by GS Rhodes
“What?” Zoe said.
“Nothing,” Kidd said, shaking his head. “While we’re here hypothesising, there are two lads in there who can tell us the real story. Or at least their side of it. Come on.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Kidd walked into Tom’s hospital ward to see him sitting up in bed, Asim at his side, both of them looking a little paler than they had the first time he’d seen them. He imagined that the events of the evening had sobered them up quite considerably. Nothing like a life-threatening situation to snap you out of a drunken state.
“DI Kidd,” Asim said, his cheeks tinged pink as he got to the end of Tom’s bed. “I’m sorry.”
Kidd blinked. “What for?”
“For leaving the pub,” he blurted. “I thought that, well, I wasn’t thinking at all really. The drink seemed to be doing the thinking for me and…well…Christ, it’s my fault that Tom is in this mess and—”
“Shut up, you twat,” Tom interrupted. “I’m alright, both of us are, don’t worry about it.” He turned his attention to Kidd. “Actually, when that officer wakes up, could you thank him from us? Or can we go and thank him ourselves, is that allowed? I don’t know what would have happened if he hadn’t shown up when he did.”
“Yeah,” Asim agreed. “He took a bullet for us. Sort of. I was so fucking scared.”
“I’m not surprised,” Sanchez said. “Glad to see that you’re both doing okay.”
“A bit shaken, but okay,” Tom said, then lifted his arm. “A bit damaged too. I need to call my mum, she’ll have a heart attack with me not being home. Can I do that?”
“We’ll get a nurse to arrange it,” Kidd said. “You mind if we have a word with you first? The investigation is still ongoing, and getting statements from you both now that we have Robin in custody will be great.”
“Robin’s in custody?” Tom asked, his face a picture of confusion. Kidd failed to see where he’d lost him. Tom had been there. Sure, he’d just been attack so maybe he wasn’t thinking entirely straight, but he’d seen all of it happen. “Why?”
“Why?” Sanchez repeated. “You sure you didn’t take a bump to the head, Tom?”
“Now, now,” Kidd said, watching Tom and Asim’s faces. They were both lost, and Kidd could feel himself stumbling through that confusion a few steps behind them. “Can you fill us in on what happened when you left the pub? Don’t leave anything out, it might be important.”
Asim took a breath before he started to explain what he could remember from after he left the pub.
“I was on the phone to you,” Asim said. “And you were properly angry that we’d left the pub, and as we were walking, we were heading away from the pub, trying to get as far away from Robin as we possibly could.”
Kidd followed so far. That much he’d managed to pick up on the phone.
“When we saw him coming out of the pub, that was when we started running,” Asim said, his cheeks once again flushing pink. “One of us yelled run, it might have been Tom.”
“It was.”
“Not the best thing to do because it drew attention to us,” Asim continued. “So we ran as quickly as we could down towards the riverside because…well…I don’t know why. It was instinct. Maybe we thought we’d be able to hide down there or something. And Robin was coming after us so we just kept on going. Then…” Asim trailed off. He took a moment and thought it through.
“Take your time,” Kidd said. Even though it had happened so recently, in the heat of the moment it must have been hard to collect all of his thoughts, to remember every single beat. Even to Kidd, it all seemed to happen so fast.
“Got it,” Asim said, looking back at the detective. “We got partway down that road. It was dark, but the moon was out so we could still sort of see what was happening. Then someone came out of nowhere and went for Tom. I didn’t see who it was but assumed it was Robin.”
Kidd’s ears perked up. Assumed it was Robin.
“Then I heard Tom scream and I called for help,” Asim said. “That’s when that other officer came running. But before that was Robin.”
“Robin?” Kidd repeated. “What did he do?”
“He helped us,” Asim said. “He was trying to stop the other person from hurting us which was why he ended up bleeding along with Tom, and then that other police officer showed up and…they panicked. They lashed out at the officer and then made a run for it. That’s when you guys appeared.”
Kidd tried to piece together the different parts of the timeline. Robin had been helping them. It meant that one of two things could have happened there. Either Robin had an accomplice and was using them as some kind of distraction, or they’d been chasing the wrong man the whole time.
He’d had a gut feeling about it, something telling him that Robin was too easy an answer, maybe he’d been right after all. But if not Robin, then who? He was so tired he could barely find the energy to add it all up in his head. The case was falling apart around his ears, what felt like a slam dunk turning into absolutely nothing at all.
Tom didn’t have a whole lot to add to the story, he just confirmed what Asim had said right up until their assailant had floored him. From that point he wasn’t much use to the storytelling, he’d been too busy fearing for his life.
“Where is Bill?” Sanchez asked. “Did he stick around?”
Tom laughed. “Demi was scared shitless,” he said. “Which I get, obviously, I’m not taking the piss or anything. But she wanted to go home. So Bill took her, or maybe back to his I don’t know. He seemed pretty rattled.”
They would still need to talk to Bill, just so he could corroborate the rest of the story, but apart from that, they were done here for the night. DI Kidd and DS Sanchez excused themselves, wishing them both well and promising they would keep them up to date with their investigations as much as they could, and they stepped outside of the hospital ward. Kidd’s head was spinning.
“We need to talk to Robin,” Kidd said. “What Tom and Asim said changes things. I still don’t know what to believe.”
“Me either,” Sanchez said, stifling a yawn. “It’s been a long day.”
“Second that.”
“Thirding,” Weaver said, appearing at their sides. “Everything alright in there?” he asked.
“Fine,” Kidd said. “Just more revelations than I’m ready for at this time of night. We should get down to the station and get an interview going with—”
“Maybe not tonight,” Weaver said with a heavy outward breath. “We’ve got him now, no use in doing an interview when both of you are about to fall asleep on me. He’s in custody and he can wait until the morning.”
“But boss—” Kidd tried to protest.
“I said what I said,” Weaver replied. “Let me at least pretend like I have some charge over you for once, eh Kidd?” he said. “Go home and get some rest, you’ve done a good job tonight.”
Weaver left the two of them outside the ward, heading home himself for the night. Kidd pulled his phone out of his pocket as they started out of the hospital, noticing the slew of missed calls from John, a couple of texts asking him if everything was okay. In all of the excitement, he’d forgotten he was supposed to be seeing him tonight.
“Everything alright?” Zoe asked as the doors slid open in front of them, letting in the cool of the night. After being in the stark white light of the hospital it was almost nice to be out in the dark.
“Not quite,” Kidd said. “I was supposed to be with John tonight.”
Zoe hissed through her teeth. “How’s he feeling about that?”
Kidd shrugged. “Not sure,” he replied. “He knows what the job is like though.” He flicked through the messages quickly, most of them asking if he was okay and to let him know that he was, because he was worried. It warmed Kidd a little to see. He quickly shot a message back.
KIDD: I am so sorry. Tonight has been mad. I will tell you all about it at some point.
“Have the others gone home?” Kidd as
ked.
“Janya went back to the station to get Robin booked into custody,” Sanchez said. “I think she wanted to see him go into that cell with her own two eyes. But Owen is staying up here tonight.”
Kidd turned to her and eyed her curiously. “Why’s that?”
“Because of Simon,” Zoe said. “I think he felt sort of bad about what happened, even though I told him he didn’t have to, he wanted to make sure Simon was alright. Simon’s his mate, I think he was just worried.”
“That’s actually quite sweet,” Kidd said. “If Janya is at the station, I’ll give her a call and tell her to go home.”
He dialled the number, Janya picking up on the second ring. “Hello?”
“Hey Janya, just wanted to give you a quick call,” Kidd said. “Weaver told us to head off for the night, so this is just a call from me telling you to do the same. Thank you for getting Robin into custody and for all of your hard work today. We’re going to interview tomorrow and—”
“Sorry to interrupt, sir,” she said. He could hear her sitting down in her chair at her desk, the slight squeak as she moved it from left to right. “I’ve sort of carried on working since I got back here.”
“How so?”
“The shoes, sir,” she said. “I just spent a lot of time with Robin in the back of an ambulance and I was looking at his footwear. His feet looked big, I guess.”
“Right?”
“So when I got back to the station, they took his shoes off him because he’s a bit of a risk given everything that he’s gone through tonight, everything he’s gone through with those guys, so they took the shoes off him because they had laces,” she said. “And it got me thinking.”
Kidd could see where this was going, and his heart was pounding. He didn’t want her to say what she was about to say, but he knew what was coming.
“I checked the size of his shoe and compared it with the one we found in his closet,” she said. “Robin is a size eight. The shoe that matches the print we found is a size six.”
“Shit.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
“What?” DS Sanchez said from next to Kidd. She’d watched him as he paced while talking to Janya, his face getting paler by the second, his breath a little shorter. And now, he looked like his entire world had fallen apart. “Ben, what’s happening?”
“Gotcha, gotcha,” he said. “No, not there. I’ll text you the address.”
He turned his attention to DS Sanchez who was waiting with bated breath for whatever it was he was about to say.
“The shoes are the wrong size,” he said.
He watched as the penny dropped and she came to the same conclusion that he had come to just moments ago. Who else had a reason to kill those boys? Who else had a reason apart from Robin? It should have sunk in sooner. They needed to move, and they needed to move fast.
They broke into a run across the car park, heading towards DS Sanchez’s vehicle. No sooner had Kidd climbed in the door and she turned on the engine and floored it out of West Middlesex Hospital’s car park. Kidd only hoped that they weren’t going to be too late. He gave DS Sanchez the address and she drove at breakneck speed through the streets of Twickenham to make it to their destination.
The road was eerily quiet. It was almost eleven o’clock but the burst of energy that phone call had given Kidd was enough to have him wide awake. She pulled onto the street and parked the car. From this distance, Kidd could see that the door to Bill’s house was gaping like the mouth of a beast, opening and closing in the breeze. He took a deep breath before he stepped out of the car. He had no idea what he was going to face when he walked through that door.
“Kidd,” Sanchez said quietly. “Do you think we should wait for backup?”
Kidd knew the answer to that question was yes. He knew that the right thing to do was to wait for the blue lights before they went anywhere near that house, but what if that would be too late? He didn’t think he’d be able to forgive himself if he had the blood of another of those lads on his hands.
“I’m sorry,” he said to her gravely. “You know I can’t.”
Sanchez sighed. “Yeah, I know.” She went to the boot of her car and grabbed their stab vests and belts, batons at the ready should they need them. Kidd only hoped that they weren’t already too late.
They walked through Bill’s front door, a light peeking out from up ahead. Kidd was sure he could hear crying, whimpering, voices talking to one another. He wanted to stay quiet, wanted to keep the element of surprise. But at the same time he didn’t want to startle the people in that room.
He looked to Sanchez, her mouth fixed into a thin line, baton out, ready to do some damage if she had to. Kidd followed suit before he barrelled towards the door and burst into the room.
“Nobody move!” Kidd shouted as the door hit the wall with a crack.
Bill and Demi were standing behind the dining table, Bill holding a chair like a lion tamer, trying to keep some distance between him and a small woman standing across from him with a knife as long as her forearm glinting in the limited light. Bill was bleeding from a head wound, a thin line of red running down his face.
Caroline Paige turned her attention to the two detectives by the door. Her face was wild, eyes wide, mouth fixed into a snarl. The straight hair that had hung neatly by her face when they’d last seen her just a day ago was wild, tangled, looking more like a nest around her head.
Her mouth twisted into a sick sort of smile as she realised she had been found out.
“Oh dear,” she said. “It certainly took you long enough.”
Kidd turned his attention to Bill and Demi. They looked terrified, and with good reason. Tears were streaming down Demi’s face.
“It’s alright,” Kidd said, consoling them. “It’s alright, we’re here and we’ve got officers on the way, you’re going to be alright.”
It didn’t seem to calm them down. Kidd got that, there was still a woman standing not six feet away from them with a knife. Until she was out of here, there was no way they were going to be calm.
He turned back to Caroline.
“Drop the knife,” Kidd yelled. “Caroline, it’s over, put the knife down.”
Caroline shook her head, tears filling her eyes. “It’s not over,” she said. “It’s not over until every single one of them pays for what they did.” She turned back to Bill, her eyes burning with rage. “You know what you did!” she spat. “You know what you did to my Gregory!”
She advanced on them, rushing around the table towards them. Bill and Demi ran the other way. Sanchez acted quickly, grabbing the two of them and pulling them behind the two detectives. Caroline stood in front of them now, no way to get to Bill, nowhere left to run.
She looked past Kidd and right at Bill, murder in her eyes, that thirst for revenge still not quenched. So long as those men were alive and breathing, she wouldn’t be able to rest. Kidd could see that quite clearly.
“What did they do, Caroline?” Kidd asked. “Tell me.”
He was playing for time. So long as she had that knife she could cause some serious damage if he or Sanchez got too close. He needed to keep her calm, keep her there, keep her talking until the other officers arrived.
“They know what they did,” she screeched, tears streaming down her face. “Everybody said he was forced into an early retirement by those boys. They exhausted him. They drove him to an early grave.”
“We didn’t mean to!”
“Shut up!” she screamed, pointing the knife at Bill.
Sanchez turned. “Don’t,” she said firmly. It was all Bill needed to hear to clam up and not say another word.
“They tormented him, they made his life hell!” Tears streamed down her face, the snarl there almost slipping for a moment, the devastation coming through. “He’d come home at night in pieces because of what those boys did. He’d cry to me, he’d tell me he didn’t want to work anymore. He feared them. After all they did, he feared them.”
“W
hy?”
“They attacked him,” she said flatly, her gaze going far away for a second. “They did it after he finished work, jumped him in the car park, beat him black and blue. One night they followed him to our old house, threw things at it—eggs, rotten fruit, anything you could think of. We had to move, we had to move because we were scared of what they were going to do next. Imagine going through your life scared of what was going to happen to you.”
“Caroline,” Kidd said. “This isn’t the answer. You didn’t have to—”
“I did have to!” she shouted. “I knew what I had to do. When he died, when they killed him with all they had done to him, I knew I needed to do something. He loved his job, he loved teaching, he’d wanted to do it for his whole life, but they stopped him. They took that away from him. They took the best years of his life away from him. So, I did the same to them. An eye for an eye.”
“That isn’t justice.”
“It’s my kind of justice,” Caroline said, pointing at herself. “It was what I needed to do. And now you’re not going to let me finish it, are you? My husband’s final wish, and you won’t let him rest in peace.”
“You know I can’t,” Kidd said. “Gregory wouldn’t have wanted this.”
“You have no idea what Gregory wanted!” she screamed. The tears came thick and fast now, practically choking her where she stood. “I knew him. I’ve known him my whole life, and when he retired we were going to see the world, we were going to finally spend the time together that we didn’t have when we were younger and it was taken away from him, taken away from me.”
“What about Robin?” Sanchez asked. “You were going to let us believe it was Robin. Your own son.”
“I couldn’t let you know it was me,” she said. “I needed to finish the job, I needed to make sure those boys felt the same kind of fear that Gregory felt in his later years, not knowing what was going to happen, not knowing what was lurking around the corner.”
