The Cabal (#16 - The Craig Crime Series)

by Catriona King

  Davy asked the question that Craig had been about to. “Does he have a record here?”

  Ash frowned. “Strangely no.”

  It could only mean one thing. Once a thief always a thief, whether in Vienna or Belfast. Mark Wilberforce’s misdemeanours had been expunged from their system locally because he was someone high level’s snout.

  Craig smiled a well-done. “That it, Liam?”

  “Nope. I had a few thoughts earlier.”

  Aidan whispered. “That explains the burning smell.”

  Liam didn’t even glance up as he thumped his insulter mid-thigh, continuing his report over the Vice cop’s groans.

  “So, I was thinking, what if the bullets in McManus and Regent matched other shootings across Europe and Russia?”

  Annette’s eyes widened. “Russia? What’s that about?”

  Craig waited patiently while Liam explained about the guns, before returning to his intended question.

  “So, you’ve had Des send the markings through to Interpol and the FSB?”

  Liam gave a smug smile. “I have indeed, because I’m a genius. We’re waiting for a result now.” He turned the page. “Also… do the Russian Mafia own the English Brothels Davy identified? And could they be involved with Lewis’ set up as well?”

  Craig nodded to the analyst. “Do what you can with that, Davy, although I’m pretty sure we’ll only get some of these answers when the case is cracked. But good points, Liam.”

  He waited to hear if the D.C.I. had anything else and when he didn’t he turned to Kyle.

  “I need everything your informant gave you, Kyle.”

  His folded arms said to leave nothing out so Kyle reported sulkily on his latest encounter with Trevor Rudkin, finishing with his phone-call to Ray Barrett at two a.m.

  Craig thought for a moment before speaking.

  “It’s looking more and more like Emmett Darrian’s place will be used, but if we tail Rudkin and Loughrey from Bangor we’ll know for certain.”

  Liam agreed. “Also, we should have people already set up at Darrian’s for when they arrive. If it turns out not to be at his place they should still be able to get to the right venue quickly.”

  Craig smiled at the image of the Keystone Cops racing through the woods.

  “OK, so we can progress the background stuff between now and then, but we really need to get a man inside that party. Kyle, Rudkin said they’re all being security screened. Any idea to what level?”

  “Rudkin will already have had a counter terrorism check for his job with Loughrey, and probably advanced security checking as well, but developed vetting, DV, takes longer, unless Loughrey has some way of speeding things up.”

  “Almost certainly.” Craig scanned the group. “Who here has been advanced security checked?”

  Every detective but Jake and Rhonda raised their hands.

  “OK, who’s been DVed?”

  All but Liam’s, his own and Kyle’s hand fell, and most surprising of all Ash lifted his.

  “When did you get DVed, Ash?”

  “Sorry, I meant to raise my hand on advanced security, chief. I was DVed as well when I worked with GCHQ. I have STRAP too.”

  DV and STRAP was the highest possible level of security clearance. Some STRAP levels even authorised the bearer to receive details of NSA recorded telephone calls.

  Liam gave the analyst an ‘I’m not worthy’ bow then laughed at Kyle’s sour expression.

  “What’s the matter, Spooky? Pissed off that Ash can spy on someone you can’t?”

  It prompted a round of laughter that Craig let run for a moment before moving on.

  “OK, so Liam, Kyle, Ash and I have DV, but we can’t use Ash on the operation because he isn’t a police officer so I can’t authorise him to take any risks. That leaves the three of us, so the next question is, how do we get inside?”

  Ash shot him an ‘isn’t it obvious’ glance and followed up with a name.

  “Veronica Lewis. She could bring someone in with her.”

  Annette shook her head. “A girl maybe, but why would she be bringing a man along?”

  “Don’t sex-workers have body guards sometimes? They do on TV.”

  Liam was taken aback at how spot on the suggestion was.

  “That’s not a bad idea, boss. One of us could go in with Lewis, and just have our DV show up under a different name.” His hand shot up. “I bags it.”

  Craig shook his head. “It’s not the last slice of pizza we’re talking about here, Liam. Anyway, you would stick out like a sore thumb!” Before Liam got defensive he added. “As would I. We could be recognised by someone. We’ve both had dealings with MLAs in the past.”

  The growing smirk on Kyle’s face made him want to smack it off, and if they hadn’t needed the Intelligence Officer he might have.

  Craig’s next words were forced out.

  “Unfortunately, of the four of us Spence is the only one who’s not known and is a police officer.” He turned to the D.I. “You’ll be wired, and the first sign of you deviating from the script I give you and we’ll be in on top of you.” He glanced at the wall clock. “OK, anyone got anything else to share before we wrap this up?”

  The way Ash glanced at him said that he had, but that it was too sensitive to share with the group.

  “Right then. Aidan, bring Annette and Rhonda up to speed on that issue we discussed, please. They’ll need to know everything for surveillance. Davy, can you brief Jake on the English brothels so that Nicky can get him organised to leave asap. Kyle, Liam, Ash, I need to speak to all of you, with Ash first. In my office, please.”

  Before the analyst moved he rubbed salt in Kyle’s STRAP wound.

  “Oh, by the way, Kyle, I got those CIA files you wanted, but sorry, your clearance isn’t high enough. I shouldn’t worry, there was nothing very exciting in there.”

  His ill-concealed smirk as he entered Craig’s office implied exactly the opposite.

  As the detective closed the door he got straight to it.

  “Right. What was that look about?”

  Ash took a seat. “OK, so you know I get some NSA phone tap detail, chief.”

  “And?”

  The analyst set his smart-pad on the desk. “Listen to this. The NSA picked it up on a random sweep yesterday.”

  Craig raised a hand hurriedly. “Whoa! Are you allowed to share it?”

  “They said that I could with you.”

  Craig found out why as soon as the analyst pressed play. A man and a woman were speaking in German and it was clearly a heated exchange. By the end of the one-minute clip, three names had come across loud and clear: Beatrix, McManus and Solokov.

  “That’s Beatrix Hass?”

  “Yes. We don’t have a name for the man she’s speaking to. The NSA’s traced his number but unfortunately it was a burn phone. Anyway, this is the translation they gave me.”

  Another tap and the words were dubbed into English, clarifying the conversation’s theme. They’d been spot on about Beatrix Hass’ involvement in Peter McManus’ killing, and that the right-wing was involved, but it was the communist comment that worried Craig most. German communism had all but collapsed when the Berlin wall had come down in eighty-nine, and it was that and the fact that the man speaking sounded too old to be part of any new wave that was making him twitch.

  He parked his questions for the meantime and returned to the issue in hand. Beatrix Hass had obviously spotted one of Vala’s team following her, but what was more worrying was the information that she was the girlfriend of one of the Eugenov Gang. He needed to pass this information on to Vala as soon as he could.

  Ash stopped the clip and shook his head. “They were careless speaking on the phone.”

  “The man realised. That’s why he was angry.” Craig frowned as something occurred to him. “Why did the NSA think to give this tape to you?” Suspicion tainted his next words. “Have you been sharing information about our case?”

  Ash’s immediate
offence made him want to lash out, but instead he recalled the Hindu precepts that he’d been brought up with and bit his tongue until he could reply in a calm voice, albeit coloured with a definite huff.

  “They watch the news so they know McManus was murdered, sir, and I had asked the CIA for sight of some files, but the real reason the NSA passed the tape on to me was because the man was calling from here.”

  Craig’s eyes widened. “Here meaning the UK?”

  The analyst shook his multi-coloured head. “Here meaning Belfast. Somewhere in the city centre, but they couldn’t be more accurate than that. Hass was in Demmin, in the North of Germany.”

  Craig was still reeling from the information when he dismissed Ash a minute later, with a muttered apology for his earlier suspicion and instructions for the analyst to keep digging as far as he could. He beckoned Liam and Kyle into the room in a half-daze, and imparted the information on Harrison with far less discretion than he should have done.

  He pushed past Liam’s stunned expression and Kyle’s nudge nudge, wink wink jokes.

  “The issue at hand now is, does Harrison know you, Kyle? If he’s at the party and makes you for a copper it could blow everything.”

  Kyle’s shake of the head was so emphatic that for once Craig believed he was telling the truth.

  “I’ve been in Intelligence since I left training college, and we tended to avoid plods, no matter how high their rank.”

  The dig didn’t pass Liam by and he added it to his list of things to avenge. He’d been keeping the catalogue since nineteen-ninety-five and every so often he tested his memory by reciting it from the beginning, only ever removing a perpetrator when they’d either retired or died.

  Kyle was still spouting, oblivious to his possible future fate.

  “The only time Harrison could possibly have seen me was when I transferred here, but I’m pretty sure we’ve never been in the squad-room at the same time, and you’re the D.C.S. who handled my paperwork for the move.”

  Craig needed more reassuring. “Liam. What do you think?”

  Liam shot the spy a dirty look before conceding that it was unlikely Harrison would recognise Kyle’s smart-assed face.

  “There was that time Teflon came down blasting off about Hughesy defecting from Vice, but if Spooky was here then he was probably up on the roof smoking a fag, as usual. But I still can’t get over Teflon being involved, boss. Do you think he knows how murky this whole thing is, or is he just following his dick?”

  Craig laughed out loud. “The second one for sure, but he’s also social climbing. Harrison’s an ambitious snob, so hobnobbing with politicians would be like manna from the gods.”

  “Women, social climbing and career advancement; his three favourite pastimes all in one place. He must be in hog heaven.”

  “We can speculate about that after the party.” Craig turned back to the D.I. “OK, Kyle. Get whatever you need together and we’ll chat again before the off. Now leave us, please. Liam and I need to talk.”

  About the female assassin who’d escaped to Germany and a man who was still in town.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Craig was pleased when Vala called him again; it saved him having to remember to call her, yet another thing to do on his never-ending list. His pleasure changed to bemusement when he realised that she was whispering, so quietly that not only would she have been inaudible to whoever she was concealing her conversation from in Germany, but he could only make out every other word.

  “I’m sorry, Vala, I can barely hear you.”

  “Scheisse, Marc! I’m whispering because I’m in trouble. Hang on.”

  As the line went dead Craig pictured the scenario at the other end. The chief inspector phoning from some stairwell at Berlin Police Headquarters to avoid being overheard by her team, only to find that casual traffic meant even more people could have heard her words. When Vala phoned back ten minutes later her voice was louder, but this time it was competing with the city’s traffic noise.

  “OK. I can talk now. Marc, this thing you’re involved in has arms and legs everywhere.”

  “I know.”

  Her strong voice rose anxiously. “How? I only know because I had a summons to Headquarters and I was told in no uncertain terms to back off Beatrix Hass-”

  Craig cut her off. “Do they know that you’ve been helping me?”

  “No.” The weak negative hadn’t even convinced her so she said it again more emphatically. “NO. They definitely can’t know about that or I would have been kept longer than ten minutes, but what I don’t understand is why they want me to back off Hass.”

  “No explanation given?”

  “None. Just ‘pull the surveillance on Beatrix Hass stat’. When I asked why, I got nothing. Just do it or else. The thing is, I don’t even know how they knew, never mind what’s got them so twitchy.”

  Craig knew. His mind had flown from Hass’ conversation with their mystery man, to the NSA and then onward to someone in the German Government or BPOL. The NSA had probably just passed on their record of the call in the spirit of international détente, but the decision to shut down Vala’s surveillance said that their case had ramifications in Germany and who knew where else.

  “I think I do, Vala.” But telling her over the phone, knowing what he now knew about the NSA, was far too risky. “But I can’t tell you right now. Look, you’ve done enough to help us, so don’t take any more risks. I promise I’ll tell you everything as soon as I can.”

  Before the phone went down Vala Raske had already made up her mind to ignore both her bosses and Craig.

  ****

  The Demesne Estate, East Belfast.

  There were many things Reggie Boyd didn’t like about his job: the standard issue tea-bags sent down from headquarters, which contained so few tealeaves that a cuppa was the colour of porridge even before he’d added milk; the high necked collars of his old-fashioned shirts that rubbed against his stubble giving him a permanent rash; OK, so he could have worn the new ones but he didn’t think they looked as smart, and in his book trading off a professional appearance with a skin condition shouldn’t have been an either or. But the one thing that he really hated about his job was rudeness.

  He’d been brought up to say please, thank you, and sir or madam, and he stuck by that training even when faced with the roughest of the rough, so he really couldn’t have it when a shaved-headed, tattoo covered yob like Mark Wilberforce polluted his station booking room with expletives and then spat in the face of the W.P.C. who was trying to help him out.

  It brought out the beast in the quietly spoken Donegal giant and Reggie found his fist twitching into a ball, so it was just as well he’d had the foresight to call Liam when he’d arrested the little thug, and a miracle of timing that the D.C.I. appeared just as Reggie’s twitching was on the verge of becoming a blow.

  “Now then, now then, Sergeant Boyd. What’s happening here? A tea dance?”

  Liam had spotted the whitening fist by Reggie’s side and decided to save his friend’s pension with a joke.

  “Tea dance, my aunt Aggie!” Reggie jerked his now unfurled hand in the direction of their guest. “This animal has just sworn and spat at my constable, and I’m not having it. No, I am not.”

  Liam’s gaze jumped from the sergeant to the W.P.C. wiping her face with a wet cloth, and when it finally landed on the scrawny, pock-marked specimen of humanity responsible for the assault he knew exactly what to do. He hoisted Wilberforce to his feet by the neck of his T-shirt and trailed him out through the door to the cells, nodding Reggie to open the nearest one, where Liam threw the offender less than gently against its back wall.

  “Stay there and shut up, Wilberforce! Understand?”

  With the survival instinct possessed by even the lowest in the animal kingdom, Mark Wilberforce considered his chances against the six-foot-six Liam and decided to acquiesce. As the door slammed behind them and Liam and Reggie walked away, the sergeant gave Liam a wondering nod.


  “How come he decided not to mess with you, when I’m as big?”

  Liam smiled knowingly. “Because he knew that in the time you took to think about punching him and struggle with the decision, I would have laid him spark out. Now, make me a cup of tea and tell me what the wee bastard said when you lifted him.”

  Ten minutes later Liam had heard everything and he knew that Craig had been right. Terry Harrison was up to his neck in their case. Wilberforce had been Harrison’s snout for years when he’d been a street detective, and when Teflon had offered him fifty quid to find him an empty flat on the Travis he’d practically bitten off his hand. No matter which way you looked at the situation, D.C.S. Terry ‘Teflon’ Harrison had organised Beatrix Hass’ safe house, and that meant he was implicated in killing the First Minister.

  ****

  The C.C.U. 4 p.m.

  Craig had been struggling with a decision since the previous evening, and for once it had nothing to do with work. Ever since Katy had blurted out what she knew about Natalie’s situation he’d been torn about whether to tell John or not. The more he thought about it the more certain he was that’s why Katy had told him, although she’d obviously needed his support as well. While a problem shared isn’t really halved at least it puts two of you in the boat.

  After another thirty minutes of will I, won’t I, and several lifts and drops of the phone, Craig decided that he had to distract himself so he lifted the list of drug-taking MLAs that Karl Rimmins had sent through, scanning it with an increasingly elevated brow. He’d never thought that politicians were angels but he admitted to being surprised by the length of the list and by some of the names.

  The usual suspects were there of course: Joshua Loughrey, Leonard Montgomery and even Roger Burke, but when he reached a Methodist local preacher and a member of a Rosary Group he had to set the paper down. It wasn’t as if their drug use was minor either, every name on the list had used either Ketamine or Cocaine, although he supposed that might explain some of astoundingly stupid policy decisions emerging from Stormont nowadays.