Remember, Remember

by Lisa Cutts

  Our man in the reflective got louder and louder. This could be a sign that he had something to hide. But he might just be a dickhead. His friend, the driver, was keeping very quiet. Almost too quiet. Up until this point, I hadn’t taken much notice of him. He was being given the same grounds as his more vocal friend while the PC went through his pockets. I tried to see what was happening. The other PC was looking in the boot of the Polo, Wingsy was turning out chopsy Hi-Vis’s pockets, and the PC searching the driver only had one pair of eyes.

  That was when I saw the driver’s hand move towards the kerb. Roughly where the drain was.

  I had to hand it to the PC searching the car, he must have caught a movement out of the corner of his eye. He moved faster than I had in months towards the outstretched hand. I caught a glint of gold. Within a second of the man’s palm opening, the PC was underneath the falling items. The only way for him to stop them going down the drain was to throw himself to the ground over the opening. I also moved towards the drain and the officer on the ground, but he had it covered – literally.

  We had both had the same thought but he was quicker than me. We both wanted to prevent the loss of someone’s prized possessions. Prized possessions like Walter McRay’s wife’s wedding ring. That thought took the edge off the sharp pain shooting through my abdomen. I hadn’t moved far and I was too slow, but it had been a sudden jerking action that had wrenched my insides.

  A heavy bracelet hit the PC in the face, a pair of earrings bounced off his head and some sort of watch went straight over the top of his head. I thought he shouted something out, but it might just have been air being expelled from his mouth as he hit the ground. Within seconds, the sound of a woman saying, ‘Did you see what he’s done?’ was almost drowned out by the noise of another patrol making its way on blues and twos towards us.

  Some time later, the three in the Polo were under arrest, names and addresses taken from any witnesses willing to give them, and searches completed. Wingsy and I drove back to Riverstone police station to write up the necessary paperwork explaining how we happened to be in the area.

  Once we got back to the station, we offered to book the suspected stolen items into the property store, then arranged for them to be photographed, for identification by burglary victims. The gold items were logged as yellow-coloured metal, the reason being that if the police took your jewellery from you, if it had been described as gold, then you should receive gold back. If it turned out not to be gold, the police could be sued. In any case the Rolex was our best bet: apart from having unique identification, it was likely to have fingerprints somewhere on it. The owner wasn’t likely to be too pleased to find fingerprint powder all over it, but at least they might get their watch back.

  When we returned to the Cold Case office to finish our statements, the room was deserted. Wingsy and I each sat at a computer in silence as the machines booted up. After a couple of minutes, Wingsy muttered something about a 999 call. He was staring intently at the screen showing his emails. He clicked on an attachment and the room was filled with the digital record of an emergency call: first the dialling, then the operator speaking to the caller, a voice of reassurance to a panicked person.

  Operator: ‘Police. What’s the emergency?’

  Male caller: ‘Someone’s been shot. They’ve been shot, twice. Oh, God…’

  Operator: ‘OK, sir. Where are you?’

  Male caller: ‘Outside Screwfix, London Road. Oh, God, oh, fuck.’

  Operator: ‘Who shot him? Are they still there?’

  Male caller: ‘I don’t know. Oh, God, they’re coming back.’

  The sound of a gunshot reverberated through the cheap speaker system of the police computer. Then the line went dead.

  Wingsy looked up at me. ‘You alright, duchess? You look very pale.’

  My throat was very dry and the room seemed to have got extremely warm. Thing was, I recognised the voice. I knew who had called the police and paramedics. The voice belonged to Richard, Annie Hudson’s son. He’d been present when his own father was shot.

  20

  My friendship with Annie had far-reaching consequences. Now I had the information, my job wouldn’t allow me to ignore it. And attempted murder was attempted murder at the end of the day. Richard knew something about the shooting of his father and there was no way that I wasn’t going straight to the Incident Room with the knowledge I had. I’d face the personal backlash another time.

  ‘Bloody hell, Wingsy,’ I said, thumping my elbows on the desk and putting my head in my hands.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ he began. ‘Do you know who that…’

  He trailed off as the door opened and Jim appeared.

  Wingsy was up and across the tiny room, blocking the door, by the time I’d turned my head from one side of the room to the other. ‘Give us ten minutes, Jim, yeah?’ he said.

  Jim’s weasel face poked around the doorframe at me. He looked momentarily puzzled, then nodded before disappearing. I could hear him whistling tunelessly as he slid off up the corridor.

  ‘What’s going on, Nin?’ Wingsy took the chair opposite me.

  I cleared my throat and said, ‘The male caller who dialled three nines…’ I sighed and then said, ‘It was Richard, Annie’s son.’

  Wingsy ran his right hand through his thinning grey hair and uttered only one word. ‘Shit.’

  ‘Suppose I’d better go and tell the DCI.’ I stood up, hoping the action would energise me. It didn’t. ‘Annie’s never going to talk to me again,’ I said, feeling a little resentful towards my job.

  Wingsy looked up at me. ‘She may never find out.’

  I appreciated the effort he was making to cheer me up but we both knew that was ridiculous. Richard had been present when his own father got shot, had called the police but fled before they arrived, and had failed to come forward and identify himself as being within earshot of the gunfire. Had he acted differently at the time, he might have been treated as a witness. Running made him look as though he had something to hide.

  Steeling myself for the unpleasant task ahead, I walked to DCI Janice Freeman’s office on the other side of the station. It was technically still the CID wing but, with Riverstone police station being an older building, it had add-ons and bolt-ons to the original building. The result was about eight staircases all over the building, some seeming to lead to empty corridors. The part of the station where Freeman had taken up temporary residence was located up from the conference room and across from the division’s superintendent.

  When I got to Freeman’s office, I could see the back of the superintendent as he leant against the door jamb, talking to someone inside the room. I thought of warning her about getting grease from the hinges on her white shirt but, while I stood and waited for my presence to be acknowledged, I reckoned I had more important things to worry about.

  The superintendent eventually turned to me and smiled. ‘Hello, Nina,’ she said. ‘How’s your first week back been?’

  ‘Yeah, you know, ma’am,’ I said, returning the smile, ‘no peace for the wicked. I wanted a word with Mrs Freeman if she’s in.’

  A voice called out, ‘Come in, Nina. I wanted to talk to you anyway.’

  It was incredibly warm in the office, despite the tatty blinds swaying from the breeze of the draughty windows. The heating went on in October and it went off in May. Probably the equivalent of two full-time PCs’ wages was leaking out of the building every year.

  Freeman was sitting behind her desk. I moved towards her. She appeared friendly enough but there was a sharpness to her I found unsettling. She scrutinised me as I stepped across the uneven beige carpet. The station’s floors had warped too over time. I came to a stop beside the vacant chair, waiting to be told to sit.

  After a couple of seconds, she said, ‘Sit down.’

  Freeman wanted me to talk first. That suited me: I needed to get the information out there. I said, ‘I’ve just heard the 999 call for the shooting of Patrick Hudson. The unide
ntified male caller is his son, Richard.’ I could have left it there but I felt the need to be as detailed as I could. ‘I’ve known Richard for a number of years and, although I only see him from time to time, I spoke to him a few months ago. It’s him. It’s definitely him.’

  Discomfort oozed from my pores as I told her this. The more I rambled, the more my composure left me. All credit to her, she seemed to mellow towards me. She leaned across, face softening and said, ‘That’s what I wanted to tell you. This morning, Patrick Hudson died, and we arrested Richard for the murder of his father.’

  21

  ‘Who’s with Annie?’ I managed to say.

  Freeman looked at me and tried her best to smile. ‘We’re looking after her and she has her sister staying. Patrick died in the early hours of this morning. We’ll know more later from the hospital but there were unforeseen complications.’ She paused before adding, ‘I know that you’re friends with Annie and, despite there being no love lost between you and Patrick, this must come as a shock to you.’

  Freeman had got up and walked towards the hot drinks dispenser in the corner underneath a whiteboard with various operation names written on them in red. None of them meant anything to me. ‘Tea?’ she asked.

  I really didn’t want one but thought that, if she was offering me a drink, she was expecting me to stay and finish it. That might mean I would get some information from her, but it also could mean that she would get information from me. It was going to be a battle of wills and I wasn’t sure I was up for it. Still, I rarely turned down a cup of tea. I nodded at her.

  As she put the drink capsules into the machine, she began to explain that they had had little option but to arrest Richard.

  ‘We had trouble locating Richard at first, but then we spoke to him at length after the shooting, while his father was still alive. Richard told us that he hadn’t seen Patrick in years.’ She came back to my seat with an instant tea and put it in front of me on the desk before sitting down again. ‘We know that’s not true from the prison records we have. There were a couple of other things, too.’

  DCI Freeman looked down at her side of the desk as she reached for her cardboard cup.

  ‘I can’t discuss all the information with you. I know that you won’t try to find out the extent of the evidence we currently have on Richard Hudson, but I do know that you and his mother go back a long way. I don’t want her putting you under any pressure to pass information back to her.’

  What I was being told was that I should stay away from Annie. I knew they couldn’t force me to give my friend a wide berth in her hour of need, but life could be made fairly uncomfortable for me if I didn’t co-operate.

  ‘I get what you’re saying, ma’am. Can the family liaison officer pass a message to her for me? I don’t want her to think I’ve washed my hands of her.’

  ‘Of course he can,’ came the reply. ‘It’s Pierre Rainer. I’ll get you his number.’

  ‘No, no, that’s fine,’ I answered. ‘I’ve got his number from my Operation Guard stint with Serious Crime. I’ll give him a call.’

  We nodded at each other and, leaving the rest of my tea, I left the office. At least I felt happier knowing that Annie was in good hands with Pierre. I’d truly hated Patrick Hudson but I felt a touch empty knowing he was dead. My concerns were with Annie. I smiled at the hell she was probably putting Pierre through, and went to the canteen to call him. It was always quiet there at this time of day, just after the midday rush and well before the mid-afternoon office workers’ tea break. Squirrelling myself away in the farthest corner I could find, I called Pierre and hoped it wouldn’t go to answerphone.

  ‘Hello, Nina,’ he said.

  ‘Hi, Pierre,’ I began. He knew why I was calling. Even though I’d never spoken to him about Annie, she would no doubt have told him that I was an old acquaintance and that I had kept in touch with her over the years. My visits to her had been a fortnight or so apart but I’d never totally abandoned her, just as my old friend Stan had never abandoned me.

  ‘I’m at Annie’s, Nina,’ said Pierre. ‘She’s out in the kitchen so I may have to end the call. She’s OK. I know that’s why you’re ringing. How are you?’

  ‘Not so bad, ta, Pierre, but I’m not the one whose ex-husband’s been murdered, possibly by their own son. This is a mess.’

  ‘I know what you mean. The point is that she’s convinced he didn’t do it.’

  There was a pause: Pierre was probably deciding how much more he could tell me.

  ‘It’s OK,’ I said. ‘I know you can’t discuss the evidence you have against him, even if you weren’t at the suspect’s mum’s house. But can you tell her that I’m thinking of her and… well, you’re eloquent – make something up.’

  I heard him chuckle as the sound of Annie’s voice carried across the ether towards me. ‘There you go, love. There’s some Belgian chocolate ones there too. They’re my Nina’s favourite.’

  Ordinarily, I’d have been put out that she’d given the best biscuits to Pierre when she never offered me any. Any feelings of annoyance, though, were squashed by her use of ‘my Nina’.

  22

  The goings-on of the last couple of days had left me feeling exhausted. There seemed to be little I could do, or would be allowed to do, as far as Annie and Richard were concerned.

  Making an effort to concentrate on something else, I thought of Joe Bring. He’d emailed me, somewhat weirdly, from prison and asked if I’d visit him. The irony was, if I wanted to talk to him officially, I’d have to fill in a form and get it signed by a detective inspector. For a fleeting moment I toyed with the idea of going to see him in a personal capacity instead, but I ruled that out as very dangerous: I was already friends with a murder victim’s ex-wife, so visiting a burglar in prison was going to get me attention from those of rank, and the Professional Standards Department, for all the wrong reasons.

  Lumbering my way back up to Cold Case, I passed the uniform sergeants’ office. I thought I’d stick my head in on the off-chance that Bill was still at work. He was in the process of signing off duty, and seeing him brightened my day. I hoped that he wasn’t still angry. I was all out of emotion.

  ‘Hi, beautiful,’ he said winking at me.

  My heart lifted.

  ‘You’ve had a long day,’ I said. ‘I’m already tired but you must be cream-crackered.’

  ‘You could say that,’ he said, turning off his Airwave radio and securing it in his locker. ‘Two of my team have been asked to stay on and do scene preservation and house-to-house for a suspicious death. A young woman, aged in her twenties by all accounts, has just been found, overdosed on heroin. That’s the third drug OD this month. They all seem to come from the Noël Coward estate, too.’

  ‘Three?’ I said. ‘One was a friend of Joe Bring’s son. I hadn’t heard about the second one. Is there a CAD record of that and today’s sus death being linked anywhere?’

  ‘Probably there is, but you’ll have to search for it yourself. I’m off to get some sleep. What time will you be in?’

  ‘Not late. I’m going to look at this and then arrange to go back to prison to see Joe.’

  Bill was giving me his most displeased look. It was the one he usually reserved for when he thought I should lay off the wine and put the kettle on. I gave him my look reserved for when I wasn’t about to be given orders.

  ‘OK.’ He sighed. ‘I’ll see you at home.’ Bag over his shoulder, he headed towards the exit.

  When I got back to the Cold Case office, I began to scan the CAD reports for the initial calls from members of the public and police attendance to deaths from drug overdoses. The first one I found easily enough. Joe had told me that the boy’s name was Daryl, so it was a simple task of searching for male juveniles called Daryl on the intelligence system. It only gave me three, and two of them were still very much alive. Daryl Hopkins was very much not. He was known to us for shoplifting at the age of ten and for public order offences at the age of fourteen
. By the time he was eighteen, he had injected so much heroin into his system that he was dead.

  I read the report over and over. Heroin was normally a drug used by older addicts, not teenagers. I was only reading through scant details, but something wasn’t right.

  Something had caught my eye on the first read-through but I couldn’t put my finger on what it was. It crawled across my brain the entire time I sat looking at the CAD reports for other linked drug deaths. The one for today was still being updated as I was reading it. This gave me little in the way of usable information as it was such a work in progress: there wasn’t, at this point, even a name for the victim; she was being referred to as ‘unidentified white female’. I minimised the screen of live calls and continued to search historic ones for the last few weeks.

  Finding the third drug-related death, I got to the part I wanted, which logged the caller and the information they’d given to the emergency services. An ambulance was requested by a man giving his name as Errol. Errol said that his friend had taken drugs and now wasn’t breathing. As I scanned through the report, I saw that the unconscious friend was named as Sidney Manning, aged eighteen. But the part that reached out from the computer screen and grabbed my face, pulling it to within inches of the lettering, were the words typed on by the call-taker in police-speak: Caller states that drugs were supplied by people known to the Rumblys.

  For a moment I wasn’t able to move an inch. This had to be the link that would lead us to the Rumbly family. I didn’t question for one minute that someone would have reviewed this call for further lines of enquiry and asked Errol to clarify and expand on what he’d said – I was looking forward to finding out his version of events.