Death to Pay (13 page)

CHAPTER 25

The smell in the apartment was heavenly when Kate pushed in the door. It had been a tough day and although Kate had prepared herself mentally for the rigours of full-time work and pregnancy, she was ready to accept that she was feeling more tired that she had anticipated. She threw her briefcase down in the foyer and made directly for the source of the smell.

Wilson was standing in the kitchen with a tablet opened on the counter in front of him. Several pots were on the go on the stove. He turned quickly when he heard Kate behind him. ‘Welcome, stranger,’ he said moving towards her and hugging her.

‘Tough day at the office?’ she asked. Wilson cooking generally meant that he needed a major unwind that could not be attained by his usual jogging routine. She noticed that he had already been at the wine.

‘Terrible, you?’

She threw her jacket onto a couch. ‘Snap.’

He moved quickly to the fridge and removed a bottle of white wine. ‘A glass of Black Oystercatcher will help reinvigorate you.’ He poured a glass and offered it to her.

She took the glass and sipped. It was cold and clear and fruity, and it tasted wonderful.

‘I have a Thai Green Curry Chicken with sticky rice on the stove. Have a shower and meet me here in ten minutes.’ He patted her on the behind and pushed her in the direction of the bathroom.

‘You shouldn’t make me jealous.’

‘You have nothing to be jealous of,’ he lied as he pushed her a little harder towards the bathroom. He lied so easily. But then again, he was an expert at it. Stephanie Reid awakened in him that old urge, that old excitement of the chase that he had given up the evening he had seen his wife expire on her hospice bed.  The bastard he thought he had banished, was still just beneath the surface. The ‘new’ Ian Wilson was just a skin-deep version of the womaniser he thought he had sloughed off. Perhaps he should expose his real self to Cummerford. He wondered would she be so happy to unmask the rotten truth that he was probably responsible for his wife’s cancer. Not totally responsible but not innocent either. And last night he was close to reliving history because of those old urges. He poured himself another glass of wine, former rugby star, top cop, philanderer, cheater and liar. That might certainly make good copy and titillate Cummerford’s editor.

Kate came back into the living area wearing a white terry bathrobe with her hair balled up in a towel. She clinked glasses with him. ‘That was wonderful.’ She drank and then put her arms around him. ‘I love you.’

‘I love you too.’ He looked for the lie but didn’t find it. He really did love Kate.

She kissed him lightly and stood back. She opened the bathrobe to expose her stomach. She was beginning to show. She took his hand and placed it over her naked stomach.

He knew that inside there was the child he had always wanted.  ‘Our supper will be overdone if we don’t make some headway,’ he reluctantly moved his hand.

‘Did you feel anything?’ she asked.

He shook his head, then bent and kissed her. It hadn’t been such a shitty day after all. 

Moira McElvaney was burning the midnight oil. Brendan was leading a seminar and wouldn’t be free until ten o’clock. They organised to have a late dinner. She hadn’t felt like sitting alone in her flat, so she decided to go through some of the boxes that had arrived from the warehouse in HQ where the old files were kept. She asked for files from the seventies and eighties relating to the activities of the Ulster Volunteer Force and, in particular, the woman’s branch of the organisation. Some organ of the security apparatus had penetrated every paramilitary organisation in Ulster on both sides of the sectarian divide. The Royal Ulster Constabulary, the forerunner of the PSNI, and the Ulster Defence Regiment had links and sometimes, although it would never be admitted, cross-memberships in Loyalist paramilitaries. Military Intelligence was concentrated on the Republican paramilitary groups. The result was that an enormous amount of documentation had been generated by the plethora of undercover agents in the various organisations. That was just problem number one. Individuals with divided loyalties wrote much of the documentation so that reports generally contained a small nugget of information hidden in a mass of fictional narrative. That was problem number two. Moira had already ploughed through several documents referring to the women’s branch of the UVF only to find that they were so heavily redacted as to be useless. Whole paragraphs were obscured by heavy black lines. She flipped over move pages and read the inarticulate ramblings of an RUC plant in the Shankill Branch of the UVF. Lizzie Rice’s name was prominent as were several others while other names had been redacted. It was all very anodyne stuff. Marches were planned; clothes were made from flags; money was collected and houses were set alight. Anodyne. She glanced at her watch. It was twenty minutes to ten o’clock, and she had managed two one-inch files since seven o’clock. It was too much like hard work. She hoped that Brendan was in the humour for dinner, drinks and a hefty bout of lovemaking. She wondered whether there was any future in their relationship. In six months, he would be heading back to Harvard and she would still be chasing criminals around Belfast. She had been down the marriage road and had seen at first hand how two people can make a career out of hurting each other. Right now, she would settle for the drinks, the dinner and the lovemaking. Tomorrow would be another day.

CHAPTER 26

‘What sort of day do you have?’ Wilson said popping a second capsule into the coffee machine. His head was not exactly in great order due to a combination of Black Oystercatcher and Chianti washed down with Jameson. The good news was that he and Kate were totally reconciled, and he had promised himself to stay as far away as possible from Stephanie Reid within the confines of his job. Kate and their unborn child were his priorities.

‘The usual, court, court and more court,’ Kate wolfed some toast and marmalade. ‘Followed by meetings with clients at the office,’ flakes of toasted bread flew from the corners of her mouth. ‘So a pretty full day.’

‘So when can we expect a slowdown?’ the coffee was beginning to take effect.

‘I’m planning my schedule with the clerk in Chambers. I’ve told him to give the briefs to some of my colleagues who are in urgent need of money.’

‘But people are still asking for you?’

‘It’s nice to have a reputation but not when you’re having a baby.’

‘And the Truth and Reconciliation Committee?’

‘On the back burner as we agreed. Ellie Smith has taken over.’

‘What’s her interest in Northern Ireland? Doesn’t she have enough to do in South Africa?’

‘She was born here, I mean Belfast. Emigrated to SA when she was a child I think. Her father was a mining engineer or something. Anyway, she’s a tough nut. She worked with Desmond Tutu on the South African Committee. She has a first in law from Stellenbosch University.’

Wilson’s phone started to do a whirling dance on the breakfast bar between them. He grabbed it before it went over the edge and pressed the green button. He listened for a few minutes. ‘Tell McElvaney to get a car and pick me up in ten.’

Kate stared at him across the breakfast bar.

‘Another older lady found murdered on a building site in Dunmurry. Someone caved in her head with a concrete block.’

‘Late to-night?’

‘Looks like it.’

‘I wonder will we ever be a normal couple.’

He walked around the breakfast bar and kissed her. ‘That depends on your definition of normal,’ he said.

The building site at Dunmurray had already been ringed off by crime-scene tape when Wilson and Moira arrived. Two police cars blocked off traffic on both sides of the road, and a diversion had already been put in place. A small van and a car were already within the cordon, and Wilson assumed these vehicles belonged to the builders. The site was in a secluded area and screened from the road by a row of bushes and trees. The builders had already laid a rough roadway of large stones to allow them to bring lorries directly up to the area where the house would eventually stand. Wilson nodded at Moira, who signed both of them in. They dispensed with the plastic jumpsuits since the builders, and the local police had already contaminated the scene. A policeman led the two detectives along the stone path to the foundations.

‘Where are the builders?’ Wilson asked.

‘In the van having a cuppa,’ the policeman replied. ‘They’re looking the worse for wear and I don’t blame them. I’ve been on the Force for fifteen years, but I’ve never seen something like this.’

The woman was lying on the concrete plinth that would eventually hold the house. She was spread-eagled and the concrete block that killed her was still resting on her head. It was delivered with enough force to crush her skull. Blood and brain caked her brown hair.

‘The pathologist and the forensic?’ Wilson asked.

‘On the way,’ Moira answered.

‘I think it’s safe to assume that this has something to do with the Lizzie Rice murder. Looks like we may have a serial killer on our hands.’

‘Looks that way, Boss.’ She was wondering what Brendan would make of this.

The policemen handed Wilson a leather bag. ‘One of the builders found this on the stone path. It must have dropped when she was carried here.’

Wilson passed the bag to Moira. She returned to the car where she had left the plastic gloves and evidence bags.  He glanced around the area. Not a bad spot for a murder. Not a house in sight and he guessed very light traffic along the laneway. Very little chance of being disturbed and yet a very good chance that the body would be discovered by the arriving builders in the morning. The murderer wanted the body to be discovered quickly. He wasn’t depending on someone out walking the dog and finding it accidently. The question was. Why did the murderer want the body found so quickly or did he just not care about hiding the body?

‘Nancy Morison late of Malvern Street,’ Moira said joining Wilson at the foundation. ‘Nothing out of the ordinary in the bag but I’ve put everything away nice and neat.’

‘Good girl, and I’m being politically correct. OK.’

They both smiled.

‘So Malvern Street again, I think we can assume a definite connection to Lizzie. How old to you think she is?’ Wilson asked.

‘It’s pretty difficult to guess with a concrete block disguising most of her head, but judging from the body and the clothes, I would guess that she’s somewhere between late fifties and early sixties.’

‘Roughly the same age as Lizzie?’

‘More or less.’

‘Bit of a coincidence. Both women’s heads destroyed, both about the same age and both from Malvern Street. Too bloody much of a coincidence. I wonder what these two were up to that they deserved to die this way.’

‘Well there’s no doubt that they certainly pissed someone off in a very bad way.’

‘Let’s talk to the builders,’ Wilson turned and made his way back along the rocky pathway.  He marched up to the van and slid the side door open. Three men in overalls sat in the van drinking tea from plastic cups. They looked to be in shock. ‘I’m Detective Superintendent Ian Wilson,’ he held up his warrant card more out of habit than necessity. ‘And this is Detective Sergeant McElvaney. Can you please get out of the van?’ He moved back to allow the three men to alight.

‘I’m Joe Campbell,’ the first man to descend said.  ‘And this here’s Jimmy Law and Dick Johnson.’

‘Tell me about this morning when you arrived,’ Wilson said.

‘We come up the lane like we do every morn,’ Campbell was taking on the role as spokesman. ‘We parked the van and got our stuff together, so we did. We had the blocks put around, the foundation yesterday, and we were goin’ to start on the walls today. As soon as we came onto the site we saw the body on the foundation. I never seen the like. Her head was all blood so it was. It right turned my stomach. Then we got on the mobile and called you peelers.’

‘Did you notice anything strange?’

‘Like what?’

‘Anything out of the ordinary.’

‘There’s nothing here, you know. We’re only startin.’

‘I thought that it was normal to put a fence up to limit access to the site.’

Campbell looked around at his colleagues. ‘Aye it is but the main contractor is a mean shite so he is. That’s why we keep our tools in the van. The site is too open, but the mean fucker doesn’t want to spend the money to fence it in.’

Wilson looked at the ground outside the site. The excavation had thrown up a good deal of mud, and a series of tyre track were visible.  He turned to Moira. ‘Make sure that forensic get casts of every track. We can easily eliminate the worker’s van and the car.’ He turned to the three men again. ‘If you remember anything, and I mean anything different about this morning I want you to contact me.’ He took some business cards from his pocket and handed one to each of the three men.

‘How soon will the site be open?’ Campbell asked.

‘That depends. We’re waiting for the pathologist and the forensics team. Not today. You guys are on holiday but leave your contact details with the officer holding the clipboard.’

‘No work, no money,’ Campbell said. ‘We don’t take holidays.’

‘I’ll tell them to get a rush on but they’re going to comb every inch of the site. It may take days so if I were you I’d go looking for a fill-in job.’

‘Where have you been lately?’ the man named Law said. ‘There’s a recession on. This is the only job we have at the present. I wish the murderer had chosen another site.’

‘I’m sorry for your trouble,’ Wilson said. A car was pulling up beyond one of the police cars, and it was accompanied by a meat wagon. ‘Looks like the pathologist has arrived.’

‘Be still my beating heart,’ Moira said under her breath.

Wilson looked at her harshly. ‘You’re not funny, Detective Sergeant.’ He saw the blond hair of Professor Stephanie Reid as she stepped out of her car. She strode forward with her blue plastic jumpsuit in hand. She ducked under the crime-scene tape and stepped into her suit.