He’d walked too far ahead to hear Liam’s response, which was probably just as well, and as he pushed at the low door of the cottage-like station, he wondered what would greet them inside. He had visited a station in Fermanagh once where the desk sergeant had kept chickens, but this was sheep country so maybe a lamb or two might come gambolling out.
Thankfully there was no livestock to be seen, but the station’s small, warm waiting area, strewn as it was with quilted cushions and low-slung rattan chairs, was a far cry from the no-frills, hard-seated ambience that Jack Harris maintained at High Street. That station reception seemed designed to dissuade wrong doers, whereas this one seemed to welcome them in.
Craig walked up to the reception desk and rang a brass hand-bell that definitely wasn’t standard issue, its musical ding bringing a round woman in less than formal uniform hurtling from the back room. As she was doing up her top button and straightening her belt Liam appeared, and the W.P.C. scanned his six-foot-six enormity so slowly it was as if she never expected to reach the top of his head.
When she’d come back down to earth she turned to the marginally less outsized Craig with a smile.
“Can I help you?”
Her voice was a low, soft burr that reminded Craig how attractive some country accents could be. He was so used to the harder tones of Belfast he’d almost forgotten.
He nodded at the woman greeting. “We’re from the Murder Squad in Belfast. We received a call about a woman who’d been found.”
The constable’s smile froze on ‘Murder’ and she nodded them, rictus-like, to the rattan seats and disappeared swiftly whence she’d come, only to return a moment later with a man whose three stripes and well-polished shoes said he was her boss. Her earlier dishevelled appearance suggested that he might have been something else as well.
The sergeant took charge immediately, beckoning the detectives across again and reaching out a hand to shake theirs in turn.
“Murder Squad, eh. And why might you lads be interested in a missing person?”
Liam showed his warrant card automatically, watching amused as the man twitched into an on-guard position at the sight of his rank.
“It’s a long story, Sergeant….”
“McCausland. Sir.”
“Well, Sergeant McCausland, myself and the chief superintendent here…”
McCausland gave a gulp.
“…have been tasked by the Chief Constable to deal with this, so we would be grateful if you could show us to your guest.”
The woman shrank into the background, the trauma of dealing with two senior officers apparently too much for her. McCausland shook his head apologetically.
“You can’t see her, sir, because she isn’t here. She was picked up on the road by a local farmer and brought here around two o’clock, but she’d been wandering in the woods for a while so she was in a bad way. We managed to get her name, Veronica Lewis, but that’s all. Just enough to see she’d been listed as missing and contact the Crime Unit. An ambulance took her to the local hospital an hour ago. One of my lads is with her there.”
It was all Liam could do not to swear. Craig shot him a warning look and asked the million-dollar question.
“And where would the hospital be?”
McCausland lifted the desk flap and moved past them to the front door, pointing the men back the way they came.
“Fifteen miles that way. You can’t miss it. There’s a big purple sign.”
As Liam stormed past the pleased looking sergeant and got into the car, Craig thanked the rural lovers with a smile.
****
Annadale Embankment, Belfast. 6 p.m.
John had hung around the lab for as long as was feasible, but even he had to admit there was only so long you could watch a DNA analysis running without turning to stone. Mike Augustus had finished Billy Regent’s P.M. earlier and confirmed what he’d already known, that the squaddie had died from a bullet to the brain via his right temple. The summary on Peter McManus held the same diagnosis, referencing his forehead, albeit fired from a much larger gun. Both reports had been written and filed, Regent’s body already identified by his mother, and McManus just lay waiting for his wife, returning from holidaying with their kids in Scotland, to give him the inevitable nod.
But that would have to wait until tomorrow, and in the absence of his anticipated post-briefing pint at The James the pathologist had finally run out of excuses not to go home, and was standing now with his key extended, about to insert it reluctantly into his front door lock.
It wasn’t as if he didn’t like his home. He and Natalie had spent the nearly two years since they’d got married turning it into a Scandinavian hygge dream that was the envy of all their friends. And it wasn’t that he didn’t love his wife: she was a dynamo who’d added an adventure to his life that he’d grown up as the only child of elderly parents never expecting to have. It was just… well, nowadays he never knew how she would greet him.
She’d always been tempestuous but now she was moody and cranky as well, flying off the handle at him for the slightest thing. The rest of the time she was locking herself in the study, and when he listened at the door he often heard her arguing with herself. As her parents were fine and they hadn’t had a fight about anything in particular, he’d assumed that her self-flagellation was something to do with work; the life of a general surgeon wasn’t easy.
So up till now he’d let things lie, in the hope that they would settle on their own, but as his key turned in the lock and the door opened to the sounds of crockery being slammed hard into the sink, John Winter, the most easy-going man imaginable, decided that he had finally had enough.
He stormed into the kitchen and grabbed the Le Creuset pan that was about to follow the crockery, wresting the orange object from his tiny wife’s hand and holding it above his own head. Natalie’s glare said that it had been the wrong move.
“What do you think you’re doing? I was using that!”
John set the pan down hurriedly, well out of reach, and perched on a stool at the breakfast bar.
“For what? An assault on the dishes?” He warmed to his theme. “What’s been wrong with you lately, Nat? You’re either shouting and banging things, or locking yourself in the study and not speaking to me at all. Is it something that I’ve done?”
He reached for her hand, only to have it snatched away.
“It’s nothing!”
She made to leave the room but he blocked her exit, glaring down at his red-faced wife.
“Speak to me, Nat, please. Tell me what’s wrong.”
When she tried to duck past him, he blocked again.
“Move, John.”
“No. Tell me what’s wrong.”
She glared up at him. “There’s nothing wrong. I’m just tired.”
“No, you’re not. You slept for hours last night and you haven’t been on-call all week.” He drew her to him. “Just tell me if it’s something that I’ve done.”
She wriggled away. “It’s nothing you can help me with.”
“That’s not an answer.”
When she tried to duck past him this time, John moved out of the way, and he thought that he read surprise on her face. When he spoke next the pathologist’s voice was flat.
“I’m your husband, Natalie, and I love you. But if you won’t let me help you then perhaps you need to speak to someone else.”
His last word was drowned out by the slam of the kitchen door.
****
Woodgrange Hospital. Tobermore, County Londonderry.
Veronica Lewis’ thin face was turned away from them on her pillow, just as it had been since they’d entered the ward. After ten minutes in which she’d given them nothing but her name, address and date of birth Craig left his deputy to it, beckoning the young P.C. who’d accompanied Lewis there out into the corridor.
“Did Mrs Lewis say anything at all to you on the way here?”
John Ryan narrowed his eyes as if it was a trick questi
on, but Craig soon realised the look wasn’t one of suspicion but the fear of saying something wrong. After a long moment, the constable nodded.
“After she gave me her name and details, she asked had her disappearance been mentioned on the News, sir.”
Craig was taken aback. Either Lewis had the wrong idea about how they dealt with people who had only been missing five days, or she thought she was more famous than she was. He corrected himself immediately; Veronica Lewis didn’t think that she was famous but that someone she was linked with was, and that the police might inadvertently have leaked something to the press.
It might be something they could use to make her talk.
“Did she say anything else at all? Mention her son, or say where she’d been?”
As Ryan shook his head his hair flopped over his eyes; it was black and curly and rambling down towards his neck. It was on the tip of Craig’s tongue to tell him to get it cut but he changed his mind: rural policing probably required more relaxed rules and those curls were undoubtedly a big hit at the local weekly dance.
“Only that she’d been in the woods, sir, and that she’d been hooded and brought there in a car boot by two men.
Damn. That meant she couldn’t have seen its registration or her assailants’ faces, not that she’d have given them either if her current behaviour was any guide. Still, the news angle might be leverage. Craig nodded the P.C. to return to her bedside and send Liam out.
He joined his boss in leaning against the corridor’s eau-de-Nil painted wall.
“What do you think, Liam?”
The D.C.I. inhaled deeply before speaking. “She’s been battered fairly hard, boss. Bruises on her face, back and legs, and restraint marks on her ankles and wrists.”
Craig nodded. “We need John to look at her. He’ll be able to say if they came from a beating, or just restraint followed by rough handling when she was dumped. Give me a minute.”
He took out his phone and made the call, saving John from spending another evening alone in front of the box.
“I can be down there in an hour, Marc. It’s a straight run on the M2.”
“Don’t tell Liam that. It took him twice that long.”
He turned back to see an offended expression on the D.C.I.’s face.
“If we’d just been heading for the hospital I’d have found it, no problem! It was going to that backside of nowhere station that got me lost.”
“Yeh, yeh, and nothing’s ever your fault. Anyway, Constable Ryan’s just told me something that could prove useful.”
He repeated what Lewis had said about the News. Liam’s response was to rub his hands gleefully.
“We’ve got her! If we say a politician’s just appeared on the six o’clock news, appealing for a friend of his to be returned-”
Craig shook his head. “She’d have to have been mentioned by name. And it’ll have to be a newspaper. She could check the TV and find out that we’d lied.”
“It’ll have to be a paper that isn’t online then. She could ask to see it on the ward computer.”
Craig’s face fell.
“We’re done then. They’re all online.”
It was Liam’s turn to take out his phone. “Oh, ye of little faith.” Craig was saved from asking who he was calling by his next words. “Davy boy, are you with your delectable lady by any chance?”
Craig smiled. Maggie Clarke, Davy’s fiancée, was News Editor of The Belfast Chronicle, one of the country’s biggest tabloids, and not averse to helping him with his work.
After a five-minute call, Liam hung up with a smirk.
“You heard all that. They’re mocking up a page saying that the Earl has appealed for help finding Veronica Lewis, a dear friend of his wife’s, who designed her dresses for the Dublin Horse Show last year. He’ll text me with the web link in a minute.”
Ten minutes later they were looking at a mocked-up Chronicle front page that no-one but them would ever see.
“OK. You thought of it so you should show it to her, Liam. Just let me do the build-up first.”
“Lead on.”
Lewis was lying in the same position as they’d left her, so Craig told Ryan to take a break and then perched on the edge of her starched counterpane.
“It seems that you’re a famous lady, Mrs Lewis. Friends in very high places. I’d wondered why the Chief Constable had asked us to find you when you’d only been missing for a few days.”
Despite her efforts to ignore him, Craig thought he detected a tiny thaw. He nodded Liam to show her the link.
“This is the cover of this evening’s late edition Belfast Chronicle. It’s coming out at nine o’clock, so if there’s anyone who you think should be warned before they see it, I suggest that you give them a call.”
As Liam held out his phone Lewis jerked upright, grabbing it from his hand. The detectives watched as her already pale face paled even further and then as she jabbed frantically at its keys to make a call.
Craig motioned his deputy to move away.
“We’ll leave you in peace for a few minutes, Mrs Lewis.” Adding beneath his breath. “And after that resounding confirmation that the Earl is involved, once John has checked you over we’ll be taking you straight to High Street.”
****
The Demesne Estate Police Station. 9 p.m.
Reggie Boyd blew out an exasperated puff of air that lifted his lengthy eyebrow hairs half-an-inch, then he shook his head and continued reading the witness statements in front of him, beginning to despair of humanity. Criminal cases were like jigsaw puzzles and the police relied on the public to help them find the missing pieces, but canvassing the residents of the Travis Estate had been even less use than he’d hoped; a mixture of unanswered doors, silent stares, and, his particular favourites, the mouthy ones who told his P.C.s to ‘piss off’, calling them the names of various farmyard animals and imbuing the words with a venom usually only heard from rioting yobs.
The Travis was supposed to be Loyalist estate and they’d been asked to help solve the killing of one of their own MLAs, and yet his uniforms hadn’t elicited a single useful statement amongst the forest of felled trees on his desk.
The veteran sergeant corrected himself. Maybe they had one. He lifted the single page that he’d set aside and read it through again. Kelly Atkins, number three Brookeborough Tower. She’d been hanging up her washing in the small back yard of her ground floor flat when she’d noticed Billy Regent rushing past just before half-past-two the afternoon before. Reggie read the verbatim statement aloud, hoping it might make the words develop more weight.
‘I’ve knowed Billy since we wus both young, and he was in a hell of a hurry to be somewhere, I knowed that much.’
‘Which way was he heading, Mrs Atkins?’
The interviewing officer had helpfully recorded his own words verbatim as well. It was a technique that Reggie hadn’t seen employed much but he’d soon be telling his own staff to do the same.
‘Fer Carson Tower. I thought it was weird ’cos he lived in Faulkner with his mum and we’an. Molly she’s called. Lovely wee thing.’
‘Was Mister Regent carrying anything, did you notice?’
‘Nah. He wusn’t.’ Reggie could picture her inserting a pause for effect before delivering her next words. ‘Mind ye, the bloke he were with wus.’
The sergeant scribbled down a reminder to visit Kelly Atkins and get more detail about the second man; if he’d been privy to the debate that Craig and John had had earlier that day then he’d have jumped in his car right away. However, he wasn’t, so instead he continued reading.
‘What was it that the other man was carrying, Mrs Atkins?’
‘A gym bag, it looked like. You know, one of them sort wi’ a logo on the side. Ye can get just as good stuff down Primark fer a fiver, so why they pays hundreds just fer a stupid badge beats the life out of me.’
Reggie could picture her arms folding as she’d discussed the financial idiocy, and remaining folded as she
’d carried on.
‘He needed the gym, mind. The other man, nat Billy. Ar Billy always had a lovely build.’
‘Why do you say the man needed the gym, Mrs Atkins?’
A curled lip was bound to have preceded her next words.
‘Well, he wus tall enuf, but a reel scrawny article. Hardly a man at all beside Billy. Mind ye, when ye see all the cut af sum of them pop stars nowadays…’
The … was Reggie’s own addition. If there had been any onward discussion about modern music the constable had had the good sense to leave it out, and the statement had ended with Kelly Atkins leaving to collect her children from school.
Reggie set down the piece of paper and glanced at his watch. Eight-thirty. His wife would have dinner on the table in an hour and she’d be expecting him home long before that. He was just about to lock up the station and head there when some instinct born of decades of experience made the Donegal man think again. He’d met the Kelly Atkins of this world, and despite the danger they lived amongst they were usually decent, truthful sorts. She’d taken a risk telling them what she’d seen so the least that he could do was follow it up properly.
So, instead of turning left out of the main gate of the Demesne, towards the Knock Dual Carriageway, home and food, Sergeant Reginald Boyd turned right, towards Belfast City Centre, the M1 south and the Travis Estate. He had no way of knowing it but he was about to uncover one of the jigsaw’s most important bits.
****
Kyle Spence knew he should be at the Travis interviewing Eileen Regent, but he loathed contact with relatives, especially ones who might cry on his suit. Besides, the woman had just viewed her son’s dead body so she’d need some time alone, and with any luck another day would change Craig’s mind about him interviewing her and he’d give the task to someone more sympathetic like Annette.
It was enough rationalisation to justify the ex-spook making the call that he’d wanted to make all day, and ten minutes later he was parking up a Cathedral Quarter alley to walk the remaining few yards to his destination on the less favoured side of the street. The venue was one of the quarter’s lesser known pubs, as yet undiscovered by the local hipsters and yuppies, although he conceded mournfully that it was bound to happen soon. Then it would be all poncey micro-brewery ales, and cocktails with curly straws. But for now it was just the sort of pub that Spence liked: dark, almost empty, and with whatever punters that were there of the borderline criminal sort. This was the sort of place where secrets dropped, from the mouths of people who got paid by the word.
The Cabal (#16 - The Craig Crime Series) Page 12
