UNLUCKY FOR SOME

THE DI BENJAMIN KIDD THRILLERS

BOOK 13

GS RHODES

DARK SHIP CRIME

Copyright 2025 GS Rhodes

All rights reserved

The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

Published Worldwide by Dark Ship Crime

Cover Design by Creative Edge Studios

ALSO BY GS RHODES

The DI Benjamin Kidd Thrillers

When You’re Smiling

Just Keep Breathing

Your Best Shot

Be My Baby

Hand On Heart

Sticks and Stones

One Last Smile

Beyond The Sea

Exit Stage Death

Someone Else’s Skin

Like A Prayer

All That Remains

The DS Zoe Sanchez Thrillers

Deadly Tears

Deadly Vengeance

Deadly Games

CHAPTER

ONE

“Next round is on you, right?”

Mason couldn’t clock who had said it, but he knew they were talking to him. He was too drunk to care, too far gone to even think about the fact that they were definitely taking advantage of him tonight.

Actually, that wasn’t entirely true. They weren’t taking advantage of him, they were taking advantage of his dad.

He pulled the card out of his pocket, pretty sure that it felt lighter than it did when he’d left the house earlier that evening, and he waved it in front of his friends. They cheered, started chanting his name. He was a god to them in that moment, the god of drinks.

Dionysus? Was that the god of drinks? Or alcohol? Or good times? Mason couldn’t remember. For tonight, he was the god of watered-down spirits with mixers that were flat as pancakes. No one had ever tasted cola so uncarbonated, but none of them seemed to care. They didn’t care when it was free.

“How about a bottle or two for the table?” he called to them. There was a slurring in his words, he knew there was, and he repeated himself, overcompensating for every vowel, every consonant, just to make sure they heard it. More cheers, more chanting. They adored him, and it felt good to be adored.

Mason wandered over to the bar and put the order in. He added a round of shots, and ordered enough glasses for everyone. They all cheered when he came back. He loved this, he absolutely loved this.

He was about to put the card back in his pocket when he saw the name across the front of it.

Mr Joshua Cooke.

Not his card. The card his dad gave him for emergencies, which very quickly became the card that he used whenever he was out with friends, or out with colleagues, or just… out. Dad didn’t mind. Dad had no right to mind. Not after everything he’d done.

That bitter feeling started twisting in his chest, threatening to overrun his brain and turn his night down a much darker path. But he ignored it. He pushed those feelings down, pushed them away, and turned his focus back to his friends.

One of them, he couldn’t remember their name, popped the bottle of champagne, the white froth fizzing over the rim. The friend put his mouth to it, taking a swig. Mason thought that was gross when he was about to pour it into all of their glasses, but no one else seemed to care, so he decided he wouldn’t care either. That would make the most sense. Go with the rest of the crowd.

They like you. Don’t make it weird. Don’t make it awkward. You have friends. They like you, Mason. They like you.

Another one of them, he couldn’t remember her name either, made a toast, something about good ships being friend ships and everyone cheered. Friend ships. Friendships. They were his friends.

He downed his drink, coughing a little as the bubbles scratched at his throat. Immediately he refilled his glass, and the night continued.

Mason lost track of how much they drank at the first place, they drank even more at the second and third, and as he wandered through the streets, the hustle and bustle of people out on a Friday night was starting to annoy him.

“There are too many people,” he said to no one in particular. “I can’t walk properly with all of these people around.”

His friends just grunted their agreement or dissent.

His ears were pounding. The music in that last place was loud, too loud actually. You couldn’t have a proper conversation with that type of volume, and he hadn’t liked it. He wouldn’t be returning there. Or maybe he would. He wouldn’t remember where it was anyway. Even if you offered to pay off the bill he’d racked up on his dad’s credit card tonight, he probably wouldn’t be able to tell you what the last place had been. He might be able to tell you the first, but it’d be best to ask him in the morning.

They wandered down a side street, someone whose name escaped Mason in that exact moment, was leading them towards a place on the corner. The music was muffled, but maybe that was coming from the loud place.

“Too loud,” Mason muttered. “It’s all too loud.”

“Alright, Grandpa!” someone next to him said. He turned to see a pretty girl with orange hair walking with him, their arms linked, stumbling at the same pace, the two of them drunkenly skipping down the cobbles of the street.

“Don’t call me grandpa, I’m pretty sure I’m younger than you.”

“Don’t complain about the noise, and I won’t call you grandpa.”

Mason laughed. It was the funniest thing anyone had ever said, and it was tickling him pink. They laughed together, they laughed until they both seemed to forget what they were laughing at, and suddenly they were in a line.

Mason didn’t know what they were lining up for. Whatever it was, he wasn’t sure he wanted to go at this point. He was tired, his feet hurt, and it was all too loud. He also needed a wee. He’d drunk too much. Or maybe he’d not drunk enough.

Maybe if I keep drinking, then everything will be okay. But he knew that wasn’t the case even as that thought drunkenly stumbled through his mind. It would only make things worse.

The line moved along, and he started to get cold. He was positively freezing by the time they reached the front, by the time the card machine was handed to him so he could pay for all of their entry, by the time the bouncer was running his meaty hands over them and making sure they weren’t carrying anything illegal.

Mason was the last one in line because paying had taken longer than expected. He’d had to put the pin in this time. Too much contact. Too much tap tap tap. And he could barely see the numbers, so he’d had to tell the bouncer what the numbers were. Had he got his card back? He was fairly sure he’d got the card back.

“You’re not coming in like this,” the bouncer’s voice was deep, gruff. To Mason, it sounded like he was putting it on, like he was forcing his voice to be lower to make himself seem tougher, and Mason found that hilarious. He laughed, he laughed so loudly he could hear it echoing in the street around him, and that just made him laugh louder still because what a wonderful thing it was to hear laughter echoing around him on all sides.

“Okay, mate,” Mason said. “Can I go in now?”

“I told you, you’re not coming in like this,” the bouncer said, still deepening his voice. Had he made it deeper? It sounded like he had. “You’re a mess.”

“I’ve been having a lovely night,” Mason slurred. “And you’re going to ruin it if you don’t let me in. Do you really want to be responsible for ruining someone’s night?”

“I’m not altogether sure I care,” the bouncer replied. “Could you get out of my line? There are people waiting to come in.”

“But my friends are already inside.”

“Not my problem, pal.”

“Pal? I’m not your pal, I am a paying customer. I’ve just paid to get in.”

“Do you want me to refund you the tenner? I’m sure we can do that if you’re that desperate for it.”

“This isn’t fair. I’ve paid for a service,” Mason felt like he was sobering up now, but that didn’t stop the bouncer from swaying in front of him. “I have every right to come inside. Do you fucking know who I am?”

“I don’t give a fuck who you are, lad. You need to get out of my line before I throw you out.”

“You can’t do that.”

“I have the right to refuse entry to anyone who is too drunk to be here,” the bouncer said. “You are way too drunk, and now you’re causing a scene.”

“You’re causing a scene by not letting me in,” Mason parried. “I’m responding to the scene you have created, sir.”

“Go home, mate, you’re pissed.”

“I’m not your mate.”

“Alright then.”

“Do you fucking know who I am, though?” Mason spat. He pointed off in the distance. “You see that fucking building over there? You see that fucking hotel? That’s my fucking hotel.”

“Alright.” The bouncer didn’t believe him; he thought he was crazy, he was rambling, he was a loon, but Mason wasn’t having it. He had to know. How dare he refuse him?

“I am going to inherit that whole fucking empire when Dad finally does us all a favour and pops his clogs,” Mason shouted. “Cooke Hotels? I am Mason Cooke. Let me the fuck into your shitty little club or I’ll⁠—”

“Or you’ll what?” The bouncer seemed suddenly taller now, practically towering over Mason. Had he been that big before, or had he grown? He looked like he’d grown, his shoulders filling out, his muscles getting bigger, his face twisted into an angry snarl. “Are you threatening me?”

“N-n-n-n-no, I’m not,” Mason cowered. “I just want to come in and have a good time.”

He saw an opening, the smallest opening, while the bouncer looked at his colleague. He made a break for it, trying to get in the door, but the bouncer was quicker than he looked. He grabbed hold of Mason and hurled him out of the line. He stumbled into the street, smacking into the pavement with such force that Mason couldn’t bring himself to move.

He was winded, and he was pretty sure he’d broken something, or at the very least bruised it.

He tried to get up, crumpling back to the ground almost immediately. He tried again, pulling himself to his feet, using a nearby lamppost to keep himself upright.

“Don’t fucking try that again!” the bouncer shouted. “If I see you in this line, I’ll just do it again.”

Mason stuck his middle finger up at him and stumbled away. The street seemed longer somehow, darker than it had been before. The lights on the road ahead started to move in front of him. He wanted to get away; he didn’t care where, anywhere would do. Anywhere but here…

CHAPTER

TWO

Detective Inspector Benjamin Kidd had taken a different route on his run and had found himself well and truly lost. He was pretty sure he knew the streets of Kingston better than anyone, but apparently that wasn’t the case because, as he looked about himself, having finished his ten-kilometre run, he was confused.

He’d gone into Bushy Park just outside of Kingston and, in running around the fields and through the trees, he had found himself unsure of where exactly he’d gotten to.

He’d been in the zone, and hadn’t been paying attention to where he was heading. His focus had been on where the path was and how he could stay on it, keep going, ignoring the pain in his side, in the balls of his feet, in his back.

When did everything start hurting? He couldn’t pinpoint a time in recent memory when there wasn’t at least one part of his body that didn’t feel like it was falling apart.

He kept walking in the direction he had been heading in, knowing that if he stopped, his body was likely to seize up completely and then he really would be fucked.

He took out his phone and checked the maps, finding a route out of the part of the park he was in that would take him back to the main road that stretched right through the middle of the park and to the Diana fountain. He started away from it, back towards the roads he knew, back towards Kingston Bridge.

His phone pinged in his hand. A message from his partner, John.

JOHN

You were gone before I woke up this morning. Where did you get to?

Things had been strange between them over the past couple of weeks. The reappearance of Kidd’s ex-boyfriend Craig had succeeded in driving a wedge between them, and while Kidd had promised that things would be better now that he was gone again, things felt a bit unsteady. Maybe John was stressed, or maybe John didn’t believe him when he said that things with Craig were finally completely over.

His last conversation with Craig had been the morning that he’d left, when Kidd had made it very clear that he didn’t want to see him again. He could only hope that Craig took him seriously. They had a lot of history together, sure, but he was with John now. He didn’t want to be tangled up in Craig’s messes anymore.

KIDD

I went for a run and got a bit lost

Three dots immediately appeared on the screen.

You got lost? The great detective got lost?

Haha! Don’t start!

How long until you’re back?

Just about to head over the bridge. Fifteen minutes?

Bloody hell, how far did you go?

10k

You’re mental.

I’m aching.

Kidd carried on over Kingston Bridge and back towards home. He wanted things to be better between the two of them. Maybe they just needed a little more time.

Kidd walked in through the front door and took out his headphones. The walk back had gone some way to cooling down his body, but he would need to stretch or he literally wouldn’t be able to move once tomorrow rolled around.

“Kettle’s just boiled, perfect timing.” John’s voice came to him from the kitchen.

Kidd removed his trainers with a monumental effort and made his way into the kitchen, where John was already pouring the hot water into mugs.

He was fully dressed, ready for whatever his day was about to throw at him. He threw a smile over at Kidd, and it felt genuine, warm, so that was something at least.

“How was it?”

“I’m too old to be running that far,” Kidd replied.

“And yet, you still do it,” John said. “It’s impressive, actually. It could never be me.”

“Don’t start running, John, it’s a trap,” Kidd said. “Because once 5k gets easy, you have to just keep going further. I’ll be running marathons at this rate.” Kidd picked up the mug, wrapping his hands around it and allowing the warmth to spread across his frostbitten fingers. “Thanks for this.”

“It fixes most things, though I can’t imagine it’s going to help with your aches and pains.”

“So many aches and pains,” Kidd replied. “You working from home today?”

“Just for the morning,” John replied. “Have to go into the office this afternoon for the acquisition meeting.”

John worked at a publisher in London, editing everything under the sun from Crime to Fantasy and beyond. Things had been going well for him before they’d both taken a break several months ago. But now John was back, and he seemed to be working harder than ever.

“They’re looking at me for a promotion,” John said. “Senior Commissioning Editor.”

“Bloody hell, John, that’s huge!”

“Nice little pay jump,” he said. “It’s pretty much the job I’ve been doing now, but by adding ‘senior,’ the paycheck gets bigger. Who knew?”

“You think you’ll get it?”

“Well, I’ll be leaving if I don’t,” John replied. “I mean, I can’t take the credit for the work of the authors, but it looks good when you’re editing people who are winning awards. So it should be good.”

“Well, congratulations.”

“Thanks,” he said. “Right, I have an edit that I want to finish before I head into the office this afternoon. And you need a shower.”

“Rude.”

“Factual. Look at you, you’re dripping.”

“Thanks,” Kidd replied. “I’ll say bye before I leave.”

“You’d better!”

Kidd made his way upstairs and took a shower, pulling on a grey suit and making sure he looked some shade of presentable for the day. With the last case fully wrapped up, he knew that something would be coming his way sooner rather than later. Hopefully, this time, it wouldn’t end with him floating down the Thames.

He made his way downstairs, finishing off his now-lukewarm tea and heading into the dining room to say goodbye to John. He had his glasses on, his eyes squinting at his screen as he trawled through the pages of his latest edit. Kidd gave him a quick kiss and was about to go on his way when John stopped him.

“I’m at a launch tonight,” he said. “I meant to mention it sooner, but it totally slipped my mind. Jennifer Sea, debut thriller author. Really gripping. I’ll probably stay at mine tonight.”

Kidd nodded. “Alright then,” he replied. “I mean, you can come here if you want. You know me, I’m always up late.”

“It’s alright,” John replied. “I wouldn’t want to disturb.”

Kidd wanted to say that John wouldn’t be disturbing him, that actually he preferred it when he was here, when the two of them could spend their time before bed talking about their days. But he didn’t want to get into that with John right now. He didn’t want to turn something innocuous into a fight or an intense discussion.

“Alright then,” Kidd said. “See you tomorrow?”

“Yes, sure,” John replied. “Maybe dinner?”

“Dinner would be lovely.”

Kidd’s phone buzzed in his pocket. A message from his friend and colleague, Detective Sergeant Zoe Sanchez.

ZOE

You want to walk in together?

Kidd tapped out a quick reply.

KIDD

Meet you at yours

CHAPTER

THREE

True to his word, Kidd made his way around to Zoe’s place. It was a short way from Kingston Train Station, and while it wasn’t necessarily on his way to work, he was more than happy to take the extra five or ten minutes to get to chat with Zoe on his way in.

He knocked on her door, and she appeared outside quick as a flash, her brown curls pulled back into a ponytail, as they often were. She shut her door, locked it, and zipped up her coat, making a face at the temperature. The fact that they were inching closer to February, and it still felt this cold, was not sitting well with her.

“Thought it might be nice to get the steps in, but actually I’m regretting it now. Do you want to drive?”

“No,” Kidd said firmly. “It’s less than twenty minutes, Zoe. Come on. It’s bracing.”

“It’s freezing.”

“Get over it.”

They made their way into town, wandering past the train station just as a crowd of people stepped out of the exit, a sea of people all heading across the road and to their places of work or education.

“Timed that wrong,” Zoe said, nodding to one side so they could take a slightly longer way around and not get caught up in the crowd. “How are you doing? You didn’t go for a run in this, did you?”

“I did,” Kidd replied. “It was nice.”

“I cannot stand you and you’re running; it makes me feel lazy.”

“You’re not lazy.”

“It’s how it makes me feel,” she replied.

“To be fair, it’s how my running makes me feel too, because I’m shit at it,” Kidd replied. They made their way around the back of the train station and towards the riverfront. It was Kidd’s favourite part of his journey into work. There was a calmness about the river, something about it that just made him feel better. It was why he normally ran that way, but… after the last case, he’d actively avoided it. Though, if he started avoiding all the places in Kingston he’d got into a scrape or found a dead body, he’d probably have to move.

Now there’s a thought.

“You alright there?” Zoe asked. Perhaps his breathing had hitched up a little bit. “Flashbacks?”

“Something like that,” he replied. “Last one was a bit of a mess, wasn’t it?”

“I wouldn’t call it a mess,” Zoe replied. “It got a little bit intense towards the end. But doesn’t it always?”

“Needs must.”

“I think you’re really stretching that phrase, Kidd,” Zoe replied.

They made their way along the riverside, walking beneath the bridge and finding themselves at the spot where they’d found the last victim, a young woman by the name of Nina Hawkins.

She had been drugged and killed in what can only be described as an unhinged revenge plot. She hadn’t been exactly squeaky clean. She had been borrowing money from some loan shark, who she had eventually stabbed to death. Not that it meant she’d deserved to be strangled under Kingston Bridge. It was a grizzly end.

There were still flowers where she had been found, little cards, little tributes. Kidd had half expected it to have been dusted away by now, but people kept coming back, kept adding to it, determined to keep her memory alive.

“This is nice,” Zoe said.

“It is,” Kidd said.

“It seems very organised,” she added. “Maybe we should come down here, and add something.”

“I don’t think they would want us here,” Kidd replied darkly. “I think it’s likely they still blame us for not working faster, or doing more.”

“I think that might be you blaming yourself more than anything else.”

“Sure.”

“And that’s always the way, you know that?” Zoe replied. “It doesn’t mean we don’t care.”

“Well, quite,” Kidd replied. “You don’t get the shit kicked out of you for something you don’t care about.”

Zoe snorted a laugh that quickly faded to nothing. They remained staring at the flowers.

“How did things go with Craig?”

Kidd turned so sharply, he almost gave himself whiplash. “What?”

“Craig,” she repeated. “He showed up, you talked to him, we never really got the closure on that. Well, I didn’t.”

“You could have asked.”

“You get spiky with things like that,” she said. “As evidenced by you snapping ‘What?’ at me just then.”

“Sorry.”

“I didn’t want to poke the bear.”

“Alright then,” Kidd replied.

Silence fell between them, and Kidd could feel Zoe waiting for the scoop.

“Come on,” she said. “I’m dying over here, and not just because it’s minus a million degrees.”

“He’s gone,” Kidd replied. “I… I bumped into him when I was coming back from the station, the day we closed it up, after the drama at The Snake Pit. He was waiting for me.”

“How romantic.”

“Well, he’d gone to the house first, and he’d chosen to stand outside, rather than wait inside with John.”

“They’d have killed each other.”

“Yeah, I did think that,” Kidd replied. “No bloodshed, just an awkward chat for the two of them, I think.”

“So what happened?”

Kidd told her about the conversation. How Craig was gone, how he wasn’t coming back, and if he did come back, Kidd didn’t want anything to do with him anymore. He was drawing a final line under it. It had certainly taken him long enough.

“I think that’s good,” Zoe said. “You’ve been through a lot for him, and every time he reappeared, something or other was going wrong.”

Kidd had been through a lot for him; Zoe was right. He’d been through more than he would care to admit, certainly more than he would admit to anyone at the station.

Kidd had taken a six-month sabbatical where he’d chased Craig across Europe. He’d even teamed up with Craig’s sister to try and track him down, only to end up finding him back in Kingston. He’d helped him get away not once, but twice now, protecting him from the same sister Kidd had teamed up with. It was a lot, and he was happy that it was over.

But is it ever really over? He could only hope.

“I’ve not heard from him since he left,” Kidd said. “So that’s something, at least.”

“Block the number,” Zoe replied. Kidd eyed her carefully. “No? You don’t want to do that?”

“Feels like overkill.”

Zoe raised an eyebrow. “Okay then,” she said. “Your funeral.”

“Tell me about you,” Kidd said as they continued along the riverfront. He didn’t want to talk about Craig anymore, didn’t want to dwell on the past if he could help it.

“Yeah, all good over here,” Zoe said. “Saw Seth last night. He was working, so we had to cut it short, but still.”

“Can you thank him for me for that CCTV?” Kidd asked. He worked at The Snake Pit, a club Nina had been spiked in before she was killed. The CCTV had come in handy with confirming all of that, putting a timestamp on where she had gone and when. Kidd hadn’t really dealt with Seth much, instead having to bollock the guy who owned the place. “Good of him to get it to us.”

“He was happy to do it,” Zoe said. “Actually, I think he’s quite keen to meet you.”

Kidd blinked. “He did meet me.”

“Yeah, but he met you with your big, angry detective face on,” Zoe said. “He wants to meet you when you’re a little bit more fun-loving.”

“I am never fun-loving.”

“I tried to tell him that, but he doesn’t believe me,” she said. “He wants to meet the man behind all the mystery. And by mystery, I mean the messes that you seem intent on getting yourself into.”

“Oh, I see, so he wants to meet me to see if I’m crazy.”

“Oh, he knows that you’re crazy,” Zoe teased. “I’ve told him that much. Think he just wants to see it for himself.”

Kidd considered it for a moment. While he wasn’t necessarily too keen on being the subject of Seth’s fascination, he was keen on meeting the new man in Zoe’s life. She’d gone through it in the past few months, starting a relationship with Owen, who had then been tragically killed on the job. It was nice to see her happy again.

“Sure thing,” Kidd said. “My diary is pretty open right now.” He thought about John having the book launch that night. “We could go out tonight, if you want.”

“Someone’s keen,” Zoe replied. “I’ll drop him a message, see if he’s free. He might be working at the club tonight, but he’s got to eat.”

“Great,” Kidd said. “Just let me know.”

CHAPTER

FOUR

They continued on to the station, catching up with each other about things in their personal lives. Kidd didn’t have a whole lot to update her on, given that his personal life had pretty much been in shambles after what had happened with Craig, so Zoe had a chance to dominate the conversation a bit, something he was pretty glad about.

Kidd loved his job, he really did, especially at moments when it felt like his personal life was getting a little bit out of control. It allowed him the freedom to really dive into something head first, and meant that his mind felt a little less full… mostly because he was filling it with a case.

They greeted Diane at the front desk, and made their way through to the Incident Room where the rest of their team was housed. Kidd was surprised to see that most of them were already there, responding to emails, filling out case files, making sure that things were up to date. Even when there wasn’t an active case, there were always things to do, and Kidd had faith that his team didn’t need him to check up on them to make sure that things were getting done in a timely manner. He’d never heard any different, so clearly they were doing their jobs right.

He logged into his computer, responding to emails. Weaver wanted an update—Superintendent Charles was breathing down his neck about something or other, and wanted updates to the case file for Kidd’s last case, which hadn’t quite been finished.

“Anyone else hungry?” Kidd called out, his voice coming through over the sound of the radio humming in the background. None of them particularly liked to work in silence; they had to have something playing or they would go mad.

“I could eat,” Powell replied. “Wanted to get out of the house pretty sharpish this morning because Mum’s been on a bit of a rampage.”

“He didn’t ask for your life story, Powell, he asked if you were hungry,” DC Ravel piped up. “If you’re offering to go out on a breakfast run, I won’t say no.”

“Not a run,” Kidd said. “Let’s just go out. Team Breakfast. I’ll even call Weaver. Be good for morale, plus I’m starving.”

“All that running worked up an appetite,” Zoe teased. “Don’t undo it now. Abs are made in the kitchen.”

“Never got the recipe for abs,” Kidd replied. “What Nigella book is that in?” He picked up his phone and dialled Weaver’s number. The line was busy. He gave it a minute while the rest of the team got ready and tried again. He’d drop him a text maybe, see if he wanted to join them.

He’d tried to do this before their last case, give them all a moment to take a breath before they got thrown into the next thing, but Weaver had managed to catch them as they were heading out the door. As it happened, he wasn’t quick enough to do that this time, so they headed back down towards the riverfront to Browns.

They were given a table by the window, one that overlooked the river, and the second Kidd sat down, he felt himself relax. This was what they needed right now, after the intensity of the last case. They needed a moment to unwind.

They ordered teas and coffees, breakfasts and side dishes, conversation already striking up about anything and everything that wasn’t related to the building they had left not fifteen minutes ago. It was good to get out; it was good not to be thinking about work for a second and just relaxing, though Kidd could feel the creeping unease of his conversation with John that morning. He wanted to push that from his mind if he could.

“What’s happening here?” DC Ash Hale asked, pointing up to a nearby TV screen with the end of a croissant.

Kidd looked up and read the ticker at the bottom of the screen.

SON OF HOTEL MAGNATE MISSING! FAMILY DISTRAUGHT!

There was a video playing that was dated towards the end of last year, a man and a woman leaving some party or other, dressed in finery and getting their photos taken by waiting paparazzi. Behind them was a young man in a suit, looking pretty grumpy about what was happening. He hadn’t stopped to pose for the photos as the other two had, so the news station paused on the video and zoomed in on his surly face.

“He looks thrilled,” Zoe said.

“He looks about how I’d look if some journalist was trying to snap a picture of me,” Kidd said. “Photographer is lucky the camera is still in his hand.”

“And that’s why you keep getting in trouble,” Janya said. “Just can’t help but ruffle feathers.”

“Got to do something to the vultures, or they just won’t learn,” Kidd replied.

The conversation quickly turned back to other things, the news crawl still happening above their heads. It was a high-profile case, the kind that would have someone working at all hours of the night, the kind that would certainly be one hell of a distraction.

But think of the press attention, Kidd thought. It would be his worst nightmare to be caught up in something as high-profile as that. His face splashed everywhere, especially when things weren’t happening quickly enough for the family, which was always the case, no matter how hard or how quickly you were working. If it wasn’t solved immediately, it just wasn’t fast enough.

There was a buzzing on the table in front of him. He’d left his phone on the table just in case something important came through, and it almost felt like an omen.

He looked at the name across the front of the screen.

WEAVER.

“Why do I get the feeling that isn’t going to be good?” Powell said through a mouthful of pancake.

“I’ll step outside and take this,” Kidd said, getting to his feet. “I’ll be right back.”

CHAPTER

FIVE

Kidd answered the phone as he stepped out of the door, trading the noise of the restaurant for the bitter wind. He tucked himself away around a corner, out of the breeze flying off the Thames, and away from the prying ears of anyone who was crazy enough to be sitting outside.

Smokers, Kidd thought. Surely it’s not worth being this cold.

“Hey, boss,” Kidd said. “Everything okay? I tried to call you earlier.”

“Oh, that was you, was it?” Weaver replied, voice gruff, rumbling down the phone. “Wondered who was trying to interrupt my chat with Superintendent Charles. I should have answered it. Imagine you’re having a much nicer time than me.”

“You could say that.”

“Where the bloody hell have you got to?” he asked. “I came down to the Incident Room to see you and the place was a bloody ghost town, chairs out, notebooks open. It looked like the bloody rapture. I was half expecting to find all of your shoes under the table.”

“What?”

“When people get raptured, they’re lifted out of their shoes.”

“You seen a lot of people getting raptured, boss?”

“You’ve derailed me.”

“You brought up raptures,” Kidd replied. “What can I do for you?”

“My question first. Where are you?”

“Breakfast,” Kidd replied. “There was nothing going on at the station, and we’ve just come off a pretty heavy case. I wanted to lift the team’s spirits, and I thought a nice breakfast would do that.”

“Thanks for the invite.”

“I tried to invite you, but you weren’t answering the phone,” Kidd replied. “How’s Superintendent Charles? Still as lovely and calm as always?”

“Your sarcasm is what keeps you from progressing in this job, Kidd.”

“I think it’s my recklessness too, sir,” Kidd replied. “I do like breaking the rules and getting into scrapes, let’s not forget that.”

“Christ, believe me, I can’t,” he groaned. “The amount of forms I’ve had to fill out for you…”

Kidd could practically hear him counting them off in his head. Even since Kidd came back from his first sabbatical, he’d been pushing the boundaries. He knew he was a headache for Weaver, and if he didn’t enjoy pissing him off so much, maybe he would stop doing that.

“So what, is this a social call?” Kidd asked.

“Not quite,” Weaver replied. “The call with Superintendent Charles was about a case. I came to the Incident Room to catch up with you about it, and you were nowhere to be seen. Hence the phone call.”

“Maybe you should have opened with that.”

“Kidd…” Weaver growled, sounding like he was about ready to reach through the phone and ring Kidd’s neck.

Kidd smirked—he did so enjoy pushing his boss’s buttons.

“You know Cooke Hotels?”

“I’ve stayed in one or two,” Kidd said. “Actually, I think that’s what we were staying in when we first got to Southend. Nice place. Why?”

“They’re run by a man named Joshua Cooke, big hitter in the hospitality world, owns the whole thing. So, rich beyond rich,” Weaver continued. “His son is missing.”

Kidd blinked and thought back to what he’d seen on the news. Family distraught. No wonder it was being reported so widely. This guy probably had the money to get it in the press at the drop of a hat.

“It’s on the news,” Kidd said.

“What?”

“The place where we’re having breakfast has the TVs on. Sound is muted, but I saw the headline,” Kidd answered. “So, this is our case?”

“Joshua Cooke lives on the borough,” Weaver replied. “And he also happens to be a good friend of Superintendent Charles.”

“Well, well, well, would you look at that,” Kidd said. “Friends in high places, how delightful.”

“He’s been tearing me to bits about it already, and the investigation hasn’t even started,” Weaver grumbled. “So I need you to finish up and get back here now. If Charles is breathing down my neck, it means I’m going to have to be on your arse like I’ve never been before.”

“Jesus, boss, buy a lady a drink first.”

“Shut up, Kidd,” Weaver snapped. “This is serious. This has the potential to be huge. We need to keep this as wrapped up as possible and solve it at speed.”

“Noted,” Kidd replied. “We’ll finish up and get back. See you soon.”

Kidd hung up and found his gaze pulled out to the water rushing by, which was normally a calming sight for him, but today it was much less so. It just made him worry, the rushing water echoing the rushing of his heart.

He returned to the restaurant, the team watching him from their table, waiting for him to report back. The look on his face probably gave them the short version. They were back in the game. They just didn’t know yet how dangerous the game would be.

CHAPTER

SIX

Kidd made sure to pick up a pain au chocolat and a coffee to go before they left Browns. It might not be enough to actually stop the raging bull that was DCI Patrick Weaver, but it might go some way to making him… Actually, no, it would just slow him down. He’d have to finish chewing the pastry before he started chewing them out.

Weaver was waiting for them when they got back to the station, leaning on one of the spare desks in the Incident Room, staring at his phone. Was this the modern version of tapping his watch to let them know he was late? Or was he just caught up in a particularly intense game of Candy Crush?

“Why did that take you twenty minutes?” he asked.

Telling us we’re late, then, Kidd thought.

“I got you a pastry and a coffee,” Kidd said, handing them to him straight away. “Thought you might need the caffeine hit and the sugar rush.”

“Very thoughtful,” Weaver deadpanned, taking a sip of the coffee.

His shoulders seemed to drop a little. Kidd might have been imagining it, but maybe it would go some way to stopping him from being quite such a problem for them in that moment.

The team gathered, notebooks poised, Powell readying himself by the evidence board to start putting something together. It was his special skill. No one could put a board together like Powell, the entire investigation at a glance, every piece of evidence, every suspect. The boy knew what he was doing, and Kidd was eternally grateful for that fact. It saved him from trying to do it. He used to hate doing it.

“What have we got then?” Kidd asked, noticing the case file that was next to Weaver. It was thin, painfully thin. They would be the ones to fill it up. “Joshua Cooke’s son?”

“Mason Cooke,” Weaver said. “He’s missing. Was out on Friday night, just never came home.”

“Alright,” Kidd said, waiting for the next piece of information, to be told there was a ransom note, some threat on the boy’s life. “Anything else?”

“Joshua Cooke is the CEO of Cooke Hotels. They have several hundred locations across the country, offering everything from boutique stays to budget-friendly weekend getaways.”

“Is this a sales pitch?” Sanchez asked with a laugh.

“Giving you all the information I have,” Weaver replied. “He’s in bits about it. He hasn’t stopped talking to Superintendent Charles all morning; he wants him found and found fast.”

And still, Kidd waited. He got the feeling he’d be waiting for some time.

“I’m not trying to diminish this,” Kidd said. “But is that it?”

Weaver blinked, the red mist getting dangerously close to descending. “What do you mean, is that it?”

“I mean, there’s been no threats, no ransom note, no sign that he’s been kidnapped or being held somewhere against his will?” Kidd asked. “He’s just missing.”

Weaver sighed. “If you want to put it like that, then fine,” Weaver replied. “He is just missing. But still, this is a high-profile missing person. There is every possibility that he is in some kind of danger, and we need to be the ones to figure out what’s going on.”

Kidd was more than a little bit confused. Unless there was some kind of foul play or the person was an at-risk individual, MISPERS were not normally something they would be dealing with. Was it all a favour to Superintendent Charles? Or was there something else at play?

“He’s an important person,” Weaver added, apparently sensing Kidd’s lack of enthusiasm. “Not just important to the Super, but also the family. It’s very possible that he could be in some kind of danger. We just want to rule that out. Hence why it has come to us.”

“Okay then.”

“All being well, you will be able to track him down and then everyone can rest easy instead of having their bosses breathing down their necks,” Weaver said.

“How far has this gone already?” Kidd asked. “I mean, it was on a news crawl this morning. Does that mean the press are already on us about it?”

“Press office has been directing enquiries our way,” Weaver replied. “There have been a few, not too many. I think once people properly get wind of us being the ones investigating it, we might be in a little bit more trouble. You know what they can be like.”

“I know all too well,” Kidd replied. “High profile nature of the Cooke family doing that?”

“Absolutely,” Weaver replied. “It’s probably nothing. Mason’s probably off on some bender that’s left him unable to contact his parents, but we just want to be sure.”

Kidd didn’t dare dream that he would get that lucky. But it would be nice.

“This has the potential to go big if the press runs with it,” Kidd said. “I know they’ve already got the headline, but if we can keep the Cookes from doing interviews, from blowing this up into something huge, we might get away with it.”

“If the press is already coming to us, what kind of chance do we have with that?” Janya asked.

“Hard to say,” Kidd replied. “But it has the potential to go national, and I’d rather avoid that if we can. I hate the press at the best of times, I’d rather not end up on the front of a national newspaper because some dickhead thinks I’m not doing enough.”

“We might have a problem with that already.” DC Hale sounded a little bit nervous to be piping up in the middle of a briefing, and actually seemed to cower in his chair when all eyes turned to him. He swivelled his screen around, a full-screen video playing as Joshua and Bernadette Cooke, a woman Kidd assumed to be his wife, walked out onto the set of Good Morning! Live! and took their seats on a deep purple sofa.

“For fuck’s sake,” Kidd growled. “For. Fuck’s. Sake.”

CHAPTER

SEVEN

“We’ve got Joshua and Bernadette Cooke with us this morning, appealing for information about their missing son, Mason Cooke.”

The presenter was far too chipper for this time of the morning, a man with hair so perfectly coiffed it looked like it was made that way and placed on his head like a Lego mini figure. His white teeth were positively gleaming, so much so that you could practically hear a ding sound effect every time he opened his mouth. The viewers at home would likely need to wear sunglasses just to get through the programme.

“Tell us about what you’ve been going through in the last forty-eight hours.” A woman sat next to the male presenter, her expression pinched and serious. She was obviously the straight man of the pairing, doing her best to really hit home the gravity of the situation. “I can imagine it’s been incredibly difficult. Fill us and the viewers at home in.”

“It’s been awful,” Joshua said. He was a little stiff, maybe not used to being on camera. “He went out on Friday night, saw some friends, and then we just didn’t hear from him all weekend. He’s a live wire, is our Mason, he likes to enjoy himself so… so sometimes he goes out and parties, like any young lad does. But he always checked in, always let us know where he was.”

Bernadette Cooke looked like she’d walked onto the set by accident. She was perfectly dressed, not a single hair out of place, her suit perfectly pressed, but it looked like the only thing that was holding her together was Joshua holding her hand.

Kidd looked at their hands. They were gripping one another quite tightly, their knuckles white. They were both nervous. Joshua was just hiding it better.

“And as a mother,” the female presenter said, “how does this make you feel?”

“I just want my boy back,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. “I don’t know if I’ve ever gone so long without talking to him, without… without knowing where he is, what he’s getting up to. It’s…” She swallowed, looking skyward, willing the tears not to fall. She didn’t want to cry on national television, though maybe it would help them get more information if she did. “I want my boy back,” she repeated. “That’s why we’re here today.”

“And what of the police?” the male presenter asked. The tone of judgment in his voice was so strong that Kidd felt himself tense, a fist clenching at his side. The implication was that they’d done nothing, or were doing nothing, or were refusing to get involved. He scolded himself for being dismissive a few moments ago. “What are they doing?”

“We are in touch with Kingston Police,” Joshua replied. “I’ve barely been off the phone with them this morning. They are investigating. They’re doing everything they can, I’m sure, to get Mason back to us.”

“Glad to hear it,” the male presenter replied, sitting back on the sofa. He wasn’t glad to hear that at all. He’d been hoping for some kind of scoop, and Kidd suddenly felt very grateful to Joshua for not giving it to him.

“Is there anything you’d like to say to Mason now,” the female presenter asked, “if, wherever Mason is, there happens to be a TV playing our multi-award-winning morning show?”

“Jesus Christ, turn them off!” Weaver barked.

Kidd shushed him, turning back to the screen.

Bernadette looked directly at the camera, her eyes watery, dams threatening to burst. She took a steadying breath and spoke strongly and clearly, more so than she had done a few moments ago.

“If you can see this, just find a way to get in touch with us,” she started. “Go to a local police station, or a shop, or even one of the hotels, they will help you. They’ll make sure you can get in touch with us and tell us that you’re okay. We just want you to be okay, Mason. Please be okay.”

There was silence as the presenters let the speech settle, allowing a dramatic beat for it to properly land with whoever at home was watching. It was the male presenter who broke the silence, the camera snapping away from the Cookes and to him, beaming down camera one.

“Powerful stuff there from Joshua and Bernadette Cooke, if you have any information, the phone number of Kingston Police Station will be on your screens now and on our website,” he said. “Do not hesitate. No piece of information is too small.”

“Well, there goes Diane for the rest of the day,” Sanchez said. “We’re going to need to get her some chocolates or a bottle of wine or something, this is going to go mental.”

“Agreed,” Kidd replied.

“Next up on Good Morning! Live!: Is your pet the next viral sensation? We’ve got a disgruntled dog that rivals Grumpy Cat, coming up after these messages.”

“Turn it off,” Weaver barked.

Ash did as he was told, the screen going dark before he swung it back around.

The room was silent. Kidd could feel the rage bubbling away inside Weaver, the frustration at what he had just seen. He was waiting for the volcano to explode.

“So much for it not going big,” Janya said, chuckling, trying to break the tension. “What’s the plan, boss?”

“The plan is fucked,” Weaver snapped. “We were talking about not letting it get too big, keeping it quiet and trying to stop it going fucking mental and they’re on national television chatting to those oxygen wasters.” He turned his attention to Kidd. “Handle this,” he said sharply. “Handle it, and handle it quickly. I’m going to call Superintendent Charles, see if we can convince them to maybe not fuck this up for us any further.”

Weaver got to his feet and made his way out of the Incident Room, the slam of the door reverberating around them. Kidd gave it a moment to settle, making his way over to the still-empty big board. They would need to get busy filling it. They didn’t have time to waste here, especially if the Cookes were doing the rounds on daytime TV.

“What’s the plan, then?” Zoe asked. “Anything we can use?”

“We need to talk to them first,” Kidd said. “I just hope that they don’t have any more stops planned and we aren’t about to see them popping up on BBC News anytime soon.”

“They talked about him being out with friends,” Janya said. “If we can get some contact numbers for them, it couldn’t hurt.”

“We need to find out where they went on Friday night,” Kidd added. “Once we know that, we can look into CCTV, get some last movements, find out where the bloody hell he could have stumbled off to.”

“Assuming he’s still with us,” Powell said, his tone dark.

Everyone turned their attention to him. It was a very real possibility, of course. It wouldn’t be the first time, and certainly wouldn’t be the last, that the missing person ended up being found dead somewhere. Kidd just hoped that wasn’t the case. The press would already be getting at them for their investigation. If they had a body on their hands, they’d make their lives a living hell.

“Let’s hope that’s not the case,” Kidd said. “If we can get as much information on Mason Cooke as possible, that would be great. Let’s look at social media channels, anything that could tell us where he was or the people he hung around with. I want to know everything. Hale, can you get on that?”

“Absolutely.”

“And I want to know about the Cookes.”

Sanchez eyed him carefully. “You want to know about the Cookes?”

“You know how these things can be sometimes, Sanchez,” Kidd said. “How many cases have we investigated together? How many cases have we studied where the culprit is one or both of the parents?”

“You think they’d go on national television just to throw us off the scent?”

“People have in the past,” Kidd said darkly, remembering cases from years gone by, ones that had been in the national news that he hadn’t even had anything to do with, but that he knew would haunt him had he been part of them. “We need to make sure we’re checking absolutely everything, just in case.”

“Sounds good,” Sanchez said. “Coffee?”

“More coffee,” Kidd said. “More coffee sounds good.”

CHAPTER

EIGHT

It took quite a few phone calls to actually get through to the Cooke household. It wasn’t entirely surprising, given what was going on. To begin with, it just rang off, leaving Kidd to leave a message, which he gladly did the first time, but was a bit less keen on the fifth and sixth times. Then it became a game of trying to get in there before whoever was causing the busy tone got off the phone.

When he finally got through, he introduced himself, finally able to tell them that he was the investigating officer, that he would be the one dealing with the particulars of the case and that he needed to speak with them as soon as possible.

They were going to be at home for the rest of the day, which Kidd took as a good sign that they wouldn’t be doing more press interviews. They needed to put the lid back on the pandora’s box that they had unleashed, that much was for certain.

He left the rest of the team to deal with what he’d tasked them with, filling out the details of the family. There was a sister. They would need to speak with her, too. She may know something. Why she’d not come up so far was beyond Kidd. Perhaps she was estranged. Would that be a motive?

Kidd and Sanchez made their way to the Cooke residence, a rather large house that was a little way out of Kingston, heading towards Richmond. He wondered if they usually said they were from Richmond rather than Kingston, preferring the way that sounded in terms of prestige. Kidd knew people like that. Kidd loathed people like that.

There were people crowded around the gate outside, cameras in hand, notebooks poised. A couple of uniformed police officers were there too, keeping people at a distance, stopping them from getting too close. Kidd half expected to find the Cookes outside giving an impromptu press conference, but as he pushed through them all, he found that he was met with the gate.

“Can we help you?” PC Grant was one of the uniforms, someone that Kidd had worked with many times before. There was a smirk on his face, like he knew that he was pushing his luck, any excuse to tease. “You alright, Ben, how’s things?”

“Shit mate, I’m dealing with this,” Kidd replied in a low voice. “You having to handle this lot?”

“Got a call from the gaffer who asked me to stand here. Think the Cookes got sick of the attention.”

The irony of them calling down the thunder earlier and not being so happy with the boom was not lost on Kidd. He wasn’t about to call them out on it, though. Maybe they didn’t realise what they were doing by going on TV like that. He doubted it.

The house was sizeable, gated, CCTV on all sides, a large gravel driveway that could easily house three or four cars rather than the single Mercedes that was sitting on it, sparkling clean, as if they’d not driven it that very morning. Perhaps they hadn’t. Maybe the TV studio had picked them up.

“Can you let us in?” Kidd asked. “We’re here to question them.”

“How is it going?” PC Grand asked, reaching for the gate and pushing it open a crack. Kidd felt the surge of the journalists behind him, pushing forward, trying to get into the actual driveway. Grant yelled at them to get back. That seemed to be enough to at least slow them down, even if it was just temporarily.

“Just getting started,” Kidd replied. “Hopefully be a quick one.”

PC Grant winced. “Famous last words. Have fun.”

Kidd and Sanchez walked across the driveway, their shoes crunching beneath them with every step. There was movement at one of the bay windows at the front, a curtain twitching, opening and then closing. They didn’t want to give the press anything that was not something they were deciding to put out. The want of control was clear.

The door opened as they reached it, no one appearing in the frame. It just swung open, showing the grand hallway, the tiled floors, the yellow-orange lights. Behind them, cameras started flashing, people started yelling, journalists firing questions as if someone was about to pop out of the door and shout the answers back.

Does that ever work? Kidd thought. Surely it never works.

They stepped inside, the door immediately closing behind them. The exhausted figure of Joshua Cooke stood before them, hand remaining on the handle, just allowing himself some time to breathe, to calm himself down.

“Detective Inspector Benjamin Kidd?” he asked.

Kidd blinked. It was rare that someone addressed him by name without him having to make the introductions first. “Yes,” Kidd said.

“I looked you up,” he replied with a light chuckle. “When you called, I thought it was best to figure out who it was I was dealing with, make sure that you’re… well… that you’re good at your job, I suppose.”

Kidd raised an eyebrow. “And am I?”

“Your reputation precedes you,” Joshua said with a smile. “The Grinning Murders, the case with the body parts in boxes, the girl that was murdered last month…” He nodded, clearly impressed by Kidd’s resumé. “You’re prolific.”

“Just doing my job,” Kidd replied. “This is my colleague, Detective Sergeant Zoe Sanchez.”

Zoe reached out a hand, and Joshua shook it, Kidd repeating the action, the silence once again pushing its way between them. Joshua had been so front-footed a moment ago, it seemed almost strange to Kidd that he was now going to have to pick that up and continue it.

“I understand that you’re very busy at the moment,” Kidd said. “But we wanted to talk to you and Bernadette, if possible. There’s a lot we need to find out if we’re going to find Mason, and the sooner we start these conversations, the sooner we can start looking.”

Joshua’s brow furrowed. “You’ve not started looking?”

“We wouldn’t know where to start, Mr Cooke,” Zoe said, tone a little sharp. “This is just the beginning of an investigation.”

“I called Superintendent Charles⁠—”

“Yes, you did,” Kidd interrupted. “And at no point did you tell us where Mason had been on Friday night, when he last contacted you, or anything. We are here to collect that information. Shall we sit down?”

Joshua opened his mouth to respond, maybe even to argue, but must have thought better of it. He steadied himself and gave the two detectives a small smile.

“My apologies,” he said. “It’s been a rather intense day, as I’m sure you can appreciate.” Almost on cue, the phone started ringing on a small table at the bottom of the stairs. Joshua made to answer it.

“If you could leave it,” Kidd said. “Let the machine get it. We really do need to talk to you.”

Joshua hesitated again.

Was there a part of him that was enjoying this? It occurred to Kidd that the man ran a hotel chain, that his name was slowly but surely going to be in all of the newspapers. It was already on the morning news. This could only be a good thing for his brand.

“Of course,” Joshua said. “Shall we go through to the living room? I’ll… I’ll find Bernadette.”

Joshua showed them through to the living room, a grand beige and brown affair with dark leather sofas and armchairs, and a TV in the corner that would dwarf an entire wall in Kidd’s house, but seemed right at home here.

Joshua left the room, and Kidd heard his footsteps recede, clicking on the tiles as he made his way upstairs. Kidd moved to the door, watching as he disappeared, before turning his attention back to Sanchez.

“Strange fellow,” Kidd said.

“I was thinking the same thing,” she replied. “He Googled you.”

“He Googled me,” Kidd repeated. “Is that weird? I don’t know if anyone has ever done that before.”

“He obviously wanted to make sure that you were up to the task and would have been asking for someone else if he thought you weren’t.”

“He’s got friends in high places,” Kidd said. He knew that Superintendent Charles could get him pulled off this case before his feet hit the ground if he did the wrong thing. “Is it just me, or did he enjoy the idea of answering the phone?”

“You might be reading into it a little bit,” Zoe replied. “But… yeah… I saw that.”

“Bookings must have gone through the roof.”

“Do we need to look into that? Is it something we can prove?”

“We can see if it’s trending online, see if people are searching for it more than normal,” Kidd said. “But I think we know they will be. Even if they’re not booking a hotel stay, they’re going to want to know what happened to the hotel magnate’s son.”

“That’s what we all want to find out, isn’t it?” The voice was icy, sharp. The figure of Bernadette Cooke was standing in the doorway of the living room.

Kidd found himself biting his tongue. He hadn’t been caught out as such, but he hadn’t been expecting Bernadette Cooke to be stepping into the room while he was mid-sentence.

She looked a little different from how she had on the TV earlier. The mask of strength she had been wearing had slipped. Kidd could see that she had been crying. It was a stark contrast to Joshua’s countenance upon their arrival.

“Thank you so much for joining us,” Kidd said. “I know you’ve had an incredibly busy day.”

“One that I would rather forget,” she said, the ice thawing slightly. “But alas, I must live it for a little while longer. At least until he is found.”

“Shall we get started?” Kidd asked.

“Yes,” she said. “Sorry to have kept you waiting. I didn’t hear the doorbell go. I was sleeping upstairs.”

“We didn’t ring the doorbell,” Sanchez said. “Your husband saw us coming.”

“Well… how nice,” she said. Meaningless. It was nothing. She was filling the silence, but Kidd couldn’t help but notice how unsteady she looked, especially compared to the version of herself she had presented on the TV that morning.

Kidd and Sanchez sat down on the sofa, Bernadette sitting in one armchair, Joshua in another. It felt odd somehow. Kidd had expected more of a united front after the display they’d put on with the presenters, but this made them look… separate. They weren’t looking at one another.

Kidd thought back to other investigations he’d had, ones where they’d gone to see the parents of children who were missing or dead. Most of the time, they’d wanted to be as close to one another as possible, like their strength was shared, coming not from one parent, but from the combination of both.

Not everyone is the same, Kidd thought. It’s probably nothing.

“Can you tell us a little bit about when you last saw Mason?” Kidd asked.

The two of them looked at one another and then back at the detectives, a silent conversation passing between them, deciding who it was that was going to answer first, perhaps.

“I saw him on Friday morning,” Bernadette said, getting in there first. “He was planning on going out with his friends. I told him it was fine, I… I told him to get back safe.”

“Did he do that often?” Zoe asked. “Go out with friends?”

“All the bloody time,” Joshua said quickly. “Every night of the week, there was another party, another gathering, always something that kept him away from us and away from his responsibilities.”

“His responsibilities?” Kidd asked. “What responsibilities were they?”

“To the company,” Joshua said.

“He works for Cooke Hotels and Casinos,” Bernadette said. “Both of our children do. They’re going to inherit it one day, they need to learn the family business.”

“And one is more intent on learning than the other. I’ll give you a clue which—it’s the one that’s working through this shit, while Mason is…” He didn’t know where Mason was. Or at least he wasn’t supposed to. It was enough to make Kidd sit forward a little bit. “While Mason is missing.” The words seemed to be a struggle for him to get out. He stammered his way through them before looking back at the detectives. “Sorry. Intense day.”

“He’s young,” Bernadette said.

“He’s not that young,” Joshua replied. “I was starting the company at his age. He should be involved in it. It’s what he’s supposed to do.”

“But he is young,” Bernadette repeated. “He wants to be out there living his life, doesn’t he? So that’s what he’s doing.”

“On my dime.”

“Our dime,” Bernadette corrected. “I work for the company too; it’s my money as much as it is yours.”

They were arguing as if the detectives weren’t there, as if they weren’t scrutinising every little thing that they said. Did they not realise how bad this looked for them? To be openly arguing in front of the detectives who were investigating your son’s disappearance…

Kidd wanted to dig deeper. There were tensions here, serious tensions. And he needed to get to the bottom of them.

“Would you mind if we spoke to you both separately?” Kidd asked. They looked at him sharply. “I think it will be quicker that way.”

CHAPTER

NINE

“What do you mean separately?” Bernadette asked.

“I feel like we’re not really getting anywhere with you two talking over one another,” Kidd said flatly. “Not saying that to cause any offence, of course. You both have a lot of things you want to say, and I think we will cover more ground if we split you up for a bit.” He turned to Sanchez. “Zoe, would you mind talking with Bernadette in here, and I’ll have a word with Joshua?”

“Of course,” Zoe said, shuffling forward on the sofa, sitting on the edge of it, pen poised, ready to fire her questions at Bernadette.

“Is there somewhere we can go that would be private, Mr Cooke?” Kidd asked. “An office perhaps?”

“My office is across the hall,” Joshua said, getting to his feet. He seemed a little shaky, like it was Bernadette who was holding things together. Even though, as far as Kidd could tell, she wasn’t having any luck in that department either.

They made their way to Joshua’s office, an obscenely large room at the front of the house that seemed to mirror the living room. It rivalled it, in fact. The bay window at the front let in streams of ghostly white sunlight, lighting up the dust particles in the air, the stuffed-to-bursting bookcases, the dark wood desk.

Joshua took a seat behind it, directing Kidd to one of the chairs in front of the desk. Kidd had the feeling that he’d maybe given away any advantage he had. He was on Joshua’s home turf now. He was a businessman, and Kidd had just willingly walked into the lion’s den.

“Tell me about when you last saw Mason,” Kidd said.

Joshua thought about it for a moment, leaning back in his chair. He had calmed down. Perhaps getting him away from Bernadette was a good idea, after all. There was an ease about him. Maybe he felt he could speak a little more freely.

“I saw him on Wednesday afternoon,” Joshua said. “He’d been at a party on Tuesday night, rolled in absolutely hammered at three in the morning, didn’t surface in time for the meetings we had scheduled that morning.”

“That must have been very frustrating.”

“I tore him to pieces,” Joshua said with a slight smirk. “Much as he was spending our money, as my wife so kindly corrected, I’m not too happy for him to be tapping my credit card at every bar in the city without so much as a thought as to where that money was coming from. It pissed me off.”

“He does that a lot?”

“Like I said, it was almost a nightly occurrence,” Joshua said. “I didn’t see him for the rest of the week, mostly because he was avoiding me, and I was doing the same to him. I didn’t want… I didn’t want to look at him. His behaviour was just so…” Joshua shook his head. “I know you need to know things about him, Detective, and I am not painting myself in a good light by expressing my dislike for my own son, but the lad is a prick and something needs to be done about it.”

Kidd raised an eyebrow. “Something needs to be done?” Kidd repeated. “Something like what?”

Joshua opened his mouth to respond, but apparently thought better of it. “I know what you’re trying to do.”

“I’m not trying to do anything, Mr Cooke,” Kidd replied. “It’s just a strange thing to say, and I’m seeking clarification.”

Joshua sighed. “He needs to be taught a lesson,” Joshua said. “He thinks he’s absolutely untouchable, that he can do whatever wants, shirk his responsibilities, but that is not the case. I can’t allow it to be the case.”

“So… what is your plan for him, then?”

Joshua straightened up, chewing on his lower lip. “He’s to inherit the company,” he said. “He needs to fall in line, he needs to understand that life isn’t a breeze, you have to work hard at it. He doesn’t seem to understand hard work.”

“But your daughter does?”

“Pippa has taken on a lot of responsibility since she joined the company, and she has worked so hard to bring us to a new audience,” Joshua said, and Kidd could feel the pride in his voice, he really did mean it when he said his daughter was doing great things. “But the company will be run by Mason. That was always the plan.”

Kidd blinked. “So even though his sister is working harder than him, Mason is still⁠—”

“He’s the oldest,” he interrupted. “That’s always been the plan. Pippa will still play a role, she will still be helping, but it will be Mason who is stepping into my shoes. Not Pippa. Which is why he needs to figure things out.”

It wasn’t Kidd’s decision, of course, but it did strike him as a little unfair that there was no changing Joshua’s plans. Pippa was going to lose out on that, no matter how hard she worked. Kidd wondered if she knew… They would need to speak to Pippa.

“So when he goes out, he spends your money?”

“Yes,” Joshua said. “Or gets himself into some kind of trouble that I have to bail him out of, gambling debts—the irony of us owning casinos is not lost on me—crashing cars. He’s out of control.”

“But you always bail him out?”

Joshua sighed. “Yes,” he said. “And I always will. I can’t say no to him. He’s my son.” He choked a little on the latter half of that sentence. It felt like the most real piece of emotion Kidd had seen him show since they met. But there was something about wanting to teach him a lesson that didn’t sit right with Kidd. What kind of father would say something like that?

“Have you received anything from Mason at all? No contact since he went out on Friday night?”

“Not as far as I know,” Joshua replied, then narrowed his eyes at Kidd. “What do you mean, received anything?”

“Well, Mason is missing, uncontactable, and this is quite high-profile, as I’m sure you can appreciate,” Kidd said. “I wanted to know if any sort of… ransom note or conditions had been received.”

“Christ, no,” Joshua said. “Nothing like that.” He chuckled, shaking his head, and then the implication seemed to hit him. “You think there could be something… You think he could have been kidnapped?”

“We have to keep an open mind at this stage,” Kidd said. “It’s just one possibility.”

“Right,” he said. “You really think⁠—”

“We don’t know, Mr Cooke,” Kidd said. “It’s been more than forty-eight hours. If you’ve not been contacted yet, it may be that he’s just… disappeared for a bit.”

“He’s not been spending any money,” Joshua said. “I’d be getting notifications if he was spending money.”

“He uses a card?”

Joshua nodded.

“We’ll need to see the transaction history,” Kidd said. “It will help us figure out his last movements.”

“I should be able to get my assistant to pull it and get it sent over to you,” he said. “If you leave me an email address, I’ll do it as soon as we’re done here.”

“Thank you,” Kidd said, steeling himself for the next question. Based on what he already knew about the Cookes, he had a feeling this wasn’t going to go down particularly well. “Where were you on Friday night, Mr Cooke?”

Joshua blinked, something dark crossing his face. “What did you just ask me?”

“It’s routine, Mr Cooke,” Kidd said. “We just need to know where you were, just in case something has happened to Mason.”

Kidd could practically hear the cogs whirring in Joshua’s head, the different retorts that he was summoning. He might have liked Kidd when he’d walked through the door, but those feelings were long gone now, a distant memory. As far as Joshua Cooke was concerned, Detective Inspector Benjamin Kidd had just accused him of kidnapping his own son.

Joshua took a breath and let those feelings slip away. “I was at work on Friday night,” he said. “I was working late, picking up the slack Mason left behind. It’s at the office in Kingston, the one in the hotel just behind the station. We’ve got offices on the upper floors. I was in there. CCTV everywhere, you’ll be able to see it if you need to.”

Kidd smiled. “Thank you, Mr Cooke,” he replied, making a quick note of it. But there was something in the way he’d been so resistant. Maybe he had more to hide than even Kidd thought. He wondered just how deep he would have to dig to find those things out. “We’re going to need to send a team to search the house.”

“You’re what?”

“It’s standard procedure,” Kidd said, not wanting to get into an argument about this. They needed to be sure. Just in case. “Please understand, this is how we’ll find your son.”

Joshua looked like he wanted to argue again, like he had more to say, but he backed down, sitting back in his office chair and staring around him, like he could hardly believe this was happening to him.

“He’s just young,” Bernadette said again. She’d said it so often that Zoe just found herself underlining the word ‘young’ in the notes that she’d taken. “Joshua sees him as reckless, out of control, that kind of thing. I just see him as a young lad having some fun. I don’t… I don’t want to say no to him, to tell him he can’t go out and see his friends and live the life he wants to live. That wouldn’t be fair.”

“Of course not,” Zoe said, though she was of the mind that sometimes you had to tell your child no, especially when they were blowing all of your money on alcohol and God knows what else. “Do you know who he was going out with? The names of the friends?”

“He’s a very popular boy,” Bernadette replied with a soft smile. “People seem to like him, they just gravitate towards him, so it’s always a different set of people. A couple of regulars, I think, but there’s always new people. He’s a sociable person, just gets on with everybody.”

Zoe couldn’t help but wonder how easy it would be to get along with someone if they were buying all the drinks, if they kept funding the good times. She imagined it would be quite easy to be friends with someone like that, so perhaps that’s what was going on here.

“So you can’t provide us with any names?”

Bernadette shook her head. “I’m sorry, but I can’t,” she said. “Maybe on social media? He gets tagged in photos all the time, shows me bits and bobs of his nights out.”

“Is this an issue between you and Joshua?” Zoe asked.

“How do you mean?”

“The Mason situation,” Zoe said. “You seem to differ in your opinions of how he conducts himself.”

“Joshua is so serious all the time,” Bernadette replied. “He wants to get him into the business, teach him that he needs to take responsibility for his actions and not everything is just going to be handed to him, but it’s more complicated than that.”

“In what way?”

“Mason wants to have fun,” she said. “He never wanted what Joshua has promised him. He doesn’t want to work, and I think… I understand him. It’s not a realistic aspiration, but he just doesn’t want any part of the business. I think he’ll come around eventually, and something will click in his head, but I think bashing him over the head with it isn’t going to get him there. Or he’ll find something else that he loves, and that will be what drives him forward. But we need to let him get there on his own.”

“What about your daughter?”

Bernadette seemed to sour at the mention of Pippa. “She works too hard,” she said. “At least, that’s what I think. Joshua is very proud of her, though not quite proud enough to bump her in any way ahead of Mason. She works incredibly hard for the family business, she is determined to make it a success, and she understands that it is her inheritance. Mason doesn’t.” There was a loud noise outside at the front of the house. Bernadette looked past Zoe to the bay window. She tutted and shook her head. “I’m sorry about all this,” she added. “I just hate it.”

“You hate it?”

“It’s so loud, so… God, it’s so fucking bleak, isn’t it?” She went a little bit red, her cheeks flushing. “Sorry, language.”

“Your language is fine with me, Mrs Cooke. I’ve heard far worse,” Zoe said. “You’re not enjoying the press, then?”

“Who could?” She exclaimed. “They’re monsters, yelling questions, wanting every bit of information. They’d publish my bra size if they could get hold of it.”

“Joshua seems to have been dealing well with all of that.”

“Joshua is thriving from the attention,” Bernadette said. “I heard you two before we walked in. Joshua’s ears aren’t what they used to be, but mine are as sharp as they’ve ever been. Bookings are through the roof. Mason’s disappearance has made us a small fortune.”

So Kidd had been right. The bookings had skyrocketed. Now that was an interesting thought.

They talked a little more about the relationship between Bernadette and Pippa. That initial sourness had faded away, so Zoe thought perhaps she’d imagined the tension she’d noticed at the mention of Pippa’s name.

When Zoe wrapped up the interview, finding out that Bernadette had been home on Friday night and they could check the doorbell camera if they wanted, Kidd was done with Joshua, and the two of them stepped out of the house together, the door closing behind them with a slam.

Immediately, the journalists seemed to reanimate, like they’d been in stasis until there was any kind of movement. There were flashes of light from the cameras, and a myriad of voices overlapping one another, deafening the pair of them.

“Get me out of here,” Kidd growled.

CHAPTER

TEN

Kidd enjoyed the slamming of the car door, the sound of the journalists muffling, the sound of the outside world dimming slightly. He let out a breath and sank back into his seat. They were still hollering, still yelling, still trying to get the Cookes to come outside and give some kind of supplementary interview. Hadn’t the TV interview been enough?

It’s never enough, Kidd thought.

“What did you think of them, then?” Zoe asked, pulling on her seatbelt. “An odd pair.”

“Very odd,” Kidd replied. “Joshua has big plans for Mason.”

“That’s what I heard,” Zoe said.

They filed each other in on the conversations they’d had, Zoe not starting the car, the two of them sitting in the parking space and mulling over the particulars of their interviews.

“You think they’re hiding anything?” Zoe asked.

“It’s hard to say,” Kidd replied. “They both seemed to have been very loose-tongued, especially once we got them alone. It’s hard to know what to think, really.”

“Joshua hates Mason,” Zoe said. “I think that much is pretty clear. He doesn’t think the lad is good enough, but feels that his hands are tied when it comes to him taking over the company.”

“Which is bullshit when he has a hardworking sister who is right there ready to step in should she need to.”

“And she might,” Zoe said.

Kidd narrowed his eyes. “How do you mean?”

“Oh God, I don’t mean if he’s dead, although I guess that’s a possibility,” Zoe said. “Bernadette made it seem like Mason wanted nothing to do with the company, and if that’s the case, then surely if he gets into a position of power, Pippa is going to end up picking up the slack. She’ll be doing all the work of the CEO without any of the money for it. She’ll get absolutely stiffed by the deal.”

Kidd considered it for a moment. They really did need to have a word with Pippa. The real question was, why hadn’t she been there for the interviews? Why was she not with them for the TV spot earlier that morning? Kidd could only imagine how it must have felt, working so hard at the company, only to be leapfrogged by your underachieving brother just because he was older.

“We need to have a word with Pippa,” Kidd said. “When we get back to the station, we need to get her in. Or go and see her. She seems to be the one keeping the company running while Mason is missing, and these two are off doing interviews.”

“Bernadette seemed a lot less thrilled about the press situation than Joshua,” Zoe said.

“How do you mean?”

“Well, while he was ready to jump on that phone call before you stopped him, she was upstairs crying her eyes out,” Zoe replied. “He’s living for the marketing side of things, and she just wants her precious baby boy back.” Zoe took a beat. “She confirmed that the bookings are through the roof. His disappearance has made them a fortune, that’s what she said.”

Kidd considered this for a second. It was a theory that he’d had, one he’d presented, after all. But it still left a bad taste in his mouth.

“You think Joshua has kidnapped his own son?”

“I think it’s something to keep in mind,” Zoe said.

“I agree,” Kidd replied. “At this stage, it could be bloody anyone. And the longer he’s missing…”

“The less likely it is we’re looking for a young man, and more likely we’re just looking for a body,” Zoe finished.

It was a sobering thought, and the two of them sat with it for a long moment. This was about to get more complicated before it got clearer, of that much Kidd was certain.

“Let’s get back to the station,” Kidd said. “Plenty to be getting on with.”

Back at the station, they found the rest of the team hard at work. They were chasing down Mason’s social media presence, trying to find anyone who might have heard from him in the past couple of days, but they were coming up with nothing.

“Christ, that’s not a happy face,” Janya said as Kidd stepped into the room.

“Is it ever?” he replied. “How are we getting on here?”

“I feel like you should go first,” Janya replied. “You might have more to go on than we do.”

Kidd and Sanchez filled them in on the information they’d managed to get from Joshua and Bernadette. While it hadn’t been anything particularly concrete, it was enough to give them a few solid leads, places to turn their attention. It was something, at least.

“So his sister?” DC Hale said. “What do we know about her?”

“I was hoping you might have managed to track her down,” Kidd said.

“I got phone numbers for her, but we haven’t actually managed to reach her,” DC Hale said. “She seems to be incredibly busy.”

“She’ll be the one putting out all of the fires, the one replying to all of the press enquiries,” Zoe said. “It’s no wonder you can’t reach her. But she’s going to be important, I think.”

“Me too,” Kidd added. “Joshua’s assistant is going to pull a credit card statement for us, which will give us an idea of where Mason has been spending his money. It will help us figure out where he has been, which means we can find out where we actually need to be looking.”

He turned his attention to Janya. “Your turn.”

“Christ,” she said. “Well, we’ve not been having a whole lot of luck here. We’ve managed to get a decent enough picture of the kind of life Mason was living. You’ll notice that the board has filled up. Thank you, Powell.”

“Very welcome,” he added.

“But a lot of these people…” Janya seemed to be trying to find the right way to say the next part. “They don’t really know Mason at all. They’re people that he’s been photographed with, people that have been out partying with him at various points, but they don’t have… They don’t have contact with him necessarily.”

Kidd knew exactly where this was going. It was coming through pretty clearly to him, at least. “So they’re just acquaintances?”

“Less than acquaintances,” Janya said. “They were just… We’ve spoken to a lot of them. Hale and I have been tag teaming them, making calls and such. But none of them have any specific contact with Mason, nothing beyond them meeting him out for drinks, following each other online, that kind of thing.”

“They were using him,” Kidd said flatly.

“It would appear so,” Janya replied.

It was the kind of revelation that Kidd could have really done without. It was a sad state of affairs for Mason to be in. From his parents’ perspective, he had tonnes of friends, he’d go out and party with them, and then just reappear a few days later, and everything would be fine. But now… Now it seemed like these people knew he had money, knew who he was and what he could do for them. And with all of that in play, it made their jobs even harder. There was no one close enough to Mason to give them real insight. He was constantly surrounded by people, but totally isolated.

“We managed to get in touch with a couple who knew him more than some of the others. Selena Byrd has been out with him a few times, but claimed to not be there on Friday night,” Janya said, reading from her notes. “Jack Franklin was similar. And then there’s one who is actually coming in to talk to us later on this afternoon. His name is Jonah Cavendish. He sounded pretty devastated on the phone, really cut up about it. Compared to the others, I think he might be our best bet, even if it’s just for getting a better picture of what Mason was like as a person. He seems to know him pretty well.”

“I want you to keep talking to them,” Kidd said. “Someone must have been out with him, or something more than just his Instagram handle. If you can get me that, I’ll be a very happy man.”

The door to the Incident Room opened, Weaver barrelling through, smoke pouring from his ears.

“You’re back then?” he said.

“No, sir, hologram technology has really come along,” Kidd deadpanned. “What can I do for you?”

“Press conference.”

“Sir—”

“Don’t argue with me, Kidd,” Weaver grumbled. “I’ve got Superintendent Charles on my arse, so I need to be on yours. They’re gathering now. What have you got for me?”

The rest of the team had heard it already; they didn’t need to hear it all again.

“I’ll fill you in on the way down,” Kidd said before turning his attention back to the team. “Keep going. We’re going to get through this. Something is coming, it has to be.”

CHAPTER

ELEVEN

Kidd hated doing a press conference this early in an investigation. They’d barely managed to get off the starting blocks and now he was going to be thrown into the lion’s den. They’d expect answers, they’d expect progress, and he knew for a fact that he had nothing of the sort. It was early days.

“So they’ve given you a lot to go on,” Weaver said. “That’s good. That feels positive.”

Kidd couldn’t quite figure out who he was trying to convince. Weaver was likely wondering how he was going to spin all of this to Superintendent Charles and maybe buy himself less of a bollocking.

“We’ve got leads, just nothing concrete yet,” Kidd said. “It’s been less than half a day since we got the bloody thing, they can’t expect us to have found him instantly.”

“You know what these people are like. They’re going to expect the moon.”

“They’re going to have to settle for what I’m giving them,” Kidd replied. “Superintendent Charles coming?”

“He was the first one down.”

“Oh, goodie,” Kidd deadpanned.

Just in case it wasn’t enough that Weaver was breathing down his neck, Superintendent Charles was about to hang him out to dry. He’d not been overly impressed with how things had gone on the last case, and now he had a personal connection to this one. Kidd couldn’t help but think he was going to be an absolute bastard about it.

“Now, now,” Weaver warned. “He’s just trying to help.”

“He’s not trying to help, boss, if he was trying to help he’d be mucking in and getting his hands dirty instead of waiting for me to fuck up so he can bollock me for it, you know what he’s like.”

“He’s my boss.”

“He’s a prick.”

“Kidd.” Another warning shot.

He’d only just come back, he needed to toe a pretty careful line here. He knew how many times Weaver had gone to the mat for him before. He had to be running out of either patience or favours. The only problem was, Weaver hadn’t gone to the mat for him last time. He hadn’t backed him, not one bit. He had let Superintendent Charles rip him to pieces, and he’d just sat there. Kidd felt like he’d run out of chances, and maybe had finally lost the faith of the old faithful DCI Weaver.

“I won’t embarrass you, boss, promise,” Kidd said with a slight smirk. “You know I can’t tell them anything, right? We can only appeal for information.”

“I know that,” Weaver replied. “I’ve got your back, Kidd.”

“Alright then,” Kidd said, as they reached the room. He wanted to believe what Weaver said, but actions spoke a hell of a lot louder than words, and his actions were mouse-quiet.

The conference room was already bustling, different groups of journalists talking to each other, trading notes, business cards, theories. Kidd didn’t know that for sure, he couldn’t hear them above the din, but he assumed. He knew this was going to be a difficult one. He just needed to get through it.

Kidd stepped into the room, and a hush fell. He crossed the front of the room, taking a seat behind a long table. There were Met Police signs behind him, Weaver sat next to him, and Kidd was a little surprised to see just how busy the room was.

He’d been expecting the usual suspects, the local newspapers, the bloggers, that kind of thing, but he hadn’t necessarily been expecting national news crews. There was someone from BBC London, there was someone from ITV, and suddenly it felt like this was spiralling out of control. He knew they were going to want answers, and he couldn’t help but feel incredibly tense about the fact that he wouldn’t be able to give it to them.

He clocked Joe Warrington standing at the back of the room, a smirk on his face. Kidd raised an eyebrow at him, and Joe waved.

He knows something, Kidd thought. Or at the very least, he’s going to pretend he knows something to get whatever I know.

The joke would be well and truly on Joe, given that, at this point in time, Kidd knew absolutely nothing. He couldn’t help but crack a little smile at that.

Though their interactions on Kidd’s precious case hadn’t been the best—he’d torn Joe a new arsehole and then Joe had taken great pleasure in skewering him at the press conference—Kidd was ready to bury the hatchet. And if he had to bury it between Joe’s eyes, so be it.

“Thank you so much for joining us this afternoon,” Kidd said. “And on such short notice. We’ve prepared a short statement that I will read for you now, after which I will be able to answer a few questions. At this stage in the investigation, we are appealing for information. Anything you might have that might assist us in moving this forward. We have only had this case for a short time, so, as I’m sure you will understand, we are still in the early stages.”

He locked eyes with Superintendent Charles at the back of the room. Kidd watched his sour face twisting as he talked, as he sort of let himself off the hook a little bit for things not being further along. Charles could snap at him if he tried, but Kidd knew he was in the right, at least for the time being.

“On Friday night, Mason Cooke did not return home to his family,” Kidd started. “His parents have tried to contact him, as have friends, but at the moment, we have had nothing back from him whatsoever. I have spoken to his parents this morning after their appearance on Good Morning! Live! and I echo their sentiments. If you happen to be watching this, Mason, please contact us. We are appealing for information from any and all sources as to Mason’s last movements before he disappeared. If you know anything, please do not hesitate to reach out, no matter how small that piece of information may seem, it could be invaluable in helping us solve this case and bringing Mason home.”

Kidd turned his attention back to the waiting reporters. He felt remarkably calm. Given that it was early in the investigation, most of what he was doing at this point was gathering intel, figuring out what their next move was going to be. How could anyone in the press be annoyed with them when things had only just begun?

A hand went up, a man sitting in the front row in a brown, tweedy-looking suit that looked like it had stepped straight out of a history book. The man wearing it was quite young, baby-faced, and his movements were jerky, belying his nervousness at having everyone’s eyes on him as he asked a question. Kidd watched him shrink into himself as he called on him.

“Martin Bowman, Surrey Comet,” he said. “I was wondering what had been done so far in the investigation? What steps have been taken and what your next steps will be?”

“Thank you, Martin,” Kidd said. “Obviously, I can only say so much, as this is an active investigation. So far, we have been to see Mason’s parents, and we’re reaching out to Mason’s friends in the hopes we can get a clearer picture of what happened to him on Friday night, where he was, what he was getting up to. But that’s why we are appealing for information. He was a very popular guy, so we are trying to put those pieces together.”

Kidd continued to answer questions for a little while longer. They weren’t particularly difficult given that he didn’t have much to say, and a lot of what he could have said would have revealed too much. It was somewhat calming. When Weaver wrapped things up, he was happy with how things had gone, and Weaver seemed that way too.

“Nice work, Kidd,” Weaver said. “Wasn’t so hard, now was it?”

“They were awful kind,” Kidd said. “Anyone would think they were almost on our side there. Did you see it?”

“Miracles do happen,” Weaver replied. “I need to catch up with the superintendent, I’ll be back with you shortly.” Weaver headed across the room, slipping past the journalists as they made their way out.

Kidd couldn’t help but notice that one of them was lingering behind. A boy in a beanie hat, who had made it his personal mission to be in Kidd’s business as much as possible over the past year or so.

“Joe Warrington,” Kidd said. “Didn’t fancy chiming in with a question or two?”

“I think the rest of the rabble handled you just fine,” he replied with a smirk. “Besides, you’ve not done anything wrong yet. Until you’ve done something wrong, there isn’t really a lot of news.”

“Oh, it’s me fucking up that gets you the clicks, is it?”

“Something like that,” Joe replied.

Kidd waited for him to continue, to say something else, but he seemed nervous suddenly, like he was going to say something that perhaps Kidd wouldn’t like and didn’t really know how he was going to react.

“What is it, Joe?” Kidd asked, trying to keep the exasperated tone out of his voice. He wasn’t particularly successful.

“I have a bit of information for you regarding Mason,” Joe said. “I… I didn’t want to bring it up in front of everyone because…”

“Because you want to use it for leverage?”

“Well,” Joe said. “Sort of. But also because if I bring it up in front of everyone here, then that gets in the way of your investigation, doesn’t it? That will compromise things because the press will then be sticking their noses in elsewhere?”

“Well, would you look at that, Joe? You’re learning,” Kidd said. “What have you got for me?”

“I was out on Friday night with some friends in Soho and I saw Mason Cooke in The Grade. It’s a bar in Soho. He was with a whole bunch of people. I don’t know who they were, but I saw the news feeds this morning, saw that he was missing and… there you go.”

Kidd eyed Joe carefully for a moment. They’d had their differences in the past, they’d had their problems, but maybe this was Joe trying to make up for them, maybe this was Joe trying to make things right.

“And you know this because you were out?”

“I can show you whatever proof you need, but I was out with some friends and I saw him.”

“Did you see where he went?”

Joe shook his head. “The only reason I recognised his picture is because he and his friends were being so bloody obnoxious.”

“Obnoxious?”

“Bottle after bottle of wine, champagne maybe, I don’t know,” he started. “Shouting over people, pushing in line at the bar. I recognised Mason because he was the one at the front of all of it; he was the one who was leading the charge.”

“Thank you, Joe,” Kidd said, hesitating slightly. “What is this information going to cost me?”

“Not a damn thing,” Joe said, hands up, white flag, surrender. “Just keep me in mind if you have anything exclusive you can throw my way. Or maybe I’ll just cash in a favour at a later date.”

“Maybe you will,” Kidd said.

Joe said his goodbyes and made his way out of the room, leaving Kidd standing alone at the podium.

CHAPTER

TWELVE

“What was all that about?” Weaver asked, reappearing at Kidd’s side.

“I might have just got a lead from Joe Warrington,” Kidd said.

“That was very nice of him.”

“No, it wasn’t,” Kidd said. “He wants something. I just can’t figure out what.”

“What did he say?” Weaver was suddenly a little more animated. Charles was still there, waiting, watching. Had they been watching him have that conversation with Joe? Were they spying on him?

“He gave me the name of a club that he saw Mason at on Friday night,” Kidd said. “So he’s given us a lead, something we can start looking into.”

“Thank you,” Weaver said. “I’m going to tell the Super about it. It might go some way to getting him off my back, which gets me off yours.”

Kidd nodded, but he still wasn’t altogether happy at being indebted to Joe Warrington. He couldn’t help but feel like it was the kind of thing that would come back and bite him in the arse sooner rather than later.

“What’s up?” Weaver asked.

“A lot to do,” Kidd said. “And with the Super on at us both, I’m worried about getting it right, that’s all. He’s shown that he clearly doesn’t care for me, and clearly doesn’t trust me, which puts me in an awkward situation.”

“Give me a moment,” Weaver said. He went over to the superintendent, spoke to him, telling him something that actually almost got him to crack a smile before he left without another word to Kidd.

That didn’t sit right with Kidd at all. He didn’t like feeling like he was on the back foot.

Weaver came back over to him, taking a seat on one of the conference chairs. Kidd sat a couple of seats away, shifting his body so he was looking across at the absolute giant of a man who was his boss.

“What was that about?” Kidd asked.

“I was giving the Super an opportunity to get out of here,” Weaver said. “He’s a busy man, he’s got plenty to do, and it’s probably better for both of us that we can sit here without him staring daggers into the side of our heads.”

“A wise move,” Kidd said. “What has he said about me?”

“Nothing so far,” Weaver said. “He wasn’t expecting you to come in here with a solution, and thinks you handled it well. He doesn’t hate you, you know.”

“With all due respect, sir, that’s bollocks,” Kidd said. “He can’t stand me.”

“You can believe what you want to believe,” Weaver said. “But I have faith in you, and he has faith in me, so that has to count for something. I know you’ve got a handle on this and the second the leads start properly coming in, you will be following them and getting this lad found and back with his parents.”

Kidd found himself looking quite hard into Weaver’s eyes. He wanted to believe him, wanted to think that he meant what he said. But he just couldn’t be sure. He was still feeling the doubts from the last case, still feeling that air of Weaver not trusting him entirely.

“Thank you, sir,” Kidd said. It was the only thing he could think to say to get himself out of this situation, to get himself away from the conference room and back to doing the work he needed to do. He excused himself and made his way back to the Incident Room, trying to shake that feeling that he was letting Weaver down, or not quite meeting his expectations of him. He didn’t like that feeling. It made him feel unsteady, and when you were feeling unsteady, it was only a matter of time before you fell.

Kidd made his way back to the Incident Room and filled in the rest of the team on what had happened at the press conference. Even they seemed surprised that he’d had such an easy time of it.

“They genuinely seemed like they were on our side,” Kidd said. “Maybe we’ve discovered the key to me not wanting to murder journalists.”

“What a novelty,” Sanchez replied. “Meanwhile, we’ve been here trying to figure out if there is anyone in the world who knows Mason Cooke beyond knowing him as a walking credit card. It’s all looking pretty hopeless.”

“Not as hopeless as you might think,” Kidd said. “I had a chat with Joe Warrington.”

“And?”

“We’ve got a location. Somewhere he was Friday night,” Kidd said. “Anyone know of a bar called The Grade?”

DC Hale sat up a little bit straighter. “I’ve heard of it,” he said. “Not the kind of place that I’ve been to, it’s all… I don’t know, it’s the kind of place that’s full of posers, sir. People who don’t actually have a lot of money, but want to say that they’ve been to The Grade.”

“No wonder Joe Warrington was there,” Zoe said under her breath. There was no love lost between the pair of them.

“Well, he saw Mason there with a group of his friends,” Kidd said. “So at least we know the area he was in. If he was going bar hopping, he could have ended up anywhere, but it’s a starting point at least.”

“True enough,” Zoe said. “What are you going to do?”

“Give them a call, maybe pop in and have a chat,” Kidd said. “We need to get in touch with the local businesses in that area, maybe even the council, see if we can’t grab some CCTV. It will help us get a timeline together of where he’s been, maybe even give us some indication as to where he went next. Or, if we’re really lucky, someone will come forward from the appeal and we’ll end up with something good landing on our desk.” He kept his eyes on Zoe, a glint in his eye. “Fancy an afternoon out in Soho?”

CHAPTER

THIRTEEN

Damon Ray, the manager of The Grade in Soho, had been far more helpful than Kidd had initially expected. It spoke volumes about the faith that he had in the people whom he usually dealt with. That Damon was willing to meet and to help, caught him very much by surprise.

“You thought you were going to have to start knocking heads together just to see him, then?” Zoe said as they got on the train at Kingston.

“I thought it would maybe be a little more complicated than ‘Come on down, let’s look at the CCTV together,’” Kidd said. “I don’t know. Maybe I’m becoming cynical.”

“Becoming cynical?” Zoe repeated. “Benjamin Kidd, you are one of the most cynical people I know. And I mean that as a compliment.”

“How is that a compliment?”

“You’re discerning,” she said. “You’re not about to trust some twat blindly. You’re going to make up your own mind. It’s admirable.”

“Thank you,” Kidd said, suddenly eyeing her carefully. They took a seat next to one another. The train wasn’t too busy at this point in the day, kids still at school, people still at work. It meant the carriage was practically empty. “What do you want?”

“What do you mean, ‘What do you want?’” Zoe repeated.

“It feels like you’re buttering me up for something,” Kidd said. “Did Seth get back to you?”

“He’s free tonight if you are,” Zoe replied.

Kidd smirked. “So that’s it,” he said. “You’re wanting me to have a good evening meeting your new boyfriend, and you’re worried that I’m going to hate him? Zoe, I’m surprised at you.”

“Well, you’ve already met him once,” she said. “And he was very helpful in that scenario.”

“I remember,” Kidd said. “Why does it matter to you what I think?”

“Because you’re my friend,” she said. “And you’re a pretty good judge of character. If nothing else, you might be able to let me know if I’m totally wasting my time.”

Kidd sighed. “Do you like him?”

“Yes.”

“Does he make you happy?”

“Yes.”

Kidd smiled at her. “Then you’re not wasting your time.”

The Grade was a small bar on a corner of Brewer Street. It had been a restaurant once upon a time. Kidd was fairly certain he’d eaten there once or twice, but that felt like it was the kind of thing that happened in a previous life. It was tidy enough on the outside. The windows were clean, the trim painted a deep green, and the neon pink sign over the top of the door wasn’t currently lit.

There was a sign on the door that marked it as closed, but the second Kidd and Zoe approached, someone was there waiting for them.

He was tall with light brown skin and a soft smile that seemed to be his resting face. He didn’t look like he was having to force any kind of cheeriness. He was just cheery. Kidd couldn’t relate. His resting face was normally one of absolute disgruntlement.

“Damon Ray?” Kidd said.

“Detective Inspector Benjamin Kidd,” Damon said, giving the words a lot more gravity than Kidd would have. It was like he was play-acting, making it sound like Kidd was making some grand entrance. “You made good time. I wasn’t expecting you until a little later.”

“Managed to catch a train pretty quickly,” he said. “And then the tubes were kind.”

“You’re going to have a nightmare on the way back.”

“I know,” Kidd said. He hated rush hour, hated being crammed in on the trains, barely able to breathe. “But thank you for seeing us on such short notice.”

“Anything I can do to help, honestly,” Damon said. “Please, come inside, make yourselves comfortable.”

He closed the door behind them, locking it at the top and bottom to keep anyone else from wandering in. There was a distinctly clean smell in the air, like the place had been freshly mopped right before they walked in the door. The bar was positioned near the back of the room, the whole width taken up with bottles in different colours, fairy lights twinkling above them. There was a sign to one side pointing to the stairs, “More Good Times Below!” but much like the sign outside, it wasn’t lit up yet.

It was the kind of place that Kidd likely would have felt out of place in on a night out when he was younger. He didn’t go out much then anyway, but a place like this would have had him noticing how dirty his shoes were, how old his jeans were, wondering if the shirt he had chosen was the right style. Ash had said it was a poser bar, and as Damon sat himself down across from the two detectives, Kidd had to agree. He watched as the manager positioned himself as if a photographer were waiting to snap a candid of him in the least candid way possible. Damon Ray was on display and performing, it seemed, at all times. Kidd needed to get past that outer shell and find out what was really going on in this bar.

“We won’t take up too much of your time, Mr Ray,” Kidd said. “We know you have to open in a few hours and don’t want to disturb you.”

“You’re not disturbing me at all,” he said. “I… I did a little bit of digging after your call, sort of put two and two together and figured… you’re looking for Mason Cooke, aren’t you?”

Kidd wasn’t wholly sure how to respond to that. He wasn’t used to people taking the time to look things up before his arrival, and it had now happened twice in one day. It didn’t sit right with him.

“Did you see the press conference?”

“I did,” Damon said. “And if you’d not got in touch with me, I’d have been on the phone to you anyway.”

“That’s good to know,” Kidd said, even if he wasn’t entirely sure he believed it. There he was, discerning. Maybe Zoe was right. “He went missing on Friday night, and I have it on good authority that he was at your bar. Would that be right?”

A soft smile made its way across Damon’s face. “Well, yes, he was in here,” Damon said. “I don’t think we were the only bar that he went to, but he did spend rather a lot of time here.”

“What makes you say that?”

“He was already pretty drunk when he got here,” Damon said. “Or at the very least, he was tipsy. We were just another stop on the road. But I know Mason. He comes here quite often.”

“How well do you know him?”

“We are more acquaintances than we are friends,” Damon said. “I recognise the people that come in here regularly, I know to treat them with… a little more attention. They like that.”

“How do you mean?”

“So, someone like Mason Cooke walks through the door, I make sure my staff knows to greet him, make sure they get a glass in his hand as soon as possible. On the house, of course. It keeps them coming back if we treat them well. Sometimes it keeps them coming here rather than starting here and then moving on to one of the other bars.”

“So Mason Cooke came here with some friends,” Kidd said. “Did you recognise them?”

“No,” Damon said quickly. “He comes in with different people all the time. This was just another set of… another set of the kind of people he normally hangs out with.” The veneer dropped for a second. There was the briefest look of distaste on Damon’s face. He knew what the people who hung out with Mason were doing, knew that they were using him.

“And what kind of people are they?”

“You know the type, Detective,” he said. “People who know who he is, people that take advantage of his good nature and his money and will spend their time sucking up to him until the credit card runs dry. Which it will happen.”

“Do they all get a drink when they come in?”

Damon smirks. “Of course,” he says. “They may be taking advantage of Mason, but his money is as good as anyone else’s. We need to keep all of the clientele happy, not just the ones we approve of.”

“Was there anything strange going on while he was here Friday night?”

Damon blinked. “What do you mean?”

“Did he seem out of sorts to you at all?” Kidd asked. “Given that we’ve yet to hear from anyone requesting a ransom or threatening his life, it would seem like he has gone missing. Was there anything different about him?”

Damon thought about it for a moment, and even in that, Kidd couldn’t help but feel like he was putting on a show for them, posing to look like he was deep in thought. He wasn’t much better than the people he had so openly criticised, the ones who had been there using Mason for his money. Damon was the same. The only difference was, he was using it to line his pocket rather than destroy his liver.

“He seemed his usual self,” Damon replied. “He was throwing money around as he always was, being very much guided by the people he was with when it came to what they were buying and drinking next.”

“And what were they drinking?”

“Anything with a high price tag,” Damon replied. “I have CCTV that I can show you, if you’d like? I have timestamps of when he got here, when he left. It’s all on camera and in the book.”

“The book?”

“Guestbook,” Damon said. “We keep track of everyone who comes in here, and we take a name at the door. It’s very exclusive. We need to make sure that we are only being filled with the most exclusive clientele. There is a cover charge at the door, and then they give a name and usually a number.”

“Contact info?” Kidd said. “So, we will have contact numbers for every person who came in with Mason on Friday night?”

Damon smirked. “I suppose you will.”

CHAPTER

FOURTEEN

Jonah Cavendish appeared at the reception desk of Kingston Police Station with a bright red face and tears in his eyes. Even when Janya had gone down to collect him, even when she’d got him a cup of tea, a biscuit, and offered him tissues to dry his eyes, the tears just kept coming. It seemed it had hit him hard, far harder than it had the other people that they’d been speaking to. It was comforting, at least, to know that Mason had someone like this that they could turn to, someone who wasn’t just using him for the money.

Janya and Ash took him to one of the smaller meeting rooms, the ones without the intimidating lighting, the ones where they took families when they needed to break bad news. Once they got him seated, he seemed to calm down a little bit. Or at the very least, he stopped crying. So that was something.

“Thank you for coming in,” Janya said. “I’m sure us reaching out to you must have been a surprise.”

Jonah sniffed. “Not really,” he said. “Sorry, not trying to burst your bubble or anything like that, but I saw it on the news. I figured that you’d be getting in touch with anyone and everyone who knew him.”

“He was a very popular guy.”

Jonah scoffed. “He was popular, sure, well-liked maybe, but only so long as that credit card didn’t go back into his wallet,” he said. “If the credit card went away, you saw pretty damn quickly how few people actually wanted to stick around and get to know him.”

Janya eyed Jonah carefully. He seemed like he meant well, seemed genuinely cut up by his friend being missing, but she wasn’t about to be guided quite so quickly down the path of him being the only good guy, while everyone else who knew Mason was bad. She was wary of him, and she would remain that way until he came out with something she felt like she could actually use in their investigation.

“How did you know Mason?” Ashley asked. “According to his socials, it looks like you’ve been friends for a while?”

“We went to school together,” Jonah said. “So we’ve been friends since we were maybe eleven? Twelve, perhaps? We weren’t the most popular kids at school, and I think we gravitated towards one another because of that. He didn’t have a credit card he could whip out at a moment’s notice to buy people’s affection, so he had a bit of a rough time of it. No one cared who his dad was.”

“But you stuck by him, how noble.”

“Not noble. We just genuinely had a lot in common,” Jonah said. “He’s a bit of a geek. I’m allowed to say that; I’m one too. Anything science fiction or fantasy, we were all over it. We saw all the MCU films together, the new Star Wars films, even used to watch stuff together online when we couldn’t meet up in person.”

“Online?”

“We’d have a FaceTime call running while we were watching,” he said. “Just press play at the same time, it was… It was nice.”

Janya found herself searching his face once again. There was a part of this story that was going untold, something that perhaps he wasn’t telling them. Did she sense some hurt there? Did she see some sadness in his eyes as he spoke about their past? Does that past not exist anymore?

“You’re speaking in the past tense,” Janya said.

“What’s that?”

“Is that something that you two don’t do anymore?”

Jonah swallowed, eyes looking a little glassy again. “We do it occasionally,” Jonah said. “Not as much as we used to, nowhere near as much as we used to. I think… I think his new friends became more important than me.”

“How did that make you feel?”

“Not great.”

“When was the last time you saw Mason?”

“We watched a show last year, November maybe, before Christmas definitely,” he said. “Season Finale of this old series we were watching—Legends Of Doom—you probably haven’t heard of it.”

“I haven’t.”

“It’s pretty niche,” he said. “But that was the last time I saw him physically. We watched it in a room of one of the Cooke Hotels in London. It was an event. We ordered room service, watched the show, talked about it until the early hours of the morning. Then we slept and had breakfast at the hotel before heading our separate ways. I’ve not seen him since then. I’ve tried to arrange stuff, but he just hasn’t had the time.”

“Were things like that before?”

“Not quite so bad,” Jonah said. “There were times he’d blow me off to go out with his friends, or cancel last minute, or… whatever. But after we finished that show, it was like the last thing we had tying us together. We didn’t have another show on the go and… it was like I didn’t matter anymore.”

“That must have been hard.”

Jonah shrugged, trying to seem fine with it, trying to make it look as if it didn’t matter that his best friend had just abandoned him to go out and party. But his eyes betrayed him, the tears that still lingered, the fact that he’d come here in the first place, desperate to help his missing friend.

“I can’t help you that much,” Jonah said. “I wasn’t with him on Friday. It wasn’t really my scene.”

“Did he invite you?”

Jonah shook his head. “At the beginning, he did. But as time went on, the invitations faded. I kept saying no, and so eventually he just stopped asking. It’s not my scene anyway. I don’t do well with crowds or with new people. I just wanted to spend time with my friend.”

“So you said you can’t help us very much,” Janya said. “What can you help us with?”

“I can tell you a little more about his family,” Jonah said. “And I have his personal phone number.”

Janya blinked. “Personal phone number?”

“He had two,” he said. “One for family, one for close friends. I imagine you’ve got the first one, but I have the second one. It might be of use.”

“It will be, thanks,” Janya said. “Tell me about his family.”

Jonah shuffled around in his seat a little bit. He started tugging at the threads of his jumper, the frayed little strings of fabric at the cuffs coming away, threatening to unravel the garment entirely.

“They weren’t a happy one,” Jonah said. “And Mason didn’t like them.”

“He didn’t?”

“They wanted too much from him a lot of the time,” Jonah said. “I… I don’t fully understand it. From my perspective, Mason has everything handed to him on a platter. His family is rich, they have a successful chain of hotels and casinos, they’re a global brand and getting bigger, and he is being asked to be part of it, but… he doesn’t want to.”

“He doesn’t?”

“He wants to enjoy his life,” Jonah said. “He wants to be free and avoid being tied into a life of meetings and schedules and work, work, work, and don’t get me wrong, I understand that, but it’s a bit idealistic.”

“Agreed.”

“I would love to have his life, I would love to be able to know what I’m doing, to have a focus, to have a future that I’m not having to try and figure out,” Jonah said. “But from what he’s said, Mason feels like he’s trapped. He doesn’t want it. He wants his sister to have it, but his family doesn’t want to give to her. It’s all… It’s all a bit of a mess, to be honest. He just wants to get away from all of that, but they won’t let him.”

“Do you think Mason could have disappeared on purpose?” Janya asked. “If he wasn’t enjoying this life that was predetermined for him, would he have run away?”

Jonah shook his head. “This is the thing with Mason. He is a lot of talk,” Jonah said. “He would love to be away from them, not to have to work for the family business, that kind of thing. But he wants the money. He doesn’t want to have to be self-sufficient. He wants the world, but he wants it without the responsibility or the consequences.”

It seemed to line up with the kind of picture they’d already managed to paint of Mason, but maybe there was more going on with the family than they first thought. There was tension there, at last as far as Kidd and Zoe had managed to detect, but what if there was more than tension, what if there were bigger problems, more reasons for Mason to disappear?

“And what about his sister?” Janya asked.

Jonah seemed a little thrown by the question. “Pippa?”

“Yes,” Janya said. “What was their relationship like?”

“They were brother and sister,” Jonah said. Janya had to resist the urge to sigh, it was such a non-answer. But Jonah continued, “They seemed to get along pretty well, but there was… tension.”

“Tension?”

“Pippa was picking up after Mason a lot of the time,” Jonah said. “So when things got… difficult or something came up that Mason didn’t want to do, a business meeting, a board meeting, press stuff, Pippa would be the one to step in. Not that she got any appreciation for it.”

So it really was as bad as the interview with Joshua and Bernadette had made it look. Pippa was doing all the work, but Mason was still going to be the one to inherit the company. It was… troubling. Being dismissed by your parents like that would surely leave a pretty bad taste in your mouth. But would it push someone far enough to act upon it? They needed to talk to Pippa.

“Thank you, Jonah,” Janya said. “If we could get that phone number off you, we’d be very grateful. And if you could let us know where you were on Friday night, that would also be helpful.”

Jonah blinked, confused. “Why do you need to know where I was on Friday night?” he asked. “I’ve come here to talk to you. I’m trying to do the right thing and help you find my friend.”

“And we totally understand and appreciate that,” Janya said. “This is just routine. We just want to rule you out.”

CHAPTER

FIFTEEN

Damon took them downstairs and led them through a door behind the second bar. It was pretty spacious, a staff room down at one end of the corridor and his office just a little way along. He took them inside, and Kidd was struck by how heavily decorated it was.

There were photographs on the wall, framed. Pictures of Damon with various celebrities who had come into his club. Each one had a small printed label under it, just in case you didn’t know who they were. The truth was, Kidd had no idea who they were and had he not included their most famous credit in a little bracket on the label, he still wouldn’t have known.

“You get a lot of famous people in here,” Zoe said. “I’ll be honest, I didn’t even know this place existed.”

“Well, it is very exclusive,” Damon said, the meaning of his words clear—you wouldn’t have any reason to.

Kidd glanced at Zoe. The words didn’t hit her too hard, just a little slice, a glancing blow, but he still didn’t like that Damon had spoken to her that way.

“What have you got for us?” Kidd asked, deciding the sooner they got out of there, the better it would be for all of them. “You said you had timestamps?”

“I do,” Damon said, sitting down behind his computer, tapping a few times before spinning the screen around. There was a camera right at the front door, looking just over the shoulder of someone at the host stand, watching as the people filed in.

Kidd watched as a group of people were turned away by the host, checking the list, shaking their head, sending them on their merry way. Kidd hadn’t needed to see that, and he couldn’t help but feel like Damon was just flexing his muscles here. Kidd didn’t like that so much.

Then a familiar face walked through the door.

Mason Cooke, dressed in a button-down shirt and a pair of chinos, stepped into the club and was immediately greeted with what looked like a cheer from the host. They threw their arms up in the air and stepped around their little stand to wrap him up in a hug.

Kidd looked at the timestamp. 21:13.

He watched Mason bring his friends forward, six of them in total, each of them dressed up. The men were in smart shirts and trousers, the girls in short dresses and high heels, stumbling over one another to get a better look inside The Grade. If Mason had come here all the time, these couldn’t have been people he’d brought with him before. They were in awe of the place.

He handed a card over to the host, paying the cover charge for them all to get in, it seemed, before the host handed them a tablet so they could type in their information. They did it in turn.

When they stepped into the club, Damon clicked off that video and on to another one, one that showed Mason stumbling out of the club, waving and blowing kisses to the door staff as he left. 22:37. They’d stayed for an hour and a half and moved on to somewhere else.

Kidd carried on watching the screen, watching as they moved off down Brewer Street, heading further into Soho. There were a million bars in Soho, they could have ended up anywhere. Until they got the credit card statement, there would be no way of knowing where he had got to.

Damon moved the screen back around, clicking a few more times before turning it back. It was a spreadsheet of the people who had come into the bar. He’d highlighted Mason’s name and the six people who had come in with him. Full names, telephone numbers, and email addresses.

“Why do you take all of this information?”

Damon smirked. “We like to have a good idea of who we have coming into the bar,” he said. “This means we can contact them with exclusive offers if they want to come again, or blacklist them entirely if they caused a fuss while they were here.”

“You’ve blacklisted people?”

“Plenty,” he said. “It’s flagged in our system. When they try to get in after that, all it takes is for them to put their name or telephone number in, and it flags it for the host. Then they’re turned away. We’re not going to have people sullying this establishment. Not if I can help it anyhow.”

“Mason and his friends didn’t cause you any trouble?”

“None at all,” Damon said. He clicked a few buttons, the small section of the spreadsheet printing out below the desk. He handed it to Kidd. “I hope this helps. He is one of our most valued customers. I’d hate for anything to have happened to him.”

Kidd took the sheet of paper and scanned it. “Selena Byrd,” he said.

Zoe turned to him. “Who’s Selena Byrd?”

“That’s the girl who Powell mentioned earlier, the one who said she hadn’t seen Mason in a long time,” Kidd said. “I think she’s got some explaining to do.”

“So I’ve helped,” he said, looking pleased with himself. “I’m so glad to have assisted in your investigation in some small way, absolutely thrilled.” He smiled. “I hope you come and drink with us some time, Detective,” he added. “We’ll be sure to waive the cover charge. For the first time.”

“You’re too kind,” Kidd deadpanned. “We should probably be getting back. Thank you for your time, Mr Ray.”

“I’ll see you out.”

They made their way back down Brewer Street, heading in the direction of Piccadilly Circus. The crowds had picked up somewhat. Even on a weekday, London could be a bit of a nightmare to navigate in the more popular areas.

“Selena Byrd,” Zoe repeated as they made their way into the underground. “So she’s lied about going out with Mason. Why would she do something like that?”

“I don’t know,” Kidd replied. “But given that someone who is supposed to be her friend is missing, you’d think that she would be more than happy to help us out if she thought she would be able to help in some way.”

“She might have just been scared,” Zoe said. “If she was taking advantage of him for his money, maybe she thought that would get her in some kind of trouble.”

“People don’t lie unless they have something to hide,” Kidd said. “And I think Selena has a lot to answer for.”

Kidd and Zoe spent some time heading to the bars just down the road from The Grade. They popped in, spoke to whoever was the most senior person there, showed them a picture of Mason, and tried to get as much information as they could. People seemed to recognise him from Good Morning Live! that morning when his photo had been flashed. And a few more that had seen him in their bar previously, just not on Friday night. It seemed like his reputation preceded him, and it wasn’t a good one.

The more people they spoke to, the more Kidd realised that Mason wasn’t a particularly nice person, and that he was only really welcome in these bars because he was willing to spend.

They gave up by the time they got to Old Compton Street. There were a few bars down there, and it was starting to feel like Mason hadn’t come down this far. No one had seen him.

Kidd looked around as they walked back to the tube, at the various CCTV cameras outside buildings, on lampposts, on street corners. There was a lot of coverage; they would be able to trace where he went next if they had no luck with Selena or with the bank transactions. You can’t hide in a city like this, so where on earth was he?

They stepped onto the tube. Thankfully, it wasn’t too busy yet. If they were really lucky, they might just manage to avoid the crush of people getting out of the capital and back to the suburbs.

“What did you think of Damon Ray?” Zoe asked, leaning in close to Kidd to be heard over the roar of the underground train.

“I think he’s a bit of a slimeball,” Kidd said. “But broadly harmless. I don’t think anything has happened at that club that he’s not told us about. At least not anything with Mason, I mean. I’m sure there’s plenty of sleaze he wasn’t sharing with us.”

“I think so too,” Zoe replied. “He took a shine to you.”

“Did he?”

“He offered you a chance to go back and have a drink there,” Zoe said. “Was going to waive the cover charge and everything. You didn’t hear him extending that same offer to me. I may as well not have been there.”

“You clearly don’t look as exclusive as me.”

“Or the guy is just a massive prick,” Zoe replied.

Kidd snorted. “Probably just that,” Kidd said. “I wonder how the rest of the team is getting on. I imagine if anyone is going to tell us the truth about the Cookes, it’s going to be his sister. She might have something for us to follow up on.”

“Hope so,” Zoe replied. “You know how things are when someone’s missing.”

Zoe didn’t need to finish that thought. The problem with people going missing is the longer they were missing, the more likely it was that you were looking for a body rather than a living person. Kidd didn’t know what was going on with Mason, he just knew that the Cookes were secretive and at least one of his ‘friends’ had lied about being out with him on Friday night. They needed to get to the bottom of this, and fast. Mason’s life depended on it.

CHAPTER

SIXTEEN

Kidd and Zoe made their way back to Kingston Police Station, just about managing to avoid the rush of people trying to get back out to the suburbs. They didn’t discuss the case on the way back, didn’t discuss the things that Damon had said to them about Mason. They allowed the time to pass by discussing other things, pulling themselves out of the work at least for that thirty-minute train ride.

“Was wondering when you’d be getting back,” Janya said as they walked through the door. “Pretty decent interview with Jonah Cavendish. We’ve got an alibi for him, so we are going to double-check that to confirm he was nowhere near Mason on Friday night. We also got a phone number.”

“We also got a phone number,” Kidd said. “They have to give a phone number and a name when they go into The Grade. You weren’t kidding about it being exclusive, Ash. They really do everything in their power to keep people they don’t want out of there.”

“But which number did you get?” Janya said with a smirk.

Kidd narrowed his eyes. “What do you mean?”

“Well, there’s the number we already have, the one from his parents, the one you likely got at The Grade,” she said. “And then there’s the number he keeps for his friends.”

“Really?” Kidd said. “Did Jonah tell you why he does that?”

“Keep his parents out of things, I reckon,” Ash said. “He seems to want absolutely nothing to do with their business if he can help it. He just wants to enjoy life.”

“So long as he can still spend the money,” Janya added.

“Well, that would be the dream,” Kidd said. “But unfortunately, it’s not possible to just dick around on our parents’ money and not pay our own way. You think he might have run away because of that?”

“No,” Janya said. “Jonah doesn’t think Mason wants to work. And if he doesn’t want to work, what would be the point in leaving? He’d have no money, and the second he started using their credit card, it would surely get found. Or at least it would be easy enough to track.”

“Unless he was squirrelling money away into a separate account and has done a runner on that,” Powell said.

“He’d need a lot of money to survive for the rest of his life,” Kidd said.

“Fair point,” Powell said. “But maybe worth looking into once I finally get hold of his banking records.”

“You having trouble?”

“Just taking their sweet ass time,” he said. “How was The Grade?”

“Posh.”

“Oh, I bet you loved it,” Powell said dryly. “Loved how exclusive it was, loved being with the in crowd.”

“How was Damon Ray? Is he as much of a prick as everyone says he is?” DC Hale asked.

“He was nice enough to us,” Kidd said. “But the way he talked about the club, he certainly takes pleasure in keeping people out that he doesn’t want there. I think… I don’t know, maybe he spent some of his life being treated that way and instead of it making him accepting of people, it just made him want to hang out with the best of the best.”

“Are you psychoanalysing Damon Ray?”

“I’m making a suggestion as to why he has a list of people’s contact information and can blacklist them at a moment’s notice,” Kidd said. “If he doesn’t want you there, he can keep you out.”

“Which means anything could be happening behind those doors,” Zoe said.

“Exactly,” Kidd said. “I don’t know if there’s anything happening there that we necessarily need to be looking into, certainly not anything to do with this case, but it’s maybe worth keeping in mind.”

“Did you get anything from it? Or just a nice chat?” Powell asked.

“We need to get Selena Byrd in for a proper chat,” Kidd said.

Janya’s face scrunched up as she looked at the evidence board and then back to Kidd. “We spoke to her this morning. She hasn’t seen Mason in… What did she say, Powell? A couple of months?”

“She’s a liar,” Kidd said. “We got a list of names from Damon Ray and she was with Mason on Friday night. Which means she knows something.”

“I’ll make the call,” Janya said, immediately going to her desk and picking up the phone.

“We also got timestamps of Mason’s arrival and departure from The Grade. It looked like he was heading in the direction of Old Compton Street, so focus on that area for the CCTV. We popped into a few places, asked if they’d seen him, but haven’t had much luck yet.”

“I can make some calls,” DC Hale said. “There are a lot of places in Soho they could have ended up. Then there’s Westminster Council for the CCTV. Might be harder to get hold of, but worth a shot.”

“Thanks, Ash, appreciate it,” Kidd said. “Keep going on that bank information, Powell. If everything is as we think it is and his friends are using him for money, he will have a trail of charges that will lead us directly to where he went missing.” Kidd let out a breath. Progress was being made, and it felt good to feel that with confidence. Now he just needed to convince Weaver that everything was going to be fine, that it was all in hand.

“I’ll be right back,” he said, making his way out of the incident room and heading down the corridor to chat to his boss.

“I’m pleased,” Weaver said, sitting back in his chair. “You seem to have really taken to this quickly, Kidd. I’m really pleased.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“I know you didn’t want to do the press conference this morning, but everything since seems to be going our way. I look forward to passing that information onto the Super. I think he’ll be thrilled.”

“Has Superintendent Charles ever been thrilled, sir?”

“Now, now,” Weaver warned, though it was hardly a confirmation. “I know I’ve not been the best since you got back, Kidd. I’ve been keeping an extra close eye on you because, despite what Occupational Health said, I didn’t want to just leave it to them.”

“How do you mean, sir?”

“I know you’ve been through a lot,” Weaver said. “Not just losing Owen Campbell, but the cases in Southend, everything with The Grinning Murders, with your partner John, with Craig, it’s not been the easiest couple of years for you. Two leaves of absence in the space of a year aren’t often a good sign.”

“I know, sir,” Kidd said. “But, respectfully, one leave of absence just ended up as a secondment of me working somewhere else.”

“Be that as it may,” Weaver said, “I was watching you a lot closer on that last case, Kidd, and things got a little bit too uncertain for my liking. I appreciate you checking in with me today, letting me know things are going well, and keeping me in the loop when I’ve asked you to. I’m here to back you, okay? I’ve always backed you. You’ve never given me a reason not to. I want to… apologise for keeping such a close eye on you.”

“It’s alright, boss,” Kidd said. He knew it was coming from a good place. He was concerned about him, concerned about his welfare. That didn’t mean he liked it, it didn’t mean he didn’t feel like he was trying his best to impress the man. More than anything else, he wanted to be back in Weaver’s good books. As much as he didn’t care for authority, he cared for his job here. And Weaver held the key to that continuing. “We’re going to wrap up for the day soon. I’m going to send the team off, give them a chance to decompress ahead of tomorrow.”

“And what’s tomorrow?”

“We’re waiting on the credit card statement and the CCTV of the area around the bar we know Mason visited, to get a proper trail for him, and we’ve got an interview coming in.”

“Juicy?”

“Lied to us about when she last saw Mason,” Kidd said. “Could be huge for confirming last movements.”

Weaver smiled at him. “I think that break did you good, Kidd,” he said. “You’re back, you’re hitting the ground running, and I love to see it. Keep it up.”

Kidd thanked him and left the office, stopping in the corridor to take a breath. He was happy to hear that Weaver thought he was doing well, happy to hear that he was pleased with what he’d done so far. But he couldn’t stop his thoughts from drifting to John, somewhere that they hadn’t been all day. Was he doing better at work because he was distracting himself from his home life?

It was a thread he didn’t want to pull, because if he pulled at it, he might just unravel. And who knew if he would be able to put himself back together after that?

CHAPTER

SEVENTEEN

“Mason Cooke?!” Seth exclaimed across the dinner table.

They were at an Italian restaurant in Surbiton, a little place that he and Zoe had apparently been to many times before, that they absolutely loved. Kidd had never heard of it, but the atmosphere was cute, the decor was cosy, and the garlic bread was the stuff of dreams. Kidd wished they’d ordered more of it. He was tempted to order another to go with his main. Carb overload incoming.

“I can’t believe you’ve got the Mason Cooke case. That must be huge, right? I saw it on the BBC,” he said.

“You know me too well, Seth, I live for the fame,” Kidd deadpanned.

“Ha ha,” Seth replied. “He used to come into The Snake Pit. Was a little prick, to be perfectly honest.”

Kidd’s interest was piqued. He hadn’t necessarily wanted to talk about work, but if Seth could provide him with some more intel, then who was he to turn it down?

“Really? How often?”

“Oh God, all the time,” Seth said. “He would always be there with a group of people, ordering us around, treating us like we were his personal servants rather than people working in the club.”

“You ever have to kick him out?”

“I think my boss would tear me a new arsehole if I kicked out someone like Mason Cooke,” Seth said. “He had money, and a heck of a lot of it, and he was always more than happy to throw it around. And so long as he was happy to throw it around, my boss was happy to keep him around. He was more important than the feelings of the staff.”

“So you say he treated them badly; how do you mean?”

“He was very demanding,” Seth said. “He’d always pay for a booth, and because he had a booth, he basically expected to be waited on all night. And the thing is, we don’t really offer that. You can book out a booth, but that just means you have a place to sit. You don’t get a dedicated server or whatever the heck you want.”

“What did he want?”

“Bottle service, VIP experience, that kind of thing,” Seth replied. “But Lawrence, the boss, he wanted us to cater to him as best we could so we’d do the best we could. Still treated the servers like shit, though. Yelling at them, telling them the drinks weren’t cold enough, the bubbly not fizzy enough, whatever. He was a prick.” Seth swallowed. “Not that it means he deserved to be kidnapped or go missing or whatever.”

Seth was backtracking a little bit. Kidd didn’t think for a second he was necessarily suggesting that, but he also got the impression that there would be a fair few people who maybe wouldn’t share that sentiment, who would maybe think he did deserve whatever he had coming to him.

“We don’t know if he’s been kidnapped,” Kidd said. “No ransom note, no contact, no real indication that someone has him. He might just be a runaway.”

“Do you believe that?” Zoe asked.

“Not really,” Kidd said. “But based on what his friend said, he didn’t seem to want the life that was being handed to him. So maybe he would just do a runner. You never know?”

Their conversation moved on, and Kidd got to know Seth a little better. He learned about how he was an avid reader and a writer, how he worked on things like that in his spare time, when he wasn’t spending time with Zoe. The odd hours he kept because of his job meant that he didn’t get to see Zoe as much as he would like, but it just meant that he cherished those moments all the more.

And Kidd shared things about himself too, telling him about his family here in Kingston, a little about John.

“He didn’t want to join us tonight?” Seth asked. “Not that you’re not enough, Ben, just would love to get to know John too.”

“He has a book launch tonight,” Kidd said. “So, unfortunately, you’re stuck with me tonight.”

Zoe looked across at Kidd, like she’d seen something flicker in his face as he talked about John. She knew that things between them weren’t necessarily at their best, but she wasn’t about to push that conversation, not while he was trying to get to know Seth. No. That would come later. Kidd was sure of it.

They finished up, the three of them taking a slow walk out of Surbiton and back towards Kingston. Seth parted ways with them as they reached the station, making his way down to the river, back towards The Snake Pit for his shift that night. Kidd and Zoe continued together.

“I hate seeing the station so late at night,” Zoe said. “There’s something weird about it.”

“Because walking past it makes you feel like you should be going inside?”

“Exactly,” Zoe said. “Sometimes being away, it can feel very out of sight, out of mind. I can pretend that it’s not there. It means I avoid this end of Kingston, or else I remember what I’m supposed to be doing.”

Kidd knew a thing or two about avoiding places in Kingston. He’d been doing it for a few things, cases that he’d tried to lay to rest, ghosts that seemed intent on following him home.

“You’re supposed to be resting,” Kidd said. “If we don’t rest, then we’ve got no chance of making any progress on this when we get in tomorrow. And we’ve got progress to make. Need to track down those credit card statements, get the CCTV, talk to Selena Byrd, find his sister…”

“There, see?” Zoe said. “Now you’re thinking about it too! Gotcha!”

“The difference is, I’m always thinking about it,” Kidd said. “Tonight was lovely because once we got off the topic of Mason Cooke, I actually managed to think about other things, to chat to Seth a bit, get to know him better. It was nice.”

A gentle silence grew between them as they walked. The pubs were pretty full. The Druids Head, with businessmen outside who still hadn’t made it home since escaping the office, the theatre-goers at The Rose making their way out of whatever had been on tonight.

“So you like him, then?” Zoe asked. “Seth.”

“He seems like a really nice guy,” Kidd said. “And you seem happy.”

“I am happy, Ben,” she replied.

“Then there we are,” Kidd said. “That’s all that matters at the end of the day, Sanchez, so long as he makes you happy.”

“And how about you?” she asked.

“What about me?”

“Are you happy?”

He knew it was going to come back around, the John conversation. He didn’t really want to have it, didn’t want to dig into how his relationship had steadily been deteriorating, because if he dug into it, then he would have to really start thinking about whether or not he and John had a future. The truth of the situation was, Kidd wasn’t getting any younger. He’d not had many relationships in his life. There had been major ones, but not a lot of them. The job always seemed to come first.

With Craig, the job had come first so much that he’d barely noticed when he’d gone missing, when he’d totally vanished from his life. With John, he was doing his best not to let the job get in the way and was failing spectacularly at almost every turn.

He wondered if he was maybe destined to be alone. If the relationship with John was another one that he had managed to screw up, then perhaps he needed to cut ties before John wound up getting into trouble simply by being associated with him. That would be disastrous.

“You’ve gone all quiet on me,” Zoe said. “That can’t be a good sign. Trouble in paradise?”

“Things have been strange since Craig,” Kidd said. “I’m in the process of trying to patch things over and, you know me, I’m not particularly good at the whole talking thing.”

“Well, you need to get better at it,” Zoe said. “I know how much this job means to you, but you can’t keep putting off your actual life in favour of it, Ben. You’ll lose your mind.”

“Who says I haven’t already?”

“Occupational Health, apparently,” Zoe said with a smirk. “Look, just talk to him, try and bridge that gap. Because if you don’t…”

If he didn’t, what would happen? He’d end up on his own again. John would be another man that he’d drive himself nuts over. He’d probably still see him around Kingston, and that would probably drive him crazy.

“I know,” Kidd said. “I’ll call him when I get in, how about that?”

“Do it in person.”

“I will.”

“Promise me.”

“I promise,” Kidd said, a little exasperated.

They parted ways, Kidd making his way back to his house. He wasn’t surprised to see it still dark when he reached it, he knew that John was out tonight, but maybe there was a small part of him that had hoped he would have changed his mind, that maybe he would be waiting for him inside with a cup of tea and some tale about how his night had gone.

That would have been nice.

But as Kidd opened the door, he realised he wasn’t going to get that. The house was cold and horribly quiet. John’s coat hook was empty, his bag hadn’t been left by the stairs, his shoes weren’t on the rack, and Kidd couldn’t help but feel disappointed.

He took out his phone, still standing in the dark of his hallway, and dialled John’s number. It wasn’t that late. Maybe he could still come over. Maybe it wasn’t too late for them to salvage some of this.

He waited as the phone rang, and rang, and rang.

“Hello, this is John⁠—”

“John, I’m so glad you⁠—”

“I can’t come to the phone right now. If it’s important, leave me a message and if it’s not, just call me again. Alright. God, I hate these. Bye.”

There was a beep, and Kidd was supposed to leave a message.

He hung up and let the silence of the house swallow him once again.

CHAPTER

EIGHTEEN

It had been quiet for too long. That was the prevailing thought in Mason Cooke’s mind. There had been movement before, on and off at least, people walking in and out of rooms, slamming doors, having conversations that he couldn’t quite make out, voices that he couldn’t quite place.

Mason’s eyes were covered, his hands and ankles bound, and he was on a sodden mattress on the floor. He couldn’t really move anywhere, not at any great speed, not fast enough to get away.

It occurred to him that he could hear things more clearly. That old trope about the other senses being heightened when one is taken away seemed to ring true, at least for the time being. The voices he heard felt far away, but he could still hear them. Kind of.

He’d lost track of how long he’d been there. It had been a couple of days, at least. They weren’t talking to him, they weren’t saying anything to him. Maybe if they did, he would know who these people were, who had picked him up and taken him away. Or they would just incriminate themselves.

It gave him hope that maybe they weren’t going to kill him. If they were going to do that, surely they would have done it already.

If they do that, they won't be able to get any money out of Dad. It was his prevailing thought.

Were they talking to him now? Were they in contact with his dad, coming to some kind of arrangement that would bring him back safely? How much was his safety worth? How much would his dad pay for him to come home? Would he pay at all?

Of course he would pay. Because Mason would be entirely indebted to him, and then what could he do when his dad wanted him attending board meetings, when he wanted him to show up to events and be on his best behaviour, when he wanted Mason to play the role of the perfect son? He would have to do it. His dad would have saved his life. And he wouldn’t let him forget it.

Things would be far easier if his dad just let his sister do it. She wanted it, Mason knew that she did. She made it incredibly clear that she thought he was a complete idiot and in no way deserving of the opportunity to run the company. She’d basically been at Dad’s right hand for the past, however many years. She would be good at it. Or at least that’s what she’d shouted at him the last time he’d seen her. God, she’d been so pissed off, so angry.

They’d been close once upon a time. They used to play together in the garden, make up silly games, look out for one another at school. It had been nice. It had been pretty perfect, actually. And then they got older, and the responsibilities kicked in, and now they spent more time at each other’s throats than anything else.

Well, she was at his throat. He couldn’t give a fuck. Mason just wanted to go out and party and live his life, it was Pippa who spent most of her time ripping into him and making sure that he felt absolutely shit about the fact that all of the things he was being handed were things he didn’t want.

She felt like he was throwing away a future that she wanted; he felt like he was being pushed into something he never had any desire to be part of, to begin with.

Mason wanted to travel, to see the world, to get drunk on every continent and party until his body wouldn’t let him anymore. Not because he’d died, just because he got too tired to be bothered.

But that wasn’t going to happen if his dad had his way. There was a way he was supposed to behave, and getting wasted in The Grade wasn’t something the future CEO of Cooke Hotels was supposed to do.

A glass smashed in a nearby room.

“Hello!” Mason called out. His throat was dry. He’d been fed, and given sips of water, but it wasn’t enough to satiate him or keep him even remotely hydrated. “Who is it? Help! Please help!”

A door opened.

When he heard it slam, he knew it was the door to the room he was in. It seemed to lock behind the person, some mechanical lock clicking into place. Footsteps came closer.

“Please don’t hurt me,” he croaked. “Please. I’m begging you.”

He heard tape being unrolled, that horrible sound of duct tape as it was pulled off the roll. A pair of scissors cut into it, and it was placed over his mouth.

“Much better.”

Mason recognised the voice. And he hated that he recognised the voice. How could they do this to him? How could they?

CHAPTER

NINETEEN

Kidd woke up the following morning to the sound of his phone buzzing angrily on his bedside table. He picked it up, noticing that it wasn’t the alarm that was waking him up, but someone trying to call him. He’d left his work phone on overnight. Usually, he would switch it off, but his brain didn’t seem to be working, and he’d left it on. He didn’t want to answer it, he wasn’t on the clock yet, and whatever it was could surely wait.

He picked up his personal phone and saw that there were no missed calls, just a message floating on the screen.

JOHN

Morning! Sorry I didn’t get your call last night. I was still at the party and couldn’t get away. If you’re around tonight, I’d love to see you. Hope you had a good evening xx

It settled Kidd’s heart to know that John hadn’t been ignoring him last night. Or at least, he was pretending that he hadn’t, which was a small mercy.

Kidd fired a quick message back to him.

KIDD

I am around. Want to come over, and we’ll order in? I’d suggest I cook, but I don’t think that’s really a selling point.

As Kidd pressed send, his phone started ringing. Not his personal phone, but his work phone, buzzing away on his bedside table. Someone was really keen on talking to him this morning. He answered it this time.

“Hello?”

“Is this Detective Inspector Benjamin Kidd?” The voice was one he recognised, but he couldn’t quite place it. Where had he heard it before?

“Yes, it is,” Kidd said. “Who am I speaking to?”

“Bernadette Cooke!” Her voice was a few decibels below a shriek, but certainly shrill enough to cut straight through Kidd’s brain like a blade. “How can you not recognise my voice?”

“We met for the first time yesterday, Mrs Cooke, please don’t take it as a personal slight,” Kidd said. “What are you calling regarding?”

He didn’t want to add that she had called him more than ten times before eight am, but she already sounded like she was ready to tear him to pieces and didn’t want to give her any more of a reason to.

“I’m calling regarding my son. What do you think I’m calling for?”

“Do you have more information?” Kidd asked. “Or has he come back?”

“No, he’s not come back! I was about to ask you the same question.”

“Same question?”

“Information!” She barked. “I’m waiting for an update from you and your team. What have you been doing to make sure my boy is found safe and sound?”

Kidd didn’t really know where to start with this conversation. He had given his work phone number to the Cookes so that if they needed to get in touch with him, they could. What he hadn’t been expecting was for them to be blowing up his phone so early in the morning when he’d not even had his first coffee of the day. His brain wasn’t quite engaged just yet.

“We have only just begun our investigations, Mrs Cooke,” Kidd said. “There isn’t much to update you on yet, but as soon as there is⁠—”

“That’s not good enough,” she interrupted. “My boy is missing, and you should be working every hour God sends to find him. Where are you? I tried calling the station, but the officer said you weren’t there yet.”

“Mrs Cooke, it is seven-thirty in the morning,” Kidd said. “My shift doesn’t start until nine.”

“That’s not my problem,” she snapped. “My problem is that you are supposed to be looking for my son, and nothing of the sort seems to be occurring. What am I supposed to do with that? I’ve spoken to Superintendent Charles. He said you were working very hard on it, working as much as you could to make sure my boy was found, and now I find that you’re not even at the station.”

“Mrs Cooke, this is entirely unreasonable,” Kidd replied. “I will be at the station in the next hour or so. I will make sure you are kept abreast of all developments in this case should it be appropriate.”

“It will always be appropriate.”

“Mrs Cooke,” Kidd said, firmly. “I will be in touch with you when we have something to tell you, or you can be in touch with me when you have something to tell me. Until either of those things happen, please do not call this number to yell at me.”

Kidd hung up the phone and switched it off. Not the ideal start to the day. He put the phone back on his bedside table and started to get ready for his day. He had a horrible feeling that conversation with Bernadette Cooke was going to come back and bite him in the arse.

He made his way to the station, stopping on the way in to apologise to the station officer, Diane, about Bernadette Cooke’s likely behaviour that morning over the phone. It wasn’t Diane that she’d spoken to; it had been the officer working overnight, but she promised she would pass it on.

In the Incident Room, Kidd started to gather up the information that they had so far, looking up at the board that Powell had put together, trying to think ahead as to what they would be doing today.

He needed those credit card statements. He needed to talk to Selena Byrd. They knew Mason had been in Soho, so that was a start, at least. He just needed to know where he had gone from The Grade. There were so many bars, it could have been anywhere, assuming they even stayed in Soho.

DC Hale had made some calls to the various bars around Old Compton Street. Much like when Kidd and Zoe had gone to speak to them the previous day, they knew of Mason, they just didn’t know if he’d come to their bar on the Friday night. There were so many dead ends.

Kidd headed to the kitchen and made himself a cup of tea. He’d not made one at home, Bernadette making him feel like he needed to be back at the station with immediate effect. Now he was here, he was craving a caffeine hit.

“Milk, two sugars.”

Kidd looked up and saw DS Sanchez walking into the kitchen, still in her coat, a smile on her face.

“You’re here early,” she said. “What’s the occasion?”

“Case to solve, Zoe, can’t be lazing about in bed all morning. What will people think?” Kidd replied.

She eyed him carefully, quirking an eyebrow. “What happened?” she asked. “Who yelled at you?”

“What makes you think someone yelled at me?”

“You’re being sarcastic and trying to make jokes,” she replied. “You would never normally say something like that, so someone has yelled at you. Is Weaver breathing down your neck already? He seemed so happy yesterday!”

“Oh, Weaver is fine,” Kidd said. “Certainly makes for a change, but he seems perfectly okay. It’s Bernadette Cooke who isn’t.”

Zoe blinked. “The mother?” she asked. “She yelled at you? When?”

“She called me this morning and decided to read me the riot act,” Kidd said. “Actually, that’s not entirely true. She wanted an update, and I told her that there wasn’t really much to update her on, and then she read me the riot act.”

“What a delightful start to your day.”

“I could have been nicer about it, but I’d just woken up,” Kidd said. “I’ll drop her a line later when maybe we actually have something to report and I’ll try and smooth it over. She was really mad.”

“Understandable,” Zoe said. “I’m not justifying her talking to you like that, I’m just saying that she’s likely freaking out about her son being missing. And you’re the only person who can give her more information. I can’t imagine she’s going to be talking to her husband about it all that often. Jumped up prick.”

“Calm down.”

“Come on,” Zoe said. “You saw what he was like yesterday. He’s got some very particular opinions, ones that I’m not sure Bernadette shares. But whatever, it’s not my place to say anything, not really. Come on, you making me that tea or what?”

Kidd made them both tea, and they made their way back to the Incident Room. The rest of the team had arrived. The three of them were gathered around Powell’s desk, digging into a box of doughnuts that he’d brought in.

“Why are there doughnuts here?” Kidd asked. “Doughnuts only show up when someone does something wrong. Who fucked up?”

“No one fucked up,” Powell said. “Birthday doughnuts.”

Kidd looked between the various members of his team, trying to figure out exactly whose birthday it was he had forgotten. Surely a reminder would have gone around, someone would have put something in the calendar or⁠—

“It’s my birthday, boss,” Powell said. “You weren’t here for it last year. Don’t worry, you’ve not missed much.”

“Happy Birthday, Simon,” Kidd said. “Very nice of you to bring in birthday doughnuts instead of fuck-up doughnuts.”

“I didn’t just bring doughnuts, sir,” Powell said. “Bumped into someone on my way through the station this morning, someone that I think you’re going to want to talk to.”

“It’s not customary for the birthday boy to give gifts to others,” Kidd said. “What have you got for me?”

“Selena Byrd has arrived for interview,” Powell said. “She’s waiting for you in reception.”

Kidd couldn’t keep the smirk off his face. “Perfect.”

CHAPTER

TWENTY

Selena Byrd was dressed head to toe in black. From her trainers all the way to her beanie hat, it was all monochromatic. Her makeup was the only brightly coloured thing about her, pink eyeshadow and a nude lip, her blush so bright Kidd couldn’t tell if it was an intentional use of makeup or if she was perhaps just a little bit too cold.

Kidd asked DC Ravel to join him, given that she had conducted the interview with Selena over the phone the previous day. They took her through to one of the interview rooms, sitting her down under one of the flickering fluorescent bulbs and waiting for her to crack.

She had to know why she was here. She had openly lied to them, told them that she hadn’t been out with Mason Cooke on the previous Friday. She had to know that didn’t look good for her.

“Thank you so much for coming in to talk to us, Miss Byrd,” Kidd said. “I’m sure you know why you’re here, so perhaps we should just cut to the chase.”

“I had a lot of messages from you on my answer phone,” she said. “I was working late last night, so I didn’t… I didn’t think you’d be here to call back. The messages said to just come in when I could find a moment to, so… here’s my moment.” She didn’t say anything else, just looked to Kidd and then to Janya, waiting for them to chime in, to guide the next part of the conversation. “I’ve got work in an hour; is this going to take long?”

“I spoke to you on the phone yesterday regarding Mason Cooke,” Janya said, opening her notebook, flicking somewhat theatrically to a page full of a neat, swirling scrawl. “You said that you’ve been out with Mason a few times, is that right?”

“It is,” she said, looking between the two of them, mouth curling a little bit, like she’d smelled something particularly nasty. “Is that all? Did you ask me to come in just to double-check? I could have told you over the phone.”

“You also could have told us that you were with him on Friday night,” Janya said. “Instead, you told us that you’d not seen him for a few weeks. Why would you withhold that piece of information, Miss Byrd?”

“I think you’re being a little too kind there, Janya,” Kidd said. “I’d be asking why she lied to the police about a high-profile missing persons case.”

“Good point, boss.” Janya smirked and turned to Selena. “Miss Byrd, why did you lie to the police about a high-profile missing persons case? It’s not a particularly good look, is it? Because now it has me wondering what else you might not have told us, if there are any other pieces of your story that aren’t quite right.”

“Okay, okay, you’ve made your point, whatever,” Selena said.

Kidd could practically feel his rage start to bubble under his skin. This wasn’t the time for “whatever,” this was the time for answers.

“I didn’t think… I didn’t think my being there mattered. I’ve not done anything to him, so I just… I thought it was easier if I just removed myself from the conversation.”

“In trying to remove yourself from the conversation, you’ve actually put yourself firmly in the conversation,” Janya said. “You could have information that could help us find out what happened to Mason. Why would you keep that from us?”

“I don’t know,” she snapped. “I don’t really know him that well. We’ve been out a few times, not on dates, just as friends, and he buys the drinks. I didn’t think where I was really mattered.”

“It matters,” Kidd said. “So start talking.”

She sighed, slumping back into her chair.

Her attitude was getting to Kidd, the way she was shrugging this off, acting like it was absolutely nothing, when she could open so many doors for them in this investigation. He took a couple of deep breaths, trying to keep his cool.

“We went out on Friday night,” she said. “It wasn’t the first time. We’ve gone to pubs, bars, clubs, but Mason was really keen on going for it on Friday night. I’ve never seen him that bad before, so desperate to just let loose and forget everything.”

“He’s normally a lot more put together?”

“He’s still a bit of a wild child because he knows he can get away with it,” she said. “He’s got money, and can just… I don’t know, give a guy in a bar twenty quid and he’ll do whatever you want, he’ll look the other way, he’ll make sure you’ve got drinks so long as you’re still paying for them. But Friday, he was really on one. I think he’d had some bad news.”

Kidd wondered if this was something to do with his dad’s expectations, for him to be the heir he was supposed to be, to take more of an active role in the family business.

“So he was pretty wild, and when he called for us to come and meet him in Soho, we did, and he was just buying so many drinks,” she said. “He was always like that, generous.”

“And yet you’re saying you don’t really know him that well?” Janya said.

“Well, I don’t,” Selena said. “He was buying me drinks. I’m not about to turn down a guy buying me fancy drinks and taking me places that I can’t afford. So I took him up on it. It’s not a crime, it doesn’t make me a bad person.”

It doesn’t make you a good person either, Kidd thought.

“So you were in The Grade,” Kidd said. “Where did you go after that? Were you there the whole night?”

“I was there until he vanished, yeah,” Selena said.

Kidd blinked. “Vanished? What do you mean, vanished?”

“Well, he was buying the drinks all night, he was paying entry into the bars, that kind of thing,” she said. “And when we got to the last place, he just… He didn’t come inside.”

“He didn’t come inside?”

“He paid the door cover,” Selena said. “So we went inside while security checked him over, and then he just didn’t come in. I don’t know what happened. Maybe he didn’t feel like it or something.” She sighed. “It was a real bummer, though. It kind of ended the night.”

“In what way?”

“Well, we were in Neapolitan. It’s a really nice place, not the kind of place that has drinks in my price range, so we stuck around for a little bit and then when we realised he wasn’t coming in, we just… went home.”

“You just went home?” Kidd could hardly believe what he was hearing. The person who had been paying for the drinks, who had been facilitating them having a good night, suddenly vanishes, and their first thought is to just go home. “You didn’t think to look for him?”

“We thought he’d gone home too,” Selena said. “He was really drunk, stumbling all over the place. I thought maybe he got to the door and thought that he was better off just going and sleeping off the alcohol, so he didn’t wreck his entire weekend. That’s what I ended up doing.”

“Because he didn’t come into the bar and keep paying for your drinks.”

“Well… I don’t mean to…” Selena pursed her lips, like the penny was finally dropping on how Kidd felt about the way she’d behaved. “I’m not going to let you make me feel bad about this.”

“You can feel however you want to feel,” Kidd said. “We’re just trying to get a sense of Mason’s last movements, and you happen to be one of the last people to see him.” Kidd took a breath. “You didn’t think to look for him? You didn’t call him to try and figure out where he’d gone?”

Selena shook her head, suddenly not so forthcoming. Kidd wondered if perhaps he’d managed to strike a nerve with her. That would be something, at least.

“He was just the guy who paid for things,” she said. “I don’t… I don’t know why I didn’t think to call him.”

“Who else was out with you?”

Selena hesitated, and it suddenly occurred to Kidd that maybe she didn’t even know. That these nights out were just a gathering of people who happened to have contact with Mason, and they were just draining him dry.

“Just some people,” Selena said, non-committal. “I can’t… I can’t really remember their names. Some were faces I’d seen before, some were brand new. Mason is always adding new people in. It’s hard to keep track.”

“And how did he arrange these nights out?”

“He’d send out a group text,” Selena said. “Or there were Instagram messages.”

“Can we have the contact numbers of the people who were there?”

Selena nodded. “Of course,” she said. “They’ll… They’ll probably tell you the same things as me. We didn’t really know him that well, he was just…”

“Paying for everything,” Kidd finished, watching the words land with her.

Maybe she hadn’t really thought of the implications of that in the past, how that looked to someone else. It was difficult because she was taking advantage of him, but Mason was out there wanting to make connections and wanting to give people a good time. Where did you draw the line on things like that?

They spoke to her for a little while longer, finding out the bars they’d been to, getting the numbers of the other people in the group, asking if anyone had been seen with Mason who hadn’t been in their group or if anything out of the ordinary had happened, but she didn’t have any details like that. She told them where she lived, gave them her address, an alibi, the name of the friends she lived with, some of whom had been up watching a film when she’d got home. There would likely be CCTV following her all the way across London, through Waterloo Station, and all the way home. If she ended up under suspicion, her alibi would be pretty easy to prove or disprove.

“Thank you,” Kidd said as he walked her to reception. She’d been a lot quieter towards the end of the interview, the attitude shifting, the guard dropping, the guilt starting to trickle through.

“I didn’t… I didn’t think I was doing anything wrong,” she said. “It never seemed like a big deal that he was paying for things. He just paid and we just… let him.”

“Okay,” Kidd said. He wasn’t in any position to absolve her of her sins. She was right, of course; she hadn’t done anything wrong. Mason had been offering to pay, and she had been more than happy to take him up on it. “We’ll be in touch if we have any more questions for you.”

She looked like she was about to say something else, maybe to ask them some more questions about the case, about Mason, but Kidd watched as she changed her mind. He could practically hear the wall being rebuilt in her head, the one that protected her from thinking too much about her behaviour. She said her goodbyes and made her way outside without a care in the world.

CHAPTER

TWENTY-ONE

“It all seems to line up,” Powell said. They were going through the list of places that Selena had given them, with Powell cross-referencing it with the bill he had managed to get from the credit card company. “I mean, he spent a fucking fortune at these places, but the trail is clear. He ended up paying an entry fee at The Neapolitan, and that was his last transaction.”

“Neapolitan,” Ash corrected.

“What?” Powell asked.

“It’s not ‘The’ Neapolitan, it’s just Neapolitan,” Ash replied. “Nice place, again pretty fancy. Mason had expensive taste.”

“Mason had a lot of money to burn,” Kidd said. “You got anything else on those charges, Si. Anything suspicious?”

“Just a lot of bar charges that would make a Rockefeller’s eyes water,” he said. “I’m talking nearly four hundred quid for a round of drinks. That is insane.”

“Agreed,” Kidd said. “We’re going to need to go and chat to the people who work there. Can you call ahead for us, Si, and see if you can’t get us some CCTV? Ash, check in with Westminster Council and see if we can pick up anything from them. The local force there… It’s still the Met, but what’s the nearest station?”

“Charring Cross, sir,” DC Ravel said. “Want me to give them a call?”

“Please,” Kidd said. Things were lining up, they just needed to keep moving forward, find more people to talk to. “And I want to hear from Pippa Cooke. She may know something, or at the very least have some idea of her brother’s mental state and affairs. We’re making progress, team, so let’s not stop now.”

Kidd and Zoe made their way back towards Soho. They got off at Piccadilly Circus once again, heading down past The Grade and on to the delights of Old Compton Street. There was an overpriced fish and chip shop, a couple of niche, exclusive-looking bars, a drag club, all sorts of places, most of which were closed since the afternoon had barely begun.

They made it to Dean Street, heading a little way down to a place on the corner of Bateman Street that looked remarkably like The Grade. This was further than they’d gone to get the CCTV. It was a road off Old Compton Street, and there were a thousand ways that they could have got there. Kidd couldn’t help but wonder where they’d gone along the way, if anywhere, for that matter.

Neapolitan had a similar air to The Grade, dark paint on the outside, a sign that would likely be bright and obnoxious when lit, and enough space outside for a decent-sized smoking area.

There was someone outside, dressed head to toe in black, wearing a hefty jacket that looked like it was hiding a stab vest. He had a body camera, just like officers in the Met, and a little plastic ID tag around his neck with a photo on it.

While the rest of Soho was just beginning to wake up, Neapolitan seemed to be open to cater to the people for whom it was five o’clock somewhere. Or maybe for whom it was always five o’clock.

Kidd flashed his badge as he got closer, and he watched as the bouncer’s defences went up. He wasn’t happy to see a detective walking towards him, which made Kidd feel like he’d definitely done a thing or two that he wasn’t too proud of.

Kidd took him in. He was a pretty burly-looking guy, tall, muscular, with biceps the size of a normal person’s thigh. Given the power that came with his job, Kidd wondered if maybe he’d got too big for his boots on more than one occasion, roughed someone up a little. He might have been proud of it at the time, but now that he was being faced with a police officer, that was all going out the window.

“Can I help you?” he asked.

“Detective Inspector Benjamin Kidd,” Kidd said. “This is my colleague, Detective Sergeant Zoe Sanchez. We were wondering if we could speak to Janice Tate. She’s the manager here, isn’t she?”

“Can I ask what it’s in reference to?”

“We’re investigating the disappearance of Mason Cooke,” Kidd said. “As we understand it, this was the last place he used his credit card. His last transaction before he vanished was the entrance fee to your establishment.”

“Right,” he said. “I… I was wondering when I might be seeing you down here.”

Kidd blinked. It wasn’t the reaction he’d necessarily been expecting. “What makes you say that?”

“I was working on Friday night,” he said, looking nervously around himself. Kidd clocked the ID tag—Maxwell Frazier. He wasn’t smiling in his ID picture. Kidd wondered if he’d tried to look tougher because it was for his security tag. “I… I saw the parents on the TV the other day and I thought I recognised the lad that they were looking for.”

“You recognised him?”

“He was here on Friday night,” Maxwell said. “I threw him out. He was stinking drunk.”

“You threw him out?”

“Didn’t even let him in,” Maxwell said, a hint of pride in his voice, like he was pleased that he’d kept him out of the club. But it was tainted. Tainted, because with the news cycle being so constant, he knew what that meant. “We have a policy here about how drunk people can be; if we can let them in or not. Mason… His name is Mason, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Kidd confirmed.

“Mason was completely off his face,” Maxwell said. “He could barely stand up, barely pay the cover charge for all of his friends. He couldn’t get his pin in.” He grimaced. “It was… It was pretty embarrassing, to be perfectly honest. So I made the call; I didn’t let him in, just threw him out.”

“What happened then?”

“He wasn’t happy about it,” Maxwell said. “He started yelling at me, saying all sorts of shit, posh boy shit. Pointed to the hotel over there and told me that’s his name, his father owns it, blah blah blah. I mean, people say a lot of shit when they’re pissed off and trying to get into a club, so I didn’t really think anything of it, but it turns out he wasn’t lying. His dad really is that much of a big shot.”

“Did you see where he went?”

Maxwell shook his head. “Sorry,” he said. “I just went back to doing my job, patting people down, letting them in. Once he was off the premises, he wasn’t my problem anymore.” He paused for a moment, like he’d just heard his words echoing back to him. “That sounded harsh,” he added. “Sorry. I mean… if something’s happened to the lad, I feel bad for him, but…”

There wasn’t anything more to say. Kidd understood where he was coming from. There hadn’t been any reason for him to think about Mason Cooke any more than that. He had been a nuisance and had been denied entry, but Kidd needed to know where he’d gone. He was counting on Janice Tate to have the information they needed.

“Thank you for your time, Maxwell,” Kidd said. At least they had a path for Mason. He didn’t even make it inside the club, so it was one less thing for them to look for on the CCTV. “Which way did he go?”

Maxwell pointed down the street, off towards a road. He could have gone anywhere. Kidd looked around and saw the CCTV cameras above the door. He hoped that they would be good enough to catch the end of the road, or at least give them some idea as to where Mason had gone.

“Janice is inside,” Maxwell said. “She’s working behind the bar today, but… she’ll be able to confirm everything I said. We have an incident book. It went in there. Everything always does.”

Kidd didn’t necessarily believe that, but he took him at his word and he and Zoe made their way inside.

The people dotted around the bar weren’t paying them much attention as they walked in, engrossed in their own intense conversations. The music wasn’t too loud, just a little bit of light jazz in the background, so people were keeping their voices low, trying to keep whatever it was they were saying private.

“So we know he was here,” Sanchez said. “That’s all confirmed.”

“The question is, where did he go next?” Kidd asked. “The credit card charges stop here, so wherever he went after that is where he’s got to now.”

They made their way over to the bar. A woman with short purple hair was sitting behind it, doing something on her phone. She hadn’t looked up when they walked in; she was barely looking up now they’d made it to the bar, finishing whatever she was doing on her phone before fixing the two detectives with a smile.

“What can I get for you?” she asked, her accent northern, cheerful.

It wasn’t what Kidd had been expecting, the friendliness of her tone taking him by surprise.

“If you’ve not had a chance to look at the menu yet,” she went on, “we’ve got a lovely selection of cocktails or mocktails, whatever tickles your fancy. Or beers and wines.”

“We’re actually not looking for a drink,” Kidd said. “I’m Detective Inspector Benjamin Kidd. This is Detective Sergeant Sanchez. We’re looking for Janice Tate.”

“That’s me,” she said, her tone serious and the customer service smile slipping from her face. “What can I help you with?”

Kidd told her why they were there, and shared the information that they’d received from Maxwell. She took it in, nodding occasionally, looking past them to see Maxwell standing outside. Kidd hoped that he wasn’t getting him into too much trouble.

“As we understand it, he never made it into the bar,” Kidd said. “But we were hoping that we would be able to check your CCTV from Friday night. It might give us some indication of where he went next.”

“Why here?”

“What?”

“Why do you want to check our CCTV?”

“This was the last place that appeared on his credit card statement,” Kidd said. “We are trying to trace his movements. This is as far as we’ve got.”

Janice nodded, looking out at the tables of people, and then back at the detectives. “I can… I can leave the bar for a few minutes, sure,” she said.

She took them through to a back room, one with an old computer in it and bottles of spirits lining the walls. It was part stock room, part office, and it was swelteringly hot.

“Sorry about the mess,” she said as she stepped inside, wiggling the mouse to wake up the computer and show them the screen split into multiple camera angles.

“That one,” Kidd said, pointing at the one outside, the one that showed them the rest of the street and out to the road. It was as he’d hoped it would be, something clear, something that would give them some direction.

They gave Janice the time that the transaction had gone through, and within a few clicks, they were on the right camera, full screen, watching as she scrubbed through the footage and got them to where they needed to be. Kidd held his breath as he watched Mason and his group come onto the screen. He watched as Selena and several others all got patted down and were let into the club.

Then the chaos broke out. Kidd watched as Mason tried to launch himself into the club past Maxwell. He was then hurled onto the street. He stumbled, smacking into the pavement, rolling around in agony. Maxwell hesitated, watching, waiting until Mason got up, then he shouted something at him.

Mason stumbled away, and Maxwell went back to his job, checking people over, letting them into the club. Most people seemed to be fine. There was another person who was turned away, so it’s not like he had been discriminating against Mason specifically. It must have really been their policy.

He kept his eyes on Mason, watching as he made his way down the street. The cobbles were really playing havoc with his feet. He could barely stay upright, stumbling, almost tumbling, as he made his way away from the club.

A car pulled up at the end of the street, black, towering, a four-by-four. Kidd couldn’t quite see what kind of car, just an SUV, shining in the dark. He watched Mason look up and then ignore it.

“Fucking hell,” Zoe breathed, watching as two people hurried from the car and grabbed hold of him, dragging him towards the vehicle. Mason tried to pull away, but they were stronger than him, or he was too drunk to properly resist them.

One of them grabbed hold of him, cracking him in the face with their own forehead. It was enough to knock him out. They bundled him into the back of the car and drove away.

CHAPTER

TWENTY-TWO

Pippa Cooke was not happy to have had her day disturbed at the Kingston location of Cooke Hotels. While she had agreed to have a meeting with DCs Janya Ravel and Ashley Hale, it was clear from the second they walked into her office that they were not welcome.

She was frazzled, and the state of her office pointed to the level of chaos that Pippa seemed to be living in at that present moment. The way she’d ushered them into the office, away from the prying eyes of the rest of the staff, told Janya that maybe, just maybe, she wasn’t too thrilled about the attention her family was getting. But who would be?

“Sorry, sorry, sorry, I’m not trying to be a bitch, it’s just that everything is a lot right now and I feel like I keep putting out fires. By the time I’ve put one out, three more have popped up and…” She let out a breath, closing her eyes and doing some kind of weird breathing thing to get herself back to some kind of centre. She opened her eyes and fixed the two detectives with a thin-lipped smile. “Sorry. Welcome to my life. Please take a seat.”

There were two seats opposite Pippa’s desk, one of only three surfaces that weren’t covered in pieces of paper. The other surface was Pippa’s desk chair. No wonder she was stressed, how anyone could make head or tail of anything in an office like this was beyond Janya.

“Thank you for agreeing to speak with us,” Janya started. “I know you’re incredibly busy⁠—”

“Well, yes,” Pippa interrupted. “Besides this, I’ve got media enquiries to follow up with, I’ve got staff to calm down because…” Another pause, another deep breath.

Pippa seemed to be on the verge of a breakdown. Janya could practically see the weight of the company resting on her shoulders. Whether it had been put there by her father or by herself was another story entirely.

“We just need to speak to you about your brother,” Janya said. “We’re trying to get a sense of him, anywhere he might have got to, and what your relationship with him might have been like.”

Pippa swallowed, the mention of Mason seeming to put a pause on the imminent breakdown. “My brother,” she said, voice quiet but not unkind. There was a warmth there. “It’s been days. Like, we aren’t the kind of siblings that talk every day or anything like that, but if we needed each other for anything, we would drop everything and be there, you know? This has been difficult.”

“I can understand that,” Janya said.

“We didn’t always see eye to eye, but you just never think of him… vanishing,” she said. “He was always going to be there, a perpetual pain in my arse, but still. It’s difficult. And my parents aren’t exactly helping matters. It’s difficult.” She looked between the two detectives. “I imagine you’ve both figured out pretty sharpish that my family isn’t exactly what you’d call functional.”

Janya smiled at that. “All families have their difficulties.”

“Yeah, they do, but not everyone has their family difficulties written about in newspapers,” she said. “In some ways, it makes it worse, makes you feel like you are completely alone in things like this, even when you might not be. I’m sure everyone who has siblings gets driven absolutely spare by them sometimes. I’m no different in that respect.”

“I suppose not,” Janya said. “Can you tell us about Mason? A little bit more about your relationship with him, perhaps?”

Pippa seemed to have calmed down, and Janya had managed to get the focus to be firmly on Mason, which felt like a decent amount of progress given the state she’d been in when they got there.

“I don’t really want to speak ill of him,” Pippa said, lowering her voice a little like there might be someone listening on the other side of the door. “We didn’t always see eye to eye, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t love him. I mean… he’s my brother.”

“Of course,” Janya said. “But we’re just trying to get a picture of him and the people in his life. Hopefully, it will help us figure out where he’s got to and the quickest way we can get him to come back.”

“You think he’s alright?” she asked. “I think that’s what scares me the most, is that someone could be doing this to hurt Mason, or to hurt my dad or my mum by using Mason. I don’t know. It’s all… It’s a lot.”

“Let’s start with you and Mason, and we’ll see where we get to,” Janya said. “Like I said, we’re just trying to paint a picture here.”

“Of course, of course,” Pippa said. “It’s a bit complicated. There are two Masons, in a way. There’s the one who’s my brother, who is there for me and a pretty decent person and then there is the one who is my colleague, the one who is about to inherit this company even though he couldn’t give a flying fuck about it.”

Janya could practically feel the temperature in the room go up a few clicks as she spoke about the company. Remembering their briefing about the conversation that Kidd and Sanchez had with Mrs Cooke, she had expected the conversation to lead to this. Now, they were going to get Pippa’s side of the story.

“Let’s go for the Mason you worked with,” Janya said. “I think you’ve made it very clear that you care about your brother, that the two of you had a pretty decent relationship.”

Pippa considered this, almost like she wasn’t quite sure if it was an accurate assessment. “I think it was strained,” she said. “When you’re a Cooke, you can’t really separate one from the other because, eventually, the two things are going to intersect. And where ours intersected was enough to drive a wedge between us.”

“How so?”

Pippa sighed, looking at her office like she was seeing it for the first time, like she was only just taking in the mess and the chaos that surrounded her.

“Mason is the oldest. He was always going to be the one to inherit this company,” Pippa said slowly, like she was choosing her words very carefully, trying not to incriminate herself, make her seem like the kind of person who would kidnap her brother for her own gains. She had to know that was a working theory.

Janya knew how intelligent she was. She would have put two and two together and come out at four.

“And,” Pippa went on, “as someone who has spent an awful lot of time building this company with my father, putting new processes in place, helping with expansion across the country, starting to consider international arms of the chain, I feel somewhat shafted by the idea that I am going to be sidelined.”

“How did you come to find that out?”

“Dad told me outright,” she said flatly. “It was only a couple of years ago, he took me and Mason to one side and said one day all of this will be ours, everything the light touches, all of that Lion King-esque bullshit. Mason wasn’t interested. Mason doesn’t want to work. He loves his life. He loves to… to be free.”

“And what about you?”

“I think you need to work for your freedom sometimes,” she replied. “And the freedom tastes all the better when you’ve spent some time breaking your back to get there. Mason never got that. Mason just wants to live the high life with little to no responsibilities, and he made sure that Dad knew that. And I thought that would be it. I’ve spent all of these years proving myself over and over again. Dad would reward me by giving me the top job.” She shook her head. “But no. That was not to be the plan.”

“So your dad told you that you weren’t going to get the job?” Ash asked.

“I was going to be a glorified assistant,” Pippa said sharply. “Dad wasn’t pushing me out of the company, not at all. He just made it incredibly clear that no matter how much work I do, no matter how hard I push myself, so long as Mason is in the picture, I will be in the background. He will be the head and the face of the company.”

“So, what are Mason’s feelings about the company?”

“He doesn’t care,” Pippa said. “No matter what happens, no matter how many incentives Dad tries to give to him, it just doesn’t matter. That’s why he does what he does, it’s why he goes out drinking and partying. Dad can’t stop him. He can try all he likes, but nothing he does seems to convince Mason to buck up and crack on.” Pippa took a steadying breath, placing her hands on the desk in front of her like it was the only thing tethering her there. “I don’t know where I’m supposed to go from here. He’s determined to piss this legacy away and I feel like I’m fighting to keep it all alive, fighting to keep myself in the frame. But he has no interest in any of that. Make of that what you will.”

Janya considered it for a moment. There was every possibility that Pippa could be the one pulling the strings, the one who got Mason out of the way so that she could step up, take over. But something about the way she was telling the story told Janya that maybe that wasn’t quite the case. She cared for the company, maybe not for her father and the way he was conducting himself, but she certainly cared about the legacy he had built. Maybe that was the route to take next.

“Can you tell us more about your father?” Janya said.

Pippa smirked. “I hate him,” she said. “You need any more than that?”

Janya couldn’t help but chuckle. It was blunt and had definitely caught her off guard. “We may need a little bit more, yes,” she said.

“Alright then,” Pippa said. “Let’s talk about him.”

CHAPTER

TWENTY-THREE

Kidd made sure to get a copy of the CCTV from Neapolitan, getting it sent across to the team back in Kingston. It was the best that they could do, but it had given them a heading. Mason Cooke had been kidnapped. He had been taken away by two people in a black vehicle that, from a distance, Kidd couldn’t quite make out, but if they could get onto Westminster Council or one of the local businesses nearby and get some CCTV, they may be on to something.

They did the rounds at the various businesses in the surrounding area, checking in with people and their CCTV providers. Some didn’t have any at all, which Kidd thought was reckless, and several had them outsourced to different companies, which they were given contact details for. It was going to create a lot of busy work, but at least they would be moving things forward.

The next thing to do would be to break the news to Weaver and then to the family. It would likely be enough to send the media absolutely spare. If they were already worried about the millionaire’s son going missing, imagine what kind of field day they’d have when they found out he’d been kidnapped.

“At least we know,” Sanchez said. “I know it’s not the ideal outcome, but now we know what we’re dealing with.”

“I know,” Kidd said. “But we don’t know who, and until some kind of ransom note appears, it’s all up in the air. We don’t know what they want. It could be anything.”

“You think Joshua Cooke is a man with secrets to exploit?”

“It would be wrong of me to make such a judgment,” Kidd replied.

“That’s a yes, then,” Sanchez replied with a laugh. “So we need to look more into him, perhaps?”

“I’d say so,” Kidd said. “There may be things that he’s not telling us, enemies that maybe haven’t quite come to light yet.”

“You think he’s got enemies?”

“You met the guy, Zo, I’d say I’m his enemy at this point,” he said. “Let’s get back to the station, see if they’ve managed to get anything out of Pippa. Weaver is going to lose his bloody mind at this.”

“Hey, it’s progress at least,” she said. “He was asking you to get things moving. I’d say the wheels are fully in motion now.”

“Yeah, it’s great, isn’t it?” Kidd deadpanned.

His phone started buzzing in his pocket. He took it out to see POWELL in big white letters across the front. He answered it.

“Powell, tell me something good,” Kidd said. But he didn’t. What he told him was far from good.

CHAPTER

TWENTY-FOUR

“All you really have to do is look online at those company review websites to see what it’s like to be employed by my dad,” Pippa said.

Janya was surprised she was being so candid, but maybe she was at the end of her rope, maybe she’d been asked to clear up one too many of her brother’s messes, and this was her opportunity to trash him. Janya only hoped that the media didn’t get near her. Joe Warrington would have an absolute field day if he managed to talk to her.

“He’s a nightmare, and don’t think that I get off easy in any way because I’m his daughter. I get it worse than anyone.”

“How so?”

“Because I’m not just doing my job, I’m doing the job of making sure the seat is nice and warm and ready to be taken over by my brother,” she said. “So it’s two jobs for a fraction of the salary that my brother will be getting when Dad decides to step down.”

“And when will that be?”

“Not soon enough,” Pippa said. “Though, do I really want to be at the right hand of my shithead brother? Not particularly. I’ll be doing all the work for none of the pay, none of the praise. What’s the bloody point?”

“So you aren’t going to keep working for the company?” Janya asked.

That question really had stalled Pippa. Maybe she’d never considered that there was another option, and now that was opening up in front of her. There was always a possibility that she could start over.

She didn’t have an answer. While her opinions about her father were pretty well formed and negative, she wasn’t about to quit the job, wasn’t about to go out into the real world without him behind her. While she might hate him, and hate working for him, she still needed this job, even if it wasn’t necessarily the job that she wanted.

“Does he treat you any differently because you’re his daughter?” Ash asked, trying to keep the interview moving.

Pippa scoffed. “No,” she replied. “If anything, he treats me worse, but other members of staff maybe wouldn’t agree with that. He’s a bit of a tyrant. I’m not making excuses for him, I wouldn’t dream of it, but he built this company from nothing, and building it from nothing means that he has a vested interest in its success.”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, when it first started, there weren’t many people in the company,” Pippa said like she was reciting it from a script, and Janya couldn’t help but wonder how many times she had been told that like some kind of motivational catchphrase. “So he was involved in every single aspect of it. He managed everything, every single piece of it had his stamp on it. And he never really let go of that mentality. So now he has this nasty habit of micromanaging people out of jobs.”

“So a lot of dissatisfaction.”

“Tonnes of it,” Pippa said. “Not everyone has the guts to leave, but those who do leave under a cloud. If he doesn’t fire them, they walk of their own accord, cursing his name every step of the way. He’s not afraid to piss people off to get things done the way he wants them or to get to where he wants to be.”

Janya’s interest was piqued by that. If there were potential enemies out there for Joshua Cooke, then maybe there were people out there willing to hurt his son just to get to him. Janya couldn’t help but think it was going to be a pretty extensive list, but she asked anyway.

“Does your father have many enemies?”

Pippa scoffed again.

Ash didn’t quite know how to write that down.

“I’d say he’s got more enemies than he does friends,” Pippa said. “People don’t like him. He tells it like it is and… well… people don’t want to hear the truth, or at least Joshua Cooke’s opinion delivered like gospel. You either bow to the king or you get out of his way. Or Off with Their Heads.”

“So when you say tyrant, you really meant⁠—”

“Mad despot, crazed leader,” Pippa said with a little chuckle. “He is out of control, out of his mind, and he will stop at nothing to grow this company. It’s amazing I sleep at all. Covering for him, covering for my brother, trying to do everything his way while still… still trying to put my own stamp on things.”

She looked around the office, the small space that she called her own, the chaos of it. “I’ve worked so fucking hard for him and for this company and I won’t be repaid for my efforts with the promotion I deserve, with the title that my brother so carelessly wants to throw away.”

Janya let it settle with Pippa for a moment. She understood her frustration, could see where she was coming from. Everything that she’d heard about Joshua and the way he ran the company, and Mason and the way that he seemed to be pissing his parents’ money away, told her that Pippa’s frustrations were more than valid. She just wanted to have her efforts recognised. And she wasn’t about to get it.

“Is there anyone else you think we should be talking to?” Janya asked.

Pippa blinked. “What do you mean?”

“Well, your brother is missing,” Janya said. “And we are treating it as suspicious, so… Is there anyone else that we should be talking to? Anyone who might be out to hurt your father in some way.”

“That’s a long list of people.”

“Name them,” Janya said.

Janya noticed the smirk on Pippa’s face, the perverse sort of pleasure that she got at the very thought of naming the people who her father had wronged.

“There are former business associates. Ryan Fowler and Jordan Patel invested in Cooke Hotels early on, but he pushed them out.”

“Pushed them out?”

“He forced their hand, bought their shares, and then made the company more profitable,” she said. “They would have lost out on millions. There’s former staff, but I don’t think he pissed off any former staff quite enough for something like this.”

“Anyone else?” Janya asked.

“Andy Hargraves is probably one to talk to rather than the other two,” Pippa said. “Oh, he and Mason have quite the history.”

Quite the history, Janya thought. Pippa really was the one with all the gossip.

“What sort of history?”

“Well, he was working under Mason,” Pippa said. “Assigned to basically try and get him to do his job properly, working under Dad, but he wasn’t doing it, wasn’t playing ball. I think what we’ve established about my brother is that he’s not too keen on the old work ethic.”

“That seems to be the consensus,” Janya replied.

“Well, they got into a massive bust-up, I’m talking proper fisticuffs,” Pippa said. “Mason cracked him one, Andy cracked him one back. It was an absolute state. And Dad fired Andy, no questions asked.”

“What?”

“Didn’t pay him, refused to, and just let him go,” Pippa said. “Andy has been trying to fight it, trying to get Dad to give him the money that he is owed, but Dad is stubborn when it comes to things like money. The reason the business is a success is that he squeezes every bloody penny. And he’s ready to bury Andy in legal fees before he’ll pay him a damn thing.”

“Do you have contact details for Andy?”

“I do,” Pippa said, clicking a few times on the computer in front of her. “It’s old, but you might be able to reach him.” She wrote the information down and slid it across the desk.

“Anyone else?” Janya asked.

“Well, maybe one person,” Pippa said. “There’s his mistress.”

Ash dropped his pen. It was a little too dramatic for Janya’s liking, but then the news had come as a shock. There was a mistress. Now things really were getting interesting.

She was about to ask another question when her phone rang in her pocket. Kidd was calling.

“Hold that thought,” she said as she stepped out into the corridor. “What’s up, boss?” she asked. “We’re mid-interview with Pippa, quite good actually, fucking hates her dad, which makes for a juicy one.”

“I’ve just got back to the station,” Kidd said. “Joshua Cooke has been down here shouting the odds because, get this, he got a ransom note.”

Janya felt her stomach drop. “Bloody hell, you’re joking.”

“Nope,” Kidd said. “He got it while we were at Neapolitan, where we got footage of Mason being picked up by a black SUV.”

“Picked up?”

“Bundled into the back of it,” Kidd said. “We’re dealing with a kidnapping here, Janya, plain and simple. This just got really bloody serious.”

“You’re not kidding,” she breathed. “I’ll let Pippa know. You do want me to let her know, right?”

“Yes,” Kidd said. “Gauge her reaction, see what it does to the interview. It might help some.”

“Alright, boss, thanks for letting me know.”

They hung up the phone, and Janya took a moment to gather herself. She’d thought things had been getting serious with Pippa dropping the mistress. But no. Now it was really serious. Mason was in big trouble.

CHAPTER

TWENTY-FIVE

Kidd and Zoe made their way back to the station at a breakneck pace, Kidd finding himself willing the trains to go faster, for people to move out of their way. He knew it would have been probably slower if they’d have driven into Soho, but the lack of control was sending him west.

Powell was waiting for them outside the station, a piece of paper in his hand, a worried expression on his face. He was the only one still there, Janya and Ash still off at their interview with Pippa, and hellfire had rained down upon him while everyone had been away.

“Where’s Joshua?” Kidd asked.

“He’s in one of the waiting rooms,” Powell replied. “He’s going absolutely spare, as you might expect.”

“What happened?”

“He showed up at the station, started shouting the odds in the reception area, gave Diane an earful, she gave it back to him. It just made him worse.”

“Good for her,” Kidd said.

“That’s what I said,” Powell replied. “I managed to calm him, to get him to tell me what was going on, and then I got him some tea and biscuits and put him in a meeting room until you got back. Every time I’ve gone in to check on him, he’s been on the phone to someone, probably still working despite the absolute chaos.”

“Is that what this is?” Kidd asked, pointing at the piece of paper. Powell handed it over, and Kidd scanned it.

He’s safe. Just. You have thirty-six hours to respond to this message. If you don’t… well… you don’t want to see what happens when you don’t.

TV Broadcast. A guarantee of £100,000. Your money or your son’s life.

It was what they’d been waiting for, but at the same time, it was the last thing that any of them wanted to see. They had contact. And contact meant that Mason was likely still alive. They didn’t have proof of that, of course, but if they were asking for money in exchange for his life, maybe they could find a way to negotiate, to trap them. They would just need Joshua to cooperate.

“Shitting hell,” Zoe said, reading the note over his shoulder. “No wonder he was freaking out. This would send me spare.”

“Yeah,” Kidd said. “Weaver is going to hit the roof.”

“Well, we already knew he’d been kidnapped. This is just the cherry on top of that,” Zoe said.

“Wait, what?” Powell said. “You got something at Neapolitan?”

“We have footage of him being bundled into the back of a black car,” Kidd said. “We need to get on to these local businesses and get their CCTV off them. See if we can’t get a number plate, we can run and find out who it’s registered to.” Kidd thought for a moment. “It might be a long shot, but if we can identify it at least, we can get other areas of the Met to keep an eye out for it. High priority and all that.”

“Give me the details, I’ll do it while you talk to Joshua,” Powell said.

“Sanchez, can you get all the details to Powell back in the incident room,” Kidd said. “I’m going to go and talk to Joshua.”

“You sure you don’t need a little backup?” Zoe asked.

Kidd smirked. “I’ll be fine,” he said. “It will be a cold day in hell before I let the likes of Joshua Cooke shout me down. We’ll be grand.”

Zoe and Powell made their way back to the Incident Room, while Kidd took his phone out of his pocket, and dialled Janya’s number. He knew she was in an interview, but this was the kind of information she needed to know sooner rather than later.

She’d stepped out into the corridor to take the call, grateful for the interruption. She’d even told him that things were going quite well, that Pippa was being an open book with them. It would certainly help.

Kidd made his way into the station reception after hanging up and waited for Diane to get off the phone. When she put the phone down, she fixed him with an icy glare. He tried his best to thaw her, apologising profusely for the way Joshua had acted, for anything he might have said to her that caused her any offence.

“I don’t like him,” she said flatly. “I think he’s way too big for his boots, thinks he can throw his weight around and do whatever he pleases, well, I won’t have any of that.”

“I know you won’t,” Kidd said. “You shouldn’t have to deal with that.”

“You’re right,” she said. “I shouldn’t. But not everyone would stop and apologise on someone else’s behalf, so I thank you for that, at least.”

“I owe you one.”

“You owe me several,” she corrected.

Kidd made his way to the meeting room, the note in his hand, ideas ping-ponging around in his head. They would need to act quickly. Twenty-four hours wasn’t very long at all, and they’d already wasted some of that getting from Soho to the station. Who knew how long Joshua had held onto the note?

Kidd opened the door and saw Joshua sitting back in one of the armchairs, on the phone, big smile on his face, gesticulating wildly as he talked about a launch of a new hotel, how they were getting on with construction, that things may need to take a pause until things with Mason blew over.

If there was one thing Kidd hated, it was being kept waiting. Considering Joshua had come in here like a Tasmanian devil, shouting the odds at various members of staff, this was not what he’d been expecting to see.

“Mr Cooke,” Kidd said, holding up the note. “Time is of the essence. Can we wrap this up?”

Joshua looked at Kidd like he’d just grown another head. Maybe no one else would dare interrupt a phone call that he was on, maybe people who worked for him didn’t speak to him that way. But Kidd didn’t work for him. That was the difference.

“I’ll have to call you back,” Joshua said. “That detective is here.” Kidd bristled. “Yes, thank you. I’ll let you know how things are going.” He hung up the phone and put it in his pocket, getting to his feet so he was on a level playing field with Kidd. Apparently, the height advantage Kidd had by standing was a little too much for him. “Ah, you’ve got the note then. You know, the woman working the front desk, the receptionist⁠—”

“Station Officer,” Kidd corrected, feeling his blood simmer.

“Yes, she’s incredibly rude,” Joshua continued. “I wanted to speak to you, wanted to give you updates on this note I’d received, find out what on earth was going on, and she acted like I was being unreasonable.”

“Did she?”

“Called me all sorts of unspeakable things,” Joshua said. “I hope she’ll be spoken to about that. I don’t like to complain, but I won’t be treated that way. It was a simple request.”

“She was likely just doing her job,” Kidd said.

“It’s her job to tell me I’m making a scene and to lower my voice?” Joshua said, raising an eyebrow at Kidd. “I wasn’t speaking that loudly, and she wasn’t doing what I was asking her to do. No wonder she works behind a desk instead of out in the field.”

“Mr Cooke,” Kidd snapped. “You may think you can waltz in here and start shouting the odds at anyone within earshot, but I’m here to tell you that it’s not the way we do things. Diane is a valued member of this team. She is not just ‘a receptionist’ or behind the desk because she couldn’t do what we do. She’s brilliant at what she does, and from what I’ve gathered, the way you acted was entirely unacceptable.”

“My son has been kidnapped, he’s being held for ransom⁠—”

“And I’m sure she was doing all she could to help, Mr Cooke,” Kidd snapped. “I’m here, aren’t I? DC Powell came and got you and heard you out and made sure you were comfortable, didn’t he?”

“You should have been here when I asked for you⁠—”

“I have been investigating the disappearance of your son, Mr Cooke,” Kidd snapped. “The only reason I wasn’t here is because I was out on the streets trying to track your son’s last movements. I had another detective with me. Two of my other detectives are off talking to your daughter. We are doing everything we can to figure this out.”

Kidd watched the words land with Joshua, who seemed to be dumbstruck. People clearly didn’t speak to him that way, didn’t stand up to him. He was used to being able to go to places and raise his voice and get his own way, but that wasn’t about to wash with Kidd. He could yell and stamp and scream all he liked, he could get the Super on him if he really wanted to, but Kidd wasn’t about to let any of it slide. He was doing his best, doing his job. He wasn’t about to have this man try and stand in his way or tell him how he should be doing things.

“Right,” Kidd said. “Now we’ve got that out of the way, let’s get back to focusing on the matter at hand, the fact that your son is missing.”

“Yes, okay.”

“We were at Neapolitan when we got your call—it’s a bar in Soho—on their CCTV we saw that your son was kidnapped and bundled into the back of a black SUV at 11:43 pm on Friday. You now have a ransom note. We need to start moving on this, and quickly.”

“Yes,” Joshua said. “You’re right, of course, the focus… the focus needs to be on finding Mason, bringing him…” The words seemed to land in his head now, what Kidd had just said hitting him square in the face. “Kidnapped,” he said. He had the note. He would have known this to be the case purely from that, but maybe Kidd saying it made it seem all the more serious. “He’s been kidnapped. This is… This is terrible. Do we know…?” He shook his head. “Of course we don’t. We don’t know where he is. What a stupid thing to even begin to ask, I’m sorry.”

“We know that he is likely okay because you got this note,” Kidd said. “When did you receive it?”

“It was in our mailbox,” Joshua said. “Bernadette… God, she was in absolute pieces when she found it, just screamed for me to come to the gate and I did and…” He swallowed, and for the briefest moment, Kidd thought he saw genuine emotion crossing the man’s face. “It was horrible. We were already so worried, preparing ourselves for the worst, but apparently we didn’t prepare quite well enough.”

“Where is Bernadette?”

“In bed,” Joshua said. “She couldn’t face coming down here, couldn’t bring herself to do it. She needed to rest. This has taken such a toll on her. I’m the one that’s trying to be strong.” He paused. “That’s why I’m still working. I’m just trying to keep things in motion as best I can. Pippa is doing the same. Lovely Pippa.”

It was the closest he seemed to come to complimenting her.

“Do you know what time it was?”

“Around eleven am,” he said. “Once I’d managed to calm Bernadette down, I came here to see you and… I shouldn’t have acted the way I did in reception, I’m sorry. That was… That wasn’t right.”

“It’s okay,” Kidd said. “We need to figure out what we’re going to do next. I know you’ve both had TV appearances already, but if that’s the way we can make contact with whoever has kidnapped Mason⁠—”

“What are you talking about?” Joshua said.

“Well, we have a note, we have contact, the next thing to do is to follow⁠—”

“I’m not paying it,” Joshua snapped, his mood shifting so quickly it caught Kidd off guard. “No, this fucker is trying to extort me for money. We are not paying it, we are not negotiating, we are having nothing to do with any of this.”

“Mr Cooke⁠—”

“You want me to go on television and act like I’m going to bow down to these threats, like I’m going to allow them to rip me off in this way?” Joshua was incredulous. “Fuck no. Absolutely not. We do it once, and it opens the door for it to happen again and again and again. I won’t do it.”

“I’m not suggesting you pay it, Mr Cooke,” Kidd said. “I’m suggesting we establish contact with the kidnappers, find a way to reach them and then⁠—”

“I said no,” Joshua said. “We talked about it, Bernadette and I, and we are not doing it. We love Mason, we want him back safely and alive, but this is not the way to do it. We make ourselves look weak and vulnerable if we start negotiating with these fucking terrorists.”

“Mr Cooke⁠—”

“I’ve made my decision,” Joshua said. “We don’t even know if these people have my son, whoever the fuck this is. I am not leaving us vulnerable for this to happen again. You will need to find another way.”

CHAPTER

TWENTY-SIX

Janya made her way back into the office, Pippa eyeing her carefully as she stepped through the door.

“That’s not a happy face,” she said, eyeing the detective carefully. “Everything alright?”

Janya offered her a thin-lipped smile. “Not really, I’m afraid,” Janya said. “I’m sorry to tell you this, Pippa, but that was Detective Inspector Kidd. He was calling to tell me that they have footage of Mason being kidnapped on Friday night.”

“What the fuck?” Pippa gasped. “You’re fucking joking. This is a joke, isn’t it?”

“No, I’m sorry, Miss Cooke. That’s the information we have,” Janya said. “He thought it might be best that we let you know so that… So that we can conduct the interview with this new information in mind.” She took her seat once again, crossing her legs, watching as the news hit Pippa like a runaway train.

“Oh my God,” she breathed.

“Take your time,” Janya said. “It’s an awful lot to process. But obviously, it changes things somewhat.”

Pippa looked up. “How so?”

“Well, previously, he was just a missing person,” Janya said. “Now, we know he didn’t leave of his own free will. We’ll have to consider anyone you mention as having a grudge against your father as the possible kidnapper.”

Pippa nodded. Janya could see her shaking as she brought a hand to her face, chewing on the end of one of her nails. Her breaths were shakier than they had been. Maybe the care she had for her brother was real after all, and it wasn’t all for show. She was genuinely worried about him.

“Are you okay to continue?” Janya asked.

Pippa looked at her sharply. “Oh God, of course,” she said. “I… I don’t want to stop. If anything, I want to help more than ever. Bloody hell. Poor Mason. Fuck. Do we know if… Is he…?”

“We think so,” Janya said. “A note was left for your parents. I don’t know the details of that, but if they sent a note, then it’s likely he’s still alive.”

“Fuck.”

“As I said,” Janya said. “Take your time.”

Pippa gave herself a minute, taking a sip of her tea, steadying herself. She made a few noises, like she was about to say something, like she was ready to continue.

“I… What were we…?” She stopped, cleared her throat. “Where were we?”

“A mistress?” Janya asked. “How long has⁠—?”

“About five years,” Pippa said sharply. She seemed to be holding back a river of tears. “That I know of.”

“How did you find out?”

“He started taking meetings out of the office,” Pippa said. “And I had to go and speak to him one day, and I saw him coming out of one of the rooms of the hotel with her. I put two and two together, I came out at four pretty easily, and no matter how much he tried to deny it, eventually he gave in and… and he promoted me.”

“Wait,” Janya said. “What were you doing before now?”

“I was just his executive assistant,” Pippa said. “So when I found out about what he was doing with her, I decided that I wanted a bigger piece of the pie, and if he didn’t give it to me, then I would tell Mum. He didn’t want that, so we made a bargain. I get to be higher up in the company, and he gets to continue living his double life.”

“And you don’t care that he’s lying to your mum?”

“Of course I care,” Pippa said sharply. “But I made my choice, and my choice was to propel my career forward. I… I don’t regret it. He treats Mum better than he ever did before because he knows that I’m watching him. I could tell her at any time, the fact that I don’t, is a courtesy.”

“So you blackmailed him to get what you want,” Ash said. “You did what you could to get ahead.”

“He wouldn’t have given it to me otherwise,” Pippa said.

“And currently your brother is missing, a brother who happens to be the only thing standing between you and running this whole empire,” Janya said.

Pippa opened her mouth to respond, but closed it quickly, apparently realising there was nothing that she could say that would make this any better for her.

“You understand why that doesn’t look good for you, Miss Cooke.”

“Yes… I suppose…” Pippa finally looked nervous, like the mere suggestion of her being involved in her brother’s disappearance was shocking to her. She’d told them a little too much, perhaps, revealed more than she had intended. She had been happy when she’d dropped the bombshell about her dad’s mistress, but now that she, too, was implicated, she was quite distressed.

“Why are you telling us about your father’s mistress?” Janya asked.

“What?”

“Do you think she might be relevant to the case, or are you trying to get back at your father?”

“A little bit of both,” Pippa said. “I don’t actually know the woman personally. I’ve only ever had to field her calls and… and cover for my dad when he wants to go and meet her.”

“And you do that?”

“I just consider it part of my job now,” she replied. “But I’m sick of it, if I’m totally honest. He shouldn’t get to do that, have his cake and eat it too. I hate it. And I hate it for my mum.”

“You said she doesn’t know.”

“I don’t think she does, but surely on some level…” Pippa let it hang in the air between them.

Janya figured that she was coming to that conclusion almost to absolve herself from any responsibility. If she could think that her mum already knew, then maybe she wouldn’t feel quite so bad about not telling her, about keeping it from her for so long.

“We’re going to need a name,” Janya said. “We’re going to have to talk to her.”

A hesitation. The briefest flicker of remorse on Pippa’s face.

“Will my mum find out?” she asked.

“I can’t be sure,” Janya replied. “She might. It… it depends on how things shake down, doesn’t it?”

Pippa seemed unsure.

It was enough to have Janya press on. “But if you think that she might have something to do with the disappearance of your brother, then surely you owe it to him to give us whatever information you can so that we can bring him home safely.”

Janya watched her words soften Pippa’s resolve, to stop that steely gaze and grim determination that had crossed her face as she was suddenly faced with the consequences of her actions. Was it worth losing her brother to keep her dad’s secret and stop her mum’s feelings from being hurt? It wasn’t. Not at all.

“Her name is Adele Jarvis,” Pippa said. “She used to work for the company as a marketing director, but… after she and my dad started seeing one another, she left the company and got herself another job elsewhere, better pay, away from prying eyes. In a lot of ways, it made it easier for them to arrange things.”

“How so?”

“She still does the marketing for Cooke Hotels, so anyone who questions them being out together, there is their alibi,” Pippa said. “But she is far enough away that no one working in the office can catch them again. Like I did.”

Janya nodded. Joshua was a crafty man. He’d considered all of the angles. It made Janya wonder what else he could be hiding.

“Thank you,” Janya said. “If you have her contact information⁠—”

“I have a telephone number and an address. That’s as good as I can do,” Pippa said quickly, regret lacing her words. The high she got from exposing her father was long gone and had been replaced with remorse. She didn’t want to hurt her mum, but she was doing what she had to do.

“And now we need to talk about you,” Janya said.

Pippa blinked, surprise crossing her face for a moment. “About me?” she repeated. “What on earth for? What have I done?”

“Well,” Janya said. “Given the situation, we’re going to need to get an alibi from you, just so we can count you out of our investigations.”

“That’s absurd,” Pippa said. “You can’t think I’ve got anything to do with it.”

“You just told us that you blackmailed your father to get a promotion,” Janya said. “Given that you’ve made it very clear that your brother is standing in the way of your progression in this company, who’s to say you couldn’t have had something to do with him being kidnapped?”

Pippa looked incredulous. “I can’t believe you’d⁠—”

“We don’t need the dramatics, Miss Cooke, just the alibi,” Janya said. “Even better if it’s something we can corroborate.”

Pippa swallowed. “I was working here until about nine pm,” she said. “There is CCTV all over the building, outside my office, outside the front door, a lovely big camera pointing right at my parking space. You can watch me drive away.”

“And then what?” Janya asked.

“I went home,” Pippa replied. “I live in Richmond, in a little flat overlooking the riverside on the Twickenham side. We’ve got CCTV all over that, too. Do you need me to pull it for you?”

“Just contact information will be fine,” Janya said, waiting a moment as Ash made his last few notes. “Anything else to add?”

Pippa considered it for a moment. She’d said an awful lot during this interview, maybe more than she had meant to, but she still wasn’t done. Janya could see words on the tip of her tongue.

“I just… I want you to know that I love my brother,” she said. “I know I’ve gone back and forth a lot in this interview about how I feel about him, but I do love him. He’s just a little bit lost and… I don’t know, if he actually got his head out of his arse and did something, he could lead this company and create some really positive changes. And if he doesn’t want to do that, he could at least use whatever sway he has with Dad to make it so that I can do it instead.” She swallowed. “I… I want to see him brought back safe. The last thing I want is for something bad to have happened to him.”

“Thank you, Pippa,” Janya said, getting to her feet. “We’ll be in touch if we have any more questions.”

CHAPTER

TWENTY-SEVEN

“He fucking what?” Weaver’s voice reached new heights of explosiveness as Kidd relayed the news about Joshua Cooke not wanting to engage with the ransom note.

The information about the slightly more successful moments in their case so far seemed to have fallen on deaf ears somewhat, with Weaver jumping straight to the part where he could get angry. He did it a lot. Maybe he enjoyed it.

“He doesn’t want to engage with it, sir,” Kidd said. “I tried to reason with him. Even after he said no, I kept talking to him about it, trying to get him to let us find a way to spin it in our favour, but he wouldn’t even consider it. He thinks it leaves his family vulnerable.”

It was what he’d kept on saying, even as Kidd tried in vain to convince him otherwise. It made Ben uncomfortable thinking about what might happen to Mason if something wasn’t done.

“He needs to… He just has to⁠—”

“We can’t force him to do anything,” Kidd said. “We can put something out maybe that a ransom note has been received, maybe leak that information to the press so that it gets back to the kidnappers and maybe they’ll try another tact, but… he is determined that there is no proof that Mason is even alive, or that they have him at all. He thinks they’re trying to extort him.”

“It’s a hundred thousand quid, of course they’re trying to extort him,” Weaver said. “But if we just ignore it, we could end up with a dead body on our hands.”

“Plot twist. The casino owner is willing to take a gamble.”

“Not the time for jokes, Kidd. There’s a life at stake,” Weaver snapped. “What are we doing? How are we moving this forward? Forget about the ransom note for a second, what else do we have?”

Kidd told him about the visit to Neapolitan, the CCTV that showed Mason being bundled into the back of a car and taken away. It was proof he’d been kidnapped, that this wasn’t just a missing person, this was now a person in very real danger.

“I’ve got Powell on the CCTV,” Kidd said. “We’re going to try and get an ID on the car, see if we can trace ownership and, if we’re really lucky, trace it through London and to wherever Mason was taken.”

Weaver nodded. “It’s good work,” he said. “There’s progress there, but… we’ve got a deadline now, Kidd, and that has me worried.”

“Me too, boss,” Kidd said. “We’re doing all we can. But… the thirty-six hours, Joshua not wanting to do anything with the ransom note…” Kidd shook his head. “I’m not sure what else to do.”

Weaver ran a meaty hand across his face. He looked exhausted, like maybe this was keeping him up just as much as it was Kidd. Maybe more, since he had the Super breathing down his neck. They needed to make a call, and fast.

“I’m leaking it to the press,” Weaver said.

“Boss—”

“I’ll run it by the Super, but if we can get that information in the right hands, then it will go fucking mental and then they might hear about it,” Weaver said. “It might buy us some time, or at least give us some indication whether or not Mason is alive.”

It was a risk. A huge risk. And Kidd knew exactly who they needed to get in touch with if they wanted this thing to go nuclear.

“Do you have Joe Warrington’s number?” Kidd asked.

Kidd left Weaver to it, heading back to the rest of the team, to go over everything that had happened since they’d all left that morning.

The interview with Pippa was enlightening, giving them names that they could follow up and see if they would lead them anywhere. Janya was also very keen to double-check Pippa’s alibi.

“Blackmailing her dad to get a better job at the company was a great career move for her, don’t get me wrong,” she said. “But if she’s willing to do that, who knows what else she’s capable of? She could be orchestrating this whole thing.”

“You want us to keep a close eye on her, then?”

“I think so,” Janya said. “She’s a smart girl. She’s not about to be caught out, not right away.”

“How did she react when you told her that he’d been kidnapped?”

“I thought she was going to fall apart,” Janya said. “But she managed to keep it together pretty well to finish the interview. She’s woven a pretty convincing tale about having a lot of love for her brother, even if she wants the job that has been promised to him.”

“Okay,” Kidd said, turning his attention to Powell. “One to keep on the suspect side of the board, then. What about this mistress?”

Janya had already made contact with Adele Jarvis on their way back to the station, setting up an interview for that afternoon.

“She was more than willing to come into the station,” Janya said. “I get the impression she was waiting for our call.”

“Hell hath no fury and all that,” Kidd said. “And these previous business associates?”

“They’re proving a little harder to track down,” Ash said. “But we’ve got two of them coming in to chat to us, so I guess we just need to divide and conquer, gather alibis, cross people off the list. A lot of people hate Joshua Cooke.”

“But why go after his son?” Kidd asked.

“Money,” Zoe said flatly. “Money is a big motivator. These people have all lost money because of him. This could be a way they can get money off him and even cause a little bit of hurt along the way. It’s a golden opportunity.”

“We’re going to need ironclad alibis from each and every one of them,” Kidd said. “What time you got them coming in?” he asked Ash.

“Within the hour.”

Kidd nodded. “Okay then,” he said. “Gather everything we can from them. And Powell, if you could stick to that CCTV, I’d be very grateful.”

CHAPTER

TWENTY-EIGHT

Adele Jarvis took her sweet time to show up at Kingston Police Station. She only lived in town, but she claimed she’d had meetings all morning and simply had lost track of the time. It was the first thing that she’d said when Kidd and Sanchez had gone to meet her in reception. It wasn’t the best first impression, and Kidd was about ready to lose his head after the unsuccessful afternoon they’d had chatting to Joshua’s various former business associates.

Ryan Fowler and Jordan Patel had proved to be absolute dead ends as far as any sort of interview was concerned. They’d been more than happy to speak to DC Ravel and DC Hale, and confirmed everything that Pippa had said about Andy Hargraves, but hadn’t given them much else to go on. They didn’t hold a grudge against Joshua Cooke; they seemed more impressed at the success he’d managed to attain. They were having their own successes now, so being screwed out of their initial investment seemed to be a drop in the ocean at this point.

The problem was Andy Hargraves. He wasn’t answering his phone, and the officers they’d sent to his home had come back with nothing. It seemed suspicious that someone who had been in a physical fight with Mason would be AWOL after he’d gone missing.

The lack of progress was enough to have Kidd entirely on edge. Kidd wanted to be able to find Andy and talk to him. He didn’t want them to start some kind of witch hunt for the man. And he wouldn’t put it past either of the Cookes to start something like that with some wayward comment on TV.

The Joe Warrington idea had worked a treat. The media had taken the bait, and had taken the fact that it was now a kidnapping case quite seriously. Joe had been pleased to have the exclusive, and Kidd was pleased to have the information out there, hoping against hope that it would bring someone forward who knew something, or force the hand of their kidnappers to try something else. He only hoped that Joshua’s gamble was going to pay off. His son’s life was at stake, after all.

Adele Jarvis floated after them to the interview room, a smile on her face, her suit perfectly pressed. She said she didn’t require any sort of legal counsel, even when they’d offered it to her. She wasn’t under arrest, she was just here to talk to them, and talking to them didn’t faze her one bit.

“Thank you so much for coming in to speak to us today,” Kidd started, taking a seat across from her.

They’d got her a glass of water as she’d requested, Kidd and Zoe both having a cup of tea. Zoe pulled her notebook and pen out, waiting for Kidd to begin asking questions.

“It’s my pleasure,” she replied. “The person who spoke to me on the phone—terribly nervous fellow, Simon Powell—he… he wasn’t entirely clear what you wanted to speak to me about.”

“And you still came down?” Kidd asked.

“Well, when the police ask you to come in and talk to them, it’s a little bit rude to turn them down. I don’t know exactly what help I can be, but I’m more than happy to do my part,” she said.

It almost felt rehearsed, like whatever marketing and PR job she had was slipping into her day-to-day life. Kidd wasn’t about to let her sweet-talk him. He wanted to get to the bottom of the situation.

“Well, we’re here to talk to you about the disappearance of Mason Cooke,” Kidd said. “You may have seen something about it on the news, or maybe you will have heard about it from one of your clients. You work with Joshua Cooke, don’t you, Miss Jarvis?”

She looked across the table at the two detectives, no doubt trying to decipher what they knew, what could potentially still be kept from them. Kidd could almost see the realisation hit her that she needed to play her cards carefully, and she was right, because if she got trapped in one lie, it would only be a matter of time before she got trapped in another.

“I have heard something to that effect,” she replied. “I don’t really get too involved in the personal lives of my clients. But I have a long history with Joshua Cooke and the Cooke Hotels brand. It’s incredibly sad that his son is missing.”

Kidd smirked. “How long do you want to keep doing this dance, Miss Jarvis?”

“What do you mean?”

“How long have you been having an affair with Joshua Cooke?” Kidd asked.

Nothing crossed her face. It was almost as if Kidd hadn’t said anything at all. Maybe she was considering calling his bluff, considering denying it. Kidd wanted to make sure they didn’t go down that road. It was a waste of everyone’s time.

“And that’s not a rumour, or a theory, or anything like that,” he went on. “We have word of this from a pretty reliable source, so let’s cut through all of the bullshit.”

Adele smiled. She had beautiful teeth, white, sparkly, the kind of smile you’d see in a toothpaste advert.

“That Pippa just can’t keep her mouth closed,” she said, shaking her head. “When the Mason thing kicked off, I had a feeling you’d be chatting to her, and of course she would find any excuse to bring me up. So, she thinks I’ve done it, does she? That I’m so obsessed with her precious father that I’ve kidnapped his son?” she scoffed. “Joshua Cooke is not worth getting myself in that much trouble for. I have much better things to do with my time.”

“But willing enough to get between a husband and wife,” Zoe said. “Willing to break up a family.”

“If all it took was for me to sleep with Joshua to break up his family, then maybe they weren’t so stable to begin with,” Adele said. “When we first got together, I didn’t know Bernadette, didn’t know anything about her, didn’t know she existed. I knew about the kids, but he didn’t wear a wedding ring, didn’t talk about his wife, so… I thought he was fair game.”

For someone whom she had just deemed as not worth getting herself in trouble for, she seemed to be going some way to defend her choices.

“What happened after you found out about Bernadette?” Kidd asked.

“That was Pippa’s fault,” Adele said. “She caught me and Joshua together while I still worked at the company, and that’s when I found out about his wife. Of course, she didn’t tell her mother, because why would she? She got a promotion out of it, she got ahead, and apparently that job was more important to her than her family was.”

Kidd practically saw the lightbulb go off in Adele’s head.

“Maybe she’s the one that you should be grilling right now, instead of me,” she added. “If she’s so willing to screw over her family to get ahead, who’s to say she wouldn’t do it for the precious brother she’s always picking up the pieces after?”

Kidd opened his mouth to ask another question.

“I get my information from Joshua,” she said, cutting him off. “I know how much trouble Mason has been causing him. Nice try, though.”

“And after Pippa found out?”

“She bargained with her father for a better position at the company,” she said. “He bought her silence, but I think you already knew that.”

“She told us that when we interviewed her.”

“How lovely of her,” Adele deadpanned. “But she made her choice, and she chose to get ahead over telling her mother about what her father was getting up to. But she never liked me after that. Things became tense and awkward. So I left.”

“You left?”

“Freelance Marketing and PR has actually proved to be more lucrative for me than being in-house,” she said. “I can work on other projects, as well as Cooke Hotels, and I can charge a premium because I’m not tied to a salary structure. It’s been rather good. Bought a flat overlooking the river, still get to see Joshua whenever I like, but now I don’t have to bump into his grumpy, frumpy daughter in the corridors. It’s a big win for me.”

“And what about Bernadette?” Kidd asked.

“What about her?” Adele replied, utterly baffled by the question. “We don’t cross paths, we’re not supposed to. She has her life with Joshua, and so do I. It works. Or at least it works for me. I don’t really care what she’s getting up to.” She sighed, checking her watch. “Do you have any real questions for me, or can I be on my way? I actually have a meeting this afternoon that I would like to be present for. My assistant is good, but not that good.”

“Just an alibi,” Kidd said. “We’d like to know where you were on Friday night, and anyone who can corroborate it.”

Adele grinned, the tiniest of smirks pulling at the corners of her mouth. “I was with Joshua on Friday evening. We were at my flat, and then he had to run back home to see his wife so she wouldn’t get suspicious. There’s CCTV everywhere, but you won’t see me coming out of that apartment block until the following morning.”

Kidd was about to ask further questions about her weekend when there was a knock at the door. He looked at Zoe and then up at the door. Neither one of them was expecting to be interrupted.

“Come in,” Kidd called.

The door opened, Powell poking his head around the frame, face panic-stricken.

“Boss, I know you’re in the middle of something, but… we have a bit of a situation out here.”

Kidd swallowed, turning his attention to Zoe. “Could you wrap this up?” he said. “I’ll see you back in the Incident Room.”

He got up and left the room, pulling the door closed behind him. What could have happened now? How could this possibly get any worse than it already was?

CHAPTER

TWENTY-NINE

There was a ticking sound effect accompanying the clock that was on the screen in front of them. In the background, barely visible, was a silhouette of a boy sitting on a chair. It was hard to make out who it was. The lights weren’t on, his distinguishing features all in shadow. But he was alive, he was moving, he was breathing, that much could be seen. Possibly.

Kidd leaned in a little closer.

Was it a photograph? Or was it a live feed? It was hard to tell. But the time on the screen was at eighteen hours, and it was counting down.

“Fucking hell,” Kidd breathed. “Where did this come from?”

“Came through the tip line,” Powell said. “Anonymously. But it’s… Fucking hell. It’s him, isn’t it? It has to be him. We were given thirty-six hours on the ransom note, and now it’s less than a day? Did they shorten the time?”

“They didn’t find the note until eleven,” Kidd said, staring at the screen. Less than a day to go. What could they do in less than a day?

“That timer could have started at any point,” Zoe suggested.

“We leaked the information about the ransom note to Joe Warrington. They likely saw that, and this is their response,” Kidd said, heart pounding hard in his chest, practically humming at this point. He didn’t know how to proceed, didn’t know where exactly to turn next.

Without a word, he turned and left the room.

He spoke to Weaver, letting him in on everything that had been going on, the ongoing search for Joshua’s former employee, the former business associates whose alibis they were checking up on, the video that was now slowly but surely counting down to zero hour.

“What happens when it hits zero?” Weaver asked.

“That’s the part we don’t know,” Kidd said. “The video account appears to be brand new, no identifying features on it, no description on the video, no nothing. It could still be a bluff, but if that’s Mason…”

There hadn’t been a clear threat on the ransom note, so there was no telling what they might do to him, what they had already done. But they knew that he was alive now, they knew that he was there, waiting for someone to rescue him. So far, it had been four days, and no one had come anywhere close.

“This is a fucking nightmare,” Weaver grumbled. “Like this wasn’t already difficult enough, we could end up with the eyes of the entire fucking nation on this video. We’re going to be under a microscope.”

As if on cue, Weaver’s phone rang. He looked at it like it was going to bite his head off, and it was likely that whoever was on the other end of that phone was going to do just that.

He answered it, offering a few monosyllables to whoever it was on the other end of the line before hanging up.

“Joshua is here,” Weaver said. “Bernadette is on her way.”

Kidd nodded. He’d asked himself how it could possibly get worse. And an answer had been presented to him on a silver platter. They had less than twenty-four hours to save Mason Cooke, and the time was ticking away right in front of his eyes.

“What are you going to do about it?” Bernadette shouted, her voice shrill, her eyes wet, her face bright red. She’d arrived a few minutes after Joshua, rushing into the reception area like a hurricane. Understandably, she was absolutely losing her mind about this. Kidd would be too if he were in a similar situation. It was heartbreaking to watch, a horrible thing to see.

He’d been around parents who had lost children before, family members who had relatives torn away from them, but Bernadette Cooke was staring down the barrel of the gun that was about to kill her son, and she wanted answers. Now.

“We’ve got tech teams trying to trace an IP address, trying to establish contact with whoever it is that’s running the channel and putting out the video,” Kidd said. “We might be able to track down a location of where it’s being broadcast from, and if we can do that, we can find Mason before the clock runs out.”

“Before the clock runs out,” Bernadette repeated. “That’s a nice way of putting it, isn’t it? Before the clock runs out. My son is in grave danger here, Detective, and I don’t feel like you’re doing nearly enough to track him down. Look at him!” She gestured at the screen, to the lone figure in the video, head lolled to one side. “That’s my boy, that’s my son. We need to do something!”

“We don’t know what they’re threatening here, Bernadette,” Joshua said. He was remarkably calm, given everything that was going on. His ability to keep a cool head in this would probably point to him being a pretty good detective if he ever wanted a change of career, that or he was a complete fucking psychopath. “They wanted a hundred grand and lo-and-behold, I didn’t give them a hundred grand, and now here we are again.” He looked at the screen, watching as the figure moved, as it struggled, albeit weakly, against the restraints. “Who’s to say that they aren’t bluffing again and we’re going to blink and have another time limit on our hands? I don’t even think they’ve got him.”

“Joshua, please,” Bernadette pleaded, sitting on the sofa, burying her head in her hands. “That is our son on that screen. Do you not care one bit about what happens to him? He could be killed when that timer hits zero.”

“We don’t know what⁠—”

“Why would they bother counting down if they weren’t going to do something drastic?” Bernadette screamed. “How can you sit there with all that money in your account and not think for a single second that maybe it’s worth losing a little bit of it to save our son? You’ll make that back in no time. You’ll be solvent again before you can even blink, and you’re willing to sacrifice our son’s life for the sake of your stupid pride?”

“I’m not sacrificing him for pride, Bernadette,” Joshua said firmly. “If we let one person extort money from us with no real proof that Mason is even there⁠—”

“What more proof do you need?” Bernadette interrupted. “He’s right there on the screen. What do you want them to do? Chop off a finger and have it sent to you in the post? Or will you just think that it’s someone else’s finger? What is it going to take to save our son’s life?”

Joshua seemed to hesitate. He didn’t know what his own line in the sand was, but there was something about the video that didn’t land with him in the way it was landing with Bernadette. What was it that was making him so hesitant? Were the sales of hotel rooms really that high while people thought his son was missing? Was he trying to prolong this for as long as possible? Was this the kind of press that no amount of money could buy? Was he looking at projections in his mind of what would happen to his business if Mason never returned?

Bernadette got to her feet, picking up her bag, rummaging around in it for a moment before coming out with her car keys. “I’m going,” she said. “I can’t have this argument with you again. I’ll see you at home.” She turned her attention to Kidd. “And you need to bring my son home in one piece. Find a way to make it happen.”

She walked out of the meeting room, leaving Kidd and Joshua sitting there in silence. Kidd waited for Joshua to say something, to speak up, or maybe even to follow his wife out of the room and make sure that she was okay. But he did nothing of the sort. He stayed sitting where he was, staring at the laptop screen in front of him.

Kidd didn’t know what he was waiting for. More proof? Something more concrete? It was right in front of them. Mason was clearly in a lot of pain, having been through the absolute ringer. What more proof did anyone need that the time to act was now?

Kidd didn’t know when he would get an opportunity to be alone with Joshua again. He knew he couldn’t ask these questions around Bernadette, not without causing some suspicion.

“Joshua, why did you lie to us about your whereabouts on Friday night?” Kidd asked.

Joshua looked up, blinked, suddenly on the back foot. Kidd wasn’t used to seeing him like that. He was unsure.

“What are you talking about?”

“You told us on Friday night that you were at work,” Kidd said. “You were in Kingston, but you weren’t at work. Do you want to tell me where you really were?”

Joshua pursed his lips. The tension crept up in his shoulders, his fingers going to his collar, pulling it away from his neck like he was suddenly choking on the air around them. “I’m sure I don’t know⁠—”

“Mr Cooke,” Kidd said. “It’s very important that you give me the details of where you were on Friday night. No spin, no bullshit. I need to know the truth.”

Joshua sighed. “Who have you spoken to?”

“It doesn’t matter who we’ve spoken to,” Kidd said. “We have reason to believe that you weren’t working quite as diligently as you’d like us to think you were on Friday night.”

“I was working on Friday night,” he said. “But I was working after I had spent time with… a woman whom I think you may have had words with.”

“Adele Jarvis.”

Joshua deflated. “For Christ’s sake,” he groaned. “Who told you about her? Was it Pippa? After everything that we’ve⁠—”

“It doesn’t matter who told us, Mr Cooke,” Kidd repeated. “What matters is that you lied to us about your whereabouts on Friday night, and that raises suspicions.”

“Why?”

“Because if you’re lying about that, what else are you lying about?” Kidd said.

Joshua fixed Kidd with a deathlike glare, like he was trying to will the detective to burst into flames or have the ground swallow him up on the spot.

“I don’t like what you’re implying,” he said slowly. “But I didn’t lie to you. I simply… omitted some parts of my story.”

“How so?”

“I went to the office. You’ll be able to check the CCTV, it will all be there,” he said. “The only difference is that I went to see Adele, and then returned to the office to continue working. It wasn’t a lie. It was an omission.”

“A lie of omission is still a lie,” Kidd said. “You have to understand that paints you in a very bad light. It makes me wonder what else you’re omitting.”

Joshua got to his feet. “I think we’re done here,” he said. “You can keep digging into my personal affairs if you want, but it won’t get you anywhere. Find out who the fuck has my son. They won’t be getting a penny off me.”

CHAPTER

THIRTY

Kidd returned to the Incident Room to find the team hard at work. Powell was still on the CCTV from the area surrounding Neapolitan, DC Hale was trying to track down the channel that the video had been posted on, and DC Ravel was checking up on the alibis they’d managed to gather.

Zoe returned from the rest of her interview with Adele Jarvis with an address and contact, so they could verify her alibi too. Zoe was shocked to find the countdown, to see Mason tied up, that this case now had a very real and present time limit.

“She was a barrel of laughs, wasn’t she?” Zoe said.

“She seemed ready for us,” Kidd replied. “Not in the sense that she knew what we were going to ask, just in the sense that she knew we would end up needing to question her. That never sits right with me.”

“You think she’s worth keeping an eye on?”

“I’d say so,” Kidd said. “I want that alibi to be ironclad. We need to know who was in that fucking car.”

The evening passed into night, with Kidd speaking to Weaver, who had spoken to the superintendent, both of whom were about ready to lose it about all of this. Kidd did his best to keep them somewhat calm, but even he was starting to lose his faith. There was a ticking clock, and they needed information, and they needed it fast.

Kidd dismissed the rest of the team. They’d already stayed pretty late, and Kidd wanted at least some of them to have had a decent night’s rest before what would likely be a difficult day tomorrow.

“You need to make sure you’re getting rest too,” Zoe said. “You’re the one who’s supposed to be leading us. Go home.”

“I’m going to give it another hour,” Kidd said. “Just in case someone in the tech team manages to come up with something.”

“Ben—”

“Let me have this, Zoe,” Kidd said. “I just need to give it another hour. Please.”

She hesitated, caught between putting her coat on, going home, and actually getting a decent night’s rest, and sticking around for moral support. Kidd could see the indecision in her eyes.

“I don’t need you to stay,” he said. “We’d just be sitting here in the dark, waiting for something to happen.”

“And you’d rather do that alone?”

“It will give me a chance to think,” Kidd said. “Today has been incredibly loud. I just need a little bit of quiet time.”

Zoe smiled at him softly, and Kidd couldn’t tell what it meant. There was something almost like pity in the way she was looking at him. He did his best not to see it. He really didn’t want her pity right now.

“Okay,” she said. “But if you change your mind, I don’t live far.”

“Okay.”

“And I’m going to call you in an hour and make sure that you’ve actually gone home,” Zoe said. “If you answer your phone and you’re still in the office, I’m going to be absolutely furious with you.”

“Alright, alright, point very much taken,” Kidd said. “Have a good night. I’ll see you in the morning.”

“I’ll talk to you in an hour,” Zoe corrected, pulling on her coat and heading out the door.

Kidd found himself on the internet, clicking through various articles about Mason, about his life, about the Cooke family and the way they did things. So much of it was clickbait and theories rather than anything concrete.

They hadn’t seemed to have got wind of the Adele Jarvis situation, which was probably for the best. Kidd imagined that any and all sympathy that the press had for the family would go out the window if they found out that Joshua Cooke wasn’t quite as squeaky clean as his media persona would suggest.

He was torturing himself. He knew he was. Looking through article after article, doom scrolling his way through internet theories that seemed to be multiplying at an alarming rate. They would need to talk to the press, need to keep them in the loop with all of this. And that would be a nightmare in and of itself.

He was also avoiding going home. The house would be empty, John would be… He didn’t know where John would be. Probably back at his own flat, maybe off doing some publishing thing. They’d not spoken today. Wait. A thought suddenly hit Kidd’s mind.

He pulled out his phone. The messages with John from that morning.

“Fuck,” he said aloud. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

They’d said they’d order in. That John would cover over. And how late was it now? Nearly ten. He gathered his things in double time, hurrying to the door when his phone rang. It would probably be Zoe, God, she’d have a field day with this one.

He picked up the phone. “I’m going, I promise,” he said, noticing how out of breath he sounded. “I’ll grab my coat and then⁠—”

“Evening, Detective,” a voice on the end of the phone said. He didn’t recognise it. They were using something to disguise their voice, some filter, something that was making it sound low and almost robotic in places.

“Who is this?”

“It doesn’t matter who this is,” the voice said.

“I’ll be the judge of that.”

Laughter. They were laughing at him, whoever was calling was laughing and it made his blood boil.

“I just want you to understand the severity of the situation,” the voice said. “That money. Or the boy’s life. Tick tock.”

The phone line went dead.

Kidd tried to call it back, but the number had been withheld. He turned his attention back to the video. Mason was still there, looking helpless, the time slowly ticking away. He needed to get through to Joshua Cooke.

CHAPTER

THIRTY-ONE

Kidd sent off every detail of the phone call that he could to the relevant parties, asking them to trace it, see if they could find some kind of location, an idea of where the call was coming from. It was a long shot, highly unlikely, but he had to do it. He needed to feel like he was doing something. If it was coming from a landline, then they’d be able to trace it to an exact location, but he didn’t anticipate the kidnappers to be quite that stupid. They’d managed to keep their identities hidden for such a long time, so why would they slip up now?

I really need them to slip up, Kidd thought as he left the station and started for home.

He hurried through town at speed, knowing he was getting a sweat on, knowing that he was going to look a wreck when he walked through the door and saw John. God, was he just going to be sitting there? Was he just going to be waiting for him to show up?

He unlocked the door, throwing it open with such force he thought it might come off the hinges.

“Ben?”

“John?” Kidd said. “I’m so sorry. I totally lost track of time. Everything has been so crazy today.”

A light flicked on in the living room, washing through the door frame and into the hall. John appeared, bathed in the yellowness of it, still wearing his shirt and smart trousers from his day at work. His hair was a little bit wild. Had Kidd woken him up?

“I was waiting for you,” John said, stifling a yawn. “I thought… We had a plan, didn’t we? And I thought… I don’t know what I thought.”

“Go on.”

“I thought that maybe you’d have finished earlier than this or you would have called to say that you were running late, instead, I show up and I’ve just been waiting here for you, all pathetic, like some love-struck teenager.” John shook his head. “I don’t want to feel like that. I’m a grown man, Ben. I don’t want to be sitting in the dark waiting for my boyfriend to show up.” Kidd could see the disappointment on his face. Kidd had failed a test he didn’t know he was taking, a surprise exam. “Stupid. Sorry.”

“What are you sorry for?”

“For assuming you’d be here,” he said. “You didn’t call.”

“You know the phone works both ways.”

“Oh, so we’re jumping straight to the part where we fight? Well, good, I’m glad I came,” John snapped.

“I didn’t mean⁠—”

“Sorry, I’m not here to fight,” he said. “I’m here to… I don’t know what I’m here for. I said I wanted to talk, but then you didn’t show up, and I just found myself getting angrier and angrier because… you’re just never here.”

The words were like a knife.

“I know,” Kidd said. “I’m sorry. Things have been so crazy and…” Kidd shook his head. He knew the excuses weren’t going to cut it, no matter what they were. The day had been long, the end of it particularly rough, the last thing he needed right now was a fight with John. He didn’t want this. Maybe they had drifted, maybe it was really and truly over. Maybe it needed to be. “Look, I’ve had a really long day, and it’s been absolutely shit from start to finish, so maybe we could do this another time.”

“Another time?” John repeated. “Okay, another time. I guess I’ll just go back to mine then.”

“That’s not what I meant. You can still stay.”

“I’m not sure you want me to.”

“And I’m not sure you want to,” Kidd said. “You keep going back to your flat, John. What am I supposed to think when you keep doing that? We just spent months away, living in and out of each other’s pockets, and now we’ve come back here, and it’s like you can’t get away from me fast enough.”

“I came here tonight.”

“And I said I was sorry,” Kidd said.

“I just want to feel like I’m some kind of priority to you,” John said. “And I don’t. The job comes first. And if it’s not the job, then it’s your ex-boyfriend.”

“He’s gone.”

“Is he ever gone? Will he ever be gone?” John snapped. “Because I feel like every time I turn around, he shows up or someone from your old life shows up, and is determined to drive this wedge between us. And you let it. Every time you let it.”

“I’m just⁠—”

“Trying to save everything, as usual,” John said. “Then why am I the only one that you don’t want to save? Why am I always the one who gets left behind when the building is on fire?” John shook his head, tearing his gaze away from Kidd. “I don’t want to fight with you, and I don’t want to feel like I’m the only one who is in this.”

“You’re not.”

“It feels like I am,” John said, his voice suddenly quiet, choked with tears. “I need to know that you’re actually in this, because… because if you’re not, it’s just too hard for me to keep fighting for someone who won’t fight for me.”

“I am fighting for you.”

“Okay,” John said. “Prove it.”

Kidd didn’t know what to do. How was he supposed to prove it right then? He’d tried so hard. He’d been open with John even when it had been difficult. He’d shared parts of himself that he wasn’t sure he’d ever share with anyone. And now it was all falling apart, and Kidd had no idea how to save it.

John didn’t say another word. He grabbed his jacket off the hook in the hallway and walked out the door, leaving Kidd unsure if he would ever see him again.

CHAPTER

THIRTY-TWO

Kidd didn’t really sleep. For all his wanting his team to show up well-rested, he had done nothing of the sort. After John left, he made himself some food, barely managed to eat it, and then took himself to bed. It was that or stew in the living room, maybe open a bottle of wine, but that was the kind of slippery slope he didn’t want to find himself on. So lying in the quiet, listening to the noise of his brain, would have to do.

He opened the feed of Mason when he woke up. The time was ticking down, down, down, and he didn’t feel any closer to finding him. Joshua might need to go back on his promise of not negotiating. That is, if he wanted to see Mason come back alive.

Now, there was a question that Kidd couldn’t be certain of the answer to. Did he even want to see Mason again? It was hard to tell.

The team was already gathered in the Incident Room when he arrived, back to work, getting on with things. Zoe seemed to twig that something was up with Kidd, but had the good sense not to ask him about it, not to try and get any information out of him. He needed to focus on the case, needed to turn his attention back to Mason Cooke, because time was ticking.

He checked his email. No one had managed to come up with anything for the phone call. He called Joshua Cooke, leaving him a message asking him to give him a call back, that there was something important he needed to talk to him about. And he sank back into his chair until Weaver burst through the door.

His gaze was fixed firmly on Kidd’s desk, eyebrows knitted together, face like absolute thunder about to rain down on Kidd’s day.

“Come on,” Weaver said. “We’ve had to gather the press. It’s all got too much for Diane and the media people to handle, we need to put a lid on this now.”

“There will be no lid,” Kidd replied, getting up from his desk. He wasn’t about to argue with Weaver about talking to the press, but he wasn’t about to be happy about it either. “They’re going to rip us apart for not figuring this out, for not finding some way to rescue Mason. I want you to know that.”

He’d been skewered by the press on their last case too, and on that occasion, Kidd had felt like Weaver was losing faith in him. He only hoped that wasn’t the case this time around, especially given that Kidd found he was losing faith in himself. Things were getting a bit overwhelming.

“I’ve got your back,” Weaver said as they made their way through the corridors to the conference room. “If they try anything, I’ll bat them away. They just have questions, and they want answers. And I know we can’t tell them exactly what’s going on, but they’re concerned.”

“They’re not concerned,” Kidd said. “They’re concerned about getting a story. They couldn’t give a fuck about Mason Cooke.”

“Well, then maybe we need to make sure that they do,” Weaver said. “Try and make them realise that there is a life at stake here.”

They made their way into the room, stepping up to the table at the front, the two detectives sitting behind it. The room grew quiet, the hubbub they heard from the corridor slowly dying down, petering out, waiting for something to be said.

There were more people here than there had been the first time around. Mason Cooke’s disappearance had been a news story in the first instance. His kidnapping was now an international concern. Kidd could practically hear the ticking of the clock in his head as Weaver did the introductions, as he laid out where they were in the case so far, as he handed things over to Kidd and the members of the press to ask questions.

“Martin Bowman, Surrey Comet,” a man in the front row said.

Kidd recognised him from the other day. Some of his stubble had grown in, and the slightly softer face that he’d had a few days ago was long gone. He was out for blood.

“The video that has been posted online is pretty horrific. Mason looks like he is in quite a state. What is being done to bring him back? Have you made contact with the kidnappers?”

“Thank you, Martin,” Kidd said. “We are doing everything that we can to track down the location of the video. We’re currently following several leads that will hopefully⁠—”

“Is there nothing in the video that can be used to find out where he is?”

“The video, as I am sure you’ve seen, Mr Bowman, is pretty stark and poorly lit,” Kidd replied. “It’s difficult to find⁠—”

“But is there not a geolocation on the video? Is there no way to trace it through the website, through the IP⁠—?”

“Our technical team is working hard on that as we speak,” Kidd interrupted, trying to keep his voice steady.

Where was the more softly spoken guy who had been at the press conference a few days ago? Where had this fight come from? Kidd pointed to another reporter with their hand up, an Asian woman in a pale yellow suit. He wasn’t sure he’d seen her before. He’d remember someone staring daggers at him, he was sure he would.

“Grace Wu, Channel 4,” she said flatly. “There are theories online about the state of this investigation, theories about where Mason might be, people who claim to know. How do you respond to that?”

Kidd tried to keep his face neutral but was fairly certain he was staring at Grace with something close to disgust. “I don’t,” Kidd replied. “Why would I need to respond to that?”

“Well, there are people out there doing your job for you,” Grace said. “They’re claiming to have access to all the information that your teams can’t seem to find.”

“They’re more than welcome to give us a call and let us know,” Kidd said. “If they’re so confident in what they’ve managed to find, they should share it instead of putting it online. There’s a young man’s life on the line.”

“Do you not think⁠—?”

“Next question,” Kidd said, turning his attention to someone else sitting in the front row.

“You have less than six hours before something is going to happen to Mason Cooke,” a male reporter said. He didn’t bother to introduce himself, or show his credentials. He had fixed Kidd with a stare that said that he thought the detective was entirely responsible for what was happening. He’d not done enough. He wasn’t angry, he was disappointed. “Do you think there was anything that could have been done sooner? Could you have convinced Joshua Cooke to pay the ransom quicker?”

“I think we’re done here,” Kidd said. “This is a serious investigation, and we are doing everything we can to make sure that Mason Cooke is brought home to his family safely. There is only so much that we can share with the press without putting Mason, and potentially, members of my team, in danger. We’ll update you all as soon as we can.”

Kidd moved away from the podium, trying to steady himself. He hated that the press could get to him like that, could get under his skin. He was trying his best, and he hated to think that his best wasn’t good enough. He wanted to find Mason, bring him home, but they wanted to make it look like he was completely incompetent.

“Sorry, I don’t mean to interrupt.” Kidd looked up to see Joe Warrington hovering beside him. Kidd got déjà vu. Had he not done this after the last press conference? “I just wondered if I could borrow you for a second.”

“We’re actually very busy, and any questions that you had should have been made during the press conference,” Weaver said. “Run along, kid, we’ve got things to do.”

“This is important to your case,” Joe said, pulling his phone out of his pocket and thrusting it at Kidd. There was a video playing. Joshua and Bernadette Cooke, yelling at each other.

Kidd pressed the phone to his ear, trying to hear what they were saying. He was only getting snatches of the conversation, Bernadette yelling about how Joshua wasn’t paying the money, how he needed to do it for the sake of their son. They were having a very public spat on the street outside the police station.

Just watching it unfold made Kidd feel incredibly uncomfortable. Things were falling apart between them because of this case, that much Kidd could see.

“When was this?” Kidd asked.

“Last night,” Joe said. “I didn’t even mean to see it. I was just walking past, and I saw Bernadette waiting outside the station. The minute he came out, she started yelling at him and…” He gestured to the phone. “I don’t even know why I started filming it, I just did, but…”

Kidd kept watching, and more than the fight, he realised why Joe was showing it to him. They left separately, walking in different directions. Had they split up? Were they not going back to the same house? This really had taken its toll on them.

“So why aren’t you posting this?” Kidd asked. “This would go down like gangbusters on your site, wouldn’t it?”

Joe shrugged. “Probably,” he said. “But some things aren’t worth posting. I thought… I thought maybe you’d be able to do something with it. It might not mean much, but⁠—”

“Wait,” Kidd said, watching the video.

Joe hadn’t stopped recording, filming as Joshua walked towards his car. It was a car that hadn’t been on his driveway when they’d gone to see him, a car that Kidd hadn’t seen anywhere near the Cooke residence. Surely Joshua wouldn’t be so stupid.

“What is it?” Weaver asked.

“The car,” Kidd said. “That’s the car on the CCTV near Neapolitan.”

CHAPTER

THIRTY-THREE

Kidd hurried back to the Incident Room, a fire under him as he addressed the rest of the team. Joe had sent him the video file, so he played it for them. Even at the beginning of the case, he’d had a hunch that one of the parents might be involved. Why did it always come back to the parents in cases like this? But Joshua was driving the SUV—he was driving the bloody SUV.

“The CCTV has just come through from that café on the corner, I’m hopeful they’ve actually got what we want,” Powell said. “I’ll get a number plate, check the ANPR.”

“Sounds good,” Kidd said. “I want it confirmed, then I want to head off Joshua Cooke as soon as we can. The longer we leave this, the more trouble Mason could end up in.”

“But it doesn’t make sense,” Zoe said. “Why is he doing this?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, he’s kidnapped his own son? He’s keeping him locked away somewhere and sending out a ransom note to himself?” Zoe’s face was a picture of confusion. “Why go to these lengths? And what for?”

“His son is a bit of a fuckup,” Kidd said. “He said in the first interview we had with him that something needed to happen to have him buck up. What if this is it? What if he’s trying to scare the lad into taking some responsibility for himself?”

“That’s sick,” Zoe said. “What’s he going to do? Pretend to pay himself, set him free, act like he wasn’t the one behind it all? That’s crazy.”

“It’s his car,” Kidd said. “Maybe Joshua Cooke is just that crazy. The PR storm around it has been huge for their business. Bernadette told us that bookings were through the roof.”

“So maybe it started as a way of scaring Mason into actually doing something with his life,” Janya said. “And then his plan slowly evolved when he realised how much he could reap from this. If they’re booked solid because of all the press, how much longer could he keep it up?”

“They already moved the goalposts once by changing the countdown,” Kidd said. “Who’s to say they wouldn’t do it again just to keep this going for a little while longer?”

Kidd could hardly fathom the cruelty of it, kidnapping your own son and then using their kidnapping to make more money for your business, but he’d seen people do a lot worse for a lot less. Joshua Cooke was a sick, sick man, and he would pay for what he’d done to his son.

Kidd waited, and he waited, the information just not coming quick enough, watching as Powell looked through the CCTV, as he pulled the number plate, as he ran it through ANPR. It might be the breakthrough they were looking for.

“Got him,” Powell said. “The car is registered to Joshua. It… looks like the same car. I can’t be sure, but it looks the same.”

Kidd was already on his feet, heading towards the door.

“Where are you going?” Powell asked.

“I’m going to pay Joshua Cooke a visit,” Kidd said, grabbing his coat. “Keep on your toes. We might need to move quickly if I can get a confession out of him.” He turned his attention to Zoe. “You coming?”

Kidd made a call to Joshua, finding out where he was. He’d tried to remain casual on the phone, framing it as wanting to give him an update on how things were going after the press conference, rather than it being a potential gotcha moment.

He was working from home, trying to wade his way through the press enquiries and media bullshit—his words, not Kidd’s. But Kidd was sure he could still hear that smile in his voice, that same self-importance that had been there when he’d met him just the other day. How had he missed it? He should have kept probing that angle, should have kept pressing that a member of the family was involved. It so often was.

Kidd got into one of the unmarked cars in the car park, swinging it out onto the road and barrelling towards Joshua Cooke’s house just outside of Kingston. He could hardly believe their luck, to have stumbled upon that piece of information when all hope seemed to be lost. He wanted to close this up, wanted to bring Mason back, wanted to bring Joshua to justice as quickly as he could.

“So, what’s the plan here?” Zoe asked. “Confront him, wait for him to fess up?”

“It’s his car, Zoe,” Kidd said. “We’ve all but got him. We just need to find out where Mason is. We know he’s not in the house. The forensic team tore it apart.”

“I think we need to be careful,” Zoe said. “He could be dangerous when backed into a corner. He feels… unpredictable.”

“That’s why we’re in this situation,” Kidd said.

The weather was horrendous. Kidd and Sanchez had got soaked to the skin before they’d even made it to the car. They pulled up outside the house and waited, hoping the rain would subside a little before they had to leave the car. No such luck.

He stepped out, Zoe close behind, the pair of them hurrying across the road, shielding their heads from the rain, for all the good it would do. They were drenched by the time Kidd rang the bell.

The gate swung open, letting Kidd and Zoe inside. Joshua Cooke was already waiting at the door when Kidd got there, a smile on his face. There was a different car on the drive, a Mercedes-Benz, sleek, silver, getting absolutely battered in the rain. The black SUV that Joshua had driven away in last night was nowhere to be seen. There was a garage, a pretty big one at that. Maybe it was in there, hidden out of view. Could Joshua Cooke really have been that stupid? Maybe. Perhaps. Kidd was hoping so.

“You’ve caught me at a good time,” Joshua said as Kidd stepped onto the porch, finally under cover and out of the torrential downpour. “Was just going to take a break from all of the chaos and make some tea. Did you want some?”

“Tea would be perfect,” Kidd replied.

“And perhaps a towel,” he added with a smirk.

“Please.”

Joshua left them standing on the stoop, reappearing a few moments later with white bath towels for the pair of them. They took time to dry themselves before stepping into the house and closing the door behind them. Kidd tried to squeeze some of the water out of his jacket, his shirt, his trousers, but he was cold and wet and no amount of patting his clothes was going to help that.

Kidd knew they needed to wait. They were so close. He didn’t want to get this wrong, didn’t want to play his cards too soon. He could feel the nervous energy coming off Zoe in waves, or maybe it was his own nervousness coming back to him.

Kidd made his way through to the kitchen, watching as Joshua pottered around, making the two of them a cup of tea. He seemed in good spirits, all things considered. His son was running out of time, that clock on the screen slowly ticking down to zero, and here he was, jollying around the kitchen making tea.

“Awful weather we’re having,” Joshua said. “I’d have offered to come down to the station if I wasn’t dealing with so much shit here, but, selfishly, I’m glad that you offered first. I’d rather not go out in this if I can help it.”

“It’s alright,” Kidd said. “I just wanted to give you an update on where we are. We had a press conference this morning, gave an update on the situation.”

Joshua paused. “What did you say about the money?”

“I didn’t say anything,” Kidd said. “Batted away any questions when it came to you paying the kidnappers.”

“Good, because I’m not going to.”

“We didn’t have to,” Kidd said. “We could very easily have set up some kind of sting, using the money as bait, Mr Cooke. You wouldn’t have to give up a penny. It might be our best chance of saving Mason’s life.”

“They’re not going to kill Mason,” he said. “And we can’t start negotiating with these kinds of people. It just opens us up to more hurt. Mason is going to be fine. They’re not going to hurt him. I know they won’t.”

Kidd looked at Joshua, busying himself with making the tea. Did he know that because he was the one who was holding him captive? They’d already searched their family’s home, but there were more places where Joshua could hide someone. They had locations up and down the country.

“Joshua, can you tell me about the car you were driving last night?” Kidd asked.

Joshua stopped what he was doing, looking up at Kidd from across the counter. He narrowed his eyes, and Kidd couldn’t tell if it was a genuine confusion or if he knew that he’d been caught red-handed.

“What are you⁠—?”

“The vehicle you drove to the station last night,” Kidd said. “It was a black SUV, right?”

“Yes…” Joshua said. “Why are you asking me about my⁠—?”

“We have video footage of you driving it last night,” Kidd said. “And we’ve got video footage of the same vehicle, picking up your son outside Neapolitan on Friday night.” Kidd let the words settle. “You want to tell us about that?”

Joshua stuttered, unable to form a proper sentence. “I don’t… What are you…? What do you…?”

“We ran the number plate through ANPR,” Kidd said. “It’s registered to you.”

Joshua placed his hands on the counter in front of him, trying to suck air into his lungs but not being particularly successful at it. He was rattled. Kidd had got him; he was sure he’d got him.

“What was the number plate?” Joshua asked.

“Why do you⁠—?”

“The number plate,” Joshua repeated.

Kidd took out his phone and read him the number plate, watching Joshua’s face as it shifted and changed before his very eyes.

“It’s not from my car,” he said, his voice quiet.

Kidd could barely hear him. He wasn’t even sure he’d heard him right. They had the details, they’d caught him, what did he⁠—?

“Joshua, there’s no use lying, we⁠—”

“It’s registered to me,” he said. “But that is my wife’s number plate.”

CHAPTER

THIRTY-FOUR

Joshua took him to the garage to show him the car, the one they’d seen him drive away in, with a completely different number plate. He told Kidd that they’d bought matching cars for himself, Bernadette, Mason, and Pippa. Mason would have seen the SUV and thought it was one of them coming to get him, to take him home, but instead…

“I’m sorry,” Joshua said, unable to keep his voice steady. “I never thought… She was so upset… She was beside herself, she couldn’t do anything, she just stayed home. Or at least I thought that’s what she was doing.”

“Where has she been keeping the car?”

“That’s the funny part,” he said, not laughing. “She told me it needed work done, so it was in some garage somewhere being looked at. I should have checked. I knew I couldn’t trust her.”

There was an irony in that, given what Joshua had been keeping from Bernadette, but Kidd wasn’t about to pull at that thread. He needed to find Bernadette.

“We’ve got… We’ve got a lot of cars,” Joshua said. “She’s been using one of the little runaround ones, just an old Fiesta that she couldn’t bear to get rid of. It was her first car. Told me how good it was that we didn’t get rid of it. I feel so stupid.”

“Do you know where she’s at today? Where can we find her?”

Joshua shifted from foot to foot, nervous in a way that he hadn’t been a few moments ago.

“Joshua?”

“I… I have tracking devices in each of the cars,” Joshua said. “I have one in Pippa’s car, Mason’s and Bernadette’s.”

“Jesus.”

“I keep track of their spending, it’s all my money after all, and I keep track of where they go and what they do,” he said. “Why do you think I was so furious with Mason? All of these things are in place to protect my kids, to protect my family, and…”

“Where is she?” Kidd asked.

Joshua sighed. “Let’s go find out.”

Kidd was with Joshua for a little while longer, getting the details of the tracking device, checking the video on his phone, seeing that Mason was still there, even if the time was running down, down, down.

He sent the location to Zoe back at the station, hurrying back to Kingston to join up with the rest of the team. Weaver was waiting in the station reception, face a picture of panic. Their time was short, but he was still there. There was still time.

The briefing was kept to a minimum. Kidd, Zoe, the rest of the team, an armed response unit, all making their way to the location of a new hotel being built in Surbiton. Not a million miles away. The thought of it made Kidd feel sick. She was doing this all so close to home, right under their noses. She must have felt so smug when they couldn’t find anything, when they couldn’t track the vehicle, track the phone. They’d needed her to make a mistake, and it turned out her mistake was trusting her husband to trust her.

Joshua had given Kidd access to the tag he’d been using to track the cars. He could see where Mason and Pippa’s cars were. Mason’s was around the corner from the Cooke Residence, Pippa’s was outside the offices in Kingston, and Bernadette’s was sitting outside the hotel. She was still there, and Kidd could barely tear his eyes away from the phone as they made their way to the location.

“I can’t believe she would do that to her own son,” Zoe said quietly next to Kidd. She was driving one of the unmarked cars, following the convoy of police vehicles making their way out of Kingston, windscreen wipers running at full speed to stave off the rain.

“She played it very well,” Kidd said. Because she had.

From the start, Bernadette had played them. She’d acted like she was the most wounded by Mason’s disappearance. She had been the one pleading on TV for his safe return, and the one to defend him.

There were so many questions buzzing around Kidd’s head. What was her game plan here? Why had she done this in the first place? He couldn’t put it all together. But the vehicle was still at the hotel. So long as she’d not ditched it and run away, this was all going to be over soon, and he would get some answers.

They pulled up outside the hotel. It was a building site. Huge boards around the outside of it, blocking entering, the door hanging off the hinges, clattering back and forth with the ever-increasing wind. It was unfinished, the “Cooke Hotels” sign not even up, the windows not even in. If you wanted to hide someone somewhere, and you had all the hotels in an empire to put them in, why wouldn’t you choose the one that looked like it had been left unfinished?

The outside boards were covered in graffiti. The entire world around this building seemed to have died. It looked like a half-finished project, something that had been forgotten, neglected.

Kidd got out of the car, wincing against the downpour. There was a team of officers sheltering in the back of a van, riot gear on, ready to break down any and every door in the entire hotel if they had to.

“I’m going in first,” Kidd said over the howling wind. The weather really had taken a turn. It was winter at its most brutal. “Sanchez is coming with me.”

“We don’t know what she has in there,” Weaver said. “You don’t know what you’re walking into.”

“But I think we’re more likely to get Mason out alive if we don’t go in all guns blazing,” Kidd replied. “If we go in there and start crashing through the place, she might panic, and if she panics, then all is lost.”

Weaver hesitated. He didn’t want his officers heading in there alone, unarmed. He made them put on stab vests, gave them batons, it was the best he could do. It was a compromise. That was something.

Kidd grabbed hold of the door, swung it open, and they stepped into the building site. There were a few signs up telling people to wear hard hats, that there were men at work, that they needed to follow the safety protocols. He was wearing a stab vest. It would have to do.

He and Zoe stepped quietly into the atrium. It was huge, tall, spreading further back than Kidd had expected. There was a reception desk directly in front of them, an empty lift shaft off to one side with a set of stairs next to it that didn’t look finished.

The doorway to the left was blocked off, chains wrapped around the handles of the only doors that seemed to have been installed in the whole place. Everything smelled musty, like it hadn’t been touched by sunlight, or a breeze, or a human in a long time. How long had it been like this? How long had it been left empty?

The only way was up.

They took the stairs slowly, reaching the first floor to find that access to the second was blocked by pieces of wood, old, dusty pieces of equipment, and translucent tarps that had been tossed to one side. And they started to look inside the rooms, one at a time, slowly counting them off as empty, empty, empty.

Kidd half expected to be able to follow the ticking of a clock, the sound that had been so prevalent in the video of Mason. But no. All they had was the sound of the rain outside, the sound of the wind as it howled through the empty floor. The cold bit at them, the windows yet to be put in. It was all unfinished. At least for now.

They got to the last of the rooms, and Kidd found himself shocked that there was someone there. But not the someone he’d been hoping for.

Bernadette Cooke was sitting in the chair that Mason had been in on the video, staring at the two detectives as they walked into the room. They were on the first floor in a decent-sized room with a view of the river. It was right under everyone’s noses. How had they not known it was here? How had they managed to miss this, of all things?

The camera was on the floor, knocked over in someone’s haste to get away, and there was the smallest moment of a thrill in Kidd’s chest as he thought that maybe, just maybe, Mason had managed to find the strength to make a break for it. Because he wasn’t there. It was only them and Bernadette.

“Where is Mason?” Kidd asked, trying to keep his voice steady, calm but authoritative, not wanting to spook her. She looked broken. “Bernadette?”

“Gone,” she said. “He’s gone. Heard you coming. He had to go.”

“What do you mean by gone, Bernadette?” Zoe asked, stepping a little further into the room.

She didn’t answer, she just stayed sitting in the chair. She had something in her hands, the ropes that had been tying Mason’s feet and ankles. He’d been here when they’d left the police station. How could she have acted so quickly? How could he have vanished so fast?

“Bernadette?”

“It was always part of the plan,” Bernadette said. “If it all went wrong, he had to go. We both had to go.”

“We?” Kidd asked.

“Me,” she said. “And Adele.”

Kidd’s blood ran cold. “Bernadette, where is Mason?”

She smiled sadly. “He won’t be around much longer. You’re too late.”

CHAPTER

THIRTY-FIVE

“What are you talking about?” Kidd asked.

Bernadette looked at him and smirked, mocking, knowing, exhausted. She looked like she might be about to laugh, or at least to poke a little bit of fun at the detective for thinking she had no idea that her husband had a mistress.

“I’m not stupid,” she said bluntly. “My husband thinks that I have no idea what he gets up to, all of the things that he does when I’m not around, but I’m not dumb. I’ve known for as long as it’s been happening. I’ve certainly known longer than Pippa.”

“You know that Pippa knows?”

“All that covering that she does for him,” she said, shaking her head sadly. “I don’t know what I wanted her to do exactly. There’s a part of me that hoped she would tell me about what was happening, but then the other part of me was actually quietly impressed that she used it to her advantage. She should have held onto it a little longer. Maybe she would have got the top job after all.”

“So you’ve been sitting on this information the whole time?” Kidd asked.

She nodded. “I decided late last year that I wanted to meet the woman who seemed to be capable of making my husband so happy.” She said ‘happy,’ like it was a dirty word, like she couldn’t wait to spit it out. “So I found her address, that lovely new flat on Kingston riverside that she bought after she left the company, and we got to talking.”

“What about?”

“She never really wanted Joshua,” Bernadette said. “He was there when she needed someone, and then it all just… carried on. At least that’s the story she told me. I’m still not entirely sure I believe it, but it was a starting point so that we could all get what we wanted.”

“And what was that?”

“A way out,” she said. “She talked about how all Joshua talked about was Mason and the company, and how she wasn’t really in it anymore. Not like she used to be. But she didn’t know how to stop it without it all blowing up in her face. She felt trapped. And I got to thinking, is there a way that we can all win here?”

“You thought that kidnapping your son was winning?”

“Had it all gone our way, then maybe,” Bernadette replied. “I want my son to succeed. I want him to do well. I want him to run the company as much as my husband does, but Joshua doesn’t have the balls to follow through on any of the grand plans that he comes up with to convince Mason to do it. He fired Andy Hargraves when actually he should have left him there to knock some sense into Mason. He won’t cut him off because he doesn’t want it to get out that he is a ‘neglectful father’ or some such bollocks. So he needed me to step in.”

“Did he ask you to?”

“He doesn’t think I’m capable of anything beyond being the doting wife who is always at his side,” she said flatly. “So no.”

Kidd couldn’t help but feel like they were wasting time here. They needed to get to the part where they found out where Mason was. If he was even still alive. It would be their only chance.

“I thought we could scare him,” she said. “It sounds silly now, doesn’t it? But that’s all this was. To show him how dangerous that lifestyle is, convince him that maybe something a little quieter would be better, a little more stable. So we decided to do it together, two heads are better than one, two people who can cover for each other if needed. One of us could be here at the hotel, checking up on things, while the other plays their role.”

“What was Adele getting out of this?” Kidd asked.

“The ransom money,” Bernadette said. “It was all going to be hers. The only stipulation was that she needed to disappear, and never go near my husband ever again.”

“Is that all it would take?”

“She might have done it for less, but it seemed like a number that she wouldn’t be able to say no to,” Bernadette said. “And she didn’t. She would leave, Joshua and I would be together, things would be… better. We could be happy again. We were happy once. It was a long time ago, but we were happy once upon a time.”

“Bernadette, where is Adele?”

She swallowed and looked at the two detectives in turn, that sad look in her eyes again. She seemed defeated, deflated, at the very end of her rope.

“Joshua messaged her to say that I’d been found out, that you were on your way here,” she chuckled. “He didn’t realise we were working together, so it gave us an out. She’ll be home by now. Home and dry.”

“Bernadette—”

“There were only two ways out of this,” she carried on. “If it all went to plan, Mason would be returned to us and we would be the happy family once again. And if it didn’t…” She looked towards the window. “Well, Mason would have to be killed. And what could we do then?”

Everything moved far too quickly.

Bernadette shot to her feet, her quiet calm that she’d had when they’d walked in dissipating in an instant as she hurtled towards the open window. Zoe was the quickest of the two of them, dashing forward and tackling Bernadette to the floor before she could get too close.

“Where is Adele?” Kidd barked. “Where is Mason?”

“You’re too late!” Bernadette screamed. “It’s over. It has to be over.”

“Kidd, go!” Zoe said. “Send officers up, we’ll take her in, go and find him.”

“Where?”

Home and dry. The words stuck in Kidd’s head. Adele lived right by the Thames in Kingston, right next to the river. It was a long shot, but it might be the only shot he had.

Kidd ran back through the hotel, hoping against hope that Mason’s time hadn’t run out.

CHAPTER

THIRTY-SIX

Kidd hurried out of the hotel, telling the team outside that Bernadette was there and had been detained by Zoe. He didn’t have time to waste, jumping into the unmarked car he and Zoe had come in and speeding back towards Kingston. It was a chance, the slightest chance, the longest shot, and he needed to be right this time, needed to have called this right.

He drove as fast as he could, overtaking cars on dangerous stretches of road, ignoring the screaming of the other motorists’ horns as he sped past. There was no time, there was less than no time, and he was playing a dangerous game.

He made it as far as the Kingston Bridge, just a little way past the Bentall Centre, when he spotted a commotion up ahead. Cars had stopped, crowds of people had gathered. The bridge, as far as he could tell, was entirely empty. And he knew that only meant one thing.

He got out of the car, squeezing through the grid-locked vehicles, through the standstill traffic, edging his way towards the bridge and the people who were watching as Adele Jarvis stood holding Mason Cooke up at the balustrade of the big stone bridge.

She was barely able to keep him upright, almost all of his weight leaning on her. Bernadette had wanted to teach her son a lesson, to scare him into being responsible, and here he was, barely clinging on to life. Had it been worth it? Given the fact that Bernadette was now in handcuffs, likely being driven to Kingston station, he was pretty sure she wouldn’t think so.

There were already police on the scene. They were the ones blocking off the bridge. Kidd squeezed through, flashing his badge and squeezing past them. It was strange to be on the Kingston Bridge when no one else was. It was so rare to see it empty, to not see the buses running down the bus lane, the nose-to-tail traffic, the bike lanes and the pathways teaming with people. It was him, Adele, and a barely conscious Mason. Kidd knew he needed to play this right.

The rain still lashed down, though less aggressively than it had been before. Kidd was still soaked through, and he had to raise his voice to even get Adele’s attention over the sound of the howling wind.

“It’s over!” Kidd shouted, only knowing his voice had reached her because she had turned to face him instead of facing the water. The calm, collected businesswoman was gone. She was wet through, her hair wild around her face, her mascara running down her cheeks. It was a far cry from the woman he’d interviewed. Things had fallen apart, and she was trying to finish the job that she had started. Kidd needed to convince her not to.

“It can’t be over!” she shouted. “We… we had a plan!”

“I know,” Kidd said. “But we’ve caught Bernadette. You know we have, or I wouldn’t be here. Anything that you do now is only going to make this worse for you, Adele. Let Mason go.”

She looked at Kidd, and then at the water, doing the calculations in her head. Kidd could hear sirens in the distance, more officers coming their way. He needed her not to panic; he needed to keep her calm.

“Adele, look at me,” Kidd called. She did. She looked so fragile, like she might be about to shatter into a thousand pieces. “It’s finished. You can hand over Mason, and we can get to the bottom of what happened. If you do anything to him now, it’s only going to end badly. Please.”

There were officers nearby, Kidd could see them steadily creeping closer. He looked at one of them and shook his head. She was already so close to the edge. Kidd didn’t want to gamble on her not being quick enough to get Mason over the edge and into the water.

“Adele,” Kidd said. “Please. It’s not worth this.”

She looked at Mason, like she was taking him in for the first time, seeing just how emaciated he was, how tired, how much the last few days had taken from him. Kidd watched the realisation cross her face, a veil being lifted as she realised that they’d taken things too far.

“This was supposed to be easy,” she said. “Bernadette made it sound so easy. And I’d be able to get away. It was all going to be easy.” She nodded for Kidd to come closer. Kidd did just that, one of the nearby officers joining him.

She practically threw Mason at them and hurried back towards the balustrade, one hand on the edge, looking between the river and Kidd. There were calculations running through her head so quickly, Kidd could practically hear them. She knew that she was in trouble; she knew that there would be no way of avoiding prison. There’d be no way to keep the life that she’d built for herself from crumbling around her. But that was something she should have thought of before it all began. It was too late for that now. Wasn’t it?

She moved closer to the edge.

“Adele.”

“It’s over for me,” she said. “You said it yourself.”

“That’s not what I⁠—”

“It’s over,” she said. “It has to be over.”

Kidd hurried forward, closing the gap between them, but Adele was too fast. Without a beat of hesitation, she lifted herself over the edge of the bridge and fell to the fast-running water below.

CHAPTER

THIRTY-SEVEN

Kidd waited with Mason at the riverside, paramedics showing up pretty quickly, checking Mason over, getting him into the back of an ambulance and on his way to the hospital.

Kidd assured the concerned paramedic that he was fine. Or as fine as one could be when you’d just seen someone jump off a bridge. He’d tried. He’d done his best. But he knew that his best hadn’t been good enough on this occasion. She had made a choice, whether it was one that she regretted as she tumbled into the water, he may never know. He wondered what was going to become of Adele. Would she climb out of the river somewhere further down, completely unscathed? Or…

There was a cold sort of dread in the pit of his stomach as he thought about the most likely outcome, the fact that she would probably wash up on the shore somewhere downstream, rather than climbing out unscathed. The water was moving so quickly, the weather so aggressive, it was hard to imagine anyone surviving that. They would just have to wait and see.

Mason was taken to Kingston Hospital, and Kidd was left by the river on Kingston Bridge, staring off at the world, at the lights of the town as they twinkled in the dark. He’d gone off alone, and so now he truly was by himself.

His phone rang, and he took it out, answering it without seeing who it was.

“Where are you?” It was Zoe, voice hard, short. He wondered what she’d been through.

“Kingston Riverside,” Kidd said. “She… She jumped.”

“Fuck.”

“Yeah,” Kidd said. “What did⁠—?”

“She tried to fight the arrest,” Zoe said. “She almost got a few hits in, but I had her until the riot squad got upstairs and took her away. She’s on her way back to the station. I just thought I should give you a call, see how you were getting on.” A pause. “How’s Mason?”

“He’s alive,” Kidd said. “He’s a lot worse for wear, but he’s on the way to the hospital, so hopefully…”

The lad would be traumatised for life, no doubt. Kidd didn’t yet know what he’d been through, but he’d been held for several days. He was in a state. They’d not taken care of him, not at all. Kidd couldn’t understand how Mason’s mother could be so cruel. He shook his head. That was something he’d need to unpack someday, but not today. They’d still need to interview Mason to find out his version of events. Maybe Mason would be able to shed some light on what really happened.

“This was a bit of a nightmare, huh,” Zoe said, voice flat. “Unhinged.”

It was hard to believe that Bernadette’s plan had included all of this. That they had some kind of suicide pact if it all went wrong, as it had done. But given how much she’d planned it out, that detail was hardly surprising. She’d thought getting rid of Adele with that money would have been enough to fix her family.

It was a pretty big stretch as far as Kidd was concerned. They’d come up with this grand plan, and there were so many things that could have gone wrong, so many things that they just didn’t consider. They didn’t bank on them having the vehicle on CCTV, they didn’t bank on the fact that, despite Joshua being the one who was having extra-marital dalliances, he didn’t trust Bernadette with the car that he gave her.

Bernadette would pay for what she’d done with her life, just not in the same way that Adele had.

Kidd filled Zoe in on what had happened with Adele, that she’d jumped, that she might not have survived, that they wouldn’t know until they found a body. If they found a body. It was rough, to say the least.

Kidd could feel the effects of the last few days suddenly weighing heavily on him. They’d solved the case, they’d got Mason back alive, but barely. And they’d lost one of their suspects.

“Bernadette got her wish,” Kidd said, “in a way, I guess. Adele is gone.”

“She’s lost Mason, though,” Zoe said. “So desperate to keep him that she’s lost him. I can’t imagine him being quite so keen to stay in touch with someone who did that to him.”

“I’ll say,” Kidd replied.

They finished their conversation and hung up, Kidd remaining by the river, staring out at the water. He needed to get back to the station, but more than that, he just needed a little more time. They wouldn’t be waiting for him, not right away. He had a bit of time.

He looked out at the raging waters of the Thames, the wind still howling down it, battering him, trying to knock him off his feet. But it didn’t. He took a breath. It was over. For now, at least, it was done.

CHAPTER

THIRTY-EIGHT

It had been a couple of days since they had wrapped up the case. Bernadette had been charged with kidnapping and attempted murder, and Adele’s body had been recovered from the Thames. She’d drowned, as Kidd had expected her to, her body appearing down near Teddington Lock washed up on the shore. Kidd had identified the body, a next of kin had corroborated it, and now, things were wrapping up.

Even Andy Hargraves had turned up, eventually. They’d been blowing up his phone so much that when he came back from his holiday, sporting a sunburn that made him look like he’d been on the surface of the sun, he came in to find out exactly what it was that had gone on. The whole thing had been pretty shocking to him. He’d been so off-grid that the news hadn’t even reached him.

In a strange way, it was a comfort to Kidd. While something had become the centre of his universe and felt like it was all anyone could think or talk about, here was Andy Hargraves, who could have been at the centre of it, none the wiser, sitting on a sun lounger, flicking through some trashy book.

Bernadette had done exactly what Kidd had expected her to do, twisting the narrative to place the blame on Adele. They would never really know the full extent of the truth, given they only had one side of the story, at least in full, written down as evidence. Bernadette would end up with a slightly lesser sentence, but her life would likely be immeasurably altered by all of this.

Joshua Cooke stood down from Cooke Hotels and Casinos, putting Mason and Pippa in joint charge of the company. He was still on the board, and would still have some say in how things played out. And if the rest of the board wasn’t happy with what Mason was doing, at least Pippa would be able to step in and take her rightful place at the head of the company, even if it was against her father’s wishes.

With things wrapping up, Kidd was able to turn his attention back to his personal life, which had been absolutely sidelined in the chaos of the case. He thought it was something of a miracle that John even responded to his messages, and he’d even agreed to join him for dinner.

They found themselves in the same Italian restaurant that Kidd had been to with Seth and Zoe. Kidd had liked it, enjoyed the quiet, homey feel, and thought it was somewhere worth showing John, given he quite liked Italian food. And it would give them a chance to talk. Something that they desperately needed to do.

They ordered, got some wine, shared a starter, danced around the subject at hand by updating one another on their lives, not mentioning the cold war raging between them, not mentioning the discomfort. Both were wondering how long it would be before one of them finally dipped their toe into the cool waters of their relationship.

“I’ve missed you,” John said.

So he’s the one who’s going to wade in first, Kidd thought, tensing. He wanted this to go well. He didn’t want things to be over. He hadn’t arranged this dinner to end things. Far from it.

“I’ve missed you too,” Kidd said. “Things have been…difficult.”

“Something of an understatement,” John said.

“Well, no use harping on about it,” Kidd said. “I’ve been difficult. It’s not so much things, it’s mostly me, I think.”

John smirked. “I’d agree with that.”

“Thought you might,” Kidd replied. “The Craig stuff⁠—”

“It’s always going to be there,” John interrupted. “No matter what, it’s always going to be between us. I… I need to maybe be a little bit less jealous of the fact that you have a past. Everyone has a past. Lord knows I do too, mine just… mine just shows up a bit less.”

“I don’t think yours has ever shown up,” Kidd said. “Mine has shown up on three separate occasions. It’s kind of embarrassing when you think about it.”

“Yours is a little more persistent,” John said. “I need to get better at letting that go. At remembering that you chose me, that we’re together, and… even if Craig comes back, he won’t come between us.”

He was looking for reassurance, Kidd could see it. He needed to be reassured, to be told that everything was going to be fine between them, even if Craig happened to rear his head again. Kidd hoped he wouldn’t. Craig had a nasty habit of complicating things.

“Craig isn’t going to come back again,” Kidd said. “At least, he said as much. And I believe him. But regardless of that, it’s you I want to be with. It’s you that I love. I can’t tell you how fucking depressing the last few days have been because you’ve not been around. I like having you around. The house has been so quiet.”

“So you’re saying I’m loud?”

“I’m saying that you fill an empty house with a joyful noise that I’ve grown accustomed to hearing,” Kidd said.

John smiled. “That’s pretty smooth,” he said. “Nice work.”

“Thank you,” Kidd replied. “Off the cuff, that one, didn’t even prepare it.”

“Then I’m even more impressed,” John said. “So, what do we do?” he asked. “We’ve had a couple of moments like this over the past little while. Where things maybe get a little bit too much and we… fall out. I don’t want to keep falling out with you. I’m not getting into some dramatic relationship where we’re fighting in the streets or yelling at one another. I can’t be bothered with it. It’s too much drama.”

“We never went that far, really,” Kidd said. “We got pretty close when we were in Southend, but Kingston seems to be safer for that kind of thing.”

“We just quietly seethe in the house and then I… go back to my flat and sulk for a few days,” John said, red tinging his cheeks.

Kidd didn’t know if it was the wine or if maybe he felt embarrassed about reacting like that. Kidd wasn’t about to judge him for it.

“I want to be with you,” Kidd said. “More than anything. And I know my job gets in the way and is an absolute bitch, believe me, I really do know, I’m the one doing it. But I… I really love you, John. And…” He’d built this moment up so much in his head before he’d even got here. He’d told himself that if John didn’t break it off with him the second he caught sight of him, that he would bite the bullet and just go for it. “And I’d like it if you moved in with me.”

John seemed to freeze, leaving him staring dumbly at Kidd. If it hadn’t been for the server coming over and putting their meals in front of them, Kidd would have thought that someone somewhere had pressed some big cosmic remote and put their evening on pause.

“You don’t have to decide now, if you don’t want to,” Kidd said. “I just figured that you’ve practically been living there anyway, and your flat is just sitting there empty, gathering dust, and you could… sell it, or rent it out, or… I don’t know. Just promise me that you’ll think about it and won’t immediately say⁠—”

“Yes,” John interrupted.

“I did say you don’t have to decide now.”

“I know that,” John said. “But it feels like the right step to me, feels like the right move. Like you said, I fill the house with such a joyful noise. Who am I to deprive you of that?”

They looked into one another’s eyes across the table, the candlelight flickering between them, the romantic setting feeling altogether more appropriate than it had done when they’d walked in, when their future had felt uncertain.

John reached forward and picked up his wineglass. Kidd followed suit.

“To the future,” John said, raising his glass.

They clinked glasses.

“To our future.”

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

GS Rhodes has been writing for as long as he can remember, scribbling stories on spare bits of paper and hoping to one day share those stories with the world. The DI Benjamin Kidd series is GS Rhodes first foray into crime writing, combining a love of where he has lived for a lot of his life with his love of a good mystery. Now well into this series, he is also writing a spin-off featuring DS Zoe Sanchez in the starring role, starting with Deadly Tears.

DI BENJAMIN KIDD WILL RETURN IN

NOBODY BUT YOU

(Coming 2025)