Page 16 of Guilty Mothers
‘Will do.’
‘One last thing though,’ Kim said, desperate to find out something about Katie Hawne. ‘Are you saying that in the two years Katie lived here, you never saw any visitors come to her door? Not even her mother?’
His eyes widened in surprise. ‘Well, that would have been a shocker. Katie told me her mother was dead.’
TWELVE
Tiff took another gulp of tea and paused in writing her report. The statement was to be passed to Dudley CID as a record of the conversation with Olivia and Logan Dench.
It was meant to be objective and factual, but Tiff kept wanting to add in her own senses, her own unease. Despite her training, she wanted to start each sentence with ‘I feel’ or ‘I think’.
‘Look lively, Tiff,’ Sergeant Kendrick said from behind as he entered the canteen. ‘Your shift’s nearly over.’
‘Sorry, Sarge. I’ll be done in a minute. Just trying to put stuff into words.’
He paused his journey to the counter and took a seat. ‘Why, what’s up? You do these every day.’
She shrugged. She was wondering the same thing herself. But the meeting with Olivia Dench and her son just kept playing over in her mind. She had felt a tension in the house from the moment she’d walked in. Nothing that had taken place afterwards had changed that.
‘Just record the facts, Tiff. We did our job. It’s up to CID now. Although I’m not sure when they’re gonna fit in the identification of the body. Our lot are busy with the murder of the woman in Stourbridge, and Dudley are tied up in court for the next few days on that big armed robbery case. It’ll probably be sent over to?—’
‘I can do it,’ Tiff said quickly. ‘I’m off shift in fifteen minutes. I’ll do it on my own time. Just to help out. Is that against any rules?’ she asked, not wanting to end her CID career before it had even begun.
Kendrick frowned, and Tiff could see that his first instinct was to refuse, but then he shrugged.
‘It does need doing quickly, and CID will end up going over our tracks anyway. It’ll be one job less for them.’ He smacked the table before getting up. ‘Okay, give that Logan kid a call. Show him the body and then do up your report before shift in the morning.’
‘Thanks, Sarge,’ she said, taking out her phone.
‘Don’t mention it. Happy to let you take on extra jobs any time. Eventually, CID will be lucky to have you.’
Tiff smiled her appreciation. She certainly hoped so.
THIRTEEN
‘What’s the verdict from the FME?’ Stacey asked Penn.
The Force Medical Examiner was a GP from a rota of local on-call practitioners who assisted the police with situations like assessing suspects claiming excessive force, taking blood samples of suspected drink-drivers and providing official medical opinions.
‘He’s with her now. The duty brief kept tapping his watch at me as if I can get the answer any sooner.’
‘Okay, so while you’re sitting here doing nothing, I’m gonna pick your brains. I’ve been looking at all these pageants that Katie entered.’
‘Yeah,’ he said, tapping his fingers on the desk.
‘Well, she entered loads over the years: Little Miss Halesowen, Little Miss Stourbridge, Little Miss Gornal, Little Miss Sunshine in Walsall, Little Rascals in Wombourne, but never anything bigger.’
‘I’ve never heard of any of them,’ Penn admitted.
‘Well, they don’t really make the news. Most are only reported in the local free papers, but she was clearly very good so why not go for the bigger ones? There are county pageants and nationals, even internationals, so why didn’t she enter them?’
‘Does it matter?’ he asked, scrunching up his face.
Stacey hid her smile. Typical Penn. There was no puzzle to solve here. They had their victim, and they had their killer, so his attention span was like the dipped beam of a headlight.
As ever, though, the boss was on full beam and wanted to uncover everything, not least a motive.
Stacey had to agree with the boss. How could anyone not want to understand every detail of why Katie Hawne had walked into her mother’s home and viciously butchered her? Katie was not known to them and didn’t appear to have suffered any prior violent episodes.