Liar Liar: DI Helen Grace 4 (A DI Helen Grace Thriller)

by M. J. Arlidge

  Naomie faltered, then replied:

  ‘Sure. Like I said –’

  ‘I’m going to discount what you’ve told me so far, as you have already lied to me on tape on a number of occasions, but there is something I’d like you to tell me the truth about. Who is firstpersonsingular?’

  Naomie’s reaction was hard to miss. She looked like she’d been caught with her hand in the till – initial astonishment morphing into a desire to disengage, to retreat. She picked hard at the scar on her hand, wanting to be anywhere but locked in a room with her accusers.

  ‘We know you’re close,’ Charlie went on, more softly. ‘That you feel loyalty to this person, that perhaps they even control you a little bit. But it’s our view that this person is principally responsible for these fires, so it would be in your best interests to tell us who they are.’

  Naomie shook her head vigorously but refused to look up at them. Helen felt a strange mixture of sympathy and contempt as she looked at the shambolic teenage girl who still clung to the person – to the ‘project’ – that made her feel special.

  ‘We will find out, Naomie. Make no bones about that,’ Helen said. ‘And this is your one chance to help us bring this to an end. It could make all the difference when this goes to trial.’

  Now Naomie did look up and Helen caught the fear in her eyes.

  ‘You’ve nothing to fear. If you need protection we can arrange that. And you don’t need to go back to your old life, once you’ve done your time. We can set you up somewhere new – new name, new place, new future. But only if you help us now. Who is firstpersonsingular?’

  ‘I won’t help you,’ Naomie said suddenly, before receding into herself once more.

  ‘Then I’m calling time on this interview. I’ve done all I can and I would urge your lawyer to use the break to talk some sense into you. Cooperation is your only option.’

  ‘I’ll never give him up to the likes of you,’ Naomie spat back bitterly.

  ‘So firstpersonsingular is a “he”?’ Helen returned quickly. ‘Well that’s a start, I suppose.’

  The blood drained from Naomie’s face, as she felt the guilt of her first betrayal.

  ‘We will find out his name, Naomie. It’s only a matter of time. So now you have to ask yourself if you’re brave enough to speak up or whether you want to spend the rest of your days behind bars for something that wasn’t your fault.’

  And with that Helen left, Charlie following close behind.

  128

  ‘Let’s take this from the top, shall we?’

  Helen had pulled the entire team into the incident room and they crowded round, keen to hear the very latest developments.

  ‘Naomie Jackson has a male accomplice, whom we strongly suspect of having been the instigator of the recent arson attacks. He goes by the online moniker of “firstpersonsingular”. DS Sanderson has put together a short profile of everything we know about FPS, which includes his most recent posts on the net, social media and so on. He is male, appears to be local and is probably in his mid-to-late teens.’

  Immediately a buzz went round the room – this was not the standard arson profile, which commonly placed offenders in their twenties or thirties.

  ‘He makes several references to schooling or teachers. He doesn’t give specifics but the incidents he refers to seem to be recent and would put him in GCSE year or slightly above. He could of course be lying to gain Naomie’s trust, but the overall tone of his posts is one of teenage anger and rebellion, infused with deep cynicism and bitterness, particularly towards his parents and authority figures in general. He types much less fluently than Naomie, which is curious. Is he a man of few words or is his access to unsupervised computers limited?’

  The team were passing the sheets around now, but their eyes were glued to Helen.

  ‘We’re trying to trace his IP address, but if he’s using a tablet with 4G or similar, then this may be a dead end, so for now let’s keep focused on his character. His posts reveal clear evidence of depression, but also strong feelings of superiority. He craves control and seems to relish the effect that the fires have had. He seems to be calling the tune. So we are looking for a teenage male who until recently has been powerless, overlooked or neglected.’

  ‘What’s the tenor of their relationship? FPS and Naomie?’ McAndrew asked. ‘Were they lovers?’

  ‘Looks that way,’ Sanderson interjected. ‘They communicated every day during the summer and well into the autumn. He makes great play of idolizing her – calling her “Angel” repeatedly – and is always trying to boost her self-esteem. She in turn is very protective of him – seemingly worrying if he’ll come to any harm – though whether at his own hands or someone else’s is unclear. She keeps referencing the first time they met as if that explained the root cause of her anxiety.’

  ‘Had they been intimate?’ DC Lucas asked, to a few quiet sniggers.

  ‘Tough to say,’ Sanderson answered. ‘It’s hard to imagine they haven’t been but there is no mention of sex or intimacy in their communications.’

  Sanderson continued her dissection of their relationship, but Helen’s mind was already arrowing away in a different direction, hidden connections forming now. Without warning, she walked away from the group, marching towards her desk. She picked up her files and searched through them quickly, until she’d located the hospital reports from the fires’ survivors. She flicked through them until she came to the page on Ethan Harris. Her eyes ran over the text, words and phrases now leaping out at her: ‘cerebral palsy’, ‘persistent shaking of the left hand’, ‘historic burn injuries’. Suddenly Helen knew why Agnieszka Jarosik had been singled out for special treatment. She knew why their arsonist had fumbled the matches during the second and fourth attacks. And she knew where she had seen Naomie’s scar – the burnt cross on the left palm – before.

  Most importantly, she knew why Naomie had called 999 twelve minutes before anybody else after the Harris fire started. It wasn’t fear or excitement that motivated her to call too early that night. It was love.

  129

  Blog post by firstpersonsingular.

  Saturday, 12 December, 10.30

  She was a funny-looking angel. But she was beautiful to me.

  Her sad face was framed by that crazy, afro hair and the shadow of a black eye haunted the left side of her face. Her face was so close to me, I could feel her breath and at first I was confused. Who was this person? What did they want with me? I thought I was seeing things – she had a kind of aura that framed her head, her voice was smooth and comforting – but later I knew I had seen right. She was an angel. More than that, she was my angel.

  It’s funny how things work out. How you can swallow abuse, neglect and more, but can be undone by a simple act of kindness. Others might have walked past me but not her. She raised me up that day and made me what I am. Together we are more than the sum of our parts.

  But things have changed now. We can’t be what we were. So it’s time to remember the good times as we prepare to finish the job. People will castigate us for what we’ve done, but all we’ve done is show them in their true colours and, boy, have they done that. I didn’t know whether to laugh or puke when my parents were giving their interviews after the fire. Saying how much they loved me, how relieved they were I was ok. That rhyme kept going round my head: ‘Liar, Liar …’. I was their ‘accident’ – my dad actually said it to my face once. How can someone be accidental??? But it’s not him I blame really.

  They wished I didn’t exist. Farmed me out to nannies, who did the minimum required, then ignored me. I was an embarrassment to everyone, a guilty secret. They would either beat me or sedate me into submission and if that didn’t work they’d scream at me. I used to like those moments – the flecks of spit landing on my face as they ranted and raved – at least then I existed in their world.

  Well, I exist now. And before I’m done I will have made them both famous. This is my last post, Mum and Dad. My last offerin
g to you. My last offering to you all. My name is Ethan Harris and I am the firestarter.

  130

  Helen took the stairs three at a time, as DCs Lucas and Edwards struggled to keep pace behind. Sanderson was busy organizing a perimeter cordon, in case Ethan Harris tried to escape, but Helen was determined to deny him the opportunity. After the fire, the Harris family had moved into a rented apartment in Upper Shirley, supported by a new carer, Anastasia Teplova. It was amazing how soon normal life re-established itself in the Harris family. Both parents were already back at work, leaving the care of their son to paid help.

  Helen quickly reached their apartment on the third floor. She had wasted too much time chasing shadows on this case, when the solution had been under her nose all along. There had definitely been something ‘off’ about the way the Harris family behaved together and Helen now realized it was because they were acting – pretending to be a loving family. Ethan had been acting for many months now, cloaking his plans and later his nocturnal activities from his parents and carers. The one thing he wasn’t able to conceal was the burn mark on his left hand. When she’d glimpsed it at the hospital, Helen thought it had been sustained in the fire, but now the cross-shaped pattern was plain to see. Firstpersonsingular had referenced burning himself in his blog – was this the pact that he and Naomie had sealed, testing their commitment to each other through fire?

  As DC Edwards joined her, Helen didn’t hesitate, ordering him to break down the door. She had considered using the concierge or even knocking on the door herself, but she couldn’t sanction even the tiniest delay. Edwards took a run up then launched himself at the door. The latch tore from the woodwork with a satisfying scream and the door swung open. Helen was through it in a flash, to be confronted by a very surprised-looking Bulgarian, who was playing Fruit Crush on her phone, rather than attending to her duties.

  Anastasia Teplova stammered some protestations in broken English, but shut up when confronted by Helen’s warrant card. The young woman was barely older than her charge and clearly had a very basic command of English. Just how uninterested were these parents in their son?

  ‘Where is Ethan?’

  Anastasia just stood there, still speechless with shock, so Helen gestured to Edwards and Lucas to start searching. Then she approached the home help, putting her warrant card away.

  ‘You’re not in any trouble, but I need to talk to Ethan. Is he here?’

  There was another long pause, before she finally said:

  ‘He’s in his room.’

  With that she gestured to a small, ancillary bedroom towards the back of the apartment. Helen ran towards it now and, throwing open the door, stepped inside.

  To find an empty room.

  Nothing on the walls yet. Nothing on the bedside table. Just an old laptop, closed and powered down, sitting next to a dirty coffee mug on the table. Ethan clearly had been here but, as the open window by the fire escape revealed, he was long gone now.

  131

  ‘Can I ask what it’s regarding?’

  She was a new receptionist – not one he’d seen on his fleeting visits before – but every bit as snotty as her predecessors.

  ‘It’s regarding her son. That’s me, by the way.’

  Ethan Harris enjoyed watching the expression change on her face. His mother ran a prestigious architects’ firm in Ocean Village and generally hired beautiful but flinty young women to guard the gate. They were practised at dealing with salesmen, tardy couriers and freeloaders. Had this new one mistaken him for the latter? As she first took in his face, his limp arm, his stooped posture, her look had belied a curious mixture of distaste and awkwardness. But when she realized who he was, her strangulated expression wrenched itself round to an unconvincing smile. Just one more reason to hate her.

  ‘One moment, please,’ she purred, ringing up to the penthouse office. Ethan watched her intently, picking at the scar on his left hand all the while – it had become a nervous tic of late. Moments later, she handed him the phone. Didn’t that say it all? Any other parent would have just told her to send him up.

  ‘What’s going on, Ethan? Is everything all right?’

  ‘Everything’s fine. I’m just bored and thought I would pay you a visit. I can visit my own mother, can’t I?’

  There was a brief pause before she responded:

  ‘Ok, but I’ve got a meeting at twelve, so it’ll have to be quick.’

  ‘It won’t take long,’ Ethan replied, before handing the receiver back to the earwigging receptionist. His hand quivered more than usual, making the handover clumsy and awkward. Funny how even now he felt embarrassed by these small things.

  The receptionist buzzed him through and he walked towards the lifts. Here he paused and as the phone on the front desk rang once more, he took advantage of this timely distraction, diving past the lifts and through the fire stairs that led to the basement. He had no intention of seeing his mother.

  Indeed, if he had his way, he would never see her again.

  132

  For a moment Luke Simms was unable to speak, the blood draining from his face. Charlie hadn’t expected such a strong reaction to her question and now put her arm on to Luke’s, worried the young boy was about to faint.

  ‘If you don’t feel up to this, I can wait, but it would be useful to know at –’

  ‘He was only there a term. I hardly knew him.’

  Luke had regained his speech, but not his colour. His father watched on, confused, anxious and not a little scared.

  ‘What’s this about? Who is Ethan Harris, for God’s sake?’

  ‘He’s a person of interest in our enquiry,’ Charlie replied evenly.

  ‘And you know him, Luke?’

  ‘I did. A bit. I mean he was at school for such a short time before he had to leave, but we were friends for a bit. He visited me in hospital after the fire, for God’s sake. He sat at the end of the bed and offered me his sympathies …’

  The devil’s in the detail, as Helen had often told Charlie. Scrolling through Ethan Harris’s educational background she had alighted on the coincidence of him attending the same posh secondary school in Millbrook as Luke Simms. Harris had been at the school for less than eight weeks – the reason for his sudden departure was not yet clear – and his stay there was so brief it hadn’t grabbed anyone’s attention in their initial enquiries. But now it seemed supremely relevant, especially after Luke had revealed that Harris had visited him in hospital after the fire. Helen had been right – their killer had been inserting himself into the narrative from the off.

  ‘How would you characterize his time at your school, Luke?’

  ‘Unhappy’ was Luke’s bleak reply. ‘He was a tricky character – hostile, suspicious, quick to take offence if anyone mocked him. And there were plenty of people who were happy to do that. You know what school’s like.’

  ‘Why did people mock him?’

  ‘Because he was different.’

  There it was. Charlie had read Ethan’s hospital report on the way over. In addition to an assessment of his burns and the various tests done to determine the effects of smoke inhalation, there was a small, dispassionate summary of his past health issues. It noted drily that Ethan had suffered from Foetal Alcohol Syndrome since birth. This was caused by his mother’s heavy drinking during pregnancy and had affected the development of both his brain and his limbs. While intelligent and articulate, Ethan had had many health problems as a result of his FAS, not least mild cerebral palsy and epilepsy. It was some inheritance to gift to your child.

  ‘He just looked different to everyone else,’ Luke continued. ‘His features were softer, like … you know … like they weren’t quite formed. And people used to take the piss.’

  ‘Did you mock him?’

  ‘No … No, not at first. I liked him, for God’s sake.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because he was good at writing. Creative writing, comprehension, reviews – all that stuff. He could do it stan
ding on his head. And he helped me – I’ve never been good at that stuff. He would have done mine for me if I’d asked him to. We got along.’

  ‘So what happened?’

  Luke hesitated now, his breathing becoming short. Charlie gave Thomas Simms a quick look, but he gently gestured to her to proceed. Like her, he was desperate to know what Luke was going to say next.

  ‘Luke?’ Charlie prompted gently.

  ‘Some of the other lads – the football guys – they didn’t want me hanging around with him. Told me to cut him off. I refused, so they cut me off. Out of the school team, out of their gang, out of everything. I stuck it for a while but …’

  ‘But then you wanted back in?’ Charlie finished for him.

  ‘Yes, so they set me a challenge. A test … and I bloody did it.’

  Now tears came, coursing down his cheeks.

  ‘They told me to humiliate him. I wanted my old life back so … the next time he came up to me – it was in the canteen – I told him I didn’t want him talking to me. When he asked me why … when he asked me why, I told him it was because he was a fucking freak …’

  Luke broke down now, the full import of his actions finally making itself felt. His father rocked him back and forth in his arms, trying to stem the tears. Charlie stayed for ten minutes more but there was little she could do now and she felt that her presence was neither helpful nor welcome. She would keep an eye on them of course, but this was something they had to face alone. Luke had done something unpleasant and mean-spirited and had been repaid in savage fashion by a boy unable to cope with the slingshots life constantly threw at him.

  It was an awful retribution out of all scale to the crime and Charlie hoped that in time Luke would come to see this and learn not to blame himself. Some hope, Charlie thought to herself, as she walked disconsolately back to the car, Luke’s cries still ringing in her ears.

  133

  He had never been in the basement before, which added to the thrill. He had seen it on the building’s plans, which he’d ‘borrowed’ from his mother’s home office, but he had been wary of scoping it in advance for fear of drawing attention to what he was up to. It was unheard of for him to turn up at his parents’ place of work unannounced.