Written in Blood (6 page)

‘Tom.’ Coleman got up from behind his desk and the two men shook hands. ‘It’s good to see you back.’

It occurred to Mariner that Coleman didn’t look old enough for retirement. In any other career he could have had another ten years in him.

‘Special Branch came to see you?’ he asked.

Mariner sat down. ‘Mm. Not that there was any point. I can’t remember seeing anything.’

‘I don’t suppose you were meant to.’

‘Have you heard much about how the investigation’s going?’

‘Only what’s being released to the press.’

‘Bugger all then. What’s going on? Usually there’s something. They can’t not know, they must be sitting on it.’

‘If they are I’m sure they have their reasons. How’s Anna?’ The swift change of subject left Mariner wondering if Coleman was sitting on it too, but he allowed himself to be led down the alternative route.

‘She’s still in shock. At least I hope she is, because otherwise we’ve lost the ability to communicate. Half the time we don’t seem to know what to say to each other, the rest of the time we’re at loggerheads.’

‘It’ll get better. It will help that you went through it together.’

‘Not the worst part. It wasn’t so much the explosion. It was afterwards, going in to find people under all that—’ He parried the image that flashed through his head.

‘Yes, I know.’ It was more than polite sympathy.

Mariner could practically see Coleman’s mind reaching back thirty years to his first weeks in uniform, and that Thursday night in 1974 when the city had been ripped apart by two IRA bombs. Coleman had been on duty and had helped with the rescue. Mariner knew that the nightmares had gone on to haunt Coleman for years to come and had almost put paid to his marriage. ‘It has a certain morbid symmetry to it; an explosive beginning and end to your career,’ Mariner said.

Coleman nodded. ‘It’s a good time to retire.’

‘I thought I could understand what happened to you,’ Mariner said. ‘But really I hadn’t a clue.’

‘Nobody ever does. Don’t underestimate the impact, Tom, on either of you. And be thankful that you have something to help you look forward.’

Mariner looked at him blankly.

Coleman raised his eyebrows. ‘I thought you were planning kids.’

‘I told you about that?’

‘I thought you needed time off for an appointment?’

‘Oh yes.’ The genetic counsellor. Coleman had done well to remember. It had slipped Mariner’s mind altogether. ‘It’ll be after the new year sometime, I suppose. Though to be honest I’m not so sure about that now. And Anna’s gone very quiet about it. I’m glad.’

‘You can’t let these people dictate how you live your lives. If you do, they’ve won.’ Almost word for word what Anna had said.

‘It’s not only that,’ Mariner admitted. ‘The truth is it scares me to death, the idea of having a child. I’ve got no experience. I keep thinking; how can I be a good dad when I don’t know what it’s like to even have a dad?’

Coleman smiled. ‘That’s how I feel about retirement. It’s a big life change. Glenys can’t wait, but I keep wondering how I’ll cope for the first time in my life when there’s nothing to do. But I’ll do it, and so will you. You’re hardly the first to be in your position. Lots of people don’t have the experience of typical family life. You’re a good man, Tom, that’s all it takes to make a good father.’

Mariner wished he could share Coleman’s confidence in him. ‘Anything happened here that I should know about?’ he asked.

‘You’ll be pleased to know that we’re on the way to an ID on your sewer queen. I won’t spoil it for Charlie Glover. As acting SIO he’ll want to fill you in. But go easy to begin with, don’t rush into anything. Take over when you’re ready.’

‘Yes sir.’

Walking along to his office, Mariner couldn’t help flinching from the everyday hubbub of the building; phones ringing, doors banging, talk and laughter. The garish Christmas decorations were an insult to his mood and by the time he reached his desk his pulse raced as if he’d just climbed Caer Caradoc, rather than walked a few yards along a corridor. The temperamental 1950s heating system left his office chill but as he took off his jacket his armpits felt sticky. At least CID was quiet; officers from each OCU had been seconded to help with the leg-work on the investigation into the St Martin’s incident, and right now Charlie Glover was nowhere around.

Mark ‘Jack’ Russell was one of the few men remaining and was immediately attentive to Mariner. ‘Is there anything you want sir?’

‘Just time to get my bearings again,’ said Mariner. Russell closed the door on his way out.

On the top of Mariner’s in-tray was Charlie Glover’s progress report on the sewer queen. It was as Coleman had said. Glover had run the prints through CRIMINT but as the woman had no record they’d drawn a blank. Missing persons had turned up no likely contenders either. But Charlie Glover had used his brain, and picking up on the unusual labels on the dead woman’s clothes had established her nationality as Albanian. The last thing he’d done was to contact the National Immigration Centre in Croydon, to see if the government’s crackdown on immigration would be of any help to them. So far it was a competent investigation and, not for the first time, Mariner wondered why Glover, in his late thirties, was still only a DC. He must talk to him about that some time.

Key photographs from the postmortem and notes from the pathologist were included in the file for Mariner. According to the initial findings, there were pressure point bruises to the oesophagus, damage to the thyroid cartilage and cricoid cartilage, and x-rays clearly showed the hyoid bone in the throat to be broken, all consistent with the application of extreme pressure with the thumbs. Conclusion: the woman had been strangled with somebody’s bare hands. She was five feet three and slightly built so most men would be physically capable. The facial photograph was not a pretty sight. She had been dead for at least a couple of weeks when she was found, in which time rats had chewed through the bin liner, before attacking her face and torso. They’d need a digital mock-up before they could think of releasing anything to the press. Something else Glover had highlighted: the girl was a mother. She’d given birth around two months earlier.

The likely scenario, Glover concluded, was that she had been strangled, taped into the bin liners and dumped down the sewer, and their strongest lead on a suspect came in the form of the latent prints found on the tape and the bin bags. These were currently being processed by forensics, though, with the holiday, Charlie wasn’t sure how long that would take. He’d begun a house to house in the area, though as Glover said in his note, with no photograph and only one spare WPC to help him, it was going to be a slow job. It was probably where he was now.

Mariner looked at the ravaged face. Hard to tell if the girl had been pretty, dead eyes staring up at him. Suddenly they were transposed by another pair of eyes, their life draining away even as he watched. His mouth went dry and he felt a slight queasiness. Pushing the picture away, he went and got some water from the cooler.

 

Returning to his desk, Mariner switched on his PC to check his email, but his mind wandered and it was hard to concentrate. Everything he did seemed to take longer than usual.

The extensive list of new messages in his in-box mainly originated from people he’d never heard of; an invitation to a New Year’s bash in a different department, notification of minor changes in procedures, and forthcoming training opportunities. Each one absurdly banal.

An open air memorial service was to be held for the victims of the explosion, in St Philip’s Square in the city centre. A circular gave details of the times and the security arrangements, bordering on the paranoid, and information about the collection for the victims and their families. A memorial book was also available for messages at the museum and art gallery. In other words, it was standard stuff. Only one other message stood out to Mariner as being of any interest. It was addressed to
Walking Man.

That was the tag inflicted on Mariner by Detective Inspector Dave Flynn when the two of them had been thrown together four years ago at a conference week in Peterborough. Two DIs in a hotel full of Superintendents, they had stuck together, more so on discovering a mutual liking for proper beer in a hotel that specialised in extortionately priced lager. It was when Mariner had first discovered Woodforde’s, something that he would forever associate with Dave Flynn. Every evening after the presentations they’d gone out on a quest for real ale, Mariner insisting they walk rather than take taxis, restless for the exercise he was missing during the day; hence the nickname. Flynn had a weird taste in naff music; anything that wasn’t cool, but it was only in subsequent years that Mariner had realised that James Taylor featured on his playlist.

Flynn was ambitious. He was probably a Super himself by now. No clue about that in the note, which was characteristically brief and to the point.

 

Mariner wondered idly whether Flynn’s visit had anything to do with the explosion. He couldn’t see how, but either way it would be good to see him again; a welcome distraction, and the chance for a good piss up. Mariner tapped in a positive reply and sent it on its way.

 

The contents of his paper in-tray were similarly mundane, and after a while the rhythmic process of opening envelopes began to have a vaguely therapeutic effect, at least creating the illusion of a return to normality. So when he came to the contents of the A4 manila envelope he was quite unprepared. Russell must have been watching him from the bull pen. He was beside him at once. ‘You all right, sir?’

Unable to answer him, Mariner handed him the A4 sheet on which a composite of letters cut from a magazine had been glued, in true TV cop-drama cliché. The message was simple:
Next time, don’t be late.

 

 

As a direct result of the letter, Jack Coleman managed to get Mariner access to the team investigating the explosion, which meant going into the city to police headquarters at Lloyd House. Movement around the central area was still restricted, traffic being directed around the ring road and directly past St Martin’s. Mariner got stuck behind a silver-grey Transit, identical to a couple more that were parked adjacent to the church. They were unmarked, like mortuary vans, though logically Mariner knew they couldn’t be. The bodies had all been recovered days ago.

Bulldozers were clearing some of the rubble and making safe what remained of the tower, but already flowers were piled high on the steps leading up from the church and back towards the city centre, almost knee deep on the pavement, their cellophane glinting in the sunlight of the clear, frosty day. A handful of people shuffled along studying the dedications, in what, since the death of Princess Diana, had become the traditional ostentatious symbol of public grief. It turned Mariner’s stomach.

At Lloyd House he was asked to wait in reception, which even on this dazzling day was a dark and oppressive cave, the waves of polished steel that formed the ceiling reflecting only the gloom beneath.

‘DI Mariner?’ He looked up to see a man approaching, tall with cropped, silver hair. ‘I’m Jim Addison, Special Branch. Would you like to come with me?’ Addison took Mariner upstairs where the anti-terrorist squad was co-ordinating the investigation and had commandeered the whole of the second floor. This was the unit routinely called in to handle any issues relating to national security, supporting the local force in investigating crimes with wider implications. Their last previous outing, as far as Mariner could recollect, had been during the somewhat tamer fuel protests; a far cry from the current situation. But their presence was indicative of the way the thinking was going - until he’d deftly lobbed a spanner into the machinery.

In a briefing room Addison showed Mariner, on a plan of the church, where exactly the explosion had occurred. It had taken out one whole corner of the building and the five people killed had all been clustered around seat B5; it was in the same block that Mariner would have occupied. The shock must have registered on his face.

‘I wouldn’t read too much into it,’ Addison cautioned. ‘The Chief Constable was to have been sitting directly in front of you.’

Mariner scanned the diagram. ‘But he’s marked as being here, on the other side of the aisle,’ he pointed out.

‘A last-minute change. His wife has a slight hearing loss in one ear and asked to be positioned on the left-hand side of the amplifiers.’ Addison reached over to another desk and produced a second plan, pointing to the seat immediately in front of Mariner’s initials. ‘This plan was operational until the morning of the service.’

‘What do you know about the cause of the explosion?’ Mariner asked.

‘The investigation is on-going.’ Addison’s response was smooth.

‘But you must have some idea, the quantity and type of explosive used.’

‘We’re getting there, yes.’

‘So?’

‘We’re not ready to disclose that information yet. We’re still exploring the possibilities.’

‘Which are?’

A breeze stirred the calm water. ‘I can’t tell you that either. It’s not in the public’s interest. We want to be sure, that’s all.’

And now Mariner was making them less sure. Because, despite Addison’s dismissal, there was now a chance that this might not be an attack on the police force, but an attack on one specific individual. It was another possibility they’d have to consider.

Addison studied the note Mariner had received.

‘It came through the usual postal channels?’

Mariner confirmed with a nod. ‘The postmark is smudged but still easily recognisable as Birmingham. And it’s been tested for prints.’

‘I doubt that there will be any.’ Addison was confident. ‘Anyone you’ve upset recently?’ he asked, giving Mariner the distinct impression that he was being humoured.