A Limited Justice (#1 - The Craig Modern Thriller Series) (14 page)

She caught sight of herself in the prison-entrance window. Fiona had brought some of her clothes to High Street, and she’d changed out of last night’s tart’s costume into a jumper and jeans. Now, scrubbed free of make-up she looked a pale, slight eighteen, instead of a late twenties mother of three. But what she lacked in stamina she made up for in determination, as her next target would soon find out.

They’d allowed her to have her medication when she’d said that it was for asthma. It was the same drug on a legal prescription so she knew they’d never check. And she needed it. It was the only thing controlling the headaches that were worsening by the day.

Someday they’d kill her, but only after she’d finished her work. She had forty-eight hours before Fiona bailed her with an expensive lawyer, long enough to complete her task. Then there would only be one hurdle left before she could rest for good.

After the searches and lectures, she was shown to her room, to share with Becky, a quiet woman in for credit-card fraud. She was scared and silent like the girls bullied at secondary school and Jessie felt sorry for her, deciding to be her guardian angel for forty-eight hours. Her newly tough persona could be useful for something other than killing.

The bell would sound for dinner at 6pm and then she’d finally see her target again, after five years. Poor little prey, hunted in the one place that she thought she was safe. She smiled to herself sarcastically. Sarcasm came easily to her these days, and she certainly wouldn’t waste any sympathy on this one. She was the cause of everything and she deserved what was coming, even more than the others had, or would. She was going to enjoy it this time.

***

At 2pm, Liam headed back to the Squad, confident that Ida wouldn’t notice his absence. A plump-faced, young officer had replaced him in her affections already; the uniform would always win with Ida.

He loped his way over to Craig’s office. The door was closed and as he reached for the handle, he was stopped by Nicky’s quick warning look, more powerful than any ‘no entry’ sign.

“Give him a minute, Liam.”

That suited him perfectly; he could fill the time nicely chatting to her, while she typed. His little crush on her and, he liked to think, hers on him, had livened up many a dull day at work. He looked admiringly at her long pink nails skipping skilfully across the keyboard. The farmers’ daughters at school had never worn ‘Amber Rose’ – not functional, so why would they? But he always got a thrill from such irrelevant decoration.

Five minutes of banter later, Craig’s door was thrown open, the smile on his face showing that the coffee had done its job. He beckoned them both in energetically, calling across the floor. “You too please, Davy. Nicky, where’s Annette?”

“She’s on her way back – just phoned through. She was with Mrs McCandless.”

Just then, Annette entered the floor, panting heavily and wishing she’d worn a lightweight suit. The Indian summer they were having meant she dressed for the morning frost in Antrim, and was half-boiled by lunchtime in Belfast.

“Right, Davy. Bring in another couple of chairs please, and we’ll start.”

Craig lifted two files of paper from his desk drawer and passed the sheets around, sitting down at his pale-wood desk with his back to the window. The day was bright and clear and two seagulls were diving towards the building so fast that Annette was waiting for them to hit the window. But, as always, they pulled up at the last minute, swooping expertly backwards into the distance, free.

Liam looked down at the sheets unsurprised, updated by Nicky five minutes before. But Annette was new to the information, and stared at one of the sheets completely bemused. Davy looked equally puzzled.

“Why are we looking at a North West case, sir? Don’t we have enough work to do?” Annette laughed tiredly and Craig looked at her, nodding.

“That’s almost what I said to the D.C.S. earlier, but I didn’t, because it shows major similarities to our case.”

Annette looked at Liam, registering that he already knew about it, and the knowledge annoyed her somehow. She never thought of herself as competitive, until someone beat her to something.

“Right, the first thing is, the North West victim was a young female officer.” He saw their shock but ignored it, continuing.

“I need you to alert everyone to be careful. We don’t know that the murder had anything to do with the job; she wasn’t in uniform when it happened. But people need to be vigilant just in case. And all W.P.Cs are to be paired with male officers on patrol for the moment please.”

Suddenly Nicky gasped, reading to the end of the page. “Oh, she was raped...oh.”

It was a statement of fact, but the way she said it touched him. Without the uniform, they were all still just Joe and Joanna public.

“Bastard.”

Liam looked practically homicidal and they all agreed with his sentiments, glad of his willingness to say what everyone else was thinking.

“Unfortunately yes. The pathologist believes that she was raped, murdered and then thrown into the Lower Bann at Portglenone.”

“That’s a beautiful part of the country too, sir.”

“I know...Right, there are some unusual points in their forensics which I’ll tell you about in a moment, and Detective Inspector McNulty will get back to me on that later today.” Even as he said it he doubted it, but John was on the job anyway.

He brought them up to date on the similarities with the McCandless murder: the abraded hands and knees, and the cuts across the shins. Then he told them about the abnormal semen sample leading to McNulty’s conviction that the husband’s D.N.A. would vindicate him. The sound of Nicky’s phone ringing ended his summary, and she reached out through the open door to answer it, nodding and pressing the mute button. Craig could tell it was for him and gestured her to transfer it.

“Marc Craig.”

His lack of words and frequent nods meant that he knew the speaker, and they listened in silence until he finished with. “Thanks, I’ll see you later” and a slightly puzzled frown.

“That was Des. He’s just spoken to the lab in Limavady.”

“What did his wife have?”

Craig looked at Annette, confused for a second, before realising what she was talking about.

“Oh God – I didn’t ask. Nicky, can you find out subtly and send flowers please.” He turned back to the sheet from the North West.

“Des has just told me that the semen sample they found on Maria Burton is a D.N.A. match for the estranged husband.” He hesitated for a moment, looking slightly confused. “But the sperm were dead and had been for many hours, so he believes the sample could have been frozen.”

“Frozen? Are they selling sperm ice-cubes now?”

“Liam!”

Annette thumped Liam on the arm, disgusted, and even Nicky looked at him reprovingly.

“Liam, that’s pretty bad, even for you, but I have to say that Des sounded puzzled as well. He said that maybe Burton had donated to a sperm bank, but even that couldn’t be right, because the sperm would be preserved alive there. And it still wouldn’t explain what it was doing at the scene.”

“Maybe she wanted the baby but not the man? Or maybe s…she’d inseminated herself earlier that day and it was just a co-finding, and everyone just assumed that she’d been raped?”

“That’s not a bad theory, Davy, but the sperm wouldn’t have been dead in that case. Ask Des about it, and see if you can get hold of the full lab-report from Limavady. If there are no signs of violence then rape may not have been the method of introduction. Liam, contact McNulty and see if there was anything else to suggest rape, and run the self-insemination idea past her. Ask her if Maria Burton had told anyone that she wanted a baby, best friend, mum maybe? But be careful with D.I. McNulty – she and I have already had words this morning. She’s got a bit of an attitude.”

Nicky leaned forward conspiratorially, “That’s his nice way of saying she’s a real piece of work. It took a whole pot of espresso to restore normal service after they spoke.”

Craig smiled. “OK, Liam, update us with what you found out about the wire and your witness, then Davy on the hammer and finances. And finally Annette on the McCandless family, please.”

Liam leaned back in his chair. It was rare that he sat at all, preferring to stand, head hitting the ceiling, spending hours afterwards moaning about his sore back. His claim to martyrdom for ‘the job’.

Davy liked the idea of being a police officer but not the thought of getting hurt, so he often stood too, hero-worshipping both Craig and Liam by mimicking them in little ways.

Liam’s deep Crossgar accent vibrated the air around them, “Ah, well now. The wire...”

“That’s the name of an American cop show – Dr Winter told me."

“And he would know, right enough.” John Winter’s obsession with American television meant that he was inundated with box sets every Christmas. And his conversation was constantly peppered with their jargon, to everyone’s amusement.

“Aye, anyway. The wire. Well, Davy narrowed it to one importer here, and even they don’t have much call for it nowadays. It’s vicious ‘aul stuff, usually only used to contain large animals, or on secure weapons sites – and we don’t have many of those nowadays. So the list of customers was short, just three buyers. I’ve ruled out two of them already, they’re Government Units and they’ve accounted for their supplies to the last inch.”

“God bless government inventory control – you have to love it.”

“Aye, indeed. Anyhow, the other buyer was two years back, a farmer in Barnardstown.”

“Never heard of it. Where is it?”

Liam reached into his jacket pocket and withdrew a notebook so small that it disappeared in his giant hand. He flicked through its tiny pages until he found his mark.

“Aye, here it is, Barnardstown. Up in the North West somewhere. A dairy farmer called Michael Adams. I’m going there this afternoon to see what he has to say. It’s only five miles from Limavady, so I could combine it with a wee trip to D.I. McNulty if you like. Then I can see if she really has fangs.”

Craig laughed wryly and nodded. “Good thinking. Maybe she won’t view you with as much hostility. Although why the D.C.S. couldn’t just have asked her for details instead of making me call her, I don’t know – they live in the same building half the week.”

“That’ll be Teflon pulling rank, that’s why.”

Craig knew that he should disapprove of the use of Harrison’s nickname, but he agreed, so he just smiled instead.

“Right, thanks Liam, follow that up. Right Davy, the hammer.”

“It’s really interesting. It‘s not a hammer at all. I’d a bit of trouble finding it at first, but I have now. It’s actually called a captive bolt. It’s really unusual; the head is s…sharper at the end.”

He couldn’t keep the excitement from his voice and for a second Craig thought that the public would view such excitement about a hammer as a bit sad. But then maybe not. After all, millions of people watched C.S.I. Davy hesitated suddenly and looked around the group, as if reluctant to go into more detail. He was a sweet lad who thought that all women were of a delicate disposition and should be protected, and they loved him for it. Craig half agreed with him, but he also knew that asking them to leave for their own protection would earn him a lecture on feminism, and he needed that like a hole in the head. He nodded him on. “I think the ladies can cope, Davy.”

“W...Well...” He winced visibly at what came next. “It belongs to a group of tools that used to be used to kill...” He hesitated again, and then continued.

“To kill cattle. They...They hit them a blow between the eyes and it knocks them out, or kills them instantly. But they stopped using them after the Bovine Encephalitis outbreak, because of the possible transfer of brain matter.”

Now Craig understood his reluctance, Nicky looked as if she was going to be sick. It was strange; they heard the details of human murder every day and had learned to distance themselves from the reality, by talking about ‘D.N.A. and forensics. But Davy’s mention of animals had caught them all unaware.

Craig held a hand up to pause him, but he’d already finished, and the images his words conjured up had already had their impact. The room fell silent for a minute, until Liam finally broke it.

“Farmers, Davy, they would have them. It fits with Michael Adams again.”

Craig grabbed at the lifeline to dilute the atmosphere.

“You’re right Liam. Take a photo of it with you and have a good look around Adams’ farm for anything that matches. Well done Davy. Annette?”

They turned towards Annette just in time to see the end of her pallor. But Davy hadn’t finished.

“There’s one more thing.”

“Yes?”

“Dr Marsham told me they found a print on the victim’s mobile phone.”

“Yes, he told me. And?”

“But w...why?”

They all looked at him blankly, then Liam jumped in. “Maybe they touched it accidentally, when they attacked him?”

Craig shook his head slowly. “Unlikely. It was inside his jacket. Davy’s right and I completely missed its significance when Des told me. Why the print?”

Craig was puzzled, and the sinking sensation that he’d had when Des had first mentioned it came flooding back. Then he answered his own question.