I imagined she never did. I looked to Nathan. ‘And the last you saw of Simon?’
‘The same.’ It was practically a snarl, but his eyes gave him away as they filled with the sorrow of his loss. He turned away from me quickly. Put his back to me and looked out of the window.
I wrote down the details of where they’d been and what time they all separated. ‘Do you know his plans for the rest of the evening?’ I asked in general.
‘His girlfriend,’ said Karen.
‘Girlfriend?’ This was the first I’d heard. How had he managed to keep that quiet? We had no intel of a girlfriend.
‘Yes, he went to see Chloe.’
‘Chloe?’ asked Aaron.
‘Chloe Bird.’
I made another note. The girl in the photograph.
‘Can you describe Chloe?’
Karen’s eyebrows knitted together but she provided a description anyway. It matched the photograph we had seized from Simon’s home.
‘Did they have a child together?’ I asked.
Tears filled Karen’s eyes afresh. ‘I wish they had. I would have a piece of Simon alive now. But, no, sadly.’
‘What’s this got to do with the investigation?’ Nathan butted in, facing us again.
‘We need to get a full picture of Simon, his life, to find out what happened to him this morning,’ Aaron answered him.
‘Hush, will you, Nathan.’ Karen was losing patience with him now. He closed his mouth. A thin line stretched out across his face as he tightened his lips. It was obvious he wanted to say more. To demand or order.
‘The child?’ I prompted.
‘He’s Chloe’s from a previous relationship. She was very protective of him and didn’t like him to see Simon there when he woke, that will be why Simon was outside his house this morning. He will have spent the night but come home early before the boy got up.’
So, we needed to look at who knew these kinds of intimate routines.
Karen leaned over into her lap. ‘Poor Chloe.’ She sobbed. Her words breaking. Shattering like glass.
Nathan couldn’t stay silent any longer. ‘What will you do with my brother now?’ he asked.
I looked Karen in the eye. It was always difficult to explain the police and coroner process to family members who wanted their loved ones home for a funeral. ‘There will be a post-mortem tomorrow.’
Karen let out a small whimper.
‘I want to be there,’ Nathan demanded.
I shifted my gaze to him.
‘He’s my brother,’ he clarified. ‘I want to be with him. I want to know what you’re doing to him.’
I explained that unfortunately family were not permitted at post-mortems and watched Nathan’s hackles rise, like a dog, his shoulders rose, he widened and raised himself up. But, I continued in my explanation. Ignored the show of power he attempted to put on. ‘You are entitled to have a qualified doctor present on your behalf.’
‘We’ll do that. Make sure you tell me when, where and what time. You’re not cutting into him without that doctor present.’
Hannah
‘Do we have Miller’s address and phone number yet?’
Aaron looked up from his computer monitor. ‘I’m waiting on the detective superintendent at the intel unit where Miller’s protected details were stored. The DS I spoke to couldn’t “confirm or deny” that they held the information but said he would check and if they did then the super would give me a call.’
‘So, thereby confirming they do have the details we need but are arsing about because they can?’
‘Pretty much.’ He looked back at his monitor where the daily briefing screen was open.
‘Ma’am?’
Pasha stood in front of me biting her lips. ‘What is it, Pasha?’
‘Well, I overheard you talking to Aaron—’
‘You did?’
She scratched at one of her arms. ‘I wasn’t listening in, it’s just, I was sat at my desk and I heard him update you.’
‘Go on then.’
‘The thing is, I joined up with a lad that works in that intel unit and I wondered if you wanted me to give him a call to see if he can make the check for us to get the info quicker, especially as we don’t know why Talbot had his name.’
My right arm ached. The point where the knife had sliced through skin and muscle and tendons the night Sally had been killed.
‘Pasha, do you have any idea what it means to work on a team? I thought you came to us from a response unit, from one of the most renowned places in the police force for their teamwork, for having each other’s backs, and yet you want to cut corners, to cut a corner one of your team is already working on.’
She blanched.
I carried on regardless. Driven from inside, unable to stop. This unreasonable feeling that she was attempting to substitute herself for Sally was eating away at me. How did I turn it off?
‘How about you stick to the task you have been given and do what you’ve been asked to do. That’s what teamwork is. Trying to one-up another member of the team is not. Not on my team anyway.’
Her bottom lip was clenched between her teeth. I heard the door behind me open and close as someone came into the incident room.
‘But, Ma’am, I didn’t want to one-up the sarge, I only wanted to help. I wanted you to see I was useful.’
‘I’ll see you’re useful if you are actually useful, Pasha.’
With that I turned to walk out, to walk to the sanctity of my office, but stood in the doorway with her mouth set in a grim line and a packet of chocolate biscuits in her hand was our analyst, my best friend, Evie Small.
Pasha
It was difficult, as they say, like walking on eggshells. Pasha had an understanding of why. This helped but it didn’t stop the hurt completely. She had heard about Sally’s death, of course she had. The whole force had. They’d had an horrific time over the past eighteen months with two deaths on duty. Two murders on duty. It wasn’t often a force other than the Met had periods like this and it had shaken them to the core.
The first time was with Sally, when she had been stabbed to death while saving a child. And Pasha knew that the DI had also been injured in that incident and carried the scar with her. She could imagine what that was like.
Then when they were barely recovered, Ken was killed. But, here she was, now, working with Sally’s old team. In the vacancy Sally had left.
She couldn’t expect them to welcome her with open arms. Neither did she fully comprehend the level of difficulty that would have to be endured to simply fit in.
Some of the team were an easier fit than others. They were more accommodating. Whether they still hurt on the inside and put on a welcome face, she didn’t know, but she’d take it. Others, well, they were more outwardly difficult. She supposed that at least she knew where she stood and with who she needed to try harder.
Detective Superintendent Walker had talked to her before she joined the team. Told her in no uncertain terms that if anyone gave her trouble she was to report it back to her. Pasha wouldn’t do that. She would never fit in if she ran to the big boss because people still struggled with emotions.
Emotions she could understand. Her younger brother had gone missing when he was seven and she was twelve. She was supposed to have been keeping an eye on him when they were in the park across the road, but she had become distracted when a boy she liked had turned up and started talking to her. She thought she had only spoken to him for a minute and when she turned to find her brother, he was gone. There was no sign of him. Her parents had gone ballistic. They’d lost their minds. They’d been angry at Pasha, though when she looked back now, as an adult, she knew that the anger they showed her was in fact anger they felt towards themselves because they allowed her to take him to the park. They’d wanted half an hour’s peace, the house was always so busy, with two kids and three grandparents living with them, so they’d let him go with her. He’d been gone for a week and had eventually been found
in the house of a local man. It was that same old story; everyone was surprised. No one would have thought him capable of abducting a child. He was a quiet, friendly lad. That was, until he abducted her brother Darshit.
As a child she was not told what had happened to her brother in that period he was missing, but as an adult she could well imagine. Though she had never brought it up. If he wanted to talk about it, she was always here for him, but she was afraid of scaring him away, so left any discussion in his court.
That week he was missing had been unbearable. The house was stretched to its limit. No one slept. Not properly. Snatches of sleep when the body said no more. But her mum and dad pushed themselves to keep going. Afraid to sleep and to forget he was not there. Afraid to dream pleasant dreams. They didn’t speak to her and when he returned Darshit was changed. The house was changed.
So, yes, she understood emotions. She wouldn’t run to the super and she wouldn’t be driven away from the unit. She would stay as she had stayed at home – well, she had, in the course of time, escaped that particular cage – but she would stay here until they accepted her. She had no part to play in Sally’s death so Pasha was sure she could ride out the underlying misgivings of her arrival.
Hannah
I was too wound up to eat any of the biscuits that Evie had brought with her. She took my seat behind my desk and left me to pace about in front of it. Her curls loose around her face which gave her an angelic look and made me feel even more of a heel. She shovelled a biscuit into her mouth while she asked me what it was she had witnessed.
‘It’s called management, Evie.’
She didn’t reply, but finished the biscuit and watched me instead.
‘Okay, maybe I did come down on her a bit heavy,’ I agreed.
‘You think?’
‘And why are you so protective?’
‘And why are you such a bitch?’
I glared at her.
‘Hannah?’
‘We’re in pieces, Evie.’ I leaned down, grabbed my handbag from under my desk and rummaged for the painkillers I kept in there. I popped two out and downed them with the cold tea on the corner of my desk which made me scrunch my nose up at the smeary cold feel of it.
‘You’re still in pain?’ Her voice was softer now.
‘Yes. It’s incessant. I can cope as long as I take something for it. It won’t take my life away from me.’
‘But, what do you mean you’re in pieces?’
‘Oh, you know, us, the unit. You couldn’t call us a unit any more. We disintegrated. Sally was killed, Grey was moved on. The concept of us being a team doesn’t exist and Pasha and Kevin trying to fill those holes just doesn’t cut it.’ I dropped into the chair opposite Evie now. Her eyes crinkled at the corners as she looked at me as if she was trying to force herself right inside me to see what was there. Then another biscuit went up and she started to chew again.
‘I think you’re doing them an injustice,’ she said through a mouthful of crumbs.
‘In what way?’
She swallowed. ‘In every way, Hannah. It’s neither Pasha’s fault that Sally was killed nor Kevin’s fault that Grey was moved. They are both trying to do the best that they can and they can do better if they have you behind them.’
I watched her as she pushed a random curl out of her face.
‘And I mean backing them up and supporting them, I don’t mean behind them sticking a knife in their backs, sweetie.’
Lee
The silence unnerved him. He knew it was there to be played into but he couldn’t help but fill it. He’d pushed his way into the EMSOU – Major Crime, incident room at St Ann’s because he wanted to see the DI and she had agreed to see him, so he couldn’t now complain when she led with silences for him to fill. EMSOU was the East Midlands Special Operations Unit. A five-force amalgamation that dealt with serious crimes across county borders.
He understood that the DI needed to know what was so important that a uniform PC turned up unannounced demanding to be seen as a murder inquiry kicked off. He had to explain. About that day. Back then when it all started. From when he woke up in the room.
The room was bright. White. Dirty. Not actually dirty. Shabby. His head hurt and it took some time for his eyes to adjust as they opened and he figured out his surroundings. There was a blurry edge to his vision that he couldn’t blink away.
He was laid in a hospital bed. The clean antiseptic smell that came with a hospital crawled over him. He was in a side room and his clothes had been stripped from him.
His uniform.
He could feel that he wore a flimsy but rough, scratchy hospital gown. Though the bed sheet and blankets weighed heavily on him there was a freedom underneath them that told him the gown was all that covered his modesty. A glance downwards sent a shooting pain through his eyes to his skull. His head was pounding. Like a hammer slamming against concrete. Every movement of his eyes caused a feeling like a pick-axe into his eye.
A groan escaped his lips and he closed his eyes again.
‘I’m glad you’re with us, Lee.’
He hadn’t noticed a visitor. The other side of the bed. He turned. The hammer and pick-axe started again. He clenched his teeth which only served to create more pain. He tried to relax his face and clenched his fists instead. Inspector Aashi Sahni was sitting, a magazine closed on her knee. How long had she been there?
‘Ma’am.’ He couldn’t move, he didn’t even try. His head thumped and he knew if he moved he would, in all probability, vomit on her.
‘There are a lot of people who want to come and see you, but the doctors have said you need your rest first. They want to assess you. You’ve had a nasty head injury.’
‘Ma’am.’ What else could he say?
‘Do you remember much?’
He flinched. From the pain, or from the memories?
‘Bits and pieces.’
‘Do you need me to get you a nurse?’
‘In a minute, maybe.’ He waited a beat, let the images of the event filter through the hurt and splitting noise in his head before he asked, ‘Ken?’
‘Can you imagine how that feels, DI Robbins?’ Lee Cave asked of DI Hannah Robbins who sat behind her desk and observed him. She didn’t interrupt. Didn’t move. Just let him speak.
Beside him was her DS, Aaron something-or-other, he couldn’t remember, he was so wound up, after going over this history. He rubbed his knees with his palms, bounced his heels on the floor. He had to stay seated as long as she was.
He wiped his palms down his trousers again. ‘And then I was told by Inspector Sahni that my partner, the man who had tutored me through two years as a probationer constable and then continued to partner me for the next two years was now dead. I was laid there in my bed. Alive. Breathing. With, basically, just a headache, and Ken was dead.
Riddled with bullet holes.
‘And I’d come out of Talbot’s house alive.’
Hannah
It was obvious he was anxious. To relay the moment you’re told your partner is dead and to a senior officer you don’t know, will make you that way. Little did he know how much I understood the pain he felt, how much we all, on the team, understood how he felt.
Other than Pasha and Baxter of course.
I let him talk it out. Gave him the room to say what he needed, without interruption. There is nothing worse than the need to say your piece and being prevented because your flow has been broken and the words have fled your mind in panic.
His nerves were obvious, so I stood and he followed suit and leapt from his chair. ‘Can I get you a drink, Lee?’ I asked. I wanted to settle him if I could.
‘Erm… oh, yes. Please, Ma’am. A water would be great.’ He sat back down. ‘Thank you.’ He fidgeted some more and I left to get his water with the hope that the space I provided would give him time to calm and gather his thoughts.
Placing the glass on the small spot available on my desk in front of him I could see that Aaron and Lee and h
ad been sat in silence the few minutes I had been to the kitchen and back. Aaron wasn’t good with grief. He was better at the investigative side of the job rather than the people-centric side.
‘So, you see, Ma’am, why I’ve come here today?’ Lee now continued.
‘I’m sorry that you had to go through that, Lee. Talbot was a nasty piece of work and he should have been put away and the key thrown away but I don’t understand why you are here, I’m afraid.’ I leaned forward. I was curious.
He rubbed his face, took a drink from his glass, then a deep breath before he looked first at Aaron then back to me.
‘When Talbot killed Ken and I was released from the hospital I wasn’t allowed on the murder investigation team that ran the case against Talbot because I was a part of that case. One of the witnesses. I understood that.’ He took another gulp of water.
‘When the investigation was completed and Talbot was charged I sat in the courtroom throughout the whole trial. I sat with Ken’s family the entire time. It broke my heart.’ Hands rubbed down trousers.
‘Waiting for the moment we would watch him get sent down. For good.’
I understood this only too well and gave Lee a small smile.
‘But then they let him go. He walked and it was as if Ken died for nothing. The uniform meant nothing. The Talbots were laughing. And we were powerless.’
‘And what is it you want me to do, Lee?’
‘It’s what I want to do, Ma’am. I’m not involved in this case, the murder of Talbot, I’m not a witness, I wasn’t at the scene, so I want to be involved in this investigation, and maybe I’ll find out why Talbot walked. I need closure. I walked out of his house with a concussion after an assault and Ken was carried out in a body bag. I want to be seconded onto the investigation if you’ll allow it, Ma’am?’
Hannah
Pasha was buzzing around the incident room. She had made drinks for everyone, sorted out her notebook and pens and organised herself for the new job that had come into the office. You had to give it to her, she was capable of getting on with the job, focusing on what was important and not dwelling on the fact that I had bawled her out. For what would appear to her as for no good reason.
The DI Hannah Robbins Series: Books 1 - 3 (Boxset) (Detective Hannah Robbins Crime Series) Page 49
