The Property

by Catriona King

  “Good points, Liam. Get Dean Kelly on the phone and ask him while I look at these. Nicky has his number.”

  “Do you want to talk to him?”

  “Not necessary.”

  Craig left him to it and turned back to the floor-plans, grateful that Davy was still there for another set of eyes.

  “Anything jump out at you, Davy?”

  He nodded his pony-tailed head. “It was a low budget place.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  The analyst traced out a bedroom and ensuite with his finger. “Look at the s…size of the rooms.”He calculated quickly. “Around nine square metres plus a tiny shower room. You could hardly swing a cat in there.”

  Craig frowned, seeing that he was right but not certain of the observation’s relevance. Budget hotels were nothing new for backpackers and families, and not even business people liked paying over the odds for a single night’s stay.

  “Perhaps that was its business strategy? Short-stay and functional.”

  The computer expert nodded. “It was. I found the archived website for The Howard Tower and it w...was really basic. Cheap fittings and not even a chair in the rooms, and the rooms were all the same size, so no stratified fee structure. But it’s just... well, they could have made a lot of money in that area of town if they’d upgraded a bit.”

  Craig was impressed at his business knowledge.

  “Every room w...was fifty quid a night, right up to when they sold to Monmouth last year. But w…with just a few extra metres on each room they could have charged double that.”

  “With high occupancy that fifty pounds might still have been lucrative.”

  The analyst clearly disagreed, shaking his head now. “Last year maybe, but not back in oh-seven when they first opened. Hotel occupancy in Belfast was far lower then. Now it’s up in the eighty percents, but that’s only been in the past five years, so why s...sell the place just as you’re starting to make money? I don’t understand.”

  Craig gave a slow smile and rose to his feet. “I might. What if it wasn’t just about making money?”

  Just then Liam reappeared.

  “Something’s not about making money? That’s sacrilege!”

  “We’re talking about The Howard Tower. Davy’s just pointed out how small and basic the rooms were and how cheaply they were being let, right up to when it was sold last year. Just as Belfast hotels were getting consistently higher demand.”

  Liam frowned. “Why would they sell just when their investment was starting to pay?”

  Davy nodded. “That’s what I said.”

  Craig leant against a nearby desk and folded his arms. “Except, what if it wasn’t about making money but laundering it? Then they wouldn’t have cared how much they were turning over.”

  Liam’s eyes widened. “You’re saying it was never about turning a profit? You think the place was a front for something nasty?”

  “Apart from the body in its floor you mean?”

  The D.C.I. conceded the point.

  As Craig rubbed his chin, thinking, he noticed he had stubble already, just four hours after he had shaved. It made him wonder if there would ever come a time when he didn’t have to shave his dark beard at least twice a day to look tidy; or maybe that could be one of the up sides of his so-called viropause.

  Finally he answered his deputy’s question.

  “The answer is I don’t know yet, but I think Davy could have hit on something so we need to check it out. With the tax man as well. If the hotel was a tax write-off for The Barr Group that could give another explanation for selling it once it started turning a profit.”

  Davy gave an impressed smile. “All that from a floor-plan.”

  Craig shook his head. “Not from a floor-plan, from your observation on the size of the rooms, and your check on the website. So good work.”

  He was sounding like the old Craig, but before he realised that and turned all grumpy again, Liam decided to bring them back to the facts and more importantly to cynical old Belfast.

  “Aye well, before you two get all gushy…”

  He waved the piece of paper he’d been holding in his hand.

  “You spoke to Dean Kelly.”

  “I did. And he had some interesting stuff to say. It turns out they got very specific orders when they started on site two weeks ago, just to level The Tower and build up from the existing foundation level, not even to dig it out a few feet like they would normally do and lay fresh screed.”

  Craig refused to ask what screed meant; he’d heard enough about Liam’s building career earlier, but he did take a moment to picture the floor where the girl had been embedded before he spoke again.

  “Orders from who?”

  Liam gave a sigh of relief at the less than perfect grammar.

  “And surely they would have to dig some of it out to get a smooth finish? I don’t suppose Kelly mentioned how far down they’d dug when the body was found?”

  Liam shook his head. “He didn’t.” Then he gave a smug grin. “But I asked. They didn’t dig down at all, because they were sticking exactly to their instructions. All they did was knock down the walls beside where she was found and lift the floor covering. It was just an industrial weight carpet with a thick underlay.”

  Craig was incredulous. “And she was just lying there as she was found? With her bones immediately visible beneath the carpet?”

  “I’ve repeated exactly what Kelly said.”

  Craig shook his head emphatically. “She couldn’t have been, Liam. Her skull was protruding, and if it had done that directly beneath a carpet someone would have noticed a bump years back. They must have disturbed the ground, even just a little.”

  Liam gave another smug look. “My words to him exactly, so he said he’d check with his lads again, but he’d been very clear with them not to do any digging in the floor-”

  Davy cut in eagerly. “Presumably someone from The Monmouth Consortium ordered it.”

  The D.C.I. looked confused for a moment, then he realised what he meant and shrugged, turning back to Craig. “The other thing is, Kelly said the reason he thought he’d been told not to dig was because there’d been a basement when the building belonged to the snivel perverts…”

  It was Liam’s less than complimentary nickname for civil servants.

  “…And he’d heard that it had flooded and been filled-in either before or when the Barr brothers bought the site in oh-seven.”

  Davy knew if he said what he was thinking then he would be taking his life in his hands, but he decided to go for it anyway.

  “You do know that you’re a civil s...servant too, Liam.”

  The D.C.I.’s eyes widened in alarm. “I am not! Wash your mouth out for saying that!”

  Craig chipped in vaguely, his mind still on Dean Kelly’s words. “Public servant, to be accurate, and yes, you are, Liam. We all are.”

  While the D.C.I. searched frantically for some rebuttal, his best effort, “Yeh, well. We get to carry guns!” Craig had decided that he was in danger of getting his layers confused so he returned to the whiteboard, flipping it over and drawing a vertical rectangular box.

  “OK.” He drew a horizontal line an inch above the rectangle’s base. “Let’s say this line represents the ceiling of the original basement in the DoE building and became the ground floor of The Howard Tower Hotel.”

  He drew another line just a sliver above it. “That’s the reception floor today, where the body was found.”

  He cross-hatched the area below the first line in red.

  “And that’s the basement being filled in, maybe because it flooded, although where did Kelly get that idea from? Anyway, if it did flood we need to know when. Was it before or after the DoE sold the building to the Barrs? Also, when was it filled in? Again, before or after the Barrs acquired it? Common sense would suggest that if it flooded while under DoE ownership then they would have held the liability for filling it in. Also, how many layers of concrete, if any, wer
e laid between the ceiling of the original basement and the underlay and carpet that were found on the Tower’s reception floor?”

  He tapped his marker against the two close-together lines. “If the builders in oh-seven weren’t allowed to dig down into the basement either because it had been filled, they might have built a few new layers up to make the floor smooth, and raise it to where it is now, If so, we need to know what their thickness was.”

  While the others had been discussing things Davy had been gazing at the drawing, two scenarios forming in his mind. Craig smiled at the analyst, wondering if they’d just reached the same conclusion.

  “Let’s hear what you’re thinking, Davy.”

  He passed him a different coloured marker and Davy began writing a list down the side of the rectangle.

  “OK. We really need the answers on all the things you mentioned: when the basement flooded, who filled it in and when, and who told the contractors on The Howard Tower not to dig down, if they w...were told. Just because the builders are being told not to dig down now doesn’t mean that the ones eleven years ago were. Plus how many layers they built the floor up, if they did.”

  “Agreed, but you have some ideas anyway.”

  “More options and questions really.” The analyst wrote up the number one. “OK, if the basement of the DoE building flooded either before or in oh-seven, then the only way it should have been filled-in would have been if attempts had been made to drain it and had failed in some way, making the space useless. Not because there was lying w…water there, they couldn’t have left that there no matter what, but maybe if it had become unsuitable for access for some health and safety reason. S…So, who drained it? We’ll look into that. But if we accept that eventually it had to be filled in, then who did it, with what, and the exact date?” The number two appeared. “Then we get to the layers laid above the basement ceiling if there w...were any. How many, how thick, who and when?”

  Liam nodded, interjecting. “And the answers to all those should tell us whether the girl was left inside the basement, dead or alive, and buried there when it was filled in, but for whatever reason her body rose to the basement’s ceiling level and broke through any new floor foundations that were laid, or if she was just buried in those new foundations of the Howard Tower themselves in oh-seven.”

  Craig put his hand out for the marker, adding Liam’s summary to the board.

  “Good, but, Davy, I need to add another question to your list. What could possibly have made a body move upwards through a basement which had been filled in, presumably with a dense material? Renewed flooding comes to mind, with the damage that might have done to the filling.”

  Liam chipped in. “Or maybe an air bubble developed in the filler around the body as it decomposed, so combined with new flooding…”

  His voice tailed off as he realised that he’d reached the limits of his structural engineering knowledge.

  Craig nodded. “Davy will find all that out. You’ll need to consult a structural engineer, Davy. The ones up at Queen’s will usually help.” He made an apologetic face. “I know I’ve given you a lot to do, so if you need any help, feel free to ask.”

  The analyst nodded. “I think I’ll need Mary, and Annette if that’s OK? At least for a couple of days.”

  “Done.”

  Just then Craig noticed the time. They needed to get to the lab to see John, so his call to Katy would have to wait. A guilty thought that he was just making excuses was smothered instantly.

  Just as they’d reached the squad-room’s exit doors, Nicky called him back.

  “Where are you going?”

  It was said in such a chastising tone that it took effort for him not to retort, “Who made you my boss?”

  It wasn’t the first time that the PA had been accused of such an offence, but for the sake of peace Craig gritted his teeth and tried for a tolerant tone.

  “To see John and Des.”

  He’d just turned back towards the doors when his secretary spoke again.

  “Just as long as you haven’t forgotten that you’re in court at two.”

  This time Craig swung around, horrified. “That’s today?”

  “Yes, it’s today. I reminded you twice. Yesterday and this morning first thing.”

  Her tone said that she had little sympathy for him, making the detective tut so loudly that everyone looked up from their work, all of them but Nicky making consoling noises when they realised why Craig had made the sound. The court case in question concerned a series of murders committed at the end of twenty-seventeen and had been dragging on since March, when the defendant, a narcissistic psychopath called Rowan Drake, had decided that his basic law degree acquired thirty years earlier suddenly qualified him to conduct his own defence.

  Since then he’d been hauling members of the squad in and out of court for cross-examination on a regular basis, most notably Liam and Craig who’d been responsible for his arrest. It was a colossal waste of public money and their precious time, and most importantly, tortuous for his victims’ relatives.

  Craig’s tone changed from irritable to wheedling.

  “Can’t you make some excuse for me, Nick?”

  So, it was Nick now, was it? His pet name for her in less grumpy times.

  Sadly, the abbreviation couldn’t change the facts and the PA shook her currently lilac-coloured hair.

  “Sorry, but I already got you excused last week when your cat died.”

  Liam interjected. “He doesn’t have a cat.”

  The PA smirked. “Don’t tell that to the judge. Anyway, it was all I could think of at the time.”

  She gave Craig a stern look that dashed the last of his hopes.

  “I’m afraid you’re just going to have to bite the bullet this time, sir.” Her tone acquired a sarcastic edge. “But never mind. Drake’s a psychopath, so you can be as rude as you like to him and his feelings will never get hurt.”

  As a rebuke to Craig’s moodiness it was sharper than any of the rest of them had felt brave enough to attempt.

  Chapter Four

  Belfast.

  “We’re in trouble.”

  The dark-eyed man sneered at his smart-phone, unimpressed by the nagging tone of his Irish friend. He found women who nagged an irritation but in a man the trait was beyond the pale.

  “You think a stubbed toe is trouble, so what is it today?”

  The caller railed at the insult. Just because he was cautious the others made fun of him, but he’d never seen any virtue in recklessness or passion, no matter how often they were both lauded in movies and books. Recklessness was messy, and passion was the same as panic in his opinion, both just emotional incontinence. His approach to life was safe, controlled and predictable, and it had always stood him in good stead.

  “If you’re going to insult me I’m hanging up.”

  The fact that he didn’t slam the phone down instantly gave a lie to the words, like the count to ten warning of impending gunfire in bad television shows, whose expiry is followed by, “I mean it, I’ll shoot. I really will.”

  The listener allowed the warning to fade and then added a lengthy pause just to underline his point. It had been enough on its own to reinforce the insult, but he couldn’t resist an additional dig.

  “Are you still there?”

  When there was no answer except breathing he decided he’d pushed the insult far enough and regrouped.

  “All right, I give in. How are we in trouble?”

  “They’ve found her body. The girl.”

  The dark-eyed man said nothing for a moment and then gave a weary sigh. “I know.”

  “You know? How do you know?”

  “I know because I keep my ears to the ground in your little country, which is more than you’ve done in the past few years.”

  The man considered biting back but realised that there was more to worry about now than a jibe.

  “So, what do you want to do about it?”

  “Nothing. They
can’t prove anything even if they guess correctly, so just hold your nerve until things cool off.”

  The man could picture him shrugging, unconcerned. It was all right for him, he was thousands of bloody miles away.

  “But what if they want to question me?”

  “I don’t doubt that they will, so put on your best smile, be nice and confident and they’ll bugger off. They’re cops, not rocket scientists. You can handle them.”

  Some emotionally incontinent panic might just be warranted this time.

  ****

  The Labs. 1 p.m.

  “OK, gentlemen, you’ve got thirty minutes before I have to leave for court, so what can you tell us about our victim?”

  They were up in Des Marsham’s forensic kingdom, John rather inconsiderately having run out of ground coffee and pleading being too busy with their victim to nip out and buy some more. The discussion that they were about to have being much too unpleasant to undertake dry, Des’ substitutes of instant coffee and a boiling kettle would just have to do.

  John glanced at their barista for permission to start, they were after all at his house, and got a go.

  “Right. What little evidence we have points to our victim being a very young woman. I would place her between sixteen and twenty years old judging from her bone epiphyses and the minimal wear on her teeth. It’s a very crude estimate because I’m not a dentist, and her jaw is locked so I can’t get a brilliant view, but I can say she wasn’t any more than twenty-five, because her wisdom teeth hadn’t appeared and they’ve almost always arrived by-”

  Craig interrupted. “You’ll involve the forensic dentists.”

  It hadn’t been a question, but as John disliked taking orders he decided to treat it as one.

  “Already contacted, but I’ll get on to that in a moment.”