Baby Lies (Reissue)

by Chris Collett

  ‘We know we can trust her,’ added Gareth. ‘And she’d bring a bit of glamour to the practice.’

  ‘Not that we don’t have that already.’ Mark fluttered his eyelashes, coyly.

  ‘And when does your receptionist retire?’ Mariner asked.

  ‘At the end of this month.’

  Blimey. That was only a couple of weeks away. They didn’t hang about.

  ‘And if you’re looking for a place to live, I see that Heron’s Nest is on the market,’ Jolyon chipped in.

  ‘Really?’ Suddenly all eyes were on him.

  ‘Yes, John Latham’s taken a position in the States, so they’re selling up.’

  ‘Oh, wow. That would be perfect,’ Becky gushed. ‘You should go and see it. It’s a gorgeous converted mill in about three acres, with views across the whole valley.’

  ‘Do you know the asking price?’ Mark saved Mariner from having to ask.

  ‘That’s the best thing,’ said Jolyon. ‘They want a quick sale so it’s up for six hundred and fifty thou’.’

  Mariner nearly choked on his fettuccini. ‘That’s a bit beyond our price range,’ he said.

  ‘I’m sure you’d be able to knock them down a bit.’ Jolyon spoke with the easy confidence of a man for whom money is no object.

  ‘We’re not really in a position to move yet anyway,’ said Mariner. ‘Anna’s accepted the offer on her house, but mine seems to be taking a little longer.’

  ‘That’s basically because no one wants to buy it, at least, not at the asking price,’ Anna’s tone was aggrieved, resentful even. ‘They all want a reduction because of . . . well, you know, its notoriety.’

  ‘Really?’ said Vinnie. ‘Given the morbid curiosity of the great British public, I’d have thought people would be queuing up for it.’ So they all knew about that, too.

  ‘Oh, plenty want to look round it, of course, but so far no one’s interested in buying.’

  ‘But you were only held there,’ said Mark. ‘No one came to any harm, did they?’ said Mark.

  Mariner controlled an involuntary shudder. Even just talking about the episode brought back vivid memories of his three days incarcerated in the cellar while Kenneth McCrae held him captive.

  ‘It has connections with a killer though, doesn’t it?’ Jolyon lowered his voice for dramatic effect.

  ‘Yes, and a killer who might well get away with it,’ murmured Mariner before he could stop himself.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Anna demanded, leaving Mariner little choice but to explain the latest development to them, though deep down he had no desire to discuss the case with people who couldn’t understand.

  ‘McCrae’s pleading not guilty,’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘He’s going for diminished responsibility. If the jury accepts it, it’ll reduce the charge to manslaughter and get his sentence reduced by half.’

  Mark shook his head slowly, in disbelief. ‘The good old British criminal justice system.’

  ‘But that’s crazy!’ Anna was outraged.

  ‘That’s how it is,’ said Mariner. ‘It has a certain symmetry, doesn’t it? Sir Geoffrey was the chair of the government body examining miscarriages of justice. And now the outcome of the investigation into his murder is likely to be just that.’

  ‘But that’s appalling. Surely the prosecution can do something.’

  ‘Put me on the witness stand,’ Mariner said. ‘Ironically I’ve got to stand up and say that Kenneth McCrae was behaving rationally at the time when it all happened.’

  ‘When does it come to court?’ asked Jolyon.

  ‘Next week,’ Anna put in. ‘It’s what Tom’s got to look forward to when we go back.’

  ‘That’s tough.’

  ‘He’s only being charged with murder, too,’ said Anna. ‘Not enough evidence to get him for abduction or false imprisonment.’

  ‘As long as he’s convicted he’ll be going away for long enough to satisfy me,’ said Mariner. It wasn’t quite true but he’d had enough of talking about it.

  ‘And meanwhile we can’t sell the house,’ said Anna brightly.

  ‘Well, I think you should have a look at Heron’s Nest anyway,’ Becky was undeterred. ‘You could always come and stay with us and do a weekly commute until Tom’s place is sold. With the hours he works he’d hardly miss you anyway, would you, Tom?’

  Mariner smiled through gritted teeth.

  As the conversation rambled on, Mariner found himself drinking steadily, more than he’d drunk in weeks and gradually faded out of it, until suddenly Jolyon and Lavinia were on their feet and saying their goodbyes.

  ‘Let’s have another drink,’ said Gareth, when they’d gone.

  ‘Haven’t you had enough?’ Becky teased him.

  Gareth looked pointedly at Mariner. ‘Don’t worry, officer. I’ve only got to stagger a few yards up the road.’

  ‘You live quite close by then,’ Mariner surmised.

  ‘Gareth’s got a barn conversion on the edge of the village,’ Anna chipped in. ‘He’s got fabulous views, too.’

  Mariner didn’t like to ask how it was that she knew that. He was desperate for his bed, now, but for some reason he didn’t want to leave the party until Gareth had gone. He wasn’t sure that Anna would have come with him. They finally made it up the stairs well after midnight. ‘You didn’t tell me about this job,’ Mariner said as they were getting undressed.

  ‘I didn’t know about it myself until yesterday. It sounds wonderful though, doesn’t it?’

  ‘It sounds like the kind of thing you could do with your eyes shut.’

  ‘That’s what I mean.’

  ‘But you’d be bored to death. What happened to your career progression?’

  ‘I wouldn’t have to be there for ever. While I’m doing that, I can be on the lookout for other opportunities.’

  Despite his fatigue, when he got into bed and felt Anna beside him, Mariner’s body began to respond. He reached out for her, but she pushed him playfully away. ‘We might disturb Megan,’ she giggled, sleepily.

  ‘She’s at the other end of the house,’ said Mariner, now very much awake. ‘And we don’t make that much noise, at least, we don’t have to.’

  ‘It just feels weird, that’s all. I can’t.’

  ‘You can,’ Mariner insisted, but she rolled away from him.

  ‘Maybe in the morning.’

  But when Mariner next opened his eyes to light and sunshine, Anna was already out of bed and sitting peering through a gap in the curtains, her chin propped on her hand. ‘Becky and Mark are so lucky,’ she said, seeing that he was awake. ‘They’ve got it all.’

  ‘I’m sure it’s not as perfect as it looks,’ said Mariner. ‘No one’s life is perfect. Come back to bed.’

  ‘But what more could anyone want? A gorgeous house with stunning views, a healthy lifestyle, great friends and their own little family—’

  Mariner wondered if she’d listed them in order of importance. ‘We’ll have that soon enough. It just takes time.’

  ‘I bet I’d get pregnant quicker living down here,’ she was thinking aloud. ‘The air is healthier.’

  ‘Why don’t we test the theory,’ Mariner said. ‘Come on.’ He patted the mattress beside him. ‘I’m as horny as hell.’

  But Anna just rolled her eyes. ‘Becky and Mark are down in the kitchen, they’ll wonder where we are.’

  ‘They’re grown-ups. I think they’ll be able to work it out.’

  ‘I don’t want them to. Come on, we’re guests in their house.’ The next three days seemed, to Mariner, to go on interminably. They did find time to go and look at Heron’s Nest, which was certainly impressive, and Anna was in raptures about it. But it was way beyond their means and she wasn’t being at all realistic about it. A little further along the lane they came across a more modest dwelling.

  ‘That would be more within our budget,’ Mariner said, but Anna wrinkled her nose.

  ‘Yes and I bet it’s got
an outside toilet and no central heating either.’

  On the day of the christening Mariner joined Mark for breakfast. ‘You’ve made the Sunday papers, Tom,’ said Mark, holding up the relevant section. ‘They’ve run a piece on Sir Geoffrey Ryland prior to next week’s trial.’ Mark read: ‘—and after the killing spree, McCrae was finally caught when he abducted Ryland’s estranged son, Detective Inspector Tom Mariner. Infamy, infamy, they’ve all got it in-for-me!’

  Mariner smiled politely.

  ‘Sorry,’ Mark was contrite. ‘Tactless of me. Are you very worried about the trial?’

  ‘No reason for me to be,’ said Mariner casually. ‘It’ll hardly be the first time I’ve given evidence in court.’ He shouldn’t have been surprised that it would be covered on the national news, as a man on trial for the murder of a prominent politician, Kenneth McCrae was unique, but it had caught him off guard.

  ‘But this is different,’ Mark observed. ‘It’s personal.’

  With a capital P. ‘I’ll be fine.’

  Megan’s baptism was held in the village church, a small private ceremony in which the star turn, perilously dressed in pure white silk, had to be caught and held under protest so that she could be anointed as required. Afterwards there was a reception back at Mark and Becky’s house, to which the whole village appeared to have been invited. After a couple of hours of making small talk Mariner wanted to scream. All those empty hills and fields out there, and nothing he could do to get away. Instead he lurked on the fringes as he generally did, nursing his drink and marvelling yet again at how very much at home Anna was with all these people.

  They finally escaped in the early evening, but on the drive north Mariner’s temper deteriorated by the moment. ‘It seems to me that everyone else is doing a great job of planning my life for me,’ he grumbled. ‘Was I going to be consulted on any of this? We don’t even live there yet and everyone seems to know all about me. It’s all so bloody incestuous; looking for a house for us, finding you a job, even membership of the hunt, of all things. Do I get a say at all?’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Tom,’ Anna retorted. ‘They’re only trying to make us feel welcome and involved. The job is something that just happens to have cropped up, and they’re concerned that by the time you’ve got your transfer and sold your house it’ll be gone. Maybe I should do what Becky suggested and move down there anyway. How long does it take for you to get a transfer?’

  ‘It varies.’

  She eyed him suspiciously. ‘You haven’t even applied for it, have you?’

  ‘When have I had time? I’ll do it soon.’

  ‘Of course, if you’d accepted what was rightfully yours from your father’s estate, we wouldn’t have to wait for your house to be sold, we could have put in an offer for Heron’s Nest right away.’

  ‘Don’t drag that up again. The money was not mine and I couldn’t accept it.’ It had been a sore point that Mariner had rejected the inheritance from his estranged father’s will. And he couldn’t fully explain, even to himself, why he’d had to do it.

  ‘Most people would have taken the money and been gracious about it.’

  ‘I’m not most people.’

  ‘You can say that again.’

  The air was still tense when they arrived home and Mariner was restless. ‘I think I’ll go down to the Boatman for an hour.’

  ‘Fine.’

  But when he got there he was disappointed to find that the pub was closed for refurbishment. He should have known. For years now it had been caught in a time warp, untouched for decades with its numerous little snugs and bars offering the only things that, in Mariner’s view, a good pub should offer: excellent beer, a quiet, comfortable place in which to drink it and facilities for the occasional game of cards, chess or dominoes. He could go to the off-licence and back to Anna’s house, but he also knew where there were half a dozen free bottles of Theakston’s stashed, waiting to be consumed. Leaving his car in the pub car park he wandered along the service road and back to the cottage on the canal that he had, until not long ago, called home. He hadn’t been back since that night when he was found, filthy and starving in the cellar; he hadn’t had the nerve. The estate agents had undertaken to show prospective buyers around.

  But looking at the place now, even in the dusk, it didn’t seem so threatening. A flutter of apprehension tickled at Mariner’s stomach as he walked up the path, growing into full-blown fear by the time he was standing on the step in the darkness. He had a powerful sense of déjà vu and his heart seemed to be bouncing off the inside of his ribcage. This was the last place he’d stood before coming round, incarcerated in the cellar.

  It embarrassed him, this level of fear he was feeling, and he was glad there was no one around to witness it. He almost couldn’t go through with it. But turning the key in the latch and letting himself in, he switched on the hall light and the feeling of nausea passed. The place was clean and tidy with no hint of what had gone on here. Someone must have seen to it. He knew that, among others, Tony Knox had been back and collected some of his things for him. Mariner moved cautiously from room to room, surprisingly comforted by the familiarity.

  The place had a musty, unlived-in smell and the first thing he did was go into the kitchen and open up the back door onto the canal. On this side of the house the air was chilly and damp, tangy with autumn. Crane flies danced around in the glow cast by the outside light. Back in the lounge he put on some music: Janis Ian, soulful and reassuring, the sound of a different era. Then, taking a bottle from under the sink, he sat down on the stone bench outside the house swigging his beer and allowed the remaining feelings of unease to wear off.

  There was just one more thing he had to do, but it took another bottle of Old Peculier before he had the courage to do it. In the cupboard under the stairs stuff had been thrown back in any old how. Dragging out a couple of boxes to make way, he shone a torch on the small crooked door at the rear. Bending low he pulled open the door, and, as the cool darkness appeared and that familiar smell hit his nostrils, he retched, his whole body alive with adrenaline. He forced himself forward until the torch-beam sliced into the cavern of the cellar. It was completely bare, the stone floor swept cleaner than it had ever been. The chain that McCrae had tethered him to was gone and someone had even filled in the hole in the wall. It occurred to Mariner that if he installed proper lighting and painted the walls, the room could be a useful storage space, and with that in mind he closed the door on it once more. He’d reclaimed his territory. This was his home, and he felt as comfortable here now as he ever had. Right now, selling it seemed to symbolise something else; the loss of freedom. He thought back over the last couple of days. Not much doubt now in his mind about where he’d rather be.

  Back in the lounge, Mariner’s eye was caught by the autobiography of the father he’d never known, and alongside it his collection of Wainwright guides to the long distance footpaths and the long shelf of Ordnance Survey maps; some of the few things he’d left behind because they were not part of his life with Anna. Her idea of a good walk was covering the distance between the Bullring and the Mail Box. He tried to remember the last time he’d had a decent walk but couldn’t. All at once it seemed to matter, a great deal. Closing the door behind him he acknowledged that he’d overcome one of his demons. The other one he’d confront in just a couple of days. His therapist would be proud of him.

  Chapter Ten

  Mariner hadn’t intended going to the trial right from the beginning, he wouldn’t be needed right away, but something drew him to it. Packing an overnight bag, he drove down to Reading first thing on the Monday morning and checked into a small and modest hotel close to the city centre. From there he could walk to the court. The murder of a Member of Parliament was always going to be a high-profile case, and the law courts, modern and sleek as most were these days, were throbbing when he arrived, and security was painstaking.

  ‘Tom?’ The first familiar person Mariner saw on his way in was Felicity
Fitzgibbon, his aunt, by marriage anyway. As Mariner wouldn’t be required on the first day, he joined her in the gallery. ‘How’s Nelson doing?’ she wanted to know. It was she who had talked Mariner into taking on the animal.

  ‘He’s keeping my sergeant out of trouble,’ Mariner told her.

  Mariner wasn’t sure how he’d react to seeing McCrae again, the man who’d had such a devastating impact on his life, but he felt nothing. It was as if it had all happened to someone else. It was a disappointing experience.

  McCrae, Mariner noted, was wearing just the right appearance for a man pleading diminished responsibility. His skin was pallid and his eyes carried a haunted look as he gazed straight ahead throughout. His ginger hair had grown longer and unruly, and his neck was scrawny in a shirt that looked a couple of sizes too big. The grandeur of the court room, combined with months on remand, had diminished him, so that it was hard to imagine him as the man who could have wreaked havoc on so many lives. The defeated exterior would do nothing to harm his case. It was likely that the jury would find some sympathy for a man who had served his country and visibly paid the price. Even he, Mariner, sometimes found it hard to reconcile what had happened and could imagine falling for McCrae’s charms all over again. Louise Byrne would have a tough job on her hands.

  In her opening speech, she was impressive. ‘As the evidence will show, there is little doubt that Kenneth McCrae killed four innocent people in cold blood; Sir Geoffrey and Lady Diana Ryland, their chauffeur, Joseph O’Connor, and Lady Eleanor Ryland. He also attempted to murder his own stepbrother, Detective Inspector Tom Mariner, whom he believed was competing against him to inherit his mother’s estate. His defence lawyers will tell you that Mr McCrae was a man suffering from mental illness as a direct result of serving his country in the armed forces. They will tell you that when he committed these heinous crimes he was not of sound mind.

  ‘But these crimes were planned and executed with such attention to detail, and with such care — so as to leave behind no trace of evidence — that they could only have been committed by a man who was thinking clearly and rationally. The only reason Kenneth McCrae was found out was because he believed that he’d got away with it. That wasn’t mental illness, it was arrogance — pure and simple. And the motive for these murders was greed — plain and simple. Kenneth McCrae had recently learned the identity of his birth mother, a woman who, in contrast to him, lived a privileged life of comfort and wealth. McCrae wanted that life for himself. A scheme of extortion foundered so he used the other option, to kill his birth mother and her loved ones in order to contest the will and profit from their deaths. Had he succeeded in his plan, Kenneth McCrae would have been a wealthy man. And that was his sole motivation. Kenneth McCrae knew what he wanted and saw an opportunity to get it. His plan was logical and straightforward— complex only in its execution and attention to detail. It took a man of sound mind and strong nerve to carry out his plan so faultlessly and I assert that Kenneth McCrae was entirely rational throughout.’