‘Aaron, you need to see this.’ Evie’s face was white, the colour drained away.
‘Martin, get onto SPoC and see if we can triangulate Hannah’s phone will you?’ Aaron said, still trying to crack the problem they had in front of them, worry obviously working away at him.
Evie tried again. ‘Drew has posted a photograph, Aaron. He has Hannah and he’s threatening to kill her.’
The silence in the incident room was heavy now. Anyone on a phone held the mouthpiece in mid-air, mouths agape. Tapping at keyboards stopped. Aaron turned on the spot. Then turned again. Unsure what the hell had just happened.
‘I don’t understand,’ he said. ‘How can this have gone so wrong so quickly?’ He stood shocked for a fraction of a minute, then he pulled himself together.
‘Let me see it, Evie. Let’s see what we’re dealing with.’
She brought up the tweet.
I am the killer. I killed Sebastian Wade and Lacey Lane because of what you did to me last year. Now it’s up to you what happens. #crimescenemurder
Poll
Option 1: Kill myself.
Option 2: Kill the police officer leading the investigation because I have her.
The image showed Drew with his hand wrapped in Hannah’s hair, her head pulled in close to him. There was a look on her face that said this was not a stable situation.
‘Fuck,’ he muttered under his breath. ‘Have you spoke to SPoC yet, Martin? We need to track down Hannah’s phone.’
Martin put the phone down. ‘They’re on it now. They’ll be back to us shortly.’
‘Do they know how urgent it is?’
‘Yes, I told them.’
‘We need to inform Baxter and Walker,’ Aaron said. ‘And get this image to digital forensics, see if we can get anything from it, see if they can get a location from anything in the background.’ He turned to Pasha. ‘Research this guy, I want to know everything about him. Particularly locations. I want to know where he might have taken her. This looks like it’s a house, a home. We must have it listed for him somewhere.’
‘On it.’ She sat down at her desk. Started tapping at her keyboard.
‘Why the hell do we not have this guy flagged in the investigation?’ he asked to no one in particular. And got no response. A couple of shrugs. Guilt filled the room. No one had seen this coming. Everyone had missed it and now the Boss was at risk.
Aaron looked at the message on Twitter again. It was now he noticed there was a time limit on the poll. Drew Gardner had given the people of Twitter just two hours to decide who should die, him or Hannah.
62.
‘Where are your family?’ I asked Drew. I had figured out this was his home. It was the only way he could have a key and know his way round the house so well. Plus, with the story about him losing everything, it made sense.
He looked at the photographs on the wall. Sadness filled his eyes. This was a man in pain. I had to get through to him.
‘Mel is at work and the kids are at school.’
‘You still love her,’ I said. I had to remind him of everything he had, of all he had to lose if he went through with this.
‘Of course I still love her. Why do you think it hurts so much that I lost this? This is my home. Not that other soulless place you visited. That isn’t a home. It’s a place with walls and a bed. This is home.’
He was passionate. ‘What would Mel think about all of this if she knew?’ I asked, not sure if I was pushing him in the wrong direction.
There was silence as he continued to look at the family photographs on the wall. I hadn’t spotted any with him in, but then, in the corner on a side table, I saw it, a family of four; he was there. And they looked so very happy. His world had been shattered.
I looked further around the room. What could I use to gain control of the situation if I needed to? There was nothing I could see. With a huge kitchen knife in his clenched fist he obviously had the upper hand. But, I wouldn’t die here today.
‘Drew?’ I prompted.
‘She would be furious.’ He stared at me. ‘What do you want me to say? That she would be okay with this? Of course she wouldn’t. She’s a good woman. She couldn’t cope with the public scrutiny on us when it was all happening, that’s why our marriage broke down. She wants a quiet peaceful life. This would break her. I know that. And yet…’ He looked back at the photographs, at the memories. ‘I did it anyway.’
‘You can stop it though. Prove to her that you’re sorry. Bring this all to an end. It doesn’t have to end this way. How horrified would she be if she knew what you have planned?’ I was grasping at straws but he had given me enough information to make an assessment of her thought process on this.
He shook his head. ‘It’s too late.’ He moved to the laptop, refreshed the screen again. His jaw went slack and his eyes widened. I could see him reading through comments on the screen. Shock registering on his face. I was scared to think what was on there. Did people hate the police that much that they were voting for me to die? Or had they seen sense and closed it down? Had the public proved him right or wrong? And which was which? Is this what was shocking him so much now? That they refused to engage in his game?
Surely people would not vote on someone dying. This wasn’t a dystopian fantasy drama. This was real life and this was my life and his life. No matter what he had done. No matter what they thought he deserved, they were not the ones to make a decision on who lives and who dies.
I inched forward. Slowly. Afraid to startle him. I wanted to see what he was reading on the screen.
‘Have a look.’ He waved me over with the knife. ‘See what they think.’
I moved next him. He was stressed. I could smell the body odour seeping through his T-shirt. Sour and strong. Dark circles had formed under his arms. I tried not to wrinkle my nose. Instead I focused on the screen.
At first I wasn’t sure what I was looking at. I wasn’t used to Twitter. It took me a moment to understand the list of tweets.
Let her go. You deserve to die. You deserve more than death.
Do us all a favour and kill yourself now. Don’t wait for a stupid poll result.
Just die.
Die.
Kill yourself now.
Kill the killer.
Die now.
Let me come and kill you. I’d do a good job of it.
Give her the knife. Let her stick you.
They were baying for his death. You could practically hear the chanting tone of the messages. He kept scrolling and the messages kept on coming. Hundreds of them. Thousands of them.
Then he clicked on his original tweet. The poll. It had been shared over three-hundred-and-twenty-eight thousand times and had two-hundred-and-fifty-one thousand votes. Ninety-five per cent of those for his death.
I wasn’t sure what he expected, but by the look of his face, he had held out a faint hope that they would prove him wrong. Prove that they were decent and would not engage in this game of his. Would he really carry this out or just resign himself that the world was not a good place?
‘Dad!’ There was a scream from outside. ‘Dad!’ And again. Followed by banging and the door handle being attacked as someone tried frantically to get in. ‘Dad! Stop, let me in!’ The voice was distraught and loud. Wanting to be heard. She banged and banged and banged.
And then there she was, at the living room window. Peering in. At her dad holding a knife. With me just standing here. Her face was streaked with tears, a mottled mess of pasty white from shock and bright red from crying. Eye make-up slashed her cheeks with the tears.
This was his daughter.
63.
Drew looked at Hannah in blind panic. ‘Libbie! How the hell? She should be at school.’
Hannah looked from the window – from the girl with the tear-streaked face, screaming and banging at the glass, to Drew. ‘I presume she has a smartphone,’ she said.
His hands went up to his head, the knife in his hand waving about in the air.
/>
‘Dad, noooo!’ she screamed again. ‘Let me in. Dad.’ Her voice was high and terrified. Here she was, a young child on her own, facing her dad through a window as he threatened to take his own life or that of a police officer, publicly on social media.
Suddenly two more faces joined her. Dylan and Mel. Mel looked in. Saw the state of Drew and stared at Hannah. She was trying to keep Dylan calm. Talking to him quietly. Then she grabbed Libbie and wrapped her arms around her in a bear hug, dragging her away from the window into an embrace that shoved her face into her shoulder.
Dylan stood there. Confused. ‘Dad?’ A quiet whisper Drew could barely hear.
‘Drew, you have to close the curtains,’ Hannah said quietly. ‘We can sort this out, but don’t let your children see this.’
Drew started to pace the room. Becoming more and more erratic. He hadn’t wanted it to turn out this way. This wasn’t what he had planned.
‘They were supposed to be at school,’ he moaned.
‘They’re kids. Something like this was bound to get at least one kid’s attention and then it would sweep the school in no time. Don’t let them watch this, Drew. Close the curtains. You can see them when we walk out of here.’
With heavy and slow footsteps he walked to the window.
‘Drew, what are you doing?’ Mel asked through the glass.
‘I’m sorry, Mel. I never wanted it to go like this.’ His own eyes were now flooded with tears. Would this be the last he saw of his wife?
‘Drew, please, just come out. You’re scaring the children. Come out and tell them you didn’t do this. That you’re hurting in your head and you made it up, that you’re going to seek help. They’ll understand a breakdown, they’re good kids, Drew.’
He shook his head. Tears fell down his face and he drew the curtains.
‘Dad!’ Libbie screamed.
64.
Aaron called for attention in the incident room. ‘We’ve had a call from Melissa Gardner, she says the man behind the tweets is her husband, Drew Gardner. He’s currently holed up in her family home she and the kids have arrived there and she’s seen Drew and Hannah alive through the window, but that he’s now drawn the curtains.’
There were sharp intakes of breath and a couple of groans in the room.
‘We’re going to the scene. A few of you will stay here and work the intelligence systems. Pasha, Martin and Ross, you come with me. The rest of you, I need you here. Baxter and Walker will be attending as will the ARV. DCI Baxter is a trained hostage negotiator so he’ll be taking the lead once we’re there.
Evie stood. ‘I’m coming with you.’
‘You need to stay here, Evie.’ Aaron pulled on his coat.
Evie moved to the door. ‘I’m coming with you, Aaron. She’s my best friend. I’m not sitting here doing nothing while people vote on whether she lives or dies. I’m going.’
‘I need you to get the tweet removed.’ He stared at her. ‘It’s important.’
Evie wasn’t backing down easily. ‘Could you stay here with her out there in trouble?’
‘Please, Evie. I can’t worry about you as well as her. You figured this out for us. Now I need you to close it all down. I don’t understand why it’s not happened yet.’
‘Because Twitter are working on US time and they get a lot of complaints. This is one of many. They’ll get to it, but whether they see it in time is another issue.’
‘Will you stay and chase them?’
Pasha looked between Aaron and Evie. Evie relented. ‘Bring her back safe, don’t make me hurt you.’
Aaron nodded. ‘She’s my friend as well.’
They closed the street off at both ends. Between the taped cordons uniform and plain cars parked all over the road, like sets of dice rolled randomly across a table. The armed unit were having another briefing on site. The officers were all kitted up in their vests, weapons strapped around shoulders. Serious expressions on faces. This was what they trained for. They were ready.
Officers were clearing residents out of the houses adjacent to Drew’s house or opposite, moving them out of the cordoned area, much to their very vocal annoyance. They had no idea what access he had to weapons. The officers back at the station were working on that.
Aaron shepherded Mel and the two teenagers to an empty vehicle and they clambered in, Mel in the middle with two traumatised looking children, each side of her. They might be teenagers but they very much looked like small children right now.
Aaron sat in the driver’s seat, twisted himself round so he was facing Mel. ‘Melissa Gardner, isn’t it?’
She nodded.
‘What can you tell me about today’s events?’
She was as pale as her children. ‘I can’t tell you anything. The first I knew about it was when Dylan texted me and told me to look on Twitter. I don’t have a Twitter account so I had to look on a colleague’s account and then I saw it. I knew the kids had made a beeline home, that they’d run out of school, I left work immediately and phoned you when I saw him there.’ Her hand went up to her mouth and a sob escaped. The daughter leaned her head into her mother’s chest and allowed more tears to flow. The son attempted to be the stoic man of the hour and stayed rigidly still as the two women of his life struggled.
‘What about weapons?’ Aaron pushed.
‘I saw a knife.’ Her hand was still up at her face.
A band of pressure went around Aaron’s chest. ‘What was he doing with the knife?’
‘Nothing. He was holding it.’
‘He wasn’t threatening DI Robbins?’
‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘She looked fine. Well, as fine as she could in those circumstances,’ she added.
‘He wouldn’t hurt her,’ Libbie chimed in, lifting her head and looking at Aaron. ‘He’s my dad, he wouldn’t hurt her. He’s a good man. He didn’t do what they said he did. He told me. I was just angry because of all the stick I got at school about it. I was angry at him because it had gone viral and made my life hell. I believed he didn’t do it and was helping that man.’
‘I believe you,’ Aaron told her. ‘But, right now, he does have a knife and he does have one of our officers in there with him and we need to know what we’re dealing with.’ He turned to Mel again. ‘What about firearms, does he have access to those?’
‘Oh my God, no.’
‘No!’ both teenagers burst out at once.
Mel tightened her grip on them. ‘Where would he even get one from? He’s not that kind of man.’
They all looked towards the house. Where Drew was now, with a kitchen knife and a Nottinghamshire police officer held hostage, having launched a Twitter poll threatening to kill one of them in the next hour. He most definitely was that kind of man.
65.
The tension in the room was dark and thick, ever since his family had turned up. He had changed. Where I had thought I was getting through to him, now there was a wall up around him. We heard the commotion outside and Twitter confirmed the arrival of police and the cordoning off of the street, the removal of some of the neighbours and the use of the armed officers.
I was close to the laptop now. My eyes flicked to the clock in the corner of the screen, checking how much time we had, I wondered what he was going to do when the clock ran out.
The house phone rang.
‘That will be them,’ I told him. ‘You need to answer it.’
He shook his head.
‘Drew, talk to them. Let them know what’s going on. Let them know I’m okay in here. That you’re okay in here. That way they won’t do anything dramatic that you don’t want.’
He looked at me, a silent stare as he contemplated what I had said. The phone continued its shrill call. He didn’t move.
Then it stopped.
Damn.
‘Drew, you really need to speak to them. We might be able to sort this out. Your children. They’re out there. You don’t want this to be the worst day of their lives.’ It was going to be anyway, n
o matter how it was resolved, but I wasn’t going to tell him that.
The phone started to ring again.
‘Drew?’
‘Shup up,’ he yelled.
I was quiet. This was spiralling out of my control. Not that it had ever been within my control. Drew himself was losing it and that was bad news.
He snatched up the phone. ‘Yes.’
He listened. ‘Yes, she’s fine.’ He held out the handset to me. I went to take hold of it but he shook his head. Instead I put my ear to it.
‘DI Robbins here,’ I said.
‘Hannah, are you–’ The phone was ripped away. Baxter’s voice. Baxter was out there. My team was out there. They were close.
‘That’s enough. You know she’s okay. That’s all you need. Now leave me alone.’ And with that, he put the phone down.
Shit. This wasn’t going well.
The phone rang again.
Silence from Drew.
Then again.
Then again.
He yanked the phone from the wall.
‘Drew.’ How the hell were we going to resolve this if he wasn’t going to engage with them?
‘It’s too late for all of that,’ he said. He looked at the laptop. ‘I think the dregs of society have spoken.’
‘No, Drew, they haven’t. They aren’t society. They aren’t the whole population. They don’t speak for everyone. They’re simply keyboard warriors who think it’s fun to hassle people from the safety of their homes without considering the impact. Normal people like me and you, we don’t use social media like that. We would be, we are horrified by this behaviour. You don’t have to listen to them or make decisions based on their words.’
He paced around. I could see he was listening, but his pacing was erratic. I had to talk him down. One of us was about to die.
The Twisted Web (Detective Hannah Robbins Crime Series book 4) Page 22
