Dying Truth

by Angela Marsons

  Kim frowned. That sounded to her like the actions of a family in fear.

  ‘Stay on it, Kev,’ she instructed. ‘Stace?’ she asked.

  ‘Okay, spent a lot of time in people’s financial affairs yesterday, and one thing I can say is that not all parents pay the exact same fee for the education of their kids at Heathcrest.’

  ‘I thought it was a fixed price per year,’ Kim said.

  ‘You’d think, wouldn’t you?’ she said. ‘There are some families paying as little as twenty-six grand a year and some as much as thirty-nine, with the majority around thirty-four per year.’

  Kim’s only hope was that such vast amounts of money were producing doctors, physicians, physicists, economists and peacemakers. Nobel prize winners. People who would have the opportunity to do some good. Although Dawson’s findings were taking a good swift kick at that ideology.

  ‘Hang on,’ she said, as her phone began to ring.

  ‘Keats,’ she answered, seeing his name on the screen.

  ‘Am I to expect your presence at the post-mortem of Joanna Wade this morning?’ he asked.

  ‘Not my case,’ she answered, ignoring the fact that she had no wish to see Joanne’s body being violated regardless of Keats’s sensitivity. ‘Traffic are holding it as a hit-and-run.’

  Force Traffic were based at Chelmsley Wood and Wednesbury and were responsible for all roads except motorways. Supported by the Collision Investigation Team they took the lead on accidents involving fatalities or life-changing injuries.

  ‘Oh, so, she’s not a teacher at the school where you’re investigating the deaths of two children?’ he asked, sarcastically.

  She rolled her eyes. ‘You know she is but it’s not my case and I’m under strict, very strict instructions, to behave myself on—’

  ‘Then I suggest you happen along for coffee,’ he snapped, ending the call.

  Keats inviting her along for a social call.

  What the hell was going on?

  Sixty-Three

  ‘Okay, Keats, where’s the coffee?’ she asked, walking into the morgue.

  She looked above the figure in the metal dish that she guessed to be Joanna Wade. The image of the last breath leaving her body was bad enough. She didn’t need to replace it with a picture of her naked flesh cold and scarred.

  ‘There’s no coffee,’ he answered. ‘But there is this,’ he said, passing her a piece of paper.

  ‘What’s this?’ she asked, before looking at it.

  ‘The contents of Joanna Wade’s back jeans pocket.’

  Still Kim didn’t open it. ‘But Traffic will want any evidence—’

  ‘It’s a copy,’ he said. ‘The original has been bagged for their err… eventual arrival.’

  Much as she had wanted to unfold the piece of paper immediately she was conscious of contaminating evidence that the Collision Investigation Unit would pass on to the forensic scene investigators.

  ‘Have you done it yet?’ she asked, nodding towards the tray.

  He followed her gaze. ‘That’s not Joanna Wade,’ he answered.

  Kim couldn’t explain the wave of relief that went through her.

  ‘That’s an urgent case from Hollytree. Stabbing, potentially gang-related.’

  Kim understood that this case took precedence. Murder over RTA. Had Joanna been her case she would have already called her death murder and she’d be arguing priority with Keats right now.

  ‘You gonna read it?’ Bryant asked, looking to the sheet of paper in her hand.

  She moved to the side of the room beside Keats’s desk and opened it up.

  The paper was lined with faint pencil writing. The words appeared tentative; some were crossed out and overwritten on the top half of the page. Kim frowned as she recognised Sadie’s writing. It was the poem that Joanna had mentioned. The one that had bothered her.

  She squinted and tried to read.

  About life

  Broken life

  Obstructed life

  Ruined life

  Tentative life

  Everlasting life

  Destroyed life

  Life

  Life

  Life

  Life

  ‘I don’t get it,’ Kim said, looking up from the page.

  ‘What, the poem?’ Bryant asked, taking it from her hand.

  ‘That, and what it was that troubled Joanna. Seems like more of Sadie’s emotional outpourings.’

  ‘Why’s “life” repeated so many times?’

  Kim shrugged as her eyes landed on the desk. ‘Keats, what’s that?’ she asked.

  ‘Joanna Wade’s phone. Also found in the back pocket of her jeans.’

  ‘Not bagged yet?’ she asked, suspiciously.

  ‘Getting round to it, Stone,’ he snapped.

  ‘Bloody hell, Keats, getting a bit lax in your old age, eh?’

  ‘Children are dying, Stone,’ he raged. ‘And I have to cut them open to find out how.’ He glanced at the desk and more directly at the phone and then back at her. ‘And now I’m going to fetch the coffee.’

  Kim looked at Bryant as the doors closed behind the pathologist.

  ‘You’re not going to touch it?’ he asked, reading her thoughts.

  There was barely a second of hesitation before she reached across the table for a pair of blue latex gloves.

  ‘Bryant, we both know that Traffic is not gonna put these pieces together. Even Keats knows it,’ she said, aware that this was exactly what he’d been hoping she’d do.

  He sighed. ‘You can’t tamper—’

  ‘If you’re worried, go help Keats bring the coffee,’ she said, picking up the phone. A single crack travelled diagonally from corner to corner. She pressed the home button, which brought up the passcode screen.

  ‘Damn it,’ she said, putting it down and reaching for her own phone.

  Stacey picked up the phone on the second ring.

  ‘Hey Stace, hypothetically, if I wanted to bypass the screen password on a smartphone that I shouldn’t really have in my possession, how would I go about it?’

  Stacey hesitated and then began calling out instructions.

  ‘Hang on, Stace, let me put you on loudspeaker so I can hypothetically do it while you talk.’

  Stacey started from the beginning and spoke slowly.

  Four instructions later and the screen burst into life.

  ‘Stace, that was worryingly easy,’ Kim observed.

  ‘Only if you know what you’re doing,’ Stacey said. ‘Hypothetically, of course.’

  Kim smiled and ended the call.

  ‘Nice to see,’ Bryant observed.

  ‘What?’

  ‘A smile on your face. First one today.’

  ‘Yeah, it was wind,’ she said.

  ‘Ha, it was because you’re doing something you shouldn’t be.’

  She had to concede he had a point.

  Kim wasn’t surprised that Joanna’s wallpaper was a gorgeous woman in a bathing suit. She went straight for the internet search engine, which clearly Joanna didn’t clear out very often.

  ‘She was on Tinder,’ Kim observed.

  ‘Who isn’t?’ Bryant asked.

  ‘Me,’ she said.

  ‘Or me,’ he answered

  She continued to scroll and spoke as she went. ‘Darts tournaments, Airbnb in Fife, how to cook a perfect beef Wellington and—’ she stopped speaking.

  She turned to Keats as he entered the room with three cups.

  ‘Keats, could Joanna have been pregnant?’ she asked, unlikely as it might be.

  He frowned. ‘I can’t say for sure, but my initial examination didn’t offer any indication. No noticeable bulge of the tummy.’

  Kim shook her head. ‘Not her then,’ she said, handing Bryant the phone.

  His eyes widened. ‘She searched seven different sites about illegal terminations. But why…’

  Kim shook her head as she looked from the phone to the piece of paper. There was something h
ere that she was missing.

  Why had Sadie written this poem? What exactly had she been trying to say?

  Sixty-Four

  ‘You know, guv, this might be a good time,’ Bryant said as they got back in the car. ‘Just while we’ve got a spare minute.’

  ‘For what?’ she asked.

  She had put the copy of Sadie’s poem in her pocket. She had read the words so many times she was no longer even seeing them.

  He rolled his eyes and shook his head all at the same time. ‘You know what, and why are you putting it off anyway?’

  She sighed. ‘Because I read your appraisal form, and I have to change some of your scores,’ she said, uneasily.

  He shrugged. ‘Okay, I just put what I thought was fair and accurate but if you disagree and have to deduct—’

  ‘That’s not the problem, Bryant,’ she said, glancing out of the window. ‘As ever you’ve undervalued yourself and your contribution to the team. I have to mark you up.’

  She caught his brief smile out of the corner of her eye.

  ‘And that’s a bad thing?’

  ‘Are you never going to seek promotion?’ she asked, thinking about the section detailing career prospects.

  He shook his head. ‘Once was enough, thanks.’

  A few months earlier, when she’d been working alongside Travis and the West Mercia team, Bryant had been handed the temporary rank of detective inspector in her absence. Once the case was over he’d thrown it back like he’d got the business end of a branding poker in his palm.

  ‘But you would make a great DI,’ Kim said, honestly.

  ‘You know, guv, I don’t think I ever told you about one of Laura’s parents’ evenings a few years ago. We sat for a long time with lots of her teachers and even longer with her science teacher who insisted that Laura had the makings of a doctor, possibly even a surgeon. We were thrilled. We’d always known she was a bright, hard-working kid – but a surgeon? Our daughter a surgeon? We were beside ourselves in the car driving home. Laura not so much.

  ‘I asked her why she wasn’t elated about what the teachers had said, and it was simple. It was what they wanted for her more than what she wanted for herself. She’d decided when she was eleven that she wanted to be a midwife and she had never faltered from that goal.’

  Kim nodded her understanding.

  The girl was now at college studying midwifery.

  He continued. ‘I always wanted to be a police officer, not manage a team of police officers. It’s your ambition for me, not mine for myself.’

  She nodded, conceding his point. ‘Well, I have to find some area for bloody improvement,’ she said. ‘Otherwise it’s just gonna look like favouritism.’

  He shrugged. ‘I’m sure we could come up with something.’

  She looked at him. ‘Not sure that’s how it’s supposed to work.’

  But she honestly could not think of an area of his performance that he could improve. Not one she could put on the form, anyway.

  ‘Occasionally, you’re a bit overprotective,’ she said, truthfully. ‘You try and shield me from the shit and the crap like back there with Keats. Instantly you wanted to stop me accessing that phone even though you knew it could give us a clue.’

  ‘And land you on suspension,’ he countered.

  ‘It’s my risk to take. Sometimes you gotta let me get my hands dirty.’

  ‘I’d level that same accusation about protection at you,’ he offered. ‘I know you’re exploring possibilities with this case that lie outside my comfort zone but I’m a big boy. I can take it.’

  Yes, she had explored the possibility that a child could be behind the murders, and she also knew the very notion would make him sick to his stomach.

  She smiled. ‘Okay, I’ll stop protecting you if you let me deal with my own crap and shit now and again. Deal?’ she asked.

  ‘Deal,’ he agreed. ‘So, are we done then?’ Bryant asked. ‘Is that my appraisal completed?’

  She knew his attitude to performance appraisals was much like her own. He assumed he was doing a good job until he heard otherwise and not the other way around.

  ‘Yep, we’re done,’ she said, taking the single piece of paper from her pocket.

  ‘Hang on one second,’ Kim said, seeing it with fresh eyes. She narrowed her gaze and remembered what Joanna had told her. See the whole picture, read the words, read the page.

  ‘Fuck,’ she said, looking at Bryant. ‘It’s here. It’s right here.’

  ‘What is it that I’m not seeing?’ he asked, taking another look at Sadie’s poem.

  Kim pointed. ‘Look closer. Ignore the words for a second and just look.’

  He shook his head. ‘If I’m not supposed to look at the words…’

  ‘Here,’ she said, stabbing at the page. ‘Each word that starts the sentence. About. Broken. Obstructed…’

  ‘Aborted,’ he said. ‘If you read those capital letters from the top it spells aborted.’

  ‘Someone has done something they shouldn’t have done, and Sadie knew all about it,’ Kim said. Finally, they were heading towards a possible motive for the young girl’s death.

  ‘You think one of the students at Heathcrest had an illegal abortion?’

  ‘Could be,’ she said. ‘And with how everyone feels about scandal…’

  ‘But there are over five hundred girls at that school. How the hell are we going to find out who?’

  Her excitement took a kick in the head. He was right. She suspected the girl was not suddenly going to come forward and reveal herself.

  ‘Hang on,’ she said, turning the problem on its head. ‘Bryant, remember everything Dawson has told us about those clubs at Heathcrest? That they were filled with powerful people, and you were a member for life?’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said, not yet catching up with her thoughts.

  ‘Where would you go if you found yourself in a spot of trouble?’ Kim asked, already dialling Stacey’s number.

  ‘Dawson still with you?’ Kim asked when she heard her colleague’s voice.

  ‘Yep,’ she answered.

  ‘I want you both to drop whatever you’re working on. There’s something I need you to do.’

  Sixty-Five

  ‘Every doctor that was previously at Heathcrest?’ Dawson asked, incredulously.

  ‘Yeah, Kev, because twenty years of Heathcrest graduates multiplied by one hundred and ten students per year that graduate means two thousand students to check,’ she said, sarcastically.

  ‘But the boss said…’

  ‘Jesus, Kev. Put your thinking head on. The boss expects us to work out how to do this on our own, you know. We’re probably talking private clinics within a radius of say ten to twenty miles. So, we do it backwards. We look at the clinics and hospitals and see how many doctors came from Heathcrest.’

  ‘But that might still—’

  ‘And then we look at the year they graduated. If it’s someone the parents of a child knew it’s not gonna be someone who left seven years ago, is it?’

  ‘Why seven?’ he asked.

  ‘Medical training,’ she said, widening her eyes. ‘Jesus, it’s like you just hatched or something.’

  Dawson shook his head as Stacey began typing, amazed at the speed and logic that lived inside her head.

  ‘Did she say why we’re doing this?’

  Stacey offered him a murderous glance. ‘Seems Joanna Wade was interested in illegal terminations, twenty-four weeks and over if you want that explained for you too. And after all your yapping about secret clubs and lifelong societies she wants us to look in that direction.’

  ‘Got it,’ he said.

  ‘Any more questions?’ she asked.

  ‘Just one, Stace. Do you still love me even though I’m thick?’ he asked, with a grin.

  ‘Bloody hell, Kev, just crack on, will yer and get looking?’

  Following her instruction, he put his head down and began to search. Except he’d had a different idea of where to look
.

  Sixty-Six

  Kim followed Mrs Winters through to the informal lounge. Mr Winters placed his laptop beside him on the sofa.

  Her stomach was still reacting to what they’d found on Joanna’s phone, but for now, she had to let Stacey and Dawson do their job. She needed answers right here.

  Mrs Winters moved the laptop and took a seat beside her husband, reaching for his hand.

  Kim sat opposite in a chair next to an ornate fireplace filled with cards of condolence, best wishes at this time and sorry for your loss. The wall to the left was filled with family photos displayed in a descending chronology.

  ‘Mr Winters, Mrs Winters, we need to ask you a couple of questions about Sadie and the medication she was taking,’ Kim said, gently but firmly.

  Mrs Winters coloured and looked to the floor.

  A few seconds passed before Mr Winters answered.

  ‘She needed help,’ he said, simply.

  ‘With what?’ Kim asked.

  They were not going to get off that lightly.

  ‘Mood swings, feelings of depression, anxiety.’

  ‘So, you gave her your own medication?’ Kim asked, looking to Mrs Winters.

  She did not raise her head, letting her husband do all the talking.

  ‘Did you try to get her any help?’ Kim asked. ‘Like an appointment with her GP or a counsellor?’

  ‘There’s no better counsellor than the one at Heathcrest but she wouldn’t talk to anyone. She just clammed up, and I suppose we just wanted to help make her feel better.’

  It seemed clear they’d made no effort to get to the bottom of her withdrawal. Had it not occurred to them that Sadie’s problems had started when her sister had become the superstar of the family?

  ‘That’s why we weren’t surprised at the news of her—’

  ‘Murder,’ Kim interrupted. This couple seemed determined to believe that their child had taken her own life.

  ‘And you asked Saffron to hide the pills from us?’ Kim asked.