A Limited Justice (#1 - The Craig Modern Thriller Series) (11 page)

“Si. Yes, Mirella Craig. Can I ‘elp you?”

The female voice was so soft and hesitant that she didn’t recognise it at first, straining to hear the words it said.

“I am ve-ry so-rry, I cannot ‘ear you, please.”

“Hello, Mrs Craig.” Silence. Then, even more hesitantly, “It’s Camille...Camille Kennedy. Is Marc there?”

Tom Craig knew something was up by the icy silence that suddenly descended on the room, and he looked over at his wife questioningly. She was gripping the receiver so hard that the blood had left her hand, and stared at it as if it was a snake. He left his laptop and moved quickly to her, convinced that she’d had bad news, until her angry look took him by surprise.

He realised in an instant who was on the other end of the phone, reaching over quickly to remove it from her. Too late. The stream of Italian/English invective that shot down the receiver was pure maternal instinct and contained words he’d only heard her use once before, when someone had beaten Lucia up at school.

“You dare call my house, you heartless trollop. You stay away from Marco, you...”

He turned her towards him and looked straight into her eyes, his finger firmly on her lips. Slowly, he loosened her grip on the handset, finger by finger, finally lifting it above her head, out of harm’s way. Marc wouldn’t thank her for her anger. This was his business.

He turned away from her, speaking into the receiver as if it had just been answered, and felt her eyes boring into his back.

“Just one minute please.”

He walked out through the French doors and into the garden, with a look that warned Mirella to stay behind. Then he spoke again, already knowing who was on the other end, but pretending that he didn’t.

“May I help you?”

The voice was tearful now and ready to run, and he almost felt sorry for her. Almost, but not quite. He’d seen the damage she’d done to his son, and it wasn’t over yet by the sounds of it. But he knew adults couldn’t be protected by over-protective parents. Life wasn’t like the playground.

“It’s Camille Kennedy, Mr Craig, I’m sorry to bother you, but ...”

“Yes, Ms Kennedy.”

Not “Camille” or “It’s lovely to hear from you”, although he’d known her for many years and they’d stayed with her several times in London.

“I take it you’re looking for Marc?”

“Yes...I wondered...”

He could see Mirella prowling just inside the French doors, eavesdropping, and he turned his back firmly to her, knowing that he’d pay for it later. Her protective Mama side would give him a special kind of hell, but it wouldn’t last, and by bedtime they’d be friends again. She never held a grudge, unless someone hurt one of her children, and then she’d hold it forever.

“He doesn’t live here, Ms Kennedy and I’m sorry, but I won’t give you his number or address, so please don’t ask.”

A quiet sob at the other end made him soften slightly and he relented, adding.

“But I will take your number and tell him you called. That’s all I can or will do. Please give me your number.”

He walked into the living room and lifted a pen, shooting another warning look at Mirella, which she returned with venom. Then he took a note of the number and with a short “Goodbye,” cut the line, walking quickly past his wife to return the phone to its cradle. Then he waited for the explosion.

***

Paul Burton sat in the small neon-lit interview room fidgeting nervously, folding and unfolding a gum wrapper in the way Gerry remembered doing, when he’d been in nicotine withdrawal. They stood on the other side of the two-way glass watching him, while Julia’s brain turned over, slowly configuring her plan of attack.

Burton had been lifted from his house outside Templepatrick six hours before, told only that he was needed to help them with their enquiries. All of his questions were met with silence or “the Inspector will explain” and there was no sign that he even knew his wife was dead. Although that meant nothing, self-denial was almost as good as the truth for portraying signs of innocence.

He’d even told them his wife was in ‘the job’ and suggested calling her. Again, silence. They already had Maria Burton’s positive identification, and a weeping set of parents who confirmed her difficult marriage and unhelpful estranged husband. Now here he was, professing not to even know that she was dead.

Burton had declined legal support, but that could mean innocence or bluff. So for the past hour, he’d been left with tea and quiet in a starkly-lit interview room, working up a sweat. He’d been cooking nicely and now he was ready to eat.

“Have you got the forensics, Gerry? I need them before I go in.” He pushed a small folder into her hand.

“I hope there’s some good news in here?”

“Well it’s interesting anyway – especially the swab results. We know she was seen alive at eight o’clock Wednesday morning and found at 5pm Thursday, so she could have been in the water between twenty-four and thirty-three hours. The pathologist says nearer twenty-four. She had abrasions on her hands and knees, thin linear cuts across her shins and a basal skull fracture.”

Julia looked puzzled but waved him on.

“They found semen inside the uterus and her clothes were disarranged, so she was raped and killed somewhere on Wednesday, and then dumped in the river. The C.S.I.s took the vaginal swabs at 5.30pm yesterday and rushed them to the lab. OK?”

“OK yes, what’s your point?”

“The lab report is timed 6pm.”

“Yes, and? Oh, for God’s sake Gerry, do you want a fanfare?”

“Well, it doesn’t add up. The lab report says the intra-uterine sperm were all dead...by 6pm?”

“Maybe it was her contraception. Spermicide?”

“Well, one, she probably wouldn’t have used anything like spermicide if she was being raped. And two, I don’t think hormone-based contraceptives like the pill are meant to do that. I think they stop women producing eggs, not kill the sperm. I’ll check, but I’m pretty sure.”

She looked at him as if he was an anomaly, a copper in touch with his feminine side. Lucky wife.

“I still don’t get it.”

“OK. According to the pathologist, she was in the water for at least a day, so raped somewhere between 8am and 5pm Wednesday. Sperm usually live for about six hours in the vagina and six days inside the uterus. Spermicide kills sperm so they likely wouldn’t have reached the uterus at all, and the pill doesn’t kill sperm so they could reach the uterus, but if they did they’d still be alive.”

“Summarise Gerry, and quickly.”

“Any sperm that had reached the uterus should still have been alive by the time the lab examined the semen at 5.30pm Thursday. She was healthy and her husband looks healthy, and there are no signs of infertility in the report.”

He pointed to the small pink sheet inside the file, his voice rising with exasperation. Julia squinted at him in warning.

“There were millions of sperm inside the uterus and most were a normal shape so, in other words, it’s an otherwise perfectly normal sperm sample. So how come they were all dead in less than six days?”

She looked into space longing for a cigarette, and then snapped her fingers.

“I’ve got it – the water?”

“Nope, the lab says that shouldn’t have killed the ones inside the uterus, just the sperm outside. And they’d have died anyway at six hours, long before we found her.”

“OK, in which case the sperm had to have been dead before they ever went inside her. Which means they were produced days ago.”

Gerry nodded looking embarrassed, and she swore she saw a blush starting. He was a good church-going man, not a heathen like herself, and she knew this sort of case made him uncomfortable.

“But why would Burton have been carrying old sperm with him when he attacked her, Ma’am? When, when...”

He blushed even deeper, and Julia had a random thought that she’d never seen that particular shade of purple before.

“When, when...what for goodness sake?”

“When men can always just make new stuff?”

He spat the last few words out as if he didn’t belong to his own sex and she had to stifle a smile. Suddenly the answer hit her. Of course. It was so obvious.

“I’ll tell you why Gerry, because he didn’t do it, and now I’m going to prove it.”

***

“Please stand, Ms Rogers.”

Jessie looked curiously around the small room in Laganside Courts; like a spectator, rather than someone on trial. She hadn’t been inside a court for five years, and it still held novelty value for her.

She screwed up her eyes and blinked a few times, trying to clear her vision. She was exhausted from last night’s clubbing and her night in the cells, spent yelling and screaming enough to warrant her bail being refused. But it had all been worth it to stand here now.

The Judge looked through her as if she was invisible, and she understood why. He must have spent years listening to people with behaviour worse than her farm animals. She hadn’t really seen them either.

“Kate Rogers, you are accused of committing a criminal act, the crime of Actual Bodily Harm. This led to your victim requiring medical attention, and has left her with the likelihood of significant future scarring. Furthermore, it appears that you committed this act with little provocation and with no reason other than your own aggression. It was not in self-defence, nor was it in the defence of others.

Your blood tests show that you were not drunk nor under the influence of illegal substances, and you have no known past criminal history. Therefore, I am at a loss to find any explanation or mitigation for this offence. In addition, you have no apparent fixed abode or means of support. And the officers have told me that you were violent; biting and kicking them when you were arrested and cautioned, and abusive throughout the night to the personnel at High Street police station.

Therefore, I can find no reason to allow bail and I am hereby remanding you to Wharf House Detention Centre, until your case can be heard for trial.”

He turned tiredly to the officer beside her. “Please remove the prisoner.”

Jessie dropped her head as if in shame, and no one saw the smile that she was hiding. This was exactly what she wanted.

As they said on television, ‘result’.

Chapter Seven

Ida sat forward excitedly in the chair that Liam had found for her. It was the most comfortable in Docklands, which wasn’t saying much, but Nicky had provided a tray of tea and chocolate biscuits to soften the situation. Not the usual fare for a police sketch session but they were all going to get old someday, or die, and somehow Liam doubted that anything could kill Ida.

She was wearing her best coat and gloves just for the occasion. Only good manners had made her remove her hat, a cake of velvet and voile that looked so new that Liam would have said she’d bought it especially for today, if time hadn’t prevented it.

The constable who’d collected her said that she’d posed for at least five minutes beside the marked police car, before allowing him to help her in. It was long enough to attract curious looks from the neighbours, and she was finally rewarded by old Mrs Wolsey from three doors down ambling up to the car, unable to control her curiosity any longer.

“What’re you doing in your Sunday best, Ida?”

In a pensioner’s show of ‘cool’, Ida had rested her hand on the car’s newly washed bonnet, as if she did it every day. And, drawing herself up to her full four foot eleven and looking around exaggeratedly, uttered in a voice that movie trailers would be proud of. “Helping the police catch a murderer.”

Then she entered the car like a secret agent, the constable entering into the spirit of events with a small salute, before driving off, certain that Ida would enjoy afternoon teas on the back of it for years to come.

Now, here she was, crunching a Hobnob with her best dentures and describing the four people that she’d seen in McCandless’ garage to the sketch artist, with all the creative panache of Da Vinci.

***

Julia tapped her silver lighter rhythmically on the hard Formica table, falling into some internal groove that Gerry thought was a recent chart number. Whatever it was, it was irritating the hell out of him, but the effect on Paul Burton was far more interesting. His distress was increasing visibly with each tap.

He was a round faced man with strangely recessed eyes, buried so deep in fat that their colour was impossible to see. He looked like a giant Shar-pei.

His hands matched his face, with short stumpy fingers like sausages, clenched together in a shiny fumble, the hairs on each finger dripping with sweat. He looked pleadingly at Gerry, somehow sensing that Julia was a much less sympathetic audience.

Burton didn’t know what they had on him, but although they’d only told him five minutes ago that his wife was dead, his concern for his own predicament seemed much stronger than any regret at the news. They’d watched his face carefully as he was told, and although it wasn’t uncommon with an acrimonious divorce that the spouse was less than devastated, he hadn’t even asked them how she’d died, and that was interesting.

Instead he’d rushed to answer their “when did you last see her?” with an urgent, “six weeks ago,” in an irritating high-toned whine.