Silent Scream

Two

Kim Stone stepped around the Kawasaki Ninja to adjust the volume on her iPod. The speakers danced with the silvery notes of Vivaldi’s Summer Concerto as they headed towards her favourite part; the finale called ‘Storm’.

She placed the socket wrench on the work bench and wiped her hands with a stray rag. She stared at the Triumph Thunderbird she'd been restoring for the past seven months and wondered why it had not captured her tonight.

She glanced at her watch. Almost eleven p.m. The rest of her team would be staggering out of The Dog right about now. And although she didn't touch alcohol, she accompanied her team when she felt she'd earned it.

She retrieved the socket wrench and lowered herself to the knee pad beside the Triumph.

It wasn’t a celebration for her.

The terrified face of Laura Yates swam before her eyes as she reached inside the guts of the bike and found the rear end of the crankshaft. She placed the socket head over the nut and turned the wrench in a back and forth motion.

Three guilty verdicts of rape were going to send Terence Hunt away for a very long time.

‘But not long enough,’ Kim said to herself.

Because there had been a fourth victim.

She turned the wrench again but the nut refused to tighten. She’d already assembled the bearing, sprocket, clamping washer and rotor. The nut was the final puzzle piece and the damn thing refused to tighten against the locking washer.

Kim stared at the nut and silently willed it to move for its own sake. Still nothing. She focused her anger on the arm of the socket wrench and gave it one almighty push. The thread broke and the nut turned freely.

‘Damn it,’ she shouted, throwing the wrench across the garage.

Laura Yates had trembled in the witness box as she'd recounted the ordeal of being dragged behind a church and repeatedly brutally sexually assaulted for two and a half hours. They had seen with their own eyes how hard it had been for her to sit down. Three months after the attack.

The nineteen-year-old had sat in the gallery as each guilty verdict was read out. Then it came to her case and two words were stated that would change her life forever.

Not Guilty.

And why? Because the girl had consumed a couple of drinks. Forget the eleven stitches that stretched from back to front, the broken rib and the black eye. She must have asked for it, all because she'd had a couple of bloody drinks.

Kim was aware that her hands had started to tremble with rage.

Her team felt that three out of four wasn't bad. And it wasn't. But it wasn't good enough. Not for Kim.

She leaned down to inspect the damage to the bike. It had taken almost six weeks to track down those bloody screws.

She eased the socket into position and turned the wrench again between her thumb and forefinger as her mobile phone began to ring. She dropped the nut and jumped to her feet. A call so close to midnight was never going to be good news.

‘D.I. Stone.’

‘We have a body, Marm.’

Of course. What else could it have been?

‘Where?’

‘Hagley Road, Stourbridge.’

Kim knew the area. It was just on the border with their neighbours West Mercia.

‘Should we put a call in to D.S. Bryant, Marm?’

Kim cringed. She hated the term Marm. At thirty-four, she wasn’t ready to be called Marm.

A picture of her colleague stumbling into a taxi outside The Dog came into her mind.

‘No, I think I'll take this on my own,’ she said, ending the call.

Kim paused for two seconds as she silenced the iPod. She knew she had to let go of the accusation in the eyes of Laura Yates; real or imagined, she had seen it. And she couldn’t get it out of her mind.

She would always know that the justice in which she believed had failed someone it was designed to protect. She had persuaded Laura Yates to trust in both her and the system she represented and Kim couldn't rid herself of the feeling that Laura had been let down. By both of them.