Written in Blood Read online

  Written in Blood

  CHRIS COLLETT

  Hachette Digital

  www.littlebrown.co.uk

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Worm in the Bud

  Blood of the Innocents

  Killing for England

  A Cursed Inheritance

  How to Seduce a Ghost

  Chris Collett was born in East Anglia and graduated in Liverpool, before moving to Birmingham to teach both children and adults with varying degrees of learning disability. Chris is married with two teenage children.

  She is the author of The Worm in the Bud, Blood of the Innocents and Written in Blood, also available from Piatkus.

  Also by Chris Collett

  The Worm in the Bud

  Blood of the Innocents

  Written in Blood

  CHRIS COLLETT

  Hachette Digital

  www.littlebrown.co.uk

  Published by Hachette Digital 2009

  Copyright © Chris Collett 2006

  The moral right of the author has been asserted

  All the characters in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  eISBN : 978 0 7481 1273 9

  This ebook produced by JOUVE, FRANCE

  Hachette Digital

  An imprint of

  Little, Brown Book Group

  100 Victoria Embankment

  London EC4Y 0DY

  An Hachette Livre UK Company

  And how am I to face the odds

  Of man’s bedevilment and God’s

  I, a stranger and afraid

  In a world I never made.

  AE Housman, Last Poems (1922) no. 12.

  Chapter One

  Chugging along through the dense, dark early morning, Tim Leavis was counting off the days. It was less than a week now to the winter solstice, when they’d begin to lengthen again. Much as he liked his life, he’d never got used to these early winter starts, and this one was earlier than most, allowing him to feed the animals but still get back for a shower and breakfast before driving across to the village school in time to see Archie perform in the nativity play. The boy had been typecast as a shepherd of course, though Leavis’s description of the likely effects on the animal’s bodily functions had, at least, dissuaded Mrs Elliot from her romantic idea of having his son carry a live lamb.

  Passing a local beauty spot, the powerful beams of the John Deere’s headlights picked up a small creature scuttling across the road, before rebounding back at Leavis off something shiny, the radiator grill of a car parked in the lay-by. As far as he could tell, it was a big car, black, though Leavis didn’t immediately recognize the make. Someone else making an early start or, more likely, returning very late from some pre-Christmas revelry. The driver’s door hung open and Leavis smiled to himself. Not the first motorist to use the woods as a convenient convenience. Better be quick, mate. Cold enough this morning to freeze off your tadger.

  But on his return journey twenty minutes later, after depositing the hay in the sheep field, the vehicle was still there. Coming up behind the car this time, Leavis could see that the boot was also open and that the driver was crouching on the road behind the vehicle, peering underneath. Exhaust problems perhaps. Hoping that it wouldn’t take long, Leavis pulled his tractor into the lay-by to offer assistance, and that was when he realised that the figure wasn’t so much crouching as lying inanimate on the frozen ground, and suddenly it was not only the air that felt chill.

  In the dark, the SOCO almost missed it. The arc lights that had been brought in were trained on the man and woman in the rear passenger seat of the limousine, their posture so natural they could have been calmly waiting for their driver to return so that they could continue their journey. As long as you didn’t look at their faces and the identical black holes that had ripped apart each forehead, spraying grey fleshy pebble-dashing across the rear windshield behind them. It was a minimalist job; a high-powered weapon fired at point-blank range, one shot apiece. The victims would have had mere seconds to understand what was happening. And the assassin had, at first examination, left nothing behind; no stray prints, hairs or fibres evident at this stage, though the car would get a comprehensive going over once it was back at the lab. Fortunately, the farmer who’d discovered the gruesome scene had seen enough detective shows to know that he shouldn’t touch anything. Colleagues working around the third dead body sprawled on the road beside the gaping trunk were having more luck. Underneath the boot lining in the spare wheel compartment they’d found traces of a white powdery residue.

  Edging out of the vehicle the SOCO made one last sweep with his Maglite and caught a momentary glimpse of something, the intense glare of the spotlights partially veiling the semi-transparent letters, which were scribed on the glass of the side passenger window in a reddish brown hue, the author using what raw materials were at hand. Every third one of the twenty-five letters was bolder than the others, the index finger dipped into its bloody inkwell at even intervals until the message was complete.

  ‘Ma’am,’ the SOCO ducked his head out and addressed the woman waiting patiently beside the car in the chill air, ‘they’ve left us a message.’

  Chief Superintendent Caroline Griffin stepped forward, taking gloved hands from the pockets of her long wool coat. She leaned into the car as the SOCO moved his beam along the communication: Vengeance is mine. I will repay.

  ‘Not particularly subtle,’ she remarked.

  ‘Or original,’ added the SOCO.

  But, put together with the rest of the scene, it began to paint a picture.

  21st December

  There was a first time for everything; Mariner humming along to Slade singing ‘Merry Christmas Everybody’. Normally the song made him cringe, but this year apparently signalled a shift in his tolerance levels. Dylan’s ‘The Times They Are A-Changin” would have been more appropriate. Christmas shopping wasn’t something Mariner did, but here he was doing it, on his own, completely unprovoked and in grave danger of looking like a New Man. It was mostly illusion though. Mariner’s underlying motive was rooted in the hope that an hour of exposing his senses to the garishness of Christmas might help him to shake off the image that had stayed with him since early this morning when he’d stood knee deep in an underground sewer, watching a police constable cut open a bound bin liner to reveal the decaying body of a woman.

  So far his strategy hadn’t been wholly successful, but he had another fifteen minutes before he was due to meet Anna and the others, and another fifteen minutes to distance himself. In Waterstone’s the atmosphere was calmer, the background chamber music a notch more sophisticated, but nonetheless contrived, along with the aroma of real coffee, to soothe him into parting with some of his hard-earned, and for a while Colombian medium roast vied with the smell of raw waste that lingered in his nostrils.

  Like everywhere else in the Bullring, this afternoon the shop was excessively warm and he sweltered in his overcoat. Another rule broken, overcoats we
ren’t his style, but Anna had persuaded him into one last winter and today it had come into its own; keeping him warm and concealing the uniform underneath. He strolled around scanning the three-for-two bestseller tables, loitering over the latest wave of women’s fiction that Anna was so partial to, featuring as it did, feisty, independent, spirited females. This year she’d probably have preferred a volume from the health section, under pregnancy planning and parents-to-be, but somehow Mariner couldn’t quite bring himself to move towards that corner of the shop. Instead he picked up a couple of what looked like the most popular of the current chick-lit titles with their ubiquitous fluorescent cartoon covers, and took them over to the counter.

  The checkout queue was long, the customers ahead of him apparently starting up their own private libraries, and for some time Mariner found himself standing beside a stack of glossy hardbacks, the early memoirs of former MP Sir Geoffrey Ryland. No prizes for guessing the reason for their prominence today, just a week after Ryland had met a violent end, ambushed and shot dead in his car on a quiet Oxfordshire lane. Mariner absently picked up a copy and skimmed the jacket. One of the Good Guys. Not, on the face of it, an attention-grabbing title, even though it might be true. Joe Public didn’t want to read about politicians who’d done the job well, they wanted the scandal, like Alan Clark’s love affairs. Sales of Bill Clinton’s autobiography had gone through the roof; everyone wanting to know the sordid truth about Monica Lewinsky and that dress.

  The flyleaf told Mariner little more than he already knew, tracing Ryland’s professional life as a human rights lawyer in the 1960s to the natural progression into politics as an MP for an inner city London borough. A specialist in miscarriages of justice at a time when they were rife, he’d given up his parliamentary seat to chair one of the government’s most prized flagship institutions, the Judicial Review Commission, the job for which Ryland had received his knighthood. According to the news reports Ryland had died at the age of sixty-eight, no age at all. Only the good die young.

  ‘You taking that one too?’ The paperbacks were removed from his grasp and Mariner looked up to see that he’d reached the head of the queue, to be greeted by a sales girl name-tagged Nikki. ‘We were all set to send them back to the warehouse,’ she told him. ‘But they’re practically walking off the shelves now. You wouldn’t believe what a sudden death can do for a writer.’

  ‘Or a musician,’ her friend chipped in from the neighbouring till. ‘When John Lennon got shot “Imagine” went straight to number one.’

  ‘Turned James Dean into a legend overnight,’ agreed Mariner. They both looked at him blankly. ‘The film actor?’ he elaborated. ‘Rebel Without a Cause?’

  ‘Oh yeah,’ Nikki’s friend said vaguely. ‘I think I’ve heard of him.’

  ‘So, are you taking it?’ Nikki returned to her hard sell. ‘Might be a good present for someone.’

  A year ago it would have been perfect. Had his mother still been alive Mariner would have bought it for her. Ryland was one of a group of charismatic social reformers of her generation who, alongside Bruce Kent and Nelson Mandela, she’d idolised. In fact that’s just how she’d have described all three: the good guys.

  ‘Go on then.’ Mariner put the book down on the counter.

  ‘Good for you,’ Nikki grinned. ‘You won’t regret it.’

  ‘I should hope not.’

  ‘You’ve even got an autographed one.’ She flipped open the cover displaying an illegible scrawl. ‘He came in for a signing in November and we had some left over.’

  ‘So you met Ryland?’ Mariner pulled his credit card from his wallet.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And did you think he was?’ Mariner asked, as they waited for the transaction to process.

  The girl had a great line in vacant expressions. ‘Was what?’

  ‘One of the good guys.’

  She shrugged. ‘He was very nice. And his driver seemed to think a lot of him. He came out back for a fag. Ryland had got him out of prison, so he thought the old man was a hero.’

  Mariner considered what he’d read about the recent shooting. Word was that the killings were down to the driver. Not a nice way to repay your hero.

  Taking the bulging plastic carrier from the girl called Nikki, and feeling slightly as if he’d been conned, Mariner stepped away from the counter. A tingling sensation crept the length of his spine. Someone walking over his grave, except it was too warm for that. It was a feeling that he was being watched. He’d experienced the same phenomenon several times during the last few weeks, though he’d told no one about it. They’d have suggested therapy. He turned and looked around the shop. The handful of other customers either had their noses buried in books or were studying the shelves intently. He’d caught no one out. He put the feeling down to being tired. It was a long time since he’d had a holiday.

  Mariner had arranged to meet Anna, along with DC Tony Knox, at the visiting Frankfurt market, and picked up the tail end of the colourful stalls on New Street. As he progressed deeper into the market the ambience subtly changed, the hard-nosed consumerism of the department stores giving way to a mellower side of Christmas. Under less pressure to buy, shoppers browsed the pastry and pottery stalls exchanging pleasantries, and the easy banter between the vendors created an atmosphere of genuine goodwill. This year there had been a clumsy effort by some local councillors to replace the market with a more patriotic English version but somehow Mariner couldn’t imagine hot dogs and burgers creating the same illusion. If he could only forget what he’d been doing all day.

  The busiest stands were those grouped below the steps of the museum and art gallery, and offering a range of exotic refreshments. It was here that Mariner spied Tony Knox, beneath one of the food bar parasols, his arms wrapped round a woman; the latest girlfriend they’d heard so much about. Selina, if his recall was accurate. There had been so many now since Knox’s wife had left him that Mariner couldn’t be sure. The pulling power of the middle-aged divorcé remained one of life’s mysteries.

  ‘All right, Boss?’ Knox asked as Mariner arrived at his side. The two men shook hands and Knox disentangled himself. ‘This is Selina,’ he said without ceremony. ‘Selina: DI Tom Mariner.’

  First impressions were that this girl’s model good looks carbon copied her predecessors; Knox continuing his quest for the antithesis to his ex. Slim and leggy in jeans and sheepskin bomber jacket, Selina’s hair was pinned up in an explosion of lethal blond spikes, and the total look was straight off a page of the glossies. But the smile, it was pure mischief. ‘The boss,’ she grinned, one perfectly shaped eyebrow arching. ‘I’ve heard all about you.’ The stress on that last word implied that it was rather more than Mariner would have liked, but at the same time he couldn’t help warming to Selina.

  ‘You too,’ he said, automatically. ‘Tony said you’re an accountant?’ As the snippet of information came back to him Mariner struggled momentarily to square the image with the occupation.

  ‘For my sins,’ Selina said, reading his face. ‘We’re not all fat and balding in a suit, you know.’

  ‘So I see.’

  ‘She’s also a Blues supporter,’ Knox put in. ‘So I wouldn’t go getting too friendly.’

  ‘Nobody’s perfect,’ Mariner conceded, with a shrug.

  Knox passed him a mug of steaming Glühwein. ‘Dutch courage,’ he said. ‘Or should that be German courage? I thought you might need it.’ He raised his own mug, slipping an arm around Selina and drawing her closer. ‘Prost.’

  ‘Prost.’

  ‘Prost.’ The mugs clinked together. ‘As long as I don’t end up slurring my words,’ said Mariner. ‘Might not look good.’ But at the same time he was trying to ignore the growing flutter of butterfly wings in his stomach. Standing up in front of the Chief Constable and other luminaries, along with a hundred or so of his colleagues, wasn’t something he was often asked to do, even if tonight he would only be reading from ‘The Gospel According to St Luke’.

/>   It said something for the heathens at the Granville Lane OCU that it was Mariner, lifelong agnostic, who was representing them by doing a reading at the force carol service, though his participation came only as a result of having his arm twisted up his back by Jack Coleman. ‘It shouldn’t even be me who’s doing it,’ he grumbled, with feeling. ‘The job should have gone to a good Catholic boy.’

  ‘Lapsed Catholic,’ Knox reminded him. ‘And I was never a contender. The Brummie masses wouldn’t understand a word I said.’ And to demonstrate, he thickened his scouse accent to a series of gutteral spasms.

  They heard Anna before they saw her, cheerfully apologising her way through what was becoming a tightly packed crowd. The soft light accentuated the paleness of her skin and brought out the copper tones of her shoulder- length hair. Watching her progress, eliciting smiles and good-natured teasing from those around her, Mariner was reminded what a lucky bugger he was. He’d been feeling pretty virtuous about his purchases, but Anna appeared to have bought out Toys ’R’ Us single handed.

  ‘Doing your bit for the national economy?’ Knox joked, relieving her of two enormous carrier bags and stacking them out of the way. ‘I’ll get you a drink.’

  ‘Thanks, Tony.’ Stretching up, Anna planted a kiss on Mariner. ‘It’s just a few bits and pieces.’

  ‘Can’t guess who they’re for,’ Mariner said.

  ‘Tony didn’t tell me you had children,’ Selina said.

  ‘Anna, this is Selina.’ Mariner took his cue.