The Killing Year (The Craig Crime Series Book 17) Page 12

  But now Craig was starting to wonder if they’d been hoisted by their own petard; had their approach backed Dudaev into the possibly even more dangerous corner that he was in now?

  The codes themselves had been changed long ago, of course, but the information in them could still be of considerable use. It would give America’s enemies the key to their thinking and the ability to predict what they were likely to do next.

  “I’m assuming all the special agents in those countries are on alert for any sign of Dudaev?”

  Ash nodded. “Yes, but he seems to have gone underground for the moment.”

  Bakar Dudaev had friends in very low places.

  “OK, keep me updated.”

  The detective’s brisk tone said simultaneously ‘Dudaev’s not my problem right now’ and ‘We have bigger fish to fry over here’.

  “Tell me about The Sect.”

  Craig felt his lip twitch as he said the words. They really didn’t need those fanatical bastards back.

  Ash wrinkled his forehead in a way that didn’t bode well.

  “The taskforce gets a lot of raw data through, even stuff that isn’t to do with a specific case-”

  Craig cut him off. “And some of it has been about The Sect.” He made a hurry up motion. “Move it on.”

  The analyst’s response was a deep sigh. “They went to South America after they left here, but the word is they’re back in Europe bigtime.”

  Craig sat forward slowly. “Tell me it’s not here.”

  He felt guilty as soon as he said it; such ‘not in my backyard’ NIMBYism something that he usually despised. But they honestly couldn’t handle any more nutters until they caught the one that was currently on the loose.

  Ash shook his head hesitantly. “Not yet.”

  “I don’t like the sound of that.”

  “You probably shouldn’t. There’s been intelligence on them from Poland, Lithuania and now Italy.”

  Craig’s heart sank. Roman Catholicism was the largest Christian denomination worldwide and the analyst had just listed three of its most devout countries in Europe. He shouldn’t have been surprised; The Sect’s members had run straight to the Catholic stronghold of South America when they’d fled initially. Religiously observant countries were their natural habitat.

  As soon as he thought it he groaned; Catholicism was the dominant religion in the south of Ireland and also amongst half the north, and there was likely to be an upsurge in island-wide devotion in twenty-eighteen, because of a planned visit by the Pope. His mother Mirella, an ex-concert-pianist and devout Catholic, was already rehearsing her choral pieces in case she was invited to play. He smiled as he pictured his father, a lapsed Methodist whose approach to any religious curiosity by his two children had always been ‘ask your mother’, trying to find somewhere quiet in the house to read.

  When he spoke again the detective’s voice was sombre. “The Sect will return here next year.”

  It wasn’t a question but Ash answered anyway.

  “We can’t know for sure, but yes, it seems likely given the Pope’s visit. But if that’s their timing then at least we have time to plan.”

  Craig shook his head.

  “No planning, chief?”

  “That was an ‘Oh Hell’ shake, Ash, not a no. I’m sure they will come and when they do we’ll be ready for them, but right now we’re pretty busy, so let’s just hope that it’s not for a while.”

  ****

  Belfast’s Cathedral Quarter. 1 p.m.

  Kyle Spence gave a tut of disgust and raised his finger for more coffee, waiting until the pert waitress with interestingly candy-striped hair had been and gone before tutting again. The reason for his disapproval wasn’t the wine-bar’s burnished wood floor or artfully bared brickwork, and its roaring open fire was a good thing on a frosty winter’s day. He was tutting because of the table that sat in front of him; not the table provided at the briefing but a second level one that he had made.

  It contained the same victims’ names, but this graphic detailed their drinking habits as well. All of it anecdotal of course and mostly gathered from the relatives of the dead, who were inclined to diminish the vices of those that they had loved. Still, even allowing for rose-tinted glasses and wishful thinking the first nine of their dead victims appeared to have been a disgustingly abstemious bunch.

  Spence laughed at a sudden image he had of the victims, still alive and at a party; it wouldn’t exactly have been a rip-roaring time. He stifled his chuckle suddenly, quite why he didn’t know; OK, so he was laughing at the dead which wasn’t the done thing, but it wasn’t as if anyone in the place knew. Maybe he had a stronger sense of propriety than he was aware.

  He gazed at the table again, this time grouping the names. Not, as Liam had attempted to do by occupation, but by the amount that each victim had normally drunk. After removing all the, ‘odd glasses of bubbly at weddings’, ‘two pints after the football match’, and ‘a couple of glasses of wine once a week after work’, only two names were left. Nathan Richards, who had never drunk at all because of his religion, and Jason Cornell, who’d apparently drunk heavily at one time but completely given it up decades before.

  The two men interested him, although he couldn’t be quite sure why. Nothing about their deaths made them stand out in the crowd.

  The ex-spook had just put his curiosity down to instinct and decided to follow it up, when the candy-stripe girl slipped him his bill marked with her phone number. He’d just found the perfect way to fill his weekend.

  Chapter Seven

  The Forensic Labs. 2.30 p.m.

  Des Marsham had thought he’d found the perfect solution. In the absence of a subordinate-stroke-hapless dupe to delegate his staff management duties to, and with the likelihood that using Human Resources at the Law Department would result in a lot of fuss and noise, he’d decided on what he liked to describe as ‘electronic diplomacy’, but what most other people would have called ‘a cowardly email’.

  It had taken the scientist the whole evening before to compose the missive. He’d started it as soon as Grace had left his office, leaving him unintentionally, or perhaps not, outplayed. He would probably never know which it was, but what he’d intended to be a meaningful discussion on crime scene forensic protocols had disintegrated into tea and biscuits, and when he’d finally abandoned all hope of confrontation she had left, giving him a mysterious smile.

  He would probably still have been tweaking the email at midnight, had not Annie called to warn him that if he wasn’t home in thirty minutes his dinner would be in the dog and he’d be sleeping with the kids. Still, he did feel rather proud of the finished product, which was, in his mind simultaneously: firm but gentle and clear but not sharp, with the emphasis on Grace’s excellent work in other ways, rather than her shifting of dead bodies to where they shouldn’t be.

  He’d pressed ‘send’ with not a small amount of pride at his abilities, and then pictured the CSI’s emotions as she read his words. Surprise at first, of course; as one would expect when someone had believed they’d done nothing wrong. Then perhaps a little embarrassment, even shame, as Grace realised that she had made an error and then exactly what it had been. He’d pictured a slight glistening of gratitude in her eyes, perhaps even a single, small tear trickling down her cheek, and then a fulsome return missive of gratitude that she had learnt something valuable, and that he, one of the UK’s most qualified forensic scientists, had taken so much time to mentor her.

  It would have been no shock to anybody but Des that that wasn’t what happened, and that instead an irate Grace had burst into his office accompanied by her union rep an hour before, threatening him for stressing her at work. It had taken him fifty minutes of grovelling to prevent her making a written complaint to the Department, and the whole experience had left the scientist shell-shocked, staring blankly at his laptop and wondering what to do next. Finally, he decided. He would ask John.

  The pathologist was after all marrie
d to Natalie, and if he could deal with an irate surgeon in full flow then he could definitely handle Grace. He on the other hand had a placid, almost hippy wife, one who had left him completely unprepared for the more excitable members of her sex.

  However, the request would have to be handled delicately, and bribery seemed to him to be the best course, so Des reluctantly opened the mahogany chest that housed his collection of rare forensic finds and withdrew the one that he knew John coveted more than any other, then he set off down the stairs.

  ****

  The C.C.U.

  If a gaze could have spurted acid anywhere outside a superhero movie then Susan Richie’s gaze would have been the one. She had perfected the requisite lowered brows and narrowed eyes, along with a rigidly set jaw that heralded hostility, over many years of scaring the bejeezus out of her subordinates, and it had never failed to make them quail. Its effect on Deidre Murray however was very different; not only did it not instil fear into the DCI, but the glower’s cartoon villain subtext made her stifle a loud yawn.

  She gave her companion a weary smile, controlling the urge to push the wall of boxes they both sat behind down on Richie’s head.

  “Really, Suz, if you’re going to look at me like that you might at least buy me dinner first.” She turned back to her file. “It’s traditional, I understand.”

  It was Richie’s cue to jump to her feet and swing around so quickly that her gym-enhanced posterior almost destabilised the wall. She loomed above her traitorous colleague and spoke in a tone that held a mixture of incredulity and disgust.

  “You’re really brainwashed, aren’t you? The man says jump and you say, ‘how high?’ You even do it with a bloody smile!”

  Murray considered for a moment before looking up again, and the slowness of her response seemed to frustrate her companion even more. If Liam had been there he would have said that the pace was deliberate, Dee having employed the tactic on him once in response to an overly familiar flirt, but Susan Richie wasn’t someone who understood nuances, so she merely assumed that her colleague hadn’t heard her and repeated her insult in a louder voice.

  This time Deidre Murray stood up, her five-feet-ten-inches making her a good head taller than Richie’s barely five-feet-two. It was a deliberate stance; Richie hated being small, once confiding drunkenly to her that she was certain it had held back her career, that and being blonde. She overcompensated by shouting at people, little realising that it made her look like a yapping handbag dog.

  Murray knew that emphasising her size was going to hit Richie where it hurt, and it worked straight away.

  “Sit down, Dee!”

  Murray ignored the order, instead employing rule number two of establishing supremacy and looking her opponent up and down.

  “Have you shrunk, Suz, or have I grown? I’m sure you used to be taller than this.”

  It sent Richie scuttling back to her seat as her opponent continued.

  “If by the man you mean Chief Superintendent Craig, then yes, I will take orders from him. A, because I want to catch this butcher, and b, because he’s ahead of me in rank. I don’t have a problem with the man, but you obviously do, so…” She pointed to the gap in the wall that led to the main squad-room. “I suggest you go and tell him what that problem is, and…” She leant in until her lips were close to Richie’s ear and then raised her voice. “Bloody well stop holding me back from my work! UNDERSTAND?”

  Her final word travelled and made Liam perk up at his desk. Ah, Deidre; the dominatrix of his dreams. What he wouldn’t have given to see her mud wrestle Susan Richie to the ground.

  But that would have to wait. Richie suddenly appeared through the gap and charged angrily off the floor, and Liam was just about to ask his fantasy woman how she’d managed it when Deidre Murray got in first with a shouted question.

  “LIAM, DO YOU KNOW ANYONE IN HATE CRIMES?”

  The disembodied voice made Andy laugh. “It’s like Pyramus and Thisbe.”

  Ash asked the question before Liam could. “What?”

  The DCI wandered across the floor to explain. “Pyramus and Thisbe were two lovers in the city of Babylon who occupied connected houses. Their parents wouldn’t let them marry, so they whispered their love for each other through a crack in an adjoining wall.”

  He tutted at the blank looks and elaborated. “Ovid’s Metamorphoses? A Midsummers Night’s Dream, anyone? No-one? Honestly, you’re a bunch of ignoramuses.”

  Craig, who had emerged from his office at Deidre’s shouting, put him out of his misery.

  “Hasn’t anyone but Andy heard of Shakespeare?” He didn’t wait for a reply. “Anyway, who’s shouting through the wall?”

  “Not Susan Richie, that’s for sure.” Liam jerked a thumb in the direction of the lift. “She stormed out a minute ago.”

  He beckoned Craig to accompany him through the gap and asked Deidre Murray to repeat her query. It was Craig who answered the DCI’s question, with one of his own.

  “You think the victims’ deaths are hate crimes?”

  “One of them might be, Guv.”

  The men took seats while she elaborated.

  “Susan and I divided the victims and I got the earliest one. A woman called Maria Drake from Crumlin who died last December.”

  Crumlin is a small village in County Antrim, set in open countryside but well connected to Belfast by road.

  “It seems that she’d only recently come out as gay, at the end of twenty-fifteen, and she’d had a bit of hassle for it in the rural community.”

  Craig considered for a moment. “Was there anything about her death that specifically pointed to a hate crime, other than her sexuality? That could just be incidental.”

  The DCI opened her mouth to answer, just as he reconsidered and cut her off.

  “Scrap that. Start at the beginning and detail everything.”

  Five minutes later they knew that Maria Drake had lived near Crumlin with her civil partner, Bryony Leyton, and had disappeared from the carpark of her offices on the fourteenth of December twenty-sixteen, sometime between six-thirty when she quit work and seven o’clock when she should have reached her home. Her body had been found three days later in park ten miles away, with all her jewellery, cash and cards still in place.

  Craig halted the report and called through the wall again.

  “Andy, Ash, come in here and bring your stuff.”

  When Ash’s smart-pad and Andy’s angles lay in front of them he waved Deidre Murray on again.

  “OK, like the other victims Maria Drake died of respiratory depression, considered to be from her alcohol poisoning. But there was also a puncture wound to the left side of her abdomen that had ruptured her spleen.”

  The words made Craig take out his mobile and in seconds they were connected to the labs.

  He shouted at the speakerphone. “John, there’s a group of us here and I want to ask you about Maria Drake. Renée P.M.ed her, didn’t she?”

  The pathologist nodded as if they could see. “Give me a minute to pull up her file on the computer.” A moment later he said. “OK. Fire ahead.”

  “OK, her cause of death is listed as respiratory depression, but she’d also bled from the rupturing of her spleen due to a puncture, yes?”

  “Yes. It-”

  Craig cut in. “Sorry, but I don’t need the details right now, just the answer to one question. How common is it that the spleen ruptures from a puncture?”

  John smiled, seeing what the detective was getting at. “It’s not. Splenic rupture is usually caused by a blow not a puncture, although if the puncture wound was made with extreme force I suppose it’s possible, or if the puncture accompanied other force. But the spleen more commonly ruptures from a blunt object hitting the abdomen, such as in an explosion or car crash, or less frequently during a massive beating.”

  “But then there would be other signs, wouldn’t there? Bruising?”

  “And blood seepage into the tissues. Yes, usually. Plus, it wo
uld take a very strong man to hit someone hard enough to cause a rupture, even if he used a weapon like a bat.”

  “Did Drake have any other signs of a beating?”

  “None. And there was nothing like the imprint that would be left from a bat, or any blunt object. Also, we know there was no explosion.”

  “How painful would that puncture injury have been?”

  “Extremely. She would have been in agony. But that’s all supposing she suffered it a while before she died. It could have only happened five minutes before she stopped breathing from the alcohol.”

  “Any way to tell when it occurred?”

  The pathologist tapped his keyboard a few times before answering. “Sorry, no. There was a lot of internal bleeding, but whether it had leaked out slowly from the puncture before the spleen finally ruptured, over a few days, or happened in a flood five minutes after it ruptured, it’s impossible to say.”

  “Anything else?”

  “No other damage to the body at all. Just the splenic puncture. Also, of course, the usual alcohol, foreign DNA etcetera. I’ve got something more on that one, but I’d like to wait for the briefing.”

  Craig nodded vaguely, his thoughts already on something else. “Fine. We’ll see you then. Thanks.” He cut the call and turned back to Murray. “So, only the single puncture wound to the spleen. Apparently enough to rupture it and kill her, yet no other sign of assault.”

  The DCI nodded.

  “It must have been a pretty vicious attack, to rupture the spleen just with a puncture wound, Guv.”