When You're Smiling

by GS Rhodes

  When You're Smiling

  A DI Benjamin Kidd Thriller

  GS Rhodes

  Dark Ship Crime

  Copyright © 2021 GS Rhodes

  All rights reserved

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published Worldwide by Dark Ship Crime

  Cover design by Meg Jolly

  Find GS Rhodes Online

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  www.gsrhodes.co.uk

  To all those who told me to jump, thank you

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FORTY

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  DI BENJAMIN KIDD WILL RETURN IN

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  CHAPTER ONE

  “You’ve absolutely got to see this! Trust me!” TJ was alight with excitement. He was practically bouncing from foot to foot, the mud squelching beneath his battered Converse, his face split in two by a smile so wild he looked like he was about to explode.

  Lydia Coles sighed as a heavy wind blew through the park, almost knocking her sideways. The trees were leaning over, leaves were flying about in the breeze, and it was cold. So darn cold. She pulled her jacket tighter around her, tucked her hands into her sleeves, and stomped after TJ.

  “But it’s creepy out here,” she complained, looking about. The further into the park they went the less clear the paths were, the more the trees seemed to encroach. And with the skies being dark grey and the weather being unpredictable, it was enough to freak her out more than a little bit. Every time a twig snapped she practically jumped out of her skin. “And it’s cold!” she added quickly. TJ wasn’t listening. He was way too excited about… well… about whatever the heck it was he wanted to show her.

  If Lydia had known they were coming out this far, this late in the day, she might have dressed a little more appropriately. But when TJ appeared outside the lecture hall telling her he’d seen something that she just had to see, what could she say?

  Well, she could have said no. But he was so excited, practically vibrating, smiling that same smile he had on his face now.

  So, now she was traipsing through a park on the other side of town, not wearing a thick enough jacket for this time of year, and it looked like it was about to chuck it down.

  She looked up to the sky and felt a drop hit her forehead.

  Great, she thought. That’s just what I need. Rain. Christ.

  “TJ, can we just go back?” she groaned. She knew she sounded whiny, but she didn’t care. Not right now anyhow. “I’m cold.”

  “We’re almost there!”

  TJ was up ahead, his baseball cap on backwards, his jeans hanging around his arse, wearing the biggest hoodie Lydia had ever seen. She remembered how in cartoons when people were hungry whoever they were with started to look like a delicious steak or something. Right now, TJ Bell looked like a radiator or a giant fluffy blanket she wanted to snuggle up next to. She didn’t have feelings for TJ or anything, but she was seriously tempted to ask if she could either borrow his hoodie or climb in there with him.

  She didn’t see him agreeing to either.

  They moved towards the trees, Lydia’s boots squelching in the mud. She couldn’t quite figure how far they’d come from the path, how far they’d even walked from TJ’s car. Had she been here before? She couldn’t be sure. But as they got closer and closer to a collection of dense trees, Lydia found herself feeling more and more unsure. Her heart started to pound a little harder in her chest. She didn’t like this. She didn’t like this one bit.

  “TJ, please can we just go?” She trusted TJ. They’d been friends pretty much since they’d started uni, but to bring her out into the middle of nowhere when the weather was like this, when there was nobody else around… It made her suddenly feel suspicious. And she didn’t want to be suspicious of a guy like TJ. He was meant to be one of the good ones.

  “Almost there, chicken.”

  He slowed down, giving her a chance to catch up. They were stood next to one another by some densely packed trees, the smallest inlet just big enough for them to fit through one at a time, opening before them like the mouth of a beast. The scraggly, bare branches clawed out at them, reaching for the heavy, grey clouds above. All it needed was a thunder crack and the nightmare would be complete.

  TJ looked down at Lydia.

  “What?” she said.

  “You ready?” He was grinning like a madman.

  Good, that makes me feel calm, she thought, trying not to let her nerves show on her face.

  “If this is lame, I’m not talking to you for the rest of the night.” She couldn’t keep the shake out of her voice. Was it the cold or was she really scared right now? She couldn’t tell. Her heart was beating so fast it was practically humming.

  TJ laughed, it was sort of like a bark, just a, ‘HA!’ that echoed off into the distance. It made her flinch. “Don’t worry, Lyds, this is worth the trek.”

  She sighed as he set off again, entering the beast’s mouth, leading the two of them slowly into the trees. It was darker in here. What limited light the sky was giving them was blocked out by the tree canopy.

  Lydia cringed as she walked. She hated the feel of the damp foliage on her skin, of the sharp branches clawing at her like they were trying to grab hold and keep her there. Everything about it was claustrophobic. Who knew you could be out in the open and still feel like the walls were closing in?

  They walked along a pathway that had been trodden down by people over the years, their shoes squelching, the fallen branches snapping underfoot. A chill ran through Lydia’s body. She didn’t know if it was anticipation or nerves.

  “Here,” TJ said finally, stopping dead in the middle of the path. Lydia couldn’t see past him and, wondering what on earth they were supposed to be looking at, let out a heaving breath before stomping around him.

  What met her eyes was a sight that she would never forget for as long as she lived.

  There was a woman on the ground.

  Or perhaps it was more accurate to say a
woman’s body.

  She was pale, her hair covered in mud and dirt, wet from the rain. She was fully clothed, wearing a pair of jeans and a t-shirt that was drenched in blood and dirt and rain and plastered to her skin. But it was the face that made Lydia’s breath catch in her chest.

  The face was pretty messed up and barely recognizable as human. Carved into her cheeks were two crosses, the skin flapping open, pale red, some of the blood still present on her face. And across her neck was a deep wound like a smile. If you looked at it wrong, or maybe even right, it looked like a laughing face, and it was enough to make Lydia need to turn away. But each time she blinked there it was. She doubled over, trying to get some air into her lungs.

  “What the fuck, TJ?” she breathed.

  “I thought you’d want to see it,” he said, totally nonplussed. She looked up at him. He was still staring at the body, not looking at her. How was he not repulsed by this? How was this not freaking him out?

  “Why?”

  He shrugged. “I saw it this morning.”

  “What were you doing in a forest this morning?”

  “What are you, the police?” he parried, turning to look at her, suddenly on the defensive. Lydia would have taken a step back but the path was so small, the trees keeping them close together. Too close together at this point. “I was out for a run, and when I was done I wandered in here because it looked like a cool place to take photos and…” He nodded towards the body. It felt weird to be talking about her like she wasn’t there. It felt rude, somehow. Though they could hardly include her.

  “Did you call the police?” Lydia snapped.

  “No, I thought you’d want to see it.”

  Lydia looked at him carefully. There was a question that ran through her mind and out the other side—did he know something about this?—but she shook the thought away as quickly as it came. There was no way. Was there?

  He didn’t seem any different. He was the same old happy-go-lucky, a little bit dumb but cute so who cared, TJ. He widened his eyes at her.

  “Lydia, you don’t think—?”

  “Stop talking, TJ,” she said suddenly. She didn’t want to talk about it with him. Of course, he didn’t know anything about this. How could he? It was TJ. There was no way. She shook the thought from her head, making a mental note not to bring it up with herself again.

  She looked at the body one more time, at the way the knife had gone from under the woman’s ear on either side, the way the wound bloomed as if it was a pair of lips opening. Messy, but effective. Clearly.

  She took her phone out of her pocket, tapped it a few times, and pressed it to her ear, annoyed when she got a busy tone.

  “Jesus,” she groaned, tapping at the phone again to redial.

  “Police?” TJ said.

  “You call the police,” Lydia said. “I have a friend who would die to see this too.” She bit her lip and looked down at the body. “Sorry, bad choice of words.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  The blue lights shot past the pub window and Detective Inspector Benjamin Kidd almost knocked his pint over. He caught it just in time, grabbing it with a thick hand before he could spill a drop. He looked around to see if anyone had noticed. Everybody in the dimly lit pub was either focussed on Sky Sports News on the big TV screen or on drowning their sorrows. They weren’t bothered about him. The only person who was bothered was Liz, sitting across from him, trying to stifle her laughter.

  He always seemed to do that. Even before he was forced to take time off due to what DCI Weaver had called “stress” and “not taking a fucking break.” Maybe it was instinct. Maybe it was obsession. He didn’t want to say it was either.

  “You’re out of your mind,” Liz finally said when she calmed down, wiping a tear from her eye. She was halfway down her third glass of white wine, her speech a little less than perfect, her smile getting lazier as the seconds passed by. She should have just bought the bottle.

  Ben’s sister, Elizabeth Spencer (formerly Kidd), was on what was one of her first nights out since her second baby was born, leaving little newborn, Timothy and three-year-old, Tilly with their father. “Do you always have to do that?” she asked, genuinely curious.

  “Do what?”

  “Sit bolt upright every time a police car goes past,” she said, taking another sip. Her lipstick had already stained the rim of the glass. Kidd was surprised there was any left on her lips at all. “You’re like a dog.”

  “Call the response Pavlovian.”

  “I’m not even going to pretend I know what that is,” she replied with a lazy smile. “It’s not healthy.”

  Kidd didn’t know how to respond to that. He knew it wasn’t healthy, but he’d done everything he thought he was supposed to do when he became a policeman some twenty-odd years ago. He’d thrown himself into it. He’d jumped at every opportunity, every scrap of overtime, and worked his way up to DI. Getting signed off with stress when, as far as he was concerned, he was just doing the job he wasn’t paid nearly enough to do, sucked the big one. The last six months had been tough.

  He took a sip of his drink.

  “Is that agreement? Or are you hoping I’ll change the subject?” Liz teased. Kidd smiled at her.

  “How’s Tiny Tim?”

  “Oh, don’t call him that, Ben, you know I hate that.”

  “That’s why I do it,” he replied, still smiling.

  “You know, I hate you sometimes?”

  Kidd shrugged. “No, you don’t.”

  “No, you’re right, I don’t,” she said. “I just worry about you, that’s all.” It was enough to stop Kidd from smiling, enough for him to put his drink down and look his sister square in the face. He didn’t know what to say next, didn’t know whether to thank her or tell her not to worry about him or— “Tim is fine,” she said, interrupting his runaway freight train of a thought pattern.

  “Huh?”

  “Your nephew,” Liz said. “He’s doing well, settling in fine. He’s crying a little bit too much at night for Greg’s liking, but what can you do, eh? He’s a baby. Babies cry.”

  “Is Greg crying too?”

  “Don’t start on Greg, Ben, not tonight.” Liz groaned. “He likes you, you know. I don’t understand why you’re always such a dick to him.”

  Kidd laughed. “Oh Lizzy, I’m a dick to him because he makes it far too easy to be a dick to him,” he replied. “He keeps setting them up, so I keep on knocking them down.” Kidd took a sip of his drink and then sighed as he saw Liz looked a few shades more miserable than she had a second ago. “I’m totally kidding,” he added. “Greg is great, you know that. He’s a great dad; he’s a great guy.”

  “I know that,” she said. “I just want you to know that.” She raised her eyebrows at him.

  Kidd nodded. “You don’t need to worry about me,” Kidd said. “Really, you don’t.”

  Liz eyed him carefully. She was the one person in his life who had known him the longest. Their parents aside, of course, Liz had been by his side for most of his good times and his bad, so she had this way of looking into him and seeing beyond the veneer he put up in the presence of other people. She could break through that barrier and pierce right into him, which meant she was listening to what he was saying and she wasn’t buying a damn word of it.

  “Okay, I’m going to tell you why I’m worried about you, and then you’re going to tell me why I don’t need to worry, alright?” she said, putting her nearly empty wine glass on the table in front of her. “And we’ll see if you’re in any way convincing because what you’re selling right now, I’m not even close to buying.”

  “Liz—”

  “If this is an auction, I’m not even bidding, I’m watching the other suckers interested in this shit, wondering what on earth they’re thinking.”

  “Liz—”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll make it quick,” she said with a wink. “I’m worried because you don’t seem to go anywhere or do anything.”

  “I run.”
/>
  “That’s exercise.”

  “That’s doing something.”

  “But it’s solitary, Ben, what about your friends?” His silence was telling. “You’ve spent most of your leave, what? Stressing about going back to work? Moping around the house? Looking for someone who maybe doesn’t want to be found at this point or maybe can’t be found?”

  And those last words hit like a punch to the heart. It winded him in ways that he certainly wasn’t prepared for. When he’d agreed to come out with Liz tonight, the plan had been to get a couple of drinks and talk about old times, maybe laugh about all the shit that went down at Christmas just last month, how he’d gotten so drunk at New Years that he was asleep at 10 pm in Tilly’s room holding a stuffed toy.

  Kidd wasn’t prepared to dig around in a past that he’d tried to bury in work, in running as far as he could most mornings of the week, drowning it in a bottle of whiskey if it dared try to resurface.

  The last person he wanted to think about was Craig Peyton.

  Kidd could still see him as clear as day in his mind’s eye. He was there most times he blinked, his blonde hair that was so long he always had to do this little hair flick to get it out of his face, blue eyes so sparkling that you couldn’t look at them for all that long because it felt a bit too intense. Pouty lips. A scent all his own.

  “See? I’ve lost you to him already,” Liz said softly, reaching across the table and stroking Kidd’s bare forearm. He yanked it off the table. “Sorry.”

  “Don’t apologise,” he said looking up, forcing a smile, though why he felt the need to try and convince Liz that the thought of Craig didn’t make him die inside, was beyond him.

  Craig had been missing for nearly two years at this point. The worst part of it was that Kidd hadn’t noticed at first. He thought Craig was being off with him, playing hard to get, despite the fact they’d been together for close to three years. Then his parents had gotten in touch wondering where he was. And Kidd’s blood ran cold.