Innocent Lies (Reissue)

by Chris Collett

  ‘Is this what you’d call legitimate? They’ve been at it for months, years for all I know. All the while I thought she was going back up to Liverpool to visit her sick mum she was really busy rekindling an old flame. Romantic, isn’t it? All she was waiting for was for our Gary to leave home before she followed suit. She doesn’t need me anymore. She said that her job with the kids was done so there was no other reason to stick around.’ He faltered. ‘When I asked her what about us, she said, “what us?”’

  The word for all this was ‘ironic’ but all Mariner could muster was: ‘Fuck. I mean, fuck.’

  Knox grimaced. ‘That the best you can do? No lecture about poetic justice?’

  ‘You know me better than that,’ said Mariner. ‘And I’m not about to feed the gossip mill either.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter, does it? It won’t be long before it’s all round the canteen. There’ll be a few sides splitting over this. The sad old fart’s got what he deserved.’

  ‘I’m sorry, mate.’

  ‘Not half as fuckin’ sorry as I am,’ Knox retorted, bitterly. ‘It’s like, this whole other little parallel world was going on that I never even knew existed, but suddenly hindsight opened the door and there it was. Suddenly I can see what a total shit I’ve been. I thought I had it all under control and meanwhile Theresa’s been the one pulling the strings, letting me self-destruct. And do you know what the biggest fuckin’ irony of all is? Now that I’m free to go out with any woman I like, I’m just not interested.’

  ‘Do you know who this other man is?’ asked Mariner carefully.

  ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘She told you?’

  ‘She didn’t have to. Come and look at this.’

  Mariner followed Knox up the stairs to a small back bedroom where a PC sat on a desk. Knox logged onto the internet and typed in a web address. ‘Old Friends’ said the banner that unfurled before them.

  ‘What’s this?’ asked Mariner.

  ‘It’s one of these school reunion websites. Watch.’

  Mariner looked over his shoulder as Knox typed in the name of a school and a date and a list of names appeared on the screen. Theresa Fitzpatrick (Knox) was among them. But Knox ignored it, instead clicking on Stephen Lamb. Up came the details: a brief paragraph revealing that Lamb, now forty-nine had built up a successful construction business and after a recent divorce was single again. The end of the message asked if anyone knew the whereabouts of Theresa Fitzpatrick. It was followed by an email address and a crystal clear invitation.

  ‘Do you think somebody told her?’ Mariner surmised.

  ‘She was well capable of finding it herself,’ said Knox. ‘She’s been emailing him for months. And all that time, not a hint of what was going on.’

  ‘When did you find out?’

  ‘Thirteen days ago. She went up to her mother’s, so I thought. But then she sent me the letter saying that she’s decided not to come back.’

  ‘Jesus.’ The silence that followed seemed to stretch for hours.

  Mariner turned his attention back to the monitor. ‘So is it weird looking back at your old school?’

  ‘Oh yeah — and the entries go back for years. There are people who were there in 1943. Can you believe that?’

  ‘Are you on there?’

  ‘No thanks. I wouldn’t want to own up to my career choice. There’s a few people I recognise though, kids and teachers. Some of the stuff about the teachers must be borderline libellous. True, but libellous just the same. You should have a go. Look up your old school.’

  ‘No thanks.’ Mariner could think of nothing worse. There wasn’t a single person he was at school with that he would have the slightest desire to make contact with again.

  ‘Want a drink?’ Knox asked. He’d clearly already had more than enough, but now wasn’t the time to point that out.

  ‘All right,’ said Mariner and they went back down stairs.

  Knox poured two generous measures of Scotch and the silence resumed. ‘How long have you and Theresa been together?’ asked Mariner eventually.

  ‘Since we were fifteen,’ said Knox. ‘We met at the Coconut Grove in 1979. There she was, dancing round the handbags with her mates. She was the most gorgeous thing I’d ever seen. But she was a good Catholic girl. She made me wait.’

  ‘What, until you got married?’

  ‘Till she knew I was serious. Jesus, the number of nights I went home with my nuts on fire.’

  ‘How many times have you been unfaithful?’

  Knox visibly flinched. ‘You mean the number of other women? Four in total. The first one was the hardest. I felt really bad about it. But after I’d done it that once it got easier to convince myself that I wasn’t doing any harm. Theresa was busy with the kids. She was shattered all the time. I told myself I was doing her a favour, taking the pressure off.’

  ‘Did you ever do it out of spite?’

  ‘No. Why?’ He looked up at Mariner. ‘You haven’t—’

  Mariner’s silence said it all.

  Knox raised an eyebrow. ‘You’ve cheated on Anna? What would you want to do that for? I thought she was hot.’

  ‘She is . . .’ said Mariner. ‘When she’s available.’

  ‘You knew about Jamie before you started it.’

  ‘That’s the thing. It’s not Jamie. His respite hours are increasing all the time. And anyway, just because he’s there doesn’t mean I can’t see her. Jamie’s okay with me. He always has been. It’s all the other stuff.’

  ‘Like . . .?’

  ‘Well, right now we’re organising a fundraising stall for the Bournville festival.’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘You haven’t seen it? It’s like a country fair but in the city; all home-grown leeks and maypole dancing.’

  ‘Nothing wrong with a bit of pole dancing,’ mused Knox.

  ‘Except this is little girls skipping around waving bits of ribbon.’

  ‘I’ll bet they attract the same kind of audience,’ said Knox, cynically. ‘And this fair is what you’re jealous of? Sounds to me like you’re getting serious about our Anna,’ said Knox.

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘But you don’t like it when she plays hard to get.’

  ‘I don’t know if she really is. It’s just as if what we’ve got doesn’t matter much. It’s just one small aspect of her life.’

  ‘Does she know how important it is to you?’ Knox asked.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean, have you told her?’

  Mariner made a show of thinking. ‘Not in so many words.’

  Knox laughed. ‘You really don’t get it, do you? You pathetic loser. I can tell you’ve never read a women’s magazine.’

  ‘My dentist gets the Great Outdoors.’

  ‘You’ve got to talk to Anna. Tell her what you’ve told me. How else is she supposed to know that you want more of a commitment?’

  ‘I’m not sure that I do.’

  ‘Oh, believe me, you do.’

  ‘What is this? Your new career as Mary Knox: Agony Aunt?’

  ‘Oh yeah. I’m a real expert, me. I bet you’ve never told her that you love her either.’

  Mariner couldn’t answer him.

  Knox shook his head in disbelief. ‘My God, what does she see in you?’

  ‘I’m dynamite between the sheets,’ said Mariner, looking on sheepishly as finally, combined with the whisky, he reduced Knox to uncontrollable mirth.

  ‘So who was it?’ asked Knox, when he’d wiped his eyes.

  ‘What does it matter?’

  ‘Who?’ Knox insisted.

  ‘Millie.’

  ‘With respect, sir, you’re a fucking moron.’

  ‘Millie’s a lovely—’

  ‘I didn’t mean that.’

  ‘No.’

  When they’d followed up the whisky with strong coffee and Knox seemed almost human again Mariner expounded his theory. ‘It all just keeps coming back to Shaun Pryce,’ he said. ‘Do you
think it was just electrical work that he did, or was he offering Barbara Kincaid another kind of service?’

  ‘He really fancies himself. I wouldn’t be surprised,’ Knox agreed. ‘He was very keen to tell us about his high sex drive and, from what we’ve seen, he doesn’t have a steady girlfriend, so how else does he get by?’

  ‘Do you think Yasmin would have gone for a bloke like Shaun Pryce?’

  ‘Yasmin?’

  ‘I was just thinking, Pryce might have been useful to her,’ said Mariner. ‘If Yasmin was still in love with Lewis, Shaun could have come in useful for winding him up. She knew Lewis was working at the industrial units and they used to meet on the bridge. Perhaps she arranged to meet Lewis to show him what she was getting up to with Shaun. Maybe she wasn’t going on the pill for Lewis at all, but for Shaun Pryce.’

  ‘Except that Lewis is telling us that he didn’t show that afternoon,’ Knox said. ‘I don’t really buy that.’

  ‘Okay,’ Mariner conceded. ‘So what if it was pure coincidence. Maybe Lewis confirmed their date but decided to stand Yasmin up after all. He told us he thought she was leading him on, so perhaps that’s the payback; Yasmin turns up at the bridge to find no Lewis. But then the guy who is there, lurking in the grass getting his rocks off, is Shaun Pryce. Pryce recognises Yasmin from the school art classes and he’s horny anyway, so he decides to try it on. But Yasmin isn’t interested, so Pryce loses it. The river’s in full spate so he dumps her over the edge.’

  ‘Lucky with the timing,’ said Knox.

  ‘Pryce could have known about the water release, though. He could have easily concealed her in the short term before coming back at the right time to dispose of her properly.’

  ‘But Pryce wasn’t there that late in the afternoon.’

  ‘So he says. That day we met him in the clearing he was saying he went there after work. Then suddenly it’s one o’clock? You saw him at the reservoir. He was loving it. And at that time he must have thought he was safe. Yasmin’s body was well concealed. Barbara Kincaid had been there for months undiscovered, and now there was Lewis Everett in the background to deflect our attention too. Yasmin could have told him that she was meant to be meeting Lewis.’

  ‘The MO for Yasmin indicates a degree of premeditation,’ Knox pointed out.

  ‘Not if Pryce just happened to have a length of wire in his pocket,’ said Mariner. ‘Whichever way you look at this, Shaun Pryce is in this up to his ears. He’s the one who connects Yasmin to Barbara Kincaid and we know he frequents the reservoir. I think we should bring him in.’

  ‘You might have to see what Fiske says about that.’

  * * *

  CHAPTER 26

  Fortunately, DCI Fiske had other things to occupy him. In response to the formal complaint from the Skeet family, the IPCC team had arrived to begin their investigation and for once the DCI was happy to let Mariner take the initiative and get on with his job. Thus when Shaun Pryce arrived at Mrs Paleczcki’s the next morning he found a two-man welcoming committee waiting for him. Half an hour later Pryce was installed in an interview room while a search warrant was organised, to authorise turning his flat and car upside down. Being in a police station can do it, but Mariner thought Pryce looked even more jittery than the last time they’d met. The actor’s mask was beginning to slip. ‘I want you to tell me again when exactly on Tuesday, 3 July you were at the reservoir and exactly what it is you were doing there,’ Mariner said.

  To settle his nerves Pryce made a show of sighing heavily. ‘Aren’t you lot getting bored with this, too? I went there at about one o’clock. I stayed half an hour. I sunbathed, I smoked a bit of weed. What’s the big deal?’

  ‘And you say you were on your own,’ said Mariner.

  ‘Yes.’ Exasperation was creeping into his voice.

  ‘You’re not always alone though, are you?’ Pryce shifted in his chair and for a split second Mariner thought they might have him. ‘When was the last time you had a woman down there?’

  ‘I’ve told you. Weeks ago. They don’t like the grass.’

  ‘And who was it, Shaun? Was it Barbara Kincaid?’

  ‘What?’ He hadn’t seen that coming.

  Knox went in for the kill, unleashing the vitriol that should have been directed elsewhere. ‘We know, you see, Shaun. We know that you’re a randy little bastard who can’t keep his dick in his trousers. You have very eclectic taste, I’ll say that for you. Middle-aged housewives to seventeen-year-old schoolgirls. Very inclusive. Were they both threatening to abandon you? Is that what made you mad? Mad enough to kill them? Or is that just part of the turn on for you?’

  Pryce was starting to look panicked now, blinking rapidly to shut out the words. ‘That’s rubbish,’ he insisted. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ But the outburst had unsettled him.

  Knox leaned forward threateningly. ‘Are you denying that you knew Barbara Kincaid?’

  Pryce hesitated. ‘No,’ he said, petulantly.

  ‘All right then,’ said Mariner. ‘Tell us about her. How did you two meet?’

  ‘I thought she killed herself,’ Pryce whined. Mariner shrugged non-committally. ‘So why are you asking these questions?’

  ‘To find out exactly what happened. Just give us an answer.’

  ‘I used to do this amateur dramatics thing,’ said Pryce. ‘Barbs played the piano for rehearsals. There was a problem with the electrics one night and I fixed it. Afterwards in the bar she came up to me and said their house hadn’t ever been rewired and she thought it might be dangerous. She asked me to go and have a look at it. After the run was finished I was resting again so I said I would.’

  ‘When was this?’ Mariner asked.

  ‘About March time I suppose.’ Which would have been around the time that Barbara Kincaid began threatening suicide.

  ‘Was that the only reason she asked you to go to her house?’ asked Knox.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Did she fancy you?’

  ‘A lot of women do.’

  ‘That must be such a burden,’ said Knox sarcastically.

  ‘So you went to the house,’ said Mariner. ‘Was her husband around?’

  ‘No. It was in the day. He’s a teacher. He was at work.’

  ‘That’s handy. So what happened?’

  ‘I did the rewiring.’ Pryce sat back in his seat. ‘What?’

  ‘That’s all?’

  ‘If you must know, she nearly fucking killed me. I was up a stepladder connecting up a ceiling rose and she came up behind me, giving me all the usual crap about her old man being useless in bed. Then she—’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Touched me up.’

  ‘Very delicately put.’

  ‘I nearly fell off the bloody ladder and took the light fitting with me.’

  ‘But did you respond? Barbara Kincaid was an attractive woman. And we all know about your famously high sex drive.’ Pryce didn’t know what to say. ‘Or was she too old for you?’ said Knox.

  ‘Luckily for me her old man turned up.’

  ‘So then you met Brian Goodway, too. Did you tell him you were a model, or had Barbara already done that?’

  ‘It just came up in conversation, you know.’

  ‘And whose idea was it that you should go and model at the school?’ asked Mariner.

  ‘I can’t remember. His, I think.’

  ‘I bet you jumped at it. All those young girls.’

  ‘It was a modelling job. It’s what I do.’

  ‘Did you get paid for it?’

  ‘Why else would I have done it?’

  ‘Mm. Why else would you have chosen to spend your time surrounded by attractive adolescent girls?’ Mariner deliberately turned to Knox. ‘I can’t think. I heard you got pretty friendly with some of them.’

  ‘I like kids,’ said Pryce, weakly.

  ‘Particularly teenage girls. Was Yasmin Akram one of them?’

  ‘I don’t know, there were a lot of them.’


  ‘You offered to take your clothes off, didn’t you?’

  ‘It was one of the kids suggested that. “Show us what’s underneath,” she said.’

  ‘Who said?’

  ‘Tall, skinny kid: Susan.’ Suzanne. ‘It was just a laugh.’

  ‘A laugh? These girls were seventeen, a very impressionable age.’

  ‘It was a joke.’

  ‘Ha, ha,’ said Knox.

  * * *

  They took a break. Results from the search of Pryce’s house sounded promising so far and were building a good circumstantial case. Not surprisingly, items included electrical wires of every gauge imaginable. His car had also yielded a grass-speckled blanket and samples from it could be tested with soil and grass from the flattened area at the reservoir. Condoms found were of the same brand as the used ones that had been picked up at the scene.

  * * *

  During the afternoon, Delrose phoned up to tell Mariner that he had a visitor: a woman. He was expecting Colleen and dreading having to face her. Instead he found Anna waiting for him in reception. Nearly as bad.

  ‘Hi,’ she said, cheerfully. ‘I wondered when I’d see you again.’ She studied him. ‘You look rough.’

  ‘Had a curry that didn’t agree with me.’ It didn’t explain why he couldn’t look her in the eye, but she didn’t allude to that. ‘What are you doing here?’ he asked.

  ‘I tried phoning, but you’re a hard man to get hold of. I was nearby, so I thought I might stand a better chance of talking to you if I came in person. I’ve missed you.’

  ‘I’ve been busy.’ Mariner rubbed the back of his neck. ‘We’re in the middle of something—’

  ‘I know,’ she said. ‘But I think we need to talk. Can you spare a few minutes?’

  ‘All right.’

  Outside, they crossed the road and walked into the park opposite, where they began a circuit of the boating pond. A couple of little kids with their grandparents were trying in vain to encourage their toy yachts to sail on the smooth expanse of water. Mariner knew how they felt. For days now it had seemed as if the wind had gone out of the sails of their investigation, leaving it stale and stagnant like the water around them. Then, today, the first hint of a breeze. He hardly dared hope.