Dead Memories (D.I. Kim Stone #10)(21)

‘Visiting her own mother?’ Stacey asked, with disgust.

Kim understood Stacey’s disgust. The constable was very close to her parents and could never picture herself disrespecting her mum in such a way, but Kim understood what drugs could do to someone. They eroded the person you were, attacked and destroyed the feelings you had for other people so that it became the most important thing in your life. Getting high the only priority: above family, love, feelings. It destroyed everything. The accusation from Mrs Wilde about her daughter being involved in the vicious attack was not beyond the realms of possibility despite how unpalatable it was.

‘Stace, there was some kind of altercation between Mark Johnson and Harry Jenks at Stourbridge Community Centre. Not mentioned to us by Jenks himself but by a co-worker. I’d like to know what it was about but, more importantly, why Jenks is hiding it.’

Stacey nodded and made a note.

‘And as you know, we have an unknown victim found within a junked car. Keats, Mitch and Doctor A are all working to extract Rubik from his cube.’

She saw the look of disapproval pass over Alison’s face and turned her way.

‘What?’

‘It’s disrespectful,’ Alison said.

‘You think?’

She nodded.

Kim took a breath. She nodded to the photos of the cube already on the board. ‘You think he gives a shit what we call him?’ she asked, not waiting for an answer. ‘As you well know there are coping strategies for what we deal with every day and humour is one of them. It keeps us sane.’ She glanced across at Bryant. ‘Well, most of us anyway. It helps us cope and function and I make no apology for that,’ she said, feeling her phone vibrate in her pocket but she didn’t need to look to see what it was.

‘You mention the word disrespectful, but we have to find a way to personalise every victim that comes our way. Once we have a name the victim becomes a person, a life, a soul.’

Kim headed for the door and paused. ‘Or we could scrub out his new name and replace it with “unknown subject”; now in my opinion that would be disrespectful.’

As she took the stairs two at a time Kim couldn’t help wondering if the two of them could make it to the end of this case alive.





Twenty-Nine





‘Ah, Stone, here already,’ Woody observed, switching on his computer.

Oh yes, she’d bribed Jack on the desk with his favourite apple pie from the canteen to let her know the minute he arrived.

‘Sir, I respectfully—’

‘There’s a contradiction,’ he said, pointing to the chair.

She ignored it.

He pointed again and narrowed his eyes.

She sat.

‘Sir, I don’t need Alison bloody Lowe babysitting me on this case and watching my every move.’

‘Continue,’ he instructed.

‘With what?’

‘You’ve probably come up with a whole litany of reasons to toss at me and I’d like to give you the opportunity to voice them all so that your time wasn’t completely wasted.’

She took a breath and exhaled loudly. ‘You’re not going to budge, are you?’

‘No,’ he answered.

‘But why her?’ she insisted. ‘We don’t work well together.’

He lifted his head from rummaging in his top drawer. ‘Are you being serious, Stone? You honestly think I have the time to find someone you would work well with? I’ll settle for tolerance and at least Alison has the backbone to fight back.’

‘But you never said…’

‘I said you needed help but I didn’t specify the type or package in which it would come.’

‘I just wish you’d have told—’

‘Stone,’ he said, quietly. ‘Last night I attended a ceremony to award the George Medal posthumously to a female police officer killed by an exploding car bomb seven months ago. The award was presented to a grieving husband who didn’t let go of his two-year-old child the whole night and accepted the medal in front of an oversize photo of his dead wife. So, right now, if your feelings are a little bit hurt, I couldn’t care less.’

Kim had no response to offer.

There had been so much that she’d wanted to say, had felt entitled to say, and right now the words would not come.

She had reached the door before he spoke again.

‘You know, Stone, for someone so intelligent there are times when you really can be a bit dense.’

‘Sir?’ she said, turning. Had her boss really just called her dense?

‘My apologies for the terminology, so let me put this another way. A few years before my wife died she bought me a letter opener. Beautiful it was. Carved wooden handle inscribed with my name. Shiny, thin blade in a leather presentation box. Thing is I’d managed to open envelopes perfectly well without one for forty years but it was the best damn backscratcher I ever had. Got that spot right between your shoulder blades. Not its purpose but…’

‘I get it,’ she said, allowing a brief smile to touch her lips.

‘Stone, this killer managed to get two young people into a block of flats and murder them without being noticed. We’re either looking at two killers or one very clever one and you need every resource to make sure this doesn’t happen again.’