The Waiting Room (#4 - The Craig Modern Thriller Series)

by Catriona King

  “Thanks Davy, I thought it might be a dead end. Des agrees with you on her nationality - he says her D.N.A. is northern European, but that doesn’t get us very far with nothing to compare it to. OK. John said that she wasn’t a drug addict and she was tortured by being cut with knives. The smaller superficial cuts happened over a period of one to two days, so sadism was part of the killer’s M.O. And she was also partially strangled, judging by the marks on her neck.”

  He paused, thinking of the last few days of their victim’s life and then shook his head hard, trying to erase the images. “John said she was strangled repeatedly and revived.”

  Nicky gasped and even Liam seemed shocked.

  “Why, boss?”

  Craig bit his lip, reluctant to say the next words. When he spoke, his anger surprised them all. “To give some sick bastard a sexual thrill, that’s why! If I could get my hands round their throats I’d do the same to them.”

  As he spoke, his fists tightened and Liam knew he was squeezing the life out of their killer in his mind. After a brief silence his shoulders slumped. He continued quietly.

  “Asphyxia wasn’t the cause of death, exsanguination was. From the abdominal laceration. They carved the pentagram and made the marks in the pattern of the crucifixion post-mortem. She bled to death somewhere, was cleaned up then they deliberately left a kosher knife in the fatal wound. It wasn’t the knife that caused her death; too small and the wrong shape. Then she was moved to the church and displayed as we found her.”

  Nicky shuddered. “There are some real monsters out there.”

  Craig nodded. Far too many of them. “OK. The priority is identifying our victim, so keep going on that.”

  “Des sent her prints through but there’s nothing on the U.K. database, sir.”

  “Here, I thought we had no prints? Didn’t they cut her fingertips off?”

  Davy interjected quickly. “They got them from her ears, palms and feet, Liam. It’s a new method.”

  Liam’s eyes widened in surprise. “Boys-oh, what’ll they think of next? I just hope the scrotes don’t find that out or they’ll be skinning their victims completely.”

  “Liam!”

  A pen flew past Craig and bounced off Liam’s forehead. He howled loudly.

  “Oww! That hurt! What did you do that for?”

  Craig swung round to see Nicky looking unrepentant, with another missile ready in her hand. “That’s someone’s daughter you’re talking about, Liam. Stop it and behave yourself!”

  The look on her face showed that she meant business. Craig laughed, impressed by her ferocity, and her aim. Liam rubbed his forehead and Craig saw a welt appear.

  “Frick me! Come back Annette, all is forgiven. At least when she tells me off she doesn’t clobber me.”

  “Well, she should. She should have done it years ago.”

  Craig called the room to order. “OK everyone, behave. Liam, learn to be more sensitive please.” He swung around, admonishing Nicky with a look. “Nicky, no matter what you think of Liam, you can’t go around hitting him.”

  He stared at her gravely and then turned back to the wounded soldier in the corner, his tongue firmly in his cheek. “Liam, would you like to press charges for assault against Nicky?”

  The howl that came from Nicky matched Liam’s earlier one and Craig feared for his windows. “He can’t do that, sir. It was only a pen!”

  Liam glanced across at her and rubbed his head dramatically. “It was a metal one!” When he spoke again it was in martyred tones. “I’ll need to think about that, boss. It’s wild sore.”

  The look of panic that shot across Nicky’s face almost made Craig relent, but Liam deserved his five minutes of revenge. The charges were nonsense but if she’d used something heavier there’d have been hell to pay, so it wouldn’t do any harm to drive things home.

  Liam gazed at the floor as if seriously considering Craig’s offer. Davy covered his face with his hair but Craig saw his shoulders shaking as he tried not to laugh. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Nicky’s colour change from her natural sun-bed bronze to pale beige. Just as he was about to put her out of her misery, Liam raised his head and a massive grin spread across his face.

  Then he picked up the pen that had hit him and put it his pocket. “I’m keeping this as evidence Mrs Morris, just in case you step out of line in the future.”

  He burst out laughing and Nicky exhaled sharply, not even aware that she’d been holding her breath.

  Craig laughed. “Sorry, Nicky. But no matter what he does I can’t have you going around hitting him. That’s my job!”

  He turned briskly back to the case, leaving Nicky to throw angry looks at Liam, instead of office supplies.

  “OK, the man we found last night. All we have on him is that he definitely didn’t kill himself, although it was staged to look like it. The house is owned by a dummy company. Davy, anything yet on the property records? Or the laptop?”

  Just then the phone on Nicky’s desk rang and she left grumpily to answer it.

  Davy shook his head ruefully. “Nothing yet. The laptop is a common make and has a totally clean hard drive. I think it was bought just for this. The upside is that it’s got a new virus programme that only came out recently, so I’m trying to trace the purchase through the manufacturer’s number. The w…weekend delayed us getting answers on that and on the house ownership. Although I’ve managed to peel back the front company, and it looks like they mightn’t have covered their trail quite as w…well as they thought.”

  “Good work, Davy. Do what you can on that.”

  “Just one other thing, s…sir. The lay preacher, Joe Higginson, is in the clear. He was away in Donegall all last w…week. And he still has his keys, so whoever accessed the church didn’t do it with those. The gardener and flower lady didn’t have keys. Anyway, they have solid alibis.”

  Craig nodded. The preacher had been a long shot. He turned and his eyes landed on Nicky. She was standing at her desk, no longer on the phone but leaning over her computer screen, clicking on a file. She stared at it for a moment before hitting print, and re-entered the room carrying some sheets of paper.

  “Nicky?”

  The look on her face told Craig that it was something sad. When she handed him the sheet he could see why. It was a photograph of two people. From the body language he read father and daughter, with a good relationship. They were wearing heavy winter clothes, and the high pine trees in the background said that it was somewhere cold and northern. He scanned it quickly, trying not to look at the girl’s face.

  The room was silent as they all stared at the picture, waiting for a signal from Craig that it was OK to speak. He couldn’t look at the print any longer without the young woman’s face coming into focus. Any chance that she wasn’t their victim disappeared in front of his eyes. He knew he would break the heart of the man beside her very soon.

  He turned slowly towards Nicky. “Who is she?”

  She sighed heavily. “That was Stranmillis Road Station on the phone, sir. A Sergeant Jake McLean. He’s just come from the apartment of a student called Britt Ackerman, who’s been reported missing by two of her friends. No-one has seen her since Wednesday.”

  Wednesday. The timing fitted.

  “Sergeant McLean interviewed her friends and circulated her picture. Then he started digging through the past few days’ cases and got a hit on ours. He’s asked if he can meet with you. Apparently there are things that make this even more complex than we thought.”

  Craig nodded, placing the picture face-down on his desk. He couldn’t look at the girl’s smiling face any longer, not when he knew the pain he was about to bring her parents. He stood up, signalling the end of the briefing, and nodded at Liam to join him for the journey to Stranmillis Road. They took the lift down to the car-park in thoughtful silence, both of them thinking of the women that they loved.

  ***

  The last time Craig had been at Stranmillis Road Station was in Apri
l. It had been midnight, and he’d been in a dark interview room facing a hardened criminal. Tommy Hill to be exact. This time was very different.

  The two women in the relatives’ room looked barely more than children. Yet in two years’ time they would both be doctors, taking responsibility for people’s lives. Craig wasn’t sure what he should treat them as; woman or girls. He tried to remember John at that age and smiled to himself. He wouldn’t have let him treat his dog, much less a human being. Yet, look how well he’d turned out, even if all his patients were dead.

  He decided that they were women and pushed firmly at the door, entering the sunny room. A tray of tea and biscuits sat in front of them, but their cups sat untouched as they huddled together on the dark settee. An image of the fairy-tale ‘Babes in the Wood’ sprang into his mind. His mother had read them the Italian version, “Neonati nei boschi" every night when he was a child, determined to make him and his sister Lucia bilingual if it killed her. She’d succeeded, despite their objections.

  The idea was whimsical but it was exactly what they women looked like, set in the austere surroundings of a police station. As they clung together Craig revised his earlier assessment - they were still girls.

  “Good afternoon. My name is Detective Chief Inspector Craig.” His voice was soft and measured and he indicated a seat opposite them, sitting down at Fiona’s glance.

  “Could you tell me which one of you is Hannah Benner please?”

  The fairer of the two gazed at him with wet eyes, nodding. Her tears were soft and silent and Craig thought he saw more in them than concern for her friend. But what? Guilt? Her wide eyes answered him. She was afraid of something. His antennae twitched and he determined to find out what.

  The door opened and Liam entered noisily. The volume he generated wasn’t always deliberate, his size made even the act of breathing loud. On Craig’s nod he sat down near the door. Not saying a word, just observing everything. Craig turned to the second girl.

  “Fiona Torney?”

  She sat forward confidently, quite clearly the leader. Just of the pair, or of a larger pack?

  “That’s me.”

  Her voice was assertive; years of supportive parents and agreeing friends. Her hand shot forward, slim and tanned - each finger a testament in silver.

  Craig shook her hand and then fixed on them each in turn. Deciding on the silent girl as the one who held the information, and the other as the one who would give it up.

  “Ms Torney, could you tell me exactly what happened between the last time you saw Ms Ackerman, and this afternoon when you called the police?”

  Fiona took a breath and started clearly. Recounting the events since their Wednesday afternoon coffee with Britt, through Thursday and Friday at lectures, until Hannah had arrived at her flat for the weekend. She covered their studying and lunch at the Lyric on Sunday, then skipped quickly across Sunday night and Monday morning, to end more quietly with their trip to Wellesley Avenue that afternoon. Her vagueness on Hannah’s visit caught his attention, and he could see from Liam’s sudden lean forward that he thought the same.

  Craig kept his voice soft, not for the leader but for her friend. She was a more fragile proposition, but she was the one who held the reason for Britt Ackerman’s death. He was sure of it.

  “When Ms Benner arrived at your apartment on Saturday evening, it was for a studying sleepover, is that correct?”

  “Yes, but not only that. We were going to have fun as well.”

  He nodded, remembering weekends spent at his mates’ houses. Ostensibly to study but actually to party hard. The hangovers had lasted for days.

  “And what form did that fun take?” As he asked the question of Fiona he watched Hannah’s reaction out of the side of his eye. On the word fun she looked down and away, as if she wanted to run from what might be said next. Fiona was still talking.

  “We have a dermatology exam tomorrow. I was off for a few weeks last term having my appendix out, so I’d missed some lectures and needed to catch up on the work. We went shopping in town on Saturday afternoon and studied when we got back. Then we had a quiet night in with a DVD. We went for coffee at the Lyric on Sunday morning, like we always do, and studied again in the afternoon. I studied all evening on Sunday as well, because Hannah had a date…”

  She glanced at her friend on the word date, continuing hesitantly. “We’d planned to take a road trip today and study again tonight, but...”

  It hadn’t happened, halted by an empty flat and police interviews.

  Craig nodded thank-you and turned to look intently at her companion. She was slumped back on the settee, hiding her face behind a curtain of hair. He could see Liam straining to see through it and smiled, visualising him doing the same with his daughter in years to come.

  Craig allowed silence to fill the room for a moment, while Hannah tried to become invisible, anticipating his questions. He calculated that she’d respond best to a kind but firm approach, so when he finally spoke it was in a voice that was gentle but authoritative.

  “Can you please look at me, Ms Benner? I need to ask you some questions.”

  Hannah jumped then sat forward urgently. She pushed her hair back from her face with a shaking hand, revealing a look of complete terror. What was she so frightened of? Craig’s natural kindness made him want to take things slowly with her, but they didn’t have the time for preamble. At any minute their parents could appear and they might clam up. His only window to get the truth was now.

  “Who was your date with, Ms Benner?”

  The words were unambiguous and Hannah stared at him, shocked, as if his directness was rude. But this wasn’t afternoon tea, no matter how nice the room was. Britt Ackerman was dead and Craig knew that the girl in front of him had information why. There was no time to mess about.

  He stared intently into her eyes, making it impossible for her to escape. He could see Liam straining to speak in the periphery, but he moved his hand slightly, stilling his words. She was going to tell them something, but not if they terrified her.

  Hannah glanced nervously towards Liam and then pleadingly at Craig. He nodded, knowing what she wanted, and signalled Liam to exit and send in a W.P.C. He didn’t miss his annoyed look, but Liam’s hurt feelings were a low priority right now.

  As the female officer sat down, Hannah’s shoulders dropped, signalling surrender, and he knew that when she spoke, it would be to tell them the truth. And to explain what she was so afraid of. Whatever it was, it had killed her friend.

  ***

  “Can you really get the time off, Natalie? It would be brilliant if you could. We could look at places together and then have lunch.”

  Natalie grinned and turned John’s credit card over in her hand. Then she laughed down the phone.

  “That would be great, but only if we hit the shops first. I feel the need for shoes.”

  “Shoe shopping it is then. And I need to get Marc a birthday present. It’s next Monday, the 17th, and I’ve no idea what he wants.”

  Julia cheered up instantly and smiled down the phone at her friend. Natalie was taking two days off to keep her company, whether at Craig’s request or her own suggestion, she didn’t care. With two murder cases to be solved there was no chance she’d see him, so it would be great to have someone to talk to.

  Her thoughts were interrupted by Natalie’s strong voice. “By the way, does Marc know that you’re looking at new houses for him this week?”

  ***

  Once Hannah started talking she didn’t stop for an hour. She covered everything from her conversation with Britt Ackerman two weeks earlier, through to her near miss the night before at Marrion Park.

  Britt had told her about the escort agency, run by a woman called Sylvia Brooks. When she’d first said what she was going to do, Hannah had tried to dissuade her. But she was determined. She couldn’t seem to see past her father’s restrictions, to look clearly at her privileged life.

  How many students had their own a
partment and car? She even had a credit card that let her indulge her expensive taste in clothes, paid off every month by her loving Dad. But like everyone who’s had everything they ever wanted in life Britt looked for reasons to be unhappy. And she found one, in her father’s overprotective nature.

  She railed against his telling her to study and forget boyfriends until she graduated, citing his urge to see her have a good career as just another form of control. Like her allowance and car. But Hannah hadn’t noticed her giving either of them up to prove her independence! She liked Britt, loved her even, after all, they’d been friends since school. But even she thought she was behaving like a spoilt brat. Then she heard how much the agency was paying and all of a sudden her dream of being able to move away from her step-father seemed possible.

  At Craig’s querying look she’d rushed to reassure him. Damien Stewart had never touched her, not even a tap on the hand when she was a stroppy teenager. In fact he’d shown her nothing but kindness if she was being honest. But he wasn’t her real father and he behaved as if he was. Telling her where she could go and when. It didn’t sound like a huge crime to Craig, but she’d had enough of it.

  So, when Britt had mentioned the ten thousand pounds for one night of sex, something she admitted to being curious about. Well, it seemed like it was too good a chance to turn down. Britt was doing it in defiance, but she was doing it purely for the money.

  Britt had been in touch with the agency weeks before and she’d given her the contact details for the Madam. Hannah hung her head, embarrassed. Craig wondered if it was because of what she’d agreed to do, or for her own stupidity.

  She’d had no idea that Britt had already agreed a day and time for her appointment when they talked. And she definitely hadn’t known she was going that week, or she would have called to ask her how it had gone, before her own date on Sunday.

  Hannah paused for a moment, sobbing quietly, and Craig knew she was thinking of her friend. Having God-only-knows-what done to her, while the rest of her class were planning their weekends.