The Running of the Deer

by Catriona King

  “I’m going to outline a few things to bring everyone up to date, and I’ll call on people for information as I do so. If I say anything majorly wrong, please correct me, but please leave any questions until the end.” He sprang to his feet suddenly and lifted the board marker, moving it in the air as he continued.

  “On Sunday morning a teenage boy’s body was found in a place called Erb’s Clearing in Killeter Forest, County Tyrone. Eight years ago another boy’s body was found in exactly the same place, and thanks to Doctors Marsham, Winter and Augustus…” He nodded at Mike as their representative. “…We now know that both teenagers were killed in the same way. Both boys suffered multiple fractures to their limbs and torsos from being crushed by a number of smooth stones, and both experienced brain haemorrhages due to skull fractures, although in slightly different places on their skulls.”

  He paused for a sip of coffee before carrying on.

  “Both boys were found to have herbal sedatives in their systems and early alcoholic liver damage, indicating the use of drink and drugs. I’m informed that the quantities of both substances would have been sufficient to produce a mild buzz but not full-blown addiction. That’s backed up by the absence of other addiction markers: nasal damage, injection sites, etcetera. So we’re looking at chronic low-grade drinking and substance abuse here.”

  He saw Aidan about to ask a question and shook his head.

  “At the end, please. OK, continuing with the similarities. Both boys had been malnourished for some time, but not in the period immediately before their deaths, and both had a very ordinary last meal with nothing there to give us any information. That covers our two victims in outline, now let’s get to their crime-scenes. Both bodies were found surrounded by deer heads. In the new case we found those heads, but in the earlier case, although they were written up in the evidence folder, they weren’t in evidence. We can debate how that might have happened later-”

  Liam cut in, ignoring the instruction not to ask questions. “I didn’t hear Des mention the number of heads found first time round, did you, boss?”

  Craig shook his head and carried on.

  “The ten heads found on Sunday surrounded the victim at equal intervals, but despite there possibly being some symbolism in that, there was none of the other detritus of ritual found, of any variety, including devil worship, Pagan, Aztec or Voodoo ritual. Correct?”

  He looked at Ash, whom he noticed was busy gazing at Mary. “Ash?”

  The analyst turned around, confused. “What?” He realised what he’d just been asked pretty quickly, which was just as well. Craig was in no mood for messing about.

  “Yes, no… I mean… I checked all the possible variations on Pagan, Voodoo and other rituals and none of them fit, and there are no documented rituals anywhere that utilise dead deer.” He glanced across at his supervisor. “Davy was checking devil worship.”

  The computer expert had been staring at the ground and, if truth were told, salivating at the thought of his coming craft beer, but he lifted his head just long enough to respond.

  “There’s nothing on devil w…worship or covens in Killeter or the surrounding area nowadays, but I did find an historical reference to Erb’s Clearing possibly being associated with witchcraft in the early sixteen hundreds, around the time of the witch hunts by Matthew Hopkins in England and a few decades before the ones in Massachusetts.”

  Matthew Hopkins was an English witch-hunter whose career flourished during the English Civil War. He was believed to have been responsible for the deaths of three hundred alleged witches.

  “Three local w…women were rumoured to be burned in Tyrone for being witches at that time, but there’s been nothing like that associated with the clearing since. Not even any folklore relating to it for hundreds of years-”

  Ash cut in excitedly. “That’ll be because witchcraft was accepted here for centuries. It’s had a long association with Irish culture, with the myths and legends, and some people professing belief in fairies, leprechauns, ghosts-”

  Mary sat up straight, suddenly viewing the analyst in a new light.

  Davy cut his junior off, rolling his eyes. “Not that stuff again.”

  Liam had to object, no longer arguing for devil worship now, much as that irked him, but about something that ran much deeper in his national consciousness.

  “Don’t you go rolling your eyes at the fairies, boy. Who’s to say they don’t exist? My granny said she saw them, and my mother saw a ghost, and-”

  Craig was torn between letting the conversation run on a topic that he found mildly intriguing or bringing everyone back down to earth. He plumped for the latter and cut his deputy off.

  “The fairies can wait. So, of the ten deer heads that were found on Sunday, one had been freshly killed but the others were considerably older. We don’t know the number of heads found with the twenty-ten victim but there was also a fresh head found there.” He nodded at Mike. “Our scientists estimate that five of the heads are three to four decades old, four others were killed sometime in the last fifteen years, but the last deer was killed around the same time as the boy on Sunday.”

  He turned to Aidan. “Bring us up to date on what the gamekeeper had to say, please.”

  The D.C.I. hastily pushed his gum into his cheek before answering. “OK, so, the keeper, Dan Russell, has worked in the forest for fifty years, and there’ve been dead deer found twice that he remembers. Once in the nineties, when their heads were left on, but their organs and muscles were removed.”

  Davy raised a finger and Craig nodded him to come in. “I spoke to D.I. Anderson like you asked and he said that they broke up a venison smuggling ring in ninety-nine, wh…which might fit with that.”

  “Good. Carry on, Aidan.”

  “Well, the more interesting episode the gamekeeper mentioned was in spring eighty-two, when five deer were found without their heads. Their torsos weren’t touched, only the heads were removed.”

  Craig frowned. Five? It fitted with the earlier age estimate, but why had only five deer been killed then?

  “Only five heads…He told the Canavans, I suppose?”

  “Yes, the boys’ father, Declan, but apparently he didn’t seem that bothered. Mind you, he didn’t own them.”

  “What about the noises, music etcetera? What did the keeper make of that?”

  The D.C.I. thought back to the imperturbable Russell and shrugged. “He dismissed the idea of ghosts or Voodoo. Said he thought it was kids just getting up to whatever they do.”

  Craig was sure it had been a damn sight more serious than kids just messing about, but he was less perturbed about that than the dead deer. If only five deer had been decapitated in eighty-two and two more since twenty-ten to mark their victims’ deaths, then why had the other three deer been killed? Whatever the reasons they knew they’d been killed in the previous fifteen years.

  Aidan hadn’t finished. “He said the noises etcetera had been happening since the late seventies.”

  Craig was taken aback. “Seventies? He was sure?”

  “Seemed like it.”

  Had they been right about the first time the heads had been used being for some other reason than murder? Could the other three deer have been decapitated for that reason as well, and not to mark killings they hadn’t discovered yet?

  It would be preferable to believing the alternative, but Craig already knew it was a forlorn hope.

  Liam voiced the other thought that was running through everyone’s heads.

  “Niall Canavan would only have been a toddler in eighty-two, and Dermot hadn’t even been born. And, at the risk of stating the obvious, if there were only five heads in the seventies, where did the ten now come from?”

  Craig nodded. “Give Des a ring later, Liam. There’s got to be some way of finding out how many heads were found with the victim eight years ago.”

  “And if it wasn’t nine, boss? That means more deer were killed between twenty-ten and now for some reason…” />
  Craig didn’t want to think about the implications right now, so he turned back to the group.

  “OK, let’s move on. After the murder eight years ago, the deer heads disappeared from evidence so we’ve no idea how many were left that time. However, the records do say that one head was new, which suggests that each time a boy was killed a deer was as well. After Sunday’s killing a government facility in the forest received a call, ostensibly from the Ministry of Defence, to remove all the heads from the crime-scene. Davy, any word on who made it?”

  The analyst shook his head. “No-one at the MoD’s claiming it, and I can’t get a reverse trace because of official s…secrets.”

  “OK, frustrating, but I think we can be pretty sure now that whoever told the director of the facility, which incidentally has now been closed down thanks to Kyle,” the D.I. took a bow, “who discovered radioactivity in the soil, but whoever told the facility’s director to collect those deer heads had absolutely nothing to do with the MoD.”

  He gave Aidan a knowing look. “Go back and press Jeannie Underwood about that caller. I think she knows more about them than she told us.”

  “Will do.”

  Kyle cut in before Craig could continue. “Ray Barrett came back to me. He couldn’t find anything about Appside that we don’t already know.”

  “Fine. What about your snout? When do I get to meet him?”

  The spook tried for an innocent look that fooled no-one. “He seems to have gone to ground.”

  Craig gave a sarcastic “Huh” before carrying on. “OK, also, the government facility is built on land leased from the Canavan family in two thousand and nine.”

  Liam raised an eyebrow. “Not long after they inherited from the old man.”

  Craig narrowed his eyes, thinking. OK, so profit may have been Niall’s motivation for leasing, but the proximity to Canavan Senior’s death might mean that the father had previously refused the lease and the boys had just been waiting for him to die to act. It didn’t smack of a loving family.

  “Davy, see if you can find out the exact date of the lease and its proximity to Canavan Senior’s death. Also, whether he’d initially refused permission, and what the relationship was like between him and his sons. Even rumours. Aidan, you ask the gamekeeper as well, please. OK, let’s return to our two victims for a moment. Davy, you’ve been running their prints and images. Anything on their IDs yet?”

  The analyst shook his head. ““I ran their info, the prints found on the heads, and the swabs countrywide and there was nothing. S…So now I’m running them through Prum, ECRIS and SIS 2 as well.”

  Prum was the EU wide mechanism for sharing DNA profiles and other data, ECRIS the European Criminal Records Information System, and SIS 2 the Second Generation Schengen Information System, a database of real-time alerts about individuals of interest to EU law enforcement.

  “There are a few boys on the missing person’s list who might fit, so I’m aging up their photos from when they disappeared to the ages our two victims w…were when they died, but the programme’s slow. There are no prints for any of the missing boys available, more’s the pity. They would be easy to check against.”

  Liam nodded smugly. “That’s why I printed my kids, and had the GP take samples of their blood for me to keep in the fridge. For DNA, just in case.”

  Being a police officer could give you a dark perspective on life.

  Everyone gawped at him as if he was insane, except Kyle who thought that it was a bloody good idea. He even added a suggestion.

  “Have you micro-chipped them?”

  Liam turned to him. “No. Why, can you do that? That’s a brilliant idea! It would be great for locating them if they disappeared.”

  Annette’s astonished, “Are you serious?”, kicked off a debate on human rights that Craig allowed to flow while he got himself a fresh coffee. After a minute of sipping and listening he called the discussion to a halt, reclaimed his marker and tapped the whiteboard hard.

  “OK, thanks for that, Davy. Let me know as soon as you get any IDs. I’ll come back to you in a moment when I’ve covered a few other points.”

  He glanced at Karl Rimmins, who was looking less like a goth nowadays and more like an elegant Edwardian, with his slightly too long jacket that was almost a frock coat, and his tieless, high collared shirt. Craig wondered idly whether it was a woman’s touch that had softened his style as Rhonda was living with him now, but he kept his speculation to himself and moved on, nodding at Mike in acknowledgement as he did.

  “OK. As you all know, our scientists found traces of cocaine and latex around the anus of our newest victim, suggesting that he was carrying a condom full of drugs. Analysis showed that the condom hadn’t passed through his GI tract and there were none visible on X-Ray, so he wasn’t a swallower. It’s likely that there was only the one condom carried anally, which suggests it may have been the boy’s first time as a mule. Analysis of the cocaine trace showed that it was almost pure. So, Karl, what can you tell us about that?”

  The sergeant rose, displaying a pair of trousers so narrow at the ankles that Liam pondered the mechanics of getting them over his feet. It would never have worked with his big hooves.

  “May I?”

  As Craig passed across his marker and watched the words, ‘County Lines’, appear, he tried to recall where he’d heard them before. Then he remembered; at an NCA conference in England five months previously.

  The Drugs sergeant answered the unspoken question.

  “OK, I can hear you all thinking ‘what the heck are County Lines, and how are they relevant here?’ Well, the term County Lines references drug gangs who’ve realised that their city markets, because that’s where drugs are traditionally dealt, big cities, have become saturated with other dealers, so there’s huge competition now for every available customer.”

  He perched on a nearby desk, continuing. “That causes inter-gang fighting and sometimes killing, as we’re currently seeing on the streets of London almost every day. So, what’s the solution? That’s where County Lines come in. By expanding their business out of the cities and into the provinces, or counties, gangs get a whole batch of new customers without the competition from other dealers, and by sending people out to those counties to act as runners, they not only stand to make huge profits, but they have a far lower risk of being nailed by the police.”

  Annette gave a tut of disgust that spread. When it had died down slightly Karl carried on.

  “The NCA estimates that half the communities targeted are in small rural or coastal towns, and in England and Wales they’ve found kids as young as thirteen being groomed as runners and sent out to the counties to work.”

  Liam grunted. “Bastards. Lifting young kids.”

  He was surprised when Karl shook his head. “Not always lifted. Many of these kids go willingly. They want the money and freedom, or they have bad homes that they need to escape.”

  Craig asked a question. “I’m puzzled by the term County Lines. What exactly is the line?”

  Rimmins smirked knowingly. “Everyone asks that. Some people think it refers to the railway lines that take the kids out to the counties, but it doesn’t. It’s all about phone lines.”

  He saw people looking confused and elaborated.

  “OK, so, let’s say the kids, runners go out to the counties trying to recruit new customers to buy their drugs. Drugs with exciting names, like maybe, ‘White Wizard’ or ‘Gold Streak’ or something. They give those new county customers mobile phone numbers to call and make their orders on, and those phone numbers are the County Lines. The key to the whole scheme is that the phones are held back at wherever the drug dealer’s base is, usually in the nearest big city, so even though a rural customer calls that city dealer on that phone number to take the order, the dealer never actually holds the drugs or has physical contact with them. They have total control over what’s being sold out in the counties, but if they ever get raided the police find no drugs.”
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br />   He was rewarded by a row of astonished faces.

  “Anyway, so let’s say the dealer takes an order from the rural or coastal punter who’s called them on the County Line, then he communicates with the local runners out in the counties, who then go to their secret drug stashes, hidden locally in that county, and they make the delivery to the punter. It’s dirty but ingenious and it took the cops in England a while to catch on."

  Craig nodded slowly. “OK… but the runners must top-up their county stashes from somewhere, otherwise they would run out of supplies.”

  “They do. They come to the city at intervals to pick up more drugs.”

  “From the dealer’s place? But that would mean the dealer holding drugs and that’s risky. They could get raided by your team.”

  The Drugs officer shook his head. “No, the runners don’t collect the drugs direct from the dealer, they get them from a location where the dealer stores his city stash. The runners go straight there to top up their supplies before going back out to the counties, and the store locations change regularly, so unless you’re told where to go they’re almost impossible to find.”

  Very clever.

  Craig nodded and motioned him on.

  “OK, so, like with any legitimate business, subscribers will be sent texts offering them special deals and sales, and the whole thing is as lucrative as hell. A County Line can make up to three grand a day, and the runners, the kids out in the sticks, get a cut. Cash to spend on trainers, weed, games, booze, whatever they fancy. It’s teenage paradise.”

  Annette thought of something. “Where do they live when they go out to the country?”

  Karl made a face. “That can be a problem. Sometimes they do a thing called cuckoo-ing, where they find some vulnerable person, drug addicted, elderly, learning disabled etcetera, and just force their way into their house and stay there, like a cuckoo, using it as their base until they’re eventually discovered and evicted. Others rent a place, but that can be a challenge given the age of some of the kids-”