by GS Rhodes
“You’re not in trouble, Lydia,” he said quietly, his voice coming out a little more like a growl than he would have liked. “Like I said, I just wanted to come here and ask you both a few questions, get your recollection of things just so we can carry on with the investigation. You have nothing to worry about at all.”
That seemed to ease her a little bit. At least she would look him in the face now. That was something.
“So,” Zoe said. “Do you want to start at the beginning? Tell us about finding the body, how you came to come across it?”
Lydia turned to TJ. He widened his eyes at her. She nodded at him, the two of them speaking in a code that neither Kidd nor Zoe could understand. Kidd had to stop himself from rolling his eyes. If they were going to start off by hiding things, this certainly wasn’t going to go well.
“Just the truth,” Kidd said, as softly as he could, though Zoe looked at him sharply. He wasn’t as good at hiding his agitation as he would have liked. “Like I said, no one is in any trouble.”
Yet, he thought.
“TJ found the body,” Lydia said quietly. “He saw it and he thought I’d want to see it too. So we both went to see it.”
Kidd had to stop himself doing a comedic double-take. He looked at Zoe, who widened her eyes at him sharply.
“Wait,” Kidd said. “You found the body, left it there, and went to go and tell your friend?”
TJ shrugged.
“I’m going to need more than a shrug,” Kidd said through gritted teeth. “You found the body and…” He trailed off, waiting for the lad to start talking. He seemed reluctant. Something told Kidd that this wasn’t in the original statement. “Mr Bell.”
“Alright, alright, sorry,” TJ said. “I found the body, and it looked interesting, I don’t know. I’ve never seen a body before and this one was… I don’t know… it was gruesome. Like something out of a movie, like a horror film or something. So I thought I’d get Lydia because… she’s into shit like that.”
Lydia scoffed and hit TJ on the arm. “No, it’s not like that at all!” Her cheeks were flushing red. “Well, not like he’s making it out. I’m not some psycho.” She stared daggers at TJ. “I study forensics science at uni,” she continued. “TJ thought I’d want to see it because it’s something that I’m studying. He thought it might be something I’d want to see in real life instead of just in pictures shown to us by lecturers or whatever.”
Kidd watched her closely, looking for a tell, looking for something to tell him that she was making it up, but she just seemed nervous that TJ had put her on the spot. What a dick.
“Okay,” he said, turning his gaze away from them, trying not to show his frustration as he waited for the next revelation. “Was there anything else? I take it, this didn’t make it into the statement?”
TJ shook his head.
“Well, you’ll need to come down to the station and amend that,” Kidd growled. “Because at the moment what we have on file is…” he trailed off and turned to Zoe.
“You found the body and called the police,” Zoe finished, sighing rather theatrically and sitting back in her chair. Apparently, they were doing Bad Cop, Worse Cop today. “Not the best start.”
“Well, that is what happened,” TJ said, his voice a little quieter. “It just didn’t happen in that order, I guess. There was time in between finding it and calling the police.”
Kidd banged his fist on the table. “You’re not getting out of this on a fucking technicality,” he barked. “This is a murder investigation, son, you need to tell us the truth at all times, otherwise they’re going to be looking at you as a suspect.”
“What?” TJ looked like he was about to crap himself.
“Well it doesn’t look good, does it, Mr Bell?” Kidd said, leaning back in his chair, joining Zoe. Let’s really put the wind up him, he thought. The chair creaked as he got comfortable, no doubt threatening to fall apart like everything else in this house. “You leave things out of your story, amending your statement, who knows what else you’re leaving out, hmm?”
“What? No. There’s nothing else,” TJ stammered. “It’s just that. I know I should have said it but I didn’t think it would matter.”
“In a murder investigation, everything matters,” Kidd growled. He knew he was laying it on a little thick now, but at least the lad wasn’t likely to lie to him again. Everything would be rosy from now on. “Anything else?”
“It’s The Grinning Murders, isn’t it?” Lydia said quietly, her voice barely above a whisper.
“What’s that now?”
“The Grinning Murders,” Lydia said. “I have a professor, Professor Rogers, he talked about it not too long ago, said there was an anniversary or something and it always fascinated him. Then, people have been talking online—”
“Who?”
“Lots of people,” Lydia said. “It was trending at one point. News travels fast these days, a picture on Twitter can make it to the other side of the world before you can even blink. All it took was a few people mentioning it and… well… it was him, right?”
“We don’t know who it is,” Zoe said before Kidd could bite her head off. “This is an open investigation and though there may be similarities, we can’t point to anyone just yet. There are a lot of sick people out there, people who would do something like this.”
“But it looked a lot like them, right?”
But Hansen is in prison, Kidd thought, staring past the two students at a spot on the faded yellow wall. He’d asked Weaver twice, he’d had it confirmed, and still it was niggling in the back of his mind because he couldn’t see it with his own two eyes. Could Hansen be pulling the strings from the inside? Did they even catch the right man in the first place?
He shook his head. Of course, they did. It was ironclad. Wasn’t it? There was that self-doubt creeping in again.
“Anything else, DI Kidd?” Zoe asked.
He pulled his focus back to Lydia and TJ. They both looked a little shell-shocked, like neither one of them had slept in the past few days. He remembered the first time he saw a dead body and it did that to him too. It haunts you.
“Professor Rogers, did you say that was, Lydia?” Kidd asked. She nodded. “Thanks, that will be all.” Kidd stood up. “We can see ourselves out. Thank you for your time.”
CHAPTER TEN
“What do you think?” Zoe asked as they walked out of the house. TJ walked them to the door, though he didn’t seem to be completely there. He was either stoned out of his mind or terrified that Kidd was going to cuff him and take him in for perverting the course of justice or some such nonsense. Kidd was tempted to do it just so the kid definitely wouldn’t lie to them again. But Zoe definitely wouldn’t let him get away with that.
Kidd couldn’t help but feel there was something a little bit off with him, like he didn’t quite know what he was doing. There was a disconnect there that wasn’t there with Lydia, that much was for certain. He certainly didn’t strike Kidd as a guilty party.
“Annoying that he didn’t tell the whole story,” Kidd said. “But it doesn’t really tell us anything new. Except that TJ’s a bit of a twat.”
Zoe stifled a laugh. She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, the curl immediately bouncing back out and in front of her face. “Looks like we’re at a dead-end. At least with those two.”
Kidd nodded and they started back towards Zoe’s car. “Something like that. I wonder about that professor though.”
“What about him?”
“Is it worth talking to him?”
They climbed into the car and Zoe turned to Kidd, the look on her face told him more than words ever could. She didn’t think it was a good idea.
“Yeah, I guessed that might be a bit of a long shot,” Kidd said, putting on his seatbelt. They were at something of a dead-end here and yet he couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something that he’d missed.
There was that creeping feeling in the back of his head that maybe all wasn’t
quite what it seemed. Or maybe it was just the feeling that his old case, one that he’d dealt with when he was a lot younger, a lot different, had reared its ugly head once more.
“If you want someone to go and talk to him, I’m sure DC Powell could go? It can’t hurt.”
“Hmmm, maybe,” Kidd replied. Zoe switched on the car, the gentle rumble of the engine filling his ears.
He looked up at the ramshackle house and tried to figure out what their next move should be. Even Lydia had been able to see that it looked like Hansen, that the murders bore a striking similarity, even if it was a little more haphazard. Kidd could feel himself spiralling on this one.
Hansen is in prison, he kept telling himself. There was no reason to go and look for him there, he was going to be there, just like he had been there for the last fifteen years. But he still felt like he needed that confirmation, just needed to know that he was still where Kidd had left him all those years ago. It might do something at least to ease his mind.
“I want to go and see Hansen,” he said suddenly.
Zoe turned off the car and turned in her seat to look at him.
“What?” Kidd said.
“Albert Hansen?” Zoe said.
“Yes.”
Zoe leant back. “You are out of your mind.”
“How am I out of my mind?” Kidd protested. “He is the man who killed those three women.”
“Fifteen years ago, Ben, he’s in prison,” Zoe snapped. “He hasn’t come out for a day trip and murdered someone in Bushy Park, that’s ridiculous.”
“I know that,” Kidd said, though he didn’t completely believe it. He needed to make sure he was still there, for his own peace of mind.
“But you want to go and see him?” Zoe was staring at him, incredulous. If it had been anyone else, he would have just pulled rank, but Zoe was his friend first and his colleague second. “You’re just tormenting yourself, Ben, don’t do this.”
“What harm can it do?”
“What harm can it do?” Zoe repeated. “What good will it do, Ben? None.”
“I want to make sure he’s still there,” Kidd said flatly. “Don’t look at me like that, don’t look at me like I’m crazy,” he added. She was still looking at him like that. He couldn’t blame her. “It might be worth talking to him. For all we know he had accomplices fifteen years ago. Maybe he’s got someone visiting him, someone he’s telling what to do.”
“You’re clutching at straws, Kidd,” Zoe said.
“I’ve got to clutch at something,” he replied. “You say we’re at a dead-end. Well, I need to find us a new route otherwise we’re just sitting here waiting for another body to show up.”
“We’re on the case, Ben,” Zoe said. “We’re waiting on forensics, we’re waiting on DNA to find out who the victim was, we’re not just sitting, twiddling our thumbs.”
“Well I feel like I need to be doing something,” he said quickly. He remembered how it had been last time. Everything had rattled along so quickly in the beginning. They’d barely had a chance to breathe when the first body was found before another one had appeared right on their doorstep. He didn’t want another body showing up, he didn’t want to have another serial killer on his hands. “He had kids, didn’t he?”
“He had a son, but I can’t imagine they get on all that well when you consider what Hansen was sent down for,” Zoe replied. “I don’t think you should go, Ben, Weaver won’t like it.”
“So?”
“So?” Zoe groaned. “Christ, Ben, you’ve not even been back for a day and you’re about to go and screw it up for the sake of Hansen.”
He knew that it wasn’t going to be a good move, he knew that Weaver would absolutely blow his top when he found out. But he was more than willing to take that risk for his own sanity. Hansen had haunted him for so long, and now he was managing to do it while he was in prison? Kidd needed to put that demon to rest, and if that meant driving all the way to Belmarsh and pissing off his DCI to do it, then he would.
“I don’t care, Zoe, I’m going,” Kidd said. “You can either come with me, or you can drop me off at home and I’ll take my own car, it’s totally up to you. But I’m going no matter what. I have to.”
It was clear cut in his mind. He needed to see him there, needed to make sure he was still behind bars. He had to.
Zoe turned away from him, her hands still at ten and two on the steering wheel. She looked like she was about to bang her head on it. Kidd wouldn’t have blamed her.
He could practically hear the cogs turning in her head as she stared out at the road ahead of them.
“Fine,” she sighed, turning the engine back on. “But I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all.”
“Noted.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
As they pulled into the car park outside HMP Belmarsh, Kidd could feel his heart rate quicken. He’d not been here for a long time. It looked… almost exactly the same as it did in his mind, just a little older. Maybe it was the grey light from the winter sky, but it was looking a little rundown. To be fair, it had never, in Kidd’s mind at least, looked opulent, but right now it looked like it could do with a jet wash. Kidd’s heart was pounding hard in his chest as Zoe turned off the engine.
“I’m really not sure about this, Ben,” Zoe said. They were the first words she’d spoken to him in the last ninety minutes. Gone was the harsh tone that had been there outside the student house in Kingston. It had been replaced by one of concern. “I don’t want you getting into trouble and I don’t want you causing yourself any more pain over this.”
Kidd sighed. “Look, you’re not going to get in trouble for this, it’s going to be me,” he started. “So don’t worry about that. If Weaver finds out, it’s my head in the smasher. You only drove me. You were following orders.”
She scoffed. “Yeah, I’m sure Weaver will see it that way.”
Kidd shrugged. “Besides, I just want to ask him a few questions. It’s not going to take more than half an hour.” He took a breath and opened the door, the cold wind biting at him as soon as he stepped out of the car. “I won’t be long.”
“You’re going in there alone?”
Kidd nodded. “You’re not taking the fall for any of this, Zoe,” he said. “I’ll be fine. Don’t you worry about me.”
She raised her eyebrows at him, her way of telling him that she did worry about him, that it was all she seemed to do when they were together. He smiled and slammed the car door.
Kidd walked into the prison entrance and headed to the reception desk. There was a middle-aged mixed-race woman sat behind the desk, her hair curly and a little wild, her bespectacled eyes staring at him intently as he approached. She already seemed completely exasperated by his presence and he wasn’t even at her station yet.
This is going to be fun, he thought.
“I’m here to see Albert Hansen,” Kidd said, keeping his voice firm, still somewhat struggling to believe those words were coming out of his mouth. He never dreamed he would ever do this. He’d not seen the man in fifteen years, hadn’t wanted to see him at any point in the last decade and a half, yet here he was at the man’s door.
“I’m afraid visiting hours haven’t begun for this afternoon,” she said curtly before turning back to her computer screen.
“Can you make an exception?” Kidd asked with a smile. “It’s rather important.”
“May I ask who you are?” she said, smiling sweetly back at him, but in a way that rubbed Kidd up the wrong way. It felt like she was talking down to him. It probably wasn’t the first time someone had shown up asking to talk to a prisoner outside of visitation hours. Maybe she turned a lot of people away.
“DI Benjamin Kidd,” he said, pulling out his warrant card and showing it to her. “I just have a few questions for Mr Hansen, if that’s alright?”
She raised a careful eyebrow at him in a way that told him she was not at all impressed. It hadn’t been his intention to frighten her, he knew what these prison
officer types were like, but he thought that mentioning his rank and that he was here to question the prisoner might have held some sway. Instead, she looked as stubborn as ever.
“As I already told you,” she said. “Visiting hours haven’t begun for this afternoon. You’re more than welcome to wait—”
“I won’t be waiting,” Kidd said, keeping his voice steady. “We can either do this the easy way or the hard way. I can call my boss, he’ll call yours, it will be messy. Or you can just let me visit Mr Hansen.”
It was a hard card to play, because if she said no, he was screwed. There was no way Weaver would back him on this.
With the pace of a geriatric snail, she started tapping away on her computer. She pulled a book out of the desk drawer in front of her and slid it across the countertop towards him.
“Could you sign in please?” she said, monotonously. “Someone will be along to take you through in a moment.”
He signed in, hovering by the desk as he waited for an officer to take him through. He tried to figure exactly what it was he wanted to ask Hansen. This was more than a little bit impromptu and he’d spent the car ride trying not to make too much noise in case Zoe blew up at him again.
Hansen had this way of disarming people when they tried to question him, of being able to turn things around so it was like you were the interviewee rather than the interviewer. He couldn’t let that happen this time.
No fewer than five minutes later, a uniformed prison officer was at his side, his eyes tired, his expression a hundred percent bored of this already.
“DI Kidd?” he said.
Kidd nodded and the officer walked away, expecting Kidd to follow, which he did obediently. He was taken through a labyrinth of corridors, of locked doors only accessible by keycards and heavy keys, of bars, to the visiting room where a familiar face was sat alone.
The walls were painted in beige, the kind of colour that was enough to drain the life out of even the bubbliest human. Stationed around the room at regular intervals were tables, a couple of plastic chairs on either side. It was empty, something Kidd hadn’t been expecting when they showed up but maybe doing this outside of visitation hours was for the best.
