Your Best Shot: An Electrifying British Crime Thriller (DI Benjamin Kidd Crime Thrillers Book 3)

by GS Rhodes

  “Where is it?” Zoe asked, nodding to Kidd’s phone. He’d already put the address into Google Maps and seen a pin pop up not too far away from them.

  “Just behind the station,” he said. “We’ll leave the car here, it’s not far.”

  They made their way across the road and beneath the railway bridge, past the homeless people that begged for spare change, past the Turkish Supermarket, and towards a new build that rose out of the ground like a concrete and metal monster, the tips of it scraping the sky.

  A pair of giant automatic doors opened to let them into a pristine reception area. It was light, airy, with dark grey walls and high ceilings that made every footstep echo loudly back at you. There were a few plants here and there, giving everything a pop of colour, but the theme here was clearly meant to be minimalist. Behind a humongous desk sat a man in a black suit, his dark hair drenched in product and swept over to one side.

  “May I help you?” he chirped, flashing them a set of perfect white teeth.

  “I’m DI Kidd, this is DS Sanchez,” Kidd said, a little out of breath from their walk. He took out his warrant card, Zoe following suit, and showed it to him. The smile fell from the concierge’s face, replaced with a concerned expression. “We’re here to see Stephen London, he lives in Flat 3A. Can you let us through?”

  The concierge was quick to comply, pressing a few quick buttons and buzzing the door just behind his desk open. Kidd thanked him and hurried through, pushing the button for the lift. The wait was agonising, everything seeming to go in slow motion as he watched the numbers on a digital blue screen tick down, down, down until a ping announced its arrival.

  The third floor of the apartment building was similar to that of its reception area. The walls were dark grey, the doors and furnishings black, but instead of hard tile floors there were carpets that muffled every step. Not that they needed to take all that many to make it to Flat 3A.

  Kidd knocked on the door, bringing his hand heavily down on the wood three times. He pressed his ear to it to see if he could hear movement from inside. Nothing.

  He hammered on the door with the side of his hand, louder this time, more forceful. Still nothing came back. His heart pounded, sweat forming on his brow as he waited for what seemed like an eternity for something, anything to happen.

  He turned to Zoe. She looked as nervous as he felt.

  “What do we do?” she asked.

  “I don’t…” he trailed off and knocked once more, as hard as he could. “STEPHEN? IF YOU CAN HEAR ME, OPEN THE BLOODY DOOR.”

  He waited. A door a little way down the corridor opened, the face of a ghostly pale young woman appearing around the frame. Kidd turned to her sharply.

  “Have you seen him?”

  “What? Are you talking to me?” She had a slight accent, though he couldn’t place where from.

  “Yes, we’re from the police. We’re looking for Stephen, have you seen him?”

  She shook her head, her eyes widening. “I’ve not seen him for a few days,” she said.

  “Do you usually see him?”

  She nodded. “I’m normally heading out for work when he comes home,” she said. “Is something—?”

  “Thank you,” Kidd interrupted, turning back to the door.

  “Kidd, what are you—?”

  “Stand back,” he said.

  “Ben, don’t—”

  But he’d already made his decision. He took a step back and kicked at the door, once, twice, a third time, a satisfying crack as it swung open and the stench hit both of them square in the face.

  “Fuck.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  It was a stench that Kidd had smelled many times before. It never got easier to stomach and it took every bit of willpower in him, and his dedication to the job, to walk inside that flat and face what waited for him.

  He walked down the small hallway. The bedroom door was right in front of him and was wide open, some clothes strewn about on the floor, a bag, a couple of books balanced precariously on a bedside table.

  He rounded the corner and walked towards an open door. There was a pool of blood that had inched its way out of what Kidd could see was the kitchen. He stopped where he was and stared off towards it.

  “If the gaffer asks we need to pretend I protested a little more than that,” Zoe said as she reached his side, her hand over her mouth and nose.

  Kidd laughed darkly. “Happy to play along,” he said. “I can’t imagine he’s going to have much to say about this one to be honest. Look.” He nodded towards the pool of blood.

  “Fucking hell.”

  “Took the words right out of my mouth,” Kidd replied. “We need to get forensics down here. This is what I was afraid of.”

  ◆◆◆

  It didn’t take long for the forensics team to make it down to the scene, the rest of Kidd’s team and DCI Weaver in tow. Simon and Campbell had gone to see Bill’s address only to find that he had moved out some six months ago. Another dead end. Kidd thanked them for their work, trying to push his panic about Bill’s whereabouts to the back of his mind. Right now, he needed to focus on this.

  Stephen London had been killed in exactly the same fashion as James Blythe, and his body had been lying in his kitchen rotting ever since.

  Kidd pulled on the coveralls and mask, heading inside alongside them, finally able to get a good look at the body and the property. His bedroom looked pretty untouched. It was the kitchen that was in chaos. It looked like he’d put up a fight.

  There was a bloody handprint on the front of one of the white cupboards, quickly confirmed to be Stephen’s by the blood that was covering his hand where he’d tried to stem the flow of blood coming from his neck.

  How had no one heard this? Kidd wondered. It seemed amazing to him that no one would have heard the commotion, and come running. But the same had happened with James. No one had come to his aide when they’d heard a scuffle happening in the alleyway behind their houses. People were afraid to step out of their own front doors. And with things like this happening, who could really blame them?

  The Polaroids taken of Stephen by the murderer somehow looked even more awful than the ones of James. They appeared to be taken from the angle of someone already in the kitchen. This person had managed to get into Stephen’s flat and wait for him to come home. How they had managed that, was beyond Kidd. Either way, it had cost him dearly.

  He made his way to Stephen’s bedroom, noticing that a copy of the same school photograph that both Asim’s family and James’ mother had on display, was in a frame on the floor. He’d obviously never gotten around to hanging it up. How long had he lived here and spent day after day telling himself that he needed to hang that up one day? How many times had he put off getting the necessary equipment to do it, only to have that time taken away from him? It didn’t really bear thinking about.

  Kidd bent down and looked at the picture again, noticing the boys in the corner, messing around and pulling focus while everybody else faced forward with a stoic expression or a smile. He needed to speak with them all again, of that much he was certain. He needed to get to the bottom of how they’d treated Robin Paige, and if there was anyone else that they’d bullied back then, because the more time that went by, the more this was looking like someone out for revenge. Every single one of them was in danger.

  He ignored Craig’s face in the top left-hand corner of the photo, a face he could pick out of thousands, a face he hadn’t seen in person for two years. He could still feel that tug in his chest, that part of him that was drawn to him.

  “What’s that?” Zoe asked, her voice a little muffled from the mask across her face.

  “An old school photo,” Kidd said, picking it up and passing it to her. He pointed out where the boys were and that he’d seen the same photo on the wall of both Asim’s parent’s house and on James’ mother’s mantel. “Enlightening, isn’t it?”

  “So they were troublemakers, huh? And this is, what, payback for somethi
ng they did some ten years ago?”

  Kidd sighed heavily. “It certainly looks that way,” he said. “Whatever they did, it must have been awful to warrant all of this. I refuse to believe that it’s a coincidence that these two boys have been murdered. We need to get them in, get to the bottom of whatever it was they did to Robin Paige, whatever it is they’re not telling us, and find out if there’s anybody else that we should be looking into.”

  “You still think Robin is responsible for all this?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” Kidd said, not quite wanting to admit the inkling that was telling him that he wasn’t. But he wanted to meet the guy first, wanted to question him, try and figure him out. That would be the clincher. “Can we get him in for questioning? I know we’ve got nothing, but if we can just chat to him—”

  “We can certainly try,” Zoe said. “Though he wasn’t all that forthcoming with me. You might be shit out of luck even if he does decide to come in.”

  “We’ll arrest him if we have to.”

  “You think we have the grounds?”

  “Two bodies in a few days? I’d like to see Weaver stop me.” Kidd knew that Weaver could and definitely would stop him. Without grounds they could get into serious trouble for arresting the wrong guy.

  “Kidd,” DCI Weaver poked his head around the bedroom door, also in coveralls, walking around like a red-faced marshmallow.

  “Speak of the devil,” Kidd muttered under his breath. “Yes, boss?”

  “Can I have a word outside?” He didn’t wait for a response, heading down the hallway, his footsteps clicking on the hardwood floors as he made his way out of the apartment.

  “So, you want me to say you protested me breaking the door down, huh?” Kidd said, laughing a little. “This shouldn’t take a minute.”

  “Wait a second,” Zoe said, still holding onto the picture. She drew Kidd’s attention to the top left-hand corner, to where Craig stood smiling next to Asim Farooq’s brother. Her eyes went wide with shock. “Is that who I think it is?”

  Kidd sighed. “Like a bad penny, isn’t he?”

  “Sorry,” she said. “Can’t be easy to see that, eh?”

  Kidd shrugged. “Not my focus right now. We’ve got a case to solve.”

  Zoe eyed him curiously. It wasn’t the whole truth and she knew that, but she also seemed to know when not to pry, so she let it go. Kidd left her in the room and walked out to see DCI Weaver, coverall hood down, and mask off.

  “Nice work, Kidd,” he said. “It’s…it’s not good, I know that, but there’s progress here. You’ve made quick work of it.”

  “Careful, boss, that almost sounds like a compliment,” he said with a smile, pulling down the hood of his coveralls and taking the mask off his sweating face. “I’m worried, sir.”

  Weaver’s face twisted. “Why?”

  “The other lads, sir,” Kidd started. “I have literally nothing to prove this apart from a hunch, but you’ll just have to go with me on this, okay? Two lads from the same friendship group, who attended the same wake, who were a handful at school, have shown up dead mere days apart. That doesn’t feel like a coincidence to me.”

  “And your worry is that the other lads are next, is that right?”

  Kidd nodded. “Absolutely, boss,” he said. “I’m going to talk to them again, get all the information that I can about what they were like at school. Hopefully that will open up some new leads.”

  “Get on it,” Weaver said. “I’ve got your back on this one.”

  “Thanks, gaffer.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Kidd and Zoe left the crime scene a short while later. He left Simon and Campbell to interview the neighbours, finding out if they heard anything suspicious in the past couple of days, and Janya to get any information they could from the pathologist. He wasn’t holding out much hope for any more information than they’d already managed to get, but maybe if this had been the first murder the killer would have made a mistake, something that would give them something to look for beyond DNA deposits they couldn’t match.

  When that was over, calls were going to be made on the boys once again. They needed to talk to them urgently. Kidd wanted surveillance, if he could get it. At the very least, they needed to be checked up on. If Kidd was right, they were all in grave danger.

  The afternoon was stretching into the evening. As Kidd and Zoe crossed the road back to where they’d left the car, the traffic on the one-way system had built up as rush hour loomed.

  “Where to?” Sanchez asked as they climbed into the car. “You alright to keep going?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Just with the picture, I…” she trailed off. “If you’re distracted, I can go and talk to Mrs Paige and—”

  “I’m alright,” Kidd said, trying to keep his tone light. Though by the way Zoe grimaced at him, he clearly hadn’t done a particularly good job at it. “Honestly. I’d rather be doing this. Let’s go.”

  She pulled out onto the main road and started towards Twickenham, back to where she had been just a few hours earlier.

  As they pulled up, Kidd’s eyes immediately locked onto the curtains in the front window. There was a figure silhouetted against the netting, a hand wrapped around the middle of them, an eye peeking through. Sanchez turned off the car, Kidd turned to her.

  “Is that her?” he asked. “Were we expected?”

  Zoe snorted. “Yes that’s her, no she doesn’t know we’re coming,” she replied. “But when we pulled up last time she anticipated us arriving.”

  “She just a busybody?”

  Zoe nodded. “Seems that way,” she replied. “She seemed very interested to know what had happened just down the road from her. Imagine knowing will give her some kind of clout in whatever Neighbourhood Watch association she’s part of.”

  “Gives me the creeps,” Kidd grumbled. “I don’t love the idea of someone watching me from their curtains, knowing the ins and outs of my business. Or at least wanting to know.”

  Even as he said it, he realised the irony. If someone had been a little more in Stephen’s business, paying attention to stuff happening outside their own four walls, maybe he would still be with them. It was a strange tightrope walk, one that in London fell to the side of ignoring all your neighbours. How many people’s lives could have been saved if people had looked beyond their own world for a second?

  They headed for the door, Mrs Paige anticipating them and arriving in the porch ready for them. She opened the door a crack and poked her head out, looking left and right, probably for more people twitching at their curtains. A rather lovely dose of irony there too.

  “DS Sanchez,” Mrs Paige said fondly. “I wasn’t expecting to see you again so soon, did you forget something?”

  “Hello, Mrs Paige,” Kidd said, pulling the woman’s focus to him. She scowled a little before softening. “My name is Detective Inspector Benjamin Kidd, I know you’ve already met my colleague just this morning.”

  “Yes, we had a lovely chat,” Mrs Paige said. “What can I help you with?”

  “Do you mind if we come inside?” Kidd asked. “It might be a little more private.”

  Mrs Paige looked a little taken aback, worried almost. She quickly readjusted and tottered back inside, the two officers following behind. “Would you like a spot of tea?” she asked.

  Kidd had likely had his fill of tea for the day, but it seemed impolite to say no. A few minutes later he was sat with a small china cup in his rather large hand, squished onto the sofa next to DS Sanchez.

  “Now,” Mrs Paige said as she joined them. “What can I do you for?”

  “Mrs Paige—”

  “Caroline,” she said with a thin-lipped smile. “Please, DI Kidd.”

  “Caroline,” Kidd started again. “We wanted to talk with Robin, is he here?”

  Her brows knitted together. “I’m afraid not. He popped out earlier on this evening, why?”

  “We just have a few questions for him,”
DS Sanchez chimed in. “Just a few I didn’t get a chance to ask him earlier. We’ve had a chance to chat to some of James’ friends, you see, and they told us a few things that we would love for Robin to…corroborate.”

  Delicately put, Kidd thought, inclining his head slightly at Zoe.

  “Well he’s not here just now,” she said. “But I’d be more than happy to help if I can. I may not know the ins and outs of my son’s life but I remember the boys from school. Anything I can do?”

  Kidd hesitated for a moment. If they said too much, revealed anything too close to the case they might give the game away that Robin was a suspect. He didn’t know what her reaction to that would be. She seemed, from what Zoe had told him, quite protective of Robin. Who knows how far she would go to protect him from a murder conviction or two?

  “The boys mentioned that they used to give Robin a bit of a hard time,” Kidd said. “I’m not here to dredge up the past, Mrs Pai— Caroline, but I wondered if you knew anything about that?”

  She took a breath. “I know just what you’re getting at.”

  Kidd froze. “You do?”

  “I was surprised when he allowed them to be invited,” she said. “Or at least, when he spoke to them at the wake. I’d arranged the guest list and he didn’t have any objections to them being there, even seemed to be pleased I’d invited them. But I knew of the trouble they’d caused, of the way they treated my Gregory.”

  “Gregory?” Kidd said. “You mean Robin.”

  “Robin, Gregory, both of them in fact,” she said.

  Kidd sat up a little straighter. Now that was an interesting turn of events.

  “Could you elaborate on that?” Kidd asked, pen poised. He could even see that Zoe was rapt next to him. This was a layer of the story that Caroline Paige had clearly been all too happy to leave out earlier today.

  “I don’t want to get anyone in any trouble,” she said, looking over at them both. “I just mean they were so difficult with Robin. They’d tease him and make fun of him. What with his dad being their teacher, there were always accusations of favouritism that Gregory refuted, of course, but to no avail. They were awful to him too.”