The History Suite (#9 - The Craig Modern Thriller Series) (28 page)

“Which one?”

“An elderly man in long-stay. And one of the old ladies did time for growing w…weed in 2005.”

Craig shook his head at people’s secrets and wondered what lurked inside his team. Better not to ask.

“So nothing relevant to the murders?”

Davy shook his head. “Not so far, but now that we’ve narrowed the list to fifteen I’ll dig deeper into that group. The prints Des found s…should help.”

Craig nodded. He wondered if he should call the others and tell them just to print the fifteen people on that list, then he dismissed the idea. That would make one piece of evidence contingent on another being correct, it was a dodgy way to proceed. His thoughts were interrupted by a knock on the door and Nicky popping her head in.

“Dr Marsham on the phone for you, sir.”

“Put him through.”

Davy stood up to leave but Craig waved him back down. “It might be about the prints on Cooke.”

He pressed speakerphone and greeted Des for the second time that day.

“Davy’s here as well, Des. Fire ahead.”

“Hello, Davy. Well, I got onto the sound archive, Marc. They can’t do it but they’ve put me onto another group that’s going to work with us, so if someone could bring Ian Jacobs to the lab this afternoon we can start that. I warn you, it might take a while.”

Davy leaned eagerly towards the phone. “Is this s…sound matching?”

“Yes. We might I.D. it, if we’re lucky.”

“I’d love to see how it w…works.”

He shot Craig a hopeful glance.

“Can Davy join you, Des?”

“Glad to have him. OK, that’s not why I rang. I’ve I.D.ed the print on Cooke’s lapel badge.” Craig leaned in as he continued. “You’re not going to like it.”

Craig’s heart sank. “Tell me.”

“It belongs to Edward Rudd. Eleanor Rudd’s younger brother. He’s on the PNC database for a shop-lifting offence when he was twelve.”

Craig didn’t know what he was more dismayed by, the owner of the print or the fact that juvenile records were still held on the Police National Computer. The UK courts wouldn’t seal juvenile records, despite several individual appeals, and it just seemed wrong that some sweets a kid nicked when they were twelve should show as a criminal record for the rest of their life.

Des continued. “If Edward Rudd is your killer, do you still want me to work on the sound I.D.?”

Craig nodded then realised Des couldn’t see him. “Absolutely. Eddie Rudd’s print might be there but it feels wrong, and we’ve still got the one on Cooke’s watch. Any idea how old Rudd’s print is, Des?”

“Sorry, I can’t tell. The technology to date prints is coming but it isn’t mainstream yet.”

Craig signed off and turned to see Davy’s puzzled face. He looked like Craig felt.

“It doesn’t make s…sense, chief. Eddie Rudd can’t be the killer; he wasn’t even on the unit that night.”

“Perhaps he got away before the police arrived.”

Davy frowned. “But w…why would he have been there? He wouldn’t have been visiting anyone, unless…”

“Unless he was waiting to see Cooke and have things out with him. He might have blamed him for his sister’s death.”

As he said the words Craig shook his head. The print couldn’t be argued with but Eddie Rudd just didn’t feel right. They needed him in for questioning. He crossed to the door.

“Nicky, get me Liam, please.”

One minute later the desk-phone rang and Liam’s voice boomed “hello.” Craig put the call on speaker and watched as Davy held his ears. Liam was even louder than usual today.

“Liam, the print on Cooke’s lapel badge matches Eddie Rudd. Bring him to High Street for interview, and take a W.P.C. to go with you, please. Carmen said he was pretty fragile.”

Liam said nothing for a moment but Craig could hear him struggling with himself. Finally he spoke.

“Much as I’d like nothing better than to do as you’ve asked, boss, I think Annette’s better placed to interview the lad. She’s better with the nervy ones than me.”

She was, but it was the first time that Liam had admitted it.

“OK. Brief Annette and send her instead. I’m taking Ian Jacobs to see Des at the lab. Davy’s coming with me. Bye.”

Before Liam could say another word Craig killed the call and returned to the papers that Davy had brought in. Somewhere on the pages lay the name of their double murderer. Ian Jacobs was innocent of anything but checking a pulse and he seriously doubted Eddie Rudd had killed Cooke, although they had to rule him out. That was the problem with forensic evidence; much as they relied upon it in court, it could spoil a perfectly good theory. It only told them what was there, not how, why or when it had got there. Eddie Rudd’s fingerprint could have been on Cooke’s badge for any number of reasons and it might have been there for months.

Rudd might have been visiting his sister on the ward one day and touched Cooke’s coat. Eleanor Rudd and Cooke had dated so perhaps the boy had even tried the coat on, in make believe. Or perhaps the print
was
there because Eddie Rudd and Cooke had had an altercation that night, maybe even because he’d killed Cooke, not in premeditated murder but in the heat of the moment, in anger about his sister’s death.

That was where the human element in crime solving came in. Annette would get the answers, either verbally or through whatever Eddie Rudd’s body language said. As Craig drummed his fingers thoughtfully on the desk he prayed that the young man hadn’t killed Adrian Cooke, or a bad childhood would become a much worse future in Maghaberry.

***

Eddie Rudd came without a struggle, without a murmur in fact. He simply gave his mother a defeated look, much as Annette imagined him doing when his father had struck him in the past. It made bringing him in for interview an easy task, but it was a very unhealthy sign; the passivity of a victim waiting to be abused again. Margie Rudd had wrung her hands and sobbed as her son, the only close family she had left in the world, was helped into the marked police car. Eased in by his uniformed guard and then driven away, eyes down and wrists cuffed, not knowing if he would be freed again. Annette placed a comforting hand on the woman’s shoulder.

“This is routine, Mrs Rudd, believe me. I would be very surprised if Eddie isn’t home again tonight.”

Margie Rudd glanced up with hope in her eyes, then experience or memory extinguished it and she stared at the ground again. Annette squeezed her shoulder once and then left. She’d meant what she’d said. Like Craig her gut was saying Eddie’s print was on Cooke’s badge for some other reason, he probably hadn’t been near the ward that night. She drove down the narrow street with that hope in mind, knowing that there was only one way to find out.

***

High Street Station.

Jack had the kettle already boiled when Annette arrived and after five minutes of chat she shifted her brain to a different place, one where she needed to extract information from someone who didn’t want to give it, information that might incriminate them in a murder. Interviewing or interrogation, whichever term was currently in vogue, was an art. Not a nice one like painting or sculpture or classical dance, but a hard, nuanced battle between two people, where one wanted to say nothing and the other was tasked with making them speak.

There were plenty who entered an interview room and asked questions like ‘did you do it?’ or ‘tell me where the gun is’, but they left again just as quickly, with ten minutes of ‘no comments’ and a solicitor’s smug grin in their head. That wasn’t art, it was judgemental clumsiness. To Annette and Craig, and even Liam to an extent, interviewing a suspect was like a first date; both parties trying to create an impression that was nothing like the truth. Add to that the fact that one side had secrets they didn’t want to give up, then easing, cajoling and seducing those secrets from them was the mark of a detective’s skill.

Annette psyched herself up to use all her skill now. Not because Eddie Rudd was some criminal mastermind; he definitely wasn’t if shoplifting had been the height of his career. And not because she believed that he’d killed Adrian Cooke that night; she’d seen the lad, he was thin and undersized, he’d have been lucky if he could squeeze out cold ketchup never mind strangle a steroid bulked man. No, she had to use her skill because Eddie Rudd had given up on life, just like his mum. Years of an abusive father had sapped his energy and taught him that life was always going to mean pain.

That mind-set could walk him into Maghaberry if he wasn’t careful, because of what he said on a tape and a random fingerprint, if a lazy defender and an angry Judge got together on a bad day. She needed all her skill, not because she was trying to convict Eddie Rudd, but because she needed to elicit something that would get him off.

***

The E.M.U. 3 p.m.

“Here son, that set of prints looks a bit rough. Go back and do them again.”

The young P.C. shrugged and turned back towards Newman Ward, muttering something under his breath.

“I heard that.”

Liam hadn’t heard it, but his words had the desired effect, quickening the constable’s steps. Ken grinned after him and Liam shrugged.

“Bet you do that all the time with young squaddies.”

“I do, but usually with less effect. Maybe I need to drop my voice an octave or two.”

Liam’s grin widened. His voice was one of his best features, or so he thought. To everyone else it was either too loud or too low, although it had halted more than one street brawl before it kicked off. Ken straightened the pile of cards in his hand.

“That’s Newman Ward all printed: staff, relatives and patients who were there on Monday evening when Cooke died. Apart from a couple who were discharged.”

“I’ve sent a P.C. to their homes to do them.”

Ken glanced at the door to Reilly Suite and then at his watch. It was three o’clock and they still hadn’t had lunch.

“What do you say we stop for a sandwich?”

Liam nodded. “I say yes to a sandwich but no to a delay. Uniform can keep going till we get back.”

***

Annette didn’t know whether to hug or shake the young man in front of her so she settled for a verbal mixture of both. The mother in her wanted to take Eddie Rudd home, feed him up and imbue him with confidence, until he stopped acting like a doormat for the world to wipe its feet on. The detective wanted him to tell the truth quickly so that she could eliminate him from enquiries and send him home. She took an approach somewhere in between.

“Please tell me where you were between six and eight p.m. on the 13
^th
of October.”

Eddie Rudd raised his eyes from the table and opened his mouth for the first time since they’d lifted him. His voice was unusual. Not in its tone, which was fairly monotonous, but in its unexpectedly deep timbre and strength, emerging as it did from a body so thin that it could have graced the ‘before’ pictures in a body-building magazine. Annette wondered idly why Carmen hadn’t mentioned it but then Carmen’s approach to life was a puzzle to them all.

Rudd also had virtually no accent. He was from East Belfast, an area with a dialect all of its own and a strong, hard accent to match, yet his voice bore no trace of the flat ‘e’ that became ‘eh’ or the ‘a’ that stretched to ‘ay’ in the middle of a word. Instead the boy sounded as if he’d learned to talk from a tape where the speaker had been English and middle-class. Radio or TV? It made sense if William Rudd had kept his family shut in the house for control. Whatever the reason Annette was surprised when he spoke.

“What day was that?”

“Monday. Tell me where you were please.”

The young man closed his eyes, as if he was remembering. “The hospital.”

Annette was shocked; maybe he’d killed Cooke after all? Then logic took hold, why admit to being somewhere if you knew it would incriminate you in a death? She hadn’t told Rudd the reason they’d lifted him, just ‘helping with our enquiries’, and Adrian Cooke’s death had been kept quiet so far. The only way Eddie Rudd would have known Cooke was dead was if he’d killed him, and if he had she doubted he would have volunteered his location that night. She kept her voice calm.

“Which hospital?”

He looked at her as if it was a trick question. “The big one off the M2. The one Ellie worked at.”

“Why were you there, Mr Rudd?”

A sad look flitted across his face. “To collect Ellie’s things. The sister phoned, said there was stuff in her locker.” He shrugged. “I think they needed the space.”

It would be easy to check.

“Why that evening? Couldn’t you have gone during the day?”

He gave a grin that said he was proud of something. “I’ve got a job. Forty hours a week at SuperMark. I work till five so I went up after that.”

Annette smiled at his obvious happiness; the supermarket had obviously decided to ignore his pilfering offence. Thank goodness for common sense. From the joy on the boy’s face it was probably the first freedom he’d had since he was born, but, much as she would have loved to let him talk about it for longer, she had to get back to the point.