M. Arlidge - Liar Liar

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?

Emilia had been up all night and she was dog-tired. This story was a good one, but did this guy really have to strike every night? Getting testimony from witnesses and emergency service personnel at one major fire was hard enough, but to have to do so from three fires, in the small hours, three nights running? This guy just didn’t let up.

Emilia drained her last drop of coffee. It was 7 a.m. and the office was starting to fill up. Her colleagues all stopped to chat, aware that Emilia had been at her desk since 4 a.m. working up her copy for the next day’s edition. Emilia was a child of the Twitter generation – her live feed keeping colleagues, fans and friends bang up to speed with what she was doing at any given moment. It was a brilliant way to disseminate breaking news, but also a fabulous vehicle for self-promotion. As she’d sat in the lonely office through the night, she’d made sure to keep the Twittersphere in the loop about developments, so the world could marvel at her investigative zeal and her bosses (and more besides) could see how committed she was. Privately, she hoped that someone in London might take notice and drop her a line.

But that was the future. Her priority now was creating a detailed four-page spread about the Southampton arsonist’s ‘Reign of Terror’. The police hadn’t confirmed it yet, but it was strongly rumoured that a young woman had died in tonight’s fires, bringing the killer’s total to four victims in three nights. That was pretty good going by anyone’s standards and confirmed his status as a prolific serial killer. If he kept going at this pace, he might exceed them all.

Reading between the lines, the police still had no clue who their arsonist was. Everyone – police, public, even Emilia herself – had expected this guy to slow down, but he hadn’t and it now prompted an interesting question. If they couldn’t catch him, then how could they stop him? Her editor had leapt on the idea of a city-wide curfew and Emilia had been happy to run with it. She didn’t necessarily believe it would happen, but it raised some concerns about human rights while simultaneously highlighting the police’s lack of progress. Secretly, Emilia hoped the city authorities would go for it – it would be incredibly dramatic and would ensure that the world’s attention would be on Southampton for a short period of time. Not since the Boston manhunt had anything so draconian been floated.

She had almost finished typing when her mobile rang. She always put her number and Twitter handle by her byline, so was constantly receiving phone calls from snitches, crooks and chancers on the make. The caller ID flagged the number as ‘withheld’, suggesting the caller was either important or very shady, so scooping up her phone Emilia hurried to the ladies’ loo – it was the only spot in this place where you could get a modicum of privacy.

‘Emilia Garanita.’

‘Emilia, it’s Adam Latham. I’m the Chief Fire Offi-’

‘I know who you are, Adam. What can I do for you?’

‘I hear you’ve been talking to a number of my officers tonight. About the latest fires -’

‘Everything I did was strictly legal and above board and I don’t appreciate being call-’

‘I haven’t called to bollock you, Emilia. I’ve called to help you.’