The History Suite (#9 - The Craig Modern Thriller Series) (3 page)

Ground floor access meant that the killing could have been opportunistic, or at least required less effort. If you could simply hop through a waist-high window, the planning ability of a master criminal was seldom required.

Liam’s groans grew exponentially as they stepped through the police tape into the unit’s circular core. Light flooded the small space, brightening it unfeasibly on the late autumn day. That in itself was no bad thing, except that the light was pouring in through windows set in a conservatory-like ring, and smack bang amongst them was a pair of full-height doors leading to a landscaped garden and grounds. Craig shook his head. The architect had designed the space for maximum light and warmth, something that on another day he would have applauded; but not today.

They exited into the garden. It ended in a low wall bordering a busy main road.

Liam rolled his eyes. “Whoever designed this had obviously never heard of security. Any scrote worth his salt could have been out the door and over that wall in less than a minute.” He squinted in the sunshine, pointing at something Craig couldn’t make out. “There’s even a bus-stop, in case he forgot his car! We’re stuffed on this one, boss.”

Craig shook his head. “Not necessarily. Look.”

Liam followed his gaze and saw a small box above the bus-stop. A traffic camera. Craig scanned the garden and noticed something else. Standing like sentinels, pressed against the hedges so that they were barely visible, were pillars mounted with CCTV. Liam revised his earlier opinion of the architect, but only marginally.

“So we’ll be able to get a nice snap of the intruder. I’d rather they hadn’t been able to get in at all.”

After a minute’s more scrutiny, Craig led the way back through the doors in search of a police uniform. He found a well-stretched one covering the rotund shape of Sergeant Joe Rice, a Cork man who’d moved to Belfast twenty years earlier but had never lost his native lilt.

“Hello, Joe.” Craig gestured around him. “This is a bad business.”

Joe smiled incongruously at Craig’s words, not because he was being disrespectful but because he was a smiley sort of man.

“It is indeed, so.”

Liam stifled a laugh at his sing-song voice, emphasised by the way he dotted ‘so’ randomly throughout his speech. It was a familiar Cork idiom but that wouldn’t stop Liam deliberately asking questions just to see how many times it occurred.

“Show us where the body was found, please.”

Joe turned obediently and walked five hundred yards down a small corridor, away from the central core. Craig gazed around him curiously. “Is the unit designed as a hub and spoke?”

“Aye. The acute part anyway. Each spoke has single rooms, so.”

“But how do the staff keep an eye on everyone? How would they know if someone fell?”

Liam had already guessed the answer. “Internal CCTV. Each room is monitored from a central bank, probably at the nurse’s desk.”

Joe grinned, spreading his chubby cheeks even more. “Well done, Liam. You’re brighter than you look, so. Mind you, that wouldn’t be hard.”

The ensuing banter ran for a moment as Craig disappeared into an empty side-room and checked the CCTV. When he emerged he waved Joe on. They moved past the rooms and into a small square space at the end of the spoke. Three doors sat flush with the wall with no external marking to say what lay behind; crime-scene tape marked the room where their victim had been found. Craig indicated the other doors.

“So if that’s the linen room, what are those?”

Joe swung the nearest door inwards to reveal a small sluice. The second door belonged to a clinical room, equipped with needles, syringes and boxes of gloves. There were locked cupboards on the walls. Craig tugged at one of them, testing its seal.

“What do they hold, Joe?”

“Medication, so. Mostly antibiotics that the patients take, but there are controlled drugs as well. Morphine and the like.”

Craig motioned the sergeant to show him. The Cork man withdrew some keys from his pocket, tagged ‘Sister’s Keys - Hands Off!’

Liam gawped in disbelief. “Here, how did you get those? Most sisters I’ve met would die defending their keys.”

Joe tapped his nose in an effort to look mysterious then he gave up and smiled. “I knew you’d want to check the controlled drugs, to rule out a junkie, so I asked Sister Norton for hers…so.”

He opened the cupboard highest off the ground and furthest from the door. At first sight its contents seemed to be tablets and bottles of liquid. Craig pictured an apothecary’s cupboard from centuries before; apart from mahogany and glass being replaced by white wood, and pestles and mortars with boxes and spoons, nothing much had changed in seven hundred years. A second glance told them that the cupboard held something more. Behind the pills and bottles lay a steel lock-box. Craig removed the obstacles so they had a clear view.

“Controlled drugs?”

Joe nodded, opening the smaller door, and they knew immediately that theft hadn’t been their killer’s aim. There, neatly arranged and marked with precision on a list inside the door, was every ampoule of opiate accounted for.

“Sister checked them?”

“All present and correct.”

Craig nodded and left the room. When he was six feet from the linen room he stopped, staring at its door while the others watched. It was stained with print powder, revealing too many smudges to make things simple; Des had a challenge ahead sorting them out. To the right-hand-side stood a steel trolley holding sheets and other things, to the left hung the dangling end of the crime-scene tape. Craig pointed at it.

“Who took that down?”

Joe stepped forward, making sure not to invade Craig’s space; it didn’t do to rile the boss at a murder scene.

“The C.S.I.s. They finished an hour past and said we could re-open the ward when you said so.”

Craig shook his head, not with a ‘no’ but with a ‘let’s see’. He stepped closer to the door and peered at a dent in the wood. It was faint and small and set at waist height.

“What’s this?”

Neither man could see what he was looking at but they pretended they did, answering “no idea” in unison, with Joe’s “so” bringing up the rear.

Craig smiled. “You can’t see it, can you?” He beckoned them closer without waiting for an answer. They squinted and Liam saw it first.

“It’s a dent, but it hasn’t broken the wood. Man, your eyesight’s good, boss.”

Once it was pointed out Joe could see the dent as well. He asked the right question.

“So? That door must get bashed a hundred times a day.” He gestured at the trolley. “Usually by that.”

Craig nodded him on. “Show me what part of that trolley matches the dent.”

Joe stared at the trolley then back at the door several times before finally shaking his head. Nothing on the trolley protruded sufficiently to make the mark. Liam hazarded a guess.

“Maybe a trolley from the clinical room, or one of the nurses’ belts?”

Craig thought for a moment longer and then shrugged, pushing away the end of the tape. “I don’t know what it is yet, but get it photographed, please.”

His inspection over he reached for the handle to open the door, then he stared again, for so long Liam wondered if he was counting the sheets. He knew better than to interrupt Craig when he was in spook mode, so he folded his arms and leaned against the nearest wall.

Craig scanned the linen room slowly. Its interior wasn’t as small as he’d expected. It extended back the length of three good-sized men and sideways two more on top of that, giving floor space of over five hundred square feet. Each wall was lined with shelves, their designated contents indicated by tabs: shelf one - sheets, shelf two - pillowcases, and so on. When the room was full of linen, a body could have been hidden at one end and not found for days.

He beckoned Joe forward. “Show me where the body was found.”

Joe pointed to the right-hand-side of the room. “There, about halfway down, so.”

“Halfway down, you’re sure?”

“Yes. Why? Is that important?”

Craig knew that it was but he wasn’t sure why. Leaving someone halfway down the room where they might be seen could indicate many things. The killer might have been interrupted or lazy, or simply unable to drag the body any farther, except that didn’t fit with the level of strength required to strangle someone with their bare hands. Perhaps they’d actually wanted Eleanor Rudd’s body found; he would think about that one later.

He turned on his heel and strode back to the centre of the unit with the other two scrambling to keep up.

“Who found the body?”

“Another nurse. Hannah Donard. She’s been interviewed and sent home.”

“Get her into High Street tomorrow, Liam. I want Annette to interview her, with Carmen, please.”

“Why not me?”

Craig ignored the question. “Joe, do you have the notes of her interview?”

Joe patted his top pocket and they knew he was literally keeping it close to his chest. “I’ll have it typed up and with you tomorrow.”

“Good. Annette will want to see it before she starts.”

Liam turned to Craig. “Do you want Annette to interview her ’cos she used to be a nurse?” It was asked like a petulant child.

Craig nodded. “And because she’ll be sensitive.”

Liam blustered. “I’m sensitive.”

“The most sensitive part of you is the sole of your foot and that’s usually inside a boot! Annette’s doing it. Right, Joe, show us the long-stay suite now, please.”

Joe led the way with Liam walking behind Craig, pulling a face.

“I saw that, Liam, and stop pretending to be hurt. Be logical; why would I waste my most senior team member on a witness interview when I need you here?”

Liam’s annoyed expression changed to a grin. “I never thought of that. We’ll have bigger fish to fry.”

Joe led the way down a wide, bright corridor with more windows on either side. When he reached a white door he stopped. Craig stared at it, surprised. It had a knocker and door-bell just like a house. There was even a letter-box in the front!

Joe grinned. “This is Reilly Suite and you’re not going to believe the inside. I’m coming here when I get old, so.”

Liam cut in instantly. “Not long now then.”

Craig’s retort was just as quick. “And you’ll be here before him.”

Liam was older than Joe by two years. There was plenty of life in him yet, but it didn’t do to let facts spoil a quip. He gestured Joe to ring the bell. One minute later it was answered by a thirty-something woman dressed in T-shirt and jeans. She smiled at them.

“Yes. Can I help you?”

Craig showed his badge and introduced everyone then waited for the woman to give her name.

“Hazel. Hazel Gormley. I’m the sister here. Please come in.”

As she led the way Craig noticed a disgruntled look on Liam’s face. He fell back and whispered. “What’s wrong with you?”

“T-shirts and jeans. I like nurses’ uniforms, especially the ones with the little hats.”

“This isn’t your erotic fantasy, Liam. She’s wearing normal clothes because this is people’s home, not a hospital ward.”

Liam made a face. “I’m just saying.”

“Well stop.”

As the exchange ended the sister halted in front of a second door and Craig realised she’d just led them through an entrance hall; quite a grand one now that he looked at it. The inner door resembled the outer except without a letter box, and as it swung inwards Craig gasped. The communal area in front of them was parquet floored and elegant in an old fashioned way, just like his parent’s hall. If it had been designed with older people in mind it worked. Off the space were several rooms and a quick tour revealed them to be bedrooms, sitting, TV and drawing rooms, with a games room towards the rear. Other hallways led to a dining room and sports complex.

The sister stopped walking and smiled up at Craig. “Most people are at dinner at the moment but I got permission to show you one of the apartments. It belongs to a married couple – Joe and Maria Muldoon. They moved in last year.”

As she talked she led them into an airy room, decorated as if it was in someone’s house. “The residents can bring their own furniture if they wish; it makes it feel more like home.”

This particular pair of residents had brought a four poster bed!

“This apartment has a living room, bedroom and ensuite. There’s also a small kitchen if they want to cook.”

After the tour had finished the sister showed them into her office. Over tea and biscuits Craig asked questions while the others munched.

“How many residents do you have in total, and how many couples versus single occupants?”

“Twenty-two at the moment; six couples and ten single residents. The age range is sixty to ninety-two. Most are mobile, although one uses a wheelchair and some use Zimmer frames and canes.”

Craig smiled. Those had been his next questions. Liam interjected.

“Sixty. That’s a bit young, isn’t it?”

Craig smiled, knowing that he was feeling his age.

Gormley shrugged. “I suppose it is if you’re in perfect health, but our residents all have problems such as asthma and diabetes. That’s why Professor Taylor started the unit; to research the outcomes if elderly people are treated with vigorous prevention and care.”