The Property

by Catriona King

  Before the others could respond he re-entered the staffroom and took a seat opposite the solicitor again, staring intently at her.

  “Ms Hazzard, it’s imperative that we hear everything that your client has to say if we’re to save both his life and your daughter’s. Do you understand me?”

  The solicitor’s hazel-eyed gaze darted between the three men before landing back on Craig.

  “How serious is this?”

  “Serious enough that I am going to have your daughter collected from school now, and you won’t be going home tonight.”

  Her eyes widened in alarm. “She’ll be terrified.”

  “I’ll make sure that she isn’t. We’ll send our best female officer along.” He turned to Liam. “Liam, can you get Annette on that now, please, and make sure she has armed backup just in case. But tell them to stay out of sight; we don’t want a whole orchestra full of terrified kids.”

  As Liam exited to make the call, one that was about to see Annette’s intended interview of Jason Conroy passed to Mary, much to the D.I.’s annoyance, Craig carried on.

  “Your phone-call came from London. We don’t have a name, but we do have a location for them, which I’m afraid I can’t disclose.”

  Hazzard opened her mouth to object, but Craig kept on talking.

  “We won’t be able to identify the individual just yet because the call was made from a large building, but we do need to speak to your client urgently. He may be able to shed some light on things.” He glanced at the clock. “He should have been here by now.”

  He was just about to start designing a wreath for Kamran Barr’s funeral, when there was a knock and Sandi Masters popped her head around the door.

  “Sarge, there’s a man in reception says he’s here for interview. Kamran Barr.”

  Jack moved faster than he had since he’d spotted a gold coin metal-detecting on Benone Beach on the Atlantic Coast, leaving Craig to call out after him.

  “Put him in the interview room.” He turned back to Lavinia Hazzard. “I take it you’d like a chat with your client before we see him. I’ll take you through.”

  She rose as elegantly as she could for a woman whose life was in danger and gave Craig a gracious smile.

  “Thank-you, Chief Superintendent, I won’t forget this.”

  The wink Liam gave Craig as she passed promised a serious slagging session on some coming day.

  ****

  NI Bank. Comber.

  Mary hadn’t been out on her own before. At work that was; she’d cast off her baby reins socially a good decade before, prowling the streets of the capital on Saturday afternoons with her posse of school friends, in a way that if she saw a similar group of teenage girls approach her now would make her brace herself for their sneers that said she was far too old to exist. But old as her twenty-six-year-old self might appear to her sixteen-year-old one, she knew that she was considered the baby of the Murder Squad, a phenomena that alternately irked her and made her want to laugh.

  For now those emotions were replaced with pride at having graduated to the role of sole investigator, something which had clearly pained Annette when she’d been forced to give her the task. In reality, Annette had only been pained because she’d wanted to meet Jason Conroy; whether Mary worked alone or in a whole battalion barely made an impression on her at all.

  But there the D.C. was. Sitting in the foyer of a bank for the first time in her life without the fear of rejection that accompanied making a request for an overdraft or a loan. Mary was just dubbing it a mark of maturity when a man not much older than her approached and extended his hand.

  She was surprised by Jason Conroy’s youth until she recalled Catherine Berger’s and remembered she’d only been nineteen when they’d got engaged eleven years before.

  “Detective Li, isn’t it? Please come into my office. This part of the bank is closed for the day.”

  Mary liked the title, far more than she liked the ‘constable’ add-on that everyone seemed to feel compelled to emphasise at work. She was shown into a small, warm office, and once seated with a cup of coffee in her hands she began.

  “Mister Conroy, I’m here on a sensitive matter.”

  He sighed heavily. “Has one of our staff been up to something?”

  His resigned tone said that the bank workers, a species that she’d always viewed as unadventurous, had obviously been naughty before. Hidden depths.

  But it left Mary having to introduce herself again.

  “I’m from the Murder Squad, Mister Conroy, and I’m afraid this isn’t about your staff, it’s about you.”

  The manager’s rapidly widening eyes said that he’d got the wrong end of the stick for a second time.

  “I haven’t murdered anyone!”

  After managing to calm him down Mary slowly laid out why she was there, watching his expression veer from confusion to sorrow and then deepen to despair, the last causing Conroy to drop his head into his hands, making her immediately picture his anguish when his girlfriend had first disappeared.

  He said nothing for a full minute and when he spoke again it was in a breaking voice.

  “I’d got to the point where I only think about Catherine once or twice a week now…”

  He lifted his head and Mary could see that his eyes were red with threatening tears. It made her want to cry too, but she wasn’t a sixteen-year-old girl any more.

  “…and now… Oh, God, now I have to think of her lying in that...”

  The words ended in a howl that ripped through the detective so hard that she couldn’t bear it, and rushed to make the manager focus on other things,

  “Where had you thought Catherine was, Mister Conroy? I know you reported her missing to the police.”

  The businessman swallowed hard to regain his composure and eventually he nodded. “Many times, many... but they made some enquiries and then told me that her father had said Catherine and her mother had travelled to Saudi for the summer.” He shook his head vigorously. “I knew that couldn’t have been right. She would never have left me. We were getting married.”

  A quick check revealed that he wore no wedding ring.

  “And Catherine hated her father, so did Maureen, her mother. Catherine didn’t even like to talk about him, just the odd time, but she said he was very controlling, and that he’d hit her mother more than once. That was why Maureen left him and took her to America.”

  He dropped his head into his hands again, this time in a gesture of exhaustion.

  “Oh, God. All these years I’d at least imagined her living somewhere, perhaps even happily married to someone else, but I never imagined this, never... never.” His pale eyes lifted, suddenly blazing. “Who did this? Do you know?”

  Mary resisted the temptation to show off by saying, “We’ve a pretty good idea” and instead shook her head.

  “No. But that’s where you can help us.”

  She explained quickly about Maggie’s article.

  “But we need your permission to mention your engagement to Catherine in it, to perhaps jog people’s memories of where they might have seen her. Any sightings could help the case.”

  Perhaps not to solve it but certainly to seal it in court.

  She added a warning.

  “But it will mean that your colleagues and friends could read about your loss.”

  Conroy shook his head dismissively. “I don’t care about that. Even bank managers have hearts you know.”

  She would take his word for it.

  “But I do need you to make it clear that I’m not a suspect in the disappearances, for my parents’ sake.”

  It wasn’t something that she’d thought of, and she was pretty sure neither had Annette.

  “We’ll make sure, and I’ll ask them to show you the finished piece before it’s published. Would that suit?”

  Would that suit? She would normally have said, “Is that good for you?” Her flipping grown-up job was making her talk like her mum.

  Conro
y nodded, managing his first smile since she’d arrived. “Catherine was so lovely... so gentle. Make sure you show that, won’t you? And her mum was the kindest woman…”

  The detective could see tears threatening again and knew that it was time to leave the thirty-year-old professional man to his teenage memories of love.

  ****

  London.

  “Do you think she got the message?”

  The agent drawled out his answer, its lethargy displaying his lack of concern.

  “She was certainly scared enough, but it really doesn’t matter either way. Short of the police locking Kamran up for life he’ll be out tonight and dead by tomorrow.”

  The dark-eyed caller wasn’t impressed.

  “But he could have told them everything by then! Why haven’t you killed him already?”

  The response was a short laugh.

  “Patience, Farshid. He’ll be dead soon enough. I’ve men waiting to track him from the station, some already outside his home, and others posted at the father’s house just waiting for my call. All the risks to you and Dalir will disappear when the only man who might talk is dead.”

  The voice became urgent.

  “Why not as soon as he walks out the station door?”

  The agent gave a tut.

  “Because the cop-shop’s in the middle of the bloody city, man, and there’ll be people all over the place! Once he’s back at his apartment no-one will notice anything. The building’s set in acres of grounds. They can kill him there without anyone seeing a thing, particularly as they’ll do it when it’s dark. Now stop worrying about the operational details and tell me about the finance.”

  Farshid Lund muttered something inaudible.

  “Speak clearly, can’t you? What’s going on with the money?”

  “Our understanding is that the police have obtained the company books and they’re going through them now.”

  The agent lurched forward at his desk, galvanised by the thought of his own possible financial loss. He had invested most of his pension in The Barr Group’s enterprises.

  “And? Can they trace the transactions back to anyone important?”

  “Not to their real source. They’ll dead-end in a load of dummy companies overseas. I suppose some financial genius might get behind their fronts eventually, but it will take them years, and by that stage we’ll all be comfortably retired. Besides, there’s no way our governments will grant the UK access beyond the most superficial details. They’d lose some of their biggest donors in Saudi and Pakistan if they did.”

  “So there’s nothing to worry about then.”

  “Not as long as you kill Kamran and Zafir tonight.”

  The agent gasped slightly then bit it off at the source, not wanting to show his shock. He hadn’t planned on killing the father as well as the son, only on keeping an eye on the old man’s house in case Kamran tried to run there. He needed clarity to make the order legal.

  “Just to check... now you’re saying that you, they want Zafir dead too?”

  “Yes, there’s no telling how he’ll react when we kill Kamran, he might run to the police. His sons mean something to him. With Zafir and Kamran dead, any suspicions of us for the murders will be just that, suspicions, and all of our customers will be safe.”

  “Dalir knows about this?”

  “Yes. If you don’t believe me then ask him yourself. He’s in the building with you now. He arrived in London an hour ago.”

  That was all he needed, that little shit breathing down his neck.

  “I’ll need the sanction on Zafir in writing. I’m not ordering my men otherwise.”

  “I never realised you were so squeamish, but all right. I’ll have it sent to you now.”

  The agent wasn’t happy so he decided to be malicious, baiting his caller with his possible fate.

  “But… if Kamran does survive and it looks like everything’s coming out, then the Saudi and Pakistan governments will throw you and Dalir to the UK’s in a heartbeat. Anything to stop them looking too closely at the money-laundering and spoiling their lucrative munitions trade-”

  “You’ll get caught too, you know!”

  The agent smirked. “Me? Why, I was just a lowly gofer doing as I was told, sir.”

  He cut the call abruptly before Lund realised that he wasn’t half as sanguine as he sounded. Gofer or not he could be done for his part in things. Kamran and Zafir Barr had to be ended or he’d be spending his old age in a cell.

  ****

  Black’s Road. Dunmurry, Belfast.

  It wasn’t often that Aidan and Andy got to work together, each of them usually paired by Craig with someone more junior in the hope that some of their experience might rub off. It was an optimistic but forlorn hope, given that both their immediate juniors, Annette and Kyle, knew a lot more than they did on different things. But at least this time neither D.C.I. felt that he had to try to look or sound knowledgeable, something neither was particularly comfortable with; it promised a couple of hours of banter, meandering debate, and speculation on the reasons behind Craig’s two-week long foul mood.

  By the time they arrived at Jimmy Mooney’s security firm, or rather the security firm for which Mooney, the DoE’s erstwhile night-guard, worked, they’d discussed every member of the squad and their romantic partners if they’d met them, an analysis which usually consisted of, “I don’t know why they bother with him/her”, “if they ever saw the carry-on of them at work they’d dump them”, and, “I would never have put them with each other, would you?”, followed by varying degrees of guilt and remorse for being judgemental that culminated in, “ach, well, I suppose they’re really not that bad.”

  When the discussion had got round to Craig Aidan had relayed what Liam had told him; that he’d seen Katy when he was at the hospital and she was just as she’d always been. Liam’s loyalty to Craig combined with his sharp survival instinct made lying to his peers a damn sight safer than telling them what he’d really seen.

  Gossip over for the season Andy parked where the sat-nav had indicated was the location of the security firm, but the only thing visible was a portakabin set on a patch of rock covered waste ground. Both men were surprised, although there was no reason why they should have been; a company called ‘Gerry’s Guards’ with the slogan, ‘Your break-in is our breakthrough’ was hardly going to have offices at the City Hall.

  Aidan was first up the three-stepped ladder to the cabin’s entrance and he rapped so hard on its grey door that the whole structure shook. The vibration obviously didn’t improve the occupant’s mood, as a loud shout of, “Just come in, will ye, fer God’s sake” guldered out. When the detectives did so, they were greeted by a man so squat that he was almost square sticking pins energetically into a multi-coloured wall chart.

  “Leave the bloody door on its hinges, would ye! I’m nat made of money!”

  Aidan gazed down at their scowling host and responded in a cool tone. “You would be Gerry, I take it?”

  “That’s what it says on the door, doesn’t it? Anyway, this is my place so I get to ask the questions.”

  In order to do so it seemed to be necessary that he take a seat behind his desk, so the D.C.I.s dragged two chairs across unbidden and joined him there.

  Gerry McCallion leaned forward on his prefabricated desk and laid both hands flat on it, making their huge, ham-like nature clear and his menacing message clearer still. Whether it was a necessary requirement for the boss of a firm that supplied bouncers, minders and security-guards to look threatening, which Andy idly conceded that it might have been given the likely size and bulk of the employees that he needed to keep in line, it didn’t cut any ice with them. Not that they would ever use them of course, but the knowledge that you have a Glock in your pocket tends to give you peace of mind, and Aidan’s unbuttoning of his jacket and strategic shift in his chair to allow his to be revealed made Andy stifle a laugh and join in by displaying his ID.

  Western Saloon postures adopted, a det
ente of sorts broke out, marked by McCallion resting back in his chair and asking what he could do to help. As Aidan was still in gunslinger mode Andy explained.

  “We’re from the Belfast Murder Squad and we’d like some information from you about a man called Jimmy Mooney.”

  McCallion furrowed his brow, looking puzzled.

  “I gave some bloke on the phone his address the other day. He said he was from some murder squad too. He was on about some site we patrolled eleven years back.”

  “That was one of our analysts and thank-you for that, but he checked the address that you gave for Mooney and he left it years ago. So we were wondering if you had any more details on him?”

  The immediate aversion of the man’s deep-set eyes said that he knew more than he was prepared to say. It prompted a sigh from Aidan, who by now had his jacket re-buttoned and his Glock neatly tucked away.

  “Mister McCallion, please don’t make us arrest you for obstructing a police investigation.”

  The businessman gave a loud gulp. “Ye can’t do that! I’ve done nathin’!”

  “You’re withholding information about Mister Mooney. It’s obvious that you know where he lives now.”

  McCallion didn’t even bother to deny it. “I don’t want to get him in trouble. Jimmy’s a good lad.”

  Seeing Aidan’s patience fraying Andy broke across the exchange.

  “I’m sure he is, and he’s not in trouble with us. We just need to ask him about something that he might have witnessed.”

  McCallion’s frown deepened. “Eleven years ago?”

  “That’s right.”

  McCallion sniggered suddenly. “Ye’ll be lucky. Jimmy’s head was stuck in a bottle back then.”

  Aidan’s eyes widened. “He was a heavy drinker?”

  “The heaviest. Pissed twenty-four-seven. He’s been clean fer three years now and he’s still tryin’ to get back on his feet, but if ye think he’ll remember anythin’ from that long back ye haven’t got a hope in hell.”