The Coercion Key (23 page)

“I bet your mum loves that.”

Annette’s tone was as sarcastic as Craig’s the day before but he corrected her wrong assumption.

“That’s exactly what I thought yesterday, but she loves it. They had dinner with us last night and when I left, two of them were playing cards with my dad and Lucia.” He laughed. “I think Mum would like to adopt them.”

Nicky nodded wisely. “Maternal instinct, it never fades.”

Craig winced, knowing that once the guards had gone their absence would demonstrate to Mirella that she had an empty nest and she would start hounding Lucia and him for grandchildren. Ah well, that was next week’s problem. He turned his mind back to the case.

“OK. I met with James Wallace this morning. He was the person who first told us about Julian Mooney. His girlfriend Elise was there as well and she was even more helpful.”

Liam cut in. “Did they know where Mooney was, then?”

“No. It turns out that they’ve never actually met him, just heard his voice on the phone. But Victoria Linton talked a lot about him.”

“Oh aye, I suppose she sat around swooning about how wonderful he was?”

Craig shook his head and laughed at Liam’s two-dimensional view of women. Nicky and Annette’s pursed lips showed that they were less amused.

“Linton told Wallace that Mooney was an architect, but the girlfriend said she’d told her he was a freelance designer and said Linton had probably lied to him because she thought an architect sounded better.”

Nicky snorted. “She was a snob.”

“That was certainly the impression the girlfriend conveyed, but it’s understandable when you hear who her father is. Henry Linton, the high-court Judge.”

Annette looked puzzled. “Who?”

“Henry Linton. He’s in London now, that’s how I know of him, but he used to work here and he was notorious. It was probably while you were still in nursing.”

Liam whistled. “Old ‘Hang-em-High’ Henry? God, I remember him in court – he was a real bugger. I bet Linton’s childhood was fun with him as a dad.”

Craig nodded. “That was the impression I got. She would have been expected to do well at everything, and I imagine that meant having a successful boyfriend as well. Anyway, Julian Mooney. Elise said that Linton described him as tall with a pony tail, and arty.”

All eyes turned automatically to Davy. His dark hair had grown so long that it touched his shoulders, and in his black shirt and trousers he looked like he belonged in an art gallery or theatre, not the C.C.U. Craig nodded.

“Like Davy, I suppose.”

Liam snorted rudely. “Arty! Him? His idea of art’s the same as mine. Print on the wall from Ikea.”

Davy became animated. “I am arty! I have a modern s…sculpture in my flat.”

Liam came back like lightening. “That’s your kettle, son.”

Even Davy had to laugh at the remark and the group debated for a moment about modern art versus traditional, until Craig dragged them away from the Surrealists and back to the case.

“OK, so Julian Mooney was arty and essentially unemployed and Victoria Linton was ashamed of him, so she never actually introduced him to anyone. I still want to talk to him. Jake and Liam, I want you to get out there today and find him. He’s a loose end and you know how I hate those.” He nodded at Annette. “What did you and Jake find out?”

Annette ran swiftly through their morning, handing over to Jake to describe the meeting in the café. She finished off with her plan for that afternoon.

“Our woman is called Jenna and I’m going to the gym where she swims, to see what I can find out.”

Craig nodded. “Good idea. Take a copy of John’s sketch with you. It should be ready at around two o’clock.” He turned to Davy and waved him on.

“OK. Unfortunately w…we’re still hitting a dead end matching the numbers to anything, but I’m hopeful that Dr Winter’s sketch will give me a face comparator for James Mulhearn and something else to s…search on. Mike got back to me this morning with some new prints and I’m running them now.”

Craig interrupted eagerly. “Where were they found?”

“The gun barrel. You w…were right; the killer must have handled it. They must have left the prints there when they gripped the gun, to force Bell to s…shoot himself.”

Craig wanted to punch the air. With John’s sketch, Annette’s lead at the gym and the prints, they were closing in on their woman fast.

“Excellent. Get onto that this afternoon. Between the sketch, the gym lead and your prints we should have a surname very soon to put on an arrest warrant. Good. Everyone get on it and we’ll brief again at four.”

Craig rose to his feet and Liam interjected, with a hurt tone in his voice. “Here, don’t you want to know what I found, then?”

Craig startled, realising that he’d completely forgotten him, quite a feat given his size. He sat down again hastily. “Sorry, Liam, you’re so shy and retiring that I forgot about you.”

Craig’s tone was so contrite that Liam wasn’t sure how to respond. It was only when Nicky laughed that he knew he was being sarcastic.

“Oh aye, that’s right. Make fun of the old guy. Well, I’ve found a connection between our victims that the rest of you missed.”

Craig leaned in attentively. If Liam said he had something then it was something worth hearing. For a second Liam considered dragging out his moment of glory then he couldn’t be bothered and blurted out his findings without any preamble.

“They all worked on the same case.”

“What?”

“The same case.”

Annette asked the obvious question. “What sort of case? Rogan and Warner were brokers, Linton was a lawyer, McCafferty was a banker and Bell worked in pensions. Where’s the connection?”

Liam scanned the ring of puzzled faces and grinned.

“Remember when we talked about the platinum market and got as far as someone losing money, then we hit a brick wall? Well I thought, why kill such a random bunch of people and in such a particular way? So I worked back from that basis. ”

“And?”

“And what sort of case involves pensions, stocks and all the rest?”

Craig frowned, trying to work it out, but his brain was fogged-up from tiredness and days spent worrying about John. He shook his head.

Liam smiled smugly. “What if I said to you that a lot of pension funds are invested in stocks and shares?”

“OK, and? We got that far two days ago.”

“So, what if I have a private pension adviser and he refers me on to a broker…”

Jake interjected. “Who has a junior broker working with him.”

“Yes. OK, so I ask my brokers to invest my pension in some shares for me.”

“Like platinum.”

Liam nodded. “Like platinum. And then they, being crap at their job, don’t invest my pension in platinum but in something else, thinking that they know best.”

Davy cut in. “Can they do that? Go directly against a client’s instructions?”

“Maybe, lad. That’s what we have to find out. Bear with me and you’ll see where I’m heading. OK, say the shares that they invested my pension in lost their value, and I lost everything I’d saved up all my life, but they try to wriggle out of it because...”

Craig interjected. “The small print says that the value of shares can go down as well as up.”

“Exactly. The stock market is basically gambling, so when stocks go down, tough, you lose. But I’d given them a direct instruction to invest in the platinum and now I’ve lost everything specifically because they ignored me. What would you do?”

“Sue them.”

“And the pension adviser who recommended them in the first place.”

Annette’s voice rang through the room. “But where does the involvement of a high street banker like McCafferty come in? He was nothing to do with stocks and shares. NIBank doesn’t have a merchant banking arm, I checked.”

Liam gave her a chastising look and tutted. “Patience, I’m coming to that. OK, so what if I had a family to support and I was getting nowhere through the courts because the pension fund and stockbrokers had closed ranks and hired a slick lawyer to defend them? What would I do then?”

Craig’s jaw dropped in realisation. “If you were broke you would ask the high street bank manager for a bridging loan.”

“Correct! And if they said no, then my family would be screwed and I might kill myself in despair.”

Everyone stared at Liam in amazement. All except Craig; he wasn’t amazed because he’d seen Liam’s brilliant streak before.

“Of course, it’s all speculation at the moment, boss. But it fits, doesn’t it?”

Craig nodded, thinking for a moment. Finally he spoke. “OK. Adrian Bell was the private pension advisor who put the client in touch with the brokers: Diana Rogan and Nelson Warner. And platinum shares were involved in this somewhere, hence the material used to make the keys.” He turned to Jake. “Jake, did we get any more information on the platinum market?”

Jake jumped. He’d been so engrossed in his chat-room search that he’d almost forgotten the information he’d gathered a few days before.

He nodded. “Yes, I have a whole lot on it, especially who in Northern Ireland was involved in its trade back in the nineties. It won’t take me long to pull it together.”

“Good. OK, so if Victoria Linton was the defence lawyer for the brokers and pension advisor and she got them off, then the bank manager they asked for a loan must have been Jonathan McCafferty.”

Annette interjected. “And he refused the loan so whoever it was went bust.” Her voice softened. “And killed themselves, leaving their children alone.”

Davy looked sceptical. “Both parents killing themselves, w…wouldn’t that be unusual?”

Craig answered him. “Suicide pacts aren’t unheard of. But OK, what if Davy’s right and it’s unlikely that both parents killed themselves? Say only one parent killed themselves, then why was the impact on the child so high that it made them homicidal all these years later?”

Nicky had been sitting quietly, now she spoke. “What if they were already a single parent? And the pension was the only thing they had to rely on?”

Craig turned to face her. “You mean that they might have been an older single parent, say fifty or over? Old enough to be living on their occupational pension. So when they lost the pension they lost their whole income and couldn’t deal with life anymore?”

She nodded vigorously, setting her black tresses flying. “Yes. They mightn’t have been able to cope. And if you’re right and this happened back in the nineties then a mental illness like depression might have gone un-noticed back then. So no-one offered them treatment or spotted that they were suicidal.”

Craig raked his hair thoughtfully. “OK, so an older, single parent, relying on their pension, gets bad advice and loses everything. Victoria Linton defends the pension adviser Bell, and the brokerage company that both Warner and Rogan worked for then, and the courts side with them. McCafferty refuses them a loan to help out; the parent becomes suicidal and kills themselves, leaving their child or children alone. If this all happened during our killer’s adolescence it could have scarred them badly.”

Annette shook her head. “No. Single parent or not. What sort of person kills themselves and leaves their children to cope alone?”

“Someone whose mind is very disturbed, Annette. They might have calculated that the care system would look after the children better than they could; that way they’d at least be fed and housed.” Craig shook his head. “Poor sod, whoever they were, they must have felt completely helpless.”

“I’d want to kill the bastards who did that to my parents as well, boss.”

“I don’t think anyone here would disagree, Liam, but wanting to doesn’t make murder right.”

Craig was about to summarise when Jake motioned to cut in.

“What if it wasn’t just because they thought the care system could take care of their children better than they could?”

“What else?”

“What if they were actually worth more dead than alive because they had life insurance? They might have left their kids wealthy. That would explain how the kid could afford the platinum for the keys now.”

Davy stared at Jake. He was impressed but he was reluctant to say it after Jake’s behaviour earlier in the week. Craig saw his reticence and smiled encouraging until Davy squeezed the words out.

“Good call, Jake.”

Jake blushed and nodded, acknowledging what it had cost Davy to say the words. Craig carried on.

“OK, brilliant though all these ideas are, this is all speculation, although my gut tells me that Liam’s probably right. Davy, if he is then the code from the keys will turn out to be a pension number, so alter your search on that basis and find me a name. Jake, go back to your platinum information and look for the names of investors in the nineties. Link in with Davy to narrow the search. Annette, pursue your gym lead please; Nicky will send John’s sketch to you once we have it. All of you, use the sketch to narrow your searches. Liam, can you come into my office for a minute?”

Everyone shuffled back to their desks and Liam followed Craig into his office. He accepted Craig’s offer of coffee gratefully and they drank and stared out of the window in silence for a moment, each deep in their own thoughts.

Finally Craig broke the quiet. “Let’s take your theory further, Liam.”

“Aye, OK. How?”

“What if the children turned out to be an only child who, because they had no-one else in the world, completely retreated into the game and online forums after his mum or dad died?”

“OK.”

“And his name was James Mulhearn.”

“Right… the name Jake got from the chat-room?”

“Yes. Then, what if James Mulhearn had a sex-change and became a five-feet-ten woman whose first name is Jenna?”

“Aye. I’m with you.”

“She paid for her sex-change with her inheritance, and used some of her money to have the platinum keys cut.”

As Craig said the words he crossed to the office door, yanking it open.

“Jake, can you come here for a moment?”

Everyone looked up from their desks, surprised by the unusual sight of Craig yelling across the floor. He usually walked over to their desks and spoke quietly. Something must be up.

Jake hurried into the room.