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

Chris looked agitated. Kidd half expected him to stop their interview and call for legal representation.

“She came back to the house on Saturday morning,” Chris said quickly. “I didn’t know where she’d been, I didn’t even ask. She went out a lot. I think Laura told you that, she just went places, didn’t tell us where she was, and would show up sometimes days later and everything would go back to normal.” He shook his head, nervous, sweating. “You didn’t ask that.”

“It’s all helpful,” Kidd said. “Keep going.”

“Well…Sarah knew about my…infidelities,” he said. “And she was threatening me, threatening to tell Laura all about them, and…I flipped out at her.”

“Did you flip out at her often?”

“No, I didn’t,” he said quickly.

A little too quickly, Kidd thought.

“But I flipped out at her, I warned her about telling Laura, and it escalated into a big fight and she left again.”

“Why didn’t you tell us?” DI Kidd asked. “We’ve been working on the assumption that Sarah went missing on Friday and you’ve been keeping this from us? That’s dangerous, Mr Harper.”

“No, you see, this, THIS is why I didn’t tell you,” he said, pointing at DI Kidd across the table. “Because I knew if you’d known we’d fought, that I’d yelled at her, you would twist it into something ugly and sordid. You would make it seem like I was the one who took her.” He took a few deep breaths. “And now you think I’m the one who killed her, don’t you? That’s why you’ve got me here.”

“You’re not under arrest, Mr Harper,” DI Kidd said calmly, resisting the urge to tell Chris that if he pointed at him again he would probably snap his finger in two. “We had a few things we needed clearing up. The whereabouts of Sarah on that Saturday being one of them. These messages for another. What were you hoping to achieve with them?” he asked. “Was it a scare tactic?”

“Something like that,” he replied.

“Was she scared of you, Mr Harper?” DS Sanchez asked. “Did you like that she was scared of you?”

Chris Harper laughed. “She wasn’t scared of me at all,” he said. “Sarah Harper wasn’t scared of anyone. We made her that way and it was probably our biggest mistake.”

They let that sit in the room for a moment longer. Chris sat back in his chair, still looking through the messages he’d sent to his now-deceased daughter. He looked upset, distraught, a shadow of the confident man who had sat in front of them two days prior. He looked like he would shatter at any moment.

“I can’t believe these were the last things I said to her,” he said. “And now she’s gone and…” He trailed off, turning his gaze back to Kidd and Sanchez. “My wife is going out of her mind with all this. She’s posting about it all day every day. She just wants justice. I want justice.”

“We’re doing our best, Mr Harper,” DI Kidd said. “But withholding information from us wasn’t the way to go about it. We were trying to create a picture of her final movements. Keeping things from us slowed that down.”

“I know,” he said, wrestling with something in his head. Kidd could see words dancing on the tip of his tongue.

“Mr Harper?” DS Sanchez said. “Whatever you need to say, you need to tell us. Everything helps at this point.”

He sighed. “I don’t want to be disloyal to a friend,” he said. “But given everything that’s happened. I…I’ve discussed it with Laura enough.”

“What?” Kidd asked.

“Norman,” he said. “I think…I’m wondering if…?” He trailed off and Kidd found himself holding his breath. They were done with him. It was Norman they needed to find now.

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

“What do you mean he’s not there?” DI Kidd barked down the phone. DC Campbell had been trying to get through to him for the past half an hour, his phone buzzing on his desk and annoying DC Ravel like you wouldn’t believe. She pretty much threw the phone at him when he walked in.

“I mean he’s not here, sir,” Owen said down the phone, audibly wincing. Which Kidd sort of enjoyed. “We knocked, we checked next door, he’s not in.”

“Let me get you the address of where he works, he might be there,” Kidd said, heading over to his desk and shuffling through his notes.

“That’s what Powell said, sir,” Owen replied.

“Well, he’s got a brain, Campbell, I’d expect him to say something like that,” Kidd snapped. He found the address and read it out, Owen repeating it to DC Powell who Kid hoped against hope was writing it all down.

“Thanks, boss. We’ll report back!” DC Campbell hung up the phone and Kidd found himself staring at his handset.

He’ll just be at work, Kidd thought. He’ll be at work, and then they’ll bring him in here, and it will be fine. Nothing else is happening here.

But he couldn’t shake the feeling that it was. His instincts were telling him that there was something else going on here, something that he couldn’t nail down and it was irritating him. He started reading through the notes DC Ravel had gotten from her interview with Ms Chowdhury. It was what he’d been expecting really—all of it a secret, no one allowed to know, sneaking around between houses but nothing incriminating. What was he missing?

DS Sanchez appeared at the door balancing three cups of tea on one hand. She delivered one to DC Ravel and then one to him. She sat on the couch between the two of them.

“Anything?” she asked.

Kidd shook his head.

“Kidd practically strangled Campbell down the phone,” DC Ravel said, taking a sip of her tea and raising a careful eyebrow at Kidd. “I honestly thought you were going to reach through the phone and punch him, sir.”

“If the technology were available, I would upgrade immediately,” he said. “He’s not home though. Norman Kaye, he’s not at his flat.”

“Maybe he’s at work.”

“S’what I’m hoping,” he