The Depths

by Catriona King

The reason that Grace was alone in the lab that evening was twofold: there was an urgent job to be carried out on some prisoner’s phone, and her boss, Doctor Marsham, who would usually have done it, not being the sort to ask his staff to work late if he wasn’t willing to do so himself, had had somewhere else important to be. Where he hadn’t said, and she hadn’t asked because it had suited her anyway; her singing voice was strong and the cavernous lab offered her the perfect rehearsal space without any fear of incurring her neighbours’ wrath.

  But that was an aside, and in front of Grace lay the evening’s main business; a smart-phone that unexciting as it appeared apparently held something of value to the police. Gloved and masked the senior CSI unsealed the evidence bag and slid the phone onto the sterile sheet spread out on her workbench, spending the next ten minutes meticulously printing every inch of its exterior before pressing its on-switch and waiting to see what appeared.

  The screen-saver was as unexciting as the phone itself; just the standard manufacturer’s logo. But that in itself told her something about the phone’s owner so Grace made a note: ‘Owner appears to view phone as a utility not a fashion accessory. Older?’

  She scrolled through the memory for any photographs and found only three: a dog, a car, and a mountain. Either the person who owned the phone, she read the evidence label and discovered that he was called Arthur Norris, had no family, or he was so private that he didn’t want a casual viewer to know that he had. It gave her something to think about, or rather for the Murder Squad to. Was Norris all alone in the world like her? Were the pictures just stock images? And most importantly, if they weren’t and Norris was being held for questioning who was going to feed his dog?

  Just as the CSI was picturing the lonely animal she was startled by a loud beep; a text from the phone’s voice mailbox. She dialled it and listened to the messages, all fifteen of them, all from the same youngish woman becoming increasingly irate at not being called back. Every word was noted down before Grace turned to the phone’s contact list, expecting to find at least the numbers of a vet and mechanic there based on the pics, but there was only a single phone number saved, a Republic of Ireland mobile, the same number she’d picked up from the messages, and it was registered as the oddly named ‘S.W.M.B.O.’.

  It left the forensic lead with only three routine tasks: to perform a data dump, including all websites accessed; to make a list of any recent calls; and to send a request to the network provider for all exchanges that had taken place on the phone in the previous six months.

  She was just about to call the C.C.U. with the information already gathered as per her boss’ instructions, when the smart-phone buzzed to life again, the ID on its screen saying that ‘S.W.M.B.O.‘ was calling.

  Thankfully Grace was a quick thinker, so before she picked up she killed her music and set the mobile to record. Then she hit ‘answer’ and was just considering saying, “Hello” when ‘S.W.M.B.O.’ aka Róisín Casey screamed down the line.

  “ARTHUR! WHERE THE FUCK HAVE YOU BEEN? I’ve been calling you all sodding day! There was nothing in the paper and that stupid bimbo didn’t go on the radio, so you must have been...”

  The words tailed off as the banker suddenly realised that she hadn’t heard Norris’ usual defensive spluttering coming down the line. Both women held their silence for a moment and then Róisín spoke again.

  “Arthur?”

  Grace didn’t utter a word, hoping that the caller would give more away. Róisín’s sharp gasp of realisation, spitting out of, “Cops!” and immediate hang-up did. No-one innocent would jump so quickly to the police as an option, not unless they followed the word up with an anxious query about what had happened to their friend. The woman who’d just rung was up to something, and wondering what that was revived a dormant Nancy Drew streak in the CSI that made her want to find out more herself before she passed things on to the police.

  After checking that the call had been properly recorded Grace decided to phone the number back, but it dialled out. No answer and no answerphone, so either ‘S.W.M.B.O.‘ had never set one up or she’d just disabled it in case her personal message gave something away.

  A call to the network provider made the CSI’s heart sink. She’d been right that the number belonged to a Republic of Ireland mobile, but it was unregistered and pay-as-you-go so she couldn’t get a name. Although the provider’s promise to give up whatever data they could from it as long as they received a warrant meant that perhaps not everything was lost.

  It was as far as she was going to get without involving the police, so Grace made a note to recheck everything again in the morning when she was fresher, called the Murder Squad with what she had and then started rehearsing her show for Friday night.

  ****

  The C.C.U. 6 p.m.

  “OK, contrary to common belief this briefing is actually going to be brief because we’re at the point where a lot of things are still up in the air.”

  Craig ignored the immediate sceptical snorts and adjusted his chair’s position, giving Aidan a chance to jump in, gesturing at a coffee drinking Ryan as he did.

  “Plus we still have a prisoner to interview before we go home tonight.”

  Craig surprised him with a shake of his head. “I’ve been thinking about that. Let Norris stew overnight and interview him tomorrow instead. A hard bed and some of Jack’s burnt toast for breakfast might just focus his mind.”

  He acknowledged the grins of gratitude and moved across to the white-board.

  “Right, let’s tidy things up a bit.”

  He wrote ‘Stuart Kincaid’ up on the board.

  “We have a dead businessman called Stuart Kincaid, forty-three, who left his Portaferry home in-” A glance towards Andy and “March” came back.

  “Left home in March twenty-eighteen, a home where he lived with his wife and two teenage sons.”

  Another glance and Andy filled in their names and added his opinion that the marriage had been happy.

  “OK, good. So, Andy, tell us about the period between Kincaid’s disappearance and being found dead, from his family’s perspective.”

  The D.C.I. gave a tight shrug. “He’d been very down since the death of his twin sister, Nicola, and went away, as far as his wife knew, to mourn. At the beginning he called home every week, then less frequently because it was upsetting their sons to speak to him but not be able to see him. The calls became sporadic. The final one was on the twenty-ninth of October but since July there’d only been one other, so they’d been sparse for months.”

  Craig nodded. “Which is why the alarm wasn’t raised about his disappearance.”

  “Yep. His wife genuinely had no idea that he was dead. She was also adamant that he only had Bella’s photo innocently-”

  “Because he was searching for her?”

  “Not that she was aware, although she didn’t rule it out. But more because he missed his sister and the girl so much.”

  Liam had been sitting motionless, resting back in his chair with his feet up on another, but now he came noisily to life, thudding them to the floor. “Now you see, that there’s what I don’t get.”

  Craig waved him on.

  “If Kincaid was so cut up about his sister then why not carry a photo of her? As well as the girl’s maybe? Or even one of the two of them together?”

  It was a good point and one that Andy thought he might have answers to. “In the clearer photo you got from Edgar Westbury, you can definitely see Nicola in the shadows behind the girl.”

  Liam was unconvinced.

  “Aye, well, it’s no substitute for close-up, is it?”

  “Ah, yes, but we don’t know where Kincaid was staying. He might have kept a whole load of photos of his sister in his room.”

  When Liam couldn’t think of a comeback Craig picked up the point by turning to his lead analyst, who he knew would already be several steps ahead. Davy didn’t disappoint, just itching to display the slides he’d made on the LED screen by Alice’
s desk.

  A yellow and blue PowerPoint slide so luminous that it hurt Craig’s eyes appeared, and his wince saw it being dimmed to a tolerable level as soon as the analyst was alongside.

  “OK, s...so. Basic facts on Stuart Kincaid. His business was and is doing well, even with a caretaker manager in charge, and he stayed in a series of four and five star hotels in the months after he left home.” He tapped his smart-pad and a map of Ireland appeared. “I’ve managed to track some of his movements over those months using credit-card payments to petrol stations, restaurants and hotels.”

  A series of numbers appeared all over the island, showing Stuart Kincaid’s transit from his home in Portaferry, number one, to his final stop in Rownton, number twenty-five. The positioning of the rest of the numbers made it clear that his journey had been far from straight.

  Ryan pointed at number twenty-four, in Omagh. “There’s the afternoon tea at the Silverbirch. He took the post-mistress shortly before he was killed.”

  Davy nodded. “You can see he meandered a lot, around the north, s...south as far as Cork, east and west-”

  “Searching for leads.”

  “Probably, chief. Anyway, the last place Kincaid stayed, checking in on the thirty-first of October for five days, was a country house hotel in County Tyrone. I’ve been in touch with them and the management have confirmed that they held his room for a few days after the booking expired and then packed up his things and put them in storage. They’re still there now.”

  Craig walked across to the screen to join him, “Excellent.”

  He scanned the group like the fickle finger of fate and landed on Andy and his companion for the day.

  “Right, you two get down to the hotel tomorrow and go through Kincaid’s stuff. Bring back anything interesting. See what the staff there have to say, and drop in on the diving team Liam organised while you’re local, to see how they’re getting on.”

  He turned back to his analyst. “Who paid the hotel bill, Davy?” already telling himself not to get his hopes up of the analyst’s answer yielding a clue. Kincaid’s killer would’ve had to have been very stupid to go and pay the bill himself.

  Davy shook his head apologetically. “S...Sorry, chief. Kincaid had preauthorised his credit card for extras so the hotel just took the outstanding bill off that.”

  As Craig nodded pragmatically and returned to his seat, the analyst added more hopefully, “But I did manage to trace his phone.” Another slide appeared. “Kincaid’s final call was made at ten-twenty-two p.m. on the second of November to his bank; at that time of night it must have been to check his accounts, but I’ll ask. After that noth-”

  Liam cut him off. “By nothing you mean no activity?”

  “No, s...sorry, I meant no outgoing calls. The phone was still receiving calls for another twenty-four hours and there w...were two from his firm. I checked and they’d left messages. The phone provider pulled them for me and it was just Kincaid’s manager with updates about work.”

  “Kincaid was still keeping an eye on his business from a distance, boss.”

  “Looks like it.”

  “Anyway, the phone died on the fourth of November and the provider gives its last location as smack in the middle of the reception cell that covers the quarry.”

  Craig sighed. “Kincaid’s killer must have thrown it in the water and its battery took time to die. That means his wallet and watch could be down there too.”

  Liam wasn’t so sure. “Maybe not, boss. Remember we speculated the killer might have taken the watch. Probably did if it was expensive.”

  “Was it, Davy? Expensive?”

  “Yep. Luisa Kincaid sent me this.” Another tap and a photograph of a stainless steel Patek Philippe appeared. “Fifty grand’s worth.”

  Liam nodded smugly. “You see. They wouldn’t have chucked that away.”

  “Maybe not. There’s one way to find out.”

  He glanced around, intending to give a refined search order for the divers to Annette, and felt his heart sink when he realised again that she wasn’t there.

  “OK, Liam, get on to the diving team and tell them to look for the watch and phone specifically. Davy, check with Luisa Kincaid and see what else her husband was likely to have been carrying, then send the dive commander the list.”

  He turned back to the whiteboard and wrote up the name ‘Rio Reynolds’ to quite a few surprised looks.

  Mary was the first to ask.

  “Who or what is Rio Reynolds?”

  Liam tutted loudly. “Have some respect, Constable. For all you know you could be speaking about the future mother of my child.”

  It sparked a series of “Seriously?”s, some with X-rated additions, but Craig took his point.

  “Liam’s point, Mary, valid if not very elegantly put, is not to judge people by their names.”

  “Well, she sounds like a stripper to me.”

  “Make-up artiste actually,” retorted Ryan in a pompous voice, then he added, “But she was prepared to take money to say she’d had an affair with someone when she hadn’t, so she’s not the nicest person I’ve ever met.”

  Mary wasn’t appeased. “As opposed to actually having the affair, which would have been so much more upstanding of course.”

  In an attempt to move things on before she had a complete meltdown Craig wrote up ‘Derek Morrow’ and tapped it with his marker, but he was interrupted yet again, this time by his deputy.

  “Rio means river, doesn’t it, boss?”

  “Yes. Or it’s a-”

  The D.C.I. cut him off. “So what’s this fad for calling your kids after nature?”

  The question made Craig smile because he’d had a similar conversation with his mother the night before, accompanied by a lecture about Katy and him not burdening their child with a whimsical moniker, in case they’d even been considering such a thing. Considering that she’d named her own pair Marco and Lucia in twentieth century Belfast, she was hardly in a position to throw stones.

  Liam hadn’t finished.

  “And I mean it’s always the nice bits of nature, isn’t it? Like Sky or Rainbow.”

  Ryan’s curiosity made him ask the question that everyone else knew the D.C.I. had been angling to have asked all along.

  “As opposed to?”

  Craig groaned at the open goal.

  “Weeds. How does Weeds Reynolds sound? Or how about Manure Reynolds, or Dung Beetle Reynolds, or-”

  Craig cut him off. “Yes, thanks for that, Liam. Just what we needed. Twenty-five different ways to say crap.”

  It brought a sigh and a tut from Alice that made Craig roll his eyes.

  “He says it twice and there’s nothing, but I say it once and I get tutted straight away!”

  His plea for justice fell on deaf ears because people were laughing so much, so he moved things along.

  “Right, that’s enough nature for now.” He tapped the board again. “Derek Morrow, a construction manager in Rownton, committed suicide hours after we found Stuart Kincaid dead.” He held out the marker to Aidan. “Explain the links.”

  The D.C.I. gave a loud yawn that reflected the busy twenty-four hours he’d had and began.

  “OK, well... here’s a quick summary. When Stuart Kincaid’s body was found, Derek Morrow, who was involved in the excavation of the quarry years back and still held the contract for its maintenance, ran into the local pub in a panic according to its landlord. He was particularly agitated about all the police around the place. Now, that could have been because he was afraid of being accused over something to do with his work at the quarry, or it could have been something else.”

  He leaned back against a desk and folded his arms. “Because only hours later Morrow tops himself, citing work stress in his suicide note, which his wife and family didn’t think was a thing and seems unlikely from everything we’ve heard.”

  He gestured at John, who throughout the briefing had been doodling quietly on a pad.

  “The Doc here sai
d Morrow’s post-mortem showed a straightforward shot from a gun that he held legally. He was a member of a gun club.”

  The words prompted a nod from the pathologist and a disgusted snort from Andy that matched Liam’s earlier reaction.

  “Back yard warriors we used to call them. Of course the guns are just a substitute for having a small-”

  He halted abruptly, remembering that he was in mixed company, but Mary was quite happy to fill in the missing word.

  “Dick. Is that what you were going to say?”

  Alice palmed her face with both hands.

  “It’s what I was trying not to!”

  Craig didn’t have the energy to chastise them so he just rolled his eyes and turned back to Aidan. “OK, so Morrow’s death was a suicide. Carry on.”

  “Yes, well, he left two letters for his wife. One was his Will, his bank details and funeral stuff, and the other said he’d killed himself because of work stress, which was nonsense, and we confirmed that when we spoke to his deputy Jimmy-”

  Liam interrupted with a smirk. “But the mention of work might have been a pointer towards the quarry, given that Morrow had managed the place and Kincaid’s body being found there had panicked him.”

  Ryan jumped in. “That’s what we thought, especially with the whole Rio cover up trying to imply that Morrow had killed himself because of an affair. First of all, the custody sergeant in Rownton knew the Morrows and said their marriage was solid so an affair was unlikely, and secondly, why offer the girl money to lie at all, unless you’re trying to divert attention away from some other cause for Morrow’s suicide?”

  Craig nodded. “Agreed.” He glanced from the sergeant to Aidan. “One of you tell me more about Rio Reynolds and Arthur Norris.”

  Aidan passed the marker to the D.S. and retook his seat, leaving Ryan tapping a finger eagerly on the board.

  “OK, Rio Reynolds is a twenty-five-year-old beautician at McGran’s department store in town and she was approached yesterday afternoon by an elderly man who offered her a grand to give two interviews, to the Rownton Recorder and the local radio. She was to say that she’d had an affair with Derek Morrow and ended it just the day before his death, the implication being that he’d killed himself for love. She got five hundred up front and will never get the second five now.”