At seven-forty, a top of the range Mercedes slid smoothly past McGinley, the only occupant a male driver, and as it disappeared around the leafy corner McGinley caught sight of the rear personalized plate: DAK 4. Perfect. Taking what he needed from his rucksack, McGinley proceeded back to the house on foot. He was ready to scale the walls if necessary, but there was no need. Hubby had obligingly left the electronic gates open. Tosser. The ‘hers’ Merc, a little SUV crossover, was on the drive, in preparation for the school run.
McGinley strolled past it and around to the back of the house. He sank back as the kitchen door suddenly opened and an exuberant spaniel ran out. Game over, McGinley thought, but the stupid mutt bounded right past him and on to the end of the garden, racing around the shrubs and sniffing after animal trails. McGinley sidled along to the kitchen window and, peering in, his eyes fell on the kind of domestic scene that was being replicated the length of the country. McGinley had seen the photos online, so was prepared for how much Lindsey had changed, but even so, it was hard to reconcile the girl he’d known with the woman before him now. Gone were the panda eye make-up, pale skin and purple lipstick. She looked good for forty-six; slim and gym-toned in tight-fitting jeans and some kind of flowery shirt, her hair was lightened to a fake blonde, and fell to her shoulders. The hair, black and glossy as it was back then, was what McGinley remembered most: that and her tits. They all used to queue up to watch her playing netball in her slightly too tight aertex shirt to see if they could get a glimpse of her nipples.
Lindsey was talking to a boy of about ten or eleven — one son, James — who sat at the breakfast bar, one hand lethargically taking a spoon from a cereal bowl to his mouth, the other cupped around some kind of hand-held gaming toy. In response to her words, but without taking his eyes off the game, the boy got up from the table and slouched out of the room. McGinley chose that moment to make his entrance. Lindsey looked up in astonishment: strike two. McGinley liked the symmetry of repetition. ‘Hello Lindsey,’ he said.
But then she floored him. ‘My God, Glenn McGinley,’ she replied, without missing a beat. Confused, she screwed up her face. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’
Fuck. She really had remembered him. For a moment it nearly threw him off course, until he thought back to the humiliation of her casual abandonment. And now, of course, he’d put her in a position to spoil his plans. Having come this far there was no alternative but to finish it. He raised the gun and watched her eyes widen. ‘Sorry, Lindsey,’ he said, actually meaning it, and he fired twice.
Lowering the weapon, McGinley caught a movement on the edge of his field of vision. The boy had reappeared in the doorway and stood silently terror-struck, staring at him, his eyes spookily similar to his mother’s. McGinley stared back. It was tempting to leave the boy be. The kid would suffer, but he still had his dad; he’d get over it. No matter that he could describe McGinley in detail to the police. Then McGinley noticed the dark stain spreading down the boy’s trouser leg. He’d pissed himself, the little wimp. Suddenly McGinley saw Spencer standing there, shame written across his features, and anger rose up in him. This kid didn’t know he was born. McGinley squeezed the trigger twice more.
Before leaving he walked over and looked down dispassionately at Lindsey’s twisted body, still beautiful if you ignored the dark hole in her chest. And those tits; in other circumstances he’d have been tempted to slide a hand inside her blouse, but the medication had put paid to any inclinations of that nature, and besides, he didn’t know how much time he had. A woman like Lindsey was bound to have some kind of domestic help. He was just rifling through his pockets for his cigarettes when he heard the door open and a voice behind him said, ‘Morning, Mrs . . .’
McGinley turned to see a young man dressed in outdoor work clothes. He’d stopped abruptly, aghast as he took in the scene, and McGinley reckoned he had about three seconds before he dived for his phone. Raising the gun again, he shot the man in the chest, registering the wedding ring as he fell. Shit. This wasn’t in the plan; two more victims he hadn’t factored in. This could get out of hand. For a moment he was frozen to the spot, casting around him, half expecting someone else to appear. Then panic galvanized him and he ran back out through the kitchen door and to the car. Getting his breath back he lit up a cigarette to steady his nerves. He couldn’t afford to lose it now, before the job was finished. What he’d achieved so far was mostly for him, but now he was on a promise. If he didn’t accomplish this last part of it, then it would have all been for nothing. With trembling hands he restarted the car and in minutes was back at the junction, picking up the road where he’d left off.
Chapter Five
DC Millie Khatoon drove carefully through the back streets of West Heath and Longbridge, the only sound in the car was the radio chuntering on low volume in the background. ‘Well, at least the rain’s held off,’ she said eventually, accelerating down the slip road and on to the motorway. ‘Might not be too bad.’
‘Mm,’ Mariner concurred distractedly, noting the clouds above that grew increasingly grey and threatening. He understood that she was making conversation and was only talking about the weather, but he couldn’t see how this could ever be anything but the most appalling day.
‘It’ll be all right, sir,’ she soldiered on. ‘This is the worst bit. After today you’ll be able to, well, you know . . .’ She tailed off and they lapsed into silence once again. Suddenly she said, ‘You do know, boss, that if you ever want to talk . . .’
‘Yes, thanks,’ Mariner cut in, before the embarrassment got too much. He cleared his throat. ‘Have you got a date yet?’ he asked, in the only way he could see of changing the subject. Millie’s promotion to detective sergeant was long overdue in his opinion, and he’d been encouraging her to put in for the necessary exams for months now.
‘Actually I haven’t quite got round to it.’ She was apologetic.
‘Well, you should have done,’ Mariner retorted, a little more sharply than he’d intended. ‘You’re wasting your skills running round after me and Tony Knox. I’ve always said that you’ve got great potential, but you need to make a start.’
‘I know. It’s just — it’s been so busy lately . . .’
‘There’s never an ideal time,’ Mariner reminded her. ‘You’ve just got to get on and do it.’
‘Yes, boss.’ She seemed about to say something else. Mind your own bloody business would have been fair enough. But she left it at that and since Mariner didn’t have anything helpful to add, silence reclaimed the car. A song came on the radio and Millie turned up the volume. Perhaps it was a song she particularly liked or perhaps it was simply a way of removing the necessity for further interaction.
* * *
The A55 was a good fast road, and McGinley had to work hard to resist pushing too hard on the gas. Although anxious to put as much distance between himself and those bodies, the enormity of what he had done was beginning to hit home. Drawing attention to himself now would mean blowing everything completely. So he forced himself to keep a steady speed which enabled him to blend in with the mostly heavy goods traffic that was heading west in the early morning. Once the police had found the bodies and worked out who it was they were looking for, it wouldn’t take them long to identify his car, and then to pick it out on the CCTV that lined his route, but he could live with that. They’d be so fucking delighted with their own brilliance that it would be some time before it occurred to them that that was exactly what he had intended, but he couldn’t let them get to him too soon. He turned on the radio to catch the eight o’clock news, but there was nothing yet to indicate the discovery of his first two victims. All in all, what with the stops to have a piss, and another to get his medication down him, the journey took only just over an hour. Coming into the town he was reminded that Wales isn’t always about male voice choirs and pretty scenery. He headed first for the rounded steel hangar of the ferry port, then, seeing a Lidl supermarket, left the car there while he went into the t
erminal to buy his one-way ticket to Dublin, making sure that he stopped to examine it right in front of a security camera before he ducked out of the building and back to his car.
The supermarket was just opening up, so McGinley took the opportunity to stock up on a few essentials. He broke out in a sweat beside the spirits, but he didn’t have the capacity for carrying bottles yet and he couldn’t succumb. His side was starting to hurt and, standing in the checkout queue, he felt a sudden wave of exhaustion from the night’s activities, but things were starting to get busy around here. He knew it wouldn’t be wise to hang around for too long. Back in the car he wolfed down the last of the bread and cheese, washing it down with some milk and a painkiller accompaniment. A light rain had started to fall so, putting on his waterproof jacket and a woolly hat, he retrieved his pack from the boot, locked the vehicle and set off towards the railway station, dropping the keys into an industrial waste bin along with his ferry ticket.
So far McGinley had been blasé about his visibility, but from now on, if this was going to work, he needed to keep a low profile. Buying his train ticket, he kept his head down under the rim of his hood. He was one of a handful of people at the train station. His fellow passengers were mainly labourers and commuters from the look of it, slaves to conventional working hours, but their presence made it easier. As far as was possible, without drawing attention to himself, he stayed close to other passengers to avoid looking like a man on his own. Now that the thrill of the night before and the early hours had worn off he felt wired and edgy; today was a day full of uncertainties. There was no way of knowing how long the police would take to work things out, or if they would be fooled by his misdirection. Meanwhile, he had to cover as much ground as possible at the mercy of public transport. This was the one day when everything had the potential to go right for him — or very wrong.
* * *
Mariner flinched as an icy drip tumbled from a gap in the wooden rafters high above, smacking the back of his neck and sending a shiver through him. He breathed in ancient wood and incense. Aside from the rain drumming on the roof of the little country church, the congregation was hushed, the customary pause allowing everyone his or her personal thoughts of the deceased. Mariner could have stood there for days and it wouldn’t have been time enough to revisit the memories, or to conduct the necessary mental and emotional self-flagellation. Nine weeks on, and still his imagination could not stretch to fully comprehend the fact that Anna — bright, passionate and full of life — lay, at this moment, cold and motionless in that insubstantial box in front of the altar, and that he was never going to see her again. The muscles of his mouth trembled involuntarily and sucking in breath he clamped his lips together to avert the spasm. From the corner of his eye he saw Millie cast him a surreptitious glance. Silently he willed her not to reach out and touch him; a comforting arm on his right now and he’d completely fall apart. Then mercifully the two minutes were up, the vicar gave the blessing and, as k.d. lang’s rendition of Leonard Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah’ echoed around the chamber, the mourners began to stir, picking up belongings and working their way slowly out of the tiny chapel and into the rain. Mariner stuffed the order of service into his inside jacket pocket as he shuffled along the pew, noticing for no reason that Millie’s was the only brown face here.
They stood then in the sodden grass while the burial was conducted, amid all the clichés about the gods crying down. Mariner wasn’t one of those who went forward to cast earth onto the lowered coffin. If anyone had asked he would have said he didn’t believe in the symbolism. ‘That’s crap,’ Anna tormented him, inside his head. ‘You just don’t want to get your hands dirty.’
‘It was a good service.’ Tony Knox fell into step beside him as they made their way out beneath the canopy of trees that provided some shelter from the wet April afternoon. Mariner didn’t know what could possibly constitute a ‘good’ funeral for a woman cut down so young, but he appreciated what his sergeant was trying to do, so he nodded in agreement anyway. ‘Still can’t believe it though, even now,’ Knox went on.
‘Me neither.’ Millie grimaced and shook her head.
‘Tom? Tom Mariner?’ They turned as one to see a man in his forties coming towards them, blond and dark-eyed; he’d been among the chief mourners in the front row of the congregation. Dr Gareth. Mariner had always said it with sarcasm and realized now that he didn’t even know the full name of the man who had effectively snatched Anna from him. Unfairly perhaps, Mariner thought ‘Dr Gareth’ suited him, implying as it did some kind of false and shallow familiarity. Looking towards him now, Mariner did a double take. At Gareth’s shoulder was a young woman, petite with cropped brown hair, at first glance a ringer for Anna. Gareth’s sister? Mariner didn’t think so. He was carrying a small cardboard box. ‘I thought you might want to have this,’ he said, holding it out to Mariner. ‘There was some stuff of yours. I thought you might like it back.’
Taking the box from him, Mariner lifted one of the flaps and peered inside. Anna’s face appeared before his eyes. ‘Ta da!’ she cried, showing off the russet-coloured cashmere scarf he’d given her, their last Christmas together. His gift buying had never been very sophisticated, but this spontaneous effort had been an unqualified success and she’d worn it often.
Tony Knox must have seen his face and recognized the tactlessness of Gareth’s gesture. He stepped forward to take the box. ‘Here, boss, let me . . .’
‘No, it’s fine,’ said Mariner, his voice husky with emotion. He forced himself to look at Gareth. ‘Thanks.’
‘No probs.’ With a brief smile, Gareth turned away. The young woman tucked her hand into the crook of his arm and together they headed off across the churchyard.
‘Christ,’ said Knox. ‘Is that his new bird? He doesn’t hang about, does he?’
‘Who knows,’ Mariner said, distracted, closing up the box and tucking it clumsily under his arm. And who cares? he added mentally. They stood there for a moment, adding further awkwardness to the growing accumulation, until, with some relief, they all saw the two uniformed police officers emerging from the church to walk up the path and out on to the road. One of the men acknowledged Mariner with a brief nod, throwing them a lifeline of normal conversation.
‘Have they made any progress?’ Knox asked.
Mariner shook his head. ‘They’re pretty sure they know who was responsible but there’s not enough evidence to even pull him in. They can triangulate a couple of mobile phone calls made to roughly that area, but there’s no clear reading of the registration number of the van from motorway CCTV and one of the chief suspects has a pretty unassailable alibi.’
‘What about Lottie?’ asked Millie.
‘Too traumatized to be a credible witness,’ Mariner said. ‘She can’t remember any useful detail. The descriptions she came up with could be any of a number of men; there was nothing unique about them. I think they’ve even tried hypnotherapy.’ The casual tone of his voice belied the hopelessness he felt inside; Anna dead and her killer still at liberty. Although grateful for the effort his two colleagues had made to support him, now that the formalities were over he was impatient to be away from here, away from the platitudes and the sympathetic noises, to go somewhere where he could lick his wounds.
After another silence that seemed to go on forever, Knox finally said, ‘Right, we’d best be getting back then, d’you think, boss?’ His glance sought and received agreement from Millie.
‘Yes, but I’m not coming back with you,’ Mariner said. Millie and Knox both stared at him. ‘My walking stuff is all packed in the back of the car, and I’ve booked a couple of weeks’ leave, so I’m going on into mid-Wales to do some walking.’
‘On your own?’ said Millie.
‘That’s the general idea, yes.’ Mariner looked pointedly at Knox. ‘I tried to do it once before.’
‘It was a bad idea, the state you were in,’ Knox defended himself.
‘I know,’ Mariner conceded. ‘But I’m pe
rfectly fine now. I just want some time to myself.’
‘But I don’t . . . will you be all right, sir?’ Millie asked.
‘Sure you don’t want me along?’ Knox checked again, his shoulders hunched against the cold, and his hands thrust deep into his coat pockets. ‘The gaffer would clear it. You know she would.’
‘There’s no need,’ Mariner said, though he shared Knox’s certainty about DCI Sharp. That was exactly why this time he’d been forced to spring it on them. They were desperate to keep an eye on him, make sure he wasn’t about to come off his hinges. They didn’t get that it was the very reason he needed to be alone; to work through his grief in his own solitary way. ‘And someone’s got to keep the mean streets of Birmingham safe while I’m away,’ he added, not without irony.
Buried Lies (Reissue) Page 3
