Page 78 of Killing Mind
‘It found me,’ Britney answered, fixing her gaze on the hypnotic fairy lights. ‘A girl here called Lorna found me bedding down for the night in the doorway of Greggs in town. She almost fell over me as I was breaking up my two cardboard boxes.’
The words immediately saddened Tiffany, wondering not only how the girl had reached that point but that she recalled it so matter-of-factly. She tried to picture Britney alone on a cold dark night, hungry and tired; trying to sleep amongst predators. Suddenly, the box room at her own house didn’t seem all that bad.
‘Lorna wasn’t like the other do-gooders who’d tried to speak to me,’ Britney continued. ‘She didn’t probe, she didn’t ask me how I’d come to be in this state and she offered me a bed for the night.’
‘And you just never left?’ Tiff asked.
Britney smiled and shrugged. ‘Why would I? Lorna found me at the lowest point in my life. I had no family, I’d stolen from all my friends. I’d made some really bad decisions. I had nothing but the clothes on my back and I didn’t know where the next meal was coming from. The Farm gave me everything I needed and changed my life for ever.’
Tiffany wanted to ask so many more questions about how Britney had reached that stage in her life, but a devilish smile was playing on the girl’s lips.
‘Hey, how about we nip back to my room, make hot chocolate, grab a blanket and come back and look up at the stars?’
Britney’s excitement at such a simple pleasure was infectious, and Tiff couldn’t help but agree.
They headed back to the room where Britney pulled out a travel kettle and a couple of small mugs. She produced a couple of sachets from her bedside cabinet.
‘My last two,’ she said, ripping the top off with her teeth.
Tiffany felt strangely touched that she was using her last two drinks. As she busied herself pouring the water, Tiff took the opportunity to check the messages on her phone.
She reached into the side pocket of the backpack. It was empty. She would have sworn she put it there, but it was so manic when they’d arrived she could be mistaken. She checked the zip section and then the main body of the bag. Twice.
No, there was absolutely no doubt in her mind.
Her mobile phone had gone.
Sixty-Three
Bryant pulled into the grounds of Hindlip Hall, a stately home that had housed West Mercia Police since 1967.
As he walked towards the building he couldn’t help compare the biscuit-coloured frontage with regal sash windows to the drab, grey concrete of their own station in Halesowen town centre. Since being rebuilt after a fire in 1820 the property had been a family home, a girls’ school and during the Second World War was taken over by the Ministry of Works, and now accommodated both the police headquarters and the Hereford and Worcester Fire & Rescue service.
He remembered the way to the squad room of Travis’s squad from when the two teams had worked together on a hate crimes case. It had almost resulted in the death of one of his team mates, but thanks to Penn’s input had not. And yet only months later they had indeed lost one of their own.
There were still days Bryant expected to see his old colleague sitting at the desk nearest the door and, in all honesty, he missed the detective’s cocky arrogance, but if someone other than Dawson had to occupy that chair, he was glad it was Penn.
He placed the temporary ID left for him at the front desk around his neck and waited to be keyed in to the main body of the building. They trusted him to wander around the building but not enough to let himself in and out.
He headed to the third floor and knocked on the closed door before entering. The door to his own squad room was rarely closed, but as he stepped inside this one he immediately understood why. He nodded a greeting towards Travis, who stood at the top of the room, beside blown-up images of the victim.
He tore his eyes away for the moment and appraised the room. Lynne was the only officer he recognised. She gave him a small wave before returning her attention to Travis.
‘For those of you who don’t know, this is DS Bryant from West Mids, who was involved in the rape and murder case of Wendy Harrison over twenty-five years ago.’
A few turned and acknowledged his presence but most just wanted to be debriefed before going home. He understood. The first day of any murder investigation was the most harrowing. It involved details of the injury; sometimes brutal, horrific details that had to be processed, considered, analysed. The brain had to absorb all the specifics while looking for clues. Family members had to be notified, empathised with, questioned at the most godawful time. And this team sure looked like they’d been through the wringer today.
‘Okay, initial findings are that the attack is exactly the same as that of Wendy Harrison. Our victim is named Alice Lennox. She was twenty-two years of age and a night worker. She kept herself to herself but other girls have confirmed that she went off to buy a pack of smokes and never came back. Her mutilated body was found at Spinners Corner at ninea.m. this morning.
‘The similarities to the earlier attack are not random, they are exact,’ Travis said, pointing to the board. ‘In addition to the rape the inside of Alice’s legs were cut in exactly the same way as Wendy’s.’
Bryant forced himself to look at the cuts that reached from the girl’s groin all the way down to her ankle as though the seams of her skin had been undone.
Bryant could see all the crisscross marks where the bastard had tortured her with smaller cuts. He also noted the blood staining on her legs. Blood had poured from the wound on her left leg from the top to the bottom. On the right leg the blood flow had slowed as he’d reached the knee.
He knew full well that meant the poor girl had been alive through most of the incision and had likely died from bleeding to death.
He tried to fight down the rage that was building inside him. Letting Peter Drake out of prison had been a huge mistake and this girl had paid the price.
