She crunched the gears into submission as she bullied the car up to sixty in three seconds.
‘She’ll probably be down by the time we get there,’ Bryant observed. ‘I’m sure that place has qualified people on site.’
Oh yeah, Kim thought, as she slowed for a bend followed by a small traffic island. She’d read an article a few months ago about a planned multimillion pound extension for a medical wing. It had sounded like the school had better facilities than most of the local town centres.
‘Next left,’ Bryant said, just as she hit the indicator stick.
The road turned into a single-track tarmac path that wound its way beneath arching willow trees with leafless branches that reached across the distance to intertwine.
At the end, the tarmac tapered into a gravel driveway that straightened. Kim ignored the sound of bricks hitting the side of Bryant’s car as she sped along the track towards the Tudor-cum-Jacobean-style house.
‘Time?’ Kim asked.
‘Four minutes,’ he said, having timed from call to arrival.
An imposing bell tower stood to the right of the building.
‘Bryant…’ Kim said, as they neared the building.
‘I can’t see anyone up there, either,’ he said, as she brought the car to a screeching halt, just yards away from a crowd of people, all looking down at the ground.
‘Looks like you were right, Bryant,’ she said, approaching the sea of horrified faces.
The girl had made it down after all.
Three
‘Police officer, move aside,’ Kim commanded as she pushed her way through the circle of people formed of both adults and students.
Horrified gasps had been muted into silence, but the open mouths told Kim it hadn’t been long. Damn, if she’d just broken the speed limit she might have been here in time.
‘There’s an ambulance on the way,’ said a shaky female voice somewhere behind her.
Kim ignored it. An ambulance was no good to them now.
‘Get everyone away from here,’ she growled to a smartly dressed man leaning down towards the figure on the ground.
He hesitated for a second before springing into action.
She could hear Bryant’s booming voice already moving students away.
Too late, probably, as they would never un-see the sight before them. It would play over and over in their minds and revisit them in their dreams. It never ceased to amaze Kim that people were so eager to give their minds something traumatic to grab and hold for ever.
‘Damn it,’ she said to herself, taking a closer look at the diminutive figure on the ground.
The girl was dressed in the school colours. Her yellow shirt was crumpled and falling out of the brown skirt that had curled over and exposed her bottom. Despite the dark tights covering her skin, Kim leaned down and gently folded it back.
She lay face down, her left cheek against the gravel, a pool of blood staining the white stones from the impact wound of her head hitting the ground. Her right eye stared along the path. Her left arm was flailed out as though reaching while her right lay close to her side. Both legs were straight and pointed to the metal grating that bordered a single row of daffodils close to the building. Her feet were encased in flat, black shoes. A grey smudge was visible on the sole of the right pump.
Kim guessed her to be early teens.
‘What’s her name?’ she asked as the smartly dressed male reappeared beside her.
‘Sadie Winters,’ he replied, quietly. ‘She’s thirteen years old,’ he added.
Jesus Christ, Kim thought.
He offered his hand across the body. ‘Brendan Thorpe, Principal of Heathcrest.’
Kim ignored the hand and simply nodded.
‘You saw her on the roof?’ she asked.
He shook his head. ‘I heard someone shouting in the corridor that a student was on the roof threatening to jump. I immediately called the police but by the time I got out here…’
‘She’d already jumped?’ Kim asked.
He nodded and swallowed.
Kim had to wonder what could have caused a thirteen-year-old to take her own life. How bad could her life have been?
‘Just a child,’ Brendan Thorpe whispered.
A child’s problems were no less important or intense than the worries of an adult, she reasoned. It was all relative. A break-up with a boyfriend could mean the end of the world. Feelings of despair were not the sole property of adults.
The sound of tyres on gravel prompted her to turn towards the road. Two squad cars followed by an ambulance pulled to a stop behind Bryant’s Astra.
She recognised Inspector Plant, a pleasant, permanently tanned officer with white hair and beard that contrasted with his skin tone.
He came towards her as Bryant reappeared.
‘Apparent suicide,’ she advised, beginning the handover. Although first on the scene they would not take the case. CID had no remit in a suicide, except to agree that was the cause of death with the pathologist, which they would do following the post-mortem.
In the meantime there were parents to inform, witnesses to be questioned, statements to be taken – but that would not be done by either herself or her team.
‘Her name is Sadie Winters, thirteen-years-old,’ she advised Plant.
A quiet shake of the head demonstrated his regret.
‘Brendan Thorpe over there is the principal, who made the call to us, but she’d jumped by the time we got here.’
Inspector Plant nodded. ‘Thanks, guys, we’ll take it—’
His words were cut short by a female voice emanating towards them.
‘Is it her?’ cried the voice.
They all turned as a blonde girl dressed in the school uniform dodged the principal and barrelled towards them.
‘Let me through,’ she cried. ‘I have to see if it’s her.’
Kim lined herself up in front of the victim and tensed her body ready for the impact. This kid was hurtling towards her like a rugby player; stopping for no one.
‘Got ya,’ Kim said, planting her feet firmly and holding her so she couldn’t pass.
The girl, only an inch shorter than Kim, strained to look beyond, but Bryant and Plant had moved into position and blocked her view.
‘Please, let me past,’ she shouted right into Kim’s ear.
‘I’m sorry,’ Kim said, trying to hold her.
‘I just want to make sure,’ she cried.
‘Who are—’
‘Please, just let me past. My name is Saffron, and Sadie Winters is my sister.’
Four
‘Bloody hell, that was intense,’ Bryant said as they headed back towards the car.
Oh yeah, her ribs were still smarting from the girl barging her to get past. Luckily the school counsellor had appeared and with the help of the principal had managed to drag the girl towards the bell tower.
They reached the car and turned. Inspector Plant and his team were scattered among the melee of students and adults as well as guarding the body for the arrival of Keats.
Sadie Winters’s sister sat against the bell tower with her head down. The counsellor, a thin, wiry man with ginger hair and bushy beard sat beside her, while Principal Thorpe paced and talked to someone on his mobile phone.
And at the centre of it all was the body of a thirteen-year-old child.
Despite her limitations in the sympathy department Kim found herself wishing she’d at least had a chance to speak to the girl, understand what had been going through her head, reassure her that it wasn’t all as bad as she thought. Emotional connection with other people did not lie at the top of her skill set but she couldn’t have done any worse than this.
‘Jesus, Bryant, maybe if we’d just…’
‘Four minutes, guv,’ he said, reminding her of how long it had taken them to get there.
‘But she’s so bloody young,’ Kim said, opening the car door. She was sure that many teenagers had contemplated ending it all but that
was a long way from actually doing it. How bad must things have been for her to actually jump to certain death?
She paused and turned, taking a good look at the building.
‘What’s up?’ Bryant asked.
‘Dunno,’ she answered honestly, as her gaze travelled up from the location of the body to the roof.
Her brain was already sorting through the cases on her desk and the explanation to both Woody and the CPS about the collapsed case of Mrs Worley. Her mind had left this place and was already heading back to the office. It was only her gut that remained.
And something didn’t feel right to her.
‘Troubled, I heard the counsellor say to Inspector Plant,’ Bryant prompted.
‘Jeez, weren’t we all at thirteen?’ she said.
At that age she had just lost Keith and Erica, the only two adults that had ever loved her.
‘Guv, you’ve got that Ghostbuster look on your face.’
‘That what?’ she asked as her eyes reached the top of the building.
‘The expression that says you’re looking for something that’s just not there.’
‘Hmm…’ she said, absently.
Her eyes travelled over the grand three-storey building, taking in the high windows, the rounded arcade at the centre, the flat roof with stone balustrade that linked the two arched roofs that topped the ivy-covered wings standing proud of the recessed centre.
‘Guv, time to go,’ Bryant prompted. ‘We’ve got plenty of our own cases back at the station.’
He was right, as usual. The major cases that landed on her desk did nothing to stem the flow of lesser cases. It wasn’t a card game where a murder cancelled out sexual assault, robbery and gang-related violence. They were still playing catch-up from the incidents that had mounted up during the recent murder of night workers on Tavistock Road.
And yet just because something looked like a duck and sounded like a duck. Didn’t mean it really was a duck.
She slammed the car door shut.
‘Guv…’ her colleague warned.
‘Yeah, in a minute, Bryant,’ she said, walking back towards the building.
Five
‘Is this the only way up to the roof?’ Kim asked, as they mounted stone steps from the third floor via a corridor that ran behind a row of bedrooms.
Brendan Thorpe shook his head. ‘There’s a fire escape in the West wing but that’s been closed off to the roof for more than a year now,’ he said, taking a set of keys from his pocket that hung lower than it would have done if his trouser belt had been working more effectively rather than sitting beneath the middle-aged paunch.
He tried the door first to find it locked.
‘Could Sadie have got a spare key from anywhere?’
Thorpe looked puzzled. ‘I don’t see how,’ he said, frowning.
‘Well, she got up here somehow,’ Kim observed, in case he’d forgotten there was a dead teenager on the ground. The girl’s purloining of the key was about to be the least of his problems.
‘I’m sorry, Inspector, you’ll have to bear with me, I’m still in a little bit of shock,’ he said, trying the wrong key.
‘I understand that, Mr Thorpe, but it would be useful to know how many roof keys are in existence.’
‘Of, course,’ he said, as they stepped outside.
‘There is one on my master set, the deputy principal has an identical set to mine. The janitor, the maintenance crew, each housemistress or master has a reduced set of keys, which includes a roof key.’
‘So, that makes?’ Kim prodded.
‘A total of fourteen roof keys,’ he answered.
Kim glanced at Bryant who took out his notebook.
She stepped outside onto the flat roof and looked around assessing the scale of the buildings joined together by walkways and ladders. From where she stood Kim could make out four clear wings, each the size of a couple of football pitches. Navigating the area from up here would be challenging enough, but downstairs, spread over three floors, she’d need a decent satnav to get her around the school.
She stepped over a roof light and around an air conditioning unit to head towards the area she thought was the side of the building.
Thorpe’s phone began to ring. ‘Please, excuse me,’ he said, edging back towards the stairwell.
Bryant joined her on a patch of recently repaired bitumen.
‘My apologies, Inspector. I have to go,’ Thorpe said, gravely. ‘Sadie’s parents are at the police cordon.’
‘Do they know?’ Bryant asked.
He shook his head. ‘Only that there’s been an incident.’
Kim understood. Delivering such news over the phone was only done as a last resort. She did not envy him his next job.
‘We’ll let you know when we’re done,’ she advised as he re-entered the building.
Bryant shoved his hands into his trouser pockets as he stood beside her.
She narrowed her eyes at him when he started humming the Ghostbusters theme.
‘Just look down there,’ she said.
‘Must I?’ he asked, taking a tentative step forward.
Three storeys below lay the body of Sadie Winters, guarded by uniform officers while others worked to take details and clear the area. Keats had arrived, accompanied by his team of crime scene techs, who were changing into white protective suits.
‘You think she jumped from here?’ Kim asked, lining herself up with the body on the ground.
Bryant nodded and stepped back. ‘Yeah, seems about right.’
‘Hmm…’ she said, taking five steps to the left.
‘Was that the wrong answer?’ he asked.
‘How about here?’ she asked, ignoring his question.
Again, he took a cautious step forward and shook his head. ‘Too far away.’
She walked past him and headed to the right.
‘How about here?’ she asked.
‘Guv, are you trying to make me throw up?’
‘I haven’t cooked for you in ages, now just look,’ she urged.
He looked down and shook his head. ‘Much too far away from where she landed,’ he said.
She returned to her first position which was directly in line with the body. She frowned as she looked down.
‘Who you gonna c— aah, I think I see what you’re looking at,’ he said.
‘The railings,’ she clarified.
A row of black wrought-iron spikes, about four feet high, surrounded a narrow-planted area she’d noticed on the ground. Four steps either way and there were no railings.
‘It’s obstructive,’ Kim said. ‘You look down and picture your body landing on those spikes.’
‘Ugh,’ Bryant said, looking away.
‘Exactly,’ Kim said. ‘And you’re a fully grown adult… allegedly.’
‘But if I’m killing myself anyway I’m expecting a broken neck or a fractured skull?’ he argued.
‘But do you really want to picture yourself impaled on those spikes?’ she asked.
‘Not really but I’m not a troubled thirteen-year-old girl,’ he offered.
‘Yeah, but I was, and I can tell you that I would have noticed those spikes.’
People wanted to die painlessly and that was no different for suicides. Fast and painless. Logically, it didn’t make sense to her. She recalled the grey mark on the bottom of Sadie’s shoe as she took another look around the surface of the roof.
‘Hmmm…’ she said, not finding what she sought.
‘What now?’ he asked, wearily.
‘The cigarette,’ she answered. ‘Sadie had recently ground out a smoke with her shoe but there’s no cigarette butt here,’ she observed.
‘Guv, what exactly are you thinking?’ he asked, with a note of fear in his voice.
‘I’m thinking we might just have a chat with our good friend Keats before we leave.’
Six
Kim stepped back outside into what appeared to be chaos.
Plant and his team had
succeeded in clearing the area close to the body but were still trying to corral students and adults into some kind of order. Word had clearly travelled, and the number of spectators had increased tenfold. A third squad car had just pulled in and officers were trying to guide everyone back into the main building.
Kim ignored it all and focused her attention on the ground. ‘There’s one,’ she said, pointing. ‘And another…’
‘Secret smoking spot,’ Bryant said, looking around.
Kim frowned. ‘That ash mark wouldn’t still be on the sole of her shoe if she’d had her smoke all the way down here,’ she observed.
‘The butt could have blown anywhere up there, guv,’ Bryant said, nodding towards the roof.
‘Get ’em all collected,’ Kim said, moving towards the focus of the forensic activity. She was pleased to see that a modesty blind had been placed around the victim.
‘Can you not do something about all these people?’ Keats asked, bypassing any form of greeting.
‘Not really my case,’ she answered, with a shrug.
‘Then don’t speak to me,’ he said, pushing his glasses back on to the bridge of his nose.
‘Bloody hell, Keats, who pissed on your chips so soon?’ she asked. ‘I’ve only just got here.’
‘All these folks with smartphones trying to get a damn photo of this poor soul to plaster all over social media.’
Kim understood that just about the only person Keats cared about right now was the one that was no longer breathing. She gave him a moment of silence as he worked through his initial examination.
‘Are you still here?’ he asked, looking up.
‘Time of death was between one fifteen and one thirty,’ she offered.
He scowled at her and then pointed. ‘And that guy standing over by the wall with the red hair is a potential serial killer.’
Kim confined her smile. ‘I wasn’t telling you how to do your job, Keats,’ she said.
He stood up straight. ‘No, really, why are you here?’
She raised an eyebrow. ‘Just passing.’
‘The word “passing” is indicative of continuous movement, so I’d suggest you carry on…’