Written in Blood (25 page)

‘Come on in. I’d make you a cuppa but I’m just finding out how important hands are. And after all, that’s what I keep the manservant for.’

Knox appeared, looking so shattered that Mariner wondered if that last remark had been entirely in jest. ‘I’ll do it, love,’ he said. ‘You go and sit down for a bit.’

Mariner followed Knox through to the kitchen. There was only one other occasion when he could remember seeing Tony Knox make a cup of tea before. ‘She’s doing well,’ Mariner said.

‘Not as well as she wants to. She gets frustrated.’

‘It’s early days.’

‘I think it’s just beginning to sink in though, that this is the way it is. I mean she’s lucky with her job, she’s pretty well office-based anyway, but she’s still got to get there and back. She’s going to have a specially adapted car.’

‘You all right?’ Mariner felt compelled to ask.

‘Yeah. You went to Jack Coleman’s do?’

‘It was a good send-off,’ Mariner said, dismissively.

The tea made they joined Selina where she was resting in the lounge. Mariner wanted to get Knox on his own. If he couldn’t spill it to Anna yet he didn’t want to talk in front of someone he hardly knew, how ever much he liked Selina.

‘How’s Anna?’ she asked.

‘Fine.’

‘Tony said you’ve got Jamie back with you. How’s that working out?’

‘It has its moments, but Anna’s taken it surprisingly well,’ said Mariner, thinking again that she’d taken it in her stride. ‘Once she’d got over the initial disappointment she’s all fired up to find him somewhere else. Not that it will be easy.’ He turned to Knox. ‘Anyway, I came to lead you astray,’ Mariner said. ‘Fancy a pint at the Boatman?’

Knox looked sheepish. ‘I would but I’m cooking tonight.’

Mariner nearly choked on his last mouthful of tea.

‘Just shut it, will you?’ snapped Knox in anticipation of the response.

‘No really, I’m impressed.’

‘You’re welcome to stay,’ said Selina. ‘It’s
Porc à la moutarde
.’

Mariner cast a sidelong glance at Knox. ‘Blimey. You’ll be making all your own frocks soon.’

Selina giggled. ‘You should see his baby blue chiffon number.’

Suddenly Mariner felt like an impostor in this comfortable domestic scene, and realised how ridiculous it would be to unburden himself here.

Knox saw him out. Standing in the hall, he seemed about to say something, but then Selina called from the lounge. ‘Shut the door, love, will you? There’s a draught.’

‘See you back at the station then,’ Mariner said, and heard the door close behind him.

 

Watching Mariner’s blurred form disappearing down the path, Knox went wearily back into the lounge.

‘I wish he wouldn’t just pop up like that,’ Selina said, straightaway. ‘Can’t you get him to phone first? We could have been doing anything.’

‘We weren’t though, were we?’ said Knox, regretting his irritation immediately. ‘We weren’t doing anything.’

Her anger flared from nowhere, nought to sixty in two seconds. ‘I didn’t ask for this,’ she screamed. ‘I didn’t want to be a cripple. If I hadn’t gone with you to that stupid fucking church this never would have happened. It’s all your fault!’ And reaching for the nearest thing to hand she picked up one of the aluminium crutches and viciously swung it at him. This time Knox caught it before it struck, calmly taking it from her grasp and laying it against the sofa. He was straightening up when the mug struck him on the side of the head. ‘I’ll go and start the dinner.’

Escaping to the kitchen Knox went through the motions of filling the sink to peel the potatoes, his eyes burning and vision blurred, still smarting from the blow. What the hell had he got himself into? He could walk out right now of course, go after Mariner and tell him the truth; that he was being subjected to physical assault on a daily basis. But he’d be so ashamed, because when it came down to it Selina was right. It was his fault she was in this mess.

 

Exhausted, and feeling somehow let down by Knox, Mariner drove back to Anna’s house, which is what he should have done in the first place. For a few minutes he sat in the car on the drive. Hers was a nice place, warm and welcoming, but it was funny how he still thought of it as her house. The truth was that right now he didn’t really feel at home anywhere. Perhaps if he told Anna, if they could just get a few minutes to sit down quietly and talk. With renewed purpose, he jumped out of the car and strode up the drive.

Inside he found Jamie in the lounge with the TV turned up way too loud and Anna on her hands and knees in the kitchen, washing the floor, the only thing visible from this angle her bottom, clad in tight jeans.

‘That’s a sight for sore eyes,’ he said, truthfully, his good intentions already thwarted.

‘Just don’t,’ she turned, her face grim, ‘unless you want to find yourself cleaning up the mess.’

‘What is it?’

‘Orange juice. It was in the wrong type of carton. They’re not the cartons they have at the hostel.’ It needed no further explanation. Jamie would have taken exception to the change and thrown it all over the room. ‘We’ll be sticking to the floor for weeks.’

‘Anything I can do?’

Bit bloody late for that, her glare conveyed.

‘You’re having a hard time?’ he asked.

‘I’ve had better.’ She sat back on her haunches. ‘A case conference has been arranged for next week to decide what will happen to Jamie. The hostel neighbours have made it clear that they don’t want him back living there and Louise is understandably ambivalent. Having him back might put the whole project under threat. I can understand her concern.’

‘So what are we going to do?’

‘We? That’s interesting.’ She sighed. ‘How about you?’

He didn’t know what she meant.

‘Jack Coleman’s do. Was it a good one?’

‘It went well. A good turn-out.’ He wouldn’t tell her he left in disgrace.

She nodded towards a white NHS envelope on the table. ‘We’ve got an appointment with the genetic counsellor, too.’

‘What, already?’

‘Christmas must be a quiet time for them. Don’t look so surprised. You were the one who thought it was such a good idea, remember?’ She turned to get on with the cleaning.

‘I’ll go and get changed.’

‘Oh yeah, and you’ve had a fax,’ she called after him.

Mariner went straight to the office where he saw the fax from Helena James. He sat down at the desk to read it. Rupert Foster-Young’s date of birth was 9th October 1963, only months after Ryland broke off the engagement. At the time of his referral to the JRC Foster-Young was serving his time at Chapel Wood prison, where Joseph O’Connor had been a guest of Her Majesty, and at about the same time. If the lobbying started four years ago it would have been about the time when O’Connor’s appeal was heard.

This added a further dimension, opening up the possibility of new resentment when O’Connor succeeded, where Foster-Young had failed, in getting his case appealed. O’Connor subsequently going to work for Ryland presented a golden opportunity to get both of them at the same time, and Foster-Young would already feel antipathy towards Diana Ryland for usurping his mother’s place. But would all of that be enough to drive a man to commit violent murder?

Mariner had handled enough cases over the years in which the stakes were lower, and as a long-term drug user, Foster-Young would be prone to paranoia, even schizophrenia. The
modus operandi
also made sense. The assassinations were too clean and neat for a disorganised mind, but while serving time Foster-Young would have mixed with the kinds of people who’d be skilled at the short, sharp hit and could stage it to look like a drugs-related shooting, though it would have hurt to waste those few crumbs of heroin. In the space of a few short hours Mariner had shifted from eliminating Foster-Young as a suspect, to realising that he was looking more like a contender.

A picture was attached to the fax, and the face that stared out at Mariner bore all the signs of substance abuse. Rupert Foster-Young was as Helena had described him: his pale, hollowed-out face was framed by longish, lank hair and half concealed by a straggling beard. All in all, he was in a bit of a state. Maggie had described Carrie Foster-Young as the antithesis of Diana Fitzgibbon, implying that Rupert Foster-Young had lacked stability in his early life. There but for the grace of God, thought Mariner.

The final sheet was a record of the calls Foster-Young had made to the Commission. They ended eighteen months ago, coinciding almost exactly with the start of those mystery payments. Rupert Foster-Young had found a more lucrative way of putting pressure on Sir Geoffrey Ryland.

‘Who is he?’ Anna had come into the room and was looking over Mariner’s shoulder.

‘The possible suspect in a murder enquiry.’

‘Madeleine?’

‘No.’ Mariner hesitated. ‘Something I’m only partly involved in.’

‘He looks old.’ She half smiled. ‘And now you’re going to say he’s only twenty-five but he’s had a hard life.’

‘He’s a junkie.’

‘Ah.’

Mariner was thinking of the baby photo. ‘How does a tiny innocent child get to end up like this?’

‘All sorts of reasons. In your line of work, you know that more than anyone.’ She put her hands on his shoulders and was gently massaging them. It felt good.

‘It’s such a huge fucking responsibility though isn’t it, bringing a child into the world? So much can happen if you get it wrong as a parent.’

‘You just have to do the best you can. Millions of people have kids, but they don’t necessarily have them in ideal circumstances. Look at you and me. Neither of us had what you’d call a conventional upbringing but our parents must have done something right.’

‘It was touch and go some of the time.’

‘But you kept it together. And you come across plenty who have had it all, but still end up like this guy. For all you know he may have had a perfect childhood.’ She was right. There were plenty of Rupert Foster-Youngs in the world and they hadn’t all had a rough start. It was all too easy to blame it on the parents.

‘But even if you do a half-decent job there’s the outside world to contend with.’

Anna stopped massaging. ‘Chloe Evans,’ she said.

‘And Yasmin Akhtar, and Ricky Skeet.’ The two teenagers who’d been brutally murdered the summer before. ‘Their parents are good people but they still ended up going through hell. Why does anyone put themselves through that?’

‘Because the bonuses far outweigh the risks. If you spent some time with Becky, Mark and Megan you’d see that.’

She slid her hands inside his shirt and down over his chest, hugging him to her, and making his lower belly begin to tingle. ‘I know you’re anxious about all this but there’s no need. Those other kids, they’re the exceptions. Just because you see the worst side of life doesn’t mean it’s all like that, does it?’

‘I just don’t know if I’ll measure up.’

Leaning over him she reached down further, running her hands over his crotch. ‘Oh I think you measure up all right,’ she murmured in his ear, swinging the chair round til they faced each other. She knelt down in front of him, her face level with his lap and slid her hands along his thighs, causing him to draw breath. The sound of intermittent applause from the TV floated up the stairs.

‘Look there’s something I need to tell you,’ Mariner said, and that was when there was an ear-splitting crash from downstairs.

Sometimes they just never knew why Jamie did it. Could be something the TV presenter said, could be that the video jumped, but what ever it was, it had upset him enough to pick up the coffee table and throw it at the set. They’d forgotten it could happen. By the time they’d cleared up the mess and Jamie had been dispatched to his room the moment had passed. So Mariner still hadn’t told her, but maybe that was for the best. It would be more complete when he’d solved the case.

Lying in bed much later, Mariner realised that he was merely speculating based on what little he knew. He had to find out what had happened to Carrie-Foster Young, and the one person who might be able to help would be Eleanor Ryland.

‘Tom?’ So Anna was awake too.

‘Yes?’

‘Is there something going on that I should know about?’

Christ, where do I start? ‘Only the usual crap. Nothing for you to concern yourself with.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Absolutely.’ And he was so wrapped up in his own adventures that it never occurred to him that he should ask her the same question. He rolled over and began nuzzling her neck, pressing himself against her hip. At first she resisted with a sleepy moan, but nonetheless put her arms round him and drew him on top of her. And miraculously this time his body didn’t let him down.

Perhaps Anna was right. A move to the country could be good for all of them and maybe he should start thinking about a family, too. Was there ever going to be a right time for that? Whatever their differences might be, he didn’t want to lose her.

 

After making love, Mariner’s breathing settled into a rhythmic pattern, but Anna couldn’t sleep. Propped on an elbow she studied the contours of his face in the half-light. She could only really see his profile, the detail of his features were masked by the shadows, much the same as he was. Many of his thoughts and ambitions she knew intimately, but there were always parts of his being that remained unreachable and indistinct. She’d thought it was a matter of time, and that eventually those elements would emerge, but lately she felt more than ever that there was so little she understood about him and what he wanted from life.

Once on a family holiday, Dad had taken Eddie and her fishing. After hours of boring inactivity, Anna had finally got a bite and the contest to reel in the fish began. At first the creature came easily, openly, before suddenly jerking back and shrinking away into the murky obscurity of the water, pulling part of the line with it, and each time she had to start again, until finally the fish was near enough for her to land it in the net. She’d never come close to landing Tom. It had been worse since St Martin’s, of course it had, but she didn’t kid herself that it was anything new. It was something she’d always found attractive; that sense of something deeper and darker lurking beneath the surface. But whatever had happened in the church had affected him.