Taking a business card out of his wallet he scribbled down the number for the hotel along with his room number, and his number at the cottage. He didn’t want Anna on his back yet. He passed it to Jayce. ‘Perhaps you could ask Mike Baxter to give me a call when he’s feeling up to it. I think I may have something on George Hollis that’s considerably bigger than evidence-fixing.’
‘Like what?’ Now Jayce was curious.
Too late, buddy. ‘No, it’s okay. I’ll wait and talk to Mr Baxter,’ said Mariner. ‘As you rightly say, it’s his case.’
* * *
From the agency Mariner returned to the hotel, hopeful that Jayce might call Baxter sooner rather than later. With luck Baxter might not live too far away and could be persuaded to meet. But climbing the stairs to his room he decided to check his mobile, and that’s when he picked up the four messages from Charlie Glover, all of them asking him to call Granville Lane urgently. Mariner’s first thought was that something had happened to Anna. Panic flooded his veins and he ran along the landing to his room, wasting valuable time fumbling with the key. He crossed the tiny room in two strides to get to the phone and punched in Glover’s direct line. It rang and rang before Glover finally picked up.
‘Where the hell are you?’ he said, cheerfully. ‘I’ve left dozens of messages on your answering machine. Some woman from Manor Park keeps ringing you at work. Louise. She’s been trying to get hold of Anna.’
‘So Anna’s all right?’ Mariner breathed out as anxiety gave way to relief.
‘As far as I know. Except that nobody can get her on her mobile.’
‘She’s out in mid-Wales. There’s no signal.’
‘Well, one of you needs to phone this Louise ASAP,’ said Charlie.
‘Okay. Everything else all right?’
‘Sure. You’ve heard about the bomb?’
‘What bomb?’
‘The explosion at St Martin’s,’ Charlie said. ‘It was a bomb.’
Mariner went cold. ‘I thought they’d said it was inconclusive.’
‘Not any more. Anyway, call Louise, will you?’
‘I’ll do it now,’ said Mariner, numbly. He couldn’t help but think back to that message — Next time, don’t be late — and the lack of information forthcoming from Addison. Since then Mariner had had two further narrow escapes, which added together made it feel as if he was right about someone being out to get him. Just because he was paranoid, didn’t mean . . .
* * *
Mariner tried Becky and Mark’s home number but there was no reply. It was early afternoon so chances were Mark was at work, and Anna and Becky had taken themselves off somewhere. Mariner just hoped their outing didn’t involve estate agents. The calls from Manor Park, he decided, were probably about the payments. There had been the ongoing problem with the automatic transactions, which Louise had mentioned on their last visit. Well, if he couldn’t do anything to resolve it, he could at least reassure them that Anna would be back soon, so he called the hostel.
‘Actually we wondered if you could come and collect Jamie for a couple of days,’ Louise said.
‘Is there a problem?’
‘Not really. Well, yes, there is, but I’m sure we can sort it out.’
‘If it’s the payments, I’m sure—’
‘No, it’s nothing like that.’ She was reluctant to disclose over the phone. ‘Perhaps if you could come over.’
‘Today?’
‘As soon as possible really.’
It was the last thing Mariner had expected and now part of him wished he hadn’t made the call, but having done so, he couldn’t ignore the request. Before checking out of the hotel he called Maggie.
‘Thanks for all your help,’ he said.
‘Did you learn anything useful?’
‘I did. Nothing conclusive, but a few things I can follow up.’
‘It would have been good for you to get closure on this,’ said Maggie.
Mariner smiled to himself. ‘Very West Coast,’ he said. ‘But, thanks.’
‘Look after yourself, Tom, and keep in touch.’
‘I will.’
On the desk was the database that Trudy had printed off for him. He wondered about its relevance now and picked it up to drop it in the bin. But something stopped him. She’d bent the rules on his behalf. He folded the paper and tucked it into the inside pocket of his jacket instead. Mike Baxter wouldn’t be able to reach him at the hotel now, but his mobile and home numbers were on the card.
* * *
Back in Birmingham Mariner had the taxi drop him off at the cottage to pick up his car. There was evidence in the form of a few additional items — including fresh food in the fridge — that Bill Dyson had moved in properly. But he wasn’t there, probably out on the road somewhere trying to flog his merchandise. Sales was never a business Mariner had envied.
* * *
At Jamie’s hostel, Louise must have been looking out for him, and met him at the door.
‘What’s happened?’ Mariner asked.
She was embarrassed. ‘It’s rather unfortunate. Jamie and some of the other clients were out in the garden. We were tidying up so we left them outside for a while. Jamie must have wanted the toilet, but instead of telling someone he just did it there and then. Trouble is, the neighbour’s grandchildren were out in the garden and saw him through the fence. They’re trying to say he did it deliberately and have made a complaint. They’re accusing him of indecent exposure. You know how hard we’ve had to work to gain acceptance here so we have to be seen to be doing something. We wondered if you’d mind taking him home for a few days until the fuss dies down.’
‘Then he can come back?’ asked Mariner.
A pause. ‘Well, we’ll have to see. We’re trying to persuade the neighbours not to go to the press.’
‘This isn’t great timing, you know,’ said Mariner feeling like a selfish shit. ‘Anna’s away and I have to go back to work.’ Not strictly true but it would be soon enough.
‘I’m sorry for the inconvenience, but I don’t know what else we can do.’
‘Couldn’t Jamie go back to Manor Park?’ The main residential facility was still open.
‘Since we’ve begun moving clients out into community accommodation they’ve cut down on staffing. There would be nowhere for him to go. You can continue to take him to the day centre though.’
Since moving to Manor Park Jamie had started attending a local day centre in Bromsgrove. From Anna’s house that would mean a round trip of almost twenty miles each morning and evening. Suddenly they would be restricted all over again. The placement had seemed ideal, a long-term solution that would meet Jamie’s needs and allow Anna her freedom. If it broke down it would put a completely new complexion on everything, including their plans for children. So, every cloud . . .
Jamie was packed and ready to go, but once they were home he wasn’t impressed, especially as Anna wasn’t there. Anna had moved into her house a couple of years ago, effectively uprooting Jamie from the family home and although it wasn’t completely new, he was less used to coming here. ‘Ann-ann,’ he kept saying. His way of asking where his sister was. For most of the evening Jamie paced around from room to room, refusing to settle. His edginess rubbed off on Mariner. It didn’t help that the place was cold, having been uninhabited for four days and they seemed to be in perpetual motion, hovering around one another.
Mariner briefly thought about calling Anna, but it would serve no purpose other than to worry her, and she was due back tomorrow anyway. No point in having her distracted for the entire journey back. Instead he cooked pizza, the only thing he was certain that Jamie would eat, and they sat up watching videos of Jamie’s favourite TV quiz shows, until he began to fall asleep and Mariner could take him up to bed, prompting him through the routine. He’d never been entirely comfortable with dressing and undressing a grown man, and tonight it seemed to take forever. Anna had developed numerous strategies for getting Jamie to co-operate that Mariner didn
’t have. He was trying to persuade Jamie into his pyjama top when Jamie, in irritation, swatted away his hand, catching his injured palm. ‘Ow! Fuck, Jamie, that hurt!’
‘Fuck, Jamie,’ Jamie repeated cheerfully and Mariner hoped that Anna would be back before her brother’s limited vocabulary had been totally corrupted. Despite the late night Jamie woke up well before dawn and it was still dark when Mariner drove him over to the day centre. They were the first to arrive.
Chapter Nineteen
Mariner got back to the house to find a message from Anna to say that she was setting off shortly and would be back by lunchtime. What to do until then? He booted up Anna’s computer. There were just a few news pieces about the Special Incident Squad, listing the arrests that had been made along with a final piece on the disbandment of the unit in 1995. The implication was that they had been shut down as part of a wider reorganisation, along with others like West Midlands Serious Crimes, whose reputation had spread and tarnished other similar outfits. Neither Hollis nor Jaeger was mentioned in the article and there was no indication of what any of the squad officers had been up to since.
Mariner had just begun another search, when he heard Anna’s car pull into the drive and was surprised to feel a stab of irritation that she was back so soon, bringing an end to his activity. He went down to meet her and they hugged on the cold drive as soon as she was out of the car.
‘Missed me?’ she asked.
‘Of course I have.’ Did it sound insincere to Anna too, Mariner found himself wondering.
But it was she who pulled away first. ‘What have you done to your hand?’
‘The back door at the cottage is sticking. I forced it and caught it on a nail.’ It came out so glibly that she accepted it without question. He was getting a bit too good at this. They unloaded her things, which seemed to be considerably fewer than she’d taken with her.
‘It’s freezing in here,’ she said, coming into the hallway. ‘Haven’t you had the heating on?’
‘I haven’t been here much.’ He didn’t add that he’d been down to London, but then she didn’t seem especially interested.
‘Get the kettle on,’ she said, disappearing upstairs. ‘I’ve got something to show you.’
Climbing the stairs a little later with the tea, he found Anna where he’d been, at the computer in the little office. She was plugging in her digital camera and downloading dozens of photographs; Megan playing, Megan smiling, Megan crying, Megan with Mark, Becky, Mark and Becky and very often with Anna.
‘Look at her. Isn’t she gorgeous?’ she enthused as the pictures flashed onto the screen.
‘She’s very pretty,’ Mariner conceded, though he was only saying what was obvious from the huge eyes and soft dark hair beginning to curl at the ends. In truth she didn’t look so very different from any other baby he’d seen.
‘She’s fantastic. You’ve no idea what it feels like just to hold her and cuddle her. When we’re out and about Becky says: “She’s my daughter.” I can’t wait to be able to say that. “That’s my daughter” — or son, of course. My son. Tom and Anna’s son. Don’t you love the sound of those words?’
To Mariner they were just words so he made a noncommittal, ‘Mm.’ and tried to imagine it. He really tried.
The pictures that interested him far more were the next ones of rolling green hills and woodland. ‘And this is where they live,’ Anna announced proudly as if it was her own private estate. ‘It’s the view from their garden. No pollution or traffic noise or nasty explosions there.’
No, Mariner wanted to say, just an hour’s drive to get anywhere, nosy neighbours and forced socialising with people you may not even like. ‘Very nice,’ he said.
The slideshow ended, Anna decided to have a bath ‘to warm up.’ ‘You can come and join me,’ she said, mischievously.
‘It’s the middle of the afternoon.’
‘Call it a special project. We need to get in some practice.’
‘Aren’t we going to wait and see what the consultant says?’
‘It’s not going to stop us, is it? All we need to know is what we can realistically do to minimise the risks.’
They ended up in bed, as he’d known they would, but suddenly Mariner found that despite Anna’s encouragement his body wouldn’t respond. This had happened before but never with Anna. The last time was after his ex, Greta, got pregnant, interpreted by his GP as his brain telling him he didn’t want babies. It would have been more palatable to think that this time it was a one-off, because he was tired and distracted, but he couldn’t quash a creeping fear that it was starting all over again and for the same reasons.
For Anna it was grist to the mill. ‘It’s stress,’ she said. ‘Moving to the country would make such a difference and if we put both our houses on the market we could easily afford it. The house prices out there are amazing. It would be a much better place to raise a child and you could walk to your heart’s content. It would help you to relax.’
‘I am relaxed!’ Mariner snapped, making them both crack a smile at the irony of that response.
‘Jamie would love it out there, too.’
‘Shit! Jamie.’ Mariner reached over to his watch and scrambled out of bed. ‘We need to go and pick him up.’
‘What? Why?’
‘There’s been a problem at the hostel. I’ll tell you on the way over.’
Predictably, when he told her, Anna was livid. ‘It’s ridiculous. I bet he hasn’t really done anything. It’s just political. This would never have happened if Simon was still here.’
‘Of course it wouldn’t.’ Good old Simon.
‘I don’t believe it. You’re still smarting about him?’
For a short time Mariner had been convinced that Anna was flirting with Simon, until he’d found out that the man was gay. ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ he said. ‘Look, I’m sure once things calm down—’
But now Anna had found another crusade, and one that wasn’t entirely incompatible with the others. ‘If it does,’ she said. ‘And what about the next time? What if he does something else that can be misinterpreted by the locals? His behaviour is like that all the time. That’s Jamie. We won’t know where we are. We’ll have to find him somewhere else.’
She’d reached that decision remarkably quickly. ‘Oh, that’ll be easy,’ said Mariner. ‘You’ve been through all this before, remember? There is nowhere else, not in this area. Unless you’re talking about Greencote. Do you think they’d have Jamie back?’
‘And have him back home permanently again?’ Jamie’s old day centre was at least close to where they lived, but without the residential facility. ‘It would be a retrograde step for all of us.’
What she said was true, and it wasn’t good news, but for some strange reason Mariner got the impression that, underneath it all, Anna was pleased that this had kicked off. He just didn’t understand why. Okay, she’d never really been happy about the idea of the community hostel, but he couldn’t see how the breakdown of the placement was going to do any of them any favours.
On the way over to collect Jamie from the day centre they called at the hostel to pick up a few more of his things, mainly because Anna wanted an opportunity to give Louise a piece of her mind. ‘He’s being victimised,’ she said. But hearing the full story she could see, too, that it wasn’t Louise’s fault and that really, for the sake of the other residents, there was no alternative.
Jamie was at least pleased to see Anna, but the sudden change in routine was disturbing for him and all at once the house seemed too small for the three of them. Tired from the day’s travelling and upset that Jamie was at home again Anna had limited patience.
Mariner had half-planned to tell her what had been happening to him, but now wasn’t a good time. Instead, to give Anna and Jamie some space, he picked up the phone.
* * *
Tony Knox was sprawled in front of the TV nursing a can of beer, relaxing for the first time in . . . well, he couldn’t remember when. Whe
n the phone rang he feared the worst, but it was only Mariner. ‘Fancy a drink, mate?’
Knox hesitated. Selina wasn’t due back from her mother’s till about ten, so plenty of time, but he walked through to the hall and examined his face in the mirror. The bruising had just about gone. In the dim light of the pub it was probable that Mariner wouldn’t notice it, and if he did? Knox would just have to fabricate something. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t had the practice just lately. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Just a quick one. But can you pick me up, I’ve already had a couple of cans?’
‘See you in ten,’ Mariner said.
The boss was punctual as always. Knox thought how tired he looked, but it hadn’t been an easy few weeks for anyone. They went to the Holly Bush out on the Stourbridge Road, a locals’ pub that did a roaring trade in home-cooked food. Tonight the lounge was quiet enough to get seats, but busy enough for them to pass unnoticed. Knox was glad. Mariner was telling him about the developments with Jamie. ‘I think Anna’s more annoyed because it spoils her plans for a family,’ he was saying.
‘So a week in the company of a four-month-old hasn’t put her off?’
Mariner shook his head ruefully. ‘She’s keener than ever, even with Jamie back. She’s talking about moving to the country now, too.’
‘She must really want it then.’
‘She had me at it this afternoon.’ Mariner flashed a weak smile. ‘Still I suppose it’s like that all the time with you two young lovers.’
Knox almost laughed out loud, the boss was so far from the truth. ‘Not just at the moment, no.’
Mariner realised his mistake, or thought he did. ‘Shit, I’m sorry, of course, I wasn’t thinking—’
‘Don’t worry about it,’ said Knox. Part of him wanted to explain to the boss that he’d misunderstood the reaction, but that would have involved confessing the truth, and right now Knox couldn’t summon the energy.
Killer Lies (Reissue) Page 16