Blood of the Innocents (30 page)

Poor bloke indeed, thought Mariner.

He found Colleen sitting smoking on her front step in the yellow late afternoon sunshine, a grotesque pastiche of contentment. ‘You’ve got a bloody nerve,’ was all she said as he walked up the path.

‘I’m sorry, Colleen: really sorry.’ Was there ever a way of instilling those words with adequate feeling? Mariner doubted it.

‘I bet you are,’ she said. ‘Sorry that you’re all in the shit.’

She was wrong about that, but there was no point in arguing. ‘Are you really going through with it?’

‘Yes she fucking is,’ snarled a voice from behind her. It belonged to a giant of a man with thick muscles and apparently no neck. Steve, Mariner guessed. ‘So why don’t you piss off out of here and stop harassing her?’

Yeah, why didn’t he? ‘I’m sorry, Colleen,’ Mariner said again. ‘Ricky was a great kid.’ And he turned and walked back to his car.

‘Tom?’ she called after him, her voice smaller than before. He looked back. ‘I know it wasn’t your fault.’

Mariner nodded briefly and walked on.

Back in the car, Mariner thought again about the connection he’d learned about from Russell. The reservoir, Yasmin Akram, Barbara Kincaid and, through her husband, the link between them all: Shaun Pryce, with his predilection for middle-aged housewives. Mariner wondered if there was any way Barbara Kincaid could have known Shaun Pryce too. He must know her husband. He’d have to drive along Banbury Road on his way out to Leamington to visit his mother. That was fortuitous.

There was a considerably delayed response when he rang the doorbell of the three-floor terrace, but eventually the door opened on Brian Goodway. His shoulders were hunched, and even on this warm afternoon he wore a thick cardigan over his open-collared shirt, his body temperature thrown off balance by delayed shock. He was apologetic. ‘I was upstairs. The kids are at home but they never answer the door, even though it’s usually for them. Teenagers, eh?’ He shook his head despairingly but his heart wasn’t in it, he hadn’t got the energy.

Mariner felt another flush of sympathy for the man. ‘Mr Goodway, I know this is a difficult time for you, but I understand you identified your wife’s jewellery this afternoon. ’

‘That’s right.’

‘As you know, I’m investigating Yasmin Akram’s death. This may be important. I wonder if you could spare a few minutes.’

‘Um, yes, of course.’ He seemed disorientated and vague and Mariner almost changed his mind. But he was here now and followed Goodway past bikes propped in the hallway into an untidy lounge with a high ceiling and a wide bay with sash windows. Like the Akrams’ sitting room, it felt cool and unlived in, probably because most of the space was taken up by a polished walnut baby grand piano.

‘Barbara’s,’ Brian Goodway said, although Mariner hadn’t asked. ‘She used to teach piano part-time. The number of pupils had dwindled over the years but she liked to do it. It was something for herself.’ Already used to speaking about his wife in the past tense, but then she’d been missing from his life for months.

‘Is that why she kept her maiden name?’

‘It was like a stage name. Barbara was a performer: music, amateur theatre, that kind of thing.’

For the first time, Mariner saw the black and white portrait photograph. The subject was stunningly glamorous. ‘Is that her?’

‘Yes, taken a few years ago now.’ Not the woman Mariner would have identified as the natural partner for Goodway.

‘The teaching was supplementary,’ he was saying. ‘At the time we married she had quite a reputation locally, so understandably didn’t want to lose that. Inevitably though, once the children came along, the family became more of a priority and she had to put her other ambitions on hold.’

‘That can’t have been easy.’

‘No. I know she found it frustrating at times. She was very artistic. But she continued to provide accompaniment for a local drama group from time to time. Please sit down, Inspector. Can I get you anything? A cup of tea?’

‘That would be good, thank you.’ It was the last thing Mariner wanted, but it would give Brian Goodway something else to focus on while they talked. He sat down on a lumpy sofa, draped with an Indian print throw. Somewhere in the house, a low bass throbbed a steady beat. Looking around it was clear that this room wasn’t a priority for decoration, being papered with ivory-coloured anaglypta that had gone out of fashion ten years ago. There was a vertical strip from the light switch to the ceiling that had been torn away, and fresh pink plasterwork inserted. It was precisely what Mariner had been hoping for.

Goodway returned with two mugs, handing one awkwardly to Mariner, before perching on the piano stool opposite.

‘They said they found her downstream from the reservoir, ’ he said, talking into his tea mug. ‘Near to where Yasmin was found.’

‘So I gather,’ said Mariner.

‘Oh God.’ Dropping his gaze, Goodway fumbled in his pockets, coming out with a handkerchief, which he used to noisily blow his nose and conceal the fact that he was weeping. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘No, I’m sorry, Mr Goodway. I realise how hard this must be for you. But I won’t keep you any longer than necessary.’ Mariner turned his attention to his tea, to give Goodway time to compose himself. The dark green mug had seen better days and Mariner could barely pick out what was left of the design: the row of cartoonish trees that had succumbed to the regular abrasion of a dishwasher. He took a scalding mouthful.

Goodway sighed. ‘It wasn’t a huge surprise when Barbara went missing, you know,’ he said. ‘She’d been depressed on and off for years, and since Christmas it had got much worse. We’ve got the children, of course, and for the last five years we’ve been looking after my mother, too. Sometimes it got on top of her. It was exhausting. Barbara said more than once that she could fully sympathise with these women who just walked away from it all and never came back. But I never thought she’d really—’

‘Did your wife often walk near the reservoir?’

Goodway shook his head. ‘I don’t know. I didn’t even know there was a reservoir there until the body of that boy was found there and I saw it on the news.’

Just like the rest of us then, thought Mariner.

‘Barbara went out walking a lot, particularly in the evenings. She needed to, to get a break from everything. But I didn’t really know where she went. There are parks around, and I suppose I just thought that she walked around the streets.’

‘Did your wife ever talk about meeting anyone?’

‘No,’ said Goodway instantly, then he seemed to reconsider. ‘It did cross my mind once or twice. Barbara had been an attractive woman, but I’m sure—’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Mariner. ‘I’m just exploring the possibilities. ’

Goodway frowned into his mug. ‘The thing I don’t understand is that the reservoir is miles from here.’

‘There’s a quicker way down to it from behind the station,’ said Mariner. ‘Your wife must have known about it.’

‘She lived in this area all her life,’ said Goodway, as if that explained it. He looked up at Mariner hopefully. ‘I keep wondering if perhaps it could have been an accident,’ he said. ‘The children . . . it would be so much easier . . .’

Mariner thought of the broken railings but he didn’t want to give the man false hope. ‘There will have to be an inquest of course. But it’s possible, Mr Goodway. The coroner will consider all the evidence.’

‘Barbara was taking anti-depressants at the time. She wasn’t always thinking clearly.’

‘I understand,’ said Mariner. ‘Thanks for your time, Mr Goodway.’ He got up to go, pausing by the strip of fresh plasterwork. ‘You’ve had some electrical work done.’

‘Actually, it was months ago. I’m not very practical around the house and rewiring was long overdue. I haven’t quite got round to decorating again.’

‘Looks like quite a job. Did you do it yourself?’

‘Heavens no. I’m hopeless, I’m afraid. We had a proper electrician come in to do it.’

‘Was it by any chance Shaun Pryce?’

For a moment Goodway looked startled. ‘Yes, it was. How—?’

‘He modelled for students at your school.’

Then Goodway remembered. ‘Ah, of course, you’ve seen the art work on the walls.’ He hesitated. ‘It was Barbara who discovered him, you know, at one of her drama productions. I got home from school one day and here he was. We got talking and he said that really he was an actor. I thought he was so striking that I asked him to come and model for the girls at school.’

‘Did Shaun Pryce model for Yasmin’s class?’ Mariner asked.

‘Not her class, but I think he sat for the art club on one occasion.’

‘Your head said he was quite friendly with the girls.’

‘Yes. In fact it became a bit of a problem. He was a bit too friendly.’

And what about your wife? Mariner wanted to ask. How friendly was Shaun Pryce with her? But now was not the time. The man had more than enough to contend with.

 

Mariner would have liked to report this latest news back to the team and get on to Shaun Pryce right away, but he had put off seeing his mother for long enough.

He decided to drive over, taking the M42. Even though the rush hour was officially over, it was still heaving with traffic. Hard to believe that just a few years ago this was the open, green countryside of the North Worcestershire way. On one of his frequent Sunday walks, he’d had the dubious pleasure of peeing on the foundations, right where the services were now.

His mother had rarely been ill. Not enough to be hospitalised, anyway. She wouldn’t make a good patient. Maybe this episode would make her consider her own mortality and think about tying up any loose ends. His gut tingled with an edge of anticipation. Maybe now she would finally give in and tell him.

He’d been seven years old when he’d first confronted his mother with the question that had been increasingly bothering him, and that he was being asked by some of his schoolfriends. ‘How come everyone else has got a mum and a dad, but I’ve only got a mum?’ Over time, of course, he’d come to realise that somewhere on the planet he must have a dad like everyone else, but that for some unknown reason, the man had failed to take any active part in Mariner’s life. Nor did his mother ever talk about him. When he was a kid, it had opened the way for all kinds of romantic notions, but with adulthood came the realisation that the truth was likely to be far more mundane: that his father had simply been married to another woman.

It had crossed his mind on occasions that his mother could have been bluffing all these years, and that in reality she didn’t have any idea who his father was, but in the midst of her vagueness there had always been consistency. And once, when she’d thought he was too young to notice, he remembered overhearing her say to a friend how much like his father he looked.

 

It took him just over half an hour to get to Warwick. The hospital was a little way out of the town, sandwiched between a housing estate and a business park: the hybrid collection of buildings a reflection of the town itself. He could have been driving into the car park of a supermarket with its brash Pizza Hut style building squatting alongside its darker Victorian predecessors. Ward eight, Coronary Care, was on the second floor of the old hospital and he’d arrived with a cluster of friends and relatives just at the start of visiting hours. He spotted his mother right away. A nurse was at her bedside, checking her blood pressure.

‘This is a turn-up,’ Rose said, when she saw him approaching. ‘West Midlands police having a quiet spell, are they?’ The whiplash sarcasm reminded Mariner of where he’d developed a taste for it.

‘Hello, son, how nice to see you,’ he countered.

She was unyielding. ‘I don’t have to spell it out, do I?’

‘If you did I’d really think something was wrong.’

‘This is my son,’ she told the nurse. ‘He’s a policeman.’ Most mothers would have instilled the statement with some degree of pride, but Mariner’s managed to imbue it with savoured distaste. Mariner could recall with great clarity the look on her face the first time he’d turned up unannounced at her house, in uniform. It had been his intention to shock her, of course, and he’d succeeded. ‘You’ve done this to spite me, haven’t you?’ she’d said.

‘Don’t flatter yourself. Why does everything have to be about you? Perhaps I’ve actually done this because it’s what I want.’ How could he begin to explain that after the unlimited freedoms of his unruly childhood he craved discipline, order and routine. Only after he’d had that grounding was he ready to flex his individuality again, when CID had offered him the chance.

‘So how are you?’ he asked now. ‘What happened?’

‘I went a bit dizzy and my arm went numb, that’s all. But now it’s passed and I’m ready to go home. Except, of course, they won’t let me until the man from del Monte says “yes”. So I’m stuck here until the morning.’ Any speculation about the origins of his own belligerent nature was always instantly dispelled by any conversation with his mother.

‘What were you doing?’ he asked.

‘I was up a stepladder, decorating the hall.’ Said so casually, it was easy to forget that she was a woman fast approaching seventy. Once she’d got used to the fact that he’d left home for good, she’d reverted to her youthful independence.

‘Was that what you were ringing me about?’

‘There was something I wanted to tell you.’

‘What?’

‘Well, obviously it’s nothing important enough for you to call me back. So it’ll keep.’

Which probably meant it was nothing at all. She was punishing him for the time it had taken him to respond. Mariner was tired of his mother’s games, and he could be as stubborn as she was. He wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction of begging her to tell him. Or reveal the extent of the guilt he felt because he hadn’t returned her calls. She seemed about to tell him anyway but changed her mind. Sod it. She’d do it when she was ready.