Chris Collett - [Tom Mariner 01] (26 page)

Which he was. He remembered the gift. ‘I brought you this,’ he said, handing over the plastic bag. ‘It was for…

But you can …’ He tailed off as Greta took out the soft toy.

‘Oh, it’s sweet, Tom. Thank you.’ She leaned across and kissed him. ‘Anyway, how about you?’

‘Me?’

‘Yes. Are you seeing someone?’

Good question. ‘Not right now. That’s probably for the best, too.’

‘Mm. Still working all the hours God sends, I suppose.’

He couldn’t really disagree. They talked a little longer about inconsequential things, mutual acquaintances who’d really been Greta’s friends, and polished off a second bottle of spring water.

‘I should be going,’ Greta said, at last. ‘As it is I’m going to get all the rush-hour traffic’

They both went up to the bar to pay. As Mariner took out his wallet, another slim, white sheet of paper fluttered out, landing at Greta’s feet. The prescription! Shit!

Simultaneously, they stooped to retrieve it, Mariner snatching at it before Greta had the chance.

‘Throwing away your love letters now, Tom?’ Greta smiled. And Mariner had to stifle a sudden urge to laugh hysterically at the irony of the situation. The bill settled, they hugged and wished each other well for the future, then went their separate ways. Greta back to Dominic, and Mariner into the nearest proper pub, where he ordered a single malt, on duty or not, and knocked it back in a couple of burning mouthfuls.

So now he knew. There was no Mariner junior inhabiting the planet and oddly he wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or disappointed. If pressed he’d have tended towards the former, but either way he wasn’t about to take any more risks with that prescription. Taking it out from where he’d stuffed it in his pocket, he screwed it into a ball and dropped it into the ashtray. For some strange reason, he felt an urge to call Anna Barham.

But Anna had already left work, and was at the day centre collecting Jamie, prior to visiting the residential home recommended by Mark. She’d specifically been asked this time to take Jamie with her.

‘The social worker came this morning,’ Francine informed her.

‘What social worker?’

‘I assumed it was to do with your last visit.’

The Beeches. Anna was surprised, she hadn’t expected things to move quite so fast, but she wasn’t about to complain. ‘Did she want to see Jamie?’ She recalled the questions about ‘challenging behaviour’, hoping that Jamie hadn’t done anything that might have put the social worker off.

‘It was a “he”,’ Francine said. ‘And no, he didn’t want to see Jamie. Said it was unnecessary at this stage. He just asked the usual questions, particularly about Jamie’s communication skills, level of understanding, that kind of thing.’

It was years since Anna had had any experience of this and even then it wasn’t first hand. Her parents had always arranged everything and she’d given it minimal attention. It seemed odd that no one had contacted her first, but then it was probably the protocol, eliminating the opportunity for any advance preparation.

‘I hope it was all right for me to talk to him,’ Francine said, suddenly concerned. ‘I kept everything very positive.’

‘Yes, of course it was. Thanks Francine. Come on Jamie, let’s go.’

Unlike The Beeches, Manor House was out of town, set deep in the Worcestershire countryside, and though based around an old manor house, included modern purpose-built facilities in acres of wooded grounds. According to a commemorative plaque in the lobby it had been opened in 1995 by HRH Princess Anne.

Run by the Autistic Association, it was designed specifically with the needs of autistic adults in mind, subscribing to the principles of the Higashi Institute in Boston, with a focus on physical exercise and a rigidly structured timetable. In addition, a number of different therapies and approaches were favoured, including the use of various functional communication aids. Wherever there were signs in words, there were pictures and symbols too. Colours were muted and displays kept to a minimum, with no strip lighting. Special attention had been given to sound absorption, too, creating a calm and relaxed atmosphere.

Anna didn’t detect all this on her own, some of it she read in the glossy prospectus she was given while she and Jamie waited for ‘one of the team’ to show them around.

All the staff, she read with interest, were trained in the use of alternative communication, including PECS, the picture exchange communication system. This was more like it.

And above all, there were no funny smells.

‘Miss Barham?’ Anna was greeted by man of around thirty-five, blond and tanned, who introduced himself as Simon Meadows, ‘One of the team of care staff.’ His accent had an Australian twang to it.

Anna noticed from the picture board on the wall that Simon was actually the senior member of that team, but she liked that he hadn’t said that.

‘And this is Jamie?’ he asked.

Anna nodded.

‘Jamie, hello.’

Jamie responded with a fleeting glance, which Simon answered with a thumbs up sign. ‘That’s good looking.

Thank you.’ He turned to Anna. ‘Shall we go?’

Their first stop was ‘the gym’, which turned out to be a Wacky Warehouse for grown-ups, with ball pools, climbing apparatus and ‘soft’ areas.

‘It’s the letting-off-steam area,’ Simon explained.

‘Essential for the clients and the staff. Jamie probably doesn’t want to do the boring tour, so he can stay here.’ He called over one of the care-workers and assigned him to watch over Jamie. ‘He’ll be leaving at quarter past four,’ he said. ‘You can start counting him down when you’re ready.’ Counting him down. Anna had seen Francine doing that with Jamie, preparing him for the end of an activity so that he wasn’t upset when it stopped or changed.

They began the tour. Simon was friendly but pragmatic, and not in the least bit ingratiating. The building was busy with other people, but often Anna was hard pushed to tell the difference between staff and clients. Overall the age profile was much nearer to Jamie’s own and relationships looked friendly and easy. Facilities for men and for women were clearly delineated and there were self contained facilities for individual independence training.

Instead of a heavy question-and-answer session at the end, Simon Meadows gently elicited information as they walked around.

‘How old is Jamie? Where is he living right now? That must be hard, how is he doing? How is his eating, and his sleeping?’ Anna was so impressed with the place, she would have told Meadows anything, and she had no qualms about being completely honest with him.

‘His sleeping is awful,’ she confessed. ‘He’s up several times every night, but I don’t want to resort to medication.’

No harm in making it clear from the start.

‘Neither do we,’ said Meadows. ‘Though I have to say that in extreme cases we do consider it. In isolated cases the use of medication can be highly successful, but we have to have tried everything else first.’

Anna was pleased to hear it. ‘So when can he start?’ she asked, straight away, only half-joking. They’d arrived back in reception.

Simon Meadows smiled. ‘Let’s just jot down a few details,’ he said, as if he hadn’t just extracted everything there was to know from Anna. ‘We try to operate like a community so we do try to take clients who will be compatible.’

He handed her a short concise application form. Full name? Easy. Date of birth? Anna even had that off pat now, too. Seventeenth of the third, 1970. At the end of the document was a small section requesting permission for the staff to administer appropriate medications to regulate sleeping and behaviour.

‘As I said, it’s when all else fails,’ said Meadows, seeing her hesitation. ‘Why don’t you think that part over, and give us a call.’ Finally he handed her a list of charges.

Anna did a double take. ‘This is for a year?’ she asked.

Meadows made a sympathetic face. ‘No, it’s quarterly. I know. It’s expensive, but the work we do involves very high staff ratios. That’s how we can avoid the use of medication. I think you’ll find that’s not unusual.’ So that was the catch.

Meadows glanced up at the clock. It was fourteen minutes past four. ‘Now, we’d better not keep Jamie waiting.’

Late in the afternoon, as he walked back into Granville Lane, Knox confirmed Mariner’s worst fears. ‘Crosby’s alibi checks out, sir. We’ve got a whole pile of witnesses who saw him at the track on that Sunday night, including some of our blokes who were down there keeping an eye on things. He had a successful run apparently and was throwing his money around. Laurel and Hardy were with him, too.’

‘Shit!’

‘It’s not conclusive though, is it? Even if the blood tests turn out to be negative Crosby could easily have hired some temporary help.’

‘Maybe, but unless we can identify who that might be, it isn’t enough to pull him in either. And if that sum of money in Eddie Barham’s bank account wasn’t about blackmail then what was it?’

‘For what it’s worth, these are the e-fits Kerry came up with.’ Knox passed him the crudely assembled photographs. They could have been anyone. In fact one of them had the look of Pope John Paul about it. Mariner wondered what His Holiness was up to last Sunday night.

The other had a neat, dark moustache. ‘No black mouth,’ said Mariner, almost to himself.

‘Sorry?’ asked Knox.

‘No black mouth,’ Mariner repeated. ‘It was what Jamie shouted when we took him back to the house. I think he was telling us that one of Eddie’s attackers had a moustache—a black mouth.’

‘That rules out about nine tenths of the population,’ said Knox, helpfully.

‘We’re almost there, then,’ Mariner replied, matching his sarcasm. The fact of the thing was that it was now almost two weeks since Eddie Barham was murdered and every hour took them further from the likelihood of finding his killers. Their one tenuous lead had come to a dead end and they were left with virtually nothing. If they had any suspects, they could arrange a line-up based on Kerry’s descriptions, but he wouldn’t know where to start. Who the hell else wanted Eddie Barham dead?

Despite the careful preparation, Jamie wasn’t too thrilled about leaving Manor Park, and moaned all the way home.

Anna had been so impressed with the place that she was tempted to just ring Simon Meadows and tell him that she’d reached her decision, but the cost had taken her breath away. Selling her parents’ house would make all the difference, but their will had made it patently clear that in Jamie’s lifetime that just wasn’t an option. Renting it out might be one creative solution to the problem, but she’d have to be certain of a long-term let and even that could prove to be messy to maintain. Jamie could live to be a very old man, at a time when she herself would be getting older and looking forward to an untroubled retirement.

The enormity of the responsibility was overwhelming, as it must have been for Mum and Dad. There was some hard thinking to be done about the medication issue. Even to be considering it made her feel the family traitor, but DI Mariner was right. Times were changing. Drug therapy was becoming more commonplace because the medicines used were more sophisticated and reliable. And if Manor Park wasn’t affordable in the long-term it was no good to her, so alternatives would have to be considered. Eddie had clearly been thinking along those lines too because once you started looking at cheaper residential care there seemed little choice. He’d been backed into the same corner.

Retrieving the handouts from Professor Fellowes’ talk, Anna spread them out on the kitchen table before seeking out the package that Eddie sent her. She took the blue folder out of the drawer in the lounge. The effect on Jamie was startling. He jumped up from where he was on the floor and hovered a few feet away, giving the folder his customary sideways ‘anxious’ look. He was muttering to himself and initially Anna couldn’t hear what he said, but then she made out,

‘No Sally-Ann, no Sally-Ann,’ Puzzled, Anna thrust the folder towards him and he immediately backed off, chanting more loudly. Anna laughed. ‘What on earth is the matter, Jamie? It’s only a folder,’ she opened the lid to show him. ‘Paper. There’s nobody in here.’

But even so, it was some time before he would settle again. As she’d noticed before, the folder comprised a collection of photocopied sheets and printouts, some of them downloaded from the Internet. Cross-referencing them with Professor Fellowes’ information there were several common names: Ritalin, Fenfluramine, Imipramine. For most, there were chemical formulae, along with descriptions of recent studies that had been carried out relating to their effectiveness. She tried reading one of the articles, but was beaten back by the jargon: ‘Opioids have long been known to reduce serotonergic transmission by stimulating the presynaptic auto receptors,’ she read. ‘A drug which, unlike serotonin itself would selectively stimulate the post synaptic receptors, could be of value in controlling aggression and sleep patterns.’ Of course it could.

A common factor seemed to be that the drugs apparently acted on the serotonin system, as Professor Fellowes had said, and Anna now wished that she had paid more attention to the talk. She didn’t even really know what serotonin was.

Systematically, she worked her way through the Internet printouts and every story was the same, doubts raised about the effects of long-term courses of treatment using the drugs mentioned.

The only deviant from this pattern appeared to be something called Pinozalyan, but that was mainly because of the dearth of information on it anyway. All Anna could find was a none-too-clear photocopied paragraph from some kind of medical journal. But interestingly, Eddie had double starred it. Did this mean that it was the one he had settled on at the end of all his research? Anna sifted through the paper and sifted back again. There didn’t appear to be any further printouts. And there was nothing amongst the notes from Professor Fellowes. She would have to do her own research. She plugged in her laptop and logged on to the Internet. There was at least some information about the other drugs, again mainly in the negative, but nothing on Pinozalyan. Strange.