The only things that might reveal any clues, he decided, were the letters. He sat on an old crate and strained his eyes to read. The letters were addressed to several different places in London, where his mother had lived an apparently nomadic existence. Mostly his grandmother described trivial events in Leamington, though occasionally she made reference to things that Rose must have mentioned in her letters home. It was these brief glimpses that Mariner clung to. In the dim light, the curling italic handwriting wasn’t easy to decipher and he took his time, anxious not to miss anything.
But he realised as he came to the last, with overwhelming disappointment, that there was nothing to miss. His neck ached and his eyes stung with the dust and the effort. It had gone cooler. When he emerged back onto the ladder he found out why. It was dark: almost eleven at night. Turning on the landing light he left a black fingerprint on the switch. He looked as if he’d been up a chimney. He was filthy.
His mother had never gone in for showers so he ran a hot bath and lay in it soaking. He had a decision to make. He could waste limitless amounts of time and energy trying to discover something that was probably unattainable, or he could get back to his life. Later he crawled into bed in the spare room to sleep on it.
CHAPTER 27
The morning brought with it a firm decision. Mariner locked his mother’s house, having made up his mind that he’d get onto the estate agent in the next few days and arrange a skip and some visits to a local charity shop. At home he found a message on the answer phone from Anna. It wasn’t exactly an olive branch, but carefully handled it might have the potential to become one. He called her back straight away, half expecting her recorded message. To his surprise she was there, but the conversation didn’t go according to plan. ‘Where have you been?’ Anna asked. ‘I’ve been trying to contact you.’
‘My mother’s dead.’
‘Oh God, Tom, I’m so sorry. What happened?’
‘A heart attack, Thursday morning.’
‘But that’s two days ago. Why didn’t you call me? Are you all right?’
‘I’m okay.’
‘Do you want me to come over? I can see if Simon could—’
‘No!’ he snapped. ‘It’s all right, I’m fine, really.’
‘Okay then.’ She backed off.
So the experience hadn’t changed him. In an emotional crisis he still couldn’t manage to tell her how he was feeling. It was so long since he’d done it that he’d forgotten how.
* * *
It wasn’t any less depressing back in the office, where in his absence, nothing much had changed. Fiske was still technically overseeing things but his mind was, understandably, preoccupied. The team itself seemed to have lost all coherence, too. Mariner recognised that he was still in a state of shock. Tony Knox seemed lower than ever, and recent events seemed to have generated an awkwardness between himself and Millie — all of which was nicely exacerbated by the fact that, beyond the initial expression of condolences, suddenly no one quite knew what to say to him.
There had been no progress, either forensic or otherwise, to pin down Shaun Pryce. The grass and soil traces on the blanket in his car were a match with the reservoir, but then Pryce had never denied that he went there. There was a feeling all round that both investigations were beginning to lose momentum as demands on resources continued to be made from elsewhere, and there were mutterings about calling in the murder review team. That and the ominous presence of the IPCC was doing little to inspire confidence.
* * *
Partly to get out of the building Mariner went to visit the Akrams, who unusually were both at home. ‘You’ve closed the school?’
‘We had to,’ Mohammed Akram told him. ‘It was impossible to keep going. We hope to reopen in a few days, but we’re in limbo. Until we know who did this to Yasmin we can’t get on with our lives. It’s like unfinished business.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Mariner said. ‘There’s no news yet, but we’re still doing everything we can.’
‘Thank you.’
* * *
Another uncompromisingly sunny day dawned for Mariner’s mother’s funeral. He put on one of his lighter suits and perused his collection of dreary ties. Had he been Fiske, he’d have had a whole range of jolly cartoon characters at his disposal, but he wasn’t, so in the end he chose a sky and navy stripe.
‘Well look at you.’ Anna was standing in the hallway. She’d let herself in and was waiting by the front door, wearing a simple floral dress and a wide brimmed hat. ‘I thought you could use some support,’ she said. ‘After all, I’ve had some experience at this.’ Over the last few years death had been a loyal companion as she’d seen both her parents and her older brother killed. It was Eddie’s murder that had brought them together in the first place.
‘Thanks, I appreciate it,’ said Mariner, truthfully.
She saw him appraising her outfit. ‘Would she have approved?’
‘She’d have approved, whatever you were wearing.’
They spoke little on the drive over to Leamington and Mariner was grateful for that, too. His nerves jangled in anticipation. Not because of the funeral; that he could cope with. But ahead of today he had placed announcements in both the local and national press. At the very least he was hoping to meet someone who could tell him who his father was. And then there was the possibility he hardly dared consider: that his father might turn up in person.
In her will his mother had planned out the ceremony to the last detail; a simple cremation with a couple of pieces of music: ‘Ave Maria’ and the ‘Intermezzo’ from Sibelius’s Karelia Suite. It had been on the programme of the Promenade concert he’d found in the loft and hearing it now, he couldn’t help wondering if the piece had had a deeper significance for her. It was all she wanted. Mariner introduced Anna to Ted, who sat beside them at the front of the church along with Mrs Masud. Turning to look Mariner saw that the chapel was a respectable two thirds full, a congregation disproportionately made up of women, attributable possibly to his mother’s lifelong commitment to the feminist cause. He could tell those who’d known her well; they were the ones dressed for a picnic in the park.
‘Anyone else you recognise?’ Anna asked him.
‘Not a soul.’
There was to be no wake back at the house. His mother had made no stipulation about it in her will, and to Mariner it seemed pointless to invite a group of total strangers to join him in mourning a woman he hardly knew. But he did formally greet people as they left the chapel.
Most of the mourners turned out to be friends of his mother’s from Leamington, but then came the encounter that he’d been praying for: a large woman dressed in flowing pink and turquoise, her grey unruly hair loosely pinned back. She smiled. ‘You’ve changed a bit since we last met,’ she said. ‘I’m Maggie Devlin. I used to sit for you when you were a baby.’
Mariner’s heart thumped against his rib-cage. ‘We’re going for a drink,’ he said, with astonishing calm. ‘Would you like to join us?’
She agreed to come, but Mariner was in for a disappointment. Maggie had indeed known his mother from her London days, but was as mystified as he was about who his father might be. ‘Rose kept that one close to her chest,’ she told him over a G&T in the garden of a nearby pub. ‘She was a popular girl. She never wanted for male attention.’
‘But she didn’t give any clue about who it might be?’
‘None, I’m sorry. She was good at secrets, your mother. There was just the one day—’
‘What?’
‘It might be nothing at all,’ Maggie warned him.
‘Please.’
‘When you were born Rose was living in a flat in Holborn. I came to see you when you were just a couple of days old, and as I arrived there was a black car pulling away from the kerb. It caught my attention because it was a big car, especially for round there, what you’d call a limousine, I suppose. It was only afterwards though that I began to wonder if it had anything to do with—’
‘And I doubt that it would be much help after all these years.’
‘No.’
‘I’m truly sorry that I can’t tell you more. But if I should learn of anything that might help—’
‘Thanks.’ Clinging to that slim hope, Mariner gave her his card.
* * *
The sun blasting in through the window roused Tony Knox from a deep sleep. He had a throbbing headache and a raging thirst again, even though he thought he’d been pretty moderate with the booze last night. He glanced over at the clock. Bugger! Twenty past ten. He should have been at work hours ago. For a moment he debated whether to pull a sickie, but remembered where Mariner had gone today. It would be good to have something for the boss when he got back. So Knox made himself get out of bed and into the shower.
Everyone at Granville Lane was either out or preoccupied so no one noticed his late arrival and now he was here he couldn’t think of anything purposeful to do. While he considered that, unable to resist the urge, he tucked himself away in a corner of the office and logged on again to the Old Friends website. But before clicking onto Stephen Lamb’s name Knox checked himself. He’d spent hours staring at that message and all it had done was fuel his anger. Lamb presenting himself as God’s gift . . . as he went to exit the website, Knox thought suddenly about Shaun Pryce. Was this the kind of site he’d go in for too? Of course he would, the self-serving little git. If Pryce was keen to publicise himself, one group he’d really want to tap into would be his old school chums, particularly as he’d enjoyed some modest success. He was bound to want to capitalise on that. And in showing off to them, what else might he give away? His exploits with middle-aged housewives? There might be something to learn from the reactions of Pryce’s former classmates too. He’d not a clue which schools Pryce had attended, of course, but it couldn’t be that difficult to work out. His webpage had indicated that he was a local lad.
All Knox had to do was systematically work through the secondary schools in the area. Right now he couldn’t think of a better way to keep himself occupied and Fiske off his back for the day. He’d start with Kingsmead and work his way out. Pryce would have left the school about fifteen years ago, so he’d take it from there. For a moment Knox was tempted to pick up the phone and make his life easier by asking Shaun Pryce the direct question. Pryce wouldn’t need to know what it was about. But then he caught sight of the Complaints officer in the far side of the office poring over Ricky Skeet’s file and decided they couldn’t risk any more aggro. With a weary sigh he began opening up the message envelopes beside each of the names. The computer was on a go-slow so it took forever.
A pattern among the messages quickly emerged. The people who bothered to leave them all had one thing in common: like Stephen Lamb they all had shiny, successful lives. Invariably the message started off with career details: working as a stockbroker/lawyer/managing director for . . . There was a distinct dearth of window cleaners, bin men and the unemployed. This was always followed by a description of family life: married with four children/wife Cordelia, children Dominic (10) and Pandora (8), etc. Occasionally someone was bold enough to admit to a second marriage, but even that came across as twice the achievement. Generally speaking, life’s failures didn’t draw attention to themselves. It was all sickeningly up-beat and did nothing to lift Knox’s own blackening mood.
For a little light relief Knox switched to reading the notice board pages where former pupils could post their opinions on anything from their former school days. Usually it was the teachers who’d become the subject of perceived injustices and occasional downright victimisation, prompting outpourings of resentment and angst. This was more like it, Knox thought: bitterness to match his own. He was busy marvelling at the human capacity for blame when he almost overlooked a name he’d seen before, more than once in recent days. Bucking the trend, the attached messages indicated relative popularity. One described in great detail an elaborate April fool’s joke taken with good humour. But it was followed by a more cryptic note, posted by someone calling himself ‘Stewey’: Goody Goodway: did he jump or was he pushed? There was one response from a Derrick Farmer: One of life’s eternal mysteries. Gone but sadly missed.
Knox stared at the screen trying to work out what, if anything, it could mean. The school was another local comprehensive where Goodway must have worked prior to teaching at Kingsmead. Running a search he found Stewart ‘Stewey’ Blake on the list of leavers from ten years ago.
For the sake of having achieved something this afternoon Knox emailed him leaving his mobile number, and hoping that ‘Stewey’ was in the habit of checking his inbox regularly. He waited a few minutes in case there was an instant reply, but then, unlike Knox, Blake would have better things to do on a sunny Saturday afternoon than spend it hunched over his computer. And it would probably turn out to be nothing. Sensationalism knitted out of a few shreds of circumstantial information — perfect internet fodder. He looked around the office. Millie was at the Akrams’, and Charlie Glover out on a call, so there was no one to enjoy a round of speculation with. He needed a drink. There was also no one to see him leave early, so he picked up his jacket and went.
On the way home, of its own volition, Knox’s brain began composing his own message for the reunion website: ‘Wife has left me because of my womanising, I’m an embarrassment to my kids. Could have made DS or even DI, if I hadn’t shagged a senior officer’s wife.’ What an epitaph.
Slamming shut his front door the noise reverberated around the empty house for seconds afterwards. Knox tried to imagine hearing that same sound every day for the next thirty years, destined to spend the rest of his life alone. He hurled his keys onto the hall table in frustration. What was the point? What was the fucking point?
* * *
After a couple of hours the handful of people who’d come to the pub with them had drifted away, leaving Mariner and Anna alone at their table in the Coach and Horses. The guest beer was a very pleasing Adnams and the garden was bathed in early evening sunshine, but Mariner couldn’t shake off the gloom that had descended.
‘Maybe you just have to accept this as one mystery you can’t solve,’ said Anna, ever the pragmatist.
Mariner flashed a wry smile. ‘I’ll add it to all the others waiting for me back at the station.’
‘It’s not your fault,’ Anna said.
‘I know, but I just can’t believe that I’ll never know.’
‘Does it matter?’
‘Right now it feels like the only important thing, but I suppose that will pass.’
‘It has before,’ she reminded him. ‘And who knows, when you clear the house you may come across something that you’ve overlooked.’
Mariner shook his head. ‘She was too careful.’
‘Why do you think she kept it from you?’ asked Anna.
‘Who knows?’ Mariner gazed over the garden around them. ‘To begin with I thought it was because of who he was. She liked to give the impression he was somebody important; someone whose reputation would suffer if it was known that he’d fathered an illegitimate child. Back then a child born out of wedlock was still a big deal. But later I used to think that maybe she played on that because she thought it would make me feel better to know that he was someone special.’
‘So it could have just been a bloke down the street?’
‘It might explain why we moved away from London in such a hurry.’
‘And there’s no one else you can think of who would know?’
‘As Maggie said, Rose deliberately severed links with a lot of her friends when we moved from London. There may be somebody somewhere, but I wouldn’t begin to know how to find out.’
‘So maybe it’s time to start looking forward instead of back,’ she said, brightly.
Mariner studied his pint for a moment. He had something to s
ay. He just wasn’t sure if now was the right time to say it. ‘I regret what happened with Millie,’ he said at last. ‘Really regret it.’
She placed a hand over his. ‘I know. And I’m not sure what gave me the right to be so annoyed about it. We’ve never had that kind of relationship.’
Mariner could almost feel Tony Knox sitting on his shoulder, urging him on. ‘I wish we did,’ he blurted out.
She wrinkled her nose, as if trying to make sense of her own feelings. ‘Yeah, me too.’
A hoard of small children raced by behind them, shrieking with ear-piercing intensity. Mariner swallowed the rest of his pint. ‘Let’s go home.’
‘Your place or mine?’
‘Yours. If I turn off my phone nobody can reach me there.’
Back at Mariner’s house the land line rang on unanswered.
CHAPTER 28
When Mariner woke the next morning Anna was already up. He could hear her moving around and eventually she walked past the bedroom door, already dressed and her arms full of boxes and bags headed for the tombola. It was ten past eight. Mariner propped himself on an elbow and picked up the mug of tea she’d left for him. Anna saw him. ‘You all right?’ she asked.
‘Fine. You?’ When she nodded he said: ‘Come back to bed.’
She hesitated.
‘Ten minutes, that’s all.’
‘And then you’ll help me?’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s a deal.’
Standing in the shower rather more than ten minutes later, Mariner had a strange feeling. It puzzled him until suddenly he recognised it as a kind of contentment. ‘Shall I come with you?’ he asked when they’d loaded up her car.
‘It’s up to you. I’ll have to man the stall for a couple of hours,’ she warned him. ‘I can’t do anything about that.’
‘I wouldn’t want you to.’
* * *
Bournville festival was an anachronistic affair dating back to 1902, at a time long before the model village created by the factory owners had been greedily swallowed up by the suburbs of the spreading city. Although the surrounding area had changed, the event retained its rural village charm, held on the vast green playing fields fronting the chocolate factory that were for the rest of the year given over to cricket, football or bowls, depending on the season. Alongside the fun-fair, exhibition tents, stalls and games had been erected alongside a small arena, the centre of which was dominated by a traditional maypole wrapped in bright red and yellow ribbons. At the far end of the grounds an area had been cordoned off for the pyrotechnic display that would end the celebrations late in the evening.
Innocent Lies (Reissue) Page 27