Hand On Heart: An Unputdownable British Crime Thriller (DI Benjamin Kidd Crime Thrillers Book 5)

by GS Rhodes

  “Well, crack on then,” he said. “Update me when you have anything new.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Kidd tried to push that feeling of unease out of his head but he couldn’t shake it off. As he walked out of Weaver’s office and back down the corridors to the Incident Room, he couldn’t escape that creeping feeling that something had been missing from their conversation.

  They’d talked in the past about what was happening in their lives outside of work, or at least Weaver had hinted that things for him were far from perfect. Kidd had offered his ear to the boss but he was yet to take him up on that offer. Kidd also knew that the Super was constantly breathing down his neck, something that Kidd’s more than occasional disregard for the rules didn’t help. But it didn’t feel like that. It felt like something different.

  There was no use dwelling, however, they had a job to do. And when he got back to the Incident Room he set everybody to work. Simon was knee-deep in the case file, taking notes, trying to make sense of it, so it made sense in Kidd’s mind to leave him here working on that.

  Doing what Weaver had instructed, Kidd sent Campbell and Ravel to talk with Michael Earle, he and Zoe would go and chat with Holly’s family. It wouldn’t be the easiest of conversations, that much he knew. But it seemed that Weaver would rather have him there than in Michael Earle’s face.

  ◆◆◆

  DC Janya Ravel had already decided that she hated it when Owen was driving. It wasn’t that he was necessarily a bad driver, but he had a tendency to really throw the car around bends and it made her feel a little queasy. Even though she had asked him not to, he couldn’t seem to help but accelerate too quickly and brake too hard. She half wanted to check his license to make sure him driving was actually legal. It certainly didn’t feel like it.

  “Not far to go now,” Campbell said as they drove past Fulwell Bus Station and down towards Twickenham Green.

  Campbell pulled away from the lights so quickly that the car sounded more like a beast than a beaten-up Corsa. Maybe she would offer to drive back.

  Campbell slammed on the brakes at a zebra crossing, letting an old lady cross the road at a snail’s pace.

  Maybe she would insist upon it.

  Not too far from the green, down a couple of side streets, they pulled up outside Michael Earle’s flat. It wasn’t in a block, just a house that had been converted into an upstairs and downstairs apartment.

  It wasn’t too bad. The location was relatively close to Twickenham High Street. It was far enough away from the road that it was quiet, the tree-lined street giving it more of a suburban feel. They got out of the car and made their way to the door.

  Without hesitation, Janya confidently pressed the bell of 54A. 54B, Michael’s upstairs neighbour, was down the alleyway with its own entrance taking you straight upstairs. There was no movement from inside. Not a thing.

  Janya looked back towards the street. There were details of a vehicle that belonged to Michael in the case file, she had taken the reg number from Simon before they had left, but she hadn’t seen it on the street.

  She rang the doorbell again, stepping back to see if there could be any twitching at the windows. It wouldn’t be the first time someone had seen them coming and decided that they were suddenly not in.

  “Is this definitely the right address?” she asked, turning her attention to Campbell.

  He quickly took his phone out of his pocket and checked, nodding back at her. “That’s what I wrote down.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “And is what you wrote down the right address?”

  Campbell rolled his eyes. “Hilarious.”

  “Thanks, I’m here all week,” she said, going back to the door and bending down. She opened up the letterbox and looked inside. “Mr Earle?” she called. “We just want to speak with you, could you come and open the door?” She waited, watching for some movement. Perhaps he really was out.

  “Do we have a phone number?” Campbell asked.

  “Simon said no,” Janya replied getting back to her feet. “Did he give us anything else?”

  “Parent’s address,” Campbell replied. “It’s not far from here, shouldn’t take us too long.”

  Janya nodded. “Maybe we’ll have a little bit more luck there.” She started away from the house and back towards the car, turning back to look one more time at the house. If he really was in the frame for this, it wasn’t too much of a stretch to think he would be hiding out should the police come around. They would have to try again later.

  Campbell hadn’t been joking when he said it wasn’t all that far. It was only a few streets over. Janya couldn’t imagine wanting to live that close to her parents. When she got the opportunity to move out, to go to University she had jumped at it, and then she’d done everything in her power to make sure that she never had to go back. Not that she didn’t like her parents, that wasn’t it at all. It was just they could be a bit much sometimes.

  Just the thought of her mum having the chance to pop round to her house at a moment’s notice gave her an anxious feeling in her chest. It was obviously a feeling that Michael Earle didn’t share.

  The house was bigger than Michael’s flat by some distance. The brickwork was dark, the red door popping out at Janya as Campbell brought the car to a stop. There was twitching at the curtains which immediately set Janya on edge. Either they were just a little bit nosy, or they’d been expecting them. If Michael had been in his flat he could have warned them that they were on the way.

  She shook her head. She was definitely getting ahead of herself here.

  “Shall we?” Campbell said, taking the keys out of the ignition.

  “How should we approach this?” she asked. She hadn’t considered talking to Michael’s parents when they left the station. The whole point of this trip had been to go and speak with Michael, find out what he’d been up to, and hopefully count him out of the investigation.

  “Cautiously,” Campbell replied. “I can’t imagine they will be too happy about us dredging all of this up. It was going to be bad enough talking to Michael about it. In a weird way, talking to his parents is worse.”

  “Agreed,” Janya said, looking back to the house. There was definitely a face watching them from the front window.

  It must have been difficult for them to see what happened to their son. Even more difficult if they believed, like Oscar Harkey, that Michael was innocent. If they believed that strongly enough, seeing him go down for it would have been incredibly painful. It would have been a hard thing for any parent to take.

  They made their way to the front door, whoever had been watching them at the window quickly vanishing out of sight. Janya turned to Campbell, who widened his eyes in response. They didn’t need to say anything else. Both of them knew that this wasn’t going to be the easiest of visits.

  Janya took the lead once again and knocked on the door, waiting only a few short seconds before it flew open.

  A woman stood in the doorframe. She was short, curvy, her dyed-black hair pulled up on top of her head, very much looking like it had been done in a rush. She looked very similar to the picture they had seen of Michael Earle, the same face just a little bit softer, a little bit rounder. She took them both in quickly, light brown eyes darting left and right.

  “Can I help you?” she said, her voice cold, clipped. She was less than pleased to see them, of that much Janya was certain.

  “My name is Detective Constable Janya Ravel,” Janya said. “This is my colleague, DC Owen Campbell. Sorry to bother you, do you have time for a chat?”

  “A chat?” she repeated, pursing her lips. “What on earth would you want to chat to me about?”

  “We would like to talk about your son, if possible,” Janya replied, keeping her voice soft, not wanting to antagonise the woman if she could help it. “We had a few questions regarding the Holly Grant case from a few years ago.”

  The woman’s eyes widened at them, her mouth dropping open. She didn’t seem able to form
words, her mouth opening and closing as she tried to figure out exactly what to say.

  “You just can’t leave him be, can you?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “After all these years and you still can’t just leave him alone,” she growled. She narrowed her eyes at them both. “After all you did to him, you should be ashamed of yourselves. Don’t you think you’ve done enough?”

  Done enough? Janya thought.

  “What have we done enough of, Mrs Earle?” Janya asked. “I’m not trying to upset you, that’s the last thing I would want to do, I just have a few questions if you don’t mind.”

  The woman hesitated. Janya could see her weighing her options, the cogs turning in her head as she decided whether or not to let the detectives in or tell them to get off her property. But there must have been something in what Janya said that softened her, because she looked past the two officers and across the street, almost checking to make sure no one was there, before she stepped out of their way and ushered them inside.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Zoe Sanchez pulled up outside Holly Grant’s old family home and Kidd couldn’t help but wonder how they had managed to stay in this house after everything that had happened. The house would be filled with so many memories of Holly, so many parts of her that just wouldn’t go away, they must never stop thinking about her.

  Maybe that’s the point, he thought. Though he was fairly sure he couldn’t stand it.

  “So you think Weaver is keeping something from you?” Zoe asked as she took the keys out of the ignition. Kidd had mentioned it to her in passing as they were walking out of the station, but on the way here she had been a little too focussed on driving to ask him about it.

  “There was something there,” Kidd said. “I don’t know, I can’t explain it.”

  “Are you trying to tell me that you’re psychic?”

  “Psycho is probably a little closer, to be fair.”

  “Touché,” Zoe said with a chuckle. “But seriously?”

  Kidd shook his head. “I’m probably being paranoid. There’s so much going on outside of the station it’s almost certainly creeping into my daily life.” Kidd let out a sigh. “Craig is hiding stuff from me so my brain is trying to convince me that everyone’s hiding something, no one is telling me the truth, blah blah blah.”

  “Blah, blah, blah, that’s eloquent,” Zoe said. “You should open with that when we get in, I think it will be a real crowd-pleaser.”

  “Don’t let me go in too hot,” Kidd said. “Weaver was clear about one thing, I need to be very bloody gentle after all they went through.”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll keep you in check,” Zoe said with a wink. “Been doing it pretty much since day one, why break a habit, eh?”

  “You’re hilarious.”

  “Honestly, why I didn’t pursue a career in comedy is beyond me,” she replied getting out of the car. Kidd followed suit, stepping out onto the pavement and taking in the early afternoon sun. It was warm on his skin, heating him up almost instantly. He may not have even needed to wear a jacket today. Summer was definitely on the way.

  They started towards the house. There was a car parked on the driveway, ruby red and glinting in the sunshine. They had called ahead of time, a little bit of preparation that the police were coming to talk to them about Holly felt like the least they could do given they were very much walking through fields of the past.

  Kidd half expected this to be the kind of street that was lousy with curtain twitchers wanting to know exactly what was going on, but it seemed quiet, sedate.

  It wasn’t a million miles from the river, tucked away down a side road just off the high street. If Kidd remembered rightly, Michael Earle’s property was right at the other end of the town, a good twenty to thirty minutes on foot, but five or so minutes in a car. They were so close to one another.

  Kidd knocked on the door.

  There was movement upstairs, the sound of a door slamming, of someone coming down the stairs at great speed and hurrying to open the door. The man that stood before them was tall, taller than Kidd at least, and slim. He looked like he might have been a runner, though how out of breath he was from running down the stairs didn’t really give that idea too much stock.

  His hair was white-blond, shaved close to his head. And the slenderness of his body went all the way to his face, his cheekbones protruding, his eyes a little bit sunken. If he wasn’t too careful, he was going to start looking like something out of a Tim Burton cartoon.

  He was half the size he had been in the video they’d seen on DC Ravel’s computer screen just a short while ago, but Kidd was fairly certain that this was Harrison Grant, Holly’s father.

  “Hello?” the man said, breathless. “Sorry, I thought you were the postman, I’m waiting for something.” He was incredibly well-spoken, so much so that it caught Kidd a little bit off guard. “Are you the officers I spoke to this morning?”

  “Yes,” Kidd replied. “Are you Harrison Grant?”

  “Yes,” he replied. “I rather go by Harry, if that’s okay, always thought Harrison was a little bit, I don’t know, posh.”

  Kidd resisted the urge to say that it suited him, because it did. He would have expected someone with the name Harrison to be speaking in such a posh voice. It made perfect sense in his head at least.

  “I’m Detective Inspector Benjamin Kidd,” Kidd started. “And this is my colleague Detective Sergeant Zoe Sanchez. We’re here because we had a few questions to ask you regarding your daughter.”

  Kidd watched the man’s face pale. It was like someone had pulled a plug out of him and all of the colour from his face would be found spilled behind him. He was clown-white and looked like he could be knocked down with the lightest touch.

  “My…my daughter…” The man could hardly get the words out.

  “I’m sorry, that was rather blunt of me,” Kidd said. “There is a case that we are currently investigating that bears some similarities to what happened with Holly.” The mention of her name seemed to be enough to knock him back all over again and Kidd was suddenly cursing himself.

  “No, no, it’s quite alright,” the man said, giggling a little. It was half-hearted and almost painful to Kidd’s ears. There was no joy in it. It was completely hollow. “It’s just strange to hear her being referred to again.”

  “You don’t speak about her much?” Zoe asked.

  “We talk about her all the time,” Harry replied. “Keeping the memory alive and all that, but when people come around they don’t like to mention her.” He chuckled and shook his head. “It’s…it’s silly really. I would rather we talked about her, but it’s a sensitive subject and a lot of people just don’t know how to deal with it, you know?”

  “I think we know better than most,” Kidd said with a smile. “Do you mind if we come in?”

  “Of course,” Harry said, stepping out of their way and ushering them in. “The kitchen/dining room is right down the end. I’ll go and get Suz, she’s…” He looked up the stairs before looking back to the detectives and lowering his voice. “She may be a touch resistant to questioning.”

  “Why’s that?” Kidd asked.

  “I understand that you need to come here and ask us questions, you’re investigating something, but Suz…” He looked back up the stairs again, like she would suddenly appear and be angry at him for speaking about her. “I think Suz would rather not. We’ve been through so much, you see?”

  “Of course,” Kidd replied, following suit and keeping his voice low. “If she doesn’t want to speak with us, that’s more than alright, I’m sure anything that you have to say will be able to help us.”

  “Thank you,” Harry said, a thin-lipped smile on his face. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  He made his way upstairs, Kidd and Zoe watching him as he disappeared out of sight. The two of them walked silently towards the kitchen, taking a seat at a long, dark-wood dining table before either one of them spoke.

  “You
think everything is alright?” Zoe asked, her voice quiet. “He seemed a little agitated, don’t you think?”

  “I think he’s bound to be,” Kidd replied. “We’re about to dredge up something that they’ve probably tried not to talk about for almost two decades, at least not in the detail we want to. I can’t imagine that would be easy.”

  There were raised voices upstairs. Not shouts, certainly nothing that Kidd felt he needed to be concerned about, but more than just a normal level of conversation. It was one way for Kidd to confirm that their presence was an unwelcome one, at least for Suzanne Grant.

  There was movement on the stairs, two sets of heavy footsteps coming down to join them in the dining room. Suzanne Grant was the spitting image of Holly. While Holly had appeared to have her father’s eyes, one thing that the press seemed incredibly focussed on at the time was how much she took after her mum. Kidd wondered what kind of effect that had on the pair of them. It was a reminder every day about what had happened. He’d seen couples split up for it in the past, just couldn’t stand the sight of one another.

  Kidd stood up and reached out a hand towards her. She tentatively took it and shook as he introduced himself and Zoe once again.

  “I hope you don’t mind us coming to speak with you,” Kidd said. “We have a few questions about the case and thought you were our best port of call.” Suzanne didn’t respond, her face stony, quiet. “We hope we haven’t caused any upset.”

  She looked sharply at the DI, her eyes burning brightly. “Then maybe you shouldn’t have bothered coming,” she hissed. “After everything we were put through all those years ago—”

  “Suzy—”

  “No, Harry, no,” she snapped. “After everything we were put through, waiting for you to lock up that monster when you bloody knew it was him, you could have caught him sooner, maybe managed to save my little Holly, but no!” There were tears in her eyes, tears that were threatening to roll down her face. But she took a deep steadying breath, calming herself, not allowing it. “I don’t understand why it’s being reinvestigated. It’s been so many years.”