He had no idea whether there’d been any mention of ghosts or not, but as it was a rural area it was a safe enough bet. He watched the man’s face as he answered, searching for some sign of avoidance or lies. There wasn’t any. Dan Russell looked genuinely bemused.
“Well noyw, I dun’t know about thaat…ghosts ye say…no, no, never heard tell af those. I was always told the ruckus was due to teenagers up to whatnot, if ye know what I mean.” He smiled conspiratorially, in a boys-will-be-boys kind of way. “Sure, it’s been goin’ an since the seventies, altho I never saw nathin’ myself.”
The seventies? That was earlier than they’d heard.
Aidan pressed him. “No devil worship, or strange Voodoo rituals then? Some people have mentioned those.”
Russell’s raisin-black eyes widened. “Have they noyw? I niver heered thaat. Which people were those then?”
Reckoning that the keeper probably knew everyone local, the detective decided to back off before he overplayed his hand. He changed the subject to something more concrete.
“Are there a lot of deer hereabouts?”
Russell’s worn face origami-ed into a smile. “Aye, especially an the high ground. Lovely creatures are deer. We see lots af the red ones around aboyt.”
Aidan nodded. “They are lovely, so it’s an awful pity when you hear about what happened in the nineties.”
It had exactly the effect that he’d expected. The gamekeeper’s amiable expression became a scowl.
“I wish I’d caught the buggers. I’d have given them a blast with my shotgun. Killin’ lovely things like thaat for their meat. It’s a sin, thaat’s what it is.”
“You believe that’s what happened then? It was venison hunters?”
Russell was taken aback for a moment. “You don’t think so? Sure, what else could it have been? Every bit af meat and organ had been taken. Awl thaat was left to them was their skin an’ bones.” His scowl deepened. “Mind, it was better than those other bastards.”
He cast a quick look behind him, obviously for his wife. Mrs Russell clearly didn’t like her husband swearing.
“They took the heads thaat time.”
The hairs on the back of Aidan’s neck stood up. The keeper knew something about decapitated deer; he prayed fervently that it was the heads that they’d found.
The D.C.I. struggled to keep his voice calm as he asked his next question.
“When did that happen, then? When they took the deer heads?”
As Russell creased his forehead, thinking, Aidan was transfixed by the depth of the furrows that appeared. If his tyres had treads like that he wouldn’t be about to buy new ones.
“Long time ago noyw. I was young when it happened. I mind it was in eighty-one, no, eighty-two it was. In the spring.”
Thirty-six years before. It fitted with the age of some of the older deer heads that they’d found.
“What exactly happened then, Mister Russell? Can you recall?”
The keeper’s eyes took on a faraway look.
“I mind it like it was yesterday, it was thaat shockin’. Me an’ the boss keeper, ’cos I was just a junior keeper in those days af course, well, we come upon some dead deer like. Five awl told. Not lying altogether, no, scattered all through the forest they were, but we knew they was killed by the same wan ’cos they was awl just torsos. Not a single head at awl.”
Five. It matched the number of older heads.
“Were the torsos intact?”
Russell gave a puzzled nod. “Aye, they were. I niver understood that. If ye’re a poacher then surely ye’d take the meat. But they didn’t. Just the heads.”
“Did you notify anyone?”
“Surely we did. The boss told Mister Canavan, the old one not the boys, but he didn’t seem fussed. Mind ye, the deer weren’t his af course, they was just wild an the land. But still… The police weren’t fussed neither, but there was a lat af killing in those days ’cos af the Troubles, so ye can’t blame them for not fussing about some deer, I suppose.” He shook his balding head. “Terrible thing though, killing beautiful animals like thaat. Terrible.”
Aidan glanced at the clock, knowing that he was pushing his luck and Mrs Russell might arrive home any minute and stop her husband talking.
“Mister Russell, I’d like to get all this on tape, and also discuss the human deaths in the forest with you, so I wonder if you would mind accompanying me to Castlederg Station. We could pull everything together there?”
He counted to ten mentally, awaiting the man’s “no”, and was pleasantly surprised when the spritely keeper sprang eagerly out of his chair.
“I’ll just leave a note for the wife, else she’ll worry.”
As he did that Aidan slipped the phone-jack back into its socket, half expecting it to ring as soon as he did. When it didn’t he casually asked another question.
“How do you keep in touch with your wife when you’re out in the forest? Mobile phone?”
Russell glanced up from writing his note and shook his head. “Don’t have one. Reception’s not great here, not enough masts ar somethin’, so we use radio awl the time. It’s in the jeep out back an’ I keep another in my hut in the forest.”
It could explain why the gamekeeper hadn’t received a call from Niall Canavan while they’d been speaking, and as they’d be at the station in twenty minutes he wouldn’t be getting one any time soon.
Chapter Sixteen
Laganside Court. Oxford Street, Belfast.
Davy arrived at courtroom number one gasping for breath after his mile run from Pilot Street, but he didn’t have a car and asking one of the team for a lift would have alerted everyone to what was going on. To be truthful he was quite pleased that he could run that distance in only ten minutes, it said that his sedentary job hadn’t quite wrecked his fitness yet, and he made up his mind to ensure that it didn’t happen over the next ten years.
As the analyst was thinking about his lungs and muscles he was also pushing gently at the courtroom door, opening it wide enough to see that the place was empty. Puzzled, he returned to the courts’ reception and approached a man whose blazer and clipboard said that he probably knew what was what.
“Excuse me.”
The official turned with the lethargy of a man who’d seen far too much of the world, especially its dark side, although that probably wasn’t surprising given that his days were spent amongst criminals, jaded legal teams and the public who came to gawp. Davy wondered which of those three groups bored him most. Probably not the criminals, who would at least have offered variety in their offences, and the public, irritating as they could be, wouldn’t have been uniform in approach. No, it was probably the legal advocates that the official found most tedious, having as they did the same education, outfits and reason to be there, varying in only one respect, whether to prosecute or defend.
“Yesss…”
The extended consonant confirmed Davy’s diagnosis of ennui.
“Has the Rowan Drake case been moved from Court One?”
“Nooo…”
There was that bored extension again, only this time with a vowel.
The official added some context.
“It’s been adjourned until tomorrow.”
It explained Maggie not being there but not why she wasn’t answering her phone. A quick, “thank you”, and Davy was outside again in the spring weather, heading for Victoria Street and then further on into town. Ten minutes later he arrived at the Cathedral Quarter offices of The Chronicle and loped up its wide stone steps until he reached the news section, expecting to find his fiancée seated at her desk. But there was still no sign of her and fatigued now by his efforts, Davy flopped into a chair set along one wall. Toby Foster spotted him and strolled across.
“Looking for Maggie?”
The analyst nodded, too tired to speak.
“She’s in court today.”
Davy knew that she wasn’t, but he wouldn’t tell a deputy who might seize on the fact to imp
ly that she was lazy; Maggie had told him all about the ambitious young man. There was nothing else for it, he would just have to keep calling her mobile until she answered. She was probably somewhere shopping, but it could take hours of wandering around the streets to find her and he needed to get back to work.
The analyst had just re-entered St Anne’s Square when he saw his girlfriend approach. Maggie’s face broke into a smile the moment that she saw him, but it fell again when she realised that it wasn’t being returned, and that Davy had a death grip on something in his hand.
“What’s that?”
The analyst’s brown eyes widened in astonishment. “What’s that? What’s that? What do you think it is?”
His hostile tone took her aback, but when he unfolded the thick square of paper he was gripping, to reveal that morning’s Chronicle front page, Maggie understood immediately why he was mad.
The headline shouted at her in bold print inches high, ‘CHILD MURDERER AT LOOSE IN COUNTY TYRONE’. She speed-read the supporting columns with a horror that matched Davy’s own not long before, and by the time she had reached the bottom the analyst had calmed down.
“You had nothing to do with this.”
It wasn’t a question, but she answered it anyway. “No”. She added a shake of her head and a croaked, “Has Marc seen it yet?”
“I don’t think so. I w…would have heard. But it won’t take long before he does, so you need to get in front of this, Maggie, or he’ll never trust you again.”
She nodded glumly, knowing that he was right. Craig didn’t find it easy to trust, much less trust the press, and it could ruin a relationship that she’d worked hard on for years. She gripped her boyfriend’s arm and gave a tight smile.
“I know who’s done this.”
“Foster?”
“Yes, although I see he was careful not to put his name to it.”
Davy sighed. “He wants you to get the blame, so he can get your job.”
She nodded. “And he waited until I was out of the way at court to make his move. Crafty pig.”
She moved towards the office door. “I need to sort this with my managing editor. If I can prove to Greg that I had nothing to do with it, he’ll back me with the management Board. Then I need to sort out Toby. Can you get me ten minutes with Marc later? I can do anytime. Court was adjourned.”
“I’ll try.” Davy glanced down at the paper. “And I’ll try to be the one to show this to him, providing he hasn’t seen it first.” He gazed down at her protectively. “Don’t try to s…sort Toby yourself, Maggie. Let your boss do it. That guy is devious and if you tackle him the wrong way he’ll try to turn it back on you.”
She shrugged unhappily. “I’ve a feeling that no matter who tackles him he’s going to do that.”
****
The Labs. Dissection Room Three.
“This is sodding ridiculous! What am I doing here? I don’t know anything about any bloody government place!”
Craig sighed and readjusted his chair, wondering absentmindedly whether he should ask John to turn up the heating. Liam was ahead of him, noticing Craig tugging his jacket around himself ten minutes before, but he’d been informed that dissection rooms weren’t equipped with central heating for the obvious reasons, so they would just have to cope with the cold.
They were almost finished anyway. Dermot Canavan, a younger, darker, better looking version of his brother, with steel bracelets, tattoos and distressed jeans in place of the former’s suit and tie, was either a very good liar or he really knew nothing about Appside, other than that they’d rented some government the land. He also professed to know nothing about dead deer or dead children, or much of anything else that happened on the family estate, answering every financial and operational question with, “I wouldn’t know. My brother deals with all that.” His later denials convinced Craig far less than his first.
But the delay in giving Canavan Junior his radiation count results could only be stretched so far, and Craig estimated that he had only a few minutes more to play with before Des would feel compelled to enter with the readings, which they already knew were normal, and then they would have to let Dermot Canavan go.
He ran mentally through his remaining list of queries, ranking them in order of importance, and as Liam watched he saw realisation suddenly light Craig’s eyes. He’d found the perfect question, the one whose answer would tell them most about the man in front of them, and by proxy about any knowledge that he might have of their crime.
Craig sat forward on his hard-backed chair, clasping his hands between his widened knees and leaning in closer to Canavan’s face. It was a dual-purpose position: intimidating, but also giving him the perfect view of each of the man’s facial micro-expressions as they appeared. The detective opened with a preamble.
“I understand you work for charity, Mister Canavan?”
That wasn’t Craig’s real query, but Canavan’s nod was so energetic it seemed that he believed it was and it made him exhale in relief. It was for precisely halfway through that exhalation, at the moment when vocal control is at its very weakest, that Craig had timed his perfect question, and it came galloping out.
“A charity for young boys?”
Dermot Canavan’s brown eyes widened in alarm, and the breath just leaving his body was sucked back in again so sharply that it made him cough. Through the whole moment of reaction Craig’s eyes never left his quarry’s face, and he read everything that was written there: the shock, the fear, the guilt, the unspoken questions of, ‘who’s been saying things?’, and even more than that, the, ‘exactly what does this cop know?’ Every answer to every question that Craig hadn’t asked was there all at once, and they all said that Dermot Canavan was up to his eyes in something dirty, most probably something to do with their dead boy.
But before even a word emerged from Canavan’s mouth Craig had ceased listening, knowing that even if the man said he gave cash to every boys’ school in the country he would still have to let him go. They needed hard evidence to hold him and his brother, and they didn’t have it yet.
What they did have was enough to start looking in a useful direction, and while they were doing that they needed Dermot and Niall Canavan not to disappear.
Craig’s next words stunned his deputy, who up until then had been enjoying the show.
“And girls charities as well, I’m sure. You give to lots of charities, don’t you? Cancer, and charities for the mentally ill as well. All very good causes.”
If his words had shocked Liam, then Craig’s next action tripled the effect. He rose to his feet and extended his hand to the man in front of him.
“All good works, Mister Canavan. Well done. I wish there were more like you.”
He turned swiftly towards the door, refusing to meet his deputy’s eyes.
“D.C.I. Cullen and I will just go and check if your tests are back.”
They were outside in the carpark before he spoke again, having silenced Liam all the way there with a stare. When they were finally far enough away from the dissection room, Craig leaned forward and placed his hands on his knees as if he was going to throw up, only his will power preventing it.
When he straightened up again a moment later, Liam’s assault began.
“I’m not surprised you feel sick! What the hell was that? Shaking hands with that bastard and practically telling him he’s a saint!”
Craig shook his head, sucking in the fresh air. “In a minute.” He pulled out his mobile phone, dialling, and it was answered in one ring by an excited Mike Augustus.
“He’s pacing the room.”
Craig tensed. “Worried?”
“No, just the opposite. He’s looking relieved, almost excited. I’d say he thinks you know nothing.”
“He thinks I just mentioned boys’ charities as part of a list.”
“Yes, I’d say so. He’s grinning all over his face. Des is about to give him his radiation results, is that OK?”
“Perfect. Ge
t Marcie to arrange a taxi home for him, and I’ll come and say goodbye to him once Des has done his thing.”
Craig was just hanging up when a hefty shove from Liam almost knocked him off his feet.
“You crafty bugger! You needed to ask that question to see his reaction, but you wanted him to feel he was still safe. That’s what all that palaver at the end was about.” He shook his head. “You sneaky sod.”
Craig rubbed his arm exaggeratedly. “If that’s what you do for congratulations, I’d hate to see what you do to people you really love.”
“Ach, dry your eyes, you big girl. It was only a wee tap.” The D.C.I. turned to look back at the building. “OK, so tell me what you got from it then.”
Craig allowed himself a small smiled. “The way he reacted says he was involved with the boys in some way, and he thought I knew exactly how. Now he believes he’s safe, so he might make a mistake.”
“OK, so we’re letting him go. Now what? Surveillance?”
“At a safe distance so he doesn’t make them. And meanwhile, we keep working the case.”
Craig started walking back towards the building.
“I want both brothers watched starting now, but covertly, so that means Kyle leads on it, and I need him running two teams in twelve-hour shifts; five to five. Him and Andy and Annette and Aidan. He can pull in resources from Intelligence to cover overnight, I don’t want our lot so tired that they miss something. I want phone taps and cameras in both their homes as well. I’ll get the warrants. Davy sent Ash down while we were interviewing Dermot and he’s already cloned both his mobiles.”
As Liam’s jaw dropped at the information, Craig opened the side door they’d just exited through, shaking his head as the D.C.I. went to follow.
“Call everyone now and get it started, Liam. I’m going to say goodbye to our philanthropist.”
A philanthropist who soon wouldn’t be able to brush his teeth without them watching every stroke.
****
Ligoniel. North Belfast. 1 p.m.
The Running of the Deer Page 25
