The Killing Year (The Craig Crime Series Book 17) Page 19

  Jake gave a tight laugh. “Lucky man. Not.” He leaned forward, all business. “OK, outline the whole thing for me first, and then you can show me that file you’ve got hidden inside your jacket.”

  Chapter Nine

  Strangford Village. 1.30 p.m.

  It had taken them sixty minutes to reach a small side road and another thirty before they’d come upon a building. All ninety minutes had been spent with Sarah holding firmly to her companion’s hand and glancing behind her for a man that she couldn’t possibly have recognised if he’d appeared.

  When the two women had finally staggered through the door of the small post-office Sarah could barely speak from exhaustion, but she’d managed to grab a pen from the counter and scribble ‘999’, before slumping down beside her companion on a plastic bench.

  The next two hours had been a flurry of ambulances and police cars, and the GP had seen the terror on her elderly friend’s face growing at their flashing lights, gently turning her towards her and smiling reassuringly. All attempts to separate the two women were refused and finally they found themselves seated opposite a detective at the local police station, after enough food and water for Sarah to have regained her voice.

  “Where are we?”

  The man seemed surprised. “You don’t know?”

  Sarah shook her head. “I was abducted from Belfast and held somewhere in countryside I didn’t recognise. When I escaped I ended up at the shore.” She gestured to her companion. “That’s where we met. This lady was there in a beach hut and she very kindly brought me inside.” She shook her head. “If she hadn’t I would have died.”

  The detective scribbled for a moment and then answered the question that she’d asked. “You’re in Strangford Station, a mile in from the lough coast.” He thought for a moment. “If I get a map do you think you could show me where you’ve been?”

  “Possibly.”

  “OK, I’ll do that in a moment, but first I need to get your names. You are…?”

  “Doctor Sarah Reilly. I’m a GP in Belfast. I went to do a home visit yesterday. No…not yesterday.”

  She wanted to cry as she realised that she had no idea what day it was.

  “I went to do the visit on Tuesday. What day is it now?”

  “Friday. You’ve been gone for three days.”

  Tears began pouring down her cheeks, prompting her companion to touch her hand and then shake her still-scarved head.

  “Don’t cry, dear.”

  They were the first words that Sarah had heard the woman utter and they made her gawp. The detective jumped in quickly.

  “And your name is, Madam?”

  “Patricia. Pat.”

  “Pat what?”

  The woman shook her head sadly. “I don’t know.”

  He nodded and turned back to Sarah.

  “OK, I’d like all of the details you can remember about your abduction, and then we’ll get on to your friend. I’ll get a constable to call anyone that you need to, then we’ll circulate both your details and see what we can find out.”

  ****

  Craig’s Office. 1.30 p.m.

  “I’ve got that missing persons info for you, chief.”

  Craig glanced up from the file that he was reading to see Ash standing in front of his desk. The detective’s expression said he hadn’t heard him enter.

  “I did knock, honestly,”

  “And when you didn’t hear a reply, you just came in anyway.”

  It was said in a resigned not an angry tone.

  “Nicky said to.”

  He and his PA would be having a word about that.

  Craig reached out a hand for the missing persons information, only to be disappointed.

  “Sorry, no page this time, but it’s on your screen.”

  The detective sighed heavily. Was it so unreasonable to always want information that he could actually hold?

  He grudgingly clicked his computer to life and searched for the relevant file. There had been ten missing persons in the previous month, five in the past week; it seemed a lot for only six counties. Craig read aloud, beckoning the analyst round to his side of the desk.

  “Walter Gruber, forty-nine; OK, we know he’s in John’s morgue. Dan Torrance, sixty, failed to turn up for an AA meeting he was chairing yesterday. I suppose he could have fallen off the wagon and be in a pub somewhere, but I don’t like the sound of that. Patricia Ware, aged seventy-five, listed as a vulnerable person suffering from dementia, who disappeared from her daughter’s house in Killyleagh, County Down five days ago, and Jonny Ross, a student aged twenty, missing since Wednesday. Let’s hope that he’s gone off with his mates and turns up soon, but we need to check that.”

  He gestured at the list. “OK, only Torrance and Ware are making my alarms ring so far, but we need to check them all out, just in case.” Suddenly he lurched forward, jabbing hard at the screen. “This one! Number five. Doctor Sarah Reilly, aged forty-eight, a GP from North Belfast. She went to visit a patient on Tuesday and never returned. Calls showed that the patient was fictitious, and no one lived at the address. Find me everything that you can on her.”

  He stood up, ushering Ash through the door and following him out to his desk.

  “I need everything you can find on these names: Dan Torrance, Sarah Reilly, and Patricia Ware are in the right age group as well. Give Jonny Ross to the local uniforms.”

  He left the analyst to it and walked across to Annette.

  “Annette, how do you fancy a trip to Bangor with me? Our John Doe’s got a name now and he worked in a factory there. I’ll explain on the way.” He glanced at Rhonda. “How are you doing on the weapons?”

  “Almost there, just the two new victims to go.”

  “OK, good. Keep going and I’ll bring Annette back as soon as I can.”

  He walked towards the exit and then did a U-turn. “Nicky, tell Liam where I’ve gone, and if Doctor Winter isn’t already coming to the briefing, ask him and Doctor Augustus if they can.”

  He turned again and shouted across the floor, making the PA roll her eyes.

  “DAVY, WHEN ARE THE GRUBERS ARRIVING FROM AUSTRIA?”

  “Six-ish. I w…was going to arrange for them to go straight to the mortuary.”

  “No, don’t. I’d like to see them first. Have someone meet them at the airport and bring them here.”

  Then he was gone, leaving Nicky tutting yet again about her squad-room being turned into a dockers’ yard.

  ****

  The Hate Crimes Unit.

  Once Liam had recovered from his visit to the H.C.U.’s space age bathrooms, he’d commandeered Jake’s computer and soon they were staring at a fresh print-out of Maria Drake’s file.

  The sergeant scanned the pages thoughtfully for a moment then rested back in his seat. When his silence had continued for what Liam deemed long enough he poked him on the arm.

  “What have you seen? Tell me.”

  Jake smiled. He was enjoying his new posting, although the extent of hate crime on their small island had taken him slightly by surprise, but there were several things that he missed about the murder squad. The camaraderie of a core team - he tended to work mostly with outside agencies now; the action - there wasn’t much opportunity to pull out your Glock during a lengthy debate on equality law, although he had been tempted at times, but most of all, and he’d only realised it that very moment, was just how much he’d missed winding Liam up. It was torture without the cruelty. Jake wasn’t quite sure what it said about him, but he couldn’t deny the gurgle of laughter rising in his chest with each of Liam’s repeated “Tell me” whines.

  The sergeant needn’t have worried about impending psychopathy; winding up your colleagues was almost the police force’s nominated sport, and seemingly some occupational psychologist had actually certified it good for morale. Whether it would prove as good for Jake’s physical health would depend on how long he continued the wind-up for, and the reddening tips of Liam’s ears said that his ti
me was almost up.

  Liam’s next words emerged through gritted teeth. “If you don’t tell me what you’ve noticed, you wee skitter, I swear I’ll-”

  Jake cut him off with a raised hand. “Chill out. It’s better for your heart.” He sat forward and turned to a page in the social worker’s file. “OK, two things. Did anyone notice that Drake was a children’s social worker?”

  Liam frowned. “Meaning what? I thought they all did that.”

  Jake shook his head. “Not full time. Social workers specialise just like the police do. Some work with children, some with addicts, some only work with the mentally ill. Drake specialised in kids, so that means child protection work.”

  Liam’s mouth opened in realisation. “You’re saying she wrecked some family and they took revenge.”

  A slightly biased view of things, but Jake parked that argument for another time.

  “Or, more likely, she rescued some child from a fate worse than death, and the abusers weren’t happy. It might be worth checking out if she’d received any threats from disgruntled families. Her partner should know.”

  “OK, good idea. But what’s that got to do with hate crime?”

  Jake spat out a laugh. “Not everything that happens to a gay person is because they’re gay you know! She might just have been killed because she’d pissed someone off.”

  Liam slumped back in his chair with a sigh. “Ach, sure I could have told you that, but I came here for some new age wisdom, you numpty. Something exciting that’ll help us crack the case.”

  “Sorry, I left my crystal ball at home this morning.”

  “None of your cheek. Just get on with it.”

  Jake stared at him blankly.

  “You said there were two things?”

  Suddenly he recalled. “Ah, OK. So, the second thing is that Maria Drake had only just come out.”

  Liam was puzzled. “What?”

  “As gay. She’d only been living as gay for a year when she died.”

  “How the heck do you know that?” He angled his head to look at the file. “Did Dee write it in there?”

  Jake nodded through his glass wall to a dark-haired girl that Liam hadn’t noticed, and she approached and entered the room.

  “This is Raina, my secretary.”

  Liam gawped at them in turn. “You have your own secretary?” He jerked a thumb at the sergeant. “Not so long ago he used to make my tea.”

  “In your dreams. Anyway, while you were off inspecting the bathroom architecture I asked Raina to run Maria Drake’s name, and it turns out that she reported some hate graffiti on her car to us six months ago. When we took a history, she said that she’d only started to live as a gay woman in November twenty-fifteen.”

  Liam nodded. “Aye, we knew she’d had some aggro from the local yokels.”

  Jake urged him on. “She was fifty-three when she came out. So, that means….”

  Liam thought for a moment and then shook his head. “Sorry. Nope. I don’t get you.”

  “It means that she’d had another life before she lived as gay, so it’s just possible that she upset someone’s applecart with her late revelation. Yes? We see quite a lot of that.”

  “Ah…I see what you mean. So, her death might be linked with her being gay, just not in the way we thought.”

  “Or it could be linked to her social work, or a million other things.”

  It wasn’t the neat answer Liam had hoped for when he’d entered the glass palace, but it was better than nothing at all.

  ****

  Strangford Police Station.

  Sarah Reilly had felt half-sad, half-relieved when an anxious middle-aged woman she didn’t know had been shown into the room where she and her rescuer were having their fifteenth cup of tea. The visitor’s relationship with her elderly companion became obvious instantly; her immediate hug and quick scan of the woman’s thin body for injuries, followed by the sigh of relief that she wasn’t hurt, said that Pat was someone who was very loved, even if her bewildered smile said that she wasn’t sure who the affectionate visitor was.

  The woman sat down beside them and lifted Pat’s worn hand, smiling in gratitude at the GP.

  “I’m Elise Ware. Thank you so much for taking care of my mother. We were frantic.”

  Sarah smiled back, demurring. “She looked after me. In fact, she saved me.”

  As she laid out the full story the daughter’s jaw dropped. “Who was your attacker?”

  Reilly shook her head. “I have no idea. I’ve no idea what they even wanted with me.” She shuddered. “But if your mum hadn’t given me shelter when she did I could have died from the cold.”

  A quiet sob broke her voice as the woman smiled proudly and squeezed her mother’s small hand.

  “Mum’s always been very kind, always worked for charity. It’s a part of her that hasn’t faded, with…her illness.” She shook her head and Sarah could feel her pain. “When she disappeared on Sunday I was out of my mind with worry. I’d just left the kitchen to put some pots in the garden shed and when I came back she wasn’t there. We searched the streets for hours. The police too.”

  A hunch prompted the GP to ask what she knew would seem like a random question. “Did your mum do much gardening in the past?”

  Elise Ware smiled as she recalled. “Yes, both she and my dad. They practically lived out there when he was alive. Pottering around the flowerbeds and his shed together.”

  Sarah nodded slowly. “I wonder if that’s why she chose the beach hut.”

  “What beach hut?”

  “It was where I met her. She’d set up house in a little hut on the shore. It must have been someone else’s once, because there was a kettle and cups there. Your mum must just have moved in.”

  The woman nodded eagerly. “She and dad always had afternoon tea in the shed! They’d made it really pretty.”

  The GP smiled. No matter how far people were from home or how confused, some part of them always sought out a familiar space that made them feel safe. She sat forward and took the daughter’s free hand.

  “I’m a doctor, so if I can ever be of any help with your mum’s care, I’d really like that. But in the meantime, I really think you should return your garden shed to exactly how it was when your dad was alive. You might find that your mother will go there instead of disappearing again-”

  The discussion was cut short by the door opening and a slim, swarthy man that they hadn’t seen before entering.

  “Doctor Reilly?”

  The medic nodded warily until he extended a hand.

  “I’m Detective Sergeant Ryan Hendron, and I wonder if we might have a few words.”

  The way he was holding the door open told her that it wasn’t to be there, so with a hug and a fond glance at her erstwhile companion Sarah followed him down the corridor, into another room where some new clothes were laid out.

  He turned to gesture at them.

  “One of the WPCs bought these for you. I’m afraid she guessed at your size, but I’d be grateful if you could put them on to keep warm. We’re going to take a little trip.”

  The GP stepped back in alarm. “Where to?”

  He shook his head. “Sorry, could you repeat that? You’ll need to speak to me face on or into my left ear. I’ve been deaf in the right since birth.”

  She nodded and asked again, “Where to?”, suddenly self-conscious under his attentive gaze; she must look a compete wreck.

  “Just to retrace your steps this morning, and hopefully then locate where you were held.”

  Her eyes widened in panic. “But I told them everything I knew! Can’t you find it on a map?”

  “I’m sorry, but we need you to confirm it.”

  “Why?” She shook her head vehemently. “No! I won’t go back there! Why is it necessary?”

  Ryan Hendron gave a sigh that was heavy with reluctance; as if he really hadn’t wanted to upset her further but now she was leaving him no choice. He nodded her to a seat and sat down close
by.

  “It’s necessary, Doctor Reilly, because there have been eleven murders this year in the east of the country, and we think that you were supposed to be number twelve.”

  ****

  Mullins Car Factory. Bangor.

  Craig had glimpsed the building’s interior from the engineering firm’s carpark, and by the time they were at its glass front door he had no doubts; the factory’s embossed rubber flooring bore exactly the same square pattern as the lividity found on Walter Gruber’s back.

  If only some of the building had been covered with it then he would have had the area cordoned off then and there, but a glance through the partitions dividing the open plan offices said that the covering ran throughout the whole ground floor.

  “STOP.”

  Craig stopped dead inside the sliding doors and raised his arm sideways to halt Annette, surprising her so much that she almost tripped. After some awkward footwork she stabilised and turned towards him quizzically. He answered her unspoken question, realising then that only he and Liam had seen the lividity first hand.

  “This floor pattern. Walter Gruber had it on his back.”

  The DI glanced at her feet with a horrified expression, as if she’d just walked over someone’s grave. Craig read her mind.

  “The whole ground floor’s covered with it. Probably the rest of the place as well.” He sighed heavily. “The poor bugger could have died anywhere here.”

  Sad though the idea undoubtedly was, Craig was also thinking of the practicalities. Walter Gruber hadn’t received any bloody injuries other than a tiny cut on his head, so if he called the CSIs down they might do hours of work with nothing useful being found. He shook his head in what Annette knew was part of some mental argument, and eventually he motioned her to follow him back to the car.