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

in all of her photos not there. Kitt wondered whether it was because she was without a filter or because the life had drained from her. Kidd couldn’t tell.

Her eyes stared upwards, glassy, unseeing, and it was enough to chill him. The rest of the team was by his side, looking down at her body as the forensics team swept around her, digging beneath her fingernails, taking photographs.

She was wearing a jacket, though now it was covered in mud. Most of her body was from where she had fallen. You could see it on the ground, where she had slipped, tripping over the dirt, over her own feet and…Kidd looked at where she was now. There was a rock jutting out of the shore. That must have been where she hit her head.

So an accident. But why was she running?

He looked at the markings around her neck, just as DCI Weaver had pointed out. A combination of the two? Did she slip and fall? Did someone come along to finish the job?

“Thoughts, DI Kidd?” DCI Weaver asked.

“We need to look for any footprints that don’t belong to us,” he said. “The scene is likely already contaminated with our footprints, other officers, Dexter’s, but we need to find the prints of whoever it is that was chasing her.”

“A good start,” Weaver said. “The houseboats?”

“Owen, Janya, can you do some door knocking on the houseboats both on this side of the bridge and on the other, see if they heard anything, saw anything,” he said. “I feel like we’d be pushing our luck to think that one of them might have CCTV.”

“They don’t have proper plumbing, Kidd, I think asking for CCTV would be a lot,” Weaver replied.

“Fair point,” Kidd said. He looked over at DCs Campbell and Ravel, both of whom were watching him with careful eyes. “No time to stand around,” he barked. “Knock on those doors, see if we can track down the bastard who did this.”

“Ben,” Weaver said. “We have Dexter Black in custody. He was found with the body. We have evidence…I think—”

“With all due respect, sir,” DI Kidd said, without a hint of respect whatsoever. “You handed the case over to me. And we didn’t move quick enough and now a girl is dead, I want to do this properly.”

“I just think that Dexter—”

“He needs to be interviewed, sir, I know that,” Kidd said. “And I will get to it. But I want to knock on these houseboats, I want to see if they heard anything or saw anything. We need a timeline on this. She was last seen on Friday, we need to know what happened between then and now.”

He kept his gaze on DCI Weaver, unable to stop the fire that was running through his veins. He didn’t want Weaver muscling in on this, he didn’t want Weaver making the wrong call and letting someone else get away with murder. He was determined to make an arrest, to charge somebody, DI Kidd was concerned with getting this right. He’d already gotten too much wrong.

“He’s at the station, in a cell,” Weaver said. “We’ve arrested him on suspicion.”

Kidd opened his mouth to speak but Weaver stopped him.

“The interview is yours, the case is yours, but I want someone charged with this,” he said his voice firm. “I’ve got the Super and I’ve got the media breathing down my neck, they are all over my arse, I want this closed.”

“So do I, sir,” Kidd said. He hated the implication that he didn’t. It made him want to tell Weaver to stuff it and figure it out himself, but he knew he couldn’t do that.

That was the problem with working on cases like this. There was a strange sort of addiction attached to it. It became a game, a puzzle that you needed to work out. The only problem was, it was a game that had people’s lives at stake, not just bravado or the thrill of figuring it out. Weaver knew that. But Weaver also had higher-ups to impress and the fact that Sarah Harper was a pretty high-profile case and she’d wound up dead wouldn’t look good on his record.

“We’ll come back to the station when we’re done here,” Kidd said, turning away from Weaver once again to look down at Sarah’s body. The camera flashes kept going off, close-up shots of the wound on her head, of her eyes staring into nothing, of the cuts and bruises on her wrists, on her legs, the strangulation marks around her neck.

To Kidd, she looked like she’d been held captive somewhere, that she’d possibly been restrained while she’d been there. It was enough to make his blood run cold. The fact that she’d ended up here, on the riverside, meant that it was somewhere in this town, right under their noses. And whoever it was, they were still out there, thinking they’d gotten away with it.

Not on Kidd’s watch.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

While DCs Campbell and Ravel collected statements from the nearby houseboat residents, and from the people who had seen Dexter with the body that morning, Kidd and Sanchez made their way back to the station.

He stayed quiet on the short car journey, watching life carry on outside the glass, people who were none the wiser to the dangers that existed in the world around them. He thought about what they had so far. Dexter was seen yelling at Sarah, very publicly. A lot of people witnessed that at the school. He was nowhere to be seen for the days after that, which lined up with her disappearance and he reappeared in time to find the body.

It all seemed to work. And maybe finding the body and calling it in meant that he looked less guilty. Could a boy so young really be that conniving? Could he really plan that?

Kidd didn’t know, but he was determined to find out.

◆◆◆

“Good morning, Mr Black,” Kidd said when he walked into the interview room, DS Sanchez at his