Leanne evaded her grabbing hand. ‘Yes way and this is not negotiable. I can’t trust you so it’s going in or you’re going to Norfolk.’
Kim stepped back and shook her head. ‘Jesus, just when I thought you couldn’t go any lower.’
‘There are no limits to how low I’ll go to get the job done,’ she said, snapping the back of the phone in place. ‘Here you go. All done.’
Kim snatched the phone back. First chance she got that thing was coming out.
Leanne held up her phone. ‘See, you’re the green dot and I can see exactly where you are.’
For now, Kim thought.
‘And it has a tamper sensor. If you mess with it or it becomes dislodged, the light turns red.’
It was a shame that the first genuine smile she saw on Leanne’s face was drenched in smugness.
Kim had stormed from the room to go and shower, taking her rage with her.
The fact that other people appeared to be taking the threat of Symes way more seriously than she was unnerved her.
She shook away all thoughts of Symes as Bryant pulled into the station car park.
Leanne shadowed her into the building, and Kim had the urge to throw a dance move here and there to see if Leanne would copy that too.
She headed into her office and fired up her emails. Bryant made coffee while Leanne plonked herself at the empty desk in the squad room.
By the time Kim had sent a few things to the printer, the coffee was brewing and both Penn and Stacey were at their desks.
‘Okay, team, let’s get right to it,’ she said, passing four photos to Penn. ‘And this will be a closed-door investigation.’
Penn took a quick look at the photos and closed the door.
Kim continued. ‘This is Helen and William Daynes, a couple in their early sixties. Helen shot her husband, daughter and son in the early hours of yesterday morning. Keats has sent through all crime-scene photos, which I’ve circulated, but we’ll just have these four on the board.’ Images depicting minors with gunshot wounds did not need to be visible from outside the door.
‘We have Rosalind Daynes aged seventeen and Lewis two years younger.’
Penn taped the photos to the wipe board and wrote the details beneath each picture.
‘Right now, we know nothing about this family. There are no sensational headlines or apparent scandals. They appeared to live a quiet and privileged lifestyle off the back of their furniture company. There are two older children, Rachel and Zachary, who are twins. Bryant and I will be talking to them both in more detail this morning.’
She turned to Stacey. ‘We’ve got Zach’s address but if you can get one for Rachel that’d be great.’
‘Of course, boss.’
‘And do some digging. Just because there’s nothing in the press doesn’t mean there was nothing at all. You know better than me where to look so just do what you do.
‘Penn, the post-mortems start at 9a.m. so I’ll leave that with you. Anything, however insignificant, that strikes you as strange let me know.’
‘Splendid,’ he answered.
Kim tried not to pay too much attention to the fact that Penn relished a good post-mortem.
‘So, guys, thoughts?’ she asked, pouring a coffee from the machine.
‘Murder-suicide isn’t that unusual,’ Stacey said. ‘But not all that common for the woman to be doing the shooting.’
Penn agreed. ‘A study in 1990 concluded that murder-suicide was most common between married couples or intimate partners with an overwhelmingly male bias.’
‘Motives?’ Kim asked.