Truth or Dare (4 page)

M
arina Esposito stared at the young woman sitting opposite her. She tried not to make snap judgements, jump to hasty conclusions that would ultimately prejudice her findings. But it was difficult.

The woman seemed to be only physically present. The small eyes in her large, bovine face swept the room, searching for anything of interest, a small smile playing at the corners of her wet, fleshy lips. Her hair was greasy and tied back, her body lumpen and shapeless inside the regulation itchy grey jogging suit. Marina picked up her pen, made a note.

‘Joanne,’ she said. The woman slowly brought her face back down to earth, fixed her vacant smile on Marina. She continued. ‘Joanne, do you know why you’re here?’

Joanne shrugged.

Marina persisted, her voice low and steady. ‘Joanne, I need you to tell me that you understand why you’re here. Can you do that?’

Joanne’s eyes washed in and out of focus, eventually settling on Marina. ‘Because of the men,’ she said slowly.

‘That’s part of it, yes,’ she continued. ‘The men. But that’s not the whole reason why you’re here, is it?’

‘Because of the men,’ Joanne insisted, her voice rising. ‘Because they wanted me to stop seeing my men.’

Marina nodded. ‘The men. Right. But the men weren’t the real problem, were they? No one wanted to stop you seeing the men. No one was telling you to stop that, were they?’

‘They said I couldn’t see my men again. That I couldn’t meet them off the computer. That I couldn’t go out any more. Then they brought me here.’

‘And why couldn’t you go out any more, Joanne? Why didn’t they want you to meet your men?’

Joanne’s eyes rolled backwards, her features darkened. Thinking. And not very pleasant thoughts, Marina reckoned.

‘Oh,’ Joanne said eventually. ‘You mean the babies.’

‘That’s right,’ said Marina. ‘The babies.’

‘You were the first person we thought of,’ DC Anni Hepburn had said when Marina had arrived the previous night. ‘To be honest, you were the only person we thought of.’

‘I don’t know whether to be flattered or not,’ Marina had replied.

Anni had phoned her a couple of days previously. Marina had met her when they worked together as part of the unit headed up by Phil Brennan, Marina’s husband, in Colchester, Essex. They had become close friends and had kept in touch when Marina and Phil moved to Birmingham, even working together on another case Marina had become involved in. Now Anni had returned the favour.

They had met in the Garden Café at the Minories Art Gallery in Colchester. Anni had arranged the location specially, knowing it was one of Marina’s favourite places to eat in the town. Anni had to admit that she liked it too. Hidden behind high-brick, secret-garden walls and with its unexpected pieces of architecture jumping out at surprising intervals, it reminded her of a mini Portmeirion just off the high street.

‘You trying to tempt me back by bringing me here?’ Marina had asked.

Anni laughed. ‘I should know better, shouldn’t I?’ Her smile faded as she passed over a folder. ‘Her name’s Joanne Marsh,’ Anni said, ‘and we need an assessment.’

Marina removed the documents, scanned them. ‘I think I’ve heard of her.’

‘I’m sure you have. She’s not what you’d call low profile.’

Marina looked up. ‘Where’s she being kept presently?’

‘Finnister. Just up the road.’

Marina nodded. Finnister was a secure hospital for the criminally insane just outside Norfolk. It specialised in rehabilitative and therapeutic treatment and housed almost exclusively female inmates. Marina only knew it by reputation. And what she had heard she had her doubts about.

‘And that’s where we’re going?’

‘First thing in the morning.’ Anni smiled, a mischievous glint in her eye. ‘So tonight is our own. No husbands, boyfriends or kids. Let’s hit the town.’

‘And doing that is supposed to make me want to come back here to live?’

Anni laughed. ‘Kill or cure.’

‘So, Joanne. Tell me about the babies.’

Joanne’s earlier good humour had dissipated. She now sat sullen, staring at Marina.

‘The babies.’ Marina’s voice was gentle but insistent. ‘What did you do with the babies?’

Joanne gave an exaggerated, moody teenager’s shrug. ‘Just… got rid of them.’

‘Why, Joanne? Why did you get rid of them?’

‘They were in the way. Stopping me doing what I wanted to do.’

‘Meet men.’

Joanne nodded.

The case had been all over the media. Joanne Marsh had lived on a remote farm outside Clacton on the Essex coast with only her father for company. She had developed a passion for meeting men through internet sex contact sites, having random, unprotected sex with them. Sometimes in multiples. There was plenty of amateur video footage of her doing so.

She had been on the social services radar for quite some time, dating back to her childhood where there had been allegations of incest and abuse. Her father and other men, some family, some just friends, using the underage Joanne for sex. The allegations were never proven but Joanne had become a person of interest to them. When she had posted a message on a sex site saying, ‘Got rid of the baby out tonit now whers my MEN?’ they became interested.

Upon investigation, they discovered Joanne had been made pregnant as a result of one of her meetings. She hadn’t let this deter her enjoyment, playing with various partners until she was full term. As far as they could gather, the baby had been delivered at home, probably by her father, and Joanne had then been out meeting men the same night.

Anni’s Major Incident Squad had been called in and they had found the corpse of a newborn child buried in a shallow grave just outside the back door of the farmhouse. Suspicions aroused, they had dug up the rest of the land. A further seven tiny corpses had been found.

Now Joanne was in Finnister awaiting psychiatric assessment.

‘So,’ Marina continued, her voice low, her demeanour professional, ‘how did you get rid of the babies? What did you do?’

Joanne looked around the room, bored once more. ‘Dug a hole, put them in.’

‘And that’s it?’

‘Closed it up again. Patted it down.’

‘And then what?’

‘What d’you mean?’

‘What did you do then?’

Another shrug. ‘Went out.’

Marina nodded. Swallowed down the revulsion she was feeling, tried, once again, to remain professional.

‘Can I go now?’

‘Go?’ asked Marina. ‘Where?’

‘Home.’

Marina shook her head. ‘Well, Joanne, I think it’s fair to say that, one way or another, you won’t be going home for quite some time.’

P
hil stared up at the tower block. Even the bright morning sun and the clear blue sky failed to lift the clouds of despondency and gloom around it. Handsworth was an area of Birmingham notable for its deprivation, poverty and social exclusion. And out of that deprivation rode the usual horsemen: crime, violence, gangs, drugs. Life during wartime.

‘Bet the fuckin’ lift’s out of order,’ said Sperring, also looking up.

‘Stop complaining,’ said Phil. ‘You need the exercise.’

Sperring affected not to hear him. ‘Or if it is working, I bet they’ll have used it as a toilet.’

Phil stared at him. Sperring, reluctantly, acknowledged the gaze. ‘What?’ he said, eyebrows rising in mock-effrontery. ‘Don’t start all that
Guardian
-reader holier-than-thou liberal bullshit. You know what this sort are like. We deal with them every day. We’d be out of a job if it wasn’t for them. Spend our days helping old ladies across the road and getting cats out of trees. That’d be us.’

Phil kept staring at him.

Sperring flinched under the gaze. ‘What? You know I’m right.’

‘A bit of respect, that’s all. Doesn’t hurt.’

Sperring shrugged. That would be the only answer Phil would be getting.

‘Come on,’ said Phil, walking towards the entrance, Sperring, reluctantly, following. ‘And besides,’ said Phil once they had almost reached the door, ‘helping old ladies across the road? You’d be dead from boredom within a month.’

Sperring didn’t answer.

Letisha Watson lived on the ninth floor of Trescothick Tower. An inner-city Sixties tower block that, like all other inner-city Sixties tower blocks, had promised to be the future of housing. Cities in the sky. And like all other inner-city Sixties tower blocks soon became the exact opposite. The concrete and brick were crumbling, the wind ghosting through the widening cracks. Walkways were sided by wire mesh to stop children climbing off, being thrown off or, like those depressed just by having to live there, throwing themselves off. It had become a textbook sink estate; a dumping ground for the problem families and the socially undesirable, the unwelcome asylum seekers and immigrants. Like a rescue shelter for stray, mistreated and aggressive animals. But unlike the animal shelter, no one would come to release these people, give them a new start, a new life.

Phil had left the crime scene, giving orders as he did so. Khan was to head up the door-to-door, checking to see if anyone in the vicinity had seen or heard anything. Seeing how carefully the crime scene had been left he didn’t expect much. But it was something that had to be done, a cosmetic exercise in hopeless hope.

Imani Oliver was still at the hospital with Darren Richards with instructions to call Phil as soon as he came round.

In the meantime, Phil and Sperring had decided to question Letisha Watson, Darren Richards’ previous girlfriend. Phil didn’t think she would come up with anything useful but it had to be done.

Hopeless hope.

They found the door they wanted. The flat looked semi-derelict; the windows filthy, the surrounds stained and mildewed. The door itself, all dents, scratches, gouges and flaked paint, looked like a failed boxer who had come off second best throughout his fight career. Phil knocked. Waited.

‘Bit early for her sort,’ said Sperring.

Phil looked at him. ‘What are you doing?’

Sperring held up his hands in the process of pulling on latex gloves. ‘Can’t be too careful, can you? Wouldn’t want to put my hand down on some upturned needle. Or anything else, for that matter.’

Phil shook his head, knocked again.

Eventually the door was opened. Phil held up his warrant card. ‘Letisha Watson?’

The woman who had opened the door looked to be still asleep. She was wearing an old T-shirt with a faded gold logo on the front proclaiming how fabulous she was. A pair of equally old pyjama bottoms covered her lower body. Her skin was naturally dark, mixed race, but pallid and unhealthy looking, and she was young but the tiredness and strain in her eyes aged her.

‘Oh fuck,’ she said and walked away down the hall, leaving the front door open.

Phil and Sperring exchanged glances and followed her in, Sperring carefully closing the door behind them.

They followed her into the living room. A fake-leather three-piece suite, worn and stained, cheap wooden furniture with an off-brand flatscreen TV in one corner. There was soiled clothing and other domestic debris scattered about. It looked like the owner had started out with good intentions where upkeep was concerned but found it all too much trouble.

‘What d’you want?’ Letisha Watson said, sitting down in an armchair and lighting up a Rothmans. Phil thought it would take more than a good night’s sleep to displace the black rings round her eyes.

‘Darren Richards,’ said Phil, sitting down on the sofa. Sperring perched on the edge, like he was either frightened of catching something or wanted to make a run for it. Or both.

Letisha Watson sucked down a lungful of air, let it go. It hung in the living room like a miserable cloud, creating its own microclimate around her. ‘What about him?’

‘We believe you were his girlfriend.’

‘I was. Till he got that slag pregnant.’

‘That would be Chloe Hannon?’

‘Yeah.’ Letisha Watson looked between the two men. ‘What’s this about? What’s he done now?’

‘He’s… well, we don’t know, Letisha. We were hoping you might tell us.’

Her eyes narrowed. Suspicion in her features. ‘Why?’

Sperring stood up. ‘Can I use your loo?’

‘Yeah,’ she said, not even looking at him. Sperring left the room. ‘What d’you want with me? Whatever it is, I didn’t do it. Darren, though, I bet he did whatever it was.’

‘When was the last time you saw Darren Richards, Letisha?’

She shrugged. ‘Dunno. Weeks ago. Haven’t spoken in ages.’

‘And Chloe Hannon?’

Her features darkened. Anger danced behind her eyes. ‘She keeps out of my way.’

‘So it still hurts, losing Darren to her?’

Letisha Watson snorted. ‘He can have the fucking bitch. Made for each other. Wouldn’t take him back now, might catch something. Skank.’

Phil nodded, seemingly in thought. ‘Letisha… how much would you say you disliked Chloe Hannon?’

‘Hated her.’

Phil nodded, didn’t speak. In the silence Letisha Watson became nervous. ‘What’s this about?’

Phil leaned forward. ‘Letisha, Chloe Hannon is dead. She was murdered.’ He waited, scrutinising her features to see what her response would be.

Her eyes widened, suddenly fully awake. ‘You think I did it?’

Phil kept his voice as calm and reasonable as possible. ‘We’re just talking to everyone who knew her and may have harboured a grudge against her. That’s all.’

‘And you think I did it?’ Her voice raised, anger and fear intermingling.

‘As I said, we’re —’

She leaned forward, pointed with her lit cigarette. ‘You come into my home making accusations like that. What proof have you got? What proof?’

‘Can you tell us where you were Monday and Tuesday night this week, please, Letisha?’

She paused, conflicting emotions on her face. ‘I was busy,’ she said.

‘You were here, weren’t you?’ said Sperring from the doorway. Phil and Letisha Watson turned. He continued. ‘Or were you out working? How long you been on the game, then?’

Her face reddened. ‘None of your fuckin’ business.’

‘Just had a look in your bedroom. Not much of a boudoir, is it? Bit bargain basement, if you ask me. You could at least put some covers on the mattress. Hide the stains if nothing else.’ He stepped into the room. ‘You always meet them here, do you? Or do you do house calls? I’d do house calls if I were you. Be hard enough getting a hard-on surrounded by all this bloody rubbish.’

She stood up, pointed to the door. ‘Get out. Now. Both of you.’

Phil stood, irritated at his DS’s behaviour, trying to salvage something from the situation. ‘Look, Letisha, we just want to know —’

‘I said out. And if you’ve got anything further to say to me, you do it through a solicitor.’

‘Bet you’re used to saying that,’ said Sperring. ‘We’ll see ourselves out.’

Outside, walking along the landing, Phil was furious.

‘What the hell was all that about? What were you doing? We only went to question her.’

‘I know,’ said Sperring, smiling. ‘And I thought it was as pointless as you did. But there was something familiar about her. That’s why I went for a look round.’

‘Unprofessional,’ said Phil. ‘Just the kind of behaviour that could get a case kicked out of court. Or us in trouble.’

Sperring said nothing until they were descending the stairs.

‘Aren’t you going to ask me what I found?’

Phil sighed. ‘What did you find, Ian?’

He gave a big grin. ‘Plenty.’