‘He might not be so keen on being watched if things aren’t going his way,’ Glover said.
‘Can’t imagine that,’ said Knox, sourly.
‘Perhaps Ricky was a regular visitor down here, too. Had seen what Pryce was up to and been blackmailing him.’
‘Well, Pryce is the only other person we can place down here, so we need to talk to him again.’
‘Yes, we do,’ agreed Mariner. ‘We need to know exactly what Pryce has been getting up to down here, when he was around and for how long, going back for the last couple of months. There’s no immediate hurry though. I get the feeling that Shaun Pryce will be in a more talkative mood once news leaks about where we’ve found Yasmin’s phone.’
‘You’re sure he won’t disappear?’ Knox said.
‘Oh no.’ Mariner was confident. ‘Judging by yesterday’s performance, if he is involved, he’ll want to be around for his bit of the limelight.’
‘I’d better go and tell Ricky’s mum,’ Glover said to Mariner. ‘Do you want to come?’
Mariner ran the scene in his head; Colleen screaming and sobbing as she beat her fists against Glover. ‘Not yet,’ he said. ‘She needs to know that you’re in charge. And we’ve got things to do.’ Or was he just a coward, unable to face Colleen after letting her down so badly, afraid of the hysteria that would ensue? Later Charlie told him it hadn’t run like that at all. She’d taken the news in a stunned silence. Somehow that had been even worse.
* * *
As they left the site, a low loader bearing a Portakabin was driving towards the scene. The incident room would be set up there to maximise the use of local intelligence and deepen the search. One of the first tasks would be a door-to-door to try and establish when and where Ricky was last seen. The murder investigation unit would support Charlie Glover’s OCU investigation and a team would be put onto searching the reservoir area for the murder weapon. The diving team would have to be contracted in from a neighbouring force, since their own divers had gone the way of the mounted division and fallen victim to budget cuts. Trawling the reservoir would make for an interesting task given all that thick black mud. Close behind the truck, Mariner could see a couple more unmarked vehicles.
‘The vultures are moving in,’ observed Knox. Inevitably the press would have picked up news of this morning’s activities from the air waves. ‘Want me to get rid of them, boss?’
‘Be as unpleasant as you like,’ said Mariner.
* * *
What Mariner was less prepared for was the mob of reporters already assembled outside the entrance to Granville Lane. News had travelled fast and they were not a happy throng. Knox and Mariner got out of the car just as Fiske appeared at the main doors to read a prepared statement. ‘We will do everything within our power to bring the killer of Ricky Skeet to justice,’ he concluded.
‘Is that the same kind of everything you did to find him when he went missing?’ someone called out.
‘We followed all possible lines of enquiry,’ said Fiske, defiant. ‘I have no doubt that my officers did all they possibly could to prevent this situation from occurring.’
‘Mrs Skeet doesn’t seem to agree with you on that.’
Fiske was getting hot under the collar. ‘Any complaints about the way this enquiry has been handled will be dealt with through the usual channels.’
‘Whitewashed, you mean.’
Mariner signalled to Knox and they jogged around the building and in through a side door. Along the corridor they ran into Fiske making his escape. ‘Bloody press,’ he grumbled.
‘Perhaps they’ve got a point this time,’ said Mariner.
‘And what the hell’s that supposed to mean?’
‘We didn’t exactly pull out all the stops for Ricky, did we?’ Mariner reminded him.
Fiske bridled. ‘Given his profile we followed the correct procedures.’
‘I’ll tell his mum that. I’m sure she’ll feel greatly reassured. “Your son’s dead, but given his profile, we did everything by the book, Colleen.”’ Deep down Mariner recognised that he was angrier with himself than he was with Fiske. If he’d made more of a stand against the arrogant bastard instead of caving in at the beginning this might not have happened. ‘And now we’ve got a kid we hardly looked for dead and another we’ve wasted energy on looking for who might have eloped with her boyfriend,’ he said.
‘We got it wrong,’ said Fiske. ‘Sometimes it happens.’
‘You don’t say.’
Millie was working up in CID. ‘You heard?’ Mariner asked.
Her face said it all. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Yeah. But we have to turn our attention back to Yasmin. There’s always the chance that the two cases aren’t linked. I know the probability has dropped a couple of notches, but still the only two people we can definitely place down at the reservoir at any time are Shaun Pryce and Ricky Skeet. Yasmin’s phone might have been there, but we don’t know for sure that she was too. Let’s deal with the real possibilities first, before we go off speculating about other things.’ The seventeen-year-old had been gone more than a week now and their one breakthrough had come to nothing.
‘Let’s have a look at the CCTV footage again,’ Mariner said. ‘I want to be absolutely sure that it’s her getting on that train.’
‘But we’ve been over that, boss,’ Knox whined.
Quashing his complaints, Mariner played the tape yet again. As on every previous occasion, they watched as Yasmin boarded the train. After about half a minute — during which time another passenger got on — the door closed and as the train began to draw away, Knox switched off the tape.
‘That’s definitely Yasmin,’ said Millie, swivelling in her chair. ‘She looks right into the camera.’
‘And no sign of her dropping her phone,’ said Mariner.
‘But she’d started running from the top of the road,’ Millie reminded him. ‘She could have dropped it anywhere before she comes into view.’
Their disappointment was tangible. ‘Well, we may soon find out about that anyway,’ Mariner said. He had half an eye on Tony Knox, who had put another DVD in the player and was winding and rewinding, like a hyperactive four-year-old. ‘Her phone should be back from—’ Mariner was about to snap at him to concentrate, when Knox froze.
‘Look at this,’ he said.
Mariner glanced back at the screen as Knox back-tracked the footage at speed. ‘But we’ve already seen—’
‘No, wait,’ said Knox. ‘This is the second camera, further up the platform.’ It was a different view of the train, this time the front carriage. He pointed at the corner of the screen. ‘According to the digital counter, this is the precise moment Yasmin got on the train at the back.’ They watched and waited. Nothing happened. Then, just before the doors closed someone passed across the screen. Knox hit freeze.
‘It’s Yasmin,’ said Millie.
‘She got off the train again,’ said Knox, with a degree of satisfaction.
‘Shit,’ said Mariner. ‘Why didn’t we think of that?’
‘Think of what?’ They were so caught up in their find that Fiske’s voice startled them. Creeping up on them was becoming a habit.
‘Yasmin Akram had us all fooled,’ said Mariner. ‘Play it back Tony.’
‘What ag—?’ Mariner glared at him and dutifully Knox re-ran the recording yet again.
As they watched Mariner provided the running commentary. ‘She runs for the train, giving her friends — and us — the impression that she was going home as usual, but gets off again before the train pulls out.’ He looked up at Fiske, calculating how far he could go. ‘She never even got as far as the university.’
Fiske stared at him. ‘Are you trying to make some kind of point, DI Mariner?’
‘Only that perhaps we could have saved ourselves considerable time and resources if we’d been a bit less hasty with the search, sir,’ said Mariner calmly.
But Fiske wasn’t so easily beaten. ‘We did the right thin
g based on the information available at the time,’ he replied, icily. ‘Not forgetting of course, the sex attacker we’ve exposed.’
‘Oh, nice one, sir,’ Knox grinned inanely, before realising, along with everyone else, that the pun was entirely unintentional.
‘Given that new information has come to light, I’d have thought your time would be more usefully spent following it up rather than playing games of “I told you so.”’ And with that Fiske turned and walked out.
‘Fucking moron,’ muttered Knox.
Mariner should really have reminded him about respect for senior officers, but it made a change to see Tony Knox back on form again. Instead he brought them back to task. ‘So why does Yasmin get off the train again?’
‘Maybe she realises that she’s dropped her phone, goes back to look for it.’
‘Which still wouldn’t explain how it ends up at the reservoir,’ said Mariner. ‘Unless in that short space of time someone else has found it and picked it up.’
‘Maybe she has other plans,’ Millie speculated. ‘What we can’t see is where she went next.’
‘There is a camera positioned at the back of the station though,’ Knox remembered. ‘It would be worth checking out the tape from that. If she heads towards the footbridge, she could be crossing the line.’
‘In more ways than one,’ said Millie. ‘Yasmin’s just full of surprises, isn’t she?’
‘Let’s get the tape.’
* * *
Yasmin did indeed appear on the footage from the back of the station, descending the footbridge and across the screen towards the station car park, but that was as far as the camera covered.
‘So where’s she off to?’
‘Suddenly it’s not beyond the realms of possibility that Yasmin dropped her phone at the reservoir.’
But as Knox went to switch off the TV, Mariner spotted something else on the screen. ‘Look at that — way behind her, in the background.’ Next to the kerb was the offside wing and part of the bonnet of a dark vehicle.
‘It’s a Merc,’ said Knox. ‘You can tell from that radiator grille.’
‘Is there anyone in it?’ asked Millie, as they all squinted at the screen.
‘Hard to see. It’s not a good angle. Can we home in on that licence plate?’
They could, but it was still too blurred to be of any use.
‘Mohammed Akram drives a black Mercedes,’ Mariner reminded them.
‘Now there’s a nice coincidence. Maybe Yasmin got off the train again because she saw someone she knew.’ The time on the corner of the screen said 16:29. ‘According to Akram he’d been to the printer’s and was on his way to Bradford by that time — all the way up the motorway,’ said Mariner.
‘Is the printer’s in the city?’ asked Knox.
‘I assumed it was in Sparkhill, near the school. TMR, it’s called. It was on the prospectus Hasan Sheron showed us.’
Knox reached for the Yellow Pages and flicked through until he found printers.
‘Here we are. TMR Reprographics. Two branches, one in the city and another—’ He looked up for dramatic effect. ‘On Birch Close.’
‘Shit,’ said Millie.
‘Thanks for that valuable contribution,’ Knox said. But he did seem to be joking.
‘And from there it’s just a short drive up to the station where the CCTV picks up Akram’s car,’ said Mariner, ‘— if it is his car.’
‘And it would be easy enough to get onto the motorway from here,’ said Knox. ‘There’s nothing stopping him from going back out through the city centre and up to Spaghetti Junction, or even up the Wolverhampton Road to the M5 then M6. The fact that Yasmin stayed for art club and left school late would have helped him out. He’d also probably have known that she’d be on her own at the station, so it would have been the perfect place if he didn’t want to confront her in front of her friends, or back at home.’
‘He could easily have picked her up from the station and taken her with him,’ said Mariner.
‘What time did he check into his hotel in Bradford?’ Millie wanted to know.
‘Not until nearly eight. But he says he stopped off at Sandbach services for something to eat on his way and that there were road works on the M62 — which there are.’
‘It doesn’t rule him out though,’ said Knox. ‘It’s still a bloody big coincidence if he was in this area at all at around that time.’
‘An appeal on local news can help to rule out anyone else,’ Mariner said.
‘When did he say he’d confronted Yasmin?’ Millie asked.
‘On Friday,’ said Mariner. ‘He said they’d sorted it out. But perhaps they had unfinished business.’
‘What if Akram talked Yasmin into going up to Bradford with him?’ Millie suggested.
Mariner was dubious. ‘Without telling her mother what was going on?’
‘It’s probable that neither of them would have wanted her to know about the pill.’
‘But that doesn’t tie in with Akram forbidding Yasmin to go to Suzanne’s,’ said Knox. ‘He couldn’t have known that his wife would give in and let her go.’
‘Unless he knows his wife better than she thinks,’ said Millie.
‘The receipt from the service station only indicates a meal for one.’
Mariner sighed. ‘Okay, folks, we’re starting to speculate again. Let’s get back to the facts.’
‘We have Ricky, Yasmin and Akram all in the same area at the same time,’ said Knox. ‘That’s a fact.’
‘Only if that is Akram’s car on the CCTV.’
‘And I still don’t get where Ricky comes into this,’ Millie said.
‘He might not,’ said Mariner. ‘We could easily still be looking at two entirely unconnected events. Maybe Ricky’s only part in this was to find Yasmin’s phone at the station and take it with him to the reservoir, where he was attacked and he dropped it — simple as that. Meanwhile, Yasmin, unaware that she’s even lost her phone, meets her dad at the station.’
‘Are we absolutely certain that Yasmin and Ricky didn’t know each other?’ Knox asked.
‘I just don’t see how they would,’ said Millie.
‘But we don’t know for sure that they didn’t,’ Knox insisted, the tension in the room thickening.
‘And they don’t have to have done,’ said Millie suddenly. ‘If Ricky was in the wrong place at the wrong time Akram could have just jumped to the wrong conclusion.’
‘What are you talking about?’ Knox pulled a face.
‘Maybe the phone is the link,’ Millie persevered. ‘How about if Ricky finds the phone, as we thought. Yasmin’s home number is on it. Ricky phones that number to establish its owner, gets Akram who arranges to meet him and collect it. Akram’s going to be at the printer's, Ricky knows the reservoir, so they arrange to meet at a mutually convenient spot. Akram is still wound up about Yasmin being on the pill, jumps to the wrong conclusion about Ricky having her phone and loses it.’
Knox’s facial expression fell just short of contempt. ‘That’s a hell of a conclusion to jump to. A kid finds his daughter’s phone so he assumes they’re having sex?’
‘We don’t know what’s on that phone.’ Millie stood her ground. ‘There might be some interesting messages or pictures. Could be that Ricky tried blackmailing Akram, perhaps he demanded money before giving it up. Akram’s already pissed off about all the hassle he’s been getting. This could’ve been the final straw.’
Mariner could see Knox’s colour rising. ‘It’s an interesting idea, but knowing what we do about Ricky, it’s a bit far-fetched,’ he said, calmly.
Millie shrugged. ‘He’d run away from home. That wasn’t his kind of thing either. And if he wasn’t planning on going back he was going to need more money.’
‘So why did Paul Hewitt find the phone still lying there?’ Knox said. ‘Akram would have taken it with him.’
‘Ricky was in a bad way, wasn’t he? The attack must have been violent, impulsive even. May
be Akram just lost it and in the heat of the moment he dropped the phone and it got forgotten. He’d have been pretty caught up in what he was doing.’
‘Or somebody disturbed him,’ Mariner suggested.
‘Down there?’
‘Okay. He looked up and saw Lily watching him.’
‘I doubt that he’d see her from that distance,’ said Knox. ‘And even so, you’re saying this was all about the phone . . . he’d hardly have left it behind, would he?’
‘Or go in bloodstained clothing back to the station to meet his daughter,’ Millie conceded.
‘He was going away overnight though,’ Mariner pointed out. ‘He would have had a change of clothing in the car.’
‘I don’t buy it,’ said Knox. ‘If that is what happened, Ricky would have had hardly any time to find the phone, alert Akram and arrange to meet him. I’d say it was virtually impossible.’ He glared at Millie, who refused to be intimidated.
‘And I think we’re getting a bit carried away here, folks,’ Mariner intervened. ‘We need to look at it from every angle, but this isn’t getting us any nearer to knowing where Yasmin’s gone.’
‘I think we need to check her dad’s movements up in Bradford,’ Millie insisted. ‘If she has simply been spirited away it would explain why he didn’t seem so anxious at the start.’
‘Look into that, will you?’ said Mariner. ‘It remains a possibility, but one of several. At the moment all we have is Yasmin’s phone, Ricky dead and Yasmin vanished.’
‘Like one of those lateral-thinking problems,’ said Knox.
Millie pulled a face. ‘I was always rubbish at them.’
‘I need some fresh air,’ said Knox.
When he’d left the room Millie asked the question Mariner had been dreading. ‘Are you sure it’s not me?’
‘Tony just takes the job very seriously,’ said Mariner brushing it off.
‘Implying that we don’t?’ She had a point.
Mariner was saved from further awkwardness by the news that Charlie Glover was back from the pathologist’s office with the preliminary findings.
CHAPTER 17
When Knox had returned, Glover cut to the chase. ‘Everything so far says the blood on the grass is definitely Ricky’s. It was a frenzied attack involving repeated blows to the skull with a blunt instrument. It would have been messy.’
Innocent Lies (Reissue) Page 16
