She followed Bryant out to the car already googling Exodus Plus on her phone.
TWENTY-SIX
Although Penn had no problem attending post-mortems, he’d never been present at two in one day before.
When Keats had insisted on taking his lunch break between the two cases, Penn had taken the opportunity to get a breath of air in the cafeteria, turning down Keats’s offer to join him in the office.
Because of what he was witnessing, he had little appetite for the beef pie or pork dinner so he’d settled on a cheese-and-pickle sandwich with crisps. There was little there to remind him of the sights on the metal table. He’d considered nipping back to the station but it wouldn’t have been worth his time. Keats had made it clear he intended to resume at 2p.m. on the dot.
For once he’d languished in peace and eaten his sandwich properly, with a warm coffee to wash it down instead of a bite here and a bite there in between urgent tasks. Who was he kidding? He wouldn’t change his job for the world. In fact, after twenty minutes of peace and quiet, he’d texted Jasper.
Wanna do choc chip cookies tonight?he’d asked.
Got no choc chips,Jasper had replied.
Blueberry muffins?
No blueberries.
Shall I get some on my way home?
‘Ifulike,’ had been the response, and Penn had wondered when his brother had started abbreviating words and missing out spaces. Teenagers.
After lunch, he’d returned and watched silently as Keats had begun working through the process on Sarah Laing. In the very early days, Keats had explained the eight steps of post-mortem to him. He knew that the external examination was followed by the internal examination, which came before viewing the internal organs. Removal of the organs came next and was just before removal of the brain. The organs were then examined, weighed and measured before returning them to the body. The final act was to sew the victim back together.
Following Keats’s guidelines, he guessed they were around number three. Keats was inspecting the internal organs but hadn’t yet removed them. So far there had been no tell-tale grunts or beckoning actions for him to come closer.
When Keats had first wheeled the body into the room, Penn had texted Stacey for any update on Sarah Laing. She had texted him back with a link to one of her profiles on a dating site. He’d been unable to think of her as Sarah Sizzle, who appeared to be chasing after a good time. The pictures of the girl with a challenging expression and a wine glass were nothing to do with the girl lying on the table who was being disassembled by Keats.
Penn was starting to think of all the things he could be doing back at the station when Keats spoke for the first time in over an hour.
‘Aah, we have pockmarks.’
‘We have what now?’ Penn asked, putting away his phone.
‘Shotgun-pellet-sized marks along the inside of the pelvic bone caused by the tearing of ligaments.’
‘Meaning?’ Penn prompted.
‘Our girl here has given birth, and it wasn’t very long ago.’
TWENTY-SEVEN
‘So where’s the baby?’ Kim asked as they headed towards Kingswinford. She had left Stacey with the task of getting them an appointment with someone at the nearest branch of Exodus on the outskirts of Wolverhampton. In the meantime, they were heading towards the childhood home of Sarah Laing, a twenty-two-year-old woman that Kim didn’t yet know. There had been little evidence of her personality in the small flat and no evidence whatsoever of a baby. Stacey had confirmed no mentions on any of the profiles.
‘Maybe adopted?’ Bryant said. ‘Didn’t fit with the lifestyle she wanted.’
‘Seems she only chose that lifestyle a few months ago, when she started all these profiles on the dating sites. There’s no mention of looking for men or of being bisexual so…’
‘So how come she was pregnant in the first place?’ Bryant asked.
‘Exactly,’ Kim said as the enigma of Sarah Laing continued to grow.
The house that Bryant pulled up at was a clean-looking semi-detached with a garage built on to the side.
One of Kim’s burning questions was answered when the door of Sarah’s parents’ home was opened. The sound of a baby crying reached her immediately.
A man who appeared to be mid-forties was looking at her with a frazzled expression.