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

by Catriona King

  He cut straight to the chase.

  “I don’t know what you know about this case, Maggie, but it’s at a crucial stage.”

  “And you don’t want journalists messing things up.”

  Craig smiled. “Let’s just say I don’t want anything to jeopardise us catching the guilty party.”

  She sipped at her coffee and stared him in the eye. “Before you even hint at it, Davy told me nothing; he never does. I knew nothing about St Mary’s, other than what Ray Mercer had written, until I got the call today.”

  “I didn’t think Davy had. Tell me everything you can about the phone call, please.”

  She shrugged. “It was like a million other tip-offs that come through to the news desk every day, saying. ‘I think you should know that such and such did this and that to so and so.’ Usually it’s someone trying to land an enemy in trouble. You wouldn’t believe the dross we have to sift through in our job.”

  Craig laughed. “Sounds familiar. So what made you take this one seriously? Out of all the calls you get.”

  Maggie shook her head. “I didn’t at first. It was just one of a dozen that came through this morning, although it came in early – seven a.m. Luckily I was on early call. Anyway, they started to give me details so I asked where they were calling from. They said St Mary’s and that I could ring them back to check.”

  Craig lurched forward. “Where were they phoning from?”

  She gave him a surprised look. “No idea. I just did as they asked. I rang St Mary’s switchboard and asked to be put through to the extension they gave me.”

  “Do you still have the details?”

  She nodded and reached for her bag, withdrawing a small smart-pad. “OK, it was St Mary’s main switchboard and then extension 207. It sounded like somewhere with…”

  Craig wasn’t listening. He’d pulled open the door and grabbed the phone outside on the wall. Maggie heard a voice say “Hello” on the other end and smiled affectionately.

  “Davy. Find out where extension 207 at St Mary’s is and phone me back, please.”

  He swiftly retook his seat. “It sounded like a somewhere with…?”

  Maggie scrambled to keep up. “Yes…OK, it sounded like a bathroom or someplace like that. You know, echoey, as if there were a lot of hard surfaces and no furniture.”

  “Good, good. When you called back how long did it take them to answer?”

  “Two rings.”

  “Did you hear anything unusual in the background?”

  She thought for a moment then shook her head. “Sorry, just what I expected to hear I suppose. It sounded like a hospital.”

  “No other voices, phones ringing; anything?”

  He was asking her to recall things as if she was there. Cognitive interviewing. She did as she was asked and after a moment she smiled.

  “There was something. It was a squeaking noise, like a trolley.”

  Craig nodded. Exactly what Ian Jacobs had heard. Could it have been a trolley? Who wheeled trollies? Not doctors and usually not nurses, that left healthcare assistants and the portering staff. He made a note to find out more about Ferdy Myers and just then the phone rang in the hall.

  “Yes, Davy… Where? ... You’re certain? ... Good, thanks.”

  He re-entered the room looking confused and Maggie sat forward eagerly.

  “Where was it?”

  He glanced at her sharply, his message clear. If it goes outside this room I’ll know you leaked it. She tried to look offended and then laughed.

  “OK, even though I could have found out myself, I promise I won’t say a word. So where was the extension?”

  “In the porters’ store. It’s a room on each floor where they keep trollies, old beds etc. There’s one just down from the E.M.U.”

  Maggie grinned. “Well, there’s your answer then! The porter did it. It’s not quite a romantic as the butler but it’ll do.”

  It was too damn neat. Anyone with half a brain would’ve known they’d trace the call and then start chasing their tails checking out the porters. They’d have to check them now but Craig’s money was still on it being someone else. He parked the information and returned to their discussion.

  “OK, tell me about the person you spoke to. Male or female?” He already knew but he wanted to hear it again.

  “Male. How many female porters are there?”

  Craig ignored her and carried on. “Age, accent, type of voice – educated, uneducated?”

  She thought for a moment then said “Older, but not decrepit old. I’d say sixties or at a push seventies. Strong, deep voice; not Prince Charles but middle-class. Accent…”

  She paused, screwing up her face in recall. After a moment she shook her head.

  “You can’t remember?”

  “No, it’s not that. I can hear his voice clearly; I just can’t say what the accent was. It’s one of those voices that sounds like it comes from everywhere, as if its owner has travelled a lot.”

  “Is there anyone on TV who sounds similar?”

  She thought for a moment then snapped her fingers with a loud crack. Craig was impressed. He’d been trying to teach Lucia how to do that since they were kids.

  “Kiefer Sutherland!”

  “From 24?”

  “The very man.”

  24 was a popular US TV show; one of John’s favourites. Sutherland had been born in London but raised in Canada.

  “You mean the voice sounded Canadian?”

  Maggie went to nod and then stopped herself. “Damn…no, it definitely wasn’t Canadian. I have an uncle who lives there. It was…” She thought for a moment. “Mid-Atlantic. Like someone who’d lived in both the States and UK, and maybe elsewhere as well. It was a very faint accent but they still didn’t speak English like they were born here.” She looked at Craig hopefully. “Does that make any sense?”

  Craig smiled. It probably would when they had their perp but right now it wouldn’t get them very far, unless… He made a note to check something and waved her on.

  “What did he say?”

  “Just ‘there have been two murders on the Elderly Medicine Unit at St Mary’s hospital, not one’. Then he hung up.”

  “Those were his exact words. There have been?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then he’s educated. OK, he gave you absolutely nothing else?”

  “Nothing. Anyway, I checked with my contacts at the mortuary and they said they’d removed two young people’s bodies from the E.M.U., on the ninth and the thirteenth. Both violent deaths. I knew about Eleanor Rudd but who was the second death?”

  Craig ignored the question and made a note to tell John he had a leak in his morgue. Five minute’s more chat yielded nothing extra so he rose to leave. Maggie smiled up at him hopefully.

  “So I can go back to the hospital now?”

  Craig gave her a ‘what do you think?’ look and her face fell.

  “You know you can’t, Maggie, but I promise you an exclusive when we break the case, providing this is kept under wraps. If other journalists start harassing the ward staff I’ll know where the leak came from.”

  She made a face and he relented long enough to give her a “thanks and well done”, then he was outside beckoning a constable to show her the front door. As Craig re-entered the squad, Annette was preparing to leave.

  “Going somewhere, Annette?”

  “Just home…to collect some things I forgot this morning.”

  Her sheepish glance at the floor confirmed what Liam had thought – she hadn’t been home the night before.

  “When you get back I want to talk to you about the interviews you held with the porters.”

  He answered her quizzical look with an update on his meeting and then crossed to Davy’s desk.

  “Davy, those background checks you were doing…”

  Davy looked up with a question that had nothing to do with backgrounds. Craig smiled.

  “Maggie’s not in trouble, don’t worry. In fact what
she told me was helpful. That’s what I want to check with you.”

  Davy hit a key on his right-hand screen. “Background checks. Fire away.”

  “I’m looking for a man, aged sixty or seventy.”

  Davy typed in the search and then shook his head. “There was no-one that age on the unit w…when Dr Cooke died.”

  Damn. Craig thought again. “OK, let’s say he was younger or older than Maggie thought he was. Try men in their fifties and eighties.”

  Davy typed again and smiled. “There were three men in their eighties on the unit when Cooke died, one in Newman and two in Reilly S…Suite. There were even more men in their fifties. Prof Taylor, another doctor, two relatives, a porter…”

  Craig stopped him. Not because he really believed a porter was their killer but because Davy’s list sounded as if it could go on for quite a while.

  “Print those out for me, then I want you to narrow your background checks. I want anyone who’s spent a significant amount of time living in both the UK and abroad, including the States or Canada, who was on the unit at the time of both deaths. I’ll be in my office.”

  Craig left the analyst staring after him curiously and entered his office. He poured a coffee and stared out at the river, nursing the drink in his hands. Their perp had tipped off the media because he wanted them on the unit, either because he wanted them to obstruct the police or because he wanted the story of Rudd and Cooke’s deaths told. Why? Because they were drug-dealers who’d got their comeuppance from a vigilante? Or because there was something more behind their deaths?

  The killer had called Maggie from the hospital, meaning he wasn’t making any attempt to escape. Either he didn’t believe they’d ever catch him, which meant that the fingerprint they’d found on Cooke’s watch wasn’t his or it wasn’t on a database anywhere, or he knew they’d catch him eventually but he simply wasn’t intending to run. Maybe he had nowhere else to go or no means to get there, or he simply couldn’t leave. Which begged the question, why couldn’t he? Family ties, a job he couldn’t sacrifice, a relative too sick to abandon or…

  The answer Craig had been reluctant to look at was right in front of him now. His reluctance hadn’t delayed the investigation, they’d done exactly what they’d needed to do when it had needed done and if he’d reached his conclusion any earlier they could have wasted valuable time on a fishing trip.

  He gazed out at the Lagan, thinking of the real-life fishing trips he’d taken with his uncle when he’d been a kid. They’d sat in boats on lakes and at the end of piers, in places like Portavogie and Ardglass. Fishing in amiable silence, knowing that they would probably catch nothing but just enjoying the peace. He loved peace and quiet, there wasn’t nearly enough of it in life.

  His thoughts were interrupted by a cough at the door and he turned to see Davy standing there. Craig beckoned him in, knowing that he couldn’t ignore the answer for much longer but uncertain how to prove he was right. They’d take the time to do the checks and rule people in or out, because if he was right about who their perp was then he had no intention of going anywhere.

  Chapter Eleven

  11 a.m.

  Annette slid her credit card into the front door lock, praying that neither of her teenage children had decided to be diligent for once and secure the mortice lock below. She’d no idea where she’d left her keys. She corrected herself immediately, remembering her untidy passion of the night before; they had to be at Mike’s but she didn’t have the time to look right now.

  To her relief the front door clicked open so she entered the small hallway and stood there, listening for the sounds of someone at home. The silence made her relax. She would have to say where she’d been the night before eventually, but work could be her alibi if she could change her clothes and escape before anyone else appeared.

  The plan was progressing well until, in the middle of brushing her teeth, Annette heard a key turn in the front door. The footsteps that followed belonged to neither of her children. Pete was home! She tugged a comb hurriedly through her hair then grabbed her handbag and went to leave. As she opened the bedroom door she was confronted by her husband’s muscular shape blocking her way.

  “Oh! You startled me. I was just heading back to work.”

  Pete McElroy didn’t move or speak. Instead he stared at her in a way that said she was going nowhere. Annette rushed to fill the silence, her heart racing.

  “Where are Amy and Jordan? Jordan has an exam next week, he should be studying… There’s no milk in the fridge, I’ll pick some up on the way home tonight…”

  His silence deepened and grew, filling each pause in her gabbled monologue like quicksand, just waiting for the word that would suck her in.

  “And Amy has…”

  Tired of waiting for his wife to lie about where she’d been the night before, to say that she’d been at work, the catch-all excuse, Pete McElroy broke his frozen silence by doing something he’d never done before. His large hand rose and covered Annette’s face and with one shove she was on her back on the bedroom floor. Her eyes widened in astonishment and her suddenly high, anxious voice sounded like some other woman’s. Annette knew immediately who she was; a victim.

  “What are you doing, Pete? Stop, please. Please tell me what this is about.”

  She already knew that her pleading was useless; her husband of twenty years was staring at her as if he didn’t recognise his own wife. For a moment Pete said and did nothing then he began moving towards her again. Annette scrambled to grab her handbag and phone for help but he saw what she was reaching for and stamped hard on her right hand. She gasped as she heard the bones crack and break then she gasped again from the sudden pain, but still she kept inching towards her mobile, knowing that it was her only hope.

  As the sweat of pain dripped down her back and she struggled hard not to be sick, Annette McElroy tried frantically to reason with the man she’d married. The good man, the hard-working man, the man who had never laid a hand on her or his kids. The man who until his affair the year before she would have said was the love of her life. He’d broken the trust between them then and despite all her efforts to mend things her love for him had finally died. Mike was just a symptom; the disease was the broken fidelity between Pete and her.

  It was too dangerous to say that now and what would she say anyway? That she’d tried and failed to forgive him, and now she wanted a divorce because she’d met a man who didn’t make her feel like second choice? This new Pete would kill her.

  Annette glanced up at the man she’d laughed and made love with for decades, the father of her children, a man she still loved in so many ways, just not in the one way that marriage required. Part of her thought she deserved what he was doing to her, after all she’d wanted to kill him when she’d learned of his affair. Now, somehow, he’d found out about hers and what had been a fantasy for her was being turned into action by him.

  Through her thoughts and pain Annette registered that Pete had stopped moving towards her and was staring contemptuously at her instead. He hadn’t said a word since he’d entered the house but she prayed that he’d say something now. If he spoke she could reason with him, before he did something that destroyed four lives.

  Pete McElroy’s lips curled into a sneer, a sentiment echoed in his words. “You’re a whore. My wife the whore.” His hand curled into a fist and Annette winced, anticipating the blow, but more words came instead. “Don’t tell me that you were working last night, because I checked and you weren’t.”

  Even through her haze Annette knew he couldn’t have been sure. But his next words said that he was.

  “I followed you all day. Saw his nice house; he must be rich. What’s his name, whore? And don’t bother to lie, I can find out myself.”

  “Pete, it’s…”

  She stopped mid-sentence, not knowing what to say. If she said he was mistaken he’d hit her again and she would never survive a full-on punch; he was a P.E. teacher and as fit as they came. What if she t
old him the truth? That there was someone but he wasn’t the reason that their marriage was finished. But she still couldn’t tell Pete that he was the reason, that his affair had frozen her heart and Mike Augustus was just the warmth that had thawed it after thirteen months. Whatever she said would anger him. Her only hope was to keep him talking until someone at work noticed she’d gone or one of the kids arrived home.

  As the thoughts raced through Annette’s mind the pain in her crushed hand grew and the urge to throw-up overcame her. She turned her head and vomited and then the room began to swim. As her head hit the floor and the room faded away Annette Elizabeth McElroy’s last thought was that at least she wouldn’t feel her own death.

  ***

  11.30 a.m.

  “Has anyone seen Annette?”

  Craig scanned the squad-room but Annette was nowhere to be seen. His question was answered by Davy shaking his head. Craig tutted to himself. He’d asked her to find out why Hazel Gormley hadn’t mentioned Eddie Rudd’s presence on the ward. It wasn’t like her not to come back with an answer in two hours. He turned to Nicky.

  “Has she called you?”

  Nicky shook her head. “I haven’t seen her since we briefed.”

  For a moment Craig wondered if Annette was somewhere pursuing her romance then he dismissed the thought immediately; she was far too conscientious to do that when he’d set her a task. A frown creased his brow.

  “Try her mobile, Nick.”

  Nicky dialled the number and a few seconds later she shook her head. “It’s ringing but no answer.”

  “Try the ward.”

  Still no Annette. The hairs on Craig’s neck stood to attention. He turned to the rest of the team.

  “Liam, where was Annette going?”

  Liam grinned. “Home to change; she’d been a dirty stop-out last night. Then she was heading to the ward to speak to Gormley. That’s what she said anyway.”

  There were many uncertain things in life. The outcome of a football match or a game of poker, the weather in the UK, the date and time of their next case, but to counter that the Universe had made some things fixed. Mountains and seas rarely shifted, the sun rose each morning and set every night and, most certain of all, if Annette McElroy said she was going to do something then without fail she did. Something was wrong. Craig headed for the lift, scattering orders in his wake.