****
High Street Station.
The detectives were in the staff-room, drinking coffee while Craig decided what to do next. He still hadn’t heard from Aidan about Bruton’s travel itineraries, but that could wait; he’d already made up his mind to let him and Mary interview the politician about them anyway.
He had other things to pursue, and while he made up his mind in which order to pursue them Liam took out his phone and exited to the corridor, re-entering the room triumphantly two minutes later and throwing himself down on the ancient sofa opposite his boss.
Craig winced at the crack the impact produced.
“You’ve definitely broken one of its struts this time.”
Liam looked confused and then realised what he meant and rose, upending the piece of furniture and displaying the truth of the words.
“Ach, sure a bit of gaffer tape will sort that. I’ll drop down with it tomorrow.”
Craig wondered whether he’d be so cavalier about the damage if one of his kids had done the same at home, but he couldn’t spare the time to ask; Liam’s triumphalism was making him curious.
“You’re looking smug.”
“Smug? Aye, well, maybe I am. I’ve just checked on a few things from last night’s briefing.”
“Good idea.” Craig knew that he should have done it himself, but he was still trying to see his way ahead. Anything that would help clear that way of obstacles was good. “Fire ahead.”
“Right, well, Davy’s run all the workers’ checks for sex and assault stuff, reports as well as convictions, and there’s nothing there.”
The words made Craig frown but after a few seconds his face brightened again.
“Call him back and tell him to run the Barrs, including the father, and Farshid Lund this time. For everything: reports, rumours, arrests and convictions, on all the same things.”
Liam gave him a sceptical look. “How the heck can he search for rumours?”
“Newspapers, magazines, gossip columns, social media. Ask him to do it right now and phone you back.”
If Dalir Barr’s sexual predilections hadn’t just been for sex workers they might just find something.
While they waited for the call-back Liam continued his update.
“OK, so Ash is doing a timeline for the two women and says he’s ninety-nine percent sure now that they’re our bones...”
Craig winced at the brutal language, but knew that there was no point trying to change his deputy now. He’d been working for six years to make Liam more politically correct and had had a modicum of success, but making the fifty-something’s turn of phrase more elegant was probably a lost cause, or at least one that neither of them would live long enough to achieve.
Liam was still speaking.
“... but he’ll give you a hundred percent in a couple of hours.”
“Good, but he’ll need to make an associate net for the women as well. We need to find out who they knew that might possibly link with someone we have in our sights.”
Associate nets were essentially tree and map diagrams that covered all of a victim’s or suspect’s known relatives and contacts, and then their relatives and contacts and so on. In the bygone days of policing they had been carried out by hand, but computers, and more importantly the internet, meant that what had once taken a police officer weeks could now be achieved within minutes.
Liam took out his phone again to relay the request, and in the process gleaned the information that Farshid Lund and the Barrs had no criminal records for anything, including sex offences, and if there had been gossip about any bad behaviour none of it had ever got into print.
Craig shrugged glumly as another door slammed in his face, and then nodded his deputy on.
“So... Annette’s busy digging into the Barrs, and Andy offered to pull the files from archives to save Ash a trip.”
He didn’t mention that the D.C.I. had also fancied another chat with someone called Dolores without competition from Kyle.
Craig was almost ready to move forward.
“OK, so we know that neither Bruton nor Tanner had keys to the hoarding, or so Bruton says and Annette will come back to us on that list. But for now that leaves us with the Duggans, who erected the hoarding, the Barrs and Dean Kelly as possible key holders. I really don’t like Kelly for the killings, the Barrs we’re working up, but we know nothing at all about Duggans yet.”
He looked at his deputy. “Who’s got a light workload at the moment?”
‘Light’ was clearly a relative term.
“Well, Kyle’s back at the ranch, and Aidan and Mary should be finished with Hardy soon.”
“Good. Send them to Duggans, they can check Bruton’s itineraries with him later.”
Liam frowned. “Why not send Spooky?”
Craig smirked. Liam was of the opinion that Kyle never did any work, even when he was doing it right in front of him; probably something to do with Kyle never obviously expending effort and Liam liking his subordinates to sweat.
He humoured his deputy with an explanation anyway.
“Because I want Spooky as you call him to look at the Barrs’ financial dealings with Andy.”
Liam grunted; more white collar work for the spy.
Craig was quiet for a moment, thinking, and when he spoke again it was in a puzzled voice.
“The carpet layer…”
Liam was back on the phone to Aidan, who’d just called about Bruton’s itineraries.
“Can you email those through to High Street?”
“I’d have to scan them first, they’re paper files. It’d be quicker if we just nipped down with them.”
“OK, fine. We’ll see you when you get here.” He hung up and turned to Craig. “Aye, the carpet man. We need to find out who he was.”
Craig’s response was to nod and phone Davy himself this time. “Davy, who laid the carpet at The HTH in oh-seven?”
The analyst checked his PC, which held a list of everyone from the hotel’s designers through to the cleaners listed by floor.
“His name’s Calvin Dodds. He runs a shop called Carpet Life on the Lower Newtownards Road.”
“Thanks. Was the hotel re-carpeted after oh-seven?”
The analyst swore under his breath; he hadn’t thought to check. “I’ll need to get back to you on that. Give me thirty minutes.”
“Fine. We’ll check Dodds anyway. Also, I’m sending Aidan and Mary to check out Duggans the hoarding people so can you send their contacts through to Aidan’s phone, and ask Andy to call me as soon as he’s back in the office.”
“Will do.”
Craig hung up and checked his watch. Almost eleven. They would wait to see Aidan then head to see Calvin Dodds and go on to the lab.
A slightly more relaxed feeling came over him. The loose ends were being tied off one by one, and if he was right then by that afternoon they would have narrowed things down to some serious suspects, one of whose names he already had in mind. That was when the fun would really start.
Chapter Twelve
The C.C.U. 11.30 a.m.
The squad-room was unusually quiet for mid-investigation in a double murder, and not from its lack of inhabitants. OK, so Ryan had gone to court to watch the Drake case and a few detectives were out investigating, but there were still six people dotted around the place.
Annette took a break from her work to consider the reasons for the peace. Scanning the large open-plan space revealed both analysts with their heads down, typing and tapping as usual, Kyle with his feet up on his desk reading a report, and Andy, just back, rummaging through his desk drawers; so far so normal. OK, so the noisiest members of the squad, Liam and Aidan, were absent, and the number of people present was slightly on the low side, but even so, on a normal day someone would have been telling a joke, throwing a pen across the office or munching noisily at some snack, even while they were hard at work.
It took the D.I. more than a minute to track down the cause of the tranquilli
ty. In place of Nicky there was a fifty-something woman called Alice sitting at her desk, typing just as energetically as Craig’s PA always did but without the running commentary of fashion advice, gossip and TV soap reviews that Nicky normally gave, not to mention her constant nosy questions and her barbed quips when she thought that anyone was stepping out of line, the constant high-heel clicking trips to the kitchen to fill the coffee percolator and her rustling in her secret biscuit stash for afternoon treats.
Annette listened again to confirm that she was right, at first smiling at her discovery and then realising that the temporary secretary’s lack of noise was actually making her feel lonely, so she left her computer search on Zafir Barr running and wandered across to Andy’s desk in search of some company.
“You were at the archives for a long time.”
Ash answered her. “He was getting me some files.”
Kyle gave a knowing smirk. “That’s not all he was getting. Dolores’ phone number is now seared on his lonely heart.”
Andy turned his back pointedly on the spook and gave Annette a welcoming smile. “In need of some company?”
She pulled over a chair and sat down beside him. “I am actually. How did you guess?”
He dropped his voice so as not to offend the temp. “It’s too quiet here without Nicky. How’s her son doing, by the way?”
Annette made a face. “His physical injuries will heal quickly enough... and Davy,” she flashed a smile in the analyst’s direction, “pinged his phone, so the guy who stole it was arrested for assault this morning. I was going to do it, but I thought it was fairer for the uniforms to get the catch.”
The D.C.I. looked concerned. “There was a ‘but’ there about the boy.”
Annette shook her head, not wanting to betray Nicky’s image of her perfect son to her work colleagues.
“Jonny’s still in shock, so she’s taking time off to look after him.”
And get him into therapy.
Andy nodded sympathetically, thinking of his own son. “He must have been terrified, poor kid, spending hours in a dark alley. Sixteen’s still very young.”
Annette decided that it was time to change the subject. “What are you working on?”
“Money-laundering. The chief got a tip that the Barrs might have been using their businesses as a front, so we’re reading up on it and then heading down to the Fraud Unit on the fifth floor.”
She glanced back at her desk. “I was just digging into the Barrs. I can bring you what I’ve found if you’d like?”
The D.C.I. glanced at the still-smirking Kyle and had a better idea. “I’ll come over to yours so you can show me.”
A few seconds later they were staring at Annette’s PC.
“OK. So Zafir Barr married in Pakistan in nineteen-seventy and he and his wife came here in seventy-five. Their two sons, Kamran and Dalir were born here and went to school and university here and in England and then settled back here in the late nineties, early two-thousands, setting up a series of very successful businesses, until in two-thousand-and-eight Dalir decided to return to Pakistan and the father and Kamran remained here.”
“What happened to the mother?”
“She died in ninety-nine of cancer.”
“OK, so the father and elder son are still here. Do they live together?”
“No, the father has a big house down near Killyleagh, and Kamran lives in an apartment up the Malone Road. He’s never married or had children, so his life is mainly business and socialising, which he does a lot of.”
Andy felt a familiar prickle on the back of his neck which he’d learnt through the years meant that, even if he wasn’t aware of it consciously, there was something wrong. He pressed Annette for more information.
“Did Zafir Barr remarry?”
“No. Ash found something about him dating some woman from Dublin in the social pages, but nothing official.”
“The younger son?”
Annette’s eyes widened.
“No, neither of the sons is married.”
OK, so maybe the father had loved his wife too much to replace her, but neither of the sons was married either? How could she have missed that? And did it mean anything?
Andy’s next question said that he thought it did.
“So, two adult men and neither has ever married?”
Kyle’s ears pricked up and he shouted across. “There’re four in here who haven’t either.”
Andy turned on him, indignant. “I have! Twice.”
“Yep, and neither of them stuck around. And just so you know, a higher number isn’t something to boast about.”
The D.C.I.’s retort was ruined by Davy chipping in, “And I’ll be married in the next few years.”
Annette seized the moment to turn Andy’s face towards her, before a fight with Kyle broke out.
“Tell me what you’re thinking.”
He gave a last malevolent glance in the spook’s direction before answering.
“It’s nothing logical, just a hunch, but culturally Asian men normally marry young, don’t they?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. You could always ask Ash. But maybe it’s different for the Barrs because they were brought up in the west?”
“True. Or they could both have girlfriends that we know nothing about, be gay, or prefer sex workers, but I just have a feeling about this... I think it could be worth checking a bit further, seeing as you’re already looking into the family?”
Annette smiled. It was a good steer, and she loved the way that he always suggested that people did things, never ordered them. The chief could do with a bit of that approach nowadays.
“I’ll do that.” She turned back to her computer. “Now, as you’re looking into the Barrs’ finances, I’ll print you off a list of their registered businesses, here and abroad.”
“Where are they?”
“India, Pakistan, Saudi and Iran. They’ve been busy boys.”
Andy felt the prickle again.
“What did Zafir do for a living?”
“He ran a supermarket until he retired. Why?”
“Well, don’t you find the family’s ascent a bit quick? Shopkeepers to multimillionaire businessmen in one generation?”
Annette was impressed by his astuteness, although why she should have been she didn’t know; Andy may have appeared sleepy and too laid-back at times but he’d made a lot of good calls since he’d joined the squad in twenty-fifteen.
“You think someone invested in them?”
“They didn’t have a lot of family money, so yes.”
“But couldn’t they have made money from laundering other people’s dirty money through their father’s supermarket?”
The D.C.I. shook his head. “Not enough. Not to get them into the big league so fast. You have to attract the dirty money initially to launder in order to generate more, and for that you need capital to build your first laundry. To attract people who want millions of pounds laundered you need that first laundry to be very flash, and the Barrs couldn’t have raised enough to do that from a family supermarket.”
He worked through his thoughts in silence for a moment before speaking again.
“OK. So, in order to launder dirty money, either your own or your clients’, you need apparently legitimate businesses, or laundries, to wash the money through. Dirty money goes into the business, aka the laundry, and generates clean money to pay the client back with. Eventually that laundering activity will generate profit for you, the owner, but you, or in this case the Barrs, would have needed start-up capital to fund at least your first flash laundry stroke business. After that it would all have snowballed, more profit made from laundering funds creating more businesses to launder them through, etcetera.”
Annette interrupted excitedly. “So, the two questions we need answered are, who funded their first business, and whose cash are they laundering now?”
The D.C.I. smiled at the search that lay ahead of them, then he nodded his thanks, lifted
the printed list and collected the squad’s far less pleasant other D.I. to go down to the fifth floor.
****
The Lower Newtownards Road. East Belfast.
Billy Bruton’s travel itineraries and curriculum vitae, also obligingly provided by Jackson Hardy’s PA, confirmed that the politician had travelled to Dubai, India, Saudi Arabia and Iran between ninety-two and two-thousand-and-ten, a period during which their younger female victim at least had already been living in the USA. Bruton couldn’t have met Catherine Berger in the middle-east. However, then she and her mother had moved to Ireland where Bruton had lived and worked...
Apart from geographic coincidence Craig wasn’t certain what it told them. Had Bruton met the women somewhere in Ireland? Might he even have had an affair with the mum? No, it didn’t ring true, although he wasn’t going to tell Bruton that. Even though he really couldn’t see the greedy MLA as a murderer, he deserved to suffer for not reporting finding the bones, so he wasn’t about to let him off the hook just yet.
He had dispatched Aidan and Mary to check out Duggans, or to give the business its full title, Duggans Hoarders, a name that conjured up an unfortunate image of an office full of rubbish and newspapers with its staff buried underneath, rather than a professional enterprise. Now he and Liam were on the Lower Newtownards Road about to enter the aspirational sounding ‘Carpet Life’, although it did occur to him that such a life would be spent entirely horizontally and perhaps even covered in stripes.
Liam being in the market for a new bedroom carpet, he had confided that he liked to squidge the fibres between his toes, his hairy toes to be precise, a detail that Craig could gladly have lived without, so the D.C.I. bounded into the shop first, leaving his boss to consider the logic of a business displaying any, never mind most, of its inventory outside on the pavement in a country where it rained at some point almost every day of the year.
Discovering that the shop’s interior was reminiscent of a souk Liam decided to treat it as one, yelling, “Keeper of the shop” at the top of his voice as he loped up and down the carpet racks. When they were rewarded by the appearance of a short, skinny man, Craig signalled that he would take over, a slightly more formal approach appropriate when you’re about to discuss bones.
The Property Page 33