Everyone Lies (27 page)

DC Moran dumped the rest of the photos onto one of her colleagues, then she was out the door.

In Renwick’s absence, Simms worked on task allocation with the HOLMES2 manager, devising a schedule with the volunteer canvassers. In twenty minutes they were on their way, stuffing photographs into their pockets and hooking jackets and overcoats from the back of chairs. Simms posted a spare on the whiteboard next to her post-mortem photo and alongside the list of penicillin-related deaths.

As she turned she saw Detective Superintendent Tanford at the door, standing back to let the team out. He nodded to the last officer and stepped inside.

‘I was passing,’ he said. ‘I heard you’d been told to scale down – thought I’d come in and commiserate. I know you feel there’s a lot more to do.’ He jerked his head in the direction of the door. ‘And judging by what I’ve just seen, you intend to get it done. I’ve got to hand it to you, Kate, I expected to find a demoralized rabble, but I’m almost knocked down in the rush of folk aiming to make the best use of the few hours they’ve got left. I knew you were good – I never guessed you were inspirational.’

Simms bit her cheek to suppress a smile; she had the feeling that Tanford would consider that too girly.

‘The photo in our murder victim’s purse belonged to Rika,’ she said. ‘They were close.’

He stared at her. After a few moments he tapped his fingers to his upper lip and a smile ghosted at the corners of his mouth. ‘Well, well, well. That …’ He shook his head, picked up a spare photo and studied it. ‘That’s just … fantastic. Shows what you can do if you just keep turning over stones, eh, Kate?’

Her mobile rang and she dipped her head in apology.

‘Go ahead,’ he said.

‘Boss, it’s Mouse.’ Apparently Ella Moran had embraced her nickname. ‘I’ve spoken to a few of the girls. No one recognized the photo, but someone said I should talk to a girl called Candy – she had a mate called “Rita”. A foreigner, she said.’

‘Good. Where can we find this “Candy”?’

‘This time of day,’ Moran said, ‘she’s usually round the back of Piccadilly Gardens, trying to score.’

Simms guessed that if she was going to get anything useful out of their witness, she would need Moran’s sensitive touch. ‘Where are you now?’ she asked. ‘I’ll pick you up.’ Moran gave her a location and she disconnected.

Tanford was still there, watching her, that half-smile playing on his lips. ‘Still turning over stones, Kate?’ He stepped aside with a mock chivalric bow, and waved her on.

Her office phone was ringing as she stopped in to grab her coat and car keys. It was reception. ‘There’s a Doctor Fenn at the desk,’ the receptionist said.

Simms’s mouth dried and her heart began to pound thick and hard.

‘He’s asking to speak to you, ma’am.’

28

‘Heroin is a Judas, a bad friend who betrays you. It is a cruel lover who goes away and makes you crazy for him.’

R
IKA

Fennimore saw Kate Simms steaming like a freight train through the glass doors at reception. She wore a woollen coat buttoned to the throat; it was minus five outside and a thick bank of dirty white cloud was creeping towards the city from the Pennine moors. She buzzed herself through, pulling a leather glove onto her left hand like she meant to do battle. Fennimore stood to greet her.

Eyes glittering, jaw set hard, she extended her ungloved hand. ‘Doctor,’ she said, ‘This is … unexpected.’ Her formal courtesy sounded like a poorly veiled threat. She gripped his elbow and steered him to the door. ‘I’m afraid I can only spare a few seconds – if you wouldn’t mind walking with me?’

Outside, she said, ‘What the
hell
are you doing here – has something happened?’

‘Nothing happened,’ he said. ‘That was the problem – I was bored.’

‘You ran out of money.’

He considered telling her that he was another two hundred to the good, but couldn’t think of a way to say it without bragging, so instead he shrugged, said, ‘Where are we going?’

Kate gave a frustrated groan, turned on her heel and started walking. ‘“We”,’ she said, ‘are going nowhere.
I
am going to the car park;
you
are going back to your hotel.’

He loped alongside her. ‘Wouldn’t it be quicker to cut through the building?’ The car park was around the back.

‘And what if someone recognizes “Doctor Fenn”?’ She carried on at a pace – three sides of the building to gain access to the car park – and he matched her stride easily, which only seemed to infuriate her more. ‘You’re not supposed to
be
here, Nick. I’m not supposed to even be
talking
to you.’

‘Okay,’ he said, stalling for time. ‘But you’ll have to drop me – I let my cab go.’

She stared at him. ‘You really think I’m that naive? Hire another one.’

‘Here?’ He turned full circle. This stretch of Rochdale Road was home to the police station, a self-storage unit and a low-cost car park. It was a long, cold walk back to the city. ‘You see a taxi rank? Black cabs don’t hang around police stations, Kate. And a minicab will take thirty minutes to haul out here – I’ll freeze to death.’

‘You could walk it in twenty-five.’

‘Wrong shoes,’ he said, looking down at the polished toes of his black Derby lace-ups.

‘You should have thought about that before you came out here to ambush me.’

She pretended to hunt for her car along the rows of vehicles, and there was something in her agitation, the way she avoided his gaze – he was certain that she was thinking about what she’d said to him over the phone.

‘Leave, Nick,’ she said. ‘Now.’

He couldn’t go back to the hotel – he would drive himself mad thinking about what she’d said, and the mistakes he had made five years ago.

‘Tell you what – I’ll call for a cab, go and wait in reception.’

Her eyes widened. ‘You wouldn’t dare.’

He began to think he might just get that ride in her car. ‘I’ll just …’ He jerked his thumb over his shoulder and began to retrace his steps.

‘Nick, I’m warning you …’

‘Don’t worry about it,’ he said, still moving. ‘I’ve been out of police work for an age. Who’s going to know me?’

She swore softly, and he knew she was about to cave in, but he waited to hear the chirp of her alarm as she clicked the remote key before he turned, careful to keep the smile off his face.

She gave him a look that would melt steel.

‘Hey, come on,’ he said. ‘You wouldn’t even have known that was Rika’s photo if it weren’t for me.’

She couldn’t deny it. But it didn’t take a lesson in Kate’s famous social skills to tell him she didn’t like it either.

‘You will stay in the car,’ she said, jabbing the ignition key at him over the roof of the car. ‘You will
not
speak to anyone.’

They stopped to pick up someone at Cheetham Hill. A plump young woman with fine brown hair and a pleasant face. Fennimore vacated the front seat, held the door for her and offered her a beaming smile.

‘Hello,’ she said. It sounded like a question.

‘Nick,’ he said, opening the rear door.

‘Detective Constable Moran.’ She slid into the front seat. ‘Mouse, if you like.’

‘Mouse?’

‘New nickname,’ she said. ‘I’m trying it on for size.’

He took the back seat. ‘Nice to meet you, Mouse. I’m—’

‘Walking if you say another word,’ Simms interrupted.

The young constable threw a puzzled look at her boss.

‘Don’t worry about him,’ Simms said. ‘He’s not even here.’

There was a time when Piccadilly Gardens was a no-go area, but regeneration since the IRA bomb in the nineties, and a zero-tolerance approach from Greater Manchester Police had effectively reclaimed the gardens from the pushers and addicts who had plagued the area up to the end of the noughties. During the day, at least, the gardens and fountains had once more become a place for families and office workers to relax, take the sun, enjoy the green oasis in the heart of the city.

But the need for heroin is a tyrant – the addicts simply adapted, hovering at the margins, ghosting at the edge of visibility. Goods were bought and sold instead in the narrow streets and dark alleyways that served as service access for the office blocks and shops that fronted the square.

It was here they found Candy. She looked one step away from collapse – two stones underweight, pale and half frozen in a denim jacket and cut-off jeans in the sub-zero temperatures. She shifted from one foot to the other, the cuffs of her jeans loose on her thighs, her legs mottled purple with the cold.

She saw them pull up at the kerb ten feet down the narrow roadway and started walking. She moved slowly, as if her bones ached, as if even the brush of her clothing against her skin caused her pain.

Kate Simms slid the car into first and trundled alongside her.

‘You talk to her,’ Kate said quietly.

The young officer wound down her window. When she’d first spoken, Fennimore recognized her accent as generic Northern – flat vowels and elongated ‘o’s, but as she spoke to the young hooker, it metamorphosed to the nasal sounds of broad Mancunian.

‘Hiya, Candy,’ she said. ‘Don’t worry, love, we’re not here to hassle you.’

‘That’s nice,
Officer Dibble
.’ Candy jammed her hands into the pockets of her denim jacket and kept walking. ‘In that case, you can fuck off.’

Simms kept pace, while Moran tried again: ‘I were just talking to Tami-Marie – she said you might be able to help.’

The use of a name was as good as an introduction. Candy stopped and bent at the waist to look inside the car. She was so emaciated that the muscles and tendons running down her jaw were visible working under her skin. Her eyes looked huge in her wasted face; her eyebrows were plucked bare – or they’d fallen out – and she’d redrawn them high on her forehead, which, together with her sunken cheeks and sallow skin, gave the impression of a startled wraith. She eyeballed Simms, then leaned in at the window to get a look at Fennimore.

‘Who’s he?’

‘Oh, don’t worry about me,’ he said. ‘I’m not even here.’

She pouted and he saw that she had inexpertly covered a large sore on her upper lip with Vaseline and foundation.

She ignored him, addressing the two women instead: ‘Looks like a fucking punter in that get-up.’

She opened the passenger door, letting in a blast of cold air. ‘Well, shove up,’ she said, practically sitting on Fennimore’s lap. ‘I’m freezing my arse off out here.’

Shifting to the offside passenger seat, Fennimore glanced out of the rear window and caught a glimpse of a car crawling past the end of the road. A punter: where addicts were drawn, so was their source of income. She perched next to him with one buttock on the seat, but a moment later shifted her weight onto the other buttock.

‘First off, it’s Candice,’ she said. ‘Not Candy.’

Moran swivelled in her seat. ‘Sorry,’ she said, her tone solemn and respectful. ‘Candice.’

‘I don’t know who Tami-Marie thinks she is, calling me Candy. I mean what if I started calling her Tami, or Tam—’

‘Candice.’ The officer who called herself ‘Mouse’ was firm, but not sharp.

Candice fiddled with the broken and bleach-damaged hair that formed a fringe on her forehead, raking and primping it. She couldn’t sit still. ‘Well, I’m just saying,’ she muttered.

‘We thought you might know this girl,’ Moran said, gently but firmly bringing her back to the subject. She took a colour copy of Rika’s photo booth picture from an A4-sized leather portfolio and passed it through the gap between the driver’s and front passenger’s seat.

Candice stared at the picture. She raised her eyes to the young constable and reached out tentatively, as if asking permission. Moran gave her an encouraging smile and she took the photograph in her trembling fingers.

‘Rika,’ Candice said. ‘She were lovely.’

‘Tami-Marie thought her name might be Rita,’ Moran said.

‘Ri
ka
,’ Candice said, all offended sensibilities again. ‘She was from Latvia, for fuck’s sake. Who heard of a girl called
Rita
from Latvia?’

Simms whipped round. ‘What part of Latvia?’ If they could pinpoint the place, they could have her full name in days, rather than weeks.

‘What’re you on about?’

‘Which city – did she say?’

‘Duh!’ Candice said, bugging her eyes at the stupidity of the police. ‘Latvia
is
the city.’

Moran took over. ‘Latvia’s a country, hon,’ she said.

‘Well, how’m I supposed to know?’ Candice squirmed constantly, taking some of the weight off her bony behind by hanging on to the grip over the door. ‘She said Latvia. Just Latvia. I’m not bloody Google Earth, am I?’

‘We didn’t even know that she was from there till just now,’ Moran said, placating. ‘Tami-Marie said you and Rika were mates.’

Candice nodded. ‘We worked out the same sauna. But Rika got fucked up on the drugs and doing … stuff she should have stayed well clear of.’ She began tugging at the scrunchy, pulled it out and retied it so that her thin, scraggy ponytail sat on the crown of her head. ‘She died.’

‘I know,’ Moran said. ‘I’m really sorry, Candice.’

Candice’s eyes sparkled with tears for a second, but she blinked them away, wiped her nose with the heel of her hand. ‘Yeah, well, like I said, she got fucked up.’

‘But we’re looking for another girl; someone who was close to Rika.’

She eyed first Moran, then Fennimore. ‘Maybe she doesn’t want to be found.’

‘We’ve already found her,’ Simms said, watching for Candice’s reaction in the rear-view mirror. ‘She’s dead, too.’

Candice’s eyes narrowed. ‘It’s that girl they found at the back of the hotel, isn’t it?’

‘We’re trying to identify her,’ Moran said. ‘She was blonde, blue-eyed. We were thinking maybe she worked with Rika – she had Rika’s picture in her purse.’

‘No.’ Candice shook her head. ‘I worked with Rika, I never saw her with no blonde. She was
my
mate. Rika always said I was the only friend she had over here.’ The possessiveness of her tone was unmistakable.