Bryant looked to his colleague. ‘Us?’ he asked.
‘Don’t flatter yourself, boys. Not you two in particular but changing police attitudes in general. He was exploring the notion that many less serious incidents are not getting the attention they deserve.’
‘I don’t get you,’ Bryant said.
‘Well, let’s be honest, there are sexy cases and ugly cases for you guys. Anything with the word murder, assault and violence shoots to the top of your in trays. Lesser incidents are constantly pushed down the list.’
Bryant began to shake his head but Tracy held up her hand.
‘We’re never gonna agree, but that’s not the angle he was going for. He felt that some reports aren’t even making it to your desks and are being blocked at the door, especially the ones not target driven.’
‘Oh come on, Frost,’ Bryant said. ‘You and I both know that national targets were abolished five or more years ago.’
‘Ha,’ she said, derisively. ‘Check the recent report that says burglary, vehicle crime and robbery are still target driven, and just because the targets have been removed at the top doesn’t mean individual forces aren’t still working to them.’
Bryant began to shake his head in denial.
‘I covered a shoplifting case recently. Twenty-eight-year-old male arrested for two joints of lamb from Asda. Caught on CCTV and bang to rights. When searched, he had a bag full of goodies pilfered from seven other shops. How many offences do you think he was charged with?’
Bryant could already guess the answer.
‘One, Bryant. Just the stolen meat, so it wouldn’t increase the number of offences. His crime counts as one statistic even though he’d nicked from eight different shops.’ She paused. ‘So, yeah, I think the kid was on to something.’
‘And you encouraged it?’ Dawson asked. ‘And here’s me thinking you might have grown some scruples following your recent near-death experience ? which, incidentally, would have been an actual death experience had it not been for us.’
Bryant shivered as he remembered how close Tracy Frost had come to losing her life to a twisted individual hell-bent on childhood revenge. Had Kim not been so doggedly determined that the woman had been abducted, in the face of everyone else’s doubt, Tracy Frost would not be sitting here right now.
‘Don’t you dare throw that at me, Dawson. Your boss saved my life and for that she gets a bit of latitude and a lot of respect. If you think that encompasses the entire West Midlands police force, you can think again.’
Bryant stepped in. ‘So, the story he was covering?…’
She turned away from Dawson and nodded in his direction. ‘To be honest, it looked like it could go somewhere. He got the idea after speaking to Aisha Gupta and I think…’
‘Who the hell is Aisha Gupta?’ Dawson raged.
Tracy shook her head. ‘Jesus, guys, you’re kinda proving Bubba’s point here.’
They waited for her to continue.
She rolled her eyes and lit another cigarette. ‘Aisha Gupta is a seventeen-year-old Indian girl from Hollytree. Last week she was accosted by some weirdo, and she reported it to the police. She didn’t get a great response.’
‘Was she hurt?’ Dawson asked.
Tracy shook her head and blew out a plume of smoke.
‘Was she touched inappropriately?’
‘I don’t think so,’ Tracy said.
Bryant was confused. ‘So what did the weirdo do?’
‘He forced her to the ground, took out his phone and told her to close her eyes.’
FORTY-FIVE
Travis had been writing in his notebook during the whole journey to the hospital. He closed it as she turned off the ignition. She waited for him to make a move. It was obvious that any progress they’d made yesterday had been erased.
He continued to stare forward.
‘Do you ever consider that sometimes you’re not right?’ he asked, suddenly.
She considered for a moment. ‘Rarely,’ she said.
Had they progressed or even maintained that brief harmony of the previous day she might have been tempted into honesty. But now she would continue to act in the role she’d been given.
‘There are times when you just get it wrong, you know.’
‘Did I do something in the briefing?’ she asked, defensively.
‘No, the briefing went well, I thought,’ he said, rendering her speechless.
He unbuckled his seatbelt, and looked at her.
‘I’m just saying that sometimes you’re wrong and people suffer.’
‘Travis, what the hell are you going?—’ She stopped talking when the passenger door slammed shut in her face.
She shot out of the car and faced him across the roof.
‘Travis, what was that supposed to mean?’ she snapped. Either he wanted to talk or he didn’t but baiting her with obscure comments and questions was just downright annoying.
‘Either consider it or don’t. I’m saying nothing more.’
Right now that was a bloody relief if all he was going to offer was cryptic one-liners.
They walked through the hospital hallways in silence. Kim pushed her way into the morgue and greeted Doctor A.
‘Nice to see you, Inspector and the sergeant too,’ she said pleasantly, as Travis’s expression soured. Kim knew she shouldn’t have found it funny, but she did.
As she watched Doctor A pull on a pair of blue gloves Kim noticed the freshly applied nail polish. Red and gold on alternate fingers.
She could only wonder at the de-stressing rituals of a woman handling cadaver bones by day and painting her nails by night.
‘Inspector, I think you are going to love me a lot when I show you this,’ she said, handing over a sheet of paper containing a photograph with measurements noted beneath.
The subject of the photograph at the centre of the page was a bullet.
‘From the pit?’ Kim asked.
Doctor A nodded.
‘Is it here?’ Kim asked.
‘No, it is gone to ballistex,’ she said.
‘What, the cold sore cream?’ Travis asked smartly.
‘Yes, because that would make perfect sense,’ Doctor A said, cuttingly.
He closed his mouth.
‘Marina thought it was a bullet but I didn’t want to tell you before I had chance to clean it properly.’
Kim couldn’t help her excitement. Ballistics would be able to detail the composition of the bullet. Some were made of soft material, like lead, designed to expand on impact. Steel based bullets penetrated further into thicker targets.
Any information could help them potentially age it. Newer bullets used materials such as aluminium, bismuth, bronze, copper, plastics, rubber, steel, tin and even tungsten.
‘And I have some information about our first victim,’ she said, moving to gurney one. Kim could see that the other two skeletons were beginning to fill out, and another box of bones was waiting on the side.
‘I think this gentleman here was Negroid.’