‘Hiya, Candy,’ she said. ‘Don’t worry, love, we’re not here to hassle you.’
‘That’s nice, Officer Dibble.’ Candy jammed her hands into the pockets of her denim jacket and kept walking. ‘In that case, you can fuck off.’
Simms kept pace, while Moran tried again: ‘I were just talking to Tami-Marie – she said you might be able to help.’
The use of a name was as good as an introduction. Candy stopped and bent at the waist to look inside the car. She was so emaciated that the muscles and tendons running down her jaw were visible working under her skin. Her eyes looked huge in her wasted face; her eyebrows were plucked bare – or they’d fallen out – and she’d redrawn them high on her forehead, which, together with her sunken cheeks and sallow skin, gave the impression of a startled wraith. She eyeballed Simms, then leaned in at the window to get a look at Fennimore.
‘Who’s he?’
‘Oh, don’t worry about me,’ he said. ‘I’m not even here.’
She pouted and he saw that she had inexpertly covered a large sore on her upper lip with Vaseline and foundation.
She ignored him, addressing the two women instead: ‘Looks like a fucking punter in that get-up.’
She opened the passenger door, letting in a blast of cold air. ‘Well, shove up,’ she said, practically sitting on Fennimore’s lap. ‘I’m freezing my arse off out here.’
Shifting to the offside passenger seat, Fennimore glanced out of the rear window and caught a glimpse of a car crawling past the end of the road. A punter: where addicts were drawn, so was their source of income. She perched next to him with one buttock on the seat, but a moment later shifted her weight onto the other buttock.
‘First off, it’s Candice,’ she said. ‘Not Candy.’
Moran swivelled in her seat. ‘Sorry,’ she said, her tone solemn and respectful. ‘Candice.’
‘I don’t know who Tami-Marie thinks she is, calling me Candy. I mean what if I started calling her Tami, or Tam—’
‘Candice.’ The officer who called herself ‘Mouse’ was firm, but not sharp.
Candice fiddled with the broken and bleach-damaged hair that formed a fringe on her forehead, raking and primping it. She couldn’t sit still. ‘Well, I’m just saying,’ she muttered.
‘We thought you might know this girl,’ Moran said, gently but firmly bringing her back to the subject. She took a colour copy of Rika’s photo booth picture from an A4-sized leather portfolio and passed it through the gap between the driver’s and front passenger’s seat.
Candice stared at the picture. She raised her eyes to the young constable and reached out tentatively, as if asking permission. Moran gave her an encouraging smile and she took the photograph in her trembling fingers.
‘Rika,’ Candice said. ‘She were lovely.’
‘Tami-Marie thought her name might be Rita,’ Moran said.
‘Rika,’ Candice said, all offended sensibilities again. ‘She was from Latvia, for fuck’s sake. Who heard of a girl called Rita from Latvia?’
Simms whipped round. ‘What part of Latvia?’ If they could pinpoint the place, they could have her full name in days, rather than weeks.
‘What’re you on about?’
‘Which city – did she say?’
‘Duh!’ Candice said, bugging her eyes at the stupidity of the police. ‘Latvia is the city.’
Moran took over. ‘Latvia’s a country, hon,’ she said.
‘Well, how’m I supposed to know?’ Candice squirmed constantly, taking some of the weight off her bony behind by hanging on to the grip over the door. ‘She said Latvia. Just Latvia. I’m not bloody Google Earth, am I?’
‘We didn’t even know that she was from there till just now,’ Moran said, placating. ‘Tami-Marie said you and Rika were mates.’
Candice nodded. ‘We worked out the same sauna. But Rika got fucked up on the drugs and doing … stuff she should have stayed well clear of.’ She began tugging at the scrunchy, pulled it out and retied it so that her thin, scraggy ponytail sat on the crown of her head. ‘She died.’
‘I know,’ Moran said. ‘I’m really sorry, Candice.’
Candice’s eyes sparkled with tears for a second, but she blinked them away, wiped her nose with the heel of her hand. ‘Yeah, well, like I said, she got fucked up.’
‘But we’re looking for another girl; someone who was close to Rika.’
She eyed first Moran, then Fennimore. ‘Maybe she doesn’t want to be found.’
‘We’ve already found her,’ Simms said, watching for Candice’s reaction in the rear-view mirror. ‘She’s dead, too.’
Candice’s eyes narrowed. ‘It’s that girl they found at the back of the hotel, isn’t it?’
‘We’re trying to identify her,’ Moran said. ‘She was blonde, blue-eyed. We were thinking maybe she worked with Rika – she had Rika’s picture in her purse.’
‘No.’ Candice shook her head. ‘I worked with Rika, I never saw her with no blonde. She was my mate. Rika always said I was the only friend she had over here.’ The possessiveness of her tone was unmistakable.
‘Maybe she knew her from Latvia then?’ Moran said.
She shrugged, still resentful. It seemed strange that she could feel jealous of a dead girl.
‘Short blonde hair,’ Simms added.
Fennimore remembered the glimpse of a young woman getting into a BMW outside the restaurant and gave her the waiter’s description. ‘Long legged,’ he said. ‘Elegant – gorgeous blue eyes.’
Candice gave him a sharp look. ‘He sounds like a punter an’ all.’
‘This girl wasn’t a user,’ Moran said. ‘I mean, most girls need something to get them through, but not this girl.’
This seemed to chime a chord with Candice. ‘Ohmigod,’ she said. ‘Saint Marta of the Just Say No.’ She smiled like it was a horrible joke. ‘So she’s dead?’ The look of spiteful glee on her face a reminder that unkindness passed down the chain from the powerful to the ultimately powerless gets smaller and meaner with every step.
‘Why d’you call her Saint Marta?’ Simms asked.
‘Because. She called Amy a hypocrite just ’cos she likes a little pick-me-up on the late shift, and there’s her—’ She broke off, as though a sudden jolt of electric current had shot through her.
‘What, Candice? What did she do?’
‘Nothing,’ she said.
‘Why do you call her a hypocrite? Was she carrying drugs for someone maybe?’
Candice’s eyes flared wide, then dulled, as though she had deliberately shut down something inside of her. ‘She didn’t do nothing. Just she was full of shit.’
‘Did she have a surname?’ Kate asked.
‘McKinley. Silly mare thought it sounded English. I told her it was Scotch, but she said she didn’t care, and I said she should care. I mean since when did the punters want English?’ She would have gone on, but Moran intervened.
‘Who did she work for, Candice?’
‘One of the saunas,’ Candice said evasively.
‘Wouldn’t people have missed her?’ Fennimore said.
‘Oh, yeah, she were very popular – had her own set of regulars and everything.’
‘But it came as a surprise to you that she was dead,’ Simms said.
Candice eyed her in the mirror. ‘I don’t work there no more – it’s a bloody rip-off what they charge for rooms – I decided to go freelance.’
Nobody contradicted her.
‘So,’ Moran said, ‘this Marta – what can you tell us about her?’
Candice folded Rika’s picture in half and tucked it inside her jacket. ‘Depends on what you got to offer me.’
Simms said, ‘What d’you need, Candice?’
‘Not what you think.’ She looked offended. ‘I’m not just some tart looking for a bit of easy cash, you know.’
‘Look,’ Simms said, ‘we haven’t got time to mess about.’
‘You think I have?’ She winced and shifted her weight
again. ‘Time’s money, and you’ve already had ten minutes worth of mine.’
‘We really need to know who this girl was, Candice,’ Moran said. ‘So whatever you can do to help …’
She chewed her inner cheek. ‘They took my kids.’
‘They?’ Simms said.
‘Well, it wasn’t Daddy Warbucks, was it?’ she snapped. ‘Fucking Social, who else? I want them back.’
‘You know how it works, Candice, love,’ Moran said. ‘You’d have to get yourself straight, first.’
‘How’m I gonna do that?’ she demanded.
‘I could maybe get you bumped up the list for rehab,’ Simms said.
She snorted. ‘Rehab. Fucking joke. They’re my kids—’ She broke off, and reached for the door handle. ‘Forget it,’ she said. ‘Thanks for the warm.’ A second later, she was out of the car and two steps down the road.
Fennimore got out the other side and Kate was quick to follow. Moran was slower, watching Kate for her lead. She had good instincts, Fennimore thought. Knew when to take point position and when to hang back.
‘Candice.’
She flipped him two fingers and carried on walking.
‘This bad shit Rika got into …’ Fennimore saw Kate’s warning look, but he went on: ‘Was it S&M?’
She wheeled to face him, her eyes wide with shock, but she recovered quickly. ‘Why?’ she asked, her face twisted in contempt. ‘Get off on it, do you, love?’
‘Was it caning? Maybe whipping? A hit of some good stuff to ease the pain after – is that the kind of bad shit you mean? Are you into the same shit now, Candice, because I noticed you seem to be in some discomfort.’
The thin mask of contempt dropped away completely and she stared at him, horrified.
‘Fuck off,’ she said. A gob of spittle gathered at the corner of her mouth. She was shaking – he didn’t feel proud of that, but she wasn’t leaving, either.
Simms put herself between the two of them, taking the chance of another shot at persuading her. ‘We can protect you, Candice,’ she said. ‘But only if you tell us what you know.’
Candice looked over her shoulder, her eyes glittering with hate and shame. ‘He can fuck right off out of here, or I will.’
Fennimore turned his back and started walking, his head down, though he felt a rising excitement. The discrete packets of information were starting to interconnect: Rika and the murder victim were both tortured, almost certainly by the same man. They injected heroin from the same source. They knew each other, and well enough for the murder victim to carry Rika’s picture around in her purse. They both knew Candice, both worked at the same sauna. He suspected that Candice had been subjected to the same torture as Rika and their unidentified murder victim. Sets, subsets, overlapping data – the Venn diagrams of scientific investigation. Soon they would find more intersections – names, places, times, events – and they would begin to understand their significance. Finally, the picture would come into sharp focus. Then everything would make sense. And at the back of it, like a tune that kept repeating over and over in his head: Fennimore, I love you.
He glanced up and saw that the kerb crawler had returned. His car was idling at the junction, twenty-five yards down the road. He caught a dull glint of something; the driver had wound down the window. Cocky sod: two women and a man talking to one of the girls in the same car screamed police, and most of the kerb-crawling types would have run a mile. He stared at the car, parked side on at the junction; as the distance closed, he saw that the driver wore sunglasses and a beanie hat. He had one arm stretched out across the doorframe; the angle seemed odd – like he was shielding something.
Fennimore increased his pace, and his heart began to thud. What the hell? He shielded his eyes and the punter jerked back inside the car. As the punter lifted his arm off the window frame, Fennimore saw a telephoto lens.
‘Hey!’
Simms turned and he pointed to the car, already running. ‘Camera!’ he shouted.
The driver shoved the camera away from him, but he was slow to shift the engine into gear.
Fennimore put on a spurt, yelled again, ‘HEY!’
Ten yards. Eight. He was going to make it. The engine whined, then caught; the car fishtailed down the narrow roadway. He made the last few yards, rounded the corner at speed, ran a few more yards, then stood still, trying to read the number plate. The car was forty yards down the road. Too late. Too fucking late.
It slewed around the corner into the traffic. Horns blared. Tyres screamed, he heard the roar of the engine, then it was gone.
Kate skidded around the corner a second after him. She looked at him and he shook his head, gasping for breath, his hands on his knees. She wasn’t even breathing hard. She kicked a can and it ricocheted off one of the buildings.
‘Who?’ she yelled, fury crackling in her eyes. ‘Who the hell was that?’
He shook his head again and she turned and walked back towards the car. He was still catching his breath when she got to the corner. He heard her curse, then she was running again.
‘Ella!’ she shouted.
When he got to the corner the young constable was lying on the ground, her hands covering her face.
29
‘A lie with a purpose is one of the worst kind, and the most profitable.’
FINLEY PETER DUNNE
Ella Moran was coughing and choking, her hands tight to her face.
‘Ella, what happened?’ Kate shouted.
The young constable gritted her teeth. ‘Pepper spray.’
Fennimore was already calling emergency services.
Moran whooped and spluttered.
‘Help is coming.’ Kate Simms knelt beside her. ‘Ella. Ella, take your hands away from your face.’
She roared into her hands. ‘Bugger, bugger, bugger – it hurts.’
Fennimore gave their location to the operator while Kate prised Moran’s hands away from her face. Her eyes were clamped tight shut.
‘You need to try and open your eyes, increase your blink rate.’
She turned her head and tried to rub her face against her jacket sleeve, but Simms stopped her. ‘Ella, listen to me – remember your training – the more you do that the worse it’ll be. You can’t touch your face.’
She coughed and retched. ‘I know but it bloody hurts.’ The upper half of her face was one livid red welt.
Fennimore pocketed his phone. ‘What can I do?’
‘Help me get her up.’ Simms gripped the young officer’s wrists as she writhed and groaned battling with her instinct to rub the irritant off her skin.
Simms nodded to Fennimore and he put his arm around the young constable’s shoulders. ‘Come on,’ Simms said. ‘Try to sit up.’
They got her to a sitting position and long threads of mucus trailed from her nose and mouth, but neither of them tried to wipe them away – it would only prolong the pain.
Sirens approached through the traffic. ‘I’m okay,’ Moran said. ‘Get after her.’ Simms hesitated, and she yelled, ‘For God’s sake, Boss, go!’
Fennimore said, ‘Go ahead, I’ll look after her.’
She ran, only returning as the crew was lifting Ella Moran into the ambulance. She was alone. Ella Moran’s eyes were open – just. She was blinking furiously, trying to wash the capsicum out of her eyes; her eyelids looked swollen and red, and her skin was puffy and inflamed, but she was breathing more easily.
‘How is she?’ Simms asked.
‘We’ll irrigate her eyes before we set off to the hospital,’ the paramedic said. ‘It’ll make her a bit more comfortable.’
‘Boss, did you find her?’ Moran asked.
‘No, but don’t worry about it, Ella – she gave us the lead we needed.’ The driver got back into the van and his partner climbed inside.
‘Ella,’ Kate called, as he shut the doors, ‘take it easy. I’ll check on you later.’
*
They sat in the car for a few minutes, Simms staring through th
e windscreen at the patched tarmac on the narrow back street. She gripped the wheel as if she was already driving on treacherous roads through dangerous territory.
At last, Fennimore said, ‘Was he watching Candice, or you?’
‘I don’t know.’ There was something in her tone that told him there was a ‘but’ at the end of that sentence.
‘Kate, what are you not telling me?’
She sighed and shook her head as if she was regretting what she was about to say before she even said it. ‘Yesterday evening, parking up at your hotel, I got the feeling I was being followed.’
Dread settled under his ribcage like a solid lump. ‘Why didn’t you say?’
‘Because I thought I was mistaken. I mean, why would anyone be following me?’
‘You have pissed off some bad people just recently.’
‘I’m a cop. I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t piss off bad people.’
‘Well, that’s all very fine and macho, but they won’t feel bound by your rules of engagement.’
For a second her game face slipped and a sliver of fear shone in her eyes; he saw that she was trying to tough it out and he was being an arsehole.
‘Kate,’ he said, ‘I—’
‘Forget it.’ She started the car. ‘You’ve always been crap at apologies. ‘Candice gave me the name of the salon she worked out of – want to come?’
Frank and Sol Henry’s massage parlour was located on an industrial estate in a low-rise, low-rental retail unit. The spiked aluminium fencing around the yard and shabby blue paintwork suggested a car repair shop rather than a knocking shop, and the next-door unit was occupied by a plumbing trade warehouse. The sign – ‘Francine’s’ – was painted in an ornate script: the only hint of the kind of trade that went on inside.
Five cars were parked on the patched concrete in front of the building: a Lexus, a Merc, two Ford Fiestas and a Ka. No BMW. Kate opened the door and they were greeted by a blast of heat that nearly knocked them back into the car park. The reception area was furnished with a couple of leather sofas; a tanned brunette wearing way too much make-up and very little else sat at the desk on a high stool, leafing through a copy of Hello! magazine.
Everyone Lies Page 22