Silent Scream

Fifty-Six

Kim nodded towards the squad car parked outside the gate. Although West Midlands Police wouldn’t authorise a twenty-four-hour watch of Richard Croft, squad cars had been advised to carry out periodic checks via the intercom when in the area.

Bryant pressed the speaker button and waited for the gate to open. He waited ten seconds and pressed it again.

They looked at each other. On their last visit the response had been immediate.

‘Keep pressing,’ Kim said, getting out of the car.

She walked back to the squad car. The officer wound down the window.

‘How long since you checked?’

‘About twenty minutes. Said he was going to work from home this morning and go to the office later. A car came out a few minutes later. The nanny, I think.’

Kim jogged back to Bryant. Richard Croft had been in the house alone for at least twenty minutes. ‘Anything?’

He shook his head.

‘Okay, we’re going in.’

She stood for a second and planned her route over the gate. It was cast of wrought iron forged ornately of flowers, swirls and leaves. Her eyes picked out a trail for her feet close to the wall on the left hand side. She used both hands to rock the gate. It was steady.

Kim remembered Keith telling her that years ago one of the local furnacemen got caught in his wheelbarrow while tipping a load of scrap iron into the furnace and went in with it. The local vicar was called in to say prayers over the molten liquid as it was poured into moulds. She remembered thinking that she hoped he’d been made into something nice.

Sorry, mate, she thought as she began her ascent. She cocked her right leg over spikes one foot high that adorned the top of the gate.

‘Not a chance,’ Bryant said, from below.

‘Come on, you big girl,’ Kim said.

‘I bloody will be if I try that manoeuvre.’

As Kim descended the eight feet on the other side she thought that with any luck Richard Croft was listening to music too far away from the intercom to hear it. Or that the hi-tech entry system was broken and he was on his way down the drive to let them in. She preferred mildly annoyed to dead.

She ran up the drive, her legs noticing an incline that had not been evident in the car. As she approached the property she saw no signs of activity.

Simultaneously she banged on the door and rang the bell. She stepped back to see where the CCTV cameras were pointed. One was aimed at the front gate and the other at the damn cars. Nothing covered the rear of the house.

‘Keep knocking,’ she instructed Bryant who had caught up with her and appeared to be intact.

She ran around the side of the house and stumbled over a shovel that had been leaning against the wall.

She felt the crunch underfoot before she saw the broken glass panel.

She screamed Bryant’s name at the top of her voice. He appeared from the other side.

The entrance door to the orangery that ran the length of the house had been smashed.

She almost stepped into the house but paused before she put her foot down.

‘Follow me,’ she said, running back to the front of the property. En route she grabbed the shovel over which she’d stumbled.

She handed it to Bryant. ‘Break that window. I don’t want that back door contaminated before SOCO gets here.’

Bryant stood as far back as he could and swung the shovel. The panel crashed through on impact.

Kim picked up a brick to smash the jagged edge pieces to make the opening safe to enter.

She stood on the terracotta planter and leaned on Bryant’s shoulder for support. Her foot found a solid object beneath the window. She put her weight on it and it held. Only when she was inside did she see that it was an antique writing bureau and that she’d entered through the study.

Once on solid ground, she held out her hand to steady Bryant as he followed her through. The heavy oak door led them into the foyer. She turned left as Bryant headed up the stairs. The next room she entered was the lounge which she recognised from their last visit. She surveyed it quickly.

‘Lounge, clear,’ she called as she once again entered the foyer. She heard Bryant’s call that the master bedroom was clear.

She entered the door to the library and stopped dead.

Lying prostate in the middle of the rug was the figure of Richard Croft, an eight inch kitchen knife stuck in his back.

Kim called Bryant and then knelt down, careful not to touch anything. The pool of blood had soaked into the carpet either side of him.

Bryant appeared beside her. ‘Bloody hell.’

Kim put two fingers to his neck. ‘He’s still alive.’

Bryant took out his mobile phone and called for an ambulance.

Kim went searching for the intercom receiver and found it mounted to the wall beside an oversize Smeg freezer.

She pressed the release button and watched the monitor as the wrought iron gate began to move across.

She noted that the house alarm was not set. Kim marvelled at how people used intruder alarms for the protection of possessions when absent from the home. But not the preservation of life when old colleagues were dying at an unnatural rate.

She shook her head, ran to the front door and threw it open.

The paramedics now had access straight into the building.

She jogged around the side of the house and stopped six feet away from the point of entry. She turned and surveyed the rear garden. On first inspection she could see no obvious points of vulnerability. The back of the property was enclosed not by a wall, but a six-foot-high fence. Decorative trellis increased that height another foot and a half. All of the panels appeared intact.

‘Okay, you bastard, if you didn’t come over it you must have come through.’

Starting at the top panel, Kim walked the left hand side, pushing on each fence panel in turn. The posts were wooden but sturdy and all the panels down the left were uncluttered with shrubs. A low level herb garden ran alongside it. An intruder attempting entry through any of the side panels would have been immediately exposed to anyone at the rear of the house.

Kim studied the row of fencing that bordered the bottom of the property. Every ten feet was a conifer tree that rose fifteen feet into the air. Most of the trees stood centre panel; except the fourth tree along.

Its three feet width hid a fence panel and post. She strode 100 feet to the bottom of the garden and used her index finger to push the panel lightly. It moved under her touch and Kim saw that the fence panel was no longer attached to the post.

Kim heard footsteps running around the side of the house.

‘Marm?’ an officer called out.

She stepped out from behind the tree, demonstrating the cleverness of the entry point and possible hiding place.

‘What can I do, Marm?’

‘Guard that back door. Don’t let anyone near it.’

He nodded and stood before the door, facing outwards.

Kim went back behind the conifer and pushed the fence again. It moved easily and offered a gap that was easy enough to slip through.

‘Damn it,’ she said. This bastard was clever. She stepped away and moved back into the garden to ensure she did nothing further to impede any evidence collection.

She climbed up on the swing set as she heard sirens speed up the drive and stop at the front door.

She looked over the fence to see that the ground on the other side formed a steep bank that led down into the back end of a trading estate. Beyond that was a housing estate that was a warren of streets, gulleys and dead ends.

A bit like this bloody case, Kim thought as she got back down to the ground.

Kim slowly walked the line from the broken fence panel to the rear door looking to the left and the right.

She came to a stop four feet away from the police officer.

‘How are you doing, today, Marm?’

Kim opened her mouth to ask him how the hell he thought she was doing when she recognised him as the constable Bryant had spoken to the other day. And he was doing exactly what he'd been told to do, which was engage her in conversation.

Kim rolled her eyes, shook her head and headed to the front of the building. Bryant stood out front watching as the rear doors of the ambulance closed.

‘Well?’

‘Still breathing, Guv. The knife’s still in him. Paramedics don’t want to remove it until they get a look at what its holding together. Perversely, it might be the intended murder weapon that’s currently keeping him alive.’

‘Oh, the irony,’ she said, sitting on the stone steps.

‘And here comes the help,’ Bryant said as a Vauxhall Corsa came to a screeching halt on the gravel. The woman they knew to be Marta got out of the car. Her face was devoid of colour.

‘What ... what ...’

Kim remained sitting but Bryant moved towards the young girl.

‘Mr Croft has been seriously injured. You need to contact his wife and advise her to get to the hospital as quickly as possible.’

She nodded and stumbled inside.

Two more squad cars squealed into the drive, followed by the SOCO van.

‘I dunno,’ Bryant said, as Kim got to her feet, ‘coppers are like buses. One minute there’s none and then ...’

‘Sergeant Dodds,’ said a burly officer with his hands inside his stab vest. Bryant took him to the side to explain the scene while Kim grabbed the first SOCO officer that got out of the van.

‘Follow me,’ she said, without introduction. She travelled around the side of the house and took the tall blond male to the bottom of the garden. She pointed behind the tree.

‘Broken fence panel is the perimeter breach.’ She pointed to the back door. ‘That’s the point of entry.’

‘Got it, Marm.’

She walked back to the front of the house to be greeted by Marta holding out a mobile phone.

‘Mrs Croft would like to speak to you.’

Kim took the phone. ‘Yes.’

‘Detective Inspector, I understand from Marta that there is considerable damage to my home.’

‘Not as much as there is to your husband.’

‘I’d like a further explanation as to what you are doing at my property. I specifically requested you were to be removed ...’

‘Russells Hall, if you’re interested,’ Kim said and switched off the phone.

She handed it back to Marta as Bryant exited the property.

‘Ready?’ he asked.

She nodded and they headed back to the car at the end of the drive.

‘You building bridges with Mrs Croft, eh, Guv?’

‘Oh, we’re just growing closer and closer all the time,’ Kim said dourly.

‘Where to now, Guv?’

‘Hollytree Estate,’ Kim said quietly. It was a task that could no longer be avoided. ‘We’re about to ruin one family’s day.’