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

by GS Rhodes

  “Afternoon,” Kidd said as he answered the phone. “Everything okay?”

  “What the bloody hell were you thinking?” Craig barked down the phone. It was loud enough that Kidd had to move the phone away from his ear. Whatever was happening, Craig was not happy.

  Sanchez looked at him, confused. “What?” she mouthed.

  “Craig,” he mouthed back. “What’s wrong?” he said into the receiver.

  “You called Andrea,” Craig said. Kidd could hear him pacing, a little out of breath. Apparently, Andrea had already been in touch with him and it had gotten him all fired up. “What were you thinking?”

  “I didn’t think it would be a problem considering that the two of you have been spending so much time together over the past couple of weeks.”

  “Cut the shit, Ben, you know I’ve not been with her.”

  “Yes, I do,” Kidd said. “So I know that you’ve been lying to me. What the hell is going on, Craig? I’m worried about you.”

  “I’ve got…” Craig sighed. “I’ve got a lot going on at the moment okay? Andrea wasn’t supposed to know I was back because…”

  Kidd gave it a beat for him to come up with something, some other excuse that would fob him off for another couple of days. It seemed like he was stuck. Maybe he’d finally decided it was time to come clean.

  “Craig, you’ve got to tell me what’s going on,” Kidd said, getting up from his desk and starting out of the room. Even though he told Zoe everything, this suddenly felt like something he needed to keep between the two of them. “I can’t help you if I don’t know what’s happening, okay? The only reason I spoke to Andrea was because you were shutting me out.”

  He carried on walking down the corridor, past Diane until he was out in the open air.

  “Andrea was angry,” Craig said, his voice a little quieter now. “Like, she was absolutely off her head.”

  “Well, you’ve been back and living with me for almost a month and she had no idea you were even here,” Kidd said. “If I was her, then I’d probably be pissed off too.”

  “No, it’s not that,” he said. “It’s….it’s more than that.”

  Kidd resisted the urge to start shouting. He didn’t have time for Craig being cryptic. He needed to know and he needed to know now.

  “Look, Craig, if I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times,” Kidd growled. “If you don’t tell me what’s going on, there is no way that I can help you.”

  “I’m worried about dragging you into all this,” he replied. “It’s complicated. And I don’t want to get you in trouble.”

  “I’ve been in plenty of trouble in my time, Craig, you know that better than most,” Kidd replied. “Tell me.”

  “She was the reason I disappeared in the first place,” Craig said bluntly. “Well, her and her husband. That’s why when I knew the two of you were together I didn’t just jump out and say hello, I…I kept running.”

  “Craig—”

  “And look, I know she doesn’t seem like it, but my sister can be bloody scary when she wants to be, and so can her bastard of a husband,” he continued. “But I had to disappear and now that she knows where I am, I’m scared of what she’s going to do. You have no idea what she is capable of.”

  “You’re joking, aren’t you?” Kidd said. “If this is another story just to—”

  “Ben, please, I’m not joking,’ Craig said firmly. “You think you know her, but you don’t. If she finds me, I don’t know what’s going to happen, okay? I went into hiding for a reason. I thought maybe it all would have blown over, but… Fucking hell, I so don’t want to be doing this over the phone. But I spoke to people in town, okay? People who know me, people who know my sister and…it’s not over. I thought it might be over, but it’s not and now I’m just… Now I’m just scared.”

  There was a hitch in his voice, and Kidd was almost certain that he could hear Craig starting to cry.

  His blood ran cold. A sudden wave of guilt crashed over him. He’d been the one that had called her, he’d been the one that told her where he was. Had he really put Craig in that much danger?

  “Why?” Kidd asked. “Craig, I need to know why.”

  “It’s a lot to explain, I don’t want to do it over the phone,” he said, his breathing was coming through ragged now. He sniffed. He really was in a bad way. “Can you meet me at the house and—?”

  There was a knock at the door. Kidd froze. Craig had gone completely silent.

  “Craig, who’s at the door?”

  “I don’t know,” he whispered.

  “Where are you?”

  “I’m at your house, I’m upstairs,” he replied.

  “Go to my room, look out the window, you should be able to see who it is,” Kidd said. “Be careful.”

  He heard Craig moving, opening the door to the spare room, then the door to Kidd’s room. Kidd’s heart was pounding.

  Craig gasped. “It’s her, and she’s not alone. What the fuck do I do?” he hissed.

  “She didn’t see you?”

  “No,” Craig replied. “I don’t think so anyway.”

  Kidd took a breath, steadying himself. This didn’t feel real, he felt like Craig was pranking him or spinning him yet another story, but if he sounded this panicked on the phone, he needed to take this seriously, needed to make sure that Craig was safe.

  “Stay quiet,” Kidd said, keeping his voice level, calm. “Quietly and calmly go out the back door. There’s a gate at the end of the garden that leads out into an alleyway. You should be able to just walk straight to town from there. I’ll meet you and we’ll figure something out.”

  “Ben, I’m scared,” Craig said, his voice shaking. All Kidd wanted to do just then was to be there for him and hold him close, tell him that everything was going to be alright. But he couldn’t do that. They just needed to act, needed to make a move.

  “It’s going to be fine,” Kidd said, even if he didn’t quite believe it. “Go out the back door and I’ll meet you down by the riverside okay?”

  Kidd hung up the phone. What the fuck am I getting myself into?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  He didn’t have time to fill Zoe in on everything that was happening, only explaining to her that he needed to go out to see Craig and would be back as soon as he could.

  “What if DI Wool shows up?” she asked as he headed out the door.

  “He can wait,” Kidd said. “You know I wouldn’t do this if it wasn’t important.”

  “Ben,” she said. He was half out the door at this point. It was only the urgency in her voice that stopped him. “Whatever it is, be careful, okay?”

  “You don’t need to worry about me,” he replied.

  “We both know that isn’t true.”

  He pulled on his jacket as he walked out of the building, his phone in his hand dialling John’s number as he walked. He picked up after a couple of rings and sounded more than a little bit distracted.

  “Sorry, sorry, sorry, had a meeting pulled forward so I can only talk for a sec,” John said down the phone. “Everything okay? You’re not in trouble are you?”

  Not yet, Kidd thought.

  “I have a massive favour to ask of you,” Kidd said as he walked out of the police station and towards the riverside.

  There was a silence while John considered this. He seemed to know instinctively that whatever Kidd was about to ask him, it certainly wasn’t going to be good.

  “Go on,” he said.

  Kidd explained the panicked phone call he’d had from Craig, that he seemed to be inching ever closer to an explanation about what it was that was going on and what was happening with Andrea.

  “Can I hide him in your flat?” Kidd asked eventually. “I wouldn’t ask unless I was properly desperate, okay? I just… I don’t want anything to happen to him.”

  John hesitated. Kidd could feel him practically holding his breath on the other end of the phone. There must have been a part of him, however small, that wante
d to leave Craig to it. Kidd couldn’t blame him. He’d already come between them once, and here he was maybe about to do it again.

  “Please, John,” Kidd said.

  John let out the breath he was holding. He let out a small noise before he started speaking, somewhere between a growl and a groan. “Sure,” he said in a voice that didn’t sound at all happy. “You’ve got a key, haven’t you?”

  “Yes. Thank you, John,” he said. “And I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t apologise,” John replied. “Just… just get it sorted okay?”

  “I promise.”

  He hung up the phone and headed down to the riverside. He could see that Craig was standing in the same spot he had been in a few weeks ago, only instead of standing there proudly waiting for Kidd to show up, he was hunched over in a hoodie, praying that no one would even notice he was there.

  “Craig,” Kidd said when he got close enough. He looked up. His face was red, his eyes puffy. Kidd hated to see him that way. If he thought they had the time, he would hug him, but he wanted to get Craig to a safer place as soon as he possibly could. They needed to move.

  They walked along the riverside, past where Kidd would normally turn off to go to the police station and a little way out of town. They turned near the student halls and headed to John’s flat. It wasn’t all that far from the police station now that Kidd thought about it. It would probably make sense for them to stay here a little more often, at least on the mornings when Kidd had to go to work. But they’d fallen into a routine of John staying over with him, which he certainly didn’t mind.

  He opened the front door, ushering Craig inside, and told him that John’s flat was on the top floor. They started up the four flights of stairs, the two of them remaining in silence until Kidd had opened the door and let them both inside.

  John’s flat was covered in books. There was a large bookcase off to one side in the living room, floor-to-ceiling, organised by genre and then alphabetically by author surname. Kidd supposed that was because John used to be a bookseller and some habits never died. Books weren’t confined to the bookcase, however, but covered every surface imaginable. There were a couple of large art and design books beneath the coffee table, were paperbacks stacked next to the TV and on the side tables. There was no way that you could live in this flat and run out of things to read, John had made sure of that.

  Kidd locked the door behind them and turned to Craig. He stood awkwardly in the middle of the room, hunkered down in his hoodie, none of his belongings with him, just him, his phone, and nothing else.

  “Whose place is this?” Craig asked.

  “John’s,” Kidd replied. “I called him on the way to meeting you.”

  “Oh,” he replied. “Can you thank him for me?”

  “Sure,” Kidd said. “I’ve not properly spoken to him about it, but I’m sure you can hide out here for a couple of days. Or whatever you need to do.”

  “Okay.”

  Kidd took a deep breath, it was now or never. “Craig, you’ve got to tell me what happened.”

  “Ben, please—”

  “If you want my help, Craig,” Kidd interrupted, raising his voice a little. “And you want to stay here, you need to tell me. I can’t take this anymore, alright?”

  Craig opened his mouth to respond, to protest or argue, but quickly seemed to change his mind. Kidd was glad that he’d thought better of it. He wasn’t sure if he had the heart to throw him back out on the street and leave him to the mercy of whatever he was running from.

  “I… Can we sit down?” Craig took a seat on the sofa, Kidd choosing a nearby armchair. Suddenly it felt like he was in an interview. It was strange doing something that felt so formal with Craig. “I got into a tight spot with money,” he started again. “I was never good with it, you know that, but this was pretty bad.”

  “How bad?” Kidd asked.

  “Five figures, easily,” Craig replied quickly. Kidd resisted the urge to wince. “It was bad.”

  “Why didn’t you talk to me about it?” Craig raised an eyebrow at Kidd. “What?” Kidd asked.

  “You weren’t the easiest person to talk to towards the end, Ben,” Craig said flatly. “You were distant, obsessed with your work. I barely saw you. And when I did, the last thing I wanted to do was have a conversation about how I had gambled my way into a hole.”

  Kidd thought back to what it had been like in the last few months of their relationship. It had started so well, as many relationships did, they had their honeymoon period, they took nice holidays, and Kidd managed to juggle work and his life with Craig most of the time.

  Then things got a little more intense and his focus shifted. He’d thought things were rocky with Craig at the time, but didn’t want to address it. What little time they’d spent together, he’d wanted to be nice, to be perfect. He hadn’t wanted to crowd it with insecurities and deep talks. In the end, that had been their downfall.

  “So I turned to Andrea,” Craig continued. “I turned to Andrea and her husband, Samuel, you know Samuel, and they paid it off for me, no questions asked, apparently no strings attached. But suddenly they offered me a job delivering things.”

  “Things?”

  “Yes,” Craig said. “Things. They wouldn’t tell me what it was. I didn’t really want to know, I assumed it was drugs.”

  “Craig—”

  “I’m not here for your judgement, Ben. If this is going to work, I just need you to listen to what I have to say, okay?”

  “Okay, okay,” Kidd replied, holding his hands up. “Go on.”

  “They told me that I owed them for paying off the debt, that nothing in life was free, all that type of shit,” he said. “So before I knew it I was delivering packages for them to various locations all over town. Slowly I was working off this debt, though every time I asked if I was anywhere close to being done, they’d be vague about it. I just wanted it to be over. The places I had to go, the people I had to interact with… It wasn’t pretty. It didn’t make me feel good.”

  Craig pulled his gaze away from Kidd. He couldn’t bring himself to look at him anymore.

  “I wanted to get out,” he said. “I knew I had to get out and I… I didn’t feel like I could talk to you about it. So one day, I told Andrea that delivery was going to be my last one. I was very clear that I didn’t want to be there anymore, that I wanted my life back. She…she wasn’t happy about it. She threatened me, she threatened my life, and Samuel did the same. I didn’t think they were serious but…”

  “What?”

  “You remember I had all those bruises about a month before I disappeared? I think I told you I’d been doing a kickboxing class at the gym or something.” Craig laughed; it was a nervous sort of laugh.

  Kidd did remember. He’d gotten up to go to work and had seen Craig with his shirt off. His skin had been more purple than skin-coloured, deep black bruises across his chest and sides.

  “I remember,” Kidd replied. When Craig had told him it was from a kickboxing class he’d just let it go. He was busy with work, on a big case, happy to let it slide. Why hadn’t he paid more attention? Why hadn’t he been the one to save Craig from all of this?

  “Well, they beat the shit out of me, Ben,” he said. “Said it would get worse if I tried to leave, if I tried to get away. But I couldn’t stay and I was too embarrassed to tell you about it. And I didn’t know if you would even be there to listen to me.”

  “I would have listened.”

  Craig shook his head. “Things were different then, Ben.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be,” Craig said. “We’re both at fault a bit, I guess. But anyway, I needed to get out, I just had to, and the only thing I could think to do was just to disappear and start over.”

  This is where the story is going to go bad, Kidd thought, bracing himself for the absolute worst.

  “There was someone else who worked for Andrea and Samuel,” Craig said. “His name was Bill. We sort of had a bond bec
ause we both hated it and we both wanted out but just… We couldn’t find a way to get out. So we decided we were going to make a break for it.”

  “How?” Kidd asked.

  “I picked up the package and I took it to where it needed to be, a seedy little underground club a little way out of Kingston,” Craig said, taking a deep breath, feeling the need to steady himself. “The money he was going to give me was what was going to get me and Bill away from here. We were going to split the money and disappear, never have to think about it again. But they caught Billy out.”

  Craig took a deep shuddering breath. “They told me that they knew what was going on and they were going to stop me before anything could happen. They phoned ahead to the guy I was delivering to and he threatened me and attacked me. He grabbed me, slammed me against a wall, he punched me, he beat me. I was in pieces, I had no idea what to do and I knew if Samuel got there before I could get away, I was done for, dead. You’d be investigating my death and I…I didn’t want that.”

  He took another steadying breath.

  Here it comes, Kidd thought.

  “I grabbed something and I hit him with it. He fell to the floor. He was still breathing when I left, still conscious, just hurt. It meant that I could run.” He took another deep breath. “I grabbed the money he was meant to pay me, I took more from the till, and was ready to start a new life, free of Andrea, ready to just get back to normal. Then I saw a news report that he was dead.”

  “Craig.”

  “He was breathing when I left, I swear. I didn’t kill him. At least I don’t think I did…” he said. “But my prints were all over that box, his blood was on my hands. That’s what I thought anyway. Andrea was leaving me messages, calling me, threatening Billy’s life, telling me she would have him done in and would make sure that it was known that it was me. She said I owed them and I would pay for what I’d done. So I ran. I disappeared. I didn’t tell anyone. I couldn’t risk it. I didn’t want you to get in trouble at work because of me, because I knew that you would want to help and…” Tears ran down his face, dripped into the cowl of his hoodie. “I ran. It was all I could think to do.”