by Casey, Jane
She laughed.
I’d have given quite a lot to never hear that sound again.
‘What are you afraid of? Is it further injury or violence?’ I wasn’t allowed to deviate from the wording of the form, even though privately I thought it was painfully obvious that the answer would be yes, and kind of insulting to break it down, as I had to, into fear of being killed, injured or ‘other’. She was worried for herself, Dani admitted. She wasn’t scared for the children.
‘He’d never touch them.’ She sounded sure but I wasn’t, not at all. The only thing I was sure about was that I was going to risk assess this one as ‘high’.
‘Is the abuse happening more often?’
‘No. Less often. Until this week,’ she corrected herself. ‘He’s been doing really well.’
‘When it happens, is the abuse getting worse?’
She looked at me for a minute without answering, as her eyes welled with tears. ‘Yeah. I suppose.’
‘Has Sid ever used weapons or objects to hurt you?’
‘Yeah.’
I waited for more details but none were forthcoming. ‘Has Sid ever threatened to kill you and you believed him?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Has Sid ever attempted to strangle, choke, suffocate or drown you?’
She looked thoughtful. ‘Never drowning. He’s never suffocated me either. He chokes me. What the difference between choking and strangling?’
‘No idea,’ I admitted. ‘Does Sid do or say things of a sexual nature that make you feel bad or that physically hurt you or someone else?’
She literally recoiled from the question, hitting the back of her chair with a thud. ‘I don’t want to answer that one.’
I paused, my pen against the page to mark my place. ‘Sorry?’
‘Move on. Next question.’
She’d been being so forthcoming and helpful it came as a shock to run across something she really didn’t want to answer. I could only imagine it was because the answer was yes but I left the box blank.
‘Has Sid ever mistreated an animal or the family pet?’
She snorted. ‘No! The hamster. Sid loves that little thing. He’s the one who looks after it. Lets it eat food off his mouth. Disgusting. He won’t let me go near it, not that I would.’
‘Okay,’ I said, making a note. Only cruel to humans. I wasn’t inclined to give him any points for that.
‘Is Sid under any financial pressure at the moment? Are you dependent on him for cash? Has he recently lost his job?’
‘Yes, yes and yes, sort of. He was working at a supermarket in Thornton Heath but he got the sack for being rude to a customer.’
‘When was that?’
‘A couple of months ago. He’s still driving a minicab in the evenings, so we’ve got some money coming in. I just look after the kids.’ At the mention of them, her voice filled with warmth. She clearly adored them.
I ran through the last questions about Sid’s drug use, threats of suicide and criminal history, getting the answers I expected. Something was bothering me, though, and I couldn’t work out what. I ran back over what Dani had said, trying to pick out what mattered from the swirl of information about mispers and nominals and taskings and call signs that passed for my brain on duty.
Less abusive lately, but more violent.
Getting angry about the laundry earlier in the week.
Working in Thornton Heath until a couple of months ago. Thornton Heath, which was next door to Croydon.
Minicab driver, working evenings and nights, driving around the area unnoticed, unremarked.
And the sexual violence that Dani wouldn’t talk about.
I wasn’t a believer in intuition. I didn’t trust gut instinct over evidence. But the more I heard about Sid Hudson, the more uneasy I became.
I sat in Dani Hudson’s kitchen and chatted with her, even though I was light-headed with horror. It was the first time I’d had the suffocating feeling that I was altogether too close to pure evil.
Even so, I recognised it like an old friend.
7
‘She’s just saying that so we’ll take her old man away for longer.’ Gary wasn’t even looking at me. He had his head inclined so he could listen to the radio clipped to his shoulder, waiting for the next call to come in. We were standing outside the house, huddled in a tight little group, while Sid Hudson, in plain view, sat sipping his lager in the living room, and his wife hid in the kitchen.
‘First of all, she didn’t say it,’ I said patiently. ‘I’m the one who’s saying it. She has no idea. And secondly, we can take him away right now. She’s told me he hurt her tonight, and that means we can nick him, which she knows because I’ve told her. So she has no reason to want to implicate him in a more serious crime.’
‘Did she know anything about the rapes?’ Chris asked.
‘No. She said he’s been behaving more or less as normal but spending a lot of time out in the evenings. She said he’s been more irritable lately.’
‘That could be because of losing his job.’ Gary shook his head. ‘This is all conjecture.’
‘Yes,’ I said, fighting down the desire to smack him. The things that I knew about Hudson matched so closely with the few things we could say for certain about the rapist that I couldn’t see any room for doubting my theory. That was all it was though: a theory. ‘We need evidence.’
‘What about the clothes?’ Andy said. ‘The ones with stains that he got angry about her washing?’
‘I asked. He threw them away. Sally-Ann was attacked on Tuesday. Dani washed them on Wednesday. On Wednesday evening he took them out of the house in a plastic bag and came back without it. They could be anywhere.’
Gary sighed. ‘Don’t get drawn in, mate. She’s making something out of nothing.’
‘Better to make something out of nothing than to make money off cheating on your girlfriend with a colleague.’ I didn’t have to look to know that Andy was round-eyed with fear that I’d reveal how I knew what Gary had done, or that Chris was hiding a smile. I was focused on Gary, whose face had gone perfectly blank. ‘No comeback, Gary?’
Chris cut in. ‘Leaving that aside, Maeve, if he’s the rapist, why is he sitting in there looking like he doesn’t have a care in the world? He should be shitting himself.’
‘He doesn’t think we know. Dani doesn’t even know, based on what she told me. She hasn’t put it together so he expects we haven’t either.’
‘I don’t think you’re right,’ Gary said. ‘He’s a thug. He beats her up for no reason and every reason. With the clothes, he could have spilled ketchup on himself. The stuff had been through the wash so it wouldn’t have looked like blood, even if it was. She can’t know what it was and neither can we.’
‘It all fits,’ I insisted. ‘Even the violence. All rape is about hatred, but this guy is off the scale. We’ve been offered a chance to catch him and we should take it or he’s going to go on hurting women.’
‘You are jumping to conclusions because you want to catch the rapist yourself. You found his last victim and you’re personally involved. Leave it to the big boys, Maeve. They’ll get him.’
I couldn’t understand why Gary was so determined to put me down that he couldn’t see how well Sid Hudson fit the profile of the person we were hunting. I suppressed the worried voice in my head that was murmuring that he might be right and I might be entirely, awfully wrong. I had one more idea up my sleeve, though. To Chris, I said, ‘What’s the other thing we know about the rapist, aside from the fact that he hates women?’
‘He likes to nick stuff.’
‘Exactly. So where does he keep it?’
The four of us turned as one and looked up at the house.
‘How are you going to get a search warrant?’
‘I want to arrest him,’ I said.
‘Ballsy move,’ Andy said seriously, and was ignored by everyone.
‘I can search the location where he’s been arrested under section 32,�
�� I said. ‘So I don’t have to get a warrant and I don’t have to wait.’
‘Doesn’t that give the game away that we think he’s the rapist?’ Chris said.
‘That Maeve thinks he’s the rapist.’ Gary again, his expression hostile.
‘Okay. Fine.’ I looked from him to Chris. ‘Who wants to get the boss on the phone to see what she thinks?’
* * *
‘I think you’ve gone loopy. Must be the heat.’ Inspector Saunders stood in the small sitting room of 17 Jaipur Road, watching me search it. ‘What are you looking for?’
‘From memory, bits of a black bra, size ten knickers, a gold watch, a heart pendant, a Motorola Razr handset, some jewellery, a shoe and a Tesco clubcard.’
‘And mascara. Don’t forget the mascara.’ She grinned. ‘Nothing wrong with your memory but I don’t think you’re going to find all that under the sofa.’
‘He has to be hiding it somewhere.’ I straightened up and looked around. I could hear the others searching upstairs and in the kitchen. It bothered me that Hudson hadn’t looked surprised or edgy, even when Inspector Saunders told him why he was being arrested. He looked as if he’d been expecting us and had planned accordingly. It fitted, again, with the MO that allowed him to ravage women without leaving traces of his own DNA. He’d thought it through.
Which meant he’d thought about where to hide his souvenirs. And he thought he’d come up with a foolproof place.
Inspector Saunders wandered about the room, looking at the shelf of videogames and DVDs under the television. ‘I’ve told Mr Godley we’ve arrested him. He’s on his way. So let’s hope you haven’t made a mistake about this one.’
I tried to look confident despite the prickle of fear that Gary had been right and I was seeing what I wanted to see. I couldn’t tell. Once I’d seen the facts assemble themselves into a shape that fitted our case, I couldn’t see them any other way. It made sense to me, even if I couldn’t yet prove it.
And why I’d thought Hudson would have hidden his gruesome treasures in the living room, I couldn’t say. His stash was unlikely to be down the back of the sofa, or under the rug. I sat back on my heels and blew my hair off my face. ‘I’m missing something.’
‘Yeah. Evidence.’
‘Something about how he behaved tonight. He sat in here like a – a – a barnacle. We had to arrest him to get him off the sofa. He never came to the kitchen to check up on his wife or to get another beer. He didn’t even go to the toilet.’
‘And?’
‘I think he was guarding something. Keeping an eye on it so we didn’t stumble across it.’ I sat down on the sofa in the exact place where Hudson had sat, and stared around the room. There wasn’t much furniture – the television and its shelf of games and DVDs, a sofa and an armchair, a storage unit for children’s toys with the hamster’s cage on top, a coffee table and a square table in the corner with a wilting fern on it. A few family photographs hung on one wall. Otherwise, there was nothing. I looked at the television. I’d searched above it and behind it. I’d gone through the boxes on the shelf, checking that the DVDs were the only things inside. I’d picked through every box of toys, looking inside everything that opened, examining fiddly bits of plastic to see if one would unlock the mystery.
The hamster scuffled in its bedding. It was a cute one, black and white, bright-eyed and active now that it was the early hours of the morning.
I reached over and lifted the fern, checking under the pot. It was so dry I could lift the whole plant out, compost and all, and look inside too. Nothing.
The hamster’s wheel began to spin.
I sat back on the sofa, aware of Inspector Saunders watching me. I tried not to think about that. I tried not to think about anything.
Hiding things. Protecting his secret life. Terrorising his wife and family about his clothes – but they were gone. I thought about his kindness to his children, and his pet. That didn’t match up with the picture I’d formed of a man who would assault a stranger so severely she would require months of hospital treatment: operations, physiotherapy, the works.
He loved his children, according to his downtrodden wife who would lie herself blue rather than risk losing her kids to social services. I wasn’t convinced about that one at all.
He was so fond of the hamster, he wouldn’t let his wife go near it.
He cleaned out the cage and fed it himself.
He cleaned out the cage.
I jumped up and went over to the cage, where the hamster had stopped running on the wheel to gaze at me inquisitively.
‘Sorry about this, chap.’ I unlatched the cage door and pushed the little creature into a corner so I could run my fingers through the bedding. Nothing. I checked the food bowl, and then lifted up the little shelter where the hamster usually slept. And it rattled.
‘What have you got there?’ Inspector Saunders came to stand beside me.
I shook a key out onto my gloved palm. ‘There’s a padlock somewhere that this fits. Now all we have to do is find it.’
‘I’ll tell the others.’ She hesitated. ‘Maybe a storage unit? One of the big multi-storey ones?’
‘Could be. But I bet he keeps his stuff somewhere close. He’d want to be able to see it as often as he can.’
I made my way to the kitchen where Dani was sitting, her eyes fixed on the baby monitor connected with the children’s room.
‘They haven’t woken up so far.’
‘We’ll try not to disturb them.’ I held up the key. ‘What does this unlock?’
‘I don’t know.’ Her face was blank. ‘I’ve never seen that before.’
‘Is there anything in the house with a padlock on it? A box? A suitcase, even?’
‘The only padlock around here is the one on the shed.’
‘The shed?’ I looked out at the small back garden, which was really just a yard. ‘What shed?’
‘Through the gate, across the lane at the back. Every house has a garage, for storage. We call it the shed because there isn’t room for a car in the garage. They’re only six feet wide.’ She shrugged. ‘I don’t know what Sid keeps in ours, but he goes out there a lot.’
I fairly skipped back to the boss to tell her.
‘Okay. Sounds good. Have a look and take someone with you. Gary. Take Gary.’
My excitement turned to ash. ‘Him?’
‘Yeah. He’s good at searching. Methodical. I don’t want Chris Curzon stamping all over it.’
I could see her point but I wished she hadn’t made it. ‘Fine. I’ll ask him.’
I didn’t need to ask twice. Gary was bored with searching the house and brightened at the prospect of getting out, even if he was still sure I was wrong. He whistled as we walked across the little garden and unlocked the door that led to the lane.
‘This must be the one belonging to the Hudsons.’ I pointed my torch at the small garage.
‘Give me the key. I’ll try the lock.’ He held out his hand and, after a brief struggle with myself, I gave it to him. I wanted to say no. Sometimes, being professional was no fun at all.
He squatted down and tried to get the key into the lock without touching the lock too much. ‘It doesn’t fit.’
I leaned over his shoulder. ‘The padlock’s rusty, that’s all.’
‘No, that’s not it. It doesn’t fit.’ He straightened up. ‘This key isn’t for this padlock. And Sid Hudson doesn’t fit the crime either.’
‘So there’s a perfectly good explanation for why I found the key in the hamster’s cage.’
‘There must be.’
I shook my head. ‘I don’t believe it. No one goes to that much trouble unless they want to hide something.’
‘Yeah, but without the padlock we can’t tell what.’ Gary shrugged and dropped the key back in my hand. ‘Could be an affair. Could be he’s leaving her.’
‘He’d never leave her. He’d make her leave him and then he’d kill her for it.’
‘That’s a pretty big
assertion.’
‘I think it’s true, though.’
‘Of course you do. Making stuff up is what passes for investigation for you, isn’t it?’
‘That’s not fair,’ I said.
‘This is a wild goose chase. What are we doing out here? We need to go in and tell the boss you fucked up. We should de-arrest Hudson and be on our way. We’re just wasting time.’
I wilted under the barrage of complaints. ‘Okay, fine. You win. Give me a minute, though.’
I drifted away from Gary, along the row of sheds, not really knowing what I was looking for. The key didn’t fit the neighbour’s garage either. Or the next one. Or the one after that.
But the brand-new padlock – the one on the shed where the house looked unoccupied and the garden was chest-high in weeds – that one fitted the key.
‘Gary,’ I called. ‘Come and look at this.’
I lifted the padlock off and unlatched the door, opening it slowly. I always hated not knowing what was on the other side of a door – a booby trap or a body or worse.
In this case, the space was almost empty. A few sad boxes were stacked by the door – BBQ written on one, and ANNA’s toys on another. Anna, whoever she had been, was long gone. Books filled another box and I would have liked to pause to admire the first edition Chalet School novels. But my focus, as it had to be, was on the anomaly – the box bigger than the rest, and newer, with a storage company’s logo on the side. The box that was under another, near the front, where the dust was much disturbed.
‘Can you lift that one off the top for me?’ I asked Gary.
‘What’s in it?’
‘Cookbooks, I think.’
It was heavy enough to make him grunt but I ignored him. I was eyeing the box underneath. The flaps at the top were folded in, bland and anonymous. I lifted them carefully, avoiding the flat surfaces where we might lift prints.
‘Oh, you beauty.’
‘Got something?’
I turned and grinned at Gary, who in spite of everything was a colleague and a good police officer. More importantly, he was there, so I could share my triumph with someone.