Chris Collett - [Tom Mariner 01]

by The Worm in The Bud (txt)

  ‘What do you suppose they are? Something to do with the occult?’

  Mariner was dubious. The images were too simple and childlike, although there was little other indication that children lived here, and they did have a kind of alien quality.

  Knox had already made up his mind. ‘I bet this guy had one of those weird compulsive disorders,’ he said. It was true. Suicide and mental disturbance were often to some degree linked, but it was still a big leap to make.

  ‘He could have just been security conscious and tidy,’ said Mariner, Knox’s tendency towards the forgone conclusion starting to rankle. ‘And be grateful. Whatever the purpose of that camera, if what happened here has been filmed it’s going to save us a hell of a lot of trouble.’

  Mariner turned his attention back to the wallet, which also contained a couple of personal business cards, and a folded page recently torn from a newspaper. Flattened out, Mariner recognised it as the column for ‘ Personal Services’, well thumbed and with several of the numbers emphatically ringed in black ink. One of them the brunette’s, he wondered?

  Something stale invaded Mariner’s nostrils again. Knox was back peering over his shoulder. ‘See,’ he concluded, uncompromisingly. ‘What kind of sad git gets his sex life out of the paper?’

  ‘We don’t know that he did!’ Mariner rounded on him angrily, feeling his colour rise. ‘There could be any number of explanations for this. He was a journalist, remember?’

  He knew he’d jumped in too soon and too defensively, conscious of the call he himself had made only the night before. Okay, so he hadn’t followed it through, but he’d made it all the same.

  ‘No, well, perhaps you’re right, boss.’ Knox’s face was inscrutable, but Mariner could almost hear him adding two and two to make five. It was no more than Mariner would have expected. Blessed with the Scouse gift of the gab, Knox would never find himself in that sorry position. It more than likely related to why Mrs Knox had thrown him out.

  ‘We shouldn’t be making any assumptions at this stage,’ Mariner said, regaining his composure. He was tempted to say more, but let it go. Instead he turned his attention back to the cutting. ‘These numbers will need to be crosschecked with the calls made on that phone.’

  ‘I’ll have a vowel, please, Carol,’ piped up one of the contestants on the TV.

  ‘Not what I’d choose as the background for my final, dramatic gesture to the world,’ Knox said, momentarily mesmerised by the screen. ‘Shall I turn it off?’ But neither of them was inclined to, not while it provided a distraction from the bleak silence of death.

  ‘Let’s get searching,’ Mariner said. ‘We need to turn up a relative or two.’ Yellow potato rings cracked beneath his feet as he stood up. ‘What is all this crap?’

  ‘Hula-Hoops,’ Knox obliged, nodding towards a wrapper beside the sofa. ‘But only one packet; not much of a party.’

  A loud knock echoed down the hall. Christ, nosy neighbours, that was all they needed. Where were they a couple of hours ago? But it wasn’t the neighbours; it was Stuart Ross, the police surgeon, carelessly dressed and bleary eyed, making Mariner wonder enviously whose bed he’d just left. Why was it that when your own love life was on the skids, everyone else seemed to have it on tap? Close behind Ross, the SOCO team had arrived, too. This was fast turning into rent-a-wake.

  •••

  ‘Stuart.’ Mariner nodded a greeting.

  ‘Tom. What have we got?’

  ‘Edward Barham. Pretty much as we found him, except that I’ve relieved him of his wallet.’

  Ross’s gaze took in the suicide note. ‘No more what?’ he wondered aloud.

  ‘Monkeys, bouncing on the bed?’ suggested Knox. He caught Mariner’s glare. ‘Next of kin, sir. I’ll get on to it.’ And left the room before Mariner could interject.

  Mariner had nothing to gain by hovering over Ross either; so, leaving the surgeon pulling on overalls, he followed Knox up the stairs.

  ‘Where the hell did you learn something like that?’ he asked.

  ‘My granddaughter.’

  It was said so quietly, Mariner thought he must have misheard. He hoped that the thud of his jaw hitting the ground wasn’t audible. ‘Granddaughter?’

  ‘That’s right.’ Knox turned to face him, his eyes challenging Mariner to make something of it.

  ‘I never had you down as a granddad,’ Mariner said, truthfully.

  ‘Neither did I,’ Knox replied evenly. ‘But some things are out of our hands, aren’t they? Sir.’ And with a minimal lift of his eyebrows he turned and continued up to the*

  landing. Subject closed.

  Of the four first-floor rooms the most promising appeared to be a small back bedroom that had been converted into a working office complete with computer printer, scanner and fax machine. In stark contrast to the lower floor, this room was by far the untidiest and there fore the one that mattered. Papers were scattered haphazardly over every horizontal surface and drawers were pulled open to varying degrees, spilling out diverse contents.

  ‘Almost as if he was looking for something, too,’ remarked Mariner.

  ‘An antivirus program if he had any sense. Look at that!’ Mariner tracked Knox’s gaze to the computer screen.

  The machine was already booted-up and as Knox nudged the mouse the screensaver cleared to reveal a scene of technological devastation. Rows of data merged and tumbled from the screen, dancing and swirling before their eyes before mutating into giant insects that scuttled off the screen, cackling nastily.

  Although functionally competent, Mariner’s interest in computers pretty well ended there. This was the first time he’d witnessed a virus in action but even he understood the implications. ‘Can you stop it?’ he asked.

  From the expression on his face, Mariner guessed that Knox had only done the basic training too. ‘I might be able to save anything that isn’t corrupted,’ he said.

  ‘Get on with it then,’ said Mariner. ‘It might be important.’

  Like holding the key to why Edward Barham, bachelor, journalist, had just killed himself.

  Knox sat down on the swivel chair and the first thing he did was to clear a space to the left of the keyboard and move the mouse and mouse-mat over to it. He noticed Mariner watching him. ‘I’m left handed,’ he said, defensively.

  ‘I find it more comfortable this way.’

  ‘Right,’ said Mariner dubiously, wondering just how far Knox’s ICT skills extended. Meanwhile, he rifled through the remainder of the desk, looking for any personal papers that might help them to build a picture of Edward Barham’s life in the days leading up to its close. The journalist, it appeared, was nothing if not methodical, and it wasn’t long before Mariner found virtually everything he needed contained in a single suspension file squeezed between dozens of others in the bottom drawer and labelled ‘Finance: Current’. In it were bank statements, credit card bills and invoices, some going back as far as a year.

  Making further inroads into Knox’s supply of evidence bags, Mariner tipped in the entire contents. They could sort it out back at the nick. None of the other files of correspondence, newspaper cuttings and assorted instruction manuals looked as immediately relevant. They could be checked at a later date if necessary.

  Closing the drawer, Mariner straightened, and as he did so, noticed a Filofax that had fallen on the floor, down the side of the filing cabinet. He picked it up and tossed it to Knox.

  ‘While you’re at it, here’s your chance to multitask,’ Mariner added. ‘Have a flick through that for any likely names and addresses.’ And leaving Knox to his endeavours, he went to look over the rest of the house, glad to escape the stuffy office to some sweeter smelling air.

  Unsurprisingly, the remaining four rooms lacked the hi tech input and were furnished more in keeping with the age and style of the house. Old-fashioned, Mariner would have called them, though the lingering smell of paint hinted at recent decoration. Only one, the master bedroom, was obviously inhabited, a
lthough a single bed in the spare room was also made up. Mariner opened drawers and cupboards. No trace of any female apparel ruling out the brunette as wife or live-in partner but several wardrobes, including those in the spare room, were full of men’s clothes and shoes.

  There were a couple of suits and some formal shirts but mainly it was casual wear: Next, Gap, fashionable off-the peg stuff. Reasonable quality but like the leather jacket, most of it well worn. This wasn’t a man who lived extravagantly. Some of the sizes fluctuated slightly too, making.

  Mariner wonder if Edward Barham had been a man battling with his weight. In any event there seemed far more clothing here than one man could reasonably wear. Marine picked up the book on the nightstand: the selected poems of Robert Frost.

  ‘So what was he into?’ asked Knox, appearing in the doorway.

  ‘Frost,’ Mariner told him.

  ‘Not a bad choice,’ approved Knox. ‘The wife likes Frost. I’ve told her it’s fantasy island as far as real police work goes, but she finds him entertaining.’

  Mariner was struggling to connect Knox’s response to the information given, but eventually the fog cleared. ‘Not Inspector Frost,’ he said, with mild disdain. ‘Robert Frost, the American poet; a slightly different league.’

  ‘Oh. I didn’t know you liked poetry, sir,’ said Knox in a tone that suggested he put it on a par with cross-dressing.

  ‘Why would you?’ said Mariner, placidly. ‘Anyway, I don’t particularly. This was an O level set book when I was at school.’ Before putting it back Mariner turned to the page that Eddie Barham had bookmarked.

  The woods are lovely, dark and deep

  But I have promises to keep

  And miles to go before I sleep.

  One of the few poems Mariner could actually remember, mainly because it had been simple enough to understand right away, but here and now it was curiously at odds with the scene downstairs.

  He replaced the book and moved on. Again up here the strange symbols were posted in places, including in the bathroom, an otherwise pretty standard affair, which gave little away until Mariner came to the medicine cabinet.

  Prying open the flimsy lock he found inside, amongst the standard remedies, six white plastic syringes.

  As if on cue, Stuart Ross’s voice echoed up the stairs.

  ‘I’ve finished the preliminaries, Tom. All right with you if we get him taken away?’

  Mariner took the stairs down two at a time. ‘First impressions?’ he asked, knowing that it was completely unreasonable to expect anything concrete at this stage.

  ‘Only what you’ve already worked out.’ Ross was replacing instruments in his kit bag while the scene photographer flashed final shots from varying angles.

  ‘Death caused by a lethal injection of some kind. The body temperature would suggest that it occurred not long ago, maybe not more than about an hour. The postmortem will establish what he injected, but I’m sure we’re all thinking the same thing. Enough of the stuff would have done the business within two or three minutes. Strange that there’s no preparation debris,’ Ross observed.

  ‘Unless he bought it prepacked. The ultimate in convenience shopping, eh?’

  It was something that had puzzled Mariner at first, but was in keeping with the general orderliness of the place and with his idea of the brunette’s role in the proceedings.

  Alternatively, Knox could be right about a compulsive disorder. ‘Could it have been an accident, a miscalculation?’ he asked Ross.

  ‘It’s possible, of course. There’s nothing on the face of it to show that he was a habitual user, so it could have been an experiment gone horribly wrong. Apart from the fatal puncture mark there don’t seem to be any others, and the point of insertion makes it look like an amateurish job.’ He pointed to Eddie Barham’s pale and lifeless arm. ‘See where the skin is torn?’

  Mariner thought back to the computer mouse. ‘He bungled it?’

  ‘Could be. But if it was an accident I’d say it was bloody bad luck. And you do have the note.’ Now safely protected within an evidence bag, the note would, along with the syringe, be sent to the forensic science service laboratory over at Bordesley Green. ‘Besides, if you were about to relax and enjoy yourself over a quiet fix, wouldn’t you at least take your coat off first?’

  Ross was right. The scene had a definite air of urgency.

  And Mariner recalled Barham’s agitation in the hotel bar, But something didn’t sit right. He kept his thoughts to himself for now. He was doubtless seeking complexity where there was none, one of his more annoying traits, as he’d frequently been told. Talking to those around Edward Barham to establish his state of mind would soon settle the matter and Knox had at last found a promising name and address.

  Mariner and Knox waited around until SOCO had finished, but after that there was nothing more to do except secure the scene. On the TV the Countdown audience went wild.

  ‘Turn that off, will you?’ said Mariner. Knox did so, and immediately a different noise became apparent.

  Mariner listened hard. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘What? I can’t hear…’

  ‘Sshhh!!’ Barely discernible in the background was a faint, high-pitched keening sound. Mariner tracked it to a small, low door under the stairs, fastened on a snib-lock.

  He opened it and rubbed noses with a battering ram.

  Chapter Two

  Anna Barham stretched lazily in her king-sized bed.

  Although the hollow remained where Jonathan’s head had been on the pillow, the other side was cooling fast and in the darkness she could just distinguish his shadowy figure as he hastily pulled on his clothes. Fully dressed, he leaned over and kissed her on the forehead, his goatee lightly scratching her skin. Anna wished he’d shave it off. Goatees had gone out of fashion months ago but apparently his wife liked it so it had to stay. She feigned sleep, knowing that he preferred to think she didn’t hear him go. Moments later she heard the front door close as her digital clock clicked over to twelve thirteen am. Hmm, earlier than usual.

  Niggling doubts suddenly resurfaced as Anna wondered again if her suspicions that Jonathan might be cooling towards her were more than just unfounded paranoia. The uneasiness had started soon after Melanie Pick joined the firm, her induction programme seeming to demand rather a lot of Jonathan’s time. But that was ridiculous. She and Jonathan had a great thing going.

  Not that a part-time relationship with a happily married man was every woman’s dream, but at this time in her life it suited Anna’s requirements perfectly. With one disastrous, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it marriage behind her the last thing she wanted was any kind of commitment. She and Jonathan had fun together, they had fantastic sex, but Jonathan’s family kept him right where Anna wanted him: at arm’s length. He didn’t want to move in with her and permanently impinge on her space. He wouldn’t start wanting babies with her, because he already had three of his own. And children were definitely not on Anna’s wish list. Okay, the downside was the occasional lonely night she had to endure when Jonathan was unable to get away, and the odd troubling pang she felt about his other life (occurring more frequently lately than she cared to acknowledge) but all else considered, it was a small price to pay for the way she liked to be and had to be: in control.

  She awoke again almost immediately after Jonathan had left, it seemed, to a lightening sky and the low humming undercurrent of the city stirring into life. Sliding into her blue silk kimono, Jonathan’s gift from his last visit to Tokyo, Anna opened the blinds and relished her view, as she’d done on every single morning of her three-year occupancy. As part of the city’s new and prestigious canal side development, the outlook from her apartment was like a picture postcard: freshly painted black and white bridges arching over the canal that snaked darkly towards the red brick and ornate iron work of Brindley Place. All this set against the backdrop of pale blocks and tinted glass of the showpiece International Convention Centre, today rendered clear and sharp by a burst
of February sunshine.

  Tearing herself away from the window, Anna took a long shower, choosing gel, shampoo, exfoliating cream and moisturising body lotion from rows of accumulated preparations.

  Applying her make-up she noticed that her hair would need trimming in a couple of weeks, which meant ringing the studio today if she was to stand any chance of getting Nicky. She was down to the last dregs of her Chanel too, so it was as well that she’d be passing through duty free next weekend on her way back from Milan.

  In all, her whole morning routine took a leisurely hour, ending, as always with a circuit of the flat as she straightened the cushions, swept up a few imaginary crumbs and replaced three CDs in their boxes, slotting them back into the neat rank. Finally, she parcelled up last night’s empty takeaway cartons to take down to the bin and wiped over the already spotless kitchen counters one last time. Walking out of the door, she took a last look around, getting a thrill as she always did from knowing that when she came back in again this evening, it would all be exactly as she had left it.

  As much as anything, Anna had chosen her flat for its proximity, via a network of side streets, to the office where she worked. But all this week she’d been inconvenienced by road closures along her usual route while cables were being laid. To follow the suggested diversions would have meant lengthy detours into heavy rush-hour traffic, so she’d developed a simple strategy. Ignoring the no entry notices, she consigned herself to the ‘emergency access to frontages category for three quarters of a mile, before swinging into the corporate car park only minutes after leaving home.

  Lowering the electric window of her fiery red company Mazda 2.5, she tucked her pass card into the machine before drawing to a halt in her reserved parking space Getting out of the car, she smoothed the skirt of her dove grey Donna Karan suit, grabbed her briefcase and laptop from the passenger seat and, setting the remote electronic alarm, strode towards the modern office block that was home to Priory International Management Consultants.