Lies That Blind

by Tony Hutchinson

  Sam sat opposite him; Ed was at his side.

  ‘You want a solicitor?’ Sam asked.

  Priest shook his head.

  ‘We’ll make custody arrangements in a little while,’ Sam said.

  Priest nodded.

  It was standard practice to take arrested police officers to custody suites where they would be unknown. In Priest’s case, as a senior officer, that meant in reality going to a different force.

  The sound of the ‘hunting horn’ interrupted them as Ed’s message alert blared.

  He strolled out of the interview room, made a call to Shane Walton in response to the text and walked back moments later.

  ‘Seems Tara left you high and dry.’

  Ed paused to savour the moment.

  ‘Marty Irons too,’ Ed said, sitting down. ‘No honour amongst thieves.’

  Priest said nothing, stared at the small, child-size desk as Ed went on.

  ‘Leonard Moorcroft, let’s just call him Lion, such a great nickname, has made some checks with his mates at other small airfields.’

  Priest looked up, eyes glazed.

  ‘Marty’s plane landed at 5.30am at a field about twenty miles away. Picked up a young, dark-haired girl. No bonus points for guessing who that is.’

  Priest, grey as the weather, wore the ashen ‘I’m fucked face’ a thousand detectives had seen a thousand times.

  Ed continued: ‘The girl arrived in a VW Golf…that’s still there. We’ll get it dusted, but I’m sure we’ll find Tara’s prints. A witness saw her fiddling with a mirror, checking her make-up.’

  Priest licked his licks, his Adam’s apple pulsed.

  ‘I want protection,’ he said, ‘and immunity from prosecution.’

  ‘You’re a long way from that,’ Sam said. ‘Start talking.’

  Priest began a staring match with Sam.

  Sam won.

  Priest looked away and started talking.

  ‘In the early days, Ray Reynolds suspected the ‘Seaton Three’ was a ‘Seaton Four’ and of course he was right. He just kept barking up the wrong tree.’

  Priest glanced sideways at Ed.

  ‘Constantly barking up the Ed Whelan tree,’ Priest said.

  Ed’s mouth said nothing, his face said less.

  ‘Whelan’s wife had plenty of money and his lifestyle, especially in the early days, was always subject to rumour and innuendo. He was the perfect suspect for the fourth man.’

  ‘Why did Ray think there was a fourth?’ Sam said.

  ‘No idea. Maybe he had a grass who told him. Who knows? I never directly said anything to Ray, who I have to say was always charm personified towards Ed, but I dropped little seeds whenever the opportunity arose.’

  ‘You bastard,’ Ed said, pouring all of his hatred into the words.

  ‘How did you get involved with Irons and Co?’ Sam said.

  Priest was like the dam that slowly cracks, his own words a trickle building to a torrent, nothing left to save but his own skin.

  ‘Good question,’ he said. ‘I certainly didn’t fit the corrupt officer profile, but of course that’s how I got away with it for so long. Flying under the radar, so to speak. Your RAF man would like that.’

  ‘How did it start?’ Sam said, hiding her disgust. She despised corruption but she wouldn’t do anything to risk Priest clamming up. Now that he was talking, he was almost enjoying the process.

  ‘It was me with Susan Street, not Whelan,’ Priest said. ‘I saw them coming out of the warehouse. Told them I wanted in or I’d have them arrested. They had no choice.’

  Priest saw Sam’s face, read her thoughts.

  ‘You’re wondering why,’ he said and shrugged.

  ‘Greed…excitement…a sense of belonging, becoming a member of a secret club…and I was loyal to them, had their backs when the shit hit the fan.’

  Priest sat back in his chair. He was as laid back and chatty as a man talking football in the pub.

  It was another movie Sam and Ed had watched before... ‘The Happy Confessor.’

  ‘And did Susan quit for another job or was that another lie?’ Sam said.

  ‘No she quit,’ Priest oblivious now to the put down. ‘Wanted nothing to do with me. She didn’t know anything, but she suspected something was going on.’

  ‘Had you spoken to her recently?’

  ‘Haven’t seen her for years. Read in the paper she’d died.’

  Sam looked at him. Not even the hint of sadness for an old flame extinguished. Another narcissist who couldn’t think of anyone but himself. Her contempt soared.

  Priest carried on talking, the crack widening, the water gathering pace.

  ‘While the lads were in prison I rose through the ranks and the higher I went, the more sensitive the information that came my way. My price to the likes of the Skinners and the Campbells went up and up.’

  Priest paused, smiled. ‘I like to think I was good value though.’

  Sam didn’t want a long interview, wasn’t interested in asking lots of questions. She couldn’t decide whether her skin was crawling because of Priest’s flippant admissions or the lack of air in the cramped room.

  Either way she would make do with the gist for now.

  ‘Luke and Mark Skinner could have informed on me when they were arrested, but they were gambling on me giving them Harry Pullman’s location and their people silencing him.’

  ‘Conspiracy to murder, Chris?’ the words out before Sam could stop them,

  Priest didn’t miss a beat, showed no remorse.

  ‘Without Harry’s testimony they felt they’d be acquitted, a better option than trying to negotiate a lighter sentence for exposing me. No jail being better than less jail.’

  Ed reached behind him and opened the door, the heat stifling in the room not much bigger than a broom cupboard.

  ‘Twice the Skinners botched the hit on Pullman after I tipped them the location,’ Priest in full flow. ‘Fortunately Hugh Campbell, or at least his sons, came in with a better offer. A hostile takeover in business terms.’

  Priest smiled: ‘Very hostile as far as Mark and Luke Skinner were concerned.’

  Cooler air had drifted into the room alongside the sound of a cleaner’s mop and bucket.

  ‘What about Paul Adams?’ Sam asked

  ‘Struck lucky with the name,’ Priest said brightly. ‘I was hoping anybody hearing Pugsley would put two and two together and get five.’

  ‘But I remembered,’ Ed eyed him as he spoke. ‘I remembered you when you were a fat nobody, remembered your nickname.’

  Priest sighed, carried on with his script.

  ‘All those years and nobody had a clue,’ he said, a respectable man remembering happier times. ‘Then one young detective somehow stumbles across my indiscretions. Phoned me when I was in my office. Asked to see me. I thought he was a whistleblower. I couldn’t believe it when he sat down and said he knew I was bent. Bent. That was the word he used. Told me had proof safely tucked away, but I always suspected that was a bluff.’

  ‘Sums you up,’ Ed said, bitterness rising like bile in his mouth.

  Priest ignored the jibe as if Ed had said nothing.

  ‘He wanted money. Five thousand a month. I’ve been paying him for six months now. I didn’t know what he had done with the money so I arranged for the sixty thousand to be planted to make sure you two took the bait.’

  ‘Lester Stephenson?’ Sam asked and regretted it, the flame-ravaged wreckage of the Jaguar and Bev Summers handcuffed and helpless a blinding image behind her eyes.

  ‘Very loyal,’ Priest said.

  Ed couldn’t resist, couldn’t hold back, wanting Priest to hurt.

  ‘No loyalty in dead men,’ he said. ‘Burnt to death on a Lakeland fell.’

  Priest shrugged, remained impassive.

  ‘He had a good innings.’

  Ed got out of his seat, looked out into the corridor. The cleaner was getting closer. He shut the door.

  ‘Tell me abou
t the money you gave Paul,’ Sam said.

  Priest couldn’t have smiled more broadly if had watched a longshot win with his hard earned on the nose.

  ‘Every £20 note he ever received was counterfeit. He was a test purchaser but he never knew. When he spent the money we knew the notes were good enough to go into circulation.’

  Priest stopped, looked around the small room, and then let the torrent run again.

  ‘When I decided 34 years was enough and it was time to retire, a decision had to be made whether Paul took over from me. It was tricky. With me, Hugh Campbell had become used to information a young detective like Paul Adams just couldn’t provide. That made him useless to the Campbells and a danger to me. Hence the plan.’

  ‘What plan?’ Sam asked.

  ‘Hugh and I knew what Tara had been, what she was. Prostitutes are actors and we knew Tara would play her part, from setting up Paul to throwing herself into the helpful arms of the police.’

  ‘How did that work out?’ Ed sneered.

  ‘You always had a good investigative gut Whelan and Sam, well, she’s one of the best. Two variables we couldn’t cater for. Plenty of investigators would have taken everything at face value, not you two. But we had no choice; we had to take our chances.’

  He means that, the sanctimonious prick.

  Ed popped his head into the corridor, saw the cleaner had gone. He left the door open.

  ‘Lester wanted to retire,’ Priest was saying now. ‘His wife was terminally ill. So Lester and Tara get the big pay-off and as a bonus she has the chance to kill the son of the father who abandoned her. The perfect storm really.’

  Sam remembered what Tara had told her, that she had slept with Marcus.

  ‘Did Tara sleep with Marcus?’ she asked.

  Priest laughed. ‘It all helped her story. She befriended him but set him up with Lucy straight away, as she was told. Tara never slept with Marcus. Even she drew the line at having sex with her brother.’

  The interview was already running longer than Sam had wanted, but she knew even the sketch of Priest’s plan wasn’t finished. Exhaustion and the crushing effort of keeping a hold on her grief were sapping her, though.

  ‘Zac Williams had to die, so did Lucy,’ Priest’s voice dragged her back from the edge.

  ‘Why were they selected?’ Sam asked.

  ‘They lived next door. Lucy was a good-looking girl. Zac was the jealous type. Ticked all the boxes.’

  ‘And Sanderson?’ Ed’s turn to prompt.

  ‘Wrong place, wrong time,’ Priest said, ‘although not exactly society’s loss.’

  For the first time, Ed had to agree with him.

  Fatty’s excuse all of his life. Wrong place, wrong time.

  ‘I needed all the loose ends tied up,’ Priest went on. ‘Nothing left to chance.’

  Priest had met Bill Redwood a few times, been seen with him, so he needed to go. He had every faith Inspector Mick ‘Never’ Wright would happily sign it off as an accidental slip from the jetty.

  ‘That’s why I chose a night he was on duty,’ Priest volunteered.

  Sam shook her head, craved a Marlboro.

  ‘And Scott Green?’ she said.

  ‘Should have been simple. Suicide note and off the multi-storey car park. Except of course he escaped.’

  Priest grinned, shook his head.

  ‘And to make things even more damaging I find out he couldn’t write. I still can’t believe nobody told me that. Always the last to know, sadly.’

  ‘Maybe if you’d been a proper detective,’ Ed said, ‘instead of locking up meter thieves.’

  Priest let that barb bounce off him like all the rest.

  ‘Anyway, I couldn’t risk Davy Swan and Jimmy Marshall getting arrested, especially if the old guy in the shop identified them. I met them after I finally got away from Tara’s, made their deaths look like a suicide. Not that it fooled anyone but it was another smoke screen, another drain on dwindling resources.’

  ‘Where did you go when you left them?’

  ‘Tara dropped me off in York. I can give you the name of the hotel, Sam. Nice place. No questions asked if you happened to be checking in with a married man.’

  Sam examined the back of her hand; aware he was playing mind games.

  She looked up, stared at him and thought again about Bev.

  Not a cat in hell’s chance you’ll get immunity you corrupt bastard.

  ‘Were you hiding in Tara’s loft?’’ she asked, eyes giving nothing away.

  ‘I needed to be in the house with Tara. She couldn’t overpower Zac and Lucy by herself even with a gun. She needed me there as insurance.’

  ‘Who did the killing?’

  ‘Tara of course. Scampering back and forward through that loft hatch like a lunatic.’

  Sam would explore that in more depth in a further interview.

  Was it all down to Tara?

  ‘And the Skinners?’ Sam asked.

  ‘The work of Mr Campbell. But of course, having them dead did me no harm. Another loose end.’

  ‘And Marty Irons?’

  Priest told them they had met a few times since Irons was released, mainly in Spain and always away from the tourist hotspots. They had met on Sunday to discuss the final arrangements.

  ‘Where’s Tara now?’ Sam asked him.

  ‘If she’s following the plan, with Marty; they’re flying to Spain then a chartered yacht from the Canaries across the Atlantic. Amazing what pockets full of cash buys without questions.’

  Ed summoned up his sarcasm.

  ‘Couldn’t buy you a seat in the plane could it?’

  Priest was a man past caring, the water almost spent.

  ‘Is that the extent of the plan?’ Sam said.

  ‘Apparently, just to be on the safe side as they’ll be in the tail end of the hurricane season, they’ll sail south to the Azores before turning west towards the Caribbean and Cuba. Then it’s sunshine, salsa and cigars. I know Marty likes a big Havana these days.’

  There was no bitterness in Priest’s voice. The dam was empty.

  Sam and Ed were back at headquarters, their third mugs of coffee on the desk.

  Priest had been ‘housed’ in the cells at a police station in West Yorkshire.

  Sam looked at the wall clock. 8.05am.

  ‘There’s a lot for the interviewers to get stuck into,’ she said.

  ‘Too right,’ Ed stifled a yawn. ‘Lot of planning to do. I want to know what happened to Marcus. Did they tell him to make a run for it and then shoot him in the back?’

  ‘That would fit,’ Sam said. ‘We’ll just have to wait and see. Let’s grab some sleep whilst there’s a lull. Dream of lazy days on a Cuban beach, drinking mojitos and reading Hemingway.’

  ‘Maybe a nice cigar as well,’ Ed mimed lighting up. ‘If it’s good enough for Irons...’

  ‘When did you start smoking?’

  Sam paused, Bev back in her head.

  ‘Me and Bev promised each other we would stop smoking when this job was over.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yep, cough’s getting worse.’

  ‘I never thought I’d see the day,’ Ed could feel her pain. ‘You maybe, but not Bev.’

  He hesitated.

  ‘About sleeping. Am I okay at yours?’

  Sam forced a smile that was weak but from the heart.

  ‘Of course. I’ll let everybody know we’ll be back here at 1pm.’

  She reached for her coat, fumbled in the pockets for her cigarettes and flicked open the packet.

  Empty.

  Maybe now was a good time to keep that promise.

  Acknowledgments

  I would like to thank everyone at Cheshire Cat Books for publishing Lies that Blind.

  A huge thank you as always to Paul Jones, Head of Publishing, for his insightful ideas and help in plot development.

  Thanks to Garry Willey, Head of Editorial, for a line by line forensic examination of the text and the sprin
kling of his ‘literary magic dust’.

  Thanks to the other ‘Cats’ without whom none of this would be possible:

  Adam Maxwell for his IT wizardry; Laura Swaddle for another great cover; Helen Long for her fabulous sub-editing skills; my son Ben for another tremendous cover photograph (Ben Thomas Photography will go far).

  For all the support and encouragement when the end seemed a long way off, my thanks go to my father Ken, my mother Jean, sisters Tania and Tanis, sons Ben and Flynn, and last, but by no means least, my partner Saphron.

  And finally thank you, the reader, for taking the time to read this book. I am always humbled. Without readers, books are just words on a page.

  In memory of Al Hutchinson

  Royal Marine and Raconteur

  Copyright © Tony Hutchinson 2020

  Tony Hutchinson has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1984 to be identified as the author this book.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication maybe reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without prior permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons living or dead, or to actual events is purely coincidental.

  Cover photograph copyright © Ben Hutchinson.

  The book is published by Cheshire Cat Books Ltd

  Suite 50-58 Low Friar Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 5UD.

  ISBN 978-1-9161349-2-8