The Property Read online

  THE PROPERTY

  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 © 2018 by Catriona King

  Photography: Yupa Watchanakit

  Artwork: Jonathan Temples: [email protected]

  Editors: Andrew Angel and Maureen Vincent-Northam

  Formatting: Rebecca Emin

  All rights reserved.

  Hamilton-Crean Publishing Ltd. 2018

  Discover us online: www.hamiltoncreanpublishing.com

  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

  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 Property’ is book nineteen 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’ is number nineteen in the Craig Crime Series and the twentieth Craig Crime novel will be released in 2019. The audiobook of the first Craig Crime novel, A Limited Justice, will be released in the winter of 2018.

  The author’s first fantasy/ mythology novella, Aurora, 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

  October 2018

  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

  Howard Street. Belfast City Centre. Monday, 13thAugust 2018. 10 a.m.

  The dust was choking; drying every mouth, throat and eye despite the guards in place to mitigate its impact. It cloaked each face and hand and protective jacket in a fine, grey-white film, transforming the demolition site into a landscape of ghosts. Not alone but disconnected from the seemingly incongruous technicoloured world beyond them, and yet without it the scene would have looked even more bizarre.

  The spectres moved slowly amidst the ruins of what had been one of Belfast’s most visible landmarks; hammers, drills and clipboards in every hand. Their mouths locked open in permanent shouts yet each one inaudible, drowned out by the crashing, grinding cacophony from the trucks and diggers at their backs.

  It was frustrating, so frustrating that one man wielding a clipboard, a man wearing a hard hat emblazoned with the title ‘Foreman’ in bold black letters inches high, raised his thickly gloved hand and waved it impatiently, and then with open irritation at his workers to stop. Yelling at them to halt whatever they were doing, until gradually all activity ceased and the noises faded, leaving only one other mouth but his own still open, in a shout.

  Still Dean Kelly strained to hear his subordinate’s words, realising suddenly that the traffic noise from the city street alongside them had been almost as loud as their own. He made his way towards his yelling junior, picking carefully through the brick and plasterboard detritus of the dying building until he was close, and then readied himself to tell Rory Fenton to, “knock it off, for God’s sake”, because he needed some peace to hear himself think.

  The words died on the foreman’s tongue as the youth spontaneously stopped shouting and pointed at something on the ground nearby, something that made Dean Kelly’s heart slow and drop. It was the thing that all construction foremen dreaded, the thing that could bring their work to a halt for months and sometimes years; the remains of a human being.

  Kelly’s immediate thought was about the impact on his project costs, knowing that his neck would be on the line, but it was accompanied by a second consideration that made him shake with fear at how his own future might be about to change.

  A too-late third concern, and this time coming noisily from the whole group once their respectably reared consciences had pricked them, was to wonder just who the dead person lying at their feet might have been.

  ****

  The Coordinated Crime Unit (The C.C.U.) Pilot Street, Belfast Docklands. The Murder Squad. 10.30 a.m.

  “Have you been in there this morning?”

  D.C.I. Liam Cullen’s question was accompanied by his enormous thumb jerking towards Marc Craig’s office, and the response of Craig’s PA, Nicky Morris, was to shake her head and give a heavy sigh.

  “He walked straight past me without even asking for a coffee.”

  The likely horror of what must have transpired to put the caffeine-addicted chief superintendent off his espresso was written on her slim face and instantly threw Liam into rescuer mode.

  “I’m going in”, was announced like some costumed superhero preparing to dive into a volcano to save the world, and the words made every team member in the open-plan squad-room look up in anticipation of the spectacle that was likely to ensue. Craig’s moods had been so dark of late that the possibility of Liam being hurled instantly from the office at the end of a stream of invective wasn’t entirely left of field.

  Nonetheless the D.C.I. took his life in his hands and strode towards the door, only to have his big entrance interrupted by Nicky thrusting a piece of paper into his hand.

  “This came in a minute ago, but I haven’t told him yet.” She gazed up at him encouragingly. “It could give you something to talk about.”

  Liam scanned the paper, nodded and then returned to his heroic advance. He raised a hand to knock the half-glass door in front of him and then, in a moment of ‘what the hell’ bravado, dispensed with the courtesy and gripped the handle, throwing it open in a manner that should at the very least have warranted a soaring choir.

  Instead it was accompanied by a disembodied, “Doesn’t anyone ever knock
in this place?” followed by a resigned sigh that could be heard all over the squad-room and, “Well, come on in then. And shut the bloody door.”

  As Liam disappeared into the caldera, every member of the team outside strained forward in their seat, although if they were hoping to overhear the conversation all but Nicky were too far away. She enhanced her proximity further by inching forward stealthily on her wheelie chair, and after a frustrating minute of listening but not hearing, Annette Eakin, the team’s longest standing detective inspector, gave up all show of working and moved across to join her, perching on the PA’s desk. They’d suffered months of Craig’s moods and if there was a hope of finding out what was causing them then she wanted to be amongst the first to know.

  The thing was, if Craig had been a ‘difficult bastard’ boss then they wouldn’t even have noticed his moodiness because it would have been the norm, but he wasn’t, a bastard that was; apart from a tendency towards secrecy and a rip-roaring temper that he usually managed to keep under control, he was actually pretty relaxed and kind. But in the previous five months he’d lurched between being sad and pale-grey moody in the spring because of something they all knew about, his break-up with his long term partner Katy, a medical consultant at the nearby St Mary’s Hospital Trust, his moodiness presumably tempered then by hope of a reunion, to the confused, torn and ricocheting-off-the walls whack-job that they’d suffered in the summer for several weeks. But since the start of August he’d been an even more miserable basket case, and nobody, not even his best friend, the country’s lead pathologist John Winter, seemed to have a clue why.

  If they’d known that Katy was four months pregnant and currently refusing to come back to Craig it would have explained a great deal, but if they’d also known that the Chief Constable had offered him the lead in Serious and Organised Crime with only a fortnight to decide, then it would have explained even more. Craig liked murder investigations, he liked their puzzles and finite end points, and SOC’s remit was enormous, with oversight of everything from drugs and human trafficking, child exploitation to cyber-crime. So, flattered though he was by the offer, with the way things were in his life right now he was already eighty percent sure that he was going to turn it down.

  But Annette didn’t know any of that and without warning she voiced her last thought aloud, as if she’d already been narrating the ones running through her head.

  “And Doctor Winter doesn’t know either!”

  Nicky glanced up from her vigilant glaring at the door, the act of effective eavesdropping requiring in her experience not only dedicated listening but the focus of every other sense.

  “What?”

  The D.I. continued with more authority now that she had an audience.

  “Doctor Winter doesn’t know what’s bothering the chief either. Mike told me he’s as puzzled as we are.”

  Mike Augustus, her partner and the father of her two-year-old daughter, was John Winter’s deputy, and both pathologists worked at Northern Ireland’s Science Labs.

  Nicky refocused her glare on the door before commenting. “Maybe he’s just telling Mike that. Doctor Winter’s the chief’s best friend, so he wouldn’t give away his secrets.”

  Annette shook her head, finding herself now staring at the office door just as fiercely as the PA.

  “He couldn’t keep things to himself that well. He and Mike work together every day.”

  “So what?” Nicky gestured at the door. “We all work together every day and none of us have a flipping clue!”

  It was unlikely that they were about to get one either, for two reasons. One, they were talking too loudly to hear anything, and two, Craig was playing his cards close to his chest, far too close to casually display them at work. Continuing the poker metaphor, he motioned his deputy to take the chair opposite, warily, as if they were rival gamblers; all that was missing was the whiskey and a deck of cards.

  The two men stared at each other in silence for a moment, Liam actually seeing what was in front of him, but Craig’s blank gaze saying that he was a million miles away. After a moment’s stand-off, Liam not having the patience of even a minor saint, he slid the note that Nicky had just handed him across the desk to his boss.

  Craig shifted his focus from wherever it had been to the paper.

  “And this is?”

  “Read it and you’ll see.”

  The almost-order was born of the D.C.I.’s genuine desire to shake his boss out of his hostile lethargy, but also a product of him getting pissed off at his moods. This last time Craig had had a strop this bad was when he’d had to shoot an elderly man, a serial killer mind you, in the head four years before, something which if he’d had to do it himself wouldn’t even have put him off his lunch.

  Even so, Liam had steered his tone away from the ‘catch a grip of yourself, man’ narkiness that he was really feeling and towards a neutral, professional one that implied the piece of paper might bear the makings of a fascinating case. He might not be the subtlest of men but he wasn’t completely devoid of tricks.

  Craig raised an eyebrow, sensing the narkiness, but lifted the slip of paper anyway. Since Liam had had the good sense not to vocalise his impatience with him then it would be churlish to reward the effort in any other way.

  After a few seconds of reading Craig placed the note on one side.

  “Nicky gave this to you?”

  The D.C.I. nodded.

  “And she got the phone-call when?”

  “A minute ago, she said.” He paused and corrected himself. “Well, probably two now.”

  “From?”

  Liam shrugged. “Haven’t the foggiest.” When he fell silent with his mouth still open Craig could hear his unvoiced, “Why don’t you bloody ask her yourself?”

  So he did. He rose to his feet so swiftly that Liam was half-expecting a blow. Instead the door was flung outwards so hard that there was a clatter and a yelp, and Craig turned just in time to see his PA sliding off her chair. Without commenting on her eavesdropping he reached out a hand to help her up, shooting Annette a pointed look that said he knew that she’d been listening as well.

  Once Nicky was back in her seat, red-faced now and averting her eyes, Craig asked the questions that he’d come out to ask.

  “This note. It’s from a call you received a minute or so ago, correct?”

  The PA nodded, not yet trusting herself to speak.

  “From whom?”

  Liam sucked in air at the elegant grammar and met Annette’s pointed gaze with widening eyes. It wasn’t that Craig wasn’t usually well spoken, because he was, but the vernacular “who?” would normally have done him in the circumstances they were in. “Whom” pointed to a man keeping an overly tight grip on things, but also that it was probably better for all of them that that grip continued until they found out what was biting him and prepared contingencies for when he finally blew.

  While Liam and Annette were having their wordless conversation, Nicky found her voice.

  “Sergeant Harris.”

  Jack Harris was the custody sergeant at High Street Station, one mile away from the C.C.U. It was a favoured location for holding interviews, and Craig’s third favourite spot for a cup of coffee and a snack.

  “And this is all he said? ‘A body’s been found in the city centre’?”

  The secretary nodded. “And he asked if you could drop down.”

  “To the body site or the station?”

  The query threw the PA for a moment. She would usually have asked that question of Jack herself, and the fact that she hadn’t said that Craig’s mood was throwing more than himself off his game. Normally she would have told him as much, they had that sort of relationship, but she decided that today an apology carried less risk of getting her head handed to her on a plate.

  “Sorry, sir, I didn’t ask him.”

  The only response was, “Mmm…”, and then Craig headed for the exit doors and the lift. By the time Liam had caught up he was inside it pressing the but
ton for the basement garage, and the deputy only just managed to jump in before he was sandwiched by the closing door.

  “Where are we going?”

  Craig answered gazing straight ahead. “I’m going to High Street. I don’t know where you’re going.”

  Thankfully Liam had the hide of a rhinoceros and rarely took offence.

  “I’m going to High Street as well then. You’re not safe to be let out on your own at the moment.”

  Craig turned his head slowly to look at him and then turned it towards the front again.

  “I’ll ignore that.”

  The D.C.I. folded his arms cheerfully. “Fair enough. I just thought that you should know.”

  As they exited the lift and walked towards the car, Craig spoke again.

  “Is that what everyone thinks? That I’m not safe to be let out on my own?”

  Liam waited until his boss had opened the car doors and he was safely ensconced in the passenger seat before responding; not putting it past Craig to have driven away alone if he hadn’t liked his reply.

  “Pretty much. It varies according who it is. So, like, Annette’s worried about you, her being motherly like, but Aidan and Andy just think you’re having a strop. Nicky wants to hit you or hug you, and she can’t make her mind which. The Doc-”

  Craig raised a hand to halt him; when Liam said “the Doc” he always meant John Winter, and his best friend’s opinion was something that he could find out for himself.

  “Never mind about John, what do you think?”

  Liam shrugged. “Like I said. You’re not safe to be let out in your own. Mainly because you might shoot someone if they piss you off enough.”

  The remark gave Craig his first laugh of the week. “You could be the first, you know.”