The Careless Word (#8 - The Craig Crime Series) Read online

  John Winter stood amidst his new décor wearing a hesitant smile as Liam’s once-stunned horror at the lab’s old Rue Morgue ambience was replaced now by gawping disbelief at its violation. Craig knew he was about to say something rude on both their behalves and Liam didn’t disappoint.

  “Who the hell did this? It’s like Ikea on Ecstasy!”

  Craig stifled a laugh then stifled it harder as John’s face fell.

  “Natalie chose it.” He set his jaw defiantly. “And I like it!”

  Liam opened his mouth to contribute another interior design review and Craig swiftly intervened.

  “It’s very… sunny.”

  John’s face fell even further. He gazed first at his long-time friend and then around the room, as if seeing it for the first time. His voice held a defeated tone. “It’s awful, isn’t it?”

  Craig tactfully said nothing but Liam nodded vigorously and inhaled to speak again. John continued before he could.

  “Natalie likes yellow and she said the place was dull.” He turned dolefully to Craig. “Did you think it was dull?”

  “Nope. I thought it was calm and academic; a bit like an old library.”

  John shrugged, realising that he’d let himself be pressured into the wrong decision. Craig patted him on the shoulder.

  “I know Natalie meant well, but if you want my advice, change it back. It’ll send the message that you’re going to stick to your guns. Marriage isn’t a dictatorship, John.”

  Liam made a martyred face. “Tell that to Danni.”

  Craig laughed. “You’re the least hen-pecked man I know, Liam. So forget the sympathy.” He gestured at the walls. “Tell Mary you want it re-painted.”

  Mary McCarthy was the long-suffering manager of the labs, who’d been given the thankless task of keeping the pathology and forensic teams on-budget by Stormont. Something that she singularly failed to achieve.

  “You can get your old cabinets and pictures out of storage and have it back to normal in a few days.” Craig headed for John’s small office. “Now, let’s get to work. Put the coffee on and give us an update on the bodies.”

  John strode towards his office assertively, more certain of his ground. He removed a slim folder from the top drawer of his desk and spread out four pages bearing the post-mortem header, starting to report in a solemn voice.

  “I’m sorry to say it but these are going to be fairly useless, at least for the next few days.”

  Liam gestured at the pages. “How so, Doc? We already know the two intact bodies were men, surely there must be something to I.D. them by.”

  John fixed Liam with a sceptical stare. There would have been an excuse for Craig asking the question; he’d spent fifteen years policing in London and only returned to Northern Ireland in 2008, ten years after the Good Friday Agreement had been signed and peace had started to reign. But Liam had worked in Northern Ireland all through the Troubles; these weren’t the first bomb victims that he’d seen.

  “I wasn’t talking about the intact bodies, Liam. Do you have amnesia?”

  Liam railed in irritation. “No, I bloody don’t. I picked enough of my mates’ body parts off the ground to know what the scene must have looked like. But there’s always something to give an I.D.”

  John nodded, accepting that he was right. He smiled apologetically.

  “Sorry, my bad. I’m stressed about the wedding and to be honest I haven’t seen a lot of blast victims so it’s a nasty one even for me.”

  Liam nodded in realisation. Most of the explosions in Northern Ireland had been thirty years earlier, while Craig and Winter were still at school. Liam assumed his role as Dad of the group, smiling wisely at them with the benefit of thirty-one years as a cop.

  “No problem, Doc. I’ve seen a lot more bomb debris, human and otherwise, than you or the boss. It’s a dubious privilege, trust me.” He waved a freckled hand towards the papers. “What did you find?”

  John started to report. “I have two mainly intact bodies downstairs but the C.S.I.s also gathered parts of more. We have remnants of limbs torn away in the explosion and small fragments of bone. My guess is that whoever the bones belonged to was standing closest to the bomb when it went off.” He took a gulp of coffee and carried on. “The two intact bodies were male, one around early forties, and one older; probably in his sixties somewhere. I haven’t started their P.M.s yet.” He made a face. “That’s tomorrow morning’s joy.”

  Craig interrupted. “Is there any way to I.D. them, John? Teeth, prints…”

  John nodded. “Yes, those two should be fairly easy. Des is working them up now.” He glanced at the phone. “I’ll call him down in a minute.”

  He paused and took off his glasses, rubbing his green eyes hard. They all knew it was a distraction technique. It wasn’t his eyes John was rubbing; it was the images of the dead bodies that he was trying to erase. Craig prompted the pathologist gently.

  “The others, John?”

  Winter nodded slowly. “Yes… the others. They were probably male as well.” He turned to Liam and a note of incredulity entered his voice. “How did you do it, Liam? For all those years? How did you see those things and not go mad, especially when it was your friends who’d been killed?”

  Liam’s normally open face clouded and he shook his head. When he finally spoke his deep voice was sad.

  “It was another time, Doc and we were all running on a hamster wheel. Every day brought a new explosion that had to be cleared up, and the only way to get through it was not to think. Not to think that the thing you were picking up from the street was actually part of someone with a name. “He swallowed hard. “It was easy enough when the bits looked like nothing, but…”

  Craig interjected, saving his deputy. “When they looked human, it was something else.”

  Liam nodded. “Especially when you knew the owner’s name.”

  John asked the question that he knew Craig wanted to ask but didn’t really want to hear the answer to. “What did you do to cope, Liam?”

  Liam was gazing through the small room’s window, back into the past. He started at the question.

  “Me? I drank, Doc. A lot. The police club was one of the few places where we could socialise safely, so there were a lot of heavy drinkers around.” He smiled wryly. “Nowadays you’d call them alcoholics. Sport as well; I kicked the hell out of a ball every chance I got.”

  “And the others?”

  “Aye, well. They went to hell their own way. Booze, affairs, drugs; you name it and someone was doing it.”

  Craig nodded. They already knew from a recent case in Portstewart that the affairs hadn’t all been confined within the ranks. Melanie Trainor, an Assistant Chief Constable, had ‘crossed the floor’ and had an affair with a republican terrorist. He was sure that she hadn’t been the only one. War made strange bedfellows.

  Craig decided it was time to deal with the present, before the faraway look in Liam’s eyes dragged him down the rabbit hole into the ’80s.

  “OK. Today’s explosion. Two intact victims and judging by your four pages, two not so. How did you reach the conclusion that all the victims were male, John?”

  John brightened up and tapped the file. “With the intact victims there were characteristics, with the others it was the shoes. It’s surprising how resilient shoes are. Clothing gets shredded in a blast almost instantly but shoe leather lives to tell the tale. All the shoes we found were flat lace-ups so at the moment we’re assuming that they all belonged to men, although one pair is pretty small, a size seven. We found four different types, so four victims; two bodies still intact. The interesting thing is Fintan Delaney, the young man who survived. He was practically untouched. Just a few cuts and bruises.”

  Liam nodded. “We used to see that with people just outside the blast radius.”

  John shook his head. “Not this time, Liam. The back of the shop and the whole yard behind it was damaged, so he was well within the bomb’s radius when it went off.”

&
nbsp; “How’s he still breathing then?”

  John gave a small smile. “Bookshelves. We think there were some between him and the blast. They were made of teak, one of the strongest woods there is, so they protected him. You’ll see when you get to the site, but we think the bomb was planted at the back of the shop. Delaney was standing near the front door and the bookshelves were in between.”

  Craig whistled. “Lucky boy. He’s at St Mary’s. We’ll head up there after we check out the scene.” He grinned. “I can tell Natalie you’re changing your lab back to its former glory while we’re there, if you like.”

  Natalie Ingrams, John’s fiancée, was a consultant surgeon at St Mary’s Healthcare Trust and a five-feet-tall bundle of energy and fun. ‘Dynamic’ didn’t do her justice but Craig couldn’t think of another word. Natalie was the best thing that had ever happened to his quiet friend, but she liked her own way, and whether by cajoling, orders or blackmail, she usually managed to get it.

  John shook his head hastily. “Let me tell her when I’m ready. Natalie doesn’t like to be thwarted.”

  Something dawned on Liam. “By any chance is Nat having yellow flowers at the wedding?”

  John nodded innocently. “Yes, actually. They’re called Poinciana; the Pride of Barbados. They’re the National flower of the island. But how did you know?”

  “It explains the colour of your walls.”

  While John recovered from the fact that his lab had become a yellow wedding accessory, Craig lifted the phone. It was answered in two rings by Dr Des Marsham, up on the fifth floor. Des was Head of Forensic Science and he and John made a formidable team.

  “Des’ place.”

  Craig laughed. “Hi Des, could you come down to John’s office and bring anything you have on the explosion. Liam’s here as well.”

  Within two minutes the ever-widening figure of Des Marsham entered the room, his face adorned by an immoderate amount of hair. Liam was first with a wisecrack.

  “You look more like Santa Claus every time I see you, Des. Eating for two?”

  Marsham thrust his abdomen forward challengingly. “Go on. Punch it.”

  Liam guffawed. “I’d knock you into next week.”

  “Do it.”

  “OK, you asked for it.”

  Liam drew his arm back and punched Des’ stomach for all he was worth. Craig winced at the thud that followed but Des didn’t even flinch, just came back with a caustic. “Is that all you’ve got?” He patted his abdomen and then took a seat before Liam decided to have a second shot. “Muscle, pure muscle. I’m taking part in a strongest man competition in a few months and I’ve been training. What you see in front of you, gentlemen, is a man at the peak of his powers.”

  Craig interjected dryly. “Is the facial hair a sign of something too?”

  Des stroked his newly regrown beard. “Virility. All the competitors have beards.”

  Liam jumped in, quick as a flash. “I bet your virility’s not getting much of a work-out with that fuzz. Annie hated your beard last time.”

  Craig raised a hand to still the banter. “OK. Entertaining as all of this is, Liam and I have a scene to get to.” He turned towards the champion weight-lifter. “Des, I know it’s early days, but do you have anything for us yet?”

  “As it happens, yes. I’ve managed to I.D. one of the bodies from dental records, and the first returns from the C.S.I.s show that the bomb was set under a bookshelf at the very back of the shop.”

  Craig interrupted. “Any idea what types of books were kept there?”

  Des looked at him curiously. ”Why?”

  Craig shook his head and waved him on.

  “OK. The answer to your question is no, not yet. We found remnants of signs indicating topics like history and politics, but they were blown all over the place so we’ve no idea which area of the shop they referred to. Your best bet on getting the layout is the owner’s wife, although she may be too upset to help. Her husband is the body we’ve just I.D.ed.”

  Craig nodded. Piecing together the shop pre-blast was going to be a challenge; he just hoped that there was a floor plan somewhere.

  “What was his name?”

  “Jules Robinson. He was sixty-eight. Davy can find out more for you, but initial checks show that he’d owned the shop since 1995.”

  “What sort of place was it?”

  Des answered Liam’s question in exaggerated tones. “It sold books, Liam. Ones without pictures.”

  Liam rolled his eyes. “Very funny. But you’re too late; Annette’s already cracked that joke. I meant did the shop have a specific theme?”

  John interjected. “It’s a valid question, but as far as we know, no. It was antiquarian and held some valuable first editions, but in terms of their subject matter, we don’t have a clue beyond the signs Des mentioned.”

  Des chipped in. “The question is why the hell would someone blow up a shop full of fusty old tomes? There must have been something crooked going on behind the scenes.”

  Craig nodded. “That’s what we aim to find out. Anything else?”

  Des nodded. “Yes, actually there is and it’s a bit strange. Something was found amongst the bomb debris.”

  Craig leaned forward eagerly. “In the shop generally, or in the bomb itself?”

  “Right in the centre of the bomb. Army bomb disposal are gathering everything they can, hoping to get the bomber’s signature, but they sent me the images of the debris because they’d never seen anything like it before.”

  Des reached for a folder that no-one had noticed him carrying and distributed the photocopies inside. There was silence for a moment as they all stared at the sheets. Amidst the charred wires and metal remnants lay the unmistakable outline of scrollwork, set in a rectangular shape.

  Craig spoke first. “It’s a photo-frame.”

  The others peered at the image and acknowledged that he was right.

  “Who the hell puts a photograph inside a bomb? You’d have to hate someone a lot to blow up their picture.”

  Craig shook his head. “Or the opposite. You could be saying ‘I did this for you’. If you hated someone you’d make them the victim of the bomb, not use the bomb to celebrate them. We’ll find out for sure when we see who was in the photo.” He turned to Des. “Was there anything that could have been a picture found nearby, Des?”

  Des shrugged. “That was all they sent through. You’ll have to ask the army.”

  Craig leapt to his feet, beckoning Liam to do the same. “That’s exactly what we’re going to do.”

  Chapter Three

  5 p.m.

  Katy Stevens wrinkled her forehead at the dress in front of her, struggling hard not to show her dismay. It was a blancmange of yellow taffeta, with yards of frills down one side. Natalie Ingrams watched her best friend’s face through a lens of excitement.

  “Isn’t it gorgeous? You’ll be carrying a posy of Poinciana as well; they’re the flower of the island. It’s almost identical to my dress, except mine is white of course.”

  She grinned broadly and danced around the room, holding Katy’s bridesmaid’s dress in front of her. When Natalie slowed down, Katy took a deep breath and motioned her best friend to take a seat; rifling through her medical training to find the section headed ‘breaking bad news’. She prayed that she was equal to the task. If she wasn’t then she’d be spending Natalie’s wedding dressed as a giant fruit.

  “It’s… lovely, Natalie. Very pretty. But…”

  Natalie’s face fell and Katy felt instantly guilty. She fought her need to confess that she was trying to change Natalie’s mind because the dress was hideous, and convinced herself that it was impractical instead. She could beat herself up for the lie later.

  “It’s just… I checked the temperature on the island, so that I knew what to pack, and it’s going to be in the eighties for the whole two weeks. If you wear taffeta, you’re going to be par-boiled.” She produced the piéce de resistance. “You’ll be bright red in all your ph
otos!”

  Katy convinced herself that it was for the greater good. The wedding photos would haunt Natalie for years, not to mention making her look like a giant grapefruit. Natalie’s small face fell further as she considered, then her expression brightened and Katy could see logic beginning to trump desire.

  “Eighty degrees? Are you sure?”

  Katy nodded, setting her blond waves flying. “Positive, I wanted to know what sun factor to bring.”

  Natalie pondered for a moment longer and Katy could see every thought reflected on her face. She interjected cautiously.

  “Have you paid for the dresses yet?”

  Natalie shook her head. “No. They’re off the peg. On approval for a week, from that bridal shop in the city-centre. You know, the one called ‘Never leave me.’ ”

  Katy nodded. She knew the shop and from what she’d seen of the dresses it sold, it would be more a case of ‘Bye-bye’ than ‘Never leave me’ for most bridegrooms. She reached into her U.N. peacekeeper’s toolkit and made a tentative suggestion.

  “What if…”

  Natalie blue eyes swivelled round like a hawk. “What if what?”

  “Well… the ceremony’s being held on the beach. Yes?”

  Natalie nodded suspiciously. “Yes… so?”

  “So it’s going to be absolutely roasting and do you really want to spend the happiest day of your life feeling like a cooked chicken?”

  “But…”

  Katy pushed on. “Because I know a shop where we can find something absolutely perfect for you. Light and floaty, a dress that will suit you to a tee.” And one for her too, she hoped.

  Natalie’s tone was sceptical; she’d trailed round a dozen shops already. “Really?”

  Katy fixed an earnest expression on her face, keeping an image of Craig gazing admiringly at her in her bridesmaid’s dress firmly in her sights.

  “Yes, really. It’s called ‘Forever Bridal’; I know the lady who runs it and she’s lovely. Look, what do you have to lose? ‘Never leave me’ is going nowhere so you always have that option. Let’s just go and have a look. If you don’t like any of the dresses then you’ve lost nothing.”