He stopped for breath and nodded meaningfully towards the door. “What’s Alice up to?”
Liam chuckled. “Looking very confused. It’s almost as if someone’s wiping her files... I’ve just watched ‘Ash Rahman was eating crisps at his desk’ disappear before my eyes.”
Craig smiled. “Yes, well, just as long as Davy doesn’t wipe any typed reports. We’ll need all of those for court.” He sighed heavily. “It looks like we’re stuck with Alice for a while. Nicky’s requested compassionate leave for a few weeks and HR doesn’t have anyone else of the level that we need.”
Liam rolled his eyes. “I’ll tell the others the good news when she leaves for the night.”
“Speaking of reports. Aren’t you in court on Drake next week?”
The deputy’s eyes widened in alarm. “Am I? No, I can’t be! No, that’s definitely wrong. I’m on holiday from Monday for a week, I put in for it months ago and you signed it off, I saw you.”
“Oh, yes, sorry... I’d completely forgotten about that.” Craig became curious. “Where are you going?”
Liam was like him; they rarely took their full allocation of holidays, always having to get paid for some at the end of the financial year, so a week off work was a real aberration for the D.C.I.
Liam sighed. “I did tell you. You just don’t listen. I’m taking my mum, two sisters and all the kids down to Dublin to see the Pope. He’s over for The World Meeting of Families.” He rolled his eyes. “We’ve hired a minibus and the eejit here promised to drive.”
Craig gawped at him. “That’s next week? I promised I’d organise transport for my mum to go down. She’s playing at one of the events.”
Craig’s mother was a retired concert pianist from Rome, and the trip would combine her two loves, her church and music.
As he scribbled a note to remind himself to arrange things, the D.C.I. shook his head in mock disapproval.
“And you forgot. Tut tut. Of course, you’re going to hell now. You do realise that, don’t you?”
Craig glanced past him at the wall clock. “I’ll be there long before next week. Katy and I are meeting in an hour to talk about things.”
It was Liam’s cue to leave before he gave away what he knew. As he reached the door he turned back.
“Here, Spooky’s been looking very pleased with himself today. I think he’s up to something.”
“Well, if you really want to know what it is then ask him. Although personally I prefer ignorance when it comes to D.I. Spence.”
“Nah, there’s no point asking. You never get a straight answer out of that one.”
They would both get the answer in the form of Kyle’s transfer request very soon.
****
The Herald Restaurant. Victoria Street, Belfast. 6 p.m.
Craig had been hoping that they could meet at Katy’s apartment; not for any nefarious reason on his part but because it would have given them uninterrupted peace to talk. So he’d been surprised and disappointed when she’d called at the last minute to say that she’d booked a restaurant. Nice though the venue was he knew that its public nature didn’t bode well for why she’d asked to see him, so as soon as the waiter had taken their orders and left he decided to ask. If he was to be executed then he would prefer that the axe dropped immediately than spend hours filled with small talk hoping for a reprieve.
When Katy placed her hand on top of his the detective became even more confused; was it just to comfort him when she broke the bad news that he was out of her and his child’s lives for good? She was a doctor after all, trained to break bad news in a particular way. Or was it a prelude to something more positive? A future together, no matter how slowly that came about? If it was then Craig knew that there was something that he needed to tell her first, before anyone else did.
Katy Stevens gazed across the table at the man that she still loved, reading everything that was on his mind. She was always surprised when people told her that they found Marc secretive and impenetrable, because to her he was an open book, and right now he was on a chapter called ‘Shame’ and about to torture himself by revealing something he’d done that he didn’t think she knew about.
Before Craig could blurt out everything that had happened at his law-school reunion she spoke, in a cold voice that surprised them both.
“I know about you and Eimear, Marc. That’s why I wanted us to meet here, to keep things civilised. If we’d met at my flat I would have screamed and cried and maybe even hit you. Then both of us would have got upset. And I don’t want to cry about it again, I’ve already cried enough.”
Craig’s mouth was hanging open, still on “Eimear”, stunned both that she knew and that she could bring herself to mention the ‘other woman’s’ name.
Katy carried on, her tone hardening noticeably, making Craig wonder why she was still touching his hand. He was an intelligent man, but his understanding of women sometimes lacked.
“Joe Warne told me. I’m not sure if it was malice, although knowing Joe I doubt it. He probably just thought we’d split up so I wouldn’t care.”
Craig finally found his voice and asked what was possibly the stupidest question of his life. “Did you?”
The words saw her hand withdrawn so sharply that he had to scramble to retrieve it, and when he did he held it so tightly that she couldn’t have escaped if she’d tried. Katy glared at him in silence for a moment, neither of them noticing if anyone was watching or caring about what the other diners might think.
Craig repeated his stupid question more intensely. “Did you care?”
And if she had, was it because she still loved him or only because of her hurt and wounded pride? Or even because she was worried about how his indiscretion might possibly reflect on her, given that some people obviously knew? When there was no answer for a full minute, he began to pray for even a negative answer. Something, anything to break the impasse.
Tears sprang to the medic’s navy-blue eyes, and when she opened her mouth again her words came spitting out.
“I hate you!”
It made his heart soar; if she hated him then she must still love him, mustn’t she? It was a myth originally peddled by deluded eighteenth century romantic poets, most of them high on drugs, and perpetuated by writers even to the present day, based on the assumption that any feeling, no matter how negative, suggests a passion akin to love.
But sometimes, often, in fact almost always when someone says they hate you, that’s exactly what they mean. Hate, loathe, despise, wish ill upon; in ancient times it would have involved curses calling down fire and plague and death, and that was exactly how Katy was feeling now. If the floor had opened up and swallowed Craig, or a lightning bolt evaporated him where he sat, she would have cheered. She wanted him to feel the pain that she’d felt in the moment Joe Warne had told her what he’d seen at the reunion; the nausea provoking, heart ripping out of her chest sensation that she could still feel now. So she spat again, “You disgust me, you bastard!”
It was accompanied by her wrenching her hand so hard from his that Craig had to tighten his grip to keep her there.
Her reaction was exactly what he felt he deserved, whether he did or not. Even though he hadn’t known that she was pregnant when things had happened with Eimear and he’d only been single because she’d dumped him, there was part of him that still needed her to punish him and not forgive him too easily, even as he prayed that she eventually would. Good old-fashioned guilt; Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Islamic, it didn’t matter; he was pretty sure that it all felt the same, and it all sucked.
She spat venom at him again and again, calling him names and venting a rage so at odds with her elegant appearance that the polite people around them who’d been averting their eyes so hard that their heads couldn’t turn any further finally gave up and sat forward to watch, split between disapproving of the exhibition, being thrilled and taking sides. Roll up, roll up and see the nice lady fight the well-dressed man; each spectator creating their o
wn script. Why was she angry? Did he deserve it? What had he done, and why were they fighting about it now and here, publically, in an expensive restaurant on a Friday night?
Inside Katy there was a cauldron, boiling with the need to hurt the man opposite her, to slap him so hard across his handsome face that it would make him reel. But at the heart of her molten anger she knew there still existed a remnant of something else, something that wouldn’t die no matter how hard she’d tried to kill it for months, and that something was what had brought her there.
So as Craig let her rant she let him grip her hand to stop her leaving, and as she burned with anger and yearning for him he gabbled out his respect and love, until finally Katy had read the open book in front of her for long enough to know that he was telling the truth, and admitted to herself that she could never bear to let him go.
THE END
Core Characters in the Craig Crime Novels
Detective Chief Superintendent Marc (Marco) Craig: Craig is a sophisticated, single, forty-seven-year-old of Northern Irish/Italian extraction. From a mixed religious background but agnostic.
An ex-grammar schoolboy and Queen’s University Law graduate, he went to London to join The Met (The Metropolitan Police) at twenty-two, rising in rank through its High Potential Development Training Scheme. He returned to Belfast in two-thousand and eight after fifteen years away.
He is a driven, compassionate, workaholic, with an unfortunate temper that he struggles to control and a tendency to respond to situations with his fists, something that almost resulted in him going to prison when he was in his teens. He loves the sea, sails when he has the time and is generally very sporty. He plays the piano, loves music and sport.
His girlfriend of four years, Katy Stevens, is a consultant physician at the local St Mary’s Healthcare Trust, but Craig still lives alone in a modern apartment block in Stranmillis, near the university area of Belfast. His parents, his extrovert mother Mirella (an Italian concert pianist) and his quiet father Tom (an ex-university lecturer in Physics) live in Holywood town, six miles outside the city. His rebellious sister, Lucia, his junior by ten years, works as the manager of a local charity and also lives in Belfast.
Craig is now a Chief Superintendent heading up Belfast’s Murder Squad and Police Intelligence Unit. The Murder Squad is based in the thirteen storey Co-ordinated Crime Unit (C.C.U.) in Pilot Street, in the Sailortown area of Belfast’s Docklands.
D.C.I. Liam Cullen: Craig’s deputy. Liam is a fifty-two-year-old former RUC officer from Crossgar in Northern Ireland, who transferred into the PSNI from the RUC in two thousand and one, following the Patton Reforms. He has lived and worked in Northern Ireland all his life and has spent over thirty years in the police force, more than twenty of them policing Belfast, including during The Troubles.
Liam is married to the forty-one-year-old, long suffering Danielle (Danni), a part-time nursery nurse, and they have a seven-year-old daughter Erin and a five-year-old son called Rory. Liam is unsophisticated, indiscreet and hopelessly non-PC, but he’s a hard worker with a great knowledge of the streets and has a sense of humour that makes everyone, even the Chief Constable, laugh.
D.I. Annette Eakin: Annette is Craig’s lead Detective Inspector who has lived and worked in Northern Ireland all her life. She is a forty-eight-year-old ex-nurse who, after her nursing degree, worked as a nurse for thirteen years and then, after a career break, retrained and has now been in the police for an equal length of time. She divorced her husband Pete McElroy, a P.E teacher at a state secondary school, because of his infidelity and violence. They have two children, a boy and a girl (Jordan and Amy), both at university, and Annette also has a baby daughter, Carina, with her new partner, Mike Augustus, a pathologist who works with Doctor John Winter.
Annette is kind and conscientious with an especially good eye for detail. She also has very good people skills but can be a bit of a goody-two-shoes.
Nicky Morris: Nicky Morris is Craig’s forty-year-old personal assistant. She used to be PA to Detective Chief Superintendent (D.C.S.) Terry ‘Teflon’ Harrison. Nicky is a glamorous Belfast mum married to Gary, who owns a small garage, and she is the mother of a teenage son, Jonny. She comes from a solidly working-class area of East Belfast, just ten minutes’ drive from Docklands.
She is bossy, motherly and street-wise and manages to organise a reluctantly-organised Craig very effectively. She has a very eclectic and unusual sense of style, and there is an ongoing innocent office flirtation between her and Liam.
Davy Walsh: The Murder Squad’s twenty-nine-year-old senior computer analyst. A brilliant but shy EMO turned Hipster, Davy’s confidence has grown during his time on the team, making his lifelong stutter on ‘s’ and ‘w’ now almost unnoticeable unless he’s under stress.
His father is deceased and Davy lives at home in Belfast with his mother and grandmother. He has an older sister, Emmie, who studied English at university.
His girlfriend of five years, Maggie Clarke, is a journalist and now News Editor at The Belfast Chronicle newspaper. They became engaged in early 2017.
Doctor John Winter: John is the forty-six-year-old Director of Pathology for Northern Ireland, one of the youngest ever appointed. He’s brilliant, eccentric, gentlemanly and really likes the ladies, but he met his match in Natalie Ingrams, a surgeon at St Mary’s Healthcare Trust, and they’ve been married now for over two years and have a one-year-old daughter called Kit.
John was Craig’s best friend at school and university and remained in Northern Ireland to build his medical career when Craig left. He is now internationally respected in his field.
The pathologist persuaded Craig that the newly peaceful Northern Ireland was a good place to return to, and he assists Craig’s team with cases whenever he can. He is obsessed with crime in general and US police shows in particular.
D.C.I. Andrew (Andy) Angel: A relatively new addition to Craig’s team and its second D.C.I., Andy Angel is a slight, forty-two-year-old, twice divorced, perpetually broke father of a ten-year-old son, Bowie, who lives with his mother. A chocoholic with a tendency towards lethargy, he surprises the team at times with his abilities, particularly his visual skills, which include being a super-recogniser, a title given to a small number of individuals who possess exceptional visual recognition abilities. Something that has proved useful in several murder investigations.
Andy’s spare time is spent sketching, painting and collecting original Irish art. He is also constantly on the search for a new relationship, but without much success as romantic subtlety isn’t his strong point.
D.C.I. Aidan Hughes: Originally seconded to the Murder Squad in twenty-sixteen from Vice, Hughes has now become a permanent addition to Craig’s team.
Single, mid-forties, tall, thin, and with a broad Belfast accent and a tendency to tan so much at his parents’ home in Spain that he resembles a stick of mahogany, Hughes has known Craig and John Winter since they were at school. A heavy smoker and a joker, he is a popular member of the squad.
Doctor Des Marsham: Des is the Head of Forensic Science for Northern Ireland and works with John Winter at their laboratories in a science park off the Saintfield Road in Belfast. They often work together on Craig’s murder cases.
Instantly recognisable by his barely controlled beard, Des is married to the placid and hippyish Annie, and they have two young sons, Martin and Rafferty. The scientist is obsessed with Gaelic Football, both playing and watching it, and spends several weekends each year metal-detecting with his university friends on Northern Ireland’s Atlantic coast.
D.C.S. Terry (Teflon) Harrison: Craig’s old boss. The sixty-year-old Detective Chief Superintendent was based at the Headquarters building in Limavady in the northwest Irish countryside but has now returned to the Docklands C.C.U. where he has an office on the thirteenth floor. He shared a converted farm house at Toomebridge with his homemaker wife Mandy and their thirty-year-old daughter Sian, a marketing consultant, but Mandy has now divorced him, pa
rtly because of his trail of mistresses, often younger than his daughter, so Harrison has moved to an apartment in South Belfast.
The D.C.S. is tolerable as a boss as long as everything’s going well, but he is acutely politically aware, a snob, and very quick to pass on the blame for any mistakes to his subordinates (hence the Teflon nickname). He sees Craig as a rival and is out to destroy him. In particular, he resents Craig’s friendship with John Winter, who wields a great deal of power in the Northern Irish justice system.
Key Background Locations
The majority of locations referenced in the book are real, with some exceptions.
Northern Ireland (real): Set in the north-east of the island of Ireland, Northern Ireland was created in nineteen-twenty-one by an act of British parliament. It forms part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and shares a border to the south and west with the Republic of Ireland. The Northern Ireland Assembly, based at the Stormont Estate, holds responsibility for a range of devolved policy matters. It was established by the Northern Ireland Act 1998 as part of the Good Friday Agreement.
Belfast (real): Belfast is the capital and largest city of Northern Ireland, set on the flood plain of the River Lagan. The seventeenth largest city in the United Kingdom and the second largest in Ireland, it is the seat of the Northern Ireland Assembly.
The Dockland’s Co-ordinated Crime Unit (The C.C.U. - fictitious): The modern high-rise headquarters building is situated in Pilot Street in Sailortown, a section of Belfast between the M1 and M2 undergoing massive investment and re-development. The C.C.U. hosts the police murder, gang crimes, vice and drug squad offices, amongst others.
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