Chris Collett - [Tom Mariner 01]

by The Worm in The Bud (txt)

  Tee ‘ream,’ he said, beaming at Anna, as a blob of melted chocolate dripped off his chin and on to his sweater.

  ‘I’ll give you bloody ice cream!’ hissed Anna. ‘You can’t just eat it. We have to pay for it!’ Holding him at arm’s length, she ran a quick visual inventory. Shit. He’d despoiled at least five cartons that Anna could see.

  Fortunately there was now no one else nearby, and for several seconds Anna was tempted to replace the lids on the tubs and bury them. But her conscience got the better of her, so abandoning the rest of the shopping she stacked the cartons one on top of the other and headed for the checkout, Jamie trailing along behind.

  ‘Somebody couldn’t wait then,’ commented the checkout girl helpfully, giving Anna a very dubious look. ‘Did you want school computer vouchers with these?’

  Anna gave her an icy glare, fumbling for cash with one hand while using the other to fend off Jamie’s sticky hands.

  Ignoring the fascinated stares of other shoppers, she re stacked the ice cream and strode out of the supermarket.

  In the car park she strapped Jamie into the car before gingerly loading the rapidly thawing ice cream into her boot, noting the interesting stains that were being added to the upholstery. Jamie, sensing her anger, was uncharacteristically quiet and subdued.

  Rarely had Anna been so relieved to retreat to the safety of her own home. Hurrying inside, she began stuffing what she could of the ice cream into the freezer. The buzz of the intercom startled her, and Anna half expected to find the supermarket manager at her door with a policeman, accusing them of product abuse. But it wasn’t.

  It was Jonathan, smiling and stomach-churningly handsome.

  Glancing at Anna’s chocolate-covered hands he grinned, lasciviously. ‘This looks like fun. Can anyone join in?’

  ‘Don’t,’ said Anna. ‘I’m not in the mood.’ When she told him what had happened the story only seemed to amuse Jonathan even further and eventually Anna was able to see the funny side too.

  ‘Except that I had to leave a trolley full of shopping at the supermarket.’ She smiled sweetly. ‘Would you do me a favour and just sit with him for half an hour while I go and get it? It won’t take long.’

  ‘What, now?’

  ‘I’ll make it worth your while.’ Anna ran a hand down his shirt front and lower. Then she grabbed her keys and hurried out of the door before he had the chance to object.

  The full trolley was still where Anna had left it, and by this time of night the queues were minimal, so she was back well within the half hour.

  As she unpacked in the kitchen, Jonathan crept up behind her and slipped his hands around her waist and up over her breasts. ‘Now Dicky Stiff wants his reward,’ he said, pressing himself against her.

  Through in the lounge Anna could just see the top of Jamie’s head as he sat, intent on the screen. ‘I’m not sure about this,’ she said, uncertainly.

  ‘Come on.’ Jonathan was persuasive. ‘He’s not a baby.

  You don’t have to watch over him all the time, do you? We can go to your bedroom. He needn’t know what we’re up to.’ He turned her towards him and his lips touched hers.

  Anna moved her head away, unable to relax. ‘I need a glass of wine first.’ The shopping stowed, Jonathan poured her one and brought it to where she sat near to Jamie. Leaning over the back of the sofa, Jonathan began to massage her shoulders.

  It felt wonderful. Then he leaned down and murmured in her ear: ‘Why don’t we continue this in the bedroom?’ And taking her hand, he practically dragged her along the hall.

  Closing the door behind them, Jonathan’s arms went around her, his mouth on hers, hungrily seeking her out.

  Anna could feel his excitement, but for some reason, she was unable to reciprocate. Inside she felt somehow deceitful, uncomfortable, as though she was setting some kind of double standard. She worried that Jamie might walk in on them? What would he make of it?

  Jonathan hardly seemed to notice. ‘God, I’ve been dying for this,’ he breathed, but Anna pushed him away and broke free. ‘What?’

  Anna didn’t really know what, and stood for a moment, helplessly, looking at him. ‘It’s very quiet in there,’ she blurted out.

  ‘What do you expect? He’s watching telly.’

  ‘If he is still watching. When he gets bored he gets up to all sorts. I think I’ll just go and check, I won’t be a minute.’

  ‘Okay.’ Jonathan was humouring her.

  Creeping back along the hallway, Anna peered into the lounge. Jamie was exactly where they’d left him, three feet from the TV, his eyes fixed on the screen. ‘He’s fine,’ she told Jonathan on her return.

  ‘Of course he is.’

  So why couldn’t she relax? Jonathan reached for her, trying a different, gentler tack. Slowly unbuttoning her shirt, he slipped it down from her shoulders. There was a crash from the lounge.

  ‘What was that?’ Anna pulled the blouse back on.

  With Jonathan’s frustrated groan ringing in her ears, Anna went back out to the lounge. Jamie had pulled the pile of magazines on to the floor and was sprawled out and happily occupied flicking through their pages. She perched on the edge of the sofa watching him for a moment, not wanting to return to the bedroom, but not really knowing why. She glanced up to see Jonathan come in, buttoning his shirt.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she asked.

  His eyes gleamed with barely repressed anger. ‘What does it look like? I’m obviously wasting my time here.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I just can’t. He could walk in on us at any time. Look, I know it’s difficult, but you don’t have to go.

  Couldn’t we just watch TV, talk for a while?’

  Jonathan stopped dressing and stared at her. ‘Have you any idea how hard it was for me to get away tonight? You honestly believe that I’d want to spend all night in front of the TV? And while we’re at it, if I’d wanted to child-mind I could have done that at home, with my own kids.’

  ‘He’s not a…’ Anna began, but was halted by a the image that for months had lain dormant on the edge of her consciousness, of Jonathan’s wife, Gillian, at home managing the constant demands of three small children, while her husband was out indulging his own selfish pleasures, egged on by Anna. Her desire to argue evaporated. As Jonathan pulled on his jacket, Anna trailed behind him to the door, stepping over Jamie, who remained blissfully oblivious to his new gooseberry status.

  As an afterthought Jonathan turned back to Anna. ‘There was something else,’ he told her. ‘The panic is off about Milan.’

  ‘Oh. Have they cancelled?’ asked Anna, stupidly.

  ‘No, I’ll be sending Melanie in your place.’

  Anna was horrified. ‘What do you mean? There’s no need. I’ll have something fixed up for Jamie by then!’

  But Jonathan was adamant. ‘I can’t rely on you at present, Anna. When things have settled down, I’ll give you a call.’

  Anna made a flash decision. ‘No, please don’t bother.’

  ‘Okay, if that’s the way you want it.’ Jonathan regarded her evenly for a moment.

  ‘It is.’

  .‘I’ll see you at the office then, when you’re ready to come back. Goodbye Anna.’

  Anna closed the door on him and leaned on it. ‘Thank you so much for your support,’ she murmured.

  As she walked back into the living room, Jamie jumped up and took her hand, pulling her towards the kitchen.

  ‘Want a drink,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t you ever say “please”?’ Anna snapped back at him, the hurt, frustration and confusion of the evening spilling over.

  ‘Please,’ Jamie echoed, cheerfully. Despite herself, Anna laughed and complied. The packet of photographs Francine had given her was on the kitchen table. If they were to be of any proper use, she’d need to sort through them and see what there was. She tipped out the contents and shuffled through the pile: Jamie at the day centre, Jamie in the garden. Jamie with a woman Anna had never seen bef
ore. She stared at the picture. She was a pretty woman, with long dark hair and chestnut coloured eyes.

  Anna remembered Mariner’s description of the woman he saw with Eddie. Was this Sally-Ann? On impulse, Anna showed it to Jamie. ‘Jamie look,’ she said. ‘Sally?

  Sally-Ann?’

  But Jamie frowned as he reached out to touch it. ‘Kay,’ he said. ‘Kay no cry.’

  ‘She’s not crying Jamie,’ Anna said. ‘She’s happy, she’s smiling.’

  ‘Kay,’ Jamie insisted. ‘Kay no cry.’

  Mr and Mrs Stephen Powell lived on the Bournville village trust, the estate created by George Cadbury in 1885 to accommodate the employees of his newly built chocolate factory. Of varying shapes and sizes, to meet the needs of workers at different levels of income, the houses carried a distinctive collective style of orange brick and Georgian style or leaded windows. Along with the narrow winding streets, fronted by neatly manicured pocket-handkerchief gardens, the impression was of a child’s toy village, perfect in every detail. As Mariner climbed out of his car the image was completed by the sound of the quaint melodic chimes of the Carillon as it struck the quarter hour.

  The Powells’ home was a semi-detached set back behind an expansive green, where in the gathering dusk the ‘No ball games’ sign was being used as a goal post by a group of noisy young boys. Mariner wasn’t really sure what he was looking for or whether the Powells’ story was likely to be of any importance, but he was curious about why Eddie Barham would have contacted a top-notch compensation lawyer, and this had seemed the only remotely viable possibility.

  Steve Powell answered the door and immediately Mariner was aware of the family Darren had described, a hoard of boisterous children rushing past their dad and up the stairs, shouting and yelling.

  ‘Detective Inspector Mariner,’ Mariner raised his voice above the racket and held out his warrant card. ‘This is nothing to be alarmed about Mr Powell, just a routine enquiry. Would it be convenient to talk to you for a few minutes?’

  ‘Yes, of course, come in.’ Closing the door, Powell led him through to the quiet oasis of a lounge where a young woman sat feeding a bottle to a tiny infant. ‘This is my wife, Ceryn and our daughter, Isobel.’

  Sitting down as invited, Mariner found himself mesmerised by the scene. The baby’s tiny hands clasped around the bottle, huge dark eyes wide and unblinking, gazing up at her mother as she suckled. With some effort he turned his attention back to Steve Powell and briefly explained the purpose of his visit. When he got to the part about following up Eddie Barham’s death both Ceryn and Stephen were shocked, but then with five young and exuberant children in the house (Mariner could hear the continued thudding of footsteps running around upstairs), the opportunities for keeping up with local news events must be limited.

  ‘That’s terrible. He was such a nice man,’ Ceryn said.

  ‘We contacted him back in September of last year,’ Stephen Powell told Mariner. ‘At the time, Ceryn was about seven and a half months into the pregnancy. We were tearing our hair out. We didn’t know how on earth we were going to cope with another child. I work up at Longbridge, where the threat of redundancy never seems far away. We sought legal advice on taking action against the health authority and a friend suggested that the publicity would bring some additional pressure to bear. That was why we phoned the newspaper.’

  ‘And Eddie Barham came to talk to you.’

  ‘Yes, he brought a photographer too. But after some discussion we decided that it would be more effective to run the piece after the baby was born, when we were due to start proceedings. So we waited, and then Isobel came along and we changed our minds.’

  ‘About the publicity?’

  ‘About suing. We dropped the action. We rang the paper to tell Eddie.’

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘The beginning of December, shortly after Isobel was born.’ Only weeks after Eddie’s meeting with Mr Lloyd.

  ‘And what was his reaction?’

  ‘He was pretty surprised. He said he thought we had a very strong case, and obviously he recognised it as a good story. But we’d already made up our minds that we couldn’t go through with it. Touch wood, we’re not badly off and we had a beautiful, healthy baby. We felt that to try to blame someone for Isobel’s birth would be an act of betrayal. I mean look at her.’ Steve Powell relieved his wife of the now replete infant, who blinked uncertainly towards Mariner. ‘How could anyone not want one of these?’

  Mariner did look, and for some inexplicable reason, he found a lump rising in his throat.

  ‘Have you got children, Inspector?’ Ceryn Powell asked, but fortunately Mariner was saved from making a reply by a thud and a loud wail from upstairs. Never a comfortable question, right now Mariner would have been hard-pressed to answer truthfully. Ceryn hurried from the room to attend the incident and, as Steve Powell was engaged with his youngest child, Mariner saw himself out.

  Driving away from the house, Mariner couldn’t help imagining what it might have been like to hold that tiny infant in his arms, while Steve Powell’s words rang inside his head: ‘How could anyone not want one of these?’ How indeed? Mariner needed a drink. Along with the seven and a half thousand dwellings on the Bournville estate, were the churches, schools and shops required to serve the residents’ needs. Unfortunately though, thanks to the Cadburys’ Quaker roots, the one glaring deficiency was a decent pub, indeed any kind of pub, so Mariner was forced to return to the Boatman.

  Over his pint of Boddington’s he considered where this case was going. The Powell family appeared now to be a complete red herring. No money had apparently changed hands and, in any case, the Powells would have been paid for their story, not the other way round. And Mariner couldn’t quite imagine them keeping their funds stashed away in some offshore account.

  All they were left with then was a partial database lifted from Eddie Barham’s corrupted hard drive, and a fragile link with Frank Crosby. Not much to offer at the inquest.

  He could do with showing that database to Anna Barham.

  It was possible that she might have an inkling of what it was all about, though somehow he doubted it, given the tenuous nature of her relationship with her brother. They should go back to the original clues, too, namely the page of small ads. So far those had yielded nothing, but Mariner felt sure that there must be something in there.

  After a couple of pints he wandered home. Despite the Focus parked outside, the house was unexpectedly dark and quiet, meaning that Knox was either on a night out, or had turned in early. Switching on the living room light, the mystery was solved by a pair of pink patent leather trainers neatly aligned with Tony Knox’s size eleven Doc Martens. This hadn’t been part of the deal, and Mariner’s immediate thought was that he wished he’d discussed the point. Too much to hope for that it could be Mrs Knox, come round for a reconciliation.

  Again Mariner pondered on the stupidity of Knox’s behaviour. ‘You’ve got it made’ he’d told Mariner, failing to realise that actually he was the one with all the advantages of a loving wife and family. A grandkid. Something that Mariner had started wondering lately if he would ever achieve.

  Until Greta had come along he’d been content to be alone. It had always been his natural state. Most of his relationships tended towards the purely functional and he’d only ever really cultivated friendships because somehow it seemed to be an expectation: of his mother, his teachers, or his girlfriends. Left to his own devices he’d always preferred to be entirely self-reliant. Now though, he’d reached that age where some kind of settled family life had begun to look vaguely appealing. The irony of the situation wasn’t lost on him. Just at the time when he felt ready for a long-term relationship, the possibility had begun to recede rapidly into the distance. The reasons for this he tried not to dwell on too much, but someone, it seemed, was determined that he would.

  He’d only been in bed ten minutes when he suddenly became aware of low rhythmic groans emanating from the room
above his. They got louder. If this was a reconciliation then it was a pretty comprehensive one. He tried to ignore the noises and go to sleep, but he was startled and ashamed by how much the undulating, animal-like sounds aroused him. And when, eventually, they built to a screaming crescendo, his own climax followed soon afterwards, leaving him feeling self-disgusted, like some dirty little Peeping Tom, and rubbing salt into an increasingly festering wound.

  Chapter Ten

  For Anna Barham, the days that followed were marked out by the rituals of sudden death. The nature of Eddie’s demise necessitated an inquest, which, in the event, was blissfully short. Mariner had already talked her through the process and it went pretty well as he’d predicted. Once the pathologist had presented his findings: cause of death a lethal injection of pure grade diamorphine, the request for an adjournment was duly granted for fourteen days pending police enquiries. Meanwhile, permission was given to release Eddie’s body to be laid to rest, allowing Anna to make the final arrangements.

  The Friday of his funeral was bitterly cold, with a biting wind and a blanket of thick grey cloud that pressed claustrophobically down over Lodge Hill Crematorium. It was a little over fourteen years since Anna and Eddie had come to this very place, on a crisp, sunny afternoon, to say the last goodbye to their parents. For that brief window in time, united in grief, they had almost been like a normal brother and sister, although even then, Anna seemed to remember, they’d found time to argue about Jamie.

  Like then, today was a day of ghosts and strangers and Anna found herself surrounded by a group of unknowns, who paradoxically all knew her. It was like being on the wrong side of a one-way mirror and one of the rare circumstances when she wished she wasn’t on her own. Despite what had happened last night, it would have been comforting to have Jonathan beside her to soak up some of the attention from all those sympathetic eyes. Even DI Mariner would have been a welcome presence. He’d rushed off after the inquest and she hadn’t yet had the opportunity to pass on the photograph she’d found. It would have been good just to talk to him, but she wasn’t sure why, except that they shared a common cause. That must be it.