The Talion Code Page 2

  Craig knew it as well, so he reluctantly set down the twenty-fourteen file he was reading and took the bait, indulging his deputy’s need for an audience because it was almost Christmas and they were quiet. Strangely quiet in fact. Apart from a burglary/murder three weeks ago and that day’s unusual events, they’d done nothing much except paperwork since a spate of paramilitary killings two months before.

  Craig nodded. “OK. I’ll bite. What was terrible?”

  Liam shook his head dramatically. “The traffic on the motorway last night. The signs said there was a crash at the Grosvenor Road junction and we were backed up for bloody miles.” He loosened his tie, warming to his theme. “You’d think Gabe Ronson could keep things moving better, two weeks before Christmas and all.”

  Inspector Gabriel Ronson, Gabe to his friends and enemies alike, had an absolute, ‘right or wrong’ approach to life. There were no grey areas in Ronson’s universe; one mile above the speed limit was the same as fifty-one to him. Both meant a fine and three points on your licence and he didn’t care if you were rushing to a funeral or for that matter if you were a cop. If you were then you’d better be pursuing a perp with the driving skills of Lewis Hamilton, because any other excuse for speeding and your name went in his book.

  Craig raised an eyebrow. “As opposed to any other time of year?”

  Liam tutted. “Ach, you know what I mean-” He stopped mid-sentence, staring pointedly at Craig and then towards his office. “Anyway, to what do we owe this honour? You’re normally holed up in there, slaving over a hot computer.”

  Nicky gave a husky laugh. “That’s the only thing hot in there. The radiator’s bust.”

  “Aha! I knew there had to be a reason why you were out here mixing with us plebs.”

  Craig’s retort was interrupted by a high pitched squeal from Ash.

  Liam winced in pain. “There’d better be a damn good reason for that noise, son.”

  Ash’s response was a finger jabbed at his computer screen and an expression that said he wasn’t watching amusing videos of cats. As the mildly OCD analyst wiped away his fingerprint with a baby wipe Craig crossed the room quickly and stared at the PC. It was playing a posted mobile phone video of two people crushed by a lift. He shook his head and turned away, stopping Nicky who was already halfway across the floor.

  “You don’t want to see it, Nick. Trust me.”

  Liam had no such qualms. He loped across to the computer and stared for what seemed like minutes as Ash scrolled through more images that he’d found on the internet. When the D.C.I. finally broke his silence it was to swear. His next words were slightly more erudite.

  “Poor wee sods.” He shook his sandy head. “Where did it happen?”

  Ash shook his shock of blue hair; it wasn’t for nothing that he’d gained the nickname of Smurf. “There’s no location tag. Give me a minute.” A flurry of typing later he turned back to Liam, gawping. “It’s in Belfast.”

  Liam nodded slowly and spoke in his best ‘humouring an idiot’ voice. “That’s right, Smurf. We’re in Belfast. Heavy night last night?”

  Ash jabbed the screen again. “Very funny. I mean this happened in Belfast. This morning. In the Oxford Street Centre.”

  It was a new shopping centre in town.

  Liam whistled. “It’s been a bad day for local accidents. Still, I suppose Christmas brings more people out.”

  He missed Nicky appearing by his side, only alerted to her presence by a loud gasp.

  “Oh my God! Those poor children.” She leaned towards the screen. “Is that a girl’s arm?” She repeated the words louder. “IS THAT A GIRL’S ARM? Oh my God, oh my God. What happened? Where did you say it was?”

  Craig shut down the screen quickly and waved Liam to take her away. She was still muttering. “A lift. An ordinary lift did that? And they allowed the video on the Net?”

  Craig thanked God John wasn’t there to explain the effects of sudden deceleration on the human body. He’d thanked the deity too soon, as just then Doctor John Winter, Head of Pathology for Northern Ireland and his best friend since school, appeared through the squad’s double-doors accompanied by someone that they all knew very well.

  “Hello, everyone. Look who I just found in the lift.”

  At the word ‘lift’ Nicky started muttering again.

  Craig walked towards the two men. “Davy! What are you doing here? You aren’t due back for weeks.”

  The young analyst blushed shyly, but they could only see it on his face now and not his neck. The long dark hair he’d cut short for a photo-shoot months before, seduced into it by Ash and the offer of money that had paid for his fiancée Maggie Clarke’s engagement ring, was past his ears and heading for his shoulders again.

  “I’m back for Christmas. They’ve given me two w…weeks off. Maggie’s busy at work so I thought I’d drop in and say hello.”

  Davy’s stutter, which had once been quite severe, was now only present on occasional ‘s’s and ‘w’s, or if he was feeling under particular stress.

  “And you couldn’t have timed it any better. We need something to cheer us up.”

  Craig scanned the floor for his traumatised P.A. and just then Nicky emerged from his office, her face blotchy and red. When she saw Davy she lit up and rushed across to give him a hug, much to his embarrassment. Craig left them to it and waved John to a seat, pouring him a drink.

  The bespectacled pathologist glanced back at the pair, puzzled. “Has Nicky been crying?”

  Craig nodded. “A bit. Ash found a video on the internet of a lift accident in town.”

  To his surprise John seemed to know exactly what he was referring to.

  “Very nasty. Mike was called to the scene this morning.”

  Of course. Even when the police weren’t involved in deaths, pathologists often were.

  Craig changed the subject, dropping his voice. “How is Mike?”

  John smiled, knowing he was referring to the deputy pathologist’s impending parenthood with Annette Eakin, the squad’s inspector.

  “Happy as a dog with two tails. Is Annette still trying to pretend it’s not happening?”

  Craig made a face. “To everyone on the squad except Nicky. If she doesn’t tell me soon I’ll have to raise the subject myself. I need to organise her maternity cover.”

  John sipped his drink. “Good luck with that conversation. It’s not one I would fancy.”

  Craig shook his head then glanced across the floor, to where Nicky, Davy and Liam were now happily chatting away. He turned back to John, dropping his voice.

  “I need to talk to you about a case from last year. The Moriarty murder.”

  John closed his eyes as he tried to recall the case. After a moment they opened again. “Les Moriarty? The lad who killed his father?”

  “You’ve got a good memory.”

  The pathologist tapped his forehead. “It’s all in here. Every body and every case. The Moriarty killing happened between the bombing in Smithfield last summer and when you shot…” His words tailed off, but they both knew the end of the sentence. ‘When you shot Caleb Pitt’.

  It was an episode that Craig wasn’t proud of and one that it had taken him months to get past. Caleb Pitt, ex Vietnam veteran, and an eighty-four-year-old serial executioner of drug dealers. Craig had shot him dead to prevent Pitt doing the same to Liam, but even though it had been justifiable it didn’t sit well with him, even now. He’d pulled his gun many times in his career and fired it a few, but only once to kill deliberately and he hoped to hell that he never had to do it again. The detective nodded.

  “Yes, Joseph Moriarty was killed last September-.”

  John warmed to the subject. “And the son, Les, was found kneeling beside the body, covered in blood and with the gun still in his hand. Pretty straightforward, so why are you looking at it again?”

  “Harrison.”

  The name told John everything, but just to be sure he asked. “I take it that this is Carmen stirring thi
ngs up upstairs, now that she’s Harrison’s new staff officer? I know she doesn’t like you-”

  Craig snorted rudely. “Hates would be a better word. I’m not sure whether it’s me or all men, but my knowing about Ken and Lucia didn’t help.”

  Carmen McGregor had been the squad’s detective constable for sixteen months, during which time she’d dated their secondee from the army, Ken Smith. The affair had ended acrimoniously, a situation not improved when Ken had then dated Craig’s younger sister Lucia. But Carmen had been disruptive in the squad long before the romantic debacle, her unwillingness to take orders and her insubordination finally making Liam take the opportunity of Craig’s absence on suspension in October to kick her into touch. She’d landed as Harrison’s staff officer, a pairing that had made them all cringe.

  John shrugged. “It is better to have loved than lost.”

  “Says the man who won. How is Mrs Winter by the way?”

  Natalie Winter née Ingrams was a whirlwind of a hospital surgeon and John’s wife of just over fourteen months. Months that had seen the dismantling of the studious scientist’s previously sedate existence and its reconstruction into a wall-of-death ride of noise, fun and unpredictability. Now he’d got over the shock John was having the time of his life, although that didn’t prevent him having a good moan about things now and then.

  “Expecting you and Katy for lunch on Boxing Day. I’ve been told not to take no for an answer.”

  Katy Stevens, a physician at the same local hospital as Natalie, had been Craig’s partner for almost two years.

  “Sounds great, but I’d better check Katy’s-”

  John raised a hand. “Let me stop you right there. Katy said the same thing, so we’ll expect you both. Anyway, back to the Moriarty case. What’s the issue?”

  Craig sighed. What was the issue with a case that had been so open and shut? A dead father and a son caught red handed, with the fatal bullet a perfect match to the gun in the son’s hand. Plus a long history of animosity between parent and child and a very public row the week before, over the revision of the father’s Will. There should have been no doubt about the case, except that if you picked at any conviction hard enough you could always find some thread to pull.

  As Craig formulated his next sentence he noticed Ash cross the floor to tap Davy on the back, beckoning him to his computer to take a look. Davy’s expression ranged from horror to curiosity, which deepened as Ash hit some keys. A prod from John reminded Craig that he’d been asked a question.

  “The issue is Harrison’s been sniffing around it and if you look hard enough every case has holes in it. Most of the time they’re tiny and the evidence weighs in favour of a conviction, like in this one. But if someone’s determined enough-”

  “Which Harrison is.”

  Craig nodded. “He would love nothing more than to see me kicked out, as would Carmen. So they’re going through my past cases, definitely over the sixteen months that Carmen was with us, and if I know Harrison, every case that I’ve led since I came home in two thousand and eight. I’ve been through them all as well and as far as I can see there are only three where there might possibly be a gap.”

  “And in the Moriarty case that is…?”

  “Les Moriarty always denied that he did it. He said that he’d found his father dead and picked up the gun in shock, but he had no alibi and when we looked for other people with motives-”

  “You found nothing.” John rose to his feet. “OK, I’ll go back over the evidence with a fine tooth comb and I’ll get Des to do the same.” Dr Des Marsham was the Head of Forensics in the lab they both occupied on Belfast’s Saintfield Road. “I’ll tell you honestly what we find, good or bad. Meanwhile you need to do your thing.”

  Craig’s heart sank as he thought about what that meant. A daytrip to Maghaberry Prison and a fraught conversation with a man that they’d sent down for life a year before.

  Chapter Two

  HMP Maghaberry. Friday 18th December. 11 a.m.

  Craig was drumming his fingers impatiently on the interview room desk when the door flew open and Liam thundered in, uttering a string of expletives. He leaned on a nearby filing cabinet with a heavy sigh.

  “Sorry I’m late. I stopped for petrol and went to get some cash, but the cash machine was on the blink. That fricking NIBank’s worse than useless. All their ATM’s are down; it’s all over the morning news. I had to run home and cadge some money from Danni.”

  Craig knew immediately that the real delay had come from Danni expecting a chapter and verse explanation of why she should hand over her hard earned money to a husband renowned for his forgetfulness in repaying debts.

  He shrugged and waved the red-faced D.C.I. to a seat, murmuring, so that the prison guard leaning against the wall couldn’t hear, “I can lend you a couple of hundred till you get it sorted out.”

  “Cheers, boss.”

  The exchange was interrupted by a sharp knock on the door and the appearance of their interviewee in the room. Les Moriarty, someone Craig had hoped never to have to see again. ‘The Baby Faced Killer’, The Belfast Chronicle had dubbed him, and twelve months inside hadn’t aged him at all.

  As he stared at the tanned skinned, innocent countenanced youth, Craig thought about physiognomy, the Ancient Greek’s method of crime solving, which had relied on the evil that a man did being written on his face. It would have missed the mark completely with Moriarty. He looked like he’d never done anything even vaguely naughty in his life.

  They’d all been surprised when the jury had returned a guilty verdict; not because Moriarty hadn’t been guilty, there’d been no doubt of that in the squad’s mind, but because good looking perpetrators were often acquitted by juries. But patricide was so bad a crime that thankfully they hadn’t been swayed, and the judge had sent Moriarty down for twenty-five years.

  Craig leaned on the flimsy Formica topped table and shut out everything but his target, staring into Moriarty’s green eyes as if he could read his mind. He could in a way, and what he read there was smugness; nothing like the fear that had haunted the youth a year earlier, when he’d been led down the steps after his sentencing in court. Perhaps he’d found a role in prison; a way to prevent his good looks leading him places that he didn’t want to go. What had he become: snitch, trader or advisor? The three most common career choices available inside.

  Craig dismissed the last option instantly; to be an advisor you had to have knowledge that people valued; a lawyer or a doctor maybe, and Les Moriarty’s only pre-prison education had been gained by drifting from scam to scam. So was he a snitch or a trader? Craig sat back and took a second look. No. Moriarty’s smugness was too marked for it to be because of some petty victory inside the nick.

  Before he’d realised it Craig’s palm had smacked the table. Damn! He knew why Moriarty looked self-satisfied; they weren’t the first cops to visit him, and he knew exactly who their predecessor had been.

  “A Detective Constable McGregor’s been here, hasn’t she?”

  Moriarty’s smile widened. He’d guessed it in one but then there had only ever been two possibilities: Carmen McGregor or Harrison, and Harrison’s snobbery would have made him shudder at the thought of crossing the threshold of a jail. Carmen had been the bane of their lives on the murder squad and it seemed she was intent on continuing that trend.

  His thoughts were interrupted by Moriarty’s answer and Craig forced himself to focus on the words.

  “Pretty little thing.”

  His tone left them in no doubt about what he’d like to do to Carmen and, despite all the grief she’d given them, the detectives jumped immediately to her defence. Liam got in first.

  “Watch your mouth, Moriarty. That’s a police officer you’re talking about.”

  Moriarty’s eyes flickered towards him and his smile deepened.

  “Keep your rug on, peeler. I’ve far better uses for her than that.”

  Craig’s heart sank, the source of Moriarty’s smugn
ess confirmed. Carmen had given him hope that they’d reopen his case. His next question didn’t betray his inner turmoil.

  “And what did the constable have to say?”

  Moriarty laughed loudly. “Typical cops. One hand doesn’t know what the other is doing. You work together, don’t you? So if you want to know what she said why not just ask?”

  Craig had no intention of explaining; instead he was going to give Moriarty something to think about.

  He adopted a casual tone. “Let’s say you tell me what use you think Constable McGregor might be to you.”

  Liam smiled inwardly. Nice. He’d just implied they could supersede any authority Moriarty might have thought Carmen had. They watched with satisfaction as the convict’s smile faded and his eyes grew wide with fear.

  “But she said I’d get out. They’re reopening my case-”

  Craig cut across the whine. “On what basis?”

  Moriarty turned to Liam frantically and then back to Craig. “Something about it all being circumstantial and…”

  His voice rose so high that it verged on hysterical and from the corner of his eye Craig saw the guard moving forward from the door. He had one more question he needed to ask so he held up a hand to halt him and leaned forward so that he was almost in Moriarty’s face, speaking rapidly to confuse him.

  “Did she mention new evidence? Did she?”

  Moriarty nodded furiously. “She said they might have a-”

  The warder wouldn’t be stopped any longer. He cut Moriarty off and gave Craig a chastising look.

  “Time he went back to his cell, sir. He’s getting agitated.”

  Before Craig could object he signalled his prisoner to stand and a few seconds later the detectives were alone in the room. As the door shut Liam exploded.