by GS Rhodes
She seemed startled at first, then instantly annoyed.
“He’s not here,” she said, groaning and rolling her eyes and returning to whatever she was looking at on her computer screen. “It’s Saturday, do you lot never take a day off?”
It was clearly lost on her that she was also working on a Saturday, but Kidd wasn’t about to bring it up. They didn’t have time.
“We’re not looking for Daniel.”
“Oh, who do you want, then?”
“Louise Harker, we’re looking for Louise Harker,” Kidd breathed.
“She was here, yeah,” the woman said. “But she had to pop out to run an errand, borrowing a company car I think. Then she came back, grabbed something, and off she went again. She does that quite a lot, in-out, in-out, she just needs to shake it all about and she’ll be doing the bloody Hokey Cokey.”
She laughed. Kidd didn’t.
“Is she in trouble?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said. “When did she leave?”
She looked at her watch. “Five minutes ago? Can’t have been more than ten. You just missed her.”
“What car is she in?” Zoe asked.
They got the details from her before heading out of the building at breakneck speed. Kidd was already on the phone to Weaver, giving him the car’s description and reg number. It wasn’t an inconspicuous car. It was a red Mondeo, the All Out Recruitment logo emblazoned across the side of it. If Louise was planning a stealthy getaway, she was doing it in the wrong vehicle.
Campbell had spotted her on the CCTV around South Lane. There hadn’t been a lot of it, but Kidd was certain it had been her. It was the bag he’d noticed, that same big bag that she’d been carrying when she’d spoken to him and Sanchez.
When he thought back to it, she probably had Maggie’s coat sitting in that bag. All it would have taken was a misstep from her when they’d spoken in the parking garage, and all would have been revealed.
Kidd was still reeling that she was in some way responsible for this. He’d spoken to her, she’d pointed them towards Leigh, she’d steered them away from Daniel and then back towards him, by planting the coat she had even tried to pin it on Peter West. She’d been playing them the entire time.
Campbell hadn’t paid attention to her at the time because he had been looking for Peter West. But when she’d shown up on the CCTV outside Bentalls, he had made the connection. Once he’d gotten confirmation that she had Tilly, Kidd knew that they needed to move. If she knew that she’d made a mistake, then there was no telling what her next move was going to be.
A message came through as Sanchez drove them away from the All Out Recruitment offices.
HORSE FAIR.
She hadn’t managed to get far. Horse Fair was the road that ran around the outside of the Bentall Centre and over the bridge. He told Zoe and she put her foot down, speeding them around the bastard one-way system, which was really starting to grate on Kidd in that moment.
“I can’t believe we didn’t see it before,” he said.
“How could we?” Zoe said, her eyes laser-focussed on the road. She was definitely speeding, but this was no time to play games. “She didn’t give anything away, she was trying to point us in a different direction.”
She kept driving, heading towards Kingston Bridge. Up ahead there was the sound of horns, the sound of tyres screeching to a halt. A bus seemed to judder as it came to a stop right before heading onto the bridge. Kidd craned his neck to see what was going on.
There she was. The car wasn’t inconspicuous and neither was her driving.
Zoe leaned on the horn and the cars started moving through the green light. It was changing as they reached it. Kidd closed his eyes as Zoe ran the light and kept on driving.
Louise swerved into the bus lane, almost getting into a head-on collision with a double-decker bus before swerving back to where she had been before.
“She’s out of her mind,” Kidd growled.
“Us chasing her probably isn’t helping,” Zoe said. “Can you call her?”
Kidd’s eyes bulged out of his head. “What?”
“She might answer, we can tell her to pull over. We have to try something or she’s going to get herself and whoever is in that car with her killed,” Zoe barked. “Tilly might be in there.”
It hadn’t even occurred to him. He clearly wasn’t thinking straight. He pulled his phone out of his pocket and dialled her number. As it rang, he cursed himself for taking her at her word, for listening to what she had to say, thinking she was trying to help them, when all along she’d been behind it.
She picked up. Kidd almost didn’t know what to say.
“Slow down,” he said.
“No, no, no, no, no,” Louise muttered as she took the first exit on the roundabout away from Kingston, quickly swinging her car right and down past one of the University Halls of Residence.
“Louise, listen, you need to slow down or you’re just going to get yourself into even more trouble,” Kidd said.
She didn’t answer. She just kept going, past the church, past the park, through a crossing that had people halfway over it. Zoe slammed on the brakes. The people crossed. It was agonising before they could get moving again.
“Louise, please listen to me,” Kidd said. His voice was probably ringing through that car but it didn’t feel like she was hearing him. “We can talk about this. We want to let you explain.”
“You won’t understand.” It sounded like she was crying, she practically screamed it at him. There was the sound of tyres screeching, she had turned another corner, Kidd didn’t have a clue where she could have gone. “You won’t understand and you’ll lock me away. I was only doing what needed to be done…I was only…I was…”
There was the sound of an engine shutting off, of a door opening and closing. Kidd listened hard for anything in the background, anything that might tell them where she was.
“I was doing what had to be done,” she said. “And I’m…I’m sorry.”
There was an electronic beeping sound, loud, obnoxious. The sound of an announcement over a Tannoy system.
He covered the receiver. “Teddington Station,” he told Zoe. She carried on down the road, past the picturesque houses, turning down Adelaide Road. He could see the car up ahead, half up the kerb. She wasn’t inside, she was in the train station, and there was a train coming.
“Shit.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Zoe pulled up the car, the two of them racing towards the vehicle that Louise had left behind. There were two children in the back seat, one that was instantly recognisable as Maggie Walters, asleep, possibly knocked out, and another that Zoe recognised as Brody Wade. He looked like he was in a pretty bad way. It had been almost a week since he had been taken. Had she been feeding him? Had she taken care of him? It was hard to tell, but he didn’t look right.
She pulled out her phone.
“I’m going to get some people down here,” she said. “Do you know where she’s gone?”
What about Tilly? he thought. He looked back towards the train station. She wouldn’t, would she?
“I think she’s on the platform,” Kidd said, heading towards the station. He knew that Zoe would be able to handle things out here, that she would make sure those kids were alright. In a strange way, it was a relief to see that Maggie and Brody were both there, both still alive, even if Brody looked worse for wear. He just needed to find Tilly.
He stepped through the opening at the side of the train station, making his way onto the platform. There were a couple of people on the other side of the tracks, waiting for the train that would take them to London, but this side was empty. Empty except for Louise Harker, who was standing at the platform edge, staring down at the rails. Kidd could already see where this was going. He needed to tread carefully if he was going to keep her safe.
“Louise,” he said, trying not to sound as angry as he felt. She still jumped at the sound of his voice. Maybe she hadn’t been
expecting them to arrive so soon, or even at all. Maybe she thought she had a way out of this if only she had the courage to jump from the platform.
He looked up at the noticeboard. He didn’t have long, three minutes until the train was due. The one time a bloody train decides it’s going to be on time. Typical.
“Please don’t panic,” he said. “I’m here to help you, okay? I’m not here to cause any trouble. Just talk to me, Louise.”
She wouldn’t look at him. Her gaze was on the tracks on the horizon where the train would be coming from. Her mind had been made up, it seemed. He needed to unmake it.
“Louise!” A bark this time, enough to pull her focus to him just for a moment.
She looked terrified. The frizzy hair that was around her head seemed wilder than it had done when he’d last seen her. The eyes that were being dragged down by tired bags were all the heavier. What she’d been doing had taken a toll on her, that much was clear.
“Talk to me,” he said. “Tell me what happened.”
“You’ve already figured it out, haven’t you?” she said with a little chuckle. Kidd only wished that were true. “You found me. You tracked me down. You used your detective skills to find the right person. Congratulations.”
It all sounded hollow, it sounded like she was trying to make a joke but had missed the punchline somewhere along the way. What was she getting at?
“No,” he said. “You made a mistake. You abducted a child with the eyes of the entire town centre on you. We’ve got it on film, Louise, there’s no denying it, but you need to tell me about the other children. Why the other children?”
Louise was shaking. He could see from this distance that she was falling apart. Had she never expected to get caught? Maybe she hadn’t. Maybe she thought she could get away with it. Maybe that was why she got so careless.
“I was doing it because it was what they deserved,” she said, her voice quiet, barely loud enough to make it across the gap between them. Kidd took a step towards her. “Don’t come any closer!” she shrieked.
Kidd stopped.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Keep going. You think the children deserved it?”
The Tannoy announcement sounded again, the same one he had heard down the phone. The train would arrive in two minutes, they were running out of time. He needed to get to the bottom of this and fast.
“The children didn’t deserve it,” she said, shaking her head. “It was their parents who deserved it for what they did. They were already hurting their children, already making them suffer by what they were doing. And I…I was making sure they paid for it.”
“You really were making sure they paid for it,” Kidd said. “Those ransom notes must have been earning you a pretty penny, huh?” Forensics was already checking the one to Eric Wade for prints, it would be another piece of evidence against her.
He thought back to what she’d said to them when they’d spoken to her in the parking garage. How she needed the money from this job really badly, how she’d had a side hustle as a delivery driver at one point. Was this her newest side hustle? How desperate could she have gotten?
“Ransom notes?” she asked, her head tilting to one side. “What ransom notes?”
“For the children, Louise, the ransom notes,” he said.
“I never sent any notes,” she said, her brow knitting together. “I did what I was told, I took the children when they were away from their parents, I returned them when I was supposed to…” she trailed off, lost in the forest of her own thoughts.
“Who told you what to do?” Kidd asked. “Were they paying you?”
She nodded.
“They paid me for my time, for my services,” she said. “I told you I had to do something to survive and this was…this was perfect.”
“Louise, it wasn’t the perfect thing,” Kidd said. “This is wrong, can you at least see that what you did was wrong?”
She opened her mouth to respond, searching for words that weren’t there.
The Tannoy announcement came again. One minute.
He needed to get closer to her if he was going to stop her from doing the unthinkable. She had so much information that they needed if they were going to get to the bottom of this, but time wasn’t on their side.
There were sirens getting closer, an ambulance, a police car on blues and twos. They needed to hurry up, Kidd wasn’t sure he’d be able to stop her on his own. He changed tack.
“Where’s Tilly?” he asked.
“Tilly?” she repeated.
“The girl you took this morning, where is she?” Kidd asked. “Maggie and Brody are in the car, but where is Tilly?”
“She’s safe,” she replied with an easy smile that struck a cold spike of fear into Kidd’s heart. “She’ll be safe. I made sure she was safe.”
“Why isn’t Tilly here?”
“She didn’t want me to bring her,” Louise said.
She, Kidd thought. Who the bloody hell is ‘she’?
“Why?”
“Investments,” she said. “I didn’t know what she meant at the time, it didn’t really make a whole lot of sense to me, if I’m honest.”
An electric clicking sound started on the tracks below, a sound familiar enough for Kidd to know that the train was on its way. Time had officially run out, and if he was going to do something, he would need to act now.
“Now that you’ve mentioned the ransom notes, I understand,” she said. “If she’s using them to get money out of the parents, then to get rid of them all at once would be careless. Brody was a mistake. Maggie didn’t seem like she was one, but I guess we’ll never know. Tilly is just another investment.”
“She’s not just another investment, she’s my niece!” Kidd shouted. “Tell me where she is; tell me who has her!”
“It’s funny, really,” Louise said, turning her attention to the tramline once again. Kidd could see the train approaching. The people on the other side of the platform were watching them intently, trying to figure out what was going to happen next. “You’ve been so close, so many times. You were close to me, you were close to her. You were practically on top of them at one point. And now…” Louise shrugged. “Now, I suppose it’s too late.”
Kidd burst forward from where he was standing just as Louise started off the platform. He grabbed her with the same hand he had punched Greg with, the pain of it ripping through his fist, through his arm, right up into his shoulder, but he couldn’t let her go.
He dragged her away from the edge of the platform and brought her tumbling to the ground. She tried to fight against him, tried to get out of his grip, but to no avail. Kidd was in pain, physical and emotional, as he held her on the ground at the platform edge. He heard cars pull up outside, the sounds of sirens shutting off, and he let out a heavy sigh as he heard the footsteps approaching. But this wasn’t over. Not yet, anyhow, but he knew where he needed to go next.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
The house near Penrhyn Road University Campus still looked as inconspicuous as it had when he’d been there this morning. There was a strange sort of dirtiness that seemed to have appeared on the outside. It was tainted now. Though, Anna Hazelhurst had claimed this was a place to look after girls, it was more than that. Kidd could see it now. He could see it all.
Zoe had returned to the station, gathering the officers and briefing them on what would need to be done with the house once Kidd was done. She didn’t like the idea of him going in there alone, but she wasn’t far. She would be able to send in reinforcements if things got bad. He didn’t think they would.
He didn’t knock. He just stepped through the front door. Anna looked up from behind the counter, her face twisting into a smile as DI Kidd approached.
“Well, well, DI Kidd,” Anna said. “What can I do for you? Are you here for business or pleasure?”
“Business,” he said.
“Don’t like to mix the two?”
“I’m afraid not,” he said. “Where is Tally Hill?
”
Anna blinked. “Where is…?” she trailed off, turning her ear towards him, like it needed repeating.
“Tally Hill,” Kidd said. “You know why I’m here, you must know why I am here.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Anna said, getting to her feet and closing the book that lay open on her desk. “And if you’re not here for pleasure, DI Kidd, then I’m afraid you’re fresh out of luck.”
“I’m here to investigate.”
She walked around her desk and stood in front of him. Her breath was laced with coffee, a little smudge of nude lipstick on her crooked front teeth. “Then I think you’ll need a warrant, won’t you?”
“I have everything I need,” he said. “You might want to get your girls out of here.”
She widened her eyes at him. “And why might that be?”
Kidd took a heavy breath. “There’s a forensics team outside and a lot of police officers who are waiting to come in here as soon as I’m done,” he said. “You said that this house was a place where you protected your girls and kept them safe from…well…from the general public, but also from us. There’s no use in them getting into any trouble for something that you’ve done.”
She blinked, her eyes locked on him. “I’ll…I’ll tell them to leave. What will—?”
“When we’re finished with the place they can come back then.”
“Thank you,” she said, and she seemed to genuinely mean it.
“Now, I’m going ask you one more time, where is Tally Hill?” he asked. “And the girl that was taken this morning, I need to know where she is too.”
Anna hesitated. Whatever Tally had done to this place, whatever hold she had over Anna was still stopping her.
“Tally is…she’s downstairs,” she said, keeping her voice low. “I don’t think she knows you’re—”
