Be My Baby: A Heart Stopping British Crime Thriller (DI Benjamin Kidd Crime Thrillers Book 4)

by GS Rhodes

  DC Ravel was behind her desk, her gaze fixed on her computer. It was Zoe who got out of her chair and hurried over to him. She looked down at his hand and shook her head.

  “What?”

  “You’re an idiot,” she said. “Come on.” She ushered him out into the corridor, quickly calling to Janya over her shoulder that she would be back in a minute.

  “Zoe, I asked you a question,” he said.

  “Follow me,” she replied, marching him down the corridor to the staff kitchen. She pointed to one of the chairs set around a small table. “Sit.”

  “Zoe—”

  “Sit.”

  He did as he was told while she went to the freezer and pulled out an ice pack. Last time she’d done that for him it had been a ready meal. At least The Met had fronted up some money to get some bloody ice packs in here. He put it on his hand and held it there, wincing as it made contact.

  “What the hell were you thinking?” she growled.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Don’t play dumb with me, Ben, I know where you were.” She looked down at his hand, shaking her head again. “And I’m pretty sure I know what you just did. So let me ask you again, what the hell were you thinking?”

  “Where’s Liz?”

  “She’s being taken care of.”

  “Where is Liz?” he asked again, slower this time, more forcefully. He needed an answer and he needed it now. This wasn’t the time to be looking after his banged-up hand. They needed to get moving. They needed to find Tilly.

  “She’s with Campbell. Don’t get up!” she quickly snapped as he started to move. “He’s getting the details from her, he’s finding out exactly where she was, exactly where she’d walked from. They’re going to look at the CCTV from town, okay?”

  Kidd took a few steadying breaths, holding the ice pack on his fist. Christ, it hurt. Now that the rage was dying down a little, he started to see how rash he had been. It would have been better if he’d gone up there and yelled at Greg and told him what a prick he was when he caught him in the act. It would have been better if he hadn’t gone up there at all and just stuck by his sister and done his job.

  “Fine,” he said.

  “Now, what I need you to tell me is that you fell over and used your fist to break your fall,” she said. “Or that you got so mad you punched a wall.”

  “I punched Greg.”

  She put her head in her hands. “For fuck’s sake.”

  “Zoe—”

  “When I called you and told you not to do anything stupid, this was exactly what I meant,” she said. “Why do I know you so fucking well that the second Campbell filled me in on what was going on, I knew you’d be off throwing your fucking fists around and causing trouble. What the fuck is wrong with you?”

  “I caught him,” Kidd said, his voice quiet. He knew he’d made the wrong choice, and he knew it was almost certainly going to come back and bite him in the ass. If not now, then when Greg showed up at the station with blood all over him.

  “You what?”

  “I caught him,” Kidd said, looking her squarely in the face. “I marched up those stairs, I went right into that office, and I caught him with her.”

  “With who?”

  “With the woman I saw him with a couple of months ago,” he said. “The one he said he was breaking it off with. I’m an idiot.”

  “I’m not disputing that.”

  “But it’s exactly what happened to the other guys,” Kidd said. “You can’t tell me this isn’t a pattern. It was a theory before, but now it’s a pattern.”

  Zoe nodded. “Three different victims, three different cheating spouses, all of them preoccupied while their kid was getting abducted.”

  “Preoccupied, that’s one way to put it.”

  Zoe chuckled.

  “But look, we’ve got someone out there who feels like they’re performing some kind of vigilante justice,” she said. “You can’t go around doing the same thing. It’s hypocrisy, and now you’ve hurt your fucking hand.”

  “I know, I know.”

  “You’re not Batman,” she said. “You’re Benjamin Kidd and…and I don’t know if anybody here is going to be able to protect you from this.”

  Kidd nodded. There was almost certainly a suspension in his future. He was fairly sure that Greg wouldn’t keep his name out of it when he showed up at the station with a busted face. He’d have to suffer the consequences of his actions. Even if it had felt cathartic at the time, he would pay the price. But he would find whoever had taken his niece first. He had to.

  “We need to keep moving,” he said. “I’ll be fine, I’ll make this work. You said that Campbell was asking about CCTV?”

  Zoe looked down at his hand again, hesitating before she started speaking.

  “Don’t bite my head off.”

  “Don’t give me a reason to bite your head off,” Kidd replied.

  “Are you sure you should even be working on this case?” she said. “There’s…there’s a big personal connection here now and…” She sighed. “I’m not trying to be an asshole here, but you have pretty much proved that you’re too close to this to be thinking clearly.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Are you sure about that?” she asked. “Because you’ve just gone and smacked your brother-in-law in the face. That doesn’t sound like the actions of someone who’s fine.”

  “Zoe, I need to finish this, I need to find her,” Kidd said. “This is…this is my fault. I need to do this.”

  She looked at him, confused. “How is this your fault?”

  He didn’t have the time or the energy to explain. They needed to keep moving.

  “It doesn’t matter. What did you say about CCTV?”

  Zoe hesitated again, but seemed to quickly shake it off. “They’ve made a mistake,” she said. “Finally, they’ve made a mistake.”

  “How?”

  “It wasn’t just in broad daylight this time,” she said. “This time, it happened in the town centre. There’s CCTV everywhere in the town centre. There is no way we won’t get a clear image of whoever it is that took Tilly. If we’re lucky, we might even be able to figure out where they’re going. It could lead us right to the other kids.”

  Kidd nodded. “Campbell’s going to get that?”

  “As soon as he’s finished talking to Liz, he and Janya are going to head over there,” Zoe said. “You and I are going to stay here and wait it out.”

  “Zoe—”

  “We’re going to stay here and wait it out so that you can be with your sister. I’m not trying to keep you out of action, Ben,” she said. “She needs you right now. We’re going to need you too, obviously, but with everything that’s happening with her and Greg, she’ll probably be in a bit of a state—”

  “I don’t want her to know,” Kidd said.

  “Kidd—”

  “Not just now,” he said. “She’s already going through enough with Tilly going missing, I don’t want to pile on with the details of this case so that she…so that she gets even more heartbroken. If Greg wants to tell her, that’s his prerogative, but right now I am not saying a word. And I would appreciate it if you didn’t either.”

  Zoe looked like she was about to speak when DCs Campbell and Ravel appeared in the door of the canteen. The DCs stared at the pair of them, neither one of them looking like they knew what to say.

  “You got everything you need?” Kidd said.

  “Yeah,” Campbell replied. “We’ve got a contact at the Bentall Centre who’s going to let us look at his security tapes. We’re waiting to hear back from the stores near the churchyard in case we need something from them too.”

  “If it comes to it, we’ll just going to go in and ask them,” Janya said matter-of-factly, pre-empting Kidd telling them to do just that. “I can’t see them saying no.”

  Kidd nodded. “Okay then, keep me updated.”

  “Will do, boss.”

  “You see anything—” />
  “We’ll let you know,” Campbell said, hovering in the doorway. “Are you going to be alright?”

  Kidd hesitated before he nodded. “I’ll be fine, just get to work.”

  The two of them left, leaving him alone with Zoe, who was watching him closely.

  “You know you’re acting like a DI,” he said. “Taking control, figuring out our next move. That’s detective inspector stuff.”

  She shrugged. “I learned from the best.”

  Kidd smirked. “Why, who else have you been working for?”

  She rolled her eyes and got to her feet. “Come on. Like you said, boss, we need to keep moving.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  The CCTV in the town centre wasn’t the best quality. It was grainy and more often than not, you were looking at a pixelated approximation of a person, rather than something that looked like the real deal. But Owen Campbell had a spring in his step at the very thought of getting to the bottom of this case.

  He didn’t like seeing the boss like that and wouldn’t wish anybody having to go through something that intense in their work life, but it had brought them closer to finding the children, closer to cracking this case open.

  They made their way to the top of the Bentall Centre, heading to their small security room that had the air conditioning on so high it was like walking into the Arctic. There were so many computers in the small room Owen imagined if you turned it off, it would be like walking into an oven or something.

  Without too much fuss, Janya and Owen sat down at one of the screens, a beefy, mixed-race security guard with a shiny bald head sat with them, steadily taking them through the morning.

  Campbell held his breath as he saw Liz come into the frame, Tilly to one side of the pram. She was skipping along, not a care in the world. It almost made what the two detectives knew was coming all the more heartbreaking.

  “Can we slow it down here?” Janya asked. The security guard did as he was asked, moving it almost frame by frame as they watched people pass by the front of the store.

  Someone walked into the frame.

  “Stop,” Campbell said.

  “What?” Janya asked.

  Campbell leant a little bit closer to the screen. The fuzziness of the footage wasn’t helping, but he’d seen them before, he was almost sure of it.

  ◆◆◆

  Zoe led Kidd to the small room near the reception area where Liz was waiting. When they walked in, she was sitting on the sofa, Timmy somehow asleep in the pram. She looked like she was managing to hold it together until she spotted Kidd. It was enough to make the tears start flowing all over again.

  “I’m sorry,” Kidd said wrapping her in his arms again. “I’m so so sorry.”

  She sniffed, squeezing him tight. “You’ve got nothing to be sorry for.”

  At least she still had no idea.

  “We’re going to get her back,” Kidd said. “We’re going to get her back, I promise.”

  He knew how dangerous it was to make guarantees but he couldn’t think of any other outcome. It didn’t bear thinking about.

  There was a perfunctory knock, DCI Weaver poking his head around the doorframe. His face was pinched, his neck a little bit red. He wasn’t happy about something, though that wasn’t exactly a headline.

  “Your husband is here, Mrs Spencer,” Weaver said. “Is it okay for me to send him inside?”

  “Oh, thank goodness,” she said, quickly taking her phone out and looking at it. The screen was empty, no notifications whatsoever. Maybe she’d expected him to call her back rather than just show up. Kidd hoped she wasn’t going to ask too many questions about that.

  “Can I have a word with you, Kidd?” Weaver added. “My office. Now.”

  Kidd gave his sister one last squeeze before getting to his feet and making his way out of the room. He followed Weaver down the corridor, heading into his office without so much as a word.

  Weaver didn’t slam the door behind them like Kidd had expected. He’d braced for the sound, but all he got was a small click. Strangely, it felt even more threatening. Kidd would have preferred it if he’d gone for the slam.

  “I’m going to need you to explain to me why that man has shown up with a bloody nose and you’re sitting there with a hand that looks like it needs to be looked over by a doctor,” Weaver said, making his way to his desk and perching on the edge of it. Even doing that, he was taller than Kidd. Christ.

  Kidd opened his mouth to respond but Weaver started pacing again, stopping him.

  “I already asked Greg,” Weaver said. “Apparently, he was at work today, is that right?”

  “That’s what I’ve heard, sir,” Kidd said.

  “He was at work and he had a disagreement with someone,” he continued. He wouldn’t stop pacing, like a lion circling its prey, he was about to go in for the kill. “Someone else in his office, was what he told me. They had a disagreement and Greg said the wrong thing, and it earned him a punch in the face.” Weaver stopped in front of Kidd, staring at him. It was scarier seeing him like this than it was when he simply blew his top. At least then Kidd felt like he could fight back, felt like he had some kind of control. With this, he felt helpless. “Does that sound right to you?”

  “People can do really strange things when they get angry, sir,” Kidd said. “Maybe what he said was particularly offensive.”

  “A disagreement seems like quite a minor thing to get punched in the face over,” Weaver replied. “Wouldn’t you agree?”

  “Certainly, sir.”

  “Good,” he said. “So we’re on the same page then.”

  “I think so.”

  “And what happened to you?”

  “I fell,” Kidd said, looking down at his hand. It really did look pretty banged up. He would probably need to get it checked out.

  “And landed on your right hand?”

  Kidd nodded.

  “These shoes aren’t made for running, sir,” Kidd said. “And when I heard what had happened to my sister I ran into town. I slipped, I fell, but continued because…well…it’s my sister, sir. I’m sure anyone else would have done the same thing.”

  Weaver perched on the edge of his desk again, his eyes burning into Kidd. There was no question that he knew what had gone on, no question at all. He didn’t buy a single word that Greg or Kidd were selling but Kidd wasn’t about to admit it, if Greg wasn’t.

  It was a surprise, for sure. Kidd had expected Greg to sell him down the river.

  “You’re out of your fucking mind, Ben,” Weaver said, pinching the bridge of his nose.

  “I don’t know what you mean, sir.”

  “You know exactly what I mean,” Weaver roared. “I know what you did, and so does he. You can’t just go around throwing your fists about when things aren’t going your way. This case is highly volatile and we have eyes on us from all over. If he decided to press charges, we would be completely fucked. You would be out of this station so fucking fast your feet wouldn’t touch the ground, do you understand me?”

  “I do, boss.”

  “Why, Kidd? Why’d you do it?” he asked. “And I want a proper fucking answer, not some story. I have no fucking idea why he’s protecting you, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to have you lying to me about what’s really going on.”

  Kidd started to explain the progress they’d made on the case over the last twenty-four hours, the theories they’d come up with, the ransom notes, all of it. He even went so far as to explain the connections between the now-three cases that they had open. It wasn’t enough to explain away punching Greg in the face, but it seemed to be enough to stop Weaver from looking like he was going to charge at Kidd and knock him into next week.

  “Kidd, I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to take you off this case.”

  “No.”

  Weaver’s eyes widened. “What do you mean ‘No’? This isn’t a discussion, Kidd. This is my decision to make.”

  “Boss, with all due respect, we’re near
ly there,” Kidd said. “I know my family is involved now—”

  “Which is the reason you cannot investigate—”

  “I need keep going,” Kidd said knowing he sounded desperate. “I am going to keep going, whether you want me on this case or not. I need to find those children. I need to bring them back and I know I can do it.”

  “Kidd—”

  “Campbell and Ravel are looking at CCTV now,” he interrupted. “The kidnapper made a mistake this time. We can figure this out, I know we can. We’re nearly there.”

  Kidd’s phone started to buzz in his pocket. Weaver was watching him so carefully, he almost didn’t dare take it out and look at it. But Campbell’s name was on the front of the screen and maybe, just maybe, this was the breakthrough they’d been waiting for.

  “What have you got?” Kidd asked as he answered the phone. Campbell was talking a million miles a minute. They were already on their way back. He mentioned the CCTV he had looked at before when he was looking for Peter West, how he had seen them walking near where the coat had been found, but it wasn’t who they’d been looking for so he’d discounted it. But maybe it was. They needed to move, and they needed to move fast.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  Campbell was out of breath when they got back to the office, Janya barely breaking a sweat. The second they made it back to the Incident Room, he showed Kidd the footage.

  Kidd couldn’t believe what he was seeing. How could they have missed it? It had been right in front of them the entire time. Kidd thought back, tried to remember everything that had been said, everything that they’d taken down. It had passed them by, and he could hardly believe it.

  He headed out of the station at a run, DS Sanchez close behind him. He headed for the car, jumping into the passenger seat, Zoe swinging them out there at such speed he’d hardly had a chance to put his seatbelt on.

  They drove around the Kingston one-way system, his heart pounding, sweat pouring down his brow. It might not be too late; it really might not be too late if they could just be quick enough.

  Zoe didn’t bother finding a parking space outside the building, pulling up and shutting off the car. They leapt out, heading inside, up the stairs—stairs they had climbed just a few short days ago—until they reached the reception desk and the woman with the bright red hair who had been so rude to them.