The Depths Read online

  THE DEPTHS

  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 © 2019 by Catriona King

  Photography: Images by polkadot_photo (Businessman), Dean Fikar (Glacier), JillWellington (Girl)

  Artwork: Jonathan Temples: [email protected]

  Editors: Andrew Angel and Maureen Vincent-Northam

  Formatting: Rebecca Emin

  All rights reserved.

  Hamilton-Crean Publishing Ltd. 2019

  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

  Core Characters in the Craig Crime Novels

  Key Background Locations

  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 Depths’ is book twenty-one 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 Killing Year

  The Running of The Deer

  The Property

  Crossing The Line

  The Depths

  ‘The Depths’ is the twenty-first book in the series. The twenty-second will be released later in 2019. The audiobook of the first Craig Crime novel, A Limited Justice, is now available on Amazon ACX.

  Aurora, the author’s first Irish fantasy/mythology novella was released in August 2017.

  She has also released 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

  June 2019

  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

  Chapter One

  The West Mountain Quarry. Thirty miles Outside Omagh, County Tyrone. Northern Ireland.

  Tuesday5thFebruary 2019. 2 p.m.

  “BREAK THE ICE, STUPID!”

  Fourteen-year-old Ricky Murphy dragged his attention away from his tangled fishing rod towards the origin of the shout, to see his two friends since nursery standing on the margin of the quarry’s excavated cliff two hundred feet above him. One of them on the free end of a narrow granite prominence edging precariously out over the frozen pool where they’d been messing about for an hour, their favourite spot for a day’s truanting because of the lack of nosey passers-by likely to snitch to their parents; and the other one, the smallest of the group, almost a year younger but already with the strut of a teenager, more sensibly bestriding the springboard’s secure attachment to the cliff’s face, both hands planted solidly on his hips the better to project his yell.

  The fisherman’s turn brought with it swift anxiety, the fear of his taller, heavier friend launching himself without warning from nature’s diving board, goaded on by the smaller, shouting second. Placing his thick arms together with hands pointed as he crashed through the ice into the freezing water below, perhaps never to re-emerge. Confusion joined Murphy’s anxiety as he puzzled why the scene was playing out at all, knowing how out of character such behaviour was for both his mates, but he understood a few seconds later when the shouted instruction was repeated and he realised that the words had only ever been meant for him.

  “BREAK THE ICE, RICKY! IT LOOKS THIN WHERE YOU ARE.”

  Paul Rontgen picked his way down to where the fisherman was hunkering on the rocky shore below, his voice quietening as he approached.

  “That way we can see if it’s worth dropping the lines.”

  A moment later they were a chuckling group of three as Ricky regaled them with his story.

  “I thought you were telling Shamie to jump!”

  The slim-framed Rontgen glanced up at the shadow-inducing bulk of Shamus Wright, the erstwhile high diver, and snorted, “Not even his big head could crack ice that hard.” He gestured to the others, clearly the boss of the group despite his size and youth. “One of you use a rock to break it... there. You can see the weeds through it so it can’t be that thick.”

  It wasn’t, and minutes later six trainer-clad feet were dangling over a small outcrop, fishing lines strung from the borrowed rods in their hands and flasks of hot chocolate filched from home by their sides as they sat contentedly ice-fishing, or as close an approximation as they were ever going to achieve in Ireland anyway.

  Nature clearly being aware of their hierarchy it didn’t take long for Rontgen to get a nibble, and after a cursory attempt to reel it in by himself he enlisted the help of the other two. Even so, it was still a challenge; three adolescents braced against a block of half-hewn stone abandoned at the close of the quarry four years before, biceps and quads tensed to hardness as their not-quite-grown-man hands gripped and slipped up and down the rod.

  “It’s bloody enormous this fish!”

  “Looks like we’ve got our own Loch Ness monster, lads!”

  Ricky squeezed out a focusing, “Shut up and pull” which was rewarded by the surrounding, already splintering ice fracturing further, and the surface of the freezing black water below breaking abruptly to reveal the ghost of a pale, almost oval shape. A further united tug and more of their catch appeared above the murky surface; a bloated, blue-white outline that distorted though it was resembled something familiar; a human face.

  It was followed immediately by something larger and heavier and unmistakably clothed, the extremity of the first tranche of material revealing a degraded stump that had once been a hand. The next pull, using strength generated by bravado, fascination, and fear now, was strong enough to display a man’s torso and legs, with whatever feet there were still remaining left hidden in the pool.

  One by one the teenagers’ clenched muscles shuddered, weakened and failed, at first just halting their efforts and then making each hand release the rod in turn as its owner waited for the others to state the obvious; that their afternoon’s illicit fishing had just come to the worst
unwelcome end.

  ****

  The Atlantic Way Merchant Bank. Dublin Docklands.

  Róisín Casey closed down the cryptocurrency site that she’d been accessing on her office computer, completely against company regulations but so well firewalled that no-one at the bank could possibly suspect, and picked up her large, expensively unwieldy handbag, setting it on her desk with the same reverence that a museum curator might attach to placing an exhibit on a plinth. But then she honestly believed that the item deserved such treatment. After all, it was a Chanel, and its kilogram of calfskin and metal had cost her the equivalent of one of her junior staff’s monthly wage.

  As the slim brunette drew an elegant finger over the bag’s smooth beige leather she mused about how little she had earned when she’d first started out at the bank; nothing close to even the cost of her purse never mind her bag. Now she was its first female Vice President, she lived in an apartment on the capital’s prosperous south riverside, and she had so much money that she hardly knew what to do with it.

  Which didn’t stop her wanting more of course. To her, wealthy people who said that they had enough money were beyond the pale. Scarcely credible and traitors to her adopted class. She was a real capitalist; always on the lookout for the next big thing.

  Money was more to her than mere numbers on a page, it was her religion, and like all zealots anything was justifiable in the name of her God. Little did she know that belief would be tested very soon.

  ****

  The West Mountain Quarry. 5 p.m.

  “What the hell are we doing here, John? It’s freezing, and I’ve a lot to get on with back at the office.”

  Pathologist John Winter didn’t even glance up at his interrogator, well used to police officers grumbling when he summoned them to cold, inconvenient places, as if everyone should meet their maker in a nice centrally-heated bedroom, or at the very worst a slightly colder integral garage.

  The idea became even more absurd if you factored in that any death could be a murder. Killers weren’t known for their tendency to plan far enough ahead to choose a nice venue unless they were hit men, or for any consideration for the people who might come after and preferred to be comfortable as they did their jobs.

  The medic’s lack of response and the silent disdain that accompanied it left D.C.S. Marc Craig with two choices: ask his question again, or ask a different, more useful one.

  As a prequel to the second he hunkered down on the rocky pedestal on which he’d been standing, grateful at least for its man-made smooth surface, being careful not to contaminate the senior pathologist’s field.

  “OK, let me rephrase that. I know we’re down here because you told the local coppers to request some Murder Squad input and we were on the Rota, but can you at least tell me why you think this was a murder rather than an accidental death? And even if it is, why it necessitated calling us down here to bloody Ballygobackwards, when we could easily have viewed the body in the morgue?”

  This time John Winter did lookup. “You mean apart from the fact this man was found dead in a quarry that hasn’t been worked in four years?”

  As Craig didn’t believe the question deserved quite the amount of sarcasm and pride with which it had been asked, he came back just as snappily.

  “I’ll need more than that! Like something that tells me he didn’t just fall in drunk and drown.”

  The pathologist conceded the point with a shrug, rising to his feet and stripping off his latex gloves as he did.

  “Fair enough.”

  Never a man to cling to pride as a defence he indicated their charge. “What you can’t see, because he’s covered now, is that he has bruising on both shoulders.”

  Craig stood up again and gazed high above them at the quarry’s excavated cliff edge. “Couldn’t those just have happened on his way down?”

  John shook his head. “You’re assuming that he fell from up there. And anyway, no, not the bruises that I’ve just seen.”

  He lifted his bag and began his ascent up a steep stone track hewn years before by quarry workers beckoning the detective to follow, and they eventually reached its pinnacle where Craig’s deputy, D.C.I. Liam Cullen, was busily running on the spot for warmth and wishing that he’d bought a winter coat like his wife had nagged him to months before. As they reached him John Winter restarted his report.

  “OK, so it looks like our man’s been in the water for months, but insects will give me a more accurate dating. We’re very lucky there’s even that much left of him. If it had been a real lake the fish would have devoured his flesh after-”

  Craig interrupted him. “So because the pool was created by rainwater filling the quarry pit there are fewer fish?”

  “None at all would be my guess, not unless someone put them there. The kids that found him...” He paused to point to a liveried patrol car parked a short distance away, where the three erstwhile happily fishing teenagers were sitting huddled and white-faced in the back, “...would have been waiting forever to catch anything. That’s what they told the local cops when they arrived, that they came here to fish, although my guess is they just fancied a day off school.”

  “I’ll ask them later.” Craig brought him back to the point. “OK, so if there are no fish what took his fingers off?”

  “Maceration, but perhaps insects as well. We don’t know what sorts are in there yet. There seems to be a lot of vegetation in the water, some of which was probably on the rocks already and grew, but some could have been blown in on the wind and brought insects along with it. And there might be small animals around here, rodents. They’ll always have a nibble. But the flesh on his hands would have dropped off eventually anyway because of the water. Maceration, like I said.” He held up a hand. “A few days’ pruning in the bath would loosen mine, and after that it’s just a matter of time before it all sloughs off.”

  Craig shuddered. “Never ever say slough to me again, John. It’s a revolting word.”

  Liam was also shuddering, but not at the thought of a fingerless John. He’d stopping jogging now and was freezing. He was also really irritable because he couldn’t understand why they were having their conversation standing in a biting easterly wind instead of inside a nice warm car!

  To underline the point he led by example, walking across to his Ford, yanking open its doors and jerking a thick thumb inside. A minute later they were all a lot more comfortable and Craig had returned to the case, trying to keep his cynicism out of his voice.

  “OK, so, he’s been down there for months, and you’re basing your view that he was murdered on the fact that you saw bruising on his shoulders?”

  He already knew the medic had to have seen more than that, but he needed to know exactly what.

  John employed his slowest and most tolerant, ‘I’m obviously talking to an idiot today’ tone.

  “Well, first... the bruising was on the front of both shoulders, which is odd as there was nothing on his shins or anterior thighs that I could see. But let’s go with your theory and say he did fall from up here into the water. Try to picture that. He’d have had to pirouette in mid-air in order to have bounced off the cliff wall face-on. Even an Olympic diver couldn’t manage that!”

  He contorted his body in the car’s back seat trying to make it work, then gave up and shook his head.

  “But OK, let’s say some bruising on the front of someone’s shoulders could possibly be explained by a fall.” His sceptical expression said that he was just humouring the detectives now. “This wasn’t just some random bruising that could have been explained by him banging against something, these bruises are on the front of both shoulders over his clavicles with no abrasions in or around them. Most importantly they look like they’re in the shape of hands. Granted, I could only see a couple of finger outlines, but this is an awkward place to examine someone so you’ll have to wait until after the post-mortem for the rest.”

  Liam was feeling warmer and less irritable so he decided that it was time to jo
in the debate. “So? What? Someone gripped him and threw him off the top?”

  It was Craig who answered, shaking his head. “It’s far too uncertain a method if you’re trying to murder someone. What if he’d survived the fall? Plenty have, even from this height. And if the water had been deep enough he could just have hidden beneath the surface until his attacker had left and climbed out.”

  Something occurred to him. “He couldn’t have died of a head injury, John, could he? Banging it on the way down?”

  “Or on the bottom of the quarry if the hole was dry when he’d fallen in, Doc?”

  The pathologist waited until both detectives had nodded eagerly and then said, “No” with a smug smile. “There was no head injury that I could see.” He relented, deciding to be slightly kinder to them. “But it is just possible that there might be a concealed one. and the local rainfall patterns should tell us how dry the hole was likely to have been when he went in. On the other hand, if he died from drowning I should be able to tell you what time of year it happened from the vegetation and insects in his lungs.”

  Liam nodded, gesturing back towards the pit. “There’s a lot of limestone in that rock, so my guess is it sucks in the water like billy-oh.”

  “Meaning?”

  “In summer that watering hole’s probably as dry as a bone.”

  One thing was sure; this victim’s time of death was going to be listed in months not days.

  John picked up his report. “OK... I’m loath to stick my neck out on the cause of death this early, and I’m caveating everything I say now with ‘wait for the PM’, but if I was pushed I’d say that by the look of him he drowned. Was drowned by someone.”