I watched every person look up from what they were doing as he walked in. News travelled pretty damn fast. Tight smiles were offered. None were passed back. I stood. ‘Ross,’ I nodded him towards my office. He threw his jacket over his chair. Took a deep breath and walked back out.
‘How are you?’ I asked once we were both behind my closed door. He still hadn’t lifted his head since entering the office. I wasn’t going to make the same mistake this time. Sally had needed me to push her, to make her talk so I could listen and make supervisory decisions and I had failed. I would not do that again. Though bolting the stable door sprung to mind.
‘I’m sorry, boss,’ he mumbled.
‘Sit down.’ I took a chair on the same side of my desk as Ross was standing. I didn’t want the desk between us as a barrier. I wanted him to talk.
He slumped into the chair next to me. Heavy, leaden. Though he was doing his best to hide his face from me, I could see how pale he was. Washed out. I worried about how this was going to run. It didn’t matter what Catherine had said, I was his supervisor and I would deal with him, but I needed him to open up and at the minute his body language was telling me he was doing the exact opposite.
Maybe he was going to tell me he wanted out of the job. Had I allowed it to get this far? How had I missed the signs? We were all so screwed up, but now I needed to step up and pull us back up to the mark and that included Ross.
‘What happened, Ross? You have to tell me. I can’t do anything about it if you don’t talk to me.’
46
Ross finally looked up. He saw his DI, Hannah Robbins, sitting beside him, elbows on knees, leaning forward. The typical positioning of anyone wanting to show they were actively listening. He knew her. He knew she tried hard and that she meant well. He had to try and talk to her. To tell her what had happened. How he had screwed up. How he had failed her. The team.
Her dark fringe had grown slightly over recent months and it hung down now, just about covering her eyes. If she dipped her head they’d be gone and he wouldn’t feel the weight of her soul as it searched him, because he knew that’s what she was doing. She was looking and she was analysing. What did she see in him? A failure already? Or did he have a chance?
Daria Pine. It had all started there. Or rather, as Ross well knew, it had started long before that. It had started with Sally – but he wasn’t going to use her as an excuse for his poor behaviour, his poor investigative skills.
Daria Pine. The woman stabbed to death in her kitchen. A woman who had lived and breathed in that house, torn down to a corpse with procedures to be carried out around it as she lay splayed on her own kitchen floor, still bloodied and shredded.
Daria Pine. For all intents and purposes, a straightforward job. Her husband there with the knife in his hand and a confession in the interview room. With the physical evidence seized by CSIs and the post-mortem evidence and the admission, it was straightforward getting a charging decision from the CPS.
Now he was here, but it looked as though the whole case was going to be lost.
47
6 weeks ago
The sun shone like an evil blast of hell, bright in the sky, reminding those around Isaac and Connie that things would still go on as normal. They’d attend this funeral, give their condolences, look saddened for one taken so young, while inside feel relieved their own nearest and dearest were still with them. And then they would, as the sun shone above them, and it probably would again tomorrow, live their lives uninterrupted by loss or grief. Real grief, pain, and that barren, barren loss.
Connie stared at her wardrobe. Half her clothes already on the bed or scattered at her feet. Trousers and blouses. Dresses. Greys, blacks, navies and greens. All selected, held up for scrutiny and discarded like trash.
She stood erect in her pants and bra, staring into the space that held the remainder of her clothes. Her arms hanging lifeless by her sides as though being pulled by an unknown force through the very floorboards she stood on. Her shoulders slumped under the invisible tension.
All colour had been drained from her this past two weeks, and her skin now looked loose on her tiny frame. Soft and malleable. Isaac couldn’t bear to watch her torture herself over what she should wear today. Who cared what she looked like for her only child’s funeral? What was the significance of the dress code? Em wasn’t here to appreciate it and even if she was, her life signified doing what you loved best, not doing what pleased others. Isaac didn’t see that it was really down to their style of dress on how much they were judged to be grieving. He stalked from the room. Already dressed in a pair of black trousers with a white shirt, paired with his polished black-laced shoes, but only because he hadn’t put any thought into it. He’d picked them out because it was the norm. It was his funeral outfit. The clothes he wore for other people’s funerals. He never ever expected to have to wear these clothes to his daughter’s burial.
Connie sighed, she sighed from the bottom of her very soul. Her pale drawn face awash with silent tears.
48
Ross walked out of the office with a bigger slump to his shoulders than he had come in with, though I wasn’t surprised considering the full set of circumstances on the Pine case I had provided him. He was overburdened with guilt. I could see that. I didn’t feel good. I had to do something to protect him, to help him through this. I was determined this wouldn’t be the thing that beat him and ground him out. Catherine might want him out of the unit, but there was no way I was going to let that happen.
He’d led me through the job as he’d seen it. Simple in his eyes. But he’d skipped so many crucial steps. He’d taken everything at face value and with a confession in custody I could kind of understand why, but he wasn’t trained to work that way. He was trained to do a full investigation, to check everything out. I could see that when he spoke of Daria Pine he was really talking about Sally. Her prone body on the floor. The stab wounds and the blood seeping out covering her clothing and the floor. He couldn’t separate the two, he was seeing his friend instead of seeing the victim and he wanted to feel the victory of the charge and conviction and I hadn’t picked up on it. I had failed as badly as he had failed. I wouldn’t let him take the flack for this alone.
Daria Pine had been a domestic violence abuser. Robert Pine had been injured by her on multiple occasions. He’d phoned it in on at least four occasions and another time the hospital reported it as he attended with a knife injury. The other occasions had been reported by well-intentioned neighbours who had heard the screaming of the couple and had seen Robert punched in the face at barbecues and other events, but he had never agreed to go to court and support a prosecution. He informed the OIC each time that he had been afraid of how it would look. A slight woman like Daria, abusing a solid man like himself. No one would believe him. Regardless of his injuries. They would want to know why he hadn’t just protected himself from her. He couldn’t. He loved her. She was diminutive. He was a physically imposing man. If he defended himself he would hurt her. What she did, he could cope with. It would stop anyway. He was sure of it. The reports had included photographs of bruises on Robert’s torso and back. On his arms and legs. Reports Ross hadn’t searched for and hadn’t found. It was these very reasons that Robert had kept quiet about the abuse during his interview. In his eyes, he had committed the crime. He had used a knife and stabbed Daria. He wasn’t going to talk about what had happened leading up to that moment, just as he refused to support prosecutions against the woman when she had beaten him. A man of his size had stabbed his wife to death and those were the facts as he saw them. He took the blame. It didn’t matter to him that she had been the one threatening him with the knife first and could possibly have killed him this time.
Of course Ross had submitted the knife to forensics and it had come back with sets of prints for both the couple, but that was to be expected, as it was the family home. He hadn’t asked the question of when she had last used the knife. That one question alone could have opened Ro
bert up and led the investigation down a different path.
And we had failed to do a simple background search that would have led to further interviews and questions and maybe a different outcome when presenting the case to the CPS charging decision maker. Robert Pine was now on trial for straightforward murder.
I could see why Superintendent Walker would say she wanted Ross gone, even if his record was previously unblemished. This looked bad for her. I went to see Anthony.
We’d worked together for several years now and though I knew he hated the stress of the job I also knew he was great at making sure we were all covered the best way we could be. That the jobs were done the way they were supposed to. He was afraid of comeback, so he did investigations exactly by the book and he expected his teams to do the same. And even though he wasn’t running the investigations he monitored them and expected updates, and if you stepped out of line he wanted to know why. In this way, he was also fair.
DCI Anthony Grey was a good man. But a worrier.
I respected him.
‘We’re short staffed,’ I continued.
‘I know, it’s not a great situation to be in. With governmental cuts and our recent losses,’ he looked me in the eye and I maintained the contact.
‘Only the other day, I spoke to a divisional sergeant who was complaining about having staff taken from her. I think the stolen bicycles can wait for a while, don’t you?’ he continued.
‘Absolutely. I’d have thought the sergeant would have understood that, with the fact that we have no idea where the poison killer is going to strike next. We have no geographical profile. No boundary line. Nothing. Why the moaning?’
‘Oh, it’s not that she doesn’t understand the scale of the job we’re undertaking. It’s that she is still being assessed on her figures. Her clear-up rates. She’s still expected to perform with less, and bear in mind she already had less before we came along and took what we needed.’
‘What? So the powers that be are still monitoring the divisions that we are taking staff from and expecting them to perform the same as before?’
‘Not the same, Hannah, better and it’s not the powers that be, it’s coming from the government. The ones making the big cuts also want us to do better and this sergeant is stressed. She’s only been in the role a year. I went to see her with a bee in my bonnet and left feeling sorry for her.’
‘You soon forget how hard they have it in uniform on division once you leave, don’t you?’
‘You sure do. Anyway, what brings you here to my door – and not Catherine’s?’ He grimaced at me, which I knew meant he wasn’t really kidding.
‘As I said, we’re short staffed, so we need to keep Ross on.’
He sighed.
‘We can’t work as we are, it’s impossible. We’re understaffed, you’ve acknowledged as much. Taking Ross off now as we run a full multiple murder investigation just doesn’t make sense. I need him and I won’t let him go.’ There, I’d said it.
Grey tapped the edge of his desk as the cogs turned in his head. I could practically hear them squealing. He’d have to take this up to Walker.
‘You haven’t told Ross yet?’
‘No, with everything that we have going on, doing the paperwork to move him to another department isn’t at the top of my to-do list. Besides, I want to keep him.’
‘Walker told you to get rid of him. How do you want me to explain this to her, Hannah?’
‘Yes, he’s screwed up but we’re as much to blame for that as he is. We’re his supervisors and we failed to supervise.
‘He’s a bloody good cop, Anthony. I could really do with him working this. Once he puts his head down, there’s no stopping him. He has no qualms about the hours he does; he goes above and beyond, checking and cross checking facts before passing them on. Last year, he picked up several pieces of key information on the Manders’ case by keeping his head down and working it from his desk.
‘Tell me, are you planning on reallocating this investigation or leaving it with us to follow through? Because if you’re leaving it with us then I’m going to need all hands on deck – and that includes Ross.’
He rubbed the lines that were creasing his forehead.
‘The other units are running a nightclub stabbing and a gang shooting. There’s nowhere else to send this. You’re going to have to keep going with it.’ He drank his coffee. I waited. Watched the traffic moving outside on St Ann’s Wells Road. The sun glinting from the washed and polished cars travelling about their business. He put his mug down.
‘I’ll take the issue of Ross up with Walker and see what her stance on it is. You’re putting me in a very difficult position.’
I stood. I knew we were about done. ‘I know, and I’m sorry. We’ve had a shit six months and we need to try and pull together not apart. I’ll keep him in line.’
‘Make sure you do. I can’t cover you forever.’
49
The nerves danced in Isaac’s stomach as the newspaper lay folded on the kitchen table. This daily routine was something akin to sticking needles in his skin. Each word became a piercing of pain driving home the loss of Em and the impotence of him as her father to protect and failing that, to avenge, to make right.
His fingers hovered over it as his mind raced through the possibilities of what lay in store. Would they get it right today or would they still be running on the wrong track? His aim was simple enough, for this void that lived inside him and Connie, to be noticed by the companies who could do something different, something to help, the newspaper had to report the use of digoxin in the deaths of local people. Fear clouded his brain and his fingers refused to move. All he needed was the ball to start moving, for the idiots in their ivory towers, those who had never seen real loss or pain, who only reported on it, to see this for what it really was. A message. And to distribute that message to those who had the power to make a real change.
The floorboards creaked over his head. Connie was moving about. He couldn’t sit here like this; she would ask what he was doing. He had to make himself move. Turn the pages. Look like he was reading the paper, not looking for a specific article. His heart hammered in his chest. The floorboards stopped creaking and her gentle footfalls started to descend the stairs. He had to open the paper.
His hands shook as he unfolded it. Hands that had loved. Had protected. Had shielded. Had failed. Hands that had fought, worked, battled and now were being used to hurt … but he had no choice. He wouldn’t allow Emma to have died for nothing. If the drugs failed her then the world needed to know, so that others wouldn’t be failed in the same way.
He read the headline and as he did so, Isaac felt every muscle within his body tense. He needed to scan the full article, to see if the drug was mentioned while trying to avoid the personal details that might be listed in there, but he could already hear Connie at the bottom of the stairs and he didn’t want to let on how fraught he was. Isaac took a deep breath in, then slowly exhaled. As he did so, the kitchen door opened and she walked through.
‘Morning, love, I popped to the shop for the paper, I didn’t think you wanted anything, I’m sorry I forgot to ask, I hope there wasn’t anything you wanted, it was just a paper I wanted, just a paper.’ The words came out in a rush, tumbling, tripping over themselves.
‘No, you’re fine.’ Connie walked over to the kettle, lifted it, shook it, testing for water, then took it to the sink and filled it from the tap. Isaac looked down at the article and started reading. ‘Coffee?’
‘Mmm?’
‘Coffee? Do you want one?’ Connie put the kettle back on the base and flicked the switch.
‘Oh, yes please. Just reading the paper. The one I bought from the shop.’
‘Yes, I can see.’
He stood up, scraping the chair on the tiles as he did so. ‘Let me give you a hand with those drinks. I’ll get the cups out.’ His movements were rushed and jerky. Connie yelped as his elbow swung into her arm, causing the mug she was holding to
fall from her hand and hit the worktop.
‘Isaac!’ he stumbled back, bumping into the chair he’d just vacated, a screeching sound rearing up from the floor as its legs ground against the tiles. His eyes were wild with panic. He quickly grabbed hold of the chair, steadying himself, took a deep breath and stood still.
‘What on earth are you doing?’ she picked up the cracked mug and rubbed it with her thumb, a gentle, weary caress. World’s Greatest Dad.
‘I’m sorry, I don’t know, I wanted to help, I was reading the paper, but wanted to help.’
‘Well, for heaven’s sake, Isaac, sit back down with your paper and let me make the coffee before you do any more damage.’
Isaac looked at his big thick hands and rubbed his face with them.
‘Isaac.’
He slowly dragged his hands downwards from his face and looked at his wife.
‘Sit down. Let me get on and make the drink.’
He sighed, moved the chair and shuffled into the seat, the newspaper still on the table in front of him, his hands now shaking. He heard the kettle whistle to boiling point behind him. He couldn’t sit here and do nothing he had to read the paper. He had to do what he’d told Connie he was doing. There was enough lying going on as it was. If he delayed opening the newspaper much longer Connie would wonder what was wrong with him and ask him why he was acting so strangely. He couldn’t face those questions. Not from her. He didn’t know if he had it in him to lie to her about this. He didn’t know how she would feel about it; if she would be angry with him, or if she would be in agreement, her anger driving her forward as much as his. Isaac couldn’t face that conversation; he couldn’t bear the idea of her looking at him with disgust on her face. There was little conversation between them nowadays but she was still his wife, and more importantly, she was still Emma’s mum.
The DI Hannah Robbins Series: Books 1 - 3 (Boxset) (Detective Hannah Robbins Crime Series) Page 32
