The Cabal (#16 - The Craig Crime Series)

by Catriona King

  Tommy pushed past his host into the living room, immediately claiming the most luxurious chair in the place.

  “Whada ye huv tee drink, McCrae? I’ve a thirst wud make a python choke.”

  Rory McCrae had been gawping since he’d opened his front door. Tommy had been the boss of all of them for almost forty years, but he’d gone out to pasture in the sticks three years back and all his old gang, him amongst them, had thought him well out of the way.

  Years back or not the old pecking order reinstated itself within seconds and McCrae did as he was bid, retrieving a bottle of Bushmills from a low cupboard and setting two Perspex tumblers on the table, filling them halfway to the top.

  Tommy kept talking as he did so.

  “Yeer wunderin’ wat I’m deein’ here.”

  It was too dangerous to speculate.

  “Billy Regent. Wat dee ye knaw abyte him? An’ dun’t haul anythin’ back.”

  Nervous that it was a test of some sort, McCrae stammered out his reply.

  “B…Billy’s deed. Shot hisself after he shot McManus, they seed.”

  Hill snatched a tumbler and swigged down half its contents. “Who seed?”

  McCrae took a hard seat opposite, risking a small shrug. Any bigger and Tommy might batter him for disrespect.

  “The pigs, I suppose, but nye it’s the word on the street. Billy did hisself in wi’ a handgun. Right in the heed.”

  Tommy fell silent for a moment, gazing down at the honey-coloured liquid and swirling it this way and that in the light of a small, fringed lamp. When he spoke again it was in a way he liked to think of as investigative, picturing Jeremy Paxman giving him the nod.

  “Ye think? Do ye believe everythin’ that yeer taul?”

  The question’s ambiguity made his erstwhile follower freeze. Rory McCrae had been tricked by Tommy asking questions like that before, and one wrong response had landed him with a bullet in the leg. Thankfully Tommy’s role-playing didn’t require any comeback and he carried on as if McCrae had already filled in the gap.

  “Tell me abyte Billy. Word is he wus a right heed-case afer he gat demobbed.”

  That one McCrae could answer with authority.

  “Aye. He wus. Under some army doctor he wus. Used to take hisself up there twice a week.”

  “Up where?”

  “Craigantlet Barracks. That’s where they dee awl that therapy shite. Billy seed all they did wus talk abyte things that’d happened. He seed it wus jest making him wurse.”

  Tommy would leave it to Craig to pull the medical records, what he needed to know now was who, if anyone, Billy Regent had blamed for his trauma. He asked the question, but the answer wasn’t what he’d hoped.

  “The A-rabs. That’s who he blamed. Billy said we shud never huv gone back there in oh-three. Said it wus the wurst days work the guverment ever did.”

  That sounded more positive.

  “Ar guverment? So Billy blamed awl politicians? Fer starting the war, like.”

  Hatred for politicians could explain why the First Minister had bitten the dirt. McCrae’s emphatically shaken head dashed Tommy’s hopes again.

  “Nah, only the yank ones. Billy said once America’d started it we had to go along. Ar lat had no say wun way ar another, no matter wat they thought. Mind ye, he hated that English primeminster twat.”

  Damn. Without Billy blaming all UK politicians his shooting of McManus made no sense, and the only thing he could do was point Craig towards the army shrinks. As Tommy was about to leave he thought of another question that made his hopes rise one last time.

  “McManus wus definitely ar man, wusn’t he?”

  McCrae nodded warily, wondering where the question might lead. “Aye, aye, he wus.”

  “So he was well in with UKUF and awl the gangs, like?”

  McCrae had inherited UKUF from Tommy and been running it in his image for years, so he could the question answer with certainty.

  “No doubt. McManus even drapped down to see me in the affice nye and then, just to be sure we wus getting ar dues from guverment, like. Like the valuble community wurkers we ar.”

  Milking the system more like.

  Tommy sat forward slowly, his rasping tones becoming more intense.

  “Wus he welcum?”

  The question made McCrae furrow his brow in confusion, then his face cleared again as he realised what Tommy meant.

  “Aye, well, the big boys awl welcummed him, like, but there wus a few wee shites who’d thought he’d sold out. On account of his Europe love, like. We kicked them back intee line if we heered. McManus wus ar lad.”

  So not all Loyalists had agreed with Peter McManus’ Pro-EU stance, but the usual suspects who might have killed him, the paramilitary gangs, the MLA had had the sense to keep sweet.

  The information was enough for Tommy. It would earn him some more dosh from the Ghost. He twisted his thin lips into a smile, slammed down his glass and jumped to his feet, his new-found testosterone administering a cheerful slap around the head to his old deputy as he marched past him to the door.

  Chapter Eight

  Wednesday. 9.30 a.m.

  Jennifer Wasson was surprised when she answered her front door to find three police officers standing there impassively, instead of the one predictably eager customer that she’d expected to greet, but not as surprised as Jake was when he saw the glamorous, perfectly-coiffed beauty who’d replaced the soccer mom they’d interviewed two days before. The transformative effects of make-up and creative upholstery always left him in awe, but the effort it took to apply them always made him grateful he was a man.

  Annette gave the escort an apologetic look and slipped past her into the apartment’s hall.

  “We won’t keep you long, Ms Wasson. I can see that you’re expecting company.”

  The fact that it was only nine-thirty in the morning confirmed all Annette’s suspicions about men.

  Jenny Wasson squinted suspiciously at the D.I.’s words, but despite searching hard for some judgment in them there was none to be found. Annette never condemned people who sold themselves, only those who sold and bought them, and her moral judgements were never for anyone who’d experienced poverty. She had no idea what she would have done if she’d had no partner, no job and kids to feed, and her government benefits had barely made ends meet, but selling her body would probably have been on the list.

  The escort gave a heavy sigh and waved the group through to the living room, glancing pointedly at her watch.

  “You’ve ten minutes. What do you want to know?”

  Aidan Hughes produced the photograph Davy had given him. “Can you confirm that this was the venue you visited in May?”

  The young woman gazed hard at the photograph, then admitted defeat and produced a pair of glasses from behind the clock, donning them with an embarrassed explanation.

  “They don’t fit the image. Men don’t make passes at girls who wear glasses, and all that.”

  Aidan smiled at her. “I like specs myself.”

  Wasson looked at the photograph again and then nodded. “That’s the place. How did you find it so quickly?”

  “The statue you described, and we have a good analyst.”

  She handed the print back with a question. “Who owns it, then?”

  Hughes shook his head and nodded towards a chair. “Mind if we sit down?”

  “Sorry. Forgot my manners.” She turned back to Annette. “Something else to ask? Only time’s moving on.”

  Annette had split the next part into two, nodding Jake to start.

  “Jake.”

  He’d been so busy analysing the ingredients of the housewife’s transformation that the prompt caught him on the hop.

  “Sorry. Yes.” He produced a list from his pocket. “Ms Wasson, do any of these things ring a bell, in your experience of the Lewis parties. Trafficking of girls?”

  She shook her head hard.

  “Drugs?”

  “Weed, Blow and Viagra. Nothing el
se that I saw.”

  “Large or small quantities?”

  “Medium. Recreational. Vero supplied it for the punters.”

  Drug dealing; Veronica Lewis had conveniently omitted to say that the drugs had come from her. He moved down the list.

  “Antiques or gun smuggling?”

  The escort’s on-fleek eyebrows shot up.

  “Who do you think we are? The Mafia? There’s nothing like that going on. It’s just a bunch of sad old men living it large.”

  The D.S. folded up the page and put it away. “That brings us onto the next question. Can you think of anyone who might have been injured, or perhaps disappeared suddenly from a party? One of the regular party goers perhaps? Girls or punters?”

  This time her gaze was sceptical. “You think they’d get so excited they’d kill a girl?”

  “Would they?”

  Her emerald eyes widened in alarm. “NO! It’s not that kind of sex. There’s no hard-core S&M, just a bit of light bondage and a lot of idiots who want to clean the lav with a toothbrush. The strongest stuff I’ve ever seen was one of the girls locking a man in a cupboard because he’d enjoyed it so much at his posh boarding school.”

  Jake pressed the point. “Anyone ever injured?”

  She frowned. “One fat man had a heart attack and they carted him off in an ambulance.”

  “When was this?”

  Her reply was to produce a diary from beneath the kitchen sink. When Aidan saw a list of dates he had to stop himself making a grab for the book.

  Jenny Wasson rifled through the pages until she stopped at a red asterisk.

  “January twentieth; it was a Wednesday. Don’t ask me where it happened though, ’cos I’ve no idea. They took him away in an ambulance.”

  Jake had an idea. “Did it have an area logo?”

  “Nope. Just Northern Ireland Ambulance and that green and yellow chequerboard down the side.”

  “Did you take down the number plate, by any chance?”

  Wasson’s eyebrows did an amused dance. “And where would I have kept my pen and paper? I wasn’t wearing a lot of clothes at the time!”

  As they’d been talking Annette had gently eased the diary from the young woman’s hands, reassuring her when she’d finally noticed with. “It’s just so I can make a note of the party dates.”

  The escort considered for a moment and then shrugged, knowing that the dates wouldn’t give them places or names.

  “They’re the ones marked in red.”

  Jake returned to his theme.

  “Any of the punters ever disappear?”

  “Like I said, not so I noticed, but I didn’t keep a list of who was there.” She glanced at her watch again, becoming exasperated. “Look, if I give you a couple of other girls’ names so you can check with them, will you please stop coming here?”

  The sergeant took out his phone, his finger poised to type.

  “OK. Grainne Masters and Izzy Watson will speak to you. I’ve checked.” She gestured towards Aidan. “Your mate here will know how to find them. Now, you really need to go. Please.”

  She was answered by a final question from Annette. “Do you recognise any of these men as attending the parties?”

  Unnoticed by their hostess the D.I. had been carrying a smart-pad, and it was now displaying images of every male MLA, MEP, MP and Irish TD. They watched as Wasson’s eyes widened.

  “I’m not telling you! Do you want me disappeared like Vero? No-one’s seen her for days.”

  Annette’s reply was quiet. “Mrs Lewis is well and back at home.”

  The young woman’s relief was palpable, but her pink lips pursed tightly, accompanied by a determined shaking of her head.

  “I’ve two kids to think of. I’m saying nothing more.”

  “We can protect you.”

  Wasson gave the snort that she felt the words deserved. “Don’t make me laugh! Belfast’s graveyards are full of people the police protected.”

  She walked past Jake and into the hall, opening the front door pointedly. As they filed out past her the young mother repeated her warning of two days before.

  “You’d best be careful yourselves. These people are seriously connected, and they won’t hesitate to get rid of anyone who threatens them, even the police.”

  Then they were back on the landing with the door closed behind them, trying hard to ignore the red-faced man lurking by the lift.

  ****

  The C.C.U. 11 a.m.

  Kyle Spence was hovering. Not literally, he’d have had to have been a superhero or a Harrier jet to manage that, but irritatingly, so irritatingly that Ash wanted to swat him like a fly. After ten minutes of not being able to hit the detective and being unable to pretend that he wasn’t there, the analyst sighed with the theatricality of an Elizabethan actor and turned his colourful head towards the stalker.

  “Yes?”

  It was all the prompt Spence needed. He pulled up a chair and leant his elbows on the computer expert’s desk.

  “Peter McManus.”

  “I’ll need more than that. If you’d just wanted his bio you could have googled it yourself.”

  Spence sat back, folding his arms. “I have. I’ve also accessed his Police Intelligence file. It’s in your inbox now.”

  Ash checked immediately, surprised to find that it was true. He didn’t trust Kyle Spence; he was the kind of man that would make him want to count his fingers after they’d shaken hands, and if he was giving him information now he had to have an ulterior motive.

  He decided to call the D.I.’s bluff.

  “So? What do you want from me?”

  The cheekiness of the question brought a guffaw from the jaded spy. He liked people who took no shit; in his experience, they were the type you could rely on when there was devious stuff to be done.

  “The American spooks. You’re working with them. Yes?”

  Ash pointed to his hair. “What do you think?”

  Spence sat forward again. “Well, OK then. We’re in business. See, the bio on McManus released by the Assembly, the one from his party website, and even his Intelligence file all say the same thing. Forty-year-old family man. Some weed smoked when he was a kid, a bit of medium-core porn watching when he thought the wife isn’t looking, but basically the most radical things about the man were his political views.”

  Ash had been typing as Spence spoke, now he turned his screen around for the detective to see. It said what Kyle Spence already knew. Peter McManus had been the youngest ever leader of the Independent Britain Party, formed in two thousand and six. The party had had an almost meteoric rise since its inception, now holding forty percent of the popular vote. Its policies were simple: unionist, anti-immigration, tax breaks for the indigenous population and no health or social security benefits for residents of less than five years, but it had traditionally stopped short of saying that it wanted out of the EU.

  Ash was surprised. “The IBP’s Pro-EU? I didn’t expect that. Did you?”

  It was a hard one to answer but Spence tried. “Pro might be a bit strong. Publicly, it’s not against remaining in the EU, but my guess is that most IBP members wouldn’t exactly cry if we left. But presumably that Pro-EU public stance was why McManus could act as IBP leader. He’d been very vocal about not wanting to leave because he thought it would be bad for the UK, although he had wanted the EUs’ powers radically limited here.”

  “Sounds like he was trying to appease the party hardliners with that. It’s unlikely to happen anyway; you’re either in or out, and in means following all the EU’s rules. David Cameron learnt all about that inflexibility when he tried to negotiate a better deal with Brussels.”

  Kyle nodded.

  “And privately that’s what a lot of the IBP’s members think as well. The party’s hard right-wing definitely wants out, and they’ll be given a free vote in the referendum. No-one’s being forced to vote along party lines this time.”

  Ash scratched his head. “So…what? You�
�re saying McManus was unpopular within his own party, even though they’d voted him leader?”

  “A substantial proportion of it.” Spence chose his next words carefully, in light of what he’d learnt the evening before. “But I honestly can’t see the party killing McManus, not weeks before the referendum vote. It risks too much confusion amongst their grass roots voters.”

  Which didn’t rule out a plot by a lone wolf like Josh Loughrey, or even a small group.

  “Even though McManus is succeeded by his deputy, Roger Burke, who everyone knows is to the right of Attila the Hun?”

  The D.I. shook his head immediately. “Nope. Too obvious. Assassinating McManus risked bringing public sympathy for his family and his Pro-EU political opinions, and a seasoned politician like Burke would never have taken that risk.”

  Ash nodded. “OK. But you think there might be something else in McManus’ background that could give a reason for his death, so you want me to find out if there’s a CIA file on him.”

  Spence shook his head, surprising the analyst again. “I already know that there’s a file. What I want you to do is get me a copy of it. And while you’re at it, check out Joshua Loughrey MEP as well.”

  ****

  The Labs. Saintfield Road, Belfast.

  John stared at the computer readout through bleary eyes, the product of a night of insomnia from worrying. Natalie had slept on the pull-out bed in the study instead of beside him the night before, and as well as worrying about her unhappiness it had made him afraid for himself.

  He’d decided very quickly after saying ‘I do’ that he liked being married. Even with all the petty arguments about chores, the colour scheme debates when they’d been decorating that had continued into the wee small hours, and the way that his beloved bachelor solitude, often spent seemingly doing nothing but staring at a wall, although in reality he was of course thinking great thoughts, was invaded now by Natalie’s less than quiet hurling of her shoes at her wardrobe rack, in an attempt to best her own record for accuracy as if she was playing some bespoke version of crazy darts. Even with all those irritations he enjoyed the institution of marriage, and he would prefer that his endured longer than a mere two years.