Innocent Lies (Reissue) Read online

  ‘Why?’ Millie was surprised. ‘The pictures are very good.’

  ‘The young man in question liked to flirt with the girls. He seemed to get them rather excited.’

  ‘I’ll bet he did,’ murmured Mariner. ‘Did he model for Yasmin’s class?’

  ‘He might have.’

  ‘Think,’ barked Mariner, getting tired of the prevarication. ‘Did he?’

  ‘Yes. I think so.’

  * * *

  ‘So Shaun Pryce has a link with the girls’ school and may have known Yasmin’ said Mariner as he and Millie walked back to the car. ‘Now why didn’t he tell us that?’

  ‘Do you want to go and talk to him again?’ asked Millie, fishing for her keys.

  ‘Not yet. Let’s get Lee out of the way first.’

  * * *

  Built during the same era, the boys’ school was structurally a mirror image of the girls’, but there the similarity ended. Less well-cared-for, soft greenery gave way to showcases full of competition trophies and raw testosterone hung in the air. Mariner identified himself to the matronly receptionist. ‘We need to speak to one of your students: Lewis Everett,’ he said.

  ‘I’ll just need to check with Mr Blyth. One moment, please.’

  Head teacher Gordon Blyth, a small man with thinning black hair and a voice from the valleys of south Wales, came out to speak to them in person. ‘I’m afraid Lewis isn’t here at the moment,’ he said. ‘He’s doing work experience.’

  ‘Where?’

  Blyth had to go away and consult with the person responsible for organising these things. He was back moments later. ‘At a place that makes kitchen units, on Birch Close. It’s—’

  ‘Yes, I know where it is,’ said Mariner. He looked at Millie. ‘Now we are going round in bloody circles.’

  CHAPTER 19

  Within a few minutes they were back on the small industrial estate, four units down from TMR Reprographics. Imran Shaikh, the manager of Dunhill’s Kitchen Design was not a happy man.

  ‘Work experience, is that what they call it? Little bugger hasn’t turned in for work again today. He cleared off last Tuesday afternoon and I haven’t seen him since.’

  ‘What time on Tuesday afternoon?’ Mariner exchanged a look with Millie.

  ‘About half one. The kid’s a waste of space. He’s hardly put in a full day since he started here. I ask you. What kind of a worker is he going to make?’

  ‘Have you rung the school to find out where he is?’ asked Mariner.

  ‘I haven’t got time to go chasing round after him. I’ve got a business to run,’ said Shaikh. ‘It’ll just go on his report at the end of the week. He wasn’t much use anyway. He’s a spoilt little rich kid who doesn’t like getting his hands dirty.’

  * * *

  Outside, just a few metres away, were the refuse bins which concealed the gap in the fence. Mariner put through a call on his mobile to the head of the boys’ school. ‘We’re at the kitchen workshop, but Lewis isn’t. In fact he hasn’t been here since last Tuesday. I trust you didn’t know that.’ The pause at the other end of the line confirmed it. ‘I’d like Lewis’s home address please.’

  Lewis Everett’s daily train journey home terminated at the exclusive hamlet of Barnt Green that nestled complacently at the foot of the Lickey Hills, just outside the city. The Everetts’ house was ‘big and posh,’ as Suzanne had described it, hemmed in on all sides by woodland on a private road that wasn’t even graced with a name. The house itself was called Hawthorns — and Mariner suspected that moniker had rather more to do with the shrub than with the home of West Bromwich Albion. Mariner tried to picture the Akram family living round here. He couldn’t. Number four, Hawthorns consisted of five room-widths of 1950s mock-Georgian with a broad double garage, behind impressive wrought iron gates and a York stone drive. Burgeoning ten-foot leylandii divided the property from its neighbours. A side gate was unlocked and they pushed through and approached the building. Mariner stepped over a dark stain that marked the otherwise flawless drive, but closer inspection revealed only engine oil. Pushing the button on the studded oak front door prompted nothing more than the jangle of a bell deep inside the house. Millie peered in through the window to see a neat and tidy house, plush carpeting, gleaming antique reproduction furniture — everything in its place.

  ‘At work I suppose,’ Millie said. ‘We’ll have to come back later.’

  ‘On holiday,’ called a disembodied voice from behind the hedge. The rhythmic chopping that had been a barely noticeable background noise, abruptly ceased. Mariner followed Millie back out through the gates and round to the adjacent property, an equally imposing edifice with tall windows and curving bays, in the style of Rennie Mackintosh. A man, tall and white-haired, with a weathered face and sinewy arms, stood mid-way up an aluminium stepladder brandishing a pair of garden shears. ‘I do their garden, too,’ he said. ‘And they’ve gone away. Mr and Mrs have anyway. Three weeks in the Bahamas. They do it every year at about this time. Due back early hours of Friday morning.’

  ‘It wasn’t Mr or Mrs we were looking for,’ Mariner said. ‘It was Lee. Lewis.’

  The man thought for a minute before slowly shaking his head. ‘Haven’t seen him for a few days either.’

  ‘You’re here every day?’ asked Millie.

  ‘Look at the size of these gardens. This street is a full-time job for me. This time of year I get here at seven in the morning and don’t go home until at least six, sometimes later if I’ve a job to finish. And by the time I get to the end I have to start all over again.’

  ‘So when was the last time you saw Lee Everett?’ Mariner asked.

  The man paused to think. ‘Monday. He was around then, driving that car of his too fast up and down the road. Only a matter of time before he kills someone.’

  Mariner and Millie exchanged a look. ‘You didn’t see him on Tuesday?’

  ‘Let me think. Tuesday I was doing the back lawn at number eight. I’d have been round there for most of the day. They’ve got more grass there than at Wentworth.’

  ‘And you definitely haven’t seen him since?’

  ‘No, but you might want to check with Margaret.’

  ‘Margaret?’

  ‘Yes, Margaret Ashworth. Their daily help.’

  ‘Do you have her phone number?’

  ‘I don’t.’ He shook his head, before nodding an acknowledgement towards a green Land Rover Discovery that was pulling into the driveway opposite. ‘But Mrs Goldman would.’

  Hurrying across the road, Mariner and Millie sneaked into the property before the electric gates could close. Mrs Goldman was stepping down from her Land Rover Discovery, stretching out long legs clad in gleaming white cotton jeans, her equally dazzling blouse contrasting with the deep tanning on her arms. On seeing Mariner’s warrant card, the friendly smile dissolved to a troubled frown. ‘Not another burglary,’ she said, opening up the boot of the vehicle to retrieve Waitrose carrier bags. ‘Who is it this time?’

  ‘It’s nothing like that,’ Mariner reassured her. ‘We need to get in touch with your cleaner, Margaret Ashworth.’

  ‘Margaret? Why? What’s happened?’

  ‘We’re trying to track down Lewis Everett.’

  ‘Oh. Do you have to?’ she said with feeling, slamming shut the tailgate. ‘It’s been so peaceful these last few days.’

  Mariner offered to carry a couple of bags.

  ‘Thanks.’

  They followed her round to the side of the house where she let them into a kitchen the size of Mariner’s entire ground floor. It was sparse and modern, with wall-to-wall limed oak cupboards, topped with granite, and a wide central station that held a butcher’s block. Another wall was dominated by a huge green-enamelled Aga. Otherwise the appliances were in clinical stainless steel, everything as spotless as Mrs Goldman herself. Margaret was obviously a treasure.

  ‘Can I offer you something to drink, something cold perhaps?’

  Mariner placed the ba
g alongside the others she’d deposited on the counter top. ‘That would be very welcome. Thank you.’

  Opening a fridge the size of a wardrobe she dropped chunks from an ice dispenser into beautifully crafted crystal tumblers, topping them up with exotic fruit juice.

  ‘You remarked on how quiet things have been over the last few days,’ said Mariner, ‘implying that it’s not always the case.’

  ‘Lewis takes full advantage of his parents being away,’ she said. ‘We get treated to the latest rock bands at full volume most evenings. The warm weather encourages him to open all the windows too, of course, which makes it worse.’

  ‘No one complains?’

  ‘Oh, one or two of the neighbours have tried talking to him. It’s a question of getting through though. Lewis is a very intense young man. The sulky and broody type, a regular Liam Gallagher — or is it Noel? You never quite know what’s going on inside his head. To be truthful, I think his parents may be a bit afraid of him and they’re lovely people so nobody really wants to upset them. We all just put up with it. When you live in a little community like this one it’s important to get along. And to be fair Lewis isn’t that much trouble when his parents are around.’

  ‘When was the last time you saw him?’

  ‘Hmm, I haven’t seen him — or heard him — for about a week. Last Monday or Tuesday, I think.’

  ‘If we could just have Margaret Ashworth’s number—’ Mariner said, finishing his drink.

  ‘Yes, of course. I’ll get it for you.’ Mrs Goldman was also good enough to let Mariner use her phone, but Margaret Ashworth was out shopping. Her daughter was expecting her back in a couple of hours.

  ‘We may as well go back to the station,’ Mariner said to Millie. ‘Thanks for the drink, Mrs Goldman.’

  ‘Not at all. Good luck with Lewis.’

  * * *

  The route to Granville Lane took them back past the girls’ school. It was the end of the afternoon and they happened to see Suzanne Perry arguing with a man beside a big flashy car, as girls swarmed out past them.

  ‘Look at that,’ said Millie. ‘What do you think’s going on there?’

  Mariner put a call through to Knox back at OCU 4. ‘Could you run a vehicle check on a Volvo estate, personalised plate SDP 2?’

  Moments later Knox came back. ‘The car is registered to a Mr Stephen Perry, 39 Oakwood Rd, Kingsmead.’

  ‘She was just being shown up in front of her friends by an over-protective father,’ Millie concluded. ‘Now who’s being paranoid?’

  * * *

  Charlie Glover was also checking in at Granville Lane, where they found him brooding over the incident room map.

  ‘How’s it going?’ Mariner truly wanted to know.

  ‘Slowly,’ Charlie said. ‘There’s still nothing to indicate that Ricky would have known Yasmin. It’s looking more and more like sheer coincidence that they were around there at the same time.’

  ‘Anything else new?’

  Glover shook his head. ‘We’re still looking for a murder weapon. How about you?’

  For the benefit of Knox, too, Mariner filled Glover in on the afternoon’s developments. ‘So now we have Yasmin and the boyfriend missing. The boyfriend works at the industrial units and Yasmin’s phone is found between the station and there. It gives us a whole new scenario.’

  ‘If Yasmin was trying to prove to Suzanne that she could cut it in the romance stakes and if she wanted to get away from her parents, what better way to do both than to elope with her boyfriend?’ said Glover. ‘She could have planned the whole thing, including the sleepover at Suzanne’s, which she never had any intention of following through on.’

  ‘But Suzanne seems certain that the relationship is finished,’ Millie reminded him.

  ‘That’s what Yasmin told her,’ said Mariner. ‘That way, the bigger the surprise when her friend finds out what she’s done. Suzanne also said that Yasmin was excited, had something to tell her. It might have been rather more than we thought.’

  ‘If Yasmin has eloped, she hasn’t taken much with her,’ Millie said.

  ‘She wouldn’t need to, would she? Boyfriend Lee isn’t short of a bob or two.’

  ‘Where does that leave us with Pryce?’ asked Glover. ‘Potentially we now have four people on or around the reservoir that afternoon, three of whom know each other; Akram knows Yasmin, Yasmin knows Lee.’

  ‘—and as we found out this afternoon, Shaun Pryce is at least acquainted with Yasmin.’ Mariner explained to Charlie.

  ‘But Pryce insists he was there much earlier,’ Knox reminded him. ‘Surely we can rule him out now.’

  ‘If we believe him,’ Mariner was sceptical. ‘I’m sure there’s something going on with him. And Akram’s still a possibility, but no more than that.’

  ‘Which leaves us with Yasmin, Lee and Ricky at the scene,’ said Knox. ‘As far as we know Ricky doesn’t know Lee or Yasmin, but perhaps he saw something, tried to stop it and Lee turned on him.’

  ‘Perhaps eloping wasn’t on the agenda,’ Millie put in. ‘We know for sure that Yasmin had just gone on the pill and that she was ready to lose her virginity. Maybe that’s what they were meeting for. Shaun Pryce could have even suggested the location. We don’t know how he gets his kicks. Perhaps he was planning to watch. So Yasmin gets there. Lee turns up with high expectations, but Yasmin then gets cold feet and won’t play. Lee gets rough with her and Ricky, there by sheer coincidence, intervenes to help her—’

  ‘And Lee turns on him.’

  ‘Mrs Goldman said he’s a bit of a sullen bastard,’ said Mariner.

  ‘And Imran Shaikh called him a spoilt kid,’ Millie added. ‘Implying that he’s used to getting what he wants.’

  ‘Then Lee and Yasmin panic about what’s happened and disappear together.’

  ‘Or Lee panics and forces Yasmin to go with him?’ Mariner concluded.

  ‘And Pryce?’

  ‘Pryce witnessed the whole thing, which is why he’s playing silly buggers with us.’

  ‘So why doesn’t he just tell us?’

  ‘Because he could be implicated on some level — especially if he just stood back and watched it all happen.’

  ‘Or more than that, it turned him on.’

  Mariner sighed. He couldn’t ever remember standing on such fast shifting sand. The phone rang.

  ‘Margaret Ashworth,’ said Millie. ‘She’ll meet us at the Everetts’ house.’

  CHAPTER 20

  ‘Have you got a warrant?’ were Margaret Ashworth’s first words to Mariner and Knox, when they arrived. Fortunately Mariner was able to persuade her that it wasn’t necessary since she was merely co-operating with the police enquiry. ‘We don’t want to search the premises,’ he said, ‘only see for ourselves that the place has been uninhabited for a few days.’ They had to wait while she disarmed a complex security alarm and then carefully removed her shoes in favour of fluffy pink mules — waiting just in front of the door — glancing disapprovingly at the men’s own heavy footwear.

  ‘You wouldn’t want me to take them off, love, believe me,’ said Knox.

  Margaret took them up a sweeping staircase to Lee’s room off the first landing at the back of the house. The curtains were drawn rendering it almost pitch-black inside.

  ‘He likes them kept closed at all times,’ Margaret told them. Switching on the ceiling spotlights revealed a room that was a far cry from the single bed, nightstand and wardrobe that had furnished Mariner’s room at the same age. There was a double bed, a bank of technology including PC, games console, stereo, TV and DVD player, even a kettle, fridge and microwave. It was virtually a self-contained flat with everything a young man could want. ‘Jeez, if I had a place like this and the folks were away I wouldn’t do a disappearing act,’ was Knox’s comment.

  Spaces on the purple-painted walls were covered with posters of surfers riding massive waves, along with some of Lee’s own gruesome drawings. A battered skateboard leaned against the ward
robe. Mariner picked over the untidy desk, a jumble of papers, books, CDs and lad magazines. He was itching to rifle through the drawers too, but Margaret was keeping a beady eye on them from the doorway.

  ‘How about a cup of tea, love?’ Knox asked, summoning the best of his scouse charm. ‘I’m parched.’ But Margaret wasn’t having any of it and her arms remained resolutely folded.

  ‘You’re losing your touch, mate,’ murmured Mariner.

  ‘Tell me about it,’ Knox retorted, with surprising acrimony. The rubbish bin had been emptied so there were no clues there, but tucked behind it Knox found a small silver tin of the kind that normally holds travel sweets. This one didn’t. Knox sniffed the dried green substance. ‘He’s got something in common with Shaun Pryce then.’

  Mariner wasn’t entirely surprised. He walked over to inspect the switched-off computer and his eye was caught by a glossy scrap of paper that had slid underneath the processor. He edged it out with a fingernail. Dusty and slightly bent at one corner, it was a strip of photographs of the kind taken in an instant photo booth. ‘Tony.’ He held it up to show Knox. Lewis Everett and Yasmin Akram grinning broadly, their faces squashed together to fit into the shot. ‘At least it confirms that they’ve been an item.’

  ‘Not much care taken to preserve it,’ said Knox. ‘Looks like a bit of a one-sided relationship, doesn’t it?’

  ‘It does,’ said Mariner. Another one, he thought, suddenly. Downstairs, a kitchen memo board bore postcards from various locations around the world, along with a number of business cards for local tradesmen and a couple of dental appointment cards. The answering machine might have been a source of additional information, but until they had permission, it was off-limits.

  ‘Have you any idea where Lewis might have gone?’ Mariner asked Margaret, who was hovering, ever vigilant, watching over them. ‘Did he say anything to you about his plans?’

  She snorted. ‘He doesn’t even tell his parents what he’s up to. He’s a law unto himself.’