Innocent Lies (Reissue)

by Chris Collett

  ‘Is there any way Yasmin could have misunderstood?’ Mariner asked, though it sounded pretty clear. The shrugged responses were beginning to get on his nerves. ‘And what time did you leave to go to Cornwall?’

  ‘I left the workshop at lunch time, about one fifteen. I told them I didn’t feel well—’

  ‘Christ, Lewis!’ Everett senior could hardly contain himself. ‘When are you ever going to do a decent day’s work?’

  ‘Mr Everett, please.’ Mariner turned back to Lewis. ‘Then what did you do?’

  ‘I went home and packed my stuff, and waited for Dan. But his car was leaking oil—’

  ‘All over my drive I notice,’ Lewis’s father interrupted.

  Mariner’s patience was at an end. ‘Mr Everett, if you can’t remain silent, I’ll have to ask you to leave. Go on, Lewis.’

  ‘We didn’t fix it till nearly four.’

  ‘And you went on the motorway?’

  ‘Straight down the M5.’ Lewis sliced through the air with the edge of his hand.

  ‘Does Yasmin talk to you much about her parents?’

  Lewis scoffed. ‘She’s always moaning about how strict they are.’

  ‘She ever talk about running away?’

  ‘Not for real.’

  ‘But she has mentioned it?’ said Mariner. ‘Did she say where she would go if she did?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did you think about taking her to Cornwall with you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Will anyone be able to corroborate the time you left?’

  A shrug. ‘Dan?’

  ‘Your best pal? Not much of a backup,’ said Knox.

  ‘The traffic cameras might pick up the car.’ Lewis was hopeful.

  But Mariner kept pushing. ‘I still don’t understand why you turned down a perfectly good opportunity on your doorstep to drive all the way down to Cornwall. Especially given that Yasmin had started contraception for your benefit. What was it; was she too tame for you?’

  Lewis’s face screwed up in a flash of irritation. ‘She was using me too, man. All of a sudden she had this thing about losing her virginity. That’s all she wanted me for. Listen, I really like Yasmin, but like I said, she’s complicated. When we were going out she didn’t really know what she wanted. I didn’t like the sound of her dad much either: seriously scary. Cornwall was just fun, a chance to get away from all that.’

  ‘Without the responsibility,’ put in Mr Everett.

  His son stared back insolently. ‘Yeah, that’s right.’

  ‘Ever heard of a boy called Ricky Skeet?’ Mariner slid the photograph across the table. ‘This is him.’

  Lewis looked at the picture, at ease with the question. ‘No.’

  Knox produced the tin of weed and placed it on the table. ‘We found this in your room.’

  ‘It’s for personal use,’ said Lewis instantly. ‘To be honest it’s been there ages. I’d forgotten all about it.’

  ‘Where did you get it?’ Knox asked.

  ‘A friend got it for me.’

  ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘John Smith.’

  ‘You sure it wasn’t Shaun Pryce?’

  Again, the smooth response. ‘No.’

  Mariner put the second photograph on the table. ‘This is him.’ Lewis frowned.

  ‘What?’ said Mariner.

  ‘It’s just . . . weird. I’m pretty sure I don’t know that guy, but it’s like I’ve seen that picture before.’

  ‘This picture? Or one like it?’

  ‘Could be one like it.’

  ‘Have you ever been into the girls’ school?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘That is weird then.’

  * * *

  They let Lewis go home with his father in the late afternoon. His car was impounded for fingerprinting but Mariner felt it was a waste of time.

  ‘Young lad like him, you’d have thought that he’d jump at the chance of a girl offered to him on a plate,’ Mariner said to Knox afterwards. ‘Would he really forgo that opportunity?’

  ‘He was hedging his bets. Yasmin wasn’t exactly consistent, was she? The girls in Cornwall must have seemed a safer bet.’

  ‘He seems relaxed enough talking about Yasmin. On balance I think he’s telling the truth. And it will be easy enough to check out his story with this Dan.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Knox. ‘After all, they’ve had the whole drive back here to get their stories straight.’

  * * *

  Knox followed up by talking to Dan, who confirmed Lewis’s version of events in every detail. And though the occupants were a blur, Dan’s battered and dusty Grand Vitara could be picked out on motorway CCTV passing Bromsgrove at 4:09 p.m. on that Tuesday afternoon. In all probability they’d drawn another blank and Mariner could reasonably have taken the rest of the evening off to help out Anna. But he chose not to.

  Instead he went back to Finlay. ‘Is there any way of knowing the content of Lewis’s last message, even if Yasmin deleted it afterwards?’ he asked.

  ‘There is one deleted message: the last one received, which would have been it,’ said Finlay. ‘As I said before, the ghosting is there. But there’s no way of knowing what that message said.’

  * * *

  ‘So, we only have Lewis’s word that the text was calling off the meeting,’ Mariner told Knox and Millie a little later.

  ‘But if she got the cancellation message, why would she still go there?’ Knox wanted to know.

  ‘We still don’t know for certain that she did,’ said Mariner. ‘Only that she got off the train again.’

  ‘But somehow her phone found its way to the bridge,’ said Millie.

  ‘All right. Supposing she did go to the bridge,’ Mariner said. ‘Say she misunderstood what Lewis had said. What would she do when he didn’t turn up?’

  ‘I’d expect her to wait around a bit, then once it was clear he wasn’t coming, go back to the train station,’ said Millie.

  ‘On the other hand, it could have been the opportunity she was waiting for,’ Mariner suggested. ‘She’s getting grief at home and with her friends. Suddenly she’s in a position where she’s accountable to no one. Her mum thinks she’s with Suzanne. Her dad’s far enough away not to be giving her much thought. A window opens up of a few hours when no one’s going to miss her, a chance to get away.’

  ‘On a West Midlands travel card?’ Knox was doubtful.

  ‘Don’t forget that this is all at about the same time Ricky is killed on that very spot. We’ve thought about Ricky witnessing something and being killed for it, but what about if Yasmin saw what happened to Ricky and it frightened her into running away.’

  ‘Which brings us right back to where we came in last Wednesday,’ said Millie. ‘Where has she gone?’

  Mariner got up from where he’d been sitting, massaging his temples to ease the headache he was developing. ‘Potentially we’ve got several people at the reservoir at that time and now we have photographs to go with them. Let’s go and talk to Lily again, see if we can prompt her into remembering anything new.’

  * * *

  The air was closing in on them as Knox drove them back to St Clare’s, armed now with photographs of Yasmin, Lee, Mohammed Akram and Shaun Pryce. Dusk was a couple of hours away but the sky had dulled to a misty grey and when they got out of the car their shirts were speckled with tiny storm flies. Mariner was hoping that Lillian would recognise at least one of the photographs, but she simply shook her head at each of them.

  ‘Are you saying you can’t be sure?’ Mariner asked.

  ‘No. I’m saying none of those are him.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘Well, thank you for looking.’ It was hard to conceal his disappointment.

  ‘Not at all,’ smiled Lily, regardless. ‘You were lucky to catch me again, Inspector. I shan’t be here for much longer.’

  ‘Oh?’

  She beamed with pride. ‘I’ve won a
competition. Twenty-five thousand pounds.’

  Mariner was impressed. ‘That’s wonderful. What competition was that?’ Shuffling over to the little table she picked up a letter and passed it to him. It was the sort of ‘Congratulations! You have been selected to receive one of our stunning prizes’ variety of junk mail that every household receives on a weekly, if not daily, basis. All it required in return was that the recipient sign up to a monthly magazine to be entered into a prize draw.

  ‘Lily, this isn’t—’ Mariner began gently, but Nora caught his eye and gave a tiny warning shake of the head.

  ‘I’m going to buy a nice little house.’ Lily went on, enthusiastically. ‘And I’m going to have a party for all my family and friends too. You must come, Inspector.’

  ‘I’d love to,’ said Mariner, with a sudden sinking feeling.

  Nora showed them out of the building. ‘I know what you’re thinking and yes, it’s true, she does have days when she’s confused, but they’re rare. She still saw what she saw.’

  ‘I know.’ But now Mariner was beginning to question exactly what that was.

  * * *

  On the way home the pain that had been moving round his skull for most of the day began to tighten like a vice, as thoughts darted around his head, seeking out connections. Should he go to Anna’s? He considered it again, but something stopped him. What he needed was time on his own to think. Back at the cottage he washed back a couple of painkillers, collapsed in the armchair and closed his eyes.

  * * *

  Mariner was woken around midnight by what he thought must be fireworks. These days waking all the neighbours seemed to have become the universal way to celebrate any special event, especially in summer. But the air had grown stickier still and the next rumble he heard was preceded by the unmistakable flicker of lightning. The storm crept slowly towards the city like a slothful beast, grumbling and complaining, building in strength until the thunder rattled the windows and lightning flashed with dazzling intensity. Then came the rain, pounding on the water and trees like no rain Mariner had heard before. He pushed open a window and leaned on the sill to breathe in the cool freshness, after weeks of intolerable heat. Then, taking his keys from the shelf and stepping outside into a puddle that covered his shoes, he just started walking. Shining under the streetlights, the gutters had become rivers, gardens vast ornamental ponds, as the water sought a way through the hard, dry earth.

  Within seconds Mariner’s clothes were soaked through and his hair plastered to his head, but the heavy drops beating down on his head and shoulders as he walked the deserted streets had a strangely soothing effect. All the while the storm raged overhead, finally admitting defeat before moving off to terrorise other neighbourhoods elsewhere. As the rain weakened to a light drizzle, Mariner let himself back into the house. He stripped off his wet clothes in the hall and collapsed into a restless, dream-ridden sleep as dawn was beginning to prise open the sky.

  * * *

  He was woken from a deep, heavy sleep by the phone. It was Fiske. ‘Yasmin Akram,’ he said. ‘There’s been a development.’

  CHAPTER 22

  Not ‘breakthrough,’ Mariner noted, but ‘development.’ It didn’t sound good. Fiske, playing the drama queen again, couldn’t just come out and tell him. But it was serious, judging from the number of people who had been contacted and brought in on this Sunday morning. With everyone crammed into the small and stifling briefing room, Fiske broke it to them. ‘The body of a young Asian girl has been found in the river that runs through Kingsmead Park,’ he said. ‘We think it’s Yasmin Akram. It looks as if she has been strangled.’

  From missing person to murder victim in three simple sentences. Murmurs of disgust rippled round the room, as everyone struggled to accept the sickening news. ‘She was discovered early this morning by a park ranger.’

  ‘How close is that to where her phone was found?’ someone asked.

  ‘It’s about a mile away, down from the station but on the other side of Birchill Lane. We’ll be setting up an incident room as soon as the identity is confirmed.’ He turned to Mariner. ‘DI Mariner who has been investigating her disappearance will continue to lead on the ground.’

  * * *

  The flash storms had caused chaos across the whole of the Midlands. Many towns along the River Severn — Bewdley and Bridgnorth, places that had seemed to be almost permanently under water during the autumn and spring — had fallen victim yet again. And in Birmingham itself they drove through streets that were still submerged by several inches. And the freshness was short-lived. It continued to be a sticky and stormy day, the sun a white smear against the grey-yellow sky, the peculiar half-light threatening more rain.

  It was a slow drive down past the railway station and to the park, in a convoy of cars that inched its way through patches of deep flooding. In the car park a small group had already gathered and uniform were having a nightmare task keeping kids away from what had become an instant water park. ‘Who found the body?’ Mariner asked the nearest officer.

  ‘Andy Pritchard.’ He pointed over to a young lad in khaki shirt, trousers and high waders standing isolated from the pack. ‘Park ranger. There’s a couple of them cycle around all the local parks dealing with vandalism, that kind of stuff. Today he’s on his own.’

  ‘The lone ranger,’ observed Knox.

  Andy Pritchard had one of the worst cases of acne Mariner had ever seen. He was virtually hiding behind the peak of his ranger’s cap. Nearby two more officers were transferring soggy books and papers into evidence bags. A saturated backpack lay at their feet. Mariner recognised it from the description of Yasmin’s. Putting on waders, Knox and Mariner went with Pritchard to where he’d found the body, in an obscure corner of the park.

  ‘I saw the books first of all,’ he told them as they sloshed through water eight inches deep, ‘floating along on the water. I couldn’t work out where they would have come from. Then I saw the bag. So I went upstream to see if there was anything else and that’s when I noticed what I thought were clothes caught on the tree roots on the other bank. When I had a closer look,’ he lifted the binoculars, ‘I could see that it was something more.’ They had come to the main channel of the river although there was no distinguishing it from the pond they’d just waded through. Pritchard pointed across to the opposite bank a couple of metres away, where they could now see a dark sodden bundle of clothing, long black hair fanning out behind. ‘Then I saw her face.’

  As if to confirm Pritchard’s story, the water suddenly swelled, turning the body and for a split second they looked into what was unmistakably the pale lifeless face of Yasmin Akram.

  ‘What time was this?’ asked Mariner.

  ‘About seven o’clock. We work dawn till dusk in the summer months.’

  ‘But you didn’t call it in until nearly eight,’ said Knox. ‘Why was that?’

  Pritchard flushed. ‘I wasn’t sure what to do. I thought about trying to get across to her but the water was too deep and too fast flowing. I thought I might lose my footing. It’s gone down a bit since then. I thought the best thing was to call you.’

  ‘It was the best thing,’ said Mariner, though preserving this scene was going to be a joke. ‘Is there a way round on the other side?’ He looked up at the steep embankment, knowing the answer already.

  Pritchard shook his head. ‘This is the closest we can get. You’d have to wade across.’

  Here the main course of the stream was six or seven feet wide. From where they stood, the level had risen over Mariner’s knees, and now and again he had to brace himself against the powerful current.

  ‘Okay, thanks Andy, we’ll take it from here,’ said Mariner. ‘If you go back up to the road someone will take a full statement from you.’

  Pritchard on his way, Mariner turned to Knox. ‘Want to try and get a bit nearer?’

  ‘After you, boss,’ said Knox.

  They edged out towards the middle of the fast-flowing brown water, dodging t
he debris that rushed by, until the level was up to their thighs. The floor of the stream was soft and yielding, and a sudden surge caught them unawares. Knox staggered, almost falling, but found his footing again. ‘The flow is uneven,’ said Mariner, bracing himself. ‘We just need to get the timing right to get across the deepest section . . .’ He watched and waited. ‘Okay — now!’

  Taking advantage of the next lull, they pushed across the mid-stream, landing in the shallower water on the opposite bank, grabbing at sodden vegetation to steady themselves. Now they were standing directly over the deceptively animated body as it danced and swayed on the water, the clothing grasped firmly by the exposed roots of an overhanging willow. Despite the bloating effects of the water, there was no doubt as to the identity. Several dark blemishes on Yasmin’s face threw up the possibility that her death had been accompanied by violence. For Shanila and Mohammed Akram the agonising wait was over, but about to be replaced by something infinitely worse. Millie had that job to do. She was probably there right now. Mariner forced himself not to think about it.

  Straining to keep his balance in the surging water Mariner looked around him. It was unlikely, as far as he could see, that Yasmin would have been hidden here. He voiced the thought to Knox. ‘To get to this point she’d have to have been carried the way we came through the park, which, in the sort of weather we’ve been having, would have been busy into the late evening and far too public. The only time to have done it would have been under cover of night.’

  ‘Even then it would have been risky,’ said Knox. ‘People walk through this park to get from the main Pershore Road through to Birchill Lane.’

  ‘We need to look further up.’

  They were hailed by a shout from the other side of the stream. SOCO had arrived in overalls and waders.

  ‘It’s definitely her?’ asked DC Chris Sharp.

  ‘No question,’ said Mariner, raising his voice to carry across the river.

  Sharp shook his head sadly. ‘Trouble is now, that after last night’s rain, all your physical evidence will have been washed away.’