Everyone Lies

by D. , Garrett, A.

  ‘Well, you got to find some way through, right?’ Amy said.

  ‘Right,’ Simms agreed, solemnly.

  ‘See, Marta always thought she had to “save” people.’

  Simms tut-tutted sympathetically.

  The girl’s mouth twisted into cruel little smirk. ‘Joke is, the only difference between her and Trevor was she didn’t have a hard-on for the girls she tried to save.’

  ‘Was there any girl in particular Marta tried to save?’

  ‘Candice.’ She didn’t even have to think about it.

  Candice, whose special friend was Rika, who in turn was a special friend of Marta’s. All three of them linked like daisies on a chain.

  Simms wrote the name down as if it meant nothing to her, kept her eyes on the page and her voice casual, interested, but not overly so, while the pulse jittered in her throat. ‘Is Candice around today?’

  ‘Long gone. Hopeless bloody addict, always on the lam for a few quid. Not for herself – never for herself – it was always “for the kids”.’

  ‘Any idea where she went?’

  ‘Like I care?’ The emotion riding in Amy’s eyes was hard and unforgiving and mean.

  Candice was the common link. If Fennimore was right – if she had submitted to a whipping – she might even know Marta’s killer. They had to find her.

  ‘I suppose if an addict gets desperate, she’ll do just about anything to itch that scratch,’ Simms said, keeping her tone conversational.

  ‘Wouldn’t know.’

  Too close to home, Simms thought. Better change tack. ‘Did you know Rika?’

  Amy’s gaze shifted to the left, as if someone had come into the room, but the only two things behind Simms were the kitchen sink and a fly-spotted mirror.

  ‘Amy?’ she said.

  ‘Haven’t been here that long,’ the girl said, licking her lips.

  ‘Rika had whip marks on her buttocks. D’you know who might have done that to her?’

  ‘A lot of the punters are into bondage games.’

  ‘These were more than “games”.’

  She fiddled with the sugar bowl. ‘I’m not into that shit.’

  ‘No,’ Simms soothed. ‘But girls talk.’

  ‘Not me.’

  ‘What, never?’

  ‘D’you think it’s all tarts with a heart, looking out for each other like on the telly?’ she sneered. ‘I got my own problems. I don’t wanna hear that stuff.’ The door opened and her eyes grew big in her head.

  ‘Everything all right in here, ladies?’

  Simms turned angrily to face Sol Henry. ‘I’m conducting an interview in here, Mr Henry,’ she said.

  ‘Heard voices raised,’ he said, a soppy grin on his face. ‘Our Amy can be a bit of a cat.’ He hissed and mimed a paw-swipe, claws out.

  Amy was already up. ‘I gotto go home,’ she said. ‘Things to do.’ She swept past Sol, but he caught her by the arm.

  ‘If the Chief Inspector is finished with you,’ he said. There was no threat in his words or his tone, but the girl stopped dead and looked anxiously at Simms.

  She stood, offering the girl a business card. ‘You can let go of her now, Mr Henry.’

  Sol Henry looked down at his meaty fingers, pressed into Amy’s flesh, then up to the girl’s face before releasing her.

  ‘You see Trevor, give me a call,’ Simms said.

  As the young masseuse fled, Simms was in no doubt that the call would come only with Sol Henry’s permission.

  Renwick met her at the door of the incident room with a sheaf of notes in his hand. ‘Pub landlord has positively ID’d Sol and Frank Henry as the men he saw drinking with George Howard. And I asked someone to look up the Henrys’ arrest record.’ He handed her a sheet, and held up a second flimsy between finger and thumb. ‘Carol Watson – aka Candice, aka “Candy”. Addict and prostitute. Three children – all taken into care ten days ago, prosecution pending.’

  There was no denying Renwick had made a bad start, but he had worked damned hard since. She smiled. ‘Good work, Sergeant.’

  He didn’t return her smile, but he looked pleased. She scanned the notes.

  ‘No address?’

  He shook his head. ‘Landlord kicked her out with six months’ rent owing.’

  So, Candice was in the wind; in a city as big as Manchester there were a million places to hide.

  ‘Okay,’ she said. Maybe Ella would know who to ask, then she remembered with a thud that DC Moran was still in the hospital and made a mental note to swing by. She began to move on, thinking Renwick had finished, but he shuffled a bit to his right, blocking her way, eyes down.

  ‘Boss.’ He lowered his voice. ‘The Super’s in your office. He doesn’t look a happy bunny.’

  She nodded, made another move, but he stopped her again.

  ‘The other thing you asked for – the canvass on Francine’s.’

  ‘Got a name?’ she asked.

  ‘Beasley.’

  Beasley – again. If he’d done his job right, they could’ve had the victim’s name two days ago. Simms stared at him, her blood fizzing and popping under her skin. ‘Talk to him,’ she said.

  ‘Will do.’

  ‘And when you’re done with him, send him to me.’

  She watched Renwick make his way to the water cooler where Beasley was chatting up one of the HOLMES operatives. Later, she thought. Right now she needed to find out why Spry had hiked over from headquarters for the second time in a day.

  Detective Superintendent Spry was wearing a heavy overcoat; he carried good-quality leather gloves in his right hand. The cold came off him like November mist; he must have come straight up from the car park. His high colour was more muted than normal, but it was as if someone had adjusted the saturation values on a digital image – he just seemed greyer – and by the look on his face, he hadn’t made this special trip to the hinterland to congratulate her on the breakthrough in the case.

  He declined a seat, and they stood at arm’s length in her small office.

  ‘When did you last speak to your NPIA advisor?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t know … it’s been frantic. I think I rang him a few days ago.’

  He nodded, watching her closely. ‘A few days. You’re sure of that?’

  She began to speak, but he interrupted.

  ‘It’s actually been a full week, Kate.’ He waited for that information to sink in. ‘Which means you haven’t consulted your forensic specialist advisor once on the entire murder investigation.’

  Stupid, she thought. Bloody careless – you could have at least thrown him a bone.

  ‘Do you know where I found all this out?’ Spry demanded. ‘At an ACPO Homicide meeting – I’ve come straight from there to share this news with you.

  ‘You’ve been on committees, Kate – you know how these meetings are. Sometimes the only highlight is coffee and a McVitie’s digestive halfway through. So,’ he said, ‘let me paint you a picture: I’m supping my coffee, engaged in chit-chat, and your NPIA advisor starts having a good old bitch about how this new DCI in Manchester blew him off when he offered his expertise in a murder investigation. You do know who chairs ACPO Homicide, don’t you, Kate?’

  Now she knew where this was going. She felt sick. She avoided his gaze, but Spry jutted his head forward, into her line of vision, unhealthy colour creeping into his face. He was not going to let this go until he had an answer.

  ‘ACC Gifford, sir,’ she said.

  ‘Full marks, well done. Now, Assistant Chief Constable Gifford happens to be standing next to me at this moment, so hears this, and he is not pleased. It’s almost comical, the look of horror on the advisor’s face. He was just having a bit of a moan, filling in the silence with idle gossip, and suddenly the ACC’s involved. Of course he wants to know the details – which is embarrassing,’ he went on, talking through gritted teeth. ‘Because I. Couldn’t. Tell him.’ By now, he was puce from the neck up.

  Grovel, or attack? She tho
ught about Tanford’s advice about political savvy; decided grovelling would leave her self-respect in shreds and gain her nothing. So, with a mental shrug, she said, ‘You might recall that the NPIA advisor told me there was nothing to investigate in the overdoses. I requested the tests, which proved otherwise. I proved that StayC’s death was caused by a severe allergic reaction. And it turns out our murder victim has a direct link to Rika – one of the heroin deaths – and Rika has a direct link to Francine’s – a massage parlour that has only just appeared on our radar.’

  Superintendent Spry opened his mouth, then shut it again, a frown of complete consternation on his face, and she forged ahead.

  ‘We now have a name for the murder victim – Marta McKinley – not her real name, admittedly, but we’re almost there. Marta worked for the same massage parlour as Rika – circles within circles, sir.’

  ‘If these two girls are connected,’ Spry said, sniffing an opportunity to criticize her methods. ‘Why was this massage parlour missed out on the canvass?’

  ‘It wasn’t.’ She thought about Beasley, but managing a lazy team member was her job, not her superintendent’s, so she said, ‘But until my visit today nobody recognized the victim’s description.’

  ‘What do we have on the owners?’

  Simms raised an eyebrow – he was actually showing an interest. She sorted through the handful of pink slips Renwick had handed her and read from the sheet:

  ‘The older brother, Frank, has a couple of arrests for assault and a conviction for GBH going back to the nineties – apparently he was a roadie for a rock band. Also a caution for possession of marijuana and a six-month spell inside for cocaine – possession with intent to supply – see above. The younger brother, Sol …’ She skimmed the sheet. ‘Assault … assault … burglary. All teenage stuff – nothing from the age of twenty.’

  ‘Fairly clean, given the business they’re in,’ he said.

  ‘And now we know Marta worked for them, they’ve decided to cooperate. One of the girls has said Marta had a blazing row with an obsessive client only last week. He hasn’t been seen since.’

  Spry frowned. His brow cleared for an instant, then he was frowning all over again. He slapped his gloves into his hand. He started to speak. He stopped. She saw him setting the advantages of a quick completion of the investigation against a humiliating turnaround and release of his favourite suspect if it turned out that Marta’s obsessive client was the killer. Only recently the landlord of murdered landscape architect Joanna Yeates had won his libel claim against eight tabloid newspapers, and he was planning to sue Avon and Somerset police for wrongful arrest. The fallout from a mess like that would certainly cast a pall over a Detective Superintendent’s dull but spotless career.

  Spry thrust his gloves into his pockets and his hands came out white and empty. When he clasped them as if in prayer, she knew she’d won the battle.

  She waited for his introductory gambit – his statement of the non-negotiable in his climb-down. ‘You can’t sideline your specialist advisor,’ he said.

  ‘No, sir.’ No harm in being magnanimous in victory.

  ‘You do have a good suspect.’

  ‘Plausible, anyway,’ she agreed, not willing to give that much ground on Howard. ‘But Marta’s obsessive client – we need to trace him.’

  Spry sucked his teeth. ‘All right. I can give you a bit more time, but I’m standing firm on budgetary considerations – I will not go back to Gifford and tell him you need more staff.’

  She saw a flash of white in his muddy eyes and thought, Oh, dear Lord, he’s scared of Gifford.

  Back in the incident room, she gave officers who were running interviews at the sauna a brief update. She wanted anything they could get on ‘Trevor’.

  ‘We need more to go on than he’s “weird”.’ As she spoke, she scanned the room. Ella Moran was standing near the back, a band of redness across her eyes and upper face. ‘As of now, I want the girls interviewed here, rather than at the salon.’ She was thinking about Sol Henry, his chunky fingers bruising Amy’s arm. ‘Trevor’s taste for prostitutes is obsessive, and probably longstanding. He told Amy he was a teacher – he said local comp, but she says not – so maybe one of the easier schools, further out. You all know the area better than me – I’m just an ignorant Southerner.’

  A few of them smiled; all of them looked eager to make a start.

  ‘Ask the girls if he ever let slip what subject he taught – we could cross-check it against school staff lists. Or did he drop a name – maybe a pupil, or a member of staff who was giving him a hard time. If he complained about traffic on the way over to the salon, did he name a particular road? Anything that could help us narrow the field.’

  She sought out one of the admin staff. ‘Contact the CRB, see if there’s a Trevor on their list.’ Since 2002, anyone who applied for a job in schools had to go through a Criminal Records Bureau check; the rules applied only to new applications – so if Trevor had been in post for a while, he wouldn’t be listed, but it was still worth a look. The meeting broke up a few minutes later. On her way to talk to George Howard, she paused to speak to DC Moran who by now was inching towards her desk with one hand shielding her eyes.

  ‘Ella, what on earth are you doing here? You should be at home.’

  ‘I’m fine, Boss.’

  ‘You look terrible.’ She resisted an impulse to seize the constable’s arm and lead her to a chair.

  ‘It’s just the after-effects. They washed all the nasty stuff out with baby shampoo at the hospital – said I’d be right as rain in a few hours.’

  ‘Okay. Take a few hours off, come back when you’re fit.’

  Her chin came up, but when she tried to look Simms in the eye, she squinted and blinked as if she was looking straight into the sun. She lowered her voice. ‘Boss, it was me who found the lead that took us to Francine’s.’

  ‘Yes,’ Simms said. ‘It was. And we wouldn’t have Marta’s name now if it weren’t for you. I won’t forget that, Ella.’

  The young constable hesitated, and Simms understood – it was still hard for a female officer to get noticed for the right reasons in policing. ‘I won’t let anyone else forget it either,’ Simms added.

  George Howard was wearing a pale-blue shirt with a blue-and-mauve paisley pattern tie. His house was still locked down, and the shirt still held its creases from the shop wrapping. This was the third day since his arrest, and Howard didn’t seem quite so sure of himself.

  ‘Why didn’t you say you were drinking with Frank and Sol Henry on the evening of the murder?’ Simms asked.

  His eyes widened – only a fraction – but she caught it.

  He said, ‘Are those the men you keep trying to place me with?’

  She smiled. ‘You, with your spreadsheets and profit predictions and pre-tax results, expect me to believe you didn’t know about your nearest rivals?’

  He shrugged and Simms said, ‘Could you respond for the tape, please, Mr Howard?’

  ‘I went for a drink at my local,’ he said. ‘If, as you say, they also run a business in the area, it’s not so strange that we would bump into each other from time to time.’

  ‘That doesn’t answer my question,’ she said. He shrugged again. ‘They say that they had arranged a meeting with you.’

  He shook his head, then leaned forward to speak into the recorder. ‘No,’ he said.

  She glanced at the statements in front of her. ‘They say you were “drunk and argumentative” when they put you in a taxi at around midnight.’

  ‘They can say what they like – it doesn’t make it true.’

  ‘You said you don’t remember how the night ended – how can you say what’s true and what isn’t?’

  He didn’t reply.

  ‘You see, to make your story true, the pub landlord would have to be lying; Sol and Frank Henry would have to be lying. I can’t see why they would do that, can you?’

  His solicitor looked across at him. ‘Georg
e?’

  ‘No comment.’

  ‘I can’t see why they would lie, but I could see why you would, Mr Howard.’

  His grey eyes met hers, wary, trapped.

  ‘You had an appointment to see a new “masseuse” on Thursday night. Is that correct?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘You’re a methodical person, Mr Howard,’ Simms said. ‘As we speak, people are scouring your BlackBerry and your diary.’

  He dropped his gaze and she heard the compulsive tic-tic-tic of him picking at the scabs on his hands.

  She waited, watching his eyes dart left and right under his lowered lids. Finally, he said, ‘It was a girl called Marta.’

  Simms held her breath.

  ‘But she didn’t show up.’

  Simms looked at Howard, and then his solicitor. Howard was sweating, but his face was grey. His solicitor, though, was bug-eyed – furious that he’d lied to her, or that he’d been found out in a lie – Simms really didn’t care which.

  ‘The murder victim’s name was Marta,’ she said. ‘She worked for the Henry brothers. That is, until the night you were supposed to meet with her.’

  He dragged his fingers through his hair, and the grey of his eyes seemed to waver and drift; this was a man who knew he was screwed and couldn’t understand how he’d got into this mess.

  ‘I told you,’ he said, way too late to have any credibility, ‘she didn’t show up.’

  ‘You withhold key evidence about the murder victim. You swear you don’t remember what happened after you were drinking in the pub. Then, when you can’t deny that any longer, you tell me that you did have an appointment with Marta but she didn’t show up.’

  George Howard lifted his hands onto the table. He had picked every scab from the scratches, leaving pale pink notches and lines of shiny skin.

  ‘Let me tell you how this looks, Mr Howard,’ she said. ‘It looks like you kept quiet about the Henrys because you knew they couldn’t provide you with an alibi. You did meet with the Henrys. What they said made you angry, but you’d already invited Marta for a try-out, so you went ahead with it.’