Silent Scream

Fifty-One

Bryant sighed heavily as he popped a mint. It was an immediate reaction to leaving a No Smoking environment.

‘Can you think of anything worse than being buried alive?’ he asked as they reached the car.

‘Yeah, being buried alive with you,’ she said, trying to lighten her own mood.

‘Thanks for that, Guv, but I mean, can you even imagine it?’

She shook her head. It was a manner of death too horrific to comprehend. She guessed most people would wish to go quietly in their sleep. She had always favoured the idea of a gunshot.

Victim number two would have needed to be unconscious or incapacitated in some way when laid in the hole. She would have regained consciousness surrounded by the dense blackness of the ground. She would have been unable to see or hear or move a muscle. She may have tried to scream, a natural reaction to abject terror. Her mouth would have filled with dirt and every breath she struggled to take would have clogged her nose and throat more. The breath would have slowly left her body as her gulping mouth took in nothing but soil.

Kim closed her eyes and tried to imagine the fear; the sheer panic that must have paralysed the half-dressed fifteen-year-old girl. It was a blackness that Kim could not comprehend.

‘How does such evil grow in a man; I mean, where does it start?’

Kim shrugged. ‘Edmund Burke called it right when he said, all that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.’

‘What you saying, Guv?’

‘I’m saying these victims could not have been his first. Rarely is cold-blooded murder the first sign of an evil mind. There had to have been earlier signs that were either excused or ignored.’

Bryant nodded and then turned to her. ‘How long do you think it took for her to die?’

‘Not long,’ Kim said, but her mind added that it would have felt like a lifetime.

‘Thank God.’

‘You know, Bryant. I can't do this anymore,’ she said shaking her head.

‘What's that, Guv?’

‘I can't keep referring to these victims by number; victim one, victim two. They had enough of that when they were alive. We have three bodies and three names and I need to match them up.’

Kim stared out of the window, a sudden memory shouted up. Her fifteenth birthday had fallen between foster family five and six.

Two days before that, a member of staff had approached her.

‘It's Kim's birthday tomorrow and we're having a collection for a present. Do you want to give?’ he'd asked her.

She had stared at him for a good long minute to see if he would realise that he'd just asked her to contribute to her own collection. His face had remained blank.

‘Where to, Guv?’ Bryant asked, approaching the exit of the hospital.

With the information they now had from Daniel Bate, Kim knew there was only one person who could help, regardless of the threat she’d received earlier that day.

‘Brindleyplace, I think, Bryant. Time to go and see the twins.’

She focused on the road ahead. ‘I have to know their names.’