Blood of the Innocents (17 page)

‘I know,’ agreed Hewitt.

‘So what were you doing there?’ asked Knox, more than a little pointedly.

Hewitt was unruffled. ‘We got a call from St Clare’s, the old folk’s home that backs on to it, just here.’ He put an index finger on the map. ‘One of the old biddies had got it into her head that she’d seen a man there beating a dog. She thought he might have killed it.’

Hairs stood up on the back of Mariner’s neck. ‘When was this?’

‘She mentioned it to the staff a few days ago, apparently, but nobody took her seriously at first. The old girl has her “senior” days, if you know what I mean. But she wouldn’t let it drop. I think she must have driven them mad over the weekend with it, so to humour her, they gave us a call, first thing this morning. I drove over with Sue, my partner, and had a look at the place she described. It took some finding, I can tell you. Even though Lily, that’s Lily Cooper, showed us from her window where she saw it happen, it was still difficult to find a way in. We had to use the
A-Z
.’

‘I’m not surprised,’ said Mariner, looking again at the map. There was no obvious access to the site.

‘When we got to it, there was no sign of any dog where the old dear said, but just to make sure we had a good hunt around, as far as we could - most of it’s like untamed jungle - and that was when we found the phone, lying there in the grass. We brought it back to the office, charged it up then keyed in to find the user identity. But because it’s one of those “pay as you go” phones I had to take it to a dealer so they could look up the name and address of the person who bought it. The Comet store’s not far away. We’ve all seen the news bulletins so once they’d looked it up, it didn’t take long to put two and two together.’

‘Well, I’m very glad that you did,’ said Mariner. ‘This could be quite a breakthrough.’ Suddenly he sensed that there was more. ‘Was there anything else you wanted to tell us?’

Hewitt lowered his voice. ‘I wouldn’t want to be alarmist, but near where we found it there was brown stuff, sort of staining on the grass. I didn’t say anything to Sue, but it looked to me like blood.’

‘We’ll need you to take us to the exact spot, Mr Hewitt.’

Hewitt slapped his thighs, a little nervously Mariner thought. ‘Whenever you like.’

They followed the same route that Hewitt had taken to get to the reservoir, past the railway station, over the line, past a pub called the Bridge and on to Birchill Lane, flanked on one side by a public park and on the other by wild woodland, broken only by a tall and rambling building that looked as if it had once been a country residence of some kind.

‘That’s the nursing home.’ Hewitt said, just as the sign for ‘St Clare’s’ came into view. Just along from the home they passed the entrance road to a small industrial park, which was followed by another half a mile or so of sparse, unhealthy looking woodland, to a row of four derelict cottages. The houses were fenced in by heavy-duty spike-topped railings, with a huge pair of steel-framed, chain-link gates padlocked against trespassers. A board in the entrance announced that the enclosed land was on the market for development.

To the side, a narrow, unmetalled service road curled round to the back of the cottages into what once might have been their gardens, with perhaps an orchard, but was now an open piece of rough ground of about a quarter of an acre. And it was here that Hewitt took them, Knox easing the car cautiously over the uneven terrain to avoid damaging the suspension. They drew to a halt in a small grassy clearing, pock-marked with litter and the sort of detritus left behind by glue sniffers. Here and there were areas of blackened grass where fires had been lit and an old, filthy mattress lay on its side, springs spilling out of it like guts from a dead animal. Even in daylight any vehicle parking here would have been shielded from the view of houses on the opposite side of Birchill Lane by the cottages themselves, the trees and the rampant, overgrown shrubs.

‘This was the nearest place I could find to park,’ Hewitt said. ‘I was hoping to find a way through somehow. I was encouraged by the fact that other people obviously use it.’ He was referring to the tyre tracks carved out of the hard earth and the little heaps of dog-ends. ‘When I looked around I saw that opening, there in the trees.’

He’d done well to spot that, thought Mariner. It was nothing more than a small gap in the undergrowth. ‘Lead the way,’ he said.

By now it was well after seven, but time had drawn none of the heat or humidity out of the day and even in shirtsleeves they sweltered. Knox and Mariner followed Hewitt through the wasteland, along the only clear path that cut a swathe through the low undergrowth, and straggling birches that had undoubtedly provided the adjacent road with its name. The dirt underfoot had been dried solid by the long, hot summer, but at one point, Mariner stopped at a small patch where water drained across its width, throwing up a couple of distinct footprints and a narrow tyre track, possibly belonging to a bike.

They smelled it before they saw it: a thick, peaty methane smell. Then, as the path meandered from one side to another, the trees began to thin to low shrubbery, then long grasses, and finally the path broke out again into the glare of the evening sun, at the edge of the reservoir, if that’s what you could call it. Today it was simply an expanse of black mud, shrunken and dried by the drought, with a single broad channel flowing sluggishly across the centre from the far side, maybe five hundred yards away, towards where they were standing now. ‘Kingsmead Reservoir,’ Hewitt announced.

Mariner marvelled at how such an expanse could exist on their patch without any of them really knowing about it. The size of three football fields, it was a vast and untamed open space, the water’s edge crowded with willows and reeds and shoulder-high grass. The land was bordered along the far side by the Birmingham to Bristol railway line and beyond that, a high bank of distant houses; the ‘cottages on the ridge’ from which the community of Cotteridge had taken its name. The factory site took up much of the near side, almost as far as the trees they’d walked through, though it finished four hundred yards away, behind substantial wood-panelled fencing. The only building that had any kind of direct view of the area was St Clare’s.

‘How could we not know about this?’ Knox said.

‘I’d heard about it.’ Mariner admitted. ‘It’s part of the River Rea that runs down from the Waseley Hills right though the city and to Spaghetti Junction at the other end. It’s been neglected for years but there has been a conservation group, Birmingham Riverside Trust, working on areas further up stream to try and clear it and create more of a leisure area: footpaths and cycle tracks, that kind of thing. I’ve seen posters around advertising for volunteers.’

As they surveyed the scene, a train thundered by on the opposite side of the water; not the local train that Yasmin would have caught, but the Birmingham to Bristol express. They heard rather than saw it, the wooden fence hiding it from view, and equally preventing any passengers from seeing anything on the reservoir. Anyone operating down here would know that they had almost complete privacy from prying eyes. The thought made Mariner shiver, despite the heat. Alongside the railway were the long production hangars of a glass manufacturer, separated from the track by a fifteen-foot wall topped with broken glass and razor wire. Anything along that stretch could be discounted as means of access.

They had come to a junction of sorts in the footpath: to the right was the rickety bridge that crossed the out-flow stream at the back of St Clare’s, but going round to the left, skirting the edge of the reservoir, there were also clear signs that other feet had trodden.

‘Lily had mentioned the bridge, so we went this way,’ said Hewitt, leading them round to the rotting structure. Constructed from wooden planks, it was in a state of disrepair, the boards mottled with holes, though still sound enough to take their combined weight. On one side the railings were snapped in two. Underneath the structure the water moved reluctantly on to a square plate of deeply rusted metal, accumulating at a pair of wooden gates. Though firmly shut, there were enough rotten crevices to allow the pathetic dribble of water to slowly insinuate itself through them to where it barrelled and cascaded limply over a concrete shelf and down into a narrow tunnel.

‘So what’s all this about?’ Knox asked, peering over the edge.

‘It looks like some kind of slow-release mechanism to make sure the reservoir doesn’t go completely dry or flood,’ Mariner said. ‘They have them on some canals. As the reservoir fills, the pressure builds on that plate until it eventually gets unlocked by the weight and volume of water, the gates open and the water surges down the spillway into the tunnel.’ But he was talking to himself. Knox had already lost interest.

Hewitt crossed the bridge to where the path broadened out slightly on the other side. ‘This is where Lily said she saw the action, and that was where we found the phone, lying just there,’ he said, pointing to an area of longish grass just to the side of what would have been a path. ‘And that’s what I thought might be blood.’ Initially camouflaged, on closer inspection there was no missing the brownish stains, some of which were as dark as creosote on the yellowing grass. Mariner’s first thought was how Sue, Hewitt’s partner, could have overlooked them.

‘But where’s our dog?’ he murmured to himself. ‘Is there a way down here from the station?’ he asked, looking up at the chain-link fence that separated them from the platforms and car park, two hundred or so yards away.

‘I think there used to be,’ said Hewitt. ‘But I wouldn’t know where exactly it comes out. I can’t imagine that anybody uses it any more because, since the factory was demolished, it wouldn’t go anywhere. The industrial units block off the other side. If you wanted to get to Birchill Lane it would be much simpler to walk along the road instead.’

But longer, thought Mariner, making a visual sweep through 360 degrees. As a walker, he was accustomed to scouring overgrown tracts of land for signs of a thorough-fare. Many times he’d come to a so-called public footpath across a field that some uncooperative farmer had planted over in the hope of discouraging ramblers. Only a few weekends ago, he’d had to battle his way through a field of maize that had grown taller than him, completely obscuring the right of way.

Generally speaking, he wasn’t alone in his determination and there were others who wouldn’t be deterred, which meant that usually, as in this case, a soft line marking out the faintest traces of human disturbance could be seen. Nettles and cow parsley stems that elsewhere were waist high had been snapped and crushed, the long grass swept over. He struck out along it a little way and was proved right: though not well-used and with hardly a break in the solid foliage, it was a definite path; recently forged down from the back of the station to where they now stood, and passed through, perhaps three or four times, since the early summer. The logical destination would be the cluster of low-level pre-fabricated units a quarter of a mile away, but the greenery in that direction looked untouched. ‘What have we got there?’ Mariner asked.

‘Small businesses, that sort of thing,’ Hewitt replied. ‘There’s a sign on up the road.’

‘We should have a closer look,’ Mariner told Knox. ‘Meanwhile, I don’t want everyone tramping around here like a herd of elephants just yet. We need to cordon off the area and get a team down here ASAP to do a thorough search.’ He scanned the area. It wasn’t going to be easy. The surrounding ground had been left to go wild for years and the grass was dense and impenetrable, with some vicious-looking brambles and nettles. Added to which they’d need to cover the disused cottages. It was all going to take valuable time and manpower. Meanwhile, forensics could get down here and verify that the staining was indeed blood, though Mariner, from experience, was pretty sure that it was.

He looked at his watch. Gone eight o’clock. By the time they could get anything organised it would be going on for nine and even at this time of year the light would start going. In this hostile terrain it would be a nightmare. Despite the urgency it would be better to have the light on their side to avoid missing anything. In only a few hours the sun would be coming up again.

‘OK, let’s get off here. We’ll need to get the area sealed off and do a thorough search first thing tomorrow.’ They trekked back along the narrow path to where the car was parked and Knox could call through to Granville Lane to organise securing the site. They were just about to leave when a distant roar greeted their ears and another vehicle appeared in the mouth of the clearing, with a lone driver. Seeing the assembled group he applied his brakes, clearly considering whether to continue or to turn and retreat. Before he could, Mariner approached, arm outstretched, holding out his warrant card, Knox at his heels. When he was near enough to be clearly identified, the car driver reacted with a resigned movement of the head and put on the handbrake.

‘DI Mariner, Mr—?’

‘Pryce, Shaun Pryce,’ the man obliged, indicating a degree of familiarity with this routine. ‘It’s all right. I’ll come back another time.’ He glanced up into the rear-view mirror as if to go, but Mariner was close enough to place both hands on the sill of the door.

‘Would you mind getting out of the car a minute, Mr Pryce?’

Standing alongside Mariner, Shaun Pryce was considerably shorter than him, a wiry young man of about thirty, his platinum hair edged with lethal-looking ginger side-burns. Testosterone oozed from every pore, his stylishly crumpled combats and a faded black tank top displaying his muscular arms and shoulders to their fullest advantage, including a couple of elaborate tattoos. He saw Mariner looking at them.

‘My personal
hommage
to the Robster,’ he said, pronouncing the word with an exaggerated French accent. ‘That’s where you’ve seen them before. So what’s going on then?’ He grinned, exposing perfect, gleaming white teeth, his eyes roving from one to another of the policemen, distinctly cagey despite the outward charm. Leaning back on the car door, he was a picture of relaxation but, folding his arms, he kept a wary eye on Knox who was prowling around the battered VW Golf. Old and scruffy, the vehicle had bits of electrical equipment lying on the parcel shelf, including several coils of plastic sheathed wire. A St George’s flag sticker decorated the rear window.