The DI Hannah Robbins Series: Books 1 - 3 (Boxset) (Detective Hannah Robbins Crime Series)

by Rebecca Bradley

  As well as the behavioural similarities between Isabelle and Allison prior to death, the MO drew us another parallel. During Isabelle’s post-mortem, ligature marks around her wrists and marks indicative of a belt around her neck had been recorded. A vicious sexual assault and weeks of recorded missing episodes prior to death also screamed out this was more than a coincidence. The problem was, this case was already detected and not attributed to Benn and because of the detection, the further, more obscure links on Isabelle’s missing persons record hadn’t been fully investigated as viable lines of inquiry.

  The differences and yet the similarities between the girls and the offences gave me a bad feeling. I pulled at my fringe as I went through the information with Harris, explaining the account Benn had given of a group of organised offenders. I needed to go to Peterborough and look into this further. If this was going the way I thought it was, then our case just got a whole lot bigger and the offender charged with the rape and murder of Isabelle Thomas could be the one lead we had on tracking down other offenders to enable us to identify and locate the girl in the photograph. I caught the team before they left for the day. I’d already updated Catherine Walker and Grey, and both were on side for our team to continue the investigation into the unidentified girl, and to take the lead within a cooperative cross force investigation. I updated Martin and asked him to check if there was any mention of Isabelle Thomas within the Norwich investigation. Walker had spent the day in conference calls to various heads of departments, along with the relevant command teams on each force. Eventually agreement was reached. Aaron and I were to travel to Cambridgeshire in an early morning start and meet with Shaun Harris. It was a messy affair by all accounts. The command teams in the various force areas didn’t like the idea of an organised crime group involved in a case that was under such scrutiny from the press crossing their borders. On top of that, having another force come in and take the lead was hard to swallow, but Walker had sold me as being most knowledgeable on this group and their MO. It didn’t say a lot about the state of the investigation in total as I was just getting my head around it. Crossing county borders had made connecting offences difficult, but a picture was being built.

  Aaron’s desk was uncluttered. I parked myself on the corner of it and talked through what we knew with everyone. I briefed them on Isabelle Thomas and the connections that had been made. I could see the same consideration for the girl in the photo cross their minds as I watched them look at each other.

  “We don’t have anything positive, but it’s a good lead. Aaron and I are driving over tomorrow and will take a copy of the photograph with us. I’d like you two to finish up the Benn file here and talk to the Digital Investigation Unit to see where we are with it.”

  Ross looked disappointed not to be going. He was always so eager to be involved.

  Sally, on the other hand, touched her hand to her stomach. The whole case made my insides turn as well.

  69

  It was getting close to that time of day when she knew she would be let out of the cramped space. There was having structure to her days. A routine. Details about her past home life felt vague and distant as she focused on what was important here. When she was due to be fed. A survival mechanism. She took the food from him. Sometimes it was good and she shovelled it into her mouth. Other times the food wasn’t so good and after eating, she felt weak and dizzy and she’d lie down, her cheek warm on the cool plastic base. She couldn’t recognise the bad food until she’d already eaten it, but she’d learned to take comfort in the release from the fear it gave her as her eyelids dragged closed and the cage blurred and softened around her.

  Another thing she had learned was if she waited long enough, she didn’t have to sleep in her own urine. She worked out toilet break times. Occasionally the routine was a little off, but when they remembered, they let her out twice a day.

  A few days she was washed and if she behaved she got her hair brushed. Right now it was knotty and wild. She always tried to be good for the photographs, staying as still as it’s possible to stay and taking her thoughts down a different path to the one she’s being physically taken down. It was getting harder and harder to hold on to her memories as they seeped out of her mind like water from a pot with the smallest of cracks, invisible to the eye, but there nonetheless. She tried to cling on to memories of her mum, craving the feeling of safety they brought. It was getting harder but she tried.

  She holds on to routine. If she’s good it may get better. Her body screams in the cramped space and she sits and waits for the time she will be let out.

  70

  Sally heard the click of the kettle as she closed the front door behind her. Tom was already home. She didn’t remove her coat, she wanted to see him. Be near him. He was the one person who could make this all right for her. He always knew the right words to say, or the right spot to massage to relax her. He was always her protector. She might be in a strong role at work, but at home she needed her husband and she really needed him tonight. She walked into the kitchen as he put two mugs down on the worktop. He turned to look at her.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “There’s been another child killed.” She sank on to one of the chairs around the table, dropping her bag on the floor. Her phone slid out through the open zipper and clattered as it hit the tiles but she ignored it. She was done in.

  “Where?” Tom believed she was on restricted duties at the station now. He’d understood her reluctance to talk about the conversation with Hannah. He’d told her he was proud of her, that he knew it was hard for her to do it and he would give her the space she needed to adjust. He trusted her.

  “Peterborough.”

  “So you’re not dealing with it?”

  She looked at him, a mixture of sadness and something else. “No. I’m not dealing with it. Hannah and Aaron are travelling over tomorrow. Martin is in Norwich still and Ross and I are dealing with what we can from here.”

  Worry flashed across his face. He turned away, took a breath before looking at her again. “But you’re not going out to deal with anyone are you?”

  Sally stood, the chair legs scraping on the floor as she pushed back. She couldn’t stop herself. She was angry. “I’m safe. Safe as houses. Does that make you happy? Someone’s child is in the ground. Someone’s baby. But I’m safe. Okay?” She didn’t have the energy to explain the child’s death had occurred several weeks ago and it was mostly a paper exercise. She was so tired. The girl still had no life, no future. It had still been violently stripped away from her.

  She walked out of the kitchen, her bag and contents lying where she had dropped them, Tom rubbing his face with his hands. The kettle whistled into the air.

  71

  He was annoyed with me. I could tell. His silence spoke volumes. I handed him a glass. “Wine?” He took it and knocked half of it down. He still hadn’t said a word. He was waiting for me. “I know I didn’t call when I said I would,” I paused. He waited. “It’s been hectic.” He finished what was in his glass. I followed suit. “Ethan?”

  “Tell me about it?” His face softened and he leaned back into the sofa. I was so unsure of this relationship but something about it, about Ethan, pulled me in. We sat together on the sofa, cradling our glasses as though they were fragile. The press release had gone out and the promised first call to Ethan to give him the heads up had not happened. I wanted to explain. We’d met the day Benn was charged but I presumed he had given me breathing space because my face still showed such visible injuries, it had obviously been eating away at him and it seemed he couldn’t put it off any longer. I pulled my feet up under me.

  “There’s been another death.”

  A pause. “A child?”

  “Yes.”

  “How can they be connected if Colin Benn is locked up?”

  “We just think they are at this point.”

  Ethan looked at me. Where to take this now? I didn’t know how to handle the uncertainty that came with a rela
tionship with him. I’d called him in a moment of weakness when what I wanted was to feel his arms around me, his warmth, his masculinity to envelope me and to hold me in tight. Instead I sat waiting, wondering. I sighed, frustrated with my inability to say anything more. Ethan leaned in towards me. I felt his closeness and my breathing deepened.

  “Talk to me, Han.” So close. “Don’t push me out.”

  I felt confused. I leaned past him and for want of anything else to say, I picked up the bottle from the floor and topped up our glasses. “You can’t print this.”

  “I don’t want to print it. I want to talk. I want us to be able to talk.”

  I took another gulp. “The MO is very similar. I’ve got an early start tomorrow. I’m heading out to talk to the team who have been dealing with it to see what we have.” I couldn’t tell him about the girl in the cage. Something was stopping me. Not just my integrity, the knowledge I shouldn’t, but a feeling, an uneasiness. I was treading on dangerous ground and it felt unsteady beneath my feet.

  “Keep in touch with me while you’re there.” He leaned closer and kissed me, I wound my arm, still holding the glass, around his neck.

  72

  It didn’t take long to get to Peterborough. We beat the satnav by some fifteen minutes or so. Aaron could have a heavy right foot when necessary. I’d endured multiple questions on the silent phone calls I’d been receiving. Aaron wanted to know if there had been any threats or suspicious activity around work or even my home address. He asked because he cared, but as I told him, they were just phone calls. Nothing had happened elsewhere. I’d had no mail, no strange unannounced visits, no gifts left for me, or threats made. They were just silent phone calls from an unknown number. I wasn’t worried.

  “But keep your eyes peeled, Hannah. Don’t become too comfortable with it. It is a little strange, you have to admit. And it doesn’t sit right with me.”

  Large steel gates groaned as they closed behind us in the secure yard at our destination. Aaron parked the car in a vacant space. “I will. It could be anyone though. I give my number out to a lot of people.” I knew Aaron was capable of taking measures a little far if he thought he needed to protect one of his own and he’d be submitting authority requests for who knew what if I didn’t go out of my way to reassure him.

  “Yeah. Too many. I’m not surprised you’ve got some nutter calling you.”

  As we got out the car we were met by a portly man. An obvious desk jockey with an amenable smile.

  “DI Robbins?” he asked as he held out his hand. “It’s Hannah.” I shook his hand.

  “Shaun Harris.”

  “Shaun, this is my DS, Aaron Stone.” They shook and Harris walked us into the building, up a couple of flights of stairs to their incident room. Though smaller than ours, I could see they were organised.

  We’d brought case files with us and we dropped these down on to the table Harris had cleared for us. We’d also brought records of the taped interviews with Benn.

  The murder of Isabelle Thomas had already been detected. A man, Karl Howard, was inside a prison on remand, awaiting pre-sentence reports and sentencing. Everything that led to the detection was now in this room and we were going to cross reference all we had and go over both cases again with both investigation teams present. We would talk to witnesses again, go over post-mortem results. We would turn this inside out until we knew what the link was. If we were doing this, we were doing it properly. We needed to find the girl in the photograph.

  Once we had everything out and everyone was there, I spoke to the room – Harris, Aaron and a small team of three young looking DCs introduced as Rob, Dave and Nick.

  “We believe there is a group involved in the abduction, abuse and murder of these young girls and it seems likely Isabelle is a part of that.”

  Harris raised his eyebrows. “You’re talking about an organised group operating around the country?”

  “It does appear to be that way, which is why we need to check both our investigations against each other.”

  “Okay. Where do you want to start?” Harris asked. The office was quiet as everyone took in what we could be dealing with.

  “What did the PM find?” I asked him. He stood and walked to another desk where Nick held out a brown folder. Taking the folder he scanned the material inside.

  “Welts around her wrists and a similar one around her throat. Significant visible proof of a rape. There were no defensive marks. The welts appear to have been made by something like electrical wiring. Cause of death was asphyxiation. Tox screens have gone off, as have stomach contents. It will take a while to get those results back, though we’ve put a rush on them.” Harris went on skimming the report which I knew would contain a much more detailed account of injuries. “The pathologist was more than happy to put the tests through as urgent. He was quite sickened by the case. Just had his first grandchild. A girl. He wasn’t happy.”

  Harris spoke to his team. “Let’s work through this and see if there is any way we can make some links and identify this girl. Alive.” he said, with more conviction than I’d previously heard from him.

  73

  Sally was bored. The paperwork was tedious, time intensive and far from stimulating. Ross, on the other hand, approached each action like it was the most important task in the world. He was like a big puppy, eager to please, and it annoyed her. It never used to, but she couldn’t keep her emotions in check at the minute and it frustrated the hell out of her and made all other tasks, objects and people all the more frustrating. Annoying. She wished she was the old Sally. The old Sally, but with the future Sally outcome.

  She turned her attention back to Ross and the job in hand. The amount of follow up inquiries and paperwork created following an arrest and charge were ridiculous. You could never rely on the admission alone. Some offenders could admit the crime during interview then plead not guilty at court, so if you were unprepared it could throw everything up in the air. The investigation continued on as though no admission had been made. With Benn, there was a hell of a lot of extra work to do. On a basic murder inquiry you needed to know about the relationships of both the offender and the victim and interview everyone involved in a detailed fashion. Background inquiries often gave you information you wouldn’t have previously considered and doing a proper job was supposed to counter any new defences the offender may come up with at the last minute. Sally felt the need to speak with people rather than spend the entire day sat at her desk listening to the enthusiasm ooze out of Ross. It wasn’t Ross, it was these bloody hormones, but they were driving her insane and she felt so over-sensitive to everything and she might be able to bear him if they were out and about talking to other people. Even if it wasn’t his fault, the work needed doing and now was as good a time as any to get it done.

  “Come on, Ross, let’s go and knock on a few doors. We can do the addresses where there was no reply to knocking first time around on Benn’s street, then chase up some of the customers identified as being at the restaurant the night Rosie was dumped.”

  Ross looked at his desk, then at Sally and stood up with a grin across his face. It didn’t take much to persuade him. Sally wasn’t sure he had a life outside of work.

  “What about the file?” he asked of the CPS paperwork.

  “It can wait until we get back,” she replied, conscious of how much time she spent at work and how Tom was feeling. But if they worked together it would help speed things up so she could get home at a reasonable hour. She put her hand to her stomach again. She wasn’t showing, but she knew it wouldn’t last forever.

  74

  We spent hours comparing notes on Rosie, Allison and Isabelle. The similarities with the injuries and lifestyles of the girls were significant. The way they had all been reported as missing at one point or another and a marked change in behaviour stood out. Signs, though not picked up at the time, pointed to the potential for sexual exploitation and, going on Benn’s recent admissions in interview, it was likely this w
as the same group operating around the country. The weakness in our theory was the man, Karl Howard, locked up in Lincoln prison for the rape and murder of Isabelle. He didn’t give a very strong account of how he had taken Isabelle. There had been no mention of networking on the internet or talking with others who had the same interest in children as Benn had talked about. On review of the interview transcripts it was obvious the initial admission on the abduction of Isabelle was vague, but the murder detailed. There was no way Shaun Harris could have known this was a network of people working together and the interview was taken at face value because of the admission of murder. It was now he could see the importance. He removed his spectacles and placed them on the table in front of him. The glass inside the frames looked as tired as he did, with smears and fingerprints covering them.