Blood of the Innocents

by Collett, Chris

  ‘He seems relaxed enough talking about Yasmin. On balance, I think he’s telling the truth. And it will be easy enough to check out his story with this Dan.’

  ‘They’ve had the whole drive back here to get their stories straight.’

  Knox followed up by talking to Dan, who was able to confirm Lewis’s version of events in every detail. And though the occupants were a blur, Lee’s Grand Vitara could be picked out on motorway CCTV, passing Bromsgrove at 4.09 on that Tuesday afternoon.

  In all probability they’d drawn another blank and Mariner could reasonably have taken the rest of the evening off to help out Anna. But he chose not to.

  Instead, he went back to Finlay.

  ‘Is there any way of knowing the content of Lee’s last message, even if Yasmin deleted it afterwards?’

  ‘There is one deleted message: the last one received, which would have been it. As I said before, the ghosting is there. But there’s no way of knowing what that message said.’ So they had Lee’s word that the text was calling off the meeting. For all they knew he could have been calling to confirm it.

  ‘If she got the message from Lee, why did she still go there?’ Knox wanted to know.

  ‘We still don’t know for certain that she did,’ said Mariner. ‘All we know for sure is that she got off the train again.’

  ‘And her phone found its way to the bridge,’ said Millie.

  ‘But supposing she did go to the bridge,’ Mariner said. ‘Say, somehow, she misunderstood what Lee had said. What would she do when he didn’t turn up?’

  ‘I’d expect her to wait around a bit, then when it’s clear he’s not coming, go back to the train station.’

  ‘Unless she saw it was the opportunity she’d been waiting for,’ said Mariner. ‘She’s getting grief at home and with her friends. Suddenly she’s in a position where she’s accountable to no one. Her mum thinks she’s with Suzanne. Her dad’s far enough away not to be giving her much thought. A window opens up of a few hours when no one’s going to miss her: a chance to get away.’

  ‘On a West Midlands travel card?’ Knox was doubtful.

  ‘Don’t forget that this is all at about the same time Ricky is killed on that very spot. We’ve thought about Ricky witnessing something and being killed for it, but what about if Yasmin saw what happened to Ricky and it scared her into running away.’

  ‘Which brings us back to where we came in last Wednesday: where has she gone?’ Mariner got up from where he’d been sitting, massaging his temples to ease the headache he was developing. ‘Potentially, we’ve got several people at the reservoir at that time and now we have photographs to go with them. Let’s go and talk to Lily again, see if we can prompt her into remembering anything new.’

  The air felt as if it was closing in on them as Knox drove them back to St Clare’s, armed now with photographs of Yasmin, Lee, Mohammed Akram and Shaun Pryce. Dusk was a couple of hours away but the sky had dulled to a misty grey and, when they got out of the car, Mariner noticed his shirt speckled with tiny storm flies. He was hoping that Lily would recognise at least one of the photographs, but she simply shook her head at each of them.

  ‘Are you saying you don’t know?’ Mariner asked.

  ‘No. I’m saying it’s not him.’

  ‘None of them? You’re sure?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘Well, thanks for looking.’ It was not what he wanted to hear.

  ‘Not at all.’ Lily smiled. ‘You were lucky to catch me again, Inspector. I shan’t be here for much longer.’

  ‘Oh?’

  She beamed with pride. ‘I’ve won a competition. Twenty-five thousand pounds.’

  Mariner was impressed. ‘That’s fantastic. What competition was that?’ Going over to the little table in her room, she handed him a letter. It was the sort of ‘Congratulations! You have been selected to receive one of our stunning prizes’ variety of junk mail that every household receives on a weekly basis. All it required in return was that the recipient sign up to a monthly magazine to be entered into a prize draw.

  ‘Lily, this isn’t—’ Mariner began gently, but Nora caught his eye and gave a tiny, warning shake of the head.

  ‘I’m going to buy a nice little flat,’ Lily went on, enthusiastically. ‘And I’m going to have a party for all my family and friends too. You must come, Inspector.’

  ‘I’d love to,’ said Mariner, with a sudden sinking feeling.

  Nora showed them out of the building. ‘I know what you’re thinking and yes, it’s true, she does have days when she’s confused, but not every day. She still saw what she saw.’

  ‘I know.’ But now Mariner was beginning to wonder exactly what it was that Lily saw. On the way home, the pain that had been moving round his skull throughout most of the day began to tighten like a vice, as thoughts bounced around his head, seeking out connections. He considered again whether he should go to Anna’s but something stopped him. What he needed was some time on his own to think. In the cottage, he washed back a couple of painkillers, sat back in the armchair and closed his eyes.

  Mariner was woken at around midnight by what he at first thought were fireworks: these days, especially in summer, the universal way to celebrate any special event by waking all the neighbours. But the air had grown stickier still, and the next rumble he heard was preceded by the unmistakable flicker of lightning. The storm crept slowly on to the city like a slothful beast, grumbling and complaining, building in strength until the thunder shook the house and lightning flashed with dazzling intensity. Then the rain came, pounding on the water and trees like no rain Mariner had heard before. He leaned on the sill of the open window to breathe it in. Mesmerised by the cool freshness after the weeks of intolerable heat, Mariner took his keys from the shelf and stepped outside into a puddle that covered his shoes, and just walked. Shining under the streetlights, the gutters had become rivers, gardens vast ornamental ponds, as the water sought to find an outlet through the hard, dry earth.

  Within seconds, his clothes were soaked through and his hair plastered to his head, but the heavy drops beat soothingly on his head and shoulders as he walked the deserted streets, while the storm raged overhead, before finally admitting defeat and moving off to terrorise elsewhere. As the rain weakened to a light drizzle, Mariner let himself back into the house, where he stripped off his wet clothes in the hall, climbed the stairs and collapsed into a restless, dream-ridden sleep as dawn was beginning to prise open the sky.

  He was woken from a deep, heavy sleep by the phone. It was Fiske. ‘Yasmin Akram,’ he said abruptly. ‘There’s been a development.’

  Chapter Fifteen

  Not ‘breakthrough’, Mariner noted, but ‘development’. It didn’t sound good. Fiske, playing the drama queen again, couldn’t just come out and tell him. But it was serious, judging from the number of people who had been contacted and brought in on this Sunday morning. With everyone crammed into the small and stifling briefing room, Fiske broke it to them. ‘The body of a young Asian girl has been found in the river that runs through Kingsmead Park,’ he said. ‘We think it’s Yasmin Akram.’

  Missing person to murder victim, in two simple sentences. Murmurs of disgust rippled round the room, an odious Mexican wave.

  ‘She was discovered early this morning by a park ranger.’

  ‘How close is that to where her phone was found?’ someone asked.

  ‘It’s about a mile away, down from the station but on the other side of Birchill Road. We’ll be setting up an incident room as soon as identity is confirmed.’ He turned to Mariner. ‘DI Mariner, who has been investigating her disappearance, will continue to lead on the ground.’

  The flash storms had caused chaos across the whole of the Midlands area. Towns along the Severn, like Bewdley that had seemed to be almost permanently under water last autumn and spring had fallen victim yet again. And in Birmingham itself, they drove through streets that were still several inches under water. But the freshness the rain brough
t was short-lived. It continued to be a sticky and stormy day; the sun a white smear against the grey-yellow sky, the peculiar half-light threatening more showers.

  It was a slow drive down past the railway station and to the park, in a convoy of cars that inched its way through patches of deep flooding. In the car park, a small group had already gathered and uniform were having a nightmare task keeping kids away from what had become an instant water park. ‘Who found the body?’ Mariner asked the nearest officer.

  ‘Andy Pritchard.’ He pointed over to a young lad in khaki shirt, trousers and high waders, standing isolated from the pack. ‘Park ranger. There’s a couple of them cycle around all the local parks, dealing with vandalism, that kind of stuff. Today he’s on his own.’

  ‘The Lone Ranger,’ observed Knox.

  ‘He’s pretty shaken up,’ the officer added.

  ‘Who wouldn’t be?’

  Andy Pritchard had one of the worst cases of acne Mariner had ever seen. He was virtually hiding under the peak of his green ranger’s cap. Nearby, two more officers were transferring soggy books and papers into evidence bags. A saturated, dark-blue back-pack lay at their feet. Mariner recognised it from the description they’d had of Yasmin’s. Putting on waders, he and Knox went with Pritchard to where he’d found the body, in a remote corner of the park.

  ‘I saw the books first of all,’ he told them as they sloshed through water eight inches deep, ‘floating along on the surface. I couldn’t work out where they would have come from. Then I saw the bag. So I went upstream to see if there was anything else, and that was when I noticed what I thought were clothes caught on the tree roots on the other bank. When I had a closer look—’ he lifted the binoculars, ‘—I could see that it was something more.’ They had come to the main channel of the river: although there was no distinguishing it from the pond they’d just waded through. Stopping abruptly, Pritchard pointed across to the opposite bank a couple of yards away, where they could now see a dark, sodden bundle of clothing, long black hair fanning out behind. ‘Then I saw her face.’

  ‘Now I’m a believer,’ muttered Knox under his breath.

  As if to confirm Pritchard’s story, the water suddenly bulged, turning the body and for a split second they looked into what was unmistakably the pale, lifeless face of Yasmin Akram.

  ‘What time was this?’ asked Mariner.

  ‘About seven o’clock. We work dawn till dusk in the summer months.’

  ‘But you didn’t call it in until nearly eight,’ said Knox. ‘Why was that?’

  Pritchard flushed. ‘I wasn’t sure what to do. I thought about trying to get across to her but the water was too deep and too fast flowing. I thought I might lose my footing. It’s gone down a bit since then. I thought the best thing was to call you.’

  ‘It was the best thing,’ said Mariner, though preserving this scene was going to be a joke. ‘Is there a way round on the other side?’ He looked up at the steep embankment, knowing the answer already.

  Pritchard shook his head. ‘This is the closest we can get. You’ll have to wade across.’

  Here, the main course of the stream was six or seven feet wide. From where they stood, the level had risen to Mariner’s knees, and now and again he had to lean into the powerful current.

  ‘OK. Thanks, Andy, we’ll take it from here,’ said Mariner. ‘If you go back up to the road someone will take a full statement from you.’

  Pritchard on his way, Mariner turned to Knox. ‘Want to try and get a bit nearer?’

  ‘After you, boss,’ said Knox.

  They edged out towards the middle of the fast-flowing brown water, dodging the debris that rushed by, until the level was up to their thighs. The floor of the stream was soft and yielding and a sudden surge caught them unawares. Knox staggered, and almost fell, but found his footing again. ‘The flow is uneven,’ said Mariner, bracing himself. ‘We just need to get the timing right to get across the deepest section.’ He watched and waited. ‘OK - now!’

  Taking advantage of the next lull, they pushed across the mid-stream, grabbing at sodden vegetation to steady themselves in the shallower water on the opposite bank. Now they were standing directly over the deceptively animated body as it danced and swayed on the water, the clothing grasped firmly by the exposed roots of an overhanging willow. Despite the bloating effects, there was no doubt about the identity. Several dark blemishes on Yasmin’s face threw up the possibility that her death had been accompanied by violence. For Shanila and Mohammed Akram, the agonising wait was over, but about to be replaced by something infinitely worse. Millie would be dealing with that. She was probably there right now. Mariner forced himself to not think about it.

  Straining to keep his feet in the surging water, Mariner looked around him. It was unlikely, as far as he could see, that Yasmin would have been put in here. He voiced the thought to Knox. ‘To get to this point she’d have had to be carried the way we came through the park, which, in the sort of weather we’ve been having, would have been busy on into the late evening, and far too public. The only time to have done it would have been under cover of night.’

  ‘Even then it would have been risky,’ said Knox. ‘People walk through this park to get from the main Pershore Road through to Birchill Road.’

  ‘We need to look further up.’

  They were hailed by a shout from the other side of the stream. SOCO had arrived in overalls and waders. Mariner talked them across the river.

  ‘It’s definitely her?’ asked DC Chris Sharp.

  ‘No question,’ said Mariner.

  Sharp shook his head sadly. ‘Trouble is now, that after last night’s rain, all your physical evidence will have been washed away.’

  ‘No kidding?’ said Mariner. ‘Just do what you can, eh?’

  Mariner and Knox left SOCO to do their work. Battling against the rushing torrent and clutching at the overhanging bushes, they staggered upstream as far as they could get, to where the stream emerged from a tunnel beneath the road.

  Knox looked up towards the parapet: a brick wall topped with waist-high railings. ‘She could have gone in here,’ he said. ‘It would only take a couple of minutes. Stop the car, open the boot and tip her over the edge, she then gets carried downstream.’

  ‘It’s a busy road,’ said Mariner. ‘Late at night would be easier, but you’d still run the risk of someone driving past and seeing.’ Looking up on the other side of the road, he noticed they’d come out opposite St Clare’s retirement home.

  ‘This stream must connect to the reservoir,’ he said.

  Knox foraged in his pocket and produced the rather crumpled map. ‘You’re right, boss. It looks as if we’re just further downstream from the wooden footbridge.’ Where Ricky Skeet was killed and where Yasmin had arranged a rendezvous with Lewis Everett.

  ‘How does the river progress down to here?’

  Knox traced a finger down the map and Mariner couldn’t help noticing how chewed his fingernail was. ‘It looks as if it must be under the ground, through some kind of tunnel,’ Knox said.

  ‘And above the ground it’s all green, so more of what we can see: rough woodland, and pretty impenetrable at that. And the river doesn’t surface at all?’

  They both studied the map. ‘Doesn’t look like it, boss. The next place it appears on the map is at the spillway next to the reservoir.’ Knox looked up. ‘You think she could have been put in there?’

  ‘It’s where we found her phone.’

  ‘She travelled all this way underground?’ Knox was doubtful.

  ‘Let’s go and have a look. And get hold of someone who knows more about the river.’

  Millie had been adamant at the time. She could handle this on her own. The Akrams had got to know her, and Shanila, in particular, she felt, trusted her. But now she was here it was different. She’d spent the drive over going through all the different possible strategies for breaking the news; set pieces she’d previously rehearsed only during training. Prepare the way but
don’t prolong the agony, use their names and make it personal. She needed none of it. Taking one look at Millie’s face, Shanila knew why she’d come. ‘You’ve found her, haven’t you? Oh God, you’ve found her!’ Before she let out a horrible, gut-wrenching howl, that went on as long and as hard as her lungs would allow.

  The reservoir had undergone subtle changes since their last visit: where it hadn’t been cut down, the foliage had been beaten flat; there was a higher tide mark; and the rank, sulphurous smell had been replaced by a fresher one of damp plant life. Looking more closely they could see that the channel down the middle was moving faster and a torrent of water gushed noisily down the spillway. From the bridge the damage was clearer. The wooden gates, there to control the flow of water, had been cast aside and lay in a jumbled heap at the base of the concrete shelf, along with bricks that had broken loose from the mouth of the half collapsed tunnel.

  ‘It’s flowing pretty fast now, fast enough to take a pretty big object with it,’ Mariner said.

  ‘But you saw how it was on the day Hewitt brought us here. It was barely a trickle because we’d had no rain. It would hardly have carried a feather down with it.’

  ‘But Hewitt also said something about the water collecting and releasing every so often. Maybe the day Yasmin was killed was one of those days. We need to find out more about this.’

  ‘Mr Mariner?’ The elderly gentleman who approached them looked as if he was almost ready to join Lily in St Clare’s. He came unsteadily along the path, using a stick for support. When he got almost to them he proffered a hand. ‘Eric Dwyer,’ he said. ‘One of your colleagues asked me to meet you here. I’m the chairman of the local river conservation group.’ Dwyer’s cheeks were weathered a rosy pink, but much of the rest of his face was obscured by glasses and a pair of extravagant mutton chop whiskers.

  ‘So you know all about this reservoir,’ said Mariner, shaking the bony hand.