Deadly Cry (DI Kim Stone #13) - Angela Marsons Page 0,8

a small piece of paper to Bryant. ‘Twenty-five years old.’

Kim was guessing he’d got the information from the driving licence, which would now be packaged up with the handbag and all its contents and sent off to the lab.

Kim walked around the body noting the position.

The woman’s torso was face forward; her front was pressing into the ground. Her legs were bent at the knee and the right side of her face flat against the earth amongst half-house bricks and clumps of grey plaster. Nail and screw debris littered the area. Kim felt the anger begin to build in her stomach; the woman had been killed and left amongst decay and rubbish – the guts of a building that no one wanted – in an area now abandoned and unused. That fact alone told her plenty about the person who had killed her.

‘Obvious injuries?’ she asked, pushing the thoughts away. They would not help her victim now. There were no stab wounds or pools of blood and no trauma that she could see. The woman looked as though she’d just lain down for a nap amongst the strewn building materials.

Keats shook his head. ‘I think her neck has been broken. I’ll be able to confirm once I get her back to the morgue.’

Kim looked again at the position of the body and visualised the woman kneeling, the murderer behind. One good, strong twist. Immediate death and then her lifeless form falling to the ground.

A quick, functional kill that lacked the frenzy of a crime of passion. There was no presence of multiple stab wounds or cuts and bruises. There was no evidence of sexual assault. The woman’s clothes appeared all in order.

Where was the feeling? Where was the emotion? Where was the motive for killing a young mother out shopping with her child?

‘I’d estimate two to five hours,’ Keats offered even though she hadn’t asked. She’d been able to work that out for herself.

As it was late afternoon, Kim guessed the post-mortem would take place the following day.

‘First thing,’ he said, reading her thoughts.

‘Oh, Jesus, I know that frown,’ Bryant said as they headed towards the car. ‘What’s up?’

‘She didn’t need to die,’ Kim said, and then wondered where those exact words had come from.

‘Well, someone wanted her dead cos she didn’t break her own—’

‘I can’t explain it,’ she said, turning to look back at the scene. ‘It’s all so throwaway, Bryant. There was no passion, no hate, no frenzy, no message, no statement and she was just left amongst all this shit. Unless Katrina Nock was leading some kind of double life away from being a wife and mother, I really have the feeling that this woman didn’t need to die.’

Kim’s thoughts returned once more to the small child whose life was now changed for ever. It was down to her to deliver the bad news.

Eight

Kate Sewell closed the car door and glanced at her Hermes handbag, bought courtesy of her commission on the book deal brokered between her client and one of the big five publishing houses.

Tyra Brooks was not her normal type of client, and the back of beyond in the Black Country was not where she’d seen herself in her late thirties, but needs must, she told herself.

The two of them had needed each other.

At twenty-eight years of age, Tyra’s glamour modelling days had been numbered. Waning interest in her physical attributes had led to her being dropped by the agency that had represented her for ten years. Right at the time Kate had lost her last high-paying client, who had been poached by a swanky agency, promising to take his mediocre acting talent to another level and make him a household name. Good luck with that, she thought. Ryan Hardwick was a handsome, arrogant man whose delusions far outweighed his ability. He was also a self-sabotager, scared of success and increased his alcohol intake at the first sign of a decent role. It hadn’t been her holding him back, it had been himself, but she’d let them discover that on their own.

Regardless of his shortcomings, Ryan’s piecemeal work had kept her business going, along with the other half-dozen clients she had left, and her hands were still full because Tyra was almost as delusional as Ryan had been.

The only person who hadn’t known Tyra’s career was on the decline was Tyra herself. Even though fuller lips and bigger boobs hadn’t reignited the interest, she still felt that it was only a matter of time before