Deadly Cry (DI Kim Stone #13) - Angela Marsons Page 0,31
area of private and council-owned dwellings. It wasn’t known as a high-crime area and residents lived in reasonable harmony.
Within the avenue itself, Kim counted five sets of Mucklow-style semi-detached properties with garages attached to the side of the house. Each property was separated from its twin by a waist-high wooden fence that ran down the middle of a shared lawn. The houses were identical with double driveways in front of the garage. From memory, houses around here went for around a quarter of a million, and if there was a picture in the dictionary to describe middle-class suburbia this would have been it. A place where both parents went out to work and nothing out of the ordinary ever happened.
Until now, Kim thought as Bryant pulled up outside the houses smack bang in the middle of the curve.
A newish Toyota Corolla sat on the drive awaiting the arrival of a second car.
‘Guv, you want me to?…’
‘No,’ she said, refusing his offer of breaking the news. Whoever was on the other side of that front door was not going to care from whose mouth the devastating news came. It’s not what they’d remember for the rest of their lives.
She took a deep breath and knocked.
‘Have you forgotten your?…’ a female voice said as the door began to open. The tolerant smile died on the woman’s face as she realised they were not who she was expecting.
Kim held up her identification.
‘Is this the home of Louise Webb-Harvey?’
The woman nodded, looking from her to Bryant.
‘Yes, she’s my wife but she’s not here right—’
‘May we come in?…’
‘Robyn,’ she said, offering her name and standing aside.
Kim passed the stairs leading out of the hallway and headed into a light and airy kitchen formed of shiny white units and an island in the middle. A saucepan simmered on the hob and the smell of a freshly made pot of coffee mingled with the aroma of some kind of bolognaise. A half-drunk glass of wine stood beside the chopping board, an empty glass beside the bottle. Everything in this kitchen was waiting for someone to come home.
‘Please, take a seat, Ms Webb-Harvey.’
‘Robyn, and please don’t tell me to sit down in my own home. Has something happened?’
Kim took a seat at the dining table, hoping the woman would follow her lead.
She didn’t and leaned against the island instead. She crossed her arms and Kim could see her hands grabbing the bare flesh of her upper arms.
‘Robyn, I’m afraid we have some bad news about Louise. There’s been an incident.’
Robyn looked around the room and reached for her handbag. ‘Where is she? I’ll go to her.’
Kim remained seated and shook her head.
‘It’s the car, isn’t it? I told her to get something more practical, more sensible but—’
‘It’s not the car,’ Kim said. ‘But I’m sorry to tell you that Louise is dead.’
That Godforsaken word again.
No response.
Kim knew she had heard, but right now her mind was trying to compute those words against the normality of cooking dinner with a glass of wine, waiting for her partner to return home.
‘I’m sorry but I think you should leave,’ Robyn said as the colour started to seep from her face. The woman thought she could get them, along with their bad news, out of the house. And then it wouldn’t be real.
‘She’s not coming, Robyn. I’m sorry but your wife has been murdered.’
Her mouth fell open as her legs buckled. Bryant had been moving closer and was there to offer a steadying hand so that she didn’t fall.
‘M… murdered.’
‘I’m afraid so,’ Kim said as Bryant guided Robyn to a chair.
The sound of something bubbling over and hissing on the hob drew Bryant’s attention.
He reached over and turned the knobs off.
Kim continued. ‘She was found by a ranger at Stevens Park in—’
‘I know where it is,’ she said as her eyes came alight with a sudden urgency, as though there was something she’d completely forgotten.
‘Where’s Archie?’
Kim’s head snapped towards Bryant.
‘Who is Archie?’ she asked as a boulder began to form in the pit of her stomach.
‘Archie is our six-year-old son.’
Thirty-One
I am startled awake from my dream.
I can feel the breath building in my body. I feel like an over-inflated balloon. I am full of air and it has no way to escape.
I try to let out a breath, but there is something heavy across my face bearing down hard; my nose feels as though I’ve inhaled a hundred feathers and my mouth is blocked.