Everyone Lies

by D. , Garrett, A.

  ‘Contentious, or assertive?’

  ‘Everyone I spoke to seemed to like her. Her grades were pretty stellar, but she got on with the rest. One of her mates told me she was aiming for a first. They were a bit mystified by her though—’

  There was a knock at the door and Kate checked through the peephole. ‘It’s Ella Moran,’ she said, cutting across what Josh was saying. ‘This will keep till later.’

  Fennimore began to question her.

  ‘Later, Nick.’ Her tone brooked no argument.

  She opened the door and Moran came in looking flushed and excited. ‘I’m supposed to be at the cemetery, checking up on Rika,’ she said. ‘Sergeant Renwick told me to get down there pronto.’

  Simms told her what they’d discovered about Rika and Marta, and about the break-in at Marta’s apartment.

  ‘So, what do I tell Sarge?’

  ‘Everything I’ve told you,’ Simms said. ‘Just tell him I’d got there ahead of you.’

  ‘Okay.’

  Fennimore waited for her to say that Renwick had gathered the same information at least a day earlier, that they suspected him of the break-in, but Simms said, ‘How are you getting on with Marta’s calls log?’

  ‘Caller ID was blocked on a few,’ Moran said. ‘But I’ve got names for most of them, now.’

  ‘Good. Email it when you get back to base.’ Kate turned to Fennimore. ‘Can we use your email address?’

  He gave Moran a business card.

  ‘She also had multiple calls from a throwdown.’ Moran handed over her notebook, and Simms copied the number down.

  Simms turned to Fennimore. ‘Is there any way to trace this?’

  He glared at her, but she gazed calmly back at him and, eventually, he said, ‘Pay cash for a SIM free phone and you’re basically off-grid. With an unlocked phone, you could swap providers every few days if you wanted – most garages and supermarkets sell pay-as-you-go SIM cards. It would be virtually untraceable.’

  ‘I know that, Nick,’ she said. ‘I’m asking if we can set up a trace and ring the number?’

  ‘If he still has the phone, and he’s still using the same SIM card, and you could get clearance to do a trace, and keep him on the phone long enough? Well, then, yes, I suppose you could probably triangulate his position. But by the time you get there, he would probably have dumped the phone and walked quietly away.’

  Moran looked from Fennimore to Simms. ‘Is everything okay?’

  Simms gave a tight smile. ‘Just tired and tetchy.’

  Moran nodded, sympathetic as always, though she looked like she’d never lost a night’s sleep in her life.

  Simms jerked her chin towards the scanner on the table next to Josh Brown. ‘Does that thing do photocopies?’

  ‘Sure,’ Josh said. ‘What d’you need?’

  She handed over the forms they had picked up at the cemetery office; Fennimore noticed she held back the student ID.

  ‘Go to Marta’s flat,’ Simms said, as Moran tucked the copied sheets into her shoulder bag. ‘Get yourself noticed by the CSIs, quiz the uniform on duty about what happened, and make sure he tells you that I am the SIO – I don’t want anyone thinking you’re already working with me. Then take these back to the station as proof you went to Blackley. Tell DS Renwick we’ve got a definite ID, and make sure the Latvian embassy is informed. Spry will arrange for a Family Liaison Officer and interpreter to talk to the family.’

  ‘That’ll take ninety minutes, tops – what’ll I do with the rest of the day?’

  ‘Just send me the phone log, but keep it out of sight of Renwick.’

  ‘Kate,’ Fennimore said, and she frowned, gave her head a little shake as if to say, Not now.

  She saw Moran out.

  As soon as the door closed, he said, ‘What the hell are you doing?’

  ‘I’m protecting her, Nick.’

  ‘You’re keeping her in the dark.’

  ‘Renwick has been playing with us all along, but this one time I’m a step ahead of him because, right now, Renwick doesn’t know he’s a suspect. If I tell Moran everything we know, it will put her in an impossible position. What if she lets something slip? What if she just looks at him the wrong way and he decides she’s a threat?’

  ‘She’s already hiding the phone log from him.’

  ‘She’s holding back a lead; every cop does that at some time or other. But the cemetery, the break-in – they say Renwick is dirty. I can’t expect her to go back into the office and deal with that on her own.’

  ‘She is,’ he said. ‘She just doesn’t know it.’

  She frowned. ‘I’m sorry, Nick – it’s the best I can do.’

  ‘If it helps, I don’t think Renwick’s been near her university friends,’ Josh said. ‘They’re assuming she’s had a family emergency and gone home.’

  ‘Nobody was worried about her?’ Simms asked.

  ‘Like I said, Marta was a bit of a mystery. None of her friends even knew where she was living in Manchester, and one of them lived in a block of flats opposite hers.’

  Fennimore had listened to this with half an ear, but now he went off in an entirely different direction. ‘Why didn’t he go to the university?’

  ‘Who?’ Simms said.

  ‘Renwick. He has a copy of Marta’s student card, yet he hasn’t visited the campus.’

  Simms shrugged. ‘He couldn’t blend in like Josh. He’d have to say he was police, and that would attract attention – questions would be asked.’ She groaned as another possibility came to her. ‘Or he’s already got everything he needs.’

  A knock at the door turned out to be Parrish. He was wearing a beanie hat pulled low over his brow and a camouflage-print hoody, his hands jammed into the pockets of his jacket. He came into the room fast and back-heeled the door shut.

  ‘This is really, seriously fucked up.’ He snatched the beanie off his head and rubbed his close crop of hair, then noticed Josh for the first time. ‘Who are you?’ He turned to Simms and pointed at Josh, hat in hand. ‘Who the fuck is he?’

  ‘Josh Brown,’ Simms said. ‘He’s been in the investigation since day one.’

  ‘Shit,’ he said. ‘Shit.’ Parrish paced the floor, squeezing the hat in his hands.

  ‘Gary,’ Simms said. ‘Detective Constable Parrish.’ He stopped for a second. ‘D’you want to tell me what’s got you so wound up?’

  He threw his head back and blew air towards the ceiling. ‘You were right,’ he said.

  ‘About what?’

  ‘Everything.’ He began pacing again and came up short at the whiteboard. ‘Oh, shit … It’s here. All of it.’

  Fennimore’s pulse rate kicked up a notch. He looked from Parrish’s agitated face to the mindmap. In this version, there were three distinct strands: the drugs deaths in black; the murders in red; and the torture strand, coloured purple.

  ‘It’s good to know, Gary,’ he said. ‘But way too cryptic for me.’

  ‘Here.’ Parrish pointed to the branch dealing with the penicillin deaths.

  On the flip chart next to it, Fennimore had bullet-pointed this strand of the investigation:

  PENICILLIN

  • Used to:

  • Bulk deals

  • Due to – loss?

  • Snowstorm – confirmed √

  • Drug Squad successes

  • Bulked by …

  • Supplier?

  • G Howard?

  • F and S Henry?

  • Bug?

  • A. N. Other?

  • Dealer?

  • Anthony Newton x – set-up?

  He pointed to Anthony Newton’s name at the bottom of the chart. ‘He confessed to causing the penicillin deaths, yeah?’

  Simms nodded. ‘After running a red light with fifteen wraps of heroin on him.’ She watched him closely. ‘Like he was trying to get himself arrested.’

  ‘Right,’ Parrish agreed. ‘Here’s the weird thing: Dip Newton isn’t a dealer – he’s a driver
. Five weeks ago, he drove a vanload of heroin onto Tesco’s car park in Didsbury. He parked it up, walked away. We let him because the plan was to follow the drugs to the warehouse, identify the buyers. When I say “we” I mean the squad. I was on a course at Bramshill, so I wasn’t part of that operation. They had surveillance on the van for ten days. No one collected. Thirty K’s worth of heroin unclaimed on a supermarket car park. Why? Because whoever shipped the drugs knew the van was being watched.’

  ‘Insider tip-off,’ Fennimore said, and Parrish gave a grim nod.

  ‘We went looking for Newton after the van was seized, but he was long gone.’

  ‘So, why’d he come back?’ Fennimore asked. ‘Was he paid to take the fall?’ It was common practice – someone lower down the food chain confessed for a fee, keeping the wheelers and dealers out of prison.

  Parrish shook his head. ‘His bank account’s been frozen since his arrest, he’s maxed out on his credit cards, and his wife and son have just been kicked out of their flat. The CPS is about to charge him with the vanload as well – apparently he turned down a deal. I had a word with one of the interviewing officers; they said he was a wreck – traumatized, paranoid, absolutely bricking it. Which is no big surprise – they had to call out the FME when he was arrested.’

  ‘What was wrong with him?’ Fennimore asked. A Forensic Medical Examiner – formerly ‘Police Surgeon’ – would only be called out if a prisoner was in medical need.

  Parrish tugged at the small beard patch on his chin. ‘I looked up the FME’s report.’ He pulled a set of colour photocopies out of his jacket pocket.

  Josh cleared a space on the coffee table and they gathered round. In the first image, Dip Newton had the terrified look of a kicked dog. Both eyes were blackened, and he had ligature marks on his wrists.

  ‘He was tied to a chair and tortured,’ Parrish said.

  Further pictures showed puncture wounds, bruises and burns around Newton’s nipples.

  Fennimore exhaled. ‘Looks like they attached crocodile clips to his nipples, connected him to an electrical supply.’

  Parrish nodded, avoiding eye contact. ‘The damage to his cock and balls – sorry, Boss, I mean, penis and scrotum – was even worse. He’s still pissing through a tube.’

  Fennimore winced and Josh crossed his legs.

  ‘They thought he was the police informer?’ Kate asked.

  ‘If they did, he must’ve convinced them otherwise, or he’d be in pieces at the bottom of the Manchester Ship Canal by now.’

  ‘So what did he do?’ Fennimore asked.

  ‘The Crime Scene Unit found an infrared video-cam hidden in a roof ventilator inside the van. It showed Dip Newton nicking a baccy-tin full of smack.’

  ‘So his bosses gave him a choice,’ Simms said. ‘Manchester Ship Canal, or a ten-year stretch for trafficking.’

  The next image showed the back of Anthony ‘Dip’ Newton’s head. Under a thin fuzz of hair, the scalp was a mass of livid burns, some of them weeping yellow ooze, some beginning to scab.

  ‘Are those letters?’ Josh asked, leaning closer.

  Fennimore experienced an answering prickle in his own scalp. Josh was right. The lines formed letters, and the letters formed a word.

  THIEF

  “They used a soldering iron,’ Parrish said. ‘Branded him. Used it on his dick as well – stuck it in there and turned it on.’

  Josh stood suddenly and walked away.

  ‘Jesus,’ Kate breathed. ‘If they did that to a thief, what would they do to an informer?’

  ‘Was it Marta tipped you off about Dip’s vanload of heroin?’ Fennimore asked.

  ‘It came in through Crimestoppers,’ Parrish said. ‘So I can’t say for definite. But, yeah, I think it was her.’

  ‘What about Snowstorm?’ Simms asked.

  ‘No – she made her first call to the hotline a couple of months after that all went down.’ He looked at Simms, and for a moment he looked like a man gingerly testing the edge of a very high diving board. ‘You wanted to know who was in charge of Snowstorm.’

  Simms lifted her chin, encouraging him.

  ‘Oh, shit.’ He took a breath, let it go slowly. ‘Superintendent Tanford.’

  The colour drained from Simms’s face. ‘No,’ she said.

  Parrish bowed his head.

  ‘It doesn’t mean he’s involved in recycling the drugs,’ she said, looking to Fennimore for support. ‘Does it?’

  ‘As senior officer, he would have to sign off on the destruction of the drugs,’ Fennimore said.

  ‘Doesn’t mean he was there. Parrish?’

  Parrish shook his head regretfully. ‘I can’t get access to the log without ringing all kinds of alarm bells, Boss.’

  Kate shook her head in a slow, wide sweep. ‘No,’ she said again. ‘Tanford has supported me every step of the way.’

  Parrish shrugged – he looked as dazed and sick as she felt.

  ‘You have to admit, it is neat,’ Fennimore said.

  ‘“Neat”,’ Simms said. ‘Is that how you see this?’

  ‘It’s how they see it,’ Fennimore said. ‘Tanford gets commended on a major drugs seizure, and he’s in the perfect position to put those same drugs back into circulation.’

  ‘Well, thank you for your insight, Professor,’ she said, and he saw the crackle of amber in her eyes. ‘Perhaps you can advise me on how exactly I can use this information, because I haven’t a fucking clue.’

  She was in pain. She had believed in Tanford, even looked up to him. Fennimore sympathized, but his mind remained clear.

  ‘You can’t use any of it, Kate. The recycling might point to Tanford, but you’d have to prove he knowingly switched a sizeable drugs haul for baby laxative, or whatever, then signed off on the burning and put the heroin back onto the streets. Dip Newton isn’t about to tell us; Marta might have had proof, but Renwick took that when he broke into her flat.’

  ‘Maybe he didn’t get everything.’

  They turned to look at Josh. He was standing with his back to the window, trying not to look at the photographs on the coffee table.

  ‘One of Marta’s friends said she’d better come back soon, ’cos she’d left a stack of textbooks in one of her lockers and it’d cost her a fortune in fines.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Simms said. ‘I don’t see how that helps.’

  ‘Why would she have more than one locker?’ the student said. ‘It’s not like she had to hike across campus – all her lectures, tutorials and seminars were in the same building. So I’m thinking, what if she was using one of them as a safety deposit box?’

  Simms nodded. ‘We found two Chubb keys in Marta’s purse at George Howard’s flat. They’ll be in the evidence store by now. But I can’t go there, and even if DC Moran could get clearance to pick them up, it could take an hour or two to gain access.’

  ‘Key?’ Fennimore smiled. ‘Who needs a key?

  43

  ‘You can lock your door against a thief, but you can’t lock your door against a liar.’

  ANONYMOUS

  It was mid-afternoon and the sun, just beginning to lower in the sky, filtered through the trees on the small square of Queen’s Park, reflecting brilliantly off the snow as Simms turned the car right at the Royal Northern College of Music.

  ‘I shouldn’t have lashed out at you like that,’ she said, with an apologetic glance to Fennimore.

  ‘Forget it,’ he said. ‘I can’t resist a smart-arsed remark, and you were right, it was insensitive.’

  ‘I suppose I’d hoped that this mess was down to one or two greedy cops who’d dipped their fingers in the sherbet and liked the taste,’ she said. ‘But four and a half million pounds’ worth of drugs was seized in Operation Snowstorm.’ She exhaled slowly. ‘The idea of that quantity of drugs filtering back onto the streets terrifies me. And I just … I can’t believe that Tanford is part of it.’

  ‘Don’t take it personally, Kate.’

  ‘I don’t�
�’ She stopped herself, laughed. ‘I’m such a liar. Yeah, I do – I take it very personally.’

  It was good to hear her laugh, even if it was a little shaky, and caught a little at the back of her throat.

  ‘I believed his flannel about me scaring the crap out of the dealers.’ She sucked air through her teeth. ‘And all the time the bastard was on the make.’

  Fennimore turned to her. ‘It’s not just you, Kate – Tanford has fooled a lot of people – senior officers who’ve known him for a lot longer than you have.’ He quirked his eyebrows and offered a small smile. ‘And he wasn’t lying when he said you had the dealers jumping; they were just closer to home than you realized.’

  The first locker was empty except for a stack of library books and a flyer advertising a guest lecture on the cultural politics of human rights. The second contained a backpack and a Next shopping bag. Fennimore stood next to Kate Simms as she emptied it into a plastic Ziploc bag. Students and staff moved up and down the busy corridor, some eyeing them curiously, while security looked on, noting each item on a receipt pad. The Next bag contained a change of clothes: a low-cut silk dress, sheer stockings and four-inch heels.

  The backpack was a jumble of the usual student essentials: pens, ruler, reporters’ notebook, A4 notepaper, timetable. Also a black A5 hardbound notebook and an 8-Gig pen drive.

  The receipt signed, and textbooks locked in the boot of the car, Simms drove around the corner, out of sight of the security manager who had followed them out of the building and watched them leave, a thoughtful look on his face.

  ‘I can’t file these in evidence – not yet – not until I have some idea of the true scale of this.’

  Fennimore snapped on a pair of nitriles.

  ‘What d’you think you’re doing?’ she demanded.

  ‘C’mon, Kate,’ Fennimore said. ‘It can’t hurt to take a peek.’

  The notebook detailed names, dates, drop points, methods and routes for drugs deliveries. He flipped through the pages and found transcripts of conversations between the Henry brothers and a man named Rob; ‘Rob the fixer’ Marta called him.