Everyone Lies

by D. , Garrett, A.

  Becky is tugging at his hand. ‘Uncle Fenn.’ He was always Uncle Fenn to Becky. ‘Uncle Fenn, Mummy wants you.’

  He groans in his sleep and tries to shake her off. This is a good dream; he wants to stay a while.

  A fire alarm goes off further down the road and the girls stare at him, as though wondering what he’s going to do about it. They’re fading. The dream-ringing follows him into reality, and he realizes that his mobile is jangling on the bedside table.

  ‘You do sleep sometimes, then?’

  Kate Simms.

  Half drugged with sleep, he wonders how Becky knew it was her mother on the line, then something clicks in his head and he’s fully awake. He sits up, yawns, asks, ‘What time is it?’

  ‘Four a.m. Can you be ready in fifteen minutes?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Good, I’m on my way.’

  ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Liz Dromer just rang.’ This was Kate’s community partnership contact. ‘She’s found the surviving victim of the abduction-torture up in Hull – the eighteen-year-old who was in the injuries database – Tanya Repton. She’ll talk to me, but she won’t give a formal statement, she won’t go anywhere near a police station, and she insists that Liz is present.’

  By 4.25 they were heading east on the M62 in Simms’s Mondeo towards Goole. It was a ninety-minute drive and Fennimore had insisted on taking the wheel, despite Simms’s protests that she’d had a good three hours of sleep.

  ‘And before that?’ he’d asked.

  She’d shrugged. ‘I’m good at power-napping.’

  ‘That’s what worries me,’ he’d said, plucking the keys from her hand.

  They drove full into an easterly wind that blasted tiny snow crystals into the windscreen like a cold white dust storm. For a time, he hugged close in behind a gritting lorry until the road began the steady descent towards the flatlands of the East Riding of Yorkshire. Kate slept through it, but as Fennimore slowed for the off-ramp, she stirred and woke.

  ‘Take it slow.’ Her words were slurred with sleep. ‘It’s a few hundred yards down on the left.’

  He saw the lights first, shining down on the car park in pods of three, like alien landing craft. Then he saw the big, plastic gold M and groaned. ‘McDonald’s,’ he said. ‘Oh, joy.’

  ‘Tanya works here.’ She squinted at the dashboard clock. ‘And she’s just about to knock off.’

  Stepping out of the car, the air felt cold enough to turn to ice crystals in his lungs, but at least it had stopped snowing. The buzz of traffic on the M62 a few hundred yards away was a constant in the background. The car park was almost deserted, but the door of an old Peugeot estate opened and a woman stepped out.

  Liz Dromer was nearing sixty, grey-haired, with direct blue eyes. She hugged Simms.

  ‘How did you find her so fast?’ Simms asked.

  Liz smiled. ‘I knew who you wanted as soon as you said the name,’ she said. ‘Tanya went through our rehab programme. But I had to square it with her, first.’

  Liz turned to shake Fennimore’s hand. ‘Professor – I know you by reputation.’ She gripped his hand a second or two longer than was necessary, and stared into his eyes. Hers was a face that had lived through pain and learned to endure.

  If not for the flaw in Tanya Repton’s iris, Fennimore wouldn’t have recognized her. The slate-grey irises had lost their sullen hopelessness and shone with good health. She had grown her hair out to her natural brown and when she took off her staff cap it fell, silky and shining, to her shoulders.

  Carrying a tray of coffees, she guided them to a table in the far corner. Tanya was eighteen years old when she’d been abducted; she would be around twenty now, but her oval, pixyish face and shy manner made her seem much younger. Her skin was clear and flawless, but prone to delicate pink flushes. She avoided looking at Fennimore, even angled her chair and turned her head so that he could see only the side of her face.

  ‘Back then, I was pretty wrecked,’ she said with a glance at Kate. ‘It was October; wet and cold.’ She stared at the table as she spoke, her voice no more than a whisper.

  ‘I was on Myton Street, trying to …’ She lifted her shoulders and let them fall. ‘Well, to earn enough for any kind of shit I could find really.’ She didn’t sound bitter. It was as if she was talking about another girl, a distant friend, perhaps – one she pitied, but had little in common with. ‘Most of the girls had given up and gone home for the night. This guy called me over to his car. Said he’d pay me and give me some good grade H if I’d do something extra for him. A game, he called it.’

  She looked briefly into Kate Simms’s face. ‘I’m not daft, I told him I wasn’t into bondage, but he said it wouldn’t hardly be anything. “Just a couple of quick stripes,” he said. Then he grabbed my wrist.’

  She leaned back in her chair as if the memory still frightened her. ‘I’m reaching for my mace spray, but then he slaps a baggy of the whitest, purest-looking shit you ever saw into my hand.’

  She shrugged as if to say, What’re you gonna do?

  ‘He paid me upfront, said he hoped I didn’t mind, but he thought we’d be more comfortable at this place he knew. He seemed like a real gent – looked away as I hid the baggy down the lining of my handbag, chatted all the way there in the car, didn’t try nothing – didn’t even try to feel me up.’

  ‘This place he took you to …’ Simms said.

  ‘An old factory near the river – over the lift bridge. Cops were having a bit of a crackdown, and a lot of punters were taking the girls out of town to do business, so it didn’t ring any alarm bells. He had a key to the gate and he knew where he was going, so I’m thinking maybe he’s security. He had that look about him, you know?

  ‘He goes to this door at the side and he says, “Through here, where it’s warmer.” It’s filthy and stinks of piss, and I tell him, but he points to some steps down. “Don’t be like that,” he says. “I got a nice room down there – fixed up all cosy.” And I’m like – No way! So he says, “Fuck you, I want my H back.”’

  She fell silent, and Fennimore and Simms both looked to Liz Dromer for her lead. With a small shake of the head she warned them to stay quiet.

  After a minute, Tanya stirred and sat up. ‘I’m really dope-sick, so I tell him I’ll do it right there. He says okay; he even lets me take a little hit to smooth the edges off the withdrawal.’ She exhales. ‘That scag was sweet …’ For a moment she’s lost in the memory, then she glances guiltily at Liz and shrugs. ‘Must’ve been good, ’cos I wake up in this room. There’s white and black tiles on the floor. And there’s, like, rings on the walls. And a chair – an old red armchair – and whip.’

  ‘Can you describe the whip, Tanya?’ Kate asked.

  She frowned. ‘You know, like they use on horses. Sort of like a cane, only more bendy. Looked like plaited brown leather.’

  Kate and Fennimore exchanged a glance. Riding crop.

  Tanya’s eyes seemed to shimmer like cold air on still water. Her chest rose and fell sharply, and Liz cupped her hand protectively over the girl’s. After a few moments, Tanya nodded and slid her hand from under Liz’s and let it drop into her lap.

  ‘I rush him, but I’m still half-stoned and he’s big. He spins me round and smacks me against the wall. Next thing I know, my hands are cuffed behind me and he’s ripping off my trousers. I think, Okay, just let it happen – get it over with. But he doesn’t want that. He pulls my top up over the back of my neck somehow, so I can’t even lift my head up. He bends down and looks into my eyes and he just grins and we both know he’s going to hurt me. He begins to pinch and twist and bite me to make—’ She broke off, her face pink with shame. ‘Well, you know,’ she said.

  To make her move, Fennimore thought.

  ‘So I do, and I’m trying to act like I’m liking it, ’cos I think if I give him what he wants, he’ll let me go. Suddenly I can’t breathe.’ Her hand went to her throat. ‘He’s choking me. I feel like my eyes are goi
ng to burst.’ She broke off with a sob and loosened her scarf, dragging the silk away from her neck.

  Nobody looked at her directly, or at each other, and after a few moments, her face wet with tears, Tanya began again. ‘I must have passed out. ’Cos when I wake up I’m tied face in to the rings in the wall, and all I’ve got on is my pop socks. He’s walking back and forth, back and forth, behind me and he’s got the whip in his hand, and I’m trying to keep him in sight. He doesn’t hit me straight off.’ She looked at Simms. ‘I think he was getting off on just scaring me. When he did hit me, I swear, I never felt pain like it.’ Her pupils dilated. ‘He waits a bit, then he kneels behind me and starts off again, only this time he’s hitting me straight.’ She motioned the vertical with the blade of her hand. ‘I thought he’d slashed me with a carpet knife. I thought he was carving my skin off.’

  The hairs on Fennimore’s arms and the back of his neck stood up.

  ‘He stops and I’m sobbing, and he’s behind me, stroking my neck, gentle at first, but then he starts squeezing harder and harder until I know he’s going to kill me. He’s whispering into my neck, so I can feel his breath on my skin. He says, “Shh … shh … it’ll soon be over.”’

  Tanya slapped at her neck with both hands as if she could still feel the warmth of his breath, the spider crawl of those terrible words on her flesh.

  ‘Next time I came to, he was sitting in the chair and I was hung up from a hook in the ceiling.’ Her smooth forehead crinkled. ‘I thought I was dead, and I was in hell ’cos of all the bad things I done.’ Her face creased and for a second it looked like she would break down completely, but she took a huge breath and her face set in an expression of fierce determination.

  ‘Then the pain came back and I knew he hadn’t killed me, yet. He just sat there and watched me. When he got bored with that he hurt me again, and then he watched me. He hurt me and he watched me and hurt me and watched me till I thought I’d go mad. And the creepiest part? Except when he was choking me, he didn’t say a word. I pleaded, I screamed, I begged him to let me go home to my mum. And he just stared at me, as if he was …’ She frowned, trying to make sense of something no normal person could. ‘You know when you were in school and you had a test and you had to know stuff by heart?’

  Simms nodded.

  ‘It was like that. Like he was trying to learn my pain by heart.’

  For a long time, nobody said anything, and after a few minutes it was clear that Tanya had said all she was going to say.

  ‘How did you get away?’

  Tanya startled, as though she’d forgotten they were in the room. She took a few breaths before answering.

  ‘He dumped me back in Hull in the early hours. Let me get dressed and took me outside to the car. He opened the boot …’ Her mouth twitched; she whimpered, and for the first time it looked like she might lose control. But she swallowed and balled both hands into fists on the table and frowned at her paper cup as if she was trying to move it by sheer willpower.

  ‘It was lined with plastic sheets.’ Her face had lost all expression; her voice was toneless, as if the only way she could tell this was by stripping it of emotion. ‘I’m thinking, This is it – this time he really is going to kill me. But he said he didn’t want me messing up his car with—’ her mouth twitched again ‘—the blood.’

  ‘The police didn’t investigate?’ Simms said.

  ‘They took pictures, I made the statement, did a photofit. I never heard nothing, so I went back to the police station after a week. The DS says to me, “He’ll be long gone, love. Look on the bright side – he let you keep the money, and the shit, didn’t he?”’ She shrugged. ‘And that was it – the end of it.’

  Fennimore could feel Simms seething beside him.

  ‘Would you know the name of the factory where he took you?’ she asked gently. ‘Or the road it was on?’

  ‘No.’ Tanya looked at Liz Dromer. Liz nodded encouragement and she heaved a sigh. ‘But I could take you there.’

  33

  ‘It’s always better to ask forgiveness than permission.’

  ROBERT RESSLER

  Simms didn’t want to let Tanya loose in case she lost her nerve at the last minute, and there was a chance that something else might drop out in conversation on the journey, so she rode along with Tanya and Liz Dromer, while Fennimore followed in Simms’s car. They passed rows of derelict houses, their windows and doors secured with steel sheeting. Further on, they crossed the bridge Tanya had remembered from her ordeal, then onto an industrial estate, squashed on a hook-shaped oxbow along the banks of the River Hull with only one way in or out. The snow smoothed and flattered the deficiencies of roadway and cracked tarmac, but the factory itself refused its softening effects. It remained defiantly ugly, its stonework the colour of dust, its aluminium-frame windows ripped out or smashed. The corrugated roof was whitened in patches by the snowfall, but holes in the panels gaped black under the tarry sky. The two cars pulled in at the gate, squeezing past the rusted shell of a Ford Focus left at an angle in the middle of the road. Fennimore gazed at the crumbling building and suppressed a shiver.

  Simms helped Tanya out. The girl pointed towards the side access, just visible through the chain-link fence surrounding the site. She was trembling from head to foot, and would not be persuaded to go any further.

  Liz said, ‘Come on, love, I’ll take you home.’ She shook hands with Fennimore and gave Simms a parting hug. ‘Don’t be a stranger,’ she said. Seconds later they were gone, and Fennimore and Simms were alone on a snowy road in a blighted landscape.

  The place had been abandoned for decades – so long that even the vandals didn’t bother with it any more. Security lights around the perimeter had been smashed or had simply rotted in a succession of east coast winters; a destructive combination of salt-laden air and winds that screamed in from Norway and all points north. For a 200-yard stretch there wasn’t a single working light of any sort, yet the snow seemed to give off its own eerie light, like a radioactive glow.

  Signs informed the unwary that the site was patrolled by guard dogs, but the area code for the contact phone number had been defunct for ten years. Still, Simms made a note of the security firm’s details – maybe Tanya’s ‘friend’ had been an employee.

  A demolition notice, the text fading and laminate cracked, was tethered to the gate; there were more of them at intervals along the crosslink fence. A container services depot had been planned, the demolition date October 1999. That was over a decade ago, yet here it was, still standing, and with the whole of Europe now in economic meltdown there was no prospect of either demolition or regeneration.

  They crunched alongside the fence, their breath steaming in the bitter cold. Fennimore hadn’t thought to put on walking shoes, so the soft leather of his loafers was already soaked, snow had got in over the cuffs and melted, and his feet lost all feeling in minutes. About fifty yards down one edge Simms found a hole cut in the chain link.

  Fennimore bent the wire to make it easier to squeeze through, but Simms hung back. ‘I don’t know – this is way out of my jurisdiction.’

  He tamped down his impatience. For Fennimore, a scientist, straying onto a derelict site might be considered an annoyance, at worst a breach of protocol; Simms, a Detective Chief Inspector, had knowingly crossed Force boundaries, and was about to break into private property – the consequences for her could be dire.

  ‘Humberside Police weren’t interested in what happened to Tanya,’ he said. ‘If they weren’t interested then, how are you going to persuade them to visit a crime scene that’s more than two years old? We need to give them a reason, Kate. Find something they can’t ignore.’

  Still she hesitated. ‘Even so, I should call someone.’

  ‘Ask permission? They’ll just escort you over the Force boundaries. As Robert Ressler says, it’s always better to ask forgiveness than permission.’

  For a while she stared through the fence at the rotting grey walls and Fenn
imore said, ‘It isn’t even a crime scene yet.’

  She eyed him dolefully as she slipped through the narrow gap. He shoved his scene kit bag through the wire and she dragged it the rest of the way.

  As he forced his bulkier frame through the damaged fencing, Fennimore was grinning. For him, the illegality of what they were doing was as thrilling as rock climbing, or slapping a hundred down on a horse he’d hardly considered just because he liked the odds.

  The access door was jammed open at forty-five degrees, the bottom edge rusted to the concrete floor. Simms slid through with no problem, shining her torch into the corners of the room. Fennimore handed the scene kit to her and eased around the steel door. Old rags were piled in one corner and the remains of a fire blackened the floor. The walls and ceiling were sooty.

  ‘Vagrants,’ Simms said.

  Fennimore tested the edge of the heap of rags with the toe of his shoe. ‘Frozen – no one will be curling up in here for warmth anytime soon. We’ve got the place to ourselves.’

  She shone her torch beam towards the far end of the room. ‘Stairs.’

  They made their way slowly. It became noticeably warmer as they descended, and the reek of urine and the ghosts of other fires rose to greet them. The passageway ran left to right. It was eight or nine feet across and maybe ten feet high. The remains of a series of pipes and conduits ran off to the left.

  ‘Left looks easier,’ Fennimore said.

  ‘You think?’ Simms’s torchlight penetrated deep into the tunnel, picking up fallen plaster and startling flashes of light reflected from shredded foil pipe insulation – most of the copper pipework had been stripped out by scavengers looking for anything saleable. Treading carefully, they made slow progress; as Simms negotiated a section of collapsed roof her torch beam snagged on a hole in the ceiling, lighting up a fibrous insulating material.

  ‘Don’t touch anything,’ he warned her, sharply. ‘That looks like asbestos.’