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  THE CABAL

  CATRIONA KING

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are used fictitiously and any resemblance to persons living or dead, business establishments, events, locations or areas, is entirely coincidental.

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission of the author, except for brief quotations and segments used for promotion or in reviews.

  Copyright © 2017 by Catriona King

  Photography: Verve

  Artwork: Jonathan Temples: [email protected]

  Editors: Andrew Angel and Maureen Vincent-Northam

  Formatting: Rebecca Emin

  All rights reserved.

  Hamilton-Crean Publishing Ltd. 2017

  For My Mother

  About the Author

  Catriona King is a medical doctor and trained as a police Forensic Medical Examiner in London, where she worked for some years. She returned to live in Belfast in 2006.

  She has written since childhood and has been published in many formats: non-fiction, journalistic and fiction.

  ‘The Cabal’ is book sixteen in The Craig Crime Series.

  Each book can also be read as a standalone.

  The Craig Crime Series So Far

  A Limited Justice

  The Grass Tattoo

  The Visitor

  The Waiting Room

  The Broken Shore

  The Slowest Cut

  The Coercion Key

  The Careless Word

  The History Suite

  The Sixth Estate

  The Sect

  The Keeper

  The Talion Code

  The Tribes

  The Pact

  The Cabal

  The seventeenth Craig Crime novel will be released in 2018

  The author’s fantasy/ mythology novella, Aurora, was released in August 2017.

  She has also written a science fiction novel set in New York City, entitled The Carbon Trail.

  Acknowledgements

  My thanks to Northern Ireland and its people for providing the inspiration for my books.

  My thanks also to: Andrew Angel and Maureen Vincent-Northam as my editors, Jonathan Temples for his cover design and Rebecca Emin for formatting this work.

  I would also like to thank all the police officers I have ever worked with, for their professionalism, wit and compassion.

  Catriona King

  November 2017

  Discover more about the author’s work at: www.catrionakingbooks.com

  To engage with the author about her books, email: [email protected]

  The author can also be found on Facebook and Twitter: @CatrionaKing1

  CONTENTS

  About the Author

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Core Characters in the Craig Crime Novels

  Key Background Locations

  Chapter One

  Monday, 27th June 2016. 7 a.m.

  If the opening of one eye was painful then the opening of two was agony as Marc Craig’s dry, sealed lids ripped apart and he struggled to make sense of his world. The exercise was futile, the sterile hospital room so ubiquitous that he could have been anywhere, but nowhere would make sense unless he first accepted that he’d been injured and was able to recall how and when.

  His long minutes of confusion seemed over finally when the room’s half-glass door opened inwards, and a starched nurse entered with the quietness typical of her work. Soon he would find out which Northern Irish hospital he was in, and then he would claim his clothes, phone for a taxi and head straight for home.

  As he croaked out “Where am I?” in a parched voice, the detective was already trying and failing to leave his bed.

  A soft reply of “Dresden” was all it took to knock him back against his pillows again.

  ****

  Two Weeks Earlier.

  Docklands Coordinated Crime Unit, Belfast. Monday, 13th June. 11 a.m.

  “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”

  D.C.I. Liam Cullen’s pale eyes widened as he read from the wooden plaque on PA Nicky Morris’ desk, his surprise as stark as if he’d just seen the Chief Constable flying past the squad-room’s tenth-floor window on the back of a unicorn. When his shock had subsided sufficiently to allow further speech, the few members of the murder squad who were present knew that they were in for a treat.

  “Who writes this bollocks? A single man with dosh is in want of a trip to Vegas with his six best mates and several crates of beer, not a wife!” He waved a long arm expansively around the floor, almost clouting a passing Andy Angel on the way. “Everyone agree?” He didn’t wait for an answer, continuing his diatribe under the PA’s narrowing eyes. “And anyway, isn’t all that marrying for money stuff anti-wotsit?”

  Andy obliged with a translation, completely missing Nicky’s ire turning his way.

  “Anti-feminist?”

  Liam nodded enthusiastically. “Aye. That. And seeing as you lot can earn more than us nowadays we should be marrying you for your dosh.” He turned the knickknack over, searching for its origin. “Who is this Jane Austen bird anyway?”

  It was too much for D.I. Annette Eakin on several counts. One, she wasn’t long back from maternity leave after the birth of her second daughter and she was missing her baby, Carina, like hell, and two, she was torn between taking her other half, pathologist Mike Augustus, up on his suggestion that as he earned enough to pay the bills she should stay at home for a year if it made her happier, instead of forging higher in her career, so the last thing she’d needed to hear said anywhere in her earshot was ‘anti-feminist’.

  The third thing annoying her was the idea that a big culchie like Liam thought he could diss a genius like Jane Austen and get away with it; it offended her literary and every other sense. She was just about to let rip and say so when the ripping was done for her by Marc Craig entering the open-plan office, crossing the floor stealthily to where his deputy was holding court, and snatching the ornament that Liam was brandishing out of his hand and then smacking him with it, not so gently, right across the back of his head.

  Liam’s objection was predictably noisy. “OW! Who did that?” His one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn was accompanied by both fists curling. They swiftly uncurled when he saw his boss.

  “Oh, it’s you, boss. What’d you hit me for?” One of the uncurled fists rubbed his embryonic bald spot for emphasis.

  Craig handed the knickknack back to Nicky and then leant against her desk.

  “Would you just like the immediate cause, or a list of all your transgressions in the past year?”

  It was said in a tone so dry that no-one present could tell if he was joking but it spurred Davy Walsh, the team’s lead analyst, to start typing a list of everything he thought Liam might have done, just in case. When he got to the tenth point he gave up and sat back to watch the show.

  Liam’s mouth was still opening and shutting like a puppet’s when Craig beckoned him into his small corner office.

  “Shut the door, Liam. Coffee?”

  The D.C.I. was about to refuse in mock offence but his ever-present t
hirst won out.

  “Aye, and one of those biscuits I can see sticking out behind the mugs. Just for giving me such a whack.”

  Craig obliged then took a seat with his back to the best view in the building, leaving Liam free to watch the boats meandering down the Lagan on the fine summer’s day. After a moment’s silent sipping the Head of the Murder Squad gave the reason his deputy had been invited in.

  “We’ve been asked to consult.”

  Liam lurched forward in his chair, suddenly enthused. It had been a boring few weeks for the team, all apart from their sergeant, Jake McClean, who’d just returned from a gruelling two months’ rehab dealing with his steroid addiction and its cause, his attempted murder by his now incarcerated other half, Aaron Foster, recently sent to Maghaberry Prison for seven years.

  Everyone else had either just been doing paperwork, giving evidence in court, or, in the case of Annette and Ash Rahman, their junior analyst, had been away. In Ash’s case that had meant New York, for training as part of a CIA task force set up to look at the vulnerability of space satellites to hacks.

  Added to that all the thugs, drunks and domestic abusers in Belfast seemed to have decided to take a holiday, so there hadn’t been a juicy murder in weeks; juicy was added shame-facedly for decency’s sake, even inside the D.C.I.’s head. All of that explained Liam’s sudden forward propulsion, so fast and unexpected that it made Craig push back his chair.

  “Calm down, Liam. It’s not a murder.”

  If someone had been recording them, Liam’s tut of disgust would have been a tabloid journalist’s dream, his follow-up whine even more so.

  “Ach, you’re kidding me? So you mean no-one’s been topped?”

  Craig stifled a laugh. “Sorry, but no.” He was just thinking how dark police humour was when he remembered some of the things his girlfriend Katy, a hospital physician, had told him doctors said. He pushed the police into second place and added. “It looks like a kidnapping.”

  Liam raised a sandy eyebrow. “Kidnapping’s not our thing.”

  “It is when the Chief Constable’s the one doing the asking. Anyway, it could have been worse; until yesterday it was just a missing person’s case.”

  He glanced at his watch and then waved towards the door.

  “Gather the troops and I’ll brief in ten minutes.” As he spoke he slid his mobile phone from his pocket. “I have a call to make first.”

  Strictly speaking he didn’t, have to make it that was. But he wanted to, and as Liam went to close the door behind him the softening of Craig’s tone told him exactly who he’d just dialled.

  ****

  Belfast City Centre.

  The once groomed woman winced with pain as her wrists and ankles burned from their bindings, the chafing from days of restriction biting into the raw, torn skin below with every twitch. She would have shouted out to have them loosened except that she’d tried that before many times, until finally she’d given up calling, crying and begging the day before, each utterance falling on the increasingly deaf ears and growing fierceness of her captors, so fierce that she was terrified her next plea might be her last.

  She slid down the wall of the empty space she was being held in, thankful that at least the room was warm; in every kidnap movie she’d seen there had been sodden floors, rubbish and rats to add to the victim’s ordeal. She’d been spared that, but she wasn’t being spared the anguish of not knowing who’d taken her, constantly worn hoods guaranteeing her captors’ anonymity, or at whose behest she’d been dragged from her office God only knew how many days before.

  But she could tell that she was in a city, and probably in its centre from the traffic noise and differing languages of passers-by. Her two guards’ accents said that they weren’t locals either, but her rudimentary knowledge of geography couldn’t pinpoint them closer than coming from Europe somewhere.

  She sighed, acknowledging that she should be glad they were hiding their faces; if she couldn’t identify them to the police perhaps it implied that she had some chance of a future life. She disagreed with herself suddenly and as she did her heart sank in her chest. Why was she wasting her time hoping? Her jailers would never let her go, and she knew exactly why.

  ****

  The C.C.U.

  “Right. Settle down everyone. We have a case.”

  Craig allowed a moment for the usual mock-disgruntled murmuring and a sneered-at cheer of excitement from Aidan Hughes, the Vice Squad D.C.I. who had joined them temporarily on a terrorism case three months before and was now a permanent member of the squad. Hughes was still new enough to display some enthusiasm for work, a behaviour that Liam promptly rewarded by knocking his elbow off his desk.

  “OK. As Liam has no doubt told you this isn’t a murder case-”

  “Yet.”

  “Thank you for that, Liam. I’ll be sure to tell the victim’s family how you wished her dead.”

  “Ach, I didn’t mean-”

  “And I was cracking a joke. Remember those?” Craig motioned to his PA. “OK. Nicky, show us the first slide, please.”

  The secretary tapped her computer and the image of a glamorous middle-aged brunette appeared on the LED screen beside her desk.

  “This is Mrs Veronica Lewis. Fifty-one, divorced and-”

  Aidan Hughes cut in. “A madam.”

  Craig’s eyes widened. “What?” He shuffled through some pages that no-one had noticed in his hands. “There’s nothing about that here.” And why the hell was the C.C. putting them on a Vice case?

  “That’s because she’s very special.” Hughes gestured towards the screen, rising. “May I?”

  “Fire ahead.”

  When he was beside the image he restarted. “OK. Veronica Lewis. Her age and marital status you already know, but her stated occupation…”

  He paused, waiting for Craig to read out what he had.

  “Is as an occasional consultant in beauty and fashion at Marches department store.”

  Nicky nodded like a woman who knew her beauty products, as that day’s deep purple lipstick and matching nail polish attested to.

  “That’s the big place in High Street.”

  Craig didn’t want a debate on the relative merits of Belfast’s shops so he moved swiftly on.

  “OK, Aidan, you’re clearly saying that’s not her real job.”

  Hughes nodded his blond head. “Correct. It’s a front for her more lucrative business. Mrs Lewis runs a high-class escort agency, and I’m talking serious money here. Some of her girls charge a thousand quid a night, and they get it as well.”

  Everybody’s eyebrows shot up at the figure so Craig asked what they were all thinking.

  “Who in Northern Ireland can afford that kind of cash?”

  Hughes was about to answer when the squad’s newest inspector, seconded Intelligence Officer Kyle Spence, who until then had been displaying his usual brand of jaded boredom, lounging back in his chair with both feet propped up on his desk, thudded them to the floor as interest enlivened his angular face.

  “I’ll tell you who. Powerful men with access to considerable money.”

  Craig turned towards his old university flatmate. “Business men?”

  “And the rest. Diplomats, politicians, high-level criminals, maybe even some spies-”

  He was cut short by Liam scoffing. “You see spies around every corner!”

  “Only because they’re usually there.”

  Craig cut the spat short and waved Aidan Hughes on again with a question. “Did you ever arrest Lewis when you were in Vice, Aidan?”

  “Nope, she was far too slippery. We could never get anything concrete on her, just rumours here and there. There was a sighting of her once on a raid apparently, but she skipped through a side door.”

  “Where was that?”

  “A house in Bangor. Ruthie Brompton’s place; she’s another local Madam, although not in Lewis’ league. We arrested Brompton and got a fair haul of directors, bank managers and middle-grade
execs, but no punters above that level and not a single girl. They all ran.”

  “Back to wherever really rich men go to get their rocks off.”

  Annette gave a loud tut. “Thank you for that vivid description, Liam. Remind me to get you to write my Christmas cards.”

  Craig sighed. It was going to be a challenging case.

  “Annette’s right. Reign in the rhetoric, Liam, and that’s an order. And while I’m on the subject, I don’t want to hear the words: hooker, prostitute or even worse used during this investigation. Everyone’s a sex-worker from now on. OK, carry on, Aidan.”

  The D.C.I. perched on Nicky’s desk, making her wonder, and not for the first time, how much it would cost her to build a barbed wire fence.

  “OK, so all we had on Veronica Lewis was that she occasionally turned up at Marches to do private beauty makeovers. We were pretty sure it was a front for recruiting new girls so we sent a W.P.C. in under cover, but all she ended up with was a blow dry and a fake tan.”

  Annette smiled. “I’ll volunteer for that job, sir.”

  “I was thinking of sending Liam.”

  Hughes continued through the laughter, gesturing at the photograph again.

  “Last time I saw Veronica she was blonde. She’d been a red-head at some point as well. Sometimes with short hair, others with long.”

  Nicky interjected. “Maybe she has a selection of wigs.”

  The Vice D.C.I. nodded. “That’s what we thought. There’s a file on her downstairs so I’ll dig it out, but I know she’s not from around here. Dublin possibly, but it could have been elsewhere down south. The W.P.C. said her accent was neutral southern and she was nicely spoken as well. Anyway, we were sure Lewis had a business base somewhere-”