Written in Blood (9 page)

Underpinning it all was the possibility that Flynn, and then he, had jumped to the wrong conclusion about those photographs. Hard to explain them otherwise though, and there was that indisputable physical likeness that even Mariner could see and there were the letters of course. But perhaps he’d take Flynn up on the offer of the DNA test just to make absolutely sure. As exhaustion overtook him, Mariner’s thoughts were becoming ever more tangled and confused. He closed his eyes for a few minutes and tried to empty his mind.

The phone’s insistent ringing woke Mariner, when his watch said 8am. He must have nodded off, still sitting in the armchair, and his limbs were stiff with cold. For a few seconds he was disorientated, until it hit him afresh like a Tsunami. He went to the phone.

It was Anna. ‘I thought you might be there. Haven’t got the courage to come home?’ Mariner greeted that with baffled silence. ‘I assume that you and Dave Flynn went on a bit of a bender.’

Since she’d employed her own logic it seemed foolish to disillusion her. ‘Something like that,’ he said.

‘Well I hope you’ve got the hangover you deserve.’

‘Yes.’ There was a degree of truth in it. He was groggy and his head was spinning, but it had little to do with alcohol.

‘Are you coming back for breakfast?’

‘Couple of things I need to do here first.’

‘All right.’

It was true. One of things he wanted was time on his own to think, but first, something else.

Stowed in the cupboard under the stairs were two ancient suitcases redeemed from the house in Leamington before he’d put it on the market, and containing what he’d chosen to salvage of his mother’s personal effects. When Rose had died, Mariner was in the middle of a high profile murder enquiry and though he’d spent a little time hurriedly going through them, he’d really had little idea of what might be significant. Now he knew what he was trying to find; anything linking her with Sir Geoffrey Ryland.

The hinges of the door were unyielding through lack of use and the cupboard inside was dusty, the cases naturally right at the back, wedged against the cellar door. Dragging them out, it took Mariner almost an hour to sort through the papers again but, apart from the corresponding programme for the Promenade concert, he failed to turn up even the most oblique reference to Ryland. Old photographs in the collection replicated those Flynn had given him, God, was it only last night? From interest he fetched the padded envelope and laid out its contents in sequence, comparing the pictures with those his mother had kept. Most of them were the annual school photographs. One was missing from Flynn’s collection, aged thirteen. Rose must have skipped a year.

Returning the second suitcase to its hidey hole, Mariner came across the old plans to the house and a couple of old books on the canal, one of which featured a photograph of the cottage. He left them out for Dyson, at the same time thinking that he should read them himself one day.

He returned Ryland’s memoirs to the small pile of unused gifts, still unable to make up his mind. Was his father a hero or villain? And had he really been killed for something as pointless as a couple of kilos of drugs? He wasn’t entirely satisfied with Flynn’s explanation of that. Meanwhile, he had a proper job to go back to.

 

On top of the pile of messages Mariner collected on his way in to Granville Lane, was the record of a phone call from a Mr and Mrs Evans, requesting a meeting. Who the hell were they? With a flurry of unwelcome emotions the name Evans hit its mark. Chloe Evans’ parents. He couldn’t possibly face them, not yet anyway. What on earth would he say? Commonsense said they weren’t to know that he was back at work, so he moved the message to the bottom of the pile. He’d deal with it soon, but not now. There were other matters more pressing, like a body down a sewer.

Tony Knox was still off but, apart from that, CID at Granville Lane was buzzing, the squad at full strength again.

‘How come everyone’s back?’ Mariner asked the nearest DC, Bev Pollack.

‘We’ve been taken off the St Martin’s enquiry.’

‘Why?’

‘Nobody’s saying. The continued questioning of minority groups across the city is no longer necessary. Terrorism isn’t suspected.’ She was quoting what she’d been told.

‘Is that because they’ve got a suspect or suspects?’

‘It’s weird. Nobody’s saying anything. Only that we were no longer needed on the investigation team.’

It was only yesterday that Mariner had been with Addison at Lloyd House. Had his visit there prompted a new line of enquiry? In any event, he’d be the last to know.

Entering his office Mariner thought at first it was someone’s idea of a sick joke; on his desk a ten-by-eight photo of a young girl with big blue eyes. He recoiled from it and was still staring in disbelief when behind him, the door opened. ‘Madeleine,’ said Charlie Glover.

‘Madeleine?’ Mariner croaked.

‘Better name than “sewer queen”. It’s the mock-up the tech lads have done. Good job, isn’t it?’

Mariner exhaled, the horror subsiding. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes, it is.’ He looked hopefully at Glover. ‘And you’ve identified her?’

But they hadn’t. ‘I’ve named her that because she’s a ringer for Caravaggio’s Mary Magdalen.’

Mariner stared.

‘It’s one of the wife’s favourite paintings. It’s only temporary. We’ll know who she is soon enough.’

‘You’ve had a breakthrough? Something from the house to house?’

‘Better than that, guv. Forensics came back with a lovely set of prints from the bin bag and duct tape that don’t belong to the deceased, so must be from who ever gift-wrapped her for us. I sent them through to Croydon and they got a hit. They’ve faxed through details.’ He handed Mariner the printouts, details of one Alecsander Lucca, also an Albanian national. He’s applying for British citizenship, so his prints are on file. He’s temporarily residing at an address in Stirchley.’

‘Close to where Madeleine was found.’

‘Surprise, surprise. And while he’s waiting for his application to be processed he’s working in a local restaurant.’

‘That’s two strong leads. Well done, Charlie.’

‘Yeah, well,’ said Glover modestly, ‘let’s see if they go anywhere first. Want to come?’

Mariner reached for the coat he’d only just removed.

‘Good Christmas?’ Mariner asked on the drive there, by way of making conversation. Glover, he knew, had a young family.

‘Very nice sir. We had everyone over, parents and grandparents.’

‘All your parents are still around?’

‘Yes sir. Don’t know what we’d do without them.’

 

Wilmott Road was like any number of streets in Stirchley, a kind of rundown no-man’s-land that lay somewhere between inner city and suburbia. The population was transient, with many of the terraced properties on short-term lease and residents identifiable by passport and immigration papers, rather than driving licences or National Insurance cards. Mariner and Glover knew this because the street was on the ‘sensitive’ list as a location likely to be targeted by local racist groups, though so far there had been no serious incidents.

The door of 158 was answered by a lanky man, mid-thirties, with coal black eyes that didn’t exactly radiate welcome, especially when Mariner and Glover produced warrant cards. His name, he told them, was Goran Zjalic (he pronounced it ‘Yalitch’) and he was a Serbian national. He was even less keen on letting them into the house, but Mariner supposed that having been persecuted by his own countrymen, suspicion towards anyone with official status was an understandable reaction. Inside, the accommodation looked temporary, the wooden floors were bare except for a littering of junk mail, and they had to squeeze past boxes of disposable nappies in the hallway to get into an uncarpeted living room that contained only a sagging brown sofa that looked at least secondhand, and a portable TV resting on a vintage 1950s coffee table. Somewhere they could hear a baby crying.

Glover proffered the immigration file picture of Lucca. ‘Do you know him?’

Zjalic hesitated, and Mariner imagined a lifetime’s habit of weighing up how much information to give. ‘He live here,’ Zjalic said eventually, pointing upwards.

‘You know him well?’ Glover asked.

Zjalic tilted a flattened palm. ‘We meet in the hallway sometimes.’ His voice was thickly accented.

‘When did you last see him?’

Zjalic lifted his shoulders. ‘Three week, a month. He go home.’

‘Home?’ It wasn’t what they had hoped to hear.

‘Tirana. His family there.’

The door opened and a young woman, no more than a teenager, appeared, cradling a very young baby, the one they’d heard, except that now it had a dummy jammed in its mouth. Ignoring Glover and Mariner she spoke insistently to Zjalic, who barked back at her, prompting a hasty exit.

‘My sister,’ Zjalic apologised. ‘Always want something.’

Glover showed him the digitally enhanced picture of Madeleine. ‘How about her?’

Zjalic studied the picture for longer, finally, slowly, shaking his head.

‘You’re certain?’ said Glover.

‘I don’t know her,’ said Zjalic. ‘Pretty girl.’

‘Pretty, dead girl,’ said Glover.

Zjalic’s eyes widened, with surprise or fear, it was hard to tell.

‘And now we badly need to talk to Alecsander Lucca. He may have been the last person to see her alive.’

Suddenly Zjalic was on the defensive. ‘I swear. He say he go back home.’

‘Do you remember which day? It’s important.’

‘I don’t know. Three, four week.’ It was all they were going to get. Glover left his card in the unlikely event that Lucca should reappear.

The manager of the restaurant where Lucca worked could be more specific. Lucca hadn’t turned up for work since December 4th. ‘A girl came in the restaurant and caused a scene,’ he said. ‘She’s shouting at Lucca in front of all my customers.’

Glover brought out the picture of Madeleine. ‘Is this the girl?’

But the manager wasn’t sure. ‘Could be.’ It was possible that their picture wasn’t an exact likeness.

‘Do you know what the disagreement was about?’ Glover asked.

The manager looked surprised. ‘Money. Is always about money, no?’

‘Was she his wife, or girlfriend?’

The manager shrugged. ‘I don’t interfere. I just want her out of my restaurant.’

‘And did she go?’

‘Only with Lucca, He took her home.’

‘What time was this?’

‘Maybe nine, nine-thirty.’

‘And what time did he come back?’

‘He didn’t. It’s the last time I see him.’

‘We can check flights on and around December 4th to verify that Lucca has left the country,’ Mariner said, when they were back in the car. ‘And then it’ll be up to Interpol. If he has turned up back home we’ll be looking at extradition - with a country that doesn’t yet have any formal extradition laws.’

‘It should be easier, shouldn’t it?’ Glover was more optimistic. ‘The Albanian authorities won’t put up much of a fight. Won’t it just be a question of finding him and bringing him in?’

‘It’s not the Albanians we’ll have to worry about,’ Mariner said. ‘It’s the CPS at our end who can make life difficult. Unless we present a watertight case and follow all the correct procedures, if Lucca gets back here and we charge him for murder, we run the risk of him getting off on a technicality. It’ll be a diplomatic nightmare. Could take months.’

‘Nothing like a positive outlook sir,’ said Glover.

‘It’s called reality. We’ll need to get together the evidence for extraditing Lucca, material and circumstantial, and send it off to the International CPS in London. You hadn’t got plans for New Year, had you?’

 

Something that had always been lost on Mariner was the human compulsion to celebrate the advent of the New Year, come what may. Tradition had such a lot to answer for. For the sake of conforming, Mariner had agreed they’d go out with Knox and Selina, who was already up and about and determined to get on with her life. Nothing fancy, just a local Chinese restaurant. They all arrived in the car park at the same time. Offers of help declined, Anna and Mariner waited while Knox retrieved Selina’s new wheelchair from the boot of his car and wrestled to open it up, all the time trying to make it look as if he’d been doing it for ever.

Several minutes elapsed while Mariner and Anna stood shivering. ‘Are you sure there’s nothing—?’ Mariner offered.

‘I’m fine,’ came the curt, if slightly breathless, reply. The wheelchair at last unfolded, Knox pushed it round to the passenger door for Selina to get in. Not until they got to the restaurant entrance did they realise there was a step, in itself not a problem, except that the porch arrangement and the angle of the inner door made it impossible for Knox to manoeuvre the wheelchair in. Between them Mariner and Knox grappled with it for a couple of minutes, Selina laughing rather too brightly at their efforts, but in the end Knox had to ask a waiter if there was an alternative way in.

It was at the back of the building. ‘That’s all right, I’ll use the tradesman’s entrance,’ Selina smiled. ‘I’m not proud.’

‘We’ll all go that way then,’ said Anna, and Mariner loved her for being so supportive. They trooped down a poorly lit side passage, past waste bins, through the kitchen and past the toilets, only to find once inside, that they’d been allocated a window table and had the task of navigating their way back through the crammed dining area. Progress was hampered while other customers were asked to move, chairs were pushed aside and coats and handbags retrieved. The eagerness of the restaurant staff to help only served to draw more attention to the situation.

‘Thanks. Sorry,’ Selina smiled, time and time again, until her face seemed to be fixed in a kind of rictus.