‘I’ve got a mate who works for a refugee charity,’ Moran said. ‘I’ll give him a bell.’
Simms nodded, approving. ‘Tell them to invoice me; mark it personal.’ That would keep it under the radar for a short while longer.
Moran moved off again, and ten minutes later they had arrived in a side street at the back of Deansgate. Simms directed her to the humped white shape of her Mondeo.
‘Talk to no one,’ she said. ‘Not even Spry.’ She took a business card from her shoulder bag and scribbled her home address on the back. ‘As soon as you have anything, call me on my mobile – anytime – middle of the night if that’s when the news comes in.’ As the constable’s fingers closed on the card, she held on to it a moment longer, looking into the younger woman’s kindly eyes. ‘Ella, remember what I said: you report back to me, and me only.’
38
‘From the deepest desires often come the deadliest hate.’
SOCRATES
The local TV news was showing the loop of Suzie Fennimore ageing up from ten to fifteen years old. A commentator gave a quick rundown of the disappearance of Suzie and her mother five years earlier, and the discovery almost half a year later of Rachel Fennimore’s body in a pond on the Essex Marshes.
Nick Fennimore sat on the sofa in his hotel suite, his laptop open on the coffee table in front of him. All it took was a quick Google search to find out that the ‘Grieving Criminalist’ – yes, ‘criminalist’ – had recently set up a Facebook page to ‘reach out’ to his lost daughter. Suddenly Suzie’s account was receiving hundreds of hits and had become a target for the curious and the disturbed and the sick, wanting to ‘friend’ him.
He dumped his suitcase on the bed and began emptying his wardrobe of clothes.
His mobile phone rang – Josh Brown. He bounced the call. If Josh had fresh information, he didn’t want to know; he was done with the investigation. Kate Simms had also tried his number, and his secretary, and Cooper, the pathologist. He switched the phone off and threw it onto the bed.
The TV newscaster spoke over his animated age-progression of Suzie. The next sequence showed footage of the crime scene where Marta’s body had been found; then the photograph of Kate Simms changing her blouse in the back of her car, Fennimore ogling her.
A rap at the door. Journalists.
Fuck.
He stood still, but the TV gave him away. The knocking came again, louder, whoever it was hammering on the door as if the building was on fire.
Fennimore dropped a battered paperback into his suitcase, strode to the door and flung it wide. The man on the other side took a step back. It was Joe González in his on-duty uniform.
He held up both hands. ‘Woah! Take it easy, Nick.’
‘What d’you want?’
‘I have messages, but your room phone is disconnected.’
He’d yanked the landline jack out of the wall in his room after it rang for the seventh time – every one from a journalist.
Fennimore turned around, walked back inside and went on with his packing.
Joe followed him in and closed the door after him. He glanced over at the TV. ‘I am sorry for what happened to your niña.’
Fennimore gave him a sharp look. ‘I don’t know what happened to my daughter.’
Joe held him with his dark eyes. ‘Then I am sorry for you.’
‘Yeah,’ Fennimore said, anger hardening his voice. ‘Okay. Thanks.’ Wanting him get out so he could finish packing and leave. When he didn’t, Fennimore looked into the Spaniard’s dark eyes. ‘Was there something else, Joe?’
The concierge reached into his inside pocket and withdrew a bundle of notes. ‘Six hundred, fifty-three pounds.’
Fennimore had forgotten the races, their long-odds bets on outsiders – had that really been only yesterday?
‘Thanks,’ he said again, more sincerely. Joe didn’t move and Fennimore tilted his head in question.
‘There is someone asking for you in reception,’ Joe said. ‘He says his name is Josh Brown.’
What the hell was Josh Brown doing in Manchester?
‘He doesn’t look like a journalist, but there is something funny about him.’
Funny? ‘Describe him.’
‘He is …’ Joe struggled for the word. ‘Desalinado.’
‘Scruffy,’ Fennimore translated automatically. ‘He’s one of my students.’
Joe lifted his chin in recognition. He himself was always bien cuidado. ‘Brown is a fake name, yes? Like Smith, or Jones.’ He pronounced it John-ez.
‘Or González,’ Fennimore said, half smiling, impressed that Joe had sussed that Josh was hiding something on such short acquaintance – it had taken Fennimore months to come to the same conclusion.
‘So what do I tell this es-scruffy person with a fake name?’
Fennimore shrugged. ‘Tell him he can come up.’
Joe nodded. ‘You should phone Doctor Cooper in the same time.’
Fennimore raised his eyebrows. ‘Coop?’
‘He es-says …’ Joe frowned, trying to get the wording exactly right. ‘“You should answer your friggin’ phone, mate.”’
‘Yup, sounds like Coop all right.’ As Joe slipped out of the door, he scrolled down his contacts list; Cooper had helped them out, taken time to run through Marta’s PM with them, when he was under no obligation – it would be churlish not to return his call.
‘Coop – it’s Fenn.’
‘Well, it took you long enough.’ He sounded excited, rather than belligerent.
‘Look, I’m about to head off for the train so I just wanted to thank you for—’
‘You can’t go now, mate,’ he interrupted.
‘Talk to Kate; I’m off the case.’
‘Bollocks to that. Anyway I tried, couldn’t get through. Nice shot of you two in the paper, by the way.’
Fennimore clenched his jaw tight.
Into the silence, Cooper said, ‘Mate, I’ve got another body for you.’
The first thing Fennimore thought was, No, I can’t do this. The second was, What makes him think it’s ours?
‘No,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘I told Kate—’ He broke off to answer another knock at the door; it was Josh Brown. He waved the student in and carried on. ‘My involvement was supposed to be under the radar. Now I am the damn story.’
‘Yeah, I saw the stuff about Suzie. I’m sorry about that, mate, but wait till you hear what I’ve got.’ Before Fennimore could stop him, he’d launched in. ‘Carol Watson, addict, prostitute, identified her from her fingerprints. Found in an alley at the back of Piccadilly Gardens. She’d been working around there.’
Not my problem, Fennimore told himself, but he couldn’t help wondering … ‘Did she have a street name?’
‘Candy, Candice, Sugar Candy – take your pick-and-mix, mate.’
Candice.
He heard himself say, ‘Cause of death?’
‘She was strangled, probably with a wide leather strap or belt. And – little bonus for you – she had recent whip marks on her buttocks and back.’
‘Whip marks as in …?’
‘As in riding crop, mate. Waffle effect. The injuries are so like Marta it’s uncanny. Except he didn’t bash her face in,’ he added with pragmatic objectivity. ‘And the whipping happened maybe a day or so ago.’
‘George Howard has just been charged with Marta’s murder,’ Fennimore said.
‘So, either he had an accomplice, or they charged the wrong feller. So, are you in?’
‘I’m compromised, Coop,’ he said.
‘You mean you’re pissed off.’
‘Yeah, okay, I am.’
Cooper laughed. ‘Get off your high horse, Fennimore. I’ve seen the pictures – and you were definitely peeking.’
Cooper was right: he was peeking – and lusting – after Kate, which was another good reason why he should head for home. Coop was right about him being pissed off, too. As a result of the images of him and Kate in the press, his attempts to c
onnect with his daughter had gone badly wrong. He hated the fact that Gifford had anything on him, and regretted the hurt to Kate and her family.
‘A nasty fucker like this shouldn’t be allowed to walk the streets with decent folk,’ Cooper said, speaking into the silence. ‘What d’you say, mate?’
Whoever took the photograph wanted him out of the way, Fennimore reasoned. That intrigued him. And he realized that he was more properly engaged, more interested in this case than he had been in any other for the past four years. He asked Cooper to email him the details.
This done, he turned to his PhD student. ‘Let’s get to work.’
39
The Simms household was unnaturally quiet for the time of evening. Normally, Becky would be working on homework in the kitchen, or talking on the phone to one of her school friends. Tim would be getting ready for bed, squealing happily in the bathtub, later listening to a bedtime story. Tonight, sensing the tension between his parents, but unable to put a label on it, he responded with anxiety, turning his large blue eyes from Mummy to Daddy, uncertain who to declare allegiance to, finally clinging to Mummy and refusing to go to bed. Becky was hiding in her room, her iPod earphones jammed in her ears.
The journos who hung around at the bottom of the driveway for the first hour had slowly drifted off. This was explained by a call to Simms’s mobile from Jim Allen.
‘The nationals have been briefed,’ the press officer said, talking fast. ‘I contacted all the locals personally. You’re a dedicated cop, determined to seek justice for the voiceless and dispossessed. You solved the penicillin deaths, a man has been charged – he’s admitted cutting the deals with antibiotics. And now you’ve got the hotel murder nicely tied up.’
It wasn’t worth telling him they’d got that one wrong.
‘They know the hours you’re working, the fact that you keep a ready bag in the boot of your car so that you can be presentable on four hours’ sleep. And the killer line – you’ve discovered a body that lay undiscovered for years. Humberside won’t like it, but that’s their press office’s problem, not ours.’
‘Okay, I—’
‘Just listen,’ he said.
She was too tired to argue and he went on, hardly pausing for breath: ‘This was a cheap attempt to use a perfectly innocent situation to discredit you, possibly by the criminal elements you are rooting out – the conspiracy theorists will love that. There’ll be corrections in the morning papers, and updates later tonight on the online news sites. Trust me, Kate, this will be cleared up by morning; all you need to do is keep a dignified silence. If they ask for a comment, do not comment. Do not say, “no comment” – do not say anything. At all. Clear?’
‘You seem to have covered every angle,’ she said.
‘Why else would a police force hire an ex-tabloid hack?’ he said, allowing a hint of humour into his voice for the first time. ‘I know all the angles and I know how to square them off. Any questions?’
‘Do we know who sent the photographs?’
He snorted. ‘You’ve got to be joking!’ Then, ‘What?’ He sounded fainter, as if he’d turned away from his phone and was speaking to somebody else. ‘Listen, Kate, gottago. Cheers.’
She closed the phone and saw Kieran standing in the doorway, staring at her with distrust. She began to tell him about the phone call.
‘Great,’ he said. ‘Terrific. DCI Simms exonerated – good for you. Pity those smutty pictures will still be out there, and I’ll still have to face my year-eleven history classes knowing they’ve seen my wife stripped down to her bra in the back seat of a car.’
‘Well, thanks for the support, Kieran,’ she said.
The look on his face said it all. ‘Maybe you should explain to Becky, so she knows what to tell her school friends when they ask what her mum was getting up to.’
‘For God’s sake!’ She wanted to say that he was making something of nothing, but her cheeks burned, recalling the look on Nick Fennimore’s face. Tim began to grizzle, and she stood, shushing him, kissing the top of his head.
The doorbell rang.
‘I’ll get it,’ she said.
‘Don’t be so bloody stupid – do you want pictures of our son in the morning papers?’ He made as if to push past her, but she stood her ground.
‘This is my mess. I’ll sort it,’ she said. ‘Here, you take Tim.’
He did, grudgingly, and she tidied her hair and composed herself at the hall mirror before opening the door.
Her heart lurched; it was Nick Fennimore.
He stamped his feet on the snowy path and looked up at her. ‘Can I come in?’
She slipped outside and pulled the door almost closed, tugging her jacket tight at her neck against the bitter cold. ‘Not a good time, Nick.’
‘Coop has been trying to reach you,’ he said. ‘Candice is dead. Murdered.’
He was watching her, and she knew he was trying to gauge her reaction. She should have told him there and then that she was suspended – or as good as – but there was a light in his eyes that was more than simple curiosity – this was an invitation to place a wild bet with him, to join him in climbing the rock face of this investigation without rope or harness. With Kieran’s silent anger at her back, she said, ‘There’s a café about five minutes’ drive from here.’
Fennimore saw Kate Simms hurry past the café window twenty minutes later. She hesitated at the door, seeing Josh Brown at the table with him, but any uncertainty was over in a second and she strode confidently to the table. They were in a corner, away from the window and partly hidden by the counter and cash register – Josh’s choice.
‘You’re here because … ?’ Kate said, offering her hand.
‘I thought he might need some help.’
Fennimore smiled. ‘He thought I was about to chicken out.’
Josh didn’t comment, and Kate said, ‘I wouldn’t blame you if you did.’ She tilted her head, a sweet expression of regret on her face.
‘I’m not leaving,’ Fennimore said.
‘Why?’
He’d said it as a reflex, to stop her talking about his dead wife and missing child – at this moment it was too painful even to hear their names – but now he had voiced his decision to stay, he felt the need to explain his decision, not least to himself. ‘Because whoever took those photographs wants me to leave.’
She looked immensely relieved and grateful; he didn’t like that look of gratitude – a good detective shouldn’t be made to feel an outsider.
‘And anyway there are no more flights to Aberdeen until morning.’
Josh organized the food order while Fennimore showed Simms the images and preliminary observations Dr Cooper had sent by email. There was no question in his mind: Candice had been tortured and throttled in the same way Marta had.
The photographs were arranged side by side for comparison on the screen and Simms stared at it, but Fennimore saw that she wasn’t looking at the images at all.
‘What are you thinking?’ he said.
‘Candice’s killer knows we’re investigating him,’ she said. ‘What if he’s the one who’s been following me?’ She took a breath, let it go cautiously, as if she was afraid of waking a dangerous animal. ‘If he took these, he must have seen me with Candice.’
‘All we can do is work the evidence,’ he said. ‘We’ve a lot more than we had. Let’s reassess, decide where to take the inquiry from here.’
‘Nick, this isn’t an inquiry any more.’
They listened while she told them what Spry had said to her. ‘He wasn’t interested in Varley’s report. He had the tox analysis for Operation Snowstorm actually in his hand, but he wouldn’t let me see it. And he wasn’t even remotely curious about who would want to discredit us with those photographs.’
She threw her head back and looked up at the ceiling. The look on her face said she’d had enough.
‘I spoke to a pal at the Forensic Science Service yesterday,’ Fennimore said. ‘Got fed up waiting fo
r the tox screen of the Snowstorm drugs haul. It’s been in my inbox since this morning, but with everything that’s happened I only just checked it.’
She leaned forward, her palms flat on the tabletop.
‘The Snowstorm drugs appear to’ve gone back into circulation,’ he said.
Simms sat back and her hands slipped into her lap like they’d lost all feeling. ‘You’re telling me someone is recycling seized drugs.’
He didn’t answer, but he didn’t think she expected him to – she just needed to say the words aloud.
She rubbed her temple, the amber flecks in her eyes jumping like something alive. ‘Show me.’
He called up a series of graphs on his laptop screen, slid his chair around the table to sit next to her. ‘The chemical constituents of the samples.’ He pointed to the peak for methaqualone. ‘This is the marker the lab used for your samples. But there are some smaller peaks – here, and … here, which are mineral constituents; just crap that got into the mix because of the method of extraction in the country of origin, but useful for comparison.’
He superimposed slide transparencies of Rika’s OD with StayC’s, adding the other penicillin-contaminated deals, and the sample taken from the bindle left near Marta’s body. One after another, they matched. Then he called up the Operation Snowstorm graph and slid it over the rest.
Simms’s eyes tracked right and left, searching the images. ‘There’s no doubt?’
‘None,’ he said.
She sat back in her chair and pushed her fingers through her hair. Her eyes lighted on Josh Brown. ‘I don’t think you should hear this,’ she said.
He eyed her coolly. ‘Hey,’ he said, ‘you’re the one with the leaky boat.’
‘Josh—’
‘No, he’s right,’ Simms said. ‘But you don’t understand, Josh. It’s not that I don’t trust you – I don’t think it’s safe for you to hear it.’
Fennimore spoke up. ‘Kate, he’s been in this from the start. You can’t cut him out now.’
She looked undecided.
‘And since you seem to be working solo on this, we can use all the help we can get,’ Fennimore added.
Everyone Lies Page 30
