The Depths

by Catriona King

  Davy nodded. “Six months. And that’s exactly what I thought, s...so I dug deeper. It turned out their house was a perk of the manager’s job, so when Edgar Westbury got so depressed that he couldn’t work after his wife’s suicide they kicked him out.”

  “Bloody hell! Not much compassion there, was there?”

  Craig sighed. “There are no friends in business.”

  The analyst offered up a defence for the hotel. “They did say the family could stay on in the main hotel, but I suppose they didn’t want to. Not the s...same.”

  After a lengthy pause while each of them pictured the nightmare that Edgar Westbury had found himself in, with a missing child and a dead wife, Craig changed topic to move things along.

  “Tell me more about Stuart and Nicola Kincaid, Davy, and why Edgar Westbury wasn’t our murder victim, if Stuart Kincaid was killed because he was hunting for the girl. Westbury was her father after all.”

  Liam looked at him curiously. “You don’t think her photo was the reason for Kincaid’s murder now?”

  “I never thought it was the whole reason, Liam, but in any case that’s not what I said. I’m just curious how Edgar Westbury reacted to his daughter’s disappearance, and why it was her uncle who ended up hunting for her instead of her father, if that was what Kincaid was doing.”

  Davy shrugged. “I don’t know much about the last bit yet, but the police reports mentioned that Stuart and Nicola Kincaid were very close and I know why.” He tapped his screen again and two birth certificates appeared. “They were twins.”

  Liam grinned. “So our Vic was a loving twin brother and uncle, not a paedo.”

  “They’re not mutually exclusive; but I take your point.”

  The analyst continued as if neither detective had spoken.

  “Nicola was born first and Stuart ten minutes later. They had no other s...siblings so Stuart must really have felt it when his sister killed herself.” He shuddered. “I know I w...would if anything ever happened to Emmie.”

  Davy’s five years older sister and only sibling Emmie worked as a lecturer in English at a London university.

  Craig nodded. Although there was a ten year gap between Lucia and him, with it just being the two of them they were close despite that, more so now that they were adults. And even though she was getting married in a year’s time to a man that he liked and was good to her, he still felt that it was his job to make sure she was all right.

  Liam also had an opinion on the subject, as he had on almost everything in life. “Your folks should’ve had ten kids like mine did. No-one tried anything on with us. We were like the local mafia.”

  “With you as the Godfather I bet.” Craig moved on before he could retort. “Perhaps Kincaid felt his sister’s pain at Bella’s disappearance as well. They say that some twins can.”

  Liam’s expression said that he was persuadable. “It could explain why he carried the girl’s photo.”

  “And why he was hunting for her if he was.” Craig nodded at the smart-pad. “Good work, Davy. You and Ash dig as deep as you can on everything.” He glanced at his watch. “How long will it take us to drive to Monaghan, Liam?”

  The D.C.I. gave a snort. “What am I? Google maps?”

  “You come from the country and country people know things like that.”

  Before Liam could argue about whether he was the rural equivalent of sat-nav, Davy had produced the answer.

  “Sixty-five miles.”

  “OK, good, that’ll only take us an hour or so. We’ll go down tomorrow morning. Davy, get Edgar Westbury’s contact details to me and ask Alice to set up the meeting for around ten. We’ll need you to brief us again early so we have the latest facts before we go.”

  The analyst shook his newly shorn head, missing the familiar swish of his long hair as he did. He didn’t care whether Maggie thought he looked like a young Jared Leto or not; he was growing it and his beard again ASAP.

  “Not me, chief, I’m at Queen’s first thing meeting my tutor. But I’ll bring Ash up to speed. Eight o’clock OK?”

  The early hour was his revenge for Ash’s habit of dandering in late most mornings; having to be there for eight meant the lazy git would have to get up by seven at the latest. Maybe it would make him empathise with what he suffered every day, although he wasn’t holding his breath.

  “Eight’s perfect.”

  As the analyst rose to leave, Liam couldn’t resist a quip. “Who did it then?”

  Davy knew instantly what he was talking about but refused to rise to the bait, instead staring innocently at him and pretending not to understand.

  “Who did wh...what?”

  The D.C.I. gestured at his head.

  “Your hair, man, your hair. Who got at you with a lawnmower?”

  Once again Davy responded in a way guaranteed to give Liam’s joke a slow and painful death. He lifted a hand slowly to his neck and feigned shock.

  “Oh my God! My hair’s gone! Who stole it?”

  He started to search frantically around the floor and beneath Craig’s desk, making the detective laugh.

  “He’s just burnt you, Liam. There’s no point taking the piss out of someone who doesn’t care.” Craig stared at the younger man’s head for a moment and nodded. “I like it. It’s more modern. That whole hipster look is getting old.”

  Liam wasn’t half as amused as the other men were. He didn’t like his punch lines ruined.

  “Aye, well. It’s...it’s too short now! You...you look like... a convict, aye a convict, that’s what you look like!”

  The convict was already out the door with his best criminal cackle echoing back to them, so the D.C.I. turned on his boss.

  “Anyway, what’re you laughing at? You could do with a hair cut too. Those girly curls of yours are about to disappear down your back.”

  That jibe was thwarted as well when Craig smiled and rose to his feet.

  “Thanks for reminding me. I think I’ll go and get one now. Tell Alice I’ll be back at six, will you, and call me if there’s anything urgent before then.”

  ****

  Eglantine Avenue. Near Queen’s University Belfast.

  It had taken Ash longer than Andy had hoped to find a photograph of Bella Westbury that was unlikely to have been used in the gendarmes’ search and email it through, and when he had done the girl had been so young in it that she could simply have been any blonde toddler dressed in the fashion of a few years before. As a tool to identify her to anyone other than a family member the image was useless, but then as Ash had phoned through five minutes earlier to inform him that the Kincaids were actually that, perhaps it would be OK.

  The second delay that the D.C.I. had encountered had held another, very tenuous, link with fashion, this time of the more modern variety. Mary had taken Craig’s admonishments to keep warm to heart and had ordered a detour to her apartment near Queen’s University to change outfit. While she was busy doing that on some storey of the redbrick Victorian terrace that she obviously called home, Andy waited outside in the car and entertained himself by playing the mix-tape his recently acquired girlfriend had made.

  The relationship with Rebecca Wickes, a D.C. in the Vice Squad, was very new but already it felt serious, perhaps in part because it had been forged during an intense operation during which one of her informants had been killed. You can learn a lot about someone when you see them cry over a virtual stranger, and even more when they make the effort to attend the funeral and visit the family afterwards. Rebecca had a good heart that mattered to him more than her pretty face and sharp brain, so as the D.C.I. listened to the strains of Jack Savoretti playing in the background there was a definite bubble of excitement in his chest.

  It was punctured quickly when the window was rapped to signal Mary’s return, decked out in a pair of trousers so tight Andy wondered how she could sit down in them, and a pink, fake-fur jacket that made her look like she was planning to moonlight as a bunny girl. He responded to her request for entry
with a shaking head and instead climbed out to join her on the street.

  “I’m not taking you to see a bereaved family dressed like that! Go back and change.”

  The D.C. jutted out her chin defiantly. “There’s nothing wrong with this! Show me the regulation that says I can’t wear it! It covers me and I need to be warm.”

  “Then put on an overcoat! And make sure it isn’t bright pink. We’re about to tell someone they’ve lost a relative for goodness sake!”

  He climbed back into the car to the sound of muttering and spent the next part of his wait pondering the wisdom of the force’s plain clothes policy. To be fair, he couldn’t recall ever having received guidance on exactly what sort of plain clothes he was allowed to wear, but most people’s common sense seemed to stretch to it involving a suit or at least a decent jacket, and the general understanding was that it definitely didn’t include pink fur!

  But, people’s craving for self-expression and narcissism being what it was nowadays, he decided to suggest to Craig that some team guidelines might be a good idea. He’d never understood the urge for individuality himself; personally he loved having the uniform of a suit to put on in the morning. It reduced his bleary decision making to the colour of his shirt, tie and socks, and at seven a.m. that was always a good thing.

  The D.C.I.’s style musings were cut short by another rap on his window, and this time a navy coated and booted Mary was granted admission, making an irritating grumbling sound that made Andy crank up the volume on his music and which only ceased when they arrived at their destination, a leafy suburban park in Portaferry lined with detached villas and displaying a collection of SUVs and Hybrids that screamed ‘middle-class family land’.

  The D.C.I. knocked off his music mid-song and turned to the grumpy constable by his side.

  “OK, this is the family of our murder victim, Stuart Kincaid, and while they may know that he’s missing, although it hasn’t been reported so we can’t even be sure of that, they’re very unlikely to know that he’s dead, so leave the talking to me, please.”

  That suited Mary, who was preoccupied with snuggling as deep into her coat as was possible and hoping that the house they were about to enter was a lot better heated than his car.

  A knock on the glossy front door of a mock-Tudor mansion and a quick flash of warrant cards saw them being shown into a comfortable sitting room by Stuart Kincaid’s wife Luisa, an attractive, tanned brunette who looked older than Mary had expected from the approximate age they’d been given for her husband.

  It was a prejudice Andy would correct another time when he enlightened her that twelve percent took place between older women and younger men, and many more than that if there was only a few years difference, and that he’d very much enjoyed being in one of them himself.

  The D.C.I. waited until they were settled and then gazed kindly at the woman in front of him, asking a question that to anyone experienced in breaking bad news was a warning sign.

  “Is anyone here with you, Mrs Kincaid?”

  She smiled and shook her head. “My sons are both at school.” She glanced at her watch. “Although the younger one should be home soon. My other son has sports practice today.”

  Just then they heard a key in the front door, and the sound of it banging open followed by a thud as something was dropped in the hall preceded a call of, “Mum?”

  “In here, pet.”

  A lanky teenage boy flew in with his school tie and blazer half off and stopped in his tracks when he saw the detectives. His mother intervened quickly, as if fearing that he would let her down by saying something rude.

  “These are police officers, Josh. Detectives.”

  The boy’s abrupt, “What are they doing here?” said that she’d probably been correct in her fear.

  “I haven’t asked that yet, dear. The officers have only just arrived. Now,” she rose and ushered him back out the door, “go upstairs and do your homework. I’ll be absolutely fine.”

  His reluctant exit was accompanied by a quipped, “I bet Kenny’s done something” that said sibling rivalry was alive and well in the Kincaid home.

  The words prompted Luisa Kincaid to ask quizzically, “Is he?”

  “Kenny’s your other son?”

  “Yes. Is he in trouble?”

  It prompted a shake of Andy’s head and a sympathetic smile. “No, Mrs Kincaid, we’re not here about your sons.”

  The slight emphasis that he’d tried to avoid placing on the final word made her eyes widen.

  “Which squad did you say you came from again?”

  There was no ‘again about it, because he’d deliberately omitted to say in the first place; but now he did, in as gentle a tone as he possessed.

  “We’re from Belfast’s Murder Squad, Mrs Kincaid.” After a short pause he added, “I’m very sorry”, which he really was. The loss of a loved one was hard enough for families without the thought that someone had deliberately taken them away.

  As the D.C.I. braced himself for a scream and tears, the constable beside him was scrutinising the new widow’s face curiously, watching as each phase of realisation registered there: confusion, incredulity, and then, slowly, fear followed by shock. It wasn’t that Mary was cold exactly; merely excessively analytical as perhaps befitted her degree background, breaking each human reaction but her own down into a binary sequence of ones and noughts. It was a useful ability in a detective if not in a human being.

  Andy’s anticipated scream and tears didn’t materialise, Luisa Kincaid instead retaining the dull, staring, silence of the shocked phase, and yet somehow with enough clarity to murmur, “Stuart?”

  The D.C.I. gave the smallest nod that he could manage, anything more vigorous unseemly, implying enthusiasm for the confirmation which was the last thing that he felt. He would’ve loved to have been able to prevent all the pain and suffering that he saw in the world but he knew that was impossible, so at the very least he tried to minimise it where he could.

  He followed the nod with a soft, “We think so. I’m very sorry.”

  A lengthy pause without any further reaction from the widow was ended by a pained swallow as he moved to deliver the next blow. “We’d like you to come and perform the identification if possible.”

  Once more he braced himself for cries, but her walled-off, stunned restraint held and she rose robotically to her feet.

  “I’ll get my coat.”

  And tell her young son that she wouldn’t be long.

  Eighty minutes later the D.C.I. was standing beside the widow in the mortuary as John Winter uncovered the least damaged side of her husband’s face, Luisa Kincaid’s silence still so persistent that both men’s experience told them that she might never unfreeze.

  ****

  The C.C.U.5.20 p.m.

  “Right. I’m back. What’s been happening?”

  A newly shorn Craig appeared in front of his deputy’s over-loaded desk, almost tripping over a heap of files as he did, and wondering why he’d never noticed how warm his hair had kept his neck until he felt nostalgic for it now. If his rank hadn’t come with expectations of upholding the highest police standards of presentation the chill would almost have been enough to tempt him into a long-haired musketeer look like John’s; he was so dark he had to shave twice daily so he could probably grow it in a few weeks but it would inevitably bring with it slagging about curls and ribbons from the squad. Or maybe a moustache just for a change, although then he’d have to deal with Katy making jokes about how he looked like a seventies porn star.

  As Craig was speculating about possible uses for his natural hirsuteness Liam was scrutinising his newly short hair approvingly; he’d never been able to grow his sandy scrub any longer than an inch without it looking like a Brillo Pad, so he didn’t see why any other bloke in the force should sport flowing locks.

  Eventually he broke off his scrutiny to answer his boss’ question.

  “Andy phoned through. He’s at the morgue with the widow and she
’s confirmed that our Vic is Stuart Kincaid. She’s in shock so he’s going to question her in one of the offices there and tape it on his phone before he drives her home.”

  “Fine. Anything else?”

  “Aidan and Ryan are staying down in Omagh tonight. They’ve four farmers and two locals to interview and most of the farmers are out on the land till sunset.” The D.C.I. snorted pityingly. “Hughesy sounded surprised about it too. City boys. Huh! I could’ve told him they’d be out in the fields till it was dark.”

  “Why didn’t you then?”

  Without waiting for a reply Craig turned to scan the open-plan office, in particular an area in the far left corner behind the last of the desks. After a minute he nodded to himself and entered his office where his deputy hot-footed it after him, suddenly curious.

  “What were you looking at near the back just then?”

  “Nothing. Hang on a minute.” Craig stuck his head back out his office door. “Alice, is that call with Mahon’s governor set up for six?”

  On her nod he stepped back in and took a seat behind his desk, nodding his now suspicious deputy to a chair.

  “Why’re you talking to the Governor, boss? You’re going to land Annette in the shit!”

  “I’ll tell you later. And I won’t add to her trouble because I’ve had an idea. Now, what have you found on those witness statements from France?”

  “I’m only halfway through them.”

  “Give me whatever you’ve got.”

  In response Liam left the room for a second and reappeared with two sheets of paper in his hand. He retook his seat and set them side by side on the desk.

  “OK, so both pages are a mixture of staff and guests, and this lot...” he tapped the left hand sheet “...are all in the clear for convictions. Ash has run them through every database he can find-”

  “That was quick.”

  “Aye, well, to be fair the wee geek was ahead of us. The Doc phoned through the girl’s name as we left the lab so he started then.”