The Property

by Catriona King

  “I doubt that was the main reason for Dalir’s trip, I’m pretty sure they have prostitutes in Pakistan. Whatever he came here for was more important than sex.”

  It brought a gasp from Liam. “Impossible!”

  Andy snorted. “Yeh, yeh, we get it, you’re a real stud.”

  Craig added his own snort and then finished his point. “Important enough to hide by entering without registering. OK, last question, Andy. Did Moder say he’d been surprised by the Barrs selling the hotel when their profits were going up?”

  They couldn’t see Andy’s smile but they could hear it.

  “He did indeed, and he put it very neatly. Moder said that he’d thought it was unusual to sell a washing machine when it was working even better than before.”

  Craig was astonished, not by the fact that The Barr Group had actually been laundering money but by the fact that Derek Moder had commented on it so openly. But then by ridiculing the Barrs’ behaviour Moder had obviously thought he was distancing himself from it, and emphasising Monmouth’s credentials as an honest business by comparison.

  “OK, that’s great, Andy. Make sure Ash and Davy know all that as well, please. And Annette, she’s looking into the Barrs.”

  He ended the call and turned to the others.

  “Useful information, but how useful it might be in getting our MLA to talk is another thing.”

  Jack volunteered some information. “Bruton already knows he’s in big trouble, and I think, well, I know, he’ll give you any info he has to get out of it. He’s told me so a dozen times since he was brought in last night.”

  Liam nodded. “Good to know, but the question is, what info does he have? We can ask him why he didn’t want Dean Kelly to dig out the floor, but that will probably just yield the drugs information we already have. What we need is something that rules him in or out of involvement with the bones.”

  Craig launched himself off the wall that he’d been leaning against.

  “We’ll spot our moment if it comes, Liam, but we need to get started.”

  He pulled open the door and headed for the interviewing room, while Jack went to collect Billy Bruton and his solicitor. When Craig had set up the tape he closed his eyes and rested his head against the cool wall for a moment, trying hard not to think of Katy or anything else that might distract him from their work.

  The night before had been spent like many before it, tossing and turning and wondering what else he could possibly say to her to make things right. She was angry with him and she had every right to be; he’d been selfish about marriage, and particularly tactless about voicing his dismissal of it over the years. Now it was coming back to bite him, because he really did want to marry her, and not just because of the baby. Yes, that might have been what had made him look at the situation through new eyes and he would always have done the decent thing, but he wouldn’t have wanted it the way he did now unless he’d really loved her. But getting her to accept that now was proving almost impossible and all his hopes were pinned on the fact she’d asked to see him the next night. If Craig had known what Katy had found out the day before then they wouldn’t have been riding very high.

  The detective pushed his personal thoughts away sharply as he heard people entering the room, rising to greet the newcomers and motioning them to take a seat. The formalities covered and just about to start, Craig was pre-empted by the pinstripe-suited solicitor seated by the Ancient Mariner’s side.

  “My client would like me to say something.”

  Craig nodded the man on, expecting his calfskin briefcase to open and a sheet with a freshly prepared statement to emerge, instead of which the lawyer simply said, “Mister Bruton says that you may ask him any questions you like and he will answer them all truthfully. Despite my best advice.”

  It wasn’t the time to debate whether that meant the solicitor had wanted Bruton to lie or just say nothing, tempted though Craig was to open it up.

  With that the brief folded his arms in a definite pissed-off and feeling redundant way and the floodgates opened. The detectives asked Bruton everything that they needed to about cannabis growing and blackmail and, as predicted, on the former the politician admitted knowing that it had been happening but said it had been completely Brian Tanner’s enterprise, and on the latter he insisted that all the monies Tanner had given him were a gift, which made everyone in the room bar the MLA raise an eyebrow. They should all have such generous friends.

  On both matters it was a case of ‘he said, he said’ and could never be proven, and when told that he would be prosecuted for avoiding tax on the financial ‘gifts’ Bruton merely shrugged as if it was a fair cop.

  As they were in the realm of fiscal misbehaviour Liam seized the moment to ask the politician whether he knew anything about The Barr Group’s financial dealings, without mentioning what Derek Moder had said. Northern Ireland’s millionaires and billionaires formed a small club and word would get around.

  The MLA looked surprised by the question, as did his solicitor, who also seemed excited at finally getting to do his job and object.

  “What has that got to do with Mister Bruton?”

  Craig hadn’t expected his deputy’s question, but now that it was out he realised that it was the perfect time.

  “Your client would be assisting us with enquiries on this one, which could go down very well with the judge.”

  Bruton been wondering whether or not to answer, his loyalty to the elite to which he now belonged deeply engrained, but he decided that cooperating with the police was probably a good idea right now, and besides, if he was going to court for his tax misdemeanours he quite fancied someone else suffering too.

  He had a malicious smile on his face when he spoke. “The Barrs, that’s Kamran, Dalir and their father, Zafir, run what I would call a chain of laundrettes with a Saudi called Farshid Lund.”

  Zafir Barr? They hadn’t heard anything about him before.

  Liam seized on the answer. “By that, I take it you don’t mean they literally wash people’s dirty clothes?”

  “Nope. Too busy washing dirty money, their own and other people’s. They run it through businesses like The Howard Tower and some other hotels they own, plus they have car showrooms, supermarkets and pharmaceutical factories down south, and some other businesses as well, I think.”

  As Bruton slowly folded his arms they could see the confident politician re-emerging from behind the dishevelled front.

  “Everyone in Ireland knows. But you’ll never get them on it. The money runs through the UK, Saudi, Iran, India and Pakistan, so it’s well out of your league.”

  The taunt made Liam growl, until Craig stepped on his foot covertly and asked a question of his own.

  “I realise this has nothing to do with your own case, Mister Bruton, but as I said, cooperation will stand in your favour, so would you be willing to assist us further with enquiries in this area?”

  “Sure. Why not? If it shaves a bit off my tax sentence. I never liked the bastards anyway, especially Dalir. They never did me any favours. Wouldn’t even contribute to an event to get me elected.”

  Craig rested back in his seat, matching the MLA’s folded arm posture and getting ready to start the next phase.

  “Mister Bruton, you asked Mister Philip Michealson, your nephew, to instruct the builders not to dig into the ground on The Howard Tower Hotel site after it was purchased by The Monmouth Consortium, where you are both a shareholder and a member of the board. Correct?”

  The politician nodded.

  “Why?”

  Craig’s eyes locked on to the MLA’s, watching as Bruton tossed up whether or not to lie. He came down on the side of the truth.

  “I didn’t want them to find the cannabis and start asking questions. We, I mean Tanner, didn’t get all … all... the plants and equipment that is… out of there in two-thousand-and-seven.”

  He’d just given himself away as having a deeper involvement with the drugs, but Craig wasn’t intereste
d in that. He was interested in the way the man’s gaze had dropped to the table towards the end of his sentence, and his hesitation after the word ‘all’, followed by his qualification of the word as referring specifically to plants and equipment. Liam’s tensing up beside him said that he was aware of it too.

  Craig waited for Bruton’s eyes to rise again and then changed the subject completely, softening his voice to make him relax.

  “You travelled abroad quite a lot when you were a student and a SPAD, didn’t you, Mister Bruton?”

  The politician seemed taken aback by the change in tack, but nodded.

  “For the tape, Mister Bruton is nodding. You went particularly to the middle-east, yes?”

  “Yes, I travelled all round the region looking at energy saving projects between ninety-two and two-thousand-and-ten.”

  They fitted with what Mary had found.

  Bruton shot his brief a puzzled glance that prompted the lawyer to sit forward.

  “May I ask how these questions are relevant?”

  “It will become clear.”

  Craig kept his eyes on the MLA, needing to see his immediate reaction to the mention of the bones.

  “Did you know that there were bones in the hotel floor, Mister Bruton?” A flinch told him that Bruton had, so the detective followed up immediately with, “Do you know someone called Catherine Berger?”

  All he received in return was a blank look.

  “Or Maureen Berger. Do either of those names ring a bell, Mister Bruton?”

  “No. Who are they?”

  It wasn’t yet time to say, so Craig returned to the flinch.

  “You flinched when I asked if you knew that there were bones in the floor.”

  Bruton blustered “Everyone knows about them! They were in the paper.”

  Liam signalled to cut in. “But why would you flinch? Most people would look sad or sympathetic, maybe even horrified, but they wouldn’t flinch.”

  “I… they…”

  Bruton looked pleadingly at his solicitor, who now seemed totally out of his depth. He’d been hired to deal with fraud and maybe some drugs, but this was something else.

  Craig came back in swiftly. “Let me ask you a different question. When did you know that there were bones in the hotel’s floor?”

  Instead of the obfuscation that he’d been expecting, Bruton’s response was a sigh so deep that Craig had only ever heard the sound before associated with profound relief. The relief of some criminals when they are finally caught, or the relief of someone who’s been carrying a dark secret for years when it finally comes out; the sound said that either Bruton’s guilt at something he’d done had been killing him, or he was glad to have a chance of unburdening himself of something, or both.

  The sigh was repeated several times before the politician eventually sat forward, rested his elbows on the table and dropped his head into his hands. Liam instinctively wanted to knock the elbows away, the product of attending an all-boys school, but Craig gently coaxed the MLA to speak.

  “You obviously know something about the bones, Mister Bruton, so why not get it off your chest?”

  He was backing a hunch that Bruton wanted to speak, not because he was a murdering psychopath who’d suddenly unearthed a conscience from somewhere and wanted some peace from his guilt, in his experience a psychopath with a conscience was a mythical beast, but because the MLA had been carrying around some knowledge that while the world hadn’t yet known anything he’d managed to ignore and live with, but now, faced with the headlines about the bones’ discovery, had been costing him sleep.

  The sighing restarted but it was slower and weaker, and finally Bruton lifted his head again.

  “I didn’t kill anyone. I want that on the record.”

  Craig glanced towards the tape machine. “It is.”

  “But I did know about the bones before they were found this week.” He sat back suddenly, leaping to his own defence. “Not who they were, not that! I don’t have a clue there. But I saw them there, in the hotel floor, years ago.” He shook his head slowly. “I should have told someone. I should have said. But I always thought that someone else would find them and report them. Someone who… well… I was entering politics, and the publicity…” There was pleading in his voice now. “You understand…”

  Through sheer force of will Craig held his temper, even though he wanted to strike the man for being such a selfish fuck. If Bruton had told the police when he’d first seen the bones then whoever the victims’ relatives were would have had peace by now. He forced his voice to remain soft.

  “I understand. You’re telling us now.”

  It was the absolution that the MLA had needed and he gazed at each man in the room in turn, his eyes suddenly clear.

  “I am. I am, and that’s good, isn’t it?”

  The bastard wanted a pat on the head! Craig knew if he let Liam give him one it would take his head clean off.

  “Good. So… when did you first see them?”

  The answer came circuitously.

  “I was worried that Tanner might have left something obvious behind, like a bloody great cannabis leaf floating on top of the cement. But I couldn’t check, not without someone seeing me, not until the hotel opened. They had high hoarding up and it was padlocked, so we had to wait.”

  We? That meant that neither he nor Brian Tanner had had a key to the hoarding.

  “And?”

  “So, anyway, there was a formal opening for the hotel just before Halloween that year, a cocktail party thing. Some people from the DoE were invited so I got myself on to the list, and while everyone was boozing I went across to the corner with the cellar beneath to take a quick look.”

  He squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head abruptly, and they all knew that he was recalling a sight that repelled him and trying to shake the image away.

  Craig’s voice became insistent.

  “What did you see, Mister Bruton?”

  The MLA’s grey eyes flew open again and he gabbled out his reply.

  “There was a trolley, you know, the sort they use to keep food hot. It was parked right there, right on that spot. It was a really big one too; covered most of that corner of the room. The cellar didn’t have a big roof opening, just a trap-door, even though it extended underground quite a way.”

  He glugged some of the water that Jack had left for him as he spoke; telling the truth seeming to produce an uncommon thirst. Given the dishonesty of many politicians it made Craig wonder why they needed to have a bar in parliament at all.

  “Anyway, I pushed the trolley aside a bit, it was hard with people milling around. And then I saw the carpet was raised up, lumpy. At first I thought it was just bad carpet laying so I didn’t think anything of it. Then I peeled back the carpet and underlay a bit and I saw it. Them. A skull and a ribcage, just bloody sitting there! Sticking out of the floor! I couldn’t believe that the carpet layer hadn’t noticed them.”

  It was a very good point.

  He shuddered violently and Craig knew they were in danger of a shut-down, so he made encouraging sounds.

  “What did you do then?”

  “Nothing. I mean, what could I do, without having to explain why the hell I’d been lifting the carpet at a party?”

  Liam gave a snarl of distaste. “And as long as there was no weed visible you didn’t care!”

  Bruton hit back instantly.

  “That’s not true! I did care. But what use would it have been to tell anyone? They were already dead!”

  “Aye, and you had a career to think about, didn’t you? Mister Important MLA.”

  Before the solicitor could do his job and object Craig rose to his feet, glaring down at the politician and speaking in a now obviously disgusted voice.

  “It could have helped us find their killer, Mister Bruton.”

  Bruton gawped at him.

  “Their? There was more than one body?”

  Craig ignored the question.

  “And n
otify the family.”

  As he turned for the door to prevent himself exploding, the solicitor finally spoke in a weak croak, obviously stunned by all that he’d just heard.

  “So….will my client be bailed now?”

  Liam answered for him. “Your client’s going nowhere until we can rule him out on two murders based on more than just his word.”

  As they exited into the hallway Craig muttered. “Liam, have Ash check Tanner’s and Bruton’s movements for that period in oh-seven again, right from the start. I’m going to have Tanner picked up again.”

  ****

  London.

  “Your men have been watching him?”

  “Yes. For days.”

  The dark-eyed man was less than persuaded.

  “And?”

  “Nothing to panic about, just as I said. Just a trip to the station and a few questions from the cops. They’ve been watching him as well, but only because they can.”

  It brought an unexpected tut, prompting the agent to ask a question himself.

  “You’re not satisfied with that? I told you that I hate burning valuable assets unnecessarily. It’s a waste.”

  The retort was swift. “It was necessary eleven years ago, but you convinced us to give him the benefit of the doubt! Watch and wait, those were your very words, so we did. Well, we’ve waited for long enough now. It’s getting too risky.”

  The agent decided to mount a final defence; not of the intended target, he didn’t give a damn about him, but in defence of all the hard work that he’d done supporting him over the years. That he did put a high value on.

  “It will take years to put someone new in place, and the cost-”

  He was cut off sharply.

  “Money’s not the issue here! There are reputations, relationships, future positions to consider. If everything comes out then all of that goes, but if he dies, well, it could just be random killing. After a brief hunt the usual suspects will get the blame.”

  There was silence for a moment and it carried finality. It was the absence of sound but the presence of instruction; all the arguing was over and no further debate would be brooked. It was time to end a life.