The Property

by Catriona King

  There was silence for a moment while all eyes scanned the column-like edifice, and then Davy’s commentary began again.

  “As you can s...see, it had a very basic, functional structure, which government offices tend towards. Just a s…simple ten storey vertical column, including its ground level.” A stroke of his smart-pad and an area below the base of the building turned red. “The red marks a basement level, below ground. It extended the whole way beneath the building’s ground floor and was split into two areas: a car-park, and an enclosed cellar accessible through a locked door, which housed the usual pipes, boiler, electrical fixtures and storage space. That cellar extended right out to the Upper Queen Street side of the building and sat directly below where the bones were found yesterday, and...”

  He tapped on the LED screen with his pen, making Nicky scowl. They’d had to replace the screen the year before because it was cracked and now she had a good idea how it had occurred.

  “...there was originally a trap-door here, between the cellar and the ground floor of the DoE building-”

  Craig interrupted. “You say originally, Davy. What happened to the trap-door?”

  The analyst shrugged. “I’ve looked at the plans for The Howard Tower and it’s not on there, so it must have been removed and sealed before the hotel opened. I’ll try to find out more about it, but that w...would make most sense. Who needs a trap-door when the cellar’s been filled in?”

  Liam turned to Craig. “Someone had the keys to that cellar. We need the name of the caretaker if there was one.”

  Davy nodded. “Already on it. I’ve a call out to the new DoE offices in Moira. But one of you might have to get involved. They’re unlikely to want to give me details of their staff.”

  As Liam made a note to shout at some civil servants, Craig nodded the analyst on, so Davy flicked back to his arrowed diagram.

  “OK, in two thousand and five Stormont decided to sell off s…some of its more valuable estate, and several city centre properties were on that list, amongst them the Howard Street DoE building.” He broke off for a moment, turning to Craig. “I found the name of the civil servant who dealt with the s...sale and gave it to Nicky.”

  The PA popped her head up from behind the TV screen.

  “Jackson Hardy. You’ve a meeting with him at one o’clock up at Stormont House.”

  Stormont or Speaker's House was the building that housed the Northern Ireland Office or NIO, and was situated on the Stormont Estate in Belfast.

  Craig frowned, puzzled. “Why there? Davy’s just said the DoE have their offices in Moira now.”

  “That’s as may be, but Mister Hardy changed job. He’s a deputy permanent secretary with the NIO now.”

  Craig nodded, pleased by the meeting’s location; he’d always wondered what the inside of Stormont House looked like and now he would find out.

  Davy picked up his report briskly, ignoring Nicky’s glare and tapping the arrows again.

  “OK, so during the marketing and s...sales period, before the site was purchased by The Barr Group, we have a possible problem. The building was vacated by the DoE in February oh-six and was vacant for over a year before it was sold. Contracts were exchanged with The Barr Group in the middle of June oh-seven, completion and handover to them happened at the end of that July, and their team moved in and got the hotel ready to open in October that year.”

  Liam saw the problem immediately. “Damn. That means building security might have been lax after Feb oh-six. Anyone could have got in and out.”

  The analyst nodded his dark head and gestured to his junior. “Ash has the info on that.”

  The junior analyst greeted his moment in the spotlight with aplomb, rising grandly to his feet to join Davy by the screen and only just remembering not to take a bow. Ash Rahman was a natural showman but rarely got to show it in his work, the job of an analyst being to research diligently and provide answers when called upon, not to get the plaudits as or when a case was solved.

  In his desire for the limelight he contrasted starkly with Davy, who loved nothing better than to hide away in a room and bury himself in cyber-world. Where his boss aspired to lifelong anonymity, Ash wanted to be the PT Barnum of the computing world. At the moment the expression of those flamboyant urges was limited to his sometimes almost fancy-dress-like clothes and hairstyles, but at some point in the future Ash fully intended to be an IT billionaire, and then, then, he was going full-on Johnny Depp.

  Even the way he was standing by the screen now, in a face-on, ‘look at me’ pose compared to Davy’s sideways angled, ‘squint and I’ll disappear’ stance, proclaimed it, and as the analyst took up position to report, the newest addition to the squad, Mary, a strange combination of cynical, judgemental millennial and astrology believing, pierced and tattooed rock-chick, made her opinion of his show-off tendencies obvious with a snort. It earned her a raised eyebrow from Craig and a complete blanking by Ash himself. The analyst had wondered when she’d joined them in March whether he might have fancied her, but five months of being exposed to her unsolicited opinions on everything from his clothes to Brexit had cured him of that.

  He focused on his more approving team mates and began his broadcast with a cheerful, “Hello, everyone”, as if he didn’t see them all every day, and Liam’s ‘get a move on’ motioning was completely ignored.

  “OK, so…” Ash tapped his smart-pad and a new slide electronically shunted Davy’s out of the way.

  “This is the list of breaking and enterings, or B&Es to those of us in the know…” Even Craig groaned. “…that occurred at the DoE site between the date it was vacated by staff in February two-thousand-and-six and its purchase by The Barr Group in July oh-seven, seventeen months later.”

  Craig’s heart sank as a list of five breaking and entering reports appeared. When Ash tapped again it fell even further, as two more incidents were added to the list.

  “In total there were seven reported break-ins on the site after it was vacated by the civil service and before it became fully operational as The Howard Tower Hotel in the October of oh-seven. The last two occurred after the Barrs took over the site on July thirty-first that year.”

  Craig signalled him to pause.

  “Two questions. You said building work, but was there any demolition?”

  “No. They just converted the DoE building. That’s how they were able to open the hotel so quickly. It’s not like the current construction work where they’re razing everything to the ground.”

  “And did all of your seven incidents have police files?”

  “Yes. Sorry, I should have said that’s how I found them; by searching reported incidents and then looking at the file summaries online. We have no way of knowing how many more break-ins there were that weren’t reported.”

  “What were they all? Thefts?”

  Ash tapped again and four of the seven were highlighted.

  “These are the theft reports, mostly of kitchen equipment, PCs, televisions, basically anything portable that wasn’t nailed down. The other three were reports of people breaking in to squat and take drugs on the site.”

  The two that had occurred after the Barrs’ purchase fell one into each group.

  “They were the only reports?”

  “Yep.”

  “And none of the summaries mention something being buried on the site?”

  “No. Sorry.”

  Craig swore beneath his breath and Liam groaned. “Seven break-ins and no-one reported seeing the body dump. What are the odds of someone burying a corpse and then shooting-up, or maybe even nicking a microwave on their way out?”

  “And leaving us a nice set of fingerprints as they did. Slim, I’d say.”

  Liam turned back to the showman and gestured at the list. “They were all investigated?”

  “Yes, the -”

  The D.C.I. cut him off before he could elaborate. “Anyone caught?”

  “In five of the cases, yes. I’ve requested the files.”
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  “Forensics on any of them?”

  Ash scrolled down his screen before finally conceding that the answer wasn’t written there.

  “Sorry, I won’t know until I read the files.”

  Craig shook his head. “Don’t worry. Take a look but I doubt there’ll be anything there. Whoever dumped our body had to have done it in that vacant seventeen months in oh-six and oh-seven, but they probably had the sense to wear gloves.” He turned to Davy. “What date exactly was the basement filled in?”

  Davy took back the floor, nodding his junior to return to his seat.

  “Still working on that one, chief. I’ll get it to you as s...soon as I know. We know the hotel’s new floor coverings were laid during a fortnight in the August of oh-seven. I’m still nailing down the exact dates.” He gestured at the LED screen, once again displaying his arrowed diagram. “So from the Howard Tower Hotel opening in October oh-seven-” He stopped abruptly. “Look, would it be OK if we just called it The HTH in future? The Howard Tower Hotel’s a bit of a mouthful.”

  Craig gave a small smile. “Sounds sensible.”

  “Great. OK then, from its grand opening in October oh-seven until now, The HTH’s been occupied by guests and staff every day, and anyway, yesterday’s discussion about the flooded basement precludes the body having been left after it opened.”

  For the benefit of the blank faces around him Craig explained their theory about the basement, finishing with, “Once Davy has liaised with structural engineering we’ll know the art of the possible on all that. When’s that happening, Davy?”

  “I’ve a conference call with Queen’s this afternoon.”

  “Good.”

  Craig nodded him to take a seat and signalled Liam to drag the whiteboard to the front, leaving the deputy to explain the rectangular building and floor layers that they’d drawn the day before while he moved across to sit beside the analyst, whispering, “Anything on missing persons for that period?”

  Davy shook his head and whispered back. “No-one reported missing since the millennium that fits with the body Doctor W…Winter found. There were thirteen women reported missing country-wide in those eighteen years, but ten were found, either alive or dead from natural causes, and the other three had serious addiction problems and their disappearances were believed to have been linked with that. But none of those were under thirty. S…Sorry, chief.”

  They seemed to be hitting nothing but dead ends.

  As Liam came to the end of his show and tell session, Craig took over again.

  “OK, we now have a little bit of information on our victim. Doctor Winter believes that it was a young woman, late teens to early twenties, of petite build. Her height is put at around five foot and she had a small frame. Doctor Marsham’s team found strands of dark hair and red fibres near the body, but we can’t yet know whether they are linked.”

  He glanced at the clock. It was after eleven.

  “Right, let’s leave it there. It’s very early days and we have a lot of questions yet to be answered, so everyone get on with whatever they’re doing and we’ll brief again this evening at six, when we should have a slightly better idea of things. Doctor Winter seems convinced that our victim died around the time the hotel was built but once we have our dental opinion we’ll know more, and know for certain whether this is our case or belongs to the HRS. My feeling is that we’re likely to be in the frame.”

  As the group trekked back to their desks, Liam sidled across.

  “What are we going to be doing, boss?”

  “After you’ve harassed someone to give Davy the caretaker’s name, we’re paying visits to Stormont House, the building site to speak to Dean Kelly, and then the lab.”

  ****

  The term ‘Northern Ireland’s Government’ probably evokes different reactions and images depending upon where in the world you live. For tourists the image conjured is likely to be the white stone façade of Parliament Buildings perched grandly upon a hill, whereas from locals the term more often provokes a snort of derision at its oxymoronic nature, accompanied by a mental picture of the squabbling politicians strutting pompously within its marbled halls. And the realpolitik the world over undoubtedly generates resigned sighs of boredom and despair, because little in the country’s politics ever seems to change.

  But down the aforementioned hill there is a deceptively quaint stone edifice called Stormont House hidden behind lush trees and guarded gates, and in that small but grand building lives not a fairy-tale princess as its exterior might suggest but the suited and booted officials of the NIO, some of them locals and others sent over from Westminster for what could variously be described as a jaunt, a punishment or an expedition to find out how the natives think. What some of the natives probably think of said officials would be far too rude to outline here.

  The curious thing about this mysterious edifice is that few outside that small group of officials and visiting dignitaries ever pass through its doors, so it was with not a little curiosity that the two detectives, having survived all of the gate-guard’s scrutiny, entered into its hallowed halls.

  And very nice halls they were too, if a little smaller than Craig had imagined; full of polished floors, tasteful ornaments and memorabilia of those who had gone before. Liam had just decided that the place looked a bit like his granny’s old-fashioned but grand house in Armagh with all its polished mahogany, when the door of the small, warm room where they’d been left to wait opened and someone that they hadn’t expected walked in. Although why they hadn’t expected the angular, wraith-like stereotype of a government servant Craig wasn’t sure; perhaps it was because the man was just too much of a cliché.

  Either way the wraith nodded them to take a seat at the polished table in the room’s centre and signalled his following minion to deposit the tray that she had carried in. A silver coffee pot and china cups; a police fact-finding mission had never been so grand.

  Deputy Permanent Secretary Jackson Hardy waved the woman out, dispensed the refreshments and then sat down as far away as it was possible to sit from the detectives, given that the table was round. To add to the stereotype the official folded his hands neatly in front of him and then spoke for the first time, in a creaky voice that Liam would later liken to an old hinge that needed oiled.

  “You gentlemen are interested in the Howard Street property, I understand.”

  Craig nodded in reply.

  “It was sold by the Department of Energy eleven years ago.”

  This time Liam nodded instead.

  “Well then, first I would like to ask why the police are interested?”

  As it was a definite question this time Craig thought that he should actually speak.

  “A body was found on the site.”

  Hardy’s strangely colourless eyes widened, and Liam watched as his folded hands clamped together in a whitening grip.

  “A dead body?”

  Despite the fact that if they hadn’t been dead he would have said “person” and not “body”, Craig decided to answer kindly, seeing the aging civil servant’s alarm.

  “Yes, I’m sorry. A dead body.”

  Hardy’s response came blurting out. “Well, it wasn’t one of ours! All staff were accounted for when we left the building. I arranged their transfers to other departments personally.”

  Liam sniggered at the image of middle-aged civil servants leaving the DoE building in a neat crocodile, as their superior counted the tops of their heads and waved them off to the Departments of Conservation, Transport etcetera.

  Craig responded in a dry tone. “That’s fascinating, Mister Hardy, but it doesn’t move us any further on.”

  But the Marley’s Ghost lookalike hadn’t finished his defence.

  “Where in the building was…” He made a face that said how distasteful he was finding the whole topic. “…the deceased individual found?”

  As Liam went to reply Craig waved him down, not willing to give away information just yet.


  “Is the location particularly relevant to you?”

  The civil servant blustered. “Well, I shouldn’t like to think they’d been lying in the main hall and we’d just stepped over them as we left, so yes, probably, it is!”

  Craig wasn’t persuaded. “Before we get to that, I’d like to ask you about the basement of the DoE building. Did you ever go down there?”

  The deputy secretary frowned quizzically. “To the cellar or the car-park?”

  “The cellar area.”

  “I went there often. Why?”

  “Why did you go down there?”

  When Hardy drew himself up straight Craig knew they were about to hear a job description.

  “Estate maintenance was part of my remit as the responsible officer for the building. Once each month I was tasked with accompanying the caretaker come day-time security-guard to the cellar to check for faults.”

  “Faults with?”

  “Many things. The boiler, electrical equipment, the pipes... And checking for infestation, although we never had any of that.”

  Thank-you very much! Belfast’s rats would never dare to enter a government building, not unless they held the appropriate ID.

  Craig saw the civil servant about to ask him a question and pressed on with his point.

  “When was the last time you were in the cellar?”

  “February two-thousand-and-six when we vacated the premises. We did a complete inventory and I signed off all the fittings as being in good working order.”

  “We?”

  “Myself, my deputy and the building’s caretaker.”

  “So, the cellar was still open then?”

  The official frowned, obviously confused. “Yes, of course it was. Look, what is this all about?” He folded his arms across his chest in an anatomical full stop. “I’m not answering anything more until you tell me why you’re asking about the cellar.”

  Then just as quickly the arms unfolded, and he leaned forward on the table. “Is that where the deceased was found? In the cellar? I always said to Mister Tanner that the place was like a maze. Someone could easily have got lost in it; it ran the whole breadth of the building.” His eyes widened in panic. “Oh my God! That’s what happened, isn’t it? Someone got locked in the building and couldn’t get out! It’s like that horror movie, ‘The Premature Burial’ with Ray Milland, the one where he got buried alive! Heads will roll for this-”