Blood of the Innocents (33 page)

She was astute enough to take this as confirmation. ‘So you are sleeping with someone else.’

‘Not exactly.’

‘What the hell does that mean?’

‘It means past tense. I slept with someone else, a couple of nights ago.’

‘Well, thanks for telling me.’ She hadn’t been lying. He could hear the pain in her voice. It sliced right through him.

‘It’s not what you think.’

She stopped and turned to face him with the same anger he’d witnessed the first time they’d met. ‘So what is it, then?’

‘When I couldn’t see you. I worked late instead, and afterwards, Millie Khatoon, she’s our—’

‘I know who she is.’

‘Right, well, Millie asked me back to her place for a curry and we ended up getting drunk and having sex. It was terrible sex. Millie would tell you the same thing. We didn’t go to bed, we didn’t even take our clothes off and it was over in ten minutes. It will never happen again.’

An elderly couple walked by, gazing at them with interest.

‘Well, that’s all right, then,’ Anna said, tightly.

Righteous anger rose in Mariner’s chest. ‘Oh, and I suppose you and Simon are above all that.’

‘Simon?’

‘You can’t seem to stay away from him. Not that I blame you. He’s young, not bad-looking from what I could see—’

‘—and apart from me, the most important person in Jamie’s life.’ Anna rounded on him. ‘We’re talking about Jamie here, who can’t communicate, and for whom consistency is a lifeline. That could explain why I spend so much time with Simon.’

‘Even on a Friday night, when you’re meant to be having a break from Jamie?’

‘Sure, that was more of a social call, but if you hadn’t walked away, you would have found out what it was all about.’

‘I wasn’t invited.’

‘What, you need a written invitation now? I asked you to stay.’

Mariner gazed out across the pond. ‘So what was it about?’ Why was it that her questioning of him had sounded entirely reasonable and calm, but he just sounded like a petulant schoolboy?

‘Simon has asked me to help with the stall on the day of the festival, so he and Martin had come round to discuss—’

‘Martin too? That was a cosy threesome.’

‘Actually, it was fun,’ she responded, evenly. ‘Martin and Simon make a great couple.’ She paused to allow that to sink in. ‘Simon is gay, Martin is his partner. And if I’d thought that it was in the least bit relevant, I would have told you.’

But even then, when she’d handed it to him on a plate, he couldn’t let go. ‘That’s convenient, isn’t it?’ he said.

‘Oh, fuck off, Tom.’ And she turned and walked away from him.

Even if he’d had the energy it would be pointless going after her, he could see that. He would only make things worse. So he went back to the nick and to Shaun Pryce.

 

They spent all afternoon on Pryce, covering the same ground but not really making any progress. Mariner was distracted and, if anything, Pryce seemed to be gaining control. He was certainly more relaxed than he had been a few hours earlier. In the end they had to let him go. As he stalked up to the office again, Mariner was ready to kill someone. Unfortunately the first person he ran into was Millie, typing at her desk.

‘Has the search team come back yet?’ he demanded.

‘Not yet,’ she said glancing up briefly before returning to the report.

Mariner banged his hand down hard on her desk, making everyone in the office turn round. ‘So why the hell aren’t you out there, chasing them up?’ And he strode into his office and slammed the door, leaving Millie staring after him. After a few moments she tentatively went in.

Mariner stood with his back to the room looking out of the window. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘It’s been a long day.’

‘Don’t let Pryce get to you, sir. If it is him we’ll find out in the end.’

Mariner swung round to face her. ‘Anna found out about what happened with us.’

‘Oh God. How? You don’t think I—?’

‘I told her.’

‘Oh. Good move, sir.’

‘I had to. It was gnawing away at me.’

‘You have got it bad, haven’t you?’

And that was the problem. He had. For the first time in his life Mariner had found a woman he could envisage growing old with. Someone he was finding it hard to imagine being without.

But the deal with Anna had always been no commitment. And now he was in danger of blowing the whole thing sky high.

 

Mariner’s conscience told him that he ought to go over to see his mother again tonight, but after the sort of day he’d had, he couldn’t face her. In any case, it was late and by the time he could get there, visiting would be over. Instead, he phoned and spoke to the duty nurse.

‘She’s fine,’ the girl reassured him. ‘Though I expect she’ll be disappointed not to see you.’ I wouldn’t count on it, thought Mariner.

Knox had already left and in any case, Mariner didn’t feel much like company, so he went home. The evening was warm and sticky again, the air heavy with unresolved tension. Opening up a bottle of home-brew, Mariner went to sit on the bench outside his front door, overlooking the canal. Towards dusk, the sky darkened ominously and thunder rumbled in the distance. A few spots of rain followed, temporarily making the air smell a little fresher, but this time the storm never quite broke.

 

The next morning he was in the shower, considering their next move with Shaun Pryce, when away in the distance he heard the phone. When he got out there was a message from the hospital on the answering machine, asking him to call back as soon as possible. He hoped it wasn’t that they were letting his mother go home early. That was a diversion he could do without today.

‘Mr Mariner, I’m afraid your mother has suffered a slight heart attack. You may want to come in.’ The voice was calm and unruffled, implying nothing more than a setback, though this would inevitably delay her discharge from the hospital.

On the drive over, Mariner could visualise his mother’s frustration as she was wired up to monitors and drips that would further restrict her independence. This had obvious implications for her after-care, too. He’d need to play a more active role, something he didn’t relish, but it might mean getting to know each other again, which in turn may present new opportunities too. The nursing sister met him on reception and took him into a side room to explain what was happening. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Mariner, we weren’t able to resuscitate her.’

For several seconds her words didn’t make any sense. Then, one by one, their meaning hit him like a forty-foot wave, almost physically knocking him off-balance.

‘She died at just after nine o’clock,’ the nurse went on, gently. ‘It was very sudden, so it’s unlikely that she knew anything about it. She wouldn’t have been in any pain.’ Her carefully chosen words were designed to offer comfort and consolation. They were words of the kind that had spouted from Mariner’s own mouth a hundred times before, when he’d broken bad news to the relatives of crime victims. In all that time it had never occurred to him that one day, he might be on the receiving end. So this was what it was like. A feeling of complete disorientation, as if time had suddenly slowed to nothing.

‘Would you like to see her?’ the nurse repeated when he failed to respond the first time.

He had to wait a few minutes, while they made her presentable, presumably. But it made no difference. When he went in he didn’t see Rose. They hadn’t succeeded in making her look as if she was sleeping, as was the desired outcome. The life in her was gone, leaving only an empty shell. In the past he’d watched families say their last good-byes, to kiss the cold cheek of their loved ones, but Mariner couldn’t bring himself to do that. His mother wasn’t there. Why was he so upset? It wasn’t as though he would miss his mother’s daily presence. They’d hardly seen each other in recent years. And it wasn’t that he was suddenly brought face to face with death. Any reminders he might need of his own mortality came regularly at work. Perhaps it was because now he had to accept the possibility that he would never know.

He realised too how much he’d taken her for granted, expecting her to never not be there. He’d always assumed that she’d be one of these women who lived well into her nineties. An afterthought struck him: she’d never meet Anna now.

They were still holding some of his mother’s personal effects at the nursing station on the ward so he went to fetch them. ‘You’ve just missed your dad,’ said the nurse. ‘I think he’s gone home.’

Mariner gawped. ‘My what?’

 

Had he been thinking rationally and stopped to consider, Mariner would have recognised the unlikelihood, but suddenly, in a warped kind of way, everything began to make sense. The ‘something to tell him’, was that his father had reappeared on the scene. It might explain why she was doing up the house, too.

He dashed back to his mother’s house, where an old style pushbike was leaning against the wall. That hadn’t been there two days ago. He let himself in with the key, his heart pounding in anticipation. ‘Hello?’

‘Hello. You must be Tom.’

Harry turned out to be a softly spoken widower who had worked for years as an engineer at Potterton’s boilers in Coventry and had lost his wife soon after his retirement.

‘How long have you known Rose?’ Mariner asked.

‘About a year. I was planning to move in with her.’

‘Were you?’ Mariner’s surprise was genuine. He was struggling to get his head round the idea that his mother had met another man after all this time. If there had been liaisons over the years Mariner had not been aware of them. As far as he knew, there had been nobody since his father who hadn’t stuck around long enough to see his son born. Just like the Akrams with Yasmin, this was where he’d find out how little he knew about his mother.

Harry was flustered now. ‘No, it wasn’t like that. We were just friends, but I was coming to stay here with her. She’d offered me a room.’

‘A room?’

‘I’m living in rented accommodation at present but the lease expires at the end of the month and the landlord wants me out, so your mother had said I could have her spare room. It was all above board. We had agreed rent.’

‘I see.’ Typical of his mother to be adopting waifs and strays, even at her age. As he spoke, Mariner recognised that Harry and his mother had espoused the kind of pragmatic approach to life that is the privilege of the older generation. They’d reached the point where, having taken their share of knocks, they’ve realised that there’s too little time left to waste it arguing about the minutiae. Harry was about to lose his home. Mariner’s mother had a spare room. The two things fitted logically together, end of story.

‘I’m not a con man,’ said Harry, answering the very question that Mariner had moments before dismissed inside his head.

‘No.’ And you’re not my dad.

Harry ‘liked to keep busy’ as he put it, hence the fresh coat of paint on the house. Mariner’s mother had been helping him, but mainly by providing cups of tea, from the sound of it. ‘I didn’t want her to be up ladders. I don’t know why she was.’ Harry had come to collect his overalls and brushes. ‘I expect you’ll want to sell the house and I wouldn’t want them to be in the way. No time like the present.’

When Harry had gone, Mariner called the office from his mother’s old Bakelite phone and spoke to Fiske.

‘I’m very sorry, Tom,’ he said, formally. ‘Is there anything we can do?’

‘No thanks, sir.’

‘Police Complaints are still here.’ Fiske couldn’t resist mentioning it, even though the timing was completely inappropriate. ‘They’re going through all the paperwork with a fine-tooth comb.’

‘That’s what they do, sir.’

‘Yes. They’ll want to talk to you, too.’ Fiske paused. ‘Tom, I hope—’

‘Not really the right moment, sir.’

‘Of course. Well, take as much time as you need.’

‘Thank you, sir.’ I won’t be hurrying back on your account. He’d let Fiske squirm. Even if the DCI were vindicated, the fact that there had been an investigation in the first place could blight his career. With any luck, the mud would stick.

The truth was that Mariner was still uneasy about his own part in the fiasco. He should have been more assertive about keeping Ricky’s case, and more proactive, both with Ricky and with his mother. Now he’d paid the price for both.

He went to the registry office to record his mother’s death. Technically, it had been a sudden death, so there would have to be a post mortem, but it would be routine. The people around her when she died had all been fighting to save her life. Nothing suspicious about that.

Sitting on the hard plastic seat, waiting his turn, it occurred to Mariner that to all intents and purposes he was now an orphan, with very little family to speak of. His mother had a couple of cousins as far as he remembered, but there were no family gatherings when he’d been a kid. It gave him something else in common with Anna, too. She’d lost her parents several years ago, except of course that he didn’t really know about the one, and perhaps now never would.

Ironically, if he’d been adopted it would have been simple. These days, there were routes to follow. But not for him. The only way of solving this particular puzzle would be if there was some clue remaining at his mother’s house, something she’d hung onto. He thought about the bond between the father of a child and the mother. Ronnie Skeet was a nasty piece of work but it still didn’t stop Colleen from letting him back into the house time after time. ‘
He’s the father of my kids
,’ she’d said.

Mariner’s mother had never given him any reason to doubt that she knew the identity of his father. Was there an unbreakable bond there, too, however tenuous? However effectively she managed to keep him a secret, would there still be some fine strand connecting them? If there was then there would be a trace of it at her house. It was the only place to start. Hours later he was back there.