When You're Smiling

by GS Rhodes

  “So he was a difficult filmmaker to work with?”

  “Impossible.” Tony sighed. “He wanted everything done a certain way, to the point where I eventually told him to just do it by himself. We got into a bit of a fight and…”

  “And what, Tony?”

  “Well, we’ve not spoken for a week,” Tony said. “It’s weird. We’ve never gone this long without speaking but…”

  He trailed off and stared at the floor, sliding his shoe off and then back on again.

  “What, Tony?”

  “He started doing things on his own a couple of months back,” Tony said, not to Kidd, just into space. He didn’t seem to want to focus on Kidd at all at this point. Maybe he felt like he was betraying his brother in some way by talking to Kidd so candidly. “And I told him he was getting obsessed again and taking it too far, but then he started acting weird.”

  Kidd leaned in, his elbows on the table. “Weird how?”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Zoe scrambled to pick her phone up off the floor, quickly hanging it up, and shoving it into her pocket as she took in the sheer state of Colin’s living room. With all the lights on, it looked like a war zone, like a bomb had hit it, hardly the clean and tidy home that she and Kidd had visited just twenty-four hours earlier.

  Her focus was pulled to two parts of the room. Groggily, a figure in a dining chair on one side of the room lifted their head and looked across at Zoe. Her eyes widened, her hair matted with sweat, tears quickly springing to her eyes and running down her face.

  On the other side of the room, sprawled out on the floor was Colin Hansen. Surrounding his head was a little blood, not much, mind, but enough to send an adrenaline surge through Zoe, enough to make her heart quicken, and know that she needed to take a few quick breaths and figure out what on earth she needed to do next. There was a dog next to him on the floor, not moving. Zoe didn’t want to think about what had happened there.

  This had not been what she’d expected.

  “Deep breaths, Lydia, deep breaths,” Zoe said as she hurried over to the girl in the chair. “Is the house empty?”

  Lydia nodded, whimpering through the gag that was covering her mouth. Her skin looked pale, heavy bags under her eyes. She wondered just how long she’d been here, suddenly wishing she’d done more, that she’d tried harder to track her down.

  “Good, good, good,” Zoe said. “Deep breaths, okay? I need to check on Colin.”

  She hurried over to him and knelt at his side. She felt for a pulse. Thankfully able to feel one, the blood around his head coming from a small cut. Whoever had done this maybe hadn’t been expecting him and clocked him around the head and then assumed he was dead. She needed to call an ambulance. She needed to call Kidd. She needed to untie Lydia.

  One thing at a time, she thought.

  She headed over to Lydia and untied her arms from behind the chair and her legs, slowly untying the gag from the back of her head. Lydia let out a heaving breath when it came free, bent double trying to get air into her lungs as quickly as possible. Zoe rubbed her back, reminding her she was here. She must have been scared out of her wits.

  Zoe took her phone out of her pocket and called it in, giving them the address and telling them to come as soon as possible. By the time she had finished, Lydia was upright again, looking a few shades calmer.

  “I thought… I didn’t know… I thought I was…” She had hardly said more than a few words and it was like she could barely catch her breath. All Zoe wanted to do was hold her and tell her that it was all going to be alright, but she knew that they weren’t out of the woods yet. She needed to know who had done this to her.

  “Deep breaths, Lydia, deep breaths,” Zoe said, bending down a little so she was at Lydia’s level, trying to make eye contact with her to show her that at least one of them was calm. Maybe it would be enough to stop her having a panic attack. “There’s an ambulance on the way for Colin. Everything’s going to be alright.”

  “Is… is he…?”

  “He’s alive,” Zoe said. “He’s still breathing, got a nasty bump to the head. But don’t worry about him right now, Lydia, okay? Let’s focus on you. You need to tell me what happened.”

  She turned back to Zoe and looked like she was about to burst into tears on the spot. The tears filled her eyes and her breath was still coming in heaving gasps.

  “What did I say about breathing?” Zoe said, giving her a quick nudge. Lydia did as she was told, taking a few breaths until she was able to look Zoe in the eyes again. “Now, tell me what happened, Lydia. Please.”

  “I was so scared,” she said. “I thought he was going to kill me. I thought…” She stumbled over it, almost like she couldn’t believe the words were about to come out of her mouth. And it came out in such a whisper. Zoe was only able to hear it because they were stood so close to one another. “I thought I was going to die.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  “We just started spending less and less time together,” Tony said. “Any time I did see him, he was snarky with me, like he didn’t want anything to do with me. Like I was in his way or something. And he got really secretive about all the tapes that he had.”

  “Tapes?”

  “Video footage,” Tony said. “Got really precious about it, wouldn’t let me see them. Mum was telling me to leave him be and let him do his work, even dad was being a bellend about it, but they don’t know him like I do.” Tony looked at DI Kidd now. “You said it yourself. They both knew we were closer than all that.”

  “Okay,” DI Kidd said, leaning back in his chair. “Then what?”

  “I stopped trying after a while, and that was when he disappeared, went off the grid,” Tony said. “He messaged me about it, told me not to tell mum, and I didn’t because…” Tony sighed and shook his head. “Because I’m an idiot. I didn’t press him on it either, I just let him vanish off the face of the earth and now…” Tony trailed off and leant forward onto the table, putting his head in his hands. His shoulders shook a little, a couple of heavy breaths leaving him.

  DI Kidd sighed. “Now, now, Tony, you can’t go beating yourself up about this,” he said. “Everything you’re telling me is good. Keep going, keep going, yeah?”

  “That’s it,” Tony said. ‘That’s all I’ve got for you, DI Kidd, I’m sorry.” Tony looked up at Kidd, his eyes exactly the same. Kidd had expected to at least see a few tears but maybe that bastard dad had beaten that kind of behaviour out of them. But it still didn’t sit right with Kidd. “If I could tell you any more I would.”

  “I’m sure,” DI Kidd said, keeping his tone even, though now there really was something not sitting right with him. “But you mustn’t beat yourself, Tony, you’ve done a good thing today telling us all that. And if you hear from Joe—”

  “I’ll give you a call,” Tony said, cutting him off. “I won’t hesitate. I know my dad can be a bit of a knob, but I know you’re just trying to do the right thing. Even if it is to catch my little brother.” Tony forced a smile onto his face and DI Kidd did the same.

  There was a horrible feeling in DI Kidd’s gut that he couldn’t let go of. It was a feeling that he followed most of the time, but right now, he needed to let it go. He stood up, Tony quickly following suit.

  He reached out a hand for Tony to shake, which he did gladly, giving a firm grip before he led the boy out of the room.

  “Do you want me to arrange to have one of the officers drive you back home?” Kidd asked. “I know this is a little bit out of your way. I’m sure you want to get home.”

  Tony seemed a little caught off guard by that, looking off down the corridor and back at Kidd.

  “No, don’t worry about it,” Tony said. “It’s not that far and the bus goes from just out there,” he nodded towards the door. “I’ll be alright.”

  “You sure?” Kidd said. “It’s not a bother. I’ll get Campbell to do it. He’s probably slacking in the Incident Room after he showed your lawyer out.”

>   “It’s fine,” Tony said. “‘I’ll be alright.”

  “No, no,” Kidd said. “I insist.”

  He didn’t give Tony another chance to respond, heading in to collar DC Campbell whose hand was in a tub of Celebrations leftover from Christmas.

  “Can you give the lad a lift home?” Kidd asked. “Think we owe him at least that much.”

  Campbell looked a little deflated, grabbing a Teaser and popping it into his mouth as he joined Kidd in the corridor.

  They walked Tony to the door, buzzing him out into the reception area. He got his things off Diane and then walked out of the front door with Campbell, waving to Kidd on his way out, a big smile on his face. It was only as Kidd watched him walk away, that he noticed the way he walked, a slight limp, like he’d done something to his ankle. He wondered if he’d gotten hurt when they’d arrested him. He certainly didn’t want that to come back and bite him.

  “Letting him go, DI Kidd?” Diane said, leaning across the counter. “I don’t know about you, but I thought you’d got your man.”

  Kidd looked off after Tony, watching him pull his jacket up around his ears and zip it up tight. The walk was strange. There was something Kidd couldn’t quite put his finger on.

  “Me too,” he grumbled. “Me too. But I think we’re getting closer.”

  Diane smiled at him courteously. “I should hope so. Dangerous out there.”

  He gave her a tight-lipped smile. “Agreed,” he said, before heading back down the corridor and back towards the Incident Room, unable to shake the feeling that he’d done something wrong.

  He stepped inside, returning to his desk and sitting behind it, going through the interview in his head again. Tony had seemed remarkably calm in the face of his brother being accused of murder. He tried to replay it, tried to read him, but decided the only thing left to do was track down Joe Warrington. They would need hard evidence, they would need to get his DNA and match it to whatever had been found on Jennifer Berry’s body, and wrap it all up.

  He remembered that Zoe had phoned him, taking his phone out of his pocket and seeing she had left a voicemail, he put it to his ear to listen to it when DC Ravel suddenly stood up.

  “DI Kidd, you’re going to want to take a look at this,” she said. She looked jittery, nervous, excited. It was infectious. Kidd hung up the phone and got to his feet.

  “You got something good?” he asked as he pocketed his phone once again.

  “Confirmation, sir,” DC Ravel said as Kidd walked around her desk to look over her shoulder at her computer screen. She opened the video file that had been sent over from Belmarsh prison, bringing it to full screen so that DI Kidd could see what she was so excited about.

  And it was clear as day, right in front of his face.

  “When is this from?” Kidd asked, trying to stop the shake in his voice. “When did it arrive?”

  “While you were in the interview, sir,” Ravel said. “It’s from about two months ago, way before the Jennifer Berry murder.”

  “Does that line up with the timeline of his visits to Colin?”

  DC Ravel leant around her computer to look at DC Powell. “Powell, did you get those dates for me?”

  DC Powell scurried out from behind his desk, a couple of papers in his hands, and showed them to DC Ravel. She looked up at Kidd and smiled, triumphant. “They match up exactly,” she said.

  Kidd leant down and took hold of the mouse, rewinding the video again to watch as the image of Joe Warrington walked into Belmarsh prison, shuffled sheepishly up to the desk, and spoke to the same woman that he’d spoken to just yesterday.

  “That’s him,” Kidd said, but looked carefully at it once again. He rewound it and watched it one more time.

  “Problem, sir?” DC Ravel asked.

  He studied it again. “No,” Kidd said. “Just checking to make sure. Now we just need to find him, right?” Kidd added, feeling that jitter in his stomach. He wanted to move quickly, needed to.

  He felt his phone buzzing in his pocket and took it out, seeing it was another call from Zoe. If it was important enough for her to call again, she really must have had something important to say.

  “Zoe, I’m sorry. I was in an interview with Tony Warrington, you’ll never believe what happened,” he said.

  “Don’t have time for that, Kidd, sorry,” Zoe spat, her breath distorting down the receiver. “You need to get to Colin’s house, and you need to get here now.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  “I’ve got Lydia, she’s fine but she’d been tied up. Colin is in a bad way,” she said. “I just need you to get down here as soon as possible. I don’t know how long the ambulance is going to be or if he’s going to come back.”

  “Okay, try and keep Lydia calm. Can you get here out of the house?” he said making for the door.

  “Why?”

  He growled. “We’ve just let Tony go,” he replied. “I need you to get her out of the house if you can, get her somewhere safe.”

  “Thanks, Kidd. Hurry,” she added quickly.

  “Gotcha,” Kidd said down the phone. “Be there as quick as we can. Hang on, alright?”

  Zoe ended the call and the house fell silent except for the sound of Lydia’s heavy breathing next to her. Her hands were shaking, shaking so much it was a wonder she hadn’t dropped her phone. Zoe pocketed her phone and turned back to Lydia, putting her hands on her shoulders, willing her to calm down, for her breathing to slow.

  “You don’t need me to tell you to calm down again,” Zoe said. “I know it was scary, but the sooner you can tell me exactly what happened, the sooner we can get to the bottom of this, okay?”

  Lydia took a breath and sat back down on the chair, putting her head in her hands. Zoe crouched in front of her. “It’s just hard to believe,” Lydia said. “I… I never thought that…”

  “Never thought what, Lydia?” Zoe asked.

  She looked up at Zoe, tears in her eyes. “I never thought that I would ever be so close to someone who would want to hurt me like that,” Lydia said. “He grabbed me, he drugged me, he tied me up, I… Maybe it was instinct, I don’t know, but I knew exactly what he was going to do with me. Like I should have realised the whole time that it was him.”

  Her hand flew to her mouth as she took a shuddering breath. “He was supposed to be my friend,” she whispered. “Who would want to do something like that to their friend? And to do that to Jenny, too? He told me. He told me it was her, I didn’t want to believe…”

  Zoe placed a careful hand on Lydia’s leg. She flinched. She really was in a bad way. Zoe kept her hand there and gave her a squeeze, hoping it would be somewhat reassuring to her, that it would help to calm her in some way.

  “I hate to say it, Lydia,” Zoe started. “And I don’t want this to colour your feelings about the world, but you never know what’s going on in people’s heads, never really know what they’re capable of. More often than not, when someone is attacked or hurt, it’s someone they know.” Zoe sighed. “It might not be a comforting fact, but it is a true one.”

  “You just never think for a second that—”

  There was a sound at the front door. Zoe stood up so quickly she gave herself a head rush. She steadied herself, placing a hand on the back of the chair before putting her body between Lydia and the door.

  “Lydia?” a voice shouted. A voice that Zoe recognised. She tensed. She wasn’t about to give away their position, wasn’t about to—

  “In here!” Lydia called back. Zoe looked at her sharply. She’d gotten up from the chair and was looking towards the doorframe hopefully, her eyes still a little glassy.

  Zoe couldn’t shake the confusion from her head as Joe Warrington stood in the door in front of her. Lydia moved to cross the room towards him but Zoe’s arm shot out to stop her.

  “What are you doing?” Lydia asked.

  “I could ask you the same question,” she replied before turning to look back at Joe. “Stay where you are!” she barke
d, her voice changing so drastically from one moment to the next, it made Lydia jump. “No one is going to get hurt, you just need to stay exactly where you are.” She took a breath. “There are already police on the way, there is no point in running, Joe.” She shook her head at him. “This is the end of the line for you.”

  “What are you talking about?” Lydia asked, a nervous quake in her voice.

  Zoe looked over at her once again, trying to decipher if she was joking or not. Was she in on this with him? Had this been some kind of ruse to lure her here? But Lydia just looked… lost. And now Zoe felt lost too.

  A car pulled up outside, stopping furiously, tyres screeching. It was enough to calm Zoe. It had to be Kidd. He’d been quicker than even she had thought possible. But time seemed to be stretching and bending since the moment she’d walked into this house. She would be happy for all of this to be over.

  “That’s DI Kidd’s car out there, Joe,” Zoe said firmly. “It’s over.”

  “What?” Joe looked panicked, frantic. “I don’t know… what’s happening? Lydia, why did you call me here? Is this a setup?”

  “No, no, it’s not a setup.”

  Zoe looked sharply at Lydia. “You called him? Why did you do that when he’s the one that…” Zoe trailed off. Realisation falling over her like a wave.

  “It wasn’t Joe who did it,” Lydia said. “It was Tony.”

  And with those words, the front door to Colin Hansen’s house burst open.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  DI Kidd hung up the phone and hurried to DCI Weaver’s office, his heart pounding so hard in his chest he was shaking.

  “What?” Weaver barked when Kidd burst through the door. “Updates?”

  “I’ve fucked up, boss,” Kidd blurted.

  He explained what had happened to DCI Weaver, explained the video, explained everything and the two moved as quickly as they could. Weaver got a response team to head down to Hansen’s property, Kidd immediately dialled Campbell’s mobile.