Blood Money (16 page)

Mariner wasn’t so sure and the conversation prompted him to phone Ruth Tunstall in Cambridge as soon as he got back to the station. ‘Has Paul Klinnemann turned up yet?’

‘Not yet.’

‘His sister describes him as a free spirit.’

‘That’s one way of putting it. I’ve had officers speaking to his close friends - the ones we can track down - but no one seems to have seen him since last Thursday evening.’ The day before Jessica went missing.

‘How about the animal rights sympathisers?’

‘We’ve done a series of raids, but of the likely contenders we’ve picked up, so far they all either have sound alibis or can at least be placed away from the scene at the time of Jessica’s abduction,’ she told him. ‘Three of our repeat offenders are unaccounted for, two men and a woman. Again, haven’t been seen since the end of the week. We’re trying to establish their whereabouts. I’ll let you know as soon as we have anything.’

‘Could you send us through some mug-shots that we can run by our witnesses?’

‘I’ll fax them through.’ Finally they might have the glimmer of a lead.

Mariner took this news back with him to the incident room, where he had a message waiting for him from Stuart Croghan. ‘News regarding the infant remains,’ said Croghan. ‘It’s a male, two to four weeks old. I’d say he died from a non-accidental injury. The skull appears to have been crushed, as if it was dropped from a height or banged against a hard surface.’ The thought made Mariner feel sick. So now they had an infanticide on their hands too. ‘Oh, and something else that might help with identification; the baby had a cleft palate.’

‘How long had the body been there?’

‘It’s hard to be precise, but my first guess was pretty close to the mark. The etymology and decay would indicate anything from nine to fourteen months.’

So it was old news, but Mariner passed it to the press office, regardless. In the excitement of the abduction the discovery of the remains would be reported and they needed to hear from anyone who may have seen anything suspicious at around that time, or from anyone who knew of a four-week old baby who disappeared between September and December last year. Chances were it was some teenage kid who’d gone through it all on her own.

 

In the early hours of the following morning Mariner gathered everyone together for a further strategy meeting. The investigation was beginning to lose impetus and that was the last thing that he wanted. Scanning the faces he saw exhaustion written all over them but somehow he had to find it within him to fire up their enthusiasm and confidence. ‘We need to make another appeal, but this time, if we can persuade her, I’d like Emma O’Brien to speak. Do you think she’s up to it?’

His question was directed at Millie, who nodded thoughtfully. ‘She’s pretty fragile but she’ll pull herself together if it means getting Jessica back.’

‘We still don’t know why she’s been taken, but the animal rights angle is looking stronger. Cambridge police have three possible suspects who have gone AWOL, along with Paul Klinnemann. They’re faxing through photographs. Tony, we’ll need to get Christie to have a look.’

There was a knock on the door. It was PC Mann, who was grinning like an idiot.

‘I’m really not in the mood for jokes,’ said Mariner.

‘You’ll like this one, sir,’ Mann said, with confidence. ‘There’s a guy from Lincolnshire police on the phone. A local vicar contacted them twenty minutes ago. He’s got baby Jessica, alive and well.’

‘What?’ The word echoed around the room, a perfectly synchronised chorus.

‘Apparently the vicar got a phone call a couple of hours ago to say that he should go and look in the church doorway. He went down to look and there she was. The description of her clothes, the car seat and everything matches and the vicar’s confirmed that she’s got a small port wine stain in the nape of her neck, just under the hairline. They’re saying she looks clean and fed and well-cared-for. They’re faxing over a picture.’

By the time the printout chugged through painfully slowly, to reveal a digital photograph of a bemused looking baby, everyone in the room had gathered around the fax machine, as if worshipping some strange electronic God. Mariner snatched the sheet the instant it stopped printing. It certainly looked pretty similar to the photograph of Jessica they’d been circulating. There were yelps of delight around the room which Mariner quashed immediately. ‘Let’s stay calm, folks, until we know this is really it. Don’t get carried away. Millie, call Ms O’Brien and Mr Klinnemann. Tell them we’ll pick them up in fifteen minutes to drive them over there. Say a baby has been found who
may
be Jessica. And remind the Lincolnshire plods to preserve the drop-off point as a crime scene. We’ll want to give it a going over.’

Mariner had experienced tension many times before but rarely as thickly as that inside the car as they drove the miles to Stamford. Emma O’Brien and Peter Klinnemann sat in the back seat clutching each other, Emma often tearful.

‘Do you have any connection with Stamford?’ Mariner asked.

‘None,’ said Peter Klinnemann.

‘Does your son drive?’

‘Yes.’

‘And he has his own car?’

‘Yes, but I don’t understand. What are you implying?’

But now wasn’t the time and Mariner let it rest. He couldn’t help but think about the proximity of Stamford to Cambridge, though Klinnemann wouldn’t like that. If the baby had been snatched by someone with a connection in that area, the route back was via the A1 and A14, Cambridge, Birmingham and Stamford forming their own Bermuda triangle into which baby Jessica had temporarily vanished.

It was an emotional reunion at the local police station where a crowd of local and national reporters and TV crews had gathered. Baby Jessica slept throughout, but there was no doubt from the reaction of her parents that this was their baby girl. Lifting her from the car seat, Emma O’Brien hugged her so tight that Mariner thought she’d crush the child. The surge of relief, coupled with sheer exhaustion, brought him to the brink of tears himself. He wandered away to try and keep a manly lid on his emotions. It was such a change to have a happy ending. Peter Klinnemann and Emma O’Brien were full of gratitude, even though it was nothing to do with him. They’d been incredibly lucky, that was all. Either the abductor or someone close to her had been seized by conscience, or the purpose - to scare the living daylights out of Peter Klinnemann - had been served.

‘There was a note, sir.’ The officer passed Mariner the crumpled paper in the plastic sheath of an evidence bag.
Take this as a warning
. But a warning for whom?

 

The Reverend Jonathan Sands was a modern vicar, tall and lean, in his mid-thirties, with an unruly mop of reddish hair. When they interviewed him he was in torn jeans and a Darkness T-shirt.

‘Not the usual garb,’ he said, grinning apologetically. ‘I just grabbed the nearest things when I got the call.’ He pushed a hand through hair that already stood on end like a shoe brush.

‘I know you’ve already been through all this, but would you mind telling us again what happened?’ Mariner said.

‘No, of course. The first thing was when the phone rang, and I checked the clock as I always do. It was five thirty am. The caller said “Go down to the church and look in the porch. Baby Jessica is there.”’

‘You remember it word for word?’

‘I always try. Occasionally we get calls from people in distress and have to notify your colleagues. The detail can be important.’

‘Do you remember anything distinctive about the voice?’

‘It was quite slow and deliberate, but I assumed that it was because the caller didn’t want me to miss anything. The voice was muffled too, as if an attempt was being made to disguise it. The phrasing was slightly unusual, as if—’

‘What?’

‘Look I’d hate to mislead you, it’s just a feeling, but it was as if the caller didn’t naturally speak English.’ Or had learned it from someone who didn’t? ‘But please, don’t read too much into that.’

‘Any accent?’ As Christie had said.

‘Not that I noticed.’

‘And what did you do?’

‘I told my wife - she had woken up by now. Then I pulled on some clothes, grabbed a torch and went down to the church, and there was Jessica, sleeping peacefully.’ He beamed. A positive outcome must make a pleasant change for him, too.

‘Did you notice anything else unusual?’ Mariner asked Sands.

‘No. I kept my eyes and ears open of course, in case whoever had left her was waiting around to make sure she was found. I even called out “Is anyone there? If you want to talk you can do so in confidence.” I waited a couple of minutes, but there was nothing. I thought I heard a car start up in the distance, but this is a residential area, so it could have just been someone going off early to work.’

 

Local officers took Mariner and Knox down to the church where the baby had been found. The Lincolnshire SOCOs had been all over the area for the last couple of hours. There was the inevitable group of bystanders watching everything and more press among them. Mariner cast his eye over the motley group, idly wondering if their kidnapper was one of them. Not unknown for the perpetrator of a crime to get an added thrill from being so close yet undetected.

Alternatives were brought so that Jessica’s clothes and car seat could be taken back for forensic testing, in the hope that they might turn up some distinctive fibres or hairs.

The note seemed to imply that they’d been correct about animal rights activists, but Mariner wasn’t entirely convinced. ‘There’s no code,’ he said. ‘Don’t they generally use a code?’

‘So what the fuck was it about?’ asked Knox. ‘Why take her and then deliver her back safely?’

‘Maybe they lost their nerve. Or it was simply about giving Peter Klinnemann a fright. Whatever we find out here, I still want to interview his son.’

It looked as though he would get his wish sooner than expected. When Mariner checked his mobile he found a message from Ruth Tunstall. He called her back.

‘Paul Klinnemann has surfaced,’ Tunstall told him. ‘As have the missing members of the animal rights cell.’

‘Well, well. Coincidence or what? Where are they?’

‘We’ve got them all here if you’d like to come down and talk to them. So far none of them is admitting to anything, of course, but one of them is a woman, thirty-three-year-old Tessa Caldwell.’

‘Does she fit our description of the abductor?’

Tunstall was guarded. ‘She could do, with a bit of work.’

Mariner went back to break the news to the Klinnemanns. ‘Sergeant Knox and myself will be travelling to Cambridge. Some members of an animal rights cell have been brought in for questioning and we will be going to talk to them as part of our investigation.’ So far, so uncontroversial. ‘We can offer you a lift back with us if you’d like that.’ To his surprise Klinnemann accepted. ‘I should say that your son Paul is among the people brought in,’ Mariner added.

‘What on earth for?’ Klinnemann demanded. ‘I’ve told you before, Paul wouldn’t do anything to hurt Jessica or me.’

No mention of Emma O’Brien, Mariner noticed. ‘I’m sure you’re right,’ he said. ‘But we need to talk to him, just to eliminate him from the enquiry.’

‘I understand.’ Klinnemann was content with that, but then, gazing at his baby daughter at that moment, he was a very contented man indeed.

Before moving off, Peter Klinnemann issued a brief statement to the press thanking Mariner and his team for all that they’d done. ‘We don’t know who took our daughter, but if it’s someone who has lost a child or who has been unable to have a child I urge them to seek help. For the last few days we have shared your anguish. Thank you for looking after her so well. But please, if you need help, come forward. Thank you to the public and the press for all that they’ve done. We would like to be left to get on with our lives.’ For some reason Mariner felt like a fraud.

They drove directly to the station in Cambridge where a car was arranged to take the Klinnemanns home. It was good to meet Ruth Tunstall in person. She turned out to be a smiley-faced woman in her late forties with cropped greying hair. She took Mariner and Knox down to the interview rooms where members of the animal rights cell were being held. ‘They’re all over the place, literally and figuratively, ’ she said. ‘I don’t think it’ll take long to find out what they’ve been up to, but that’s what bothers me. If they were involved in the abduction I’d expect them to have at least got their stories straight.’

It bothered Mariner too. ‘How did you track down Paul Klinnemann?’

‘Through the mother of one of the friends we went to talk to. He turned up at their house to see his mate. He was in a bit of a state.’

 

On the other side of the table Paul Klinnemann looked weary, but was newly washed and wearing clean clothes. He glanced up as they went in and Mariner saw the same blue eyes as his father’s, but other than that he was baby-faced, almost pretty with dark curly hair. As a professional courtesy Mariner allowed Ruth Tunstall to proceed with the interview, while he sat in as an observer. To open the conversation she produced the front page of a national newspaper, Saturday’s edition.

Klinnemann glanced over it, initially disinterested, but when he saw the content he was suddenly alert. ‘What’s this meant to be?’

‘You didn’t know?’

‘No. God, is she all right?’ He was trying hard to make it sound as if he cared.

‘She was found safe and well this morning.’

‘Well, praise the Lord.’ He flashed a sarcastic grin.

‘Shortly before you appeared at your friend’s house, as it happens. Where have you been since last Thursday?’

‘I was at a party.’

‘All weekend?’

‘It was a good party.’ Klinnemann smiled, lazily, his eyelids low. ‘I crashed at a friend’s house afterwards. I was out of it, you know? Still am, as a matter of fact.’