A Limited Justice (#1 - The Craig Modern Thriller Series) (5 page)

The relatives’ room was sited eight floors below the murder squad, just above the building’s main entrance. Annette ran upstairs quickly for her notes, joining Craig at the double doors into the corridor.

As they walked the short, carpeted length towards the room, a small, thin youth stood up to greet them. He had dark auburn hair and a light tan that threw his blue eyes into sharp relief. He looked about eighteen. His black jeans and sweatshirt stamped his student identity clearly. A doubly pierced right ear and Chinese tattoo adding ‘media or drama’ to its title, nothing ever as unique as teenagers thought it was.

He put his hand out warmly and Annette took it, holding it slightly longer in comfort.

“I’m Joey McCandless. You must be D.S. McElroy. Mum said you were kind to her this morning. Thank you.”

Craig smiled.

“I’m truly sorry about your father, Mr McCandless.”

“Joey, please.”

“Joey. I promise you we’ll do everything we can to catch his killer.” She gestured to Craig.

“This is D.C.I. Craig; he’s leading the investigation into your father’s death.”

Craig stepped forward and shook his hand firmly, giving the young boy his new role as man of the house. Then he spoke quickly in his deep, mixed accent.

“Joey, I’m going to apologise in advance, but we need to ask quite a few questions today, and some of them may be painful. Any help that you can give us in lessening that pain would be very welcome. We need to find out why anyone would have done this to your father. So any information you have, no matter how insignificant you think it might be, will help us, believe me.”

The younger man nodded, tears flooding his eyes suddenly, reminding them of his age and hurt. Annette took his arm tightly and led him into the small, softly furnished room where his mother already sat, curled into herself like a small child. Then they began trying to make the next few hours less painful, something they already knew was impossible.

***

Jessie pulled her long floral skirt down over her knees and lifted Pia onto her lap. The little girl stared up at her mother with soft brown eyes, smiling the wide, gummy smile of a happy child. Two small white teeth poked through her bottom gum and Jessie knew that it must be sore for her, remembering her own wisdom teeth. But this beautiful baby never cried. Perhaps she knew how much she was loved.

Tears of injustice pricked Jessie’s eyes suddenly. Her children had done nothing wrong but they had suffered so much. And regardless of who or how many she killed, she couldn’t stop that.

But her killings would keep them safe in the years ahead, and no matter what her conscience said, she had to finish what she’d started. And as soon as possible, time was running out.

***

Meg McCandless had unfolded herself from her foetal position when they’d entered, sitting bolt upright at the edge of the black leather chair, her coffee untouched. She held up her head, and the only signs of grief were in her hands. They were knotted together on her lap, wringing hard at a white handkerchief. As if all the pain and loss she felt could be squeezed out by her constant twisting and pulling of the small square. The neon light in the windowless room threw every line on her face into harsh relief, each one etched deeper by her grief.

Joey sat beside her, watching her dry eyes anxiously, his own tears falling freely in compensation. Her eyes were closed tight, shutting out the world and the reality that opening them would force on her. She hadn’t moved except to straighten up, since they’d entered thirty minutes before, despite her son’s touch and Annette’s kind words. So they all sat, matching her silence. Until finally she opened first one eye and then the other, staring at her son vacantly.

Craig reached over and touched her hand gently. She stared down at his long tanned fingers, her eyes moving slowly from his hand to his face. Then to Annette’s and finally to her son’s again, expressionless and uncomprehending. Annette had seen the reaction before and she motioned Craig outside the room.

“She needs a doctor, sir. She hasn’t said a word since the I.D. this morning, and if anything she’s blanker now than she was then.”

Craig nodded. Any hope of getting information from Meg McCandless had left him five minutes after they’d entered the room. He raked his hand down his face tiredly.

“OK, Annette. Call the medical examiner to see her. Then see what you can get from Joey. Anything he can give us.”

She nodded and re-entered the room. Leaving Craig to drive to the labs, angrier by the minute at the destruction of a whole family, probably for the rest of their lives.

***

The newly built pathology labs were set in a secure science park on the Saintfield Road, two miles from Belfast city centre. They shared the park with valuable research facilities, whose high security and alarms were a condition of the huge grants they received. Craig abandoned his black Audi in the nearest free space and pushed through the double PVC doors into the pathology lab, heading straight for John Winter’s corner office. The door was lying open, the office unexpectedly empty, so he helped himself to a coffee with the rude familiarity of a long-time friend. John’s percolator produced seven types of coffee with bastardised Italian names, but only espresso had the hit he needed after that interview.

He was sitting at the desk flicking through an old newspaper when John clattered in, dropping an armful of papers onto the desk and knocking Craig’s drink flying. They watched silently as the dark brown liquid spread across the floor, and then laughed simultaneously, as John frantically grabbed towels to stop the patch spreading. He’d dropped, spilled and ripped everything he touched since they’d been at school; it had cost his parents a small fortune.

“At least I missed the notes this time. I didn’t yesterday. Fancy another one?”

Craig jumped up with a parental look. “I’ll get it.”

They settled into an amiable silence, John knowing from the darkness in his friend’s expression not to speak until Craig broke it. Eventually he did.

“Sorry to rush you John, but what do you have? Des asked me to drop into the lab and he’s got to leave by five.”

“Part-timer.” They both laughed, before John added.

“Still, I suppose your wife going into labour is a valid excuse, she was admitted to St Marys about an hour ago. I tell you what, we’ll head up there now and let him leave, I can update you afterwards. Bring your coffee and I promise not to spill it.”

They took the stairs two floors up to Des Marsham’s world, where things went bleep in the night. As they entered, he was leaning over a souped-up microwave, his thin tie stained with some nameless chemical.

“Making dinner, Des? That’s decent of you.”

“I’m cooking something, but it’s not your dinner.”

“I hear Annie’s in labour. Congrats.”

“Don’t congratulate me too early, I’ve hours of swearing to go through first. I was called names I never knew existed when she had Martin, and she’s learned some new ones since then. You two won’t know this yet, but labour is all men’s fault.”

John nodded sagely, “Every woman swears and every man gets sworn at, it happened with every baby I delivered. Just think of it as a rite of passage. What do you have for us?”

“Well, there are a few interesting bits and pieces. We have a clear fingerprint on the doorjamb, and another on the victim’s phone. We have a distinctive white cream on the petrol pump, on the wire and on the victim, with a smaller amount beside the door print. And we have two very unusual weapons; the wire and the weapon that fractured his skull.”

Finding the prints made Craig immediately suspicious, but he wasn’t sure why. He knew he should welcome any print, but somehow he thought the fact they’d been left was bad news, not good.

“First of all, the print. It’s a clear index finger, small enough to be a woman or boys. If we had the technology we could try for a sex.”

“I didn’t know you could sex a print?”

“In theory, yes. The technology uses urea levels; men’s are higher than women’s, but we’ll have to make do with size today. It’s not in our system, so can Davy do a wider search for us, Marc?”

“Sure, send it over.”

“Thanks. Number two, the cream. It’s white, and there were two sizable smears on the pump and the victim’s face. And patches on the wire and beside the print. Its main constituents are zinc oxide, benzyl derivates, with a few other substances like lanolin in small quantities.”

“Some sort of diesel or lubricant? Maybe car wax? There were used cars for sale at the garage.”

Des smiled down at his papers, shaking his head knowingly.

“I know exactly what it is, but I’m in the mood to make you guess. Here’s a clue. It’s a cream I’ll be using in huge quantities for the next year, and that I’ve had to use before.”

Craig looked at his beard. “Well, it’s definitely not shaving cream.”

Des shook his head laughing, and Craig looked at John, puzzled. Every answer that sprang to mind, either too strange or too deviant to voice.

“I’ve absolutely no idea. Put us out of our misery.”

“It’s Purecrem. Not exclusively, but most commonly used for...nappy rash!”

“Nappy rash?” John looked at him incredulously. “Was it definitely linked to the body? Couldn’t it be an old patch? Maybe McCandless was a grandfather?”

Craig shook his head . No grandchildren.

“Yes, yes, no and maybe. The cream was fresh; it hadn’t dried or congealed to any extent. I’ve spoken to the manufacturer and carried out some tests, and it would have taken eight hours to congeal at yesterday’s temperatures. And it was found within ten millimetres of the clear fingerprint. So, if you ask me, I think our killer was either changing a nappy, or perhaps working in a nursing home or hospital ward, less than eight hours before they killed McCandless. So that’s interesting, isn’t it?”

“Why nursing home or hospital?”

John answered before Des could. “Because it’s often used to prevent pressure sores. In immobile patients of all ages.”

They shared a puzzled look but moved on. “OK, what about the wire?”

Des looked at them excitedly. “The wire’s even more interesting. It’s razor-barbed wire in a flat-wrap type. Our wire’s made of stainless steel, although it comes in electro-galvanized and hot-dipped galvanized as well.”

He started digging into the detail with excitement, expecting Craig to be equally ‘turned-on’, the delusion of the true scientist.

“There are lots of types; straight, crossed, spiral and flat-wrap, which is ours. It’s one of the newest types, so it’s quite unusual, and very unlikely to have been in domestic use.

It’s mainly used in prisons, farms, national defence locations and so on. The C.S.I.s didn’t find anything similar at the garage, and there’s Purecrem all over it. The more interesting question is, how it was cut? It has a carbon core that makes it impossible to break through with normal tools.”

Des looked into space distractedly for a moment then continued, talking to himself.

“And then of course, there’s handling it. How would that work?”

He caught himself and turned back to them eagerly, expecting his enthusiasm to be reciprocated. Their blank expressions indicated that it wasn’t, so he sighed and continued, with heavier emphasis.

“The wire’s easy enough to tie as long as you wear hand protection, but we have a clear fingerprint in the cream on the doorjamb. So, unless they wore gloves to tie it and had the cream on the gloves, and then took the gloves off at the door
deliberately
leaving the fingerprint in the centre of the cream...Well, you two work it out.”

John could feel Craig losing the will to live, so he conceded defeat quickly and said, “why don’t you tell us?” urging him quickly though the rest of the science.

“Well basically, it means that whoever did this either wore very strong gloves and then left the print deliberately, or they were completely immune to pain. In which case they tied it bare-handed, and you’re looking for someone whose hands are torn to shreds. See why it’s interesting?”

John couldn’t feign disinterest any longer and Craig saw the excited look in his eye. He interjected quickly, before they went to ‘nerd’ heaven.

“What about the hammer?”

“Ah now, that was even more interesting. Come over here.”

Des led them to a small table at the back of the lab where a plaster reconstruction of Ian McCandless’ skull sat. Copies of its shattered fragments were laid out to reveal a small gap in the bone, the size of a large coin.

“That’s where he was hit. I can see why you thought it was a hammer. Size-wise it’s not far off. But it definitely wasn’t a hammer.”

“What was it then?”

John spoke eagerly before Des could. “I think I can answer that. There was a tear in the brain’s covering, the Mater. And that, plus the shape of the brain contusion makes it much more likely that this was done with a sharp penetrating weapon, not the rounded head you see with a hammer.”

“What then?”

Des reached into a drawer and brought out a book, filled with page after page of implements nasty enough to cause similar damage to the human skull. He flicked quickly through the pages, and stopped at a section marked ‘trauma: sharp’. He turned it round to show Craig hundreds of pictures, ranging from household implements to unrecognisable objects. They made unpleasant viewing.