As I talked a darkness loomed at the side of me and I looked up. Deven was peering into the car. Water washing over him. But he didn’t appear to notice. He was focused on me. His gaze intense. I gritted my teeth as Diane talked, and waved Deven around to the passenger side. He climbed in as though he’d pulled himself out of a lake. Water the main composition.
I tasked Diane with making inquiries to find out who Shobi’s father was. He would need to be informed. If we could find the boy alive, his father would need to take and care for his son.
‘We need to talk,’ said Deven at the side of me. His Tyvek suit now removed, I noticed.
‘I need to make another call. Give me a minute.’ I held a finger up to indicate the time.
My next call was to the duty inspector in the control room to ask him if he could send more staff to help with the search. I heard a muffled shout as a hand went over the phone and when he came back to me he said they were on their way. I thanked him. Grateful that at times like this everyone pulled out all the stops. I hoped to God that Shobi hadn’t been a part of this and wasn’t now laid in a garden somewhere bleeding out. The problem with the foot heavy search that we, or rather, that I, was starting up, was that it could compromise areas of a crime scene that we didn’t yet realise were the crime scene. But saving a life trumped the crime scene every day. If we could find the missing child, alive, then I’d risk losing evidence on the outer cordons. Tremelle was covered. The immediate scene, Tremelle herself, she was safe and secure. Now we had to hope we didn’t find a second scene in the form of her son.
Hannah
‘What is it?’ I asked. I couldn’t see the scene in front of me or the people working. The rain created a blanket across the windscreen that cocooned us within the vehicle. It gave a slightly warm feel regardless of the frigid temperature it generated outside when you were stood in it.
Deven let out a long sigh and twisted in his seat so he was facing me more. It was strange, I’d only just met him, but it felt as though I had known him longer than the very short period that was the reality. I could understand the tension without him verbalising it. ‘It’s this case, DI Robbins.’
‘Call me Hannah.’ It was instinct.
He inclined his head. ‘Hannah.’ He bit at his lower lip, considered his next sentence. ‘This is the third witness that has been killed in the investigation into Simon Talbot. We have a real problem.’ His eyes met mine. ‘Wouldn’t you agree?’
I could hardly disagree, no matter how much I wanted to. I didn’t want to think about the possibility that we had a bent cop on our team, be that my team personally or the wider team of the police force in general. It was heart-breaking. That we all turned up day in and day out to do this job, for someone to do this and make it all feel worthless. Because when the public found out the whole police service, not just Nottinghamshire, would be tarred with the same brush.
Cops are crooked.
I pulled at my fringe. It was growing out and annoyed me. At the halfway stage that was neither there or not. ‘It’s not good. The important thing right now is that we find Shobi.’
‘I agree. We do need to find the boy. But me and you, we need to make sure we keep this scene with the mother secure.’
I looked at him.
‘It can’t be compromised, Hannah.’
I turned away from his and pulled open my door. ‘You can take control of the scene.’ I put one foot out of the car and looked back at him. ‘But I shall be searching for that little boy.’ I stood and slammed the door behind me.
‘Hannah.’ Deven was now out and walking around the front of the car. ‘He’ll be found, if he’s out here, he’s going to be found. But the best thing for this investigation is that it’s run properly and as SIO, that means you need to head it up. You need to coordinate it. From here. People need to be able to turn to you, find you, take commands from you.’ His face softened. ‘I’m sorry if that sounds hard.’ He took a step closer.
Rain pelted the pair of us as we stood in our standoff. I could feel it run down the inside of my collar. Soak through my clothes. Rub against my skin.
‘But it’s the realities of this case. We will find him,’ he continued.
I glared at him. My insides swelled up and nearly choked me. I was so furious. ‘Have you met this little boy? Talked to him? Played with him? Until you have, don’t tell me how hard it is or what I need to do.’
I went to step around him.
He put a hand on my arm. ‘You know you need to control this crime scene. For him as much as anyone. What if someone manages to contaminate it, to cover up who killed her, how will that help the child when we find him alive, that we can’t then prosecute his mother’s killer?’
I wanted to lash out, to slap him. My emotions raged. I pushed my way past him. ‘I’m going to find Shobi. You can stay here and protect the scene. It doesn’t need two of us.’
Hannah
Aaron walked out of the crime scene tent and towards me as I paced in his direction. ‘Search party organised?’ he asked.
‘Yeah. Look at the weather, Aaron. What if he’s been hit and he’s laid out in this? Our clock is definitely ticking.’
‘We’re doing what we can.’
I wasn’t sure. I wracked my brain as I moved down the street, back towards the tent, towards Tremelle, towards where Shobi will have been if he had been with his mother. ‘The helicopter. We can get the helicopter up.’
Aaron kept pace with me. ‘Good call.’ He didn’t wait to be asked, he was on his phone to the control room making the request before I had time to say any more.
We were stood outside the tent. He finished his call and looked at me. The sound of the rain on the tent like a drum beat. Persistent. A solid background noise. ‘You okay?’
I took a deep breath. ‘I don’t know, Aaron. It was a shock, you know? I expected one of the gang members, and I’d met Tremelle. But Shobi, her little boy, we really need to find him. He’s such a cute kid. He doesn’t deserve to be caught up in this. Plus, she was a witness, Aaron. What the hell is happening?’
Deven joined us. I glared at him. He held my gaze. Steady. Patient.
Aaron was oblivious. ‘I don’t know,’ he continued the conversation, ‘but we need to find out and find out now. This is way past too late now.’
I looked at my watch. Though Aaron was talking about the case as a whole, my focus was on the small area of it that was Shobi.
But he was right. It was bad enough when gang members killed each other. And that the public perceived that we allowed them to police themselves this way, when the truth was we didn’t. It was murder on our area and we didn’t tolerate it any more than we tolerated the killing of any other person. But, now that an innocent member of the public had been caught up in a gang drama there would be uproar. From the public, from the press, from the police commissioner’s office, from the chief, from all directions. And that was the important word in all this. Innocent. The gang members were intent on enacting violence on each other and had entered into a world of their own volition, but someone like Tremelle, like Shobi, they were civilians who did nothing but live their lives. She went out and worked for her money and tried to bring up her son without him being affected by those who lived around them.
‘You’ve called for the Hotel Eight Eight?’ asked Deven.
I itched. I couldn’t stand still and wait. I wanted to be active, to do something to help this little boy who had been so joyous when we played in the police cars. Who had said he wanted to be a policeman when he grew up. Who wanted to be able to drive the police cars. Turn on the lights on his own.
‘Yes, they should only be another five minutes,’ replied Aaron.
And now all I could see was him laid in a pool of his own blood which would be invisible on the sodden ground. Bleeding out and waiting in the cold and the wet and the dark, waiting for his mum, for anyone, to come and help him. With no one there. His wishes for help and comfort unanswered.
I checked my watch
again. I wasn’t sure if the hands had moved at all. I couldn’t now remember what it had said last time I had looked at it.
‘I’m helping in the search,’ I said, to no one. I didn’t care who was listening. I needed to find him.
‘Hannah.’ It was Deven. I was several steps away from him, headed towards the gardens behind the tented off area. That I knew had probably already been checked, but I had to start somewhere.
‘Hannah!’
I stopped and turned around. Deven and Aaron were soaked through. This boy, I needed to find him. ‘What is it?’ I snapped back. I wouldn’t stay behind.
‘What do we know so far?’ asked Deven.
I looked to Aaron. Looked at my watch again. Dammit. I walked back towards them. ‘Aaron?’
‘The team have completed some house-to-house to see if we could identify any witnesses. Though most of them appear to be out on the street regardless of this awful weather. Residents have been spoken with.’ He scratched at his head and a wet patch of hair stuck up where his hand had shifted it. ‘We managed to obtain a partial registration and have sent it out to CCTV operatives and the ANPR unit. As you can see, Roads policing are measuring up tyre tracks on the road where the car has skidded as it fired at Tremelle. That will help when we find it.’
The ANPR was the Automatic Number Plate Recognition software that logged vehicles as they passed it. I nodded at Deven. Another scowl on my face. He was determined to keep me in one place. I was determined to go.
‘You’re aware of the trouble Pasha had in her previous unit? The complaint she made? The reason she moved?’
Aaron looked at me. I shook my head. I was fully aware.
I stalked off. I wouldn’t stand and listen to him any more. He was attempting to divide us and I wouldn’t have it.
The front gardens were small postage stamps, but you needed to check Shobi wasn’t hidden behind the short wall that surrounded each garden. I walked in to the first one. It was run-down, there was a car up on bricks, its rear end sticking out onto the pavement. An old television in the corner on its side. Grass growing up and over it. I pushed through it, walked back and forth along the wall in case the small boy was curled up against it and had been hidden from sight. Then ran down the alley between the two houses to the rear of the property. If we had to do this for all the houses on the street it was going to take time. It needed as many staff as possible doing it.
A light came on as I hit the back of the house. It was the opposite of the front. Completely paved, with plenty of weeds growing through, but flat enough to see Shobi wasn’t here.
I walked back to the street.
What I found strange was that though people had heard the skidding and gun shots no one had noticed the child. They hadn’t seen if Tremelle had her son with her, because everyone had looked in the direction of the squealing tyres and the shots fired. Though they’d quickly dropped to the floor and protected themselves before they’d realised someone had been hit by the fired rounds.
Aaron stood at the gate. My anxiety levels were through the roof. If only I had paid more attention when Tremelle had come in to the station. If I had paid attention to her concerns I might have realised this would happen. Then we could have protected her and protected Shobi. This was down to me.
I stalked out of the garden and moved on to the next one. Aaron followed me as far as the gate. Leaving me to go through the ritual I needed to complete.
I didn’t know what to think. At first blush it had appeared that a woman had been hit by accident instead of the intended target. After all, we were outside the address of Simon Talbot, but now I knew it was Tremelle Brown who had been killed, there was the distinct possibility that she was the target all along because she was a witness to Talbot’s murder and that made me responsible.
‘Where is he, where’s Shobi?’ I asked Aaron who was searching the sky for the impending helicopter, oblivious to the rain pouring down on him.
‘I’m surprised Eight Eight has come out in this weather.’
I looked at him. Rain streaming down his face. Hair now plastered to his head again. Tyvek suit clinging to his frame. ‘Did you hear me?’ I asked.
‘I’m pretending we’re still in charge of this investigation.’
This wasn’t like Aaron. For him to buck the system like this, well, I’d never come across it. ‘Aaron?’
‘Baxter said that I had to answer to Clarke as well as him. That I couldn’t do as I pleased like I had done all this time.’
‘What the hell.’
‘Yeah, while you went to grab some stuff out your office after Martin informed us of this job, Baxter collared me. So, I’m wondering if maybe it’s time to move on again.’
‘Hell, no, Aaron. I won’t allow it.’
‘What? Me to move?’
‘No, Baxter to—’ Then we heard the helicopter above us, the whup whup of the blades in the rain. And they shouted me up on the radio. Time to find Shobi, and I hoped we weren’t too late.
Hannah
It was dark now. The helicopter was using everything at its disposal. It had a powerful searchlight that was called Nightsun. It was incredibly bright. The team aboard the helicopter also had the ability to seek by heat signature, but it was difficult in a built-up area such as this, but they were attempting to do it. After all, we had a shooting and a missing child.
Diane had now located Shobi’s father. He hadn’t ever been on the scene. He and Tremelle had had a brief relationship but they’d broken up before she found out she was pregnant. She didn’t want to know him once pregnant because if they didn’t work without a baby they wouldn’t work with a screaming shitting baby in the mix she’d said. She’d gone it alone and he’d left her to it. Quite happy to be let off the hook it seemed. But now his son was missing, he was out of his mind. He wanted to know where he was. I asked Diane to keep social care in the loop as they’d have to make the final decision if, I corrected myself, when, we found Shobi.
There were cops all over. Torches swinging in arcs. The crime scene manager Doug Howell was losing his cool.
‘DI Robbins, do you know what you’re doing to my crime scene? You’re destroying it. What will CPS say when you try to take someone to court over this? How will you feel if you lose it?’ His face started to redden even though it was freezing due to the rain that was still coming down.
‘Doug, we’ve protected what we can. But if we don’t find this boy and he dies, you tell me how you’ll feel? Because I’ll bet you any amount of money that I will feel a hell of a lot better than you if we find him.’ I paused. Water continued to wash down my neck and into my clothes. ‘No matter how we find him.’
Doug dipped his head. Droplets fell from the front of his hair to the ground. He looked back up. ‘I’m sorry. I’m still new to this role and it’s important to me. Just do your best to protect what you can.’
I put my hand on his arm. This was frustrating all of us. ‘It’s okay. I’ll take responsibility. It’s my call.’ And I’d defend it to anyone who opposed it.
‘Oscar Hotel Eight Eight to DI Robbins’. My ears pricked up as my name came over the airwaves.
‘Go ahead.’
‘There’s a very feint heat signature in a front garden about three streets away. On Muskham Street. You might want to send someone to check it out.’
Doug’s eyes lit up. It was hope and it was away from his immediate crime scene.
My heart was in my throat. It could be him.
It could be a cat.
Jesus.
I took hold of my lower lip and bit down.
Time seemed to still. The airwaves radio was silent. The helicopter circled overhead. The whup whup whup a continuing soundtrack. The stream of light emitted from the Nightsun directed at the area it had directed officers to.
I started to move.
‘Hannah, let the uniforms go.’ It was Deven.
A wave of black was moving in front of me as uniformed officers started to head in the
direction the helicopter had given.
Then I ran.
‘Hannah!’
Ground water splashed up as the downpour continued to fall. I pushed on, trying to see through the sheet of rain. The air cold and damp in my lungs. Aaron’s heavy footfalls behind me, catching me up. I dug down deep and forced my body faster. I pushed past the uniformed officers who were jogging. I had to get to this little boy. I hoped we were in time. We had to be in time. It felt as though we had taken too long.
People were out on the street, looking up at the police helicopter as it hovered overhead. Women with bright umbrellas, men braving the weather, some in T-shirts. They’d heard what had happened and wanted to see.
I turned the last corner, onto Muskham. My chest was heaving.
‘Where?’ I shouted into my radio.
‘Three gardens in front of you. To the left.’
It wasn’t a garden as such, more like a concrete parking zone and huddled against the rubbish bin was the smallest boy. His arms around his knees, his head tucked in so he was barely visible. He was shaking.
‘Shobi!’
Aaron came to a stop behind me as I crouched down to the boy we had been searching for.
‘Shobi.’ I put my arms around his shivering shoulders. ‘Are you hurt?’
He lifted his head. His eyes dark and fearful. And though he was wet I could make out tear tracks down his face.
He was alive. I couldn’t believe it. He was alive.
‘It’s me, Hannah. From the police cars?’
A small nod.
A battery of cops now stood at the tired wooden gate that hung from its hinges.
I felt Shobi for injury then gently lifted him onto my knee. He allowed me to do this without making a sound. His eyes never left mine. A silent acceptance.
Blue lights punctured the darkness that surrounded us. An engine was turned off.
‘Okay for us to head back to base?’ asked Oscar Hotel Eight Eight.
I thanked them for their help and the spotlight that engulfed us switched off and we were dropped into the dull tone of street lighting from the side of us. The helicopter moved away. The whup whup dying out.
The DI Hannah Robbins Series: Books 1 - 3 (Boxset) (Detective Hannah Robbins Crime Series) Page 63
