The Talion Code

by Catriona King

  Craig loosened his tie and leaned back in his chair.

  “How’s Maggie?”

  The analyst’s grin said it all. “She’s brilliant. W…Working really hard in her new job, but loving it. She seems to like being the boss.”

  “At work or at home?”

  Davy straightened up theatrically. “Work only.” His laugh said it was unlikely to be true.

  Craig changed topic. “I know you and Ash are working on something -”

  Davy’s eyes widened and he opened his mouth to object, but Craig raised a hand in peace.

  “I don’t mind. It must be something good to interest both of you, so just fill me in on it as and when. Now. Paris. What’s the situation with Mitic and Carleton?”

  Davy shook his head, his expression grim. “They managed to tail Mitic as far as Cairo then he disappeared, so the latest thinking is that he’s somewhere in Egypt or Kuwait.”

  “Both non-extradition countries. Damn.”

  “W…Worse than that. Normally they’d still be able to send in agents to pinpoint his location even if they couldn’t arrest him. But with all the chaos in the Middle East at the moment there’s an embargo on crossing borders covertly, so the closest they can pin him-”

  “And his sister.”

  “And his sister down, is to those two countries. They could leave there without Interpol knowing and end up anywhere in the w…world.”

  A hesitant look crossed his face and Craig knew what he was going to say.

  “You’re wondering if we should keep pursuing them at all.”

  The analyst shrugged. “The girl hasn’t killed in three years as far as Interpol knows, and do we really think that Mitic would have started again if Joanne Greer hadn’t been about to give them up to s…save her own skin?”

  Greer, Mitic’s latest victim, had been a convicted felon about to shop Mitic and his sister to save herself when Mitic had assassinated her at Laganside Courts eight months before. Craig was inclined to agree, but he was the boss so he had to at least pretend to believe that the hunt was worth it.

  “They killed at least three people, Davy. The case has to stay live. Although I don’t think our chances of catching them are great.”

  He sighed heavily before leaning forward, his change in posture reflecting his higher excitement about their second chase. “What about Ronnie Carlton? Any sign of him or any other sect activity?”

  Davy’s grim expression returned. “There was another series of murders. In Florida this time, so the FBI are involved now in the S…States.”

  Craig’s eyes widened. Interpol and the FBI, Davy was getting the full parade; he almost envied him.

  “What about the CIA and MI6? They’re bound to get involved now that the investigations cross countries and continents.”

  The analyst nodded excitedly. “There was w…word of that before I came home. Interpol has a map marked with all the cases. North and South America and Europe have all been affected now.”

  Craig sat back, furrowing his brow. If the sect kept strengthening their international operation despite the agencies involved, they had to be getting serious funding from somewhere. Donors and money meant bank transfers. It might just provide a way of bringing them down.

  ****

  The Titanic Quarter. 8 p.m.

  Dominic Guthrie’s smart-pad showed everything. Theory, strategy, and most important of all, the execution of their scheme. Richard Jamison was a man who rarely touched a keyboard or screen; he adhered to the maxim, ‘why have a dog and bark yourself?’ and he had plenty of Rottweilers in his employ. But this time he made an exception. He lifted the small screened computer in one hand and, after staring at it incredulously for several seconds, he stroked it gently, as if he was stroking his mistress’ neck.

  Guthrie stifled a smile; the businessman looked like he was in love, but then if something was about to earn him half a billion, he would fawn over it too. He was only getting ten percent and he’d stroked the screen for hours that afternoon. He pulled himself up abruptly. Only? ONLY? In what universe was fifty million pounds only anything? Was this how the rich justified becoming even richer? By greed becoming normal and no amount of money ever being enough, in the same way that Wallis Simpson had said you could never be too rich or too thin? He focused back on the real things in his life: Cecilia, the kids, his border collie, Rube, and felt his racing pulse slow and his grip on the earth return. After all, they were only numbers on a screen, and unless or until he pressed the button that was all they would ever be.

  The screen’s glow was making Jamison look maniacal so the accountant reached over to remove the pad from his golf-tanned hands. A task easier to describe than to perform, given that the mogul’s grip was like a vice. When he’d retrieved the computer he turned to Jamison with a “well?”

  The only reply was his companion’s soft thud back in his chair, so he expanded the question with “What do you think?”

  After a moment Jamison nodded. Guthrie took it as an invitation to expound.

  “It was simple really. I just applied the usual with a few tweaks, but this time to-”

  Jamison raised a hand to halt him. It was enough that his dog could bark; he didn’t need to know how. But there was something that he did need to know.

  “When?”

  Guthrie’s reply was a shrug, sulking that he hadn’t been allowed to show off.

  “So you’re saying we could do it now if we wished?”

  A nod. Jamison straightened up in his chair and glared at the accountant as if he was a pouting teenager.

  “For God’s sake stop sulking, man. Yes or no? Have you set up the account?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you could do it instantly, just by pressing ‘go’?”

  Another nod.

  “And when it’s in there, how do you get your commission?”

  He didn’t give a shit how the bean counter got his commission; he hadn’t decided whether he would even transfer it yet, but he needed to keep Guthrie believing that he would for now.

  The spreadsheet Michelangelo perked up. “I’ve set up a secondary account. Once we press the button it will automatically send every tenth penny into that.”

  Automatically. Jamison gave a grudging smile; Guthrie wasn’t as naïve as he’d thought he was. It irked him that he would lose ten percent, but perhaps there’d be some way to retrieve it down the line. His man in Geneva would certainly have a go.

  He stared at the wall clock for a moment, resting his hands flat on the desk and breathing deeply. Until the second hand had reached the minute, then he nodded Dominic Guthrie to press ‘enter’ and smiled as he became an even richer man.

  ****

  The Craigs’ Home. Holywood, County Down. 10.30 p.m.

  It had been a busy dinner. Noisy; courtesy of seven people talking and eating and Craig’s energetic Labrador Murphy snuffling in and out of the kitchen, despite repeated instructions from his mother, Mirella, to remain in the hall. Murphy seemed to forget that he was almost ten years old when Craig was around, behaving like a frantic puppy; behaviour encouraged by Craig running him around the garden chasing a ball for an hour. He’d been aided and abetted in it by his father and John, who, with Natalie, had joined the family for the second last Friday night dinner of twenty-fifteen. It was Christmas the following week and the coming days would be spent last minute shopping and partying, so in a way the routine dinner was like the calm before the festive storm.

  When the males, animal and human, had worked up a sweat, they’d descended on Mirella’s dinner like ravening beasts. That was where they sat now, several inches wider post antipasto and pasta, and halfway through the apple pie that Katy had baked. To imagine that anyone else might have baked something would be to imagine an end-of-the-world scenario where a post-apocalyptic bake-off had become the only way to survive.

  Natalie shovelled a mouthful of apple pie and ice-cream into her small mouth and then proceeded to speak, waving her empty sp
oon in the air as she did.

  “It’s great about Annette, isn’t it?”

  The diners glanced at each other grinning. Not so much at the question, they’d guessed it was about Annette’s baby from the mention of her name, but at the fact that all any of them had heard emerging from Natalie’s full mouth was “It ret bot Annette, ist?”

  John translated, pink with embarrassment. “It’s great about Annette, isn’t it?”

  Natalie turned on him, annoyed. “I just said that!”

  Craig laughed at her increasing resemblance to Liam: calling a spade a JCB; talking with her mouth full; plus her ability to drink like she had a hollow leg. He wondered if John realised he’d actually married a pintsize Cullen in a dress.

  He was just about to move on diplomatically when his mother gave a tut, followed by a stern “NO!”

  “No what, Mum?”

  “No, not great. She no married and having bambino.” She waved a finger in the air as her narrowed gaze swept the faces of her children in warning. Even Murphy didn’t escape. “No marriage, no bambino.” Then she rose to her feet, swishing her apron from side to side agitatedly. “Mama turn in grave.”

  As Mirella was very much alive Craig knew that the mama in question was her own, Serafina. He risked as smile as he recalled her. Perennially dressed in black as was the fashion of the time in Italy, his grandmother had ruled her large family with an extensive range of facial expressions and an exceptionally sharp wit. He remembered her unquestioning love for her brood of grandchildren, slipping them treats when their parents weren’t looking and egging on their naughtiness then sitting back to enjoy the ensuing parental torment.

  She’d always smelled of lilac and boiled sweets and had displayed her rosary beads at her waist like a warning, not above brandishing them in the air to underline a point. His mother was right; the devoutly Catholic Seraphina would have been horrified even now at the idea of an illegitimate great-grandchild, so it was just as well that he and Lucia had no such plans.

  He emerged from his memories just in time to see Natalie open her mouth again, doubtless to state that this was twenty-fifteen and people’s attitudes had to move with the times. Frantic head shaking by Lucia, solo tonight as Ken, her army Captain boyfriend and Craig’s ex-secondee, was back at his base, and a desperate hand squeeze by John, derailed the surgeon temporarily from her impending foray into the tunnel of death. As she drew breath for a fresh assault they were literally saved by the bell; the one at the front door of the house.

  Craig leapt up gratefully and raced into the hall, to see Liam’s face pressed adolescently against the Victorian stained-glass door. He yanked it open so fast Liam overbalanced and barely escaped hitting the floor tiles with his face. The D.C.I. glared up at Craig from his position on all fours.

  “Thanks for that.” He scrambled to his feet, flushed at the indignity. “I’ll do the same for you someday.”

  Craig arched an eyebrow. “Not that I don’t love seeing you on a Friday night, Liam.” His tone said that he very much didn’t, regardless of whether it had saved them from his mother’s religious ire or not. “But what do you want?”

  Liam folded his arms. “Oh, that’s charming.” Suddenly he caught the scent of cooked apples and turned towards the kitchen, following his nose. Craig stepped in front of the kitchen door and repeated his question, so Liam was forced to oblige him with a response.

  “Take a guess.”

  Craig sighed. “There’s been a murder.”

  Liam edged past him. “No, I just love leaving my dinner to go cold on a Friday night.”

  As Craig wondered who had been killed, his deputy saw his chance and wrenched open the door, the scent of apples growing stronger as he did. Mirella momentarily forgot her chagrin and smiled up at the new arrival.

  “Lee-am, Lee-am. Come. Sit. Have food with family.”

  Craig caught his arm mid–descent, yanking him vertical again and turning the hungry D.C.I. back towards the hall.

  “Sorry, Mum. He’s got work to do.” His eyes beckoned John to follow. “And so have we.”

  Mirella didn’t hear her son’s last words because her head was already in a cupboard. She emerged a moment later with two plastic boxes that she’d filled generously with pasta and apple pie before the men had reached the cars. As she thrust them into Liam’s hand she held her free hand to his face.

  “You good boy. You protect Marco. Yes?”

  All that was missing from Liam’s smug smile was his tongue sticking out at Craig.

  ****

  Queens Road. The Titanic Quarter. 11.30 p.m.

  Craig stared at the soles of the dead man’s shoes while John was staring at his face, and Liam was standing at a distance, telling the C.S.I.s to make the crime-scene tape sufficiently taut. He’d already seen the corpse before he’d driven to the Craigs’, and after managing to eat both the pasta and the apple pie while Craig drove on the way back, he didn’t trust that the blood soaked cadaver wouldn’t succeed in making him throw up now. Not that he was squeamish you understand, but scoffing that much food during a ten minute drive had an effect, even on him. His respite was short-lived as Craig’s yelled “get over here” made him relinquish the tape to a passing P.C.

  He joined the other men, who were hunkering on the gravelled ground.

  “Probably hit from behind and fell forward face first.” Craig indicated a gaping hole in the dead man’s skull. “John thinks it was caused by a brick or something else rough. Ask the C.S.I.s to search around.”

  His usual ‘please’ fell by the wayside as payment for Liam’s earlier smugness. But a glance at the D.C.I.’s pallor said that indigestion was going to be punishment enough. John had gone to borrow some specimen bags and tweezers. He reappeared, gesturing down at the corpse.

  “Killed between two and three hours ago, I’d say. So between eight-thirty and nine-thirty. Help me lift him for a moment, Marc. I need to see his front.”

  Craig obliged. The man’s face showed abrasions where he’d met the ground on descent, but nothing that could have contributed to his death.

  John nodded. “OK. Looks like cause of death was a single blow along the coronal suture, but I’ll tell you more after the P.M.” He saw Liam’s confusion and translated. “He was bashed on the top of his head.”

  Liam sniffed loudly in the cool night air. “I knew that.” He gestured at the body. “Businessman? And doing well enough, judging by the suit.”

  Craig smiled. “Says our resident fashion commentator.”

  But he was right. The man’s suit looked like it was bespoke.

  “Any I.D. on him, Liam?”

  “Nope.”

  “Then the suit might help us find out who he was.”

  John’s face took on the quizzical expression it always did when he was thinking. “Was it a robbery?”

  Liam shrugged. “Probably. His wallet’s gone.”

  Craig leapt to his feet. “But they left his expensive watch, so the wallet could have been taken to hide his I.D. OK, so a man of…what? Thirty, thirty-five?”

  John nodded. “Around that. He’s pretty healthy looking-”

  Liam interjected. “For a corpse.”

  The pathologist smiled. “Well-nourished then. Well-groomed and well-nourished, so probably middle-class.”

  Craig took over. “OK, so a well-to-do, middle-class man, possibly robbed-”

  Liam raised an eyebrow. “Possibly?”

  “They didn’t take his watch.” Craig gestured at the body. “And definitely killed by a single blow to his head.”

  John’s mouth opened again so he added hastily.

  “Subject to post-mortem of course.” He paused for a moment, scanning their surroundings. Where they were standing was six feet from the footpath beside the Queens Road; a road that went on for miles and branched off to the Sydenham Road halfway down.

  “So what was he doing here on a Friday night? Friday night is a bar and movies night; hardly the place you woul
d expect to see a man in a suit alone.”

  Liam raised a hand and pointed. “Unless he was out on the pull. The Odyssey Complex is up there. There are night-clubs inside.”

  Craig nodded and turned one hundred and eighty degrees. He gestured at a collection of buildings. “Offices?”

  It was John who answered. “Mostly. There’s industry down there as well.”

  A glance in the other directions showed only the Lagan, more roads and railway tracks in the distance. It made up Craig’s mind.

  “OK, John, we need a quick sketch of him by the police artist and then you can take the body. Quickest P.M. you can manage please. Liam, get the sketch copied and we’ll need two sets of uniforms and Joe Rice from Stranmillis, plus I want Reggie and Andy here as well. Friday night off is cancelled.”

  He started walking towards the Odyssey. “I’ll meet you all back here in thirty minutes. Meanwhile, tell the C.S.I.s they can have the scene, and I want one of them searching at least one hundred metres around, to see if they can find a blood trail.”

  John shouted after him. “They won’t. He was killed where he fell.”

  Craig waved a hand in acknowledgement and then disappeared into the night.

  ****

  The Odyssey Complex is a sports and entertainment centre in the Titanic Quarter, part of the Belfast Harbour Estate, and as Craig stepped through its pavilion’s sliding doors the scene that greeted him seemed surreal, as if he’d been transported to another world. A world far away from murder, where people lived a myriad of normal lives. Cinema going lives, dinners in restaurants lives, night-club lives, and lives where half-dressed skinny teenagers performed their tribal dance, dulled by a fog of God only knew what. All under one roof, all in close proximity. All less than half-a-mile away from where a man had died.

  He wasn’t certain what he’d been looking for when he’d entered. A sense of perspective maybe, or perhaps just a negative; the certainty that wherever their dead man had been before his death it was unlikely to have been there. But why did he think it so unlikely? Not from a lack of well-dressed groups or couples; there were plenty of them to be seen. But perhaps it was simply that. The dead man was alone. No crowd of mates threatening retribution, no wife or girlfriend to call the emergency services, screaming and crying by his side.