Stalked By Shadows

by Chris Collett

‘What do you want with them?’ The man was short and stocky with big shoulders and a thick neck, his eyes close together in a podgy face.

  ‘And you are?’ Mariner asked.

  ‘Their son.’

  ‘Ah, Billy’s brother, George, I presume. I need to talk to your parents about the death of Nina Silvero.’

  ‘This week of all weeks? You know what you can do.’ Hughes pushed against the door but Mariner held firm.

  ‘I understand that this is a difficult time, Mr Hughes,’ Mariner said calmly. ‘But if we don’t do it now we’ll have to come back. All we need to do is eliminate them from our enquiries. Then we can leave you in peace.’

  An older man appeared, white haired and in checked shirt and cardigan. ‘What is it, Georgie?’

  ‘They’re coppers. Want to talk to Mum and Dad.’

  The man was resigned. ‘Let them in, son. Let’s get this over and done with.’

  He stepped aside, but George Hughes made sure his presence was felt while Mariner and Knox talked to his parents. Refusing to sit, he stood glowering in the corner of the room across from where the two policemen sat on the sofa. Neither Eric Hughes, who appeared to be in the early stages of Parkinson’s disease, nor Eva, a mild woman, small and quietly spoken, appeared to object to the visit.

  ‘I felt sorry for her,’ Eva said, of Nina Silvero. ‘She’d lost her husband, hadn’t she?’

  ‘Sorry for her?’ interjected Hughes junior. ‘Christ, Mum, after what he did? And she stood by him, denying that he’d done anything wrong, while my little brother lay dead in the morgue. I’m glad she’s dead, and I hope she suffered in the way that our Billy did.’

  ‘Don’t talk to your mother like that,’ barked Eric Hughes, his speech slightly slurred.

  ‘Did you go to Nina Silvero’s house after your brother died?’ Mariner asked George.

  ‘I think you know the answer to that one,’ Hughes spat.

  ‘So it was you who put a brick through her window?’

  ‘We weren’t going to get any comeback any other way, were we? You lot, you all close ranks and cover up for each other. It was a whitewash. Our Billy was dead and nobody gave a toss. Is that what you’re here for, to charge me with criminal damage twenty years too late? You lot must be desperate for something to do.’

  ‘Is that the last time you went there?’ asked Mariner.

  ‘What are you getting at?’ Hughes’ eyes narrowed.

  ‘That you could have approached her recently, insinuated your way into her house and ensured that she suffered the same agonising death that Billy did.’

  ‘I haven’t been near the place in twenty years.’ Hughes was defiant. ‘I’d hardly thought about her until now.’

  Mariner noticed the folded newspaper on the coffee table. ‘You get the Mail regularly, do you?’

  ‘June and John get it,’ said Eva.

  Mariner fixed his gaze on George. ‘Told you about the announcement, did they? That must have provided a little reminder.’

  ‘It made me sick,’ said Hughes, with disgust. ‘Bloody MBE. What’s she done to deserve that?’

  Mariner nodded slowly, understanding. ‘So much anger and resentment,’ he said. ‘It’s been festering away all this time, hasn’t it? And the twenty-year anniversary of your brother’s death might be just the right time to get justice once and for all.’

  ‘Georgie?’ Eva Hughes cast a doubtful look at her son.

  ‘Where do you live, Mr Hughes?’ Mariner asked.

  ‘Down south with Mum and Dad. I got made redundant.’

  ‘Where from?’

  ‘The Rover.’

  ‘And what did you do there?’ Mariner persisted.

  ‘I was in the paint shop.’

  Mariner turned to exchange a brief glance with Tony Knox. ‘What were you doing on Sunday evening between seven thirty and midnight?’ he asked Hughes.

  Hughes laughed and shook his head in disbelief. ‘You’re so way off beam, it’s a joke. You haven’t got a clue.’

  And Hughes, it transpired, had a pretty good alibi. The family had all gone for a meal with other relatives, including sister Tracey, at a local restaurant. ‘About twenty other people and the staff in the restaurant can confirm it,’ Hughes finished smugly.

  ‘Although there was nothing stopping him from slipping out for half an hour,’ Mariner said to Knox, as they were walking back to their car.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Mariner was home a little late that evening, and as he pulled into the service road leading up to his house he came to a halt behind a Porsche he recognised. As he walked into the lounge, Giles jumped to his feet immediately. In the light Mariner had a better opportunity to study him, and gallingly he was even better looking than Mariner remembered. He matched Mariner for height and was lean and athletic looking, from what Mariner could tell through the well-cut jeans and pink candy-stripe shirt, and, despite what had happened the previous night, he had manners. They both remained standing, two stags weighing each other up.

  But it was Giles who ended the stand-off. ‘Hello again, sir.’ The confidence and enunciation said public school. The ‘sir’ underlined both the breeding and Mariner’s age.

  Mariner took a few seconds to arrange the bullet between his teeth, then he clamped down hard on it. ‘Look, I’m sorry about Saturday night,’ he said. ‘I jumped to some conclusions.’

  ‘Apology accepted,’ Giles cut him short. ‘I admit that I was pretty annoyed at the time, but I know what kind of life Kat had before she came to stay with you, and I understand that you were only looking out for her.’

  ‘Still, I made some assumptions about you that I shouldn’t have,’ Mariner said.

  ‘Occupational hazard, I suppose.’ Giles smiled. ‘Really, it’s OK. Forget it.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Mariner said awkwardly. He took the small evidence bag from his pocket. ‘And you can have this back. I didn’t get around to having it tested.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Giles took it from him and pocketed it.

  Mariner gestured for Giles to sit, and they took up places opposite one another. ‘I’m not sure that Kat will be so quick to forgive,’ he said. ‘She wants to move out.’

  ‘I think she’s wanted to for a while,’ Giles said. ‘She just didn’t know how to tell you.’

  ‘Well, I’ve certainly given her that opportunity. Is she moving in with you?’

  ‘No.’ Giles seemed surprised. ‘It’s not like that. I think she wants her own place, close to one of her friends at the centre.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘She’ll get over this, sir,’ Giles reassured him. ‘She worships the ground you walk on, talked about you non-stop when we first met. It’s her opinion that you saved her life.’

  Mariner nodded; gratifying though it was, he wasn’t sure of what to say to that.

  Once again Giles rescued him. ‘We’re going out for dinner. If that’s OK.’

  ‘Of course.’ Mariner nodded. For an awful moment he thought Giles was going to invite him along, but thankfully he didn’t. That would have made for an uncomfortable evening. ‘So what is it that you do, Giles?’ he asked.

  Giles visibly relaxed, on safer ground. ‘I’m in merchant banking, for my sins. It’s something of a family tradition.’

  That and polo at the weekends, Mariner guessed. At least it went some way towards explaining the affluence.

  Kat rescued them from further awkward small talk, appearing at the top of the stairs. She looked frail yet stunning, dressing again to show off her best features, and Mariner wanted to rush over and cover her up. Instead, he just said, ‘Have a good time,’ as he got up and saw them out, hoping that the gritted teeth weren’t too obvious. On her way past Mariner, Kat leaned up and kissed him on the cheek. Giles was right (again). They’d get over it.

  On his own again, Mariner felt restless. He phoned Tony Knox, with a view to a possible early-evening drink, but caught his sergeant on his way out to the pictures with Jean. ‘Want to come, boss
?’ Knox offered, but Mariner had no intention of playing gooseberry with Knox and his date either.

  Instead, he got a sheet of paper and divided it into two columns, Nina Silvero heading up one, Lucy Jarrett the other. Then he listed everything he knew about the two women, highlighting any possible connections between them. By midnight the paper was a mess of scribblings and arrows but, aside from a few question marks, he found nothing that connected the two.

  On Wednesday morning, Mariner drove in early and caught up with Tony Knox in the car park. ‘Good film?’ he asked.

  ‘It was OK,’ Knox conceded. ‘Jean liked it. I spent most of the time trying to work out what Nina Silvero and Lucy Jarrett have in common.’

  ‘You and me both,’ said Mariner. They climbed the stairs to find Millie already in CID along with Rick Fraser from forensics, who was outside Mariner’s office, hopping from foot to foot like an errant schoolboy waiting to see the head teacher. A comical sight given that Fraser was a bear of a man, red faced with explosions of wiry ginger hair above each ear and fringing a completely bald dome of a skull.

  ‘Sackcloth and ashes, Mr Mariner,’ he said sheepishly, passing Mariner a manila folder. ‘You should have had this a couple of days ago, but I wanted to tie up the loose ends before I gave it to you.’

  ‘This is the crime-scene report?’ Thanking him, Mariner took the folder. ‘Can you stick around in case we’ve got any questions?’

  ‘Of course.’ Fraser followed Mariner and Knox into Mariner’s office, where Millie joined them too.

  Sitting behind his desk, Mariner opened the report and scanned it quickly. ‘It’s as we thought,’ he said eventually, glancing up at the three on the other side of his desk. ‘The wine bottle had been rinsed, leaving no traces of white wine or paint stripper. Two wine glasses had also been recently used and rinsed. Looks as if it played out just as we surmised.’

  Knox nodded thoughtfully. ‘So the killer comes to the door with a celebratory bottle of wine, they go into the kitchen, two glasses poured.’ He mimed the pouring of the wine. ‘They toast the MBE.’ He raised his imaginary glass.

  ‘And the killer hesitates, allowing Nina Silvero to drink the fatal mouthfuls, while he or she watches,’ Mariner added.

  ‘Then he or she tips the rest of the paint stripper down the sink, rinses the bottle and his own glass, puts that glass away again and takes out the plastic drain-fluid bottle containing the residue of the paint stripper, and leaves that on the table.’

  ‘There’s nothing else?’ Mariner was disappointed. These results only confirmed what they’d already worked out.

  ‘In case you’re interested,’ Fraser added helpfully, ‘the wine was part of a batch sold at Sainsbury’s in Selly Oak between December last year and February this year. And there is one more thing,’ he said tantalisingly. ‘We’ve got a latent lifted from the base of the bottle.’

  ‘There’s a fingerprint?’ Mariner remained cautious. ‘I thought the bottle had been wiped clean.’

  ‘So did we.’ Fraser grinned. ‘The killer must have overlooked it. In all the areas where you’d usually hold the bottle - the neck and body, it’s been wiped, but the killer slipped up. There’s a single print on the base of the bottle that’s been missed. It probably got there when the bottle was first picked up in the supermarket to examine the label. Do you mind?’ Millie was clutching a bottle of water. With her consent, Fraser took it from her and placed it on Mariner’s desk. He then picked up the bottle, grasping it around the neck with his right hand, and resting the base on the fingertips of his left hand to demonstrate. Satisfied that they’d all seen, he held up the index finger on which the bottle had been resting. ‘And that’s the print that was overlooked.’

  ‘It’s not Nina Silvero’s print?’ Mariner allowed himself a glimmer of hope.

  ‘Definitely not,’ said Fraser, with an emphatic shake of the head.

  Mariner hardly dared ask. ‘Is it one we’ve got on record?’ The print was useless if it wasn’t already on file.

  Three pairs of eyes fixed on Fraser. His face broke into its crooked grin. ‘Indeed, it is. Of course it may not mean anything,’ he cautioned. ‘If that’s the explanation for how it got there, anyone could have picked up the bottle from the supermarket shelf prior to the killer, then changed their mind and put it back again, but -’ He broke off and shrugged.

  ‘Come on then.’ Knox’s impatience was beginning to show. ‘Give us the worst.’

  ‘The print belongs to a Martin Bonnington, sixteen, Hill Crest.’

  ‘Jesus,’ Mariner said.

  ‘You know him?’ Knox wrinkled his nose, the information meaningless to him.

  ‘Hill Crest is where Lucy Jarrett lives,’ Millie put in. ‘Number sixteen is just across the road from her house. I rang the bell there when she had a parcel delivered, but there was no one home.’

  ‘So we’ve got ourselves another coincidence,’ said Knox.

  ‘And I’d say a possible suspect,’ Mariner added. ‘Do you know what Bonnington’s on our books for?’ he asked Fraser.

  ‘About three years ago, he had an injunction out against him to stop him harassing a female work colleague,’ Fraser told them.

  ‘Which makes him well worth a look for Lucy Jarrett,’ Mariner said. ‘But where does Nina Silvero come in?’

  When Fraser had departed with promises of a pint next time they were in the pub, Mariner brought up Bonnington’s record on his PC, Millie and Knox standing at each shoulder. ‘Do you recognise him?’ he asked Millie, as Bonnington’s mug-shot appeared.

  She shook her head. ‘I haven’t seen him around there. When I rang the bell at his house there was no vehicle on the drive, though I did get a feeling that there could be someone in the house. Also, I think Lucy must know him too, at least just to say hello to. I’m sure that at the time she said, “That’s Martin’s house.”’

  The file didn’t tell them much else, only that just under three years previously Bonnington had been accused of harassing a woman called Claudette Vernon, who had subsequently made a complaint to the police. Officers had gone to see him, at a different address from his current one, and presented him with the injunction. Bonnington, it appeared, had initially protested his innocence, but had then been penitent and had accepted the court order. Brian Mann had been one of the officers involved and Mariner made a note to go and talk to him about it. He printed off copies of Bonnington’s photograph, hoping that it was still a good likeness.

  Back at her desk, Millie phoned Lucy Jarrett’s mobile. ‘When would be a convenient time to come and see you?’

  ‘I’m at home right now, if that’s any good.’

  ‘Not at work today?’ Millie asked.

  ‘No, the doctor has signed me off for a few days. Stress she says, but she’s running some blood tests too.’

  Twenty minutes later Mariner and Millie presented themselves at Lucy Jarrett’s house. Mariner was shocked by her appearance. Since he’d last seen her she’d visibly lost weight, and her skin looked pale and sallow. They followed her into the lounge, where she sat across from them on the sofa, hugging a cushion to her for comfort. ‘So what brings you here?’

  ‘The flowers you had in the post,’ Mariner said. ‘We’ve come across something similar before.’

  ‘Oh?’ Lucy looked uncertainly from one to the other of them. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘Lucy, do you know a woman called Nina Silvero?’ Millie asked her.

  Her brow creased to a frown. ‘The name is fam- Wait a minute, isn’t she that woman who was killed recently?’

  Mariner nodded. ‘But had you heard of her before that? Did you know her?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What about Rachel Silvero, or Rachel Hordern as she’s called now, or Susan Brady? They’re more your age.’

  But Lucy knew neither of them.

  ‘Did you ever have ballet lessons?’ Mariner asked.

  ‘No.’ She glanced at Millie, her anxiety levels visibly risin
g. ‘The cheerleading is the closest I got. Look, I’m sure I don’t know any of these people. What is it? What’s going on?’

  Mariner chose his words carefully, knowing that what he was about to say would put the fear of God into her. ‘Nina Silvero received some flowers packaged in the same way as yours, and with exactly the same message, about a year ago,’ he said. ‘It seems that she had been getting unwanted phone calls too, and there’s evidence to suggest that she had fears for her own safety.’

  ‘What kind of evidence?’ Lucy made no effort to disguise her unease now.

  ‘She’d taken steps to make her house more secure,’ Mariner said.

  ‘And you think it’s the same person who’s coming after me?’ Lucy asked, her eyes wide.

  Mariner took out the photograph he’d brought along. ‘Do you know this man?’

  ‘Yes, of course I do.’ Now she was baffled. ‘It’s Martin from across the road.’

  ‘How well do you know him?’

  ‘Not at all really.’ Lucy shifted uncomfortably. ‘He was very helpful when I moved in to the house.’

  ‘Helpful how?’ Millie asked.

  ‘He’s a computer geek. He wired everything up for me.’

  Millie and Mariner exchanged a surreptitious look.

  ‘And since then?’

  Lucy shrugged. ‘Nothing much. We speak to each other when our paths cross but that’s about all.’ But she’d coloured. Something she wasn’t saying.

  ‘Lucy, if there’s anything -’ Millie bided her time and eventually Lucy cracked.

  ‘It was just a misunderstanding, that’s all,’ she blurted out.

  ‘What was?’ Mariner wanted to know.

  ‘Martin came over to look at my computer one evening, not long after I’d moved in,’ Lucy said. ‘He came on to me, but he’d completely misread the signals. He’s a bit, well, old-fashioned looking and I didn’t fancy him so I fielded it. And that was the end of it. It was all perfectly innocent and it was ages ago.’

  ‘Do you know where he works?’

  ‘From home mostly. He’s freelance.’