Tony turned back to the group, all of whom were by now watching with interest. ‘I’d like you all to meet Carlton Renford-Brown,’ he said. Then, with a flourish, and gesturing towards his former boss, he added, ‘And this, Carl, is DCI Tom Mariner.’
Renford-Brown reached across to shake Mariner’s hand. ‘Tom. Good to meet you. I’ve heard all about you. I want to thank you for being so good to my mum.’
Mariner squinted at them both for a moment, trying to make sense of what he’d just heard, and noting from the faces of everyone else around the table, including Millie, that he seemed to be the only one for whom this was news. He blamed it on exhaustion, because even when it was explained to him it took a while to sink in.
‘Carl’s one of ours,’ Knox told him, drawing up an extra chair for Renford-Brown. ‘We’ve been working together on Athena. He was one of our UCs, except that we’ve just pulled him out.’ Putting a hand on Renford-Brown’s shoulder as he sat down, Knox went to get him a drink.
‘And yes, you did see me at Pincott and Easton that night,’ said Renford-Brown to Mariner, more than a little sheepishly. ‘We’d been keeping an eye on Greg Easton. We knew he was in trouble, and that he was meeting someone, but we had no idea it was his brother-in-law. I got there and saw the same thing you did, but once you guys turned up I had to get going. I couldn’t risk being arrested.’
‘Were you at my house, too?’ Mariner asked, frowning.
‘Yeah, that was totally unplanned. Mum had a turn and she called me.’
‘A turn?’
‘She gets angina attacks from time to time.’
‘What? She didn’t tell me that.’ Mariner was horrified.
But Carlton was relaxed about it. ‘It’s cool,’ he said. ‘She’s on medication, so most of the time she’s good, but now and again she forgets to take her tablet.’
‘So why have you been pulled?’ asked Mariner, backtracking several seconds. ‘Is Athena over?’ If it was, it might mean getting Tony Knox back, though after this little performance, he wasn’t sure if that would be a good thing or not.
‘Not all of it,’ said Knox, putting a pint of lager down in front of Renford-Brown, before sitting back down. ‘But we made an important arrest this afternoon.’
Mariner saw him exchange a look with Vicky, in which she seemed to nod approval. This was becoming more surreal by the minute, making Mariner wonder if it was all a dream.
‘Who?’ asked Millie impatiently.
‘They’ve got the man who killed Brian.’ Vicky said it so softly Mariner thought he must have misheard.
‘Your Brian?’ he said. ‘Brian Riddell?’
She responded with a nod.
‘We picked him up this afternoon,’ said Knox. ‘And we’ve got Charlie to thank for that.’
‘Jesus,’ said Mariner picking up his pint. ‘Now I am confused.’
‘Does the name Mark Kent mean anything?’ Knox asked.
It did, but it took a couple of seconds to come back to Mariner. Meanwhile Charlie got there first. ‘He’s the guy I talked to at Sceptre Betting, who kicked off at the Belvedere,’ he said. ‘It was him?’
‘Not exactly,’ said Knox. ‘But do you remember asking him to voluntarily provide a DNA sample?’
‘Of course,’ said Charlie, and Mariner took some comfort from his expression of utter incomprehension.
‘Well,’ said Knox, enjoying the drama of the story, ‘amazingly the moron complied, and his swab proved beyond doubt that he was not your washerwoman, or the man who attacked Chelsey Skoyles. In fact, it’s pretty unlikely that he would attack Chelsey anyway, since he’s actually her cousin. But what it did prove was that he was at the scene of Brian Riddell’s shooting. The lump of chewing gum left there was his. And this afternoon we arrested his older brother, Stephen, on suspicion of murder.’
‘Shit,’ said Mariner. For several seconds it was all he could muster. ‘Well done, Charlie.’ He looked across at Jesson, who seemed remarkably composed. ‘And, Vicky, I’m glad for you.’ He raised his glass to her and they all followed suit. Mariner saw Vicky mouth ‘thank you’ to Charlie and Tony.
‘And now,’ she said, getting to her feet, ‘I’m sorry to break up the party, but I have children at home who are beginning to get used to seeing their mum again.’
Mariner walked her out to her car. ‘Are you OK?’ he asked. ‘It’s obvious they’d already told you, but still, it must take some getting used to.’
‘Yes,’ said Vicky. ‘And Tony was very kind in there.’ She nodded towards the pub. ‘He left out one important aspect.’
‘Motive,’ said Mariner.
‘Motive,’ she repeated. ‘Do you remember in the Country Girl, when Charlie claimed he couldn’t remember who’d led the investigation into the attack on Chelsey Skoyles?’ she said.
‘Yes,’ said Mariner. ‘It was unlike him.’
‘Charlie hadn’t forgotten,’ said Vicky. ‘He just didn’t want to say.’
By now Mariner had guessed. ‘The investigating officer was Brian,’ he said. He worked through the logic of it. ‘So Brian was shot because he didn’t take the attack on Chelsey seriously.’
‘Brian’s line was that she was a slapper who was asking for it,’ said Vicky. ‘And not surprisingly, her cousins, the Kent brothers, took offence. Quite strongly as it turned out.’
‘I’m so sorry, Vicky.’ Mariner put a hand on her arm. He didn’t know what else to say.
‘It’s fine,’ she said, and from the tone of her voice, he could believe it. ‘I knew better than anyone what kind of man Brian was. You must have wondered at the time why I didn’t want to go to Lea Green.’
‘It was unexpected,’ Mariner admitted.
‘Brian had been having an on/off affair with a sergeant from there for years and at the time he died, it was very much on.’ Her smile was sad. ‘It would be nice to think that Brian took a bullet for his partner, but the truth is that Stevie Kent was just a good shot. Some policemen might be heroes; it doesn’t mean they all are.’ Mariner opened the car door for her and she climbed in. ‘I’ll see you in the morning, boss.’
Epilogue
On a sunny Spring Saturday, Suzy came to Birmingham and Mariner drove them down to a country hotel in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire. After checking in, Mariner took their bags up to the room. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘You’ll be OK here for a while?’
Suzy held up a weighty academic tome. ‘There must be a residents’ lounge,’ she said. ‘I’ll be fine.’
Leaving her there, Mariner continued on to the nearby Stoke Mandeville hospital. He was shown into a sun lounge with French windows looking out onto expansive lawns dotted with clumps of daffodils that rippled in the breeze. After a few minutes, the automatic door swung open and a young man wheeled himself into the room, accompanied by a nurse in uniform. The man’s legs ended at mid-thigh and across them rested a child’s scrapbook. An ill-disguised catheter bag hung from the back of the wheelchair. Mariner walked across to shake his hand. ‘Private Lomax?’ he said. ‘DCI Tom Mariner.’
‘It’s Craig,’ he said, coming to rest beside one of the chairs.
‘I’ll leave you to it,’ the nurse exited the room with a smile.
‘I appreciate you agreeing to see me,’ Mariner said, sitting down beside Lomax. He was just a kid, Mariner realised, with a jolt. Though pockmarked with scars, his complexion was soft, with a barely established beard line. There were patches of exposed scalp in his short, fair hair and his forearms were bandaged, a thick, waxen swelling peeping out from one, as if his skin had melted.
He caught Mariner’s gaze. ‘Grafts,’ he said, cheerfully. ‘Got them all over, but they’re taking well.’
Mariner swallowed back the lump that had suddenly constricted his throat. ‘Rory Clarke spent a lot of time at your bedside,’ he said, before clearing it. ‘I’m curious as to why that was.’
‘He knew I was on to him,’ said Lomax. ‘That IED was meant to have killed me because I’d fo
und out about his nasty little secret.’
‘So Grace Clifton wasn’t his first victim?’
Lomax shook his head. ‘I’d say that was Monique Rousse. You may not know this, but our unit was involved in the rescue of three aid workers.’
‘I read about it,’ said Mariner. ‘You were honoured for it.’
‘Yeah, well, that all makes it sound more dramatic than it was,’ said Lomax. He gazed out of the window, remembering. ‘The four of us trekked over thirty miles across hostile territory, into the mountains. We could only move under cover of darkness, so it took more than three days. We’d located where we thought the women were being held but we had no idea about the number of captors or how well armed they would be. After a couple of false alarms, we identified the exact place. It was desolate and we thought we must have missed them, that they’d been moved on somewhere else. It can happen. Clarke went in first, leaving the rest of us under cover. He had to tread carefully, in case the place was booby-trapped, but it seemed like we were waiting to hear from him forever — must have been at least fifteen minutes. Eventually we got the call. He said: They’re here and they’re alive. You can come in. So in we went.’
‘What had taken him so long?’
‘The women were in a bad way. They’d been tied up and gagged and were lying in their own waste. One of them, Monique was practically naked. She’d had half her clothes ripped off. Clarke said he’d been trying to make her decent before we all came in — you know, preserve her dignity. Anyway, it didn’t matter. We were just over the moon that it had been so easy.’
‘And Clarke?’
‘He was wired. He’d led a mission that had been successfully executed without anyone getting hurt. We all knew there would be commendations in it. The other lads and me, we were all for getting out of there as fast as we could. We had no idea if the militia would come back, but once we’d recovered the women Clarke made us wait while he gathered photographic evidence.’
‘Was that routine?’
‘It wasn’t part of the brief, and we just wanted out, but he insisted. Said we had to finish the job. He was in there ages and he switched off his comms. But when he came out he was different, calm and more in control. It was like the adrenalin rush had passed.’
‘Did anyone else notice this?’
‘I don’t know. We were all focused on getting out of there as fast as possible.’
‘What do you think he was doing when he went back?’ asked Mariner.
‘Knowing what I know now? I think he was jacking off. Going in there and finding the women in that state, it did something to him.’
‘And then?’
‘It took three days to get the women back to the jeeps. They were pretty weak, so we had to help them. It got obvious then that Clarke had a thing for Monique. He appointed himself her personal bodyguard and at the slightest hint she needed help he was in there first before anyone else got the chance. We all started taking the piss out of him over it.’
‘And those feelings, were they mutual? Was it the start of a proper relationship?’ asked Mariner.
‘No, it was nothing like that. The women were in shock; they hardly even spoke. But it was like Clarke took charge of her, so that no one else could. We made it back to base and the women were taken to the aid centre. A few days after, they came to thank us and that was that. Then a couple of weeks on, we heard that Monique had disappeared. Her body was eventually found dumped in the river, bound and gagged.’
‘The news article I read put it down to revenge killing by the same rebels involved in the original kidnap,’ said Mariner.
‘At first that made sense,’ said Lomax. ‘I said as much to Clarke. Knowing how he’d been with her I thought he’d be upset, but it was like he didn’t care. It struck me then that I couldn’t remember seeing him at all the night she went missing. It got me thinking about how weird he’d been on the rescue mission. I asked him outright where he was, and he couldn’t tell me. I let it go. I couldn’t prove anything. Then a couple of days after that we were out on foot patrol and I got blown to kingdom come.’
‘And when you were brought back to Birmingham he had to come too, to keep an eye on you.’
‘He sustained minor injuries, so he got leave.’ He picked up the scrapbook. ‘Looking in here, he was watching over me nearly all the time, those early days.’
‘But he wasn’t there on the Wednesday afternoon when you briefly regained consciousness, so he didn’t know what you might have said to Dee Henderson or Leo Hayden. They had to be silenced.’
‘Christ,’ said Lomax, momentarily lost in thought. ‘All those people. He might as well have just opened fire in the crowded hospital. What gave him away?’ he asked.
‘His watch,’ said Mariner.
Lomax expelled a laugh of genuine amusement. ‘God, he was so proud of that watch,’ he said. ‘Cost him a couple of grand, so he said.’
‘What kind of man was he?’ Mariner asked.
‘I suppose he was a good soldier,’ said Lomax. ‘He stuck to the rules, to the point of being obsessive, and you knew where you stood all right. But he was always at a distance; he never joined in with the banter and that. And some of the sights we saw — stuff that floored the rest of us — he just took it all . . . like there was nothing that could touch him.’
‘At the start, I thought he was your dad,’ said Mariner.
‘I sometimes wish I’d known my dad,’ said Lomax. ‘But I thank Christ it wasn’t him.’
‘And how’s it going, the rehab?’ Mariner asked.
‘Oh, you know, good days and bad. I suppose I’m one of the lucky ones.’ He seemed to really believe it.
* * *
Mariner returned to the hotel in time for dinner with Suzy. ‘How did it go?’ she asked him as they ate. ‘Did it answer your questions?’
‘Some of them,’ said Mariner. ‘And I think I might have met a genuine hero.’ Thinking about the damaged young man, Mariner felt his eyes unaccountably filling up and his head dropped as he blinked them clear again. Suzy reached across the table to touch his hand, while the moment passed. ‘Thanks for coming with me,’ Mariner said, eventually, ‘and for sticking with me.’
‘Don’t know why I do,’ she said, pragmatically, taking her napkin from her lap and depositing it on the table. ‘You haven’t got a lot going for you.’
‘There must be something that makes it worthwhile.’
‘I’ll tell you if I find it. Actually,’ she said, ‘I have a bit of a confession to make.’
‘Oh yes?’
‘I wasn’t quite truthful with you that last time I saw you. When I said I’d been at a conference in Coventry, in fact I’d been to have a look around Warwick University. I’ve applied for a job there. I mean, I haven’t got it yet, but . . .’
‘Oh,’ said Mariner.
‘It would mean relocating, of course. I wouldn’t expect to move in with you, but I would be a bit nearer. What do you think?’
‘I could live with that,’ said Mariner, trying hard to sound casual.
‘Really?’ she said. ‘Only . . . I really haven’t been too sure about us. About you.’
‘I know, and I’m sorry,’ he said.
‘Anyway,’ she said, picking up the key to their room and dangling the fob suggestively, ‘if we’re all finished here, I think you made me a promise not long ago. Now would seem a good time to keep it.’
THE END
DI MARINER SERIES
Book 1: DEADLY LIES
Book 2: INNOCENT LIES
Book 3: KILLER LIES
Book 4: BABY LIES
Book 5: MARRIED LIES
Book 6: BURIED LIES
Book 7: MISSING LIES
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DI TOM MARINER BOOK 1: DEADLY LIES
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Journalist Eddie Barham is found dead in his home. A syringe is in his arm and a note by his side reads, ‘No More.’
Open and shut case of suicide? Not for DI Mariner. Hours before, he saw Barham picking up a woman in a bar. And then Mariner discovers Barham's younger brother, Jamie, hiding in a cupboard under the stairs.
Jamie is the only witness to his brother's death, but his severe autism makes communication almost impossible. Mariner is determined to connect with Jamie and get to the truth. Is the journalist’s death related to his investigation of a local crime kingpin?
Please join our mailing list for free Kindle crime thriller, detective, mystery, and romance books and new releases, as well as news on Chris’s next book!
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Thank you for reading this book. If you enjoyed it please leave feedback on Amazon, and if there is anything we missed or you have a question about then please get in touch. The author and publishing team appreciate your feedback and time reading this book.
Missing Lies (Reissue) Page 29