Liar Liar

72

Helen and Sanderson stood in Helen’s office, neither saying a word. Outside, Helen could see news of Alice’s death rippling round the incident room. Several members of the team were fighting back tears, others just looked blank with shock. Everybody had been knocked for six by this terrible, sudden tragedy.

‘What did they say?’ Sanderson asked.

Helen had only just got off the phone from the hospital and was still trying to process what they’d told her.

‘She’d been stable since the fire but they never managed to get her to regain consciousness. It seems… that her injuries were just too profound and in the end… her heart gave up fighting.’

Tears pricked Sanderson’s eyes and Helen felt her desolation. They had all been so convinced that this brave little girl would pull through. Had this just been wishful thinking? The doctors had seemed hopeful, but in the end it was a terrible trauma for a little girl to endure. Despite her mother’s very best efforts to save her, it hadn’t been enough. Which meant that Richard Ford was now facing a triple-murder charge.

‘What do you want to do?’ Sanderson asked.

They had been discussing how to respond to Shapiro’s ultimatum when the call had come through. Helen knew she had to keep calm and avoid getting caught up in the emotion of the moment. It was very tempting to charge Ford right now, to seek some immediate justice for Alice and her mum, but they had to be able to make the charges stick.

‘Well, he’s got motive and opportunity in abundance. Not to mention the expertise. We know he’s lied to us under caution already on a number of occasions, but he’s not going to confess, so -’

‘He might if we charge him. If he thinks he can wriggle out of it by pleading diminished responsibility -’

‘But if he doesn’t and ends up beating the rap, it’ll be our fault. We need to link him to the site of the fire itself -’

‘What about Deborah Parks’s findings? She said she found a boot print at the Roberts house which matched the sole of Ford’s fire boots -’

‘But that print was made post fire, we need evidence of him setting them. We need paraffin in the house, on his clothes, a print on the residual evidence, footage of him buying cigarettes…’

‘What if we ask Naomie Jackson to ID him? Put him in the frame for the Roberts fire at least.’

‘Wouldn’t stand up. She was clear that she didn’t see his face and it would be easy to disprove. It was dark, she’d had a drink and so on…’

‘So what then?’

Sanderson’s tone was a little too strident for Helen’s liking, but she let it go. They were all wound tight today.

‘I’m going to let him go.’

Sanderson looked so shocked, so disbelieving, that Helen followed up quickly. She didn’t have the time or the headspace for a row with her deputy.

‘We can hold him here, but he’s not going to say anything. I want to get him away from Shapiro. While she’s in play, he’ll keep his head down and do what he’s told. But once he’s out there, isolated and scared, then we’ll see the real Richard Ford. He’ll need to be tailed 24/7 of course and we’ll have to keep an eye out for have-a-go heroes wanting a piece of him. If Meredith or Deborah turns up anything, we’ll pull him straight back in, but until then I think his isolation and paranoia could be our best friends. If there is a site where he’s keeping the paraffin and his tools of the trade, then he may well be tempted to try and destroy it now. If he does, we’ll be waiting for him.’

Sanderson nodded, begrudgingly seeing the wisdom of Helen’s words. Helen knew, were she younger, that she would have been tempted to push Ford through another round of questioning, to try and bulldoze a confession out of him. In some situations this might have worked, but this was different. The Hants Fire and Rescue Service had paid for one of the best legal brains on the South Coast to chaperone their man, so they had to play this smart. Releasing him might destabilize him. He couldn’t return to work while he was still under investigation, so he’d have plenty of time to think. And Helen wanted to see what he would do next.

So, calling McAndrew into her office, she set the plan in motion. She prayed it was the right move. The team were baying for blood now, they wanted justice, and Helen knew they would never forgive her if the killer slipped through their fingers now.