“Drake didn’t give a damn about the Granger girl specifically; my guess is he’d probably made notes about lots of cases he was in court for, and maybe fantasised about taking revenge on everyone he considered guilty in some way. The defendants, jurors, even the judges if he didn’t like the sentences they gave. Back when the Granger case happened in ninety-two Drake was only young, and probably just in the early stages of his condition, so he didn’t do anything then but make notes. Whereas now he’s got full-blown NPD-”
“He’s decided to act on his impulses. OK, very good. But that still doesn’t explain why he chose this little girl’s case, and why now.”
Kyle shook his head. “That’s my point. The girl herself was completely irrelevant to him. It could have been any case as long as it fitted.”
Deidre came back into play, holding up a slip of paper. “And it fitted because of Drake’s divorce, Guv. I thought something rang a bell when Andy gave us the three locations, so I’ve just checked. Although they had a quickie divorce the Drakes would have been married twenty-five years on the exact day that the first body, Maria Drake, was left. The silver wedding anniversary that was never going to happen was the trigger for -”
Aidan cut in, shaking his head. “Nope. That doesn’t fit. Maria Drake’s body was dumped on the seventeenth December, and Rowan Drake was in court on that date in ninety-two, hearing Jason Collier get sentenced, so how could he have got married that day?”
Before Craig could say anything, Nicky’s telephone rang and she beckoned him across.
“It’s Doctor Winter, sir.”
“I’ll take it in my room.”
He closed his office door to quieten the debate now raging outside and picked up the phone.
“Yes, John.”
“Maria Drake was the only one who’d had intercourse. None of the other women had any discharge or semen present on either their original or new vaginal swabs.”
It was all leading them back to Rowan Drake.
The pathologist was still talking.
“There’s no hit on the DNA we found on her vaginal swab yet, but you need to know that we found DNA on her mouth as well. It was all over her lips.”
Craig flinched, knowing exactly what it meant: Drake had kissed his ex-wife on the lips as he’d raped and killed her, the ultimate in degradation and control.
But they still needed confirmation.
“It’s definitely not one of the victims’ DNAs, John? Or Bryony Leyton’s?”
“Absolutely not. It’s an unknown male. Maria Drake was completely violated.”
And in Rowan Drake’s sick mind he’d had every right to do it. His wife, his marriage, his wedding anniversary. Maria Drake had been nothing but a possession to him, and when she’d had the temerity to leave him he’d believed that he’d had every right to take revenge.
“Why all the forehead kisses then?”
He could almost hear John’s shrug. “My guess is that was the killer’s fuck-you to us. Basically, I’m smarter than all of you, so try working this one out. It almost worked, too, as a diversion. It could easily have led us down the necrophilia trail.”
“It did, but not for long, thanks to you.”
Craig gasped suddenly, realising that Drake had killed ten innocent people just to cover up his wife’s death.
“What is it, Marc?”
Craig answered with a request. “Can you join me at High Street at twelve-thirty, John? I’d like you to assist with an interview.”
Regardless of how many more questions the pathologist asked that was all the information he got before Craig ended the call and returned to the group.
“You were saying, Aidan?”
The DCI gave an embarrassed grin. “I was saying that Drake couldn’t have been in two places at once on the seventeenth of December ninety-two. In court for the Collier case and in church getting married.” He gestured to Davy. “But Davy’s just sorted that one out.”
The analyst read from his smart-pad. “Maria and Rowan Drake tied the knot at Antrim Courthouse on the afternoon of the seventeenth of December ninety-two, chief. The s…same building where Jason Collier was sentenced in the morning, just in a different room.”
Aidan sighed. “That’s my upbringing, making me think everyone has to spend their wedding day in church.”
Deidre patted him on the arm. “You did better than me. I hadn’t even noticed the possible conflict. They had the reception at Ballygally afterwards.”
Craig rolled his eyes. “Near the place where he dumped Roger Hardie’s corpse. What an old romantic. OK, anything else, Deidre?”
“Yes, if we accept Drake wanted revenge on his ex-wife, why didn’t it happen as soon as she left him?”
Kyle interjected. “Maybe he was at a train-spotters’ conference.”
Craig shot him a dry look, but Deidre was nodding her head.
“Actually… maybe Kyle’s right, Guv. Maybe Drake didn’t have the time, or the plan was just festering, but then, when he was about to spend what should have been his silver wedding anniversary alone, knowing how happy his ex was with someone else, something snapped and he decided to take revenge.”
Aidan nodded enthusiastically. “He completely unravelled at that point. Whatever control he had of himself broke.”
Annette sighed. “I hate to say it, sir, but the fact that his wife had left him for a woman might also have played a part in his meltdown. She didn’t just go off him but the whole male sex type of thing. Not true, of course, you can’t make someone gay, she’d probably just realised she always had been and chose that time to come out, but in his warped mind…”
Craig knew he would soon have to tell them what was on his mind. He decided to let them lead him into it.
“OK, so why not just kill his wife?”
Rhonda answered. “Maybe he intended to originally, she was the first victim, wasn’t she. But then he realised that would have led us straight to him.”
“You’re right, it would, or at least it should have done if the case had been worked properly.”
John wouldn’t be the only person having words with his troops. When the C.C. realised that the killings could possibly have ended with Maria Drake’s death, heads would roll.
Craig moved on.
“Was that the only reason he didn’t just kill Maria Drake?”
Deidre shook her head. “I don’t think so for one minute. NPD sufferers can have grandiose delusions; they like to make a statement-”
Andy cut in. “I said it felt like theatre right at the start.”
Deidre nodded. “The whole dramatic, leaving strange clues aspect of the murders would fit with that. Also, deluding himself that he was avenging a child’s death would have made him feel good about himself, and killing all…”
As her words tailed off and her eyes widened, Craig knew that the penny had dropped, not only on her but on the others as well. Ash noticed their stunned expressions as he returned from calling Liam.
“What’s wrong with you lot?”
Craig obliged with an explanation. “Rowan Drake murdered ten people to cover up one.”
Before anyone could speak he carried on.
“I believe that Rowan Drake used his knowledge of the Amy Granger case for vengeance generally, to satisfy that side of his NPD, but mainly to take revenge on his ex-wife for divorcing him. His other ten victims served a dual purpose: to satisfy his NPD needs for grandiosity and vengeance, yes, one killing was never going to be enough for him, but also to help cover up the death of the one person who could have led us directly to him.”
He turned back to the junior analyst. “Ash, when Liam gets that court list I think you’ll find that neither Maria Drake nor Rick Jarvis had anything to do with the Granger-Collier case. They’re the only two victims that didn’t. Maria Drake wasn’t the social worker involved in sentencing reports or the probation service, and we already know Rick Jarvis wasn’t even alive in nineteen-ninety-two.”
Andy sig
nalled to interrupt. “You’re saying Drake was so desperate to kill his ex-wife that he disguised her death as part of a wider revenge spree based on a court case he’d sat through and remembered, and that he also killed a seventeen-year-old boy purely as a red herring? Just to ensure the angle Rick Jarvis was lying at cancelled out his ex-wife’s, so that his route map from the collision site to the courthouse still worked?”
“Yes. Drake’s obsession with revenge became everything.”
Rhonda nodded. “I said Jarvis was a red herring, didn’t I?”
Craig nodded. “You did.”
Davy was frowning. “But why did Drake bother to leave us so many clues? He must have known they w…would lead us to Granger and then him eventually. If he’d just killed randomly instead we might never have caught him.”
“Think of the characteristics of NPD, Davy. Grandiosity, delusions of superiority, arrogance. Part of Drake leaving all those clues was a grandiose compulsion from the NPD, the compulsion to play a warped game. And his arrogance made him certain that no-one would ever connect him to Amy Granger, and therefore not to the killings. And he was right for the best part of a year, partly because of human error.”
Craig stood up and pushed back his chair.
“OK, I want everyone to give me a half-page summary on their relevant information by eleven-thirty.”
“What happens then, chief?”
“We lift Rowan Drake and put all of this theory to the test.”
Chapter Eighteen
High Street Station. 1 p.m.
It should have felt like an anti-climax, but it didn’t. At eleven-thirty Ryan Hendron had reported Rowan Drake making a dash for his car and had brought him to High Street to assist with their enquiries, making sure that he was lodged far away from Jack’s other two tenants: Sarah Reilly and Dan Torrance. He wasn’t giving Drake’s solicitor any opportunity to dismiss future identifications by saying that they might have heard or seen Drake in his cell.
Bill McEwan and Co had called their country stakeout to an end and grumbled their way back to whatever cupboards they slept in when they weren’t switched on; Liam’s theory, because he’d never met a single ARC officer wandering around the supermarket on a weekend with their wife and kids, so he just knew that they had to live their lives plugged in on charge until they were activated again. Real Robocops.
For Craig it felt like his already thirty-six-hour day was just starting, and he needed to up his game. If he handled Rowan Drake’s interview incorrectly then there would be no warrant granted for his DNA, and even if they found a photograph of every one of the victims’ dumpsites amongst the train enthusiast’s decades of photo albums, any sensible public prosecutor would refuse to indict him on such circumstantial evidence and the civil-servant would walk free to kill again.
That was the only thought in Craig’s mind as he gazed through the viewing-room window at their detainee, and it was responsible for the tightening ball of fear in his chest. John Winter stood against the room’s side wall, deep in thought, while Liam was outside in the carpark, pacing as he talked on the phone. He was the person they were waiting for, and as the door opened and the DCI entered, still scribbling in his notebook, Craig urged him on with a hopeful, “Well?”
Liam’s response was to slide the notebook towards him and tap his forefinger on a list.
“Every day. He was in court every, single, day of the Granger case, boss.”
Craig merely nodded, so Liam continued, determined to be encouraging. He’d seen Craig wear that impassive expression in the past pre-interview, and he knew that it masked a man who would blame only himself if the guilty man got off.
“And the lads at the house said nearly all the dumpsites were in Drake’s photo albums. Places where he and the Missus were pictured on day trips over the years.”
Rowan Drake had relived their romance by leaving bodies at places he and his ex-wife been happy together. The man really was a sick fuck.
John’s quiet voice emerged from the shadows.
“We need his DNA, Marc. If we can match that we can prove everything else.”
Craig swung round, startling him. “Of course!”
He raced out the door, through reception and into the staff room, where he took out his phone and made a call.
“Nicky, do you have a number for Bryony Leyton?”
A moment later the bereaved social worker came on the line.
“Ms Leyton, it’s DCS Craig. I need to ask you a question. Do you have Maria’s mobile phone to hand?”
Bryony Leyton’s eyes fell on the small handbag that she still couldn’t bring herself to throw out.
“Yes. It was returned to me two months ago, once the police didn’t need it any more.”
“Good. It was found where they thought Maria had been abducted, yes?”
“Yes. In the carpark of her offices.”
“OK, please get me her last text message and call numbers, in and out.”
As she disappeared for a moment to oblige, the detective prayed that his hunch was correct. Eventually Leyton came back on the line.
“The last few texts in and out were to a mutual friend of ours, arranging dinner, and Maria’s last two outgoing calls are tagged as work.”
Craig closed his eyes as she continued.
“One of the incoming ones was work as well, but the very last call she got was from Rowan. They must have been talking about Buster.”
“What time was that call made?” Craig could hear the tension in his voice as he spoke.
“Six-thirty.”
The time of Maria Drake’s last walk from her office to her car.
“How long did it last?”
“About five minutes.”
He gave a quiet sigh. “Thank you.”
“But why do you need to know that?”
“I’ll call you back later and explain, I promise, but right now I have to go.”
He did, to call Nicky again. By now he had an audience in the staff room of John, Liam and Jack, who was busying himself making tea.
“Nicky, get me Davy…”
After what seemed like an hour the analyst came on the line. Craig didn’t waste any time on preamble.
“Rowan Drake’s mobile phone. I need you to find out exactly where it was between six and seven o’clock on the fourteenth of December last year. I need his exact location coordinates. Can you get them without waiting for a warrant?”
Davy smiled. He had his contacts. “Give me his number and I’ll phone you back.”
A tortuous ten minutes later the detective had what he needed. Not only had Rowan Drake lied about his whereabouts at the time of his wife’s abduction in his original statement, but he’d been no more than fifty metres away from Maria Drake when she’d received her final call. From him. So much for his train exhibition in Dublin; his ticket had to be a dud.
All bets were off.
Craig turned to John.
“What samples do you need for Drake’s DNA, John? He lied in his alibi for his wife’s death, so we’ve got enough to get a warrant for it now, but I’d rather not take blood and alert him that we’re on to him.”
The pathologist thought for a moment. “If they can get some hairs from his comb to Des, he should find one with a follicle. Also, they should look around his home for a cup that looks recently used. Des might be able to get saliva from that.”
Craig nodded to his deputy. “Liam, tell Ryan to get those samples to Des, and we need a rush comparison to the vaginal DNA. And when I say rush I mean now.” He glanced at the mug of coffee Jack had placed in front of him, taking a grateful sip. “Give me five minutes, and then we’re good to go.”
Five minutes to re-read the half-page summaries that he’d gathered from his team and formulate the first few questions he needed to ask, then he nodded the others to take their places; John to the viewing room to observe, and confirm or refute their assessment of Rowan Drake as a malignant narcissist, Jack to the cells to bring forth
their offender, and Liam and him to take up position in interview room one.
****
Interview Room One. High Street Station. 1.30 p.m.
The police are supposed to be noble, bound by a code that says, ‘protect the innocent and bang up the bad’, or something like that. And OK, so there are bad apples in every barrel, but most do their best to be chivalric knights riding to the public’s rescue, even though they don’t get to carry a cool Arthurian sword.
Marc Craig and Liam Cullen were no different, even given the differences between the two men; OK, Liam’s language was distinctly un-knightly at times, and Craig often struggled to control his temper, but their hearts were in the right places and they genuinely did their best. Which doesn’t of course mean that they were perfect, or that a very human desire to wind a perp up or piss them off didn’t occasionally slip through. In fact, Craig was looking forward to employing a bit of vice in Drake’s interview, purely in the name of justice, of course.
It would be boring to go through what happened in the next twenty minutes word for word, to recount each lengthy question and cynical glance, each repetitive tap of Rowan Drake’s forefinger against the interview room table, and every monotonous “no comment” that he gave. Except that, as the clock on the wall kept beating rhythmically and Drake’s glances at it increased, Craig could have sworn that the sound of its ticking was growing deafening in their prisoner’s ears.
The tightening of Drake’s jaw was accompanied by beads of sweat populating his brow in what was a seasonably chilly room, and his eyes, when not on the clock or his interrogators, darted with growing frequency towards the door. Craig could feel Liam’s increasing eagerness to push the man’s buttons, but he continued to ask his long list of questions in a leisurely voice.
“Where were you on Tuesday the fifth of December, Mister Drake?” and “Have you ever been to Tyrella?”
Questions on the eleven murders came dawdling out, all greeted with the same null return, but when after thirty minutes Drake’s “no comment”s began emerging in a terser, almost panicked tone, Liam realised what Craig’s plan had been from the start.
The Killing Year (The Craig Crime Series Book 17) Page 35
