The James Bar. Friday, February 5th.
All Xavier Rey had been authorised to confirm was that Fox and McAllister had both been members of The Rock. Beyond that he’d been ordered to shut his mouth. It tied up some loose ends in their cases and confirmed they’d been dealing with a feud between two tribes; any future action on the gangs’ other activities would lie with Geoff Hamill and his merry men.
Andy and Kyle had both been spoken to severely, although how much it would change their behaviour was anyone’s guess. Craig rolled his eyes as he saw Andy whisper something to his new sidekick Sid Freeman and then sidle down the bar towards some unsuspecting girl. At least he seemed to have got over Rhonda, which was just as well considering she and Karl Rimmins had been gazing into each other’s black lidded eyes for the last half-an-hour.
Liam thudded down onto the bench beside Craig with two whiskies and an unceremonious “Shove up.” He dropped his voice and added. “When are you announcing it to the troops?”
Craig glanced at him. “What?”
“Your chief super thing.”
“Oh, that. Never, probably. My guess is that they all know already, seeing as you’ve got such a big mouth.”
Liam was about to object then he conceded that Craig was right. “Aye, well. They needed some good news.” He gestured at Kyle, who was leaning on the bar. “I see he’s wearing his gun now.”
Craig rolled his eyes. “I just wish he wouldn’t wear it like he’s Wyatt Earp.”
The Glock was sitting very visibly on their new secondee’s hip.
“Ach, he’s just new-fangled with it, but I’ll have a word. Still, you have to admit; he found Goga all on his lonesome. Not a bad man to have around.”
Craig smiled; he’d already thought as much. He took a deep drink of whisky and changed the subject.
“Ash and Des have managed to access Miskimmon’s computer. They used it to start up the others so we have all his files. Some of them are encrypted and they’ll take a while to crack, but we’ve got enough to stop him being shipped off to South America so at least we’ll have time to build our case.”
“Will the P.P.S. prosecute Corneau on the same charge?”
Craig made a face that said he wasn’t sure. “There’s part of me thinks she was almost another one of Miskimmon’s victims, but we’ll re-interview them both then let the solicitors decide.”
Liam nodded and gestured at his glass. “Top up?”
As he walked to the bar the side door opened and a plaster-casted Natalie entered with John. Craig rose to give her his seat while John headed for the bar. When the diminutive surgeon was settled she reached up and grabbed Craig by the tie, pulling his face down close to her own.
“Go outside.”
“What?”
“Now. Go outside. There’s someone who wants to see you.”
Craig was out the door before the other men had returned. He stood in Barrow Square squinting into the darkness, until finally he made out a feminine shape fifty metres ahead. He followed as it moved towards the Lagan, until they were standing five metres apart, gazing down at the river’s slow flow. He spoke first.
“Katy.”
She raised a hand to cut him off. “Let me speak, Marc. If I don’t say this now I never will.”
His heart sank at the tremor in her voice; heralding as it might bad news. But he recognised how much it had taken for her to see him, so he waited for her to carry on.
Katy stared straight ahead as she spoke, the distant lights of Titanic Belfast flickering across her slim face.
“I love you, Marc, and I’ll always love you. But what happened…” Her voice faded away for a moment before she gathered the strength to go on. “…it terrified me, and I’m still frightened…in case it happens again. I’m sorry if that makes me a coward-”
He went to speak but she raised her hand again, its curled fingers almost begging him to let her finish. “I know what you’re going to say. God knows, Natalie’s said it often enough, and I’ve said it to myself. It’s not going to happen again, the chances are infinitesimally small.” She turned to face him suddenly, taking a step back to underline that it wasn’t an invitation to approach. “I know all that. I know it, but I’m still frightened.” He could see a small smile twist her lips. “No matter how many reckless things I try to make myself brave.”
She turned back to the water, staring into it in silence for what felt to him like minutes before she began to speak again. “I know we’re all going to die, heaven knows I see enough of it every day at work. Strangely death doesn’t frighten me. Not at all. But the hatred, the sheer evil that you deal with every day does. Killers, psychopaths, people who murder without a thought.” She swung towards him again. “Does that make any sense?”
He nodded.
“And you’re so vulnerable. They could kill you at any time. I’m frightened for you every day.” Another small smile. “And I know that even if you became Chief Constable you would insist on being on the street sometimes, because you love it, you love the action. Don’t you?”
Another nod.
“What’s more, you need it.”
He didn’t reply. What could he say when he knew that she was right?
She sighed as if defeated. “And that’s the man I fell in love with.”
It sounded like something she would stop feeling if she could and her next words confirmed his fear.
“I’ve tried to stop loving you, Marc, over the past month. Really tried. I’ve tried to imagine dating other men, to picture what it would be like.” His heart plummeted as she continued. “Another doctor maybe, or an accountant.” She smiled suddenly, making him want to take her in his arms. “Can you imagine me with an accountant? He’d cut up my credit cards. Or a lawyer? No. Maybe an artist of some sort. Someone bohemian. That would be better. A gentle life.”
She stopped abruptly, beginning to feel cruel. Her next words sounded resigned.
“But the problem is I can’t. I can’t even picture being with anyone but you.”
His heart soared again.
“So what does that leave me? With you or on my own? Frightened or safe? Happy, or lonely and missing you.”
Her shoulders slumped and Craig took it as his cue. He closed the distance between them slowly, waiting for an objection that never came. When he was within touching distance he stopped.
“I love you, Katy… and I can tell you all the things that Natalie has already told you about low risk, but I know that being with me will be frightening at times-”
She glanced up at him, tears in her eyes. “I don’t care for myself anymore, but if someone ever hurt you-”
He reached out and took her in his arms, stroking her blonde waves gently. “I’ll leave the job. I’ll resign. I can’t lose you.”
She pulled away abruptly, shaking her head. “NO. No, you can’t. It’s your life. I can’t ask that.”
He gazed at her intently. “I’m offering to do it.”
She shook her head again. “Even so. No. You would hate me for it one day.” She dropped her eyes. “This is my problem and I need to get past it.”
He reached out for her again and met with no resistance. As he held her close he whispered. “Let me help you, please.”
She nodded against his chest, her tears soaking into his shirt. “You’ll have to, Marc, because I can’t seem to love anyone else.”
THE END
Core Characters in the Craig Crime Novels
Superintendent Marc (Marco) Craig: Craig is a sophisticated, single, forty-five-year-old. Born in Northern Ireland, he is of Northern Irish/Italian extraction, from a mixed religious background but agnostic. An ex-grammar schoolboy and Queen’s University Law graduate, he went to London to join The Met (The Metropolitan Police) at twenty-two, rising in rank through its High Potential Development Training Scheme. He returned to Belfast in two-thousand and eight after more than fifteen years away.
He is a driven, compassionate, workaholic, with a
n unfortunate temper that he struggles to control and a tendency to respond to situations with his fists, something that almost resulted in him going to prison when he was in his teens. He loves the sea, sails when he has the time and is generally very sporty. He plays the piano, loves music and sport. He lives alone in a modern apartment block in Stranmillis, near the university area of Belfast.
His parents, his extrovert mother Mirella (an Italian concert pianist) and his quiet father Tom (an ex-university lecturer in Physics) live in Holywood town, six miles away. His rebellious sister, Lucia, his junior by ten years, works as the manager of a local charity and also lives in Belfast.
Craig is now a Superintendent heading up Belfast’s Murder Squad, based in the thirteen storey Co-ordinated Crime Unit (C.C.U.) in Pilot Street, in the Sailortown area of Belfast’s Docklands. He loves the sea, sails when he has the time and is generally very sporty. He plays the piano, loves music by Snow Patrol and follows Manchester United and Northern Ireland football teams, and the Ulster Rugby team.
D.C.I. Liam Cullen: Craig’s deputy. Liam is a fifty-year-old former RUC officer from Crossgar in Northern Ireland, who transferred into the PSNI in two thousand and one following the Patton Reforms. He has lived and worked in Northern Ireland all his life and has spent thirty years in the police force, twenty of them policing Belfast, including during The Troubles.
He is married to the forty-year-old, long suffering Danielle (Danni), a part-time nursery nurse, and they have a five-year-old daughter Erin and a three-year-old son called Rory. Liam is unsophisticated, indiscreet and hopelessly non-PC, but he’s a hard worker with a great knowledge of the streets and has a sense of humour that makes everyone, even the Chief Constable, laugh.
D.I. Annette Eakin: Annette is Craig’s Detective Inspector who has lived and worked in Northern Ireland all her life. She is a forty-seven-year-old ex-nurse who, after her nursing degree, worked as a nurse for thirteen years and then, after a career break, retrained and has now been in the police for an equal length of time. She divorced her husband Pete McElroy, a P.E teacher at a state secondary school, because of his infidelity and violence. They have two children, a boy and a girl (Jordan and Amy), both teenagers. Annette is kind and conscientious with an especially good eye for detail. She also has very good people skills but can be a bit of a goody-two-shoes. Since her marriage broke down, she has acquired a newly glamorous image and is now dating Mike Augustus, a pathologist who works with Dr John Winter. She recently discovered she was expecting their child.
Nicky Morris: Nicky Morris is Craig’s thirty-nine-year-old personal assistant. She used to be PA to Detective Chief Superintendent (D.C.S.) Terence ‘Teflon’ Harrison. Nicky is a glamorous Belfast mum married to Gary, who owns a small garage, and is the mother of a teenage son, Jonny. She comes from a solidly working class area in East Belfast, just ten minutes’ drive from Docklands.
She is bossy, motherly and street-wise and manages to organise a reluctantly-organised Craig very effectively. She has a very eclectic sense of style, and there is an ongoing innocent office flirtation between her and Liam.
Davy Walsh: The Murder Squad’s twenty-eight-year-old computer analyst. A brilliant but shy EMO, Davy’s confidence has grown during his time on the team, making his lifelong stutter on ‘s’ and ‘w’ diminish, unless he’s under stress.
His father is deceased and Davy lives at home in Belfast with his mother and grandmother. He has an older sister, Emmie, who studied English at university. His girlfriend of almost three years, Maggie Clarke, is a journalist and now News Editor at The Belfast Chronicle. They recently became engaged.
Dr John Winter: John is the forty-five-year-old Director of Pathology for Northern Ireland, one of the youngest ever appointed. He’s brilliant, eccentric, gentlemanly and really likes the ladies, but he met his match in Natalie Winter, a surgeon at St Mary’s Trust, and they have been happily married for over a year.
He was Craig’s best friend at school and university and remained in Northern Ireland to build his medical career when Craig left. He is now internationally respected in his field. John persuaded Craig that the newly peaceful Northern Ireland was a good place to return to and assists Craig’s team with cases whenever he can. He is obsessed with crime in general and US police shows in particular.
D.C.I. Andrew (Andy) Angel: A relatively new addition to Craig’s team and its second D.C.I., Angel is a slight, forty-year-old, twice divorced, perpetually broke father of a five-year-old son, Bowie. A chocoholic with a tendency towards lethargy, he surprises the team at times with his abilities. His spare time is spent in the constant search for a new relationship and romantic subtlety isn’t his strong point.
D.C.S. Terry (Teflon) Harrison: Craig’s old boss. The fifty-seven-year-old Detective Chief Superintendent was based at the Headquarters building in Limavady in the northwest Irish countryside but has now returned to Docklands where he has an office on the thirteenth floor. He shared a converted farm house at Toomebridge with his homemaker wife Mandy and their thirty-year-old daughter Sian, a marketing consultant. Mandy is now divorcing him, partly because of his trail of mistresses, often younger than his daughter, so he has moved to an apartment in Belfast.
Harrison is tolerable as a boss as long as everything’s going well, but he is acutely politically aware and a bit of a snob, and very quick to pass on any blame to his subordinates (hence the Teflon nickname). He sees Craig as a rival now and is out to destroy him. He particularly resents his friendship with John Winter, who wields a great deal of power in Northern Ireland.
Key Background Locations
The majority of locations referenced in the book are real, with some exceptions.
Northern Ireland (real): Set in the northeast of the island of Ireland, Northern Ireland was created in nineteen-twenty-one by an act of British parliament. It forms part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and shares a border to the south and west with the Republic of Ireland. The Northern Ireland Assembly holds responsibility for a range of devolved policy matters. It was established by the Northern Ireland Act 1998 as part of the Good Friday Agreement.
Belfast (real): Belfast is the capital and largest city of Northern Ireland, set on the flood plain of the River Lagan. The seventeenth largest city in the United Kingdom and the second largest in Ireland, it is the seat of the Northern Ireland Assembly.
The Dockland’s Co-ordinated Crime Unit (The C.C.U. - fictitious): The modern thirteen storey headquarters building is situated in Pilot Street in Sailortown, a section of Belfast between the M1 and M2 undergoing massive investment and re-development. The C.C.U. hosts the police: murder, gang crimes, vice and drug squad offices, amongst others.
Sailortown (real): An historic area of Belfast on the River Lagan that was a thriving area between the sixteenth and twentieth Centuries. Many large businesses developed in the area, ships docked for loading and unloading and their crews from far flung places such as China and Russia mixed with a local Belfast population of ship’s captains, chandlers, seamen and their families.
Sailortown was a lively area where churches and bars fought for the souls and attendance of the residents and where many languages were spoken each day. The basement of the Rotterdam Bar, at the bottom of Clarendon Dock, acted as the overnight lock-up to prisoners being deported to the Antipodes on boats the next morning, and the stocks which held the prisoners could still be seen until the nineteen-nineties.
During the years of World War Two the area was the most bombed area of the UK outside Central London, as the Germans tried to destroy Belfast’s ship building capacity. Sadly the area fell into disrepair in the nineteen-seventies and eighties when the motorway extension led to compulsory purchases of many homes and businesses, and decimated the Sailortown community. The rebuilding of the community has now begun, with new families moving into starter homes and professionals into expensive dockside flats.
The Pathology Labs (fictitious): The labs, set on Belfast’s Saintfield
Road as part of a large Science Park, are where Dr John Winter, Northern Ireland’s Head of Pathology, and his co-worker, Dr Des Marsham, Head of Forensic Science, carry out the post-mortem and forensic examinations that help Craig’s team solve their cases.
St Mary’s Healthcare Trust (fictitious): St Mary’s is one of the largest hospital trusts in the UK. It is spread over several hospital sites across Belfast, including the main Royal St Mary’s Hospital site and the Maternity, Paediatric and Endocrine (M.P.E.) unit, a stand-alone site on Belfast’s Lisburn Road, in the University sector of the city.
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