Deadly Deceit

by Hannah, Mari

  She held up a blonde wig.

  An exclamation from Gormley reached them from the living room.

  ‘Hey, take a look at this!’ he yelled.

  They followed the voice. As they entered the room, Gormley opened his hand, gesturing towards an old-fashioned writing bureau in front of him. He looked elated. No wonder. He’d found a stash of incriminating evidence: several European passports, medical cards, bank and credit-card statements, suggesting that Susan Armstrong was more than your average con artist. Using the tip of his pen, Gormley turned over one of the medical cards, revealing a name: Judy Amos.

  ‘Yes!’ Carmichael was getting excited.

  Snapping on a pair of Latex gloves, Daniels thought it ironic that intelligence on Reid’s girlfriend – the elusive ‘woman in uniform’ – had come from a man who’d be stripped of his within a matter of months. Dixon had been well and truly duped. For a split second, she almost felt sorry for him, until revulsion took over when she thought of what he’d done. His actions were despicable: not only to George Milburn and his grandson, but to Chantelle Fox and his police colleagues too. Why should they be tarred with the same dirty brush? Right now though, that was the least of Daniels’ worries . . .

  Sifting through the passports, her stomach took a dive as a woman’s face stared back at her from the laminated photographs in each. Despite attempts to change her appearance, there was no mistaking her. The SIO didn’t need to ask Carmichael or Gormley for confirmation. They all knew it was Jennifer Rankin, the woman who’d casually walked into Lottery HQ with a stolen ticket, passing herself off as a big prize winner. The question was, did she bludgeon an old lady to death – and, if not, who did?

  ‘Hank, get a scenes of crime team down here now!’ she said. ‘And a uniform to stand guard until the house is secure.’

  Gormley didn’t move an inch. His face was white with rage and he appeared not to have heard her. There was no doubt in Daniels’ mind that he was dwelling on his one and only brief encounter with Ivy Kerr, strapped to her seat in the pouring rain next to her dead husband, mayhem all around her, minutes before she met her end at the hands of a callous and cold-blooded killer.

  In an attempt to snap him out of his reverie, Daniels raised her voice. ‘Hank! CSIs, pronto! Lisa, get this lot bagged up, the entire contents of the bureau. Log everything meticulously and get it all back to the nick. As soon as it’s been processed you’re going to be very busy on that computer of yours.’

  As soon as they got back to the incident room, Daniels went to brief Naylor. When she returned an hour later, Carmichael had made excellent progress. Susan Armstrong, aka Judy Amos, was already under investigation by the fraud squad, Interpol and the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau. The names were just two of several aliases used in connection with a real estate scam where foreign property was either sold or rented to unsuspecting victims, the proceeds channelled through Internet accounts in foreign banks in Spain, Portugal, Cyprus and other places before disappearing into the ether.

  ‘Her criminal activity is well documented.’ Carmichael buried her head in her notes. ‘Funds go in and out of dodgy accounts like fiddlers’ elbows, at which point accounts are abandoned and the trail goes cold. Investigators have travelled many a blind alley trying to collar her – whatever her name is. Her “businesses” look kosher, but they’re far from that.’

  Daniels rubbed at her aching neck. The lottery money had disappeared in much the same way, gone within seconds of arriving in the destination account, according to the guv’nor. She had wondered how the woman managed to bury it so quickly, why it left no trail. Now she knew. She’d worked in the fraud squad as a DS. If scams were well set up, it was like chasing shadows trying to follow the cash.

  ‘Have you spoken to any of her victims?’ Daniels asked.

  ‘Andy has,’ Carmichael said. ‘Not one of them had any direct contact with her.’

  ‘Doesn’t surprise me,’ Daniels said. ‘Most business is conducted via email or phone these days. No one bats an eyelid, paying for stuff by electronic transfer without first seeing the goods. That’s a gift for someone who’s dodgy.’

  Carmichael nodded. ‘I gather victims turned up on holiday and found that either they weren’t booked in, or else there was no dream villa in the sun. Poor buggers. Can you imagine ploughing your life savings into a pile of rubble, or turning up with your bucket and spade with nowhere to stay?’

  ‘They only lost a holiday, Lisa. Or money. I have little sympathy.’

  ‘That’s a bit harsh.’

  ‘Is it? Some people ask to be fleeced.’

  ‘Even Ivy?’

  Daniels gave her a pointed look. She didn’t say as much, but the sad fact was the old lady had been foolish telling a stranger about her windfall.

  Carmichael flicked her eyes right. ‘Is Hank OK?’

  Daniels glanced in Gormley’s direction. Carmichael’s hero had crumbled and was staring blankly out of the window, deep in thought. A massive breakthrough in a murder case was usually a time for celebration. But not today. A vicious killer was out there. He knew it. She knew it. And so did Carmichael. The team couldn’t afford to relax. Gormley would have to ‘man up’ and get on with it. They needed to find this woman before she fled the country. She certainly had the means to do that. But first they needed to find out who she really was.

  ‘It’s late, Lisa.’ Daniels managed a half-smile. ‘We’re all exhausted. He’ll be OK.’

  Responding to the whispering, Gormley turned around. He got up and walked over to join them. ‘Did you record the names and numbers on the passports?’ He was talking to Carmichael.

  Nodding, Carmichael reeled off a list of names from her notebook.

  ‘Gimme a look at that!’ he said, taking it from her. He scanned her neat handwriting with Daniels breathing down his neck: Judy Amos, Karen Thompson, Marriane Forbes, Naomi Crouch, Olivia Raynard.

  No Jennifer Rankin, Daniels noticed, but then why would there be? Whoever they were dealing with was clever and sophisticated. She wouldn’t risk using the same name twice. Gormley studied the names for what seemed like ages, noting that the capital letters of each first name ran alphabetically. He read them out: Judy . . . Karen . . . Marriane . . . Naomi . . . Olivia.

  ‘The only missing letter is L,’ he said, looking up.

  ‘You think that’s significant?’ asked Carmichael.

  He shrugged. ‘I’d bet my pension that Judy Amos is Reid’s girlfriend. His mates say she was shy and never joined them socially. Dixon told me the only reason he knew Armstrong’s address is because he followed her home one night. She was cagey about where she lived and refused to have her picture taken. Now we know why. If Armstrong, Amos and Rankin are one and the same, we should alert the press. Every shift should have a copy of her picture. We should publish it on the PNC and in the media too. I want to lock this woman up so badly it hurts.’

  Daniels didn’t argue. It was nice to have him back.

  64

  The redhead lay back in the roll-top bath, surrounded by bubbles and drinking pink champagne in the penthouse of a converted printworks with stunning views of the city. She particularly liked the glazed brick walls, expansive windows and industrial architecture, the exposed steel and solid timber beams.

  The apartment belonged to a musician who wanted to sell. But she’d talked the estate agent into a short let, pretending it was a ‘try before you buy’ lease when it was nothing of the kind. She needed the property for a day or two until the Cypriot gave her the nod to move. First, however, she had some unfinished business with Chantelle Fox . . .

  Fox knew stuff – dangerous stuff that could be useful to the pigs. While the rest of the morons on Ralph Street had been getting pissed, she was not. She claimed to have photographic evidence of the arson and wanted to cut a deal in return for keeping her big mouth shut. The redhead wasn’t having that. She needed to silence the bitch before things got out of hand.

  But how? It was risky
with cops around and because of that the Cypriot was angry. He didn’t understand why Fox was such a threat – why should he? – so she threw him an explanation to keep him off her back, reminding him that in the early days the girl had been a source of cheap phones. That much was true, but it wasn’t why she had to be dealt with.

  ‘I didn’t hear you complaining then,’ the redhead said. It suited her to let him believe that Fox could implicate them both in serious fraud. ‘How was I to know she’d turn on me and threaten us?’

  She stressed the word ‘us’ so he understood that the threat extended to him also, even though that was not the case. She could hardly tell him the truth – that she’d been seeing other men while he was out of the country, one who was going places and knew how to treat a lady, the other an obsessive tosser who’d fallen for her big style – a polis who thought he was God’s gift to women. Then he really would go off on one.

  ‘You were a fool to use the girl!’ he yelled.

  ‘Hindsight is a wonderful thing,’ she bit back. ‘Chill out, why don’t you?’

  His eyes grew dark and dangerous. He hated being told to chill and was sweating like a pig. She didn’t need him telling her that they stood to lose everything through her stupidity. She’d been insane to use Chantelle directly in the early days. Hadn’t he told her time and time again to employ a go-between? Always, always cover your tracks when requisitioning hardware. No trace. No way back to us. No wonder he was spoiling for a row.

  Any moment now he was likely to snap. Then he’d fly into one of his rages, guaranteed to last several hours – possibly even days. She was bored with his strops. Bored with him. He’d outlived his usefulness and she had plans to deal with that. In the meantime he was the one with all the contacts, so she needed him for just a little longer, until she was free and clear of a difficult situation.

  She wished she’d never met him. He was older than her, a small-time crook back then, posing as a businessman. A brief fling on the holiday island of Cyprus had led to something more serious before she’d learned what he really was up to. Instead of putting her off, it had the opposite effect. She’d seized her chance to muscle in as the UK arm of his operation.

  It turned out to be a lucrative partnership.

  Lifting her right leg out of the water, she watched the suds slide off her foot. Admiring her painted toenails, she thought of those early days. They had cooked up a scam to make easy money – and, boy, did they live up to that. People were so obliging. They were asking to be relieved of their hard-earned, accepting anything they were sent because it happened to look right, believing whatever they were told by the posh bird on the phone.

  The redhead grinned.

  She was good – really good.

  Learning her scripts came as easy to her as learning the two times table. Before long she didn’t need the written version. In fact, she was so good, she began believing she was who she said she was: a property developer, a foreign travel agent, whatever the hell she wanted to be. When not in the UK, she spent her time at his home in Cyprus. There was no extradition to the UK from the island, an obvious attraction should she be forced to flee the country in a hurry.

  She’d always been clever at pulling the wool, a faulty gene she’d inherited from her father, a two-timing bastard who’d let her mother down spectacularly. For years he’d lied about working away from home. In reality, he had a whole other life, a second wife too, they later discovered. But lying to her mother was nothing compared to what he had done to her.

  The Cypriot reminded her of him and it made her skin crawl.

  He was staring at her now.

  ‘I teach you nothing?’ he yelled. ‘This girl? She sees. She exploits. She makes the most of every opportunity. We have something in common, do we not? Maybe it is her and not you I should’ve chosen to share my bed. Every one of us is greedy, my dear. It is basic human nature to want more than God gave us when we arrived in this world.’

  He was right.

  The bastard was always right.

  Not that the redhead would ever admit it.

  ‘I’ll take care of it,’ she said.

  ‘We cannot afford to wait.’ The Cypriot puffed on his cigar. ‘You said yourself, the girl she is smart. Smarter than you, I hope. If that is true then we must assume she also realizes the information she has is too valuable to share. Pay her off. Do it tonight or we’re finished, you and I.’ He chucked a large brown envelope on the tiled floor. ‘Our escape route. Make sure you study it to the letter. No more mistakes.’

  The redhead knew what was inside: fresh passports, airline tickets, new names, new identities. She told him she’d sort it, find out what the girl knew and pay her off. Money talks, she told him, a more permanent solution entering her head. No need for cash to change hands. She’d silence Fox for good. It was that or forever face the threat of life imprisonment with a tarrif-date of twenty-five years or more. She’d be drawing her pension before she saw the light of day. And she wasn’t having that.

  65

  Daniels had stepped out for some air. It had been a hell of a day, but at least she was finally making headway. There was a way to go though, before catching the woman with the multiple aliases.

  Her mobile rang.

  Daniels had lost count of how many calls she’d received during the day. She checked her watch. It was five past ten. Maybe this was Matt West with the result on the cigarette end she’d found stubbed against the wall of Chantelle Fox’s home. He’d promised it was imminent a couple of hours ago.

  ‘DCI Daniels . . .’ She cringed on hearing the voice on the other end of the line. It wasn’t Matt West. Not even close. Daniels was tired of silly games. Tired full stop. She took the phone away from her ear, put it on speaker, and tried not to sound too interested. ‘What can I do for you, Chantelle?’

  ‘Nothing! But I can do something for you.’

  Leaning against the wall of the station, Daniels waited for Chantelle to explain herself. She didn’t speak right away, but the DCI could tell she was indoors, a TV on in the background, News at Ten, by the sounds of it, a programme she’d meant to catch herself. At her request, the BBC were running a piece warning people to be aware of a female fugitive wanted in connection with a murder by Northumbria Police. And then the penny dropped . . . Chantelle had seen the breaking news.

  ‘Has this got something to do with the woman I’m looking for?’ Daniels asked.

  ‘Might do.’

  ‘Has it?’

  ‘Just so happens I know who she is—’

  The girl’s voice was lost as a siren wailed into action close by. A panda car reversed, then shot out of the car park, blues-and-twos engaged. A Traffic car followed it out, adding to the din. Daniels waited for the noise to fade away. For a moment, she thought the girl had had second thoughts and hung up. Then she heard a siren on the other end. A coincidence? Or was Chantelle close by?

  ‘Chantelle? Sorry, I didn’t catch that.’ Taking out her key, Daniels pushed open the back door and stepped inside. ‘Who is she, Chantelle? I need a name.’

  ‘Nice one, Inspector. You think I’m daft?’

  ‘You really want me to answer that?’ Daniels said, heading upstairs.

  ‘Well, I’m not as daft as you, am I? ’Cause I know stuff would make your eyes pop.’

  ‘So tell me. And stop buggering about – this is really important.’

  ‘I need assurances.’

  Daniels mounted the stairs two at a time. ‘Such as?’

  ‘That I won’t face prosecution for wasting police time.’

  ‘No deal . . .’ Daniels paused on the landing. ‘Look, tell me what you know and I’ll see what I can do. I really could use some help here.’

  ‘You’re not the only one.’

  ‘Fuck’s sake! Tell me who she is!’

  ‘You know what, forget it!’

  The line went dead.

  Cursing Chantelle, Daniels called Gormley but he didn’t pick up. Running back down
the stairs, she burst through the exit door looking for him. His car was nowhere in sight. He was probably out picking up Dixon – they needed confirmation that the woman he knew as Susan Armstrong was in fact the woman in the passports – or maybe he was in the Bacchus, having called it a day.

  No. If that was the case, he’d have rung to let her know.

  Daniels called Carmichael instead.

  ‘Lisa, I’m in the station yard. Get down here ASAP. We’ve got a witness to see. And bring your snips. I’ve a feeling this one won’t go quietly.’

  66

  Carmichael’s old 3 series BMW pulled to the kerb. No kids around at this time of night to lighten their pockets for watching the vehicle. Ralph Street was in semi-darkness, streetlights still missing, despite Daniels’ request to the city council to fix them. She looked up and down the terrace as she got out of the car. Some women were gathered in a doorway chatting. They looked over in her direction then went back to their conversation, unperturbed by her presence.

  Seeing the law in this street was an everyday occurrence.

  ‘Chantelle’s obviously expecting us.’ Carmichael pointed to an open front door.

  ‘That’s handy for us . . .’ Daniels smiled. ‘No need to knock or wait for an invitation.’

  Daniels led the way, Carmichael behind as they passed through the hallway, stopping dead in their tracks as they entered the living room. The place had been trashed, thoroughly ransacked: drawers emptied on to the floor, cupboard doors flung open, the fireside rug lifted, cushions slashed – the stuffing inside removed.

  The back kitchen was much the same.

  A thud on the ceiling got their attention.

  Carmichael froze. ‘They haven’t found what they were looking for then,’ she whispered.

  Daniels put a finger to her lip and pointed to the ceiling above. They moved out of the kitchen and back through the living room to the hallway, picking their way over the debris on the floor. The stairs were clear. Steep and narrow. Light shone out from a chink in one of the doors on the landing above.