The Property

by Catriona King

  Liam was about to come back with a quip about worms when Craig went on.

  “Even if the woman hadn’t wanted to pursue it the force should have disciplined him. This is a bloody disgrace.”

  “Aye well, before you go getting your boxers in a knot, remember who the Chief Constable was back then.”

  Craig’s face fell. He was right; Sean Flanagan’s predecessor, Hugh Latimer, had been an Olympic standard ducker and diver who’d rarely done anything by the book. He’d been at The Met during his tenure so he’d never actually worked for the man, but he’d heard all about him through the grapevine. Latimer had run the force like an overblown youth club where the only important youths were the boys.

  “I’m still going to tell Flanagan about Price when I get time. He might not have seen the file’s full contents.”

  Even as he said it he wasn’t sure; Flanagan’s comment about the chips falling where they may said that he might have done.

  Liam pulled in and parked the car.

  “Good luck with that.” His tone said he thought Craig hadn’t a hope in hell of getting Price kicked out. “Anyway, the good news is that we can rule Price out for our murders. Andy checked and the lady in question is alive and well and living down south, a mother of two.”

  Craig was unimpressed. “The better news would have been if we could have pinned both of our murders on Price.”As he climbed out of the car he checked his watch. “We’re not going to have time to interview both Tanner and Bruton before the briefing. Although if I’m right we should get what we need to leverage Bruton from this one.”

  He headed for the station’s rear door and two minutes later they were seated across the table from Brian Tanner again, this time with a brief by his side, a very young, very disillusioned looking one, who might as well have had ‘bored duty solicitor’ tattooed on his forehead for all the enthusiasm he displayed. Liam speculated idly whether he might have it tattooed for real somewhere else.

  The introductions over, Craig rested back in his chair and folded his arms.

  “I’m going to tell you a little story, Mister Tanner, and you can tell us if it rings any bells.”

  The words clearly unnerved the ex-caretaker, so much so that he turned anxiously to the man by his side.

  “Can he do that?”

  The solicitor glanced up from the pad that he’d been doodling on to stare at his client, his sceptical expression saying that he clearly thought Tanner was insane.

  “Can he do what? Tell you a story?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes. He can. Stories aren’t a breach of your Human Rights.”

  The lawyer returned to his artistic endeavours with a sigh, leaving Craig to carry on.

  “Picture a man who once had a hobby. Gardening, you might call it.”

  Liam stifled a grin.

  “He was good at it too and sold his plants to make a lot of money, but he needed somewhere warm, dry and bright to help them grow well.”

  He stared at Tanner intently for a moment, pleased to see that he was looking nervous.

  “So, this man looks for a safe space where his plants won’t be disturbed, and luckily he finds one. He sets them up with heat and light in a place where usually only he and maybe one other person goes, and everything’s going brilliantly. He’s growing and selling the plants and making a lot of money from them-”

  The solicitor glanced up from his sketch. “Is there a point here, Superintendent?”

  “Just getting there.”

  The brief set his pad face-down on the table and folded his arms, suddenly interested. “Carry on.”

  “So, we have this man, this gardener as we’ll call him, and the other person that he pays to turn a blind eye…”

  He had no idea whether the night security-guard had been paid or not but it wouldn’t take long to find out.

  “…and it’s all going so well that he decides to expand his garden to cover the whole of the big space available.”

  Liam smiled at the Jackanory way in which he was telling the tale, although he doubted there’d ever been a story about growing weed on children’s TV.

  “But then the gardener hits a little snag. His garden is discovered by someone new and they threaten to tell everyone about it, because you see the gardener shouldn’t be growing plants in that place, especially not these plants. So, the gardener agrees to pay this new person some money to keep quiet and he carries on as before…”

  Blackmail?

  Liam’s eyebrows shot up, wondering who’d blackmailed Tanner, but he knew better than to query it until they were outside the room.

  Craig leant forward on the table and stared into his prisoner’s beige face.

  “Then one day the gardener finds out that his secret garden is being sold, so he’s torn between keeping his plants growing for as long as possible or getting rid of them before the space changes hands. He decides to hold on as long as he possibly can, but he leaves it too late, and so he has to hurry to clear as many plants out as he can and then he panics and decides that he has to hide the rest.”

  Craig had watched the caretaker’s eyes widen further and further as he’d been speaking, but as he needed Tanner’s help to nail a much bigger fish he didn’t want to give the man a heart attack, so he relaxed back in his seat once again and smiled reassuringly.

  “So, the gardener tells a big fat story about the space having flooded, and then a workman is sent to help him fill it in with cement, leaving glass and plants trapped in that cement at the bottom, glass and plants that we have now found.”

  As Tanner gulped Craig smiled meaningfully.

  “That workman has now confirmed what happened but denied ever knowing what was in the space. He says that his firm only sent him because they’d been told the space was flooded.”

  Tanner’s eyes were darting between the detectives and his solicitor, and Craig knew that both solicitor and client were desperate to object or deny something, or even to mutter, “No comment” into the tape, except that he hadn’t asked any questions yet. He was just telling his tale.

  “So, at the end of the story, we have the gardener and his plants, the workman who will testify that the gardener was there when he filled in the space with cement, and had already filled in the bottom few feet before he arrived, and coincidentally we now also have a witness who was looking out of their apartment window at that exact time in the early morning and saw everything. But…” A hopeful expression appeared on Tanner’s face. “…the person we’re really interested in, in fact the only important person in all of this, is the person who helped the gardener convince everyone that the space had flooded and sent a particular fax to prove it, and we believe that was also the man who was blackmailing the gardener for cash.”

  The words’ meandering ‘for the want of a nail the shoe was lost’ character made Liam smile.

  The duty solicitor felt that he should probably do something to earn his wage, such as it was, so he leaned forward suddenly and stared Craig straight in the eye.

  “Can you please get to the point?”

  Craig looked pleased with himself. He’d even made the solicitor crack. It was revenge for Hanna Reynolds, of a sort.

  “Certainly. The point is we believe that your client, Brian Tanner, ran a cannabis farm in the cellar of the Department of Energy building on Howard Street between two-thousand-and-six and seven.”

  The brief went to object but Craig raised a hand to halt him.

  “We found the cannabis leaves and other detritus of the farm when we excavated the cellar yesterday. But we’re not particularly interested in your client. He’s a very small fish.”

  Tanner decided to wait to hear what came next before he made up his mind whether to be insulted or not.

  “We would like Mister Tanner to confirm some things for us, and in exchange we’ll drop any case against him. Otherwise... we will prosecute him to the letter of the law.”

  It was the first that Liam had heard of it.
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br />   The solicitor gazed at Craig incredulously, still on his earlier point. “Why would you dig up a cellar? Just to find a cannabis farm from a decade ago?”

  “Not at all, but I’ll come to that in a moment. I’d like to finish my story first.” He didn’t wait for permission. “Your client, Mister Tanner who was the day-time security-guard and caretaker for the DoE, was probably paying the night-guard only a small amount for keeping quiet. But when his farm was discovered by another man he had to pay that person, who essentially blackmailed him, a considerable amount of his profit.”

  He stared at Tanner. “Fifty, perhaps even sixty percent?”

  A wince from the security-guard said that he’d hit a nerve.

  Craig turned back to the brief. “So, sixty percent of your client’s drug profits went to this blackmailer to prevent him giving things away, because your client was scared of this man. He was powerful in some way, unlike the night-guard, and the police would have believed him over your client which made him a very real threat. Getting caught running a large drug enterprise would have sent Mister Tanner to prison.”

  The solicitor stared at him coolly. “If it had been true.”

  “Which it was.”

  Craig took a sip of water before carrying on.

  “Your client paid this blackmailer sixty percent of everything until the time came that the DoE building was to be handed over, and even then they pushed things right up to the wire, trying to make as much money as they could. Then, at the latest date possible, before people began asking questions, the blackmailer arranged for a building firm to send in a construction worker, ostensibly to fill in the cellar because it had flooded-”

  The solicitor had had enough and held up his hand, cutting Craig off.

  “You’d be hard put to prove any of this since it happened so long ago and even the workman didn’t see anything but cement! I’m presuming that you want my client to give up the name of this blackmailer, if he ever existed?”

  Craig hid the fact the solicitor was pissing him off and looked solemn. “The reason that we dug up the basement yesterday was because a body was found in the cement, and we’ve now found two. Are two dead people a good enough reason for your client to stop covering his ass?”He turned back to Tanner, his tone hardening. “Unless you want to be investigated for their murders, Mister Tanner, give us the blackmailer’s name.”

  It prompted a huddle between the now-shocked client and brief, which ended with a nod from them both.

  Brian Tanner spoke for himself this time.

  “I don’t get charged for anything?”

  “No. Give me the name.”

  “But he’s powerful now. I could be at risk.”

  “We’ll protect you until we get enough to arrest him. Now, his name, please.”

  The ex-caretaker swallowed hard.

  “Billy Bruton. The MLA.”

  Yes! His hunch had paid off. Craig wanted to punch the air but he kept his face composed.

  “Go on.”

  “He was some sort of advisor to the Minister back then, a real big cheese. Used to lord it over all the staff, strutting about like he had a poker up his ass.”

  Liam winced at the thought.

  “Anyway, the building had been clear of civil servants in oh-six for about two weeks when I started up my plants. The cellar was perfect, and with a few lights up they grew like weeds.”

  The obvious joke appeared to pass him by, but everyone else got it and smirked.

  “Just like you said, I expanded the place over the next few months and slipped the night-guard a score now and then, just to keep his mouth shut. I offered him some of the takings, but he said he didn’t want anything to do with it. Said drugs were disgusting, the pompous prick.”

  Craig was with the night-guard on that, but now wasn’t the time for a drug eradication debate.

  “When did Bruton catch you?”

  Tanner made a face. “About a month after I started. He’d come back to the building looking for some bloody papers and needed the keys to the offices, but instead of phoning me like a normal person he wandered around the place looking for me and ended up down at my farm.”

  He made the place sound idyllic. All that was missing were the cows.

  The farmer’s face contorted with anger. “The bastard spotted that there was money to be made and it went just like you said. He took sixty percent of my takings and pushed me to grow more plants, but we kept it going too long.”

  “Did Bruton send the fax to the surveyors saying that the basement had flooded?”

  “Aye. He went into one of the offices and did it; said he got hold of some headed paper from somewhere. He made a call as well.”

  They’d been right about the sender being someone associated with the DoE.

  “Anyway, the rest was what you already know. Me and Dean Kelly filled in the hole one night, but Kelly never knew what was down there.” He shook his head hastily. “Plants, I mean. We had nothing to do with no bodies! All we covered up was some old scrub plants and some glass stuff I used in the growing. Nobody got killed by us.”

  Craig nodded; it was as he’d thought. “OK, I’ll make a recommendation to the prosecution service that you’re not charged.”

  The solicitor jumped on the words. “You said definitely there would be no charges.”

  “And I meant it. But we have to go through the formalities, and Mister Tanner will have to testify in court against Bruton when it comes to it.”

  He pushed back his chair and stood up before either client or brief could object.

  “Your client will need to wait here until we can arrange an officer to protect him. I’ll be back to see him myself after seven sometime.”

  The duty brief agreed, mainly because it was turning out to be a more interesting case than he’d expected, and if Billy Bruton was involved it might turn out to be more interesting yet.

  Craig was already in the car-park when Liam caught up with him and the D.C.I. waited impatiently while he spoke on the phone, arranging for Kyle to guard the caretaker until they had Billy Bruton all wrapped up.

  As the end of the call Liam pounced.

  “You might have shared your thoughts on Bruton with me before the interview!”

  Craig leaned back against the car, shielding his eyes from the late afternoon sun.

  “You’re right, I should have. Sorry. But in my defence I only developed the theory about Bruton a short time before we left the ranch, and I didn’t want to jinx it by saying it out loud. You already knew Bruton was on The Monmouth Consortium Board and that the surveyor who ordered Kelly not to dig out the floor this week, Philip Michaelson, was related to him. Anyway, it turns out he’s Bruton’s nephew. I had a hunch that the order not to dig had come from Bruton not the Board, so I got Mary to look into his background and it turned out that Bruton was a SPAD at the DoE in the right time period eleven years ago.”

  Liam was only slightly appeased. “OK, so he was Johnny on The Spot back then. That’s all well and good, but how did you make the leap to blackmail?”

  “I had Mary look into Bruton’s finances, and in two-thousand-and-seven he and his wife moved from a two-bed terraced house off the Ormeau Road to a five-bed detached out at Knock. He wasn’t earning anything like enough for that as an advisor, so I thought maybe there’d been some inheritance or income from somewhere that he hadn’t declared, so Mary pulled his bank records. She’s a wiz on the computer you know.”

  Liam wasn’t ready to be diverted.“It was her degree. Anyway, what did she find?”

  “No lump sums that would have indicated an inheritance, but cash deposits of between four and six grand at intervals, for over a year starting in early two-thousand and six. It totalled over two hundred grand. Now, where do you get money like that?”

  “And so you thought, Bruton was a SPAD at the DoE where there just happened to be a cannabis farm in the basement, join the dots and Bob’s your uncle. Very sneaky.”

  Craig shrugged
. “I just played a hunch. And I’m sorry again for not telling you before we went in.” He frowned. “I’m not sure how much closer it will take us to the murderer, but we need to play Bruton out.”

  “You like him for the killings?”

  “I won’t know until we interview him.” He glanced at his watch. “I was going to find him at five o’clock but we’ve missed our window, so that’ll have to be tomorrow’s job. We’re going to be late for the briefing.”

  Liam climbed into the car. “I wouldn’t worry too much. They can’t start without us.”

  Chapter Ten

  When gossip is overheard by the very person who shouldn’t hear it on a TV show, we call the scenario far-fetched and unbelievable; such coincidence the creation of an over-heated scriptwriter’s mind. An unlikely occurrence in any modern city with a large population, the chances of a gossiper and a victim meeting far more likely in medieval times, when people lived in tiny villages arranged around a single meeting-square.

  Small and parochial places, dominated by a group of worthy elders who set the tone; with a market for shopping, stables instead of garages, and a tendency to burn anyone who defied the orthodoxy at a well-charred stake. Set amidst this standardised living was that most infamous of all citizens, the village gossip; a woman, traditionally and pejoratively, of such an inquisitive, garrulous and vindictive nature that no sooner had she learnt a secret but it would be spread all around the square.

  Now picture Belfast as that village; yet how could it be? A capital city with three hundred thousand residents? Ah, but for the sake of this analogy, picture its occupants limited to a university educated middle-class, whose quasi incestuous propensity to date and breed with each other produces a tendency towards powerful dynasties, and on a less hierarchical level, for everyone to know and socialise with everyone else. In particular along the artery of the Lisburn and Malone Roads; an evening spent in the hostelries of either guaranteed to be spent, “Hello”-ing, air-kissing and asking “How’s X, Y or Z, the Porsche and the kids?”

  Such familiarity can of course be a comfort, with readymade social groups and their ease of finding new partners, if you don’t mind recycling divorcees and a lazy form of vetting that doesn’t even require an internet search. Simply ask your friends what they know about the attractive man or woman who’s just entered the bar, golf club or café and they’ll give you their school, degree, job, church, financial status and a list of their exes within a breath.