Silent Scream

Thirty

It was almost midnight when Kim entered the garage. The quiet family street beyond had settled into cosy silence. She switched on her iPod and chose Chopin’s ‘Nocturnes’. The solo piano pieces would ease her through the early morning hours until her body demanded sleep.

After leaving the crime scene she had returned to the station unable to do nothing while there was the potential of another body lying in the ground.

Eventually she had returned home and vacuumed the house throughout. She had mopped the kitchen and used half a bottle of Cillit Bang on the work surfaces. Two washing cycles had ended and the clothes had been dried, ironed and hung in her wardrobe.

The nervous energy had still raged around her body, prompting her to fix a broken shelf in the bathroom, rearrange the furniture in the lounge and tidy out the airing cupboard at the top of the stairs.

Probably just need to cleanse, she thought, stepping into her favourite room of the entire house.

To her left was the Ninja, reversed into the space, poised for their next adventure.

For a moment Kim visualised herself lying into the body of the bike, her breasts and stomach against the petrol tank, her thighs clutched around the leather seat, bending the bike into a series of tight turns; her knees an inch from the ground. The co-ordination of her hands and feet working together to control the beast took every ounce of concentration and erased everything else from her mind.

Riding the Ninja was like breaking in a spirited horse. It was a question of control, of taming a rebel.

Bryant had once told her that she liked to argue with fate. He said fate had dictated that she was beautiful and yet she fought against it by doing nothing to enhance her looks. He said fate had decided that she couldn’t cook and yet she tried complex dishes every week. But only she knew that fate had decreed that she would die young and so far she had fought against it. And won.

There were times when the fates chased her to make her what she should have been when she was six years old; a statistic. So, every now and again she tempted them, goaded them into catching her as they had tried to back then.

The restoration of the Triumph Thunderbird was a labour of love, a testament to two people who had tried to make her feel safe, who had tried to love her. The Thunderbird was an emotional journey that bathed her spirit.

In this one room of her house, the stresses and challenges of the working day eased out of her muscles, leaving her relaxed and content. Here she did not have to be the analytical detective dissecting every clue, or the leader of her team guiding and prodding to get the best results. Here, she did not have to justify her ability to do a job she truly loved or battle to mask the social skills she so sorely lacked. Here, she was happy.

She crossed her legs and began to assess the pieces that had taken five months to gather. The ‘93 genuine Triumph parts would all fit together to form a crankshaft casing. Now all she had to do was figure out how.

Within the overall challenge of restoring a classic motorbike came smaller tasks along the way. The crankshaft casing was the heart of the machine so she began as she always did with a puzzle within a puzzle, she grouped similar type parts together.

Twenty minutes later the washers, gaskets, springs, valves, tubes and pistons were all separated. She opened the diagram that would help guide her through the challenge.

Normally, the process jumped off the page like a three-dimensional hologram. Her mind was able to assess the most logical starting point and she would build from there. Tonight, the instructions remained a muddle of numbers, arrows and shapes.

After ten minutes of scowling at it the page still resembled the writings of the Rosetta Stone.

Dammit, no matter how hard Kim fought she knew this case was having an unsettling effect on her.

She uncrossed her legs and leaned back against the wall. Perhaps it was the amount of time spent in such close proximity to Mikey’s grave. Although she took fresh flowers every week she had locked away those memories when she was six years old.

Like a bomb linked to a motion sensor, there would never be a good time to open that package. Every psychologist she’d been sent to had tried to break open that box and had failed. Despite their assurances that she needed to talk about the trauma in order to heal, she had resisted. Because they had all been wrong.

For a few years following Mikey’s death Kim had been passed around the mental health profession like a puzzle that could not be fathomed. Looking back, she often wondered if a set of steak knives had been on offer for the professional who could break open the surviving twin of the worst case of neglect the Black Country had ever seen.

She suspected there was no such prize for putting the child back together again.

Silence and aggression had been her best friends. Kim had turned into a difficult child and that had been her intention. She hadn’t wanted to be coddled and loved and understood. She hadn’t wanted to form bonds with foster parents, mock siblings or paid carers. She’d wanted to be left alone.

Until foster family number four.

Keith and Erica Spencer were a middle-aged couple when they started fostering. Kim had been their first foster child, and as it would turn out, their last.

They were both teachers who had consciously chosen to have no children. Instead they had spent every spare moment travelling the world on motorcycles. After the death of one of their friends they had decided it was time to curtail the constant travel but their passion for bikes had remained.

When she was placed with them at ten years of age Kim had donned her spikes, ready for the usual onslaught of long, probing chats and measured understanding.

She spent the first three months in her room, honing her rejection skills, waiting for their intervention. When it didn’t come, Kim found herself venturing downstairs for short periods of time, almost like an animal checking to see if it was safe to come out of hibernation. If either of them were surprised, they didn’t show it.

On one such foray she was mildly interested to find Keith restoring an old motorbike in the garage. Initially she sat at the furthest point, just watching. Without turning, Keith explained what he was doing. She never answered, but he carried on anyway.

Each day she moved closer towards his work area until eventually she was sitting right beside him, cross-legged. If Keith was in the garage, so was she.

Gradually Kim started asking questions about the mechanics of the machine, eager to understand how it all came together. Keith showed her diagrams and then demonstrated the practice.

Erica would often have to drag them from the garage to eat her latest gastronomic delight from the countless cookbooks that lined the kitchen shelves. She would roll her eyes fondly while Kim continued to ask questions as they ate to the gentle sound of Erica’s classical music collection.

Kim had been with the couple for about eighteen months when Keith turned to her and said, ‘Okay, you’ve watched me do it plenty of times, do you think you could fit that nut and washer into the exhaust housing?’

He moved out of her way and went to get drinks from the kitchen. With that first turn of the nut her passion was born.

Lost in the process, she continued to sort through the parts strewn across the garage floor, eventually fitting another couple of bits to the bike.

A soft chuckle caused her to turn. Both of them stood in the doorway watching her. Erica was teary.

Keith came and took his place beside her. ‘Yeah, I think you got the clever genes from me, sweetie,’ he said, nudging Kim sideways.

And although she knew it to be impossible, the words had brought an ache to her throat as she had thought of how happy she and Mikey could have been had the fates been kinder.

Two weeks before her thirteenth birthday, her foster mother had brought a hot chocolate to her bedroom and simply placed it on her bedside cabinet. On her way out, Erica had paused at the door. Without turning, her hand had clutched the door handle.

‘Kim, you do know how much we love you, don't you?’

Kim had said nothing but had stared hard at Erica’s back.

‘We could not care more deeply if you were our biological child and we will never try and change you. We love you just the way you are, okay?’

Kim nodded as the words brought tears to her eyes. Without her knowledge this middle-aged couple had touched her heart and offered the first foundations of stability she had ever known.

Two days later, Keith and Erica were killed in a motorway pile-up.

Later she found out that they’d been on their way home from an appointment with a solicitor who specialised in adoption law.

Within an hour of the accident Kim was packed up and returned to the social care system like an unwanted package. There was no celebration, no fanfare upon her return. No acknowledgement of her three-year hiatus. A nod here and there and the latest spare bed.

Kim wiped away a tear that had escaped and travelled down her cheek. This was the problem with journeys to her past. Any happy memory led to tragedy and loss. The reason she didn’t visit all that often.

The aroma of the coffee pot called from the kitchen. She pushed herself to her feet and took her mug for a refill.

As she poured the liquid into the mug her eyes moved across the vast collection of cookery books that lined her kitchen shelves.

Suddenly the words that were twenty-one years too late escaped from between her lips.

‘Erica, I loved you too.’