Kim sat back and listened. Maybe she should have let Stacey speak sooner.
‘All was well for three years. She studied hard and began improving her swim times. She’d been entered for the junior world championships, except she started turning up late for practice. Started back-answering the sports coach. Talented girl by all accounts but the training is brutal. Six mornings a week and five evenings.
‘Two days after her fifteenth birthday she dived into the swimming pool from the ten feet high diving board.’
‘And?’ Kim asked, confused. She’d probably done that a million times.
‘The pool was empty.’
‘Jesus Christ,’ Bryant said, as Dawson visibly winced and rubbed his neck.
‘It had been emptied earlier that day due to a high legionella reading. Lorraine didn’t know that because she’d skipped training that morning.’
‘She was in the pool in the dark?’ Kim asked.
Stacey nodded. ‘Her death was marked accidental.’
A moment of silence fell before Kim turned to Stacey. ‘And this is what you were doing last night?’
Stacey nodded, and Kim recalled her earlier words.
‘Stace, remember when I said about losing effectiveness in your job as the hours go on?’
‘Yeah, boss.’
‘Doesn’t apply to you,’ Kim said. ‘These two maybe, but definitely not you.’
‘Thanks, boss, but there’s one more thing you really need to know.’
‘Go on.’
‘Lorraine Peters was pregnant.’
Eighty-Three
‘What makes you think he’ll be there?’ Bryant asked, parking up at Russells Hall Hospital. It wasn’t quite yet 8 o’clock.
‘You didn’t watch the news last night?’ she asked.
‘Not last night, no,’ he said.
‘Aah, ballroom night,’ she realised. ‘You and your good lady giving Strictly a run for its money?’
‘Guv, I really wish I’d never told you.’
Yeah, she bet he did.
‘Body of an elderly male found along the canal. Been missing for two weeks. Keats’ll be in,’ she said, definitely, as they strolled along the corridor.
Although reception wasn’t manned, the hospital was coming alive for another day. Patients and visitors milled around the café area. Porters pushed out patients towards appointments, and red tee shirted volunteers stepped forward to offer direction. Not one person they passed wanted to go where they were heading.
As expected Keats was already preparing for his first job of the day when they entered.
‘Did you get it?’ she asked.
Keats frowned at her. ‘You know, Inspector, I get more common courtesy from my customers than I do from you,’ he said, looking towards the sheet covering the dead body.
She didn’t doubt it.
‘So, did you?’ she repeated.
‘An email may have arrived from your detective constable,’ he said, taking out his Dictaphone. ‘And I shall have a look once I’ve completed—’
‘No problem. I’ll wait,’ she said, hopping onto the work surface. Her legs dangled in mid-air. ‘I’m a patient person.’
He narrowed his eyes as he pulled back the sheet and switched on his recorder.
‘Ooh, he’s in a bad way, isn’t he?’ she asked loudly.
He switched it off. The ghostly white flesh bore the scars of the insects that had feasted all over him. Keats switched on the machine and opened his mouth to start again.
‘Bloody hell, he fed a few communities, didn’t he?’ she asked, loudly.
He offered her a warning glance and tried again.
‘Missing two weeks, eh?’ she asked.
‘Stone, quiet,’ he snapped, pressing the pause button.
She nodded her understanding as he began again.
‘Conducting the post-mortem of—’
‘Just look at that lividity down his right side, Bryant,’ she called out.
Keats switched off the Dictaphone. ‘An email you said?’ he asked, conceding defeat.
‘It’ll be better on the computer,’ she said, jumping down, as he pulled the cover back over his customer.
‘And what exactly am I looking for?’ he asked, taking a seat at his desk in the corner.
Kim stood behind him.
He pointed to the chair opposite and turned his screen so she could see it.
‘Post-mortem report of a fifteen-year-old girl,’ Kim answered.
He squinted at the date.
‘From the mid-nineties?’ he asked.
‘Hey, Keats, it wasn’t that long ago,’ Bryant said.
‘What am I looking for?’ he asked.
‘Anything,’ Kim answered.
He scrolled through the document that had been scanned on to the computer.
‘She was pregnant,’ he said, more to himself. ‘Approximately nine weeks, which clearly you already knew.’
He reached the end and shrugged. ‘On first inspection, it all looks fine. What were you hoping I would find?’
‘Not sure,’ she said, deflated.
‘Tragic accident, clearly,’ he said, scrolling back to the top. ‘Multiple internal injuries from the impact and yet surprisingly little injury to the head.’
‘Would she have tucked it under?’ Bryant asked.
Kim imagined an experienced diver would have done so.
‘Hard to say,’ he said, frowning and then reading again.
‘What is it?’ Kim asked.
‘It’s no smoking gun but there are two pieces of evidence that tend to cancel each other out.’
‘Go on,’ Kim urged.
‘Well, the theory of her head being tucked when she hit the ground explains the lack of head trauma but there are flesh marks to the neck that are not consistent with the head being tucked. It’s either one or the other but it can’t be both,’ he said.
‘So, why was this never investigated?’ Kim asked, outraged.
‘It was,’ Keats said, pointing to the bottom of the screen where a few initials were scrawled together.
‘That’s the signature of Burrows. DCI Larry Burrows, the officer in charge of the case.’
Eighty-Four
It took only a few calls to locate DCI Larry Burrows.
‘Never understood golf,’ Bryant said, as they headed down the fairway to the ninth hole of the Staffordshire Golf Course near Wombourne.
Recently renamed, the course claimed to be the most picturesque golf course in the Midlands. Even the avenues of pines, rhododendrons, and sixty-foot fir trees wouldn’t persuade her to part with over eight hundred quid to join, despite the fact it was popular with at least three local police forces.
‘Hit a ball and then follow it. Hit a ball then follow it,’ he said, shaking his head.
Kim reckoned most sports could be reduced to a similarly basic description, but with golf she certainly had to agree with her colleague.
‘There he is,’ she said, spotting the exceptionally tall male among a group of average-sized men. She recalled being introduced to him, briefly, when she had first joined the force. He had looked her up and down and dismissed her and then continued to talk to her male colleague.
That one simple action had told her all she’d needed to know.
‘DCI Burrows,’ she said, pushing herself into the middle of the group. ‘DI Stone and DS Bryant, may we have a word?’
He looked from one to the other and frowned. Although retired he clearly didn’t appreciate his golf game being interrupted.
‘One of your old cases, sir,’ she said, affording him the respect his position deserved.
‘Can’t it wait?’
‘Not really, sir,’ she answered, shortly.
He looked to his friends and sighed heavily as they moved away.
‘Really, my dear, couldn’t you have called and arranged—’
‘Chief Inspector Burrows, it’s regarding a fifteen-year-old girl named Lorraine Peters,’ she interrupted. She would allow his endearment to pass. Just once.
His tanned face remained blank.
‘She dived into an empty pool at Heathcrest Academy. It was your case in the mid-nineties.’
‘Yes, I know the one you mean. You’ll have to excuse an old man’s memory, love.’
‘Inspector,’ she said.
‘Yes?’ he answered.
‘Not love,’ she corrected. ‘Inspector or Stone. Either is fine.’