He Knows Your Secrets

by Charlie Gallagher

  Maddie’s eyes continued along the line. Next was a small plastic fob, bullet shaped and attached to a key ring. Next to that was the number twelve, beaten out of thin metal, and then a small book that looked new. Brightly coloured with a picture of a bird on the front, it was labelled Addresses.

  ‘Anything in there that might assist with next of kin? I’ve been told we’ve got nothing so far.’

  ‘There are a few addresses written out. No clue as to who lives in them, nothing else that I could see but I only flicked through it briefly.’

  ‘No problem. I’ll have a look later.’

  ‘There are still a few more bits that came out of the bag that need seizing. There’s a handwritten list of something on some lined paper — looks like initials to me but, whatever it is, it’s not going to answer any questions. If anything you’re just getting more questions here.’

  Maddie was drawn back to the car, her interest waning in the random items that Holly Maguire had in her possession in her last moments. Maddie found herself considering that if it was all that she owned in the world, that might fit with the picture other officers had painted of her: a drug-taking prostitute leading a chaotic life. But whatever she had been in life, she didn’t deserve this as an end. Maddie’s mind flashed with the unimaginable fear of going over that cliff, of the car rolling forward, of the tipping point playing out in near slow motion so the occupants could see what was coming and how they would know it was too late to stop it. Charley’s voice pulled her back.

  ‘There’s nothing that stands out from a forensics’ point of view I’m afraid.’

  ‘Okay, then.’

  ‘The rucksack itself, too . . . It looks like a kid’s one to me. It just doesn’t strike me as the sort of thing an adult might choose?’

  Maddie looked at the rucksack for the first time in any real detail. It was pale yellow with a rounded pocket on the front, the top half of which was covered in glittery sequins, while the bottom half had a small image that looked like an ice cream cone with a rainbow on top. The word ‘Smiggle’ was written on a pendant that hung from the zip. Charley had a point. Maddie took her book out to make a note of what she could see.

  ‘Don’t worry about that,’ Charley said. ‘I’m running an exhibits register. I’ll scan a copy across when I get back to the office. I’m nearly done here.’

  ‘I can book them in, if you like? Just leave them with the register on my desk. I should probably have a proper look. Anything else loose found in the car?’

  Charley shrugged. ‘It’s been searched as well as I can. I did speak with a PolSA who said he could put search-trained officers into it but it’s a lump of twisted metal . . . we’re not going to be able to say there isn’t something tucked up in the rear footwell, for example, or thrown a hundred metres from the car as part of the fall. I’ve searched what I can. I’ve dug out an air freshener and I think I’ve got the mobile phone that belonged to the driver. Holly’s mobile was in her pocket. I seized it but it looked pretty broken. I guess it’s down to you how far you want to go with searches beyond that.’

  ‘I don’t see the need for a search team,’ Harry said. ‘Sounds like it’s all been covered.’

  Maddie turned to him. He was looking away from their scene, his hands pushed into his pockets. She could tell he was lacking enthusiasm. ‘It does,’ she agreed. ‘We did see an ashtray at the scene — it had blood on it. Not a great surprise, I appreciate, but that isn’t here?’

  ‘It’s in the CSI office. I swabbed it at the scene but had to book it in separately to send the sample off. When I got it on the table in the office I picked out a hair from one of the cracks, too.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Meaning it must have hit one of them — the driver, I would say, from the colour. But an object like that loose in the car would have been flying around the interior for sure. No way of saying it didn’t strike him then.’

  ‘Or it could have been used as a weapon? Before it went over the cliff?’

  ‘If I found it in another scene, I would be pointing it out as a possible weapon. Not here, though. I’ve sent it away to make sure the blood and the hair matches one or both of the two victims. I don’t want to be red-faced when you search their homes and another body turns up! Not much else I can tell you, though.’

  ‘I guess not. And no signs of any other bodies, thankfully.’

  ‘A sex act gone wrong would make sense, then. Like uniform were saying?’ Charley shrugged again. ‘Not that it’s my job to talk about what makes sense.’

  ‘Well, I suppose it does. I was hoping for something else from the car, though — a used condom . . . some sort of sex toy or a restraint . . . Anything, really.’

  Charley was clearly battling laughter. ‘Sorry . . . there are too many obvious jokes!’

  ‘Obvious means not necessary,’ Harry growled. ‘Right, we need to go and see a taxi firm about a driver. Are we done here, DS Ives?’

  Maddie was doing her best to stifle her own laughter. She nodded. ‘Yeah, I think we should stop now, before we continue with my wish list for a Saturday night.’

  ‘Let’s get going, then.’ Harry’s straight answer seemed to be the final word. Maddie shot a hurried glance at Charley, and both squealed with laughter.

  * * *

  Maddie surveyed the occupants of the taxi office from the threshold. Old habits, perhaps. In a previous life, it had been essential to know who was in a room before she entered it. There were only two people. The closest was a young lad with a Staffordshire Bull Terrier without a lead, leaning so far back on the plastic seating he was almost lying down, despite being in a deep conversation with a young woman in the seat next to him. She was bowed forward as though she was about to be sick, but she snapped up when Maddie and Harry moved past. Maddie was greeted at a glass window by an employee who had an instant air of impatience about her. The term ‘greeted’ had to be applied loosely. It was more a toothless attempt at a smile, with no real commitment. When Maddie identified herself as a police officer and asked who was in charge, she only got a shrug. Maddie was aware of the two occupants in the background getting to their feet and filing out. It seemed to take the woman another few minutes to realise that Maddie and Harry were not just going to go away. Finally she said she would go and get someone but gave no idea who that might be. Maddie didn’t think it was going to be the owner of Langthorne Taxis as she had asked. She was quickly proven right.

  ‘Yeah?’ A large man loomed against the glass. He had to bend down to where the small holes were cut to allow for voices to be heard, adding to the overall impression of a caged beast.

  ‘Afternoon. I’m DS Maddie Ives, this is DI Harry Blaker and we were hoping to speak to the owner of the firm here. It’s about what happened yesterday.’

  ‘Yesterday?’ The man’s spoke slowly, his tone suggesting apathy. He wore an off-white t-shirt with the sleeves cut off. He was overweight and his excess fat seemed to be pushing up, flaring his neck out and flushing his face an unhealthy-looking shade of red.

  ‘Yesterday. There was an incident on the clifftop with one of your drivers. I’m sorry—’

  ‘At the bottom I heard.’ The man spoke over the bit where she said how she was sorry for the loss of one of his colleagues. She abandoned that tack; he could hardly present as less bothered.

  ‘Quite. So you know what I am talking about, then.’

  ‘I don’t know nothing. I just drive here.’

  ‘Okay then. I did ask to speak to someone in charge. Who runs the place?’

  ‘He ain’t here.’

  ‘Okay then, who’s running the place today?’

  ‘I am.’

  Maddie wasn’t getting anywhere. Harry had detected it too.

  ‘Where’s Freddie?’ Harry said. He stepped closer to the glass. The man stepped back and shrugged.

  ‘Don’t know no Freddie.’

  ‘Funny, that. He owns this place, I heard. You sure you work here?’ Harry did nothing to
hide the sarcasm in his tone.

  ‘Sure I do. Guess we can’t help you.’

  Maddie took out her business card. There was a gap at the bottom of the glass. She pushed it under, keeping her fingertips on it until the man looked her in the eye.

  ‘Whoever runs this place, can you make sure he gets my card. And ask him to get in touch straight away, I’m sure he doesn’t want us sniffing around.’ She jutted her thumb in a gesture behind her. ‘It seems to be bad for business. He just needs to call. I might even be able to do this over the phone.’

  ‘Alright, love. I’ll do my best, yeah?’

  Maddie waited until they were back in the car before she spoke to her colleague.

  ‘Freddie?’ She was in the driver’s seat. She sat back to make it clear that they weren’t moving until she got an answer.

  ‘Freddie Rickman.’

  ‘First time I’ve heard his name.’ She stared over at him now. He stayed looking forward.

  ‘Mitch sent an update through. They did some digging around NH Cars. It was bought by Freddie Rickman five years ago. That’s when it was changed to Langthorne Taxis. He’s the owner.’

  ‘You didn’t think to mention that before we went in there?’

  ‘Mention it? What for? We need to find out what they knew about their driver — like if he had been acting oddly. Then maybe ask for an opinion on why a ten-year-old ashtray was in the car when they died. Rickman isn’t going to be the right person to ask those questions. Day to day, he won’t have anything to do with running the place. It’s just a place to attach his name to.’

  ‘You know that?’

  ‘I was told a bit about him. There’s plenty of intelligence around him. Seems he’s a career criminal with links to drug supply and prostitution. He’s been arrested five times or more, mostly for violent offences, but he’s always released without charge and really quickly. This place will be one of the ways he tries to make himself look legit. A place to wash his money.’

  ‘Prostitution?’

  ‘He was the owner of a few places that were raided as brothels a few years back.’

  ‘What happened to him?’

  ‘To him? Nothing. As always. He’s just the landlord, don’t forget. He just rents the place out. According to his account, he had no idea what was going on in the building.’

  ‘Of course he didn’t. And you didn’t think to tell me this?’

  ‘Which bit?’

  ‘Jesus, Harry! A suspected sex worker dies in a taxi and you know that the owner of the same taxi firm is involved in prostitution?’

  ‘I don’t know that. There’s nothing recent.’

  ‘You know what I mean!’

  ‘Mitch sent me a brief update as he was finding bits out. He’s going to present a fuller picture to us both. I didn’t see the point in telling you something when you’re going to get it all anyway.’

  ‘This is my job, Harry. I need to know everything. If the DCI calls me with questions and I don’t have the full picture, how does that make me look? Especially if you can tell him more?’

  ‘I’m still the boss, last time I checked at least. I have the overview while this is a major crime enquiry. Which may not be much longer.’

  ‘Not for much longer?’

  ‘That’s what I said. If CID had a skipper covering the weekend like they should have, they would have come out with you. And from what I’ve seen, they would have been left to run it. We don’t investigate misadventure. Or suicide for that matter.’

  ‘Murder-suicide is always attended by Major Crime.’

  ‘And pretty quickly dropped by Major Crime. I know the policy, I also know they’re a waste of our time. We’ll go out with CID . . . we take it if it’s clear it wasn’t a suicide. You can’t tell me we’re clear on anything at the moment.’

  ‘This is my job, however that came about.’

  ‘Until I say it isn’t.’

  ‘So do I not have an input on whether I think it’s misadventure or not?’

  ‘We have a lot of work on at the moment. The Harnett case file — how are you getting on with that?’

  Maddie huffed.

  ‘I take it that means you’re no further along? CPS will lose their patience, Maddie. They’ve already given you two extensions.’

  ‘They keep changing what they need! We both know that case file is a waste of time. I’ll spend the rest of my life getting a bulletproof case together with all defences negated and Justin Harnett will turn up and plead guilty. Why wouldn’t he?’

  The Justin Harnett case was one of Maddie’s more frustrating — and upsetting. Justin Harnett killed his brother but in circumstances that most people who were involved felt was tragic. The two brothers had fought their whole lives — nothing serious, not much more than most brothers who were close in age. On Justin’s thirtieth birthday, he had argued with his younger brother Michael over his plans to go travelling. It was petty. Michael thought Justin should be taking his girlfriend. He called him disrespectful for expecting her to wait for him for six months. Justin lost his temper. He punched his brother once to the face and the combination of that blow and the one to the back of his head as he went down was enough to kill Michael instantly. Justin Harnett had not intended to kill his brother and certainly had not wanted that outcome, but the offence was complete. Charging him with the murder and watching a close family tear itself apart at the seams was one of the darker days in her career. Her motivation to complete the work that would determine Justin’s sentence was very much missing. Part of her thought he had already suffered enough.

  ‘I’ll tell you why he wouldn’t — if he or his brief get a sniff that we are unprepared. The media interest alone should be enough to sharpen you up. This job has the ability to make us look very silly.’

  ‘By us, I take it you mean me.’

  ‘Same thing. The press don’t see us as separate entities. We’re just the police.’

  ‘But we are separate entities. Hence I don’t automatically know what you do — you have to tell me.’

  ‘Noted.’

  ‘What does that mean? Misadventure or not, I’m an investigator. I can’t do that without all the information.’ Maddie twisted the car keys roughly. Her anger was starting to spill over.

  ‘And now you have it. You really think we have something here? We go after bad guys — murderers. There’s no one here to chase.’

  ‘You don’t think Freddie Rickman changes this? Maybe a man who runs a taxi firm to launder his money, a pimp with a penchant for extreme violence, might have a motivation to run that car over a cliff.’

  Harry didn’t answer straight away. ‘I’m not sure I’m seeing a motivation.’

  ‘That’s our job, though, isn’t it? We need to find it. Or at least be sure there isn’t one. So we need to speak to this Rickman fella.’

  ‘If it makes you feel better. Don’t expect to get anything out of him, though.’

  ‘We’ll see. I’m getting a lot of practice at getting information out of people that would only give you half the story.’ Maddie was still fuming, but she cut it there before she overstepped the mark. She pulled out into the traffic.

  ‘You’re right,’ Harry said. ‘It is relevant. I should have told you earlier. Let’s go back and get this full update and we’ll work out where we go from there.’

  ‘We? I’m quite happy to do this on my own.’ Maddie spoke a little softer. ‘I’m the one who needs to be convinced. I’m just not yet.’

  ‘I know. But you don’t go and see this man alone. He’s a nasty piece of work, from what we do know.’

  ‘All the more reason to go and speak with him, then. And throwing someone over a cliff? That would be pretty nasty, Harry.’

  Chapter 14

  Kelly stopped a few paces short of the communal door to Truro House. She knew she was going to have to go in, but she always felt better for taking a moment. Previously it was always Holly who would lead the way. She had her own fob to open the door and she w
ould hold it open while Kelly took her moment, her face a reassuring smile the whole time. How she missed that! How could anything ever be okay now? She suddenly felt a surge of anger towards Holly for leaving her to do this alone.

  ‘How could you?’ she hissed at the door. It instantly clicked and flexed in its housing as if it had unlocked to the sound of her voice. But she knew better, she knew that someone was watching the camera that was concealed in a glass dome above the door. She stepped forward and pushed through it, stopping again on the threshold, waiting for Benny to detach himself from the shadows. There was nothing — no movement, no sounds. Nothing — just the scuff of her shoe leather as she started up the stairs. The anger was fading now to be replaced by that familiar knot of fear in the pit of her stomach. She didn’t know what to expect. She mouthed words of a prayer that she would at least be working on her own.

  She made it up the two flights of stairs to the corridor that would lead her to Flat 12. She took in the passing numbers like she always did, slowing as she passed Flat 10 — like she always did. The door to Flat 12 was shut this time. She dipped the handle. It was locked. She stepped back, confused, her eyes running over the door, resting on the spy hole that was just above where she could now see a faint outline of the number 12 that was seemingly written in dust. She put her hands on her hips, staring at the spy hole, waiting for someone to open it. She wasn’t in the mood for games. A door opened, not the one in front of her, but of the flat to her left. Benny stepped out from it, his usual leering smile plastered across his face.