Dead Memories (D.I. Kim Stone #10)(29)

His hand moved back and forth trying to expel the poison the bitch had put right into his balls. The rage that, always present, had been fanned and needed to fire out of him in order for him to think straight.

He thought back to Deana’s visit the previous day, her big tits straining against the cheap tee shirt two sizes too small. Her wobbling flesh had done nothing for him but the slut knew what he liked. Her right hand had hovered over the milky white skin before pinching her own flesh, gently at first, teasing him and then harder until red patches had started to appear. His arousal had begun as the marks had deepened, when the discomfort had showed on her face. She’d grabbed the flesh harder, twisting it roughly, digging in her talon-like nails until she’d cried out with the pain.

He’d thought he was gonna come there and then.

He pumped harder trying to hold on to the image of her discomfort, her bruises, her pain.

But his dick hung loosely in his hand.

He returned his mind to the one memory that always got his juices flowing, used sparingly in case he ever wore it out.

He pictured Kim fucking Stone on the floor of the basement, placing herself between him and the nine-year-old girl whose life he’d been promised.

He remembered the feeling of kicking her hard in the knee to bring her to the ground. The groan of pain that had escaped from her mouth.

There it is, he thought to himself, as his dick began to wake up.

He pictured himself on top of her, his fist smashing into the side of her face.

Oh yes, oh yes, oh yes, he thought, as his hand worked harder.

Her face flinching against the pain he was inflicting.

This was more like it, he thought, as the heat surged through his hand.

‘Come on, Symes, we ain’t got all day,’ Gennard called from outside.

‘Fuck off,’ he shouted back at the intrusion.

But it was too late. Gennard’s voice prompted the reminder of why the guard was with him anyway. Because of that bitch’s visit.

And the new vision now came to haunt him, replacing the old, treasured memory kept safe for his own pleasure.

The bitch, fit and healthy, pain-free and without injury. Her smug, victorious face mocking him from the other side of the room.

His dick turned limp in his hands and he knew that he would never get that precious memory back.

And now he hated the bitch even more.





Forty-One





Alison watched as Stacey approached and knocked before entering The Bowl.

‘Coffee?’ she asked.

Alison shook her head.

‘Tea, water?’

Alison held up a silver flask containing a smoothie prepared at home. ‘I’m good, thanks.’

‘Anything I can help with?’ she asked, pleasantly. ‘Data mining isn’t everyone’s cup of tea and—’

‘Stacey, it doesn’t matter if you creep around the subject all day or ask me outright, it’ll be the same answer, which is, I can’t tell you what I’m working on.’

‘But she’s hiding stuff from us, isn’t she? You can at least tell me that.’

Alison hesitated for just a second before nodding.

‘I’m sorry to say, Stacey, that she’s definitely doing that.’

Alison watched as the constable retook her seat in the general office. Regardless of whether or not she agreed with Stone’s secrecy she had to respect it.

Despite the DI’s insistence on Alexandra Thorne she had placed a call to the warden of Drake Hall to ring her back to establish any changes in the woman’s pattern of behaviour. Any new visitors on the scene? Any new alliances in the prison? If the psychiatrist truly was a sociopath she was a contender whether or not she was in prison. Bryant’s comments led her to believe that Thorne’s efforts had already taken place from behind bars, which only increased Alison’s suspicions. And unlike Stone, her own experience of sociopaths was that they rarely gave up after one attempt.

But after her meeting with DCI Woodward her mind was still on Beverly Wright, lying in a hospital bed and the mistake she’d made which had put her there.

She wondered whether it was her own arrogance that refused to accept the outcome of the West Mercia Police investigation. She knew that was a possibility. No one ever wanted to admit they were wrong, especially when the error had led to an innocent female being brutally beaten and raped.

Alison was unable to stop herself opening the folder on her laptop, asking herself for the hundredth time why she hadn’t archived it or let it go.

And it was because she couldn’t understand her mistake. She needed to know where she’d gone wrong. How could she do her job here with this team or any team in the future if she didn’t understand where she’d messed up?

It was almost four months ago that she’d been called in to assist on the brutal rape and murder of a twenty-nine-year-old woman in Malvern due to a lack of physical clues left at the scene.

She had known immediately that the task was challenging, given that a fundamental aspect of profiling was that multiple crimes could be linked to a specific offender, and that the profile could be used to predict the offender’s future actions.

With only one crime she’d had no choice but to work on the premise that behaviour reflects personality.

With multiple crimes she would have been able to use linkage analysis to find similar cases with little evidence and link them through similarities, but the brutal rape and murder of Jennifer Townes was like nothing she’d ever seen before.