Shallow Waters (Detective Hannah Robbins crime series Book 1)

by Rebecca Bradley

  Sitting on the edge of a desk at the front of the incident room I reeled off the new information that identified Colin Benn as the offender. Looks passed between staff. It wasn’t a name we were familiar with, but we didn’t have a list of potential suspects anyway. I continued, “Benn is the current boyfriend of Natalie Kirk, mother of the second murdered child, Allison. It doesn’t look like the explosion Sally and I were caught up in was an accident. It’s being investigated by divisional CID as arson with intent to endanger life. We have information on Benn from a few years back. One of the many pieces of intelligence we have is that he was fired from a job a few years ago, for stealing parts from the company. He worked as a kitchen fitter which would give him enough information on how to set a gas explosion off in a house. We have three victims, including Natalie. Now we have forensic evidence linking Benn to Rosie, it means he has identifiable links to all three victims: semen on Rosie; a relationship with Natalie and in turn, a relationship, or knowledge at least, of her daughter, Allison. We need to find him and bring him in. Initially on the murder of Rosie Green, but we’re looking at him hard for Allison’s murder and the attempted murder of Natalie, so we still have a lot of work to do. We have no idea how Benn links to Norwich or how Rosie Green came to be found here. I need to know everything about Benn. We can’t leave any stone unturned.” I could see Aaron writing lists as I spoke, his head down and his hand scribbling. From past history I knew he was still listening. He had an uncanny knack of following conversations as they happened around him even if he appeared to be doing something else. A loud ringing interrupted the briefing. “Who the fuck has their phone on that loud in the middle of briefing?” I snapped. All eyes looked just to the right of me where a phone was lighting up with every ring. Shit.

  “Robbins!” I was in no mood for whoever this caller was now.

  Silence. Again.

  “ROBBINS.”

  Nothing.

  I slammed the phone down hard on the desk; it bounced twice before hitting the floor. All eyes looked away. “Bollocks.” I cursed again, picked it up and put it on vibrate before I set it back down a bit easier. Aaron eye-balled me, a question in his expression. I took a breath.

  “Okay. The last known address for Benn is 28 Sharland Street, Basford. There is an old Y registered blue Mondeo registered to him at that address. We want the car seized as it could have been used to transport the bodies. He has some previous convictions for,” I looked down at the paperwork in my hands and read from the printouts, “assault, drugs and an old USI…” USI stood for Unlawful Sexual Intercourse, “with a fourteen-year-old girl when he was eighteen.”

  “His taste hasn’t changed with age then,” Aaron commented, still writing his notes.

  “It would appear not.”

  39

  The girl was tired. Too tired to be scared. Or so she thought. The games he played with her were exhausting. She feared him and the time alone was hers. She recognised this now and was grateful for it. She rested her cheek on the cold red plastic, closed her eyes and allowed her mind to wander again.

  Red was the perfect colour. It had probably been chosen on purpose. Or maybe not. She used to like red. She used to have a red woollen scarf she liked to wear when it was cold. A birthday gift from her mum. Tears gathered under her eyelids. They felt hot.

  She missed her mum. She loved her. She loved her more than she loved anything in the world and wished she could take back the spiteful, hurtful words spat out in anger. The last clash they’d had, she’d said she never wanted to talk to her again. She’d said she hated her, that she’d ruined her life.

  The reality was, she wanted to talk to her so very much. She wanted to feel her warmth and be held. She desperately wanted to say how much she loved her and to tell her she needed her and couldn’t imagine a life without her. Did her mum hate her now? Was she enjoying the peace her absence brought?

  She needed this time alone. From him. It was time where she could recover and rest, yet at the same time she felt isolated and hated it. Memories of tantrum-induced stomps to her room where she would blast out her favourite songs alone brought with it a swelling in her chest that choked her. She didn’t want to be alone. She didn’t want to be here.

  The red plastic became damp, her cheek sticking like tacky paint as the warm tears slid down.

  40

  I parked the car a couple of doors down from number twenty-eight. Night time was closing in and the streetlights were on. The road was silent but for a dog barking, muted somewhere in another house. The mood felt electric. We were all wired at the prospect of an arrest. As the convoy of police cars pulled up and parked behind me, I appraised the front of Benn’s address.

  The house looked in a state of disrepair. Litter spilled out of an attached outhouse building onto the overgrown pathway to the front door. The whole neighbourhood had a look of open indifference. Wheelie-bins were left in the road and broken tricycles were discarded on neglected lawns.

  I shifted my focus back to number twenty-eight. The Y registered Mondeo we were interested in was parked rusting on the road. The two rectangular windows in the top half of the front door of the address were dark. There were no other sign of lights from within. I wiped the palms of my hands on my trousers, damp rivulets of sweat soaking into the material.

  Aaron knew what I was looking for. “He’s in there. There’s a faint glow in the upstairs front window, maybe a television or computer monitor.”

  I saw it. “Okay, listen in.” I turned to the gathered search officers. “As discussed at the office, Aaron and I will enter the address at the front and Ross and...” I paused and gave a querying look to one of the uniform cops I’d forgotten the name of.

  “Gavin, ma’am.”

  “Gavin will make sure no one exits at the rear of the property. Once Benn is secured they will take him to into custody, book him in, and leave the search teams to do their job. Is everyone happy they know why we are here and what they’re doing?” A murmur of yes ma’am went around the circled group. “It looks as though he is in a first floor room, so DS Stone and I will head straight up there. Benn has markers for violence, so be careful.”

  We quietly moved to the address and I nodded towards the door indicating to the enforcer officer, wearing full protective gear which included face visor and gloves, to do his stuff. He held the enforcer with both hands and slammed it forward with force. Twice. The door gave with a sickening crack as it split near its locking system. I pushed on the door and ran into the house. The dimming daylight outside gave the sparsely furnished interior an eerie sepia toned feel. My feet clacked heavily on bare floorboards. The stench of rotten food and bodily fluids hit.

  “Fuck.” I heard Aaron at my side.

  “Police!” I shouted a second time. I strained to hear a response but could only hear echoes of Police! as other officers entered and moved about. The stairs were straight in front of me. Holding my Maglite in my right hand, I directed the beam onto the steps so I could see where I was treading and started my ascent, shouting my identification as I went.

  Moving quickly my boots sounded hollow on the steps. We needed to contain Benn and prevent any evidence being destroyed.

  I went straight for the door emitting a faint line of light under the bottom and turned the handle. The sight that met me was pitiful.

  Colin Benn was a slim man with a flabby belly overhanging a grubby, threadbare pair of blue and white striped boxer shorts; they left little to the imagination, with the front gaping open like the mouth of a hungry animal. He was bent over his computer, an old tower with a keyboard, mouse and monitor wires all tangled in a mess hanging down at the back of the basic desk he was seated at. His yellowing fingers tapped on the keyboard as we entered. He turned and faced us, a flash of fear registering on his face. He looked back down to the task at hand. Within a few strides across the small box room I was beside him. I took hold of his right wrist, yanked it hard away from the keyboard and wrapped the rigid metal speed
cuff around his wrist. Leaning forward, I pulled his left wrist behind him, forcing his body forward, his nose almost touching the desk. Benn let out a high pitched squeal. “Colin Benn, I am arresting you for the rape and murder of Rosie Green.” I locked his left wrist into the cuffs and pulled back, lifting him up and out of his chair and away from the keyboard. He let out a couple more yelps of complaint, his breath, a stench of stale cigarettes and alcohol.

  “You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned...” I continued the caution as Benn spluttered, spittle flying out of his mouth. Disgusted and conscious of virus transmission I shifted my head sideways.

  “I didn’t do anything. You can’t prove it.”

  His nearly naked body reacted to the stress of the situation as goosebumps appeared all over him. His legs shook. I held the rigid metal between the two cuffs with my right hand as I pulled the search warrant out of my pocket with my left.

  “Colin, I’m DI Hannah Robbins and I’m in charge of this investigation. This search warrant has been signed by a magistrate and authorises us to search your house for items relevant to the offence for which you have been arrested. Do you understand what is happening?”

  The shaking got worse. “You can’t prove anything. I don’t know anyone called Rosie whatever her name was.”

  I didn’t plan on discussing the facts of the case with him until I had him in a recorded interview room. “Regardless of whether you believe we can prove it or otherwise, do you understand the information I have given you?”

  Benn nodded, eyes to the floor.

  I handed Benn over to Ross and Gavin who had by now both entered the premises. Once Benn was out of the address in his boxers and a frayed grey blanket from one of the police vehicles, the crime scene investigators were called in.

  As I stood in the small cramped bedroom, I saw a photograph of Allison on the chipped table at the side of his bed. The photograph wasn’t framed but was laid face up and looked to be well fingered. It showed a smiling Allison in her school uniform. Her smile looked forced for a camera she had no interest in, by an organisation she felt wouldn’t and hadn’t protected her and could do little about it. The face in the image looked into the lens, saying with her eyes what she couldn’t say with her words. The eyes that looked out said a big fuck you, yet Benn felt it appropriate to have it at the side of his bed. With my hands gloved I opened the bedside drawer under this photograph and found a box of tissues and several packets of condoms. On the floor at the side of the bed were bundles of hardened screwed up tissues.

  41

  Aaron and I left the search team and CSIs to go through the house. It would be a long and intense search. If Benn was our man, then his address could well be the scene of the girls’ murders. I gathered everyone in the incident room to debrief the arrest and to discuss the strategy for interview. Walker had come in after hearing the arrest had been successful. She looked more relaxed than the last time I’d seen her.

  As she entered the room her eyes searched me out and she gave a nod, indicating her approval at the progression of the case.

  Grey on the other hand looked twitchy, his fingers worked the documents in his hand. He didn’t like having to monitor how I was doing. I liked it even less, though I had to admit he was good at the paperwork, the politics and multi-agency workings, managing the press and public perception of how the job was going. I loved my job but the arse kissing wasn’t what I joined up to do.

  The incident room buzzed with a restrained excitement. The monster behind the death of Rosie Green and possibly Allison Kirk, and the attempted murder of Natalie Kirk, now sat in the cells waiting for his solicitor. On arrival in the custody suite he’d been booked in by the custody sergeant and searched, though, with what he was wearing, there wasn’t much of a search to conduct. He was photographed, fingerprinted by the Live Scan machine and another sample of his DNA taken by mouth swab. His boxer shorts had been seized and he had been provided with a pair of royal blue, one size fits all, elasticated jogging bottoms, a plain white T-shirt and black pumps.

  We still had a long way to go with the case, but the mood was upbeat.

  When I’d talked to Benn at his home, he had a look of surprise but not an outrageous indignation you would expect from someone arrested for a violent murder they hadn’t committed.

  Forensics from Allison’s crime scene and swabs and samples taken during the PM hadn’t started coming in. I hadn’t had chance to look over the interim PM report sent over by Jack, though Grey had given me a brief outline. With the preliminary report open in my hands I read down the initial findings.

  There was a strong resemblance to the MO with Rosie Green, particularly the binding around her neck with a circular imprint. Both girls were found discarded and naked and not thought to be at the initial murder scene. There was no information coming back from CSIs at Benn’s address and I wouldn’t expect anything of use to be reported any time soon.

  There were so many ways this interview could go and I was concerned about the lack of real information or evidence we had to link him to crime scenes, counties, or to link him to one of the murders and attempted murder of one other. I hated to work like this but we couldn’t have left him out there once we had his name. The media would have a field day if we continued to investigate all the links without making an arrest and another child was killed. Not just the media but we’d then have MPs asking very difficult questions and it spiralled from there. It would come down to me and what decisions I had made so I kept my decision log up to date, giving reasons for the implementation or otherwise of certain actions.

  We had to work all the possible angles.

  My arm and chest wall throbbed. Grabbing the plastic blister pack out of my pocket I snapped out two painkillers, palmed them into my mouth and washed them down with cold tea.

  “Do we have the crime scene report on Allison’s scene?” I asked the room.

  Ross raised his arm, a blue folder in his hand. “It’s a preliminary report produced by the CSU as so many results haven’t come in yet, but they’re aware we are on the clock now.” The custody clock would restrict us with detention of an offender as we had twenty-four hours from the arrival at the police station. After that we would have to apply for extensions if we needed to. We had our guy; evidence was slow at the best of times, but when you needed it, time seemed to speed up. I flipped through the pages.

  “So, we have DNA evidence that links Benn to Rosie Green, but nothing further on how they knew each other. He is linked to Allison Kirk, through her mother’s relationship with him. Looking at this we have photographs of the neck injury on Allison and comparatively the same injury on Rosie. What we need is for the search team to locate the item that left the marks around their necks. Chase them up and get updates on items seized.”

  We had enough to ask him about while further inquiries were carried out. On the arrest of Benn I had seized his computer straight away as there was something on there he didn’t want us to see, which made me all the more curious. Aaron had taken the tower to the Digital Investigation Unit. The gathering of evidence was a slow process. Time however, was a luxury I wasn’t sure we had.

  42

  It was late by the time we got into interview with Benn. The daytime civilian staff had all left the building. Offices were closed and lights off. Booking into custody and waiting for a solicitor took time.

  The duty solicitor was more than likely at home and had been disturbed in the middle of a meal by a call requesting their presence at the police station. This process and the subsequent consultation with their client could take hours again. Written disclosure was often a bone of contention between police and attending solicitors. Not revealing enough could mean the interview wouldn’t run smoothly as client and solicitor broke to discuss previously unknown and not provided and consulted issues before answering further questions. The whole issue caused new officers no end of headaches. Aaron wrote ours, giving the pe
rtinent facts of the case and reason for arrest, stating Benn would be asked about these and any items seized from the address. He was great at writing up this document without giving them our case on a plate. In this instance, we weren’t presenting the DNA evidence. We wanted to see how Benn was going to play his knowledge of Rosie. I couldn’t figure it out, so getting a version out of him prior to giving him our hand would be interesting.

  Now, hours after his arrest, we were sat in the interview room with him. It was windowless and airless. A table, four hard plastic moulded chairs and a black box tape machine, a remnant of the eighties, were the only items in the room. Benn was seated at one side of the table with his solicitor, Ms Corinne Selby, a small blonde who looked fresh out of school. She’d taken the written disclosure from me with a tight smile.

  Copious notes, reports and a couple of pens rested on the table between us.

  Aaron flicked his pen against the table in an irritating rhythmic way. Corinne Selby looked at the pen, then at Aaron, lips pursed. He continued tapping to an inaudible beat.

  “I’ll ask you again, Colin. How did you know Rosie Green?”

  “I don’t know anyone by that name,” Benn replied, sitting straight in his chair.

  “Okay, let’s start with things you do know. Tell me about your relationship with Natalie Kirk.”

  “What do you want to know?” This seemed to abate his anxiety. His shoulders relaxed and he shrank down in his chair in an easy slide. I was happy to let him talk about the things he was comfortable with first. If he was comfortable, I hoped he would keep talking and not notice the direction we were going in.