Play Dead (16 page)

I
sobel held fast
to the grey. It was edging along the black like a spreading stain. She knew it was trying to claim her, but she didn’t know if it was life or death.

And she no longer cared.

Anything but the unrelenting blackness that suffocated her would be a welcome relief.

The darkness had taken everything away. It had stolen her thoughts. There was nothing upon nothing that lived in the desolate bleakness.

Send her the grey, offer her the white, show her the tunnel that would lead her away.

At times the tide of grey slowed to an agonising crawl, causing her to wonder if she’d imagined its encroaching stealth.

There was also a blurring of the edges as though her consciousness was fraying.

The blackness was not as deep, but the more she reached, the higher the panic rose in the fragmented parts, and so she waited patiently for whatever was about to come.

‘
Y
ou told him
, didn’t you?’ Kim spat as soon as they were alone in the car. ‘You sung like a canary about where I’d be.’

Bryant shrugged. ‘I
might
have mentioned that you walk Barney up Clent on a Wednesday night around nine and that you park in the lower car park. Just in passing, you know.’

She swung a hard left and bounced him against the passenger door. ‘Bryant, you do realise just how deeply I resent your attempted intrusion into my private life.’

‘Ha, is that what you think I did?’ he asked, righting himself.

‘Isn’t it?’

‘Nah. Whenever we’re working on a big case you get turned all outside in. I know you don’t like Daniel Bate, so I thought this was the ideal opportunity for you to blow off a bit of steam. Basically if you’re shouting at him you’re not shouting at us.’

Kim realised that he’d had far too long to come up with that response.

‘And if you insisted on driving just to punish me, it’s working and I won’t do it again,’ he said, grabbing hold of the dashboard.

That hadn’t been her intention but she’d bear it in mind for the next time.

‘Any change with Isobel?’ Bryant asked as she slowed at the Russell’s Hall traffic island.

He knew she would already have checked.

‘Nothing significant but there is still brain activity.’

‘Uggh…’

‘What?’ she asked.

‘Have you ever thought about it?’

Instead of answering she just waited for the inevitable continuation.

‘It’d be like being buried alive, wouldn’t it? I mean, your brain still working but locked in darkness because your body won’t move and your senses are numb. It’s like being just a head. Do you know what I mean?’

Unfortunately she did. It was something she had been forced to ponder on one of their earlier cases when she’d met a young girl named Lucy. She had not been in a coma but her body had been destroyed by muscular dystrophy, leaving her only the use of a few fingers. Her brain had worked perfectly.

‘It’s like your whole existence is being just a head,’ he continued then sighed.

‘Okay, Bryant,’ she said. She’d heard enough. ‘If you want something to think about, spend some time working out why Bob had pound coins and a raffle ticket in his pocket ’cos it’s got me beat,’ she admitted, parking the car.

‘Yeah, I’ll be sure to give that priority,’ he moaned.

She had lost count of the times they had visited the hospital over the last few days but this time they weren’t heading to a ward.

‘But why eleven pound coins?’ she mused out loud, as they headed down the corridor to the morgue.

‘Trick question, guv?’ Bryant asked.

‘Why not a tenner or fivers. Why all coins?’

‘I really have no idea,’ he replied.

Kim found it strange sometimes how different minds chose different things to dwell on. Bryant had given the detail no thought and yet she’d thought of little else. With so little evidence to dissect, everything had to mean something.

‘Hmmm…’ she said, pressing the access button into the morgue.

A wall of white coats greeted her.

‘Keats… Daniel,’ she said. ‘What do we have?’

The pathologist shook his head. ‘Inspector, if you spent less time on small talk, you’d save yourself… well, no time at all really.’

Kim was grateful that the crisp white sheet covered their victim up to the shoulders.

She knew from the picture that had remained in her head all night that the woman’s face was decaying slowly. The injuries she had sustained were still evident.

‘How many blows to the face?’ she asked and had no preference for whichever one of them decided to answer.

‘I’ve counted seven so far, all to the left side,’ Keats stated.

Kim knew he was inferring that the murderer was likely to be right-handed. The blows probably came from above while the killer was astride the victim.

‘Mouth?’ Kim asked.

Keats nodded. ‘Full of dirt. Most likely the cause of death but we haven’t finished yet so I’m not prepared to commit, but go take a look on my desk.’

Kim strode to the table in the corner of the room. An evidence bag was positioned in the corner. She picked it up and turned it around.

It was a kirby grip. There was no broken heart, but she could see a gap in the white plastic where something had been broken off.

‘Same as Jemima,’ she whispered.

‘A little bit coincidental, Inspector?’ Keats offered.

She nodded her agreement and put the bag back onto the desk. Curious but not much help to her. They were mass-produced and available in two chemist chains and countless supermarkets.

She moved back to the table.

‘Any idea how long she’s been down there?’ Kim pushed.

Regardless of their stage of the process, she needed answers. Anything that would help her identify this woman.

‘Given the seasonal and climatic variation, the amount of soil water and acidity, I would estimate four to five years.’

‘Seems a bit far gone for such little time,’ Bryant observed.

‘Bodies decay quicker the higher up they are buried,’ Keats replied.

Of course their victim had only been about two and a half feet down.

‘Anything that will help me put a name to her?’ Kim asked. Her priority on both a professional and personal level.

Daniel stepped forwards. His Clark Kent glasses were like a uniform that converted him to a serious, studious scientist. Gone was the playful, teasing expression she’d seen the day before.

‘Over a lifetime the human skeleton undergoes sequential chronological changes normally categorised as foetus, infant, child, adolescent, young adult and so on. Up to the age of twenty-one the teeth are the most accurate indicator of age. From what I can tell so far, our victim falls under young adult, which typically spans from twenty to thirty-five years of age.’

‘Can you be any more specific?’ she asked. She would have liked to offer Dawson something in his search through missing persons. That was one heck of an age range to cover over the last four to five years. And that was if the woman had been reported missing.

‘I would estimate that the female is over twenty-five years of age. The clavicle – collar bone – is the last bone to complete and is fully grown.’

Kim said nothing and waited. She was hoping for a little more than that or she had been seriously short-changed when humiliating herself in asking him to stay.

Daniel continued. ‘Throughout a lifetime bone makes new osteons, which are minute tubes containing blood vessels. Younger adults have fewer and larger osteons, but with age they become smaller as new ones form and disrupt the old ones.’

Kim was grateful for the information but wasn’t sure she would ever have cause to use it again. If this woman could not be identified by her osteons it wasn’t a great deal of help to her.

‘And finally the cranium. The bones that enclose the brain grow together during childhood along lines called cranial sutures. During adulthood bone remodelling gradually erases these lines.’

‘So age wise are we looking to early thirties like Jemima Lowe?’ she asked, determined to force a more accurate answer.

‘Except for one key difference,’ Daniel said. ‘This victim has had a child.’

She exchanged a look with Bryant.

Now the service provided was becoming worth the price she’d paid. But his expression said that he wasn’t finished yet.

‘Pregnancy doesn’t modify a woman’s bones, with one exception. During childbirth the pubic bones separate to allow an infant to pass through the birth canal. The ligaments connecting the pubic bones must stretch. They can tear and cause bleeding where they attach to the bone.

‘Later bone remodelling at these sites can leave small circular or linear grooves on the inside surface of the pubic bones called parturition pits—’

‘Doc… Daniel, what are you trying to tell me?’ she asked.

‘I suspect she gave birth in her teens.’

And that final statement had sealed the deal.

I
sobel looked around the darkness
. Her heart beat faster as she realised that it wasn’t black any longer but more of a dirty grey.

The black was being bleached out of her mind but not just at the corners any more. And it moved.

There was something beyond the darkness and there was a shadow.

There were voices. She listened carefully to see if they were in her mind. She wasn’t sure, but she suspected they were beyond her head and not in it.

The familiarity of the warm feeling on her hand was back. It was reassuring, comforting.

Please, someone, help me
, she cried.
I’m in here. Please let me out. I don’t know how to leave.

The effort of trying to communicate with her mind brought about sudden exhaustion. But there were sensations. There was a tickle in her foot. Something cold being placed on her chest
. I’m here
, she wanted to scream but her body wouldn’t listen.

For a while she’d wondered if her body parts were scattered around her head but the sensations told her they were connected.

Her body was still whole and she might be alive, not stuck in this silent, eternal hell.

But if she allowed hope then she must also prepare for despair, and she didn’t know if she could take the disappointment of being wrong.

He heart cried with unshed tears as she prayed for the nightmare to end.

Being dead made much more sense and that’s why she had so readily accepted it. Being alive was far too complicated, exhausting.

If she was dead, she no longer had questions.

If she was alive, she had too many.

‘
I
still don’t see
why you’re quite so, er… animated,’ Bryant said, as they exited the hospital.

Kim switched on her phone to see she’d missed a call from Stacey. Just the person she wanted to speak to.

She pressed to return the call and threw the car keys at Bryant. He’d suffered her driving enough.

‘What have you got, Stace?’ she asked.

‘Something I think you’re going to like.’

‘Go on.’

‘I have the address of the old head teacher from Jemima’s junior school. I’ve got a list of staff that were there when she would have been.’

‘Good work, Stace. Text the address to Bryant. Now find out from her parents which high school she went to and check to see if you can find anything on a teen pregnancy for any girl around the same time,’ she said as they got into the car.

‘On it, boss, and one more thing. There are seven warfarin clinics in the area. Spoke to them all and have a list of eleven men who stopped attending around the time Bob was found.’

‘Bloody hell, Stace. Are you on fire?’ Kim asked. ‘Just give me the first names,’ she said as Bryant exited the car park.

‘Alphabetically, they are Alan, Charlie, Edward, Geoffrey, Ivor, Jack, Lester, Malcolm, Norman, Philip, Walter.’

Kim shouted them out as Stacey said them.

‘Guv, you do know I’m driving and I can’t write anything down?’

‘Use your memory,’ she said, moving her mouth away from the phone.

Bryant shook his head and continued driving. He stopped at the Brierley Hill high-street lights.

‘Catch up later,’ Kim said, ending the call.

She looked to her left as Bryant was forced to brake sharply for a group of teenage boys who stepped into the road six feet shy of a crossing.

‘Jesus, sometimes…’

‘Pull over, Bryant,’ she said, her eyes fixed on one of the shopfronts.

He expertly claimed a space vacated by a white delivery van.

‘Guv… what are…?’

His words trailed away as he saw where they’d stopped.

Every high street had one. No matter how deprived the area or the rate of unemployment. There was always the market for an amusement arcade.

‘Wait here, Bryant,’ Kim said, jumping out of the car.

She pushed open the door and stepped in. Her eyes took a few seconds to adjust from the bright day outside to the false night-time environment of the premises.

Three slot machines along, a man wearing jeans and a white shirt was wiping at the glass display.

‘Excuse me,’ Kim said, allowing the door to close behind her.

His face was thin and pale but he smiled openly. ‘Whassup, love?’

Kim didn’t feel like taking the time to explain her position. Her question was a simple one.

‘Do you use raffle tickets here?’ she asked, looking around. ‘For bingo or for…’

She stopped speaking as he was already shaking his head.

Damn it, although it had been a long shot.

‘Nah, love…’

‘Okay, thanks for…’

‘We ain’t used ’em for years, five or more,’ he said.

Good news and bad news in one short sentence.

‘What did you use them for?’ Kim asked.

‘Prizes. There was a weekly raffle, but we stopped it when business dropped off.’

Kim nodded and began to back out of the claustrophobic space.

‘Appreciate your time…’

‘You might want to try the one over at Merry Hill. I think they still use ’em today.’

She offered him a warm smile and peered closer at his name badge.

‘Melvyn, you’ve been a great help, thank you,’ she said, before heading towards the door.

‘You’re smiling,’ Bryant observed as she got back into the car.

‘Down to Merry Hill,’ she instructed, securing her seatbelt. It was still a long shot but for the first time she felt like she at least had a field to play on.

It was a short drive from Brierley Hill down Level Street and onto the complex.

Bryant drove into a space that luckily opened up right in front of him. He parked and they cut through the bus station into the amusement arcade.

The dark space was lit by the fast, racing lights of the machines as they tempted with their promises of jackpots and prizes.

Two elderly women looked around sharply as the sound of pound coins falling was heard from the next aisle along. Kim could hear bingo numbers being called towards the back of the property.

‘Excuse me,’ Kim said, approaching a woman dressed in a light blue overall. A leather bag containing change was strapped around her waist.

Her hands automatically reached towards the bag and Kim couldn’t help but think the lady might need a short course in recognising your customer. There was no such thing as a ‘typical gambler’ look but neither she nor Bryant were dressed for anything of a leisurely nature.

Kim took out her badge. The woman squinted in the light and the wrinkles around her eyes deepened. She accepted the identification and immediately looked concerned.

‘How long have you worked here, Jean?’ Kim asked, reading the name badge.

‘Eight years,’ she said, as though she couldn’t quite believe it herself. But a job was a job as far as Kim was concerned, and anyone who had the gumption to stick at one instead of looking for easier options had her vote.

‘You use raffle tickets?’ Kim clarified.

The woman nodded slowly as though she was making some kind of guilty admission.

‘May I ask what for?’ Kim asked, praying there would be some kind of clue.

She shrugged. ‘Many things. Grocery hampers, meat joints, shopping vouchers, free bingo games.’

Each item punched a bit of excitement out of her stomach.

Bryant stepped forwards. ‘All these items every week?’ he asked.

Jean nodded.

‘How do you keep track of which raffle ticket is for which item?’

‘The colour,’ she said simply.

Kim shot Bryant a grateful look.

‘What’s blue for?’

Jean smiled. ‘Blue is for a bottle of Bell’s whisky.’

The hope was being rebuilt in her gut. ‘Always?’

‘For as long as I can remember,’ she said. And Kim already knew that was over eight years. It was a very simple system but one that had worked.

‘Do you keep records?’ Kim asked hopefully. The normal form of identification for a raffle ticket was an address or phone number. Yes, there’d be one a week for the last three years but that totalled less than two hundred and worth the work to give Bob a name.

Jean shook her head. ‘Only for a few months and then we give the unclaimed prizes to Mary Stevens Hospice. We tell people that when they buy the tickets,’ she added defensively.

‘We want to ask you about a man who may have been a customer here a few years ago. I think he had one of your whisky raffle tickets.’

Just the words leaving her mouth was enough to convince Kim of the futility of this exercise. The woman’s expression only confirmed her thoughts. Jean must see hundreds of faces every day. Multiply that by two or three years and Kim was looking for one face out of more than a hundred thousand. But the pound coins had to mean something.

‘Love, I’m not being funny but—’

Kim let the endearment pass and continued anyway. ‘He would have been in his mid-fifties, dark hair, a bit on the heavy side.’

Jean began to shake her head and handed a clutch of pound coins without speaking to a gangly lad who appeared to her right. She placed the note in a separate zip pocket on her pouch.

Bryant stepped forwards. ‘May have been named Alan, Charlie, Edward, Geoffrey, Ivor, Jack, Lester … ’

Kim stole a glance at her colleague as Jean frowned. ‘Hang on a minute,’ she said. ‘Did you say Ivor?’

Bryant nodded. It wasn’t a common name around these parts.

‘We used to have a bloke named Ivor come in here a lot. Used to sit and play the OXO machines for hours. Anything he won he put straight back in.’ Her eyes widened in surprise. ‘He bought a raffle ticket for whisky every week. Not for the other stuff but always for the bottle of Bell’s. Won it a fair few times as well,’ she said, nodding. ‘He hasn’t been in for years though. We assumed he got banged up for something.’

‘Why would you think that?’ Kim asked, frowning. She wasn’t sure that was the immediate conclusion with the loss of every customer.

‘Oh, no reason,’ she said, colouring, but Kim didn’t believe her.

‘That’s not true,’ Kim said. ‘Please, Jean, anything you can tell us would be greatly appreciated. We really need to find out more about this man.’

She hesitated and then sighed. ‘Hang on, I’ll be back in a minute,’ she said before walking away.

‘Jesus, guv, Woody was right when he said you can make something out of nothing,’ Bryant said, once Jean was out of earshot.

‘You weren’t too bad yourself,’ she observed. ‘I can’t believe you managed to memorise all those names.’

‘I assume you don’t keep me around for my good looks, although—’

‘This is Rita,’ Jean said, presenting a woman of similar size to herself but with a shock of deep red hair. She too wore a blue overall and a money belt.

‘Do you remember that bloke you had a bit of trouble with, Ivor the whisky bloke?’

Rita nodded and looked suspiciously at her and Bryant.

‘It’s all right, tell ’em, they’re police,’ Jean urged.

Rita looked doubtful but Jean nudged her. ‘Go on, it might be connected.’

Kim’s interest was piqued.

‘He was a big guy – overweight I mean. Not tall. A bit creepy, but you just get used to that in here. Don’t get me wrong, there’s some lovely folks that come in here and—’

‘But Ivor…’ Kim said, steering her back.

‘Well, we get kids in here now and again,’ she said, looking at Jean. ‘We do everything to stop ’em, but they ignore the signs on the door, and we get ’em out as quick as we see ’em, eh, Jean?’

Kim wasn’t interested in a bit of underage gambling on fruit machines.

‘I understand, it must be difficult,’ Kim said. ‘Now about Ivor?’

‘A while back, must be a couple of years now, I had a group of girls in and I hadn’t spotted ’em until one of ’em came over and said that Ivor had touched her mate.’

‘What did you do?’

‘Well, I couldn’t call the police… she didn’t want to make a complaint and, well, she shouldn’t have been here in the first place.’

So neither the girl or this woman had wanted to get into any trouble.

‘What about Ivor?’

‘I told him to get out and not to come back,’ she said, nodding, convinced that she’d taken the correct course of action.

‘And did he come back?’ Kim asked.

She shook her head. ‘Nah, and I never saw his mate again either.’

Kim’s heartbeat quickened. If Ivor was their man Bob, then his friend could be their first lead.