The sergeant turned to the farmer with the picture facing down towards the farmhouse’s polished stone floor.
“We have another photograph that we’d like you to take a look at, if you would.”
McCusker tugged at his long sideburns for a moment and then nodded. “If I can help. Is it another man?”
“No.” Ryan passed the picture across, watching the man’s face closely as he did. “Do you recognise this little girl?”
Both detectives spotted the immediate upward flash of McCusker’s eyebrows and then his narrowing gaze, so Aidan urged him on in an intense voice.
“You know her, don’t you?”
The country man hesitated. “I...I’m... ach, it’s not exactly a brilliant photo now, is it.”
“Sorry, no.” Ryan’s tone became insistent as well. “Who is she? Do you know?”
In response McCusker pointed at the photograph’s shadowed background, and to a woman standing about six feet behind the girl that no-one so far had paid any attention to.
“I’m not sure on the girl, but I’m nye on a hundred percent that’s Nicola Westbury. So the girl must be her wee daughter, mustn’t it? It’d make sense.”
Aidan sat down again with a thud. Nicola Kincaid-Westbury had been in Rownton at some point! Was that why her brother Stuart had come there? And could it be a lead to how he’d died?
“How do you know Nicola Westbury?”
The farmer shook his head. “Well, I don’t really; it’s her husband I know. Edgar he’s called. His family used to run the guest house on the edge of the village, and we went to the local school together. The parents are dead now; they passed in a car crash on the A28 in early fifteen.” He shook his head solemnly. “Shocking road that. Course, I’m not surprised, the state of the potholes-”
Ryan heard a rant about government irresponsibility coming and cut in. “How can you be so sure which year the Westburys died?”
McCusker looked at him, surprised. “They announce all the local anniversaries for ten miles around at mass.”
It was a stark reminder of how much closer rural communities were than those in the Big Smoke.
“They were nice folk too, the Westburys, so everyone round here was sad at their passing. I recognise Nicola because when they were alive Edgar used to bring her o Rownton to stay regular. Maybe they brought the wee lassie too but I never saw her. Mind you, I spend most my time in my fields. I don’t go into town if I can help it.”
His tone became conversational. “I heard Edgar’s a bigwig in hotels now. They moved abroad somewhere, didn’t they?”
Aidan steered the farmer back to the point. “So Edgar grew up around here and he used to visit with his wife Nicola until his parents died. What happened to the guest house then?”
McCusker shook his head morosely. “It got sold eventually and knocked down to build houses. Same fate everything has nowadays. No sense of history some folks.”
Aidan steered again. “The rest of the Westbury family?”
“Aye, well, there was only one lad besides Edgar. His younger brother Blaine.” He laughed maliciously. “A complete bloody waster he was. There were five years between them, but even so, him and Edgar were like chalk and cheese. Anyway, Blaine went off to fly his kite somewhere abroad years back so there was no-one interested in taking the guest house on.”
“And you definitely saw Nicola with Edgar when he visited Rownton?”
“Oh, aye. Those two were real lovebirds. Like I said, I’m never in town much, but I remember meeting them once in the pub holding hands. Years ago it was.”
Ryan was doing some calculations. Edgar Westbury’s parents hadn’t died until early in twenty-fifteen, months before Bella was taken. It was unlikely that Edgar and Nicola would have left their children with her parents every time they’d visited, the Westburys would have wanted to see their grandchildren after all, so... both Bella and her older brother must have been in Rownton at some point even if Gabriel McCusker hadn’t seen them there.
He decided to try a more focused question.
“I appreciate that you’re not sure of months or years, Mister McCusker, but could you tell us if you saw the man in this photograph,” he held out the image of Stuart Kincaid again, “before or after the Westburys died?”
Both detectives held their breath while the farmer thought. This time it only took a second for him to nod.
“Aye, well, when you put it like that. He was definitely here after.”
Stuart Kincaid had visited Rownton at some harvest time from twenty-fifteen onwards. Time to narrow it down further.
This time it was Ryan who stood up to leave.
“Thank you, Mister McCusker. You’ve been very helpful.”
As he exited through the farmhouse door Aidan hurried to keep up.
“Where are you going?”
The D.S. waved his mobile in the air.
“To call Davy. If he can tell us the exact date the Westburys died in twenty-fifteen we might be able to form some sort of time-line. When they died, when Bella was abducted in France, when McCusker’s harvest time sighting of Stuart Kincaid might have been; twenty-fifteen, sixteen, seventeen or eighteen.”
Aidan was having some thoughts too and he pulled out his own phone.
Five minutes later they had reconfirmed with John Winter that Stuart Kincaid had been dead for no more than four months, which meant he could have been alive at harvest time the year before. They also knew that the elder Westburys’ accident had happened in March of twenty-fifteen, so it was likely that Bella Westbury and the rest of the family would have been in the village that spring for the funeral, unless they’d left the children with Nicola Westbury’s parents to spare them the grief.
That left them with another question for Gabriel McCusker so they knocked on his front door again, to have it answered by the farmer clad in his wellingtons and waterproof coat.
“I was just on my way to the cowshed.”
“Sorry, just a couple more questions. The Westburys’ road accident happened in March twenty-fifteen. Could you have seen the man in the photograph that harvest time?”
“No, it was more recent than that for sure.”
That left sixteen, seventeen and eighteen.
“Did you see him in the village more than once?”
The local man shook his head. “No. Just the once with Biddy. But I was thinking, it must have been harvest time twenty-sixteen that he was here, because Biddy retired from the post-office that Christmas and it was taken over by her son.”
“Excellent, thank you. Now, the Westburys’ funeral. Did you attend it?”
McCusker nodded firmly. “Everyone around these parts did. To show their respects.”
“Do you recall seeing Edgar and his wife there?”
“Oh, aye, and their two kids as well. Nice wee things. It was right sad what happened to that family-.”
Ryan cut him off urgently. “Was Edgar’s brother Blaine there too?”
The farmer’s lips curled, telling them again what he thought of Blaine Westbury. “Aye, he was. And at the wake the day before, drunk off his head.”
They had their timeline! Aidan wanted to cheer. The Westburys had died in the car crash March twenty-fifteen and Edgar and his whole family had attended the funeral at Rownton later that month. Then in August that year Bella had gone missing over thirteen hundred miles away in France, and at harvest time the year after that, in twenty-sixteen, Stuart Kincaid had been witnessed in Rownton talking to its post-mistress.
But that obviously hadn’t been Kincaid’s only visit to the village because he’d met his end there in the quarry only months before, so what had made the businessman return?
As the detectives returned to the car with their embryonic timeline they knew they would have three interviews to hold the next morning instead of two, now that Biddy Evans had been added to the list. While Ryan called Davy for some background on the post-mistress his D.C.I. phoned to update Craig.
&nbs
p; ****
The Labs. 7 p.m.
Identifying a dead body is never pleasant for anyone, but when someone has loved the deceased it can be a descent into hell; an amalgamation of chest tightening, stomach churning light-headedness and cold perspiration that makes the viewer want to vomit or run away.
But that is just the physical side of the ordeal, horrific yes, but transient, and what remains can be far worse torment with its effects enduring for life; the loss of a companion, a child or a parent and every small and large aspect of them, from their laughter and support, their moods and foibles, through to the simple sound of their key in the front door and their call of, “I’m home” every night. All absent. Forever gone.
It would be tempting to say that nothing could possibly worsen that impact, but there is always the way in which the person died. Although not always true that a natural death with time for goodbyes is a comfort and mitigates the losses mentioned, the disappearance of a loved one ending in the news that they were brutally murdered is a horror that can steal even the most stoic’s peace of mind.
That was how it was for Luisa Kincaid when Andy led her gently from the mortuary viewing room, so blank of expression and devoid of words that he knew he couldn’t possibly interview her that day. Instead he’d ushered her into the warm, lamp-lit relatives’ room that John Winter had indicated, guiding her to its couch and dispatching his junior to make tea while he sat opposite, saying nothing and allowing the wife who was now a widow to have whatever thoughts she chose.
The D.C.I. was no longer concerned about asking questions that could wait for another day, no longer willing to produce the photograph of the missing Bella at that moment and enquire about what Luisa Kincaid knew; instead his only concern was for the slim brunette in front of him, whose suffering was etching its name through her repeated scratching and gouging of her forearm and pouring out through her eyes, a river of pain and misery that made him shiver and offer up an entreaty that what had happened to this woman never became the lot of anyone he loved.
It was an approach that Craig would have agreed with had he been asked, but he wasn’t. Couldn’t be in fact, because at that moment he was engaged in a silent conversation of his own with George Royston, the Governor of Mahon Prison; an hour later than scheduled because some prisoner had decided to punch his mate.
Royston was a man that they’d encountered during a case at the prison in December, and one that Craig knew would cave and give him whatever information he needed if stressed enough. And he needed the name of Pete McElroy’s cellmate; banking on him being the prisoner that McElroy had grown closest to inside, or at least the one that it was worth interviewing first.
So that’s what the detective was trying to obtain through the strategic use of silence, and when Royston finally squeezed out, “Benjamin Frampton” in a grudging tone it became evident that the approach had worked.
“Pete McElroy’s cellmate was called Ben Frampton?”
“Yes.”
The detective could picture Royston’s hand sweeping back through his hair repeatedly as he grudgingly yielded the information, just as it had done each time he’d been questioned during their case months before; although the stress in his voice suggested that this time it might be not so much a sweep as a rake.
“OK. Tell me more about Mister Frampton. How long is he in for, what was he convicted of, and the rest.”
‘The rest’ being Frampton’s general behaviour as a prisoner, and exactly how close he and Pete McElroy had become. The governor’s grudging tone became defiant, but with a nervous undertone, as if he was insecure in his boldness and expecting to be shouted down.
“The Ombudsman’s office contacted me and warned me to keep any information about Mister McElroy’s time with us confidential.”
‘Time with us.’ The man made it sound like he was running a boarding school, or at worst some sort of retreat.
It prompted Craig’s first equivocation of the conversation; one that he was glad his deputy wasn’t in the room to hear.
“The Ombudsman’s office has been in touch with me as well and I’m au fait with everything.”
If not exactly a lie it was a pretty big bluff to start on, but he’d made the calculation that either it wouldn’t be caught, or if it was and he was proved right about the reason for McElroy entering Annette’s house he would get a pat on the back. But even if he wasn’t right, as long as he hadn’t interfered with any possible prosecution it was likely he would only get his knuckles rapped.
His calculations were interrupted by the prison CEO giving a relieved sigh at the other end of the line and then being so forthcoming it verged on incontinence.
“Well, if the Ombudsman’s office says it’s OK to tell you...”
Craig was tempted to point out that wasn’t actually what he’d said but he held his tongue.
“Ben Frampton is a burglar. He’s halfway through a ten year sentence with six offences being taken into account. No parole.”
“Straight burglary with no weapon?”
“Yes.”
Ten years and no parole for unaggravated burglary? Even with six offences, one of them must have involved a bloody bank!
Craig had guessed right.
“He was part of the big job on the NI Bank in Belfast’s centre, and he did post-offices, shops, homes and even some cars as well. Anything with a lock really, and he was gifted at it; never left a mark. As far as his behaviour in here goes, it’s been excellent. He’s likable and does as he’s asked with grace.”
“And his relationship with Pete McElroy?”
“Good. Mister McElroy was put into the cell last January.”
“Any particular reason for the pairing?”
Royston hesitated just a beat too long, making Craig’s antennae twitch.
“None. Frampton’s last cell-mate had been discharged and we needed the bed.”
“Right...”
The detective left, “you’re lying” hanging in the air as a subtext and continued on.
“You were about to tell me about their relationship being good.”
“Yes, well, I’d go so far as to say it was cordial. Mister McElroy was a teacher before he offended as you know, and he spent a lot of time teaching Ben to read and write. To quite a good standard now actually. They shared for almost a year and became well nigh inseparable in McElroy’s last few months here...”
Loyalty. Damn. It could make Ben Frampton a tough nut to crack.
As Royston’s voice tailed away in either real or mock sympathy for his dead inmate, Craig was teeing up his most difficult query and already visualising himself hitting a brick wall.
“This may be difficult to answer, Governor, but I need to know if McElroy ever consulted the prison doctor?”
The defensiveness reappeared. “Why do you need to know that?”
“Answer the question, please.”
It was said in his best interrogatory tone, which he’d noticed normally worked everywhere but at home.
But this time the stubbornness of the righteous joined Royston’s defence.
“I’m not sure that I can, Chief Superintendent. Even by confirming such visits I would be breaching medical confidentiality.”
“I could get permission from his family.”
“Do that, and then perhaps I can help you.”
He heard the governor’s drawbridge being raised and locked. Apparently it wasn’t just at home that particular approach could fail.
Shit. That meant involving Amy and Jordan, and he’d wanted to keep them out of things until he had proof to back up his hunch. Annette wouldn’t want her kids upset, not even to save herself.
If there was no way around it that’s what he would have to do to defend their mum, but before that Craig decided to play one last card.
“I need to interview Mister Frampton.”
“For what reason?”
“That’s confidential and to disclose it could prove prejudicial to an investigation.
”
That old chestnut.
But he’d deliberately said ‘an’ investigation not this specific one, so he only counted it as a half-lie and one that he was prepared to defend; exactly how he would work out later.
A note of stubbornness entered the governor’s voice. “I’ll need paperwork to release Frampton to you.”
“You’ll have it. I’ll order him brought up to Belfast tomorrow afternoon. Make him ready for transport, please.”
Ben Frampton didn’t know it yet but he was about to help save a so-called ‘pig’s’ bacon, and Aidan and Ryan didn’t know yet that they would be making a detour on their way back to Belfast to pick him up.
****
Craig was just about to leave the office for the night when his mobile rang. He wasn’t leaving to go home but to meet yet another estate agent, and be shown around yet another house that was for sale. Since their wedding six months before he and Katy had kept their own places, mostly because he’d been a bachelor for so long that an incremental transition to permanency, with all its overlapping living arrangements, was necessary to stop him, as Lucia had put it so pithily, “Freaking his dog’.
Logically the expression meant nothing, and yet it conjured up perfectly his likely state of mind on waking up one morning to find that he had no place to escape to for solitude, even though that place currently, his scruffy apartment at Stranmillis, was being visited less and less often every week.
Given that he wasn’t carrying around a four kilogram embryo it made sense that he did most of the leg work of scouting fora house that met their minimum requirements: separate his and her caves as well as all the boring stuff like a kitchen, garden and so on; and then presented Katy with photos and his opinion to help her make a choice. But three weeks in and ten houses down he was bored rigid, not to mention left wondering how television presenters who did home makeover shows weren’t tempted to run screaming for the hills.
One more sodding pine/Shaker/space-age/glossy kitchen with or without an ‘island’, or bedroom with ‘a panoramic view’ that could only be seen by hanging out a window with a pair of binoculars, and he thought he might actually shoot the agent. Left to his own devices he would just have had them produce a list and stuck a pin in it, but he acknowledged that Katy’s view of buying their first home together carried a considerably more romantic tinge.
The Depths Page 11