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

by Rebecca Bradley

‘He’s your partner and to lose someone is always hard, but I can only imagine the difficulties in your situation, with a baby on the way.’ I tried to connect with her. Aaron, I noticed, was leaving me to it, probably recognising that dealing with heavily pregnant women was not one of his strengths.

  She grunted at me. ‘What do you know? I’m no worse off with him dead that I would have been had he lived. He wouldn’t have been a dad to this kid. All he were interested in was running that fucking gang of his and ruling with his iron dick. I were there to just hang off his arm whenever he needed me. It’s no loss, let me tell you.’

  Gemma was honest. I liked that. And I could work with that.

  ‘Okay, what can you tell me then about his enemies, his recent life? Has there been anything you’ve noticed out of the ordinary?’

  ‘You’re not listening to me, are you?’ She tried her tea again, this time managing to drink some.

  I waited.

  ‘I were only there when he wanted me. It’s not like I were his confidante. I’m a mere woman, meaningless to him, a trinket on his arm and about to be his baby mama. I’m not stupid. I accepted him for who he was.’

  I nodded my understanding at this comment.

  ‘His life were about making sure the Niners were the top gang. He was always looking for trouble. But I ain’t heard any threats against him, if that’s what you’re asking. I don’t think anyone dare. Not after what he did to O.’

  ‘So, that was him?’ asked Aaron.

  ‘Yeah, that were him all right. Came round that night all hyped up. Pumped, he was. Told me if I told anyone, he’d kill me. I believed him. Kept me mouth shut.’

  She looked from Aaron to me. ‘But he can’t kill me now can he?’

  77

  Grey’s fingers twitched on the desk in front of me. His once-blue eyes, now sliding into a murky pond colour, froze me in my seat. He had to have known this was coming but the feeling in the pit of my stomach was telling me something else. It had been four days since Rabasca’s post-mortem. Four days where we’d talked to Gemma Spicer at length, worked with source handling to see if they could task their informants with obtaining intelligence on whether this was to do with Rabasca and the gang world, though I was told it was sensitive work and we’d hear back when they were ready. And so far, we hadn’t. When we’d moved his body from the street we’d recovered a Glock, which was a change of weapon for him; it also tied him to a shooting that had occurred a couple of weeks ago, so I passed the weapon and the information onto DI Amanda Lawrence who was the SIO for the case. It appeared the death of this man cleared up many cases – apart from our own.

  I focused on Grey’s fingers, which always fascinated me. They were his giveaway, his tell, the thing that told me if he was anxious about what was happening. At this moment in time, his fingers were doing a merry dance on the desk top. He couldn’t keep still. He moved his pen from one side of his laptop to the other, without looking away from me.

  ‘And he’s sure?’

  ‘Sir, it’s science, of course he’s sure. Jack would never guess and he’d only ever phone and tell me when the results are in, never before.’

  ‘Did they double check?’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Did they double-check the results? The sample? It could have been from one of the other victims.’ The pen moved back to its original place. His stare was getting harder, a steely glint, a warning.

  My stomach twisted in on itself. Grey was clutching at straws. I knew he hated that this case could get any bigger.

  ‘Sir, they tested the correct sample. Jack and his team are scrupulous.’ I ran my fingers through my fringe, buying a little time, mere seconds. ‘There is no mistake. Damerae Rabasca had digoxin in his system and no other cause of death was evident. We made enquiries with his girlfriend Gemma Spicer on the day he died and she had nothing obvious to offer. It could be a rival gang – or one of his own, bearing in mind what he did himself. There had been no suggestion that anyone would make a play for Hajric’s hold on the gang so when it happened it took everyone by surprise, including the Niner’s themselves, according to the intelligence that came in following the incident. Spicer’s disclosure last week tied up a long-running investigation.

  ‘But, my feeling in relation to this, is that it’s simply a part of our bigger picture. This has come unexpectedly for everyone who knew him. Spicer stated she doesn’t know anyone who is ill or taking any medication. Of a legal variety, anyway. I lean towards believing her. I’m not sure any of the gang members from either side are smart enough to pull this off. We’ve brought her in and got her interview on camera to cover our bases. She’s not the most helpful of witnesses but she went along with us.’

  Grey closed his eyes.

  ‘On the positive side,’ I tried to help him process what was happening, ‘We no longer have a problem with the copy-cat. Armitage was kept in on remand and won’t be going anywhere for a while. That’s one file for court that is currently being put together and wrapped up.’

  ‘Okay, Hannah. I get that, but we still have a huge problem. No one sleeps. No one leaves. No one has a life until we get to the bottom of this. Am I understood?’

  He’d stopped moving. I wasn’t sure which was more unnerving. ‘Yes, Sir. I’ll let the team know where we’re up to now.’

  I left his office wondering if my boss wasn’t in need of some heart medication himself.

  78

  If they’d had a dog, he would have had some warning that the paper had been delivered but they couldn’t have a dog because Connie was allergic to most pet hair. So instead, the first he knew was when he saw Connie walking down the hallway from the kitchen. He was standing in the doorway of the living room about to get himself a coffee when he saw her. Sauntering. Towards the Nottingham Today. Which lay like a bright hot burning beacon of his guilt on the mat. Screaming out the horror he was inflicting in the name of justice for their daughter. Justice she would never understand. It was this guilt and this knowledge that she wouldn’t understand and that she would be put through so much more pain that made him rush past her.

  Isaac was panicked. Blinded by fear, his vision tunnelled and dark. The brightness of the Today searing into his brain and leaving no room for conscious thought, nothing but getting hold of it and saving her from its cruelty. Because the Today was cruel. Its portrayal so far had been cruel and unfair. It had been incorrect and it had been nonfactual.

  Connie was the love of his life. He had chosen to spend his living breathing life with her and they had produced a miracle together. How could anyone ever think he could hurt her? And yet here she was, on the floor, leaning against the hallway wall with her hand on her head, asking him what an earth he was doing. There was blood on her hand when she pulled it away from her head. She looked at it before she spoke to him again.

  ‘I was fetching you the paper with your coffee, Isaac.’

  79

  His head screamed like a flock of angry birds in the air, fighting over the smallest of food scraps. How could this have happened? He looked down at his fragile and shaken wife, now pale with shock. He crouched down to her, trying to hold back the noise in his head and held out his hand to her.

  ‘Connie, let me help you.’

  A look of confusion crossed her face. She dropped her hand from her head then looked away from him and put her hand back up to the small wound that was bleeding like a bloody great gash had opened up across her skull.

  Isaac didn’t know what was happening. How had he got to the place where he had injured his wife, when all he had been doing was trying to protect her?

  Eventually she was settled with a strong stewed tea on the sofa in the living room. She insisted she didn’t need to see a doctor, that she knew what signs to look out for if she had a head injury but that he was overreacting and there was nothing wrong with her. She wasn’t feeling sick, or dizzy, she only a slight headache and would keep an eye on it. It was, Connie explained to him in a tone she reserved f
or talking to a young child, a small bump, and nothing serious. Bumps and bruises happen as part of life. It was the look on her face that made him ache though. She was scolding him for his fussing when she should really have been yelling at him for his behaviour in making her fall to the floor in the way she did. If it wasn’t for him rushing at her that way she wouldn’t be on the floor and she wouldn’t be looking out for the signs of a head injury or scolding him for fretting over her. He would never stop fretting over her.

  She was all he had left of Em.

  She shooed him away and he was torn between wanting to stay and worry over her more and get back to what he had been rushing towards, the Nottingham Today. Isaac turned back and had one last look at her before he left the room and was stung by the look she was giving him. Her eyes were narrowed in on him while her fingers gently tapped on the cup of tea she was holding. He kept walking.

  He picked up the Nottingham Today from where it still lay on the doormat and took it into the kitchen, sneaking a look at Connie who was drinking her tea and staring out of the window.

  Again, it had made the front page. Little else made front-page coverage lately. It was dominating the local news. It was also starting to gain national coverage but all he was interested in was what was happening on a local level. This was the place that had let them down and this was the place that would carry on paying … until those who played fast and loose with the lives of those who trusted in them made their drugs safer, and the community more aware.

  Killer Strikes Again

  A 24-year-old man was found collapsed in the street and pronounced dead at the scene, with no obvious signs of injury. An incident that mirrors that of jogger, Angela Evans of Toton.

  Damerae Rabasca was with his girlfriend at the time of his death. She is eight months pregnant with his child and does not want to be named. She describes his death as violent and sudden.

  Mr Rabasca is the fourth victim of the killer who is using poison to murder his victims.

  In a recent development, Nottinghamshire Police have released a new media appeal asking for any witnesses who may know who the offender is and are offering a reward for any information that leads to his arrest.

  Detective Inspector Hannah Robbins from East Midland’s Special Operations Unit – Major Crime, based in Nottingham said, ‘At the moment, we don’t have much detail on where Mr Rabasca could have obtained the products he ingested, or where he has been the last few days, it is possible that someone could help us with those enquiries and help us build a larger picture of his last moments and in the process, narrow down where the poison could be filtered into the public domain.

  ‘If anybody has any information that they believe could help our enquiries then please contact police.’

  They are also advising caution when buying, using, cooking and eating foodstuffs, telling the public to check all seals and labels, lids and tops to make sure they are secure, but warning against panic. You can contact the tip-line number printed below.

  He slammed the newspaper down on the table and looked up at the door. The space there was empty. He was glad Connie wasn’t standing there. How could he explain his anger? His fury. His utter contempt for multiple organisations that were letting people down and letting people die. How could they stand by and watch this unfold and simply do nothing when they all had it in their power to do more? To stop it. All it needed was an admission of guilt and their culpability would come to an end.

  Right now, however, he was failing. He was obviously not working on his plan hard enough. He was failing Em and it could be argued that he was now failing her more than they ever did. Unless he could get things back on track, he had been nothing but a failure for his daughter.

  80

  Bridgette York loved her new sandals. They had wide pink flowers on the bar that ran across her foot and in the centre of them were the cutest white buttons with smiley faces on. As she walked, she watched her feet. She watched the flowers. To make sure they were still smiling. She’d only got them yesterday so they had that lovely smell about them as well, but without bending down close to them she couldn’t smell it and she had hold of her mum’s hand right now. It did mean she could walk and keep looking at her flowers without bumping into things. Well, not too many things anyway. Occasionally she heard her mum tut as she hit her side on a shelf as they rounded the corner in the shop. Her mum was trying to do some shopping but she was also trying to stop Bridgette from walking into anything and Bridgette knew that the tuts she heard were not aimed at her, how could they be, she was protected by smiley-faced sandals. Her mum was tutting at herself because she had been unable to stop Bridgette from bumping herself again. Never mind. Bridgette grinned down at her beautiful, sunny, smiley sandals.

  She felt her arm twitch as she was manoeuvred around the end of another line of shelves but she didn’t look up, she knew her mum was keeping her on the right track. And then Bridgette bumped right into her mum. Right into the back of her legs. With no warning. When she’d stopped to choose shopping from the shelves Bridgette had been guided to a stop in front of the shelf but this time her mum stopped abruptly in the centre of the aisle and Bridgette had walked into her.

  ‘Stay behind me, Bridgette.’

  She looked up from her sandals.

  She couldn’t see anything because her mum’s legs were in the way so she shifted a little to the side and looked in the same direction as her mum.

  ‘Bridgette, I said stay behind me.’ She was pushed back behind her mum’s legs. Mum had never been that rough before. Bridgette twisted her neck so she could look around instead.

  In front of them was a group of people. She could only count to ten and Bridgette thought there were less than that but the people were moving about, shouting, so she didn’t know if she was counting right or not. They were angry and there was a woman in the shop uniform who was trying to talk but they weren’t letting her, they were shouting at her so loudly.

  Her mum stepped backwards one step and nearly stood on her sandals. Her hand went tighter around hers and Bridgette started to feel a bit strange. She didn’t know what was happening or why her mum was acting weird. She looked down at the smiley flowers again.

  There was a crashing sound and the voices grew louder. Suddenly her mum let go of the shopping trolley and Bridgette was snatched up from the floor and they were running back the way they had just come. Past the fridges and freezers which made Bridgette cold. Little bumps grew on her arms and they grew on her legs because she had a dress on. She was cold even though it was warm outside. The sun was shining and her flower sandals could look up to the sun and smile.

  She watched over her mum’s shoulder as the shop whizzed past, cold and blurry, her mum’s handbag bouncing against her bare legs as her mum ran towards the doors. She could still hear the shouting, she could see people running towards the voices as her mum was running away from them.

  ‘We’ll be in the car in a few seconds, sweetheart.’

  It was the last thing Bridgette York heard her mum say.

  She never saw the car barrelling through the store’s sheer glass window and barely had time to register the sound of shattering glass and screaming, panicking people – before her world went silent and there were no more flowers smiling for Bridgette York.

  81

  It was carnage. There was no other word suitable for what was in front of us. The car had been moved from where it had mown down mother and child, because the fire service had needed to get to the mother to save her. She hadn’t died. Her young child wasn’t as capable of taking the impact.

  The mother’s injuries were severe and life threatening. Her status, as defined by the hospital, was currently critical, but her daughter hadn’t made it that far. She was pronounced dead at the scene. Her mother had been rushed away, unaware of what she was leaving behind in her unconscious state. The doctors and nursing staff had a difficult job ahead of them, not just with Trisha York’s physical needs but with the emotional needs
that she would present when she woke from her surgeries.

  The Honda Civic had been pulled out of the store window and now stood quietly in a disabled space near the doors.

  Shattered glass lay in fragments along the shop floor. Sharp and bloody. A tiny pink sandal sparkling with shards caught up in the leather straps, discarded during the havoc. The early evening sun innocently reflecting rainbows.

  The child, four-year-old Bridgette York, still lay in situ amongst the twinkling pieces of glass.

  Damaged.

  Not pretty or sparkling.

  Her face; smashed and bloody.

  Her legs bent out of shape.

  Bone protruded from her arm, splintered and torn.

  Blood congealed in her hair. Matted to her head.

  We worked quietly and we worked quickly. To get Bridgette York out of here as soon as we could.

  This was the work of our poison killer. This time, he hadn’t used poison, but his reach was even more deadly than before – because this time he had managed to put the fear of God into others to now do his bidding.

  82

  Nottingham Today – online article

  Four-Year-Old Girl Killed By Car In Supermarket

  A four-year-old child was killed and her mother was seriously injured when a Honda Civic ploughed through the window of Tesco supermarket on Carlton Hill.

  Trisha York and her daughter Bridgette were in the store when a disturbance flared up in one of the aisles. One witness states that on seeing the fracas, Trisha picked up her daughter, dropped her shopping and headed for the exit. As the argument in the store became more violent, Trisha was seen by several people to start running with Bridgette in her arms.