The Keeper

by Catriona King

  Liam nodded grimly. “Restraining order or engagement ring, take your pick.”

  John considered the suggestions. “No, not an engagement ring, although I still think that you should marry Katy. But if you propose to her now she’ll become the target of Sophia’s unwelcome attention as well.” He suddenly thought of something. “Of course…” He stopped mid-sentence, staring into space.

  Craig prompted him tiredly. “I know I’ll regret asking, but what?”

  But they’d already lost the pathologist. He began rifling through his bookcase until, after a minute, he realised that the detectives were still there. He waved them out with a dismissive “when I’m sure of my ground you’ll be the second and third to know.”

  Chapter Two

  The Antrim Road, Belfast.

  The small, tanned woman lifted an avocado and squeezed it in one slim hand. Firm but ripe, just how she and Gerry liked them. She placed two in her basket and moved down the organic supermarket’s aisle, looking like any other grandmother doing the weekly shop. Her pepper and salt bob added to the housewife image; her flat pumps and pedal pushers hinted at a more fashionable bent. There was something of the nineteen-sixties about her; gamine à la Audrey Hepburn, but nothing like as innocent.

  The sixties; ah now, that was a time. Post war, free love, when the baby boomer generation was still young. They’d wanted to make the world better: flower power, ban the bomb and marches every weekend. Tuning in, dropping out and, according to the writer Philip Larkin, inventing sex in nineteen sixty-three. I wonder how babies were created before then? They’d marched their way into the seventies with all the upheaval that decade had brought: the worsening of the Vietnam War and the trauma of The Troubles. Rebels with a cause, they’d thought they could change the world, and instead they’d ended up planting the very bombs that they’d professed to despise.

  Now they were grandparents, retired and pensioned off. Living in chateaus in France and vineyards in Tuscany, their lefty leanings reserved for yelling at politicians on TV. Some of them. Others actually were the politicians, their tattooed arms hidden now beneath well cut suits, their berets and sunglasses replaced by winning, silver fox smiles. Amazing what a makeover could do.

  As the woman browsed the aisles the store cameras overhead browsed her: ubiquitous, invisible, part of everyday British life; just one more image of the most surveyed people in the world. As she paid for her avocadoes her credit card passed her details swiftly online, and elsewhere in Belfast an email alert pinged up. It gave him all that he would need to find her, when her turn came around.

  ****

  1.30 p.m.

  “Where to now? No, let me guess; the crime scenes.”

  Craig drove smoothly through the city centre then turned left down Victoria Street and drove on for another mile. They might have been heading for the motorway but they weren’t.

  “You’re going to York Street and I’m heading back to the office.”

  As he finished his sentence he pulled into Cityside’s car-park, slowing down just enough for Liam to disembark. He didn’t move.

  “Are you waiting for a doorman?”

  The D.C.I. shook his head and gestured further down the road. “We’ve still half-a-mile to go.”

  Craig’s eyes widened; not even Liam could be that lazy, especially when, given his long legs, he’d reach the scene in five minutes or less. He leaned over and opened the passenger door.

  “Out. I’m not driving all round the one way system just to save you a few minutes’ walk.”

  Liam folded his arms stubbornly.

  “Get out or I’ll tell Danni about that waitress you flirt with every day in the canteen.”

  Liam gawped at him. “You wouldn’t.”

  He wouldn’t, it was just harmless fun; but Liam didn’t need to know that he was bluffing. Whatever he read in Craig’s eyes made the D.C.I. disembark.

  “One of the uniforms can bring you back. And remember, we’re briefing at four o’clock.”

  With that the passenger door was slammed and Craig pulled out into the traffic, smiling when he saw Liam’s V sign in his mirror. Five minutes later he walked through the squad’s double-doors and was stopped in his tracks by the sight that greeted him. In one corner of the squad-room, Carmen McGregor, the most troublesome constable that he’d ever had the misfortune to hire, was attempting to drag her desk across the floor, watched by the rest of the team. The only person who wasn’t watching was her ex-boyfriend Ken Smith, an army Captain who’d been seconded to them for the previous eleven months and who was due to return to his regiment in a few weeks. He was sitting head down, staring at the floor, with a flush on his cheeks that said the furniture removal had everything to do with him.

  Craig crossed quietly to Annette’s desk.

  “Let me guess. Carmen’s finally found out about Ken and Lucia?”

  The D.I. nodded. “Ten minutes ago.”

  Carmen had dumped Ken unceremoniously six months earlier and her loss had been Craig’s younger sister Lucia’s gain. The couple had been seeing each other covertly since then but the cat was obviously out of the bag at last.

  “Lucia rang for Ken and Nicky accidentally put it through to Carmen’s line.”

  Craig stared pointedly at his P.A., arching an eyebrow. Accidentally his foot; Nicky never did anything by chance, although he wasn’t entirely certain what her motive had been this time so he went over to find out. Nicky hastily averted her gaze from Carmen’s feat of strength and feigned something interesting on her computer screen. Craig was having none of it.

  “My office, please.” He turned back to where Andy and Davy were sitting mesmerised by Carmen’s herculean efforts and barked an order. “One of you men help Carmen move her desk, now! And you shouldn’t need to be told. She’s half your size!”

  With that he ushered a sheepish Nicky into his office and shut the door, turning to gaze out the window at the river Lagan below. He asked the question without looking at her.

  “Why did you put Lucia through to Carmen’s phone?”

  The P.A. began an obfuscating monologue that would have done a defence lawyer proud. At the end of it Craig took his seat and repeated the question, adding a caveat.

  “And I don’t believe for one moment that it was an accident.”

  Nicky blushed to the roots of her hair, which this week was Marilyn Monroe blonde. For a moment she considered trying another diversion, but then she shrugged instead.

  “She needed to know.”

  “And that was your business, how?”

  She pulled up a chair and sat, uninvited, leaning forward earnestly on the desk. “You’re not here all day. You haven’t seen what’s been happening.”

  He was curious now. “What has?”

  “Carmen realised that she wanted Ken back and she’s been flirting around him for weeks. It’s embarrassing.”

  “For whom?”

  She warmed to her theme. “For both of them. Ken’s too nice to ask her to stop and tell her that it’s really over, and she’s making a fool of herself. If we let her keep doing it then she’ll hate all of us.”

  He gave a snort that would have done Liam proud. “It’s a bit late for that! She’s pretty much hated everyone since she joined the squad, and now she’ll realise that we’ve known about Lucia all along.”

  Nicky’s became energised. “No she won’t. Not if we all pretend that we didn’t know until today.” She sat back looking pleased with herself and then realised something. “Of course she’ll hate you. You were bound to have known, being Lucia’s brother and all. And Ken, she’ll really hate him for not telling her.”

  “Hence trying to drag her desk a mile away from him.”

  He stared at the ceiling for a moment. Ken should have told Carmen, but he understood why he’d found it hard and it still hadn’t been Nicky’s place to out the new couple. The army man had probably hoped to keep Lucia a secret until he’d left the squad in a few weeks’ time, then they coul
d have dated openly without Carmen ever finding out. As a plan it had been kind but doomed to failure.

  Craig stared hard at his P.A.

  “This wasn’t your business, Nicky -”

  “But-”

  “But nothing. With a little luck Ken would have gone back to the army and Carmen might never have known, or at least she could have pretended that she didn’t. She would still have her pride intact and we wouldn’t have weeks of atmosphere to deal with now.”

  Nicky’s face brightened. “Ah, but I thought of that. Ken’s got loads of holiday to take. If he wants to he can go on leave tomorrow and Carmen will never have to see him again.”

  Craig sighed heavily. “You’ve completely missed the point. She’s been humiliated in front of her workmates. She’s been finding her therapy hard enough and now she has an additional problem to deal with.”

  Carmen had had serious anger management issues even before she’d joined the squad, leaving a trail of insubordination and bad feeling in every section where she’d worked. He’d called her old boss in Leith months before and found out that it had been the same in her home town, which was part of why she’d crossed the Irish Sea. They still didn’t know the reasons for her aggression but months of enforced therapy had calmed things slightly, until Nicky had gone and stirred them up again.

  Craig frowned, shaking his head. “You might have meant well, Nick, but you’ve really blown it this time. Go back to work and send Ken in, please.”

  With that he swivelled his chair towards the window. He turned back when he heard heavy male footsteps enter the room. Ken was still blushing to the roots of his fair hair. Craig waved him to a seat and poured him a coffee without asking. After a minute’s silence he shook his head solemnly.

  “This is a real mess.”

  The outed lover nodded glumly and mumbled an apology. Craig waved it away.

  “It’s not your fault. Nicky should never have transferred the call.”

  Ken leapt to the P.A.’s defence. “It was an easy mistake, sir.”

  “It wasn’t a mistake. She did it deliberately.” As Ken’s jaw dropped he carried on. “She thought she was doing it for the best. Said Carmen was making overtures trying to get you back and she was embarrassing herself and you-”

  Ken suddenly found his voice and it was loud. Craig could see why he’d made Captain.

  “She had no bloody right! What business was it of hers? Lucia and I were keeping things quiet till I’d re-joined my regiment specifically to avoid hurting Carmen. Now Nicky’s made all our efforts worthless.”

  Craig nodded. There was no defence for what Nicky had done but his main issue was dealing with the trouble that it had caused.

  “I’m not great on this kind of thing, Ken, so would you mind if I asked Annette to join us? Say no if you’d rather that she didn’t.”

  The angry lover nodded vigorously, his face saying that as soon as they’d finished he’d be giving Nicky a piece of his mind. “Please do, sir. We need to sort this out before it impacts on everyone’s work.”

  A minute later Annette was sitting at Craig’s desk shaking her head as well.

  “I know Nicky meant to help, sir, but this is a shambles. My main concern is Carmen’s welfare.”

  Ken nodded in agreement. “She feels humiliated in front of everyone and she’ll think we’ve all been laughing at her behind her back.”

  Annette thought for a moment and then asked a question. “Ken, how would Carmen react now if you said that you wanted her back?”

  Ken’s eyes widened in panic. “But I don’t. Lucia and I are-”

  She waved him down. “Humour me and imagine that you did. How would she react?”

  Craig smiled, seeing where Annette was heading.

  Ken didn’t hesitate. “She’d spit in my eye; probably literally after this.”

  “OK then. I have a plan. And timing is everything.”

  Five minutes more and they had it ironed out, leaving them plenty of time to discuss the case.

  ****

  Near York Street, Belfast.

  Liam crunched across the wasteland’s gravel as he traced the likely route taken by Billy Hart and his killer. Unless their perp was stupid he would have parked his car somewhere that no CCTV would have caught it. It would also have been essential to avoid the main road, not just to avoid being seen but to stop the dead man walking from yelling for help to a passer-by. OK, so their killer had parked somewhere secluded, but not only secluded, dark as well. Every victim had been killed in the early morning, so their killer had upped the privacy by deliberately choosing to kill them when most good folks were safely tucked in their beds.

  The D.C.I. pulled out his notebook and scribbled down some points. Cameras and bus routes, and who might have passed by at that time of night? Joggers, junkies, the homeless? He kept on walking, eyes locked firmly on the ground, until he’d reached the taped-off area marking their murder scene. It was being guarded by a gormless looking constable. Liam gestured back at the ground he’d just covered.

  “I don’t suppose anyone photographed all the possible routes in here, did they?”

  The boy blinked so hard that Liam began to wonder if he had a health complaint. Finally the P.C. spoke. It was hardly worth the effort.

  “No.”

  “No what?”

  The constable looked at him like it was a trick question. “No, sir?”

  Liam rolled his eyes. “Very polite, but not what I was getting at. Did you notice anything unusual on the ground?”

  The youth glanced inside the tape. “There’s blood.”

  “I meant outside the tape. Anything lying around?” It was probably too much to hope for that the killer had dropped their business card.

  The P.C.’s mouth opened and Liam’s heart leapt. It fell again as he said. “Oh, aye, I see what you mean, sir. But no, I didn’t notice a thing.”

  It wasn’t his fault but that wouldn’t stop Liam giving him a job to do. “Right then.” He gestured at a second uniform on the other side of the tape. “I think I can protect the scene without you for half-an-hour, so I want you and your mate on your knees doing a fingertip search of the terrain.” He pulled some plastic gloves from his jacket. “There you go. Give your pal a pair and get stuck in.”

  With that he climbed over the tape into the execution site and hunkered down, staring hard at the dried blood staining the stones and earth. He pictured Billy Hart standing, hands bound behind his back; struggling and begging; anything to avoid the inevitable end of his life. How would his attacker have controlled him? He must have been big, bigger than all three of his charges. He couldn’t remember the paramilitaries’ heights so he scribbled ‘how tall?’ in his notebook and then slid it back into its resting place.

  So their killer was a tall man who’d held his victims in place with one hand and had a gun in his other. Liam retrieved his notebook and scribbled ‘strong’ and ‘right or left handed?’ on the page. It was useful running through the scene like this; threw up all sorts of things for the forensics lot to check.

  OK, so whichever was their killer’s gun hand his other hand had had to be strong enough to hold his victims very still; the bullet entry wounds had been clean and they wouldn’t have been with wriggling men. Maybe there’d been two killers? Another note.

  Liam leaned in closer to the blood. So where had he taken the first shot? The trick would’ve been to have prevented Hart from escaping, so the kneecapping had to have come first. Maybe it had been done before they’d arrived? No; Hart couldn’t have walked any distance if it had been and the blood was two hundred metres from the nearest road. The kneecapping had definitely been done there.

  So…gun to the back of the knee or to the side? Back of the knee would have severed the artery, but cutting the artery wasn’t important unless you were leaving them alive for long enough to bleed out. The detective shrugged. Through the side then; Mike’s reconstructions would tell them soon enough. He wondered whether the patho
logist would speak to a trauma specialist or he should; another thing to add to the list.

  OK, so shot number one would have made Hart fall and bleed from his knee on the spot. Liam searched the ground. Sure enough, a patch of blood about the size of a fist was marked with a C.S.I.’s numbered flag. He peered at it and then scanned around, searching for the second knee shot; it was three feet away at the end of a thin blood trail.

  He pictured Billy Hart; one knee bent and bleeding, crawling away as fast as he could, desperate to save his skin. There’d have been no need to hold him then; he wasn’t going anywhere fast. Hart had trailed blood from his knee, the left judging by where the next patch lay, then, after he’d travelled three feet, a second shot through his right knee had stopped him in his tracks. Liam stared at the two half-round patches and then at the trail joining them; they told a gruesome story of a pitiless executioner and a hobbled man fleeing for his life.

  He closed his eyes and pictured the times that he’d seen the pattern before. Sometimes that had been all there’d been; a punishment shooting that the victim had ultimately survived. Chastised for some deviation or disloyalty and then left to be patched up by a doctor, to live their life struggling to ever run or jump properly again.

  But the others... Liam shook the images from his mind and stared at the ground again, his gaze moving four feet ahead of the blood patches, seeking evidence of the mortal blow. The spatter pattern he found there matched their victims’ injuries perfectly. There, two thirds of a man’s length in front of him, was a larger patch of blood and spray that the clean-up team still had to remove. He hunkered down for a better look and then rested back on his haunches, breathing through his nose to stem the growing urge to throw up.

  Amongst the blackcurrant-red dried blood lay scattered globules of brain, peppered with soot from the gunshot residue and spicules of shattered skull. This was how men died. Not quietly like in the movies and not always peacefully in their beds, but begging and clawing and losing control from fear, as their blood and brains met the cold dank earth.