False Witness

by Michelle Davies

  Poppy was upstairs in her room, reading. Julia asked if they could have a chat.

  ‘How are you feeling about going back to school tomorrow?’

  ‘Mum, that’s the hundredth time you’ve asked me. I told you – I’d rather be at school than here. I want to see my friends.’

  Her happiness at returning to Rushbrooke seemed genuine enough and this was the most upbeat she’d been in days. Julia had taken on board her dad’s criticism of her behaviour towards Poppy and had made a huge effort to hug and kiss her as normal. His other comments were buried at the back of her mind to deal with another day; she had too much going on to dwell on her mum’s affair right now.

  ‘I’m pleased to hear it,’ said Julia, although it wasn’t strictly true. If Poppy had protested about going back she’d have kept her at home in a heartbeat.

  They chatted for a minute about the book Poppy was reading, then, as Julia got to her feet, the doorbell went.

  ‘I’d better see who that is,’ she said, planting a kiss on her daughter’s crown.

  Passing Dylan’s bedroom, she could hear the noise of him pretending to be a dragon tamer. Oh, to be nine and able to switch off to the horrors that surround you.

  She still had a smile on her face when she yanked open the door. It dropped the second she saw the warrant card being held up.

  ‘Mrs Hepworth, I’m Acting DS Maggie Neville. I’m here for your daughter.’

  67

  Alan turned down the offer of a duty solicitor, fearing it might make him appear guilty if he accepted. It was already bad enough that the police had misconstrued the panic attack he’d experienced on arriving at the station as him being deliberately obstructive. He tried to explain it was because of his asthma that he was getting anxious and that he felt better after using his inhaler, but they’d still put him in a cell to ‘cool down’.

  Half an hour into his confinement, it dawned on Alan that his only option was to stick to his story and brazen out the text message to Gus if they asked him about it.

  He wasn’t worried about the police finding any other incriminating messages on his phone, because the arrangement with Gus to use the Pavilion was done through the school email system. It was genius when he thought about it – who’d query messages from the chairman of the school governors to the site manager asking for a building in the grounds to be unlocked? More specific messages had been passed on in person, like the request for Alan to source the sofa beds.

  Reclining onto the hard rubber mattress rolled out on a concrete bench inside the cell, Alan debated which of Gus’s cohorts was responsible for Ruby’s murder. Deep down he knew it wouldn’t have been Gus himself because he never got his hands dirty when others were willing to do it for him. Alan wasn’t sure if Gus even availed himself of the services Ruby and her friends provided – he suspected he simply profited from them. Gus’s profession, the day job that occupied his hours outside of being a governor, was accountancy, and Alan always got the impression that money trumped everything for him, even sex.

  Poor Ruby, though. Alan had only spoken to her the once, when she’d arrived early at the Pavilion one night just as he was opening up. She seemed like a sweet kid, friendly and polite, if out of it, like she was on something. She’d mistaken him for her first punter and when he explained who he was, she said she could squeeze him in if he wanted, for mates’ rates, on account of him knowing Gus. Her proposition horrified him and he said no. He hadn’t slept with anyone since Gayle.

  Really, whoever was behind Ruby’s murder could be any man out of hundreds. Gus had boasted to him once about the number of clients his girls had, of the men queuing up to pay to sleep with them. From all walks of life they came, even community stalwarts who ran in the same circles as Gus, whose faces were familiar to readers of the Echo . . .

  Alan sat up suddenly, remembering.

  What was it Gus had said after he’d spoken to Gayle? Getting his ducks in a row. A councillor, business leaders, a police officer . . . and the star player of the local football team. Alan never went to matches but he knew the striker’s name: Marky Gates. Playing for a top-table second-division side meant the player’s involvement in a prostitution ring would make headlines.

  He’d have to be clever about it, though.

  He got up and banged on the door until the duty officer came to see what the fuss was about.

  ‘I want my phone call now,’ said Alan.

  ‘Are you calling your solicitor?’

  ‘No, a friend. I want to let them know I’m here.’

  As Alan trailed the officer along the corridor, past identical cell doors, he remembered what Doug had said to him in The Wheatsheaf about making sure he had some insurance in place for when the shit hit the fan.

  Well, the fan was spinning. This was his insurance.

  He huddled over the phone so the duty officer couldn’t hear.

  ‘Gus, it’s me, Alan.’

  ‘Why are you whispering?’

  ‘I’m at the police station. They want to question me about the body at the school.’

  ‘Shit.’

  ‘The thing is, I’ve heard them mention Marky Gates. I think they know about him.’

  There was a drawn-out pause.

  ‘Gus? You still there?’

  ‘Yes, I’m thinking.’

  ‘You need to get me out of here now. Ask that police officer you know to help.’

  ‘I can’t. He’s been suspended.’

  Alan’s heart sank.

  ‘But there is someone else I can try. Leave it with me.’

  Twenty minutes later the duty officer was back at his cell door. Alan was free to go.

  68

  Maggie took Poppy and Julia straight to the ABE suite, where Belmar and another woman were already waiting for them. Her name was Ayse and, Belmar explained, she was a social worker who was going to be sitting in on the interview as an appropriate adult instead of her parents.

  ‘No, I’m not having that,’ said Julia. ‘I should be with her.’

  ‘I’m sorry, but we don’t need your permission for this,’ said Maggie firmly. ‘You can wait outside until we’re done.’

  Julia tried to protest, but Maggie wouldn’t budge. ‘DC Small will show you where you can wait.’

  As Julia left the room Poppy started crying as though her life depended on it.

  ‘You think I’m guilty! That’s why she’s here,’ she sobbed, pointing at Ayse.

  Maggie handed the girl a tissue and tried to assuage her anxiety.

  ‘Ayse is simply here to make sure you’re okay while we have our chat with you.’

  The child still looked terrified. ‘Why can’t my mum stay with me?’

  Ayse answered before Maggie could. She knelt down next to Poppy’s chair so they were on the same level. She had the kind of face you trusted immediately, with beguiling, deep-set brown eyes, and a wide, kind smile. Poppy seemed calmed by her friendliness, wiping her tears with the tissue as she listened.

  ‘You know how sometimes you don’t always want to say stuff in front of your parents, because they might not understand or get the wrong end of the stick? Well, that’s why I’m here instead today,’ Ayse explained. ‘So you can talk freely without worrying about what they’ll say. Your mum is just outside the room waiting for you. Answer the questions as quick and as fully as you can and then you can go and see her.’

  Belmar returned and settled down on the sofa next to Maggie. He was more casually attired than normal, his preferred three-piece suit dispensed of presumably in deference to the warm weather.

  Ayse sat with Poppy.

  ‘We want to talk to you a bit more about how you got along with Benji, because I’m a little confused about it,’ said Maggie. ‘Are you okay to do that?’

  Poppy looked to Ayse for reassurance and received an encouraging nod in return.

  ‘I am,’ she replied.

  ‘That’s great,’ said Maggie warmly. She wanted Poppy to feel as though the inter
view was in her control, that she wasn’t being strong-armed into talking. It was a strategy she and Belmar had agreed beforehand, as well as their line of questioning.

  ‘We’ve been told you had a big fight with Benji at school two weeks ago. Is that right?’

  Poppy hesitated for a moment, her gaze flitting to the door that separated her and her mum.

  ‘We did.’

  ‘What was the fight about?’

  ‘Benji kept shoving me really hard and it hurt. When I told him to stop he started saying stuff and I got cross, so I whacked him. It wasn’t hard.’

  ‘Why was he shoving you in the first place?’

  ‘He wanted me to listen to him but I was talking to someone else.’

  ‘Listen about what?’ asked Belmar.

  Poppy shuffled awkwardly in her seat. ‘I don’t know.’

  Maggie appraised the girl carefully and decided she did know: she just wasn’t saying.

  ‘Was it about something he’d seen in the school grounds, something that might’ve been shocking or scary?’

  The head shake was too quick, too eager.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Poppy, on Saturday we found a body buried in the school grounds, close to where Benji fell. We’re pretty certain he knew it was there. Did he say anything to you about it?’

  Any pretence at playing it cool was lost as Poppy’s mouth gaped open.

  ‘He wasn’t lying?’

  ‘Benji had said something then?’

  Poppy looked around wildly.

  ‘I want my mum.’

  ‘You can see her in a minute.’

  ‘No, I want to see her now.’

  She leapt to her feet and began screaming for Julia. Ayse tried to calm her but Poppy shrugged her off and ran to the door.

  ‘Mum! Mum!’

  Maggie went after her.

  ‘Poppy, please sit down,’ she urged, gently holding her shoulders. ‘I’ll go and get your mum now.’

  Ayse took over and led a sobbing Poppy back to the sofa. Maggie darted out of the room where she found Julia almost hysterical with worry.

  ‘What have you said to her? Why is she screaming like that?’

  ‘Please, come in, she needs you.’

  Julia elbowed past Maggie and raced across the ABE suite to Poppy, who wailed even louder as she fell into her mum’s arms.

  ‘Honey, what is it? What’s upset you?’

  Poppy was crying so hard that none of what she said made any sense. Julia kept shushing her and eventually her words became clearer. She was saying the same thing over and over, like a mantra.

  ‘He wasn’t lying. He wasn’t lying. He wasn’t lying . . .’

  69

  Maggie and Belmar went outside to give Julia and Poppy some space. Ayse stayed with them, a silent but comforting presence.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ said Belmar, clearly rattled. ‘That was some scream.’

  ‘Benji told her about the body,’ said Maggie, trembling from the adrenaline spike Poppy’s outburst had triggered. ‘He told her and she didn’t believe him.’ She took a breath. ‘I think she pushed him. I think she was telling him to shut up on the wall because she didn’t believe him. Kids shove each other when they’re annoyed. He’d got her out of bed early in the morning but when they got on the wall there was nothing to see and she thought he’d lied and so she shoved him. She didn’t mean to kill him, but she did, I’m certain of it.’

  ‘I think the same. So what do we do? Talk to Umpire about bringing charges?’

  This, Maggie knew, was her first test as Acting DS. If they went to Umpire now Poppy’s fate would be sealed, because there was cause for the CPS to recommend charging her with manslaughter on the grounds of gross negligence. Once the CPS was involved, Poppy was in the system.

  Maggie stared up at her friend as she tried to think. However angry she’d been with him earlier, now she was grateful he was there. Belmar was the best partner she’d ever worked with and she trusted him to back her.

  ‘Let’s see if we can get her to admit it first,’ she finally said.

  ‘You mean give her a chance?’

  ‘Yes. She’s eleven years old and she’s no Mary Bell. I want to make sure we’ve got this right.’

  Belmar pulled a face at her mention of Bell, one of Britain’s most notorious juvenile killers. Bell was the same age as Poppy when she was convicted in 1968 for murdering two boys, one three years old, the other four.

  ‘No, Poppy’s not. Bell’s actions were far more savage,’ he said. ‘But . . .’

  Maggie groaned. ‘I know I’m not going to like this “but”.’

  ‘Mary Bell was also convicted of manslaughter and not murder. She successfully pleaded diminished responsibility because her mother was an alcoholic prostitute who tried to kill Bell as a baby, then let clients sexually abuse her for money from the age of four.’

  ‘What are you getting at?’

  ‘The jury believed the psychiatrist who testified in the trial that Bell had developed a psychopathic personality that impaired her mental responsibility. I’m not saying Julia’s been exposing Poppy to similar depravity, but the social services file is very revealing about that episode on the viaduct. I went through it earlier,’ he added.

  ‘That happened when Poppy was two,’ Maggie pointed out. ‘There’s no way she’d remember it and, besides, what Julia did wasn’t an act of violence but of desperation, brought on by PND.’

  ‘What about since? The Facebook post said Poppy was most likely violent because of what was going on at home. For all we know the viaduct was the catalyst.’

  ‘If we pursue this line we’re saying we think Poppy meant to kill him.’

  ‘I’ll go along with whatever you think is right,’ said Belmar.

  She exhaled slowly. ‘Let’s go back in.’

  70

  Alan barely had the energy to turn the key in the lock, let alone push the front door open. He stumbled into the hallway, then collapsed on the bottom step of the staircase, too fatigued to move any further.

  The enormity of his situation bore down on him like a ten-tonne weight. Whoever Gus had called to secure his quick release from police custody had to be someone high up, with clout. And now Alan was indebted to them as well as Gus.

  It was seriously beginning to look as though running away might be his only option. He’d already done it once when he moved to Mansell and this time it’d be even less of a wrench because he wasn’t leaving behind anyone he loved. He could start again in a new town, maybe somewhere coastal this time, get some fresh air in his tired, aching lungs. God knows they needed it.

  Eventually he dragged himself off the bottom step and into the kitchen. He was starving, his last meal now hours ago. But on opening the fridge he remembered he still didn’t have any food in the house. Could he be bothered to go out again? The gnawing hunger in his stomach convinced him he had to, so he trudged back down the hallway. But as he pulled open the front door to leave, he was jolted to find someone on the doorstep, knuckles poised to knock.

  ‘I hope you don’t mind me coming round unannounced,’ said Mr Lincoln, the school’s deputy head and not a person Alan ever expected to see on his doorstep, let alone in a social context. ‘I heard that the police questioned you again today and I wanted to see how you were.’

  ‘Did Mrs Pullman send you?’

  ‘No, she doesn’t know I’m here.’

  Alan couldn’t understand why Lincoln had taken it upon himself to come round. Unless –

  ‘Did Gus Reynolds tell you?’ he asked sharply.

  Lincoln’s expression instantly gave him away. Alan was stunned. He was one of them. He knew about the Pavilion.

  The teacher tried to brazen it out.

  ‘I happened to bump into him on my way home,’ he said, ‘so I thought I’d pop round to check you were okay.’

  ‘You can see that I am, so, bye.’

  Alan went to close the door, but Lincoln put his hand out to stop him.
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br />   ‘Mrs Pullman thinks really highly of you,’ he said. ‘I would hate to see her faith in you destroyed.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  A look of utter desperation seized Lincoln’s features.

  ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t come round here to threaten you. I’m at my wits’ end. I only did it the once.’

  ‘That’s what they all say,’ said Alan flintily. Lincoln had lorded it over him at every opportunity, yet all this time he was the real lowlife at Rushbrooke.

  ‘It’s true, I swear. Afterwards I knew what a terrible mistake I’d made, what I stood to lose if my wife found out, so I never went back. But if it comes out now, I’ll be ruined. I’ll lose her, my kids and my job.’

  Alan wavered. He knew what it was like to wish you could turn back the clock and choose a different path, one that didn’t hurt the people you loved and rob you of your self-respect.

  ‘I came here to ask if you know what the police suspect. Please, I’m going out of my mind with worry.’

  ‘I wasn’t questioned in the end. They let me go. I don’t know anything.’

  Lincoln went grey. Alan decided to throw him a bone.

  ‘Gus knows people high up in the police – that’s why I wasn’t questioned. Trust me, they’re not going to let the truth about the Pavilion get out.’

  Lincoln’s posture went limp as he exhaled.

  ‘That’s good to know,’ he said.

  ‘Was it Gus who told you about it?’

  Lincoln looked haunted for a moment.

  ‘Yes, but not outright. He told me he was having a few after-hours drinks and did I want to join him and his friends. I didn’t guess what the set-up was until it was too late, and then I was too weak and too pissed to say no. I can’t believe I was so stupid.’ He looked like he might cry. ‘I want to tell the authorities what he’s been doing, because of the girl they found, but I’m scared because of where it’ll leave me.’