Just Keep Breathing by GS Rhodes (any book recommendations txt) 📗

“We’d not informed the press,” DCI Weaver said gravely, switching off the video. “Alexandra Kaye told us less than an hour ago, and Laura Harper is acting like she’s BBC News 24 all over Facebook, spreading it, making us look like idiots. She’s been making us look like idiots the whole time,” he added. “No wonder the Super is breathing down my neck about it. He just wants an arrest to be made. He wants to be able to tell the press something.”

“Right.”

“She’s still calling for Dexter to go down for Sarah,” he said. “I know you’ve told me he’s innocent, told me that the parents locked him away all weekend, but she doesn’t know that. She’s got her followers out for blood and I don’t know what she’s going to do if she doesn’t get her own way.”

“Then we need to get Norman for it,” Kidd said flatly. “That’s the only thing we can do. We need to get Norman arrested for it, charged with it, and announced so that this vitriol will end.” He looked back at the screen that was now facing away from him. “There’s no way we can stop her?”

“Caitlyn asked the same thing,” he said. “She’s been in the house with her the whole time, having to listen to it all, watch all the bullshit.”

“But it’s her free speech,” Kidd said.

“Fuck her free speech.”

“Dangerous road to go down, boss,” Kidd replied.

“But she’s—”

“Saying stuff we don’t agree with, but it’s what she believes,” Kidd finished for him. “I don’t think it’s about all that anyway.”

Weaver knew where he was going with this, Kidd didn’t need to go over it again. It was the same theory he’d had about her from the start. So much of this was to do with getting attention. That’s what it had all been about really. Whether the attention was positive or negative, her number of followers was going up and that seemed to be all she cared about. But it was dangerous. Kidd hoped that DS Sanchez was having more luck than he was.

◆◆◆

DS Sanchez went with uniformed officers in tow to Norman Kaye’s place of work. He worked in the ASDA just outside of Kingston town, a stone’s throw away from the flat that DC Campbell and DC Powell were currently busting into, hopefully, to find Caleb. Based on what Alexandra Kaye had said about him, the last thing she wanted to do was deal with Norman on her own.

They pulled up.

“Do you want us to come in with you?” PC Eve was pretty new to the force. He had a baby face and the keen attitude of somebody who was fresh out of the academy and he wanted to impress.

“Might scare him off if he’s in there,” she said flatly. “But thank you. I’ll keep you on radio. If he’s in here, we just need him arrested as cleanly as possible. Don’t want to alarm him.”

“You think he’s dangerous?” PC Grant had been in the force for longer than DS Sanchez, his grey beard a little bit wispy around the edges. One year away from retirement, as he liked to keep reminding her. He also liked to remind her that he would miss her every day once he was retired, which was a sentiment that Zoe didn’t share.

“He might be,” she said. Though what she really wanted to say was more than likely. Given what Alexandra Kaye had said to them, they needed to proceed with caution. And based on what she’d seen of him at the school reunion, she would. “Like I said, I’ll radio.”

“You be careful now,” PC Grant said. She resisted the urge to tell him to go fuck himself, reminded herself he was old and from a different time, but it was a few shades too condescending for her to take lying down. She shot him a look that would make Medusa quake and opened the car door.

She felt in her back pocket for her handcuffs, just in case. Beneath her shirt was a stab vest—you could never be too careful with things like this. She didn’t know what he would try.

The ASDA was bright white, an assault on the eyes when you walked in from the semi-dark of the outside. There were a lot of people milling around, baskets in hand, focussing on their shopping, no one paying attention to her. Which was, of course, what she wanted. If she’d have walked in there flanked by two police officers, then she wouldn’t have had any chance of catching Norman Kaye by surprise.

She walked the aisles slowly at first, checking the bakery counter, the rotisserie, the fish, he was nowhere to be seen. All she knew of him was that he worked there. What his actual job could be anything, which meant he could be anywhere.

She looked down every aisle and couldn’t see him, making her way to the freezers at the end of the store and down towards the checkout. If he was here, that was likely where she’d find him.

And she was right.

He was stood by the self-checkouts, a look on his face that told her he was bored, that he was barely paying attention, which was exactly what she needed. If she could catch him by surprise maybe—

No.

He looked up. He caught sight of her. That flicker of recognition flashing across his face before he realised that she was here for him.

And the panic.

The panic that, in her eyes, told her that he was guilty.

Without a second thought, he dropped everything and bolted for the door.

“Fuck’s sake!” she growled, grabbing the radio from her pocket. “We’ve got a runner,” she said. “I’m going after him. Coming out of the exit now.”

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

“Nothing?” DI Kidd said down the phone. “There’s nothing?”

DC Campbell made a noncommittal noise down the phone. It was enough to make Kidd want to throttle him.

“Going to need a little more