Number seventy-two blended perfectly into the squalor. Torn grey net curtains hung at some of the windows, although those higher up looked new. There was no bell or knocker, so Mariner banged his fist on the door, creating as much noise as he could.

  After a faint burst of music and some scuffling, the door was opened by a large African-Caribbean woman of indiscernible age. ‘What you want?’ she barked, squinting suspiciously at Mariner’s proffered warrant card.

  ‘We’re looking for Kerry,’ he said.

  ‘Kerry?’

  ‘We’ve got reason to believe she lives here. We just want to talk to her.’

  ‘There’s a girl lives on the top floor,’ the woman said. ‘Don’t know what her name is.’

  Mariner held out the photograph. ‘Is this her?’

  The woman peered. ‘Yeah, a real sweetie.’

  ‘We need to come in.’

  The woman shrugged, turned and shuffled back into her own apartment, slamming the door behind her and leaving them alone in a dark and desolate hallway. Mariner led the way up uncarpeted wooden stairs, through a dim atmosphere, thick with the stench of stale cigarette smoke and rotting food. He cringed on Anna’s behalf. It was all in a day’s work for him, but for her it must be like a different planet. They passed one landing and continued on up to the next. A door at the top was crudely daubed ‘1a’ in grey paint and had a tarnished knocker in the centre. Mariner rapped on it. Kerry was apparently expecting someone. The door was pulled back almost immediately, wide and welcoming, by a tall slim girl, with glossy shoulder-length chestnut hair and chocolate eyes, which were instantly wary. An inch of her midriff was visible, showing off a small, neat tattoo of a butterfly.

  Mariner held out his warrant card again. ‘Hello, Kerry.’

  Kerry stared at him suspiciously, trying to work out where she’d seen him before, but then she saw Anna, and, recognising her, attempted to slam the door shut again. The door rebounded off the sole of Mariner’s shoe. ‘We just need to ask you a few questions about Eddie Barham,’ he said. ‘We can do it here or at the station. It’s up to you.’ He’d said the magic words and her resistance breached, Kerry led them through a short hallway into a lounge.

  The small flat was neat in comparison with the rest of the building. She doesn’t bring her clients back here, thought Mariner, it’s far too homely and personal. Even to his undiscriminating eye the decor was tasteful and pleasing, and above all it was spotlessly clean. For Anna’s sake he was glad of that. That wasn’t the only surprise, either. Kerry, when she spoke, was surprisingly articulate, although her manners didn’t extend to offering them a seat. Mariner sat down anyway and Anna followed his lead, leaving Kerry with little choice. Mariner also held back on any introduction of Anna, allowing Kerry to make the assumption that she, too, was a police officer.

  ‘Tell me how you first met Eddie Barham,’ he began.

  ‘It was a long time ago, I can’t really remember.’ She was cool and closed.

  ‘Try.’

  Kerry looked over to the window and made a show of trying to recall, though it was more probable that she was weighing up how much to tell him.

  ‘It was a couple of years ago, maybe three. I was living rough. A bunch of us used to go to this café, greasy spoon place near the bus station, when we could afford it. Eddie came in there and we got talking.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘I don’t know, just chit chat, you know. Nothing really, but he was very good at getting stuff out of you. He was just nice, friendly, and he seemed interested.’

  ‘In what?’

  ‘Anything, everything. How we lived. What we did all day. I did think it was a bit weird, until one day he coughed that he was a reporter. He said he was working on some article about what it was like to be living on the streets in Birmingham. He wasn’t going to use real names or anything, but just write about how kids ended up there, on the streets, and what happened to them. He said it was a chance to tell our story.’

  ‘And you helped him with it?’

  ‘Yeah. I thought it would be a laugh. Besides he was offering money.’

  ‘Did you know about what was going on at Streetwise?’

  Kerry blushed, more in anger than anything. ‘Yeah, of course I knew. Everyone did.’

  ‘So you were aware that Frank Crosby was using the drop-in centre as a way of procuring underage kids for prostitution?’ Mariner had to be sure of this. From the corner of his eye he saw Anna’s eyes widen almost imperceptibly, but he couldn’t help that. She’d asked to be here.

  ‘I didn’t know about Frank then,’ Kerry said. ‘I’d seen him around, but I just thought he was a friend of Paul’s. Paul was the one who did all the deals.’

  ‘Did you ever do any “work”’ for Paul?’

  ‘You know I did.’ She held his gaze.

  ‘And you told Eddie about it.’

  ‘I missed one of our meetings. Eddie wanted to know where I’d been, so yes, I told him. I think I wanted to shock him.’

  ‘And did you?’

  ‘Sort of. But Eddie was too much of a pro. He just found it more interesting than the piece he was writing. From then on that was all he wanted to know about.’

  ‘Did you tell him much?’

  ‘Only what had happened to me. I said he’d have to find out the rest himself. I don’t grass.’ Implicit was her utter contempt for informants. Mariner wondered what she’d have thought if he’d told her that it was how he’d first joined the payroll of the West Midlands Police.

  ‘The next thing I knew, your lot had arrested Paul and Frank Crosby. That was when I first knew who Frank really was. But by then Eddie had paid me enough to put down a deposit on this place, so I didn’t have to go to the drop-in anymore.’

  ‘And when did you start working for Frank Crosby yourself, Kerry?’ Mariner asked innocently. He hadn’t been sure, but her reaction verified it all right.

  ‘I don’t work for him,’ she said, petulantly. ‘I work for myself.’

  ‘And where do you work?’ asked Mariner. ‘Where do you take your clients?’

  ‘I rent a room.’

  ‘In one of Frank’s seedy little hotels?’ Mariner could tell from her face that he’d hit the mark. ‘And I suppose Frank puts the occasional punter your way, too.’

  ‘It’s worth it, they’re always generous, Frank’s clients. I had to get started somehow.’

  As if there was no other option in life. ‘I bet Frank doesn’t know that you helped Eddie with his story, does he? Does he ever encourage you to offer your clients extra services?’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like a little additional chemical stimulation.’

  ‘No. I don’t mess with any of that stuff.’ She was rock steady.

  Mariner let it go for now. ‘And did you see Eddie again after the story broke?’

  ‘Not for a while, no.’

  ‘So when did you see him?’

  ‘A few weeks ago. He’d been in to Maureen’s.’

  ‘Heaven’s Gate.’

  ‘I know.’ Even she could see the irony. ‘He’d seen my picture. Maureen gave him one of my cards, so he phoned me.’

  ‘For an appointment?’

  Crunch time. But Kerry just laughed. ‘Not exactly.’

  ‘So why did he contact you?’

  ‘He wanted a favour.’

  ‘Another story? About what? Frank Crosby?’

  ‘No, it wasn’t like that. Eddie’s got this brother who’s a bit backward, you know?’

  The sudden shift in the conversation caught Mariner off guard. ‘Jamie?’ he said, nonplussed.

  ‘Yeah, that’s right. Eddie looked after him. Anyway, he was having trouble with him getting horny. He’d started playing with his dick in public, groping women, that kind of thing. Eddie thought it might help if he actually had sex, you know. He thought it might calm him down. He could hardly ask any of his friends to do it, so he had been trying escort agencies. That’s how he finished up at Maureen’s. Trouble was, none of the girls would go to his house, and he needed Jamie to learn that sex is something you do in private, in your own place. Then when he saw my picture in Maureen’s and she told him what I was doing, he thought I’d be able to help. He knew I looked after myself.’

  ‘And did you agree to do it?’ asked Mariner.

  ‘Not straight away. I mean, I felt sorry for the boy. Nearly thirty and had never been laid. Can you imagine that?’ Mariner didn’t say that actually he was beginning to get an inkling. ‘I said I’d want to meet him first,’ Kerry went on. ‘I didn’t know if I could. So one night I met Eddie in the pub and he took me back to his house.’

  ‘When was that?’

  ‘About a month ago, I suppose.’

  ‘And did you do the business?’

  Anna visibly flinched, but Kerry remained casual. ‘No, but I would have. He was quite sweet and good-looking too. You couldn’t really tell that there was anything wrong with him, apart from some of that weird stuff he did. But he wouldn’t come near me. It was as if he wanted to, he kept sort of looking, but Eddie said it might take time for him to get used to me.’

  ‘So what did you do?’

  ‘I started just going to see them. I used to stop by at their house on my way back from other appointments. I would have been bloody stupid not to. All I did was sit and watch TV with them, but Eddie still paid me.’

  ‘Did you tell Eddie Barham that you work for Frank—?’

  ‘I told you, I don’t.’

  ‘All right then, did Eddie know about your little “arrangement” with Crosby?’

  ‘Not to begin with, no. Why should he? It was none of his business.’

  ‘So who was it who had him beaten up three weeks ago?’

  Kerry fell silent, avoiding Mariner’s eye. ‘Frank must have found out that I’d been seeing Eddie and jumped to the wrong conclusion,’ she glared at Mariner. ‘Like you did. He wanted me to stop seeing him. Said he knew what crap reporters wrote. I told him it wasn’t anything to do with that, but Frank didn’t believe me.’

  ‘So he gave Eddie a going over. And then what?’

  ‘Frank told me not to see Eddie again. That if I did, the next time he wouldn’t get off so lightly, and me neither. I called round to tell Eddie I couldn’t see them anymore. It upset me to do it. I think even Jamie knew something was wrong. He was really sweet, tried to comfort me.’ Mariner remembered Jamie’s words: Kay no cry. ‘Eddie was disappointed of course, but he understood.’

  ‘So when did you see Eddie Barham again?’

  ‘Last Sunday night, he called me. He’d had a bad week. Jamie had walked up to some woman in the swimming baths and grabbed at her breast. Eddie was worried that she might make a complaint. He was desperate. He wanted me to go round, just one last time.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I told him I couldn’t. I had another appointment anyway. Then when I was waiting for the punter to show—’

  ‘Derek.’

  Now Kerry realised where she’d seen Mariner before. She looked at him anew. ‘Yeah, that’s right. While I was waiting for Derek, Eddie turned up. He knew where I met people and he came to talk me into going with him.’

  ‘And you went with him, even though Crosby had warned you not to.’

  ‘Eddie could be persuasive, and like I said, I felt bad. He’d already paid me a lot with nothing to show for it. I wanted to wait to explain to Derek, but Eddie had left Jamie at home on his own so we had to go straight away.’

  So that’s what the argument was about. ‘Did Eddie ask you to bring him a little extra something this time?’

  ‘No. He wasn’t into that shit and neither am I.’

  ‘So what happened?’ Mariner asked, even though he was already beginning to put it together for himself.

  ‘Eddie took me back to his house in the car. But when we got there, his front door was wide open and there were these two guys inside. Jamie had gone. Eddie went ballistic.’

  ‘What guys? Frank Crosby’s men?’

  ‘I’d never seen them before. They were going through Eddie’s stuff upstairs, after money I suppose. Eddie tried to take them on, but there were two of them. He didn’t stand a chance.’

  ‘And?’

  Kerry looked down at her hands. ‘What could I do? I was behind Eddie and I didn’t think they’d seen me, so I ran to get help. The battery in my mobile was dead and there are no bloody call boxes anywhere any more. I had to go for miles, but in the end I found one and called 999.’

  ‘Very public spirited of you. I thought you said you liked Eddie Barham.’

  ‘I did.’ She was defiant.

  ‘So at the first sign of trouble, you just bugger off and leave him.’

  ‘I told you, I went to get help. What else could I do? I was scared. I didn’t know what was going to happen, that Eddie would be—’

  ‘Why didn’t you go to the neighbours?’

  ‘Oh yeah, like they’re going to help me. You should see the way that snotty cow next door looks at me.’

  ‘Are you sure it wasn’t more to do with the fact that you knew who those men were? That Frank Crosby told you to disappear? I think you did as you were told, but then your conscience got the better of you, so you waited a while and then called us.’

  ‘That’s not true!’

  ‘Crosby had already had Eddie beaten up once, but it hadn’t worked, had it? And he was afraid of what Eddie Barham was going to write, wasn’t he?’

  ‘It wasn’t like that—’

  ‘I think you’re lying, Kerry. I think you know very well who killed Eddie Barham. And that’s why you ran away that night and why you ran away again today, from Eddie’s sister.’

  ‘His sister?’ She stared at Anna. Up until then she hadn’t realised who she was. She turned back to Mariner. ‘I don’t know who those men were. I swear it.’

  ‘Who’s Sally-Ann?’ Mariner asked suddenly.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Sally-Ann. Is she this friend of yours, or do you sometimes use another name?’

  ‘I’ve never heard of her.’

  ‘I think you have.’

  ‘All right. I heard the boy mention her once, that’s all. But I don’t know who she is.’

  Mariner stood up. ‘Get your coat.’

  ‘What for? You said—’

  ‘You were probably the last person to see Eddie Barham alive, Kerry. We need you to make a formal statement.’

  ‘But I’m expecting—’

  ‘Leave a note on the door. You’re the only person who’s seen these two men, and even if you didn’t know them,’ Mariner could barely keep the scepticism from his voice, ‘you can give us a description, while I have a little chat with your friend and beneficiary, Frank Crosby.’

  Kerry sighed and got her coat. On the way out she turned to Anna. ‘I’m sorry, I really am. Eddie was one of the good guys. How’s the boy?’

  Anna smiled, weakly. ‘He’s fine.’

  ‘This is where you have to leave it to us,’ Mariner told Anna, depositing her outside her flat.

  Anna nodded. ‘I know. But thanks for letting me hear that. I need to know what happened.’

  ‘I’ll stay in touch.’

  ‘Thanks, I appreciate that.’

  CHAPTER 22

  Mariner left Kerry in the capable hands of a WPC at the Facial Identification Bureau, at Lloyd House, to be shown a selection from the 25,000 or more mugshots they kept on file. The department also operated a sophisticated e-FIT system, which could create a computer image based purely on descriptions Kerry gave them. It was a step or two up from the crude cut-and-paste jobs they were doing when Mariner had started on the force. But if all that state-of-the-art razzmatazz failed, there was always the graphic artist on hand.

  Mariner’s next stop was DCI Coleman’s office. Burly and balding, Jack Coleman was an old generation copper who had risen through the ranks through sheer slog and a powerful conviction that simple but dedicated attention to detail achieved results. It was a doctrine bordering on pedantry that in his previous posting at Severn Road Station had earned him the nickname of ‘the Severn Bore.’ But Coleman’s principles were founded on bitter experience. Only five weeks into the job he’d been one of a handful of officers on foot patrol on the night of 21 November 1974, when a coded warning was received to say that two bombs had been planted in Birmingham city centre.

  He’d been present later too, at Steelhouse Lane, when the six Irishmen had been brought in, branded guilty and savagely beaten before they’d even opened their mouths to protest their innocence. He’d seen the fear on their faces and known that it was wrong, but like dozens of others he’d kept silent and had lived with the guilt ever since. These days he made sure that his officers had solid facts before an arrest was sanctioned, and despite the frustration of most of the relief, his squad’s high conviction record spoke for itself. Today he was characteristically bedded deep in paperwork when Mariner went in.

  ‘I want to shake Frank Crosby,’ Mariner told him, without procrastination.

  Coleman put down his pen and sat back in his seat. The glare from his desk lamp bounced off his shining scalp. ‘On what grounds?’

  Mariner explained what they’d uncovered, including the link with Kerry. Saying it out loud, even to his ears it was beginning to sound flimsy and insubstantial. Unsurprisingly the gaffer apparently felt the same way.

  ‘Eddie Barham’s murder doesn’t on the face of it look much like Crosby’s usual style, does it?’ he said. ‘He’s not known to dress things up, as someone patently did.’

  ‘No, but he does have ready access to drugs and women, so that part at least makes sense. And he has a history with Eddie Barham, too. I just want to talk to him, see his reaction.’

 

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