I continued, ‘But we don’t suspect there was anyone else involved. Karen Talbot is helping in any way she can. She is, as you can expect, utterly devastated by the turn of events and wants to put an end to all this as quickly as she can so she can move on with her life and that includes a move out of the area. She doesn’t want to be connected with the life her sons had so wants to be away from their contacts and associates. She will help all she can and give us access to what we need. This way we hope to find out if there are any more sleeper officers in the force, but we don’t expect so. It was pretty expensive to keep Lee on the books by taking care of his nan for him.’
‘She didn’t know about Nathan?’ asked Ross. His suspicious mind never letting up. There was probably some soreness at himself that he hadn’t been more suspicious of Lee working with him so closely.
‘She says not and from the grief and anger she displays, it appears to be the truth. What mother would know one child wanted to kill the other and not intervene? And Amelia didn’t pick up on it either, other than that Nathan was pretty rattled. She took that to be his nature.’
Catherine stepped forward, walked through the desks to the front of the room.
‘I want to thank you all for your hard work these past few weeks. I know how it must have hit you having worked with PC Cave and to find this out and then to have no recourse with him. But, remember, he was never one of you. He didn’t join and then get corrupted. He was never a police officer. Not where it matters.’ She patted her palm on the left of her chest. ‘In his heart.’
Wow, that was the most sentimental I’d ever seen or heard her. I looked around the office. She was connecting though, like I’d never seen her.
‘You come into work and you put yourselves through whatever the job dictates. You run towards the danger, you view the nasty and vile and disturbing and you come back the next day ready to do it all again and all you ask in return is the respect of your colleagues and your pay at the end of the month. You don’t even ask for the respect of the public. You do it anyway. I for one respect each and every one of you and I am grateful for every day you come in to work and put one foot in front of the other.’
Jesus. Had she been hit over the head?
‘Don’t let this bring you down. You’re a good team and I’m proud to work with you. To lead you. Push onwards, you’ve done well.’ And with that, she looked to me and gave the slightest nod.
‘Okay, guys, we’ve still got a lot of work to do. We have to tie it all together. We don’t want this to fall apart at court for Nathan. We want a solid file. We want to make sure paperwork is submitted and we need to stop visits with his associates to prevent any similar planning that occurred for Simon. This needs to be an airtight case. All forensics need to be submitted. Witness statements need taking and special care taken with them.’
I stepped away from the front, a sign that the briefing was over.
‘Pasha, can I have a word in my office please?’
Her eyes widened.
‘It’s okay, you’re not in trouble. Come on.’
She rose, looked worried, even though I’d attempted to reassure her. Once we were both in my office I closed the door, sat behind my desk and indicated for Pasha to take the seat in front. She did, perched on the edge of the chair as if she was ready for flight at the earliest opportunity.
‘Pasha, I want to thank you for your help with this investigation.’
‘I… I’m sorry?’
‘The tedious job I left you with when we went out to arrest Nathan Talbot, I know how dull it was and going out on the arrest would have interested you more and you must have felt as though I was punishing you for something – and maybe I was, I’m sorry. But the work you did, the conversation you had with Lee, we’d never have made the link. You made us query him. So, thank you.’
Pasha was twisting a ring on one of her fingers. ‘I did something wrong?’
How did I explain this to her?
Hannah
After I’d explained to Pasha that it wasn’t her, that I had problems after Sally’s death, but that she made an excellent addition to the team and I was glad she was here, I went in search of Evie and explained what had happened.
‘About time you owned that one,’ she said with more than enough I-told-you-so in her voice. Her office was immaculate and I had no idea how she knew where her files were if they weren’t easily to hand. There was nothing on her desk other than her desktop computer and a tray with some files in. The rest was bare. The rest of her work was pinned to the walls and corkboards and filed away in the filing cabinets that lined the room.
I sat in the spare chair. ‘We on for a stiff drink tonight? I think I’m in need of it.’
‘If you are, I am.’
‘Did you hear any more from that guy from the bar?’
‘Which guy?’
‘The bar, the night we went out after Talbot walked from court.’
‘That was a while back, Hannah. We went out, made out and that was the end of that.’
I laughed at her.
‘What?’ She flicked a curl out the way of her glasses.
‘I can’t keep up with you.’
‘Well, I shall update you this evening. Is it all wrapped up here?’
‘All bar the paperwork and some leg-work.’ I shrugged. ‘Which means there’s still a hell of a lot to do, but in as far as knowing who did what and why, then yes. We have to prove it all for CPS now.’
There was a single knock on the door and Aaron walked in. He didn’t look well. He had a sheen to him and he was red in the face.
‘You okay?’
‘Yeah, I was looking for you. Baxter wants a word, he wants to arrange a meeting with the CPS.’
‘Yeah, I’ll be right with you.’ I looked at him again. He was still holding his arm but he was leaning over now. I wasn’t sure he realised this.
‘Aaron?’ I stood.
‘I think I might… get my arm checked.’ His voice was strained. ‘…can’t drive. If someone…’
‘Yes. Right now.’ I moved towards the door. He didn’t look well. He was scaring me.
I heard Evie move behind me. As I got to Aaron he fell into the door frame. I grabbed hold of his right arm but his weight pulled him down. He grunted. A low guttural sound that came from deep within him.
‘Shit,’ from behind me and the click of a phone being picked up.
I couldn’t hold him up. I tried to slow his descent to the floor, stop him hurting himself more. His right arm clutched the centre of his chest now.
He was down. On the floor and he didn’t look well at all.
It didn’t take long for the ambulance crew to arrive. For the second time in two days I saw someone bundled onto a stretcher and rushed off to the hospital.
Suspected heart attack they’d said. He was pale and was clammy to the touch. They had used an ECG machine, the same way they had with Lee. I was more than useless. I didn’t know his medical history. I couldn’t even give them much about the run up to this incident because Aaron had kept most of it to himself. They asked me lots of questions. Questions I couldn’t answer. And all of a sudden, I knew what our witnesses must feel like. Or family members. When forced to stand by as the professionals march on with the task at hand regardless of the help or not that you can provide. And as soon as they saw the results from the ECG they had made a call to the cardiac unit to tell them to expect them. Aaron had had a heart attack and I didn’t know if I would lose my friend.
If you enjoyed Fighting Monsters but haven’t yet received your FREE copy of Three Weeks Dead which is the prequel to the series, then you can claim it HERE.
Acknowledgements
Fighting Monsters was not written in a vacuum. I have several people to thank for the fact that it has come together the way that it has.
As always, from the start of the series, I have to thank Denyse Kirkby for her continued support and advice in relation to Aaron and his Aspergers. This is something
I want to portray in a realistic fashion rather than have him as a ‘plot device’.
For information on severing tongues from the human body I have to thank pathologist, Dr Mark Stephens. Who knows what he thought as he answered my emails! To friend and paramedic Tracy Wardle for help with Aaron’s heart attack and paramedic actions on attending scenes. Neil White for a discussion on a legal technicality. And Angela Clarke and Jane Isaac for the support in reading early drafts of this and helping me to bang it in to some sort of shape.
And these past months wouldn’t have been the same without the friendship of my crime-writing friends. I also have to thank bloggers and my early readers because when a book goes out into the world, it is they who help give it the shove it needs.
And finally, but importantly, without the support of my family I would not be able to sit and write these books. So to those, I send love.
About the Author
Rebecca Bradley is a retired police detective who lives in Nottinghamshire with her family and two Cockapoo’s Alfie and Lola, who keep her company while she writes. She needs to drink copious amounts of tea to function throughout the day and if she could, she would survive on a diet of tea and cake.
If you enjoyed Fighting Monsters and would be happy to leave a review online that would be much appreciated, as word of mouth is often how other readers find new books.
DI Hannah Robbins will return later in the year, but in the meantime if you’re interested in meeting the team again and finding out how they got to where they are on the Major Crimes Unit, then you can read the prequel, Three Weeks Dead, a short novella where a young DC, Sally Poynter, has to get through to a desperate husband before he commits a crime that will have far-reaching consequences. You can view that HERE.
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Books in the series
Three Weeks Dead (Prequel novella)
Shallow Waters
Made to be Broken
Fighting Monsters
Other books
Dead Blind
The DI Hannah Robbins Series: Books 1 - 3 (Boxset) (Detective Hannah Robbins Crime Series) Page 69