He hit the indicator stalk and pulled out on to the rain-washed road.
‘So, what brought you to this part of the world?’
Anna paused, unsure of how to answer. ‘Oh, the usual, bored really. Fancied a change of scene. The offer of the secondment came up. I thought now or never.’
He nodded as if to say he understood. ‘Not many from your part of the world over here. Poles, Lithuanians and Romanians yes, but not many Welsh.’
‘I guess you’ve been missing out then.’
They stopped at a pedestrian crossing. A child in a yellow raincoat skipped out and was hastily grabbed back by her mother as the lights turned amber.
‘Well, have you had a chance to get up to speed with this Wells girl case?’
‘I’ve read the briefing and looked at the press stuff. No leads yet?’ she asked.
‘Nada. You know what it’s like at this stage – it’s all about elimination. The volume of work on this one will be huge with so many wedding guests to talk to.’
‘What about CCTV? I assume the hotel had cameras?’ Anna said.
‘Yep, but wouldn’t you know they were down. There was a loss of connection which management had reported over a week ago, but they hadn’t got around to fixing it.’
‘Coincidence or just convenient?’
McKay grimaced, ‘That’s for whoever takes the lead in this case to decide. There’s a lot of pressure riding on this case and my balls are busted if we don’t come up with something double quick. I need a breakthrough and I need it today. Let’s see what we can glean from the funeral goers.’
With the church car park overflowing, like the other mourners, they were forced to park some distance from the church. The black hearse sitting at the front of the church steps still held the oak wood coffin adorned with blooms of pink and white flowers.
Anna struggled to keep up with Richard’s long strides. She silently cursed herself for wearing such high heels. She liked to think the added couple of inches made up for her small stature and she had been keen to look well presented on her first day. She’d revert to her usual boots and trousers when she settled in.
They left the brightness of the mid-day sun and entered the dark, hushed church. Voices mumbled quietly while an organist played a hymn Anna didn’t recognise. The altar was opulent. A huge arrangement of yellow and pale blue flowers flanked either side of the marble altar table where the priest stood, arms opened and raised as the congregation stood on cue. The choir began to sing and the coffin was carried in. Anna watched as the mother and father followed it up the aisle. Isabel Wells was dressed in a severe charcoal grey dress walking slowly beside Declan Wells in his wheelchair.
Anna was used to religion and the rituals of mourning but the Catholic mass was not familiar to her. Her own family was Baptist. Their church a pale wooden construct, with little adornment and certainly no graphic artwork of the crucified Lord or the periwinkle blue clothed Virgin Mary statue, holding a fat infant Jesus.
As the congregation worshiped, kneeled, prayed, stood and sang, Anna allowed herself to drift off in thought. She wondered if Jon had sorted the leaking showerhead; if he had remembered to call the garage about the part for her car, and more importantly, if he missed her. She was still trying to work out her own feelings. The newness of her surroundings, the assault of the accent, the cultural shorthand – all of it was so different, and welcomed. Part of her expected to feel at home in Ireland. To have found herself in the greenness of the countryside, in the din of the city, in the rumble of Belfast. She had always felt something was missing, some unknown part of her she couldn’t identify. Even with her brief time in the city every conversation was loaded. People weighed her up, assessed her, and she did the same too.
She glanced around at the congregation. The family sitting in the front rows, heads lowered as if the weight of grief was pressing down on them. The father, Declan Wells sat at the edge of the pew in his chair. That must surely jar, she thought, always being separate because of the chair. She made a mental note to ask Richard about him. The case notes mentioned he had been in a car bomb. She knew that he was a psychologist working in forensics and had been in the force for many years. He was likely to have been used to dealing with the murder of someone else’s daughter or son and now here he was playing the reverse role. Anna couldn’t imagine it. She wasn’t naive enough to think that she could understand the pain of losing a child.
The mother placed her arm around the other daughter who was crying freely, tears streaming like they would never stop with her new husband, Rory, sitting beside her. The case notes said the mother, Isabel, was a lecturer at Queen’s University. She taught in the English faculty. By all accounts, they appeared to be the typical middle class, well-to-do family. Now they sat devastated and broken.
The priest was holding the white disc of communion high up, praying for the transformation of the bread into the body of Christ. The choir began to sing again, ‘This is my body broken for you …’ the words lilting and somewhat strangely joyful. Anna watched the congregation mouth the responses, and as they moved in unison to kneel, she caught sight of the new husband, glancing behind, scanning the crowd. Who was he looking for?
He held the bird in his hand, feeling its heart beat like a snare drum against his palm. The quickest and most efficient way to kill it, without damaging the specimen, is to compress the lungs. He repositioned it, making sure that its body was between his thumb and fingers so that it could gain no purchase with its talons on him. As always, he wanted to cause no impairment to the specimen. An intact creature was always preferable. For a larger bird, he would need to insert a sharp knife under the left wing, straight to the heart, making sure to plug the mouth and the wound instantly. This made him think of the girl, her gaping mouth lying wide in a silent scream.
6
Declan made it his business to position his chair close to McKay at the entrance to the church.
‘Where are we with forensics? No one has given me any details and I swear to God if something doesn’t happen soon, I will crack heads.’
Richard was doing that awkward stance of being bent over to speak quietly to Declan as the mourners filed out of the church, seeking out the family to pay their respects.
‘Declan, you know the protocol. You can’t be too closely involved. We have little to go on but it’s early days.’
People were waiting to speak to Declan. Izzy was being hugged by someone from the university, and Lara was talking to a one of Esme’s school teachers.
Declan took the hand of a well-wisher and thanked them for attending, while Richard stood by. Aidan Anderson, the city’s Lord Mayor approached them. ‘Mr Wells my sincerest condolences,’ he said.
‘Thank you. Good of you to come today,’ Declan replied.
‘The mighty and good have all turned out,’ McKay said.
‘He knows my son-in-law. Now I need to know who you have working on this.’ Declan spoke through gritted teeth. He could barely contain his anger.
‘We’ve good people on it. Thomas King, the usual team and a blow in from Wales – Anna Cole. That’s her over there talking to one of the mourners.’
‘Get him caught.’
Richard nodded, his mouth in a tight line. He patted Declan’s shoulder.
‘How is Izzy bearing up?’ asked Richard.
‘As you would expect.’ Declan released the brake of the chair and manoeuvred out of the crowd. He couldn’t stomach another empty platitude.
The days after the wedding were a blur. Declan fought against the instinct to shut down, to allow the blessed numbness of shock to wash over him. He needed to stay alert. To question how the police were handling the case, keeping an eye on what was going on and who was in charge. He was desperate to have an insight into to pathology reports and to keep on at them to get the forensics back. Sure, they placated him. Told him that they would do everything humanly possible to get this monster locked up; that they had every man and woman on it. But
Declan knew all too well that mistakes were made, people messed up, evidence was lost, tampered with, either deliberately or accidently, and that not every bastard out there got what they deserved.
He also knew that if they got who had done this, if they had them locked up in watertight evidence, then it still wouldn’t bring his daughter back.
Esme. When he thought of her it was in movement. She was always rushing, a swirly mass of teenage hormones, long, tawny brown hair, and legs clad in skintight pale blue jeans. As a child she had been athletic, keen on running and good at gymnastics. Again, always moving, running, jumping. Look dad, look at me. Look at what I can do!
When he ended up in the chair something between them shifted. She wasn’t so quick to show off her cartwheels, to ask him to take her to the Mary Peter’s track where she would sprint and jump hurdles. He saw it for what it was – her way of protecting him. As if she was not rubbing his nose in her ability to be quick and agile while he had been left to rot in the blasted contraption. They never spoke about it in the way they should have. Never acknowledged that he could no longer be the same type of father. Instead she went to fewer running events, collected fewer medals and certainly didn’t share that part of her life with him. Izzy said it was her age – she was becoming more interested in her friends and boys than spending time with them. That it was only natural that she pulled away from them. Sure, hadn’t Lara been the same? But Declan knew different. It was as if she decided not to excel at something beyond his realm of possibility.
The details of her death tortured him. It was an endless unease, like ants clawing through his brain, roaches scratching at his lungs. Every part of his being was affected. He had managed to protect Izzy and Lara from knowing the worse of the pathologist’s findings. Head injury, impaling and strangulation. The words sounded clinical and removed from the reality of his daughter lying on a cold mortuary table.
He looked around his home office lined with dry tomes of psychiatric learning, books on every aspect of the criminal mind, dusty looking forgotten piles of academic research papers and journals stacked in the corner. All this knowledge, research and training, and yet he was prevented from using any of it to help find who had did this to his daughter.
Frustration tightened like a hard, tight knot inside his chest. He had to do something. To be part of the investigation, as being on the sidelines was doing his head in. He couldn’t shake off the feeling of shame and blame. It was as if misfortune had sought him out. Again.
He had ended up working in the police by accident. The module he had wanted to do at Queen’s was oversubscribed so as an afterthought he had ended up taking a two-term course on theories of criminal behaviour. That was it; he was hooked. By the end of his second year, he had ensured he was well placed to major in criminal psychology and to do a dissertation entitled, ‘The applications of psychology to the criminal justice system; terrorism and political violence in Northern Ireland.’ Under the tutelage of Professor Bonham, he had found his calling and secured an entry-level job in the prison service before moving on to the police force a few years later.
His career path wasn’t welcomed at home. His parents, both fearful for their Catholic son working for the prison service and even worse the police, hounded him to find a secure and safe hospital job. It wasn’t so much the nature of his work that bothered them, though his mother found the idea of trying to understand the workings of the criminal mind to be a lost cause, it was more the worry of the sectarianism he would face, the outright hostility and the not insignificant threat of being a Catholic working for the RUC.
‘Have you no sense, lad? They’ll put a bullet in yer head as quick as look at you,’ his mother said. She used every blackmail tactic she could employ. Her heart wasn’t up to it. Didn’t he care what he was putting them through? Did he not think he was putting them at risk too? How could they hold their heads up in the street when everyone would have him down for a turncoat serving the British? He would be a walking target for both sides of the divide.
But Declan had refuted their concerns and pointed out that his work didn’t put him on the firing line, that he was seen as little more than a pen pushing academic who was brought in the to look at theories of criminal behaviour, causes of violent crime and offender typologies.
He was grateful they had both died before the bombing and now this, Esme’s death. He was glad they didn’t have to go through the living hell of seeing their granddaughter buried. A small mercy on a dark day.
Declan hadn’t forgotten how it felt to be a new comer, someone on the outside. As a Catholic, fresh in from graduation, he knew he had lots to prove. Coming top of his year in a psychology degree meant sweet F.A. to his colleagues.
But Northern Ireland had been changing. Within the police force there was an undeniable air of fear. Power, when held for so long, is hard to relinquish even for those who understood the sense and the ice of it. Declan Wells made sure to prove himself. He didn’t put a foot wrong. He respected the traditions, kept his counsel to himself and turned a blind eye when necessary. He deferred to his superiors and the old brigade without ingratiating himself. Enough to show respect and to make it seem like he knew his place. Really, he was marking time. Time when the politics of Northern Ireland could no longer sustain the bigotry and sectarianism of old. Declan had intuition, and a belief that the system would begin to change, and when it did, he was well placed to help make the transformation and benefit from being part of it.
Even after fifteen years with the service, he never relaxed, never let his guard down and never got too close. He knew he was respected. Declan Wells was sound, they would say, with the unstated, for a Catholic, left handing in the air. He didn’t try to fit in knowing he was all right if he kept to the sidelines. Now he feared the depth of the unacknowledged trenches were apparent in the investigation. Esme was high up on anyone’s radar. No one liked to see a pretty, middle-class, young girl murdered and not find the bastard who did it. McKay and his team wouldn’t like it hanging around, sullying their statistics. But Declan was no fool, he knew that they would end up chasing this idea that somehow Esme had brought it on herself, that her attacker knew her.
Maybe that was his own bigotry talking – an occupational hazard of living in this place meant that sooner or later nearly everyone displayed a certain tribal instinct.
His daughter was dead and he couldn’t be sure that they were doing enough about it. The acid taste of frustration overwhelmed him. He couldn’t sit around doing nothing. Not even the wheelchair was going to stop him.
He needed an in. A way to get to the heart of the case. He thought of that woman, Cole. Richard said she had been seconded in from Wales. He liked the idea of someone from the outside being involved. Someone immune to the politics of this bloody country. Someone not cowered into thinking along the same old, tired lines. Anna Cole was fresh in from the mainland, and could provide the unclouded judgment he needed. He had to convince her and the likes of Thomas King to let him play a part in the investigation.
Declan needed to take control, to feel that he was in some part helping get the bastard who had done this. It was his only way to cope. Lara had Rory; she didn’t need to pay witness to her father’s grief. And Izzy? Well, Izzy would cope fine as far as he could tell. He wasn’t so presumptuous to think that that was the full picture. Izzy would take her grief elsewhere. Where and to whom, he didn’t want to dwell on.
7
Two weeks from the murder and everyone was beginning to feel anxious. At her desk, Anna read through the report notes again. Victim Esme Wells, seventeen-years-old. Death by strangulation. Interestingly, her mouth had been stuffed with wood wool. The report described it as straw-like shredded wood used in hampers and storage facilities. It was graded as super fine and suitable for toy stuffing. The idea of having that stuffed in your mouth while you fought for your life, made Anna shudder.
She trawled through the statements taken on the night of the murder. The buoyant thump
, thump of the music had not completely drowned out the cries, for those smoking on the back lawn had heard the screams. At the time, the cries had been dismissed as rowdy horseplay. A day of drinking champagne and cocktails had ensured that most of the guests were well liquored. So, Esme had managed to scream out before the wood wool was shoved in her mouth.
It had been an unseasonably balmy night. The report suggested that there were a group of smokers out on the lawn to the rear of the venue. No doubt couples were mooching off to find a quiet corner. Someone had to have seen something. A bridesmaid can’t wander off and be murdered without someone seeing her leave.
The report stated that a group of teenagers were having their own underage contraband drinking session courtesy of a swiped bottle of wine and had been sat in the bandstand. Earlier in the day the bandstand had been the focal point for many of the official photographs. She could bet the bride and groom had stood in the mock eighteenth-century folly smiling at the bequest of a charming photographer. Had someone been watching the wedding party from afar? The hotel was set in lush green grounds, complete with a river that ran around the perimeter, the long driveway up was reached over a stone bridge. Had someone been waiting for the right opportunity? Was Esme the target or was she the one who presented at the right moment for her killer?
‘Cole, can you come into my office? I need a word,’ Richard called from the doorway. She lifted the case notes folder and headed in.
‘Sit,’ he ordered.
She took the chair at the side of his teak desk and placed the folder down. The view from the window was bleak. Concrete blocks of offices, surrounded by high security walls, cameras, and look out posts from more troubled times, gave the impression of a fortress.
‘How are you finding it, so far? A bit different from across the water, no doubt?’
‘Yes, sir but I’m keen to get stuck in,’ she was aware of sounding over eager, like a schoolgirl trying to impress the teacher she had a crush on.
Little Bird: a serial killer thriller Page 3
