Letting himself back into his small canalside home, Mariner was greeted by the warm smell of frying bacon. Kat was in the kitchen, prodding at the pan on the cooker. ‘Hello,’ she greeted him brightly, with not a hint of reproach. Had she put two and two together? ‘You like some breakfast?’
‘No time,’ Mariner called from halfway up the stairs, wanting to avoid that conversation until he was ready for it. ‘I’ll get something at the station.’
Ten minutes later he was back down again, showered and changed, and Kat was at the table poised to tuck into the full English. It made Mariner feel slightly queasy. It was a mystery how she got away with it, although at twenty she did, of course, have age on her side. She’d been staying with him for six months now, and had succumbed to all the worst of the British junk-food habits. Her diet was far removed from the one she’d been used to in her native Albania, yet she remained as skinny as a rake. ‘You have a good meeting yesterday?’ she asked.
‘Oh, it was the usual thing,’ Mariner said.
‘It finish late.’ She was all innocent observation. ‘You find a woman?’ She could be disarmingly direct.
Mariner’s face flamed. ‘It wasn’t -’ Like that? But that’s exactly how it was. He gave up.
‘Is a good thing,’ she said brightly. ‘You should meet a nice woman.’ When Mariner didn’t respond her hand shot guiltily to her mouth. ‘I’m sorry. Is not my business.’
‘That’s OK. I know what you meant. Where’s Millie?’ Mariner thought his DC, who had quickly also become Kat’s friend and chaperone, would have appeared by now, but perhaps she’d already gone.
Kat shrugged. ‘She can’t come. I think her family . . .’ She trailed off vaguely.
‘So you were here on your own all night?’ Mariner was mortified.
‘Is OK. I watch TV and go to bed.’
No big deal
, she was saying.
Mariner studied her expression for the brave face she must be faking, but slightly to his disappointment she looked genuinely unfazed. ‘I’ll get home early tonight,’ he said. ‘Get in a couple of films.’
She shrugged again. ‘OK.’
‘OK.’ Now Mariner was the one disconcerted. She’d come a long way from the terrified young woman he’d first encountered cowering in a filthy room during a raid on a brothel.
Mariner had been well aware of the raised eyebrows when he’d offered to accommodate Kat, and he knew that the common consensus was that sharing his house with the stunningly attractive twenty-year-old would only lead to one inevitable conclusion, especially when he and Anna had so recently split up. It was only meant to be a temporary arrangement, a few days at most, and with DC Millie Khatoon in close attendance. But, as the days had stretched to weeks, Millie had succumbed to family demands, and the station gossips had also been proven wrong. One day Kat might feel strong enough to make contact again with her natural parents back home in Albania but, until then, it seemed to Mariner that morally the only role open to him was to protect her.
Waking a little later, her eyes sticky and head muzzy, after the couple of hours of fitful dozing that these days passed as sleep, Lucy had come to a decision. She couldn’t go on like this; she had to do something about it. The pounding water of the shower cleared her head and strengthened her resolve. Now was the time to do it. If she waited until Will came back he’d talk her out of it by telling her it was probably her imagination. Walking back into the bedroom, she glanced at the photo on her bedside table, the classic wedding picture, the happy couple arm in arm. She was glad she’d held out for formal dress, it had made the day all the more special, and Will hadn’t resisted. He looked so stunningly handsome in his morning suit that it brought a lump to her throat; his dark skin, that Cherokee blood that he was so fond of talking about, offset by the pale grey of the suit.
‘Whatever makes you happy,’ he had said. That was a phrase she hadn’t heard much lately.
By nine forty-five on Tuesday morning, Mariner was buttoning his shirt for the third time, this time in the clinical conditions of a consulting room, at the close of his annual routine medical; height, weight, blood pressure and the usual questions about diet and exercise which Mariner could, as always, answer truthfully with impunity. He’d just about made it on time.
‘Getting much exercise?’ Saunders asked.
Mariner side-stepped the obvious. ‘Let me think . . . Last Sunday I climbed the Wrekin, the week before that walked fifteen miles of the North Worcestershire Way, and the week before that: the Malverns, end to end.’ It had taken courage, that last one, standing at British Camp and looking out south-west towards the Black Mountains, knowing she was out there somewhere, but he’d made himself do it; all part of the healing process.
‘That sounds a bit excessive to me,’ commented Saunders. ‘You running away from something?’
‘I didn’t know you’d qualified in psychology too.’
‘It’s an obvious question.’
Mariner remembered his dream. ‘No, I’m not running away.’ Staying away perhaps. After what Kat had been through, the last thing Mariner wanted to do was parade his own love life in front of her, which is why, he told himself, until last night he hadn’t really had one.
‘And how’s the sex life?’ Saunders asked, with uncanny insight.
The man was a mind reader, too. Mariner felt heat rise from his throat. ‘What’s that got to do with anything?’
‘Nothing at all.’ Saunders grinned. ‘But it gives me and the wife something to talk about over dinner. You’d be amazed at how many people happily spill everything.’
‘So what’s the verdict?’ Mariner asked, fully dressed.
‘Bastards like you give the police a bad name. You’re obscenely fit and healthy; at six one and eleven and a half stone your BMI is a bit on the low side if anything. How many of us would love to be able to say that?’ Saunders himself was a squat ex-rugby player, who, since giving up the sport, had developed a significant paunch. ‘You’re eating properly?’
Mariner shrugged at the question. ‘I eat when I need to eat.’ Food wasn’t something that interested him greatly and he could never understand the excitement it generated.
‘Christ, you’re not even losing your hair,’ Saunders said irritably, running a hand over his own thinning pate. ‘Well, you might want to consider upping your alcohol units or dipping into recreational drugs now and then. Oh, and get yourself a woman. Seriously, married men live longer.’
Christ, not someone else, too. ‘Thanks.’
The eye test was a different matter. Stephanie had been right in her assessment and Mariner needed glasses, for reading anyway.
‘Your age,’ the optician told him. ‘Most people in their late forties succumb in the end.’
Mariner took the prescription to the nearest of the force-approved opticians where the choice of frames was overwhelming.
‘You might want to bring your wife in,’ suggested the dispensing optician, presenting him with yet another set almost identical to the previous three he’d tried.
In the end Mariner settled on a mid-range pair, lightweight and flexible, that seemed to him to look OK.
Mariner had parked his car next to the Mailbox, and from the opticians walked back through the busy shopping centre, down Corporation Street and across New Street. Despite the current economic crisis, people still seemed to have enough money to spend and he had to dodge the shoppers on the pavements. Suddenly among the bobbing heads in front of him, familiarity captured his attention; close-cropped reddish-brown hair, a slight figure with a spring in her step. Mariner launched himself forward through the crowd and grasped her arm, a little more enthusiastically than he’d intended. ‘Anna?’
The woman spun round, alarm on her pale face, her features giving away immediately that the hair colour wasn’t natural for her age. Mariner backed off as if he’d suddenly realised that she was carrying a contagious disease. ‘I’m sorry. My mistake,’ he stuttered. ‘I thought you were -’ Now he felt foolish, and it wasn’t the first time in the last few weeks that he’d made that same error of judgement. How many times had he thought he’d seen her? He should keep a tally. Just as well he’d had his eyes tested. Mariner was aware that he spent more time than was healthy wondering what Anna might be doing, but couldn’t help himself. All very well for Saunders, advising him to get himself a woman; he’d had one once but let her go.
Driving south out of the city towards Granville Lane, the traffic all seemed to be going the other way, the roads pretty clear until Mariner hit the usual bottle-neck at Selly Oak. As he sat idling he became aware of a faint buzzing in the background, like a bluebottle trapped behind a window, and suddenly realised that it must be his personal mobile. Since Anna had left, he’d hardly used it, everyone else called him on his work phone, so the sound was unfamiliar. Checking that the traffic ahead was stationary, Mariner applied the handbrake and fished the phone out of his jacket pocket. Someone had sent him a text. The only other person who had this number was Kat, for emergencies, though since her first uncertain weeks she’d never used it. So what could have happened in this short time? But when he looked, the text wasn’t from Kat.
Thanx 4 a gr8 nite
, it read,
look 4ward to next time, S xxx.
S? Who the hell was . . .? Oh, Stephanie, of course. How had she got his number? She must have looked at his phone while he was asleep. Mariner didn’t much like the idea of that. Nice message, though, especially the ‘
gr8
’. Hmm, he was fit, healthy and
gr8
in bed. What more could a man want? ‘Shame there won’t be a next time, though, Steph,’ he murmured, and closed the phone without replying.
Arriving in CID, Mariner expected to find everyone hard at work, but there appeared to be a party in progress.
‘What’s going on?’ he asked, taking the paper cup proffered by his Detective Sergeant, Tony Knox. ‘It’s a bit early, isn’t it?’
‘Don’t worry, Tom, there’s no alcohol involved.’ DCI Davina Sharp grinned from within the huddle. Tall and elegant and wearing a beige trouser suit that complemented her caramel skin, she looked radiant. ‘You can blame this distraction on me.’
‘What are we celebrating?’ Mariner asked. She couldn’t be pregnant, surely?
‘Andrea and I are tying the knot,’ Sharp said. ‘I proposed to her last night.’
Mariner raised his cup towards her. ‘Congratulations, ma’am. I hope you’ll be very happy.’ Mariner meant it. Though they’d only worked together a short time, his respect for the gaffer grew daily. One of few female DCIs in the city, and mixed race and openly gay at that, he knew that she had taken her fair share of flak, albeit covertly, from certain other senior officers. Mariner had felt proud from the start that none of his team had considered either her gender or her sexuality to be an issue and it was typical that she’d wanted to share her good news with them.
‘Thanks.’
‘So what happens about a ring?’ Tony Knox asked. A working-class scouser with traditional views, even he’d been grudgingly accepting. ‘Do you share it, or fight over who gets to wear it?’ His years in Birmingham had done nothing to diminish his accent.
‘That’s the beauty of a gay engagement,’ said Sharp. ‘We get one each.’
‘Well, make sure you get a good’n, boss, then when it all goes pear shaped -’
‘Yes, thanks, Tony.’ Sharp cut him off amid protests from some of the others. ‘I’ll bear that in mind. Now all we need to do is get you two clowns fixed up.’ She looked pointedly towards Mariner and Knox.
‘Yes, but who’d have them?’ DC Jamilla Khatoon pulled a face.
‘I’ve tried it once,’ Knox reminded them, rubbing a hand over his shaven head. ‘That was enough for me. It’s him you need to work on.’ He gestured towards Mariner.
‘Too late,’ said Mariner, holding up his hands in defence. ‘I’m a lost cause.’
‘You can say that again,’ Sharp agreed. A phone rang on one of the desks, and the celebration began to break up. ‘Anyway, thanks for all your good wishes, ladies and gents, but there’s work to be done.’
Millie had answered the call. ‘Don’t make yourselves too comfortable, boss,’ she said, seeing Mariner heading towards his office. ‘We’re wanted down in interview suite three.’
‘What’s down there?’ Mariner stopped in his tracks.
‘Brian Mann,’ Sharp said. ‘He’s talking to a woman who’s getting some funny phone calls.’
CHAPTER THREE
‘Christ, not another one,’ Mariner said, as he and Millie descended the stairs. The face of Jemima Murdoch had only just left the front pages of the national papers. Around a year ago she had complained to an OCU in the north of the city that she was being followed and her life was being threatened. Faced with flimsy evidence, the officers on the case had labelled her a neurotic and refused to take her complaints too seriously. They’d paid the price only a matter of weeks ago, with two fatalities; Murdoch’s stalker, her ex-boyfriend, stabbing to death his prey before cutting his own wrists in the full public glare of a busy local shopping centre. It had made a whole lot of the top brass determined that it wouldn’t happen again.
‘Tenner says it’s a duff,’ said Millie. Her apparent flippancy was born of frustration. Since the killing, any reported incidents had to be followed up, and the policy played into the hands of every attention-seeker on the patch. While the number of harassments had risen significantly, the vast majority turned out to be false alarms.
‘Any detail on this one?’ Mariner asked, as he and Millie descended to the ground floor. Some of Sharp’s dress sense was rubbing off on her, Mariner noticed. Not long out of uniform, Millie could dress more flatteringly for her fuller figure now and wore a fitted jacket and trousers that the DCI might have worn, her long hair tied back.
Millie shook her head. ‘Only that Mann thinks it’s worth our time.’
They descended the second flight. ‘I understand you couldn’t get across last night?’