The Talion Code

by Catriona King

  ****

  The Ligoniel Road. North Belfast. 4 p.m.

  Reggie pulled his Volvo to a smooth stop and leaned forward to peer through the windscreen. He tutted loudly then remembered he was alone so he stopped; a good tut was wasted without an audience and he’d never liked to waste his breath.

  He was tutting for several reasons. Number one, it was a freezing cold day and he was going to have to get out of the car. He’d realised the year before, at fifty, that he really didn’t like the cold, after thirty years pounding the beat in all weathers and interviewing buck eejits in chilly rooms. The great outdoors that he’d loved as a lad growing up in the countryside, suddenly didn’t seem so great unless it was over twenty degrees. And number two, the vista that lay before him was less the green grass and rolling hills of Donegal than it was concrete blocks, abandoned supermarket trollies and kids in what passed for urban chic slouching around in groups, in a way that, even with their generation’s general disregard for good posture, hinted that they were up to no good.

  After bemoaning his fate for a minute longer the veteran sergeant opened the door, reaching a hand behind him automatically for his hat. It was only when his fingers met thin air that he remembered he was playing at being a detective nowadays and his uniform was a three piece suit. He’d always liked waistcoats. Evidently his young observers liked them as well, judging by the cat calls and cries of “where’d you leave your horse, sheriff” that greeted his approach.

  Reggie smiled tolerantly, his mind in a much less tolerant place. One where teenage boys were forced into a uniform and made to do push-ups and ten mile runs, until their excess testosterone had finally turned them into men. His fake smile increased as he approached the group, where the leader, a skinny lad in a hoodie, stepped forward to prove what he was worth. His bravado was boundless and Reggie was just wondering if he’d ever been that cocky at any age, when the youth opened his mouth and displayed a mouthful of grill and a Belfast accent that could have cracked hard stone.

  “Wada ye want, filth? This is ar turf.”

  He glanced at his acolytes for approval, not one of them over fourteen or taller than five-feet-five. City kids, malnourished and full of e-additives, their idea of healthy eating a lettuce leaf in their burger bun. Reggie drew himself up to his full six-feet-five and the action made his antagonistic host step back. His cadre of followers did the same, so perfectly synchronised they could have been the cast of A Chorus Line.

  Reggie liked being tall, even abnormally so. In a world where the average male barely tipped five-nine, and those in the police maybe four inches more than that, he found that his extra height gave him a rarefied view of the world, in more senses than one. He’d been tall since he’d been a teenager, able to rest his elbow on his friends’ heads by sixteen and on his six-feet tall father’s at twenty-one, although that definitely wasn’t recommended as his old man had ruled his brood with a rod of iron and could still take him in a fight at eighty-three.

  After a few years of swaggering and abusing his size as a teenager he’d been cut down effectively by the girl who would eventually become his wife, with a Lincoln quote that he would never forget. ‘You have to do your own growing no matter how tall your grandfather was.’ After that he’d realised the main value of his bulk was that the sight of him, along with a well arched brow, was often all it actually took to get wrongdoers to cough. So, arching his brow and narrowing his gaze at the teenager, Reggie quietly asked the question that he’d come to ask.

  “Would any of you lads know where Jackson Poulter could be found?”

  The crowd retreated further, leaving only the leader standing his ground. He jutted his jaw out pugnaciously.

  “Who wants tee know?”

  As Reggie reached for his warrant card the crowd reacted as if he’d had a gun, with half scattering into the concrete undergrowth and the others edging backwards bit by bit. Any relief they felt when they saw the I.D. manifested as shrugs that said they’d known it all along. A handful moved back to support their leader in his defiant but ultimately futile stance.

  “So ye’ve gat a badge. So wat? We knew ye wus filth soon as ye came and we’re nat squealin’ no how.”

  A thousand English teachers wept but Reggie’s response was calm.

  “So you do know Jackson. Pass him a message then. Tell him I work for the Superintendent, and I’m here to discuss our deal.” With that he turned and pointed at the car. “I’ll wait for twenty minutes. If Mr Poulter isn’t here by then the deal is off.”

  In the minute it took Reggie to reach his driver’s seat the activity behind his back ramped up. A yelled round of “piss aff, peeler” and “dirty filth” was soon replaced by the sound of trainer clad feet scampering through the rubbish and the noise of a trolley and bricks being thrown about randomly to scare the enemy. The Belfast teenager’s equivalent of the Māori Haka.

  When the sergeant looked again the landscape was empty. Perhaps he’d miscalculated and Poulter wasn’t in the vicinity, or else he was and he just hadn’t fallen for his ploy; after all, Harrison might already have paid him for the false alibi, although the idea of Terry Harrison paying someone up-front on the off chance they would still appear in court seemed unlikely. Not even he was that stupid.

  Maybe Poulter was being held in protective custody somewhere, under another name. Except he’d done a custody search of Northern Ireland before he’d left the office, and no-one fitting the description of Jackson Poulter was in any station, prison or safe house under any alias.

  Reggie scanned his surroundings, his gaze alighting on the half intact wall of an old house. Perhaps it was even worse than he’d imagined and Poulter was hiding there right now, calling Harrison’s office to check if he’d been sent. If that was the case then he was in deep shit. OK, so he hadn’t lied outright; he did work for a Superintendent, just not the one that Poulter probably thought. He’d twisted the truth slightly to smoke Poulter out, and if it backfired he couldn’t picture either Craig or Terry Harrison being amused.

  After five minutes of speculation and no answers Reggie reclined in his seat to wait out the other fifteen. Whatever happened he had to stay put for that long, if only to prove to the hoodlums of Northern Ireland that what a police officer said was actually what he meant. As the dashboard clock approached the deadline and he was straightening up to leave, the narrow face of his young opponent suddenly appeared beside the driver’s door. Reggie slid down the window expecting to hear more vitriol, only to be pleasantly surprised by what the teenager actually said.

  “Jackson sayz com on.”

  With that the hoodie started off across the wasteland, only stopping to look behind him when he’d reached the derelict wall. He’d been right! Poulter had been hiding. Reggie’s heart sank as he remembered the second half of his guess. If Poulter had phoned Harrison to check him out he was in trouble and approaching the house now could be a trap; plenty of people wanted to kill the police and he’d gone looking for a criminal without back-up.

  His worries proved redundant when a scrawny figure with bedhead shuffled out from behind the wall. The cachexic effect of hard drugs was unmistakable, as were the heavy lidded signs of opiates.

  His anxieties extinguished, Reggie nodded at the man.

  “Jackson Poulter.”

  It wasn’t a question; he’d seen Poulter’s picture on the computer database. He knew it was just as well that it hadn’t been a question when he saw the glint of suspicion in Poulter’s dark eyes.

  “Who’re you?”

  The apostrophe made no difference to his pronunciation, but Reggie understood the question anyway.

  “Sergeant Boyd from the C.C.U.”

  He noticed the mobile in the drug addict’s hand and prayed that he hadn’t yet made the call. Poulter’s next words chilled him.

  “I’ve just called there. Bloody switchboard never picks up.”

  Thank God for human error. Reggie continued with his bluff.

  “If y
ou’re looking for Superintendent Harrison he’s gone to Limavady for the day. That’s why I’ve been sent.”

  It was half true. Harrison was in the North-West for the day, apparently sorting out something for his divorce. Poulter’s suspicion melted away and he stepped forward, almost losing his balance on a stone. He steadied himself against the wall and nodded towards Reggie’s car.

  “We goin’ sumwhere?”

  “Town, if that’s OK?” And town even if it wasn’t.

  “Why?”

  “Just to tie up a few loose ends. We need to have everything right.”

  Poulter nodded again and Reggie noticed that his hair didn’t move when he did. Gel or dirt? He didn’t want to think about it, but he did intend to get his car valeted at the murder squad’s cost. He smiled amiably and turned towards the car, then he turned back to the leader of the pack, reached into his pocket and brought out a five pound note.

  “Thanks for your help. Sorry, I didn’t catch your name?”

  A sharp snatch and his adversary was gone without a word. Not a problem. He’d identify him from the computer anyway. As they walked to the car Reggie pondered how to proceed once they’d reached the station. Any interview had to be done in such a way that Poulter had no idea he was supplying them with information that Terry Harrison definitely wouldn’t want them to know. There was only one man he knew who was sneaky enough to manage that, so he sent him a text and then headed towards town.

  ****

  The Titanic Quarter.

  If Annette had to interview another noughties wannabee yuppie she thought that she would scream. Gordon Gekko’s ‘greed is good’ mantra obviously hadn’t died out with Thatcherism and the eighties; it was alive and well in business land Belfast. The only difference was that no-one wore red braces nowadays and their hair stood on end instead of being combed back, but in every other sense the office workers of Dockland Belfast were the reincarnation of the capitalist dream.

  She gazed around the grey and glass office she stood in, marvelling at the number of workers who were there, despite it being a Saturday afternoon. It wasn’t only the public sector that worked unsocial hours then, although they required the motivation of catching a murderer to do it and she found it hard to imagine numbers on a spreadsheet having quite the same effect.

  She’d just taken a seat, planning on five minutes rest and more thinking, when an excited yell made her turn towards one end of the open-plan floor. Joe Rice’s rotund figure was slow rushing towards her, the resultant thumping of the highly sprung floor drowning out his words. When he reached her they were drowned out again by the sounds of the sergeant gasping for breath.

  “I’m… not… fit.”

  “You don’t say.”

  Annette watched the bent over figure with little sympathy; her stomach was already bigger than his and she’d four months’ more growing to do. As Rice recovered, the reason for his hurrying emerged in fits and starts.

  “That fella…” He pointed a finger awkwardly back over his head “Down there.”

  Annette turned to see three men perched on adjacent desks.

  “Which one?”

  Joe half-turned, his face still flushed. “The ginger one, so.”

  Politically incorrect as it was, it certainly narrowed the field. Annette locked eyes with the only red-haired man in the group and beckoned him to come down. As he approached she tried for more detail, her voice taking on an insistent edge.

  “Joe, what did he say?”

  “About what?”

  It was her turn to turn red. “About the dead man, for heaven’s sake. Quickly!”

  Joe frowned. He was an easy going man, everyone who knew him said so, and he knew the inspector was pregnant and that sometimes that could cause moods; God knows, even his own Patricia, the saintliest woman who’d ever drawn breath, had raised her voice to him once or twice before their son had been born. But even so, he was doing his best and it never helped anyone to be shouted at, so he frowned at Annette and then answered her deliberately slowly, his tone displaying a definite huff.

  “He saw… the victim…” Pause for dramatic effect as Annette flushed further, then finally “alive on Friday night” emerged.

  Just as his mouth closed a neatly suited man appeared by his side. He was younger than Annette had thought at a distance and his bright blue eyes and sharp bone structure made him striking, so much so that she felt suddenly shy.

  “Can I help you, Officer?”

  Joe stepped in, claiming ownership of the lead.

  “Let me introduce you to Inspector Eakin. This is Mr Tom Fitzhenry. He works here as an actuary.”

  Annette recovered enough to be curious. “You work with statistics?”

  Fitzhenry laughed, showing straight white teeth. “Yes. Boring I know, but it keeps the wolf from the door.”

  Annette giggled along with him, until she realised she was behaving like a school-girl instead of a pregnant mother of two. She rose from her seat, attempting gravitas.

  “Sergeant Rice says that you think you saw our victim. Could you tell me when, please?”

  “I don’t think. I definitely saw him. It was on Friday evening around nine o’clock. I was just leaving for the evening and-”

  Annette raised a hand, stopping him. “Can I ask why you think it was our victim?”

  Fitzhenry screwed up his face and she noticed a small hole in his right earlobe. He’d had a piercing done there at some point. Lots of boys had had one ear pierced when she’d been a girl and she’d always liked it; it had added a hint of rakishness. She quickly pulled herself up, trying to focus on the businessman’s answer.

  “Your colleague described the man, and it sounded like the person I’d seen. Then I recognised his sketch.”

  “As the man you’d seen.”

  “More than that. I know his name. It’s Dominic Guthrie. He’s a partner in an accountants’ firm we do business with.” He shook his head. “God. I can’t believe he’s dead.”

  Annette halted him swiftly. “We haven’t confirmed that yet, Mr Fitzhenry.”

  The last thing they needed was the victim’s wife finding out from someone else. She thought for a moment. If Fitzhenry had known their victim and admitted to seeing him on Friday night, he had to be interviewed properly to rule him out as their killer, however unlikely that possibility might seem.

  “Would you mind coming to the station to be interviewed?”

  For a second the actuary looked startled, then he turned quickly towards the exit, taking a few strides towards it before looking back.

  “Well? Are we doing this thing or not?”

  Annette couldn’t decide if his eagerness ruled him in or out.

  ****

  St Mary’s Healthcare Trust. The High Dependency Unit.

  Katy murmured to the junior doctor at reception before slipping quietly into the small, four-bedded bay. Her stealth was kind but pointless; the machines that the patients were connected to made more noise with their beeps and whirrs than she could have done on a very boisterous day.

  But quietness was her habit now, although it hadn’t always been. She’d been the noisy one of her family when she’d been a teenager, head-banging in her bedroom to the sound of Faith No More. She’d played the violin too, very badly, and the sound of her practicing her squawking scales had earned her several pillows around the head from her older brother Rick.

  So when had she become so demure? It had started gradually, at school; seven years of nuns telling her to ‘walk like a young lady and always on the left hand side’. She had the trait even now, almost hugging the wall when she walked down a corridor, lest some Reverend Mother approach incognito and chastise her for hogging the middle lane. Medical school had sealed the deal; when you’re part of a crocodile traipsing through wards of sick people, being noisy earned you reproving looks and frowns. If not from the ward sister then certainly from the consultant, who held the power to give you a pass or fail.

  However s
he had learned to be quiet, that was what she was doing now, although she’d noticed that ever since she’d met Natalie, her tendency to get into mischief had risen tenfold. She smiled, recalling a recent shopping trip where Natalie had almost had a punch-up with an assistant who’d refused to process her return. It was only the appearance of a handsome manager that she could flirt with that had stopped her being locked up for public nuisance.

  Katy’s smile changed to professional concern when she reached the bedside of the woman that she’d come to see. Craig had told her about the RTC he’d chanced upon and asked if she would check on the victim the next time she was in. As she gazed down at the bruised face of the woman and then at her screens and charts, she knew she would have to tell him that the progress wasn’t good.

  She was just turning to leave when she bumped into a slightly built girl.

  “Sorry, I was just going.” Katy stopped abruptly. No-one but next of kin was allowed in the unit, so the girl must be family. “I was sorry to hear about your mother.”

  The girl grasped her hand and held it for just a second too long. “I’m not her daughter. I just witnessed the accident.”

  Katy raised her eyebrows. It was thoughtful of her to visit, but she really shouldn’t have been there.

  “I’m sorry, Ms …?”

  “Corneau. Eleanor Corneau.”

  “Ms Corneau, it’s kind of you to be concerned, but only relatives are allowed on the unit.”

  The young woman smiled, amused. “Are you a relative?”

  Katy was about to say ‘isn’t it obvious that I’m a doctor?’ When she realised that nothing about her could possibly have told the girl so. Gone were the days when doctors wore white coats and badges, now everyone walked around with their stethoscope in their handbag or dangling from around their neck. She missed white coats. As a junior she’d worn ones with very deep pockets that had held everything from her pen torch and reflex hammer, to a copy of ‘top ten medical emergencies’ and a Crunchie for her lunch.