Kim understood that this case took precedence. Murder over RTA. Had Joanna been her case she would have already called her death murder and she’d be arguing priority with Keats right now.
‘You gonna read it?’ Bryant asked, looking to the sheet of paper in her hand.
She moved to the side of the room beside Keats’s desk and opened it up.
The paper was lined with faint pencil writing. The words appeared tentative; some were crossed out and overwritten on the top half of the page. Kim frowned as she recognised Sadie’s writing. It was the poem that Joanna had mentioned. The one that had bothered her.
She squinted and tried to read.
About life
Broken life Obstructed life Ruined life Tentative life Everlasting life Destroyed life Life
Life
Life
Life
‘I don’t get it,’ Kim said, looking up from the page.
‘What, the poem?’ Bryant asked, taking it from her hand.
‘That, and what it was that troubled Joanna. Seems like more of Sadie’s emotional outpourings.’
‘Why’s “life” repeated so many times?’
Kim shrugged as her eyes landed on the desk. ‘Keats, what’s that?’ she asked.
‘Joanna Wade’s phone. Also found in the back pocket of her jeans.’
‘Not bagged yet?’ she asked, suspiciously.
‘Getting round to it, Stone,’ he snapped.
‘Bloody hell, Keats, getting a bit lax in your old age, eh?’
‘Children are dying, Stone,’ he raged. ‘And I have to cut them open to find out how.’ He glanced at the desk and more directly at the phone and then back at her. ‘And now I’m going to fetch the coffee.’
Kim looked at Bryant as the doors closed behind the pathologist.
‘You’re not going to touch it?’ he asked, reading her thoughts.
There was barely a second of hesitation before she reached across the table for a pair of blue latex gloves.
‘Bryant, we both know that Traffic is not gonna put these pieces together. Even Keats knows it,’ she said, aware that this was exactly what he’d been hoping she’d do.
He sighed. ‘You can’t tamper—’
‘If you’re worried, go help Keats bring the coffee,’ she said, picking up the phone. A single crack travelled diagonally from corner to corner. She pressed the home button, which brought up the passcode screen.
‘Damn it,’ she said, putting it down and reaching for her own phone.
Stacey picked up the phone on the second ring.
‘Hey Stace, hypothetically, if I wanted to bypass the screen password on a smartphone that I shouldn’t really have in my possession, how would I go about it?’
Stacey hesitated and then began calling out instructions.
‘Hang on, Stace, let me put you on loudspeaker so I can hypothetically do it while you talk.’
Stacey started from the beginning and spoke slowly.
Four instructions later and the screen burst into life.
‘Stace, that was worryingly easy,’ Kim observed.
‘Only if you know what you’re doing,’ Stacey said. ‘Hypothetically, of course.’
Kim smiled and ended the call.
‘Nice to see,’ Bryant observed.
‘What?’
‘A smile on your face. First one today.’
‘Yeah, it was wind,’ she said.
‘Ha, it was because you’re doing something you shouldn’t be.’
She had to concede he had a point.
Kim wasn’t surprised that Joanna’s wallpaper was a gorgeous woman in a bathing suit. She went straight for the internet search engine, which clearly Joanna didn’t clear out very often.
‘She was on Tinder,’ Kim observed.
‘Who isn’t?’ Bryant asked.
‘Me,’ she said.
‘Or me,’ he answered
She continued to scroll and spoke as she went. ‘Darts tournaments, Airbnb in Fife, how to cook a perfect beef Wellington and—’ she stopped speaking.
She turned to Keats as he entered the room with three cups.
‘Keats, could Joanna have been pregnant?’ she asked, unlikely as it might be.
He frowned. ‘I can’t say for sure, but my initial examination didn’t offer any indication. No noticeable bulge of the tummy.’
Kim shook her head. ‘Not her then,’ she said, handing Bryant the phone.
His eyes widened. ‘She searched seven different sites about illegal terminations. But why…’
Kim shook her head as she looked from the phone to the piece of paper. There was something here that she was missing.
Why had Sadie written this poem? What exactly had she been trying to say?
Sixty-Four
‘You know, guv, this might be a good time,’ Bryant said as they got back in the car. ‘Just while we’ve got a spare minute.’
‘For what?’ she asked.
She had put the copy of Sadie’s poem in her pocket. She had read the words so many times she was no longer even seeing them.
He rolled his eyes and shook his head all at the same time. ‘You know what, and why are you putting it off anyway?’
She sighed. ‘Because I read your appraisal form, and I have to change some of your scores,’ she said, uneasily.
He shrugged. ‘Okay, I just put what I thought was fair and accurate but if you disagree and have to deduct—’
‘That’s not the problem, Bryant,’ she said, glancing out of the window. ‘As ever you’ve undervalued yourself and your contribution to the team. I have to mark you up.’
She caught his brief smile out of the corner of her eye.
‘And that’s a bad thing?’
‘Are you never going to seek promotion?’ she asked, thinking about the section detailing career prospects.
He shook his head. ‘Once was enough, thanks.’
A few months earlier, when she’d been working alongside Travis and the West Mercia team, Bryant had been handed the temporary rank of detective inspector in her absence. Once the case was over he’d thrown it back like he’d got the business end of a branding poker in his palm.
‘But you would make a great DI,’ Kim said, honestly.
‘You know, guv, I don’t think I ever told you about one of Laura’s parents’ evenings a few years ago. We sat for a long time with lots of her teachers and even longer with her science teacher who insisted that Laura had the makings of a doctor, possibly even a surgeon. We were thrilled. We’d always known she was a bright, hard-working kid – but a surgeon? Our daughter a surgeon? We were beside ourselves in the car driving home. Laura not so much.
‘I asked her why she wasn’t elated about what the teachers had said, and it was simple. It was what they wanted for her more than what she wanted for herself. She’d decided when she was eleven that she wanted to be a midwife and she had never faltered from that goal.’
Kim nodded her understanding.
The girl was now at college studying midwifery.
He continued. ‘I always wanted to be a police officer, not manage a team of police officers. It’s your ambition for me, not mine for myself.’
She nodded, conceding his point. ‘Well, I have to find some area for bloody improvement,’ she said. ‘Otherwise it’s just gonna look like favouritism.’
He shrugged. ‘I’m sure we could come up with something.’
She looked at him. ‘Not sure that’s how it’s supposed to work.’
But she honestly could not think of an area of his performance that he could improve. Not one she could put on the form, anyway.
‘Occasionally, you’re a bit overprotective,’ she said, truthfully. ‘You try and shield me from the shit and the crap like back there with Keats. Instantly you wanted to stop me accessing that phone even though you knew it could give us a clue.’
‘And land you on suspension,’ he countered.
‘It’s my risk to take. Sometimes you gotta let me get my hands dirty.’
‘I’d level that same accusation about protection at you,’ he offered. ‘I know you’re exploring possibilities with this case that lie outside my comfort zone but I’m a big boy. I can take it.’
Yes, she had explored the possibility that a child could be behind the murders, and she also knew the very notion would make him sick to his stomach.
She smiled. ‘Okay, I’ll stop protecting you if you let me deal with my own crap and shit now and again. Deal?’ she asked.
‘Deal,’ he agreed. ‘So, are we done then?’ Bryant asked. ‘Is that my appraisal completed?’