Innocent Lies (Reissue)

by Chris Collett

  ‘I just wondered what’s going on,’ Anna said, interrupting his thoughts. ‘The other evening you wouldn’t stay and now I’m beginning to get the idea that you’re avoiding me.’

  ‘It’s not that—’ Mariner began, too tired for this now.

  She moved towards him and made as if to take his arm, but a reflex made him move away, putting some distance between them. As they exchanged a look he saw the flash of understanding cross her features.

  ‘Just so that you know,’ she said, using that phrase of hers that always preceded any straight talking, ‘I’d be really hurt to find out that you’re shagging someone else.’

  ‘I know,’ he said helplessly, staring ahead.

  She was astute enough to take this as confirmation. She stared straight ahead. ‘So you are sleeping with someone else.’

  ‘Not exactly.’

  ‘What the hell does that mean?’

  ‘It means past tense. I slept with someone else, a couple of nights ago.’

  ‘Well, thanks for telling me.’ She hadn’t been lying. He could hear the pain in her voice. It sliced right through him.

  ‘It’s not what you think,’ he said.

  She stopped and turned to face him, her eyes gleaming with the same fury he’d witnessed the first time they’d met. ‘So what is it then?’

  ‘The other night when you were . . . busy. I worked late instead and afterwards, Millie Khatoon, she’s our—’

  ‘I know who she is.’

  ‘Right, well, Millie asked me back to her place for a curry and we ended up getting drunk and having sex. It was terrible sex. Millie would tell you the same thing. We didn’t go to bed, we didn’t even take our clothes off and it was over in ten minutes. It will never happen again.’

  An elderly couple walking by gazed their way.

  ‘Well, that’s all right then,’ Anna said, tightly.

  Righteous anger rose in Mariner’s chest. ‘Oh, and I suppose you and Simon are above all that.’

  ‘Simon?’

  ‘You can’t seem to stay away from him. Not that I blame you. He’s young, not bad-looking from what I could see—’

  ‘—and apart from me, the most important person in Jamie’s life.’ Anna rounded on him. ‘We’re talking about Jamie here, who can’t communicate, and for whom consistency is a lifeline. That could explain why I spend so much time with Simon.’

  ‘Even on a Friday night, when you’re meant to be having a break from Jamie?’

  ‘Sure, that was more of a social call, but if you hadn’t walked away you would have found out what it was all about.’

  ‘I wasn’t invited.’

  ‘What, you need a written invitation now?’ She was incredulous.

  Mariner looked out across the pond. ‘So what was it about?’ Why was it that her questions sounded entirely reasonable and calm, but he just sounded like a petulant schoolboy?

  ‘Simon has asked me to help with the stall on the day of the festival, so he and Martin had come round to discuss—’

  ‘Martin too? That was a cosy threesome.’

  ‘Actually it was fun,’ she responded, evenly. ‘Martin and Simon make a great couple.’ She paused to allow that to sink in. ‘Simon is gay, Martin is his partner. And if I’d thought that it was in the least bit relevant, I would have told you.’

  But even then, when she’d handed it to him on a plate, he couldn’t let it go. ‘That’s convenient, isn’t it,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, fuck off, Tom.’ And she turned and walked away from him.

  Even if he’d had the energy, going after her would be pointless, he could see that. He would only make things worse. So, after watching her go for a moment, he went back to the nick and Shaun Pryce.

  * * *

  They spent the rest of the afternoon on Pryce, covering the same ground but making no progress. Mariner was distracted and if anything Pryce seemed to be gaining control. He was certainly more relaxed than he had been a few hours earlier. In the end they had to let him go. As he stalked up to the office again Mariner felt ready to kill someone. Unfortunately the first person he ran into was Millie. ‘Has the search team come back yet?’ he demanded.

  ‘Not yet,’ she said glancing up briefly before returning to the report.

  Mariner banged his hand down hard on her desk, making everyone in the office turn round. ‘So why the hell aren’t you out there, chasing them up!’ And he strode into his office and slammed the door, leaving Millie staring after him. After a few moments she tentatively opened the door.

  Mariner was standing looking out of the window. ‘Sorry,’ he said, running a hand over his cropped hair. ‘It’s been a long day.’

  ‘Don’t let Pryce get to you, sir,’ said Millie. ‘If it is him we’ll find out in the end.’

  He swung round to face her. ‘Anna found out about what happened with us.’

  ‘Oh God. How? You don’t think I—?’

  ‘I told her.’

  ‘Oh. Good move.’

  ‘I had to. I couldn’t stand it.’

  ‘My, you have got it bad, haven’t you?’

  And that was the problem. He had. For the first time in his life Mariner had found a woman he could envisage growing old with. Someone he couldn’t imagine being without. But the deal with Anna had always been no commitment. And now he was in danger of blowing the whole thing sky high.

  Mariner’s conscience told him that he should go over to see his mother again tonight, but after the sort of day he’d had he couldn’t face her. In any case, it was late and by the time he got there visiting hours would be over. Instead he phoned and spoke to the duty nurse.

  ‘She’s fine,’ the girl reassured him. ‘Though I expect she’ll be disappointed not to see you.’ I wouldn’t count on it, thought Mariner.

  Knox had already left and in any case Mariner didn’t feel much like company, so he went home. The evening was warm and sticky again, the air heavy with unresolved tension. Opening up a bottle of home brew, he went to sit on the bench outside his front door, overlooking the canal. Towards dusk the sky darkened ominously and thunder rumbled in the distance. A few spots of rain followed, temporarily making the air smell a little fresher, but this time the storm never quite broke.

  * * *

  The next morning Mariner was in the shower, considering their next move with Shaun Pryce when away in the distance he heard the phone ringing. When he got out there was a message from the hospital on the answering machine asking him to call back as soon as possible. He hoped it wasn’t to let him know that they were letting his mother go home early. That was a diversion he could do without today.

  ‘Mr Mariner, I’m afraid your mother has suffered a slight heart attack. You may want to come in.’ The female voice was calm and unruffled, implying nothing more than a setback, though this would inevitably delay her discharge from the hospital. On the drive over Mariner could visualise his mother’s frustration as she was wired up to monitors and drips that would further restrict her independence. This had obvious implications for her after-care, too. He’d need to play a more active role, a prospect he didn’t relish, but it might mean getting to know each other again, which could in turn present new opportunities. The nursing sister met him on reception and took him into a side room to explain what was happening. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Mariner, we weren’t able to resuscitate her.’

  For a second or two her words didn’t make any sense. Then, one by one, their meaning struck him like a forty-foot wave, almost physically knocking him off-balance.

  ‘She died at just after nine o’clock,’ the nurse went on, gently. ‘It was very sudden, so it’s unlikely that she knew anything about it. She wouldn’t have been in any pain.’ Her carefully chosen words were designed to offer comfort and consolation. They were words of the kind that Mariner had spouted a hundred times before, when he’d broken the news of sudden, unexpected death to the relatives of crime victims. In all that time it had never occurred to him that one day he might be on the rec
eiving end. So this was what it was like. A feeling of complete disorientation, as if time had suddenly slowed to nothing.

  ‘Would you like to see her?’ the nurse repeated when he failed to respond the first time.

  He had to wait a few minutes, while they made her presentable presumably. But it made no difference. When he went in he didn’t see Rose. The life in her was gone, leaving behind an empty shell. In the past he’d watched families say their last goodbyes, kiss the cold cheek of their loved one, but Mariner couldn’t bring himself to do that. His mother wasn’t there anymore, and all that lingered was a burning pain in his chest. Why did it hurt so much? It wasn’t as though he would miss her daily presence. They’d hardly seen each other in recent years. And it wasn’t as though the idea of death was new to him; he faced the reminders of his own mortality on an almost daily basis at work. Perhaps it was because now he’d have to accept the possibility that he might never know.

  He realised all of a sudden how much he’d taken Rose for granted, expecting her to never not be there. He’d always assumed that she’d be one of those women who lived well into her nineties. An afterthought struck him: she’d never meet Anna now.

  They were still holding his mother’s personal effects at the nursing station on the ward. ‘I’d meant to give them to your dad,’ the nurse told him, when she handed them over. ‘But he left before I could.’

  Mariner gawped. ‘My what?’

  * * *

  Had he been thinking rationally and stopped to consider Mariner would have recognised her mistake, but other things began to fall into place. His mother’s ‘something to tell him,’ that his father had reappeared on the scene. It might explain why she was doing up the house, too.

  He drove at speed back to his mother’s house, where he found an old-style pushbike leaning against the wall. That hadn’t been there two days ago. He let himself in with the key. ‘Hello?’

  ‘Hello. You must be Tom.’ Ted emerged from the under stairs cupboard, and turned out to be a softly-spoken widower who had worked for years as an engineer at Potterton’s boilers in Coventry and lost his wife shortly after his retirement.

  ‘How long have you known Rose?’ Mariner asked.

  ‘About a year,’ said Ted. He’d made tea and they sat companionably at the kitchen table. ‘I was planning to move in with her.’

  ‘Were you?’ Mariner’s surprise was genuine. He was struggling to get his head round the idea that his mother had met another man after all this time. If there had been liaisons over the years Mariner had never been aware of them. As far as he knew there had been nobody since his father, who hadn’t even stuck around long enough to see his son born. Just like the Akrams with Yasmin, this was the part where he was finding out how little he knew about his mother.

  Ted was flustered now. ‘No, it wasn’t like that,’ he said. ‘We were just friends, but I was coming to live here with her. She’d offered me a room.’

  ‘A room?’

  ‘I’m living in rented accommodation at present but the lease expires at the end of the month and the landlord wants me out, so your mother had said I could have her spare room. It was all above board. We had agreed rent.’

  ‘I see.’ Typical of his mother to be adopting waifs and strays even at her age. As he spoke Mariner recognised that Ted and his mother had espoused the kind of pragmatic approach to life that is the privilege of the older generation. They’d reached the point where, having taken their share of knocks, they’d realised that they had too little time left to waste it arguing about the minutiae of life. Ted was about to lose his home. Rose had a spare room. The two things fitted logically together, end of story.

  ‘I’m not a con man,’ said Ted quickly, answering the very question that Mariner had dismissed inside his head moments before.

  ‘No.’ And you’re not my father.

  Ted ‘liked to keep busy’ as he put it, hence the fresh coat of paint on the house. Mariner’s mother had been helping him, but mainly by providing cups of tea, from the sound of it. ‘I didn’t want her to be up ladders. I don’t know why she was.’ Ted had come to collect his overalls and brushes. ‘No time like the present. I expect you’ll want to sell the house and I wouldn’t want them to be in the way.’

  * * *

  When Ted had gone Mariner called the office from his mother’s old Bakelite phone and spoke to Fiske.

  ‘I’m very sorry, Tom,’ he said, formally. ‘Is there anything we can do?’

  ‘No thanks, sir.’

  ‘Complaints are still here.’ Fiske couldn’t resist mentioning it, even though his timing was so utterly inappropriate. ‘They’re going through all the paperwork with a fine-tooth comb.’

  ‘That’s what they do, sir.’

  ‘Yes.’ A pause. ‘They’ll want to talk to you, too. Tom, I hope—’

  ‘Not really the right moment, sir.’

  ‘No.., no, you’re right. Well, take as much time as you need.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’ I won’t be hurrying back on your account. He’d let Fiske squirm. Even if the DCI were vindicated, the fact that there had been an investigation in the first place could be enough to blight his career. With any luck the mud would stick.

  Mariner was still uneasy about his own part in the debacle. He could have been more assertive about keeping Ricky’s case and more proactive, both with Ricky and with his mother. Now he’d paid the price for both.

  The following day he went to the registry office to record his mother’s death. Technically it had been a sudden death, so there would have to be a post-mortem, but it would be routine. The people around her when she died had all been fighting to save her life. Nothing suspicious about that. Sitting on a plastic seat awaiting his turn, it occurred to Mariner that to all intents and purposes he was now an orphan, with very little family to speak of. His mother had a couple of cousins as far as he remembered, but there’d been no family gatherings when he was a kid. It gave him something else in common with Anna. She’d lost her parents several years ago — except of course Mariner couldn’t know for a fact that both his parents were gone . . . and perhaps now never would.

  Ironically if he’d been adopted it would have been simple. These days there were routes to follow. But not for him. He thought about the bond between a father and the mother of his child. Ronnie Skeet was a nasty piece of work but it still didn’t stop Colleen from letting him back into the house time after time. He’s the father of my kids, she’d said.

  Mariner’s mother had never given him any firm reason to doubt that she knew the identity of his father. Was there an unbreakable bond there, too, however tenuous? However effectively she’d managed to keep this man a secret, would there still be some fine strand connecting them? If there was then there must be some trace of it at her house. It was the only place to start, his only chance of solving the puzzle . . .

  For the sake of being thorough he began with all the obvious places, but knowing beforehand that there would be nothing in the bureau in the dining room or in her drawer in the bedroom. Those were too accessible. He found all her current paperwork, bank and building society accounts, letters from the last few years. Most of the entries in her address book were local, friends and contacts made when she moved back up to Leamington. There was nothing from before that time.

  Among the documents was his birth certificate, but he’d seen that years ago and it gave nothing away. He was officially a bastard. That would amuse some of the crooks he’d put away in the past. Rose had kept all his old school reports too, most of them variations on a ‘could try harder’ theme. But it was futile. She’d kept the secret for this long. She’d never leave anything lying around down here that would give it away. Mariner knew where the important stuff was. The past had literally been hanging over his head all the time he’d lived in this house.

  When they’d moved in with his grandparents, space was at a premium and consequently many of their belongings had vanished up into the loft, never, to his knowledge,
to come down again. Rose had always vehemently discouraged him from going up there on the grounds that he might clumsily put a foot through the fragile floor and into the ceiling of the rooms below, but Mariner suspected the real reason lay deeper than that.

  No one had been up there for years, mainly because it was such a hassle getting up there, involving balancing precariously at the very top of the stepladder before launching off into the narrow aperture. But now that Mariner had height on his side, the manoeuvre was relatively easy. The loft space was stifling and dirty, with everything coated in a layer of black dust. A bare bulb, the cable draped over one of the rough timbers provided the minimum amount of light and in the gloom Mariner could see the enormity of the task: boxes and trunks, rolls of faded wallpaper, a collection of old camping equipment that could have belonged to Edmund Hillary, complete with rusting tartan vacuum flasks and heavy canvas groundsheets.

  Opening a cardboard carton he found old crockery and cutlery, including a child’s porcelain Peter Rabbit dish that had probably been his. In another, a whole willow-patterned bone-china dinner service. One suitcase was stuffed full of dusty dun-coloured blankets. Finally he found what he was looking for in a brown cardboard suitcase whose catches were almost rusted solid. With effort he slid them across and the lid flipped open to reveal yellowing paper: letters, cards, newspaper cuttings and photographs. The dull grimy address label stuck to the inside of the lid had written on it Rosemary Ellen Mariner in neat italic ink-penned script. This was his mother’s life in London.

  She’d been twenty-four when he was born in the middle of another long hot summer, which left him looking for anything dated from around that time. Her twenty-first birthday cards were bundled together, as were letters from his grandmother, even a handful of birth congratulations cards, most from women or couples. There were black-and-white photographs of him as a baby, wrapped in a woollen shawl. Along with these were mementoes from special occasions: tickets from London Zoo, a programme from the Henry Wood promenade concert the previous year, an evening of Sibelius, conducted by Malcolm Sargent.