A Limited Justice (#1 - The Craig Modern Thriller Series) (33 page)

Craig nodded; it was exactly where he’d have gone. There were far fewer cameras there, so she could walk through the side streets for ages without being picked up.

“Anything else in that area in the next few hours?”

“Only this, it was taken at 9pm U.K. time.” Davy clicked again and showed a few dark frames of two women walking with a pram and two small children wearing baseball caps, only to be lost again immediately.

“I’ve checked and that camera cut out just then and remained down all evening. Mechanical fault.”

Craig put a hand on his shoulder, “Well done, Davy, that’s excellent work.” Davy blushed, embarrassed, and Nicky winked over at him, making it even deeper. The boss was in a very good mood.

Annette wandered over to them.

“But where does it actually leave us, sir? They could go anywhere from Paris. We know what they were called and looked like when they left the U.K., but it wouldn’t take much to change their looks and get new passports again would it? They’ve obviously got the resources.”

Her voice tailed off and she looked down sadly. “And... Jessica Adams will be dead soon, so who do we pursue then?”

Craig nodded. “John and I had the same discussion earlier Annette. But if Fiona McNamee was a willing partner then we have to pursue her.”

Nicky stood up at her desk indignantly, “And leave those three babies alone in the world! Or even worse, with that paedophile of a grandfather. How can we, sir?”

At least she’d said ‘We’. Its inclusivity somehow making Craig feel less of a villain. He looked over at her kindly, but his voice was firm.

“We have to try, Nicky. They killed three people who also have families that love them.” She still looked defiant. “And remember, they nearly killed Liam.” That burst her balloon, and she sat down heavily in her seat.

Craig shrugged resignedly. “If it’s any comfort, we have to look, but I’m not sold on our chances of finding them. Interpol is unlikely to mount an expensive manhunt, and it would have to be huge – they could be anywhere in Europe or the East by now. It’s a huge landmass with free transit for E.U. members, so as long as they avoid airports and big cities we may never see them again.”

Nicky allowed herself a small smile for the children.

“So let’s start worrying about what happens if we actually find them. And that will get less likely by the day, especially when Jessica Adams ...”

He didn’t need to finish.

South East Italy

They pulled the battered 4 x4 hard-left off the country road, Fiona checking constantly in the rear mirror that they hadn’t been followed. She’d been doing it since they left Paris, but Jessie was letting her guard drop slightly now. They were in a rural part of Puglia in South East Italy, just off the Adriatic coast, and they hadn’t seen a car since the outskirts of Bari two hours ago.

Fiona looked in the mirror again but Jessie realised that this time she was actually staring at herself. She looked very different from the middle-aged woman who’d left Belfast. A short blonde bob had replaced her chin-length brown hair. And, although her face was still swollen, with her new cheekbones and her lines smoothed and filled, she looked thirty-five again. Her face had been changed to suit the future they planned.

Jessie lifted a small mirror from the handbag at her feet to stare at her own reflection, she looked younger too. She smiled ironically; at least she’d be a pretty corpse.

The sun was setting behind them as they drove along the ever-bumpier roads, looking for a clearing. The girls bounced up and down in time with each bump, in a game Jessie had taught them years before on the farm’s muddy tracks. They squealed excitedly every time, the simple game never jading for them.

Finally, they found a small, square clearing, its worn earth surrounded by trees, and its central heap of charred stones showing that it had once been a campsite. The car pulled to a halt and Jessie lifted the girls down one by one, each reaching eagerly for the fresh air and a chance to play tag between the trees. Fiona motioned her to take the food, while she pitched the tent for the night. Their final destination was still fifty miles away and they all needed a rest, but a tent was a lot safer than some pensione landlady inconveniently asking for I.D.

The Italian evening was bright and balmy with none of the bone-cutting cold of a British winter, and Jessie felt well, in a way that she hadn’t done for months in the damp Ulster air. Maybe she had longer left than she thought. Just then, a searing pain behind one eye doubled her over and she set Pia on the ground quickly, turning away from the small group to be sick. Or maybe she hadn’t.

Fiona put her arm around the younger woman, sitting her down on the rug that she’d just spread out. Eventually Jessie felt better, and leaned over, opening the food basket that they’d packed before they left the city.

“Girls, come and have a drink. We have Orangina.”

They ran around the trees one more time and then came screaming towards her, plonking themselves heavily on the tartan ground, each cuddling Pia as they sat. Then she poured the juice and spread the forest-feast in front of them, giving them each small, tin-foiled food parcels to unwrap as if they were Christmas presents. And taking miniature toys and crackers out, so that the whole experience turned into more fun than they’d had in weeks.

They watched the sunset together before Jessie tucked them into a makeshift bed, then the two women drank wine, and Jessie talked through the details of the girls’ years ahead. Fiona taped each word for a dual purpose, to make sure that she delivered Jessie’s wishes as closely as possible, and to let the girls hear their mother’s voice every night as they fell asleep.

***

The Grand Opera House was appropriately named; it was large, ornate and ceremonial, in exactly the way opera houses and opera singers should be. It had survived Nazi bombs and thirty years of homespun terrorism, and through it all, it had watched over Belfast, like a gilded, stone observer. Now it housed performances as diverse as Sir Derek Jacobi and the Christmas Panto, and tonight it housed ‘The Cold Stone’, with Camille Kennedy as the leading lady.

It was the first time Craig had left the office early in months, leaving his father to cover his missed Friday dinner. Now here he was, waiting to see Camille perform for the first time in years and he was regretting it already.

He’d been drinking since six but he still wasn’t drunk enough for this. Downing two whiskeys in the theatre-bar with two more waiting for the interval, while John stayed sober, to curb the worst of his potential behaviour later.

There was no ignoring that she was in the play. Her face was on every poster outside and she had a special biography slot in the programme. “Camille Kennedy, a gifted American actress trained at R.A.D.A...” blah blah blah.

He stared at her photograph angrily. She was still beautiful. Why couldn’t she have at least gained weight? As if that could ever have killed his feelings for her. No hope; he was the fifty years married type, if he ever got that far, and he’d been closer ten years ago than he’d probably ever be again.

The performance bell rang and they took their seats, at the end of a row, far back in the stalls. Where Craig could see her but she couldn’t see him. Not that she would have reacted while she was on stage anyway; she was far too professional ever to put real emotions before fake ones.

Suddenly the lights went down, and she walked out onto the stage, slight, blonde, and gorgeous, just as he remembered her. His eyes ran over her face, staring into her soft blue eyes as if she could see him. And then resting on her lips; feeling their fullness pressing against his, as if it was only an hour ago.

He watched her walk to her mark and stand gracefully, to start the first of many speeches and dialogues that blurred into each other as he ached, and planned to drink himself deeper into numbness at the interval. All the time remembering her soft hair, and her soft skin, and her soft, soft words. And her lies.

By the interval, he was so drunk that he nearly missed John check his phone. Except that he was never too drunk to see what was happening, or to avoid the meeting that he knew Camille was trying to engineer.

He sat through the second act already knowing who the murderer was, then he leaned over to John five minutes from the end, whispering very quietly, “I’m leaving.” Then he moved so quickly that John couldn’t get out of his seat fast enough to catch him, before he exited the plush, carpeted foyer into the cold night.

They reached the street and the chill air hit them both, Craig’s slight unsteadiness the only sign that he’d drunk enough to sink the Titanic.

“Where are you going?”

“Home. I know exactly what she’s planning, John. Don’t forget I know her too well. She sent you that text, the one that you thought I didn’t see.”

John looked at him with a mixture of surprise and shame.

“I didn’t say that you would meet her, Marc. I told her I’d ask you, that’s all. Just that I’d ask you.”

“Asked and answered. No. OK? And you can put it any way you like, John. No nicely, no way, no never...”

“Never? Really?”

“Never. Or for as long as I say, whichever comes first.”

He ended the conversation without a backward look, sprinting athletically across the road to the waiting taxis beside the statue of Henry Cooke, the ‘Black man’, another politically incorrect Belfast term. Then he climbed into a cab and disappeared. John turned reluctantly towards the theatre, heading backstage to tell the leading lady that she wasn’t getting her own way this time, or anytime soon. And that she would probably never again get anything from Marc Craig completely on her terms.

***

The sky above Julia was so clear that she’d rarely seen the stars like this, each one shining separately, but all glowing together. She knew all the constellations: Orion, Sirius and the Big Dipper...an offshoot from her army navigation training, although she somehow doubted that the Chief of the Defence Staff would appreciate such romantic thoughts.

For a moment, she let herself wish on each of them, longing for someone here with her; to point them out to, and kiss beneath them. She chided herself hard, to ‘get a grip’, and reached into her jean’s pocket for her closest companion, lighting one up and inhaling, long and hard enough to blow smoke at the moon.

Chapter Twenty-One

Craig was woken at 7am by his mobile and he groped urgently for the handset, knocking a glass of water off the table onto the varnished-wood floor. The liquid formed and broke like globules of mercury, and he muttered an expletive as he pressed ‘answer’, visualising the clean-up.

“Yes.”

His hangover voice sounded rude even to him, and he looked quickly at the screen: a private number. Realising he had no idea who was on the other end, he swallowed and started again, more politely.

“D.C.I. Craig – can I help you?”

Silence followed, and his instinct told him that it was the silence of a woman. For one fleeting moment he thought that it was Jessica Adams, and then dismissed the idea immediately. There was no way she could get this number. But any delusion that his number was beyond reach was squashed a second later.

Her soft voice was instantly recognisable, its timbre and cadence unchanged by the passing years, although there were east-coast inflections that he hadn’t noticed before. That would be Prick’s influence.

“Hello, Marco...”

He was suddenly disoriented, as when you meet someone in an unexpected place and don’t recognise them for a moment. And then he realised that it was her. How the hell had she got his number? John would never have given it to her. Why was she calling? And most important of all, what would he say?

He took the route of minimal response; a habit his friends said drove them mad. “Hello...” It was all left up to her to say; why she had called, why she had left him, what was going through her mind.

“Marco...I need to see you, I need to talk to you and explain, and...”

Suddenly she was babbling, running randomly through the years, her sentences streaming and broken, like the water on his floor. She had spilt it and now she wanted him to mop it up. And say. “It’s all OK.” Except it wasn’t OK.

His anger rose suddenly and he wanted to shout at her, accuse her, and, a sudden realisation hit him and he was only half -ashamed of it, he wanted to hurt her. Really hurt her, hurt her and break her, in exactly the way she’d broken him. His lips rushed to form the words, thinking up new and different tortures for her as she babbled on. But he couldn’t.

The tears in her voice meant he couldn’t, the memories he had meant he couldn’t, and his image of himself as a man meant he couldn’t. So instead, he said nothing, waiting until she stopped. Sheltering in the silence behind her words until he had regained control. Then he hid again, as he always did, behind ‘the job’.

“Camille.” He let the softness of her name hang there, asserting his authority through the silence.

“Yes.”

“Give me your number, Camille, and I promise I’ll call you.”

“But you didn’t come backstage last night and...”

Her panic was immediate and urgent and he felt instantly guilty, but he wasn’t playing games. He would call her, but only when he was ready. He needed time to find his feet.