Chapter 13

‘What's the verdict from the FME?' Stacey asked Penn.

The Force Medical Examiner was a GP from a rota of local on-call practitioners who assisted the police with situations like assessing suspects claiming excessive force, taking blood samples of suspected drink-drivers and providing official medical opinions.

‘He's with her now. The duty brief kept tapping his watch at me as if I can get the answer any sooner.'

‘Okay, so while you're sitting here doing nothing, I'm gonna pick your brains. I've been looking at all these pageants that Katie entered.'

‘Yeah,' he said, tapping his fingers on the desk.

‘Well, she entered loads over the years: Little Miss Halesowen, Little Miss Stourbridge, Little Miss Gornal, Little Miss Sunshine in Walsall, Little Rascals in Wombourne, but never anything bigger.'

‘I've never heard of any of them,' Penn admitted.

‘Well, they don't really make the news. Most are only reported in the local free papers, but she was clearly very good so why not go for the bigger ones? There are county pageants and nationals, even internationals, so why didn't she enter them?'

‘Does it matter?' he asked, scrunching up his face.

Stacey hid her smile. Typical Penn. There was no puzzle to solve here. They had their victim, and they had their killer, so his attention span was like the dipped beam of a headlight.

As ever, though, the boss was on full beam and wanted to uncover everything, not least a motive.

Stacey had to agree with the boss. How could anyone not want to understand every detail of why Katie Hawne had walked into her mother's home and viciously butchered her? Katie was not known to them and didn't appear to have suffered any prior violent episodes.

‘You're not at all intrigued?' Stacey asked.

Penn shook his head.

‘It's her mother,' Stacey exclaimed. ‘I'm sure Freud has a lot to say on the subject, but from a layman's point of view, our mothers are everything. We're dependent on them from conception. They house us, they feed us for nine months and then we're completely reliant on them once we pop out. It's the most nurturing bond in existence. How does that transform into those crime-scene photos we saw earlier?'

‘It doesn't endure,' Penn said after a minute's thought. ‘We don't consciously recall the supplying and nurturing, so as we grow up, we become immersed in our own emotions. And there's always some kind of emotion involved in taking a life, whether it's anger, hatred, jealousy – or, for the really depraved, joy.

‘There are hundreds of examples. Remember the film Heavenly Creatures? That was based on Pauline Parker and Juliet Hulme, who bludgeoned Pauline's mother because they didn't want to be separated. Did you ever see Savage Grace?'

Stacey shook her head. She had yet to discuss any subject with Penn where she didn't learn something.

‘It's about Antony Baekeland, who murdered his mother in 1972 at their luxurious London apartment. It was said that she'd raped him to cure him of his homosexuality.'

‘Jeez, even Freud would have his work cut out with that one,' she said.

‘Susan Cabot, an actress in the fifties, was beaten to death by her son in 1986. Doctor Kathleen Hagen, a prominent urologist, killed her mother and father in 2000 and was acquitted on the grounds of insanity. Jennifer Pan staged a home invasion that led to the murder of her mother in 2010. Dee Dee Blanchard was murdered by her nineteen-year-old daughter, Gypsy-Rose, in 2015. Then there's?—'

‘Hang on,' Stacey interrupted. ‘Although I can't reel off countless cases of matricide cos, like, I'm not a freak, even I know that some of those cases are extreme. Didn't Dee Dee Blanchard terrorise Gypsy-Rose for years due to Munchausen syndrome by proxy?'

‘Exactly. Killing a parent, especially a mother, would require some intense emotion of some kind.' He shrugged. ‘Maybe Sheryl was the critical type and she just said the wrong thing over coffee.'

‘But the drinks weren't touched,' Stacey offered. ‘The boss said the cups were still by the kettle. It didn't look like Sheryl had much chance to say anything. Doesn't sound like a sudden fit of rage over elevenses, does it?'

‘You think it was premeditated, like Katie already had the plan in her head on the way over?' Penn asked.

‘It sure looks that way. Almost like she discovered something and came to confront her mother.'

‘Well, if she doesn't speak, we're likely never gonna know,' he said, looking at his watch. ‘And on that note I'm off back downstairs for the doctor's verdict. Let's just hope it's the one the boss wants.'

Stacey's head was still spinning with information when Penn left the room, but now another question was uppermost in her mind.

What intense emotion had propelled Katie?