The Depths

by Catriona King

  He motioned the D.C.I. to get up again. “Don’t get comfortable, you and I are going to see the C.C.to grovel for a warrant for Pete’s communications. I emailed him my report explaining yesterday and I’ve a paper copy for him in the car. Then it’ll be the Ombudsman and PPS before we can hopefully tell Annette she’s off the hook.”

  “You grovel while I spit in their eyes.”

  Sounded fair enough.

  “Agreed. Then we’ll have a week’s work to do unravelling this abduction ring before we do a coordinated swoop.”

  Liam gawped at him. “A week! That’ll never be enough!”

  “It’ll have to be. Flanagan phoned me on Saturday to say it’s all he can give us. The Trafficking Unit’s got wind that there’s something big happening and he doesn’t want him running away with things before we’ve got a serious grip. I’d warn Danni she won’t be seeing you till Friday if I were you.”

  He’d been joking, but as his deputy began sizing up his new kingdom for a sofabed it occurred to Craig that putting one in both of their offices mightn’t be such a bad idea.

  They were just heading off the floor when Davy entered so Craig repeated the one week deadline to the immediately panicked analyst and got on the road.

  Twenty minutes later they were standing in Sean Flanagan’s office where Craig was indeed grovelling, to a man who was trying to look stern as befitted a Chief Constable and not bemused like he actually felt.

  “Well done on the abduction ring, both of you, but why are you asking me to request a warrant, Craig? Why would I when you’re perfectly capable of doing the job yourself?”

  “The warrant’s not linked to the abduction case, sir.”

  It earned him a raised eyebrow.

  “You’re working on another as well?”

  “Well…yes, in a way.”

  The puzzled C.C. turned to Liam for enlightenment, which he was only too pleased to give.

  “We need a warrant for Pete McElroy’s communications.”

  Craig jumped back in. “I did email you a report on this yesterday, sir. Here’s a paper copy.” He set down the document that he’d brought from the car.

  Flanagan’s quizzical look became a frown, and when he spoke again there was more than a hint of steel in his tone.

  “And why is Peter McElroy any of your business, Chief Superintendent?”

  Seeing that Flanagan hadn’t read his email and the meeting looked likely to last longer than the five minutes they’d originally requested, Craig glanced questioning at some chairs. The detectives were briskly motioned to sit, however, the welcoming sign of refreshments was nowhere in sight.

  “I can explain, sir,” Craig paused and then added, quite cheekily his deputy was pleased to see, “if I could just have five minutes without any questions.”

  With no signal from Flanagan that such an amnesty would be forthcoming Craig decided to continue anyway, determined not to pause for breath in case he cut in.

  “We all know the details of McElroy’s breaking and entering and subsequent shooting by D.I. Eakin before Christmas, but this week we were informed that, following the Ombudsman’s report, the PPS was considering a charge of manslaughter. Annette is very distressed.”

  He stopped reluctantly to inhale, fully expecting someone to say something. Happily no-one did so he hurried on.

  “But there was something that made me suspicious of the events, namely that McElroy had left his fingerprints, which he knew were in the system, on the French doors through which he entered-”

  Flanagan raised a hand to halt him, frowning as if he hadn’t been aware of the detail. “Meaning?”

  Liam volunteered the answer. “Either he didn’t care if he got caught and sent back to the nick or he wasn’t planning on being around when his prints were ID-ed.”

  The Chief Constable’s eyebrows had risen on ‘nick’, but when he said nothing about the slang Craig carried on.

  “Given that McElroy was due for release only a short time later, the more likely thing is that he believed he wasn’t going to be around when he got made. Also, the French doors were intact, meaning that he’d broken in very expertly without a sound-”

  Liam jumped in helpfully. “And the Governor at Mahon finally admitted on the phone to me yesterday that McElroy had specifically asked to share a cell with a burglar last January. Royston thought it was because Pete was trying to be good, i.e. he didn’t want to share with someone violent who he’d get in fights with, but he must have been thinking of a possible break-in for a year.”

  Although Craig was wondering just how much pressure Liam had applied to elicit the admission from George Royston, his glance said, ‘Good man’.

  Flanagan raised a hand to stop their flow. “You’re implying that Peter McElroy had sought lessons in breaking and entering, but that’s irrelevant as the prints he left behind would have shown up on the system immediately.” He nodded slowly in realisation. “Ah… I see. You mean he didn’t want to be heard entering and was planning to go on the run afterwards.”

  Craig shook his head emphatically. “No, he wasn’t going to run, sir. With what resources? Ones that he could have accessed, I mean. And where could he have gone without being pursued? Annette would have alerted everyone he was the burglar the moment he’d left the house.”

  The C.C.’s next words were irritable. “Well, what then? Get to the point, man!”

  Craig bit back his urge to respond, “if you’d read my bloody report you’d already know all of this” and laid things out in a calm tone.

  “It occurred to us that Pete McElroy had never intended to leave that house.”

  Liam knew that he was getting credit for something that hadn’t even occurred to him, but decided that now wasn’t the time to demur.

  An astonished expression appeared on Flanagan’s face but Craig ignored it and pushed on.

  “McElroy wasn’t a burglar yet he broke in smoothly leaving the door’s lock and glass was intact, so we wondered where he’d learned to do that. I enquired and found out that while in Mahon he’d shared a cell with a Ben Frampton, so I decided that we should have a chat.”

  The Chief Constable found his voice. “A chat?”

  “Yes, sir. A chat.”

  Liam gave him five points for sarcasm and five more for managing it while still sounding polite.

  “It turned out that Frampton was a notorious burglar, which was particularly interesting because of the break-in, so I had him brought to High Street last week and questioned him under caution. He revealed that in exchange for McElroy teaching him how to read he’d taught McElroy how to break and enter.”

  The C.C.’s eyebrows rose again.

  “He also said that McElroy had been severely depressed about his future prospects and had talked of suicide several times. He’d also stated that he wanted his ex-wife to suffer what he had after he died.”

  Liam had been champing at the bit to say something and spotted his chance.

  “That means he wanted Annette to lose her freedom, her kids and her job. He wanted her to do jail time just like he had.”

  Craig gave a small smile and carried on.

  “McElroy was clear with Ben Frampton about his intent to break in and kill Mike Augustus, Annette’s new partner, placing her in a position whereby she would feel threatened and draw her gun. If the gun hadn’t already been handy Pete had intended to place it beside her. He had the code to her lockbox, having watched her secure her weapon every day for years when they were married. Frampton also confirmed that Pete knew Annette was a crack shot. In other words, if she fired at him she wouldn’t miss.”

  Flanagan’s eyebrows had jumped so high he looked like a mime.

  “In the weeks prior to the episode McElroy employed a new firm of solicitors, Floods in Oxford Street, and deposited some letters with them. We asked Colum Flood could we see the letters but he wouldn’t even confirm their existence, however we’ve since found out that Pete’s two children received letters from
Floods in the past few weeks. It’s my belief that one of the other letters Colum Flood is holding will be Pete McElroy’s suicide note. I also believe that he’ll have dated it to be opened years from now, approximately when he would have expected Annette to be freed from prison if she was convicted on his death.” He fought to keep sarcasm out of his next few words. “It’s all in my report, sir.”

  Liam added helpfully. “That’s so she’d have to serve all her sentence before people learned the truth.”

  Flanagan finally roused himself to comment. “Yes, I got that, Chief Inspector.”

  Craig was beginning to feel more confident so he stared directly at the Chief Constable and re-issued his earlier request as a demand.

  “We need a warrant for those papers and all of McElroy’s electronic communications, because it’s my belief that we’ll find a step-by-step outline of how he set up Inspector Eakin in a deliberate suicide by cop.”

  There was absolute silence in the room. How long it might have lasted they would never know, because the next moment the door was rapped and thrown open and Donna Scott, Flanagan’s eternally cheerful PA, bounced in.

  “Call for D.C.S. Craig, sir.”

  Flanagan snapped at her. “It’ll have to wait, Donna!”

  She stood her ground, grinning. “Can’t, sir. It’s his son saying his first hello.”

  The blood drained from Craig’s face, and although his mouth opened not a whisper emerged. It was left to his deputy to race out and lift the telephone, to hear an ecstatic Katy say, “Tell Marc everything’s fine. The baby arrived very quickly and the ambulance is here now. We’ll be at St Mary’s when he gets down.”

  Liam heard another woman’s voice say, “End your call, dear. We’d better get on our way” just before the line went dead.

  He swaggered back into the office and thumped Craig on the arm for the second time that day.

  “Cigars all round! The wife says they’ll be at St Mary’s.”

  Craig was still gawping. He’d left Katy fast asleep only two hours before! That meant she’d been alone when the baby was born; in fact she must have delivered it herself! She’d got her wish after all.

  Sean Flanagan brought the detectives back to earth.

  “Congratulations, Craig. Your first?”

  Liam guffawed. “And last, judging by the shock on his face.”

  “Well, let’s finish up here quickly and you can be on your way to the hospital.” He turned to Liam, seeing that he was going to get no more sense from his boss. “You have this statement signed by Frampton, D.C.I. Cullen?”

  Liam mustered his best professional tone. “Yes, sir.”

  “And he mentions the same solicitor Inspector Eakin’s children received their letters from?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yet the solicitor didn’t confirm that?”

  “He said he couldn’t confirm anything without a court order, but surely the kids’ letters are confirmation enough?”

  The reply was a frown. “The Ombudsman won’t like this, and I don’t want a precedent established for his investigations being challenged by anyone who simply doesn’t like the outcome.”

  Liam thought he detected a hint of Flanagan preparing to give them what they wanted through his grumpiness, and decided a sober, “I understand” would work better as encouragement than, “hurry the hell up!”

  The Chief Constable’s flinty next words poured cold water on his hopes. “Also, the police aren’t above the law, and we can’t be seen to be trying to thwart an investigation into one of our own.”

  Craig suddenly heard things slipping away from them and woke up.

  “But surely neither can we proceed against an officer incorrectly just to appease the public, sir? If it comes out later that McElroy had openly expressed his intention of committing suicide by cop, then people will say taking Inspector Eakin to trial was a complete waste of public funds.”

  He’d mentioned money very deliberately, knowing how close Flanagan’s budget was to his heart. It did the trick.

  The Chief Constable nodded briskly and stood up.

  “Right. D.C.I. Cullen, wait outside until I can organise a warrant, then you can execute it at Flood’s yourself. If we find what you believe we’ll find then D.I. Eakin could be off the hook, although you’ll both still have some explaining to do to the Ombudsman and PPS.” He added ominously, “And me, for interfering in an investigation this way.”

  As he turned to Craig again he allowed a smile to play on his lips. “I advise you to go and see your son. And congratulations again.” Then he motioned abruptly at the door. “Now, get out of my office, both of you.”

  As they left the room Craig turned to his deputy. “Please explain to Annette why I couldn’t be there to tell her in person.”

  “I’m pretty sure she’ll understand, boss.”

  “And remember, the idea that Pete hated her enough to set her up will be a shock after them being married for twenty years, so be prepared for her to get upset.”

  “Aye, aye, I’ll be Officer Sensitive.” Liam pointed firmly towards the exit. “Now take yourself off to see Luigi or Spaghetti or whatever you’re calling him, and I’ll see you whenever.”

  As Craig took off at a run his deputy was already making a bet that he’d be back in the office the next day. After all, he had someone new to work hard for now.

  His speculation was cut short by a shout from Sean Flanagan summoning him back in and handing him a search warrant.

  “Take this to the court and get it signed. There’s a judge waiting. And I want a call as soon as you’ve opened whatever papers you find at Floods.”

  An hour later Liam would oblige him, but not before he’d already read the suicide note that Pete had left over the phone to Craig, who listened while staring at his baby son as if he’d just landed from space.

  “Exactly the same stuff as in his email, boss, but the bastard dated it not to be opened till twenty-thirty-five.”

  “As we expected, he wanted Annette to serve her whole sentence. OK, follow the C.C.’s lead on when to tell her, Liam, but emphasise that Annette’s extremely depressed so if it could be done yesterday that would be good.”

  “Leave it to me. I’ll emphasise it so hard that Flanagan won’t be able to sit down afterwards. Anyway, how’s Cannelloni? Cute like his mum?”

  Craig smiled at a sleeping Katy as he answered. “No-one’s that cute, but he’s astounding. Now, go away, Liam. I want to talk to my son.”

  THE END.

  Core Characters in the Craig Crime Novels

  Detective Chief Superintendent Marc (Marco) Craig: Craig is a sophisticated, single, forty-seven-year-old of Northern Irish/Italian extraction. From a mixed religious background but agnostic.

  An ex-grammar schoolboy and Queen’s University Law graduate, he went to London to join The Met (The Metropolitan Police) at twenty-two, rising in rank through its High Potential Development Training Scheme. He returned to Belfast in two-thousand and eight after fifteen years away.

  He is a driven, compassionate, workaholic, with an unfortunate temper that he struggles to control and a tendency to respond to situations with his fists, something that almost resulted in him going to prison when he was in his teens. He loves the sea, sails when he has the time and is generally sporty. He plays the piano, loves music and sport.

  His girlfriend of four years, Katy Stevens, is a consultant physician at the local St Mary’s Healthcare Trust, but Craig still lives alone in a modern apartment block in Stranmillis, near the university area of Belfast. His parents, his extrovert mother Mirella (an Italian concert pianist) and his quiet father Tom (an ex-university lecturer in Physics) live in Holywood town, six miles outside the city. His rebellious sister, Lucia, his junior by ten years, works as the manager of a local charity and also lives in Belfast.

  Craig is now a Chief Superintendent heading up Belfast’s Murder Squad and Police Intelligence Unit. The Murder Squad is based in the thirteen storey Co-ordinated
Crime Unit (C.C.U.) in Pilot Street, in the Sailortown area of Belfast’s Docklands.

  D.C.I. Liam Cullen: Craig’s deputy. Liam is a fifty-two-year-old former RUC officer from Crossgar in Northern Ireland, who transferred into the PSNI from the RUC in two thousand and one, following the Patton Reforms. He has lived and worked in Northern Ireland all his life and has spent over thirty years in the police force, more than twenty of them policing Belfast, including during The Troubles.

  Liam is married to the forty-one-year-old, long suffering Danielle (Danni), a part-time nursery nurse, and they have a seven-year-old daughter Erin and a five-year-old son called Rory. Liam is unsophisticated, indiscreet and hopelessly non-PC, but he’s a hard worker with a great knowledge of the streets and has a sense of humour that makes everyone, even the Chief Constable, laugh.

  D.I. Annette Eakin: Annette is Craig’s lead Detective Inspector who has lived and worked in Northern Ireland all her life. She is a forty-eight-year-old ex-nurse who, after her nursing degree, worked as a nurse for thirteen years and then, after a career break, retrained and has now been in the police for an equal length of time. She divorced her husband Pete McElroy, a P.E teacher at a state secondary school, because of his infidelity and violence. They have two children, a boy and a girl (Jordan and Amy), both at university, and Annette also has a baby daughter, Carina, with her new partner, Mike Augustus, a pathologist who works with Doctor John Winter.

  Annette is kind and conscientious with an especially good eye for detail. She also has very good people skills but can be a bit of a goody-two-shoes.

  Nicky Morris: Nicky Morris is Craig’s forty-year-old personal assistant. She used to be PA to Detective Chief Superintendent (D.C.S.) Terry ‘Teflon’ Harrison. Nicky is a glamorous Belfast mum married to Gary, who owns a small garage, and she is the mother of a teenage son, Jonny. She comes from a solidly working-class area of east Belfast, just ten minutes’ drive from Docklands.

  She is bossy, motherly and street-wise and manages to organise a reluctantly-organised Craig very effectively. She has a very eclectic and unusual sense of style, and there is an ongoing innocent office flirtation between her and Liam.