Death to Pay

by Derek Fee

  The team assembled at six in front of the whiteboards. Every space was now covered with information on the crimes. Harry Graham had located a photograph of Francis McComber from the Social Welfare and Moira had added a blown-up version of the photo she had removed from the young girl’s file.

  ‘We’re almost there,’ Wilson said as he began the briefing. ‘Francis McComber, single mother, has an affair with Joan Boyle’s husband who is a bit of a Jack the Lad. Francis also has one in the oven. Lizzie and the gang find out and decide to chastise the woman who is cuckolding their friend. The chastisement gets out of hand, and they kill McComber. Lucky for them their boss is connected and her husband probably has experience in getting rid of unwanted bodies. The McComber girl is dumped in a housing estate where she’s sure to be found, and her mother is removed to a shallow grave somewhere she won’t be found. Our killer is on the revenge trail. Lizzie is gone because she was the boss, Boyle because her husband was the cause and Morison for some reason we don’t know at the moment. Anyone want to argue with this hypothesis?’

  The team remained silent.

  Wilson turned to Moira. ‘We have to find the girl.’

  Moira said. ‘She was adopted by a couple called Glynn who subsequently moved to the mainland. The husband died a few years later in Cheshire, and the wife moved on. The question is where to. I’ve put requests out to our colleagues on the mainland. Maureen Glynn was about thirty-five when her husband died so it’s likely that she remarried. I’m trawling through the marriages from the date of her husband’s death.’

  ‘Good,’ Wilson said. ‘We’ve all had a tough day, and we’re almost there on this theory. If it’s the right one we’re close to nailing the case. First priority is to find where the girl is today.’

  CHAPTER 63

  The e-mail from forensic was in his in-box when he returned to the office. McIver’s Glock 17 fired the bullets that killed Ivan McIlroy. Forensics had sent him a copy although he was no longer SIO. He supposed it was a question of professional courtesy. He had lost someone who had not only been a colleague but a friend. His mind filled with pictures of Ronald, sitting studiously at his desk, or in the back bar of the Crown his head tilted backward laughing at a joke at the closure of a case. That was the way he wanted to remember him. Not the dishevelled man with the sunken eyes and the two-day old beard. If he needed any further evidence of what this job did to people, it had been before him in the interview room. Maybe he didn’t need this anymore. How many more colleagues would he see needing their heads retuned before he took the hint? The job chews people up and spits them out. Only bottom feeders like Jennings thrive. Bottom feeders, bag carriers and paper pushers, they were the new lords of his universe. He looked at his phone. No message from Kate. They hadn’t had sex since the miscarriage which he totally understood. It was a road that she didn’t want to tread for some time. He remembered what he had said in the hospital room. It was inevitable that things would change. The question was how much and in what direction. He looked out into the squad room and saw Moira hunched over her computer terminal. He didn’t want to lose her but there was a part of him that hoped she would follow Brendan. Sooner or later, the job would get to her and he didn’t want to be around when that happened. He picked up his jacket and switched off his desk lamp. He was dog tired. When this case was over he was going to take a few days off. Get up late and watch old films on TV all day.

  Moira was on a roll. She was running through reams of certificates of birth, death and marriages. This was a crash course in genealogy. If she ever decided to ditch the PSNI, she could apply for a job with those agencies that find heirs to their inheritance from long-lost relatives. She had searched high and low for the Glynns and finally discovered that they’d moved to Cambridge. Then it was a question of going through every marriage certificate in the area of Cambridge for the ten years after their arrival. Plod, plod and more bloody plod.

  When Wilson left the office, he was on his way home. However, his car seemed to find it’s way to a parking place beside the Crown. He sat in the car for several minutes trying to decide and then switched off the engine. As he pushed in the door of the Crown, he entered a different world. Nobody here was murdering anyone or contemplating putting a plastic bag over the head of their comatose spouse. Well, not on the surface anyway. He glanced at the bar and a barman was waiting for his order. It was one of the advantages of being a local. This really was decision time. He signalled for a pint of Guinness. He would just have one pin, and then it would be home.

  Moira glanced at her watch. It was eleven o’clock, and light from her desk lamp was casting an eerie glow round the squad room. She might be a Fenian bitch, but she could get the job done. Two more years of marriage certificates to go through. It had to be there. Pages flashed across the screen. Then she pressed stop. Maureen Glynn married to a Joshua Cummerford. It was a Eureka moment. Margaret, Maggie, now it made sense. Margaret McComber was Maggie Cummerford. Her hands were shaking when she took out her phone.

  ‘Boss.’

  ‘Aye,’ Wilson voice was soft on the other line.

  She could hear the noise of a public house in the background. ‘I found her,’ she couldn’t keep the excitement out of her voice. ‘The wee girl, the McComber girl is Maggie Cummerford.’

  ‘You’re sure,’ Wilson’s voice was suddenly alert. ‘You know where she lives?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Find out. Send a car for me to the Crown. Call Harry and get him in.’

  It was almost midnight when they assembled in the squad room. ‘Show me the papers one more time,’ Wilson said. He had consumed what seemed like a gallon of coffee since Moira’s phone call. Just when he needed all his wits about him, he decided to run off the rails.

  Moira printed off copies of all the papers, the fostering document, the adoption papers, the death certificate for Mr Glynn, the marriage certificate for his wife and Joshua Cummerford and the piece-de-resistance the change of name certificate for Maggie Cummerford nee Margaret McComber.

  ‘Outstanding work,’ Wilson patted her on the shoulder. ‘You must be exhausted. Go home, Harry and I can take it from here.’

  ‘You’ve got to be joking, Boss. You think I could sleep without being in on the collar.’

  ‘Harry, any news on the tactical team?’

  ‘They’ll be ready by one o’clock.’

  ‘Are we sure she’s inside?’ Wilson asked.

  ‘Two uniforms saw the lights go out about midnight. Nobody’s left since then. I would never have believed it, Boss. That skinny little woman beating the heads off people.’

  ‘They don’t normally have ‘murderer’ tattooed on their foreheads, Harry. You’ve been around long enough to know that.’

  ‘When do we do it?’ Moira asked.

  ‘As soon as the tactical team is ready.’

  Maggie Cummerford wiped the sleep from her eyes. The knocking on the door of the house was incessant. She heard the shouts of ‘police open up’ but she had no realisation that they were intended for her. She picked up her mobile phone and looked at the time. Ten minutes past one o’clock in the morning. What the hell was going on? She stumbled from her bed and was on her way downstairs when the front door was literally knocked off its hinges. In seconds, the hallway was full of armed policemen.

  ‘On your knees,’ the lead policeman shouted pointing his gun directly at Cummerford. ‘Hands behind your head.’

  She knelt and put her hands behind her head. A woman officer came forwards and frisked her then nodded to her colleagues who holstered their guns. She looked up and saw Wilson entering the house following by McElvaney and Graham. She smiled.

  ‘Good morning, Maggie,’ Wilson said. ‘Moira, would you do the necessary please.’

  Moira stood forward. ‘Margaret Cummerford, I am arresting you on suspicion of the murder of Elizabeth Rice, Nancy Morison and Joan Boyle. You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence, if you fail to mention, when
questioned, something which you may later rely on in court. Anything you do say, may be given in evidence. Do you understand?

  ‘Yes,’ Cummerford said. ‘May I get dressed?’

  ‘You will be given clothes at the station,’ Wilson said.

  ‘I’m innocent. You’ll be sorry you did this,’ Cummerford said.

  Wilson stood in the squad room and watched Maggie Cummerford on the CCTV. She was dressed in an white jumpsuit and seated at the table in an interview room. Wilson had left her in the room for an hour to allow her to stew in her own juices, but she seemed completely calm, outwardly at least. Moira and Harry had done a quick and dirty recce of her apartment but had come up with nothing. Forensics were about to arrive, and the apartment would be taken apart piece by piece. If there was any evidence there, they were going to find it. The question was whether Cummerford had left anything to find.

  Moira walked into the squad room. ‘I hope forensics have more luck that us.’

  ‘Time to have a word with Maggie,’ Wilson said. He pointed at Moira. ‘You’re with me.’

  Maggie Cummerford looked up when the two police officers entered the room.

  Wilson and Moira sat in the seats across from her. Moira switched on the recorder and went into her rigmarole of date, time and who was present.

  ‘Well, Maggie,’ Wilson said. ‘It’s been a long road but here we are. We know everything.’

  Cummerford smirked but said nothing.

  ‘Maybe I should call you Maggie McComber.’

  ‘Call me what you want.’

  ‘Margaret McComber was the name you were born with.’

  ‘If you say so.’

  Moira took a paper from a file and placed it on the table. ‘A photocopy of your birth certificate,’ she said.

  Cummerford ignored it.

  ‘Your mother was Francis McComber, father unknown,’ Wilson read from the photocopy.

  No reaction.

  ‘Your mother disappeared on April 25th 1983 according to our records. Was that the day she was murdered?’

  Cummerford smiled.

  ‘You were there when she was abducted,’ Moira placed another paper on the table. It was a copy of the statement made by the six-year old Maggie McComber. ‘Nobody believed you.’

  No reaction.

  ‘When did you find out that your mother was murdered?’ Wilson asked.

  Cummerford sat back in her chair and crossed her legs.

  ‘It won’t help not to answer questions. We have the motive and we have you,’ Wilson said.

  ‘But you have no proof,’ Cummerford said. ‘Remember I attended all your briefings.’

  ‘Except for those relating to the Joan Boyle murder. That one was a real mess. The clean up must have taken forever.’

  Cummerford’s eyes suddenly looked sharper.

  ‘Yes, Maggie, we found something that links you to the house and the murder. Now is the time to spit it all out because we have enough to hold you and in the coming days, we’ll add to that. Now that we know who you are we only have to track your movements. We’ll place you at Malvern Street, somebody will have seen you torching the car, we’ll even place you at Archvale. It’s over.’

  ‘You’re bluffing,’ Cummerford said.

  Moira took a plastic evidence bag from the file and laid it on the table.

  ‘It’s hair,’ Wilson said. ‘And it’s got Joan Boyle’s blood on it but it’s not from her head. Now who else do you think that hair might belong to? DS McElvaney removed some hair from a hairbrush in your apartment. The DNA test is being done as we speak.’

  Cummerford squirmed back. ‘You can’t do this.’

  ‘You are charged with a capital crime. We can do anything we bloody well like. Now let’s go back to the beginning. When did you find out that your mother was murdered by Lizzie and her gang?’

  Cummerford slumped in her chair. ‘I want a lawyer.’

  ‘You will have a lawyer when you are charged, but we have some time before we have to do that. We’ve had a long day, and we’re ready to have an even longer one if that’s the way you want to play it. Wake up, Maggie. It’s over. The only thing that you can do now is to come clean and gain some brownie points with the system. Because if you don’t, you’re going to bring a shit storm down on your head the like of which you’ve never seen.’

  Cummerford stared at the small plastic sleeve on the table containing the hair and sighed. ‘One of Lizzie Rice’s gang sent me a letter via the orphanage last year. I always checked in with them on the off chance that my mother made contact,’ she laughed. ‘I half believed the bullshit about her running away. The old bitch who wrote was dying of cancer, and she was afraid to die with such a big sin on her soul. She described how they had hung my mother by her feet from a beam in their romper room and dropped her until her head almost hit the floor. Then one time they didn’t catch the rope in time, and her head smashed into the floor. That was much more fun. So they dropped her again and again until the top of her head was mush. Then they wrapped her body in bin bags, and one of their husbands disposed of her.’

  ‘That wasn’t so hard,’ Wilson said. ‘So you decided to avenge her death.’

  ‘I came back to Belfast thinking that I could get the case re-opened. I got the files under the Freedom of Information Act and saw that there wasn’t a hope in hell of getting anyone to believe what was in the letter.’

  ‘What about Historical Crimes?’

  ‘My mother disappeared. She was never murdered. The murderers were getting old and dying off naturally. I had to do something. I decided to speed up the natural process.’

  ‘So, you admit that you murdered Elizabeth Rice, Nancy Morison and Joan Boyle.’

  ‘No. I executed them like the state should have done if it was doing its job.’

  ‘You picked a particularly nasty way of executing them,’ Moira said.

  ‘I gave them the same death as they gave my mother.’

  Wilson leaned back in his chair. He needed a coffee. No he needed a pot of coffee. The next bit was going to take time. He signalled to those watching on CCTV for a drink to be brought in. ‘OK, Maggie,’ he said. ‘Talk us through the murders.’

  CHAPTER 64

  Wilson had been awake for more than thirty hours by the time the first interview with Maggie Cummerford was completed. There was a lot of backslapping as he walked through the station on his way to the squad room.

  ‘There’s a car waiting for you outside,’ Harry Graham said as soon as he walked into the squad room. ‘You’re wanted at HQ.’

  Wilson wheeled around without a word and headed for the parking lot. He slept in the back of the car during the twenty-minute journey to Castlereagh. He flashed his warrant card at the entrance and made his way to the top floor and the office of the DCC. Chief Superintendent Donald Spence was sitting on a chair directly outside the office.

  ‘Been waiting long?’ Wilson asked.

  ‘Long enough,’ Spence replied. ‘You look like shit.’

  ‘Nothing that a sleep, a shower and a fresh shirt won’t put right,’ Wilson cracked back. ‘Pain or pleasure?’

  ‘My guess is pain,’ Spence stood up and straightened his uniform.

  They entered the outer office together, and Jennings’ secretary pointed at the door of the inner office. ‘He’s waiting for you.’

  ‘I suppose you think I’m going to congratulate you about the Cummerford woman,’ Jennings began as they entered his office. ‘Well I’m not. I just received the file on the interrogation of McIver. We are going to be pilloried in the press. A long-serving police officer murdered two people, one of whom was his wife. Questions are going to be asked.’ He looked at Wilson. ‘I notice that he has already engaged a senior member of the Bar to represent him. I suppose he can thank you for that.’

  ‘He can hire who he likes I presume,’ Wilson said.

  ‘Sir,’ Jennings shouted. ‘You will address me as Sir.’

  ‘Yes, Sir,’ Spence said quick
ly cutting off any possible reply from Wilson.

  Jennings thumped his fist on his desk. ‘I’m not going to carry the can for your incompetence. I have every intention of speaking to the Chief Constable concerning the level of dereliction of duty on both of your parts.’

  ‘I don’t think that would be wise,’ Wilson said and added ‘Sir,’ as an afterthought.

  ‘You don’t think so do you?’ Jennings stood up from his desk. ‘If you’re still in the Force after this fiasco, I’ll make sure that you’re pounding a beat.’

  Wilson stood at his full height and looked down on his superior. ‘In defending ourselves, we may be obliged to explain that you gave permission for a serial killer to have access to the station and worse to attend briefings of the team investigating murders for which it appears she was responsible.’

  Jennings’ face went white and his mouth flapped open and closed without making a sound.

  ‘I wonder who’ll be pounding a beat when that piece of news hits the airwaves,’ Wilson said.

  Jennings fell back into his chair as though he was punched in the chest.

  Wilson could almost see the wheels in Jennings’ mind trying to turn and grapple with the threat. Wilson continued, ‘McIver’s legal representative has no desire to drag the PSNI over the coals. It might be wise for you to deal with her directly in an effort to ensure that the Force receives the minimum amount of negative publicity. Perhaps she has already considered how McIver’s deeds might reflect the difficulty experienced by PSNI officers and the stresses they are forced to work under. Then the Cummerford issue would have no need to see the light of day.’