The discussion had come to its natural conclusion and DCI Sharp ended the conference call, with an undertaking from both localities that information would continue to be shared at intervals, or as fresh intelligence came to light.
In Wales, Mariner was considering spending some time exploring Llanerch, prior to returning to Caranwy, when Griffith unexpectedly said: ‘We’re just about to interview Willow about his organic produce business. Since you’re here, you might want to stop by an observation room?’ Mariner didn’t need to be asked twice.
In the interview suite, Nigel Weller was looking decidedly uncomfortable. Griffith didn’t pull any punches. He disclosed what had been learned through the soil analysis, keeping Mariner’s role out of it, then he asked a simple question: ‘If you are a vegetable grower, why do you import in bulk from the continent?’
Nigel Weller was a sensible man and knew when he had been rumbled. He sighed heavily. ‘I didn’t set out to con anyone,’ he said. ‘When I first moved out to Caranwy it was with every intention of growing and selling organically produced vegetables. On paper the fertilizer looked promising, but it just didn’t work. Oh, it altered the soil temperature a little but not enough, so then I invested in the poly tunnels, and finally the turbines to try heating them, but it was impossible to ensure that they were adequately insulated. And the plants needed warmth but they also needed more hours of sunlight than were ever going to be realistic out here. I thought infra red lamps might do the trick but they didn’t. After a couple of years it started to become clear that I was never going to be able to create the right conditions, least of all naturally. There had been some commercial interest in the product and I’d even attracted a couple of sponsors, but they started to become impatient, and what savings I had were dwindling. But somehow I couldn’t quite let go. I still had some ideas about the fertilizer, so I just needed to make some money to be able to continue a little longer. By this time I’d become used to the life out here. It suited me and I didn’t want to lose it and that was quite apart from all the investment I’d made in the farm.
‘Then one day, by chance, I got chatting to a guy running a successful stall at one of the markets and he let me into a secret – that he supplemented his organic produce with non organic. He said that if you were careful about how you did it, nobody could tell the difference. I hadn’t ever intended it to be long term; it was just to generate some extra income to keep us going until the fertilizer was perfected. He gave me his contact in Holland, and that was when I set up the scam.’
‘And was Theo Ashton planning to shop you?’
‘Theo?’ Weller seemed genuinely taken aback by the suggestion. ‘Of course not. He was like a son to me. He and Amber have been happy at the farm. Why would he have wanted to destroy what we’ve got?’
‘Perhaps he’d been offered something more enticing by Joe Hennessey,’ Griffith suggested.
‘The wildlife photographer? What’s he got to do with anything?’
‘Hennessey was a jack of all trades; part photographer, but he was also a private investigator and a journalist,’ said Griffith. ‘Maybe this was a story he was going to sell to the papers.’
Weller leaned back in his chair. ‘I don’t believe it,’ he said. ‘Theo would not have sold us out under any circumstances. He and Amber had – have – too much to lose. I hold my hands up to deception, but if you think I had anything to do with the death of Theo Ashton, you are insane.’
Afterwards Griffith joined Mariner in the observation room. ‘So what now?’ asked Mariner.
‘We’ll turn him over to Trading Standards. It’s all we’ve got.’
‘And Theo Ashton?’
‘I don’t think he would have killed the lad. And the bottom line is that we have no evidence for it anyway.’
For Mariner the whole afternoon’s experience had been very like being at work again, so it felt strange when a squad car deposited him at the White Hart and back into the middle of his so-called holiday. He felt drained by the experience, but tomorrow had the walk with Suzy to look forward to. He went to bed and slept soundly.
THIRTY-THREE
Day Eleven
On Friday morning Mariner got his stuff together and walked up to Gwennol at the appointed time. It was bitterly cold again, with squalls of rain blowing in from angry clouds. The door to the MIU was open but there was much less activity going on up here now. It was always the same when the heat began to go out of an investigation, and Mariner didn’t envy Griffith the task that lay ahead. They’d gone from having no suspects to several, but none of them was straightforward and they all lacked any sound evidence. Climbing the wooden steps to Suzy’s flat he found her waiting for him, all ready in boots and walking gear.
They set off this time across the Gwennol estate, round the back of the hall and away from the village, crossing a stone bridge on the far side of the valley that took them up on to the hillside, branching off along a narrow track that began to climb steeply. They kept up a steady pace and soon, aside from the wind rustling the trees, the only sound was that of their own breathing and the occasional rook cawing overhead. After walking for more than an hour, they crested the rocky outcrop of the hill and stopped to catch their breath for a moment.
‘Did your “some other time” girl like walking?’ Suzy asked suddenly.
Despite a sudden stitch of pain, the mere thought made Mariner smile. ‘Absolutely not,’ he said. ‘She could never get her head round the attraction of it. Her idea of a walk involved her credit cards – or, even better, my credit cards – and armfuls of designer shopping bags. I took her up Clent once, one of the little hills just outside Birmingham, on a beautiful warm sunny day, and she asked me what was the point, if all we were going to do was climb down again.’
‘So you didn’t do any of this – walking holidays?’
‘No. We were only together a couple of years and holidays were one of the few things we ever argued about. To be honest it would probably always have been like that. Anna liked to go somewhere and do things, which as far as I’m concerned, means visiting places that other people consider worth going to, and therefore by definition are the places I’d do anything to avoid.’ They’d done it once, he remembered; a long weekend in Florence in July, when among other things, Mariner was subjected to the torture of queuing for three hours in the baking sun, along with hundreds of other tourists, for the privilege of shuffling past Michelangelo’s David. When they finally got there, it didn’t look to him any more impressive in the flesh than the photographs he’d already seen in books. He made the mistake of saying so. It hadn’t been the most successful of weekends – apart from the sex, he thought ruefully.
Setting off again they began a descent into the valley running in parallel to the Vale of Caranwy, joining the course of a stream that cut a groove through the hillside. As the path flattened out, the sound of trickling water increased and they came into a small hollow, alongside a twenty-foot limestone cliff rising up, with a deep tarn at its base. ‘What do you think? Perfect, isn’t it?’ Suzy cried, scrambling over to the water’s edge.
‘Perfect for what?’ Mariner asked naively, noticing that she had already dumped her rucksack on the rocks and was fiddling with her watch.
‘A swim.’
‘What?’ Mariner thought he must have misheard her, even though as he watched, she was starting to remove her outer clothes.
‘A swim,’ she repeated. ‘Haven’t you ever done wild swimming?’
‘Not in bloody April,’ said Mariner. Walking over to the water’s edge, he squatted down and dipped his fingers into the green water. ‘It’s arctic.’ His voice came out as a squeak.
She’d sat down on a rock to take off her boots and gazed up at him, rolling her eyes. ‘Don’t be so pathetic. It’ll just be a quick dip. I thought you liked the outdoors.’
‘I do,’ said Mariner defensively. ‘But I also have an aversion to bronchial pneumonia. I haven’t brought a towel or anything.’
This time she openly laughed. ‘My God, you’re a wuss after all. Who’d have thought?’
Ordinarily Mariner never felt a need to prove himself to anyone, but for some reason that remark stung, so he put down his pack and started removing his clothes with the same enthusiasm he’d have had for a particularly invasive medical exam. ‘This is complete madness,’ he muttered, half to himself. ‘We’ll die of exposure.’
‘That’s rubbish,’ she shot back, stepping out of her very skimpy underwear. ‘It’s great for your circulation and your heart. The Scandinavians do it all the time.’
‘But they have the sense to follow it up with a hot tub,’ he grumbled. Her olive skin contrasted ridiculously with his that was pasty white; not that she’d have noticed. She was already wading into the icy water, shrieking with the cold, and as Mariner dropped his boxer shorts on to the pile he’d created he saw her plunge into the water and swim strongly across the pond. Stepping gingerly into the water, his feet sliding on the slimy rocks, Mariner suppressed an anguished cry and the desperate urge to run back out again. No chance of that. She was paddling about underneath the cliff, where the rock shelved away. ‘Look, there’s a cave under here!’ she called, and disappeared momentarily.
Mariner watched, his limbs starting to throb with the cold, but she didn’t reappear. ‘Suzy?’ he called uncertainly. ‘Suzy!’ He started to thrash out across the pond, then suddenly she reappeared, grinning broadly. ‘It’s a tunnel,’ she said. ‘It goes right into the mountain.’
‘There’s a whole network of them underneath these hills,’ Mariner said, his teeth chattering. ‘Can we get out now?’
They were in the water for no more than five minutes, which was about four minutes fifty-nine seconds more than was comfortable for Mariner, and as soon as he could he was out again and pulling on his clothes.
‘There, wasn’t that exhilarating?’ Suzy said, her head popping through her thick sweater.
Now that it was over, Mariner had to admit that it was. ‘Probably caught my death though,’ he complained.
‘Come here then, I’ll warm you up.’ Stepping over to him, she put her arms around him, rubbing them up and down his body. Mariner couldn’t resist. He leaned forward and kissed her, briefly on the lips, or at least that’s what he intended, but it was so good that he carried on, and then his arm was around her, drawing her in to him.
‘Well,’ Suzy said, when finally he broke the kiss. ‘That was unexpected.’ She looked at him. ‘How far is it back to Gwennol?’
‘Not far, if we take the shortest route,’ said Mariner.
‘All right then.’
Scrambling back down the path, they were making their way across to the estate, when they came across a small stone cottage set back behind a neat garden. ‘It must be the Reverend Aubrey’s,’ Mariner said, lowering his voice. ‘He used to be the local pastor, but left the ministry in disgrace some years ago.’
‘What kind of disgrace?’
‘The kind of disgrace the clergy is getting quite good at.’
‘Looks like he’s still unpopular,’ Suzy observed. ‘Someone’s thrown wood stain all over his windows.’
She was right; although Elena had given Mariner the impression that things had died down, there was a transparent brown liquid splattered over the window panes, standing out against what were rather grimy net curtains, ‘Could have been there years,’ said Mariner. ‘An old guy living on his own, maybe he doesn’t clean his windows very often.’ He didn’t want to pry, but he walked the few feet into the garden and ran a finger down the glass to try and ascertain what the substance was. And that was when he realized it wasn’t on the outer window but on the inside, and that it was the staining of the curtains themselves that made it that odd translucent brown colour. ‘Wait here,’ he told Suzy firmly. Walking round to the back of the cottage he found the back door of the property an inch or so ajar. He pushed it gently and called out a cautious ‘Hello?’ but as the door swung open, wafting out a cloying, sweet, metallic smell, Mariner knew that there would be no response.
‘What is it?’ Suzy had followed him around the side of the cottage.
‘It’s ugly,’ said Mariner. ‘Have you got your phone with you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Carry on down to the estate and keep going until you can get a signal and call the police,’ he said. ‘Ask for Ryan Griffith if possible. That unfortunate habit of mine? It hasn’t gone away.’
Mariner didn’t enter the cottage but sat and waited on the grassy bank to one side. It was a long, cold wait and he was relieved to finally see a mud-spattered blue Land Rover bumping along the grassy track towards him. He let Griffith and Blaine put on their forensic suits and go into the cottage.
Griffith emerged a few minutes later and immediately lit up a cigarette, before coming over to join Mariner. ‘It is the Reverend Aubrey,’ he said. ‘He’s been shot multiple times, including in the head. What you can see all over the windows, well, you can guess. Either he was sitting in his arm chair when the killer got in, or he was made to sit there.’
‘How long ago?’ asked Mariner.
‘Hard to say exactly, of course, but it’s a matter of days. It’s pretty gruesome. Scenes of crime are on their way.’
The two men sat in silence while Griffith smoked his cigar-ette. ‘We’ve had news about Joe Hennessey too,’ he said, at last. ‘The post-mortem has given us a ToD somewhere on Monday afternoon.’
‘Monday? So that’s before Bryce was killed,’ Mariner remarked.
‘May or may not be significant,’ said Griffith. ‘But it does start to undermine our idea about Hennessy being killed for incompetence. The other result we’ve had is from the waterproofs found at the byre. The blood all over them is definitely Theo Ashton’s, so it’s likely they were worn by his killer, but we’re pretty certain it wasn’t Glenn McGinley who’s been sleeping rough there.’
‘How can you be so sure?’ asked Mariner.
Griffith raised his cigarette. ‘McGinley’s a chain smoker, and there were no dog ends. I’m not sure that he’d have bothered going round clearing them up after him.’
‘Probably not,’ conceded Mariner. ‘But someone has been hiding out there?’
‘Oh yes,’ said Griffith. ‘Just a question of working out who.’
When Tony Knox arrived home from work on Friday afternoon it was to find his house transformed. Kat was in the kitchen, in rubber gloves, attacking his grimy stove. ‘I hope you don’t mind,’ she said, removing iPod ear phones. ‘Is good for me to do some cleaning and be busy. Is therapeutic.’
There was a further surprise when the doorbell rang and Knox opened the door on Michael, scrubbed, smart and bright-eyed and looking, as kids do, like an extra from the Magic Roundabout, all pipe cleaner legs in skinny jeans and oversized converse trainers. ‘Is Kat here?’ he asked hopefully, peering past Knox and into the hall. ‘I thought we could take Nelson for a walk?’
Knox smiled to himself. He recognized a crush when he saw one. Perhaps Kat did too, because she happily went off with Michael, returning more than an hour later at the point when Knox was starting to wonder if something had happened to them. And perhaps it had, because, when they came into the kitchen to give Nelson his post-walk treat, the air between the two of them seemed heavy with expectation. It was Kat who finally broke the tension. ‘You should tell him now, Michael,’ she said. ‘It’s okay.’
‘Tell me what?’ Knox asked.
Michael was staring at the floor.
‘He knows,’ said Kat. ‘Someone told him who gave Kirsty the pill.’
Michael looked up at her accusingly. ‘I told you that in confidence,’ he said, his eyes shining.
‘Kirsty died,’ Kat reminded him. ‘And she was your friend. These are bad people and believe me, I know about bad. He might do it again to another girl.’
‘But they’ll know it was me who grassed him up,’ Michael whined miserably. ‘I’ll get into so much trouble. My mum …’
‘Your mum?’ said Knox. ‘What’s she got to do with this?’
‘Nothing. You don’t understand.’ Finally Michael dragged his eyes up so that they met with Knox’s. ‘It was his mate,’ he spat with disgust. ‘The man who gave the pill to Kirsty is a mate of Mr Lennox.’
‘Your teacher?’ Knox checked that he’d understood correctly.
‘Lennox brought him to the party,’ said Michael. ‘He was meant to be there helping out, but all he did all night was hit on the girls, especially Kirsty. Georgia told me, he kept trying to get Kirsty to have a drink and when she wouldn’t he offered her a pill. He told her it wasn’t like alcohol; it wouldn’t do her any harm. It would make her feel relaxed. When he saw what it did to her, he legged it. He’d gone way before you got there.’
‘Does Mr Lennox know about this?’ demanded Knox.
Michael shrugged. ‘What if he did? Where does that leave Mum?’
‘Your mum can make her own choices,’ said Kat. Stepping over, she put an arm around Michael’s shoulders. ‘Well done,’ she said. ‘It was the right thing to do.’
Leaving Kat and Michael watching TV, Knox went across to Jean’s house.
‘Was there another teacher at Michael’s party?’ he asked.
Jean looked momentarily puzzled. ‘Not a teacher, but Pete brought a friend of his; a gym-buddy. He was extra help in case anything got out of hand.’
There’s an irony, thought Knox. ‘Which gym?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know the name. One of those fancy ones on Broad Street.’
From his own house, Knox rang Charlie Glover. ‘You need to go and talk to Peter Lennox again and ask him about his mate.’
When Griffith had finished with him, Mariner chose to walk back to Caranwy and stopped off at Gwennol to check that Suzy was all right. She seemed now to have grasped the enormity of what it was they’d found, and was visibly upset.
‘Would you like me to stay with you for a while?’ Mariner asked.
She smiled weakly. ‘That would be nice. I know it’s completely irrational, but I keep thinking about what happened to the pastor – that something or someone may still be out there. Do you mind?’
Blood and Stone Page 26
