by Nigel Cooper
DC Walcott’s thinner – and somewhat more petit build, compared to the sturdy Ruddock – frame was no match for Ruddock. He struggled to keep his body between Ruddock and Stanton.
‘Jack, don’t, think about what you’re doing.’
‘Oh, I am thinking about what I’m doing, I’m gonna to kill that sick mother fucker.’
‘Jack, listen to me, if we take him back to Parkside with a mashed up face his solicitor’s gonna shout “police brutality” and it could fuck up the entire case,’ he said, struggling to keep Ruddock back.
‘Get out of my way, Rent,’ said Ruddock.
‘Jack, if you want this man to walk I’ll gladly step aside, is that what you want? You really want this man to get away with this, to walk? Because if you beat the crap out of him that’s what’s gonna happen, and on top of that you’ll get fired,’ said Walcott, knowing that what he’d said wasn’t strictly true, well, the last part was.
After a moment, Ruddock came to his senses, the tenseness dropped from his shoulders.
DC Andrew “Rent” Walcott, was so-called ‘Rent’ – as in rent boy – because he was only 26 years old and looked even younger with his clean-shaven boyish complexion and immaculate haircut.
‘He’s not worth it, Jack.’
Ruddock, although 44 years old, had never managed to get any higher up the rankings than detective constable. He’s an ok copper, nothing special – if he was a footballer he’d probably play for Tottenham, not great, but not exactly crap either – but he just liked to do things the old way. Jack was probably the closest thing to a real life DCI Gene Hunt as you could get, Jack certainly gave the Life on Mars character a run for his money. Jack’s colleagues say that he’s more BFI than CSI, BFI being an acronym for Brute Force and Ignorance. But every once in a while, not very often, it came in handy for those good-cop-bad-cop situations, as long as the guy playing good cop had the skillset to reel Jack in, control him if he gets a little too carried away. Having said that, big Jack had a heart of gold and would always be there for a mate.
The powers that be just figured that Ruddock didn’t have the right attitude to modern policing. Really, Ruddock was probably not the ideal man to be sent over to Parkside to interview Stanton, but the SIO figured that Ruddock, alongside the sensible by-the-book Walcott, would make a good interviewing combo in a good-cop-bad-cop sort of way.
Ruddock stood still, thinking, with Walcott still between him and his target, Stanton’s face. Even though his shoulders had relaxed and he’d lowered his fist, he still wanted to punch the bastard, but he didn’t.
‘Get this evil piece of shit back to the car,’ said Ruddock, his Yorkshire accent barely a whisper now.
DC Walcott turned around, grabbed Stanton by the collar, said, ‘Move it,’ pushing Stanton back along the corridor the way they came.
‘You drive,’ said Ruddock, handing Walcott the keys as they approached the car. He relieved Walcott of Stanton while his colleague hit the central locking button on the key fob. Ruddock opened the back door and shoved Stanton in the back, making sure he bashed his head on the edge of the roof as he did so. He slammed the car door and grabbed his radio.
‘Jack, what was in there?’ said Walcott, over the roof of the car.
‘Hell,’ said Ruddock, getting on the radio to arrange a whole bunch of SOCOs and forensics guys.
While Ruddock and Walcott were out at the church with Stanton an inspector had authorised intimate samples to be taken and organised a doctor to obtain them: blood, urine, penile swab, mouth swab… The doctor was waiting at Parkside when Ruddock and Walcott returned with Stanton. He was then assessed for his mental health capacity and fitness before being interviewed by the two detectives.
Once this was all dealt with, the civilian detention officer took Stanton through to a small room to obtain his fingerprints on the Livescan machine.
‘Well, this is all very high-tech,’ said Stanton as he was told to press his fingers down onto the glass. ‘I was expecting messy ink and paper.’
‘Not for quite some time, things are done a little differently these days,’ said the detention officer, not really wanting to engage in conversation with the sick child killer. Stanton’s prints would be electronically transferred to Scotland Yard almost immediately, where they would remain on record forever.
With the fingerprints out of the way the detention officer took a fresh buccal swab from its packet and removed it from the plastic tube.
‘Open your mouth please,’ he said.
‘What, again, the doc did this in my cell already.’
‘Well now you’re going to have to do it for me too, open,’ demanded the detention officer. Word had got around the station about the evil scene in the basement of the church. With this new information the police civility towards Stanton was about to become non-existent.
As with Stanton’s fingerprints, his DNA would also end up on record, only not quite as fast as his prints.
‘Now I need your photo. Stand right there and face the camera,’ he said, gesturing to the mark on the floor, his tone clipped and measured.
Stanton didn’t smile, he looked like the menacing evil child killer that he was, devoid of any visible human emotion – creepy.
Eventually, about three hours after walking into Parkside police station and being arrested right there in the public foyer, Father Derek Stanton was fully booked in, processed, relieved of his bloody clothing and personal possessions and, eventually, locked back into the holding cell where he would wait until DCs Ruddock and Walcott were ready to interview him. In the meantime, Stanton was offered a cheap ready microwave meal and a cup of tea – he declined.
Chapter 12
It was 7:30 p.m. when acting FLO, DC Aria Dubois, rang the doorbell at the Kramer’s house to break the news – the kind of news that needed to be broken in person and not via a telephone call. Her colleague, DC Monica Dobson, also a trained Family Liaison Officer, stood next to her.
‘Nooooooooo, please, nooooo,’ cried Helen, falling to her knees and crying, almost choking, in a wretched heap on her living room floor as she struggled to find the will to breathe in. John, in a state of shock himself, dropped to his knees and held his inconsolable wife in his arms. They cried and held each other while the two FLO’s tried to remain as dignified as possible having just told them that their children had been found, dead.
‘I’m so sorry,’ said DC Dubois.
Even though the FLOs had previously explained, tactfully, that the Kramers needed to be prepared for the fact that their children may never be found, or worse, that they may be found dead, it still hit the Kramers harder than a fully laden freight train. But, as parents do, they’d hung onto the remote possibility that their boys were still out there, alive, and would be found, that there was still hope. But, as the media had so kindly pointed out, the more time that goes by the more unlikely it is for them to be found. The media had made various comparisons to the missing Kramer boys: the Soham girls, Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, and the abduction of April Jones in Wales. But, as time went on, the media had started to liken the missing Kramer twins to that of the Madeleine McCann case, who disappeared one evening in May back in 2007. There were some differences in these two cases, of course, but there were a lot of similarities also.
But now, exactly one year after the Kramer boys disappearance, Helen and John’s hope was obliterated in just one sentence as DC Aria Dubois explained to the Kramers that their boys had been found, and that they were both dead, and that the police had a man in custody. The Kramers had considered the fact, and tried to prepare themselves for the worse, that their boys might be dead, but now it was a reality the news hit them so hard it knocked the very life and soul out of them both.
Then, Helen’s choking sobs stopped and her breathing appeared to normalise as she looked up through red teary eyes at DC Dubois, she said, ‘Who is he?’
‘I’m sorry?’ said Dubois.
‘The man, you said you had a ma
n in custody?’
‘Yes, yes we do.’
‘Well who is he?’ repeated Helen.
‘Mrs Kramer, it’s early days, we don’t have all the facts yet,’ said Dubois.
‘But he killed my boys, right?’
‘At this moment he’s a suspect, my colleagues are looking into it.’
‘Well what’s his name, at least tell me that, I’m entitled to know.’
‘Please, you must understand that at this early stage we can’t give out any information, he’s just a suspect and until we know definitively we have to be very careful what information we give out. Two detectives were interviewing him earlier and as far as I know they still are. It’s probably going to take quite a while and the interview will, more than likely, continue tomorrow. Mrs Kramer, I can personally assure you that as soon as we have all the facts you’ll be the first to know,’ said Dubois, noticing that the look of pain and loss in Helen Kramer’s eyes had been replaced by a look of hate and anger and possibly even thoughts of revenge.
* * *
DC Jack Ruddock – a blank DVD in one hand and an equally blank expression on his face – faffed and struggled with the recently installed digital video camera recording system that Parkside nick was now using to record interviews. The old Phillips audiocassette system and PZM microphone from yesteryear was out and a spiffing new DVD recording system – comprising of two wall-mounted digital camcorders up in the corners, which fed into a large DVD recording deck that sat on the, rather small, desk – was in.
‘How the fuck does this thing work, Rent?’ said a frustrated DC Ruddock.
‘Go and grab the custody sergeant, he’ll know,’ said Walcott.
When DC Walcott moved from constable to detective constable and joined the MCU it didn’t take his new colleagues long to slap the nickname ‘Rent’ on him. At first it bothered him somewhat, but now it’s water off a duck's back, pretty much every copper in the country had a nickname in some form or another – some good, some bad, some just plain stupid. Some were called by their nicknames to their faces, while others, with somewhat more offensive nicknames, were only ever used when the person it belonged to was not in the room. Some were mildly offensive, some were funny, some fitted the person’s looks or personality to perfection and some were just plain stupid: DC Aria “Eggy” Dubois falls into the latter camp. She came in to work nearly two years ago with the slightest trace of egg yolk on her blouse – it was so slight it would have taken one hell of a detective to spot it – considering her blouse that day was yellow – and one did. The detective responsible for spotting the spilled evidence of Dubois’s breakfast that morning started calling her Eggy, it caught on quick, and stuck, and now everyone calls her that; stupid, but true. Coppers had to be pretty vigilant when it came to their appearance, personal hygiene etc. Woe betide any officer who turned up for work with even a hint of dandruff on their suit shoulder, or epaulettes, unless they wanted to be stuck with the nickname “Flaky” for the rest of their career.
Ruddock paced towards the interview room door to go and grab the custody sergeant a little too eagerly and scraped the knuckles of his left hand on the disgusting vomit-green exposed breeze-block wall, it was rough, rough as shit.
‘Fuck!’ said Ruddock, examining the grazed skin and specks of blood on his knuckles.
‘What happened?’ said Walcott.
‘The fucking wall happened. These big breezeblocks might make good soundproofing but at least cover them with plasterboard, fucking walls are lethal,’ he said, nursing his knuckles.
‘Don’t worry, Jack, you’re used to bruised and bleeding knuckles,’ laughed Walcott.
‘Ha ha, very fucking funny. Jesus fucking Christ, I mean look at this place, who the fuck decided to paint it this colour, makes me feel sick. And there’s hardly room to swing a sodding cat in here, I mean look at it, how the hell are we supposed to work in these cramped conditions. Fuck knows how four people are supposed to squeeze into this damn broom cupboard of a room.’
Just then, after hearing Jack’s slightly raised voice, the custody sergeant appeared at the door. ‘Everything ok, gentlemen?’
‘Yeah, just Jack here being attacked by the wall,’ said Walcott.
‘Oh yeah, don’t get too close, it’s grazed and snagged many a solicitor since we had it converted.’
‘Converted?’ said Jack.
‘Yeah, it used to be a broom cupboard,’ said the custody sergeant, deadly serious.
‘That figures,’ said Jack.
‘Jack’s having a little trouble with the recording equipment,’ said Walcott.
‘I don’t know, I thought you MCU boys were supposed to be savvy with new technology,’ joked the custody sergeant as he stepped over to the desk (well, perhaps half a step) to show Ruddock how to put a blank DVD into the recording deck and press the record button. ‘You’ll know it’s recording because of this red light blinking on the front, also, if you look at the LCD screen you’ll notice those little recording level lights moving up and down when you talk,’ he said, pointing to said lights.
‘That’s it?’ said Ruddock.
‘Pretty much, oh, the two cameras up in the corner, they’ll also have red lights blinking on front of them,’ he said, heading out the interview room.
Walcott gave Ruddock a look with a slight smile.
‘Don’t say a word. All this was so much easier with audio cassettes, at least you could see the damn things turning so you knew it was up and running,’ said Ruddock.
Eventually, after overcoming the technology, Stanton was brought from his cell to the interview room, where his solicitor was now waiting. Although Stanton had told the police a solicitor would not be required, he’d since changed his mind.
Ruddock, knowing there was a fresh DVD in the deck, pressed the record button and clapped his hands to make sure the record level meters moved, then he checked to see if the red record light on the DVD deck and those on the front of both cameras were blinking away. The last thing Ruddock needed right now was to be responsible for screwing up the recording of an interview, especially one as important and high profile as this one.
‘The time is 6:05 p.m. we’re in interview room three to interview Father Derek Stanton. I’m Detective Constable Andrew Walcott. Also in the room is my colleague, Detective Constable Jack Ruddock and Father Stanton’s solicitor, Mr Stephen Amiel. Mr Sta—’ Just then the solicitor’s pen rolled off the folder he was balancing on his knee and clattered to the floor. In an attempt to grab it before it hit the floor he also sent some of his papers cascading all over the DVD recorder.
‘Sorry,’ he said, gathering up his papers and retrieving his pen off the floor. It wasn’t really his fault, the room was so damn small and there was nowhere to put anything. The only desk in the room was a tiny thing, about two by one and a half feet, the biggest they could fit in here, and most of that was taken up by the large DVD recording deck. There was perhaps room for a couple of pencils or a mug of tea. So, the four of them, not exactly facing each other either, sat in the cramped little room with their files and papers balanced on their laps at rather retarded angles. If it wasn’t for the serious setting of the police station the cramped scene actually looked quite comical.
‘Mr Stanton, do you understand why you’re here and why you’re being interviewed?’ said DC Walcott, trying to gather his thoughts and get back on track after the paper scattering fiasco.
‘Father, Father Stanton,’ he corrected.
‘Father Stanton, do you understand why you’re here being interviewed today?’
‘Yes,’ said Stanton, not bothering to look at his solicitor, sitting next to him, for cues or permission to answer.
‘At precisely 11:30 this morning you walked into the police station here at Parkside, soaked in blood from head to toe, and informed a member of staff at the front desk that you were responsible for abducting Jamie and Edward Kramer exactly one year ago. You also claimed that at approximately 10:50 this morning, about
forty minutes before your arrival here at Parkside police station, that you killed both of the Kramer twins. Is this correct?’
‘You don’t have to an—’
‘Yes,’ said Stanton, cutting his solicitor off.
‘You’ve since been escorted by myself and my colleague, DC Ruddock, to the basement crypt at St Catherine & St Benedict church on Histon Road, where you minister. There, you showed us the exact location of the basement crypt and told us we’d find the bodies of Jamie and Edward Kramer, you also told us that this is where you’d kept the Kramer twins, alive, for the past twelve months before killing them this morning. Is this correct?’
‘Yes.’
‘Once inside the basement crypt, DC Ruddock and myself found Jamie and Edward Kramer, they were both dead and seriously mutilated. The pathologist on call estimated that the twins had both been killed very recently, within hours. Father Stanton, I’d like you to start at the very beginning, one year ago, with the events leading up to your abducting the Kramer twins.’
‘I’d had something planned in my head for quite some time,’ he said.
‘Can you elaborate?’ said Walcott.
‘Of course. I had to do this. I’d prepared the crypt, bought a camcorder and some video lights and … the various instruments that I’d need,’ he said, no emotion whatsoever.
Instruments of torture you sick fuck, thought Ruddock, fantasising about leaning over the table, grabbing his head and smashing it against the rough breezeblock wall next to him. ‘By instruments you mean the various knives and other devices that you used to torture and eventually kill the Kramer twins?’ said Ruddock, chipping in.
‘Detective, so far there’s no proof that—’
‘It’s ok,’ said Stanton, again, cutting his solicitor off.