The Running of the Deer

by Catriona King

  Kyle was still grinning. “The Tyrone facility is called Appside. Barrett checked with the Ministry of Defence and the place is exactly what Craig thought it was.”

  Andy gave an agonised groan. Their version of Porton Down was called Appside; Appside Down... Either they hadn’t noticed what it sounded like or there were some real jokers at the Ministry of Death.

  It was another moment before the D.C.I. noticed Kyle’s use of Craig’s surname. The little shit still couldn’t bring himself to call him chief or boss.

  “What do they do there?”

  “Well, Barrett didn’t know the specifics, although he said he’d try to find out for me, but he did say it’s a jointly funded facility involved in”, he raised his fingers in mocking parentheses, “researching into and monitoring non-traditional threats.”

  “Non-traditional? Is that what they’re calling biological, chemical and radioactive weapons nowadays?”

  “It would seem so.”

  Andy took a deep breath before asking a question that he was pretty sure he didn’t want to hear the answer to.

  “Researching and monitoring… OK… but are they developing weapons there as well?”

  Kyle’s malicious smile said that he was excited by the idea, confirming Andy’s long held suspicion that they had a high functioning sociopath on the team, albeit not a violent one. Yet. He was wondering if he should discuss his diagnosis with Craig when Kyle answered his question with a shrug.

  “I’d say that’s what researching means, wouldn’t you?”

  The D.C.I. wanted to throw up. He’d seen images of some of the injuries such weapons inflicted, and the idea that men created them deliberately disgusted him.

  “When will D.C.I. Barrett get everything to us?”

  “He’s on it now, so I’d say tomorrow at the latest. He did suggest we look for aerial images of the area.”

  “Like the chief said.”

  Before Kyle could say something derogatory about Craig, Andy threw the car into a U-turn and headed for Aerial Support.

  ****

  Police Headquarters.

  After thirty more minutes of Liam driving and Craig constantly on the phone, tasking Miranda to organise a search of the forest around the clearing for stones and tyre tracks, and allocating more work to the squad, he finally pocketed his mobile just as the Liam drove into the carpark at Police Headquarters. The D.C.I. threw Craig his car keys and climbed out.

  “Smooth ride, but you might want to get your stereo checked.”

  Craig glanced at the sound system and then joined him outside.

  “Why?”

  “Because someone’s loaded it up with crap.”

  He strolled away chuckling, with Craig still extolling the merits of John Coltrane, Sinatra and Snow Patrol as they entered the building and ascended the stairs to Sean Flanagan’s office suite. When they reached the top Liam yanked open the door shaking his head.

  “Now what you want are some classics. The Glums belting out on the motorway really clears your head.”

  Before Craig could ask the obvious question, Liam sang a few bars of ‘Bring Him Home’ in his warm baritone, making it clear that by The Glums he had actually meant Les Misérables. Craig was torn between laughing at the slang and incredulity. He chose the latter.

  “You like musicals? How come I’m only discovering this?”

  “’Cos you’d have taken the piss before.”

  “And you think that I won’t now?”

  Before the D.C.I. could respond, Donna Scott, Flanagan’s PA, stood up at her desk to greet them.

  “Go on in, gentlemen. Oh, and Superintendent, Nicky’s just been on and asked if you could call her back as soon as you’ve finished.”

  Liam sidled across and gave the short secretary a nudge that nearly knocked her off her feet.

  “So, you two are speaking again, eh?”

  The PA looked up at him, uncomprehending. “What?”

  Craig clarified. “He means that you and Nicky had a falling out. You know, over some dress.”

  Donna rolled her large, slightly protruding eyes. “That was last year! We made it up before Christmas. Honestly, boys, do try to keep up.”

  Craig burst out laughing, as much at Liam’s offended expression as at her words. A polite knock later they were inside the C.C.’s office, remaining on their feet while Flanagan finished a call. As he set down the phone he nodded them both to seats.

  “Coffee?”

  Liam was about to accept but Craig said no for them both, earning him a dirty look, so Flanagan straightened his shirt sleeves and rested back in his chair, sipping at a cup he’d been drinking before they’d arrived. It was seldom that they saw the big boss without his jacket, but the pile of paper in front of him said that he’d been hard at work.

  “You wanted to see me, Craig?”

  “Yes, sir. I wanted to ask you a question.”

  He omitted saying, “face to face, because then I can see if I’m being fed a line”, but Flanagan heard it anyway and smiled.

  “The same one you asked yesterday, by any chance?”

  Craig smiled too, the manoeuvring amusing him.

  “No, not that question, sir. I’ve realised that if you had known our victim was linked to someone prominent then you would have known the boy’s name and told us.”

  Flanagan nodded. “Correct. But…?”

  “But you have seen someone die like this before, and that’s why you wanted us on the investigation. Did you work on a similar case by any chance?”

  The Chief Constable studied his snow-white shirt cuffs for a beat too long before replying, and when he did it was with a catch in his voice.

  “You’re right, of course. I did work on a similar case, a dead boy eight years ago. But I was promoted to Assistant Chief two days in and taken out of the field.”

  Liam sat forward, curious. “Were you leading on it?”

  “No. An old friend of yours was, D.C.S. Harrison. I was just there as an observer.”

  D.C.S. Terry, Teflon, Harrison was Craig’s erstwhile boss and they loathed each other. The sixty-year-old divorcee was a lecherous snob who was quick to take credit for others’ work and pass on any blame to his subordinates, and he viewed Craig as a rival who he would love to destroy. He particularly resented his life-long friendship with John Winter, who wielded a great deal of power in the Northern Irish justice system.

  It was all that Liam could do to stop himself blurting out, “Teflon? That pillock!”, and Craig knew he wouldn’t be as restrained once they’d left the room.

  He jumped in before his deputy’s self-control broke.

  “Was anyone ever arrested, sir?”

  Flanagan shook his head. “No-one. I checked before I came to see you. Other cases took over, so it remains unsolved.”

  Craig was surprised, and he didn’t hide it. “Didn’t the boy’s family object?”

  Flanagan looked solemn. “No-one claimed him. It was surmised that he’d been living rough on the streets, so…”

  Another one of the thousands of children in the UK and Ireland who disappeared every year.

  Craig kept going.

  “We’d like to ask you a few quick questions, sir, to establish any initial similarities with our case.”

  The C.C. rubbed his temples wearily and nodded him on, and within five minutes they knew that the first boy, also mid-teens, had been found in Erb’s Clearing as well. Unclaimed and unnamed, the adolescent’s cause of death had been listed as asphyxia.

  “Was the boy strangled, suffocated… or perhaps crushed, sir?”

  The question made Flanagan sit forward sharply. “Why do you say that?”

  As Craig outlined John’s findings on their victim, it earned him a weary shake of Flanagan’s salt and pepper head.

  “I knew there was something odd about our death. Odder than the place he was found in that was.”

  “So you think your victim might have been crushed too?”

  �
�You tell me, or rather get Doctor Winter to tell me. The original PM report listed several, what appeared to be random, fractures, but no conclusion was ever drawn. The pathologist put a general heading of asphyxia on him, but it never got further than that.”

  Craig was leaning forward now too, so eagerly it was as if he was straining at a leash. “Were there deer heads at your scene?”

  Flanagan frowned. “I read that there was one found somewhere in the clearing, but I couldn’t swear to how close it was to the body, so you’ll need to check. I never got into the detail of the case because I was called away so soon, but I do remember reading in the file that some animal blood was found close to the boy, although I’m not sure they ever identified the species.”

  It was all too similar for comfort, and it suggested that had Terry Harrison done a better job eight years’ before, their teenage victim might still be alive now.

  Craig took a deep breath before making a request that he knew would bring conflict with Harrison. “Do I have your permission to take over the twenty-ten case to look for links?”

  Flanagan gave a tight smile. “That’s what I’d been hoping you would do.”

  “It may involve Doctor Winter having to exhume the first victim.”

  “I understand. The only person likely to object is D.C.S. Harrison, and you’re welcome to refer him to me.”

  Craig gave a cold smile. “I can handle D.C.S. Harrison, sir.”

  Flanagan rose to his feet, prompting the others to do the same, then he stared at Craig with a warning.

  “I don’t want a war between you and Harrison, Craig. I’m well aware of your history together.”

  “I’ll be charm itself.”

  The C.C. burst out laughing. “Well, now, I wouldn’t go that far. Just solve both cases with the minimum of superintendents’ blood hitting the wall and that’ll be grand.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Erb’s Clearing, Killeter Forest.

  Des Marsham stared hard at the flat forest floor, its earth parched despite the forest’s heavy annual rainfall, a testament to how efficient the trees overhead were at sucking moisture up through their roots. As the scientist’s slightly downward sloping eyes scanned the area for signs of recent human presence, the perimeter of the clearing was being walked slowly and methodically by John and Mike, neither of whom uttered a word. It was as if the place had become sacred somehow, the plants and insects solemn witnesses to a young boy’s demise. Witnesses who unfortunately would never talk.

  Miranda had returned to her station to organise Craig’s search, leaving the three men walking and staring for forty minutes when their silence was shattered by the loud ringing of John’s phone. He lifted a hand in apology for the disturbance and answered it in a whispered voice.

  “John Winter.”

  “Why are you whispering?”

  “Marc? I’m trying not to disturb Des. He’s doing his earth communing thing. Staring at the ground to see what it tells him.”

  Craig pictured the scientist swathed in the clearing’s morning mist, incongruous amongst the surrounding earth tones in his bright white CSI suit.

  “OK, then you listen and I’ll talk, John. Do you have a paper and pen?”

  John removed some from his pocket. “Go ahead.”

  Craig outlined their discussion with the Chief Constable and was rewarded by a sharp intake of breath.

  “He died here as well? Eight years ago? In exactly the same way?”

  “That’s something I need you to confirm. The C.C. wants you on both cases; the earlier one was never closed so we’re taking it over as a link to this new one. It might mean you’ll need to exhume the first boy.”

  The pathologist’s “Mmmm…” was non-committal, but Craig pressed on anyway.

  “But first, there’s something I was wondering. How sure are you that our victim was actually killed where he was found?”

  The response was complete silence and then he heard John start to walk. After a good sixty seconds of pacing and thinking the medic stopped again and gave his reply.

  “Almost certain. The lividity pattern on his back matches the general roughness here in the clearing, and there were some crushed insects and leaves on him as well. We still need to identify them, but I’m convinced that they’ll match the ones here.”

  “OK, let me know once you’ve confirmed it. I agree that it probably was his place of death, but we just need to make sure.” He paused and then repeated his earlier words, this time making them a clear question. “Will you work the earlier case with us?”

  “Yesss…”

  “But?”

  “I’ve got something important to do this afternoon, so I can’t start on it until tomorrow, and you’ll need Des as well.”

  Before Craig could be nosy John shouted across to the Head of Forensics, completely shattering his focus.

  “Des, can you work a second case for Marc? It’s an open one from eight years ago that bears similarities to this one. You too, Mike?”

  Craig couldn’t hear the replies, coming as they did from several feet away, but John’s, “We’ll meet you at nine tomorrow, at the lab”, said that the answers had been yes.

  ****

  The Police Aerial Support Unit (The ASU). Holywood, County Down.

  Andy Angel stood as far back from the glass map table as he could while still managing to see the images beneath it. The LED display had a strobing effect that irritated his eyes, but more than that, he’d had migraine headaches since he’d been a teenager and it was just the sort of thing that could bring one on.

  Kyle on the other hand was pressing his nose so hard against the glass that he looked like he’d go through it at any moment, and Andy had a sudden image of the spook appearing in miniature on top of the building they were viewing.

  He turned to D.C.I. Theo Sheridan, the commander of the unit. “These are the exact coordinates we gave you?”

  It was said with curiosity, not doubt, and Sheridan took it as such. “Yep. Why? Not what you expected?”

  Andy took a tentative step forward making their host smile.

  “Migraines by any chance?”

  Andy was surprised. “How did you know?”

  “I get them myself. Don’t worry, the strobing won’t start one off, or at least it never has mine. I couldn’t work here if it did.”

  It reassured the D.C.I. enough to make him peer more closely through the glass, after he’d jerked a thumb to make Kyle get out of the way. He pointed down at the building and the dense woodland around it.

  “Those are the Nissen huts the chief described all right, but I can only see three of them and he said that they walked for miles.”

  Sheridan tapped a hilly area behind and to the north of the huts. “Let’s task the helicopter to take a closer look.”

  Even Kyle looked impressed. “Now? You can do that?”

  Their host rolled his eyes. “What do you think we do here all day? Just sit and stare at three-day-old satellite maps? We survey land and sea territories in real-time.”

  “With what?”

  If Sheridan felt disrespected he didn’t show it, although the excessive tolerance in his voice made it sound like he was patting a child on the head.

  “Planes, drones, ’copters, boats, submersibles, all equipped with heat sensors, radar, ultrasound and plenty more. We own some of them, the army and coastguards own the rest.”

  Andy was less interested in how they knew it than what they knew, so he took a seat against the nearest wall and waited, until thirty minutes and several phone calls later Sheridan beckoned them back to the map.

  “OK. This area.” He circled the area behind the Nissen huts with a light pen. “Is an igneous hill, and your facility runs underneath it. It extends for ten square miles, and probably goes down at least six storeys according to our earth penetrating radar. It looks like your Nissen huts are just the bit that the public, should they ever stumble on it, which they won’t, would get to see. Easily explained
away as an animal hospital or such like. We can’t know the detail of what’s going on within those six storeys because they’re shielded in metal a foot thick.”

  Kyle was still on, “which they won’t”.

  “Why won’t the public ever stumble on it? The forest’s open to the public.”

  Sheridan shook his head and wielded his lightsaber again, drawing a larger circle, this time covering the facility and several acres all round. “Not here. It’s a government restricted area. Didn’t your boss mention the signs?”

  Andy made a note to ask Craig about them and then asked a question of his own.

  “You said a metal shield. As in a radioactive shield? Like lead, maybe?”

  “No way of telling from the outside, but who knows? Or it could just be an attempt to prevent prying eyes like us from seeing things that we’re not cleared to see. But whatever they’re doing down there, they definitely don’t want anyone to know about it.”

  He set down his pointer. “I could organise some soil and water sampling in the area, if you’d like to find out?”

  Kyle’s face lit up but dulled again immediately as Andy shook his head.

  “Hold on that, can you, Theo. I’ll need the chief’s clearance. I’m as curious as you are what they’re up to, but it might be beyond the scope of our case and I don’t want to bring MI5 down on our heads.”

  Kyle smiled inwardly. He knew the local MI5 agents and he could handle them; they were pussies. And OK, so maybe whatever was going on inside Appside didn’t have anything to do with their case, but that didn’t mean that he wasn’t going to check it out.

  ****

  The C.C.U.

  “I can do it by myself, Liam.”

  Liam pressed the lift button for the tenth floor and gave a sceptical snort.

  “Does that mean that you want to?”

  Craig smiled at the distinction. He was right; can and want were two very different things, and he needed to think which his preference was before he headed three floors up to face Terry Harrison. Not only which was his preference, but which would be safer for the old bugger; he loathed Harrison and that wasn’t a feeling he held about many people.