Blood of the Innocents

by Collett, Chris

  ‘Be as unpleasant as you like,’ said Mariner.

  What Mariner was less prepared for was the mob of reporters already assembled outside the entrance to Granville Lane. News had travelled fast and they were not a happy throng. Knox and Mariner got out of the car just as Fiske appeared at the main doors to read a prepared statement. ‘We will do everything within our power to bring the killer of Ricky Skeet to justice,’ he concluded.

  ‘Is that the same kind of everything you did to find him when he went missing?’ someone called out.

  ‘We followed all possible lines of enquiry. I have no doubt that my officers did all they possibly could to prevent this situation from occurring.’

  ‘Mrs Skeet doesn’t seem to agree with you on that.’

  Fiske was getting hot under the collar. ‘Any complaints about the way this enquiry has been handled will be dealt with through the usual channels.’

  ‘Whitewashed, you mean.’

  Mariner signalled to Knox and they slipped round the building and into a side door. Along the corridor they ran into Fiske, making his escape. ‘Bloody press,’ he grumbled.

  ‘Perhaps they’ve got a point this time,’ said Mariner.

  ‘And what the hell’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘We didn’t exactly pull out all the stops for Ricky, did we?’ Mariner reminded him.

  ‘Given his profile we followed the correct procedures.’

  ‘I’ll tell his mum that. I’m sure she’ll feel greatly reassured. “Your son’s dead, but given his profile, we did everything by the book, Colleen.”’ Deep down, Mariner recognised that he was more angry with himself than he was with Fiske. If he’d made more of a stand against the arrogant bastard instead of caving in at the beginning this might not have happened. ‘We’ve got a kid we hardly looked for dead and another we’ve wasted energy on looking for who might have eloped with her lover.’

  ‘We got it wrong. Sometimes it happens.’

  ‘You can say that again.’

  Millie was up in the office. ‘You heard?’ Mariner asked.

  Her face said it. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Yeah. But we have to turn our attention back to Yasmin. There’s always the chance that the two cases aren’t linked. I know the probability has slumped a bit, but still the only two people we can definitely place down at the reservoir at any time are Shaun Pryce and Ricky Skeet. Yasmin’s phone was there but that’s all. We still don’t know for sure that she was too: let’s deal with the reality first, before we go off speculating about other things.’ She’d been gone more than a week now and their one breakthrough had led them nowhere.

  ‘Let’s see the CCTV footage again. We might be able to establish if Yasmin dropped her phone, and I want to be absolutely sure that it’s her getting on that train.’

  ‘But we’ve been over that, boss,’ Knox groused.

  Brushing aside his complaints they played the tape yet again. They watched as Yasmin boarded the train and the door closed behind her, as on every previous occasion. As the train began to draw away, Knox switched the tape off.

  ‘That’s definitely Yasmin,’ said Millie, swivelling on her chair to face Mariner. ‘She looks right into the camera.’

  ‘And no sign of her dropping her phone,’ said Mariner.

  ‘But she started running from the top of the road. She could have dropped it anywhere before she comes into view.’ Her disappointment was tangible.

  ‘Well, we may soon find out about that, anyway. Her phone should be back from—’

  ‘Look, boss.’ Tony Knox had suddenly become animated. While Mariner and Millie were talking he’d turned the tape on again, watching it with half an eye.

  Mariner turned his attention back to the screen as Knox wound back the film at speed. ‘But we’ve already seen—’

  ‘Look, for Christ sake!’ At the point at which Yasmin boarded the train, Knox pressed the play button again. The train began to move off, and as it did so, a door further down the carriage reopened, a figure appeared and after a second’s hesitation, leaped from the moving train on to the platform. It stumbled and almost fell before regaining its feet and, when it straightened, was unmistakable.

  ‘She got off the train,’ said Knox, with a degree of satisfaction.

  ‘Nearly killing herself in the process,’ observed Mariner. ‘Christ. Why didn’t we think of that?’

  ‘Think of what?’ They were so caught up in their find that Fiske’s voice startled them. Sneaking up on them was becoming a speciality.

  ‘Yasmin Akram had us all fooled,’ said Mariner. ‘Play it back, Tony.’

  ‘What ag—?’ Mariner glared at him and dutifully Knox reran the tape yet again. As they watched, Mariner provided the commentary. ‘She runs for the train, giving her friends - and us - the impression that she was going as usual, but gets off again before the train pulls out. He looked up at Fiske, calculating how far he could go. ‘She never even got as far as the university.’

  A muscle bulged in Fiske’s jaw. ‘Are you trying to make some kind of point, Mariner?’

  ‘Only that perhaps we could have saved ourselves considerable time and resources if we’d been a bit less hasty with the search, sir,’ said Mariner calmly.

  But Fiske wasn’t so easily beaten. ‘We did the right thing based on the information available at the time,’ he replied, icily. ‘Not forgetting that in the course of those actions, we’ve exposed a sex attacker operating in that area.’

  ‘Oh, very good, sir.’ Knox grinned inanely, before realising, along with everyone else, that the pun had been unintentional.

  ‘Given that new information has come to light, I’d have thought your time would more usefully be spent following it up rather than playing games of “I told you so”.’ And with that, Fiske turned and walked out.

  ‘Fucking moron,’ muttered Knox. Mariner should really have reminded him about respect for senior officers, but it was good to have Tony Knox back on the planet again, however fleetingly. Instead, he brought them back to task. ‘So why does Yasmin get off the train?’

  ‘Because she has other plans?’

  Having recovered from her leap from the moving train, they watched as Yasmin walked along the platfrom, towards the footbridge and off the screen. ‘What it doesn’t tell us is where she went next.’

  ‘Except that there’s a camera positioned at the back of the station too,’ Knox remembered. ‘It would be worth checking out the tape from that now. She’s going towards the footbridge. She could be crossing the line.’

  ‘In more ways than one.’

  ‘Yasmin’s just full of surprises, isn’t she?’

  ‘Let’s get the tape.’

  Yasmin did indeed appear on the footage from the back of the station, descending the pedestrian bridge and moving across the screen towards the station car park, but that was the extent of the camera’s coverage.

  ‘So where’s she off to?’

  ‘Suddenly, it’s not beyond the realms of possibility that Yasmin dropped her phone at the reservoir.’

  But as Knox went to switch off the TV, Mariner spotted something else on the screen. ‘Look at that; bottom right-hand corner.’ Next to the kerb was the offside wing and part of the bonnet of a dark vehicle.

  ‘A Merc,’ said Knox. ‘You can tell from that radiator grille.’

  ‘Is there anyone in it?’ asked Millie, as they all squinted at the screen.

  ‘Hard to see; it’s from the wrong angle. Can we home in on that licence plate?’

  They could, but it was still too blurry to be of any use.

  ‘Mohammed Akram drives a black Mercedes,’ Mariner reminded them.

  ‘That’s neat. Maybe Yasmin got off the train again because she saw someone she knew.’

  The time on the corner of the screen said: 16.29. ‘How accurate is that?’

  ‘According to Akram, he’d been to the printer and by half past four was on the motorway on his way up to Bradford by that time,’ said Mariner.r />
  ‘Is the printer in the city?’ asked Knox.

  ‘I assumed it was in Sparkhill, near the school. TMR Printers, it’s called. It was on the prospectus Hasan Sheron showed us.’

  Knox reached for the Yellow Pages and flicked through until he found ‘printers’.

  ‘Here we are: TMR Reprographics. Two branches, one in the city and another—’ He looked up for dramatic effect. ‘On Birch Close.’

  ‘Shit,’ said Millie.

  ‘Thanks for that valuable contribution,’ Knox said. But he did seem to be joking.

  ‘And from there it’s just a short drive up to the station where the CCTV picks up his car,’ said Mariner. ‘If it is his car.’

  ‘And it would be no problem to get on to the motorway from here. There’s nothing stopping him from going back out through the city centre and up to Spaghetti Junction, or even up the Wolverhampton Road to the M5, then M6. The fact that Yasmin stayed for the art club and left school late would have helped him out. He’d also probably have known that she was on her own so it would have been the ideal place if he didn’t want to confront Yasmin in front of her friends, or back at home.’

  ‘So he could easily have picked her up from the station and taken her with him.’

  ‘What time did he check in with the family in Bradford?’ Knox wanted to know.

  ‘Not until nearly eight. But he says he stopped off at Sandbach Services for something to eat on his way and that there were roadworks on the M62, which there are.’

  ‘It doesn’t rule him out, though. It’s still a bloody big coincidence if he was in the area at all at around that time.’

  ‘An appeal for the driver on local news can rule out anyone else.’

  ‘When did he say he’d confronted Yasmin about the pills?’ Millie asked.

  ‘On Friday. He said they’d sorted it out. But there might have been unfinished business.’

  ‘What if Akram had talked Yasmin into going up to Bradford with him?’

  Mariner was dubious. ‘Without telling her mother what was going on?’

  ‘They probably wouldn’t have wanted her to know about the contraception.’

  ‘But that doesn’t tie in with Akram forbidding Yasmin to go to Suzanne’s. He couldn’t have known that his wife would give in and let her go.’

  ‘He might know his wife better than she thinks.’

  ‘The receipt from the service station only indicates a meal for one.’

  Mariner sighed. ‘OK, folks, we’re wandering into the realms of speculation again. Let’s get back to the facts.’ Just the facts, Jack.

  ‘We have Ricky, Yasmin and Akram all in the same area at the same time,’ said Knox. ‘That’s fact.’

  ‘Only if it is Akram’s car.’

  ‘And I still don’t get where Ricky comes into this,’ Millie said.

  ‘He might not,’ said Mariner. ‘We could still be looking at two entirely unconnected events. Maybe all Ricky did was to find Yasmin’s phone at the station and take it with him to the reservoir, where he was attacked and he dropped it, simple as that. Meanwhile, Yasmin, unaware that she’s even lost her phone, meets her dad at the station.’

  ‘Are we absolutely certain that Yasmin and Ricky didn’t know each other?’ Knox asked.

  ‘I just don’t see how they would,’ said Millie.

  ‘But we don’t know for sure that they didn’t,’ Knox insisted, the tension in the room thickening.

  ‘They don’t need to have done. If Ricky was in the wrong place at the wrong time, Akram could have just jumped to the wrong conclusion.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Maybe the phone does provide the link. How about if Ricky found the phone, as we thought. Yasmin’s home number must be on it. Ricky phones that number to establish its owner, gets Akram who arranges to meet him to collect it. Akram’s at the printer, Ricky knows the reservoir, so they arrange to meet at a mutually convenient spot. Akram is still wound up about Yasmin being on the pill, jumps to the wrong conclusion about Ricky having her phone and loses it.’

  Knox’s facial expression fell just short of contempt. ‘That’s a hell of a conclusion to jump to. A kid finds his daughter’s phone so he assumes he’s having sex with her?’

  ‘We don’t know what’s on that phone.’ Millie stood her ground. ‘There might be some interesting messages. Could be that Ricky tried blackmailing Akram: perhaps he demanded money before giving it up. Akram’s already pissed off about all the hassle he’s been getting. This could’ve been the final straw.’

  Seeing Knox’s colour rising, Mariner spoke up. ‘It’s an interesting idea, but knowing Ricky, I’m not sure that he’d have done that kind of thing,’ he said, calmly.

  Millie shrugged. ‘He’d run away from home. I didn’t think that was his kind of thing, either. And if he wasn’t planning on going back he was going to need more money.’

  ‘So why did Paul Hewitt find the phone still lying there?’ Knox almost sneered. ‘Akram would have taken it with him.’

  ‘Ricky was in a bad way, wasn’t he? The attack must have been violent, impulsive even. Maybe he just lost it and in the heat of the moment he dropped the phone and it got forgotten. He’d have been pretty caught up in what he was doing. Or somebody disturbed him.’

  ‘Down there?’

  ‘OK. He looked up and saw Lily watching him.’

  ‘I doubt that he’d see her from that distance,’ said Mariner. ‘And even so, if the phone was what this was all about, he’d hardly leave it behind, would he?’

  ‘Or go in bloodstained clothing back to the station to meet his daughter.’

  ‘He was going away overnight. He would have had a change of clothing in the car.’

  ‘That’s crazy. If that is what happened, Ricky would have had hardly any time to find the phone, alert Akram and arrange to meet him. I’d say it was virtually impossible. ’ Knox glared at Millie, who refused to be intimidated. It was a stand-off.

  ‘And I think we’re getting a bit carried away here, folks,’ Mariner intervened, quietly. ‘We need to look at it from every angle, but this isn’t getting us any nearer to knowing where Yasmin’s gone.’

  ‘I think we need to check her dad’s movements up in Bradford,’ Millie insisted. ‘If she has simply been spirited away, it would explain why he didn’t seem so anxious at the start.’

  ‘Look into that, will you?’ said Mariner. ‘It remains a possibility, but one of many. At the moment all we have is Yasmin’s phone, Ricky dead and Yasmin vanished.’

  ‘Like one of those lateral thinking problems,’ said Knox.

  Millie pulled a face. ‘I was always rubbish at them.’

  ‘I need some fresh air,’ said Knox.

  When he’d left the room, Millie asked the question Mariner had been dreading. ‘Are you sure it’s not me?’

  ‘Tony just takes the job seriously,’ said Mariner, brushing it off.

  ‘Implying that we don’t?’ She had a point.

  Mariner was saved from making any further crass remarks by the news that Charlie Glover was back from the Pathologist’s office with the preliminary findings.

  Chapter Twelve

  Glover cut to the chase. ‘Everything so far says the blood on the grass is definitely Ricky’s,’ he said. ‘It was a frenzied attack involving repeated blows to the skull with a blunt instrument. It would have been messy.’

  ‘So the clothing the killer was wearing—’

  ‘—would be pretty well covered in blood.’

  ‘According to Lily, it was some kind of brown suit.’

  ‘Yeah, I’ve spoken to her. Her eyesight seems pretty sharp and what she’s told us seems accurate so I think we can go with that. So the brown suit would have needed to go to the cleaner’s or even more likely to have been destroyed. Hard to explain to Sketchley’s why your suit is covered in someone else’s blood.’

  ‘Have we got a time of death?’

  ‘Thanks to the weather the body was
pretty ripe, as you saw. But they’re saying it’s been there about seven days. That would put it at sometime late on Tuesday afternoon.’

  Lining it up nicely with the last time that Yasmin was seen alive. ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Only what Lily’s already said: she’s pretty certain that the man she saw had dark hair.’ Like Mohammed Akram, thought Mariner. Did he own a brown suit? ‘It could, of course, depend on the angle of the sun at that time,’ Glover went on. ‘If the sun was behind or overhead it could be the one detail that she’s mistaken on.’

  ‘It’s possible,’ agreed Mariner. ‘What about Colleen’s boyfriend, Steve?’

  ‘We’re checking him out, but so far his alibi looks sound. He was still at work.’

  ‘That’s a pity.’

  ‘Yeah, isn’t it? And so that you know, Ronnie Skeet was in Wolverhampton.’

  ‘Any thoughts on how it played out?’ Mariner asked.

  ‘Well, we’ve got blood on the grass by the bridge, but around that, nothing, and no sign of disturbance. However, working back from where the body was found is a kind of tunnel through the grass, leading almost back to the bridge, and also smeared with blood. It makes it look as if Ricky was killed at the bridge, then his killer, probably thinking he was dead, carried him into the long grass and dumped him, coming back to the path to cover his tracks. It looks as if Ricky could have dragged himself further through the grass, creating a kind of tunnel, to the point where we found him.’

  ‘Christ, so he wasn’t dead.’

  ‘And crawling even further from the path did his killer a favour by delaying the discovery of his body. We’re continuing the search in the direction he was going: to see if he was making for anything in particular. But he may just have been trying to get away. And you were right about the reason for Ricky being there,’ Glover added. ‘I asked Colleen. His dad did used to take him fishing on the reservoir, but not for years. We still haven’t found his bike, but did they tell you about the Anderson?’

  ‘I didn’t get time to check in yesterday.’

  ‘Further round still from where Ricky’s body was found we came across an old Anderson shelter. From all the empty cans and crisp packets it looks as if Ricky had been there before.’