Lying Ways, page 3
‘Don’t be fooled, Dinger, it’s definitely you I’m to be working on today. And tomorrow perhaps too. If you last that long. I do so hope that’s the case, otherwise I wouldn’t enjoy my job so much, would I? What’ll it be? Are you a pussy? That’s not what I heard. I heard you’d last for days.’
Dinger gulped. He had no idea how long he’d be able to put up with the physical suffering. He guessed it might be a long time; longer than the average law-abiding civilian.
He closed his eyes.
‘Don’t do that,’ the man said. ‘I was just getting to them.’
Dinger flinched and squirmed as the blade sank into his left eyelid.
Chapter 4
Eden House sat pompously on top of a sloping hill in the centre of Penrith. It was made of local red sandstone, quarried in the early eighteenth century. The structure was originally a Victorian workhouse, and had been converted into a police station in the nineteenth century, when it was renovated and extended. Now the whole of the policing for the northern Lakes was centralised here, and Kelly was in charge of the serious crime investigation team. In the south it was Barrow-in-Furness that took on the role, and similarly, the station there was an early Victorian pile of splendour.
There was no such magnificence on the inside, and Kelly drove around the back into one of the parking bays. Parking was a nightmare in town and so the staff was thankful to have an off-road space so close to the centre. Penrith was built on a series of hills, like Rome but less grand. A lot of the roads were cobbled and it gave an air of quaintness to it, which came in handy when they were touting for summer cash from tourists. There was a handful of rateable pubs and some lovely cafes selling interesting food. But the standard fare in town was pasties and fish and chips. During her pregnancy, Kelly had filled her face with carb-loaded treats. She couldn’t get enough of them. Her cravings had all been related to bread or potatoes in some way and she worried at times, asking Johnny if it was normal. Her team had never witnessed her tucking into crap before.
‘Of course it’s normal!’ Johnny insisted. ‘You need the energy because there’s something growing inside you, using at all up without your permission.’ It was a reassuringly gentle way to put it.
Weaning herself off the carbs had been hell over the last few weeks and she could smell the bakery down the road. At lunchtime, she’d pick up the drifting aroma of the chippy, open for the afternoon. It was torture. Gradually, with sheer stubbornness and willpower, she’d begun to eat more as she had before, and the pounds had begun to fall away. That and work, which helped. She was the one who insisted on going out to do house visits when they needed doing. It was way below her rank as detective inspector, and she should task a detective sergeant or constable with it, but sitting in the office all day would turn her stir-crazy.
Kelly checked her watch again; she just had time to take the stairs rather than the lift. It wasn’t as if she’d get disciplined if she was late to her own briefing. She locked her car and checked her bag, realising that one of Lizzie’s teddies was in there, left from a walk to the pub at the weekend. She’d realised that taking a baby out in to a social situation required some prior planning and preparation. Pre-empting mood-swings hunger, and taking into account changing facilities and entertainment, was key. She found that Johnny’s army background came in handy at these times. He loaded everything effortlessly into a backpack and slung it over his shoulder, except this time the teddy had gone into hers. She smiled: never mind, she could sit it on her desk for the day.
The lower floors of Eden House were taken up by admin staff, as well as uniforms dealing with walk-ins and overnight custody. Kelly walked through the main entrance and greeted the staff at the front desk. She heard shouting from downstairs, which is where the cells were, and the female officer at the desk informed her they’d had a drunk in overnight, and he’d now woken up. If he wasn’t careful they were going to charge him with affray, instead of just letting him go home to cool off and sober up.
‘Good luck,’ Kelly said. She walked past other offices and saw people sat at desks, busy behind computers. There wasn’t much talking going on. A lot of police work was done in silence: writing reports, checking them or updating files. Even emails took up vast chunks of time, as everything had to be formally recorded and watertight, in case some aspect of a situation that had been documented here in Penrith was ever challenged. Other reports were stored here from smaller stations, which were no longer open to the public. Most stations around the Lake District were staffed solely for the purpose of being present, rather than patrolling or interacting with the community. All calls went to central pods and remote officers sat behind desks, like they did at Eden House, looking after their communities from behind walls. Of course, squad cars still patrolled, and officers on foot could often be spotted walking about Penrith, but, for the main part, police work was done like many other jobs now: online. Unless a visit was necessary, and that’s where Kelly came in. It was the job of her team to open an inquiry when needed, and to look into local crimes committed on her patch. Occasionally, north and south Cumbria worked together, and they did so happily.
The mood upstairs in her own office, which was open plan except her room, was casual and relaxed. They had no major cases active at the moment, and so it was an opportunity to catch up on paperwork and look into some of the more trivial local offences, such as theft, minor assaults and drugs. Narcotics was something that had become more and more prevalent during Kelly’s career, and now it was downright depressing. Drugs took up the majority of their time; if it wasn’t the buying and selling of the substances themselves, it was that the perpetrator of a crime was high on something before committing it. People did stupid shit on drugs that they never would sober.
Kelly greeted her waiting team.
‘How’s Lizzie, today, boss?’ Rob asked. DC Rob Shawcross had returned from paternity leave just as Kelly went on maternity leave, and it was good to be in his company again. She’d missed them all.
‘Cheeky,’ she replied. It was standard that her team was more interested in her daughter than they were in her. She’d got over it. Rob had a little boy of his own who would turn one in the new year. Rob and DS Kate Umshaw were Kelly’s go-to agony aunts for trivial baby inquiries about milk formula and sleep routines. Kate was a little rusty on those things, as her girls were all but grown up, but Rob was bang up to date.
‘How did the race go, Emma?’ Kelly asked DC Emma Hide, a keen young officer whose pastime was racing hundreds of miles up and down fells. Kelly didn’t judge: before Lizzie, she and Johnny had considered all sorts of extreme races. There was something about having the mountains just outside the door that made you want to run up them.
‘Go on, Emma, tell them,’ said DS Dan Houghton, their newest addition. He’d begun working with the team earlier in the year. He was a broad Glaswegian with a gruff voice that belied a warm compassion. He was deeply intelligent and perceptive.
‘What?’ asked Kelly.
Emma looked shy.
‘She was the first woman home, out of more than two hundred,’ Dan spoke for her. Kelly noticed a frisson of appreciation between the two, but moved on. Dan was married, but that was none of her business.
‘Jesus! Emma, that’s amazing. And now I can drink I insist we go and celebrate. What about this Friday, everyone? A quickie at The Bell after work?’
The general murmured consensus was affirmative, and it gave them something to look forward to.
‘What was it like?’ Kelly asked, wanting more information. Emma had entered the October Scree Challenge, which was a race over the screes of the Lake District. Over two days, camping in between, participants covered fifty miles and a total of 5,000 feet elevation. It attracted more male applicants than female, and around 700 in total. Kelly felt a burning desire to get out and train for something awe-inspiring herself, but she feared that those days were gone for now. She looked at Emma, with her fresh face and tight skin; Kelly felt tired already.
‘It was bloody hard, and the weather was proper shit,’ Emma said.
‘You’re tough, and I bet you coped,’ Kelly said. Emma had been training for months, not touching a single drop of booze and managing her calorie intake. It was a favourite source of conversation in the office: what Emma was eating, especially how much meat she seemed to put away, and if she might have a small glass of wine at the pub when they made it there occasionally after a quiet day. She certainly didn’t eat the stodgy carbs favoured by pregnant women.
‘Right, let’s get going, anything overnight I need to know about?’ Kelly asked. Every morning they gathered to assess what jobs needed prioritising. On a Monday, it was usually all the drunken-fuelled antics of the weekend, which sometimes turned into extremely violent crime, but by midweek, which it was now, it was fairly quiet.
DS Kate Umshaw arrived late, breathing apologies. Kate had three grown-up teenagers, all girls, and she was something of an oracle for Kelly. She’d confided in Kate early in her pregnancy, when no one else knew about it, and she held regular check-ins with her in her office at work, which had become a bit of a regular routine. They’d close the door, put work aside and Kelly would offload. Kate, ever patient, would always have a solution, or at least a suggestion. She’d become a rock for Kelly. They’d spent more time together out of work too, with Kate driving them to Manchester to shop for baby clothes, amongst other things. Kelly smiled at her.
‘No worries,’ Kelly assured her. ‘I don’t think you’ve missed anything crucial, apart from Emma winning the women’s scree race.’
‘Oh my God!’ Kate hugged her younger colleague. ‘Blimey! You put us all to shame. On that note, I brought in some cake.’
There was a collective groan, but secretly they all loved Kate’s cake, and it wouldn’t last long with Rob and Dan picking at it for the rest of the day.
‘Good time?’ Kate asked.
‘Twenty-one hours, give or take a few minutes – my watch stopped working,’ Emma replied.
‘Bloody hell, I’d give up after the first mile. Well done you, Emma,’ Kate said.
Kelly restarted the briefing and got through it quickly; there was little new of note to report, and the conversation turned to their most recent case, which was a local suicide. The man had been working from home, on MS Teams, and had exited a meeting with twelve colleagues. Only he hadn’t switched off his camera, and was still live. His aghast co-workers had shouted to warn him as he proceeded to get a box of tissues out of his drawer and google a porn channel. Some had turned their computers off in horror, others had exited the meeting or closed the programme, while others had tried to phone him. Some watched, glued inexplicably to their screens, hands over mouths, as he pleasured himself. Their cries of panic had gone unheard and it was only a text, seen after the event, that informed the man that he’d been live the whole time. He’d left his desk, gone upstairs and hung himself. His wife had wanted a full investigation into how MS Teams could be held accountable for manslaughter. They were expecting to hear from the CPS to see if the wife had a case for them to investigate.
‘Dropped,’ Kate said.
‘Poor bloke,’ Kelly said. It was a tragic case. According to his GP, the man had suffered from general depression for years, and this incident had simply tipped him over the edge. After his death, the wife discovered that he was also in line to lose his job. They were mortgaged to the hilt and faced ruin. At least she’d get a handsome insurance payout now, though even that was being disputed because it was unclear if his policy covered suicide.
Apart from that calamity, it was a relatively quiet period at Eden House, and for that they were grateful. There’d been some notable unrest inside Highton prison, over near Seascale. The prison population teetered around nine hundred to a thousand, but it was built for six hundred. Conditions were appalling and Kelly regularly checked in with the police liaison officer at the prison. Discipline was a prison affair, but they had plenty of suspects on remand there, as well as sentences coming to an end: convicts who might cause them a headache on the outside. Several of the prison officers were ex-military and Johnny knew a couple of them. Kelly knew from conversations he’d had with them that overcrowding, disorder and threats of violence were a lot worse than the governor let on. Legislation was due to be debated in Parliament later this month, which could potentially lighten the load. But it was highly unlikely to be passed. The general public didn’t like the idea of reform, just punishment, and Kelly had little hope that funding to improve the environment inside would be forthcoming. Why spend money on criminals?
‘I’m briefing the chief constable at ten,’ Kelly moved on.
‘Charming man,’ Kate said. What she really meant was that the new chief constable, Andrew Harris, appointed this year, was alarmingly attractive. He was also a decent bloke, something they all found refreshing, compared to some superiors they’d had in the past. Andrew Harris was in charge of the whole of the Cumbria Constabulary and had vowed to make changes. They’d heard it all before, and anything likely to make a difference to their effectiveness cost money, lots of it, so the seriousness of his promise lacked guts. Instead, they hoped to be pleasantly surprised. One thing was certain: Harris valued Kelly Porter’s opinion, and had invited her to HQ to discuss it several times.
‘Good, thanks everybody,’ Kelly finished up. Jobs were dished out for the day and everyone moved back to their desk spaces and got to work. There were no site visits or interviews today, though a phone call from Barrow had put them on alert about a man who’d been reported missing this morning. All units in the county had been notified to look out for him. His last known location was Seascale beach, where he’d been with his girlfriend’s dog. The dog had been found wandering around the sand dunes, whining for its carer, a man called Dean Kirby. Technically, Seascale was kind of in between north and south Cumbria, but the man was a Barrovian, and quite a distance from home just to walk a dog. He’d been reported missing by his girlfriend, who saw an appeal for the owner of the dog on Facebook.
The team dispersed and went back to their various tasks for the day, and a hush fell on the office once more. Kelly went to the coffee machine and took a cup to her private office and sat down to catch up on emails. The window was open and she heard the traffic below in the street. If she strained her neck and sat up in her chair, she could see the castle ruin. She did so when she was idling for a distraction, which, amongst mountains of paperwork, was often.
When she was satisfied that she’d sifted through the most important communications in her diary for the morning, Kelly called to Kate through her open office door. She never liked being shut away, as if she were some aloof boss; she preferred being accessible, and everybody knew they could walk into her office anytime. If her door was closed then it was a different matter entirely. But it rarely was. Kate poked her head around the door.
‘I’m done here, I’m off to Carleton Hall soon,’ Kelly said to her deputy.
‘Fancy some company?’ Kate asked.
‘Why not? If you like. Purely professional, of course?’ Kelly smiled.
‘Of course, I have a vested interest in the future policing of this county, with three grown-up daughters to worry about,’ Kate added. She turned to leave. ‘Come and get me when you’re ready to head out?’
‘Will do,’ Kelly said, and smiled to herself as she rooted for her bag under her desk. Chatting to Kate in the car might be just what she needed. As she bent over, her stomach felt bulky above her skirt and she wondered if she’d ever get back into shape. The pregnancy had left her hair weak and dull, her once honey-coloured waves lacked bounce and shine, and her nails were brittle. Lizzie had literally sucked the life out of her. She’d bought new clothes to return to work, but two months off had caused her to become used to joggers and vest tops. The summer had been glorious, and one to remember in the Lakes. Tourists had flocked to the beaches, lakes and fells and she’d eaten a lot of ice cream. Summers like that were usually spent hiking, swimming and taking the Wendy out on Derwent Water, but not this year.
A tiny seed of doubt entered her head, and it concerned Johnny. A vision of them, this time last year, watching the stars above Ullswater as the Wendy bobbed up and down on the lake, taunted her. They’d just made love. He was the Johnny she’d fallen in love with. Since the birth of their daughter, though, he seemed emotionally absent in small ways that she couldn’t put her finger on. He was a different man to the one seventeen years ago, who shortly after the birth of Josie, had left his first wife to go on operations to Iraq. That time, he’d been away for nine months and shortly after, his marriage fell apart. His own PTSD, as well as her numerous affairs, saw to that.
But was he fully healed?
Chapter 5
The new chief constable had arrived in post like a whirlwind. The first thing he set about doing was requesting accounts on all aspects of crime: its investigation, the gathering of CPS data, and its evaluation, which had sent section chiefs like Kelly into a flat spin. She hadn’t had to justify her position in such a manner since she’d worked in the Met. Their first meeting had been nerve-wracking, but she’d instantly warmed to the man. He’d transferred from Manchester – after a messy divorce, or so the gossip alleged – and the common ground between them of having worked crime in a large metropolitan area encouraged an instant connection. He was quick-witted and didn’t bullshit.
Now she looked forward to their meetings. She closed her computer and went to find Kate, who was busy applying lipstick. Kelly raised her eyebrows, and Kate shrugged. She was an attractive woman, in Kelly’s opinion, and had been stuck in an unhappy marriage for years. Kelly guessed Kate put up with it because of the girls, but Kelly knew from experience that couples who remained together simply for the kids could do even more damage than if they separated. More recently, something had finally broken and Kate’s husband had moved out to trial a separation. Kelly suspected he wouldn’t be welcome back. Kate was free to appreciate any man she chose. Besides, if Kelly thought that Kate wouldn’t pay attention or add value in a professional capacity just because she fancied the bloke, then she wouldn’t be taking her. Let her have her bit of flirty fun, she thought. She had to admit, Andrew Harris was good company.
