The Lies They Told

by Jay Nadal

  Smartly dressed, she looked the part. Committed, focused, and professional. With a dry sense of humour and a formidable character, she was known for being competitive and aggressive. That was what she felt she needed to compete in a male-dominated world.

  The damn phone vibrated and pinged again as it rattled across the bedside cabinet. Receiving the text message was enough for her to drag her tired body out of bed and jump into the shower. She stood there soaking her body underneath the warm spray, swearing and muttering. Because it was ruined. The first day off following a nineteen-day stretch without any breaks. She knew working herself into an early grave was wrong, and contravened every single health and safety policy, but when she signed up for the job, she waived her right to that protection.

  A quick glance in the mirror to make sure she looked decent and Karen flew out the door.

  Highgate was a suburb of London situated to the north, and one of the most expensive areas to live in London. Crime rates were low, and murder rates even lower. As DI Karen Heath made her way to the crime scene, curiosity tugged at her brain. She couldn’t help but see the irony in the fact that the crime scene was no more than a short walk from Highgate Cemetery, a place synonymous as the final resting place to so many rich and famous from George Michael to Karl Marx.

  The phrase “never a dull day” didn’t exist in Karen’s world. Detective Inspector Karen Heath was part of the Met’s major investigation teams, more commonly referred to as MITs, that dealt with murder and attempted murder, manslaughter and infanticide offences; missing persons or abductions; and other investigations identified for specialist needs such as criminal organisations. There were twenty-four MITs that covered the whole of the Met, and she was assigned to the team that covered much of North London. It meant that her hours were long, she travelled a lot, and ducked in and out of police stations.

  And the job consumed her life.

  Another bugbear was Central London traffic. She was fine driving around suburbs and Home Counties, but the closer she got to town, the more frustrated she became with the congestion, the bad drivers, the taxis, the buses and well, pretty much everyone on the road. She had arranged for Detective Sergeant Jade Whiting to pick her up from a convenient Tube station.

  “Morning ma’am,” Jade had greeted her as she pulled over and flicked on her hazards.

  Karen jumped into the passenger seat and groaned with a smile. “I wish it was, Jade, but I’m so shattered. I could really do without this one today. I feel so unorganised and barely had time for a shower, let alone dress properly,” she said, looking at her jeans that seemed at odds with the purple blouse she had thrown on. She took a few sips of her coffee she’d grabbed from the nearby Costa whilst waiting for Jade. Thankfully the air was warming up, and she didn’t need the warmth from the coffee, even though she cupped both hands around the vessel and hugged it close to her chest.

  Jade understood and offered only a sympathetic smile. As they made their way towards Highgate, Jade updated her on the latest information to come from the crime scene. And they had plenty of time to discuss it as the Holloway Road crawled through rush hour. Karen tapped her fingers on the cup as Jade relayed the information. Jack Taylor, aged fifty-two, more commonly known as Jack “Beanie” Taylor had been gunned down at his home. He was a career criminal well known to the police. They had identified him as the head of a major criminal organisation operating in North London, with connections to Manchester, Liverpool and Spain.

  Karen let out a long, deep breath as she stared at the line of snaking traffic that stretched ahead of them. Concerns rose in her mind. There could be a multitude of reasons why Taylor had been shot dead. A vendetta, a business deal that had turned sour, or a rival organisation looking to muscle in on his business and territory. That raised significant concerns for her, but what worried her more was that the killer had the barefaced cheek to turn up at his home.

  None of Jade’s actions were jerky or aggressive, which helped to settle Karen’s stomach. Jade was a safe driver and had taken the advanced driver training which many officers undertook to help them with activities such as surveillance and observing suspects. She weaved in and out of the traffic, speeding up where she needed to, braking smoothly when called upon. A bottle of red wine seemed the ideal tonic last night, but it had left a dry mouth, with Karen’s stomach doing somersaults when she woke this morning.

  Karen flipped down the visor and slid back the cover to look at herself in the vanity mirror. She brushed through her long, dark brown hair that wrapped around her shoulders before applying eyeliner to her dark brown eyes that peaked beneath her straight cut fringe. She wasn’t one for much make-up, preferring the natural look. At five foot eight she was a tall woman with an hourglass figure, which intimidated both men and women alike. A constant frown always made her look pensive as if she were assessing and analysing. To be recognised as an equal, she’d had to fight hard. But because of her tenacity, she was considered a tough and professional officer. In her early days as a uniformed officer, many of her male colleagues had teased her about her 34DD chest, and many of her female colleagues had been envious of the extra attention she attracted. Neither had been welcomed, and she now wore baggy jumpers or a blouse and jacket.

  “Was there any sign of a murder weapon?” Karen asked.

  “No, nothing. He was found slumped on the sofa in a building close to the main property.”

  “Who’s over there now from the team?”

  “No one has yet, ma’am. Brad and McQueen have been called over to an armed robbery at a convenience store in Mile End. It was raided during the early hours of this morning. The manager was beaten around the head with the butt of a handgun. They left him for dead.”

  Karen heaved a sigh. That was all that they needed. Two big jobs at the same time, and limited resources for both.

  “Has the DCI been informed?” Karen asked.

  “A message has been left on his phone, but he’s not answering.”

  Karen bristled. Lazy pain in the arse. The DCI seemed to have his own agenda and walked in and out of the office when it pleased him. As the DCI leading a MIT, he would be the SIO, the senior investigating officer. But Karen led the investigations then clashed with the DCI when he rebuked her for doing things without his permission.

  “Any specifics on the armed robbery job?”

  Jade grimaced. “Not much of a description, I’m afraid. I think the shock and surprise overwhelmed the manager. There were three white assailants dressed in black, with black balaclavas. And check this out, there were two punters in the shop. One older guy in his late seventies and another bloke in his forties. The younger bloke shit himself and ducked under the table. The older fella got stuck in. Sadly, he was overpowered, but he slowed them down which gave us more CCTV footage. It turns out that the old boy served in the military. He’s a former para.”

  8

  They swept through the black ornate gates, Karen showing her warrant card to the officer standing guard at the entrance. It was an impressive house in Karen’s view. A horseshoe-shaped gravel driveway framed the front of the building. Green ivy crept up the walls of the double bay fronted house like a green blanket of wilderness that gave the property charm and character. Jade pulled up alongside two white scientific services vans.

  “And they say crime never pays,” Jade remarked getting out of the car and walking across the gravel towards the front door. “My parents had to work their socks off for a place like this!”

  Jade had grown up in a similar house, and stopped for a moment to admire the splendour as her mind drifted back to her childhood. Jade was smart, polite and dedicated. She was also sophisticated young, vibrant, and determined. When she spoke, there was an air of elegance about her tone, which had earned her the nickname of “Posh” from her colleagues. Her private schooling had made her an unlikely candidate for the police, much to her parents’ disappointment. They had wanted her to join the legal profession as a solicitor or barrister.


  Inner London was in marked contrast to her home in Beaconsfield, in Buckinghamshire’s stockbroker belt. Her father was a financier, and her mother, an accountant, but Jade had always craved a break from suburban life, opting instead for a frenetic and crazy life in London.

  “Yes, but look where it ends up,” Karen replied, raising a brow. She caught sight of a Mercedes and two BMWs parked to the far side of the house.

  They both signed into the scene log, and acknowledged the scene guard, before taking a pack of disposable overalls and foot coverings and making their way through the house. Cream marble floors extended in all directions, and there was an exaggerated opulence about the place. Grotesque vases, prints and ornaments adorned the windowsills and fireplaces. An oversized sofa sat positioned in the middle of what Karen assumed was the lounge. Around it were tall vases, and glass tables. They walked past a TV room, a second more informal lounge, and a large kitchen kitted out in glossy white kitchen units, and black marble worktops. She realised they had spared no expense.

  Karen squinted and placed her hand above her eyes as a makeshift visor. She stepped out into the morning sun followed by Jade. The smell of flowers in bloom, and the freshness of the grass and trees swamped her senses. Several SOCOs dressed head to foot in white paper suits, and blue foot coverings hovered around the front door to the outbuilding at the far end of the garden. There were clear plastic evidence bags laid neatly on the floor beside one SOCO who documented all the evidence. Not wishing to contaminate the scene, Karen and Jade donned their coverings before stepping through the door. They were greeted by the brilliance of small arc lights that had been set up around the victim.

  Jack Taylor lay slumped back in the cushions, his arms hung by his sides, his head tilted over the back of the sofa. Christopher Wainwright, the pathologist was putting a few things away in his bag when he saw the two officers approach. Wainwright was a tall, gangly man, with glasses, a beaky nose, and a large Adam’s apple that bounced up and down in his thin neck. Of course, other than his glasses, there was little else to see as he was covered in head to foot in a white paper suit.

  “Ah, Karen, good to see you.”

  Wainwright and Karen had worked together frequently and had developed a strong bond and mutual respect. Both shared similar traits such as their no-nonsense directness and often abrasive mannerisms.

  He repeatedly asked her to refer to him as Christopher, but just to annoy him she always called him Wainwright. A joke he played along with.

  “What can you tell us, Wainwright?”

  “That’s what I like about you, Karen, your warm, welcoming tone. I bet you’re the life and soul of any party you go to.”

  Karen raised a shoulder. “At least I get invited to parties. You kill a conversation the minute you walk into the room. No pun intended.”

  “Keep trying, Karen. One day it might work. Anyway, back to business. One victim, one gunshot wound to the head, instant death.”

  “Short and snappy. Just how I like it,” she fired back.

  Wainwright didn’t respond, waiting for what no doubt would be her next question. It seemed to escape her lips in every situation like this.

  “Any sign of a struggle?”

  And there it is.

  Wainwright smiled behind his paper mask. “There are abrasions to his face, more than likely scratch marks. But there’s nothing under his fingernails. There is bruising to his knuckles, which appears to be fresh. But as you can see, there doesn’t appear to be any signs of a struggle in the room. I’ll know more when I get him on the table, but my first impressions suggest he was shot where he sat, and there doesn’t appear to be any form of resistance at the time of the shooting.”

  “And the bullet?”

  Wainwright pointed his pen towards the front door. “Forensics have it. There’s an exit wound at the back of his head, which removed much of his skull. I’d say it was close range.” Wainwright rubbed his chin, his eyes darting back and forth from where he stood to the corpse. “I would say about six to eight feet.”

  Karen moved to the side of the sofa where large blood trails had dripped down the back of the sofa. There were blood splatters on the wall behind the sofa, and a congealed mess of flesh, bone and organ tissue that lay dispersed across the floor and wall. The impact was savage, and Wainwright had been right, death would have been instant.

  Jade came alongside Karen and saw the evidence for herself. “He didn’t stand a chance.”

  They discussed the possible trajectory path of the bullet. SOCOs had gouged out a small piece of plaster from the wall about twelve inches above the skirting board. Early indications suggested that the killer had stood facing Jack and had fired down towards Jack’s face. Wainwright estimated a time of death between three a.m. and five a.m. as the body was warm and stiff, but there was still some movement, suggesting the body was in algor mortis. He had taken body and environmental temperature readings to determine the approximate time of death.

  Karen noticed that the laminate floor in front of the sofa had been dusted for footprints, as had all the door handles, glass table and whiskey bottle that lay on its side.

  Wainwright interrupted their discussion. “I’m off, ladies. I’ll be conducting the post-mortem later, so I’ll see you then.” And with that, he breezed out of the room whistling to himself as two men arrived to remove the body.

  Karen stepped out into the garden and glanced around. She frowned. “What do you notice, Jade?”

  Jade looked perplexed at the cryptic question, and examined herself, thinking she’d forgotten something. She glanced back at Karen who looked around the garden. Jade followed her eyes. “Um, nice lawn, expensive rattan furniture?”

  Karen tutted. “No CCTV, Jade. I noticed there was nothing at the front, and there’s nothing out here. For someone of Taylor’s reputation, you’d have thought this place would be protected like Fort Knox?”

  “Maybe he thought he was untouchable?” Jade suggested.

  Karen nodded in agreement. That was a possibility, but it made little sense to her, as she walked back towards the main house.

  A FLO sat by a woman who was hunched forward on a chair in an upstairs bedroom. Family Liaison Officers were assigned to the immediate family whenever there was a loss of life or a missing person. Despite the need to follow procedure and not discriminate, Karen felt aggrieved that a resource was being used unnecessarily. Her thinking was that, If you live by the sword, you die by the sword, and Taylor had brought this upon himself.

  The FLO nodded as Karen entered the bedroom.

  Karen pulled out her warrant card. “Diane Murphy?”

  The woman glanced up from the mug of tea she cradled in her hands and offered the smallest of nods.

  “I’m Detective Inspector Heath, and this is my colleague Detective Sergeant Whiting. We’re from the Major Investigation Team. Firstly, sorry for your loss.” Just saying those final few words grated. She tried to sound as sincere as possible, but noticed the dryness in her tone, and hoped the woman hadn’t noticed it.

  “Thank you,” she whispered.

  She was a short woman with a voluptuous figure. Karen put her at around five foot two inches tall, and in her late forties. With long, cascading brown locks, and piercing blue eyes, she was attractive for her age. Karen noticed that the woman’s eyebrows had been plucked high above her eyes in a thin line, as if permanently fixed in a look of surprise. But behind those eyes a sadness lingered, not just from her loss, but an overwhelming shadow of loss and sadness that was clear from the lattice of red thread veins that criss-crossed her eyes.

  Karen felt foolish for asking, but knew she had to. “Diane, did Mr Taylor have any recent altercations, or enemies that may have wanted to harm him?”

  The question brought the slightest of smiles to Diane’s face, which led her to wince as the pain from her fat lip jolted her. “You know as well as I do he probably had a string of people who wanted to have a pop at him.” The question, though expect
ed, took her by surprise. Less than a few hours ago, she had seen Jack and Dean go head-to-head. She averted her gaze from the officers, fearing her expression might give it away.

  Karen pointed towards the woman’s face. “How did that happen?”

  Diane’s face flushed, and she hastily placed her hand with a tissue over her mouth. She was annoyed with herself for not keeping her mouth covered with the scrunched tissue. “I had a bit too much to drink last night and fell forward on the steps as I was going upstairs.”

  Karen acknowledged the answer with a nod but wasn’t convinced. “The pathologist noticed abrasions on Jack’s face, and he suggested they looked like scratches. Scratches that may have resulted from a fight?” Karen let the question hang.

  An empty silence tainted the atmosphere for a few moments as Karen watched the woman. Diane flicked a gaze in Karen’s direction, before looking away. She looked at everything else in the bedroom other than the two officers who stood just a few feet away from her.

  “You wouldn’t know anything… about… it?”

  As the mounting anxiety threatened to explode from her chest, Diane went on the offensive. “If you think I had anything to do with his death…”

  “I’m not suggesting that, Miss Murphy. All I’m asking is whether you know how he came about those injuries to his face.”

  Diane shrugged and shook her head, before doing the safest thing she could do, stare at the contents of the mug.

  “Well, I’ll be arranging for DS Whiting here to take a full statement from you. Also, as a process of elimination, we’ll need to take a buccal swab from you, and secure all the clothes that you wore yesterday.”

  “What’s a buccal swab?” she asked.

  “It’s just a mouth swab so we can take a DNA profile and compare it to any evidence we come across during our investigation. It’s a process of elimination. And we start with those closest to the victim.”