A Limited Justice (#1 - The Craig Modern Thriller Series) (19 page)

The compromise between its eviction and survival was his willingness to allow its reupholstering, to match whatever luminous colour scheme Mirella was inflicting on them. Subtle home decor had never been her thing.

This year the room was a riot of cherry and aubergine. Its bright cosiness was echoed in the flames of the real log fire that his mother insisted on burning for six months of the year, still unable to bear the British cold despite forty years away from Rome. Ornate lamps lit every corner, casting their light towards the fire and her grand piano, where she practiced every day for the charity concerts she still gave.

Mirella looked up at him from the drinks she was pouring, her jaundiced look only tempered by her immediate joy at seeing him. “You are ve-ry late, Marco. This is not good.” He could almost see her finger mentally wagging at him, knowing that only the presence of a guest actually prevented it appearing.

“We ‘ave a guest.”

She gestured to a chair dramatically, its occupant half-hidden behind Lucia’s massive head of tawny-blonde hair. Craig detected a pair of long male legs protruding behind her.

“This is Richard. He is pianist like me.” The pride in her voice almost made him laugh. Richard could have been a mass-murderer as long as he could play the piano.

He walked over and ruffled his sister’s hair, smiling as a fairer, finer version of his own face grinned back at him.

“Hey Marc, you’re late. This is Rick.”

From behind Lucia’s hair appeared the face of a fair-haired man, handsome, but not in the arty way that Craig had expected. He was strong-framed and tanned like a sportsman, and as he stood up to shake hands, his height and demeanour reminded Craig very strongly of someone. It only took him a second to realise who, and to realise that he might be looking at his future brother-in-law.

He turned towards his smiling father, knowing that he’d seen it as well. Lucia, the family’s little rebel, had just conformed completely, by falling for a man just like dear old dad.

Chapter Eleven

The soft morning light breaking through the curtains woke Jessie painlessly. It wasn’t so bright that it hurt her eyes, but bright enough to cast soothing shadows across the small, cool room. She smiled to herself, she still couldn’t believe it had come together so well. If she’d believed in a benevolent God, she’d have called it divine intervention, except she really didn’t any more.

She looked around and not for the first time she thought that prisoners had it better than many pensioners. There was no justice in a system that was more humane to the criminal than the innocent.

She’d pretended to listen sympathetically to all their moans over dinner, bleating on about ‘their loss of freedom,’ and how ‘it wasn’t fair, locking them up’. But she’d only heard every third word, her eyes fixed on a young, blonde woman across the canteen, laughing and talking as if she had some sort of right.

Lynsey Taylor’s sallow skin and premature lines gave her away as a smoker, and Jessie already knew about her other vices. She wasn’t alone. There were so many women wearing long sleeves in the warm dining room that she knew there was a roaring heroin trade going on behind the guard’s backs. Or maybe they knew. Some of them certainly seemed more concerned with being the women’s ‘best friends’, than with any discipline.

Maybe it was because it was a women’s unit, or maybe male prisons were just the same. Guards matey with the inmates, as if it was some grey-walled summer camp, and they were the hosts, there to make each day more tolerable for the ‘Campers’.

But it shouldn’t be tolerable; it should be hell for them, every single day. Like the hell they gave their victims. She could never tell Fiona how easy life was here, now that Equality and Human Right’s bleeding hearts had removed the ‘hard’ from ‘hard time’.

If Jessie ever had any doubts about killing Lynsey Taylor, which she hadn’t, the luxury she’d lived in for the past five years while she and Fiona had lived in hell, would’ve killed it stone dead. Justice had been nowhere for both of them for years, but today she’d make damn sure some of it was delivered in full.

*** 

“Michael Adams isn’t the man at the garage. He’s dead.”

Davy had been in since eight, chasing the searches he’d left running, and his little electronic friends hadn’t disappointed him. He had driving licence and passport photos on his screens.

“Here he is.”

He pressed a button and the image of a slim, blonde man no older than forty appeared on the large screen by Nicky’s desk. He was grinning widely, even though he shouldn’t have been in the regulation photos; but even if he hadn’t been, the look in his eyes was one of amusement. He looked happy, so what could have happened to make his farm so sad?

Gerry had been as good as his word and the sergeant at Barnardstown had phoned Liam on the dot of nine, with everything he knew about the happy Adams’ household. Happy until nineteen months ago that is, because that was when the people at Adams’ farm had seen it all go to hell.

Michael Adams’ family had farmed the same two hundred acres of land for 150 years, crops and cattle mostly, and as the eldest son, he’d taken over the farm. It had all been going brilliantly. He’d married a young local girl and they’d had two little daughters, it had been their toys that Liam had seen. Then three years ago, Encephalitis had hit their herd, followed by crop blight, and the Adams had got into debt. Struggling, until the farm had finally ceased production.

His younger siblings blamed him for running the farm into trouble and things had spiralled downwards. Until finally, a year ago in April, when the farm had been circling the drain, he’d hanged himself in one of the outhouses, leaving his young wife to find him. It had been a real local tragedy, garnering inches in the local paper. ‘The Neutral Recorder’.

The children were two and four and, after a few months trying to deal with their creditors with no life insurance to help because of the suicide, Jessica Adams and her children had simply disappeared overnight. No one knew where they’d gone.

Davy flicked the control and a marriage certificate came up. Jessica Margaret Adams nee Atkinson, aged twenty at marriage and twenty-seven now. That would fit the Hoody’s age. But the wedding photo that Gerry had sent from the local paper showed a sweetly beautiful girl with long dark hair, healthy and blooming. It was definitely the same woman, but the gaunt, frail figure in their sketch looked a mere shadow of this bride. Could her husband’s suicide have made her so ill? And why would she kill Maria Burton and Ian McCandless?

Craig pulled up a chair and nodded everyone to sit.

“Morning, Liam. Did you hear about Annette’s meltdown at D.I. McNulty yesterday? We should have sold tickets.” Annette blushed and looked murderously at him.

“No, what was this?”

“I’ll tell you later, but let’s just say that they crossed swords and the Inspector lost.”

“Good for you, girl. All those ‘find yourself’ workshops must’ve taught you something.”

Annette ignored the wind-up, thinking of something more important.

“Sir, if Jessica Adams is our killer, and she may not be, after all, the farm was pretty open, so anyone could have lifted the bolt-gun and wire. But if she is, then we should send her photo and the sketch to Limavady, to show to Paul Burton, just in case. If he has slept with a stranger in the past few weeks, it might have been her.”

Craig thought about it. “You’re absolutely right, Annette. If Jessica Adams slept with Paul Burton and used a condom, then she could easily have got some of his semen to place at Maria Burton’s scene.”

“But why do it?”

“Playing for time perhaps? Trying to send us in another direction?”

“OK, but why play for time, sir? If she’d already killed McCandless she didn’t need the time for that, so maybe she was just trying to escape being caught?”

Craig closed his eyes in sudden realisation. Of course.

“We don’t know that she killed McCandless first. Maria Burton had been in the water for at least a day, so she could easily have killed her in Portglenone on Wednesday morning and then made it to Belfast in time to kill McCandless on Wednesday afternoon.”

“Could it be something to do with her husband’s death, sir? Maybe the victims both had something to do with his debts, Maria Burton was local and McCandless was in debt as well? Maybe Mrs Adams blamed them for his suicide. ”

“I don’t think so, Annette. We can’t rule anything out yet, but Maria Burton wasn’t in business, she was a local W.P.C.. And McCandless’ business was all in Belfast, Davy checked that already.”

“Don’t dismiss Maria Burton just yet, s...sir. She came from a local farming family and only became a constable this year. Before that she lived on her dad’s farm, two miles from the Adams’.”

The room fell quiet for a moment, and then Craig spoke.

“OK, that’s worth following up, Davy. Maybe Jessica Adams is just trying to evade capture, or maybe it’s because she hasn’t finished yet? And if she needs time to kill more people, then who and why? If we find out one then we’ll have the other. Davy, run McCandless, Maria Burton, and both the Adams, through every database that you can think of, and see if there are any links at all. There’s something connecting them.

Liam, follow up the findings from the Adams’ farm. And Annette, I want you to find out everything there is about Jessica Adams, including showing her photo to Mrs Foster, and to Meg McCandless and her son when you get him in. Watch his face carefully when he sees her picture please."

“Sir, something’s just come through on the man at the garage. He works for a local debt-collection agency called Mercury. His name’s Adrian Smith.”

“OK, great work, Davy. We’ve already eliminated the postman and paperboy, so Liam, have a quick word with Mr Smith and rule him out completely. If he’s clear then that just leaves us with Jessica Adams as our prime suspect.” He looked at his watch quickly.

“Sorry everyone, I know this isn’t much of a weekend, but we need to meet again at three.”

“Aye. And in the meantime, just think of the overtime.”

“And you can pity me. I have to call D.I. McNulty now and tell her that she needs to ask Paul Burton even more details about his sex life.”

***

Gerry wasn’t quite sure how to tell the chief this one, not without getting his ear in a sling. But there was no question. Paul Burton had taken one look at the sketch that Belfast had sent through and smiled lecherously, his wet, puffy lips folding into the smirk that men reserved just for their sexual conquests.

At least she’d be spared the full details of the encounter, only hearing Gerry’s sanitised version. He honestly wished that he could say the same.

No, he’d had to sit opposite slug-man, hearing how. “There I was, just standing in the ‘Triffic takeaway’ Friday night two weeks ago. Picking between double pasty and chips and deep-fried Pizza, when this really fit Ho comes in and stood real close to me like. An’ she just gives me that look. You know, the one that says ‘you’re mine tonight son’.”

Gerry had wanted to throw up by the word ‘Ho’, so by the time Burton got to ‘mine’ he was thinking of oceans and mountains and anything else that would distract him from what he knew was coming next. No such luck.

“So I said, come back to ours and I’ll show you my moves, luv.”

That was it, it was all Gerry could listen to. He’d suspended the interview and headed outside, not sure whether to laugh or bang his head off the wall. Opting for the former, he’d laughed for a full five minutes and then resumed his customary deadpan and re-entered the room.

Now he was bracing himself to tape the statement that he just knew, was going to be ten, very long minutes of Paul Burton giving him every detail of his ‘moves’. He could hear the Barry White C.D. playing already.

Chapter Twelve

“Crap, crap and more crap. How did Belfast know that she’d been Burton’s one-night stand, and why didn’t I?”

Julia was staring at the sketch printout, positively identified as the woman who had picked-up Paul Burton and had sex with him two weeks before. She couldn’t believe that he hadn’t questioned his luck, but he just acted as if attractive women threw themselves at him every day!

The D.C.S. wasn’t going to be happy, but they had no option now but to release him. The local uniforms would keep an eye on him, but somehow she doubted that he’d stray far from his armchair. She was furious with herself for not working it out before Belfast, she was playing ‘catch-up’ every step of the way.

“Maybe their minds have been cynically corrupted by years of policing in Belfast, Ma’am. While you were fighting in noble defence of your Queen and country.”

She nodded at Gerry, completely missing his irony, and tapped her un-lit cigarette so hard against the desk that its end split and crumbled on the veneer.

“In other words, experience Gerry. I might have the rank, but I don’t have the experience people expect from a D.I.”

He nodded inwardly, the words ‘graduate entry scheme’ forming on his lips, but never reaching the air.

“Ma’am, may I humbly suggest something?”

He was taking the piss and she knew it, certain that he’d heard about her run in with Annette McElroy. But she didn’t have the energy to bollock him, so she shrugged assent.