by GS Rhodes
At least this way we can get a little privacy, he thought. Hansen was infamous. If people saw him being spoken to, there would have been questions.
There were prison guards stationed at the various doors in and out of the room, their eyes trained on Kidd, on Hansen. But there he was, as clear as day.
He’d aged considerably since he’d been inside, that much was clear even from a distance. And the years had not been kind. His hair had gotten long, wiry, and grey, hanging lank around his head. He’d let his beard grow, which made him look even older than he was, white with occasional strands of black running through it. But it was his face that had clearly taken the brunt of his time on the inside. His eyes were sunken, making the darkness in them all the more haunting, the wrinkles on his face were pronounced, his lips even seemed to have wrinkled. He’d probably taken up smoking again since he’d been here.
“Well, well, well,” Albert growled, his voice was gravelly but it still had that singsong quality just like it had all those years ago. It was a voice that Kidd would never forget. Even now, it sent a chill through his body. “When they told me I had a visitor, I didn’t think for a single second it would be you that was coming to visit little old me, DC Benjamin Kidd.”
“DI Benjamin Kidd,” Kidd corrected. “Things have changed since I last saw you.”
Hansen looked about himself. “Perhaps they have for you,” he replied. “The only thing that’s changed here are the inmates. They come and go, I remain.”
Good, Kidd thought. That was what he’d wanted after all.
He reached down to pull the chair out only to find it nailed to the floor. Guess they couldn’t be too careful. He took a seat across from Hansen, putting his jacket on the blue plastic chair beside him. The seats weren’t comfortable, instead they were designed to make you want to spend as little time here as humanly possible, in case the grimness of the room itself didn’t already do that to you. Kidd would do his best to keep things brief.
“I wanted to talk to you about the killings,” Kidd said flatly, trying to keep his voice as devoid of emotion as possible. He didn’t want to give Hansen anything. “The murders.”
Hansen looked confused. “Murders from fifteen years ago? Why on earth would you want to do that?”
“Curiosity.”
“Killed the cat,” Hansen said, a grin snaking across his face. “Maybe it will kill you too.”
“You wish.”
Hansen laughed. “What is it you want to know?” he asked. “There were so many files, so many transcripts from interview after interview after interview, from the trial, what on earth do you think you could have missed?” Hansen leant forward, regarding Kidd with a careful eye. This was what Kidd had been afraid of. He was already starting to toy with him. “You’re not trying to pin something else on me are you?” He grinned, his teeth annoyingly white, annoyingly perfect. The grin that haunted a hundred front pages. “Because I’ve been in here for the past fifteen years, and believe me, The Grinning Murders took up more than enough of my time.”
He was almost gleeful at the mention of them. He had a name, he had fame. Infamy, Kidd supposed. People had written about him, there had been biographies, there was talk of a TV series about his life, about what he did. It made Kidd sick.
“No, nothing like that,” Kidd said, remaining calm, remaining sat back in his chair, not rising to the bait. “I want to know if you’ve had any visitors. You said you were surprised to see me, were you expecting somebody else? A colleague? An accomplice?”
Hansen laughed. It rang through the empty visitation area and dug itself deep into Kidd’s soul. It made him feel cold.
“Oh dear, dear, dear,” Hansen said when he composed himself. “You are in a pickle aren’t you, DI Kidd?” Hansen grinned. Had he stopped grinning since Kidd had arrived? Was this just another piece of attention that he was enjoying? “This is just a checkup, isn’t it?”
“Excuse me?”
“Making sure I’m still here, aren’t you? Making sure I’m not out there haunting the streets, taking women, slicing their necks open—”
“That’s enough,” Kidd barked. The prison officers flinched.
Hansen leant back in his chair. “I’m still here, DI Kidd,” he said, a hint of glee in his voice. “But I hear things.”
Kidd’s ears pricked up. “What things?” Was he taunting him? He wouldn’t put it past Hansen.
“Oh, all sorts of things,” Hansen said, waggling his eyebrows. “I’m assuming that there’s someone else out there who fancies themselves the new me, would that be right?”
Kidd stared at him, ashen.
“A copycat, an admirer,” Hansen said, picking at his fingernails. “How quaint.”
Kidd scrabbled to find the words. He’d read him like a book, just like he always had when they’d been interviewing him all those years ago. He was smart, smarter than people gave him credit for. He always seemed to be able to turn things around, turn the tables. It was maddening.
“Not at all.”
“Your silence speaks volumes, DI Kidd,” Hansen said with a smile. “I must say I’m flattered that you think I had the time to train an heir or however you want to put it. But those murders took up rather a lot of my time, as I already said. I worked alone, as you well know. To suggest anything less is a discredit to me.”
Kidd scoffed. Hansen remained stone-faced.
“I cannot help you.”
“Cannot, or will not?” Kidd snapped, trying to regain his footing.
Hansen shrugged. “Both.”
“You’re an arsehole, Albert Hansen,” Kidd growled. “Always have been, always will be.”
“And you are clueless,” Hansen replied. “You think I’m some criminal mastermind from a film, you think you’re some kind of vigilante detective. You’re not Batman and I’m not your Joker, DI Kidd. What you have on your hands is a copycat and, I assume, nowhere else to turn but me. Am I right?”
Kidd opened his mouth to speak but quickly closed it again. He wasn’t wrong. Why had he come here? He wanted to make sure that Hansen was still in the same place he’d left him, still under lock and key, but what else? Did he expect to find he’d been let go? Maybe. That would have made his path ahead clearcut, easy.
“How wonderful that someone wants to emulate me,” Hansen said leaning back in his chair, the grin still on his face, the grin that still managed to haunt DI Kidd’s worst nightmares even all these years on. “Do you not think so, DI Kidd?”
“No,” Kidd replied flatly. “I think it’s disgusting. And if I find out you had anything to do with it—”
“You’ll what?” Hansen said, the smile slipping from his face, quickly being replaced with a snarl. “You can’t lock me up any tighter, Kidd. I’ll be in here for the rest of my life. I’ll likely die in here. Your threats mean nothing to a man who has already had his freedom stripped away.”
“Like the freedom you stripped away from those women,” Kidd snapped. “A life for a life.”
Hansen chuckled. “Very clever, DI Kidd.”
They stared at each other for a moment, Hansen’s dark eyes drilling into him just like they always used to. Kidd couldn’t take it any longer. He stood up and started away from the table without another word.
As he walked away from Hansen he fought the urge to turn around, to look back at him. But, as ever, his curiosity got the better of him. He turned around and saw Hansen staring at him, unblinking, watching Ben leave him behind.
CHAPTER TWELVE
DI Kidd was taken back through the long corridors and back to the front desk where the receptionist watched him closely as he signed out.
Hansen was surprised to see me, Kidd thought, wondering, or rather hoping, that there might be something in that. Even if there wasn’t, surely it had been worth a try.
He handed the woman back her book, which she gladly took, wiped with an antibacterial wipe, and returned to her desk drawer. She turned back to her computer screen and continued
with whatever it was she’d been doing when Kidd had returned. He could see from the reflection in her glasses that she was incredibly engrossed in a game of solitaire. Kidd resisted the urge to roll his eyes at her.
“Can I ask you something?” Kidd asked.
“I think you just did,” she replied, clicking her mouse a few more times before training her gaze on him once again. “What can I do for you?”
“I assume you keep all of these sign-in sheets?” he asked.
She seemed a little taken aback, offended almost. “Of course.”
Kidd took a breath. “I wasn’t trying to insult you,” he said. “I only meant that I would like to know who has been visiting Albert Hansen.”
She sat up a little straighter. “Hardly anyone at all,” she said. “I was a little surprised when you came in asking after him. He doesn’t get many visitors. You don’t make many friends in that line of work,” she added with a little laugh, though quickly stopped when Kidd didn’t join in.
“I’d love to know who’s coming to see him,” Kidd said. “It might be nothing but…” he trailed off. But what?
“It might take a while,” she said. “There are an awful lot of names in here. Do you have an email I can send them to?” She handed him a piece of paper which he gladly filled out with DC Ravel’s email address.
“Anything you can give me now?” Kidd asked as he handed her back the piece of paper. “If you could flick back through the pages in that little book you’ve got there and let me know, that would really help me out.”
“Well, we get a lot of visitors here, as I’m sure you can imagine,” she started, taking the book out of her desk drawer and opening it to the first page. “And Hansen’s name doesn’t come up in here all that often. The only one I can remember off the top of my head is someone who had the same name as him,” she said, shaking her head as she flicked through the pages.
Kidd’s blood ran cold.
“Had to be a son or a relative of some kind. Didn’t look a thing like him which…” She looked up at Kidd and lowered her voice. “Well, you’ve seen him, it’s a blessing really.”
“Colin Hansen?” Kidd asked, the name coming back to him in a rush.
That had been the most heartbreaking part of it all, ripping a kid away from a single parent. He always wondered just how much Colin knew about what his dad had done. He was thirteen when it was happening, there was no way he could have been totally clueless, was there? Though, when you’re a teenager, if the world doesn’t revolve around you, why would you pay attention?
He remembered the day they’d first gone to arrest Albert Hansen and bring him in for questioning. He’d come so willingly it had made it harder to believe he’d done it. Kidd always wondered if he was just impressed that the police had finally figured it out. It had taken them long enough. After that, he’d been let go, and they’d only just managed to stop him before he killed his fourth victim.
Colin had been there when they’d brought Hansen in for questioning the first time, wondering why people were coming to take his dad away. He’d been so confused, a little bit scared, sure, and a couple of officers had stayed behind to look after him. He hadn’t needed looking after, he was thirteen years old, but he’d been so distraught.
“That’s the one!” the woman said, pointing to the book. “Lucky guess?” she suggested.
Kidd smiled. “Something like that. Would you mind gathering the rest of the visitors and sending it to the office as soon as you have it?”
“No problem,” she replied, though it clearly was a problem. It was like getting blood from a stone.
“And CCTV if you’ve got it?” he added. Every little bit helps.
“I’ll get to work on it as soon as I can,” she said, putting the book to one side and starting to tap away on her computer. She didn’t close the solitaire window, apparently, her game was more important than the lives of the people of his borough.
“Thank you so much,” he said, heading for the exit.
He pulled his jacket tightly around himself as he crossed the car park, the wind biting at him with every step. Zoe caught sight of him through the window, her brow furrowing as she saw the look on his face.
He got in the car and she was still staring at him, her eyes burning into the side of his head.
“Well, you did say it wasn’t going to take long,” she said, looking at the clock on the dash. “But that was fast.”
“Hansen was useless,” Kidd said, pulling on his seatbelt. “He was still there, but he didn’t give us anything new to work with.”
“But now that you’ve seen him, you can put it out of your head, right? We can carry on with this investigation?”
“Something like that,” Kidd said, turning to face her.
“What? What have you found out?” she asked. “You said he was useless.”
“He was, but the desk clerk wasn’t,” he said. “He’s had visitors.”
“What?”
“Well, one visitor that we know of,” he corrected. “She’s checking to see who else has been in.”
“Who?”
“Colin Hansen.”
Zoe’s face dropped. “You’re kidding.”
“I wish I was.”
“Jesus Christ.”
It looked like Zoe was coming to the same conclusion. Maybe it was too simple, too easy for it just to be his son that was committing these acts, the same acts as his father, but it wasn’t so far beyond the realms of possibility that it felt like a long shot. Maybe they should have started there to begin with.
All Kidd knew, as they pulled out of the car park and away from Belmarsh, was that they had a lead, something they could really hang onto. The clock was ticking, and maybe, unlike last time, the cards had fallen in their favour.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
It took them the best part of an hour and a half to make it back to the office, an accident on the M25 and a bunch of rubberneckers slowing their progress considerably. So when they made it back, all eyes were on them.
“Anything?” Owen asked, looking up from his computer. Everybody looked like they were hard at work, DC Powell was finishing off the board, DC Ravel had her head practically buried in her computer, no doubt playing havoc with her shoulders, terrible posture.
“A couple of things, yeah,” Kidd said, closing the door behind him. “Weaver around?”
“Had some other stuff to deal with, sir. He thinks the press is starting to get a little antsy,” Simon said from the big board, tacking up the last few scraps of evidence from the old case, including Hansen’s old mug shot. That was how Kidd remembered him, that little tug of a smile at the corners of his mouth. He couldn’t suppress the shiver. “How’s the board looking?”
Kidd smiled. “Good, lad, you’ll do Owen out of a job.”
Owen looked up quickly, opening his mouth to say something but thinking better of it. “What did you get?”
“Spoke to the two students that found the body,” Kidd started. “Turns out they actually found the body earlier than they said. The lad, TJ, he found it that morning and then went to get his friend, Lydia, to show her that afternoon, thought she’d find it interesting.”
“So the body had been undisturbed for the entire day?” Owen asked.
Kidd shrugged. “I would assume so, yes,” he replied. “Which means, in case we needed that confirming, it’s a place that people don’t often go. If no one found it for an entire day before TJ and Lydia showed up for the second time…” he trailed off.
“He went to get his friend to show her a body?” Owen asked, confusion rippling across his face. “‘Hey, I’ve found a body, do you want to see?’ Bit of a weird chat-up line.”
Kidd rolled his eyes. “Don’t think it was a chat-up line, Owen, think he just wanted to show her the body. Like I said, he thought she’d find it ‘interesting.’ That’s a direct quote.”
“Sounds suspect,” Owen said.
“Yeah, I thought the same, but she’s studying f
orensics, so I think it might be a genuine curiosity rather than anything malicious,” Zoe chimed in.
“But it’s weird,” Owen said. “Who does that? Should we bring him in?”
Kidd shook his head. “No,” he said, bluntly.
“But sir—”
“Drop it.”
“Either way,” Zoe interjected. “It’s worth noting. TJ is going to come in and change his statement, but if we could just make a note of that. Simon?” Simon looked up from the evidence board. “DC Powell, could you please make a note of that?”
“Right away.” He scurried over to his computer, practically falling over his own feet, and started typing. “What shall I say?”
Zoe widened her eyes at him before turning to Kidd. “I’m not answering that.”
“Just that TJ will be in to amend his statement,” Kidd said with a sigh. “And if he doesn’t come in, let’s say in the next day or so, we’ll need to follow up.”
Kidd had a feeling TJ wanted to do the right thing. He was pretty sure he’d scared him a little too much about getting arrested for him to leave it as it was. He didn’t want to get into trouble. He’d just wanted to show his friend a body. Maybe a little bit weird but no reason to think he was the killer. It would certainly be a bloody weird way to act if he was.
“Did we pick up on anything here?” Kidd asked. “DC Ravel?”
“Waiting for details of the victim before we can do a press conference,” she said, looking up from behind her computer. “The boss is keen to beat the press, but we’re getting enquiries left and right. Like Powell said, think he’s getting it from all sides.”
“Not your responsibility,” Kidd said. “Don’t reply to anyone.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And can someone look into a Joe… Warrington?” Kidd looked over at DS Sanchez for confirmation. She nodded and rolled her eyes. She may not have been showing it at the time, but he obviously got to her too. “He was hanging around the crime scene. Any information you can get on him might be useful.”