Page 1 of Killing Mind
Prologue
I will not feel the fear. I will not feel the fear.
I repeat the words to myself over and over in my mind. The fabric that cuts a tight line across my mouth prevents me from saying it out loud.
My hands and feet are numb, caused either by the cold or the ties that bind me tightly to the chair, I’m not sure which.
The goose bumps on my skin are raised and my breathing is shallow. I know how to control these physical reactions to the fear that is running around my brain. I have been taught.
I don’t know how long I’ve been here. The dense silence around me offers no clues. It feels as though time is standing still. Somehow they’ve stopped it.
My senses have been muted; there are no smells, sounds, there is nothing I can reach to touch. The blindfold prevents me seeing beyond the blackness of the cloth.
There is only one sound and already I welcome and dread it at the same time.
The metallic clunk that echoes around me when they open the door assures me they’ve not left me here to die. Yet.
But then I know that it will all begin again: the questions, the accusations, the lies.
Their voices will assault me. Their words thrust into my ears like tiny insects. Left there to crawl and burrow into my brain. I was told they would do this.
They are trying to reach the very heart of me.
I know what they want but I can’t give it to them and therein lies my fear.
What will they do when I refuse to say what they want me to say?
One
Kim could feel the tension emanating from her colleague in the driving seat as he negotiated the traffic island at Russells Hall Hospital and headed towards Dudley.
The cause of his mood could not be attributed to their target destination. Keats had told them not to rush. It was an obvious suicide, he’d said, and needed only their confirmation.
‘You doing something nice later?’ she asked.
He’d requested the afternoon as annual leave and judging by the hard line of his jaw it wasn’t to do anything fun.
‘No,’ he answered, without looking at her.
‘Jeez, Bryant, turn that frown upside down.’
She waited for his retort at the irony of such a statement coming from her.
No response materialised as he turned off the main road and pulled up short behind Keats’s van.
She shook her head at his sullenness as she got out of the car.
Groups were congregating at the line of tape stretching between the squad car and the ambulance, their stomachs touching the tape in an ‘I was here first’ kind of way, possessively claiming the space as though at a music concert, terrified of missing out.
Kim said nothing as she pushed her way through to the front. Bryant followed in her slipstream and didn’t offer one apology on her behalf. Blimey, he must be pre-occupied, she thought. She’d best not let on to Woody. She was only allowed out of the station because she was accompanied by a responsible adult who was responsible for holding her manners in his mouth.
‘Coming through,’ she called to the last couple who were holding on to their places as though queueing for a Boxing Day sale.
She flashed her ID and ducked under the tape. A PC pointed to the stairs that appeared to lead to a first floor flat. Another directed her to the first door on the left.
Keats waited for the usual greeting from Bryant, as they normally spent a minute or two taking the piss out of her right in front of her face.
No response came from her colleague as he attempted to look around the pathologist.
