Everyone Lies (42 page)

‘Josh Brown,’ Simms said. ‘He’s been in the investigation since day one.’

‘Shit,’ he said. ‘
Shit
.’ Parrish paced the floor, squeezing the hat in his hands.

‘Gary,’ Simms said. ‘
Detective Constable Parrish
.’ He stopped for a second. ‘D’you want to tell me what’s got you so wound up?’

He threw his head back and blew air towards the ceiling. ‘You were right,’ he said.

‘About what?’

‘Everything.’ He began pacing again and came up short at the whiteboard. ‘Oh, shit … It’s here. All of it.’

Fennimore’s pulse rate kicked up a notch. He looked from Parrish’s agitated face to the mindmap. In this version, there were three distinct strands: the drugs deaths in black; the murders in red; and the torture strand, coloured purple.

‘It’s good to know, Gary,’ he said. ‘But way too cryptic for me.’

‘Here.’ Parrish pointed to the branch dealing with the penicillin deaths.

On the flip chart next to it, Fennimore had bullet-pointed this strand of the investigation:

PENICILLIN

• Used to:

• Bulk deals

• Due to – loss?

• Snowstorm – confirmed √

• Drug Squad successes

• Bulked by …

• Supplier?

• G Howard?

• F and S Henry?

• Bug?

• A. N. Other?

• Dealer?

• Anthony Newton x – set-up?

He pointed to Anthony Newton’s name at the bottom of the chart. ‘He confessed to causing the penicillin deaths, yeah?’

Simms nodded. ‘After running a red light with
fifteen
wraps of heroin on him.’ She watched him closely. ‘Like he was
trying
to get himself arrested.’

‘Right,’ Parrish agreed. ‘Here’s the weird thing: Dip Newton isn’t a dealer – he’s a driver. Five weeks ago, he drove a vanload of heroin onto Tesco’s car park in Didsbury. He parked it up, walked away. We let him because the plan was to follow the drugs to the warehouse, identify the buyers. When I say “we” I mean the squad. I was on a course at Bramshill, so I wasn’t part of that operation. They had surveillance on the van for ten days. No one collected. Thirty K’s worth of heroin unclaimed on a supermarket car park. Why? Because whoever shipped the drugs knew the van was being watched.’

‘Insider tip-off,’ Fennimore said, and Parrish gave a grim nod.

‘We went looking for Newton after the van was seized, but he was long gone.’

‘So, why’d he come back?’ Fennimore asked. ‘Was he paid to take the fall?’ It was common practice – someone lower down the food chain confessed for a fee, keeping the wheelers and dealers out of prison.

Parrish shook his head. ‘His bank account’s been frozen since his arrest, he’s maxed out on his credit cards, and his wife and son have just been kicked out of their flat. The CPS is about to charge him with the vanload as well – apparently he turned down a deal. I had a word with one of the interviewing officers; they said he was a wreck – traumatized, paranoid, absolutely bricking it. Which is no big surprise – they had to call out the FME when he was arrested.’

‘What was wrong with him?’ Fennimore asked. A Forensic Medical Examiner – formerly ‘Police Surgeon’ – would only be called out if a prisoner was in medical need.

Parrish tugged at the small beard patch on his chin. ‘I looked up the FME’s report.’ He pulled a set of colour photocopies out of his jacket pocket.

Josh cleared a space on the coffee table and they gathered round. In the first image, Dip Newton had the terrified look of a kicked dog. Both eyes were blackened, and he had ligature marks on his wrists.

‘He was tied to a chair and tortured,’ Parrish said.

Further pictures showed puncture wounds, bruises and burns around Newton’s nipples.

Fennimore exhaled. ‘Looks like they attached crocodile clips to his nipples, connected him to an electrical supply.’

Parrish nodded, avoiding eye contact. ‘The damage to his cock and balls – sorry, Boss, I mean, penis and scrotum – was even worse. He’s still pissing through a tube.’

Fennimore winced and Josh crossed his legs.

‘They thought he was the police informer?’ Kate asked.

‘If they did, he must’ve convinced them otherwise, or he’d be in pieces at the bottom of the Manchester Ship Canal by now.’

‘So what
did
he do?’ Fennimore asked.

‘The Crime Scene Unit found an infrared video-cam hidden in a roof ventilator inside the van. It showed Dip Newton nicking a baccy-tin full of smack.’

‘So his bosses gave him a choice,’ Simms said. ‘Manchester Ship Canal, or a ten-year stretch for trafficking.’

The next image showed the back of Anthony ‘Dip’ Newton’s head. Under a thin fuzz of hair, the scalp was a mass of livid burns, some of them weeping yellow ooze, some beginning to scab.

‘Are those
letters
?’ Josh asked, leaning closer.

Fennimore experienced an answering prickle in his own scalp. Josh was right. The lines formed letters, and the letters formed a word.

THIEF

“They used a soldering iron,’ Parrish said. ‘Branded him. Used it on his dick as well – stuck it in there and turned it on.’

Josh stood suddenly and walked away.

‘Jesus,’ Kate breathed. ‘If they did that to a thief, what would they do to an informer?’

‘Was it Marta tipped you off about Dip’s vanload of heroin?’ Fennimore asked.

‘It came in through Crimestoppers,’ Parrish said. ‘So I can’t say for definite. But, yeah, I think it was her.’

‘What about Snowstorm?’ Simms asked.

‘No – she made her first call to the hotline a couple of months after that all went down.’ He looked at Simms, and for a moment he looked like a man gingerly testing the edge of a very high diving board. ‘You wanted to know who was in charge of Snowstorm.’

Simms lifted her chin, encouraging him.

‘Oh, shit.’ He took a breath, let it go slowly. ‘Superintendent Tanford.’

The colour drained from Simms’s face. ‘No,’ she said.

Parrish bowed his head.

‘It doesn’t mean he’s involved in recycling the drugs,’ she said, looking to Fennimore for support. ‘Does it?’

‘As senior officer, he would have to sign off on the destruction of the drugs,’ Fennimore said.

‘Doesn’t mean he was there. Parrish?’

Parrish shook his head regretfully. ‘I can’t get access to the log without ringing all kinds of alarm bells, Boss.’

Kate shook her head in a slow, wide sweep. ‘No,’ she said again. ‘Tanford has supported me every step of the way.’

Parrish shrugged – he looked as dazed and sick as she felt.

‘You have to admit, it is neat,’ Fennimore said.

‘“Neat”,’ Simms said. ‘Is that how you see this?’

‘It’s how
they
see it,’ Fennimore said. ‘Tanford gets commended on a major drugs seizure, and he’s in the perfect position to put those same drugs back into circulation.’

‘Well, thank you for your
insight
, Professor,’ she said, and he saw the crackle of amber in her eyes. ‘Perhaps you can advise me on how exactly I can use this information, because I haven’t a fucking clue.’

She was in pain. She had believed in Tanford, even looked up to him. Fennimore sympathized, but his mind remained clear.

‘You can’t use any of it, Kate. The recycling might
point
to Tanford, but you’d have to prove he knowingly switched a sizeable drugs haul for baby laxative, or whatever, then signed off on the burning and put the heroin back onto the streets. Dip Newton isn’t about to tell us; Marta might have had proof, but Renwick took that when he broke into her flat.’

‘Maybe he didn’t get everything.’

They turned to look at Josh. He was standing with his back to the window, trying not to look at the photographs on the coffee table.

‘One of Marta’s friends said she’d better come back soon, ’cos she’d left a stack of textbooks in one of her lockers and it’d cost her a fortune in fines.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Simms said. ‘I don’t see how that helps.’

‘Why would she have more than one locker?’ the student said. ‘It’s not like she had to hike across campus – all her lectures, tutorials and seminars were in the same building. So I’m thinking, what if she was using one of them as a safety deposit box?’

Simms nodded. ‘We found two Chubb keys in Marta’s purse at George Howard’s flat. They’ll be in the evidence store by now. But I can’t go there, and even if DC Moran could get clearance to pick them up, it could take an hour or two to gain access.’

‘Key?’ Fennimore smiled. ‘Who needs a key?

43

‘You can lock your door against a thief, but you can’t lock your door against a liar.’

A
NONYMOUS

It was mid-afternoon and the sun, just beginning to lower in the sky, filtered through the trees on the small square of Queen’s Park, reflecting brilliantly off the snow as Simms turned the car right at the Royal Northern College of Music.

‘I shouldn’t have lashed out at you like that,’ she said, with an apologetic glance to Fennimore.

‘Forget it,’ he said. ‘I can’t resist a smart-arsed remark, and you were right, it was insensitive.’

‘I suppose I’d hoped that this mess was down to one or two greedy cops who’d dipped their fingers in the sherbet and liked the taste,’ she said. ‘But four and a half million pounds’ worth of drugs was seized in Operation Snowstorm.’ She exhaled slowly. ‘The idea of that quantity of drugs filtering back onto the streets terrifies me. And I just … I can’t believe that Tanford is part of it.’

‘Don’t take it personally, Kate.’

‘I don’t—’ She stopped herself, laughed. ‘I’m such a liar. Yeah, I do – I take it very personally.’

It was good to hear her laugh, even if it was a little shaky, and caught a little at the back of her throat.

‘I believed his flannel about me scaring the crap out of the dealers.’ She sucked air through her teeth. ‘And all the time the bastard was on the make.’

Fennimore turned to her. ‘It’s not just you, Kate – Tanford has fooled a lot of people – senior officers who’ve known him for a lot longer than you have.’ He quirked his eyebrows and offered a small smile. ‘And he wasn’t lying when he said you had the dealers jumping; they were just closer to home than you realized.’

The first locker was empty except for a stack of library books and a flyer advertising a guest lecture on the cultural politics of human rights. The second contained a backpack and a Next shopping bag. Fennimore stood next to Kate Simms as she emptied it into a plastic Ziploc bag. Students and staff moved up and down the busy corridor, some eyeing them curiously, while security looked on, noting each item on a receipt pad. The Next bag contained a change of clothes: a low-cut silk dress, sheer stockings and four-inch heels.

The backpack was a jumble of the usual student essentials: pens, ruler, reporters’ notebook, A4 notepaper, timetable. Also a black A5 hardbound notebook and an 8-Gig pen drive.

The receipt signed, and textbooks locked in the boot of the car, Simms drove around the corner, out of sight of the security manager who had followed them out of the building and watched them leave, a thoughtful look on his face.

‘I can’t file these in evidence – not yet – not until I have some idea of the true scale of this.’

Fennimore snapped on a pair of nitriles.

‘What d’you think you’re doing?’ she demanded.

‘C’mon, Kate,’ Fennimore said. ‘It can’t hurt to take a peek.’

The notebook detailed names, dates, drop points, methods and routes for drugs deliveries. He flipped through the pages and found transcripts of conversations between the Henry brothers and a man named Rob; ‘Rob the fixer’ Marta called him.

‘Listen to this,’ Fennimore said, reading from the journal. ‘Rob said, “I can guarantee continuity of supply.”’

‘By recycling seized drugs.’ Simms checked her wing mirror and moved off into the traffic.

‘See something?’ Fennimore asked.

‘No, doesn’t mean they’re not watching though.’ She squinted across at the journal. ‘Why d’you think she wrote it in English? Why not Latvian?’

‘Good question.’ He thought about it for a minute. ‘Insurance maybe? If anything happened to her, she knew that eventually her lockers would be emptied, and this would come to light – she wanted whoever found it to know exactly what they had.’

He continued turning the pages, trying to absorb the sheer volume of names, dates, delivery points. ‘She’s listed car and van registration numbers, addresses.’ He flipped to the next page and recoiled. ‘Jeez—’

Simms glanced across. ‘Yeesh,’ she said, flinching as he had. ‘Who’s
that
?’

‘Our man “Bug”, apparently,’ he said, reading the inscription. Marta had conveyed suppressed rage in the muscles and tendons snaking up the thug’s arms and twisting around his neck like vines. His eyes bulged as if he was half-mad.

‘Bug is a “Mixer”,’ Marta wrote, ‘which means he mixes heroin with powders so it goes further. Three women do the labour. He makes sure they follow the recipe.’

Fennimore glanced at Simms. ‘We have his address.’ He grinned. ‘She’s even described the security at his flat.’

‘Don’t suppose there’s a sketch of Rob in there?’ Simms said.

She was joking, but Fennimore riffled through the pages anyway. He found a photograph slipped into the back cover, held in place by the notebook’s elasticated strap.

It looked like a home print, on semi-glossy paper; a dark-haired man of about forty. Taken side on, standing in a dingy-looking corridor, he was extending a hand to someone standing the other side of a doorway. The image was slightly grainy, as if it had been taken without a flash. He flipped the photograph over; it was labelled ‘Rob’. Under that, a combination of numbers and letters: 1211<4-19. The puzzle-solver in him automatically began trying to work out what it meant.