The Twisted Web (Detective Hannah Robbins Crime Series book 4)

by Rebecca Bradley

  Then he was gone.

  And Sebastian Wade was propped on the council building steps awaiting the dawn and judgements of others.

  10.

  Awed silence filled the room as everyone took in what we had viewed. How calm and collected the killer had been.

  Unruffled.

  ‘And what time is this?’ asked Baxter.

  I looked at my notes. ‘Two-o-nine a.m., Sir.’

  ‘And what time is the post-mortem?’

  ‘Fay said she can fit him in at the end of the day.’

  He nodded.

  I returned my focus to the team who waited patiently for our exchange to end. I’d noticed a couple of them had made notes on the time the victim had been dumped.

  ‘We need to check out Nick Henson. He said he was at home but that he went out to look for Sebastian. We need clarify his whereabouts; his being out could have given him opportunity to commit the murder. Get the recording from when he phoned Sebastian in missing. What time it was, bearing in mind this footage at two-o-nine a.m. And I want the report from the officers who attended his home address, their pocket notebooks, plus I want to speak to them in person. To see what his demeanour was when he reported his husband gone. Was he upset he wasn’t home or distressed because he’d just publicly dumped his body? Though this guy on the CCTV looks far from distressed.’ I looked at the screen again, at the still image of the killer walking away, calm and slow. As though he’d just dumped a bag of rubbish on the side of the road. Not a human being who had a life, a husband. Loved ones.

  I hated to do this when a loved one was grieving so obviously, but very often a murder was committed by someone close. We had to at least rule Nick out. This image on the screen. It didn’t correspond with the man we had seen. The coldness on the screen. I couldn’t feel it in their home.

  ‘Martin…’

  He lifted his head at me.

  ‘Can you check the Family Liaison list and see who’s available to put in the home with him, please?’

  He made a quick scribble in his incident book.

  I turned my back on the room. Other than Nick Henson, we had the book club, who will have been the last people to see Sebastian alive. Plus we had the whole blog issue. I scrubbed at my face and turned back to the room.

  ‘I want every last person identifying from that book club, and I want them speaking with, and statements from them all. I want to know where they went after book club finished. Check their statements, CCTV, ANPR, witnesses, anything we have at our disposal.’

  Baxter nodded at the back of the room.

  ‘It’s held in a pub. Speak to the staff, I want to know who else was there that night, if they have CCTV inside or outside in the car park. I want statements from each and every one of them. This has got off to a sticky start. We’re on the back foot. Let’s catch up and catch up properly.’

  I looked to Aaron’s desk. He would usually run point on the actions that needed to be dished out but he wasn’t here. I missed him. I missed his calm. How he never became flustered. I missed my friend.

  Christ, I was tired. My bones felt heavy as though I was dragging them around in this soft frame of mine, like it was hard work. There seemed to be a permanent headache threatening to burst out from behind my eyes and the point at which I had been knifed in my upper arm dragged at me, reminding me how fragile I was, how fragile the human body was.

  I turned to Theresa and Diane, our two civilian staff who were responsible for the majority of the HOLMES work. Theresa was the inputter: it was her job to make sure everything made it onto the system. Diane indexed, processed, researched and analysed all the information on there.

  Theresa was already nodding before I even spoke, a gentle smile on her face.

  ‘You don’t mind?’ I asked.

  ‘Of course I don’t mind. It’s no bother to me. I’m sitting here on my computer anyway. What difference will it make?’

  Both these women made our lives so much easier with their professionalism with HOLMES. Though I still liked to go with my gut. It was great to have a system in place that tied all the information together and found the links, but you couldn’t take people out of the equation.

  ‘You all have something to do. Let’s get on with this.’ I looked to Baxter. His face was tight and closed. He wasn’t happy. I had to get this over with.

  Baxter’s office was sparse. Impersonal. He waved at the chair in front of his desk and sat down. Behind him the grey day slipped quietly into the room through the large window behind him.

  ‘Have you seen what’s happening online?’

  I understood why public perception was always so important to the bosses, but it was a problem I didn’t worry about myself and it was the reason I didn’t want to go any further in the promotion ladder. There was too much paperwork, not enough policing. Too many meetings and not enough interviews. Too much bullshit, not enough humanity.

  ‘I can’t say spending time online has been a priority of mine today,’ I said.

  His face soured, his chin crinkling below his lip.

  I corrected myself. ‘I’m sorry. I mean, I’ve been too tied up to have looked. Is there more I need to be aware of?’

  ‘It hasn’t stopped. In fact it’s growing. Because it wasn’t us, they’re even more interested in what happened.’

  I looked at him. The man who had made comments earlier today and called it That Twitter. How did he know what was happening online? ‘Sir?’

  He waved a hand outwards. ‘Kirsty.’ He indicated towards his PA who was sitting at her desk outside his office. Her head was down, fingers tapping away at her keyboard. ‘She showed me how to follow the hashtag and check for any new or trending hashtags.’ He paled. ‘It’s like the Wild West on there, you know.’ He didn’t wait for a response. ‘The press want a statement.’

  I nodded. Of course they did. Even if it hadn’t have been online they would have been interested in a body in the middle of our city this morning.

  ‘What the hell am I going to tell them?’

  I hadn’t seen him this stressed before. Baxter was still relatively new to the department. Only having been here a few months. He liked to give the impression of control. Wanted to know what we were doing at all times and was more hands on than the previous DCI, my friend, Anthony Grey. And I was aware that this was a stop-gap; Baxter wanted to further his career. He wanted to climb that ladder. A shitstorm was not what he needed on his watch.

  ‘We give them the bare facts as we would any murder investigation,’ I replied. ‘We treat it as any other murder investigation. Just because people have an opinion doesn’t mean we investigate differently, or behave differently.’ Even as I spoke I knew it wasn’t quite true. For him and for Catherine, our Detective Superintendent, it was all about perception, answering to supervisors higher up. Christ, even the Chief Constable had to answer to someone, and that was the Police and Crime Commissioner, the civilian role responsible for providing efficient policing in their areas. They were elected positions, so yes, they, at the top of the chain, were most definitely concerned about what the public thought about the police and what the police were doing and very slowly that concern trickled down. With a high profile case like this, our PCC’s eyes would be all over it. No wonder Baxter was tense. He could see his promotion prospects slipping out his grasp. Not that the PCC could influence them, but if a job this big went wrong, it wouldn’t look good on his CV. He wouldn’t be classed as up to the task.

  ‘Shall I get Claire to draft a media release for you?’ I asked. I didn’t want to be dragged into this. I had enough to do. I wasn’t sure why he had dragged me in here when he could have contacted Claire Betts, our media liaison officer, himself.

  ‘I can phone her.’

  I clenched my teeth together. Kept my mouth shut.

  ‘The reason I asked you in here…’

  Ah, I knew there was something, other than him feeling the pressure.

  ‘I’ve had a message from HR.’
>
  I lifted myself taller in my chair. I was interested now.

  Baxter leaned forward and placed his arms on the desk. ‘Aaron has been in touch with Occ Health and wants to come back to work.’

  Yes! This was the best news I’d had in months. ‘This is great news.’ I looked at Baxter. ‘And great timing, we could do with all hands on deck. I presume he has to have his assessment at Occ Health first?’

  Baxter’s mouth twisted and he leaned back in his chair. His face wasn’t matching my emotions. ‘Yes, he needs to be assessed as fit to be operational, but…’

  But? What the hell did he mean, but? My stomach sank. Aaron had been away from work for the past six weeks after suffering a minor heart attack at the office following a pretty tough case. I had since learned the proper name was a myocardial infarction. I had been speaking with him during his enforced absence from work and I knew he was hating it and was desperate to return, though I hadn’t known he was about to contact HR to make the request. I was desperate to have him back. What was wrong with Baxter? Why so reticent?

  ‘What?’ I asked him.

  ‘After a heart attack, do you really think a high stress team like Major Crime is the right place for him?’ He gave me a look. I wasn’t sure what he thought he was conveying but he looked to be in pain. ‘Honestly?’ he pleaded.

  ‘I do think we’re the best team for him,’ I replied. So that’s what this was about. Just prior to the heart attack Baxter had threatened Aaron’s position on the team. He had clashed with him. Disliked Aaron’s manner, not realising Aaron had Asperger’s. And Aaron had refused to allow me to inform him. I had been stuck between wanting to support Aaron’s decision and helping him. ‘I think if we move him now we would add more stress to him that he could most certainly do without.’

  Would he really do that to him? Could I still keep Aaron’s confidence? Or was protecting him more important? This ball was now in Baxter’s court.

  ‘Let’s see how his assessment with Occ Health goes first, shall we?’ he conceded.

  I stood to leave.

  ‘I’m of a mind to get a replacement DS in here, Hannah. I think it’s for the best, for the team and for Aaron.’

  11.

  David Smithson, or Smithy as he’d introduced himself when he held out his hand in the witness interview room on the ground floor of St Anne’s police station, was petite for a male, standing at only about five foot five. Louise Burton towered over him. Her frame tall and willowy. A good meal wouldn’t have gone amiss though.

  I didn’t know if they worked the night shifts in the CCTV unit on a permanent basis and therefore never saw daylight, but the pair had a sallow look about them. Their pale skin had a slight rubbery sheen to it.

  They were witnesses so I needed to separate them, to speak to each of them alone. I explained this and Martin indicated to Louise that they would leave and use another interview room. Her already pallid face turned grey and her eyes widened as she looked to Smithy.

  ‘It’s normal in these circumstances,’ I reassured her. ‘If we catch whoever did this, we may need your help at a later date and we can’t have the prosecution saying you conferred during this interview.’

  She gave a slight nod and Smithy bared his teeth at her in an approximation of a smile.

  I suggested we sit and Martin ushered Louise out the door before she could protest.

  Smithy dropped into the plastic seat and let out a breath. ‘She’s scared, you know.’

  ‘Why’s that?’ I asked, curious why she would be afraid of talking to us about what occurred during the night.

  ‘She’s got a couple of kiddies.’

  I frowned, confused.

  Smithy pulled on his bottom lip with his teeth.

  I leaned back in my chair opposite him. Gave him time to think about his next statement.

  ‘She doesn’t want to lose her job.’

  I looked at him.

  ‘You found a dead body and we followed the guy with the camera and did nothing!’ he exploded, spittle flying from his mouth. I tried not to wince as it hit my face. It wasn’t as though he had spit at me as an assault, this was emotion.

  I rubbed my nose and tried to discreetly wipe the damp patch from my cheek with the side of my palm. Smithy watched me. His eyes hard. Waiting.

  ‘Tell me what happened,’ I said eventually, after I had managed to clean my face.

  ‘You saw the video?’ Funny how we still referred to anything that wasn’t a still image as a video, even though video recorders were long gone and everything was now digital. It was simply a digital recording on a disc.

  I acknowledged that I had.

  ‘We thought he had a Guy Fawkes.’ His voice was plaintive now. He ran his hands through his hair. ‘He was so goddamn relaxed we seriously thought the guy was a prop. That it was staged. Especially when he put the crime scene tape up first.’

  He pulled his hands down from his face. ‘It’s not like you expect someone to walk a dead guy out into the middle of Market Square right under your CCTV nose, is it?’

  12.

  We’d been in the morgue for over an hour now and my back was starting to ache as well as my upper arm. I rubbed at my arm as I listened to Fay talk into the microphone hanging from the ceiling over Sebastian Wade. A strong scent of disinfectant lay heavy over us in the clinical setting, the strangest of medical rooms. The floor sloped towards drains for easy cleaning and every surface was wash and wipe clean, tile and metal. It was a large well-lit space with multiple tables in the centre.

  Today we were the only people in here and all that had been done so far was the outer examination. Fay was thorough. Not only was she thorough, but she wasn’t in any hurry.

  I kneaded my arm.

  Fay cut off Sebastian’s clothes, and Martin had bagged them individually in brown paper evidence bags, sealing each one and signing the exhibit label. The bloody items would be placed in the forensic dryer back at the station once we returned before being sent to the forensics lab for analysis. Sending damp items through to them was a big no.

  Sebastian was laid before us in the very condition he entered the world, other than the extra stab wounds he possessed.

  I hadn’t asked Nick if he had any parents still surviving. No one wanted to survive their child. It was always the most difficult task I had, informing a parent about the loss of a child. No matter how old that child.

  Here, in the mortuary, the dead were quiet. Peaceful. The pain they suffered was finished. They were here to give us their answers. To talk to us about their last moments. I could cope with that. With their help, we could stop another family going through what their loved ones were going through.

  And it was with this reasoning that I was able to stand here as Fay took her scalpel, leaned over and made the first incision into Sebastian Wade.

  Fay looked at me. ‘He didn’t stand a chance.’

  I nodded. I’d watched and listened to the examination of the three knife wounds in his abdomen.

  ‘He was never going to survive unless he got to a hospital in pretty quick time,’ said Fay. ‘His liver was pretty badly damaged and I would say he died within minutes.’

  ‘He would have known what was happening?’ I asked.

  Fay walked to the side of the room, bent down and retrieved a clean sheet from one of the shelves under the work-counter. ‘Oh yes. Death wasn’t instantaneous. He would have been able to look his killer in the eye. Ask him the obvious question: why?’ She placed the folded sheet on Sebastian’s feet and ankles ready for when he had been stitched back up. ‘He wouldn’t have said much more. Blood loss would have been rapid.’

  ‘And the type of weapon we’re looking for?’

  Martin was placing all the evidence bags we were going to take away with us into a larger bag for carrying.

  ‘I’d say it was a kitchen knife. An average kitchen knife. One you can find in any knife block. The slim filleting one.’ Fay snapped off her gloves and bagged them, then hande
d the bag to Martin. ‘I don’t believe it was found at the scene so we can’t do a comparison.’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Well, if you find it,’ she continued, ‘we can match it up with the wound and tell you if it’s the right one.’ She looked at Sebastian laid on the slab.

  I followed her gaze. Sebastian, now pale and waxy-white as his blood had pooled as his heart was no longer pumping it around his body. A man who had been filled with life and had interests and love, but had it torn away from him.

  He’d tried to talk to us today, but he hadn’t been able to say much.

  Fingernail clippings had been taken, but there were no visible signs that he had scratched at anyone. There were no defensive marks on him. All we had found were the three knife wounds in his abdomen.

  Whoever had killed Sebastian Wade had managed to do so without him putting up a fight.

  This either meant it was someone he knew, or someone had got the jump on him.

  He’d gone out last night not realising it was his last night. His last book club. His last goodbye with Nick.

  Sebastian Wade had not said goodbye to anyone. And he hadn’t said much to us either.

  13.

  Drew couldn’t concentrate on work today.

  All he could do was watch the online explosion about the body found on Market Square that morning. The speculation and finger-pointing was incredible to witness. It was mesmerising. Every person had an opinion on what had happened. They knew whose fault it was. Who should be castigated for such a heinous act, leaving that poor man out there on the steps that way. The poor people who’d seen him would be traumatised.

  Though it didn’t stop them sharing the images.

  Twitter was doing its best to take them down. It had put a formal request out for them not to be shared but then there had been further uproar about citizen journalism, and how images of warzones and riots where people were hurt and beaten were shared with no consideration for the effects on the viewer of the image.