The Coercion Key (10 page)

Craig set his coffee down and rose to his feet, glancing towards the hall. “Can we take a look now?”

Rogan hesitated for a moment and Craig read his mind.

“If you show me which room it is, I’m happy to go in by myself.”

A look of relief covered the younger man’s face and Craig wondered how long it would be before he sold the house. Rogan would never sleep in that bedroom again without thinking of his wife.

They climbed the stairs slowly and Rogan pointed Craig towards a room at one end of the landing. Craig turned the door handle hesitantly as Rogan raced back downstairs. Poor sod. He knew he would be the same if someone he loved killed themselves. He shuddered, trying not to imagine it.

When Craig entered the small bedroom he was surprised by its everyday ordinariness, as he often was at the place where someone had died. Somehow death belonged in dingy alleyways and abandoned barns, but not in the neat suburban houses where most people really met their end.

It was all so normal looking. A king-sized bed, with a small table on either side. One covered with bits of screwed-up paper and a spy novel. The other heavy with pictures and jewellery, the difference between the sexes captured in the small tableau. Craig turned his head and saw fitted wardrobes at the other end of the room. He slid the doors open. One side was completely empty and the other was full of a woman’s clothes. He glanced down and saw Diana Rogan’s shoes; high heels and trainers to match the suits and tracksuits above, the wardrobe of every working mum. It was so poignant it made Craig catch his breath. He couldn’t imagine how he would feel if they belonged to a woman he loved.

After a moment he turned back towards the bed, his eyes drawn towards the right-hand side. That was where the police report said Diana Rogan had been found, at four-thirty in the afternoon. She’d been found by her mother when the school had phoned her to ask why no-one had collected the kids. Poor woman, finding her only daughter in such a way. It must have nearly killed her; he knew it would kill his mother if she found Lucia like that.

Diana Rogan had been wearing her suit when they’d found her, but she hadn’t gone into work that day. The post-mortem estimated her time of death at one o’clock. Five hours since she’d kissed her husband and children goodbye, letting them believe that she was leaving for work soon after. Five hours of plucking up the nerve to swallow the Paracetamol tablets, and then swallow more to replace the ones that she’d vomited up.

Craig gazed at a framed photograph on her bedside table then walked over and peered at it. It was a group shot at a family gathering, showing everyone that she loved. Her parents and children, and in the middle Conor and her. Her husband’s statement had said it normally sat in the living room. She’d brought it upstairs specially. For comfort or for courage? What could possibly have persuaded her to take her own life when she had so much? What was the hold that their killer had over Diana Rogan, or any of the people who had died? Was it the same for all four suicides or different for each one?

Craig stayed in the room for so long that finally Conor Rogan climbed the stairs and knocked the door. He retreated quickly, in case he glimpsed the room’s interior when Craig emerged. As Craig approached Rogan he turned his face away, his message clear: don’t tell me what you found because I don’t want to hear the words. Craig said nothing, merely nodded and thanked him, then he left the small, ruined, family home and drove swiftly away.

***

Jake and Annette walked away from Amelia McCafferty’s elegant home certain that she wouldn’t be mourning her ex-husband at all. To say there’d been no love lost between them would have been an understatement; Jake thought the ice age had probably been warmer than their marriage.

“Well, she hated him for sure.”

“Was that a statement or a question, Jake?”

“A fact.”

Annette nodded, conceding that he was right but understanding better than he did how a marriage could foster hate. She and Pete were trying to make a go of it after his affair the June before, but there were days that she still wished him dead.

“She may have hated her husband but she didn’t kill him.”

“How do you know, Ma’am?”

Annette smiled at the old-fashioned term. She kept telling him to call her Annette. He’d remember for a while, then lapse back to her default title again.

“Because our killer’s clever, and to be blunt, that woman was as thick as two short planks!”

Jake burst out laughing at the most un-Annette-like phrase; it was something he’d have expected Liam to say. Nevertheless it was true. When beauty had been handed out Amelia McCafferty had been at the top of the queue, but when brains were being distributed she must have been doing her nails. Annette continued.

“She would never have thought up something like that key. Besides, she’s female and too young.”

She wrinkled her nose in disgust. Jonathan McCafferty had been fair, fat and forty-five. His bride of seven years was twenty years younger.

“He must have met her at the school gates, Ma’am.”

“Yes, when he was kerb-crawling!”

They both laughed this time and Jake made a note to tell Liam Annette’s joke. They climbed into the car and Annette turned over the engine, doing a U-turn towards the Belmont road.

Jake pointed back over his shoulder.

“Aren’t we going the wrong way? The C.C.U.s back there.”

“We’re not going back yet. We’re going to his parents’ place. I think I saw something there yesterday and I want to check.”

Ten minutes later they were knocking on Niall McCafferty’s apartment door. He opened it with an unwelcoming look on his face.

“What now, Inspector? Didn’t you upset my wife enough yesterday?”

Annette gazed at him apologetically. “I’m sorry, Mr McCafferty. I only have one more question, I promise. This is my colleague Sergeant McLean. May we come in for a moment?”

The old man sighed heavily and waved them into the small living room, then took up position behind his wife’s chair. Angela McCafferty looked even more fatigued than she had the day before and it was hard not to see the tell-tale signs of tears. Annette vowed to make the visit quick.

“Mr and Mrs McCafferty, when I was here yesterday I couldn’t help but notice something.”

“What?”

Niall McCafferty’s voice was flat and its undertone said ‘hurry up and get out’.

Annette walked over to a small bookcase set on one side of the room, where they’d erected a make-shift shrine to their son. It had photographs of Jonathan growing up arranged in a semi-circle, with a young boy’s knick-knacks sitting in front. The photos stopped at the age of around twenty. Annette presumed that was the point where McCafferty senior had lost control of his son.

Annette withdrew a plastic glove from her handbag and put it on then she lifted the small object she’d noticed there the day before. As she held it up Jake gasped. It was a key made in a gothic design.

“Could I ask you, Mr McCafferty, did your son give you this?”

Angela McCafferty struggled to her feet and reached out to retrieve the key. Annette held onto it tightly.

“Did he, Mrs McCafferty?”

“No. It was found amongst his effects. Amelia didn’t want it so I asked for it as a little reminder of him.”

Annette turned the key over, inspecting it, then she withdrew the USB that lay inside. Angela McCafferty gawped at it.

“What’s that?”

Annette smiled, certain that the woman wouldn’t have a clue what to do with a memory stick.

“It’s a computer stick that contains information. With your permission I’d like our forensic lab to take a look at it. It will be returned to you.”

“You promise? Only I want it to remember Jonathan by.”

Annette nodded firmly. “I promise. But we must examine it. It might be important in explaining why your son died.”

The elderly woman nodded and Annette saw that she was close to tears. She put the key quickly into an evidence bag, ready to be dropped off at the lab on their way back to the squad.

***

Liam left the Warner’s slim, modern house wearing a faux-grave expression, by the time he’d reached his aging Ford it had changed to one of incredulity. He let out a long whistle. There wasn’t much that shocked a hoary old cop like him but Erica Warner had just managed it. Maybe he was getting old, like Davy and Jake were always joking or maybe even he had more morals than modern society possessed.

He was turning the car engine over and wondering how the others would react to his newly acquired information when his mobile rang. It was Craig.

“What’s up?”

Craig smiled at Liam’s lack of preamble. Good. He didn’t have time to waste on ‘how’s the weather?’ Niceties were reserved for conversations with girlfriends, and not even that in his life nowadays.

“Meet me at the offices of Linton and Roche, Liam. We’re interviewing Victoria Linton’s P.A. in half an hour.”

“Fine. I’ll see you there.”

The line clicked off and that was it. No bye-bye or cheerio, no ‘what’s it about?’ or ‘what’s her name?’ Just the Vulcanesque shorthand that had developed between them over the years. Logical and efficient. All that was missing was the ‘live long and prosper’ hand gesture and they would be the perfect Kirk and politically incorrect Spock.

Twenty minutes later Spock and Kirk were sitting in a café opposite Victoria Linton’s elegant chambers, drinking coffee. They were early and even if they hadn’t been, Natasha Nunes had extended her coffee-break to run some errands, leaving them with twenty minutes to kill.

Craig finished his scone and went to the counter to order a fresh round of drinks, scanning the room carefully on his way back. Any man in the café could be their mystery caller and try to end one of their lives. Or would he? Would killing first hand be as easy as coercing someone to kill themselves, or pressing a button on a computer game and watching a monster fall to the ground? Killing by proxy was easy: distant, clean and quick, without any of the blood-letting, air-gasping reality of death. Killing close-up was quite another thing.

The waitress brought their fresh coffees just as Craig sat down again. Liam dropped the last corner of a pastry into his mouth and took a slurp, starting to talk before he swallowed as he always did.

“I was going to keep this for the briefing but it’s no good, I have to tell you what I found out about Nelson Warner.”

Craig could see Liam was bursting to impart whatever juicy titbit he’d learned. He was tempted to torture him by changing the subject, but his curiosity kicked in and he waved him on.

“Aye well, you know those pervs who were killed in February?”

He was referring to a headmistress called Eileen Carragher and her husband, who they met on their last multiple murder case. They fully deserved Liam’s lack of sympathy; they’d both been child killers. Craig nodded him on.

“Well, if you think they were pervy you want to hear what old Warner was up to.”

Craig wasn’t certain that he did while he was eating, but Liam was on a roll.

“He only had a girlfriend he lived with during the week in the Belfast flat and a wife at home in Randalstown! And the wife knew all about the mistress!”

Craig barely blinked. It wasn’t the first time he’d heard of wives being more tolerant than they ought to be. He wondered if that was all Liam was going to say.

“But here’s the best bit. He had a second family as well.”

“With the mistress?”

“NO! That’s it. With a third woman in Antrim. They had three small kids together. His kids with the wife are grown-up and gone.”

Craig gave a wry smile. “Perhaps he liked children.”

“Liked children, my ass. He just didn’t believe in contraception.”

“How do you know that?”

“The wife told me, open as you like. Says they belong to some weird church.”

Craig laughed. “St Polygamy’s, presumably.”

Liam missed the joke completely. “I don’t know what you call it, but the thing is, they all know about each other! And the wife was fine with all the other women, just as long as Warner paid the bills.”

“At least he kept the petrol costs down.”

Liam screwed up his face in confusion. “What?”

Craig took out a pen and drew a map on his napkin to show Belfast, Antrim and Randalstown, joining the dots.

“They live within twenty odd miles of each other.”

Liam grinned down at the napkin. “The Bermuda Triangle.”

“The lust triangle you mean.”

They were still laughing a minute later when Craig’s phone rang. He glanced at it quickly. The number was withheld. He gestured Liam into silence and answered it warily. Five seconds later he smiled and said ‘fine’ then he stood up to leave.

“The P.A.?”

“Yes. She’s waiting for us.”

Spock and Kirk headed back to work, more enlightened about Nelson Warner’s mating habits than they’d ever wanted to be.

***

The C.C.U. 11.50 a.m.

Davy stared at his screen, exasperated, trying to make sense of the numbers in front of him. They had four numbers from the suicide notes and Des had three keys now, out of what they had to assume would be four. Victoria Linton’s, Nelson Warner’s and Jonathan McCafferty’s, spotted in his parent’s shrine to their son by Annette’s eagle eye. That only left Diana Rogan’s key to find.

The keys were identical in every way, including the fact that they each concealed a USB within. Each USB so far had held the same thing: a single file containing the words ‘I am depressed and have nothing to live for’ and a number. The numbers were all different and Davy was staring at them now, trying to work out how they were linked. They had to link in some way because the deaths did, but how?

He read the numbers over again; 111012, 740150, 501760 and 070645. He ran them through the computer for important dates in their victims’ lives: passport and national insurance numbers, weddings, anniversaries, birthdays, even the dates that they’d first started work, but there was nothing. Social and world events, anniversaries of national significance, even the phases of the moon didn’t yield anything useful. He was down to trying star signs when the others trudged in for the briefing.