She’d accused him of stalling on looking at places. And he knew he had, but even he couldn’t understand why.
“Sorry to focus you on the case, John, but I need to get back. You said you had something more on our male victim?”
“He had Ketamine in his system, and Rohypnol.”
Roofies and Ket, the old favourites. One to make the victim suggestible and the other to paralyse them so they couldn’t fight back. A bullet to the brain would be easy after that. Or a ‘no-brainer’ as Liam had so indelicately put it.
Craig nodded. It was a drug combination they’d seen only two months before, in the murder of Nigel Murdock, a consultant at St Marys’ hospital. The Drugs squad had said there was a lot of Ketamine floating around Northern Ireland.
“There was something else as well, Marc. We got a hit on his prints.”
Craig leaned forward, more interested now. “Which database?”
“The Republic. A case in Dublin. Driving under the influence four years ago. Des said Davy’s running them through the others to check for more hits.”
He slid a sheet of paper across the desk. It carried a picture of their dead man and his name. ‘Paul Ripley’.
“Paul Ripley. Great, it’s a start. I’ll get Davy on to next-of-kin.”
“He might want to contact church headquarters as well.”
Craig glanced up from the photo. “Why?”
“Because he’s the Reverend Paul Ripley, late senior churchman of this parish.”
Craig whistled in surprise. He was interrupted by his mobile ringing. He clicked it on, still thinking about John’s news. “Yes Liam. Any sign of our suspects yet?”
He listened for a minute, then nodded and grunted goodbye. He sat back and loosened his tie in a way that John knew signalled the end of the day.
“No joy with finding them?”
Craig shook his head. “Nope. The woman’s nowhere to be found and Morgan’s apparently away for work until tomorrow.” He rubbed his eyes tiredly. “To be honest I’m glad, John. We’ve been working all weekend, so an early night will do us all good. It will still be there in the morning.”
***
Tuesday. 12pm.
The court rose for lunch and James Dawson rushed into his chambers, already disrobing. He headed for the car-park and gunned his car through the exit from Laganside Courts, slipping smoothly into the slow-moving midday traffic. He was heading for the docklands building that housed the man he urgently needed to see.
No one would question his presence at Dockland’s Coordinated Crime Unit, or that of his protection detail, following a respectful two paces behind. Always trying to blend in, but never managing it, their hyper-vigilant fitness giving them away.
Dawson pulled into Pilot Street and parked in the Unit’s car-park, pressing the basement lift button impatiently. He disembarked on the floor he’d chosen and thrust open the glass doors without announcement, heading for the office of the man he’d come to see. The man’s sedate secretary rose urgently as he approached, hesitating to move towards him, his hostile body language screaming a warning to anyone nearby.
Dawson pushed through the office door and banged it closed behind him, leaning over the desk towards his friend. He spoke in an aggressive whisper, too low for the secretary and armed detail outside to hear the words.
“We’re in trouble and you have to get us out of it.”
The sleek uniformed man smoothed his hair down, and gestured at the chair across the desk. He spoke quietly, with the lack of affect that comes from having killed once too often.
“Sit down James. You’re scaring the help.”
His calmness infuriated Dawson even further, fanning already hot embers. He ignored the chair and brought his palm down hard on the desk. The officer saw his secretary reach for the telephone, preparing to call for support, so he rose and opened the door.
“Could Judge Dawson and I have some tea please? Earl Grey for me.”
He smiled at her confusion as she realised that the angry man was a senior member of the Judiciary. She nodded, moving hastily across the floor towards the kitchen. He re-entered the room smoothly, taking his seat again behind the desk.
James Dawson paced the room aggressively. He was still standing when the P.A. re-entered with the tea. The man thanked her with a smile and decamped to a coffee area in the corner, staring up coolly at Dawson.
After a moment he spoke, in a voice laced with sarcasm. “Why don’t you just wear a badge saying ‘guilty’, James? You might as well. Your body language is already saying it for you.”
Dawson glared at him and grudgingly took a seat.
“They’ve got the girl’s name. I heard the talk in court.”
The man shrugged, straightening his trousers and pulling at the crease with sharp precision.
“So they know who she is. So what? It means nothing without a link to us, and they don’t have that. Hold your nerve man.”
“Sylvia’s still out there.”
The man glared at him. “I thought she was being dealt with!”
Dawson shook his head. “She gave him the slip. Clever little whore.”
The man thought for a moment and then shrugged again. “It doesn’t matter, she’ll never talk. If she did, she would implicate herself.”
The Judge leaned forward. “Call your men off, they’re getting too close.”
The man smiled with a mixture of pride and concern at the murder squad’s abilities. Marc Craig was on the case and he was good. It wouldn’t take him long to fill in the gaps. “I’ll see what I can do at this end.”
An angry look flashed across Dawson’s face. “Don’t ‘see what you can do’, just bloody stop them! This is partly your fault. If you hadn’t told Ripley which D.N.A. to plant they would’ve had nothing.”
“They still have nothing. It was only blood from some local thugs. The murder squad will lift them and that’ll be that.”
Dawson gawped at him. “For God’s sake, man! You didn’t think it through, did you? The very fact the D.N.A. was there at all will set them hunting. And who could have accessed it except the police?”
“Try the men whose D.N.A. it is! And St Marys’ labs, or the doctor who took the blood. The list is endless. Just because you know how Ripley got it doesn’t mean that they do. I’ll say it again, man. Hold your bloody nerve.”
“What the hell were you thinking of, letting him display her in a church like a trophy? She could have just disappeared quietly.”
The man shook his head. “Not once we realised who she was. That silly bitch Sylvia was supposed to supply us with orphans. As soon as Ripley found out the girl’s real name she had to die or we’d all be finished.” The policeman’s voice growled more loudly than Dawson had ever heard it and he recoiled.
“She couldn’t even have been traded - her father’s an international diplomat for God’s sake! We had to kill her and she couldn’t just have disappeared or he would never have stopped looking. This way he’s got a body to mourn and he thinks she was the victim of some local nutcase.”
His voice regained its normal monotone. “Don’t worry so much. I’ll make sure Craig pins it on someone.”
Dawson startled slightly at the mention of Craig’s name - he knew from his performance in court how determined he was. He shook his head despairingly. “You should have called me as soon as you found out her name.”
They lapsed into silence for a moment while the policeman sipped his Earl Grey. Dawson thought of something. “What were the men’s names?”
“What men?”
“The ones who’s D.N.A. you used.”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean you don’t know? You chose them!”
“Well actually no, I didn’t. I chose one of them; Tommy Hill. Nasty little bastard. I put him away for twenty in ’98 and those pricks up at Stormont let him out early.” He sneered in disgust. “I pulled a recent file with his name in it. The case fitted and they’d taken his
blood for elimination, so I gave Ripley the names to get the blood out of St Marys’ Labs.”
“My God! It was that random?”
“Not random at all, Hill’s a known killer. The recent case was his daughter’s murder and she was close in age to our girl. It would be easy to make it look as if he was unbalanced over his daughter’s death, and killed another young woman through grief.” He smiled. “Besides, it’s about time he did the rest of those years.”
Dawson nodded, conceding the tenuous link to Hill’s daughter. It might stand up in court. “Who was the other man?”
“Just one of his crew.”
He glanced at his watch and stood up briskly. “I have a two o’clock meeting at Stormont and you need to get back to court. I don’t want the Greer case being messed up. That woman’s as guilty as sin.”
He smiled at his own irony and then opened the door, speaking loudly enough to ensure that the whole floor heard his platitudes. “Lovely to see you, James. Give my love to Catherine and Melanie. We must have dinner sometime soon. Goodbye now.”
Then he closed the door quickly, leaving the Judge standing in reception under the scrutiny of the curious P.A. He exited the floor quickly followed by his detail, to pass on his anger to the recipient of his next call.
***
“How the hell could she have gotten away? You only had to go round there and finish her off quickly!”
Dawson was sitting in his car in the courthouse car-park, yelling down the phone at the man that he really blamed for Paul Ripley’s stupidity. Ripley had been an idiot but Morgan had no bloody excuse. He was an intelligent man. A cardiac surgeon for fuck’s sake!
“OK, it was my bad. She’s a clever little bitch and I admit I got careless. But we don’t see you getting your hands dirty, James, do we?”
“I can’t kill someone, I’m a sodding Judge. I wouldn’t last two days in prison without being knifed.”
The protection officer watched Dawson from the rear door of the court. He was gesticulating wildly and that meant that some poor bastard was getting it in the neck. Just as long as it wasn’t him he’d be happy.
Morgan was still arguing. “Tough! If we go down for this then we’re all going down together, James. Anyway, stop making a federal case of it. Sylvia won’t say anything; she has too much to lose.”
“For your sake you’d better hope so. What about the D.N.A.? Whose bright idea was that?”
Tim Morgan sighed heavily. “When Paul found out she had family who were bound to come looking, he panicked and called me. He had no option but to kill her. He couldn’t let her go. She’d seen him, and the house in Marrion.”
“So? You could have just dumped the body somewhere, instead of turning it into a sodding sideshow!”
Morgan rubbed his eyes tiredly and smiled at the waitress refilling his coffee. He’d been planning this quiet lunch at his surgical club for a week. He really didn’t need it ruined by James Dawson.
“No, we couldn’t. Her father’s a diplomat, James. That means this is an international incident. If she’d disappeared he’d have hunted for her. We’d have had Interpol crawling up our ass for years and then bang goes our European market. At least with a body and the killer’s D.N.A. all over it, her father gets closure. And the police get their crime solved.” He paused. “There’s no link between Paul’s death and hers. Everyone will believe his was suicide. Pressure of work.” He laughed coldly. “God was obviously a tough boss.”
He sipped at his coffee and sniffed indifferently. “Besides, he had to go. He was too stupid to live. Now everyone’s happy.”
Dawson snorted at his distorted idea of ‘happy’. “What about the D.N.A.?”
“That was no problem. They keep old samples for years on the off-chance that cases are re-opened. I work at St Marys on Fridays, so one quick trip to the freezer and Bob’s your aunty.”
“I know one of them was Tommy Hill – good choice. Who was the other?”
“Some idiot on the same case. A real animal. He’s been done for rape and assault before, so he was perfect. His blood work was in the same freezer as Hill’s so it only meant one trip. Less chance of being caught.”
Dawson’s tone became insistent. “What was his name?”
Morgan shrugged. James had always been a picky bastard. He’d been pedantic at school and he hadn’t changed. He wasn’t going to give up until he got the name.
“Oh, for God’s sake. Hold on.” Morgan reached into his pocket and flicked on his Smartphone, scrolling through the notes section until he found it. Dawson realised what he was doing and yelled down the phone.
“Tell me that you haven’t written it down somewhere? You cretin! Get rid of it immediately.”
Morgan mouthed an obscenity at the phone and then read the name out in a bored tone. “He was called Rory McCrae. Happy now?”
Morgan had expected his reassurance to end the conversation, if not pleasantly then at least in an armed truce. So he was stunned by the roar that greeted the name. Dawson bellowed down the phone so loudly that his protection officer heard the yell and started over from the gate. As he got closer he realised that Dawson wasn’t in trouble, the person on the other end of the phone was. Tim Morgan dropped his phone, shocked at the sudden rise in volume. When he retrieved it from under the table Dawson was running through every expletive he knew.
“You fucking imbecile, you’ve ruined us all. McCrae’s in Maghaberry prison. I put him there myself. You planted the D.N.A. of a man who couldn’t possibly have done it. Fuck, fuck, fuck. You stupid fuck!”
Tim Morgan froze and cold sweat ran urgently down his back. He realised what he’d done and what it would mean for him. Ripley had been expendable, and he could be next. Unless he could find a way out of it.
“We need to convene the club.”
***
“Liam I’m heading to High Street for two o’clock. Did you manage to find Morgan yet?”
“Twenty minutes ago, at some posh lunch-club. Fairly ruined his dessert.” Liam guffawed and Craig nodded.
“Good. What about the woman, Sylvia Brooks?”
“Nothing yet boss, but we’re still looking. The lads called at her office but it was locked up, and we’ve no home address yet.”
“Tell them to keep on it. Can you ask Davy to give John a call? It’s about our male victim’s prints. John got a hit in the Republic, and I want Davy to keep on it.” He paused for a second before continuing. “He’s a Reverend.”
Liam whistled and Nicky turned around, knowing that it meant new information. “That’ll give the Chronicle some tasty headlines. I can see them now. ‘Vicar rushes to God’ will be the first.”
Craig smiled at his wit.
“Here, boss. This is a bit coincidental, isn’t it? One body found in a church, another one a churchman? There has to be a link.”
“I’ve always thought the cases were linked, but I still want us to work them separately, Liam. They have to be safe convictions, and they won’t be if we start looking for shortcuts.”
“Right enough. OK, I’ll tell Davy and see you there at two.” He went to sign off then remembered something. “Oh, aye. A Sergeant Jake McLean is looking for a quick word with you, boss. Was he the one up at Stranmillis, when we met the two girls?”
“That’s him. What’s his number?”
Craig wrote it down quickly and then signed off, grabbing a five minute sandwich and a call to Annette, just to make sure she was OK. Then he sat in his elderly Audi and called Stranmillis.
“Sergeant McLean, D.C.I. Craig here. What can I do for you?”
“Well, it might be nothing sir, or it could be important. I don’t know which.”
One of those. He needed a sounding board that wouldn’t make him feel stupid and Craig was happy to help. After all, he had I.D.ed Britt Ackerman for them.
“Fire ahead.”
“Well, we had a strange call earlier to a house in Marrion Park.”
Craig sat bolt upright, inter
rupting him quickly. “What number?”
McLean stared at the phone, surprised. He’d expected Craig to feign interest but not at this level.
“Number 42.” The house next door to Paul Ripley’s final resting place. This was too much to be coincidence.
“Sorry sergeant, continue please.”
“Well, the call came from a woman who was found by neighbours in the street. She screamed fire first of all, but then she told them a man was trying to kill her.”
Craig was tempted to ask more questions but he decided against it. There was a story here and he wanted to let it come out.
“Then, as soon as she was safe she refused to say anything about him. Except some lame story that he was from the council and that’s why she’d let him in. It was obvious she was lying. The constable told her she needed to help us because he might hurt someone else, but she completely refused. So he got suspicious and called me in.”
Craig smiled to himself, the lad was good.
“I did a background check on her. She’d given us a false name, Sylvia Brooks.”
Craig snapped his fingers in a way he thought people only did in bad movies, and gripped the phone hard.
“Her real name is Sylvia Bryce and it turns out she was a Madam in Ballymena for years. She was lifted several times and is well known to the local team. Then all of a sudden in 2010 she appears in Belfast. Big house on the Malone, offices in Cornmarket. Mrs Respectable. I was just about to threaten her with ‘obstructing enquiries’ when she ups and asks to meet the sketch artist. She’s downstairs with him now, probably creating some fantasy man that we’ll never find.”
The Sylvia Brooks that Hannah and Britt had met was really Sylvia Bryce. Craig wanted to fill in the gaps for McLean, but he decided to see what else he’d got.
The Waiting Room (#4 - The Craig Modern Thriller Series) Page 13
