Dying Truth: A completely gripping crime thriller

by Angela Marsons

  The Joker allowed the information to sink in.

  Refusal to join was an affront to everything they believed in, the values they honoured for the rest of their lives, an allegiance to a brotherhood that mattered above all else.

  ‘You all understand what the punishment will be?’

  A murmur travelled around the table.

  ‘Take out your pins. It’s time to vote.’

  The Joker nodded towards the King for the first vote. The King pushed his pin to the centre of the table.

  One by one every Spade pin travelled to the centre of the table.

  The cards had voted.

  Geoffrey Piggott had refused the Ace, and there was only one possible consequence.

  The Joker knew what he had to do.

  Eighty-Two

  Kim glanced at her watch as Stacey bustled through the office, removing her satchel as she moved.

  ‘Sorry I’m late, boss,’ she said. ‘Missed my bus.’

  Kim crossed her arms. ‘What time did you get off last night, Stace?’ she asked.

  ‘Around eight… ish,’ she answered vaguely.

  ‘CCTV says nine thirty,’ Kim corrected, giving her a hard stare. ‘A full hour and a half after I told you to leave.’

  ‘I know, boss, I just…’

  ‘You know, guys,’ Kim said, opening up her words to them all. ‘I’ve done all your appraisals this week, and I could stand here and talk to you about my duty of care surrounding physical and mental health. I could explain the rate at which your effectiveness drops as the day wears on. I could even bore you to death with figures of police burnout and breakdowns if I wanted to, but how about when I tell you to go home you just do it?’

  She heard three mumbled responses in the affirmative.

  She was the first to admit that staff welfare was not one of her strong points. Yeah, running into a burning building after any one of them was a no-brainer but making sure they got enough R&R between shifts was another story.

  ‘Okay, we know that Sadie Winters was being fed antidepressants by her parents. We’re not sure exactly what dosage she was taking but they were definitely in her system. We established that there may have been a girl at Heathcrest who had an illegal abortion possibly carried out by Doctor Cordell. We know the name Lorraine Peters means something to—’

  ‘Boss, about Lorraine—’

  ‘Hang on, Stacey,’ Kim said, as Dawson stood and began noting the bullet points on the board.

  ‘We also know that Monty Johnson was instructed to kill Joanna Wade by members of his old club in return for re-entry back into the group. We have the whole message stream on text but can’t find out from whom.’ She paused to demonstrate her frustration at that fact. Having the whole conversation but no name was driving her mad.

  ‘And now Monty Johnson is dead, so we can’t get any more information from him. Rupert knows nothing and thought Monty’s messaging was due to an affair. So, we still have a lot of names, a lot of secrecy, private elite clubs, privilege, wealth, illegal abortions. And yet there’s only one question that matters as much today as it did on Monday.’

  ‘Why is Sadie Winters dead?’ Dawson said.

  ‘Exactly,’ Kim agreed, looking at the board.

  Shaun Coffee-Todd had been murdered by having nuts forced into his mouth. Joanna Wade had been killed by someone under instruction, and Christian Fellows had almost joined them. But it had all started with Sadie Winters. Her death was the key to the whole thing.

  ‘There’s not one thing there we can tie her to,’ Kim said. ‘She wasn’t in the groups, she wasn’t pregnant and seemed to have no enemies at all.’

  ‘Shaun was in the Spade group, but Christian Fellows wasn’t. It makes no sense,’ Bryant said.

  Dawson turned. ‘It has to be linked to this illegal abortion,’ he said. ‘It’s the only thing that adds up. Perhaps all of this is just smoke,’ he said, pointing to the boards. ‘Maybe these kids just heard the wrong thing at the wrong time.’

  Kim shook her head. ‘I get that for Joanna. Someone definitely wanted to shut her up but not the others. It’s not proportionate,’ she said.

  ‘Huh?’ Bryant asked.

  ‘Murder begets murder,’ she explained. ‘If someone steals your bike you don’t stab them multiple times. It’s too much,’ she explained. ‘The death of two children, and a third attempt, in addition to Joanna’s death to cover a seedy secret, is just not proportional. There’s far more to lose from the subsequent acts than the original crime.’

  ‘But we’re dealing with people who value image above all else,’ Dawson argued. ‘These folks will do almost anything to protect their precious reputations.’

  ‘I agree, Kev, but you don’t use a hammer to crack open an egg. Don’t get me wrong. I also think our good Doctor Cordell is involved in this somewhere. For some reason that abortion is intrinsic to this case. If it was someone named Lorraine—’

  ‘It wasn’t,’ Stacey said, quietly but definitely.

  ‘Wasn’t what?’ Kim asked.

  Every gaze was on Stacey.

  ‘Go on,’ Kim instructed.

  ‘Lorraine Peters enrolled at Heathcrest in 1990, when she was twelve years old. She was one of the two annual scholarships because of her swimming abilities. Olympic material, apparently.’

  Kim sat back and listened. Maybe she should have let Stacey speak sooner.

  ‘All was well for three years. She studied hard and began improving her swim times. She’d been entered for the junior world championships, except she started turning up late for practice. Started back-answering the sports coach. Talented girl by all accounts but the training is brutal. Six mornings a week and five evenings.

  ‘Two days after her fifteenth birthday she dived into the swimming pool from the ten feet high diving board.’

  ‘And?’ Kim asked, confused. She’d probably done that a million times.

  ‘The pool was empty.’

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ Bryant said, as Dawson visibly winced and rubbed his neck.

  ‘It had been emptied earlier that day due to a high legionella reading. Lorraine didn’t know that because she’d skipped training that morning.’

  ‘She was in the pool in the dark?’ Kim asked.

  Stacey nodded. ‘Her death was marked accidental.’

  A moment of silence fell before Kim turned to Stacey. ‘And this is what you were doing last night?’

  Stacey nodded, and Kim recalled her earlier words.

  ‘Stace, remember when I said about losing effectiveness in your job as the hours go on?’

  ‘Yeah, boss.’

  ‘Doesn’t apply to you,’ Kim said. ‘These two maybe, but definitely not you.’

  ‘Thanks, boss, but there’s one more thing you really need to know.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Lorraine Peters was pregnant.’

  Eighty-Three

  ‘What makes you think he’ll be there?’ Bryant asked, parking up at Russells Hall Hospital. It wasn’t quite yet 8 o’clock.

  ‘You didn’t watch the news last night?’ she asked.

  ‘Not last night, no,’ he said.

  ‘Aah, ballroom night,’ she realised. ‘You and your good lady giving Strictly a run for its money?’

  ‘Guv, I really wish I’d never told you.’

  Yeah, she bet he did.

  ‘Body of an elderly male found along the canal. Been missing for two weeks. Keats’ll be in,’ she said, definitely, as they strolled along the corridor.

  Although reception wasn’t manned, the hospital was coming alive for another day. Patients and visitors milled around the café area. Porters pushed out patients towards appointments, and red tee shirted volunteers stepped forward to offer direction. Not one person they passed wanted to go where they were heading.

  As expected Keats was already preparing for his first job of the day when they entered.

  ‘Did you get it?’ she asked.

  Keats frowned at her. ‘You kno
w, Inspector, I get more common courtesy from my customers than I do from you,’ he said, looking towards the sheet covering the dead body.

  She didn’t doubt it.

  ‘So, did you?’ she repeated.

  ‘An email may have arrived from your detective constable,’ he said, taking out his Dictaphone. ‘And I shall have a look once I’ve completed—’

  ‘No problem. I’ll wait,’ she said, hopping onto the work surface. Her legs dangled in mid-air. ‘I’m a patient person.’

  He narrowed his eyes as he pulled back the sheet and switched on his recorder.

  ‘Ooh, he’s in a bad way, isn’t he?’ she asked loudly.

  He switched it off. The ghostly white flesh bore the scars of the insects that had feasted all over him. Keats switched on the machine and opened his mouth to start again.

  ‘Bloody hell, he fed a few communities, didn’t he?’ she asked, loudly.

  He offered her a warning glance and tried again.

  ‘Missing two weeks, eh?’ she asked.

  ‘Stone, quiet,’ he snapped, pressing the pause button.

  She nodded her understanding as he began again.

  ‘Conducting the post-mortem of—’

  ‘Just look at that lividity down his right side, Bryant,’ she called out.

  Keats switched off the Dictaphone. ‘An email you said?’ he asked, conceding defeat.

  ‘It’ll be better on the computer,’ she said, jumping down, as he pulled the cover back over his customer.

  ‘And what exactly am I looking for?’ he asked, taking a seat at his desk in the corner.

  Kim stood behind him.

  He pointed to the chair opposite and turned his screen so she could see it.

  ‘Post-mortem report of a fifteen-year-old girl,’ Kim answered.

  He squinted at the date.

  ‘From the mid-nineties?’ he asked.

  ‘Hey, Keats, it wasn’t that long ago,’ Bryant said.

  ‘What am I looking for?’ he asked.

  ‘Anything,’ Kim answered.

  He scrolled through the document that had been scanned on to the computer.

  ‘She was pregnant,’ he said, more to himself. ‘Approximately nine weeks, which clearly you already knew.’

  He reached the end and shrugged. ‘On first inspection, it all looks fine. What were you hoping I would find?’

  ‘Not sure,’ she said, deflated.

  ‘Tragic accident, clearly,’ he said, scrolling back to the top. ‘Multiple internal injuries from the impact and yet surprisingly little injury to the head.’

  ‘Would she have tucked it under?’ Bryant asked.

  Kim imagined an experienced diver would have done so.

  ‘Hard to say,’ he said, frowning and then reading again.

  ‘What is it?’ Kim asked.

  ‘It’s no smoking gun but there are two pieces of evidence that tend to cancel each other out.’

  ‘Go on,’ Kim urged.

  ‘Well, the theory of her head being tucked when she hit the ground explains the lack of head trauma but there are flesh marks to the neck that are not consistent with the head being tucked. It’s either one or the other but it can’t be both,’ he said.

  ‘So, why was this never investigated?’ Kim asked, outraged.

  ‘It was,’ Keats said, pointing to the bottom of the screen where a few initials were scrawled together.

  ‘That’s the signature of Burrows. DCI Larry Burrows, the officer in charge of the case.’

  Eighty-Four

  It took only a few calls to locate DCI Larry Burrows.

  ‘Never understood golf,’ Bryant said, as they headed down the fairway to the ninth hole of the Staffordshire Golf Course near Wombourne.

  Recently renamed, the course claimed to be the most picturesque golf course in the Midlands. Even the avenues of pines, rhododendrons, and sixty-foot fir trees wouldn’t persuade her to part with over eight hundred quid to join, despite the fact it was popular with at least three local police forces.

  ‘Hit a ball and then follow it. Hit a ball then follow it,’ he said, shaking his head.

  Kim reckoned most sports could be reduced to a similarly basic description, but with golf she certainly had to agree with her colleague.

  ‘There he is,’ she said, spotting the exceptionally tall male among a group of average-sized men. She recalled being introduced to him, briefly, when she had first joined the force. He had looked her up and down and dismissed her and then continued to talk to her male colleague.

  That one simple action had told her all she’d needed to know.

  ‘DCI Burrows,’ she said, pushing herself into the middle of the group. ‘DI Stone and DS Bryant, may we have a word?’

  He looked from one to the other and frowned. Although retired he clearly didn’t appreciate his golf game being interrupted.

  ‘One of your old cases, sir,’ she said, affording him the respect his position deserved.

  ‘Can’t it wait?’

  ‘Not really, sir,’ she answered, shortly.

  He looked to his friends and sighed heavily as they moved away.

  ‘Really, my dear, couldn’t you have called and arranged—’

  ‘Chief Inspector Burrows, it’s regarding a fifteen-year-old girl named Lorraine Peters,’ she interrupted. She would allow his endearment to pass. Just once.

  His tanned face remained blank.

  ‘She dived into an empty pool at Heathcrest Academy. It was your case in the mid-nineties.’

  ‘Yes, I know the one you mean. You’ll have to excuse an old man’s memory, love.’

  ‘Inspector,’ she said.

  ‘Yes?’ he answered.

  ‘Not love,’ she corrected. ‘Inspector or Stone. Either is fine.’

  His face coloured slightly at the rebuke, but she didn’t care. She would remain respectful, but she would not tolerate blatant sexism to her face. Prejudice in the force was not yet completely behind them, but the era of resigned silence and acceptance was.

  ‘One of my officers is requesting the case files as we speak but we’d also appreciate your insight,’ she said.

  He shook his head. ‘I can still see her now,’ he said, placing his golf club back into the bag. ‘Such a tiny thing lying at the bottom of that bloody pool.’

  ‘It was ruled an accident,’ Kim said, falling into step as he began to walk behind the others. ‘Did you agree?’

  ‘Not at first,’ he said.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘You’ll see in my reports,’ he said, bristling.

  ‘Could you tell us now?’ she pressed.

  ‘It’s nothing,’ he said.

  Kim stopped walking. ‘Sir, there’s clearly something about this case that still bothers you,’ she observed.

  ‘It’s my Midnight Express, Inspector,’ he said.

  ‘Sorry?’ she asked. It wasn’t a term she’d heard.

  ‘Haven’t you seen the film?’

  Kim shook her head.

  ‘It’s about a guy imprisoned in Turkey for drug smuggling. To cut a long story short he’s eventually placed with the crazies who walk endlessly around a pole in the middle of the room. Our guy joins them but he’s walking the opposite way.’

  Kim got the analogy. ‘You thought there was more to it and other people did not?’

  ‘I did indeed, and my boss agreed with me, initially, and allowed me to run with an investigation, but eventually I got shut down. Costing too much money with no clear motive never mind a suspect.’

  ‘The baby?’ Kim asked.

  He smiled ruefully, realising they weren’t quite as different as he thought.

  ‘Yeah, that was my logic too. I wanted to find the father but the funds…’ he shrugged as his words trailed away.

  ‘How far did you get?’

  ‘DNA samples from the kids, well, the ones that were old enough, anyway.’

  ‘Teachers?’ she asked.

  He shook his head. ‘Not before the mon
ey ran out.’

  ‘Then what?’ she asked.

  ‘That was it. Couldn’t go any further. I was assigned new cases, and by the time the inquest was done I almost agreed that I’d been mistaken in the first place.’

  ‘About what?’ she asked, wondering what had caused his doubts.

  ‘The placement of the body,’ he admitted, reaching for another club.

  Kim recalled her own feeling on the placement of Sadie’s body and realised that this man would be far more disturbed than he realised if he understood just how similar they were.

  There was an instinct that he possessed that was similar to her own. It was something that could not be taught. Except there was one small difference. She believed in her gut and had learned to argue on its behalf. He had not.

  ‘What about the placement?’ she pushed.

  ‘It didn’t look right. Too far away from the diving board.’

  ‘You’re saying she didn’t dive from the board like the accident the inquest ruled?’ Kim asked.

  He shook his head. ‘Not even close and there was nothing accidental about it.’

  Eighty-Five

  ‘Are you kidding me?’ Stacey asked as Dawson entered the office with one box. ‘That’s the total investigation into the death of Lorraine Peters?’

  Dawson nodded as he slid the box onto the spare desk.

  ‘Looks like DCI Burrows wasn’t all that keen on paperwork,’ he said, taking the lid off the box.

  He removed three brown Manila folders and an inch-thick computer printout.

  Stacey came to stand beside him.

  ‘Hardly a major investigation,’ she observed, opening one of the files.

  ‘The boss said he was cut short, but I’ve had shoplifting cases that have generated more paperwork than this.’

  ‘Reckon it’s all here?’ Stacey asked.

  Dawson shrugged. ‘We’ll never know. Paper trail and arse covering wasn’t like it is now.’

  Stacey closed the folder and touched the computer printout.