Written in Blood (24 page)

‘So that’s that. Brady’s just being allowed to get away with the murder of a well-known public figure. Doesn’t that in itself strike you as being odd?’

‘I thought you said you were working on this. Just because there’s been no arrest yet doesn’t mean anyone’s getting away with anything. You should talk to your colleagues.’

Mariner thought of Dave Flynn. ‘I have.’

‘And?’

‘They seem pretty complacent about it too.’

Baxter gave Mariner a curious look. ‘Well, I don’t begin to get what you’re up to, but Geoff was a mate, so if there’s anything else I can do to help—’

‘Thanks.’ Mariner opened the car door and stepped back out into the deluge.

So, despite what he knew, Baxter blamed the unholy triumvirate of Brady, Jackson, O’Connor, too. But it wasn’t good enough for Mariner. He thought it far more likely that the trigger for the assassinations were the imminent publication of Ryland’s memoirs, which would strip off the gag order placed on him by the Home Office and expose the extent of George Hollis’s corruption. Brady may have been a patsy, he may even have been involved, but he sure as hell wasn’t behind the shootings. Of the three main parties he was the one who had most to lose.

 

Leaving the motorway services Mariner realised that he wasn’t far from the scene of the shootings so decided to take a detour along the road that ran through Cheslyn Woods. He left the motorway at the next junction, taking him close by the village where Eleanor lived. The road cut through deep deciduous forest on either side, and the only way of determining exactly where the shootings had taken place were a few tattered scraps of crime-scene tape hanging bedraggled from the trees. Mariner parked up, probably at the very same spot the assassins had.

The choice of location was an obvious one, a gravel car park that would yield no clear forensic evidence in the way of tyre tracks or footprints. Even if the car was noticed, which was doubtful under cover of the trees, it wouldn’t arouse suspicion and during the night at this time of year, the killers could be pretty much assured their privacy. Then it would just be a question of flagging down the limo, perhaps claiming to be lost, or broken down. Mariner visualised the scene; O’Connor pulling over to be confronted by men, masked perhaps, brandishing deadly weapons.

The gunmen would have needed to be ready for when the car was approaching, which might imply two vehicles, one following Ryland’s car, the other lying in wait, though not if some kind of tracking device had been employed, like the one that had been fixed to his own vehicle. It was something else he must ask Flynn about.

From here it was quicker for Mariner to drive north across country and in doing so his attention was distracted by signs to Long Compton; childhood experience tugging at his consciousness. He hadn’t visited the Rollright Stones for years and wondered if they were still there, or if he’d remember how to find them. In the end it was simple enough. The site was clearly signposted and as he drew nearer, the landscape took on a familiar shape. Mariner pulled off the road alongside the field. The rain had stopped and even though it was a cold, damp day a group of American tourists was visiting, luckily for him heading back to their minibus to leave the monument deserted. He put his modest admission fee into a collection box at the gate and walked along the winding footpath and into the stone circle, a poor man’s miniature and shambolic Stonehenge.

His mother used to bring him here regularly as a child; seventy odd chunks of local limestone, weathered into moth-eaten honeycomb and forming a perfect circle about a hundred feet across. ‘How many are there?’ his mum used to ask, knowing that it would keep him occupied for hours. Each time he counted, no matter how many times, he’d arrive at a different number. As a child he’d been enthralled by the puzzle and on one memorable summer’s day had made Rose sit and wait while he counted them twenty times, determined to come up with a definitive answer. The simple explanation of course was that some of the stones were broken and half buried in the grass, making it difficult to be consistent about which to include. Back then some of them were taller than he was. Now he towered over most.

At one end of the circle, apart from the rest, stood five stones called the Whispering Knights, so named because they all leaned in towards each other, as if plotting some kind of conspiracy. In their place Mariner saw the Harlesden officers, watching him cross the car park and leaning in murmuring to each other. Was it really that complex? If the shootings were a crime of vengeance then there were plenty who had motives.

Terry Brady might want retribution because his activities had been curtailed, but equally Hollis’s forced retirement after a lifetime of service would provoke a deep resentment. Or both men could be in league, they’d been pretty tight for years. And was it revenge against Ryland, O’Connor or both? Or was that message just a complete decoy? So much easier to make Brady the public fall guy rather than allow the revelation of two bent coppers and the admission that they were allowed by the Home Office to get away with what they’d done.

For all Mariner knew, Brady could be in on it too, persuaded to return to the UK at around the same time, safe in the knowledge that there would be nothing else to link him to the killings. It was only the middle of the afternoon, but already darkness was beginning to fall and other shadows appeared, increasing the volume of rocks, until Mariner was finding it hard to distinguish between what was real and what was imagined.

Returning to his car he could just about pick out the King’s Stone, separate and isolated, on the opposite side of the road, 5,000 years old and weirdly shaped thanks to the nineteenth-century drovers who chipped off pieces to keep as lucky charms and ward off evil spirits. Mariner couldn’t escape the feeling that he’d been manipulated out of the loop, being fed only the information that people wanted him to have.

Mike Baxter had been pretty quick to call him back and hadn’t questioned their meeting. What if Baxter was part of the whole plan to keep Mariner out in the cold? He and Flynn, doing just enough to keep Mariner at arm’s length from the truth. And then there was Rupert Foster-Young. How close had been the relationship between Ryland and his mother?

Mariner dug his hands deep in his pockets and looked around at the stones. Whatever it was, he wouldn’t solve it here. His head buzzing, Mariner drove straight back to the cottage, cold and deserted. Where had Dyson said he was? Carlisle; that was it, and probably snowed in too, if the weather reports were to be believed. It suited Mariner well, and he retrieved the pack of photographs from where he’d stashed them and tipped them out onto the table. Sorting through them he picked out the one he hadn’t initially recognised.

Studying it more carefully Mariner could see now that the picture wasn’t of him. It was different from the others. Comparing it with the photographs in Rose’s collection he saw now that the baby was fuller in the face and with more hair than Mariner had when he was born. It was also the only one without annotation on the back.

No way of telling, of course, if the child in this photograph was also Ryland’s offspring, but no other family babies had been mentioned and here was this picture, among the photographs of him, Ryland’s other bastard son. If nothing else it was the most logical explanation. The press cutting in the library had shown Ryland in 1963, arm in arm with fiancée Carrie Foster-Young. After that, according to Maggie, it was ‘a bit of a shock’ when he had suddenly become engaged to Diana Fitzgibbon later that same year, dropping Carrie like a hot brick. Why would Ryland have done that? Was it for the same reason he split with Rose? Then, thirty-five years later, hey presto, a man turns up in prison claiming Ryland as his mother’s ‘friend’, meaning that Rupert Foster-Young was either being deliberately euphemistic, or was genuinely ignorant of the extent of that friendship.

The whole scenario had a certain ring of familiarity to it; history repeating itself in a pretty short space of time. If Ryland could do the dirty once, on Rose, then he was certainly capable of doing it again, with Carrie-Foster Young. Looking at the snapshot, Mariner suddenly realised that after years of being an only child he had to consider the possibility that he had a half-sibling, and one who had been on the wrong side of the law.

The condition of the photograph itself was different, more handled and worn than the others, but then, it was the only one of its kind so apparently the only one Ryland had. That was interesting in itself, just the one picture and not a whole collection, as there was for him, but back then not everyone owned a camera. Or maybe Carrie Foster-Young hadn’t remained on such good terms with the father of her child. And if he did know about his origins, how would Rupert Foster-Young feel about it?

Mariner thought back to the night he’d met Flynn in the Prince of Wales, and his initial reaction. The overriding first emotion was anger. He’d felt angry and resentful towards Ryland, seeing him as an ambitious, irresponsible bastard who’d screwed Rose and then moved on, abandoning both of them. He’d felt angry for himself, but also angry for his mother who’d had to raise him alone.

Since then Mariner had been given good reason to reassess his feelings. For a start he’d been given the consistent message that it wasn’t like that, and that actually the young Geoffrey Ryland was a good man caught up in a difficult situation. Okay, so Eleanor Ryland was hardly likely to condemn her son’s actions, especially so soon after his death. But Maggie would have seen things more objectively, and there wasn’t much room to argue about the content of Rose’s letters. Apart from the blip during his teens when it could have all gone horribly wrong, things hadn’t turned out badly either for him or for Rose. But how differently he would have felt had his mother been crushed by the abandonment, and he’d spiralled into Rupert Foster-Young’s condition.

On top of that Ryland was dead before even Mariner found out, so the anger he felt towards the man was futile. Had Ryland still been alive he certainly would have wanted questions answered, maybe even seeking some kind of redress for the perceived wrong that had been done to him. And what would he have done if he’d known that Ryland was in a position to offer help, but refused to even acknowledge him? Mariner hardly dared imagine how he might have felt about that. And he considered himself to be pretty restrained. Maggie had described Carrie Foster-Young as ‘wild’ and Foster-Young was a junkie. A drug addict with a hot temper would be unlikely to show the same degree of control, especially with an additional grudge against Ryland. He’d served time too, so would have made contacts and developed a number of different skills inside, and Mariner wasn’t so much thinking origami or cake decoration. Working alone a junkie may not have the ability to plan or execute an operation like the one in Cheslyn Woods, but with the right support—

So the motive and means were there all right, but how about opportunity? According to the information Helena had given him Foster-Young wasn’t due for release until next year, but he was out, which implied that he’d been released on licence. He’d have had to serve at least half of the seven year sentence which would have let him out in about April the year before last, about eighteen months ago. It would also make it about the time that Ryland had suddenly begun placing his so-called bets on horses.

Suddenly those payments took on a new significance. Foster-Young turning up on the scene as the abandoned child fallen on hard times would hardly do Ryland’s reputation any good and Ryland would have been keen to keep him quiet, especially if his wife remained in blissful ignorance. Perhaps Foster-Young was threatening to go to the press and those monthly payments came down to nothing more than blackmail.

At that meeting in Pearl’s Café Ryland could have been planning to end the arrangement, refusing to pay up any more, or making an attempt to pay off Foster-Young completely. It might even explain why Ryland had the photographs with him at the time. But the scheme backfired and Foster-Young wouldn’t be fobbed off. Perhaps he even upped the ante, demanding more money, or increasing his threats, enough to disturb Ryland into needing a stiff drink when he returned to the Commission. He wouldn’t play ball, so the following week Foster-Young ambushed and killed him, or had him killed. Payback for the way he and his mother had been treated. Mariner had lost count of the number of cases he’d been involved with over the years where what had at first looked like a complex case boiled down to such simple yet powerful motives as resentment and greed.

Mariner shivered. In his eagerness he’d forgotten to put on the heating and he became aware of how cold he was. The prospect of Anna’s cosy house was suddenly irresistible. On his way out, he remembered what Dyson had said about the tap in the upstairs ensuite. It might be as well to take a look now, in case it would involve to getting someone in. But reaching the top of the stairs he found the door to Dyson’s rooms locked. Although there were keys knocking around it was the first time that Mariner known this to happen. The cottage itself was secure so it seemed a bit overcautious. But the guy was in security so he was bound to be bit neurotic, maybe this was an indirect hint about the burglar alarm. And on the positive side it gave Mariner a good excuse not to be messing about with icy water and he was glad not to have to do the job. He had other things on his mind.

Mariner badly wanted to talk it through with someone. It should be Anna. At some point she would have to know. But this was huge, more than just a five-minute chat, and with Jamie at home it would be impossible for her to give it the attention it needed. Things had hardly been easy between them of late either and he could do without the inquest into why he hadn’t told her sooner

Selina was clearly surprised to see Mariner. She was learning to walk on her newly acquired crutches, and when he rang the doorbell was practising walking up and down the hall. Not easy with a four-month-old puppy joining in too. Her upper lip was beaded with perspiration from the effort, and this time her smile seemed forced.