by Ashley Dyer
“Okay, it was worth a try.”
“But you think Barrington is worth a second look?”
“Back in the nineties, Mr. Barrington was taken to an employment tribunal by a female employee for sexual harassment,” she said. “He made the problem go away with an undisclosed out-of-court settlement.”
“It’s a big leap from sexual harassment to stalking and murder.”
“Depends what form the harassment took, surely? And some men do make that leap. Anyway, it won’t hurt to ask a few questions.”
“You plan to go and see him?” Anxiety again flickered like a candle at the back of his eyes. “Take someone with you,” he said.
“Parsons and Jansen both warned me off interfering; there’s no one else I can tell.”
“Ruth . . .”
She checked her watch. “I’ve got to head in for the team briefing, and I’m interviewing Gaines with DCI Parsons later this morning, but I should have enough time to sneak out for an hour to speak with Mr. Barrington and be back in the office before anyone misses me.”
“Who’s Gaines?” he asked.
“Doctor Gaines—an anthropologist we’re consulting with,” she said, trying to sound offhand, cursing herself for letting it slip.
“Then why did you say you were interviewing him?”
He might be weak, but he was still sharp.
She moved to the door. “I have to go.”
“What are you keeping from me?”
“Everything, okay? It’s not your case anymore.”
He stared at the air around her as if trying to focus on a mote of dust. “There’s something off about this Doctor Gaines, isn’t there?”
“His credentials are good.”
He gave a choked laugh. “You just lit up, Ruth.”
“I did what?”
“Fluorescent bile green—it’s the color of lies for you.”
“How attractive . . . You know we’ll have a talk about this . . . thing with auras at some point,” she said. “But all right: Gaines is a creep with a huge ego and a talent for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. I’m going to have a chat with him about that . . . and a few other things. Parsons is going to referee. Satisfied?”
“Nowhere near,” he said. “But there’s nothing I can do about it, stuck in here, is there?”
“Not a damn thing.”
“Well, can we at least exchange mobile numbers?”
“I thought you weren’t allowed mobile devices in here.” Besides which, Ruth knew Carver’s own smartphone was still logged in evidence.
He gave a brief smile. “Special dispensation—someone smuggled in a pay-as-you-go handset.”
She indulged him: it must be hell for him having to sit by and watch.
He gave her the number and Ruth pinged him a text: “STOP WORRYING!”
He managed a smile at that.
She was almost through the door when Carver called her back. She would have left him to it, but the possibility of him getting out of bed and falling flat on his face made her turn back.
“What?” she said.
“This thing with Barrington,” he said. “Be careful.”
“I’ll be fine,” she said, unbuttoning her jacket to reveal a Casco baton holstered on her trouser belt. “And if I’m not, you know where to send the cavalry.”
Chapter 44
The morning briefing finally over with, Ruth left a spare jacket over the back of her office chair and stole out of the Major Incident Room. Her phone rang as she headed down the fire escape. It was Dr. Yi, the forensic psychologist who had recommended Gaines to the investigation.
“Sorry it’s taken so long to get back to you,” he said. “You wanted some background on Lyall Gaines?”
“Just your general impression of him,” Ruth said.
“I don’t know him personally,” Yi said. “But he’s respected in his field, and he has a solid publishing record. When he expressed an interest, I thought why not? He seemed to have a thorough knowledge of the case, and he was keen.”
Ruth slowed on the stairs. “So, did you approach him, or did he approach you?”
“I put out a few feelers across social sciences and anthropology departments,” Yi said. “Now I think of it, he wasn’t on the original list. But he rang to say he would like to be considered.” He stopped. “Is there a problem, Sergeant?”
“Honestly, Doctor? I don’t know,” Ruth said. “I’ll be talking to him later—can I get back to you if I have any concerns?”
Yi promised he would do anything he could to help and she rang off. One more question to ask Gaines when she interviewed him.
She hoofed it the half mile up the road to Adela Faraday’s previous place of work. The Liverpool office of LC&K Assets was based in a shiny new block near Mann Island. With the grand Port of Liverpool building and the Liver Buildings as neighbors, it was prime office space.
The building was clad in glass and black granite, giving a checkerboard effect from the street. Two sets of glass doors glided open with a discreet sigh, and a besuited receptionist greeted Ruth with just the right balance of warmth and professionalism. Ruth showed her warrant card and asked to speak to Mr. Barrington.
The receptionist picked up the phone and moments later told her with a smile that Mr. Barrington’s PA would be down in just a few minutes, if she wouldn’t mind signing in? Formalities completed and visitor’s pass clipped to her lapel, Ruth turned to the lifts as her phone vibrated in her pocket. She checked the screen: it was Greg Carver. The lift doors opened a second later, and a man stepped out.
“Ms. Lake,” he said.
“Detective Sergeant Lake,” she corrected and saw something jump behind his eyes.
“Apologies,” he said, in that bland way men do when they think you’re being a bitch but haven’t the nerve to call you on it.
She declined Carver’s call and followed the PA into the lift. Access to the fourth floor required a pass card and he flashed his at the near-field reader, then turned and stood next to her. He fidgeted all the way up, adjusting the card on the lanyard around his neck, tucking it inside his jacket, then tugging the jacket hem, front and back, and smoothing his tie. The lift doors slid open and he led her through a second set of obscured glass doors into the main office.
Mr. Barrington’s office was a partitioned section at the far end of open-plan space. He rose and came around his desk to greet her. A big man, his suit well tailored to hide a good five stones of excess weight, he had silver hair and sharp blue eyes and wore a gold watch that probably cost more than she earned in six months.
“Sergeant Lake,” he said, with a falling inflection. He offered his hand as if to a recently bereaved relative. It was warm and soft, and well cushioned, like the rest of him.
She gripped it, hard, maintaining eye contact, and saw a slight tightening around the eyes and the tiniest hint of a downturn of the corners of his mouth.
Mr. Barrington released his grip before she did.
“Coffee, Sergeant?” he said. “Water, perhaps?”
“No,” she said. “Thank you.”
He nodded to his assistant, and the younger man left, closing the door after him.
Barrington waved her to an armchair in the corner. Normally, Ruth would opt for easy access to the door, but he was already wary of her and if it would get him to loosen up, she’d concede that much. He seated himself adjacent and leaned forward, forearms resting on his knees, hands lightly clasped in front of him. “I expect this is about poor Adela?”
“It is.” Ruth looked past him to the PA’s desk on the other side of the glass partition. He fussed over his paperwork the way he fussed with his clothing, straightening and tidying, without seeming to achieve very much.
“I spoke to one of your constables several days ago,” Barrington said. “I’m not sure what I can add to that.”
That would be one of Jansen’s team. She lifted her chin, acknowledging the information as though she knew all about
the previous interview.
“We’ve had new information, and I was hoping you would be able to shed some light, sir,” she said.
“Of course—if I can. Bearing in mind Adela left the firm some seven months ago . . .” He opened his hands in a helpless gesture.
“This relates to something that actually happened seven months ago, sir,” she said, watching for his reaction.
His hands moved and she thought he was going to clasp them again, but he quickly diverted, resting them on the arms of the chair instead. He placed his feet wider apart and even slid one out so that it was almost touching her chair. If she wanted to get past, she’d have to climb over him.
Classic aggressive assertion.
He didn’t speak, waiting for her to make the next move.
“A witness has said that he felt Adela was being harassed.”
“Really? How does one get an impression like that?”
“I was hoping you would tell me, sir. The witness said he thought it was an ex-boyfriend.”
“I’m afraid I wasn’t privy to Ms. Faraday’s personal life.”
She noticed that he’d distanced himself from Adela, switching to her surname, and that he was leaning his chin on his cupped fist, his forefinger curled over his upper lip, to cover the lie.
Oh, you were lovers all right, she thought.
“She told the witness the name of her persecutor,” she said.
The tension in his body extended from his neck muscles to his arms, and the muscles in his thighs. She watched him, ready to act if he suddenly lashed out.
“His name was Chris,” she added.
Barrington stood abruptly, and she steeled herself.
He gestured to his PA to come in, and Ruth heard a clang as the younger man crashed his chair into his desk jumping to do the boss’s bidding.
“You can see Sergeant Lake out,” Barrington said, when the PA put his head around the door.
Barrington didn’t look at her, and Ruth read panic in the assistant’s face when she didn’t move from her chair. If this was how Barrington made his male staff feel, she could imagine that a woman might feel extremely intimidated.
“I didn’t get to my question,” she said, standing smoothly, so that when he did turn around, they met eye to eye.
“The question,” he said, his jaw clamped tight, “was implicit in the statement—and I resent the implication.”
“I kind of got that,” she said, pleasantly.
Blood darkened his face. “Should you have any further questions regarding this fictitious ‘Chris’—or Ms. Faraday, for that matter—you may ask them in the presence of my lawyer,” he said.
Ruth looked at him, thinking, I most certainly will have more to ask you, Chris Barrington. She wasn’t about to go around him, so she waited and after a moment he seemed to rein in his temper and turned away to his desk.
Ruth walked to the office doors in silence, the PA a pace behind, but she could feel the nervous energy crackling off him like static. He stood by her side at the lift, jangling the coins in his pockets.
“That didn’t go well, did it?” she said, giving him a sidelong glance.
He cleared his throat, his Adam’s apple bobbing, but didn’t reply.
Something seemed to be holding up the lift, and she said, “Did Adela have any problems with Mr. Barrington?” He seemed to stop breathing, and she glanced over her shoulder. “It’s okay—no one can see us from here.”
He flushed. “I really can’t comment,” he said.
The assistant was in his late twenties, good-looking, if you didn’t mind your men boyish, and the way he filled his suit, she wouldn’t be surprised if he worked out. But his eyes were too watery, prone to dart away from direct contact, his fingers in a constant state of agitation, plucking and primping and tugging at his clothes.
“Be sure to hand your visitor’s pass in at reception,” he said, as the lift doors finally slid open.
“You’re not coming down to see me out?” she said.
“Just press the ‘zero’ button. You don’t need a pass to get out.”
She shrugged and dug in her pocket for a business card. “In case you want to talk,” she said. He didn’t reach for it, and she tucked it in his breast pocket. He flinched as though she’d dug him in the ribs.
The man was badly scared.
Her phone buzzed and she checked it as she got into the lift. Carver again; his injuries seemed to’ve turned him into an old woman. As the lift’s recorded voice intoned, “Doors closing; going down,” the PA stood square on to her for the first time, his jaw clamped tight as if he was afraid he’d blurt something out, but his fingers, traitorous and restless, spoke eloquently. They smoothed his lapels and snagged upon the ID card untidily trapped between this suit jacket and his tie. Ruth glanced at it, read the name: Chris Lomax.
Chris.
The doors began to slide across and Ruth stuck her hand in the safety beam. They juddered and opened again and she made a move to step out of the lift.
He slammed the heels of his hands into her chest and she bounced off the back of the box, her head booming from the impact. He followed through with a punch to the side of her head and she buckled. Fighting a rising wave of nausea, she reached for her Casco baton even as she went down. He trapped her hand against her side, jabbed one of the buttons on the console, and punched her again. Light and pain exploded above her left eye, and then she felt nothing.
Chapter 45
Just after midday, Greg Carver rang through to the police headquarters switchboard and asked to speak to DCI Parsons.
“Chief Inspector?” Parsons said, and Carver heard wariness in his tone.
“This is going to sound odd,” Carver said. “But is Detective Sergeant Lake all right?”
He heard silence, and he knew it wasn’t good.
“Why do you ask?” Parsons said.
“Because she’s not answering her mobile, her home phone, or her desk phone, and I’m concerned,” he said.
“Do you have a reason for this ‘concern’?” Parsons asked.
Carver had dealt with the man before and knew him as a prig, so he made an effort to slow his breathing and stay rational. “Is she at her desk?”
More silence.
“Did she get back in time for her interview?” he asked, already knowing—dreading—the answer.
“How do you know about that?” Parsons said sharply. “Has DS Lake been discussing the case with you?”
“For God’s sake, man—will you get the rod out of your arse and listen? I’ve been ringing her all morning, but I can’t raise her, and I think she’s in danger.”
Parsons said, “Dr. Gaines postponed—but she would have missed the interview if he hadn’t.”
“Have you tried her mobile?”
“She isn’t answering,” Parsons admitted.
“You need to check with Chris Barrington, northwest area manager at LC&K Assets. Ruth went to talk to him after the briefing—and, no, she wasn’t discussing the Thorn Killer with me—she thought Barrington might know something about Adela Faraday’s murder.”
He heard a muffled curse at the other end of the line. “I’ll send someone immediately,” Parsons said, surprising Carver with his businesslike response. “And I’ll get someone to ping her phone.”
“Wait,” Carver urged. “Tell me you’ll get back to me—I need to know she’s okay.”
Parsons hesitated. After an agonizing moment, he said, “All right. I’ll call you as soon as I know anything.”
Carver waited fifty minutes for the call, refusing food and drink, sitting in the chair with the illicit phone in his hand between spells of pacing, staring at the screen, willing it to light up. He stood and looked out of the window, hoping to see Ruth cross the scrappy patch of grass below, on her way in to tell him what she’d found out from Barrington. He texted her. Tried her home number again. He even considered phoning Barrington himself but discounted that as a terrible idea.
Carver felt a sudden cold weakness and sat down heavily on the bed.
He heard a commotion in the corridor, a nurse’s voice raised above those of Jansen and Parsons, and then his door burst open. Carver forced himself to his feet and turned to face Jansen.
“What the fuck have you been playing at?” Pale blue light danced like St. Elmo’s fire around Jansen’s face.
Parsons got in front of the man and raised his hands, palms down. “This isn’t helping. DCI Carver, we need to know what Ruth told you. Why did she want to interview Mr. Barrington?”
“Will someone for pity’s sake tell me what’s happened?”
“Ruth is missing,” Parsons said.
“Barrington?”
“Barrington is in custody. You need to tell us everything she told you.”
Carver felt cold and sick. He took a breath, hating this weakness, his inability to take action. “She said she’d found a witness who said Adela had been harassed by someone named Chris—”
The two senior detectives exchanged a look. “It is Barrington, isn’t it?” Carver said. “He’s done something to Ruth.”
“What else did she tell you?”
“Nothing.”
“He’s holding back,” Jansen said.
“I’m not,” Carver said, but he knew there was something else she’d told him. If he could just—
“Do you want to get her killed?” Jansen yelled.
Carver’s heart beat fast and shallow; he couldn’t think over the screaming in his head.
Then it stopped. For two whole seconds, the pounding in his chest ceased altogether, and then he felt a huge surge of pressure, as if a blockage had been forced out of an artery.
“No—wait. She said Adela was in a shooting club. That’s where she got the intel. Adela told someone there that she was being hassled, stalked—I don’t know what. But the man who was bothering her was named Chris.”
“What was the name of this shooting club?” Jansen demanded. “What was the name of her informant?”