Blood Money (20 page)

Back in the lounge, Mariner’s eye was caught by the autobiography of the father he’d never known, and alongside it his collection of Wainwright’s guides and the long shelf of Ordnance Survey maps; some of the few things he’d left behind because they were not part of his life with Anna. Her idea of a good walk was covering the distance between the Bullring and the Mail Box. He tried to remember the last time he’d had a decent walk but couldn’t. All at once it seemed to matter, a great deal. Closing the door behind him he acknowledged that he’d overcome one of his demons. The other one he’d confront in just a couple of days. His therapist would be proud of him.

Mariner hadn’t intended going to the trial right from the beginning, he wouldn’t be needed right away, but something drew him to it. Packing an overnight bag he drove down to Reading first thing on the Monday morning and checked into a small and modest hotel close to the city centre. From there he could walk to the court. The murder of a former Member of Parliament was always going to be a high profile case, and the law courts, modern and sleek as most were these days, were throbbing when he arrived, and security was painstaking.

‘Tom?’ The first familiar person Mariner saw on his way in was Felicity Fitzgibbon, his aunt, by marriage anyway. As Mariner wouldn’t be required on the first day, he joined her in the gallery. ‘How’s Nelson doing?’ she wanted to know. It was she who talked Mariner into taking on the animal.

‘He’s keeping my sergeant out of trouble,’ Mariner told her.

Mariner wasn’t sure how he’d react to seeing McCrae again, the man who’d had such a devastating impact on his life, but he felt nothing. It was as if it had all happened to someone else. It was a disappointing experience.

McCrae, Mariner noted, was wearing just the right appearance for a man pleading diminished responsibility. His skin was pallid and his eyes carried a haunted look as he gazed straight ahead throughout the proceedings. His ginger hair had grown longish and unruly, and his neck was scrawny in a shirt that looked a couple of sizes too big. In the grandeur of the court room he looked insignificant, and certainly not the kind of man who could wreak havoc on so many lives. Months on remand would be enough to diminish a man, but the defeated exterior would do nothing to harm his case. It was likely that the jury would find some sympathy for a man who had served his country and visibly paid the price. Even he, Mariner, sometimes found it hard to reconcile what had happened and could imagine falling for McCrae’s charms all over again. Louise Byrne would have a tough job on her hands.

In her opening speech, she was impressive. ‘As the evidence will show, there is little doubt that Kenneth McCrae killed four innocent people in cold blood; Sir Geoffrey and Lady Diana Ryland and their chauffeur, and Lady Eleanor Ryland. He also attempted to murder his own step-brother, Detective Inspector Thomas Mariner, whom he believed was competing against him to inherit his mother’s estate. His defence lawyers will tell you that Mr McCrae was a man suffering from mental illness as a direct result of serving his country in the armed forces. They will tell you that when he committed these heinous crimes he was not of sound mind.

‘But these crimes were planned and executed with such attention to detail, and with such care, so as to leave behind no trace of evidence, that they could only have been committed by a man who was thinking clearly and rationally. The only reason Kenneth McCrae was found out was because he believed that he’d got away with it. That wasn’t mental illness, it was arrogance pure and simple. And the motive for these murders was simply greed. Kenneth McCrae had recently learned the identity of his birth mother, a woman who, in contrast to him, lived a privileged life with comfort and wealth. McCrae wanted that life for himself. A scheme of extortion foundered so he used the other option, to kill his birth mother and her loved ones in order to contest the will and profit from their deaths. Had he succeeded in his plan, Kenneth McCrae would have been a wealthy man. And that was his sole motivation. Kenneth McCrae knew what he wanted and saw an opportunity to get it. His plan was logical and simple and complex only in its execution and attention to detail. It took a man of sound mind and strong nerve to carry out his plan so faultlessly and I assert that Kenneth McCrae was entirely rational throughout.’

The first few witnesses were almost routine, presenting the incontrovertible forensic proof that linked Kenneth McCrae to the murders, and proving beyond reasonable doubt that he was culpable. There then followed a precession of prosecution psychiatrists whose reports demonstrated, in their opinions, that Kenneth McCrae was entirely sane.

Roy Shipley, the man who had handled the letting of Mariner’s flat to McCrae, turned out to be a surprisingly convincing witness. It was the first time Mariner could ever remember being impressed by an estate agent. He’d met McCrae on three occasions while he was implementing his plan, one of which was in Mariner’s presence. He recalled the conversations in which McCrae had behaved perfectly normally, taking information and using it as part of his scheme.

‘Was there anything about Kenneth McCrae’s behaviour that would have led you to think he was suffering from some kind of mental disturbance?’ was Louise’s final question, and the answer was a resounding ‘No.’

Mariner was gratified too that the defence barristers seemed to let Shipley off the hook quite lightly. A prediction, he hoped, of what was to come.

Mariner, when his turn came, cited the snippets of information that he had unwittingly made known to McCrae, such as the times when murder victim Eleanor Ryland would be alone in her isolated house. Byrne also referred to Mariner’s statement to police describing the conversation he’d had with McCrae in the cellar. When he’d recovered from the initial trauma of the event Mariner could remember the whole conversation with surprising clarity, and could describe McCrae’s intentions and actions in the greatest detail. It all made perfect logical sense.

Byrne ended on the same question she’d put to Roy Shipley, and Mariner was more than happy to elaborate. ‘On the contrary,’ Mariner said. ‘Kenneth McCrae had thought about every contingency and had a plan that accounted for them all. He was able to adapt to new circumstances as they arose.’

The court adjourned until the following morning, so Mariner was able to prepare himself for the defence onslaught. ‘It went well,’ was Louise’s verdict. But they both knew that the worst was to come. ‘Where are you staying?’

‘A little hotel just down the road. I thought I’d get something to eat before going back there though. You wouldn’t like to keep me company would you?’

‘I’d love to.’ Her smile was apologetic. ‘Unfortunately I need to get back. My fourteen-year-old is on her own and much as she’d like me to leave her that way for the entire evening, I need to check that she’s doing something more productive than texting her friends.’

In the end it was Felicity who joined him for dinner.

‘How’s Anna?’ she asked.

‘We’ve been trying for a baby.’

‘So you’ve come round to the idea.’

‘Anna miscarried a few months ago.’

‘That must have been devastating. For both of you.’

‘Yes. It’s affected her more than I’d thought. She seems afraid of trying again.’

‘These things take time. You just need to be patient.’

‘Yes.’

When he left Felicity, Mariner went alone to a small bar where the atmosphere was depressing. Too many kids there with the sole purpose of getting drunk. He left before ten, resigned to an early night.

 

The following morning the defence cross-examination began by taking the same line with Mariner as they had with Shipley.

‘On how many occasions did you meet Kenneth McCrae?’

‘Five times,’ Mariner replied.

‘And how long did each of these meetings last?’

‘I didn’t time them,’ Mariner said, reasonably.

‘But you must have a rough idea. Was it five minutes, half an hour, an hour? What about the first meeting?’

‘About twenty minutes.’

‘And the second?’

‘About ten.’

After this tedious process had been completed, the defence barrister concluded: ‘So in total you met with Kenneth McCrae for around two hours.’ Mariner confirmed it. ‘And at the time of your last conversation with Mr McCrae you’d been held by him in the cellar for how long?’

‘Three days.’

‘During which time you’d had no food or water and were in temperatures of minus eight degrees, in complete and utter darkness. Do you think you were in a fit state to judge the frame of mind of another person?’

‘Possibly not, but—’

‘I understand that you’ve recently been receiving counselling yourself, Inspector.’

‘Yes.’ In theory.

‘What for?’

‘Post traumatic stress disorder.’ Mariner felt a pinch of uneasiness in the pit of his stomach.

‘And when was this condition diagnosed?’

‘About nine months ago.’

‘Shortly after the night when you were involved in the bomb explosion in Birmingham city centre. Is that correct?’

‘Yes.’

‘So you’ve been on sick leave for the last nine months?’

‘Not all of it, no.’

‘Indeed, we have all been reading in the papers about the success of your investigation into the abduction of Jessica Klinnemann, is that correct?’

‘Yes.’

‘So how much time have you had off work during the last nine months, as a result of this diagnosis?’

‘I had a couple of weeks off.’

‘A couple of weeks? That doesn’t sound like much. So for all but a couple of weeks, of the last nine months while you’ve been suffering from post traumatic stress disorder, you’ve been back at work, and some of that time working on an extremely high-profile case.’

‘Yes.’

‘You’re a detective inspector. It must be a difficult job at times.’

‘It can be.’

‘And yet, as we saw from the happy outcome of the baby Jessica abduction, you have been able to function perfectly well in that job, despite having a diagnosis of PTSD. Isn’t it true that the very nature of PTSD is that it affects every individual differently, comes and goes, and that with the right kind of treatment it can be controlled? You have by your own admission been behaving in a perfectly rational way whilst battling this condition, so isn’t it possible that in the brief times at which you had contact with Kenneth McCrae, he was merely doing the same thing?’

Mariner stalled. He could think of no comeback.

‘Mr Mariner?’

‘Yes.’

Next came the expert defence witnesses; a couple of specialists in post traumatic stress disorder and its effects, followed by the specialist McCrae had been seeing, who also introduced the stark facts about his early life and the effects of deprivation and the trauma of Tumbledown.

Somehow the defence had also persuaded Kenneth McCrae’s reticent brother to appear as a witness for the defence. During the final, dramatic hunt for Kenneth McCrae, Tony Knox and Jack Coleman had interviewed he man in the garden of his home in a remote Scottish community. Mariner had read the notes. Here he looked uncomfortable, scrubbed up and in a suit and tie. He described, as he had to Knox and Coleman, the extreme maltreatment and physical abuse he and his brother had been subjected to during a childhood with a brutal adoptive father, providing a further layer of reasoning for the jury to feel sorry for McCrae. Louise’s cross-examination, though competent, would have barely dented the jury’s sympathy.

‘Could you tell us what you do for a living?’ she asked.

‘I’m a storeman.’

‘Did you suffer abuse at the hands of your adoptive parents?’

‘Yes, but—’

‘And have you ever killed, or felt the urge to kill, another human being?’

‘No.’

A couple of McCrae’s army colleagues were wheeled out to describe the horrors of Tumbledown. They probably left the jury feeling amazed that it had taken McCrae another ten years to commit murder.

As a final flourish the defence insisted that once Kenneth McCrae had realised the enormity of his crimes, he was penitent. Mariner looked across at the defendant. He didn’t look especially remorseful and as the jury was sent out, Mariner left the courtroom feeling empty.

 

Almost inevitably, it seemed to Mariner, Kenneth McCrae was found not guilty of murder, but guilty of manslaughter on the ground of diminished responsibility. Sentencing was deferred and would be based on the outcomes of further medical assessments.

‘How do you feel?’ Felicity asked Mariner.

‘Cheated, I suppose,’ Mariner said, wryly. ‘McCrae had a tough life, there’s no doubt about that, and I’m sorry for him that he did. But so do lots of people and they don’t end up on a killing spree.’

She gave him a hug. ‘Give my love to Nelson.’

‘I will.’

 

Nelson was enjoying an early morning walk on a dull and drizzly Saturday, with Tony Knox. Since the abduction case had finished things had quietened down considerably and the morning stroll was becoming routine again. The woman Knox had hoped to bump into still wasn’t around. Unless, he wondered, this was her, just crossing the far end of the playing field. Hard to tell the make of dog from here, but it was bounding around all over the place, as hers had. Knox stepped up his pace to try and catch up with her, but then his mobile rang. Cursing the fact that he’d left it in his pocket, he nonetheless took the call.

‘Sergeant Knox? It’s Christie, from Jack and the Beanstalk nursery. You said I could call you?’ She sounded distant, but it might just have been the line.

‘Are you all right? Has he hurt you?’ Knox was immediately alert and back in professional mode.

There was a pause, and noises in the background. ‘I can’t talk about this on the phone. Can you meet me, tonight?’ She sounded strung out, breathless even, but maybe she was walking fast.