Buried Lies (Reissue)

by Chris Collett

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Griffith. ‘Just a question of working out who.’

  * * *

  When Tony Knox arrived home from work on Friday afternoon it was to find his house transformed. Kat was in the kitchen, in rubber gloves, attacking his grimy stove. ‘I hope you don’t mind,’ she said, removing iPod earphones. ‘Is good for me to do some cleaning and keep busy. Is therapeutic.’

  There was a further surprise when the doorbell rang and Knox opened the door to Michael, scrubbed, smart, bright-eyed and looking — as kids sometimes did — like an extra from the Magic Roundabout, all pipe cleaner legs in skinny jeans and oversized converse trainers. ‘Is Kat here?’ he asked hopefully, peering past Knox and into the hall. ‘I thought we could take Nelson for a walk?’

  Knox smiled to himself. He recognized a crush when he saw one. Perhaps Kat did too, because she happily went off with Michael, returning more than an hour later at the point when Knox was starting to wonder if something had happened to them. And maybe it had, because, when they came into the kitchen to give Nelson his post-walk treat, the air between the two of them seemed heavy with expectation. It was Kat who finally broke the tension. ‘You should tell him now, Michael,’ she said. ‘It’s okay.’

  ‘Tell me what?’ Knox asked.

  Michael was staring at the floor.

  ‘He knows,’ said Kat. ‘Someone told him who gave Kirsty the pill.’

  Michael looked up at her accusingly. ‘I told you that in confidence,’ he said, his eyes shining.

  ‘Kirsty died,’ Kat reminded him. ‘And she was your friend. These are bad people and believe me, I know about bad. He might do it again to another girl.’

  ‘But they’ll know it was me who grassed him up,’ Michael whined miserably. ‘I’ll get into so much trouble. My mum . . .’

  ‘Your mum?’ said Knox. ‘What’s she got to do with this?’

  ‘Nothing. You don’t understand.’ Finally, Michael dragged his eyes up so that they met with Knox’s. ‘It was his mate,’ he spat with disgust. ‘The man who gave the pill to Kirsty is a mate of Mr Lennox.’

  ‘Your teacher?’ Knox checked that he’d understood correctly.

  ‘Lennox brought him to the party,’ said Michael. ‘He was meant to be there helping out, but all he did all night was hit on the girls, especially Kirsty. Georgia told me, he kept trying to get Kirsty to have a drink and when she wouldn’t he offered her a pill. He told her it wasn’t like alcohol; it wouldn’t do her any harm. It would make her feel relaxed. When he saw what it did to her, he legged it. He’d gone way before you got there.’

  ‘Does Mr Lennox know about this?’ demanded Knox.

  Michael shrugged. ‘What if he did? Where does that leave Mum?’

  ‘Your mum can make her own choices,’ said Kat. Stepping over, she put an arm around Michael’s shoulders. ‘Well done,’ she said. ‘It was the right thing to do.’

  Leaving Kat and Michael watching TV, Knox went across to Jean’s house.

  ‘Was there another teacher at Michael’s party?’ he asked.

  Jean looked momentarily puzzled. ‘Not a teacher, but Pete brought a friend of his; a gym-buddy. He was extra help in case anything got out of hand.’

  There’s an irony, thought Knox. ‘Which gym?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t know the name. One of those fancy ones on Broad Street.’

  From his own house, Knox rang Charlie Glover. ‘You need to go and talk to Peter Lennox again,’ he said. ‘And ask him about his mate.’

  * * *

  When Griffith had finished with him, Mariner chose to walk back to Caranwy and stopped off at Gwennol to check that Suzy was all right. She seemed now to have grasped the enormity of what it was they’d found and was visibly upset.

  ‘Would you like me to stay with you for a while?’ Mariner asked.

  She smiled weakly. ‘That would be nice. I know it’s completely irrational, but I keep thinking about what happened to the pastor — that something or someone may still be out there. Do you mind?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘I’ll make us something to eat.’ But as it turned out, neither of them had much of an appetite. So instead they just curled up together on the sofa, watching the fire. After a while Mariner couldn’t resist putting out an arm to her and she leaned in to him. ‘I don’t understand what’s going on with you,’ she said. ‘You need to give me more of a clue.’

  Mariner shifted uncomfortably. ‘I haven’t been entirely honest with you.’ He broke off. He’d never in his life discussed anything like this openly with anyone and now didn’t seem like a particularly good place to do so for the first time.

  He took a deep breath. ‘My feelings about Anna only make up half of the story.’

  ‘So what’s the other half?’

  ‘When I said the other night that I might disappoint you, that’s exactly what I meant. I’ve had a couple of . . . unfortunate experiences in the past, when I haven’t been able to . . . deliver, as it were. I never know if . . . I really am afraid I’ll let you down.’

  Suzy was mortified. ‘Oh God, and now here I am, making you talk about it. That’s even worse, isn’t it? But isn’t there something I can do to help?’ Instinctively she put her hand on his thigh, but immediately snatched it away again. ‘Oh God, I’m sorry. That’s probably not a good idea.’

  That made Mariner laugh. ‘It’s all right, it won’t fall off.’

  ‘And this Anna. Are you certain it’s over?’

  ‘It’s definitely over,’ said Mariner. And though he hadn’t planned to, he found himself telling Suzy about Anna’s last hours. ‘I wasn’t there, of course, but there are certain advantages to being in the job and the Hereford police have been incredibly co-operative in terms of allowing me access to witness statements. I think the other woman involved was relieved to be able to offload to me too, in the mistaken belief that doing so might help to ease some of her own pain. She gave me enough detail to be able to reconstruct the chain of events reasonably accurately. Sometimes it just plays inside my head like a silent movie on a loop.’

  ‘Poor you,’ she said. ‘I can’t imagine what it must be like to lose someone so suddenly.’

  Mariner finished up staying the night at Gwennol. This time when Suzy moved over to his side of the bed he didn’t make any excuses, and Anna stayed away.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Day Twelve

  Still warmed from the pleasure of the night before, Mariner strode out across the fields and back towards the pub. He was feeling rather pleased with himself and with the day, and decided to extend his route back via the footpath that took him close to Abbey Farm. As he did so, he heard the sound of a vehicle starting up, and craning his neck, he watched over the hedge as Willow’s van drove out along the track and up to the farm gate. It stopped for Amber to get out and open the gate, before moving off again. They were still apparently going to market, to sell their fake organic produce. Mariner watched the truck bounce along to the end of the drive and make a left towards Llanerch. He thought about how calm Willow had been, in the interview room at the police station, despite having learned that his business was about to become discredited and go down the pan. The only reason he could have been that relaxed was because it didn’t matter. He must be seriously wealthy to get by. Even with the mark-up on the vegetable prices, the profit margins couldn’t be that great. Turning away, Mariner’s gaze swept over the rows of poly tunnels. He wondered if they would be retained to keep up the illusion that the farm was still a working one, and that Willow’s product was a going concern.

  For a millisecond, he thought he saw what looked like a faint plume of smoke rising from one of the structures. That couldn’t be right. It couldn’t be smoke, it must be steam. On a warm day that might be explained by the sun heating off the moisture of the dew, but not on a chill, cloudy day like today. In a sudden rush, Mariner recognized a possibility that both he and Griffith had overlooked.

  The new barn may be th
ere for refrigerating produce but what about those poly tunnels? Willow had said that they couldn’t be insulated, but what if he’d been lying about that? Climbing the flimsy fence Mariner went first to investigate the source of that vapour. Unfastening the flaps on the tunnel, he hoped and expected to see the rows of green plants that had eluded them in the barn, but he was to be disappointed for a second time. What confronted him instead was a vast expanse of brown, putrid vegetables showing little sign of growth, very like the parsnips Willow had shown him on that first day he came here. The air inside the tunnel was warm and humid, which explained the steam he had seen, but it didn’t account for why there seemed to be nothing of value growing in such a carefully manufactured atmosphere. Kneeling down Mariner examined the growth more closely. Was this simply some kind of plant matter he’d never come across before? As he stooped he felt a blast of warm air on his face — as if he were leaning over a kettle spout — and, lifting the vegetation, he saw underneath the steel grille of some kind of ventilation pipe coming up from under the ground. Standing upright, he emerged from the tunnel and looked over at the farm buildings, about two hundred yards away. He thought back to the time when he had worked on the farm, and suddenly Mariner knew exactly where that steam was being vented from, and why. This was the moment he should contact Griffith to report his suspicion, but the principle of evidence-based claims was deeply ingrained in his psyche, and having come unstuck before, this time he wanted to be absolutely sure of what he thought he knew. It wouldn’t do any harm to just take a quick look first. Given the circumstances, he would be in and out of the farm without anyone even knowing.

  Walking back up the track Mariner found, as expected, that all was quiet. He went round to the back door of the farm house which, with extraordinary vigilance for this neighbourhood, he found locked via both mortise and Yale. Mariner rattled it but could see that it wasn’t going to budge. He stepped back to survey the rest of the building. A small frosted-glass window on the ground floor to his left was slightly ajar. A pantry, if Mariner remembered rightly. Reaching up he was able to unhook the inside bar and open the window to its full extent, which gave him a rectangular opening of about two square feet; perfectly manageable if it hadn’t been eight feet or more off the ground. This was where he wished he had Tony Knox’s agility. Pulling up on the crossbar, he managed to scramble up and get a toe-hold on the window ledge, then, hoping that the frame would take his weight, he thrust the upper half of his body in through the window. Not a pantry but a WC, the cistern and lidless bowl immediately below him.

  Leaning in as far as he could, Mariner reached down, taking his weight on his arms, so that in effect he was doing a handstand on the cistern. Then he tried easing the lower half of his body in through the window. But he was six feet tall and, unsurprisingly, ran out of space. The only way to get his legs through would be to ‘step’ down with his arms on to the rim of the toilet bowl, but that was a two-foot drop, and if he missed, he ran the risk of crashing face first into the toilet or onto the stone flags of the floor. Meanwhile the balance of his weight had shifted and trying to heave himself back out through the window again would place a huge strain on the wooden frame. He eased forward a little, yelping in pain as the spike of the window fastening drove into his groin. In an effort to alleviate the agony, Mariner did the only thing open to him, which was to shift even more of his weight forward. His arms were beginning to shake with the effort of supporting himself and suddenly the decision was taken out of his hands. Lurching forward with his right hand, Mariner managed to grab on to the toilet seat but, as the full weight of his body followed, his elbow buckled under the force and he fell, collapsing in a heap on the stone floor to the side of the toilet, his shoulder hitting the ground with an excruciating crunch. There was a noise outside the door. He listened, the only sound the rasp of his laboured breathing. A clock somewhere in the house finished chiming eleven, and Mariner relaxed. He lay there for a couple of seconds assessing the damage and found that, despite the indignity of it, he seemed to have remained intact. His shoulder and bollocks would be sore for a couple of days, but he was otherwise unscathed.

  Inside the house Mariner made his way to the kitchen, trying to get his bearings and recall where the entrance to the cellar had been. After prowling all the ground-floor rooms, he finally identified the door leading off a small utility room at the back of the house. It was bolted on the outside and swung open easily to reveal a dark, cavernous void. It was here that Mariner realized what the biggest obstacle in all this was going to be: his own fear. As a young man, Mariner had been down to these cellars a couple of times with Bob Sewell. He’d never enjoyed the experience and had always been glad to get out again, and that was before his ordeal of a couple of years ago, when he’d spent days incarcerated in his own cellar, waiting to die. He took a deep breath to try and calm his racing heart and ran his tongue around his mouth in an effort to moisten it, before taking the first faltering steps down the steep wooden staircase.

  Almost immediately he was hit by an overpowering wall of hot, moist air, like stepping into a sauna, and he instantly felt the damp prickling of sweat gathering on his face and neck. The wooden stairs were greasy and he had to concentrate hard on keeping his footing, all the time fighting the urge to turn back and slam the door shut. All he needed to do was go down there, take a few photographs on his phone and get out again. Ryan Griffith would do the rest. Mariner passed a light switch on the wall, but as he neared the bottom of the stairs, it became apparent that he wouldn’t need it, for his way was lit instead by an eerie bluish glow emanating from the depths of the cellar. From the bottom step he finally looked up and gaped at the spectacle. The glow cast a light over thousands and thousands of spidery plants whose leaves, trembling in the moving air, gave the illusion that they were alive and about to crawl all over him like a thousand scurrying creatures. The main cellar was as Mariner remembered it, a natural limestone cavern that extended backward into a further series of smaller caves. What he could see here were hundreds of plants at varying stages of growth, some as high as four and a half feet tall, and the air was thick with a powerful herbal smell. If the other caves were similarly full this was a massive operation.

  Mariner made his way gingerly along the stone floor, past a couple of workbenches holding trays, plant pots and fertilizer, and what was evidently the processing and packaging section. He saw what he recognized as a trimming machine — a rotating blade with a mesh above it and a bowl below. The largest leaves would be harvested by hand and fed through this machine, whilst smaller leaves would be gathered using handheld garden shears, cutting them carefully from around the flowering buds. Somewhere in the operation, perhaps in one of the cellars at the back, or up in the main farm house, there would be an air-cooled room where the leaves would be placed on silk screens to dry. The plants themselves were lined up on long trestle tables that raised them up close to the high-powered lights that heated the air, and the cellar roof was lined with reflective foil for further insulation and to maximize the heat. Here Mariner took more photographs; he’d just get some shots to illustrate the scale of production, and then he could be gone. But at the far end of one of the benches something caught his eye that looked out of place. It was a black leather wallet, sitting alongside a mobile phone. He opened the wallet and a photograph of two little girls looked out at him.

  Then a voice said, quietly, from a few feet away. ‘I don’t think that concerns you, does it?’

  Mariner looked up towards the steps and into the twin barrels of a twelve-bore shotgun, behind which stood Amber, her hair illuminated to a golden haze, like some ethereal, ancient goddess. Mariner’s head was beginning to pound, from both the heat and now from fear. He could feel the sweat running off his forehead and down his face.

  Amber’s voice, when she spoke again, was stronger and much more resolute than he was expecting. ‘I’m really sorry, but I won’t be able to let you leave here alive. You know that, don’t you?’

/>   ‘You can’t keep me here,’ Mariner said unconvincingly. ‘Sooner or later DI Griffith will start looking for me. Suzy Yin will tell him where I disappeared and it won’t take them long to track me down.’

  ‘Oh, I’ll probably let them find you,’ Amber said. ‘But by then you won’t be in any condition to tell them very much. They’ll see that you met with an unfortunate accident.’

  Mariner eyed the gun. ‘The kind of accident that involves a twelve-bore?’

  ‘I’m of a very nervous disposition, Mr Mariner — or can I call you Tom? After what happened to Theo, and the possibility of Glenn McGinley being at large, it would be only natural that I should be afraid for my safety. It gives me every reason to protect myself, and I’m not terribly experienced with guns. Who’d be to say the whole thing wasn’t just a dreadful accident? After all, you are trespassing on private property. And we’ve never really met before, have we? As far as I’m concerned, you could be anyone.’

  Mariner was still holding the wallet, trying to grasp its significance. ‘But I don’t understand. Why have you got . . .?’

  ‘Haven’t you worked it out yet?’ She was smiling. ‘I’m surprised. Elena says you’re very smart. Look at the photograph.’

  Mariner did as she said and looked back at the two smiling little girls. Then he looked back at Amber. ‘Jeremy Bryce was your father,’ he said, understanding at last.

  ‘Not fully accurate on either count,’ she said. ‘His name wasn’t Jeremy Bryce; it was Jonathan Bruce — Jonny to his friends. Not that he actually had many of those. It’s one of the reasons the police haven’t been able to identify him yet. I expect he planned it that way. The beard and the hair helped too; not really his style at all. He was always clean shaven; hair cut with military precision.’

  ‘The other count?’ Mariner said.

  ‘I suppose biologically he fathered me, but I stopped thinking of him in that way long ago,’ Amber said bitterly. ‘I reviled him. The man was a monster. Even if someone has recognized him, it doesn’t surprise me that they haven’t come forward to claim him. I can’t think of anyone who’d want to. He destroyed my whole family.’