The Broken Shore (11 page)

“Hello again, sir.”

Craig was surprised to hear her voice instead of Annette’s.

“I thought Davy was transferring me to Annette?”

“I took back the call. I’ve just had a fax in from Dr Winter’s office that you need to hear about.”

“What’s it about?”

“It’s the toxicology report for Lissy Trainor. She was full of Morphine when she died.”

Morphine. What the heck was that doing there? There’d been no sign that she was an addict, unless…

“OK, Nicky. I’ll call John after I speak to Annette. Is she there?”

Annette was at her desk running through the printouts of Lucia’s texts that Davy had given her first thing. They read like the one Lucia had showed her on Saturday, but there was nothing to identify the sender. Jake was at the desk beside her doing the same with Lucia’s phone-calls; home, mobile and work. The home phone-calls were ten pages long. Annette smiled; Lucia talked nearly as much as her Mum. Nicky waved to catch their attention then transferred Craig to Annette’s phone.

“Good morning, sir. What can I do to help?”

Craig laughed. She’d just said his six favourite words after sex and beer.

“Thanks Annette, but you might regret asking. Is Jake with us full time now?”

Annette glanced at the fair-haired sergeant and grinned.

“Yes, and raring to go.”

“Good. OK, Davy’s digging out the files of Jonno Mulvenna’s arrest and trial in ’83, for the murder of Veronica Jarvis. Briefly, it has a lot of similarities to the murder we’re working on up here and the lead officer back then was ACC Trainor. She’s our current victim’s mother.”

Annette’s gasp told him that the grapevine gossip hadn’t extended that far. It wouldn’t take long.

“This is sensitive and confidential, Annette, but I know I can trust you with that.” He had no idea just how true that was. “When the files come in, give me a call and I’ll tell you what I want you to look for. Use my personal mobile please. I’ll explain why when we talk.” His voice changed to a cheerful tone. “How’s life at the ranch without us? Quiet? Nicky’s been telling me all about Liam’s cup.”

Annette laughed. “That’s only her way of saying that she misses him. But for God’s sake don’t tell him that, he’ll be unbearable if he thinks we care. It’s quiet here thankfully, I spoke to D.C.I. McKenzie and he’s rearranged the rota to make sure we’re not on call again until next week.”

“Good. We’ll be back before then, not that you need us. Right. I’m off to phone John. I’ll be in touch.”

The line clicked off and Annette shot the pile of paper in front of her a baleful stare then she called early elevenses and put the kettle on.

*
**

Craig was surprised by his phone ringing while he was mid-dial to John. He was even more surprised by the voice on the other end. Melanie Trainor’s imperious tones echoed down the line.

“Superintendent Craig? It’s ACC Trainor.”

He stared at the receiver for a moment remembering the Chief Constable’s warning three hours before. But he hadn’t called her in for interview, she’d contacted him. A conversation couldn’t hurt. He swallowed hard.

“Yes, Ma’am.”

“I’d like to see you, Craig. Do you have some time now? I believe you’re still in Portstewart?”

“Yes. At the station.”

“Good, I’ll meet you there and save us both a trip to my office. Ten minutes?”

She didn’t wait for a reply, just cut the line and left him staring at his phone. He thought for a moment and then made the call to John.

“Hi, John. Nicky’s just told me you sent a fax through to the C.C.U.?”

“Ah, hello. Yes, it was Lissy’s toxicology. I have her stomach contents too if you’re interested.”

“Just the highlights please, ACC Trainor wants to see me stat.”

John went to ask and Craig halted him mid-stream. “I’ll tell you when I know what it’s about. At the moment I haven’t a clue.”

“Right. OK then. Lissy’s stomach contents show that she had an ice-cream about an hour before she died, washed down with cola of some sort. I can be more specific about the flavour when we’ve run a few more tests, but at least we know whoever took her was feeding her well. It’s her blood work that’s really interesting.”

“Morphine.” As soon as the word was out Craig knew he’d stolen his thunder. He apologised. “Sorry, John, I’m just in a rush. What can you tell me?”

John’s voice held a brief huff then returned to its normal cultured self. “Yes, Morphine. Injected not swallowed. Before you ask, she wasn’t prescribed any morphine and there are no track-marks to suggest addiction.”

“So you think the killer gave it to her?”

“Yes. The levels indicate she received a massive bolus. Given her size and the amount she had in her blood I’d say she only survived about five minutes after the injection. Death was from respiratory failure. I thought at first that the strangulation had been the cause, but it was definitely the Morphine.”

“Where was it?”

“Injected into her jugular vein in her neck. It would have been a painless death. She’d have been asleep before she started to have trouble breathing. She was strangled as she died from the morphine but she wouldn’t have felt a thing. It was definitely done before she was dead. She had the typical bruising and petechiae from strangulation and she would only have got those if she’d been alive when it was done.”

“Tricky injection site.”

“No, not really. Anyone who goes to the movies would have seen it done before.”

“You’re sure she was unconscious when she was strangled? But how does that fit with the scratch marks on her neck?”

There was silence for a moment before John spoke.

“God, you’re right! If the Morphine had put her out completely she couldn’t have struggled and caused those. Poor girl. She must have woken up at some point after she was injected.” He paused then restarted “There’s another thing, Marc. There were traces of a benzodiazepine in her bloodstream and stomach.”

“She was sedated?”

“Yes. Digestion shows she was given it the same time as her ice-cream and drink, then they injected her with the Morphine. I think they meant her to die without feeling a thing. The last thing she was supposed to experience was drinking cola and eating ice-cream but unfortunately she must have woken up.”

“Nice way to go, if there is such a thing.”

“It tells us a lot about her killer.”

Craig nodded. “They staged her death to match the case in ’83 but they took no pleasure in it. They didn’t beat her or rape her and her death was basically intended to be falling asleep.”

“If they took no pleasure in it then what was the point?”

“To draw our attention to the case in ’83. This whole thing is to make us see something that happened then.” He paused. “I met with the Chief; Sean Flanagan.”

“And?”

“He’s on our side and he didn’t seem to think my theory was too left of field.” He thought for a moment. “Are you busy this evening?”

John thought quickly. Natalie was on call from home and he normally kept her company at her place. He shrugged. She would understand him disappearing for a few hours.

“What time were you thinking?”

“Seven. We could meet somewhere halfway? It would help to talk things through.”

“OK, let me think of a venue and call you back. In the meantime, I’m going over Lissy’s post-mortem again with a microscope, in case there’s something else that I’ve missed.”

***

The Chief Constable had been sympathetic and she knew he would do his best, but Julia didn’t hold out much hope of a transfer. Terry Harrison had got there before her, explaining why he really needed her to stay in the North-West. He’d actively start looking for her replacement, of course he would, sir, but all of them, including the Chief Constable, knew it could take years for Harrison to find someone qualified who wanted to move to Limavady. Especially if he dragged his heels. People in Northern Ireland stayed close to their roots and nothing short of a natural disaster would shift them. There were Belfast people, Derry people and people from Fermanagh and Newry, with little in between. Everywhere else was just a commute.

She tapped her slim fingers against her desk and stared down ruefully at her dun brown suit. It was her least attractive outfit but it was getting a lot of wear nowadays, anything to avoid the lecherous attention of Terry Harrison. She heard the kettle boiling down the corridor and pulled open her half-glass
door, wandering down to see who was there.

Gerry Shaw, her sergeant, was standing in the coffee room with his back to her, pushing a handful of biscuits into his mouth. She called his name and he spluttered in surprise. He spun towards her with crumbs trailing down his tie.

“You scared the life out of me, boss. I thought you were Harrison. You shouldn’t creep up on people like that. It’s dangerous.”

She stared pointedly at her high heels before she spoke. “It’s pretty hard to creep up on anyone in these bad boys. And what do you mean dangerous? I’ve just saved you from a carbohydrate overdose.”

“Don’t joke about it, I’m eating for two.” He pointed at his stomach and she was surprised. She hadn’t noticed it before but he was getting a paunch. “Our Linda is pregnant again and I’m eating in sympathy.”

She grinned broadly. Babies were always good news.

“Congrats.”

Something occurred to her and when she spoke again it was in a wheedling tone.

“With another baby on the way you’ll need to earn more money, won’t you?”

“Maybe, but Linda’s parents are helping us out.”

“That can’t go on forever. You have to think of the future.”

He saw where she was heading and held his hand up. “Whoa. If you’re thinking of putting me up for the Inspector’s Board, forget it. I’ve enough of my plate without burning the midnight oil studying P.A.C.E. Besides, you’ve already got the job.”

She shook her head sadly and picked at a biscuit while he made the tea.

“I can’t keep commuting to Belfast for much longer and Teflon won’t let me have a transfer.”

He was shocked. She never referred to Harrison by his nickname, not even in private, although everyone else in the station did. She must be really pissed.

“He says it would leave him an Inspector short and until he can find someone to replace me he won’t let me go.”

Gerry was surprised to see a tear forming in her eye. She was genuinely upset.

“Can’t the Chief Constable intervene?”

Julia shook her head and red tendrils escaped her fierce chignon and fell across her face. She looked vulnerable. It was a side of her he never saw. She’d joined them from an army captain’s post and she ran a very tight ship, but he supposed everyone was vulnerable when they were in love.

“He says he can’t really. Marc had already spoken to him, and he was very kind, but he said that Harrison has the right to insist.” She pushed her hair back angrily. “I could resign and move to Belfast then try to find a job, but...”

“You’ve already changed your life once by leaving the army and you don’t want to do it again.”

She was shocked by his perception. She nodded and Gerry thought again.

“Look, let me speak to Linda. If she agrees then I’ll put in for the exam in 2014, but there’s no way that I’d be ready before then.”

Her heart soared for a moment then fell again, knowing the distance was killing their romance already, in another year it would be beyond life support. She pushed her doubts to one side and smiled at her deputy gratefully. If his wife agreed then he would try and that was all she had any right to expect. She already knew it would be too little too late.

Chapter Thirteen

When Craig walked into the staff room, Jim O’Neill’s hushed tones told him the ACC was already there. His raised eyebrow said that she wasn’t in the mood for delays. Craig turned towards the corridor housing the relatives’ room and was stopped by an apologetic “Sorry, sir. Other way” as the sergeant’s finger indicated an interview room. Craig knew right then that this wasn’t going to be an informal exchange. He walked down the short, grey corridor and halted outside interview room two. Half of him wondered whether he should knock, then the grown-up half pushed firmly at the door and stepped inside. What he saw next said that Melanie Trainor stood on ceremony no matter what was happening in her life.

She was seated at the room’s small Formica table dressed in full uniform, her hat sitting by her side. But it was where she was sitting that amused Craig. In the interviewer’s position. He wondered how he could ever have imagined anything else.

She glanced up as he entered and nodded him briskly to a seat. It felt like a job interview, at best. He resisted her nod and stood across from her, hands in his pockets like a defiant teenager up in front of the beak. She stared pointedly at him and started to speak without any preamble.

“I’m here against my better judgement, Superintendent Craig, and I won’t be answering any questions about my daughter or her mode of death.”

Having satisfied herself that she’d excluded anything personal from their talk, she reached inside a polished document case and pulled out a sheaf of paper. The ‘Dear’ at the top of each page said that they were letters. The differing size and colour of paper said that they’d been written at different times. Some were scrawled on A4 sheets of file paper and others more neatly written, on watermarked sheets from a writing pad. He remembered his mother giving the same paper to him and Lucia after Christmas each year, to write thank-you letters for their gifts. Basildon Bond. It was her ‘good’ writing paper; thick and elegant. He could still remember the excitement of using it. Terrified in case he got a word wrong and had to use another sheet, but secretly hoping that he would so that he could get to start again.

All the pages were handwritten, covered in letters of differing sizes, and exclamation marks, with words underlined. She laid them on the desk with a look of distaste and spoke again.

“If you’re looking for a motive for my daughter’s murder, these may give you one.”

Craig could see she was going to keep talking, and he knew that if he didn’t take charge of the conversation soon he would never get a chance. He interrupted briskly.

“When did you start receiving them?”

“In 1984. At first they were hand delivered, when I was living in the centre of Portstewart. When I moved in ’85 they were posted; the postmark is Coleraine. I had it examined, and the handwriting. They were all from the same person. A woman, the graphologist said, which makes sense given the content.”

“Do you have any idea who sent them?”

He pulled out a seat and sat down facing her, equalising their position, height wise at least. She stared at the notes saying nothing for a moment. Finally she shrugged as if to say ‘why should I protect her?’ Craig watched her silent debate with interest. No-one asked themselves that question unless they felt they’d had a reason to protect someone in the first place. No, maybe not a reason. A duty?

“They’re from a woman called Bronagh O’Carolan. She was the victim of a rape investigated back in 1984.”

“I take it that it was never solved?”

The letters’ evident unhappiness was testament to that. Trainor nodded.

“She blamed me.”

“You were the investigating officer?” He asked the question with surprise. Melanie Trainor had been in murder in 1984. What was she doing investigating a rape?

She shook her head, confirming he was right. “No. I was nowhere near the case.”

“So why…”

She cut across his question saving his breath. As she stared at him he noticed her eyes were a warm dark brown and behind the formal disguise she looked very like her daughter. He couldn’t imagine how hard it must be seeing your dead child’s reflection every time you looked in the glass.

She answered his query. “The Senior Investigating Officer, Superintendent Murtagh, was pretty sure a man called Declan Wasson was to blame, but the forensics were weak and he couldn’t get a conclusive match so he was set free.” She dropped her eyes. “He lived in the same estate as Mrs O’Carolan so she had to see him every day. Finally it got too much for her and she killed herself in 1986. The letters ended then.”

She fingered a sheet of pale blue paper then turned it face-down on the table-top. “This was her last note to me. She posted it three hours before she died.”

The small room fell silent and Craig listened as the wall-clock marked the time. After more than a minute he asked another question.

“Why did she blame you?”

Trainor lifted her eyes to look at him. They held a mixture of anger and disdain but he wasn’t sure who they held it for. Him, herself, or the woman she thought had taken the coward’s way from this world? Because if he was sure of one thing it was that Melanie Trainor would have viewed Bronagh O’Carolan’s suicide as the act of a coward. When her voice came it was strong and clear.

“Because I convicted Jonno Mulvenna of a crime.”

Craig knew what she expected his next question to be. “What has that got to do with Wasson?” But instead he surprised her.

“Was he innocent?”

Her shock was visceral and she jerked back in her chair. She gathered herself hurriedly to disguise it but it was too late, they both knew he’d seen it and there was no way to bluff. She tidied the letters into a pile and rested her hands on top, using the time to compose her face into a mask of indignation and untruth. Then she let him have it in an icy voice.

“Who do you think you’re talking to, Superintendent? I’m your senior officer, remember that. I came here to assist your investigation, not be questioned like some petty crook.”

Craig gazed at her unflinching. “Yes Ma’am, I’m well aware of that. But my question remains. Why would Bronagh O’Carolan blame you for a rape you didn’t investigate, that occurred the year after another crime in which a woman was killed? A crime for which you convicted Jonno Mulvenna? Unless there are other links between the two cases? She must have felt that you’d convicted the wrong man. Did she believe that Declan Wasson, her accused rapist, was guilty in the Veronica Jarvis murder? Not John Mulvenna?”

It was the question he’d been asking himself and everyone else for the past three days. He hadn’t intended to get there this quickly with her but she’d opened the door and it seemed rude not to walk through.

He watched as her hands clenched, throwing her knuckles into white relief against her tan. He could almost hear her mind racing, wondering whether to lie, or perhaps to continue a lie that had already been told for thirty years. Instead she relaxed suddenly and drew herself upright in her seat, showing the metal that had taken her to the top. She smiled at him. It was a cold half-smile that didn’t reach her eyes and it was calculated to generate fear. It had probably worked on her subordinates for years. Well she could think again. He might not have her elevated rank but he was subordinate to no-one and he
was going to get an answer to his question, either here or under oath.

She finally spoke, her mime not enough to break his nerve.

“She believed Declan Wasson had committed the crime that Jonno Mulvenna was convicted of. And that if Wasson had been put away in 1983 for the murder of Veronica Jarvis he could never have attacked her in 1984.”

Her voice was calm and cool and she lifted a small piece of lint from her jacket as she spoke, casting it away into mid-air. Craig wasn’t fooled; he’d seen displacement activities plenty of time before with interviewees. From kicking the table to tapping their fingers annoyingly on the desk, or glancing up and down and all around the room. Her lint was just an elegant version of the same. He knew right then that she was lying and he was on the right track. She was still talking but he knew her words would all be lies. Instead he listened to the message in the gaps between them and the real truth, in her tone of voice and posture shifts. They confirmed the story from the lint.

“Wasson was looked at briefly for the Jarvis murder but it didn’t stack up, Mulvenna was a much better suspect and all the evidence pointed his way.”

Really? All what evidence?

“Mrs O’Carolan wanted the murder case re-opened, to convict Wasson and put him away, but there was nothing I could do.” Again, really?

Trainor slipped her hand inside the document case and pulled out another file. It held a series of typed letters much more orderly than the last. Her gaze said this was the last answer Craig was getting and she expected him to be satisfied with it and stop looking elsewhere. He raised a questioning eyebrow.

“These are from Bronagh O’Carolan’s eldest son. James. He’s thirty-three now. He was six when she died.”

“What age were her other children?”

She glanced at him as if she was confused.

“You said he was the eldest, what age were the other ones?”

She dropped her eyes and Craig thought that at least she had the good grace to do that. Her voice was quiet. “Three and one year. Two little girls.”

On the last word her voice broke. She regained her composure quickly and tapped the pile. “He’s been writing to me since he was at Queens.” She sighed. “Each letter is the same. Blaming me for letting Wasson go and asking for the Mulvenna conviction to be examined.” She shook her head. “Wasson’s dead and it won’t bring his mother back. Why doesn’t he just leave it alone?”

The question was rhetorical but her tone was a mixture of pleading and despair and Craig knew she was afraid of what might be found if the case was examined again. He framed his next question in such a way that she couldn’t attempt to pull rank. He wanted the mother, not the ACC.

“Do you believe James O’Carolan had something to do with your daughter’s death?”

She glanced at him quickly, her mouth ready with a defiant word. What she saw in Craig’s eyes was sympathy for her loss. It disarmed her for a moment and she nodded, then shook her head quickly as if she couldn’t decide whether to answer yes or no.

Craig saw something else behind her confusion. She was afraid, and… there was guilt as well. The guilt could have been for Lissy, for her being murdered for her career. But the fear? He parked it for future analysis and waited for her reply.

“I think…perhaps…” She shook her head despairingly, settling on “I don’t know. It’s why I brought the letters for you to see.”

It wasn’t the only reason, Craig was sure of that. He reached out his hand and she gave him both files. He pushed back his chair and stood, looking down briefly at the top of her head, then he turned and left the room. Leaving her to mourn her daughter alone, without trying to maintain the façade of rank.