The Depths

by Catriona King

  Craig made a mental note to give the analyst a glowing annual assessment and nodded his deputy on.

  “Anyhow... they’re all clear. But this lot.” He lifted the right hand page into the air. “Aren’t.”

  When Craig saw a list filling half the page his eyes widened. “You’re telling me they’ve all got sex convictions?”

  “Well, not all the convictions are for child sex and some just have suspicions and reports.” The D.C.I. took out a pen, “But anyway, forget the rest of them, my gut says that this is the most interesting one.” He circled a name and turned the page for Craig to read.

  “Pierre Galvet. OK, so why him?”

  “He’s the only serious possibility. The others are mainly rumour and gossip, and what convictions they do have are mostly petty theft, public nuisance and the rest. My gut says most of them just pissed off the locals in some way so they squealed on them to the cops.”

  He underlined a different name. “I mean, look at this guy. Belgian, stayed at the hotel every year in their cheapest room, and was always shouting at the staff and complaining. I think he just got up the management’s nose so much that they put his name on a list for the cops to harass.”

  Craig rolled his eyes; a contemporary version of the witch trials.

  “So tell me more about Galvet.”

  Liam rested back in his chair and spoke from memory, which was still teenager sharp despite his fifty-three years. He could remember the name of every person that he’d ever arrested, and of the thankfully far smaller number that he’d been forced to shoot.

  “Forty-four, born in Paris. Ran away from home at fourteen and ended up on the streets, where he mostly survived by thieving and scamming people. When he was nineteen he was done for the first time for sex offences, flashing, and the gendarmes banged him up for a short stay. He left Paris as soon as he got out of Le Nick.”

  Craig chuckled at the Franglais. There was more of it as the D.C.I. went on.

  “The mademoiselles in Par-ee must’ve seen enough of Galvet’s dingaling to do them.”

  Craig asked a question through his laughter. “OK. So where did he go next, and what were his other offences?”

  When his deputy made a face Craig knew instantly that Galvet’s crimes had become serious and his laughter died in his throat.

  “There were multiple reports from small towns from Paris down to some place called rocket server...”

  Craig considered enlightening him that it was La Roquette-sur-Var but decided to leave it alone.

  “... of lewd behaviour, public urination and more flashing, but no charges. Then he got done for the second and third times, once for groping a twelve-year-old girl in a park where there was a witness to it, and then in twenty-ten he was suspected of trying to abduct a girl from outside a shop.”

  Craig’s eyebrows rose. “Was he locked up for it?”

  “Not for long, unfortunately. They couldn’t prove attempted abduction so they just did him for groping again. The mother came out of the shop just in time to catch him with his hand on the girl and called the cops, but Galvet argued that he’d just been chatting to the kid because he was worried that she was standing on her own. Both times he got short sentences and was sent on his way.”

  “How old was the second girl?”

  “Eleven.”

  “He’s a hebephile then.”

  Hebephilia is a strong sexual interest by adults in early adolescent children, typically aged from eleven to fourteen.

  “Yep, well the cops in Nice obviously didn’t bother checking his records in other regions after Bella Westbury was abducted.”

  “Probably because when they were searching for known paedophiles they checked for those whose preference was for Bella’s age range, not for older children like Galvet.”

  Liam nodded glumly. It was a mistake he’d seen cops make before, assuming that sex offenders chose their type and stuck to that. Some did but plenty didn’t and it turned out to be a fatal mistake.

  “OK, so the next that was heard of the scrote was more petty offences in Cross de Cagney...”

  Cros de Cagnes.

  “...that’s down the coast from the hotel where the Westbury girl lived. The offences always happened between Augus and October and each time Galvet was interviewed he said he was in the area to pick grapes.”

  “What did he do to gain police attention this time?”

  “Theft. Skimming credit cards and nicking cars mostly. There are no more sex convictions recorded.”

  “So either he got more cautious about his approaches or he learned to cover his ass.”

  “Do you want me to check if any other girls went missing locally?”

  “Ask Davy to run a search when he has time, but let’s focus on Bella for the moment.”

  “Will do.”

  The D.C.I. stretched his long arms above his head and yawned loudly before continuing, giving Craig a view of his rather large tonsils that he could well have done without.

  “Anyway, I think that his history of attempted abduction and his proximity in the summer to the Westbury’s house makes Galvet a suspect for Bella, boss, although his interview with the cops after her abduction gives him an alibi. He said he was in the field picking fruit all day.”

  Craig nodded. “I agree. We definitely need to dig deeper on him. OK, great work, Liam. Finish checking the rest of your list and then we’ll make a plan.”

  The D.C.I.’s eyes lit up. “France?”

  The suggestion made Craig’s heart leap too. A trip to France would be wonderful; he hadn’t visited the country in years. His family had spent every summer when he was growing up between Rome where his mother came from and Tuscany where they had cousins, and they’d often nipped over the border to Nice. It had done far more for his French than all the lessons he’d had at school and he would love the chance to speak it again.

  But... sadly his mistress was the police finance department and she wasn’t a generous one, so without serious justification they would never sanction the trip. Although of course that didn’t mean he couldn’t pay for it himself.

  Craig’s rationalisation had only taken seconds so his deputy was still looking at him hopefully for a yes.

  “I’m not ruling a trip out, Liam, but it depends on what we discover here over the next few days.” He lifted his desk phone. “OK, bugger off now. I need to make some calls before Alice puts Mahon through.”

  The D.C.I. didn’t need to be told twice, especially as he guessed that at least one of the calls would be to Katy and might involve unnecessary, in his opinion, expressions of romance.

  In fact none of Craig’s calls were to his new wife, despite the advanced state of her pregnancy, because she’d told him very clearly to, “leave her alone”, courtesy of his apparent tendency to, “fuss”, something that he vehemently denied, although he supposed that phoning her every two hours in the previous month had been a bit much. It had seen Katy forbidding all communication between them between the hours of eight and eight, but thankfully he had the reassurance that she was in the care of her mother and he would have trusted Maureen Stevens with his life.

  So his calls were in fact to the Ombudsman’s and PPS’ offices making appointments to see them the following week, by which time he’d hopefully have found out a lot more about Pete McElroy’s burglary and also be less inclined to take a swing at their staff.

  He followed up with a third call to the police works department, querying the price of an alteration to the squad-room’s infrastructure which he’d just realised fifteen minutes before was long overdue. When he’d recovered from the quote that he was given for doing the work, and doing it that weekend, he gave them the go ahead. Even if the new structure didn’t end up being utilised for its intended purpose all the time, they’d lost their quiet space to write reports and view CCTV tapes when the staff-room had been built so it would never go unused.

  At the very least it would give his team a surprise on Monday and cheer them up,
which they badly needed. While the main impact of Pete McElroy’s death had definitely been on his immediate family Annette was a member of another family as well, his team, and although they dealt with death and tragedy every day in their work it was very different when somebody that they cared about was involved.

  Whether she liked it or not, and he knew that sometimes she viewed it as a pain in the ass, Annette wasn’t only a gifted detective she was the squad’s surrogate mum, just as his permanent secretary, Nicky Morris, currently only working occasionally because she was caring for her teenage son who had a drug problem, was their ever present nagging aunt. With both of them away now for an indeterminate length of time it was knocking the team’s balance off, and he needed to find some way to rectify that while still keeping his eye on the prize; finding Stuart Kincaid’s killer.

  Craig’s thoughts were disturbed by his desk phone ringing, normally only something that happened after he’d heard Alice receive a call to transfer. Rather than waste time wondering who might be bypassing the PA he answered the call quickly in case it was about Katy, and was surprised to hear a voice that he wasn’t able to put a name to but sounded familiar enough that he thought he probably should.

  “D.C.S. Craig?”

  “Yes. Who’s calling?”

  “It’s D.C.S. Pine. Counterterrorism.”

  Craig’s thoughts ping-ponged from, ‘What the hell does counterterrorism want with me?’ to ‘now why is that name familiar?’ and back again, before he realised who she was.

  Catherine Pine was one of three Chief Superintendents, with himself and Andy White, the Drugs lead in Derry, that Sean Flanagan had in his questionable wisdom decided to make into an informal team. Their task was to provide ad hoc consultation and expertise for the Serious and Organised Crime unit, its day-to-day operational running being the job of SOC’s dedicated team and the Assistant Chief Constable who was their lead. Flanagan also utilised their joint expertise as and when any of their own cases revealed links to something bigger, as in the squad’s murder case before Christmas which had yielded leads to counterfeit drug importing and dealing networks in prisons, and paramilitary gangs.

  But Craig was struggling to think of anything that linked his work currently to counterterrorism and his heart sank at the only other possible reason he could think of that Cate Pine was giving him a call. He tried not to let it show in his response.

  “Hello again, Cate, how are you?”

  There was a momentary pause at the other end of the line during which he realised that she couldn’t remember where they’d met before. He refreshed her memory.

  “We were both at the joint forces conference in Dublin last year. The one with the Gardaí.”

  A drawn out, “Yesss...” said that the penny was taking an unflatteringly long time to drop. When it did it was with a clang. “You were the one who wouldn’t switch your phone off and kept going outside to take calls.”

  It was said in a tone that implied phone answering was what secretaries were for, and he decided to move things on before she said something else to make him think she was a snob.

  “What can I do for you, D.C.S. Pine?”

  If she noticed the change in appellation she gave no sign of it.

  “I thought we should meet up. I hear you’ve already worked with D.C.S. White in the new arrangement.”

  He’d been right about her reason for calling and it made his heart sink. He had enough to do at the moment without taking tea with a woman whose missing sense of humour was the talk of the force. So much so that one wit had even offered a reward for finding it and had had to be talked out of circulating a flyer to that effect. Being no craic was considered a crime in Ireland, and not a victimless one.

  He deflected the meeting request with information.

  “I had a case before Christmas that we needed his expertise on and it evolved into more, but I don’t think anything we’re working on at the moment overlaps with C.T.” When he realised that he was sounding as reluctant to meet her as he felt, his good manners kicked in. “But I’m more than happy to meet up for a chat anyway.”

  “Information Technology.”

  “Sorry, what?”

  He wondered whether he’d tuned out for part of the conversation and missed something; it had been known before when he was tired.

  Her next words said that he hadn’t.

  “I’m leading Information Technology Crime now. I’ve left Counterterrorism. The only reason I mentioned it in my introduction was because I thought that was the only place you might know me from.”

  “Ah... well, I imagine tech is very interesting,” he would rather have had his fingernails pulled out, “there’s an IT component in most crimes nowadays.” That part was true at least.

  It was as if he hadn’t spoken, as her voice, which Craig noticed was quite husky and attractive despite the words she was uttering, continued in exactly the same tone.

  “When shall we meet? We won’t need long, just enough for me to give you my perspective on how we might work together should the occasion arise, and you to give me yours.”

  The clipped nature of her last few words said that any meeting would be mostly about her, but Craig already had an idea how to defer the fateful day.

  “I can’t meet until the end of the week, and it may even be next week. We’ve just caught a case.”

  Her voice rose in the first sign of interest since she’d called him. “A murder?”

  Diplomacy prevented him hitting back with, “No, shoplifting, because that’s what a Murder Squad does,” and he responded with a short, “mmm” instead.

  As he made the sound Craig realised that there’d been something more than interest in her question; she was jealous of what she perceived was his exciting job. The sadness of it made him soften towards her slightly and he made up his mind to be more generous in their interactions, although as they hung up on, “Let’s confirm later this week” he also decided to liven up their eventual meeting by bringing Liam along.

  ****

  Rownton Village Hinterland. 7 p.m.

  It was seven o’clock by the time Aidan and Ryan had completed their interviews with the local farmers and most of what they’d learnt could have been acquired by phone. The quarry had closed down four years before and the only people who ever went near it now were: a site guard who was paid to do occasional inspections, who even when he could be bothered to go there did little but drink tea in his hut near the entrance; people fly-tipping amongst the rocks on the cliff above the main pit; and evidently, although none of the farmers had been aware of it and the one who was Ricky Murphy’s father had been less than amused, it had proved the perfect hanging out place for the local kids.

  One thing that had made the personal visits worthwhile was being able to show Stuart Kincaid’s photograph around, something that had caused their final interviewee, Gabriel McCusker, to narrow his eyes, momentarily rendering invisible the white squinting-in-the-sun lines that radiated from them and scored his mahogany skin like engravings in wood.

  Aidan seized on his attention to Kincaid’s photograph gratefully.

  “You know this man?”

  The farmer shook his head slowly. “Not know...”

  Ryan jumped into his pause. “Saw. You saw him somewhere then?”

  The response was a nod.

  “Can you recall where that was?”

  The closing of McCusker’s eyes and screwing up of his face made the detectives hold their breath in anticipation. Their wait was finally rewarded by a hesitant nod.

  “I think...”

  As Ryan’s mouth opened with a prompt, Aidan closed it again with a shake of his head that said, “Patience.”

  A moment’s pause and then the local man’s second nod was more definitive.

  “Aye, aye, I did see him. Definitely. I saw him in the village. In the shop it was. He was talking to the post-mistress. Asking her something.”

  Aidan smiled encouragingly. “Do you have her name
?”

  “Aye, it’s Biddy Evans, Bridget. She ran the shop and post-office for years. You can’t miss it; it’s the only shop in the place.”

  Rownton was the original one horse town.

  Ryan signalled to speak again and this time his slightly controlling D.C.I. allowed it.

  “Can you recall when you saw him? Was it last year for instance, or the year before?”

  The farmer shook his head. “I’m not much for years and months, me. We mostly talk seasons here.”

  He rested back in his armchair in the warm room where they’d been sitting for the previous thirty minutes and continued, “Planting season, harvesting season, that’s how we reckon time on the farm. But it was definitely in a harvest time I saw him, I know that because I was taking some veg to the church for Harvest Festival when I walked past Biddy’s shop-”

  Aidan cut back in. “Harvest happens in August and September doesn’t it?”

  “Mostly July to September, depending on the crop. The festival’s in September.”

  Ryan had another idea. “Can you remember if he was showing the post-mistress something as he was talking to her? A piece of paper or...a photograph perhaps?”

  McCusker’s small brown eyes enlarged. “Now you come to mention it, he did have something in his hand. But I couldn’t rightly say what it was. Biddy could tell you maybe.”

  “Maybe?”

  “Aye, well, she’s retired now.” He tapped his temple with a weathered finger. “Not as sharp in her mind as she once was.”

  Aidan sighed heavily; if the post-mistress had a poor memory she mightn’t even recall seeing Stuart Kincaid, never might remember what he’d asked her.

  The farmer saw his downcast look and threw him a lifeline.

  “But sure, Biddy was always cleverer than everyone else around here anyway, so she’s probably just come down to our level now.”

  It was something perhaps, but there was only one way to find out. The D.C.I. rose to his feet and as he did so he saw Ryan withdraw the image of Bella Westbury that had been found in Kincaid’s pocket, although considerably cleaned up by Des. It was worth a shot.