So strong was his belief that the constable was a dictator in the making that he felt he needed to expose the truth.
“Were you Head Girl at school by any chance?”
Mary’s small brown eyes narrowed at the ill-disguised, but as it happened, accurate dig.
“Why?”
“Just curious.”
“No, you aren’t, you’re having a go at me. You’re saying I’m bossy just because I’m efficient!”
The analyst smirked, knowing that he’d hit a sore spot. “Not just because you’re efficient but because it’s obviously giving you such a buzz. You’ll be asking us to salute you next!”
She glared at him indignantly. “It is not giving me a buzz! And you wouldn’t say that if I was a man.”
The analyst shook his head immediately. “Oh, no, you don’t! Your sex chromosomes have nothing to do with it; you’re difficult because of your personality!”
Davy had been listening to the argument in the way that he listened to music while he worked on his PhD thesis, melodic tunes played at a low volume providing background, in a ‘musical wallpaper’ kind of way. But if any part of the music became discordant and threatened to distract him he changed the CD or turned it off entirely, and he was wondering which option to employ now.
Ash worked to him, so he could easily be silenced, but then again Mary was also working to him today, in a way. Davy considered his options for a moment and decided that although Ash was by far the easier of the pair to control, as they were equally at fault it would be wrong to single him out, so he rose at his desk, and after watching the bickering pair for a moment longer he raised a lean hand and shouted, “SHUT UP!”
Surprised and pleased that the words had emerged without a stutter, Davy wasn’t at all surprised at what came next.
Mary jumped to her feet at her desk, to where she’d diverted Nicky’s phones.
“You can’t say that!”
“I just did, and if I’d said ‘be quiet’ w...would either of you have taken any notice? Your constant arguing is getting in the way of people doing their work.”
As the squad-room was empty apart from the three of them, by “people” he obviously meant himself.
He glanced pointedly at the wall clock.
“It’s twelve o’clock now, and I want to see everything you’ve got on the s...searches you were doing at one. And remember, you’ve got to pick up the database work that Ryan was doing as well as your own.”
Mary’s mouth re-opened immediately. “Not me. I’m answering the phones.”
“I’ll hold both of you responsible for any work that isn’t done, and I’ll make s...sure the chief knows why. Because you’ve been bickering like children!”
Ash gave a subdued nod and returned to his work immediately, while Davy could see Mary gearing up for another round. The woman seemed to view arguing as some sort of recreation, and he wondered whether she’d been in the debating society at school, in addition to being what Ash had asserted, no doubt correctly, that she had been Head Girl.
As Mary’s small mouth opened yet again Davy got in first.
“One more word and the chief gets told.”
It was the work equivalent of ‘wait till your father gets home’.
The small full lips pursed shut again and the D.C. turned back to her PC, leaving Davy wondering when he’d gone from being the squad’s if not exactly enfant terrible then at least its cool kid, and turned into someone’s nagging dad.
****
The Police Intelligence Section, Malone Road. The Reception Area.
“There’s an easy way to do this.”
Aidan glanced at Kyle suspiciously, wondering if what the ex-spook was about to suggest could really be as simple as the thought he’d just dismissed. Andy was wondering the same so he asked.
“Which is? No, don’t tell me. Because we don’t have a name to search, you want to check out all senior officers’ intelligence files.” He rolled his eyes. “You really don’t think we’d already thought of that?”
Kyle gave a grunt of displeasure at him being right. He didn’t like people being able to predict his thoughts or actions; it meant that they were getting to know him too well. His stock in trade as a spy had been being mysterious; no-one ever being able to pin him down. Not only, using the old adage, should his right hand never know what his left was doing, but his preference would be that neither even knew that the other one existed. But he’d obviously been away from spying too long if he was losing his edge, and that was a situation that would soon need to be addressed. For now he merely gave a tight nod that brought an outraged laugh from both D.C.I.s.
Aidan gave a sceptical snort. “You honestly think that Intelligence is just going to let you see all those files?”
“Of course. You forget that Barrett wants me back.”
D.C.I. Roy Barrett was the Director of Police Intelligence, although ultimately the whole section now reported to Craig, but Barrett had been Kyle’s service boss for years and wanted him back in spooky harness, so whatever the D.I. asked for he received.
“Are you considering it?”
Andy had tried to keep his hopefulness out of his voice and failed, and it gave Kyle the opening for an enigmatic smirk. He knew that his teammates found him irritating, but as Craig’s opinion, the only one that mattered as far as him getting paid was concerned, was that he was sometimes useful, the spook really didn’t care.
Aidan got back to their task impatiently. It had been an irritating morning so far, the re-interview of Jackson Hardy confirming that yes, the civil servant had held a set of keys to the DoE’s cellar and every other room in the building, but they’d been returned to the central government registry six months before the building had been sold; long before the fax and call to Xavier Ross and before Jessica Chambers had seen the men on site in the wee small hours. Hardy had produced the receipt for the keys’ handover with such alacrity that it made him wonder whether the man slept with it at night. Now he had sealed files and Kyle to deal with, and none it was improving his mood.
“OK, so we have a sealed file on some cop or politician, probably but not certainly the former, we could be barking up completely the wrong tree there, remember. But let’s say that a cop is involved here, then our only job here is to rule out any link to The HTH murders, nothing beyond that.”
He gazed pointedly at Kyle. “That’s all, D.I. Spence. We’re not interested in their sexual habits or weird perversions. If there’d been enough to prosecute them for those in oh-seven then someone would have done. And we’re not interested in embarrassing them or leaking names to the press. The only question is, could the man be our murderer, or the woman who called the police our victim, yes or no?”
Andy gave a small smile, not at Aidan’s approach but at his mention of weird perversions; personally he’s always been curious about other people’s kinks, if only to see how they compared to his own.
The curious D.C.I. considered the task in hand for a moment and then voiced a concern.
“Let’s say we get the two parties’ names and addresses, and we confirm that they were at The Pierrot Hotel that night, how exactly do we rule them in or out on our killings?”
Kyle had an idea that he’d been saving for later, but when the opportunity arose to show off he jumped.
“We need to know exactly how long the concrete was wet for, then we’ll know the time-frame in which the bones had to have been dumped. Then all we have to do is nail down the owner of this file’s movements in that period to rule them in or out. The female caller’s even easier. If she’s still alive then she obviously can’t be the owner of our bones.”
Andy gazed into the distance for a moment, processing the information visually as he always did; picturing the wet cement, the surreptitious and undoubtedly nocturnal bone depositing, and then the killer or killers sneaking away. He concluded that Kyle’s approach was neat, but until they had the answers to some unknowns they couldn’t confirm anything, so
he took out his phone and dialled the office.
“Hello.”
Mary’s response was sulky. “Hello.”
“Aren’t you supposed to say, ‘Good afternoon, Murder Squad’?”
“No, because I’m working to rule.”
The D.C.I. knew there was probably a long and tortuous explanation for her behaviour but he really didn’t care to hear it right now, so he said, “Could you transfer me to Davy, please?” trying to keep his boredom at her antics out of his voice.
“No.”
The phone went slamming down.
Andy was gobsmacked, but when he described what had just happened his two man audience had different reactions. While Aidan rolled his eyes in a way that said, ‘Oh, for the days when juniors did as they were told’, Kyle took out his phone and called Davy direct.
“Davy, exactly when was the cement laid in the cellar of the DoE building and how long would it have been wet?”
“We don’t know for s...sure yet. We’re pretty certain it was on the third of July because that’s when Jessica Chambers saw activity at the site, but we’ll know better after the chief interviews the foreman.”
“When’s that happening?”
“Now. I’ll get the chief to phone as soon as anything’s confirmed.”
“Cheers.”
As the D.I. went to hang up Davy asked him a question.
“How come you called my mobile?”
“Because your switchboard operator said she was working to rule and wouldn’t transfer us.”
He cut the call while the analyst was still spluttering, leaving him to sort Mary out himself.
“OK, the foreman Kelly’s being interviewed now so the cement timing should be tightened up soon.”
Aidan nodded. “That means, depending on the type of cement, quick or slow drying, then we probably have a window of between the third and maybe the seventh of July when the bones could have gone in, but-”
Andy shook his head, cutting in. “I know what you’re about to say; that if the bones were buried on the third that rules out our sealed case from the first of July having any relevance. But it doesn’t. The same woman could have been killed on the first, reduced to bone and buried two days later on the third.”
Aidan continued as if he hadn’t been interrupted. “-that doesn’t negate the relevance of our sealed case.”
Andy had the sense to mutter, “Sorry” and received a gracious nod in return.
“OK, that brings us back to Roy Barrett. You really think he’ll give us sight of his police officer files, Kyle?”
The D.I. shook his blond head. “He’ll give me sight.”
Andy objected instantly. “No way. We all need to see them.”
“I can ask him, but…”
“And if you ask him with that attitude then he’ll know you don’t want us to see them. We all go and see Roy together.”
It pissed the spook off for a second time; Kyle believed information was power and he wanted any power that came from the sealed file for himself. He had big plans for it.
To maintain his front the D.I. shrugged nonchalantly, as if still certain that Barrett would refuse the D.C.I.s’ request, all the while plotting how to avoid sharing whatever the sealed file held if Barrett didn’t.
But Andy had a plot of his own. Craig was head of both Murder and Intelligence now, and if he said jump then Roy Barrett would ask “how high?”. He excused himself to the bathroom and called Craig’s mobile, hoping that he wasn’t in the interview room just yet. Andy was in luck, and when he rejoined the others a few minutes later, it was with the confidence that Roy Barrett would welcome them all with open arms.
****
High Street Station.
The detectives stared across the table at Dean Kelly, an altogether more subdued foreman than the one that they’d first met. By his side sat Hanna Reynolds his solicitor, a woman that Craig had known from law-school and never liked, her natural ‘mean girl’ bitchiness enhanced even more back then by the group of girls that she had associated with.
His uneasiness about the solicitor was enhanced by the knowledge that her partner Joe was a doctor who worked in the same department as Katy, and the last time he’d met the pair had been at the reunion where he’d got bombed out of his mind. It made things awkward, not because they might have seen him drunk and incapable, he’d seen Hanna the same way many times as a student, but because he knew that while he’d been in that condition he’d done something indiscreet and he couldn’t be sure that the pair hadn’t witnessed the lead-up to that event.
As Craig prayed that the woman opposite either hadn’t witnessed his drunken behaviour or had been so drunk herself that she’d forgotten, the solicitor’s thoughts were exactly what he’d feared. Hanna had been around when he and Eimear had been getting cosy on the dance floor and had then headed upstairs in the lift, and she and her other half had speculated several times since what it meant for his and Katy’s relationship.
Belfast was like a large village and its middle-class was over-educated and bored, so a piece of juicy gossip seldom survived a purdah of more than a few months before it started to spread and Hanna Reynolds had just decided that that spread was going to begin today.
Thankfully Craig couldn’t read her mind, so he readied himself to get on with what they’d all come there for.
“Mister Kelly. There are a number of facts that I would like to share with you.”
The solicitor drew herself up straight. “I’ll expect copies of whatever you have.”
“And you’ll get them... before any case comes to court.”
If it had been intended to spook Dean Kelly it had more than the desired effect. The foreman lurched across the table, a pleading look in his eye.
“I didn’t do it, whatever you’re thinking!”
While Liam shooed the man back, Craig kept his voice steady. “Do what precisely, Mister Kelly?”
“Whatever you say you have evidence of! Those bones Rory found were nothing to do with me! I wouldn’t hurt a fly.”
“And what if there had been other offences committed on the site? Would they be nothing to do with you as well?”
Kelly gave a confused frown and went to speak again, but Hanna Reynolds cut him off.
“I think we should hear those facts that you mentioned now, Chief Superintendent.”
Craig smiled. “Happy to oblige.” He nodded Liam to start reading from the page in front of him.
“Mister Kelly was the construction foreman during the development of The Howard Tower Hotel and now for the new hotel recently commissioned by The Monmouth Consortium.”
Reynolds gave him a sarcastic look. “I take it you wish a yes or no to that?”
“That would be nice.” Liam accompanied his words with a sickly grin.
The brief turned to her client. “Mister Kelly?”
The foreman nodded. “Yes. I was... am... I mean, will be, the gaffer on both.”
Liam rustled his paper theatrically and read on. “Mister Kelly was also commissioned to fill in the basement of the Department of Energy building.”
Kelly nodded, but added two caveats. “It wasn’t the whole basement, just the cellar bit of it. The car-park’s still there. And... I’m not sure if it was still the DoE when I filled it. It might already have been handed over to the Barrs by then.”
As the cellar filling had occurred on the third of July and the site handover had been on the thirty-first, they knew it hadn’t been, but Liam didn’t correct him, asking a question instead.
“Why was the cellar filled in?”
“Flooding. They said they’d tried to drain it but it didn’t take, so it had to be filled in.”
Craig signalled to cut in. “In the middle of the night?”
Kelly’s green eyes widened so much that they looked like they might bulge out. “It…we…”
Craig waved him down before he choked.
“Please don’t bother to lie to us, Mister Kelly. We kno
w that the cellar was filled in at around three a.m. on the third of July two-thousand-and-seven because we have a witness.” The eyes bulged further. “Two men were seen on the site at that time operating a cement mixer and we know that you were one of them.”
Know? It was poetic license at its best.
Kelly turned to his brief frantically and even she looked surprised. She went on the attack immediately.
“We’ll need to speak to this witness.”
“In good time. Now, please instruct your client to respond, Ms Reynolds.”
“I didn’t hear a recent question.”
Craig sighed as he obliged. There were times that he hated lawyers, even though he’d studied for the same degree. He knew that they had a job to do, but some of them must have taken extra modules in sarcasm and nit-picking during their summer breaks.
“Mister Kelly, can you confirm that you were one of two men filling in the cellar of the DoE building on the morning of the third of July two-thousand-and-seven? Please remember that the action of filling itself was not a crime, even if the timing was slightly odd.”
A moment’s whispering between brief and client was followed by a quick nod from the foreman.
“Yes. It was me.”
“Thank-you. And the other man was Brian Tanner, was it not?”
“Yes.”
The reassurance that it hadn’t been a crime seemed to have done the trick.
“Good. Thank-you.”
Craig sat back and nodded Liam on again.
“Can you tell us why you were filling in the cellar?”
Reynolds jumped on the words.
“My client’s already answered that. The cellar had flooded.”
“And Mister Kelly knew that... how?”
Kelly answered for himself this time.
“Leonards Construction told me. They sent me to do the job.”
“At three a.m.?”
The foreman wrinkled his forehead. “I thought it was strange too. But we sometimes did night jobs-”
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