Lies That Blind

by Tony Hutchinson

  Showered and changed, Bev wore clean jeans and a dry sweatshirt.

  Tara stomped out of the en suite wearing a tracksuit Bev had bought her and leaned against the doorframe, one leg bent, hand on hip.

  ‘I wouldn’t be seen dead in this.’

  Bev hid her grin under the towel, rubbed her hair harder. That was exactly why she had bought it; four coast-to-coast walkers were staying in the pub tonight and she didn’t want Tara flashing her eyes when they went down for food.

  Bev put the towel on the bed, tapped out a text and pressed send.

  The message was refused passage into cyberland.

  She cursed the fells, the thick stone walls and the impassive rain.

  Bev walked to the window, held the phone aloft and pressed send again. This time the apologetic message cancelling the date pinged on its way. Probably for the best. He was too young for her.

  ‘Right, let’s crack on,’ Bev said.

  She put two cassettes into the portable tape machine, pressed the button and waited for the long beep to finish.

  ‘Okay Tara. The time is 6.05pm on Sunday 1st November 2015. I am DC Bev Summers and for the benefit of the tape, you are?

  ‘Tara Paxman’

  ‘Okay Tara. I want you to tell me exactly what you told Detective Chief Inspector Parker.’

  The security light above the double garage illuminated the lush green lawn either side of the path, the grass straight out of an advert for chemical feeds.

  Megan Redwood had a houseful of people and the noise from the back garden hinted that the party was bigger than the parked cars in the street suggested.

  Normally, Sam wouldn’t be dragging Shane ‘Tucky’ Walton out of the office, but after Ed’s suspension nothing was normal.

  Knocking would be futile. Sam guessed the front door would be unlocked and it was. She stepped inside. Shane followed.

  A skinny, giggling forty-something blonde ran along the hallway chased by a man half her age. They both skidded to a halt when they saw Sam.

  ‘Megan,’ the blonde shouted. ‘New people.’

  The young guy slapped her on the backside, and she was off running again, this time up the stairs, shrieking as she took them two at a time.

  ‘Hi,’ Megan said, walking towards them, a large glass of white wine in her hand. She glanced at the stairs.

  ‘I see you’ve met Frances. Lives next door. Husband left her for a younger model, and now she’s taking a few younger models of her own for a spin. Always seems to have plenty, but whether that’s her or her money…’ Megan grinned. ‘What a bitch I am. And it’s not Frances now, it’s Franky.’

  Megan snorted then giggled, a cocktail of drink and nerves.

  A twenty-something girl appeared, iPad in hand. She tapped it a couple of times and ‘Hi Ho Silver Lining’ started belting out from some distant speakers.

  ‘Is there somewhere we could have a private chat?’ Sam asked, wondering whether it was a little early for Jeff Beck.

  Megan nodded. The giggles had gone. Only the nerves remained.

  The small study off the hallway was private, if a little compact for the three of them. Sam spun the chair away from the desk and asked Megan to sit down.

  Sam noticed the screensaver on the desktop Apple Mac, a photograph of Megan and her father on a yacht.

  ‘I’m sorry. We were wrong. You were right. Your dad didn’t fall.’

  Megan’s hand shot over her mouth; her head moved slowly from side to side. She stared at the floor for what felt like five minutes to the detectives, but was probably less than one. Then she rubbed her eyes, looked up at Sam, and spoke. ‘Thank you so much for believing me, I knew he hadn’t fallen in. How did you catch him? I presume it’s a him?’

  She rubbed her eyes again.

  Sam dropped onto her haunches and took hold of Megan’s hand.

  ‘It’s a them,’ she said quietly. ‘It’s part of a wider investigation. I can’t go into too much detail now. I just wanted you to know that things are progressing.’

  ‘Do you think they’ll admit it?’

  ‘It’s early days. I’ll keep you posted.’

  ‘Okay, but what’s your gut instinct?’

  ‘Let’s just wait and see Megan,’ Sam said, understanding Megan’s need for information. Every relative of every homicide victim wanted every detail.

  Megan stood up. ‘Thank you again. I’m just so glad you listened.’

  She wiped her eyes, sniffed, and took a huge deep breath. ‘Now, can I get you a drink?’

  ‘Best not,’ Sam said, moving towards the door, ‘lot to get through yet.’

  Sam walked into the hallway, opened the front door, turned to say goodbye, and was caught off-guard by the lunge and smothering tightness of Megan’s arms around her neck.

  ‘Thank you again. Thank you for believing me.’

  Sam dodged the hanging baskets as she stepped outside and headed for the car, Shane in tow.

  ‘What do you think?’ she asked him. ‘And before you answer, I’m not asking about the blonde.’

  She blinked, focused on the car keys, and kicked herself for mentioning the blonde. Ed would have come back with some quip but she wasn’t with Ed, she was with Shane and he wouldn’t dream of making sexist comments, certainly not to her.

  ‘Megan?’ Shane asked. ‘Seems a nice woman. Think she’ll make a complaint when it’s all out in the open?’

  ‘Probably. It was all set to go to the coroner and get written off as a suicide. What would you do?’

  Sam pressed the remote, the car beeped and the lights flashed.

  She might be wrong but no one could blame Megan given the justification and the failings of the initial investigation.

  ‘Why are we bothered anyway Boss?’ Shane asked now. ‘It’s Mick Wright who’s in the shit.’

  Sam had opened the driver’s door, about to step inside.

  ‘Because Shane, from the outside looking in, it damages the reputation of the Force, not the individual, and I don’t like…’

  Ed’s voice flashed into her head. ‘I thought it was a Service Sam, not a Force.’

  She paused. One hand still on the open door.

  ‘Let’s turn it on its head,’ Sam said, ‘What if Wright’s not as incompetent as we think? What if he just wanted this to go away?’

  Shane ‘Tucky’ Walton felt out of his depth. He had no idea what Sam was thinking.

  ‘Uhmmm.’

  Sam ducked into the car.

  ‘Oh, just ignore me Tucky. It’s the sleep deprivation. I’m seeing corruption everywhere.’

  Chapter 34

  Bev laid on her back in bed, hands behind her head, her mind on Ed Whelan.

  She glanced at the two plates on the bedside table, smears of tomato sauce around the edges, and burped back the fish finger sandwich and chips.

  Her fault. She ate too late.

  Bev had known Ed for more years than she hadn’t. Could he really be bent?

  She kicked off the duvet, her body overheating in the small room, she guessed a consequence of the large radiator and that time of life. Typical that the pub Sam insisted they stay in had only one room available.

  Tara hadn’t mentioned Ed by name, but she had a real downer on male police officers. She’d often overheard conversations about bent cops, no names but always the references to ‘him’ and ‘he’.

  There had been only one exception. Paul Adams.

  Bev couldn’t believe Paul was corrupt; ‘Jack the Lad’ as far as women were concerned, but corrupt?

  She was still trying to make sense of it all. Could she work with corrupt officers and not smell them?

  Tara claimed she had been told to target Paul, said he’d been easy: swayed past him in the pub, made eye contact going to the toilets, more eye contact on the way back and he had followed her to the high bar table and two Manhattan bar stools.

  Bev could believe it. Paul wouldn’t be the first to be led by his trousers.

  Tara ha
d been told he was in there, what he looked like, even what he was wearing.

  They had gone back to her house that night.

  Tara was loyal to Harry Pullman but where did Paul Adams hang his allegiance? Tara didn’t know the answer. At least that’s what she claimed.

  At first blush, Bev knew the allegations against Ed couldn’t be anything to do with last night’s shootings – too soon after the event.

  But what if Ed knew Harry Pullman’s plans in advance? What if he was in on it? Easy enough to set it up it for a night when he was on-call lead negotiator. Ed wasn’t on call last night, that much she’d established, so he’d arranged a swap. Did that mean something had happened to bring the shootings forward?

  Bev closed her eyes, tried to concentrate.

  Paul was maybe going to expose Ed, but what would be the sense in that? Was Ed loyal to a different firm?

  Bev expected sleep to move over her like a warm summer breeze, for tiredness to pull her down to a dreamless dark.

  But her mind wouldn’t let up, the questions snowballing.

  Nothing made sense but one thing was clear. The best way to have someone rubbed out was to get the police to do it for you. Okay, the police hadn’t killed Paul Adams…but they may have killed the person who did.

  Bev rolled over onto the other side, Tara asleep in the other single bed.

  She had watched her peel of the tracksuit. Like Sam she could see why Paul had taken the bait.

  Finally Bev slipped out of bed and stretched. She may as well smoke as toss and turn. She pulled on jeans and a top, walked out of the room, down the stairs and out of the back door. There was surface water everywhere but at least it had stopped raining and it was blissfully cool after the sauna that was masquerading as a bedroom.

  Ed had always got huge amounts of information from informants. Now Bev wondered if that was all part of some grander plan… sacrifice the small fry to keep the bigger fish free.

  She shuffled her feet and savoured her cigarette.

  Then there were the years between Ed leaving the Job and returning. He was out for a decade. Had he really left because his wife wanted him to work in the family-run company? And why come back after so long away?

  Bev could just pick out the outline of something towering above her, dark and foreboding. She couldn’t have named Place Fell for a small fortune, but the vision made her uneasy, something so big and still in the pristine silence.

  Bev Summers was arrow straight but the rank stench of corruption had found her years before.

  She was a probationer, still within her first two years, the point in service when your career could be terminated for ‘not being likely to become an efficient officer’. Nothing to do with pass marks or fitness tests. Just someone who mattered sniffing the wind and deciding your future.

  That was the time Bev had found herself mixed up in the biggest anti-corruption inquiry Eastern Police has ever seen.

  Three officers were convicted of taking bribes. The backhanders were big, each worth more than a month’s salary, and as the Crown Court heard and the Seaton Post faithfully reported, there had been plenty of dirty money to go round.

  Bev’s crime? To be young, naïve and attractive…and to fall for a smooth-talking married detective who was dynamic, exciting and, unknown to Bev, absolutely corrupt.

  She had spent fraught hours in interview rooms pleading her innocence to Complaints and Discipline. The threat of jail was terrifyingly real, the off-stage whispers a soundtrack that seemed to follow her for years.

  No charges had ever been brought against her and now, after so long, Bev almost felt like it had happened to someone else.

  Shivering in the soft rain that had drifted from the fell she looked up towards the summit, sucked hard on the cigarette, and remembered how it had ended.

  The corrupt detectives all worked in the same CID office as Ed Whelan.

  They went to prison. He went to work in the family business.

  Sam was curled up on the large white leather settee, feet underneath her, staring at the latest copy of Yachting Monthly, staring at the same page she had turned to ten minutes ago.

  She had eaten as soon as she got home – overcooked roast beef and soggy mash that took the microwave meal for one to a new culinary low. No point in doing a Nigella for yourself was there?

  At least the bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon from Beaulieu Vineyards in Nappa Valley would be savoured for an hour or two; the meal was already forgotten.

  Sleep wouldn’t come easy tonight. It never did this early in an investigation.

  She pushed herself off the sofa, walked back into the kitchen and poured another glass, remembering the wine moments she shared with Tristram.

  Why aren’t you here? I could talk to you…watch you nodding your head as you listened. Then you’d speak in that deep, soothing voice, a hypnotist’s voice, the sound of reason, easing my fears. Instead I’m left behind. Widowed. Alone.

  What have I got to look forward to? We were going to retire together, sail away. Now what? Nothing. Absolutely nothing but the job and shitty food.

  ‘Fuck the yachts. Fuck the sea,’ she muttered before stomping into the lounge, snatching the magazine off the settee, and throwing it against the wall.

  She made sure her tears didn’t drop into the wine.

  The only light came from the TV, a period drama that held no interest but broke the silence. Tears and wine flowed, sometimes at the same time, until the bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon was empty; the clean ashtray of a few hours ago now home to nine cigarette butts.

  Sam replayed every decision she had made throughout the investigation, questioned what, if anything, she could have done differently.

  She lit cigarette number ten.

  Chapter 35

  Monday 2nd November

  Ed left the bed and breakfast at 6am, ‘Doris’, his 1972 fully restored VW campervan, now in a car park opposite The Victoria Hotel.

  Located about 5 miles south of Whitby on the North Sea, Robin Hood’s Bay and its narrow, cobbled streets twist and turn steeply downwards from the car park to the sandy bay where coast-to coast walkers at the end of their journey drop a pebble they’ve carried from St Bees on the Irish Sea.

  Descending the eerily quiet streets on foot, Ed imagined sailors and fishermen, smugglers and press-gangs, roaming the bay hundreds of years ago.

  He stood outside The Bay Hotel, breathed in the sea air and drizzle and strolled back up to the car park. He winced at the dirt on Doris’ Porsche Fuchs wheels.

  Inside he made a coffee, picked up a Raymond Chandler paperback and waited.

  He didn’t wait long.

  Five pages into ‘The Long Goodbye’ he looked up and saw a local taxi pull onto the car park. Harry Pullman stepped out.

  ‘Kettle on?’ Harry said, opening the side door.

  ‘It is.’

  Harry stepped inside, sat down behind the table.

  ‘So, what’s this about?’

  ‘You know exactly what it’s about,’ Ed said, putting a mug of coffee in front of Pullman.

  ‘I’ve got no idea what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Tara Paxman.’

  ‘A daft tart who’ll say what anybody tells her to say, your lot included. What about her?’

  Ed sat next to him.

  ‘Why did you come then? Something must be bothering you.’

  Harry blew across the top of his mug.

  ‘Maybe I just wanted to look into your eyes, see what a bent bastard looks like.’ He slurped on his coffee. ‘Maybe I want to tip off the local press. Your lot sure as hell won’t.’

  ‘It’ll be in the press soon enough so crack on. See if I’m bothered. But maybe you’re here because you know you’re in the shit? We’ve got Tara.’

  ‘Like I said, a daft tart.’

  Ed tried to read Harry Pullman’s eyes, find the tell-tale tics of doubt, the shadow of fear. ‘A daft tart with a second rabbit suit in her loft.’

 
; Pullman sipped the coffee. ‘What are you on about?’

  He had held Ed’s gaze, eyes steady and clear, but now he looked away.

  ‘Maybe your grand plan hasn’t quite worked out,’ Ed said. ‘Maybe Tara is telling the truth.’

  Pullman looked out of the window, stared at the drizzle.

  ‘It’s too cramped in here for me.’

  He leaned forward, pushed open the door, and moved out of his seat.

  ‘What grand plan?’ he said, stepping out of the van.

  Ed hadn’t moved, just raised his voice a little. ‘We could start with the shootings on Saturday night.’

  Harry Pullman turned to face him so quickly it caught Ed by surprise, veins bulging in his forearms, hot anger coating his words.

  ‘What, the one that’s been all over the news? You think I’ve got something to do with that?’

  Ed’s tone was as laid back as his posture. ‘You have according to Tara.’

  Pullman let the rage melt away, smiled as he shook his head, and sipped his coffee.

  ‘Fucking hell Ed this is bollocks,’ he said. ‘Don’t tell me you think I’m involved because of some shit Tara’s feeding you. What’s she saying now?’

  ‘Plenty.’

  ‘How will that ever stand up? I’m living at the other end of the country in case you’ve forgot. And I’ve got an alibi.’

  Ed was still searching for fear to betray Harry Pullman’s eyes but saw nothing but confidence and calm.

  ‘And we…’ Ed said, before Pullman cut him off.

  ‘Last time I checked you weren’t part of the ‘we’ anymore so cut the bullshit.’

  Ed took a deep breath. ‘Big mistake not getting rid of the suit. Hot as hell them things. Make you sweat a lot I would imagine.’

  Ed drank some coffee. Pullman would know where this was going.

  ‘And where there’s sweat, there’s a boatload of DNA.’

  ‘What suit?’

  Ed smiled.

  ‘Big white rabbit suit.’

  ‘I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.’ Pullman sounded bored but Ed thought it was put on.