Take three statements from three people and they’ll all differ.
Sometimes in minor ways, but there’ll always be a different emphasis, a different focus.
Sometimes all three will lie to aggrandise or diminish their own part in proceedings. What you do – as an investigator – is you take all these stories and pull them apart; find the kernel of truth in each one.
No one can lie convincingly without incorporating some element of truth into what they say.
Wickes hadn’t lied about the surrogacy. The obsession, from a certain point of view, was also true. And the intimidation. That part, he had dead on.
The rest, according to Kathryn, was warmed-over shite.
“Deborah was looking for help. Someone to get Burns to cool off. The police were no help. Even when those bastards assaulted her. When they…” She broke off. What had happened the night those thugs broke into Deborah’s room?
Wickes had been fuzzy on details.
Deborah’s sister was avoiding them.
Maybe I already knew, but I hoped to Christ I was wrong.
“The police didn’t do anything?”
“Didn’t take her seriously. Kept giving her this shite about Burns being nothing more than a businessman.”
Aye, try getting them to say that today.
Back then, it had been the end of the honeymoon for coppers and organised crime. No more backroom deals or attempts at negotiation. Zero tolerance.
Both sides coming to terms with the end of an era.
I said, “You remember the name of the officer she talked to?”
Kathryn shook her head. “It was a long time ago.”
What was the bet…Bright?
Christ, and why not? He couldn’t go down any further in my estimation, right?
“If you people had just done your job, maybe we wouldn’t be here, now.”
You people.
I wasn’t a copper any more. But I still carried their sins.
The job of an investigator is often nebulous; our precise areas of interest fuzzy and undetermined. More often we can say with certainty what we can’t do rather than what we can.
The Britain’s second police force slogan sometimes feels like just that. An empty collection of words designed to inspire faith without actually saying anything of value.
People come to us to track down missing persons, gain evidence on other’s activities and sometimes to hire muscle.
The intimidation game.
A no-no for anyone on the ABI register.
Wickes had done that kind of work. In the old days, most people in the profession wouldn’t have thought twice about it.
These days, the lines are defined more clearly.
“All she wanted was someone who could get these people to leave her alone.”
The way Wickes told it, she came to him looking for a saviour. That had been where his story made the connection between us: who could refuse that kind of request?
“He told her it would never happen. What she needed to do was run.”
Kathryn nodded. “When she came and told me that it was better to run away than to fight, it sounded sensible. Given…the situation. And the authorities’ lack of interest.”
“But he persuaded her to run away with him. He offered her the protection she needed. Or thought she did.”
“That’s what I didn’t like. This man – this man she barely knew, barely trusted – offering her a way out.”
Talk about your deals with the devil.
There were conditions to the arrangement. A whole book of them. The one that worried Kathryn the most: Deborah was allowed no contact with her old life. She would have to leave everything behind.
Including her sister.
“And she just went along with that. Always Deb’s problem, you know? She was…suggestible. Never knew if that was to do with…you know…”
Her depression. Her illness. Kathryn didn’t need to say anything out loud. I could sense it, what she meant. What she didn’t want to say.
Wickes hadn’t been lying to me about some things, at least.
She must have seen my look, said, “Aye, you know, then?”
“Way he told it, she was aggressive and unpredictable.”
Kathryn’s eyes were glassy. Puffed up; those bags showing.
It was killing her just to talk about any of this.
But she had to.
And I had to listen.