Page 43 of Guilty Mothers
Never had Penn been so conscious of how short ten minutes was.
‘We’re here about the body of James Nixon. We’re assessing whether there are any suspicious circumstances around his death.’
‘You looking for extra work, Sergeant?’
‘Just answers,’ Penn replied.
‘After a cursory physical exam, I’m leaning towards an accidental death. I remain open to being proved wrong, but I see nothing obvious on his body to suggest violence.’
After two years in the water, that was hardly a surprise.
‘I think it most likely he either had too much to drink or he stood too quickly and had a dizzy spell which caused him to fall in the water.’
All this from a cursory glance at the body. They sure did things differently over here in Sandwell.
‘Can you tell if he definitely drowned?’ Tiff asked.
‘It’s a safe bet, love,’ he said indulgently, and Penn felt the hairs stand up on his neck. ‘But I will be conducting a digital post-mortem later today, which I expect will confirm my suspicions.’
The problem with having a preconceived idea was that it left little opportunity for further development. Instead of looking at everything, you tended to look only for facts that supported the theory you’d formed.
‘But if he was pushed?’ Penn asked.
‘No pathologist would attest to such a theory after two years without video evidence or a sworn confession.’ He looked at his watch again. Clearly the ten minutes he’d allowed included travelling time. ‘To be honest, Sergeant, I’m not sure exactly what you were hoping to achieve with this meeting. There’s really nothing more I can do to help you.’
‘Will you send me the report?’ Penn persisted, unwilling to let go quite so easily.
Before the pathologist refused, Penn took out his notebook and pen. He quickly scribbled down his email address and pushed it across the desk.
Doctor Connor folded it into his top pocket as he stood up.
They both thanked him and left the room.
Tiff waited until they were outside before speaking.
‘Sorry for wasting your time, Penn. I suppose that leaves us with nowhere?—’
‘Hey, us Dudley lot don’t give up quite that easily. Come on – let’s get out of here.’
‘To go where?’ she asked, following closely behind.
‘To where it all began.’
TWENTY-NINE
Stacey sat back and took an eye-break from the grid that was almost complete.
Every girl and every local pageant had been logged, along with the placement results. In total there were 127 names on the grid. The bottom fifty-seven names belonged to girls who had done the odd pageant here or there during that seven-year period.
The middle section consisted of around forty girls who had been consistently attending but only for a portion of the years that Katie had been active. That left a core group of thirty girls at the top, the most prolific at that time.
Stacey was now working her way down the list, searching for criminal records or scandal. She seriously hoped she was going to find something before having to go through all their social media accounts looking for clues.
So far, she’d found two drug addicts, one deceased and one incarcerated, and a prolific shoplifter with no form for violence.
On the other hand, she’d found a couple of models, one swimwear, one editorial, plus two doctors, an army recruit and a bakery owner.
After everything she’d read, she still wasn’t sure of her opinion on pageants and wondered at the ratio of successes and failures compared to other early endeavours. Was pageantry more or less likely to have adverse effects in the future? Were there any detrimental long-lasting effects of taking up kick-boxing, or netball or football? Was participating in pageantry as a child any more harmful than any other hobby? But that was a whole new set of data, she thought, typing in the next name.