It had been lust at first sight for her, and him too if he was to be believed, and they’d battled Nicky’s well-meant but nosy disapproval to fall in love, the PA’s protectiveness of Davy only easing when she’d decided that her intentions were honourable.
They’d had to work around Davy still living at home with his mum and grandmother as well, not for his sake but for theirs, the only man left in the family since his father’s death. They’d managed to survive all of that to get engaged, and some year soon they would tie the knot, but Maggie had a niggling concern that her desire to write a true crime novel might somehow divide them where other things had failed.
She shook her head at her own nervousness. Davy wouldn’t leave her for interfering in his world, no, her real nerves should be reserved for when she met Craig to discuss possible killers to write about, and made what might be the first of many requests. It wasn’t exactly that she found Davy’s boss scary, well, no scarier than her own. The news editor stopped herself mid-thought, tutting at her own dishonesty; if she was going to lie to herself before she’d even started writing the damn book then the only way was down.
She corrected her previous assertion. She did find Craig scary, in fact very scary at times, because he was that most perplexing sort of man; genuinely charming and nice to work for, and she believed Davy when he said that, and after his initial wariness of her because of her journalistic profession he had welcomed her into their social group, but… with Craig there was always a line that you couldn’t cross.
A thick blue line between the police and everyone else, a line that was warded with confidentiality and duty, and didn’t give a sod about anyone’s opinion unless they were on the moral side. Craig the man was charming, but Craig the detective didn’t care about things like public opinion, popularity or sound bites. She’d seen him grab a microphone pushed into his face by a reporter and chuck it into a bush, and getting a quote at a press conference with him in charge was an exercise in pulling teeth.
It had only been by sheer dogged determination and sticking to her word, and never leaking the things that she’d heard from the squad that Craig the cop had finally begun to trust her, a good eighteen months after Craig the man.
And that was what was making her nervous now; the thought that by the wrong approach or a single misplaced word she might undo all of that good work. Craig would never take her transgressions out on Davy, that wasn’t her fear, but he would give her that look. The look that was midway between disappointment and disgust, with a tinge of hurt thrown in, and she really couldn’t cope with that, so she had to be cautious in every step she made.
Maggie had set down her pen while she’d been thinking, gazing without actually seeing the MAC theatre opposite and the people toing and froing across the square, but now she lifted the well chewed implement again and began to make a list of tasks, from deciding her book’s title to its format, and on a deeply scored circle around all of them was written ‘speak to Craig’.
****
The Labs.
By the time he was due to leave for the briefing John had been on his knees in the archives for well over an hour, most of them spent hiding behind a filing cabinet for fear that Des might come looking for him again. The forensic scientist was about to do just that. Not, as John thought, to shout at him, but to give him a lift to the C.C.U.
In point of fact, Des had spent the previous hour ruminating, and had decided that one woman thinking he was a wimp didn’t actually matter, as long as that woman wasn’t his wife. Grace’s pity was a small price to pay to avoid a conflict that could have run and run.
Of course, he had no intention of telling John that he’d forgiven him, and fully intended to leave him stewing in his own juices for a few days more; it was the least that he owed him for taking his seventeenth century torturing iron, and now its companion piece thumbscrew as well! His precious possessions aside, John had transgressed against the ancient code of male solidarity, so he would have to pay.
John meanwhile was attempting to cough file dust from his lungs, so loudly that he didn’t hear the archive door opening and almost jumped out of his skin when a hand fell on his back.
“AGHHHH!!!”
The pathologist leapt to his feet and jumped backwards, his cries of alarm joined quickly by those of his baby daughter and a stream of disgusted invective from his wife.
“Look what you’ve done now! I’d only just got her to sleep!”
John’s eyes widened. “What are you doing here?”
He realised it was the wrong thing to say as soon as the words popped out.
Natalie’s eyebrows drew together in a frown. “I thought I’d bring our daughter to see where her father works, and Mike said you were down here. That’s what we’re doing here!”
John immediately went to have a conversation about the incompatibility of corpses, pathogens and infants, but quickly bit his tongue. If this was Natalie offering an olive branch, then he wasn’t going to break it in half.
He attempted a smile and leaned in towards his daughter, ooochy-coochy-cooing her into a tear-streaked smile. Natalie meanwhile was gazing around her.
“What are you doing down here anyway? These files look decades old.”
John ushered her towards the door. “They are, and the dust is awful. I don’t want Kit getting it in her lungs. Let’s go to my office and have a coffee.”
They passed Mike on the way and the look John shot the junior pathologist said that they would be having words about revealing his whereabouts.
When the parents were seated over coffee John asked a question.
“Not that it’s not lovely seeing you, but I thought you had an operating list today.”
Natalie shrugged. “My afternoon list was cancelled so I went home and collected Kit. We’re on our way to yoga now.”
Visions of small unformed bones being bent into awkward positions made John’s mouthful of coffee go down the wrong way. When his spluttering had subsided, he circled the issue cautiously.
“You mean you’re doing yoga and Kit is watching.”
Natalie shook her head cheerfully. “No. Kit’s doing it too.”
John could feel his temperature rising in a way that had nothing to do with his hot drink.
“How can a baby do yoga? Her limbs are so covered in fat she can hardly bend them, and there’s no way she could support herself in the Downward Dog!”
He was struggling to keep the panic out of his voice, but Natalie appeared not to have noticed how close to the edge her husband was.
“She can bend them just fine, and I’ll be supporting her in the posit-”
John’s struggling finally failed. “SHE CAN’T DO IT! You can’t do it! She’ll slip and hit her fontanelle, and she’ll twist a soft ligament, and-”
He realised that his wife was first gawping at him and then up on her feet. “You really think I’m that careless?”
He jumped up to face her. “Accidents happen, and I don’t want one happening to Kit. I for…”
Natalie’s eyes narrowed in a warning squint. “Don’t say it, John, because you’ll never be able to take it back.”
“I won’t? What about what you’re doing? You think it’s normal to make a nine-month-old do this?”
The surgeon’s cheeks flushed red. “Normal? What’s normal got to do with anything? Do you think it was considered normal in my family when I became a surgeon?”
“You were old enough to make the choice. Kit isn’t.”
John dragged a hand down his face, exhausted by the argument, and fell back into his seat. His next words were said in a quieter voice.
“I want us to see a therapist, Nat. This can’t go on.”
Her pale blue eyes widened. “What sort of therapist? A shrink?” Her jaw jutted out defiantly. “No bloody way am I seeing a shrink.”
John had a fleeting thought that the speed with which she’d rejected the suggestion might be significant, but right now he was more concerned about h
is child.
“Not a psychiatrist, a child therapist, and actually, a physiotherapist as well. I want to find out what’s physically safe for Kit to do and what isn’t at this age, before she has an injury that I know we’ll both regret.”
Natalie raised her eyebrows suspiciously. “Child therapist? Why? There’s nothing wrong with her.”
“No, but there is with our parenting. We believe completely opposite things on everything, from music to physical exertion, and we need to find some middle ground before Kit suffers for it.” His voice hardened slightly. “I’m making the appointments for next week, and until then no yoga, backpacking, or music except nursery rhymes. OK?”
It wasn’t so much her agreement as the absence of Natalie saying bugger-off that gave him hope, and the pathologist walked his family to the car feeling slightly happier. Whether he was right to trust his wife or delusional only time would tell.
****
Strangford Police Station.
Ryan Hendron re-entered the warm station desperate for a cup of tea; he’d had to wait two hours at the trench for the CSIs. Realising that there’d been no need for Sarah Reilly to wait with him, he’d sent her back to the station in a car, now he deferred his need for a cuppa for a moment and went in search of the GP.
He found her keeping the desk sergeant company in the staff room, and as he entered she jumped to her feet.
“Well?”
Hendron smiled at the instant results expected by anyone who’d watched an episode of C.S.I.
“Well, they took casts and photos of the shoeprints, but until they have something to compare them to we’ll be no further on.” He nodded at the teapot. “Is that still OK? I’m gasping.”
“I wouldn’t. It’s stewed.”
The bluff custody sergeant put on the kettle and left them to it.
“We need to get you home at some point, Doctor Reilly.”
Panic filled the medic’s eyes and her next words were blurted out. “I can’t! What if he finds me there?”
The detective made fresh tea as he answered, stirring the pot deliberately slowly in an attempt to calm her down.
“We have no reason to think that he’ll try. He enticed you to a neutral space before he kidnapped you, and why would he have done that if he’d been able to get to you at home? But I would advise you don’t go back to work until we catch him. We know he definitely has the surgery address.”
He placed a fresh mug of tea in front of her and sat down opposite. “Don’t worry, before I take you home I’ll be contacting the lead investigator in Belfast. He’s running all the cases, so I’m sure he’ll be pleased to hear that you’re OK.”
She was reassured slightly by the thought that being left alone might still be some time away.
“Why Belfast?”
The question confused him. “Sorry?”
“Why Belfast when I was found down here?”
Hendron set down his cup, understanding. “Belfast’s the mid-point between Antrim and Down where the earlier cases were. He’s a Chief Superintendent as well, so maybe Belfast was where they could find the first free officer of that rank.”
Sarah sipped her tea in silence for a moment, casting a covert glance at the DS. He was pleasant looking but not handsome, but his kindness and solidness more than made up for that. Besides, she was no oil painting herself, although her father called her comely, whatever that meant. The thoughts made her smile to herself and when she spoke again it was with a correction of sorts.
“Sarah’s my first name, not Doctor. Sarah Jane to be precise.”
****
The C.C.U. 4.30 p.m.
“Right. Everyone haul ass to the front, so we can get started.”
Craig rolled his eyes at Liam’s method of calling a professional meeting to order; he’d heard stag-parties convened with more delicacy.
He leant against a desk, folding his arms.
“What Liam just said, but with a please at the end.”
Liam turned towards him, offended. “I said please.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“Yes, I did. Haul ass means the same thing.”
Craig didn’t bother answering, instead helping himself to a shortbread that Nicky had released from her secret stash for the occasion. She kept a treasure trove of cakes, chocolates and biscuits locked in a cupboard beneath her desk, eking out their release like they were prisoners just granted parole.
He could only guess what would happen if she attempted re-arrest once Liam had spotted them; he’d seen his deputy eying the small cupboard greedily on more than one occasion, and knew it was only a matter of time before he launched a midnight raid.
His thoughts of burglary were cut short by Liam shoving him on the arm.
“All present and correct, boss.”
To Craig’s surprise the whole team was there, plus three attendees from the labs.
“John, Des, Mike, thanks for joining us. No work this afternoon?”
An immediately snapped back, “They’ll cope without us for a couple of hours, but you won’t”, told him more about John’s mood than he had wanted to know.
Craig let the crack pass and turned towards the whiteboard.
“OK, we have several strands to this investigation so we’re going to update each one methodically before we go to new information. First, the angles.” He perched against the desk again and held out a marker. “Andy, you’re up.”
The DCI declined the baton and instead nodded Davy to tap his keyboard. The X and Y axes that he’d used before appeared on the LED screen, and a second tap populated the space with lines at various angles. Andy rose and stood alongside them.
“OK, we’ve been running the lines through every different permutation we could think of, including using Davy’s computer programmes and The Met’s code-breakers, and the current news is that none of the suggestions work. Not barcodes, images, symbols, 3-D models, languages ancient or modern; absolutely none of them make sense.”
He tapped the screen with his finger, drawing a frown from Nicky whose house-proudness instantly made her want to jump up and wipe it.
“So… that took me back to the simplest ideas of all. Location and time. That is, could these lines possibly be a route map to some destination that we don’t know yet, from somewhere we also don’t know? And/or might some of them even represent times?”
He turned to the visitors. “The last two victims, Judith Roper and Walter Gruber, were left almost head to head, in a position that if we were looking at a clock would have read eight-twenty.” He turned again, this time to the DCI secondees. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but they were the only two victims found together, weren’t they?”
Deidre Murray nodded. “All the others were left alone.”
Andy nodded. “Good. OK, so then let’s just say that Roper and Gruber’s positions represent a time.”
Liam went to interrupt but the DCI halted him with a look.
“Just for the sake of argument. OK? Then I can take those two angles out of the equation and play about with the remaining ones to see what routes in Northern Ireland they might represent-”
Craig cut in. “Taking them in order of the bodies’ discoveries?”
Andy shrugged. “That’s about all I can do.”
Deidre asked a hesitant question. “OK…just one thing…during your checks, did you run the programmes for the sexes separately?”
“Sexes, ages in decades, eyes open, eyes closed, you name it, Davy and I ran them all. “He gestured at the screen. “And this is all that was left.”
Craig was considering the implications when she motioned to speak again.
“I’ve had another thought, but you’re not going to like it, Guv.”
He resisted the urge to utter an expletive, not about whatever her possible thought might be, but at the idea that the case could get even more complex. Seeing Craig’s expression Liam waved the DCI on.
“Hit us with it, Dee.”
The secon
dee winced, knowing that her next words wouldn’t be popular, not least with the woman by her side, who had been reluctant to make any effort at all so far, never mind doing the new work her suggestion was bound to bring.
“Well…it’s just…has anyone looked at the significance of the dates? The dates the victims’ bodies were found, and I suppose, the dates they were abducted as well? It’s just that they seem pretty random to me. One in December twenty-sixteen and several this December. One in January, then two in March, another in May, June... There seems to be no order to them-”
The words made Ash perk up. “I did. Well, when I say I did, I looked for patterns for the dates they were found, in case it was some sort of number sequence, like one, three, seven, thirteen…”
Craig nodded. “Increasing by two each time and added to the previous number.”
It made John smile; Craig had been good at maths in school.
Ash nodded. “Yep, but nothing fitted. I tried it for the abduction dates too, lots of different pattern programmes, but there was nothing.”
Craig frowned thoughtfully. “Deidre’s right. The dates mean something. But it might be something that will only make sense when we find our archive case. OK, Deidre, I want you and Susan to follow up on that. Andy, keep going with the routes and time as well.”
He pulled over a seat and sat down. “Right, I know I said that we would update everything first before covering any new information, but I’ve changed my mind. Annette, can you update everyone on the factory, please.”
As Annette ran through their visit to Walter Gruber’s factory and detailed its flooring, supported by Des who informed everyone that they’d found blood inside Gruber’s second floor office, along with a shoeprint and a possible palm print on his desk, Craig helped himself to a fresh coffee.
The Killing Year (The Craig Crime Series Book 17) Page 23
