The Coercion Key

by Catriona King

  Craig knew immediately that he’d been had. He was stuck for words for a second then the moment was lost in Liam’s loud entrance.

  “Morning, boss. Good sleep? How’s the Doc?”

  Craig gave Nicky a warning smile and pulled a chair into the centre of the floor, beckoning them all to sit.

  “He’s much better this morning, thanks. Very weak, but that’s to be expected with a big hole in your back. He’s on blood and pain relief and they’re keeping a close eye on him.”

  Annette interrupted. “Was Natalie there all night?”

  “Most of it. I saw her briefly this morning. John’s lost part of one lung, which will affect his breathing for a while, but he should be fine with time. He’s sore from the operation but you know John, he’s finding being shot a fascinating experience.”

  “Fascinating’s one word for it. Bloody and sore are two more.”

  Liam winced, remembering when he’d been shot back in’89 and rushed in an ambulance to St Mary’s with a young doctor pummelling at his chest. There was bugger all fascinating about it but he had managed to get a date with a pretty nurse from intensive care. Craig’s voice broke through his thoughts.

  “John’s remembered some information about his shooter, but I’ll come onto that later. For now, let’s go round everyone and see what you’ve got. Davy?”

  Davy crossed his long legs and stared down at the sheets in his hand, frowning. He didn’t know which to start with – the gun or the other stuff. He decided on the gun. As John Winter hadn’t died it seemed safe enough.

  “Dr Winter was s…shot with a Parabellum full metal jacket cartridge, most likely fired from a s…semi-automatic weapon. There are too many to speculate which one.”

  “Any markings that match?”

  Davy shook his head. “Not on any of the known databases. The gun w…was probably an unlicensed import.”

  Liam shrugged. “It’ll be a dead end. There are so many guns coming in on the lorries that we’d be chasing our tails for weeks.”

  Craig nodded. “Liam’s right. We’ll match it when we catch our perp. Carry on, Davy.”

  “That sounds like a film title.”

  Nicky arrived with the coffee just at that moment. She sniffed. “Yes, a rude one. Typical of Liam to think of it.”

  Davy ignored them both and turned to his next page. “OK. Connections between our victims. There might be s…some light there. Diana Rogan had a significant previous relationship.”

  Annette was surprised. “But she was only thirty-three and she had an eight-year-old son with Conor Rogan.”

  Davy shook his head. “The boy isn’t Rogan’s child. He’s his s…step-father.”

  Craig interrupted, knowing there was something relevant there. “Who’s the boy’s father, Davy?”

  Davy smiled and its smugness suddenly irritated the hell out of Jake. Jake realised immediately that he was jealous and that he needed to nip it in the bud fast. He’d always been competitive but Davy wasn’t a cop; there was no mileage in competing with him.

  “Nelson W…Warner.”

  “Nelson Warner! But he was old enough to be her father. Dirty old man.”

  Craig burst out laughing at Annette’s outraged tone. She had a real thing about age-gap relationships.

  “When did they marry and divorce, Davy?”

  Davy smiled at Craig kindly and Craig knew at once that he’d just betrayed his age and traditional approach to life.

  “Never. S…She interned at a firm of brokers Warner w…worked in, back in 2005. They must have met then.”

  Annette interjected. “Oh, let me guess. He was her boss and it was ‘take a letter Ms Jones and let’s see what comes up’.”

  Liam guffawed and Annette realised what she’d said, blushing furiously.

  “Good one, Annette. It’s normally me that says things like that.”

  Davy glanced at Craig and saw his signal to hurry on and cover Annette’s embarrassment.

  “OK. Rogan only w…worked there for a year then she left, had the baby and w…went back to college to complete her post-grad training. She married Conor Rogan when the boy was three years old.”

  “Nice work, Davy. That gives us a connection between at least two of our victims. Take a look at anything they worked on together. Anything else?”

  “Yes. Victoria Linton. When s…she worked in commercial law she had clients in the retail s…sector, consulting firms and insurance brokers; I’ll get the full list to you by close of play.”

  “Excellent. Keep ploughing through our victims’ pasts. If there’s a connection between two of them, there’s something that connects all four.”

  Craig turned to Annette and nodded her on. She took her notebook from her handbag then set the bag on the floor and started to report. There were some constants in the universe: the sun, the stars and Annette’s handbag. It never left her side. It was like a black leather comfort blanket. Liam often wondered what she kept in there but it was more than his life was worth to ask. He’d made the mistake of looking in his granny’s bag once when he’d been ten year’s old and he hadn’t been able to sit down for days. His reminiscence was interrupted by Annette’s report.

  “I went to a small broker’s firm this morning in Rosemary Street. They specialise in precious metals and stones.”

  Nicky interjected. “Did they show you any gold? I love gold.”

  “No, unfortunately not. I was hoping for a diamond or two at least but they don’t actually keep any valuables there. All they had was boring spreadsheets.”

  Annette flicked through the pages of her notebook until she reached one near the back. She made a mental note that it was time for a new pad.

  “OK. The platinum market is very healthy. Average values over 2013 were between 1500 and 2000 dollars per oz. Twenty years ago the range was four to five hundred, which was worth a lot back then.”

  “So anyone investing in the 1990s would have made money.”

  “Yes. And if they hadn’t cashed in their shares they’d be making even more now.”

  The group was quiet for a moment while they all imagined what it would be like to be rich. All except Craig; his mind was still on the case. People were rarely unhappy because they made money. The only example he could think of would be if sudden wealth had destroyed their lives, like some of the bizarre stories of Lottery winners that Sunday tabloids loved to report. But they were rare. It was far more common that people’s lives were destroyed by going bust. Annette was still reporting.

  “I think that someone either made or lost a fortune on platinum.”

  Liam snorted. “Lost, more likely.”

  Craig nodded. “That’s my thinking. OK, let’s speculate a bit here. The average man in the street wouldn’t have traded stocks and shares back in the nineties. They’d have relied on a broker to do it for them. Correct?”

  “Aye. But even then trading stocks would have been the luxury of the rich, boss.”

  “Agreed. So either this was someone rich who lost a fortune on the stock exchange by investing in platinum…”

  Annette shook her head. “No, platinum made a profit in the nineties. Anyone who invested in it couldn’t have lost.”

  “OK, or…this is someone who lost money because their money should have been invested in platinum but for some reason it wasn’t.”

  Annette leaned forward eagerly. “Like if a broker was dodgy.”

  Davy’s soft voice cut in. “Or it w…was a badly invested pension fund.”

  All eyes turned to Davy and he smiled, gratified by their attention.

  “OK. If you’re w…wealthy and have money to invest in the nineties, you go to a broker. But w…what if you’re an average person? Who invests your money for you?”

  “Your bank, maybe?”

  Davy nodded at Jake. “And?”

  Liam leaned in, warming to the subject. He’d be eligible for his pension soon and it was a subject close to his heart. “A pension adviser.”


  “Yes. A pension adviser. Brokers and pension advisers often get blanket permission to invest as they s…see fit, without asking the pension holder every time. W…What if they invested a pension fund badly, say by taking the fund out of the platinum market instead of leaving it there? And their customers made a loss?”

  Craig interrupted. “What if they lost someone’s whole pension fund or life savings? It would affect not only them but their family. Our perp is too young for it to have been their fund, but what if it was their parent’s and they saw the damage it did?”

  “They’d blame the advisors, boss. I know I bloody well would.”

  Jake leaned forward eagerly. “It happened once, didn’t it? The 1929 banking crash.”

  “That was a slightly different situation, Jake, but yes, a lot of people lost their fortunes through it. People killed themsel…”

  Halfway through saying it Craig knew that they were on the right track. Someone had lost their fortune and it had resulted in a suicide. Whoever it was who’d killed themselves, their adolescent child had suffered and it had twisted them so badly that they were intent on making people pay now.

  The room was quiet for a moment apart from the sound of computers whirring and faint chatter from another team far across the floor. This was their motive all right, but did it actually bring them any closer to catching their perp? Craig gathered his thoughts. He wasn’t quite ready to share John’s bombshell with the group so he turned to Jake and nodded him on.

  “Game forums, Jake.”

  Jake handed out the sheets that Liam and Davy had seen earlier and worked through his logic until he held the final page listing the five screen names of the Northern Irish gamers in his hand.

  “I’ve called the internet providers but it’s like talking to a brick wall, so Liam’s been trying for warrants.”

  Craig turned to Liam.

  “Aye. I’ve just been down to the court, trying to get them signed, but Judge Patterson was playing hard to get.”

  Craig frowned. “What’s his problem?”

  “Apart from a charisma bypass you mean?”

  Craig smiled, acknowledging that Liam was right. The elderly judge never had possessed much joie de vivre.

  “He hates us for banging Dawson up. The old boys’ network is alive and well and down at Laganside Courts.”

  Liam was referring to James Dawson, the youngest judge in Northern Ireland. They’d put him away the summer before for his part in a people trafficking and murder ring.

  Craig shrugged. “Tough. They’re happy enough to lock up corrupt cops, so they have to take their own medicine. Go to Judge Standish, he’ll sign them for you.”

  Liam shook his head. “On holiday.”

  “Damn. Where?”

  “Donegal. Up in Rathmullan. He has a house there.”

  Craig thought for a minute. With a shooter on the loose he needed Liam’s firearms experience close by; he couldn’t afford him taking a five hour round trip to the Republic. He turned to Jake.

  “Jake, as you’re leading this strand of work, find out exactly where Judge Standish is and then go there and get the warrants signed. If you apologise for disturbing him on holiday he’ll be fine.”

  Jake nodded sharply and Liam could see that he wasn’t best pleased to be away from the action for a whole day. Too bad. He’d traipsed all over the country and done what he was told when he was a kid, it would do Jake no harm to do the same. It might teach him to learn to walk before he tried to sprint up the ranks. Craig continued.

  “John saw his shooter, although he won’t be well enough to make a formal I.D. for a while.” He paused, waiting for the barrage of questions to start. They didn’t and Craig smiled. They knew him well enough to know that there was more. “It was a woman.”

  A gasp ran through the group and they started muttering amongst themselves. Craig halted the babble with a glance.

  “It doesn’t eliminate anyone on Jake’s list because they all use screen names, so it won’t help us much until we get behind those, but it’s interesting.”

  “And unexpected, sir. Although God knows we’ve encountered enough female killers not to be shocked.”

  “It still surprises me too, Annette. More so this time in some ways. Jessica Adams and Mai Liu used poison and knives, but guns are usually a man’s weapon.”

  Craig was referring to the female protagonists in two murder cases they’d dealt with in the previous eighteen months.

  Liam guffawed. “Not a bit of wonder they stick to knives, have you seen women’s scores on the firing range?”

  Annette bristled and Craig could see a full scale row about to start, so he leapt in.

  “Don’t generalise, Liam, and Annette, don’t overreact. Back to John. He says the woman was auburn with freckles. Her hair looked natural but it might have been dyed. Slim and tall, about five-feet-ten. Late twenties, early thirties.” He saw the smile twitching at Nicky’s lips and got the crack in before they did. “And no, it wasn’t D.I. McNulty before anyone cracks that joke.”

  “How’d the Doc see so much, boss? He must have only had a split second.”

  “God knows, but I’m sure John will explain when he’s better. Probably something to do with perception or physics, or something like that.” Craig could see Davy about to launch into a scientific explanation and he halted him mid-breath. “When the case is over, Davy, you and John can draw it on a graph for us, but for now let’s just carry on.”

  Craig scanned their faces and stopped at Annette. She was staring at the floor, deep in thought.

  “Annette? Have you thought of something?”

  She nodded and scanned the group with a puzzled look on her face. “Am I the only one who remembers that it was a man who called us issuing threats? Now we have a female shooter. Are we looking for a couple?”

  Craig nodded. “Maybe. It’s certainly a possibility. For now let’s just concentrate on what we have. OK. We have a tall, red-haired woman. The age range seems correct, late twenties to early-thirties, making her a teenager around the millennium which is the correct time frame for Jake’s game. The gothic keys we found link to the game, and the platinum that they’re made of may link to financial loss and suicide. That means that the answer to this is somewhere in the information that Jake and Davy are trying to find.”

  He sipped his coffee and made a face, glancing pitifully at Nicky. She went to make a fresh pot while Craig allocated the work.

  “Davy, keep searching on the four numbers we found and the connections between our victims. Annette and Liam, pay Conor Rogan and Nelson Warner’s wife another visit, and find out why neither of them mentioned Diana Rogan’s son being Nelson Warner’s. Follow up on Warner’s mistress as well. I want to know why Warner was alone in the love-shack mid-week if she was normally supposed to be there. Davy, chase up anything you can on the bullet and gun and once Jake gets back from Donegal get your heads together on the chat-room. I want real names and addresses by tomorrow please, not virtual ones.”

  He stood up and headed for his office. “Right, you all know what you’re doing. I need to go and clear my head. And remember that they only missed John by accident, so you’re all still at risk. Watch your backs.”

  ***

  Jenna Graham smiled to herself. The last one was going to be easy. Far easier than he should be for a man who spent all day successfully persuading people to listen to his advice. How much do you earn, Mr Bell? And how much commission is added on top? Just so you can bamboozle ordinary Joes with their life’s savings clasped metaphorically on their laps, into handing them to you across your desk. Do you show them graphs and charts, and tables that they can’t possibly understand? Then move them swiftly past the small print at the bottom of the page, until they reach the dotted line?

  Do you hand them a lovely bespoke pen to sign with, conveying their importance and your gravitas? And then whip the page away so fast that they never think to ask about the cooling-off phase or an independent opinion; simp
ly leave your office smiling, believing that they’re safe in your future choices? Investments can up down as well as up, Mr Bell, and in your hands fifty-fifty would be an overly optimistic guess.

  Adrian Bell was a small, small man, in every way that counted. His suits might have been marked ‘extra-large’ but his manners were mean and his way of treating people was even meaner. Framed certificates bearing testament to his business degrees hung emblazoned on his walls, but only money occupied his mind and he spent his days calculating how to acquire more. If a few people got hurt in the process, so what? They’d been warned. Investments can go down, remember that.

  Few if any of his disgruntled clients would take legal redress and even fewer would reach the courts, defeated by the expensive lawyers paid for by his insurance company. Bell had it all worked out, every possible option costed and covered to keep him out of jail. Every cost outlined except the human one, but that wasn’t his problem, was it? In big finance it was every man and woman for themselves.

  Jenna stared up at Adrian Bell’s second-floor office window from the doorway across Rosemary Street, her eyes flickering between the window and street level as she waited for the delivery that would change Bell’s life. She smiled at the approaching postman and he smiled back, the sight of a beautiful redhead gazing at him making his day. Jenna wound a long auburn curl playfully around her finger and watched him grin as he imagined the feel of her hair against his chest, then she broke his gaze and opened her handbag, pretending to be engrossed with the contents inside.

  The postman shrugged and turned towards the building, holding a white padded envelope in his hand. Up you go, Mr Postie, take it to the second floor and then reappear without your charge. One minute later he did, just in time to see Jenna turn and walk off down Wine Cellar Entry. She’d seen everything that she needed to. The parcel had reached its goal. Now all she had to do was wait and then she could score off the final name on her list.

  ***

  1 p.m.

  “Davy, have you checked out the links between Linton and McCafferty yet?”

  Davy glanced up from the page he was frowning at and frowned at Craig instead. “Yes. S…So far there are none.”