The Running of the Deer

by Catriona King

  Craig nodded. “More than that. It smacks of Niall’s control. Is there any history of animosity between the brothers, Davy?”

  The analyst shrugged equivocally. “There’s a lot of rumour that I haven’t had time to dig into yet, but there w…was one incident in a restaurant in two thousand and five when the police were called. No charges were pressed, but apparently Dermot had whacked his brother in the face. The witness statements said they were overheard arguing about a holiday Dermot w…wanted to take but his brother said he wouldn’t fund.”

  Andy was curious. “Just the one argument?”

  “In public, yes. And it was thirteen years ago.”

  “The rest have probably taken place at home.”

  “Or they avoid each other. The family house was built on the site of an old Celtic settlement on the north side of Killeter Forest, and it’s huge. Like a castle.” He swopped slides to show a building so large that the word house really didn’t describe it. “Dermot has an apartment in one wing and Niall in the other, so they probably don’t meet much, and Dermot has had a place in Belfast for the past two years as w…well.”

  Craig motioned him to take a seat for a moment as he considered, tuning out the discussion around him about wealth and what each of his team members would do if they had billions of pounds. After a few minutes thinking Craig glanced around the group, and once everyone was silent he spoke.

  “OK. We have an apparently dysfunctional family here.”

  Liam’s eyebrows rose at the caveat, but he said nothing as Craig went on.

  “A diligent older brother who inherited everything, and a far less diligent younger brother who he keeps on a short lead. Once a bad boy, now apparently reformed.” He turned to Davy. “Has Dermot Canavan ever worked?”

  “He tried farming but didn’t stick at it, then he worked in the IT company his brother had interests in for a while, but he left that too. He quit university before graduating as well.”

  “What was he studying?”

  “Biomedical sciences at Queen’s, but he left after the s…second year.”

  Liam leaned forward. “What are you thinking, boss?”

  Craig shook his head. “Just information gathering at the moment.” They both knew it was more than that, but Craig wouldn’t label it just yet. “OK. Davy, drill down further into this pair. I want everything. Gossip, rumour, social calendars, businesses, charitable interests, everything. Even if it seems irrelevant, I want to hear it.”

  Davy grinned; it sounded like easy work. A day spent reading Hello magazine and drinking tea.

  “And find out about the deer on their estate. There must be a gamekeeper. Get his name, we need to speak to him.”

  “W…Will do. I have another bit about the forest if you want it?”

  “Go on.”

  “OK.”

  Rather than stand again, he swopped over his slides from where he sat, revealing an aerial map of woodland alongside the original red area map.

  “OK. The red area on the map is Killeter Forest. Half of the land it’s on belongs to the Canavans, the rest is on common land managed by the local council. You can see the boundary between the two.” A black X appeared inside the red. “That’s the clearing where the victim was found. It’s in the Canavans’ part of the forest, but you can s…see it’s not far from the boundary line. I’ve marked it with an X on the aerial map as well.”

  While the others perused the images, the analyst turned to Craig.

  “You asked about police reports and disturbances in the area, especially about an incident in the nineteen-nineties where some deer w…were found dead. The next slides show what I’ve found so far.”

  A page they recognised as a police report appeared on the screen.

  “As you can see there’ve been reports of disturbances in the forest since nineteen-seventy-”

  Annette interjected. “The Canavans weren’t born then.”

  “Yep. The disturbances have continued intermittently since then, w…with reports of lights, noises, drums, even screams, but each time the police investigated there was nothing to find.”

  Miranda Hunter shook her head. “They found something in the nineties. The dead deer.”

  Davy tapped again, and a police document appeared. “Here’s the incident report. Apart from the fact it involved dead deer and was in the s…same location, there’s no match with our case. The deer weren’t decapitated, their torsos were hollowed out and all the muscles and organs removed, and the conclusion was that they’d just been killed for their meat. There were a few fibres and prints found but they led nowhere.”

  Craig turned to the Head of Forensics. “Des?”

  “I’ll take another look. They might still be in central storage.”

  Andy raised a finger to interrupt. “Davy, could you mark the location of the facility on the map.”

  Mary frowned. “What is this facility everyone keeps talking about?”

  Craig shook his head. “We’ll get to that in a minute.”

  Davy flicked back to the map and a second X appeared.

  Mary gawped at the screen. “It’s in the forest, practically on top of the clearing!”

  Davy shook his head. “It doesn’t look like it with the map scale, but it’s actually five miles south. But yeh, it’s on the Canavans’ land as well-”

  Andy interrupted again. “When was it built?”

  The analyst shook his head. “I don’t know yet. I’ve s…submitted requests to the council and both governments, but they’re slower than the dead.”

  Craig nodded. “Keep chasing it, please, Davy. And try asking the Canavans. After all, it’s on their land so they or their parents must have sold or leased some for it to be built. The older brother should have the records.”

  He gave Liam a meaningful look. A research facility built on the Canavans’ land, undoubtedly with their permission; disturbances in the clearing nearby since the seventies and dead deer there in the nineties, not to mention their murder victim, and one eight years earlier whose death they had yet to compare. There was too much going on in one small area for it to be coincidence.

  He decided to retrace his steps for a moment. “Davy, who was looking into Voodoo again?”

  “Ash.”

  All eyes turned to the junior analyst, most of them staring at his outfit, which today included a leather waistcoat and a neckerchief. Liam said what most of them were thinking.

  “Good grief, man, what are you wearing? You look like a gunslinger.”

  Ash immediately glanced down at his hips, wondering what he would look like with a Colt 45 strapped there, but before he could respond to Liam’s question, Craig wanted an answer to his.

  “You can banter all you want in the pub, Liam, but right now we work. Voodoo, Ash? Or anything about drums, lights and so on?”

  Just at that moment Nicky’s desk-phone rang and she rose to answer it, listening for a moment and then covering the receiver to mouth, “downstairs”, and jab her finger at the floor. It was the signal for them to take a break, and for Craig to ask his PA who had come to call.

  “That terrible National Crime Agency woman’s in reception, and she wants to see you. Do you want me to say you’re out?”

  Just then the lift doors opened, and National Crime Agent Jennifer Somerville hurtled out, rendering Nicky’s offer redundant. So much for their front desk security.

  Craig nodded glumly to his secretary to hang up the phone and then signalled for Liam to join him in his office, knowing that as soon as they entered they would be followed in by the NCA’s equivalent of Cruella deVille.

  Grumpy had seemed to be Somerville’s default mood each time he’d met her, but the glimpse that he’d just caught of her face said that it was grumpy plus today.

  He’d just reached his chair and Liam his favourite spot on the wall on which to lean, when the prediction came true, with Nicky’s delaying pleasantries outside his door being drowned out by the sound of it being flung back. Cr
aig decided to kill the NCA agent with kindness, more to wind her up that in any belief that it would make them bosom friends.

  “Why, Agent Somerville, how lovely to see you.”

  Liam echoed, “lovely”, having decided to join in the game.

  “Would you like a coffee?”

  Little Sir Echo chipped in again with “Coffee?” as Craig rose to his feet, the perfect host.

  As he’d expected, Somerville was less than amused and completely ignored their hospitality, yanking out a chair to sit.

  “You and your men have been trespassing on government property!”

  Craig gazed around him as if puzzled, but when she didn’t take the bait he gave a short nod.

  “I’m not sure you could actually call it trespassing. We work here.”

  The agent lurched forward angrily. “You know exactly what I’m talking about. Appside!”

  It was the first that Craig had heard the facility’s name, but he got the joke immediately. So did Liam, who didn’t keep his amusement to himself.

  “Our version of Porton Down is called Appside? Appside Down! Man, but they’re dopey buggers at the MoD.”

  The detectives didn’t even try to hide their amusement, and anyone listening outside might have thought that the three were having fun. But fun wasn’t a word in Jennifer Somerville’s vocabulary, along with party, weekend off, chocolate, and others along the same theme, so she glared at the men in turn and when she considered them suitably chastised she carried on.

  “You entered a secure government research facility without permission.”

  Craig stared straight at her, his expression inscrutable. “It was hardly secure then, was it? And we had permission. My PA called ahead.”

  The agent’s eyes flew instantly to the door, and Liam wondered if she was adding Nicky to her mental list of who to kill, in an, ‘all who had knowledge of the facility must die’, sweep.

  She turned her gaze back to Craig. “Well, you shouldn’t have had permission, and I’ll be taking that right to the top.”

  He resisted the urge to look at the sky that the expression always provoked in him and rose to his feet.

  “Now that we’ve settled that the permission was at fault, not us, I won’t detain you any longer.”

  Liam reached over and opened the door, surprised when Somerville actually rose, although not when she closed the door again. She retook her seat and crossed her knees, tugging her skirt down over them in a schoolmarm-ish way.

  “I hadn’t finished, Superintendent. I need to know what you found out.”

  For a few seconds Craig considered messing with her, telling her that they’d seen a cat with two heads roaming through the Nissen huts and his next stop was The Belfast Chronicle. But in his experience of spooks they had a restricted sense of humour distinctly at odds with their unrestricted access, and the comment would probably land him in a small room in some black site having an electrode shoved up his nose. So instead he outlined their case and the discussions that they’d had with Jeannie Underwood, ending with, “We’ll be questioning the Canavans soon about their leasing of the site.”

  He sat back as he finished, awaiting the explosion, but was surprised when Somerville merely looked confused.

  “You only went there to check out the deer heads, and they’re being transported now to the Belfast labs?”

  “Yes.”

  “So, your team’s interest wasn’t in Appside, but in the crime-scene evidence?”

  Well, almost; he conveniently didn’t mention the work that he’d tasked Kyle and Andy to do.

  As Craig answered “Yes” again, both detectives realised that something else had happened to bring her there, something that they weren’t yet aware of. But one thing was certain, it involved a member of their squad.

  Before Craig said the word, Liam had exited the room and belted across to Kyle, beckoning Andy over to join them. The deputy glared at the ex-spook.

  “What did you do?”

  Kyle raised his eyes slowly to Liam’s pale face. “About?”

  Liam noticed how he managed to convey sarcasm in a single word. It was a talent, of sorts.

  “Appside. That’s what they call the place apparently.”

  Even though Andy’s heart immediately sank at what he knew was coming next, he couldn’t stop himself chuckling at the name.

  Kyle just nodded casually. “Ah, that… Well, I did as I was asked. I looked into it. We…” He gestured at Andy, not about to let him off the hook. “…went to see Ray Barrett in Intelligence and he said he’d see what he could find out for us. I’m still waiting for him to come back with the info.”

  Andy nodded. “That’s true, Liam. Then we went to Aerial Support to look at the maps and the building’s footprint. It’s a big place, a lot bigger than it looks from the air. It extends for miles beneath the hills nearby, and goes down several storeys. Theo Sheridan said there was some sort of metal shielding around it as well.”

  Liam was torn between fascination about the facility and confusion. So, they’d found out a bit about the building’s structure, why would Somerville be getting in a twist about that?

  “That’s all you did?”

  As Andy looked instantly guilty, Liam saw Kyle turn his face away; it seemed that even spooks found it a challenge to lie to someone while staring them straight in the eye.

  “But that’s not all you did, Inspector, is it? Did you authorise this, Andy?”

  Andy shook his head glumly. “I didn’t know anything until we arrived back here. Although I still don’t know when he got the time to do it. We were together every minute!”

  Liam shook his head. “Not every single one, I bet. There would have been one particularly long loo break. Yes? Long enough for spooky here to make a call and task one of his mates.”

  When Kyle didn’t respond he repeated himself so loudly that the others turned to stare, and Craig put his head around his office door.

  “YES? Don’t make me ask again, Inspector.”

  Kyle glared up at him. “I did my job. I found out about what they were really doing in that building.”

  Andy cut in before Liam could speak again, his anger at Kyle slipping something past him making his normally warm voice rough.

  “Who did you ask?”

  The D.I. was unashamed. “Just a contact I have. He took water and soil samples for half-a-mile around the place. He’s working them up now, but the preliminary report says there’s all kinds of shit down there. Radioact-”

  Liam cut him off sharply. “Come with me.” He marched back into Craig’s office with the recalcitrant spy in tow, closing the door behind them and looking at Jennifer Somerville and Craig in turn.

  “I suppose you both heard that?”

  Craig sat back down behind his desk, nodding, uncertain how he felt about what he’d just learned. He’d asked Kyle to find out about the facility, so he bore some blame for what the D.I. had done and he would take it, but beneath his guilt there was a small nugget of amusement and defiance.

  He didn’t like spying, or hidden experiments, or even people keeping normal secrets much, but he acknowledged that on some rare occasions some information was better not released into the public domain, although the, often self-appointed, groups who made the decisions on what that included he had genuine problems with.

  So, while he was annoyed with Kyle for not keeping him up to date, he wasn’t furious about what he’d done, and a glance at his deputy said that now he’d calmed down Liam was having the same internal debate.

  Their thoughts were interrupted by Jennifer Somerville rising to her feet.

  “This officer will be coming with me.”

  Craig gazed up at her coolly. “No. He won’t. He was following orders to find out about the facility as part of a murder investigation. Now…”

  He glanced over at Kyle who was inspecting his nails and looking bored. It told Craig that he’d been in far bigger messes than this when he was an agent, probably in som
e country he shouldn’t have been in and where if he’d been caught he would have disappeared into a deep dark hole. Compared to that, even the worst that Jennifer Somerville could do would be like a day at the spa. He went on speaking with a grudging but growing respect for the man, although it still could never be described as like.

  “…Detective Inspector Spence may have taken it slightly too far and found out some things that he shouldn’t have, but he worked in Intelligence for years, I have overall responsibility for Intelligence, and we’ve all signed the Official Secrets Act, so be assured that your information will not leak.”

  Somerville gave a sharp shake of her head. “That’s not your decision to make, or mine. My boss will have to make the call on this.”

  Liam was getting tired of the posturing, so he cut to the chase. “Who’s your boss?”

  She considered for a moment too long.

  “Ach, for God’s sake, woman, surely that’s not an official secret as well? Don’t make me shine a light in your eyes. Who. Is. Your. Boss?”

  She was so surprised by his tone that she blurted out. “Nigel Allsop.”

  “Phone number?”

  When she obediently trotted out a London number the deputy chortled.

  “Man, you wouldn’t be much good under interrogation, would you?”

  As Somerville blustered defensively Craig opened the door again.

  “Nicky, can you call this number and get a Nigel Allsop on the line, please?”

  The PA complied, knowing exactly what the call would be about because she’d been eavesdropping since Somerville had arrived. The phone on Craig’s desk rang almost immediately and Liam ushered Kyle outside again, leaving the NCA agent and Craig to sort out the mess.

  The outcome became clear a minute later when Jennifer Somerville emerged from the office like a bullet, not slowing down until she was at the lifts. Craig beckoned the men back in.

  “Her boss isn’t a happy man.” He scowled at Kyle. “He wanted your head on a stake, but I managed to persuade him that you’d keep your mouth shut.” His frown relaxed slightly. “And you will, just as soon as you’ve told us what your friend found.”