by GS Rhodes
Kidd was thrown back a whole fifteen years, to when he’d gone to a house with the liaison officer and seeing the look on a young girl’s face as they told her that her mummy was never coming home. Angela Berry’s husband was completely crushed but trying to stay strong for their little girl, who was absolutely torn apart by the news.
Kidd sighed. “Jenny Berry was the daughter of one of Hansen’s original victims.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Zoe blinked. “Wait a minute, a relation?”
Kidd growled and walked over to the evidence board. He looked to the first drop, where all of the details of the first murder were but was met with the wrong face. That was Natalie Anders.
He moved along to see the second victim. Angela Berry. She was in her early forties, had worked at the same company as Hansen, they’d been great friends apparently but she had a troubled life with her husband. When she’d gone missing, everybody assumed it was the husband or that she’d left him, then her body showed up dumped by the river just a few weeks later.
Kidd’s mind started to spiral as he looked from Natalie Anders over to Angela Berry. How much of a copycat was this murderer?
“What are you thinking?” Zoe had appeared at his side, looking up at the same pictures he was.
“I’m trying to figure it out,” he said. His head was spinning with so many questions that he was trying to get a handle on just one, trying to order his thoughts so he knew exactly what to do next. “How closely do you think our copycat is following the script?” Kidd asked.
It wasn’t a question that necessarily needed answering right this second, but Zoe thought about it for a moment before responding.
“If they’re copycatting the style of murder,” she said cautiously, “then there is nothing to say that they wouldn’t also try to copycat the victims too.” It was what Kidd had been afraid she’d say. “Does that mean what I think it means?”
Kidd nodded. “It means that if our killer is following the same pattern of people as Hansen did, then 1) a member of Natalie Anders’ family could be in serious trouble and 2) someone needs to get in touch with Karen Nicks’ next of kin.” He turned back to the team. “You hear that?” he called. A series of nods came back to him. “It’s very possible that there is another body somewhere on the borough, so I need somebody to try and get in touch with Natalie Anders’ family.”
“On it, sir,” DC Ravel volunteered, darting back to her computer and furiously attacking the keys on her keyboard. It was a sound that normally annoyed Kidd, that constant clacking, but right now it was music to his ears. It was progress, every tap on that keyboard was getting them closer and closer to catching this murderer.
“If you could also check in with Karen Nicks’ next of kin, that would be fantastic,” Kidd said, sending a thumbs-up her way. She sent one back without looking up.
“Anything for me to do, sir?” Powell piped up, ever the eager beaver.
“I’m going to need somebody to go with a liaison officer to tell Jennifer Berry’s family that she’s been murdered,” Kidd said solemnly. He didn’t want to send someone so young into the fire like that, but maybe if Owen went with him it wouldn’t be so bad. “Go with DC Campbell, find out anything you can about the daughter, anything that might give us a lead.”
“Righto, sir,” Owen said.
“Be sensitive,” Kidd barked.
Owen stepped back. “I’m always sensitive.”
“Like fuck you are,” Kidd replied. “Keep him in check won’t you, Si?” He winked at DC Powell who looked like he was about to collapse.
Kidd looked back at DS Sanchez who was eagerly awaiting her orders, possibly even more so than Powell. She was ready to get going on this as much as Kidd was. As sick as it might have sounded, the information had lit a fire under both of them and they were ready to get this done.
“You’re with me, Sanchez,” Kidd said with a shrug. “Weaver’s orders.”
“We going to check in on Colin?”
“Yep,” Kidd said, about to head to the door when he turned back to the team. “One thing I was going to say before Weaver rudely interrupted me earlier on, we have a suspect.” The room went quiet as they waited for him. “Don’t get too excited, it could be a dead-end, but Hansen has been getting visits from his son. That was the only person that the clerk at Belmarsh could remember, so he’d been there enough for it to stick in her mind. It’s a long shot, maybe too obvious, but DS Sanchez and I are going to go and have a word with him, see what information we can get out of him. If anything.”
Kidd turned back to the door, grabbing his jacket, and slinging it over his shoulders. He was about to open the door when DC Ravel squeaked from behind her computer. He spun around so fast he nearly knocked over the coat stand.
“What?” he called across the room.
DC Ravel stood up. “Pathologist report,” she called back. “Body was cold around sixty hours. So time of death is considered to be some time on Monday night.”
Kidd rushed back to the board and started to do some quick calculations in his head, marking back the dates, seeing just how long they had before the killer might be likely to strike again.
He turned to the team, his voice dark. “I’d wager we have about two days before another body shows up,” Kidd said, eyeing each of his team in turn. “The faster we figure this out, the more likely we are to save a life,” he added, before turning back to Zoe. “Let’s go. We don’t have time to waste.”
They hurried down the corridor towards Weaver’s office. Kidd wasn’t sure if he’d want to know what was going on, but decided to keep him informed, even if it was just to score points against the miserable bugger.
He didn’t knock, pushing the door open with such force that Weaver practically jumped out of his skin.
“You scared me half to death, you prick, what do you want now?” he barked.
Aha, there’s that fire, Kidd thought.
“Off to see Colin Hansen, sir,” Kidd said. “Thought you might want to know. Plus we’ve got a DNA match on the body. Jennifer Berry.”
Weaver’s face screwed up. “Why do I know that name?” And then it dawned on him all at once, just as it had done for Kidd a few moments ago. His mouth fell open. “You’re joking.”
Kidd shook his head. “Be a shit joke if I was, boss. DC Powell and Campbell are going to speak to the family now, and DC Ravel is looking up the family members of the other victims to see if… well… to see if anybody has gone missing recently.”
“You really think—?”
“I don’t know what I think, sir,” Kidd said. “But I’m not ruling out the possibility that this nutcase isn’t just following Hansen’s methods but he’s following his victims too. We’re going to see Colin Hansen.”
“Don’t be a hero, Kidd.”
“Never do, sir.” He slammed the door and marched down the corridor with Zoe at his side.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Zoe Sanchez pulled out of the car park at breakneck speed, barely giving Kidd a chance to get his seatbelt on. He resisted the urge to swear as she swung out onto the road, nearly straight into a cyclist with no pissing lights on and no high-vis.
“We need to get there in one piece, Zoe, maybe don’t drive like a twat.”
“Maybe learn to drive before you start telling me how to do it,” she grumbled, pulling out of the high street and heading out of Kingston and over Kingston Bridge towards Richmond borough.
“You know where you’re going?”
“Of course, I bloody do.” She snorted. “I had DC Ravel check out Colin’s address while you were getting a bollocking from Weaver. Grabbed it on the way out the door.”
He looked over at Zoe whose eyes were fixed squarely on the road. This was what they had been like before Kidd had been sent on leave. Zoe Sanchez was a bloody good DS. It was a wonder she hadn’t been made a DI yet, though that was something Kidd was glad of. He enjoyed working with her and the day she became a DI, she’d be off bei
ng SIO on her own cases without him. It would happen one day, but he was glad it hadn’t happened yet.
They got lucky with the traffic. If they’d have left any later, they would have been caught in the rush hour and Kidd would be itching to be anywhere but in the car.
Zoe sped through Hampton Wick, beneath the railway bridge, and towards Teddington Lock, Kidd suddenly having an idea as to where they were going.
“Lower Teddington Road?” Kidd asked, somewhat hesitantly.
“Yeah,” Zoe replied as she turned off again, slowing down as the speed limit shifted in the residential area. She was craning her neck to look out of the windscreen, the veins in her neck popping as she drove. “How’d you guess?”
“Not a guess, Zoe,” Kidd replied. “What number is it?”
She told him and Kidd found himself staring out the window, watching the houses go by, the houses that he knew pretty well. It wasn’t every day that his job brought him down this road, but whenever it did it was enough to send a chill through his bones.
“Why are you being weird?” Zoe asked. “What’s wrong with the address?”
“That’s Albert Hansen’s house.”
“Colin Hansen.”
“No, Zoe, you’re not hearing me,” Kidd said. “Colin is living in his old family home. I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me that he would. His dad would have probably left it to him when he went to prison. Why wouldn’t he stay in a fancy house on the river in Teddington?”
Zoe eyed him carefully from the driver’s seat. “So, this is the house that you came to fifteen years ago when you took Hansen away?”
“Uh-huh,” Kidd replied. And it was the same house he’d had to come to with somebody to tell Colin everything that had happened to his father, that he was going to be in prison for a while—he’d underplayed it, of course, the lad was only thirteen—and did he have a member of his family to come and stay with him or that he could go and stay with? They’d never checked up on him after that, at least Kidd hadn’t. It hadn’t felt like it was his place to.
“You feeling okay, boss?” Zoe asked, reaching for the joke they’d had just a little while before, but missing it by a mile. Kidd was elsewhere.
“Don’t call me boss,” he mumbled. “And I’ll be fine, yeah. Everything about this is setting me on edge. Every other hour I seem to be sent on a trip down memory lane.” And the memories weren’t ones Kidd was keen on revisiting. He was so much younger at the time, barely out of uniform, and he was working on a case like that.
Zoe pulled up outside the house and it took all of Kidd’s strength not to make a noise when he saw the house. It looked almost exactly the same as it had fifteen years ago. The white door to the garage looked like it had been freshly painted, the patio looked jet washed and perfect, picturesque ivy climbed up the red bricks outside the house. It was the perfect little suburban home, and there had been a vicious murderer in there the whole time. He wondered if they were about to prove the same thing again.
The only thing that was different were the hordes of people on the pavement. Kidd hadn’t noticed them at first, but they’d noticed him, a couple of them pointing, one or two raising their cameras to get a good look at him and snap a shot just in case he happened to be someone important.
The flash made Kidd wince.
“Christ, what’s all this then?” he grumbled.
Zoe sighed. “Looks like we’re not the only people with an interest in Colin Hansen,” she said, looking past Kidd at the crowd. She turned off the engine and undid her seatbelt. “Last chance to bail and send somebody else in there, Ben.”
Kidd shook his head. “No chance,” he said. “Are you ready for your close-up?”
“If I end up on a front page and I look shit, I’ll sue.”
“There’s a joke in there somewhere,” Kidd said.
“And if you make it, I’ll run you over,” Zoe quipped.
They got out of the car and a couple of people from the crowd moved towards them. He looked and saw press badges, though no faces that he recognised, nothing more than the local papers and freelancers trying to get a bit of information, anything to sell a rag.
Kidd walked towards the front door, keeping his eye-line above them and focused on the house as much as possible. There were a couple of people shouting questions that he couldn’t quite make out, a layering of voices that made him want to rip off his own ears.
“What can you tell us about why you’re here?”
“Is Colin Hansen a suspect?”
“Any further leads on The Grinning Murders case, DI Kidd?” That last one caught Kidd’s attention. The use of his name, a voice he’d heard for the first time earlier in the day.
He turned sharply to his left to see Joe Warrington stood in front of him with his phone held out like a microphone. He’d let his curls free so they looked a lot wilder than they had done under his hat, but was still wearing the same hoodie and jeans he’d had on earlier. Had he just gone from Bushy Park to here? It wasn’t exactly far. All just to stand outside and harass Colin Hansen?
“Move,” Kidd growled, but Warrington seemingly heard, “Please come and stand directly in my path,” because he did just that, positioning himself right in front of Kidd as if he was giving an impromptu press conference.
Absolutely not, Kidd thought.
“Running out of options so pointing the finger at the son?” Warrington’s eyes were glinting with something akin to pride at that one. He was smiling, flashing his slightly crooked teeth at Kidd. “Is that silence a confirmation?”
“That silence is—”
“Just silence!” Zoe interrupted, grabbing hold of Kidd’s arm and marching him towards the front door. The crowd followed them, clamouring louder now, asking more questions, Warrington practically tripping over his own feet just to stay at the front of the pack.
The porch light flicked on, bathing the two of them in an orangey glow in the fading light of day.
“At least he fixed the porch light,” Kidd said.
“What?”
He pointed up to the orange light above their heads. “The whole time we were investigating before, the porch light was out. Colin must have fixed it.”
Ignoring him, Zoe knocked on the door as hard as she could, the gold door knocker jumping with every impact, the glass panes shuddering. There was no answer. There were lights on in the house, a car on the driveway, he was obviously here. People had probably been knocking his door down all day, trying to get a picture of him, trying to get him to answer some far too cleverly worded question designed to trip him up. These journalists, if you could even call them that, were scum.
“No answer,” Kidd said.
“Can’t imagine why,” Zoe snarked.
Kidd bent down and opened the letterbox with his fingers. There was a bark in return that made him jump back.
“Skittish!” Zoe commented.
“Don’t fancy losing a finger,” Kidd replied. “You’re more than welcome to try if you like?”
Zoe held her hands up, so Kidd bent down again, opening the letterbox and trying to keep his fingers as far from harm as possible.
“Colin? It’s DI Kidd from Kingston Police,” he called, doing his best to be heard over the dog’s yapping. It was definitely more of a yap than a bark, perhaps not the most threatening of beasts, but enough to startle anyone who wanted to try and break-in. “Could you let us in? We won’t let any of the vultures inside.”
There were footsteps inside, the sound of a door opening and closing, and through the gap in the letterbox, Kidd could see a pair of legs coming their way.
“Out of the way, Buzz,” Colin hissed. “Get in, go on, go and lay down.”
Kidd let the letterbox fall closed and stood back up, drawing up to his full height. The door opened and in front of Kidd stood Colin Hansen. The blasts from the past just kept on coming.
He looked exactly as he had all those years ago, just supersized. Instead of being a little bit gangly and sp
otty, he’d filled out a little, probably from regular visits to the gym. Rather than the same dark curls as his father, he had his dark hair cropped close to his head and his eyes didn’t have that same shark-eyed quality. He had, according to Albert, his mother’s eyes, which were a much gentler light brown colour.
He looked like he had hardly slept, the purple bags weighing heavily under his eyes. His lips were a little cracked and as he looked out at Kidd a moment of recognition passed across his face.
“It’s you,” he said in a whisper. He always was quite well-spoken, Kidd could remember that much. He’d been so polite to the officers that had come to his door on that night fifteen years ago, offered them tea, all sorts. As Kidd regarded him, it seemed hard to believe that this man could be responsible for the same atrocities as his father. It didn’t sit right with him.
“That’s right,” Kidd said. “I thought you might remember. I’m DI Kidd, this is DS Zoe Sanchez,” he added. “Do you mind if we come in?”
The flashbulbs on the tops of the cameras started going at an alarming rate. Colin’s eyes widened as he sank back into the house.
“I’d prefer it,” he said, shielding himself behind the door. “Please come in. Don’t mind Buzz, he’s a loudmouth but he’s harmless.”
“Sounds like Weaver,” Zoe muttered.
Kidd and Zoe stepped through the doorway and Colin quickly closed the door behind them. Through the glass panes on the front door, Kidd could see the flashbulbs still going, like Colin was about to come out for an encore. They calmed down a few moments later and the crowd went back to waiting.
“They been hanging around out there all day?” Zoe asked.
Colin nodded, looking utterly exhausted by it all. “They think they have the inside scoop on everything that is going on,” he said. “All it took was one person mentioning that the killings were like… well, like my dad’s and suddenly they were all here trying to get an exclusive.”
