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He snorted. ‘And where’s the fun in that?’
She took her credit card from her phone case. If luck was on her side, the latch would be facing her way.
She slid the edge of the card between the door and the strike plate. Once the corner was in there, she straightened the card so that it was perpendicular to the door and the entire edge of the card was between the door and the strike plate. She bent the card towards the doorknob and wiggled it back and forth until she heard the tell-tale click.
The door sprang open, and straight away Kim detected a stale, musty odour.
It was nothing as insidious as a dead body, but it was unpleasant just the same. She guessed if you lived in it, you didn’t notice it so much.
She stepped inside the kitchen, which on the face of it wasn’t a shit tip.
Bryant followed her in and said nothing as he closed the door behind him.
She moved through the house. It wasn’t a huge space. The stale smell followed her.
She poked her head into each room as she passed, not quite sure what she was looking for but feeling sure she’d know if she found it.
She reached the foot of the stairs by the front door. There were bits of food and fluff gathered in every corner throughout. As she looked closer, she saw everything was coated in a millimetre of dust. That was most likely the cause of the smell. Although the house was being kept tidy, it wasn’t actually being cleaned. She recalled Stacey saying something about the loss of his mother when she’d interviewed him and wondered if that was the reason why. It was hard to devote time to keeping a place show-home ready when you were on your own.
The first upstairs door she opened was the bathroom. Nothing offensive jumped out at her. It was dated but reasonably clean.
Next was the box room, which was filled with piles of women’s clothes, which she guessed had belonged to his late mother.
The next room was the biggest room and looked out onto the road. It was furnished with a king-size bed, one bedside cabinet and a built-in double wardrobe.
The smell of neglect continued to follow her, even as she opened the wardrobe doors and confirmed that this was where Terence Birch had slept. He’d paid no more attention to this space than anywhere else.
Just one more room to check before taking a closer look in one or two drawers.
She pushed open the door of the final bedroom and stopped dead.
Bryant looked into the room over the top of her head. ‘Jeeesus,’ he said, before letting out a low whistle.
The sickness in her stomach was immediate and almost overwhelming.
She swallowed it down as she approached the largest wall in the room.
Stacey’s image met her from a hundred spots. Photos of her entering her flat, coming out, getting off the bus, sitting in a café doing something on her phone, walking round a supermarket. The photos varied in size and shape. The thinner ones were likely where he’d had to cut Devon out of the picture. Some were small and some had been blown up to A4 size.
Pinned within and around were receipts, phone bills, leaflets, wrappers; some that had been scrunched and then flattened out.
The nausea wasn’t helped by the realisation that he’d been going through Stacey’s rubbish.
‘He’s been this fucking close to her,’ Kim snarled, approaching the wall.
Before she could stop herself, she started tearing at the photos, pulling them off the wall, ripping Stacey’s face from what had been his viewing gallery.
‘Hey, hey, hey,’ Bryant said, grabbing her arm. ‘That’s more than looking, guv, that’s tampering, which is a whole worse pile of shit to land yourself in.’
‘Aaargh,’ she growled, stepping back. ‘Fuck’s sake.’
If Birch had been in front of her, she’d be digging her fingernails into his face. How dare he do this to one of her team!
Seeing this wall of obsession, she was glad he was dead, and she made no apology for that thought.
She stared at the ripped photographs on the floor. More than anything she wanted to gather every piece of paper that linked this man to Stacey so that her name came nowhere near the investigation into his death. She wanted to erase the girl’s name from the psycho’s life to protect her. But that meant doing something she’d never done before.
‘Bryant…’
