Blood and Stone (34 page)

They were in the water for no more than five minutes, which was about four minutes fifty-nine seconds more than was comfortable for Mariner, and as soon as he could he was out again and pulling on his clothes.

‘There, wasn't that exhilarating?' Suzy said, her head popping through her thick sweater.

Now that it was over, Mariner had to admit that it was. ‘Probably caught my death though,' he complained.

‘Come here then, I'll warm you up.' Stepping over to him, she put her arms around him, rubbing them up and down his body. Mariner couldn't resist. He leaned forward and kissed her, briefly on the lips, or at least that's what he intended, but it was so good that he carried on, and then his arm was around her, drawing her in to him.

‘Well,' Suzy said, when finally he broke the kiss. ‘That was unexpected.' She looked at him. ‘How far is it back to Gwennol?'

‘Not far, if we take the shortest route,' said Mariner.

‘All right then.'

Scrambling back down the path, they were making their way across to the estate, when they came across a small stone cottage set back behind a neat garden. ‘It must be the Reverend Aubrey's,' Mariner said, lowering his voice. ‘He used to be the local pastor, but left the ministry in disgrace some years ago.'

‘What kind of disgrace?'

‘The kind of disgrace the clergy is getting quite good at.'

‘Looks like he's still unpopular,' Suzy observed. ‘Someone's thrown wood stain all over his windows.'

She was right; although Elena had given Mariner the impression that things had died down, there was a transparent brown liquid splattered over the window panes, standing out against what were rather grimy net curtains, ‘Could have been there years,' said Mariner. ‘An old guy living on his own, maybe he doesn't clean his windows very often.' He didn't want to pry, but he walked the few feet into the garden and ran a finger down the glass to try and ascertain what the substance was. And that was when he realized it wasn't on the outer window but on the inside, and that it was the staining of the curtains themselves that made it that odd translucent brown colour. ‘Wait here,' he told Suzy firmly. Walking round to the back of the cottage he found the back door of the property an inch or so ajar. He pushed it gently and called out a cautious ‘Hello?' but as the door swung open, wafting out a cloying, sweet, metallic smell, Mariner knew that there would be no response.

‘What is it?' Suzy had followed him around the side of the cottage.

‘It's ugly,' said Mariner. ‘Have you got your phone with you?'

‘Yes.'

‘Carry on down to the estate and keep going until you can get a signal and call the police,' he said. ‘Ask for Ryan Griffith if possible. That unfortunate habit of mine? It hasn't gone away.'

Mariner didn't enter the cottage but sat and waited on the grassy bank to one side. It was a long, cold wait and he was relieved to finally see a mud-spattered blue Land Rover bumping along the grassy track towards him. He let Griffith and Blaine put on their forensic suits and go into the cottage.

Griffith emerged a few minutes later and immediately lit up a cigarette, before coming over to join Mariner. ‘It is the Reverend Aubrey,' he said. ‘He's been shot multiple times, including in the head. What you can see all over the windows, well, you can guess. Either he was sitting in his arm chair when the killer got in, or he was made to sit there.'

‘How long ago?' asked Mariner.

‘Hard to say exactly, of course, but it's a matter of days. It's pretty gruesome. Scenes of crime are on their way.'

The two men sat in silence while Griffith smoked his cigar-ette. ‘We've had news about Joe Hennessey too,' he said, at last. ‘The post-mortem has given us a ToD somewhere on Monday afternoon.'

‘Monday? So that's before Bryce was killed,' Mariner remarked.

‘May or may not be significant,' said Griffith. ‘But it does start to undermine our idea about Hennessy being killed for incompetence. The other result we've had is from the waterproofs found at the byre. The blood all over them is definitely Theo Ashton's, so it's likely they were worn by his killer, but we're pretty certain it wasn't Glenn McGinley who's been sleeping rough there.'

‘How can you be so sure?' asked Mariner.

Griffith raised his cigarette. ‘McGinley's a chain smoker, and there were no dog ends. I'm not sure that he'd have bothered going round clearing them up after him.'

‘Probably not,' conceded Mariner. ‘But someone has been hiding out there?'

‘Oh yes,' said Griffith. ‘Just a question of working out who.'

When Tony Knox arrived home from work on Friday afternoon it was to find his house transformed. Kat was in the kitchen, in rubber gloves, attacking his grimy stove. ‘I hope you don't mind,' she said, removing iPod ear phones. ‘Is good for me to do some cleaning and be busy. Is therapeutic.'

There was a further surprise when the doorbell rang and Knox opened the door on Michael, scrubbed, smart and bright-eyed and looking, as kids do, like an extra from the
Magic Roundabout
, all pipe cleaner legs in skinny jeans and oversized converse trainers. ‘Is Kat here?' he asked hopefully, peering past Knox and into the hall. ‘I thought we could take Nelson for a walk?'

Knox smiled to himself. He recognized a crush when he saw one. Perhaps Kat did too, because she happily went off with Michael, returning more than an hour later at the point when Knox was starting to wonder if something had happened to them. And perhaps it had, because, when they came into the kitchen to give Nelson his post-walk treat, the air between the two of them seemed heavy with expectation. It was Kat who finally broke the tension. ‘You should tell him now, Michael,' she said. ‘It's okay.'

‘Tell me what?' Knox asked.

Michael was staring at the floor.

‘He knows,' said Kat. ‘Someone told him who gave Kirsty the pill.'

Michael looked up at her accusingly. ‘I told you that in confidence,' he said, his eyes shining.

‘Kirsty
died
,'
Kat reminded him. ‘And she was your friend. These are bad people and believe me, I know about bad. He might do it again to another girl.'

‘But they'll know it was me who grassed him up,' Michael whined miserably. ‘I'll get into so much trouble. My mum …'

‘Your mum?' said Knox. ‘What's she got to do with this?'

‘Nothing. You don't understand.' Finally Michael dragged his eyes up so that they met with Knox's. ‘It was his mate,' he spat with disgust. ‘The man who gave the pill to Kirsty is a mate of Mr Lennox.'

‘Your teacher?' Knox checked that he'd understood correctly.

‘Lennox brought him to the party,' said Michael. ‘He was meant to be there helping out, but all he did all night was hit on the girls, especially Kirsty. Georgia told me, he kept trying to get Kirsty to have a drink and when she wouldn't he offered her a pill. He told her it wasn't like alcohol; it wouldn't do her any harm. It would make her feel relaxed. When he saw what it did to her, he legged it. He'd gone way before you got there.'

‘Does Mr Lennox know about this?' demanded Knox.

Michael shrugged. ‘What if he did? Where does that leave Mum?'

‘Your mum can make her own choices,' said Kat. Stepping over, she put an arm around Michael's shoulders. ‘Well done,' she said. ‘It was the right thing to do.'

Leaving Kat and Michael watching TV, Knox went across to Jean's house.

‘Was there another teacher at Michael's party?' he asked.

Jean looked momentarily puzzled. ‘Not a teacher, but Pete brought a friend of his; a gym-buddy. He was extra help in case anything got out of hand.'

There's an irony, thought Knox. ‘Which gym?' he asked.

‘I don't know the name. One of those fancy ones on Broad Street.'

From his own house, Knox rang Charlie Glover. ‘You need to go and talk to Peter Lennox again and ask him about his mate.'

When Griffith had finished with him, Mariner chose to walk back to Caranwy and stopped off at Gwennol to check that Suzy was all right. She seemed now to have grasped the enormity of what it was they'd found, and was visibly upset.

‘Would you like me to stay with you for a while?' Mariner asked.

She smiled weakly. ‘That would be nice. I know it's completely irrational, but I keep thinking about what happened to the pastor – that something or someone may still be out there. Do you mind?'

‘Of course not.'

‘I'll make us something to eat.' But as it turned out, neither of them had much of an appetite. So instead they just curled up together on the sofa, watching the fire. After a while Mariner couldn't resist putting out an arm to her and she leaned in to him. ‘I don't understand what's going on here,' she said. ‘You need to give me more of a clue.'

Mariner shifted uncomfortably. ‘I haven't been entirely honest with you.' He broke off. He'd never in his life discussed anything like this openly with anyone and now didn't seem like a particularly good place to do so for the first time.

He took a deep breath. ‘My feelings about Anna only make up half of the story.'

‘So what's the other half?'

‘When I said the other night that I might disappoint you, that's exactly what I meant. I've had a couple of … unfortunate experiences in the past, when I haven't been able to … deliver, as it were. I never know if … I really am afraid I'll let you down.'

Suzy was mortified. ‘Oh God, and now here I am, making you talk about it. That's even worse, isn't it? But isn't there something I can do to help?' Instinctively she put her hand on his thigh, but immediately snatched it away again. ‘Oh God, I'm sorry. That's probably not a good idea.'

That made Mariner laugh. ‘It's all right, it won't fall off.'

‘And this Anna. Are you certain it's over?'

‘It's definitely over,' said Mariner. And though he hadn't planned to, he found himself telling Suzy about Anna's last hours. ‘I wasn't there of course but there are certain advantages to being in the job and the Hereford police have been incredibly cooperative in terms of allowing me access to witness statements. I think the other woman involved was relieved to be able to offload to me too, in the mistaken belief that doing so might help to ease some of her own pain. She gave me enough detail to be able to reconstruct the chain of events reasonably accurately. Sometimes it just plays inside my head like a silent movie on a loop.'

‘Poor you,' she said. ‘I can't imagine what it must be like to lose someone so suddenly.'

Mariner finished up staying the night at Gwennol. This time when Suzy moved over to his side of the bed he didn't make any excuses, and Anna stayed away.

S
till warmed from the pleasure of the night before, Mariner strode out across the fields and back towards the pub. He was feeling rather pleased with himself and with the day, and decided to extend his route back via the footpath that took him close to Abbey Farm. As he did so, he heard the sound of a vehicle starting up, and craning his neck, he saw over the hedge as Willow's van drove out along the track and up to the farm gate. It stopped for Amber to get out and open the gate, before moving off again. They were still apparently going to market, to sell their fake organic produce. Mariner watched the truck bounce along to the end of the drive and make a left towards Llanerch. He thought about how calm Willow had been, in the interview room at the police station, despite having learned that his business was about to become discredited and go down the pan. The only reason he could have been that relaxed was because it didn't matter. He must be seriously wealthy to get by. Even with the mark-up on vegetable prices, the profit margins couldn't be that great. Turning away, Mariner's gaze swept over the rows of poly tunnels. He wondered if they would be retained to keep up the illusion that the farm was still a working one, and that Willow's product was a going concern.

For an instant, he thought he saw what looked like a faint plume of smoke rising from one of the structures. That couldn't be right. It couldn't be smoke, it must be steam. On a warm day that might be explained by the sun heating off the moisture of dew, but not on a chill, cloudy day like today. In a sudden rush, Mariner recognized a possibility that both he and Griffith had overlooked.

The new barn may be there for refrigerating produce but what about those poly tunnels? Willow had said that they couldn't be insulated, but what if he'd been lying about that? Climbing the flimsy fence Mariner went first to investigate the source of that vapour. Unfastening the flaps on the tunnel, he hoped and expected to see the rows of green plants that had eluded them in the barn, but he was to be disappointed for a second time. What confronted him instead was a vast expanse of brown and rotten vegetables with little sign of growth, very like the parsnips Willow had shown him on that first day he came here. The air inside the tunnel was warm and humid, which explained the steam he had seen, but it didn't account for why there seemed to be nothing of value growing in such a carefully manufactured atmosphere. Kneeling down Mariner examined the growth more closely. Was this simply some kind of plant matter he'd never come across before? As he stooped he felt a blast of warm air on his face, as if he was leaning over a kettle spout, and lifting the vegetation he saw underneath the steel grille of some kind of ventilation pipe coming up from under the ground. Standing upright, he emerged from the tunnel and looked over at the farm buildings, about two hundred yards away. He thought back to the time he had worked on the farm, and suddenly he knew exactly where that steam was being vented from, and why. This was the moment he should contact Griffith to report his suspicion, but the principle of evidence-based claims was deeply ingrained in his psyche, and having come unstuck before, this time he wanted to be absolutely sure of what he thought he knew. It wouldn't do any harm to just take a quick look first. Given the circumstances he would be in and out of the farm without anyone knowing.