Dead Memories (D.I. Kim Stone #10)(59)

His words were cut off as she grabbed the front of his stab vest and pulled him towards her. She raised her clenched fist into the air.

‘Okey dokey,’ Bryant said, grabbing her arm and pushing her towards the open field.

‘Bad taste, mate. Real, bad taste,’ Bryant said with disgust. ‘Just be glad it isn’t your fucking sister.’

The rage burning through her body begged her to break free of her colleague and head right back to the heartless bastard behind.

‘Let me go,’ she snapped. ‘I’ll wring his…’

‘Oh no you don’t,’ Bryant said, keeping a hand on her elbow.

‘For fuck’s sake,’ she growled.

‘Yeah, scream, shout and swear at me all you like. Hit me if it’ll make you feel better. I won’t report you for it. Probably,’ he said.

‘You think he should get away with saying that about a young, innocent kid who…’

‘Punching him and losing your job is not gonna put the words back on the other side of his lips and help us catch the bastard that did this.’

Bryant only let her arm go once they’d reached the car.

For the second time that day he looked at her over the roof of the Astra.

‘Am I allowed to ask the significance of what we just saw in the woods back there?’

Kim shook her head and forced down the emotion building in her throat. Her reply was little more than a whisper.

‘No, Bryant, you are not.’





Seventy-Six





Bryant did her the favour of staying quiet as they followed the ambulance at speed through the evening traffic.

It was what she’d asked him to do, but was it really what she wanted: more time to think?

She stared at the rear ambulance doors, picturing the girl within. Violated, hurting, scared, confused, angry. She had a police officer holding her hand.

She wanted to be beside her, to apologise, to explain that this was all her fault; that these things were happening because of her, that she herself had done nothing wrong. But most of all she wanted to tell her that she was going to catch the bastard who had done this and they were going to make him pay.

‘Guv, I’m not sure how this links…’

‘It was foster family number five, and Mr Lampitt worked at the pop bottling plant, and if you ask me any more questions I’m gonna jump out of this moving car, got it?’

‘Well, the kiddie locks are on but you’re welcome to try the sunroof,’ he said, deadpan.

Kim felt a smile touch her lips despite the emotion churning around her veins.

‘Bryant, sometimes you—’

‘Yeah, yeah. So, you going to try and talk to this girl at the hospital?’

‘Hope to,’ she answered. ‘Not sure she’s in any fit state to offer us anything at the minute but I’m happy to wait. Maybe I can speak to the WPC in the meantime, get a name or something.’

‘Could be quite a wait,’ he observed, pushing on the brakes as an idiot in an MR2 pulled in between them and the ambulance. ‘I wish she’d been noisier,’ he said, echoing her thoughts at the scene.

Her phone began to ring. She took it out to see Woody’s name at the top of the screen.

She considered not answering it until she’d received some kind of update from inside the hospital.

‘Evening, sir,’ she answered, realising she hadn’t updated him in a while.

‘Stone, where are you and what are you doing?’

There was an edge to his voice that she assumed was due to the time of night.

‘We’re following a sexual assault victim in an ambulance to the hospital to try and speak with her about—’

‘Put me on loudspeaker right now,’ he bellowed.

She glanced at Bryant as she did so, but his focus was on keeping pace with the ambulance as they headed down the Pedmore Road.

‘You’re on, sir,’ she said.

‘Do not go to the hospital. Do not attempt to question that victim and get back to the station right now. And Bryant, unless you want to risk both of you losing your jobs you’ll do exactly what I say.’

The line went dead in her hand.

Bryant slowed the car as the ambulance sped away from them.

And then he took a left.





Seventy-Seven





‘Sit down, Stone,’ Woody said as she knocked and entered.

Silently she did as he asked. His brusque phone call had been followed up with a brief text message that had read.

‘Just you.’





She’d told Bryant to head off home to his wife and pasta bake but she knew he was sitting downstairs in the squad room.

‘The incident this evening?’ he said, giving her a hard stare.

Kim really had no clue why he was bordering on hostile but she’d learned that when he was like this it was best she just did what he said.

‘We’d just arrived back at the station, sir. I was on my way to give you a briefing,’ she said, hoping to appease him. Perhaps she wasn’t keeping him in the loop enough. ‘And we became aware of a situation at Linley Park. We followed the officers to the scene and—’

‘Stone, it may surprise you to know that I keep a radio on my desk and am well aware of the incident at Linley Park and your reasons for attending. But what I didn’t hear over the radio, and what reached me via a phone call from Sergeant Wilkins, is that you assaulted a police constable at the scene.’