Paul Gitsham - Web of Lies

Brilliant book Heart-stopping finale

I do love this series

Paul never lets you down

Beautifully written, well plotted and well researched

Up there with the best series

PAUL GITSHAM started his career as a biologist working in the UK and Canada. After stints as the worlds most over-qualified receptionist and a spell ensuring that international terrorists hadnt opened a Childs Savings Account at a major UK bank (a job even duller than working reception) he retrained as a Science teacher.

The DCI Warren Jones series

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Silent as the Grave

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The Common Enemy

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A Deadly Lesson (Novella)

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Forgive Me Father

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At First Glance (Novella)

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A Price to Pay

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Out of Sight

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Time to Kill

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Web of Lies

PAUL GITSHAM

HQ

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

HarperCollins Publishers

Macken House, 39/40 Mayor Street Upper,

Dublin 1 D01 C9W8

Ireland

First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2023

Copyright Paul Gitsham 2023

Paul Gitsham asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the authors imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

E-book Edition March 2023 ISBN: 9780008395339

Version: 2023-02-06

Table of Contents

To my beloved wife, Cheryl.

We did it!

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The woman hunched over the workbench straightens with a groan. How long has she been working? Shes so tired, she cant even remember. She looks at the pile of finished boxes, then at the far bigger pile awaiting assembly, and feels a wave of despair.

Christmas is half a year away, but shell need to fulfil her orders months before then. She has to. Its her last throw of the dice; the culmination of years of scraping by, building her reputation, garnering positive reviews. First at the kitchen table, then at a second-hand dining table in the garage, and now in the cheapest rental unit, on the dodgiest industrial estate in Middlesbury.

If she can prove herself this Christmas, they can finally move forward; the banks will start listening again, and they can put all this behind them and start living like a family once more. Her eyes flick towards the picture above the bench: four crudely drawn stick figures representing the centre of her universe.

Shes exhausted; all she wants to do is go home and sleep. But its too early. She has to hit her daily target. Miss it tonight and shell have even more to do tomorrow.

She wistfully remembers her university days: all-nighters fuelled by endless cups of coffee made with three spoonfuls of harsh, supermarket-brand instant coffee. Foul-tasting, even with milk and sugar, but effective.

Those days are long gone. Caffeine no longer does the job.

Opening a drawer, she pulls out a small tin marked paperclips and unscrews the lid. She has to be careful; she needs enough to get her through the next two hours, but not enough to stop her sleeping when she finally makes it home.

Just the one line, she decides; although she makes it a generous one.

The knocking on the door makes her jump.

Who the hell is that, this time of night? She hastily wipes her nose, screws the lid back on the tin and drops it back in the drawer.

More knocking.

During the day, she works with the door propped open to let in more light, but not at night, when the occupants of the other units have gone home.

Crossing the workspace, she peers through the narrow window next to the door.

She recognises a familiar outline.

What are you doing here? she starts to ask as she turns the handle.

The words die in her throat

Louisa Greenland, thirty-one years old, missing since Tuesday night.

Detective Chief Inspector Warren Jones projected a headshot of a dark-haired woman with pale, lightly freckled skin, onto the briefing room screen. Her husband, Ben, reported her missing yesterday afternoon, when the nursery for their youngest child contacted him at work to say she had been sick and needed to go home. Louisa is the primary contact, but her phone was switched off. He picked up his daughter and took her home and could find no sign of his wife. He went around to the industrial unit she rented for her cosmetics business and found it locked. None of the tenants from neighbouring units recalled seeing her that day.

The question was immediate and predictably from Detective Sergeant David Hutchinson, who always got his hand up first. A transplant from Newcastle, Hutch specialised in organising door-to-door canvassing; hed worked at Middlesbury for longer than anyone cared to remember.

Why didnt he notice she was missing first thing?

Apparently, Louisa has been working very late for the past few months, and her husband is a light sleeper, so she is staying in the spare bedroom. He gets up with the kids and does the school and nursery run; Louisa works from home during the day and picks them up. For the past few months, shes then left her husband in charge for the evening and walked to her unit and worked until the early hours. Warren gave a tight smile. Well be looking into the state of their marriage as a matter of course.

Why has it come our way? asked DS Mags Richardson. Shes been gone, what? Thirty-six hours? Surely its still a missing person inquiry.

An overabundance of caution perhaps, but there are enough inconsistencies for them to bring us in, said Warren. The Missing Persons Units careful approach was understandable. The previous year the team, based at Hertfordshire Constabularys headquarters in Welwyn Garden City, had failed to escalate the disappearance of a vulnerable victim. Several months had passed before her body was found, during which time her killer had been free to murder again. The subsequent inquiry into those failings, and another poorly handled disappearance, had been brutal, almost claiming the scalp of Camilla Wong, the inspector in charge.

At first glance, Louisas a prime candidate for somebody whos decided to take off for a while. Shes had mental health episodes previously, including post-partum depression, and has been under significant pressure for the last year. Her husband claims their marriage is fine, but their sleeping arrangements suggest that might not be entirely true. Her unit was locked, its alarm set, and her bag wasnt there. A search of the premises revealed a quantity of cocaine; she has struggled with addiction issues in the past.