Stalked By Shadows

by Chris Collett

  ‘Her history shows that she had explored one or two Internet dating sites,’ Mariner said. ‘Do you still feel sure that she hadn’t been meeting men at all?’

  ‘I’m absolutely sure.’ She gave Mariner a pointed look. ‘It has about as much credibility as the idea of me murdering Nina for her money.’

  Mariner ignored the comment. ‘Have you ever heard your stepmother talk about a Lucy Jarrett or Will Jarrett?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did Nina like folk music?’

  That made Rachel smile. ‘Absolutely not. She was strictly Brahms and Vaughan-Williams. Why all these random questions, Inspector?’

  ‘We’re just verifying some background information,’ Mariner said.

  ‘My,’ said Millie when she and Mariner got back in the car.

  ‘She’s a bit prickly, isn’t she?’

  En route back to Granville Lane, Millie remained in the car while Mariner went up to Estelle Waters’ flat to ask the same ‘random questions’, but Nina’s friend similarly had no recognition of the name or picture of Martin Bonnington. Nor could she recall Will or Lucy Jarrett ever being mentioned in conversation.

  ‘Did she ever talk to you about her computer?’ Mariner prompted.

  ‘Only to say that the whole contraption was a complete waste of money,’ Estelle told him.

  Back at Granville Lane, Tony Knox had found nothing among Nina’s things relating to Martin Bonnington, but there was a note on Millie’s desk from technician Max, along with a list courtesy of Lucy Jarrett’s Internet provider listing the addresses from which the spam emails had been sent to her machine. Millie took it through to Mariner’s office.

  ‘This might help us, sir.’ With a brief explanation, she handed Mariner the list. By far the most frequently listed name and address was Mr M Bonnington, sixteen, Hill Crest.

  ‘At last this is starting to look like a case,’ said Mariner.

  ‘And we know the flowers were sent from Birmingham,’ Millie reminded him. ‘Is it enough to bring him in?’

  ‘The fingerprint itself isn’t conclusive,’ Mariner said. ‘But triangulate it with these emails and the flowers, posted locally, and I think we’ve got more than enough. Before we do, though, I want to talk to the other woman he harassed; Claudette Vernon. Let’s get to know as much about Martin Bonnington as we can. He played it pretty cool this afternoon and I’d like to get one step ahead of him if we can. We also need to keep working on the Nina Silvero connection. Unless we can come up with some kind of motive for her, we’ve only half got him.’

  When he had explained the urgency of the situation, Claudette Vernon invited Mariner and Millie to call round and see her at her flat that same evening. They turned up promptly at six o’clock, the agreed time. Bonnington must have something, Mariner thought, when she came to the door. She was mid-forties, Mariner would have guessed, olive-skinned with fine features and sleek black hair. Her movements were graceful and unhurried as she showed them into the sitting room of her flat, the ground floor of a detached Georgian villa in a smart area not far from the University. When they’d declined her offer of drinks, she picked up her own wine glass and positioned herself opposite them, curling into the armchair like a contented cat.

  ‘You met Martin Bonnington on an Internet dating site, I understand?’ Mariner said, quoting from the file.

  Claudette smiled, a perfect, white smile, and her voice, when she spoke, was deep and husky. ‘Yes. His postings on the website were funny. That’s what attracted me to him in the first place, and he just seemed a nice guy. Some of them stand out as creeps right from the start; they try too hard. My initial reaction when I met Martin, and got past the wardrobe issues, was that he was a sweet guy, if a bit nerdy. And he knows that. He never tried to sell himself as anything he wasn’t, and that honesty was very appealing. We built up a rapport quite quickly. I loved his dry sense of humour.’

  ‘We had a taste of that,’ Mariner said wryly. ‘How well did you get to know him?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ She tilted her head to one side.

  ‘Was there any kind of physical relationship?’

  She drew back a little. ‘Is that really necessary?’

  ‘We’re investigating a particularly nasty murder, Miss Vernon. We wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t central to the case.’

  ‘Oh my God, and you suspect Martin?’ She was incredulous.

  ‘We’re just trying to find out a little more about him,’ said Mariner. ‘We’ve no reason to believe that you’re in any danger.’

  ‘OK, well, yes, it did get physical, almost straight away. I think it surprised both of us.’

  ‘And how was it? Really, this is crucial,’ Mariner added, seeing the look on her face.

  ‘It was fine!’ she said. ‘OK, well, it wasn’t earth-moving. He wasn’t terribly experienced, so I had to take the lead quite a bit, but he was very responsive, if you know what I mean.’

  ‘Did Mr Bonnington have any difficulties in that area?’ Mariner asked.

  ‘Not difficulties as such. I mean, the first time wasn’t that great but after that it got better. He learned fast.’

  ‘How long did your physical relationship last?’

  ‘About a couple of months, no more than that.’

  ‘So what went wrong?’ Mariner wanted to know.

  ‘Not the sex,’ Vernon said quickly. ‘That was getting better all the time. It was the other stuff. It was getting too intense emotionally; claustrophobic. Martin wanted to be with me all the time and I began to feel hemmed in. He used to send me dozens of emails every day, and leave messages on my mobile. I started to realise that emotionally he was quite -’ she broke off, searching for the right word ‘- needy. It became clear that he hadn’t had many relationships with women and, having found me, he clung to me desperately. I have other friends, and I like to go out with the girls at the weekend too. We had a couple of fairly public arguments about it, and in the end I felt that the fairest thing was to finish with him.’

  ‘How did he take it?’ said Mariner.

  She sat back. ‘It was a horrible conversation to have. He was upset. I actually think he thought we had a long-term future together, but in reality we hardly knew each other. He’s a nice guy and I felt terrible, but it had to be done. We had very different approaches to relationships. ’

  ‘And after that?’ Mariner asked.

  ‘I thought that would be it, but he kept ringing me. Usually it would start off on the pretext that he thought there was something he’d left at my flat, or he’d been given tickets for something that I might like, but from there it would always turn into a discussion about what he’d done wrong. He didn’t seem to grasp that fundamentally we’re different kinds of people. I’d started seeing someone else, and he asked some very intrusive questions. Then he began hanging around outside the office where I work, waiting for me to leave, and a couple of times he came up to me while I was out with friends. He was clearly following me and it was getting creepy, so I went to the police.’

  ‘And since the injunction was served?’

  ‘Actually I feel quite bad about that. In retrospect, it probably was a bit heavy-handed. It shocked him. I’m not even sure that up until then he’d realised what he was doing. But he took the hint and it stopped.’

  ‘How about in the last six months or so?’ asked Mariner. ‘Has he tried to contact you?’

  She shook her head. ‘Not at all, I mean, I saw him once when I was in the supermarket and that freaked me a bit, but I think that was a genuine coincidence. We just smiled and said hello and moved on. It was fine. In fact, he told me he was seeing someone else, too.’

  ‘Did he tell you her name?’

  ‘No. I wasn’t even sure that I believed him. What’s all this about? What has he done?’

  Millie put away her notebook as Mariner stood up to go. ‘We don’t know yet if he’s done anything,’ Mariner said. ‘But thank you for your help, Ms Vernon.’

  ‘So Lucy Jarret
t is the second woman to have turned him down,’ Mariner observed, when he and Millie were back in the car. ‘And she gets the stalking treatment too.’

  ‘But what about Nina Silvero?’ Millie wondered.

  ‘Maybe she was the person he really vented his frustration on,’ Mariner speculated. ‘Tomorrow we could use some kind of break.’

  Mariner opened his front door that evening to be greeted by the smell of Kat’s home-made beef goulash from the pot that was simmering on the cooker. Hearing him come in, Kat herself appeared on the stairs, in one arm a bottle carrier, which she passed to him. Six different varieties of ale. ‘We can watch this too?’ She held up a copy of The Big Easy, one of Mariner’s all-time favourite films, and one that he knew she didn’t really like, because of the violence.

  ‘That would be good,’ he said, gratefully accepting the olive branch.

  ‘We are friends again?’ She smiled tentatively.

  ‘Friends again,’ Mariner agreed.

  It was almost like the old times, but there was a conversation they needed to have.

  ‘So, tell me about this flat,’ Mariner said, when the film had finished and he was mellowed by the food and beer.

  ‘My friend Saira at the language centre, she haves one,’ Kat said. ‘Is in Moseley near to the cricket pitch.’

  ‘I think you mean the cricket ground,’ said Mariner.

  ‘Yes, and it haves one bedroom and a lounge and a kitchen and all the furnitures.’ Her enthusiasm grew as she spoke.

  ‘And you can afford this?’ Mariner asked. But he already knew the answer to that. Albanian translators were in demand in a city as culturally diverse as Birmingham, and Kat was paid handsomely for her services, which he knew because she occasionally worked for them at Granville Lane. And she had thought it through.

  ‘Saira, she have not such much money as me, and she can do this. She help me. Wait.’ She disappeared up to her room and returned moments later with a glossy folder containing property details and notebook, in which she’d worked out all the sums. The flat would be rented but well within her means and, after all, she pointed out, she may not be in this country for ever.

  ‘It looks great,’ Mariner said, saddened by that thought. ‘Do you want me to help you to apply for it? You’ll need to get hold of an application -’

  Sheepishly, Kat sorted through the pack to produce application forms already completed in her neat hand. ‘Is all done,’ she said. ‘Will you referee for me?’

  Despite himself, Mariner smiled. ‘Yes, I’ll referee for you.’

  At Mariner’s request, DCI Sharp joined them for the briefing session first thing on Thursday morning. If they were to bring Bonnington in, Mariner wanted her to hear what the grounds for it were.

  Knowing what they were up against, Max had worked overnight on Bonnington’s computer and he joined them as well. ‘Bonnington’s taste in porn is a tad disappointing,’ he told them, ‘very tame. And there are a few legitimate emails sent to Lucy Jarrett months ago, but I can confirm that most of the spam emails and the catalogue requests were triggered by his machine. He’s also accessed Lucy Jarrett’s wedding photos on several occasions. ‘And I found this.’ He passed round a sheet that bore a printed label: flowers from Guernsey. ‘He must have mocked it up himself and stuck it to the boxes to make them look legit. Stupid git saved the document to his hard drive.’

  ‘Isn’t that odd?’ queried Sharp. ‘He’s a computer expert himself, yet he’s made no attempt to hide any of this?’

  Max shook his head. ‘He must have thought he was safe. He hasn’t made any attempt to conceal any of this, and there are plenty of steps he could have taken. Ultimately we’d have found it of course, so it wouldn’t make any difference, but it means that I could just lift all this off straight away.’

  ‘He panicked when we said we were taking the machine,’ Mariner told her. ‘He even asked if he could download some “work material” before we took it away. Maybe he just got lazy and didn’t bother at the time.’

  Sharp nodded, seemingly satisfied with that explanation.

  ‘Can we pinpoint the times when the emails were sent?’ she asked.

  Max responded by producing a data printout. ‘This is a breakdown of dates and times. Bonnington’s a “night prowler”. Most of the stuff is done in the late evening, a couple of times in the early hours. His mobile is clean, by the way, no calls to Lucy Jarrett’s number. Most of the numbers coincide with the numbers for client accounts on the computer, but he could have another one he’s not telling you about.’

  ‘Is Nina Silvero on his client list?’ Mariner took the printout that Sharp handed him.

  ‘’Fraid not,’ said Max. ‘Only similarity with her is that they’ve both used Internet dating sites, but they’re not even the same ones.’

  ‘So what now?’ Sharp asked Mariner.

  ‘I’d like to bring him in,’ Mariner said. ‘Voluntarily, if he’ll come. I want to get him on to our territory, where I think he’ll be less sure of himself. There’s enough to question him about Lucy Jarrett, and maybe in the course of the interview the link with Nina Silvero will become clear.’

  Sharp nodded agreement. ‘Best of luck, and keep me posted.’

  Mariner took Millie with him to collect Bonnington. She’d done a lot of work with Lucy Jarrett and deserved to take the credit.

  Bonnington continued to maintain his innocence. ‘There must be some misunderstanding,’ he kept saying. But he put up no resistance, and didn’t feel the need to have a solicitor present. Entering the interview suite, Mariner felt the familiar nervous anticipation that came with the end game. The most satisfactory outcome, as always, would be a confession from Bonnington, preferably with a clear explanation of his motives. It was seldom what they got, of course, and Bonnington was continuing to play the ‘confused’ card, which could be genuine, or preferably meant that he had simply convinced himself that he had done nothing wrong. Either way, he was pretty calm, confident that the misunderstanding would be rectified. He looked smaller than ever in the interview room, Mariner and Millie on the opposite side of the table.

  ‘I really don’t understand why I’m here,’ he said, for the umpteenth time. ‘A fingerprint on a wine bottle? I mean, that could be anyone’s.’

  ‘Tell us about Claudette Vernon,’ Mariner said.

  ‘Ah.’ Bonnington looked directly into Mariner’s eyes. ‘You obviously know all about her. That’s the other reason I’m here, is it? That I happened to be a little over-enthusiastic in my advances towards Claudette, let me see, three years ago? Hm, I can see how that might make me an automatic suspect for harassing a married neighbour whom I hardly know, and murdering a middle-aged woman I’ve never heard of.’

  Mariner ignored the sarcasm. ‘Were you harassing Ms Vernon? Is that how you’d describe it?’

  ‘That was your word,’ Bonnington corrected him. ‘You told me yesterday that Lucy Jarrett was being harassed.’

  ‘So why don’t you tell us about your relationship with Claudette Vernon?’

  ‘You really do have an unusual preoccupation with my sex life, Inspector, which I probably could understand if it was a particularly salacious one, but I think we all know that you’re in for a disappointment.’

  ‘Just get on with it, Mr Bonnington.’ Mariner tried to quash his rising exasperation.

  ‘All right.’ Bonnington shrugged. ‘I met Claudette through an Internet dating site. She turned out to be a very attractive woman and, quite amazingly, she seemed to feel the same way about me, at least to begin with. No signals misread there, I can assure you.’ He looked from Mariner to Millie. ‘We went out for two or three months, usually to a film or to the theatre, or for dinner. After the first couple of dates we started fucking, and I think we fucked on most occasions subsequent to that.’ Spoken in such a polite conversational tone, the words sounded obscene and Mariner felt sure that Bonnington’s intention had been to try to shock them. He’d have to try a lot harder than that.r />
  ‘And how was it, the fucking?’ asked Mariner.

  ‘Not up to much to begin with, if I’m brutally honest, but Claudette was prepared to give it a chance, and it got better, for both of us.’

  Mariner had to admire his honesty. ‘You must have missed it then, when she ended your relationship.’

  ‘I did. And not just the sex, but the conversation, the evenings out. She’s a lovely woman. I think I’d fallen for her.’

  Mariner searched Bonnington’s face for signs of irony, but for once they were absent.

  ‘So you stalked her.’

  ‘I wasn’t stalking her,’ Bonnington said impatiently. ‘I admit that I found it difficult to accept our relationship was over. I couldn’t understand how her feelings could be so intense one day and non-existent just a few days later. I had to be sure that she really thought it was over, and that there wasn’t something I could do to rekindle the interest.

  I can see now that at the time my behaviour must have seemed odd, and that I might have frightened her.’

  ‘Did it give you a buzz, frightening her?’ Mariner asked. ‘Is that what you get off on?’

  ‘No.’ Bonnington seemed offended by the question.

  ‘Did you find it difficult when Lucy Jarrett finished with you too?’

  ‘Finished what? I’ve already told you; with Lucy there wasn’t anything to finish.’

  ‘Must have been tough, though; two women dumping you within such a short space of time,’ Mariner said. ‘And both because of your inadequacies in bed. That’s pretty humiliating, isn’t it? Did you wonder what they might be saying to their new partners: Poor old Martin, nice guy but can’t really cut it? Did you think Lucy and Will were laughing about you behind your back?’

  ‘The thought never crossed my mind.’

  ‘So, why have you been sending her hundreds of emails, and ordering dozens of products on her behalf?’ Mariner put the data sheet down on the table in front of him.