‘No.’
‘Has Tom talked about meeting anyone new recently? He might not even know who it is.’
‘I can’t think of anyone.’
‘Anything out of the ordinary happened?’ Anna pulled a face, as they both instantly thought of St Martin’s. ‘Sorry, stupid question.’
‘Tom has rented rooms at the cottage,’ she said suddenly. ‘You know, the ones you and Jenny had.’
In a different age, thought Knox. ‘Who’s his lodger?’
‘A guy called Bill Dyson.’
‘When did he move in?’
‘Just before Christmas. But according to Tom he’s never there.’
Knox reined in a ripple of anticipation, remaining outwardly calm. ‘What do you know about him?’
‘Not much. He’s from up north somewhere, and he sells burglar alarms.’
He was working in security, Clive McCrae had said.
Knox had assumed as a security guard, but Christ, it could be him. ‘You’ve never met him?’ Knox asked.
‘No, but the letting agent has.’
As it was, they didn’t have to find Roy Shipley to show him the photograph. He’d already seen the appeal on the local news and had contacted Granville Lane. ‘The man you’re looking for with Mr Mariner is the one who’s renting rooms in his house.’
‘Kenneth McCrae?’
‘He doesn’t call himself that, I know him as Bill Dyson, and his hair is longer than in your picture, but it’s him all right.’
‘Could you come in to the station?’
When he arrived, Shipley was shown up to Coleman’s office, where Knox waited impatiently.
‘I don’t understand,’ Shipley said. ‘Dyson gave me references, showed me pictures of his family—’
‘He made it up,’ Coleman said, simply. ‘Is there anything else you can tell us about him?’
‘His car. He drives an Audi estate, silver grey, and he ran a burglar alarm business called Apex Security. I have his card.’ Shipley produced the business card from his wallet. ‘I rang the number before I came here, just to make sure I wasn’t making some terrible mistake. Mr McCrae hasn’t worked there for years. And he didn’t own the business, he was a sales rep. According to them, not even a particularly good one.’
‘Thank you, Mr Shipley,’ Coleman said, reassuringly. ‘You’ve been a great help.’
They were just in time to get out an appeal for the silver Audi on the local early evening news, and meanwhile Knox joined the team that was searching Mariner’s house, the last place they could be certain that he’d been.
‘We’ve found some blood spatters,’ a SOCO showed him the dark brown stains on the step by the front door.
‘He’d cut his hand,’ Knox said, at the same time knowing that the cut had long healed.
Other forensics officers were going over every inch of the house, every nook and cranny brightly lit with spotlights and Knox had to step around them. Apart from that, the place looked perfectly normal, the post even neatly arranged on the hall table. Breaking into the second floor flat they’d found it empty, the only thing Dyson had left were drawings and a couple of books about the canal. ‘It’s as if he’s never been here,’ said Knox, but he arranged for SOCO to sweep it anyway.
The drum beats were going in Mariner’s head again, the death knell. He’d no idea how much time had passed since Dyson had been here. His body had been still for so long that it was easier now not to move at all, though occasionally he was seized by attacks of uncontrollable shaking. He had a raging thirst, his mouth so dry that every so often he had to peel his tongue from the roof of his mouth. He couldn’t see her, but at one point he was convinced that Anna was there beside him, telling him how stupid he’d been, as if he needed that pointing out. Just lately he’d been coming and going so much that no one would miss him for days. And now he was going to die of exposure, starvation or both before anyone even knew he was missing. And he hadn’t a clue where he was. He had no idea for how long he’d initially been unconscious or how far Dyson had brought him, even if he was still in the UK. He could already be in Cyprus, except that he didn’t think it would be this cold. Did they have a winter in Cyprus? He thought of warm beaches and sunshine and was overcome by a sudden drowsiness . . .
The call came in shortly after the news item, a sighting of Dyson’s car parked only streets away from Mariner’s home. Coleman spoke to the caller, a resident living nearby. ‘Is it still there?’ he asked.
‘I can see it from where I’m standing, under the street light,’ the man told him.
‘You’re sure it’s the same vehicle?’
‘I noted the registration the first time I saw it, in case I was going to have to report it as abandoned, but then it went. A couple of days later it came back again.’
Knox met Jack Coleman and a couple of uniformed officers down there. The car was parked within walking distance of Mariner’s house. ‘Meaning that there were times when Dyson could have been there without wanting anyone to know,’ Coleman said. ‘Stalking Mariner from there would be a piece of cake, and Mariner would have had no idea it was happening.’
Breaking into the vehicle they found a folder in the glove compartment and examination in the beam of the powerful torch revealed printouts of an Earls Court hotel, a list of numbers; Mariner’s mobile, Anna’s number and the invitation to Jack Coleman’s retirement. There was a sheaf of newspaper cuttings about the Rylands and the press photo of Mariner emerging from the bombing, along with features from previous years, including the arrest of the teacher Brian Goodway for the murders of Ricky Skeet and Yasmin Akhtar. It was the information McCrae had used to find Mariner in the first place.
‘But where the hell is McCrae now?’ Knox demanded, looking around him as if the man might suddenly emerge from the shadows.
‘He must have another vehicle, or he’s hired something,’ Coleman surmised.
‘He’s taking a hell of a risk.’
‘Maybe that doesn’t matter, because he’s long gone by now. And he has no idea that we’re onto him. Get uniform to take his photograph around local car hire firms. Get people at home if needed.’
‘And what about DI Mariner?’
It was the question they’d both been avoiding. If McCrae had made his escape, he’d be unlikely to encumber himself with a prisoner.
‘He needs Mariner silenced,’ said Coleman, calmly. ‘He has no reason to keep him alive.’
‘But if he’s not in the house, or here in the car, where is he?’
‘We know that Mariner came back to the house yesterday afternoon. If McCrae was lying in wait, where would be the easiest place to dispose of a body in the immediate vicinity?’ Like clockwork they both turned in the direction of the canal. ‘We need to get some divers down here. And make sure Anna stays away. She mustn’t know.’
Tony Knox was becoming a liability, Coleman realised. It was close to midnight and they were both on the freezing canalside under a dome of floodlights, watching and waiting as the small team of divers began their gruesome task. Periodically, Knox leaned over, yelling orders, even though he wasn’t in charge. Only a matter of time before either he fell into the icy water, or got punched in the face by an exasperated diver.
Coleman walked over to him. ‘Why don’t you go inside and check on forensics. Phone the labs and see if they’ve come up with anything. You’re not helping here.’
For a moment Coleman thought Knox was going to put up a fight, but after a moment’s hesitation the constable did as instructed.
Inside Mariner’s house, Knox used his mobile to put a call through to the labs. He tried the vehicle workshop first, but it was too soon for any fingerprints.
‘We’ve found something of interest though.’
‘What?’
‘Two dog hairs from a Border terrier.’
Eleanor Ryland had a dog, Fliss Fitzgibbon had said so, which would mean that McCrae might have been to see Eleanor Ryland, too. What were the chances that
he had murdered her as well? The possibility did nothing to reassure Knox. Ringing off he next tried the central lab who had taken numerous samples from the house. ‘Have you found anything?’
‘Nothing conclusive,’ was the frustrating reply. ‘But we found something odd. I took some residue from a footprint on the rug in the hall. You can probably see it if you look.’ Knox went back to the hall. Sure enough there was a faded print on the beige runner, halfway along. ‘It’s going out of the house,’ Knox observed. Coleman appeared, giving a brief shake of the head to indicate that nothing had been found, waiting while Knox finished the call.
‘Yes, strange in itself,’ the SOCO was saying. ‘And what I assumed to be soil turns out to be coal dust.’
‘He’s got a woodburner,’ Knox said.
‘That’s the point. It burns wood, not coal. May be nothing of course, but I just found it puzzling.’ He rang off and Knox relayed the conversation to Coleman.
‘Coal dust?’ he said. ‘So where the hell would it come from?’
‘This cottage used to service barges,’ said Knox. ‘I remember Mariner telling me that once. The barges would have burned coal on their stoves.’
‘So there must be a coal store somewhere. But where?’
‘McCrae had the plans to the cottage in his flat.’ Knox ran up the stairs, two at a time, grabbed the plans and was back, breathless in less than a minute. Spreading the papers out on the table it took a few seconds to make sense of the drawings, but then Knox saw it.
‘It’s right under our feet,’ he said, calmly. ‘There’s a cellar.’
Coleman mustered all those remaining in the house. ‘Check inside and out. We’re looking for the entrance to a cellar.’
It wasn’t easy. A circuit of the exterior revealed nothing that would lead them underground, and all the interior doors opened onto storage space, including the deep cupboard under the stairs, which was piled high with boxes of papers and miscellaneous junk. But it was while flashing a torch around it that Knox noticed the drag of fingerprints in the light layer of dust covering one of the boxes. Pulling out some of the cartons into the hall allowed him to get a better view of the cupboard’s interior walls, and there he saw the hinges and bar-catch of a door.
‘It’s here! Help me clear this junk out!’ he yelled, and was immediately inundated.
On the edges of Mariner’s consciousness the pounding had become a constant, loud and insistent, Mariner’s pulse racing and signalling the end. It was to be the last thing he heard. Was this how Chloe Evans’ last minutes had been? There was a deafening crack, and a blinding glare burned his eyes as he strained to focus on the dazzling shaft of light that had appeared, leading him away to the other place. Funny though, he never expected St Peter to have a scouse accent, nor that the guardian angel’s first words, with a catch in his voice, would be, ‘Fuckin’ hell. Look at the state of you.’
After so long in a vacuum, the activity that followed overwhelmed Mariner’s senses, so that he wanted to bellow for them to go away and leave him alone. But his mouth was so dry that he could hardly speak. Tony Knox brought him some water, which he gulped down greedily and promptly threw back up all over Knox’s trousers.
It took half an hour for the fire crew to sever the chain that bound him to the wall, and more time to cut off the ankle-cuff, exposing his raw skin. During that time paramedics stretchered him and attached a drip. As it all went on around him Mariner drifted in and out of consciousness, hardly able to distinguish what was real and what was in his throbbing head. Knox was talking to him, his face close by. ‘McCrae’s gone,’ he said. ‘Did he tell you where?’
‘McCrae?’ Mariner murmured, his tongue flopping clumsily in his mouth.
‘Dyson’s real name. It was Bill Dyson who did this to you.’
‘Mm.’ It was easier to nod.
‘Dyson seems to have been an arbitrary choice.’
Mariner shook his head. ‘. . . Diana’s son,’ he slurred. ‘... obvious.’ Drifting off again, he rallied himself. ‘Cyprus,’ he said.
‘That’s where he’s going?’
Mariner blinked a negative. ‘. . . not yet. He’s waiting . . . to contest the will . . . lying low.’
‘Loch Cree,’ said Knox enigmatically, and then he was gone.
Later Mariner learned that, taken by surprise, Bill Dyson had come quietly. Shortly before dawn local police officers including an armed response unit, had surrounded the caravan on the loch. Inside they’d found, among other things, a laptop with the necessary program to manage the tracking devices on Ryland’s car and on the Volvo.
Day 1
Mariner opened his eyes onto a white world, everything transformed from dark to light, but as his eyes focused he could distinguish a face looking into his. Anna.
She smiled and squeezed his hand. ‘Hello, you.’
With effort, Mariner smiled back, but, then, from nowhere, his chest heaved and great wracking sobs convulsed his body. Wrapping him in her arms, Anna held him tight to her. ‘It’s all right. You can let it out. You’re safe now.’
‘I should have told you,’ Mariner said, when the storm had passed.
‘And when did this profundity occur?’
‘The first time I woke up in the cellar.’
‘Bit late then, really.’
‘You could say that.’
Before she went she helped him shave.
‘If I had a mirror I could do it myself.’
‘You’re too scary for a mirror. We’ve put it away.’
Day 2
Tony Knox came to see him, bringing copies of The Great Outdoors and a couple of bottles of Sam Smith’s. ‘They’re bound to let me drink that in here,’ Mariner said. ‘But thanks.’
‘So when did you know it was Dyson?’
‘I’m not sure. I remembered Dyson talking about his “chosen family”. It seemed an odd phrase to use. And then he came, while I was in the cellar. He came to tell me he was going and of course I recognised his voice. He confessed it all. Is there enough to charge him?’
‘Plenty. He was stupid enough to hang on to the murder weapon. The barrel markings match the casings on the bullets recovered at Cheslyn Woods. They found dog hairs in his car, too.’
‘It could be cross contamination,’ said Mariner. ‘He gave me a lift once.’
‘Maybe, but we’ve got a sighting of his car near Eleanor’s house on that Saturday afternoon, someone sitting in it. A neighbour saw it but thought he was just another reporter. She came forward after the TV appeal.’
‘So I’m off the hook.’
‘You were never really on it, Boss.’
‘I don’t know why it took me so long to work it out. Diana’s “illness” came up time after time, and all along people were telling me how much Geoffrey and Diana Ryland had in common, but I couldn’t see what it was. I couldn’t link those two things together; him dealing with the guilt of having abandoned me, while his wife grieved for the loss of her child.’
‘You got there in the end.’
‘Only just. And if you and Coleman hadn’t realised what was going on—’
‘It was a joint effort. Would have helped if you’d told someone the full story of course, but we were lucky to be able to piece it together, with help from Anna, Dave Flynn and Fliss Fitzgibbon.’ Knox reached into his pocket and produced a letter. ‘She left you this, by the way.’
‘She’s gone back to Switzerland?’
‘Couple of days ago. Oh, and bad news on Alecsander Lucca.’
‘The extradition’s been turned down?’
‘Worse that that. Lucca was shot dead by a sniper while they were moving him from one jail to another.’
‘Is Charlie Glover any closer to identifying Madeleine?’
Knox shook his head. ‘And now we might never know. Some you win, some you lose eh?’
‘How’s Selina doing?’ Mariner asked.
Knox shifted uncomfortably. ‘She’s moved in with her mother for a whil
e. Things were going too fast. It was getting a bit,’ he groped for the right word, settling on, ‘intense.’ He seemed about to say more, but stopped.
‘Anyway, I’d best get back. The new boss is in, so got to make a good impression.’
‘What’s she like?’
‘Haven’t had the pleasure yet.’
‘Let me know when you do.’
‘Sure. You’re looking better now anyway.’
‘Thanks.’
But as Knox left, Mariner couldn’t help wondering what it was about the way he looked. It couldn’t be that bad. There had to be a mirror somewhere, maybe in the bedside cupboard. He was reaching down, conscious, but unconcerned that his hospital gown gaped, exposing his bare backside to the fresh air. With the blinds pulled shut in his private side-ward there was no one to see.
‘Inspector Mariner?’ The unfamiliar woman’s voice was low and husky, with an understandable trace of amusement. Mariner shot back up, hastily covering himself, and came face to face with a tall, slender woman, olive skinned with thick dark hair. She was impeccably dressed, and barely suppressing a smile.
‘Sexy,’ thought Mariner.
She offered him a hand. ‘I’m Davina Sharp, your new DCI. I wanted to come and introduce myself, see how you’re doing.’
‘Bollocks!’ thought Mariner, but recovering, he shook hands with her. ‘You saw my most attractive feature first,’ he said, brazening it out. ‘Since everyone keeps telling me how rough I look.’
‘And how are you feeling?’
‘Better.’
‘You’ve been through a major ordeal.’
Mariner allowed himself a modest shrug.
‘You’re quite the caped crusader,’ she went on, ‘and lucky to get away with it, from what I hear. My view is that maverick detectives should stay where they belong - on TV.’ She smiled, warmly. So this wasn’t so much a social call as an early warning. ‘Crimes are most effectively solved through teamwork, and officers who decide to go it alone, in my experience, put themselves and their colleagues at risk. I do hope this is a conversation we won’t have to repeat.’ She smiled again.
Written in Blood Page 30