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

by Rebecca Bradley

  I understood where she was coming from. I gave a slow nod. I wouldn’t contradict her.

  ‘But, it would be more typical of the male officers or younger, more bolshy officers who think they know it all. You don’t look like you fit into either of those camps so I will take the comment as I hope you intended it, DI Robbins.’

  I let out a breath I hadn’t realised I’d been holding.

  ‘Shall we take a seat?’ She indicated a couple of chairs pushed to the side of the room below a large map of the county pinned on another wall. We pulled them out and sat.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said as I made myself as comfortable as I could in the dingy room, knowing what I was about to ask her.

  ‘What can I do for you today, that requires you to be respectful and for me to be discreet?’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘Ah, indeed.’ She smiled. It lit up her face.

  There was a knock at the door, it opened part way and a head poked around, the rest of the body out of view behind the door. He was a young lad and I realised he would be an armed officer. This young man, whose head I could see, was given the task of protecting us, officers and public, against people who would choose to aim firearms at us. ‘Ma’am, you asked to be informed when…’ He looked at me and trailed off, not knowing who I was.

  ‘It’s okay,’ she reassured him. ‘You can speak in front of DI Robbins.’

  The young officer inclined his head to me, then continued. ‘You asked to be informed when Cook was spotted in Beeston. We’ve had information he’s driven over there with Marshall half an hour ago.’

  ‘Thanks, Rich, I’ll be out soon.’

  And the head disappeared. Like a turtle, tucking itself back in. And the door clicked closed.

  ‘You’re busy,’ I said.

  ‘I’m always busy.’ Her gaze was steady. ‘Which is not ideal if you consider what we are called out to. Though we’re lucky that most jobs don’t turn serious, although we still have to deal with them as though they are.’

  ‘Have you heard much about extra tensions after the Talbot death?’ I asked.

  ‘Is that why you’re here? You’re investigating the Talbot murder?’

  ‘We are. I am.’

  She nodded, a thoughtful expression on her face. Lips pursed. I gave her a minute.

  ‘We’re paying attention to the Meadows. It’s a volatile estate at the best of times, though it has got better over time, the Talbots have never been ones to keep the peace for long and now one of them is down we’re not quite sure what effect that will have on the other one.’

  ‘Nathan.’

  ‘Nathan.’ She agreed.

  ‘You expect trouble?’

  ‘Not expecting, as such. Preparing to keep the peace.’

  ‘The shift that was on duty when Ken Blake was killed…’

  Superintendent Long pushed back on her chair, stood and buttoned her jacket back up. Smoothed it down.

  I didn’t like the feeling of being lower than she was and stood myself. Not sure why the sudden change.

  ‘Is that the team that are on today?’ I finished the question. Curious as to what had made her jump up.

  ‘Have you ever lost an officer, Hannah?’

  I turned my back on her. Looked at the map on the wall. Red, amber and green pins dotted about the county within the map. Breath forced its way through my lungs. The expansion felt jagged and unnatural. I let out a breath, tried to steady myself. Turned back to her.

  Charlotte Long’s brow was furrowed. ‘Oh, Sally Poynter, she was yours. I’m so sorry.’ She sat back in the chair as quickly as she had climbed out of it. Again, I followed her lead. Grateful for the chance to now sit, my body was revolting against me. My arm throbbed. Keeping my hands in my lap I made a conscious effort not to draw attention to the injured arm. Not that there was a visible injury, but if you’d heard of Sally’s murder then you had more than likely heard of her senior officer who was also stabbed on duty and I didn’t want to take this conversation in that direction. I wanted it to stay where it was.

  ‘The team, that day?’ I ignored her questions. At my peril, I knew.

  She inclined her head. She understood what I was doing. ‘No, it’s not the shift that is on at the minute. In fact, you’ve not long missed them. They were the previous shift. Why do you ask?’

  ‘It would have been maybe interesting to have a quick word while I was here.’ I ran my hand through my hair. ‘Though, you understand, by interesting, I talk in an investigative framework.’

  ‘I do, but I don’t understand the relevance to Talbot’s murder.’

  ‘It’s about understanding the whole. About getting the big picture. Wanting to know about that day in case it bears any relevance to this investigation.’

  ‘Surely you have the file?’

  ‘It’s been requested, but there are things that don’t make it into statements—’

  ‘I can assure you,’ she cut in. ‘That nothing was missed out of the statements my officers wrote.’

  ‘I don’t mean the facts of the job, but other things they may not have considered. Sounds, smells, something amiss that wouldn’t have gone in. It’s the evidential they see and hear that go in to a statement rather than what is missing for instance.’

  ‘And that’s why you came over?’

  She was professional but she was protective of her officers, of her department. What I had to say next wouldn’t go down well. I was the first to stand this time. I noticed that Superintendent Charlotte Long didn’t feel the same need to put herself on a level with me. She was confident in her status.

  ‘Actually, Ma’am, I need to know about your firearms teams in general. If any of your teams have reported accidental discharge of weapons in the past week? Or missing, lost or stolen ammunition.’

  She laughed. Stayed in her chair, but laughed.

  ‘Please tell me you are messing with me?’

  I rubbed at my face, uncomfortable in her stare. In her certainty, because that was what I knew this was.

  ‘It’s an inquiry I have to cover and once it’s done, it’s done.’

  ‘Consider it done, Detective Inspector Robbins.’

  Lee

  A uniformed officer walked into the incident room pulling a trolley on wheels and on the trolley were several boxes and piles of papers tied up with pink ribbon. The file from the Talbot investigation had arrived. Martin asked Lee to sign for it as he was on hold with the forensics lab. He said hello to the officer who had brought the file over, signed for the paperwork and pulled the trolley up alongside Martin’s desk.

  While he waited for Martin to finish his call he decided it would be a good time to check in with his nan’s carer. Sheila Emerson was a warm, friendly and kind woman who would do anything to help Lee and his nan and he was so grateful to her. She came in every day, followed Lee’s shift pattern, so that his nan was never left to cook her own meals, wander off or fret if she had been left alone too long.

  ‘Hi, Lee, how are you?’ It was how she picked up the phone every time he called.

  ‘Hi, Sheila. I’m good. It’s busy here. How’s Nan?’

  ‘Ah, Lee. It’s not a good day today. She’s been upset most of the day. She wants to know when her husband will be home from work and has shouted at me a lot more than usual.’

  Lee rubbed his head. He didn’t know why he checked because he felt so powerless when Sheila told him this way, when he was at work and helpless, that his nan was not at her best. He hated that he wasn’t there for her when she was upset because he was always able to sooth her, even if she thought he was his dad or his grandad, she accepted him and was calmed. And he never knew if she was aware of his absence when he wasn’t at home. Aware and thinking less of him for it. Hating him for putting Sheila there. Leaving her with someone who wasn’t family. And the thought of this hurt him as he thought of all the meals she had cooked for him, the homework she had helped him with, the girlfriends she had wrapped in love because he was infatuated
so she would be too. He didn’t want her to think less of him for not being there. The possibility that she might think him less of a person for not taking care of her as she had cared for him cut him deep. He wanted to care for her and for her to be proud.

  ‘You still there, Lee, love.’

  His throat was tight, he swallowed and it caught, burning as he struggled to speak.

  ‘Yes, I’m still here.’

  ‘Look, I know you want to care for her at home as long as you can and you’ve done an amazing job, but I think we need to have a talk.’ She paused and softened her voice. ‘Don’t you?’

  ‘Yeah, Sheila, I know. It’s tough. I’ll see you when I get home. It might be a late one though. Will you be okay for today? And we will, we’ll have that talk.’

  ‘Of course. Do what you have to do and I’ll take care of her. Don’t fret.’

  ‘Thanks, Sheila. I’ll see you later.’

  He hung up the phone, swallowed again and stretched his neck out left and right.

  ‘Is that the Talbot file?’ asked Martin as he hung up his own phone.

  ‘Yes, I signed for it.’ Lee straightened, pulled himself up. He had to get back to work.

  ‘Great, let’s open it up and pick out statements etc. that will be easy to read through to see what we have.’

  Lee lifted the lid of one of the boxes. In here was the day when it had all happened. But not all of it. He looked out of the window. Then turned to Martin and remembered his friend.

  Ken had loved a practical joke. When Lee was a new probationer, but after his initial training, after the period of time that Ken tutored him, he became the target for one of Ken’s jokes. It had had to wait for Lee to come out of his tutor period otherwise it could have been construed as bullying. But Lee knew of the team dynamics and the penchant they had to decompress by playing practical jokes on each other. New cops on shift were always the easy targets as they had never seen the jokes played before.

  Lee had turned up for his shift, it was a cold damp day and there was a slanting drizzle in the air. In his docket on headed paper was a note signed by the station’s superintendent that stated he was taking action against the recent spate of damage that had occurred to officers’ vehicles that were parked in the secure car park and he expected one officer to guard the barrier at all times to check the warrant card of all those who came into the secure yard. Apparently, the shift had decided Lee was up first as he was the newest boy on shift and they would do one-hour stints going up in order of seniority.

  There had indeed been damage done to the cars in the yard in the last couple of weeks, so Lee hadn’t been suspicious of the note. He’d donned his coat and hat and stood by the barrier as daytime staff drove into the station to start work. He’d even asked the DCI to check his warrant card. It wasn’t until he looked up at the window some ten minutes later that he realised he’d been had, as all his shift were in hysterics at the window with camera phones all pointed in his direction.

  Walking back into the station he growled at the shift as though he was annoyed, but he wasn’t. He had been on the lookout for the prank and he had missed it. Looking for the instigator of the car park patrol he needn’t have looked far as Ken had a grin that spread from ear to ear and could barely speak. It hadn’t been the super’s signature.

  ‘I’ll get you back, old man,’ he’d said to him.

  ‘Only I had run out of time to do that,’ Lee said to Martin as they continued to shift the boxes of papers on the trolley.

  Hannah

  ‘Superintendent Long gave you the brush off?’ asked Aaron.

  ‘Not exactly. She wasn’t happy but she did concede that she had to answer my questions if they were relevant to the investigation. She couldn’t refuse to answer because she was offended that we could even consider that a cop be responsible for this.’

  ‘That’s not what we think.’

  ‘And that’s what I told her. It’s about elimination. Which was what appeased her.’

  ‘Her response?’ Aaron was interested. As much as we hoped it wasn’t a cop, the screwed up feeling in your stomach because you were making these moves made you crave the answers in a hope it would settle the nastiness that crawled about inside you.

  ‘That there had been no accidental discharges reported and no missing ammunition in the time frame we were looking at, or in any other time frame. She was very clear on that.’

  ‘Does that rule out a firearms cop who attended the Blake scene then?’

  ‘It rules out a cop using force equipment.’ I hated what I was about to say next. ‘I can’t guarantee it rules out a cop finding another method of sourcing the required equipment. And one who would know where to find it in his or her line of work.’

  ‘Jesus, Hannah.’

  ‘I know. I simply want to cover every eventuality. Doesn’t mean I think it will work out that way, but we can’t close our minds to the possibility.’

  He stood from the chair in front of my desk. ‘I’ll go and add it to HOLMES.’

  ‘Don’t forget the restrictions on this report.’

  He gave me a look. I thought I’d better move the topic along. ‘I’ll read through the original file and see what that throws up.’

  Without another word Aaron was out the door and headed back to his desk.

  I moved another pile of paperwork onto the floor to make room on my desk for some of the papers from the Talbot investigation. I wanted to read through it in my office where I had peace to concentrate, before I talked it through in more detail with the rest of the team.

  It looked as though the investigation team had done a thorough job. There were multiple witness statement from various sources. CCTV from areas that surrounded Talbot’s house, because there wasn’t any on his street, logged vehicles having entered and exited the area at the relevant times and forensic scientists wrote statements about blood spatter.

  The Senior Investigating Officer was DCI Robert Summers. I didn’t know him personally but had heard positive reports about his investigations and of how he handled his staff.

  The Talbots were the gang that ruled the Meadows estate and the problem was that another gang from another area of the city wanted to branch out and the Talbots were in their way. The Buckhurst crew were known to be pushing the Talbots, taking advantage of the vacuum left by Simon’s incarceration and now murder, and at every opportunity. This was said to have aggravated the Talbots who were a close family run gang. The Meadows was theirs and they wouldn’t give it up for anyone. There were several statements to this effect.

  The command and control log registered a call from the neighbour and it was surmised by the control room DI that it could have been trouble from the Buckhursts. Two cars were sent because of concerns for safety, but when Lee and Ken arrived first it was decided to send a third car to back them up.

  But it was already too late.

  When the two double-crewed cars turned up Blake was dead, shot twice, once in his belly below his stab vest and once in his head. There was a third bullet hole in the wall that had missed him. Lee was unconscious in the living room with a fractured cheekbone and eye socket.

  The rest of the house was empty. Everyone had scarpered.

  In time two witnesses had come forward. Paul Miller and one other, whose name was now blacked out of the witness statement. They both said they were part of the Buckhurst crew and had gone around to the Talbots to give them shit because Miller’s girlfriend had been one of the girls to have died in the Vanilla Jazz nightclub incident.

  Two months prior to Blake’s murder there had been several OD deaths in the club. The drugs were said to have been provided by the Talbots but an investigation hadn’t progressed far by the time the Talbot incident was called in.

  Miller and one other said they wanted to fuck Talbot over, but he had a gun on him and before they knew it two coppers walked into the house and Talbot shot one of them. They ran off terrified they would either be next or be implicated in the murder
of a cop.

  Talbot was located and arrested. He denied having shot PC Blake stating one of the other two men in his house had pulled the trigger.

  There was a lot of information here and yet I didn’t feel it brought me anywhere closer to knowing what had happened this past couple of days. The Talbots moved a lot of drugs through the county, guns were easily accessible, they were a violent breed and they bore no respect for human life, but how did a Talbot and a Buckhurst crew member both end up murdered within a day of each other. Were we in the middle of a turf war? I wondered if it would get worse.

  Hannah

  I downed two painkillers with my tea and rubbed my arm. The ache deep down inside, persistent as it burrowed into my brain. I needed it to stop so I could concentrate.

  My office had started to look like a storage room. My reports had to be given some priority or I would be run out of this space by the paperwork.

  Aaron was reviewing the work that had been done during the afternoon and I was to chase up Superintendent Hilary Byrne, the head of the intelligence department where the unit who kept the records of anonymised witnesses was housed, to obtain the details of the second witness as all identifying features had been blacked out of the original file to protect his identity.

  To say Byrne was shocked by Miller’s violent death was an understatement. He was furious.

  ‘We are now worried about the second witness and would like to check up on him, make sure he’s safe.’

  ‘Yes, yes, of course. I’ll email you the details and you can get onto it.’

  ‘Thank you, Sir, I appreciate it.’

  ‘You’ll let me know?’

  ‘Of course.’

  I took another drink of my tea.

  ‘How the hell did this happen?’ he boomed down the line.

  ‘I hoped you could tell me that.’

  ‘It’s secure information as you know, Hannah. No one outside that unit should be able to get their hands on it.’