Shallow Waters (Detective Hannah Robbins crime series Book 1)

by Rebecca Bradley

  “We’ll set it up for this evening. Considering the very high possibility there’s a child being held whose life is in danger, I can’t see the prison being difficult about it; we have a pretty good relationship with them.” He looked across at Rob. “Would you mind setting it up please, Rob? Three visitors for Howard.”

  “Three?” I queried. Interviews were usually set up with pairs of interviewers.

  “Yes. I believe the interview will run better and be more productive with two new interviewers, yourself and Aaron. I’ll be about if you need any information in relation to the Isabelle Thomas case.” He surprised me. My experience of police officers, not just in other force areas but in other units in our own force, was that they liked to keep a tight rein on their own investigations and someone else coming in resulted in some massive brick walls being built. Harris was another thing altogether. He wanted this girl found and he recognised the best way to do that was with Aaron and me going in. I didn’t think he’d messed up as much as he felt he had. They had the murderer of Isabelle Thomas locked up tight. I was grateful to have come across such a dedicated detective.

  “Thank you, Shaun. Let’s hope Howard talks before time runs out.” If it hasn’t already, I thought to myself.

  Prisons are always grim. They make me feel on edge. The level of security and suspicion on entry automates a guilty reflex in me. Dealing with offenders in a police station custody suite is one thing, but prisons are another thing altogether. Harris manoeuvred the car into a parking bay. I could feel Aaron’s natural calm behind me. I wasn’t sure if anything unnerved him. It was another reason I liked working with him so much.

  As we entered the building, the hairs on the back of my neck started to rise. The reception area was shielded behind thick glass and a uniformed member of staff eyed us over his oval shaped glasses. Harris informed him who we were and why we were there. After a couple of minutes, a prison intelligence officer came through the doorway, introduced himself as Alex Foster and led us through the doors. His keys and chain clinked as he walked.

  “It’s a late one for you today then,” he stated. The doors locked behind us.

  “It’s one of those days,” Harris replied as we waited for the next set to unlock.

  “You know the drill. All property in the trays and lockers. Only paper and pens allowed through.” This guy enjoyed his job too much I mused as I emptied my pockets. Once our property was secured we were wanded and told to sit in the boss chair. You have to love a chair whose sole purpose is to see if you have items secreted inside your body cavities. It’s a plastic moulded chair, high backed with arms, that acts as a metal detector. It lets staff know if you’ve inserted anything metal inside your anus or vagina.

  Once all the security protocols had been passed, Foster showed Aaron and me into a single interview room and Harris into the communal interview room where he would wait until we might need him.

  I’m not sure what I expected when I met Howard but he caught me off guard. Benn was a permanent loser, the type of person I’ve come across on a daily basis since I first joined the job. Howard, however, looked previously well groomed and cared for, though it was obvious time inside, albeit short, had had its effect. A significant weight loss was evident around his neckline as the T-shirt he wore hung loose around him. He had a decent haircut which was now growing out and was curling around the bottom of his ears; his nails were clean and not bitten down to the quick. They looked neater than mine and I pushed my hands into my pockets. Howard’s stubble seemed to be something he was not used to as he continually rubbed at it with one hand. He looked, to all intents and purposes, to be a white collar worker, in here for a crime of the financial kind rather than the horrific abuse and murder of a child.

  My own surprise was reflected back at me as he looked at us. I imagined he would be used to being interviewed by the local team who arrested him and then probation officers and those inside the prison, but he obviously hadn’t expected to see anyone different, especially at this time of the evening, long after visitors were allowed in.

  “DI Hannah Robbins.” I held out my hand as I introduced myself. “And this is DS Aaron Stone.” Aaron kept his hands in his pockets but nodded his greeting. A puzzled look crossed Howard’s face and I could see the informality and first name terms were causing confusion. In here, he would be used to disdain and disgust on a daily basis and would be expected to call the prison officers either miss or sir. For someone to enter this environment, use first name terms and shake his hand would be disconcerting. It was meant to be.

  75

  The interview went at a steady pace and every word was being recorded. Howard was unsure of us and it took some time to settle him and put him at ease. He couldn’t keep still on his chair, crossing and uncrossing his legs. He made the same admissions to us that he had made to Harris’s team. He took Isabelle to a lock-up he owned and raped and murdered her there. The crime scene techs had confirmed evidence of this.

  “Where did you meet Isabelle?” I asked.

  Howard’s eyes widened. “Erm… I… I... met her in a park.”

  “You met her in the park. How did you strike up a conversation with her?” I could feel the tension rise and knew this was the same scenario Benn had described. This was part of a bigger picture. We were about to break into a well organised ring. If we could get Howard to talk.

  “I… erm… she, we talked. I liked her. We connected. You know. You know all this. You know what happened. Why are you going over it again?” The tone of his voice rose.

  “We need to know how it happened, Karl, not just what happened. How did she get to your lock-up?”

  “She liked me. She wanted to keep talking. It happened.” He gulped down the water in front of him. His hands shook so much I was surprised any of it made it into his mouth.

  “I don’t believe you, Karl. We know it didn’t happen like that. Tell me what happened.” I looked at him. I could practically see his nerves fraying. He twitched in his seat again.

  “I told you how it was. I told you already. Please.”

  Aaron looked up from the notes he was taking. “Tell us about the online meetings and how the arrangements were made.”

  Shock registered on his face. He’d got this far without much in the way of questioning about the abduction. A simple explanation had been taken at face value. Being confronted with the reality someone else had been involved and he wasn’t in this alone seemed to shake his already fragile demeanour. Howard crumbled in front of us. He wept as he told us of the online meetings. Of the arrangements to provide a child with the condition that everything was recorded and shared with the group. What we previously didn’t know was that money was exchanged. Howard paid to do the things he did. Sadistic sexual gratification at a price. He told us he couldn’t control himself and it was a need deep within him. As much a part of him as being heterosexual or homosexual was to those who were born that way. We listened to the excuses and weepings of a depraved man who paid for and murdered a child for his own selfish ends. I was seething inside. Moments of silence came and went while I gritted my teeth before going forward with the interview. Aaron’s analytical mind worked wonders, running rings around Howard. Finally he gave us the email address of the person in charge of the whole group. The main man who organised the sale of children and demanded photographs and video evidence of the violent sexual acts committed against young children. The email address didn’t consist of a name, it was a random phrase made with an attempt to keep his identity secret. Shallow waters. Howard didn’t know who the man was. The arrangement had been the same as Benn described. A meeting in a quiet place where the girl was handed over from the boot of a car. It was dark. Howard was more interested in the girl, his excitement and thrill of the situation blinkered his attention to his surroundings. All he remembered was a saloon shaped car, dark in colour and a man in a baseball cap, wearing jeans and trainers handing him the child. That was it. As nondescript as that. A baseball cap, jeans and
trainer-wearing driver of a dark coloured saloon.

  My pleasant demeanour ebbed and all that was left was a empty void. The room seemed to shrink and the pitiful face of Karl Howard filled my vision. He repulsed me. We left him rubbing his chin with a dejected look. There was no shaking of hands or words of thanks. I steered Aaron towards the door as his usual calm looked in danger of being lost when he took a step towards Howard with his fist clenched by his side as Howard apologised to us again. It had been another long day and I could see Aaron’s five o’clock shadow starting to form. We were a step closer to the girl in the image but I didn’t know if it was enough.

  76

  It was dark and late when we returned to the station, the wind picking up dead leaves from the ground, scattering them about with force. No matter the lateness of the hour, we still had work to do. We had to work as though this girl was, as far as we were concerned, still alive. Knocking off before that work was done wasn’t an option. Harris parked the car and didn’t move. I turned in my seat to look at him.

  “Shaun?”

  Aaron sat in the rear, silent.

  “I’m sorry we didn’t pick this up earlier. We could have saved you a lot of trouble and a lot of time. I have no excuses. We will do all we can to help. Our resources are your resources.”

  While I appreciated the sentiment, he couldn’t just hand over his force resources like that, but his team could give us a dig out while we were here. “You couldn’t have known it would turn out like this.” I tried to relieve some of his guilt. The rear door opened and I heard Aaron climb out.

  “Really, Shaun, give us what you can now and we will find her. Nothing is final.” There was silence for a moment. I didn’t want to break it. I knew how I would feel if this had happened on my area.

  Harris sighed. “Okay then, let’s get on with this. Identify the account user?”

  “Absolutely.”

  I love police stations when it’s late. There is a quiet lull. The nine to fivers have all gone home. The only people left in the building were the custody staff, the night shift uniformed cops and the odd late-nighters like ourselves. The automatic ecological lighting had the place in near darkness. There were lights on at the far side of the building, where I imagined someone on nights would be filling in paperwork. We walked to the major incident room, the lights in the hallway illuminating our path as we moved. The quiet around us broken only by our own footfalls and the clicking sound of lights switching on as we walked.

  I pushed on the doors of the incident room and watched it light up like a silent fairground. Harris walked to his desk and switched on his computer terminal. Aaron turned around and walked out of the room without comment. At times I couldn’t read him and this was one of those times. His words were often quick and factual, but his silences were like gaping chasms. It was better to leave him. No matter what was happening inside his head, he would always work through it and I could rely on him.

  I turned my attention back to Harris, who was now loading the documentation we needed to obtain details of an email registrant. It was a long-winded, bureaucratic pain in the arse to complete, but Harris tapped his way through it diligently, considering things like this are usually completed by a constable rather than the inspector of the unit. Once the required details were in he submitted the document and made a call to the control room inspector so that the request would get immediate attention. It was marked ‘urgent life at risk’, but turnaround still couldn’t be quantified. I thanked Harris and found Aaron on his phone in the hallway. He hung up his call on seeing me.

  “We done for the day?”

  I nodded. “We’re done.”

  77

  Sally lay awake, Tom snoring at her side. It made her ability to think all the more difficult. He slept soundly. How she envied him that. The streetlights illuminated enough to make out his profile, the softness that came with sleep, the man she had promised her life to and who had promised his in return. She raised her hand to touch his cheek but stopped short. Her fingers hovered over the shadow on his chin, feeling his breath with each exhale. Warm and strong. Then let it rest on the pillow at the side of his face and watched him.

  Her deception of Tom, friends and colleagues was wearing, but on top of that she worried about the longer term issues the pregnancy brought and those fears were carried alone, in the night, when darkness fell, that it all became too much. There was a thin line when withholding the information from the organisation. The contents of the health and safety policy form for pregnant officers had sent her spiralling into a panic. So much change and so much to consider. Could she continue with full time work and stay in the unit? How would her life change and what would this pregnancy do to her? The enormity of what was happening to her physically and to her relationships scared her. The future was now completely mapped out. There would be no more spontaneity, working over as much as needed, boozy nights, late mornings or random episodes of sex around the house when the mood took both her and Tom.

  There were massive changes occurring in her body, even at this very point in time. Though it wasn’t visible, the baby was growing and her body was accommodating it. Tom would fuss and make more of an issue of the work thing, wanting to know what Hannah had said about the impending happy event.

  She felt far from happy. Hormones raged around her body, taking control, leaving her with none and her mood in the gutter. Would she love this little being growing inside her? It was a part of her, after all. A child she was keeping warm and safe becoming a perfect little human.

  Her mind was drawn to the girl on the mortuary table. Rosie Green. The image of the girl in the cage. She couldn’t give up on the investigation while she was still out there. Everyone was working this case hard and she was not going to be the exception.

  78

  The email address results would take some time and I worried it was time we didn’t have. The first girl we were visiting was Samantha Bryant, a friend of Isabelle Thomas. We knocked early so we could catch her before school. Her mum was anxious throughout the interview. She sat on the very edge of the sofa checking every couple of minutes with Samantha that she was okay, rubbing her knee constantly as though the very act of contact would secure Samantha from a world we now wanted to ask her about. Every time her mum asked, Samantha confirmed she was fine.

  After several minutes of reassuring her mum, she told us of the drinking sessions she would engage in with her friends. She spoke to the floor, directly at the dirty grey trainers she wore. She talked about how they would get together and drink anything they could get their hands on. She then went on to tell us about Jesse. Jesse was wonderful.

  “He took care of us you see. He stopped us getting into trouble. Looked out for us. If Mr Timmins in the shop got annoyed with us, Jesse would walk us somewhere else, make sure we didn’t get into trouble. He was a good guy.”

  Mrs Bryant looked hard at her daughter, hearing for the first time, I suspected, about just how bad things had got with her youngest child. Samantha, for her part, kept her eyes focussed on her shoes.

  “How old was Jesse, Samantha?” I asked.

  “It’s Sam.”

  “Okay, sorry, Sam. How old was he?” I could see how difficult this was for her, not just our interest in her lost friend, but upsetting her mum. I kept my voice low and casual, not letting on how potentially critical her information was.

  “He said he was twenty-one.” Her head flicked up from its downward stance, eyeing me. “But he was cool, you know. Didn’t seem old.” Mrs Bryant’s lips parted. She wanted to say something, to chide her daughter for her stupidity. She looked at me before she said what was on her mind; I shook my head. Samantha would clam up if she felt upset, anger or criticism from her mum.

  “What was his last name, Sam?” Aaron asked.

  “Erm, Davids. Jesse Davids. He had a flat somewhere and a car. We thought it was so cool that he had a car. And he didn’t look twenty-one.”

  I felt an excitement beginning. We h
ad a name, something to go on. But he was only twenty-one. Was he capable of setting up arrangements of this size and complexity? He had a car and he had access to girls. One of the murdered girls in particular. We were closing in. I could feel it.

  “We were jealous.” Tears filled Samantha’s eyes.

  “Jealous?”

  “Yeah, Jesse chose Isabelle and we were jealous of her.”

  “What do you mean, he chose her?”

  “The last night we saw her he gave her a gift, a chain. It was pretty. Then they left. I was jealous.” Her eyes filled as the pain came through. Mrs Bryant softened and she leaned in towards her daughter, wrapping a protective arm around her that said, It’s okay, I’m here, you’re safe, you’re okay. Oh god I’m so glad you’re okay. Samantha collapsed into her mum and we left them to their grief and relief.

  79

  It didn’t take long to come up with an address for Jesse Davids. He was recorded on our systems with a string of petty theft offences to his name.

  “How does an offender go from theft to child abduction, rape and murder?” I asked the open office.

  Harris rubbed his face. “I don’t know. It’s a big leap. Maybe he’s not in it alone. We seem to be up against that a lot.”

  “I agree. What’s he doing with them once he has them then?”

  “He’s taking the girls directly off the street after building some sort of relationship with them. That takes time. And he’s taking them away from close friends without anyone batting an eye. That takes trust. He’s putting a lot of effort into this, so he has to be getting something out of it. I’d imagine he’s getting a lot out of it. When he was stealing, it was to feed whatever habit he needed money for, but there’s a lot more risk with the girls, so the pay-off has to be considerably higher.” Aaron analysed the situation out loud and it made a lot of sense.