The History Suite (#9 - The Craig Modern Thriller Series)

by Catriona King

  “W…Why? Is it important?”

  Craig nodded. “It might be; I’ll tell you in a minute. Do you have anything else for us?”

  Davy shook his head. “I’ve background checks running on every s…staff member but they’ll take a while to come through. I’ll map people’s movements that morning as well.” He frowned slightly. “Checking out everyone on the research suite might be a stretch, chief. Do you w…want me to go ahead?

  “Yes. The whole unit; Newman and Reilly wards. We’ll get warrants if necessary.”

  Craig scanned the group for any other contributions then he nodded Ken to report on their meeting with Tim Taylor. Ken’s English accent echoed through the room, making Nicky smile. She loved his voice and a quick glance told her that Carmen did too; now she just had to love the rest of him.

  “Superintendent Craig and I went to the university to meet with Professor Taylor, who was, to put it mildly, odd. He seemed far less interested in his patients’ welfare than in his own pursuit of youth and it looks like he set up the research suite to find ways to stay young.”

  Craig smiled at the truism.

  “Apart from being a middle-aged man with a much younger wife and an obsession with youth, Taylor came across as arrogant and unpleasant. But I don’t think he killed Eleanor Rudd, if anything he seemed shocked when he heard about her death.” He turned to Craig. “Actually, that’s a thing, sir. Why wasn’t Taylor called down when they found the body? Especially if Hamilton, his deputy, was away on leave – although Taylor didn’t seem to know that either. In fact, he doesn’t seem to know much about what’s going on in his unit.”

  Craig nodded. It was a good point. Why hadn’t someone told Taylor that it was Eleanor Rudd who was dead? Ken carried on.

  “Then we met with Dr Winter and he confirmed Taylor’s self-absorption.” He gave Craig a puzzled look before he made the next comment. “The Super asked Dr Winter if whoever had strangled our victim had been wearing a ring.”

  He handed back to Craig who smiled.

  “The killer wasn’t wearing any rings. There would have been a mark on Eleanor Rudd’s neck if they had been.”

  Davy cut in. “That’s why you wanted to know if Adrian Cooke was married.”

  “Yes. Taylor is and unfortunately he wears a ring to prove it.”

  Liam was the next to interrupt. “Taylor could have removed it before he strangled her.”

  “He could have, but his reaction when he heard it was Rudd who’d died makes me believe not. The ring was just a grope in the dark.”

  Annette shook her head. “Not true, sir. If whoever strangled Ellie Rudd didn’t wear any rings, that’s something. Yes, they could have removed them before they killed her, but how likely is that in the heat of the moment, and why bother if they were wearing gloves?”

  Craig shrugged. “That’s supposing Rudd was killed in the heat of the moment, Annette. Someone could have been waiting for her for hours. That’s what makes Davy’s movement-mapping essential. We need to rule people in or out of that linen room area between nine and eleven o’clock.”

  He nodded at Ken to continue but his face was blank. “I don’t think there’s anything else, sir. Except that we’re awaiting the victim’s tox-screen from the lab.”

  Craig straightened up briskly. “OK. Davy, you know what to do. Carmen, you know your way around computers, can you help Davy with the checks? Jake and Liam, go back to the unit tomorrow and see how quickly you can get through the rest of the interviews, Ken and Joe can help.”

  Annette gave a little wave. “What can I do?”

  Craig made a face. “You’re coming with me to see Eleanor Rudd’s grieving family.”

  Chapter Four

  Holywood, County Down. 10 p.m.

  Craig pushed a strand of spaghetti around his plate until it finally split in two. He selected another, repeating the routine while he thought about the case. A metal spoon rapped his hand, brutally interrupting his ruminations; Mirella Craig hadn’t spent hours bent over a steaming pot of pasta for her son to play with it! In fact she hadn’t spent hours bent over anything, it had only taken her thirty minutes to prepare dinner, but that wasn’t the point.

  As Craig yelled “Ow!” she swooped in and grabbed his plate, depositing its contents in the bin.

  “I was eating that!”

  Mirella faced her first born with her hands on her ample hips and began to berate him in a half-Italian, half-English stream. The English part said.

  “You play with food, no eat it. You must no like.”

  The Italian half was less polite but Craig could see both of them about to bring on tears. His mother was a volatile Roman Italian, made even more volatile by her creative musician side. She might have retired from being a concert pianist, but her artistic temperament definitely hadn’t been put out to grass.

  He rose and gave her a hug, under the amused gazes of his laid-back father and sister, who were both about to laugh. He shot them a warning look and mollified his mother by taking a fresh plate of food. As Craig tucked in Mirella squinted suspiciously at him.

  “So! It wasn’t that you no like food. You think of murder! At my table you think of murder!”

  She swung towards her husband looking for support, but Tom Craig was gazing eagerly at his son.

  “What’s the case, son? Is it the one at the hospital?”

  Craig was puzzled. “How did you hear about it?”

  Craig Senior waved towards the TV. “It was on the News.”

  Craig sighed heavily. Great, the media had got hold of it, now they’d be crawling all over the E.M.U. He was inventing threats for any of his team who leaked things to the press when he realised he had no control over the ward staff. He sighed again and asked his father what the report had said.

  “Just that someone had been found dead under suspicious circumstances.”

  Suspicious circumstances; the magic words. A death at a hospital wouldn’t have attracted attention otherwise. Craig was about to say something about the case when both men became aware of Mirella’s proximity and her hands again placed threateningly on her hips. Father and son clammed up as Lucia marvelled at the power of her mother’s ire and made a note to emulate it when she had kids. Craig shot his father a look that said ‘I’ll tell you later’, then, like the good son he was, he returned to the Friday night family meal.

  ***

  Saturday, 11th October 10 a.m.

  Craig had waived the standard eight o’clock briefing in favour of one at twelve; there was too much legwork still to be done. He and Annette were on their way to see Eleanor Rudd’s parents and the others knew their tasks. As he pulled his soon-to-be retired Audi into the narrow street off the Newtownards Road his heart sank. Outside their destination sat a row of cars, far more than would feasibly belong in the small cul-de-sac. Craig’s heart sank further as he recognised one of the drivers; Ray Mercer, The Belfast Chronicle’s scummiest reporter and its most highly paid. Mercer didn’t earn the big bucks for erudite prose; he earned it by writing sensationalist crap. Crap that sold tabloids.

  Craig and Annette glanced at each other then they opened the car doors simultaneously, swallowing the words they wanted to say to Mercer and replacing them with expressionless professional masks. Craig went first to break through the crowd, with Annette following in the path he cleared. At the front door of the house stood their nemesis; Raymond James Mercer, a wizened, bitter weasel of a man, made even more bitter by his impending divorce. He was thin, dark and angular, with a nose that could have opened cans. His harsh looks served him well, scaring eager cub reporters out of his way, but his motivation had nothing to do with reaching the truth or even getting the best story; whatever interviewees said Mercer wrote whatever he liked. His God was money and the Chronicle’s was the same. It was the perfect match.

  Mercer smirked at Craig then flicked his eyes down Annette’s body in a judgemental, chauvinistic arc. Craig willed her not to react, knowing that ten other reporters
stood ready to take a snapshot if she did. He spoke before anyone else could.

  “Move aside, Mr Mercer.”

  Mercer drew himself up to his full five-feet-eight and sneered up at Craig.

  “Or what, Craig? You’ll threaten me again?”

  Their last encounter had been at a particularly gory murder scene, where Craig had intervened to stop Mercer rattling Liam’s cage so hard that Liam picked Mercer up and rattled him. To be strictly accurate he hadn’t actually threatened the reporter, merely informed him that there were quite a few criminals who would like his home address.

  Craig ignored the taunt and reached above Mercer’s head for the door knocker. When Mercer saw he was getting no reaction he turned to Annette and prepared to insult her in his customary way. Annette raised a hand to stop him.

  “If you’re going to call me ‘frumpy cop’ again, save it, Mr Mercer. Sticks and stones.”

  Mercer licked his lips lecherously. Craig was about to intervene when a glance from Annette said that she had it under control.

  “I was just going to say you’re looking well, Inspector. Lost weight?” What he said next shocked Annette to the core. “Maybe you’re in love?”

  She stared into the journalist’s tiny eyes, searching for the meaning of his words. Did he know about her affair? Was he about to expose her in the press? But she saw nothing there except Mercer pissing in the dark to see what he hit. She followed Craig through the opening front door, but not before both men had seen her flinch.

  The door opened inwards to reveal a small woman standing in a short, narrow hall. She was around fifty, with the stunned look Craig had seen on relatives’ faces many times before. It began as shock from losing a loved one in a premature and evil way then morphed into a daze from the questions and procedure, press enquiries and neighbours’ inquisitive looks. The paraphernalia of murder left people lost and exhausted sometimes for years, and the woman in front of them bore its stamp, along with the half-dried tears of a mother who’d just lost her child.

  Margie Rudd turned slowly down the hallway and led the way into a sunny back room; half-house and half-conservatory. The sun seemed incongruous somehow in a murder victim’s home but October was often the brightest month of the year. She turned towards a man that Craig hadn’t noticed, hidden as he was in a winged armchair that obscured his presence from the door.

  For the first time since she’d opened the front door Margie Rudd spoke. Her accent hailed from the country somewhere and Craig guessed that her voice was normally strong, in the way a working-class voice was often loud to make itself heard in a world dominated by the rich. But today there was no strong voice, just a weak whisper that murmured her husband’s name.

  “Billy, the police are here to speak to us. They want…” She paused for a moment as if unsure whether she needed to say what came next. Her frightened glance at her husband said that she was also gauging his potential rage. However the sums stacked up they fell on the side of her saying “…want to…to talk to us about Ellie.”

  At the mention of his daughter’s name William Rudd lurched forward angrily. He was a thick-set man with a neck the size of his head and hands that were red and rough. They clenched into fists far too quickly and Craig understood his wife’s frightened glance. He made a note to check domestic violence calls just as Rudd sprang to his feet.

  “Don’t mention that whore’s name in my house!” He waved his hand angrily towards the front door. “Look what she’s brought to my door. Peelers and news scum, digging into our lives.” He pointed a thick finger at his wife. “It’s your fault, she was your daughter. Staying out all hours of the night and dressing like a slut. It’s not a wonder someone killed her!”

  Annette moved towards Margie Rudd as she shrank back against the door and Craig stepped into her husband’s line of sight. The next thing Rudd would do was raise his hand to his wife, to take out his frustration at the world. If he did they would have to nick him and he would do it happily, but it would only defer and magnify the beating she would get when he was released.

  “Calm down, Mr Rudd.”

  Rudd’s face reddened and spittle gathered at the corner of his mouth. “Don’t you tell me to calm down, peeler. This is my house.”

  Craig raised his hands in truce and Rudd pushed him out of the way, grabbing for his wife. In a second Craig had Rudd’s burly arm up his back and had pushed him to the floor.

  Billy Rudd yelled at the top of his voice as his wife cowered behind Annette. “You can’t do that. This is my house!”

  Craig’s normally warm voice was ice. “That doesn’t mean that you can hit your wife.”

  Rudd’s voice was muffled by his position but they could still make out his words. “I’ll hit her if I want to. I own her, that’s what the bible says.”

  Craig sighed despairingly and glanced at the conservatory door, calculating whether they could get Billy Rudd out the back without some canny reporter spotting them. He nodded to Annette then said the words that opened a can of worms that had probably needed opening for years.

  “William Rudd, I’m arresting you…”

  Annette threw across her cuffs and as Craig secured his prisoner she helped Margie Rudd to gather some overnight things. Then they walked their murder victim’s unhappily married parents through their back garden for the trip to High Street.

  ***

  St Mary’s Hospital. 10.30 a.m.

  Liam swung his legs onto the desk in the office they’d been allocated on Newman, just as Jake and Ken entered the room. Jake shoved Liam’s legs aside to make room to sit, nodding Ken to take the only free chair.

  “Well, that was a waste of time. Everyone on Reilly was too busy with chess, aerobics and organising day trips to the coast, to pay any attention to what was happening here on Thursday!”

  Liam nodded and smiled at the younger men. “It’s fair cheered me up.”

  Ken wrinkled his brow, wondering if he should take the bait. “OK, I’ll ask. Why?”

  Liam grinned broadly. “Because it tells me that there’s life after retirement. That bunch must have an average age of seventy-five but they’re still out partying every day.”

  Ken laughed. “I’d hardly call chess and tea dances partying.”

  “You will when you’re their age.”

  “One of the old ladies said she remembers when there was no TV!”

  Liam’s reply was heavy with sarcasm. “O.M.G., how did people survive?”

  He noticed Jake studying his notebook with a perplexed look on his face.

  “Penny for them, lad?”

  Jake considered for a moment and then tapped on a page. “This old boy’s ninety-two and there’s hardly anything wrong with him. How is that fair?”

  “Fair on who?”

  Jake realised what he’d said and that they didn’t know about his grandfather yet. He shook his head. “On anyone younger who dies.”

  Liam shook his head solemnly. “Ours is not to reason why, lad.” He swung his legs down and his feet hit the floor with a bang. “OK. What have we got?” He nodded Ken on.

  “Right. There are twenty-two long-stay residents at the moment; they have room for up to thirty. There are six couples and ten single residents, seven women and three men. The age range is sixty to ninety-two, like Jake said. The ward also runs day sessions for any local pensioners who wish to attend.”

  “Like tea dances?”

  “Exactly. Sing-songs, day trips and the rest.” He turned over the page. “OK, out of twenty-two most are mobile, although there’s one who uses a wheelchair, two who use Zimmer frames and four canes.”

  Liam raised a hand. “Do you know why?”

  Ken nodded. “One of the Zimmer framers has nerve paralysis in her left leg and one had a hip fracture about six months ago; the frame’s part of her rehab. The cane users mostly have arthritis and the man in the wheelchair had a leg amputated from diabetes.”

  Liam made a face, glad that his last blood sugar had been OK.<
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  “OK, so that leaves us fifteen mobile and seven with limited mobility.” He turned to Jake. “How many have the upper body strength to strangle a fit young woman?”

  Jake thought for a moment, tapping his pen against his teeth until it irritated Liam so much he grabbed it. “Well?”

  “I’d like your opinion on that…sir.”

  The ‘sir’ was said in an amused tone and Liam thought back wistfully to Jake’s early days on the team, when reverence had tinged the word every time. He was getting as cheeky as Davy.

  He rephrased his question.

  “Your best estimate as to how many have the upper body strength, then. Start with the ones who definitely don’t have it.”

  Jake nodded. “Four of the old ladies looked as if they would blow away in the breeze. I tested the grip of the others and out of the remaining nine women only two could even squeeze my fingers hard enough to make them hurt.”

  “Any chance they were faking?” Cynicism ran through Liam like graphite through a pencil.

  Jake shook his head. “I got Ken to try and he agreed.”

  Smith nodded.

  “OK. So that gives us two women with a slightly strong grip. How strong?”

  “One of them said she could tear telephone directories in half when she was young.”

  Liam raised an eyebrow. “Was she in a circus?”

  Jake shook his head. “No. She had five children and she used to wring out their nappies by hand.”

  Everyone laughed and Liam gestured towards Jake’s notebook. “OK, put those two names down then, although I’m still sceptical. Ken, what about the men?”

  Smith recited from memory. “There are nine men in total on Reilly and I’d say that three of them could have done it. The others are too weak.” He hesitated for a moment until Liam said “spit it out.”

  “One of the three is the man in the wheelchair, so he couldn’t have done it. That only leaves two.”

  Liam shook his head. He could see where Ken was coming from but he’d leave any de-selection of suspects to the boss.