Chris Collett - [Tom Mariner 01] (23 page)

‘Who’s a clever boy then?’ She smiled enigmatically back at him from the mirror, a hand straying down over his groin.

Mariner wished she wouldn’t talk in riddles all the time.

‘What?’ he asked irritably.

‘You’re going to be a daddy.’

Mariner had almost passed out. Horror wasn’t the desired response, he could tell immediately from Greta’s face, but he couldn’t help it, he was horrified.

‘I thought we wanted a family,’ she wailed, her misery equal to his. And maybe he did, somewhere in the safe and distant future, in an abstract kind of way, but not now.

Occasionally since then he’d wondered if he could have compromised. But he couldn’t, not over something so big.

And the experience had shaken him, because up until that point he’d always considered his mother and himself to be the wronged parties, when they’d been abandoned by his own father. But now, for the first time he could see it from the opposite perspective. Had his mother sprung the same unwelcome surprise on his dad?

Greta was distraught, and later that night Mariner had tried to make it up to her but had failed dismally, as he had done ever since.

‘So it’s since then that this problem has developed?’ asked the doctor, bringing Mariner back to the present.

‘Yes.’

‘And have you had further contact with your girlfriend?

Did she go ahead with the pregnancy?’

‘I assume so, yes.’ Even though he’d tried contacting her to offer financial support, Greta had completely stonewalled him. It wasn’t enough she said. She didn’t want his money. She wanted a husband and father for her child.

After a while he’d just given up.

‘Well,’ said the doctor, after a considered pause. ‘I think this is all in your mind. You’re feeling guilty.’

‘Guilty about what??’ Mariner was indignant. He wasn’t the one who’d walked out.

‘Well, you must surely have thought from time to time that you might be a father, that there could be some small being out there who’s your responsibility?’

‘My partner made it very clear. Whatever she chose to do, she didn’t want me involved. She was going to take care of it.’ But the doctor was right. It hadn’t stopped him from wondering. Rarely a day went by when he didn’t consider the possibility of a small child out there going through life under the same cloud of uncertainty that he had.

The doctor looked at him. ‘I would suggest you look for a resolution, because at the moment your body is telling you loud and clear that it won’t risk getting into that kind of trouble again.’

‘Is it?’

‘Yes. It’s saying “don’t have sex, it leads to unwanted pregnancies”. Sort things out with your ex and I think you’ll find that this is just a passing phase. I’ll prescribe you a couple of Viagra though, just in case. That ought to be enough to kick-start you again.’ Mariner winced at the choice of phrase. ‘There might be side effects of course, including headaches and nausea. But see how you go.

You’ll need to weigh those against the benefits.’ His own line coming back at him.

Taking the prescription, Mariner tucked it into his wallet where it kept ironic company with a packet of three, purchased six months before but still unopened.

DI Mariner was astute, Anna thought as she waited for Jamie to wrestle into his T-shirt. They were getting used to this. For some weird reason she’d woken up this morning thinking about the detective. She liked him. She liked him a lot. After he’d gone, she’d tried to remember the last time she’d been held by a man, not as a precursor to sex, but just held. She couldn’t, not even by her dad. Despite the emotional turmoil going on inside it had felt good. She could still recall that musky smell of a man who’s put in an honest day’s graft, sweetened by the faintest hint of aftershave.

It came as something of a surprise to her that she could be even remotely attracted to a man like Mariner. She unfailingly went for ‘dark and classically handsome’, never for ‘pale and interesting’, however blue the eyes. Mariner was thin to the point of skinny too, and older than the men she generally fancied, he must be well into his forties. But there was something about his quiet dependability that she found somehow warm and reassuring.

Jamie could have a complete change of clothes today; the new ones she’d bought for him. The rest could go in the wash, including those he’d worn a couple of nights ago. But as Anna turned them inside out something heavy dropped out of the pocket. Jamie pounced on it and she had to wrest it from him. It was a mobile phone. Not hers, but Jonathan’s. She had to smile at that. He’d be lost without it, but too proud to contact her to get it back—if he even knew where it was. Just out of curiosity she had a look at the stored numbers. Hers was the third in the list, probably about what she’d expect. And Melanie? In at number eight and climbing steadily.

In the hall, the letterbox snapped shut. A couple of bills and a package had dropped on to the mat. Anna went to pick them up, turning her attention to the large padded envelope first. Clearly one of the postal service’s sorting office disasters, it was battered and crumpled and somewhere along the way one edge had been repaired with adhesive tape. But reading the address made her shiver.

‘It’s Eddie’s writing,’ she murmured in disbelief.

‘Eddie,’ Jamie echoed meaninglessly, continuing to shovel cereal into his mouth, some of the milk not quite making it and running down his chin. Anna had drawn the line at Hula Hoops for breakfast, and after several mornings of scraping various glutinous substances off the walls, had finally found a cereal that he liked.

Anna’s hands trembled slightly as she took the thick envelope into the lounge. It was postmarked a week ago last Friday, so it had taken a long time to get here, literally caught up in the system judging by its battered condition.

But why was Eddie sending her things through the post, and why now? Had he known then that his time was running out, or was it just an unhappy coincidence? Tearing open the flap she slid out a blue envelope folder. It contained a sheaf of papers held together with a paper-clip. There was no explanatory note, just a series of computer printouts that looked as if they’d been taken from the Internet.

It took Anna several moments to work out that they represented information on medication, the kind used to control autistic behaviours and suddenly Anna got the message. Eddie was helping her out. He’d have known that if anything happened to him, one of the first things she would do was to try and find a residential place for Jamie, and that she would come up against the same insistence on medication as he had. So he was sharing his knowledge with her. Perhaps it was even his way of saying it was all right, he’d had to consider it too.

Not for the first time, Anna wondered what Eddie could possibly have been involved in that would put him in such danger, and experienced a stinging guilt that she hadn’t been able to help. All she could do now was accept and make use of what he’d given her. There wasn’t time to read it all now, and at first glance she wasn’t even sure if she would understand it anyway, so she slid the papers back into the folder envelope and put them in a drawer for when she could set aside more time.

The journey to the day centre was becoming routine and Anna no longer had to make a conscious effort to steer the car in the right direction.

‘Wow, look at you today,’ said Francine, to Jamie when she saw him.

‘I thought he could do with a new wardrobe,’ Anna said.

‘We didn’t have too bad a night either, he was only up a couple of times.’

‘That’s great.’

Yes, it was. And in a strange way Anna was beginning to feel like an old hand. She’d planned on going back to the office today, if only to touch base, but the package had brought Eddie back to the forefront of her thoughts. After the funeral, she had requested that his ashes be buried in the garden of remembrance, along with a small commemorative plaque. The crematorium official had told her that it would take at least forty-eight hours to arrange, and now she felt a sudden desire to check that the task had been done. Leaving the day centre she took a diversion to Lodge Hill.

It had rained during the night and as she crossed the damp grass, a layer of early morning mist hung suspended over the ground. Combined with the noise of several rooks cawing in the trees it lent the crematorium the quality of a Gothic horror film, and it was almost a relief to Anna to find that she was not quite alone. As she approached the area where Eddie’s plaque should have been planted, she saw another woman, dressed, not in the black hooded cloak that would have sustained the illusion, but in jeans and a leather jacket. As Anna came nearer, she realised that the woman was crouching directly in front of Eddie’s newly planted memorial, arranging a small bunch of carnations, and unaware of Anna’s presence, until she spoke.

‘Hello,’ said Anna. The effect was immediate. The young woman turned and seeing Anna, scrambled to her feet and began to back away, until with enough distance between them she turned and ran.

But those few brief seconds were enough for Anna to recognise her. ‘Wait!’ she called, but to no avail. Realising that the woman wasn’t going to stop, Anna wasted valuable seconds debating whether to follow on foot, or return to her car. She opted for the chase, running after the woman as she fled from the cemetery out on to the main road, and praying that she wouldn’t get into a waiting vehicle. An extensive housing estate had grown up around the crematorium, and glancing back occasionally to see Anna in pursuit, the girl kept on running, through the network of almost identical streets, until finally she emerged on to the busy dual carriageway of the main Bristol Road.

She seemed to be heading for the bus stop, which would take her back towards the city centre. If she boarded a bus Anna didn’t have a hope, it would move off long before Anna could catch up. But for once things were going Anna’s way, and there were none of the familiar double-deckers to be seen. Anna was gaining ground now and the girl showing signs of panic, until suddenly a black cab appeared from nowhere and with the minimal wave of a hand, the girl flagged it and jumped in. Anna was still too far off to read the cab’s licence number, but not for the vehicle registration. Rehearsing it over and over to herself, she fumbled in her bag for a pen and scribbled down the number on the palm of her hand. Breathless, but still running on adrenaline, she retraced her steps to the crematorium, where she retrieved her mobile phone from the car.

In seconds she was connected.

‘I’d like to speak to Inspector Mariner, please,’ she gasped. ‘It’s urgent.’

Tony Knox was nearer to the phone in Mariner’s office when it rang. He picked it up.

‘Anna Barham, boss,’ he said, watching Mariner’s reaction a little too carefully as he handed it over.

‘Who? Oh.’ Mariner took the phone, masking, he hoped, the fact that Anna had barely been absent from his thoughts, conscious or unconscious, since last night. She was probably embarrassed now about what had happened, but when she spoke, if anything, she sounded excited.

‘I think I’ve just seen Kerry.’

All thoughts of the previous evening evaporated. ‘Where are you?’

‘Selly Oak; at the crematorium. She went off in a cab, but I’ve got the registration.’

It was tenuous, but it was something. ‘Okay, go ahead.’

But he sensed hesitation.

‘On one condition,’ she said.

‘What?’ That we don’t talk about what happened last night? Fine. But it was nothing like that.

‘I’ll give you the number,’ Anna said. ‘But I want to be there when you talk to her.’

Christ, she didn’t ask much. ‘Alternatively, I could just charge you with obstruction,’ he said, coolly, but, like that other significant aspect of his life, it was impossible to maintain. ‘All right,’ he conceded. ‘When I talk to her informally you can be there, as long as you stay quiet and don’t interfere. But if I have to bring her to the station for formal questioning, you know that will be different, don’t you?’

‘Of course. Look, I know you’re going out on a limb for me. Thanks.’

‘Sure.’

She recited the cab’s registration number for him to write down.

‘It will take time to trace this back,’ Mariner warned her.

‘And even then we may not be sure. If the taxi has dropped her off somewhere in the city, we’ll have lost her. Go back to your place and if we do find her, I’ll pick you up from there.’

‘Thank you.’

More gratitude. He’d save it up for a rainy day.

A weak sun was trying to push its way through the low, grey cloud when, fifty minutes later, Mariner drove down Millpond Road, one of the shabbier aspects of Edgbaston, with Anna Barham beside him in the passenger seat. They’d been lucky. The taxi driver who picked up Kerry had been able to furnish them with the exact dropping-off point and even the number of the house he’d seen her let herself into, perhaps making a note of it for his own personal future reference.

The road comprised mainly Victorian three-and four storey houses of rusty brick that had long since passed their heyday. Most were now segregated into numerous flats and bedsits, to provide cheap accommodation for asylum seekers, DHSS claimants, and anyone else with a high level of desperation. None of whom had any long-term interest in the aesthetic qualities of the properties. Consequently, gardens were untended, stray rubbish littered the streets and this morning a couple of mangy wire-haired dogs foraged for pickings amongst the over-spilling bins.

Number seventy-two blended perfectly into the squalor.

Torn, grey net curtains hung at some of the windows, although those higher up looked new. There was no bell or knocker, so Mariner banged his fist on the door, creating as much noise as he could.

After a faint burst of music and some scuffling, the door was opened by a large African-Caribbean woman of indiscernible age. ‘What you want?’ she barked, squinting suspiciously at Mariner’s proffered warrant card.

‘We’re looking for Kerry,’ he said.

‘Kerry?’

‘We’ve got reason to believe she lives here. We just want to talk to her.’