Written in Blood (5 page)

‘How’s the sleeping?’ Anna asked. Night times she knew had not been easy.

‘We’re getting there,’ said Luke elusively. ‘And how are you?’ he asked Anna, in what now always seemed to be a loaded question.

‘We’re fine,’ Anna said, ‘better each day.’ But she didn’t say what a slow process it was proving to be.

From the hostel it was a short walk into Bromsgrove town centre where, by way of an alternative Christmas treat, they took Jamie for a McDonald’s. From the outset Mariner was jumpy, Jamie seeming to walk too close to the edge of the pavement to be safe.

‘Jamie,’ Mariner warned. Jamie moved away from the kerb but within a few paces had drifted back again as traffic raced by just a few inches away. ‘Jamie, stay on the path,’ Mariner said.

‘He is,’ said Anna, pointedly. ‘He’s fine.’

But as they rounded a corner Jamie teetered on the edge of the pavement and unable to stand it any more Mariner lunged towards him and grabbed his arm. Jamie pulled away in alarm and almost into the path of an oncoming HGV that blared its horn. Yards later they reached the safety of the pedestrian area. Anna was incredulous. ‘What the hell were you doing?’

‘He was too close to the road. I thought he’d get hit.’

‘Well thanks to you he nearly did. You know he doesn’t like to be touched.’

‘I forgot. I don’t know why I did it.’

Mariner hated fast-food chains with a vengeance. In his experience they were anything but fast and the food was barely edible. This one proved to be no exception. Excessively bright and filled to capacity with people taking a break from last minute Christmas shopping, the noise and the chaos made his palms sweat and his heart race. The incident with Jamie had shaken them all up too. Mariner couldn’t wait to get out, but instead, the tension between them tangible, he and Anna sat in near silence sipping bitter, watery coffee while Jamie, oblivious to the atmosphere, slowly munched his way through a Big Mac, large fries and a chocolate donut, pausing only occasionally to noisily suck coke through a straw. At the adjacent table a mother yelled intermittently at her gaggle of kids, every other word an obscenity. A joyous experience it was not. One of the toddlers, pale-faced with huge grey eyes, fixed an unwavering gaze on Mariner and suddenly he was confronted again with Chloe Evans’ beseeching face. He jumped up.

‘I’ll see you back at the hostel,’ he said. And Anna knew him well enough to let him go.

Mariner walked into the centre of Bromsgrove where the statue of A.E. Housman dominated the High Street.
A Shropshire Lad
had been the only book of poetry at Mariner’s grandparents’ house.

He met Anna back at the hostel but, before they left, Louise asked to speak to them both in the privacy of her tiny office. ‘It’s a bit awkward,’ she said, apologetically. ‘We still haven’t had any payments through. You owe quite a bit of money.’ She passed Anna an invoice. ‘I wouldn’t mention it now, but I’m under pressure from the finance department.’

Anna was mortified. Since the takeover she’d changed her method of payment to what should have been a simple automatic bank transaction, but for some unknown reason it didn’t appear to be working. ‘You should have said something sooner,’ she told Louise. ‘The money is there. I’ll write you a cheque now. And after the holidays I’ll get onto the bank and sort it out,’ she said.

Louise was palpably relieved. ‘Thanks, I appreciate it. Have a great Christmas.’

Some hope, thought Mariner.

 

At home he helped Anna to go through the motions of decorating the tree, wondering if it was as hollow and unsatisfying a gesture for her too. In the evening she insisted that they go to the open air carols on Bournville village green, to try to recapture something of the Christmas mood. In a crowd of thousands, many of them children, carrying glowing lanterns and wearing flashing Santa hats, they stood on the hard frozen ground, the cold spreading up through their feet.

Untouched by the carols, Mariner’s attention was snagged by a toddler in a thick snow-suit wandering around in front of them. The crowd was dense and he was roaming further and further from his parents, weaving in and out through the forest of legs. ‘He’ll get lost,’ Mariner thought, irrational panic quickening his pulse. He made to intervene, just as the child turned and made a beeline back to his dad. But minutes later the child made another foray into the crowd, his mum and dad singing enthusiastically and completely oblivious, so when a stranger hoisted the child up and began to move off, Mariner lunged forward and snatched the toddler, causing him to shriek out in fear. A woman screamed and the white-haired man holding the child spun round in alarm. ‘What are you doing with my grandson?’ And suddenly the situation looked very different.

‘I didn’t know you—,’ Mariner handed back the wailing child. ‘It’s all right,’ he said to the hostile faces. ‘I’m a police officer. I thought—’ But now he could see exactly how it looked, and explanation was futile. ‘I’m sorry.’ Turning away he pushed his way back through the crowds and out onto the road, Anna trailing in his wake, unnerved by the outburst.

‘What was that all about?’ she asked when they were back in the car.

‘I don’t know. I thought the kid was going to get lost, he was straying too far, and then that man picked him up.’

‘He was with his family. They were all his family.’

‘I can see that now, but at the time—,’ He couldn’t explain the panic he’d felt, the overwhelming need to intervene that had overtaken him. ‘I overreacted, I realise that, but I couldn’t help it.’

‘Okay,’ Anna said, but her tone implied it was anything but.

‘I just can’t get those five families out of my head,’ Mariner said. ‘Their Christmas will never be the same again.’

She put a hand over his and squeezed it. ‘I know.’

 

During the night Mariner was woken by a deafening roar. The low-flying aircraft made him cry out in fear. Suddenly there seemed to be danger everywhere, lurking around every corner and he was on a constant adrenalin rush, waiting for the next thing to happen.

 

On his own while Selina was in hospital, Tony Knox came over for Christmas lunch the next day and Mariner told him what had happened. ‘I lost it,’ he said. ‘But I don’t really know why. It was nothing.’

‘I don’t like being inside,’ Knox admitted. ‘It makes me nervous.’ So he and Mariner took the puppy for a long walk over Clent and Walton Hills. Early morning frost had given way to a brown and murky day, the cloud low and misty, and the rotting woodland vegetation smelled acrid. Paddy ran huge circles around them, bounding back and forth, dragged by the nose along the scent trails of a hundred other creatures. Selina’s baby. Breathing hard from the first steep climb, the men walked in companionable silence for a while.

‘Have you seen your two this holiday?’ Mariner asked suddenly, kids very much on his mind. He knew he was treading on sensitive ground.

‘I took presents over for the grandson,’ Knox said, casually. ‘Though Siobhan made it pretty clear that she couldn’t wait for me to go. Gary’s gone up to his mother’s for Christmas, but he called in to see me before he went.’

‘It’s getting better then.’

‘They still both blame me for the split.’

‘That’s hardly fair. It was Theresa who left you.’

‘She had good reason though, didn’t she? I let her down, let them all down. And let’s face it, this wasn’t the first time.’

There wasn’t much room for contradiction.

‘Theresa didn’t ever want to come here you know. She only had to leave Liverpool because of me.’ A direct consequence of Knox shagging the wife of a senior officer, as Mariner recalled. Paddy came lolloping over and Knox picked up a stick and threw it. ‘Dogs are much simpler,’ he said, ‘all the fun of kids, without the emotional stress.’

‘Maybe Anna and I should go for a dog.’

‘Nah, kids are great really. You’ll love being a dad.’

‘Yeah.’

After lunch they all went to visit Selina. She’d had the operation the previous day and was still groggy and feeling phantom pains from the missing part of her leg. They kept things light, plenty of jokes about Long John Silver and wooden peg-legs.

‘You might have to find yourself another woman,’ she told Knox. ‘I’ll be in with a chance with Paul McCartney now.’ Knox stayed on at the hospital and when Anna looked back down the ward for a final wave, she could see Selina clinging to him.

The news continued to be dominated by the explosion, but though speculation in the press was rife, no one appeared to be any nearer to knowing who had been responsible, so the rumours continued to flourish. The longer the silence, the harder it was for Mariner to comprehend. It usually took just a few days to pinpoint the source, which meant that this had to be some kind of public interest cover-up. No political or religious group had claimed responsibility, implying that it related to something bigger and the authorities didn’t want to spark a full-blown panic. The less palatable alternative was that there had been some kind of warning and someone, somewhere had cocked up. Not something it would ever be easy to admit to.

On the eighth day Mariner brought Anna tea and toast in bed as he had done each morning, but today when he came back to the bedroom she was already in the shower.

‘The sales are on. I want to go and snap up some bargains,’ she told him when she emerged.

Mariner felt the now familiar flutter of fear. ‘I don’t think it’s a good idea to go into the city, yet,’ he said, trying to sound casual.

‘I wasn’t thinking Birmingham. They’re still clearing everything up, and the security checks are a nightmare. I thought I’d go down to Worcester. I can get you another coat.’ To replace the one that had been discarded among the devastation of St Martin’s.

‘I still don’t think it’s wise.’

‘Why not? This is a great time to go. Other people are staying away. More chance of making a killing.’ She looked at him. ‘Sorry, poor choice of words.’

‘Maybe there’s a good reason people are staying away,’ Mariner said.

‘And maybe you’re being slightly overprotective? I can’t spend another day cooped up in here and neither can you. We have to start getting on with our lives again. Aren’t you the one who’s always saying we shouldn’t let these people win?’

‘But we don’t know yet if the explosion was the start of a campaign.’

‘The press are saying not. But even if it is, I can’t imagine Worcester being at the top of the terrorists’ list.’

‘The press don’t know everything. In fact, where this is concerned the press don’t know anything. I’ll come with you.’

‘Are you kidding? You’ll be bored stiff within half an hour, and the last thing I need is you pacing up and down outside the changing rooms every time I try something on. Go back to work. It’s what you really want to do.’

She was right about that, the inertia was starting to drive him mad, aggravated by the knowledge of what would be awaiting him at the office. ‘You’ll be all right?’

She tapped her chin, frowning for dramatic effect. ‘I don’t know, if only someone could have invented some kind of portable communication device that would allow us to talk to each other during the day. Oh, guess what? They have. It’s called a mobile phone.’

‘Ho ho,’ said Mariner, mirthlessly. ‘Have you been getting sarcasm coaching from Tony Knox?’

She gave him a hug. ‘I’ll keep in touch, I promise.’

‘Right, I’ll just go in and check the post, then.’

‘Good idea. Who knows, we might even have something to talk about at the end of the day.’ She looked him in the eye. ‘Something that we’re both willing to talk about, that is.’

 

Overnight there had been a light fall of snow and the clean purity outside was at odds with Mariner’s current perception of the world. At Granville Lane he sat in his car for a few minutes, fascinated, he told himself, by watching the progress of the occasional snowflake, though in reality he was summoning the courage to walk into the building. When he finally did it he was disconcerted to see the tremor in his hand as he swiped his security pass through the pad.

‘How are you, sir?’ Receptionist Ella’s earnest expression lay somewhere between sympathy and wariness, something that Mariner was to see reflected on almost every face he encountered in the weeks that followed, as if he’d been a victim too. A black cloud hung over the station as it did over every OCU in the city. Crime hadn’t stopped because of the explosion, although figures later would reveal a significant dip. Even the criminal fraternity had been shocked to the core.

‘I’m fine, thanks,’ Mariner said.

‘Mr Coleman would like to see you.’

Mariner went straight to DCI Jack Coleman’s office. As his hand hovered just short of the door, it occurred to him that the nameplate wouldn’t be there for much longer.

Coleman was due to retire at the end of January. That was only a month away. It had crept up suddenly. Hearing Coleman’s response, he went in.