“Invite?”
“Sorry to disappoint you, but I don’t fancy storming an accountancy firm.”
He ignored the muttering and listened to the GPS instructions, and within ten minutes they were outside a builders’ yard with signage that declared it as ‘Grangers and Co.’
Craig climbed out of the car and strode across an untidy forecourt towards a one storey building. As they entered a burly man behind the desk stood up with a smile.
“Hello, gentlemen. How can I help you?”
Craig flashed his warrant card. “Sorry, we’re not customers. We’re from the Belfast Murder Squad and we’d like to have a word with a Mister Geoff Granger.”
The man looked confused. “Murder? I’m Geoff Granger, but I don’t know nothing about that.” He fell back into his seat wearing a look of panic. “Has someone in the family been killed? Is that what you’re saying?” He sat forward anxiously. “Who is it? Josie? Miriam?”
Craig raised a hand to halt him, his mind already made up that this wasn’t their man. Liam wasn’t possessed of any such intuition or faith in humanity, so he stared at the man with suspicion narrowed eyes.
“Who’re Josie and Miriam, and what have you done to them?”
Craig sighed and looked around for a chair. “Hold on a minute, Liam. We need to gather some facts.” He stared at Granger. “You were the uncle of Amy Granger?”
Sadness clouded the man’s brown eyes. “Lovely wee thing… knocked down and killed years ago, by a lousy drunk.”
“Do you remember the drunk’s name?”
Anger contorted the builder’s face. “Jason bloody Collier. How could I ever forget? He might as well have killed the whole family. My brother and his wife Sylvie never recovered, I’m sure that’s why she died young.”
Craig shifted to the edge of his seat. “How young, and from what?”
Granger shook his head sadly. “Forty-five. She got cancer. It was losing Amy that did it, she just lost the will to live after that.”
“And your brother?”
“Dead as well. Heart attack two years ago. He was only three years older than I am now.”
Craig made up his mind to start going to the gym. He nodded Liam to say what they’d agreed in the car and watched Granger carefully as he did.
“Jason Bloody Collier as you call him is dead too. Murdered a few months ago.”
To both their surprise Granger said nothing for a moment, then he burst out laughing.
“And you think I killed him? I wish I had. When you find out who did it I want to shake his hand.” He shook his head slowly. “Finally dead. Thank God. I wish I’d had the guts to do the bastard years ago. Maybe it would have given Sylvie some peace.”
Craig was certain that the man in front of them was innocent, but he needed to cross the Ts.
“DCI Cullen has a number of dates, and I need you to tell him where you were on each of them.”
While Liam did that Craig scanned the office. It was a treasure trove of jackhammers, crowbars and hammers, many of which would have fitted Annette’s weapons list, but if Granger’s alibis checked out they’d have no basis for getting a warrant to check them for trace.
Liam’s deep voice broke through his thoughts.
“January and March, Mister Granger here was in Spain.”
“Aye, we have a place out there. We were out there last week as well. I can show you my airline tickets.”
“Liam, have Davy check the flights.”
As Liam exited to make the call Craig took a different tack.
“Can you think of anyone else who might have wanted Mister Collier dead?” He paused for a moment, weighing up his next words and then deciding to go for it. “Collier wasn’t the only person killed. The judge who sentenced him, the barrister who defended him…”
Granger’s dark eyes widened, and he shook his head vigorously.
“No way! None of my family would have done that. Those people were just doing their jobs. The judge even contacted my brother afterwards and apologised for the light sentence. He said he was restricted in what he could give Collier by the guidelines, but if we wanted to petition parliament for harsher sentences then he would support us all the way.”
Craig hid his surprise by asking another question. “Were you in court every day?”
“Bloody right I was. We all were. We owed it to Amy.”
“Did anyone there stand out to you? Anyone taking an excessive interest in the case who wasn’t a family member?”
Granger frowned as he thought, his thick forehead folding into a trench. After a moment he nodded.
“There was a reporter. Every single day he was there, and he just stared at Collier the whole time.”
“Do you know who he wrote for?”
“One of the Belfast papers, I think. He was obsessed with the case.”
Just then Liam re-entered, shaking his head. “His alibis check out, boss.”
Granger laughed. “You needn’t sound so miserable about it. I’m sure you’ll find someone else to lock up-”
Liam went to bite back but Craig shook his head, handing the DCI a scribbled note that saw him exit again to make another call. Meanwhile Craig turned back to the builder. Something had been bothering him since the briefing and he wanted to see what Granger knew.
“Lucinda Collier.”
Granger looked puzzled. “Which one was she?”
“Collier’s wife.”
“Sorry, you’ll need to be specific. What did she look like?”
He made a quick call to Kyle and returned. “She was a redhead. Why?”
“Because if she was then she was in court every day. She even gave evidence for his defence, although she did him more harm than good.”
“How so?”
“Well, she said all the usual stuff about him being a good husband, but then she turned to Sylvie and started crying and apologising, saying how Collier had been drinking that night so she’d assumed he was walking to the off-licence. And if she’d realised that he’d been going to drive she would have taken away his keys or called the cops herself. She practically won the case for us.”
Craig’s jaw dropped. Of course… It had been niggling at him that Lucinda Collier hadn’t been targeted by their killer, after all she would have been an obvious person to blame; the wife of a drunk-driver, why hadn’t she used her influence to stop him getting behind the wheel? But now he understood why she was still alive; she’d pleaded the case for the girl. So had the prosecuting barrister, and he’d been left untouched too. Anyone not defending Jason Collier had been left alone. It was yet more proof that their killer had been in court throughout the case.
Liam reappeared again, shrugging.
“Maggie’s checked the court reporters. It seems one was some old boy who’d lost a kid of his own and got a bit obsessed with cases where kiddies were involved. He died back in oh-five. The other was a cub reporter trying to make a name for himself, and he moved to one of the big nationals in London fifteen years ago.”
“Get Davy to check he hasn’t come back, please.”
But Craig already knew the reporter was a dead end; every time it looked like they had a lead they hit another brick wall.
Suddenly he felt tired, he really needed a holiday. He might find himself on a permanent one soon; he’d reassured the C.C. that morning that they were close to catching their killer and it was looking like he’d be proved wrong.
Craig rose to his feet, readying to go.
“OK, Mister Granger, that’s all for now. Don’t leave the country, please, not until we clear things up. So no more jaunts to Spain until I say so.”
It didn’t dent Geoff Granger’s good mood one iota, and Craig knew the builder would be toasting Jason Collier’s demise the second that they left. As they climbed back into his car he motioned Liam to make another call. “Give the locals a bell and brief them what to ask Martin Granger.”
“You don’t think either of them did it, do you? Anoth
er dead end.”
Craig didn’t answer, his mind running through anyone who might conceivably have been in that courtroom back in nineteen-ninety-two.
****
Laganside Apartments. 4 p.m.
The hunter’s patience was finally rewarded. After hours of sitting in front of the riverside development’s two blocks, occasionally shifting to let someone past him into their garage and the rest of the time spent listening to Radio Four, a parking spot opened up just where he needed it. Close to the river and with easy access to the balconies. A quick shin up their steel supports and he’d be right where he needed to be, inside Sarah Reilly’s second floor apartment with the GP back in his grasp. Dusk would help for camouflage, as would the start of the two-hour evening traffic roar, to cover any unforeseen noise.
He exited the SUV quickly by its passenger side and pressed himself flat against a wall, reaching the river front balconies within seconds and beginning to climb. In less than a minute he was crouching down on the balcony right outside Sarah Reilly’s living room, the top of her dark head just visible above the back of a sofa, but with no sign of the human guard-dog that he was certain would be lurking inside. With any luck he could get in, taser her and get out again before they reappeared, but if he did then his gun would be the last thing that the policeman ever saw.
He was in luck, and so was Ryan Hendron, not that he would feel lucky when he saw that his charge was gone. The balcony’s French doors, obligingly ajar, slid open quietly, and by the time Sarah Reilly had seen her assailant and opened her mouth to scream, fifty thousand volts coursing through her body had silenced her and a gag was stuffed into her mouth.
The athletically strong man strapped her to his back with the harness he wore and descended the steel balconies more quickly than he had climbed, and the medic was in the SUV’s boot and out into the heavy traffic by the time Hendron had returned from his trip to the kitchen to make some tea.
The detective took in the scene instantly: the paperback abandoned face down on the floor and the French doors now opened wide. He raced out, first on to the balcony to search and then two flights down and out to the main road and the surveillance car.
“He’s got her! They must have driven right past you!” He jumped into the saloon’s back seat. “Play back your video for the past five minutes. Any cars in and out through the gates.”
It seemed they were in luck, there had only been one, but in the dusk and at rush-hour it might as well have been ten. Hendron put out an all points alert and braced himself to phone Craig.
He caught him on the West Link on his way back from Granger’s yard. Craig nodded Liam to answer the phone on speaker.
It took him less than ten seconds to realise that someone was calling with bad news, the immediate widening of Liam’s small eyes preceding a loud, “What the fuck, Hendron?”
By the time the DCI had got to, “You bunch of dickheads!” Craig had pulled over and nodded him to hand over the phone. Not out of any concern about the Strangford DS being offended by his blunt deputy, but rather that if anyone was going to give the surveillance team a bollocking that honour belonged to him.
A terse, “Tell me exactly what happened” resulted in three voices fighting for air time, until Craig’s loud, “SHUT UP, ALL OF YOU! Hendron, you speak.”
No-one could beat Ryan Hendron up any harder that he was already beating himself, so as the surveillance car fell quiet the sergeant responded in a tight voice.
“Doctor Reilly’s gone.”
Craig closed Liam’s immediately opening mouth with a glance and waited for the sergeant to continue.
“I went to the kitchen to make tea, for less than a minute, and when I came back the balcony doors were open and she was gone. I ran out to the car and played back the surveillance video. The only car that exited through the development’s gates in that time was a dark SVU.”
Craig growled a question. “Colour?”
“Racing Green according the DVLA database. We got the reg.”
“Name?”
“Belongs to some company called Caradine’s. We’re looking into it.”
“Which direction did it go?”
“Over the bridge and on to the M3 motorway.” Hendron swallowed hard. “We lost it there.”
Liam allowed himself another “Fuck!” and followed up with, “Cameras all over that stretch of road and you can’t find a car that size?”
Craig was tempted to join him in castigating the trio, but instead he forced himself to concentrate. He nodded to switch seats, motioning Liam to drive on.
“Right. Hendron, get down to Traffic and find Inspector Gabe Ronson. I want every inch of that camera footage checked until you find where that SUV went. Tell him to get a helicopter up if necessary, but we need it stopped, understand?”
He took the muffled grunt as a yes then the sergeant risked a question.
“Should I get some of my lot down to the original place she was held?”
“You can do, for caution, but I doubt he’ll go anywhere near there again.”
Liam saw Craig about to wind up and mouthed, “Get him to ask Ronson about our judge Vic, McClelland.”
Craig sighed. “You forgot to.”
“Yep.”
Craig passed on the request and then signed off. “Right now, bugger off all of you. I’ll expect a report in the next hour.”
As the call ended he could feel his hand shaking, as he fought hard not to smash his phone against the dash.
“Fucking idiots! They had one sodding job to do.”
Liam nodded glumly. “If you want something done properly, do it-”
“We can’t be everywhere at once.”
The DCI added yet more wisdom. “You realise it’s too late for a helicopter. By the time it gets up they’ll be long gone.”
Craig nodded glumly and pointed ahead. “Head back to the ranch while I make some calls.”
The first one was to Ash, and it caught the analyst gazing at his reflection in a mirror and smoothing down his hair. He wasn’t sold on the whole nineteen-twenties’ preppy look, but if it got him some loving, then what the hell. His new girlfriend Ruby had made it clear that the Great Gatsby was her favourite ever book and had made him sit through the movie, both the Redford and Di Caprio versions, fifteen times so far. The way that she’d looked at him dewy eyed each time they’d appeared with their slicked down hair, said that the whole roaring twenties style was the way to her girlish heart.
An image of the small blonde dancing the Charleston faded with his desk-phone’s third ring and Nicky’s hissed, “It’s the chief! Pick it up!” The Romeo obliged quickly, but barely got out a, “Hi, chief” before Craig barked down the line.
“Important dates in the Granger case. You were working on them.”
Ash’s eyes widened at his tone.
“Give me any there are in December.”
The analyst tapped quickly on his keyboard and a calendar appeared. “The sixth and-”
“Just the ones after today.”
The analyst’s brown eyes raced through the calendar.
“The next one is the tenth. Tomorrow. That was the date Collier’s two-year sentence expired in ninety-four. Then there’s the seventeenth, when Collier got sentenced in ninety-two. The first victim, Maria Drake’s body was found then.”
The killer had dumped his victims out of date order; the body left on the seventeenth of December twelve months before the ones left on the sixth. Perhaps they might have solved the case more quickly if he’d killed in sequence. It was a pointless thought.
Craig was still on the tenth of December. The end of Collier’s two-year sentence. He glanced at his watch; four-thirty.
“What time did his sentence expire?”
Ash’s eyes widened again. He hadn’t checked the exact time. For one second he thought about bluffing then he realised it was more than his life was worth.
“I’ll need to check, chief.”
“Call me ba
ck. And get me an update on the factory CCTV as well.”
As the line went dead Ash exhaled loudly, making Davy turn around in his seat.
“What’s up?”
“No idea, but whatever it is must be bad. The chief nearly bit the head off me.”
Nicky obliged them with an answer. “I’m not surprised. The surveillance team let Sarah Reilly get abducted again. My mate in Traffic’s just texted me.”
Nicky’s web of contacts was so extensive Churchill could have done with them in World War Two.
Davy swore before asking, “How did they manage that?”
“I dare say the chief is asking the same. Anyway, that’s why he’s grumpy, so make allowances.”
Ash wasn’t listening to either of them, he was too busy hacking court files. Two minutes later he called Craig back.
“The factory wipes its CCTV records every Friday lunchtime, so we were too late, chief, sorry. On the other thing, twelve o’clock on the tenth of December ninety-four, that’s when Collier’s sentence expired.”
“Tomorrow at noon...” If their killer was as wedded to specifics as he thought he was, that meant they had less than twenty hours before Sarah Reilly died. “Look at the other two December dates for me. Remind me again, do they coincide with events in our case?”
“Yes. The sixth was the final day of testimony by witnesses, and that’s when Judith Roper and Walter Gruber were found dead. Doctor Reilly was first taken on the fifth so that means she would have been dumped on the eighth if she hadn’t escaped, that’s the date the jury was sent out after the barristers had summed up. Mister Torrance was taken on the seventh-”
Craig cut across him. “To be killed tomorrow, on the tenth.” He’d been wrong; their final two victims hadn’t been destined to die together.
Liam realised something. “So why take Reilly again instead? Wouldn’t Torrance have been better?”
Craig shook his head. “He’s in High Street so the perp can’t get at him, and a woman’s always easier to abduct. Abducting her was expedient, he’s obsessed with ending everything on the tenth.”
Something occurred to him. “Ash, if the jury was just sent out yesterday and tomorrow is the verdict, they didn’t deliberate for long.”
The Killing Year (The Craig Crime Series Book 17) Page 30