Lying Ways, page 30
‘Oh, I do remember where I was last weekend now. I went walking with Johnny and Tom. It’s good for mental health and mindfulness, you know, getting out in nature. You should try it some time,’ he said.
Kelly held on to her pen so tightly that she couldn’t breathe.
Chapter 62
One month later…
Ted cut into his steak.
‘Well rested,’ he said. Kelly nodded and smiled. Josie wasn’t eating with them tonight. She was out with friends. Her stepdaughter had decided to stay here, with her and Lizzie, after Johnny left. The place was strangely quiet without him. He was never a big creator of noise, or anything like that, it’s just that his presence had been felt. He was part of fabric of this place. That’s what made it so painful.
It had been a mutual decision.
Millie nannied full-time, and slept over occasionally when Kelly needed her. Of course, Lizzie went to see her father regularly too. He was staying with Tom Gorman in Keswick, in a flat close to the start of many of his favourite fell walks. They’d spoken about Ian Burton a number of times after the events at Highton, and each time it had descended into a bitter exchange as Johnny dug his heels in, insisting that the man needed understanding, not judgement. Kelly balked at the idea of showing a murderer compassion. When she’d asked him to cooperate with the police and tell them all he knew about him, he’d refused, despite knowing that it was an impossible position to put her in – living with someone who could be a witness for the defence. No matter how hard she tried, Kelly couldn’t reconcile the two faces of the man she thought she loved. She had to choose between him and her job. The fact that he still considered Ian Burton a victim, combined with his refusal to end the relationship while they investigated him, had been the final straw between them. Johnny and Tom had even continued to walk with Burton, while he was being investigated. They’d pretended that everything was all right in front of the kids, but it wasn’t. Kelly had suspected for a long time that his work with veterans took him to some places she’d rather not go. Not if it involved people like Ian Burton. She’d never know for sure if Lizzie had ever been in the savage’s company. Johnny said not. She didn’t believe him. They’d lost trust, so they lost everything.
In the end, Rickie Burton hadn’t had a chance to hide his burner phones, worth a grand each. There was no shortage of prisoners willing to testify against him because the empire had crumbled. A shopping bag full of the tiny handsets had been found in his relatively tidy cell: one of the few left intact in the whole prison. The same couldn’t be said about his battered body, retrieved from the rotunda two days after the riot ended, along with the bodies of Nathan Appleton, Brian Taylor, Liam Fawcett and Doug Hopper.
Testing on some of the phones had shown that Rickie had been in contact with the outside on many occasions, and they’d tirelessly pieced together the course of events over countless hours inside Eden House. Kelly and her team had worked out an intricate web of phone networks involving the Burtons, throughout Cumbria, including Dean Kirby and Jack Bell. They’d proven that the phones found in the flats where Jack and Dean lived were bought at the same time and delivered to the same address as the burner phones in Rickie Burton’s cell. It was Kieran Foster’s address in Barrow. It was also revealed that Foster was a regular visitor to Highton. Perhaps more crucially, a search of the flat where Ian Burton had stayed had led to a bag of washing being found dumped in a wardrobe: the clothes were covered in the blood of the victims. More intriguingly, around £70,000 in cash was also found there and the case for the prosecution was suggesting that it was Rickie Burton’s own son who was stealing from his father, not the two ex-cons. Rickie Burton’s true motive may never be known, because he’d taken it to his grave, but it was likely that the control he enjoyed inside Highton, thanks to the collusion of the officers, had gone to his head, and he couldn’t bear Dean and Jack being free and not at his beck and call. Jeanie Clark had agreed to testify, and she was their star witness.
But in the time it took them to piece together the facts, Ian Burton had been free to roam, for four whole weeks.
Her problem with Johnny wasn’t that he’d caused her more work, by lying to her, but more to do with his denial that Ian was capable of killing. The irony of soldiers pleading they were incapable of murder was something that she couldn’t come to peace with in her soul.
She’d asked herself many times if love was something that could turn off as quickly as it turned on, and her answer was yes. Should that trust, certainty and sureness, gained through nights sharing the same pillow, holidays nurturing and feeding attachment and devotion, be impacted so crushingly by something that was at odds with everything one knew about a person, then the elusiveness of passion slipped away.
Was she being childish? Selfish even?
She’d questioned herself about whether she was merely throwing her toys out of the pram because Johnny didn’t fit nicely into her investigation, and she couldn’t control him. But if there was one thing she’d learned from watching people consumed with self-preservation, to the detriment of all else, it was to trust her instinct.
She’d asked him to testify against Ian and he’d said no. And Johnny didn’t even keep notes on his clients, he felt that strongly about them being misunderstood. So she’d never know what Ian had disclosed to him.
She could insist that the CPS called him as a prosecution witness, but they wouldn’t risk it because he was what they deemed unreliable. A witness on the stand who didn’t want to be there wasn’t somebody to rest a case on.
Johnny’s take on Ian Burton was that he was somebody who had suffered dramatic and acute trauma and needed to be worked with, understood, relieved and given space… not punished.
‘No matter what?’ she’d asked.
‘I did things I’m not proud of on operational tours, Kelly,’ he’d said.
‘Murder?’
She wished she hadn’t asked.
‘If ordering smart bombs on villages counts as murder, then yes.’
The CPS had decided, after four weeks of twelve-hour days, of her team building a case against him, that Ian Burton had passed the threshold to be charged with murder, and he was currently on remand, awaiting trial, at HMP Highton. Parts of the prison had been rebuilt, at a cost of £11 million so far, and counting. One sliver of good news was that the case against Aaron Lewis had collapsed. The integrity of the initial investigation had been questioned and he’d been cleared of all charges before he even got to court. He’d been given a second chance.
On days when Kelly found herself driving south along the coast road, past St Bees, heading to the prison to tie up details pertaining to the upcoming trial, she steered herself into the void that this case had created, and noticed that the silence and isolation encouraged reflection on why Johnny had left, and why she’d let him.
The problem with understanding murderers was that it dishonoured the victims. Of course, psychologists and criminologists did valuable work in studying killers, and some of it helped Kelly with her job, but placing emphasis on what Ian Burton needed to heal was a slap in the face for Jack Bell and Dean Kirby, and the others. They hadn’t been perfect, far from it, but their lives had been brutally snuffed out, almost on a whimsical habit. Defending serious criminals was an arbitrary process, and everybody had the right to a defence, but explaining away Ian Burton’s horrendous crimes as some kind of inevitable behaviour, because of what the army had done to him, was a travesty in her mind.
Because there was one thing that they all overlooked. Plenty of soldiers were harmed beyond repair by the things they had to witness or perform in war, but they didn’t all go on to become monsters. And this was what she couldn’t reconcile with the man she’d loved. And she’d come to realise that it was so important for her to be able to look her team in the eye, especially Kate, that Johnny leaving had actually brought her relief. It was simpler this way.
Kelly looked at her steak and agreed with her father.
‘It is well rested, Dad,’ she said.
‘It makes all the difference.’
Acknowledgements
Researching this book was only possible because of some very knowledgeable and passionate people. I’d like to thank Dave Part for first bringing my attention to the appalling statistics on re-offenders inside the UK penal system, particularly young men. The input of other professionals was invaluable. Thanks go to Adrian Priestley for answering countless questions, and to Gary Clarke for tightening up my accuracy. To Mike ‘Dinga’ Dingwall for his expertise and vast experience. To Steve and Jon Doherty for sharing their stories. To my friends in the military world who provided solid and fascinating context, thank you.
I’d like to thank Peter Buckman, my agent, for his constant insight, commitment and advice. Also the team at Canelo, especially Siân and Louise, who backed this book so wholly. The faith in this series never fails to inspire and awe me.
Special thanks goes to my family, Mike, Tilly and Freddie, who have turned into sleuths themselves: you drive me every day. I love you.
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About the Author
Rachel Lynch grew up in Cumbria and the lakes and fells are never far away from her. London pulled her away to teach History and marry an Army Officer, whom she followed around the globe for thirteen years. A change of career after children led to personal training and sports therapy, but writing was always the overwhelming force driving the future. The human capacity for compassion as well as its descent into the brutal and murky world of crime are fundamental to her work.
Also by Rachel Lynch
The Rift
Detective Kelly Porter
Dark Game
Deep Fear
Dead End
Bitter Edge
Bold Lies
Blood Rites
Little Doubt
Lost Cause
Lying Ways
First published in the United Kingdom in 2021 by Canelo
Canelo Digital Publishing Limited
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Oxford OX2 0DF
United Kingdom
Copyright © Rachel Lynch, 2021
The moral right of Rachel Lynch to be identified as the creator of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Ebook ISBN 9781788637619
Print ISBN 9781788638715
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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Rachel Lynch, Lying Ways
