by Derek Fee
Sir Philip Lattimer had just finished a very agreeable lunch at Coleville House, the family pile on the north Antrim coast. It was a beautiful day and he contemplated a post-prandial walk with his two Weimaraners. That was as soon as he packed off his lunch guests back to Belfast. It had not only been a fine meal, it had also been productive. His developer colleague had managed to convince the two bankers present to finance their new venture. Lattimer was thus not only physically sated but was happy in the knowledge that the lunch would contribute substantially to his bank account. He was enjoying a post-lunch brandy when his wife entered the dining room and whispered in his ear. He sighed and stood up. ‘Forgive me, gentlemen; I have an important phone call in the study. It shouldn’t take too long.’ He shuffled off in the direction of the study. He pressed the speaker button on the phone and sat in a chair. ‘Yes,’ he said, the sharpness in his voice indicating his displeasure at the call.
‘Have you seen this morning’s Chronicle?’ The tension in Robert Faulkner’s voice was palpable.
‘Yes.’
There was silence for a moment.
‘What are we going to do?’ Faulkner finally broke the silence.
Lattimer rubbed his substantial chin. He was hyper about security and was aware that no phone conversation was secure. ‘Your investment is safe,’ he said finally. ‘I suggest there is no need for disquiet at the moment.’ He hoped that if Faulkner had even a modicum of intelligence he would be able to decipher the message.
‘Are you quite sure about that?’
‘Please don’t worry old chap. Everything is under control. The most important thing now is that nobody should panic. All eventualities have been covered. Now be a good man and stop worrying. I’d prefer if you didn’t call me again on this matter.’
‘Sorry,’ Faulkner spluttered on the other end of the line.
Lattimer pushed the button cutting off the call. He didn’t rise immediately from his chair. He was more than a little annoyed at Faulkner’s call. It dispelled the good mood that the meal and the possibility of a capital injection had created. He had put the article in the Chronicle out of his mind. He could not understand how a stupid piece of paper could have come to light. There were enough thirty year-old crimes in Ulster to keep the PSNI busy for a generation. So what if they dug up Evans? Every shred of evidence would have long ago disappeared. He pushed himself up from his chair. Faulkner might be a weak link. He remembered the wife had been made of sterner stuff. Poor old Robert Faulkner, he overestimated his importance in the decision to remove Evans from the scene. There were far more pressing reasons for the elimination of Alan Evans than the satisfaction of Faulkner’s lust for his wife. It was time to get back to his guests. His developer colleague might drown the bankers with his enthusiasm. It was his experience that it took subtlety to separate bankers from their money, and he had subtlety in abundance. Who cared if they managed to dig up Alan Evans? That trail was colder than the grave he was lying in.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Wilson downloaded the file relating to the disappearance of Alan Evans and printed it off. There was only so much time he could spend looking at a computer screen. He opted for having lunch at his desk. In an attempt at a healthy lifestyle he had chosen a tuna sandwich on brown bread and a cup of mint tea. The sandwich turned out to be a soggy mess and most of it found its way into his wastebasket. But he enjoyed the freshness of the tea and it beat the hell out of the station cafeteria coffee. The initial investigation into the Evans’s disappearance was the usual 1980s sloppy RUC job. There were reports of interviews with his wife, his parents and his siblings. The SIO was a detective sergeant who was obviously hard-pressed to move on to something more concrete. The facts were clear enough. Evans had been holding a public meeting in a hall in Downpatrick. The meeting had finished at nine thirty but Evans hadn’t left until ten thirty. He had stated a clear intention to drive directly back to Belfast. According to his wife, he never made it. Therefore, it was safe to assume that sometime between ten thirty and eleven thirty, Evans and his car disappeared into thin air. As Wilson read the reports of the interviews, he could imagine the desperation of the SIO to find a rational explanation for the disappearance of man and machine. Reading the documentation of the investigation, he could feel the momentum draining as nobody was located and no witness had been found who could indicate what might have happened on the short trip from Downpatrick to Belfast. Eventually, the investigation just fizzled out as the SIO had less and less time to spend on it. In the end Alan Evans became just another statistic, one of the three thousand unsolved murders in Northern Ireland. That was if it really was a murder. There was not a shred of evidence to prove that Evans had, in fact, been murdered. It was three-thirty when he finished reading the file and he felt that he was no further forward than when he started. A meeting was scheduled with the chief super at four o’clock so that they could discuss their joint approach on the advice to ACC Nicholson. He had thirty minutes in which to review the interviews with Karin Falkner and Robert Evans and the content of the file before coming to a conclusion that could cost the PSNI valuable budget. Faulkner wanted the matter forgotten while Evans wanted closure. Which side would he come down on? If Evans was dead why not leave him where he was? Did it really matter whether he was resting in a bog or in a cemetery? But why had someone bothered to hide the body? He could have been left for the early morning milkman to find, like so many others. That was the real mystery. And Wilson was attracted by mysteries. There was a knock on his glass door and he looked up before waving Harry Graham inside.
‘News, boss,’ Graham said. ‘I spent the morning at the property register and you were right. Sammy owned a warehouse in East Belfast.’ Graham put a copy of a property registration document on Wilson’s desk.
Wilson picked it up and looked at the address. It was in an industrial estate not far from his apartment in Queen’s Quay. ‘Where is this place in relation to where the two idiots say they found the car?’
‘It was more or less next door.’
‘Nine o’clock tomorrow morning, make sure we have someone on site that can gain us entry. I’m upstairs now and then the Chief Super and I are at HQ. Whatever’s in the warehouse will still be there tomorrow.’
‘OK, boss. I’ll make the arrangements. You think Sammy’s inside?’
‘That’s what we’re about to find out.’
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
On the way upstairs to the chief super’s office, Wilson was still juggling with what side of the fence he was going to fall on. He knocked on the office door and entered.
‘Don’t tell me it’s four o’clock already,’ Davis said looking up from a pile of papers on her desk.
Wilson sat facing her. It would be his nightmare scenario to one day sit in Davis’ chair. Even the rise to superintendent bothered him. He had set his goal at arriving at chief inspector and would have been happy to stay at that grade. There was administration at that level but it was manageable. He was about to refuse the promotion to superintendent but accepted only when he was told that he would be remaining in his old job.
Davis moved the papers aside. ‘I’m swamped.’ She leaned forward on her arms and let her head drop.
Wilson smiled. ‘It’s early days. I’m sure you’ll get the hang of it.’
‘Right now I don’t really want to get the hang of it. I don’t have time to take a pee. Please tell me that you’re going to reduce my administrative burden not add to it.’
Wilson shook his head. He had just this minute decided what side of the fence he had decided to come down on.
Davis put on a sad face. ‘Tell me.’
Wilson started by going through the interviews he held earlier in the day and finished with his review of the RUC file of the investigation. ‘McDevitt thinks that the map is genuine. By accident, we probably have stumbled onto evidence of the final resting place of Alan Evans. The question is what are we going to do about it? Walking away gives the impression th
at we don’t really care what murderers do with the bodies of their victims. That PSNI is not the one that I want to work for. We’re here for the victims and whether Evans is in a hole in Ballynahone bog or not, we owe him the effort of finding out.’
‘Wrong answer,’ Davis said. ‘I’ve already had Nicholson on the phone attempting to steer us towards refuting McDevitt’s information.’
‘And saving the PSNI the cost of recovering the body.’
‘If there is a body. And if there isn’t a body, we’re left with egg on our face. And I’ve screwed up the first major decision I’ve made as a chief super. I can see that working with you is going to be a challenge. No chance you could change your mind?’
Wilson shook his head. ‘It’s the right thing to do.’
Davis stood up. ‘Let’s get this over with, Nicholson’s waiting for us.’
Assistant Chief Constable Nicholson sat back in his chair and made a steeple of his hands. There was a feeling at PSNI HQ that bereft of Donald Spence’s support Superintendent Wilson would be easier to manage. Yvonne Davis was chosen because she had a reputation as a ball breaker and there was general agreement in Castlereagh that Wilson badly needed his balls broken. However, the discussion that had just taken place in his office convinced Nicholson that Davis had, like her predecessor, fallen for Wilson’s brand of charm. The man undoubtedly had charisma and even the new chief constable wasn’t immune to it. Nicholson, on the other hand, had been an acolyte of Deputy Chief Constable Jennings and had tied himself to that star. His mentor was currently doing penance with the Cumbria Police Force but would be rejoining the PSNI in the near future. In the meantime, it was up to Nicholson to jump on Wilson every time he erred. Wilson’s support for an effort to find Alan Evans’s body might provide a chance to change the Chief Constable’s view. He had spent the day doing a preliminary costing of the project. It involved a preliminary survey using sophisticated ground-penetrating radar, followed by a costly programme removing tons of bog leading to a further programme of body clearing and removal. He looked at Davis concentrating his gaze on her. ‘You realise we are putting the credibility of the PSNI at stake here. We are assuming that the Chronicle’s claim is valid. You are prepared for the fallout if Superintendent Wilson is wrong.’
‘Yes, sir.’ Yvonne Davis was a thirty-year veteran of the police force. She had dragged herself up from the beat and into the management while being sexually harassed and denigrated by her fellow male officers. It was obvious to her that nothing would please Nicholson more than her falling on her face. There had been lots of Nicholsons on her way up the greasy pole of career advancement in the RUC and then the PSNI. The man sitting beside her was nothing like Nicholson. He could be just as deadly in finishing her career but at least he would do while he was doing his job.
‘OK.’ Nicholson smiled exposing two rows of small white teeth. ‘We have limited experience in this type of operation. However, our friends in the Garda Siochana have considerable experience of unearthing bodies in bogs. I’ll discuss your findings with the chief constable and make the necessary contacts with Dublin if he decides to go ahead.’
‘I suppose that you will oversee the operation,’ Davis said.
‘Oh no, Chief Superintendent.’ The smile faded from Nicholson’s face. ‘I am going to leave that pleasant task to you and Superintendent Wilson. It’s on his advice that we will proceed so I think that it’s only appropriate that he should be responsible.’ He picked up his phone. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me. I must arrange a meeting with the Chief Constable. He’ll be anxious to make an announcement.’
Wilson and Davis rode down the lift in silence. They sat together in the back of the car.
‘I think I need a drink,’ Davis said.
‘I have the necessary in my office,’ Wilson said. ‘So the only question is, your place or mine?’
She smiled. ‘Spence told me that you were irredeemable. It doesn’t bother you that Nicholson appears to have set his sights on us.’
‘I noticed that it didn’t seem to bother you.’
‘Better make it my place. Bring the bottle to my office but make sure nobody sees it. I don’t want to set the station rumour mill running.’
Wilson smiled. Maybe it was going to be fun after all.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Wilson decided that an evening in was in order. He had already consumed a large whiskey in Davis’ office. It was the first time he had worked for a female boss and while he had some reservations at the beginning, Davis had impressed him as a very competent officer. She wasn’t slow at voicing her trepidation at managing him and his squad in her first role as the head of a station. But he was convinced that, while they would never have the same relationship he’d had with Spence, they were going to get on well together. He decided that he would continue to cut back on the visits to the Crown, and especially on the drinking sessions with McDevitt. That would prove easier than usual since McDevitt was into his new role as an author. Apparently, his publisher had an urgent need for the book on the investigation that had snared Cummerford and her subsequent trial. People like Cummerford had a sell-by date. The public’s interest was constantly being tweaked by current events. And it was important to strike while the iron was hot. This all meant that McDevitt was not as available as usual and Wilson didn’t like drinking alone. Being alone always brought his thoughts back to Kate McCann. He was so sure that she was going to be the “one”, but he supposed that she would have to go down as the “almost one”. She was beautiful, intelligent and came from one of the best families. Her father was a judge and her mother was one of the foremost businesswomen in Northern Ireland. It was a background that contrasted starkly with his own. His father was a police sergeant and a suicide, his mother a teacher who had fled to Canada to escape the disgrace. Perhaps he and Kate had been an ill-starred couple from the start, a ying and yang that could never work together. But he missed her every day. He had accepted that they would never be together again, and the longing that he had experienced during the first weeks of their break-up was fading. He had seen enough of life to know that it was pointless to pine for the past. Right now, he had a disappeared criminal to find and a possible body to dig up. He was about to make himself an omelette when the intercom sounded. He pressed the button.
‘It’s you know who,’ Stephanie Reid’s voice came over the line. ‘Buzz me up.’
He smiled and pushed the button. Stephanie was the chief pathologist of the province and operated from the Royal Victoria Hospital. She was also the professor of pathology at Queen’s University. It was impossible for a man not to like Reid. She was beautiful, funny and vivacious. They’d been “seeing” each other for almost a month. It wasn’t dating and it wasn’t regular. It was two people having a meal together, watching a DVD together and sometimes sleeping together. The word “love” hadn’t been mentioned and he wondered whether it ever would be. He heard a knock on the door and opened it.
‘Hi!’ She stood on tiptoes and kissed him on the cheek. ‘Have you eaten yet?’
“I was just about to make an omelette.’ He closed the door behind her.
She had apparently just come from the hospital and she was wearing her normal day dress of white blouse and black knee-length skirt. Her blonde hair was tied back behind her head. She looked fantastic.
She made for the kitchen and dumped a Marks and Spencer bag on the counter. ‘I spent the day cutting up dead bodies. For a change they all died of natural causes. It appears that crime in Belfast has taken a holiday. At least the kind of crime that leads to people being on my table.’ She sighed. ‘Today’s was the kind of work that gives me an appetite for steak and salad.’ She produced two rib-eyes and a packet of prepared salad from the bag. ‘And I got this for afters.’ She held up a DVD of the latest James Bond film.
He smiled. Kate would have to be chained to a chair to watch tosh like that.
Reid headed for the cooker. ‘I’ll stick the steaks on and you can get me a
nice glass of Chardonnay. You do have a nice bottle of Chardonnay?’
He nodded and went to the fridge. He had gone through many years of not having friends. Now he had two, McDevitt and Reid. He poured her a glass of wine and handed it to her. She already had the ridge-pan on the gas and the steaks were sizzling.
She took a long drink of the wine. ‘God, I needed that. It’s been a long hard day. How was yours?’
‘Long and not so hard, did you get a chance to read the Chronicle today?’
‘You mean the article by your friend?’ She flipped the steaks. Reid liked her meat literally as it came off the animal. Rare would be too well done.
‘Looks like I’m going to be in charge of bringing up the body.’ He had poured himself a glass of wine and was sipping it.
‘Not your forte.’ The steaks were reflipped and two plates were already covered in salad. ‘Get the knives and forks. I suppose there’ll be work for me when you bring him up.’
‘I have no idea what shape the body would be in. It’s been in a bog for more than thirty years.’ Wilson wrapped a paper napkin around a knife and fork and put them on the breakfast counter. He had just finished when two plates with a barely cooked steak and salad arrived on the counter.
‘Refill,’ Reid held out her empty glass. ‘The body might be in reasonably good condition. Bogs have been known to preserve bodies. It depends on the soil conditions.’ She sipped her wine and then cut into her steak. Blood ran onto the plate. ‘Perfect.’ She cut off a chunk and dropped it into her mouth savouring the taste. ‘Steak, salad, a glass of Chardonnay and a James Bond film, what more could a girl ask for?’
He touched his glass to hers. She was the perfect antidote to his feelings about Kate. He had no idea where the relationship was going and he was just along for the ride.
After they’d eaten and Wilson had put the dishes into the dishwasher, they took their wine glasses and settled themselves on the couch. Wilson had already put the DVD into the player and he pressed the remote control. As the opening sequence started, Reid lay down on the couch with her head in his lap.