Everyone Lies (3 page)

‘So tell him you’re using your initiative – he might even be impressed.’

‘I doubt it.’ She almost spat the words.

The Kate Simms he knew never carried that kind of resentment around with her. Budgets were tight – even at his self-imposed distance from the police, he knew that – but what kind of ACC would want to stamp on thorough investigative work? His mind flew back to the Crime Faculty and, suddenly, he thought he knew.

‘Kate, who is the ACC?’

She took a breath, let it go, took another. ‘Stuart Gifford.’

For a moment, the steady tug of the past became a tidal wave: anger, terror, grief, so strong that he almost lost his footing.

‘Nick? Are you okay?’

He couldn’t answer that, so he said, ‘What the hell possessed you? Didn’t you
know
he’d moved to Greater Manchester Police?’

‘He followed
me
here – he was still climbing the greasy pole at the Met until a month ago. And, just so you know, Gifford is also the current chair of ACPO’s Homicide Working Group.’ The Association of Chief Police Officers coordinated and developed policing strategy. ‘He could argue it’s his
duty
to take a close look at the investigation.’

He rubbed his forehead, trying to ease a throbbing pain that was building behind his eyes. ‘Ever feel cursed, Kate?’

‘
You’re
asking
me
?’

One of his students greeted him as she passed, but Fennimore barely noticed.

Simms exhaled into the phone. ‘I shouldn’t have said that.’

He cleared his throat and loosened his tie, tried hard to keep the tremor out of his voice. ‘If anyone’s earned the right, it’s you.’

‘I didn’t call you to argue, Nick,’ she said. ‘And I swear, if I had any other option …’ Her voice cracked, and she cleared her throat before she went on: ‘But my lowprofile easy-start investigation is turning into something much more complicated, and Gifford is sitting on the sidelines, just
aching
for me to mess this up.’

‘What happened was my fault, not yours.’

‘I’m nobody’s puppet, Nick. I made choices – of my own free will.’

‘But I’m not police; Gifford can’t touch me, so he hounds you instead, is that it?’

‘Honestly?’ She sighed. ‘Gifford thinks I should have been kicked out for what I did.’

‘Jesus, Kate—’

‘I told you, I don’t regret it,’ she interrupted. ‘But I had to go back into
uniform
to make Inspector, Nick, and I’ve had my fill of neighbourhood policing: D&Ds and TWOCs and ASBOs, and endless bloody partnership meetings. I’m a detective. I want to make it as a detective. I’m asking for your help.’

In five years, she hadn’t asked for anything from him. He knew how hard it must be for her to ask now. He would not make her ask again.

‘Okay,’ he said. ‘What’ve you got?’

‘Names, dates, the Crime Pattern Analysis Unit’s report, a few of the tox results. They’re spread over several coroners, so I’m waiting on some.’

‘The pathologist who’s dealing with StayC’s death sounds friendly,’ he said. ‘See if you can get any more detail from him. He can send attachments by email, or if he only has hard copy, I can take faxes – I’ll text you my office fax number.’

‘Okay, you’ll have everything I’ve got within the hour. When will you—?’

‘Tonight. It’ll be late though.’

‘Fine. No problem. You can reach me on my mobile anytime. Anytime.’ After an awkward silence, she said, ‘Well, I’d better …’

‘Kate, don’t hang up.’ If he didn’t say it now, he never would: ‘How’s the family?’
The family
, like he couldn’t remember their names. Like it had slipped his mind that Becky, Simms’s daughter, and his had been inseparable.
Well done, Fennimore. No, really – nice touch
.

2

Marta is preparing for a client. She’s wearing a short red wrap-over dress, stockings, heels. She is sinuous, graceful, holds herself like a dancer. She tells her customers that she trained for the ballet, but she grew too tall; her dancing career was over by the time she reached fifteen. None of it is true, but they like the story. She has practised how to walk and turn, and tilt her head in the expressive way ballet dancers do. She wears her ice-blonde hair short, feathered lightly at the temples and cut straight along the delicate line of her jaw.

The room is clean, painted in dark red and cream, L-shaped, with a shower cubicle around the corner in the foot of the ‘L’; soft, fluffy towels are stacked in purposebuilt shelves to the left of the shower; cream and red, to match the decor. Erotic pictures and mirrors are framed in gold; the lights can be dimmed, and usually are. A massage table stands off-centre of the room. A double bed is placed opposite a forty-inch plasma screen; access to twenty-three adult TV channels and a range of DVDs is included in the price. This is the deluxe suite: Rob is a special client.

Sol Henry escorts him in personally, slaps him on the back and says, ‘Marta – just like you asked. She’s come in special for you.’

Rob looks her over, as he’s if deciding what he wants to do to her. He’s a big man – broad as well as tall. Big men are often the sweetest – careful in case their clumsy hands should hurt or bruise. But Rob is not so careful. He’s one of those big men who like to demonstrate their power.

Sol is shorter than his client, stocky, but he can move fast when he needs to. He shaves his head, because his hair grows in thick black curls, and he thinks that makes him look soft. He hands her a package. It’s about the size of a brick, wrapped in grey plastic and sealed with parcel tape. He does it right in front of Rob. They’ve lost a couple of big consignments, one way or another, since she joined the firm; Rob is helping with that. She only knows this because she listens at doorways and lingers when she takes coffee in to their meetings. Now this is an official message to her: Rob is on the team. She looks at Sol, keeping her face carefully blank, and the quick sparkle of humour in his eyes says,
Yeah, life’s full of surprises, isn’t it?

He places an envelope on the bed. ‘For you. Address is inside. By two o’clock, okay?’

She checks her watch; she has somewhere else to be at two, but if Rob is quick she can wash up, drop off the package and still make it in time. ‘Yes, I can do that.’ Her accent is Eastern European, her voice warm, well modulated.

He cocks an eyebrow. ‘What else you got to do, middle of the day?’

She smiles. ‘If I told you, you might be shocked.’

Sol laughs, looks to Rob for his reaction. ‘She’s worth her weight in gold, this one.’

‘You think? I reckon I could lift her with one hand.’ Rob looks into her eyes as he says this, sending her a message of his own.

This time Sol doesn’t laugh; he looks at Marta. ‘All right?’

She inclines her head, and Sol turns away. His hand hovers over the doorknob, but he lets it drop and turns back.

Rob frowns. ‘Forget something, Sol?’

The two men lock gazes, ignoring her.

Sol touches his arm. ‘Be nice.’

Rob’s smile is a second too late to seem genuine. He looks down at Sol’s hand on his arm, and up into Sol’s face again, but Sol does not move, and he does not look away. Rob has been warned, and it’s clear he doesn’t like to be warned. But he does smile, and pats Sol’s shoulder. ‘“Nice”? My middle name, Sol,’ he says with a chuckle.

Sol leaves his hand where it is for a moment longer, for just long enough, and Rob does not try to shake him off. His eyes dart left, and Sol nods, satisfied.

Rob stares at the door as if he can see Sol Henry walking slowly down the corridor. After half a minute, he turns to Marta, a thoughtful look on his face.

‘What
have
you been up to?’

Marta keeps her face blank of expression. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘I’ve never seen Sol Henry so smitten.’

She hefts the package Sol handed to her. ‘He values reliability,’ she says.

‘You ever curious?’

‘About what?’

He jerks his chin. ‘About what kind of pestilence you’re carrying around the city in those neat packages.’

‘You have saying, I think? “Curiosity drowned the cat.”’

‘
Killed
the cat.’

She shrugs. ‘Anyway, it died.’ She drops the block into her shoulder bag and reaches for the envelope on the bed. ‘This is what I am interested in.’ The envelope is stuffed with twenties.

‘Speaking of which …’ He fetches out his wallet, as he has done every session, and she waves away his offer of payment, as she has done every time.

‘It’s taken care of,’ she says. ‘On the house.’

‘How about a little extra?’

She smiles a slow smile; they have danced this dance before. ‘Extra?’

‘A speciality.’

She strokes the web of flesh between his thumb and index finger. ‘Rob, I
am
the speciality.’

‘Come on … Just a little game.’

She smiles her refusal.

‘Okay, how about OWO for an extra twenty?’ He means oral without protection. Most of the girls do, at no extra charge. Marta does not.

She holds up a small square condom packet between her first two fingers; the shiny bronze wrapper glints under the lights. ‘Your ticket for the ride, sir,’ she says, keeping her voice low and warm. ‘Real-Feel, ultralight.’

He looks ready to argue and she says, ‘I’m afraid you must have valid ticket to enter.’

A dark shadow seems to pass across his face. Rob is a man who is used to saying, ‘Do this,’ and it is done, a man who is not used to being told ‘no’.

‘You think I’m
diseased
, Marta? Worried I’ll give you the clap?’

She runs her fingers lightly across his chest and feels an answering shimmer of muscle contractions up and down his torso. Heat is coming off him in waves. She moves in close, reaches up on tiptoe, her fingers resting on his shoulder, her mouth close enough to his ear to kiss. ‘
So
-rry, dar
link
,’ she whispers, amping up the accent: ‘No glove, no love.’

She turns to leave, and he catches her by the wrist, not gently. His eyes burn with dull fury, and red-hot pain flares up her arm. Her heart skips a little; every instinct tells her to fight, but she relaxes her body, turns 180, and allows herself to be drawn into an embrace, arranging her features into an expression of wide-eyed inquisitiveness.

‘Be nice,’ she says. It’s a reminder that Sol will not take it well if he is rough with her.

The light in his eyes seems to flare, then it dies, and he flings her hand away. ‘All right,’ he says. ‘You win.’

‘No, lover,’ she says, patting him lightly on the cheek, ‘we both win.’

She moves to the mirror above the dressing table, arranges her hair, checks her lipstick, using big, bold movements, so he won’t see that her hands are shaking.

3

Afterwards they shower and she sees him out, then she returns to the room and showers again, taking her time, washing all trace of Rob off her skin. She dries carefully, then sits naked at the dressing table to fix her make-up. Her wrist is bruised, but otherwise she is unmarked.

There was never any serious danger: every treatment room in the place is rigged for surveillance. Right now, she’s looking into the lens of a tiny camera built into one of the screws on which the mirror hangs.

In the main office, there is a desk in front of the stockroom door; night or day, one or other of the Henry brothers will always be sitting behind the desk. If neither brother is in the office – well, you should not be, either. This means that nobody else has seen behind the magnolia white door; not the other girls – not even Rob – because Rob might be more important to the boys than she’d realized, but he is still a punter, and if he finds out what’s in there, he won’t like it.

Marta herself has been inside that small windowless room because Sol invited her. The other girls fantasize about a pharmacy of powders and herbs and pills stacked in boxes behind that door, but the Henrys are too careful for that. Nothing incriminating is kept close by; they have stashes all over town – she should know – she has run supplies to half of them. So that first time Sol invited her into the storeroom, she hadn’t expected to see goods stacked on shelves, but she hadn’t expected to see banks of screens, either. Monitors linked to DVD recorders, a column of USB drives for back-up.

She stared at the images on the screens: men in various stages of undress, fucking or being fellated by women or with their heads buried between women’s thighs. ‘You record everything?’

Sol stood behind her and nuzzled her neck. ‘Mmm …’ He slipped his hand under her blouse and cupped her breast.

‘Why are you showing me this?’

He tilted her chin with his left hand, and planted kisses along the sharp line of her jaw, rotating her nipple stud between his right thumb and forefinger. ‘Because I trust you.’

She eased away, turning her head to look up into his face. ‘Or because maybe this is the only place without your little spy cameras?’

He laughed. ‘That’s what I like about you, Marta. You’re smarter than the average.’

‘Sure, always thinking.’ She faced the screens again, pushing her buttocks into his erection. ‘Like now, I think you bring me here because you want to screw me and you don’t want your brother to know.’

He kneaded her breast, almost hypnotized by the girls and their punters silently humping and sucking and licking on twelve different screens. ‘Frank’s old school,’ he said, his voice hoarse now. ‘Doesn’t like mixing business and pleasure.’

‘So, if I fuck with you, Frank wouldn’t like it.’

‘What Frank doesn’t know can’t hurt him, can it?’

She reached around to fondle his buttock with her left hand while she assessed the room. A filing cabinet; a wall safe, unlocked; stacks of CDs – recordings of men fucking and women faking.
Is it worth it? Is it worth fucking Sol for the chance of getting a good look around some other time?
Sol worked his free hand down her body to her crotch and she knew she had to make up her mind, because once he got his fingers inside her panties, there would be no stopping him.
Yes
, she thought.
I really want to know what’s in that safe
.