The Killing Year (The Craig Crime Series Book 17) Read online

“Annette, call whoever Nicky spoke to at the firm and ask them to come out here. I need to phone Des.”

  His call was answered by a voice so serene he wondered if he’d got a psychic phoneline instead.

  “Yes… Doctor Des Marsham at your service.”

  Had Craig been privy to the whole Grace, John, bribery scenario he would have understood instantly, but he wasn’t and right now he didn’t have the time or the inclination to find out. He barked out a response.

  “DES!”

  It prompted the chilled-out scientist to almost drop his phone.

  “Yes… What? Oh God, who?”

  “If you ask where next I’m hanging up.”

  Craig’s brusque tones had an immediately reassuring effect on Des that the detective didn’t understand, mainly because he couldn’t see the images of an irate Grace and her equally irate husband that had been racing through the forensic scientist’s head. Compared to the imaginary Mister Adeyemi, Craig was a positive pussycat.

  “Oh, it’s you, Marc. Thank goodness. I didn’t recognise your voice right away.”

  Craig was tempted to ask who else normally yelled at him, but he couldn’t be bothered. He outlined the situation quickly and waited for some world renowned forensic advice. Instead he got a request to “hold on” and a moment later John joined the call from downstairs.

  “Hi, Marc. Des has filled me in.”

  Just then a rotund middle-aged man emerged through the factory’s sliding doors and it was Craig’s turn to say wait. He turned to Annette. “CEO?”

  She nodded. “Yes. Brian Finch. He’s the one we were due to meet.”

  The man was barrelling across the carpark at a brisk pace, but Craig needed to finish his call before they spoke, so he gestured Annette to head him off.

  “Get what you can from him and I’ll join you in a minute.”

  He tuned back into his call just in time to hear the other men having a debate.

  “You’re sure you did it?”

  “Positive.”

  “And she really took it OK?”

  John’s reply was almost smug. “I think I can safely say that Grace won’t only be OK with you in future, she’ll be positively maternal.”

  “She will? Wh-”

  Craig cut him off.

  “OK. Back to work.”

  John was relieved to hear the detective re-join them; Des had been about to ask him why Grace had experienced such a volte face, and the small detail that he’d essentially neutered him in her eyes would be better not revealed.

  “Has Des told you about the flooring, John?”

  “Yes, and it’s a tricky one. If you’re sure it’s the same pattern that we found on Gruber, and I don’t doubt you, then that means he most likely died somewhere in the building, so the whole place is a crime scene. On the other hand, what evidence are we likely to find? He died three days ago, and that floor will have been mopped and vacuumed several times since then. What do you think, Des?”

  The forensic expert’s response was immediate. “I think we have to look anyway. Even if we don’t find blood there could be Gruber’s and perhaps even the perp’s hair, and in any case even small signs of a struggle will give us more than we have right now.” His tone became authoritative. “Seal the whole place off, Marc, and I’ll send a team down right away.” He reconsidered. “Actually, I’ll come down myself as well. It sounds like this could be a tricky one.”

  A click said that the scientist had left the call, leaving Craig thinking aloud to his best friend.

  “The CEO looks the sort to have a coronary. I’d better try this one with tact.”

  John smiled. He’d seen Craig charm their extremely irascible headmaster into giving them half days off when they were fourteen, so the businessman should prove an easy mark.

  ****

  Crumlin, County Antrim. 2.30 p.m.

  Liam had been halfway up the motorway to Antrim when he’d realised he could have done some of the donkey work from his desk, but it was a bright winter’s day with only a thin coating of lying snow, so it would do him no harm to fill his lungs with some country air.

  He’d been brought up on a farm near Crossgar and he missed being outdoors sometimes, although not enough to put on his wellies and go wading through mud. Still, the narrow road he was on now, with its winding hedgerows and low stone wall made him picture his adolescent self vaulting over it one-handed and landing on the other side without a twinge. If he tried that now with his sciatica he’d be flat on his back for a week.

  He dragged himself from his thoughts of bygone days to stare at the car’s GPS. He’d already visited Maria Drake’s social work offices and his search for potentially vengeful families had yielded two names. They rested in his top pocket at that moment, waiting for his call to the local nick to check them, but right now he was on his way to Drake’s erstwhile home in Crumlin, one that she had shared with the apparent love of her life, Bryony Leyton, or at least that’s what her colleagues had told him an hour before.

  Leyton was also a social worker, although with his new-found knowledge about such things he’d ascertained that her specialty wasn’t paediatrics but mental health. She had entered Drake’s life three years earlier, when they’d worked together with a family with abused children and a father who’d had a borderline personality disorder, plus an overly familiar relationship with drink.

  By all accounts their eyes had met across the case-conference table and it had been immediate love, all of which would have been rom-com perfect had they not both already been in relationships. Liam shook his head despairingly; why did love have to be such messy shit? Surely Cupid, if such an entity existed, should only go firing his arrows at the sad singles of this world, people who wanted romance and were free to enjoy it, not set in motion some mess that broke third or in this case fourth parties’ hearts along the way. Bad planning, Cupid. Tut tut.

  It was on his first tut that Liam recognised the name of the road that he was seeking, on a small cast-iron plate almost buried in a hedge. By his second he’d swerved off the main stretch and on to it, cursing the low hanging branches now whacking his windscreen. They would scratch his paintwork and drive down the value of his Ford even more.

  The thought made up his mind; it was time to change his car. And, based on the misery loves company theory of friendship, if he was getting rid of his trusty chariot, which carried a whole range of memories in its upholstery, some too raunchy to outline but he blamed that on his excitable wife, then Craig was finally ditching that heap of crap Audi that he’d been threatening to sell for years. Sell? That was a laugh. The thing was so battered that he’d be lucky if anyone wanted it for scrap.

  He was just picturing them striding into a new car showroom together when the road he was on came to an abrupt end. Liam peered through his now seed-covered windscreen and found that the thoroughfare had been replaced by a muddy track. He would have to walk the rest of the way! Suddenly he missed his wellies from the farm.

  After ten minutes of grumbling and a loud tirade about the sort of people who lived in the wilds like hermits, the track opened into a clearing in which was set the type of cottage people painted on Christmas cards. The detective stood for a moment gazing at it, picturing himself and Danni living there in their dotage and surprising himself with warm thoughts. As he was admiring the cottage’s emerald green front door it opened, or at least the top half did. The bottom remained fixed as was the way with stable doors, with a tall, slim woman in her sixties leaning over it.

  “DCI Cullen?”

  Liam strode forward, extending a hand.

  “You must be Bryony Leyton.”

  The woman shook his hand firmly and opened the bottom door to let him in. “To the right. And wipe your feet.”

  The clipped order made him smile. His mother had barked the same to him ten times a day when he’d been a boy.

  When they were seated with a cup of tea in hand the DCI began.

  “I’ve just come from Mrs Dr
ake’s office, and they gave me the names of a couple of families who’d been giving her some grief.”

  Leyton shook her head instantly. “Maria wasn’t frightened of any of her families, Inspector. She knew that most of their noise was just anger and grief.”

  “And that’s fine, but in my line of work anger often turns to action, so we’ll check them out anyway.”

  He paused for a moment, setting down his mug commemorating the couple’s holiday in Italy the summer before and glancing at their smiling faces on the side. They’d been happy together and now some fucker had gone and ruined it.

  He’d always found that the hardest part of murder; how some bastard could shatter other people’s futures to satisfy some perverted agenda of their own. Nothing else mattered but what they wanted. It was sheer selfishness, and the thing that in his darkest moments made him want to bring back the death penalty.

  He sat forward, his hands clasped together and swallowing hard as he formed his next question. It was one that he’d asked victims’ relatives a thousand times before, but for some reason he was finding the words hard to form this time. Perhaps it was an acknowledgement that life was still a challenge for some gay people and for anyone to find real love at this stage of their lives more challenging still, so what did the future hold for the woman now sitting in front of him? How likely was she to find such a love again?

  Whatever the reason was it made his question emerge slowly.

  “Ms Leyton… who do you think did this to your partner?”

  It was always a tricky question, especially for the respondent, because it carried with it the risk of setting the police on someone’s track, and potentially sending them to prison for life. The less scrupulous might easily allow vengeance or personal bias to creep in, but Liam saw quickly that that wasn’t Bryony Leyton’s character, from the measured manner in which she stared at him and the time it took her to respond.

  “If you had asked Maria and me six months ago who’d wanted to kill us, we would both have laughed. No-one wanted to kill either of us, Mister Cullen. That’s the truth.”

  Liam’s voice was soft. “Someone did kill Mrs Drake, but from what you’re saying, I take it you think it was a completely random attack? None of her jewellery or cash was taken, so that points away from robbery.”

  “I know that, but even so, yes. I think it must have been random.”

  He tried a different tack.

  “I understand there had been rumblings locally, about you being a gay couple.”

  She rolled her eyes and sighed. “This is still a conservative country, and religion around here is strict, so yes, there were people who weren’t exactly thrilled about us. But the worst we’d ever encountered was the odd tut if we walked down the street holding hands.” She shook her salt and pepper bob. “There were none of the markers of hate crime in Maria’s death. No-one left graffiti, or abused her sexually-”

  The words made Liam wince, and he was taken aback by the dispassionate way she said them. Leyton caught his look.

  “You think I’m being callous, Mister Cullen, but I’m not.” She waved a hand in the air. “That body wasn’t Maria, it was just her shell. You see, I’m religious too and I honestly believe that she’s somewhere much better now.” She placed the hand over her heart. “And she will always be in here.”

  The gesture made Liam’s eyes brighten, and even more determined to catch whoever had taken Maria Drake’s life. He changed tack quickly.

  “When you and Mrs Drake met you were both with other people.”

  “Yes. We were.” A renewed sadness crossed Leyton’s face. “And I’m not going to say that it was easy to hurt them. Maria’s husband Rowan, and my partner, Jess, hadn’t done anything to deserve what happened to them.” She gazed defiantly into Liam’s eyes. “And before you even ask, no, neither of them could have done this. Rowan even helped Maria move in here, and I see Jess at work all the time. Don’t waste your time pursuing them, because you’ll be barking up the wrong tree.”

  Liam smiled and rose slowly to his feet, already planning his next two calls.

  ****

  The Glens of Antrim. 2.30 p.m.

  When Dan Torrance’s eyes finally re-opened it was to a bright afternoon light, but which afternoon? The detail was important because of the three-day deadline his captor had mentioned, and because afternoon always brought the hope of someone out walking, perhaps on their way to the supermarket, or even like him walking his dog post-lunch. The thought made him gasp. Maple! She would be waiting for him and starving. His immediate concern for his pet was tempered by a growing and slightly guilty hope; when Maple was hungry she barked, loudly, so perhaps a neighbour would come and check.

  As he thought about it he grew certain that they would; Mrs Stewart three doors down was intolerant of noisy animals at the best of times. Here’s hoping that her grumpiness would make her call the RSPCA and them call the police. There was no way that Torrance could have known that all of the above events had already been set in train.

  The sponsor had been scanning his surroundings the whole time he’d been thinking, but it was a very limited view of the world when you couldn’t lift your head. Or so he’d thought, until a descending crow, intent on having his nose for lunch, made him try to jerk it away. The movement that he managed was tiny, but enough to deter his attacker, and more than enough to tell him that his paralytic was wearing off.

  That could mean several things: either his attacker had made the dose too low accidentally or it was wearing off because he’d been delayed, or perhaps, worse, that the bastard was lurking around him now, sadistically waiting to see his hopes rise so that he could swoop in and dash them with another jab.

  Torrance listened carefully for the sound of feet on grass but there were none to be heard, so he returned to his first two options: his kidnapper had underestimated the dose, or something had prevented him getting back on time. Either way he didn’t care. If the chemicals had begun wearing off while he’d been asleep and not using his muscles, then they might wear off even faster if he could burn some energy up.

  With every ounce of determination he possessed, the sponsor tensed and relaxed each of his muscles from head to toe, calling on knowledge acquired during a brief flirtation with weight-training to focus on the different groups. The effort was so enormous that sweat poured down his face and his pulse thumped loudly in his ears. He stopped periodically to listen for someone approaching and then restarted, knowing that his survival might depend on the next few minutes of his life.

  Finally, Torrance was able to lift his head, and as he continued to exercise his other muscles he scanned the place in which he lay; it was a small grassy clearing set within a larger copse of trees that split the bright winter sunlight overhead into a fan of wide white rays.

  His mind wouldn’t let him call the area a wood because of the isolation that implied, but no matter how far he peered he couldn’t see signs of life, apart from a cluster of bees buzzing close to some nearby brambles and some butterflies hovering over a small stream. The location was beautiful, like some fairy grotto, but the sponsor wasn’t in an appreciative mood.

  Slowly, agonisingly, he began to feel movement in his hands and feet. The first spasms had just begun twitching in his thighs when he heard the snap of a small twig. He stifled a gasp and closed his eyes, willing himself not to even tremble as he heard heavy feet approach.

  A sharp kick hit his calf and then his assailant knelt so close to his ear that the sponsor could feel his breath. His impulse was to get the man’s head in an arm lock and choke him, but he couldn’t be certain of his strength just yet.

  “Still out cold, sponsor?”

  Sponsor. This man knew everything about him! Torrance was taken aback but willed himself not to show it.

  “I’m not staying but I’ll be back later. Just need to check in on my life.”

  The sponsor braced himself for the familiar prick in the back of his hand, but instead he heard his kidna
pper clamber to his feet and stand there for a moment. Torrance knew what he would have done next in his place; stabbed him with something sharp to see if he was play acting. That had to be the thought running through his captor’s mind right now.

  Whether it was or not the sponsor would never find out, because a moment later his abductor turned on his heels and left the clearing the same way that he’d come.

  Torrance opened his eyes just a crack and waited, waited until the crow appeared again, warier this time and perching on a branch above his head, waited until the light grew duller above him and he knew that it would soon be dusk, waited until the spasms in his legs had passed completely and he instinctively knew that he could stand and run. So, he did.

  With one massive effort he sprang to his feet, scattering crows and leaves and the clanging remnants of his assailant’s makeshift torture chamber as he did so, and then, with a three-sixty scan of his surroundings to assure himself he was alone, Dan Torrance took to his heels and ran until his heart thudded in his chest and sweat dripped down his face and back, and further, and further, until he was certain he was free.

  Chapter Ten

  Mullins Car Factory. Bangor.

  Craig’s heart was being strangely athletic, leaping when Des appeared with his coterie of suited-up CSIs, notably without Grace Adeyemi in their midst, and then sinking in increments as they moved through the floors of the five-storey engineering complex, to find identical grey embossed flooring everywhere but the carpeted offices, purchased in bulk as the CEO told them, ‘for economies of scale’.

  He knew that the forensic scientists would be there for hours, so after a brief interview with the chief executive, who’d mapped out Walter Gruber’s movements day to day, Craig had nodded Annette towards his car and left the white-suited men to it, with the promise of their first findings being delivered to him by four o’clock.

  Thankfully the engineer’s movements had mainly consisted of a well-worn trek between his office and the second-floor laboratories, and his final sighting had been there by a cleaner, on the Monday evening four days before when he had stayed late to finish a report.