Traitor in the House

by Caz Finlay

  ‘It’s your call, Simon. You have five seconds before I leave you to this lot.’

  ‘If I tell you, you’ll hand me over to this DI? And you won’t let them touch me?’ He nodded towards John.

  ‘It depends what information you have, I suppose. I mean, I already have the card, don’t I?’

  ‘The card on its own isn’t enough,’ he said. ‘It needs someone who was there.’

  ‘And let me guess, you are the only person left alive who was there? Is that right?’

  Simon nodded.

  ‘You gave up those poor women to save your own skin, didn’t you?’

  He started to cry again and Grace sighed.

  ‘Tell me what I need to know, Simon, or you will spend the next twenty-four hours of your life in pain you can’t even imagine.’

  He looked up at her again and sniffed. ‘There’s a video of a party on there. It was a sex party. I was recording it. There were six women and three men. It was taken six years ago and some of the girls were underage.’ He continued to cry and Grace rolled her eyes.

  ‘So they were girls, not women?’ Grace snapped. ‘Children?’

  ‘Some were fifteen. Some sixteen.’

  ‘So children! Who were they?’

  ‘The four girls from the kids’ home who’ve been murdered. Melanie Simmonds and Samia Munro.’

  ‘Samia Munro?’ Grace asked.

  ‘Yes. She was a kid we found on the streets. A runaway.’

  ‘She was? Other than the girls being underage, what else happens on that video? People have died for this video and you went into hiding?’

  ‘Things got out of hand. Someone went a bit too far, and she…’

  ‘She what?’ Grace snarled.

  ‘She died. It was an accident. All of the girls knew that these particular customers liked it rough. They knew what they were getting into.’

  Grace resisted urge to crush Simon’s balls with the heel of her stiletto. She looked up and saw Michael and Sean stepping out of the shadows. She held up her hand to them to indicate she wasn’t done with him yet.

  ‘Who else was on the video?’

  ‘Joey Parnell, Sol Shepherd…’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Chief Superintendent Barrow.’

  Grace sat back in her chair and rubbed her temples. ‘You can get dressed, John,’ she said quietly and he slipped away to retrieve his T-shirt.

  ‘If this happened six years ago, why wasn’t this memory card destroyed then? Why is it surfacing now and why have the women been murdered for it?’

  ‘Barrow and the others didn’t know that I’d filmed the party. I always filmed them – secretly.’

  ‘God, you’re fucking disgusting,’ Grace couldn’t help snapping.

  ‘Sol and Barrow had Samia’s body disposed of and the other five girls were warned to never speak of the incident. They were too terrified of all of us not to agree, so Barrow, Parnell and Sol assumed that would be the end of it. Then Melanie Simmonds got clean and she started talking to people about what had happened.’

  ‘So she was disposed of too?’

  ‘I had no part in that. I thought Barrow was just going to warn her off. Slap her around a bit, you know?’ Simon said, as though that would have been entirely acceptable. ‘But he went too far, and…’

  ‘Seems he had a habit of going too far.’ Grace snapped. ‘What about the women from Sunnymeade?’

  Simon started to cry again and looked down at his feet. Grace looked over at Michael and nodded at him. He walked across the warehouse, grabbed hold of Simon’s head by the hair and pulled it back sharply. ‘Tell her what she wants to know, because if I have to listen to you much longer, I will cut out your fucking tongue.’

  Simon howled in pain as Michael let his head snap back. He sniffed loudly before he carried on talking. ‘After I got out of prison, I needed some cash, so I contacted Parnell about the video. I thought that we could blackmail Barrow and make a bit of easy money.’

  ‘But you hadn’t counted on Barrow and Parnell being such good buddies?’

  ‘I didn’t realise they’d worked together so closely and Barrow had made sure that Parnell was looked after in prison. So, instead of blackmailing him with me, Parnell told Barrow about the video and the next thing I know someone is trying to kill me. Barrow and Parnell contacted me and tried to get me on side. They wanted to know who’d taken the video and who had it, so I told them it was one of the girls,’ he snivelled. ‘That’s why they went after them.’

  ‘You’re a piece of shit!’ Grace spat at him. ‘I’m going to hand over that memory card to the police. If what you say is true, I don’t want to see it. I’ll hand you over too, you waste of oxygen, but only because you’ll be needed to put Barrow away.’

  Simon’s shoulders slumped, possibly out of relief, and he sobbed quietly.

  Grace stood up and Michael, Sean and John walked over to her.

  ‘I’m going to contact DI Moss and let her know we have Mr Jones and the memory card. I’ll give her the heads up about what’s on it. John, can you contact Danny and Luke and tell them to stand down? We won’t be needing that camera after all.’

  ‘Yes, Boss,’ John said. ‘I’ll go and call them from the car.’

  As John walked away, Grace turned back to Michael and Sean. ‘Can you cut him free and make sure he’s dressed and presentable? Because we’re going to drop him at the police station ourselves. And do you think you can do that without killing or maiming him?’

  Michael and Sean nodded and Simon looked up in fear. ‘We’ll be leaving here in ten minutes. He needs to be in one piece if we’re handing him over,’ she said to them.

  ‘We’ll behave ourselves,’ Michael replied.

  Grace smiled at him. She knew that he and Sean would like nothing more than to give Simon Jones a taste of the pain and torment he had caused the six women who had died at the hands of his associates. ‘Thank you,’ she said. Then she looked at Simon again. ‘If I find out you’ve lied about what is on that video, or if you suddenly change your story about what happened and end up for some reason walking out of that police station, these men will track you down again and they will make sure that you suffer the same fate as those poor women you allowed to be tortured and murdered just to save your own skin. Do you understand me?’

  Simon nodded furiously.

  Satisfied with his response, Grace kissed Michael on the cheek. ‘I’ll wait outside.’

  Then she walked out of the warehouse to phone Leigh and tell her they had the evidence to bring down her boss.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Grace walked into the kitchen and inhaled the aroma of the lamb rogan josh Michael was preparing.

  ‘That smells delicious,’ she said as she selected a bottle of wine from the rack. ‘Red or white?’

  ‘Hmm, red. What about the new Rioja?’

  ‘Perfect,’ Grace said as she selected the wine from the rack. The doorbell ringing signalled the sound of their guests arriving. ‘I’ll get it,’ she said as Michael poured boiling water into a pan for the rice.

  Grace poured out four glasses of wine as Michael dished out the curry.

  ‘I’ve been looking forward to this all day. I believe your lamb curry is something to behold, Michael?’ Leigh Moss said as she took a seat at the dining table.

  ‘Well, you should count yourself lucky. I only usually make it for people I like,’ Michael said with a half-smile as he handed her a plate.

  Leigh grinned at him and Grace laughed. She knew her husband was only half-joking but she appreciated that he was willing to try and get to know Leigh a little better.

  ‘Pile my plate high,’ John Brennan said as he rubbed his hands together.

  ‘I bought a whole extra lamb shoulder once I heard you were coming, mate, don’t worry,’ Michael said with a laugh.

  John grinned and picked up his knife and fork.

  ‘So, I saw they charged your dodgy boss today, Leigh?’ Michael asked as they sta
rted eating.

  ‘Yes. The Chief Constable is doing his best to minimise the fallout, but the press are having a field day. As you can imagine.’

  ‘Well, it’s not every day a Chief Superintendent is charged with murder and kidnap, is it?’ Grace said. ‘I bet your bosses are all having their arses handed to them over this?’

  ‘On a daily basis! Things are not good, let’s just say that. But we’ve got a strategy. Barrow is going to have the book thrown at him and that should assure the public that we’re taking the whole thing very seriously.’

  ‘So, he’s been charged with killing Melanie and the girls from the children’s home?’ Grace asked.

  ‘He denies everything of course. But his DNA was all over Melanie Simmonds. His semen was found in her vagina, but obviously there was no way to tell it was his at the time or during the investigation.’

  ‘Do we have to talk about this when we’re eating?’ John said with a grimace.

  ‘Oh, shut up and finish your curry, John,’ Grace said good-naturedly. ‘Enquiring minds need to know.’

  Leigh swallowed her mouthful of food and went on. ‘The evidence suggests that he raped and killed Melanie himself. Apart from the semen, she had his DNA under her fingernails.’

  ‘What? How stupid could he be?’ Michael asked. ‘He’s a copper and he left all of that evidence on the body?’

  ‘Well, I expect he thought he would never be connected to the crime. At that time neither he or his associates knew that the memory card even existed. Barrow and Sol Shepherd thought that Melanie was the only loose end to tie up. They didn’t know about Simon and the memory card until Simon contacted Joey about his plan to blackmail Barrow. I also suspect that Barrow hadn’t intended to kill Melanie, and would have had Joey or one of Sol’s men do it for him, but with an ego like he has, I imagine he wanted to teach her a lesson of some sort. A display of his power, maybe? But he went too far.’

  Grace shook her head as she digested the information. ‘So then when he was told that one of the girls from Sunnymeade had the video of him with Samia Munro and the underage girls, Barrow had Joey kidnap and kill them all?’

  Leigh nodded. ‘We knew the girls must have been held somewhere fairly remote because they were tortured for some time before they were killed. When we did some digging into Barrow, we found an old farmhouse in Scarisbrick listed in his assets. He inherited the house from his father. Our forensics team have been through the place and found evidence of all four of our Sunnymeade victims being held in the basement, as well as Joey Parnell’s DNA and some of his possessions all over the upstairs living area. There’s no CCTV near the place as you can imagine, but we do have Parnell’s car leaving the A road nearby on key dates, including the dates the victim’s bodies were disposed of. It looks like some of the women were there at the same time, and also that he left them alone for days at a time. Can you imagine how terrified they must have been? Tied up? In the dark? With God knows what down there with them? Never knowing if their tormentor was coming back for them?’

  ‘Wasn’t that a bit dodgy though? Just leaving them alone? They could have escaped. Or someone could have heard them,’ Grace said.

  Leigh shook her head. ‘The place was pretty isolated and the cellar was an old stone construction. It was completely underground. Those poor women could have screamed all day and night and no one would have heard them. They were tied up and kept in cages—’

  ‘Cages?’ Michael almost choked on his curry. ‘What kind of cages?’

  ‘Those big dog crates.’

  Everyone at the table stopped eating and stared at Leigh in horror.

  ‘Yes, I know,’ she said. ‘Besides that, the door to the cellar was a huge steel thing and it was bolted shut. There was no way anyone was escaping the place.’

  ‘Wow,’ Grace said. ‘So we were right about Parnell all along?’

  ‘Yes,’ Leigh confirmed as she continued eating. ‘He’d left everything as though he’d intended to go back and clean the place, but obviously he disappeared and never got the chance to.’

  Grace continued looking at Leigh intently and was impressed by how Michael and John didn’t even flicker at the mention of Parnell’s disappearance.

  ‘So, how are you intending to tie Barrow to the Sunnymeade murders? Surely everything you have so far could be explained away by his expensive brief?’ Grace asked, partly to change the subject, but also because she was desperate to know that that horrible fucker was going to pay for what he’d done to those poor women.

  ‘Well, we have him and Parnell on the video so we know they are connected. We know that he murdered Melanie, although we can’t prove his part in the trafficking ring – yet! The crate that the girls were held in belonged to Barrow and we’ve tested some of the animal hair found in it, which belong to one of his dogs. The farmhouse belonged to him. And Simon Jones has agreed to testify against him for a plea deal. Jones was the one who provided him and Parnell with the four names of the Sunnymeade girls.’

  ‘And that sick fuck gets a plea deal?’ Michael snapped.

  ‘Don’t worry, he’s still going away for a very long time.’

  ‘Still?’ Grace said, knowing all too well how a good barrister could make all of that appear circumstantial. ‘It’s still not concrete, is it?’

  ‘How much more evidence do you think they need, Grace?’ John said as he stared at her. ‘That fucker is banged to rights.’

  ‘Well, we know he did it, but it’s a jury that has to be convinced. I doubt he’s going to plead guilty to any of it, is he?’

  Leigh shook her head. ‘Not a chance. And Grace is right, what I’ve told you is enough to charge and enough to persuade most people that he was probably involved, but a jury must believe beyond all reasonable doubt, and that’s different.’

  ‘So he might get away with it?’ John snapped.

  Leigh smiled triumphantly. ‘I haven’t told you about our trump card yet. We put this piece of evidence to him today and I wish I could have taken a photograph of his face when we did.’

  ‘What is it?’ Grace asked.

  ‘It’s something you were most helpful with, actually, Grace. I’m not sure we’d have made the connection if you hadn’t gone speaking to the girls at Number 69 for me.’

  Grace smiled. ‘The tooth?’

  ‘What tooth?’ Michael asked.

  ‘When Nerys Sheehan was found, she was carrying a child’s tooth.’

  ‘A child’s tooth? But how, if she was strangled? She wouldn’t have been able to hold onto anything,’ Michael asked, revealing his intimate knowledge of the topic.

  Leigh didn’t flicker and Grace supposed she was well aware of what the three people she was sitting eating dinner with were capable of. ‘She wasn’t holding it. She had pressed it into the open ligature wound on her wrist,’ Leigh said and John and Michael both shuddered at the thought. ‘We took DNA from the tooth, and whilst initially we couldn’t determine who or where the child was, because she wasn’t in any database, we were able to match the DNA and prove that she was Nerys’s daughter. Our database didn’t have any DNA matches for her father—’

  ‘Until recently?’ Grace finished for her, as though as someone had flicked a switch in Grace’s brain.

  Leigh nodded.

  ‘Barrow?’ Grace said.

  ‘Exactly. She had just turned sixteen when she had Daisy, so we have conclusive proof that Barrow had sex with her when she was underage. Additionally, now that we know what has really happened and have Barrow in custody, Stuart Halligan has confirmed that Nerys was pregnant when she left Sunnymeade. She’d managed to keep it a secret because she was terrified that Barrow would have Vince Collins kill her – and her baby. Stuart was a year younger and was one of her only friends. He’d left Sunnymeade just after Nerys had fallen pregnant. His aunt Beth had moved back from Australia with her new husband and when she found out where he was, she took him out of the place straight away. Stuart went to live with her, but he stayed in
touch with Nerys and he was her vital link to the outside world. When Nerys left on her sixteenth birthday, she was six months pregnant. With nowhere else to go, she turned up at Stuart’s and that was when Beth learned of what had been going on and the abuse Nerys and Stuart had suffered. When Nerys talked about giving the child up for adoption, Beth suggested a better option. She and her husband couldn’t have children and had been through two unsuccessful cycles of IVF. As she had moved from Australia a few months before, her medical records weren’t available. Nerys had the baby and Beth and her husband were able to convince medical professionals that Daisy was a complete shock and Beth hadn’t even known she was pregnant. Then one afternoon, at home, she had arrived. Mother and baby were checked over by the attending midwife, and all was deemed to be above board.’

  ‘Didn’t the midwife notice she hadn’t just given birth though?’ Michael asked.

  ‘No. Perhaps Beth refused to be examined? Or perhaps the midwife was in on it? Beth works at the hospital and is a well-respected paediatrician.’

  ‘Wow!’ Grace said as she took a sip of her wine. ‘At least little Daisy is okay. What will happen now though? Have they committed a crime?’

  ‘Technically, but Beth and her husband have a great legal team. Daisy is thriving. She is almost six and they are the only parents she has ever known. And they also have a sworn statement from Nerys handing over all legal guardianship of her daughter to the couple. Their solicitor drew it up in the event of anything ever coming out like this. It’s not like Daisy’s father is in a position to object, is it?’

  ‘No,’ Grace agreed. ‘God, what a horrible bastard! So Stuart was a good guy all along then, just like Stacey said?’

  ‘Exactly. When I started asking questions about Daisy, Stuart was terrified that Barrow was onto them. He also told me that Nerys visited his flat two nights before her death.’

  ‘Two nights before? But wasn’t she being held by Parnell then?’

  ‘Yes. Perhaps it was Parnell’s plan all along? Perhaps it was part of Nerys’s plan to negotiate her freedom? I suppose we won’t know unless Barrow talks, or we find Joey Parnell.’