‘Where were you on Saturday?’ she asked.
He tipped his head. ‘Oh, Inspector, you can’t believe I had anything to do with it. Honestly, I couldn’t even be bothered.’ He looked down at his crotch proudly. ‘I’m just your average kind of guy.’
Kim offered no reaction. ‘So you were…?’
‘Here, in bed.’
‘Can Rach verify that?’ she asked.
He smiled. ‘No. Unusually I was alone. It was a rare—’
‘Thank you, Mr Roach,’ she said, standing abruptly. ‘If there’s anything further we’ll be in touch.’
Quite frankly, she couldn’t bear another second in his company.
‘You’d best get someone back here to fix this door,’ he moaned from behind her.
Oh yeah, it would jump right to the top of her priorities list, Kim thought as she stepped outside and almost gulped in the cleansing fresh air.
Bryant stepped past her and headed towards the car. Kim turned to follow him. Simon filled the doorway in all his naked glory.
Kim stepped back towards the repulsive creep. Her skin started to recoil at each inch she closed.
She spoke loudly, confident that her voice would carry. ‘By the way, given your sexual activity, I would strenuously recommend you get yourself checked for sexually transmitted diseases. We are awaiting those results from your last partner.’
His shocked silence gave her just long enough to hear the sound of movement from the bedroom behind him.
Result.
Simon Roach opened his mouth to speak but Kim beat him to it.
‘And for the record, whoever said you were average…’ she cast her gaze downwards ‘… was just being kind.’
She offered him a sad smile and turned away.
‘Honestly his name should be cock for a number of reasons,’ Kim said, getting into the car.
Bryant thought for a second. ‘Oh I get it. Last name and all that.’
‘Jeez, Bryant, I’ll wait while you catch up.’
Her gut was taking the fifth on Simon Roach. If she was looking for the cockiest moron this side of the River Severn he’d be cuffed and on his way to the station, but she was looking for a murderer, someone who had actually possessed the passion to beat Jemima’s face to a pulp. Was Mr Personality capable of that? She really had no idea.
‘Where to, guv?’ Bryant asked as her phone began to ring.
‘Stace,’ Kim answered, checking her watch. It was almost six and she wasn’t surprised the detective constable was still at work.
She listened as her colleague revealed the reason for the call. A frown began to form on her face as she ended the call.
‘Change of plan, Bryant,’ she said, taking a deep breath. ‘Head back to the Lowe house. There’s something this family hasn’t told us.’
Seventeen
The door to the Lowe house opened as Bryant parked the car.
A woman in her early sixties stepped out and turned to hug Mrs Lowe. The absence of a handbag or purse told Kim it was probably a neighbour offering condolences for the family’s loss.
Kim noted that Mrs Lowe tapped the woman’s back as they hugged.
It was a gesture of reassurance. A physical ‘there, there’ as though the neighbour had suffered the loss.
She was not surprised as the woman walked across the driveway that separated the Lowe property from the next.
Any irritation she had felt at the family’s omission faded away when Mrs Lowe offered a weary wave, the exhaustion and grief shining from her eyes.
‘Sorry to bother you again,’ Kim said and meant it. ‘But there’s something we need to clarify.’
‘Of course, come in,’ she said, stepping aside.
Kim automatically moved towards the lounge they’d occupied the previous day. She caught a movement from the top of the stairs. It was Sara. Her eyes were red and puffy, and she had a tissue clutched in her right hand.
Kim nodded in her direction and Sara nodded back. This time Sara didn’t skulk back into the shadows but lowered herself and sat on the top stair.
‘How are you doing?’ Kim asked once the three of them were seated.
The woman considered for a moment before answering. ‘People visit and mean well. They bring me their grief, and I don’t need any more. A bit of it stays when they go. Another realisation of what the loss of my daughter means to someone else.’
Kim heard the tinge of bitterness and understood it. Swimming alongside someone in the sea of misery was not helpful to a grieving person. It offered them nothing, no respite from the hollow feelings of loss. Share something funny, an example of their clumsiness, innocence, humour, naiveté. Offer the grief-stricken a memory to add to their own portfolio that would grow no more.
‘Mrs Lowe, we need to ask you about something that happened to Jemima before she left for Dubai.’
The confused expression as the woman looked from her to Bryant was genuine. There was no deceit. It had been an honest mistake and obviously something she had forgotten in the intervening years.
‘We have an incident report filed by Jemima dated just a few weeks before she left. It details an attempt of forced entry into her flat.’
The woman’s hand flew to her mouth. Her eyes had widened in horror. ‘Are you serious? Are you telling me that some kind of madman tried to get into her home?’
‘She didn’t tell you?’
Mrs Lowe shook her head as her hand rubbed furiously at her chin. Her eyebrows raised as a memory seemed to jump to the front of her mind.
‘What is it?’ Kim asked. She’d take anything.
The woman nodded slowly. ‘She came home to stay, before she left for Dubai. She said that her landlord was carrying out emergency repairs to the building.’ She paused as the rest of the memory caught up. ‘She also took some time off work. Said the job was getting her down, and she needed something new. She heard about the job in Dubai from an old college friend. She spoke to the family for two hours on Skype and she clicked with them straightaway…’
‘So she moved back in and then rarely left the house?’ Kim clarified.
The woman nodded again. ‘Come to think of it, yes. She didn’t even accompany us out for a family birthday. I just never thought for a moment that anything like that…’
‘Are you saying that she never told you?’ Kim asked incredulously. Jemima had felt frightened enough to report the incident to the police. She had moved back into the family home and had pretty much left the country as a result – but she hadn’t told her family?
‘I swear that she never—’
‘It was me she told, Inspector,’ Sara said quietly from the doorway.
Mrs Lowe’s head whipped around as Sara took two steps into the room.
‘What are you… when did she… why…?’
Sara held up her hands in defence. ‘I’m sorry, Mum, but she swore me to secrecy. She didn’t want you to worry. She called me the night it happened. It was me that advised her to come home.’
Kim could see the hurt that had settled on Mrs Lowe’s face. That her daughters had kept such a secret from her seemed just too much to bear under the weight of everything else. Kim couldn’t tangle herself up in that right now. Sara had spoken to Jemima on the night of the attempted break-in. She might have said something that hadn’t made it to the report.
Kim turned towards the younger sister.
‘Sara, did she talk to you about what had happened?’
Sara nodded. ‘Only that night on the phone. Once she was back here she swore me to secrecy and then tried to pretend that it had never happened. She never spoke of it again.’
Kim could feel the frustration growing in her stomach, but she had to push the girl.
‘Is there anything at all that your sister said that night about the incident that might help us now?’
Very slowly Sara’s head began to move in an affirmative direction.
‘Go on,’ Kim urged.
Sara took a breath. ‘She said she thought it was someone that she knew.’
Eighteen
Kim tried to leave the day on the doormat as she turned the key in the lock.
Her detour to the Brierley Hill station on the way home had been brief but fruitful.