Reggie pressed pause and tapped the screen. “That one’s your killer?”
“Aye. They pressured Billy to take the shot on McManus and then they blew him away. See the black gloves? There are latex ones under those, but they’re not the ones your Mrs Johnston found.”
“Who did those belong to then?”
“Billy was wearing latex gloves himself. Even though Baseball Cap was pressuring him to kill he still had the wit to cover his prints. It all says he believed he was getting off that roof alive.”
Reggie shook his head sadly. “There’s none so blind as those who will not see.”
“Thank you, Confucius.” Liam gestured at the screen. “Play that clip back from the start and just watch Baseball Cap.”
Both men watched for a moment as the slimmer figure crossed the square close behind Billy Regent and then Liam signalled stop.
“OK. What did you notice?”
Reggie screwed up his face. “Tall enough, but scrawny. Billy could have taken him in a fight.”
“What’s your impression of colouring? Quick. First thing that comes into your head.”
“Fair skinned. Although I don’t know why I’m saying that. You can’t see his hands or face.”
“Aye, you can. There, just the tip of the chin. It’s definitely pale. OK, anything else?”
Reggie sat back and folded his arms determinedly. “I know you, Cullen. This is where you pretend you’ve worked something out all by yourself when really somebody else told you, and you try to make me look thick. Well forget it, I’m not playing. Tell me what you know.”
Liam gave a fake sigh. “Ach, you’re no fun anymore, Reg. Time was when you’d have gone along with me.”
“Time was when I’d nothing better to do. Spill.”
Liam gestured at the computer. “Oh, OK. Baseball Cap’s a woman.”
Another thing that Craig had told him in his late-night call.
The revelation made Reggie sit forward again to peer at the screen. “No way.”
“Yep. The DNA says there’s no doubt. Billy’s killer was a German woman.”
Reggie looked shocked. “German? That’s rare over here.” He turned to the screen again. “But now you say that it’s a woman, I can see it. It’s the pointed chin that gives it away.”
“Whatever it is, someone spoke to her. Everyone inside that cordon had to give their name and address, so some copper interviewed a tall, slim, youngish woman.”
The sergeant’s response was to reach into his desk drawer and pull out a sheaf of pages. He split the pile and pushed half across the desk.
“Start looking.”
Thirty minutes and two more biscuits later, Liam looked up from his papers, shaking his head.
“I’ve only got youngsters under eighteen, and a couple of old dears.”
Reggie was similarly perplexed. “I’ve got nothing but men here, and there’s no way a woman would be mistaken for a man if they were interviewed face to face. Your girl wasn’t inside the cordon. She must have slipped out before it went up.”
Liam shook his head emphatically. “Aidan had that cordon up before the shot that killed Regent. He went to the Travis as soon as trajectory analysis said McManus had been shot from there. And I had Ash check and there were no unknown CSIs or police on scene.”
“Well, no-one spoke to her so she must have slipped out.”
Liam’s jaw dropped in realisation. “No, she bloody didn’t. She was still hiding inside the block!” He jumped to his feet and headed for the door, beckoning the sergeant to follow him. “I’m going to kill Bill McEwan. His trigger-happy bunch of Rambos did an incomplete search!”
****
As the two policemen left to murder the Armed Response Commander, something that was unlikely to be achieved unless every gun but their own was removed from the room, Liam got a call. He pressed answer, expecting the withheld number to be Craig calling from the office, only to hear Davy’s voice on the line.
“Have you seen the chief?”
Liam suppressed his reflex quip about feeling unwanted because of the stress in the analyst’s voice.
“No. Have you tried his mobile?”
“It’s cutting to voicemail. He must be in a dead zone. He went to interview Leonard Montgomery about thirty minutes ago, but-”
“Whatever you’ve got can’t wait. Reggie’s with me, but say what you have to say.”
Davy swallowed hard, knowing that what he had was basically gossip, but gossip from a very reliable source, Maggie, who knew everything there was to know about Northern Ireland’s journalistic world.
“Ray Mercer.”
The name made Liam feel sick and the sudden sour taste in his mouth said that he just might be. Ray Mercer had been News Editor at The Belfast Chronicle two years before, and the bane of their lives for much longer than that, with his distorted and biased reporting. One transgression too far had seen him reported to the newspaper’s Executive Board and cost him his job. He blamed Craig for it and they’d almost come to blows last time they’d met.
The last Liam had heard of the reporter was that he’d been working as a freelancer in Dublin, and Mercer reappearing and disturbing their peace now, especially during such a sensitive case, was something that they could all do without.
Davy was still speaking.
“He’s back in Belfast, w…working for The Belfast Journal.”
The real gutter press.
“And he’s got something on McManus’ killing.”
Liam found his voice. “When you say something, do you mean fact or fiction?”
“Maggie doesn’t know. All she knows is that Mercer’s been dropping hints about some big scoop he’s got, on a s…secret club being involved in McManus’ death.”
A secret club? Did he mean the group who met at Lewis’ parties? Could the newshound possibly have found out something that they’d missed?
Liam thought fast, pulling his car into a U-Turn as he did. Leonard Montgomery lived on the Malone Road somewhere and Craig needed this information fast.
“Davy, what’s Montgomery’s address?”
“The chief’s meeting him at his office on the Upper Lisburn Road.”
“OK, send me the address. We’re heading there now. You get back to Maggie and see what else you can find out, and I want to know where Mercer is. We may need to pick him up.”
And chuck him in a deep, dark hole if he had any say in it. As Davy ended the call, Liam made another one, this time to Aidan Hughes. He dispensed with the niceties.
“I need you to do something for me.”
Aidan Hughes put his mobile on speaker and continued doing his sit-ups, hidden behind Nicky’s now repaired wall. It had proved a valuable construction. Not just for yesterday’s spectacle, but for the fact that he could do some keep fit while he worked and no-one could see to gawp.
“OK. What?”
Liam stared at the hands free, listening to the D.C.I. pant and grunt. It dawned on Reggie what was going on and he mouthed ‘sit-ups’, making Liam roll his eyes.
“Are you exercising in the office, Wensley?”
“Yep. It helps my bad back. Five minutes an hour makes for nearly an hour a day.”
Liam was torn between asking him what exercises he was doing, he had a bad back himself, and telling him to stop immediately. In the end he did neither, continuing on.
“I need you to contact Bill McEwan.”
“Armed Response?”
“Ach, how many other Bill McEwans do you know?” He didn’t wait for a reply. “Anyway, go and see him about the sweep his men did of Carson Tower on the day of the shootings.”
Aidan jerked upright and grabbed the phone. “Why? I was on site. It was all done by the book.”
“Well then, you’re as stupid as McEwan is, because his men missed something huge. It turns out Billy Regent’s killer was a woman. The DNA beneath his nails was conclusive.” He heard Hughes inhale sharply. “But Reggie and I just checked the in
terviews held within the cordon and no-one fits the bill. I think Regent’s killer hid in the tower until everyone had gone, and she could only have managed that if one of McEwan’s muppets didn’t do their job.”
“Shit!” It was followed by an even more astonished “Bloody hell, Liam”, as Aidan Hughes realised exactly what he was asking him to do. “You seriously expect me to tell Bill McEwan that his men let a killer escape! There’s no way! Do it yourself.”
This was where seniority proved useful and Liam felt his chest swell as he realised he had the power to compel the more junior D.C.I. This must be what the Chief Constable felt like every day.
“D.C.I. Hughes, you will visit Commander McEwan, and tactfully, or not, and actually I couldn’t give a monkey’s which, you will find out how this happened. Meanwhile, I want you to get some uniforms down to that tower, checking every flat to find where our woman might have concealed herself. I suggest they start with the empty gaffs. Go down there yourself after you’ve seen McEwan and take a C.S.I. team along. Reggie will be joining you as well.”
Aidan wasn’t so awed by Liam’s authority that he couldn’t manage a question. “And where will you be all this time? Swanning around, I suppose.”
That had been the plan, until the idea of Ray Mercer at large had begun to gnaw at him and he’d turned the car back towards the Demesne, deciding to leave Reggie back to his car and lift Mercer himself.
He wanted to interview the reporter before telling Craig what Maggie had heard, but the idea that listening to Ray Mercer spouting off could be categorised as swanning gave Liam his best laugh of the day so far.
****
The C.C.U.
Davy had just finished a follow-up call to Maggie when his one hundred and eighty IQ kicked in. They’d already deduced that a group might be using Veronica Lewis’ parties as a place to meet, their secrecy ensured by the other party-goers having too much to lose if things came out, but what if Ray Mercer, with all the time and contacts that only an investigative reporter had, really had managed to discover something more? And what if what they’d called a clique and Mercer had called a secret club, was actually more of a cabal? A political faction powerful and sinister enough to influence world affairs.
The more the analyst thought about it the more that it made sense. The group seemed to have a political agenda, didn’t balk at killing if it was necessary, and the members that they were aware of had, between them, wealth, influence and interests worldwide. The book code that he was still unable to crack fitted with the secrecy they craved, and perhaps more than that, the use of encryption was well known to every government that used clandestine agencies.
The question was how and when had the group formed? And was it a onetime deal of people drawn together by a common interest, quitting the EU, only to disperse once their goal had been attained, or did it have deeper and more extensive roots than that? With powerful, permanent members that brought issues they needed resolved to a group of the equally powerful, in a dangerous arrangement of ‘you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours’?
One thing was certain; these people stood to gain from whatever they were doing, which meant that with Peter McManus out of the way things were likely to speed up. It prompted Davy to draw up a table and begin populating it, hoping fervently that a common thread would appear.
****
The Upper Lisburn Road, South Belfast.
Leonard Montgomery, MBE, MLA had folded like clean laundry as soon as Craig had mentioned the word escort. It marked him out not as one of the hard core they needed to break but as a man that they could use.
Craig sat across the impressive maple desk in the Finance Minister’s constituency office, considering the politician. He looked like every second middle-aged businessman in Belfast: a decade-out-of-fashion-cut grey or navy suit, plain white cotton-mix shirt and not too colourful silk tie; plump, thinning on top and with skin that was either toasted brown from too much sun or fish-white from never having glimpsed its rays. He’d often wondered how the lean-hipped students of Northern Ireland morphed into these rotund, characterless men, whose only attempts at individuality seemed confined to the buckles on their belts or their socks. It was as if there was some factory that made them out of heat-moulded plastic comprised of their long dead hopes and dreams. If he woke up like one of them one morning it would be time to give up the ghost.
While Craig’s thoughts meandered through his mind, Leonard Montgomery’s were racing across his face, and they all amounted to one thing; the politician was well and truly screwed. Knowing that ‘Screwed and panicking official’ wasn’t a good look, before Craig had time to ask the questions about escorts that he already knew would break the MLA, Leonard Montgomery obliged all by himself.
He lurched forward, blurting out his words in clumps as if someone was punching the air out of him.
“It was…only a few times!... My wife and I… We’ve been having… problems.” The official coloured. “Of the marital sort… She doesn’t like…”
Craig’s heart sank. There was nothing he hated more than people whining excuses, especially if he had to listen to them crying about their lack of sex. He raised a hand to stem the politician’s diatribe on his wife’s frigidity and moved forward to the edge of his chair.
“Parties, Mister Montgomery.”
“What?”
“Have you ever attended a party hosted by Mrs Veronica Lewis?”
The MLA’s averted eyes told him that the answer was yes.
“When?”
Montgomery’s brown eyes widened beneath their concertinaed lids.
“I didn’t say that I-”
“Not in words, no. So, when did you attend?”
The answer came slowly and in a mutter.
“Say that again, please, Minister. This time so I can hear.”
Craig heard this time all right.
“In January! OK?”
The detective’s reaction was to raise an eyebrow.
“Perfectly OK, I suppose, if you’re into that kind of thing. Now… Was Peter McManus present?”
A nod. Craig slipped a folded page from his pocket, spreading it out on the impressive desk.
“And these men?”
Montgomery scanned the page slowly, muttering to himself as he did.
“Louder please.”
“THEY ALL WERE! Happy now?”
“Ecstatic. I enjoy nothing better than spending my day like this.”
While the Minister tried to work out if it was the truth or sarcasm, Craig ran his gaze down the list. Montgomery had just confirmed Loughrey, Burke, the Earl, McArdle, Bell and McManus. It was time to play a hunch.
“Did they absent themselves from the party at any point? As a group?”
When Montgomery gave up all show of reluctance Craig knew that the MLA had computed his odds; if he cooperated with the police now there was just a chance they wouldn’t tell anyone he’d been using escorts. Craig had never intended to tell anyone, but if Leonard Montgomery thought that meant his wife would never find out then he was heading for a fall. But he’d drop that bombshell at the very end, right now he had information to extract.
“So? Did they?”
Montgomery nodded.
“All of them. Although McManus returned to the party pretty quickly.”
It was interesting. Was it in January that the group had realised McManus’ Pro-EU stance was genuine? If they’d argued about it seriously enough then it might have triggered the planning for the First Minister’s subsequent demise.
“Did you attend any other parties?”
The politician shook his head.
“I was invited, but the dates always seemed to clash with work or home.”
The MLA stopped speaking suddenly and Craig could see him calculating again: do I tell this cop more and hope that it saves my ass, or just say nothing and hope the same? Montgomery opted for the former.
“There’s a party this weekend. Saturday.”
“You’re invited?”
“Yes.”
“You’re going.”
“No, I’m not. It’s my son’s sixteenth.”
Craig shook his head slowly. “That wasn’t a question, Minister. You’re going. And if you do as we need you to do then your past behaviour will remain between us.”
Apart from your wife, whose anonymous phone calls say that she already knows.
****
The Labs. 12 p.m.
“Any progress on the guns or logo, Des?”
John Winter received a vague grunt, that in his experience of the Head of Forensics meant good news.
“Will they lead anywhere useful?”
The grunt had a higher pitch this time, saying maybe no, maybe yes. It gave him hope. Des wasn’t a teaser, not at work at least.
“OK. Can you give me any details yet?”
This time he received a full-on snort. Translated it meant ‘Bugger off, John. I’ll call you when I’m done’.
Six miles away Davy was having much the same conversation with Ash, and about one of the same things. Clarity on the logo was going to take some time while the FBI’s Logo Comparison Programme ran, so both analysts had turned their attention to other things. In Ash’s case, it was the DNA profile that John had sent through. He was just about to chase it up with Interpol, with the added benefit now of knowing that it belonged to a woman, when his desk telephone rang.
Even on “Hello” he knew that the caller was foreign, and by “May I speak to” he’d narrowed their accent to Europe. Not being a great believer in coincidence he knew that fate had just saved him making a call.
“Speaking. How can I help you?”
His exaggerated politeness made Davy turn and stare. Either Ash was speaking to his mum or his Hindu guru, because no-one else ever warranted such a deferential tone. The addition of “Monsieur Moreau” said that he was wrong, so Davy lifted his own receiver and quietly pressed two buttons so he could listen in on the call.
“I am calling from Interpol in Lyons regarding a specimen that your police sent through. We have a match that I will send by secure email.”
The Cabal Page 23
