The Running of the Deer Read online

  “I worked as family liaison on a domestic murder in Derry, sir. Pretty violent. And a couple of suicides and hit and runs.”

  Liam shrugged. It was standard fare for a copper in Northern Ireland unfortunately. Hunter was still speaking.

  “I worked on a spate of drug deaths as well, but I didn’t see the bodies.”

  Craig nodded. It was enough to ensure that she wouldn’t scare, wherever their investigation led. He decided to issue a warning anyway.

  “This could be a nasty case, Inspector, and it’s already a strange one, so you need to be prepared for that. I also need to know that you won’t run from the evidence. Whatever we find we find, agreed?”

  She nodded, confused.

  “But that’s always the case, sir, isn’t it?”

  “Ideally, yes, but it’s just possible there might be vested interests who’ll try to supress unpopular findings this time, and the press coverage could be strong. You’ll need to be ready. OK?”

  Miranda was still puzzled but knew that saying so might get her thrown off the case, so instead she agreed with a nod.

  Liam slid off the car bonnet, rubbing his hands. “What now, boss?”

  “Now the inspector changes into her civvies, we have a late lunch, and we wait for John and Des.”

  ****

  Belfast. 2 p.m.

  Harry Johnston, or Hacker as he was known to his mates, for no good reason other than that they thought it sounded cool, had stopped running ten minutes before but he was still out of breath, the product of too many ciggies and the odd toke of weed since he’d hit ten. And why not? His family didn’t give a monkey’s about him, and all his mates were doing the same.

  If Johnston had been possessed of a higher IQ or better information, he might have realised that smoking both substances was bad for him, doing what was known in the olden days as ‘stunting your growth’. Although the teenager would no doubt then have rationalised that stunting wouldn’t have altered things much in his case anyway, as his father had barely hit five-four and his mother had looked up to him, so his current five-foot-three was probably as good as it got.

  Not true, as he still had at least another four years of growth ahead, but either way, for a fourteen-year-old Harry Johnston barely looked eleven, and it had served to get him out of quite a few scrapes. Scrapes that he got into continually, despite the maternal cluckings of the aunt that he lived with, her loving care and comfortable home no barrier to his self-deluding version of the world that he was only a challenge because he had such a troubled life.

  After five minutes more spent intermittently checking behind him, as if his teachers had nothing better to do than follow him out of school, the teenager searched the wasteland at his trainer clad feet for a decent sized stone to kick, propelling it sporadically down the road. Ten minutes later he was bored and looking for mischief. That was the problem with bunking-off school, all your mates were still in there, so you had no company. Freedom seemed exciting when you were stuck in a classroom looking forward to it, but spending it alone once you’d achieved it, not so much.

  It set the boy on a hunt for new companionship, and where better to find that than the place where modern youth hung out? So, Harry headed for town and the Castle Court Shopping Centre, one of the largest malls in Belfast.

  Shopping malls, good or bad? Discuss.

  The structures had divided opinion since the concept had hit Ireland from America. Made popular with teenagers by movies like Clueless as cool youth’s home from home, even the gangs of brain-eating undead that roamed malls’ corridors in zombie movies hadn’t served to diminish their attraction, and in fact if a zombie had suddenly appeared in front of Harry it would probably have made his day. In Ireland shopping malls held an added advantage of course, sheltering people as they did from a climate with six months of varyingly persistent rain, not to mention the bonus of avoiding being knocked off your feet in an open high street by the frequent transatlantic hurricanes with incongruously pretty names that seemed intent on hitting its shores.

  But for Harry Johnston and his peers their love of malls was far less complicated; malls simply provided them with a place to mooch. Mooching, the mobile slouching progress adopted by disenchanted teenagers, had been feared to be a dying art at one time due to the resurgence of straight-backed ‘preppies’. However, the ascent of Goths, Emos and Hipsters with their various associated dark anthems had breathed life into the sulky posture of indifference once again.

  As Harry mooched his way past the shopping centre’s ground floor pound shop and market stalls, window shopping inattentively as he went, his passage was being watched by someone on the upper level and by the time he’d reached the front doors on to Royal Avenue and nipped outside for a cig, a group of youths was following close on his heels.

  As the habitual truant flicked his plastic lighter hard to generate a flame, he found one already touched to the end of his cigarette. Nodding his thanks to a blond boy standing head and shoulders above him, Harry Johnston had no idea that the introduction was about to change his life.

  Chapter Six

  The Oaks Care Home. West Belfast.

  It was a soulless place, no matter how many team games they organised or how many cheerfully coloured posters were hung on the walls, urging the home’s youthful occupants to, ‘look up, look forward’, and affirming that they ‘could be all that they wanted to be’.

  Not soulless to the outside world perhaps, on the rare occasions that its representatives passed through the code-locked doors, clutching an oversized cardboard cheque to their chests for a photo opportunity, to show society just how charitable they had been in the year before. And maybe not even soulless to some of its occupants, for whom the home was a refuge from the domestic horror that they’d suffered for years. But for others, well, they’d simply been dumped or just hadn’t run fast enough to avoid being brought there, passing from the purgatory of their birth homes to another one, and this one shared with thirty punching, shouting boys just like themselves, meaning that whatever limited care and attention there was available was divided between far too many baby birds with open mouths.

  Although for some of the boys the absence of beatings and abuse alone made the forced proximity worthwhile, for others: the troubled, the disturbed beyond casual counselling, the restless thinkers, the confused for any one of a myriad of reasons, it just made them long to be free. Long for the day when they reached eighteen and ‘aged out’ of the care system, liberated to be alone with all their problems and thoughts in a different space.

  How did he know all of this? Why, because he was one of the people who cared for them, But more than that, because he had once been one of those troubled boys.

  ****

  The Police Mortuary. County Tyrone. 3.30 p.m.

  “The technicians said there was hardly a mark on the boy apart from on his head when he came in on Sunday, and there still isn’t much to see.”

  John Winter gazed at the small body lying in front of him, only half hearing the words of the local pathologist by his side. He’d trained all Northern Ireland’s younger pathologists and technicians and Lorcan Farrelly was good, so if he said that the boy had limited external injuries then he knew that he was right.

  Even so, he was there to consult, and the job of any consultant was to ask difficult things, so without taking his eyes off the dead boy’s smooth face the Director of Pathology inquired in a quiet voice.

  “Black light?”

  Black light, also referred to as a UV-A light or Wood's lamp, is long-wave UV-A ultraviolet light with very little visible light, used in forensics to reveal some matter and marks than can’t be seen with the human eye, including bruising which can take days to appear post-mortem.

  Farrelly nodded his dark head, his thick chestnut hair arranged in a bizarre confection of peaks and protrusions locked in place by a wet-look gel. It wouldn’t have been John’s style, but then Lorcan was his junior by fifteen years and fashions changed, s
o who was he to judge?

  “I did it just an hour ago. It showed diffuse but not discrete bruising on the anterior surfaces of his torso and limbs, still not visible to the naked eye. There’s some on the temporal aspect of his skull as well, but nothing at all on his posterior aspect.”

  John nodded. “What did the X-Rays show?”

  He was answered by a gulp.

  “You did take some?”

  He raised his eyes to the junior pathologist’s face as he asked and noticed that it looked paler than before.

  “Well…no…I thought I’d do them just before the PM.”

  John felt his jaw tighten. “That hasn’t been done yet? Over thirty hours after his death?”

  Lorcan Farrelly had a decision to make, and quickly. He could be defensive, say that they hadn’t had the body long, he’d had two other PMs to finish, and he could only work so fast, or he could look contrite and admit his failing gracefully, allowing the national boss to be gracious in return. He chose the latter.

  “I’m sorry, Doctor Winter, but no, it hasn’t. I was in Manchester at a conference when the body came in yesterday, and I had two PMs to finish this morning, so an hour ago was the first contact that I had with the boy. Shall I organise the X-Rays now?”

  John said nothing for a moment, three emotions competing to see which won: annoyance, admiration or relief. Annoyance that he would now have to wait for the X-Ray films, admiration that Farrelly hadn’t tried to bluff, and relief that the body hadn’t yet been post-mortemed, so he would get to do it himself which he always liked, not out of any sense of ghoulishness but because the first view, unsullied by previous cuts, always gave a clearer, more accurate result.

  Relief won out and he admitted to it.

  “Good, yes. You do that, and then, if you don’t mind, I’ll do the PM myself. With you assisting of course.”

  Did Lorcan Farrelly mind? Hell no. He’d get to watch the maestro at work for the first time in years, while resting his conference-drink-hangovered ass against a bench. He realised John was still speaking.

  “But before the X-Rays, and I know it’s possibly not worth it as people have already handled the corpse, but I’d like forensics to check the body over. They might find a random print or hair.”

  Another thing Lorcan knew that he should have thought of, although, rushing to his own defence, they did only have a couple of murders in the area every decade.

  John was already at the mortuary door beckoning Des in, and leaving the forensic expert to it he joined the detectives in the building’s unusually large staff-room, helping himself to some tea from Liam’s pot. Craig had been gazing out of the room’s small window, thinking, now he turned to his friend for an update.

  “Can you tell us anything yet, John?”

  The pathologist took a sip of tea and shook his head. “Only that the boy has no obvious external marks, but black light has shown some diffuse bruising on his temporal region and the front of his body and limbs. Nothing on the back. Des will get what he can on forensics, then we’ll perform a full body X-Ray and I’ll do the PM.”

  Liam glanced up from his perusal of a magazine on angling, one of a selection of papers he’d found in the room that hinted there was good fishing water nearby. It was a pastime that he’d really enjoyed in his youth, when he and his father and younger brother had sat on the banks of the Annacloy River in amiable silence for hours.

  “How come the PM’s not been done yet?”

  It was just what Craig had been going to ask. John gave no explanation of the omission, just the conclusion of his emotional tug of war.

  “Actually, I’m relieved that it hasn’t. It’s always better to make the first cut.”

  The inevitable strains of ‘The First Cut is The Deepest’ filled the room, until Craig quietened Liam to a hum and Miranda Hunter’s eyes had widened so much at the theatre that John suddenly noticed that she was there. He walked towards her, extending a hand.

  “Doctor John Winter, lovely to meet you.”

  “Inspector Miranda Hunter. Likewise.”

  Craig caught the pathologist’s quick chastising look and nodded. “Sorry, I should have introduced you. Inspector Hunter’s from Castlederg Station and she’s joining us on the case as local liaison.”

  John sighed. “You’ll have to excuse our detectives’ poor manners. They don’t get out much, and when they do most of the people that they meet are dead.”

  Liam stopped humming to object, but Craig cut him off with a chuckle.

  “OK, let’s get down to business. I know you haven’t done the PM yet, John, but any first thoughts on cause of death?”

  The pathologist took a seat, thinking for a moment, and his opening shot was a caveat.

  “You can’t hold me to this, you understand that.”

  Craig nodded. “Because it could all change when you do the PM. We know. But if you could just give us an idea then we’ll leave you in peace.”

  “OK then, on that understanding, my feeling is that the boy was probably crushed to death. If I’m right we’ll see multiple rib and limb fractures on his X-Rays, perhaps even a crushed skull.”

  Liam gave him a disgusted look. “Ach, it’s not another Burking is it? We had enough of that historical shit with Rowan Drake.”

  Burking was the name given to a form of murder by suffocation that left no or few marks of violence. It was named after the Burke in Burke and Hare, two nineteenth century Edinburgh murderers who had supplied corpses to the city’s medical anatomists and had killed their victims by occluding the nose and mouth, so they couldn’t take air in, and then lying on their chests to prevent expansion. It was a quick suffocation that left no marks and had been used by the man due to go on trial that week, Rowan Drake.

  Craig was pleased when John shook his head.

  “No. Burking’s a one to one death. I obstruct your nose and mouth and prevent your chest from expanding by lying on you. Fractures are rare, and at most might be a broken rib or two.”

  “Drake managed eleven dead without a single crack.”

  Miranda Hunter’s eyes widened again. This was getting really dark. What had she let herself in for?

  John shook his head. “I’m not thinking of that sort of crushing, Liam. I’m thinking more of the injuries you might see if a body was crushed by a car.”

  Craig frowned. “Except that there was no report of tyre tracks to say that a car accessed the clearing.” Or any report at all in fact. “But Des might tell us differently when he takes another look.”

  “And there were no tyre tracks on the boy’s body either. Interesting, isn’t it.”

  John smiled tightly and rose to his feet.

  “But that’s your bit. If I prove the boy was crushed to death, I should be able to give you the approximate pressure that caused it, from the types of fractures and internal organ damage. But finding out what generated that pressure is your job.”

  He exited the room, looking a mite too excited for Miranda Hunter’s liking.

  ****

  The C.C.U.

  Mary Li had finally left the D.C.I.s’ desks to head for Davy’s, releasing Aidan Hughes to dash across the open-plan office and up the four flights of stairs to the roof. He waited until he’d caught his diminished-beyond-his-years breath again and then moved to the edge of the building’s flat roof to gaze down at Pilot Street and out at the River Lagan, before easing a slim white cigarette out of its packet, planning on diminishing his breath some more.

  He counted the sticks left as he did so and found that there were only five. With his twenty-a-day habit they would only do him until close of business, so he made a mental note to buy more on his way home, along with the microwave dinners that had become the highlight of his evenings of late. The thought stopped the detective in his tracks. He was in serious danger of becoming a cliché; a sad forty-something with no wife, no kids, only a Friday-night-drink-in-the-pub social life, and a smoking habit that was slowly killing him. It was no way to live.


  An image of Nicky gazing mournfully at him every time he headed for the roof appeared in Aidan’s mind’s eye, her disapproval of his nicotine addiction no secret, but her genuine concern for his health the bigger thing. Like all addicts he made it a rule to ignore disapproval, citing other people’s drinking, bad diets and extreme sports as far worse for their health than the odd cigarette, so why didn’t people nag about those? But at the age of forty-six he couldn’t even do the stairs to the roof without getting short of breath now, and his morning wheezing was loud enough to wake the dead. Even worse, unless he wanted to spend the rest of his life alone he had to accept that with a recent survey saying that fifty-six percent of women thought smoking was a turnoff in a partner, his habit might severely reduce his dating pool and pull.

  As the image of Nicky was replaced with one of a sunken-faced, grey-haired pensioner, if he even lived that long, watching TV with only his dog for company, Aidan Hughes summoned all his will power and removed the unlit cigarette from his mouth, tucked it firmly back in beside its companions and then dropped the whole lot off the roof.

  Chapter Seven

  County Tyrone.

  “What’s that?”

  Craig’s accusing words drew Liam’s gaze away from the fields that they were driving past to the unwrapped Mars Bar in his hand, provoking a dry retort.

  “It’s a baseball bat.” He followed up with a sceptical snort. “What do you think it is? It’s chocolate!”

  “I know it’s bloody chocolate! But what do you think you’re doing with it?”

  It was only the fact that Craig was driving that stopped him arm-wrestling the confection from the D.C.I. Remembering that there was a third person in the car he decided to delegate the job.