Hand On Heart: An Unputdownable British Crime Thriller (DI Benjamin Kidd Crime Thrillers Book 5)

by GS Rhodes

  “Not taken him to meet Liz yet?”

  “No, but she’s making sure I do it quite soon,” Kidd said with a chuckle. “I was just thinking that we need to get together again at some point. It’s been way too long.”

  Kidd could hear her smiling down the phone. “That would be so great,” she said, breathing out a heavy sigh. “God, you have no idea how good it is to hear that from you, Ben, I’ve been… oh I don’t know, it’s silly.”

  “No, I’m glad you’re excited, it’s not silly at all,” he said.

  “It’s just…” She took a breath. “Oh God, don’t hate me for this okay? We’ve been through too much together for me to start keeping things from you now.”

  Kidd stilled, a knot forming in his stomach. He flicked his gaze over to Zoe, who looked back at him, her brow furrowed in concern.

  “What’s up, Andrea?”

  She sighed again, her breath distorting down the phone. “With you being with John and being so happy and everything, I was starting to think that you’d given up on Craig entirely.”

  Kidd froze. “How do you mean?”

  “Finding him,” she said. “Everything was so weird after we parted last time, not being able to find him back in Essex, it all just felt… I don’t know, it felt a little bit hopeless, you know?”

  “Yeah,” Kidd said. “It did.”

  What on earth is she talking about? Kidd thought, feeling his heartbeat quicken.

  “I mean, I might be jumping to conclusions here, but I take that because you’re getting back in contact with me, you want to start looking for him again,” she said, still smiling, he could hear it. In his mind's eye he could see it, her bright eyes, her sparkling white teeth, that hope that he had seen dashed so many times before when they hadn’t managed to find Craig.

  But that was the thing. Craig had found him.

  “I know it might be awkward with John, but if you just explain to him everything that happened between you two, I’m sure he wouldn’t mind,” she continued. “I thought you were calling because you had a lead or new information or something, but when we meet, we will figure out a gameplan, okay? I’ll send you my availability, maybe we can get together later on in the week.”

  “Sure thing,” Kidd said, frozen to the spot, no idea what to say. “I’ll talk to you later on in the week.”

  “Talk to you soon,” Andrea replied brightly before she hung up the phone.

  Kidd looked over at Zoe, who was staring at him with her eyes wide.

  “What the fuck was that all about?” she asked. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost or something.”

  “No, nothing like that,” Kidd said. “That was Andrea.”

  “Craig’s sister?” she replied. “What’s she phoning you for?”

  “I called her this morning because Craig has been acting… Well, he’s been acting a bit odd. I thought she might know something about it because he’s been going to see her quite a lot over the past couple of weeks.”

  “Right, and? Is everything okay?”

  Kidd shook his head. “Not really,” he replied. “Andrea has no idea that Craig is back.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” Zoe said. “How can she not know he’s back?”

  Kidd shrugged and checked the time on his phone. “We need to get back to the office.”

  “We need to talk about this,” she replied.

  “Talk and drive,” he said. “We’re burning daylight out here and we need to keep moving with the case.”

  They got back into the car, Zoe revving the engine and starting them back towards Kingston Police Station. The last thing that Kidd wanted was for his personal life to once again be creeping into his day-to-day at work, but here he was once again with Craig on his mind when it should have been on his job.

  “She was talking about us going and looking for him again,” Kidd explained as Zoe drove back through Twickenham High Street. “She was glad to hear from me because she thought that with me being with John I had given up on it. She has no idea.”

  “Why didn’t you correct her?”

  Kidd opened his mouth to respond, only to find that he didn’t have a valid excuse. He should have said it there and then, let her know that her brother was safe and well, instead she still thinks he’s out there waiting to be found, when actually, he was at Kidd’s house waiting for him to come home for dinner.

  “It was the shock,” he said.

  “Right.”

  “You don’t believe me?”

  Zoe sighed. It seemed to drag her entire body down. “No, I don’t,” she said. “This is your hero complex kicking in again, you know?”

  “Zoe, come on.”

  “I’m being serious, Ben, you want to figure out what’s going on with Craig,” she said. “You must have had some hunch that he wasn’t going to see Andrea, so you were calling to drop him in it. And you had the chance to right there but…but you didn’t.”

  She had caught him red-handed, a kid with his hand in the cookie jar.

  “I’m worried about him,” Kidd replied.

  “And maybe Andrea can help you out with that,” Zoe said. “She’s his sister, doesn’t she have a right to know he’s safe and well?”

  “Absolutely,” Kidd replied.

  “But?”

  It was Kidd’s turn to sigh. He leant back in the chair and stared out of the window as they drove past Teddington Lock. “But I don’t want to drag Andrea into whatever trouble Craig has gotten himself into.”

  “Ben, you don’t know what—”

  “I know I don’t know what it is,” he interrupted. “And believe me when I say I am trying to find out, but if it’s bad, I’d rather it was just me that got clobbered by it, not everybody around me too, you know?”

  Zoe kept her eyes on the road, slowing down to a full stop behind a red double-decker bus. It idled at the stop and Zoe turned her attention to Kidd while she waited for the passengers to get on and off.

  “I completely know where you’re coming from,” she said. “And I sort of hate that I do, because it’s almost like I’m excusing your behaviour and I’m not.” She took a moment. “I just want you to be careful, Ben. I don’t want you getting into trouble because of Craig.”

  “I won’t,” Kidd replied. Though even he knew that it wasn’t something he could guarantee. He wasn’t quite sure how far he would go to protect Craig.

  “I wish I believed you.”

  Me too, Kidd thought. Me too.

  ◆◆◆

  By the time they got back to the police station, DC Ravel and DC Campbell had already made it back and had returned to their desks waiting for Kidd and Sanchez. Simon was still poring over the case file, looking like he hadn’t come up for air in quite some time. There were at least twenty tabs open on his internet browser and his notebook was covered in a spidery scrawl that Kidd prayed he would never have to decipher. No one could ever say that the boy didn’t work hard.

  “How’d it go with Michael Earle?” Kidd asked as he walked over to the Evidence Board to see that Simon had been hard at work here too. There were pictures of Michael Earle, Holly Grant, and most of the family. Even though the pictures were old, he could tell who was who.

  “We didn’t get to talk to Michael,” Janya said, getting up from behind her desk and grabbing her notebook. “So we went and had a chat with Michael’s mum, Lindsay.”

  “Anything useful?”

  “Not really, boss,” Campbell chimed in.

  “I’d hardly say that,” Janya replied.

  “Really?” Campbell looked sceptical. “She doesn’t think Michael did it,” he added. “It’s classic. Textbook.”

  “And I’d definitely say there was a little more to it than that,” Janya said.

  Kidd looked at her. Something that Lindsay had said obviously resonated with her in some way. While Kidd was of a similar thought process to Campbell—not something he was particularly happy with—he wanted to at least
hear what Janya had to say.

  She explained what Lindsay had said to them, about the mishandling of the case, how it felt like the whole thing was rushed.

  “That’s funny,” Sanchez said. “Holly Grant’s mum was saying the same thing. We didn’t do enough, quick enough, and then when we did do it, it was too fast and we didn’t cover everything properly.”

  “Can’t do right for doing wrong,” Campbell said, not bothering to look up.

  “What else?” Kidd asked. “Did she give us anything to go on, or just a feeling?”

  “Nothing specific to go on, no,” Janya said. “But she said things were missing and to look at the case file again. I don’t know how Weaver is going to feel about us digging into a two-decade-old case but, I don’t know, what if there is something in there?”

  “It wouldn’t be the first time that a family is unhappy with what we’ve done,” Campbell called over from his desk. He was eating a doughnut now, the raspberry jam oozing out of the back of it and threatening to wreak havoc over his clean, blue shirt. “If we looked into every single case that the family was unhappy with, we would be looking into every bloody case we’ve ever solved.”

  Janya sighed, a little bit deflated. “There was something about what she said,” she said. “The way she said it too. I wouldn’t normally want to go digging around in an old case file either, but she seemed so sure that something was missing.”

  “Funny you should mention that,” Zoe said. “Phil Jackson.”

  Janya blinked and looked over at DS Sanchez. “Who is Phil Jackson?”

  “Exactly what I’m hoping to find out,” Kidd said. “He was Michael Earle’s best friend, they used to do everything together, known each other since they were kids. Suzanne Grant refuses to believe that Phil wasn’t involved in some way. She seems to think the two of them were working together to kill Holly.”

  “The irony being that Lindsay was very determined to let us know that Michael loved Holly more than anything in the world and would never do anything to hurt her,” Janya said. “Maybe there is something going on here.”

  Kidd turned to Zoe. “Weaver is going to kill us if we want to dig this up at the same time as trying to figure out who sent a severed arm to Oscar Harkey, isn’t he?”

  “Oh, he will absolutely blow his top,” Sanchez said, nodding, unable to keep the smile off her face. “But these two things seem to be going hand in hand. If we’re looking into one, what’s the harm in looking into the other one?”

  “Hold that thought!” Simon Powell chimed in from his desk.

  Everybody turned around to look at Simon. Even Campbell stopped inhaling a packet of doughnuts so that he could pay attention.

  “You said there’s stuff missing, right? People not getting interviewed?”

  “That’s right,” Kidd said.

  “There is a lot missing from this case file,” Powell said. “There’s no interview with Phil Jackson, even though he gets mentioned by Michael a few times in interview, and even by a couple of Holly’s friends.” Powell shook his head. “You said it all seems to have been done in a hurry. I’m not sure if this would get past DCI Weaver if we presented him with a file like this. It feels… thin. There is definitely something in here that we’re not being told.”

  A whole part of the story seems to be missing, Kidd thought. That has to be Phil Jackson’s story. Why would they not want to tell that?

  “Maybe Lindsay was onto something after all,” Janya said, hopefully.

  “Possibly,” Kidd said. “And I have a feeling that Phil Jackson is going to be an important part of this.” He turned his attention back to Powell, a smile on his face. “Fantastic work, Simon. Next port of call is to get a hold of Phil and—”

  “That’s not all I’ve got for you, sir,” Powell interrupted, somewhat sheepishly. “Sorry, it’s just we might not need to go as far as Phil to get more information on this case.”

  Kidd narrowed his eyes. “What do you mean, Si?” he asked. “Who else knows about it?”

  “DCI Weaver,” Simon said. “He was working on the case as a DC eighteen years ago.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Kidd ignored Zoe calling his name as he grabbed the case file and stalked out of the room. She shouted something about him not doing anything stupid, about taking a deep breath and letting it go, but he didn’t have time for that Zen bullshit just now. Weaver had kept this from him when they’d spoken this morning and he wanted to know why. He had to know why.

  His blood was boiling, bubbling over. He was a volcano and he was about to let rip at DCI Weaver, whether it got him in trouble or not. This wasn’t the right way to go about police business.

  The time for knocking on doors had long since passed. Kidd barged into the room, DCI Weaver practically jumping out of his seat as he stepped inside, slamming the door behind him.

  “Kidd, what the bloody hell are you—?”

  “You knew!” Kidd barked, slamming the case file onto the man’s desk. He looked down at it and then back up at Kidd. “You knew about this case the whole time and you just let me run around talking to the families about it. What the fuck is wrong with you?”

  “It didn’t seem appropriate that I—”

  “Didn’t seem appropriate?” Kidd interrupted. “You could have saved me a lot of trouble today of having to go and dredge up the past for these people. You could have saved me some time and maybe we’d be a little bit closer to figuring out who did it. Why didn’t you say anything?”

  Weaver took a heavy breath before he gestured to the chair opposite his desk. “Would you like to take a seat, Kidd?” he asked.

  There was so much frustration rushing around Kidd’s body he wasn’t entirely sure he would be able to sit still, but he took the gaffer up on his offer. He sat down on the edge of the chair, unable to relax.

  “Tell me what you thought you were playing at,” Kidd said through gritted teeth. “I’m sure you’ve got your reasons but bloody hell, boss, they’d better be good ones.”

  “When you came in and started talking about the case, I froze up,” Weaver said, putting his hands up in the air, a surrender of sorts. “It’s something I’ve not thought about for a long time, so to have it brought right back to my door caught me off guard.”

  Kidd took the man in, waiting for him to explain further, but nothing. Kidd raised an eyebrow, staring his boss down. It seemed to work because Weaver leant forward.

  “It was eighteen years ago,” Weaver said. “It was a pretty high profile case, and back then, at least, I’d never dealt with anything like it. I was a DC. I’d dealt with a few dark and twisted cases before but nothing like that had ever come my way. I think the DI tried to avoid them if he could.”

  “And who was the DI?”

  “Kidd, I don’t know if you should be digging into all this,” Weaver said, keeping his voice low. “You know what the Super is like. He doesn’t want us going around looking for mistakes, it makes us all look bad.”

  “So you think that there will be mistakes if I go digging, do you?” Kidd asked. It was all he needed to hear from Weaver. Simon had already picked up on it, both the families had in some capacity noticed that something was missing from the case, but The Met had just ignored it.

  But why? Kidd thought. Stubbornness could be one reason. The complications of the case could be another. But Kidd couldn’t help but feel there was something deeper, something that Weaver wasn’t telling him. Maybe even something that Weaver didn’t know.

  “I’m not going to be able to stop you from looking into this, am I?” Weaver said, leaning back in his chair, not allowing himself to look away from the DI. He could have pulled rank if he really wanted to, taken Kidd off of the case so he had no reason to go digging into the past, but the fact that he was asking surely meant that even Patrick Weaver knew it needed to be done.

  “I’d say not, sir,” Kidd said. “I want to solve Oscar Harkey’s case. And if this is connected to it in any way, and I have a fee
ling that it is, then I want to make sure that everything up until now has been done properly. I’m not trying to get you into trouble.”

  “You’re not after my job?” Weaver laughed.

  “Absolutely not,” Kidd replied. “I just want to know the truth. Tell me about the DI.”

  A silence pushed its way between them as Weaver seemed to take a moment to gather his thoughts, to cast his mind back to that time. Kidd allowed it. He needed it to be as accurate as possible. He didn’t want to rush him.

  “I was a DC on the case,” Weaver started. “You know that now, I’m sorry I didn’t bring it up sooner I thought…well…I didn’t really think. The reason I didn’t chase you down the corridor to tell you all about it was because I thought you would go and talk to these people and find that there was no connection. I take it that isn’t the case?”

  Kidd shook his head. “We can’t be sure, of course, but it feels like it has a connection. I was already pretty sure after Oscar told us about it. If you’d have been there talking to him, boss, you would have thought so too. How many times in your career do you deal with severed body parts?”

  “Hopefully, just the once.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Right, right,” Weaver replied. “Well, I hoped we wouldn’t have to go into it like this but here we go. The Detective Inspector was a Dennis Wool. He was pretty old at this point, hadn’t gone for a promotion to DCI, was happy to stay a DI until his retirement, which came a couple of years later.”

  “So he isn’t still around?”

  “Not here, no,” Weaver replied. “The second he could get out of the job, he did a runner. I think it was all a bit too much for him.”

  “What was he like?” Kidd asked.

  Weaver sighed. “Domineering,” he said. “Harsh. Brutal even. Nothing like you Kidd, nothing like you at all.”

  “You flatter me, sir.”

  “Just what the rest of your team tells me,” Weaver replied. “But he was a bastard, a total bastard one hundred percent of the time. You tried to talk to him about anything, tried to have any sort of input into a case, he would shout you down, whether you were right or not. He had a way that he wanted things done, and it was his way or the highway.”