Blood and Stone

by Chris Collett

  ‘But you have,’ thought Mariner, remembering what Elena had said about the SAS. Griffith tilted his head towards the stairs. ‘Who is he?’

  ‘His name is Jeremy Bryce.’

  ‘And he’s a friend of yours?’

  ‘Not exactly. I met him just a few days ago.’

  Griffith walked over to the two uniforms now standing by their car and spoke to them for a couple of minutes, before coming back to Mariner and Elena. ‘I’ll need you both to go with these officers to make statements.’

  The journey to Llanerch was a seven-mile drive into what turned out to be little more than a large village. Mariner and Elena remained quiet in the car, confining themselves to the occasional exchanged glance. Elena seemed nervous, but then it was undoubtedly the first time she’d been through anything like this, and she would be worried about Cerys too. Mariner wanted to reach out and take her hand but he didn’t want to do anything that could be misinterpreted by their two escorts and fed back to Griffith. In a local area like this the squad would be tight. The police station was a wide square greystone block set back behind parking space. It must have been there a while, and still had the old-fashioned blue lamp hanging outside.

  Mariner was taken first to the medical examiner. Except for a brief sympathetic smile as he went in and the minimal necessary instructions, the FME worked in complete silence; taking a blood sample, swabbing and scraping and then removing several hairs from different parts of his head. Mariner accepted it all without complaint. Although his hair was cropped short he had plenty to spare, and it was the evidence from those samples that would help to put him in the clear. If he’d cut Jeremy Bryce’s throat, the blood spatter would have found its way into his ears and the fine spray would have penetrated to the roots of his hair. Its absence wouldn’t in itself be enough to rule him out as the killer, but it would form part of the wider picture. Finally the FME handed Mariner a couple of brown paper evidence bags. ‘And I’ll need you to do the honours again, sir, please.’ Another police-issue tracksuit was folded on the chair and she left the room to allow Mariner to change into it.

  After processing Mariner was shown to an interview room, where a uniformed officer came and took his written statement and then he sat twiddling his thumbs for a further hour and a half. By now he had a blinding headache and it was actually a relief to be left in peace for a while. Elena would be doing the same in a separate room. The waiting couldn’t be helped; Mariner knew that and he hoped Elena realized it too. Griffith would be sealing off the scene and waiting for the SOCOs to get there. In a rural area like this it could potentially take hours. Aberystwyth was probably the nearest main base. And he had no reason to grumble. The custody officer was attentive and courteous, offering refreshment at intervals, including some painkillers, and apologizing for keeping him waiting. Even so, Mariner felt a certain apprehension, knowing that having clearly been the last man to see Bryce alive he would inevitably be the focus of the questioning. And the trouble was he couldn’t explain it, except that it must have happened while he was sleeping up in the attic room. He’d racked his brains to remember if at any time during the night he’d heard or even sensed anything out of the ordinary, but could come up with nothing. There was no way of proving to Griffith that he hadn’t been in the dorm all night, so inevitably he was going to be the main suspect. What would he be thinking if he was in Griffith’s shoes? Eventually he was offered the opportunity to make a phone call.

  Tony Knox was at his desk, going over some of the statements Charlie Glover’s team had collected from the kids at Michael’s party to see if he could find something that had been overlooked. So far it had been a fruitless exercise, exactly as Glover had said; it was like coming up against a brick wall, and pretty incomprehensible that with so many people in such a confined space, none of them had seen a thing. Knox was starting to share Charlie Glover’s feeling that some of the kids knew much more than they were saying. He focused his efforts on Emily and Georgia, Kirsty’s two best friends, who surely would have been the ones around her all night, but both claimed that they had been dancing downstairs immediately before the incident. Something was nagging at Knox, and he was trying in vain to identify what, when his phone rang. That it was Mariner was unexpected. ‘Hi, Boss, how’s things?’ He saw Millie glance up from her desk.

  ‘Not all that great, as it happens,’ Mariner admitted. He sounded muffled, far away, on edge.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Knox was instantly alert. The information Mariner had asked him to put together was under a pile of other papers and he tried to retrieve it with his free hand.

  ‘You know that killing here in Caranwy?’ Mariner said.

  ‘Yeah, it made the national news. Some kid wasn’t it?’

  ‘Yes. There’s going to be a further news item today. There’s been another one; a tourist has been murdered in what used to be the youth hostel, less than half a mile away.’

  ‘Christ, so you’re near all that too?’

  ‘Pretty near,’ said Mariner.

  ‘Have they got anyone for it?’ Knox asked.

  ‘That would be me,’ said Mariner. ‘The guy was sleeping in the bunk above mine when he was killed.’

  There was the merest beat of a pause while Knox absorbed that. ‘Christ,’ he said again. ‘Are you under arrest?’ Knox immediately felt, rather than saw, half a dozen heads swivel in his direction as the noise in CID faded to nothing. Instinctively he turned his back to the room and covered the phone’s mouthpiece.

  ‘Not quite,’ Mariner said. ‘But I could use a friendly face. How soon can you get out here?’

  ‘I’ll talk to the gaffer.’

  ‘With any luck she already knows. Round about now the Dyfed police will be contacting her to inform her that I’ve been taken in for questioning.’

  ‘Who’s running the show?’

  ‘A DCI Bullman is in charge, though the man controlling things on the ground is DI Ryan Griffith.’

  ‘What’s he like, this Griffith?’

  ‘To be truthful, I can’t make up my mind. Outwardly he seems okay. We’ve had a couple of conversations about Theo Ashton and he seemed to genuinely welcome my input.’

  ‘But?’

  ‘I don’t know how close he is to some of the locals.’

  ‘Is that going to be a problem?’

  ‘Not for me, but for the case? I guess we’ll have to wait and see. Listen, I might be here a while,’ Mariner went on. ‘I could do with a change of clothes. And did you manage to do that research for me?’

  ‘I’ll bring it along.’

  Knox didn’t want the whole of CID to know yet, they’d get the details soon enough, so he took Millie to one side to explain, before going and talking to DCI Sharp.

  ‘So two people have been killed out there and they haven’t got a suspect,’ she said.

  ‘That’s about it,’ said Knox.

  ‘And Glenn McGinley?’

  ‘What about him?’ Knox asked wearily. This obsession was becoming tiresome, especially as it was pretty well established by now that McGinley had got away to Ireland.

  ‘Don’t you think it’s just too easy that he left his car where everyone would find it and let himself be seen buying a ticket to Dublin?’ Millie persevered.

  ‘He hasn’t been caught yet, has he?’ Knox reminded her. ‘So it wasn’t that easy.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Millie retorted. ‘Maybe that’s because he’s got everyone looking in the wrong place. What if he didn’t get on the ferry at all?’

  ‘The man’s committed two double murders. It would be in his interests to get as far away as possible.’

  ‘Unless he isn’t finished yet.’

  Knox took a deep breath. ‘Look, Millie, this isn’t the time …’

  ‘Why is nobody listening to me?’ Millie was beside herself.

  ‘Because all the evidence indicates that McGinley’s well away,’ said Knox, exasperated. ‘His car was found in the ferry car park. And all his victims w
ere shot, not stabbed, so these killings in Wales are not at all consistent with his MO.’

  ‘Unless he was provoked. He’s a career criminal. His path could easily have crossed with Tom’s in the past.’

  ‘Do me a favour, would you?’ Knox said, rubbing a hand over his face. ‘Forget Glenn McGinley and look up a DI Ryan Griffith, Dyfed Police and see what you can get on him.’

  As anticipated, the Welsh police had already been in touch with DCI Sharp and she was fully prepared for Knox to travel down to Wales. ‘There will be an explanation for this, Tony,’ Sharp said, unnecessarily. ‘Don’t let him do anything stupid.’

  ‘He sounded calm and rational over the phone,’ Knox reassured her. ‘He’ll be okay.’

  High on adrenalin, Glenn McGinley had scrambled his way back to the unoccupied bungalow and let himself in. This time he found the electric immersion heater and celebrated with a hot bath as well as something to eat, before subsiding on to one of the beds feeling weakened and drained, the lack of adequate nutrition over the last few days beginning to take its toll. From the radio alarm he learned that his car had been found in Holyhead and the search had shifted to the Republic of Ireland. ‘My work is done,’ he congratulated himself, before falling into a deep and heavy sleep.

  Before leaving the city Knox called in at Mariner’s house to pick up some things for him, but this time he drove along the service road to park right outside the house. He could see at once that something was wrong; the front door was hanging off its hinges and it was immediately obvious that the place had been trashed. For the first time Knox thought about the murders in Wales and what was happening here. What if Millie was right and this was all part of something bigger? Squeezing in by the battered door, he was instantly aware of a presence, even before he heard the voices coming from the direction of the kitchen. Stepping around the broken glass on the floor, he crept along the hallway. No, not voices: one voice, male, moaning and chuntering to himself. Knox cursed that he had no baton with him, nor was there anything to hand that he could use to protect himself. He inched his way forward and as he did so, the open door behind him swung and creaked in the breeze. The talking stopped abruptly and a face appeared in the kitchen doorway, long enough for Knox to glimpse a young man, with long untidy hair and growth on his chin. Knox met his startled gaze momentarily, before the trespasser turned and bolted, clattering out through the back door and on to the canal towpath.

  ‘Hey!’ Knox yelled, taking off after him. Outside he saw the figure in jeans and a hooded top running off in the direction of the city. Knox gave chase, but his fitness levels weren’t what they once were and his breathing was congested by his cold, and after about fifty yards it became clear that the fugitive was younger and fitter, and that the gap between them was rapidly widening. Heaving for breath Knox stopped and took out his phone. First of all he called the ops centre and had a car dispatched to the next main road junction with the canal, along with a description of the man, though he knew it was a long shot. Then he called Millie. ‘See if you can swing it to get a couple of SOCOs down to the boss’s place,’ he gasped. ‘I’ve just disturbed an intruder. I think he’s been here before so it would be good to find out who he is. The place has been given a good going over.’ He then gave Millie as detailed a description as he could, to add to any trace evidence that might turn up.

  ‘While you’re on,’ she said. ‘I made some enquiries about the Welsh copper, Griffith. He’s ex-SAS so started out in Hereford. Has had a couple of commendations, but nothing else is flagged.’

  ‘Okay, thanks, Millie. You know this idea you’ve got about Glenn McGinley?’

  ‘Yes.’ She sounded suspicious, as if he was going to tear her off a strip again.

  ‘Keep on it, will you?’

  ‘Okay.’

  Returning to the cottage, Knox found that in addition to the highly visible damage, the kitchen worktop was now also littered with the essential paraphernalia of the habitual heroin user. The guy he’d disturbed could simply be an opportunist, who had found the door off its hinges and decided to use the place as his personal drugs den, but Knox didn’t think so. Either way he was going to miss his equipment, and with luck he would have left behind a few decent latent prints that could be matched with a set already on the national database. Leaving all that for the SOCOs to find when they arrived, Knox went upstairs and grabbed a few of Mariner’s clothes, before rigging the front door as securely as he could, and setting off for mid-Wales.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  It was early afternoon when Griffith finally appeared along with Superintendent Bullman, the latter’s jaw already working the nicotine gum. Bullman presented a freshly laundered contrast to his subordinate and was as immaculately turned out as the first time they’d met. The strain on Griffith was beginning to tell in ways that Mariner recognized only too well. His tie had slipped down another few notches and his shirt collar was slightly grimy. Mariner couldn’t be certain if the slight unwashed smell in the interview room was coming from Griffith or him.

  Understandably, and perhaps for the benefit of Bullman, Griffith wasn’t quite as friendly towards Mariner as on their last encounter, and Mariner wondered if he now regretted sharing as much as he had on the Ashton case. It felt very odd for Mariner to be on this side of the questioning, even though this wasn’t the first time. A couple of years back he had found himself, with the help of a third party, deliberately implicated in a serious crime. On that occasion he’d been rapidly exonerated. He hoped that the pattern would hold.

  Mariner had declined the option of a solicitor or a Federation Rep. Although it was obvious how the events of the previous night might be construed, he had nothing to hide and, rightly or wrongly, he was depending on Griffith’s intelligence to understand that. But having set the scene for the benefit of the recording equipment, it was Bullman who took the lead in questioning. ‘Perhaps you could start by telling us what happened last night, sir,’ he began. He wasn’t being overly polite; the ‘sir’ was a necessary means of putting some distance between them.

  ‘I don’t exactly know,’ Mariner said, truthfully. ‘I met Jeremy Bryce the evening before last on my way back to the hostel. It was after dark and he was in a bad way, but because the pub was crowded he was planning to walk on several more miles before sheltering for the night. I didn’t think it was a good idea, so I took him back with me to the hostel. Fortunately Elena Hughes agreed that he could stay there. Last night was the second night he stayed. He and I went down to the Hart for something to eat, then Bryce returned to the hostel and I followed him across a little later.’

  ‘Why the delay?’

  ‘I went to check on El— Mrs Hughes, to make sure that she was all right.’Mariner sensed Griffith’s eyes on him.

  ‘Did you have reason to think things might not be OK?’Bullman asked.

  ‘Not specifically, no, but after what had happened to Theo Ashton … Anyway, when I went over to the hostel Jeremy Bryce was already asleep in his bunk and was snoring loudly. He had a nasty cold. Believe me, as I’d learned the night before, he could snore. So I picked up my bedding and went up to the attic room to sleep up there. I’d done this on the previous night too. I slept for a while, but in the early hours I woke up again because it had got very cold, so I came back to the dormitory. Bryce had quietened down by then.’

  ‘He’d stopped snoring.’

  ‘So I thought.’

  ‘And what time was this?

  ‘I can’t say for sure, but it was still completely dark, so could have been anything between about one and four a.m.’

  ‘That’s a pretty big window,’ Bullman observed. ‘You can’t be more specific?’

  ‘There was a car,’ said Mariner, remembering all at once.

  ‘A car?’

  ‘Outside one of the tied cottages, picking someone up. That’s what woke me; either the door slamming, or the voices, or it might have sounded its horn. I looked out and saw someone from the cottage get in, and the
n it drove off.’

  ‘Can you describe this car?’

  ‘It was a saloon, quite big, maybe the size of a Passat or something and light coloured; silver or grey. It’s not much but it would pinpoint what time I was in the attic. I could have only seen it from the attic window. The view from the dormitory is blocked by a tree.’

  ‘And then you went down to the dormitory,’ said Bullman. ‘Did you notice anything out of the ordinary at that point?’

  ‘Only that Bryce was no longer snoring. I fell asleep again. I was woken some time later – just as it was getting light – by his blood dripping on me, although I didn’t realize straight away what it was.’

  Bullman turned to Griffith, who placed one of the brown evidence bags on the table, the cellophane window displaying a brown and white garment: Mariner’s bloodstained T-shirt. ‘Do you recognize this?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, it’s my T-shirt,’ Mariner said. ‘And it has Jeremy Bryce’s blood on it. As I said, it had dripped on me during the night and I was wearing it when I found him.’

  ‘What did you do, when you saw what had happened?’ asked Bullman.

  ‘I threw up,’ said Mariner. ‘Then I went to tell Elena – Mrs Hughes.’

  ‘You went to her house?’

  ‘I didn’t have to. She’d come over to the hostel to bring us tea. She called up the stairs. I didn’t want her to see what had happened, so I ran down to stop her.’

  ‘And if Elena hadn’t come across, what would you have done then?’

  ‘I would have gone to her house.’

  ‘Are you sure about that, sir?’

  ‘Yes, of course I am. What else would I have done?’ Realization dawned. ‘You think I was going to run away, in my boxer shorts and boots?