The History Suite (#9 - The Craig Modern Thriller Series) Read online

  Craig gazed at him curiously, thinking of his own ageing parents. “And what does happen?”

  John smiled. “They do amazingly well. The research shows that they live longer, healthier lives.”

  Liam interjected. “So this suite, it’s like a home for Peter Pans then?”

  John laughed. “You could say that. I’ve seen the place and it’s amazing, well worth you taking a look. It’s called Reilly Suite. There are rooms for married couples and singles, a central canteen and even a swimming pool and tennis court outside.”

  “On the NHS?”

  John shook his head. “No, those parts were funded by some eccentric millionaire called Reilly, hence the name. He’s probably worried about his old age. The staff are all NHS but the place looks like a five-star hotel.”

  Liam was still smiling at his Peter Pan idea. “It’s like a living history suite; I bet the patients have some stories to tell. Mind you, none of them could have killed Rudd.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, it stands to reason - they’re too old.”

  Craig shook his head. “In my experience old people do all the things young people do, only with less fuss and a lot more skill.” He continued before Liam could say something rude. “And that’s where our victim worked?”

  “There and in the acutely ill elderly ward on the other side of the unit. Newman Ward.”

  Craig and Liam smiled simultaneously. Newman and Reilly – the E.M.U. sounded like Coronation Street’s fictional brewery. He nodded John on.

  “OK, so Eleanor Rudd, our victim, was found around eleven o’clock by another nurse, Hannah Donard, in the linen room when she went to collect fresh towels. As I said on the phone, Rudd had definitely been strangled less than an hour before. Manually. There were no ligatures and the bruises on her neck indicate the hands belonged to either a very large woman or a man. Whoever did it they must have had considerable upper body strength.”

  He glanced down at his desk and Craig knew there was something more.

  “What else?”

  John’s eyes darkened. “There were healed scars all over her back, the most recent a few years old. I’d say our victim had been abused when she was younger.”

  He removed some photographs from a drawer and set them on the desk. Craig stared at them, not hiding his disgust. Eleanor Rudd’s back was covered with thick, linear scars and burn marks in the familiar shape of a cigarette.

  “Definitely not recent?”

  “No. I’d say the last was made around six or seven years ago.”

  The group fell silent for a moment, imagining the childhood Eleanor Rudd must have had. Eventually Craig moved the discussion on.

  “Forensics?”

  “The C.S.I.s have just finished. First impressions are that the linen room was covered in prints, so you’re going to have a job on your hands.” Craig opened his mouth to speak and John shook his head. “Before you ask. No, there aren’t any prints on the body. I thought we might have got something from her neck but either they wore gloves or they wiped them off.”

  Liam interrupted. “What wipes prints off skin?”

  “Anything that removes sweat or oil. But they’d have had to be a cool bugger to take the time to do that. Gloves are much more likely, especially since there were boxes of them all over the place. I’ll let you know if we get anything. Des is starting the forensics now.”

  Dr Des Marsham was Northern Ireland’s Head of Forensic Science and he and John made a formidable team. If there was anything to find then they would.

  Craig thought for a moment, running through a checklist of questions before he shook his head. There was nothing more to be learned here until the P.M. results were through; time to visit the scene.

  As they rose to leave Liam grinned at John.

  “How’s married life, Doc?”

  Craig knew exactly what he was getting at but John’s face broke into an innocent smile.

  “Brilliant. I don’t know why I didn’t do it years ago.”

  “Because you didn’t meet Natalie till 2012.”

  “Ah, yes, that was probably it.”

  Liam hadn’t finished. “Any plans?”

  John gave him a puzzled look and Craig was just about to interject when John’s puzzle changed to comprehension and he nodded. “You’ve heard then?”

  Craig froze. Liam had been right; John was going to announce a happy event. Liam squinted shrewdly, not prepared to show his hand in case he was wrong.

  “I heard something. Tell us more.”

  John nodded eagerly. “It’s great. Not too big and not too small. Compact really. Natalie can’t wait to dress it up.”

  On the word ‘compact’ Craig laughed, more at Liam’s bewildered face than anything else. Liam thought John was discussing his developing offspring, but Craig had caught on quick. John was talking about something much bigger than a baby.

  “Where is it?”

  “Near you, on Annadale Embankment. It’s an 18th Century chapel, Methodist I think, but first converted into a house about ten years back. It’s really cool inside – spiral staircase, the works. We’ll have a housewarming when it’s decorated.”

  Liam guffawed.

  “What’s the joke?”

  Craig smiled. “Liam thought you were referring to something else that Natalie might want to dress up.”

  John looked bewildered for a moment and then realisation dawned. He gawped at Liam.

  “A baby! Good grief, man, give us a chance. We’ve barely got our suitcases unpacked.”

  Liam shook his head sagely. “You’d better get your skates on. Like Nicky said, you’re not getting any younger, Doc.”

  “Now Nicky’s involved? Next thing you’ll be laying a bet on it.”

  Liam shook his head. “Nah… we did that with McGregor and Smith and I’m still waiting for a return.”

  He was referring to the squad’s two newest members, Carmen McGregor and Ken Smith. McGregor was a fiery detective constable from Edinburgh, who’d clashed with Liam since her secondment from Vice in July; a secondment that had since become permanent. Smith had joined the team on a year’s exchange from the British Army. He was a bomb-squad captain who’d acted as military liaison on a recent case. Nicky had been trying to match-make the pair since they’d joined, immediately spotting Smith’s attraction to the flame-haired Scot. She’d hoped that a recent work trip to Geneva might have sealed the deal, but they’d come back just as single as they’d left.

  John stared at Craig reprovingly and Craig raised his hands in denial.

  “Don’t blame me. The baby idea was all ‘earth mother Cullen’ here.” He headed for the door. “Give me a call when you’ve some good news.” He realised what he’d said and added hastily. “I mean about the P.M.”

  Chapter Two

  St Mary’s Trust Elderly Medicine Unit. 5.30 p.m.

  The two detectives entered the E.M.U. groaning and muttering. Not because the unit wasn’t sealed off effectively, because it was, and not because civilians had stomped all over their crime scene as was often the case, because they hadn’t. They were groaning because the unit was situated at the end of St Mary’s lengthy ground floor corridor, adding a factor that would make their murder harder to solve; easy access from the outside.

  Ground floor access meant that the killing could have been opportunistic, or at least required less effort. If you could simply hop through a waist-high window, the planning ability of a master criminal was seldom required.

  Liam’s groans grew exponentially as they stepped through the police tape into the unit’s circular core. Light flooded the small space, brightening it unfeasibly on the late autumn day. That in itself was no bad thing, except that the light was pouring in through windows set in a conservatory-like ring, and smack bang amongst them was a pair of full-height doors leading to a landscaped garden and grounds. Craig shook his head. The architect had designed the space for maximum light and warmth, something that on another day he would hav
e applauded; but not today.

  They exited into the garden. It ended in a low wall bordering a busy main road.

  Liam rolled his eyes. “Whoever designed this had obviously never heard of security. Any scrote worth his salt could have been out the door and over that wall in less than a minute.” He squinted in the sunshine, pointing at something Craig couldn’t make out. “There’s even a bus-stop, in case he forgot his car! We’re stuffed on this one, boss.”

  Craig shook his head. “Not necessarily. Look.”

  Liam followed his gaze and saw a small box above the bus-stop. A traffic camera. Craig scanned the garden and noticed something else. Standing like sentinels, pressed against the hedges so that they were barely visible, were pillars mounted with CCTV. Liam revised his earlier opinion of the architect, but only marginally.

  “So we’ll be able to get a nice snap of the intruder. I’d rather they hadn’t been able to get in at all.”

  After a minute’s more scrutiny, Craig led the way back through the doors in search of a police uniform. He found a well-stretched one covering the rotund shape of Sergeant Joe Rice, a Cork man who’d moved to Belfast twenty years earlier but had never lost his native lilt.

  “Hello, Joe.” Craig gestured around him. “This is a bad business.”

  Joe smiled incongruously at Craig’s words, not because he was being disrespectful but because he was a smiley sort of man.

  “It is indeed, so.”

  Liam stifled a laugh at his sing-song voice, emphasised by the way he dotted ‘so’ randomly throughout his speech. It was a familiar Cork idiom but that wouldn’t stop Liam deliberately asking questions just to see how many times it occurred.

  “Show us where the body was found, please.”

  Joe turned obediently and walked five hundred yards down a small corridor, away from the central core. Craig gazed around him curiously. “Is the unit designed as a hub and spoke?”

  “Aye. The acute part anyway. Each spoke has single rooms, so.”

  “But how do the staff keep an eye on everyone? How would they know if someone fell?”

  Liam had already guessed the answer. “Internal CCTV. Each room is monitored from a central bank, probably at the nurse’s desk.”

  Joe grinned, spreading his chubby cheeks even more. “Well done, Liam. You’re brighter than you look, so. Mind you, that wouldn’t be hard.”

  The ensuing banter ran for a moment as Craig disappeared into an empty side-room and checked the CCTV. When he emerged he waved Joe on. They moved past the rooms and into a small square space at the end of the spoke. Three doors sat flush with the wall with no external marking to say what lay behind; crime-scene tape marked the room where their victim had been found. Craig indicated the other doors.

  “So if that’s the linen room, what are those?”

  Joe swung the nearest door inwards to reveal a small sluice. The second door belonged to a clinical room, equipped with needles, syringes and boxes of gloves. There were locked cupboards on the walls. Craig tugged at one of them, testing its seal.

  “What do they hold, Joe?”

  “Medication, so. Mostly antibiotics that the patients take, but there are controlled drugs as well. Morphine and the like.”

  Craig motioned the sergeant to show him. The Cork man withdrew some keys from his pocket, tagged ‘Sister’s Keys - Hands Off!’

  Liam gawped in disbelief. “Here, how did you get those? Most sisters I’ve met would die defending their keys.”

  Joe tapped his nose in an effort to look mysterious then he gave up and smiled. “I knew you’d want to check the controlled drugs, to rule out a junkie, so I asked Sister Norton for hers…so.”

  He opened the cupboard highest off the ground and furthest from the door. At first sight its contents seemed to be tablets and bottles of liquid. Craig pictured an apothecary’s cupboard from centuries before; apart from mahogany and glass being replaced by white wood, and pestles and mortars with boxes and spoons, nothing much had changed in seven hundred years. A second glance told them that the cupboard held something more. Behind the pills and bottles lay a steel lock-box. Craig removed the obstacles so they had a clear view.

  “Controlled drugs?”

  Joe nodded, opening the smaller door, and they knew immediately that theft hadn’t been their killer’s aim. There, neatly arranged and marked with precision on a list inside the door, was every ampoule of opiate accounted for.

  “Sister checked them?”

  “All present and correct.”

  Craig nodded and left the room. When he was six feet from the linen room he stopped, staring at its door while the others watched. It was stained with print powder, revealing too many smudges to make things simple; Des had a challenge ahead sorting them out. To the right-hand-side stood a steel trolley holding sheets and other things, to the left hung the dangling end of the crime-scene tape. Craig pointed at it.

  “Who took that down?”

  Joe stepped forward, making sure not to invade Craig’s space; it didn’t do to rile the boss at a murder scene.

  “The C.S.I.s. They finished an hour past and said we could re-open the ward when you said so.”

  Craig shook his head, not with a ‘no’ but with a ‘let’s see’. He stepped closer to the door and peered at a dent in the wood. It was faint and small and set at waist height.

  “What’s this?”

  Neither man could see what he was looking at but they pretended they did, answering “no idea” in unison, with Joe’s “so” bringing up the rear.

  Craig smiled. “You can’t see it, can you?” He beckoned them closer without waiting for an answer. They squinted and Liam saw it first.

  “It’s a dent, but it hasn’t broken the wood. Man, your eyesight’s good, boss.”

  Once it was pointed out Joe could see the dent as well. He asked the right question.

  “So? That door must get bashed a hundred times a day.” He gestured at the trolley. “Usually by that.”

  Craig nodded him on. “Show me what part of that trolley matches the dent.”

  Joe stared at the trolley then back at the door several times before finally shaking his head. Nothing on the trolley protruded sufficiently to make the mark. Liam hazarded a guess.

  “Maybe a trolley from the clinical room, or one of the nurses’ belts?”

  Craig thought for a moment longer and then shrugged, pushing away the end of the tape. “I don’t know what it is yet, but get it photographed, please.”

  His inspection over he reached for the handle to open the door, then he stared again, for so long Liam wondered if he was counting the sheets. He knew better than to interrupt Craig when he was in spook mode, so he folded his arms and leaned against the nearest wall.

  Craig scanned the linen room slowly. Its interior wasn’t as small as he’d expected. It extended back the length of three good-sized men and sideways two more on top of that, giving floor space of over five hundred square feet. Each wall was lined with shelves, their designated contents indicated by tabs: shelf one - sheets, shelf two - pillowcases, and so on. When the room was full of linen, a body could have been hidden at one end and not found for days.

  He beckoned Joe forward. “Show me where the body was found.”

  Joe pointed to the right-hand-side of the room. “There, about halfway down, so.”

  “Halfway down, you’re sure?”

  “Yes. Why? Is that important?”

  Craig knew that it was but he wasn’t sure why. Leaving someone halfway down the room where they might be seen could indicate many things. The killer might have been interrupted or lazy, or simply unable to drag the body any farther, except that didn’t fit with the level of strength required to strangle someone with their bare hands. Perhaps they’d actually wanted Eleanor Rudd’s body found; he would think about that one later.

  He turned on his heel and strode back to the centre of the unit with the other two scrambling to keep up.

  “Who found the body?” />
  “Another nurse. Hannah Donard. She’s been interviewed and sent home.”

  “Get her into High Street tomorrow, Liam. I want Annette to interview her, with Carmen, please.”

  “Why not me?”

  Craig ignored the question. “Joe, do you have the notes of her interview?”

  Joe patted his top pocket and they knew he was literally keeping it close to his chest. “I’ll have it typed up and with you tomorrow.”

  “Good. Annette will want to see it before she starts.”

  Liam turned to Craig. “Do you want Annette to interview her ’cos she used to be a nurse?” It was asked like a petulant child.

  Craig nodded. “And because she’ll be sensitive.”

  Liam blustered. “I’m sensitive.”

  “The most sensitive part of you is the sole of your foot and that’s usually inside a boot! Annette’s doing it. Right, Joe, show us the long-stay suite now, please.”

  Joe led the way with Liam walking behind Craig, pulling a face.

  “I saw that, Liam, and stop pretending to be hurt. Be logical; why would I waste my most senior team member on a witness interview when I need you here?”

  Liam’s annoyed expression changed to a grin. “I never thought of that. We’ll have bigger fish to fry.”

  Joe led the way down a wide, bright corridor with more windows on either side. When he reached a white door he stopped. Craig stared at it, surprised. It had a knocker and door-bell just like a house. There was even a letter-box in the front!

  Joe grinned. “This is Reilly Suite and you’re not going to believe the inside. I’m coming here when I get old, so.”

  Liam cut in instantly. “Not long now then.”

  Craig’s retort was just as quick. “And you’ll be here before him.”

  Liam was older than Joe by two years. There was plenty of life in him yet, but it didn’t do to let facts spoil a quip. He gestured Joe to ring the bell. One minute later it was answered by a thirty-something woman dressed in T-shirt and jeans. She smiled at them.

  “Yes. Can I help you?”

  Craig showed his badge and introduced everyone then waited for the woman to give her name.