‘In that case can we stop wastin’ time here freezin’ our arses off, eh?’ his sergeant retorted.
‘Yeah, let’s go and find a pub.’
They settled for a swift half at the Bell in Harborne, before returning to Granville Lane in the late afternoon. Mariner almost didn’t go back into the station, but at the last minute changed his mind. Up in his office he put through a call. Jack Coleman picked up on the third ring.
‘It’s Tom Mariner.’
‘Hello, Tom.’ After all this time Coleman wasn’t surprised.
‘I saw you at the service,’ Mariner said.
Coleman’s tone was guarded. ‘I used to work with her husband.’
‘Can I come and see you?’
‘Come tomorrow morning, after ten o’clock.’
Mariner drove out to Stourbridge on Saturday morning with mixed feelings. In many ways he still missed the old man. Jack Coleman had been his boss when he started in CID at Granville Lane as a DC and they’d been through the ranks, albeit Coleman one level higher, together. They’d had a great professional relationship and Mariner had always looked up to Coleman, who he considered to be the epitome of a good copper. He’d also come to be the father figure Mariner had otherwise lacked. But Coleman’s behaviour yesterday had been odd. He’d seen Mariner, there was no question of that, so why had he disappeared so swiftly? And then there was the wreath.
As he pulled into the drive, the gaffer came to the door and seeing him close to reinforced Mariner’s initial reaction yesterday afternoon; that he looked old. He seemed to have shrunk in the time since he’d retired, and there was a pallid tone to his complexion. In a hot rush of emotion, Mariner thought, he’s ill. He’s got something awful and he hasn’t told me. That’s why he couldn’t face me yesterday.
The thought merely compounded his guilt - he’d promised to keep in touch with Jack Coleman to keep him up to speed with what was going on, but this was the first time - second if you counted yesterday - he’d seen him during the last year, and this was only because he wanted something from the old man.
‘Listen, I’m sorry I haven’t been out sooner,’ Mariner began awkwardly, from the comfort of an armchair in the large, traditionally furnished lounge. Strange to see Coleman in this environment with all its flounces and frills. Stranger too, to have Jack Coleman making coffee for him, arranging it on the occasional table beside him and fussing over the coaster. His movements were slow and unhurried, giving weight to Mariner’s theory about an illness.
‘Don’t worry about it,’ Coleman said, taking the sofa across from him. ‘I know what the job’s like, remember? Socialising isn’t a high priority. Still, you and Anna must come over sometime.’
‘Anna and I aren’t together any more.’ It came out as a distressed cry, Mariner only then realising that Coleman didn’t know.
‘Oh?’ Coleman was confused. ‘I hadn’t heard.’
‘Why would you? We split just over a year ago.’
Fourteen months two weeks and three days, but who’s counting?
‘Just as we were bringing Goran Zjalic to justice.’
Coleman shook his head wearily. ‘Oh, Tom, Tom, what did you do?’
Mariner was affronted. ‘She walked out on me!’
But Coleman knew him too well; he simply waited patiently for an answer.
‘OK,’ Mariner conceded. ‘I probably messed her about a bit. She wanted to settle down, house in the country, kids and all that.’
‘And you couldn’t make up your bloody mind.’ Christ, it was terrifying how well Coleman knew him. ‘How could you let her go? She was bright and witty, and so right for you. You were right for each other.’
‘You should get a slot on daytime TV,’ Mariner said sulkily. He could have told Coleman about the miscarriage, but he knew that was only part of the problem.
‘I’m only stating what’s obvious,’ Coleman pointed out.
‘Any idiot could see it, apart from you apparently. Who’s she gone off with?’
‘A quack from Wales.’
‘Gareth what’s-his-face?’ Mariner had forgotten that Coleman had been around when his rival first came on the scene. ‘You should have seen him off.’
‘Well, I didn’t,’ said Mariner. ‘So there we are.’
Coleman gave a wistful sigh. ‘It’s a crying shame. I really liked Anna. And Glenys will be devastated.’
So that makes two of us.
There was a lengthy pause.
‘I was surprised to see you yesterday,’ Mariner said, moving the conversation around to where he wanted it.
Coleman shifted in his seat and stared into his coffee mug. ‘Just paying my respects.’
‘You didn’t come to the bash afterwards, though.’
‘No.’ Coleman inspected his shoe. ‘I had to get back.’
‘I went to the crematorium afterwards,’ Mariner said carefully. ‘I couldn’t help but notice the wreath.’
‘Nina was a friend of ours,’ Coleman said evenly.
‘I mean the other one,’ Mariner said. ‘The one you hadn’t signed.
Cherished, loved and much missed
? That sounds like more than friendship to me.’
Coleman gazed out through the windows at the freshly mown lawn. ‘I visited Nina a few times after Ronnie died. She was having a hard time. She’d just lost her husband, yet the press were still saying terrible things about him. She needed taking care of. One thing led to another . . .’ He tailed off and now Mariner understood partly why he looked so terrible.
‘Christ. Were you still -?’
Coleman closed his eyes briefly and gave a shake of the head. ‘It didn’t last long, mostly because I still love my wife and Nina had loved her husband. I think it was just a little comfort that got both of us through a tough few months.’ He looked up at Mariner. ‘Glenys doesn’t know,’ he added. The question was in his eyes.
‘I’ve no reason to share that information with anyone,’ Mariner said. A thought occurred to him. ‘Do you remember once running into one of Nina’s friends while you were with her?’
‘We did have a couple of narrow scrapes, yes,’ Coleman admitted.
‘She introduced you as her cousin?’
‘I think that was how it went.’ Coleman rubbed a hand over his face. ‘I can’t get over what’s happened to Nina. It’s a terrible thing. Is it true, what was reported in the press, that she was forced to drink sulphuric acid?’
Mariner nodded grimly. ‘There aren’t any signs of a struggle, so “duped” is looking more probable. Her killer brought along a doctored bottle of Chardonnay.’
‘Jesus, that’s nasty.’ Coleman’s words caught in his throat.
‘Nasty and personal,’ Mariner said. ‘Someone wanted to do Nina Silvero serious damage. Trouble is, no one we’ve spoken to yet has a bad word to say against her, so we’re left wondering who the hell would want to do it. We’ve got people who might have been after her money, but it doesn’t seem to give us the right motive for such cruelty. How well did you know Ronnie Silvero?’ Mariner asked.
‘We worked together for a while at Steelhouse Lane - I was a sergeant while he was in CID.’
‘What was he like?’ Mariner asked him.
‘Well, if he was still alive I’d have said that Ronnie could easily have been a target for this kind of thing. Nowadays he’d probably be tagged as a bully; sexist, racist and about everything else-ist. Though of course back then we didn’t have to worry about things like political correctness. He was an old-fashioned copper; some of his methods might occasionally have been questionable, but he got the job done.’
‘He did all right too,’ Mariner remarked. ‘Made it to chief inspector.’
‘I said he was a bully, not that he was stupid. Ronnie was a shrewd strategist. He knew exactly how to behave in certain situations, and who were the important players,’ Coleman said wryly. ‘Belonged to the right lodge.’
‘He was a Mason?’
‘Oh, yes, he was thick with them. It all appealed to his sense of self-importance.’
‘Did you like him?’ Mariner asked.
It was a leading question and one Coleman preferred to evade. ‘We worked OK together. I don’t think Nina or the daughter - what was her name?’
‘Rachel.’
‘Of course, Rachel, that was it. Well, I don’t think they had an easy life of it.’
‘What about the investigation that was going on when Ronnie Silvero died? Did you know anything about that?’ Mariner asked.
‘I couldn’t help it. Despite what the media think, the death of a prisoner in custody is always regrettable and of course it caused a stir.’
‘Justifiably?’
Coleman suddenly seemed uncomfortable. ‘As far as I understood it, the officers involved were doing their job and made decisions based on what they thought was the right thing at the time. You know how it is when something like this happens. Half the time you’re thinking, there but for the grace . . . That line between too much force and not enough is paper thin, and you know that as much as I do. Billy Hughes was asthmatic and no one knew it. If they had, things might have been handled differently - or they might not.’
‘You think the CPS would have gone all the way with the prosecution?’
‘They had every reason to. Hughes’ family were applying a lot of pressure and had the press behind them, and Butler had just come out, criticising the failure to prosecute in previous instances. This would have been a high-profile case to show that things had changed.’
‘And Silvero definitely died of a heart attack?’ Mariner verified.
‘As opposed to what?’ As Coleman fixed his gaze on Mariner, the room temperature seemed to drop a couple of degrees.
Mariner had seen that expression on Coleman’s face before, but rarely directed at him. It told him he was overstepping the mark, but it wasn’t in his nature to back off. ‘He must have been under a lot of pressure,’ he said meaningfully.
‘Ronnie Silvero died of a heart attack,’ Coleman said coldly. ‘Christ, Tom. You think he could have staged that?’
‘Yeah, OK. I had to ask,’ Mariner said lightly and the tension in the air seemed to ease a little. ‘What was the reaction of Hughes’ family when Silvero died?’
Coleman sighed, as if dredging all this up was taking enormous effort. ‘Like I said, they gave Nina a hard time about it. Some of them thought Ronnie had got what he deserved, and others felt cheated by it. Of course they did. They’d lost their scapegoat.’ Coleman looked up as if something had occurred to him. ‘You’re thinking Nina’s death might be some kind of posthumous revenge thing?’
‘I’m thinking I’d just like to find some kind of motive for such an obscene attack on an otherwise universally popular middle-aged woman,’ Mariner said. ‘At the moment we’re clutching at any old straw we can find.’
‘Well, it’s a pretty flimsy straw. It happened twenty years ago. Why on earth would anyone want to start digging it all up again?’
‘I’m going to have to talk to the Hughes family,’ Mariner said.
‘You must do what you have to, just like we all do.’ But Coleman didn’t sound happy about it.
Mariner drained his cup. ‘Did you know the first Mrs Silvero?’
‘No, she was long gone when I met Ronnie. He was a single dad. It was like a dream for him when Nina came along.’
‘How was the relationship between Nina and Rachel?’
‘I don’t remember it being an issue, though it might have been in the early days. Half the time I used to forget that Nina was her stepmother.’
‘Nina Silvero would have been pretty busy, what with the ballet school as well.’ Mariner said. ‘Did you know her well, I mean before?’
‘We’d met a couple of times at social functions, but Glenys would have talked to her more. She’s shopping in Worcester today, but when she gets back I’ll ask her what she remembers, and, if you want to come back and talk to her, that’ll be fine.’
Mariner raised an eyebrow. ‘You sure?’ The Glenys he remembered hated the way the job had taken over her husband and probably wouldn’t be keen on him getting involved again.
‘I’m sure. She’d want to do what she can to help. It’d be good to find the bastard who did this.’
‘Yes,’ said Mariner. ‘It would.’
The rest of the conversation was small talk, Mariner updating Coleman on the station gossip.
‘How’s your new gaffer working out?’ Coleman wanted to know.
‘She’s good. Could never fill your shoes, of course, but she’s OK. You’d like her.’
As Coleman was showing him out, Mariner had to ask, ‘Do you ever miss it?’
‘Do I miss being up to my elbows in paperwork, trying to juggle a budget that covers about half of what we need and all with the brass breathing down my neck about targets? Do I miss standing in a morgue looking at what some lowlife has done to a woman like Nina Silvero?’ There was a catch in his throat and, to recover, Coleman feigned reflection for a moment. ‘Can’t say that I do,’ he concluded, his voice still hoarse.
‘No, when you put it like that.’ Mariner extended a hand and as the two men shook, as if to underline the point, a blackbird sang out joyfully from a nearby tree.
On his way back to the city, Mariner went for a walk on Holly Hill, before dropping down to the Holly Bush, an unpretentious working-men’s pub, for a pint of M&B mild. In the late afternoon it was quiet, those who had been for lunch were drifting away, and it was too early for the evening drinkers. The Holly Bush was also one of those pubs that would have suffered from the smoking ban. A gazebo had been erected at the back of the pub in the car park, but it was questionable how many people would be prepared to drive out to a country pub only to spend large chunks of the evening shivering outside under canvas.
But the lack of activity suited Mariner very well, allowing him the peace and quiet to mull over what Jack Coleman had told him and, equally significant, Coleman’s mood. He’d remained studiously objective about the death of the prisoner, though not without some sympathy for the family, but he was right about the timing. Could the attack on Nina Silvero really hark back to something that happened twenty years ago? As Tony Knox had pointed out, Nina Silvero had been afraid of something. But, if it related to that death in custody, why now? At the very least it was a possibility that would need to be ruled out. And it would be interesting to know what the dead man’s family were doing now.
CHAPTER TWELVE