Play Dead (D.I. Kim Stone, #4)(69)

He had talked her through all of their dates. She had listened intently as he’d detailed their collision outside the coffee shop, trying to recognise herself in the picture, eager for any clue.

She felt the weight of her eyelids dropping and she shook herself awake.

She had tried to understand the significance of the phrase one for you and one for me. What did it mean and why was it the only thing playing in her head? She visualised the words, like a sign, in her mind’s eye, but the refresh button wasn’t working, and nothing new was coming through.

‘Hey, can’t get to sleep?’ asked Marion from the other side of the bed. The night sister had started her shift at seven.

Isobel shook her head and then widened her eyes.

Marion smiled knowingly. ‘Can’t or won’t?’

Isobel felt tears prick the back of her eyes. She knew she could not hold out much longer. Her body demanded sleep and she was losing the fight.

‘You won’t go back,’ Marion offered. ‘Your brain has woken up now.’

Isobel wanted to believe the kindly nurse, but her brain had been awake before, trapped and fully functioning in a useless, defiant body.

She shook her head. ‘I can’t…’

Marion sighed. ‘Okay, how about you just let yourself rest for…’ she looked at her watch ‘… half an hour. I’ll wake you up at half past eleven and we’ll take it from there.’

Isobel considered. The thought of being able to succumb to the fatigue and allow her body to rest while someone was watching was too tempting to refuse.

Suddenly she felt like a three-year-old child in an adult body. A little girl afraid of the dark.

‘Are you sure you’ll…?’

‘Eleven thirty on the dot. I promise.’

Isobel allowed her head to rest back fully on the bed, the dressing wedged between her skull and the softness.

Her aching neck sighed as the muscles began to relax. Isobel wasn’t sure she’d felt anything sweeter.

Her eyelids slammed shut and for a split second she panicked in the darkness but it was okay, she told herself. Marion was coming to get her.

Her flesh seemed to fall away from her bones like a well-cooked chicken as she allowed the tension to ease away.

But in the darkened tunnel of her mind was a voice. No face, no form, just a whisper or an echo.

It was like trying to hear a conversation in the next room.

She tried to focus the concentration to her ears even though the voice was inside. She squeezed her eyes tightly closed, but the voice travelled further away. Come back, she silently called. But the sound had disappeared.

The tension had seeped back into her body, so she quickly chased it away. The voice had come when she had finally allowed herself to relax.

She shook the tension away and relaxed all her senses.

The warmth of total relaxation stole over her flesh, reaching right down into her bones. She heard the voice in the distance. It was calling a single word. She urged her body not to react, to chase it away again.

She remained as still as a statue, forcing her mind to stare beyond the voice and into the abyss. The sound was growing in volume, but she couldn’t make out the word. She desperately wanted to chase after it, but she kept herself relaxed.

The voice came closer, but she kept her body and her mind still.

Closer. It was two syllables.

Closer.

The word sounded like handy.

Closer.

No, the word was candy.

Closer.

For the first time she heard it clearly. And the voice was calling out ‘Mandy’.





Sixty-Three





Everywhere Kim looked, she saw Tracy.

Every cupboard door she opened or drawer that she closed reminded her of the absence of life in the home of the complicated woman.

She had never liked the reporter. On occasion Tracy had shown a distinct lack of empathy for a victim or their family, choosing the urgency of the story instead.

And yet there had been other moments that had niggled at Kim’s usually unshakeable opinion of the woman.

Whether by fate or accident, she had managed to save Dawson’s life during a solo investigation he’d been carrying out. Faced with a group of youths from the Hollytree estate who were kicking the shit out of him and brandishing a knife, Tracy had stepped out of the shadows and intervened.

Earlier this week, when asked to leave something alone, she had done so.

These things contradicted Kim’s resolute opinion of the ambitious, ruthless woman who would sell a kidney for a story and probably two for an exclusive.

And now she was missing… potentially in the hands of a killer who had murdered at least two women and had tried for a third.

Kim knew she had done all she could. At present it was no more than a suspicion and getting valuable resources committed to a grown woman reported missing by no one was an uphill struggle, even for her.

She had tried Tracy’s number almost hourly since arriving home, but it continually hit voicemail.

As though she had willed it, her phone dinged the receipt of a message. Never before had she reached for her phone hoping it was Tracy Frost.

It wasn’t. It was a text message from Daniel.

She gasped as she read the words on the screen: ‘Got a minute? I’m outside.’

What the hell was Daniel Bate doing outside her house? She wasn’t sure herself of the guidelines in the subtle game they were playing, but she knew that turning up outside her house breached some kind of rule.