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

by GS Rhodes

  Eventually they left the house, the morning having mostly passed them by. Kidd was satisfied by what he had found out, and Simon seemed the same.

  “So he didn’t do it,” Simon said as they started back to the car.

  “It certainly doesn’t look that way,” Kidd said. There was, of course, the possibility that Michael was simply spinning them another story, that all of that was a lie and he had way more to do with it than he was letting on. But Kidd wasn’t so sure. He was trying to be discerning, critical, trying not to let his gut get in the way of what his head was telling him, but his gut told him that Michael Earle was innocent and that he had a lot of work to do to try and prove that.

  “What do we do now?” Simon asked.

  “We need to get in touch with Phil Jackson as soon as possible,” Kidd said. “And, if possible, I’d like to talk to Michael’s dad. There was something about the way that conversation went down that didn’t sit right with me.”

  “I get that,” Powell said. “He was angry.”

  “Very angry,” Kidd said. He took out his phone to check the time. “We should be getting back, plenty to be getting on with and—” The phone started ringing in Kidd’s hand, Andrea’s number flashing across the screen. He’d messaged her this morning to tell her that he needed to talk to her, but hadn’t been expecting her to get in touch so soon.

  No time like the present, he thought.

  He answered the phone, throwing the car keys to Powell before he took a few steps away.

  “Hey Andrea, thanks so much for calling me back,” he said.

  “No problem,” she replied. “I wasn’t expecting you to get in touch with me this morning,” she added. “I know I probably came across a little bit strong yesterday, but the last thing I want is to make you feel like I’m putting pressure on you or something.”

  “Not at all,” Kidd replied. “I’m glad you called.” He took a breath. Just do it, he told himself. Rip off the plaster, just tell her. “There’s something that I need to tell you.”

  Kidd could practically hear the impact of his words down the other end of the phone. It was like she was holding her breath, maybe waiting for him to say that Craig was dead, that they had found a body. It was quite the opposite.

  “Craig is alive,” he said.

  “I know that,” she replied. “I showed you the pictures, Ben, I—”

  “No, sorry, that’s not what I mean,” Kidd said. He was fucking it up, he was nervous and fucking it up. “Craig is alive and he’s with me.”

  She let out a breath. It distorted down the phone.

  “What?” Andrea asked.

  “He tracked me down about a month or so ago,” Kidd said. “Pretty soon after we got back from Essex, actually. He…he just showed up.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Neither did I. I really didn’t,” Kidd said. “He showed up out of the blue and I took him in, he’s staying with me at the moment and the reason I didn’t tell you was because, well, I thought you knew.”

  “How would I have known?”

  “Because he told me that he was in contact with you,” Kidd said. “He told me that he was calling you and spending time with you and it was only after we talked yesterday that I realised that wasn’t the case.”

  Down the phone, he could hear Andrea’s footsteps as she paced back and forth. He wondered where she was, maybe in her beautiful house not too far from here, maybe at her office, wherever it was, she was wearing out the flooring.

  “I… This is an awful lot to process,” she said. “He told you that he had called me.”

  “Yes,” Kidd replied. “He’s mentioned it a few times, actually. That’s why I didn’t get in touch with you. I didn’t think I would have to. Your brother was back and he was safe, it’s what we wanted all along, right?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “Why wouldn’t he want to speak to me?”

  “I’m sure it’s nothing personal, Andrea, really. I just think… I don’t know, I think he might be in some really big trouble. Worse than we could have thought. I can’t get him to talk, but you’re his sister, I wonder if maybe you can.”

  “I just can’t believe it.”

  “Me either,” Kidd said. “Honestly I still look at him sometimes and think that he’s a ghost and he’s just going to vanish before I get to see him again, you know? None of it feels real. None of it at all.”

  “I can imagine,” Andrea said. “Is there… This might be too much, okay? Tell me if it’s too much. But is there any way I can get a phone number from you or something? I just… I want to talk to him. Is that weird?”

  Kidd laughed. “It’s not weird at all,” he said. “As soon as we hang up, I’ll text it to you.” He felt like a massive weight had been lifted from his chest. He hadn’t properly realised that it had been there but now that he’d told her, now that there seemed to be some light surrounding this Craig situation, he was feeling a lot better.

  “Thank you, Ben,” Andrea said. “You have no idea what this means to me.”

  “I’m glad I could help,” he replied. “I’m just sorry I didn’t tell you sooner.”

  They said their goodbyes and hung up the phone, Kidd immediately tracking down Craig’s number on his phone and sending it across to Andrea. He didn’t know how Craig was going to react to him telling her, or sharing the number, but he had to do something. It felt like it was the right thing.

  ANDREA: Thank you so much, Ben. This means so much to me. Xxxx

  The response was enough to put a smile on his face. He felt like he could face the rest of the day now and whatever it was going to throw at him next.

  He turned back towards the car to see that Simon was standing next to the passenger side door on the phone, his face looking an even ghostlier shade of white than usual. He turned to Kidd as he approached.

  “Sure thing,” he said. “We’ll be back as soon as we can.”

  “What was that?” Kidd asked.

  “They tried to phone you, but…like…you were on the phone, obviously,” Powell stammered.

  “What’s happened?” Kidd asked, a little more forcefully this time.

  “Another body part’s been delivered.”

  Kidd’s body went cold.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  “What have we got?” Kidd asked as soon as he walked through the door of the Incident Room. Both DCs Ravel and Campbell were on the phone, Zoe was glued to her desk, holding up a finger to request Kidd wait a moment before she responded. “In your own time, Zoe.”

  She pressed a key on the keyboard with a flourish before she turned her attention to him. “Forensics is already there to collect it, but I’ve had a couple of pictures sent through if you want to take a look. They’re printing now.”

  “Right, but what is it that—?”

  “Severed leg this time,” Zoe interrupted, walking over to the printer. “A pretty brutal looking cut too. Real hack job.”

  “Graphic,” Powell said, looking a little green.

  “We’re dealing with severed body parts here, Si, not cupcakes,” Zoe spat.

  “Is there a message on this one?” Kidd asked.

  “‘Not A Leg To Stand On,’” she said. “Ring any bells?”

  “Well known phrase,” Kidd said. “Si?”

  He sat down at his desk and started flipping through the case file. “Pretty sure I’ve seen it in here somewhere…” He scanned through the pages.

  “Who did it go to?” Kidd asked. A smirk tugged at the sides of Zoe’s mouth. “Hardly the time to be smiling about something, Zoe.”

  “Oh, I’m not smiling about that,” she said. “It’s just gone to exactly the person you want to speak to.”

  “You’re joking.”

  “Phil Jackson.”

  “Christ,” Kidd breathed. “Well, it certainly saves us looking for him. Any word on what state he’s in?”

  “Not a particularly good one, I’d wager,” Zoe said. “But no time like the present if y
ou want to go and speak to him. You might need to—”

  The door to the Incident Room burst open behind them, DCI Weaver’s broad shoulders filling the frame. He walked over to Kidd as soon as he clapped eyes on him. He didn’t look annoyed, just a little bit agitated, which Kidd would usually say was the man’s natural state, but there was something different this time. There was something in the way he was a little hunched over, a little sheepish looking.

  “Boss?” Kidd said.

  “Just got off the phone with DI Wool,” he grumbled. “He gave me a bit of a bollocking.”

  “He’s retired.”

  “Yeah, but old habits and all that,” Weaver said. “I’m obviously too used to saying ‘yes, sir, no, sir, three bags full, sir,’” He sighed and shook his head. “Anyway, he’s coming in later on this afternoon. Didn’t give a time, said he’d be here when he gets here, which is typical Wool, if I’m honest.”

  “Bit of a wooly response, you might say,” Campbell quipped and immediately regretted it. DCI Weaver rolled his eyes so hard that he could have pulled a muscle. Kidd could have punched him.

  “Good luck getting a line like that past DI Wool, he’ll have you hung, drawn and quartered before you can blink,” Weaver barked across at Campbell. It was enough to make the lad cower. He turned his attention back to Kidd. “You need to be the one to interview him, Kidd. No offence to the rest of your team, but he won’t bloody listen to anyone who was of a lower rank.”

  “Oh, so he’s a complete tosser then,” Zoe said. “Good to know.”

  “Tread carefully,” Weaver said.

  “Got it!” Powell cried out from his desk. The whole room seemed to turn to him in slow motion. Simon immediately flushed red. “Sorry, just found where ‘Not A Leg To Stand On’ came from. It was in the court case. The judge said it to Michael before he got sent down.”

  Kidd checked the time. He needed to stay here if he was going to interview DI Wool, and he knew that he wanted Sanchez at his side for that. Powell had the most information about the case out of all of them, and he would rather have Ravel here for when the forensics came through. Much as he wanted to interview Phil Jackson as well, and really get to the bottom of all this, that would have to wait. He would put his trust in DC Owen Campbell, God help him.

  ◆◆◆

  There were men and women in bright white coveralls all over the property. They were in the front garden with cameras, leaning in close to the mud to catch footprints, they were on Phil’s doorstep where the unmarked box had been.

  It was a little bit battered in comparison to the previous one. It didn’t look like it had been as carefully wrapped or handled, practically dumped on his doorstep before whoever left it ran away.

  There was blood on the bottom of the box. It was the first thing that DC Powell noticed when they had shown it to him. The leg had been fresh enough when it was put in the box that it had bled through the paper. He wondered when it had been packed, probably right after it had been severed if it had left marks. It didn’t bear thinking about.

  The leg had already been sent off to the lab to make sure that it was a match with the arm. It was expected that it would also be Philippa’s. He wondered how many more times they would be sending parts of her to the lab just to make sure they didn’t have another victim on their hands.

  Phil Jackson had been escorted away from his property as soon as the police had arrived. They had stuck him in the back of a van and tried to talk him down. It wasn’t every day that you found a severed leg on your doorstep. Powell couldn’t help but wonder if those words were etched on his mind from the case way back when. It wouldn’t surprise him to find out he was there to watch his friend go down.

  There was a small flicker of excitement inside DC Simon Powell. He had been unpicking the puzzle of this case for the past couple of days and in doing so, had a mighty need to know more about Phil Jackson. He was an enigma within that case file, a ghost. Always mentioned but never materialising. He wanted to know what his involvement was, if any. He had to know.

  “I think we need to tread pretty carefully with this,” Powell said. They weren’t standing far from the police van. Phil was sitting on the edge facing away from them. He almost certainly wouldn’t be expecting the level of questioning Simon wanted to subject him to today.

  “What makes you say that?” Campbell asked.

  “I don’t want to spook him,” Powell said. “We need to get as much out of him about this and about Michael as possible.”

  Phil Jackson was a slight man. The years had been a lot kinder to him than they had been to Michael Earle. While he had aged considerably during his time in prison, Phil had managed to maintain some of his youthfulness. When you got a little closer you could see the bags under his eyes, the crow's feet, but mostly he didn’t look much older than the twenty-five-year-old they had seen in old pictures that had been posted on social media.

  His hair was still light brown and thick, a little bit messier than perhaps he would have liked but he had been through an awful lot this morning. He looked up at the two officers as they approached, icy blue eyes shining out from a lightly tanned complexion. He offered them a thin-lipped smile, resigned to the fact that he was going to have to talk about what had happened.

  DC Powell took the lead, introducing himself and Owen as they stood over the man. Simon didn’t particularly like that Phil remained seated, it didn’t feel like they were on a level playing field and he didn’t want it to look like he was trying to intimidate him.

  “Could you tell us what happened this morning?” Simon asked. “Please, don’t leave any details out.”

  Phil took a breath to try and steady himself. He was shaking.

  “Take your time,” Campbell said.

  “I’m okay,” Phil replied. His voice stayed quiet, the slight shake in it betraying his words. “I… I was out pretty late last night. I went out for drinks with a couple of friends. I got home at around midnight. I didn’t see the… the package there when I got home. So either I just missed it or it got delivered after that.”

  Simon was furiously taking notes as Phil spoke.

  “I slept in this morning because… Well, I’m a little hungover, as it happens,” he continued with a chuckle. “And I came downstairs and saw there was something outside the door. Like, I could see it through the glass. I opened it up and there it was. It had what I thought was mud on the bottom of it, I figured it had been there for a little while. Then I opened it and…” He shuddered. “I’m sorry. It’s just… It’s not what I expected. That was when I realised it wasn’t mud, it was blood and…and the words on the side of it…”

  “What about them?” Powell asked.

  “They just seemed familiar,” Phil said. “I had…I had a friend who was involved in something pretty bad. He…he murdered a girl, he cut her limbs off and tried to dispose of the body in the river. But he’s…” Phil shook his head. “He was never the sharpest tool in the shed. Michael, his name was Michael Earle, you might have heard of him. Anyway, he tried to dump it in the river but there wasn’t enough water to take them away. He’s an idiot.”

  “Why is he an idiot?”

  “Because he couldn’t dispose of the body right,” Phil said. “I’m not saying I’d know what to do in that situation, but I didn’t bloody kill somebody, did I?” Phil took a breath to calm himself. It didn’t seem to work, he was still shaking pretty violently. “But the words on the leg, they were said to Michael over and over and over again by the judge in the courtroom. It was like the guy was stuck on repeat. There was so much evidence, you don’t have a leg to stand on, blah blah blah.”

  Simon wrote all of this down. Even though Phil seemed pretty shaken up by it, there was still something about it… He didn’t quite believe him. Maybe it was from reading the case files, maybe it was from the lack of interview with Phil in the first place and hearing Michael’s side of things first, but he didn’t trust Phil Jackson. Not one bit.

  “Can you
tell us about your relationship with Michael Earle?” Simon asked.

  Phil looked up at Simon sharply, his eyes blazing. “Relationship?” he repeated. “What bloody relationship? The man is a murderer. I want nothing to do with him.”

  “So you’ve had no contact with him since he got out of prison?”

  Phil paled. “I…I didn’t know he’d even gotten out,” he said, his voice a little quiet. He looked back at his house, and then back at the two detectives. His eyes were wide, fearful. “Do you think it’s him that’s doing this?” His breaths were coming out ragged, in fits and starts. “Do you think he’s threatening me with all of this? Have you been to speak with him?”

  “We’re keeping our options open with regard to—”

  “Because he tried to drop me in it, you know?” Phil interrupted. “He so wanted it to be me. He’s…he’s mental. He kept bringing me up even though it had nothing to do with me. If I find out it’s him that’s doing this, I’ll kill him. I swear to God, I will kill him.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  While they waited for DI Wool to show up, Kidd filled Zoe in on everything that had happened with Michael Earle that morning. It had left Kidd with more questions than anything else, questions that he was hoping Powell and Campbell would be able to get Phil Jackson to answer. It felt like they were getting close to something here. They had momentum and Kidd didn’t want it to let up because he was having to wait for a DI who Weaver had built up as quite possibly the worst person he would ever have to interview in his career.

  He was about to fill her in on everything that had happened with Craig the previous night when he felt his phone start to vibrate in his pocket.

  Kidd pulled it out and was surprised to see Craig’s name across the top of it. In spite of himself, he found himself breathing a sigh of relief. He hadn’t heard from him since their argument last night. At least he knew that he was safe.