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

gents playing fives-and threes up one end of the lounge bar. This was occasionally bolstered by the ebb and flow of the murmured conversation of a younger couple on one of the side benches. Irish landlady Beryl was on her own, gliding gracefully under the weight of her extravagantly bouffant hair, which, like the pub, belonged to a different age. Seeing Mariner and without prompting, she slid a straight pint glass under the Marston’s Pedigree tap. ‘You’ve been in the wars then,’ she commented blandly, as Mariner approached the bar, her gaze lingering just a little too long.
    ‘Walked into a door,’ said Mariner, stealing the line he’d been given in countless domestics over the years. He wasn’t sure whether Beryl caught the irony, but she certainly took the hint, allowing Mariner to retreat to a corner table to enjoy his beer without further interrogation.
    ‘I’ll leave the car,’ he told Beryl, twenty minutes later, replacing his second empty glass on the bar.
    ‘Right you are, darlin’.’
    It was something Mariner did regularly, journeying the 100 or so yards back to his house on foot. The pub car park was as safe as anywhere to leave a car, overlooked as it was by the small, local Norton Road Police Station.
    The rain had stopped and, though it was mild for February, a fresh breeze blew as Mariner wound his way along the sixties-built cul-de-sac that was to the one side of the pub, and into the small service road that few people even knew existed. Ominously, a silver Ford Focus was parked just down from his house, and walking up the path of the narrow, three-storey, Victorian red-brick, Mariner noticed the blue-tinged flickering of a cathode tube in the darkened window of his living room. He opened the front door and turned on the light.
    ‘Fancy a spring roll, boss?’ asked Knox, brightly. He’d made himself at home, slouching on the sofa with his feet up on the coffee table amid a clutter of greasy takeaway cartons, from which emanated the pervasive smell of egg fried rice. On screen the subjects in a reality TV show were arguing loudly.
    Mariner felt his anxiety level crank up a notch. ‘I take it the peace negotiations didn’t go as planned,’ he said, closing the door.
    Knox killed the sound on the TV. ‘Not exactly, although she did chuck me down some clothes, so at least I’ll be clean. Is it all right if I kip here tonight, sir?’ Although the reply seemed to have already been taken for granted.
    ‘I suppose so,’ said Mariner, doubting the decision already. Knox could have the second-floor room, the one that he’d been trying to rent out. ‘As long as you remember that we’re off-duty,’ Mariner reminded him. ‘You don’t have to call me sir here.’ Interestingly Knox had never bothered with the formality at the station, so it was puzzling that he should start now.
    ‘Right.’ Knox held up a glass of brown liquid. ‘And I helped myself. I hope you don’t mind,’
    ‘No,’ Mariner said, dubiously. ‘What do you think?’
    ‘It’s all right,’ Knox was unenthusiastic. ‘Though I’m more of a lager man myself.’
    Mariner was disappointed; he’d thought it was a good brew. To check it out for himself, he went and fetched a bottle.
    ‘You’ve got a nice place here,’ said Knox, when Mariner returned. ‘Very neat and cosy.’
    ‘Yes, well, I have my last girlfriend to thank for that,’ said Mariner. ‘She took an immediate dislike to the place and refused to set foot in it until it was liveable.’
    Mariner could still remember the buzz he’d got from seeing the ‘For Sale’ sign on the property, the day he’d come across it. Right from when they’d first met, Greta had been nagging him to make the move from renting to owning a house that they could share, but unfortunately this wasn’t the sort of place she had in mind. Her dream was of a brand new house on a regimented estate of clones, not an ancient, rundown cottage in the middle of no-man’s-land. The