The History Suite (#9 - The Craig Modern Thriller Series)

by Catriona King

  “Liam, the print on Cooke’s lapel badge matches Eddie Rudd. Bring him to High Street for interview, and take a W.P.C. to go with you, please. Carmen said he was pretty fragile.”

  Liam said nothing for a moment but Craig could hear him struggling with himself. Finally he spoke.

  “Much as I’d like nothing better than to do as you’ve asked, boss, I think Annette’s better placed to interview the lad. She’s better with the nervy ones than me.”

  She was, but it was the first time that Liam had admitted it.

  “OK. Brief Annette and send her instead. I’m taking Ian Jacobs to see Des at the lab. Davy’s coming with me. Bye.”

  Before Liam could say another word Craig killed the call and returned to the papers that Davy had brought in. Somewhere on the pages lay the name of their double murderer. Ian Jacobs was innocent of anything but checking a pulse and he seriously doubted Eddie Rudd had killed Cooke, although they had to rule him out. That was the problem with forensic evidence; much as they relied upon it in court, it could spoil a perfectly good theory. It only told them what was there, not how, why or when it had got there. Eddie Rudd’s fingerprint could have been on Cooke’s badge for any number of reasons and it might have been there for months.

  Rudd might have been visiting his sister on the ward one day and touched Cooke’s coat. Eleanor Rudd and Cooke had dated so perhaps the boy had even tried the coat on, in make believe. Or perhaps the print was there because Eddie Rudd and Cooke had had an altercation that night, maybe even because he’d killed Cooke, not in premeditated murder but in the heat of the moment, in anger about his sister’s death.

  That was where the human element in crime solving came in. Annette would get the answers, either verbally or through whatever Eddie Rudd’s body language said. As Craig drummed his fingers thoughtfully on the desk he prayed that the young man hadn’t killed Adrian Cooke, or a bad childhood would become a much worse future in Maghaberry.

  ***

  Eddie Rudd came without a struggle, without a murmur in fact. He simply gave his mother a defeated look, much as Annette imagined him doing when his father had struck him in the past. It made bringing him in for interview an easy task, but it was a very unhealthy sign; the passivity of a victim waiting to be abused again. Margie Rudd had wrung her hands and sobbed as her son, the only close family she had left in the world, was helped into the marked police car. Eased in by his uniformed guard and then driven away, eyes down and wrists cuffed, not knowing if he would be freed again. Annette placed a comforting hand on the woman’s shoulder.

  “This is routine, Mrs Rudd, believe me. I would be very surprised if Eddie isn’t home again tonight.”

  Margie Rudd glanced up with hope in her eyes, then experience or memory extinguished it and she stared at the ground again. Annette squeezed her shoulder once and then left. She’d meant what she’d said. Like Craig her gut was saying Eddie’s print was on Cooke’s badge for some other reason, he probably hadn’t been near the ward that night. She drove down the narrow street with that hope in mind, knowing that there was only one way to find out.

  ***

  High Street Station.

  Jack had the kettle already boiled when Annette arrived and after five minutes of chat she shifted her brain to a different place, one where she needed to extract information from someone who didn’t want to give it, information that might incriminate them in a murder. Interviewing or interrogation, whichever term was currently in vogue, was an art. Not a nice one like painting or sculpture or classical dance, but a hard, nuanced battle between two people, where one wanted to say nothing and the other was tasked with making them speak.

  There were plenty who entered an interview room and asked questions like ‘did you do it?’ or ‘tell me where the gun is’, but they left again just as quickly, with ten minutes of ‘no comments’ and a solicitor’s smug grin in their head. That wasn’t art, it was judgemental clumsiness. To Annette and Craig, and even Liam to an extent, interviewing a suspect was like a first date; both parties trying to create an impression that was nothing like the truth. Add to that the fact that one side had secrets they didn’t want to give up, then easing, cajoling and seducing those secrets from them was the mark of a detective’s skill.

  Annette psyched herself up to use all her skill now. Not because Eddie Rudd was some criminal mastermind; he definitely wasn’t if shoplifting had been the height of his career. And not because she believed that he’d killed Adrian Cooke that night; she’d seen the lad, he was thin and undersized, he’d have been lucky if he could squeeze out cold ketchup never mind strangle a steroid bulked man. No, she had to use her skill because Eddie Rudd had given up on life, just like his mum. Years of an abusive father had sapped his energy and taught him that life was always going to mean pain.

  That mind-set could walk him into Maghaberry if he wasn’t careful, because of what he said on a tape and a random fingerprint, if a lazy defender and an angry Judge got together on a bad day. She needed all her skill, not because she was trying to convict Eddie Rudd, but because she needed to elicit something that would get him off.

  ***

  The E.M.U. 3 p.m.

  “Here son, that set of prints looks a bit rough. Go back and do them again.”

  The young P.C. shrugged and turned back towards Newman Ward, muttering something under his breath.

  “I heard that.”

  Liam hadn’t heard it, but his words had the desired effect, quickening the constable’s steps. Ken grinned after him and Liam shrugged.

  “Bet you do that all the time with young squaddies.”

  “I do, but usually with less effect. Maybe I need to drop my voice an octave or two.”

  Liam’s grin widened. His voice was one of his best features, or so he thought. To everyone else it was either too loud or too low, although it had halted more than one street brawl before it kicked off. Ken straightened the pile of cards in his hand.

  “That’s Newman Ward all printed: staff, relatives and patients who were there on Monday evening when Cooke died. Apart from a couple who were discharged.”

  “I’ve sent a P.C. to their homes to do them.”

  Ken glanced at the door to Reilly Suite and then at his watch. It was three o’clock and they still hadn’t had lunch.

  “What do you say we stop for a sandwich?”

  Liam nodded. “I say yes to a sandwich but no to a delay. Uniform can keep going till we get back.”

  ***

  Annette didn’t know whether to hug or shake the young man in front of her so she settled for a verbal mixture of both. The mother in her wanted to take Eddie Rudd home, feed him up and imbue him with confidence, until he stopped acting like a doormat for the world to wipe its feet on. The detective wanted him to tell the truth quickly so that she could eliminate him from enquiries and send him home. She took an approach somewhere in between.

  “Please tell me where you were between six and eight p.m. on the 13th of October.”

  Eddie Rudd raised his eyes from the table and opened his mouth for the first time since they’d lifted him. His voice was unusual. Not in its tone, which was fairly monotonous, but in its unexpectedly deep timbre and strength, emerging as it did from a body so thin that it could have graced the ‘before’ pictures in a body-building magazine. Annette wondered idly why Carmen hadn’t mentioned it but then Carmen’s approach to life was a puzzle to them all.

  Rudd also had virtually no accent. He was from East Belfast, an area with a dialect all of its own and a strong, hard accent to match, yet his voice bore no trace of the flat ‘e’ that became ‘eh’ or the ‘a’ that stretched to ‘ay’ in the middle of a word. Instead the boy sounded as if he’d learned to talk from a tape where the speaker had been English and middle-class. Radio or TV? It made sense if William Rudd had kept his family shut in the house for control. Whatever the reason Annette was surprised when he spoke.

  “What day was that?”

  “Monday. Tell me where you w
ere please.”

  The young man closed his eyes, as if he was remembering. “The hospital.”

  Annette was shocked; maybe he’d killed Cooke after all? Then logic took hold, why admit to being somewhere if you knew it would incriminate you in a death? She hadn’t told Rudd the reason they’d lifted him, just ‘helping with our enquiries’, and Adrian Cooke’s death had been kept quiet so far. The only way Eddie Rudd would have known Cooke was dead was if he’d killed him, and if he had she doubted he would have volunteered his location that night. She kept her voice calm.

  “Which hospital?”

  He looked at her as if it was a trick question. “The big one off the M2. The one Ellie worked at.”

  “Why were you there, Mr Rudd?”

  A sad look flitted across his face. “To collect Ellie’s things. The sister phoned, said there was stuff in her locker.” He shrugged. “I think they needed the space.”

  It would be easy to check.

  “Why that evening? Couldn’t you have gone during the day?”

  He gave a grin that said he was proud of something. “I’ve got a job. Forty hours a week at SuperMark. I work till five so I went up after that.”

  Annette smiled at his obvious happiness; the supermarket had obviously decided to ignore his pilfering offence. Thank goodness for common sense. From the joy on the boy’s face it was probably the first freedom he’d had since he was born, but, much as she would have loved to let him talk about it for longer, she had to get back to the point.

  “So you went to the hospital after five to collect your sister’s things. Tell me what happened.”

  He stared at her blankly.

  “When you went to the hospital. Tell me your movements when you entered the unit.”

  “Oh…well, I went to the sister, Gormley I think her name is, and she gave me the key to Ellie’s locker.”

  “Where are the lockers?”

  “At the back of the long-stay ward, in the staff-room there.”

  If the staff-room was where she pictured it, it was a distance away from where Cooke’s body had been found.

  “What did you do then?”

  “Opened the locker and got Ellie’s things. There wasn’t much. Just a sweatshirt and some make-up.”

  His voice faded away and he looked down. There was no doubt he’d loved his sister.

  The mother in Annette took over. “Tell me about Ellie. What was she like?”

  Rudd’s face lit up and he looked even younger than he was.

  “She was brave, really brave. No matter what Da did to her she never gave in.” He leaned forward eagerly. “She had her own place and all.” His face fell again. “She only moved back home for Ma and me, to see we were OK.”

  Annette’s voice was soft. “And her drug-dealing?”

  He shook his head hard. “You lot say she did, but I know it’s not true. Ellie wouldn’t have; she was a nurse.”

  But Ellie had and no amount of deifying her would make it untrue. Something occurred to Annette.

  “Do you take drugs, Eddie?”

  His head shaking was vehement now. “No way. That’s a mug’s game. Ellie would have killed me. Nothing, not even weed.”

  Eleanor Rudd wasn’t averse to dealing drugs to other kids but she’d wanted to keep her brother clean; it was a double standard they saw a lot but Annette was pleased for him. Eddie didn’t do drugs and he’d got himself a job, now all they had to do was clear him of murder…

  “Tell me what else you did on the ward.”

  Rudd looked confused. “What do you mean? I just got Ellie’s stuff and left.”

  “Which exit did you use?”

  The boy screwed up his face, trying to remember. “It…it was the back one. Out to where the old people park their cars. It’s close to the road so I got a bus home.”

  It was feasible, another thing to check.

  “Which bus did you get?”

  “I…I think it was the 2B or D. I’ve the ticket at home.” He smiled shyly. “I collect them.”

  Between the street cams, bus CCTV and ticket that placed Eddie out of the unit before Adrian Cooke had even arrived. So how had his fingerprint got on Cooke’s badge? Annette decided to ask straight out.

  “Did you see Dr Cooke on the ward that night?”

  The solicitor who’d been apparently indifferent suddenly leaned forward and whispered in his client’s ear. Probably something like ‘don’t answer that’, but whatever he’d said Eddie ignored it.

  “I didn’t see him and if I had I’d have punched him in the face. If Ellie got involved in drugs that bastard must’ve done it.” His voice broke. “Without him our Ellie would still be alive.”

  It was debatable, given that they were both dead at someone else’s hand, but Annette agreed that Adrian Cooke and Ellie Rudd together had been a lethal mix. She decided to play her ace.

  “Dr Cooke is dead and your fingerprint was found on the badge on his white coat. Can you explain that?”

  Instead of the horrified retreat she’d expected from him, from anyone accused of leaving their fingerprint on a badge worn by a corpse, Rudd shocked her by giving a loud cheer.

  “Cooke’s dead? He’s really dead? Who did it, because I’d like to buy him a beer.”

  It sounded like a line he’d heard somewhere. Annette imagined it was on the radio that had taught him how to speak. Rudd had focused on the first part of her sentence and completely missed or ignored the rest, but one thing was certain; he’d wanted Adrian Cooke dead. The boy was still speaking.

  “If he got Ellie involved in all sorts then he killed her as sure as if he’d strangled her himself. I hope whoever did for him gets away and you never catch them.”

  He said it like an innocent man but Annette repeated her question in an insistent voice.

  “How did your print get on Dr Cooke’s badge?”

  Rudd shook his head. “Haven’t the foggiest. I probably tried on his coat one day before I knew what a bastard he was.” He gazed at the ceiling as if trying to remember. “Yeh…I remember now. I borrowed it for a school play.”

  “I thought you rarely went to school, your father wouldn’t allow it.”

  “The social made him send me for a bit. We did a show for end-of-term. Frankenstein. I played the mad doctor and Cooke lent me his coat.”

  Again, easy to check. In the modern world where every phone had a camera, someone must have taken a picture of the show. Annette closed her folder and stood up to leave. Rudd leaned forward with an intense look on his face.

  “How did Cooke die?”

  She shook her head. “I can’t tell you that.”

  His voice deepened so much his words took on a movie-trailer’s doom. “I hope it really hurt. Nothing was bad enough for him.” He folded his arms defiantly, ignoring his brief’s warning glance. “I hope that whoever did it gets a medal for killing the bastard.”

  Annette shook her head then the mother and detective spoke together. “We’ll be checking everything you’ve told us, Eddie, and you’ll remain here until we’re satisfied. But…please don’t let your hatred of Adrian Cooke twist you. You seem like a nice lad.”

  Before he could come back with something that changed her mind, she was out the door.

  ***

  It was the strangest I.D. parade that Craig had ever attended. Instead of a two-way mirror into a room, where men holding numbers faced front and recited words dictated by the victim and the crime, they were sitting outside a sound-proofed room in Des’ fifth floor lab. They watched through the glass as Ian Jacobs sat wearing headphones, nodding ‘yes’ or ‘no’ each time Des turned a dial. ‘Yes’ meant they were getting closer to the squeaking sound that he’d heard and ‘no’ meant the opposite.

  Craig and John lounged on their chairs with an insouciance befitting their age and vast experience of the world. In reality it was the onset of exhaustion that this stage in a case always brought. Craig felt slightly guilty, knowing that his team was being indus
trious elsewhere, all except Annette who’d called to ask for a few hours personal time. Mysterious but not his business to ask.

  As the old hands lounged Davy sat forward eagerly with his face close to the glass. Craig couldn’t work out if it was because he was on an outing from the C.C.U. or because the scientist in him was excited by the libraries of scents and sounds.

  John nodded at the young analyst. “Doesn’t he get out much?”

  Craig raised an eyebrow sceptically. “Listen to the international playboy! This from a man who thought a trip to a nightclub was exciting until two years ago.”

  John laughed despite himself. “I beg to differ. I’ve travelled all over the world in my job.”

  “Yes, and when you got to wherever you were going how much of the local nightlife did you see? None! Airport, hotel, mortuary or burial-site and back again. It’s only since you met Natalie that you’ve even been to a cinema!”

  John’s reply was truncated by a loud “Ssshhh” and Davy shaking his head.

  “I’m trying to listen.”

  John laughed in disbelief; not at being told off, he’d been told off plenty of times before, but that Davy was trying to listen to an inaudible sound.

  “You can’t hear anything through the glass!”

  “I can. He’s s…saying ‘yes’ and ‘no’ and if you two weren’t talking you’d know that it’s much more ‘yes’ than ‘no’ at the moment. W…We’re getting close.”

  John’s interest was piqued even if Craig’s wasn’t. He adopted Davy’s pose while Craig shook his head and smiled. After five minute’s more ‘yes-ing’ Des emerged from the room.

  Craig’s eagerness suddenly matched the others’. “Well?”

  Des made a face that said ambivalence. “He narrowed it to one of two things. Rubber soled shoes rubbing against the unit’s polymer flooring, or rubber wheels of some sort doing the same. I’m not sure that it gets you much further.”

  Craig sighed heavily. Even if the wheels belonged to a ward trolley it didn’t narrow it down; there were a dozen on the unit. It had been too much to hope that it would help. Davy asked a question.