‘I guess that’s fair, isn’t it?’ Taylor ventured, sounding not at all convinced. ‘I mean, it’s them or us, right?’ He looked at Lexie expectantly.
‘Let’s just hurry the fuck up, shall we?’ she said, already turning to start closing the gap on their rapidly escaping mark.
Chapter Six
Chris walked without urgency, his resentment at having to return late from work balanced out by fear of the atmosphere he would encounter at home. The feeling of being caught between a rock and a hard place was a familiar one, not only did he no longer believe himself to be a good husband but nor could he find consolation in being accepted by his colleagues as one of the lads. It may only have been a twenty-minute train ride back to St. Albans but he could already feel the alcohol starting to wear off; the mild buzz he had felt in the pub being replaced by a headache. This was a feeling Chris had become accustomed to since starting his new job a few months ago.
When interviewed for the position in the start-up tech company, with offices close to the Shard, he had lied his way through questions about his feelings towards team bonding exercises, and focused purely on the significant hike in salary he could look forward to if successful. In the beginning he hadn’t minded being dragged to various London hot-spots, but whilst his colleagues’ enthusiasm for lager hadn’t waned, their willingness to venture beyond a two-hundred-yard radius of their place of work had. Increasingly Chris’ early evenings had been spent waiting for an opportune moment to make his excuses and leave, with the nature of their inevitable cries to stay for one more allowing him to gauge how well judged his timing had been.
It was okay for them; they might only be between five and ten years his junior but they seemed content to spend the bulk of their salary on renting expensive apartments in the heart of the city, with the remainder poured down their throats. But Chris had responsibilities, not least the wife who would be at home waiting for him to return. He had been irked by her resentment at the frequent late nights but that had long since been replaced by something far worse – indifference.
Chris turned into his driveway only ten minutes after exiting the station. The first thing he did was look up at the front bedroom window. The light wasn’t on, which meant one of two possibilities. Either his wife was still downstairs watching TV, or she had already turned in for an early night. He prayed it was the latter. With his headache having now firmly set in, he just wanted a few minutes to unwind in peace before setting off to bed himself. He would have an indication of what the atmosphere was going to be like in the morning based on whether she had chosen to leave him out anything to eat.
Chris waited until the security light flicked on before reaching into his pocket for his house keys. As his hand fumbled past the packet of mints he had started carrying in an effort to mask the alcohol on his breath, he vowed that this would be the last night he would be doing this. For all his resentment at having a wife who failed to appreciate the difficult situation he was in, Chris knew that there was little point having a fancy job and decent salary if his home life was as miserable as this. As soon as he got into work tomorrow, he would tell his colleagues that he would continue to give his all during office hours but the evenings were his to do with as he pleased.
Slipping the key into the lock, Chris now hoped that his wife was still up. Perhaps he would even wake her if she wasn’t. More than anything, he needed her to know that he was sorry and he was going to make things right.
‘Excuse me?’ enquired a voice from behind, causing Chris to spin around in surprise. He had only begun to put the girl’s smiling face to the voice when he realised that she was not alone. But that was all his mind had time for, such was the speed of their approach, and the next thing he knew he was being bundled through his front door and pushed onto the wood flooring of the entrance hall.
‘Are you alone?’ demanded a thickset youth who stood over him, his face silhouetted by the ceiling light above him.
Chris was too stunned to say anything, much less think of an appropriate response. It was only when he saw two others push past his interrogator and could hear the footsteps of one on the stairs that he fully understood what was happening. He opened up his mouth to shout his wife’s name; to provide some kind of warning, no matter how little time it would give her.
But before he could get a sound out, the bigger guy had brought the rounders bat crashing down onto his skull.
Chapter Seven
‘Come on, Cooper, I thought you said it could wait!’ Ruby said as soon as she accepted the call, using the button on her car’s steering wheel.
‘Yeah, about that…’ Cooper relied, his tone a mixture of awkwardness and excitement. ‘I think we might have a development in our case.’
‘Has someone handed themselves in?’ Ruby asked, more in hope than expectation. She was well-accustomed to investigations being far more complex than they first appeared.
‘Not exactly, it looks like they may have struck again.’
‘Oh, I guess I won’t be going back to Hemel then,’ Ruby commented, searching for a side road in which to turn around her car.
‘Are you sure about this, what with you still meant to be on holiday and everything?’
‘Nah, it’s fine,’ Ruby replied, finding some small comfort in the fact that she hadn’t been spending a nice evening with Danny. ‘What have you got so far?’
‘Details are thin at this stage but I’m only just around the corner, so should have the lowdown by the time you get here.’
‘Be there in fifteen,’ she said before hanging up the call.
One of the ways in which Ruby had sought to console herself that she was leaving the excitement of London, where she had spent her short career in uniform in a shared house with some of her colleagues, was by purchasing a brand new car to accompany her on her return to her childhood home. But much as she still loved the gleaming red VW Up! GTI, and hadn’t grown tired of its peppy performance on her commute in to St. Albans each day, she did feel a little self-conscious at times like these when she was turning up at a crime scene in it. Aside from the panda cars which usually were the first to attend, all the other vehicles were anonymous saloons in bland hues. Not that anyone had said anything, but she couldn’t help but think it did nothing for her efforts to disguise the fact she was easily the youngest in the team.
As if to confirm her fears, DC Cooper, a man fifteen years her senior, was resting against the bonnet of his silver Vauxhall Insignia as she pulled up.
‘What took you so long? I thought that thing was meant to be fast?’ he teased as soon as she opened her door.
‘Couldn’t you have called me before I was just about to park up at home?’
‘Whatever. Look, I’ve just stepped outside to give Forensics some room but it has all the hallmarks of our guys. The man was attacked in the hallway. Blunt trauma. Lucky to still be alive by all accounts’
‘Please don’t say there were kids,’ Ruby whispered, looking up at the large property.
‘No, thank God, but there is a wife. The neighbours thought they heard screaming and called it through.’
‘Did they see anything?’ Ruby asked, feeling a rush of excitement despite the horror of what they were attending.
‘Uniform is with them now but from what I overheard they were concerned enough to call the police but not enough to bother looking out their window.’
Ruby sometimes found Cooper’s cynicism irritating but, if what he was saying was true, she couldn’t disagree with the sentiment. ‘What was the response time?’
‘Under five minutes I’m told.’
‘Shit, they know what they’re doing then. Any idea what’s missing?’
‘Not yet, but by the looks of things they were once again just going for jewellery, hand-held devices; that sort of thing. They’re not afraid of roughing up their victims either, are they?’
Ruby was well used to robbery but the level of intimidation and violence with this gang sent a shiver up her s
pine. ‘I guess I’d better see for myself,’ she said reluctantly.
They walked up the drive with the pulsing blue lights from the squad cars giving the property a foreboding look. ‘There was plenty of space for you to wait in there with Forensics,’ Ruby said as they approached the front door. Her statement didn’t receive a response, but it didn’t need to. In the short time they had worked together she knew Cooper was surprised by how tough she was, and yet was grateful he hadn’t left her to enter the house without prior warning of what she would find.
Aside from a scuff on the wall, the provenance of which was unclear, there was nothing to even hint at the full extent of what had gone on. ‘The attending officers noticed his right sleeve rolled up, with a tan line for where his watch would have been worn,’ Cooper said. ‘It’s less pretty up there,’ he added as Ruby took to the stairs.
Taking a few deep breaths to compose herself, she knew the direction to travel as soon as she reached the landing, such was the power of the artificial lights the forensic team had erected in one of the bedrooms.
What she found in there was worse than she had expected. The splashes of blood may have been confined to one corner, but they were vivid enough to make her wonder what had happened to the world. Her only hesitation at accepting her first detective position in St. Albans was that the place would feel tame after inner-city London, but her experience so far had been anything but sedate. Perhaps pockets of depravity had existed when she had grown up in the area and she had been shielded from it, but that didn’t lessen the impact of seeing such acts of brutal violence in quiet residential districts.
It was whilst staring at where the wife must have slumped, Ruby realised she hadn’t even stopped to find out the names of the victims.
A shout from downstairs alerted her to the arrival of DCI Nelson. As much as Ruby wasn’t looking forward to the inevitable pressure he would place on her and Cooper to find the people responsible, as though they hadn’t been trying hard enough after the first incident, she welcomed the excuse to step outside and take some fresh air.
‘It’s them, is it?’ Nelson said by way of greeting as they exited onto the driveway.
‘There are some differences but, yes, we believe so, guv,’ she replied.
‘Holy shit! We’re only a couple of streets away from the last victim,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘How many does that make now? I’m not sure whether I’m going to be able to keep the link out of the press.’
Ruby had initially found Nelson very different to the affable man who had interviewed her, and a primary source of her irritation had been how he always seemed concerned by how things looked to the outside. She was still trying to convince herself that it probably went with the territory when you were higher up the chain of command and that, deep down, he was largely a good guy.
‘Until we establish how they are picking their targets and what mode of transport they are using, I guess there won’t be much for the papers to go on,’ Cooper said.
‘Hmmm,’ was all they received as a response, but Ruby could see the accusation in her boss’ eyes.
Chapter Eight
Kate had still been sat up when she heard the faint sound of the key slipping into the lock. She could feel the dump of adrenaline in her system but knew it wasn’t there to stir her into action; it was fear. Just as she knew what he had been doing that evening, so too she now understood what his reaction would be if she just came out and accused him of his infidelity. He would instantly deny it, and then somehow twist it back on her, using it as an excuse to storm off. He would then meticulously erase any evidence of his actions, starting with his mobile phone.
Silently sliding down the bed and turning over, ready to feign sleep, Kate ignored her mind’s claim that it was purely cowardice making her not face up to the reality of the situation. She silenced the voice, with the promise that she would find a way of getting hold of his phone in the morning and obtaining the evidence she required to combat any protestations of innocence. The delay would be worth it, and she was looking forward to seeing the reaction on his face when he realised that he had been caught red-handed.
Hearing his footsteps on the stairs, Kate allowed herself one last smile before she concentrated on controlling her breathing. If he did not think she was asleep she wasn’t sure she would be able to control her excitement at the anticipation of finally gaining the upper hand on her shit of a husband.
Kate hadn’t bothered to set an alarm for the next morning, believing her anxiety would rob her of much of the sleep she needed. Therefore it came as a surprise to her when she awoke to the sound of her husband turning on the shower in the en-suite. Knowing that this might be the opportunity, she waited until she could hear the water splashing on him; trying to ignore her brain’s attempts to remind her what it was he would be washing away. Ironically it was his insistence on taking a shower on his late-night returns that had first alerted Kate to the possibility he was having an affair. More recently he had mostly dispensed with this last shred of decency; bringing the smell of her into their marital bed.
And this wasn’t the only way Scott was making little effort to cover his tracks. Intermingled with the alien perfume smell she was forced to inhale, as he lay snoring next to her last night, had been the unmistakable bitter tang of red wine. Kate felt that, at the very least, he might have insisted on drinking beer whilst he and his mistress lay intertwined on her soiled sheets, as they waited until he was able to get it up again; that way adding some credence to his story that he had been at the pub watching the football.
At least Scott’s attempts to kiss her goodnight had ended with the nocturnal washing; but that might have been more about him no longer wanting any physical contact with his wife than him appreciating how discourteous it would be given where his mouth had just been.
‘Shit,’ Kate murmured venomously, hearing him step out of the shower and understanding she had missed her chance to reach over to his bedside table and check his phone.
‘Come on, hun, I thought you said you had a big day today,’ Scott said, striding into the bedroom with just a towel wrapped around him a few moments later.
‘Meeting’s not until 10am,’ she said, turning over in the hope that he would take it as an end to their conversation.
‘Well, it just so happens that I’m not needed in work until a bit later today either, so if you’re lucky we might still be able to catch the train together.’ Kate didn’t feel in the slightest bit fortunate, especially now she was going to have to think of an excuse to tell her boss as to why she wasn’t in on time.
But as it turned out, that was the least of her worries.
‘Say,’ Scott continued theatrically, and Kate could hear the appalling sound of his towel dropping to the carpet. ‘Why don’t I join you and we can have a lie-in together?’
Chapter Nine
In the early hours of the morning even DCI Nelson had admitted that they should call it a day and reconvene after they had all got some sleep. By the time Ruby had travelled back to Hemel, it was only three hours until she would need to get up again, but she could take comfort from the fact that everyone else working on the case was likely to feel as tired as she did.
Waking up after so little rest, Ruby was certain she felt more tired now than when going to bed. Resisting the temptation to indulge in her usual exhaustion cure of a trip to the McDonald’s drive-thru proved hard she decided that a call to Danny may prove just as nourishing. ‘Morning, sweetheart, I was hoping to catch you before you arrived at work.’
‘Me too,’ Danny’s voice said through the car’s speakers. ‘I’m sorry you had to go back to your parents last night.’
‘I kind of got waylaid on the way over,’ Ruby responded with a laugh that contained only a hint of bitterness. ‘I ended up spending a couple of hours at a crime scene.’
‘Bad was it?’ This was as close as Danny ever got to asking her the details of an investigation, something she had appreciated in the beginning bu
t was surprised hadn’t changed after the events of her first few weeks.
‘Well, it’s rarely good is it?’ she replied, hoping that she had kept enough lightness in her tone. ‘Look, I suspect it’s going to be a long day and I was going to ask—’
‘You don’t have to ask,’ came the instant interruption. ‘You know that you’re welcome around any time. Just give me an indication of when you’re likely to get here and I’ll make sure I have some supper ready for when you arrive.’
‘Ah, thanks babe.’
‘No problem. Look, I’m almost at the office now so I’d better get going. You have yourself a good day, okay?’
‘You too, hun,’ Ruby replied, pressing the switch on the steering wheel to end the call. Speaking to Danny hadn’t made her feel any less tired but at least she had something to look forward to once work was finished. She just hoped she would be able to stay awake long enough to repay the favour once they’d eaten.
‘You never know, perhaps we’ll be celebrating,’ she whispered to herself – the sight of the cathedral in the distance indicating she wasn’t too far from the station. The only thing she could think of more satisfying now than a few more hours’ sleep would be toasting the capture of those robbing bastards whilst cuddled up on Danny’s sofa.
* * *
‘Hold up, will you?’ she called out of her window as she drove into the secure car park. Cooper was in the process of stubbing out his cigarette and about to gain access to the building.
‘Oh sorry, Rubes,’ he replied, using the nickname she had hated since primary school. ‘I didn’t notice you there, which is surprising considering…’
‘Yeah, yeah, just because you wouldn’t see which way I went if you tried to race me in that rep-mobile of yours.’ She suspected that she wasn’t the only one forcing the humour but she had learned that banter was the coping mechanism most of CID employed to try and not get dragged down by the reality of what they were investigating.
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