The Lying Kind: A totally gripping crime thriller

by Alison James

  ‘We find that usually does the trick,’ the woman told her cheerfully.

  No sooner had she hung up than she had the chance to put this advice into action, because her phone rang immediately. Only this time, although the number was an unfamiliar one, it had not been withheld.

  ‘Yes?’ Rachel was aware she sounded snappy.

  ‘Is that Detective Inspector Prince?’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘This is Nancy Poole. From Eastwell library.’

  ‘How can I help you?’ She modulated her tone to sound more user-friendly.

  ‘I think I can help you,’ said Nancy. ‘We’ve found out who was sending those messages.’

  Twenty-Four

  Rachel had only been to Brickall’s flat once, when she had dropped him off on the way back from a human trafficking job in Dover. He lived in Forest Hill, in a small Victorian first-floor conversion on a steep hill with views over the Weald of Kent.

  She rang the button by the front door that said M. J. Brickall.

  No reply.

  She rang again. And again. The speakerphone crackled. ‘Jesus, who is it?’

  ‘It’s me, dickbrain. Prince.’

  ‘I’m suspended, remember. Fuck off.’ He hung up the intercom.

  Someone from another of the flats came through the front door at that exact moment, hesitating as Rachel tried to get past him into a communal hallway littered with pizza leaflets and junk mail. She flashed her warrant card.

  ‘Police.’

  Brickall ignored the hammering on the door for about thirty seconds, then flung it open.

  ‘What?’ If he was surprised to see Rachel, he did a good job of covering it. He was unshaved and still in pyjama bottoms, his naked torso partially covered with an open towelling robe.

  ‘You’re coming with me. Go and shower and put some clothes on.’

  He scowled, but complied with the order.

  Unlike her own pristine flat, her sergeant’s was chaotic and untidy. The coffee table was littered with empty lager cans and takeaway remains; the throw on the back of the sofa featured the Charlton Athletic strip. A large wooden dresser along the wall opposite the window contained a surprising number of books: mostly sci-fi and thrillers. There was one framed picture next to them, catching Rachel’s eye because it reminded her of the photo of Gavin Harper and Andy Whittier. Two sunburnt, freckled little boys grabbed each other’s T-shirts in a play fight, staring down the camera with cheeky grins. They were very alike, but Rachel could tell from his wiry frame and belligerent expression that the smaller one was Brickall.

  ‘Who’s this with you?’ she asked when he emerged, shaved and dressed in jeans and a clean shirt.

  ‘My older brother.’

  ‘I didn’t know you had a brother.’

  ‘Well, I didn’t know you had a husband,’ he fired back as he followed her down the steps of the building to her car.

  ‘So what does he do?’

  ‘Mostly pushes up daisies. In the cemetery.’

  Rachel stopped in her tracks. ‘Jesus, Mark, I’m so sorry. What happened to him?’

  Brickall climbed into the passenger seat. ‘Don’t want to talk about it.’

  ‘Sure. Of course.’ Rachel started the ignition without looking in his direction. She had heard the catch in his voice and didn’t want to embarrass him by provoking tears.

  ‘Where the fuck are we going?’ he asked as they turned back towards the South Circular. His voice had returned to normal. ‘Um, let me guess: Eastwell.’

  Rachel smiled sweetly. ‘That’s right: your favourite Home Counties destination. I felt like some company, and since you’ve got nothing better to do than sit around farting in front of Countdown…’

  ‘So what are we doing?’

  ‘Paying a visit to the library.’

  ‘Bloody hell, Prince, you know how to live life in the fast lane, I’ll give you that.’

  * * *

  Nancy Poole was waiting for them at the front desk, shifting from foot to foot, her plump frame almost quivering with excitement. Rachel and a still-surly Brickall followed her into her office.

  ‘So…’ she spread a photocopied document on the desk, ‘this is the sign-in page for the days in question. The messages coincide with the time slots when this user was active.’ She pointed to the relevant line with the tip of her pen.

  Under surname, the user had written: Found. Under first name: Lola.

  ‘Lola Found,’ read Rachel.

  ‘It’s the same here, here, here, here…’ Nancy pointed to the other occasions when Lola Found had booked time.

  ‘As a fake name, it makes a point,’ observed Rachel drily.

  ‘Doesn’t really help us identify them, though,’ muttered Brickall, hovering like a reluctant teenager on a family outing.

  ‘Ah, but!’ Nancy continued triumphantly, enjoying her role as bringer of important news. ‘We also checked the footage from our closed-circuit camera, and on one occasion, the user who logs into Terminal One as Lola Found then comes up to the front desk and checks out a book. Using a reader’s card that was registered with a real name and address.’

  She slid a copy of the electronic book scan on top of the paper they had been looking at.

  Title: Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone

  Reader: Ben Wethers

  Rachel caught her breath. ‘Have you still got the footage? Can I see?’

  Nancy bustled over to a computer and pulled up a black-and-white video file. Thanks to the bright strip-lighting in the library, the quality of the image was good. The woman at the desk was young and slender, dressed in baggy linen pants and a ripped T-shirt. She had her head dipped down, face partly obscured, but the abundant corkscrew curls were unmistakable. Rachel had seen them at close quarters only a few days earlier.

  ‘Bloody hell!’ she breathed. ‘I know who she is.’

  ‘You’ve met our TruthTella then?’ asked Brickall.

  ‘Not exactly,’ said Rachel. ‘By the time I clapped eyes on her, she was dead. Murdered. She’s Carly Wethers.’

  Part Three

  It matters little, at this point, where the exact truth lies in the maze of perjury, evasion, and of contempt for the normal.

  Noam Chomsky

  Twenty-Five

  Officially, Rachel was out of the office attending a victim-support training day.

  In reality, she had emailed the course organisers first thing that morning to say that she was no longer able to attend, and had returned alone to Eastwell to talk to DS Rajavi. Giles Denton had emailed her to say that Sussex Police had a significant new lead, and she would hear about it as soon as it was confirmed.

  ‘We’re still running forensics on Carly’s house,’ Rajavi told her. Her olive skin had a grey tinge, and there were circles under her eyes from what had no doubt been a week of minimal sleep, compounded by the discomfort of late pregnancy. She had offered Rachel coffee, but after seeing her air of exhaustion, Rachel insisted on fetching drinks for the two of them.

  ‘I’ve got the full post-mortem report here, if you want a look,’ Rajavi said when Rachel returned.

  Rachel skimmed through it. ‘So there were marks on her wrists compatible with some sort on inflexible restraint… like a handcuff?’

  ‘Possibly. Time of death is between two and four on the Friday morning, so the theory is that Carly was deeply asleep. Didn’t hear the lock being bumped – it doesn’t really make any noise other than a tapping sound – so was still asleep when the killer came upstairs. Then, to prevent her struggling, something was slipped round her wrists while she was still sleeping. She probably woke up at that point, by which time she was pinned down, unable to move her arms. Her mouth would have been covered before she could cry out. There wouldn’t have been a whole lot she could do.’

  Rachel closed her eyes briefly. What a terrifying way to die. It always made an investigation slightly less soul-destroying if a victim had the chance to fight back, and managed to in
flict some scratches or bruises. Not only were relatives consoled that their loved one had not given in, but there was often valuable DNA gathered under the fingernails from skin or hair.

  As if reading her mind, Rajavi said, ‘Whoever did this wasn’t stupid. They used fabric gloves – we found some dark fibres around her mouth. So there were no prints on the door and no DNA left on Carly’s body. They probably closed off her mouth with one hand and pressed a pillow down hard with the other. It’s usually pretty difficult to achieve suffocation unless the victim is a child, or very frail, but the fact that Carly couldn’t move her arms would have made it possible. Once she was dead, the pillow was returned to its position under her head, but we know for sure that it was used because of the saliva and traces of blood on it. The handcuffs or restraints were removed and taken away. The whole episode probably only took ten minutes.’

  Rachel sipped the cup of machine coffee, though she felt that brandy would be more appropriate. ‘You probably know what I’m going to ask next.’

  ‘If it’s about CCTV, then we’re still going through it,’ said Rajavi wearily. ‘I’ll let you know what we find. We’re doing all we can. Taking Ben Wethers’ formal witness statement has to wait until we’ve held a CWIP meeting with Surrey Children’s Services.’ Rajavi referred to the Child Witness Interview Planning regulations. ‘You know how it is: all the boxes have to be ticked, an officer with the correct training has to be assigned, and we can only go ahead when he’s ready.’

  ‘In that case, I have something that could be relevant when the time comes.’

  Rachel told Leila about their discovery that the individual claiming online to know what had happened to Lola Jade was none other than Carly Wethers. ‘In her last post as TruthTella, she claimed she was going to take what she knew to the police. Less than forty-eight hours later, she’s permanently silenced. There has to be a link between Carly and the Harpers.’

  Rajavi took a moment to let this sink in. ‘All I can say is that Carly never came up in any of our original enquiries. There’s no reason she and Michelle would have known each other, or moved in the same circles. Ben Wethers is at Overdale, but Lola Jade went to St Mary’s C of E Primary, over on the other side of Eastwell.’

  ‘Lisa’s kids are at Overdale. And Michelle Harper is living under her roof, mixing with Lisa’s friends and acquaintances,’ Rachel pointed out.

  ‘But if these comments – TruthTella’s – are anonymous, how would anyone with an interest in Lola have known they were written by Carly?’

  ‘Maybe Carly spoke to someone about what she knew.’

  Rajavi smoothed a strand of dark hair away from her face, placing a hand over her swollen abdomen. ‘We can’t exactly ask her now, can we? All we can do is question as many people as possible about it; see if they heard anything.’

  ‘There’s Stacey Fisher,’ Rachel reminded her. ‘She of the mysterious disappearing washing machine. She used that message board too. There were others. And the neighbour – Kirsty – she might know more than she was letting on…’ Rachel suddenly thought of something. ‘Hold on, let me see your copy of Lola’s file.’

  She flicked through until she found Kirsty Wade’s original statement, reading it out loud. ‘“I’m married to Darren”, blah blah… “I have three children…”’

  She looked up at Rajavi. ‘Her youngest is a baby or toddler. We saw that when we called round to speak to her. She has three kids, but only two are school age. So when we saw Lisa and Kirsty’s children going to school together, who was the fifth child?’

  She was thinking aloud now, and Rajavi stared at her, mystified. ‘There were the two Urquhart kids and the two Wades. A fireman, a Superman, a couple of princesses and a penguin… so who on earth is the penguin?’

  * * *

  In her flat that evening, Rachel paced restlessly, thinking about Carly Wethers. Did her killer also kill Lola Jade? In an attempt to untangle the spider’s web of connections in her mind, she used the longest blank living room wall as a canvas, pinning up pictures of Lola, Michelle, Gavin, Andy, Lisa, Carly, Kirsty Wade, Stacey Fisher and Chloe Atwell. Black silhouettes served to represent the mysterious men with the white Transit van. She tried drawing lines between the key players, but it ended up looking like a ball of knitting wool and provided no answers.

  She rarely watched television in the evening, but switched it on now in an attempt to relax. After pouring herself a glass of wine, she settled down to watch a documentary about the ways in which Mexican cartels smuggled drugs across the US border. They were hidden inside a surfboard, in breast implants, even fired across the border in a cannon. There was one method that caught her eye: the creation of a secret compartment along the inner sides of a pickup truck, packing plastic-wrapped bundles all the way around the edge of the flatbed and then covering them with a false front of panelling. It was ingenious: unless you knew about the fake sides, you would have sworn it was a regular unmodified vehicle.

  Rachel sat bolt upright, splashing an arc of wine over her new rug. That was it! There had been something nagging away at the back of her brain, and looking at the concealed partition in the Mexican drug lord’s truck had made her realise what it was. She snatched her phone and trawled back through the call history, hoping she still had a record of his number. She found it, and pressed call.

  ‘Mr Lewis… sorry to phone so late, but I need to speak to you about something. Urgently.’

  * * *

  Philip and Sally Lewis, the son and daughter-in-law of Michelle Harper’s next-door neighbours, lived in a 1920s semi-detached in the prosperous but dull wasteland between Wimbledon and Mitcham.

  Philip Lewis was clearly proud of his home, insisting on giving Rachel a full tour and bragging about how much its value had surged, and how good the local schools were. Inside, everything was orderly to the point of obsession: every surface devoid of clutter, shoes in the hallway neatly aligned, mugs in the kitchen with their handles pointing the same way. Rachel tried to imagine what it would be like to live with a Philip Lewis. The thought made her shudder.

  ‘Well, this is certainly a surprise, Detective Inspector,’ he said, as he led her into the converted breakfast kitchen, almost vibrating with curiosity. ‘How may I be of further assistance? Refreshment? Can I offer you tea or coffee?’

  Rachel accepted tea, since it was still early, and sat down at the table. It was neatly set with four place mats, but the chaos of family breakfast and the school run was already spirited out of sight.

  ‘You have two children, is that right?’ She already knew this, having just seen their abnormally tidy bedroom. Philip Lewis had lectured her on how houses like this built in 1926 had three large double bedrooms, while the standard 1930s semi had two doubles and a box room. The Lewises’ third bedroom was used as a home office, with two desks and a lot of computer hardware.

  ‘Yes, Felix and Finlay.’ He looked concerned, which was understandable given that Rachel was investigating the abduction of a child.

  ‘It was something your mother said that got me thinking… She said they liked staying with her because at her house they get to have a room each.’

  Lewis frowned. ‘A small room admittedly – they’re both singles, and one has the computer in it – but yes, the boys sleep separately there. I suppose it’s a novelty for them.’

  ‘So your parents’ house was built as a three-bed? When they bought it.’

  He nodded.

  ‘But the house next door – the Harpers’ house – is only a two-bed.’

  Philip looked perplexed. ‘No, no, that’s not the case.’ He shook his head firmly. ‘My parents bought from new, off-plan, in 1991. They had the choice of either 55 or 57, the point being the two houses were identical: mirror images of each other with their garages adjoining in the middle.’

  ‘You’re quite sure?’

  ‘I’m not only sure, I can prove it to you.’ He gave her a smile of triumph. ‘If you’d care to come upstairs, I can show you the pl
ans.’

  They went up to the office and Philip pulled out a box file from a cabinet. A typed label on its spine read: Purchase of 55 Willow Way.

  ‘My parents had never bought property before, so I helped them with all the paperwork.’ He pulled out an architect’s blueprint and laid it on the desk, then produced a floor-plan outline that was probably drawn up by the estate agent or property developer. Numbers 55 and 57 Willow Way, Eastwell.

  And there they were. Two identical houses, with living/dining room and kitchen on the ground floor, a large bedroom taking up the full width of the front of the house, a bedroom along the vertical edge of the landing – Lola’s room in number 57 – and a bathroom and single bedroom next to each other at the back of the house.

  Rachel pulled out her phone and sorted frantically through the camera roll until she found the pictures she had taken in number 57. The headache-inducing poppy wallpaper on the landing, with two doors at the garden side, a bathroom and a storage cupboard. Except that it hadn’t started out as a cupboard; not when the house was built. It had been another room.

  Twenty-Six

  A couple of hours later, Rachel was back on Victoria Embankment.

  This time, she was not visiting the offices of Hepburn, Willis & Bell, but 6 Bailey Court, a barristers’ chambers. There on the brass plate at the entrance listing the incumbent lawyers was an engraving that read Miss Amber Crowley.

  The clerk at the front desk was unmoved by Rachel’s warrant card: police officers routinely attended criminal-case conferences in chambers. Miss Crowley was in court, but would be back when the morning session ended, at 1 p.m. It was now 12.45, so Rachel decided to wait.