Page 14 of Deadly Cry
Disbelief shaped his features as he continued to shake his head. As yet there were no tears. She knew they would come with acceptance.
‘This is some kind of mistake. I’m in a nightmare. There’s something wrong. It makes no sense. Why would anyone want to kill Kat?’
He looked to her as though she had the answer when, in fact, she was hoping to learn that from him.
‘That’s exactly what we intend to find out,’ she said, looking from one to the other. ‘Is there anyone you can think of who had any kind of grudge against Katrina, or anything strange that might have happened to her recently?’
Both shook their heads as though they were humouring her until she told them the truth.
A light cough from Bryant told her what she was already thinking: they both needed space and time for the news to sink in.
‘We’re going to leave you alone for now, but a family liaison officer is on the way. They’ll answer any questions you have, and we’ll be back to talk again.’
Kim stood.
Andrew Nock continued to stare forward as though she hadn’t spoken. Kim wished she had words of comfort to ease his suffering, but there was nothing. As the hours grew, he would understand that the nightmare was real. There would be tears and heartache and more tears as he considered how to tell his little girl that her mummy wasn’t coming home.
‘I’ll see you out,’ Ella said.
Kim passed the door to the lounge where the little girl slept. Kim’s heart ached. When she woke, Mia’s life would never be the same again.
‘Does the body need to be identified, officer?’ Ella asked, taking a deep breath.
Kim could sense that the woman before her was a coper: one of those people that came into their own in the face of tragedy. The sort of person one needed in times like this.
‘Yes, when your brother is—’
‘I can take care of it,’ she stated.
Kim hesitated. ‘It may be something your brother needs to do for acceptance,’ she said, looking back into the house and noting that the man still hadn’t moved an inch.
‘I’ll decide later if he’s up to it,’ Ella said in a parental tone.
Kim didn’t show her surprise at the woman’s take-charge attitude. Sometimes it was what people needed at times like this.
‘Oh, and Inspector,’ she said with her hand on the door handle, ‘please cancel that liaison officer. My brother has me. He doesn’t need anyone else.’
Eleven
‘It was around one thirty in the morning,’ Lesley began with a faraway look in her eyes.
Stacey guessed that was the last memory she had of being carefree and unafraid.
‘The last act had finished a while before and security were ushering us out the gates. Taxis and parents’ cars lined the road, even at that time. I lived less than a mile away, so hadn’t asked anyone to pick me up. I said good night to my friends, and they piled into different cars and carried on up the road. I could still hear the beat of the band in my ears, which is probably why I didn’t hear anyone behind me.’
Lesley paused as a dozen ‘if onlys’ appeared to surge through her mind.
‘I was about halfway home when I felt a searing pain to the back of my head,’ she said as her right hand touched the spot. ‘I didn’t know I’d been hit. I didn’t know anything until I regained consciousness and, even then, the blinding pain came second to the smell.’
‘The smell?’ Stacey queried.
Lesley nodded. ‘I was face down in someone’s front garden. My head was being held against the dirt amongst a bed of geraniums; it’s a smell I’ll never forget. I can’t smell it now without wanting to burst into tears.’
Stacey knew that some victims retained triggers from their attacks that brought the memories flooding back, even if the attack was not at the forefront of the mind. It could be the sound of traffic, a car horn, certain words or phrases used by the attacker. For Lesley, it would be the cloying scent of geraniums.
‘I felt the suffocation of the smell before the thundering pain in my head or the realisation of what was happening. His hand was holding me down exactly where I’d been struck, and he was assaulting me from behind. Any movement and the pain brought nausea up to my throat. I thought I was going to choke on my own vomit. I thought I was going to die,’ she whispered, blinking back the tears.
Stacey nodded but said nothing. She didn’t want to rush her along. The story had to be told at her own pace, in her own way.
