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

by Rebecca Bradley

  Now here he was, faced with Lacey Lane inside an apartment he needed to get into.

  Drew knocked on the door. He was shaking head to foot. It had gone to shit so far. He was taking a huge risk, but she had to be his next play. There was no one else who would fit the plan quite so well. Not here, in Nottingham. Not who he could get to. It wasn’t as though he lived in the capital, where everyone who was anyone lived.

  He was met by silence.

  Had she gone straight to bed? It wasn’t even late.

  He knocked again. This time hard on the wood. Pulled his hood up further over his head. Pulled his cap down a little more and bowed his head.

  ‘Who is it?’ Her voice was soft and gentle.

  ‘Pizza,’ he replied, trying to keep his voice low so as to not disturb any of the other residents.

  ‘I didn’t order one,’ she said.

  Now was not the time for her to get security conscious.

  ‘Well I have one here for this address,’ he pressed. ‘And it’s paid for and getting cold.’ He leaned towards the door, face downwards so she couldn’t see his face. ‘You may as well have it. If some idiot made a mistake it’s theirs not yours.’ He really needed her to open this door.

  There was silence.

  The door stayed closed.

  He clenched his fists. This was not working.

  And then a chain was slid in its moorings and a key was turned.

  She was opening the door.

  He inhaled and filled himself with oxygen. The life-blood of the brain. He had to be ready.

  With shoulders back, hands gloved, he was as prepared as he could be.

  Nothing happened.

  His nerves jangled.

  He shook out his arms.

  He waited.

  The corridor was silent; no one was about. He didn’t want to alert any of the neighbours in this block that there were problems here. He had to keep everything quiet.

  Then she opened the door.

  He was ready for her and with a sudden and rapid movement he pushed with all his might, pushed and kept pushing and he walked forward, kicked back with a foot, nearly tripping himself off balance as he stepped over the threshold and closed the door behind him. He kept the momentum up, driving forward, taking her off her feet. She was lost in the shock and speed of it. Limbs tangled and cut off from her control.

  His arm was around her waist and he half carried her into the room in his violent burst of energy.

  They exploded into a small coffee table and a vase of flowers crashed over and into the television. The noise in the room loud as the table shifted and the glass smashed.

  Lacey yelped as the back of her legs hit the table: the first sound that had escaped her.

  Drew pushed her sideways on to the sofa and saw as she realised what was happening.

  Her arms came up but Drew was prepared. He didn’t want scratching so he weighed her down with his body weight. She struggled and she fought.

  He stuffed a rag in her mouth that he’d had ready in his pocket, ready to silence the sounds, and she gagged as her throat constricted and her face darkened. Her legs flailed beneath her and her head thrashed from side to side as she tried to force the rag out of her mouth.

  The moment stretched out.

  She was beautiful as she fought for her life. There was no question about that. No wonder she had proved to be so popular on a site that revolved around imagery. Placing herself in settings that were not usually known for their beauty was a smart move on her part. Her red hair was like fire around her head. Her blue eyes popped from her now pale face.

  She was something else. And the eyes, they held an intelligence. She had worked for what she had achieved. She had known what she was doing, she had an obvious artistic flair and she had worked it well. He felt a stab of guilt for what he was about to do. A young life, striving to live and to live well, to do the best that she could.

  Her eyes were wide in terror.

  He needed to be quick. Lacey was fighting and struggling for her life. The longer it continued the more chance evidence would be left. Time for stealth was gone.

  She was only petite.

  This would be easy.

  It didn’t seem fair.

  He had a task to do.

  There was music playing. As there had been in the canal boat. And it thumped in his head as he leaned over her.

  Her legs kicked out, booted feet wheeling in the air, her body arching and fighting against his grip.

  He needed to get control of her and quickly. Had he thought about this part properly, how to keep her quiet? Yes, he had brought the material to gag her but he hadn’t considered the noise made as they struggled. He leaned over her more. A heavily booted foot slammed into his stomach. Drew swore. Her eyes glinted and she fought harder. Her breath was coming hard and fast through her chest as it heaved. The music a weird backdrop against the struggle.

  Lacey’s hands broke free and he realised she was about to go for his face. He punched her. He hadn’t wanted to punch her. To hurt her that way. Like a common drunk. But his fist clenched and it happened. She fell back like a puppet whose strings had been cut, her eyes rolling in her head.

  This would be easier for him. She wasn’t out for the count but she was definitely subdued. He relaxed his grip a little.

  The music died.

  He paused, standing as still as he could and listened for movement outside.

  Then the next track came on.

  His nerves were shot. He could feel the adrenaline as it coursed through him, like an electric current. He needed to get this done and then get out. Because that would be the next step. Getting out of here.

  He placed his hands around her throat, felt her soft young skin beneath his fingers and his stomach twisted in on itself. He tightened his grip a little. Her head shifted as her subconscious realised what was happening. Her eyes tried to focus on him. Those blue eyes, they flickered as she attempted to get a fix. A groan escaped her throat. The blow to the head had done more damage than he had anticipated.

  He applied more pressure. He could feel the muscle in her neck. Could feel as she squeezed back and fought to keep her airway open.

  He let go.

  He couldn’t do it like this. He couldn’t do it while he felt everything she could feel.

  He looked around the room.

  Lacey used a hand to push herself up. He turned. Pushed her back down and she stayed, her lids closing.

  The woollen scarf she had been wearing when he first saw her was thrown carelessly over the table with her gloves and coat, all tangled together. He pulled at it, the coat and gloves falling to the floor.

  With one hand he lifted her head slightly, wrapped the scarf around her neck, placed a knee on the sofa behind her to get purchase and finished the job he had come here to do.

  With a quiet click he closed the door behind him. He looked at his watch. He had spent more time in there than he had hoped to spend.

  34.

  The call came in just as we were about to log off for the day. It had been a slow day. It felt as though we were wading through sludge. We had to work methodically and hope that eventually something would break.

  Days like that were long and hard. We craved for that break. For something to show us which way to go. All today had been was legwork. Paperwork and legwork.

  Then the call.

  As soon as the operator explained what had been found, we knew from the strangeness of it that it was connected. Sebastian Wade had been left in a crime scene. The scene in Hucknall, this scene might be in a different league in how grim it was, and might even be a different MO, but the weirdness of how the body had been left was enough to tell us it was our man.

  He had killed again.

  And he was making a statement.

  I just needed to figure out what he was trying to say.

  I looked across, grateful to see Aaron back in the driver’s seat, manoeuvring the car seamlessly through the early
evening traffic.

  ‘You could have gone home, you know?’ I said to the side of his head.

  ‘And left you with this?’ His focus didn’t leave the road.

  ‘I’d have been okay. Martin, Pasha and Ross are following. The CSU are also travelling. Baxter and Walker are aware.’

  ‘Would you rather I wasn’t here?’

  ‘I’m not saying that.’

  His focus remained on the road.

  ‘What I’m saying is that it’s your first day and you’ve only just recovered from a heart attack. Lisa would–’

  ‘Recovered.’

  ‘What?’ He’d stopped me mid-flow.

  ‘The word in that jumble, the pertinent word, the one you need to pay attention to is, recovered.’

  Ah.

  ‘If you’re sure.’ It wasn’t a question. He’d told me he was. He wouldn’t have done so if he didn’t mean it. Over time I had come to learn this about him. ‘I don’t want to have several strips torn off me by Lisa though. Did you get in touch with her to say you’d be late home?’ Seriously, the way she had fussed over him after his attack, well, I was in awe of the love I had seen. It shone from her every pore.

  ‘I did. She told me to take it easy and to come home as soon as I started to feel tired.’

  ‘And are you?’

  ‘What?’

  He knew what I was asking. ‘Are you feeling tired?’

  ‘It’s just up here.’

  The road turned into a dirt track and narrowed. The car bumped along and in the wing mirror I could see a trail of vehicles follow us down like

  ducklings following their mother.

  Up ahead was a row of garages. They were old. Uncared for. To the right of them were a couple of kids. Our headlights picked them out as we wound our way down the cul-de-sac towards them. They can’t have been any older then fifteen. Two boys. Skinny, their jeans hanging around their arses. Arms wrapped around themselves as they leaned into each other.

  A uniformed vehicle was parked behind them, its light rotating, informing the houses overlooking the scene that we were here. The officer from the car was stood with the boys, a notebook in his hand. His lips were moving and the boys were nodding.

  Aaron slowed our car and the cars behind followed suit.

  One of the garages had its door wide open like a yawning mouth, stretched wide and dark. A sliver of the police car’s headlamp sliced into the edge, giving the chasm a stretched cleaved look and a weird ghostly half-light where you might imagine what was beyond.

  Aaron parked and we got out the car.

  The boys looked up with panic in their eyes. We walked over to them. PC Hamid Dewan said the boys were Lewis Cotton and Naveed Khan, thirteen and fourteen years of age.

  Younger than I thought.

  What were they doing here? Where did their parents think they were? I imagined their parents would just be grateful it wasn’t them tonight.

  ‘Parents on the way?’ asked Aaron. As a father he was always the first to make sure the kids were looked after. I can’t say I had noticed this before. Not until his heart attack and I saw how his family rallied around him. How important he was to them and how devastated they would have been if they lost him.

  Why was this concept so foreign to me?

  ‘They are,’ Dewan said. In the rotating blue light he looked pasty.

  ‘Have you started an incident scene log?’ I asked him.

  He shook his head.

  ‘You’ll have one in your car. If you get it started, then we can get dressed to go in.’

  He gulped.

  ‘Not very pleasant?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘Get the log. Have a seat while you write in the main details. Get yourself together then we’ll get going.’

  He nodded his head this time.

  ‘Okay, boys, I need you to tell me what happened this evening,’ Aaron said.

  They looked to each other. Looked to the open doorway and then back to Aaron.

  It took a few minutes, but eventually they told us that they had been hanging around. This was an area they were used to. They would come around here for a smoke, where their parents wouldn’t find them. They didn’t live here so no one else would see them who would be able to tell their parents. It was just hanging. They saw the open door. It was unusual. All the doors were always closed and locked.

  ‘You know they are always locked?’ I asked.

  They nodded in unison. They’d tried the doors in the past. When it had rained. Looking for a place to shelter. That’s what they were saying anyway and tonight, that’s what I chose to believe. They had been through enough.

  They saw the open door and as it was getting colder and threatening to rain again they decided to seek refuge. It was dark but they used the torches on their phones.

  At first they didn’t see it. There was all the stuff around it. It was like a junk garage. Something you would see on Storage Hunters. Suddenly it reared out of the dark and it was there, in all its nastiness. They skidded out of the garage as fast as the rain-soaked road would allow, tripping over each other in their rush to escape. Each swearing they would never try to deceive their parents again.

  I looked closer at the lads. Saw the soaked patches down their jeans and on their elbows. A wet trail that confirmed their story.

  Our own next step was to suit up and make our way into the garage and see for ourselves what lay beyond.

  35.

  Aaron hated not being completely honest with Hannah. He hated not being honest with anyone. But, with Hannah, it felt worse. She had been nothing but kind to him. She was prepared to fight for him against Baxter. An issue he still didn’t know what he wanted to do with.

  He shouldn’t have to fight for anything. Not in today’s age. Weren’t they supposed to be living in a more enlightened era? Though, working in his job he knew damn well that they weren’t. There was no enlightenment around him.

  He straightened his tie as they moved away from the two teenagers. Hannah hadn’t pushed him when he didn’t answer her question about his level of fatigue. He knew better than to think she hadn’t noticed his lack of response. He fretted on why she hadn’t questioned him about it.

  He fiddled with his tie again. It helped him feel even, if his tie was straight. It was such a ridiculous garment, so easily moved when it was supposed to be lined up. It was supposed to lie flat and central down his chest with his buttons and from the middle of his chin. If it was all aligned he would feel aligned.

  ‘They’re scared,’ said Hannah as they reached the line of parked cars. Martin, Ross and Pasha were there waiting for an update.

  Why couldn’t she just have pushed him? He would have told her what she wanted to know. Aaron flipped open the boot where the forensic suits, gloves boots and masks were stored.

  ‘What do we have?’ asked Ross, eager to know the details.

  He would have told her he was exhausted and he was ready to go home to Lisa. To a cooked meal, his feet up on the sofa, the comfort of his drawings, and some time to close his eyes.

  He would have told her all of that.

  Instead, Hannah quietly explained to the three waiting officers what the boys had said.

  ‘Grim,’ said Pasha.

  He so desperately wanted to close his eyes. His body felt like he was wading through thick mud. He was pushing too hard on his first day. He should have gone home. Lisa told him if he was tired to go home. She would not be happy if she knew how he was feeling. She had known better than to ask. When he called her to say he was going out on a call, she knew he had already made the decision, regardless of what she may or may not say. Any added stress caused by arguing with him would not help. She told him to take care of himself and to come home if he felt he needed to.

  Hannah placed a plastic sheet on the ground so they could get changed without getting the suits wet.

  Aaron tugged out a Tyvek suit from the box.

  He hadn’t lied to Hannah about tha
t. In fact, he hadn’t lied to Hannah at all. All he had done was avoid the question.

  ‘Aaron and I will go into the scene with the CSIs. See if you can get more details from the boys. Talk to their parents when they get here and organise to do the visually recorded interviews, this evening if you can. Tell them how important it is.’ She pulled at her suit, yanking it over her foot. ‘If they’re against it and want to get their children home, then obviously their welfare comes first. Make arrangements for first thing in the morning.’

  Was that as bad? A lie by omission. If it was one of his children he would say that it was.

  The CSIs were already suited up and making a beeline for the garage. Small metal plates were being laid down on the ground to step their way into the mouth of the scene. Several huge halogenic lamps were being erected to provide lighting. It was organised and professional.

  Should he own up to her? Or keep quiet now?

  Aaron still wanted to get into his own bed and sleep. To stay there for a week, that would be preferable. He never imagined his return to work would be this difficult.

  He pulled the zipper up on the suit. Collected the paper boots and bent over. A huge fog of fatigue bore down on him and he took a deep breath in an attempt to steady himself.

  At home he had been good. But at home all he had done was potter about and sit down when he needed to. Hannah was right, he should have gone home.

  It’s just there was Baxter to consider. If Aaron gave in and went home, then he was providing Baxter with ammunition to move him out of the department. Regardless of what he had previously said about Occ Health giving him the clean bill of health and Baxter not being able to do anything, if he was unable to do his role, then the situation could easily change and he didn’t want that. He liked it where he was.

  Hannah shoved the box of gloves under his nose and he pulled a pair out.

  Headlights pitched in the dark as two cars roared down the street towards them.

  The parents.

  Aaron looked at the boys who were both shaking. Martin and Pasha were with them. Ross was talking to the cop and taking notes.