The Running of the Deer Read online

  John tried not to picture the moment, and in trying not to he inevitably did. This small, pale body struggling and wriggling to be free, all the time pinned to the earth by whatever or whoever had caused his death. The pathologist removed his fine wire glasses and rubbed the top of his nose and forehead, as if trying to rub away the images in his mind. When he replaced his spectacles, it was with a sigh and a sense of inevitability, as well as a fervent wish that there was someone else in the room.

  He needed Mike there, for his moral support even more than his expertise. He could ask Lorcan of course but somehow it wouldn’t be the same. So, in a move that John Winter would forever deny had been based in any part on deferring the inevitable, he took out his mobile and asked his deputy to drive down.

  ****

  Killen. County Tyrone.

  Craig honestly hadn’t thought that it was possible to have so much tartan in a room and still be able to find anything, especially not when it was such a vivid tartan as the yellow, green and red confection shouting back at him from everywhere that he looked. The pattern was so bright that it was causing after-images on his retinae, so that when he stared at Liam it looked for a moment as if he had green and yellow hair. He squeezed his eyes shut and kept them that way for a moment, hoping that normal service would be resumed when he opened them again. It helped a little but not much, as demonstrated by the red and green squares that now insisted in dancing across Miranda’s face.

  The white-haired veterinary surgeon they were visiting had hospitably set out some tea and shortbread, and he handed Craig a mug adorned with ‘Independence for Scotland’ on its side. As Liam helped himself to a handful of the buttery biscuits Craig tried once again to block out the rainbow and focus on the reason they were there.

  “Thank you for agreeing to help us, Mister Lokken. You were the local vet for how many years?”

  The retiree settled back into what looked like an extremely comfortable armchair, no doubt moulded to his contours by the pressure of many years, and bit very slowly into a shortbread finger before answering Craig’s question in an accent that couldn’t have been more stage Scottish if they’d been in a performance of Macbeth. The question of why a Norwegian was pretending to be Scottish was probably best left to another time, but he now understood Raymond O’Boyle’s description of Lokken as a “wee bit weird”.

  “Many’s a lang year. Forby thirty-five, all told.”

  It was the worst impression of a Scottish accent that Craig had ever heard.

  “And did you have much occasion to deal with deer?”

  Their ruddy complexioned host gazed up at the ceiling for so long that it caused the three police officers to do the same, before Craig suddenly realised what they were doing and waved the others down. Eventually Lokken spoke again.

  “I mind how I delivered a fallow fawn wance by caesarean, when the old Laird brought its mother to me.”

  “The Laird, Lord, who was that?”

  “Ach, weel now, when I say Laird, he wisnae a Laird in the true sense. Jest a rich family who’ve owned the land for a lang while. The Canavans they’re callt.”

  While Craig added the name to his list, the still green-and-red-faced Miranda leaned forward, eager to find out what had happened to the deer.

  “Did the fawn live? After the section.”

  A flash of indignation lit the old man’s eyes. “Of course, it lived, lassie! They both did! I wis a damn fine vet.” His tone softened slightly, remembering. “Bonnie wee thing it wis. Both of them set free to run the land wance the mother wis well.”

  Bambi was a lovely movie, but it was time to get back to the point, so Liam obliged.

  “Did you ever see any other deer? Like maybe ones who’d been separated from their heads?”

  The look of disgust on the vet’s face instantly altered the mood in the room.

  “Filthy, dirty, bastards!”

  Craig seized on the words. “So, you have seen headless deer?”

  The pensioner turned to him with a searing gaze. “No, I have not. What sort of folk do you think we have around here?”

  Craig noticed that his Scottish accent had disappeared suddenly, in favour of a half-Nordic, half-Tyrone twang.

  “You tell me, Mister Lokken. Ten Red Deer heads were found yesterday, and I’m just wondering where the bodies might have gone.” He stared into the man’s hooded blue eyes. “You never came across any separated heads or bodies? Or deer mutilated in any way?”

  It made the man pause, and after a moment screwing up his face he gave a slight nod.

  “Back in the mid-nineties there was a series of mutilated deer found along the Killeter borders-”

  Liam cut in. “Mutilated how?”

  “Their heads were still there, if that’s what you’re asking, but their carcasses had been cut open and everything removed. Organs, muscles, every last pick of edible material was gone. It was investigated by the police at the time, but what with them being busy with The Troubles…”

  The Troubles was the title given to the thirty-year conflict in Northern Ireland that had occurred between the nineteen-sixties and nineteen-nineties.

  Craig nodded, understanding. The police investigation had probably been a cursory one, the growing toll of human death taking up all the RUC’s time back then.

  The vet was still talking.

  “Poaching they said it was. Venison was worth a pretty penny then, as now. But the heads were definitely there and untouched. I know because I did the post-mortems for the police.” He paused for a moment, frowning. “Where did you say the deer were found this time?”

  “I didn’t.”

  In the absence of information being forthcoming, Lokken offered some of his own.

  “It wasn’t in Erb’s Clearing was it?”

  Craig struggled to keep his face neutral and a quick sideways glance told the others to do the same.

  “Why do you suggest there?”

  The retiree shook his head from side to side. “Because it’s a wicked, wicked place. Everybody around here knows it.”

  A panicked look from their local inspector said that it was everybody but her. Craig gave her a pass because she’d just moved there and urged the old man on.

  “In what way wicked?”

  The vet shuddered. “There’ve been goings on there for a long time. Lights and music, throbbing, tribal stuff.” His eyes flicked to a well-worn bible lying on the sideboard. “It’s the devil’s work, sure enough.”

  Craig sighed inwardly, knowing that Liam would seize on the words. He wasn’t wrong. The D.C.I. lurched forward so fast that he almost slid off his chair.

  “Devil worship? Is that it?”

  Lokken shook his head solemnly. “I dinnae ken what it wis, but everywan kens not to go to the Erb at night.” The fake Scottish accent had returned, but before Craig could appease his curiosity by asking why, the vet slipped in another question. “So that’s wheer ye found the heeds then?”

  Craig didn’t rise to the bait, rising to his feet instead and extending a hand. “Thank you for your assistance. We may be back in touch.”

  He braced himself for the inevitability of another devil worship rant by Liam as soon as they reached the car, hoping that his newly unwrapped Bounty Bar might make his mouth too full to speak. When it only quietened the D.C.I. for seconds before it disappeared down his throat, Craig decided to defer the Satanism discussion further by phoning the ranch.

  “Nicky, pass me over to Davy please.”

  “In a minute.”

  Her tone was curt. The PA was still smarting over Aidan’s immediate back-pedalling on his no-smoking pledge, and in addition to making a note to ‘get’ Annette, who she suspected had worked against her in some way although she wasn’t quite sure how, she wasn’t in the mood to be pleasant to anyone now, not even Craig.

  “Your new constable’s here, so what do you want me to do with her?”

  Craig frowned at the phone, knowing that something had rattled her ca
ge, but too busy to care what. As Annette had been given charge of Mary, he needed to speak to her, plus he also knew that she would transfer him to Davy without an argument once they were done.

  “Pass me over to Annette then, please.”

  Instead of Nicky transferring the call as normal she held out the phone.

  “D.I. Eakin, the Superintendent would like a word.”

  Both Annette and Craig recognised the tactic as a punishment; making Annette walk across the squad-room was simply Nicky underlining her power. The D.I. took the phone with an insincere smile, unsurprised when Craig’s first words were.

  “Who rattled Nicky’s cage?”

  “Later, sir.”

  “She’s watching you like a hawk then?”

  “Hmm…”

  “OK, just tell me how Mary’s getting on and then transfer me to Davy.”

  “She’s OK. I’ve had her going over everyone’s court statements with them.”

  “Good. OK, look, we’re going to be down here for the rest of the day, so just keep her busy and I’ll meet with her tomorrow. Now, transfer me to Davy PDQ, before Nicky grabs back the phone.”

  In a quick draw contest with Nicky, Annette would definitely have won, courtesy of her hours at the shooting range. She demonstrated that speed now by transferring the call with a few swift taps before the PA could manage to cut her off.

  Davy had been watching the whole episode, and as he lifted the line to the sound of Craig’s voice he gave Annette a blatant thumbs-up, adding his name to Nicky’s list of people to be punished severely that week.

  “Hi, chief.”

  The analyst smiled as Annette practically danced back to her desk, a performance that made the PA add an asterisk against her name.

  “Davy, I’ve got a bit of work for you and Ash.”

  “Fire away.”

  “OK, I need you to find out what you can about Killeter Forest in County Tyrone. Generally, and in particular about a place called Erb’s Clearing.”

  “Any chance you have its GPS coordinates?”

  “I have the ones where we parked and it’s not far away.”

  Craig read them off his car display.

  “I take it that’s w…where the body was found?”

  “It is. Right, first, I need clarity on who owns the land the clearing’s on, but also if there have been any police reports or even rumours of disturbances on that site over the past fifty years.”

  Davy smiled, knowing from Craig’s approach that he was about to get a long list. That was cool with him, he needed something new to do; he was sick and tired of checking the data report that he’d compiled for court.

  “Next, I need to know about a family called Canavan who own land locally, they may be the ones who own the clearing. And about an episode in the nineties where some deer were found dead on the land. The police were called in, but nothing came of it. That may have been because they were too busy with terrorists. Oh, and while you’re on that, check on any other deer killed over the past fifty years, and on the deer killed in the Republic recently. As far as I remember it was in County Meath. Check if the anatomical damage to their deer was the same as either the ones found in Tyrone in the nineties or yesterday.”

  He noticed Liam waving at him and paused to see what he wanted.

  “Tell the boy to check where the deer might have come from, and whether they should’ve been on some reserve? Endangered like.”

  “Did you hear all that, Davy?”

  “A deaf man would have heard him.”

  Liam’s foghorn voice had its uses.

  “Good. OK, on that point, apparently there are some differences between the UK’s and Ireland’s deer laws, and regional differences within the UK. I need you to check them. Primarily the differences between the south and here. Also, look into venison suppliers, and include any black-market ones in that. Dougie Anderson in Fraud might be able to help you. He deals with counterfeit goods, smuggling, etcetera, and he works closely with Revenue and Customs, so if there’s an illegal venison trade anywhere in the island then he’ll be the man who knows.”

  Liam was waving again, more frantically this time, and when he caught Craig’s eye he made two horns on his head with his fingers.

  “Hang on a minute, Davy. What do you want now, Liam?”

  “Tell him to check up on devil worship locally.” He wiggled his fingers. “Horns, get it?”

  Craig gave a sigh that came from his boots. “It wasn’t bloody devil worship.”

  “That old vet said it was.”

  “He didn’t say anything of the sort! He said there were lights and noises. And it was all just rumour anyway.”

  But Davy had already added devil worship to his list, determined to do some digging. He was a city boy through and through, but he was also deep into Celtic mythology, so he was easily persuaded that strange things happened, especially in the countryside. As Craig rang off and the analyst set about dividing the work between Ash and himself, he made certain to keep devil worship firmly on his half of the list.

  Chapter Nine

  The M1 Motorway West. 4.30 p.m.

  “I won’t be home until late, Annette. In fact, I might not be home tonight at all. Sorry.”

  Mike Augustus tried to sound contrite, but he didn’t really feel it. One hour earlier he’d been dictating his report on the lab’s last outstanding post-mortem and wondering what he was going to do with the rest of his day, and then John had phoned. When the chance of a trip to the country on what was a dry, bright day had been offered, he’d jumped at it with both feet, only remembering that he’d promised to babysit that evening to let Annette go to the movies with her friend Gemma when he was already thirty miles down the road. That was where he was phoning from now, trying to conceal his ‘ROAD TRIP!’ excitement beneath a show of guilt that he didn’t really feel.

  Annette kicked the wastepaper basket beneath her desk hard, drawing a disapproving squint from Nicky. Nicky be damned! She’d kick her basket as often as she felt like it! So, she kicked the object again twice just to make her point, earning her a second asterisk on the PA’s list.

  The kicking was accompanied by a whined, “That’s not fair, Mike. Gemma and I have wanted to see this movie for ages. I can’t cancel on her now.”

  The tone was so unlike Annette that it made everyone in the office turn and stare. A scowl from the vocalist soon made them turn back to their computers again.

  “I’m sorry, love, but John’s requested me down there, so what can I do? Tell him where to stuff it?”

  “So, you can’t let him down, but you can me?”

  “He’s my boss! He pays my wages.”

  The normally sensible Annette knew that she was being unreasonable, but she didn’t care. The pain of her disappointment was completely fogging her brain, and Mike shouting to be heard on his car-phone wasn’t helping her mood much either. She could feel her anger building until her head hurt, then suddenly she blew and yelled down the phone at the top of her voice.

  “I DON’T CARE! I DON’T CARE! I DON’T CARE! I want to go to see A Wrinkle in Time, and now I can’t because you won’t babysit!”

  The pathologist was about to lash back with, ‘I’ll buy you the sodding DVD!’, when he thought of a solution that he knew still wouldn’t please her but would defeat the point that she was trying to make.

  By this stage no amount of Annette’s scowling could have made the team look away; they were transfixed by the farcical nature of the domestic exchange. Some thanking their lucky stars for their singledom, some wishing that they had someone to argue with, and others making hasty notes to buy their other halves a gift on the way home.

  Mike meanwhile was feeling smug about his brilliant idea.

  “I know! I’ll pay Amy or Jordan twenty pounds to babysit, if you’ll call and ask them.”

  It was a reasonable request, given that they were Annette’s university age children, and only being asked to look after their baby step-sister for a
few hours, but by this point the D.I. was too wound up to climb down.

  When she re-started with, “Oh, yes, that’s right. It’s my job to sort it out now, it’s my job to sort every-”, Mike lifted the plastic wrapper from a biscuit that he’d been eating and rustled it into the phone’s ear piece, shouting, “Sorry…bad…recept…area…” Then he pressed the button, cut the call and switched off his car-phone, grateful for the immediate peace and quiet but wincing in anticipation of the earful he knew awaited him when he eventually returned home.

  ****

  Killeter Forest. County Tyrone.

  “Where are we going now, boss?”

  Craig answered gazing straight ahead, but with Liam’s now-empty Bounty wrapper firmly in his peripheral vision as it shifted position with the D.C.I.’s movements between his knee, the edge of his seat, and its inevitable final resting place, the foot well. It wasn’t that Craig minded the paper landing there, he could easily pick it up once he’d stopped the car, but Liam was a messy eater, so inside that innocent blue and white wrapper were bound to lurk chocolate shards, any one of which could within seconds have smeared and embedded its way into the fibres of his new carpet or passenger seat, and that way lay Armageddon for the D.C.I.

  At that moment Craig realised something; he wasn’t so much disturbed by Liam’s untidy tendencies as by his own. He knew that the moment the car’s current showroom perfection was ruined by a single food smear it would be like someone taking their foot off his brake and giving him carte blanche to make a mess. Then he would see no barrier to chucking empty cans, drink bottles and crisp wrappers over his shoulder into the back seat, and scattering newspapers that he’d finished reading all around the place. All that was keeping his car tidy was its perfection, and once that was gone all bets would be off and his flood-barrier would open wide.

  As all of these thoughts were running through the detective’s mind, leading him to the inevitable conclusion that he was a car slob, Liam was still awaiting his answer, so he asked his question again in a different form.