The Property

by Catriona King

  “So, the foreman called you just after ten, Jack, and then?”

  The sergeant shrugged. “Then I did what you’ve already heard. I called Nicky and the labs and then asked Horgan to tape off the scene, except the numpty went to the wrong place. It was the guts of forty minutes ago now, so I was starting to wonder why you hadn’t arrived.”

  Liam smiled to himself, knowing that he’d just been handed proof positive of Nicky’s cowardice, something he wouldn’t be letting pass without a few jokes. She’d sat on Jack’s message for ages, just waiting for him to appear and take it in to Craig.

  Craig frowned at the delay then asked another question.

  “Any idea who owned The Howard Tower, Jack? No, scrap that.” He rose and headed for the door. “Talk amongst yourself for a minute, I need to make another call.”

  He decided to make it in the station’s car-park, his need for fresh air growing increasingly urgent since the mention of Katy’s name, and within a minute he was speaking to Davy Walsh, the team’s shy but cool hipster senior analyst.

  On Craig’s, “Hello” Davy immediately tensed up; the chief had been a bugger to work with over the previous few months and although he hadn’t given his analysts as much grief as his detectives, he felt sure that it was just a matter of time.

  “Hello, chief, how can I help?”

  In his experience obsequiousness was a tried and tested path to avoiding a bollocking.

  “Davy, I need you to check out the site of The Howard Tower Hotel in Howard and Upper Queen Streets, including who owned the land for two centuries back.” Who knew how old the remains would turn out to be. “Plus, who built the hotel itself and when? I’ll need every company that worked on that: engineers, architects, surveyors, contractors, decorators, furnishing suppliers and fitters, the lot. Get Andy to make you a list.”

  Andy Angel was one of three D.C.I.s on the squad, of which Liam was the most senior and his deputy. A talented artist he was unquestionably the most creative member of the team, especially visually, and as a super-recogniser he missed nothing, so if any of them could picture what it would take to transform a building site into a hotel fit for guests he could.

  A super-recogniser was someone with enhanced facial recognition and other cognitive abilities, which gave them the uncanny talent of recognising things from even the poorest view. Craig had heard about them when he’d worked at The Met and knew they’d been organised into a team in twenty-eleven after the English riots, but he’d never imagined that he would have one on his own squad.

  “Also. Find out who’s just purchased the site, Davy. The newspaper calls them The Monmouth Consortium but check that out, please. The Howard Tower’s being demolished at the moment and a new hotel’s about to be built there, so I’ll need anyone involved in the new venture as well. Oh, and floor-plans for both the old and new hotels, plus, get Ash digging back into the archives to see if the land itself has any local significance, anything at all. Thanks.”

  Ash Rahman was the squad’s junior computer analyst and Davy’s deputy. They were exactly the same age, twenty-nine, and had studied computer science together at Queen’s, but while Ash had gone to travel the world for a few years Davy had joined the squad, the upshot of which was that he’d ended up now being his friend’s boss. But although Davy might have been senior at work, in terms of cheek and chancing his arm, wide-boy Ash won hands down.

  And that was all Davy got from Craig; a list of instructions and requests with nary a nicety along the way. OK, so he’d got one “please” and a “thanks” and Craig hadn’t actually been grumpy, but it was a long way from the easy familiarity that had been the detective’s hallmark for years, and as the analyst set down the phone receiver someone who had been watching his face throughout the call beetled across.

  Aidan Hughes was another of the squad’s three D.C.I.s, moving sideways into Murder from Vice. He had known both Craig and John Winter since school, a common and often unavoidable occurrence in such a small country, and it had resulted in several sessions at squad’s local bar, The James, during which he’d been plied with drinks by other members determined to find out what Craig had been like as a boy. And more importantly, whether there was any dirt on their boss to tease him about.

  But if Aidan had had any tales to tell then he was too discreet to do so, and so far all they’d managed to discover was that Craig had been sporty, thoughtful stroke moody and a hit with the girls, something he’d been far less interested in than his sport back in the day. But superficialities aside, youthful familiarity often bred a deeper knowledge of someone and it was that knowledge that Hughes was about to display.

  “I wouldn’t worry about him, Davy.”

  The analyst was jerked from his thoughts by the D.C.I.’s loud Belfast accent.

  “W…What?”

  Davy had had a stammer on ‘w’ and ‘s’ all his life, but it rarely appeared nowadays unless he was nervous or caught off-guard.

  “I mean that I know you were just talking to Marc, and I could tell from your expression that it perturbed you. Not what he said maybe, but the way it was said.”

  The analyst said nothing, trying for an inscrutable expression but landing wide of the mark on disturbed. The ex-Vice cop took it as a signal to carry on, so he perched on a nearby desk and adopted his quietest tones, which were still loud enough to be heard by Ash and Andy sitting nearby.

  “The thing is... I’ve known Marc since he was ten and there are only three things that bother him: his work, personal relationships, and, when he was playing rugby, whether his team lost. The first is going fine, the last one doesn’t apply anymore, so my guess would be that it’s the relationship thing.”

  Davy rolled his eyes sarcastically. “I’d guessed that much. He’s been a pain in the butt since he and Katy split up.”

  Andy decided to give them the benefit of his own lack of romantic wisdom.

  “We can’t just assume it’s her until we eliminate other things. OK, so work’s OK, we haven’t heard that anything’s wrong with his folks and his sister’s just got engaged so she’s fine. So… yeh, I suppose that does just leave his love-life.”

  As a man whose romantic traumas included two messy divorces and a ten-year-old son that he only got to see every other weekend, he could empathise.

  Aidan nodded. “Exactly. This miserable mood started in March when they broke up, then it kind of ramped up in the middle for a while when he was just nuts, and now since the start of the month it’s got ten times darker.”

  He nodded, as satisfied as if he’d solved a crime.

  It made Davy’s disturbed expression alter to glum.

  “But there’s nothing we can do about his love life, s...so we’re screwed.”

  Aidan refused to be pessimistic. “Not so fast, young Skywalker. We won’t know if we can change things until we find out more about what we’re dealing with.”

  The others shook their heads immediately and Andy spoke for them all.

  “No way! We’re dead men if the chief finds we’ve been snooping into his private life. You’re on your own.”

  As if to underline it he retreated to his desk, and Ash and Davy turned their gazes back to their PCs. But Aidan was undeterred and he knew he would have an ally in Liam, and as soon as he returned to the office he planned to enlist the deputy’s help in finding out exactly what Katy was doing to rattle Craig’s cage.

  Meanwhile Craig was off to rattle someone else’s. P.C. James Horgan had finally found the right piece of land to tape off and Des Marsham had arrived there too, so Craig and Liam drove down to join them and met John packing the young engineer who had discovered the body into Dean Kelly’s car and off home.

  Craig greeted his best friend with a nod on his way past to the cordon, standing just outside its perimeter and peering at where a forensically suited Marsham and his CSIs were carefully placing samples in small plastic bags.

  “How much longer, Des?”

  The scientist waved in ackno
wledgement and then held up ten fingers. Ten minutes was the best that the impatient Craig could have hoped for, so he picked his way back through the rubble to wait, while Liam corralled the hapless Horgan to help him interview the now unoccupied crowd of builders.

  As John Winter joined his friend by his car Craig indicated the body site with a hand.

  “Have you seen it yet?”

  John folded his arms in symbolic restraint. He didn’t want to discuss the body with Craig, he wanted to discuss Katy, but he knew he would get his head handed to him if he said a word and his anatomical strait jacket reflected how constrained that made him feel.

  “I took a quick peek once the tape was up.”

  “And?”

  John was tempted to shrug but he had a rule never to shrug about the dead out of respect, so instead he sighed. It was a sigh full of sadness for a life lost and the ignominy of its final resting place, but also full of frustration at his best friend’s incompetence in his personal life. He concealed it all behind logic, for now.

  “It’s a woman. You can tell by the shape of the jaw and area around the eyes. A petite woman judging by the size of her skull.”

  It took Craig aback, although he wasn’t sure why; there was no logical reason he should have assumed that the dead person was a man.

  The pathologist continued speaking.

  “I only saw her skull and femur, her thigh bone, although the student who found her said her spinal column was there as well. But from the femur’s epiphysis I’d say she was very young. Mid-teens to early twenties. I can’t say more until I’ve examined more of the skeleton.”

  Craig nodded and then ignored the assertion with his next question.

  “Any idea how long she’s been dead?”

  The pathologist shook his head. “Beyond guessing how long it took for the decomposition of her tissues to reveal the skeleton, no, not yet.”

  “And that would be?”

  “It’s impossible to be definitive. Factors such as temperature, humidity and insects all determine how fast a fresh body will skeletonise. A basic guide for the effect of environment is Casper's Law: when there is free access of air a body decomposes twice as fast than if immersed in water, and eight times faster than if buried in earth. An embalmed body in an oak coffin buried six feet down can take fifty years to become bones, but if the right chemicals are applied to a body it can happen in a matter of days. We’ll need to do some tests back at the lab.”

  It was Craig’s turn to sigh.

  Just then they saw Des approaching and Liam hastily abandoned his interviewing to lope across. As the ground they were walking on was perilously uneven, Craig beckoned them to join him in front of his car, leaning against the bonnet and folding his arms as he held court.

  “OK, Des, shoot. What did you find?”

  The forensic scientist rubbed his beard thoughtfully.

  “Interesting…”

  After his pause went on too long for Liam he prompted him with, “Care to elaborate?”

  “Very interesting then.” Before the D.C.I. could rail at him Des continued. “Definitely a young woman, but John’s probably told you that already. It looks like she was embedded in the ground floor of the old-”

  Craig cut in. “When you say in, do you mean in the concrete?”

  “That’s exactly what I mean. I’ll need a much closer look, but I’d say she was buried in it when it was wet.”

  “So, before any covering like vinyl or tiles-”

  Liam interrupted. “Or carpet.”

  “Before any of those went down?”

  Des nodded cautiously, reluctant to commit himself too early. “It looks like it. As I said, I’ll need to examine the bones and floor materials in more detail, but that seems the likely case.”

  John frowned. “How much of her is likely still to be embedded, Des?”

  The Head of Forensics made a face. “The builders only reached the wall and floor in that corner at the weekend, so we’re probably talking about a lot of her bones still being embedded there, but well below the surface. The ones we’ve found are probably just the ones that rose to the top, or were left lying there in the first place.”

  The words made John shudder and prompted Craig to stride across to a short man carrying a clipboard and flash his ID.

  “Are you one of the foremen here?”

  The man gave a cautious nod. “Deputy. The foreman’s taken someone home, but he’ll be back in a while.”

  “That’s fine. I just need you to answer something for me.” He lifted his hand to point. “The corner area where the bones were found. Exactly when did you start digging there?”

  The deputy gazed down at his board, flicking back through several pages before he answered.

  “That area covers sections twenty to twenty-four of the floor. We started work there on the walls and floor two days ago.”

  Two days. Damn.

  “How much debris has it generated so far?”

  The man rubbed his stubbled chin as he replied. “It’s a corner...” Didn’t I just say that? “So between the side and back walls and floor there, I’d say... maybe around two truckloads so far.”

  Two truckloads!

  Craig could feel his heart start to thump. “Has it all been removed?”

  “Aye. We dump twice a day to keep the site clear.”

  The murder detective’s questioning grew more intense.

  “Always in the same place?”

  “Aye. We have our own plot down at the city dump. We pay through the nose for it.”

  Craig thrust his notebook and pen into the man’s hand.

  “Write down its exact location, and specifically the section that’ll contain the rubble from that corner.”

  When the man realised that he wasn’t joking he scribbled a note that was quickly passed on to Liam.

  “Liam, they’ve cleared two truckloads of debris from that corner’s walls and floor to this sector of the city dump over the last two days. Contact Jack and Newton Rodgers up at Stranmillis and get them to send down as many uniforms as they can spare, ready to get their hands dirty. And send Horgan down there to update them when they arrive.”

  He turned back to Des. “Could some of your CSI’s go with them? We’ll need people who can identify any fragments of bone there may be lying loose amongst the rubble, and anything else that could be evidence. Some of the bigger pieces may have bone embedded in them and-”

  He stopped abruptly, realising that they needed a building expert to identify exactly which of the larger concrete remnants to retrieve. He beckoned James Horgan across and walked him back to the deputy foreman.

  “I need you to go with this constable and take a plan of the old hotel with you. He’ll need your assistance to identify which of the rubble dumped came from the relevant sections of floor and the adjoining walls.” He turned to the P.C. “All of those pieces, every last one of them no matter how big or small, are to be transported to the Science Labs under the supervision of Doctor Marsham’s CSIs. They could contain human remains even if they’re not visible from the outside.”

  Des rummaged inside his forensic suit for his phone. “Just give me a minute to get my lot organised and then I’ll restart my report.”

  While Liam and Des were occupied John decided to take his life in his hands and veer into the area of the personal. He sidled closer to Craig and dropped his voice.

  “So…umm…Natalie invited Katy round the other day. For afternoon tea with Kit.”

  When Craig said nothing, staring straight ahead, the pathologist swallowed hard and went on.

  “She looked well apparently. Natalie said she’s put on some weight, but I always thought she was a bit thin so that’s good. But… umm… well… she said you’d had a disagreement about something a couple of weeks…”

  The words died in his throat as Craig turned sharply to face him.

  “Look, John, I know you mean well, but if you want to know what Katy and I argued about then why
not ask her?”

  The pathologist’s next words came blurting out. “Natalie did ask, but Katy’s as tight-lipped as you are!”

  “Well, that should tell you something then. This is between me and her.”

  As Craig turned to face front again, John could hear a metaphorical portcullis slamming down, saying that not only was the discussion over for now but it was done for good. He was saved from using his head as a battering ram by Liam ambling back across.

  “Right. That’s them all off to the city dump now, boss. We’ve got ten uniforms for two days between Jack and Newton, so they should find whatever there is to find.”

  Just then Des re-joined them as well. “Grace is taking two CSIs down to help, so if there’s anything important there they’ll retrieve it.”

  Liam couldn’t resist a quip. “Tell her to take her dustpan and brush too. The dump could probably do with a tidy.”

  Grace Adeyemi was Des’ new lead CSI, joining his team from Glasgow eight months before. She’d had such a good reputation there that he’d done something that he never did; he’d poached her from the other team.

  However, there was one area in which he’d had to ask the CSI to change her practice, her habit of straightening up bodies at the scene. After she’d gathered evidence and photographed them of course, but before they’d been seen by the murder team, which had caused ructions with Craig and given Liam licence to make jokes about her excessive tidiness ever since.

  Des snorted sceptically. “You tell her, since you’re so brave.”

  Before Liam could think of a retort Craig had brought them back to the case.

  “OK, so if this young woman went into The Howard Tower’s foundations that should help date her death. Shouldn’t it, John?”

  Reassured that Craig was still speaking to him, about non-personal matters at least, the pathologist gave an equivocal nod.

  “If you assume that she’d just died when she went in, but…”

  His voice faded away, the possibility of the girl being buried alive occurring to him for the first time.

  Craig nodded glumly. Unfortunately, the thought had occurred to him the moment Des had said she was in the floor. The tradition of burying people alive in the foundations of buildings was a long-held one in the Italian mafia and also in Mexico, and although he had no family links with either he was half-Italian, so he’d heard stories about mafia bogeymen and concrete overcoats from his cousins since he’d been small.