Just Keep Breathing, GS Rhodes [best book club books for discussion TXT] 📗

I’m thinking that maybe this means we need to take a closer look at Ms Chowdhury.”

Zoe turned back to him. “You think?”

“It’s a little suspicious that she’s not exactly Sarah’s biggest fan to begin with, and then to have this added on top of it. If Sarah knew about it, then she would be making Chowdhury’s life hell, no? Which could explain a lot.”

“Or Sarah is just a bit difficult to deal with,” Zoe replied. “That’s a possibility too.”

“There’s a lot up in the air right now.”

“And our list of suspects keeps getting longer,” she added. “What’s our next move?”

Kidd pulled into the car park outside the police station and shut off the engine. “First thing we need to do is figure out what’s going on between these two,” he said. “Then we go from there.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

After Chris and Norman had been booked in, Kidd gave them a little bit of time to get settled, which gave himself and DS Sanchez some time to figure out how they were going to play it. This would be the first time they’d get to properly speak to Chris Harper, at least on the record, so they needed to get it right.

They had him brought to the interview room, a bruise already swelling on his face where Norm had managed to land that first punch. He’d really gotten him good. Chris sat back heavily in his chair, his face drawn, his eyes puffy with exhaustion, and pulled his suit jacket around himself. Though these rooms had a tendency to get too hot in the summer, in the wintertime they were sometimes glacial. Wearing a thin, white shirt and a jacket, Chris Harper was feeling it. It might make him talk faster.

DI Kidd pressed the record button on the in-room tape recorder and saw Chris’ eyes widen as he did it. Perhaps, he hadn’t been expecting this interview to be recorded. He’d been offered legal representation but had refused. Maybe he had a little more to hide than Kidd first thought.

“I am Detective Inspector Kidd, this is Detective Sergeant Sanchez,” Kidd started. “If you could state your name for the tape.”

“Uh,” Chris said. “My name is Christopher Harper. Does this really need to be recorded?”

“Well, you’re not under arrest,” DS Sanchez said with a smile as deadly as it was sweet. “We need to record the interview in case you want to press charges against Norman Kaye or if he wants to press charges against you.”

“I don’t want to press any charges,” Chris said quickly, leaning forward in his chair. “If I don’t want to press any charges, can I go?”

“He may want to press charges against you,” DS Sanchez repeated. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, you might be here for a while.”

“Suppose that means we can get to know one another,” Chris said.

“I don’t think so,” DS Sanchez said. Chris sat back in his chair, looking a little disappointed. Maybe lines like that usually worked, but Zoe was having none of it. Kidd was surprised she didn’t leap across the table and lamp him.

DI Kidd cleared his throat. “We have an open case at the moment looking for your daughter and I really think it would be good if we could talk about it.”

“I told you, DI Kidd, I’m a very busy man—”

“I know that, Mr Harper, you already told me that this evening,” Kidd said. “But right now we have you in custody, so let’s kill two birds with one stone, how about that?”

Chris eyed DI Kidd carefully. He didn’t like this, he didn’t like this one bit. Kidd could see it in the way his eyes narrowed, the way his fists clenched as he tried to hold his suit jacket closed. What was he hiding?

“Do you know why Mr Kaye would have reacted the way he did to you speaking to Alexandra Kaye?” DI Kidd asked.

Chris shrugged.

Kidd sighed. “For the benefit of the tape, Mr Harper just shrugged.”

Chris smiled and sat up a little straighter. “I don’t know why he would have reacted that way,” he said. “Norman is crazy. Always has been.”

“Crazy?” DS Sanchez said. “That’s a little strong, don’t you think?”

“You saw the way he acted, does that look like the behaviour of a rational man to you?”

“It looked like there was more going on than you just being near his wife, at least that’s how it looked to me,” DI Kidd said. “I imagine it also looked that way to everyone else in that room. Does your wife know why Mr Kaye would have reacted that way?”

“I don’t know.”

“I’m going to need a little bit more than, I don’t knows from you, Mr Harper, it’s very late and you’re currently costing my boss a lot of money in overtime, and believe me, he doesn’t like having to fork out for overtime,” Kidd said bluntly. “So either you start talking or I lock you in a cell for the rest of the night and we can discuss this when I’m actually supposed to be on shift. How does that sound?”

Kidd let the words float across the table and reach Chris, who was considering what his next move could be. Kidd could tell he wouldn’t want to spend the rest of the night in a cell. Nobody did, given the choice. So he waited patiently until Chris unravelled and started talking.

“We used to be friends,” Chris started. “It was a couple of years ago. He used to work for me, but when everything went down with the company, when I had to make lay-offs, he had to go.”

So he was one of the people he had upset? A potential enemy.

“Not really the kind of things that friends do, Mr Harper.”

“It wasn’t about friendship, it was just business at that point, there was nothing else I could do,” Chris pleaded. His wife had mentioned people that he made enemies with over the years. Norman Kaye must have been one of them.

“So he attacked you tonight because