The Killing Year (The Craig Crime Series Book 17) Page 2

  “This is Detective Chief Superintendent Craig, and I’m Detective Chief Inspector Cullen. Just who the hell are you?”

  He suddenly noticed that the bustle surrounding the scene on their arrival had ceased, in favour of a crowd now gathering to spectate their spat.

  Grace turned to the DCI defiantly, rising to her new audience.

  “I am Chief Crime Scene Investigator Grace Adeyemi, and all of my questions still stand.”

  Craig had been counting to one hundred since Liam had begun the introductions, in an attempt to come down off the boil. He’d managed it just enough to squeeze out one question, in answer to her three.

  “Which CSI team are you on?”

  She answered him in a voice full of pride. “I report solely to Doctor Desmond Marsham at the Northern Ireland Pathology Labs.”

  Des Marsham was the brilliant but scruffy Head of Forensic Science for Northern Ireland, who worked, along with John Winter, the equally gifted but much tidier Head Pathologist, at laboratory facilities in the Northern Ireland Science Park. Both men worked closely with Craig’s team.

  Liam was torn between laughing at hearing Des called Desmond, and sucking air in through his teeth in a warning ‘you’re in trouble now’.

  Craig saved him the bother.

  “There is absolutely no way that Doctor Marsham told you that moving bodies before the investigating squad has arrived to view them in situ was acceptable. You could have destroyed valuable evidence.”

  Adeyemi’s response was to flash her large eyes at each of the men in turn and then imperiously reach out a hand behind her, to have it filled quickly with a file by a scuttling junior member of her staff. She ignored Craig’s expectant reach and opened the file to a section marked ‘photographs’, turning them around so the detectives could see exactly what had greeted her when she’d arrived.

  Craig had been right; the bodies hadn’t been lying neatly paralleled as they were now, but instead had been set almost head-to-head, extending outwards at an angle to each other with both their eyes open wide.

  As Liam tutted loudly, knowing that the CSI had probably closed the victims’ eyes as well, losing them yet more evidence, Craig snapped out a series of questions.

  “You’ve taken photographs of the ground beneath them, and samples from it?”

  He was answered by a ‘How dare you even ask that?’ flash and a sharp nod.

  “And their eyes… swabbed? Corneas printed and photographed?”

  “All done.”

  “How were the eyes held open? With super-glue?”

  This time the flashing glance was more quizzical, but even though Craig didn’t know Grace Adeyemi yet, he knew that she would never ask him how he had known that fact. Instead the CSI muttered a grudging “yes” as he carried on.

  “Estimated times of death?”

  “Around twelve hours for the female, a bit longer than that for the male. They were found at nine this morning by a man out for a run.”

  “Locations of death?”

  The CSI’s expression became confused, but there was still no hint of contrition for her earlier actions until Liam underlined exactly what Craig had meant.

  “He means they might have been killed elsewhere and moved here.” He leant down towards her for emphasis. “And that means there would have been trace evidence from their original murder scenes on them, so you’d better pray that you haven’t destroyed it in your rush to tidy up.”

  With that he joined Craig, who was already heading back to the car, gearing up for a face-to-face with Des Marsham that none of them would forget.

  ****

  The C.C.U. 1.30 p.m.

  Davy Walsh was staring, and he’d stared all through lunch at The James Bar as well. Not random staring, at the wonders of nature afforded to them as they’d taken the long way to the pub past the Lagan River, nor at the sheen on the bar’s original eighteenth century brass fittings, glinting in the glow of its fairy-lit Christmas tree. No, only one thing had caught Davy’s interest over his pizza, and it had been holding it since his work day had commenced five hours before. To wit, why Ash, his friend of many years and his workmate for the past two, a man whose tonsorial adventures had ranged from blue hair through green and then to a Mohican, and whose usual sartorial efforts wouldn’t have looked out of place on a circus clown, was today sporting a short-back-and-sides frat boy haircut, one with a side parting no less, and a cutting-edge three-piece suit combo that would have done a nineteen-twenties accountant proud.

  As Davy had stared he’d been thinking. Could someone have died, and Ash be heading to their funeral later? He’d dismissed the idea because the analyst’s tie boasted large flashes of red. Well then, perhaps Ash was going to a job interview that he hadn’t told him about? But that possibility went the same way even faster. Not due to the red flashes this time, even nerdy software companies could appreciate those, but rather because Ash was completely incapable of keeping quiet about anything that showed off his analytical prowess, and the possibility of a new job, undoubtedly with a larger salary than the police force could afford to pay them, would have been blurted out at speed.

  That only left one possibility in Davy’s mind, and it wasn’t one that boded well. Ash had got himself a woman. One who liked her men to dress like they’d stepped out of a magazine.

  The senior analyst found himself shaking his head as he thought, in the way that his grandmother often did while she watched her soaps: wordlessly, but wearing an expression that had a doomsday, foreboding, bent. It was invariably followed by some character that he’d never heard of dying nastily when no-one else had predicted it, not even on social media. As first he’d assumed his Granny Rose was just a pessimist, not in life but in her viewing habits, reckoning that all soap characters had to die eventually and unpleasantly, to maintain the ratings and viewers’ need for a thrill, and that she’d just managed to guess which one would die next through sheer luck.

  But then he and his fiancée Maggie had watched a few episodes alongside her, and to his surprise he’d realised that she’d been spotting subtle clues. A glance here and an intonation there that hinted the character wasn’t long for this world, and it was only a question of when and how they bit the dust.

  Suddenly Davy stopped shaking his head and sat upright, realising that his sense that Ash’s new love interest was bad news felt more like Granny-Rose-wisdom than male cynicism. He’d clearly inherited more from his mother’s mother than her hazel eyes.

  ****

  Comber Town. County Down.

  Liam was admitting to his third surprise of the day, the first being Jack’s call saying that they had two bodies, and the second seeing them lined up like books on a shelf by a lippy CSI, but this new surprise was proving altogether more pleasant and had resulted in him being bought lunch.

  They’d been halfway back to Belfast on the A24, with Craig driving his clapped-out Audi like he was the star of a Meatloaf song, when he’d suddenly swerved off at Ballynahinch and headed towards Comber, a small town near Strangford Lough. As Craig had been ranting since they’d left the crime scene and had hardly broken off to take a breath, rather than interrupt his boss’ well deserved expletives to ask where the hell they were going, Liam had just decided to go with the flow.

  It had led them to the small, bright café on Comber High Street where they were now sitting, a place that he’d never been in before.

  The DCI gazed at his surroundings curiously; he liked new places to eat and the country had lots of those now, the speed of construction meaning that a new venue seemed to open every week. The café they were in was part of a fashion showroom, fair to say not a copper’s usual habitat, not that they weren’t both stylish in their own way you understand; Craig’s suits still had a sharp edge that said he’d lived in London for years, and while he didn’t waste much time coordinating his look in the morning himself, just grateful if he managed to leave the house wearing matching socks, Liam prided himself on having a certain r
ugged charm, Strangely no-one but his wife Danni ever seemed to agree.

  After a satisfying pudding that would have done a Michelin Star proud, Liam roused himself to ask why they were there. He was answered by one growled word.

  “Calm.”

  It wasn’t onomatopoeic, that was for sure, but the Crossgar giant understood.

  “Aye. That woman would have tried the patience of a saint.”

  It was accepted that neither of them fitted that celestial bill.

  Two coffees later Craig had found more words.

  “I didn’t want to go in all guns blazing at Des.”

  Liam shrugged carelessly, not understanding the problem.

  “Why the hell not? She’s one of his team.” He sat forward, warming to his topic. “If one of us had behaved like that you’d get it in the ear, and quite rightly too.”

  Craig burst out laughing, surprising himself. “I’m glad you think so! I hadn’t realised my role was squad whipping boy.”

  Liam continued, oblivious to all but his own sarcasm. “And then you’d pass it on to us. That’s what Des’ll do when you yell at him. Fair’s fair.”

  Craig shook his head. “I’m not going to yell at anyone. People don’t forget being shouted at, especially friends. That’s why I wanted to calm down before we reached the labs.” He took another sip of coffee. “I’ll just tell Des what I have a problem with and then he can deal with Grace.”

  Liam shrugged again. “Whatever. Shout it or whisper it, it doesn’t change the fact that woman might have destroyed evidence.”

  Craig’s lack of response said that it was time to get back to the case. Liam lifted the salt and pepper cellars and paid them down side by side.

  “OK, so here’s the way Quincy put them.”

  The comparison made Craig smile, and prompted him to lift the case file from the seat beside him and take out the photographs of the scene.

  “And here’s the way the victims were actually found.”

  Liam moved the condiments to lie head to head.

  “They weren’t touching.”

  He obediently moved them half an inch apart.

  Craig stared down at the two cellars, his face screwing up in thought.

  “Together. That’s how they were found together at the clearing.”

  The DCI glanced at him quizzically.

  “What’s your point?”

  He was answered by another photograph being produced. It was of the man on his own.

  “This was how he was found, with the woman a little distance away. Both set at different angles. Yes?”

  “According to Miss Bossy-Boots.”

  Craig smiled.

  “That wouldn’t be your nickname for Erin, by any chance?”

  Liam’s seven-year-old daughter was precocious and articulate, and she organised her parents and little brother like a general marshalling her troops.

  “Don’t start me.” The DCI’s pale eyes took on a wistful look. “I’m saving up for boarding school when she hits her teens.” He refocused briskly. “But for sake of this discussion that title belongs to Grace.”

  Craig tapped the photograph. “So, our male victim was found in this position.”

  He moved the salt cellar representing the man to lie at the correct angle and then produced a third photograph, moving the pepper representing their female victim to reflect the image that it displayed. “And our female in this position…”

  As his voice tailed away to silence Liam became confused.

  “We already know all that. Those are the positions they were in when Bossy-Boots arrived, except almost head to head-”

  Craig raised a hand to quieten him. “Bear with me. When they’re pictured together it must mean something, but I’m just wondering if each body’s individual position might mean something else as well-”

  His ruminations were cut short by a loud gasp, and the detectives turned to see a pale elderly woman growing even paler as her gaze fixed on the photographs that they had on open display. Craig suddenly realised what they were doing; not only were they looking at pictures of corpses in a public restaurant, but in a place as small as Northern Ireland the dead people might easily be recognised!

  He crossed quickly to the woman’s table while Liam hastily gathered up the images. Just then a middle-aged man approached carrying a tray, placing it down with a clatter when he saw his mother’s obvious distress. She waved an accusing finger at Craig.

  “He was looking at dead bodies!”

  The detective rushed to calm things.

  “Not dead. Just some American internet images for a book that we’re producing. I’m sorry if they upset you.”

  As the son’s mouth opened to either calm his mother or chastise Craig, they would never find out which, the woman’s face flushed and she shook her head.

  “They weren’t from America, one of them was that woman you see on local TV! What was she doing lying on the ground?”

  The son answered before Craig could.

  “Probably acting in a play or something, Mum. TV people are always doing silly things like that.”

  It was a way out, and as Liam was already by the café’s exit Craig shot the son a grateful smile and beat a hasty retreat, Liam’s “Why American?” query ignored as Craig’s hopes rose that their female victim might just have been IDed.

  Chapter Three

  The Belfast Chronicle Newspaper. The Cathedral Quarter, Belfast.

  Maggie Clarke was curious, which was part of a journalist’s job of course and also happened to be in her DNA, but neither of those reasons were why she was curious today. Today’s curiosity was born out of her desire to write a book.

  It was a hackneyed cliché: everyone has a book in them and every journalist has two, and they were all just waiting for the day that they could quit their nine-to-five indenture to their fourth estate masters and disappear off somewhere sunny to write their seminal works.

  It was also a cliché that Maggie had never really believed. Not everyone had a book in them, and even if they had, most would simply be year by year retellings of their lives, some of which would be so boring that only, or perhaps not even, their mothers would buy a copy to put upon their shelves.

  She especially had never believed that she had the makings of a tome, editing as she did the Chronicle’s news section, where stories were as fleeting as melting snow and held the public interest for just about as long. And yet there it was, that urge to scribe, not a piece measured in flimsy column inches, but one hundred thousand non-abbreviated words printed on thick paper, in chapters that could be bound.

  What was even more surprising was that she wanted to write about crime. Or perhaps not that surprising, given that her fiancé, Davy, was an analyst on Belfast’s Murder Squad, and even though he was the soul of confidentiality she probably already knew more about death in the capital city than anyone working outside its morgues.

  So then, if crime was to be her genre she faced a challenge, not just in terms of storyline but for her author credibility; after all, she’d never been a crime scene reporter or shown the slightest interest in such. The next challenge came in deciding whether her book should be fiction or fact; some dashing detective who whizzed around the city righting wrongs, or the even more gruesome true telling of local people’s deaths?

  After a moment gazing out of her office window across the piazza of St Anne’s Square, Maggie nodded decisively. Fact it was then; true life was stranger than fiction in so many ways. Part of her wondered whether she’d deliberately chosen to make things more difficult for herself, knowing how tight-lipped the murder squad were about the things they saw, or if the difficulty of extracting gory details from them was going to be half the fun.

  ****

  The Northern Ireland Pathology Labs. Saintfield Road, Belfast.

  Craig had been uncharacteristically quiet since their arrival at the pathology labs, even after their café detour to ensure his calm, so it was left to Liam to make the init
ial small talk, a feat that he found impossible to perform without cracking a joke.

  “Seen any good corpses lately, Des?”

  It didn’t even generate a surprised glance from the Head of Forensics. Des Marsham was, whether by dint of natural temperament or sight of so many dead bodies and the weapons that had rendered them dead, a man who found it very difficult to get worked up.

  Only two things in life got him excited apart from his family: Gaelic Football, both playing and watching it, and his four weekends a year spent metal detecting with his university mates on Northern Ireland’s Atlantic coast. He kept quiet about the latter, particularly in Liam’s presence. He had a sneaking suspicion the information would generate far too many jokes.

  “If you mean the two bodies downstairs, then not yet. Mike’s working on them. So I’ve no idea what killed them, before you ask.”

  That had to be Craig’s cue, so Liam glanced across at him hopefully, but the murder detective was still staring at the floor deep in thought.

  With the desperation of an academic making small talk at an MTV cocktail party, Liam grasped for yet another straw.

  “Has the Doc seen them yet?”

  There was only one doctor ever referred to as that; John Winter, the country’s lead pathologist and Craig’s boyhood friend.

  The question made Craig’s head jerk up.

  “Mike’s doing all the post-mortems for a while, Liam, you know that. John’s still off on paternity leave.”

  Like most modern fathers John Winter wanted to spend time with his new-born, but unlike most he also had another reason for staying home. The pregnancy had been a difficult one for his wife Natalie. She’d only recently found out she was a carrier of the serious clotting disorder haemophilia and had considered terminating the pregnancy in case she passed the disease on, a thought process that she’d completely failed to discuss with John until Craig’s partner Katy had alerted him, destroying her long friendship with Natalie when she did.