He walked in, calm and steady.
‘Close the door,’ I demanded.
With the gentlest of touches he pushed it to and looked at me. Looked at the anger that flashed across my face, clear for him to see.
‘What do you mean, you’re considering his offer?’ I could barely get the words out of my mouth, my face was clenched up so tightly.
‘Just that, Hannah.’ He waved at the chairs. ‘Can we sit? Talk about it?’
‘No.’ I sulked. ‘Tell me.’
‘What don’t you understand?’
‘How you can even consider going to the training department, Aaron? That’s what I don’t understand. You’re a born cop. You’re meant to be here, talking to witnesses, to criminals, looking at crime scenes. Not locked up in some classroom talking to snotty-nosed probationers and shiny new detectives who think getting out of the uniform is a step up in the world.’
I let out a breath and my body relaxed as I expressed my fears. ‘This is your life, here, with us.’
He didn’t say anything.
‘You do know Baxter saying there was a space open at training school wasn’t an offer, don’t you?’ I said.
‘What do you mean? There isn’t a position?’
‘I’m sure there is,’ I snapped. ‘What I mean is that it’s not an offer, Aaron. He’s sending you there whether you like it or not, he’s just dressing it up as an offer, in the hope you’ll jump.’ I glared at him. ‘Which you damn well look like you’re doing.’
His silence continued. ‘And if you turn his kind offer down, he’s going to send you anyway.’ I raised my voice. ‘And you’re making his job a whole lot easier. Why the hell would you do that?’
He sank down in one of the chairs opposite my desk. ‘I’m tired, Hannah.’
It was that simple. Three little words. They were like daggers in my chest. He was tired. Aaron was tired.
I dropped into the chair at the side of him. ‘Oh, Aaron. I’m so sorry. I should have done more to help you out.’
He shook his head. ‘There’s nothing for you to do. It’s my body that’s letting me down. There’s nothing anyone can do.’
‘I can take the load off you a bit more. Give you time to recover. Jeez, you’ve not two months ago had a heart attack and here you are back at work. Lisa would kill me if you had another one, you know.’
He smiled. A sad, resigned smile.
‘You don’t have to do this alone. We can do this together. We’ll get Occ Health to assess you again, see what support they can put in place. See if there’s any practical help they can offer, not just the phased return stuff, but physio etc. to strengthen your body, get it used to being fit.’ I didn’t know enough about heart attacks. Just some stuff I had read online after Aaron had had his as well as talking to Jack. I didn’t know what he needed but I would find out and I’d give it to him.
‘We can do this, Aaron. And you have to really consider telling them about your diagnosis. We could even talk to Walker if you don’t want to tell Baxter. I know she’s a bit brusque herself sometimes, but Baxter, well, he’s just on another level with how much he wants this department to perform.’
‘What if I told you it’s not what I wanted?’
‘What do you mean?’ He didn’t want to go to Walker? He’d rather talk to a man, Baxter?
‘To stay on this department.’
‘You’re kidding, right?’ I stood. Not sure what to do with myself.
‘I think maybe it’s time.’
‘Time to what exactly?’ I railed at him. ‘Time to give in. Time to let people walk all over you.’ Shit, I really needed to stop turning on my friend like this. But, fuck, I wanted him to stay and he was throwing away his career because some dickweed decided he wanted him out. It was all fine before Baxter had turned up.
Aaron stood now. ‘You can’t control everything, Hannah.’
‘You don’t mean this,’ I tried again. ‘I’m sorry I shouted. I’m emotional. You know that about me. It’s because you mean a lot to me. Sleep on this decision, Aaron. Don’t make it yet.’ A thought sprang into my mind. A last chance. ‘Have you spoken to Lisa about it?’ Surely she wouldn’t let him throw his career away.
‘Hannah–’
‘When you’ve talked to Lisa and when you’ve slept on it, we’ll talk and go from there, okay?’
‘This is not something you can figure out and resolve like a work problem. This is me. This is my problem and one I have to evaluate, and I’m tired. There is structure and regular hours in training. It’s perfect for me.’ He walked out the door.
56.
I felt bereft. A tiredness overwhelmed me. A feeling that Aaron himself explained to me. I made it to the other side of my desk, sank into my chair, stuck my elbows on my desk and put my head in my hands. What the hell would I do without my friend? It wasn’t just about me. How would he survive without the puzzles of work to keep his brain active? He would shrivel up and die. I knew him. He loved this department. We worked well together.
I wanted to shake some sense into him. I hoped that Lisa would be able to, but maybe she was behind him all the way, supporting him in whatever decision he made, as a good wife did. But I wasn’t a good wife. I was his boss and his friend and he was throwing a good career away. I couldn’t let him do it. I didn’t know how to stop him. I needed some time to think about it.
It was an interesting move on Baxter’s part, to offer Aaron the slide sideways rather than waiting for any report from me. He was probably a little worried that there wouldn’t be anything he could write Aaron up on so this was another way of getting the same result. An Aaron free office. I would speak to Occupational Health myself before I handed over any report if it came to it anyway. There was no way I would throw Aaron under the bus. They wouldn’t give me specifics on Aaron but they would help me understand what was normal for his settling back into the department. I would not go down without a fight in this situation.
Though it looked possible that might just happen.
I looked at my desk, at the notes scattered all over the piles of paper and Post-its tacked around my laptop screen. In the meantime I had work to do.
So much work, I wasn’t sure where to start.
I looked at the whiteboard where I had listed the pertinent facts of the case. A habit I had started after the Talbot case a couple of months ago when a night in with my whiteboard had resulted in a lightbulb moment.
The list was a mess. There was no making sense of it this time. No break-through Aha! moment here. Just a list of actions we had already taken and some that still needed to be done.
I ran through them and saw that we still hadn’t received the list we needed from Andy Denning, the guy who ran the true-crime book club for Sebastian, of the members of the group who had now left. Who were members in Sebastian’s time, but no longer attended. Denning had been helpful, but he appeared to have forgotten this one crucial piece of information. And that could be our Aha! snippet. Our guy could be hiding in amongst the people Sebastian knew. After all, it started with him and it had to have done so for a reason. Yes, there was the significance of the crime scene. And we were still working that. I had to do something. I had to get out of the office. I needed some air. Maybe I could get some clarification on two things at once if I popped out and did this small task.
Grabbing my coat and scarf, I yelled down the corridor into the incident room. Told them where I was headed. An arm was waved in acknowledgement.
It was good enough, I supposed. They were aware I existed at least.
The temperature had dropped outside. I pulled my scarf tighter and climbed into the car, ramped up the heating and willed for it to warm up faster than the journey would take. I wasn’t hopeful.
I wasn’t sure what Denning did, I’m sure we had his occupation logged somewhere on our system. I’d hate to have driven out here and for him to not be in this time. I was in luck. His car was on the drive. There was a light on in the house.
&nb
sp; The car was warm now and I didn’t want to leave. A couple walked past with a baby wrapped up in a pram, their breath spiralling around them as they spoke. It really was bloody freezing out there.
I tightened my scarf again and clambered out. Knocked on the door. Jumped up and down on the spot to keep warm.
‘DI Robbins.’ He sounded surprised to see me.
‘I’m sorry to disturb you,’ I said. Please just let me in. ‘It’s just that we never got that list of old book club members from you.’ I looked more closely at him. He looked terrible. It seemed I had appeared at a bad time. ‘I won’t take up much of your time,’ I added.
He looked thoughtful. I jigged up and down again to show him how cold it was out here.
‘It’s no trouble,’ he said finally. ‘Please, do come in. Your timing is perfect actually.’
He stepped aside and I walked in. Out of the cold.
57.
Aaron was sitting at his desk with his earphones in. Regardless of what Baxter would have to say about it. It didn’t matter now.
He allowed the gentle sound of raindrops to soak into his mind and quieten the frenzy that had seared through it during the conversation with Hannah. The natural sound lowered the blinding whiteout so he could think and function again.
He flicked through HOLMES and checked to see where they were currently at.
Hannah yelled down the corridor that she was heading out to see Andy Denning to obtain the list he hadn’t provided yet. He didn’t have it so loud that he couldn’t hear the work world around him. He added the task to HOLMES.
‘Get you a coffee?’ Pasha appeared in his line of sight making a drinking motion with her hand.
He pulled an earphone out of one of his ears.
‘Coffee?’ she said again.
‘That would be great, thanks,’ he said.
She nodded and moved off, around the room getting orders from everyone.
Evie strolled into the room with her laptop under her arm. She headed straight for Aaron and stood above him until he pulled his earphones out again.
‘Hannah not in?’ she asked.
‘No, she’s gone out to see a witness, the book club guy, Denning.’
‘Okay, do you have a minute?’ She searched around for a chair. Saw one further in the room, wandered off to fetch it without waiting for Aaron’s response, then pulled it over and sat beside him, placing the laptop on his desk. He hated when Hannah came and sat on his desk and put her mug on it, now Evie was here, dumping a large laptop on it. Was there no peace to be had here? He kept his thoughts to himself. She obviously had something she wanted to show him.
‘What is it?’ he asked, rolling his earphones up and shoving them in his drawer.
‘Remember when Hannah asked me to have a look at the blog Sebastian Wade ran?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Well, I found something of interest. Do you remember that bloke who shoved the homeless lad over and the internet went wild about it?’
He remembered something about a homeless male being pushed and some guy losing his job, but he’d heard about it on the news, not on social media. ‘I think I know what you’re talking about,’ he gave her.
‘Guess who blogged about it?’
‘Sebastian Wade?’
‘Bingo.’
‘And what does that have to do with our case?’ he asked. Not following at all.
‘It’s probably nothing, but it’s a local case and it’s the most recent local one he’s blogged about, so I thought it was worth mentioning and there’s a photograph. It’s not very clear but you can just make out his face. I know it’s a long shot, but it is someone Sebastian blogged about and not in a very polite manner. It was a lead Hannah suggested we look at and he seemed to say that the guy deserved to lose his job because he was a school teacher and we need our teachers to set an example, but then went on to say that he didn’t deserve to be vilified in the way he was being on social media. It was a real mixed post, to be honest.’
Martin had turned round and was listening. ‘Even though he was currently using him for fodder on his blog?’ he said with a laugh.
‘I know, right?’
Ross was paying attention now too. ‘I watched this incident unfold, with my mouth on the floor, it was awful what they did to him, whether he did push the other guy or not,’ he said.
Pasha came back with a tray and put a mug down on Aaron’s desk. ‘What are we talking about?’ she asked.
‘The guy who pushed the homeless kid,’ answered Ross, leaning over and picking up a mug.
‘Wow, that was nasty. How’s he involved?’
‘We don’t know he is,’ said Aaron. ‘Evie has found a post about it on Sebastian’s blog.’ He turned to Evie. She was pulling up the post and the photo. ‘Do we know who the so-called offender in that case is?’
‘Yeah, his name is Drew Gardner.’
It didn’t ring any bells. ‘Okay.’ He made a note of it. ‘We’ll have a look into him. Do we have any more details?’
‘There’s this photograph from the day of the incident.’ She pushed the laptop closer to him, turning it so he could see the screen better.
She enlarged the photograph to fill the screen and the two men were clear as day. The homeless male who the whole country had been up in arms about had his face turned away from the camera as he stumbled to the ground. The other male, the one that had hold of him, his face was clear. No wonder he had been identified. His face filled the screen and seeped into Aaron’s brain. ‘Nope, nothing from me.’
There was a gasp from where Pasha was standing with a mug of coffee in her hand. Everyone looked at her. She had paled and her hand was shaking.
‘Where did the boss say she was going when she went out?’ she asked.
‘To see Andy Denning,’ replied Aaron.
Pasha pointed at the screen. ‘That’s Andy Denning. That is the guy from the book club who supported Sebastian in running it. The boss has just gone to visit him on her own.’
58.
The plan was simple. He would put this all right. See if the social media crazies were in fact crazy or if they were human.
He had opened a browser window on his laptop. He logged into Twitter using his own account and had his profile photo attached. The account that had not had a single tweet sent from it for well over a year. This time would be different. He was about to have his say and this time they would listen.
He drafted the tweet and attached the hashtag they were still using for the murders. Then he created a poll.
I am the killer. I killed Sebastian Wade and Lacey Lane because of what you did to me last year. Now it’s up to you what happens. #crimescenemurder
Poll:
Kill myself
Hand myself in.
He kept the message in the draft folder and collected his car keys. He would hole up somewhere where they couldn’t find him. This was his final act. Let’s see what their final act would be. And he was fully prepared to carry out whatever they decided.
He selected the sharpest knife from the kitchen block, held it up to the light and watched the blade glint. It would do the job if necessary. But, he hoped they would finally turn into human beings.
Then there was the knock at the door. He put the knife and the car keys down on the kitchen worktop and went to get rid of whoever it was. He could be as rude as needed, he just had to get out of here.
He didn’t expect to see the detective inspector standing on his doorstep, a pleasant smile on her face, asking for his help. He had forgotten to give her something she said.
He was confused. What was it she needed? All that was in his head was the message in his drafts folder. The knife on his kitchen counter. The plans for the rest of the day how it would end. Maybe she would have something to do with it. Well, she would in one way or another, either with an arrest or collecting his body.
Then it crossed his mind. She could be a part of this in another way. A more direct way. She could hel
p him. The social media frenzy had not been kind to the police. It never was. This would be more interesting if he could pull this off.
‘Come on in,’ he said. And she did.
As she stepped over the threshold and he closed the door, her phone rang. They carried on walking. He moved them towards the kitchen.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I just need to get this. It’s the office.’
He didn’t want her to answer the call, but, if she didn’t, they might get concerned too early for his plan to be put in motion. He moved to the kitchen counter and she answered the phone.
‘DI Robbins. Yes, yes, I’m here now.’ Silence. Her eyes darted to him. He felt uneasy. Her body stiffened but she kept a smile on her face as she looked at him.
Something was wrong. He could feel it.
‘Uh huh,’ she said. ‘Okay, yeah, that’s great.’ She smiled again.
He gripped the knife tightly. She knew. They knew. He didn’t know how. Her eyes slid to his hand on the knife and she kept quiet to whomever she was talking to. It didn’t matter now. All that mattered was getting out of here and quickly before they could get to them. Once they were out of here then he could put his plan into motion and it would end the way he wanted. Not the way they wanted it to end.
With one long stride he was in front of her the knife pointing directly into her stomach. ‘We need to go,’ he said to her.
‘Andy, what is this? Let’s talk about it.’
He was done talking. He had tried to talk last year. He was all talked out. He grabbed her arm and pulled her over to his laptop. ‘Carry that.’
She picked it up, a confused look on her face.
‘Andy, you don’t want to do this. You’ll get yourself into more trouble than you’re already in. We can sort this out. Whatever’s happened. Let us help you.’
He kept the knife pointed at her. Close enough to lunge and penetrate her stomach at a moment’s notice. She did as he directed.
‘We need to go to the car.’ He pushed her towards the front door. ‘Phone,’ he demanded.
The Twisted Web (Detective Hannah Robbins Crime Series book 4) Page 20