Play Dead (D.I. Kim Stone, #4)(62)

Kim understood. The hope ended now.

Quietly she pushed back the chair. There were few questions to ask. This woman did not even know her daughter, had not seen her for many years before her murder.

‘Thank you for being so open and honest, Mrs Hickman,’ Kim said, holding out her hand.

Mrs Hickman shook it in return and made to stand.

Kim ushered her back down. ‘We’ll see ourselves out,’ she said.

A formal identification would follow but Kim knew they had their girl.

She paused at the door that led into the porch.

A little girl with mousy brown hair and a red chequered dress frowned from an enlarged school photo.

‘I’ve got one of mine at home looking just like that,’ Bryant observed with a sad smile. ‘Photographer’s nightmare but a pretty little girl.’

Kim stared for a moment at the photograph and saw something that took her by surprise.

‘What else do you see there, Bryant?’ she asked.

‘Awww… shit,’ he whispered as his eyes found the same thing hers had.

A kirby grip fashioned with half a heart.





Fifty-Five





Tracy Frost finished reading the article and placed it on the passenger seat.

It was good copy. Her editor had loved it.

She had chosen not to reveal to him that she had known she was being used. A fact that was still gnawing at her insides like a hungry ferret.

Her natural instinct was to go digging into the exact thing Inspector Stone wanted to keep hidden, and she hadn’t been able to help herself completely. She had managed to find out the name of the woman who worked there as an entomologist, which had made her even more curious about what it was about Catherine Evans that Kim Stone wanted to hide.

Her fingers had been poised to start searching when she’d realised what she was doing. She had given her word and there came a time when that had to mean something. They had agreed to scratch each other’s backs and Tracy knew she couldn’t stop scratching just because she’d found a juicier itch. That’s what had kept Bob anonymous for this long. And so she had removed her fingers from the keyboard and ripped out the page with the name so no one else could find it. A deal was a deal.

Now that she had parked, Tracy knew she eventually had to try to leave the car, but it would take another couple of deep breaths before she could even think about it.

She glanced up to the bay window. He would know she was here. His seat was to the left of the first glass pane. A spot he’d claimed as his own when he’d married her mother twenty-one years ago.

Tracy felt the rage course through her as she turned the ignition and started the car.

She still couldn’t force herself to go in there.





Fifty-Six





‘You wanted to see me?’ Kim said, closing the door behind her.

She was not surprised to see a copy of the Dudley Star on Woody’s desk.

‘Stone, you have a leak.’

She moved closer to the desk. ‘May I?’

‘Carry on,’ he said, pushing it towards her.

She turned the paper around. The headline screamed ‘Body Farm Shocker’, which caused her an internal groan. Tracy had had plenty of time to come up with a decent headline.

The front page began the story, which then took up the majority of pages two and three.

She scanned it and found that Tracy hadn’t done a bad job, despite the appalling headline.

‘It’s got everything, Stone. I distinctly remember instructing you to keep this low profile. Did you not think to pass that instruction to your team?’

‘I did, sir,’ she said, pushing the paper back towards him.

‘Do you realise what this is going to cause? Do you have any idea of the letters, complaints and petitions that are going to flood in?’

Luckily they wouldn’t be coming to her.

‘I am not happy about this at all, Stone. The location of the facility has been compromised because you have a leak in your team, someone who cannot be trusted to follow a simple instruction or keep their mouth shut.’

Woody slapped the newspaper. ‘It’s clear that she has spoken to someone involved in the investigation and I want the name of that person…’

‘It was me, sir,’ she said calmly. ‘I spoke to Tracy Frost.’

It was not often Kim was afforded the luxury of seeing her boss speechless, but it didn’t last for long.

His disbelief turned into a knowing frown. ‘No, Stone, you’re covering for one of your team members, and I won’t stand for it. I want to know who it was.’

‘It really was me. I spoke directly with Tracy Frost and gave her most of the information. Some she dug up herself but not much. It came from me. I am the unnamed source.’

Woody sat back in his chair, shaking his head. He regarded her with an expression that demanded answers.

Even in the face of his anger, she wasn’t sorry she’d done it. She’d defied a direct order, and she had no regrets.

Very few other publications would want to run the story if all they were doing was repeating the same old facts, and Tracy had included them all. Tracy was the only person who had spoken to Catherine and the entomologist wouldn’t be taking any more calls from the press.