Stalked By Shadows (27 page)

‘I would have been here.’

‘On your own?’

‘I think we’ve already established that,’ Bonnington shot back.

‘So no one can verify it?’

‘Not really, that’s kind of the point of being alone.’

‘Do you mind if we have a look round, Mr Bonnington?’ Mariner asked.

‘Would it matter if I did?’

‘It would only delay the inevitable.’

‘Then you may as well get on with it. Can I continue with my work?’

‘Could you show me first where you keep any cleaning materials?’

Bonnington kept them in the usual place, under the sink, but Mariner wanted him to be there while he examined them. Among the collection was a grey plastic bottle with an integral handle, containing drain fluid. It bore dire warnings about safety and was identical to the bottle found on Nina Silvero’s kichen table, though this one felt full. Bonnington did an impressive double-take. ‘That’s not mine,’ he said. ‘I haven’t bought that. I never use it.’

Ignoring him, Mariner bagged it up. Bonnington’s claim about the wine appeared to be true. The half-dozen or so bottles in the wine rack were all French reds. After the kitchen, Mariner and Millie continued their search of the rest of the house; the first floor, two bedrooms and a bathroom, and the top floor, further bathroom and a spare room.

‘Well, looky here,’ said Millie, reaching the doorway of the spare room. On a tripod stand, pointing out over the street below, stood a telescope. ‘Something caught my eye when I was over at Lucy’s the other day. He must have been watching us.’ She shivered. ‘What a creep.’

‘This is where he’d have seen the fight from, too,’ said Mariner, going over to the window. ‘No wonder he could describe it so graphically.’

‘I wonder how many hours he spends up here, spying on the neighbours.’

Back downstairs, Mariner tackled Bonnington about it. ‘That’s quite an impressive piece of kit you’ve got up there,’ he commented.

‘I like watching the stars,’ Bonnington replied, unruffled.

‘And your neighbours arguing?’

‘I just happened to be up there. It drew my attention.’

‘I’ll bet it did,’ Mariner said. ‘You need to shut your computer down now, Mr Bonnington, we’ll have to take it away with us.’

At last the composure went and there was panic in his eyes. ‘You can’t, I need it for my work.’

‘We can, and you’ll have to make other arrangements.’

‘Can I just download some work material?’

This time Mariner just laughed. ‘We’ll let you have it back as soon as possible. Do you own a mobile phone?’

‘Yes, but I need it for my business.’

Mariner held out his hand. ‘We’ll let you have that back too.’

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

‘What do you think?’ Mariner asked Millie, as they were driving back to Granville Lane.

‘I kind of liked him.’ She saw Mariner’s expression. ‘I know. But he seemed pretty honest and open. I don’t know many men who’d confess their failings so easily. I mean, he virtually admitted to being a loser. How many other men would do that? And he’s got a sense of humour, which I didn’t expect.’

‘It could be a ploy. He was polite about it but he doesn’t seem to have a very high opinion of women. He seems pretty resentful of Will Jarrett, too. And he has the opportunity. He knows Lucy’s address to send the unwanted post to, and he knows her computer system, so it would be easy enough to set up the incoming emails. Also, he can see when Jarrett is coming and going, so can time the phone calls.’

‘So wouldn’t he realise that we’d be straight on to him?’ Millie pointed out.

‘Except that he’d equally know that we have no proof. I’d be interested to know who he used to work for and why he left.’

‘But if it’s Bonnington, and this is all because he’s still in love with Lucy, why wait until now? She got married six months ago.’

‘He’s caught them arguing,’ Mariner suggested, ‘seen some cracks in the relationship and is taking advantage.’

‘So wouldn’t a better strategy be to offer a shoulder to cry on, rather than making threats?’

‘Not if it’s all designed to incriminate Will Jarrett, or drive him away. Let’s face it; that’s who you’ve been thinking is behind it all, haven’t you?’ Mariner said.

‘But Bonnington just doesn’t seem the type you’d expect to be stalking.’

‘There isn’t a type,’ Mariner reminded her. ‘Would women be attracted to him?’

Millie shrugged. ‘He’s intelligent, and not bad looking, even if his clothes are a bit nineteen fifties. I could see some women wanting to take care of him.’

‘The thing I don’t get is where the hell Nina Silvero comes into all this,’ Mariner said. ‘Say he did fix her computer, would he do it on a Sunday night, and would she then share a glass of wine with him?’

‘Depends how well she got to know him. If she was the motherly type, perhaps she wanted to look after him.’

‘It would be interesting to know if his name rings any bells with Rachel Hordern,’ Mariner said. ‘Give her a call and find out where she is.’

In the middle of the afternoon, Rachel and Adam Hordern had just returned to their hotel after a trip to the Sea Life Centre. ‘I’ll come down and meet you in reception,’ she told Millie. ‘We’ve just got Harry down for his nap.’

By the time Mariner and Millie got to the hotel, she was waiting for them in a quiet corner of the lobby. Mariner formally introduced Millie and, as they sat, put the photograph of Bonnington down in front of Rachel. ‘Have you ever seen this man, or heard your stepmother mention a man called Martin Bonnington?’

Rachel studied the picture carefully. ‘No. Who is he?’

Mariner bypassed the question for now. ‘Who set up Nina’s computer for her?’ he asked instead.

‘My husband,’ Rachel replied.

‘Do you know if Nina ever called anyone out for technical support?’

‘Not as far as I know. She hasn’t had the computer very long and I think she’s hardly used it. We encouraged her to get it so that we could keep in touch by email.’

‘Her history shows that she had explored one or two Internet dating sites,’ Mariner said. ‘Do you still feel sure that she hadn’t been meeting men at all?’

‘I’m absolutely sure.’ She gave Mariner a pointed look. ‘It has about as much credibility as the idea of me murdering Nina for her money.’

Mariner ignored the comment. ‘Have you ever heard your stepmother talk about a Lucy Jarrett or Will Jarrett?’

‘No.’

‘Did Nina like folk music?’

That made Rachel smile. ‘Absolutely not. She was strictly Brahms and Vaughan-Williams. Why all these random questions, Inspector?’

‘We’re just verifying some background information,’ Mariner said.

‘My,’ said Millie when she and Mariner got back in the car.

‘She’s a bit prickly, isn’t she?’

En route back to Granville Lane, Millie remained in the car while Mariner went up to Estelle Waters’ flat to ask the same ‘random questions’, but Nina’s friend similarly had no recognition of the name or picture of Martin Bonnington. Nor could she recall Will or Lucy Jarrett ever being mentioned in conversation.

‘Did she ever talk to you about her computer?’ Mariner prompted.

‘Only to say that the whole contraption was a complete waste of money,’ Estelle told him.

Back at Granville Lane, Tony Knox had found nothing among Nina’s things relating to Martin Bonnington, but there was a note on Millie’s desk from technician Max, along with a list courtesy of Lucy Jarrett’s Internet provider listing the addresses from which the spam emails had been sent to her machine. Millie took it through to Mariner’s office.

‘This might help us, sir.’ With a brief explanation, she handed Mariner the list. By far the most frequently listed name and address was Mr M Bonnington, sixteen, Hill Crest.

‘At last this is starting to look like a case,’ said Mariner.

‘And we know the flowers were sent from Birmingham,’ Millie reminded him. ‘Is it enough to bring him in?’

‘The fingerprint itself isn’t conclusive,’ Mariner said. ‘But triangulate it with these emails and the flowers, posted locally, and I think we’ve got more than enough. Before we do, though, I want to talk to the other woman he harassed; Claudette Vernon. Let’s get to know as much about Martin Bonnington as we can. He played it pretty cool this afternoon and I’d like to get one step ahead of him if we can. We also need to keep working on the Nina Silvero connection. Unless we can come up with some kind of motive for her, we’ve only half got him.’

When he had explained the urgency of the situation, Claudette Vernon invited Mariner and Millie to call round and see her at her flat that same evening. They turned up promptly at six o’clock, the agreed time. Bonnington must have something, Mariner thought, when she came to the door. She was mid-forties, Mariner would have guessed, olive-skinned with fine features and sleek black hair. Her movements were graceful and unhurried as she showed them into the sitting room of her flat, the ground floor of a detached Georgian villa in a smart area not far from the University. When they’d declined her offer of drinks, she picked up her own wine glass and positioned herself opposite them, curling into the armchair like a contented cat.

‘You met Martin Bonnington on an Internet dating site, I understand?’ Mariner said, quoting from the file.

Claudette smiled, a perfect, white smile, and her voice, when she spoke, was deep and husky. ‘Yes. His postings on the website were funny. That’s what attracted me to him in the first place, and he just seemed a nice guy. Some of them stand out as creeps right from the start; they try too hard. My initial reaction when I met Martin, and got past the wardrobe issues, was that he was a sweet guy, if a bit nerdy. And he knows that. He never tried to sell himself as anything he wasn’t, and that honesty was very appealing. We built up a rapport quite quickly. I loved his dry sense of humour.’

‘We had a taste of that,’ Mariner said wryly. ‘How well did you get to know him?’

‘What do you mean?’ She tilted her head to one side.

‘Was there any kind of physical relationship?’

She drew back a little. ‘Is that really necessary?’

‘We’re investigating a particularly nasty murder, Miss Vernon. We wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t central to the case.’

‘Oh my God, and you suspect Martin?’ She was incredulous.

‘We’re just trying to find out a little more about him,’ said Mariner. ‘We’ve no reason to believe that you’re in any danger.’

‘OK, well, yes, it did get physical, almost straight away. I think it surprised both of us.’

‘And how was it? Really, this is crucial,’ Mariner added, seeing the look on her face.

‘It was fine!’ she said. ‘OK, well, it wasn’t earth-moving. He wasn’t terribly experienced, so I had to take the lead quite a bit, but he was very responsive, if you know what I mean.’

‘Did Mr Bonnington have any difficulties in that area?’ Mariner asked.

‘Not difficulties as such. I mean, the first time wasn’t that great but after that it got better. He learned fast.’

‘How long did your physical relationship last?’

‘About a couple of months, no more than that.’

‘So what went wrong?’ Mariner wanted to know.

‘Not the sex,’ Vernon said quickly. ‘That was getting better all the time. It was the other stuff. It was getting too intense emotionally; claustrophobic. Martin wanted to be with me all the time and I began to feel hemmed in. He used to send me dozens of emails every day, and leave messages on my mobile. I started to realise that emotionally he was quite -’ she broke off, searching for the right word ‘- needy. It became clear that he hadn’t had many relationships with women and, having found me, he clung to me desperately. I have other friends, and I like to go out with the girls at the weekend too. We had a couple of fairly public arguments about it, and in the end I felt that the fairest thing was to finish with him.’

‘How did he take it?’ said Mariner.

She sat back. ‘It was a horrible conversation to have. He was upset. I actually think he thought we had a long-term future together, but in reality we hardly knew each other. He’s a nice guy and I felt terrible, but it had to be done. We had very different approaches to relationships. ’

‘And after that?’ Mariner asked.

‘I thought that would be it, but he kept ringing me. Usually it would start off on the pretext that he thought there was something he’d left at my flat, or he’d been given tickets for something that I might like, but from there it would always turn into a discussion about what he’d done wrong. He didn’t seem to grasp that fundamentally we’re different kinds of people. I’d started seeing someone else, and he asked some very intrusive questions. Then he began hanging around outside the office where I work, waiting for me to leave, and a couple of times he came up to me while I was out with friends. He was clearly following me and it was getting creepy, so I went to the police.’

‘And since the injunction was served?’

‘Actually I feel quite bad about that. In retrospect, it probably was a bit heavy-handed. It shocked him. I’m not even sure that up until then he’d realised what he was doing. But he took the hint and it stopped.’

‘How about in the last six months or so?’ asked Mariner. ‘Has he tried to contact you?’

She shook her head. ‘Not at all, I mean, I saw him once when I was in the supermarket and that freaked me a bit, but I think that was a genuine coincidence. We just smiled and said hello and moved on. It was fine. In fact, he told me he was seeing someone else, too.’

‘Did he tell you her name?’

‘No. I wasn’t even sure that I believed him. What’s all this about? What has he done?’

Millie put away her notebook as Mariner stood up to go. ‘We don’t know yet if he’s done anything,’ Mariner said. ‘But thank you for your help, Ms Vernon.’

‘So Lucy Jarrett is the second woman to have turned him down,’ Mariner observed, when he and Millie were back in the car. ‘And she gets the stalking treatment too.’