The Running of the Deer

by Catriona King

  As she locked her apartment’s front door and walked to her taxi, parking near the courts now costing an arm and a leg and she needed all her limbs, the journalist felt a bubble of excitement rise in her chest. Maggie Clarke, author. It had a nice ring.

  ****

  The C.C.U.

  While Maggie was preening herself pre-court, her fiancé was a mile away tearing out his considerable wealth of hair. Craig had called him at home the night before with yet more things to do and wanting all the answers yesterday, and with just him and Ash on the job that was going to be easier to request than to achieve.

  Just as he thought it Davy had a flash of inspiration, and he flew on his long legs across the room, landing in front of Annette’s desk. The inspector gazed up at him through wine-weary eyes; neither of her almost adult children had been available to babysit at short notice the evening before, so she and Gemma had had to make do with a DVD and several glasses of Merlot at home. Mike Augustus didn’t know it yet, but he was going to pay for his girlfriend’s ruined evening, and it was going to cost him a lot more than twenty quid.

  Annette mustered a smile for the analyst, lack lustre maybe, but it was still there. After all, apart from being a man on a day when she hated the whole sex, Davy hadn’t done anything wrong.

  “How can I help you, Davy?”

  “Mary.”

  “What about her?”

  “She came from Traffic, didn’t s…she?”

  “She did.”

  Annette liked the conversation so far, not only had it involved few words in short bites, something that wasn’t straining her aching brain, but it sounded as if the analyst was bringing work for Mary rather than for her.

  “So, she w…would have worked with computers a lot.”

  “That’s my understanding.” Annette was curious now. “Why?”

  “It’s just…I was wondering maybe if I could-”

  “Borrow her?” Annette gestured cheerfully at the girl on the next desk. “Be my guest.”

  Mary had resumed her incessant questioning of the day before as soon as Annette had entered the squad-room that morning, and it was making her sore head worse. The young constable reminded her of her Amy and Jordan when they were toddlers, with her ‘why this?’ and ‘why that?’, and Annette’s heart sank as she’d realised that in only a very few months Carina would hit that stage.

  In a rare moment of indiscretion, the D.I. leaned forward confidingly.

  “You can have her until the chief gets back, and gladly. To be honest, she’s hurting my head.”

  Davy smiled, recognising the signs. He’d had plenty of red wine hangovers himself.

  “Great. Thanks.” He hesitated, before making another request. “Could you tell her she’ll be working to me for a while? It’s just…in my experience, cops don’t s…seem to like taking orders from non-cops.”

  Annette tapped her nose and then wondered immediately why she’d done it; it seemed that the effects of her hangover weren’t merely confided to a headache, they included conspiratorial clichés as well. She rose gingerly to her feet.

  “She’ll be with you in a minute.”

  As the analyst returned to his desk she girded herself for another round of “why?”s as she approached Mary’s desk, but to her surprise her, “I’d like you to help the analysts today. Until the chief gets back at least, please”, was met with an eager nod.

  Annette didn’t know it yet, but Mary Li couldn’t stand having nothing to do, so if her choice was between spending all day watching Nicky eye up her piercings or helping Davy, then it was an easy one.

  She dragged her chair across the floor and set it in front of the analyst’s desk.

  “What can I do to help?”

  The hipster smiled at her gratefully. “OK, can you use the Police National Computer?”

  “I did computing and linguistics at Uni, so probably. Is it just like any other database?”

  “Yes, once you’re in.”

  She stood up again, lifting her chair. “OK, then, sign my computer in and give me your list. I’ll do my best.” Without warning she leaned forward, peering into Davy’s brown eyes. “You’re a Pisces, aren’t you?”

  He was taken aback, not so much by the personal question as by the fact that she believed in astrology, something that he saw as pseudo-science and frankly, crap. Too surprised to speak Davy nodded that she was in fact correct, part of him wondering how she’d guessed.

  Mary nodded smugly. “I’m always right. You just had to be.”

  Without further explanation she turned on her heel, leaving the analyst wondering whether she was planning on reading people’s tea-leaves over lunch. Ash had been watching the exchange and as the D.C. returned to her desk he leaned across.

  “She’s cute.”

  Davy raised an eyebrow. “And you’re with Ruby.”

  Ash wasn’t having it. “Who made you the morality police? You sound like my mum, and she’s sixty!”

  It took the senior analyst aback. Was he being preachy? And if he was, then when had he become so staid? Embarrassed, Davy retorted more like he thought a twenty-something should.

  “Anyway, she’s a whack job.”

  Ash was intrigued.

  “Is she? How? Anyway, whacky girls can be exciting.”

  Davy didn’t engage, already returned to his work, part of him remembering nostalgically the days when he’d found whacky attractive as well.

  The junior analyst sighed meaningfully at the conversational dead-end and returned to his computer, wondering idly about Mary Li’s foibles and whether she would make him wear suits to please her like Ruby did, or whether she had different fantasies entirely…

  ****

  Belfast City Centre.

  Kyle Spence shrugged his shoulders in the VW Golf’s passenger seat, and then he shrugged them again, making Andy’s lips twitch into a knowing smile. Whether Kyle realised he was doing it was debatable, but his repeated shrugging, as if he was literally trying to throw something off, was as loud a ‘bugger off’ as the D.C.I. had ever heard. The spook fancied himself as a Lone Ranger, and Andy was pretty sure that having a sidekick, especially one who ranked higher than him, wasn’t his idea of a good day.

  To counter the former spy’s reluctance, or perhaps to wind him up even more, Andy asked innocently, “So where do you think that I should start?”

  He hadn’t needed any emphasis on the ‘I’ to stoke Kyle’s flame; the D.I. obligingly combusted all on his own, swinging around in the passenger seat with his grey eyes narrowing.

  “I’m the Intelligence Officer, so I should take the lead! You wouldn’t know where to start!”

  Andy hadn’t minded the first sentence, but he railed at the second. He pulled the car sharply over to the side of the road and turned towards his junior, so that they were almost nose to nose inside the small car.

  “Now listen to me, Inspector. I’ll accept your knowledge of Intelligence if you accept that I’m the D.C.I. You get to take the lead, but only because I’m allowing it. Understand?”

  As Kyle immediately went to bite the hand that was feeding him Andy turned back to face the road, repeating his last word, “Understand?”, and adding, “Otherwise I’ll call the chief and tell him that I’ll be checking out the facility on my own and you’ve gone back to the office to help Nicky file. Take your pick.”

  He didn’t need to look to know that Kyle was racing through his options: be subordinate to him or spend the day back at his desk, with a bawling out from Craig to look forward to the moment that he returned.

  But if Andy had been waiting for an apologetic, “Yes, sir”, or even an, “OK”, he already knew that he’d be waiting until Hell became a fridge. So, as the D.C.I. was nothing if not a pragmatist, he accepted the growl that came from the passenger seat a few seconds later as the politest assent he was going to get and restarted his car.

  ****

  County Tyrone. 10 a.m.

  As Des set off for Killeter Fore
st accompanied by the two pathologists and Miranda, who’d wanted to see where their victim had died again, to place his injuries in context, Craig and Liam were already halfway up the M1, heading to the C.C.U., via Police Headquarters.

  As they reached Sprucefield Shopping Park Craig pulled in, making Liam rub his hands gleefully.

  “Second breakfast. Excellent.”

  Craig climbed out of the car and reappeared a moment later at the passenger door, opening it wide.

  “No, not second breakfast, we’re swopping seats. And anyway, you only had your first breakfast at the hotel two hours ago! I honestly don’t know how you can eat so much.”

  “I’m six-feet-six! It takes a lot of fuel just to keep me upright.”

  Craig’s eyes widened; the thought had never occurred to him, but his opinion on its lack of credibility soon became clear.

  “Rubbish. Anyway, get out. I need you to drive the rest of the way, so that I can make some calls.”

  He beckoned his deputy to climb out, but was met with folded arms and a stubborn shake of Liam’s head.

  “Second breakfast first.”

  Craig sighed. “We don’t have time for this, Liam. I need to see the Chief Con before we go back and brief the squad.”

  The D.C.I. changed his tactics to wheedling. “Ten minutes? I can shave that off driving up the motorway.”

  Craig knew that he could and would, regardless of what it did to his car’s engine, but as they were wasting time arguing and he knew that Liam would moan all the way back if he didn’t get his way, he gave in, motioning the D.C.I. into the nearest coffee shop and ordering the strongest espresso that they had.

  He decided to use the time it took for Liam to demolish two croissants gainfully.

  “Nine hollow heads. Nine people killing one. Nine men? No, it wouldn’t have taken nine men for a boy that size. So, what?”

  Liam dashed some flakes of pastry from his mouth before he answered. “Women? Nah, it wouldn’t have taken nine grown women to kill him either. Maybe two or three, although if they used lots of stones they might have needed the extra people just to carry them across.”

  Craig considered. “And they all wore heads?” But the point had some merit, so he didn’t dismiss it out of hand. “Maybe you have something there.”

  Liam froze, a piece of buttered croissant three inches from his mouth. “What, you really think women killed him?”

  Craig sipped his tar-black coffee, thinking for so long that by the time he responded Liam’s croissants were no more.

  “Let’s think this through…nine hollow deer heads says nine people wearing them. Why else would the heads have been there?”

  “And why leave them behind?”

  Craig nodded eagerly. “Yes. Good. Why abandon the heads? I doubt they had a reserve supply. Perhaps someone interrupted them during the attack, or…” grudgingly “…perhaps there was some symbolism to it.”

  Liam furrowed his forehead. “Nah. If they’d been interrupted they’d have left the stones too, not taken the time to lift them off the boy and disappear with them. They wanted the heads to be seen.”

  Craig nodded. He was right. This was why he liked having Liam as his deputy; he was good at pointing out what he’d got wrong without any malice or competitiveness. The malice-free D.C.I. was still speaking.

  “And maybe they knew they could get the heads back too?”

  “Except that they were taken by the government.”

  Liam gave him a ‘so what?’ look. “That doesn’t necessarily rule it out.” He returned to his favourite subject. “Symbolism, now that makes more sense than an interruption. That could be why they left the heads. As part of a ritual.”

  “Not devil worship again. Please.”

  Liam shook his head. “No, not that, for now. I know you’ll think this is weird, but it feels like this was tribal. You know, like something that would happen in the jungle somewhere.”

  Craig’s hand slammed down on the table so hard that people turned to look. He ignored them, too busy with Liam’s idea.

  “Tribal! Yes, that’s brilliant, Liam, that’s exactly what it feels like. A tribal ritual of some sort. Remember how Lokken described the music? Throbbing, tribal…And all those stones…Didn’t the ancient Aztecs kill human sacrifices like that?”

  He scribbled some notes on a paper napkin and shoved it into his pocket.

  “Davy can help us find information on tribes, but let’s get back to the heads for a minute. They wanted them to be seen, but I don’t think they were discarding them. I’m sure they thought they would get them back somehow, which brings us back to the call that Underwood received. But Ash is already on that, so let’s get back to the female angle. Give me your thinking on that again.”

  Liam topped up his tea as he answered. “OK, so, the boy was tiny, so if there were nine killers like the heads suggested, then why were they all needed? Nine men would have been excessive just to kill a kid, so after gathering the stones maybe they just danced about?”

  The image made Craig smile despite the macabre circumstances, so Liam continued, gratified by having an attentive audience. Work was the only place he really got one nowadays, with Danni so busy with Erin and Rory that she was often too tired to listen when he got home, and the kids not interested in anything that wasn’t a cartoon. If he’d looked like SpongeBob he’d have been well in. Not that he was complaining about his life, no way; he had always wanted a family, and he was mature enough to know that he shouldn’t bitch about it now. But having someone’s undivided attention was a luxury, so he was going to enjoy it while he could.

  “OK, so, I don’t see nine men doing it, but if there’d been nine women, it would probably have taken three, maybe four of them to secure the boy and kill him, and maybe the others wouldn’t have minded the gathering stones and dancing bit as much as men.”

  Craig made a face, not about his sexism but about something more primal.

  “Except that I really can’t see nine women all being happy about murdering a child, especially in such a violent manner. Women’s weapons of choice are usually poison, or at a pinch suffocation or drowning.” He paused for a moment, making a mental substitution. “What if the killers were around the victim’s own age? Teenage girls, or maybe even boys. If they’d been in their early teens they mightn’t have been strong enough to carry more than one boulder at a time.”

  Liam nodded eagerly. “That could fit.” Then his face twisted in disgust. “The little shits! How could they do it?”

  Craig waved him down. “Before you go racing off down that path, we don’t know yet that we’re right. Let’s think this through. Nine early to mid-teens girls or boys, wearing deer heads, which are pretty heavy remember, bring this boy to the clearing to be killed. Some hold him down while the others carry the stones.”

  He stopped abruptly, shaking his head. “No. Where did the stones go afterwards? It would have taken kids ages to move them.”

  “Maybe we can work that one out. What if they had a car?”

  “Couldn’t have got between the trees to enter the clearing.”

  “Parked nearby, maybe? Like the place where we parked.”

  “And walked that distance carrying heavy stones? Kids? It’s unlikely.”

  Liam tutted. “Now you’re being picky. Some other method of transport then, like that cart we were talking about. Something that could have gotten through the trees. And maybe it wasn’t kids. We haven’t proved that yet.”

  Craig hemmed and hawed. “No tyre tracks… but I suppose they could have wiped them… OK, let’s come back to that. What I want to know is why kill the boy at all? What had he done that was so bad? And if it was a group, who told them to do it? There’s always a leader, even in a democracy.”

  Liam shrugged. “Maybe there was an older kid there as well. Maybe they drove the vehicle.”

  Craig raised a hand to halt him; they were trying to follow too many threads at once. Were the killers young or old, male or
female? Where had the stones gone, and how long after their victim was killed had they been removed? Had the killers used a vehicle or carried the stones by hand?

  He took out his napkin again and made more notes; they needed a full search of the area for the stones and tyre tracks. And if the killers were young, had they just gone home afterwards, as casually as if they’d returned from a kickabout or a ballet class? What sort of parents wouldn’t have noticed something amiss? Or were there nine more missing kids out there? He shook his head. No, not possible; there would have been someone calling for a nationwide search.

  He reached for his coffee cup only to see that it was empty, and Liam’s voice broke through his thoughts.

  “Do you want another one?”

  As Craig focused on his deputy’s solid reality, it brought him back to earth and to his feet.

  “No. We need to go. I need Miranda to set up a search.”

  ****

  The Police Intelligence Section. Malone Road, South Belfast.

  Kyle Spence emerged from the revolving doors of the Police Intelligence building wearing a smug grin, and with a swagger that said he was ‘the man.’ He was tempted to raise a hand for Andy to high-five him, but guessed the D.C.I. was probably choosy about who he awarded that accolade to, so he avoided the embarrassment of being left hanging and climbed back into the car.

  Andy rose to the bait set by the D.I.’s body language.

  “OK. You obviously got something from Roy, so what did you find out? And don’t even think of withholding from me, Kyle, or it’ll be Nicky and her files.”

  D.C.I. Roy Barrett was the Director of Police Intelligence, although ultimately the whole section now reported to Craig, but Barrett had been Kyle’s service boss for years and wanted him back in spooky harness, so whatever the D.I. asked for he received. Given that Craig ruled both worlds Andy knew that he could have got the intel anyway, but he might have only got the abridged version and that could have cost them time.