Shallow Waters (12 page)

38

The
girl was tired. Too tired to be scared. Or so she thought. The games he
played with her were exhausting. She feared him and the time alone was
hers. She recognised this now and was grateful for it. She rested her
cheek on the cold red plastic, closed her eyes and allowed her mind to
wander again.

Red
was the perfect colour. It had probably been chosen on purpose. Or
maybe not. She used to like red. She used to have a red woollen scarf
she liked to wear when it was cold. A birthday gift from her mum. Tears
gathered under her eyelids. They felt hot.

She
missed her mum. She loved her. She loved her more than she loved
anything in the world and wished she could take back the spiteful,
hurtful words spat out in anger. The last clash they'd had, she'd said
she never wanted to talk to her again. She'd said she hated her, that
she'd ruined her life.

The
reality was, she wanted to talk to her so very much. She wanted to feel
her warmth and be held. She desperately wanted to say how much she
loved her and to tell her she needed her and couldn't imagine a life
without her. Did her mum hate her now? Was she enjoying the peace her
absence brought?

She
needed this time alone. From him. It was time where she could recover
and rest, yet at the same time she felt isolated and hated it. Memories
of tantrum induced stomps to her room where she would blast out her
favourite songs alone brought with it a swelling in her chest that
choked her. She didn't want to be alone. She didn't want to be here.

The red plastic became damp, her cheek sticking like tacky paint as the warm tears slid down.

39

I
parked the car a couple of doors down from number twenty-eight. Night
time was closing in and the street-lights were on. The road was silent
but for a dog barking, muted somewhere in another house. The mood felt
electric. We were all wired at the prospect of an arrest. As the convoy
of police cars pulled up and parked behind me, I appraised the front of
Benn’s address.

The
house looked in a state of disrepair. Litter spilled out of an attached
outhouse building onto the overgrown pathway to the front door. The
whole neighbourhood had a look of open disregard. Wheelie-bins were
left in the road and broken tricycles were discarded on neglected
lawns.

I
shifted my focus back to number twenty-eight. The Y registered Mondeo
we were interested in was parked, rusting on the road. The two
rectangular windows in the top half of the front door of the address
were dark. There were no other sign of lights from within. I wiped the
palms of my hands on my trousers, damp rivulets of sweat soaking into
the material.

Aaron
knew what I was looking for. “He's in there. There's a faint glow in
the upstairs front window, maybe a television or computer monitor.”

I
saw it. “Okay, listen in.” I turned to the gathered search officers.
“As discussed at the office, Aaron and I will enter the address at the
front and Ross and....” I paused and gave a querying look to one of the
uniform cops I'd forgotten the name of.

“Gavin, Ma'am.”

“Gavin
will make sure no one exits at the rear of the property. Once Benn is
secured they will take him to custody and book him in and leave the
search teams to do their job. Is everyone happy they know why we are
here and what they're doing?” A murmur of yes Ma'am went around the
circled group. “It looks as though he is in a first floor room, so DS
Stone and I will head straight up there. Benn has markers for violence,
so be careful.”

We
quietly moved to the address and I nodded towards the door indicating
to the enforcer officer, wearing full protective gear which included
face visor and gloves, to do his stuff. He held the enforcer with both
hands and slammed it forward with force. Twice. The door gave with a
sickening crack as it split near its locking system. I pushed on the
door and ran into the house. The dimming daylight outside gave the
sparsely furnished interior an eerie sepia toned feel. My feet clacked
heavily on bare floorboards. The stench of rotten food and bodily
fluids hit.

“Fuck” I heard Aaron at my side.

“Police!” I shouted a second time. I strained to hear a response but could only hear echoes of
Police!
as other officers entered and moved about. The stairs were straight in
front of me. Holding my Maglite in my right hand, I directed the beam
onto the steps so I could see where I was treading and started my
ascent, shouting my identification as I went.

Moving quickly my boots sounded hollow on the steps. We needed to contain Benn and prevent any evidence being destroyed.

I
went straight for the door emitting a faint line of light under the
bottom and turned the handle. The sight that met me was pitiful.

Colin
Benn was a slim man with a flabby belly overhanging a grubby,
threadbare pair of blue and white striped boxer-shorts; they left
little to the imagination, with the front gaping open like the mouth of
a hungry animal. He was bent over his computer, an old tower with a
keyboard, mouse and monitor wires all tangled in a mess hanging down at
the back of the basic desk he was seated at. His yellowing fingers
tapped on the keyboard as we entered. He turned and faced us, a flash
of fear registering on his face. He looked back down to the task at
hand. Within a few strides across the small box room I was beside him.
I took hold of his right wrist, yanked it hard away from the keyboard
and wrapped the rigid metal speed cuff around his wrist.  Leaning
forward, I pulled his left wrist behind him, forcing his body forward,
his nose almost touching the desk. Benn let out a high pitched squeal.
“Colin Benn, I am arresting you for the rape and murder of Rosie
Green.” I locked his left wrist into the cuffs and pulled back, lifting
him up and out of his chair and away from the keyboard. He let out a
couple more yelps of complaint, his breath, a stench of stale
cigarettes and alcohol.  

“You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you
do not mention when questioned...” I continued the caution as Benn
spluttered, spittle flying out of his mouth. Disgusted and conscious of
virus transmission I shifted my head sideways.

“I didn't do anything. You can't prove it.”

His
nearly naked body reacted to the stress of the situation as goosebumps
appeared all over him. His legs shook. I held the rigid metal between
the two cuffs with my right hand as I pulled the search warrant out of
my pocket with my left.

“Colin,
I'm DI Hannah Robbins and I'm in charge of this investigation. This
search warrant has been signed by a magistrate and authorises us to
search your house for items relevant to the offence for which you have
been arrested.  Do you understand what is happening?”

The shaking got worse. “You can't prove anything. I don't know anyone called Rosie whatever her name was.”

I
didn't plan on discussing the facts of the case with him until I had
him in a recorded interview room. “Regardless of whether you believe we
can prove it or otherwise, do you understand the information I have
given you?”

Benn nodded, eyes to the floor. 

I
handed Benn over to Ross and Gavin who had by now, both entered the
premises. Once Benn was out of the address in his boxers and a frayed
grey blanket from one of the police vehicles, the crime scene
investigators were called in.

As
I stood in the small cramped bedroom, I saw a photograph of Allison on
the chipped table at the side of his bed. The photograph wasn't framed
but was laid face up and looked to be well fingered. It showed a
smiling Allison in her school uniform. Her smile looked forced for a
camera she had no interest in, by an organisation she felt wouldn't and
hadn't protected her and could do little about it. The face in the
image looked into the lens, saying with her eyes what she couldn't say
with her words. The eyes that looked out said a big
fuck you,
yet Benn felt it appropriate to have it at the side of his bed. With my
hands gloved I opened the bedside drawer under this photograph and
found a box of tissues and several packets of condoms. On the floor at
the side of the bed were bundles of hardened screwed up tissues.

40

Aaron
and I left the search team and CSIs to go through the house. It would
be a long and intense search. If Benn was our man, then his address
could well be the scene of the girls’ murders. I gathered everyone in
the incident room to debrief the arrest and to discuss the strategy for
interview. Walker had come in after hearing the arrest had been
successful. She looked more relaxed than the last time I'd seen her.

As she entered the room her eyes searched me out and she gave a nod, indicating her approval at the progression of the case.

Grey
on the other hand looked twitchy, his fingers worked the documents in
his hand. He didn't like having to monitor how I was doing because this
meant he was in the firing line should anything go wrong. I liked it
even less, though I had to admit he was good at the paperwork, the
politics and multi-agency workings, managing the press and public
perception of how the job was going. I loved my job but the arse
kissing wasn't what I joined up to do.

The
incident room buzzed with a restrained excitement. The monster behind
the death of Rosie Green and possibly Allison Kirk and the attempted
murder of Natalie Kirk, now sat in the cells waiting for his solicitor.
On arrival in the custody suite he'd been booked in by the custody
Sergeant and searched, though, with what he was wearing, there wasn't
much of a search to conduct. He was photographed, fingerprinted by the
Live Scan machine and another sample of his DNA taken by mouth swab.
His boxer shorts had been seized and he had been provided with a pair
of royal blue, one size fits all, elasticated jogging bottoms, a plain
white tee-shirt and black pumps.

We still had a long way to go with the case, but the mood was upbeat.

When
I'd talked to Benn at his home, he had a look of surprise but not an
outrageous indignation you would expect from someone arrested for a
violent murder they hadn't committed.

Forensics
from Allison's crime scene, and swabs and samples taken during the PM
hadn't started coming in. I hadn't had chance to look over the interim
PM report sent over by Jack, though Grey had given me a brief outline.
With the preliminary report open in my hands I read down the initial
findings.

There
was a strong resemblance to the MO with Rosie Green, particularly the
binding around her neck with a circular imprint. Both girls were found
discarded and naked and not thought to be at the initial murder scene.
There was no information coming back from CSIs at Benn's address and I
wouldn't expect anything of use to be reported any time soon.

There
were so many ways this interview could go and I was concerned about the
lack of real information or evidence we had to link him to crime
scenes, counties, or to link him to one of the murders and attempted
murder of one other. I hated to work like this but we couldn't have
left him out there once we had his name. The media would have a field
day if we continued to investigate all the links without making an
arrest and another child was killed. Not just the media but we'd then
have MPs asking very difficult questions and it spiralled from there.
It would come down to me and what decisions I had made so I kept my
decision log up to date, giving reasons for the implementation or
otherwise of certain actions. 

We had to work all the possible angles.

My
arm and chest wall throbbed. Grabbing the plastic blister pack out of
my pocket I snapped out two painkillers, palmed them into my mouth and
washed them down with the now cold tea.

“Do we have the crime scene report on Allison's scene?” I asked the room.

Ross
raised his arm, a blue folder in his hand. “It's a preliminary report
produced by the CSU as so many results haven't come in yet, but they're
aware we are on the clock now.” The custody clock would restrict us
with detention of an offender as we had twenty-four hours from the
arrival at the police station. After that we would have to apply for
extensions if we needed to. We had our guy; evidence was slow at the
best of times, but when you needed it, time seemed to speed up. I
flipped through the pages.

“So,
we have DNA evidence that links Benn to Rosie Green, but nothing
further on how they knew each other. He is linked to Allison Kirk,
through her mother’s relationship with him. Looking at this we have
photographs of the neck injury on Allison and comparatively the same
injury on Rosie. What we need is for the search team to locate the item
that left the marks around their necks. Chase them up and get updates
on items seized.”

We
had enough to ask him about while further enquiries were carried out.
On arrest of Benn I had seized his computer straight away as there was
something on there he didn't want us to see, which made me all the more
curious. Aaron had taken the tower to the Digital Investigation Unit.
The gathering of evidence was a slow process. Time however, was a
luxury I wasn't sure we had.