The Coercion Key (2 page)

Chapter Three

Victoria Linton prided herself on being precise in everything she did. Precise and logical. If she’d had a hero, it would probably have been Mr Spock. The Star Trek box sets had been her guilty pleasure for years. Except that she didn’t believe in hero worship. It was juvenile, self-indulgent and worse of all, illogical.

She brushed down her navy suit and assessed her appearance in the long mirror she’d purchased just for that purpose. Shoes polished; check. Skirt a sensible length; check. Long curly hair swept back in a tight chignon and pinned into submission at the nape of her neck; check. Make-up discreet and up to the standard that market research showed optimised a woman’s earning power in the workplace; check, check, check. She was ready.

Ready for another day spent shuffling paper and working out the best way to prosecute her case. Another day sitting in her plush air-conditioned office and lunching in the club with the rest of the boys. Ready in fact for another day spent being one of them, all semblance of her female softness and compassion stripped away. There was no place in the law for emotion. She’d heard it every day at law school and every day since she’d become a barrister. Now she actually believed it. That would be her mistake.

***

Docklands C.C.U. Monday, 1 p.m.

Craig gazed out the window of his tenth floor office and wondered what to do about his problem. John was right, he was drinking too much. He knew why; he was lonely. What he didn’t know was what to do about it.

He stared out at the bright spring day, watching how the sun lit up the Harland and Wolff cranes up-river. It made them embody their nicknames, Samson and Goliath, and become two yellow giants instead of just bits of steel. He knew it was fanciful but that had never stopped his day-dreams before.

Craig tried to imagine them having a conversation; what would they say? They should have plenty to talk about after presiding over their small river kingdom for forty years; watching ships being built and launched and bombs detonating in the streets below. They’d seen bad fashion and even worse haircuts, watched couples courting on the river bank and buildings rising around them, their architecture echoing Belfast’s sea-faring past. With nautical names, and chimneys and roofs shaped like parts of a ship.

Samson and Goliath had seen it all. The rowers on a Sunday morning and the drunken youths at night. The starlings swooping over the Albert Bridge at sunset and the swans and seals that swam their way to parts of the river where they shouldn’t have been. Craig smiled to himself. What a chat they could have; him and the Lagan’s two old men. Maybe they’d tell him to stop drinking so much as well.

He was still imagining the exchange when his desk phone rang, disrupting his fantasy. He reached back over his shoulder for the receiver.

“Craig.”

Normally that one word would have been sufficient to start a conversation about work. His team knew who he was, as did anyone in the force who was calling the Murder Squad. He’d bargained without it being an outside call.

“Pay attention, Superintendent Craig.”

The man’s voice was strong and local with an undertone that Craig couldn’t nail down. But Craig recognised its intent and it wasn’t good. He spun his chair round and strode, still holding the phone, to his office door, yanking it open and signalling Nicky to trace the call. The voice chuckled quietly, sending a shiver down his spine. He knew exactly what Craig had just done.

“Trace away, Mr Craig. It will dead-end somewhere in the United States. Now listen.”

“What do you want?”

Not ‘who are you?’ or ‘where are you calling from?’ Those questions would have been a waste of breath. Anyone who was calling through a re-routed line was never going to give his name. But the man had called for a reason, so Craig cut straight to the point. The voice laughed again, admiringly this time.

“Very good. I’d heard you were clever. Well, be clever now and listen. You have three cases in front of you and you think that you have a puzzle to solve.”

The voice paused as if waiting for a reply, but Craig hadn’t heard a question, not one he was going to answer anyway. After a moment’s silence the man carried on. As he spoke Craig heard his words, but he was listening for so much more. An accent, a background noise, some quirk that would give him away. Craig listened hard and heard it all.

“I won’t insult you by saying that there’s no puzzle here, Craig. And I won’t say I expect you to stop investigating and back off. You would see both those things as a challenge and I don’t have time for games. What I will say is simply this. Hunt me and I will hunt you, Mr Craig. Your team, your family and everyone you love. I have nothing to lose. You’ve already seen what I can do, be careful that I don’t do it to you.”

Then there was silence. No sound of the call being cut and no dialling tone, but the man had gone, Craig was sure of that. He dropped the receiver and was at Nicky’s desk in a second, lifting her back-up phone.

“Switchboard? It’s Marc Craig from the Murder Squad. I want to know who just came through on my line.”

He listened for a second, tapping his pen irritatingly against Nicky’s computer screen.

“No, they weren’t put through by my secretary. The main switchboard is already running a location trace, I want you to get onto the provider and find the caller’s name. It can’t have come from thin air.”

He listened for another moment then nodded and cut the line, turning to face a very curious P.A.

“You didn’t put that call through, Nicky, did you?”

She gave him a look that said ‘as if’. Nicky had been his P.A. for more than three years now and she was one of the best in the force. She would never have made such a rookie mistake. If Nicky had answered the call and she hadn’t recognised the voice, she would have subjected the caller to name, rank, serial number, birthdate, star-sign and favourite colour before she would have transferred the call to him.

Craig smiled sheepishly, knowing that he’d been stupid to ask.

“I take it they didn’t give you their name?”

Craig shook his head and pulled a chair up to her desk. Liam had been watching nosily from halfway down the room, now he voted with his feet, joining them in two giant steps. Craig nodded as he approached.

“Grab a seat, Liam. I want to run something past you.”

Craig took the fresh coffee Nicky held out to him and screwed up his face, puzzled. “I’ve just had a phone call.”

“So? You get plenty of calls.”

Craig shook his head slowly. “Not like this one.”

He repeated what the voice had said and Liam whistled. “It’s like something out of a spy movie.”

“Isn’t it just. But at least we know we’re on the right track.”

Liam stared blankly at him.

“The three cases John gave us are obviously worth following up, if someone wants us to stop looking at them this badly.”

“Oh aye, I see.”

Liam scanned Nicky’s desk for biscuits. She read his mind and handed him a pack, gazing pointedly at his growing girth. Liam sucked-in his stomach huffily and bit defiantly into a chocolate crunch. He carried on talking. “Did you notice anything about the voice, boss?”

“Yes. A lot. Definitely from here; Belfast or the surrounds. Polished. Middle-class vocabulary.”

“What do you mean?”

“His sentence construction. He said ‘I won’t insult you by saying that there’s no puzzle here’. That’s a complex sentence formation...”

Craig stopped mid-phrase and turned urgently to Nicky, unsurprised that she was already holding her notepad and pen. She’d probably been waiting for him to ask his next question since he’d sat down. He recited the phone call verbatim as she scribbled quickly in shorthand then turned back to her keyboard to type it up. A minute later he and Liam had printed copies in their hands.

Liam gawped at Craig and then at the sheet. “How the hell did you remember it word for word?”

Liam’s ‘I’m astonished’ face was hard to miss and within seconds they were joined by the rest of the team, milling curiously around Nicky’s desk. Craig saw her warning glance and lifted his chair, moving the conversation further down the room. Craig passed round his sheet and started talking.

“OK. A middle-class Northern Irish man, probably from the east of the province, has just managed to get through to my line without going through either Nicky or the switchboard. The conversation we had is on that page. He was educated and I’d say in his twenties or thirties somewhere. So what has he told us?”

Just at that moment Annette walked onto the floor. She joined the small group, staring quizzically at Craig. As he brought her up to speed Annette scanned the page. She volunteered her thoughts.

“He’s telling us that we have a case and that he’s responsible for it in some way. Obviously he doesn’t want us to solve it.”

Craig nodded eagerly. “Yes, and why?”

“Because if we do, it will lead to him.”

“OK, what else? Anyone?”

Davy pushed back his long dark hair and smiled. He liked puzzles and he was good at them.

“The w…way he said; ‘you’ve already seen what I can do, be careful that I don’t do it to you’ means he’s taking responsibility for the suicides in some way.”

Liam interrupted and Davy shot him an irritated look.

“Aye. And he’s threatening to do it to anyone who tries to catch him.”

Davy interrupted back. “Yes, but particularly the boss. He knows w…who you are, chief. He came right through to you and he called you by name.”

Craig nodded. The fact hadn’t escaped him. “OK. So how did he know?”

Annette smiled. “That’s obvious. You head up the Belfast Murder Squad. If the cases are being treated as murder then who else would be leading the case?”

Craig smiled. God bless Annette’s common sense. While the rest of them were looking for Machiavellian plots and surveillance techniques she’d go straight to the simplest answer and be right.

“You’re right, Annette. Thanks for the reality check. OK. But how did he even know the squad was looking at the cases? The only person who knows about this other than us is John. The rest of the world would believe the coroner’s verdict on the first two cases was the final word.”

Jake had been quiet throughout the discussion, now he spoke.

“Doctor Winter wasn’t the only person who knew, sir.”

Craig swung round to face him. “Who else?”

“You mentioned the coroner this morning so he’d obviously spoken to them too, and he’s bound to have discussed it with the other people at the lab.”

“Aye, the lad’s right. And the Doc might have called the families of the first two victims as well, asking questions.”

Craig raked his thick hair. They were all correct. The list of people who knew John was looking into the cases was long. It would get even longer if they didn’t plug any leaks, fast.

“OK, Jake. I’ll speak to Dr Winter and find out who knows he’s looking at the cases. I’ll make sure he doesn’t discuss them with anyone else. Meanwhile you plot any possible connections between the victims.” He turned to Nicky. “Nick. Can you get that transcript over to linguistics please? Explain the context and ask them to see if there are any clues in the sentence construction, speech patterns etc.”

Craig turned back to Liam. “Liam, where are we with the backgrounds of the deceased?”

“At the beginning, basically. Davy’s looking into the obvious; finances, health, families. Anything that might give them a reason to commit suicide. But our hands are a bit tied.”

“How so?”

“These people’s families believe they committed suicide. How do we go digging for murder motives without letting them know what’s up?”

Liam was right. For all his bluntness even Liam had been more sensitive on this one than him. Craig thought for a moment then sighed.

“You’re right. Sorry. I should have approached the families straight away but I wanted to see if we actually had a case before upsetting them. I’ll find out how much they already know from John and then tell them what we suspect before we go any further.”

Annette could tell from Craig’s face that it wasn’t a task he was looking forward to. She interjected kindly. “I’ll come with you, sir, if that’s all right? I did a stint in psychiatric nursing during my training and dealt with a few suicide cases.”

Annette had been a nurse for years before she’d joined the force and it had proved useful on several occasions. Craig smiled gratefully.

“Thanks, Annette. Relatives aren’t my favourite thing.” He glanced at the clock. It was one-thirty. “If we start this afternoon we should get through all the relatives by tomorrow. The rest of you do what you can behind the scenes until all the families are on board.” He paused meaningfully. “And while it’s easy to dismiss our caller as a nutter, remember what he said and watch your backs.” He took his car keys from his pocket, readying to go. “Nicky, which family lives nearest?”

“Diana Rogan’s. They’re in Andersonstown.”

“OK. Call them and say we’d like to drop round this afternoon. If that doesn’t suit then contact the next family.” Craig headed for the door, signalling Annette to follow. “Nicky, we’re going to the lab first to update John, then on to the coroner’s office to check out some things. We’ll head to the Rogan’s after that. Call me on the mobile with the times.”

***

John was sitting in front of his computer screen wearing a stunned expression when Craig and Annette entered. He hit the screensaver quickly and greeted them both as if he hadn’t seen them for months. Craig knew immediately what John had been doing and walked round the desk, tapping the PC back to life. As the screen filled with images he chuckled and beckoned Annette over to take a look. In front of them was a photograph of a large banqueting room filled with circular tables and chairs covered in satin bows. Craig tapped the screen again and images of stationery and flowers appeared. He turned to see a blushing John.

“I told you, mate. This will be your life for years unless you set a date. It’s Natalie’s equivalent of the Chinese water torture.”

Annette gave a mock frown. “It’s not that bad. They’re lovely pictures and she just wants your opinion before she starts looking.”