Eleven liars, p.20
Eleven Liars, page 20
part #2 of Ben Harper Series
Approaching the waterfront, I slow and catch my breath. I am now just a few feet behind Archie. I know he will be easily spooked but feel certain he won’t try to escape me by running towards the supermarket and the police. He is alone, crouched inside the doorway. He is bending forward, his attention caught by the police activity outside the supermarket. I silently approach him until I am only steps away.
Suddenly, from behind, three figures charge forward, running past me along the riverside walk. Hallowe’en masks cover their faces and they yell to each other as they go. I press myself against the side of the building and, while remaining hidden, I see Archie turn to watch the start of the reconstruction.
The three figures sprint towards the gourmet supermarket. The young officer portraying Dani, dressed in police uniform, briefly looks in their direction as they race past. All Dani thought she saw was a group of kids wearing ghoul masks. Watching now, it’s easy to understand why. When they reach the front of the shop, the three masked figures stop. They stand for the assembled press photographers before CI Bridget Freeman takes to the podium to begin her appeal.
‘Two days before Hallowe’en, did somebody return home with a mask similar to one of these? For no explicable reason, were their clothes torn or damaged? Or were they suddenly flush with cash? During the raid, over four thousand pounds was stolen.’
I look across the courtyard towards Dani. She is standing beside her husband. Freeman tells us PC Cash, unaware of their intention, had followed the three raiders into the store. Inside, one of the raiders had pulled a knife. With the knife pressed against her back, PC Cash was forced to the floor, along with the store owner and a customer.
‘With hostages under threat,’ continues DCI Freeman, ‘police officers with operational command took the decision to enter the rear of the building. After forcing open the back entrance, DS Mat Moore led the team that freed the three hostages. While effecting the rescue, DS Moore suffered a direct knife attack. Due to the injuries he sustained to his spinal cord, he remains paralysed from the waist down.’
I watch as DS Barnsdale joins Freeman on the podium. She holds a knife, believed to be similar to the one used to attack DS Moore.
‘Did someone you know return home that evening with blood on their clothes? Did someone appear in a different outfit to the one they had worn earlier in the day? And where is the knife used in the attack? Somebody must know.’
I step forward and grip Archie’s shoulder. Startled, he turns and tries to run. I grab hold of his arm, twisting it up behind his back. He cries out in pain. I force him forward and press his face against the bar’s glass doorway.
‘My guess is that somebody is you.’
CHAPTER 61
Adrian Withers knew exactly the kind of people the reconstruction would attract – rubberneckers seeking titillation. The very worst of humanity. He was desperate to avoid all of the gawping crowds. They repulsed him. Yet, he too had found himself making his way along the river path in the direction of the vulgar glass tower. He needed to hear what the police were saying.
From Haddley Bridge, he descended on the opposite side to the overpriced supermarket, taking instead the steps that led down into the riverside park. At the foot of the steps, he looked towards the playground. Small children were running without a care in the world. How he envied them. He walked back beneath the bridge, following a narrow tunnel under the road, which led towards the open courtyard. In the damp, confined space, water dripping down the brick walls, the smell of urine turned his stomach. Repeatedly he felt the need to bring his hand to his mouth to stop himself gagging. At the end of the tunnel, he concealed himself in a small alcove, and was barely able to see the police officer standing on the small podium.
Ensuring he remained hidden in the gloom, he watched the men charge forward towards the supermarket. When the detective stood on the podium, holding up the knife, a shiver ran through him. He could still hear the officer standing on the podium taking questions from the assembled journalists. She repeated her assertion that somebody must know what happened on that day; somebody was sheltering the truth. She avowed her determination to find the knife and to arrest those responsible for the life-changing injuries suffered by Detective Sergeant Moore.
He whispered a quiet prayer.
‘Make me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me.’
‘I think that moment passed many, many years ago,’ a low voice breathed into his ear.
He quickly turned his head.
‘Hello, Adrian,’ said Betty Baxter. ‘Still skulking around in dark corners?’
Open mouthed, all he could do was lurch backwards. He pressed himself against the tunnel wall and felt the damp stone beneath his hands.
‘Cat got your tongue?’ she said, moving a step closer. His mouth quivered beneath his moustache. He tried to smile but his lips froze. ‘Strange way to greet an old friend,’ she continued.
He could feel her breath on his face. ‘I just wasn’t expecting you,’ he said, wishing he could hide the tremor in his voice. ‘I didn’t think we’d see you again in Haddley.’
‘I don’t like it when people arrive uninvited at my front door, especially nosy journalists asking questions. It makes me think things are getting out of control.’
Nervously shaking his head, Withers stared over her shoulder. In the dark recess of the tunnel, he could see another figure standing in the shadows.
Baxter gripped his face. ‘I’m over here,’ she said, her fingers squeezing his fleshy cheeks.
‘Of course,’ he replied, his eyes darting back.
She released her hold and reached into her pocket. The vicar held his breath until he saw her pull a small bottle of hand sanitiser from inside her coat.
‘Can’t be too careful these days,’ she said, ‘never know what you might pick up. Shall we walk and talk?’
He knew very well it wasn’t a request. Briefly, he looked towards the courtyard and the police but realised there was nobody who could help him now. He felt Betty take hold of his arm and together they crossed back beneath the bridge, away from the reconstruction.
‘Smells like you’ve pissed yourself, Adrian,’ she said, as they walked under the road. He hated the sound of his own pitiful laugh.
It took his eyes a moment to adjust to the bright glare of the daylight. As they walked in the direction of the children’s playground, he risked a glance at Betty Baxter. Even in her early seventies she somehow still maintained the same menace from thirty years before. When he looked over his shoulder and saw the giant forearms of the man walking only three paces behind, he felt even more feeble.
‘Eyes forward,’ said Baxter. ‘Everything behind you you’ve seen before.’
Withers locked his eyes on the path ahead. ‘Sorry, Betty.’
‘I don’t like it when dead bodies turn up unannounced,’ she said.
‘I’m sure everything will blow over soon.’ Even he thought his answer sounded pathetic.
‘Blow over!’ she replied. ‘Have you been shoving too much of that stuff up your nose?’
He forced himself to look in her direction. ‘The dead body has nothing to do with you, Betty,’ he said, hesitantly. ‘Has it?’
He regretted it as soon as the words left his mouth. She gripped hold of his arm as her minder moved two steps closer. ‘Where’s Luke?’ she said.
‘I don’t know, I really don’t. Honestly, I’ve been trying to contact him. I knew you’d want to speak to him – we all do – but we don’t have a number for him or any way of reaching him. I haven’t seen him for over two decades. I’m sure if anybody knows the truth, he does.’
Baxter took a step back. ‘Calm down, Adrian. We don’t want you pissing yourself again.’
His laugh was little more than a titter. ‘But then again, I really don’t think he knows anything.’
‘He built the bloody place!’ Betty again grabbed hold of his face. He felt her nails dig into his cheeks. ‘Find him,’ she said. ‘Or I will.’
CHAPTER 62
As the woman on the podium held up a knife that was four times the size of anything Pamela had in her kitchen drawer, Pamela winced. She was standing at the back of the crowd, near the steps, and even from there, she could see it was a vicious weapon. When the police officer placed the knife at the front of the podium, Pamela saw its jagged edge. To her, it looked more like a saw than a knife. She flinched at the thought of it piercing her skin. She couldn’t stop herself looking towards Dani and her husband, together outside the supermarket. Sitting upright in his chair, he looked like a very proud man.
The officer on the podium continued talking but Pamela kept her eyes on Dani. She watched as Mat Moore opened his hand and reached up in search of his wife’s. Dani let her fingers briefly touch his before taking her hand away and resting it upon his shoulder. Slowly, he dropped his arm back down onto his chair.
Dani’s expression was blank, her eyes dull and sad. Pamela remembered the noisy toddler she’d chased around Haddley Hill Park, who grew up wanting to be just like her daddy. On the days when Jack worked long into the evening, she would take Dani up to bed, only for her to creep down, minutes later, to ask when her daddy would be home. She would carry her back up to bed, often sitting with her throughout the evening, making up stories about each of the toys that covered Dani’s bed. How she’d loved to make Dani laugh, to see her bright blue eyes sparkle. How she wished it was as easy to make her eyes shine in the same way now.
The police officer stepped down from the podium. She kept talking as a television cameraman and a small group of journalists followed her inside the supermarket. Pamela felt there was little more for her to see and decided she was ready for home. Jeannie would be long gone from the playground, but she still thought it was probably wise to keep her distance. She would walk on the opposite side of the bridge.
The stench of urine hit her as soon as she entered the tunnel. She dropped her head and quickly made her way through the underpass. Not looking where she was going, she walked straight into a figure moving in the opposite direction.
‘I’m so sorry, all my fault,’ she said, her eyes still fixed on the floor. ‘I wasn’t looking where I was going.’
‘I’m sure I’m equally culpable,’ replied the man.
At the sound of his voice, Pamela froze. She knew it was him, she didn’t need to look, and yet she found herself lifting her gaze to his. She shuddered, fear coursing through her.
‘Pamela,’ said Adrian Withers. ‘After you, I insist.’
Her coat brushed against the wall as she stepped around him. Hurrying up the stairs, she felt her legs begin to cramp but she was determined not to slow down. Instead, she forced herself to quicken her pace, pushing herself forward until she reached the middle of the bridge. Only then did she begin to slow and steady herself. She looked back over her shoulder and breathed a sigh of relief when there was no sign of him. Resting her hand on the side of the bridge, she took a deep breath. Again, she checked behind her before, at a slower pace, she walked on, the hate within her burning brighter than ever.
CHAPTER 63
‘If you try and run, I will break your arm,’ I say to Archie, before I release him.
In the doorway of the bar, he turns and looks at me. His face is dirty, his hair a mess. He smells just as you would expect a teenage boy to smell after three days without a shower. The fight has gone from his eyes. He knows he’s cornered. Now all I can see is fear.
‘I want to try and help you,’ I say, ‘if it’s not too late.’
He says nothing, his breathing heavy. We can both hear Freeman fielding questions from journalists. She tells them whoever fled the supermarket that evening was covered in blood. Somebody saw them. Somebody helped them.
‘Somebody helped them,’ I repeat.
Archie’s breathing quickens. I think he is going to cry.
‘Pull your hood up,’ I say, ‘and keep your head down. Walk alongside me. If you run, the only place you’ll end up is in a police cell.’
He nods.
‘Come on,’ I say. ‘Let’s go.’
We push past the bar’s outside tables and chairs and continue along the river before turning onto the path that leads us away from Haddley. The paved path becomes more of a gravel track as we reach the derelict industrial railway arches. When I kick open the door to an old London taxicab repair shop, pigeons fly in all directions.
Inside, the floor is stained with oil. Metal tools, coated in rust, cover an abandoned workbench. Rotting tyres are stacked along the wall. Before I flick on my phone, I push the door closed behind us. In the far corner of the garage is an abandoned office. Little remains other than two desks, facing each other across the room. Plastic letter trays and a Rolodex filled with faded business cards still sit on one of the wooden desks. I shove them aside.
‘Sit down,’ I say. The room is barely illuminated. Its only window, a narrow gap at head height, is obscured by a thick layer of cobwebs. ‘Tell me everything.’
Archie lifts himself up and sits on one of the desks. From beneath his unkempt hair, his dark eyes hang heavy, his gaunt cheeks sagging like a man’s more than thirty years his age. He stares at the floor. I lean against the opposite desk and wait.
Eventually he speaks. ‘I wasn’t there. It was nothing to do with me. I didn’t even know it was them. I would never have got involved with them if …’
He stops.
‘Take a breath,’ I say, ‘and start at the beginning.’
Archie sighs. ‘They came to me,’ he replies, his hair hanging over his face. ‘But I suppose I didn’t take much persuading. I wanted the money.’
‘To help your mum and dad?’
He laughs. ‘I’m not a stupid kid. The money I could get would never be enough to help them, but it would help me. I wanted stuff. I wasn’t going to be the poor kid at school. And I didn’t want that for Ted, either.’ I think of his Nike trainers, his Maverick clothes, the latest iPhones for him and Ted. ‘I earned enough to buy things.’
‘Expensive things.’
He looks up at me. ‘I was stupid, but I just wanted a bit of cash.’
‘How did it start?’
Archie pushes his hair out of his eyes. He pulls his legs up onto the desk and then wraps his arms around them. ‘They needed somebody to sell stuff at school.’
‘Drugs?’
He nods. ‘I’d never been interested in any kind of pills or even weed, so hadn’t had much to do with them. That probably made me more appealing, no danger of me feeding my own habit.’ His smile is a fatalistic one. ‘At first all I did was drop-offs.’
‘How old were you?’
‘Fourteen. Not long after, a couple of kids dealing for them in school were caught sampling the goods. That meant they were out, and I was in.’
‘And over time you were expected to do more and more?’
‘Pretty quickly, I had a couple of other kids working for me in school. I started dealing out of the boathouse. They gave me a list of regulars. I was their contact point. Higher-priced deals meant a bit more commission for me.’
‘Didn’t your mum and dad ever ask where all the clothes and the phones came from?’
‘I told them they were second hand. They think I’ve got a job cleaning up at the boathouse. In a way, I do.’ Archie smiles nervously. ‘My dad was always working, and my mum thought praying was somehow the answer. If she knew the truth about Reverend Withers. He gave the dealers my name.’ I raise my eyebrows. ‘And he’s by far my biggest customer.’
‘Tell me what happened on the night of the fire.’
Archie rubs his hand across his face. ‘You saved my life,’ he says, quietly.
‘Why were you there?’
‘They paid me two hundred quid to get rid of the knife.’
‘You decided to hide it in the community centre?’
‘No,’ replies Archie. ‘It’s been hidden there for the last year, under that old weights machine.’ I suddenly realise why Archie was so slow to leave the burning building. ‘My job was to get hold of the knife and get rid of it, but the machine was bolted to the floor. I tried everything to free the knife but couldn’t. When you screamed at me to get out, I had no choice but to leave it.’
‘Who has the knife now?’
‘I don’t know. I was glad to be out. They could have killed me.’
‘You think they set the fire?’
‘Who else would?’ I don’t answer but I can’t help but wonder why anybody would want to kill Archie after paying him to retrieve the knife. ‘Why are you still working for them?’
‘You don’t decide when to stop. If I tried to quit, that would make things worse.’
‘They’re desperate to get hold of the knife,’ I say, ‘because it was the knife used to stab Mat Moore?’
Archie nods.
In the dim light, I look directly at him. ‘Tell me you had nothing to do with that.’
‘Nothing,’ he replies. I hear an urgency in his voice. I think of the way Ted idolises his older brother. I want to believe Archie is a good kid who’s made some stupid decisions.
‘If you want me to help you, you’re going to have to tell me who they are.’
Archie drops his head and covers his ears with his hands. He raises his eyes to me.
‘You work for Bertie Baxter?’ I say.
CHAPTER 64
Pamela stopped when she reached the bottom of the high street. Still catching her breath, she looked back over the bridge to where people were now moving away from the reconstruction.
Her body tensed.
On the opposite side of the road, there he was, scurrying past. He didn’t see her. She waited and watched him hurry away towards St Stephen’s. For a moment, she felt paralysed. She forced herself to breathe before taking slow, hesitant steps forward.
