by GS Rhodes
The next ones down were the ones from her dad. And it was a different sight entirely.
“Bloody hell,” Janya said.
“What?” Kidd asked, leaning in a little bit closer.
She handed him the phone and Kidd read the messages her dad been sending her.
Don’t you say a bloody word.
You need to get home now. Stop attention seeking, your mum is worried sick.
Don’t you breathe one word of this to anyone.
Sarah!
Answer me!
DI Kidd handed the phone back to DC Ravel. “Could you download all the messages, get them all put together as part of the file?” he asked before turning to Zoe. “I think we need to get Norman Kaye and Chris Harper back in. Letting them go the other night was premature.”
“I’ll say,” Zoe said, looking over Janya’s shoulder at the messages on the phone screen. “Do you reckon Sarah found out he was fucking the headteacher?”
“That seems likely,” Kidd said. “Just in case we needed any more things happening in this case, we’ve now got a dad threatening his child. It’s all looking a little bit—”
The door to the Incident Room swung open, clattering into the coat stand and announcing the arrival of DCI Weaver. DI Kidd did his best not to sigh too obviously. He was trying to get this done, the last thing he needed was DCI Weaver breathing down his neck every step of the way. It was always a heck of a lot easier when he cleared off to his office and let Kidd get on with things.
“Where the bloody hell is my arrest?” he asked. Well, asked was definitely putting it mildly. It was more of a demand.
“We’re working on it,” Kidd replied flatly. He didn’t need this right now. “And a good morning to you too, sir,” he added, smiling at the beast of a man as he strode into the room. DCI Weaver didn’t budge, his face fixed in a grimace like the wind had changed and left him that way…since birth.
“Not what I wanted to hear, Kidd,” Weaver replied. “I’ve got the Superintendent wanting me to make an arrest and announce it to the public. I’ve got Laura Harper talking about us online and making us…you…me…look bad. Get someone in here and get them charged. Where are we on that?”
“We had Dexter Black yesterday,” Kidd said. “We had his story corroborated by Nicholas and the fact that his parents kept him locked up in his house,” Kidd continued. “They weren’t too happy with some of the websites he’d been looking at, so they decided the right thing to do was act as prison officers and stop their son from leaving the house.”
“And he found the body how?”
“An unfortunate coincidence.”
“I fucking hate coincidences,” Weaver growled.
“I’ve got the statements,” Kidd replied. “Dexter Black hadn’t been out of his house all weekend. He didn’t even go to school. He’s off the hook. We’re working on the other leads and we’re working as quickly as we can. Right now you’ve just wasted five minutes that could have been better spent trying to find the fucker who has done this. Any further questions?”
Weaver grumbled and was about to turn out of the room when he caught sight of the evidence board. He strode over to it, Kidd walking from around the computer and joining him, staring at the pictures that had been plaguing them for the past few days.
Their suspect list had gotten a heck of a lot shorter, only pictures of Norman Kaye and Chris Harper remained, but neither one of them really sat right with DI Kidd. There was something he was missing, something that he couldn’t quite put his finger on. He didn’t have the proof he needed for either of them to wrap up the case. Even if he got them in for a little chat, he didn’t have the grounds for an arrest.
Not yet anyway.
“How are we getting on?” DCI Weaver said quietly. “I don’t like this, Kidd. I don’t like that we don’t seem to be getting anywhere.”
“We’re getting somewhere, boss,” Kidd replied. “It’s taking a little longer than I would like, but we’re crossing people off the list. We’ve got it narrowed down.”
“And where’s your money?”
Kidd stared at the board one more time. “My money is in a safe place, boss,” he replied. “I’m not a gambling man.”
“Odds not good enough for you?”
“Not quite yet, sir,” he replied. “But I’ll get there.
DCI Weaver let out a heavy sigh. “You better,” he said. “And fast. Mrs Harper has been posting again.”
“You’re joking,” Kidd said. “What now?”
“She went live last night, after everything that had happened, doesn’t think we’re doing enough, doesn’t think she’s being kept in the loop with the investigation,” Weaver said. “She’s got a bloody FLO there for crying out loud. Caitlyn is rushed off her feet, always feeding her information when she can, trying to calm her down but it’s not enough. The socials have gone insane, Diane has been fielding calls from the media all bloody morning.”
“Right, sir, I’ll get on it,” Kidd replied. “We’ll…we’ll figure something out.”
DC Simon Powell stood up from his desk at that moment, knocking a mug of tea and sending it flying across the room, cold tea covering the floor. DI Kidd was about to bark at him to get it cleaned up when he saw the look on the lad’s face. He looked panicked. And while that might have been his default state most of the time, Kidd didn’t like it one bit.
“What is it, Simon?” Kidd asked, moving towards his desk. “What have you got?”
“CCTV, sir,” he said. “From the night that Sarah died.”
He beckoned them closer, pulling a video up and setting it at full screen. There were a few clips, stitched together from the various CCTV points around Kingston town. It followed Sarah as she ran through town, past the Bentall Centre, and towards the river. And there was the person who was following her.
Kidd immediately assumed it was a man, it certainly looked that way anyway. He was wearing a hood, probably because it had been raining, and the CCTV had him running after her. The lights were shit so they couldn’t make out the face, but he was wearing black, head to toe, he was pretty well built and Christ, could he run.
Somehow Sarah was faster, but Kidd knew how this story ended. He looked from the screen to the notice board and back again. They needed to get these men in, and they needed to get them in now.
CHAPTER FORTY
DC Owen Campbell pretty much ran from the office the second DI Kidd had exploded at him, telling him to head to Norman Kaye’s property and bring him in for questioning again. He’d grabbed DC Powell, his keys, and his coat and bolted out the door before he got himself in even more trouble.
To say that DI Kidd was on edge would be something of an understatement. He bundled Powell out of the building and into the unmarked Corsa in the car park and they started their drive out of Kingston.
Simon Powell was a quiet one, that’s what Campbell had discovered in his time there. Even when they’d gone out for drinks after work, Simon was never one to be loud and have one too many and maybe fall over on the way home. That was Campbell’s role. He didn’t mind it. He was fine playing the clown.
“Do you think he did it then?” Owen asked as they pulled onto the Kingston one-way system and headed out towards Norman Kaye’s flat. They’d checked the location and the location that Sarah had been running from and gathered that she almost certainly came from this direction. Kidd was probably kicking himself that he hadn’t kept Norman in for longer. Not that he could have done. He had nothing then. And Sarah had still been alive.
“I dunno,” Simon said. “It all happened the same night that they brought them in for questioning. So maybe. Kidd said he seemed pretty pissed off with Chris Harper at the school reunion.”
“Family drama gone a bit too far, innit?” Owen said, pulling up towards the flat. It wasn’t a block of flats, but a small collection of houses that had been converted. One up, one down. It looked pretty deserted, at least from the outside.
There were no ca
rs out front, no lights on in any of the windows. Owen didn’t like the look of it. It seemed creepy somehow. And the last thing he wanted to do was walk into someone’s flat unannounced and get a clobbering. He’d heard that had happened to people on the force before and, after what happened with the Warrington boy a month or so back, he wasn’t keen on it happening again.
He rubbed the back of his head at the memory of it.
They walked up to the front door and knocked. He rang the doorbell too for good measure, a mechanical buzzing sound ringing through the hallway of the empty flat.
It was definitely empty.
He took a breath, bent down, and opened the letterbox, taking a peek inside.
No movement.
No sound.
No nothing.
“Anything?” Powell asked.
“Empty,” Campbell replied, stepping back to look at the windows, half expecting to see a curtain twitch, somebody hiding inside. But nothing.
“Maybe he’s at work,” Simon said.
Campbell wasn’t so sure. “Maybe,” he replied. “Leave that for Kidd to decide. Come on.”
◆◆◆
DC Ravel was quickly escorted through the reception by Ms Lu and into the office of Ms Chowdhury. The receptionist had tried to convince her that Ms Chowdhury would be too busy for visitors but she wasn’t having any of that. She may not have been the prime suspect but there was a chance, however remote, that she would have something that would be able to help them.
“Another police officer,” Ms Chowdhury said as DC Ravel was escorted inside. “I’ll have met the whole team at this rate, do I win a prize?”
“I don’t think it’s a prize worth winning,” DC Ravel said with a smirk. “It’s lovely to meet you. I’m Detective Constable Janya Ravel, we just had a few follow-up questions for our investigation, it shouldn’t take all that long.”
“Lovely to meet you too,” Ms Chowdhury said, a smile snaking its way across her face. “Have a seat, I can imagine what this is about.”
“Then you won’t mind if I get straight to it then,” DC Ravel said, taking a seat across from her. She perched on the edge of the seat, remembering DI Kidd ranting about how much he’d sunk into it, and locked eyes with Ms Chowdhury. “I’m sure you’ve guessed that this is about your relationship with Mr Harper.”
Ms Chowdhury laughed. DC Ravel burned.
“I don’t think it’s a laughing matter, Ms Chowdhury.”
“Well I don’t think it’s a relationship,” she replied. “It’s two grown adults having sex.”
DC Ravel winced. “One of them is married,” she said, looking down at Ms Chowdhury’s hands and not seeing a ring. “Also it is the parent of one of your students. Is that not unethical?”
“It’s two consenting adults, what’s unethical about it?” Ms Chowdhury said, sitting up a little straighter. That had gotten her attention. “If that’s all you have to speak to me about—”
“I’d like to know more,” DC Ravel said, cutting her off. “How long has it gone on? When did you meet? Where?”
Ms Chowdhury sighed and rubbed at her temples. “Is it really necessary to go through all of this?” she asked.
“One of your students has turned up dead, Ms Chowdhury,” Janya snapped. “She was murdered. I would like to think that you would care a little more about that. Or maybe if not about Sarah, perhaps you’d care about the daughter of the man you are currently sleeping with.”
Ms Chowdhury locked eyes with DC Ravel, the two of them sat across from each other in a standoff. Janya knew she was going to be difficult to talk to, Kidd had made that abundantly clear, but this was something else.
Ms Chowdhury eventually backed down. “It’s been on and off for the past couple of years,” she said. “He was going through a hard time and I comforted him when he came to a Parents’ Evening without Lau—Mrs Harper,” she quickly corrected. “We met here, we met at his house, or…anywhere quiet, really.”
“At his house?”
“No,” she said. “At the unfinished ones. He has them all over town.”
DC Ravel noted it down, it felt relevant. She remembered Kidd saying something about all of the houses Chris Harper had left unfinished. It made her shudder to think that he was using them to hook up with women who weren’t his wife. There was something in that. She could feel it.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Chris Harper had been surprisingly amiable when they’d finally managed to get through to him on the phone. Given the way that he’d spoken to DI Kidd at the school reunion and then afterwards at the station just a few nights ago, letting him know how bloody busy he was all the time, he half expected to get given the cold shoulder and have to pull rank. But it was like he’d had a change of heart. Chris Harper was suddenly more than willing to help. As they spoke on the phone, asking him to come in, he was already on his way from the office, wandering through town to come and see them.
“I don’t like it,” DS Sanchez said. “He’s a fucking slime ball.”
“I’m not denying that,” Kidd replied. “But we obviously put the wind up him last time he was here, so let’s use that to our advantage. Remember, Sarah wasn’t dead last time. The guilt must be eating him up.”
“He doesn’t know we have the phone,” Zoe added.
“Right,” Kidd said. “We have all the cards. We just need to play them carefully.”
Diane popped down the corridor to tell them when he had arrived, and they took him through to the nicer of the interview rooms. He wasn’t under arrest, not yet anyway, so they needed to play this as carefully as possible. As far as he knew, they were just clearing a few things up.
Once they’d exchanged pleasantries and sat him down, DS Sanchez fixed him with an eagle-eyed stare that suggested to Kidd that it was her turn to play bad cop, he began.
“We just had more information come to light and we wanted to know if you could clear a few things up for us?” Kidd asked as calmly as he could, when all he really wanted to do was slam the printed messages on the table and demand answers.
“Of course,” Chris said. “Anything I can do to help, I’ll do it. I know I was cagey when we first started speaking but…” His voice cracked as he trailed off and DI Kidd watched as his mouth moved, no sound coming out. His eyes suddenly watery. He looked away from them for a moment, then back at them, taking a deep, heaving breath before he carried on. “I’m sorry. That was before Sarah was found and I…I didn’t think that would be how things…happened.”
“Okay,” DI Kidd said, still watching the man carefully. He really was quite different to how he had been just a couple of days ago. Kidd had seen death affect people in a lot of different ways but it was surprising to see the way it had affected Chris Harper. He’d expected anger, that same frustration that his wife had been sharing on social media, but this was a man who had been broken by it. It was surprising to say the least. “We just have a few questions,” DI Kidd continued, pulling the printouts of the messages from the file and sliding them across the table towards Chris. He went a little paler as he realised what they were. “These were messages that were found on Sarah’s phone—”
“You found her phone?” he asked. “When did you find—?”
“The same day we found her body,” DI Kidd said. It wasn’t a lie, but he wasn’t going to tell him the entire story about what happened with Caleb, not until they had the facts from Chris. He didn’t want to put the kid in danger, after all. “I just want you to explain them to me if you can. Take your time. Read them.”
Chris Harper picked up the pieces of paper and read them carefully. His eyes widened as he read them. He even looked a little bit confused at times, like they were things that he didn’t remember saying. Kidd could already feel the lie coming from a mile off and he sincerely hoped he wasn’t about to try it.
“I—” Chris started. “I—I don’t—”
“If you can’t explain the messages,” DS Sanchez said. “Then perhaps it would be a
good time for you to explain what happened between you and Sarah on Saturday morning.”
Chris Harper looked up sharply. He swallowed, his eyes wide, his face ghostly pale. He’d been well and truly caught out. This was not what he’d been prepared for, not by a long way and he was very much on the back foot. DS Sanchez was enjoying herself.
“Take your time,” DI Kidd said sitting back in his chair. “We’ve got plenty.”
“But not too much time,” DS Sanchez interjected. “You take too much time we’re going to know that you’re cooking up a story and that’s the last thing you want us to think, Mr Harper.”
DI Kidd looked across at her. She wasn’t just playing bad cop. She was playing demon nightmare cop, and Chris Harper was very much on the receiving end of it.
Chris looked agitated. Kidd half expected him to stop their interview and call for legal representation.
“She came back to the house on Saturday morning,” Chris said quickly. “I didn’t know where she’d been, I didn’t even ask. She went out a lot. I think Laura told you that, she just went places, didn’t tell us where she was, and would show up sometimes days later and everything would go back to normal.” He shook his head, nervous, sweating. “You didn’t ask that.”
“It’s all helpful,” Kidd said. “Keep going.”
“Well…Sarah knew about my…infidelities,” he said. “And she was threatening me, threatening to tell Laura all about them, and…I flipped out at her.”
“Did you flip out at her often?”
“No, I didn’t,” he said quickly.
A little too quickly, Kidd thought.
“But I flipped out at her, I warned her about telling Laura, and it escalated into a big fight and she left again.”
“Why didn’t you tell us?” DI Kidd asked. “We’ve been working on the assumption that Sarah went missing on Friday and you’ve been keeping this from us? That’s dangerous, Mr Harper.”
“No, you see, this, THIS is why I didn’t tell you,” he said, pointing at DI Kidd across the table. “Because I knew if you’d known we’d fought, that I’d yelled at her, you would twist it into something ugly and sordid. You would make it seem like I was the one who took her.” He took a few deep breaths. “And now you think I’m the one who killed her, don’t you? That’s why you’ve got me here.”
