Liar Liar: DI Helen Grace 4 (A DI Helen Grace Thriller) (33 page)

Naomie Jackson had a rich internet history. Hunched over her laptop, Helen was climbing inside her other life now and was pretty depressed by what she saw. There were the usual celebrity and reality TV websites, Amazon, Netflix, but darker elements too – suicide websites, the Samaritans, ChildLine and posted pictures of her injuries, shared with teenagers in similar predicaments.

It was the latter that interested Helen the most and she had zeroed in on Naomie’s online ‘friends’, starting with those she had chatted to most recently. There were scores of acquaintances – people she’d never actually met but seemed happy to converse with about matters trivial or grave – but their conversations were sporadic at best, there was no stand-out friend or confessor.

There was, however, one unusual pattern: a cyberfriend whom she had chatted to repeatedly over the last six months, before suddenly dropping them three weeks ago.

Helen looked at the username. Naomie’s correspondent went by the handle of ‘firstpersonsingular’ – no first name or surname was ever referred to in their chats. It was an intriguing choice – implying a sense of difference, a unique quality perhaps but also showcasing a high level of education and exhibiting a degree of wit and sophistication in choosing a grammatical pun as their user name. This immediately concerned Helen – Naomie was not
educated, not massively bright per se, whereas this person clearly was – given their vocabulary and the considered, acerbic style of their insults and character assassinations.

As a disturbing thought took hold, Helen searched for other sites or postings linked to firstpersonsingular. There were a few to choose from, but Helen homed in on a blogsite that had been recently added to.

‘When people come to judge me, they will see that none of this is my fault.’

‘Whatever, it’s important that you know I’m not mad, or bad. I’m just reacting to circumstances. Actions have consequences, my friends …’

‘They told him he was a worm, a germ, a piece of shit who should never have existed. But he did more than any of them.’

‘I saw what people said about the fire at the Millbrook – they said it was hideous, ugly, an abomination. But not to me. I thought it was beautiful.’

The posts had all been written in the last four days –
after
the spate of arson attacks had begun. Firstpersonsingular’s interest in the fires was telling, as was the fact that there had been no formal break-off in their online friendship with Naomie Jackson. What had happened? Had they met at some point? Decided face to face to drop online communication to attempt to conceal their connection?

Suddenly it all made sense. The reason why they couldn’t find a motive for the Simms and Harris fires. And why they couldn’t place their prime suspect at the Roberts and Blayne fires. She had hidden it pretty well, but now it was as plain as day.

Naomie Jackson had a partner in crime.

‘Can I just double-check these timings? So there’s no mistake in your statement?’

Helen was back in the interview suite, flanked by Charlie, who had just arrived back from St Mary’s. Helen had asked her to sit in, tasking Sanderson with chasing down the mysterious ‘firstpersonsingular’. It was a slight break in the chain of command, but Helen wanted Charlie’s input and, besides, it felt good to have her old friend back at her side as the case reached its climax.

‘So on Wednesday night, you left the Green Man around eleven-ish and made your way home?’

Naomie looked tired and wrung out, the product of a sleepless night in the cells. Part of Helen was pleased – it’s harder to keep your guard up when you’re exhausted.

‘More or less.’

‘I’m going to have to press you, Naomie. You left the pub around eleven, walked to Denise Roberts’s house and then what?’

‘I set the fire, like I said.’

‘So that would have been around eleven fifteen p.m.?’

‘Right.’

‘Wrong. Because you were in the Green Man with your friends,’ Helen replied, all the warmth suddenly evaporating from her tone.

Naomie’s brief shot a concerned look in her direction, but Charlie leapt in before she could intervene.

‘I’ve spoken to Danielle this morning. I’ve seen the photos, placing you there until gone midnight. We’ve also had a little look at your movements on Friday – the day Mandy Blayne’s house was targeted. The movement of your mobile signal suggests you didn’t go near St Denys.’

Charlie could see Naomie was about to kick back, so carried on quickly:

‘That doesn’t prove anything of course. You might have lost your phone or had it stolen. However, we have tallied your mobile movements with street cameras and guess what – they match.’

‘I’m now showing the suspect some CCTV stills time-coded to the hours between two and four p.m. on Friday,’ Helen said, taking over. ‘Your face can be clearly seen in a couple of them, in spite of your cap. I take it you’re not going to deny that it’s you?’

Helen pushed the stills across the table towards Naomie and her brief, but the former refused to look at them. She looked ashen.

‘Look at them,’ Helen barked, her voice suddenly harsh. ‘Are you going to deny that’s you?’

Naomie glanced anxiously at her brief, but received nothing in return – it clearly
was
her in the photos. Now Naomie’s eyes started to fill. Helen could see that the young girl was panicking, clearly torn as to what to do next. Helen cursed herself for ever having believed this scared, downtrodden teenager was the mastermind behind the arson attacks.

‘I know this is not what you wanted, not how you
hoped things would pan out, but believe me this is good news, Naomie. There’s a simple reason you can’t provide any clear motive for the fires at the Simms and Harris households – because they weren’t
your
victims. Your accomplice wanted to hurt them, while you wanted to get at Denise Roberts and Mandy Blayne. Credit to you both, you played it smartly. You set the first and third fires, your accomplice the second and fourth. You had no personal connection to the victims you actually targeted making it virtually impossible that you’d be identified as a suspect.’

Helen let her words hang in the air. The brief looked shocked, whereas Naomie just looked beaten.

‘Now I know you’re a capable girl,’ Helen continued. ‘But an elaborate scheme like this, well it doesn’t feel very
you
, does it? You’ve been hurt, neglected and belittled more than any girl should be and you’re angry with your dad, your mum, with the world. But ultimately you just want your family back together, don’t you? You don’t want to burn this town down, do you?’

Naomie just stared at her through tear-filled eyes, but didn’t commit either way.

‘All that planning, the endless scouting, the diversionary fires, was that really your idea?’

Helen could tell Naomie had to think for a moment to work out what diversionary meant and in that instant she knew she had her answer.

‘And the idea of putting yourself forward, to sell us the big lie about seeing a guy with a Fire and Rescue tattoo? You came up with that, did you?

Naomie faltered, then replied:

‘Sure. Like I said –’

‘I’m going to discount what you’ve told me so far, as you have already lied to me on tape on a number of occasions, but there is something I’d like you to tell me the truth about. Who is firstpersonsingular?’

Naomie’s reaction was hard to miss. She looked like she’d been caught with her hand in the till – initial astonishment morphing into a desire to disengage, to retreat. She picked hard at the scar on her hand, wanting to be anywhere but locked in a room with her accusers.

‘We know you’re close,’ Charlie went on, more softly. ‘That you feel loyalty to this person, that perhaps they even control you a little bit. But it’s our view that this person is principally responsible for these fires, so it would be in your best interests to tell us who they are.’

Naomie shook her head vigorously but refused to look up at them. Helen felt a strange mixture of sympathy and contempt as she looked at the shambolic teenage girl who still clung to the person – to the ‘project’ – that made her feel special.

‘We will find out, Naomie. Make no bones about that,’ Helen said. ‘And this is your one chance to help us bring this to an end. It could make all the difference when this goes to trial.’

Now Naomie did look up and Helen caught the fear in her eyes.

‘You’ve nothing to fear. If you need protection we can arrange that. And you don’t need to go back to your old life, once you’ve done your time. We can set you up somewhere new – new name, new place, new future. But only if you help us now. Who is firstpersonsingular?’

‘I won’t help you,’ Naomie said suddenly, before receding into herself once more.

‘Then I’m calling time on this interview. I’ve done all I can and I would urge your lawyer to use the break to talk some sense into you. Cooperation is your only option.’

‘I’ll never give him up to the likes of you,’ Naomie spat back bitterly.

‘So firstpersonsingular is a “he”?’ Helen returned quickly. ‘Well that’s a start, I suppose.’

The blood drained from Naomie’s face, as she felt the guilt of her first betrayal.

‘We
will
find out his name, Naomie. It’s only a matter of time. So now you have to ask yourself if you’re brave enough to speak up or whether you want to spend the rest of your days behind bars for something that
wasn’t your fault
.’

And with that Helen left, Charlie following close behind.

‘Let’s take this from the top, shall we?’

Helen had pulled the entire team into the incident room and they crowded round, keen to hear the very latest developments.

‘Naomie Jackson has a male accomplice, whom we strongly suspect of having been the instigator of the recent arson attacks. He goes by the online moniker of “firstpersonsingular”. DS Sanderson has put together a short profile of everything we know about FPS, which includes his most recent posts on the net, social media and so on. He is male, appears to be local and is probably in his mid- to-late teens.’

Immediately a buzz went round the room – this was not the standard arson profile, which commonly placed offenders in their twenties or thirties.

‘He makes several references to schooling or teachers. He doesn’t give specifics but the incidents he refers to seem to be recent and would put him in GCSE year or slightly above. He could of course be lying to gain Naomie’s trust, but the overall tone of his posts is one of teenage anger and rebellion, infused with deep cynicism and bitterness, particularly towards his parents and authority figures in general. He types much less fluently than Naomie, which is curious. Is he a man of few words or is his access to unsupervised computers limited?’

The team were passing the sheets around now, but their eyes were glued to Helen.

‘We’re trying to trace his IP address, but if he’s using a tablet with 4G or similar, then this may be a dead end, so for now let’s keep focused on his character. His posts reveal clear evidence of depression, but also strong feelings of superiority. He craves control and seems to relish the effect that the fires have had. He seems to be calling the tune. So we are looking for a teenage male who until recently has been powerless, overlooked or neglected.’

‘What’s the tenor of their relationship? FPS and Naomie?’ McAndrew asked. ‘Were they lovers?’

‘Looks that way,’ Sanderson interjected. ‘They communicated every day during the summer and well into the autumn. He makes great play of idolizing her – calling her “Angel” repeatedly – and is always trying to boost her self-esteem. She in turn is very protective of him – seemingly worrying if he’ll come to any harm – though whether at his own hands or someone else’s is unclear. She keeps referencing the first time they met as if that explained the root cause of her anxiety.’

‘Had they been intimate?’ DC Lucas asked, to a few quiet sniggers.

‘Tough to say,’ Sanderson answered. ‘It’s hard to imagine they haven’t been but there is no mention of sex or intimacy in their communications.’

Sanderson continued her dissection of their relationship, but Helen’s mind was already arrowing away in a different direction, hidden connections forming now. Without warning, she walked away from the group, marching towards her desk. She picked up her files and searched
through them quickly, until she’d located the hospital reports from the fires’ survivors. She flicked through them until she came to the page on Ethan Harris. Her eyes ran over the text, words and phrases now leaping out at her: ‘cerebral palsy’, ‘persistent shaking of the left hand’, ‘historic burn injuries’. Suddenly Helen knew why Agnieszka Jarosik had been singled out for special treatment. She knew why their arsonist had fumbled the matches during the second and fourth attacks. And she knew where she had seen Naomie’s scar – the burnt cross on the left palm – before.

Most importantly, she knew why Naomie had called 999 twelve minutes before anybody else after the Harris fire started. It wasn’t fear or excitement that motivated her to call too early that night. It was love.

Blog post by firstpersonsingular.

Saturday, 12 December, 10.30

She was a funny-looking angel. But she was beautiful to me.

Her sad face was framed by that crazy, afro hair and the shadow of a black eye haunted the left side of her face. Her face was so close to me, I could feel her breath and at first I was confused. Who was this person? What did they want with me? I thought I was seeing things – she had a kind of aura that framed her head, her voice was smooth and comforting – but later I knew I had seen right. She was an angel. More than that, she was my angel.

It’s funny how things work out. How you can swallow abuse, neglect and more, but can be undone by a simple act of kindness. Others might have walked past me but not her. She raised me up that day and made me what I am. Together we are more than the sum of our parts.

But things have changed now. We can’t be what we were. So it’s time to remember the good times as we prepare to finish the job. People will castigate us for what we’ve done, but all we’ve done is show them in their true colours and, boy, have they done that. I didn’t know whether to laugh or puke when my parents were giving their interviews after the fire. Saying how much they loved me, how relieved they were I was ok. That rhyme kept going round my head: ‘Liar, Liar …’. I was their ‘accident’ – my dad actually said it to my face once. How can someone be accidental??? But it’s not him I blame really.

They wished I didn’t exist. Farmed me out to nannies, who did the minimum required, then ignored me. I was an embarrassment to everyone, a guilty secret. They would either beat me or sedate me into submission and if that didn’t work they’d scream at me. I used to like those moments – the flecks of spit landing on my face as they ranted and raved – at least then I existed in their world.

Well, I exist now. And before I’m done I will have made them both famous. This is my last post, Mum and Dad. My last offering to you. My last offering to you all. My name is Ethan Harris and I am the firestarter.