by GS Rhodes
“But he’s your son.”
“I did what I had to do,” she growled. “He was at that school all day, every day and he couldn’t stand up for his dad. Those boys were after him too. If he’d known it was me, he would have been glad to see them in pain, glad to see them hurt.”
Blue lights appeared in the window behind her, flickering across the room, startling her a little. Kidd expected her to panic, expected her to do something stupid, but instead she laughed. Maybe it was something of a relief to have been caught.
“I bet it killed you when he helped them tonight, huh?” Kidd said. He needed a few more minutes, he needed to keep her talking until the officers arrived. “When he tried to stop you from hurting either one of them.”
She shrugged. “He’s a good boy, I raised him well,” she said. “He was doing what he thought was right.” She sighed. “And now I have to do the right thing for me.”
The world seemed to go into slow motion for a moment.
Caroline Paige turned the knife on herself, her eyes looking past Kidd and Sanchez to the boy standing stock-still between them, fear rooting him to the spot. She smiled as she plunged the knife into her stomach.
“No!” Kidd shouted. He bolted across the space towards her as she started to bleed, as she fell to her knees, her mouth wide, the life pouring out of her with every passing second. “Call an ambulance,” he barked.
He turned back to Bill who was watching her die, watching as the blood soaked into the carpet of his house.
“Bill!” he shouted. “Call a bloody ambulance.”
He didn’t move. Was it fear that was holding him there? Was it defiance? Was he glad to see her go this way? Next to him, Demi moved with speed, with intention, grabbing a handbag from near the dining table and pulling out her phone.
Sanchez took hold of them both and got them outside as police officers poured in, a few moments too late. Everything too late. Time had run away from them in the worst possible way, and the price of that was being paid with someone’s life.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Kidd advanced on Bill as soon as they made their way outside, launching himself straight past DCI Weaver and DS Sanchez who were waiting for him and over to the ambulance where he was having his head wound tended.
“What the bloody hell were you thinking?” Kidd barked.
Sanchez appeared at his side, taking his arm, trying to pull him away. He shrugged her off.
“What?” Bill said, confusion etched across his face. Kidd wanted to punch the look right off it.
“You know what,” Kidd said.
The paramedic tried to get Kidd’s attention. “Excuse me, sir, I’m trying to tend to a patient, if you could—”
“This won’t take a second,” Kidd interrupted. “You were about to stand there and watch her bleed out.”
“Just like she did to my friends.” Bill sneered. “What did you expect me to do?”
“To call an ambulance and get her taken to hospital so she can face proper justice,” Kidd replied. “That was an easy way out for her and she might have gotten away with it. Don’t you want to see her go down for this?”
“Of course I do,” Bill replied. “But after what she did to my friends, maybe that was what she deserved.”
Kidd looked at him and finally he seemed to see the face of the boys who had tormented Mr Paige all those years ago, who had mercilessly beaten him and taunted him, making his life hell. It was just a flash, only a slight glimpse, but it was enough to make Kidd feel sick.
He walked away, back towards Weaver, Sanchez at his side.
“I’m not going to reprimand you for any of that,” Weaver said quietly. “But if anyone asks, feel free to tell them that I gave you bollocking.”
“Yes, sir,” Kidd said, turning back one more time to see Bill leaving the back of the ambulance, a couple of stitches in his forehead. “Thank you, sir.”
He couldn’t get his head around the number of things the boys had kept from them throughout the investigation. All of the things they’d not said, all of the things that must have seemed insignificant to them while they were being questioned, and that had ultimately cost them time, cost them lives.
It had nearly cost them most dearly of all, and yet they’d been willing to keep their secrets. Secrets that might have led them to investigate Caroline more deeply. It was hard to tell. There were so many should haves and could haves but when it all came down to it, he had no idea if it would have played out any differently. They all seemed pretty keen to pin it on Robin, based on what they’d done to him in the past, none of them considered that it was even possible for Caroline Paige to do such a thing.
People often had a habit of surprising you.
“Well done figuring that one out, Kidd,” Weaver said. “A good catch at the last minute, you saved a couple of lives by doing what you did. Even if you could have gotten yourself killed in the process.”
There were blue lights all around, filling the street with a sea of colour, causing Kidd to squint. There were people at their windows, curtain twitching, trying to see what was happening. They’d likely hear all about it in the papers or on the news tomorrow morning. For a moment, it would look like a victory, even if it had cost so many lives in the process.
“Wasn’t me, sir,” Kidd said. “Well, I put two and two together and came out with four, but it’s DC Ravel who needs the credit for this one. She checked the shoes.”
“The shoes?”
“The shoes we got from Robin Paige’s wardrobe, which must have been put there by Caroline,” he said, surmising that it must have been in a moment of panic after she’d killed David Oliver. He would bet his life that they’d find her fingerprints on the camera as well. She must have known they were closing in, though not quickly enough. “She checked Robin’s shoe size and they wouldn’t have fit him. His mum was willing to frame him, willing to let him suffer for it. We’d already decided that Robin Paige was our man, so we would have arrested him and that might have given her enough time to kill the rest. She was using him as a means to an end.”
“But why?” Weaver asked.
Kidd explained what they’d done to Mr Paige over the years, the way the boys had treated him and how they’d kept this information from the police.
“Mr and Mrs Paige should have come to us when it happened,” Weaver said. “If they’d have told us about what the boys were doing, maybe we could have stopped this in its tracks.”
“Maybe they tried,” Kidd said with a shrug. “It was ten years ago and we’re far from perfect. Maybe there wasn’t enough evidence, or maybe Mr and Mrs Paige didn’t have faith in us that we would get it done. From what I can tell, the school let them down when it came to the bullying of Robin, maybe any faith in authority had been lost and they decided to take things into their own hands.”
“That’s how situations like this end up happening,” Weaver said gravely. He ran a meaty hand over his face, that exhaustion present once again. It was only in that moment that Kidd realised that DCI Weaver wasn’t in his usual suit and tie. He’d clearly gone home and gotten into his comfies before getting a call asking him to come out again. He was wearing a pair of jogging bottoms, a ratty grey hoodie, and a pair of trainers. Kidd didn’t think he’d ever seen Weaver in a pair of trainers. If nothing else, it brought a tired smile to his face.
“Is she going to be alright?” Zoe asked, nodding over to an ambulance drove off into the night.
Kidd shrugged. “I’m not sure. I hope she is,” he said, though after all they’d done to each other it was hard to say why. He always preferred to see someone do the time for what they’d done, rather than take what some might call the easy way out. Killing yourself wasn’t easy, but it was a way to make sure you didn’t go to prison for what you’d done. She needed to go down for this.
“I think we need to call it a night,” Weaver said, putting his hands in the pockets of his hoodie. Kidd tried not to stare at him. It really was a weird sight,
him not being in a suit. “This will all still be here in the morning. We’ll finalise it then and we’ll get what we can out of Robin and the other lads too. The truth this time.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Kidd said. “Night boss.”
Weaver bade them both goodnight, heading back to his car and off into the night. Sanchez and Kidd walked back to her car in silence, pulling away from the scene of the crime and towards Kidd’s house so he could get some shut eye before work started all over again in the morning. Kidd checked his watch. It was midnight. It was a new day, even though this one barely felt over.
He checked his phone on the way home, more missed messages from John wishing him well, hoping that he was doing okay. He tapped out a quick reply.
KIDD: I’m so sorry about tonight. Definitely too late to do anything now. But I’ll make it up to you. I promise. Xx
JOHN: I’ll hold you to that. Glad to hear that you’re okay. Sorry you’ve been kept up so late by this. Maybe I’ll see you tomorrow night?
Kidd smiled at his phone.
KIDD: Sounds good. Sleep tight. I know I will.
JOHN: And you. Xx
“What are you smiling at?” Zoe asked as she pulled up outside Kidd’s house.
“John,” he said taking a heavy breath. “He’s glad I’m okay.”
Zoe made a throwing up sound. “Seriously, it’s way too late for you two to be getting mushy,” she said. “You going to be alright?”
“Yeah, I’ll sleep well,” he said. “Quite a day.”
“Quite a week,” she corrected.
Kidd got out of the car and said his goodbyes to Zoe before heading towards his darkened house. It was later than late, the road around his house quiet, the tiredness bone-deep inside him. He was glad for this case to be practically over, to have nothing left to do but line up all the evidence and make sure that Caroline Paige went down for it. If he could get them on perverting the course of justice, then he would. He’d have to see how he felt about it in the morning.
His house was quiet, but it was the kind of quiet that didn’t feel oppressive or painful to him, but the kind of quiet that felt like a comfort, that would sing him to sleep and let him rest properly.
His phone started to ring in his pocket, and he sighed.
“Maybe I fucking jinxed it,” he said into the darkness as he rummaged in his pocket and pulled out the phone.
WITHELD NUMBER.
“Just can’t take the fucking hint,” he growled as he pressed accept on the call, not waiting for anyone to say anything, because he knew that they wouldn’t. “I told you, you need to stop calling me,” Kidd said. He was tired. He was tired of these phone calls, he was tired of this day. “Just leave me alone, alright?”
“But I can’t.”
The voice that came back was one that stopped Kidd in his tracks, one that woke him up.
“Craig?” Kidd whispered down the phone. “Craig, is that you?”
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Kidd hadn’t heard that voice for two years. He didn’t need to ask if it was Craig, he knew it, he knew it in his bones, and the whole time he’d been getting these phone calls he hadn’t considered for a single second that it would be Craig Peyton on the other end of the phone. He thought maybe he didn’t want to be found, maybe it was all in his head and Kidd was doing everything in his power to sabotage what he had with John, but here Craig was on the other end of the phone, telling Kidd that he can’t leave him alone. The feeling was more than mutual.
“Yeah, it’s me,” Craig said. “I’m sorry.”
“What for?” Kidd said on a sigh, taking a seat on his staircase. Was this really happening? It was so late at night, maybe it was a dream, maybe he’d fallen asleep on the way back to his house and any moment now DS Sanchez would be shaking him awake and trying to push him out of her car.
“For everything,” he said. “For leaving, for not telling you, for…for calling you and not having the guts to say anything to you, because what do you say to someone that you ran away from?”
“Hello would be a good start.”
“Hello, Ben,” Craig said, and Kidd could hear the smile in his tone. He had so many questions that needed answers, so many thoughts rushing through his head that he couldn’t pin one down to ask him.
“How are you?” Kidd asked. It was simple, probably the easiest one for Craig to answer. Kidd didn’t know how long he had, how long before Craig would hang up the phone and disappear from his life all over again. He wanted to know that Craig was okay.
“I’m…” he trailed off. Maybe it wasn’t as easy a question as Kidd thought. “Right now, I’m okay,” he continued. “I want to see you.”
Kidd sat up a little straighter. “Where are you?” It was late but Kidd was pretty sure he would drive anywhere if it meant he would get to see Craig again, get to find out what happened, where they went wrong, why he’d needed to run.
“I’m here.”
Kidd’s eyes widened. “Where?”
“I’m down by the river,” Craig said. “I’ve been in town for a couple of days and…I kept trying to call you and talk to you, tell you that I knew you were looking for me but…you seemed busy.”
Had Craig seen him around town? Had he been watching him, maybe even seen him with John? Or maybe he meant he’d seen that Kidd had been working. It had been a wild few days. He could barely hold onto a single thought long enough to verbalise it.
“Work has been intense,” Kidd said.
“I understand if you don’t want to see me right now, if this is too much, but I—”
“Can I…can I come and meet you?”
Craig breathed what had to be a sigh of relief down the phone. “I’ll wait right here.”
Kidd could hardly believe what was happening as he hung up the phone. His legs felt like jelly, his brain like there was a train running through it. He stood up and grabbed his keys from the table by the door, heading back out into the night.
It felt stupid, reckless, wild to be doing this so late at night. He’d just told John that it was too late to do anything and now Benjamin Kidd found himself doing the biggest something he’d done in a while. This wasn’t a wild goose chase to Germany, to the seaside, this was it, this was the moment, this was a certainty, wasn’t it?
There was still a part of Kidd that didn’t know whether or not to believe his own ears when Craig had told him to meet him at the riverside. Maybe he would get there and Craig would be gone again, if he was ever even there in the first place. It was impossible to know, impossible without taking some kind of chance, and here Kidd was taking it.
He walked down the Old London Road and away from his house, past the queue for Pryzm where drunken adults were just getting ready for their night out, through the deathly quiet town centre, the lights on, the air completely still but for the sounds of Kidd’s footsteps as he walked towards Kingston Riverside.
His heart was in his mouth as he walked down the ramp towards the water. The blue lights that lit up the bridge were casting strange lights across the running tide. Usually being here calmed Kidd, allowed him time to think, time to breathe, but right now he couldn’t even bring himself to do that.
He turned the corner and there he was.
He was the same tall, broad-shouldered man that Kidd had fallen for all those years ago. His blond hair had been cut short, a change from the last picture he’d seen of Craig from the CCTV. It was shaved close at the sides, swooping over on top of his head. His eyes still seemed to sparkle as he took Kidd in, those pouty lips that haunted his dreams stretching into a smile so wide it looked like it might crack his face in two.
Kidd’s heart felt like it had stopped, the entire world felt like it had, as if someone had taken the pin of out the clock that kept the hands of time running on this world. Time stood still for Ben and Craig, and they stared at each other across the shortest distance that had existed between them in two years.
He could hardly bear it.
As Kidd had said many times before, he didn’t know whether to run over to him and hug him or punch him. He just took him in for a moment longer, the man that had haunted him for so long, who had vanished without a trace and now, after so much searching, had walked so willingly back into his life.
They walked towards one another, their steps seeming to light up the dark as they got closer and closer. Kidd opened his arms wide and threw them around Craig, who did the same, the two of them embracing under a streetlight by the riverside.
There were questions. There were so many questions that desperately needed answers. But the questions would wait. Craig was alive and Kidd had unequivocal proof. He was in Kidd’s life once again, and he had no idea what was going to happen next.
DI BENJAMIN KIDD WILL RETURN IN
BE MY BABY
Coming August 2021
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Here we are again. I know I said something similar in the last acknowledgements, but it is amazing to me that I am writing another set of acknowledgements. Once again, I need to thank the people in the group who have made this possible with your advice and insight. I’d like to thank Will Harker for being a massive cheerleader for me and for these books, it really means a lot to have you in my corner.
Thank you again to my brilliant editor Hanna who turned this around so fast and was brilliant as ever. And huge thanks again to Meg for an incredible cover. You knock it out of the park every single time.