The Cabal (#16 - The Craig Crime Series)

by Catriona King

  “Because I found these, sir. In the bins at the back of her flat.”

  With a flourish, she whipped an evidence bag from inside her stab vest. Reggie leaned down to peer at it and made out the shape of two plastic gloves inside. The effect on him was electric and Prentiss instantly sensed his change in mood, her speech accelerating in step.

  “You see, sir. I heard a CSI talking about latex being found on the dead man, so, I thought gloves. Don’t ask me why, but I decided to have a rummage in all the bins around the estate, and I found these in the bin belonging to number fifty-two in Andrews. A Mrs Sally Johnston lives there. She’s the lady.”

  Even being pedantic the sergeant couldn’t have faulted her process, so he ushered her ahead of him into the lift, radioing for a criminal records’ check on Sally Johnston on the way. By the time they’d reached her apartment he knew that the worst thing Sally Johnston had ever been chastised for had been smoking in the toilets at her local church hall, and her warm smile when she answered her front door told the experienced policeman that if Sally had disposed of the latex gloves in her bin then she’d probably only worn them to clean the fridge. It didn’t negate the find, and when the housewife denied ever dumping the gloves, following up with “My bins are emptied on Tuesday evenings” meaning the gloves had been dumped after that, and “I’ve a latex allergy” both things that could easily be checked, Reggie Boyd’s hopes soared again.

  The gloves would go to forensics who would, he hoped, match them with Billy Regent’s trace evidence, and even more hopefully find a print or DNA that belonged to his killer, confirming that they had stripped off their gloves as they’d escaped from Carson’s roof and dumped them a distance away in Sally Johnston’s bin.

  If that happened he would buy Emily Prentiss a chocolate bar himself.

  ****

  The C.C.U. 3 p.m.

  “Davy, come and look at this.”

  The dark-eyed analyst glanced up from his computer screen, calculating swiftly whether he had the time for Ash’s request. He had searches running on McArdle, Bell, Loughrey and Peter McManus, not to mention checking Veronica Lewis’ email and trying to crack the book code. Thankfully Craig had given him Rhonda to help scan the Travis Estate CCTV and Ash was checking the DNA and the smuggling, otherwise he would never get out of there that evening and he and Maggie had a booking to check out a wedding venue.

  He’d been engaged to the newspaper editor for six months now, and so far it was going well, except that their families kept dropping hints about setting a date so the occasional visit to a wedding venue or an appointment to taste cake was proving necessary to keep them quiet. Tonight’s booking was just the latest smokescreen. They would get married when they were ready, and they’d already decided that when they tied the knot they would do it literally with a druidic hand-fasting ceremony where their wrists were tied together with silk rope. They’d do it at one of Ireland’s many mystical sites, followed by a short honeymoon on the remote Clare Island, spent in its totally unique Lighthouse Hotel.

  They would do the traditional church thing as well to keep the old folks happy, but only after they’d already been husband and wife for a while. The secrecy had been Maggie’s idea and the hand-fasting his, the idea of someone literally binding them together feeling more meaningful to both of them than any wedding ring.

  The analyst’s daydream was interrupted by Ash repeating his request, this time with an added shove that almost knocked Davy off his chair. He glared at his junior, wondering how to make him treat him like his boss and show him the respect that everyone accorded Craig, although he grudgingly acknowledged that might have been because the detective had a gun.

  He rose from his seat to loom over his colourful workmate.

  “What do you want, Ash? I’m busy.”

  The words had been meant to sound threatening, but Ash grinned at his PC screen, clearly unintimidated.

  “Check this out. It’s Veronica Lewis’ phone calls; in and out.”

  As he scrolled down a list of asterisks Davy wondered what he was supposed to be seeing.

  “Big deal. So those ones are w…withheld.”

  Ash hit enter with a flourish, and the asterisks disappeared leaving a list of numbers in their wake.

  “The phone companies have just unmasked them for me.”

  Davy pulled over a chair and sat down. “Which one’s got you so excited?”

  Another tap and one number was highlighted in green, so many times that the screen looked like a golf course.

  “How many calls?”

  “Eighteen times since the beginning of May. All of them lasted between five and thirty seconds, silent calls would be my bet. Guess who owns the number?”

  “Some pervy bloke who didn’t have the bottle to speak to a real live woman?”

  Ash shook his head, looking pleased with himself. “Wrong. It’s a woman.” He switched to a second screen. “This one. Mrs Annabel Montgomery.”

  Davy frowned. The middle-aged woman whose image he was looking at looked normal, even pleasant, but her name seemed familiar and he couldn’t say why. Ash saved him from having to ask.

  “Or, if you were being retro, Mrs Leonard Montgomery.”

  The fashion for naming women as extensions of their husbands thankfully having become outdated decades before.

  Davy gawped at the screen. “Minister of Finance Leonard Montgomery?”

  “The very man.” Ash lounged back in his chair with a smug look on his face. “It looks like Loughrey and the Earl aren’t the only naughty politicians around. My bet is that Annabel sussed out that old Leonard was phoning someone a bit too often and did some phone stalking to find out who it was. She probably called Lewis’ office the first time just trying to find out who the number belonged to and then realised hubbie was having dealings with ladies of the night.”

  The phrase made an eavesdropping Rhonda giggle like a schoolgirl; with her Goth tendencies ladies of the night always made her think of vampires.

  “So… Annabel kept phoning Veronica Lewis’s office just to wind her up.”

  Davy shook his head, puzzled. He’d never understood what people got out of silent calling.

  “This is dynamite, Ash. W…Well done.” He gestured at the screen. “Are any of the other withhelds significant?”

  “Yes, actually. Quite a few came from Parliament Buildings, but there’s no way of tracing which extensions they came from. But either politicians or their civil servants have been phoning Veronica Lewis, so it looks like the chief was right about these parties.”

  ****

  Craig had a lot of respect for Bill McEwan, but not a lot of time, the reason being that when James Murray had defined the word monosyllabic for the Oxford English Dictionary in eighteen-seventy-nine he must have had the Armed Response Commander in mind. A meeting with the man was an interesting study on the value of small talk, and more precisely how much of even the most basic business meeting was comprised of words that had nothing to do with work. ‘Would you like a coffee’, ‘dreadful weather’ etcetera; phrases that until you tried to converse without them seemed trivial, but after a meeting with McEwan carried the import of a diplomatic treaty.

  Nevertheless, Craig attempted to oil the wheels by opening their encounter with a courteous “Haven’t seen you for a while, Bill, how’s the family?” providing the “Good. Fine.” answers himself before getting to his reason for being there.

  “I’m going to cut to the chase, Bill.”

  A slight twitch of the commander’s heavy eyebrows acknowledged the words.

  “So…forensics and pathology have shown that Billy Regent didn’t kill himself and there was someone else at the scene, someone wearing latex gloves. They shot Regent and made it look like suicide.”

  Craig was aware that he hadn’t paused for acknowledgment or comment. It sounded strange to his ears, but preferable to deafening silence.

  It was what it was so he hurried on.

  “There was
DNA under Regent’s nails, and we’re following up on that, but, given that the shot that killed him was fired while your men and mine were at the estate, and there was no-one but Regent on the roof when we checked, that means the killer must have escaped while we were there.”

  He was surprised when McEwan both shook his head and spoke. “You can’t say that.”

  “What? That the shot was fired or that they got away?”

  “That the shot that killed Regent was fired when we were there.”

  It was the longest sentence he’d ever heard the man utter, and it didn’t make sense.

  Unless…

  “You’re saying Regent might have already been dead when police arrived.”

  The commander gave a curt nod.

  “As a possibility you might be correct, but what then would have been the point of someone firing another shot when you were there? It only attracted attention and made D.C.I. Hughes lock down the tower. Plus, the pistol was only one bullet short, not two.”

  McEwan acknowledged the logic with a shrug that was as close to saying he was wrong as Craig knew he would get. But his point, while wrong, had been useful; it was making Craig think things through again.

  “Unless they actually wanted our attention…” He shook his head; he would consider that option another time. “OK, for now let’s just say that they didn’t. So, the shot happened while police were there, the tower was already cordoned off, and yet the shooter still got away. That means the shooter was either disguised as, or actually was, a resident who slipped down from Carson’s roof and into an apartment, or they were wearing uniform and mingled with your men.”

  McEwan’s response was dry. “Or a suit and mingled with yours.”

  His logic was impeccable, except for one thing. Only three detectives had been there during the lockdown: Aidan, Liam and him, and they’d have noticed a fourth man in a suit. Craig continued in an even tone, refusing to let the commander’s defensiveness get to him.

  “Uniform is more likely. We’re interviewing all of the residents, so I’d like you to interview your men and ask if they saw any uniformed officers they didn’t recognise.”

  “They all know each other.”

  This time Craig barely supressed a tut. The strong silent act was starting to piss him off.

  “I meant someone else in police uniform, yours or ours. Someone they might have assumed had arrived with us. OK?”

  A grunt was all he got to say that McEwan agreed, and as Craig left, glancing pointedly at the commander’s wedding ring and thinking that his wife must be an angel, he prayed that the man’s verbal economy at work meant that he stored up most of his words for romance.

  Chapter Ten

  The C.C.U.

  Nicky stared at her PC screen slack-jawed, scarcely able to believe what was playing in front of her eyes. She’d been checking the local news bulletins, part of her routine every few hours just in case something new happened in the world that might affect a case, when the video had just started to play. This was the second time that she’d watched the one-minute clip, in the hope that she might have been delusional the first, but sadly there could be no doubt. There, as large as life and wearing an expression of grief so fake that not even a soap actor would have been proud of it, stood Roger Burke, IBP MLA, and now, by dint of his inherited leader position in the party, the new First Minister of the land, holding a public press conference!

  Quite apart from the fact that the man had been sequestered by the Chief Constable, Burke was expounding on events that might affect their case. Nicky listened until the end of the clip and then beckoned frantically for Liam to join her as she watched it a third time, knowing that by doing so she was neatly passing the responsibility for informing Craig and taking any subsequent fall-out to the D.C.I.

  ****

  Interviewing Jenny Wasson’s two comrades in arms had yielded about as much information as Annette had expected it to. The women described the same blindfolded journeys as Wasson, but whereas she had been aware enough to take note of her surroundings, they had apparently been out of their heads on drugs. The only venues they could describe sounded like they’d been painted by Jackson Pollock.

  By lunchtime the three cops had had enough of walking on the wild side and moved on to the suburban half of their task, interviewing Peter McManus’ grieving wife. A call from Nicky said that she’d secured them passage past the Stormont Mafia and close protection team to arrange a meeting with Emily McManus at her well-appointed Helens Bay home, probably with IBP advisors censuring every word that she said.

  The detectives made a pact before they left Annette’s small car; while one of them elicited answers from the widow, the others would head her censors off at the pass. So it was that Annette found herself leaning in close to the First Minister’s widow asking the difficult questions, while Aidan and Jake distracted the men placed there to ensure that she toed the Independent Britain Party line.

  “Can you think of any reason someone might have wanted your husband dead, Mrs McManus?”

  “Emily.”

  Annette smiled again. The first time she’d smiled was when she’d entered the warm family sitting room and seen a jeans clad Emily McManus playing on the floor with her toddler son. The boy was sitting on the lawyer’s knee now, less as a barrier and more as a bond between the women. Annette suspected that he was a comfort blanket for his mother as well.

  “Emily. Can you?”

  The younger woman rolled her tired blue eyes, red rimmed and shrunken from hours of crying.

  “Opponents across the floor, perhaps. Or rather, not them but their hard-line supporters-”

  Annette cut in gently. “Dissident Republicans? I can understand your reasoning; Republican versus Unionist, but why now? Had your husband had threats from them?”

  The widow set her wriggling toddler at her feet, shaking her head. “No more than usual. Well, not that Peter had told me anyway.”

  She waved a hand vaguely through the French windows towards a small rock garden, where a three-man protection detail was hovering, grudgingly giving them some space. “They would know more about it than me.” She wrinkled her smooth forehead. “But if you’re referring to more recent reasons for Peter being threatened…he had ambitious party rivals.”

  “Such as?”

  A name emerged without hesitation. “Roger Burke, Peter’s deputy. He’s always wanted the leadership.” She glanced around the room distractedly. “But could I see him killing Peter to get it?” She fell silent for a moment and then reluctantly shook her head. “No…not that Burke wouldn’t have wanted to, you understand, but I honestly don’t think he’d have the balls.”

  The last few words were clipped and dismissive making Annette see the prosecuting barrister that Craig had described. The widow went on.

  “The only other reason I can think of is the EU Referendum.”

  She glanced quickly at the party advisors, who were halfway across the large room straining to hear their conversation through the wall of sound being caused by Aidan Hughes’ strident voice, deliberately asking them things about government that the D.C.I. didn’t care if he never knew.

  Emily McManus dropped her voice and leaned in. “Peter was genuinely Pro-EU, you probably know that, but there are many in the IBP that aren’t. But whether they’d kill him…” As her voice tailed away her gaze skittered around the walls. “To kill someone for what they believed in…I can’t…”

  Annette spotted her impending meltdown and knew that she only had time for one more question.

  “The man we believe killed your husband was an ex-soldier, a Loyalist and Unionist as far as we can tell. Can you think of any reason why such a man -”

  The young mother cut her off. “Traitor. That’s why.”

  “The killer was a traitor to your husband, you mean.”

  She was surprised by the violent shaking of McManus’ head.

  “Not him. Peter. Plenty in the Loyalist community saw him that way. T
hey thought Peter was a traitor to the UK for wanting to stay in Europe.”

  Her gaze dropped to her son, who even at his young age already looked like his dad.

  As Annette caught the others’ eyes and signalled that it was time to leave, Emily McManus murmured “He wasn’t a traitor, he wasn’t” and started crying fresh tears.

  ****

  “SHUT UP!”

  The words emerged with a force so strong that the listener felt them like a blow, even down the phone line.

  “Just do as you’re fucking well told! Your ticket will be at the airport, so get ready to go on my call. Until then, keep your head down, and if anyone starts asking questions, you stick to the cover we agreed.”

  The Fox’s words didn’t require an answer, his silent ‘or else’ loud and clear. When the silence between them continued a full minute they both knew he’d made his point and the call ended without niceties.

  It didn’t matter. All the goodbyes in the world couldn’t change their shared history, or alter which one of them really held the power.

  ****

  The C.C.U. 4 p.m.

  Much as Craig enjoyed peace and quiet, after spending time with the world’s most recalcitrant man he welcomed the cacophony that greeted him when the lift arrived on the tenth floor. The noise was loud even in the hallway, but when he entered the squad-room it hit him like a wave, making him stop dead in his tracks and search around for its source.

  There was the usual tapping and clicking of computer activity, and the gathering roar of a kettle coming to the boil, but that was just everyday squad-room white noise, nothing to make him want to tell people to shut up. He focused harder, landing on Liam, the usual culprit when his quiet was disturbed, but the deputy was simply sitting, large feet up on his desk, with the only noise he was generating the sound of a pen being tapped against his teeth.

  Craig did however notice that Liam tensed when he saw him standing there, and how tensely he rose to said large feet and started to approach, but he was still engrossed in finding the source of the row, so his gaze moved on to the next suspect on his list; Aidan Hughes, whose Belfast accent was so strong that it could strip the varnish off wood. And OK, yes, Aidan was talking, to Nicky, but not at the top of his flat-vowelled, town-crier’s voice. That only left one corner of the open-plan office unchecked, and as the thing you’re looking for is always in the last place that you look for it, Craig discovered the source of his impending headache straight away.