The Coercion Key Read online

  Craig’s face became serious and he shook his head. “Not at the moment, Annette. They aren’t directly under threat in the way that you all are. I’ve restricted my family’s movements to the house and I’ll have to take care of them as best I can, just as you’re doing with yours.” He paused for a moment then restarted. “John and Des have protection details as well.”

  Liam leaned forward, catching Craig’s eye. “Who’s with the Doc?”

  “Marlene Carey. Do you know her?”

  Liam whistled then he grinned. “Marlene the Darlin’.”

  Annette snorted. “That doesn’t even rhyme.”

  “It suits her though, doesn’t it, boss?”

  Craig tried not to grin. John’s eyes had certainly lit up when he’d seen who was guarding him, but Natalie was staying with him tonight and there’d be fireworks when she met Marlene.

  “No comment. OK, let’s move on. There’s a lot to get on with today. Annette and Jake are visiting Amelia McCafferty, I’m going back over Diana Rogan’s case and Liam’s taking a good look at Nelson Warner.” He turned to Liam with a warning look. “Liam, we don’t know if Warner had a mistress he stayed with at his Belfast apartment, but if he had then please be careful around his wife. She may not know, and if she does I’m damn sure she won’t want it rubbed in her face. So, a bit of diplomacy, OK?”

  Liam feigned innocence. “I’m the soul of discretion.”

  Craig gave him a sceptical look and continued. “Jake, have you booted up the game?”

  “Yes. It’s ready on my screen so that you can all have a look.”

  Two minutes later they were huddled around Jake’s computer, watching as he worked quickly though Justification’s increasing levels of difficulty. On each level he had to kill anyone who got between him and a stone tablet. When he had enough tablets he gained entry to the final level where the tablets were exchanged for the key which opened the door to the ultimate trial and the treasure.

  Davy leaned in curiously. “W…What’s the treasure?”

  Jake grinned. “Like I said yesterday, that’s the thing that makes it cool. The player chooses what their treasure is at the very start of the game. Money, power, love, whatever you fancy. You set it at the beginning of the game and work towards achieving it by killing anyone who gets in your way.”

  Craig said what they were all thinking. “Apart from teaching hand-eye coordination, all it teaches is how to kill.”

  Jake glanced at him defensively. “It teaches different methods of killing as well, sir. You can choose to have weapons or use unarmed combat: bare-knuckle fighting, wresting, martial arts, anything you like. It requires skill.”

  Craig smiled sceptically. “In the hands of a well-balanced individual like you I’m sure that’s possible, Jake, and it may have improved your fighting skills. But if someone is even slightly disturbed this is going to make them worse. It’s essentially rewarding them for destroying anyone or anything in their path.”

  “And giving them a serotonin buzz.”

  Craig turned to face Annette. “Go on.”

  “Serotonin is the brain’s ‘feel-good’ chemical. There’s a theory that some behaviours or situations that cause repeated pleasure can elevate its levels in the brain and create psychological dependency. I’d be very surprised if this game didn’t do that pretty quickly.”

  Craig nodded. He could feel it happening to him when they’d played the evening before.

  “So an already vulnerable individual could become dependent on the game.”

  “Yes. And the morality it encourages.”

  Nicky tutted loudly. “It’s a playground for psychopaths and addicts.”

  Liam rubbed his chin. “Aye, this is all fine and dandy, but what’s it got to do with our killer? The key’s the only connection and they might just have liked the key’s design and copied it.”

  Craig smiled. Liam hated anything abstract or theoretical. “Don’t forget our caller’s age, Liam – that fits as well. This game was in vogue in the late 1990s, early 2000s, when our caller would have been in their teens, and it was a game used predominantly by teenagers.”

  “So you’re saying that our killer became addicted to this game all those years ago and decides now to make it the basis for a killing spree? That’s a stretch, boss, but OK. But where’s the connection with suicide? The people in the game are killed directly, they don’t kill themselves.”

  Craig thought for a moment, Liam was making valid points, but he still knew that he was right.

  “OK. Let’s say our killer was a vulnerable or shy teenager who sought refuge from the world in this game. He played it all the time and basically became addicted. Yes?”

  There was a series of nods.

  “But that doesn’t turn him into a killer on its own. Let’s say that something traumatic happens to him in real life, perhaps something involving suicide. Something inside him breaks and he descends even further into the fantasy world of the game.”

  Annette nodded enthusiastically. “So he tried to commit suicide?”

  “Or someone else he cared about did and they succeeded. Whatever happened suicide is part of it, I’m sure of that, and the experience skewed him somehow.”

  Davy shook his head, making his hair fall into his mouth. He pulled it out quickly as Craig nodded him on. “That w…wouldn’t explain why he didn’t start killing years ago. W…When things first went wrong in his life.”

  “Good point, Davy. Let’s look at that. He’s a teenager and something traumatic twists him, so that the game he was already playing too often suddenly becomes his whole world. He retreats into it. So why start killing years later? One idea might be that he was a child when he was traumatised, with no access to the means to kill.”

  Liam shook his head. “Nah. That would only work until he was an adult, maybe late teens. Why wait another ten years?”

  “OK then, anyone else?”

  Nicky chipped in. “What about if he’d been in therapy or locked away? If he’d been in a psychiatric unit or prison, he couldn’t get out to kill anyone.”

  Craig nodded. “Very good. So far we’ve got no capability because he was too young, or no access because he was incarcerated. Anyone else?”

  Jake tapped his computer screen thoughtfully. “How about… how about if he was looking for justice for something criminal that had happened in his life, and he tried the legal route but it failed. It might have taken him years to go through the courts. It might only have been when that failed that he decided to take the law into his own hands?”

  Craig barely breathed for a moment. All of the theories made sense. Something had happened to their killer in his teens and he was taking delayed revenge for it now. It might have been delayed for all sorts of reasons. But what was it that had traumatised him so much originally? Craig didn’t know why but the idea of something criminal didn’t ring true.

  “I think you’re almost there Jake, but I don’t think this was something criminal. What happened to him was something emotional, something to do with suicide.”

  Davy turned to Craig, excited. “Maybe it’s an insurance case, chief? That would combine the court and emotional things. W…What if someone connected to him committed s…suicide and his family were denied their life insurance money? It could have taken years for the courts to say no?”

  Craig raked his hair, thinking hard. It was almost right but he knew there was still something missing, he just couldn’t work out what it was. He sighed and nodded. It was as good a place to start as any.

  “Good work, everyone. OK. Davy. Start looking at suicides in Northern Ireland between the mid-1990s and early 2000s, if our killer was a teenager that would put him between his late twenties to early thirties now. Look for any and all suicides where the surviving family contained a teenage son. Also, find out if there are any online forums for this particular computer game. If he’s so obsessed with it then it’s odds on that he’ll still be playing it.”

  Liam’s voice
boomed across the room. “He might just play it alone, boss. Lurking in some darkened room.”

  Jake shook his head. “No, there are gaming forums for everything. Everyone uses them when they get bored playing alone.”

  Craig nodded. “OK. Davy, Jake can help you on that when he gets back from Amelia McCafferty’s. You’ve all got other checks to work on as well, so there’s plenty for everyone to do before we meet again at twelve o’clock.”

  Craig strode across the floor towards his office and then turned back with a grim look.

  “Remember that we’re all under threat so don’t forget that, please. You need to watch your backs.”

  ***

  The Rogan’s. 10 a.m.

  “You never saw your wife with anything that resembled a key cut in a gothic design?”

  Conor Rogan thought hard for a moment then shook his head despairingly at Craig.

  “There seems to have been so much about Diana that I didn’t know. She never even told me that she was feeling sad. I must have been making her miserable and I never realised.”

  Craig really felt for the man. His young wife had killed herself and he had no idea why; it was natural to blame himself. Craig wanted to tell Rogan where their investigation was pointing but he couldn’t, in case it turned out to be smoke and mirrors and Jake’s computer game turned out to be just that: a game. He decided to take a different tack.

  “Your wife worked in a firm of brokers in town, you said?”

  Rogan nodded vaguely. The shadows under his eyes were so deep that Craig wondered if he’d slept at all since they’d last met. Davy would rule him in or out as his wife’s killer with his computer checks. They had to do them to be sure, but Craig already knew the man in front of him had had nothing to do with Diana Rogan’s death.

  “Did they specialise in any particular area of broking?”

  Craig’s knowledge of the stock market could have been written on the back of a stamp but he knew enough to know that brokers often specialised in different markets, some in commodities like coffee, others in telecommunications etc.

  Rogan shook his head. “I honestly don’t know. Diana didn’t talk much about her work. I know she was good at it and that she worked hard, but it was such a small part of her life. The kids...” He sobbed suddenly and tears began to trickle down his face. “They were everything to her. She would never have left them voluntarily.” His voice dropped. “Except she obviously did, didn’t she…?”

  Craig couldn’t stand it any longer. He had to give the man something to hold on to or he might be the next death. Craig said the words quietly, as if less volume somehow meant that he was giving less away.

  “You don’t know why she did it, Mr Rogan, and neither do we. But I can tell you that if we thought this was a straightforward suicide we wouldn’t be investigating it like a murder.”

  Rogan’s eyes widened. “But the post-mortem…”

  Craig nodded. “Yes I know. The post-mortem was conclusive that she died by her own hand, but that doesn’t mean it was by her own choice.”

  Rogan gawped at him. “You think she was forced into it?”

  Craig raised a hand to prevent more questions. “I’ve already said too much, Mr Rogan, and I must ask you to keep it to yourself. Please.”

  Rogan nodded reluctantly.

  “But I honestly don’t believe that your wife chose to leave you or your children. I can’t say any more than that right now.”

  Just then the children giggled in the next room. Rogan glanced towards the door in case they’d overheard then he nodded again. “Thank you for telling me, Superintendent. It helps to know in one way, but in another…”

  Craig knew that he was picturing his wife being pressured to end her life and feeling unable to discuss it with him. Hopefully they’d find the metal key that Craig was sure Diana Rogan had been sent, but until then, they could only speculate as to why she’d been chosen to die.

  “When your wife… Did you tidy up the room?”

  Rogan shook his head sorrowfully. “I couldn’t… The police had a look around and then my mother-in-law cleared up. I haven’t been in the bedroom since. I’ve…I’ve been sleeping downstairs.”

  Craig set his coffee down and rose to his feet, glancing towards the hall. “Can we take a look now?”

  Rogan hesitated for a moment and Craig read his mind.

  “If you show me which room it is, I’m happy to go in by myself.”

  A look of relief covered the younger man’s face and Craig wondered how long it would be before he sold the house. Rogan would never sleep in that bedroom again without thinking of his wife.

  They climbed the stairs slowly and Rogan pointed Craig towards a room at one end of the landing. Craig turned the door handle hesitantly as Rogan raced back downstairs. Poor sod. He knew he would be the same if someone he loved killed themselves. He shuddered, trying not to imagine it.

  When Craig entered the small bedroom he was surprised by its everyday ordinariness, as he often was at the place where someone had died. Somehow death belonged in dingy alleyways and abandoned barns, but not in the neat suburban houses where most people really met their end.

  It was all so normal looking. A king-sized bed, with a small table on either side. One covered with bits of screwed-up paper and a spy novel. The other heavy with pictures and jewellery, the difference between the sexes captured in the small tableau. Craig turned his head and saw fitted wardrobes at the other end of the room. He slid the doors open. One side was completely empty and the other was full of a woman’s clothes. He glanced down and saw Diana Rogan’s shoes; high heels and trainers to match the suits and tracksuits above, the wardrobe of every working mum. It was so poignant it made Craig catch his breath. He couldn’t imagine how he would feel if they belonged to a woman he loved.

  After a moment he turned back towards the bed, his eyes drawn towards the right-hand side. That was where the police report said Diana Rogan had been found, at four-thirty in the afternoon. She’d been found by her mother when the school had phoned her to ask why no-one had collected the kids. Poor woman, finding her only daughter in such a way. It must have nearly killed her; he knew it would kill his mother if she found Lucia like that.

  Diana Rogan had been wearing her suit when they’d found her, but she hadn’t gone into work that day. The post-mortem estimated her time of death at one o’clock. Five hours since she’d kissed her husband and children goodbye, letting them believe that she was leaving for work soon after. Five hours of plucking up the nerve to swallow the Paracetamol tablets, and then swallow more to replace the ones that she’d vomited up.

  Craig gazed at a framed photograph on her bedside table then walked over and peered at it. It was a group shot at a family gathering, showing everyone that she loved. Her parents and children, and in the middle Conor and her. Her husband’s statement had said it normally sat in the living room. She’d brought it upstairs specially. For comfort or for courage? What could possibly have persuaded her to take her own life when she had so much? What was the hold that their killer had over Diana Rogan, or any of the people who had died? Was it the same for all four suicides or different for each one?

  Craig stayed in the room for so long that finally Conor Rogan climbed the stairs and knocked the door. He retreated quickly, in case he glimpsed the room’s interior when Craig emerged. As Craig approached Rogan he turned his face away, his message clear: don’t tell me what you found because I don’t want to hear the words. Craig said nothing, merely nodded and thanked him, then he left the small, ruined, family home and drove swiftly away.

  ***

  Jake and Annette walked away from Amelia McCafferty’s elegant home certain that she wouldn’t be mourning her ex-husband at all. To say there’d been no love lost between them would have been an understatement; Jake thought the ice age had probably been warmer than their marriage.

  “Well, she hated him for sure.”

  “Was that a statement or a question, Jake?”r />
  “A fact.”

  Annette nodded, conceding that he was right but understanding better than he did how a marriage could foster hate. She and Pete were trying to make a go of it after his affair the June before, but there were days that she still wished him dead.

  “She may have hated her husband but she didn’t kill him.”

  “How do you know, Ma’am?”

  Annette smiled at the old-fashioned term. She kept telling him to call her Annette. He’d remember for a while, then lapse back to her default title again.

  “Because our killer’s clever, and to be blunt, that woman was as thick as two short planks!”

  Jake burst out laughing at the most un-Annette-like phrase; it was something he’d have expected Liam to say. Nevertheless it was true. When beauty had been handed out Amelia McCafferty had been at the top of the queue, but when brains were being distributed she must have been doing her nails. Annette continued.

  “She would never have thought up something like that key. Besides, she’s female and too young.”

  She wrinkled her nose in disgust. Jonathan McCafferty had been fair, fat and forty-five. His bride of seven years was twenty years younger.

  “He must have met her at the school gates, Ma’am.”

  “Yes, when he was kerb-crawling!”

  They both laughed this time and Jake made a note to tell Liam Annette’s joke. They climbed into the car and Annette turned over the engine, doing a U-turn towards the Belmont road.

  Jake pointed back over his shoulder.

  “Aren’t we going the wrong way? The C.C.U.s back there.”

  “We’re not going back yet. We’re going to his parents’ place. I think I saw something there yesterday and I want to check.”

  Ten minutes later they were knocking on Niall McCafferty’s apartment door. He opened it with an unwelcoming look on his face.

  “What now, Inspector? Didn’t you upset my wife enough yesterday?”

  Annette gazed at him apologetically. “I’m sorry, Mr McCafferty. I only have one more question, I promise. This is my colleague Sergeant McLean. May we come in for a moment?”