They both keyed into their mailboxes. Kim listened to Dawson’s excitable voice and then deleted the message.

‘Dawson wants me back at the site straight away.’

Bryant chuckled. ‘Woody wants me to get you back to the station within the same timeframe and last I heard, talented as you are, you’ve yet to master being in two places at the same time.’ He turned to her. ‘So, Guv, column A or column B?’

Kim looked at him and raised one eyebrow.

‘Yeah, I thought that’s what you were gonna say.’

Forty-Three

Bryant pulled the car onto the dirt patch. It had taken forty minutes to travel eight miles from the centre of Birmingham.

Kim opened the door. ‘Check in with Dawson, make sure he’s okay.’

‘Will do, Guv.’

She trotted to the third tent. The site was beginning to look more like a festival concessions area than a crime scene. She paused at the entrance. She turned and looked down the hill at the middle house and the prisoner within, and gave a little wave. Just in case.

Cerys turned as she entered.

Kim looked down into the pit. ‘Where’s she gone?’ she asked, sexing the body without thinking. There was no sure way of knowing this second body was that of a female except for her gut and that was normally good enough for her.

‘Dan has the body in the other tent. It was removed about half an hour ago. We’ve had chance to sieve a third of the pit and I thought you might like to know we found more ...’

‘Beads,’ Kim finished for her.

‘How did you know?’

Kim shrugged. ‘Anything else?’

Cerys sighed heavily and nodded slowly. ‘We’ve carried out a full sweep of the site and found ...’

‘One more mass,’ Kim interrupted again.

Cerys placed her right hand on her hip. ‘Shall I just go home now?’

Kim smiled. ‘Sorry, I’m just tired. One of those days. Will this second area be completed tomorrow?’

‘First thing in the morning I’ll get started on the excavation of area three. We haven’t marked it yet. We don’t want to give the vultures a head start,’ Cerys said, meaning the press. ‘We don’t yet know for certain that the third anomaly is another body.’

Kim felt the certainty in the pit of her stomach.

‘The press are watching our every move so I had the guys complete the sweep and then pack the machine away and keep clear of the area of interest so they don’t get suspicious.’

‘How will you know exactly where to dig if you haven’t marked it?’ Kim asked.

‘I’ve paced it from the edge of the tent. Trust me, I’ll know.’

Kim did trust her.

‘The good news is that site one can be closed down and filled in tomorrow. I just need to sign it off and the first tent can be removed.’

‘Anything else of interest?’

‘A few bits of cloth; all labelled, bagged and sent back to the lab. May help with identification.’

After their meeting with Nicola, Kim guessed it was only going to be the choice of three.

‘Anything else?’

Cerys shook her head and turned away.

Kim appreciated the woman’s tenacity. She accepted that her own drive grew from something more than the need to solve this case. Try as she might to convince herself that it was no different; it was. She knew the pain of these girls’ past. Not one of them had woken up one day and chosen the future mapped out for them. Their behaviour could not be traced back to an absolute year, month, day and time. It was a progressive journey of peaks and troughs until circumstances eventually stifled hope.

It was never the big things. Kim remembered only ever being called 'child'. All of them had been called 'child' so the staff didn't have to remember their names.

Kim understood that her own motivation came out of a need to seek justice for these forgotten kids; that her pace would not slow until she had.

And she appreciated anyone that tried to keep up with her.

‘Hey,’ Kim said, as she reached the exit. ‘Thanks.’

Cerys smiled.

Kim headed to the utility tent. Daniel had his back to her but she could see that he and two others were busy labelling plastic bags.

‘Hey, Doc, what you got?’

‘What – no insults, no abuse?’

‘Look, I’m tired but I’m sure I could muster ...’

‘No, it’s fine. Today I could live without it.’

Kim noted that the doctor was more sullen than usual. His shoulders were slightly hunched as he sealed the plastic bag containing the skull. White strips of tape bearing black marker pen listed the site and the bone within.

His assistant reached for the lid to the storage box but Daniel shook his head. ‘Not yet.’

Kim was confused. She’d seen bodies packed before with the heaviest bones at the bottom of the box and ascending so that the lighter, more fragile bones lay at the top.

Normally the skull was the last item to be packed.

She stood beside him as he reached for a container the size of a sandwich box, already lined with tissue paper. A collection of small bones was piled to the far right of the table. His hand trembled slightly.

‘Adult or non-adult?’ Kim asked.

‘Definitely non-adult. I can’t give you any idea of how she died at the moment. On first inspection there are no obvious areas of trauma to her body.’

His voice was quiet and controlled.

Kim was momentarily confused. ‘Hang on, Doc. Because our first victim was juvenile I couldn’t threaten you into sexing it but all of a sudden you’re referring to this one as a female before you’ve even taken the bones back to the lab?’

He removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes. ‘That’s right. I have no hesitation in sexing victim number two, Detective.’ He looked back at the sandwich box.

‘Because this young lady was pregnant.’

Forty-Four

‘What a bloody day,’ Bryant said, parking the car at the rear of the station. They were the first words spoken since leaving the site. ‘Dawson was pretty quiet up there.’

‘Are you surprised?’

Dawson had been unable to take his eyes from the small container until the bones were loaded into the larger box, beside the bones of the mother.

‘Get off home, Bryant. I’ll go see Woody and then I’ll be heading home myself.’

It was just after seven and they were entering the thirteenth hour of the sixth working day. Bryant would keep at it right beside her. But he had a family. She did not.

Her last burst of energy was used as she mounted the steps to the third floor. She knocked and waited.

As Woody called for her to enter she marvelled at the level of controlled rage that could be contained in two syllables.

The stress ball was already in his hand when she took a seat.

‘You wanted to see me, Sir?’

‘Three hours ago, when I called, would have been more appropriate,’ he growled.

Kim looked to his right hand and swore she could hear the stress ball crying out for mercy.

‘There were developments at the site that required ...’

‘Stone, you were involved in a traumatic incident.’

‘Bryant’s driving isn’t that bad,’ she quipped weakly. It had been a long day.

‘Shut up. You’re fully aware of the procedure and the need for your return to the station for a debrief and a welfare check.’

‘I was fine, ask Bryant ...’

‘You’ll excuse me if I choose not to waste my time with that.’ He sat back and switched the stress ball to the left hand. Damn, she wasn’t out of the woods yet.