Dead of Winter (18 page)

The track leading up to the pump house was treacherous with fresh snow so he decided to park out of sight in a dip at the bottom of the hill and walk up. He had used some of Issie’s cash to buy sandwiches, a bottle of whisky and a razor, as well as more fuel for the oil-fired heater and canisters of camping gaz. His urgent desire for her and a renewed sense of immunity had guided him smoothly through the transactions. Now he was impatient.

The snow in front of the pump house was pristine. She hadn’t managed to escape then. The thought made him smile. He walked in a wide semicircle close to the skeletal brambles so that his tracks would be hidden in their shadows, only stepping onto the white covering a yard from the door. One stride and he was at the padlock.

The key took some time to turn in the frozen metal but it opened eventually and he pushed on the door. The gloom inside surprised him until he remembered that the gas lamp was out of her reach.
He lit it and saw his breath mist in the stale air. As he shut and bolted the door concern filled him that she might have died and he ran to the bundle on the mattress.

There she was, shapeless in layers of his clothing, zipped up tight in two sleeping bags, her eyes open and staring at him but he could tell she was alive. He remembered her body, the feel of her skin under his hands, how the slenderness of her back and waist swelled into muscle-firm buttocks. She would be so grateful to him for being here that she would do anything for him.

‘I came back,’ he said proudly, ‘I said I would.’

‘Can I go now?’ she asked at once.

‘Maybe,’ he smiled, ‘depends on whether you’re a good girl.’

‘He gave you the money, like he said he would?’ she demanded. ‘You’ve got the money, right?’

The reminder of his failure made him angry. Snooty little bitch; typical that she would rub his nose in it. Women; they were all the same. She was meant to be pleased that he was here but instead she was nagging him already. His head ached. He cracked open the whisky and swallowed, coughing as the raw spirit hit the back of his throat.

Without looking at her he refuelled the heater and lit it, pushing his palms towards its heat. Then he lit one of the gaz stoves and put a camping kettle of water on it.

She was talking to him, bleating on like his stupid wife, but he ignored her. How could a man think straight with all that noise? He drank some more of the whisky directly from the bottle. Anger at his failure slowly turned on her, his temper simmering like the water, gradually bubbling to the surface mixed with a rush of desire. Ungrateful little bitch.

‘… please tell me. They paid, right? They’re waiting for me; we’re going to them? … Answer me, damn you!’ She screamed at him. ‘Answer me, you bloody bastard!’

The flat of his hand caught her mouth, snapping her head to the side as the return stroke knocked her back on the mattress, her head swaying in a satisfying see-saw motion, so he hit her again. It made him laugh through his fury.

‘Shut up,’ he bayed at her, spittle covering her reddened cheeks. ‘Don’t you ever shout at me, you little whore. You should be grateful I’m here.’

‘I am, I am.’ The girl looked at him with wide wet eyes. Her obvious terror made him feel good.

‘You are really grateful?’

‘Yes, very, very.’ She blinked back tears.

He reached down and grabbed a handful of her short hair, pulling her head forward sharply. Some of the tears that had accumulated in her eyes spilt over. The sight of them gave him enormous pleasure.

‘How grateful?’ He whispered, bending down so that his lips brushed her ear.

She stank of sweat and urine but his desire was stronger than any repulsion and she was trembling, he could feel it through his hands, through his lips as they rested against her salty skin. He started to devour her with little bites.

‘I’m very grateful, Badger,’ she whispered.

He heard the lie in her words. Her deception was transparent to him now.

‘It’s Steve,’ he said, ‘not Badger. Bloody daft name; don’t call me by it again.’

‘Of course, Steve,’ and she reached up to touch his cheek with her bound hands.

He remembered how she had head-butted and scratched him only that morning and jerked his face away. The recollection of her insolence drew his anger back to the surface, bringing with it overwhelming desire. With his free hand he reached down and pulled the sleeping bags away from her. The unwashed smell that wafted out was irrelevant to his lust as he unzipped himself, sighing with pleasure at the release of pressure as he burst free.

‘Then it’s time you showed me just how grateful you are,’ he said, pulling her towards him.

It took a long time for him to finish. He had never experienced such intense pleasure and she had been willing – well sort of – at least by the end.

He hadn’t enjoyed hitting her and he’d told her so. It caused him as much pain as it did her, he had explained, but she had to be good. Good girls weren’t punished, only bad girls. She learnt her lesson eventually and he was able to tell himself that the sex had been consensual. That mattered. At one point she almost passed out. All he could see were the whites of her eyes and her breath had sounded all raggedy in the back of her throat. He had forced some whisky into her and that choked her back to consciousness.

Satiated, he reached out to touch her. Despite the vigorous hour of sex her skin felt cold to the touch and her lips were bloodless in the gaslight. He patted the top of her head, not with affection exactly, more with pride of ownership.

She was worth her weight in gold, literally, much more than the five hundred thou’ he had asked for. And she was his; there was no doubt about that now, not after what they had just done together. Being with her made him strong. Feeling her body do exactly what he told it to made him the master. It was only when he was away from her he realised that he started to doubt himself. Together they were invincible, like Bonnie and Clyde.

‘My little Issie,’ he whispered into the darkness. ‘What am I going to do with you?’

They couldn’t stay here. She needed warmth and decent food inside her. They had to get away, but where? They could hardly waltz into a hotel with her being looked for everywhere.

Steve stood up and stretched. As he moved the girl moaned. She sounded really sick.

‘Have something to drink, baby.’ He put the bottle to her mouth but she moved her head away feebly.

‘Feel sick,’ she muttered but he could barely hear her.

Maybe he shouldn’t have given her some of his skunk. It was good, really strong and he had thought it would make the sex more fun, but on top of the whisky and with no food inside her maybe it hadn’t been such a smart idea.

He rested his hand on her forehead. It was icy and he felt a spurt of fear. The albatross couldn’t die.

‘Come here.’ He bent down and wrapped his arms around her, trying to infuse warmth into her shaking body but the trembling just wouldn’t stop.

Steve started to panic. They needed to move now, but where? There was nowhere to go. They were stuck here with virtually no money and the hunt lurking outside. With Dan dead he didn’t dare go to his mum’s in case the police went there. He hugged Issie tight, rubbing her arms, feeling the chill of her body seep into his skin. She was so cold! How had he not noticed before?

She was going to die; he suddenly became sure of it and moaned. Issie couldn’t die; she was his lucky mascot; a sentence of doom would fall on him if he let her die. With no idea where to go other than away from the freezing pump house, Steve began to bundle his belongings into the car, talking to her all the while, running back to her side to hold her between trips to the car.

‘Come on, Issie, wake up, baby. Wake up for Badger like a good girl.’

But no matter how hard he tried to revive her, Issie lay dead to the world in his arms.

The car Fenwick was being driven in had to navigate black ice in total darkness as it crawled to Surrey HQ in time for CC Norman’s briefing. On the verges abandoned cars were being wrapped in deep blankets of snow as they passed, spraying dirty salt and grit onto pristine whiteness. Including the search teams, Norman had deployed a team of seventy officers dedicated to finding Issie and Steven Mariner but there had been no sight of man, girl or car. The weather didn’t help as poor visibility hampered the ability of the Automatic Number Plate Recognition system, despite it being the most extensive in the western world.

The major incident suite was on the fourth floor of Guildford police HQ and a room had already been dedicated to operations Snow White and Goldilocks; the former for Issie’s disappearance the latter for the ransom, which would now be combined. The ransom drop had failed and even though CC Norman had taken charge of it personally, Fenwick knew he would be a convenient scapegoat. He was being returned unceremoniously to MCS with attendant damage to his reputation.

That wasn’t what was worrying him, though, as he entered the briefing. His only concern was finding Issie and he hated the idea of
leaving the investigation to others. The chances of her being alive were remote but he placed his hope in Mariner being a coward at heart, who would find premeditated murder extremely difficult. Another accident though … Fenwick pushed the thought away.

Directly next to the door a thoughtful civilian clerk had placed an oversized thermos of coffee and a jug of milk together with a plate of toasted teacakes from the canteen. With the comfort of so many people in the room it could almost have been cosy, except for the wind buffeting the windows and the thought of Issie at the mercy of a killer, out there somewhere.

As soon as Fenwick was seated Norman started the meeting, identifying the case, the time, date and presence of senior officers by name. Rather than run the meeting on his own, he gave Bernstein the lead when it came to Dan Mariner’s murder and the scene at the caravan. He nodded for her to speak as Fenwick helped himself to coffee and a teacake, remembering that he had missed lunch.

Bernstein had written down the salient facts about Dan Mariner’s murder on a whiteboard and used it to illustrate points as she spoke.

‘This afternoon at fifteen-fifty, one of the search teams discovered the body of Daniel Mariner, known as Dan, thirty-seven years old. It was in a caravan on agricultural land outside Haslemere. The nearest farmer claims not to own it and we have an outstanding inquiry with Land Registry. Dan was the elder of two brothers, the younger, Steven, being a person of interest in connection with the disappearance of Issie Mattias. The boys’ mother Betty Mariner is a resident at Golden Park Nursing Home. We sent Cobb to notify her of her son’s death and to interview her. I’ll say more about that shortly.

‘Dan Mariner’s throat had been slashed with a broken bottle. Whether it was deliberate or accidental we can’t yet say – we might know more after the PM. Whatever, he died where we found him almost instantly, according to the pathologist.

‘The broken bottle was recovered at the scene.’ She directed her next remarks to Fenwick. ‘As well as many smudges we have been able to recover prints from the bottle. Two, Dan and Steven
Mariner’s, we’ve been able to match to prints recovered from their homes. We don’t know who a third set belongs to – they aren’t Issie’s, nor are they in the system – they might simply be from the person who sold the whisky. The important thing is that we have a perfect set showing that Steve Mariner held the bottle,
right-handed,
upside down by the neck; a perfect grip for the killing blow. He’s our main suspect in the murder of his brother.’

There were no questions. Everyone in the room was listening with absolute concentration, taking whatever notes they needed. At Bernstein’s next words there were exclamations of surprise and excitement from everyone but Fenwick and Norman.

‘From fingerprints recovered at the scene, we know for certain that Issie was held at the caravan, probably by Steven and/or Dan Mariner. She might have been there from Monday night up to when Dan was killed. If so, that’s good news because at least she would have had shelter. The gas heater in the van kept it well above freezing, probably in the low sixties in the back bedroom, which is likely where she was kept as it’s lockable from the outside and there was heavy urine staining in one of the corners.

‘We’re asking for DNA confirmation to match against samples taken from Issie’s bedroom; results should come through sometime tomorrow. The lab is working on this as priority over the weekend. We also found this outside the van under a layer of fresh snow.’

She circulated a photograph of the navel ring together with the one of Issie hanging upside down with her tummy revealed.

‘We don’t know where she was taken after the caravan or even if she was still alive. The search of the vicinity has stopped for now because the weather is so bad it’s impossible to continue.’ As if sensing Fenwick’s disapproval Bernstein rushed on, ‘We’ll resume at first light and bring the dogs in. Probably hopeless given the snow but we have to give it a go.

‘In the meantime, we’re trying to establish the previous whereabouts of both Mariner brothers. This is the timeline we have so far.’ She gestured to the board.

‘Monday fourth December, Steven Mariner was at work at
St Anne’s College. He knocked off at five exactly – there are reliable witnesses – and went to visit his mother. Dan visited with him the same day. They stayed for just under an hour.

‘Tuesday afternoon, Steve Mariner joined the search for Issie for a few hours. This is him here in surveillance pictures taken at two-thirty. That’s the last we see of him. We don’t know where Dan Mariner was but he definitely wasn’t in the search party and so far no one from the school recognises his photo.’

‘Was he even alive on Tuesday?’ Bazza asked.

‘Good question. We don’t know. ToD is going to be difficult to establish because of conditions at the scene. CST is going to do their best to simulate the temperature curve in the caravan but we don’t know how much fuel there was in the Calor heater or whether there was any other form of heating– there’s an electric stove and the van is connected by a Heath Robinson contraption to a nearby power line.

‘Back to Steve Mariner: he called in sick on Wednesday. His wife can’t vouch for his whereabouts as she says she was visiting her mother in Epsom. We don’t think the wife is involved but we’re checking her alibis anyway. She gave us a list of places the brothers frequented – it’s been photocopied and I want every one checked out. Cobb, that one’s for you; take whoever you need.’

Fenwick’s heart sank. Why couldn’t the idiot-boy have taken a few days off sick? He watched Cobb take the list and picked up a copy himself to slip in his pocket.

‘So far as Dan is concerned we have no idea where he was from the time he visited his mum to when he died. But Steven Mariner is more interesting.’ She looked at Bazza who stood up to take over.

‘On Wednesday night Steven Mariner returned to his house on Goosegreen Avenue at between twenty-one-forty-five and twenty-two hundred hours. A neighbour recalls Mariner’s car pulling into the garage. He’s sure of the time because he was waiting for the ten o’clock news to come on. He was keeping an eye out because Mrs Mariner had asked him to – which suggests, by the way, that she might not have been entirely sure that her husband would be sleeping at home.

‘Just before 8 a.m. Thursday, a call was made in the vicinity of Goosegreen Avenue using Issie’s mobile to Saxby Hall. It was the ransom demand for fifty thousand pounds. Shortly afterwards Mariner left the family home. The wife of that same neighbour looked over on her way to the eight-twenty bus. Snow had fallen heavily overnight and there were fresh tyre tracks outside the garage. We have a marker on with ANPR for Mariner’s Mondeo, so far without success. This is a picture of it – note the licence plate everyone, it’s customised “ST EV 77”.

‘And before anyone asks, we don’t know where he went or whether Issie was with him. The next we see of Mariner is this morning at seven thirty-eight when he uses Issie’s spare cash card at a garage on the A31. The lad on the till has been interviewed twice but is frankly useless. He doesn’t even know which day of the week it is. But the surveillance pictures from the petrol station show a man with a resemblance to Mariner.’

One of the civilian support team passed around grainy stills that showed a male of indeterminate age wearing a sweatshirt with hood up.

‘The part of the face that’s visible is similar to photos we have of Mariner. We’ve asked Tech to see if they can enhance them as a visual is always helpful at trial but we know it’s him from fingerprints on the vendor copy of the sale slip.’

The photos reached Darren Yarrow, a DC who had been with Fenwick at the ransom drop.

‘There’s something familiar about him, don’t you think, sir?’ He asked Fenwick. ‘We’ve seen him before.’

Fenwick peered over his shoulder to study the grainy image. ‘You’re right.’

‘Like where?’ Bernstein asked, as she popped a piece of nicotine gum into her mouth and started chewing.

‘I’m trying to remember. It was recently; maybe at the swimming pool …’

‘That’s where!’ Darren almost shouted. ‘Sir, do you remember we had a possible pickup – a bloke in a hooded sweatshirt and brown jacket?’

‘You’re right; we need to check the CCTV from the pool and our own surveillance footage.’

‘If it’s him it means I didn’t spend three hours in the front seat of a green Volvo freezing my balls off for nothing.’ The young constable was too excited to remember CC Norman was there.

‘Diddums; I’ll knit you a ball cosy.’ Bernstein chuckled.

Before Norman could intervene, Fenwick continued.

‘Darren; we should compare these photographs and the others we took from his house with the surveillance footage from the swimming pool. If he was there, it’s very unlikely it’s a coincidence and it means he’s definitely the kidnapper, not his brother, because Dan was dead by the time of the second phone call. We might be able to pick up CCTV coverage of his car leaving the car park and track him out of Guildford. He could still lead us to her!’

CC Norman ordered Yarrow and two other officers to make an immediate start on checking the recordings. As they left Fenwick watched Bernstein add a possible sighting of Steven Mariner to the timeline during the wait for the ransom drop between nine-thirty and one o’clock. Norman stood up and the room went still.

‘What now, sir?’ she asked Norman.

‘Have a team continue the door-to-door in Mariner’s neighbourhood. Cobb should follow up ASAP on Mariner’s known haunts; he’ll need backup.’

There were some curious glances towards Fenwick as Norman allocated work away from him. Fenwick could feel eyes on his back but ignored them and stood up to study the timeline.

‘He used the cash card at the garage at seven thirty-eight: the second call to the Saxbys was at eight-thirty and we know he’s at the pool by then. Where’s the map?’

A large-scale map of Guildford and the surrounding area was already tacked to a wall.

‘So, Saxby Hall is where?’

One of the detective constables put a black pin on the location. Without asking she moved on to mark the swimming pool and, after double-checking her notes, the location of the garage where Mariner
used Issie’s card. They made an irregular triangle shape with the pool at the east point in Guildford centre, the garage on the A31 four miles west and Saxby Hall to the south-west of Guildford, five miles into the countryside. While Norman, Fenwick and Bernstein watched, the constable added a cluster of pins showing both Mariner houses and the nursing home. She didn’t have a map reference for the caravan but Bernstein did and added a red pin almost exactly halfway between Mariner’s house and the garage.

‘That gives us a clear search area,’ Fenwick said, pointing to the triangle. ‘With the bad weather yesterday he wouldn’t have wanted to drive far. This should be the priority area to cross-check with whatever Cobb finds out about the brothers’ hang-outs.’

‘Of course,’ Cobb sounded almost offended that he had to be told.

‘What did we learn from Mariner’s mother?’ Norman took a step forward and both Bernstein and Fenwick had to sit to give him room. ‘Anything that might help?’

Cobb shook his head.

‘She’s a witch; completely batty and nasty with it. She barely reacted to the news that her elder son had died and when told it looked likely her younger son had done it she burst out laughing like it was the best joke ever. We’ve had a team searching her house but CST hasn’t found a trace of Issie and the dust on the furniture suggests it hasn’t been lived in for a while. That’s consistent with what the neighbours say.’

Norman looked frustrated.

‘So we have no idea where Steven Mariner might have taken Issie after the caravan. Where would he hide her? Bazza, you told me his wife is adamant that neither brother has any property, not even a shed or workshop. He’s poorly paid, doesn’t have any savings and is very unlikely to risk going to a hotel or B&B. Where will he go?’

There was a flourish of grimaces as the team realised that despite all they had discovered they were no closer to finding Issie.

Fenwick raised his hand.

‘We have to find out more about his past. Did he have any favourite haunts, hidey-holes from when he was a kid; anything?’

‘His wife mentioned an old girlfriend a couple of times, Annie Sallow. She married a few years ago and left the area,’ Bazza threw in but he didn’t sound optimistic.

‘We should trace her,’ Fenwick suggested, ‘from everything we’ve learnt about him, Mariner is the sort to run to ground somewhere familiar. That’s where we’ll find Issie.’

‘Assuming she’s alive and he’s taken her with him rather than finishing her off and dumping the body somewhere. There’s a chance she saw the murder and if so it might have prompted him to kill her.’ Bernstein stated bluntly what they were all thinking.