Hurt (DS Lucy Black) (24 page)

All of which applied equally to Sarah Finn, Lucy reflected. ‘The question is, how did the groomer know that they were perfect candidates for it?’

‘Ask the girl, see if she knows. See if he gave her any hints about where he first saw her. And get a description.’

Lucy stopped at the main office again to phone through for a picture of Gene Kay. It took all of thirty seconds for Sarah Finn to confirm for her that Kay was not ‘Simon Harris’ either, nor indeed had she ever seen him at any of the parties.

‘You’re sure?’ Lucy asked. ‘Look again at the image. He might have been dressed differently.’

The girl studied the image, examining the eyes and mouth, covering part of the face with the flat of her hand to better focus on particular features. Finally she shook her head. ‘I’ve never seen him before. I’d remember any of the people there if I saw them again. He wasn’t there.’

‘And the other man I showed you earlier, he was there but wasn’t “Simon Harris”?’

Finn nodded her head. ‘I remember his face. Simon was younger than them, in his twenties maybe. Thin faced. Short dark hair. He wasn’t an old man.’

‘But this guy was definitely not involved?’ she asked, pointing to Kay’s picture.

‘I never saw him. Not once.’

If that was the case, Lucy realized, then how had the collection of images, taken from the parties, ended up in Kay’s house, after Fleming had checked it and found nothing there the day before.

Robbie eventually agreed that Sarah Finn be allowed home with her mother, though only with the understanding that they would be visited daily and that Sinead Finn was to agree to enter an addiction programme. The woman announced that Seamus Doherty was no longer welcome in her home, having lied to her and kept her daughter from her for so long. Having been the only person Sarah felt able to confide in, Doherty now found himself excluded from the girl’s life.

Lucy drove back to the PPU struggling to make sense of all that had happened. Gene Kay had clearly been used as a distraction, a scapegoat on whom could be pinned the killing of Karen Hughes. The fact that he had died in the house fire prevented him being able to argue his innocence.

When she reached the unit, instead of going into her own office, she cut across to Cooper in Block 10. He was working on a laptop, scrolling through a series of spreadsheets, when she came in, one of his colleagues having allowed Lucy into the block as he was leaving.

‘That looks interesting,’ Lucy said.

‘Serious or sarcastic?’ Cooper asked, leaning backwards to see who was talking to him. ‘Oh, hi, Lucy,’ he said, when he saw her. ‘Sarcastic then.’

‘That’s very cynical,’ she commented, pretending to be offended.

‘But probably very accurate,’ he countered. ‘I hear you found the girl. It’s been on the news. How is she?’

‘Useful,’ Lucy said.

‘Well, I’m sure that’ll be a relief to her parents.’

‘After “Harris” had won the girls’ trust, he took them to a house party and got them either drunk or high. They were raped while they were out of it.’

‘This is why I work with numbers,’ Cooper said. ‘Tax fraud doesn’t make you want to kill someone.’

‘The important thing is she saw “Harris”. And “Harris” is not Carlin.’

‘Really?’ Cooper asked, sitting up. ‘What about Kay?’

Lucy shook her head. ‘She’d never even seen him before. Carlin, at least, she’d seen at the parties. She thought he might have been one of the men who raped her. Kay, though, drew a complete blank.’

‘That doesn’t mean he wasn’t involved.’

‘Perhaps. But it does mean he wasn’t “Simon Harris” and, therefore, not “Paul Bradley” or any of the other sock puppet identities.’

Cooper pushed back from the desk he was working at and rolled his seat across to the opposite bench, propelling himself with his feet. He reached the large iMac and began clicking through folders.

‘What are you after?’ Lucy asked, joining him.

‘“Bradley” or “Harris” or whatever he was called was definitely using the free Wi-Fi in the Foyleside the day you went in. Kay was there obviously, but if he wasn’t “Harris”, then someone else in the restaurant must have been.’

‘What, and it was just a coincidence that Kay was there too and we went after him?’

‘Maybe,’ Cooper said. ‘Or maybe not. Maybe Kay was set up. Maybe “Bradley” got wind that we were on to his account after Karen’s death and made a point of going on the accounts somewhere public, where we would find Kay. Regardless, we do know that whoever was on the accounts was in the restaurant, right?’

‘OK,’ Lucy said, pulling over a chair and sitting.

‘I had the CCTV footage for the day sent across after I couldn’t retrieve anything off Kay’s phone. I wanted to satisfy myself that he had been online. If Sarah Finn has seen “Harris”, or “Bradley”, then she might recognize him as one of the other customers.’

‘She might,’ Lucy said, approvingly.

Cooper finally found the folder he wanted and opened up the footage. He played it through at half-speed, allowing them time to examine it in more detail, looking for possible candidates.

‘Do you remember anyone standing out, apart from Kay?’ Cooper asked.

Lucy shook her head, but, as she considered it, she recalled a man she’d put in his twenties sitting by the window. He’d been with a woman and child though. She assumed that the perpetrator would be alone. She told Cooper as much.

‘If he was at the window, this camera angle will be no good,’ Cooper commented. He closed the image he was looking at and picked another from the folder. This time, the view was of the seating area, the main concourse of the Foyleside visible through the window beyond.

Cooper forwarded the footage until the time counter in the corner read twelve, then continued at half-speed. Sure enough, some time later, a young man with thinning black hair appeared in the image, bearing a tray with a burger and drink on it. He sat alone at the window and, taking out his phone, spent some time seemingly texting on it. After ten minutes a woman and child arrived. Though there was no sound, Lucy could tell that the woman was asking if they might share his table. He agreed without even looking at them, his attention focused on the phone he held in front of him.

Some minutes later, those in the seats all around him stood quickly, their attention directed off screen to where Lucy knew Kay had been. Sure enough, in the subsequent images, Kay could be seen running down the concourse outside the window, pursued by several officers, Lucy included.

Those inside watched as the events unfolded. Rather than following the events unfolding outside the restaurant, the man quickly put away his phone and continued eating. A few minutes later, a uniformed officer appeared at the table, paused for a few moments, clearly taking the names of all those there, then moved on. After a further minute, the man balled up the wrapping of his food, gathered his stuff and left, pulling the hood of his top over his head as he did.

‘Can you run me off the best picture of him you can find?’

‘The best? It’s all relative,’ Cooper offered apologetically. ‘I could try sourcing footage from outside, but with the hood up, he’ll be even more difficult to identify.’

He moved back through the footage slowly until he found the best image he could. He was right about it being relative; the image was grainy, the man’s features blurred. Still, it would hopefully be enough for Sarah Finn to at least be able to confirm whether or not he was “Simon Harris”.

Lucy drove straight up to the Finn house, having thanked Cooper for his work. Sinead opened the door, the action soundtracked by raucous laughter from the living room beyond. Sinead wore a black dress, low cut enough to provide Lucy with a view of her cleavage.

‘Is Sarah free for a moment?’ Lucy asked, stepping inside. In the confines of the hallway, she could smell the spirits off Sinead’s breath, sweet and sharp.

‘We’re having a party, celebrating her safe return,’ Sinead explained. ‘Sarah?’ she shouted.

A moment later, Sarah appeared from upstairs. It seemed she was the only one not attending the party being held in her honour.

‘All right, love,’ Sinead said, rubbing her daughter’s arm a little too vigorously, smiling through the haze of her drink, a rictus that lacked all warmth. ‘Come in for a drink if you want one,’ she added to Lucy. ‘Or are you on duty?’

Lucy wondered at the mentality of the woman, inviting an officer in for a drink hours after being told she would need to enter an addiction programme if she wanted to keep her daughter at home.

When the door to the living room closed, Sarah seemed to slump against the wall.

‘Are you OK?’ Lucy asked.

‘I ... I don’t want to be here any more. Being away with Seamus, even for those few days, was so easy. There was no shit, no drugs or drinking or parties. It was like a normal life.’

Lucy nodded. ‘That’s understandable,’ she said.

‘But how do you come back to this shit? At least before I didn’t know any different. I thought this was normal.’

‘I can ask them to leave if you’d like,’ Lucy offered.

Sarah shook her head. ‘They’ll leave in a bit anyway, once the carry-out is finished.’

Lucy nodded, the folded picture in her hand, suddenly reluctant to ask the girl to look at it.

Sarah, though, had already worked out the purpose of the visit. ‘Is this another picture to look at?’ she asked, gesturing towards the sheet.

Lucy nodded. ‘Do you mind?’

The girl shook her head, taking the page and opening it. She hissed a sharp intake of breath as she looked at it, then, handing it back quickly to Lucy, said, ‘That’s him. That’s “Harris”.’

‘You’re sure?’ Lucy asked.

Sarah Finn nodded her head. ‘I think that’s him.’

‘This is “Simon Harris”?’ the ACC asked. She was sitting in Burns’s office, having been called by the Chief Super.

‘According to Sarah Finn,’ Lucy said. ‘He was in the Foyleside at the time we picked up Kay. He was using his phone.’

‘He could be anyone,’ Burns said. ‘The image is so grainy, it doesn’t really help us move forward.’

‘It at least necessitates that we do move forward,’ Lucy said. ‘We know Carlin was involved in this ring, but we don’t have the ringleader. I think this is him.’

Her mother held the picture at arm’s length, lowering her glasses to see if doing so aided her examination of the image. Finally she nodded, laying the picture on the desk.

‘So, what’s your next move, Superintendent?’ she asked.

Burns was leaning against a filing cabinet to her right, biting on the skin around his finger, angling his hand to facilitate the process. He spat the small bit of skin he had removed from the tip of his tongue. Lucy watched the exchange between her mother and her lover with distaste.

‘If the girl says he was the one who groomed her, then we need to follow it up. I still think Kay is involved, though, regardless of what the girl said. Why would he have had pictures of her?’

‘Why would she not remember having seen him take them if he had?’ Lucy asked.

‘You said yourself she was drugged,’ Burns retorted. ‘Even she’s not sure if she said she
thinks
it’s him.’

‘What if he played us?’ Lucy said, pointing towards the picture lying before her mother. ‘What if he knew Kay would be a suspect with his history and he set him up, going online somewhere public where we’d find Kay. He’s been offline since, as far as we know. Maybe he saw Kay as the perfect fall guy. Then planted the pictures in his house after he’d been lifted.’

‘What? Do you think he set the house alight too?’ Burns scoffed.

‘It’s possible,’ Wilson said.

‘I don’t think so,’ Lucy began. After all, she suspected she knew who had been involved in lighting the fire. Gavin Duffy. ‘I think Kay’s burning was in retaliation for Karen Hughes’s death. But we do know that uniforms took the names of all those who were in the restaurant at the time. Maybe we could follow up on any single men listed in that.’

‘That’s all been done already,’ Burns said. ‘Nothing showed up from it.’

‘If whoever was interviewing thought Kay was our man, they may not have been too thorough,’ Lucy objected.

‘Careful, Sergeant,’ Burns said. ‘I seem to remember it was PPU who missed Kay’s paedophile collection when you searched his house.’

‘Maybe we didn’t miss anything. If this is how it went down, maybe there was nothing to find when we searched the house,’ Lucy argued. ‘In which case what about Inspector Fleming?’

The comment was greeting initially with silence, her mother glaring at her as she lifted her glasses and put them on, the skin around her mouth tightening. Finally she spoke. ‘That’s not your concern, Sergeant. Leave it at that.’

‘But the stuff in Kay’s might have been a set-up, to put Kay in the frame for Karen Hughes,’ Lucy began. ‘It’s not fair if Tom —’

‘That’s enough, Lucy,’ her mother warned. Then she turned to Burns. ‘Would you give me a moment, Mark?’

Burns lingered a second, as if in protest at yet again being ask to leave his own office, before pushing himself off the cabinet with his rump and padding out of the room.

Wilson stared at Lucy a moment before speaking. When she did speak, it was not what Lucy had expected.

‘What happened to your face?’

‘I was hit.’

‘By whom?’

‘A suspect.’

‘I see.’ She rubbed at the bridge of her nose, then removed her glasses again. ‘These bloody things are new and they’re leaving me with sores on my nose. I should have stayed with the old ones.’

Lucy watched her, aware of the tactic, the circling around small talk as she worked out the best angle for attack.

‘I heard there was an incident at Alan Cunningham’s family home last night.’

‘Really?’

Wilson stared without speaking this time.

‘If you heard that,’ Lucy queried, straightening herself up in the seat, ‘then why are you asking what happened to my face?’

‘I just wondered if you were really so stupid as to go to that house alone.’

‘No one else is interested.’

Wilson shook her head, smiling ruefully. ‘The martyr role doesn’t suit you, Lucy. Is that what you think? You’re the only one who cares? That we should take every case personally, make it our mission?’ She widened her eyes on the final word to emphasize its grandness.