Liar Liar

90

‘Are you absolutely sure?’

Helen’s tone was abrasive and aggressive. She would never usually talk to one of her officers in that way, but she forgave herself tonight. Too much had happened tonight for her to pussyfoot around important issues.

‘One hundred per cent,’ DC Lucas replied evenly, choosing to ignore Helen’s rudeness. ‘He hasn’t moved a muscle.’

Helen stepped forward and looked through the grimy windows of the internet café. She had hung back out of sight, not wanting to compromise Lucas’s surveillance operation, but now she had to see for herself if he was really in there. Her heart sunk when she saw that he was. According to Lucas, Richard Ford hadn’t once got up from his monitor, tapping away on the keyboard as though his life depended upon it.

‘What time did you both arrive here?’ Helen continued.

‘Around eight p.m.?’

‘And he was never out of your sight? You didn’t go to the loo, for a cigarette…’

‘Come on, boss.’ Lucas’s tone was less forgiving this time – she clearly didn’t enjoy having her professional competency called into question.

‘So what’s he been doing?’

‘See for yourself,’ Lucas replied. ‘ Just… that. I wanted to get round the back of him to see what he was typing, what he was looking at, but I couldn’t without massively flagging my interest in him, so…’

Helen nodded at Lucas and considered her next move. Richard Ford was such a good suspect – he fitted the general profile in almost every way. And yet he hadn’t moved a muscle tonight. A thought suddenly grabbed her and Helen now found herself striding past her colleague and into the café. Lucas was unsure whether to stay outside or follow, but in the end chose the latter. She wasn’t sure what was about to happen, but she knew she didn’t want to miss it.

Helen was making straight for Ford. Such was the speed of her approach that he barely looked up until she was upon him.

‘What the hell do you want?’

His right hand moved quickly towards the keyboard but Helen grabbed it, twisting it sharply, pulling Ford away from the terminal. He yelped in pain and stumbled backwards off his chair, Helen’s sudden momentum catching him completely by surprise.

‘What are you doing, you mad bitch?’ Ford said, picking himself up off the floor.

It was a rash move, especially in front of the handful of witnesses who were still haunting the internet café at his late hour, but Helen knew she had no choice. She had to see what he’d been doing.

To her surprise, the website for Sussex Fire and Rescue Service was up on his screen.

‘What’s this?’

‘What do you think it is? I’ve got to work, haven’t I?’

Ignoring him, Helen pulled up his recent search history. Kent Fire and Rescue, Devon and Cornwall Fire and Rescue, job vacancies, training opportunities, nothing incriminating at all. Then she noticed a minimized Word document at the bottom of the screen and pulled it up. Immediately, Richard Ford lunged forward, trying to wrestle the mouse from her grasp.

‘Can’t you give me a moment’s peace?’ he pleaded. ‘Can’t you leave me a shred of dignity?’

It was his resignation letter.

‘You don’t let up, do you?’ Ford continued, incandescent with rage and embarrassment now. ‘My life is in bloody tatters and even now you won’t just… let me be. I’m finished in this town and you want me tarred and feathered. You won’t be happy until you’ve set the lynch mob on me, will you?’

His Southampton accent pinged through loud and clear as his voice rose, which made Helen feel all the more ashamed. Ford was clearly a strange, unpleasant man, with a peculiar fascination with fire and yet… he was also a successful, well-trained firefighter who’d been helping keep his home town safe since the day he was old enough to join the Service. And Helen had effectively exiled him from Southampton. In some ways she’d had no choice, she’d had to pursue every lead with the utmost vigour, but it was still a bad outcome for everyone concerned.

‘I thought…’

‘We all know what you thought,’ he spat back, his face puce with anger and shame. ‘But I’ve done nothing wrong.’

Helen suddenly became aware of the other people in the café – their faces turned towards her, drinking in the drama.

‘I’m sorry,’ she repeated and headed for the exit.

It was an ignominious retreat, with Lucas scurrying to keep up with her, but there was no point making the situation worse by arguing further. The damage had been done. Helen had never felt so foolish or misguided, ruining an innocent man’s life while letting the real perpetrator continue his reign of terror unchecked. Where, Helen wondered, would this end? And what would it take to stop their perpetrator killing again?