Killer Lies (Reissue)

by Chris Collett

  ‘And you were happy with that?’

  ‘Didn’t matter so much to me,’ said Baxter. ‘But it rankled with Geoff and I don’t think he ever quite let it go. He’d have loved to have got at Hollis somehow.’

  ‘Would he have exposed Hollis in his memoirs?’

  ‘It’s possible, though I’m not sure how happy the publishers would have been. If he’d told the full story, it’d have left a number of influential people with egg on their faces, including the Home Secretary.’

  ‘You think the Home Office were so desperate to keep it quiet that they tipped off Hollis.’ Mariner was astonished.

  ‘Who knows?’

  ‘Do you know what happened to Hollis?’

  ‘He’s decamped abroad from what I’ve heard.’

  ‘And Jaeger?’

  ‘Redemption. He went through internal disciplinary proceedings and appeared to learn from it. He’s working as a DI in Cumbria I think.’ Baxter turned to face him. ‘Anyway, what’s all this about?’

  Mariner felt slightly foolish now.

  ‘I’m peripherally involved with the investigation into Geoffrey Ryland’s death,’ he said.

  ‘Well, Brady’s fingerprints are all over it, metaphorically speaking,’ said Baxter. ‘I understand he was back in the country at around that time, and Ryland was at least partly responsible for breaking up his operation. Vengeance is mine? Doesn’t come much clearer, does it? And Brady is that kind of guy. Doesn’t like to be messed around.’

  ‘So why is everyone hell bent on blaming Joseph O’Connor?’

  ‘Because it keeps the good names of the police and the Home Office out of it. And if the right man is caught in the end, what does it matter?’

  ‘I don’t imagine O’Connor’s widow would agree with you,’ said Mariner. ‘And if it’s that clear, why hasn’t Brady been arrested?’

  ‘I would guess that there’s no material evidence to connect him to the scene. And with him being out of the country most of the time, it must be hard to even connect him with any associates.’

  ‘So that’s that. Brady’s just being allowed to get away with the murder of a well-known public figure. Doesn’t that in itself strike you as being odd?’

  ‘I thought you said you were working on this. Just because there’s been no arrest yet doesn’t mean anyone’s getting away with anything. You should talk to your colleagues.’

  Mariner thought of Dave Flynn. ‘I have.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘They seem pretty complacent about it too.’

  Baxter gave Mariner a curious look. ‘Well, I don’t begin to get what you’re up to, but Geoff was a mate, so if there’s anything else I can do to help—’

  ‘Thanks.’ Mariner opened the car door and stepped back out into the deluge.

  * * *

  So despite what he knew, Baxter blamed the unholy triumvirate of Brady, Jackson and O’Connor, too. But it wasn’t good enough for Mariner. He thought it far more likely that the trigger for the assassinations was the imminent publication of Ryland’s memoirs, which would strip off the gag order placed on him by the Home Office and expose the extent of George Hollis’s corruption. Brady may have been a patsy, he may even have been involved, but he sure as hell wasn’t behind the shootings. Of the three main parties he was the one who had most to lose.

  * * *

  Leaving the motorway services Mariner realised that he wasn’t far from the scene of the shootings so decided to take a detour along the road that ran through Cheslyn Woods. He left the motorway at the next junction, taking him close by the village where Eleanor lived. The road cut through deep deciduous forest on either side, and ran on for several miles. Reducing his speed, it was not long before Mariner spotted the tell-tale scraps of crime scene tape hanging bedraggled from the trees. He parked up, probably at the very same spot the assassins had.

  The choice of location was an obvious one, a gravel car park that would yield no clear forensic evidence in the way of tyre tracks or foot prints. Even if the car had been noticed, which was doubtful under cover of the trees, it wouldn’t arouse suspicion and during the night in the middle of winter, the killers could be pretty much assured that they’d be alone. Then it would just be a question of flagging down the limo, perhaps claiming to be lost, or broken down. Mariner visualised the scene; O’Connor pulling over to be confronted by men, masked perhaps, and brandishing deadly weapons.

  The gunmen would have needed to be ready for when the car was approaching, which might imply two vehicles — one following Ryland’s car, the other lying in wait — though not if some kind of tracking device had been employed, like the one that had been fixed to his own vehicle. That was something else he must ask Flynn about. He paced about the area for a while getting a feel for the place, but when the rain started pattering down he returned to his car.

  From here it was quicker for Mariner to drive north across country and in doing so his attention was distracted by signs to Long Compton, childhood experience tugging at his consciousness. He hadn’t visited the Rollright Stones for years and wondered if they were still there, or if he’d remember how to find them. It turned out to be simple enough. These days the site was clearly signposted and as he drew nearer, the landscape took on a familiar shape. Mariner pulled off the road alongside the field. The rain had eased off again and even though it was a cold, damp day, a group of American tourists was visiting, luckily for him heading back to their minibus to leave the monument deserted. Mariner put his modest admission fee into an honesty box at the gate and walked along the winding footpath and into the stone circle, a poor man’s miniature and shambolic Stonehenge.

  His mother used to bring him here regularly as a child; seventy-odd chunks of local limestone, now weathered into moth-eaten honeycomb and forming a perfect circle about a hundred feet across. ‘How many are there?’ his mum used to ask, knowing that every time he counted them, no matter how many times, he’d arrive at a different number. As a child he’d been enthralled by the puzzle and on one memorable summer’s day had made Rose sit and wait while he counted them twenty times, determined to come up with a definitive answer. The simple explanation of course was that some of the stones were broken and half buried in the grass, making it difficult to be consistent about which to include in the count. Back then some of them were taller than he was. Now he towered over almost all of them.

  At one end of the circle stood five stones called the whispering knights, so named because they all leaned in towards each other, as if plotting some kind of conspiracy. In their place Mariner saw the Harlesden officers, watching him cross the car park and leaning in murmuring to each other. Was it really that complex? If the shootings were a crime of vengeance then there were plenty who had motives.

  Terry Brady might want retribution because his activities had been curtailed, but equally Hollis’s forced retirement after a lifetime of service could have provoked an equally deep resentment. Or the two men could have been in league — they’d been pretty tight for years. And was it revenge against Ryland, O’Connor or both? Or was that message just a decoy? So much easier to make Brady the public fall guy and prevent the revelation of two bent coppers — easier than admitting that the Home Office had allowed them to get away with they’d done.

  For all Mariner knew Brady could be in on it too, persuaded to return to the UK at around the same time, safe in the knowledge that there would be nothing to link him to the killings. It was only the middle of the afternoon, but already darkness was beginning to fall. Other shadows were appearing before Mariner’s eyes, increasing the volume of rocks, until he found it hard to distinguish between what was real and what was imagined.

  Back at his car he could just about distinguish the King’s Stone, separate and isolated on the opposite side of the road, 5,000 years old and weirdly shaped thanks to the nineteenth-century drovers who’d chipped pieces off it to ward off evil spirits. Mariner couldn’t escape the feeling that he’d been manipulated out of the loop, fed onl
y the information that people wanted him to have.

  Mike Baxter had been pretty quick to call him back and hadn’t questioned their meeting. What if Baxter was part of the whole strategy to keep Mariner out in the cold? He and Flynn, doing just enough to keep Mariner at arm’s length from the truth. And then there was Rupert Foster-Young. How close had the relationship been between Ryland and his mother?

  Mariner dug his hands deep in his pockets and looked around at the stones. Whatever it was, he wouldn’t solve it here.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  His head buzzing, Mariner drove straight back to a cold and empty cottage. Where had Dyson said he was? Carlisle — that was it, and probably snowed in too, if the weather reports were to be believed. It suited Mariner well, and he retrieved the pack of photographs from where he’d stashed them and tipped them out onto the table. Sorting through, he picked out the one he hadn’t initially recognised.

  Studying it more carefully Mariner could see now that the picture wasn’t of him. It was different from the others. Comparing it with the photographs in Rose’s collection he saw now that the baby was fuller in the face and with more hair than Mariner had had. It was also the only one without annotation on the back.

  There was, of course, no way of telling if the child in this photograph was also Ryland’s offspring, but no other family babies had been mentioned and here was this picture, among the photographs of him, Ryland’s other bastard son. If nothing else it was the most logical explanation. The press cutting in the library had shown Ryland in 1963, arm-in-arm with fiancée Carrie Foster-Young. After that, according to Maggie it was ‘a bit of a shock’ when he had suddenly become engaged to Diana Fitzgibbon later that same year, dropping Carrie like a hot brick. Why would Ryland have done that? Was it for the same reason he split with Rose? Then, thirty-five years later, hey presto, a man turns up in prison claiming Ryland as his mother’s ‘friend,’ meaning that Rupert Foster-Young was either being deliberately euphemistic, or was genuinely ignorant of the extent of that friendship.

  The whole scenario had a certain ring of familiarity to it; history repeating itself in a pretty short space of time. If Ryland could do the dirty once, on Rose, then he was certainly capable of doing it again, with Carrie Foster-Young. Looking at the snapshot, Mariner suddenly realised that, after years of being an only child, he had to consider the possibility that he had a half-sibling, and one who had been on the wrong side of the law.

  The condition of the photograph itself was different, more obviously worn than the others, but then, it was the only one of its kind so apparently the only one Ryland had. That was interesting in itself, just the one picture and not a whole collection, as there was for him, but back then not everyone owned a camera. Or maybe Carrie Foster-Young hadn’t remained on such good terms with the father of her child. And if he did know about his origins, how would Rupert Foster-Young feel about it?

  Mariner thought back to the night he’d met Flynn in the Prince of Wales, and his initial reaction at finding out that his father had until recently been alive and well and perfectly aware of his existence. The initial overriding emotion was anger. He’d felt angry and resentful towards Ryland, seeing him as an ambitious, irresponsible bastard who’d screwed Rose and then moved on, abandoning both of them. He’d felt angry for himself, but also on behalf of his mother who’d had to raise him alone.

  Since then Mariner had been given good reason to reassess his feelings. For a start he’d had the consistent message that it wasn’t like that, and that actually the young Geoffrey Ryland was a good man caught up in a difficult situation. Okay, so Eleanor Ryland was hardly likely to condemn her son’s actions, especially so soon after his death. But Maggie would have seen things more objectively and there wasn’t much room to argue about the content of Rose’s letters. Apart from the blip during his teens when it could have all gone horribly wrong, things hadn’t turned out badly for either him or Rose. But how differently would he have felt had his mother been crushed by the abandonment, leaving him to spiral into Rupert Foster-Young’s condition . . .

  On top of that Ryland was dead before Mariner even found out, so any rage he might have felt towards the man was futile. Had Ryland still been alive he would certainly have had questions, demanded answers —maybe even sought some kind of redress for the perceived wrong that had been done to him. And what would he have done if he’d known that Ryland was in a position to offer help, but refused to even acknowledge him? Mariner hardly dared imagine how he might have felt about that. And he considered himself to be pretty restrained. Maggie had described Carrie Foster-Young as ‘wild’ and her son had grown up to be an addict. A junkie with a hot temper would be unlikely to show the same degree of control, especially with an additional grudge against Ryland. He’d served time too. He would have made contacts and more than likely developed a number of different skills inside, and Mariner wasn’t so much thinking Origami or cake decoration. Working alone a man driven by dependence on drugs may not have had the ability to plan or execute a slick operation like the assassination in Cheslyn Woods, but with the right help . . .

  The motive and the means were there all right, but how about the opportunity? According to the information Helena had given him, Foster-Young wasn’t due for release until next year, but he was out, which implied that he’d been released on licence. He’d have had to serve at least half of his seven-year sentence, meaning he should have been out in the summer of the year before last, about eighteen months ago. It would also make it about the time that Ryland had suddenly begun placing his so-called bets on horses.

  Suddenly those payments took on a new significance. Foster-Young turning up on the scene as the abandoned child fallen on hard times would hardly do Ryland’s reputation any good and Ryland would have been keen to keep him quiet, especially if his wife remained in blissful ignorance. Perhaps Foster-Young was threatening to go to the press and those monthly payments came down to nothing more than blackmail.

  At that meeting in Pearl’s Café, Ryland could have been planning to end the arrangement, refusing to pay up any more, or making an attempt to pay off Foster-Young completely. It might even explain why Ryland had the photographs with him at the time. But the scheme had backfired and Foster-Young wasn’t to be fobbed off. Perhaps he even upped the ante, demanding more money, or increasing his threats enough to disturb Ryland into needing a stiff drink when he returned to the Commission. Ryland wouldn’t play ball, so the following week Foster-Young - or someone he’d hired to do the job - ambushed and killed him. Vengeance for the way he and his mother had been treated. Mariner had lost count of the number of cases he’d been involved with over the years, where what had at first looked like a complex case, boiled down to such simple yet powerful motives as resentment and greed.

  Mariner shivered. In his preoccupied state he’d forgotten to put any heating on and suddenly became aware of how cold he was. The prospect of Anna’s cosy home was suddenly irresistible. On his way out of the house, Mariner remembered what Dyson had said about the tap in the upstairs en suite. It might be as well to take a look now, in case he needed to get in a plumber. But reaching the top of the stairs he found the door to Dyson’s rooms locked. Although the locks had always been there and there were keys knocking around, it was the first time that he’d known a tenant to make use of them. The cottage itself was secure so it seemed a bit overcautious. But the guy was in security so he was bound to be bit neurotic, maybe this was an indirect hint about the burglar alarm. And, on the other hand, it gave Mariner a good excuse not to be messing about with icy water — a job he was glad not to have to do right now.

  Mariner badly wanted to talk all his ideas through with someone. It should have been Anna. At some point she would have to know what was going on, but this was huge, more than just a five minute chat, and with Jamie at home it would be impossible for her to give it the attention it needed. Things had hardly been easy between them of late either and he could do without the inevitable inques
t into why he hadn’t told her sooner.

  Selina was clearly surprised to see him. She was learning to walk on her newly acquired crutches, and when he rang the doorbell she came to the door. She’d been practising walking up and down the hall. Not easy with a four-month-old puppy joining in too. Her upper lip was beaded with perspiration from the effort, and this time her smile seemed forced.

  ‘Come on in,’ she said. ‘I’d make you a cuppa but I’m starting to learn how important hands are. And after all, that’s what I keep the manservant for.’

  Knox appeared, looking so shattered that Mariner wondered if that last remark had been entirely in jest. ‘I’ll do it, love,’ he said. ‘You go and sit down for a bit.’

  Mariner followed Knox through to the kitchen. There was only one other occasion when he could remember having seen Tony Knox make a cup of tea before. ‘She’s doing well,’ Mariner said.

  ‘Not as well as she wants to,’ said Knox, holding the kettle under the tap. ‘She gets frustrated.’

  ‘It’s early days.’

  ‘I think it’s just beginning to sink in though, that this is the way it is.’ He flicked down the switch. ‘I mean she’s lucky with her job, she’s pretty well office-based anyway, but she’s still got to get there and back. She’s going to have a specially adapted car.’

  ‘You all right?’ Mariner felt compelled to ask.

  ‘Yeah. You went to Jack Coleman’s do?’

  ‘It was a good send-off,’ Mariner said, dismissively.

  * * *

  The tea made, they joined Selina where she was resting in the lounge. Mariner wanted to get Knox on his own. If he couldn’t spill this stuff to Anna yet, he didn’t want to talk in front of someone he hardly knew, however much he liked Selina.

  ‘How’s Anna?’ she asked.

  ‘Fine.’