Murder In The Academy : A chilling murder mystery set in Belfast (Alice Fox Murder Mysteries Book 1)
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Sandra nodded and left without any further comment.
Paton refocused on her two colleagues. “So let’s begin with the autopsy report – Bill, any of your observations of that process?”
They extracted the copy of the report from their papers and Bill started the discussion.
“Well, the bad news is that the refrigeration has meant that we can’t get very precise info about time of death – but the point at which the freezing became effective at arresting degeneration suggests that it took effect probably in and around ten hours after death. So she was killed and then her head was wrapped in plastic sheeting and she was moved fairly quickly to the place where the body was found. As I suspected, the forensic sweep in her office indicated that some altercation had taken place there. It looks like a fairly professional clean-up was done but there is always a trace or two of body fluid – or in this case blood-and-brain matter – that gives it all away. I am going back to the college later to talk to the night security staff and see what I can pick up there. I’ve asked for a look at any logs they keep and CCTV from the car parks and surroundings. That’s just in the unlikely case they walked rather than drove from one building to the other. Better cover all possibilities.” He reviewed his notes and had a bite of a ham roll. He chewed quickly and carried on with his input. “In terms of the autopsy, cause of death was penetrating brain trauma. Her head was pounded repeatedly against what forensics and the autopsy will show was a concrete pillar in her office. The deed was done by someone who was really determined that the victim was not going to survive. Cynthia was clear that she continued to be battered some time after her life had stopped. It was as if the motion of beating became almost hypnotic and the perp lost sight of the fact that death had occurred before he or she actually stopped. Now we need to establish when this might have happened and who was around that might have seen or heard something. The last night of evening classes was the Thursday and as far as I can gather, Helen Breen wasn’t seen again after that although her passkey was used to sign out on Thursday evening at nine thirty-six. Lectures finish in and around nine twenty to allow time for the buildings to be clear for nine thirty. I suppose we have to consider that someone else may have used that passkey to create uncertainty about the time and place of the killing. I’m hoping we will be able to piece all that together to get a clearer picture of the possible timeline.”
Ian McVeigh was fishing through interview notes. “On the Thursday before term finished up on the Friday,” he said, “Jackson Bell asked Helen to cover evening duty for him as he had another meeting to attend outside the college. They had all been at Professor Hartnett’s on the Wednesday for a Christmas bash and Breen was alive and well at that event. She was observed by several colleagues to have been deep in conversation with …” he shuffled through his notes, “yes, here it is … she was seen talking with Liam Doyle, the young buck who looks after student interests. We have him coming in tomorrow for interview after the Press Conference.”
Paton raised a hand to indicate she was going to comment. “Just while you’re on the subject of interviews, let’s see where we are with the staff. We got through most of the DePRec staff more quickly than I had imagined would be the case. The admin and part-timers were pretty consistent. Helen Breen wasn’t well liked. She invested nothing in establishing relationships with her peers, aside from her superiors, whom she seemed to cultivate fairly earnestly.” There were nods of assent to that. “Jackson Bell bucks the trend in that he thought very highly of her. He spoke of her as his most trusted colleague. They seem to have had a steady and mutually supportive relationship. Let’s find out what the motivation behind that was when we talk to him tomorrow. He’s either a poor judge of character or there was some understanding between them that suited them both.”
She was working methodically down her mental list and Burrows and McVeigh knew the form and remained quietly attentive.
“We didn’t learn very much from the interviews in Marine Biology. The maintenance were worried about causing damage to the contents of the freezers and called in a staff member. Dr Baker saw that there was what looked like a body in the freezer and rightly called the President who alerted us. She had nothing to add really aside from a little context about the contents of the freezers, which is no use at all to us. Hard to get excited about different sponge varieties I’d say, even when you are not preoccupied with a murder.” She grimaced. Paton had a low threshold for anything not directly relevant to her case. “We didn’t get far with security as the right people weren’t available. I asked for various reports and video footage to be gathered and said we would call back later tonight.” She raised both eyebrows in the direction of Burrows who nodded agreement. They were both on the same track there.
Burrows allowed a small pause and then launched into the void. “Ian and I had an interesting conversation with Ralph Wilson. His name cropped up in a good few interviews as an obvious antagonist of Breen’s and he lived up to his reputation. He was beyond nervous and really lost it when he was describing his reasons for disliking Breen. He demonstrated that he has quite a temper and he didn’t seem to be able to keep it under wraps at all.” Ian nodded in agreement. “When we asked if Helen Breen made him angry he replied that it would be more accurate to say that she provoked him to ‘rage’. At the same time, he was so open about how he felt about her that it was hard to think that if he was the one who harmed her he would actually be that obvious.”
“I agree with Bill,” said McVeigh. “He kept insisting that he had a fiery temper but was not a violent person. But then again he would be aware of his reputation and there would be no point in trying to conceal that. I think we need to see how he matches up with times and locations when we have those pinned down.”
“Bell was fairly damning about Wilson as well.” Paton had briefly talked informally to Bell earlier in the day and found him a bit of a paradox. He was open and helpful in response to questions about the workplace and even his visual research interests in different communities but there was something not entirely authentic in his demeanour. She had not eliminated him from her list of potential suspects by any manner or means. Perhaps his admiration of Helen Breen was such that any betrayal of him could provoke a violent response. “Wilson is obviously a thorn in Bell’s side, critical of his decisions about the future of DePRec and a constant dissenting voice at staff meetings. I think we need to talk to Wilson again, maybe in the station to ramp up the pressure a little. I can do that tomorrow afternoon before going to the Breen family. We’ll wait until the afternoon and contact him then to request he comes in here to assist us. Ian, will you look after that?”
McVeigh was tapping some interview notes with his pen and interjected. “When you said about personality disorder, DI, you reminded me of another conversation that backs that up. There was a part-time person who had a specific personal gripe with Breen. Most of them just disliked her at a few degrees of separation. This guy, Neil Larmour, had covered some classes for her and yet she had seemed unwilling to approve his legitimate pay claim. A month elapsed without him being paid and, when he asked her for an explanation, she offered to give him book tokens in lieu of payment. He was furious at the time, mainly at her lack of understanding that his payment was needed for his rent and other bills. He said he had challenged her rather forcefully saying, ‘Do you think I can pay my bills with fucking book tokens?’ He said he was angry at how casual and disregarding she was about his needs. He described her total lack of empathy as shocking.” McVeigh was good at holding on to useful pieces of the overall picture that might easily get lost. “Larmour was illustrating something dysfunctional in Breen’s personality but, I suppose, he was also putting himself on the list of those with some motive for harming her.”
“Good thinking, Ian. I feel we are really making progress with the victim profile and are at least getting some insights into the possible character of our offender.” She seemed to be considering whether to add something and that sh
arpened their interest. “I interviewed the visiting scholar from New York City university this afternoon – one Dr Alice Fox. It is always interesting to get the outsider’s perspective. Anyway Alice Fox confirmed a lot of the stuff we’ve mentioned about Breen being disliked and even had her own experience of being used to cover Breen’s class for free. But more importantly, before becoming an academic, Alice Fox was a detective in the Lowell Police Department in Massachusetts. She knows the business of detection well and might be a useful insider viewpoint for us to consult if need be.”
Burrows and McVeigh were giving only slight signs of agreement with that idea and she left it at that for the moment. She knew not to push some ideas too hard until they came around to her viewpoint in their own time.
“Who’s left on the list of DePRec personnel that we need to talk to, Bill?”
“We still have Bell’s official interview, then the faculty head, Professor Janet Hartnett, Liam Doyle the student rep and Mairéad Walsh. That’s it for the staff. If Ian goes to Hillsborough I can get started on those in the morning once Sandra is briefed. I’ll head straight to DePRec this evening when we finish up here and hopefully they’ll have the security reports you asked for ready and waiting. I want to check out about college cleaning procedures too. I’d say it’s a sub-contract like the security but I’ll check it out anyway. I’ll keep in touch about any outcome from that.”
Paton added to the list. “I need to update the President too at some point, out of courtesy at least, not to mention he needs to know that the murder took place on college premises. He won’t like that one little bit. In fact, I’ll phone him when we finish talking here so that he is up to speed before the press conference tomorrow morning. I think the Super wants me to take the lead on that although he will also be present to show that we are treating this as a priority. We are on at ten o’clock in HQ so make sure that Sandra is with Mrs Breen at that point in case it provokes any new media disclosures.”
DC Ian McVeigh was charged with contacting the Hillsborough police that evening and finding out if there was any local knowledge on Helen Breen. He could follow up then the next day when he went to examine Breen’s home. Because of its security priorities during the Troubles and even now, local police were vigilant about anything that might jeopardise the security of Hillsborough Castle and those who lived there. As the home of the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland and any number of high-profile visitors, it meant that there had not been the same relaxation of security measures in Hillsborough as elsewhere in the province.
They spent some time pooling the most burning questions that presented themselves. Who was known to be on DePRec premises on the Thursday when they now deduced that Breen been killed? How had the killer cleaned up after the killing and how was the body moved to the nearby Maritime Studies building? It was clear that someone must have seen something unless the removal of the body was purposefully designed to be congruent with everyday college activities. What was to be learned from Helen Breen’s Hillsborough home that apparently none of her colleagues or her family had ever visited? Was Breen a recluse or were her chosen associates entirely outside her work colleagues? If Breen was killed at work what had become of her car? College Security held records of all vehicles so they might be able to help Burrows answer that one when he spoke to them later that evening. Who had removed her belongings – her bag, laptop and phone from her office and why? What information could college IT systems provide in relation to Breen’s College account and computer usage? Could the mobile phone company she used be requisitioned to provide account details and printouts of user history for the past six months? Any CCTV footage from the MI motorway between Belfast and Hillsborough was to be accessed and indeed footage from around the Titanic Quarter on the Thursday evening and into the following day would be worth studying. The list was always long at this point in an inquiry.
As they approached the end of the first full day of investigation, they had made some progress but a lot was left to do. These were the crucial moments in detection when most clues were available for discovery. With every day that passed getting results became more difficult and valuable impetus ebbed away. Caroline Paton was plainly aware of these time imperatives and she knew that Burrows and McVeigh would not be found wanting in their drive to solve this case as quickly as possible. They would each spend another several hours that evening working on the tasks they had identified and would be on call if any important new evidence required their attention, even throughout the night.
Paton reached for a second muffin and nodded to the men to help themselves. They would need any energy boost they could get tonight to keep them going for another few hours.
25
After their briefing in Grosvenor Road Barracks, Bill Burrows made his way back to DePRec and his prearranged meeting with College Security. During Paton and McVeigh’s earlier meeting with security staff that morning it was clear that the right people were not on the premises to consult. The provision of college security was through a private company and although it was part of the oversight of Estates Management, college staff did not carry out the actual tasks. It was much harder to pin down these private outfits, Bill thought as he drove towards the Titanic Quarter. All these subcontracts meant that staff members were moved about frequently from one organisation to another and people were no longer familiar with their colleagues. It was cheaper to work in that way but Burrows doubted it did much for staff morale or team spirit, never mind basic efficiency. His expectations of getting any solid evidence from the college systems were not high.
He parked in the college underground car park and went straight to the security desk located in the main foyer. The uniformed man was obviously expecting him and said that the security manager was waiting for DS Burrows in the operations room in the basement. Burrows returned to the lift and followed the directions to find Matt Gillespie of HiSecurity Services. A young man in his mid-to-late thirties was waiting in the room where a line of monitors flashed everchanging views, both internal and external, of different areas in the college.
They sat at a desk to the side of the monitors and Gillespie passed a folder of prepared data to Burrows. “This is what DI Paton requested,” he said, pleased with himself for having delivered on the task. Bill scanned the cover sheet and was impressed at the comprehensive contents.
“This looks good,” he said, and the younger man appeared grateful for the praise. “I’d like you to talk me through it all, Matt, but first tell me how the security system here is set up and who oversees the staff that come and go. I am assuming that there isn’t a great deal of continuity and people can potentially work a number of different company jobs in the same week?”
Burrows expected to hear a lot of business jargon and assurances that HiSecurity Services was all things to all people, but Matt Gillespie was personable and plausible and gave no impression of whitewashing the facts. He explained that the College had twenty-four-hour security with a series of motion-activated cameras recording comprehensive visual information on an ongoing basis. “A staff member sits at a desk in the foyer throughout this period and has access to immediate back-up if an incident occurs. All staff members are fully trained and many are ex-police or armed services personnel. The visual data is stored digitally and archived for twelve months at which point it is deleted.”
Matt Gillespie was impressive in his matter-of-fact description of the system, thought Bill.
“We are not big on cyber-security, firewalls and anti-hacking as that is a specialised security business very different to what we do. On the other hand we have secure cyber archiving systems that mean within a given twelve-month period visual data will be safely stored. More importantly perhaps it can be easily retrieved. Things have moved on a lot from the days when information was recorded on video cassettes that would be randomly taped over or lost.”
“What would be the perceived security risks in a place like this?” Burrows asked out of genuine interest.
Gillespie explained that the passkey system was not a foolproof method of tracking staff behaviour but was liked by organisations like Belfast City College because it placed responsibility on academic, admin and ancillary staff to be accountable for their movements. Of course people forgot passkeys or could ask a colleague to swipe them in when they were elsewhere but generally it was sufficient for a low-security educational establishment.
“I guess you just need one murder on the premises to dispel that myth.” Burrows could not resist stating the obvious but he got Gillespie’s point. At the same time he understood that every organisation could not be expected to guard against every risk. Armed guards on schools in the USA did not seem to him an example of progress but it was useful when detectives could access good quality data from those they collaborated with in solving crimes in the community.
When they got down to specifics, Matt Gillespie demonstrated that he had a firm grasp of his business. Paton had asked for a breakdown of the staff present in the building on the night of that Thursday in December. The first printout in the folder provided showed the arrival and departure times of all staff that had used the passkey system that day. This included the fact that Helen Breen’s key was used to swipe out at nine thirty-six that evening. Ralph Wilson had been present until seven-thirty, Jackson Bell until five fifty-five, Liam Doyle was not registered on the system that day and Janet Hartnett had left the building at nine-thirty.