Truth Will Out

Book 3: Fennimore and Simms

by A.D. Garrett

Genres: Mystery; Hard-Boiled; Police Procedurals; Female Sleuths; Thrillers; Crime Fiction; Suspense

Synopsis

A mother and daughter are snatched on their drive home from a cinema. The crime has a number of chilling similarities to a cold case Professor Nick Fennimore had been lecturing on. Then Fennimore begins receiving taunting messages - is he being targeted by the kidnapper?

Meanwhile, a photograph emailed from Paris could bring Fennimore closer to discovering the fate of Suzie, his own daughter, now missing for six years. He seeks help from his old friend, DCI Kate Simms, recently returned from the US. But Kate is soon blocked from the investigation... A mother and child's lives hang in the balance as Fennimore and Simms try to break through police bureaucracy to identify their abductor.

Atmospheric, chilling, and full of suspense, the dynamic pairing of AD Garrett's acclaimed duo, Fennimore and Simms, delivers a pulse-pounding plot that will keep you guessing until the very end.

Release date: November 3, 2016

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Print pages: 400

Sample

Gail Hammond was having a hellish day. Her mother had called at lunchtime: Dad was poorly – he’d had a fall in the garden, banged his hip. The hospital said there was nothing broken, but could she come and take a look? Gail was about to begin a stint on nights; she needed her rest. Mum played the guilt card – she hadn’t been to see them in over a month; it was only half an hour by train from Chelmsford to London – and what good was it, being a nurse, if she couldn’t even help out her old dad?

So Gail had cancelled her plans for an afternoon snooze and caught the 13:09 from Chelmsford. If she got the seven o’clock train back, she’d be home around seven-thirty – plenty of time to shower, change, grab a bite to eat, maybe even put her feet up for an hour before heading out to work. But Mum was fretful, in need of reassurance, and Dad did seem to be in a lot of pain, so Gail comforted and soothed, went out to pick up Dad’s prescription, then cooked a light supper and tucked them both up in front of the TV before leaving, reluctantly, an hour later than planned.

The trip home was stop-start all the way, held up by ‘an incident’ on the line. As they trundled through green fields and small towns at a crawl, the summer sun lowering in the sky, Gail checked her watch and shifted in her seat, astonished and perversely irritated by the quiet acceptance of those around her. She called her supervisor in A&E twice to let him know her progress; he was understanding, but they were short-staffed – he was struggling to cope.

‘I’ll be there just as fast as I can,’ she promised.

Six short minutes from journey’s end the train’s intercom crackled; the conductor announced that there had been a points failure at Chelmsford – they were backed up behind two other trains. The twenty or so people in her carriage groaned as one. They would make an unscheduled stop at Ingatestone, the conductor said. A bus would carry them the rest of the way. Gail felt a pang of dismay – her shift started in fifteen minutes – a detour by bus would add another fifty minutes on to her journey.

As the train drew to a halt at the platform, she dialled her boss. The strain in his voice made her wince. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said, ‘I’ll grab a taxi.’ She raced from the platform to the exit, thinking she’d be lucky to see even a single cab waiting: Ingatestone was a small commuter town, a minor station stop; it didn’t even have an official cab rank. She dodged past someone wheeling a document case and hurried out on to the service roadway that ran past the red-brick Victorian station frontage. Four minicabs were lined up at the edge of the car park; word must have got out to the local cabbies. For a second, her heart lifted, but half a dozen passengers were ahead of her. A single-decker bus idled on the main car park; maybe she should head for that. Two people in the queue got into the first cab, leaving three more, with just four people to cater for – maybe she had a chance, after all. She watched eagerly; the queue for the bus dwindled, the last of the passengers climbing on board as two more people got into the third cab – the last one was hers! She strode to it, relief flooding through her, but as she reached for the door a man jostled past, throwing her off-balance, knocking her phone out of her hand. ‘Hey!’ she said, bending to pick it up.

He ignored her, sliding into the passenger seat and slamming the door after him.

Gail straightened up, phone in hand. ‘What the hell are you doing?’ she shouted, but the man turned away, and the cab swung out from the kerb and was off.

‘Hey!’ she called again. She glanced over her shoulder, but there was no one to share her outrage: the bus was already turning into the lane. ‘No – wait!’ She ran a few steps, but it picked up speed, accelerating away.

Gail turned full circle. The car park was almost empty – she was stranded. Listening to the roar of the bus retreating down the lane, she swore softly, just about ready to weep with frustration. She took a breath. For heaven’s sake. ‘So you’ll be late for work,’ she told herself. ‘It’s a pain in the neck – but at least no one died.’ Her inner balance restored, she wiped the grit off her smartphone and began scrolling through her contacts for a cab firm. The phone buzzed in her hand. Her boss.

She hesitated, then hit ‘Answer’. ‘Paul, I’m so sorry, I—’

She broke off, seeing a grey Mondeo sweep down the lane towards her. A sticker on the driver’s door bore the logo of A2B Cabs – her favourite taxi service. The driver wound down his window. ‘You all right, love?’

‘I am now,’ she said, climbing in next to him. Then, to her boss: ‘I’m in a cab. Should be with you in half an hour, tops.’

She grinned at the driver as she closed the phone. ‘I think you just saved my life.’

Believe no one, doubt everything, and remember – everyone lies.

NICK FENNIMORE

Aberdeen, Monday

‘Gail Hammond’s partially clothed body was found two days after she disappeared. She had been sexually assaulted, strangled with a ligature and left in a ditch on a country lane near Willingdale, eight miles west of Chelmsford.’

Professor Nick Fennimore was giving a public lecture in one of the shiny new riverside buildings at Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen. He was tanned, having spent a few weeks advising on a murder investigation in the United States’ Midwest with DCI Kate Simms, and although he had a healing scar on his forehead – a souvenir of his visit – he felt fit. It was mid-June, exams were over and most of the students had gone home for the vacation, yet he had an audience of three hundred. This presentation was part of the ‘Science Matters’ festival – a ‘summer pops’-style series of free public lectures and seminars for techies, science geeks, the mildly interested and the morbidly curious.

On the projector screen behind him, a grainy CCTV image, date-stamped eight years ago: a grey Mondeo on a railway station car park; a small, fair-haired woman slipping into the front seat of a car. ‘CCTV at Ingatestone Station, Essex,’ Fennimore said. ‘That is Gail Hammond. Several passengers noticed her hurrying off the train – those who boarded the bus saw a man muscling ahead of her in the queue for taxis – she was rather slight, as you can see. The cab driver who picked her up was identified as Tom Killbride.’

He clicked through a series of traffic-cam images, creating a time-lapse sequence of Killbride’s Mondeo progressing through traffic lights and junctions en route to Chelmsford. The final image on the screen: Killbride in the driver’s seat looking surly, with an anxious-faced Gail Hammond beside him.

‘Oddly, they never made it into the city centre. Killbride dropped out of sight until ten hours later, when he was seen heading west on the A414.’ Fennimore called up a map of Chelmsford and the surrounding area. ‘But he vanished again between these two traffic cams.’ Fennimore used a laser pointer to highlight the two locations, about half a mile apart. ‘The next time Killbride showed up was in Chelmsford the following night, picking up a fare in the city centre.’

He got a rumble of response: the audience shifted in their seats, exchanging glances and murmured comments. Fennimore gazed around the tiered seats, enjoying the sound of crime enthusiasts leaping to conclusions. Tracking left to right, his eye snagged on a still, silent figure in an aisle seat, second row from the back.

Josh Brown, Fennimore’s doctoral student. Josh was in his mid-twenties; he was dressed urban style in T-shirt, combats and hoodie. Camouflage – and it worked; he merged well with the younger students. But this was not a student lecture, and the student’s sludgy colour palette stood out among the summer pastels of the general public. Fennimore himself wore a shirt and tie under a lightweight grey suit: delivering lectures or visiting crime scenes, he never felt properly dressed in casual clothes. Josh met his gaze but glanced quickly away.

‘What happened during those missing hours?’ Fennimore asked. ‘Killbride told police he’d dropped Ms Hammond on Parkway, a busy arterial road into Chelmsford town centre. But why would she ask to be dropped at the side of a busy road ten minutes’ walk from the city centre? Broomfield Hospital was another four miles on from there, and she was already late – surely she would head straight to the hospital?’

He saw the answer to his questions in their faces.

‘Killbride said he didn’t know why Gail asked him to drop her at that point. Nor could he account for his journey along the A414, ten hours later.’

The next slide showed the same map, but with a location marked in red. ‘This is where Gail Hammond’s body was found on a country lane, a half-mile from the A414. Coincidentally, this was between the last two traffic cameras to sight Mr Killbride’s car.’ He added the locations of the two traffic cams and sketched a shallow-sided triangle between the three points on the map; an arrowhead, pointing irresistibly towards Killbride’s guilt.

He clicked on to a photograph of police cars on a country lane, a white ‘incitent’ over the ditch, CSIs kitted out in white Tyvek suits. ‘Killbride was picked up soon after police gained access to Ingatestone Station’s CCTV recordings.’

Fennimore pulled up an image of a microscope slide; on it were three bright green fibres. ‘These are fibres from a rope – possibly a tow line. Twenty-three distinct strands of this stuff were embedded in the skin of Gail’s neck and caught in her hair. And although none of these particular fibres was discovered in Killbride’s car, fibres from her clothing were.’ The audience stirred, and he added, ‘Of course, you would expect that – after all, she was a passenger – but these fibres were found in the boot of his car. Now, Gail Hammond had no luggage – all she was carrying was her shoulder bag and her phone. So how did those fibres get from the front seat into the boot of the car? And why were fibres from her trousers and blouse found on his jacket, shirt and trousers?’

He left these questions unanswered, for now.

‘Killbride was recently divorced; he lived alone in a flat on the edge of the city. His credit card and a search of his computer revealed that he regularly accessed online porn. A year earlier, Killbride had been arrested for the false imprisonment of an eighteen-year-old girl.’

Another murmur from the audience; he would come back to that wee red herring later.

‘He was considered a loner and “a bit weird” among the other cabbies. He claimed that he hadn’t left his flat between dropping Gail off and heading to Chelmsford railway station the next evening. Witnesses confirm that they did see him cleaning his car during the afternoon, but his Mondeo was missing from its usual parking space all morning. He later admitted meeting with a man in a lay-by on the A414 to buy drugs – Mr Killbride had a little cocaine habit – but he denied driving into the country lanes. He was off the grid for thirty minutes somewhere between those two traffic cameras. Killbride said his supplier was late, that he’d waited “a while” – he couldn’t be more specific. Unsurprisingly, the phantom dealer couldn’t be traced, and the police decided it was yet another lie.

‘But the most damning evidence of all …’ The audience leaned forward as one. ‘Killbride’s blood was found on Gail Hammond’s shoes.’ Fennimore called up an image of Gail’s black lace-ups. He repositioned and magnified the image; five tiny drops of blood had been marked on the photograph: two on the stitching of the left shoe; one on the edge of one of the eyelets, and two more on the toe cap of the right shoe. ‘Blood spatter,’ he said. ‘Point-five of a millimetre across. DNA analysis proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that it was Mr Killbride’s blood. And it revealed that he has a relatively rare genetic condition – he is 47,XYY karyotype. In plain English, he has an extra Y chromosome, which is unusual and interesting.’ Fennimore paused. ‘But is it relevant?’

A few people nodded, eager.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘all right, yes, it is … The Y chromosome is what makes an egg develop into a male infant. Common sense would tell you that having an extra Y chromosome would make you more male, yes?’ A few more nods in the audience. ‘And XYY males do tend to be tall.’ The next slide was of Tom Killbride, photographed at his wedding, with the bride and her parents. He towered over the group. ‘As you can see, Killbride is no exception. The prosecution argued that his genetic quirk made him prone to aggression, criminality and social abnormality – they quoted a 1960s study to support their case, and the press helpfully came up with all kinds of entertaining stories about “super-males” and violent criminals.’ Fennimore clicked through slide after slide: killers and madmen – all cursed with the XYY abnormality.

‘Killbride was prone to severe nosebleeds – he’d had a doozie two days before Gail disappeared, and required a nasal cautery at Broomfield Hospital to stop the bleeding.’ Fennimore gave the younger members of the audience a meaningful look: ‘One of the grosser side-effects of cocaine addiction, kids.’ A few tittered.

‘Gail Hammond was an A&E nurse; Killbride’s defence claimed that she must have been splashed with his blood during his hospital visit. Police checked the story – he was, indeed, at Broomfield Hospital two days before the murder, just as he’d said. Unfortunately, Gail wasn’t. Her work records showed she wasn’t on duty the day he came in. He’d lied – just as he’d lied about dropping her off on Parkway, miles from her destination. Just as he’d lied about not being on the country lane where her body was found. Tom Killbride was charged with Gail Hammond’s abduction and murder. And he was found guilty.’

There was an audible outrush of breath from the audience, murmurs of approval. Interesting, Fennimore thought – they didn’t know the rest of the story. But Killbride had been tried at Chelmsford Crown Court, five hundred miles and a country-and-a-half away from where they were sitting. It wasn’t so surprising that his Scottish audience hadn’t paid too much attention to an eight-year-old case, tried in the English courts. Fennimore smiled.

‘But Tom Killbride was innocent,’ he said.

In the audience, unnoticed by the professor, a man, better camouflaged than Fennimore’s student, watched with bitter contempt. Oh, he’s quite the grandstander. A real showman. Performance like that, they should be charging admission. The man huffed air out through his nostrils, resisting the urge to start a slow handclap, and instead forced a smile. Let him talk – it’s what he’s good at.

Fennimore waited for the rustle of consternation to settle to a murmur of dissent. He explained that a pressure group had taken an interest in Killbride’s case and began a campaign to have the cab driver’s conviction overturned. They called Fennimore in to review the forensic evidence.

‘There are lots of reasons why miscarriages of justice happen,’ he said. ‘Trial by media, the prosecution overestimates the value of the evidence, the defence is weak or even incompetent, police fail to disclose evidence which could help the defence.’ He paused.

‘All of these were true in the prosecution of Tom Killbride. As for the “weird-therefore-bad” culpability argument?’ He winced. ‘Do me a favour – I mean, I’m weird – but no one ever charged me with murder.’

That got a laugh, loosened the tension a little.

He pulled up the image of Gail Hammond easing into the passenger seat of Killbride’s car. ‘Killbride did indeed pick Gail up at Ingatestone Station. He was a licensed minicab driver – that was his job – that was what he was supposed to do. Okay, technically, he should only have picked up passengers who’d booked through his firm – but that’s not a hanging offence.’

‘What about the false imprisonment charge?’ someone called out.

‘Good point,’ Fennimore said. ‘Why on earth was he still driving a minicab with that kind of record?’ He lifted one shoulder. ‘The fact is he didn’t have a record. Killbride was never charged. The supposed “victim” was drunk, threw up on the back seat, refused to pay her fare, let alone the cleanup costs – and she tried to do a runner. Killbride locked the doors; she called the cops.’ He spread his hands. ‘She withdrew the accusation after she sobered up – even apologized. The question is, why did the police leave the false accusation uncorrected on file – worse still – why was it entered into evidence? Was defence counsel asleep or did he just not give a damn?’

Fennimore clicked to a photo of the roadway where Killbride claimed to have dropped off his passenger. ‘Okay, so why did he drop Gail off at Parkway?’ A grey railing ran alongside a roadway blurred by speeding traffic. Beyond the railing stood light industrial units and office blocks. ‘Common sense tells you it’s not a good place to leave a young woman at that time of night,’ he said. ‘Doesn’t it?’ He got a few nods of agreement. ‘Well, Einstein said common sense was the collection of all the prejudices acquired by the age of eighteen. So let’s ditch the common sense and do some actual fact-checking instead. Walk twenty yards north-west along Parkway, this is what you see.’ He clicked to the next slide, a picture Fennimore had taken himself, barely a year ago.

A row of Edwardian red-brick houses stood at a right angle to the main road. Three concrete bollards blocked the street to traffic from Parkway. ‘There’s pedestrian access only at this point,’ Fennimore said. ‘So Killbride couldn’t have turned into the street, even if he wanted to. But walk two minutes down that row, take a right, then a sharp left and you’re in the street where Gail Hammond lived.’

A few people shifted in their seats.

‘Did Ms Hammond go to her flat after all? Her car was parked there – perhaps she decided to drive the rest of the way. Gail was known to keep a “ready bag” in her car with a clean uniform in it – she’d come straight from London, so she wouldn’t have had a uniform with her; maybe she realized she’d have to stop by her flat to pick one up, and took the short cut from the main road.’

The next slide bore the words:

‘Locard’s exchange principle: every contact leaves a trace.’ Gill Grissom, CSI

The smiles in the audience said they recognized the oft-repeated phrase from the TV series.

‘Let’s look at the fibre and blood evidence.’ Fennimore folded his arms and trotted down the steps from the stage into the audience. He offered his hand to a man in the front row and after an embarrassed hesitation, the man took it and they shook.

Fennimore held up his right hand. ‘This gentleman now has, oh, about fifty shades of grey wool fibres from my jacket on his right hand.’ He got a few smiles from the women at that. ‘And I will probably have fibres from his clothing on my skin – along with sweat and skin cells, sloughed from his palm.’

A woman a little further along the row wrinkled her nose and Fennimore gave a theatrical shudder. ‘I know …’ He made a feint for a young couple in the front row and they shrank back. Laughter broke out.

He stepped back, serious again. ‘Every contact leaves a trace,’ he said. ‘It was a hot summer the year Gail Hammond disappeared. Tom Killbride often wore a jacket to work, but he’d take it off if he got too warm and leave it on the seat next to him until he found a moment to stow it in the boot of his car – so his jacket was bound to pick up fibres from the car seat, and carpet fibres from the boot. Picture this: Gail sits in the car. Her trousers and top pick up fibres from the car seat, from Killbride’s jacket, a few fibres from the car boot carpet, too – and she leaves contact trace from her own clothing. Look at the details of the fibre evidence, and you’ll find that trace from Gail’s clothing was found only on the seat of Killbride’s trousers and the back of his T-shirt.

‘He was seen cleaning his car the following afternoon. Now, I don’t know about you, but when I’m vacuuming my car, I often sit in the passenger seat to get a better angle on the hard-to-get-at corners on the driver’s side.’

He saw recognition in some of the faces.

‘Every contact leaves a trace,’ he said again. ‘Physical evidence is not proof of guilt. Not everything found at the scene of a crime is relevant to the crime: there are hammers that are not used as bludgeons, knives that are guilty of nothing more violent than slicing a lemon. Fingerprints, DNA, blood – can all prove that someone was present, but it’s the context and interpretation of the evidence that make the case. Or prove innocence.

‘The investigator’s job was to look at the evidence from both sides – not to construct a case to prove Killbride was a killer. But the police wanted a result; the CPS wanted a clean, quick prosecution; the family wanted justice for Gail; the public wanted to feel safe on the streets again. So nobody looked for an innocent explanation.’

He brought them back to the image of green fibres on a microscope slide. ‘Not a single fibre from the rope ligature used to strangle Gail Hammond was found on Killbride or in his car. Why? The prosecution said that was irrelevant – the blood evidence on Gail’s shoes more than made up for that. Gail had scratches on her neck, and a broken fingernail – her parents and her friends said she wouldn’t have given up without a fight – she must have given him a bloody nose. But there wasn’t a mark on Killbride, not a scratch or bruise – and the only DNA under Gail’s fingernails was her own.’

Fennimore took a moment to look into the faces of the audience and was pleased to see that some were adjusting their earlier judgements.

‘The local paper reported on the trial every day, and Gail Hammond’s supervisor rang the police as soon as he saw the news about the blood on Gail’s shoes. You see, Gail was on duty two nights earlier, when Killbride came in to A&E: she’d gone in on her off-duty to cover for a staff absence. Her supervisor gave a statement to the police; he’d been so upset after Gail’s death that he completely forgot to update her work log with the extra hours. The work record provided by the hospital’s human resources department was incomplete. It was possible – even likely – that Gail had come into contact with Killbride during the course of her shift. She wouldn’t even have to get that close: Killbride’s mouth and throat would be full of blood – he’d be coughing and choking. And a vigorous cough can travel at the speed of sound.’

He waited while they pictured this.

‘Oddly enough, the police never got back to Gail’s supervisor. He wasn’t called to give evidence and his statement was never passed on to the defence. In fact, I only discovered this little gem when I interviewed staff personally.

‘But the prosecution has to hand over any evidence that might undermine the prosecution or strengthen the defence’s case, right?’ Fennimore dipped his head. ‘To a point. The full disclosure rule only applies to evidence they have in their possession at the time disclosure is made – and that would be before the start of the trial. This came out during the trial, so technically the police did nothing wrong. They didn’t include the notes in the bundle they sent out to me either. Which is why a case reviewer should start the investigation over again, like it was day one. Believe no one, question everything – and remember – everyone lies.’

He clicked back to the slide of Killbride at his wedding. ‘So we come to Killbride’s “sinister genetic make-up”. After all, the 1960s study found a high percentage of convicted criminals had XYY syndrome. Which was a steaming pile of—’ He flashed up an image of Crapshoots and Bad Stats, his popular science text, and got a few smiles.

‘The study was flawed by poor sampling and experimental bias. But journalists who couldn’t count to twelve without taking their shoes and socks off started misinterpreting experimental results they didn’t understand, and behold – a medical myth was born.

‘XYY males are the same as the rest of us – they get married, raise kids and are no more prone to violence or criminality than you or me.’ He paused before adding darkly, ‘It is true, however, that they tend to be a bit on the tall side …’

A faint ripple of laughter ran around the auditorium.

‘The investigators never checked Gail Hammond’s car – she didn’t use it on the day, so it was dismissed as irrelevant. But what if her car was the crime scene and not Killbride’s?’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘I just had to know.’

The next slide showed a red, weather-faded VW Polo.

‘Gail’s car,’ he said. ‘Her parents sold it, but eight years on the buyer still owned it. Killbride’s appeal team paid to have the car forensically examined. Trapped under the headrest, they found seven bright green fibres matching those embedded in the ligature marks on Gail’s neck. And here’s the clincher: a fragment of torn fingernail was discovered in the groove of the seat rail runner. The new owner had adjusted it to his leg length the day he drove away in her car, and there it remained for eight years.’

Fennimore showed them images of the fragment side by side with post-mortem photographs of Gail’s torn fingernail. It was a good match. ‘The fingernail had viable DNA under it …’

The camouflaged man sat up straight.

‘… Gail’s DNA,’ Fennimore concluded, and the man settled back in his seat, mirroring the posture of the man next to him: one leg bent at the knee, the other stretched out.

‘It now looks like Gail was abducted and murdered in her own car.’

The camouflaged man picked up a pen and began doodling on the notepad in front of him.

‘If only police had checked Killbride’s claim that he dropped Gail off at the roadside …’ Fennimore said. ‘But all that tosh about highly aggressive XYY “super-males” quite turned their heads. They stopped looking – stopped even thinking.’

He went to the final slide: a newsprint photograph of a pale but smiling Killbride standing next to his barrister on the steps of the Supreme Court. The headline: KILLBRIDE INNOCENT.

‘You got Tom Killbride off, but Gail Hammond’s killer is still out there.’

Fennimore located the questioner in the middle of the second row. A student, he guessed, but not one he recognized.

‘You’re right,’ he said, ignoring the confrontational tone. ‘There are no happy endings in such sad tales; all we can hope for is justice. Tom Killbride found justice because of the hard work of people who didn’t even know him. Gail Hammond still waits for hers.’

‘The murderer made fools o. . .