Everyone Lies (14 page)

‘We could do those in twenty-four hours,’ Fennimore said.

‘Thanks, Nick. I’ll courier them to you and send on the rest as they turn up.’

She ended the call and walked two doors down from her own office to the CID room. It was empty, except for Detective Sergeant Renwick who was sipping coffee, and Ella Moran, typing up her notes from the interview with Jordan.

Renwick was forty-two; recently divorced, he was a member of the GMP cycling club, he used the gym at headquarters regularly and kept himself in trim. He dressed like a business rep, favouring bold striped shirts and ties.

‘Looking for anyone in particular, boss?’ Renwick swung his office chair to face her.

‘You were in drugs, weren’t you?’ she said, remembering his signature on Jordan’s witness statement, the hopelessness in Jordan’s face when she said, ‘Who’s gonna listen to a smackhead?’

He looked momentarily flustered and she said, ‘Come on, Renwick, it’s not a trick question.’

‘Four years,’ he said. ‘Why?’

‘Were you involved in Snowstorm?’

His eyes searched her face. ‘You think Snowstorm is linked to our OD vics?’

Moran looked up from her computer screen, but Simms kept her eyes on Renwick and raised an eyebrow, waiting for an answer to her question.

‘Yes, I was in on Snowstorm,’ he said. ‘Four and a half million—’

‘Thanks,’ she interrupted, ‘I’ve heard the press release. Did you shut down the local operators?’

In the silence that followed, she heard the soft click of Moran’s typing, but she seemed to have lost her rhythm.

‘We got the transporter – a local haulage firm that was going under when the recession hit, then miraculously started turning a profit.’

‘You didn’t get the wholesalers, the suppliers?’

He seemed embarrassed. ‘It was all a bit last minute. Customs got a tip-off something was coming through. Just the name of the haulier and the number of vehicles – Day’s Haulage, based in Salford, which is why we got drafted in to handle this end. We let the trucks through in the hope the suppliers would show up at the warehouse.’

‘But they didn’t.’

‘No. Steve Day said he ran the whole thing. His drivers backed him up.’

‘But you didn’t believe him.’

He stuck his chin out and grazed the back of his hand along the edge of his jaw, thinking, his gaze locked on something halfway across the office. A second or two later he shrugged as if to say,
What the hell.

‘If you want my opinion, Steve Day hasn’t got the nous. I think he’s so shit scared he’d rather do a life sentence than give up his bosses’ names.’

One more piece in the puzzle
, she thought.

‘You don’t mind me asking, why the interest?’ Renwick said. ‘Snowstorm is someone else’s problem.’

‘Not any more.’

‘How d’you mean?’

She looked at them both; DC Moran had stopped working on her report altogether, and was waiting for her answer with just as much curiosity as Renwick. ‘Because when Snowstorm took thirty kilograms of their goods at a stroke, I think Day’s bosses started bulking their reserves with penicillin.’

14

‘
Gambling is a principle inherent in nature.
’

EDMUND BURKE

‘Diane B., aged sixty-nine, found in the back garden of her home in West Yorkshire. Cause of death: exsanguination.’

Nick Fennimore pulled up the next slide on his PowerPoint presentation. It showed a plump woman lying on her back on a lawn; she was fully clothed, her head turned slightly to the right, the collar of her blouse stained red. She had been partly covered with a housecoat, and three pink spots had seeped through from beneath it. A red-brown streak, like a question mark, stained the patch of grass above her right shoulder.

‘Diane was a chronic alcoholic. She was on prescribed diazepam, and she had a volatile relationship with her husband – also alcoholic. Their arguments were frequent and violent.’

The greenhouse itself was wood-framed and rank with weeds and clumps of grass. A green plastic patio chair stood at the far end, next to a bundle of clear plastic and a few discarded plant pots.

He clicked to a post-mortem close-up. ‘You can see the stab marks in her neck, here. The distance between the two puncture marks was five centimetres. A pair of scissors found near the body matched the wounds.’

Fennimore was talking to forty-plus MSc and PhD Forensic Psychology students at Manchester Metropolitan University. A smattering of academics had turned out alongside the mixture of new graduates and older students, some of whom were serving police officers or data analysts retraining for a career step-up. This was an introduction to working with professionals in related disciplines. He had shown them two other case studies, demonstrating how Bayesian analysis helped in making investigative decisions. He had given them a brief history of his own unusual career path: failed genetics student; successful gambler; betting agent, Scene of Crime Officer; chemistry graduate, toxicology specialist, three years as scientific advisor to the National Crime Faculty. Now a scientific consultant, reviewing cold cases, with a particular interest in miscarriages of justice. They already knew his academic credentials.

‘The investigative team had formed two hypotheses – murder, or accident. They arrested the husband. But surely there was a third explanation.’ He gave them a moment to form their own hypotheses before naming his: ‘Suicide.

‘I worked with a clinical psychologist on this one – we performed a joint physical evidence and behavioural review. He said there was little to suggest she’d been suicidal. Before you ask, no, I didn’t forget to mention she was an alcoholic taking prescribed anxiolytics. But she’d made none of the preliminary arrangements you would expect of a suicide; there was no recent history of self-harm – in fact no recent change in behaviour at all – no tentative wounds. And no note. Plus, women in her age group are more likely to choose self-poisoning, rather than violent means.’

The next image was just outside the greenhouse. The victim’s slippers sat neatly on the grass; the insoles and fur trim were spotted with blood. ‘The drip pattern suggests she was standing – those nice round splodges indicate that the blood dropped vertically, and not as a result of impact or cast-off from a weapon.’

He used a laser pointer to circle the top left corner of the photograph, where one of the slippers was partially hidden by a clump of weeds. ‘For the botanists among you, that blood-spattered clump of vegetation is hedge mustard. You’ll see that it’s also flattened. She – or her assailant – pulled the scissors out. She clamped her hand to her neck, staggered about a bit, stepped out of the slippers at some point, fell backwards.’ He clicked to the next slide, showing Diane B.’s body a short distance from her slippers. ‘In this instance, blood distribution would be the same for accidental self-injury or attack, and the pathologist suggested an accidental cause was “most unlikely” – hence the husband’s arrest for murder.

‘All of this was pre-Bayes.’ He smiled. ‘But you know I like my stats.’ They did for sure – about fifty copies of
Bad Stats and Crap Shoots
were stacked on a table just outside the lecture theatre, with a keen bookseller ready to take their money.

‘I wondered what the odds were on accident versus murder. I went to SCAS – that’s the Serious Crime Analysis Section. It had three hundred and thirty-two murders on file. In six, the murder weapon was a pair of scissors. All involved multiple stab wounds.’

He caught a couple of frowns of disapproval among the academics. ‘I know, small sample size – I accept your silent disapproval – so I asked International ViCLAS for some data.’ This was the Violent Crime Linkage Analysis System, a computerized tool used by police forces across Europe and in Canada. ‘Of about nine thousand homicides, three thousand were stabbings – but just ten of those were with scissors – it’s just not a popular weapon. Of those ten, all the victims were stabbed multiple times. All of them.’

He paused. ‘But Diane B. had been struck just once – no sign of struggle, no defensive wounds, abrasions or other injuries.’

He saw a few accepting nods in the audience.

He clicked to the post-mortem slide again. ‘Mrs B. has two puncture marks – both blades penetrated her neck equally, so the fatal injury was caused by one blow, with the scissors held only
partly
open. The wounds are at right angles on the left side of the neck. The pathologist said it would be impossible to produce those wounds accidentally, because Mrs B. was right-handed. Try it for yourselves.’ They did, and there was a satisfied murmur of agreement.

He frowned at his audience. ‘Looks bad for Mr B., doesn’t it?’

He circled the puncture marks on the post-mortem photograph with the laser pointer. ‘And those wounds are unusual, aren’t they? Hard to imagine how she could have done that to herself. Diane and Mr B. had been arguing shortly before she died. Objects were thrown. Even worse for Mr B., the pathologist said that adaptive functionality ruled out an accidental stumble. You know – the drunk who places his feet very carefully, talks a tad slower, but without a hint of slur, and drives very,
very
precisely.’

He got a few smiles of recognition. Those who’d taken the academic route would be recalling sources, articles, psychosocial theories – or their own undergraduate binges. The police in the audience would know it from experience – policing city centres on Saturday nights, or battling their own demons – or perhaps a bit of both.

‘At that time, I was a Forensic Science Service toxicologist. I completely disagreed with the pathologist’s evaluation. Mrs B.’s blood contained three times the legal limit of alcohol for driving – as well as diazepam in the moderate therapeutic range. She was drunk and drugged.

‘Now, a habitual drunk might be able to walk a line, speak clearly, drive apparently well. But challenge that careful, conscious control with a change in conversation, a slight jostling of an elbow, someone braking suddenly and all equilibrium is lost – disaster quickly follows.’ He could see them anticipating his report conclusions, but still not quite able to reconcile the facts with an accident.

‘Mrs B. had been taking cuttings from her geraniums, so she was holding scissors.’ He picked up a pair of kitchen scissors he’d laid out ready on the bench, holding them in his right hand as if he was about to use them to cut paper. ‘She’s on her way out of the greenhouse.’

He clicked to a photograph of the greenhouse interior, looking towards the door. A few sorry-looking geraniums cluttered a wooden bench along one side; beyond that, the doorframe cast a faint shadow over two loops of blood on the packed earth floor.

‘Notice the uneven surface.’ He circled the lumps and bumps with his laser light. ‘Add into the equation alcohol, diazepam, the well-worn slippers, a slight lip at the base of the frame; she catches her toe, puts her hand against the frame to save herself.’ He mimed the action. ‘It’s a natural reflex to spread the palm and fingers to try to regain balance.’ The scissors in his hands were now partly open. ‘This wedges the handles against the frame at shoulder height, with the points of the blades turned straight towards the holder.’ He continued the mimed fall, only turning his head away as the points approached his face. Now the tips of the blades pricked the left side of his neck, and they could see that the momentum of the fall would drive the blades deep into the flesh.

‘Accidental death suddenly looks a far more likely explanation.’

There was a murmur of approval in the room. Fennimore closed the blades and placed the scissors thoughtfully on the bench.

‘So—’

The lecture theatre door opened and Kate Simms stepped through. Fennimore took a breath and experienced a momentary dizziness. He hadn’t told Kate of his visit to the city – pure cowardice – he was scared of the emotions that seeing her face to face would stir up.

A slight rumble from the audience made him realize he’d made a misstep of his own, and he dragged his eyes from Kate to the expectant faces in the auditorium.

‘It’s still speculation.’ Judging by the dead-eyed look, this was from an ex-cop; the type that had barnacles encrusted around the heart. ‘Opinion.’

‘Backed by statistics,’ Fennimore said, mildly. ‘Accidental injury can happen to anyone – which in the UK gives you a pool of around sixty-one million possible candidates. The murder pool, by comparison, is fewer than a thousand a year, so even if Mrs B.’s injuries are a hundred times more likely to be malicious than accidental, it’s still
six hundred
times more likely that this was an accident.’

‘You’re saying it must be an accident because murders are rare? But people
are
murdered, Professor.’

‘And the statistical rarity of murder is not accepted as a defence argument. Fair point,’ Fennimore said. ‘So, we go back to the evidence.’

He pulled up the slide he’d been saving till last. ‘Reexamination of the scene photographs of the greenhouse revealed apparent shallow indentations on the left-hand doorframe, five feet from the ground.’ He highlighted the marks with the pointer. ‘These were a physical match to the scissor handles.’

He’d been relishing this moment, yet he delivered the coup de grâce with his eyes on Kate Simms: ‘The coroner’s verdict was accidental death.’

He left them to study the slide while he studied Kate. Now that he’d got over the shock of seeing her, he found himself unexpectedly cheered by her presence and he had to curb a foolish impulse to grin. It was as if a tight cord had unravelled from around his chest; and he felt unreasonably happy.

She wore a trouser suit – she’d probably come straight from work – and it fitted her perfectly. Kate used exercise for stress relief, and she had the lean physique of a distance runner. He could see from the way she held herself that she was pissed off.
Possibly with me
, he thought.
Ah, well.

‘I’m often consulted in cases that have already been investigated by scientists, police, pathologists, psychologists. I’m no cleverer than they are, but perhaps I think differently.’ He shrugged his shoulders in a practised gesture of self-deprecation. ‘I have been called weird.’