Play Dead (D.I. Kim Stone, #4)(67)

‘There were four or five to start with I think. One little girl came running to the staff room to get us. Funny little thing, she was.’

Bryant continued. ‘Of course, I remember now. Little Louise was there as well, wasn’t she?’

Mr Jackson started to nod, but as he did so his expression began to change. His face crumpled into confusion. He looked from one to the other and then beyond them to the doorway.

‘Vera…?’

The carer appeared instantly. Her smile was warm and comforting.

‘It’s okay, Mr Jackson. These nice people just called to see if you wanted double glazing fitted, but they’re going now.’

She turned to Kim as Bryant stepped backwards. She looked towards the door. It was not an unkind gesture, but it was clearly time for them to leave.

Kim nodded her thanks and turned away, saddened.

‘He’ll be okay,’ Vera said, appearing beside her. ‘Coronation Street will be on in a minute. It’s his favourite.’

Kim swallowed the emotion in her throat and continued to the door.

‘Wait a minute,’ Mr Jackson called. ‘I remember now. That funny little thing that fetched us. She had a limp. A terrible limp. And I think… I think her name was Tracy.’





Sixty





‘Guv… you don’t think…?’

‘Bryant, I’m willing to bet your house on it,’ she said as they reached the end of the drive. She shook her head as a couple of things began to make sense. ‘Those bloody stupid heels. Ring Stacey and get an address,’ she said, scrolling through her list of incoming calls. She found the one she had received a few days ago around midnight. She hit the button to recall.

The phone rang and rang and finally ended with a brief message from Tracy Frost. Kim could hear Bryant talking to Stacey as she called again.

Same thing happened. It rang all the way to the message.

She tried once more. This time it went straight to voicemail without ringing.

Damn it. The phone had been switched off, and she had no way of knowing by whom.

Bryant ended his call and walked towards her. ‘I’ve asked Stacey to check and see if Tracy Frost went to Cornheath and if she was there at the same time as Jemima.’

Kim nodded. She knew it was almost half past seven and her team had been at it all day. She also knew if she tried to send any one of them home they would refuse to go. Leads didn’t always present themselves at nine in the morning.

‘Have you got Tracy’s address?’ she asked.

Bryant nodded as he unlocked the driver’s door. He hesitated. ‘You do know we could be completely wrong?’

Kim had no such hesitation as she plonked herself in the passenger seat.

‘Yeah. But what if we’re completely right?’





Sixty-One





‘He has no idea where she is,’ Kim said, ending the call. Tracy’s editor had not seen her again following their morning briefing.

‘You know, there are worse people he—’

‘Finish that sentence, Bryant, and you and I are gonna have problems.’

No person was any better or worse, more or less deserving than the next. In their job they couldn’t be. Tracy Frost was a pain in the backside, there was no doubt about that, and there had been times over the last few years Kim would have abducted the woman herself if she could have got away with it – but there was more to the reptilian reporter than she had originally believed. If Kim thought her colleague truly believed that Tracy deserved it he’d already be on his way home.

Bryant slowed as he passed QB Motorcycles. ‘Is that the one?’

‘Looks like it,’ Kim said, checking the number of the door.

He continued to the bottom of the hill and turned into a pub car park.

Kim noted that the white Audi was nowhere to be seen.

Bryant pulled up directly in front of the house.

‘Not what I expected,’ he observed.

She had to agree with him. The house was a tiny terrace squeezed between two others. Together, all three might have made a decent-sized property.

Tracy’s designer labels did not fit in a house like this.

She knocked on the door hard. Perhaps Tracy had the car in a garage somewhere.

She leaned down and lifted the letter box. The door led straight into a small reception room. Kim could see a television in the far corner. It was off and no other sound met her ears.

‘Jesus, guv, how do we even get around the back?’ Bryant asked, taking a step back and looking around.

He had a point. Tracy’s property was in the middle.

A movement to the right caught her eye. The corner of the net curtain covering next door’s window dropped back down.

Kim took two steps and knocked on the door. Perhaps they could get to the rear of the property via the back gardens.

The door was opened by a thin lad in his mid-teens. Gangly, milky legs protruded from multicoloured shorts covered with tropical birds. His concave upper half was uncovered.

‘Yeah,’ he said with the requisite attitude.

‘You know the woman next door?’ Kim asked, relieved she did not even have to try to raise any pleasantries.

He looked outside and glanced at the property as though he had no idea who she was talking about and had to be reminded there was a house next door.