Her mouth parted and her hands splayed.
‘I hope you know what you’re doing, Hannah.’
She walked out. I looked down at the newspaper on my desk.
So did I.
64
I brewed myself a green tea, made a black coffee, then picked up the half eaten pack of chocolate digestives I kept in my desk drawer and walked down the corridor to Evie’s office. I pushed my way in with my bum as my hands were full and as I turned round Evie was already looking at me, a smile on her face, lifting her glasses up onto her head and leaving them nesting in her curls.
‘I see you take advice well and have brought biscuits with you as well as drinks,’ she said.
‘You are definitely the one person I listen to, Evie.’ I handed her the coffee, put the biscuits on the desk and sat on the spare chair inhaling the green tea vapours winding their way up out of my mug.
‘Ah, so on that point, who is it you are not listening to?’
‘You’re so wise.’
‘That’s why you come here.’ She grinned at me and leaned towards the biscuit packet, pulling one out and stuffing half in her mouth. I have seen her eat a whole biscuit in one before but she obviously wanted to be able to speak today. I picked the next digestive out of the packet.
‘I’ve had a run in with Catherine and needed a tea break. Where better to do that than with my best friend?’
‘Ah, um,’ Evie mumbled through the biscuit, waving a finger at me.
‘My thoughts exactly,’ I replied, smiling at her before taking a bite of my own biscuit. This was why I came in here. I knew she would make me smile.
She swallowed hard. ‘Sweetening me up with biscuits and sweet talk, it must have been bad.’
‘It was. The article in the Today started her off, then we got into the Ross situation and how I’m managing the investigation.’
‘She didn’t send the bad news through Grey?’
‘Nope, I was lucky enough to get it all from the horse’s mouth today. Grey is probably getting his own version right now.’
‘Oh dear. Poor Grey. I’m not sure he can cope with Catherine on the rampage.’ The rest of the biscuit went in her mouth.
‘Neither do I. Though I think part of the reason she is rampaging is because she is stressing over the pending result of Sally’s inquest. Grey is even more fretful than usual for exactly the same reason.’ I washed down the biscuit with my tea.
Evie swallowed again. ‘And you?’
‘Me?’
‘Yes, you. How are you with the inquest still hanging over your head, what’s the effect on you?’
I paused. Put my cup down. It was a good question.
‘I don’t know.’
Evie looked at me.
‘Really Evie, I don’t. This job has had my full attention. It isn’t giving me time to think too much. Having to deal with the stress of Catherine and Grey is enough of a knock-on effect for me without me adding my own stuff to the mix.’ I picked my cup back up and drank.
‘Don’t hide behind those excuses too long, Hannah. More harm will come of it than good and I don’t want to see the outcome of that.’
65
I looked at the faces of the team on this manhunt. A dedicated team and I was proud of them. Even Ross who was trying hard to do what was needed without moaning about the shit job he’d been given. Martin continued to be his shoulder to lean on, or tried to. He was there for him. Always chatting, talking about the job, about life, how it continued for him, his wife, and his dogs. I often overheard them as they sat doing something mundane where they could talk and work at the same time. I could see what Martin was doing. He was a great guy, a great detective, not easily spooked or excited and I didn’t ever want to lose him from my team. I knew there were plenty of other departments out there he could apply for but I hoped he was settled enough to stay here for some time at least.
Things were happening quickly and we all needed to be up to speed on it all. I’d taken three painkillers as my arm was killing me and I didn’t think two would even take the edge off. I needed my thoughts to be focused on the job at hand, not on the deep throbbing ache that pulled my mind away from whatever it was dealing with.
‘We have a lot of information to get through, so listen up. You might want to get your incident books out and take some notes.’ The room rustled in one seamless movement as green incident books were pulled onto the tops of desks and onto knees where room wouldn’t allow for desk space.
‘Several things have happened and have come to light as we’ve been working,’ I continued, ‘so it’s going to be a long night as we tackle what we’ve got. When we’ve finished in here you need to make the calls home that are necessary. OT is already authorised. I hope it’s not going to be a problem for anyone.’ It wasn’t a question. On an investigation like this people expected to work long hours and rarely was I asked for time off before a job was finished. Sick children or spouses were the usual exceptions to a working rule.
‘We’ve had another public order incident. More shoppers trashing foodstuffs because they couldn’t figure out if it had been tampered with or not and the staff member there at the time was unable to calm them down sufficiently. Luckily no one was seriously hurt but there were arrests for public order offences. This time in Beeston, so following this briefing I have to head straight into another briefing to deal with that side of it. We need to be supporting divisions that are dealing with the fallout of this; after all, we’re the ones who have not yet got a handle on who this is or what their motive is. Going into meetings like that is not something I enjoy doing, so we need to get a grasp on this and now, please.’ I was actually giving them the toned-down version of how I felt about going into the next briefing. Not enjoying doing it was a massive understatement. I think if someone gave me a spoon and asked me to gouge my eyes out with it I would probably consider it, if it would get me out of what was coming next.
‘Why Beeston in particular? Finlay seems like an age ago now?’ a voice from the back of the room asked.
‘I don’t know. I imagine they’re worried this problem will come back to them as it is moving about and has no discernible pattern. It’s not helped by the hysterics from the Today. That’s something else we need to deal with.’
‘As far as we’re concerned,’ I continued, ‘and I’ll update you after this next briefing, we are doing everything we can to keep the public safe. The hospital staff are keeping in touch with the CRCE, the Centre for Radiation, Chemicals and Environmental Hazards for anyone not conversant with the acronym, to keep on top of the public safety issue. There is nothing to be done to protect them that we aren’t already doing. We could consider a public televised piece on what to check for – tampered food etc., but I’ll discuss that at the next meeting with Claire, Catherine and Grey, and feed it back down.’
Pens scribbled away in notepads as heads bent over in concentration.
‘Regarding the property seized from Dawn Barry’s address. The CSU have found the item that contained the poison that made her sick and identified the poison as an off-the-shelf rat poison, which matches up with what the hospital identified from the tox screen.’
Heads flipped upwards. All mutterings stopped and phones that were being texted from were quickly slid into pockets.
I tucked my hair behind my ear. ‘It was in the carton of ice cream she ate. There was a small puncture mark in the tub, which is how the offender got it inside without notice. It was pushed up as close to the lid and under as he or she could get it. Dawn is recovering slowly. Her body was badly affected by the poison. She went into convulsions and was also jaundiced, which indicates a problem with her liver. She’s in good hands and should make a full recovery. Rat poison, however, isn’t what we’ve been dealing with up to now. I made a phone call to the National Crime Agency and spoke to one of their profilers and from what she was saying, this is likely to be a copycat and not the original poisoner.’ There was a collective groan from the room.
‘But we still need to identify and arrest them before they continue their spree.’ I paused and looked around. This was going to be a long explanation. I looked behind me, gauged the distance, walked backwards to a desk, and perched myself on it.
‘Karen, the profiler, says that this offender is likely to have committed the offence because of the high level of publicity that has surrounded the murders. Copycats desire the media attention that is being directed at the original crime. It’s usually a male and though this is probably publicity driven, it does not mean he would not have offended in some way without the trigger of the press frenzy. Look at the world we live in, everyone is obsessed with how many people are looking at them, how many followers and friends they have. Locally this is the biggest thing to happen in a while, especially as we’ve lowered the rate of gun crime in the county.’
‘So, are we looking at someone who hates their mummy?’
‘Is that a serious question?’
‘Erm.’ A scratch of a balding head, one of the seconded staff. ‘Yeah, I suppose it is; this psychology stuff isn’t much of my thing.’
‘No, then. They’d be targeting women specifically and doing it from the get go rather than copying someone else.’
‘But, he’s craving attention?’
‘Yes. The attention that’s building daily because of these murders has built up in his mind and he wants a piece of it for himself.’
There was a mixture of nodding and shaking of heads as the strangeness of this statement sank in.
‘Martin, tell us what Dawn said when you saw her please.’
‘Well, she’s been lucky to survive. There was a pretty high dose of rat poison in the ice cream and in her system. It’s causing all sorts of problems for her. She didn’t taste it because she was drunk when she ate it. According to the experts, this guy really wanted to kill.’
More head shaking.
‘Dawn said she only bought the ice cream the day before she ate it as she loves her ice cream and tends to get through a lot of it, which is why she can be so specific. She bought it from the shop round the corner from her home address.’
His look told me he’d finished.
‘Good, thanks.’ I looked at the rest of the room again. ‘Ross, I’d like you to go to the shop to pick up the CCTV for as far back as it goes, speak to the store owner and any and all of the store workers to see if they saw anyone suspicious around the ice cream freezer.’
I turned to Martin, who was working on looking at finding links between the victims.
‘What have you got?’ I asked.
‘Unfortunately, I still can’t find a link between any of the victims. I looked through all the relatives’ statements and there was nothing there. I then looked through the victims’ bank accounts and I couldn’t find anything there either. They didn’t go to the same takeaways, restaurants, gym clubs, or hairdressers. There is nothing to link two of them, never mind all of them. It’s harder with Finlay McDonnell but I did take a lot of information from his parents’ statements and the extra information that has come in slowly from their FLO. Nothing. It’s so frustrating.’
‘Okay, keep looking, there has to be a crossover somewhere. Also, I heard back from Curvet after they did an inventory check and they don’t have any missing stock, so the digoxin is not coming from them.’ Another dead end.
‘Aaron has the rest of the actions for everyone else, so let’s get going, we have a hell of a lot to do. This isn’t even the original enquiry work!’
66
By the time I got back from my meeting with Youens I was stressed and wanted to run to the kitchen to find that spoon for my eyes. The amount of times I’d had to admit I didn’t know something to him made me feel like I didn’t have a handle on the case and it annoyed me as much as it had very obviously annoyed him. He’d said the investigation was toxic to his area and infecting his residents and turning them into monsters. Because of course they were never predisposed to this behaviour before our offender started his business of randomly poisoning people.
We needed to get a grip on this and get a grip now before more bodies dropped on either of us.
Ross was already back with the CCTV collection and was sitting in the CCTV viewing room going through it. I spoke to Martin who was stretching his legs around the incident room.
‘So, the owner of the shop is a woman in her late fifties. Doesn’t understand how any of her products could have been tampered with. She hasn’t seen anything but she was more than happy to hand over all her CCTV discs as she doesn’t want to get a reputation for being one of the stores where there is dodgy food. She asked Ross if she should be closing the store or anything. He didn’t know and called me, and to be honest, boss, I don’t really know. Has our offender put this stuff in more than one tub, or even in more than one product?’ he asked, looking a little more pensive than I was used to seeing him, his hands in his pockets as he stood in front of me, shoulders slumped forward.
‘As we’ve identified her store as a source of one of the outbreaks I think we need to inform CRCE and let them take the lead with those questions don’t you? It’s not our area of expertise. She needs to keep the shop closed until they contact her and go from there, but they’re very good and will be in touch with her soon,’ I answered.
‘I did tell Ross to keep it closed until I’d spoken with you to be on the safe side.’
‘Great. Thanks, Martin. And how’s it going with checking the CCTV? What about any other staff?’
‘She has two other part-time staff members. Ross took statements from them. They both say the same thing. Nothing suspicious seen and this is out of the blue to them. After getting back in, Ross volunteered to start viewing straight away, so I’ve left him to it.’
‘And we’re running background checks on the owner and the staff as well?’
‘Yes, I’ve started it but still have a lot to do.’
‘Great. HOLMES will be able to identify if any of the nominals are known to each other, which will help us to see if there is a link anywhere.’
‘I fed all the names to Diane to index on HOLMES before I continued with my stuff.’
‘Thanks, Martin. I’m glad I have you on the team right now.’ I made a move towards my office. ‘How’s Ross doing?’
Martin walked with me. ‘He’s doing okay, I think. He’s subdued. But you’d expect that, with what has been happening. He desperately wants to stay here, that much is obvious, so he’s doing all the jobs, even the tedious ones that will hopefully show him in a positive light. I know it’s not my place to ask, but they’re not going to boot him, are they?’
‘Not if I can help it they’re not. Not if I can help it.’
67
It was late, the sun had set and the heat of the day had finally given way to a cooler easier evening. A light was on in the upstairs window. He’d be sat in bed, glasses perched on the end of his nose, book in hands, drooping into his lap as his head nodded downwards.
I had a key but I didn’t like to use it. Not now, not when he was in bed. I knocked softly on the glass pane and waited. Then knocked again because in his fitful sleep pretence of reading he wouldn’t have heard me the first time. I checked my phone for texts or missed calls as I waited for him to rise and answer the door. Nothing had come through. I didn’t want to use the Q word, even to myself, but a silent phone was good news.
A light went on.
‘Who is it?’ the voice behind the glass asked. Did I hear fear? I forget he ages as I age. But mostly, I think he’s lost on his own.
‘It’s me, Dad.’ It had been a couple of weeks since I had spoken with him. It always caused me to feel guilty but with the pressures of the job and the difficulties in the relationship, I didn’t seem to be able to call him or visit any more often than I did, but this was different.
‘Hello?’
‘Dad, it’s Hannah.’
‘Hannah!’ the joy in his voice nearly broke my heart. The door swung open and his face shon
e. ‘Come in, come in. How are you?’
I picked up the four carrier bags at my feet, my arm twinging, and walked over the threshold. ‘I’m good. You?’
He looked at the bags, stepping back out of my way, confusion crossing his face. ‘Good. Good, yes,’ he paused, ‘how’s the arm?’
‘Still sore, but you know … still healing.’
‘Yes. These things take time. Don’t push it, Hannah. Take care of yourself.’ He grabbed at the bags, taking them from me.
‘I am, Dad, I am …’ I gritted my teeth. We walked into the kitchen. ‘Look, I called for a specific reason this evening.’
‘Okay.’ He dumped the bags on the kitchen worktop.
‘I’ve brought your weekly shopping round so you don’t need to go out to the supermarket and buy it yourself.’ He looked at me in silence. ‘If there’s anything I’ve missed, text me.’ He frowned. ‘Or call. And I’ll bring that round as well.’
‘What on earth for? I’m quite capable of doing my own shopping. You know that, why would you do this?’
‘You’ve read the papers, Dad. Please do this for me. I’m not asking you to stay indoors or anything, just to stay out of food stores. I don’t want you to get caught up in anything and get hurt. You can still go about your daily business as usual. Please, Dad?’
He sighed. ‘Okay. But only because you actually asked, Hannah, and not because you told me to.’
‘Thank you, Dad.’ I rubbed my arm. ‘It’s because I care.’
‘I know. And when I ask you for something, it’s always because I care as well.’
‘I know. I’ll order your shopping online for next week, as I’m not sure if I’ll get time to do it again. But, I don’t want you doing it until this is resolved. I hope that’s good with you?’
He looked at where I was rubbing. ‘Hannah?’
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