‘Listen, Stace, there ain’t a woman alive good enough for you.’
She held his gaze for a second before black uniforms poured out of the van. A second vehicle pulled up behind.
Everyone gathered around the bonnet of the car as Devon headed towards them.
Stacey tried to ignore the feeling in her stomach as the woman strode purposefully their way. Damn, she looked even sexier in a stab proof vest.
‘Briefing done at the office. Just finalising now.’
‘Did you get the warrant?’ Dawson asked.
Devon shook her head. ‘We’re aiming for cooperation from the owners.’
‘Good luck with that,’ Stacey murmured.
‘Be aware, we’re not going in to frighten anyone. The last thing we want is for these girls to be terrified into silence. Myself and Grant will go in first and talk to the owners. One of you can come in but I don’t want you both. Not yet.’
She waited for their decision.
‘Stacey,’ Dawson said. ‘The women will trust her more than me.’
Devon nodded and turned her way. ‘Don’t speak, though. We have to go through a process. Got it?’
‘Got it,’ Stacey said, grateful to get a bird’s-eye view of the operation and hopefully some answers.
‘All set?’ Devon asked, as a tall blonde man approached. Stacey assumed him to be Grant.
Stacey was just a couple of steps behind as they crossed the road towards the premises at speed. By the time they reached the reception door she’d caught up.
Melody’s smile turned to fear as they entered the building.
Grant immediately held out his hand.
‘Grant Chance from Immigration Enforcement,’ he said, holding out the identification card hanging around his neck. ‘May I speak to the person in charge?’
She nodded mutely and picked up the phone.
Officially that should be Mrs Robertson but Stacey had no doubt that it would be Steven who came through the door.
And as she’d thought Steven appeared immediately, looking flushed and pensive. She guessed he’d seen the vans from the upstairs window.
‘What’s going on?’ he asked, looking across them all.
Grant took a step forward and offered his identification.
‘Immigration Enforcement,’ he said. ‘We’ve received an anonymous call regarding the employees here.’
Steven looked directly at her. His expression was cold.
‘Anonymous, eh?’
‘Yes,’ Grant confirmed.
Stacey couldn’t help but notice that the man’s cool, calm demeanour had definitely been ruffled. Each time they’d seen him he had been in control but this surprise visit had unnerved him.
‘We have nothing to hide. Please follow me.’
Devon followed Grant and she followed Devon. Melody offered her a tight smile as she passed.
A lot of heads rose with interest as they passed through the factory. Tension crackled in the air as the furtive looks waved along the rows of sewing machines. Foot pedals stopped tapping and hands stilled as their steps to the mezzanine were closely watched.
Nicolae shouted something in Romanian and the heads snapped back down and the noise resumed.
Steven guided them all into his office and closed the door.
‘All of our workers are legal immigrants and have every right to—’
‘Of course, Mr Robertson,’ Grant said, amiably. ‘But we have to act on complaints. I’m sure your paperwork will be in order. Now if we could just begin with the full names and addresses of all of your workers?’
Steven sat down and tapped a few keys on the computer. The printer beside him burst into life. Pages began to spit out of its mouth.
Stacey glanced at the first sheet of paper, which held six different names.
Devon removed the sheets and passed them to Grant but not before Stacey had recognised the address.
Devon returned to stand beside her as Grant continued speaking to Steven Robertson.
‘Every one of them lives at the property we followed them to last night,’ Stacey whispered, as the conversation about documentation continued.
‘Not uncommon,’ Devon advised. ‘These poor women don’t normally earn enough to live alone. Sometimes they club together to rent a small house.’
Stacey re-joined the conversation taking place around the desk.
‘Well, Mr Robertson, everything appears to be in order here. Our only issue will be to check the passports of the employees, which we can do by visiting the address you’ve given us.’
‘No need for that,’ Steven said, stepping to a filing cabinet. His demeanour had returned to the measured, deliberate state she recognised and his movements calm and controlled as he took a key from his desk and unlocked the top drawer. He reached in and produced an elasticated bundle of passports.
Stacey looked to Devon who was frowning, reflecting her own thoughts.
Which was, why did he have their passports at all?
SIXTY-FIVE
Kim couldn’t hide her surprise when Bryant pulled up at the childhood home of Donna Hammond-Hill.
A drive along a short lane in Wollescote led them to a modernised farmhouse with a sunroom tagged onto the side. The front of the home had been fashioned with wood and tinted glass. A small Peugeot was the only car on the sizeable drive.
‘Honestly, guv, I just don’t get it,’ Bryant said, shaking his head.
Kim knew he was picturing the tiny space in which Donna had chosen to live. Instead of here.
‘We can’t judge her reasons, Bryant,’ she said. A nice-looking house was not indicative of the life inside. Unhappiness, misery and abuse were not the sole property of the poor and disadvantaged. They had not yet met Donna’s family.
Kim knocked and waited.
The woman that opened the door was late forties. Her skin was pale against the red-rimmed eyes and auburn hair. She wore no make-up but her navy trouser suit and court shoes told Kim she had only recently returned from the morgue.
Bryant introduced them both and the woman stepped back from the door.
‘Are you alone, Mrs Hammond-Hill?’ Kim asked.
She nodded as she guided them through the hallway. ‘I was offered a liaison officer or victim support worker or something but I don’t want anyone here. I just want to be alone.’
‘I’m sorry we have to intrude…’
‘Not at all, officer. I am beyond numb right now so it might be best to catch me before it all sinks in.’
Kim saw the tears form in her eyes as she spoke.
It was beginning to sink in.
They followed her into the sunroom.
‘My favourite part of the house even in this weather,’ she said, taking a single high backed wicker chair.
‘A beautiful home you have,’ Bryant observed.
A book lay face down on the table beside a china teacup and a pair of reading glasses. Kim wondered if that’s what she’d been doing when the informing officers had knocked the door the previous night and destroyed her world.
‘It was my husband’s labour of love, his childhood home, which was sold off to clear farming debts. He got to enjoy it for a whole year before suffering a fatal heart attack at the age of forty-four. No warning, no previous signs,’ she explained as she reached to the side of the chair.
She took out a pair of furry moccasin slippers that immediately looked odd when paired with the smart trouser suit.
‘How old was Donna when her father died?’ Kim asked.
‘Fifteen,’ she answered, kicking her court shoes to the side.
‘And she reacted badly?’ Kim pushed.
‘I think we both did, officer.’
This woman had barely had time to grieve the loss of her husband before issues arose with her child.
‘After her father died everything changed. We had been so close, doing everything together and somehow the two of us suddenly didn’t know how to re-form around his loss. We were li
ke strangers, both unable to reach out and comfort the other. The distance between us grew until neither of us knew how to bridge the gap.’
‘It must have been a shock to you, seeing her?’ Bryant said.
She bit her lower lip. ‘I had to tell myself that was Donna I was seeing. My heart wouldn’t believe it even though my head knew it to be true.’ She shook her head, bewildered. ‘How do I mourn her when I can’t process the fact that that poor child is my daughter?’ she asked.
‘You understand the manner of her death?’ Kim asked.
The woman nodded slowly. ‘I do understand that she was a prostitute and she was murdered,’ she said, as though speaking about someone else.
Kim understood that her brain was connecting the murder to the girl she’d seen at the morgue but that her mind had not yet completely joined the last dot of both of those facts relating to her daughter.
‘There is a cruelty here that is unbearable,’ she said, dabbing at her watery eyes.
‘Sorry?’ Kim said.
‘That she only called me three days ago.’
Kim sat forward. ‘After how long?’ she asked.
‘It was the first time she’d made contact since she’d left,’ the woman said.
Kim thought back through the days. ‘She called you on Sunday after more than a year?’
‘Yes. It was wonderful just to hear her voice.’
She had called the day after Kelly Rowe had been murdered.
‘And what did she say?’ Kim asked.
‘Not very much. Just that she’d been thinking about me and that she missed me…’
‘And?’
‘And that she was sorry for what she’d done.’
Kim could hear the heartbreak in her voice.
‘Anything else?’
She shook her head. ‘I didn’t want to push her. I told her I forgave her and that I loved her. I was too scared to say more in case I frightened her off.’
‘She would have appreciated that,’ Bryant offered, quietly. ‘It was probably what she needed to hear.’
‘I hope so,’ she said, as the tears fell from her eyes.
Kim gave her a moment of silence with her grief before continuing.
‘Mrs Hammond-Hill, is there anything at all that changed between yourself and Donna that could explain why she finally chose to leave home?’
After meeting and speaking with this woman Kim was coming around to Bryant’s way of thinking. Why the hell had Donna left home in the first place?
After two years of anger, arguments and bitterness, had there been something in that final argument that had propelled her towards the door? What had been in Donna’s head to pack some clothes and just leave?
The woman shook her head. ‘The argument the night before was the same one we’d been having for months.’ She shook her head. ‘It ended with the usual line she threw at me before stomping off.’
‘And what was that?’ Kim asked.
‘That I had to learn to see the bigger picture.’
SIXTY-SIX
‘I know it’s just a saying, Bryant,’ Kim said. ‘But you don’t find it strange that it’s come up twice in a couple of days?’
‘It’s a cliché used all the time,’ he argued.
‘Our missing girl, Ellie, said it to her mother before running away and now we find out that Donna said it before doing the exact same thing a year ago. What the hell do these kids know about “the bigger picture”?’ she asked.
He remained calm in the face of her aggravation. ‘I’m just not sure how it helps us find—’
‘They were fucking groomed, Bryant. Don’t you get it? Some bastard is finding these teenage girls, probably online, and exploiting their annoyance at their parents, manipulating them, weakening them and then taking advantage. It’s got to be Kai fucking Lord,’ she said, grinding her teeth.
‘Steady on, guv. You really think he’s the grooming type? There’s no shortage of desperate women on Hollytree. I’m not sure he needs to extend his reach beyond—’
‘They’re young girls, Bryant,’ she said. ‘They fetch a higher premium. Think about it. Get them away from their parents, maybe hooked on drugs and you’ve got ’em for life.’
He paused at the traffic island to let a learner driver crawl past.
‘You really think Ellie Greaves could be caught up—?’
‘Hang on,’ she said as her phone started to ring.
‘Penn,’ she answered. ‘Any luck on Ellie Greaves’ phone?’ she asked, immediately.
He answered in the negative and then offered her the reason for the call.
‘Damn it,’ she said, pressing the End button as Bryant turned into the hospital. ‘No warrant to search Roger Barton’s house so we gotta try and get him in without his brief. I want to know why he has Kelly Rowe’s blood in his car.’
‘Pretty obvious, guv,’ Bryant said.
‘You think he killed them, don’t you?’ she asked, as he parked the car.
‘I’m thinking that there’s something not right with this guy. His house is like something out of Ripley’s Believe It or Not! He visits prostitutes but not for sex and now blood from one of the victims has been found in his car.’
She shook her head in the face of the evidence. ‘Not feeling it, Bryant.’
‘I know your gut is begging to differ, guv, but it might be due its annual service.’
Kim ignored him as she pushed open the door into the morgue.
Keats looked their way and nodded coolly.
The absence of a smart remark told her he was not happy and it wasn’t due to the dark circles beneath his eyes. He’d pulled many all-nighters over the years. Just as she had.
‘What have we got, Keats?’ she asked.
‘Absolutely nothing, Inspector,’ he replied, tightly.
She understood his irritation. He had spent the night performing a second post-mortem on a victim he felt should not have been exhumed in the first place.
Her colleague was doubting her instinct; the pathologist was pissed off with her decisions. Kim wondered if it might be wise to go back and start this day again.
She used her hands to lift herself backwards onto the stainless steel island in the middle of the room. The body of Lauren Goddard had been returned to the cooler. She placed her hands either side of her and dangled her legs over the side of the table.
‘Keats, stop sulking and talk to me,’ she said.
He narrowed his eyes in her direction. ‘I fail to understand—’
‘Objection noted. Now we’ve sorted that out, is there any way of deducing from her injuries if Lauren Goddard jumped or was pushed to her death?’
Keats sighed wearily. ‘Absolutely not. Falling thirteen floors would eradicate any distinction between the two completely.’
Kim raised herself to a standing position on top of the table, narrowly missing a strip light. She stared down and leaned forward.
‘Guv, what the hell?’
She straightened and looked at Keats. ‘But surely there has to be something, some kind of calculation based on force or rotation through the air or velocity or—’
‘Oh Stone, she has forty-three broken bones in her body. The injuries from that height would be the same if she jumped or was pushed.’
Kim put one foot forward, dangling over the precipice.
‘But if she just stepped—’
‘For goodness’ sake, Inspector, if she fell, dived, belly flopped, stepped, jumped or stood on her head and bounced—’
‘Hang on,’ she said, easing herself back to a sitting position, a sudden thought in her head. ‘Why are we assuming she was standing?’ Kim asked. ‘If she had no plans to jump, she wouldn’t be standing up, would she?’
Keats shook his head in despair and aimed for the desk behind her.
‘What if she was sitting, just looking around and then suddenly—’
Kim’s sentence ended as she felt herself being pushed forward forcefully from behind.
‘Jesus, Keats,’ she said, stumbling forward as her feet landed on the floor.
‘Like that, you mean?’ he asked, innocently.
She stood still for a minute and assessed the instinctive reactions of her own body. She brought her hands up in front of her face.
‘Nails, Keats. Check under her nails. My first instinct, without realising it, was to try to grab something, to hang on.’
If Lauren Goddard had been sitting on the edge of the building and had been taken by surprise there was the possibility her nails had scraped on something. With the assumption of suicide she was guessing the nail beds would not have been checked the first time.
He nodded his understanding and then rubbed at his chin. ‘I’m taking an hour or two first for breakfast, coffee and rest and then I’ll bring her back out.’
She folded her arms and glanced at the pathologist and then back to the table.
‘You feel better after that, eh, Keats?’ Kim asked.
‘Surprisingly, yes,’ he said, smiling. ‘In the interests of scientific discovery I felt I owed you that.’
‘Scientific discovery?’ Bryant said behind a cough.
Keats turned towards him. ‘Jealousy is an ugly trait, my friend.’
‘Next time, Keats, I’m gonna hang you up by the—’
She was interrupted by the ringing of her mobile phone.
‘Penn?’ she answered.
‘Yeah boss, Roger Barton, owner of the Toyota. He’s sitting in reception, on his own. No solicitor. Wants to talk to the police and will only speak to you.’
She ended the call and motioned to Bryant to follow.
She hadn’t been expecting that.
SIXTY-SEVEN
‘Do you believe him?’ Stacey asked Devon and Grant once they were outside the building. ‘About the women asking him to store the passports for safekeeping – all of them?’
Grant shrugged. ‘It’s not normal but everything seems to be in order,’ he said as Dawson joined them.
‘And yet?’ Devon said, smiling.
‘Yeah, exactly,’ he said.
‘What?’ Stacey asked.
‘Instinct isn’t limited to you coppers, you know,’ Grant said.
Broken Bones: A gripping serial killer thriller (Detective Kim Stone Crime Thriller Series Book 7) Page 22
