The Running of the Deer

by Catriona King

  So it was with shock that his son greeted Tom Craig’s opening words.

  “You need to take care of that girl, Marc.”

  Craig was instantly confused. What girl? Lucia was as happy as a clam. He glanced through the French windows to where she was sitting on Ken’s knee and sipping cheerfully at her drink.

  Seeing his very clever but very stupid son’s bemusement, Craig’s father elaborated.

  “Katy. She isn’t happy, son.”

  Craig’s mouth fell open, and then he instantly felt his hackles rise, only the fact that the man in front of him was his father preventing him from saying, “bugger off”. He didn’t like taking advice at the best of times, even in work, but this was his personal life and it was a no-go zone.

  As he immediately turned to re-enter the house he was taken aback by his mild-mannered father gripping his arm.

  “You don’t have to say anything, Marc, but listen to me. I love you, but Katy isn’t happy, and you need to find out why or you’re going to lose her.”

  Anger and embarrassment, and a nagging sense that perhaps his father could see things from the outside that he had missed because he was too close, made Craig take two steps forward and then one back as Tom Craig continued more intensely.

  “It’s obvious that she loves you, son, and that you feel the same way about her. But sometimes love alone just isn’t enough.”

  He swallowed hard, knowing his son’s temper. He should do; he’d watched his toddler tantrums become harder and angrier as he’d grown, only barely held in check at times by his logical and compassionate sides.

  But he had to take the risk of him storming out offended, because he loved him.

  “You’re getting older, son, and so is Katy. Have you asked her what she wants for her future?”

  Craig’s reply sounded weak even to him. “But she’s happy with things as they are. She would tell me if she wasn’t.”

  Tom Craig shook his head. “You’re happy with the way things are, but she may not be and could be too afraid to tell you. All I’m saying is, have the conversation before it’s too late. That’s all.”

  He rested his hand on Craig’s shoulder for a moment and then walked back into the house, leaving his adult son alone in the small flower garden fighting with his thoughts.

  Craig stared down at the grass as he struggled with the veracity of his father’s words. The truth was that he was as afraid of the conversation as Katy, but in a different way. What if she wanted marriage and children? Could he really commit to that? And marriage deserved commitment; he knew that he would only ever marry once, if at all.

  But the older he’d got and the longer he was single the more he’d grown concerned that marriage might hold him back. Not from dating. He didn’t want anyone but Katy, he was monogamous through and through. And besides, he had never understood where people found the time to have affairs.

  But would marriage destroy whatever it was that gave him his edge? His moods, his anger, his need for solitude to think, his urge to rail against the world; where would they all go if he was living full-time in domestic bliss? Pretentious as it sounded even to him, might he lose whatever it was that made him, him?

  And worse, would he hurt the people he loved by blaming them for it if that happened, and perhaps even walk away one day, breaking their hearts?

  Craig didn’t know it, but his torture would soon take another form. The decision was about to be taken out of his hands.

  Katy had seen Tom Craig calling his son out into the garden, and watched the fractious exchange between the two, knowing, because of the occasion and because she loved both men, that it could only be about her. Craig’s father had caught her eye several times during the evening, and even though she’d tried to be cheerful for Lucia she knew that he had seen her mask slip and read what was on her mind. His dark-eyed son’s contemplative mood now said that he’d just passed on his concerns, and because she loved Marc so much she wouldn’t make him put his, so obviously confused, thoughts into words.

  She couldn’t make him say something that he might regret, or worse, commit to her simply because he thought that he should. She couldn’t make the man that she adored with every part of her choose.

  So, as Mirella got into full swing on the piano and the others fell into a happy daze, Katy Stevens slipped into the hall, took her coat from the stand and opened the front door, leaving the brief note that she had written for Marc that afternoon propped up beside the phone, and then walking out into the night.

  ****

  Two Months Later. Mid-May.

  Katy Stevens stared at her smart-phone flashing Marc’s name as he rang for the second time that day, waiting patiently until the call had ended and then replaying the message that he’d left. She had done the same thing every day of the preceding eight weeks, playing each of his messages over and over until she’d memorised every word that he’d said.

  His message was consistent. He’d read her note saying that she needed to think about where her life was heading and had to be apart from him while she did, and he understood. But couldn’t they just talk before she made any decisions? Couldn’t he just see her, even once?

  There’d seemed to be no point in explaining that she couldn’t think straight when she was near him, love and lust sweeping all her clarity and reason away, or that even speaking to him on the phone would be fatal for her decision making, knowing as she did that she would instantly want to see him and at his first suggestion of it she would give in. Give in, fall into his arms and back into the status quo of their relationship, which, much as every fragment of her longed for it, would move her, and them, no further on.

  So, she had kept her distance, just thankful that he had allowed her to do so, knowing that any day he’d wished to, he could simply have turned up at her office and all of her resolve would have failed.

  The physician stroked her phone and made Craig’s smiling image appear; her favourite photograph of him, taken on their skiing trip five months before. She slowly traced the outline of his lips, imagining her own pressed against them, and wished that he was really there with her. Then she stroked the screen again and another picture appeared, this one making her giggle with joy: a fuzzy shape that looked like nothing but meant everything to her, its tiny contours outlined in an ultrasound’s black and white.

  It had turned out that not all her agitation months before had been due to discontent with her romantic relationship, but an unborn third party making its presence felt.

  Soon she and Marc would have to meet and talk, not only about them as a couple but about whether he wanted to be part of his child’s life.

  THE END

  Core Characters in the Craig Crime Novels

  Detective Chief Superintendent Marc (Marco) Craig: Craig is a sophisticated, single, forty-seven-year-old. Born in Northern Ireland, he is 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. He 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 Intellige
nce 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, partly 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.

  Sailortown (real): An historic area of Belfast on the River Lagan that was a thriving area between the sixteenth and twentieth centuries. Many large businesses developed in the area, ships docked for loading and unloading and their crews from far flung places such as China and Russia mixed with a local Belfast population of ship’s captains, chandlers, seamen and their families.

  Sailortown was a lively area where churches and bars fought for the souls and attendance of the residents and where many languages were spoken each day. The basement of the Rotterdam Bar, at the bottom of Clarendon Dock, acted as the overnight lock-up to prisoners being deported to the
Antipodes on boats the next morning, and the stocks which held the prisoners could still be seen until the nineteen-nineties.

  During the years of World War Two the area was the most bombed area of the UK outside Central London, as the Germans tried to destroy Belfast’s ship building capacity. Sadly, the area fell into disrepair in the nineteen-seventies and eighties when the motorway extension led to compulsory purchases of many homes and businesses and decimated the Sailortown community. The rebuilding of the community has now begun, with new families moving into starter homes and professionals into expensive dockside flats.

  The Pathology Labs (fictitious): The labs, set on Belfast’s Saintfield Road as part of a large science park, are where Doctor John Winter, Northern Ireland’s Head of Pathology, and his co-worker, Doctor Des Marsham, Head of Forensic Science, carry out the post-mortem and forensic examinations that help Craig’s team solve their cases.