Parrish’s face seemed to sag. ‘Oh fuck.’ He rubbed his hand over his cropped hair. ‘I’ve been sweating blood over this – couldn’t make up my mind whether to tell you or go to the nearest pub and get bladdered.’
‘Regretting your decision, Detective?’
He considered the question carefully. After a long silence, he said, ‘Haven’t made my mind up yet.’
Simms smiled. ‘Why’d you come to me?’
‘I’m the new boy on the squad, like I said. I don’t know who I can trust. And everybody thinks you’re a pain in the arse.’ She could see him listening back to what he’d just said, and although he didn’t show any overt signs of alarm, he added, ‘I meant that in a good way, ma’am.’
‘It’s “Boss”,’ she said, allowing another fleeting smile to play across her features. ‘Did you record your conversations with her?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘No way would she agree to that.’
‘So you’ve no proof of any of this?’
‘Only my notes. Her calls to my mobile should be on the calls log, and I’ve kept the text.’
‘Does the text say she was in Francine’s when she made this discovery?’
‘No.’ He scrolled down his phone screen and showed her the text:
‘He is police,’ it said. ‘He sold drugs to Frank and Sol.’
‘Why does it matter where she made the call?’ Parrish asked.
‘Because Francine’s is probably our primary crime scene,’ Fennimore said. ‘And this Rob could be our killer.’
Parrish nodded. ‘So what do I do?’
Simms thought about it. She should talk to Superintendent Spry – this was way above her pay scale. But Spry wasn’t in the mood to listen, and they didn’t exactly have incontrovertible proof. She was tired and frightened and sick to the pit of her stomach, and a part of her wanted to give up, send everybody home, get into bed and pull the covers over her head. Maybe it was pride, maybe it was Parrish standing there, asking for her help because she was the only person he knew who was bloody-minded enough to trust; maybe it was hearing of Marta’s reckless courage in the face of violent men. Whatever the reason, when she looked at Parrish again, she knew she had to follow this through to the end.
‘Feel like doing some digging?’ she said.
Parrish replied with a cautious, ‘Okay …’
‘I want to know who was in charge of Operation Snowstorm. And specifically who signed the log supervising the destruction of the drugs.’
‘Yeah,’ he said, and she could see him working it through in his mind. ‘I can do that.’
41
Night fog gave way to a cold, dismal morning. It was 9 a.m. and Fennimore and Simms were in the Cemetery Office at Blackley in the northern outskirts of the city.
No, the ruddy-cheeked official told them, there was no ‘Rika’ buried in a pauper’s grave. She waved Simms’s copy of the coroner’s report.
‘I know exactly who you’re looking for,’ she said. ‘I didn’t say she wasn’t here, only that she isn’t buried in a pauper’s grave.’ She shoved her chair back and began rummaging under her desk. ‘I’ll show you.’
Kate winced. ‘Really, Nesta, that won’t be necessary.’
‘No trouble,’ the administrator said, her voice muffled under the desktop. ‘I could do with a breath of air.’ She came out from under the table flustered and glowing, with a pair of shiny black rubber overshoes in her hand. She crammed her feet into them, then struggled into a bright red duffle coat which she’d hung on the back of her chair. She riffled through a pile of buff folders halfway down the high-rise tower of files on her desk, extracted one and glanced at an A4 sheet inside.
‘Follow me,’ she said.
They sloshed their way along the slushy curve of the access road to the far north corner of the cemetery, and the tip of a wedge-shaped section, hedged in by winter-grey trees. A wood pigeon mourned in a treetop behind them, and the persistent did-didn’t, did-didn’t, did-didn’t chirrup of sparrows in the lower brush sounded like children embroiled in a tedious argument.
Fennimore scanned the rows, picking out those with a plain wooden marker; state-funded burials did not run to the cost of a headstone.
‘It’s on the fifth row,’ Nesta said, pointing to a new granite upright, half buried in snow.
Fennimore brushed away some of the powdery drift. The granite was carved with the inscription, ‘Veronika Aizupiete, aged 19.’
‘Veronika,’ Simms murmured.
‘Yes,’ the official said. ‘Not Rika. Though of course that was the name we had originally.’
‘Who paid for this?’ Fennimore asked.
‘Her sister. She put us right on the name when she requested permission to erect a headstone. Of course she had to cover burial costs and actually buy the plot before she was allowed to—’
‘The sister’s name?’ Simms interrupted.
‘Marta,’ she said. ‘Marta Aizupiete.’
Simms glanced at Fennimore, her eyes glowing. They had a name – a genuine, verifiable name.
‘Did Marta give a contact address?’ she asked.
‘Ye-es,’ the woman said. ‘And proof of identity – a passport and university student card.’
Simms stared at the folder clutched tight to the administrator’s chest. ‘Did you happen to keep copies?’
‘Of course,’ she said with prim disdain.
Kate took a breath and exhaled through her nose. ‘May we have copies?’ she asked, scrupulously polite.
Twenty minutes later they were on their way out of the office, the photocopies tucked away in Kate’s shoulder bag, when a man wearing a sharp suit and a bright spotted pink tie intercepted them.
‘You’re police?’
‘Detective Chief Superintendent Kate Simms, and this is Professor Nick Fennimore.’
‘Do you have proof of identity?’ he asked.
Simms showed her warrant card. ‘Your turn,’ she said.
He held up his staff card, hanging from a lanyard around his neck. ‘Tyburn,’ he said. ‘Section manager.’ He turned to the plump administrator. ‘Did you get her to sign a receipt?’
‘Um, well, no, Mr Tyburn,’ she said, her forehead colouring deeply. ‘They are police.’
‘By what authority are you here?’ he asked.
Fennimore wondered for one mad, paranoid moment if he’d been tipped off that Simms was no longer in charge of the investigation or, worse than that, he’d recognized them from the media coverage of the airport photographs.
Simms gave him a flat cop stare. ‘I’m investigating a murder, Mr Tyburn.’ She held up her warrant card again. ‘This is my authority.’
He flushed suddenly; apparently he wasn’t used to being faced down. ‘Don’t you people compare notes?’ he demanded. ‘We do have to consider client confidentiality, you know.’
‘I’m not sure I follow,’ Simms said.
‘I went through all of this with your chap on Wednesday.’
Fennimore shot her a glance.
‘What “chap” is this?’ Simms asked.
‘Um …’
‘What did you give him?’
‘Everything – address, proofs of ID – the lot.’
‘And did you ask him to sign a receipt?’ Kate asked tightly. ‘Did you even get a name?’
‘He showed me his warrant card,’ he said. ‘A detective sergeant,’ he said. ‘Tall. Dark hair. Forty-ish?’ He reddened and fumbled to a stop.
‘A name would be really helpful,’ Kate said with icy civility.
‘He never actually said his name,’ Tyburn admitted, his bravado thoroughly punctured.
‘He never actually said his name.’ She sucked her teeth. ‘Think you’d recognize him again?’
‘Yes,’ he said, recovering a little. ‘Yes, I believe I would.’
‘Good. I might need to call on you. And Mr Tyburn?’ she added, her voice like silk. ‘You might want to make a note of our names, for future reference.�
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‘The mystery sergeant,’ Fennimore said, as they walked back to the car. ‘Renwick?’
She nodded. ‘It was Renwick who told me that Rika had been buried by the state.’
‘Rika and Marta, sisters,’ he said, trying it out to see if he believed it. ‘It explains a lot.’
She nodded. Revenge, justice – they were strong reasons. ‘But Rika must have told her how dangerous the Henrys are. I can’t imagine why Marta would put herself in the same danger. ’
‘Maybe Parrish is right – she enjoyed the thrill. Or maybe it was better than sitting thinking about what happened to her sister.’
Simms glanced at him from under her lashes. She often thought that Fennimore’s restless activity was an escape from having to think.
Fennimore drove while Simms arranged for Scientific Support to attend Marta’s flat with her to take safe custody of any evidence. The route from Blackley Cemetery took them through Cheetham Hill, past the alleys and tenement blocks and their bin stores, where some of the early drugs death victims had been found. The pavements here were unsalted and the snow had been trodden down to dirty packed ice.
As they reached the mean row of shops where only ten days earlier they had leafleted the locals to warn them about tainted heroin, Simms wondered if Marta had crossed the street in front of her, on her way to make a delivery of heroin. Which of these nondescript buildings housed a crazy man named Bug? That shuttered and empty shop? That flat above a greengrocer’s? Marta hadn’t given DC Parrish an address, said Bug was ‘small potatoes’. It seemed that nothing less than the destruction of the Henrys’ entire empire would avenge her sister’s death. Simms kept replaying pictures in her head: Marta’s face battered beyond recognition; the whip marks, proof that the horrible torture inflicted on Rika had also been visited on Marta, too.
Fennimore glanced at her. ‘You okay?’ he asked.
‘Just thinking – Marta’s mother was right.’
He nodded. ‘She could have gone home, made a life for herself – a bright, resourceful young woman like that. But then Rika’s death would go unpunished.’ His face seemed calm, but a muscle in his jaw worked.
Suzie, she thought. In a way, every investigation, every case he worked on was about Suzie.‘Let’s see if we can finish what Marta came here to do,’ she said quietly.
She scrolled down her contacts list to Josh Brown and switched to speakerphone. ‘Marta Aizupiete,’ she said, spelling the surname. ‘She was a sociology student at Manchester Metropolitan University.’
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Want me to look up her records?’
‘No, I want you to talk to her friends.’ She hesitated. Strictly speaking, she should put this in the hands of a Family Liaison Officer. ‘Josh, what I’m asking you to do is highly irregular …’
‘Not a problem,’ he said. ‘Just tell me what you need.’
‘Ask about her, find out if she told anyone about her background, but do not let them know what happened to her. Josh, it’s possible Renwick got there before us, so suspicions could already be aroused—’
‘It’s fine,’ he said. ‘I’ll get hold of a teaching schedule – I’m a friend from London, looking her up. Got her address?’
Kate read it to him from one of the sheets the admin officer had copied for them.
‘Got it – I’ll say I went there and couldn’t get an answer.’
‘Well.’ She glanced at Fennimore as she disconnected. ‘Young Josh is a natural at this.’
Fennimore gave her a wry smile. ‘I think Josh has had a bit of practice when it comes to reinventing himself.’
She turned in her seat. ‘What does that mean?’
He shrugged. ‘Just a feeling.’
Simms nodded to herself; a cop’s curiosity wasn’t always welcome.
She kept quiet until they approached the wide junction at the end of Cheetham Hill Road. From there, she gave him directions, guiding him anticlockwise onto a grey, high-walled section of the Mancunian Way. When she’d first moved north to Manchester, Simms had no cosy notion of narrow streets of terraced houses and neighbours chatting on doorsteps, but she hadn’t expected something quite on the scale of the city’s urban sprawl either. At Castlefield the road opened up onto a vista of leafless trees and scrubby grass; in the distance, they caught glimpses of Beetham Tower, the forty-seven-floor skyscraper looking like an impossibly tall slab of marble, reflecting the greys and whites of the sky, the penthouse wreathed in a lingering mist. They took the first left off the roundabout and drove past a student apartment block on the left.
Marta had rented a two-bed furnished apartment across the road in a Victorian Mill conversion – four-star accommodation at about double the rental on a student flat yet only five minutes’ walk from the university. The place was secure on their arrival. Kate had contacted the flat owner, who had an apartment in the same building.
‘Marta’s a good tenant,’ he said. ‘No noise, no visitors that I know of. Pays her rent, cash every month. I didn’t like it at first – cash seems a bit iffy, doesn’t it? But she paid three months’ deposit upfront and she’s never been late – not even a day, not once in ten months. She’s a nice girl, Chief Inspector. I don’t know what you think she’s done, but—’
‘Sir,’ Simms said gently. ‘Marta is dead. She was murdered.’
His eyes watered suddenly and he made a small noise at the back of his throat. ‘Marta?’ he said. ‘Are you sure?’
She nodded and he placed the key in her gloved hand, then she asked him to take a step back. He stood to the side of the door and turned away for a second, wiping his face with the back of his hand.
Kate unlocked the door and swung it wide, remaining in the hallway. She looked at Fennimore and he said, ‘I think we both expected this.’
‘What?’ the landlord demanded. ‘Expected what?’ He crowded forward looking over her shoulder.
‘Fucking hell!’
The place was a mess. Furniture overturned, cushions ripped apart, their stuffing feathering every surface. Books had been pulled out from the bookshelf, spines ripped off. There was no TV – removed at her request, the landlord said. A CD player was intact, but every disc had been taken. At the far end of the open-plan living space, every drawer, cupboard and shelf in the kitchen had been emptied. Rice, cereal, biscuits and dried pasta lay strewn across the floor and work surfaces, tipped out of their packs. Drawers were turned upside down, even the washing machine had been dragged away from the wall.
‘Thorough,’ Fennimore said.
Simms nodded. ‘Now I know why Renwick missed the lunchtime briefing on Wednesday.’
The landlord made a move to enter, but she turned and eased him back. ‘Sir,’ she said. ‘This is a crime scene. You can’t go in.’
There was no laptop, memory stick or external drive in the flat. Fennimore and Simms left the Crime Scene Unit to it and headed back to the Midland Hotel for an unofficial debrief of her unofficial team. The police constable on the door had been told to admit no one but the CSIs.
‘He’s been ahead of me every step,’ Simms said. ‘I thought I was doing him a favour, giving him a chance to prove himself. He’s been messing with the evidence and laughing behind his hand with every supposed foul-up.’
Unexpectedly, Fennimore smiled.
‘Oh, you think this funny, Professor?’
‘You know Locard’s Principle – “Every contact leaves a trace.”’
‘Even when you break in to steal evidence?’ she said gloomily, irritated by his good mood.
‘Sometimes especially then,’ he said. ‘You would think he’d be especially careful, wouldn’t you? But he trashed the place.’
‘He was panicked or angry, or both,’ Simms said.
‘Which means he made mistakes.’
‘He’s a cop, Nick – he’s forensically aware.’
‘Police always think they know more than they do,’ he said. ‘If he was there, the CSIs will find him.’
42
‘Everybody lies.’
DR GREG HOUSE
They got back to Fennimore’s hotel just after midday. His suite was decked out like an incident room. His laptop stood open on a circular dining table, a flipchart lying open next to it was covered in notes, diagrams and doodles; on a whiteboard, mounted on a couple of easels, he had mindmapped the investigation as it currently stood. Hung on a stand next to it, a second flipchart summarized the mindmap in bullet points. A drift of scrapped flipchart sheets from previous attempts lay curled and scrolled against the far wall.
Josh sat in one of the armchairs, his laptop on his knee, a combined printer and flatbed scanner perched on a stack of printer paper on the coffee table in front of him. His smart-phone was in his hand and he appeared to be texting. He looked up, lifted his chin in greeting, his thumbs still moving over the touch screen. The blinds were closed – a precaution in case any of the journalists who had dogged them the previous day had failed to get the message and bribed their way into one of the buildings opposite.
Simms moved straight to the whiteboard; it was an explosion of colour.
Fennimore stood next to her. ‘Didn’t sleep too well last night,’ he said.
Minutes after he reconnected his hotel landline, Fennimore had received an angry call from his in-laws; they had been trying to reach him all day. Rachel’s father described the Facebook page as ‘a stunt’, and called Fennimore a selfish, self-obsessed bastard. It was true: it hadn’t even occurred to him to consult with Rachel’s parents or even warn them of what he was about to do. He’d meant to apologize, but heard himself say, ‘I’m trying to find my daughter.’
Rachel’s mother came on the line, her voice raw with anger and tears. ‘It’s all about you, isn’t it, Nick? Well, we lost a daughter, too.’
He shook himself free of the memory and looked at Simms; she was engrossed, studying the swirling complexity of lines on the mindmap. Fennimore left her to it, and turned to Josh.
‘Did you make contact with any of Marta’s friends?’ he asked.
Josh nodded. ‘She was in her second year – told everyone she was Russian – on a placement from a university in Moscow. She attended lectures regularly; was a bit of a live wire in tutorials; had strong opinions and wasn’t shy of expressing them.’
Everyone Lies Page 32