Lying Ways Read online

  Lying Ways

  Cover

  Title Page

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62 One month later…

  Acknowledgements

  Canelo Crime

  About the Author

  Also by Rachel Lynch

  Copyright

  Cover

  Table of Contents

  Start of Content

  Chapter 1

  ‘Enjoy your holiday, Dinger, don’t rush back.’

  The prison officer’s farewell was laced with affection for the older man. Jack Bell had been a quiet and respectful convict. What you might call a good sort. Unlike some of the offenders inside Her Majesty’s Prison, Highton, Dinger’s eyes didn’t suggest a violent or sadistic past; in fact they were more like sparkling portals to a grand old soul, more suited to a kind grandfather. His hands were huge, but gentle, and he spoke to the prison staff respectfully, especially Jeanie. She was his favourite. He spent most of his time banged up in his cell, like the others, shuffling around in his burgundy slippers, sent to him by his loving niece. But he was also let out more than most, thanks to his library job, delivering books and papers up and down the corridors.

  Jack had been known as Dinger most of his adult life, and inside prison was no different. Tags and labels made existence easier on the inside. Dinger Bell. It was about the least clever or original sobriquet a bunch of heads could muster up, but then these were criminal minds, and lads at that: they were just babies, some of them, which is why Jeanie was so popular. She was a mother figure to them, from the sixty- and seventy-year-olds who’d never leave here, to the teenagers, arriving pale and terrified, bulging at the seams with regret and the realisation that they’d just made the biggest mistake of their lives.

  On Dinger’s first morning, thirteen years ago, she’d spotted him at breakfast, as she patrolled the room, chatting to the lads about what they missed: good food, family, football and the like. She’d welcomed the new arrival warmly and they’d chatted for a while about his family and his love of fishing. Dinger, like Jeanie, was a Cumbrian born and bred. As a girl, Jeanie’s father had taken her to catch trout from his boat on the lakes which had licenses, and there were plenty of them. Munching on warm ham sandwiches, wrapped in saved greaseproof paper, tied with string, staring into the clear water below, looking for ripples to indicate where the rainbow-coloured fish were feeding, was the overwhelming memory of her childhood, and it was a happy one.

  Dinger looked a bit like her father. But that’s where the comparison ended. He was about the same height: six foot four, with broad shoulders, a wide jaw and grey hair. Even in his issued grey sweatpants and jumper, he looked smart. Jeanie figured it was a generation thing: they took pride in what they wore and made the best of it, like they were taught by their mothers. She felt safe when he was around. In the midst of the constant male threat that was part of her job, despite all her training and skills, Jack Bell was a source of comfort and security. Nowadays, Jeanie saw the young ones coming in with jeans around their hips, hoods over their faces, and tattoos all over their bodies, and they gave off a different vibe to the men of Jack’s era. No matter their crime, there was something about a man who stood tall and proud, wearing cleaned and ironed clothes, that made one think him more innocent. In Category A prisons like Highton, the men weren’t allowed to wear their own clothes, because of the potential opportunities to conceal weapons and contraband, but they could still turn themselves out nicely, like Dinger.

  A final farewell look lingered between them as they said goodbye.

  Jeanie saw something in Jack’s eyes and threw him a warning glance. CCTV was everywhere, and they’d kept their feelings for one another hidden from questioning stares. She was warning him not to let his guard down now, at the eleventh hour, upon release, when, finally, they had the chance to meet up on freedom’s terms. He got the message and turned away, taking in the view for one last time. He’d seen snippets of the desolate moor from his tiny cell window, and now he took in the whole thing and breathed the free air deeply.

  HMP Highton was an institution that not many folk knew about. Of course, if you lived within a five-mile radius of the tiny village, and shopped at the local Co-op, then you’d be familiar with the high-security sprawl of concrete, metal and wire, built on peatland and heath, in between the rivers Esk and Irt. But the vast majority of the millions of visitors who crammed onto the Ravenglass steam railway every year, or hiked the western fells, had no idea. Neither did the tourists flocking to the nearby beaches on the coast of the Irish Sea. It existed in a bubble: sitting proudly on the ancient land that no one in their right mind would want to develop now. It’d be too expensive to dig adequate foundations into the edge of Hallsenna Moor, and, besides, it wouldn’t be allowed. The wildlife habitat was protected. Back when the Victorians were looking for remote places to lock up their prisoners and forget about them, no one worried about preserving nature, just shooting, stuffing and framing it. So the prison had been built in 1843 and had stood on the windy, desolate moor ever since, welcoming some of Britain’s worst offenders. The adult male population was made up of murderers, rapists, armed robbers and terrorists.

  Jeanie loved her job.

  She’d miss Jack Bell, though, brightening her shifts, though who knew where their relationship might go now he was free. He was inside for armed burglary; he’d ended up in HMP Highton because the use of weapons had elevated the crime to Category A. Jeanie couldn’t imagine Dinger being armed and dangerous, but then most of the stories from the lads were the same: they were all in here because of some misunderstanding. Jeanie wasn’t gullible or stupid, she knew the score, it’s just that she also saw the boys behind the men, and felt empathy towards them. Even the ones who refused to acknowledge their own humanity, burying it so it didn’t make them weak: she still treated them the same. There were the real bad ’uns, of course, the ones who’d committed the worst crimes imaginable; sometimes even Jeanie had trouble picturing some of the offences. But, to her, they’d once been little boys, loved by their mothers and looking up to their papas. Along the way, something had gone wrong.

  With Dinger, it was his naïve trust of folk
that had got him in to trouble. Until he met Rickie Burton, who hunted for foot soldiers to do his bidding. During his thirteen-year stay at Highton, Dinger had clawed his way up the pecking order and created a comfortable life. He’d quickly worked out who was in charge and made the system work for himself, and he kept out of trouble. Dinger was street clever like that, and Jeanie watched how he observed those who’d put themselves in charge of the wings. Like Rickie. Prison wasn’t much different to the outside, really, not when you looked at it: it was an almighty test of survival, like a primary school playground. The only difference was that the physical boundaries were smaller, but the rules were the same. Dinger knew how to play the game, and thus he endured.

  Now he was free of all that, and unchained. Free of Rickie.

  But the prison population was changing. Some of the old rules were not just being bent but broken entirely, and Jeanie noted a certain stench infiltrating the wings; more attacks on prison officers were being logged, and they’d become more sinister and well planned. The atmosphere of the typical clink had developed into something altogether more violent and disrespectful lately, and Jeanie knew it was because of alcohol and drugs. As well as staff shortages. There simply weren’t enough officers to prevent substance abuse and the inevitable violence which followed. The hours of boredom, always a constant component of incarceration, hadn’t changed, but the demographics of the penal population had, in conjunction with a decrease in funding. Less money and more bodies, along with brain-altering poisons, all combined to create a more uncertain environment for Jeanie to do her job. Dinger was getting out at the right moment. And that made her happy.

  In the fifteen years Jeanie had worked at Highton, she’d been assaulted five times. Each time had been worse than the last. Every time she’d witnessed an assault on a member of staff, the convict had been intoxicated on something. They made hooch by mixing hand gel, fruit, and bread for yeast. It smelled vile but it did the job. Other popular drugs were spice and weed. The wings stank of it. The method of ingestion grew more and more ingenious with every restriction put into place by the governor. E-cigarettes were their latest problem, because they were used to burn any drug the cons could get their hands on, creating an instant heat medium for inhalation. They’d become one of the new currencies inside, alongside spice, replacing cigarettes and shampoo.

  She and Dinger had talked more and more about this changing dynamic, and the circumstances outside that were producing it. For every prison is a reflection of the condition of the society beyond the wall. Theirs was not looking good. This was what Dinger’s plan was on the outside: getting the message out to those in the community who still gave a damn. He had a message about broken souls who ended up lost and forgotten, with no chance of rehabilitation. For this, Jeanie was proud of the man before her. He was committed to improving himself. He’d begun to write letters, with Jeanie’s help, to professors, psychiatrists, educators and politicians, lobbying them about why young men ended up behind bars. And he’d received invitations to meet some of them.

  After one final job for Rickie Burton.

  The thought cast a shadow over her brow and she looked up at the sky, beyond the huge wall separating Dinger from his freedom.

  ‘Take care, Dinger,’ she said. CCTV didn’t record conversations, but one couldn’t be too careful.

  He looked at her and smiled. His eyes were deep brown and he had wrinkles carved into his face, more than he had when she’d first met him thirteen years ago. His arms were still lean and his body hard and bulky, but his shoulders hunched over a little more, and silver hair stuck out above his T-shirt. She wanted to hold him but knew it was out of the question.

  Dinger held the belongings he’d handed over thirteen years ago, when he’d been fifty-three years old; they were forgotten and dated now. He chuckled at the size of the mobile phone, and the quality of the photographs he’d carried in his wallet: they were of his daughters who no longer spoke to him, and one of his pet dog, who’d died seven years ago in a kennel. There was a Zippo Venetian silver lighter and he handled it, watched closely by Jeanie. It always amazed her, at this moment of release, how humbling the ritual was. These guys had been on the wrong side of a locked door for so long that when they reclaimed their possessions, if they came in with any, it was a poignant moment.

  ‘Bye, ma’am,’ he said, with a cheeky glint in his eye.

  She looked up at him and beckoned him to the final set of doors, beyond which he’d start his new life on the outside.

  ‘You’ll be all right,’ she said gently. ‘You’ve got a lot of important work to do,’ she added and she didn’t mean the temporary job, set up by the parole agency at a local Co-op in Workington.

  He looked at her and she thought he might cry. Inside his huge frame, she knew he was a good man. She’d never been scared of him; she had no reason. She was intimidated by very few of them. There were a handful who she kept her eye on, like a teacher who knows her class, keeping the naughty ones at the front where she can see their hands. Jeanie and her colleagues used an array of strategies to keep the bad sorts at bay, and she had to admit that there were some men who were beyond such tolerance and leniency. Jeanie hated giving up on anyone, but she’d witnessed, during her long years of service, that some of them had suffered such poor starts in life that left them too tough and hardened to turn back, and no amount of kindness or understanding would ever change that. But Dinger wasn’t one of them.

  His lip twitched and his eyes looked glassy. It was as if he wanted to tell her something. She touched his arm softly and he turned to go. They’d already said everything they needed to, about the hotel, and what they wanted. The guard of the outer perimeter opened the huge iron door and the clanks of the locks turning grated on Jeanie’s nerves. He walked towards it and Jeanie turned away from the incessant wind that assaulted her senses. The damn gales never gave up in these parts.

  And then he was gone.

  Chapter 2

  Kelly balanced a piece of toast on her lap as she fed the baby. Lizzie was strapped inside a bouncer, balanced on the kitchen table. Kelly sat in front of her, trying to coax her to take more formula. Her partner, Johnny, was in bed. They took turns feeding in shifts, like a tag team, passing the baton to each other, barely talking, until the day was over, and they had time to assess what had worked well, and what not so well. Johnny invariably took responsibility for the night stretch, so Kelly could continue with her job, as the detective inspector responsible for serious crime in the north Lakes. So far, the arrangement had worked pretty well.

  For the baby.

  Their lives had changed. Where once they’d made their own decisions about what set the rhythm of their days, now it was this tiny nuclear rocket in a pink bodysuit who called all the shots. Lizzie made gurgling sounds and her little voice went up and down in pitch, as if she were singing. Kelly smiled and joined in, matching the confusion of notes, thrilling her daughter and adding to her masterpiece. Lizzie kicked her legs and bounced up and down, making it harder to feed her.

  Kelly’s phone buzzed and the toast slipped off her lap onto the floor, jam side down. At least it hadn’t stuck to her suit trousers.

  ‘Shit,’ Kelly said. She should know by now that phones and babies don’t mix.

  Lizzie giggled and stopped springing, pausing, waiting for her mother to turn her attention back towards her. It didn’t happen fast enough and she batted her hands around, kicking herself up and down in the bouncer. Kelly put her phone down while bending over to retrieve the toast, and the bottle was knocked out of her other hand by Lizzie’s enthusiastic foot. It clattered onto the floor and opened, and milk sprayed all over the cupboards. How it missed the two of them was a miracle. Lizzie giggled and sucked her fingers. Kelly exhaled and remained hanging upside down, deflated, eyes closed to the mess. She remained there for a few seconds, desperately trying to muster the energy required to sit back upright.

  Between her and Johnny, she knew she had the easier lif
e. She’d ached to get back to her desk at Eden House in Penrith, which is where, nowadays, her life was at its most peaceful. The problems caused by crime to other families were a welcome diversion, no matter how obscenely contradictory that sounded. A case that had a beginning and an end, as well as some evidence in the middle, was infinitely more straightforward than a baby. Their cobbled-together routine was holding for the time being, but each was as stressed as the other, and she knew that Johnny missed the mountains, as well as trying to fit in PTSD clients. He’d worked with veterans for five years now and it was something that gave him peace. An ex-soldier himself, he knew the impact war could have for decades after. They were only now seeing the fallout from the Second Gulf War, almost two decades later.

  He’d been with the mountain rescue for eight years now too, and she knew that he longed to get back out there, in the wild expanse of endless peak and lake, doing what he did best: saving people. The trauma therapy work was just as essential to his make-up and she heard him holding Zoom calls late at night, talking veterans out of suicide. They were both exhausted.

  But Lizzie was an entirely different mission. Johnny wasn’t a first-time father, but he’d missed much of Josie’s early life, being away on army operations for chunks of it. However, it also meant that he wasn’t coming into this blind, like Kelly. It had been pointed out to her, by her own father, that she could be too hard on herself at times, and that babies didn’t come packaged with user manuals. But she couldn’t help feeling overwhelmed sometimes.

  It was almost nine a.m. and time for Kelly to hand over. Sure enough, she heard Johnny’s alarm go off upstairs and felt a flood of relief that she’d be able to spend her day with predictable adults, even if they were poring over horrible crimes, rather than in the company of a mercurial two-month-old, sophisticated in the art of chaos. She heard Johnny go into the bathroom and wash quickly and she looked up at Lizzie and slowly got to her feet, thankful she didn’t have to change. It was always risky, the decision to shower and dress before breakfast rather than after it. She gave Lizzie a teddy bear and approached the mirror in the hallway, checking her long auburn hair for detritus. It was clear and she tied it up. The skin around her bright green eyes looked tired and dark. She applied some lip gloss and rubbed a bit of blush on her cheeks. At forty, she was considered an older mother. And sometimes she felt it. These days, wherever she was, she noticed every young twenty-something pushing a pram, and envied their energy. She went back to the kitchen to wipe up the milk.