Everyone Lies (20 page)

She smiled, slowing her pace a little. ‘Sorry, I’ve been running on caffeine since this kicked off.’

‘That’s okay. Just don’t have an aneurism – I’m rusty on my first-aid skills.’

They crossed to the short-stay car park with jets screaming overhead, the sun bright and the air crisp and cold under a clearing sky.

On the first floor of the multi-storey, she pointed her remote key at her Mondeo. ‘I’ve put together a file for you. I’ll update you as we drive.’ She opened the car boot and Fennimore dumped his tote bag, keeping hold of the laptop in case he needed it during their impromptu meeting.

She reached to slam the boot lid and he caught a flash of red on the collar of her blouse.

‘Cut yourself shaving?’ he asked.

‘What?’

He indicated on his own shirt and she pinched her collar between finger and thumb, tugging the fabric and squinting down at the damage. ‘Jam. Oh, Tim …’ she groaned. ‘I
really
haven’t got time for this.’

She ducked into the boot and dragged a small vanity case to the front. ‘You go ahead – file’s on the dashboard.’ A second later, the rear passenger door opened and she slid into the seat behind him.

He turned just as she finished stripping off her blouse. ‘See anything of interest?’ She twitched her eyebrows. ‘In the file, I mean.’

He swivelled to the front, chastised, and picked up the buff folder. The file contained a bundle of documents and photos. The first photograph showed Howard’s hands, palms down on a table, fingers splayed, scratches visible on both, bruises on the knuckles of the right.

‘We’ve had the results,’ she said, pausing to curse her cuff buttons. ‘It’s his DNA from the swabs of the bites, his DNA under her fingernails.’

The next image was a close-up of Howard’s left hand. The scratches ran parallel from wrist to knuckles, ending in half-moon indents where the nails had found purchase and dug right in. The close-up of his right hand showed abrasions and bruises on the knuckles.

‘We have CCTV footage – possibly the victim – climbing into an unidentified car near Livebait restaurant on Lloyd Street in the city centre at 10 p.m. last Thursday.’ By now, Simms was behind the wheel. ‘Male driving – photo’s in the file.’ She had the key in the ignition and pulled out of the bay before he found the picture.

It was raining heavily. A woman sheltering under an umbrella was leaning to open the passenger door of a sleek BMW. Someone had tried to sharpen the image, but rain and reflections from the road made it impossible to see anything more clearly defined than a hulking shape at the steering wheel.

‘Partial index,’ he said, tilting the picture to get a better look. A taxi parked at the kerb had cut off the last three letters of the number plate.

‘Yep.’ She spun the steering wheel, turning onto the down ramp like a rally driver, and he slapped his hand onto the stack of pictures as they shifted on his lap. ‘MA12 – which covers cars registered for the first time in Manchester and Merseyside between March and August 2012. The DVLA sent a list. D’you know how many hits we got?’

‘A lot?’

‘A lot.’ She shoved her credit card into the slot at the barrier and rested her arm on the window frame, her fingers twitching, practically beckoning the machine to return the card.

‘I don’t suppose the partial matches Sauna Guy’s car?’

‘Cars,’ she said. ‘Plural. A Mercedes, a Mini Countryman as a runabout, a twelve-year-old Volvo estate – and, yes, a Beamer. No match to the index.’ She lifted one shoulder as if to say,
But number plates can be faked.

‘The Volvo is interesting,’ Fennimore said. ‘The other cars scream conspicuous consumption, but a turn-of-the-century Volvo?’

‘Apparently he keeps that as a reminder of what he could afford to drive as a more “respectable” member of society.’

‘Hm …’ he said. ‘A Volvo estate’s also a more practical choice for body disposal.’

‘Well, if he did use it to dump the body, he hasn’t left a single trace – in that, or any of the cars.’

‘Disappointing, or possibly telling.’

‘Meaning that he didn’t do it?’

‘I wouldn’t go that far – he could’ve used an accomplice’s car.’

‘
If
he had an accomplice. Again, there’s no physical evidence pointing to that.’

Fennimore looked again at the picture. ‘This could be our victim,’ he said. She was long-legged, and showed them off in a thigh-length skirt. The shadow of the woman’s umbrella sliced diagonally across her face, catching only a tantalizing glimpse of short blonde hair and an eye.

‘What about the restaurant staff?’ Fennimore asked.

‘One of the waiters remembers her. Slim, early twenties, pale blonde, blue eyes –
gorgeous
blue eyes, he said – elegant, foreign-sounding.’

‘And her companion?’

‘Big bloke, older than her,’ she said.

‘That’s it?’

‘I think his attention was elsewhere. He did say her companion was a lousy tipper.’

‘Very useful.’ A thought flashed into his head, but Simms anticipated the question.

‘Before you ask – he paid cash.’

‘Big Bloke likes his anonymity.’ He stared at the dark blur in the car.

‘Mr Howard – Sauna Guy, if you like – is small and rather slight. And he was drinking in the Derby Brewery Arms, a mile up the road, from nine till midnight. Landlord confirms.’

By now, they were on the M56 motorway, barrelling towards the city.

‘She died about four hours after the meal,’ Fennimore said. ‘She could easily have met Sauna Guy between midnight and 2 a.m. Or she could have gone with this man—’ he tapped the photo ‘—and Sauna Guy joined them later. Or she could have been murdered by somebody else entirely.’

‘Yup,’ she said. ‘That’s a bloody great hole we’ve got in our timeline.’

Fennimore read in silence for a few minutes, checking the lab reports on the swabs, trying to think of a way to fill that hole. As he sifted through the photographs a second time, he realized there was something missing.

‘I can’t see any CCTV images for the hotel.’

‘We didn’t get any,’ she said. ‘There’s a blind spot on the street cams both ends of the alley.’

‘That’s a happy coincidence for the killer.’

‘Local knowledge again,’ she said.

‘What about the phone? Anything back from that yet?’

‘The lab’s working on the DNA from the phone mic, and I’m still waiting on the IMEI number.’

‘We need those phone records, Kate. They could tell us who she is, who she knows, even where she was on the night she died.’

She speeded past a slow-moving lorry and jinked left onto the off-ramp. From here it was a straight run all the way down to the Mancunian Way.

‘I know that,’ she said. ‘I’ve got Sergeant Renwick chasing it. But we can’t rely on the phone, Nick. We have a suspect who can’t account for his actions or whereabouts – the DNA tells us he was with her – but did he kill her?’

Fennimore cocked his head. ‘If I approached this using Bayes, I’d be looking at the likelihood he
didn’t
do it.’

‘That’s a given,’ she said dryly. ‘What I need to know is what we should be looking at, evidentially.’

‘Contact points.’

She shook her head. ‘We already looked at contact points – the lab results were inconclusive. We got a mixed profile from anal swab – not good enough for a match – and semen in stomach, but the DNA was destroyed by stomach acid.’

He looked out of the window. They passed winter woods and retail parks which quickly gave way to a mix of Victorian red-brick houses, tight against the street, and jaundice-yellow new-build maisonettes, their backs set to the roadway.

‘Okay. The digested semen in her stomach tells us that she must have had oral sex, perhaps before dinner or just after,’ he began slowly, working it out as he spoke. ‘Something might have lodged behind her teeth – you should ask for dry swabs of the back of her incisors.’

She shook her head. ‘Cooper was right – there was too much blood in the mouth – it destroyed the semen evidence.’

‘Semen is mostly liquid – easy to dilute, easy to wash away,’ Fennimore countered. ‘With a dry swab, you’re looking for epithelial cells.’

‘From the penis,’ she said.

‘They stick well to the teeth, and the backs of teeth best of all.’

She nodded.

‘It might be worth taking an external swab of the perineum, too. Same reason: during sex – consensual or otherwise – the perineum is the most likely place for skin-to-skin contact.’

‘Even if the assailant wore a condom?’

‘Even if.’

‘Okay.’

He knew they were approaching the hotel as the density of sandstone railway bridges and warehouses increased. He leafed through the paperwork, studying the reports more closely. ‘The lab found nothing of interest on his clothing, but they did find her blood on his shoes?’

She shrugged. ‘They always keep the shoes.’

He nodded. ‘I’d like to know exactly where the blood was found,’ he said. ‘Is it in the seams, on the laces, on the toe-caps? Was it dripped? Is it transfer, or is it spatter? We need to know exactly how it got there.’

‘Okay, you’ll have it.’

He reached the end of the reports and then turned back the pages, thinking he must have missed something.

‘What?’ she said.

‘Odd, there’s no trace at his massage parlour.’

‘Oh, there’s plenty of
trace
,’ she said, with a grimace. ‘Just nothing from her.’ She took a sharp left after the GMex centre and skimmed neatly onto the cobbled paving of the hotel’s drop-off point.

‘He might have taken her elsewhere, I suppose,’ Fennimore mused. ‘But it is odd …’

Simms checked her watch and her fingers began tapping nervously on the steering wheel. The car was still in gear and she hadn’t even engaged the handbrake. ‘I’ll talk to Cooper about those additional swabs,’ she said and, when he still didn’t move: ‘I’ll email you as soon as I have anything.’

He wasn’t listening. ‘I mean, why would he take her somewhere else, when he has a torture room in-house? And if he
did
use his own torture room, how is it he managed a forensically thorough clean-up, yet carelessly dropped her phone down a drain outside his own house?’

Simms’s fingers stilled and she turned to him. ‘You think he was deliberately set up?’

He gave her a pained look.

She rolled her eyes. ‘Let me guess: you’re not ready to make that assessment until you have more evidence.’

He grinned. ‘You read me like a book.’

‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘A textbook. With complicated maths and tables, and smart-arsed questions at the end of every chapter.’

She waited for him to get his tote bag from the boot, then zipped off before he had a chance to say goodbye, leaving him at the drop-off point with his tote bag at his feet and the file and his laptop tucked under one arm. He smiled to himself, watching her tail lights flash once, before she scooted right into Mount Street.

As he shouldered his bag, a car swerved out from behind a delivery van and followed her, accelerating fast.

21

Detective Superintendent Tanford was standing in front of the whiteboards as Kate Simms entered the Major Incident Room. Post-mortem photos of their unidentified victim had been Blu-tacked to the board and he was studying them intently. Around him, the office was a scene of quiet activity. The HOLMES2 operatives were corralled off in one corner of the room, behind office dividing screens, where they could get on undisturbed with the exacting task of accurately logging the hundreds of items of data that came in every day.

It was after 9 a.m., and the majority of Simms’s team had already put in an hour and a half of work. Those who had been out canvassing had begun drifting back in, ready for the briefing. They carried machine-dispensed coffee cups and plastic-wrapped sandwiches, or pastries in lieu of breakfast.

She nodded in greeting to a few as she walked to the far side of the room.

Tanford continued his scrutiny of the board, feet planted squarely a foot apart, hands on his hips, but as she reached his side, he said, ‘Funny how things can change overnight, isn’t it? I mean last week you were Cinderella, sweeping up the fag ends of other people’s parties, and now … I heard you’d bagged this one off DCI Anders.’ He laughed softly. ‘Must’ve had to armwrestle him for it – all that extra overtime his lot will have to forgo.’

She didn’t comment.

He let his hands drop and turned to face her. ‘Well, the important thing is, you got your man – again.’

‘You got the dealer, sir.’

He slid her a sidelong glance. ‘Not still sore about that, are you, Kate?’

‘I’m sorry, sir, I don’t think I know what you—’

He waved away her awkward protestations. ‘Come on, Kate. You wanted to solve StayC and the ODs all by yourself – of course you’re pissed off.’ He chuckled. ‘I know I would be.’

‘Well, we’re all on the same side,’ she offered, thinking she’d need to work on her poker face.

‘That’s the spirit,’ he said, still smiling. ‘Anyway, you can claim this one all for yourself.’ He jerked his head towards the board, and the photographs of their murder victim.

She grimaced. ‘Not really.’

‘No?’

‘A tip-off from Crimestoppers,’ she said. ‘You might say it fell right into my lap.’

‘We all need the odd bit of good luck to get the job done, Kate. But as Louis Pasteur said, “Chance favours the prepared mind”. You’re having an impact – getting yourself noticed by people who matter. Some think you’ve been badly treated since Crime Faculty; the way you handled the review – and now this nasty murder – shows what you’re really capable of.’

Her pulse quickened. Did she dare hope, after five years, that she was shaking off the ‘untrustworthy’ tag?

‘Gifford’s not quite sure how he feels about it, of course – but you know what? Fuck him, and his brand of policing by tick-box.’ He stopped, looked down at her. ‘I’ve shocked you.’

‘No, sir, I—’

‘No,’ he said. ‘I’ve put you on the spot – I should be ashamed of myself. Wasn’t I the one who told you half of this job is handling the politics?’