Chris Collett - [Tom Mariner 01] Read online

  Flexitime ensured that Anna was early enough to have preempted most of her colleagues but not Becky, her brilliantly efficient PA, who emerged from behind her work station to pick up Anna’s stride like a well-trained relay racer.

  ‘Hi Anna.’ She spoke as they walked. ‘The first draft off the contract for Milan is ready on your desk for you to approve and I’ve confirmed your flights for next weekend. Mr Waterhouse has booked a table for eight thirty this evening at da Paglia.’

  ‘Perfect.’ Anna nodded approval. Helping Jonathan to wine and dine prospective clients was becoming an increasing feature of her job, and Robinson’s Logistics PLC, their guests tonight, were potentially amongst the biggest they were ever likely to get. Even better, Robinson’s had been Anna’s find. She’d been the first to pick up the rumours of their sliding profit margins and a timely phone call had generated just the response she’d hoped. The following day her call had been returned and, so far, the chance of a deal Was looking promising. All Anna had to do now was to make sure that she was the face of Priory Management most visible to the Robinson’s chief executive. If she could front the securing of the contract with them it would earn her a barrowload of brownie points with Jonathan. Something she felt in need of right now.

  ‘These are your phone messages.’ In place of a baton, Becky passed across a sheaf of papers. ‘And,’ she added casually as Anna rested her hand on the door handle, ‘there are two policemen waiting for you in there.’ So they’d got her.

  Taking a deep breath, Anna pushed open the door that bore her nameplate in shiny brass. The room seemed darker than usual, the view over Birmingham’s city centre obscured by the tall man who stood with his back to the room looking out of the window.

  The other man, a uniformed policeman, had been sitting in the visitor’s chair but now clambered awkwardly to his feet, weighed down by bulging occupational hardware. It was he who spoke first. ‘Anna Barham?’ he asked, waving identification in her face and not waiting for her reply. ‘I’m Police Constable Knox and this is Detective Inspector Mariner.’

  The tall man turned to face her, holding out his warrant card, which this time she got the chance to see. Detective Inspector Thomas G. Mariner, she read. The mug shot adequately portrayed the pale features and the glacier-blue eyes, but not the hideously bruised and swollen nose he bore in reality. Anna had to stop herself from staring. What was the story behind that, she wondered?

  Talking herself out of difficult situations was one of Anna’s specialities, but in the half-minute or so she’d had, she’d already decided to come clean. They must at least have her licence-plate number and had probably filmed her in the act of defying the diversions with closed circuit cameras, although she was staggered that such a petty traffic offence should provoke a personal house call from two police officers, one of them a detective. ‘I’m really, sorry,’ she began, apologetic but coolly professional just the same. ‘I know I shouldn’t keep ignoring the signs, but I forget and before I know it, I’m just way past…’

  PC Knox just looked at her. ‘Sorry?’

  Anna helped him out. ‘The diversion signs, I should follow them, I know.’

  ‘This isn’t about driving.’ PC Knox was suddenly floundering.

  Anna glanced up at Mariner’s battered face. ‘Well, don’t remember assaulting a police officer…’ she began instantly regretting the flippancy.

  ‘It’s nothing you’ve done, Miss Barham,’ Knox persevered, with a touch of irritation, Anna thought.

  ‘You may want to sit down,’ Mariner intervened, his voice thick and adenoidal, so that Anna had to fight a bizarre urge to pinch her nose and respond in the same way. He gestured towards her chair and, more from surprise than anything else, she did as she was told.

  ‘Your brother, Edward, was found dead in his home, late last night,’ he said.

  Wow, this guy knew how to make an impact. He may as well have punched her in the stomach, and for several seconds the room seemed to sway.

  ‘No!’ Anna blurted uncontrollably. ‘No, he can’t be.’ A sudden vision flashed through her mind of the occasion fourteen years ago when she’d got home late from a party to find Eddie himself waiting for her. ‘Ann-ann, I’m afraid there’s been a terrible accident…’ Now they were telling her that Eddie was dead too? It was impossible.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Mariner.

  ‘When? How?’ She was so sure that this couldn’t be right.

  Knox had taken out a small, black notebook. ‘We were called to a house late last night; thirty-four Clarendon Avenue,’ he said. It was Eddie’s address all right.

  ‘As yet we’re not looking for anyone else in connection with his death,’ Mariner added.

  It was common enough police-speak and it took Anna only a few seconds to catch on to what he meant. ‘You think Eddie killed himself?’ she said.

  ‘It’s a strong possibility. There was a note.’

  ‘Where? Can I see it?’

  He turned to Knox, who was ineffectively digging around in his pockets. Eventually he produced a folded, crumpled photocopied sheet, which he passed to Anna.

  ‘Does it look like his writing?’ he asked.

  Staring at the print, Anna gave the slightest shrug of her shoulders. There was little that was distinctive about the scrawled block capitals.

  ‘Your brother seems to have died from a massive drug overdose,’ Mariner went on.

  Now Anna knew for certain that they’d got it wrong.

  ‘That’s nonsense,’ she told them. ‘Eddie didn’t do drugs.’

  ‘But…’

  ‘When did you last see him?’

  ‘I’m not sure exactly,’ Anna hedged.

  ‘Days ago? Weeks?’ Mariner probed.

  ‘Weeks, I suppose.’ Suddenly Anna knew what he was getting at and resented the assumption. Her eyes flashed angrily. ‘But I know he wouldn’t have killed himself. It’s absurd.’

  ‘It would help us if you could make a formal identification, Miss Barham. Do you feel up to it?’

  Anna looked from one to the other of them. ‘I will,’ she said, eventually, ‘but I really think you’ve got this horribly wrong.’ She glanced up at the outer office. ‘I’ll have to arrange for my PA to cancel my diary. Could you just wait for a moment?’

  ‘Of course.’

  Anna went out to where Becky sat at her desk, printing off documents.

  ‘Becky, incredible as this sounds, these policemen think my brother has killed himself. They want me to go with them and identify a body.’ Telling it how it was helped Anna to keep a grip on herself and ride out her friend’s shocked reaction. Then she returned to the office to pick up her bag, feeling the first creeping chill of apprehension as she allowed herself to consider the seriousness of what she’d been asked to do. ‘Right,’ she said. ‘Let’s get this over with.’

  Apart from an ominous creaking and whirring of the lift mechanism, the trio descended to the ground floor in silence while Mariner gave Anna Barham time and space to assimilate what she’d been told. For once, Knox was exercising some discretion too. And thanks to Mariner, he did at least present more like a respectable officer of the law this morning. After they had finished at the station last night, he’d given Knox the spare front door key to his house and ordered him to go and get a shower and borrow a clean uniform from somewhere, before returning. ‘I’m not breaking the news to the relatives with a tramp.’

  Mariner had worked this routine a hundred times before and was always prepared for shock and anger, even denial Suicide in particular threw up all kinds of powerful and often unwanted emotions. But this one was especially interesting. He couldn’t work out whether Anna Barham really didn’t believe them, or simply didn’t want to. Or did the lady just protest too much? Mariner hadn’t of course over looked the possibility that Anna Barham could herself be involved. A woman had made the emergency call, and not the brunette, why not her, making her reaction partly an elaborate attempt to cover up for her brother? Bu
t somehow he didn’t think so. What would be the point? And her initial surprise had seemed genuine enough.

  And there was that newspaper cutting, the list of small ads for personal escort services, leading them in one swift move back to the brunette. Mariner hadn’t changed his view of her and Knox hadn’t appeared to disagree. It was becoming increasingly commonplace for some of the higher-class call girls to supply, and if that was the case it would explain why everything had been left so neat and tidy. A pro would have cleaned up before she left. It could easily have been the way Eddie Barham had planned things, a discreet and distinctly personal service. But even that explanation left one significant outstanding loose end. He was waiting for Anna Barham to come to that.

  Hers was an unusual reaction; indignant and affronted, as if they were wasting her time. And she was taking the whole identification procedure surprisingly in her stride, leaving Mariner considering the dubious possibility that she’d done it before. But he knew better than to make any final judgements at this stage, because death is much the same as life. Everybody handles it in his or her own unique way. Shock can do funny things to people. And right now, as Knox manoeuvred them out into the soupy mid-morning traffic of the Hagley Road, Mariner was content to bide his time. They’d know for sure soon enough.

  The city mortuary on Newton Street was housed in an anonymous-looking square Georgian edifice labelled innocuously enough ‘Coroner’s Office’ by the ubiquitous brass plaque. The sign that had always afforded Mariner a darker satisfaction was the red-topped ‘T’ at the entrance to the street, so fittingly declaring the by-way a ‘dead end’.

  Within the bowels of the building, in a tastefully and sensitively furnished suite of rooms, Anna Barham did, reluctantly, provide them with a positive identification of her brother.

  Afterwards, Mariner carried two beakers of scalding, grey tea from the vending machine to where she sat in what was generally referred to as the recovery lounge. It was a misnomer in most cases, though occasionally relatives managed to regain their outward composure, as Anna Barham seemed to have done. Now faced with the truth, she was clearly shocked, as Mariner would have expected, but still far from being distressed. Instead, she appeared more puzzled and detached as if presented with a conundrum.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Mariner asked anyway ‘

  ‘Yes.’ With a brief nod of thanks, she awkwardly relieved him of one of the flimsy, polystyrene cups. ‘Just can’t believe it.’ Mariner took a seat opposite, and her tawny-brown eyes looked directly into his, steady and unblinking. No avoidance, but no trace of any tears either.

  She read his thoughts. ‘You must think I’m hard.’

  It wasn’t an apology and Mariner only shrugged.

  ‘Everyone reacts differently in these situations,’ he said.

  ‘You’ll probably cry your eyes out when you get home.’

  Anna Barham smiled weakly. Christ, it was a stunning smile. ‘That’s tactful of you,’ she said. ‘But I don’t think so. Eddie and I weren’t what you’d call close. It isn’t weeks*

  but more like months since I last saw him even though we live only a few miles apart. I left home to get married when I was quite young.’ There was diffidence to her admission and from the bare fingers of her left hand Mariner guessed that the marriage hadn’t lasted.

  That aside, none of this was beyond the scope of his comprehension. The week-old answer phone message from his mother tweaked at his conscience, but he pushed it away again. He braced himself. ‘Miss Barham, coincidentally i saw your brother earlier yesterday evening in the bar of the Chamberlain Hotel. He was with a woman, about five foot, with long, reddish hair and brown eyes. Do you have any idea who she might be?’ He’d keep his own opinions about the brunette to himself for now.

  ‘No, I’m sorry. As I said, I’m a bit out of touch.’

  He couldn’t resist. ‘Yet you seem very sure that Eddie wasn’t considering taking up a new recreational pursuit.’

  She flushed with annoyance. ‘I do know Eddie. We may not have seen each other often, but I know he wouldn’t have done that. He didn’t smoke, he hardly ever drank…’

  ‘People change. Sometimes pretty dramatically.’

  ‘Not Eddie. He wasn’t a user,’ she insisted.

  ‘He doesn’t have to have been. It looks as if it was his first time.’

  ‘No!’ Again the anger flared.

  When the silence stretched to breaking point and she still made no reference to the other item outstanding, Mariner said quietly, ‘There was another man in the house.’

  His words had a more dramatic effect than anything he’d said so far and she jumped violently, almost spilling the tea.

  ‘Jamie! God, of course! I’d completely— Forgotten? Now that was unbelievable. ‘But I don’t understand—he shouldn’t have been there. Not at the weekend. Is he all right?’ She got to finally.

  ‘Oh he’s fine.’ Involuntarily, Mariner touched his swollen nose and elicited a smirk of understanding from her. ‘Although that skull of his should be classed as an offensive weapon,’ Mariner said. ‘He is—?’

  ‘My younger brother.’ It was confirmation of what they’d already half guessed from the physical resemblance to the dead man. He was struck by her likeness to her brothers, too. Though smaller and more fragile, she had the same fair hair, tinged with red and cut boyishly short so that it curled into the nape of her neck. They were like peas in a pod, the Barhams. ‘Where is he?’ she asked.

  ‘At the station. We’re waiting for him to come down so that we can talk to him.’

  ‘Come down?’ Momentarily she was confused, but as realisation dawned, she broke into a humourless laugh. ‘Oh great, now you’re going to try and tell me that Jamie’s on drugs, too.’

  ‘Miss Barham, Eddie was found with a hypodermic needle sticking out of his arm. There’s not much doubt about the way he died. And we found more syringes in the bathroom…’

  ‘Yes, probably left over from a time when Jamie used to have seizures,’ she said matter-of-factly. ‘Afterwards, he needed an injection of Valium to help him calm down and sleep it off.’

  ‘And head-butting people is a normal part of his behaviour, is it?’ Mariner persisted. ‘We found him hiding in a cupboard under the stairs and when we let him out, he went crazy.’ Her reluctance was understandable and nothing new. ‘Look,’ he went on patiently, trying to help her out.

  ‘You don’t have to pretend to me, I’ve had years of experience of users.’

  ‘And what’s your experience of autism, Inspector?’

  ‘Autism?’ It came at him from out of left field.

  ‘Jamie isn’t on drugs, he’s autistic. He freaked out because he was frightened. He didn’t know you. It’s that simple. If he was shut in a cupboard he would have been terrified. He’s always been afraid of the dark.’ Her voice carried a triumphant ring.

  It took Mariner a few seconds to fully digest what she’d said, but gradually it began to add up. The kid’s raw terror, his apparent total lack of understanding of anything they’d said to him, the peculiar mannerisms. ‘Autistic. Christ,’ he said at last. ‘That’s why we couldn’t find any tracks.’

  ‘I’m sorry to disappoint you, Inspector, but Jamie won’t be “coming down” from anywhere. That’s the way he is all the time.’

  ‘We’re going to need to talk to him,’ Mariner reiterated eventually.

  ‘You can talk away,’ she said, with obvious amusement ‘Jamie will completely ignore you. His understanding of spoken language is virtually non-existent, and the only things he says are words and phrases that he’s learned, mainly from the TV. He just echoes what he hears.’

  ‘Echoes?’ It was out before he could stop himself Mariner groaned inwardly. This was worse than he’d thought. The video camera had proved a nil return there was no tape loaded, so finding Jamie Barham had been the next best thing. They were banking on him as a key witness. Mariner had felt confident that however stoned he might have been, he w
ould be able to confirm at least some of the events of the previous evening. ‘Maybe if you talked to Jamie?’ he suggested, hopefully.

  ‘Me?’ Another wry laugh. ‘You must be joking. Eddie’s the one you need.’

  ‘We will have to interview Jamie, and the sooner the better. It will help if you can be there. And then you can take him home.’

  ‘Home?’

  ‘He’s not under arrest. We only held him for his own safety until after questioning. He’s free to go at any time.’

  ‘But not with me!’ And for the first time she seemed truly appalled. ‘I’m flying to Milan in a few days. I can’t look after him.’

  ‘So is there someone else we can contact?’

  ‘I don’t know. He goes into respite care at the weekends but the rest of the time…’ Her shoulders sagged as suddenly the fight went out of her and finally the tears looked as if they might come. ‘With Eddie gone there’s nobody. God, what a mess.’

  ‘What about your parents?’

  ‘My parents are dead.’

  So she could have been through this before. Shit. Nice work, Mariner.

  Chapter Three

  From the mortuary it was a twenty-minute drive to Operational Command Unit 2, Granville Lane Police Station, where Jamie Barham was being held. The station was Monday-morning busy, nonetheless allowing the desk sergeant the opportunity to call out cheerily as they passed, ‘That bloke you brought in last night has been creating havoc in the cells, sir.’

  ‘Doing what?’

  ‘Trying to crack his head open on the walls, mainly Draper’s had him brought up here for his own safety.’

  Andy Draper, the station’s Forensic Medical Examine would be overseeing Jamie Barham’s detention.

  ‘Where is he?’ asked Mariner.

  ‘Observation Room Four. We’re keeping an eye on him. Draper says he can’t find any traces of drug use either He’s just your average nutcase.’