The Coercion Key

by Catriona King

  The boy gazed up at them with solemn brown eyes then he pulled the door wide, almost falling backwards under its weight. Craig slipped out his badge and held it out for the boy to take a look.

  “Is your father…Daddy home? I’m…” He hesitated at the use of rank when he was talking to a bereaved child and instead changed the word to Marc. “Marc Craig and this is Annette. Could you tell your Daddy that we’d like to speak to him, please? He knows we’re coming.”

  The boy frowned seriously as befitted his important role. He scanned Craig’s badge exaggeratedly then reached out a small hand to Annette, gripping hers. Just then a slim young man with a shock of blond hair came rushing into the hall. A small girl was clinging to his leg, giggling and hindering his approach. The man extended his hand to Craig and smiled, his face a grown-up version of his daughter’s.

  “I’m Conor Rogan. Thank you for coming.”

  Rogan stepped back, taking his daughter with him, and waved them into a bright kitchen-dining room. As they took their seats he detached his small daughter gently and she hovered in the doorway beside her brother, watching everything. Annette smiled warmly at them and gave a small wave, tempting the pair to move cautiously into the room as their father carried a ready-prepared tray of refreshments to a table.

  “Tea or coffee?”

  Craig nodded Annette to answer first and smiled down at the boy, who had taken up residence beside his chair.

  “Coffee please.” She glanced at Craig. “Two cups would be great.”

  After the drinks were poured and biscuits offered round, Rogan shooed the children to play in another room.

  “I’m sorry. David’s fascinated by the police. It’s all cops and robbers at that age, isn’t it?”

  Craig nodded, remembering his own childhood games. He’d never grown out of them. After a moment’s silence Craig started to speak, introducing himself and Annette again and broaching the reason why they’d come. Conor Rogan halted him with an outstretched palm.

  “I appreciate your diplomacy, Superintendent, but you don’t need to tiptoe around my wife’s death. In fact I’d rather that you didn’t. I’ve never believed that Diana committed suicide; she had everything to live for and she certainly wasn’t depressed. Quite the opposite in fact. We were planning a trip to Disneyland this summer with the kids and she was more excited than either of them.” He paused and Craig could see tears brightening his eyes. “When a verdict of suicide was handed down I was devastated. No, more than that, I was furious.”

  Craig leaned forward. “Did you ask for the inquest to be re-opened?”

  Rogan nodded then rubbed his face in frustration. “For months. I tried everything, but the coroner’s office was adamant. They said the forensics were indisputable. I even asked my senior partner to intervene. He tried but it made no difference.”

  Craig could only imagine the anger Rogan felt.

  “You’re a solicitor, Mr Rogan. Is that correct?”

  Rogan nodded and sipped his coffee. “I deal mainly with employment law.”

  “And what exactly did Mrs Rogan do for a living?”

  Craig already had the information that Nicky had sent through, but it was generic. Diana Rogan had been a middle manager in a firm of brokers in town. That could have meant anything.

  “For a living… that sounds so strange now.” Rogan gazed into space for a moment then asked a question of no-one in particular. “Why do we get so obsessed with money and material things? Can you tell me that?” He carried on, not waiting for an answer. “We both worked so hard to give our children the things we thought they needed, the latest toys and games, but they won’t touch them now. All they want is their mum; they don’t care about anything else.”

  His voice broke suddenly and he dropped his face into his hands, sitting in silence for a moment as the two officers looked on, powerless to help. Eventually he looked up and gave a weak smile.

  “What was your question? Ah, yes, for a living. Diana was a manager at a small brokerage firm in the city centre; Murphy Johnson Limited. She trained as an accountant originally then moved sideways into stocks and shares; mostly for small investors.” Rogan laughed. “She used to try to explain it to me; swaps and futures and hedge-funds, but I never understood a word of it. Numbers aren’t my strong point I’m afraid.”

  Annette smiled in agreement. “Nor mine. Not when they get to that level.”

  Craig asked another question. “Had your wife complained about any problems at work? Any disagreements with colleagues – anything at all?”

  Rogan shook his head. “No. Quite the contrary, she loved her job. It’s a very small office, only her, an actuary and her boss Jacob Johnson. They were all on good terms as far as I know. Apart from that they had a couple of secretaries and the occasional student attached from Queens, or from one of the local accounting firms. In fact they had a student there last month as far as I know.”

  He shook his head vaguely and stared into space again. Craig could hear the children chattering in the other room but Rogan seemed oblivious to the noise. Finally he shook himself from his reverie and turned to Craig with a defiant look on his face.

  “There was no reason for Diana to take her life and I will never believe that she did.”

  Twenty minutes of routine questioning later, Craig completely agreed with him.

  ***

  It was almost six o’clock by the time they left Diana and Conor Rogan’s warm family home so Craig dropped Annette home, instead of back to the office to collect her car. He offered to collect her the next morning but she shook her head.

  “Don’t worry, sir. Pete can drop me in tomorrow morning on his way to school.”

  Pete McElroy was a P.E. teacher and Head of Sport at a secondary school near Newtownards. It was rare that the team ever saw him, even rarer since his and Annette’s marital problems the year before. Craig drove the twenty minutes to Annette’s house and parked. As she went to open the door he placed a hand on her arm.

  “How is everything?”

  Annette smiled thinly, knowing he was referring to Pete’s affair the previous year. It had almost ended their marriage and it had definitely ended her willingness to take second place in it. Pete had cited her job and working hours as his excuse for infidelity and she’d gone along to marriage guidance, willing to do anything to make things work. But it had had the opposite effect. She was more ambitious than ever now and more determined that she wouldn’t let Pete or his petty insecurities stand in her way. She would go for Chief Inspector in a few years, when Craig said she was ready, and Pete could bloody well lump it.

  Craig watched the thoughts running through Annette’s mind, knowing that she was composing the answer that she thought would fit, and sanitising the facts for her boss. He’d watched her change and grow since the affair and he’d wanted to cheer her on. She was a good detective and she’d get better. Pete’s attempt to control her had backfired badly and if anyone had the upper hand in their marriage now it was Annette.

  Annette smiled and gave the answer that Craig knew she would. “Everything’s fine, sir. Would you like to come in for a coffee?”

  Craig smiled at her polite invitation and shook his head, so Annette climbed out of the car and waved him away. As Craig drove to the junction and turned right towards town, he completely missed the car following three car lengths behind.

  ***

  Jenna Graham really wanted to hear Victoria Linton’s exclamation when she inserted the key, and see the horrified look on her face. But she couldn’t. She wouldn’t be in the room with her when it happened so she could only wait for the inevitable effect. And it was inevitable, just like Linton’s two weeks of skiing in the winter and her weekends spent sailing out of Cultra.

  Graham smiled at how easy it had all been so far. She wanted it to continue until the end, needed it to, but the Murder Squad were getting nosy and she had to make them stop. Everyone had a weakness that could be used against them; she just needed to find o
ut what Superintendent Marc Craig’s was.

  ***

  9 p.m.

  Craig threw his jacket on an armchair and loosened his tie. He slumped on the settee and flicked idly through the channels as he thought. Diana Rogan had no more wanted to kill herself than Cleopatra had. She had a loving husband, two cuter-than-hell kids and a job that she seemed to love. She was going to Disneyland for God’s sake; people who were going to Disneyland didn’t take their own lives!

  Craig paused his thoughts like a DVD and skipped back several frames. Her job. Her husband had said that she’d loved it but her death had to be linked with her job in some way; there was no other possible source of stress in her life. He’d searched Conor Rogan’s face for signs of lies about their marriage. So had Annette and she said that Rogan was telling the truth, so he must be. He trusted Annette’s judgement of people even more than his own. They’d speak to the neighbours and Diana Rogan’s family about the marriage of course, but it would be a dead end, he was sure of it. But Diana Rogan’s job… now that was something else.

  Craig made a note to get onto it in the morning then he wandered to the fridge to grab a bottle of beer, ignoring John’s medical lecture earlier that day. He sat back down on the settee and gazed around his small living room. It felt empty. It was empty. He was alone in life apart from his parents and sister, and pretty soon John would be married and living in domestic bliss. He rubbed his face in irritation, not at John but at himself. Why couldn’t he settle down like everyone else?

  He took a swig of beer and gave himself a pass. He and Camille had split up because of her ambition. She was in New York now, acting on Broadway; she still sent him occasional postcards with tales of her exciting life. Good luck to her, he wished her well in the States, but it wasn’t the place for him. His parents needed him as they grew older and he loved his job. The job. Was that it? Was the job the reason he was still alone?

  Craig shrugged and then realised he was sitting in total darkness. He reached over to turn on the light and an image of Julia filled his mind. He pictured her lying beside him on the couch with her red hair spread out and her blue eyes smiling. Why had it all gone wrong between them? He already knew the answer. Stubbornness and geography, just like with Camille. If it had just been his stubbornness he could have done something about that, but theirs he had no control over. And geography? Well New York or Limavady, there was no way to shorten miles, regardless of whether they were land or sea.

  Career had been the reason he was still single, not just his but theirs. Neither of them had been ready to drop everything to be with him and he’d had no right to expect it. The same was true in reverse. What was interesting was why he was attracted to such career-driven women in the first place. And he definitely was; John was the same. Was it their intelligence or their ambition? No, it wasn’t ambition in any formal sense. He didn’t care if they didn’t have big titles or earn a lot. It was their drive. Intelligence and drive; it was a very sexy combination. He just wished he could find a woman with those qualities who wanted to live in Belfast, like John had managed to with Natalie.

  Craig wallowed in self-pity for a moment longer then kicked himself up the ass and surfed the channels until he found a football match to watch. As he stared at the screen half-dozing, the image of a woman’s face floated into his mind and he smiled, realising that he might already know the answer to his prayers.

  Chapter Five

  Victoria Linton threw her briefcase in the corner of her large open-plan living room then rifled through her handbag for the padded envelope she’d opened earlier that day. She poured a large glass of Merlot and sat down on a leather couch with her laptop on her knee, turning the key over in her hand. She stared at it for a moment, wondering again who it was from. ‘I am from the past’, that was what the note had said. She snorted with laughter thinking of her exes throughout the years.

  It was far too cryptic for Nathan; he’d been a concrete thinker. Correction, a leaden thinker. Nathan had thought creativity was something that should be vaccinated against. And as far as Robin was concerned, the idea of doing something as romantic as sending a key would have brought him out in hives. She reached up and loosened her chignon, letting her dark curls fall down her back. What about Julian? She imagined her impoverished partner being able to afford a platinum key and dismissed the idea instantly. And Julian wasn’t in her past yet. As soon as the idea occurred to her she shuddered, pushing it away. Julian Mooney was staying in her life regardless of what her family would think.

  Victoria stopped speculating and took another gulp of wine. Whoever had sent it, the key would reveal them once she inserted the USB. She deposited her wine glass carefully on a side table, ensuring that she placed a coaster underneath, and pulled off the memory stick’s valuable outer casing, inserting it into her laptop. She watched while the computer scanned for viruses and when it was sure there were no contaminants she clicked to open the USB and reveal what lay inside.

  Her eyes fell on a file with the title ‘Your future’ and she felt a bubble of excitement rise. This was it. Someone who had worshipped her from a distance was about to declare their love and whisk her away from her mundane life. She’d daydreamed about it of course, just as every woman had, but it was actually happening to her because she was special. She had no idea just how special. As Victoria Linton clicked open the file she had no idea that her life was about to change for good.

  ***

  Tuesday, 4 a.m.

  Craig was woken by the sound of a mobile phone ringing somewhere in his dream. As his dream was set in Rome during July he wasn’t amused to wake up and find he was actually in a freezing spring in Belfast. He grabbed the handset grumpily and banged it on.

  “Yes?”

  Craig’s voice was hoarse and if he sounded angry it was because he was. He’d glimpsed the time on the screen as he’d answered. Four a.m. someone had better have a damn good reason for phoning him in the middle of the night. It was John Winter and he had.

  “There’s been another one, Marc. In the next block along the river to yours.”

  Craig was confused. One minute ago he’d been in Rome, strolling through the Piazza Navona with an attractive blonde on his arm, and now this. Either the booze had finally got to him or there’d been another death. He sat up quickly, throwing his feet onto his bedroom’s wooden floor, then he raked his hair ruthlessly, trying to wake himself up.

  “OK. Give me that again, John. What, who and where?”

  “Another death; apparently suicide. A barrister called Victoria Linton. She lives in Stranmillis Quay.”

  He was right. It was the next block along. Craig dragged a jumper and his jeans from a nearby chair and pulled them on as John continued talking.

  “She was found in her car in the communal garage.”

  “Carbon Monoxide poisoning?”

  “Yes.” John paused and Craig knew what was coming next. He wouldn’t have woken him up at four a.m. for a suicide case, no matter how lonely he felt. “She left exactly the same note, Marc... I’ll see you there in ten.”

  The line went dead and Craig slipped his mobile into his pocket and went to freshen up. He looked a shambles but he didn’t care, neither would Victoria Linton. He brushed his teeth sleepily as her name turned over in his head. He knew that name, he was certain he did. Then he remembered where from. She’d prosecuted a case of his six years before, when he’d first come back to Belfast. She’d been a snippy piece of work, but attractive. Craig wondered idly what she looked like nowadays then he remembered she was dead and chastised himself.

  Ten minutes later he was staring down at her corpse, the familiar cherry-red discolouration of her skin confirming John’s diagnosis of a Carbon Monoxide death. Craig gazed at the woman’s face, remembering her from the courtroom. He could almost hear her voice. Cool but not unpleasant, like a BBC Newsreader in a vaguely pissed-off mood. It was her stare that had really wilted her opponents; fierce and unblinking, as if she could make th
em tell the truth by her sheer force of will. A tap on his shoulder told Craig that Linton’s apartment was ready to view and he nodded John to cover her face with the sheet.

  “Pity. She was young.”

  Craig nodded in agreement.

  “Did you know her, Marc?”

  “I came up against her in court once. She was a criminal prosecutor. Pretty good as well. I don’t know if she was still doing it.”

  “Her apartment will tell us.”

  “Who found her, John?”

  “A neighbour who was coming home late. He heard the car engine running and went into the garage to take a look. He pulled her out and tried to resuscitate her, but no joy. Uniform at Stranmillis caught the call.” John pointed at a young man who was leaning against a police car, holding a cup of coffee in his hand. He was shaking so much that he was spilling it all over the ground.

  Craig walked over to him and extended his hand. “I’m Superintendent Craig, Mr…?”

  “W…Wallace. James Wallace.”

  Wallace’s voice was shaking as much as his hands and Craig smiled kindly at him. “It must have been a shock.”

  The man nodded vaguely. “I knew her. Vicky. She used to come to the boat club the odd time and we’d all go to Cutter’s Wharf together.”

  Cutter’s was a popular riverside bar in Stranmillis that Craig had been to many times. Wallace was still speaking.

  “Why would she do this to herself? She had everything. Her job, Julian, her…”

  Craig interrupted gently. “Who is Julian?”

  Wallace stared at Craig as if he was looking through him, searching for something. It was probably his peace of mind.

  “He’s her boyfriend. They’ve been together for a while. It was quite serious I think.” His mouth dropped open. “Oh God, maybe he dumped her? Maybe that’s why she did it?”