‘Well, you got me,’ he said. ‘Can we go inside now?’
‘Not a chance. The senior investigating officer actually charged with investigating the case is in there – you’re not even supposed to be here,’ she said, glancing towards the security doors thirty yards away. ‘And neither am I.’
‘So why are you?’
‘Fair question,’ she said. ‘I could just leave you to it, wait for you to get yourself arrested. I’m doing what I always do – covering your backside.’
A flash of sunlight prismed off the rain-beaded entrance door and two men emerged, both in business suits, one of them carrying an A4 bound notebook.
‘Oh, hell …’ Simms opened the back passenger door and slid into the seat behind Fennimore.
‘Is that the SIO?’ Fennimore said. ‘Why don’t you introduce me?’ He was watching her in the rear-view mirror, and he looked like he was having fun.
He reached for the door lever and she said, ‘Don’t make me hurt you, Nick.’
He laughed, holding both hands up in surrender. ‘Okay, but can we go inside when they’re gone?’
‘No.’ Hunched down in her seat, Simms kept a close eye on the two detectives.
‘Come on … who would know?’
‘I would. Look – I didn’t ask for this,’ she said, ‘but I’m stuck with it. I’ve been given a job to do – if I let you in there, it makes me look bad.’
He shrugged. ‘You could leave. You can’t be held responsible for something you didn’t even witness.’
She wasn’t getting through to him.
‘I’m already a witness. And this is not your case, Nick.’
‘So you keep telling me.’
‘I wouldn’t have to if you’d listen.’
‘Okay, you didn’t ask for this – well, neither did I,’ he said, serious at last. ‘The man who took Julia and Lauren Myers made me a part of it. He wants me involved – he made it personal – so if you need to arrest me, go ahead, but I need answers and I’m not going to get them sitting out here.’ He opened the door.
‘Nick, wait.’ Simms closed her eyes. Why are you doing this? You should call Enderby and let Fennimore face the consequences. But she wouldn’t; she couldn’t … ‘All right,’ she said. ‘There is another way.’
An hour later, they were in a pub a mile down the road, supping cask ale and waiting for forensic pathologist Dr David Cooper. Simms had phoned him from the mortuary car park, offering to buy him coffee. She had worked with Cooper on her first murder case. He fancied her and she knew it – and she wasn’t above using that to her advantage. So when he said he would gladly spend an hour with her if she made it a pint of real ale in a decent pub, she readily agreed.
Cooper was short, neat, bearded, and had the cocky strut of a nineties rock star. Heads turned when he walked through the door. He hadn’t been expecting Fennimore, but he showed no surprise, merely nodded to both of them, maybe a glint of mischief in his eye.
He slid on to the bench seat next to Fennimore, raised his glass in thanks to Simms, took his first swallow of Lakeland Gold and sighed contentedly before he spoke a single word.
‘So,’ he said, ‘what’s the story, morning glory?’
‘We were hoping you’d tell us,’ Fennimore said.
‘Leave me out of it,’ Simms said. ‘I’m just here as chaperone.’
Cooper looked from one to the other over the rim of his glass. ‘I thought that was my job in this threesome.’
Simms shot him a warning glance and he grinned.
‘Julia Myers,’ Simms said.
Cooper had grown up on the streets of Salford, Manchester – Lowry country – mills and red-brick terraces: generations living cheek-by-jowl with poverty and desperation. Although he now swanked it up in the affluent suburbs of Knutsford with footballers and soap stars as neighbours, he remained proud of his urban roots and street smarts. He took another swallow of ale before responding.
‘Well, you know me – I like a chinwag,’ he said. ‘But this is police business.’ He sucked his teeth. ‘And given you didn’t want to meet at my office, I’m thinking you’re not here in an official capacity?’
‘I’m … not … directly involved in the investigation,’ Simms said carefully.
Cooper smirked. ‘You’ll have to do better than that.’
She watched him watching her. He knew she was taking a risk – she could see it in his face – the question was, how much did she need to tell him?
‘Come on, Kate.’ He crooked one finger, beckoning. ‘You know you’ve got to give to get.’
Cooper had done Simms a big favour when she was new to Manchester Police and very much the outsider. She knew him to be straight-talking, unbound by protocols, yet paradoxically capable of a discretion and sensitivity that belied his salty language and his hard-lad swagger.
‘Nick has been getting letters from the abductor,’ she said, with a quick glance at Fennimore.
Cooper switched his attention to the scientist. ‘And you think it could be linked to your Rachel and Suzie?’
Fennimore flinched. ‘I’m not leaping to any conclusions, Coop,’ he said.
Simms glanced at him. Can he really believe that?
‘Kate thinks I’m paranoid.’ He smiled, and she saw a weary acceptance in his grey-blue eyes. ‘But there are parallels.’
‘There are,’ she agreed. ‘But the fact is, you’re all over the Web, Nick. Hundreds of articles and blogs written on you and’ – she hesitated – ‘what happened to you. I agree that whoever abducted Mrs Myers and her daughter is pushing your buttons. I just don’t think you should make assumptions about why.’
‘Which is how we come to be on this fact-finding mission.’ A ghost of a smile played across Fennimore’s face.
Cooper took another sip of ale, set down his glass and looked at them both. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Off the record.’
They nodded in agreement.
‘Julia Myers disappeared a week ago, but she probably died in the last forty-eight hours. Hadn’t been in the water long before she was spotted.’
‘Did he botch the disposal or did he mean for her to be found?’ Fennimore asked.
‘Beats me,’ Cooper said. ‘But I will say this – I’m surprised he wasn’t seen – Rivington Pike is very popular with walkers.’
‘So maybe he doesn’t know the area,’ Fennimore said, thinking out loud.
‘She had bruises on her arms and face, ligature marks on both wrists and her left ankle.’
‘What was the ligature?’ Fennimore asked.
‘Probably zip ties, judging by the striations on her ankle – her left wrist showed almost nothing, her right was too much of a mess to see any clear markings,’ Cooper said.
‘She was tethered to give her some freedom of movement,’ Fennimore said. ‘So she could care for Lauren?’
‘Maybe – the SIO is going to have a word with your forensic psych about that. You ready to hear the rest?’
Simms saw a fractional hesitation before Fennimore nodded.
‘She was malnourished and dirty. We got scrapings from under her fingernails; puncture marks on her arms and legs suggest that she was probably drugged a couple of times.’
‘Tell me they’re rushing the tox screen.’
Cooper shrugged. ‘That’s up to the SIO. Her last meal was a chocolate bar and blackcurrant juice. She wasn’t sexually assaulted. The SIO asked me to send nasal swabs to a palynologist – said something about a possible match to mould spores.’
Fennimore nodded. ‘They found spores in one of the letters I received,’ he explained. ‘Aspergillus and rust mould.’
Simms gazed at Fennimore. ‘How do you know that?’ She thought back to their earlier phone call. Oh, you sneaky— ‘You went to the Cellmark lab in Chorley, didn’t you? That’s how you knew where to find Coop.’
Fennimore dipped his head ambiguously. ‘I didn’t want to compromise you, Kate.’
She gave an exasperated laugh
. ‘What do you call this?’
Fennimore looked hurt and Cooper put in: ‘Just three old pals having a natter over a pint.’ He tapped Simms’s hand lightly. ‘Give the man a break. The good news is, if the mycologist can narrow the spores down to a species, it could point you to a location.’
‘But with over seven thousand species of rust mould alone, that could take a while,’ Fennimore said.
Cooper cocked an eyebrow. ‘Thank you, Mr Sunshine.’
‘I’m just thinking about Suzie,’ Fennimore said quietly. ‘Out there in some damp basement, surviving on chocolate bars and fruit juice.’
‘You mean Lauren,’ Simms said.
He glanced up. ‘That’s what I said.’
Simms looked at Cooper, but he was staring into his half-empty glass, embarrassed.
‘No, Nick, it isn’t.’
The stricken look on his face made her want to comfort him, but he had to think this through rationally – for Lauren Myers’s sake as well as his own – and she added quickly, ‘Okay, so we know the similarities between the two sets of disappearances – what about the differences? Mrs Myers was only gone a week, but Rachel was gone for months.’
Cooper looked shocked by Simms’s bluntness, but Fennimore nodded. She was getting through to him.
‘Rachel was in good health before she was murdered,’ he said, ‘and there were no signs of abuse.’
‘No ligature marks,’ Simms added.
‘And she was well-nourished,’ Fennimore said. ‘She’d eaten a meal of pork, rice, sweet peppers and spring onions shortly before her death. There was alcohol in her blood, but only in sufficient quantity to suggest she’d had wine with her meal.’
He seemed to take some comfort from this recitation of the evidence that Simms knew he had memorized and gone over thousands of times in the years since.
Simms turned to Cooper. ‘How did Mrs Myers die?’
‘Strangled with a ligature,’ Cooper said. ‘Zip tie again. She also had a small penetrating wound on her left ankle. A short, wedge-shaped blade – possibly nail scissors.’
‘She tried to escape,’ Fennimore said.
‘Seems likely,’ Cooper agreed. ‘The wound almost bisected the small saphenous vein – she’d lost quite a bit of blood; if he hadn’t strangled her, she probably would’ve bled out.’
Simms took the baton, ran with the evidence: ‘There are plenty of differences, Nick: Rachel was manually strangled,’ she said. ‘For a while, it looked like Rachel had just walked out on you. She’d packed bags for herself and Suzie, cleaned out your joint accounts—’
‘You’re assuming that Rachel did all that.’
‘Come on, Nick – she’d been pissed off with you for months before they disappeared – all that was missing was a “Dear John” note.’ Cooper shifted uncomfortably in his seat, but Simms ignored him. ‘Julia and Lauren Myers, on the other hand, were snatched from the family car on their way home from watching a film.’
Fennimore rubbed his chin. ‘What do we know about the Myers’ family situation?’
‘Like I said – I’m not on the team,’ Simms said, patient but firm. ‘But from what I’ve seen on the news, they were like any young family struggling to pay a mortgage through a recession. My guess is, even if she’d wanted to clear out their bank accounts, they didn’t have the spare cash to make it worth her while. And as far as I know, they’re not looking at the husband for this.’
Simms paused, and she and Cooper waited for Fennimore to respond.
‘All right,’ he said, after a few moments. ‘The differences are striking.’ He seemed calmer, less haunted with this realization. He took a thoughtful sip of beer. ‘Abduction from a car – that’s got to be unusual, hasn’t it?’
‘I’m sure the SIO is looking into it,’ Simms said.
‘Worth making sure, though.’
She threw up her hands, exasperated. ‘Why do you assume you’re the only one who knows how to do things right?’
‘I don’t – I just like to be reassured that they have.’
She laughed despite herself.
‘I know,’ he said, a gleam in his eye. ‘I’m an arrogant bastard. But it’s too late to change, so …’
‘I can’t go blundering in, Nick,’ she said. ‘I’m supposed to be preventing you from interfering. This investigation is complicated enough without me coaching from the sidelines.’
He gazed at her steadily and she felt control shift from her grasp to his.
‘No,’ she said, hearing the pitch of her voice rise. ‘The investigating officer won’t want it – Chief Constable Enderby won’t want it—’
‘Varley is impartial,’ Fennimore said, his tone wheedling.
‘One of the nicer things Professor Varley says about you is you’re “unpredictable”,’ she said.
‘And that’s a bad thing?’
Do not laugh – he’ll take it as acquiescence. She took a breath. ‘Here’s what I will do: I’ll talk to Enderby, find out what kind of analysis has been done. If he tells me it’s none of my business, that’s the end of it – okay?’
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘But make sure they asked about the family situation of the victims, their occupations – and the zip tie’s got to be worth a mention.’
‘Nick.’
He shut up, but she could tell he was still compiling a list of search refinements in his head.
21
There is a higher court than the courts of justice, and that is the court of conscience.
MAHATMA GANDHI
Fennimore sat back, exhilarated by the roar of the jet engines and the rush of tyres on asphalt beneath him. The instant when a jet lost contact with the runway always gave him an adrenaline rush. He thrilled to the tug of gravity as it climbed; sometimes it felt as if the earth, intent on maintaining the natural order, would drag the improbable weight of steel, fuel, baggage and human flesh back to solid ground. Not a particularly healthy way to think, he acknowledged. But how many roller-coaster crazies, screaming as they plunged from the top of a ride, could swear they had never experienced that same buzz of delighted horror?
As the pilot banked to turn southward, he glimpsed Manchester’s urban sprawl. The top-heavy shard of Beetham Tower, a grey monolith, dominated the Victorian jumble of red-brick and black-slate architecture. In high winds the glass blade howled like a soul in torment.
As soon as the seatbelt warning went off, he retrieved his shoulder bag from the overhead locker. Reaching in to the padded section for his laptop, he discovered the document wallet that Lazko had handed him in the pub earlier that day. He shoved the sheaf of papers back inside and opened his laptop; Wi-Fi wasn’t available on-board, but he had downloaded a list of emails in the airport lounge and he skimmed the names and subject lines for anything urgent. Most were queries from students, but there was one from his accountancy firm – he hadn’t answered their earlier message and he made a note to call their offices when he returned home.
He closed the laptop and slid it back into his shoulder bag. A corner of Lazko’s folder caught in the zip and he eased it free, placing it on the seat next to him, remembering the reporter’s nervousness as he slid the folder across the pub bench, his parting comment: ‘Be careful how you use it.’ Fennimore still hadn’t arranged for someone to take on Josh as a doctoral student – he regretted asking Josh for help with the abductor’s letter – it would only make his reassignment more difficult. Fennimore picked up the folder.
Inside were at least a hundred sheets of paper: computer print-outs of online articles; downloads from national newspapers; photocopies from the archives of the Essex Chronicle, Lazko’s own newspaper. The first article was dated six years earlier. Under the banner CONSPIRACY BROTHERS ACQUITTED, a group shot in front of Chelmsford Crown Court: three men, one of them not much older than a boy. The caption read, ‘Collins family “jubilant”’. He scanned the text – the three had been accused of conspiracy to evade excise duty, but the case had collapsed after k
ey witnesses disappeared. No mention of Josh, though. The exonerated brothers were Greg (32), Liam (30) and Sean (17). Could Sean be Josh Brown?
The Collins family’s notoriety carried far beyond the borders of Essex, and reading the journalist’s catalogue of previous arrests and prosecutions, Fennimore was reminded that he himself had been involved tangentially as a forensic scientist at the National Crime Faculty, analysing evidence in a few of the cases.
He thumbed through the bundle of papers: smuggling offences, harassment, assault, threats against witnesses and money laundering. ‘All but three prosecutions failed,’ Lazko had written in the margin.
Three? Fennimore had only counted two.
He turned to the back of the folder and found four sheets paper-clipped together. On the top, a photocopied newspaper clipping, dated five years before. The headline: MURDER TRIAL BOMBSHELL – COLLINS BROTHERS ARRESTED. Fennimore skimmed the report. Ahmed Azan, a British national, had been on trial for the abduction, torture and murder of his business partner, Bangladeshi Deepak Hafiz. Torture implements had been discovered at Azan’s house, together with the gun used to kill Mr Hafiz. The two had been involved in a smuggling operation, bringing shisha tobacco into the UK from Dubai. The tobacco was legal. Avoiding Customs and Excise, however, was not. The prosecution’s case was that the two men had fallen out over percentage shares of the profits, Mr Hafiz had hidden the stash of goods and Mr Azan had tried to torture its whereabouts out of his former partner. But on the third day of the trial, Liam Collins and another brother, Steve, both known associates of Azan, were arrested in a dawn raid on the family home.
New evidence took the police to the hidden contraband – in a Southend-on-Sea lock-up owned by the Collins family. Audio evidence emerged of the two brothers giving details of the torture, murder and disposal of Mr Hafiz’s body. But most damning of all, Sean Collins, eighteen-year-old brother of the two men, gave an eyewitness account, stating that they, and not Mr Azan, had carried out the abduction and murder of Hafiz.
Fennimore stared at the intense young man in the photograph. So Josh Brown was really Sean Collins.
Truth Will Out Page 11
