The Sixth Estate (The Craig Crime Series) (16 page)

Annette and Craig smiled; they were both dog lovers, although Craig’s Labrador, Murphy, lived at his parents’ house in Holywood. It was good exercise for his dad to walk him, even though he moaned about it, a lot.

“And the van. Des identified the treads as belonging to a Ford Transit.” He tapped his screen and turned the pad round for them to see. The image of a large windowless van appeared. “It’s big enough to hold three or four people in the back.”

Craig thought for a moment. “OK, ask Des to check how the treads would look on mud for the likely weight it might have been carrying; factor in the weather last Wednesday night/Thursday morning. Also, check how many of those vans there are in Northern Ireland.”

“Already w…working on the first and there are twenty-three of them.”

“Damn! I don’t suppose there’s any way to narrow it down?”

“I’m cross checking the owners with names linked to the case, residents within fifty miles, employees in any of Bwye’s companies and a few other things. Des did say that the treads showed a s…small slash on the left tyre.”

“Meaning?”

Davy shrugged. “It probably ran over glass at some stage. It will help confirm it’s the right van w…when we find it.”

If they were in luck it might do more than that.

“Run the MOTs for all the vans. I want to know if any examiner noted the slash in their MOT report and advised that the tyre be changed.”

Liam’s eyes widened. “They’re manual reports. It’ll take the lad ages.”

Craig fixed his gaze. “Not with you helping.” He moved on before Liam could moan. “Any vans too new for MOT see if they visited any garages to have their tyres checked in the past year. It’s a long shot but who knows. Anything else, Davy?”

Davy shared a look of martyrdom with Liam. He maintained the expression when he turned back to Craig.

“No s…sightings of the Bwyes at airports or ports and no activity on any of their cards. I’ve frozen their accounts just in case, but we’ll still s…see if someone tries to use a card. Oh, and I’ve hacked into Jane’s emails but the only people she emailed were female friends from college. That’s it so far. I’ve a lot of checks still to run, including getting more detail on the Bwyes’ GP and hospital records; it was the insurance company that told me about Oliver Bwye’s heart and cancer problems. We may need w…warrants for the other records.”

Craig nodded. “Let me know.” He turned to Liam. “Right, mighty mouth; tell everyone about Brendan Gordon.”

Liam gave Craig a faux hurt look and summarised Gordon’s interview in three minutes, ending with “Oh aye, and he’s studying landscape gardening.”

Annette asked first. “Where? Is it the same place Jane Bwye is doing fashion?”

Liam glanced at Craig. Neither of them had made the connection. Liam flicked open his notebook.

“He told Ellis it was Stonebridge College. Is that the same place?”

Annette rolled her eyes and was tempted to say “DOH!”, like her kids did when something was so obvious she should have spotted it immediately. Instead she said patiently “Yes it is, Liam. Oh, what a surprise.”

He sniffed. “So what if they knew each other from college? They’d have met each other around here anyway.”

“But college is a more social, equal place. If a romance was going to start it would have started there.”

Liam wasn’t going to be defeated. He gestured at Davy. “He’s just said she was seeing that Justin O’Hare.”

The bickering was giving Craig a headache so he raised a hand. “Be quiet, both of you!” His tone ensured they did as they were told. “Check out Gordon and O’Hare. Gordon blushed when we asked about Jane; let’s see if O’Hare does the same. Annette, I want you and Andy to interview him.”

Andy perked up at the sound of his name and asked the question that he’d been waiting to ask for five minutes.

“What was Gordon’s accent like? Can we hear it?”

Craig startled; he’d forgotten to get it on tape. He shook his head. “Neutral. I don’t know where he grew up but whatever his natural accent is it’s been trained out of him.”

Julia nodded like a sage. “I bet he was in the prison drama club. They could have ironed his accent out.”

“Good point. I hadn’t thought of that.” He turned back to Davy. “Anything more on the ransom call?”

Davy nodded excitedly. “Sorry, I forgot. The language boys s…sent me a report. I’ll read it out.”

Craig smiled. Davy’s stutter had always made him prefer to demonstrate things in writing and diagrams, and he avoided public speaking like the plague. So for him to volunteer to read aloud was a major step forward and a sharp glance from Craig warned Liam not to draw attention to the event. Annette nodded encouragingly while Davy found the right page.

“OK. The voice on the tape w…was, like we thought, a man in his twenties-”

Craig cut in, breaking his resolve not to interrupt. “Definitely not teens?”

Davy shook his head. “Twenties; early twenties. They were adamant.”

He paused for another comment but Craig waved him on.

“The voice was in the baritone range, signalling a man likely to exhibit obvious s…secondary sexual characteristics -”

It was Julia who interrupted this time. “Like what? Secondary sexual characteristics are body hair, broken voice, musculature, etc. and most men have those. His voice has obviously broken, so how can they say more than that?”

Davy shrugged. “Apparently they can. I think they’re implying that the man, w…when we find him, will look quite butch. Broad, big jaw…”

Andy cut in. “Maybe he’ll have a beard and smoke a pipe, hey.”

“Like Santa Claus.”

Craig brought them back to the point. “Go on, Davy.”

“OK. The accent is most likely from the North of Ireland and its capital city, Belfast. Belfast accents can be narrowed to within a few streets by the s…skilled listener and this accent hails from w…west Belfast, more precisely the area around the lower Falls Road.”

Craig nodded, Vera Patterson had been right. Davy saw him nod and shook his head, turning back to the paper.

“However, it is our opinion that this accent, whilst a good facsimile, may not be native to the speaker. W…We are therefore unfortunately unable to identify the s…speaker’s real accent from this brief sample and request a longer sample.”

There was silence while Craig thought and the others exchanged confused looks. Davy broke it.

“They always add that caveat to cover themselves. Even if the caller put on the accent at least that means he knew how to; maybe he’d lived in the Falls Road area s…sometime in the past.”

Craig shook his head. “Anyone who’d watched movies about The Troubles would have been able to mimic one. Thanks for trying but it doesn’t get us much further.”

Annette jumped in. “I disagree, sir. It tells us that our man is definitely early twenties and not a wimp.”

“True, but that doesn’t rule out Brendan Gordon. He’s small but he’s got muscles like the Spartan 300. And twenty-five isn’t far out of the age range.” He sighed heavily. “I wish to hell we’d kept a recording of his voice, we’ll have to go back and get one now. OK. Let’s keep going. Liam, you and Davy chase the van, Annette and Andy are taking O’Hare, and get him on tape please. There are still all of Mrs Bwye’s friends and Bwye’s enemies to chase. Julia, you and Gerry start on Diana Bwye’s charity friends. When you’ve finished with them go to the golf-club and see who you can find there. John Ellis witnessed Bwye’s behaviour that Wednesday evening so he can give you the names from that night.”

Liam interjected, looking sheepish. “We did keep a record of Gordon’s voice. I knocked on the recorder just before he came in.”

Craig tutted and everyone knew Liam hadn’t told Gordon he was being taped. Craig decided to save the lecture; the tape could be useful this time. When he nodded Liam on he knew he’d skated past.

“I’ll give the tape to the lad for comparison. Here, what about the lake? The work there’s only just started.”

Craig thought for a moment before admitting there was too much to do to tie Liam up with MOT checks, no matter how much he wanted to teach him a lesson. He relented grudgingly.

“OK, you take the lake tomorrow. Sorry, Davy, you’ll have to do the MOT checks on your own.” He glanced at the clock on Oliver Bwye’s desk. It was after five. “Let’s take a break for dinner. Anyone who wants to go home, do. Anyone who’s staying locally tonight get ready to work.”

He scanned the row of faces, searching for the most exhausted looking ones. “Julia: you, Gerry and Andy take the night off; the rest of us will keep going.”

Gerry’s face lit up but Julia stubbornly refused.

“I’m staying. Matt’s on-call so I’ve a free evening. I’ll take tomorrow night off, if that’s OK?”

“Fine. But Gerry and Andy, go home after dinner or now if you want to, you both look wrecked.” He stood up. “Right, someone find us a decent restaurant. Dinner’s on me.”

****

By nine p.m. Liam had walked the arc of the lake nearest the house, no mean feat in the pitch dark. Only the muddiest part of the shore was lit, by lamps jerry-rigged by the local uniforms to make sure that none of them fell in. The water would claim their lives quickly; they’d drown, become entangled in weeds or simply die from the cold.

He squinted out over the black disc. Any boats on the lake when they’d first arrived had gone now, the water off limits to any but the police. It was normally used by the locals for fun and fishing, its public rights preserved by its perimeter bordering on some council land. Liam wondered if Oliver Bwye had tried to control access to it the way that he’d controlled the rest of his kingdom, if he had then the law had thwarted him.

Liam switched off the lamps and stood in the dark, picturing what he would have done if he’d kidnapped the Bwyes. It didn’t make pretty viewing. First, he would have loaded them into the van at the study door, just the way their perp seemed to have done. He stopped abruptly, realising something. There was no way one person could have lifted an injured man without help. Oliver Bwye was big; overweight would have been more accurate. If he was as injured as the blood in his study suggested then he would have been spark out. How could one man possibly have got him into the van?

He took out his notebook and jotted the question down, followed quickly by another. Disabled ramp? Then he turned back to the water and his thoughts. OK then, let’s say their perp had managed to get all the Bwyes into the van. Liam stopped again; there’s been no sign of Jane Bwye’s blood, what did that mean? Was she an accomplice or so frightened that she’d done what she was told without needing to be hurt? Had her dog been injured to subdue her instead? Liam scribbled the questions down then gazed at the water again.

OK, so you’ve got them all in the van, the parents too injured to fight back and Jane scared half to death; then what? You drive away from the back door. He jotted down; ‘chase the weight/tread link’. Then where? The lake? The tracks’ direction outside the door had been ambiguous and they’d found nothing but mush in the mud beside the lake. The van might not have driven to the lake at all, or it might have done and gone right up to the edge. So how did they get the Bwyes into the water… or onto a boat? It brought Liam back to the idea of a ramp. He shivered violently but not because of the cold.

Just then Craig appeared at his side and they stood, not speaking, just staring at the lake, its darkness growing more oppressive with each breath. Craig broke the silence.

“They’re dead.”

Liam didn’t move, his eyes fixed on the dark. He stared into it, through it, at the starless sky and the invisible horizon, then down, down through the still water to the tombs below. Finally he nodded.

“I know. It was the only thing they could have done once they’d left the tracks. If it had been a dry night they might have lived.”

On a dry winter’s night even the soil near the warm house would have been frozen and nothing would have left an impression. But the evening’s showers plus the warmth had caused mud, and on wet mud tracks were unavoidable and the Bwyes’ fates had been sealed.

Craig sighed; it was a defeated sound. Liam glanced at him, surprised. The boss never gave up. Craig’s next words said it was just a momentary lapse.

“They probably didn’t intend to kill them, at least not that fast. If they had they would just have done it in the house.”

“So…they came to take them but they also came prepared to do serious harm. That’s obvious from the blood.”

“You mean if the perp hadn’t been prepared the Bwyes would have fought back using whatever was to hand, and nothing in the house was missing or bloody. OK, so they brought a weapon, or they had Bwye’s rifle.”

“Yep. They intended to take them, maybe for money or maybe to kill later, but not here. That wasn’t the plan.”

“They must have had help to get them into the van, or it was adapted in some way, to let them be dragged or rolled in easily.”

Liam smiled in the dark; it was exactly what he’d written in his book.

Craig continued. “At some point they noticed the tyres were leaving tracks.”

“Before they’d gone very far. They saw the trail they’d left by the door and knew smoothing it out would mean leaving more clues. They might as well have sent up a flare. We’d have their treads and once they’d got on the main road they’d be caught on traffic cams eventually and we’d follow the trail straight to them.”