Unti Lucy Black Novel #3

by Brian McGilloway

  “All of it, ma’am,” Fleming said. “His account of what happened fits with the timeline.”

  “Certainly it corresponds with what we know about the theft from Doreen Jeffries’s home.”

  “Where did Krawiec go after Moore went underground?”

  “Terry Haynes’s,” Fleming said. “I’d guess he went to Terry for help.”

  “Why?” Burns asked. “Why not come to us?”

  “And admit he’d possibly aided in the killing of another homeless man. And had just robbed an old woman’s home?” Fleming asked, without looking at Burns directly. “Terry would have understood. He’d have wanted to help. Especially if he knew other ­people were still being held. Maybe he wanted to check for himself first.”

  “So you think he and Krawiec went to the soup kitchen and accepted work to see it firsthand?” Wilson asked.

  Fleming nodded. “Krawiec wouldn’t know the city. Wouldn’t know where the men were being held. Moore doesn’t even know and he’s from here. Maybe Terry reckoned he’d have a better chance of recognizing the place and being able to find it a second time if he did report it to us.”

  “One way or the other,” Lucy said, “the ­people running the gang found out about Haynes, though. And killed him for it.”

  “And Krawiec, too,” Tara added. “But why would he go back? After what he’d seen happen? And why would they take him back? Would they not have punished him for escaping?”

  Lucy shrugged. “Maybe he wanted to help his friends.”

  “Perhaps they did punish him. Maybe he folded and sold out Terry Haynes to them?”

  Lucy shook her head. “Haynes was cremated hours before Krawiec was dumped. Perhaps once they knew Haynes was on to what they were doing, knew about their having killed one of the men, they probably guessed Krawiec was the one who’d told him, considering they were recruited together at the kitchen.”

  “What about the man Moore claims they killed? Have we anything to substantiate that?”

  “Bodies are pulled out of the river all the time, ma’am,” Fleming said. “He might not even have surfaced yet. And if he was homeless, he might never have been reported missing. We can check back over records for the last few months.”

  Wilson nodded, then moved across to the table at the head of the room and perched against it, her arms crossed. “So why go to all that trouble with Haynes? Why hide his body in a coffin? And the cost of doing it, if they did pay off Duffy.”

  “Krawiec being found in a bin wouldn’t arouse suspicion. He was a street drinker, homeless. He fell asleep or passed out and didn’t wake when the lorry came to empty the bins,” Lucy said. “Even a street drinker being pulled from the river wouldn’t raise any alarms.”

  “But with Haynes though, you’d not have had that excuse. Haynes was known for working with the street drinkers and that. ­People would ask questions if his body was found,” Fleming said. “Especially with an axe wound.”

  “With Duffy, we just got lucky that the rain started and put out the car before the fire could take hold properly,” Lucy argued.

  Wilson glanced toward Burns. “What’s your feeling, Mark?”

  “It sounds reasonable,” Burns admitted. “I do worry a little about the stables comment, mind you. We know Moore has a thing for horses. And there are no stables near the Craigavon Bridge, which is the shortest one over the river.”

  “There’s the Peace Bridge,” Mickey offered. “Though no stables near that either.”

  “There’s more than one river near the city,” Wilson said. “We’ve the Faughan, too.”

  “Moore said the journey to wherever they kept them was short. A cigarette’s length. That must be what? Ten minutes at best?”

  “It depends,” Mickey offered. “There’s no way Moore could be certain that he started smoking as soon as the van started.”

  “Still, he said it was short. Let’s say twenty minutes. There’s only so far they could have traveled in that time. Allowing for time to get out of the city,” Lucy argued. “There can’t be that many bridges within a ten-­ or fifteen-­mile radius of the city.”

  “We need to hurry on this, too,” Fleming offered suddenly. “Sammy Smith is with this crowd and is diabetic. He had enough insulin to last him until last night at the most. If we don’t find him soon and get him to a doctor, we’ll have another death on our hands.”

  Wilson raised her eyebrows slightly, then nodded in agreement. “Take a look at the maps and see how many you can find. There’s little uniform support available with the parades stuff still going on, so you might need to assign teams to check each location, Inspector,” she said. “And do it quickly.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” both Burns and Fleming said at the same time.

  Chapter Fifty-­Eight

  BURNS DELIBERATELY TOLD Fleming and Lucy that their help would not be required in arranging the division of labor for checking the bridges throughout the city and beyond. He would contact them, he said, in due course, to let them know where they would be searching, with members of the Major Incident Team.

  As they reached the car, Lucy’s mobile began to buzz in her pocket. She pulled it out and recognized the caller’s number as Grace’s.

  “I need to take this,” she said to Fleming, gesturing that he should get in and wait for her.

  “Grace?” she asked, answering the phone.

  “Who is this?”

  Lucy didn’t recognize the voice. It was female, but the accent was Southern Irish.

  “DS Lucy Black of the PSNI,” Lucy said. “Who is this? Where’s Grace?”

  “DS Black, my name’s Mary McGeady. I’m a nurse in Altnagelvin. Are you a relative of the girl who owns this phone? Did you say her name was Grace?”

  Lucy felt the pavement tilt beneath her, had to put out her hand to steady herself against the thick wall of the compound.

  “What’s happened to her? Is she okay?”

  “She’s in A & E. You’d best come up.”

  FLEMING TRIED TO insist on coming into the hospital with her, but she pleaded with him to stay in the car until she was done. Grace would barely trust her, never mind if she landed with her DI as well.

  At the reception area, she was directed straight through to the cubicles at the rear of A & E, curtained partitions where patients were treated after triage. She found Grace in the fourth bed, with a nurse in attendance.

  Grace was unconscious, her face so badly bruised and bleeding that Lucy was not entirely sure at first that it was her. A small oxygen tube was strapped below her nose and ran across the bruised cheek and looped over her ear. But she recognized her by the clothes she wore, the same ones she’d been wearing when Lucy had dropped her off in town.

  “What’s happened her? Is she going to be okay?”

  “She’s being transferred upstairs,” the nurse said, extending her hand. “DS Black?”

  Lucy nodded, took the proffered hand, briefly, recognizing from the woman’s name badge that she was the one who had called her.

  “Mary McGeady. So, are you family?”

  “She doesn’t have family,” Lucy said. “She’s homeless.”

  “I see. She was found by one of the street cleaners up on the Walls. Maybe she had a run in with some of those young fellas that congregate up there drinking.”

  Lucy nodded, unconvinced. “Could have been,” she said. “Have you called the police? Apart from me?”

  “There was a uniformed officer came in about half an hour ago. But the girl—­Grace—­can’t say anything. He said he’d come back when she woke up.”

  “I’ll handle it,” Lucy said.

  “I thought you were family,” the woman explained. “Your number was the only one that had rung the girl’s phone.”

  Suddenly, an alarm began to blare, its source seemingly a few beds further down the corrido
r.

  “Excuse me,” Mary said, pulling back the curtain and disappearing out onto the corridor, leaving Lucy alone with Grace.

  Lucy moved across to the bed and took the girl’s hand in hers. Her hands were grubby, but not marked with blood. It meant that she’d not fought back, Lucy guessed, or that she hadn’t much chance to defend herself from whoever attacked her. The bruising seemed to be restricted solely to her face. The unit fell suddenly quiet as the alarm ended.

  “Grace? Can you hear me?” Lucy said softly, holding the girl’s hand in hers, rubbing her thumb across the rough skin of the girl’s knuckles. “Grace? Who did this?”

  There was no response from the figure on the bed, no sound save for her breathing and the hiss of the oxygen.

  She heard the clatter of the curtain rings rattling against the rail as Mary reentered the cubicle.

  “She’s out of it on painkillers,” Mary offered. “We’re admitting her, in case of concussion. We want to do a few more checks, too, that there’s no serious swelling on the inside. You know?”

  Lucy nodded. “Call me when she wakes,” she said, handing Mary her card. “Don’t worry about the uniform. Come direct to me, okay?”

  Mary nodded. “As soon as she’s fit to talk, I’ll call.”

  “Thanks,” Lucy muttered, turning again to Grace. “I’ll speak to you later, Grace? Okay?” She patted her hand lightly, replaced it by the sleeping girl’s side, left before Mary could see her face.

  She stopped halfway between A & E and the car park and took Grace’s phone from her pocket where she’d secreted it. She opened the call history but, as Mary had said, the only number on it was her own.

  She flicked through instead to the Photo Album and opened it. She had to flick back a few shots to be sure that Grace had photographed it a second time. But she felt a queasy mixture of anger and guilt when she saw that the final picture Grace had taken had been a second shot of Bernadette Thompson’s black Audi.

  Chapter Fifty-­Nine

  FLEMING WAS LEANING against the car when she reached it, his fingers drumming on the roof.

  “I’ve been thinking. I—­” He stopped, seemingly noticing Lucy’s expression. “Is everything okay?” he asked.

  “Fine,” Lucy said.

  “What’s happened, Lucy?”

  Lucy hesitated a moment. “Grace—­the girl with the red sneakers who took us to where Krawiec was killed? She’s been beaten up.”

  “As a result of showing us the bank?” Fleming asked.

  Lucy shook her head. “I think it was one of her johns.”

  “How do you know?”

  Lucy started the engine and shifted into gear before she spoke again. “The night of the heavy storm I called her and let her stay in my house. She was sleeping rough. She’d been hit by someone, a client.”

  “Did she say who?”

  Lucy shook her head.

  Fleming said nothing for a moment, staring out the window. They reached the traffic lights outside the hospital before he spoke again. “You called her to stay in your house?” he asked, finally.

  “It was pouring down. I . . . I felt . . . I was worried.”

  “Of course you were,” Fleming said, the admiration in his tone clear.

  Lucy felt her mobile vibrating again in her pocket and, worried that perhaps the hospital had realized she’d lifted Grace’s phone, she pulled it out quickly to check. It was her mother.

  “Lucy? How did things pan out with that council worker, John Boyd, and his partner?”

  The question was such an odd one, so unconnected to anything they had been discussing, that Lucy was automatically suspicious. “What’s happened to him?”

  “Can you not answer a question with a question? How did it pan out?”

  “She left him, I think.”

  “You think? Did she or did she not?”

  “She did. Then she found out I was a cop. I’d not told her. I’m hoping that doesn’t drive her back to him again. Why?”

  “Boyd has vanished. You need to come back in.”

  FLEMING ACCOMPANIED HER up to her mother’s office. Her secretary was off, so they knocked at the main double doors and waited to be called through. When they went in, Lucy was surprised to see not just her mother, but also another ­couple—­a young man whose face she recognized, and an older woman who she did not know.

  “Tom, Lucy, come in,” her mother said, directing them across to the meeting table that sat to the left of the room. Six large leather chairs surrounded it. Fleming and Lucy took a seat. A tray with a flask of coffee and empty cups and saucers sat before them.

  “Lorna’s off, so I’ve no milk,” Wilson said. “If you can take it black, go ahead.”

  Lucy passed on the coffee, but did peel back the cling film from the small plate of biscuits and lifted the pink wafer, not least because she remembered they had been her mother’s favorites when Lucy was young.

  “This is Chief Superintendent Tracey Marshall,” Wilson said, introducing the woman who sat opposite Lucy. “This is DI Tom Fleming and DS Lucy Black, as I explained.”

  Marshall nodded at them both and smiled. “This is Colm Elliot,” she added, nodding to the young man who had also moved across and sat next to her. “Colm is—­”

  “An auditor,” Lucy said suddenly, not meaning to interrupt, then immediately apologized.

  “That’s right,” Marshall said. “Can you tell that just by looking at him? I have that skill with accountants, personally,” she added, smiling.

  “I saw you with John Boyd the other day. You were about to go out on a site visit.”

  “That’s right,” Elliot said.

  “Tracey is with the Fraud Unit,” Wilson said. “They’ve been investigating John Boyd for some time.”

  Lucy was aware that Fleming glanced quickly at her, worried perhaps that, in getting involved with Fiona, she had somehow screwed up a fraud investigation.

  “You’ve had dealings with him, DS Black?” Marshall asked, looking to Wilson to show from whom she had gained this knowledge.

  “Tangentially,” Lucy said. “My neighbor’s sister is, or was, his partner. My neighbor was concerned that he was being abusive or controlling of her. I shared her concerns.”

  “Why?”

  “The description she offered of their relationship was of a controlling partner. He wouldn’t let her handle her own money, her own bank accounts, discouraged her from maintaining any friendships she’d developed before she met him, discouraged her from visiting her family.”

  “He’s an unpleasant little shit all round,” Marshall said. “Was he physically abusive?”

  “On at least two occasions, I saw her with bruises or cuts which I suspected he’d caused.”

  Marshall nodded. “But you didn’t arrest him? Or intimate that you planned to?”

  “I was introduced to Fiona as a friend of her sister’s. She didn’t know I was an officer. Then, when I next met her, it didn’t seem like a natural thing to drop into the conversation. Certainly, I encouraged her to seek help and to report him, but I’m not sure that she did.”

  “Where is she now?”

  Lucy shrugged. “She had been with her sister. He called at the house last night and, in so doing, revealed to her that I was a DS.”

  “Did she leave with him again?”

  “That wasn’t the sense I had from what she said,” Lucy admitted. “But I can’t know for sure. She was . . . unhappy that I hadn’t been totally honest with her.”

  “What is the Fraud Unit’s interest in him?” Fleming asked, sparing Lucy further embarrassment.

  “He’s been under suspicion for some time,” Marshall said. “Colm can better explain it.”

  Elliot straightened himself in his seat and put down his coffee cup in preparation to speak. “Boyd had limited purchasi
ng powers on behalf of the council, to facilitate speedy remedial works that might be needed.”

  “He was allowed to sign cheques to certain companies?” Fleming asked.

  “Essentially, yes,” Elliot said. “One company, actually.”

  “Dynamo? Dynamic?” Lucy said. “He told me the day I met him with Burns.” She glanced at her mother and Marshall. “Chief Superintendent Burns,” she added.

  “That’s right,” Elliot said, a little deflated. “Dynamic.”

  “So what’s happened?”

  Elliot shifted in his seat again. “He’s been issuing more cheques than Dynamic have been receiving.”

  “How?”

  “We suspect he’s created a bank account in the name of a second company, Dynamic Construction, and has been writing cheques to that company as well as the genuine one. They’ve been countersigned by his boss and passed through the council accounts because he has permission to write cheques to Dynamic Inc. Nobody picked up on the slight change in the name.”

  “Not even the bank?”

  “They did, eventually,” Marshall said. “Which is where we got involved. But we think he’s been doing it for some time.”

  “What about the countersignatory? His boss. Is he involved?”

  “She,” Marshall corrected. “And no, we think not. We’re fairly sure that it was carelessness rather than criminality in her case. Boyd wrote the cheques; she glanced at the name, saw Dynamic, and signed them off.”

  “Can the bank check who set up the Dynamic Construction account? If it was Boyd, you’d have direct evidence to lift him.”

  “That’s the problem; it wasn’t Boyd,” Elliot said. “It is actually a real building company, set up three years ago by someone called Rory Nash, who does small-­scale building works.”

  Marshall offered Elliot a rebuking glance. “That stays within these four walls for now.”

  “We know Nash,” Fleming offered. “In fact, we had him in for interview downstairs yesterday.”

  “For what?”

  “We believe he’s been using vulnerable adults for forced labor.”