Connor dropped Donna just up the road from Randolphfield, not wanting to get too close to the station for reasons she didn’t quite understand. Since he’d quit the PSNI, he hadn’t set foot in a police station and had no intention of breaking the habit now.
His talk with Donna had proved informative, if not revelatory. He told her what Helen Russell’s husband had said about his wife, hoped that her source had given her something Ford hadn’t shared. That wasn’t the case, but the fact she knew about the beheading, Billy Griffin’s tattoo and the scale of the trauma that had been inflicted on him told Connor she had worthwhile contacts, who might come in handy.
He watched her walk up the street, heading for the station. She was a strong woman – she’d have to be to shrug off finding a decapitated body beside her car. There was something else too: a defiant hardness that Connor could sense rather than see. It was as though she was trying to prove something, but what?
Her clothes told him she wasn’t affluent, her shoes that she was doing okay. There were signs of recent weight loss in the slightly sagging folds of skin around her neck, and the dark patches around her eyes spoke of a night’s lost sleep. Understandable given what she had just seen but still there was something . . .
He considered his next move. No word from Simon yet about his arrival, so he had some time to play with. He wanted to speak to Ford, see if they knew anything about Russell’s mysterious lover, or whether she’d had any links to Belfast.
But even if she did, what would that prove? Hughes was dead, so whoever had left that book with Helen Russell’s body had known him, and the trick he had pulled on Connor. He had never reported the incident, and Simon had offered to alibi him, if necessary, so who did that leave? The answer was obvious. Hughes had obviously told someone about the beating, and what he had done to trigger it.
But who had he told? And why were they sending him this message now? Was it to settle a debt to Hughes, to get retribution for the little shit now that he was dead? And how did it link with the other two murders? The tattoo on Billy Griffin’s body seemed to indicate a link to Loyalists, but with Jonny’s tribe or another branch?
Connor sighed, leant back in his seat, thoughts swirling. Too many questions. Not enough answers.
He was startled from his thoughts by the buzzing of his phone. He thumbed a button on the steering wheel. ‘Hello?’
‘Fraser, it’s Ford,’ the policeman said, his voice slightly distorted by the car’s speakers. ‘There’s a press conference just starting here, and I don’t want to be anywhere near it. Can you meet up? I’ve found something and I need to talk to you.’
Connor leant forward, interested. ‘I’m nearby,’ he said, looking up at the police station. ‘Where do you want to meet?’
The answer surprised him. ‘Can you get to the uni? I have business there, and the main SOCOs have cleared the site now so it should be quiet enough.’
Connor mapped out the route in his mind. Not a problem. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Any chance you can give me a clue what this is about?’
Silence filled the car, heavy, expectant. Then Ford grumbled a curse. ‘Seems Billy Griffin wasn’t the only one who liked body art,’ he said, his voice low. ‘Pathologist found a site on Helen Russell’s body that shows recent burning, the type you get from laser tattoo removal.’
‘Take it you managed to get a partial look at the tattoo. But what’s that got to do with me?’
‘Depends,’ Ford replied. ‘When you were in Belfast, did you have any run-ins with the Red Hand Defenders?’