The Coercion Key

by Catriona King

  “OK, Ian?”

  Ian Sinclair unfolded his arms, revealing a muscular torso beneath his snow-white shirt. Craig had met Sinclair on a case in 2012, when he’d been guarding an errant Stormont Minister. He’d been impressed with him. Sinclair had seen a lot of the world, and a lot of war zones during his time in the army and N.A.T.O., but Craig had never got the feeling that he would rush to pull a trigger if a punch would do the trick instead. Sinclair had been stunned that Craig had remembered him from a case more than a year before, but pleased when he’d requested him for protection duty. He’d been less pleased by what Craig had asked of him earlier that afternoon.

  When Craig had beckoned him into his office from his guard post outside the floor’s double-doors, Sinclair had been surprised to find Liam and Annette there. He recalled the conversation.

  “All right, Officer Sinclair?”

  “All right, Chief Inspector. Inspector.”

  Liam could see Sinclair’s brain working overtime, knowing that they were hatching some plan but with no idea what it was. When Craig told him what it was, Sinclair had set his jaw and shaken his head.

  “Absolutely not, sir.”

  “Hear me out.”

  Craig had waved him to a seat and Annette had poured him a cup of coffee as Craig talked on.

  “We need to draw our perp out before she kills any more innocent people.”

  Sinclair raised an eyebrow sceptically. “Is that likely? Weren’t you saying just yesterday that she’d completed her list?”

  Craig knew that he’d been caught out. He smiled.

  “Fair enough. The public isn’t at risk now, but she definitely has one last name on her list. Me. If you agree to step down as I’m asking, I believe that we can draw her out.”

  Sinclair had set his jaw even harder. “All the more reason that I won’t do as you ask. Sorry to be blunt but if I step down this evening and she takes a shot at you, you’ll be dead and my career will go up in smoke.”

  Liam tapped on his jacket indicating his gun. “Here, are you saying that I can’t protect him?”

  Before Sinclair could answer yes or no Annette shoved Liam hard. “You’re not the only police officer in this room, Liam Cullen. So stop making this about your ego.”

  Craig said nothing, just watched Ian Sinclair’s face as he considered the options. After a moment Craig spoke again, more quietly.

  “OK. If the perp sees you it won’t stop her trying to get to me, she saw Marlene and she still went for John. So how about you come in the car with me to my place, to let her see you. Then I’m proposing that you let her see me being left alone.”

  Sinclair lurched forward in his chair, ready to object. Craig raised a hand to still him.

  “Hear me out. I want her to enter my flat, for all sorts of reasons. One, because once she’s broken into my apartment it becomes unambiguous that she’s broken the law; she can’t just say that she was passing by. And two, because it’s only by her raising her gun that we can say it was attempted murder.”

  Annette interrupted. “But can’t we just get her on breaking and entering and possession of a firearm once she’s in your place? That should be enough.”

  “Enough for what? Burglary? She’d get a rap on the knuckles for a first offence if she has a licence for the gun. “

  “But we can match the bullet with the one from Dr Winter.”

  “If it’s the same weapon. And before you say we have prints from Adrian Bell’s scene, we don’t know for sure that they’ll match hers, and it’s still circumstantial. Graham could have handled Bell’s gun another time, when he was showing it to her for instance. A clever barrister would wriggle her free within days then we’d be right back to square one.” Craig shook his head. “No. I want her caught red-handed. It’s our only guarantee of putting her away for good.”

  Sinclair’s gawped at Craig. “You really want me to let her try to kill you?”

  Craig nodded. “Yes. At the moment all we have is a theoretical case with holes in it like a sieve. We’ll close them given time, but that time could see her getting out on bail and free to skip the country. I can’t allow that.”

  “Even though she shot Dr Winter and he can I.D. her.”

  Craig sighed. “We know that but proving it in court is completely different. All we have is a sketch produced by a man who’d just spent two days in I.C.U. It would be ripped to shreds. That leaves us with theory and conjecture. I need hard proof and this is the only way to get it, as far as I can see. If any of you can think of another I’d be happy to hear it. I could do without getting shot in the back.”

  “Or the head, boss.”

  Annette rolled her eyes. “Thanks Liam, none of us had thought of that.”

  Liam set his jaw determinedly. “Well, if she shoots him in the head it’ll be night-night Craig, and you can explain it to his family, not me.”

  Craig stilled the argument and turned back to Sinclair.

  “Graham’s been clear about hunting me and I’m pretty sure she’s been stalking me for days. She’s going to take a shot at me sometime and I’d rather that it was on my terms and in a way we can use it. This is the best idea I can come up with. Will you help?”

  Sinclair puffed up his cheeks then blew out the air, thinking. After a moment he nodded. What else could he do but go along with it? The protection team’s boss was a Chief Inspector and Craig outranked him. If Craig wanted to set a trap using himself as bait the only person who could counter it was the Chief Constable, and he didn’t fancy calling him at home on a Sunday night to intervene.

  Craig read his mind. “The C.C. already knows. I ran it past him an hour ago.” He tapped a file on the table. “Here’s your written cover for what I’m asking you to do.” He scanned Annette and Liam’s faces. “Yours too. If this goes belly-up I’m not having anyone but me taking the blame.”

  “And you’ll be dead, so they can’t sack you.”

  Annette glared at Liam, but Craig just laughed. Liam’s tendency to call a spade a JCB was oddly reassuring at times.

  Craig nodded. “As Liam said, I’ll be dead.” He straightened up. “OK. Shall we do this then?”

  That had been three hours earlier and now Craig was standing beside Ian Sinclair in the darkened squad-room saying the same words.

  “Right. Shall we do this then?”

  Sinclair rose to his feet and nodded and the two men walked in silence to the lift. Craig pressed the button for the car-park, where Liam and Annette were waiting uncomfortably and got ready to play the next level in the game.

  ***

  Katy Stevens wandered into the living room of her apartment towelling her blonde hair dry. She poured herself a glass of wine and walked out onto the balcony, staring at the river. Marc Craig’s call an hour before had surprised her, not least by its intensity. He’d sounded like a desperate man.

  They’d had a nice chat that day at the hospital, but it had mostly been about John and Natalie, and family things; there’d been no hint of romance in Craig’s approach. She chided herself for being selfish; why should there have been? It had been nine o’clock in the morning and his best friend was lying in intensive care. Except that the lack of romance explained her shock when he’d called her that afternoon suggesting that they meet tomorrow evening for a drink. Drinks weren’t like coffee. Coffee said day-time, cheerful chats in bright cafés, surrounded by mums and their kids or perhaps, at a push, business men out of their offices on a break. But drinks…

  She stared into her glass, eying the ruby liquid whose colour alone suggested warm words and romance. Drinks were different. Drinks said softly-lit bars with long leather seats where people sat side by side. Sweet and tart tastes, meshing on tongues and loosening them, to confide childhood memories and secrets that rarely reached the light of day. Drinks were sipped in evenings that turned inevitably into nights. Nights that suggested places to go on to when the wine bar had closed, with all the new experiences that might bring. Slow, shy dancing and
long soft kisses were only two.

  Katy blushed warmly at her thoughts and glanced around her empty living room as if someone else might see. No-one did, so she slipped back into her fantasy of what Craig’s invitation might mean and let her excitement bury her niggling concern about the urgency in his voice.

  ***

  Jenna Graham watched Craig drive down Pilot Street with his burly companion sitting alongside, scanning their dark surroundings the way his job description outlined. She could make out the man’s eyes from her vantage point and their expression was just what she expected from a guard-dog: wariness and suspicion. She smiled to herself in the darkness, curling up her beautiful lips; they’d gone from thin in a man to full in a woman, eagerly enhanced now by gloss and paint. Strange how perception and proportion altered so many things, but perception hadn’t altered her view of right and wrong. As an adult woman or a teenage boy, she’d always known who had to pay for her mother’s death.

  She watched the car’s tail-lights fade as it turned onto Corporation Street then she strolled slowly to her sporty saloon. The guard-dog should be no problem; after all, the female version hadn’t stopped her getting to the pathologist. She shuddered. What sort of doctor preferred dead people to live? She’d almost helped John Winter join them, but not quite. This time she wouldn’t miss, although getting past a Neanderthal outside Craig’s apartment might be a stretch.

  Jenna shrugged in the darkness. She’d got to five people in a way that had almost been the perfect crime, this should be easy. Anger flooded through her; it would have been the perfect crime if Craig and his cronies hadn’t interfered. Suicides, notes and nothing but a decorative key to give a clue. No-one should ever have worked it out. But Craig had and now he had to be dealt with before she could leave. She patted the new airline ticket in her pocket and glanced at the dashboard clock. Almost nine p.m., plenty of time to finish off Craig and catch the early flight to Heathrow, then on to the Far East where her new life could really begin.

  Craig fixed his eyes straight ahead as he drove through every shortcut he knew until he finally reached the apartment complex he called home. Jenna Graham would be at least ten minutes behind them. He’d seen her moving through the shadows beside St Joseph’s church as he’d driven down Pilot Street. It would take her two minutes to reach her car and ten more gained by his knowledge of Belfast’s streets.

  Craig pulled sharply into a free parking slot and Sinclair jumped out the passenger door, blocking sight of Liam and Annette’s exit from the street. They slipped into the shadows while Craig and Sinclair strode openly towards the apartment block’s front door. As Craig made a show of seating Sinclair inside the street-level entrance, Annette and Liam took the stairs silently to Craig’s fourth floor flat.

  Craig loitered, talking with Sinclair until a pair of approaching dipped headlights said that the game was about to commence. Craig spoke as loudly as he could without it sounding like a shout.

  “Stay here, please. There’s no entrance to the apartments other than through this door, so you’ll see everyone who comes in.”

  Sinclair nodded and took his seat facing the car-park, folding his arms and scouring the darkened space with vigilant eyes. As Craig turned towards the stairs Jenna watched him go, formulating her plan. What Craig had said was right; there was no entrance except past the guard. Clever. She corrected herself instantly, clever in one way but stupid in another. If she could get past the Neanderthal then she was home free, with only a flimsy apartment door between her and her prey.

  Jenna scrutinised the man sitting by the entrance; he just looked like the usual bulky grunt. Good with a gun but without much between his ears. If she’d known Ian Sinclair’s background her blood would have run cold. She scanned the area around his chair. There was no paper by his feet and no sign of a photograph anywhere. If they’d known what she looked like then they would have given him an image to match. Craig wasn’t so clever after all. The guard had no way to prove she wasn’t a resident.

  Jenna shook her head immediately at the idea. No, she couldn’t be a resident or she would have had a front door key. Damn! Why hadn’t she thought ahead? She could easily have made one. She thought for a moment longer then tugged the front of her jumper down, revealing an inch of her hard-won cleavage. She’d pretend to be a visitor to someone in the block. The thought of posing as Craig’s girlfriend made her smile then she dismissed it as a trick too far. The guard would have been told if Craig was expecting visitors. She got out of the car then turned to lift her handbag from the passenger seat, deliberately leaning in to display her bottom, certain that the testosterone-ridden guard wouldn’t have missed the view.

  She was right. As Jenna locked the car and strolled towards the apartment block she saw the smile in Ian Sinclair’s eyes, just not where it was coming from. She slipped her hand inside her bag, gripping her gun’s handle just in case, but there was no need to fire a shot. The guard stood to open the door for her as she approached.

  Ian Sinclair ran his eyes over the redhead as she walked towards him, pretending to find her attractive just as he’d been briefed to do, but he was shocked by his body’s genuine response. Craig had shown him the images before they’d left the squad so that he would recognise her, but the sketch didn’t do her justice. The woman walking towards him was stunning and he’d defy any man he knew to say anything else.

  Her legs were long and shapely, encased in tight black jeans, and her slim waist lay beneath a pair of high, full breasts. But it was her face that really made him gasp. It was perfect, with a pair of wide cheekbones that framed eyes so blue that he’d have thought they were lenses, if he hadn’t seen the same eyes in the photo of James Mulhearn from 2004. Long fire-red hair fell heavily to her shoulders, past soft lips that promised everything but gave nothing away.

  Sinclair noted her slim hand resting inside her bag, but he was confident that he could beat her in any draw. He spoke first.

  “Good evening, Madam. I’m sorry to ask, but could you tell me your name and which flat you’re visiting please?”

  Jenna smiled, watching his gaze wash over her body and confident that he didn’t know who she was. Her voice surprised him, although it probably shouldn’t have done. He’d expected some incongruity, a rougher voice than her body would suggest, but he was wrong. Her voice was low but indisputably female.

  “I’m visiting my boyfriend in apartment forty-five. My name’s Jane Garston.”

  Sinclair smiled inwardly. She’d kept the same initials and chosen a flat as far away from Craig’s as she could, on the other side of the block. He nodded.

  “Thank you. I’m sorry I had to ask. Bit of a security issue.”

  Jenna feigned concern then turned to walk towards the lift. She was halted again by Sinclair’s voice.

  “Sorry, Miss. The lift’s out. You’ll need to walk.”

  Jenna shrugged and turned towards the stairs. It would only defer Craig’s fate for a moment. Ian Sinclair watched her ascend and heard her heels move onto the second floor then he slipped out his phone and quietly made the call.

  ***

  Liam had been moaning for a solid five minutes, complaining at having to squash his six-feet-six frame into the space beneath Craig’s breakfast bar. Annette hissed at him from her position behind the settee.

  “Shut up, Liam. She’ll be here soon and she’s not deaf!”

  Liam made a face. “It’s all right for a pygmy like you, but I’m a man. I’m breaking my neck here.”

  Craig broke his silence to hiss. “If you don’t shut up I’ll break it for you. Annette’s right. Be quiet.”

  Liam made another face then stuck out his tongue at Annette. Craig sighed, knowing exactly what he was doing even though he couldn’t see. He reached across to the coffee table and lifted his cup, cursing the body armour beneath his sweatshirt for its bulk. It was hard to get comfortable wearing thirty pounds of body armour and a bloody great gun strapped to your hip. Their grumbles were interrupted
by a single beep of Craig’s phone and Sinclair’s name flashing up. She was on her way.

  Craig signalled to Liam and Annette then dimmed the lamp beside him. The only thing that Jenna Graham would see when she entered the apartment was his silhouette against the TV’s flickering glow. The poor light would conceal Liam and Annette’s presence but give Graham enough visibility to take her shot.

  Annette had objected vociferously to the plan.

  “Why can’t you just sit in the dark? She’d have to find you and we’d grab her before she had time to shoot.”

  “And what would that give us, if you couldn’t see her raise the gun? Breaking and entering and possession of a weapon. We couldn’t prove that she’d intended anything but burglary. No. I want her for the full whack.”

  “Whack being the operative word, sir.”

  She’d looked at Liam for support but he’d agreed with Craig’s suggestion.

  “Aye… aye, you’re right. OK, boss. The full Monty it is then, but you’d better hope that she’s a crappy shot.”

  Annette snorted. “You’d better hope she has a sense of humour if you’re doing the full Monty.”

  So the plan had been hatched. Craig would give Jenna Graham sufficient target to aim her gun at, and Annette and Liam would stop her firing. That was the plan anyway.

  Craig held his breath as Graham’s high-heeled footsteps halted outside his apartment door. He tensed as the lock was manipulated, calculating that it would take Graham around twenty seconds to break through. It was only a Yale and they were easy to crack. Craig’s hand moved slowly to his Glock and he slipped it onto his knee, ready to shoot. What they’d all reckoned without was a crowd of drunken students in the Stranmillis streets outside.

  Just as Craig’s front door slipped open, a series of loud cracks erupted in the street below, followed by the sound of glass shattering and a girl’s high-pitched scream. It was all the distraction that Jenna Graham needed. She burst into the open-plan living room and took in the scene in a glance, pointing her gun straight at Craig’s head. Craig moved just as she took the shot and the bullet caught him square on the right upper arm, knocking his gun out of his hand and onto the floor.