The Whole Truth

by Hunter, Cara

  ‘Coincidence?’ offers Asante.

  ‘No such thing,’ says Ev. ‘That’s what the boss always says.’

  There’s the smallest of pauses, an ebb of time in which they all think the same thing, see the same face, then deal with it and move on.

  ‘So the question,’ says Gis thoughtfully, ‘is how Tobin could have known about Caleb Morgan’s tattoo.’

  Baxter shrugs. ‘Perhaps Morgan took him swimming? I mean, he babysat him a lot, didn’t he. It’s not impossible.’

  ‘Or perhaps he mowed the lawn,’ says Quinn. ‘Easy to see him getting his top off in this weather –’

  ‘Marina Fisher doesn’t have a lawn,’ says Asante quietly. ‘The garden is paved.’

  Quinn folds his arms and frowns. He hates being corrected, especially by Asante.

  ‘We can check the swimming thing easily enough,’ says Everett.

  ‘But what if it’s not that?’ asks Somer, looking round at the others. ‘What if Morgan never went near a swimming pool with Tobin? Because if that’s the case –’

  There’s a silence; it doesn’t need spelling out.

  ‘But it doesn’t tally, does it?’ says Baxter eventually. ‘Morgan never said anything about them getting their kit off that night – in fact, he said quite explicitly that they didn’t.’

  ‘So,’ begins Gis, ‘either the boy saw the tattoo some other time –’

  ‘And recently,’ says Somer quickly. ‘He’s only halfway through that picture – it has to be within the last week.’

  ‘– or Caleb Morgan is lying about what happened during the alleged assault. After also conveniently failing to tell us about the incident with Freya on the doorstep –’

  He doesn’t finish the sentence. He doesn’t need to.

  Ev turns to him. ‘But that was a lie by omission not commission. It’s not the same. He’d have every reason not to mention he’d pushed Freya, but why lie about the sexual assault? What’s in it for him?’

  Gis looks blank. ‘Search me.’

  ‘It’s on the Welsh flag, though, isn’t it? The red dragon?’ says Asante. ‘Presumably that’s why Morgan got the tattoo in the first place. Maybe Tobin picked it up from that. Maybe it’s nothing to do with the tattoo.’

  Quinn considers. ‘Well, I guess it’s possible, but the only time I ever see Welsh flags is rugby or football, and this kid doesn’t seem to be interested in sport at all.’

  ‘And Wales weren’t in the World Cup either,’ adds Baxter, team footie wonk.

  ‘So he wouldn’t even have seen the flag on TV,’ finishes Quinn. ‘Not lately, anyway.’

  Baxter clears his throat. ‘Maybe we’re all overthinking this – what’s wrong with the bleeding obvious? Fisher and Morgan were having an affair – they were going at it in the kitchen that night and the kid caught them doing it.’

  Gis looks round at him. ‘But if that’s the case, why didn’t Fisher just come out and tell us that right from the start? Why let things get so out of hand?’

  ‘Perhaps she was scared of losing her job,’ says Ev. ‘If she admitted having an affair with a student she’d probably be sacked.’

  ‘She’ll be sacked pretty damn fast if she’s convicted of assault,’ says Quinn darkly. ‘Those stilettos of hers won’t touch the bloody ground.’

  ‘Yeah,’ says Ev quickly, ‘but that’s just it. If she’s convicted – not if she’s just accused. Perhaps she decided her best bet was to keep on saying she can’t remember and banking on there not being enough evidence for the CPS to pursue the case.’

  ‘OK,’ says Gis, ‘so being devil’s advocate – why did Morgan make the allegation in the first place if they’ve been banging on the quiet this whole time?’

  Ev shrugs. ‘Who knows why people do anything? Could be a power play, revenge –’

  ‘Or to get him off the hook with Freya,’ says Asante. ‘We know how jealous she was – I can see her losing it big time if she discovered Morgan really was having an affair.’

  ‘So – what?’ says Somer. ‘Freya finds out something happened between Morgan and Fisher that night, and Morgan tries to dodge the bullet by claiming she assaulted him?’

  ‘Lipstick on his collar,’ says Baxter, ‘told a tale to Hughes?’

  ‘It was the scratches,’ says Ev quietly. ‘She told me as much.’

  Quinn gives her a dry look. ‘Yeah, well, you don’t get those playing bloody Scrabble, now do you?’

  Baxter nods. ‘And Morgan wouldn’t be the first person to allege sexual assault to get themselves off the hook with their partner.’

  The implication hangs in the air: it might well be one of the oldest tricks in the book, but the people who play it are almost always women. Not tough, athletic young men.

  ‘There was one thing,’ says Asante slowly. ‘At the end of the interview, Fisher’s lawyer said the kid’s been having nightmares. Perhaps the dragon thing is connected with that?’

  He looks round but they’re not joining the dots – not yet.

  ‘What I mean,’ he continues, ‘is that if Fisher really did have sex with Morgan that night and the kid saw them, maybe that explains why he’s so disturbed? Sex probably looks pretty scary if you don’t know what’s going on and you’re only eight.’

  Ev is nodding again. ‘I buy that. Especially a kid like him. From what I’ve heard he sounds pretty fragile.’

  Gis takes a deep breath. ‘OK,’ he says. ‘It doesn’t look like we have much choice. We need to ask Marina Fisher if she’ll let us question her son.’

  * * *

  Adam Fawley

  12 July 2018

  15.55

  The lunch they brought me is congealing on its plastic tray. Hardly surprising, given it’s been there over an hour. The lad who brought it didn’t have the courage to look me in the eye, just dumped it and did one. I might as well have ‘pariah’ chalked on the door. So when the keys clatter in the lock again I wasn’t exactly expecting a social call. I hadn’t even remembered Gis was back in the office. It’s a measure of how fast I’ve fallen that I don’t find the contrast between me and his post-holiday self humiliating. Though he clearly does. He hesitates in the doorway, then comes in and pulls the door to behind him.

  ‘All right?’

  Hard to see how I could be any less ‘all right’, but what else is the poor bastard going to say?

  He shrugs. ‘Just wanted to see how you’re doing.’ He looks round. ‘I don’t think I’ve even been to this station before.’

  ‘I’m surprised they let you in.’

  He gives a dry smile. ‘Turns out the custody sergeant is an old mate from Training College.’

  I shake my head. ‘All the same. You shouldn’t be here. It really isn’t a good idea.’

  He glances at me and then away again, takes a deep breath. ‘Just in case you’re wondering – me and the team – none of us think that you – well, you know –’

  They don’t think I raped and killed an innocent woman and threw her body in front of a train. Well, I guess it’s something.

  I lean back against the clammy wall. ‘Thanks, Gis.’

  ‘So what have they got?’

  I shake my head. ‘Trust me, you don’t want to know.’

  ‘If I didn’t want to know, I wouldn’t ask.’

  I look at him. Is it fair to drag him into this? He has a family, a career. Just because I seem to be throwing mine away, can I really ask him to risk doing the same? But there’s another voice in my head – a louder voice – which is telling me he could be my only chance of getting out of this. I need help. Not from Penny McHugh, however sharp she is, but from someone who knows how police investigations work. Someone on the inside.

  ‘Look,’ he says now, sensing I’m misgiving. ‘I wouldn’t be a DS at all if it wasn’t for you. I owe you. So if I can help, just let me do it, OK?’

  ‘I don’t want to land you in the shit.’

  ‘That’s down to me. If there’s shit, I’ll deal with it.
And if I find something, well –’

  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: if you were drowning, it’s Gis you’d want on the end of the rope. And right now, the water is over my head.

  I take a deep breath. ‘I think I’m being framed. No, I know I’m being framed.’

  He frowns. He won’t want to hear that, any more than Penny did.

  ‘How’s that then?’

  ‘The DNA evidence – it must have been faked. Yes, I was in the flat – I’ve said that right from the start – but I never had sex with her. I never even touched her.’

  Gis’s frown deepens. It’s not just that forensics don’t lie; he thinks I’m asking him to believe the entire CSI team are lying too.

  ‘But you and Challow are old mates, aren’t you? Why on earth –?’

  ‘No,’ I say quickly. ‘I don’t think he has anything to do with it – I don’t think any of them do. They just processed the evidence they were given. But that’s the point – they were given it. Someone staged that scene.’

  Someone put my hair there. I don’t know how, but I know why.

  The hair – it’s a message.

  Because when Alex testified in court that she never planted those strands of hair in Gavin Parrie’s lock-up, I knew it was a lie. I’d known for months. Not right at the start – not until it was far too late. But I knew. And I said nothing. I didn’t stop her, because it was the only way to stop him. He was guilty and we had nothing else. But it was still a lie. And now Gavin Parrie is making me pay.

  Gis is staring at me and I drag myself back. ‘They’re saying I tried to make it look like suicide so the police wouldn’t go looking for DNA.’

  Gis makes a face; he knows that makes sense. As far as it goes.

  ‘But then I fucked up by not hanging around long enough to realize the engineering team were there and would stop the train.’

  ‘OK, so –’

  ‘But he’d have wanted someone to stop the train, wouldn’t he? He put that DNA on her body and he needed them to find it, so they’d make the connection – so they’d come after me.’

  He frowns again; he’s not following me. ‘Hang on a mo. He? Who are we talking about here?’

  ‘Gavin Parrie.’

  His eyes widen. ‘Parrie? You think Parrie’s behind this?’

  I hold his gaze. ‘Who else could it be?’

  ‘But he must be tagged –’

  I nod. ‘He is. But all the same.’

  He hesitates, then nods.

  ‘So what do you want me to do?’

  ‘Find that engineer – the one who called it in. I need to know if he saw anyone else on the bridge just before it happened. Because if it was Parrie, he couldn’t just throw her over the side and flee the scene. He had to wait – wait until those engineers were close enough that they would definitely see the body fall and have enough time to stop the train.’

  Gis jots down a few lines, then he closes his notebook and looks up.

  ‘OK, boss. I’ll see what I can do.’

  * * *

  Marina Fisher pauses at the French doors. Her son is on his hands and knees looking at a stag beetle edging carefully across the flagstones.

  ‘Tobin, darling, I need to talk to you.’

  But he doesn’t seem to have heard her; he’s completely absorbed, completely focused.

  The beetle lifts first one leg, then another; its mandibles prod the air as if feeling the way.

  ‘Tobin?’

  She steps closer. ‘Tobin, I’m talking to you.’

  Still nothing.

  ‘Leave that alone, sweetheart,’ she says, in the sort of patient tone that has a very limited shelf life. ‘I need to talk to you for a minute.’

  Again, nothing. She steps out into the blinding sunlight, reaches down for her son’s hand and pulls him to his feet. The beetle must sense a change in the air current, because it scuttles away now and disappears behind one of the tall terracotta urns.

  ‘I was looking at him!’ wails Tobin. ‘And now you’ve made him run away!’

  ‘I’m sorry, darling, but this is important. Mummy needs to talk to you.’

  He pouts and refuses to look at her as she leads him back inside and lifts him on to a kitchen chair. He starts swinging his feet, banging his shoes against the chair legs.

  ‘Tobin, darling, Mummy just had a phone call from her friend Niamh. You remember Niamh, don’t you?’

  He doesn’t answer.

  ‘Well, she’s had a phone call from the policemen who came to the house, and they’d like to ask you some questions.’

  He looks up, suspicious but intrigued. ‘What ’bout?’

  She flushes slightly. ‘About the last time Caleb was here. Do you remember that night?’

  He looks down, starts kicking the chair again. It’s getting on her nerves.

  ‘Well, Niamh says it might help Mummy if you could talk to them. It won’t be scary or anything. No one will hurt you, they’ll just ask you questions. And Mummy will be in the next room.’

  Bang bang bang

  She reaches out and grasps one of his legs, holding it firmly. ‘Don’t do that, darling.’

  He’s still kicking the other leg. And he’s still not looking at her. She reaches to his forehead and pushes back the curls. His skin is hot to her touch; he’s been out in the sun too long.

  ‘So can you help Mummy, Tobin? Can you be my special, helpful, clever boy?’

  The kicking stops. He looks up, almost shyly. ‘Is it a game, Mummy, like last time? I liked that game.’

  * * *

  It’s gone six when Erica Somer gets home. She pushes open the main door and climbs listlessly up to her own flat; she can’t remember the last time she felt so damn tired. As she rounds the corner from the stairs she can see a bouquet propped against her front door. White roses, a dozen or more, dotted with stems of blue agapanthus. She feels tears coming into her eyes. Giles knows how much she loves those.

  She unlocks the door and shoulders it open, drops her bags in the hall and takes the flowers through to the kitchen.

  But she doesn’t run the tap or look for a vase. What she reaches for is the laptop on the counter.

  * * *

  Ev doesn’t get home to flowers. The only thing waiting at her flat is a vocal and rather disgruntled cat with some issues about the quality of service in this establishment. Ev feeds him, then sticks the kettle on. She’s trying to ignore the light winking at her from the landline: there’s only one person who’d phone her on that.

  ‘Miss Everett? It’s Elaine Baylis at Meadowhall. Nothing for you to worry about – your father’s perfectly fine. But I do need to talk to you. Perhaps you could call me first thing in the morning?’

  Gislingham is still in the office – in fact, the only one still in the office. His wife has already phoned twice. Once, to remind him that he promised to be home in time to read Billy a story. And the second time, an hour later and a little more waspish, to say she’s put his salad in the fridge. She didn’t need to call to say that – she’ll be in, and still up, when he gets home. It’s just her way of putting a marker down. She’ll cut him some slack for a while, especially after the holiday, but there are limits and they are not elastic.

  What he can’t tell her, even if he wanted to, is that he isn’t even working. He’s been faking it pretty well, for a man famously dreadful at lying, but what he’s really been doing all this time is waiting for the last member of Gallagher’s team to piss off home.

  Simon Farrow clearly doesn’t have a wife – or a life – since it’s gone eight when he finally gets up and pulls his jacket off the back of his chair. Gis leaves it another twenty minutes, the ‘Oh shit, I forgot something’ moment being the most dangerous part of this whole enterprise. He’s made his decision: it’s the right thing and he’s doing it, but he can’t afford to get fired in the process; he only has to imagine Janet’s face to start coming out in hives. The twenty minutes crawl by, then he gets up and wanders
, with deliberate nonchalance, into the Major Crimes office.

  They operate a clear-desk policy in this place. At least, in theory. But people get lazy, they make assumptions. What’s there to worry about, after all, when you can’t even get on to this floor without a Thames Valley key card?

  Farrow’s turned his computer off, but Gis doesn’t care – that’s not what he’s after. He takes one more quick look round, then reaches for what he came for.

  * * *

  They interview Tobin the following morning at the Vulnerable Witness Suite in Kidlington. The room they use for the victims of child abuse. Pale-blue walls, dark-blue carpet; toys, cushions, a playpen; the box of special dolls they use to get kids to talk about body parts and what people in their own family have been doing to them. It makes Ev shudder just looking at it. She’s in the adjoining room with the rest of the team, watching the video screen.

  Tobin Fisher is huddled on the sofa as far from the door as he can get. His knees are drawn up to his chest and he’s looking out at the specially trained female officer from under his fringe. The officer has been chatting away for about fifteen minutes now. Ev has come across her before, and always been impressed. She looks caring and comfortable, but she’s not so gushing that the kids get wary and clam up. Though Tobin Fisher may well be her toughest challenge yet. She’s talked Toy Story and Fortnite and what subjects he likes best at school, but most of the time she’s been talking at him, not with. Even when he does answer, he thinks so hard first that you wonder if he’s just going to stay silent. As if he’s looking for the trap in even the most innocuous question – as if he’s been warned (and Ev, for one, wouldn’t put it past his mother) that everywhere here there be dragons. Speaking of which –

  ‘Your drawings are really good, Tobin,’ says the officer, opening the colouring book on her lap and turning the pages. ‘I specially like the dragon.’

  He blinks, shifts a little.

  ‘You must have seen pictures of dragons before, to be able to colour them so well.’

  He shrugs and says something half mumbled about The Hobbit.

  She turns the book round and shows him the page.