Chris Collett - [Tom Mariner 01]

by The Worm in The Bud (txt)

  You’ve found us a connection!’

  Anna flushed with unexpected pleasure. She’d always been a sucker for praise. For one bizarre instant she thought he might be going to kiss her, but he was studying the picture again. ‘Yes, it’s her all right. And if her name happens to be Sally-Ann, we’ve hit the jackpot.’

  Anna shook her head. ‘I don’t think so. Watch.’ Taking the picture from him, she got up from the table and Anna took the photograph to where Jamie sat on the floor in front of the TV. ‘Jamie, look.’ She held out the picture again, for Jamie to see.

  He glanced momentarily at it. ‘Kay, Kay no cry,’ he said before turning his attention back to the screen.

  Anna came back to the kitchen. ‘Meet Kay,’ she said.

  ‘Christ, how many mystery women can a guy have?’

  Mariner wondered aloud, visibly disappointed. ‘I’ll need to take that to make a copy,’ he went on. ‘We can show it around, see if anyone else recognises her. Somebody made that emergency call, and presumably it wasn’t the invisible woman.’

  His sarcasm was drowned out by a clatter from the living room. Mariner and Anna rushed in to find Jamie on the rampage, running the length of the sofa, pulling things from the shelves as he went. His TV programme had ended.

  ‘Jamie, get down! Down! Now!’ Anna commanded.

  ‘Jesus.’ Mariner looked on with disbelief as Jamie jumped down from the sofa and ran off down the hall, sweeping his arm along a radiator shelf and knocking its contents to the floor.

  With a weary sigh of resignation, Anna knelt and began to retrieve them. ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with him tonight. He hasn’t settled since we got back from McDonald’s.’

  Mariner bent down to help. ‘It’s all those additives.

  You could do with some space. You haven’t got a garden here?’

  ‘Oh, there’s a garden all right. The only problem is, it’s on the roof, with very little to separate it from a two hundred-foot drop. Jamie wouldn’t last five minutes.’

  Mariner glanced back at his watch again, and Anna waited for the inevitable ‘Actually-I-must-be-going’ routine, that any of Jamie’s more extreme behaviour always seemed to prompt in people.

  Instead Mariner said, ‘Why don’t you come and keep me company? I was on my way to The Wall.’

  ‘The Wall?’

  ‘The indoor climbing centre. You could get in as my guests and Jamie can climb as much as he likes there. He’d have to wear a harness of course, and a helmet, but if you think he can handle that we’ll give it a go.’

  ‘Game on,’ said Anna and somehow she meant more than the climbing.

  Chapter Eleven

  ‘Are you sure this is no trouble?’

  ‘None at all. It’ll ensure that I actually go. I’ve had about as much use out of the membership as your average person gets from the gym: not much. Somehow there’s always something more important to do.’

  ‘Well I appreciate it. I had no idea what a comprehensive service the police offered these days,’ said Anna.

  ‘Hadn’t you heard? It’s all about customer satisfaction.

  Even the felons get a customer satisfaction questionnaire.’

  Mariner was watching in the rear-view mirror as she strapped Jamie into the back seat of the car beside her. He wished now that he’d hung on to the borrowed squad car, which tended not to include the optional extras of discarded polystyrene cups, cellophane sandwich packs and chewing gum wrappers that littered the floor of his own neglected vehicle. Deep down, he knew that he was pushing the boundaries of professional conduct with this, although if it came to it, he could fully justify his actions. Jamie Barham provided the link with his brother’s killer. All Mariner was trying to do was build enough of a relationship with him to get at the truth. Anna Barham’s presence was just a necessary but pleasant by-product. Wasn’t it? Tony Knox would have approved.

  The Wall was actually more like a vast cavern lined with layers of towering moulded and riveted panels, lending it the surreal appearance of an old set from Dr Who. Once a disused firearms factory, abundant EU regeneration grants had helped to reinvent it as a comprehensive climbing centre with a thriving clientele. Despite being a long-standing member, Mariner continued to be treated with the customary cool suspicion afforded police officers in most social situations. It did mean, however, that there was no argument about Jamie and Anna gaining entry.

  Mariner had brought a bag in with him and once inside, left Anna and Jamie to go and get changed. Returning minutes later, wearing khakis and a T-shirt, he felt more relaxed, and sensed Anna Barham looking at him differently too. Jamie had at first seemed overawed by the new surroundings, but as they walked round to the climbing area, he suddenly came to life and was at the nearest wall in a couple of bounds, forcing Mariner and Anna to physically restrain him.

  ‘Wait Jamie,’ Mariner said, firmly. ‘Helmet and harness first, then climbing.’ Jamie complied, but under duress, and it was like trying to keep hold of a wriggling eel getting his harness on, and ensuring that it was safe. Mariner was worn out before they’d started. The beginner’s climbs provided fixed ropes, making the walls simple and safe for anyone to try. But it soon became obvious that for Jamie Barham these were unnecessary precaution. Quick and unerring, he reached the top of the first wall in a matter of minutes. A small audience gathered to watch as Mariner gradually introduced Jamie to increasingly complex climbs.

  He had, it seemed, an insatiable appetite, but after an hour Mariner called a halt.

  ‘It’s taken me years to achieve this level,’ Mariner told Anna. ‘I refuse to be completely humiliated by a novice. Let’s get a drink. Jamie drink?’

  ‘Drink,’ echoed Jamie happily.

  ‘I thought he didn’t have any special talents,’ Mariner said, bringing over two bottles of beer and orange juice to where Anna sat watching Jamie as he prowled.

  ‘So did I,’ said Anna.

  ‘He’s a natural. Most of us have to give it some thought.

  You sure he hasn’t climbed before?’

  ‘Apart from at every opportunity around the house? How would I know? One of the things I’ve learned in the last week is how little I’ve ever really known about him or Eddie, or for that matter, my parents. And now they’re all gone and it’s too late.’

  ‘Does that bother you?’

  ‘Well, I never thought I’d hear myself say this, but yes, in a way it does. It’s weird, knowing that there’s only Jamie and me left. No one else to answer to.’

  ‘Sounds all right to me,’ Mariner said, without thinking.

  ‘Oh, yes? Nobody keeping tabs on you?’ she asked, cheekily.

  ‘My gaffer mainly,’ smiled Mariner, trying to keep it professional.

  But she wasn’t satisfied with that. ‘What about family, brothers and sisters, mum and dad?’

  ‘There’s just me. I see my mother from time to time. I never knew my dad.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry.’ She’d misunderstood, as people always did.

  ‘No, I mean, as far as I know he’s still out there somewhere.

  I’ve just never met him. Don’t know who he is.’

  ‘Oh.’ Naturally she didn’t know what else to say. It was a situation people generally seemed to have difficulty in grasping, which is why Mariner on the whole kept it to himself. In fact he didn’t have a clue why he should be talking about it now. Apart from Greta, he hadn’t told anyone in years. But perhaps he felt that Anna deserved something back from him. Through her brother’s murder he was uncovering more and more of the intimate details of her life, it only seemed fair to reciprocate on some level.

  ‘My mother didn’t tell me,’ he said, in response to her unasked question. ‘She didn’t think it mattered.’

  She’d also made it clear that his father didn’t want to know. She was fobbing him off of course. This was the sixties, when the consensus was still that children ought not to be troubled with the complexities of adult lives. To her credit Mariner
couldn’t ever remember being lied to, it’s just that what he was told was vague; his dad was an important and very busy man, so he couldn’t live with them in the same way that other dads did. It didn’t explain why the man also couldn’t be identified, but by the late sixties his fantasies ranged from Neil Armstrong to the Krays to Geoff Hurst, depending on his mood.

  By the time he was old enough for his questioning to be more probing and direct, his mother had conveniently developed migraine. Any talk of his father was guaranteed to induce an attack, long before any answers were forthcoming.

  Repeatedly he was dismissed with a vague promise that one day ‘when the time was right’ he would know. The few friends he had were those who took him for what he was, and when he began, in his mid-teens, to attract girlfriends, his predicament afforded him an aura of mystery that he used shamelessly to his advantage.

  ‘And what do you think?’ Anna Barham jolted him back to the present.

  ‘I think there are times in my life when it’s been more important than anything else in the world, and other times, like now,’ Mariner shrugged, ‘when it seems almost irrelevant.

  ‘

  ‘It must have been hard, growing up though,’ she said.

  It was a simple observation, no more.

  ‘Difficult for my mother at times,’ Mariner agreed, deliberately deflecting any imminent concern she might feel for him. ‘She got to be very dependent.’

  ‘On you?’

  T was all she had. She gave up a lot to raise me.’ Mainly her itinerant lifestyle. Marching for world peace wasn’t so easy with a toddler in tow, so the sisterhood had come to her. ‘It got a bit intense sometimes.’

  Anna was pensive. ‘I’d always thought I had a raw deal, not getting enough attention. I’d never considered the possibility that too much could be worse. What did you do?’

  ‘I stuck it for as long as I could. Then I ran off to join the police force.’

  ‘Very romantic’

  ‘Yeah, well, this was during the great circus shortage of 1977.’

  ‘And you lived happily ever after.’

  She was right. He’d made it sound glib. But then, he’d missed out a couple of chapters in the middle. There seemed little point in telling her about the filthy squalor he’d moved into, the near starvation, or the months of depression that had followed. It was a bad time in his life, when the boundaries had become blurred and chaotic: dismal days and black, lonely nights when, unable to sleep he had sought out the open spaces, and prowled the dark chasms of the canals that on occasions had looked so very inviting. For a while he teetered on the edge of a slippery slope, until a young detective constable, Les Randall, had thrown him a lifeline. Even now, years later, he never failed to appreciate the comfort of clean sheets and clothes and an orderly, disciplined environment.

  ‘You didn’t have it so easy, either,’ Anna remarked, to bridge the silence that followed.

  Mariner shook his head, grabbing the opportunity to change the subject. ‘It hardly equates with having a disabled sibling,’ he said. He looked around him. ‘Where is Jamie?’

  Jamie, who only minutes ago had been hovering near an adjacent fruit machine, was now nowhere to be seen.

  ‘Oh God,’ said Anna. ‘He does this all the time.’

  A loud ‘Hey!’ pointed them in the right direction, as they saw a young man snatch back the phone that Jamie had helped himself to from a table. He relinquished it, but only under protest, leaving Anna to make profuse apologies. She and Mariner were still laughing about it going out to the car park. She had a terrific laugh. A little later, Mariner dropped them outside the apartment block.

  ‘Thanks for that,’ Anna said. ‘Jamie loved it.’

  Him and me too, thought Mariner. ‘No problem,’ he said, lightly.

  ‘So did I,’ she added, unexpectedly. ‘I mean it’s great to have some normal adult company again. And who knows, Jamie might even sleep tonight.’

  ‘Let’s hope so.’

  She’d sat in the front passenger seat for the return journey and was smiling up at him, a warm, encouraging smile. Mariner breathed deeply, inhaling her perfume, sweet and heady. All he had to do was lean a little closer—

  ‘Consernunt please, Carol,’ piped up Jamie inaccurately from the back seat. They laughed again, and the moment, if that’s what it was, had passed.

  Mariner thought his timing for getting home would be about right, but his heart sank when, on the approach, he saw that the ground floor lights were still on. To compound his irritation, he’d decided tonight to drive right up to the service road, to find it blocked not only by Knox’s car, but also a scarlet Fiat Panda.

  Inside, a touchingly domestic scene greeted his eyes.

  Knox and his female friend were watching TV together. Or at least they might have been, if the blonde hadn’t been draped across Knox’s lap treating him to some alternative entertainment. As Mariner walked in they jumped up like a pair of teenagers caught in the act, though in fairness, one of them at least appeared to accurately fit the age profile.

  ‘Hi boss,’ Knox said, running a nervous hand over his cropped scalp. ‘Erm, this is Jenny.’

  ‘Hello, Jenny,’ said Mariner, politely.

  Blonde, petite and stunningly attractive, Jenny stepped forward and offered Mariner a hand, the same one that only moments before had been groping around inside Tony Knox’s police-issue shirt. ‘Hi. Tom isn’t it?’ she said turning on a beaming white smile that looked used to getting its own way. ‘Nice to meet you.’

  Mariner nodded but declined the hand.

  ‘I love your house,’ she went on, effusively, as if seeking to justify her presence.

  ‘Thanks.’ Mariner was non-committal.

  In recognition of the sudden awkwardness, she cast a meaningful glance at Knox and nodded towards the stairs.

  ‘I’ll go on up then.’

  ‘Sure,’ said Knox. ‘I’ll be up soon.’ The two men stood and watched her go. ‘Hope you don’t mind, boss,’ Knox said, sheepishly, when her small, shapely bottom had disappeared from sight.

  Mariner gave an indifferent shrug that belied a powerful and irrational urge to punch Knox’s lights out. Instead he said. ‘How did you two meet?’

  Knox squirmed like a guilty schoolboy. ‘She’s a second year medical student at the uni. I responded to a burglary at the hall of residence a couple of weeks back.’ He left Mariner to fill in the rest.

  ‘I take it she’s the complication.’

  ‘You could say that, yes.’

  What the fuck are you playing at? Mariner wanted to ask. You’ve got a wife, a family, and a grandchild for Christ’s sake. How can you throw it all away for a five minute fling with kid who’s probably just turned on by the uniform? But he didn’t say anything. Mariner couldn’t begin to understand what Knox’s motives might be. And perhaps underneath it all he was just jealous, plain and simple.

  ‘Well, cheers, anyway,’ said Knox, clumsily.

  Mariner just nodded again in response.

  ‘I’ll say goodnight then.’ There seemed little else to say.

  Tonight, Mariner noted, lying awake below them, their lovemaking lasted a mere seventeen minutes. Not long by most standards, but still enough to be a painful reminder of what he was missing.

  In a moment of half dream, half rampant fantasy, he imagined asking out Anna Barham, taking her out for dinner, or to see a film and back home afterwards. And what? Dazzle her with his non-existent conversational skills? Mariner had never had any problem attracting women, but until Greta came along his relationships had rarely strayed beyond the superficial. ‘There’s less to you than meets the eye,’ one former girlfriend had unkindly commented. A psychologist would have had a field day; an only child, bled dry by his mother. What else could you expect?

  Over the years he’d come to rely heavily on sex, but now he couldn’t even manage that. Drastic action was called for.

  Ignoring his problem in the hope that it would go away
hadn’t worked. And he hadn’t had the guts to go through with the one-night-stand remedy. What any sensible man would probably do was see the doctor, but he just couldn’t face it. Somewhere at the back of his mind was a nagging worry. Didn’t a man reach his sexual peak at nineteen or something ridiculous? He was more than twice that age now. What if it didn’t get better and he was over the hill?

  An ecstatic cry erupted from the room above his and Mariner shoved his head under the pillow and tried to block it out.

  Chapter Twelve

  The following cold and blustery morning Mariner was scheduled to appear at the Queen Elizabeth law courts in the city centre, giving evidence in a fraud investigation he’d been involved in sixteen months previously. Small and unassuming, Peter Foley had single-handedly relieved the insurance firm for which he worked of two hundred and fourteen thousand pounds over a six-year period. His ingenuity was spectacular. If it weren’t for the fact that he’d broken the law, Mariner would have had a sneaking admiration for him. Mariner’s contribution to the prosecution case was over by mid-morning and as he was in the vicinity, he took the opportunity to drop in on DI Doug Lowry, ex-Vice Squad, now based with the recently formed Crime Support Team at headquarters in Lloyd House.

  It proved an uncomfortable experience. Amid the overflowing in-trays, out-trays, stacks of files and empty coffee mugs, Lowry’s office resembled a landfill site, with about enough free space to swing a pencil. The only absent feature was the hovering seagulls. Mariner found the clutter almost unbearable.

  ‘Sit yourself down then,’ Lowry insisted cheerfully, leaving Mariner wondering if he was expected to perch on top of the filing cabinet. Instead, shifting a pile of dubiously stained paperwork from a moulded plastic chair, he parked himself gingerly on it. Lowry’s office was windowless, airless and overheated, and already the big man was sweating profusely. Mariner hoped this wouldn’t take long. ‘You knew Eddie Barham, didn’t you?’ he kicked off.

  ‘That journalist you lot thought had topped himself? Yes, I did.’