by GS Rhodes
It wasn’t the kind of welcome that inspired two police officers to walk into someone's house, but nevertheless, Janya and Owen followed her down the hallway and to the pokey little kitchen at the end. Doors lined the corridor, again giving the impression that this was more of a hotel or an apartment block than it was a fully functioning house.
“Brody Wade,” Tally said as she took a seat at the kitchen table, crossing one long leg over the other. She looked thoughtful. “That’s Eric’s son, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Janya said, taking a seat across from her. “He went missing almost a week ago. Another team has been investigating but there was a disappearance not too far from here and we were wondering if there was a connection.”
Tally looked at her expectantly. “And is there?”
Janya cleared her throat. “That’s what we’re trying to find out.” Good grief, she was hard work.
“We were pointed in your direction by one of our victims,” Owen said, opting to stay standing. “She thought you might know something.”
“About Brody going missing?” Tally looked confused. “I heard that he had gone missing on the news,” she said. “I tried to call Eric to tell him that I was sorry it had happened, that he must have been devastated, but he’s not been answering his phone. He was one of my favourite clients.”
“Clients?” Owen repeated.
Tally blinked.
“Associates,” she said quickly. “Friends,” she added. “We had a lot of fun together. We’d been seeing each other for a little while. He needed a bit of time away from his wife, from his family and…” She shrugged. “That’s what I’m here to provide.”
It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that Tally Hill was a call girl. The pieces suddenly seemed to fall into place as to why the house looked the way it did. It was a brothel, clearly. Though obviously not something that they would tell police officers about.
The relationship between sex workers and police was a turbulent one to say the least. Campbell couldn’t be sure, of course, but using the word ‘client’ was something of a giveaway. He wondered how many of them lived or worked here. He wondered who he would find sitting behind that desk on any given day.
“So you’re here because you think I’ve got information?” Tally asked, tilting her head to one side. Her red hair fell over her face, she brushed it away with a hand. “Sorry, you’re out of luck.”
“One of our victims seemed pretty convinced that you would have some information,” Janya said. “We’re just checking in. Is there anything at all you can tell us?”
Tally eyed them both carefully before she started nodding.
“I see what this is,” she said, that soft exterior hardening so quickly it caught Campbell by surprise. “You’ve been sent here by Eric’s wife, huh? I get it. She comes round here and threatens me, tells me to stay away from her husband or else. That’s right, basically threatening my life, and suddenly I’ve snatched her little boy?” She scoffed and shook her head. “I’m a business woman, I have a life, I have better things to do with my time than plot revenge on some poor woman who can’t keep her husband happy.”
“We’re not accusing you of anything,” Campbell said. “We’re following up on—”
“Yes, yes, yes, following up on a lead, sure,” Tally spat. “I’m doing nothing wrong here. I am living my life, I am taking opportunities that come my way, but believe me when I say that those opportunities do not include taking children away from their mothers. I don’t have time for it, I don’t have any interest in it, and I certainly don’t appreciate being accused of it.” She sat back in her chair, locking eyes with both of them in turn.
“I’m sorry to press you on this,” Campbell said. “And I promise you we are not trying to cause you any more distress. But we need an alibi from you.”
Tally sighed, rolling her eyes. “For when?”
Janya flicked through her notebook.
“Saturday afternoon.”
She smiled. “I was with Eric. He can confirm it too, if you bother to question him about any of this, but I have text messages from him arranging it, I have bank transactions from the money he sent me.”
“Well then, we won’t take up any more of your time,” Janya said, moving to get to her feet.
“Look, I know there are some sick people out there, and I know you’re just doing your jobs or whatever,” she said. “But if you don’t believe me, you can search the place, top to bottom. Get yourselves a warrant, get those weirdos in hazmat suits who like dusting for prints or whatever CSI shit they do, and crack on. But you won’t find him here.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Kidd and Zoe left Daniel Walters’ place of employment in silence, taking an immediate right turn away from the building to head into the parking garage where they waited. Kidd checked his watch.
“It’s not even been five minutes yet, you’re paranoid,” Zoe said, nudging his side where they stood. A couple of people had walked in, paid for their parking, driven off. Kidd wondered if she’d had second thoughts.
“There are other floors in here,” he said. “She wouldn’t have—”
“If she’s coming, let’s at least give her the full ten minutes, Ben, Jesus,” she replied. “What do you think it’s going to be?”
Kidd shrugged.
“If she’s not willing to say it in that office then it has to be something big, right?”
Zoe nodded and the two went back to waiting in silence. The ten minutes quickly moved to fifteen, and then to thirty before Louise appeared in the doorway to the ground floor of the parking garage. She’d put her coat on and had her bag. She didn’t look like she was going to go back into the office after this.
“Everything okay?” Kidd asked.
“Sorry it took so long,” she said. “I needed to…I don’t know, I felt like I had to make an excuse to come out again.” She looked a little sheepish. “I didn’t want to say anything in the office. They’re very big on loyalty there and…I don’t know…if I said something negative about Daniel, I thought I might get in trouble for it.”
That piqued Kidd’s attention. He had known that there would be something. From him not being able to come to the phone to him not being in the places that he was supposed to be, there was something more to him.
“The reason that he wasn’t at any of the places I’d put yesterday is because…he wasn’t,” she started. Kidd knew that much already, but he was hanging on her every word. “He…he’s not the best boss in the world. He’s pushy and aggressive and if he doesn’t get his way, he gets very violent. He’s never done anything to hurt me,” she said quickly, Kidd and Zoe’s faces giving away their concern. “He just gets very frustrated. And if he found out that I was telling you this then I would be in big trouble.”
“We won’t tell anybody that you told us, Louise,” Zoe said quietly. “But if he wasn’t in the office yesterday, or today for that matter, where was he?”
Louise took a deep breath. She looked out of the door, back towards her office, appearing to check that she hadn’t been followed. Though this was a serious police matter, Kidd could tell that she was enjoying this a little bit.
“I had booked him into a hotel,” she said. “There’s a Holiday Inn at the other end of Kingston, pretty cheap, pretty out of the way, not really much of a chance that anyone who knew him would see him there. There’s a cafe downstairs as well, so if it came to it, he could have lied about meeting someone in there. Less suspicious.”
“And why was he at a hotel?”
“He was meeting someone,” she said, hesitantly, looking around again. Either she was over-egging it a little bit or working at that place really did make her nervous. “He was meeting a woman. Her name is Leigh Cremer, he met her at some business thing a while back, they have been…sleeping with one another for the best part of a year now.”
Given what Kidd had been told by Vicky about the way Daniel had acted around her and Rachel’s friends, it was
n’t altogether surprising, but it didn’t make it an easier pill to swallow. So while his daughter was being kidnapped, while his wife was losing her mind over not knowing where their daughter was, he was shacked up in a Holiday Inn with his mistress. What the hell was wrong with men?
“Is there anything else you can tell us?” Kidd asked. “You say it’s been happening for a year, is that where he’s been whenever he’s been out of the office?”
Louise nodded.
“They meet with each other a few times a week,” she said. “I don’t know what Leigh does, she doesn’t have an assistant. Sometimes she’ll call to make the arrangements, but usually it’s a message from Daniel. But I book them into the hotel under my name, and they…go there while I fill up his calendar with meaningless meetings. He then comes back to the office like nothing has happened and carries on with his life. I don’t ask questions I’m…I’m not paid to ask questions. That’s what he said when I…” she trailed off. “It’s not important.”
Kidd eyed her carefully. He had a feeling that it would be important, or that it was but he didn’t want to press her on it just now. He might need to at a later date.
“And this is on company money?”
Louise shook her head.
“Not company money, just company time,” she said. “He has a different bank account that the money goes out from, one that he doesn’t share with his wife. But no one in the office knows about it, or if they do, they pretend not to know and…it’s a cliquey office. Stuff like this would get out and it could be damaging for the company and…” She took a breath, steadying herself. One last look over her shoulder. Kidd felt like she was really about to let rip. “Look, I don’t love working here. It’s shit, I hate it. The pay is awful and they treat me terribly, I’m always on the lookout for side hustles I can do to get by, you know? I was a bloody Deliveroo driver for two months before my bike got nicked. But I need this job. That’s why I couldn’t tell you in there, I hope that’s okay?”
“It’s fine,” he said. “I understand. I hate to ask you this, but do you know where he is right now?” he asked.
She nodded.
“He’s at that Holiday Inn,” she said. “He asked me to book it for him yesterday, so I did. He messaged me to confirm the booking earlier this afternoon.”
So he missed the press conference, the one appealing for the safe return of his daughter, because he was off shacking up with his mistress. Kidd’s blood boiled, but he tried to keep his cool in front of Louise. She seemed pretty skittish, and they might need her further down the line, the last thing he wanted to do was scare her off.
“Thank you, Louise,” he said, fishing into his pocket and pulling out his card. “If you think of anything else, you give us a call okay?”
“I don’t think he did it,” she said, taking the card from Kidd and putting it into her handbag. Another cautious look around.
Zoe eyed her carefully. “You don’t?”
Louise shook her head. “He loves Maggie,” she said. “He talks about her a lot, has pictures of her all over his office, more than he has of his wife anyway. I don’t think he would do anything to hurt her.”
Kidd wanted to tell her that the way he was behaving, the fact that when Rachel needed him most he was off with another woman, and how he wasn’t there during the press conference was hurting Maggie. But he didn’t want to lay that on her. It was Daniel Walters who needed to feel that guilt and Kidd was going to make sure he felt it.
“Thank you for all of your help,” he said. “Like I said, if you think of anything else.” He pointed to her purse.
She offered them both a smile and walked out of the parking garage. It might not have brought them closer to Maggie, but if Daniel was hiding this, who knew what other skeletons he might have lurking in his closet. Kidd turned to Zoe.
“What next?” she asked.
“I know what I’d like to do next, but I know it’s not the right thing to do,” he said. “I want to go to that hotel and beat the ever living shit out him.”
Zoe smirked. It confirmed to Kidd that she was feeling the same way about Daniel.
“Definitely not the professional thing to do,” she said. “He’s not breaking any laws by cheating on his wife.”
“I know,” Kidd said. “But he has kept this from us. I’m starting to wonder what else there might be.”
“I don’t like this,” she said. “I don’t like what this is turning into. All these secrets.”
Kidd nodded. He felt the same. The deeper they dug, the more tangled it became. Who knew what they were going to uncover next.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
They made their way back into the Incident Room to find DCs Campbell and Ravel already there waiting. Kidd couldn’t help but notice the grave look on both of their faces. He wasn’t holding out a lot of hope for what they had gotten from the mistress.
“Not good?” Kidd asked.
Janya shook her head.
“It was fine,” she replied. “Tally Hill confirmed everything that we already knew. She had been having a relationship with Eric Wade, a sexual one it seems, nothing more. And she found out his son went missing from the news. Said she even tried to call him after she’d seen it and he wouldn’t pick up the phone.”
At least one of these men is doing the honourable thing, Kidd thought.
“She doesn’t have him,” Campbell said. “She is more than happy to have a forensics team look around her flat, but she said she doesn’t have Brody.”
“Alibi?”
“She was with Eric,” Campbell said. “And we have that confirmed too. She had proof of it and then gave him a call when we got back here to confirm it. He was surprised to hear from us. Apparently, DCI Reid’s team haven’t been the most communicative.”
Kidd took a heavy breath. For all the information they were managing to gather about these two men and their affairs, they weren’t getting any closer to finding Maggie. The forensics team hadn’t come up with a lot for them to go on, and the public appeal was yet to bring in any results. There was still time on the latter. They needed something, anything.
Kidd filled them in on what they’d found out about Daniel Walters. They need to talk to Daniel Walters, but it was growing late so that would have to wait until tomorrow, and they needed to track down Leigh Cremer. Maybe she would be able to shed a little more light on everything. Maybe she was the key to all of this.
Kidd sat down at his desk. He felt like he’d been run ragged by this case but wasn’t getting anywhere. Like a hamster on a wheel, he was running around and around in circles. He took a breath and looked at the Evidence Board, of what they’d gathered so far. It wasn’t much to go on.
Daniel Walters was in the frame for not being around when it had happened. They had confirmation from Louise that he wasn’t available or contactable at the time of the abduction. They would need his alibi, which would at least get them to Leigh.
Peter West. That was another story entirely. Now that the press had found out he was out of prison and in the area, they would latch onto him pretty fast. They would need to get to him quickly and talk to him before he got spooked. If he ran, they’d be in trouble.
He headed out of the room, walking down the corridor to Weaver’s office. He knocked, waiting for the bark of, “Come in!” before entering.
“So my warning of a heart attack has actually had an effect on, Kidd?” Weaver said, a smile on his face when Kidd entered. “You got an update?”
“Not much of one, boss,” Kidd said. “We’ve done a lot of running around but it hasn’t really gotten us anywhere.”
“How do you mean?”
He explained to Weaver what they’d done, where they’d been. He tried to ignore the redness creeping up Weaver’s neck and onto his face, tried not to pay too much attention to the fists that were clenched on the desk in front of him. He clearly wasn’t liking what he was hearing, but Kidd couldn’t stop now, he was already through the looking glass.
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br /> “I don’t know where to start,” Weaver sighed when Kidd was finished.
That makes two of us, Kidd thought.
“First of all, good catch on figuring out where the husband was,” Weaver said. “Credit where it’s due on that one. We’ll bring him in tomorrow morning, figure out exactly what’s going on. I…I don’t know what else he could be hiding, but if he wasn’t present and accounted for yesterday afternoon, there is every possibility he might be involved.”
“Yes, sir,” Kidd said.
“As for marching in on DCI Reid’s territory…” he trailed off. There was practically steam coming out of his ears. “How would you feel if someone barged in on your territory, Kidd? If some other DI started sniffing around your cases and trying to solve them for you”
“I’d be pissed off, boss.”
“Too bloody right you’d be pissed off,” Weaver barked. “And yet, here you are having gone and spoken to one of DCI Reid’s victims, to one of her suspects—”
“She was happy for us to go and do it, sir. DC Ravel checked in with her first.”
“I know you’re on a case, Kidd, and I know you’re trying your best to figure out what the bloody hell is going on here, but you can’t do that. I’ll…I’ll have to talk to DCI Reid, see if I can’t figure out a way to patch this up.”
“Boss—”
“I have to, Kidd, for my reputation if not yours,” he interrupted. “I’ve told you a hundred-thousand times that we are being watched at all times. We can’t go around behaving like this, not if we want to be able to conduct our cases with integrity. It’s one thing to go around looking at other people’s cases, looking to see if there are any connections anywhere, but you can’t just pick up and go investigating without telling anybody. What the bloody hell is wrong with you?”
Kidd could feel his rage about to get the better of him. He was working so damn hard to try and get this case solved, working his fingers to the bone to figure out where the hell these children had gone, and now he was getting a bollocking for trying? He took a few deep breaths to calm himself. He knew better than to blow up at Weaver at a time like this, especially when he was almost definitely in the wrong for it this time around. Not that he’d say that out loud.