Someone Who Isn't Me, Danuta Kot [good books to read for adults TXT] 📗

Alicia Traynor. At first, Traynor had got Poppy working for the girls at the massage parlour, doing hair and make-up. She had been generous with the roll-ups and the pills – sweeties, she’d called them. ‘Xanthe was OK with it,’ Poppy protested. ‘She said it wasn’t like the hard stuff I’d been on, it was just, you know, party stuff, like everyone does.’

‘And then what happened?’

It had started slowly, Traynor asking Poppy to be ‘nice’ to this guy or that guy, but it had escalated fast, going from one man, and then it had been two, and then it had been like a party, and when Poppy expressed reluctance, Traynor made her roll-ups, and somehow, it was all a laugh after that.

And very soon, Poppy needed the stuff that was in the roll-ups, but Traynor wouldn’t hand it out for nothing, not any more. ‘I made some videos,’ Poppy said, her face flushing, not meeting anyone’s eyes. ‘Alicia said she’d send one of them to my dad if I didn’t do what she said.’ Her eyes filled with tears. ‘I didn’t know!’

‘What didn’t you know, Poppy?’

Kay felt herself tense. She wasn’t sure she wanted to hear this, and as the story came out, she wanted to shake Poppy until her teeth rattled for her docile compliance in something she must have known was dangerous and illegal; for sitting there and letting murder happen.

Poppy had driven Traynor and a young man down the coast to Stone Creek. She had witnessed the early stages of an attack on the man, but he’d managed to escape. Traynor had gone after him, taking a motorbike across the rough ground. ‘There was a fight,’ Poppy told them, ‘and he ran away. Alicia went after him. One of the guys tried to stop her, but he’d been hurt in the fight and he couldn’t stand up. Then she came back and said it was OK. I drove her back. I didn’t know they’d killed him.’ Just like that, Kay thought. Poppy was crying as she talked. ‘Am I going to prison?’

Kay wondered what Poppy had thought was happening that night. Her fear of Traynor might have kept her compliant at the time, but there was no justification for her continued silence, apart from the drugs that Traynor went on supplying. Becca had risked her life to save an eleven-year-old boy. Poppy had watched an attack that became fatal and had asked no questions at all, told no one what she knew, just retreated into the drugs haze, where she felt safe.

The cynic in Kay said that Poppy’s grief now was more to do with the prospect of prison than about the death of the young man whose child had already lost her mother. But Poppy had agreed to talk to the police, and she seemed to be telling them everything she knew.

Maybe that was a start.

Curwen sat in on the questioning of the MLRO from the Bridlington Building Society, Gordon Fletcher. He was an ex-police officer, he wasn’t short of cash, and he lawyered up at once. Curwen expected him to go ‘no comment’, but the woman from the financial crimes team, Angela Hayes, didn’t think he would. ‘He’s on pretty safe ground,’ she told Curwen. ‘He went by the book. He just didn’t follow any of it up – took it all at face value. His finances look clean – I’m sure he got something for doing soft reports, but where he’s stashed it… If we can’t find it, we can’t charge him with anything.’

‘I did the report,’ the man kept saying in response to DS Hayes’ questions. ‘I looked at everything I needed to.’

‘Did you check the source of the money Docklands Holdings was donating?’

‘I did. It came from the sale of property, and from a range of legitimate businesses.’

‘Did you look at the businesses themselves? Did you look at the original property sale?’

‘There was no requirement to do so.’

And that became the refrain. There was no requirement to do so. He’d done the barest minimum, but his back was safely covered.

Angela Hayes moved on. ‘I want to ask you about your relationship with Xanthe Adamos.’

‘No comment.’

‘Where did you meet Ms Adamos?’

‘No comment.’

‘Why did the relationship end?’

‘No comment.’

‘It was because Ms Adamos went to the US, wasn’t it?’

‘No comment.’

‘Did you expect that? How did you see your future with Xanthe Adamos?’

‘No comment.’

‘And did you subsequently have a relationship with Poppy Brooke?’

‘I did not.’

After the interview, Curwen took Angela Hayes for a coffee – not in the canteen at the police station, but in one of the coffee shops near the harbour. ‘Are you going to go after him?’ Curwen asked as they sat down at the table.

Hayes stirred sugar into her coffee. ‘Probably not. The evidence isn’t there. Oh, he won’t work as a MLRO again, but he did his job. Just very badly. He’s not the only one like that.’

‘You reckon he knew?’

‘I reckon he didn’t care. I’m pretty sure he wasn’t getting paid – not in cash, so he could tell himself it was all OK.’

‘So what did he get?’

‘He got a girlfriend. Xanthe Adamos. I’m willing to bet he thought it was the real thing, or he told himself it was. He wasn’t going to drop Adamos in it, but did you notice how pissed off he was when I asked him about Poppy Brooke?’

‘So what was that about?’

‘Well, it looks like Lavery and Traynor were working together. He looked after their cash for them, Traynor supplied the girls to keep our man Fletcher happy. But he wanted a proper girlfriend, not someone who was doing it for money. We’ve been investigating Adamos, and so has Hammond’s team. She worked for Tania’s House and probably persuaded Fletcher not to tie the donation up in too much red tape. But she did a runner a few months ago, got a place in a US university and left without letting anyone know. She got the money for the fees from somewhere. We’re