The Sixth Estate (The Craig Crime Series) (31 page)

Craig went back to his first impression. “How old are these men? The councillor must be pushing seventy.”

Lawton smiled wistfully. It was the smile of a seventy-year-old looking at a forty something and wishing that he had all those years again.

“You’re right. Ormond is seventy-two, Ronson’s in his sixties and Clinton’s in his late seventies; he’ll never leave prison, thank goodness.”

Craig sighed. All seven men on the list could have families who might want to avenge them, that meant that Davy still had wider searches to do. The newsman scrutinised Craig’s face.

“I hope you don’t mind me saying so, Superintendent, but you look exhausted. Aren’t you near solving the case yet?”

The mirror in the men’s room had told Craig how tired he looked ten minutes earlier, so Lawton’s words weren’t a shock.

“I don’t mind you saying so but unfortunately no, not yet.” Craig lifted the list. “Thank you for this. If you think of anything else, please get in touch.”

It was clear from Lawton’s expression that he already had.

Craig leaned forward eagerly. “What is it? We need to know, no matter how insignificant it seems.”

Lawton looked sad for a moment then he spoke, in a reluctant tone. “It’s difficult…one doesn’t like to speak ill of the dead, especially when they had such a hard life…”

Craig connected the dots. “It’s something about Diana Bwye?”

Lawton’s expression said yes, it also said that he wasn’t sure. “Perhaps. I’m not certain… Diana was a truly lovely woman.” He glanced at Craig. “You know what I mean by that?”

Craig smiled his first real smile of the day. He knew exactly what Bwye meant. Nice women, pretty women and even good women were seen every day in homes and streets. But lovely women were few and far between and their loveliness had nothing to do with their looks. His grandmother had been one, her every smile an offer of help geared towards making the recipient’s life better in some way. She’d never shouted and never complained, instead carrying the burdens of the world with good grace. Everything she’d done had been tinged with kindness and he’d adored her for it. He’d never met anyone like her before or since. He stopped himself abruptly. Yes he had. Katy. Before he could ask himself what the revelation meant, Lawton continued wistfully.

“I see that you’ve met such a woman. They leave an impact, don’t they? Diana Bwye was one. It was such a misfortune that she married Oliver.”

He gazed out his office window until Craig prompted him gently. “And? You implied there was something you could tell me about her that was pertinent.”

The older man shielded his eyes with his hand for a moment before he looked at Craig again.

“I think Diana was seeing another man.” His tone grew defiant, as if he was daring Craig to judge. “And so what if she was? Her life with Oliver was hell, didn’t she deserve some happiness?”

Infidelity clearly didn’t fit with Lawton’s idea of a lovely woman, except in cases of duress.

“Who is he, Mr Lawton?”

“I…I don’t want to slander anyone when I’m not sure. It was just something I noticed at last year’s Christmas party.”

Craig’s tone was firmer this time.

“His name?”

Lawton hung his head. “The Bwye’s family solicitor, Joshua Kelly. I invited him to the party as he’d helped us with an article. He didn’t normally attend.”

“Tell me what happened to make you suspicious.”

“It might be nothing…”

Craig’s stare hardened.

“Joshua…he, he spilled some wine down his shirt and Diana got a damp cloth to clean it off. But instead of handing him the cloth to do it himself she wiped his shirt until the stain was gone. She, she was being kind. She always was.”

“There was more than that, wasn’t there?”

Lawton nodded sadly, his voice dropping. “He covered her hand with his for a moment; a very long moment and she didn’t pull away.” He shook his head. “They were in the kitchen so no-one else saw but me. I might have imagined it. Perhaps she was just being kind?”

He wasn’t imagining it, Craig was sure of that; but what did it mean? Diana Bwye might just have been snatching a well-deserved moment of tenderness from the brutality of her life, or there could have been more between the pair. Either way it had to be checked out. Craig slipped the list of names into his pocket and rose to leave, then he shook the editor’s hand.

“You’ve been very helpful, Mr Lawton. We’ll check everything.” He smiled reassuringly. “And I won’t think any less of Mrs Bwye no matter what we find.”

Chapter Seve
nteen

Katy was in outpatients at St Mary’s when her mobile rang with a withheld number. She let it cut to answerphone, too busy dictating a letter for her P.A. and wondering what to buy her mum for Christmas, to answer an unknown call. It would be some company asking her to buy something she didn’t need.

Her brother always went for safe and sensible Christmas presents, getting their mum a warm cardigan or a new coat, but she was determined to bring a bit of excitement back into her life. She’d been alone for ten years since her dad had died but she was still only seventy; still lots of time to get back out in the world.

She’d just narrowed the gifts to three possibilities when her phone rang again, this time with a message; it was John requesting a call back to the lab. She rang immediately, visions of Craig lying somewhere, bruised and bleeding, and John being the designated messenger of bad news racing through her head. John was just about to say hello when she cut across him.

“What’s wrong? Is Marc OK? What happened to him?”

He realised immediately how his business-like ‘call me back’ must have sounded and gabbled an apology.

“Marc’s fine. I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to scare you.” Before Katy had a chance to answer, he caveated his words. “Well, he’s not really fine but he’s not injured. Well actually, that may not be true, strictly speaking…”

He was taken aback by her next words.

“For God’s sake, John, be quiet! You’re scaring me even more now.” After a pause she carried on. “Just answer these questions. Is Marc hurt?”

“No.” He inhaled to elaborate but she cut across him.

“Is he sick?”

“No.” He knew better than to inhale this time.

“Is this about his recent drinking, moodiness, insomnia and being generally difficult?”

John heaved a sigh of relief. Answering logical questions was so much easier than free-flowing discourse.

“Yes.” He paused to let her continue. When she didn’t he carried on. “He’s making life hard for everyone on the case. He’s snappy, vague and looks like hell, well, as much like hell as Marc ever looks, and I’m worried about him.”

It was Katy’s turn to sigh. “So am I. I have an opinion on what’s happening but I’d like to hear yours first.”

“PTSD. He hasn’t dealt with shooting Caleb Pitt in October. It doesn’t matter that Pitt was about to kill Liam, Marc still feels like crap because he had to shoot an old man in a wheelchair, especially in the head.”

“I know, but he won’t talk to me about it. It’s like he’s ashamed, as if it was dishonourable somehow.”

John nodded then remembered that she couldn’t see him. “That’s exactly what he thinks! For a twenty-first-century man, Marc’s soul belongs in medieval times. He’d have been happier fighting a duel to the death than doing what he had to do that day.”

Katy fell silent. They agreed on what was wrong and what had caused it, now they had to do something positive. She swallowed hard before speaking; she didn’t want to give away Craig’s secrets but she needed John’s help.

“Marc’s been seeing a counsellor. The force insisted on it after the shooting.”

If she’d expected John to be surprised then she’d been wrong.

“I know.”

Of course he did. He’d been in Craig’s life far longer than she had. John was still speaking.

“I also know that he won’t talk to her; all he does is stare out the bloody window for an hour once a week.”

She hadn’t known. Her voice broke. “He didn’t tell me.”

“He loves you too much. He sees it as his job to protect you.”

“Even when he needs my help!”

John shook his head. She still had a way to go before she understood Craig.

“In Marc’s head, needing anyone’s help is weak, especially the help of a woman he loves. He’s an old fashioned bloke, Katy. He sees it as his job to protect you, not the other way round.”

Katy’s resolve broke and she started to sob. “But if he won’t let us help him what are we going to do, John? I can’t bear to see him so unhappy.”

John could feel his sympathy for Craig starting to turn to anger. Guilt and remorse were all very well but not if they hurt the people you loved. His voice softened.

“Please don’t cry.” He attempted a joke. “If Natalie hears I’ve made you cry she’ll beat me up.”

The thought of the five feet tall Natalie making a dent on him was so ridiculous that it made her laugh.

“I’m serious! She has a mean right hook.” He paused for a moment, regrouping. “OK, how’s this for a suggestion? I’ll take a quick trip to Derry on the pretext of Mike needing a consult, so I can really assess the Italian stallion’s state, and how much longer he’s likely to be up there. I’ll let you know what I find. Then, when we get some time over Christmas we’ll try talking to him, separately or together, I don’t mind. He might ignore one of us but not both. He needs to acknowledge that there’s a real problem, before his team get fed up and resign, or…”

He didn’t need to finish the sentence. They both knew Craig’s propensity for self-destruction far outweighed the likelihood that he would ever hurt someone else.

****

Craig’s meeting with Sean Flanagan was painless; all he’d wanted was an update, not answers. Yet. The pressure would start when the Christmas headlines loomed large. Flanagan had even offered him a whisky, citing not medicinal reasons but seasonal bonhomie. It wasn’t a sentiment Craig could share with two murders still to solve.

The drive back to Derry wasn’t as bad as he’d feared, either. The snow had turned to slush beneath the grit from the council lorries, and a wariness of ice had kept the side roads clear of all but the fearless and there weren’t too many of those.

He was left alone with his thoughts for thirty miles. He stared at the slumbering countryside, thinking of spring when the fields would be filled with plants and noise. Where would he be then; where would any of them be? He shook his head at his morbid thoughts in what had always been his favourite time of year and forced himself to focus on the case.

Had Diana Bwye been having an affair with Joshua Kelly? And if she had what could it possibly have had to do with her own or her husband’s death? He corrected himself. Her affair could have had everything to do with Oliver Bwye’s death, but for her to die as well seemed odd if it had. Could her lover have killed them both? But why? What possible benefit would anyone have got from her dying? He shook his head hard as if shaking it would knock the ill-fitting pieces into place, but it was no use, he needed to start the jigsaw again.

Diana Bwye and her husband were both dead. Diana shot dead and Bwye so injured that he couldn’t have fought back and was drowned in concrete. The attack was well planned; a van with facilities that enabled a large man to be loaded onto it and covered in the concrete that had caused his final demise. OK, so it was planned. Craig thumped the steering wheel in irritation; it changed to surprise when he realised something else. Of course it had been planned, but not only the abduction. The boat might have been a contingency, used to dump the bodies in panic, or perhaps it wasn’t, perhaps the plan had
always
been to dump the bodies in the lake. Take the Bwyes from the house to the van and then the boat, deposit them in a watery grave and drive away.

But why bother? Why not just kill them in the house and leave the bodies where they’d dropped; it would make sense, even if a stranger had killed them. Unless. Unless they hadn’t wanted someone whom the Bwyes knew to see the bodies, or someone had specifically wanted the police to think it was a stranger attack.

He mulled over the first option; they hadn’t wanted anyone who knew the Bwyes to see them dead. Did they have a considerate killer, concerned with Jane Bwye’s or the staffs’ sensitivities? Someone who knew the family or someone
in
the family? It led him back to the deaths being organised by Oliver Bwye and him worrying about his daughter’s feelings.

Craig shook his head. No. By all reports Oliver Bwye was a selfish bastard who’d cared too much for himself to end even his terminal life, not the sort of man to give a damn what the discovery of his body would do to his child. That left Diana Bwye. She
would
have cared about Jane’s feelings, so she definitely wouldn’t want her to have found their dead bodies in the study. Had Diana organised her own death and that of her husband, then arranged for them to be disposed of in the lake? If she had then why? Craig half shook his head at the idea, but only half. Something prevented him from dismissing it completely.

He turned to the second option; someone had specifically wanted the police to think that it was a stranger attack. It led him back to the first option but with an additional strand. Richard McCann. Had Richard McCann killed his abusive father-in-law in a deliberately convoluted way so that his young wife would never find out? But why kill his mother-in-law as well? By all accounts he’d liked her. Unless Diana Bwye
had
simply been collateral damage, the unlucky wrong person in the wrong place.

Craig ran the possible scenario. Diana had cancelled going to a charity meeting that evening, a meeting that she never missed. She wasn’t supposed to be in the house at all, so when Richard McCann had arrived to dispatch Oliver Bwye, he’d been taken by surprise. Or perhaps Diana had heard the noise and entered the study to find McCann shooting her husband with his own gun. McCann had been startled by the noise when she’d entered, fired at her in reflex and suddenly he’d had two injured people on his hands. And even though Bwye was a pig of a man, Diana’s religious beliefs would have prevented her allowing or concealing his death, meaning that McCann would’ve
had
to finish them both off.

After that it was a simple matter of McCann leaving the room in disarray like a burglary, faking the bloody prints and then dumping the bodies and the gun in the lake. He’d only brought enough concrete to cover Bwye, so he’d had to improvise for Diana and use stones from the lake shore, and he hadn’t covered Diana’s face because he was fond of her. Jane would never know that he’d done it and they would inherit everything.

The theory worked, except that McCann had two alibis for the Wednesday evening; his mother and his wife. Craig shook his head. A mother alibi-ing her only son would never stand up in court. But would Jane really have lied to alibi a husband who had killed her mum? No, but she might have innocently given him an alibi to protect him, if McCann had told her that he was somewhere else for part of the evening.

The scenario fitted. McCann had wanted rid of Oliver Bwye for the way he’d treated Jane and to gain access to her trust before she reached thirty. With Bwye gone, Diana Bwye would never have held to the thirty clause and he and Jane would have had a comfortable life. Diana Bwye was supposed to be out of the house that night, just as she’d been every Wednesday night for years; her death was simply bad luck.

Craig nodded. OK, it fitted, so why did he still feel so uneasy? The questions came thick and fast and he answered them as they did. Why wouldn’t McCann simply have knocked Diana out? Because she still might have recognised him. But surely McCann would have worn a mask, and even if she had recognised him, would Diana really have testified against him when it would have dragged her daughter down? Perhaps; she had staunch Christian beliefs that she might not have compromised, even for Jane.

The idea of Richard McCann killing his mother-in-law still stuck in Craig’s throat, not from disgust but from disbelief. He shook his head at an invisible jury, imagining giving evidence on the case. If he didn’t believe that Richard McCann had done it how would he ever convince twelve citizens good and true?

He made a decision and pressed dial. He needed to look into Richard McCann’s eyes as he asked him the question, then he would be sure.

“Liam. Richard McCann; where is he?”

Liam held his mobile at arm’s length and made a face, knowing from the background noise that Craig was driving fast. That mean he wasn’t in Belfast where the average speed was less than twenty mph, he was on his way back. He waved goodbye to his relaxing evening in the pub.

“They’re both at his mum’s apartment. I take it you want to see him?”

“Forty minutes at the station. I’ll see you there.”

The line went dead and Liam muttered at his phone. “Forty minutes at the station, Liam. I’ll see you there, Liam. Tote that barge and lift that bale, Liam. Sod the fact that there’s a match on the box tonight.”

Annette rolled her eyes at his monologue. “I take it that grumbling means the Super’s on his way back and you’d been hoping that he’d stay in Belfast overnight.”

Liam warmed to his theme. “I ask you. What sort of normal man doesn’t take the chance for a bit of nooky? There he is, only five miles from his own bed with a warm and willing girlfriend close at hand, and what does he do?”

Annette decided to irritate him further. “He decides that solving a double murder is more important. Oh dear me, no; a man who actually does his job! Call the BBC.”

He reached for something to throw at her but Davy shook his head sanctimoniously. He had ears like a bat and he’d heard everything that Craig had said.

“If you don’t get McCann lifted and leave for the s…station now, the chief will get there before you.” He dropped his tenor to a movie-trailer bass. “And we all know w…what’ll happen then.”