The Grass Tattoo (#2 - The Craig Modern Thriller Series) (29 page)

“Liam, any other reason why someone would frame him for murder?”

“Not a thing, he’s well liked, boss. I’ve been onto Newry and the people down there say Watson did a lot of work for poorer people, and built a lot of community bridges. Everyone says the same thing. Even his first wife likes him and that’s a miracle. They should canonise him just for that.”

“But it doesn’t tell us who framed him and why. Davy, go back to his wife and dig a bit more. Any private business interests, investments, and people he hacked off in the past. Unless he was Santa Claus someone is bound to hate him.”

“What about quangos, committees and s...special interest groups, s...sir?”

“Good point. Liam, work with Davy to cover those. There’s a reason someone framed Joe Watson. People don’t bother to do that unless there’s something in it for them. So follow the trail backwards. Who does he
have power over? And whose life is he disrupting, or about to disrupt? We’ll brief here at two every day unless you hear otherwise. Liam will be leading some of the briefings - I’m heading over to London tomorrow for a day or two, to follow up on some new leads.”

***

Stevan took his room-card politely from the girl at reception, nodding as she smiled and handed him the receipt. She was really very cute, and he’d never seen so many freckles. For one brief moment, he thought that it might be fun to count them.

“That’s room 407, Mr...” She looked down at her desk computer. “Mr Marberg. It’s a deluxe room. I do hope that you enjoy your stay with us.”

Sven Marberg smiled down at her, nodding a polite ‘thank you.’ Then he turned and headed towards the back stairway, taking the lift to the fourth floor. He checked his watch quickly. The flight had been slightly delayed but it was still only 9.30. He had time to shower and change before he went to his imaginary business meeting, with his imaginary client. With the very real agenda of accessing his weapon and target.

He opened and closed the room door quickly, keeping to his habit of staying low key. Then he threw his Mulberry travel-bag onto the bed, running the shower until it was hot. The plumbing in this country had proved a bit variable, and he didn’t want to step into freezing needles. Leave that to the real Nords. He looked at his newly blonde hair in the steel bathroom mirror; it went well with his tanned skin. He looked every inch the prosperous Nordic executive.

He had stuck to the rules and kept the pretence of coming from an eastern European or Nordic country. People would take their cues from his height and colouring, and he was fluent in most languages. It was a good cover.

He stood under the warm shower, letting the water flow over his dark muscular back, and he felt his mind drift. A holiday was definitely in order, somewhere very warm. Kaisa needed a bit of colour. He laughed to himself; she’d looked like ‘Casper the friendly ghost’ that morning.

And he really needed a woman. Properly this time. Not the scripted groping of his character legends. Although Teresa had been pleasant enough; and the receptionist might provide a nice little diversion later tonight. He had a sudden vision of ‘joining the dots’ of her freckles with fresh cream and it made him smile.

No, he needed a real relationship soon, someone to talk to and maybe even settle down with. Kaisa would try to sabotage it of course, but he knew that it was up to him to breed; she would never overcome her hatred of any man long enough. Yes, he would leave the life behind soon and marry, but he had to choose the girl well. And she would have to understand that he could never ever leave his little sister.

***

“Here, boss. Does that mean I’m in charge ‘til you’re back? Annette and Davy will need supervising.”

Craig was at his parent’s house in Holywood saying hello, and Liam had just called him, talking about his trip. He excused himself from the noisy family kitchen, ignoring his Mother’s finger wagging at his phone, and stood outside in the cool December evening continuing the call.

“Annette can cope very well, Liam, and you know it. And Davy has plenty to get on with. Besides which, I’ll only be a couple of days.”

“Aren’t you staying the weekend to catch up with your mates?”

“Maybe next time. I just want to see if they can help us. If it looks like extending beyond two days I’ll let you know.”

“Aye well...All right then...I suppose.”

“Can you nip out to Lilith’s with Keith and see if they can do a sketch of the girl. And try Joe Watson again for a sketch, he had the best view of her face of anyone.”

Liam gave a lecherous laugh. “And the rest.”

“And you can knock comments like that on the head right now, especially at Harrison’s briefing.”

“What? Ach, boss. Do I have to go to that?”

“Yes. It’s the only way to find out what’s happening elsewhere. One of the privileges of rank you’re so fond of mentioning. I bet you won’t feel so privileged after you’ve been to it. Davy is working with Des on the bullet.”

“Is Des back then?”

“Yes, on Monday. And D.I. McNulty is finishing up in Donegal this evening. She’s sent all the prints they found over to John, so follow up on those with her please.”

“I’ll put Kevlar on before I go near her.”

Craig laughed, more relaxed about Julia McNulty than he had been in months. “I’d better get back inside; I’m getting dirty looks through the kitchen window. And don’t worry, I’ll be on the phone every hour, trust me, if only to stop Annette and Nicky strangling you.”

They cut the call and he went back into the warmth, sitting on the wide kitchen bench beside his sister. She smiled, and he noticed that she was looking tired. “What’s tiring you out, Luce? Partying?”

“I wish! No, just work unfortunately.”

She worked for a charity helping the growing immigrant population in Northern Ireland, and there’d been a recent spate of racism causing people to leave their homes. Uniform had told him that they’d seen her there trying to help.

She brightened up quickly, grinning at him. “We’re planning a big rally at the City Hall next month. We’ve got people coming from all over the E.U.”

Craig groaned loudly. That meant the tactical support group would get involved and he’d get ripped about her for weeks.

“Don’t you moan at me. If you were in those people’s positions, you’d
be glad we were doing it. Anyway, freedom of speech and all that, aren’t your lot supposed to uphold it?”

“My lot! Listen miss, I must caution you that anything you say...”

Tom Craig sat in the middle of the kitchen ignoring everything around him, reading his Scientific American while Murphy barked loudly at his feet. It was a technique that he’d perfected many years before when he’d had to write scientific papers in a house filled with two noisy children. And a pianist wife who was constantly practicing for some or other concert. He could tune out every single sound now.

Of course, it had its dangers. Especially when he didn’t hear Mirella saying, “dinner’s ready” for the third time. Then it was likely to result in a bread roll thrown at his head, followed by a stream of incomprehensible Italian, the only safe response to which was a weak smile and next-day flowers.

Both of their children spoke Italian but he’d never managed to get further than ‘amore’. Still, it kept the mystery alive. His reverie was rudely interrupted by a loud banging on the worktop.

“Stop doing that, now.”

They all turned, puzzled, towards the small dark-haired figure of Mirella Craig, unsure which one of them she was talking to.

“All stop everything, now. You stop reading, you stop torturing your sister, and you stop up-winding your brother. Now eat!” So they did.

Chapter Twenty

Declan hadn’t slept all night from disbelief that Joanne was capable of killing someone, anyone...and especially for money. Could he ever kill? Perhaps to defend his kids or parents. Yes, he could definitely kill for them, but for money? No. That was a whole different type of cold.

He shuddered. He couldn’t believe that he’d ever made love to Joanne now. Worse still, that his lovely daughters were fifty-percent from the evil bitch. Nature versus nurture. He just prayed to God that his genes were stronger.

He looked towards the window, and the quality of the morning light told him that it was about eight. He should have gone into the office yesterday but there was no way that was happening; he needed time to think. And he needed to be far enough away from Joanne not to hit her. He’d never hit a woman, but he thought that he could make an exception for her.

He’d driven around for hours after he left his parent’s house on Tuesday, not even noticing where he was, until he’d found himself back on the familiar ground of the Upper Malone. He’d pulled into Newforge lane to think and had found Virginia Apartments; private, self-contained and rentable by the week. There was no way that she would find him here.

He couldn’t go home, he couldn’t go back to his parents and he couldn’t go to any of his usual haunts. She would find him at any hotel in the city. God’s knows he’d slept in most of them during their volatile marriage, when he’d had enough of listening to her shit.

The apartments were a bit close to home but Joanne never walked anywhere, smug in her hermetically-sealed little world. That would all change soon. He idly wondered how prison would suit her; it would be hard even for her to accessorise there.

The image made him laugh, and suddenly he had the energy to bounce out of bed and wonder what to do next, over a hot, white coffee. He knew that he should go to the police, but how could he prove that it had only been Joanne responsible for the Leighton’s deaths? And that he’d known nothing about them? And what about Horizon? She stitched him up completely there and innocence was pretty hard to prove when you’d signed a contract.

He flicked the local news on mute and watched the headlines sailing across the bottom of the screen. All of a sudden ‘Leighton’s Murder Claimed’ appeared and he clicked the sound on urgently, watching as the middle-aged newsman told the world that Bob Leighton’s killing had been claimed. What the fuck?

“A new dissident splinter group, the N.I.F. the Northern Ireland Freedom Brigade, has claimed the killings of Robert Leighton M.P. and his wife Irene. There is some dispute about this claim...”

The N.I.F.? He’d never heard of them and he bet that nobody else had. That would hack the big boys off.

The screen changed to a view of Donegal and the sight of crime scene investigators outside a house, but Declan ignored it, thinking frantically. He was totally confused now. Had he been wrong about Joanne’s involvement?

No...Definitely not. Joanne had known that Leighton was dead before anyone else. She’d done it. But she was even smarter than he’d realised, managing to give someone else the blame. How the hell had she managed it? Did the N.I.F. even exist?

If they did, either they were in cahoots and they’d done the job for her, or she’d framed them. In which case she was playing an even more dangerous game than he’d realised. The real boyos would be none too pleased.

But it changed things. If he told the girls that Joanne was involved now they’d never believe him. And what if he told the police? They might think that he was involved in terrorism, and that would bring him a whole world of pain.

He thought for a minute longer, and then decided to do what he’d always done, and what had always driven Joanne mad about him. He’d just wait and see. The news would change over the next few days, and when it did, he’d be ready to head for High Street station.

In the meantime...well, he might as well take in a race or two. The charity race meeting was on at Antrim this afternoon. He looked at his watch; six hours until it started, plenty of time for breakfast and another little reward. He lifted his mobile and scanned for ‘bookie’, smiling as it dialled.

***

Craig disembarked at Heathrow and headed quickly for the Express train, and the short fifteen-minute journey to Paddington. It had all changed from the fifty-minute tube ride on the cramped Piccadilly line, when he’d first been there in ’98. Stopping and starting, dropping and picking up. He almost missed it.

The occupants on the tube covered the whole range of Londoners, mixing with the newly-arrived from every country. They covered all age-groups, from excited kids to tired pensioners. But the Express was more like a mobile morning office, with businessmen stroking at their phones desperately, as if they were lovers. One or two hopefuls even tried to log-on or make calls, aborted mid-sentence at every tunnel.

He sat back and relaxed, remembering the city that he’d lived in for so many years. He loved London; it was constantly changing. People had too much variety here to divide themselves with arbitrary doctrinal differences. If only Northern Ireland could learn the same trick.

The journey ended too quickly and he disembarked, walking slowly along platform seven towards the coffee stand. The smell soon reminded him that his plane ticket hadn’t extended to breakfast and he’d just bought a coffee and croissant when he felt a light tap on his back.

He turned to apologise, assuming that he was blocking the way, only to come face to face with the tight muscular build and wide white grin of Yemi Idowu. A grin that he hadn’t seen for nearly five years.