The paramedics picked their way through the throng of people now encircling us and took him from me. There was a cold empty feeling left where he had been. Colder than the weather could ever manage to create. They cradled him in their arms, in his wet state he looked tiny. They said they’d take him to the hospital to get him checked out even though he didn’t appear to have any visible injuries. He cried out for his mum as he entered the well-lit confines of the ambulance. My heart broke.
I went to the door. To him. ‘They’re going to take good care of you, Shobi.’ A blanket was wrapped around his shoulders.
The tears started to roll down his face again. They say kids have big fat tears, this wasn’t like that. They streamed down his little face. A tiny river that fit his tiny face. I just wanted to make all his pain go away.
‘We have to go,’ the male paramedic shouted over. I held my finger up questioning for one minute. He looked at the boy who was perched on the bench in the ambulance, wrapped in a blanket, his face pale in the strip light of the van. Eyes like dark moons peered out. Fingers clutched the blanket tight to himself. ‘One minute, then we have to go.’
In a whisper, I asked, ‘What happened, Shobi?’ I didn’t expect an answer. I didn’t think he had heard me. I just wanted to look at the little boy for one more minute before they took him. So glad to have found him alive, but at the same time, broken for the future he now had to adjust to, without his mum.
‘Mummy told me to run. Run, Shobi, she said, run.’
Then he was gone. The blue lights fractured the surrounding area. The people watching. The water bouncing. The street lights bleeding through the gloom. It broke it all up and then pieced it back together again. And now we had to piece together what exactly had happened here.
Hannah
I went home and changed my clothes. Everyone who lived close enough I sent to do the same. It was going to be a long night so they may as well be comfortable, we’d been soaked through to the skin and though the odd person had a change of shirt or blouse, no one had a full suit to change into at the office. It wasn’t until I stripped off that I realised how wet I was. If you had looked at me you would have presumed I had decided to jump in a swimming pool with all my clothes on. I shoved the clothes I’d removed straight into the washer – I wasn’t one for dry cleaning my suits. And rubbed my hair dry roughly under the hairdryer before tying it back with a hair elastic. This was about a quick functional turnaround, not about looking my best. I needed to get back to the office.
Baxter was waiting when I made it to the incident room.
‘What the hell is happening?’ asked Baxter.
‘I don’t know.’
He glared at me.
‘I’m working on it,’ I clarified as I moved towards my office with him in tow. ‘At first it looked to be collateral damage to a missed target, but then when I saw who the victim was—’
‘Who the hell was it?’ he asked. Grabbing me by my arm, stopping me in my tracks as we reached my door.
‘It was a woman by the name Tremelle Brown. She was a witness. She found Simon Talbot the morning he died.’
‘Shit,’ he muttered under his breath.
‘She said she didn’t see anything of worth. She found his body. But it does make you wonder if the killer thinks she saw him. How close to time of death she was when she found him.’
We moved into my office.
‘This doesn’t look good.’ Baxter closed my office door behind us, then curled his top lip as he looked around at the stacks of papers that took up room where people could otherwise stand or move. He narrowed his eyes at me. I ignored him and took the seat behind my desk.
‘And what’s this we hear about the involvement of a child?’
‘He’s safe. The last thing she managed to do was send him running. We found him in a garden a few streets away.’
‘That’s what we’ll focus on with the press. The fact that the child is safe and well.’ He let out a breath. ‘Your plans now?’
I faced the team. Baxter had been good to his word. There were now extra staff stuffed into the incident room. A couple I recognised from my time around the force, but others were unknown. I wasn’t sure I would have the time to learn names. They’d have to make do with my gratitude for their time and commitment. Because that’s what I’d demand for this job, their full commitment. It was out of control and we needed to grab it back.
‘I want teams working the CCTV, I want it seized and viewed. We need to identify and trace the vehicle, another team on witnesses. I know they’re scared round there, scared to come forward, but play on the fact that a little boy was caught up in this today. Do they want their own kids in this dangerous situation? Cars flying past spraying bullets with no regard for where they end up. Push hard, but sympathetically please.
‘I want another team to go through the Blake file with a fine-toothed comb and I want it gone through properly and with speed. We are missing something. This all comes back to that case.’ I knew it did. I could feel it. This all started the day Simon Talbot had walked away from the court a free man after he was charged with the murder of PC Ken Blake. We had to circle back.
‘Forensics are still at the scene along with the accident investigation team I hope we will be able to get something helpful from them in due course. In the meantime, we need to put in the leg work and the hours.’ I looked at the team. Tonight would be a late one. They’d already put in a lot of hours. ‘Let’s get a pizza order sorted and get you all fed. Then I won’t have earache later from a hungry team.’
A cheer went up and a couple of pizza menus came out of drawers. Theresa pulled out a pen and flourished it around like a Harry Potter wand. It looked as though she was overseeing the organisation of the hungry hordes. I went over to her.
‘You’re keeping this lot in order then?’
She snorted. ‘I’m not sure that’s possible where food is concerned, but yes, I’ll write up the list of what they want and I’ll phone it in. Someone needs to keep them in line or we’ll all end up with one type of pizza from the person who orders it.’ She laughed. I didn’t see this often and it was a pleasant sight.
‘Thanks, Theresa.’
‘Purely selfish reasons, you understand?’
I patted her on the shoulder. ‘Absolutely. And on that note, can I order a Hawaiian please?’
She grimaced.
‘What?’
‘That’s exactly the kind of reason I’m doing this. To prevent all the pizzas arriving with fruit on them. Who puts fruit on a pizza?’
CCTV picked up the vehicle a couple of streets away, from the timings and the partial identity the couple of witnesses who would speak to us provided. A grey Honda Accord, old and reported stolen after the fact. I had no reason to doubt its theft. We would need to speak to the owner and confirm this and confirm any alibi.
Having a full VRM would mean we could track it with ANPR and put out an alert on PNC and let all uniform units know to keep an eye out for it, but not to approach it. To inform control and get an ARV to do a stop.
One step forward.
The pizza came, boxes and boxes of the stuff. I paid up and was greeted with cheers. It was a sure-fire way to keep everyone going no matter how hard they’d worked or how tired they were. Food was a pick-me-up. Especially if it came in a flat box. A couple of staff were still out on inquiries but the pizza would be eaten cold or warmed up in the microwave. They wouldn’t miss out.
I put a call in to Buckhurst again, this time he picked up. I dropped my slice of pizza and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. ‘Ryan, it’s DI Robbins.’
‘Yeah, I recognise your number,’ he replied.
Of course he did. ‘Are you available to meet up? There’s something I need to talk to you about.’
The line went quiet. I let it play out. He would either agree to it or he wouldn’t. There was no point in pushing him or getting stressed about it.
Eventually he came back to me, ‘I heard
about the woman and the kid.’
I didn’t speak. It wasn’t a question nor was it a response to my question.
‘Okay, fifteen minutes at Burrows Court again, same terms as last time.’
Aaron wouldn’t like that but he’d proved he could be trusted to an extent last time we met, I’d give him that same level of trust this time. I needed to attempt to prevent a gang war and if I had to meet him on his terms then so be it.
The rain-soaked ground was soft and muddy beneath our feet.
He stood there. Arms crossed. Face impassive.
‘This is Aaron.’
‘I said alone.’ Buckhurst was like a mirror image of Aaron. Hard-faced and not happy with the situation one bit.
It was dark. There was no lighting up here in front of Burrows Court. We all used torch light to find our way about. It provided a more sinister feel to the meet and the darkness was another reason Aaron had insisted I not come alone, because I would not be able to see Buckhurst’s goons move towards me if they decided attacking a cop was a good idea.
‘Yeah, well, you got two for the price of one.’ He wasn’t amused. ‘And I don’t have time to argue about it.’ He had four men in the background again. Big lads, round stomachs extended way past any belt they may have been wearing. Shoulders like boulders below their heads. Which themselves were like solid rocks. Three of them bald, shined and scarred.
‘The situation is out of hand and we need to calm it down,’ I continued.
‘We had nothing to do with the woman and the kid.’ He crossed his arms. The cream tower block looming over his shoulder.
‘But you know about it.’
He barked. A sound that I presumed was supposed to be a laugh. ‘Everyone knows about it. And in my position I need to know about stuff like that.’
I didn’t ask him why that was. I wasn’t here to go into the whys and wherefores of what he did or did not do. I was here to calm the situation. The rest would wait for official investigations.
‘What do you know about it?’ I asked him. If he knew about it, it was possible he knew enough to help.
Another bark. ‘What is it with you that you think I’m here to help you out?’
I didn’t know. But I knew he had his ear to the ground. I had to try. ‘You said last time that someone else was in the house.’
‘Yeah and what have you done with it?’
‘I need more.’
A snort this time. And he turned to walk away.
‘Wait.’
He paused.
‘Look, you might not want to help us, but I need you to give us some time to resolve this without the issue of retribution. It will only spiral and get worse.’
‘You mean for Miller and Davis? My two guys who are now dead?’ The emphasis was on the word dead. Pretty much how his eyes now looked. Why did I think I could talk to a guy like this? Maybe because he’d agreed to meet me and something was driving this.
‘You don’t want a turf war any more than I do. You might want the Talbots out of the way, but you don’t want a war…’ Sooo, why was he doing this? He was getting something out of this, he had to be. Here he was, the leader of a feared gang, meeting a police officer, there had to be a reason. I was missing something. ‘Give us some more time? Before you act.’
He looked at me. ‘You haven’t proved yourself very good at your job, DI Robbins.’
I looked to Aaron. His face was equally as steely as Buckhurst’s but I knew Aaron and it wasn’t the same. I wanted to laugh. Ridiculous as the moment was. For some reason Buckhurst didn’t want to hurt us, he wanted to us to work the problem out.
‘We’re working around the clock. Tell us where to look.’
He shook his head. His voice hard edged, telling me we were out of time. ‘As I said last time, the house. You need to focus on what happened last time. In your last investigation. The answers are there.’
Hannah
It was half an hour out of the evening I didn’t want to take, but it was important.
‘You think it was worth it?’ Aaron asked as he manoeuvred the car through the light evening traffic. Hands steadfastly in the ten two position.
‘I do. I think he’s focused us. On where we need to look.’ I turned to Aaron. ‘You don’t?’
‘I don’t trust him.’
‘I don’t expect you to trust him.’
‘What if he or one of his, was responsible for the drive-by earlier? You think it’s right we talk to him this way before we get further information from our investigations?’
‘I think we needed to talk to him before the drive-by happened and it was…’ how to phrase this without turning the loss of a parent, the violent gunning down of a community minded woman in the street, into an inconvenience, when it was anything but, ‘still necessary to talk to him after events unfolded. More so, I’d suggest.’
He wasn’t annoyed. He assumed the role of devil’s advocate. This was a space we could talk it through and here, in this car, we were safe to say what we needed to. ‘So, what did you come away from the meet-up with?’ he asked. Eyes still on the road.
‘I’m not sure he would have met us if he had been responsible for Tremelle’s death for one. He had been slow to pick up the phone to me and yet eventually he did and he met me.’ I looked to Aaron again. ‘He met us.’
‘And that told you he was innocent.’
‘I wouldn’t go that far. I don’t believe he shot or ordered the shooting of Tremelle.’ I took in a deep breath. ‘But, I could well be wrong. It has been known.’
There was no disagreement from the next seat.
‘But, that gives us a very difficult question,’ I continued.
‘It does indeed.’
‘Who the hell shot Tremelle?’
Now Aaron pulled his eyes away from the road. ‘It has to be someone who wants to cover up the Talbot murder.’ He slid his focus back to the front.
I rubbed my face. Dammit. ‘Which means Ryan Buckhurst didn’t kill Talbot?’
‘That’s what you’re saying,’ Aaron agreed with me.
‘So, we go back to the original consideration that it could be family of Blake or a cop? Which means we have bent cops passing on intelligence and killer cops. Are you kidding me?’ I was losing the plot.
‘We need to work the cases as we work any other cases, Hannah. Focus on where the evidence leads us.’
The wipers sliding across the windscreen started to squeak as they moved from side to side. I inclined my head at them. ‘We need to get those changed.’ I looked at Aaron. ‘He was also telling us something else. Directing us somewhere.’
‘And you want to listen?’
‘I think we should.’
‘Yeah, because we run all our investigations on the say-so of local gang leaders.’ Aaron indicated to turn right from Highfield Drive onto Foxhill Road Central.
‘We follow the information. He provided us information that is worth our attention. And bear in mind, we were looking at it anyway.’
Aaron pulled the car up to the kerb.
‘This is one messed up job, Hannah.’
Zakari Williams was an imposing man. He took up most of the small living room we were all standing in. And he towered over both me and Aaron. For all his height and width, his fear for his son appeared to have visibly shrunk him. His hands were clasped in front of him, wrapped around one another. His eyes, wide, pleading, for someone to explain the last couple of hours to him, to tell him it was all a mistake and that Tremelle was alive and well and their son, the son he hadn’t had anything to do with, wasn’t alone in the world with only him to rely on.
‘I’m so sorry for your loss.’ I sat on the nearest chair to me. ‘Tell me about your relationship with Tremelle.’ I indicated that Zakari should also sit. He needed to settle a little if he could. Like a child, he dropped onto the sofa which softly gave to his bulk.
‘She, she, she told me to stay away from Shobi and that she didn’t need my help and I should stay
away. So, I did.’
‘How did you feel about that? About not seeing your son?’ I looked to Aaron, wanting him to sit as well. His standing was oppressive. He furrowed his eyebrows at me. I flicked my eyes down to the other chair in the room and he moved towards it and sat.
‘It was what she wanted. I didn’t have much to offer them so I did as she wanted.’
‘You weren’t angry?’
Zakari stood. ‘Angry enough to shoot her in front of him?’ His voice raised. ‘No. No, I wasn’t angry enough to do that.’
I stayed where I was. ‘I didn’t mean it like that.’ What had I meant it like? Had I been looking for another way out of this other than the option that was staring us in the face? ‘Please, sit.’ I waved my hand back towards the sofa he’d vacated. ‘We will get details of where you were, but just to rule you out.’
Zakari scowled, but stayed silent. Still standing. Filling the room. With his physicality and anger. Both were dominating, oppressive.
‘Please,’ I asked. ‘Sit, help us out.’
He stared at me.
‘What I want to know is, did you have any kind of relationship with them? With Tremelle? Did she talk to you at all? About anything that was worrying her?’
Zakari sank back into the sofa which plumped around him and welcomed him back like a long-lost friend. He shook his head. ‘We didn’t keep in touch. She said stay away, so I stayed away.’ He dropped his head in his hands. ‘What about Shobi? What happens to him now?’
‘Are you prepared to take him?’
‘Oh my God, yes.’ He softened. ‘That poor boy. I don’t have much to offer him and he doesn’t know me, but he wouldn’t know no foster family, but I want to have him, to give him a home. To take care of him. He’s blood and blood means everything. This is only a one bedroom apartment, but he can have the bedroom until I can sort us somewhere else out to live.’
The DI Hannah Robbins Series: Books 1 - 3 (Boxset) (Detective Hannah Robbins Crime Series) Page 64
