The Grass Tattoo (#2 - The Craig Modern Thriller Series)

by Catriona King

  She decided to try another tack, her voice softening. “Look, I know that you hate the Chronicle. Ray’s coverage of the Adams’ case wasn’t good, we all know that.”

  Craig’s eyebrows rose at the understatement, but she ignored his scepticism and kept going. “I was on the Derry Telegraph then, and I covered the story responsibly. Ask Inspector McNulty at Limavady, she’ll tell you.”

  He softened slightly at the mention of Julia McNulty’s name. They were sometime ‘friends with a future’ and she had mentioned Maggie’s account favourably. He nodded her on.

  “Look, how’s about I leave, for now?”

  “Good idea. After giving your statement to the constable.”

  “Of course.”

  “OK, and?”

  “When you’re ready to see the Press, I get an exclusive interview. Say...six hours before the main briefing?”

  He looked down at her shrewdly, knowing her game. Six hours meant that she’d make the early edition, with the others losing out to the ‘late’. But he could turn the request to his advantage. If he could control what she wrote and it hit the newsstands first, the others might have to behave better. ‘Might’ being the operative word.

  He nodded slightly to himself and Maggie caught the move, smiling inwardly. Her smile was short-lived.

  “OK, Ms. Clarke. I’ll give you an exclusive. But I want to see your copy before printing. And if you play games with me, I’ll make life very challenging for you in the future. Do you understand?”

  The look in his eye showed that he meant it. There would be no messing.

  Maggie nodded grudgingly. “Agreed.”

  Craig turned to go and she moved to give her statement to the constable. Then she remembered something important.

  “Chief Inspector.”

  “Yes?”

  “You do know that Irene Leighton is the wife of Bob Leighton, don’t you?”

  “Who?”

  “The Energy Party M.P. for West Antrim.”

  And with that, his normal day went to hell.

  Chapter Three

  Liam Cullen was kneeling back on his substantial haunches, wearing a too-small forensic suit. Its seams were struggling, and so was he. He stared at the grandeur around him in a mixture of sadness and anger. And then reluctantly back at the body of the blonde woman, face-down in the damp grass beside Parliament Buildings’ steps.

  She was fully-clothed in black trousers and an elegant beige-silk blouse, tucked loosely into the trousers’ narrow waistband. Her slim body lay in the unmistakable shape of a cross; her arms at right angles to her body and her legs set tightly together. She looked so vulnerable that even Liam’s world-weary heart broke.

  He couldn’t see any obvious trauma, apart from some faint grazes on her left hand. But that didn’t mean that there wasn’t any, he knew his limitations. The crime scene investigators had just arrived, so thankfully his view wasn’t the last. What he could see were clumps of new grass clasped in both of her hands, and a small dark area below her left shoulder blade, clearly visible through the blouse’s thin material.

  A shape above him blocked his light unexpectedly, and he knew it was Craig without looking. “Hi, boss. What kept you?”

  It was said tiredly and Craig immediately heard the fatigue. So he smiled at Liam’s cheek, lifting the mood. He had no intention of explaining his lateness, and Liam didn’t really want him to. He was just filling-in the silence, the way that he always did.

  Craig looked down thoughtfully at the woman on the grass, and then spoke quietly. “She’s the wife of an M.P.”

  Liam looked at him, surprised. “How do you know that? There’s no I.D.”

  “I met one of our friends from the fourth estate.”

  He filled Liam in on Maggie’s information and his bargain with her, and Liam let out a low whistle. “Shit, that’s all we need. The press will be all over this like a rash.”

  Craig nodded. “Let’s solve it quickly then. I called John and he’s agreed to take it. He’ll be here in ten minutes.”

  Just then, a bright blue car pulled up on the elegant avenue, and Dr John Winter extricated his long limbs from its interior, loping towards them. His brown hair blew randomly across his eyes and he pushed it away absentmindedly, adjusting his glasses and dropping his briefcase in the process. He looked like the stereotype of a youthful nutty professor, because he was. He was also Director of Forensic Pathology for Northern Ireland and Craig’s long-time friend. They often worked together, when time and the system allowed.

  He speedily donned a suit from the C.S.I.’s pile and ambled over to them, scanning the body expertly. “The traffic was dire. I nearly had to send Trevor.”

  “I thought he was in the north-west, John?”

  Winter gazed intensely at the body as they talked.

  “Nope. He moved down here last month, and I’m pleased to have him. He’s good.”

  “Limavady won’t like you poaching their staff, Doc.”

  Winter looked over his glasses at Liam, half-smiling. “I think you’ll find that as Director they’re already mine, Liam.”

  Craig smiled benignly at his friend’s unfamiliar ego. John had never pulled rank yet, and Liam understood his bluff immediately. “Trevor asked you for the move, didn’t he?”

  Winter smiled as his cover was blown. “Oh, OK then. He has a new woman in Belfast. I just thought I’d try acting the boss for a day.”

  “Give it up, Doc.”

  They laughed together for a second, and then Winter turned seriously towards the woman and started reporting.

  “No sign of blunt force trauma anywhere on the posterior aspect of the body, except...”

  He leaned in, peering at the woman’s back through the thin fabric of her blouse.

  “There’s a tear in the material, here.” He pointed at a miniscule rip that Liam had missed. “And this dark area below the left scapula might be a bruise, or congealed blood. I’ll tell you more when we get her back to the lab.”

  “What can you give us quickly, John?”

  Winter stared at the woman for a moment longer, before speaking.

  “Right. The victim is thirty to forty years of age, well nourished, and judging by her skin and hair, not deficient in nutrition or vitamins. Definitely not a smoker. She’s wearing a wedding ring so probably married. She has new abrasions on her left knuckles and torn clumps of grass in both hands. The cruciate positioning of her body is interesting.”

  “It’s deliberate.”

  “I agree. It might have significance; perhaps even tell us something about the murderer.”

  “Definitely a murder then, Doc?”

  Winter sat back on his haunches, surprised by Liam’s question. ‘Natural causes’ hadn’t even occurred to him, and it always should. But this was definitely a murder.

  “I’d say so, Liam. She could have lain down in this position herself I suppose...but the way the grass is clasped in her hand, and torn out from the earth...”

  “How do you know it’s torn?”

  Craig interjected. “The roots are still on the grass, Liam. The abrasions on her hand could indicate a fight or a struggle. Can you see her nails, John?”

  He leaned forward and gently opened the woman’s left hand, finger by finger, carefully removing the strands of torn grass. Her nails were long and oval, painted with a tasteful, beige varnish, and he wondered if she’d deliberately matched it to her blouse, touched by the small detail. Her death had been so obviously unexpected.

  The nail on her left index finger was half-torn from the cuticle and he opened her palm to examine it. Then he gasped audibly. Craig leaned forward quickly to see what had caused the reaction. John was very familiar with death, so whatever made him gasp had to be something unusual. It was.

  In the woman’s small, hurt hand lay a clear zip-locked bag, like a miniature freezer bag. Inside it lay a square of white paper. Winter held the bag up to the newly-appeared December sun, examining it from every angle.
But the view yielded no new information - the paper was folded tight.

  He lifted a pair of tweezers and opened the bag slowly, cautiously removing the square. Then he laid it on a sterile glove, unfolding it gently. A tiny figure ‘10’ was written on the white paper, in black ink.

  The three men looked at each other, puzzled. Then, with a quick look, Craig asked him to examine the other hand, but there was nothing. No broken nail and no hidden note. Just a few thin blades of grass.

  Craig broke the silence. “10? 10 days...10 thousand?”

  Liam looked blankly at him and then at the paper, uncharacteristically silent. Finally John interjected. “There’s no rigor and she’s not cold yet, despite the weather. I think she died in the past hour, Marc.”

  Craig’s dark eyes narrowed, they’d just missed her murderer. Whoever had called Maggie Clarke had phoned from nearby.

  John Winter turned the woman’s body over carefully and the three men saw her face for the first time, making everything more real. She was lightly tanned and blue-eyed, and her shoulder-length fair hair was lightly streaked with grey. A pretty woman; in a mummyish way that made her pleasant, rather than striking. She looked as if she’d been nice.

  Craig looked away from her face sadly and noticed a fine gold cross on a chain around her neck. Below it hung a longer chain, holding a tiny, engraved bracelet, identical to one that his sister Lucia had worn as a baby. It was marked clearly with the initial ‘R’. It wasn’t Irene Leighton’s.

  He thought for a moment. In his experience there were only three reasons for murder; love, power or money. Everything else was just a combination of those. He wondered which one applied to Irene Leighton. John’s soft baritone broke through his reverie, signalling the woman’s removal to a discretely parked mortuary van, and onwards to his Saintfield Road lab.

  Craig looked at his watch, scanning the area quickly. The morning work-crowd was gathering rapidly outside the Estate’s gates, and from the look of some of their suits, it probably included politicians. Damn. Then he realised that Liam was talking.

  “The Doc says there’s blood on her chest, from a wound. The C. S.I.s will need another hour or so here, but they’d better get their skates on, apparently we’re stopping five thousand civil servants getting to work.” He snorted. “You’d think they’d be grateful.”

  Craig half-smiled at the comment, already preoccupied with questions. He waved the investigators on vaguely, thinking. Why would anyone have killed this innocuous looking woman? Was she Irene Leighton? And if so, was her husband involved in her death? The husband always had to be the first suspect. But she’d been left outside the seat of Northern Ireland’s parliament, so could there be some political aspect to her killing? And why tell a journalist to call the police, when you could just call them directly? Unless the murderer wanted publicity for some reason...

  John interrupted his thoughts. “I’m going to the lab now, Marc. We’re not busy so I’ll do the post-mortem this morning. If you call down about two, I should have something for you.”

  “I’ll find the husband, boss.”

  Craig nodded, sighing. “And I’ll call Chief Superintendent Harrison, tell him that an M.P’s wife might be dead, and then listen to him try to find ways to look important.”

  Chapter Four

  Joe Watson was knackered and it was only 10am. Last night’s meeting of the Strategic Finance Foundation had been a late one, and he wasn’t young any more.

  Added to that, he hadn’t been able to get near his office until ten minutes ago, because the police had locked the whole place down, with no bloody explanation. He threw his briefcase tiredly onto the desk and yelled for his special advisor, ready to shout about something.

  Michael Irwin popped his head around the office door warily. His boss was a politician and they were tricky at the best of times. But S.F.F. had gone on until midnight, so tired would be added to tricky today.

  He fixed on his best smile and entered quietly. “Good Morning, Minister. May I get you something?”

  “A gun would be good, after last night.”

  Watson was leaning red-faced over his laptop, and by the way that his fingers were tapping, Michael knew that he wanted a cigar. He’d only quit yesterday. Again.

  “Sorry, no guns. Would a white coffee do instead?”

  Watson smiled grudgingly. “It’ll have to, I suppose.”

  Irwin turned, and had nearly made good his escape, when Watson added to his burden. “Then find me the Commissioner for Public Conduct. We need a little chat...”

  ***

  She smoothed the expensive body lotion down her tanned legs and smiled to herself. He’d been quite good on Monday night, not that it mattered; it wouldn’t make any difference to the outcome. Still, if you had to do something it was always better if it wasn’t repulsive, and he’d certainly been energised about something.

  She pulled on her designer lounge-suit and brushed her soft blonde hair, one hundred times, just like her mother had taught her, stopping mid-stroke to remember her. Her worn brown hands, even though she was young, romantically entwined with their father’s. Her soft, kind smile when she looked at them, as if they were everything important in her world. And more than anything, her strength. Never crying, not even when they came.

  Kaisa looked at herself in the mirror. Her hands were white and smooth, but when she smiled, it wasn’t soft at all. And just like her mother, she was strong. Always.

  ***

  Bob Leighton, or The Right Honourable Robert Leighton, Member of Parliament, as he preferred to be called, was sitting in his West Antrim constituency office, bored and angry. Bored because his next meeting was on road drainage, and angry because of the previous evening’s Foundation meeting, and the latest threatening phone-call, received four hours earlier. He was getting fed up with them now.

  He had plenty of ideas on how he could make his day more tolerable, but only one of them was available now, so he walked speedily to the door, checking that his secretary was busy outside. Then he locked it, reached into his desk drawer for the small tinfoil wrap, and sat down eagerly on the dark-brown sofa in the corner.

  He placed the foil on the coffee table, unfolding its edges cautiously, careful not to spill any of its contents. Then he took a credit card and a ten-euro note from his pocket, and began his favourite ritual. He spread and chopped the white powder rhythmically with the card’s edge, then rolled the note into a tight funnel, with one end at his nostril and the other poised to inhale. He’d always known that Euros would prove useful for something.

  He inhaled sharply and waited for the chemicals to hit his brain. The buzzing in his ears made him momentarily deaf and his head fell back against the sofa in slow motion. Then the familiar warm, tingling sensation spread first through his arms and fingers, and then flowed like water through his thin thighs, arousing him as it passed.

  He closed his eyes in pleasure for a moment, imagining her dancing between his legs, moving sinuously back and forth, up and down, while he slipped high-value notes into her G-string.

  A knock on the door pulled him harshly back to reality. He rose slowly and reluctantly, his legs weak, and opened it just a crack. His young secretary’s wary face appeared.

  “Your 10 o’clock is here, Mr Leighton”

  Shit.

  “Oh. Alright, Sarah, I’ll be right out. Give me a minute.”

  He closed the door too quickly in her face, and hurriedly scraped the remaining powder back into its wrapper, running a wet finger across the residue and rubbing it into his gums for one quick, final buzz. Then he prepared himself to face the most boring men in Antrim, and talk about the drains.

  ***

  They’d got halfway through the surveyor’s report when Sarah rescued him, or so he thought. Until Marc Craig and Liam Cullen entered, flashing their badges and ensuring that their visit was common knowledge in Antrim by lunchtime. Leighton’s hackles rose angrily. He had enough of the local cops without Belfast’s hea
vies barging in.

  “You should have made an appointment, Chief Inspector, instead of interrupting an important meeting. The Chief Constable will hear of this.”

  Craig had intended to deal sensitively with Bob Leighton. After all, the man had just lost his wife, whether he knew it yet or not. And Craig believed firmly in ‘innocent until...’

  But he’d just had a ten-minute phone-call listening to Terry Harrison’s unctuous self-promoting, severely straining his courtesy. Plus, the politician’s overly-bright eyes had alerted him to his drug habit on sight, so his natural politeness was already tempered with suspicion.

  “Mr Leighton, please sit down. We have some news for you.”

  They’d agreed in the car that while Craig told Bob Leighton about his wife, Liam would watch his reaction, so Liam was watching the scrawny M.P. very carefully now. They’d both seen his flushed face and eyes when they’d entered and now Liam could see white powder inside his nostril, knowing that Craig was at the wrong angle to catch it. The man was on coke, and untidily at that, and it was only 10.30 in the morning! Liam had a grudging respect for his stamina.

  Leighton was still talking. “What sort of news?” Then alarm crossed his face, and what he said next surprised them both.

  “Kaisa? Is Kaisa alright?”

  Craig said what they were both thinking. “Who is Kaisa, Mr Leighton?”

  “My nanny.” The look on their faces told Bob Leighton that he’d slipped, and he tried to cover it quickly, digging an even deeper hole. “My son Ben’s nanny, he’s three.”

  Embarrassment made the M.P. hostile, and his next words were nearly a shout. “She’s new here, OK. Is she all right?”

  It told them a lot about the Leighton’s marriage, and made the man in front of them more likely to be a killer than a victim. But he was still innocent, until...

  “I don’t know anything about any Kaisa, Mr Leighton. But...we have found the body of a woman...” Leighton’s eyes widened.

  “We believe that it may be your wife, Irene.”

  Bob Leighton stared at him, uncomprehending. So Craig restarted, softly. “We need you to come with us...to help with the identification.”