Craig shook his head again and rose, opening the office door to beckon Liam in. When he’d been brought up to speed the DCI shook his head.
“Collier and the girl would have been treated by different doctors at the scene, and probably seen by different police officers too, boss. The only people who would have seen images of both parties’ exact injuries would have been in court. Either the Coroner’s court-”
Mike finished his sentence. “Or the criminal one. That means the jury, the judge or Coroner-”
Craig shook his head. “No. The Coroner wouldn’t have been interested in Collier’s injuries, the inquest would only have been concerned with the girl’s.”
Liam agreed the point. “OK, then that just gives us the criminal hearing in ninety-two.” He thought of something and turned to John. “The case was heard in the same year she died, wasn’t it?”
“Yes. The girl died in January ninety-two and the case began in March. It went on for months, until that December.”
As he said the words Craig froze. January and March; two of the months that bodies had been abducted and dumped… What were the odds that all of their victims’ deaths would fit with significant dates in the Granger case? The girl’s death, Collier’s charging, the verdict, the submission of court reports, the case starting and ending, sentencing…
He shook himself; they could check the dates later, right now he needed to concentrate.
“Who would have seen both sets of injuries in detail during the criminal case? The judge, jury, defence and prosecuting counsels-”
Mike jumped in. “Granger’s family members if they were in court. In fact, anyone who was in court throughout the case. Reporters-”
Liam shook his head.
“Aye, OK, so they might all have been there and seen the injuries, but who would have been interested in revenge? And do we actually know that any of our Vics were linked with the court case? Apart from Collier himself that is.”
His astuteness made Craig even more determined to make him try for Superintendent soon.
“Good thinking, Liam. We need to confirm all their occupations back in ninety-two. Annette and Rhonda were going to look into that, weren’t they? Ask them to come in, please.”
Liam shook his head.
“Rhonda’s out with Richie, and Annette’s been with us all morning, boss. When would she have had the time to work on it since last night?”
He was right.
“OK, let’s get on to that now then. If any of our victims were in court back then, we need to know.”
He noticed John cleaning his already clean glasses; his tic when something was on his mind.
“John? Do you have something?”
“Well… I know that theoretically anyone who was in court might have seen both sets of injuries, and so know exactly what they wanted to inflict this time around, but I agree with Liam’s point, who would be bothered taking revenge for the Granger case, and why now, twenty-five years later?”
Mike shrugged. “The girl would have been thirty this year, maybe that means something?”
Craig wasn’t convinced. “It’s hardly a milestone birthday like eighteen or twenty-one. As for who would be interested in revenge, the obvious answer is Amy Granger’s family. Did she have a father or brothers? We’re pretty sure that our killer’s a man.”
“I’ll check it out, boss, uncles and cousins too. Mind you, the dad and any uncles would be knocking on a bit now, so would they be strong enough to do all this?”
“When we see them we’ll know, Liam. Give that bit to Davy or Ash, I want you to chase up Hugh Bellner. See if he has any connection with our old case. I’ll check the victims’ occupations. Just find that whiteboard I was working on, will you.” He opened the door. “Thanks for coming down, you two. We’re briefing at twelve if you’d like to hang about?”
Mike shook his head. “I have a P.M. to do.”
As John signalled his intention to stay by asking Nicky to point him towards the canteen, the junior pathologist smiled; John was still avoiding Des for some reason and he intended to find out what that was.
Craig was just walking them to the lift when a yell came from behind the cardboard wall.
“BOSS, COME AND TAKE A LOOK AT THIS.”
Craig did, and in a moment he’d joined Liam in gawping at the whiteboard he’d been using the day before. Where he’d put a few vague notes and a lot of question marks, it was now covered in red and blue pen.
“Who’s been working on this?”
“Well, it wasn’t old Suzie, that’s for sure. This took hours and it must have been done last night.”
Just as Craig was about to say “Deidre” the owner of the name appeared, with Aidan Hughes in tow.
“Where have you two been?” He gestured at the whiteboard. “Apart from here for most of the night by the looks of it!”
Aidan nodded his companion to explain.
“Aidan and I decided to stay on for a while last night, Guv, and we made some progress.”
Hughes nodded, a nicotine-yellowed streak of hair flopping across his face.
“But we still had some gaps, so we needed to interview a few people. That’s where we’ve just been.”
Craig smiled, proud of the self-formed team; no doubt a mutual dislike of Susan Richie had sealed their bond.
“OK, we’re briefing at twelve, so you can go through it then, but answer me one thing...” He drew a hand down the names. “Were any of our victims involved in Jason Collier’s court case?”
Aidan’s grin gave him his answer. “More than one.”
****
Laganside Apartments.
He had one main advantage over the police; he could spot them a mile off, but they wouldn’t spot him. That anonymity was something he intended to hold on to, and its associated protection from the policemen now seated across the road from him in the unmarked car. If skilled detectives had been sent to guard the apartment block then he might have been at risk, but the pair of coffee swilling, badly dressed surveillance cops parked on the road outside Sarah Reilly’s development wouldn’t have known a predator if one had bitten them on the ass.
There was a second thing in his favour, something that the police could never control; the apartments were in a busy commercial area of the city, surrounded by office blocks and with a train station so close that you could hit it if you spat. There would be hundreds of people milling around there during rush hour that evening, including coming and going through the development’s electronic gates. If the GP hadn’t emerged from her home before then, the bustle would be the perfect cover for breaking in.
He would abduct Sarah Reilly again without difficulty, only this time he would do it right under the PSNI’s nose.
****
St Mary’s Healthcare Trust. 10.30 a.m.
Katy Stevens couldn’t cope any more. Not with the silences when they passed each other in the corridors, nor the averted gazes across the lecture hall, and when Natalie’s ignoring her had descended to the childish depths of abandoning her lunch any day that she happened to enter the hospital canteen, Craig’s other half had finally decided that enough was bloody well enough.
Anyone would think that she’d slept with Natalie’s husband! Or at the very least beaten her to a job. But no, all she’d done was dare, dare to feel sorry for John because his wife was making his life hell when she’d been pregnant but hadn’t yet decided what to do about it, and to tell him the truth because she’d felt that he’d deserved to know!
Natalie had needed her husband’s support then even if she hadn’t realised it, so she’d told him, and for that breaking of a confidence she’d: been accused of betraying some imaginary oath of sisterhood, condemned to silence, ignored, and lost someone who’d once been a close friend. It was just too much!
Katy jabbed her spoon angrily into her bowl of yoghurt, slightly alarmed to see the implement stand up straight, although in a way it showed her what she had to do. She was going to stand up and face down Natal
ie Winter, back her into a corner somewhere she couldn’t escape and force her to listen while she talked, even if it meant tying her to a chair to get her to do so.
If Craig and John, currently halfway across the city, had known what was on Katy’s mind they would both have cheered. The two men were sick of the childish argument that was curtailing all their social lives, and for John, preventing the offer of free babysitting.
And if Liam Cullen had known what was brewing, he would have sold tickets to the showdown of the year.
****
The Malone Road, Belfast. 10.30 a.m.
Susan Richie was confused, not an emotion that she admitted to feeling often, and even then, never to do with work. But nothing fitted about Rick Jarvis’ death, nothing, and it was making her even more irritable than normal, so she decided to go against her golden rule and encourage a subordinate to speak.
She turned towards the passenger seat of her pristine Jaguar, a foolish car for any police officer to drive, given the odds of someone filling it full of holes, something which no matter how often she had harangued her insurance company she couldn’t get their policy to include. But ego and vanity had triumphed over financial probity, so that was the car in whose seat the DCI now turned.
“What do you think, Constable O’Neil?”
The opinion she was seeking was why Richard ‘Rick’ Jarvis, seventeen on his last birthday and found dead in June, had been killed at all, seeming as he had to have been a normal if annoying teenager, with the usual assortment of irritating music and untidy friends that she believed were typical of that group, but with nothing naughtier against his name in the great celestial book than that.
They’d interviewed his teachers, parents, siblings and even some creatures called ‘Freak’ and ‘Dog’, but none had managed to shed light on why Jarvis was no more, so Susan Richie had decided it was time to ask the opinion of someone closer to Jarvis’ generation than she was, and handily she had one sitting at her side right now.
She waited expectantly for the Australian’s answer.
Once Rhonda had got past the shock of being asked her opinion she considered for a moment, a frown wrinkling her unblemished skin. Her red-stained mouth opened and then closed again as a thought aborted, only re-opening, bravely, when she had finally decided what to say.
“I don’t think Rick Jarvis has anything to do with our case.”
Susan Richie would have jumped back in shock had she not been in such a confined space. As it was she was tempted to get out of her car just to do so, but decided that such an action might open her to future ridicule by her colleagues behind her back. Ridicule would have been an improvement compared to what normally happened there.
When the DCI’s shock had subsided, she stared at the younger woman and frowned, searching for some sign that the girl was being funny, something she almost never was and most certainly not at work. But there was no sign of teasing or amusement on Rhonda’s face, quite the contrary; she looked disgusted. Before Susan Richie would ask her why, the constable obliged all by herself.
“In fact, I think Jarvis was a red herring, just killed to throw us off.”
It was so ridiculous that it might just have been true, so without saying another word the DCI drove them back to the ranch.
****
10.30 a.m.
Liam screwed up the paper in his hand and threw it into his car’s back seat with a grunt of disgust; all three addresses he’d been given for Hugh Bellner had turned out to be dead ends. He’d be having sharp words with the Vice Squad when he got back.
After a pitstop for a cuppa and a bacon roll, the DCI had a moment of inspiration and pulled out his phone. Aidan Hughes was ex-Vice and he still had contacts there.
He started the conversation as he meant to go on.
“You know that fucker Bellner, don’t you?”
Hughes didn’t bother to ask who was calling; only Liam and his brother began interactions with such charm, and Hughes junior was currently half way up a ski-slope, so he doubted he’d be wasting his time calling him.
“Yep.”
Liam appreciated his brevity and went for the same. “Where?”
Hughes reeled off the three addresses that had been on the list, but on Liam’s exasperated, “Already been to all of them and he’s not there”, he came up with a fourth.
“He hangs out in a gambling club down on Gresham Street. The Jack of Hearts.”
“Bellner’s a gambler?”
“That’s not what the Drugs Squad thinks, but they’ve never caught him dealing yet. You could try there.”
Liam knew exactly what the place would be like; blackened windows so that it looked like a sex shop from the outside, but instead of the place being filled with girls it would be wall to wall hard men. Aidan read his mind.
“Fancy some company?”
“I thought you’d never ask. I’ll be sitting outside it in the car.”
Liam felt better about the hunt now; Aidan was a big lad and a good shot. If things got tasty he’d be a handy man to have around.
Fifteen minutes later the handy man’s car pulled up behind Liam’s Ford and they both got out, crossing the narrow city street in a few strides and arriving at the club’s black front door. Liam dropped his voice.
“Is there some sort of secret knock, then?”
Aidan nodded. “Aye. The one we used in Vice was this.” With that he kicked hard at the door, earning a nod of admiration from his companion.
Hughes was through the door in seconds, shouting at the top of his voice.
“POLICE. NOBODY MOVE! THIS IS A RAID!”
Even Liam was surprised, but he got past it quickly, whipping out his ID and holding it up while he tried to get his surroundings into focus. The interior of the club was as dark as its outside, with the only light coming from some small lamps on what looked like card tables, each one attended by four seated men. Liam had seen the place before; in the photo that McCrae had taken off his wall.
As the two detectives stood in the doorway there was a rustling that if they’d been more naïve they might have thought was mice, but as their eyes adjusted to the gloom they saw money, cards and God only knew what else disappearing up sleeves and into pockets so fast it would have done a magician proud.
Liam boomed at the group.
“PUT THOSE BACK ON THE TABLE.”
Aidan added, for clarity. “Or we’ll search you, and that means shaking you upside down.”
The items reappeared reluctantly, accompanied by considerable grumbling. When Liam had checked and found nothing but cards and cash, everything fell quiet again and he announced the reason they were there.
“Which one of you is Hughie Bellner?”
A glance from Aidan said their quarry was on the left side of the room and as Liam walked across, leaving his back-up blocking the door, a well-groomed man of around fifty rose slowly to his feet. Liam ticked off the things on Tommy’s list: age, tick, more like six feet tall than five-eleven but tick again, and instead of bulky he put weight-trained and fit. Bellner could easily have abducted and killed even their largest victim, and the realisation made the DCI place a hand closer to his gun.
Bellner smiled at the detectives in turn, adding, “Hello, Inspector Hughes. Long time no arrest, eh?”
Liam corrected him. “He’s DCI now, and I think you’ll find today’s your lucky day. We’d like you to come with us and answer a few questions, Mister Bellner.”
The kingpin smiled right in his face. “About?”
Liam didn’t have time to bandy words with the man, so he reached into his pocket and withdrew his cuffs. “I can arrest you if you’d prefer. I can think of at least three charges off the top of my head.”
Bellner’s response was to turn to a smaller man beside him. “Meet me at…which station is it, officer?”
“High Street.”
“Meet me there with my brief.”
Then he nodded to Liam and followed him out, leaving Aidan H
ughes to wave the gamblers on with an, “As you were.”
****
The C.C.U. 11.30 a.m.
When Susan Richie and Rhonda re-entered the squad-room Nicky was laying out a sandwich lunch, and in an attempt to steal her junior’s thunder Richie rushed straight across to Craig.
“I think Rick Jarvis was a red herring.”
Craig took in the scene immediately. Rhonda’s dropped jaw and eyes threatening tears, not passive tears of hurt but tears of fury as she scowled at Richie behind her back. His response was to stare up at the DCI from his seat at Liam’s desk and ask her a question in a quiet voice.
“Explain your logic.”
Richie’s mouth opened and closed like a guppy’s, with only “too young” squeaking out.
“That’s it? Just too young?” He shook his head. “There must be more.” He turned towards Rhonda, as Annette watched, knowing exactly what he was doing. “Rhonda, I’m sure you can tell us why.”
The constable perked up immediately.
“We interviewed everyone and found nothing, sir, nothing to explain why Rick Jarvis was killed. He was too young to have been connected meaningfully to any historical case and we couldn’t find anything connecting his family members either, so… if everything that could make sense doesn’t apply then all that leaves is either the fantastic or a trick.”
Liam gave a chuckle. “Where’d you hear that one?”
She smiled smugly. “My old sergeant back home.”
Craig thought for a moment, still watching Susan Richie out of the side of his eye; she had turned an interesting shade of puce. He beckoned Andy across.
“Andy, if you removed Rick Jarvis’ position from your angles, would it make any difference to your route maps?”
“Leave it with me for a few minutes, chief.”
“OK, you have five minutes and then we’re starting.” He turned back to Susan Richie, dropping his voice ominously. “We don’t take credit for juniors’ ideas on this team, DCI Richie.” He caught her immediate angry glance towards Rhonda and added in a louder voice. “And if I see any attempt at revenge, you’ll be going back to Antrim with another black mark in your book.”
The Killing Year (The Craig Crime Series Book 17) Page 27
