The Killing Year (The Craig Crime Series Book 17) Read online

  “How old, boss?”

  Craig frowned quizzically. “The victims? You have their ages on your list.”

  It made the DCI roll his eyes. Craig mightn’t have been drunk the night before, but he obviously hadn’t had enough sleep.

  “No. I mean how old is the revenge case? If this is all down to revenge for some unknown victim, we could be talking about someone a hundred years back. We might never find them.”

  It made more than just Craig’s heart sink. A buzz ran through the group and John groaned loudly.

  “Pathology cases have only been computerised since ninety-seven, Marc. If it’s not in my database, we’ll have to go back through all the paper files. We don’t even know the sex of the original victim, and...”

  Craig raised a hand, halting his impending meltdown.

  “Calm down, everyone. First of all, try your computer files before you panic, John, and second, we’ll help you with the paper ones if it proves necessary. Remember, you’re not doing this in a vacuum. We’ll all be working up the victims’ details and something is bound to bear fruit.”

  Liam’s muttered “It hasn’t for a year” earned him a scowl.

  ****

  Strangford Lough. 6 p.m.

  Sarah Reilly didn’t know which she was more shocked by: the fact that her plan of the rain being sufficient to lift her close enough to the top of her prison to clamber out had worked, or that she’d managed to stagger away from it for what the changing light said must have been an hour now, without a single person coming into sight.

  She should be grateful, she knew that; the absence of people also meant the absence of her kidnapper. But she didn’t know how much longer her legs would carry her, and if she collapsed completely she might be dead when morning came, either from exposure or from her captor hunting her down.

  She fell to her knees with exhaustion, sucking in the cold, damp air around her until her gasping finally eased, and she could lift her head again without dizziness, raising it just far enough to cast a look around where she was.

  On a bright summer’s day the scene would have been beautiful, miles of uninterrupted grass-fringed coastline with tiny boats in the distance telling her she was in sailing land, but tonight the vista merely made the medic’s heart sink; its lack of roads or cars or even an occasional house, with all their attendant lack of saviours, telling her that she had never been more alone.

  She sat on the rain-soaked ground and scanned the sky for several minutes, until hopeless, tearing eyes threatened to make her lie back on the sparse grass and give in to her fate. It was then that something happened to change her mind.

  Sarah would have liked to have taken credit for her struggle to her feet and said that she’d discovered some reservoir of strength and will power and a burning urge to survive, but she couldn’t, because it was the sudden splash of something being cast into the water that had reinvigorated her, and the sight of seagulls swooping down to scavenge whatever it was.

  She watched as they clustered on the water’s edge and then allowed her gaze to track further down the shore, halting on a faint glow emanating from a wooden hut that she hadn’t noticed before. Someone inside it had thrown something into the water, and the way that the gulls were crying said that it must have been food.

  The thought of something to eat drove the GP to her feet again, but as she dragged first one foot and then the other towards the shore, her eyes watering now with its wind and spray, her heart began pounding with a new fear.

  What if the hut’s inhabitant was hostile, or worse, returned her to her captor? But still she couldn’t stop moving, knowing that she had no choice. If she didn’t get warmth and fresh water soon then she would die, and better a quick death from a few sharp blows than a lingering one alone.

  ****

  The C.C.U.

  “OK, Ash, what do you have for us?”

  Craig was surprised when the analyst didn’t tap or click anything and didn’t walk across to Nicky’s screen. He was so accustomed to his younger team members using technology that, when instead Ash passed around some handouts, he didn’t bother to conceal his surprise.

  “Paper? Since when did you use paper?”

  The analyst didn’t rise to the bait, stating matter-of-factly. “Since it made my point best. I know you oldies go a bit snow-blind when you look at a screen too long, so I’m giving you my info the traditional way.”

  John made a dry retort. “You make it sound like papyrus!”

  Craig smiled. “When he says stone against rock you’ll know that he’s really having a go.” He glanced at the first page of the handout. “I take it this is the map of where our victims were found that I saw earlier?”

  The page showed a map of Northern Ireland marked with a series of red and green dots.

  “Yep. Men are green, and women are red.”

  He gave a sharp nod to Davy and the same map appeared on the screen, prompting an “Ah Ha” from Liam.

  “I knew you’d get pixel withdrawal.”

  Ash gave him a cool look. “Not at all. I’m just giving it to you both ways to help you understand. OK, next page, please.”

  The screen switched again.

  “This is just the east side of the country, showing the counties of Antrim and Down, with Belfast between them, split into its usual four parts. North, South, etcetera.” He gestured at the screen. “You’ll see that the bodies appear to have been distributed randomly, and in terms of every parameter that I can assess them against they were-”

  Craig stopped him. “List the parameters.”

  Ash already had the list in his hand. “OK, I assessed them by dividing the eastern area into equal sized squares, to see if the bodies had been dumped at regular intervals.”

  Liam nodded. “Like a pattern.”

  The analyst shot him a pitying look. “Yes. Like a pattern.”

  Liam was pretty sure he was being patronised, but he needed more proof to hit back.

  “But there was no pattern of any description: geometric, visual, cultural, geographic against famous landmarks or even natural features like woods, coast, hills. I also tried mathematical sequences to see if there was some symmetry between the crime scenes, but there was nothing.”

  John interrupted, curious. “What sort of mathematical sequence?”

  Davy ventured a guess. “Like maybe a Fibonacci sequence in the GPS coordinates?”

  Ash nodded, concurring. “Exactly, but a Fibonacci was the most basic. I took it several levels up.” He shrugged. “Anyway, there was still nothing, so I’d say the sites where the bodies were left don’t hang together as any sort of pattern.”

  He motioned for the next slide and everyone turned the page. The image this time was different. It was a map of the whole country again, but this time the dumpsites were all marked in the same colour, red, and the whole of Northern Ireland, as far west as Belleek and to the south-east tip of Carlingford Lough, was peppered with crosses in blue. Craig was about to ask what they showed when Ash told them.

  “OK, this time all the bodies are marked in the same colour, red, but I’ve marked the site of each victim’s home, the ones we’ve IDed so far, in blue. As you can see they lived all over the province and not just in the east where they died.”

  The room was quiet for a moment, while eyes shifted back and forth from the pages to the screen. Finally, Andy asked a question.

  “The crosses show their most recent home addresses?”

  “Yep.”

  “OK, but if Doctor Winter can’t find Aidan’s injury combo in his database, it might be worth taking them back a few decades as well. Marking where they all lived back then, I mean.”

  It made Ash stop to consider and Craig give a nod of admiration. Eventually, Ash agreed.

  “Good idea, and actually, that could apply to my next slide as well.”

  Davy swopped the screen to the same red dots but this time with a series of purple crosses.

  “This time the crosses
show where the victims worked.”

  The crosses were again dotted all over the province, but in different locations to the home addresses. Craig tapped his page to get Ash’s attention.

  “I’m sure you’ll already know the answer to this. What’s the range of distances between the victims’ work and home addresses?”

  “Between five and thirty-three miles from their homes to their offices.”

  “Who was the thirty-three?”

  “Joseph Loughry. Lived in Derry and worked in Omagh.”

  The detective turned to his DCI secondees. “Which one of you was checking out Loughry?”

  Deidre nodded. “Me. He worked in bio-tech, so I imagine there weren’t that many suitable jobs near where he lived. That’s probably why he worked thirty miles from home, but I’ll check.”

  “I need both of you to check your victims in detail against Ash’s parameters.”

  He got a cheerful “will do” from Deidre and a grudging nod from Susan Richie.

  “Ash, anything else?”

  He knew there was because he’d already turned to that page. A table appeared on the screen and the junior analyst ran through its contents.

  “OK, this shows three distances for each victim in miles: their home to work distance, home to their final dumpsite, and work to dumpsite. We won’t know which represents each of the victims’ final journeys until we check their last movements.” He gestured to the secondees. “That sits with DCIs Murray and Richie. When I get that information, I’ll be able to use geo-location to give you a likely area that represents your killer’s comfort zone. That’s the spared area where the killer most likely lives and works.”

  Davy nodded in support. “Typically, a killer won’t commit crimes or leave bodies within their comfort zone or ten miles around it-”

  Liam cut in. “In other words, don’t shit in your own backyard.”

  Annette rolled her eyes. “Lovely.”

  Davy continued as if he hadn’t been interrupted. “The absence of bodies in an area is a useful sign.” He glanced back at his maps. “But, so far as I can w…work out, there’s no obvious area of sparing yet except Belfast. Ash?”

  “Agreed. No-one’s been dumped in Belfast yet, so it’s likely that our killer comes from here. But what’s plain, is that no matter where the victim lived or worked, the killer brought them to the east of Northern Ireland to either be dumped or killed and dumped, so we have to accept that the east of the country holds major significance for whatever the killer’s purpose is.”

  Craig shook his head. “Which purpose? Reliving some trauma that the killer suffered there, or highlighting something to do with Aidan’s possible historical case?”

  John responded to what he was only half sure wasn’t a rhetorical question. “Either, or maybe both, but surely we can’t know until we identify whether there is an historical case?”

  Craig shrugged, irritated. He knew that the pathologist was right, but it still left things up in the air and he needed some damn facts to get on with. There was some poor sod out there who might be dead soon unless they got a move on.

  He was so busy berating himself that he completely missed Rhonda’s hand rising, and started to sum up.

  “OK, thanks everyone. I don’t need to tell you to keep on top of everything, but I will anyway. Susan and Deidre, I need every one of the people who last saw your victims re-interviewed by tomorrow afternoon’s briefing, and each victim’s final movements confirmed for Ash. If you need any help, Liam had some uniforms interviewing the neighbours, so ask them to help you when you’re out and about. Jack Harris says he can supply more if you need them.” He rose to his feet. “Thanks everyone. Tomorrow same time-”

  Annette had got fed up with Rhonda wiggling her fingers in the air, so she cut in.

  “Sir.”

  Craig swung round. “Yes?”

  “Rhonda has something to say.”

  With that she gave the younger woman an encouraging push forward, almost knocking her off her chair.

  “What was it, Rhonda?”

  The Snow White lookalike’s pale face lit up with a blush. “It might be nothing useful, sir.”

  Craig smiled. “That never stops Liam.”

  The deputy’s automatic “Here now” was drowned out by Annette’s laugh, and Rhonda started speaking in her clear, Australian voice.

  “Well, it’s just about the table of victims, sir. It may be nothing, but their ages…”

  Her voice trailed off as, on Davy’s click, the table appeared on the screen.

  Craig scanned it, wondering what she’d noticed. It looked pretty unexciting to him.

  “Clearly I’m missing something. What have you seen, Rhonda?”

  It emboldened the constable to rise to her feet and sweep a hand down the relevant column.

  “All of the victims were forty-eight and older, except possibly for our unnamed male victim and this one.” She pointed to a name. “Rick Jarvis, seventeen. He’s the only one who wasn’t old.”

  While half the team revolted at her description of forty-something as old, Craig peered at the screen and then his page in surprise. She was right! Out of the ten victims they’d IDed thus far, all but one was older than forty-eight, and several were in their sixties. It raised two questions: how was the fact relevant, if it was, and why the hell hadn’t he noticed it?

  While Craig was busy questioning himself, Liam was still busy revolting. Noisily. They could have heard his indignation down in the canteen.

  “They weren’t old!”

  “But you are.”

  He swung around to see who’d said it, but every face was the picture of innocence.

  “Aye, well, every one of you except Rhonda and the geeks will be there soon enough.”

  Davy grinned. “Brilliant name for a band. Rhonda and the Geeks.”

  Craig finished his ruminations and took back control. “OK, that’s enough, all of you. Rhonda, well spotted. You’re right, and I want you to follow that up. Now, does anyone know the relevance of this discovery?”

  Andy answered in a puzzled voice. “Rick Jarvis was the body that was left pointing in the wrong direction as well.”

  Craig’s eyes widened; Jarvis was different to the other victims somehow.

  “Jarvis is important here, so Andy, help Rhonda look into him. OK, anything else? What about the others being over forty-eight?”

  John gave him an answer that made everyone’s heart sink.

  “That says to me that we’re looking at a trauma that happened before my database did.”

  Chapter Eight

  The Labs. Thursday, 7 p.m.

  Des had been sitting with his feet up for an hour, basking in the relief that comes from devolving a dirty job that you don’t want to do to someone else, when a sharp knock came at his door. He glanced around from the fuming cabinet he was facing, the swirling movement of a cloud of superglue as it attached to a set of fingerprints something that always helped relieve his stress, only to find himself taxed anew as the door opened and he was greeted by the sight of his errant CSI.

  Grace Adeyemi smiled brightly at the man that she’d wanted to work with for years and had now finally managed to.

  “Hello, Doctor Marsham. Doctor Augustus said you wanted to speak to me?”

  Des dropped his size tens to the floor with a thud, his mind racing with what she could possibly mean. Had John taken his prized artefact only to then flunk his task and betray him? Had he asked Mike to pass the buck back to him via Grace?

  His eyes narrowed with paranoia as he wailed inwardly. How could they do this to him? It was downright cruel. Typical medics! Doctors always stuck together, shafting the poor scientist without a second thought.

  As panic and suspicion propelled him to his feet, the Head of Forensics’ thoughts progressed to possible revenge. He would go on strike, that’s what he would do. He gave a cackling laugh that made the CSI take a step back. See how you like getting your DNA and prints a week late, Jo
hn Winter! All that was missing was a petulant ‘So there!’

  He was so wrapped up in his internal conversation that he almost failed to hear what Grace said next.

  “About what I found on the forehead swabs? He said it was really helping them with the case.”

  It shocked Des out of his fugue. “What?”

  The CSI stared at him as if he wasn’t quite right in the head.

  “Doctor Augustus said that you wanted to tell me what the forehead swabs had shown.” She started to back out the door. “But if it’s a bad time…”

  Des didn’t try to stop her leaving, embarrassment and guilt making his face burn red. How could he ever have doubted John, when he’d been his friend for years? And how could he ever forgive himself for what he’d been planning to do? Go on strike indeed. How unprofessional.

  It was one of the perils of working alone that Des Marsham thought that the conversation he’d held inside his head had actually hit the air, and within seconds he was hurtling down the stairs towards pathology. To say that John Winter was shocked when the forensic scientist burst through his door begging forgiveness was an understatement, but never one to look a gift horse in the mouth he adopted a hurt expression and accepted the apology gracefully, adding a hint that the branding iron’s partner torture implement would look particularly well on his shelf too.

  ****

  Belfast City Centre. 7 p.m.

  Kyle had left the briefing and headed straight for the pub. Not the team’s usual haunt, The James, but his favourite seedy, dark-walled Cathedral Quarter haunt. It seemed a fitting venue to again peruse the list of their victims’ drinking habits, but even after a fresh gaze, still, so far, unblurred by excess alcohol, the same two names jumped out. Nathan Richards and Jason Cornell.

  He checked the notes that he’d made on them, half of it poached from the seconded DCIs’ work. First up was Nathan Richards, sixty-one. A lay preacher who’d belonged to a small evangelical church on the edge of the mainstream, and who, according to his good lady wife in her original interviews, had never allowed a drop of ‘the Devil’s buttermilk’ to touch his lips. The term made Kyle snigger. Devil’s buttermilk indeed; as if old Lucifer would choose any sort of milk when he could have all the alcohol in the world.