The Depths

by Catriona King

No-one argued.

  “He also worked out that Bella might have been taken for another reason, just as we did-”He stopped abruptly mid-thought and took out his phone. “Hold everything for a minute. I need to speak to Davy again.”

  As he disappeared into the corridor Liam rolled his eyes. “Bosses. Huh!”

  Andy seized on the pause to ask about something else that had been puzzling him. “Two things. One, Doc Winter’s just confirmed the location of Kincaid’s possessions in the water fits with his findings, and two, what was all the moody stuff about earlier on, Des?”

  The scientist looked offended. “I wasn’t moody!”

  Liam started at him sceptically. “Not much, you weren’t.” He decided to enlighten his team-mate. “He took the hump with the boss because him and his mad metal mates decided to dig a hole in a castle garden last night and got themselves nicked. Einstein here called the boss in the middle of the night asking him to bail him out, but the boss made him wait till this morning so he’s been sulking all day. Boo bloody hoo.”

  Just as Des was about to retort Craig reappeared, knowing from the sudden silence that greeted him that his ears should have been burning but too absorbed in what he had to report to care.

  “Davy’s just confirmed something for me.” He pointed to the list of names. “He hasn’t got info on all of them yet, but at least eight of these children were snatched off the street.”

  Liam tutted. “Filthy scum.”

  “Yes, but they watched and waited to take Bella so someone specifically wanted that little girl, so much so that they were prepared to invest time and money in surveillance. Right. Everyone give me your thoughts on why.”

  “Pretty.”

  “There are lots of pretty children.”

  “Blonde and blue-eyed so she’d fetch a good price.”

  “Ditto.”

  Liam ventured. “Maybe she was born to someone other than Edgar and Nicola Westbury and her birth parents wanted her back?”

  Andy rolled his eyes. “You’ve watched way too many soaps, mate. I saw her birth weight and location in her file on Ash’s computer. She was definitely the Westburys’ kid.” He repeated what he’d said at the briefing. “A grudge. Revenge. Someone wanted to hurt the Westbury family.”

  Craig nodded emphatically. “Yes. A grudge. I think you’re right.” He expanded his reasoning. “Stuart Kincaid was exceptionally close to his twin sister, so it makes sense that she would have told him things over the years. Things about how bad Edgar’s relationship was with his younger brother, about Blaine causing their parents pain by being a waster, him getting drunk at their funeral and about how they’d left almost everything to Edgar in their Will. Yes?”

  Liam nodded. “My sisters tell me all sorts of stuff about their in-laws.”

  “Right. So when Kincaid began investigating his niece’s disappearance, especially after his sister’s death when he became almost obsessed through grief, something, either something that Nicola had said or something that he’d learned independently, made him suspect Blaine Westbury of being up to no good. Maybe he hadn’t connected Blaine with Bella’s abduction exactly, or maybe he had, we can’t know, but something made Stuart Kincaid suspicious and I think he went to Rownton hoping to find out more about Blaine.”

  “A fishing trip you mean?”

  “Yes, but led by an informed hunch. Once there perhaps Kincaid unwittingly asked questions of people who liked Blaine and they tipped him off.”

  “Who?”

  Craig shook his head. “We’ll probably never know. Some misguided childhood friend perhaps. But if Stuart Kincaid was getting close to unravelling something they’d have wanted rid of him, and if Blaine did drown him then it makes sense for him to then try to access Kincaid’s possessions to see what evidence he had and get shot of it.”

  Andy gestured at the folder. “The sad thing is if Kincaid had brought all this to the cops last year instead of acting like a lone wolf we would have been months further on.”

  Liam tutted. “And he would still be alive. He thought he could do it all on his own and it got him killed. Stupid Joe Expert.”

  Craig shook his head. “Or the police might just have treated him like an obsessed, bereaved man and ignored everything. We’ll never know.” He sighed heavily. “You have to admire the man for what he achieved.”

  Liam pulled a face. “Mmm…OK. But getting back to the kidnappings; if Blaine Westbury could abduct his own niece and not care about the damage, then those other kids probably didn’t cost the fucker a thought.”

  Craig nodded wearily and was about to open the final piece of paper when Andy spoke again.

  “This is all grand but it still doesn’t tell us why Kincaid went to that quarry.”

  “Maybe Blaine had something to do with the place? If he had then Kincaid could’ve been looking around for clues, boss.”

  Craig responded by spreading out the paper and displaying another list of names. He recognised two of them but not the rest. Róisín Casey and Blaine Westbury.

  “What are the odds this is the consortium that owns the quarry? If it is then it explains why Kincaid went there looking for Blaine. He’s one of the owners.”

  And he could guess where he’d got the money to buy into the enterprise.

  He turned briskly to his second D.C.I. “But that can wait for a while. Let’s follow what we have for now. Andy, Arthur Norris is being taken back in High Street, call Aidan and say you’ll be joining him for his re-interview. He’ll bring you up to speed on everything. Liam and I are heading down to Dublin to interview the Róisín Casey who’s on this list. We believe she’s S.W.M.B.O., the woman Norris is working for.”

  “Looks like I missed a lot in a short time.”

  “You can thank our analysts for that.” Craig turned towards the door but Andy stopped him with some more information.

  “By the way, the hotel maid ID-ed the man’s watch as being Kincaid’s.”

  Another loose end tied off.

  “Good. OK, I’m grateful to all of you. OK, Des, Andy can bring you and John up to speed on anything else relevant before he leaves. There’ll be a briefing at some point when hopefully we’ll be a lot further forward. I’ll let you know when.”

  As he was walking back to the car Craig realised that another thing he probably shouldn’t do now that he was married was simply disappear overnight, so he called Katy, who was giggling as she answered. Liam sensed an unwarranted lovey-dovey moment approaching so he took the opportunity to get offside and make a call of his own.

  “Hello, pet. I’ve got to go to Dublin now and we may need to stay overnight. I just wanted to let you know and check you were feeling OK.”

  He could hear other people laughing in the background and recognised his mother’s musical trill.

  “Don’t worry about me; I’m having a whale of a time here. You know how the mothers high-jacked Annette and took her and Carrie house hunting with them? Well they’re all here now telling me about it. Honestly, Marc, it’s better than a comedy show. Your dad’s here too, in the bedroom trying to find some peace to read. The best thing is they may even have found us a few decent houses to view already tested by a toddler.”

  As he pictured the scenario Craig smiled. “Houses with chandeliers and marble columns knowing my mum.”

  The only answer was a giggle that he took as a yes, so he got off the line quickly before she elaborated. Meanwhile, Liam’s call to Mickey O’Hare had informed him that the Rownton locals had torn down the quarry’s gates as soon as they’d been erected in protest so neither Stuart Kincaid nor his killer would have needed a key to get in.

  Another box ticked, the D.C.I. pointed the car south and hopefully to the solution to their case.

  Chapter Eight

  The C.C.U.

  “Davy, come and look at this for a minute.”

  The senior analyst shook his head. “I’m busy, Ash, what is it?”

  “You’ll want to see it, honest. I think I�
��m on to something with the crypto icon.”

  Even as technologically advanced as he was the concept of cryptocurrency still intrigued Davy, so he dropped what he was doing and rode his wheelie chair across to his junior’s desk, following Ash’s pointing finger to his PC screen, which was displaying a sample blockchain.

  “OK, so we know blockchains are central to the way cryptocurrencies work. One key feature of them is that information added to a chain can’t be changed without a major effort, and there’s always a digital evidence trail. Signed and time-stamped so that the person who put the info there can be traced.”

  “Presupposing they haven’t created a false identity.”

  The junior analyst puffed out his cheeks for a moment and then nodded. “I suppose there’s always that, but it’d be hard to do. They’d have to have created false bank accounts to transfer their funds from as well, and they’d leave trails too.”

  A sceptically raised eyebrow by his boss said that it wouldn’t be a first.

  “OK. Well, anyway, the theory is that this information lock on a blockchain stops people removing information, making fake transactions or manipulating their account balance. Yes?”

  “OK…”

  “But a few months back, the amount of data that could be added to some blockchains was increased. Big time.” He gestured at the sample chain on his screen, “And one of them was the blockchain Derek Morrow was accessing.”

  Davy was loath to admit it but he was starting to get confused. “S…So that means what?”

  “People had only been able to add small pieces of text or web links to blockchains, but then suddenly it became possible to add huge files, really enormous ones. Then I remembered what I’d heard about criminals using crypto sites. The files they’d been adding to the chains had included images, in an encoded format.”

  Davy felt the hairs rise on his naked neck.

  “A few weeks back the English police discovered images of child abuse embedded in a blockchain. A bunch of perves were using it as a secret distribution network, so that anyone anywhere with the right info could look at the photos without getting caught. The police got the guy who uploaded them and it can’t happen again on that blockchain, but there aren’t universal safeguards in place yet to prevent uploading, or spot and remove any images.” He tapped Derek Morrow’s icon. “And there are none on the blockchain this shortcut leads to.”

  Davy slumped back in his chair, knowing where he was heading. “You’re saying Morrow may have been accessing the crypto-chain via this icon to view images rather than to trade.” He frowned. “It could make s…sense. I’ve just cracked his Cayman account and it has a lot of dosh in it. There was some paid to his crypto site, but only small amounts.”

  Ash nodded eagerly. “Then he must’ve just spent enough to access the blockchain but not trade on it. I’m not saying I’ve found a definite link to images, but when I followed the icon it threw up some seriously weird code. I’ve been in crypto sites before and I’ve seen nothing like this, but I didn’t want to dig deeper in case…”

  “You found child pornography. You were right.”

  “Yeh, I really don’t want to see that stuff. But also just in case Morrow put a kill sequence on the site and I wipe everything.”

  Davy gave a sharp nod and stood up. “W…Work on something else till I speak to the chief and see what he wants to do. This is a brilliant catch.”

  He reached Craig twenty-five miles south just outside Banbridge and explained the situation. It took the detective a minute to get his head around the tech side but then he knew exactly what to do. He’d been feeling guilty about neglecting Cate Pine and it was the perfect way to set that right.

  “I’ll call you back in a minute, Davy.”

  Luckily the IT Crime Superintendent was eager to working with them, especially when Craig explained that she’d not only be working with his staff but with the head of Vice, Emrys Lomax. If there was even the tiniest chance of illegal images popping up on his analyst’s screen he wanted an expert sitting there when they did, to cover everyone’s ass.

  By the time he got round to calling his chief analyst back they were almost at Dublin Airport and Craig grimaced at the signs for it, wondering whether children had been smuggle through it as well. He had a feeling that a lot of unsavoury information was going to be revealed over the coming weeks.

  “Right, Davy, here’s the plan. I’ve spoken to D.C.S. Pine from Information Technology Crime and D.C.I. Lomax down in Vice and they’re coming to look at what Ash has. Move everything into my office when they arrive, please, I don’t want anyone else accidentally seeing something unpleasant. And let me know what you get ASAP. My phone will be on unless we’re in an interview.”

  The words made him wonder whether Pat Goodall had lifted Róisín Casey yet and decide to make that his next call.

  ****

  The Atlantic Way Bank.

  Róisín Casey was mid phone argument with her lover when her office door flew open and several uniformed Gardaí burst in, with her flustered PA close behind them counterpointing their noisy announcement of their intentions with, “I’m sorry, Miss Casey, I’m so… they just stormed past me… they didn’t even give me time to knock!”

  It only took the man at the other end of the line ten seconds to ditch both the call and his girlfriend; although Róisín wouldn’t learn that she’d been dumped until much later. For now her loyalty to her lover remained such that she refrained from calling out his name for assistance as the police approached. But his loyalty was non-existent so his next move was to rip apart his mobile, microwave it and his laptop to remove all traceable tech and then grab his go-bag from the bottom of the banker’s fitted wardrobe and take her apartment block’s turbo-lift down to his hire car.

  When Craig heard that Casey’s call had been to her apartment’s landline he gave a heavy sigh, and an even heavier one when twenty minutes later the Gardaí reported that they’d found no-one at her home.

  It had always been a possibility that any accomplice she’d had might have been waiting there for her, and if they’d been in Belfast he would have had officers at Casey’s apartment before arresting her just in case, but he was in another force’s jurisdiction and relying on their goodwill to bring the woman in, so swearing mentally and saying “Thank you” was all that he could do.

  But they weren’t totally powerless, not while they had a hacker like Ash on the team, so when Craig received a call back from Pat Goodall to say that one of his officers had overheard something when they’d entered the banker’s office, a smile twisted the detective’s lips.

  “You’re sure you heard Casey say Caracas?”

  “One of my lads did. That’s the capital of Venezuela isn’t it?”

  “Yep. I’ll check the flight times and get back to you in a minute.”

  Craig caught Davy just as he was taking Cate Pine into his office.

  “Davy, I need you and Ash, so I’m afraid your crypto thing’s going to have to wait a minute. Unless you want to let D.C.S. Pine have a go at it first?”

  “She’s waiting for one of her computer guys so we won’t be starting for a while anyway, chief. What was it you needed?”

  “Two things. I need you to check direct flights from Ireland to Caracas today and the ones from the UK too, just I case they plan to connect there. Then I’ll need Ash to hack into the airports’ CCTV and departure check-ins. How long will that take?”

  “The first one will take five minutes, and he w…won’t need to hack. We have reciprocal agreements.”

  The analyst smiled to himself. Hack; he was pretty sure Craig just liked the frisson attached to the word.

  He was right, and a thwarted Craig let it show in his disappointed tone.

  “No hacking? Really? Oh, OK then… No, I mean that’s great, really great. Right, call me back.”

  Five minutes later the analyst called back to say that whoever was flying to Caracas had to be leaving from either Dublin or Heathr
ow Airports. In the absence of Róisín Casey coughing up her caller’s name in the next few hours they would have to keep their eyes peeled for the only person Craig thought it could possibly be. Blaine Westbury.

  “OK, Davy, get Blaine Westbury’s photograph to all check-in, search and security staff at those airports and tell them we need him detained. He’s a person of interest in a murder case if they ask. Sorry, I know it’s a lot of work but get Alice to help you. I’ll alert the police.”

  Twenty minutes later the metaphorical gates were locked as tightly as possible and everyone was on alert. But in reality, although they thought they’d tied Casey’s call to her Dublin apartment, Davy knew it could just as easily have been routed to appear that way and been to anywhere in the world. It prompted another round of calls to the European and US security services to be on the lookout at direct and connecting airports as well, that finally left the analyst feeling that he’d done everything he could.

  Craig didn’t notice until his last call had ended that he was in Dublin City Centre, and in fact parked outside a police station. He turned to his deputy in surprise.

  “We’re here? Headquarters?”

  “Yep, so haul ass.”

  Craig glanced around him at the narrow one-way street. “Can’t you find somewhere better to park? Like in the station grounds?”

  Liam gave a disgusted tut. “I’ve been asking you about that for the past five minutes without getting an answer!” He restarted the engine grumpily. “Honest to God, there’s no pleasing some folk!”

  After a minute of Craig trying hard not to laugh they were admitted to a secure car park, and the grudging admission that the move might have saved him a ticket was accompanied by an improvement in Liam’s mood, but only a marginal one. As they walked towards the station’s reception his sulk was still so obvious that it made his boss tut.

  “Who rattled your cage?”

  “You did! You barely said a word to me all the way down because you were on the phone. And I couldn’t even listen to Mantovani because you were trying to hear. Two bloody hours of a one-sided conversation! The least you could do is bring me up to speed now, before I walk in there and look like a prat!”