The Running of the Deer

by Catriona King

  She moved on hurriedly to something else, refusing to confront her ‘but’.

  What about her career? No, that was great. A little tiring perhaps, and she found the nights on-call more difficult with each year, but then she always had the option of going part-time. The thought stopped her in her tracks. Part-time? Was that what she wanted? After all her years spent studying and working to get to the top? When she didn’t think ‘no’ immediately, the physician knew that there might be something there.

  She smiled absentmindedly at her small charge and rose to make her some food as she kept on thinking. But why go part-time? And how could she justify it? I mean, maybe if she had to care for an elderly parent, or had decided to lecture or something, or if she…

  She shook her head abruptly, refusing to continue the thought, and instead focused on the, much easier, practical considerations. She could afford her mortgage and live even if she went part-time, but without the holidays and luxuries that she currently had. But that would be OK. She didn’t really need them, did she? She’d had her years of driving flashy cars, and she could give half her clothes away to charity and still have enough, so she certainly didn’t need money for more ‘things’. But still…why was she thinking of part-time, in fact, why was she really thinking of changing anything in her life? Where was her anxiety coming from?

  As she spooned some yellow gloop into a bowl and carried it back to the baby, Katy smiled. She and Natalie had patched up their eighteen-month argument just before Christmas, sort of, so she often offered to babysit Kit when she had a day off that Marc wasn’t free. They’d just spent a lovely few hours together, visiting her mother in her little bungalow, and then tootling around the city centre shopping. Now she needed to get the baby fed and changed before Natalie arrived home from work in a few hours’ time.

  A sudden wave of sadness came over the medic, so strong that she thought she was going to cry, as all the things that she’d been refusing to look at reared up abruptly and slapped her in the face. All her agitation and thoughts of going part-time, all her offers to babysit, even her moment’s hesitation earlier about Marc, they were all pointing to one thing; she wanted a child of her own, his child.

  As Katy realised how frightened she was of telling him and what it might mean for their relationship, tears began to trickle down her cheeks.

  Chapter Five

  Castlederg Police Station.

  “Hang on a minute, Liam.”

  As Craig beckoned his deputy back and returned to his seat on the wall, Liam turned to face him again with a sigh.

  “What now, boss? I’ve already promised you I won’t hit him again, so why can’t we just go inside?”

  Craig shook his head, frowning. “I’m thinking, that’s why. OK, now, without losing your rag, can you remember what he said?”

  “Who, Billy Bunter?”

  Craig rolled his eyes. “And we’ll have no more cracks like that, thank you. Although I am going to speak to the C.C. about overweight officers. It looks inefficient, and it’s bound to slow them down in a pursuit.”

  Liam patted his stomach smugly. He’d lost his paunch two years before and managed to keep it off.

  “And that’s enough virtue signalling as well. Just tell me what he said. It obviously made an impression on you.”

  Liam closed his eyes and thought for a moment. When he re-opened them, he recited with a snarl, “‘He was a townie, written all over him, so what was he doing here anyway? Asking for trouble and he got it, that’s what.’” He added a completely gratuitous, “bastard”, at the end.

  Craig nodded. “I agree with the bastard part, but I’m more interested in whether he was right, and if so, how he knew.”

  Liam was getting confused. “Right about what?”

  “That the boy came from a town.”

  Liam scoffed. “Ach, that’s easy. He probably was right, ’cos country kids recognise each other. Our clothes and haircuts are different to townies, and we look healthier than them-”

  Craig interrupted, gawping at him. “You look like you’ve just been exhumed some days!”

  Liam gave him an offended look. “That’s only because I’ve been living in a filthy dirty city for decades. But when I was a kid in Crossgar, now that was different. We were outdoors all the time, so we caught the sun, and we were always active, walking and riding and climbing trees, so we were strong, muscly. That poor wee lad in the photo had arms and legs like twigs.”

  Craig nodded and slid down off the wall. “Thanks for the explanation, but anthropologically sound as no doubt all of that is, we need a closer look at the boy.”

  ****

  Carson High School. Ligoniel Road, North Belfast. 1.10 p.m.

  George Alden lifted a finger to count the small heads in front of him. When he reached the end and found they only numbered nineteen he repeated the process more slowly, only to arrive at the same conclusion again; a teenage boy was missing from his science class and he had a good idea who it was. He lifted the roll book to go through the names individually, already knowing that the effort would prove redundant. His errant number twenty would prove to be Harry Johnston, as sure as eggs were eggs. The middle-aged schoolmaster made the effort anyway, and after five minutes of, “Present, sir”s, were over he nodded his charges to sit.

  “Has anyone seen Johnston today?”

  A breaking adolescent voice called out from the back. “I saw him in the canteen at half-twelve.”

  A mere forty minutes before.

  Now George Alden, a teacher by vocation and his deepest instinct, driven to imparting useful information to his charges whether they wanted it or not, and in his heart an optimist who believed that there was no such thing as a lost cause, would have loved to have said that he was surprised by Harry Johnston’s disappearance just before his double science class, but sadly he could not.

  Harry was an amiable enough boy, but, although not the dullest knife in the box, he had struggled with science from the beginning. That alone mightn’t have been sufficient for him to ‘beak off’ the class, but Harry had two other contributing personality traits; the boy combined a short attention span with a desire for adventure, often chasing anything that seemed to promise excitement to the exclusion of all else, including a regard for his own safety. As he’d told the boy’s Aunt Josie many times, unless they broke him of that habit it was only a matter of time before Harry followed the wrong trail to his doom.

  Still, duty was duty and he had to do his, so Alden beckoned to the nearest responsible boy.

  “Watch the class for a moment, please, Kennaway. I need to go to the principal’s office.”

  Go to the office and tell the headmaster what he’d told him twice the week before, that Harry Johnston had gone AWOL and they needed to call his home.

  ****

  The C.C.U. 1.30 p.m.

  “That’s Nicky, and…” Annette moved her pointing finger to the left, “…that’s our senior analyst, Davy.”

  “The hipster?”

  Annette nodded down at her charge. Standing beside the petite constable made her feel like a baby elephant, but it made her feel strangely superior to her as well. She moved the fickle finger of fate towards the detectives who were present.

  “The one with the spiky hair is D.C.I. Andy Angel.”

  Mary stifled a laugh. “Angel? That’s his real name? I bet you’ve got all sorts of nicknames for him. Saint Andy, Heavenly-”

  Annette silenced her with a glance, but secretly wondered why they hadn’t given Andy such an obvious nickname. Then she realised that none of them had nicknames, well, not that she knew of, and wondered why not again. Maybe they just weren’t that sort of squad? Her sudden remembrance that Liam always called Ash ‘the Smurf’, and Davy ‘the boy’, came almost as a relief, but why did such playfulness only extend to the squad’s civilian staff?

  Before she could answer her own questions, a wave from Andy made her jump.

  Annette had reckoned that by standing ju
st outside the double doors to the squad-room no-one would see them, and she could identify people covertly to Mary before they entered, by pointing through the glass. Somehow the D.I. had completely forgotten that transparency went two ways, so to say that she was surprised when the detective gave them a big wave was an understatement.

  “He can see us! How can he see us?”

  Mary gawped at her, wondering if it was a trick question. When she saw Annette’s genuine surprise she tapped the glass door.

  “Because it’s glass.” Adding unnecessarily, or perhaps not. “Glass… is… see-through.”

  The exaggerated slowness of her words broke through Annette’s fog; her two-year-old daughter Carina had an ear infection and hadn’t been sleeping much, so neither had she.

  When she realised her mistake she snapped defensively, scrabbling for a way to cover her embarrassment.

  “I know glass is see-through, I just meant that Andy’s… Andy’s far away.”

  Ten feet didn’t seem far away to her, but Mary thought she’d better let that one pass. She gestured at the door handle.

  “Should we go in now? They might think we’re being rude. Pointing, I mean.”

  Her only answer was Annette marching through the glass doors and taking up position at the front of the room.

  “Everyone. This is Detective Constable Mary Li, who’s joining us. She’s just escaped from the Traffic Division, the rest she can tell you herself.”

  A chorus of “Hello”s followed as Annette showed the new entrant to the desk recently vacated by Rhonda. While Mary introduced herself to everyone Annette crossed to Nicky’s desk, preparing for the inevitable questions. They didn’t take long to come. The PA leaned forward conspiratorially and whispered in her husky voice.

  “So? What do you make of her?”

  Annette gave her a look that said she was undecided. “Bright, sharper than most, but a little bit tricky. I think there could be sparks, but she’ll be good at the work.”

  Nicky sat back again, sniffing. “She’ll need to get those earrings out.”

  “I’ve already told her that, but I think she’s going to hang on to them until she hears it from the chief.”

  The PA made a mental note to inform Craig of the infraction as soon as he reappeared, then she lifted a file marked Public Prosecution Service and pushed it into Annette’s hand before she had a chance to run away.

  “The chief wants you to check all the officer statements on the Drake case, especially for anyone who’s testifying in court.”

  Annette was just about to object when something occurred to her. Going over their statements face-to-face with every team member would be the perfect way for Mary to get to know the squad.

  ****

  Castlederg Station.

  The interior of the rural station fulfilled the promise of its façade, with exposed wooden beams that looked centuries old and a hearth well blackened from years of smoke. While Liam admired the embossed brass fender surrounding it Craig approached the reception desk, to see a youngish woman in uniform standing behind it, her epaulettes adorned with inspector’s pips.

  She spoke before Craig could. “Are you the one who hit my constable or is he?” Her sharp indication of Liam said that she favoured him.

  Craig raised an eyebrow and stared at her for a moment, before replying in a dry tone. “Your constable slipped and fell while pursuing someone.”

  She wasn’t diverted. “And when he hit the ground the second time?”

  He kept his voice steady. “He fell the second time as well, just as D.C.I. Cullen was reaching out to help him up.”

  He thought he caught a slight flicker in her eyes as he mentioned Liam’s rank, so he decided to make it two for two and reached inside his jacket for his warrant card.

  “I’m D.C.S. Craig, and this is D.C.I. Cullen, Belfast Murder Squad. We’ve come about the boy found in the forest yesterday.”

  The woman stood so still that for a moment Craig wondered if she’d heard him, but as he hated mentioning his rank he was loath to say it again, so instead he jogged her from her trance by asking who she was. The answer came in a far more subdued tone than before, saying that the inspector’s moaning constable hadn’t bothered to tell her who they were when he’d complained.

  “Inspector Miranda Hunter.”

  “Sir.”

  The voice that had said it wasn’t Craig’s, but since Liam had finished his perusal of the station’s antiques he’d decided to join the fray. He stared down at the inspector in a pointed way, until finally she gave in.

  “Sir.”

  Liam grinned at her. “There now. That wasn’t so painful, was it?”

  Craig responded before Hunter could, moving them quickly on.

  “We’ve been asked by the Chief Constable to take over the boy’s murder-”

  He was cut off instantly, her words surprising him.

  “Murder? Who said anything about murder? There were no obvious injuries. For all we know he could have just died of cold.”

  Some recent nights had hit temperatures of below zero.

  Craig’s mind raced. The C.C. hadn’t mentioned the cause of death and, as his mind ran back over their encounter, he realised that Flanagan hadn’t used the word murder either. But he must have believed that the death was one or why else involve a murder squad? Then there was the deer heads, and…

  As the detective ran through what he knew his certainty returned.

  “The C.C. has called in a murder squad, so it’s murder until we prove otherwise, Inspector. Now, we need to see the body, and every bit of paperwork that you have on the case so far.”

  Hunter still didn’t look convinced, but she shrugged and turned to enter a back room, returning a moment later with a thin file. Craig opened it, scanned the single page inside and then slid it along the desk to Liam with a scowl. A moment later the D.C.I. was looking similarly unimpressed.

  “Is this it? You’ve had this boy’s body since yesterday morning and this is all you’ve got? A paragraph from the couple who found him and a note that says, ‘awaiting PM’? What sort of show are you running down here, between obese constables and-”

  Craig raised a hand to cut him off, before he hung himself with a politically incorrect rope. Then he waded in himself.

  “I’d like to hear your thoughts on the cause of death, Inspector. Even the tentative ones. And where is the copy of the boy’s fingerprints, his description for the national register of runaways, the diagram showing his distinguishing marks for database searches? Have you done anything except take some lovers’ words that they found the boy just lying there dead?”

  His voice had increased in intensity if not in volume as he’d spoken, and Liam, who recognised the signs, took a big step back, wondering whether the impending explosion would be modified significantly because it was a woman who was the target of Craig’s ire. To his mild disappointment but not a great deal of surprise it was. Instead of the bang that Liam had been waiting for, Craig turned sharply on his heel and exited the station, to vent his temper through a series of hard kicks on the wheels of his new car.

  “Here, watch your alloys, boss. They’ll mark.”

  He abandoned further warnings when Craig stalked off down the country road, only reappearing a few minutes later when his anger had waned. Liam was sitting on the Audi’s bonnet holding the flimsy casefile and gazing up at a nearby bird as he did, and he continued his nature study as he waited for his boss to speak.

  “Un-bloody-believable.”

  Liam transferred his gaze from his feathered friend to Craig.

  “Yep. Still, I suppose to be fair they’re not murder ’tecs. I don’t imagine they see much of any crime except sheep rustling down here.”

  The image made Craig smile despite himself. He took a seat alongside his deputy, carrying on in a more contrite tone.

  “Was I hard on her?”

  The D.C.I. rolled his eyes. “Ach, get away with you. You’re never hard on women
, you know that. Neither am I, not even when they deserve it.” He gave a martyred sigh. “We’re fools to ourselves, we are. The fairer sex has us by the-”

  Just then Miranda Hunter appeared, looking shame-faced. She walked across to where they were sitting and blurted out an apology.

  “I’m sorry, sir, I really am… This is my first post as inspector. I only came down here four weeks ago, and… I’ve never handled a murder investigation before.” She looked contritely at each of them in turn, her voice taking on a pleading tone. “But I’d love to learn. If you’d consider letting me tag along.”

  Liam spoke first. “Who’d watch the station? Tell me it won’t be that idiot we met.”

  She shook her head and a strand of glossy auburn hair escaped its chignon, reminding the deputy of the way his seven-year-old daughter’s did from her ponytail at the end of every school day, no matter how many ribbons her mum employed.

  “No. I have a good sergeant. He’ll take over.”

  Craig had been staring at her, expressionless. Now he asked a question.

  “Where were you before this, Inspector?”

  “I was a W.P.C. in Belfast and Newry, then a sergeant for six years in Londonderry. Under D.C.I. White for the last two.”

  Craig gave a small smile, He knew Andy White well from his time in the Drugs unit at the C.C.U. and he was good cop. He’d hailed from the north-west originally and his aim had always been to move back home, so it looked like he’d made it at last.

  His next question was a test, and everyone knew it.

  “Did you see much death in those years, Inspector?”

  Hunter tossed up whether to exaggerate or tell the truth. Something told her that the pair would be quick to spot a liar, so she decided to stick to the facts.