The Talion Code
THE TALION CODE
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 © 2016 by Catriona King
Photography: Smit
Artwork: Jonathan Temples: creative@jonathantemples.co.uk
Editors: Andrew Angel and Maureen Vincent-Northam Formatting: Rebecca Emin
All rights reserved.
Hamilton-Crean Publishing Ltd. 2016
Discover us online: www.hamiltoncreanpublishing.com
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 has worked with the police on many occasions. 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 Talion Code’ is a new Craig Crime Novel being released in April 2016.
The next Craig Crime novel will be released in late 2016.
The Craig Crime Series
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
Acknowledgements
My thanks to Northern Ireland for providing the inspiration for my books.
My thanks also to: Andrew Angel and Maureen Vincent-Northam, my editors; Jonathan Temples for his cover design; and Rebecca Emin for formatting this book.
I would like to thank all of the police officers that I have ever worked with for their professionalism, wit and compassion.
Catriona King
Belfast, April 2016
Discover the author’s books at: www.catrionakingbooks.com
To engage with the author about her books, email: Catriona_books@yahoo.co.uk
The author can be found on Facebook and Twitter: @CatrionaKing1
CONTENTS
Core Characters
Key Locations
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
The Talion Code
Chapter One
Armagh, Northern Ireland. December, 1993.
It was a short drop. Short and hard. From a metal bridge onto a gravelled track; painful but nothing fatal there. A young man could leap up, bones unbroken, hands barely cut; fit to stroll away into the cool winter night. If that had been his intention.
But it wasn’t. So he gazed into the distance; head cocked, eyes wet, full of the reasons that had led him there; and he listened.
It came quickly; the night’s silence ripped apart by noise. Throbbing followed by grinding, building so fast that soon he couldn’t tell which was which; until the grinding grew harsher and the train’s brakes suddenly screamed. Screamed like a thwarted child, a wounded animal, a victim howling hopelessly for help. And then it was over.
The scream was replaced by sobs and gasps and exclamations of pity. All wasted. The young man couldn’t hear. His pain was over and someone else’s was just about to start.
****
Oxford Street, Belfast City Centre. Wednesday December 16th 2015. 11.30 a.m.
“Have you got Mum’s present yet?”
The girl ignored her older brother and kept tapping irritatingly on her mobile, until he reached around from behind and yanked it from her grasp. Her grab was instant but futile, the phone already hovering two feet above her head. He used it as bait, a pied piper leading the way into a glass walled lift, the mobile still dangling above her head until he’d pressed the button for the fifteenth floor. Belfast’s tallest shopping centre, packed with last minute shoppers in search of the perfect Christmas gift.
It was a common enough exchange; happy sibling banter, the prelude to an arm around the shoulders and the offer of a burger lunch. But not today. Today it was the prelude to a trip to the upper mall, to continue the search for the elusive gift. As the cabin’s glass walls revealed views across Belfast, lit by the bright winter sun, the siblings gazed out admiringly and waited for the doors to slide apart.
Nothing could have prepared them for the suddenness of the fall. The lack of signal and absence of sound, as the floors raced by so swiftly that they couldn’t count. And then the halt; the sharp deceleration that rocked the whole centre and shattered their thin teenage bones, leaving nothing of the banter, nothing of their love; just the torn remnants of two young bodies and a shattered pink mobile phone.
****
South Belfast. 12 p.m.
Liam Cullen gazed down the steel cylinders and then at the sweat slicked finger curled around the trigger behind. His gaze was curious, not anxious. Almost detached, as if the shotgun was part of some computer game, instead of pointing six inches from his face. He couldn’t take credit for his coolness, although that wouldn’t stop him in the months to come, because he knew what his assailant didn’t, but would do in ten seconds or less.
Four seconds as it turned out. Four seconds was all it took for Marc Craig to kick out the man’s knee, snatch the shotgun mid- fall, and then administer a short armed punch to his jaw just before he hit the ground. He ratcheted the weapon then swivelled it smoothly to point at the gunman’s bloodied face, which was wearing a look of astonishment at his sudden change in rank. Liam gave an admiring nod.
“Nice jab, boss. Where did you learn that?”
“Karate. I did it for three years at law school.”
“Oooh… multilingual, piano playing and now your hands are lethal weapons.”
Craig gave a small smile. “Yeh, yeh, I’m a real hero. Just cuff him.”
As Liam slipped on the cuffs with unnecessary zeal, Craig recited the man’s rights with a loud yawn.
“You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence...” Blah, blah, blah.
So much so usual. If it seemed to anyone watching that the detectives were bored it was because they were; there was no challenge in taking down a killer as dumb as this bloke.
The yawning continued long after the van had come to ferry their charge to High Street Station and well into their journey back to base. It was Liam who stopped first, smacking his lips as he rummaged through Craig’s Audi’s side pocket for something to eat. It was lunchtime and a man had needs. He broke his silence for a meaningful question.
“Is it just me, or are Belfast’s perps getting thicker?”
Craig nodded; his eyes fixed ahead on a rain sodden Chichester Street. “They are.”
Liam tutted like a teacher whose class had just scored a ‘D’. It morphed into a grin as he pulled a bag of crisps that had seen better days from Craig’s glove compartment. The grin soon faded when he struggled to find a crisp intact.
Craig was still speaking.
“Not that I’m complaining. We could do with some down tim
e. I’ve narrowed the cases Harrison’s likely to come after us on to three…”
Detective Chief Superintendent Terry ‘Teflon’ Harrison was a bastard. To call him anything milder would be unfairly harsh on the scrotes and scum that they’d arrested through the years. Harrison grabbed the glory for any work success, if his subordinates weren’t quick enough to stop him, and any attractive woman with a pulse was subjected to his particular brand of lechery until she either hit him hard or walked. The first Mrs Harrison was divorcing him and, judging by the trail of confused looking women he brought to work functions, he was interviewing for the next. Most of Harrison’s dodgy morality wasn’t any of their business, but the fact he had the murder squad in general and more specifically Craig in his sights most definitely was.
What had started as Harrison using Craig as a talented subordinate to make him look good, had altered, via a series of Harrison’s dirty tricks and Craig’s promotions, to the D.C.S. seeing the detective as someone to get rid of any way he could. That currently translated into scouring the squad’s past convictions for any grounds to appeal, which Craig had now managed to narrow down to three possibilities.
“…And I’ve heard a rumble about one in particular. I want the team going through all three with a microscope over the next few days. I don’t want any surprises when he finally comes after-.”
He cut off abruptly and hit the brakes, throwing the contents of Liam’s crumb filled bag all over his trousers and the floor.
“What the hell-?”
Craig didn’t answer. He was already out of the car and running down the street. A moment later Liam joined him, slaloming his way through the cars whose brakes hadn’t been as efficient as Craig’s, now shunted into and alongside each other outside Belfast’s Christmas-light laden City Hall.
When the D.C.I. reached his boss Craig was kneeling beside the body of a woman, who was lying with her legs twisted beneath her on the wet road, blood splattered all across her unconscious face.
“Call an ambulance, Liam. I’ll stay with her.” Craig turned back towards the direction that they’d come. “Then take a statement from him.” His finger was jabbing at a pale faced youth gripping the side of a Volkswagen. Its front bumper bore a dent that Liam guessed would match the woman’s legs.
What Liam said next was drowned out by the cries of anxious bystanders, the highest pitched of which carried to Craig’s ears.
“It wasn’t the driver’s fault. The lights turned green when she was halfway across.”
Craig glanced up instantly, taking in the request crossing signal on the traffic lights and adding up two and two. His next glance was towards the voice; it belonged to a blonde girl in her early twenties, small and tanned with bright blue eyes.
“What’s your name, miss?”
“Corneau, Eleanor Corneau.”
The name was French but the accent was local; probably one of the many Huguenot descendants living in the UK, their ancestors fleeing there in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
He cast another look at the woman on the ground, then another at an older man who’d joined them kneeling in the road.
“I’m a nurse. Please let me help.”
Craig was grateful. It gave him the space to do what he was good at; grill potential witnesses. The girl was first and as Craig walked across to her he noticed the crowd thinning and moving away. He turned swiftly towards the wanderers.
“I need anyone who saw anything to remain here.”
Only one man stopped, so Craig turned back to the girl.
“OK. Tell me exactly what you saw please, Ms Corneau.”
She gestured at the lights. “The lady was walking across, carrying her shopping from Marks and Spencer.”
Craig did a double take; he’d completely missed the food scattered all over the road.
“She’d waited till the crossing light appeared-”
“How do you know?”
“I was waiting to cross from the other side.” She paused, waiting for him to ask something else. When he didn’t she carried on. “Anyway, I saw her waiting, then the signal appeared and she started walking towards me-”
Craig stopped her. “How many people were crossing?”
The girl shook her head. “Not many. She was the first out into the road.” She pointed towards the Volkswagen, whose driver was now throwing up, to the accompaniment of Liam’s jovial. “Better out than in, son. Better out than in.”
Craig nodded Corneau on.
“Anyway, the Volkswagen had stopped when the lights turned red, then suddenly, when the woman was halfway across, he put the boot down and drove straight at her.”
There was something disturbing about her tone and Craig realised what it was.
“You don’t sound surprised.”
More than being unsurprised, she sounded as if she didn’t give a damn that someone had nearly been killed.
“I’m not. I mean I wasn’t. The lights had turned green so he was free to go.”
“Not straight into a pedestrian he wasn’t!”
Something more than her attitude was bothering him.
“Why weren’t you hit?”
He was answered by a second voice. It came from the only member of the crowd not to have left; a tall man in his thirties with short fair hair and a reddish blonde hipster beard. He looked more Nordic than Irish, but then the Vikings had scattered their DNA all over the North Coast.
“Because she was doing what I was. Listening to music. I’m always stopping in the street when a song I like comes on.”
It sounded plausible, but something made the detective unsure. Even though the man was standing still he managed to swagger. He’d seen it in bombastic egotists before.
“What’s your name, sir?”
“Ronan Miskimmon.”
“If you could wait there for a moment, please, Mr Miskimmon.” He turned back to the girl, checking on the casualty on his way. Just then a blue-light ambulance hove into view and Craig breathed a sigh of relief. The victim’s fate was someone else’s responsibility now and he could get on with his job.
“Do you have any I.D., Ms Corneau?”
The girl rifled through her Parka’s pockets and produced a debit card. It confirmed her name but he wanted more.
“Show me your audio player, please.”
He could see Liam’s eyebrows shooting up even from a distance. The expression said ‘you’re treating her like a perp, not a witness’ and he was. Worse, he didn’t know why, except that Eleanor Corneau’s unemotional affect was giving him the creeps. She’d just seen a woman slammed into by a car and she was as cool as if they’d just taken afternoon tea.
Craig scoured her playlist for he didn’t know what yet and then realised that he was being stupid. Corneau had been on the opposite side of the road when the accident had happened and they had the driver bang to rights. After a moment admiring her taste in music and noting the track that had been playing when she’d said the accident had occurred, he handed the device back.
“OK. Thank you.” He turned to Miskimmon for corroboration of the story then took both of their details and nodded them away. Even before he’d reached the Volkswagen he knew what Liam was going to say.
“You didn’t like her much, did you?”
Craig smiled. “What makes you say that?”
The reply was a sceptical look.
Craig shrugged. “There was something off about her.”
Liam knew that Ash Rahman, the team’s temporary analyst, was about to get some digging to do on Corneau. Their regular analyst Davy Walsh was in France on secondment to Interpol, and his university friend Ash had stepped into the breach. He had no complaints about his work at all, and his blue hair, unusual fashion sense and conspiracy theories had brightened up many a dreary winter day; but, even though he’d never admit it, he missed Davy, so roll on his return in January.
Craig changed the subject, gesturing towards the driver who was now seated inside his car with
his feet on the road and his head lodged firmly between his knees.
“Tell me about him.”
Liam flicked open the notepad in his hand.
“Jonny Hall, twenty-four. He’s a post-grad student at Queen’s. Licence, tax and insurance all check out-”
Craig cut in. “Has he been drinking?”
It was the week before Christmas so it wasn’t a big stretch. Office parties in Belfast often started in late November and kept on going for weeks.
Liam shook his head. “I don’t have a breathalyser but I’d say not.”
“I have one in the boot, so let’s check him.”
Liam shrugged. “OK. Anyway, his story is that he’d stopped for a red light then it turned green so he put the boot down.”
Craig’s eyebrows shot up. “Without checking if anyone was in front of him?”
“Reflex, I suppose.” The D.C.I. nodded towards the hunched-over youth. “He’s pretty sick about it.”
“Not half as much as the pedestrian is.”
Craig popped the Audi’s boot, handing Liam the breathalyser kit. “Check him out, then arrest him for careless driving. I’ll call a van to take him in.”
Liam whistled. “Two arrests before lunch; that’s good going even for us.”
The reference to food told Craig that they would be stopping for something to eat before they got back to the ranch.
****
Dockland’s Coordinated Crime Unit (The C.C.U.). Tenth Floor. Murder Squad. 3 p.m.
“Man, it was terrible.”
Craig glanced up from the file he was holding, read uncharacteristically at a desk on the murder squad’s open-plan floor. The team put his sudden fraternisation down to holiday spirit, all except for Nicky, his well-informed P.A. She knew the truth; Craig was reading at a desk in the squad-room because the heating in his office was on the blink. Whatever the reason it made him accessible, so everyone knew that the ‘man’ that Liam Cullen had prefixed his comment with most definitely referred to Craig.