Unti Lucy Black Novel #3 (11 page)

 

Chapter Twenty-­Four

W
HEN
L
UCY CALLED
Fleming's mobile, the number was initially busy so she called straight through to Strand Road to tell Burns what she had found. Grace watched her as she did so, waiting.

“I need to split before the cops come,” she said, when Lucy hung up. “The rest of the cops.”

Lucy nodded. “I understand.”

The girl waited a moment. “Is there a reward of something? For finding this?”

Lucy stuck her hand in her pocket and pulled out two bills, a twenty and a five. She hesitated a beat, then handed the girl both.

“Go and buy some food. And a place to stay for the night,” she said.

“Right,” the girl said, without conviction, then turned and took the steps two at a time, holding her phone as a torch.

“And thanks,” Lucy added.

She stopped at the turn of the steps and looked down. “See you around,” she said.

Lucy's own phone began to ring. It was Fleming.

“What's up?”

“The girl's on her way out. Let her go. I think she's found the kill site down here.”

“We'd best tell Burns,” Fleming said.

“I already have. Your line was busy.”

“It was City Center Initiative with the registration number we wanted,” he said. “Wait a mo.” She heard grunts as Fleming, she guessed, helped Grace climb back out through the windows.

“Lucy said there was a reward.” Lucy heard the girl's voice, tinny through Fleming's mobile.

“Tom,” Lucy called, but to no avail. She heard the rustling of movement and Fleming came back on the line a moment later.

“I gave her a few pounds for her help,” he said.

“She already got twenty-­five from me,” Lucy said.

Fleming chuckled softly. “The little shite,” he said, admiringly.

T
HE
F
ORENSICS TEAM
came in through the main doorway on Waterloo Place, after Lucy had helped push out the wooden boards from the inside. The sudden bloom of light filling the room dazed her a little. She could see now the sheer quantity of cement dust motes floating in the shafts of sunlight and realized, with concern, that she had been breathing them in for some time.

With the benefit of the increased light in the room, to which the team added further by removing all the window boards as well, there could be no doubt that the stains she had seen were indeed blood.

Tara Gallagher stepped into the room a few minutes later, accompanied by another DS with CID called Mickey, whose surname Lucy had been told numerous times and had promptly forgotten on each instance. Tom Fleming followed behind, looking a little flushed, the heat, and exertion of climbing up and down the Walls, telling on him.

“Well done, you,” Tara said. “Scooped everyone to the site.”

“How did you find it?” Mickey asked. “It's a bit off the beaten track.”

“A tip-­off.”

“More like just a tip,” Tara said, glancing around at the state of the place. “Who would have been in here in the first place?”

Fleming wandered across from where he had been standing examining the holes in the wall. “Stealing pipes and wiring,” he said.

“Who? The tipster or the victim?” Mickey asked.

“I'd say the victim,” Fleming said. “Martin Kerrigan said that Kamil had thin cuts on his hands. That would be consistent with pulling out cables and pipes. Kamil was a builder by trade; the trenches cut in the wall are fairly precise.”

“Maybe that's what he's been doing these past few months? Metal thefts?” Lucy said.

Fleming shrugged. “He'd not be the first,” he said.

Lucy reddened. During a previous case, they'd encountered a metal theft team who had stolen railings off the grave of Mary Quigg. Lucy had broken the fingers of one of the thieves during his arrest. Her only regret was that she'd not managed to stand on his other hand before she'd been pulled off him.

One of the Forensics team padded down the steps, pulling down his face mask, revealing himself to be Tony Clarke with whom Lucy had spoken earlier.

“Looks like some of the local hookers are using the rooms above,” he said. “The number of used johnnies lying about up there.”

“I'm sure it's not the first time clients got screwed in a bank,” Fleming said. Lucy guessed he had already figured out the use to which the building was being put to by Grace.

“How did they get in?” Mickey asked. “The front was sealed tight.”

“The window on the upper floor runs level with the City Walls. The board had come loose. You can climb in fairly easily,” Lucy explained.

“Why bring him in here to kill him, though?” Mickey asked. “It's a lot of effort.”

“It is private,” Tara said. “No one's going to interrupt.”

“Especially if the beating was prolonged,” Lucy said. “The PM
showed over one hundred impact points. Plus, Kerrigan said he'd been kneecapped.”

Fleming was watching where the CSI team worked. They had cordoned off the area around where the blood could be seen and were following each other's steps across small raised platforms to avoid unnecessary contact with the scene. “I think he was tortured,” he said, finally.

“Why?”

Fleming looked around. “Why would he be down here? If he'd been in here for sex, he'd have been in the upstairs room. Maybe he had a falling out with one of the team working with him. Whatever it was, they wanted him to suffer. Breaking both his legs? Beating him with hammers and leaving him in a bin to be crushed? They could have left him sealed in here; no one would ever have known any different.”

“Until one of the whores found him,” Mickey said.

“Girls,” Lucy said sharply. “Not whores.”

“Regardless,” Fleming agreed. “It means they didn't want him found near here.”

“Not while he was still alive at any rate,” Lucy said.

Fleming's phone began to ring and he took the call. At first Lucy thought he was unable to hear what was being said, that perhaps the mobile signal inside the building was poor, for he asked the person at the other end to repeat themselves three times.

“You're sure of that,” he said finally. He listened to the response then, thanking the caller, hung up. He stared at Lucy, his expression bewildered.

“I got them to check the registration number of the car seen in the alley that CCI pulled off the CCTV cameras for me,” he said finally. “It belongs to Terry Haynes.”

 

Chapter Twenty-­Five

F
LEMING WAS UNSETTLED
the whole way back to the PPU, tapping out an impatient rhythm on his knee with his fingers as they drove.

“Are you okay?” Lucy asked, looking over at him.

He shook his head, then turned and looked out the window. “Terry helped me the last time I dried out,” he said, finally. “He had slipped himself years back and gave up sponsoring until he got himself right. I knew he'd taken on a few recently, supporting newcomers and that.”

“I'm sorry,” Lucy said.

Fleming continued staring out the window. “It is what it is. If he's involved in some way then . . . you know. I just . . . Terry
helped
­people who were drinking. He knew what it was like himself. Once you've been through that, you know how it feels. He was almost evangelical.”

“So you don't think he could he have killed Kamil?”

Fleming shrugged. “If he'd slipped and was drinking heavily again, I suppose he could be capable of anything. I've known Provos and UVF men who were great AA sponsors, just not particularly good ­people. But I thought Terry was one of the good guys, you know.”

Lucy nodded, watching ahead as the traffic thickened and their journey slowed. “Just because it was his car, doesn't mean it was he who killed him,” she said.

“But it doesn't mean it wasn't either,” Fleming said. “Lucy, I'm not going to let my friendship with Terry blind me from the evidence,” he added. “If he did kill Kamil, he'll have to answer for it.”

Lucy said nothing. She'd not wanted to offend Fleming, but at the same time, she needed to be sure that he was looking at the case objectively.

Fleming glanced at the dashboard clock. Lucy was surprised to see that it was pushing 4:45.

“Can you drop me off at home?” Fleming said, finally. “I'm going to call around a few ­people and see if anyone knows where Terry might be.”

Lucy nodded. She realized that she had planned to call at the Social Ser­vices residential care unit in the Waterside at some stage to speak with Helen Dexter. She could do so now, once she'd dropped Fleming home. That she hadn't before was partly due to Doreen Jeffries not wishing the girl to think that she suspected her in the theft of her jewelry until the fingerprinting had been completed, but, more importantly, Lucy knew it was because she herself was reluctant to face Robbie. They had dated for some time, before she broke off with him over an errant kiss he shared with a colleague of his at a Halloween party. They had made up on the night he was injured after an explosive device went off under her car. While they had slept together on occasions since, Lucy couldn't help feeling that something had changed. Not least, her nagging doubt that what had once been affection for Robbie on her part had now changed into guilt for what had happened to him.

S
HE COULD SEE
his outline through the frosted glass pane of the care unit's front door as Robbie hobbled toward it, his newly acquired walking stick betraying his identity.

“Oh, hi you,” he said when he saw her, opening the door wide to allow her in. He inclined toward her and pecked her on the cheek. “I didn't know you were coming up.”

“How are you?”

Robbie nodded. “Okay. Same as usual. Still sore.”

Despite the passage of nine months, Robbie was still experiencing pain in his leg. The surgeon had managed to save it, though the lower half was composed more of metal pins and plates than bone at this point, he'd joked.

“I thought the Bionic Man felt no pain,” Lucy said. “And he can jump
really
high.”

Robbie smirked unconvincingly. “Come on in. Social or business?”

“Business,” Lucy admitted. “Are you sure you're okay? You usually humor even my worst jokes.”

He smiled mildly. “My leg's sore, is all.”

“How about a massage?” Lucy said. “Business should only take a few minutes.”

Robbie managed a more sincere smile at that. “It might help. It depends how long it lasts.”

“Play your cards right and you never know,” Lucy said. “Is Helen about?”

“She's in her room. What's up?”

Lucy shook her head. “Maybe nothing. Did you know she was working for Doreen Jeffries?”

Robbie nodded. “She's been going out to her for a while. I thought it was a good thing for her to do. The two of them have got quite close. I think Doreen likes the company. Helen's thriving on the trust, especially after how the charity shop ended up. Why? What's happened?”

“While Doreen was on holidays someone stole her jewelry.”

“And you think it was Helen?”

“I don't want to. Nor does Doreen. But whoever got into her house did so without having to break in.”

“They had a key?”

Lucy nodded. “Doreen said she gave Helen her key.”

“She did. It was a really big thing for her.”

“What was a big thing?” a voice said. Lucy looked across to where Helen Dexter stood in the doorway of the corridor leading down to the unit's bedrooms.

“Someone broke into Doreen's house while she was on holiday.”

“What? You're kidding? How is she?” she said, then as she realized the purpose of Lucy's visit, her expression darkened. “You think it was me?”

“Whoever broke in had a key,” Lucy said. “I have to check with all the key holders.”

“Who are
all
the key holders?”

“You,” Lucy admitted. “I'd like to take your fingerprints.”

“You bitch,” the girl spat suddenly. “I don't believe you.”

“Helen—­” Robbie began, raising his hand in placation.

“No,” the girl retorted. “She thinks I did it. Don't you?”

Lucy held her stare. “I hope you didn't. And Doreen doesn't believe that you did either. But we'll be taking prints from her room where the jewelry was taken. I know you were doing cleaning and that for Doreen, which means that your prints are going to be all over the place. I need to take a set for elimination purposes so that when your prints are pulled I can explain why they're there. It's not to try to prove that you did it. You'd be helping me catch whoever stole Doreen's stuff.”

The girl seemed somewhat mollified by the explanation, coming into the room and dropping onto the sofa. “How is she, anyway?”

“She's shaken,” Lucy said. “The sooner I can eliminate you, the sooner you can visit her. But I think you'll need to wait until we can prove you didn't take the jewelry that's missing.”

“Why would I steal from her? She's my friend.”

Lucy moved across and sat on the sofa next to her. The girl shifted her weight away from Lucy. “With what happened in the shop? You need to ask? I'm not accusing you, I'm just doing my job.”

“Well it's a shit one,” the girl retorted. “And you're very good at it.” She glared across at her. “So what happens now? Are you going to ink me up?”

“Robbie, can you get me a glass or something?”

Robbie limped across to the kitchen, took a glass down from the unit and, lifting a drying cloth, wiped it thoroughly. He came across and handed it to her, holding its upper lip with the cloth.

Lucy took it, gripping the lower end in an evidence bag she'd taken from her pocket. “Can you grip that tightly,” she said, offering the glass to the girl, who did so. Lucy then pulled the bag up over the glass, careful not to touch it herself.

“This should be fine,” she said. “I didn't want to have to start bringing you into the station.”

“That was big of you,” Helen said.

Lucy put the glass into her bag. “If we do get a hit, I'll have to. The only reason I'm doing it this way is to keep you out of the station and off any records,” Lucy added. “Doreen doesn't think for a minute that you did it. Nor do I. But can you think of anyone else who might have had a key? Meals on Wheels? Any relatives or home help?”

Helen shook her head. “She doesn't have relatives. The only person who helps her out is me.”

Lucy nodded. “Anybody new about the house in the weeks before she went away?”

“She had a bunch of guys doing the driveway,” Helen said.

“When?”

“The week before she went. She said the frost from a few winters back had destroyed her driveway. Some crowd came in and fixed it for her.”

“Do you remember who they were?”

Helen shook her head. “I'm sure Doreen will, though,” she said.