He nodded, remembering his conversation with Stacey.
‘She was tasked to perform an initiation rite of doing continual star jumps until she was told to stop.’ Mrs Phifer closed her eyes. ‘Nine minutes she managed. When she slowed down her calves were hit with a garden cane. She tried to explain, she tried to tell them, but they wouldn’t listen. They wouldn’t let her stop.’
‘Tell them what, Mrs Phifer?’ he asked.
‘That she was asthmatic, officer. Eventually she collapsed and almost died. She was on a ventilator for two and a half weeks.’
Damn it, Dawson thought. This was exactly what he’d been afraid of.
‘And the school’s response?’ he asked, fearing the worst.
A look of total disgust shaped her attractive features.
‘As far as they were concerned the incident never happened.’
Forty-Three
An overwhelming sadness stole over Kim as her eyes rested on the sheet that smothered the small form on the metal tray.
She glanced at the back of Keats who fiddled with something over at his desk. Yeah, he gave her shit, and plenty of it. But this week his career of choice had dictated that he cut open and dissect the bodies of two children.
She had the sudden urge to tell him that she understood. That she knew that neither the job description nor the training could ever prepare you for the reality. That they had both signed up to represent the dead and neither of them got to choose. She wanted him to know that she got it.
She opened her mouth to speak.
‘There is no doubt this boy died of anaphylactic shock,’ Keats said, beating her to it.
Yes, probably better that way.
He peeled back the sheet to reveal Shaun Coffee-Todd’s face, and pointed to the mouth.
‘His lips and tongue are blue, indicating respiratory collapse. As he couldn’t get air into the lungs the blood couldn’t be oxygenated. The heart muscle needs oxygen to pump the blood around the body.
‘Once one major organ of the body starts to falter, in turn others become strained until they are unable to function. Death is the result of such a catastrophic systems failure. Low blood pressure occurs then eventual circulatory collapse are the final events.’
‘How long did it take him to die?’ Kim asked, quietly.
‘If the shock only affects the respiratory system it may cause respiratory depression and later brain damage in three minutes and death a few minutes later; but death comes quicker if the shock leads to arrhythmia, which it did in this case.’
‘So, how long?’ she asked again.
‘No more than a couple of minutes,’ he said, staring down at the body. ‘But they would have been the most horrific and frightening couple of minutes you could imagine.’
And Keats had lived every second of them with this poor child, she thought, as the tip of her fingers found the boy’s soft cheek. There was an instinct inside her that wanted to offer this child comfort for the fear and pain he had suffered.
During her last major case, she had been held down and choked almost to unconsciousness. She swallowed, still able to recall the feeling of panic that had screamed throughout her body and mind as she’d struggled to get air into her lungs.
And this was a fourteen-year-old boy.
She shook away the memory.
‘Keats, how long would this have happened after ingesting the nuts?’
Keats shrugged. ‘Most food-related symptoms occur within two hours of ingestion, but severe cases start within minutes. Given this boy’s history and the circumstances the onset would have been almost immediate.’
Kim frowned. ‘What circumstances? This happened at the end of his gym lesson. It would have been at least an hour before that he could have accidentally eaten—’
‘Sorry to interrupt you, Inspector, but this was no accidental ingestion from a trace of nut products.’
‘But the kid knew of his condition. His epinephrine was in his gym bag.’
‘Exactly my point,’ Keats said, placing an X-ray on the light board.
‘This is the boy’s throat,’ he said, pointing. ‘And those two objects are whole peanuts.’
Kim glanced at Bryant as she made sense of the pathologist’s words.
Someone had force-fed nuts into this poor kid’s mouth.
Forty-Four
28 February 2018
Hey Diary,
I got back to school just two hours ago and half of that time I’ve spent hidden in the toilets.
Always the same cubicle. The one furthest away from the door. I’m silent when I’m in there despite the tears that fall from my eyes.
My hand trembled as I used the razor blade to make the first cut. It’s simple, perfect beauty sliced through the skin. The calmness hit me instantly. I wondered if it was how a heroin addict felt when taking a hit. The relief, the release. The feeling of inner peace.
I sat back against the cistern with my eyes closed, my mind blank and calm, my breathing deep and even, totally relaxed.
Two more and I was ready to face the world.
As I walked back to my dorm, I could feel the fresh cuts rubbing deliciously against the skin of my inner thigh despite the sterile plaster.
But the peace inside was fleeting.
All too soon the memories of home returned; the hushed conversations that stopped completely when I walked into the room. The three of them looking away unable to face me. My feelings of being a stranger in my own home. My mother spending hours in Saffie’s room. My father making secret phone calls that he claimed were for work.
I tried to talk to my mother. I tried to explain.
‘Not now, Sadie,’ she said. ‘Don’t bother me with this right now.’
So I slunk back into the shadows and watched until it was time to come back. Just waiting for the chance to get into my cubicle at the end of the row.
But the hungry demons have not been quieted. The feelings are worse than ever.
I don’t know how to shut them up and then I remember what I’ve been told and I pop the pill right into my mouth.
Oh Sadie, I see now that I did you a favour. You were too unhappy to live.
I know you so much better now from reading your innermost thoughts. I understand your pain, and I know that you thank me for setting you free.
And now you’re not alone. You have your good friend Shaun to keep you company.
It wasn’t the same, though, Sadie. You were the first and you were special. Very special.
Shaun fought so much harder than you. He made it so bloody hard. My sense of satisfaction and righteousness, enjoyed and relished after your death, was nowhere to be found. He didn’t follow my script.
If he’d just stayed calm and eaten the fucking nuts – but he clamped his mouth shut. If he’d just chewed them I wouldn’t have had to get rough, but his teeth were welded together because he understood that he was about to die.
He tried to run past me, back into the hall, but I blocked his way and threw him to the ground. I lay across him using my weight to pin him down. I forced a handful of peanuts into his mouth and held it closed, one hand on his head and one beneath his chin.
He chewed and whimpered as the nuts began to go down and he realised the horror that was to come.
And horrific it was. I stood aside as he writhed and shook and dribbled and trembled and tried to crawl towards me, his face contorted with pain and fear. But eventually he stilled.
And as his small body fell against the tiled floor I heard the sound of the gym hall door close.
Someone must have heard us, and I need to find out who.
Forty-Five
Kim parked outside St Paul’s Chambers on Caroline Street in the Jewellery Quarter.
‘I remember it in the old days,’ Bryant moaned as they got out of the car.