The Talion Code

by Catriona King

  It had to have happened today, because he’d been as happy as Larry when he’d driven to Guthrie’s office at eight a.m. As Andy closed his eyes and ran through the list of things that he’d done since then, Reggie jerked a thumb towards him and whispered to Annette.

  “What’s up with him then?”

  She shrugged, not really caring. Normally she was curious about people, watching their changing emotions and behaviours with a sociologist’s eye, but it was all she could do to stay awake today, so the thoughts of Chairman Andy weren’t high on her priority list. Instead she turned to look for Rhonda, conscious and slightly guilty that since the new constable had joined the team they’d barely even had a chat. The statuesque Australian was sitting behind Dominic Guthrie’s desk running through the address books on two smart-phones.

  “Where did you find those?”

  Rhonda’s red lips moved but Annette didn’t hear a sound. She moved closer, repeating the question encouragingly with the caveat. “Sorry, would you mind speaking up. I’ve had a cold.” She hadn’t but it had the desired effect. With a heave of the shoulders that usually accompanied a shout, a quiet “in the desk drawer” emerged. Annette nodded encouragingly so the new D.C. continued.

  “They’re only half charged, so I doubt he’d used them recently, but I’ll bag them for Davy to go through.”

  “Great.”

  Meanwhile Andy had reached nine-thirty in his day’s schedule and the penny had suddenly dropped. He opened his eyes and stared over at the two women, a look of horror on his narrow face. He’d felt agitated since Rhonda had arrived! He recognised the signs and what they meant all too well.

  He was twice married and twice divorced, with only a rented flat, an old sports car and a five-year-old son to show for his forty years. His wives had been very different. Cindy had been small and noisy, with a mop of black hair and transparent braces that she’d still insisted on wearing even after her teeth had become perfectly straight. Elaine had been taller than him and ethereal, with an other-worldly quality that he’d realised too late was because she really wasn’t all there; ‘away with the fairies’ was the local term.

  What they’d had in common, apart from their determination to keep hold of the communal property in the divorce settlements, was a strange effect on him that had never gone away, although memories of marital war had tempered its strength somewhat. From the first day he’d met both of them he’d felt agitated, and it was a sensation that he’d come to associate with falling in love. Rhonda agitated him even though they’d only exchanged a few words, and, with a fatalism that he acknowledged as a weakness, the D.C.I. realised that the third ex Mrs Angel might just have entered his life.

  His sense of powerlessness was rudely interrupted by Reggie yanking the USB from its port. He followed it by lifting the computer’s hard drive and making his way towards the stairs.

  “I was working on that!”

  The sergeant’s words floated back to him. “In between bouts of falling asleep.”

  Andy went to say that his eyes had been closed in contemplation but the words just tailed away; his record of falling asleep in briefings made his closed eyes hard to defend. Besides, he had bigger worries, and as they packed up the contents of Dominic Guthrie’s office before sending it on its various ways, he glanced furtively at the squad’s new constable and imagined her in a long white dress.

  ****

  Craig’s first sighting of Posy Lynch elicited almost the same reaction as Liam’s and Jack’s. He gestured through the viewing room glass, knowing that Annette and Lucia would kill him for what he was about to say next.

  “She’s The Mirror’s News Editor?”

  Lynch hadn’t turned out to be just a journalist as Liam had originally thought, but The Belfast Mirror’s News Editor as well. Craig didn’t think of himself as a chauvinist but he knew that he was being chauvinistic now. Or was he? It wasn’t that he was surprised by a woman being the News Editor of a national newspaper, Maggie was and she was the best that The Chronicle had had in a long time. So why was he so shocked by Posy Lynch?

  Jack answered for him.

  “It’s just… she’s so wee, isn’t she? It’s like…I mean…how does she keep all those aggressive journalists under control?”

  Craig laughed. “You make them sound like axe maniacs!”

  “Ach, you know what I mean. The ones who’d do anything for a story can be pretty hard to stop.” He shoved Liam’s arm. “You’ve talked to her. What do you think?”

  Liam sniffed and gestured through the glass. “Biscuits. That’s how she does it. I spotted boxes of them in her office. All sorts. My guess is she assesses which is their favourite then she plies them with those till they’re too full up to shout. That’s what she did to me.”

  Craig headed for the door. “Well, biscuits or no biscuits she printed a story that’s jeopardising our enquiry and she’s obstructing us now, so Ms Lynch has some questions to answer.”

  Liam followed, muttering beneath his breath. “You’ll have to ask them, then. When I look at her all I can see are Tunnocks Caramels.”

  The detectives appeared on the other side of the glass as Jack watched, suddenly hungry after all the talk of food. He rang through to Sandi and two minutes later he got tea and biscuits of his own, just as Craig finished reciting the names and addresses into the tape.

  Craig sat back in his chair and considered their guest. She wasn’t accompanied by a solicitor so it was his guess that she hadn’t informed the newspaper’s management where she was. Much as he preferred interviews without solicitors present he felt obliged to point the omission out.

  “You’ve chosen not to have a solicitor present, Ms Lynch?”

  She smiled at him winsomely. It was a cute smile, like a Pomeranian puppy’s, and he imagined that she’d traded on its effect a good many times in her life.

  “I don’t need one, Superintendent.”

  “Why is that?”

  Without warning she detached her still present rucksack. Jack tutted loudly, realising that both he and Sandi had missed it when they’d booked her in. He’d thought it was part of her dress, a grey and black affair that stretched down past her knees.

  Craig noted the omission but didn’t react. He very much doubted Posy Lynch was carrying a weapon that could do them any harm. He was almost right. She opened the bag to reveal a packet of custard creams.

  “I hope you don’t mind, Superintendent. I have low blood sugar so I always carry a snack.”

  He ignored Liam’s audible salivation and carried on in a firm tone. “Why is it that you don’t need a solicitor present, Ms Lynch?”

  She tore open the packet of biscuits with her teeth, not looking up as she answered. “Because I’m not going to answer any of your questions. And if I don’t say anything I certainly won’t say anything wrong.”

  Craig rolled his eyes. Her logic was impeccable and he knew immediately that logic and not the availability of her biscuits was how she ruled the newsroom. He pressed on.

  “Do you deny writing the leader in this morning’s Belfast Mirror?” He set a copy of the paper in front of her and she scanned it slowly, nibbling a custard cream and nodding as she read.

  “Yes, I wrote the article.”

  “Do you deny that you wrote it based on information from an individual who claims to have seen who committed a recent murder in the Titanic Quarter?”

  She offered Liam a biscuit and he lifted his hand to accept, only to drop it again at Craig’s sharp glance. She shrugged and shook her head.

  “No, I don’t deny it.”

  “Can you see then that said individual might have valuable information to help us solve that murder?”

  She stared into space, screwing up her face in thought. After a few seconds she nodded for a second time. “Yes. Yes, I can see that.”

  “So will you give us their name?”

  “Sorry. Can’t. They came to me in confidence.”

  Craig could feel his t
emper fraying. “They may have actually committed the murder.”

  She shook her head. “I’ve met them and they didn’t.”

  Liam noticed that instead of her hair being grey as he’d first thought, it was actually lilac. It looked like shades of purple were the next hair thing.

  Craig wasn’t interested in hair colour and he was less than impressed by the journalist’s answers. He leaned forward, his tone increasingly tense.

  “Ms Lynch, unless you tell me that you’re psychic, you have no possible way of knowing if your source killed someone or not! And what’s more, you’re putting yourself and others in danger by allowing that person to remain free.”

  Her small jaw set. “I don’t agree.”

  He brushed her words aside. “It’s clear from the article that they were at or very close to the murder scene, and the level of detail provided says that they must have either been or seen the murderer. So I’ll ask you again. What is their name?”

  Her lips tightened, the biscuits were returned to the rucksack, and the men watched as she zipped it up and rose to her feet.

  “I’d like to go now or I’d like a lawyer.”

  Craig rose as well. “Get Ms Lynch a phone, Liam, and then show her to a cell. You’re going nowhere, Ms Lynch.”

  He re-entered the viewing room with a bang that could be heard out on High Street and a swear word that he hoped couldn’t.

  “That woman, Jack! I can honestly say she would drive me to drink if I wasn’t already there.” He gestured through the glass to where Liam was supervising the journalist’s call. “Doesn’t she realise she could be leaving a killer free to kill again? For all we know her source didn’t witness the murder, they committed it!”

  Jack nodded slowly, hoping that it would calm Craig down. He’d read about Neurolinguistic Programming a communication modelling approach the week before and he was curious to see if it would work on the hoof. Sadly Craig wasn’t open to influence. He started pacing as fast as the small viewing room would allow, stopping every so often to give the wall a thump.

  “We have a dead man, another who didn’t kill him but was probably up to no good with him financially, and so far no useful witnesses, no clear CCTV, an untraceable weapon and no firm motive.” He jabbed his finger at the glass. “Now we have some biscuit munching journalist refusing to compromise their damn integrity and treating a source with the sanctity of the confessional!”

  Jack kept his voice slow and quiet, not ready to give up on NLP yet. “But what can you do about it, sir? We can’t force her to talk.”

  It gave Craig an idea. “We may not be able to, but I’m damn sure The Mirror’s editor-in-chief will.”

  ****

  High Street Station. The Staff Room.

  Craig’s call to Sean Flanagan began cheerfully enough, on the Chief Constable’s part at least.

  “Ah, hello Marc. How are things?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “I hear Sergeant McLean’s back on Monday. Excellent, excellent. How are you accommodating getting him back onto the street?”

  Craig hadn’t thought that far, but thankfully Flanagan didn’t wait for an answer.

  “Disability shouldn’t be a barrier to a good officer solving crime. We just need to facilitate it for him, don’t you think?”

  Craig went to say yes, but Flanagan had moved onto other things. “I hear you’ve been trying to second Inspector Spence from Intelligence.” He laughed heartily. “Roy Barrett’s blowing steam out of both ears about it, so it has to be a good thing. It does the spooks no harm to spend some time in the real world occasionally, so take Spence with my blessing and if Barrett gives you any grief just refer him to me.”

  Well, that filled his inspector vacancy so at least something good had happened that day, and the C.C. was in a cheerful mood so it was a good time to ask for his help. Craig tried to interrupt the ebullient Flanagan’s flow for the second time but the veteran officer was like a force of nature.

  “Your case, Marc. That fellow you found in the Titanic Quarter. Any news on that yet?”

  Thank God. He was finally leaving a gap. Craig leapt in fast.

  “Actually, sir. That’s what I called about.”

  Two minutes later Sean Flanagan was up-to-date on the case’s progress or rather the lack of it, and appraised of The Mirror’s shenanigans. Craig had lit the blue touch paper, now he was just waiting for the bang. It was loud.

  “Bloody journalists! Integrity of the press, my eye, they wouldn’t know integrity if it bit them on-”

  Craig interrupted before Flanagan said something he’d be embarrassed by.

  “Exactly my feeling, sir, so we have the journalist who wrote the article here now. She’s refusing to give up her source, who for all we know could actually be our murderer, so I wondered if you could-”

  “With pleasure. I went to Uni with Jimmy Pearce, Chairman of The Mirror’s Board, and he owes me a favour.”

  The way he said it Craig knew that said favour had involved a girl, and not just any girl. So there had been someone significant before Helen Flanagan.

  “I’d be grateful if you could precipitate things, sir. We’ve very few other leads so this could be a big break.”

  “Right now then.”

  Before Craig could answer the phone went down. He knew things ran slower the higher up you went so he used the expected wait to give Davy a call. The analyst was eating and it reminded Craig that they hadn’t had any lunch. He was surprised Liam hadn’t gone on strike. Davy swallowed his mouthful of bagel hastily and told Craig what he wanted to know before he asked.

  “Nothing on CCTV in the Titanic Quarter yet, no eye witnesses other than Fitzhenry, but the good news is we might have something on Jamison’s dodgy deal.”

  “What?”

  Davy rolled his eyes. Would it kill him to say ‘Good for you; that sounds great’? Or ‘Thanks for all your hard work, Davy’? Even as he was grumbling he knew that it wasn’t strictly true. Craig was a decent boss, but the middle of a case wasn’t when his decency shone brightest. That came in the pub when everything was done. Between now and then you could drop down dead and he would step over you to get to the evidence.

  “It looks like Guthrie might have been checking out dodgy currency swops a few hours before he was killed. I don’t have all the details yet, but I s…should do by the time you get back.”

  “Have you told Ms O’Hara?”

  The analyst was glad Craig had used her surname. If he’d just said Nicola a two minute telephone farce could have ensued.

  “I’ve told her we might have s…something, but not the details. Should I?”

  “If it has a possible international angle then yes, you should. Also, I’ve just realised we forgot about insurance as a possible motive. Check if Guthrie was heavily insured by his wife or firm, and I want to know the general health of the firm’s finances as well.”

  “OK, I’ll-”

  But Craig had already gone, retreating into his thoughts while he waited for Sean Flanagan to ring back. They had two people blocking up Jack’s cells. Richard Jamison, whose solicitor was already bitching about getting him bailed, and Posy Lynch, stubborn and recalcitrant and sent to make his life difficult. He wondered briefly if Posy was her birth name. It could have been but it wasn’t one you heard often in Belfast. He decided it was probably adopted, like her hair colour, and tried to recall if he’d ever seen lilac hair before.

  Just then Liam entered the staff room and threw himself heavily into a chair, realising too late that it was one without any stuffing and clambering back out of it again with a groan.

  “That’s my back screwed. Tell me something to cheer me up, boss.”

  Craig waved behind him vaguely. “There are chocolate biscuits in that jar.”

  Liam immediately forgot his pain. “Now you’re talking.” He walked to the sink and filled the kettle. “You waiting for the C.C. to call?”

  “Hmm.”

  “Spoken to him yet?” The kettle was cl
icked on and he went in search of a more comfortable seat.

  “Hmm.”

  Liam decided to change the subject to one where the answers would have to be more than monosyllables.

  “That Posy’s a wee firecracker. If she wasn’t being a pain in the ass I’d quite like her.”

  Craig glanced at him sceptically. “Since when did you like difficult women?”

  Liam sighed. “I’m preparing myself for Erin in a few years’ time. She’s showing signs of being less than amenable.”

  Craig gave a loud laugh. “You mean she’s answering you back already? At four-years-old?”

  “And the rest. She bashed Rory over the head with his toy lorry last night, then argued he was being obstructive.” He smiled proudly. “She used that very word, too.”

  Craig blew out his cheeks and shook his head in sympathy. “Sounds like you might have a barrister on your hands.”

  Liam shuddered. “God forbid. The only lawyer I’ve ever liked is old man Standish.”

  Craig shrugged. “Nicola O’Hara’s all right. She’s helping-” He was cut short by his mobile ringing. He answered it with his fingers mentally crossed. “Marc Craig.”

  His wishing worked. It was Flanagan.

  “Good news, Marc. Jimmy’s calling the editor-in-chief, so your guest should be getting a call in the next few minutes ordering her to give up her source.”

  Craig’s shoulders dropped in relief. “That’s great, sir. Thanks. Hopefully she’ll do as she’s told.”

  “If she doesn’t then get back to me. Cheerio.”

  Craig was off his seat and into reception before Liam could ask.

  “Jack. Have you got Ms Lynch’s mobile?”

  “In the safe. Do you want it?”

  “Put it and Ms Lynch back in the interview room, then join us in the viewing room and watch.”