Blood Money (25 page)

‘So you’re saying that it’s suicide, even though she had things to look forward to and even though she was making plans?’

‘She was a mixed up kid,’ Mariner reminded him. ‘She’d been knocked about over time, just split with her boyfriend and finished up back living with her nan. She blamed herself for Jessica’s abduction—’

‘That turned out okay though.’

‘Alcohol distorts things too, doesn’t it? It can make you depressed. Maybe leaving Bond hit her harder than we think, and getting stood up in, let’s face it, what’s a pretty bloody awful pub made her realise what she was missing. It could be why she was headed back to Bond’s house.’

‘She’d walked quite a distance to get to here, though. Wouldn’t she have sobered up a bit?’ Knox was morose. ‘Christ, if only I’d met her as planned.’

‘You never did tell me what the better offer was.’

Knox told him.

‘Ah.’ It wouldn’t have been the first time Knox had been led by the trousers. ‘You really couldn’t give that up?’

‘I suppose I saw it as an unmissable opportunity. Her ten-year-old son was—’ Knox broke off.

‘Was what?’

‘There’s something wrong here, boss. Christie can’t have been hit by a train on this line in the early hours of Sunday morning. There were no trains running. The line was closed for maintenance.’

‘You’re sure about that?’ said Mariner.

Knox told him about the conversation with Jean. ‘We’ll have to verify it, of course, but she was pretty anxious about her dad’s driving. If she could have put Michael on the train she would.’

‘And the Transport Police didn’t mention it?’

‘Why would they? We didn’t have a time of death when I spoke to them. They would have assumed that Christie was killed during Sunday night after the trains had restarted. It was Croghan who told me she’d been dead more than twenty-four hours. It’s not the sort of thing he gets wrong.’

Back at Granville Lane, Knox phoned the Transport Police who were able to confirm what he already knew; that the line had been closed from ten o’clock on Friday night until ten on Sunday night. It took them back to Stuart Croghan. ‘We now know that there were no trains running at that time. Is it possible that Christie was dead before she was hit by the train?’

Croghan was doubtful. ‘I can’t see how. The impact injuries have to have been made when she was alive, because of the extent and nature of the haemorrhaging.’

‘The SOCOs didn’t find much blood at the scene,’ Knox remembered Olsen telling him.

‘Yes, and came to the conclusion that she’d been carried some distance by the train and that they were looking in the wrong place.’

‘There is another alternative of course,’ said Mariner. ‘That she wasn’t hit by a train at all, but by a car.’

‘Well, that’s possible,’ Croghan agreed. ‘She died from impact injuries and because she was found on the railway track the natural conclusion is that a train caused them, but it’s not certain. In any case we’ll find out before long. There were paint flecks in her clothing and hair that I’ve sent off for analysis. Those will be able to tell us what kind of vehicle struck her.’

‘Is there anything else?’

‘Well, there are no signs of sexual assault, as you’d expect. Also she had very high levels of alcohol in her blood.’

‘She was pretty drunk when she left the pub.’

‘As the proverbial newt, I’d say. And there are traces of gastric juices in her mouth, while her stomach is nigh on empty. I’d say she threw up somewhere along the way. We haven’t had any rain to speak of since the weekend, so if you’re trying to trace her last movements you could do worse than look for a pool of vomit.’

‘Oh lovely.’

‘There’s also the missing shoe. If she was that drunk she might have lost it before she got as far as the railway track.’

‘Along with her handbag and phone,’ Mariner added. The immediate area around the bridge and that end of the park had also been searched without a result. ‘We can put out an appeal for them.’ He and Knox adjourned to his office, where Mariner pinned up the photo of Christie next to the photo of Madeleine. Two young lives ended for no clear reason.

‘If Christie was hit by a car we can probably rule out suicide. It’s not the most obvious or effective method.’

‘Unless she deliberately stepped out in front of a vehicle.’

‘It’s messy though and by no means certain death. If you’re serious about killing yourself that way you choose a busy road, something like a motorway. If she’d done that, even during the night it would cause chaos and we’d have known about it. It makes it more likely to have been an accident, doesn’t it? She could just have been the victim of a hit and run. She was drunk, staggered out into the road and is hit by a car or lorry. The driver panics, bundles her into his car or van, drives to a quiet spot on the railway line and throws her over the bridge to disguise what’s happened.’

‘In which case, it could have happened anywhere in the area between the pub and the railway line.’

‘Any reports of RTAs on Saturday night?’

‘Not that I remember, but I’ll double-check.’

Mariner put together a press release including an appeal for anyone to come forward who may have witnessed or been involved in a hit and run. He put with it descriptions of Christie’s handbag, phone and missing shoe.

‘Witnesses are more likely. If someone went to the trouble of disposing of a body, I don’t think we can count on them giving themselves up. Now we sit back and wait.’

 

Anna was ‘out with friends’ according to the note left on the kitchen table when Mariner got home that evening, so he made himself beans on toast and was enjoying the quiet when he heard the unmistakable twang of a text message arriving. Mariner didn’t do texting, so it could only mean that Anna had left her phone behind. He should and could reasonably have ignored it, but something compelled him to look. He found the phone in the pocket of one of her many jackets and didn’t much like what he saw. The message was from Gareth of all people, urging her to have a good time tonight. Did he know where she’d gone? It was more than Mariner did. He’d signed off with four kisses.

Mariner felt the first tickle of unease. He should have stopped there, but curiosity dictated that he check Anna’s inbox as well. Opening and deciphering the messages was a laborious process, as he’d never really got used to text-talk, but what he found turned his stomach. Since they’d come back from Herefordshire only yesterday, there were half a dozen more messages from Gareth that Anna hadn’t bothered to delete, all flirtatious to varying degrees and with kisses all over the place. Anna had replied to them all in the same tone. A lot of them referred to the planned move that she seemed to be discussing in far more depth with Gareth than she ever had with Mariner. The last in particular caught his eye because of the enigmatic title:
Progress?
Anna’s response shredded his heart.
Nochance2talkyetBp8tient2gethersoonxxx
.

2gethersoon???
What the hell did that mean? Mariner went to bed thinking that he wouldn’t sleep. He’d stay awake and ask Anna about it when she got home, and she’d have a perfectly rational explanation. But he remembered nothing until he woke the following morning, Anna curled up beside him in their bed, but facing away from him, as far as she could get. He had work to do, so he let her sleep on.

 

First thing, Mariner and Knox returned to Phyllis Gates’ house to do a more methodical search of Christie’s room. They drew up behind a big black four-wheel drive on the road outside. The door was opened to them by a small black woman with a head of grey, tight curls. ‘Who are you?’ she demanded, eyeing them with suspicion.

Mariner produced his warrant card and made the necessary introductions. ‘We’re from the police.’

‘Phyllis is very upset,’ the woman told them, as if scolding a couple of inconsiderate little boys. ‘She’s not seeing visitors.’

‘This isn’t a social call. We need to have another look at Christie’s room,’ Mariner explained.

‘I’ve seen you on the telly, haven’t I?’

‘Yes, you probably have.’ It was enough to get them over the threshold at least. Considering she wasn’t seeing visitors, there seemed to be a large number of voices emanating from Phyllis Gates’ living room. A glimpse of the age profile and dress code as the lounge door opened and closed told Mariner that they were church women, come to offer solace. The black woman disappeared and, after what seemed like a lengthy consultation, returned and allowed them up to Christie’s room.

Halfway up the stairs they met Trudy Barratt on her way down. She was clearly startled to see them, but then hadn’t, as they had, been forewarned. ‘Inspector, I didn’t expect to see you here. I brought some flowers for Christie’s grandmother, and had to “use the facilities”.’ She cared more about her staff than Mariner had thought, or at least, that’s how it appeared. ‘Must be getting on though.’ And she continued on down without another word.

‘So what was she doing here?’ Knox wondered when they reached the landing.

‘Such a suspicious mind,’ said Mariner.

Undisturbed now for several days, the atmosphere inside Christie’s bedroom was stale and heavy, with the cloying smell of old makeup and perfume. On investigation, most of the black bin bags were found to contain clothing. ‘Christ how many pairs of jeans does one girl need?’ Mariner said pulling out pair after pair in various shades of denim, but having gone through all the bags they were no nearer to finding Christie’s white handbag. The stacked boxes contained scraps of multicoloured paper, card and fabrics, clearly used for making children’s craft items for the nursery, and another, dozens of magazines of the celebrity variety, some of them with pictures and articles cut out.

They had almost come to the end before they actually found something of use - a cardboard box file containing a handful of personal documents, including cheque and paying-in booklets. Among the papers were half a dozen recent bank statements, a couple of them complete with the ringed stains from coffee mugs. There was never much in the account though the regular monthly credits probably indicated her salary.

‘Is that all she gets?’ Mariner was astonished. ‘It only adds up to about ten thousand a year. It’s barely more than the minimum wage.’

‘Like Mrs Barratt said, I don’t suppose hers is considered a skilled job,’ said Knox.

‘No wonder these girls can’t wait to leave and have their own families.’

Also contained in the folder was a sales brochure for the flat that Christie had talked to her nan about buying. Side by side, the two items just didn’t add up.

‘This is way out of her league,’ said Mariner, reading the description of the luxury apartment. ‘I couldn’t afford a place like this on my salary.’

‘Kids these days have such unrealistic expectations,’ Knox said. ‘Our Gary thought he was going to move straight into his penthouse flat after uni.’

It wasn’t only the kids, thought Mariner, remembering Heron’s Nest. Even a grown and rational adult could have her head turned by the right temptation. He shelved the unwelcome distraction.

There was one other payment into Christie’s bank account only three weeks ago. It corresponded with the scratch card win her nan had talked about, and was for the princely sum of five hundred pounds. ‘That won’t get her very far either,’ Mariner observed. ‘It wouldn’t even make the deposit. And any pay rise she might have negotiated with Mrs Barratt wouldn’t be that much. So where the hell did she think she was going to get the money for this flat?’

‘Don’t you think it’s strange that none of the other girls at the nursery mentioned her win? Most people would want to celebrate something like that with their friends. They wouldn’t keep it a secret.’

Mariner pulled a face, the significance of that lost on him for the moment.

Downstairs the doorbell rang again and Mariner peered out of the window.

‘Phyllis certainly has her support network in place,’ he said, expecting to see more blue rinses. But he was wrong. ‘Marcella Turner. Christ. What on earth is she doing here?’

Mariner descended the stairs to see Ms Turner standing on the doorstep, her mouth agape in a rare moment of speechlessness. Phyllis Gates’ white-haired minder must have broken the news. Beside her was another younger woman, with pink spiky hair and wide black-framed glasses. The silence didn’t last long.

‘Oh, I’m so terribly sorry,’ Turner was saying. ‘We didn’t know. Of course we wouldn’t dream of intrud—’

But the younger woman had her notebook out at the ready and was not so easily deterred. ‘Can you tell us what’s happened?’

It was time for Mariner to intervene. In one swift and easy movement he leapt the remaining few stairs and swept past the minder and out into the garden, ushering the two visitors as he went. ‘As you can see,’ he said, giving spiky hair a cold glare, ‘this is not a good time. What are you doing here?’

Marcella Turner was defensive. ‘We came to talk to Christie.’

‘About what?’

Spiky hair shrugged. ‘About her experiences.’

‘And you are—?’ Mariner asked.

Spiky hair smiled broadly to reveal pearly white teeth, encircled by a vivid aubergine lipstick, oblivious to the contempt in his voice. ‘Jez Barclay, assistant producer for Angelwood TV.’

‘You’re a television producer?’ Mariner said with disbelief, ignoring the outstretched hand.

‘That’s right.’ The woman fished in her pocket and came out with a business card, which Mariner pocketed without a glance. ‘And you are—?’ she asked, the smile remaining and notebook poised.

‘Detective Inspector Mariner. What did you want?’ He was careful to use the past tense.

The look on Jez Barclay’s face said that he’d already been a topic of discussion, but it was Marcella Turner who spoke up. ‘During the kidnapping I got to know Christie a little. I found that she was sympathetic to my concerns about the government’s childcare agenda. Jez’s company specialises in fly-on-the-wall documentaries. Christie seemed willing. We were here to discuss terms.’