“Twenty-six hours if you exclude meals and sleep. The judge said the evidence was overwhelming.”
As Craig ruminated, Liam indicated to pull off into town.
“OK, Ash, pass me over to Andy.”
As Craig was waiting to be transferred Liam nodded at the road signs. “High Street or the ranch?”
Craig paused before answering “Neither. The Labs.”
Just then Andy came on the line.
“Andy, I need to know about the dumpsites’ significance.”
The DCI sighed heavily. “As far as I can see they don’t have any direct relevance to the Granger case, chief, none of them. Neither Amy Granger nor Jason Collier lived near any of the sites, other than that they both lived in the east of the country, and I can’t tie the locations to events in either of their lives-”
Craig snapped. “Of course the locations are significant! The bodies were left where they could be found quickly, and they weren’t concealed, they were displayed. The places matter!”
Andy attempted to calm him down without actually telling him to; that might earn him a red-hot ear. He spoke deliberately slowly.
“So, I was thinking…We know that all our victims played a part in either Collier’s drinking or his court case, and from what I just overheard Ash saying, we know their discovery dates are relevant to that case as well, but what if the dumpsite locations are a clue to the killer himself? Surely they have to be, if they don’t link to the case? What else could they be? Unless they’re just completely random.”
Craig went to object then a sudden niggle stopped him. Three of their victims: Drake, Ryland and Loughrey could have cancelled out the angle their red herring victim Rick Jarvis had been left at, and now Andy thought the victims’ dumpsites might have more to do with their killer himself than the Granger case. The niggle grew as Craig thought, until finally he decided to follow his hunch.
“Andy, I want you to focus on the four victims that didn’t fit on the angles.”
“Jarvis, Loughrey, Ryland and Drake?”
“Yes. Especially the last three. If Jarvis was a red herring, then, as you said, for your route map from Cultra to Antrim Courthouse to work, one of their three bodies was positioned to cancel Jarvis out and we need to find out which one. It could lead us to our killer. Dig deep into their backgrounds, and quickly. Get Deidre and Susan to help you out. They’ve already got background on the victims. See if anything in Loughrey’s, Ryland’s or Drake’s lives links them with the dumpsite locations, and anything you find that’s relevant I need to know right away. Put Rhonda, Annette, and Kyle to work as well, if he hasn’t disappeared. Ash will help you on the tech side.”
Andy frowned at the phone, confused. “What exactly am I looking for, chief?”
“You said it. Those locations mean something, and if it’s not to the Granger case then it has to be the perp himself. Look at Loughrey’s, Ryland’s and Drake’s places of birth, where they lived, went to school, got married, all of it. Sarah Reilly’s life might depend on it. OK, get on with it now and hand me over to Davy.”
Andy signalled to Nicky to transfer the call yet again, just as Liam pulled off the Ormeau Road. He turned to Craig, raising an eyebrow.
“You should just move the office into your car, boss.” He glanced around the untidy Audi. “It already looks like you sleep here.”
Craig followed his gaze absentmindedly and suddenly made his mind up about something that he’d been putting off for years.
“This car’s wrecked. You’re coming with me to look at new ones as soon as we finish this case.”
Before Liam could say ‘great minds think alike’, Davy came on the line.
“Tell me about the whisky, Davy.”
“Aidan’s got the w…warrants so we were just about to leave.”
“OK. Call me as soon as you get anything. I’ll be at the labs.”
With that he ended the call, just as Liam pulled into the science park. The DCI parked and then turned to gawp at his boss.
“You’re really going to buy a new car?”
Craig climbed out as he answered. “Well, I’m not sure how new it will be. A brand new one wouldn’t be worth it, the trashing it’d get on the job. But yes, I’m serious about it.”
As Liam locked up and tossed him the keys the penny suddenly dropped.
“Katy’s disgusted with it, isn’t she?”
Craig walked off. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Don’t kid a kidder, son. She’s refusing to go out with you in this heap of crap, and that’s why you’re changing it.”
Craig’s lack of response was as definite a yes as he was going to get. The subject was forgotten as they entered John Winter’s lab and Craig tripped over a box. Liam went to kick it out of the way only to have John rush out of his office shouting, “NO!”
Craig laughed at his panic.
“I hope whatever’s in there is important enough to risk my death, John?”
The pathologist lifted the box’s lid and stood proudly back.
Craig peered at the iron brand. “What is it?”
“A seventeenth century branding iron. It was used by the Spanish Inquisition.”
Liam groaned. “You really need to get a nicer hobby, Doc.”
The pathologist sniffed disdainfully and re-entered his office. “I suppose you two want coffee. It’s the only reason you ever call in.”
Craig smiled at his hurt feelings. “Not true, we call in because we need your help as well, although coffee is always good.”
The pathologist poured two mugs from the percolator and sat down in his chair. “OK, what do you need?”
Craig took a long sip of the tarry liquid; he liked his coffee strong, unlike Liam who had abandoned his straight away. When Craig kept staring into the liquid, the pathologist knew something was amiss.
“Sarah Reilly’s been taken again.”
John’s jaw dropped, but he didn’t ask how it had happened. He knew they’d be feeling bad enough without him throwing his two-penny’s worth in.
“How can I help?”
“Kisses.”
Liam clarified hastily. “Forehead kisses to be precise, Doc. But before that, the boss needs to bring you up to date.”
Craig launched into a quick update as to the significance of the dates and locations, especially the fact that the latter might link more to their killer than their dead, finishing with, “So the kisses might be important. Was there anything in the hospital records to say that Amy Granger received forehead kisses from her family?”
“No, but it’s a normal place to kiss a child.”
Liam snorted. “Not when you’re gripping their cheeks so hard that it leaves marks.”
“True.” The pathologist walked to his filing cabinet and returned with an orange file that they hadn’t seen before. “This was the file Mike found in the archives.”
Craig set down his mug. “It’s the original P.M. on the girl?”
“Yes.” John opened the file at the photographs’ section and turned it around for the detectives to see. “As you can see, there was no bruising anywhere on her face.”
Liam swallowed hard at the sight of the five-year-old, picturing his own small daughter and thanking God that it wasn’t her. Craig waved the file shut, visibly moved.
“OK, so if the kiss and fingerprints don’t link to the girl, can you give us anything more?”
John placed the document back in the cabinet, looking puzzled. “Such as? Both the kiss and the finger-marks were present on all seven of the bodies Mike and I re-examined under black light, and we already had all eleven forehead swabs to compare the DNAs. I didn’t think it necessary to exhume the other four victims; two had been cremated anyway.”
Craig felt the niggle again. “Were Rick Jarvis, Maria Drake, Joseph Loughry and Velma Ryland amongst the four still buried or cremated?”
John shook his head. “Velma Ryland was cremated, but the other three are downstairs in the mo
rtuary. Renée did the original P.M.s on Drake and Loughry, Jim did Ryland and Jarvis, and Mike and I re-examined all of those except for Velma Ryland.”
“OK, it’s not ideal, but we’ll have to make do. I’m sorry, John, I know you were very thorough, but I need you to examine Rick Jarvis, Maria Drake and Joseph Loughry one more time. Every inch of them.”
The pathologist frowned. “Looking for what exactly?”
Craig shook his head as he answered. “The truth is I don’t know.”
Chapter Sixteen
This couldn’t be happening to her. Not again, not after all she’d been through the first time. Not after she’d been safe and warm in her own home, with a man that she actually liked beside her for the first time in years. OK, so it was Hendron’s job to be there and he’d probably been getting paid extra to look after her, but there had been something more than duty in his eyes when he’d looked at her, she was certain of that-
Sarah Reilly’s thoughts of romance were cut short by a male voice, a normal male voice, not the mechanised one that she’d heard before.
“If you’re plotting how to escape again, I wouldn’t bother. This place is miles from anywhere. They’ll never find you in time.”
It was as clear a statement of execution as most people would ever hear in their lives, but strangely the GP didn’t greet it with surprise. She’d felt as if she’d been living on borrowed time from the moment that she’d escaped from her pit, and it had had an odd effect on her. She felt brave, braver than she’d felt since she was a kid; those halcyon days of leaping off walls and freewheeling down hills on her bicycle with no fear, because nothing had yet happened in her life to make her feel afraid.
Her adult experiences had been far less pleasant, and they’d made her timid and over cautious as a result. It had led her to live a solitary, lonely life in case she was hurt again, but her recent escape had made her want to seize life now, and love.
Her newfound bravery made her lift her eyes from the room’s uncarpeted floor to the face of her assailant, and she saw that the move took him aback. After a moment’s mutual scrutiny, the man shrugged.
“It doesn’t matter if you see me now.”
Sarah wasn’t listening to his words, she was too busy looking, at a strong wide face that no-one could call handsome, but someone could have been attracted to and still might; he was barely fifty after all. Her abductor was hunkered down in front of her, but she could still see that the face topped a broad, muscled body that her mother would have called thuggish, but she would have described as rugby prop forward. Whatever it was called, it explained how her kidnapper had found it so easy to carry her unconscious nine stone body down two storeys to the ground.
She wanted him to speak again, in case naming his accent was important someday if she survived, so she asked a question.
“Why me?”
The response was a cold laugh. “Finally, someone asks the right question. Because of what you didn’t do, that’s why.”
It was a polite Belfast accent, which slightly confused her, and she realised why right away; her liberal upbringing had conditioned her to believe bad people were bad because of a lack of privilege, privilege that this well-groomed man had so obviously had. But psychopathic killers are born into every level of society; the only difference that money makes is that it enables such people to better cover up their crimes.
The medic tried not to get distracted. She needed her captor to keep speaking to say from which area of Belfast his accent originated, so she asked a question whose answer she really didn’t want to know.
“What didn’t I do?”
The man rose from his hunkered position, giving her a better view of his frame. The GP added neat and tallish to her earlier description and awaited his reply. It was strangely dismissive, as if the details of her past transgression bored him.
“You didn’t try hard enough. Anyway, it will all be irrelevant soon.”
He glanced at his watch and turned towards a short flight of stairs, making Sarah go to stand up. When she couldn’t she realised that she was chained to the floor, with large, dull-steel links that no amount of struggling could break through. It explained the man’s casual willingness to leave her; there was no chance of her escaping this time.
“Don’t go!”
It was a strange thing for the condemned to say to their jailer, but she didn’t want time alone to think.
The man smiled and pointed to a clock that she hadn’t noticed on the wall.
“Tick-tock. I have places to be. I’ll be back tomorrow just before twelve.”
Twelve o’clock. That was when the man with the soft east Belfast accent was going to kill her. She knew it as surely as she knew her own name.
****
5.20 p.m.
Aidan and Davy had just arrived at the first wholesaler in Downpatrick, when the analyst had an idea and made a call. A moment later he was squinting at a smart-phone display of the dumpsite locations that Andy had just sent through. Aidan Hughes said nothing about the analyst’s vision, merely reached into his pocket for a pair of spectacles and watched as Davy’s almond shaped eyes widened in horror.
“I don’t need those!”
Hughes smiled at the younger man’s indignation, remembering his own in the months before he’d caved in and bought his first pair.
“Give me the phone then.”
Davy held his phone to his chest possessively and reluctantly donned the specs, shocked at how much clearer they made the words. He tried and failed to hide his sadness at the symbolic passing of his youth and started to read aloud.
The DCI interrupted almost immediately. “OK, so they’re the dumpsites. What have they got to do with who bought the booze?”
“The chief thinks the bodies’ locations link to the killer, not his victims, so…”
“If the killer is the w…whisky buyer they should link to him as well.”
It was a logical approach, but in the detective’s opinion logic was often overly optimistic, not allowing as it did for the excessively irrational nature of mankind.
“Our perp would have to be as thick as ten short planks to have given his real name and address when he paid for the whisky, but on you go, son.”
It didn’t imbue Davy with much confidence, but he’d had an hour out of the office in the fresh air so even hitting a dead end now was still a win. Hughes was still speaking.
“Mind you, shouldn’t we get that list to the second wholesalers too? So they can compare the addresses to whoever bought their shipment as well, or where they delivered it to.”
While Davy forwarded the address list, the DCI greeted an elderly man who had approached them, informing him why they were there. Their host waved away the warrant cheerfully.
“Who said you’d need that? I’m the owner and I’ll be happy to tell you anything you want to know. Come into my office.”
Five minutes later Davy was perusing the previous two years MacDonald Red Label orders and punching the air.
“There’s an order here in twenty-sixteen for eighty bottles, delivered to a farmhouse near Waterfoot, close to the Glens where Torrance thinks he w…was held.”
“How close?”
“Well, it’s ten miles away, but none of the other deliveries are within fifty miles of any address on our list.”
Given the small size of the country it might be significant.
“Get Ash to check who the farm belongs to.” Aidan turned back to the proprietor. “I don’t suppose you recognise the name?”
The man shook his head. “Sorry, I’m not here that often, but I could call my foreman in from home, and see if he knows?”
Aidan rose to his feet. “We need to get on, but if you could ask him to phone me on this number with anything he remembers.” He passed across his card. “It’s urgent, so as soon as you can please.”
They were in the car on the way to the second warehouse when his mobile rang. The DCI put it on speaker.
“
It’s the foreman, Bill Dewey here. The boss says you were asking about that delivery of MacDonald Red Label last year.”
“I was.”
“Aye, well, it was a weird one. I was told to just leave it outside this farmhouse without waiting for a signature.”
“Do you remember anything about the man who ordered it?”
“It wasn’t a man, well, it was a man I spoke to, but he said the order was being placed by a business called Caradine’s.”
Davy jumped in. “How did they pay for it?”
“Cash. They posted it in a week before delivery, just in an envelope. Very chancy, anyone could have nicked it.”
Very chancy but very anonymous.
“OK, thank you, Mister Dewey. We’ll get back if we’ve any more questions.”
Aidan clicked off the phone and frowned, unsure whether they were any further forward. Twenty minutes later they were leaving the second suppliers with Davy thinking the same.
“This is the s…second order from Caradine’s to the same farmhouse, with exactly the same payment method.”
Hughes sighed. “OK, so both orders link back to some place called Caradine’s, but really, apart from the address of a farmhouse ten miles from one of the dump locations, we have nothing new.”
Davy shook his head. “I’ll get Ash to check. If the farmhouse records yield a name, then we could be home and dry.”
On the way back to Docklands the phone rang again, and Ash’s clear tenor came down the line.
“That farm. It’s owned by a trust, not an individual.”
Aidan shouted into the speaker.
“What kind of trust, Ash? Family, company or something else?”
“All I can find is it’s called Caradine’s and based on the Isle of Man. That’s a low-tax centre and lots of people invest there, so I doubt they’ll tell us anything without a warrant, and we’re looking at Monday for getting that. Remember it’s a Saturday after six.”
There was only one thing for it. Hughes signed off and signalled Davy to dial again, pulling over so he could speak without shouting over traffic noise. Craig was pissed off enough today without being yelled at.
The Killing Year (The Craig Crime Series Book 17) Page 31
