Chris Collett - [Tom Mariner 01] Read online

  The Worm in the Bud

  by

  Chris Collett

  All the characters in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © Chris Collett 2004

  First published in Great Britain in 2004 by

  Piatkus Books Ltd of

  5 Windmill Street, London WIT 2JA

  email: [email protected]

  www.piatkus.co.uk

  This edition published 2005

  The moral right of the author has been asserted

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 0 7499 3534 0

  Set in Times by

  Action Publishing Technology Ltd, Gloucester

  Printed and bound in Great Britain by

  Bookmarque Ltd, Croydon, Surrey

  Chapter One

  Mariner glanced at his watch again. Christ, it was still only ten to eight yet it felt as if he’d been here for hours. Getting here first was his way of keeping control, but now, as anxious speculation clenched his stomach into a tight, nauseating knot, he wished he hadn’t been so keen.

  The only vacant seat he’d managed to secure in the crowded bar was on a stool positioned directly under an air-conditioning vent that blew a steady stream of cold air down inside the unbuttoned collar of his shirt. Twenty-four hours ago this idea had seemed a good one, a simple solution to a growing problem, but now the doubts were creeping in faster than the chill descending his spine. If he’d been a smoker he’d have dragged his way through half a packet of Silk Cut by now.

  The only reason he’d bought last night’s Echo was to check that his advert had been correctly placed in the ‘Accommodation to Let’ section. It had. Double room with ensuite facilities. No pets, non-smoker preferred. Placing that ad was a big step, and not one he was completely sure he’d wanted to make, but mortgage rates were climbing steadily, and it was the only foreseeable way of sharing his house without necessarily having to share his life. And having placed the ad, he’d stayed in all evening absently leafing through the rest of the paper while he waited for the phone to ring. That’s when the ‘Solos’ page had caught his eye. Lulled into a state of misplaced confidence by three pints of Brewmaker’s Traditional (one of his stronger concoctions) Mariner had picked up the phone.

  Impulsiveness wasn’t normally one of his traits and now, as his apprehension gathered momentum, he remembered why.

  Noting the assortment of ill-matched couples around him, Mariner sensed that his venture wasn’t unique. The comfortably anonymous mix of blond wood, brushed steel and pale blue leather upholstery made the bar of the Chamberlain Hotel perfect for any assignation: business or pleasure or a combination of the two, and he had to fight a sudden hysterical urge to get out his warrant card and watch the place empty.

  ‘Derek?’

  Mariner’s stomach lurched. The girl who approached him was sleek and attractive with thick, chestnut hair and eyes the colour of dark chocolate.

  ‘No.’ Recovering, Mariner shook his head and watched hope fade. For a minute there she must have thought her luck had changed; he was tall, reasonable looking (so he’d been told) and, thanks to Greta’s past influence over his wardrobe, he was pretty sharply dressed tonight. Derek on the other hand would turn out to be a middle-aged, fat and balding suit like the majority of her clients. Mariner had no doubts that she was a tom.

  With a brief smile that left her eyes untouched she tottered away on ludicrously high heels to take a seat on one of the squashy blue sofas, crossing her long tanned legs. For a moment Mariner half wished he was Derek.

  Being Derek would have been so much simpler. And his intention wasn’t so very different. Same planned outcome, just glossed over with a flimsy layer of social respectability.

  Suddenly the knot felt ready to explode and he had to make a dash for the Gents.

  Emerging minutes later, Mariner scanned the room, not allowing his eyes to rest on anyone who might conceivably be looking out for him. The brunette was on her feet again engaged in animated discussion with a man. Not Derek, Mariner decided. This man was a rough diamond, unshaven with collar-length dark hair, in jeans and a well-worn leather jacket, the Harley-Davidson logo stretched across his broad back. The body language was pure agitation: shoulders bunched, semaphore arms. Now he had his wallet out, flashing money, cajoling. Her pimp, or just an over attached client? Whoever he was, he was giving her a hard time about something. At one point he grabbed her arm but she wriggled free. Then, before Mariner’s eyes, her resistance seemed to crumble and with a last cursory glance around the room for Derek she slung her bag over her shoulder and reluctantly followed the Harley man towards the sliding glass doors.

  The whole exchange made Mariner uneasy, putting up just the excuse he needed. Feeling only a minor twinge of guilt for his own date he tailed the couple out of the hotel and into the orange sodium-glare of Broad Street to where an eight-year-old Porsche with a badly dented boot squatted on double yellow lines, its hazard lights flashing.

  Concerned for the woman’s safety, Mariner watched the couple get into the car but Harley man was visibly calmer now and, as they drove off, the woman seemed more irritated with him than anything. Mariner perceiving trouble where there was none. You got the wrong idea, mister. Occupational hazard.

  Left alone on the pavement Mariner stared back into the bustling hotel lobby to where the ‘attractive blonde, seeking male 35-45 for discreet fun’ was even now anticipating his arrival and suddenly knew he wasn’t going back in there.

  He’d phone her tomorrow and apologise—maybe. Turning away, Mariner threaded a path through the snarled traffic to the opposite side of the road and into a dark and rowdy Australian bar. Over a pint of foul-tasting non-alcoholic beer he watched a part of what most of the city’s population would be glued to this evening; the live Worthington Cup draw between Blues and Wolves. But after an uninspiring and goalless second half, followed by the usual inane discussion from the pundits, Mariner retraced his steps to reclaim his borrowed pool car from the Chamberlain’s underground car park.

  With nothing to distract him on the drive home, Mariner reflected on the evening’s non-event, knowing deep down that it had never been a viable option however desperate the circumstances. Was he desperate? It was nearly a year now since Greta had left. For a while Mariner had really believed that they had something. But that was before Greta turned forty and mutated into his mother, running his life for him and imposing unreasonable expectations until finally trying to force a commitment he couldn’t make.

  That she’d left after that was no big surprise. The mystery was that she’d taken his confidence with her. Not his social confidence, his small talk had always been pathetic, but his confidence in bed, something he’d never had trouble with before.

  That last time, when he’d been unexpectedly invited to stay the night with a young WPC, he’d resorted to distraction tactics. As intimacy progressed he’d tried mentally rehearsing the names of the actors who had played the Dirty Dozen and the Magnificent Seven respectively. It had worked like a dream until he had inadvertently spoken Steve (McQueen)’s name out loud.

  ‘What?’ She’d halted him mid-thrust, the expression on her face enough to precipitate his collapse, leaving them both agonisingly frustrated and Mariner with a big enough question mark over his head to discourage her from ever seeing him again. That had been nearly six months ago and Mariner hadn’t had the guts to pursue anything or anyone since.

  Tonight’s quick fix was the intended solution, but if he couldn’t get it up with the assistance of Hollywood’s finest, how would humiliating himself wit
h a total stranger help?

  ‘Delta one to all units.’ The squad car’s radio, tuned to the OCU wavelength, cut through his maudlin train of thought. ‘Request for urgent assistance at thirty-four Clarendon Avenue, Harborne, informant an unidentified female.’ It was just a few streets away on this patch.

  In normal circumstances, Mariner would have ignored the call. It was one for uniformed patrol and in any case he was well off-duty. But he was in no hurry to go home and, judging from the lack of any other audible response, there was no one else nearby. Resources tonight would be concentrated around St Andrews, keeping the rival fans apart and diverting any trouble. Like the comforting glow of a distant refuge, Mariner felt himself drawn towards the secure predictability of work. He’d take a small detour to check whether the incident was already attended. If so, he would simply drive on by. Making a second circuit of Five Ways traffic island, Mariner peeled off in the direction of Harborne.

  Almost immediately the nervous energy of Birmingham night life melted away into silent darkness, taking with it Mariner’s own anxieties. One of a cluster of mongrel Birmingham suburbs, Harborne was populated in pockets by university professors and consultants from the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, their relative affluence reflected in the sprawling detached houses that were set in immaculately tended gardens.

  Clarendon Avenue was easy enough to find, but locating the house itself was a different matter. Here the properties were more modest and compact, but set back from the road, hiding behind dense hedges and gift-wrapped in swathes of ivy and wisteria, making individual identification in the dark almost impossible. There was no outward indication of any disturbance or any sign of a police presence.

  Picking out a number at last, Mariner counted along, hugging the kerb as he went. Thirty, thirty-two, thirty-four… That was it, a mock Georgian detached, ablaze with lights and standing out like a bloody carnival float. Then Mariner noticed the eight-year-old Porsche with a badly dented boot parked on the drive, and the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end.

  Scrambling from his own vehicle, Mariner skidded up the gravel driveway sending shingle flying in all directions, past the empty Porsche and into a narrow porch. The solid oak front door was slightly ajar, the only sound the babble of a distant TV, Mariner advanced cautiously along a bare, parquet-floored hallway, alert to any possibility.

  ‘Police!’ he warned, easing open the nearest internal door, already visualising the brunette cowering in a corner, her face bruised and bloodied. But in the event there was no blood, only a sterile and unnatural calm.

  The man lay sprawled on the sofa, his arms widely splayed. Even from a distance his eyes were glazed and staring, his complexion waxy. The right sleeve of his leather jacket was pulled up to above the elbow and a hypodermic syringe dangled grotesquely from his inner arm, its needle still tugging at the vein. A message beside him, scrawled in block capitals on a curled scrap of paper, was short and to the point: ‘NO MORE’. Had he rolled him over, Mariner would have seen Harley-Davidson advertised across the man’s back.

  There was no sign of the brunette but the TV chattered on, a tape running in the VCR that projected a beaming Carol Vorderman from the screen in an obscene accompaniment.

  Mariner moved quickly over, his footsteps crunching on debris underfoot. Checking for signs of life at each of the pulse points, twenty years of experience already told him that he was too late, while his mind struggled to reconcile the fact that only a couple of hours earlier he’d seen this man so very much alive.

  ‘Anyone home?’ Though loud, the voice was too guarded to be a threat, and even in those two words Mariner thought he recognised the nasal intonation.

  ‘In here,’ he called back.

  A uniform appeared, confirming his hunch. PC Tony Knox, formerly of the Merseyside Police was about Mariner’s age but had moved with the times, his number two buzz-cut obscuring the onset of baldness and combining with his sinewy build to make him look every bit the hard man he was reputed to be.

  ‘Sir?’ The question hung unanswered in the air as Knox took in the scene. ‘Shit. Is he dead?’ As he squatted down to verify it, Mariner watched Knox trying to make sense of things. Finally his gaze shifted back to Mariner, as if seeing him for the first time. ‘What are you doing here?’ he demanded, subtlety obviously not a strength. The exact reason for the transfer from Liverpool had never been made explicit, but rumour had it that it wasn’t entirely Knox’s decision. In this case the question was justified. A DI wasn’t normally the first to the scene of a bog-standard domestic disturbance.

  Mariner hoped it wouldn’t complicate things. ‘I was in the area and heard the call,’ he said. ‘When I got here I recognised the car on the drive.’

  ‘You know him?’

  ‘Not exactly.’ Mariner briefly recounted what he’d witnessed earlier in the evening. If Knox wondered what a senior officer was doing hanging around the bar of the Chamberlain Hotel on his night off done up like a dog’s dinner he was, for once, astute enough not to ask.

  ‘It’s ironic,’ added Mariner. ‘The way this guy was behaving made me afraid for the woman’s safety. But then that was more than an hour ago.’ And, as they both knew, practically anything could have happened in the interim.

  As he inhaled, Mariner caught a whiff of something, a sort of unwashed smell. He was about to open his mouth to comment when he noticed the grimy rim around the collar of Knox’s white shirt and the sheen of stubble coating his chin. Tonight’s match was a Category C: high risk and officer intensive, which meant they’d be short of bodies elsewhere in the city. It explained why Knox was solo, but even so.

  ‘How long have you been on duty?’ Mariner asked him.

  ‘Since two.’ Knox shifted uncomfortably. He hesitated but Mariner wanted more. ‘The wife has locked me out so I had to kip in the car overnight. I’ll get a shower at the end of the shift.’

  ‘Good idea,’ said Mariner with feeling, making an effort at shallow breathing and shaking off any speculation about why Knox might have been barred from his own home.

  Taking the hint, Knox got up and moved away. ‘I’ll check over the rest of the house.’

  ‘It’ll be a start. John Doe here drove off with the brunette, and it was a woman who made the emergency call, so there’s a strong possibility that it’s the same one. She looked more like a call girl than a crackhead to me, but this guy was waving his money around so it’s possible that she supplied and serviced him. Let’s make sure that she isn’t still hanging about somewhere, then get Scenes of Crime out of bed.’

  Whatever the circumstances might imply, this was a sudden unexplained death and in the absence of any reliable witnesses they would have to keep their minds open for now. It didn’t look like too many other crime scenes Mariner had seen, unless the reckless dispersal of potato snacks had suddenly become a felony, but until there was conclusive evidence of suicide nothing was certain, and it had to be treated accordingly.

  ‘You’ll need these,’ said Knox.

  Throwing Mariner a small polythene packet, he went off to search the house, speaking into his lapel radio as he went. Mariner opened the packet and squeezed his hands into the tight latex gloves, grateful, as always, that he was only a policeman and not a vet.

  Knox reappeared. ‘We’re on our own,’ he confirmed, tactfully keeping his distance. ‘No sign of life. And SOCO are on their way.’

  ‘Good.’

  Taking care not to disturb the syringe, Mariner slid his hand into the inside breast pocket of the dead man’s jacket to retrieve the soft leather wallet he’d seen earlier.

  It contained a hundred and thirty in notes, along with a variety of standard credit and loyalty cards, plus a larger, laminated press card, conveniently displaying a photograph of the deceased. He’d been right. This wasn’t Derek. But it seemed he’d been way off the mark about everything else. ‘Edward Barham,’ he read out loud, for Knox’s benefit. ‘And this is his place, according to the address.’

&
nbsp; He made a swift mental calculation. ‘Age thirty-nine, and a paid-up member of the National Union of Journalists.’

  ‘A hack,’ said Knox. Walking the length of the room, he’d come to rest in front of a fitted cupboard, on top of which, high up and almost beyond Mariner’s line of vision, was a row of plaques and trophies. ‘Someone thought he was a good one too, if this lot’s anything to go by.’ He craned his neck to read the engraving. ‘Midlands Reporter of the Year in 1996.’

  ‘But modest enough about his achievements to stick them way up there, almost out of sight,’ observed Mariner. ‘Christ, and is that what I think it is?’ Staring out from the corner of the ceiling was the beady eye of a miniature, remote-controlled video camera.

  ‘Journalist, junkie and security nut,’ announced Knox.

  ‘This is a prime area for burglaries, it would have been a reasonable precaution.’ But even as Mariner spoke he was conscious, studying it for the first time, that the design of this room represented security taken to its extreme.

  The substantial TV and video housing were conspicuously bolted to the polished wood floor, while the state-of-the-art sound system, CDs and rows of books were all present and correct, but locked away behind elaborately reinforced glass doors inside the same floor-to-ceiling cupboards that ran the entire length of one wall. Apart from those items, the four-seater sofa was the only other stick of furniture in what was a cavern of a room. This represented minimalism taken to the extreme.

  It was Mariner’s kind of place, but the overall impression was stark and empty, with none of the usual worthless clutter accumulated in most homes. No pictures, photographs, pot-plants or the army of candles that these days seemed to be practically mandatory. The only aberration was a pile of dog-eared catalogues that stood in a jumbled stack by the door, topped by two weighty hardback books.

  And then there were the funny little symbols. Black and white laminated line drawings were posted here and there, on the side of the TV, the back of the door, beneath the window sill. Knox was studying one at close quarters.