The Sixth Estate (The Craig Crime Series) (25 page)

“Well, no. She did say Bwye was worse than usual that night.”

“OK. What did S…Sergeant Ellis say?”

“He said Bwye was completely legless and people were disgusted.”

Craig saw where Davy was heading. “Make your point.”

“OK. The barmaid, the driver and S…Sergeant Ellis, who’s seen a lot, said Bwye was falling down drunk. W…What if Bwye knew he was going to die that night and that’s
why
he got so drunk?”

Gerry gawped at him. “Why the heck would he go home if he knew that he was going to die?”

Davy blushed as if he was being ridiculous, but what he was saying was ringing a bell inside Craig’s head. He urged him on.

“Because?”

“Because…he went home because…he’d arranged his own death. And he got paralytic drunk to numb w…what he knew was coming.”

Craig leaned forward. “You mean he’d paid for a hit on his family?”

Davy looked confused. “Maybe…I’m not sure yet…maybe just on himself but Mrs Bwye got caught up in it by mistake.” He shook his head, signalling defeat. “I don’t know. That’s as far as I’ve got. It’s just a theory.”

Craig’s Italian half wanted to hug him but instead he settled for a manly “well done”. Andy gawped at them both as if they were mad.

“You’re taking this seriously? That Bwye arranged his own death and deliberately got drunk so that he wouldn’t suffer? But what about the wife? And if Bwye arranged it, then why was there so much blood from both of them? He struggled and so did the wife, hey.”

Craig shook his head. “I can’t answer all the questions yet, and I’m not saying it’s correct, but it’s useful to have another theory. OK, good, Davy. Andy, what happened with the GP?”

“Just what you’d imagine. He’s not going to tell us anything without a fight. Patient confidentiality, blah blah.”

Craig nodded, but its vagueness told them his mind was elsewhere. It was; at the mortuary. He glanced at the clock and sprang to his feet.

“Andy, you’re with me. Gerry, stay here and help Davy and Carmen.” He realised that Carmen was nowhere to be seen. “Where is she, by the way?”

“W…Working upstairs. She needs quiet to concentrate.”

“Fine.”

Andy gazed meaningfully out at the snow. “Where are we going?”

“The mortuary.”

“Great. Just what we need on a day like this; somewhere warm to hang out…”

****

Mavis Brown had insisted on meeting Liam at the escort agency because she had a Mr Brown at home. Liam had had high hopes for the trip but by the time he left The Kasbah and re-emerged into Derry’s winter sunlight, he was a more disappointed man than the one who’d entered an hour before.

He trudged back to his car through the snow, thinking. Old man Bwye had been a frequent visitor to the agency and an equally frequent requester of Mavis’ company, but Liam felt let down by both. He’d expected The Kasbah to have a reception draped in red and gold silk, not a front office like an insurance company’s, with all the attendant charm. He also expected escorts to be called Leonora or Gloria, or have some other vowel-filled name; not Mavis. He’d been even more disappointed by Mavis once they’d met.

Instead of the pneumatic twenty-something he’d expected, Mavis had lived down to her name, with short brown hair and sturdy legs and an age well past her two thirds century. He pictured Diana Bwye, a pretty brunette who would have stayed pretty well into old age, and decided that Mavis must have hidden charms. Ten minutes of chat later he’d understood her attraction.

She’d hung on his every word with a look that said he was a God amongst men and every syllable he uttered was a gem. For a control freak like Oliver Bwye she must have been a dream come true. Bwye had seen her three times a week for the past year, either at the agency or, more daringly, in his study at home. Liam wondered whether he’d cared if his wife and daughter found out and then plumped for probably not. A man selfish enough to need a yes woman wouldn’t waste time caring about anyone’s feelings other than his own.

Three times a week didn’t leave much time for a real affair and questioning of The Kasbah’s staff confirmed that Bwye had often been there even when Mavis wasn’t working, making do with someone else for the night. An hour of questions later and with Mavis Brown’s swab in his pocket to eliminate her DNA, Liam was walking back to his car.

He stopped and gazed around him for a moment, wondering whether to have tea and a bun in a small café he’d spied, or head back to the undoubtedly freezing lake and start chasing the phantom boat. Compromise won and a takeaway accompanied him the six mile journey to the farm north of the lake. Twenty minutes later he was standing on a jetty with a young man, both of them staring down at a small speedboat.

“My parents are away, Chief Inspector. You’ll have to make do with my wee brother Micky and me.”

The speaker was a wiry youth of around eighteen. But around eighteen was always dodgy so Liam decided to check his name and age.

“Do you have any I.D., Mr McDermott? Only, no disrespect, but you could be some kid who’d just wandered in off the street.”

It was unlikely, given that the boy had answered the door of the double-fronted farm house holding a games console and wearing no shoes. But it never did any harm to check.

Oisín McDermott produced his driving licence, reassuring Liam that he was who he’d said he was and was nineteen in two weeks.

“Grand. I just had to check. How wee is your wee brother?”

“Sixteen.”

“Fine. Is he around?”

“Back at the house. You want me to call him?”

“Aye. Another pair of eyes.”

Five minutes later three pairs of eyes were staring at the speedboat, anchored to the jetty by a braided mooring line. Liam rubbed his chin.

“You say it disappeared and then suddenly came back?”

Micky McDermott nodded vigorously, barely shifting the vertical mass of hair on top of his head. Hair products had moved on since the Brylcreem of Liam’s youth.

“It was me who noticed it gone. Last Wednesday.”

Wednesday; it fitted their timeline.

“What time did you notice?”

“When I got home from school, ’bout six. I stay late on Wednesdays for science club.”

Liam nodded approvingly, picturing his son Rory building computers by the time he reached nursery. Both his children would be geniuses of course; it stood to reason with him as a dad.

“Who did you tell?”

The boy looked blank and then glanced at his brother as if he didn’t want to land him in a mess. Oisín nodded him on in a way that suggested he didn’t want to add lying to the police to his list of misdemeanours.

“Nobody. I…It’s happened before and Dad got mad.”

Oisín cut in. “I took the boat out overnight last summer without telling my dad.” A light blush coloured his cheeks and Liam knew immediately that there’d been a girl involved. “He grounded me for six weeks.” The lothario shrugged magnanimously. “It was fair enough. I scared them to death. Mum thought that I’d drowned.”

Liam grinned. “Trying to impress a young lady by any chance?”

The blush deepened. Liam turned back to his brother.

“So you thought Oisín had taken the boat again and you didn’t want to land him in it.”

Micky nodded.

“OK. So you noticed the boat gone at six o’clock last Wednesday. Tell me what you did for the rest of the night, including when you raised the alarm.”

The sixteen-year-old answered without hesitation. “I went in, had dinner, did my homework then watched TV before bed like I usually do. I didn’t tell anyone the boat had gone.”

“What time did you go to bed?”

“Ten. I had a try-out for the rugby team next morning, so I didn’t want to sleep in.”

Liam turned to look at the house. It was an impressive edifice with balconies on the upper floor. One of them overlooked the lake; it was too much to hope for that the room belonged to one of the boys. He was right; it was their parents’ bedroom.

“Where are your rooms?”

The brothers answered together. “At the back.”

“So you didn’t notice any activity on the lake late that night?”

Micky shook his head.

“And you didn’t see your brother so you didn’t realise that he hadn’t taken the boat?”

“No. He wasn’t up when I went to school on Thursday, so I couldn’t ask him. But I noticed the boat was still missing when I left for school at seven.”

Satisfied with the boy’s story, Liam turned to his dirty-stop-out elder brother.

“OK. Tell me where you were that night.”

Oisín screwed up his face, trying to recall. Then he smiled, remembering. “Party at the student’s union.”

“What subject are you studying?”

Whatever it was they obviously didn’t have morning lectures.

“Media studies.”

Liam smirked. Another budding Spielberg.

“OK. Tell me about Wednesday night and Thursday morning.”

The young man shrugged. “Partied at the union till three and then crashed at a mate’s. I didn’t get home till Thursday evening after lectures.”

Before Liam could ask, he volunteered the mate’s name. “Jackson Flood. He’ll vouch for me.”

He slipped his phone from his jeans and read out Flood’s number. “I didn’t even notice the boat had gone until Dad said.”

Micky chipped in. “I saw it wasn’t back when I came home after school on Thursday, but I still didn’t want to say anything till I saw Oisín. It was Dad who mentioned it first, about eight o’clock that night.”

Oisín nodded. “On Thursday evening, over dinner.” He looked aggrieved. “He asked me straight out if I’d taken it!”

As if
. Liam urged him on.

“So you both said that you hadn’t. Then what?”

Micky cut in excitedly. “Dad got his binoculars and looked. It was floating in the middle of the lake. Dad and Oisín went out in the row boat and brought it in. It looked OK so Dad just assumed it’d got loose and floated out.”

Except that it hadn’t. Their killer had been clever. He’d dumped the Bwyes’ bodies, sailed back to their side of the lake and deliberately left the boat unmoored, knowing that it would float back out with the current. Liam took out his phone.

“Has anyone been in the boat since then?”

Both boys shook their heads. “It’s too cold.”

He smiled at their solidarity and hoped that his kids would grow up as close, then he called in the C.S.I.s as Oisín McDermott got his surprised father on the phone.

****

The brick mortuary was as cold as they’d expected but at least Mike’s office had working radiators. They sat on them gratefully until Craig had thawed out enough to speak.

“Diana Bwye. What did you find?”

Mike handed out hot drinks with a solemn look on his face.

“She had the ligature marks you saw around her neck, and two wounds, both gunshots. The first was to her left thigh, nasty and vascular; it explains the amount of blood we found in Bwye’s study. But that wasn’t her cause of death. What killed her was a second shot to the chest; straight through the heart. It’s hard to be accurate on time but I’d say that they were separated by less than half an hour. Both bullets were from the same weapon, a point 22 rifle.”

Andy was confused. “So what was the point of the ligature?”

Mike shrugged. “God only knows. She wasn’t strangled; whoever did it didn’t even break the hyoid bone. If I was being cynical I’d say they left the mark to throw us off track.”

Craig returned to the gunshots. “Were the wounds caused by Bwye’s weapon?”

“Probably. But until we get the gun we won’t know for sure. I’ve sent the bullets to Des.”

Craig sipped his coffee, feeling the sensation return to his hands.

“So she was dead before she entered the water.”

“Definitely. There was no water in her lungs and no sign that she’d struggled to get free of the sack. There would have been plastic under her fingernails. In fact I don’t think she struggled at all. We would have found skin or blood under her nails if she’d fought her attacker, but there was nothing.”

Andy nodded. “If Bwye had battered her for years she might have given up fighting.”

Mike’s face saddened. “I’ve seen it happen before.”

“If she knew her attacker that might’ve made her less likely to run as well, hey.”

Craig’s voice was dull. “We could speculate forever. When we find them we’ll know. Anything else on her, Mike?”

“No. Just an ignominious end for a nice woman. Thank God she was dead before she hit the water; her husband’s fate was even worse.”

Craig glanced up from his drink. “How much worse?”

“A lot.”

“You got him out of the concrete?”

The pathologist nodded. “We scanned it at the hospital first so that we didn’t damage evidence, then we used ultrasound to shatter the shell at two points. Forensics are working on the pieces now but Des says it’s a concrete found in every DIY store.” He gave a brief smile. “Bright side. The body’s intact.”