Dead of Winter (20 page)

‘That’s him. Brilliant, Bob. Thank you! I’ll send a car straight away and, Bob, please tell Dot I’m sorry but you might just have helped save a girl’s life.’

‘I’ll explain that to her in my own time. Right now I’ve got a bunch of flowers and a box of chocs from the garage that’ll have
to do my talking for me because one thing I know, she won’t be in a mood to listen!’

Fenwick organised a car to pick up Knight and then called the hospital where his mother was, to be told that she was asleep. He left a message and tried Bernstein next, found her out with Cobb checking on the list of locations they had been given by Mariner’s wife. He was relieved Cobb hadn’t been left on his own.

After she listened to his update she told him her own bit of good news.

‘We know Annie’s married name; it’s Jones. Not a great help but we also know where she lives. She’s kept in touch with a friend who works at the takeaway pizza place the Mariner brothers went to. She’s now in Godalming and I’ve sent a local round to pick her up, but given this weather she won’t be with us for an hour. I was wondering whether I should call her right away. I know it’s a risk. If she and Mariner are still thick she might tip him off or even be in on it, but I think that’s unlikely. According to her friend she married well and has put her past behind her. What do you think? Any minute now I’m expecting to have her mobile phone number – shall I make the call?’

‘Absolutely, yes. We’re only twelve hours behind Mariner and we’re closing on him. Get everything you can as fast as you can. I’ll be here at HQ. If I’m not at my desk I’ll be with Operations.’

Fifteen minutes later Bernstein called him. He knew at once from her voice that she had news.

‘There’s an abandoned pump station two miles south of the caravan. Annie says it was somewhere both brothers used to hang out. It’s the only place she can think of that Steve might run to. It explains why he took the camping equipment and food. He could be holed up there. And if Issie is still with him …’

‘She could still be alive!’ Fenwick stood up and grabbed his coat.

‘I’ve informed Norman and he’s sending two teams and a negotiator. If I were you I’d leave before he tells you to stay out of it. I’ll see you there.’

Fenwick’s thumbs were tingling as he broke the call.

An ambulance, three squad cars and an unmarked minibus carrying eight officers from the local support team converged before the start of the track leading to the abandoned pump station and parked out of sight. Fenwick climbed out of the lead car and walked through snow to Bernstein who was standing in the meagre shelter of a barren oak. She gestured up the unmade, steep icy road, barely a vehicle-width, and the LST deployed silently without torches, the visors of their military style helmets up until the last minute to help visibility. Before them the silhouette of a decaying pre-war brick building rose solid black, apparently deserted. Fenwick paced behind. Norman had allowed him to accompany the operation after all but ordered him not to interfere.

All the way up to the entrance the snow lay virgin fresh, with no signs of a car or footprints. Eight officers deployed around the building; the rest of the team lowered their visors and flexed fingers inside heavy-duty black gloves. They were ready. The rusty chain on the door was already hanging loose.

‘POLICE!’

They entered loud and in force, torch beams sweeping the space ahead while Fenwick and Bernstein waited with the officers blocking the track.

‘Clear!’ The team leader called out and they ran forward, Fenwick slipping and clouting his bad knee with an audible crack. Cobb offered a hand but he shrugged him away.

From just inside the door Fenwick surveyed the room, lit intermittently by torches until the SOC floodlights could be set up. There was abundant evidence of recent occupation. Beside the entrance a pile of rubbish spread across the dank concrete floor. A cracked camping gas light, just warm to the touch, lay abandoned on its side. In a saucepan were the remains of a can of baked beans. It was 10.42 p.m.

Bernstein made an immediate decision to authorise a search of the building. Fenwick knew she was breaking with procedure and should have waited for the crime scene technicians to process it first, but approved. They didn’t have the time to waste on niceties and needed any clue as to where Mariner might have taken Issie. After a frantic fifteen minutes it became clear that there was nothing to indicate where they might have gone – assuming that the recent residents had been Mariner and Issie, of course, but that was an empty question. Fenwick was certain they had been there – barely hours before. The dread in his stomach churned to acid.

He walked over to a stained sleeping bag and old mattress, ignoring the protests from a CST behind him, and knelt to smell them. He didn’t need an expert to tell him it was heavy with evidence, and was almost sick – he was a man who could study a decomposing corpse with equanimity; but this he couldn’t bear.

‘He’s still abusing her.’ Fenwick failed to mask the disgust he felt.

‘And we almost had the bastard!’ Bernstein was shaking with anger as she gestured towards the filthy mattress. ‘She’s just a kid; a year younger than my niece! I thought everyone said he was a normal bloke. It makes you think, doesn’t it: what lies beneath.’

Fenwick didn’t have time to waste on philosophy.

‘We must be close behind them,’ he insisted. ‘In this weather he won’t have travelled far.’

‘Norman has ordered roadblocks and released details of the Mondeo. We’ll find him, Andrew. Don’t forget, the press release
was broadcast at ten with Lord Saxby’s blessing. We’ve got the eyes of the public on our side now as well as traffic control and ANPR. But if we could only work out where he’s gone …’

Fenwick paced the concrete, watching with growing impatience the fruitless search by the technicians for any clue of where Mariner might be heading.

‘With a blizzard due overnight he’d have to be suicidal to try and stay outside,’ Bernstein offered.

He wished she hadn’t said that. Would Mariner snap and kill them both? The CSTs didn’t remark on the damage done by the officers who had completed the hasty search. The ambulance that had been standing by went away empty to deal with other tragedies of the night. Reluctantly Fenwick and Bernstein left the scene and returned to Guildford HQ where they could be at the centre of the search operation.

Just before midnight a report came in that a patrol car might have seen Mariner’s car that afternoon before the alert was issued. Fenwick read it and his fears that Mariner could be suicidal grew.

‘We need to get a profile of him, Deidre. Have you got someone you rate?’

‘I have,’ Bernstein looked at him curiously, ‘but I didn’t think you’d have much time for psycho-babble.’

‘Not all of it’s rubbish; I’ve been glad of it in the past. Why don’t you get them in now? I’m going to read the latest interviews – just in case. There must be some clue as to where he might go. And we need to alert all the homeless shelters within driving distance.’

‘You’ve suggested that already, Andrew,’ she smiled at him sympathetically, ‘on the drive back here, remember?’

‘Have you arranged for posters to go up at all bus and railway stations?’

‘Yes, Andrew.’ Despite his increasingly brusque manner Bernstein didn’t appear to be rankled. Nor did she remind him that his time was running out as advisor. ‘I did it when we issued the press release.’

Fenwick ran his hand through his hair and looked around the
incident room, as if there might be a clue lurking in a corner that he had missed.

After he had read the most recent interview statements he went up to Operations but they had nothing to tell him. So far the roadblocks and traffic cameras had drawn a blank. After that he paced down to join Bernstein and team who were still going through tapes from around the swimming pool. They had been at it for hours and their eyes were red with exhaustion.

‘We haven’t been able to find anything else, sir,’ Darren said grimly. ‘There’s no sighting on tape of him leaving the car park or in the roads immediately around there.’

‘You should call it a day as soon as you’ve finished the final tape,’ Bernstein said. ‘He must still be within thirty or forty miles of Guildford. In this weather it would be impossible for him to drive further.’ She sounded positive but with every minute Fenwick knew Mariner was becoming more difficult to find.

At two-thirty Bernstein came back with the profiler’s report and complete histories of the Mariner brothers.

‘He was a student of average intelligence but a serial underachiever according to his school records; he suffered from mild attention deficit disorder from the age of ten, which made him disruptive and difficult to teach. Until then he’d been a Joe-average kid, but apparently his dad left home never to return and he came under the influence of his older brother. Dan Mariner was a bully who terrorised the neighbourhood. By the time the kids were fourteen and eleven respectively they were known to social services and the police.

‘There were numerous reports of vandalism and verbal abuse and they were arrested as juveniles for joyriding.’

‘They were never prosecuted?’ Fenwick asked but he thought he knew the answer.

‘Nope.’

‘So Steve Mariner is likely to have contempt for the law.’

‘The profiler says that’s possible but we shouldn’t rule out that he is in awe of authority figures. He wasn’t in trouble while his father was at home and seems to have been completely under his
brother’s influence. Dan was certainly beyond caring. He had a spell in the army but was dishonourably discharged. After that he drifted into a life of casual labour; there is no further record of arrest or conviction. Dan Mariner couldn’t hold down a job and was often rough with women. There are two complaints from his late teens, from girls who say he forced them to have sex, but both were drunk at the time and later retracted their statements.’

‘Have we matched his DNA to the system yet?’

‘In process; Issie’s evidence took priority.’

Fenwick was thinking of Flash Harry, the unsolved investigation he had regretted taking from Harlden and Nightingale.

‘What about Steven Mariner? How did he manage to end up married and with a job at one of the top girls’ colleges in the country?’

‘In a minute, I haven’t quite finished with Dan yet. There’s more from social services. It appears both boys were on their watch list. There were suspicions of abuse though nothing was ever proven. Neighbours reported seeing the boys, particularly Dan, with bruises and once a broken arm but he said he’d got it falling out of a tree and it was left at that. He was a big lad for his age so they took his word for it. Interestingly, Steven was never seen with a scratch on him.’

‘Was he assaulting his brother? Surely not?’

‘Very unlikely; the profiler suggests it was probably the mother. She was always screaming at her sons, even now she’s bedridden. This week she spat hot tea in Dan’s face when he visited, according to one of her carers. It looks as if Steven was smart enough to stay out of harm’s way.’

‘It sounds like Steve is the cleverer of the two but possibly weak-willed and easily manipulated,’ Fenwick suggested.

‘Could be; while his brother was in the army he finished school and ended up in a training scheme where he did well as a carpenter. He passed his technical exams and was apprenticed to a coffin-maker, of all things. While there he met the daughter of his supervisor who became Mrs Mariner. She used a contact of her uncle’s to get him a job as a handyman at St Anne’s when he fell out with her father.’

‘He must be used to leading a double life,’ Fenwick suggested and was rewarded with raised eyebrows and a small smile from Bernstein.

‘That’s exactly the profiler’s conclusion. She says he’s grown up in an abusive home, with a manipulating sadistic mother and an abused bully for a brother. Despite this he hasn’t previously appeared to revert to violence or crime in adulthood. Somehow he managed to develop enough independence from his brother at a crucial stage in his life – late teens while his brother was in the army – which saved him from continuing to be totally dominated by him. Then his wife’s good influence probably reduced the power the brother had over him. He may even be a bit scared of her, as his only experience of women was previously his mother whom he would have resented and feared.’

‘Has he had any straightforward, positive experiences with women?’

‘You mean does Issie stand a chance? Well, Annie Jones says he was quite a sweet boy. She had a bit of a thing for Dan rather than him but says he was sometimes with them at the pump house. Annie couldn’t believe that he would abduct a girl.’

‘Same as his wife. She didn’t believe it either.’ Fenwick scratched his cheek and yawned. ‘That’s what makes me think Steve Mariner is two people. Part of him is almost childlike, as if he never finished growing up. It means he might be able to live in a fantasy world, and that’s good news for Issie. If somehow she becomes part of an alternative future he can believe in then there’s a chance she’ll stay alive.

‘But the other side of him is the frustrated, dominated, younger brother, hating the world, hating himself but blaming all his failings on others, possibly in particular on women. At some point Issie could become a focus of real rage. She might come to be the reason for all his failures; even the murder of his brother could somehow become her fault. Then he will kill her – perhaps not with a deliberate blow but in a fit of rage, or he’ll abandon her and in this weather she’ll be dead in no time at all.’

Bernstein’s expression had lost its habitual scorn as she stared at Fenwick.

‘You didn’t need that profiler’s report, did you? You’ve done a better job than she did.’

‘I think I’m getting to know him a little, Mariner I mean. We have to find him, Deidre. If we don’t there’s a real risk that he turns against Issie.’

‘Yes, but right now you should try and get some sleep. I’ll call you if anything comes up.’

‘I’d rather stay; you go home. I won’t be here next week. Other than going to see the Saxbys there’s nothing else for me to do before I leave …’ He looked down at a random piece of paper on the desk.

‘Well, in case I don’t get to see you tomorrow, it’s been a privilege,’ Bernstein said and stuck out her hand. ‘Just so you know, Norman’s decision to send you packing had nothing to do with me. In fact, I asked him to change his mind.’

‘You did?’

‘Yeah; I thought we had the makings of a good team but he’s decided otherwise and the Home Office are no longer pushing the idea of a miracle worker from outside.’

‘Right, well …’ Fenwick shook her hand. ‘I can do without that sort of label, so I don’t regret it but I would have liked to get this job finished. I can’t help but feel Issie is partly my responsibility now.’

Bernstein shook her head sympathetically.

‘You’d be the same in my position, Deidre. Go get some sleep; that’s the least I can do. I’ll leave you a note if I think of anything else.’

He walked out of the room, not sure of where he was going and not really caring as long as he could be on his own.