The Grass Tattoo (#2 - The Craig Modern Thriller Series) Read online

  The day was abnormally ‘soft’ for the time of year, warm and wet; Northern Ireland’s climate was definitely changing. Global-cyclical or global-warming, who knew, but the guaranteed winter snow and summer light of his childhood seemed to be morphing into a milder year-round cloud. He missed the snow.

  An impudent gull had perched on the narrow sill outside and was pecking lazily at his window, with no hope of access. Craig smiled at it. The windows were heavy-duty and never opened; the force ever fearful that they’d throw themselves out after a bad day. He’d need a bungee rope for every murder.

  He stared past his companion and towards the sky, searching for inspiration. What were the Vors doing in Belfast? Northern Ireland had eastern immigrants like everywhere in Europe, but they’d had no briefings to suggest that the Vory v Zakone were part of that population. Davy was putting out the feelers in serious crime. If they were here, it was odds-on that the drugs, vice or fraud squads would know about it already.

  He smiled, remembering London, where practically everyone was an immigrant from somewhere, himself included. It made for a more tolerant society and Belfast could only benefit from that. He always felt protective towards anyone new; it was hard learning new ways. He wondered vaguely if Kaisa Moldeau found it a challenge, his mother Mirella certainly had.

  She’d come from Rome, the Eternal City, forty-three years before, when she’d married his Belfast father, Tom. It had been a huge sacrifice, only made bearable by her twice-yearly visits home and the constant stream of Italian cousins visiting throughout their childhood, improving their rusty Italian.

  They’d met when his scientist father was presenting a paper in Venice, in the same conference building where his mother had been a pianist. And, as she’d never tired of telling them, it was love at first sight, or ‘amore a prima vista’ as she much preferred to say. He smiled to himself; they were an old married couple now, living in the quaint town of Holywood, ‘home of Rory McIlroy’, one of Northern Ireland’s favourite golfers.

  He shook himself back to business. He still felt that he was missing something, but what? After a minute chasing the thought he gave up to try again later, knowing that he should return the phone message that he’d received earlier. He hesitated for a moment and then quickly lifted his mobile before he changed his mind. Not from any lack of inclination, but from caution.

  It was answered in three rings and the familiar clear Anglo-Irish voice of Julia McNulty answered warily, recognising his number.

  “D.C.I. Craig. Hello.”

  “Hello, Julia.” Hoping that she would follow his informal lead. She didn’t.

  “Thank you for returning my call, D.C.I. Craig. Would it be possible to get a copy of the Adams’ file?”

  He knew that he deserved her frostiness, he’d hurt her. She was a beautiful woman and he’d foolishly risked a dinner that could have led to more, if his past hadn’t prevented it. But it had.

  She knew why. She understood that he still had unfinished business with his ex-fiancée Camille. She understood, but that didn’t mean that she was happy about it.

  He picked up the conversation from her lead and it became a formal call, until with all the business done, she made to go. He stopped her, gently.

  “Julia, I’m sorry that I hurt you.”

  Her reply came quickly, and coldly. “I can assure you that you didn’t.” But he had.

  “I just didn’t want to embroil you in my mess, you know that.”

  “I’m fully aware of the facts, sir.”

  Craig could feel his frustration rising. “Oh, for God’s sake Julia, talk to me.”

  “We have nothing to talk about, sir.”

  “Yes, we have. We have to work together and we can’t do that if we’re barely civil.” He looked at his watch and made a swift decision. “I’ll be in Limavady in an hour, and I’d like a meeting, D.I McNulty.”

  There was silence for a moment. He hated pulling rank, but he knew that she couldn’t refuse to meet a senior officer. Finally she answered him, slowly, and feigning indifference.

  “As you wish, sir. I can do 5.30. Now I really have to go.” And with a quiet click, she’d gone.

  And without even planning it, he’d found his perfect exit from Harrison’s press fiasco, and from Maggie Clarke’s demanding gaze.

  ***

  The dissection room was always cold, but John rarely felt it, much more interested in the dead’s answers than his own comfort. Davy had phoned through his findings on the photographs five minutes before and they fitted perfectly with John’s on the bullet. Now he just had to work out the logistics.

  Normally Des would look at bullets and trajectories, but he was on leave, and John didn’t want the north-west having all the fun, so at that moment he was in Des’ lab on Des’ computer, playing with Des’ programmes, and setting up a spectacular light show for Marc Craig to solve.

  ***

  Joe Watson hadn’t believed it when he’d been told, dismissing it angrily as Stormont gossip. The grapevine running away with itself again. Then he’d tried her mobile, listening anxiously as it rang and rang, and then cut to her sweet, kind voice on the answerphone, entreating him to leave a message.

  He’d left three now, with no reply, and he thought vaguely that the police would soon know that he’d called. But he didn’t care, not even a little, unable to shake off the image that while he’d been having the best sex of his life; Irene had been somewhere alone and frightened. He reached for the whisky bottle and poured himself another hit, trying to drown the pain, but he couldn’t. The mother of his child was dead.

  Chapter Eight

  Bob Leighton wasn’t hanging around. Once they’d told him about the note, he’d known exactly what was happening, and he wasn’t staying for the finale. He looked around the bedroom that he’d shared for years, with the woman that he’d killed as surely as if he’d pulled the trigger. His eyes filled with sudden tears.

  He sat on the edge of the bed with his face in his hands for a moment, remembering her. Her warm laugh and her shining fair hair. The scent that she’d always worn, that smelled of raspberries and summer, all year round. He smiled at the memory of her touch while tears ran freely down his cheeks, and then he sobbed rawly that their son would never feel that gentle touch again.

  They’d loved each other, really loved each other, but he’d buried it under career and politics. Under the years of his infertility and trying desperately for a baby, nearly breaking them, in every way possible. None of it was her fault, none of it. She’d stayed as kind and loving as the woman that he’d married twenty years before. Never demanding, never scolding, and never giving him a reason to be cruel. But he hadn’t needed a reason, it was just who he was. He loved power.

  With the power came more stress and easing it with drugs, and now, what? Kaisa? He would never have done anything while Irene was still alive, but now? He needed warmth and comfort and he couldn’t stop thinking about her. But he couldn’t tell her yet; too soon, it would be wrong. People would think that he’d never loved Irene. But he did.

  He kept packing and thinking, now and again lifting one of his wife’s trinkets, tempted to put them in his case as a keepsake, already wearing her wedding ring to remember her by. He needed to get away, just for a few days. To think, and find a way out of this mess. He’d be back, Ben needed him. Of course he’d be back.

  Just then, a telephone rang and it took him a moment to decide, landline or mobile? Then he reached into his jacket pocket, and looked at the flashing screen. No number, it could be the office. He hastily pushed another shirt into his case and pressed ‘answer’.

  The man’s voice wasn’t one that he recognised. The accent was so heavy that at first he didn’t understand what he’d said, so he asked him to repeat it. He understood him clearly enough the second time.

  “You bought the grass for her, Mr Leighton. And you will have it yourself soon.”

  He froze and drops of sweat formed urgently on his upper lip
. Then he shouted down the phone. “Who are you?” Silence. “Leave me alone, for God’s sake. I don’t have it.”

  “You must find it, or we will find you.”

  “But it wasn't my fault.”

  “You were hired and you failed. Then you got greedy. Ten, Mr Leighton, by Saturday. This is the last call that we will make.”

  The line went dead, and Bob Leighton gasped wildly for air, his throat closing over in fear. He sat down heavily on the bed, coughing, and completely out of his depth. Who the hell were these people? What sort of people had Joanne Greer involved him with?

  He grabbed for his phone and was just about to dial her number when there was a soft knock on the door. It opened slowly inwards, revealing Kaisa and his toddler son. Ben’s tear-streaked face looked exactly how he felt.

  Kaisa ushered the boy towards his father with a sad look. “He is missing his Mama.” Oh God, so am I, Ben. He put the phone down and lifted his baby son urgently into his arms, hugging him tight, to comfort both of them. Kaisa sat down primly on the bedroom chair and stared at the chaos of clothes.

  “Are you going on other trip?”

  He answered her quietly so as not to frighten the boy. “Yes. I need to go to London for a couple of days. But when I’m back I’d like us to talk, Kaisa...about the future.”

  She smiled to herself quietly. Men often said such things to her, always talking about their future. She wasn’t being arrogant, it was just the truth. But she looked at him faux-questioningly anyway; it didn’t look good to be too confident. His quick look answered her question, and she smiled, gently extricating Ben from his father’s arms.

  “Shall we go to park, Ben? We can feed ducks. And then, when Papa is back, we can talk about the future...”

  ***

  “Thank you for coming, Mr Cabot. I know it’s rare for a Minister to volunteer for a meeting with the Commissioner.”

  Joe Watson laughed nervously and gestured the round-faced Commissioner for Public Conduct to take a seat. John Cabot looked at him curiously. He’d been surprised when Watson’s staff had called his office; politicians normally avoided him like the plague, keen to hide their bad habits from his scrutiny.

  But when he’d heard why, he’d been eager to meet. He’d gathered together the papers that he’d been preparing for months, in anticipation of just such a moment. As far as he was concerned, this meeting was four years overdue, but the retirement of one Minister often opened doors for another to come along, with fresh eyes, and hopefully more honesty. Now all of his preparation would come to fruition and with Joe Watson’s help he would expose a national fraud that would give the Chronicle column inches for months to come.

  ***

  Bob Leighton finally made the call to Joanne Greer just as he was about to board at Belfast City Airport. “You cow. My wife is dead because of you. Who the hell are involved with?”

  She hissed down the phone at him. “I warned you that London would get involved.”

  “You set some bastards on me, and now they’ve killed Irene. She had nothing to do with the deal. She didn’t even know about it. You’ve left my son without his mother. You bitch. I’m going to kill you when I get back.”

  “I think you’ll find you’d already killed her, Bob, once we paid you half a million pounds.”

  “Five hundred grand, you killed my wife for a poxy five hundred grand.”

  He was yelling as loudly as he could in an airport lounge, without being arrested, and the coolness of her voice was infuriating him even further.

  “Now some gangster calls to tell me I owe them 10 million, 10 million. Where the hell do they get that from? Who are these bastards?”

  Joanne ignored the question. “Your job was to keep the Minister sweet, Bob. All you had to do was finesse the Horizon Project through the sub-committees, and we’d have been home and dry by now. But you couldn’t even manage that.”

  “Ron Burgess was fine, we got the approval through without a murmur, but he had to go and retire halfway through. Joe Watson is a different kind of Minister. He knows that the contracts are bogus. You’re embezzling public funds, Joanne.”

  “And you. Let’s remember that you’ve had half a million a year since 2008. It all adds up, Bobby. Watson has been interfering in everything since he joined S.F.F. You’ve had nearly a year to sort him out and you’ve done bugger-all. Now he’s going to blow it wide open. Did you really think that we’d do nothing? We’ve got millions invested in this!”

  “Who the hell is ‘we’? You said you were in this with Declan. He would never sanction killing Irene.”

  Joanne laughed caustically. “You’re right; my darling husband’s far too big a wimp for that. But did you really think he was the backer? Declan knows nothing about this. This is my project.”

  “Who else, then? Who’s ‘we’?”

  “No one you would know. The money’s from my contact in London, not someone you want to mess with. I warned you last week that I’d call London.”

  “You said that you’d give me a week. And I thought that you meant Declan was in London. Christ Joanne, these people are killers, you have to call them off me.”

  “It’s out of my hands now. I sank a fortune into Horizon, and so did our backer. We had it perfect. Approval, dummy contracts, everything ready to go. Just two more months to make millions and walk away scot-free...If you’d just done your part with Watson.”

  “He can’t be bought, I’ve tried. Believe me I’ve tried.”

  “Not hard enough! He’ll be bought, Bob, everyone has a price. We’re working on him right now and we’ll do it. But you’re out. You’re out and you’re dead unless you come up with the money.”

  “Ten million! Fuck! Where do you think I’ll get that? Where do you get ten from, anyway?”

  “Salary, plus what you stole from us to shove up your nose.”

  Leighton gasped audibly and she laughed.

  “Did you really think that I wouldn’t find out about the coke? There’s nothing you do that I don’t know about. Then there’s the money that my contact stands to lose if Watson goes public. Ten million should just about cover it.”

  There was silence for a moment, and then she spoke again, sarcastically.

  “At the airport, Bob? I do hope you‘re not trying to run?”

  “I’m going to London to try to borrow the money, you avaricious bitch.”

  “Good, glad to hear it. I look forward to seeing you when you get back on Friday.”

  “How did you know I was back on Friday?”

  “You can’t hide from us anywhere, Bobby. Remember that.”

  ***

  John stood by the ballistics’ lab door taking one last look at his light show. He’d finally worked it out. The bullet was identified, ready to be matched with the rifle, if they ever found it. He corrected himself mentally, when, not if. And now the bullet’s angle and speed of trajectory had been calculated to within half a millimetre.

  He knew that he should be pleased with himself for succeeding, even once, in Des’ domain, but all it showed was that they were dealing with a professional. And if they’d been that professional in their aim, they’d be equally professional in their disappearance. Marc had his work cut out on this one.

  John shrugged, resigned to the knowledge that too many murders were never solved. Then he smiled. Craig’s fail rate was much lower than average. He’d find their killer, if they could be found. He flicked off the light and left the safety of his clean, sterile world, to get ready for his squash match, and the much messier, less safe one of romance. He felt nervous already.

  ***

  Joe Watson pulled off the Bangor Road into the layby outside the high wooden gates of his detached home and the gates opened slowly inwards. He was grateful that they’d been shut, needing the ten-second delay before he pasted on the smile of a devoted husband, one that he’d have to wear all evening.

  He could already hear Caitlin’s kitten heels crunching down the path, accompani
ed by the bark of her small terrier, knowing that his own giant Airedale would be resting sensibly by the fire in the cool December evening. His thoughts ran frantically through the day’s events, crushing-in one last moment of remembering.

  Remembering what? The woman that he’d always loved but never owned, not since they’d been young, and free. Before life had ground them both down. Remembering the promise that he’d made to her; a promise that he had really meant, but that she had broken. Remembering their child; the happy, sweet girl whose loss had broken them both, and put a wall between them that he’d eventually been too weak to climb.

  The gate was open far too soon and he looked through the car windscreen at his attractive wife, whom he loved, but obviously not enough. He smiled at her in reflex, but without feeling, hardly seeing her at all. And then he drove in for another evening of charades, counting backwards to Irene, and forwards to next Monday night.

  ***

  Craig turned up the C.D. player and accelerated up the M2, nearing Limavady, hoping that he’d soon feel better about the call that he’d just taken. Nicky hadn’t wanted to phone him, but Susan Butler, Harrison’s austere P.A. had insisted upon it, and no one sensible ever argued with Mrs Butler. He smiled at the certainty that Nicky was already planning her revenge.

  He wasn’t annoyed by the call, just irritated with Harrison. And astounded that he thought it was acceptable to summon him back from Limavady just to placate a bunch of journalists. As if he was really going to come! Maybe he’d call the Chief Constable and accept the superintendent’s post. At least it would stop Harrison being his boss anymore.

  He mused for a few miles further, against a background of ‘Run’ by Snow Patrol and then turned sharp right into Limavady’s Victorian police headquarters, flashing his badge at the lad on the gate, and parking near the building’s low front entrance.

  He took the three flights of stairs two at a time and arrived at the long office corridor, still breathing normally. The workouts were definitely paying off, time to add in a few weights. He slowed his pace, eventually reaching Julia McNulty’s office. But before he could knock, the door opened inwards, sharply, and she stood in front of him with a face like thunder, ready to rant.