The Keeper

by Catriona King

  “You sound like a medium.”

  “You know what I mean. Now they’ve started killing the other side we have to look for sectarianism plus a warped sense of humour.”

  Craig shook his head. “You should have been looking at sectarianism anyway. Hart and Lindsay could always have been shot by a dissident republican gang.”

  Liam frowned, confused. “So what’s this murder then? Tit for tat? The loyalists think the republicans killed two of theirs so now they’re hitting back?”

  Craig shrugged. “Maybe. I’d be tempted to see who dies next before I judge.” He leapt to his feet. “Except that we can’t do that because we’re supposed to be the good guys preventing crime, so hurry up and finish your coffee, we’re heading to the morgue.”

  ****

  The Pathology Labs. Saintfield Road, Belfast.

  As the detectives walked through the PVC doors into Doctor John Winter’s outer office, Craig’s mobile rang again. Liam watched as he glanced at the screen and then cut the call, only for the answerphone to ring him back seconds later. The D.C.I. arched an eyebrow knowingly.

  “You’re gonna have to talk to her eventually.”

  Craig shook his head. “I’ve talked to her until I’m blue in the face and she still won’t take the hint.”

  “There’s nothing else for it then. A restraining order it is.”

  Craig squinted, certain that he was taking the piss. A shake of Liam’s head said that he wasn’t.

  Craig rolled his eyes.

  “Oh, that would look really brilliant; a policeman who can’t get a beautiful woman to leave him alone. The Chronicle would have a field day!”

  “Nah. Maggie would stop it getting into print.”

  Maggie Clarke was The Belfast Chronicle’s news editor and girlfriend of the squad’s analyst, Davy Walsh. What had begun as combat between her and Craig’s team three years earlier had developed into mutual respect, and in Davy’s case into love.

  “She probably would, but if The Mirror got hold of it…”

  Liam nodded slowly, imagining the media storm; it would be funny if it wasn’t happening to someone that he knew. The long and the short of it was that Craig had a stalker; a beautiful Italian psychiatrist called Sophia Emiliani, whom they’d met on a case in March. She’d set her cap at him and despite everything that he’d tried she just wouldn’t give up.

  Liam considered his boss’ options, imagining himself in his place. Craig could ignore the psychiatrist’s calls until she got bored; see her and try to reason with her, but that held all sorts of risks; change his number, except she’d just find it through some app or another and start calling him again; or show her once and for all that he was out of bounds. He decided to have some fun with the last option.

  “Of course, there’s one way to stop her once and for all.”

  Craig gave a wry smile. “I draw the line at shooting her.”

  Liam guffawed. “That’s not a bad idea, and it would solve it, right enough, but that’s not actually what I meant. Just prove to her that you’re off the market for good.”

  “She already knows that. She’s seen me with Katy.”

  Katy Stevens, a consultant physician at St Mary’s Healthcare Trust, had been Craig’s partner for almost two years.

  Liam waved his ham-like left hand in the air and wiggled his ring finger. “Nothing says forever like a diamond.”

  Before Craig’s jaw could drop John appeared at his office door.

  “Are you two going to stand there all day? I heard you arrive ages ago.”

  Craig grabbed at the interruption gratefully. “Have you post-mortemed the third victim yet?”

  “Give me a chance. He’s just out of the van.”

  The pathologist walked past them, heading for the dissection room, then he stopped and stared at Liam who was now pointing at his left ring finger. “I hope you’re not proposing, Liam, because you’re most definitely not Marc’s type.”

  “I’m trying to tell him that the sultry shrink won’t get the message until he’s married.”

  Craig shoved John quickly through the outer doors. “That restraining order’s starting to look more attractive by the minute.”

  To his surprise John turned to face him with a light in his eyes that was almost evangelical.

  “I’ve never understood what you’ve got against marriage, Marc. It’s a wonderful institution.”

  “You make it sound like an open prison, and I didn’t see you rushing to get up the aisle.” Craig began heading for the car-park. “If you two don’t drop this Liam will be walking home and you’ll be reporting your findings to thin air.”

  John waved him back. “Keep your offensively abundant hair on. We’re only winding you up.” He entered the dissection room where their latest two victims were lying on metal slabs. “Victim one’s downstairs in storage.” He pulled back the sheet covering Rowan Lindsay and they stared at the sixty-something in silence for a moment.

  Craig broke it first. “Are you as clueless as you look?”

  John raised an eyebrow, tempted to take offence, but he knew it was payback for his marriage comment.

  “If you mean did the bodies give us any clues other than bullet calibre then yes, they did, but not much. The first two victims, Hart and Lindsay, took three shots apiece. Mike P.M.ed them and said they each received two bullets to the knees and one to the base of the skull.”

  Mike Augustus was the lab’s junior pathologist, or as junior as someone could be at forty-one. He was dating the squad’s inspector, Annette Eakin, and making the end of her violent marriage bearable.

  “Their knee joints are a mess so he’s still unsure if the bullets went straight through the back, severing the popliteal arteries, like they did in the bad old days when they wanted them to bleed out and/or lose the limb, or in through the side just to disable them. He’s reconstructing the joints now so we should know more soon.”

  “All the bullets are the same calibre?”

  John nodded. “And unusual. Thirty-thirties as they’re known colloquially. “

  “And their real name?”

  “.30-30 Winchesters. None of us has ever seen one before. They’re an American cartridge. Anyway, they were definitely fired at close quarters. There are powder burns at each entry wound.”

  “Did they lodge or go straight through?”

  The scientist gave Craig a quizzical look. “They lodged. In fact there’s something interesting on that, how did you know?”

  Craig shrugged. “I didn’t. I was just asking.”

  “Well, I can tell you that this definitely isn’t the first time that your man’s fired a gun. Each bullet lodged approximately half a centimetre in from the skin, so he knows his guns and he knows the human body extremely well. For that to be intentional he would’ve had to calculate the tensile strength, bulk and resistance of each muscle in each man, and that’s not easy, they had very different builds-”

  Liam cut in. “Specialist training. Loads of paramilitaries do it; here or abroad. ”

  John nodded. “Exactly my thoughts.”

  Craig considered for a moment before speaking. “So he calculated the muscle bulk and position in each man and angled the bullets to lodge half a centimetre in. Why? Why not dig them out? Someone really skilled wouldn’t leave a trail.”

  The ideas came thick and fast.

  “He’s cocksure, doesn’t think we’ll ever find him.”

  John chipped in excitedly. “Or he just doesn’t care if he’s caught.”

  Liam shook his head. “Nah. My bet is he knows the gun won’t lead back to him, or he’s already skipped the country.”

  The pathologist had another idea. “Perhaps the bullets themselves have some significance? Something that he wants us to know about? There are only two guns commonly used to fire them: the Century Arms Model 100 revolver and the Magnum Research BFR. ”

  “I’ve never heard of either, boss. Sounds like something the yanks would use.”


  Craig mulled over the information and decided they didn’t have enough yet to say what rationale their killer had followed, so he turned back to the corpse, gesturing at the man’s face.

  “Rowan Lindsay. The file says he had a kill list as long as your arm. Billy Hart was the same.”

  Liam’s face darkened. “I could tell you more about them than any file.”

  John shook his head. “Save it for coffee. There’s more.”

  He uncovered the man’s torso and Liam gasped.

  “You’ve seen this before?”

  Craig asked the question without looking at his deputy, his face instead six inches from Lindsay’s chest. It was covered in large burns. John nodded towards their victim’s groin.

  “They’re on his genitals as well. Hart was covered in them too. They’re electro thermal burns, where current has passed directly through the body. High voltage by the looks of them, and at least sixteen milliamps for best outcome. Anything less wouldn’t have caused tetanic spasm, which I presume was the effect they desired.”

  Liam found his voice. “They tortured them using live electrodes.” His face said he was recalling such scenes, not imagining them. “Paramilitaries used them to interrogate people during The Troubles. Alternating Current did the most damage; the DC just flung them free. They used the mains supply, or a twelve volt car battery if they didn’t have a handy plug, but they were too weak to do any real damage.” He nodded at the cadaver. “And a battery definitely wouldn’t have left those marks.” He shuddered. “I’ll never forget the smell when we found the bodies.”

  John nodded and went to re-cover the body. “Charred flesh. Same as in house fires.”

  “Except nowhere nearly as accidental.”

  Craig straightened up from his scrutiny. “They did this to everyone they kidnapped?”

  Liam shrugged. “Mainly to people who’d pissed them off, but they weren’t choosy. Catholic paramilitaries did it to the Protestant ones and vice versa. ’Course they tortured police and military before they killed them, and rivals on their own side got it as well. Innocent bystanders might just have got shot, but it depended what sort of mood the bastards were in.”

  John made a sound of disgust. “There’s a lesson there. Beware of men bearing acronyms.”

  Liam continued. “Oh, and snouts got it as well, if they were stupid enough to get found out. The Catholic paramilitaries took out anyone they thought had informed against them to the RUC. But sod the political motivations; it was just a psychopaths’ free-for-all back then.”

  The RUC or Royal Ulster Constabulary had been the name of Northern Ireland’s police force from nineteen-twenty-two until two-thousand and one, when the Patten Commission reformed and renamed it the Police Service of Northern Ireland; the PSNI.

  Craig had seen enough. He crossed to their new victim, still slumbering inside his body bag. As John unzipped it he was shocked by the face that appeared. It was someone that they’d met before. Liam’s jaw dropped.

  “Jonno Mulvenna! What the hell was he doing in Belfast?”

  The last time they’d encountered the ex-IRA man he’d retired to paint and live the quiet life on the North Coast, and to forge a relationship with the son that he’d never known he had.

  Craig didn’t answer. Instead he asked a question. “Where exactly was he found?”

  “Falls Road. Round the back of Divis Street.”

  The Falls had been a favoured area for dark deeds during The Troubles.

  Liam nodded. “Odds on that Mulvenna killed someone there back in the day, even if he wasn’t done for it.”

  Craig knew that he was right. “And the bullets are the same as the other two, John?”

  “I’ve only retrieved the one from his skull so far but it’s definitely the same calibre. We can’t I.D. the gun until Des checks the ballistics.”

  Doctor Des Marsham was the Head of Forensic Science at the labs and an expert in his field.

  The pathologist gestured at Mulvenna’s still covered torso. “The mortuary assistant said that he’s got burns as well.”

  He re-zipped the bag and Craig led the way back to the office, helping himself to a coffee with the rudeness of a good friend. The others did the same and when they’d taken their seats and stared into space for a while, Craig spoke again.

  “OK. So we’ve got two dead loyalists: Billy Hart and Rowan Lindsay, and one dead republican, John Mulvenna.” He turned, catching Liam mid-gulp. “Liam, you policed here during The Troubles; tell me everything you know about the first two.”

  Liam’s sneer expressed his view of the men unambiguously. “Scrotes.”

  He dunked a biscuit into his drink and then swallowed it whole.

  “I was hoping for a bit more than that, and before you say it, I don’t mean big scrotes.”

  Liam shrugged. “Like what? They were bastards, both of them. Hart was tight mates with Tommy Hill. He was with him when he climbed onto the bus and shot four men. Lindsay specialised in hunting and killing Catholic civilians, but like I said he’d take out the odd cop as well, just as long as he wasn’t Protestant.”

  Tommy Hill was a recalcitrant old loyalist, well known to the police for his exploits during The Troubles. He’d served ten of a twenty-year stretch for shooting four people on their way home from a wedding, climbing calmly onto their mini-bus and killing three men and the driver as they tried to escape through the windows and past him to the door. It had earned him urban hero status amongst his paramilitary pals, and twenty years in prison. He’d been granted release in ninety-eight under the Good Friday Agreement, despite widespread disapproval, and had then dabbled in drug dealing and petty theft, before retiring to Templepatrick to be near his toddler granddaughter. But there was no doubt he still had his finger on the loyalist pulse.

  Liam sniffed derisively. “Hart re-invented himself as a community worker after the Good Friday like half of them did -”

  John interrupted eagerly, fired up by Liam’s tales of a dangerous time. The fact that he’d been at school and university when most of it had happened didn’t prevent him playing detective vicariously.

  “Which means he might still have been dealing drugs and running protection rackets.”

  Liam arched an eyebrow. He’d never thought of his youth as exciting, just gut wrenchingly terrifying every day he’d put his uniform on and most of the days that he hadn’t. But TV and movies had reinvented The Troubles as thrilling, so who was he to rain on the Doc’s parade. He nodded grimly, playing to his audience.

  “Very likely. I’ll ask around. Lindsay was part of a loyalist hit squad who specialised in lift and shoot raids on any Catholic unlucky enough to be caught in the wrong place. The boys mostly, but they killed some girls as well. He shot an off duty cop too.” He looked sad suddenly. “I knew him. Shy lad. He left three small kids.”

  Craig interjected. “And we all know what John Mulvenna did.” He thought for a moment. “Lindsay’s body was found off the Shankill. Where?”

  “On wasteland not far from the leisure centre.”

  “And Hart’s on wasteland off York Street. Our man obviously likes wasteland. OK, that gives us three distinct venues: near York Street, the Shankill and the Lower Falls. We need to know if the men had ever lived close to where they were killed, although since Mulvenna lived on the North Coast when we met him, my guess is that Liam called it right; the dumpsites have more to do with their past crimes than their current addresses.”

  Liam nodded. “The old dogs finally got what they deserved.”

  Something occurred to Craig. “Sorry, John, I’m assuming that they were all shot where they were found. Were they?”

  Winter tried to look superior. It just made him look like he had bad sinuses. “So you’ve decided to ask that very obvious question, have you?” He paused for effect and Craig yawned, spoiling his big build up.

  “So that’s a yes then?”

  The pathologist scrambled for a witty comeback but gave up.

 
; “Yes, OK, they were shot where they were dumped. But you shouldn’t have assumed.”

  “Mea culpa. OK, but they can’t have been electrocuted there -”

  Liam cut in, shaking his head. “They could if they’d a portable generator and a pair of jump leads.”

  Craig shook his head “OK, maybe they could have been, but it’s unlikely; there are too many burns to have made them in a hurry. They took their time with these men and that requires privacy. My guess is that our killer tortured them somewhere secluded and then ferried them alive to the three sites to be killed.” He sipped his espresso before continuing. “OK, so they were shot at three different locations in Belfast which hopefully won’t be anywhere near where they live. If we’re right that links the shootings firmly to their murky pasts.”

  John made a face. “So we’re looking for a vigilante?”

  “Maybe. But why now? It’s seventeen years since the Good Friday.”

  The question was greeted by furrowed brows and stares into space. When no answers appeared Liam returned to their victims.

  “Maybe they were all banged up together and someone in prison hated them all?”

  Craig shot him a glance that said it was thin but possible. “Maybe. At this stage I’ll take anything I can get.”

  The D.C.I. got excited. “Or maybe if we mark the dumpsites on the map and join them they’ll make a square, like in the Downpatrick killings.”

  He was referring to the religious sect that they’d dealt with seven months before.

  “Now you’re just fantasising. You’ll be seeing sects around every corner next.” Craig set down his cup and stood up. “When you’ve done the formal I.D.s and got the ballistics give me a bell, John. And see if you can find out exactly what made those burns, please.”

  As if on cue his phone rang and he repeated the ritual of thirty minutes before, before sliding it back into his pocket with a heavy sigh. He wished he was back on the yacht with no mobile phone reception.

  John adopted an ominous tone. “You’ll have to do something about Sophia soon, Marc. She’s definitely stalking you.”