Good. She wanted them to see how ridiculous their claim was, and if that meant a bit of play-acting from her, then so be it.
She stretched her arms, keeping one finger on the trigger mark. The gun wavered before settling beneath her chin. The suicide position. She adjusted the angle and the end moved further along her neck.
She changed position and fed the piece of wood up and over her shoulder.
‘That’s about the closest,’ Travis said.
‘Yeah, but I can’t keep my finger on the trigger.’
She handed him the gun. ‘You have longer arms.’
He took it and repeated her movements as she watched.
‘Possible but more likely to be a graze or a flesh wound rather than the bullet entering the body.’
And they both knew it had.
They were currently reliant on the report from ballistics to confirm the bullet had come from that gun. Until then she couldn’t run up to them and scream ‘liar, liar’.
She sighed and took a step back towards Fiona and her anxious-looking father.
Her phone signalled a message. She took it out and read the short sentence. She turned to Travis with a smile and then strolled back to the family members.
‘Was there anything you saw us do just then that looked familiar, Mr Cowley?’
‘Yes,’ he said, eagerly. ‘Over the shoulder. I think Billy was putting the gun over his shoulder.’
Fiona stepped forward. Kim was surprised she had stayed silent for this long.
‘Officer, what does this have to do with the discovery of bones on the land? There has been no crime committed here. My brother had an accident as he has already confirmed.’
‘That you confirmed for him,’ Kim reminded. She had yet to hear Billy Cowley speak.
‘But my father…’
‘Is recounting everything you told him to,’ she said coldly.
‘How dare you?’
‘How dare you.’ Kim replied. ‘How dare you blatantly lie to us? Did you think we would take your word for it with a firearm involved?’
‘It’s the truth,’ she growled.
Kim took a deep breath. ‘So, despite it being almost a physical impossibility, and the fact we’ve just confirmed with the hospital there was no gunshot residue on your brother’s hands or neck, you still insist your story is that it was an accidental shooting?’
Fiona faced her squarely. ‘Yes, Inspector, that’s our story.’
THIRTY-EIGHT
Kim paused before pulling away from the Cowley property.
‘Travis, what the hell is going on here?’ she asked, trying to understand their determination to stick to a sequence of events that simply didn’t happen.
‘I thought you were going to arrest her,’ Travis said.
‘I was,’ she admitted.
‘For what?’
‘Smugness,’ she replied.
She would swear that a chuckle almost popped out before he smothered it with a cough.
‘So, did you get anything?’ she asked.
When they’d worked together in the past, Tom had had a thing for checking sofas. He maintained that whatever was down there was not even known by the owners. Nine times out of ten he came up empty, but just one time he’d found the missing earring of an assault victim who claimed she’d been raped and held hostage. The forty-seven-year-old male had denied all knowledge. Until Travis had found the earring hanging on to the lining of the sofa.
‘Something fell onto my hand,’ he said, reaching into his trouser pocket.
She pulled over into a bus stop.
A jagged, torn off piece of paper was in his palm.
Travis blew away the hair, fluff and sofa debris that had attached itself to the scrap.
‘You know you should have bagged that and left it with the techies,’ she observed.
‘It stuck to me,’ he offered lamely.
The murky colour of the paper told her it had been there some time. It was the size of a medium envelope, bank-statement size. One side was blank, and the other had printed capital lettering.
A brown stain coloured the top-left corner. A chunk was missing from the centre. Her eyes skimmed back and forth over it a dozen times trying to mentally insert the missing words.
T-------NT
FR-------------ER
P----------ED
‘This could be anything,’ she said, shortly
‘And yet you’re stuffing it into your pocket,’ he said, ruefully. ‘When it was my find.’
He had a point but she had no intention of giving it back.
Silence settled between them but for a while, a short while, it had been very much like old times.
‘Where to?’ she asked.
‘I’d like you to take me home,’ he said, zipping up the wallet.
She sighed heavily. ‘Tom, are we ever going to discuss what happened back—’
‘No, Stone, we’re not,’ he said, emphatically.
‘Fuck’s sake, Tom. How long can you hold a grudge?’ she cried, at his stubbornness.
‘You never even said you were sorry,’ he shouted back.
‘Because I’m not,’ she snapped.
The silence was more deafening than the shouting because it was final. While the accusations were flying between them there was a chance they could stumble upon some common ground. And the silence confirmed they never would.
After a few moments his steady voice broke the tension.
‘I’ll say it once more before I get out of the car and call a taxi: I’d like you to take me home.’
Kim knew any further attempts at conversation were futile. She drove towards Kidderminster without speaking.
As she pulled up outside the house she voiced what had been building in her mind.
‘Tom, as this is a joint investigation, I’d like to lead the briefing tomorrow.’
She had expected outright refusal. Tom Travis was a proud man. But his hesitation gave her hope.
‘I’ll think about it,’ he said, as he got out of the car.
Kim sat still and watched the curtain twitch as it did every night. Well, if the man was on a curfew, he was going to get punished tonight.
As she pulled away she tried to leave the sadness at his doorstep. Part of her wished she had not caught a glimpse of the man, and more importantly, the police officer, she had once known. The last few years had been filled with so much bitterness and animosity that it was sometimes hard to remember that she had once respected and liked this man ? and even on occasion trusted him with her life.
But she knew now that they would never be able to get past what happened back then.
And that fact bothered her more than it should.
THIRTY-NINE
‘Come on, boy, help me out here,’ Kim said, looking down at Barney.
She had showered and changed and now sat astride the Kawasaki Ninja, her bare feet resting on the pedals as she surveyed the wipe board that occupied a full wall of her garage.
Barney returned her gaze. If big brown eyes and a wagging tail could assist, she’d have the puzzle sorted by now.