“And hopefully the younger woman’s cause of death.”
“Mmm…”
Knowing that he’d lost his friend to the Great God Science, Craig nodded Liam out the door.
“I just need to make another pit-stop before we go, boss. Too many cups of tea this morning.”
Craig didn’t question his deputy’s biological functions, too busy glancing around him, still fearful of bumping into Katy even though logic said that she wouldn’t be anywhere near. Liam was feeling stressed too, for a not unconnected reason. Now that he knew Katy was pregnant should he raise it with the boss? He knew that Craig had to have seen her recently, if only to argue, so surely he must have spotted her condition? So... if it was his child he obviously already knew and just wasn’t discussing it because he didn’t want to, and if it was somebody else’s then the same must obviously apply. Liam nodded to himself, relieved; Craig obviously didn’t want to discuss it which meant he didn’t have to.
As the D.C.I. dried his hands in the bathroom another thought occurred and panicked him. But what if Craig hadn’t noticed that Katy was pregnant? She wasn’t big so the signs might easily be missed by someone less familiar with them than him. Did he tell him? The thought provoked a hasty shake of the head. Telling Craig if he didn’t already know, no matter who had fathered the child, would be a quick invitation to a punch in the face.
Liam shook his head again. No, this wasn’t his business, and it shouldn’t be the subject of anyone on the team’s speculation. He liked both parties and this was serious stuff, so his only role now would be to tell the other nosy parkers to butt the hell out.
****
“Any word, Robbie?”
“Nothing yet, sorry, Annette.”
“OK, give me a bell if there is.”
Annette cut her phone-call and dialled again, this time to the final station sergeant on her list, and to her surprise the answer was different and longer this time. She listened in silence, her face composed as she tried not to give anything away to the anxious mother in the back seat of the car that she was standing beside, or to the team’s new sergeant in its passenger seat in case he gave something away.
To that aim Annette strolled slowly away from the vehicle, pretending to peruse a parking sign. She’d read ‘Bus Lane’ at least five times before the Central Belfast station sergeant finished his report, allowing herself a vague smile throughout to show Nicky that nothing dreadful was happening, without the blatant grin of falsehood that everything was good.
Angling her face away to prevent lip-reading she asked the important questions.
“It’s definitely him, Fred?”
Sergeant Fred Rushton nodded his dark head. “A battered version, but yes. He was found by a P.C., but I went out to ID him as soon as he was found.”
“Was he seen by your medical examiner?”
“Briefly at the scene, but she advised calling an ambulance right away. He’s at St Mary’s emergency department now.”
Jonny was in safe hands so Annette took another minute to gather more detail before telling his mum.
“Right… tell me exactly where your lads found him.”
“In an alley down the back of that nightclub on Cromac Street. He was unconscious, but he came around when the constable spoke to him. He’d been beaten pretty badly.”
“Lucid?”
“Just. Someone had given him a hell of a whack around the head, although it was hard to say whether that or the drugs were the reason he was so out of it. The hospital will find out.”
Annette swallowed hard. Drugs had been her concern ever since Nicky had told her the teenager had changed recently.
“What drugs? Was there gear or powder nearby?”
“Nothing found, but it looked like he’d taken Spice. Sometimes I think that crap’s even worse than the Group A stuff.”
Spice was one the best known of a group called novel psychoactive substances (NPS), once known as legal highs but now illegal. They were substances that mimicked the effect of long established hard drugs, but by a slight tweaking at a molecular level had evaded anti-drug laws until the Psychoactive Substances Act had been introduced two years before.
“OK, thanks, Fred. We’ll head for the hospital now. You won’t have to charge him with anything, will you?”
“Not as far as I’m concerned. There was no sign that he’d been dealing. He had no phone on him so I’m wondering if he was beaten up for that. I can ping it if you like, to see where it is?”
“I’d rather our team did it, if that’s OK. Would you mind phoning Davy Walsh at the squad with the information. He’ll find it and give you whatever you need to arrest the thief.”
“I’ll do that now, Annette. Tell Nicky I’m sorry about her boy.”
She would, once the PA was ready to hear it. Annette slid her phone into her small shoulder-bag and returned slowly to the car, keeping her expression relaxed. As she opened the driver’s door she changed her mind about driving and threw Ryan her keys.
“Could you drive, please?”
“Sure. Where to?”
She climbed into the back seat quickly and turned towards the concerned mum, gripping her hand hard before she answered, “St Mary’s ED”.
Her prediction of the PA’s hysterical response was proved exactly right. Nicky’s face contorted in a Munch-like scream that sliced through the car’s interior like a machete. It took seconds to subside and was followed by another, halted only by Annette’s answer to the question that the mother had been too afraid to ask.
“He’s alive, Nicky, he’s alive.”
When the secretary went to scream again Annette put an arm tightly around her shoulder and repeated the words for a third time, this time more softly and in her ear, hoping that their quietness might help them penetrate. What it did was make Nicky stare at her in complete silence, her eyes an uncomprehending blank, so Annette tried a different way to make the secretary understand.
“Jonny’s speaking but confused. It looks like someone assaulted him to steal his phone. Davy’s trying to locate it and them now.”
Nicky echoed the words robotically. “His phone.”
“Yes, his phone.”
“His phone.”
Annette smiled reassuringly. “But he’s alive and speaking, Nicky, and that’s all that matters. Everything else can wait.”
On the word “everything” Ryan shot the D.I. a knowing glance and she silenced him with a small shake of her head. Any discussion of drugs could wait. For now all that mattered was that Nicky’s only child was still alive.
****
High Street Station. 11.30 a.m.
Craig was running out of ways to frame his question to Dean Kelly and on the verge of the foreman’s solicitor using the dreaded words “police harassment”, when the detective’s subconscious pleas for help must have been heard by the universe because there was a knock on the interview room door.
A swift, “interview suspended” and a nod, and he and Liam were out of the room, smiling with gratitude at Sandi Masters regardless of what she had just knocked to say.
Craig ushered the young officer away from the door and into reception, pausing only to rouse Jack from his trance in the viewing room on the way. The reception area of the station, or as Jack liked to call it, his ‘entrance hall’, being currently free of the public Craig nodded the W.P.C. to go ahead and speak.
“I was just knocking to say Doctor Marsham’s on the phone, sir.”
Craig nodded towards the custody desk. “Can I take it here?”
Jack answered for her. “Better not, in case someone pops in.”
‘Popping in’ being what people normally did in entrance halls and foyers, if not in police stations where they tended to be dragged in, in cuffs.
Craig took the hint and headed for the staff-room, nodding Liam to put on the kettle while he took the call.
“Yes, Des.”
“I’ll just transfer him now, sir.”
He rep
eated his greeting to the right person and waited to see what the scientist had to say.
“You left just before the good bit, Marc.”
“Radiology you mean?”
“Yes. Oh, by the way, we saw Nicky and Annette going into X-Ray on our way out. They were with some young boy who looked a bit of a mess.”
Craig heaved a sigh of relief; they’d found Jonny alive. He made up his mind that his next call would be to Annette and then prompted Des to continue.
“What was the good bit then? Apart from a lot more bones, I’m guessing.”
“Yes, there were plenty of those, but the bodies still only number two, which is good. But it was what else we found embedded in the concrete that was interesting, especially when we got to the blocks from down near the cellar’s floor. Vegetation.”
Craig’s eyebrows shot up. “What? Like trees you mean? What would they be doing in a cellar? Unless it was very badly maintained I suppose, then maybe-”
Des ended his speculation with a chuckle. “Not trees, plants. The genus of flowering plants in the family Cannabaceae, or cannabis plants to you. A load of them. The plants must have taken up most of the cellar’s floor space. There were remnants of plastic and glass as well.”
Craig laughed in astonishment. “They were running a cannabis farm in the basement of a government department! Carson would turn in his grave!”
Sir Edward Carson had been one of the founders of Northern Ireland and its government.
“Well, I suppose it’s conservation of a sort.”
Liam glanced across from where he was filling the teapot, his eyes wide.
“Did you just say someone was growing weed at the DoE? The cheeky buggers.”
Craig set the phone to speaker so that the conversation could continue three-way, and Liam halted his pouring for a moment to pontificate, struggling not to laugh.
“Mind you... when you think about it the place was perfect. Vacant for over a year but still with a heat and light supply, and Tanner had the keys. He must have made a fortune.”
Craig shook his head. “It wasn’t only Brian Tanner who had keys. There was Jackson Harper-”
Liam cut him off. “That suit? He forgot that place even existed as soon as they removed the last file.”
Probably true but he would ask Aidan what he’d got from Harper on re-interview, just to be sure.
“OK, then what about the night security-guard? He would have had a set of keys too, so he must have been in on it, or at least been turning a blind eye. And Dean Kelly. That has to be why he and Tanner were filling in the basement that night. They must have realised that with the building being handed over they could have been caught with the drugs-”
Des cut in. “OK, but then why didn’t they just remove all the plants and equipment? Then they could have avoided having to fill in the cellar. It gave them a lot of work.”
Craig shrugged as if the scientist could see him. “I’m guessing they probably did remove most of it, but time must have run out. Contracts were exchanged on the place in June.”
Liam had poured out two cups of tea and taken his own across to the sofa, and as he rested back on it, sipping, he speculated some more.
“So was Dean Kelly in on the drugs all along? Or did he only get involved then because Tanner confessed to him about the weed and asked for his help covering it up?”
“We can ask him.”
The D.C.I. hadn’t finished. “Or… did Kelly jump at the opportunity to fill the cellar because he already needed the wet cement for a purpose of his own?”
That was what they needed to find out. The cannabis plants didn’t rule Tanner and Kelly either in or out on the two women’s murders, but they might give them leverage to get the men to talk.
“Thanks, Des, that’s very useful. Keep going with everything and let me know what you get.”
Craig cut the call and used the remnants of the kettle’s water to make himself a coffee, trying to surreptitiously tip the tea Liam had left for him down the sink without him taking offence, but eagle eyes Cullen didn’t miss a thing.
“Here, I would have drunk that. You should have said you wanted coffee.”
Craig rolled his eyes. “How long have you known me, Liam? And how often do I prefer a cup of tea?”
It was on the tip of the D.C.I.’s tongue to say, “I thought I’d known you long enough that you would have told me you were about to be a father”, but he decided he needed a lot more information and ten pints of beer on board before he chanced that one.
Craig had already moved on to his next call so he didn’t notice his deputy’s vacillation, and this conversation went onto speakerphone right away.
“Annette. What’s happening with Jonny?”
He heard a door opening and then closing and knew that she was distancing herself from someone.
“Sorry, I couldn’t speak. Nicky was there.”
It made both detectives frown; what could there possibly be about Nicky’s son that Annette didn’t want her to know? They found out a few seconds later.
“Jonny was found in an alley behind some nightclub-”
Liam cut across her. “Nightclub? At sixteen? He’d be grounded for a decade if he was mine.”
Craig heard the D.I. sigh and motioned him to be quiet.
“What is it, Annette?”
“If being in a nightclub was the worst of it, that would be fine, sir, but there were drugs involved.”
She laid out the details quickly, informing them that so far Nicky didn’t know.
“We’ve been busy getting his skull x-rayed. The people who stole his phone were pretty rough.”
“Fractured?”
“No, thank goodness. It’s fine. Davy’s pinging the phone for us, and when he does I think I’d like to make the arrest. I’ll clear it with the uniforms that found him.”
“OK. But take Ryan with you in case they get rough.”
“Will do.”
Liam interrupted again. “What drugs was he found with? Weed?”
It had been said almost hopefully and he realised immediately how sad it was that he was rationalising that there were somehow better and worse drugs, when he hated all the bloody things.
“We think it was Spice, or at least that’s what Fred Rushton’s team thought it was.”
Craig tutted loudly.“Damn. That stuff’s addictive.”
Liam interjected. “Ach, they’re all addictive one way or the other, boss. He’ll need to go to rehab.”
Craig shook his head. “One step at a time, Liam. First we need to tell Nicky that drugs were involved. Are you up for that, Annette?”
He was praying that she said yes. It wasn’t a conversation that he relished having with his PA.
“I’ll do it, sir, and I’ll speak to the doctors as well to see what sort of help is available.”
“Good, but if there isn’t anything available right away then remember my offer.”
“Ah, you’re very good.”
She couldn’t see Craig blushing but Liam could, so he jabbed his cheek and made a noise like steam being released.
“Yes, yes, thanks for that, Liam. Annette, thanks again for doing this. Liam and I will be at High Street for a while and then we’ll be back at the ranch if you need anything. Tell Nicky she’s to take as long as she needs at home; I’m sure we can hold down the fort. In fact, I’ll get Mary to call HR and organise a temp. It’s not fair to expect her to answer phones full-time. She’s a copper, not a secretary.”
Thankfully Annette hung up in time to miss Liam’s, “W.P.C.s used to do both in the good old days”, or he would have felt her feminist wrath.
Ten minutes later Human Resources had promised the squad a temporary PA for the next day, and the detectives were heading into the interview room armed with information that Craig hoped would move the case along quite a way.
****
London.
“There’s been another fuck up! They’ve found the second body.”
The agent rolled his eyes. “That’s what I love about you. Your elegant use of language.”
“Don’t be sarcastic! You haven’t earned the right. This is your trouble too, or have you forgotten that? If you’d been more help eleven years ago then we wouldn’t be in this bloody mess now!”
The agent yawned deliberately close to the phone to avoid any doubt about his disdain, and he scored a goal.
“You arrogant bastard!”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
He sat forward at his desk, his low, slightly sibilant tones intensifying. “Remember when you came to me with this issue back then, and I told you exactly what to do? You wouldn’t listen to me. You didn’t have the stomach to do what was necessary, so instead you let that idiot live. Now here you are again, expecting me to clean up yet more trouble.”
The dark-eyed caller hit back. “If the bodies had been disappeared properly-”
“And whose fault was that? It was already done before you involved me! How about if the land had never changed hands? Or maybe if the builders hadn’t been hired? There are a million ways that those bones could have been discovered, and I warned you about that back then. The fact that they were left there at all was your fault, so don’t forget it!”
The caller fell silent for a moment and the bearded agent imagined him swallowing a mouthful of humble pie. When the man spoke again his tone was almost pleading.
“What do you advise?”
The answer was accompanied by a smirk.
“We do everything my way this time. Watch and wait until it’s the perfect time to move.”
****
The C.C.U. 12 p.m.
Much to her surprise Mary Li had discovered that she had a hidden talent. Well, she’d said it was to her surprise, but Ash had a sneaking suspicion that ruling the squad-room floor à la Nicky was the D.C.’s seventh heaven; the ease with which she took calls and directed queries and tasks to others pointed to an inner authoritarian control freak until now well camouflaged by her seemingly rebellious piercings and tattoos.
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