Everyone Lies (44 page)

Something lodged at the base of her throat and, for a second, she couldn’t breathe. He was telling the truth, she knew it, and Becky was lost to her.

‘Kate.’

‘Starbucks,’ she said. ‘Near St Ann’s Church. Go left at the next turning.’

‘Delay them,’ he said, ‘as much as you dare.’

He was out of the car and running as she switched the phone mic back on.

45

‘Tattoos on criminals are as good as a bar code.’

C
HIEF
I
NSPECTOR
D
AVE
G
RIFFIN

Fennimore ran past Manchester College, heading towards the city centre. These quieter side streets had not been gritted and he slithered and slipped every few steps, until he gave up on the pavement and took to the roadway. There was nothing but offices and a few seedy pubs on this stretch – no sign of a taxi. He reached a main road and looked right and left. No signs, no directions. He stopped a woman.

‘St Ann’s,’ he gasped. ‘Which way?’

She shook her head, avoiding his gaze, hurrying on. He turned to a group of people waiting to cross to the north. ‘St Ann’s,’ he said. ‘The church?’

A man pointed to a side road diagonally opposite.

He dodged into the roar of rush-hour traffic. Someone exclaimed, a car blared its horn, a woman screamed. A bus bore down on him, its air brakes hissing and juddering. He leapt out of its path, and ran on.

Fifteen yards down the road he saw a motorcycle courier’s bike parked outside a restaurant, keys in the ignition. He swung his leg over the seat and turned the key.

He heard a yell, then lights seemed to explode in his head and he was on the ground, staring at an empty bottle of Yanjing beer, spinning on the tarmac. The biker’s engine roared and was gone.

Fennimore groaned and rolled onto his back; freezing ice-melt flooded down his neck, and the shock brought him fully conscious.

He struggled to his feet. His knee and ankle hurt and, looking down, he saw that his trousers were torn and he was bleeding. He hobbled to the next junction; the road ahead seemed impossibly long – he’d never make it in time. Then, miraculously, a taxi appeared from his left. He flagged it down, but it swerved around him and carried on going. He dragged himself fifty yards, seventy-five yards further, heading towards the rumble of traffic, onto another busy thoroughfare. He had no clue where he was, no clue which way to go. Two more black cabs swept past, refusing to stop. Then he remembered the wad of notes Joe had handed him the day before – his share of their winnings. He pulled the lot out, fanned it and waved it at the next taxi. It passed him.

He looked for the next, heard a squeal of brakes behind him, a grind of gears and the whine of an engine, then the taxicab was next to him at the kerb.

‘Where to, chief?’ the driver said.

Kate Simms followed directions through parts of the city she’d never seen – Lowry territory: vacant houses and disused warehouses and, as the light faded towards dusk, the occasional figures in the landscape took on a flat monochrome, like Lowry’s matchstick men. She took a couple of wrong turnings pretending confusion, and kept her speed below thirty all the way, trying to give Fennimore a few more minutes to reach Becky.

She ended up at the edge of a large vacant lot once occupied by an old mill, judging by the scale of it. She drove around two sides of it, over uneven tarmac, then onto a narrower cobbled lane at a right angle to the tarmac road. It might once have been an alley, running between back-to-back housing for mill workers, but now it was a blank space, hemmed in on either side by tall spiked railings. The snow had melted in patches, creating oily black puddles, and in places the stone sets showed through. The lane doglegged left and ended abruptly at a brick wall. Tangled bone-white stems of wild buddleia and elder at the fence line boxed her in on either side.

‘What now?’ she said.

‘Turn off your lights, get out of the car. And keep the line open.’

She waited five minutes; it was almost dark. She saw the car headlights first, rising and dipping on the uneven surface of the mill road. Then she heard its tyres swishing through the slush. As it negotiated the dogleg in the lane, she was caught in the full glare of its headlights.

She recognized the LED halos as BMW headlamps, a darker centre and bright outer rim, like the eyes of an animal, a predator. A spasm of alarm shot through her: he wasn’t slowing down. She cast right and left, hoping to find a gap in the railings, knowing there were none. She dodged to the side of her car and the BMW stopped a foot short of her own bumper.

Standing to one side, out of the glare, she could read the registration clearly, and she knew before he stepped out of the car that Tanford was in the driving seat.

‘Dynamic brake control on this model,’ he said, patting the roof of the car like it was a pet. ‘Fantastic.’

The unreasoning terror Kate had felt since she’d received the image of Becky was replaced by a cold rage. The shaking stopped and calm settled on her.

‘No questions, Kate?’ he said, a look of rueful amusement on his face.

She took him in from his polished black loafers to his glossy black hair. ‘I’ve got all the answers I need,’ she said. ‘This is the car that picked up Marta outside Livebait restaurant on the night she was murdered. You took Marta to her place of execution, you tortured and raped and murdered her and you framed George Howard.’

He smiled. ‘You were always good on the details, Kate, just not very good at working out which were relevant. None of this matters any more – you’re here, and you’re about to hand your entire case over to me all neatly wrapped in plastic. ’

‘I know you have attacked other women,’ she went on, willing him to confess, just so she could hear it that one time. ‘I think you murdered Candice Watson.’

He shook his head and sighed. ‘Open the boot,’ he said.

She did as she was told and he took a folded sheet from the inside pocket of his overcoat. She recognized it as a copy of the receipt she’d signed at the university.

‘Just how many of you are in on this?’ she asked.

He smiled. ‘There are
some
things you don’t know, then?’

She shrugged. ‘I’ll admit I don’t know how much help you had from the Henry brothers.’

He ignored her, holding each of the bags under the boot light in turn, checking the contents against the list before placing them one by one on the ground next to him.

‘But I know you’re recycling drugs to them,’ she said.

In answer, he held out his hand and she gave him the last of the improvised evidence bags: Marta’s diary and memory stick. ‘Do you have even a shred of proof, Katie?’ He smiled.

‘You broke into Marta’s flat,
Tanno
– you can’t destroy that evidence.’

‘You won’t find any DNA or trace evidence from me in Marta’s flat, because I was never there.’

‘No, because like the coward you are, you sent Mark Renwick to do your dirty work. But men like you don’t stop,’ she said. ‘That’s what’ll get you in the end.’

He caught her arm, spun her around and slammed her head against the Mondeo. Dazed, she flailed with her hands, but couldn’t find purchase. He had her by the scruff of the neck. A second later, he adjusted his grip and, two-handed, he dragged her coat back over her shoulders. She heard the seams tear; her arms were pinned. He slammed her forward against the car.

As she fought for breath, she felt his right arm snake around her neck, felt the scratch of his overcoat sleeve against her face. He had her in a chokehold. She kicked backward, connected with bone, heard him grunt in pain. He squeezed, flexing his forearm against his biceps and her legs lost feeling, she felt herself falling. He eased off and he slipped his free hand over her breasts and stomach, squeezing, probing, hurting – his breath hot on her skin. She grunted in disgust, tried to fight him, but she couldn’t move. His hand travelled lower, groping her crotch.

She must have blacked out for a second – suddenly she was on her knees in the oily snowmelt, choking, coughing, sucking air into her lungs. He grabbed a handful of hair and forced her head up. Her phone was in his hand. He grinned and there was such violence and madness in that smile that she was paralyzed with terror.

‘That you, mate?’ he said into the phone. He listened to the answer. ‘You’ll have to excuse us for a bit,’ he said, ruffling Kate’s hair. ‘I’ll call you back – me and the lady need some private time.’

Fennimore handed the cab driver two twenties and said, ‘The same again if you wait for me, take me where I need to go next.’

The cabbie grinned. ‘Fetch us a latte, I’ll let you off the tip.’

Fennimore walked into a pleasant fug of hot coffee grounds and warm food. He knew Becky immediately; she had her mother’s dark hair and eyes. She was drinking a smoothie at a window table with two friends.

The goon was unmistakable – a man with a huge head and no neck. He wore a ski hat and a leather jacket; a Bluetooth receiver was jammed in one ear. He was sitting a couple of tables away from the three girls, incongruous and ill at ease, like a wrestler in a ballet chorus.

Fennimore limped over and Becky looked up, her face blank for a second, then she stared at him in horror. ‘Uncle Fenn. What happened to you?’

He made a weak attempt at a grin. ‘Slipped on the ice, had an encounter with a lamppost.’

Her friends giggled nervously.

The man’s chair scraped back and he stood, his leather jacket creaked as he folded his arms, and Fennimore had a slightly queasy notion that he’d chosen leather for its durability and convenient wipe-clean properties.

‘Your mum asked me to pick you up,’ he said.

The man took another step, barging a chair out of the way. It squealed against the vinyl floor tiles. His skin was the colour of raw meat and now he was closer, Fennimore could see that he had a bar code tattooed just under his left ear.

‘You’ve got blood on your face,’ Becky said, glancing uneasily towards the big man.

‘Yeah, Uncle Fenn,’ the thug said, crowding closer. ‘You got blood.’

Becky’s anxious look told him she knew they were in danger. Fennimore dabbed at his lip and his finger came away bloody. ‘That was one angry lamppost.’ He eyed the goon surreptitiously.
What the hell am I doing? I can’t take on this human meat mountain.

But he could get in the way. He put his back to the man and took Becky’s hand. ‘My lady, your carriage awaits.’

Becky’s eyes widened, and she blushed, but then he saw recognition in her face and she played along. ‘Lead on, sir.’

But when he turned, the thug was blocking their way.

Fennimore sidestepped right, and the man moved with them. He moved left, and once more, the thug stepped in their path. Then he opened his jacket just enough to show Fennimore the Glock stuck in the waistband of his trousers.

Fennimore broke out in a cold sweat; there were twenty or more people in the place, and a goon with a gun was threatening to start shooting. Becky’s hand tightened in his.

‘Now sit the fuck down,’ the man said.

Becky’s friends exchanged a frightened glance; a mother at the next table quietly picked up her coat and shopping bags and led her child out of the coffee bar.

As if by some kind of ESP, the manager turned around from the grill at the service counter and peered across the café. ‘Everything all right over there?’ he asked.

‘Fine,’ Fennimore said, his heart racing. He put Becky on the far side of the table, but he remained standing. ‘Can we get a couple of coffees over here?’ He pointed to the torn leg of his trousers and smiled apologetically. ‘Ice-related injury.’

The man scowled. ‘Stop pissing about.’

‘A tall mocha for me,’ Fennimore said. He leaned back a bit to get a good look at the thug. ‘I’m guessing you’re a no-nonsense Americano man? An Americano for the man with the interesting bar-code tatt under his left ear,’ he said, not waiting for an answer.

The thug’s eyes bulged.

‘Better make that a decaf.’

The man stepped up and squeezed his arm till it lost all feeling. ‘Go ahead,’ he hissed. ‘Keep taking the piss – I’ll fucking burst you like a pimple.’

‘You
do
know the police keep a database of criminals with distinctive tattoos? Good as a bar code.’ Fennimore tapped the side of his own neck, under his left ear. ‘In your case, literally.’

The thug shifted his weight from one foot to the other.

‘How many people do you see?’ Fennimore whispered. He saw confusion on the man’s face. ‘Let me put that another way – how many
witnesses
do you see?’

Bar Code’s leather creaked as he surveyed the room; he seemed to be counting in his head.

‘What were your instructions? Follow her, separate her from her friends?’ He looked around, lowered his voice even further. ‘I’m fairly certain your boss would not want you to get into a hostage situation.’

The man sucked his teeth and stared into Fennimore’s eyes, and it was only thinking about Simms on her own with the dark gathering around her that gave him the strength to hold that cold, dead stare.

At last, the goon let go of Fennimore’s arm and fiddled with his headset with fat, nicotine-stained fingers. ‘Bit of a situation, Boss,’ he said, keeping his eyes on Fennimore the whole time. A pause, then: ‘Fennimore … At the café.’

He listened, nodded, smiling, which Fennimore did not take as a good sign.

‘So,’ Tanford said, ‘tell me, Kate – why haven’t you mentioned the body you dug up in Hull?’ He gave Kate Simms’s hair a tug and bent to look into her face. ‘Oh, yeah, I know about that.’ He put his mouth to her ear and she shuddered involuntarily. ‘Are you
holding out
on me, Kate?’ he whispered.

He drew back and she stared dully at him.

‘Oh.’ He tilted his head and made a little moue of sympathy. ‘Are you hoping that even if you don’t make it, your pet nerd will find some way to
find me out
? How noble.’ He shook his head. ‘How pathetic.’

He lifted her up one-handed by the collar of her coat. The seams gave with a sharp
rip
, freeing her arms. He straightened her collar in a gentlemanly gesture, smiling into her face, and all she saw was rage.