Just Keep Breathing

by GS Rhodes

  Kidd did his best not to sigh down the phone. “Nothing yet sir, but we’re on our way to see Sarah’s parents now, get what we can from them. Chatting with the students was enlightening, I think—”

  “Glad you’re having a good time, Kidd, but a teenager is missing and the Inspector is breathing down my neck to get this done ASAP,” he growled. Kidd could see Weaver’s face in his mind’s eye, cheeks puffing, eyes bulging, ready to explode at a moment’s notice.

  “Doing my best, boss,” Kidd said.

  “Do better,” Weaver snapped. “We’ve got a press conference here this afternoon.”

  “What time?”

  “Whatever time you get here,” he snapped. “So don’t dawdle.”

  Weaver hung up before Kidd could properly respond, leaving him staring at the phone screen as they walked to the car.

  “So?” Zoe said.

  “Press conference,” he said.

  “When?”

  “Whenever we get there,” Kidd grumbled, pocketing his phone.

  “Kidd.” A different voice this time, though still one that DI Kidd recognised. He looked up to see a boy with curly brown hair leaning on the hood of DS Sanchez’s car, just as he had done the first time they’d met him just over a month ago. He looked scruffy, another thing that Ben expected from him.

  “Joe Warrington,” DI Kidd said, walking towards him. “Get off the car.”

  “Oh, yeah, sorry.” Joe got to his feet, his hand wrapped tightly around his phone. He looked up into the looming figure of DI Kidd.

  Joe Warrington was the brother of Tony Warrington, the guy they’d caught for the copycat killing of The Grinning Murders. There had been a time when Kidd had been convinced that it was Joe who had done it, but that had proved to be false. Joe had just been covering the news story as best he could for his social media channels, which had brought him into pretty sharp focus.

  “Do I really need to ask what brings you here?” Kidd asked. “You chasing this story too?”

  “I used to go to this school,” he said. “So I still follow socials, they use me as a success story every now and again so I’m still in the loop with stuff.”

  “So you have an in?” Kidd said. “You getting an exclusive on it?”

  “Hardly,” Joe said, rolling his eyes. “Her parents have dominated the major news cycles. Laura Harper posting all sorts of things to her Instagram basically makes me pointless.”

  Kidd raised an eyebrow at Joe Warrington. There was no way that Joe would be covering this story if he didn’t think he could get some kind of exclusive on it and there was no way he would be here if he thought it was pointless. There was definitely something more going on here. He folded his arms and waited.

  “So what are you talking to us for?”

  “Because I think I have something that might help you,” Joe said. “And I don’t just want to put it out there when I think it could actually help find Sarah.”

  It was the last thing that DI Kidd had been expecting. When Joe had been posting things about The Grinning Murders, Kidd had assumed Joe was just an obnoxious young man who was hungry for a viral moment. He tried to get all sorts of information out of Kidd and just ended up rubbing him up the wrong way. But now he seemed to want to help.

  “What have you got?” Kidd asked. “And what do you want in return?”

  Joe wrapped his arms around himself. “A ride back to Uni would be great.”

  ◆◆◆

  “Go on then,” Kidd said from the front seat. It was no bother driving him back to the University, especially when he was going to give them information.

  “What do you know so far?” Joe asked.

  Kidd sighed. “Are you recording this? Are you after information from us?”

  Joe rolled his eyes. “I have pretty much everything, I just want to know what you know.”

  They locked eyes in the rearview mirror, Joe eventually giving up and pulling out his phone. Kidd didn’t want to give him too much. Even though he was only in his twenties, Joe was technically still press. He shouldn’t even be telling him anything but, and this was something he had figured out during the last case, he seemed to know a lot. And if he’d gone to the same school, there was every possibility he could help them out.

  “Website exposing the fact Sarah was cheating, fight on Friday afternoon, Sarah hasn’t been seen since,” Joe said, all of it matter of fact, not a lick of emotion. “You got all that?”

  “Yep.”

  “Good, because I think I know who it was who set up the website,” Joe said with a grin.

  “You’re joking,” Kidd said. He pulled the piece of paper Ms Chowdhury had printed for them out of his pocket and showed it to Joe. “This is all we got. Headteacher said it had been deleted.”

  “It was, but I was all over it before the guy responsible could take it down,” Joe said. “The thing about having a website is, there’s an IP address, and it doesn’t take a genius to track down who owns a domain. So I’ve got the name of the guy, and confirmation that he was in Sarah’s year at school.”

  “Well, who is he?”

  “Nicholas Ayre,” Joe replied. “I know the name won’t mean much to you, but he’s all over social media so you’ll track him down soon enough. He’s not in their crowd or anything, sort of an outsider from what I can tell, but he has a vendetta against her. Could be something.”

  “You got anything else?”

  “Only that Sarah’s social media presence isn’t all it seems,” Joe said. “From what I’ve got from people who knew her and people who knew of her, it all sounds very Mean Girls/Gossip Girl/tired teen drama. She was the queen bee and there were a lot of people who wanted to see her fall from grace. And when I say a lot, I mean a lot.”

  “I got the impression from her friend, Taylor, that she wasn’t all that keen on having Sarah around all the time.”

  “She’s not, none of them are, really,” Joe said. “It’s a little bit sad, I’ve got to admit. But everybody I know at that school has it in for her.”

  Kidd turned his attention back to the road, DS Sanchez was pulling onto Penrhyn Road, getting ready to turn into the University car park. He felt a little bit sorry for Sarah. He knew from the news that kids were using social media too much, using it to the point that they were causing themselves damage, faking that they were happy when they weren’t, but this was ridiculous. Sarah’s social media was full of her friends, or people she thought were her friends, all of them doing things together and having fun, and all of that was fake?

  “You okay?” DS Sanchez asked quietly, shutting off the engine as she parked off.

  “Yeah, yeah, good,” he said, turning back to Joe. “You got anything else for us?”

  Joe shook his head. “That’s all I had. I didn’t know you guys were going to be there today. Just a stroke of luck on my part.” Joe said, shuffling across the back seat towards the door. “Nice to see you both again—”

  “Joe,” DI Kidd interrupted. “Just wanted to check, everything alright with you?”

  Joe eyed him curiously. “How do you mean?”

  “I just mean at home, given everything that happened.”

  “Given you arrested my crazy ass brother?” Joe said, a twinkle in his eye. But there was something else, something Kidd couldn’t quite place. “My dad has been pretty cut up about it. Mum too, but for different reasons. But they’re fine.”

  “What about you?” Kidd asked. Joe had been there the night they’d finally caught up with Tony and arrested him. He’d ended up with a knife to his neck. One false move and Joe might not even have been here to talk to them about all this.

  Joe took a breath. “I’m fine,” he said. “It’s a weird thing for people to know me for. I certainly get some stick for it. But I’m okay. Just looking after myself, my family too.”

  Kidd smiled at him. “Good. And if you come up with anything else—”

  “I’ll give you the exclusive,” Joe said with a wink before shuffling
out of the car and heading off towards the reception of the University.

  DS Sanchez turned to Kidd. “What are you thinking?”

  “A lot of things.”

  “Give me specifics,” she said.

  “I’m thinking that there are probably more suspects in this than we first thought,” he said. “I know we need to go and talk to the parents and see if they’re involved in any way, but the more I hear about these kids that hate her, this headteacher who doesn’t give a shit about her, the more concerned I am for her safety.”

  “So the kids at school hate her,” Zoe said. “That doesn’t mean that they’re capable of kidnapping her and holding her hostage.”

  Kidd looked over at Zoe. She locked eyes with him and it was like she read his mind. They both knew better than that. They’d seen enough to know that anyone was capable of absolutely anything under extreme circumstances.

  She turned the engine on and drove away.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Sarah Harper’s family home was exactly the kind of house that DI Kidd expected Laura Martins to have moved into after finishing school. It was at least three times the size of Kidd’s place and looked like it belonged in a magazine rather than on the outskirts of Kingston town. It was just across from Fairfield Park, a stone’s throw from the middle of town, and Kidd was fairly sure that they had bought two houses and knocked through to build one, giant house because it definitely looked out of place.

  “Who the hell needs a house this big?” DS Sanchez asked as they stepped out of the car. “Honestly, who needs this many rooms? Do they ever see each other?”

  Kidd shrugged. “Maybe they don’t.” It certainly looked like the kind of house that you could spend an entire day in without bumping into another single soul. There were probably more bathrooms than Kidd had rooms in his house.

  He walked up to the front door and knocked, stepping back from the huge, black double doors with DS Sanchez, neither one of them knowing which one was going to open.

  It creaked open, just the tiniest crack. A small woman that DI Kidd instantly recognised as Sarah’s mother appearing in the gap.

  “Can I help you?” she asked. This was not the woman that DI Kidd had seen online. Laura’s online presence had her fully glam at all times, always done up, always with a smile on her face, and a filter to go with it. The only exception to that was the video where she told her fans that Sarah was missing, but even in that video, everything seemed perfectly placed. Seeing her now, a little bit off guard, she seemed smaller.

  “My name is DI Kidd, this is DS Sanchez,” Kidd said. “We’re investigating Sarah’s disappearance, someone should have called ahead from the station. Is this a bad time?”

  Laura opened the door a little further, drawing up to her full height and painting a smile onto her face. And now Kidd saw something more of the woman he had seen on Instagram, the smile, the high cheekbones, the perfect blonde hair. How had she managed to do that in just a few shifts of her body?

  “Lovely to meet you both,” she said, her voice steady, her eyes glistening a little. Had she been crying recently? Kidd couldn’t tell. “Do come in, you must be freezing.”

  She opened the door a little wider, the two of them stepping inside and taking in the gigantic hallway. This place had definitely been gutted and put back together again, there was no way a house on this street could look this modern without that. The high ceilings meant that every movement they made was echoing around them, the windows above the door letting in so much natural light there wasn’t really any need for anything artificial.

  “Come through to the kitchen, I’m sure we’ll all be more comfortable there,” she said with a smile.

  “I’m sorry, do you mind if I use your bathroom?” DI Kidd asked. “I wouldn’t normally ask but we’ve been out of the station all morning.”

  Laura smiled at him. “Of course not, it’s just up the stairs, second door on your left,” she said, but then she stopped suddenly and took a step back from him. She narrowed her eyes, like she was seeing him much clearer in the light of the hallway than she had done when he was outside in the bright winter sun. “Do I know you from somewhere?”

  Kidd laughed a little nervously. He hadn’t really anticipated saying anything so soon but perhaps he hadn’t changed as much as he thought over the past twenty or so years. He was older, a little more wrinkled and grey, but no less himself. “Yes, actually, we were at school together,” he said. “Secondary school. I didn’t know whether or not you—”

  “Little Benji Kidd,” she said, her face lighting up. “I can’t believe it’s you, you look so different.”

  Kidd shrugged. “Well, it’s been twenty years.”

  “And you’re a detective inspector now, that’s very impressive! How long have you been a policeman?”

  “For about twenty years or so,” he said. “But we’ll have more time to catch up in a second,” he added, gesturing towards the stairs. “Or at the reunion, you’re coming to the reunion, aren’t you?”

  Laura opened her mouth to respond but faltered. “We weren’t sure whether or not we were going to go,” she said. “With everything happening with Sarah, I didn’t want anybody looking at us and thinking we were off having a good time while our daughter is missing. We may show our faces, for old time’s sake, because in a way it would be weirder to not go, we’d be expected to go. But it’s so good to see you. We really do have some catching up to do.”

  She turned on her heel and marched off down the hallway. Zoe looked up at Kidd, her face screwed up in confusion. Kidd gestured for her to follow Laura, which she did.

  Kidd started up the stairs, suddenly very aware of his quite unclean boots on her very clean hardwood floors. Then again, it would probably give her something to make a video about. He looked back to make sure he wasn’t traipsing mud through her house, relieved when he couldn’t see footprints behind him.

  There were photos hung on the wall by the stairs, photographs of Sarah at various ages in school uniforms, seeming to get older as he ascended. All the photos were posed, perfect, professional photographs, or at least made to look like that. There were some photos from what Kidd assumed was Laura and Michael’s wedding. Though it looked new, so maybe it was a vow renewal. Or just a party where Laura decided to wear a big, white dress. She looked beautiful. Sarah was made in her image.

  He made it to the top of the stairs and turned left as he’d been instructed, immediately heading towards the open door to what would likely be the most opulent bathroom he’d ever been in. But he stopped at another open door on the way.

  Had it not already been open, practically begging him to come inside, he wouldn’t have looked. At least, that’s what he told himself. He looked left and right, making sure there was no one hiding behind any corners, watching him in case it was some kind of trap, before he pushed the door open a little further and stepped inside.

  He was almost certain that the room belonged to Sarah, the only clues that really gave that away being a few photographs attached haphazardly to a cork board and the fact that it didn’t look like the kind of master bedroom Laura Martins would have.

  It was nothing like the rest of the house. Compared to everything else in the house, it looked like it had been ransacked. While, what he’d seen of the house and Laura’s online presence had shown her to be the queen of clean, this was precisely the opposite. Perhaps she hadn’t been able to bring herself to touch it after they’d come in here for the search. Maybe it was too much for her.

  The room would already have been searched last night, looking for a suicide note or anything that might show her to be high risk. They also would have been looking for body parts or signs that the parents were responsible. Kidd knew the drill. But they’d not found anything. Kidd couldn’t help but wonder if they’d missed something. There was more going on here than he could tell right away. He listened for the sounds of anyone coming up the stairs or coming down the corridor. He knew he shouldn’t be in here, b
ut he couldn’t resist.

  He didn’t even really know what he was looking for. Something to help him find her, absolutely anything. He started over towards her desk. There was a computer on it, a few notebooks that were leaning over as if one of them were missing, either the ones she’d taken to school with her on Friday or ones they had seized.

  He picked one of them up at random.

  He opened it to find beautiful drawings in it. Sarah was artistic, it seemed. The pages were dotted, but she’d filled them with hand-drawn calendars and daily jottings. He found himself skimming over a couple, the names Dexter and Taylor coming up more than a few times. Jonno coming up a lot too, though not really with any reference to their relationship. She was even hiding it from her diaries too.

  He put the notebook down and opened one of the desk drawers. It was full of makeup, lip glosses, mascaras, eye shadow palettes, the whole drawer practically overflowing when he opened it. He closed it and opened the next one, this time there was stationary. He rummaged a little, past the pens, the pencils, the sharpies, his heart pounding faster because the more time he spent in here, the more likely it would be that someone downstairs would wonder where he was.

  Then his eye landed on something interesting.

  It wasn’t much. An Apple logo. But he found himself moving quicker, grabbing it and pulling it out from beneath the piles of pens. It was the same as the handset he had, a year or two out of date. Kidd couldn’t imagine this family going without when it came to new tech. The parents had said she’d taken her phone with her, and the last ping on the phone had been near her school, so it all checked out. This had to be an old phone.

  He wondered if there was anything on it, anything that might be able to help.

  He pressed the on button, greeted with the Apple icon before the phone opened up before him. He opened the photos, selfie after selfie of Sarah. He checked the dates and saw that it was from just over six months ago, nothing new since then. At least it confirmed in his mind that it was an old handset.