The Lying Kind: A totally gripping crime thriller

by Alison James

  Rachel adjusted her position on the bench, but he still wouldn’t look at her. She stood up and leaned on the wall in an attempt to give him thinking space. ‘Which was?’

  ‘We didn’t get told the sex when we had the antenatal scan done: Michelle claimed she wanted to be surprised. But she was convinced it was a girl. She decorated the nursery all pink. And then he was born, and he was a boy, and she just didn’t want to know. I mean, she looked after him. Gave him a bottle and changed him. But she didn’t, you know…’

  ‘Bond with him?’

  ‘Yeah. They didn’t bond. She pretty much ignored him. I thought that was just Michelle: she’s not exactly the cuddly type. But then she was quite different around Lola when she was a baby, and that got me thinking… I remember in particular this one night when I got back from work and she was bathing Olly, and his head was under the water. She lifted him out again when I came into the bathroom, said she was just washing his hair—’

  ‘You thought she might be trying to drown him?’ Brickall interjected, blunt as ever.

  ‘Who knows? Michelle could twist things, and she got so defensive if you ever suggested she was doing anything wrong. She was furious that night; said I was crazy to suggest she could hurt a baby. I remember that bit particularly: it was “a” baby, not “my” baby or “our” baby… But she was pestering me and pestering me, from the day of her six-week postnatal check, you know – to get her knocked up again. I said it was too soon to be thinking about another one, and of course that led to yet another row. So many rows.’ He sighed and ran his fingers through what was left of his hair. ‘Long after Olly’s death, it came back to me what she’d said during that particular argument.’ He lifted his face and looked straight at Rachel. ‘She said: “I don’t want a boy. I want a girl. I’m not going to stop until I get my little girl.”’

  Twenty

  Rachel had once again cancelled a training session with Howard.

  Unfortunately, by the time she returned home the same evening, exhausted but with her brain buzzing, she had forgotten this. Grabbing her kitbag and a swimming costume, she headed to the gym, only to walk straight into Howard as she entered through the building’s revolving door.

  ‘Well, this is awkward.’ She thought she might as well address the large, adulterous elephant in the room.

  ‘Rachel, about what happened…’

  ‘It’s fine. No big deal.’ She tried to dodge round him, but he filled too much space.

  ‘Can we please just talk about it over a cup of coffee?’ He indicated the café area to one side of the reception desk.

  Rachel sighed. The last thing she wanted was a heart-to-heart with an inadvisable one-night stand. On the other hand, if they were going to keep on bumping into each other, it would be best to clear the air.

  They sat in one of the ceiling-height windows overlooking a playing field, where a floodlit game of five-a-side football was under way. Rachel asked for a hot chocolate, and when Howard brought it over to their table it was buried under whipped cream and mini marshmallows. She set about removing them with a spoon, the task giving her an excuse not to look him in the eye.

  ‘The thing is, Howard,’ she said firmly, ‘I’d had an awful lot to drink the other evening. I probably wouldn’t have been so reckless if I hadn’t.’

  His expression was mildly disappointed.

  ‘Come on, admit it,’ she went on. ‘Sleeping with me wasn’t the best idea. I’m a client. And you’re married.’

  ‘For the time being,’ he said grimly.

  ‘Things that bad?’

  ‘We haven’t resolved the baby issue. She acts like she doesn’t want me, but she’s so paranoid every time I leave the house. Suspicious.’

  ‘Well you can relax, on my part at least. I’m not going to make waves. Luckily you picked the most commitment-averse woman in London for your one-night stand.’

  He did relax, enough to laugh at this. ‘Fair enough.’

  ‘And it was…fun.’ She smiled as she recalled the heavy, solid feel of him. ‘But speaking of making waves, you haven’t been…’ More awkwardness. For a few seconds she concentrated on arranging the marshmallows in a neat row along the edge of her saucer. Best to just come out with it. ‘Have you been phoning me and withholding your number?’

  Howard’s horrified expression was the only answer she needed. She had been interviewing suspects long enough to know that you couldn’t fake a reaction like that. ‘Christ, no! Why would I do that? If I wanted to speak to you, I’d just call you and leave a message; all above board. Withholding your number’s creepy. Not my style at all.’

  ‘It’s fine, I believe you.’ She touched his wrist briefly and looked into his pale blue eyes. ‘Someone’s been making nuisance calls to my mobile and it started after that night we…’

  ‘Not me, honest to God.’ He placed a giant paw on his equally impressive pectoral. ‘Hand on heart.’

  Rachel stood up, kissing him swiftly on the cheek. ‘I’ve got to go, but… good chat.’

  ‘Our indiscretion is in the past.’ Howard gave her a conspiratorial wink. ‘Even if it’s not quite forgotten.’

  * * *

  The following morning, Rachel carried out one of her now habitual checks on the Lola Jade Facebook page. TruthTella had been at it again.

  Lola Jade hasn’t gone very far. And I’ve got proof.

  The other site visitors had stopped responding to her taunts, deciding that if she was ignored, she would go away.

  The phone on Rachel’s desk rang. It was Donna, the Tinworth Street receptionist.

  ‘Is Detective Sergeant Brickall there? Only he’s not answering his extension and there’s a man in reception who wants to speak to him.’

  ‘He’s in the building somewhere,’ Rachel told her. ‘I’ll send him down.’

  She tore herself away from her screen and went in search of Brickall. He was sitting in the office kitchen morosely nursing a mug of instant coffee.

  ‘Someone to see you in reception.’

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘How do I know? I may leap tall buildings in a single bound, but I haven’t mastered X-ray vision.’

  ‘Can’t you go down?’

  ‘No. That’s what I have you for. Jesus, Detective Sergeant, sometimes you’re as much use as an ice tray in an igloo.’

  Still grumbling, Brickall disappeared. When he returned, thirty minutes later, it was with a bit more of a spring in his step.

  ‘Well, that was interesting.’

  ‘Because?’

  ‘The man who wanted to talk to me was our missing gumshoe – Mr Mike Booker. He does exist. He’s the real deal.’

  Rachel set down her pen. ‘A classic turn-up for the books, just like in the best TV cop dramas.’

  ‘For what books? Never known what that expression means… Anyway, the place was locked up because he was away for a couple of weeks in Swindon, on a case. All legit; he showed me the paperwork. When he got back, he found the card I shoved through the letter box and got in touch.’

  ‘Interesting. And what did he have to say about the elusive Mrs Harper.’

  ‘That bit’s even more interesting.’ Brickall dropped into his chair, slapping his notepad on the table for emphasis. ‘Never met the woman. Never spoken to her and never been hired by her. And more importantly, never been paid fourteen grand by her. Or sixteen, or however much it was supposed to be.’

  ‘So Michelle lied to us. Again.’

  ‘No big surprise there, Sherlock.’

  Rachel frowned. ‘In that case, what’s she done with the rest of that money?’

  ‘When we interview her, I guess we’ll find out.’

  But Rachel was shaking her head. ‘We’re not going to do that. Not yet anyway. Because you know that if we do, she’ll just come up with another lie: she got the name wrong, or Booker’s not being truthful, or whatever. We need to come at this from a completely different angle, and hope we can get something watertight that way.�
��

  Brickall was sceptical. ‘By doing what?’

  ‘Tell you on the way. It’s going to involve another drive down to Eastwell.’

  Brickall sighed heavily. ‘I was afraid you were going to say that.’

  * * *

  ‘Where are we going this time?’ Brickall asked as they set off on their ninth joint road trip along the clogged London-to-Brighton trunk road. It was a dour, squally early-December day, with damp leaves blowing on to the car windscreen and sticking there. ‘Michelle’s house or Lisa’s?’

  ‘Neither. Eastwell nick. When we were there last time, I asked them to go through the CCTV from the shop opposite Happy Nails, and Leila Rajavi just emailed to tell me they’d found something.’

  While she was checking the contents of her inbox that morning, Rachel had also emailed Lee Knightley and asked him to try and track down TruthTella’s identity. Statistically the odds were on him or her being a crank, a fantasist, but it still seemed worth investigating.

  Rajavi led them into a vacant interview room and set up a computer monitor, arranging chairs in front of it so that Rachel and Brickall could watch the footage.

  ‘The shop has an old-fashioned analogue system where you take out tapes and replace them with a fresh one when they get full. The owners were in the habit of keeping the tapes for several months before recording over them, rotating and re-recording in a loop. This is from late June.’ She pressed play.

  The image was of mediocre quality, but clear enough to show Michelle sitting across from a woman at one of the manicure tables. The time stamp showed that it was 8.30 in the evening, and there was no one else in the salon. The woman, who looked somewhere between thirty and forty, had her hair in a ponytail and was still wearing a parka, as though she didn’t intend on staying. She and Michelle spoke for a few seconds, then Michelle went out of the room, heading in the direction of the office, where the safe was kept. She came back thirty seconds later with a bulging envelope, which she handed to the other woman. The woman took out a couple of bundles of notes and started counting them, then, once she had checked them, shoved the envelope into her coat pocket and left the salon.

  ‘So what’s that then?’ asked Brickall. ‘A bung? A bribe? Blackmail?’

  ‘We don’t know yet,’ said Rajavi. ‘It might not be any of those things. But we do know who this woman is.’ She brought up another file, which showed footage from further down the street, recorded the same evening. The woman in the parka climbed into a small, rust-streaked hatchback along from the nail salon and drove off. ‘We ran the plate and the car is registered to a Stacey Fisher, of 27 Merrion Drive, Eastwell.’

  ‘Michelle’s online mate,’ said Rachel. ‘At least she’s the one who’s always defending her honour on the Lola Jade message board.’

  ‘Have you spoken to her?’ Brickall asked.

  ‘Not yet. I wanted you to see this first. But we can bring her in now if you like?’

  ‘Excellent idea,’ said Brickall. ‘Send one of your trusty woodentops to get her, if you’d be so kind.’

  * * *

  The best way to describe Stacey Fisher was drab. She had drab mousy-brown hair, a drab complexion and wore a drab khaki top, teamed with the same fur-trimmed parka.

  She was unmoved when DS Rajavi showed her the footage from the salon.

  ‘Yeah, what of it?’

  ‘Michelle Harper is giving you what looks like a considerable sum of money.’

  Fisher shrugged. ‘She owed me it. She bought a washing machine and tumble dryer off me. Seven hundred quid.’

  Rachel thought of the small fitted kitchen in Willow Way, done up by Danny Keen some time ago, and the even smaller kitchen in Lisa’s house in Jubilee Way, which on the most recent search had not featured newly plumbed appliances.

  ‘So where are they now? These machines?’

  Stacey shrugged. ‘Dunno. Didn’t ask.’

  ‘You can’t just hand them over like a packet of biscuits,’ Brickall said. ‘They put concrete in the base of washers, you know. You need a truck to put them in, some muscle to move them… So did she come to your house for them, and who with?’

  Stacey chewed her fingernails, and her neck reddened slightly. ‘Don’t remember. My partner dealt with it.’

  ‘And what happened to the seven hundred pounds?’ asked Rajavi.

  ‘Spent it. On Christmas presents.’

  They let Stacey go, in perfect confidence that she was lying. The CCTV footage suggested bundles of notes that would amount to thousands, but the images weren’t sharp enough to prove it.

  ‘I can try getting them enhanced,’ Rajavi offered. ‘And we can speak to Fisher’s boyfriend about the washing machine story.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Rachel. She was just about to arrange a time for a debrief when her phone rang.

  No Caller ID.

  * * *

  That evening, Rachel went for a long, solitary run, icy drizzle whipping against her cheeks and Lorde playing in her headphones. Her right knee protested but she ploughed on, slipping over the greasy cobbles of Shad Thames until her mind had emptied. After a long, hot shower and a bowl of tofu salad, she sat staring at her phone for a few seconds, then with a heavy exhalation picked it up. It had to be done. She couldn’t avoid the issue of her non-marriage forever.

  Stuart answered after a couple of rings, and sounded full of bonhomie.

  ‘Rae! That’s a coincidence. I was just about to phone you, actually.’

  Rachel was thrown. ‘You were?’

  ‘I was,’ Stuart said, maintaining his amiable tone. ‘As it happens, I’m going to be in London tomorrow, for a symposium at the Royal College. I thought it might be a good idea for us to meet.’

  Rachel’s hackles went up. The last thing she wanted was another attempted interrogation on the sudden end of their union. ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘I’ve got the outline divorce petition; I just thought it would be easier and quicker to agree on the statement of case together. Though since we’ve been separated so long and have no children, it should be pretty straightforward.’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘Unless you’re intending to file for spousal support?’

  ‘Of course not,’ said Rachel hotly. ‘I have a perfectly good income of my own.’

  ‘All right then. The next thing I think you should consider is the name of a solicitor.’ Stuart: in control as ever. ‘Not mandatory; you can represent yourself if you like. Cheaper.’

  ‘Sure,’ said Rachel. ‘Whatever. Let’s try and carve out some time tomorrow.’

  ‘Was that why you phoned me? To ask what was happening with the divorce? Only I’m sorry it’s not been quite as speedy as I hoped it would be: I’ve been lecturing in Singapore.’

  ‘There was something,’ said Rachel. ‘But it can wait until we’re face to face. I’ll see you tomorrow.’

  Twenty-One

  The following morning, Rachel and Mark Brickall had an argument.

  This was not unusual; in fact, it was one of their standard case-solving techniques. They would take opposing positions and find the truth somewhere in between the two.

  ‘I reckon we should get Michelle Harper in again,’ Brickall said, as they sat at their desks ploughing through routine paperwork. Rachel was checking her inbox for word from Lee Knightley about TruthTella for the umpteenth time that day.

  ‘What would that achieve?’ she asked. ‘We know she doesn’t have Lola Jade. We can’t charge her with anything at this point in time.’

  ‘That’s bullshit,’ Brickall hissed. ‘She lied to us about Booker in the course of the investigation: that’s Section 89, perverting the course of justice by wilful obstruction of a police investigation. She’s helped herself to the charity fund: that’s a Section 4 fraud. Fuck it, looks like we could even have her under Section 5 of the Domestic Violence Act: causing or allowing the death of a child.’

  Brickall had an encyclopedic recall of crime statutes, and loved to trot them
out whenever possible.

  ‘There’s the not-so-small matter of evidence.’ Rachel’s tone was calm: the best way to draw the heat from Brickall’s fire. ‘Besides, our first priority still has to be finding out what happened to Lola Jade, and not ruling anything out. We’ve still got Gavin Harper – now a proven criminal – leaving his semen on the bedroom floor. Okay, he says Michelle set him up, but we have zero proof that’s true.’

  Rachel kept her eyes on her screen as she spoke, going to the bookmark for the Find Lola Jade page.

  ‘But if we haul her in and really put the screws on, maybe she’ll cough. Tell us what she did with the rest of the money.’

  ‘Knowing Michelle Harper, I doubt that. She’s probably spent it on handbags and clothes. And if that’s the case, we’ll have her for fraud, I promise. Just not yet.’

  Brickall threw his pen angrily across his desk. ‘Fuck this!’

  Rachel ignored him, as though he was a toddler throwing a tantrum for attention, and turned back to her online search. The previous afternoon, TruthTella had posted again.

  Well, if none of you believe me when I say I know where Lola Jade is, I’m pretty sure the police will!

  ‘Christ,’ said Rachel. ‘This could be interesting. Our online troll’s threatening to come out into the open.’

  Brickall merely grunted. Rachel turned and squinted at him. He was scowling, and for the first time she noticed that he looked paler than usual, and had shadows under his eyes.