The Sixth Estate (The Craig Crime Series) (35 page)

Her next words were telling.

“I don’t mind what Oliver does to me, I made my marriage vows before God, but for a child who deserved safety and love Jane was owed a better life. It was my duty to ensure that she had one and I failed.”

She continued that Bwye was threatening to contest the female inheritance line and sell off the estate. His threats were probably just to torment her, just as he’d done all of their married life, but she would have had no way of knowing that.

As Kelly read on tears spilled down his cheeks, becoming so heavy that he could barely speak. Craig took the letter and continued reading. It was a sad story of love and disappointment and when he reached the final paragraph everything fell into place.

“I have made a plan that I know will damn my soul, but I pray that God will forgive me some day. I’ve made copies of the keys to Oliver’s gun cabinet and rear study door. I intend to shoot him with his rifle and then kill myself. There’s a man who has agreed to help me, someone whom you will never find. His only task is to take us in a van to the lake and dispose of us both there. Oliver is evil so he must suffer when he dies and I’ve found a way to ensure that.”

Liam murmured “the concrete” as Craig read on.

“Then I will kill myself. This man’s job is only to put us in the water and dispose of the gun and van. I borrowed the van from The Belfast Chronicle; it seemed fitting somehow. I ask two things of the police. Do not pursue this man; he is nothing, just a friend who has suffered a great deal in his life and agreed to help someone else in pain. He didn’t kill either of us. His hands are clean. The second thing I ask is that you allow Jane to believe that we were killed by a stranger. I beg you not to destroy my daughter’s love for me by telling her the truth.”

Kelly had recovered enough to read so Craig paused at the final sentence and handed the letter back. “Finally, Joshua, you are a kind man and you deserve to find happiness. We were not to be. Perhaps in a different life. Love, Diana D’Arcy.”

Kelly set the page on the desk and dropped his head into his hands. The detectives waited for a moment, then Craig lifted the letter and envelope and slid them into an evidence bag. They left the office without a word, leaving a lonely man to mourn the woman he had loved.

****

Sunday. Midnight.

It was their final night in Derry so John Ellis had finally got his dinner guests. Five to be precise, once everyone who’d had a nearby home to go to had gone, leaving just the core Docklands team. Dinner was excellent, but at almost midnight, when all the craic had been had and Brenda Ellis was beginning to wilt, it was finally time to leave. Liam suggested they go in search of more drink, but in the wee small hours the only place still serving was a club. So that was how they found themselves now in a dimly lit nightclub in Derry, complete with throbbing music and matching lights.

Liam took a swig of beer and shook his head at the taste; he hated bottled beer but not many nightclubs sold draught.

“Aye well, that’s all the ‘i’s dotted and ‘t’s crossed. Reynolds confirmed Diana Bwye asked to borrow the van for a charity gift run, and Des has confirmed her prints on the gun.”

He said it like it was the end of the story but Craig was left feeling discontent. He’d updated Sean Flanagan a few hours earlier and signalled his desire to pursue the man who’d disposed of the Bwyes. Normally Flanagan would have been gung-ho, but swathing cuts through the force’s budget meant that justice wasn’t the only mistress he had to serve, and Mistress Stormont held on to her money like every other good-time girl.

“Sorry, Marc. Unless something obvious appears I want you to let this go. It could take months of man hours and we mightn’t even get a sniff. Even if we did what would we charge him with? Accessory after the fact maybe, but with no forensics even that would be a stretch. All we have is a letter from a self-confessed dead killer to say that he helped at all.” Craig had heard him shaking his head. “I’ll speak to the P.P.S. and let them decide, but my guess is their answer will be ‘not in the public interest to pursue.’ Don’t worry; you’ll have plenty to do after Christmas now that they’ve granted the Greer appeal.”

That was how he’d found out about Greer. It was probably just as well that none of his team had told him; he would very likely have exploded, like he had when he’d got round to bollocking Carmen for her cheekiness to Liam.

So here they were, drinking bottled beer in a nightclub in a last hurrah before they went home. Suddenly Liam nudged him; he’d spotted two dark-eyed beauties approaching across the dancefloor. “Incoming at three o’clock. I’ll take the one on the left.”

Craig shook his head and drank even more. The last he remembered was Liam being dragged round the floor by a short girl with the strength of ten men, and Davy deep in conversation with her friend. Carmen and Annette rolled their eyes, especially when Liam’s love interest told him he was a “fine big man.” Just what he didn’t need; an ego boost. Their cynicism changed to amusement as he fought off her good-night kiss and legged it out of the club. The photos would appear in people’s inboxes before the Christmas break.

Chap
ter Twenty

Belfast. Christmas Eve. 9 p.m.

The tree was spectacular but what John had done with the rest of the living room impressed his guests even more. Not only was the house a masterpiece of Nordic décor but he’d continued the theme with decorations from different Scandinavian countries. With glass icicles from Denmark and handmade decorations from Norway, the place looked like a snow palace, and when John turned out the lights and switched on the tree even the cynical Carmen gave an excited gasp.

Two hours and several bowls of punch later, the crowd of police, medical and lab party goers had thinned to a core group of ten, the rest hurrying home to fill stockings for little ones or open their presents in peace. Craig had been mellow all evening, aided and abetted by John topping up his glass as he’d sat beside Katy on a small chaise longue. She gazed at the tree like a little girl and Craig smiled and ran his fingers through her curls, wondering whether to give her present now or wait till they got back to her place.

None of them had noticed the front door opening, left trustingly on the latch as people came and went, and no-one had noticed the unwelcome spectre at the feast. John and Natalie were in the kitchen, giggling at the mess that would wait until after Christmas to be cleaned up. Ken was attempting to arm wrestle Mike in one corner, egged on by Liam and Jake. Only Annette, chatting quietly to Danni and the voluntary designated driver for them all, had felt a breeze as the door was flung open, and only she wasn’t blinded by the mulled wine, enough to see a camera flash.

She turned to see where it had come from, just as the scrawny figure of Ray Mercer entered the main room. Without anyone touching the music the sounds of Sinatra seemed to fade and Annette knew that she had to reach the reporter before any of the men did. She raced across the floor, slipping awkwardly in her high-heeled shoes, but she wasn’t quick enough to stop Craig seeing the reporter and in two strides he was by her side. She stood between the two men, feeling Craig straining at the leash and watching as Mercer’s face contorted into a sneer.

Her eyes said ‘leave now, for pity’s sake’, but Mercer had come to say something and no amount of pleading was going to shut his mouth before one of the men’s fists did.

“Well, well, it’s party time at the zoo. So this is how cops and doctors play. It’ll make a lovely article, especially now I’ve got a photo.”

Annette could feel Craig’s temper building and she willed him to say nothing. It was a forlorn hope, but his voice was cooler than she could have hoped for and for a moment she thought that things might still be OK.

“Why are you here, Mercer? Don’t you have a hole to crawl into?”

The journalist’s eyes narrowed. “I’m here because you are, Craig, just like I intend to be everywhere you go in future. You cost me my job, so I’m freelance now. That’ll give me plenty of time to make yours and your family’s lives hell.”

John and Natalie heard something was wrong and emerged from the kitchen, just as Mercer added.

“Friends and girlfriends too. I’m going to dig up every dirty little secret that you’re desperate to hide and plaster it all over the press.” He stared at Katy and Natalie in turn. “Every malpractice suit, every bad decision.” His eyes swivelled towards Jake and Ken. “Every one night stand that you don’t want anyone to know about.”

Liam stepped forward and Mercer grinned maliciously. “I’m particularly going to take my time with you, Cullen. I’m going to dig back through all your years on the force and find something to bury you with.”

The only thing holding Craig back was that he was in someone else’s home. John saw there was still a chance to stop things and his voice echoed across the room.

“Get out, Mercer. You’re a sad little man who can’t be happy unless you’re making someone else miserable.”

Mercer replied by closing the distance between them as John moved Natalie quickly out of the way. He brought his face close to John’s and whispered something in his ear. No-one else heard it, but Craig saw his friend blanch and in seconds he’d crossed the room, his fist curled to strike. Katy dashed after him and just as Craig’s arm rose she shouted out his name.

“Marc! No!”

Mercer hadn’t moved and wasn’t defending himself and suddenly Craig saw the blindingly obvious. This was what he’d wanted. Not for John or Liam or Jake to lose it, but him. Mercer wanted him to hit him so he could get him thrown off the force. He knew he had a temper and he also knew he was more likely to use it in defence of someone else.

As Craig’s fist fell the momentum was so strong that he couldn’t halt its progress; the only thing that he could do was turn away. Perhaps he didn’t really want to stop. He was so angry that it had to be satisfied somehow. All his months of guilt and pain had to find somewhere to go.

For a moment he was deaf to everything except the ringing in his ears, and the only things he could see were Mercer’s sneer and Katy’s shocked blue eyes. Then the blood reddening his sleeve and spraying across John’s maple floor and the glittering shards of glass at his feet made things feel surreal. Detached. Nothing to do with him.

He felt nothing as the blood spread and no pain as his knees hit the floor. Nothing except a sudden peace that made the Christmas tree lights fade away.

Chapter T
wenty-One

2nd January 2015

Craig gazed at his bandaged right arm as if it didn’t belong to him. It almost hadn’t; severed arteries were hard to fix and torn tendons a challenge to mend. But the surgeons had managed, just. Five hours in theatre, with Natalie gowned and masked, watching the plastic surgeon like a hawk. That’s what he’d been told anyway; he had no memory of events after Mercer had threatened John.

He’d lost a lot of blood and it had been a stupid thing to do. And yet…

The woman’s voice broke through his thoughts.

“You’re smiling, Superintendent.”

Yes he was. He knew why, and he knew that to say why would land him on a psychiatric hold, and make Katy and his mother cry again. So instead he turned away from the Sycamore tree and buried his dark thoughts, preparing to cooperate.

Punching the glass had been a stupid thing to do and yet… In that moment he’d felt a freedom that he’d never felt before. Free of guilt for the first time in months, free of the murderers they locked away, free of the problems the whole world faced.

It was indulgence and it was selfish and he would have to wait till it was his time to go to feel it again, that or make the people that he loved cry. He stole a last glance into the abyss before it closed for another few years then he smiled again and answered the woman’s unvoiced question.

“I think that I’m ready to talk.”

THE END

C
ore Characters in the Craig Crime Novels

Superintendent Marc (Marco) Craig:
Craig is a sophisticated, single, forty-four-year-old. Born in Northern Ireland, he is of Northern Irish/Italian extraction, from a mixed religious background but agnostic. An ex-grammar schoolboy and Queen’s University Law graduate, he went to London to join The Met (The Metropolitan Police) at 22, rising in rank through its High Potential Development Training Scheme. He returned to Belfast in 2008 after fifteen years away.

He is a driven, very compassionate, workaholic, with an unfortunate temper that he struggles to control and a tendency to respond with his fists. His girlfriend of one year, Katy Stevens, is a consultant physician at the local St Mary’s Healthcare Trust.

He lives alone in a modern apartment block in Stranmillis, near the university area of Belfast. His parents, his extrovert mother Mirella (an Italian pianist) and his quiet father Tom (an ex-university lecturer in Physics) live in Holywood town, six miles away. His rebellious ten years younger sister, Lucia, works as the manager of a local charity and also lives in Belfast.

Craig is now a Superintendent heading up Belfast’s Murder Squad, based in the thirteen storey Co-ordinated Crime Unit (C.C.U.) in Pilot Street, in the Sailortown area of Belfast’s Docklands. He loves the sea, sails when he has the time and is generally very sporty. He loves music by Snow Patrol and follows Manchester United and Northern Ireland’s football team, and Ulster Rugby.

D.C.I. Liam Cullen:
Craig’s Detective Chief Inspector. Liam is a forty-nine-year-old former RUC officer from Crossgar in Northern Ireland, who transferred into the PSNI in 2001 following the Patton Reforms. He has lived and worked in Northern Ireland all his life and has spent thirty years in the police force, twenty of them policing Belfast, including during The Troubles.

He is married to the forty-year-old, long suffering Danielle (Danni), a part-time nursery nurse, and they have a four-year-old daughter Erin and a two-year-old son called Rory. Liam is unsophisticated, indiscreet and hopelessly non-PC, but he’s a hard worker with a great knowledge of the streets and has a sense of humour that makes everyone, even the Chief Constable, laugh at times.

D.I. Annette McElroy:
Annette is Craig’s Detective Inspector who has lived and worked in Northern Ireland all her life. She is a forty-seven-year-old ex-nurse who, after her nursing degree, worked as a nurse for thirteen years and then, after a career break, retrained and has now been in the police for an equal length of time. She’s in the process of divorcing her husband Pete, a P.E teacher at a state secondary school, because of his infidelity and violence. They have two children, a boy and a girl (Jordan and Amy), both teenagers. Annette is kind and conscientious with an especially good eye for detail. She also has very good people skills but is a bit of goody-two-shoes. Since her marriage broke down, she’s acquired a newly glamorous image and is seeing Mike Augustus, a pathologist who works with Dr John Winter.

Nicky Morris:
Nicky Morris is Craig’s thirty-nine-year-old personal assistant. She used to be PA to Detective Chief Superintendent (D.C.S.) Terry
‘Teflon’
Harrison. Nicky is a glamorous Belfast mum, married to Gary, who owns a small garage, and is the mother of a teenage son, Jonny. She comes from a solidly working class area in East Belfast, just ten minutes’ drive from Docklands.

She is bossy, motherly and street-wise and manages to organise a reluctantly-organised Craig very effectively. She has a very eclectic fashion sense, and there is an ongoing innocent office flirtation between her and Liam.

Davy Walsh:
The Murder Squad’s twenty-seven-year-old computer analyst. A brilliant but shy EMO, Davy’s confidence has grown during his time on the team, making his lifelong stutter on ‘s’ and ‘w’ diminish, unless he’s under stress.

His father is deceased and Davy lives at home in Belfast with his mother and grandmother. He has an older sister, Emmie, who studied English at university. His girlfriend of two years, Maggie Clarke, is a journalist at The Belfast Chronicle.

Dr John Winter:
John is the forty-four-year-old Director of Pathology for Northern Ireland, one of the youngest ever appointed. He’s brilliant, eccentric, gentlemanly and really likes the ladies, but he met his match in Natalie Winter, a surgeon at St Mary’s Trust, and has now been happily married for seven months.

He was Craig’s best friend at school and university and remained in Northern Ireland to build his medical career. He is now internationally respected in his field. John persuaded Craig that the newly peaceful Northern Ireland was a good place to return to and assists Craig’s team with cases whenever he can. He is obsessed with crime in general and US police shows in particular.

D.C.S. Terry (Teflon) Harrison:
Craig’s old boss. The fifty-six-year-old Detective Chief Superintendent is based at the Headquarters building in Limavady in the northwest Irish countryside. He lives in a converted farm house at Toomebridge with his homemaker wife Mandy and their thirty-year-old daughter Sian, a marketing consultant. He has also had a trail of mistresses, often younger than his daughter.

Harrison is tolerable as a boss as long as everything’s going well, but he is acutely politically aware and a bit of a snob, and very quick to pass on any blame to his subordinates (hence the Teflon nickname). He sees Craig as a rival and resents his friendship with John Winter, who wields a great deal of power in Northern Ireland.

Key B
ackground Locations

The majority of locations referenced in the book are real, with some exceptions
.

Northern Ireland (real)
: Set in the northeast of the island of Ireland, Northern Ireland was created in 1921 by an act of British parliament. It forms part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and shares a border to the south and west with the Republic of Ireland. The Northern Ireland Assembly holds responsibility for a range of devolved policy matters. It was established by the Northern Ireland Act 1998 as part of the Good Friday Agreement.

Belfast (real):
Belfast is the capital and largest city of Northern Ireland, set on the flood plain of the River Lagan. The seventeenth largest city in the United Kingdom and the second largest in Ireland, it is the seat of the Northern Ireland Assembly.

The Dockland’s
Co-ordinated Crime Unit (The C.C.U. - fictitious):
The modern thirteen storey headquarters building is situated in Pilot Street in Sailortown, a section of Belfast between the M1 and M2 undergoing massive investment and re-development. The C.C.U. hosts the police murder, gang crimes, vice and drug squad offices, amongst others.

Sailortown
(real):
An historic area of Belfast on the River Lagan that was a thriving area between the 16
th
-20
th
centuries. Many large businesses grew in the area, ships docked for loading and unloading and their crews from far flung places such as China and Russia mixed with a local Belfast population of ship’s captains, chandlers, seamen and their families.

Sailortown was a lively area where churches and bars fought for the souls and attendance of the residents and where many languages were spoken each day. The basement of the Rotterdam Bar, at the bottom of Clarendon Dock, acted as the overnight lock-up to prisoners being deported to the Antipodes on boats the next morning, and the stocks which held the prisoners could still be seen until the 1990s.

During the years of World War Two the area was the most bombed area of the UK outside Central London, as the Germans tried to destroy Belfast’s ship building capacity. Sadly the area fell into disrepair in the 1970s/1980s when the motorway extension led to compulsory purchases of many homes and businesses, and decimated the Sailortown community. The rebuilding of the community has now begun, with new families moving into starter homes and professionals into expensive dockside flats.

The Pathology Labs (fictitious):
The labs, set on Belfast’s Saintfield Road as part of a large Science Park, are where Dr John Winter, Northern Ireland’s Head of Pathology, and his co-worker, Dr Des Marsham, Head of Forensic Science, carry out the post-mortem and forensic examinations that help Craig’s team solve their cases.

St Mary’s Healthcare Trust (fictitious):
St Mary’s is one of the largest hospital trusts in the UK. It is spread over hospital sites across Belfast, including the main Royal St Mary’s Hospital site and the Maternity, Paediatric and Endocrine (M.P.E.) unit, a stand- alone site on Belfast’s Lisburn Road, in the University sector of the city.