Play Dead (D.I. Kim Stone, #4)(17)

During the course of the day she had tried everything she could think of, yet the feeling had not cleared.

Maybe she just needed some sleep. These feelings rarely accompanied her into the next day.

She carried the pair of Jimmy Choos up to the bedroom and opened the door. She placed them behind the other pointy-toed stilettos in the Anouk range. So far she had six pairs. And every one of them had a support in the left shoe.

She knew people laughed behind her back as she tottered around on them, and that was fine because what they didn’t know was that the shoes helped her hide the real problem.

The one that had plagued her for most of her life.





Eleven





Oh, Mummy, I miss you every single day.

I have trudged through the sludge of years since you left me.

How strange that I always phrase it that way in my mind. You left me. You didn’t leave me. You fucking died.

Sorry, Mummy, you don’t like swearing and neither do I. It is a sign of a limited vocabulary, you said.

I always agree with you, Mummy. Eventually.

I remember one time when I didn’t. I woke up and my clothes were laid out at the bottom of the bed.

It was a brown pinafore dress that buttoned up the front. It was dark brown. The colour of mud. It was a rectangle that fell at a no man’s land between my knees and my ankles. A long, shapeless block of dirt with two flaps as mock pockets on the front. Not even real pockets.

I liked pockets.

I hated it. I didn’t want to wear it, and I told you I wouldn’t.

You asked me if I would reconsider.

I said no.

You gave me that sad smile, and I knew I’d made a mistake. But I couldn’t go back.

And neither would you.

Without speaking you marched to my room. You brought down all my favourite clothes. You took the scissors, the sharp ones you used to cut my hair. I knew they were sharp because one time you nicked my neck while giving me a trim.

You sat at the kitchen table, a smile playing across your mouth, and I was happy to see any expression at all.

Cut. Cut. Cut.

I watched as you began to snip them to smithereens – like streamers, slivers of material fell to the ground, intertwining with each other like a pit of snakes.

The pinafore lay folded on the table between us.

You didn’t cut along seams. You cut so they could never be repaired. The damage was done.

A lesson to be learned.

I started to undress and the scissors slowed but they didn’t stop. I looked at you, but you didn’t look at me because you knew.

You had won.

I slipped on the yellow T-shirt and then the slab of brown. It hung like a block of unyielding chocolate.

You placed the scissors on the kitchen table, gently and without speaking, and stood at the sink.

I stood in the middle of the kitchen, staring at your back. The only sound was your hand swishing the warm water as you turned the washing-up liquid into bubbles.

But still you didn’t speak. What else had I done wrong? I had done what you asked but still that wall of silence and a spine bent with displeasure.

‘Mummy…’

You turned. Your face was impenetrable, but somewhere beneath was the promise of a smile.

This was my moment, my opportunity to make our world right again.

If only I said the right thing.

‘Mummy, play with me.’

And, finally, you smiled.

But you’re not here to play with me any more, are you, Mummy? But my other friends are.

I must go now.

My next best friend is waiting.





Twelve





‘Okay, folks, let’s get to it. Stace, what do we know about the team at Westerley?’ Kim asked, eager to get moving on the first full day of investigation.

‘Professor Christopher Wright was born in 1959. His father died when he was two years old and his mother never remarried. He’s a confirmed bachelor and has worked in various medical fields before settling on human biology. He has written countless papers and is listed as a consultant to seven universities that I’ve found so far.’

‘Clever chappie,’ Bryant observed.

‘Oh, there’s more,’ Stacey said, continuing. ‘He is a qualified expert and has testified in at least three murder investigations and two appeals. He’s got a reputation for remaining calm even under robust cross-examination. Also, in addition to his full-time job at Westerley he’s still pretty active on the lecturing circuit.

‘There was a complaint lodged against him in his early teaching days by one of his students, but it was unfounded and later retracted. Oh, and he has a cat named Brian.’

‘Bloody hell, Stace,’ Kev said snidely. ‘What did you do, take him out?’

‘To be honest he’s plastered all over the internet. He wasn’t hard to find,’ Stacey admitted.

Kim opened her mouth to ask a question, but the detective constable beat her to it with the answer.

‘No criminal record, boss. Three parking tickets all paid on time.’

‘Bit of an open book,’ Bryant said. There was nothing there that warranted any kind of note-taking.

‘Catherine Evans, on the other hand, is a completely different story,’ Stacey said, raising her eyebrows. ‘No articles and no published papers. Found her on LinkedIn but no Facebook or Twitter. Really weird.’