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third blow landed on her mouth. Teeth burst away from her gums.
    Every inch of her had succumbed to the pain as the calm voice reached her once more.
    ‘I will no longer see your face in my dreams.’
    She had one last thought before the darkness claimed her.
    Please, just let me die.

Three
    K im knocked once before entering the domain of her boss, Detective Chief Inspector Woodward, who resided in a corner office on the third floor of Halesowen Police Station.
    The landline was at his ear. Mild annoyance shaped his features before he ended the call abruptly.
    ‘Didn’t feel like waiting for the word “enter”?’ he growled.
    ‘Er… you asked to see me, sir,’ she said. It’s not like he didn’t know she was coming.
    He checked his watch. ‘Almost an hour ago.’
    ‘Really, that long?’
    She stood behind the chair that faced him.
    He sat back and offered her an expression that her best guess said was a smile. But she wouldn’t bet her house on it.
    ‘Congratulations on a positive result yesterday with the Ashraf Nadir case. Had you not been so insistent that there were more people involved in that prostitution ring we would never have found the second property.’
    Kim accepted the compliment. Woody had managed to condense her dogged effort into one single sentence. If she recalled correctly it had taken four separate requests to investigate Ashraf Nadir after she’d spotted him talking with a male suspected of involvement in the publicised Birmingham case. She hadn’t exactly camped outside his office but she’d been close to buying a tent.
    She took a step back to leave.
    ‘Not quite yet, Stone. I have a couple of questions.’
    Oh, if only she’d been called to his office just for a pat on the back. Too late she realised the completed statements from her team on the Nadir raid were neatly piled on his desk.
    He popped the reading glasses onto his nose and lifted the first page of the top statement, which he really did not need to do. Kim knew that any questions he wanted to ask her were already in his head.
    ‘I’d like you to clarify the time difference between receipt of the warrant and entry to the Nadir property.’
    ‘Marginal, sir,’ she answered honestly.
    ‘Minutes or seconds?’ he asked.
    ‘Seconds.’
    ‘Double figures or single?’ he asked, removing his glasses and staring at her, hard.
    ‘Single.’
    He placed the glasses on the desk. ‘Stone, was the warrant in place before you entered the property?’
    She didn’t hesitate. ‘Yes, it was.’ She didn’t add the word ‘just’. She also decided it was best not to add that she’d been about to go in anyway. She tended to get in enough trouble for her impetuous acts of judgement. Adding in near misses was a whole new story.
    He eyed her suspiciously for a few seconds before tapping the statements with his fingers.
    ‘Other than that, watertight,’ he said.
    She nodded her understanding and again took a step backwards towards the door.
    ‘So much so, I think you and your team have earned yourselves a little treat.’
    She narrowed her gaze and opened her ears. Now she was suspicious.
    ‘Do you remember being briefed about that facility in Wall Heath?’ he asked.
    She nodded. ‘The one carrying out forensic research? Of course.’
    Everyone down as far as detective-inspector level had been briefed when the place had originally started work. It was called Westerley and focussed on studying the human body after death.
    Kim wondered if the mid-July heat was getting to her boss. Outwardly the twenty-three-degree heat had only prompted him to loosen his shirt cuffs but maybe he was melting on the inside.
    Completing cases was not like bowling. Solving one didn’t knock the other ones down. There were many more cases spread across the desks of her team, and Woody knew it.
    ‘Sir, any chance of a rain check?’ she asked. ‘My team has six new cases that have landed over the weekend.’
    Again, that almost-smile appeared on