Read Online Chris Collett - [Tom Mariner 01] by The Worm in The Bud (txt) - Free Book Online Page B

play a more prominent role around here than Anna was happy with.
    ‘Good,’ Jonathan smiled. ‘I told Gillian it would be a very late night.’
    Anna liked the sound of that. Now it was imperative that she find somewhere for Jamie. Alone once more, she turned her attention to her in-tray, firing off rapid responses to memos and e-mails where she could, sending faxes. After a whole morning out, there was a lot to catch up on if she was to be ready for Milan by next weekend. So much so, that when Becky put her head around the door to say she was going, Anna didn’t notice how empty the outer office had become. The phone rang and kept ringing, and glancing up irritably from her PC monitor, Anna suddenly realised it was dusk and everyone else had gone.
    She picked up the handset. ‘Hello?’
    ‘Hi, this is Francine,’ said a friendly-sounding voice.
    ‘Francine?’ Anna didn’t know a Francine.
    ‘I’m Jamie’s key worker at the centre,’ the voice explained. ‘I was wondering when you were coming to collect him. All the other clients have gone home…’
    Jamie! Anna had forgotten all about him. ‘I’ll be there as soon as I can,’ she said, already on her feet and stuffing papers into her briefcase.
    When she got to the centre it was practically deserted, apart from the omnipresent cleaning staff. Jamie sat alone in the foyer, head bent, gently rocking.
    ‘Hi Jamie.’
    He didn’t even look up. He wasn’t punishing her for being late. He just wasn’t interested.
    A young mixed-race woman emerged from the office.
    ‘Hi, I’m Francine, you must be Anna?’
    ‘Yes. Look, I’m really sorry, I completely lost track of the time.’
    ‘That’s okay,’ Francine smiled generously. ‘I had some paperwork to do and Jamie didn’t seem to mind.’ She hesitated.
    ‘I’m so sorry about Eddie. I couldn’t believe it when Joyce told us. It must be hard for you.’
    ‘It’s bad timing,’ Anna agreed. She still had this evening’s little problem to solve. Taking advantage of Francine’s sympathetic smile, Anna tried a long shot.
    ‘Actually all this couldn’t have come at a worse time for me. Do you know if there’s anywhere that would be able to just look after Jamie for tonight?’ But, predictably, Francine didn’t.

    In the early evening gloom, Tom Mariner also sat at his desk in a deserted office. His nose throbbed painfully and.
    despite assurances that it wasn’t broken, every time he exhaled he emitted a low whistling sound. A bag of frozen peas sent up by some wag in the station canteen was generating a slow-spreading puddle on one corner of the desk, like the dull ache that was inching its way around his skull. He’d been through the files of local known prostitutes over and over now, hoping he’d missed her the last time and willing those brown eyes to gaze out at him. Once he even thought he saw her, but he was kidding himself.
    Either she was new or she was careful, or she wasn’t what he thought.
    Knox had finished for the night, stating his intentions to go and try to patch things up with ‘the wife’, but sounding more as if he was trying to convince himself than anything.
    Mariner’s plans for this evening, which had at one time included the digital reworking of Hitchcock’s Rear Window playing at the MAC, had been comprehensively sabotaged: he was loath to squander the cinematographer’s talents on his intermittently blurring vision. The rain that had in the last hour begun beating relentlessly on the windows precluded a walk, even for him. So, other options closed, courtesy of Jamie Barham, Mariner was left flicking through the information gathered by the canvas of Eddie Barham’s neighbours.
    Apart from what he’d already learned from Moira Warren, it didn’t amount to a fat lot, even though Eddie Barham had lived in Clarendon Avenue all his life.
    Neighbours hardly seemed to know him and certainly nobody had heard or seen anything the previous night, or at any rate was