The Talion Code

by Catriona King

  Annette shook her head instantly. “I’m going.”

  Liam stared pointedly at her abdomen but she was having none of it.

  “I’m no more pregnant than I was before I told you.”

  “You are actually…” Liam glanced at the clock. “Forty minutes more, to be accurate.”

  “Trust you to choose today to turn into Spock.” She turned to Craig pleadingly. “I’m still OK to be on the streets, sir, and I’m the one who held Jake’s hand though all of this. I have to be the one to bring Aaron in.”

  Craig said nothing for a full minute, staring first at Annette and then at the ground. Finally he nodded, but as she turned to rush off the floor, he added a caveat. “Liam goes with you, and I don’t want any argument on this; the first sign of anything rough you stand back, Annette. Understand?”

  She gave a grudging nod and then the two detectives were on their way. Craig waited for the lift door to close and then summoned the others to gather around Nicky’s desk.

  “OK. Quick update on what Liam and I have been up to.”

  He brought them quickly up to date with Les Moriarty, omitting his contretemps with Terry Harrison.

  “Andy, I want you and Reggie to work together on this. You’ll need to take a trip back to Maghaberry. I’ll bring you up-to-date before you go.”

  Reggie Boyd, or Sergeant Reginald Telfer Boyd to give him his full title, was a fiftyish Donegal man who had trained with Liam and, although almost the same height as the booming six-feet-six D.C.I., was so softly spoken that everyone strained to hear his words. Combined with his lilting accent and quaint language it made people pay close attention to everything that he said, and even his arrestees reported feeling soothed after being read their rights. Boyd was normally in charge of one of East Belfast’s worse sink estates, the Demesne, and he’d lived out his days there in relative peace and quiet until Craig had asked if he would join the squad until Jake was one hundred percent fit. Reggie had agreed reluctantly, waving goodbye to his nine-to-five days. His replacement had kindly bought him a flask for comfort which, on a good day, was filled with tea. No-one asked what was in it on the rest.

  Craig didn’t miss the thirty year veteran rolling his eyes. It was as rude as Reggie ever got and he knew that the sergeant would be as good as gold when they got out on the street, although he couldn’t guarantee his tolerance of Andy’s habits of chatting up every woman he met and chomping constantly on a chocolate bar.

  Craig poured a coffee from Nicky’s percolator and turned to other things. “First, staffing. OK, as you’ve all just heard, Annette will be going on maternity leave at some point, although we’ve still to agree a date. That will leave us short of one constable to replace D.C. McGregor, whom Liam has been tasked with finding-”

  Andy cut in. “He told me he had a name in mind.”

  Craig raised an eyebrow. “Well, perhaps he’d like to share it with me sometime.” Andy returned to chewing his Snickers. “OK, so we’ll have a new constable in the near future and Reggie is kindly staying with us until Jake’s full return to the street, which may take some months, but that will still leave us down an inspector when Annette’s on leave. I’ve got someone in mind for that on secondment, but I haven’t nailed them down yet.” Not for lack of trying, but his chosen secondee, Kyle Spence from Police Intelligence, was playing hide and seek behind red tape.

  He swivelled his chair to face the team’s analysts, who’d been in a gesticulating huddle since he’d started to brief.

  “Davy, Ash; would you care to share what you’re discussing?”

  The ‘yes’ and ‘no’ that came back simultaneously said that they had yet to agree.

  “OK, then please stop talking during my briefings until you’re prepared to tell us what you’re talking about.”

  Davy glanced at his feet, suitably chastised and Ash rubbed furiously at his desk with a wipe.

  “Davy, when are you returning to France and for how much longer?”

  The analyst glanced up nervously. “I’m going back on the fourth of January and I’m finished completely on twenty-ninth.”

  “OK, good. I’d like a briefing on your work there soon, please. Verbally will be fine. Most specifically on the pursuits of Stevan Mitic and Ronnie Carleton.”

  Mitic was an assassin that they and Interpol had been pursuing for years, and Carleton was a member of an international religious sect that had murdered five local people back in March.

  He covered some other housekeeping issues before rising to his feet. “Andy and Reggie, join me in my office for a minute. And I suggest you put your jackets on, it’s like a fridge in there.”

  It didn’t escape him that Davy and Ash had returned to their animated discussion the moment that he’d got up from his chair.

  ****

  The Titanic Quarter. 3 p.m.

  Dominic Guthrie tugged at his shirt collar nervously, an act that made him look like a desperate man; far more desperate than Richard Jamison felt their discussion warranted.

  The magnate tutted in exasperation.

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Dom. All I said was I needed your help moving some money about. Stop being so bloody dramatic. It’s not as if we haven’t done something similar before!”

  The younger man renewed his manipulation with more vigour. The movement was accompanied by tiny beads of perspiration forming on his top lip. Finally he whined out a response.

  “It was barely legal and you know it, Richard. The audit office investigated me and I was lucky they didn’t take my trading license away.”

  He stopped tugging and reached for the water jug on Jamison’s desk, pouring a glass and glugging it down noisily before carrying on.

  “They’ve been dipping into my firm’s books ever since without warning, and I swear they have the fraud squad on speed dial just waiting for me to make a slip!” He shook his head emphatically and went to stand up. “I can’t help you, Richard. I’ve Cecilia and the kids to think of. What would they do if-”

  Jamison waved him down gently, his earlier authoritative tones becoming mellifluous.

  “What if I said you’d be set up for life this time?”

  Guthrie retook his seat, his interest piqued. The older man continued seductively.

  “We could check it out now; you’ve got your laptop with you. This one deal will make me half a billion, so with your commission at ten per-”

  The rest of the word was drowned out by Guthrie’s astonished. “WHAT?”

  Jamison nodded. “Ten percent. You do the sums, but my guess is that means that you‘ll never have to work again. Am I right?”

  The room fell silent as the accountant feverously did the calculations and Jamison allowed his gaze to drift past him to the lough. He would miss the view when he left, although not enough to stop him leaving. He’d just decided to make a video of Belfast Harbour to take with him when Dominic Guthrie spoke again.

  “I’m not saying yes, you understand that?”

  Jamison inclined his head.

  “But I’ll hear you out.”

  Jamison smiled inwardly, but his full lips, the ones that Sarah said made women long to kiss him, remained in an impassive line. An open smile might make Guthrie bolt.

  After a decent interval he leaned forward on his desk.

  “Good. Now, what do you know about foreign currency swops?”

  ****

  Craig was going through the detail of Les Moriarty’s arrest with Andy and Reggie when his office phone rang and he answered it in an irritated voice. Irritated because the more he remembered about Joe Moriarty’s murder the more he remembered how circumstantial their evidence against his son had been. It was probably why Harrison had chosen the case to mess with. He was also irritated because his office was approaching near artic temperatures, courtesy of its two outer walls. Great for the year round view and great in the summer, but the winter made it colder than the Cave Hill and it would stay that way till the engineers got the radiators back on. It mig
ht have been his Mediterranean blood but the cold turned him into a grumpy sod and every molecule of grumpiness was obvious now in his phone answering technique.

  “WHAT?”

  At the other end of the line Liam’s expression said ‘what’s biting your ass?’ His words were only marginally more polite.

  “Oh, that’s charming. Here’s me ringing to say that we’ve got Foster, and I get my head chewed off!”

  Craig was unrepentant. “If you’d called me on my mobile I would have seen your name.”

  Neither of them was sure if that made things better or worse. Craig put the call on speaker and sat back in his chair, tugging his jacket tight around him.

  “Park your hurt feelings and tell me how you got him.”

  Liam decided to huff and put Annette on the phone instead.

  “The tip-off said Foster was in a café, sir, so the local troops parked outside in case he tried to run-”

  Craig cut in. “I take it he didn’t.”

  “No. Apparently he just kept eating. By the time we arrived he’d already decided to give himself up. I’m not surprised. He looks shocking; like he’s been sleeping in a ditch for weeks.”

  “He probably has. We’d pretty much papered the country with his photograph; it would have made it hard to rent a room. Thanks, Annette. Put sulky back on now, please.”

  Thankfully Liam didn’t hear his new nickname.

  “Liam, take Foster straight to High Street. You and Annette can have first crack at him. I’m going to let Jake know we’ve got him and then I’ll join you there. OK?”

  There was a grunt in reply and then the line went dead. Craig shrugged; too cold to humour the giant teenager. He wrapped up his meeting quickly and then headed off to see Jake.

  ****

  Guthrie and Son: Chartered Accountants and Stockbrokers. Howard Street, Belfast. 4.20 p.m.

  Dominic Guthrie re-entered his city centre office two hours after he’d left it for a lunch that he’d never had, his mind still racing with Richard Jamison’s request. They’d worked together often throughout the years; his father had been Jamison’s accountant since they were both young and the firm had kept Jamison’s accounts after he’d died. It had seemed only natural that once he’d qualified Jamison should request he handle his accounts personally, and that was when all his troubles, and the rapid increase in his bank balance, had begun.

  He’d always felt creative accounting was a pejorative term, used by the ill-informed and unimaginative to describe everything from the clever, but perfectly legal, use of accounting techniques, to the deliberately fraudulent; thereby painting all Michelangelos of the spreadsheet with the same brush. In his book it was envy, pure and simple. Anally retentive bean counters jealous of their more exciting sibs.

  His father had been one of the latter and so was he; there was no point in false modesty. But it was only when he’d examined Richard Jamison’s accounts since the nineteen-nineties that he’d realised just what an artist his dad had really been. There’d been deals that had sailed so close to the wind that one figure here or there could have landed them both in jail.

  But he wasn’t his father; he didn’t quite have his nerve, so his encounter with the audit office the year before had been a scare too far. He’d distanced Jamison after that, giving his annual accounts to his assistant to oversee, and yet, when Jamison had phoned asking for that day’s private meeting he’d still somehow found himself in The Titanic Quarter, as if powerless to say no.

  Guthrie strode past his secretary, ignoring her upheld hand clutching scribbled requests, and entered his comfortable office, slamming the door behind him with a hard swing. He slumped on the low couch in one corner still in his overcoat, and stared into space, his head full of an eight digit sum and exactly how he would spend the cash.

  ****

  Craig sat in his Audi outside Meredith McLean’s small bungalow for twenty minutes, staring alternately at his CD player and then at the blue front door. Just one more Walking on Cars song and he would get out, to face seeing the pain that had been inflicted on a decent young officer refreshed when he told him that his assailant had been caught. He was certain that would be the effect of the words “Jake, Aaron Foster is in custody” because he knew how he would feel if it had all happened to him.

  This was no victory and there would be no pleasure in Foster’s trial. Not because he didn’t deserve arrest and conviction; no man deserved it more; but because it wouldn’t assuage Jake’s pain. The physical damage, which months of care and physiotherapy were only slowly mending; mending enough to see him take a tentative first step the week before, although it would be months before he could do without his wheelchair. And the emotional harm; and that was by far the worst. How did you recover from knowing that someone you’d loved for a decade, someone with whom you had shared your life, had tried to kill you? Because that was exactly what Aaron Foster had done. He’d loved Jake but seen him slipping away; to care more for the woman who’d raised him than he ever could have about him. And jealousy, spite, anger; whatever you wanted to call it, had made him push Jake down the stairs onto a floor so hard that it should have broken his neck, and nearly had. Even if they locked Foster away for twenty years and Jake walked normally again, nothing could erase that legacy.

  When the strains of ‘Speeding Cars’ had finally faded away, Craig locked his doors and walked slowly up the pavestone path, raising his hand to knock on the small front door. It opened before his hand fell and Detective Sergeant Jake McLean gazed up at him from his chair.

  “Hello, sir. I heard you coming up the path.”

  He turned the chair round slickly and led the way into a cosy living room, where a tray of tea things was already laid out.

  “Would you mind re-boiling the kettle? My grandmother’s upstairs taking a nap.”

  Craig obliged and after five minutes of casual chat, Jake raised the reason they both knew he was there.

  “You’ve found him, haven’t you?”

  No name and no emotion; just a cool statement of fact. Craig stared at the younger man, assessing him before nodding. He seemed genuinely calm and looked better than he had in months. Apart from the fact he was in a wheelchair Jake seemed as healthy as he’d ever been. The younger man read his mind.

  “I’m fine, sir. Better than fine in fact. They say with enough work I’ll be walking by the summer, and the accident has given me time to think.”

  Accident. They both knew it hadn’t been that.

  “Think about what?”

  Craig crossed his fingers mentally that Jake wasn’t about to say he was quitting the force. He needn’t have worried.

  “About being in such a hurry to make it to the top. There are more important things in life than rank.”

  Craig smiled, remembering the aggressively ambitious young sergeant who had joined the squad two years before. It hadn’t been his most attractive trait.

  “There are indeed. I-”

  Jake cut across him. “I’m sorry to be rude, sir, but I’d like to see him. Aaron. I’d like to ask him why.”

  Craig’s question was out before he thought to temper it. “Do you honestly expect the truth?”

  Jake looked startled; as if the idea of a lie had never occurred to him.

  Craig continued more gently. “Liam and Annette brought him in. They’re doing the preliminary questioning now and I’m heading to High Street after here.”

  Jake smiled. “How’s Annette feeling?” His tone said he’d heard her good news before the rest.

  “Fine. She told everyone at lunchtime.”

  A cheeky smile Craig recognised of old lit up Jake’s slim face.

  “I recognise that look, Sergeant.”

  “Well, you’ll be short-staffed with Carmen gone and Annette going on maternity leave, so…”

  Craig set down his cup. “I was hoping you would say that. The sooner you get back the better as far as I’m concerned. Apparently Liam’s found us a new constable, although he�
��s being mysterious about who it is, and I’ve an inspector in mind to cover Annette’s leave, but they’ve been playing hard to get.”

  “What about Reggie?”

  “He’ll stay until you’re back on your feet. Better make it quick. He’s already moaning about having to work more than nine to five. But until then I get to have two sergeants and for once personnel won’t be able to complain. Win, win for us.” He rose to leave. “Monday OK for you?”

  Jake’s smile became a grin. “Monday’s great, and you’ll let me question Aaron before then?”

  Craig shrugged. “If you’re certain that’s what you want.” He turned towards the door. “I’ll brief you on the outcome of the interview.”

  He was halfway down the hall when Jake heard his parting words.

  “You can kiss goodbye to daytime television and get back to doing some honest work.”

  Chapter Three

  5.30 p.m.

  “I’ve worked out how to do it.”

  Richard Jamison smiled at the speaker phone and smoothed down his Dior tie, listening as Dominic Guthrie outlined the details of their last ever scam. They’d had a good run together, the Guthries and him. Dom’s old man had been gifted with a much weaker conscience than his son, but Guthrie Junior was more tech savvy and that was what was needed this time around.

  Jamison yawned as the accountant began outlining the details; small print had never interested him, so he rose to admire his favourite view, tuning into only the odd word. Just enough to make Guthrie believe that he was hanging on everything he said. A pause alerted Jamison that it was his turn to speak, so he dragged his eyes away from the water and said.

  “That all sounds fine. So when can we move?”

  At the other end of the line Dominic Guthrie rolled his eyes. Fine? FINE? Had the man no conception of how difficult a task he’d just asked him to perform?

  But instead of the outrage he felt, he answered as calmly as his father would have done.