The police chief produced the sheet with the haste of a man who realised that, however inadvertently, he might have been harbouring a criminal in his ranks and wanted to make it up.
Annette ran a finger down the page.
“Tomelty’s on duty a lot in the coming weeks, especially at night.”
She stabbed her finger on a date.
“The next time is this evening! He’s scheduled for an all-nighter from ten o’clock.”
“Well, the night shift does pays overti...”
Donovan’s voice faded away as he realised that it mightn’t just be the overtime payments attracting Jerome Tomelty to the docks at night.
Annette pressed on. “What ships do you have coming in then, Chief? Any from the countries that we’ve just discussed?”
A quick rustling of paper was followed by a computer being booted up and soon they were looking at the Pirsaitis from the Port of Riga in Latvia, due to dock at ten-thirty.
Andy frowned. “Will anyone else be on duty with Tomelty then?”
“A junior officer, but he’s scheduled to remain in the office to respond to any calls. Tomelty’s the only one who’ll be out on patrol.”Donovan’s large jaw dropped. “You think he’ll be out unloading drugs from the ship!”
The detectives glanced at each other and rose to their feet to leave. Andy issued another warning before they did.
“I don’t want any of this leaking to Jerome Tomelty, not even by a look or a gesture that might make him suspicious. Can you give me your word on that?”
The police chief swallowed hard before answering, “I can.”
“All right then. We’ll get back in touch with you later and take it from there. As far as everyone is concerned we were never here. Please ensure that your secretary’s clear on that and that includes her not telling other support staff. No-one here can know anything about our visit in case Tomelty catches on and runs.”
They were back in the car a minute later and Annette got straight on the phone again, setting it on speaker.
“Davy. A Lithuanian sailor called Moldau was arrested in Dozy’s nightclub in town on the ninth of November for alleged sexual assault. He was taken to High Street and remanded but Jack doesn’t have a record of the court outcome, so could you find out what happened to him for me?”
It was a lot more interesting than the research the analyst had just been doing so he opened a fresh screen and got to work.
“St...Stay on the line. It’ll only take me a second.”
More like thirty but who’s counting?
“OK. Matis Moldau, Twenty-four years old...” The analyst scrolled down, speed-reading as he went, “He groped a girl at the club in front of witnesses and w...was remanded pending trial, which happened on... OK, so the trial began on December fourth and lasted three days. That was fast, wasn’t it?”
He didn’t wait for a response. “There were three witnesses so it was pretty cut and dried, and he was sentenced to six months for sexual assault and s...sent to Magilligan. He’s still there now.”
“Great. Can you pull up his charge sheet and check his tattoos for me?”
“Looking for nasties?”
Annette gave a weak laugh. “Looking for anything like ‘BM’ or another gang tatt.”
Davy scanned the uploaded photographs in front of him for a moment before answering, “BM’s there twice in different places, and there’s what looks like a lot of anti-soviet tatts, but I’ll have to check those out.”
“Great.” She was about to cut the call when she had another thought. “Do you have Derek Smyth’s calendar handy?”
“Right here. Why?”
“Check whether tonight’s marked on it, please.”
Andy had been listening to the conversation impassively but now his slim face broke into a grin. “Hey girl, you’re wild clever.”
Annette giggled at the words and then caught herself on for being so flattered. It was vain and she’d been taught not to be, although that didn’t mean that the teaching had taken of course.
Davy’s whoop timed out her internal debate.
“Tonight’s marked with a red circle! What its s...significance?”
“We’re not sure yet, but it may mean drugs being smuggled on a ship.”
The analyst smiled at the calendar, knowing that if a red circle meant drug smuggling by ship then it might provide them with the key to cracking the rest of the chart.
“Brilliant. Oh, before you go, the briefing’s going to be a half-six now. The chief’s stuck down at Mahon. There’s been another death.”
Then he cut the call, abandoning the two, now-stunned detectives in favour of his chart.
Chapter Ten
Mahon Prison.
After Craig had spat out his “Damn!”s in the doorway of Filip Pojello’s cell his years of training had kicked in, and after a flurry of, “Post a guard outside and pull the CCTV”, followed by Liam’s, “And seal off Jimmy Morris’ cell too” directed at George Royston, the detectives had moved in to take a closer look at their second victim of the week.
Why closer, neither of them was quite sure; Filip Pojello’s cause of death was already glaringly obvious from his violet hue and the deep scratch marks around his neck, where his now broken nails had torn at his flesh in a vain grab for air, his hands then dropping to his chest where they still lay, locked in the grasping posture they’d held at his moment of death.
But move closer the detectives did, leaning in, and their inspection of the dead prisoner was punctuated by a growling, sibilant, “Shit” from Craig.
The expletive was the expression of many things: frustration at not preventing Pojello’s death when he was in government custody, and more, when there had already been one killing that week, undoubtedly by the same hand; anger at that hand for daring to cause the death right under their noses, and at the bloody cheek of the man or men who had engineered it, when they must have known that the police were in the house. There was disgust from Craig too, at Filip Pojello’s obvious agony in his last minutes, the slow desperation of suffocation an unnecessarily sadistic way to kill; and then even more, this time aimed at himself, that whoever had done this wouldn’t have, couldn’t have, if he had already found those responsible for Derek Smyth’s death.
The detective straightened up sharply, the steel always in him showing itself now in a rigid spine. In his mind Filip Pojello’s death was on him, and that ownership gave birth to a fury that Liam only rarely saw, and, while not fearing its direction at him, it made him step back to clear Craig’s exit from the cell.
It came with barked orders.
“Get John and Des down here. And I want them to come themselves. No excuses. CSIs too. When they’ve finished we’ll need a full search of the cell and you and I will do that, Liam. Seal the door for now. I’m going to look at the CCTV.”
He swept past George Royston outside without slowing and the governor realised that he’d better keep up if he wanted to know what was going on. He puffed along behind Craig until the D.C.S. slowed as they reached the admin suite and turned to face the manager, still with a scowl on his lean face.
“Where’s the central CCTV bank?”
Royston leaned against the nearest wall to catch his breath, just enough left to direct Craig towards an office on his right to where he followed him at a far slower pace than before. A short knock and the door opened to reveal a sight familiar in every shopping centre and transport hub, a bank of screens stacked two high and displaying real time black and white images of activities everywhere in the house. They ranged from the mundane, guards patrolling walkways in the way they’d done a thousand times before, through the routine, laundry and tea trolleys trundling past the cells, to the irregular, sporadic punch-ups kicking off in the showers or yard, generating an alert to the nearest warder to intervene.
The alert came from the man in front of the screens, a prison officer so short and slight that Craig wondered whether he would cope outside the room; but t
hen perhaps he never had to, perhaps watching CCTV screens all day was his reason to exist.
He indicated the screen bank too curtly and he knew it.
“I need to see what happened on landing ‘B’ this afternoon.”
The guard’s gaze flicked immediately to his boss and Royston nodded back from his position leaning against the door.
“Go ahead, McCausland. Play it back.”
Before he could, Craig had had another thought.
“Can we narrow the timings? When was Filip Pojello last seen alive, Governor?”
Royston’s response was to glance at his watch.
“Wait here a moment. I’ll check where he should have been after lunch.”
He returned half-a-minute later and walked straight over to the guard.
“Pull up the library at two o’clock, please, McCausland.” He turned to Craig in explanation. “Pojello was a library trustee and he was due there today.”
A live version of their dead man appeared on the screen, enlarged so that they could easily make out his face.
Royston nodded. “That’s Pojello. OK, now fast forward to see what he does next.”
A rapid dance ensued that involved Filip Pojello moving books on and off shelves in an in-out, in-out, shake-it-all-about performance and then racing his book trolley back to the library’s main desk, followed by him apparently speed-walking at several miles an hour back to his cell.
A sharp, “Stop” from Craig showed the time of his entry there to have been two-thirty.
“Now just take it forward at double speed.”
They gazed at the cell door and landing walkway diligently for the next ninety minutes, until they arrived at a point ten minutes before Pojello’s body was found and Craig spoke again.
“Slow it up a little, to one and a half.”
The three men watched as the guards on the landing changed over and the new one dutifully peered through the peephole of each cell on the floor, the horror on his face as he performed the check on Filip Pojello’s cell immediately obvious. It was followed by its door being thrown open, the warder entering and then reappearing a moment later to raise the alarm. Craig signalled John McCausland to freeze the screen and then glanced around him for a couple of chairs, lifting one and nodding the governor to join him sitting down.
George Royston was the first to speak, in a shocked voice.
“No-one killed Pojello!”
Craig shook his head. “We can’t say that. All we know is that no-one entered his cell during that period and did it hands-on.” He gestured at the screen. “Can we see inside Pojello’s cell between when he entered and when the guard found him dead?”
Royston shook his head. “We don’t observe the men twenty-four seven. Only people on suicide watch.”
Damn. He’d forgotten that the cells weren’t like the custody ones in a nick.
The detective recovered quickly.
“It wouldn’t have mattered anyway. The odds are that he died after taking a tablet, and Liam and I can search for those now.” He turned back to the screen watcher. “Would it be possible for you to examine all the CCTV you have on and around Pojello’s cell for today?”
“Do you want to wait while I do it now?”
“No, but before we leave today would be great. I’m interested in anyone other than Filip Pojello who might have entered his cell. Tell the governor if you find anything.”
He thanked the guard and motioned Royston towards the door, wondering why when they were together he always felt like the one in charge.
“Let’s go to your office briefly. I want to hear what the search of the drains yielded.”
Ten minutes later Royston had reported the search had revealed several conduits leading to the grate in the mechanic’s pit from both inside and outside the prison, all of them apparently clear. The information generated a wry smile from Craig that confused him.
“You’re pleased? But the snaking revealed nothing.”
“I wasn’t expecting to find drugs.” Craig enlarged Davy’s version of the drain networks on his phone. “By nothing, you mean there were no obstacles to the snaking?”
The governor nodded. “That’s right. The snaking was obstructed by nothing but water.”
“And the fibre-optic probe too? By that I mean that there were no grilles or meshes seen across the drains at any point?”
The question prompted some doubt and made Royston lift the phone. “Officer Murtagh, it’s the governor here. You supervised the drain snaking, didn’t you?”The answer was obviously yes as his next question was, “And you also watched on the screen as the fibre-optics went through?”
Another affirmative and they’d reached the one million pound question.
“Good. Now, tell me, were there any grilles or meshes across the pipes anywhere in the system?” The answer seemed to confuse him as to whether it was good or bad, “There were? How did-”
Before he could ask anything further, Craig reached out for the phone. “It’s D.C.S. Craig here. A few more questions. I’m presuming the grilles you found were big enough for the snake to get through?”
“Yes.”
“How big?”
“About one inch square.”
“OK. So easy water flow. But were there any pathways from the outside of the prison to the mechanic’s pit that didn’t have grilles or meshes anywhere on the way through?”
If he’d been less confident in his judgment it might have been the moment for Craig to cross his fingers, but he was sure that he was right so he was relaxed, and unsurprised when a few seconds later another, “Yes” came.
“OK, good. How many?”
“Just one. The others all had a grille somewhere along the pathway.”
“Good. Talk me through the route.”
As Craig followed the journey inch by inch on his plan, Royston got tired of being two steps behind in everything and went out to ask his secretary for some hot drinks. He set down a mug in front of Craig just as he ended his call. The detective took a sip and then turned his phone plan towards the older man.
“OK, you were right that there was nothing found in the drains that would have impeded water flow, but all of the routes coming into the pit from outside the prison had metal grilles across them except one.” He tapped the plan. “It’s a convoluted route starting half a mile outside the prison, across the road from your rear gate but it feeds straight into the mechanics’ pit. I’m sure further examination, I’ll ask the CSIs to do it, will show that there were some grilles or meshes there originally but they’d been cut away to give unimpeded access. Someone put a lot of effort into setting this up. Possibly Derek Smyth. He did metalwork classes in the hall, didn’t he?”
As he took another sip of coffee, Royston, who had been gawping, managed to gather himself to speak.
“So you’re saying that’s how the drugs that killed Smyth got into my prison?”
“And Pojello. Yes.”
“But...but, the organisation that would have required... cutting the grilles... they must have been working at this for months!”
Craig nodded. “Since around the drone drop in May, I’d say. That could have been a diversion, or perhaps you putting up the nets and cameras is what drove everything underground.” He realised what he’d just said and added, “Literally” with a smirk. “Either way, I suspect there’ve been drones travelling your drain network for a while, bringing in drugs and possibly even taking things out like messages. We know Pojello and Wyatt were involved with the one in May, but Wyatt and Derek Smyth both belonged to a tiny Loyalist group called the Sons of the Boyne at one time, so they knew each other, so perhaps when Wyatt got parole he passed the scam over to Smyth, that’s if he wasn’t already involved. Anyway, now we know the drone’s entry point we can search the local area, although we probably won’t find anything unless we’re lucky enough to catch the operator in action.”
Royston was still struggling to get his head around things. “So... someon
e stood over a drain just outside my walls and directed a drone into the mechanics’ pit... without anyone noticing?”
“Yes. Well, they probably didn’t stand right over the opening but they couldn’t have been far away. The range on small drones isn’t huge, so the operator needs to be close by.”
Craig realised that he was depressing the official, so with a last swig of his coffee he turned for the door.
“Thanks for the drink. I’d better get back to the cell.”
Royston nodded heavily and followed him. “I’ll come with you. I need to keep appraised of everything, to update the Department later.”
The heaviness with which he said the words told Craig that he really wasn’t looking forward to the call.
Minutes later they were back at Filip Pojello’s cell where the forensic party was in full swing, watched by a gaggle of prisoners on the landings above and below who whooped each time anyone new appeared.
Craig ushered the governor inside and closed the door.
“What’s happening, Liam?”
“These are the CSIs Des sent ahead. He and the Doc are on the road. They’re doing this cell and Joyboy’s. I’ve already given this place a quick once over. I was going to wait for you but...”
“I was away for quite a while. I know. Sorry.”
The deputy displayed a gloved hand to prevent Craig’s inevitable next question. “I’m sterile, so you needn’t worry.”
“I’m sure that’ll be a relief to your wife.” Before Liam could retort he added, “Good. OK, so what have you found?”
The D.C.I.’s other hand appeared bearing gifts, in the form of an evidence bag full of blue tablets, the like of which they had seen before.
“They look the same, down to the seams. They were in Pojello’s vent, and they weren’t alone.” A nod towards the bedside table revealed a second evidence bag, this time containing a mobile phone. “I think we’ve found the phone to go with Smyth’s SIM.”
Craig smiled; his day was improving slightly. OK, so there were a lot of phones in the world that might fit their SIM but if forensics could prove that Derek Smyth’s SIM worked in Filip Pojello’s phone then, added to the other things they knew, they had a possible circumstantial link between their two dead men to support their suspicion that they’d been in cahoots. Although proving that was still a long way away.
Crossing The Line Page 29
