“No, I need everyone on the case, and I don’t want uniforms tailing an MLA either; he’d call his security detail right away. I’ve got another idea.”
A phone-call later they were on their way to the C.C.U. and Liam was asking another question.
“What about Kelly and Tanner?”
“Give Jack a call to release Kelly on bail, but Tanner can stew until we re-interview him later.”
Ten minutes later the detectives were leaving the lift on the tenth floor, and as soon as they pushed through the glass doors into the squad-room Craig felt the tension in the air. He kept on walking, heading for Davy’s desk, but Liam stopped dead in his tracks, refusing to waste any time on subtlety.
“What’s been going on here then? You all look like someone stole your sweets!”
It made Aidan, who hadn’t long arrived back with Andy and Kyle, laugh, and he spoke into the phone he had in his hand bidding, “Slán” to someone on the other end and then hanging up.
Liam was impressed.
“You speak Irish?”
The answer was a confirmation in the language, with a P.S. in English.
“I speak to my Dad in it all the time. He wanted me to be fluent like him, so we spent every school holiday in the Gaeltacht. I’ve got my gold Fáinne now.”
A Fáinne is the name of a pin badge worn to show fluency in, or a willingness to speak, the Irish Language, and the Gaeltacht is the name for a primarily Irish-speaking region in Ireland, most of which are found along the west coast.
Kyle had overheard the conversation, and as he didn’t like there being anything that he didn’t know he asked a question.
“What’s a Fáinne look like?”
“A polo mint, only smaller and finer.”
Liam nodded admiringly.
“I’d love to speak another language-”
Andy couldn’t let it pass. “I’d master English first if I were you.”
The deputy ignored both the comment and the eruption of laughter from the others and carried on.
“I gave up Irish after third year at school ’cos it clashed with sport. I always wished that I’d kept it on.”
Craig looked over his shoulder at his deputy, interrupting the discourse.
“Lovely as it is to be bilingual, can you all please get on with some work!”
Liam huffed his way to his desk, muttering, “It’s all right for you, you can speak Italian.”
Craig rubbed it in. “Don’t forget the French. Liam, make a list of the loose ends we need to tie up this afternoon, please, while I chase Billy Bruton.”
As soon as Davy heard the word “chase” he knew that more work was coming his way, but to his surprise when Craig pulled over a chair the first thing he did was drop his voice to ask, “What’s been going on here?”
The analyst’s reply was similarly quiet. “Mary took the hump about answering the phones. I think she thinks she w...was only asked to do it because she’s a girl.” He hesitated before adding. “She’s been working to rule.”
Uncertain if that counted as squealing and then rationalising that as the front door to the squad the D.C. could do serious damage if she was rude to the wrong caller, he added, “She hung up on Andy earlier.”
Craig glanced over at the D.C.I. direction and then turned back to his analyst, still speaking quietly.
“It had nothing to do with her being female; it was because she’s the most junior. And what does working to rule even look like when you’re answering a phone?”
“She’s been giving one word answers and refusing to transfer people.” The analyst gave an apologetic wince. “Sorry, chief.”
Craig shook his head; it was his own fault. Mary was right, she was a detective and she shouldn’t be doing secretarial work, but in his defence it had been because she was the most junior that he’d asked her, not because she was a girl, woman, or whatever her preferred description was.
“I’ll sort it out, but can I give you something else to check first? Sorry, I know you’re overloaded.”
Davy gave a weak smile that implied one more straw might just break his back. Then he had an idea.
“I’ll give it to Mary to do if that’s OK? She’s good on the computer and it’s not admin so she can’t complain.”
“Great. I need someone to look into William Bruton MLA; he’s usually called Billy. I want everything on him from school to the present day, plus I need a chart of his extended family. Also, I need the name and contacts for the Chair of The Monmouth Consortium Board.”
He glanced regretfully at the wall clock. “Liam and I have a few other things to do, but we’d like to surprise Mister Bruton with a visit around five o’clock-”
Davy interrupted, finishing the sentence for him. “So you need all this info s...sometime after three, and his exact location at five.”
Craig gave a grateful smile. “Please. But Bruton’s not to be alerted.” He rose to his feet, rubbing at a twinge in his neck that he only ever got when he was stressed. “OK, I’m going to be in my room for an hour or so catching up, so anything you need...”
He was halfway through his office door when Liam caught him.
“When do we head out again?”
“An hour or so. I’ve a few things to do here. Can you take the three stooges somewhere private and check out what they found in that sealed file?”
“Once my stomach stops feeling like my throat’s been cut, I can.”
The dramatic expression made Craig realise that he was hungry as well, so he re-ordered his timetable to ten minutes thinking, lunch at The James Bar, back for some work before they returned to High Street to grill Brian Tanner, followed by an interview with the MLA at five.
“OK, give me ten minutes and then get everyone across to The James for lunch. We’ll pick up on things here when we come back.”
He closed his office door and threw himself down in his chair with a thud, swivelling it around to look out at the river and rubbing his neck hard as he did. It had been acting up since they’d finished Dean Kelly’s interview and he knew exactly the stressor that had started it. Hanna had definitely seen him with Eimear at the reunion so that meant her other half had as well, and he knew the odds of him not telling Katy in some roundabout way were very slim. Joe Warne was a nice guy, but if he honestly thought his and Katy’s relationship was over then he would probably think it was just a harmless bit of gossip about her ex that couldn’t do any harm. It left him with the decision of whether to just hope and pray that Joe said nothing or tell Katy first himself. She would take it OK, wouldn’t she? After all, it wasn’t as if he’d betrayed her, was it? She’d dumped him months before!
But no matter how reasonable Craig tried to make it sound to himself, he knew that she would view it differently, yet short of ringing Joe and begging him to keep his mouth shut, something which could easily backfire, he had no idea what to do.
When another five minutes thinking produced no solution he turned to other things to distract himself, calling HR to say that he needed his now very urgent replacement for Nicky that afternoon instead of the next day, and once he had their cast iron guarantee he called Mary in. After a very short meeting to explain why she’d been the one asked to answer the phones and inform her that she would still be doing it, but alongside a new piece of detective work, until a replacement arrived sometime within the next few hours, Craig got exactly the moaning, ungrateful response that he had expected to come his way.
****
London.
The time was approaching when it mightn’t be whether it should be done but when. Too soon and they might destroy a valuable resource with no confirmation that it was actually necessary; simply pressing the eject button out of panic because they feared what might be coming and not what really was. Might. He’d hated the bloody word when he’d been an agent and he still hated it now. Might implied uncertainty and uncertainty always cost.
There had been time and money invested here, including his own, and such an asset w
ould be difficult, perhaps even impossible to replace. And after all, they’d been through a lot together, worse than this surely, so perhaps there might yet be a better way? Damage limitation and repositioning instead of elimination perhaps?
The agent shrugged at his internal debate. There was little flex in the matter now. His men would watch and then he would suggest the best solution, but if the kill order was given legally then his role would be to facilitate. And the closer that the Belfast police got to solving their murders, the sooner that time was likely to be.
****
The C.C.U. Craig’s Office. 3. 15 p.m.
“William Bruton, elected Member of the Legislative Assembly for the Energy Party.”
Craig had been back in his office for ten minutes, signing his way through a sheaf of papers that Nicky had left for him five days before, when Mary reappeared in front of his desk. He hadn’t heard her knocking although he assumed that she’d done so, the stern looking temp now ensconced in Nicky’s chair saying that she was unlikely to have been granted admittance any other way.
He set down his pen and rested back in his seat, motioning her to take the one opposite.
“Carry on.”
When she did so enthusiastically, Craig wondered if the key to getting the D.C.’s cooperation was as simple as ensuring that she was constantly busy. If it was it could come in very useful.
“Right, well, Billy Bruton as he’s usually known, was born here in nineteen-seventy, but went to university in London in eighty-eight where he studied environmental science. He returned here in ninety-three and joined the Environment Party, which doesn’t exist now, first as a constituency worker and then as a lobbyist until he’d worked his way up to special political advisor.”
A SPAD.
SPADs were a sub-species of the political plankton that swam around Stormont and attached themselves to elected representatives. Often powerful beyond their abilities, some of them abused their positions and got a deservedly bad press.
Mary’s sudden grin said that was when things had got good.
“In two-thousand-and-five Bruton became special advisor to the Minister for Energy, based in the DoE building in...”
Craig’s eyes widened. “Howard Street.”
“Exactly. And he was with the Minister during that whole period of the DoE moving and selling the site to The Barr Group. When it became The Howard Tower Hotel.”
As she continued Craig’s mind started to race.
“Bruton remained as a SPAD until two-thousand-and-ten, and then was elected as a councillor for the Energy Party, working his way up to become an MLA four years ago.”
Craig let the information sink in before he asked his next question.
“Tell me about The Monmouth Consortium.”
“Billy Bruton’s been on The Monmouth Consortium Board for three years and owns a twenty percent share in the company.”
His eyebrows shot up. Bruton had worked at the Howard Street site when it had been the DoE and now he owned one fifth of it and The Monmouth Consortium’s other assets. Where the hell did an MLA get money like that?
“Anything on his family connections?”
Mary tapped her smart-pad and a family tree appeared, showing that Philip Michaelson was the son of Bruton’s older sister.
“Excellent work. Anything on The Monmouth Consortium’s finances?”
“All above board. Their twenty-seventeen/eighteen company accounts have just been audited and given a clean bill of health.”
Craig smiled slowly, a connection that had nothing to do with Billy Bruton’s family tree suddenly crystallising for him. To confirm it he set his constable another task and a deadline of thirty minutes to achieve it, while he made an important call in preparation for his and Liam’s trip back to Jack’s.
****
St Mary’s Hospital Medical Department.
Nicky had barely spoken a word since they’d arrived at the hospital, other than to confirm her son’s date of birth and address, so it had fallen to Annette to update the doctors on anything that they knew and then make the call that brought the PA’s husband racing in now, to be stopped halfway down the corridor by the D.I. and drawn into an empty side-room to talk.
“How is he? I need to see him!”
Annette scanned the sturdily built motor mechanic’s face, noticing how his normally light wrinkles had become gouges from concern. She led him to a seat, taking the one beside him.
“Jonny’s going to be OK, Gary. Someone beat him up and stole his phone, but Davy’s trying to locate it now and when he does they’ll be arrested.”
He shook his close-cropped head despairingly. “I should never have bought him the bloody thing. But he said all his friends had one, and when he did so well in his GCSEs…” His voice fell away to a murmur. “He wants to do physics at Queen’s. He’s a clever boy.”
Suddenly he jumped to his feet. “I have to see him, Annette.”
Knowing that she wouldn’t be able to make the anxious father sit again, she joined him standing up, placing a hand on his arm in anticipation of the likely effect of her next words.
“I’ll take you now, Gary, but before I do there’s something else you should know.”
His, “What?” was vague, as if nothing could be as important as finding his son, and he gazed past her through the room’s glass walls and down the corridor outside, his eyes searching this way and that. Annette knew that his inattention would make her words even more of a shock than they should be, but time was limited so she said them anyway, attempting to limit the violence of their truth by using her softest tones.
“He’s taken drugs, Gary.”
The garage owner said nothing for a moment, his eyes still fixed on the world outside the room, but Annette didn’t repeat her words, knowing from his sudden stillness that he had heard them the first time. She waited, her experience of people gifting her the patience to do so; taking her cues from the man beside her and only moving again when he did. When it came it was a retreat, a backward step towards his chair and a hard thudding into it, then with his head dropped into his hands the devastated father began to moan.
Sadly the nurse in her had heard it before. A low, mournful sound called keening, heard sometimes at village funerals from the female relatives of the dead; it was a slow, piercing lament of requiem. There it was called to mourn a death, but here it was to mourn the death of an ideal. Jonny, Jonathan Morris, the perfect golden son that they’d guarded so closely and cultivated so carefully was dead, and in his place was a real, flawed child.
She let the man keen in silence, until the sound quietened, then faltered and ceased, and then she talked him slowly through the reality of what Jonny had taken and only when she was certain he understood that there was treatment to be had and his child wasn’t lost, she walked the father slowly towards his son.
****
4 p.m.
As the detectives were heading towards High Street, armed with the newest piece of information that Mary had found and Craig’s hunch, his mobile rang and Annette’s name appeared.
“How’s Nicky?” were the first words out of his mouth. The next, “How’s Gary taking it?”
Although not quite as strict as Nicky was with their son, the garage owner had aspirations for him and drug use wasn’t one of them.
“Nicky’s happy that he’s alive, and Gary’s coping. I told them both about your offer to pay for rehab and they’re grateful, but they won’t know what’s what until they find out what the hospital is offering. I just rang to say that Ryan and I will be back for the briefing.”
Craig was about to tell her off for telling them about his offer, but he hadn’t the energy.
“OK, although even better if you could get back a bit before it. There’s a temp standing in for Nicky and she won’t know the ropes for any handouts etcetera.”
Annette frowned. “Why isn’t Mary doing it anymore?”
He responded in a contrite tone, not apologising to Annet
te but in her absence to Mary herself.
“Because it’s not her job, Annette, any more than it’s any of yours. She’s a detective not a PA and I shouldn’t have expected it of her.”
The D.I. gave an impatient tut.
“She’s a flipping junior! And juniors turn their hands to anything they need to, including phones and filing.” She gave an unimpressed sniff. “Or they did in my day. But I suppose Madam Mary’s above all that, and you were too soft to insist.” She had another thought which made her tut again. “I bet she played the sexism card, didn’t she?”
Craig didn’t have the energy for a debate.
“The discussion’s over, Annette. Get back to the office and we’ll see you later.”
As he cut the call he saw Liam chortling to himself.
“What’s so amusing? Or are you going to start on at me about Mary as well?”
“What? Mary? Who’s talking about Mary? I’m laughing about what Andy told me about the sealed file. Mind you, he wasn’t laughing much about it himself.”
A minute later Craig knew all about Christopher Price’s sordid behaviour and he was absolutely stunned. Not at the man picking up a woman half his age, he’d seen plenty do it before, although he had always wondered what the hell the women saw in them, especially when they were balding and overweight. He wasn’t even that surprised at what Price had done, disgusting as it was he was never shocked by the depths of degradation that the human race was capable of. No, what really stunned him was that the man still had a job, and he said as much.
“Why wasn’t he kicked out?”
Liam turned into High Street and drove towards the station car-park.
“Beats me. I suppose once the court had decided not to prosecute-”
Craig cut him off. “But why was that? They shouldn’t have dropped it just because the girl was prepared to. Surely there must have been more than enough evidence to nail him without her testifying? I mean the man was naked on a balcony in the middle of the night with a camera in his hand! He was hardly bird watching, was he!”
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