Just Keep Breathing

by GS Rhodes

  DI Kidd did know what that was like. It had happened to him in the past. He was never really a fighting man, but when you were in the force sometimes you had to stand up for yourself, throw a punch every now and again. He’d certainly taken more than his fair share over the years. But to lose control? That was maybe a little too far. But Mr Kaye didn’t seem like the kind of man who wanted revenge on Mr Harper. At least, it didn’t seem that way right now.

  “What can you tell us about Sarah Harper?” DI Kidd said.

  Mr Kaye sat up straight, his eyes wide. “Their daughter. She’s missing, isn’t she? Have you found her?”

  “No, Mr Kaye, we’re just wondering if you can tell us anything about her,” Kidd said. “Anything at all.”

  Mr Kaye took a breath and looked away from them, apparently gathering his thoughts. He turned back. “I knew her quite well,” he said. “Both me and my wife did. We’ve been friends with the Harpers for years. They’re good people. When I saw what happened I… I sent flowers. It seemed like the right thing to do somehow.”

  DI Kidd remembered the collection of flowers that had been by the Harper’s door, how he’d had to shove some of them out of the way just to get inside. Would a kidnapper send flowers to the parents of the person he had kidnapped? Would that be a way of throwing them off the scent? DI Kidd wasn’t so sure.

  “I didn’t take her,” he said suddenly. DI Kidd looked up sharply. “I didn’t. If that’s what you’re implying.”

  “I’m not implying anything at all,” Kidd said calmly. “I was just asking a question.” He turned to DS Sanchez who was watching Mr Kaye carefully. “Anything to add, DS Sanchez?” he asked.

  “Nope,” she said.

  “Okay,” DI Kidd turned back to Mr Kaye. “Then you’re free to go, Norman. Mr Harper doesn’t want to press charges and we have about everything we need from you here.”

  Mr Kaye looked shocked. He stared at the two detectives, a little dumbstruck.

  “Really?”

  Kidd nodded. “Maybe that friendship isn’t quite as damaged as you thought,” he continued. “We’ll get an officer to grab your things and show you out.”

  They said their goodbyes to Norman Kaye and watched as he left the building, wandering off into the night. Kidd didn’t really know what to make of him. All that aggression that had been so fiery just a little while ago had faded and left behind a man who was quite docile, who didn’t look like he could fight his way out of a paper bag. It had left Kidd puzzled.

  “I can’t believe you let him go,” Sanchez said as they walked back into the Incident Room. “I would have kept him.”

  “On what grounds?”

  “On the grounds that he has a pretty good reason to have taken Sarah Harper,” she snapped. “He could have her locked up in his little flat, everybody around none the wiser, and we’ve just let him go to do who knows what to her.”

  “I think you’re overthinking it,” Kidd said, though the thought had crossed his mind. “I don’t see it. We can get a team over there to search his property in the morning. We have his address now, so that part will be easy enough. But I don’t think he’s got her.”

  “He’s got priors,” she said. “It’s possible.”

  “I’ll admit that it could be true,” Kidd said. “But I don’t think it fits. He seems more intent on getting to his son than anything else. If he kidnapped Sarah, if he does anything to her, he’s going to get put away for that, it’s not going to help his cause.”

  DS Sanchez grabbed her coat from the hook by the door. “If you say so,” she said. “There’s just something about him I don’t like.”

  DI Kidd headed over to his desk, flicking on his computer and sitting down. DS Sanchez hovered by the door.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “I’m just looking something up. I promise I won’t stay for too much longer,” he replied, tapping in his login details.

  “No, no,” she said, crossing the room to his desk and pressing the off button on the computer.

  “Zoe!”

  “You’re not staying here to work, you’ll drive yourself crackers, let’s go!”

  DI Kidd sighed and stood up. “What? Are you dragging me out for a drink? It’s late, Zoe, it’s been a long day—”

  “Don’t flatter yourself,” she said with a smirk. “You’re my ride home. It’s freezing outside, there’s no fucking way I’m walking. Grab your keys, let’s go.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  After dropping Zoe home, Kidd debated whether or not he should go back to the station to keep working. He had been about to type up his notes and then maybe have a little snoop around to find Caleb online. As far as he was concerned, it didn’t count in his work-life balance promise if he was still at the station. When he’d told DS Sanchez his theory, she told him it was bullshit, which made him laugh.

  He pulled into a parking space near his house and got out, hurrying to the front door to get out of the rain. The house was quiet when he got inside, just as it always was. He flicked the lights on as he stepped in, locking the door behind him and kicking off his shoes. Thankfully, the heating had clicked on when it realised that it was cold outside and the radiators were pumping out their full complement of heat. Perfect.

  Ben made his way up the stairs, quickly taking a shower before heading into his bedroom to settle down for the night. He just had one more thing he needed to look for before he could rest, one thing that he knew would nag in the back of his mind all night if he didn’t just do a quick search.

  He grabbed his laptop from its usual resting place on the floor by his bed—a dangerous habit that Liz had told him many times to stop—and pulled it up onto the duvet. Within minutes he’d made his way online, checking through each and every social media site for Caleb Kaye.

  There were a couple of accounts there, some that he could quickly dismiss for being in the wrong location, a couple that he had to look through a little before he could establish that the person wasn’t in Kingston. But then he found him. The red hair was a giveaway, just like his parents.

  He flicked through the photos, through the posts on various pages, trying to find something that would give him a connection to Sarah. But nothing. He checked again, checked the captions under photos, reading comments and hashtags, but there was nothing about Sarah there at all. Some posts were recent, since her disappearance, but there wasn’t a single thing about her.

  Maybe he’s just not the kind of person to do posts like that. But he couldn’t help but feel like there was more to it than that. His mother had said he was particularly distressed by the whole situation, that he was worried, and yet he hadn’t posted a single thing.

  He made his way over to Sarah’s account, the one that was monitored—or perhaps controlled, Kidd wasn’t all too sure—by her mother. The photos had very much been burned into his memory at this point, pictures of her smiling with her friends, captions that were laden with emojis and inspirational quotes. But Caleb was nowhere to be seen.

  He looked at who she was following, searching for Caleb’s handle and finding absolutely nothing. Were they even friends? Did he even know her? Was Alexandra just trying to relate to Laura in a bigger way, get closer to her after everything that had happened between them? If Kidd had found one thing tonight it was that they had a deeper history than he ever could have imagined.

  He leaned back against his pillows and stared up at the ceiling. Outside, a car drove by at what had to be quite a way over the speed limit, splashing through the newly formed rain puddles, the white headlights flashing through the panes of glass on the window. He took a breath and sat back up, opening his personal email to send the social media handles to his work email. He would have someone look into it tomorrow, he was too tired to deal with it right now.

  The message pinged up just as he was about to shut down. It was Andrea replying to his message from last night. There was no attachment so she hadn’t found anything more, and there was a part of him,
after his conversation with Zoe earlier, that told him to ignore it, to just let it go.

  But it was taunting him. That unread message. And he knew that if he didn’t at least click on it and see what it said, he wouldn’t be able to get to sleep.

  He took a breath and opened it.

  Dear Ben,

  Thank you so much for responding so quickly. It’s nice to know that I’m not the only one who hasn’t given up hope of finding Craig. I know the picture isn’t much, maybe it isn’t enough to go on at all, but it is hope, and I think I needed that.

  I am going to keep on looking, and I really hope you are too. If you find anything, or you need any more help from me, don’t hesitate to get in touch. I’ve left my phone number below if you want to talk about this in person rather than over email, it can be so impersonal sometimes, don’t you think?

  Anyway. I’m sending you a lot of love and all the luck in the world.

  We will find him, Ben. He is out there, I know he is.

  All my best,

  Andrea

  He read the message a few times, letting the words sink in a little bit. She was still looking. She didn’t want to be in this alone and he totally understood why. It was hard when people around him were telling him that Craig was never coming back and he’d never really gotten over it. It must be hard for her, she’s holding onto him because he’s her last hope of having someone to find him with.

  He was about to reply when he remembered what Zoe had said. If he wanted to be found, he would have been found already. If he wanted to see Kidd, he would have come back.

  He considered it and he sighed.

  He knew she was right. Deep down he knew.

  A message pinged up on his phone.

  JOHN: Hope you had a good night tonight. See you tomorrow maybe? X

  He looked at the message and couldn’t stop himself from smiling. Maybe it really was time to let go of all this.

  He shut his laptop and set it down on the floor by his bed. He quickly fired off a response to John on his phone, setting a time for the two of them to meet tomorrow evening before climbing into bed.

  It was finally time for him to let Craig Peyton go.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Sarah Harper ran down the street at full pelt. She was already out of breath before she’d even started, the wind completely knocked out of her, but she needed to get away, and she needed to get away fast.

  The past day had been hell. Drifting in and out of sleep, not knowing where she was, who was talking to her. She could barely remember what she’d seen, it had all happened so quickly.

  So she had to keep going. She had to keep running. Her breaths were coming quick.

  “Just keep going,” she told herself. “Just keep running. Don’t stop. Fucking hell, Sarah, do not stop.”

  The footsteps were coming up behind her at some speed. They were heavy. She knew who it was, she knew that they were coming to get her and they wouldn’t stop until they had her. Where could she hide? Where could she go?

  She managed to get away from the side streets, into somewhere that was better lit, where there were roads, where maybe someone would see her running, where someone could help her. But what time was it?

  It was dark, the streetlamps were on, bathing everything in a strange orange light that made her feel disorientated. Though maybe that was from her lack of energy. Or the drugs. She felt dizzy.

  “KEEP RUNNING!” she told herself again as she made her way towards the centre of town.

  The fact that she’d managed to get away felt like a minor miracle. They’d sedated her, she knew that much, left her in a room all by herself, drifting in and out of consciousness. They’d left her for too long. Maybe they’d forgotten she was even there, pushed it to the back of their mind, a desperate attempt to stop themselves from feeling guilty for what they’d done to her.

  She almost laughed.

  Like they could feel guilt.

  They probably enjoyed it.

  She’d made it out of the room, she’d surprised them, and it was in that moment that she’d managed to make her escape, out into the night, out onto the streets where maybe she could find someone to help her.

  But it was late. There wasn’t anyone around. Not a single soul in the whole town.

  It was like a nightmare.

  She’d had dreams like this before. Where you’re running from someone and you just can’t get away no matter how hard you try. You can feel them gaining on you, your legs pounding against the pavement. One trip, one slip, and it’s over.

  Tears broke free from her eyes and started running down her face, mixing with the rain that was drizzling down around her, slicking the pavement, making her escape all the more treacherous.

  She turned back.

  They were still there.

  Of course, they were.

  They would never stop.

  Without thinking of where she was going, Sarah Harper started through the middle of town. She barrelled past the darkened shop fronts, past the M&S with its shutters down, past the Bentall Centre that still seemed to be lit up like a beacon, even in the middle of the night.

  When she carried on out of town and started over Kingston Bridge, she didn’t realise the mistake she’d made. She was running out of steam, running out of places to go, running out of ideas, if she had any ideas at all in the first place.

  Then she made her final mistake.

  She took a left towards the riverside, heading out of the light and into the dark. She ran down the paved road and towards the river, heading past the houseboats with their twinkly lights still on even though it was the middle of the night, even though Christmas had long since passed, and she kept going.

  She kept going until the ground seemed to give way under her feet, or maybe it was her legs giving way, finally giving up.

  Sarah Harper fell near the water, her head smashing onto the concrete and as the blackness enveloped her and took her away, her assailant stopped and watched her. They watched her lying there, the blood pouring from a wound on her head, her jacket covered in mud, her legs scraped and bleeding too.

  They walked over, shoes squelching in the mud along the riverbank. They watched her move, slowly coming to. She locked eyes with them and moved her mouth, trying to say something, maybe even trying to scream.

  It was a risk they couldn’t take.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  DI Kidd wasn’t prepared for what greeted him when he made it into the station the following morning. He’d woken up determined to get to the bottom of what was going on. They had more suspects than they could count, everyone from Norman Kaye to Dexter Black, with the headteacher and Caleb Kaye in-between. They needed to narrow it down and every second that passed was putting Sarah in more and more danger.

  He’d walked into the Incident Room with that renewed vigour, a spring in his step almost as he approached DS Sanchez and told her what he had found out about Caleb. She was interested, more than interested. They broached it with DC Ravel, who dug a little bit deeper and found that he had no online connection to the family at all, his social media presence was almost nil. If he had a relationship with Sarah it was either analogue or non-existent. Which put many questions in Kidd’s head about Alexandra Kaye.

  They were about to get to work on trying to narrow this down, wanting to bring people in, when DCI Weaver walked into the room.

  And that was when DI Benjamin Kidd knew something was wrong.

  He’d worked with DCI Weaver long enough to know that he barrelled into rooms like a bull in a china shop, knocking anyone and anything out of the way to make sure everybody knew that he was there. But this morning was different.

  Kidd turned to the door, the smile quickly slipping from his face when he locked eyes with DCI Weaver.

  “Boss?” Kidd said. “Everything alright?”

  “We’ve got a body,” he said. “Sarah Harper’s body.”

  He wandered over to the evidence board where the pictures
of their suspects were, every single one of them, Norman’s mugshot from last night, Ms Chowdhury’s school photo, a family photo of the Harpers, all of them surrounding a picture of Sarah Harper. He wandered over to the picture of Dexter Black, tapping it.

  “I think we’ve got your man too.”

  DI Kidd was confused, he needed Weaver to go back a few steps. He must have noticed because he shook his head.

  “We’ve found Sarah Harper’s body at Kingston riverside,” he said. “Her head had been caved in, blood everywhere, all over her, there are marks around her wrist, marks around her neck too, strangled we think and covered in mud, looks like she was running from someone. Though that remains to be seen, we’ve got some detective work to do on that.”

  “What about Dexter Black?” Kidd asked.

  DCI Weaver took a breath before he spoke. “Response team found him with the body. Turns out he was the one who called it in.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  There was already a Family Liaison Officer on their way to see Mr and Mrs Harper to break the news. DC Powell was sent to meet them at their house. They would need to identify the body, even though Dexter Black had already done that for them over the phone.

  The team wasted no time gathering their coats and heading to the riverside to see what was going on. Every single one of them went along, like it was some kind of strange family outing, not a group of detectives going to see a dead body.

  DI Kidd cursed himself on the way there. Had they not worked fast enough? Had they not been working flat out since they found out…? He traced it back in his head. Yesterday morning. They’d found out about it yesterday morning, they’d conducted interviews, they’d even gone to that bloody school reunion to see if they could figure out who it was that was doing this and all they’d ended up with was a body.