by GS Rhodes
“Right,” Kidd said. He watched as Daniel shifted where he sat, like he was suddenly unable to get himself comfortable. What was he not telling them? “And why didn’t you answer your phone?”
“What’s that now?”
“Your phone,” Kidd repeated. “Rachel called you, the officers did too. You weren’t responding.”
“It was a busy day,” he said. “I was in meetings, back to back, absolutely swamped. I…I couldn’t get to the phone.”
Daniel locked eyes with Kidd now, a challenge almost.
“Even when your wife was calling you so much?”
“I was busy,” Daniel said. “Don’t you think I already feel guilty enough as it is, without you piling on?” His face went a little red, his grip tightening on Rachel’s hand. “I couldn’t be there for my wife when she needed me most, do you know how that makes me feel?”
“We didn’t mean to press you, Mr Walters,” Zoe said, shooting a quick glance at Kidd before continuing. “What DI Kidd means is, do you have someone who can confirm that at your office? Is there somebody we can speak to who will confirm it?”
Daniel thought about it for a moment, letting go of Rachel’s hand.
“I think so, yes,” he said. “I’ll…I’ll give you my assistant’s number, she’ll be able to give you my schedule for the day.”
“Thank you,” Kidd said. “We’d appreciate that.”
Daniel shot Kidd a cold look, one that he possibly deserved. But there was something about the way that Daniel seemed to challenge him that didn’t sit right with Kidd. He didn’t seem happy with the line of questioning, but not because he was upset. Now wasn’t the time to dig any deeper. Kidd turned his attention to Rachel.
“We’re keeping all of our options open in terms of lines of enquiry,” Kidd said. “But one thing that usually helps in situations like this is an appeal for information to the general public.”
Rachel sat up a little straighter. “What does that mean?”
“It means we will bring you down to the station, sit you in front of some journalists from national press as well as local, and you will appeal for information,” Kidd said. “It’s asking anybody who knows anything to come forward.”
Rachel nodded. It wasn’t what Kidd wanted to do, but even if they got a little bit of information from it, it would be worth it.
“I’ll do whatever it takes,” she said, looking to her husband for support. He smiled a tight-lipped smile back at her. “Anything to bring our little girl back.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
“Went in a little bit strong there, didn’t you?” Zoe said as they got back into the car. “I thought he was going to have a breakdown or something.”
They had explained the procedure of the appeal to Rachel, that they would be in touch with her to arrange an appropriate time for it to happen, and that it would be sooner rather than later, possibly even today if they could arrange it. She seemed keen to help, desperate to do anything to get her daughter back.
“I didn’t like him,” Kidd said flatly. “There was something about him.”
“What?” Zoe asked, turning on the engine and starting away from the house. “The fact that he didn’t answer his phone while he was at work rubbed you up the wrong way?” she asked. “If that’s a crime, you’d be guilty as sin, both when you’re on duty and off.”
“Cheap shot.”
“A fair one, I’d say,” she parried with a smirk.
“It wasn’t so much that,” Kidd said. “Don’t you think he was a little odd?”
“His daughter has just gone missing and he wasn’t able to do anything about it,” Zoe said. “And when it came down to him needing to help his wife, he was nowhere to be found. He’s probably racked with guilt.”
Kidd wasn’t so sure. There was more to it than that. It was just a feeling, something that he couldn’t put his finger on yet, but there was more, he was sure of it. He had no idea how he would find out what exactly, but maybe speaking to the people at his office would help. They had the address. He worked in a recruitment office in Kingston town. He’d make some calls, see if he could go down there to talk to them about it, if things still didn’t feel like they were adding up. And something about the way he’d been acting told Kidd that things really weren’t going to add up.
They carried on out of Teddington, driving along the riverfront and through Twickenham to get to Richmond. The address that Weaver had given Kidd was one that he recognised. He’d visited it a few times when they’d initially investigated the case. He’d been there to look for Peter when he wasn’t at his own property, they’d spoken to his mother, Eveline too. He didn’t think he would be coming back here so soon. Peter should have been spending the next five years in prison, he shouldn’t have been out. Not yet.
The house was tall, terraced, and looked like it had been well-kept over the years. It overlooked the green and was a stone’s throw from the riverside. Eveline was living a rather good life, it seemed. She had spent most of her life here with Peter’s father, and until he moved out aged eighteen, Peter also. Harrison West had died a few years ago, while Peter was in prison. Eveline had lived alone for the majority of Peter’s sentence. Kidd couldn’t help but wonder how she must feel now that he was back in the picture.
The green was covered in people, as it often was when it was a nice enough day. There were people out with coffees, with early lunches, enjoying the weather in a peaceful part of London. It was places like this that made you forget that you were so close to the big city.
“Nice place,” Zoe said, looking it up and down. “Must be worth a bloody fortune.”
Kidd scoffed. “House prices in London are already sky-high, you come to Richmond and it’s like a different planet."
Kidd knocked on the door. It rattled back at him in response. Maybe it wasn’t quite as well kept as he thought. The door felt like it would fall off its hinges if he hit it again.
There was no movement from inside, no curtain twitching on the upper floors that told them someone was peeking out or had seen them coming. Kidd knocked again, a little more carefully this time, before bending down and looking through the letterbox. He could safely assume that a dog wasn’t about to jump up and nip at his fingers if they weren’t reacting to the aggressive knocking.
There was no one to be seen inside, no movement, nothing, The lights were off, the curtains were drawn downstairs, and nothing met him but silence. It didn’t sit well with Kidd.
“We’ll have to come back later,” Kidd said, getting back to his feet. There was a creeping feeling of unease covering him as he stepped away. He didn’t want to leave it unchecked. It felt like a stone that they needed to turn and quickly. “Maybe Janya can put in a call or something, leave a message, let them know we want a word.”
Zoe nodded. “Sounds good to me,” she said. “He has to know we’ll want to talk to him, right?”
Kidd took a heavy breath. “That’s exactly what I’m afraid of.”
They drove back to the station in almost complete silence, Kidd mulling over the interview, Zoe focussing on the road. It felt like there were still things to be said, but neither one of them wanted to say them. Kidd wasn’t sure if it was to do with the case, or his personal life. They both appeared to be giving him problems at the moment. He’d been in that situation before, and last time he let them both get on top of him, he’d ended up signed off with stress. He couldn’t risk getting himself into that position again.
“Keep driving,” Kidd said as they made their way towards the station. Zoe did as he asked, driving right past the police station and past the Rose Theatre. Kidd continued to direct her until they reached a house just off the back of the river, near the end of South Lane. If you walked a little you’d be right on the riverfront, right opposite where Maggie was taken. “Stop just here,” Kidd said. Zoe stopped the car.
The house they were stopped in front of was small, thin, and run down. There was a bit of graffiti on the outside of it, a t
ag that Kidd had seen one too many times around the Kingston area that he could never quite read. It looked like Mouse or Beast, he could never quite make it out. Some of the windows had been smashed, either by vandals or by accident and had been boarded up, then used as a canvas for even more graffiti. On a relatively clean road in a relatively nice part of town, it was an eyesore.
“What’s this place?” Zoe asked.
“Peter West’s old house,” Kidd replied. “Well, it’s still his house I suppose, he’s just not in it right now.”
“That we know of,” Zoe added.
Kidd blew out a puff of air. “That we know of, right.”
“Ben, it’s so bloody close to the station,” she said, quietly turning around in her chair to look back down the road. “You go down there, what, five minutes in a car and you’re right outside the front door.”
“I know,” he said. “It made it all the more embarrassing that we didn’t catch him quicker.”
Kidd got himself out of the car and started towards the house. Zoe quickly jumped out too, hurrying to catch up.
“What are you doing?” she asked. “You can’t just—”
“I can just,” he said, marching up to the front door and hammering on it with his fist. Immediately, he pressed his ear to the door to see if he could hear anything, any movement, any sound whatsoever. Nothing came back. He hammered again, harder, louder, longer, before pressing his ear against it one more time.
The letterbox had been boarded up some time ago it seemed, the nails in it had long since rusted. He was about to start knocking again when he felt Zoe’s hand on his shoulder.
“The boss has put him on our radar,” she said. “We can go and talk to him if you want, make sure we can strike him off the list. But hammering on his door and causing a scene isn’t going to do anything, unless you’re planning on kicking down the door and raiding the place.”
Kidd chuckled darkly. “I don’t have any reason to do that. Unless of course I’m looking to get myself fired.”
Zoe raised an eyebrow at him. “Oh, is that why you’ve been acting foolish all these years? You’ve been waiting for someone to write you up?” She shook her head, the smile fading from her face. “Come on,” she said. “We should get back.”
Kidd looked up at the house one more time, remembering how they had broken down that door, how they had hurried in there to find the kids in that basement, malnourished, shadows of who they had been before. He didn’t want that to happen again. If it was Peter West who was behind this, he would make sure he went down for the rest of his life and if it wasn’t…God help whoever it was.
◆◆◆
The Incident Room was a hive of activity when they got back. The board had been fully changed over, a picture of the smiling Maggie Walters front and centre watching them all, like it was specifically asking each of them, “What are you doing to help find me?” Below that were pictures of the parents, a map of the riverside and her possible last movements. Beyond that, what on earth did they have to go on? That appeal needed to happen sooner rather than later, if they were going to make any progress whatsoever.
“Boss,” DC Ravel piped up as Kidd and Sanchez hung up their coats. “I managed to chat to the friend, Victoria Moore, nothing on record for her, by the way, but she’s in for the rest of the day if anyone wants to go and get a statement.”
“Perfect, thank you, Janya,” Kidd said.
“She seemed really sad, sir,” she continued. “I know that seems like a given, her friend’s kid has gone missing, but she sounded really cut up about it. Said that it was her fault a few times because it was her kids that Maggie was off with. I’m…truth be told, I’m a little worried about her.”
Kidd nodded. “Whoever goes down there should keep a proper eye on her then,” Kidd said. “Check in on her, make sure she’s in her right mind, okay?”
“Sounds good, boss,” Janya said, settling back in behind her computer.
Kidd stopped in his tracks on the way to his desk. There was an unfamiliar form hunched over DC Simon Powell’s computer. It took Kidd a moment to figure out who it was. Simon obviously had his chair quite low, because right now, DCI Weaver looked like something fresh out of Hobbiton from The Lord of the Rings.
“Boss?” Kidd said tentatively. “What are you…uh…what are you doing?”
Weaver looked up at DI Kidd and cleared his throat. “Just helping out, Kidd,” Weaver said. “Janya was looking to find out if anybody else in the area had been kidnapped recently, and I came in and asked if anyone needed a hand and she put me to work.”
Kidd opened his mouth to respond but he couldn’t sift through all the jokes in his head fast enough to figure out exactly what he was going to say. He didn’t know whether to poke fun at his gargantuan boss hunched over a desk or to thank him for his assistance, or maybe return to the initial Hobbit joke that had sailed through his head.
In a moment that even Kidd would later think of as ‘growth,’ he kept his mouth shut and headed over to his desk to boot up his computer.
“What is he—?” Sanchez started.
“I think it’s best we don’t ask,” Kidd said. “We could probably use the help, and even if it is the boss, he might actually be able to make himself useful for once.”
“Tenner says he fucks something up before lunchtime.”
“Deal.”
Kidd turned his attention to the rest of his team and—doing his best not to look at his boss hunched over a desk—started to tell them what had happened at the Walters’ residence.
“Sanchez managed to get hold of an address and phone number for Daniel Walters’ workplace,” Kidd said. “Campbell, if you wouldn’t mind, get in touch with them and see if you can corroborate his story for us. There’s something…” Kidd trailed off. Maybe it wasn’t best to start rousing suspicions about the husband based off nothing more than a hunch. But it was a pretty big hunch. Kidd shook it off, at least for the time being. He’d see what Campbell could come up with first. “If you could call them, Campbell, that would be brilliant.”
“I’ve got the number here,” Zoe said, pulling out her notebook and heading over to his desk.
“Boss?” Kidd added.
“Yes, Kidd?” Weaver replied.
“I’ve managed to get Rachel to agree to a public appeal,” he said. “She seems quite keen, not altogether surprising given the severity of this and the fact that her daughter is missing, but I wonder if you’d be able to set that up for us? Sooner rather than later.”
Weaver’s eyes widened. He knew better than most how Kidd felt about working with the press. They both seemed to hate it as much as the other, the only difference being that Weaver often got to palm things off on Kidd, while he had to suffer and talk to the vultures.
“Surprised to be hearing that from you, Kidd,” Weaver replied. “You sure?”
“It might help, sir,” Kidd said. “At the moment, we’ve got practically nothing to go on, at least until something comes back from forensics. What have we got to lose?”
“A little bit of dignity,” Weaver said. “Depending on who they send along, of course.”
It was a fair point. Vultures they may be, if a reporter decided to take an aggressive line of questioning with the DI, things may not end all that well. Hopefully, the focus would remain on Rachel and would stay respectful.
Yeah, Kidd thought. And after the press conference I’ll ride home on my flying pig.
“It might be the best thing to do,” Kidd said.
Weaver got up from his chair, standing to his full height so he towered over DI Kidd a little. The man was a beast, and as funny as it was to see him at Simon’s desk, this made Kidd feel a lot more comfortable, and less like laughing in the big man’s face.
“I’ll get right on it,” Weaver said. “Maybe get it for this afternoon if we can manage it.”
“We’ll check in with Rachel and make sure that works.”
“I’ll get right on that,” Zoe said,
taking her seat behind her desk. Weaver started out of the room. They had movement, they had things to work on. Already it was starting to feel like they were making progress.
There was a buzzing in Kidd’s pocket. He took out his phone to see the words UNKNOWN NUMBER in block capitals across the front of it. It made his heart skip, and he cursed himself for it. He knew who it was. It would be Craig. He took a breath and started for the door to the Incident Room.
CHAPTER NINE
“Hello?” Kidd said into the phone as he got out into the corridor, walking at speed towards the exit.
“Hey, Ben, sorry to do this to you,” Craig said. It was still strange to be hearing his voice, even stranger to think that he was less than a twenty minute walk away. “I didn’t want to just, I don’t know, do something and then it be the wrong thing.”
Kidd had no idea what he was talking about. He buzzed himself out into the reception area and stepped out the front door of the station. Without thinking too much on it, he walked a little way away, leaning on a wall. It wasn’t like anyone in the station probably cared who he was on the phone to, but you never knew who was listening.
“You should probably unblock your number or something,” Kidd said. It came out harsh. He could practically hear Craig flinch on the other end of the phone.
That’s right, Ben, scare him off, Kidd thought. You’ve only been looking for him for two years. At this rate, he’ll be gone before lunchtime.
“I just mean that it’s coming up as an unknown number,” he said. “I should probably have your number, right? In case something happens.”
“Probably a good idea, yeah,” Craig said. “Sorry about that. It’s a new phone. Had to get rid of the old one. I…I didn’t know if you’d want to speak to me after…everything, so thought it best to block the number. I’ll change it.”
“Where did you go?” Kidd asked. “For two years, where did you go?”
“That’s not what I called for.”
“I know that,” Kidd said. “But two years, Craig, where did you—?”
