One Last Smile: An Action Packed British Crime Thriller (DI Benjamin Kidd Crime Thrillers Book 7) Read online

  Kidd settled for, “Morning.”

  It made Colin at least crack a small smile. Perhaps he was feeling the same uncertainty.

  “Morning, Ben,” he said. “I’m… surprised to see you here.”

  “That’s funny,” Kidd said. “That’s what the boss was saying about you.”

  “It’s my dad,” he said with a shrug. There was a sort of resignation in his voice. Kidd definitely got the impression he was there, more out of a sense of duty than wanting to pay respects to his father. If Colin didn’t bury him, who would?

  “It was a nice service,” Kidd replied. “How have you been?”

  “Thank you,” he said. “I’ve been exhausted, to put it bluntly.”

  “Why?”

  “The news about Dad came as a bit of a shock,” Colin replied quickly. “I don’t know how much you know.”

  “Not a whole lot,” Kidd replied. When Weaver had told him, he hadn’t been paying attention to the details. He didn’t really want to hear it.

  “Heart attack,” Colin said. “Very sudden, very quick, apparently painless.”

  Shame, Kidd thought darkly.

  “But it felt strange,” he continued. “He’s been out of my life for such a long time, I’ve not even seen him in so many years, it was odd to hear anything about him whatsoever. I thought about him every now and again, but it was never good, usually something nightmarish, especially given what happened in January and… Do you know what I’m talking about?” He looked at Kidd for confirmation, but quickly looked away. “No, of course you don’t. Sorry. I’m rambling. I must sound crazy.”

  “Ramble away,” Kidd said. “I understand. I… I didn’t have the same connection to your dad as you do, of course, but I can see why you might feel the way you do.”

  “Do you still think about Dad?” he asked.

  Kidd sighed. “Unfortunately so,” he said. “It’s hard not to. It was my first major case when I started as a detective. And it was quite… brutal.”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s haunted my nights for many years,” Kidd continued. “You’re not alone in that.”

  Colin took a heavy breath. It looked like it would be enough to make him break, for a tear to fall, but he seemed to steady himself with a deep breath. He looked Kidd right in the eye, a warmth there, a kinship, an understanding.

  “Maybe we’ll both sleep a little better now. Thank you,” he said. “And thank you for coming. I’m sure it can’t have been easy.”

  Kidd said his goodbyes and made his way back over to Weaver and Sanchez. Kidd had felt their eyes on him throughout, probably worried he was about to fly off the handle or do something stupid. He could hardly blame them, he did have priors.

  “What?” he grunted.

  “Everything alright?” Sanchez asked.

  “As alright as it can be,” Kidd replied. “Shall we go?” He looked up at Weaver. “Is this good enough for you, boss?”

  Weaver fixed Kidd with a hard look. “We should probably be getting back anyway,” he said. “No rest for the wicked.”

  Weaver turned and started away from the Crematorium. Kidd held back to give it one last look, committing it to memory so he could be sure that it had definitely happened. Colin had returned to the other people at the service, the small group of them chatting quietly. It didn’t seem real. Could it really be over, after all this time?

  “You okay?” Zoe asked, her hand finding his forearm and giving it a squeeze.

  “Fine, actually,” Kidd said. And he meant it. After years of the memory of it haunting him, sitting in the back of his head and not letting him escape, maybe he would finally be able to put it to bed. Maybe he could finally move on.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The journey back to the station was a quiet one for Kidd. He wasn’t driving, so he took the time to stare out of the window and think. It could have been dangerous given the circumstances, but he needed that time to get it out of his head. It wouldn’t do well for him to dwell on this. He knew that.

  It doesn’t feel like it’s over, he thought. He couldn’t allow himself to feel like it was, at least not in that moment. It had haunted him for so long.

  Weaver signalled for Kidd to follow him when they got back to Kingston Police Station. They marched through the reception area, Zoe silently wishing him luck as she returned to the Incident Room and left Kidd to it. Whatever this was going to be, it certainly wasn’t good, that much Kidd could gather.

  They’d talked a little a couple of weeks back about Weaver leaving the job at the end of the year, getting away from it all to live a bit of his life and spend some time with his family. Kidd wondered if that time had come a little sooner than either of them had anticipated. Much as Weaver was a pain in the arse most of the time, the phrase “better the devil you know” sprung to mind when it came to getting a new DCI. Kidd got away with murder, so to speak, when it came to working with DCI Weaver. He couldn’t imagine he would get so lucky with whoever replaced him.

  Weaver closed the office door behind them and gestured to the seat opposite the desk. Usually, when Kidd was brought into Weaver’s office, he was about to be assigned a new case, or was aware of the fact that he had fucked up and was about to get a bollocking for something. On this occasion, he wasn’t so sure. Weaver seemed calm. And that was cause for concern.

  “Take a seat, Kidd,” Weaver grumbled as he made his way to the other side of the desk. “You’re not in trouble.”

  “I should hope not,” Kidd said. “I’ve not had the chance to do anything yet.”

  Kidd had been taken off their previous case. He’d taken some time off and only returned last week as those final loose ends were being tied up by Zoe and the rest of the team. That was when he’d found out about Hansen. It had brought him back to Earth with a bump, that was for sure.

  “This morning must have been pretty rough,” Weaver said. “I wanted to make sure you were doing alright, and that you’re comfortable coming back to work.”

  He’d been able to spend a bit of time with John over the past couple of weeks, the two of them repairing the damage that had been inflicted by the previous case.

  John was still pretty shaken up by everything and hadn’t yet returned to the office, at least not in a full-time capacity. The last thing he had expected to happen was for him to be so heavily involved in the case, to be accused of murder, and it had taken a toll on his mental state. He was doing a lot better now, but the first few days had been pretty rough. There was a lot of therapy in his future, that much Kidd was aware of. He’d been advised to get some himself, but there were some boxes Kidd had stored away in his head that he wasn’t sure he was ready to open. At least not yet.

  “I’m fine,” Kidd replied, which earned him a look of utter disbelief from the gaffer. “I mean it. I did what you asked me to do. I took time off, I relaxed, I didn’t think about work at all.”

  “You’re a terrible liar.”

  “I thought about it occasionally, but you didn’t see me, did you?” Kidd said. “I wasn’t begging to come back or anything.” He took a moment. “As I recall, it was you asking me not to disappear entirely a few weeks back.”

  It was enough to make Weaver sit up a little straighter. “And where have you landed with those thoughts, Kidd?” he asked.

  “I’ve decided that I can’t decide,” Kidd replied. “Which I suppose means that you’re stuck with me for the foreseeable. At least until…” Kidd gestured towards the giant man sitting opposite him. Weaver nodded, but stayed silent. Apparently, he wasn’t about to give anything else away. “And where have you landed with those thoughts, sir?” he asked.

  “Smooth.”

  “Avoiding the question.”

  “I’m not sure what I’m doing yet,” Weaver said quietly. “No decisions have been made, no one has been told beyond my wife, except for your-good-self, and I would like it to be kept that way.”

  “I’ve not told a soul.”

  “Good,” Weaver
said bluntly. “I appreciate that. But I’ve not come to any decisions yet. I’m staying, like I said, at least until the end of the year. Beyond that, who knows?”

  “Good to know,” Kidd replied. “Was there anything else you wanted to speak to me about?”

  “Not just yet,” Weaver replied. “I wanted to make sure that you were doing okay given… everything.”

  “Very kind of you, boss,” Kidd replied. “Can I get back to my team?”

  Weaver took a steadying breath. Kidd couldn’t help but feel that there was something else, something he wasn’t telling him just yet. Whatever it was, he didn’t like it.

  “Of course,” Weaver said. “Go. And let me know if you need anything.”

  The warmth wasn’t unwelcome, it was just out of character for DCI Weaver. It was enough to set Kidd on edge. There was something going on, something he wasn’t being told about. And he had a sneaking suspicion that when he found out, he wasn’t going to like it.

  ◆◆◆

  There was laughter in the Incident Room when he walked inside. It was a strange sort of juxtaposition that almost sent him off balance, given everything that had happened so far today.

  Sanchez was over at Campbell’s desk laughing about something, her hand resting gently on his shoulder. It was a strange image. The only interactions that any of the team usually had with Campbell were to tell him to stop talking or to not talk with his mouth full. He didn’t listen to either.

  Zoe’s eyes found Kidd’s as he closed the door. The hand on Campbell’s shoulder immediately retracted. She followed him over to his desk.

  “What was that all about?” Sanchez asked as Kidd reached his desk. The Incident Room returned to the state of silence that had become the norm over the past couple of weeks. DCs Ravel, Campbell, and Powell were all writing up reports, doing the admin parts of the job they definitely didn’t show in the TV dramas. Who wants to watch a bunch of people sitting around doing paperwork?

  “Could ask you the same question?” Kidd teased. “You looked cosy over there with Campbell.”

  “What?”

  “Did he actually say something funny for once rather than something vaguely offensive?” Kidd asked, booting up his computer.

  Zoe hesitated before she responded. “Uh, something like that, yeah,” she said.

  Kidd chuckled. “Care to share?”

  “Are you avoiding my question?”

  “About what?” Kidd asked.

  “About Weaver pulling you into his office,” she said. “He have a problem with you talking to Colin or something? Did you say something you shouldn’t have?”

  “Certainly sounds like something I’d do,” Kidd said with a smirk.

  “Did you?”

  “No, no, nothing like that,” Kidd said. He’d not told Sanchez what he and Weaver had discussed at the tail end of the last case. Discussing that would open up more questions than Kidd was willing to answer right now regarding his future in the Met. Apart from breaking Weaver’s confidence, which was something he didn’t want to do, he didn’t want to have a conversation with Sanchez about him potentially walking away from the job he’d been in for the past sixteen years. It was a huge conversation to have in general and one he hadn’t really had time to have with himself yet.

  “So what? New case?”

  “He was checking in,” Kidd said. Zoe’s brow knitted together, confusion etched in every line of her face. “I know, I thought it was weird too.”

  “Checking in?”

  “After everything that happened with John and now everything with Albert, I think he wanted to make sure I was alright.” It wasn’t strictly a lie, it was something they had discussed. But he didn’t want to tell her what they’d really been speaking about. It wasn’t the right time.

  “And you are?”

  Kidd blinked. “Yes, of course,” he replied. “It was a difficult time, but we’ve managed to get through it. I think we’re stronger because of it. I’m meeting him for lunch.”

  “I meant you, not John,” Zoe said. “I worry about you sometimes.”

  “Nothing to worry about.”

  “It’s you, Ben. There is everything to worry about,” she replied with a chuckle. There was lightness in her tone, but definitely something serious in there, too. He didn’t want to be a worry or a burden to anyone, least of all Zoe, who certainly had her own things to deal with.

  “I’m fine,” he said with as much assuredness as he could muster. “Or at least, I will be.”

  Zoe smiled at him. “Glad to hear it,” she said. “How do you feel about today? I know you said you’re doing alright, but it’s probably been a difficult day for you, hasn’t it? Can’t have been easy.”

  Kidd could feel the eyes of the rest of the team move to him. They’d greeted him as he’d walked through the door, but no one seemed to want to dare to ask about the funeral in case it had affected Kidd in some deep and profound way. Sanchez had also probably filled them in on what had happened, so there were fewer questions for them to ask, of course.

  “I feel fine,” he said.

  “You need to stop saying fine. Fine usually means something bad.”

  “I feel alright, then,” Kidd said. “I didn’t want to go. I didn’t know what it would bring up in me, didn’t know what it would bring out. I didn’t know if it would have me thinking about the case again. But all it brought out was this sense of relief that maybe, finally, after all these years, I can stop thinking about it.”

  “You thought about it a lot?”

  “Most days it pops into my head at one point or another,” Kidd said. “I’d think about the fact that he was in that prison, locked up, but he could get out at any time, could be out there at any point and could do it again. I know the prison system, I know rehabilitation isn’t the best, that people re-offend, and it kept me up at night, but now…”

  Kidd hesitated to go any further. It almost sounded like he was about to say that he was happy Albert had died. It sounded awful in his head, absolutely terrible, but maybe there was a small part of him that was. That worry would no longer be there. It was the darkest way it could have happened, but Benjamin Kidd finally had closure.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Kidd had plenty of admin and paperwork of his own to do. He may not have been officially working on the previous case with the rest of the team, but there was always something that he could be doing. But after more than an hour, he was bored out of his mind and needed to get away from the screen.

  John messaged at just the right time, telling him to meet him by the river for lunch. Kidd couldn’t get out of the station fast enough.

  It was a well-documented fact that Kidd wasn’t the biggest fan of the warm weather. In a job that was high pressure when you already had to dress in formal wear, throw in the heat of the British Summer and Kidd was a dripping wet mess. It just made what was already a pretty tough job even more difficult. But today, after a bitterly cold winter, he was actually rather enjoying the warmth and the feeling of the sun on his face as he crossed the road towards the riverfront to meet John.

  He pulled John into a hug the second he reached him. He would never tire of this man, never tire of the way he made him feel, the lightness he seemed to put into Kidd’s chest. With the job he had, it was exactly what he needed on most days.

  “Skiving off?” John asked.

  “At your request,” Kidd replied. “How has your morning been?”

  John had been working from home since everything went down with Westway Press. He’d only been doing a couple of days a week, trying not to put himself under too much pressure.

  A couple of weeks ago, two of John’s authors and one of his colleagues were murdered, and John was nearly next on the serial killer's hit list. Had it not been for Kidd and Zoe being there, things could have been a heck of a lot worse. A fact that wasn’t lost on either of them. He’d had a lucky escape. It was part of what had Kidd questioning almost everything about his policing career.
r />   “Oh, you know,” he said, trying to shrug the question off, but Kidd didn’t say anything. He fixed John with the kind of look that told him that he wanted to hear about it. Neither one of them seemed to be particularly good at talking about their feelings, but if they were going to survive, they definitely needed to get over that. Kidd stared at John until he caved and started speaking again.

  “It was busy. It’s still a little overwhelming being back, if I’m honest. The case derailed me and now even a quick flurry of emails has me reaching for the paracetamol. And I can’t edit like I used to.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “I was so fast, I used to be able to whizz through pages. I think it’s how I ended up with so many authors on my list, but now?” He shook his head, letting out a breath. “Now not so much. I just feel slow. I hate it.”

  “It will come back.”

  He shrugged. “Maybe it won’t,” he replied. They made their way into one of the restaurants on the waterfront, quickly getting seated on an upstairs terrace, giving them a full view of the river. There were a few boats out on the water, rowers from the University team, people on the little motorboats you could hire from a little further down. The sun twinkled on the river, blinding Kidd a little. It was beautiful. It was his favourite spot in Kingston and one of the few places he could feel a little bit at peace.

  “You’ll get back to it,” Kidd said when the server had left them. “It’s just going to take a bit longer than you want it to.”

  “I’m impatient.”

  “I know that.”

  “You should know that better than anybody else,” John said. “Are you sure you should be back at work?”

  “Same question to you,” Kidd replied.

  “Touché,” he replied, before shaking his head. “I don’t want to talk about it right now. Can we talk about something else?”

  “I hardly think what’s happened to me today is much cheerier,” Kidd said with a smirk.

  “A good point,” John replied. “Everything… alright there?”