Chris Collett - [Tom Mariner 01] (24 page)

‘There’s a girl lives on the top floor,’ the woman said.

‘Don’t know what her name is.’

Mariner held out the photograph. ‘Is this her?’

The woman peered. ‘Yeah, a real sweetie.’

‘We need to come in.’

The woman shrugged, turned and shuffled back into her own apartment, slamming the door behind her and leaving them alone in a dark and desolate hallway. Mariner led the way up grimy, uncarpeted wooden stairs, through a dim atmosphere, thick with the stench of stale cigarette smoke and rotting food. He cringed on Anna’s behalf. It was all in a day’s work for him, but for her it must be like a different planet. They passed one landing and continued on up to the next. A door at the top was crudely daubed ‘la’ in grey paint and had a tarnished knocker in the centre. Mariner rapped on it. Kerry was apparently expecting someone. The door was pulled back almost immediately, wide and welcoming, by a tall slim girl, with glossy shoulder-length chestnut hair and chocolate eyes, which were instantly wary. An inch of her midriff was visible, showing off a small, neat tattoo of a butterfly.

Mariner held out his warrant card again. ‘Hello Kerry.’

Kerry stared at him, suspiciously, trying to work out where she’d seen him before, but then she saw Anna, and making the connection, attempted to slam the door shut again. But Mariner was prepared for this and the door rebounded off the sole of his shoe. ‘We just need to ask you a few questions about Eddie Barham,’ he said. ‘We can do it here or at the station. It’s up to you.’ He’d said the magic 188

words. Her resistance breached, Kerry led them through a short hallway into a lounge.

The small flat was surprisingly neat in comparison with the rest of the building. She doesn’t bring her clients back here, thought Mariner, it’s far too homely and personal.

Even to his undiscriminating eye the decor was tasteful and pleasing, and above all it was scrupulously clean. For Anna’s sake he was glad of that. That wasn’t the only surprise, either. Kerry, when she spoke was surprisingly articulate, although her manners didn’t extend to offering them a seat. Mariner sat down anyway and Anna followed his lead, leaving Kerry with little choice. Mariner also held back on any introduction of Anna, allowing Kerry to make the assumption that she, too, was a police officer.

‘Tell me how you first met Eddie Barham,’ began Mariner.

‘It was a long time ago, I can’t really remember.’ She was cool and closed.

‘Try.’

Glancing over at the window, Kerry made a show of trying to recall, though it was more likely that she was weighing up how much to tell him.

‘It was a couple of years ago,’ she said at last. ‘Maybe three. I was living rough. A bunch of us used to go to this cafe, greasy spoon place near the bus station, when we could afford it. Eddie came in there. We got talking.’

‘About what?’

‘I don’t know, just chit-chat, you know. Nothing really, but he was very good at getting stuff out of you. He was just nice, friendly, and he seemed interested.’

‘In what?’

‘Anything, everything. How we lived. What we did all day. I did think it was a bit weird, until one day he coughed that he was a reporter. He said he was working on an article about what it was like to be living on the streets in Birmingham. He wasn’t going to use real names or anything, but just write about how kids ended up there, and what happened to them. He said it was a chance to tell our story.’

‘And you helped him with it?’

‘Yeah. I thought it would be a laugh. Besides he was offering good money.’

‘Did you know about what was going on at Streetwise?’

Kerry blushed, more in anger than anything. ‘Yeah of course I knew. Everyone did.’

‘So you were aware that Frank Crosby was using the drop-in centre as a way of procuring under age kids for prostitution?’ Mariner had to be sure of this. From the corner of his eye he saw Anna’s eyes widen almost imperceptibly, but he couldn’t help that. She’d asked to be here.

‘I didn’t know about Frank then,’ Kerry said. ‘I’d seen him around, but I just thought he was a friend of Paul’s.

Paul was the one who did all the deals.’

‘Did you ever do any “work” for Paul?’

‘You know I did, don’t you?’

‘And you told Eddie about it.’

‘I missed one of our meetings. Eddie wanted to know where I’d been, so yes, I told him. I think I wanted to shock him.’

‘And did you?’

‘Sort of. But Eddie was too much of a pro. He just found it more interesting than the piece he was writing. He wanted to know all the details.’

‘Did you tell him?’

‘I could only tell him what had happened to me. I said he’d have to find out the rest himself. I don’t grass.’ Implicit was her utter contempt for informants. Mariner wondered what she’d have thought if he’d told her that it was how he’d first joined the payroll of the West Midlands Police.

‘The next thing I knew, your lot had arrested Paul and Frank Crosby. That was when I first knew who Frank really was. But by then Eddie had paid me enough to put down a deposit on this place, so I didn’t have to go to the drop-in any more.’

‘Is that when you started working for Frank Crosby yourself, Kerry?’ Mariner asked innocently. He hadn’t been sure, but her reaction verified it all right.

‘I don’t work for him,’ she said, petulantly. ‘I work for myself.’

‘And where do you work?’ asked Mariner. ‘Where do you take your clients?’

‘I rent a room.’

‘In one of Frank’s seedy little hotels?’ Mariner could tell from her face that he’d hit the mark. ‘And I suppose Frank puts the occasional punter your way, too.’

‘It’s worth it, they’re always generous, Frank’s clients.

I had to get started somehow.’

As if there was no other option in life. ‘I bet Frank doesn’t know that you helped Eddie with his story, does he?

Does he ever encourage you to offer your clients extra services?’

‘Like what?’

‘Like a little additional chemical stimulation.’

‘No. I don’t mess with any of that stuff.’ She was rock steady.

Mariner let it go for now. ‘And did you see Eddie again after the story broke?’

‘Not for a while, no.’

‘So when did you see him?’

‘A few weeks ago. He’d been in to Maureen’s.’

‘Heaven’s Gate.’

‘I know.’ Even she could see the irony. ‘He’d seen my picture. Maureen gave him one of my cards, so he phoned me.’

‘For an appointment?’

Crunch time. But Kerry just laughed. ‘Not exactly.’

‘So why did he contact you?’

‘He wanted a favour.’

‘Another story? About what? Frank Crosby?’

‘No, it wasn’t like that. Eddie’s got this brother who’s a bit backward, you know?’

The sudden shift in the conversation caught Mariner off guard. ‘Jamie?’ he said, nonplussed.

‘Yeah, that’s right. Eddie looked after him. Anyway, he was having trouble with him getting horny. He’d started playing with his dick in public, groping women, that kind of thing. Eddie thought it might help if he actually had sex, you know. He thought it might calm him down. He could hardly ask any of his friends to do it, so he had been trying escort agencies. That’s how he finished up at Maureen’s.

Trouble was, none of the girls would go to his house, and Eddie needed Jamie to learn that sex is something you do in private, in your own place. Then when he saw my picture in Maureen’s and she told him what I was doing, he thought I’d be able to help. He knew I looked after myself.’

‘And did you agree to do it?’ asked Mariner.

‘Not straight away. I mean, I felt sorry for the boy. Nearly thirty and had never been laid. Can you imagine that?’

Mariner didn’t say that actually he was beginning to get an inkling. ‘I said I’d want to meet him first,’ Kerry went on. ‘I wouldn’t do it with just anybody. Some of these people are, well, you know, I don’t know if I could. So one night I met Eddie in the pub and he took me back to his house. ‘

‘When was that?’

‘About a month ago, I suppose.’

‘And did you do the business?’

Anna visibly flinched, but Kerry remained casual. ‘No, but I would have. He was quite sweet and good looking too.

You couldn’t really tell that there was anything wrong with him, apart from some of that weird stuff. But he wouldn’t come near me. It was as if he wanted to, he kept sort of looking, but Eddie thought it might take time for him to get used to me.’

‘So what did you do?’

‘I started just going to see them. I used to stop by at their house on my way back from other appointments. I would have been bloody stupid not to. All I did was sit and watch TV with them, but Eddie still paid me.’

‘Did you tell Eddie Barham that you work for Frank?’

‘I told you, I don’t.’

‘All right then, did Eddie know about your little “arrangement” with Crosby?’

‘Not to begin with, no. Why should he? It was none of his business.’

‘So who was it who had him beaten up three weeks ago?’

Kerry fell silent, avoiding Mariner’s eye. ‘Frank must have found out that I’d been seeing Eddie and jumped to the wrong conclusion.’ She glared at Mariner. ‘Like you did. He wanted me to stop seeing him. Said he knew what crap reporters wrote. I told him it wasn’t anything to do with that, but Frank didn’t believe me.’

‘So he gave Eddie a going-over. And then what?’

‘Frank told me not to see Eddie again. That if I did, the next time he wouldn’t get off so lightly and neither would I. I called round to tell Eddie I couldn’t see them any more.

It upset me to do it. I think even Jamie realised something was wrong. He was really sweet, tried to comfort me.’

Mariner remembered Jamie’s words: Kay no cry. ‘Eddie was disappointed of course, but he understood.’

‘So when did you see Eddie Barham again?’

‘Last Sunday night, he called me. He’d had a bad week.

Jamie had walked up to some woman in the swimming baths and grabbed her breast. Eddie was worried that she might bring indecent assault charges. He was desperate. He wanted me to go round. Just one last time.’

‘And?’

‘I told him I couldn’t. I had another appointment anyway.

Then when I was waiting for the punter to show…’

‘Derek.’

Now Kerry realised where she’d seen Mariner before.

She looked at him anew. ‘Yeah, that’s right. While I was waiting for Derek, Eddie turned up. He knew where I met people and he came to talk me into going with him.’

‘And you went with him. Even though Crosby had warned you not to.’

‘Eddie could be persuasive, and like I said, I felt bad.

He’d already paid me a lot with nothing to show for it. I wanted to wait to explain to Derek, but Eddie had left Jamie at home on his own so we had to go straight away.’

So that’s what the argument was about. ‘Did Eddie ask you to bring him a little extra something this time?’

‘No. He wasn’t into that shit and neither am I.’

‘So what happened?’ Mariner asked, even though he was already beginning to assemble the jigsaw for himself.

‘Eddie took me back to his house in the car. But when we got there, his front door was wide open and there were these two guys inside. Jamie had gone. Eddie went ballistic’

‘What guys? Frank Crosby’s men?’

‘No. I’d never seen them before. They were going through Eddie’s stuff upstairs, after money I suppose.

Eddie tried to take them on, but there were two of them.

He didn’t stand a chance.’

‘And?’

Kerry looked down at her hands. ‘What could I do? I was behind Eddie and I didn’t think they’d seen me, so I went to get help. The battery in my mobile was dead and there were no bloody call boxes around there. I had to go for miles. In the end I found a phone box and called 999.’

‘Very public spirited of you. I thought you said you liked Eddie Barham.’

‘I did.’ She was defiant.

‘So at the first sign of trouble, you just bugger off and leave him.’

‘I told you, I went to get help. What else could I do? I was scared. I didn’t know what was going to happen, that Eddie would be…’

‘Why didn’t you go to the neighbours?’

‘Oh yeah, like they’re going to help me. You should see the way that snotty cow next door looks at me.’

‘Are you sure it wasn’t more to do with the fact that you knew who those men were? That Frank Crosby told you to disappear? I think you did as you were told, but then your conscience got the better of you, so you waited a while and then called us.’

‘That’s not true!’

‘Crosby had already had Eddie beaten up once, but it hadn’t worked, had it? And he was afraid of what Eddie Barham was going to write, wasn’t he?’

‘It wasn’t like that…’

‘I think you’re lying, Kerry. I think you know very well who killed Eddie Barham. And that’s why you ran away that night and why you ran away again today, from Eddie’s sister.’

‘His sister?’ She hadn’t until then realised who Anna was. ‘I don’t know who those men were. I swear it.’

‘Who’s Sally-Ann?’ Mariner asked suddenly.

‘Who?’

‘Sally-Ann. Sally-Ann/Kerry-Ann. Is she a friend of yours? Or do you sometimes use another name?’

‘No. I’ve never heard of her.’

‘I think you have.’

‘All right. I heard the boy mention her once, that’s all.

But I don’t know who she is.’

Mariner stood up. ‘Get your coat.’

‘What for? You said…’

‘You were probably the last person to see Eddie Barham alive, Kerry. We need you to make a statement.’

‘But I’m expecting…’

‘Leave a note on the door. You’re the only person who’s seen these two men, and even if you didn’t know them,’ Mariner could barely keep the scepticism from his voice, ‘you can give us a full description. While I have a little chat with your friend and beneficiary, Frank Crosby.’

Kerry sighed and got her coat. On the way out she turned to Anna. ‘I’m sorry, I really am. Eddie Was one of the good guys. How’s the boy?’

Anna smiled, weakly. ‘He’s fine.’

‘This is where you have to leave it to us,’ Mariner told Anna, depositing her outside her flat.

Anna nodded. ‘I know. But thanks for letting me hear that. I want to know what happened.’