The Property

by Catriona King

  The D.C.I. shook his head. “Nah, you won’t shoot me. Too much paperwork… Anyway, that’s generally what people think.”

  Craig’s response was dry. “Thanks for sharing.”

  It earned him a tut.

  “Sarcasm. Nice. People are just worried about you.”

  “They shouldn’t be.”

  “That’s what I said. I told them if the boss wants to have the viropause then just leave him in peace to have it.”

  Craig turned to stare at him. “The viropause? What’s that when it’s at home?”

  Liam wasn’t sure whether to be chuffed that he knew something that Craig didn’t, or to admit that he only knew it because his wife Danni had accused him of having the same thing when he’d been grumpy with her the week before. He opted for the explanation that would score him the most points.

  “Ah, well, now you see, the viropause is what happens to us men when we reach a certain age. Our test…testost-”

  “Testosterone.”

  “Aye, that stuff. Well, it drops you see and then we get all moody and sensitive and stuff, like you’re being now. Mind you, that could be your continental blood, of course.”

  Craig was half-Italian, something to which Liam attributed everything from his dark hair to his romantic side.

  Leaving aside the fact that if the viropause existed and was that widespread, something that Craig fully intended to check out, then why wasn’t someone prescribing supplements, he rebelled at the description of himself.

  “I’m not moody and sensitive and stuff, as you call it! And I’m not having the bloody viropause! I’ve just got things on my mind. And you need to stop reading the Sunday supplements.”

  Liam shrugged, un-insulted and un-insultable, something that Craig had realised with gratitude years before.

  “All I’m saying is, if it is that, then people should give you some space... Like maybe the whole of Arizona.”

  As payback for the dig Craig accelerated out onto Pilot Street, going especially fast to throw his deputy sideways in his seat, and they were almost in town before he spoke again.

  “Look, I know you mean well, Liam, but I don’t need people talking about me. What I need is a juicy case, so let’s hope that’s what Jack’s found.”

  He couldn’t possibly have guessed how their week was going to evolve.

  Chapter Two

  Central London.

  “How the hell did they find it?”

  The neatly bearded agent gave a bored yawn, but the terse, “Well?” that came next said that his dark-eyed caller hadn’t considered it a useful response.

  “Well, I-”

  The agent halted abruptly, calculating the possible effects of whatever he said next. He wasn’t going to be a scapegoat no matter what they were hoping for, especially since he’d only been informed of the killing a month after the event. But in his experience people with power were talented at passing the buck, especially to someone lower down the food chain, almost as if some form of status-based gravity applied, so he chose his next words carefully to avoid any possible doubts.

  “I wasn’t involved, or informed when it happened, and I haven’t been appraised of any find now, but I’ll see what I can find out if you like?”

  And so the ball was sent nicely back over the net, without even a smudge of mud attaching itself to him. After a moment’s grudging silence during which he could almost hear his caller searching for more ways to shift the blame, a sigh signalling a resigned acceptance that he couldn’t came wheezing down the line.

  “Do so.”

  Then without a please or an apology for the mess that he and his friends had created the phone came slamming down.

  ****

  Howard Street. Belfast City Centre. 10.30 a.m.

  John Winter waddled his way towards the building site, the forensic overalls, heavy protective boots, gloves and hard hat that he was wearing making him feel more like a children’s television’s Telly Tubby than a professional man. He pictured his toddler daughter Kit’s squealing reaction if she could see him now and smiled, despite the grim mission that he was on.

  The pathologist was just getting into his wide-based stride when an approaching man wearing a near-identical outfit waved at him in greeting, the usual handshakes too much of an effort with their clumsily safety-gloved hands.

  “Dean Kelly, site foreman. Pleased to meet you.”

  “John Winter, government pathologist. Likewise. I understand that one of your men has found something.”

  Kelly turned and beckoned a younger man across, how young John only realised when he removed his pulled down hard hat.

  “This is Rory. He’s a civil engineering student on work experience with us. He found it and called me across.”

  The lad looked even younger than his young student age and was possessed of such a pale, puppy-fat plumped complexion that John was reminded of clotted cream. Mindful that the pallor might have been from the shock of finding a body, the pathologist thought that the youth should probably have been sitting down.

  “Are you feeling all right? You’re very pale.”

  The youth nodded uncertainly.

  “I always am, but I do feel…”

  John nodded understandingly as the student’s voice faded away and led him to sit on a nearby concrete block, glancing back at Kelly. “Can someone take him home when we’ve finished?”

  Kelly nodded. “I’ll do it. Just tell the doc here what you noticed, Rory, and we’ll be on our way.”

  The student sat with his legs akimbo, raking a hand through his thick shock of gelled hair, random strands of which were flattened and pointing this way and that from hours spent sweating beneath his hat.

  “I’ve never seen anyone dead before.”

  He sounded stunned and John nodded sympathetically, remembering how shocked he’d felt when he’d seen his first body too. It had happened at around the same age, but sadly in his case it had been only the first of thousands that he would see in his career.

  “Just take your time.”

  The young man gazed up at him. “I was inspecting some metal reinforcement inside the old concrete wall we were knocking down.” He lifted a hand to point. “Back there. The one that joins Howard Street onto Upper Queen Street-”

  Kelly interrupted. “The building’s being demolished to make way for a new hotel. Twenty-five storeys. It’ll be the tallest building this side of town.”

  Northern Ireland and Belfast in particular was undergoing a hotel building boom. With well over one hundred cruise ships docking in Belfast’s port every year, and annual tourist numbers approaching five million, more accommodation was essential, so it seemed that a new hotel was going up almost every month.

  “What’s the building you’re demolishing?”

  “The old Howard Tower Hotel. It’s just been bought over, and the new owners want to build a really plush place. It’s big business for Leonards, the construction firm I work for.”

  John immediately heard the subtext in the foreman’s words: time is money and that dead body is slowing us down. He didn’t blame the man, he’d handled body finds on building sites before and they’d ranged from delaying work for a few days while his team and the police did their things, to total site closures if the bones were proved old and treated as part of a historic find.

  He acknowledged the words with a nod and smiled at the student to continue.

  “There was grey-white concrete dust everywhere, so at first I just thought I’d found another metal bar on the ground covered with that. But when I moved it with my foot it stayed white; no dust and no metal. So, I bent down to take a closer look.” He paused, swallowing hard. “That’s when I saw the other thing.”

  He stopped, seemingly unable to say the word, so Kelly helpfully inserted. “A skull. That’s what he means. Human, no question.” He nodded meaningfully. “I’ve found a few before.”

  John raised an eyebrow. No matter how often he was called to bone finds on constr
uction sites, for one builder to find several in his career was still relatively rare.

  The foreman caught his surprise and reassured him hastily. “Not in the rubble, like. I mean inside houses, in actual rooms. Two old dears who’d died and not been found for months until the council sent us in to renovate.” He shook his head in disgust. “Bloody council workers hadn’t even bothered to check the place was empty before we went in.”

  Reassured that he wasn’t dealing with a mass-murderer, John motioned the young engineer on again.

  “So, you saw a skull, Rory. And then what?”

  The youth stared at the uneven ground at his feet, nudging at a concrete chipping with his boot.

  “I looked closer and saw what I think was a…” He shook his head hard as if it would make the image disappear. “A spine.”

  It was followed by a shudder so violent that John knew that the student’s shutdown was imminent, and if that happened they might get nothing more from him for days. The pathologist pushed for details to keep him talking, half information gathering about the body, half as a doctor not wanting his patient to collapse in shock.

  “What made you think it was that, Rory?”

  The answer was indisputably logical, reminding John that he was dealing with a practical scientist.

  “It looked like those bone columns you find in tins of salmon.”

  It was ghoulish, but still a better description of a vertebral spine than most he’d heard.

  “What did you do then?”

  “I yelled for Mister Kelly, and he stopped everyone working and came across.”

  Kelly corrected him. “The truth is I’d already stopped work, ’cos I needed a break from the noise. That’s when I realised the lad was shouting to me and I went across. I closed down the site and called the cops immediately.”

  He stopped speaking suddenly and cast a look around. “Actually, where are the cops? I’d like to get this over with so we can get back to work. Shouldn’t they have got here before you, to tape the place off, like?”

  The words pulled John up short, and he suddenly realised that he’d been about to commit a heinous crime against procedure, by entering a possible murder scene before police or forensics had had time to take a look. If there hadn’t been a murder already then there would have been one if he’d been caught. It prompted him to take out his phone and motion the two men to wait while he called High Street, the station which his secretary Marcie had said originated the request for him to attend.

  Marcie Devlin was the PA for all of the Northern Ireland Science Labs, organising both the pathology and forensic science services, and while she was fundamentally an actress biding her time before her big break, she was also a very efficient, if slightly melodramatic administrator. Her flamboyance and fashion sense brightened up their normally stainless-steel filled lives, and while of course they would be very happy for her to fulfil her acting ambitions, if she left them the place would suddenly become very dull.

  John’s phone-call found Jack Harris polishing his large mahogany reception desk, the cleaners never quite doing it the way that he liked it done, and as the sergeant answered the call, wedging the phone handset between his ear and shoulder, he carried on rubbing, wiping and checking the wood for marks.

  “High Street Station. How can I help?”

  John could tell from the muffled words that the receiver wasn’t at the policeman’s mouth, and illogically assumed that meant it wasn’t at his ear either, so he answered the question with a shout.

  “JOHN WINTER HERE. IS THAT JACK?”

  The result was a clatter as the receiver hit the desk to the sound of a distant, “Ow!”, and then a not so distant, “What are you yelling at me for?”

  “I’m not yelling. I thought the phone…”

  The pathologist’s sentence tailed off as he decided he couldn’t be bothered explaining, and he changed topic quickly.

  “Was it you who called Marcie about a body, Jack?”

  “Aye, it was. I got a call from a building site foreman about some bones they’d found, so I thought you should take a look.”

  “You’re right, I should, but only after the murder squad and forensics have. So, where are they?”

  The custody sergeant made a huffy face at the handset.

  “There’s no good you having a go at me if they haven’t turned up. I called them all at the same time I called you, so God only knows where they-”

  He was cut short by the station door swinging open and Craig and Liam walking in, to be greeted by,

  “Where have you two been? I called Nicky more than half-an-hour ago.”

  Liam shook his head.

  “Ten minutes tops.”

  Jack shook his head.“Half-an-hour.” He thrust the phone at him. “You can ask your mate if you don’t believe me. I called him at the same time.”

  As Liam juggled with the now polish-covered handset, the uniformed officer turned to Craig with a smile.

  “Morning, sir. Fancy a coffee?”

  Craig gave a small shake of his head. “Thanks for the offer, Jack, but I should probably sort this out first.”

  “Suit yourself.” He turned towards the staff-room. “I’ll be in the back having mine when you decide.”

  Craig turned towards his deputy, who had finally got a grip on the phone, and reached out a hand to take it.

  “Hello, John. Where are you?”

  “Howard Street, on a building site. They found some human bones and Jack called the lab, but you and forensics need to see them first before I touch them. And the scene still has to be taped off.”

  Craig sighed at the mix-up. “I’m sorry, it looks as if someone’s got their wires crossed. Can you get Des down and we’ll be there in ten?”

  Just then a hand was waved in front of his face and he looked up to see Liam curling and uncurling his fist three times.

  “Make that fifteen minutes, John. We need to get all the details from Jack first. We’ll see you there.”

  He handed back the receiver and headed for the staff-room, not happy.

  “Jack, why hasn’t that site been taped-off yet?”

  The sergeant glanced up from his copy of Metal Detectors Monthly. Des Marsham, the head of forensic science, went metal-detecting with his university mates on the Atlantic Coast occasionally and had invited him to come along. Now he’d got the bug, much to his wife’s chagrin.

  He gave Craig a puzzled look.

  “Hasn’t it been? I sent Horgan up there to do it as soon as I made the calls.” He took out the radio that permanently inhabited his pocket. “P.C. Horgan, come in.” A moment’s crackling later and a younger man’s voice came down the line. “Horgan here, Sarge.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Hill Street.”

  Liam’s eyes widened. “That’s round in the Cathedral Quarter! What’s he doing there?”

  Exactly what Jack was about to ask.

  “What are you doing there, Horgan?”

  “You said to tape off a site on the corner and I’ve just finished.”

  Jack swore beneath his breath.

  “I said Howard, not Hill! You’ve probably taped off someone’s private land! Get it down and get over to Howard Street ASAP, and next time, check your map.”

  Or his ears. Whichever it was Craig knew they had time for a drink, so he poured out two coffees and took his to a chair.

  “What can you tell us about the find, Jack?”

  The sergeant realised that his hobby would have to wait for a while and set aside his magazine.

  “Not much more than you know already. I got a call just after ten from a construction site foreman called Dean Kelly, telling me that they’d found some bones. They’re building some new hotel on the site of the old Howard Tower Hot-”

  He was cut off by a crunch as Liam threw himself down on the staff-room’s aging sofa and then followed up by dropping his feet onto the coffee table with a thud.

  “Watch it! This furniture’s no
t designed for your twenty stone carcass.”

  “Fifteen.”

  “Well, whatever it is there’s far too much of you!” The sergeant continued without waiting for the inevitably rude retort. “Apparently the new place they’re building is going to be very swish.”

  Liam snorted, making his view of hotels clear.

  “That’s all we need in Belfast, more hotels. How many have gone up in the past year? And who’s staying in them? That’s what I’d like to know.”

  Craig shrugged.

  “Apparently we need them. The existing accommodation is almost full year-round.” Tourism bulletin over he turned back to Jack. “Who’s building this new one?”

  By way of reply the sergeant rummaged around until he found a newspaper, pointing Craig to a page inside.

  “That’s yesterday’s Sunday Chronicle, there’s an article about it there. The people building it are called The Monmouth Consortium. Apparently, it’s a consortium of businessmen from here, down south and somewhere in Canada. They’ve already built other places in Johannesburg and Paris. It’s going to be very posh apparently. You can take your young lady there for romantic dinners once it’s open.”

  The words made Liam wince; everyone had avoided mentioning Katy openly for months, so he wasn’t sure what the reaction would be. To his surprise Craig merely gave a small nod of acknowledgement, although there was a definite blanching beneath his perennial tan. It made up the D.C.I.’s mind to investigate what had happened to his boss’ seemingly forever romance and he knew just where he was going to start.

  But for now, he decided to shift the discussion back to the case.

  “So they’re knocking down the old Howard Tower. Pity. My mum and dad went there for their fiftieth anniversary.”

  Jack warmed to the nostalgic theme. “Aye, we went there when our Lynn graduated from Queen’s. Lovely meal. They did us proud.”

  Jack’s daughter was a solicitor. She was the law and he was the order; evidently apples didn’t fall far from the tree.

  Grateful as Craig was that they were off his personal life, they needed to get back to the investigation. The effort required to keep people on point sometimes was Herculean.