Blood of the Innocents (34 page)

For the sake of being thorough, he began with all the obvious places, but knowing beforehand that there would be nothing in the bureau in the dining room or in her drawer in the bedroom. It was too accessible. He found all her current paperwork: bank and building society accounts, letters from the last few years. Most of the numbers in her address book were local: friends and contacts made when she moved back up to Leamington. There was nothing from before that time.

Amongst the documents was his birth certificate, but he’d seen that years ago and it gave nothing away. He was officially a bastard. That would amuse some of the crooks he’d put away in the past. She’d kept all his old school reports too, most of them a variation on a ‘could try harder’ theme. But it was futile. She’d kept a secret for this long. She’d never leave anything around down here that would give it away. Mariner knew where the important stuff was. The past had literally been hanging over his head all the time he’d lived in this house.

When they’d moved in with his grandparents, space was at a premium and, consequently, much of their stuff had vanished up into the loft, and had never, to his knowledge, come down again. Rose had always vehemently discouraged him from going up there on the grounds that he might clumsily put a foot through the fragile floor and into the ceiling of the rooms below, but Mariner suspected the real reason lay deeper than that.

No one had been up there for years, mainly because it was such a production to get up there, involving balancing precariously at the very top of the stepladder before launching off into the narrow aperture. But in adulthood, Mariner had height on his side and the manoeuvre was relatively easy. The loft space was stifling and dirty, everything coated in a layer of black dust. A bare bulb draped over one of the rough timbers provided the minimum amount of light and in the yellow gloom, Mariner could see the enormity of the task: boxes and trunks, rolls of yellowing wallpaper, a collection of old camping equipment that could have belonged to Edmund Hillary, complete with rusting tartan vacuum flasks and heavy canvas groundsheets.

Opening a cardboard carton, he found old crockery and cutlery, including a child’s porcelain Peter Rabbit dish that had probably been his. In another, a whole willow-patterned bone-china dinner service. There was a suitcase full of dusty, dun-coloured blankets. Finally, he found what he was looking for in a brown cardboard suitcase with catches that had almost rusted solid. Working them back and forth finally slid them across and the lid flipped open to reveal yellowing paper: letters, cards, newspaper cuttings and photographs. The faded and peeling address label stuck to the inside of the lid had written on it: Rosemary Ellen Mariner, in neat italic ink-penned script. This was his mother’s life in London.

She’d been twenty-four when he was born in that other long hot summer of 1959, which left him looking for anything dated 1958-59. Her twenty-first birthday cards were bundled together, as were letters from his grandmother, even a few birth congratulations cards, most from women or couples. There were black-and-white photographs of him as a baby, wrapped in a woollen shawl. There were mementoes from special occasions: tickets from London Zoo, a programme from the Henry Wood Promenade Concert in September 1958: an evening of Sibelius, conducted by Malcolm Sargent.

The only things that might reveal any clues were the letters. He sat on an old crate and strained his eyes to read. The letters were addressed to several different places in London, where his mother had lived an apparently nomadic existence. Mostly, his grandmother described trivial events in Leamington, though occasionally she made reference to things that Rose must have mentioned in her letters home. It was these brief glimpses that Mariner clung to. In the dim light, the curling italic handwriting wasn’t easy to decipher and he took his time, anxious not to miss anything.

But he realised as he came to the last, with overwhelming disappointment, that there was nothing to miss. His neck ached and his eyes were sore with the dust and effort. It had gone cooler. When he had emerged back on to the ladder he found out why. It was dark and almost eleven at night. Turning on the landing light, he left a black fingerprint on the switch. He looked as if he’d been up a chimney. He was filthy.

His mother had never gone in for showers so he ran a hot bath and lay in it, soaking. He had a decision to make. He could either waste further endless time and energy trying to uncover something that was probably unattainable, or he could get back to his life. Later, he crawled into the spare room to sleep on it.

The morning brought with it a firm decision. Mariner locked his mother’s house. He’d get on to the estate agent soon and arrange a skip and some visits to a local charity shop. At home he found a message from Anna on the answer phone. It wasn’t exactly an olive branch, but carefully handled, it might have the potential to become one. He called her back straight away, half expecting her recorded message. To his surprise she was there, but the conversation didn’t go according to plan. ‘Where have you been?’ Anna asked. ‘I’ve been trying to contact you.’

‘My mother’s dead.’

‘Oh God, Tom, I’m so sorry. What happened?’

‘A heart attack, Thursday morning.’

‘Why didn’t you call me? Are you all right?’

‘I’m OK.’

‘Do you want me to come over? I can see if Simon could—’

‘No!’ he snapped. ‘It’s all right, I’m fine, really.’

‘OK, then.’

So the experience hadn’t changed him. In an emotional crisis he still couldn’t manage sharing his feelings with someone else. It was so long since he’d done it that he’d forgotten how.

 

It wasn’t any less depressing back in the office where, in his absence, nothing much had happened. Fiske was still technically overseeing things but his mind was, understandably, preoccupied with other matters. The team itself seemed to have lost all coherence, too. Mariner recognised that he was still in a state of shock. Tony Knox seemed lower than ever, and recent past history had generated an awkwardness between himself and Millie, all of which was nicely exacerbated by the fact that beyond the initial expression of condolences, suddenly no one quite knew what to say to him.

There had been no progress, either forensic or otherwise, to pin down Shaun Pryce. The grass and soil traces on the blanket in his car were a match with the reservoir, but then Pryce had never denied that he went there. There was a feeling all round that both investigations were beginning to lose momentum as demands on resources continued to be made from elsewhere, and there were mutterings about calling in the murder review team. That and the ominous presence of the PCA was doing little to inspire confidence.

 

Partly to get out of the building, Mariner went to visit the Akrams, who unusually were both at home. ‘You’ve closed the school?’

‘We had to. It was impossible to keep going. We hope to reopen in a few days, but we’re in limbo. Until we know who did this to Yasmin we can’t get on with our lives. It’s like unfinished business.’

‘I’m sorry: there’s no news, but we’re still doing everything we can.’

‘Thank you.’

 

Another uncompromisingly sunny day dawned for Mariner’s mother’s funeral. He put on one of his lighter suits and perused his collection of dreary ties. Had he been Fiske, he’d have had a whole array of jolly cartoon characters at his disposal, but he wasn’t, so in the end he chose a sky/navy stripe.

‘Very smart.’

Coming down the stairs, he looked up to see Anna standing in the hallway. She’d let herself in and was waiting by the front door, wearing an elegant floral dress and a wide-brimmed hat.

‘I thought you could use some support,’ she said. ‘After all, I’ve had some experience at this stuff.’ Over the last few years, death had been a loyal companion, as she’d seen both her parents and her older brother killed. It was Eddie’s murder that had brought them together in the first place.

‘Thanks, I appreciate it,’ said Mariner, truthfully.

She saw him appraising her outfit. ‘Would she have approved?’

‘She’d have approved whatever you were wearing.’

They spoke little on the drive over to Leamington and he was grateful for that, too. His nerves jangled in anticipation. Not because of the funeral: that he could cope with. But in the days after his mother died, he had placed announcements in both local and national press. At the very least he was hoping to meet someone who would be able to tell him who his father was. And then there was the possibility he hardly dared consider: that his father might turn up in person.

In her will his mother had planned out the ceremony to the last detail: a simple cremation with a couple of pieces of music; ‘Ave Maria’ and the ‘Intermezzo’ from Sibelius’s Karelia Suite. It had been on the programme of the 1958 Promenade Concert he’d found in the loft and, hearing it now, he couldn’t help wondering if the piece had a deeper significance. It was all she’d wanted. Mariner introduced Anna to Harry, who sat beside them at the front of the church, along with Mrs Masud. Turning to look, Mariner saw that the chapel was a respectable two thirds full, a congregation disproportionately made up of women, attributable possibly to his mother’s lifelong commitment to the feminist cause. He could tell those who’d known her well: they were the ones dressed for a picnic in the park.

‘Anyone else you recognise?’ Anna asked him.

‘Not a soul.’

There was to be no wake back at the house. His mother had made no stipulation about it in her will, and to Mariner it seemed pointless to invite a group of total strangers to join him in mourning a woman he hardly knew. But he did formally greet people as they left the chapel.

Most of the mourners turned out to be friends of his mother’s from Leamington, but then came the encounter that he’d been praying for: a large woman dressed in flowing pink and turquoise, her grey unruly hair loosely pinned back. She smiled. ‘You’ve changed a bit since we last met,’ she said. ‘I’m Maggie Devlin. I used to sit for you when you were a baby.’

Mariner’s heart thumped against his rib cage. ‘We’re going for a drink,’ he said, with astonishing calm. ‘Would you like to join us?’

He was in for a disappointment. Maggie had indeed known his mother from her London days, but was as mystified as he was about who his father might be. ‘She kept that one close to her chest,’ she told him over a gin and tonic in the garden of a nearby pub. ‘Rose was a popular girl and nobody was really sure if she knew who the father of her baby was, though I was certain she was seeing someone for quite a while after you were born.’

‘But she didn’t give any clue about who it might be?’

‘None. She was good at secrets, your mother. There was just the one day—’

‘What?’

‘It might be nothing at all.’

‘Please.’

‘When you were born, Rose was living in a flat in Holborn. I came to see you just after you came home from the hospital, and as I arrived, there was a black car pulling away from the kerb. It caught my attention because it was a big car, especially for round there, like a limousine. It was only afterwards though that I began to wonder if it had anything to do with—’

‘Did you get the licence plate?’ asked Mariner automatically, before laughing with Maggie at his own stupidity. ‘Of course not. Why would you?’

‘And I doubt that it would be much help after all these years.’

‘No.’

‘I’m truly sorry that I can’t tell you more. But if I should learn of anything that might help—’

‘Thanks.’ Mariner gave her his card.

 

The sun blasting in through the window woke Tony Knox. He had a throbbing headache and a raging thirst again, even though he thought he’d been pretty moderate with the booze last night. He glanced over at the clock. Bugger! Twenty past eleven. He should have been at work hours ago. For a moment he debated whether to pull a sickie, but remembered where Mariner had gone today. It would be good to have something for the boss when he got back. Knox made himself get out of bed and into the shower.

Everyone at Granville Lane was either out or preoccupied, so no one noticed his late arrival. Now he was here he couldn’t think of anything purposeful to do. While he considered that, unable to resist the urge, he tucked himself away in a corner of the office and logged on to the old friends website again. But before clicking on to Stephen Lamb’s name he checked himself. He’d spent hours staring at that message. It wasn’t going to change anything. Before he clicked his way out of the website, a further thought occurred: would Shaun Pryce go for something like this? Of course he would, the self-serving little git. If Pryce was keen to publicise himself, one group he’d really want to know would be old schoolfriends, particularly as he’d enjoyed some modest success. He was bound to want to capitalise on that. And what else might he give away? His exploits with middle-aged housewives? There might be something to learn from Pryce’s former classmates, too. He’d not a clue which schools Pryce had attended, of course, but it couldn’t be that difficult to find out. His web page had indicated that he was a local lad.

All Knox had to do was systematically work through the secondary schools in the area. Right now, he couldn’t think of a better way to keep himself occupied and Fiske off his back for the day. He’d start with Kingsmead and work his way out. Pryce would have left the school either in ’87 or ’89. For a moment, Knox was tempted to pick up the phone and make his life easier by asking Shaun Pryce the direct question. He wouldn’t need to know what it was about. But then he caught sight of the Complaints officer in the far side of the office, poring over Ricky Skeet’s file and decided that he couldn’t risk any more aggro. With a weary sigh, he began opening up the message envelopes beside each of the names. The computer was on a ‘go slow’ so it took for ever.