by LJ Ross
“We were too late, Frank.”
Phillips glanced across at his friend’s stern profile, and could see very clearly the sadness and frustration beneath the calm veneer.
“We couldn’t have done anything differently,” he said. “The Army gave the soldiers a full debrief and there was a counsellor booked in to see them all, this morning.”
“She didn’t even wait to see if she was right,” Ryan said, softly. “Jess Stephenson was so convinced she was responsible, she took her own life.”
He turned to his friend with blazing silver-grey eyes.
“Were we too hard, Frank? Was…I too hard on her?”
“Nay, lad,” Phillips said, and put a comforting hand on his shoulder. “You did your duty, and you did it fairly. Nobody could say otherwise.”
Ryan was silent for the rest of the journey but, as the car moved through the main security gates, he made up his mind about something.
“I’m officially opening a murder enquiry into the death of the unidentified woman,” he said, decisively. “I want a Major Incident Room set up here, on-site, where everybody can see us and, more importantly, where we can see them.”
“Aye, that Winchester hunting bullet seems fishy to me.”
“I don’t know whether it’s fishy, but it’s certainly unexplained, and I have a lifelong aversion to unexplained things.”
“Po-tay-to, po-tah-to,” Phillips said. “But Morrison won’t like you setting up the MIR away from Police HQ. Only last week, she was on about us sticking to our desks rather than scampering about the countryside.”
“I don’t tend to do much ‘scampering’, as a rule,” Ryan drawled. “But the day I’m chained to a desk is the day I die.”
“Amen to that,” Phillips said. “Howay and let’s go catch a killer.”
“Couldn’t have put it better myself.”
* * *
Faulkner’s team of CSIs had already arrived at the scene, by the time Ryan and Phillips made their way back out to Witch Crags. This time, they made for a small woodland area nearby, where Private Jess Stephenson had apparently decided to end her days.
Much as it grieved him, Ryan had given orders that, as it was clear no life-saving resuscitation could be performed, she was to remain where she was until the CSIs could photograph the area and take full swabs before the surroundings were contaminated by outside forces.
Once that process was complete, Ryan cut her down himself.
It was a thankless task, and the image of Jess Stephenson’s horribly bloated and mottled skin would no doubt haunt him for many years to come. However, he handled her body with the utmost care, transferring her onto a waiting stretcher before she was transported to the mortuary and into Jeffrey Pinter’s safekeeping.
As the stretcher was lifted away by four soldiers, Ryan looked down at his gloved hands, which still held Stephenson’s brown, military-issue leather belt, and the knife he’d used to cut it from her neck. With a last, lingering look at the simple contraption that had taken a life, he slipped the belt into a plastic evidence bag and handed it to Faulkner, who was waiting nearby.
“You didn’t have to do that, yourself,” the man said. “We’d have brought her down.”
“I was glad to help,” Ryan replied, and cast his sharp gaze around the vicinity and across to where Phillips was taking statements from the group of army privates from 3rd Platoon, who had been the ones to find Jess a short while ago.
The patch of woodland was small but dense; the pine trees having grown close to one another so their fragrance filled their nostrils, mercifully blotting out the less salubrious scent of death that might otherwise have infused the morning air. The forest floor was thick with discarded cones and smaller branches which crackled beneath their plastic-coated feet and, a short distance away, an army-model quad bike was parked with the keys still swinging in the ignition.
“That must be how she got up here,” he surmised, nodding towards the vehicle.
Faulkner followed his gaze and nodded.
“It looks like it,” he said. “We’ll dust it for prints.”
Ryan nodded, and wondered how much to say. It was important that the forensics team were free to complete their duties without any preconceptions or bias, wherever possible; however, if there was a particular line of enquiry, it was equally important to let them know so they could pay attention to the finer details that might be significant.
He decided on a middle road.
“Did you find any shell casings for a .308 calibre Winchester bullet, during your search yesterday?” he asked.
Faulkner frowned, and referred to the preliminary report he’d only recently drafted.
“No, I’m almost certain we found nothing of that kind. We found plenty of smaller calibre shells, more like 5mm, which I anticipate will be a match to the bullets used during the tactical exercise, yesterday. Why do you ask?”
Ryan thought of the kind of distance that could be covered by a long-range hunting rifle, and wondered where the unknown sniper had stationed himself, when he’d fired a single shot at the woman who now lay on a metal slab at the mortuary. The preliminary report from the pathologist indicated that the Winchester bullet had been found lodged in her skull, with a trajectory that suggested the woman was shot from behind, as she was running away.
Bearing in mind where she fell, that put the position of the unknown gunman somewhere to the east, towards Witch Crags. However, Ryan knew that hunting rifles could maintain accuracy over hundreds of metres, and there was every chance the person who fired the Winchester .308 bullet did so from some distance away. They’d have needed high-spec night vision goggles, like the rest of the platoon section, but it was possible.
That knowledge alone was enough to give him pause, because the very idea suggested the existence of a perpetrator who was highly organised, in possession of high-tech equipment and who may, or may not, have been responsible for driving the victim out into a live-fire training exercise.
But why? Ryan thought.
What was the motive?
He took a final look around the little enclave of forest, and thought about Jess Stephenson’s family, and of the young woman he’d spoken to less than twenty-four hours ago.
Had there been something else in her eyes that he’d missed?
He, who was so good at reading people and behaviour, had utterly missed the signs that must have been there, plain as day. Why hadn’t he seen that Jess Stephenson was close to the edge, and that she was ready to end her own life?
“Ryan—?”
He realised Faulkner was waiting for a response.
“There’s a possibility the woman yesterday wasn’t hit by an army-issued bullet,” he said, quietly. “Pinter found a Winchester .308 bullet lodged in the woman’s skull, but none of the army firers carry that kind of weapon. It isn’t even part of their arsenal—I checked.”
Faulkner was quick to join the dots.
“You think this hasn’t got anything to do with the army, after all?”
Ryan narrowed his eyes and gave a brief nod.
“I’m beginning to think we’ve been looking at this from the wrong direction, all along.”
CHAPTER 17
“How about fish and chips for lunch?”
MacKenzie’s suggestion was met with an eager affirmative from Samantha, and the pair of them made their way along to the high street in Wooler, where a small, traditionally-styled fish and chip van tended to park itself, in time for the lunchtime crowd.
Fishy on a Dishy was another triumph of Northern brand-marketing, MacKenzie thought, as they joined the small queue, and she found herself humming the old folk tune beneath her breath.
“Thou shalt have a fishy, on a little dishy…thou shalt have a fishy, when the boat comes in…dance to thy daddy, sing ti’ thy mammy…”
‘What are you singing?” Samantha asked.
“It’s a traditional Northumbrian song,” MacKenzie said. “Every part of the world has its o
wn traditions and customs, folk songs and whatnot.”
“Do they have it in Ireland, where you’re from?”
MacKenzie nodded.
“They’ve got different songs, there,” she said, and felt a sudden pang of homesickness, something she hadn’t felt for a long time.
“What’ll it be, ladies?”
The man behind the counter was so large, he seemed to fill the whole van. He was around forty, tall and very muscular beneath the traditional white fishmonger’s outfit he wore, and looked as though he’d be more at home in a boxing ring than a fish and chip van.
“Um, we’ll have a large cod and chips, and a small portion of scampi, please.”
“Comin’ right up,” he said, and the pair watched as he trowelled a generous portion of cholesterol-laden chips into a takeaway box. “Haven’t seen you for a couple of days,” he added, as he bustled around getting their order together. “Been having plenty of fun, over at the holiday camp?”
Samantha nodded eagerly.
“Yeah! There’s loads of stuff to do there, but I like the swimming pool the best,” she said.
MacKenzie smiled and handed over the money to pay, but when he reached over to take the cash from her, his fingers brushed against hers in a manner too practised to be accidental. Surprised by the unexpected contact, she snatched her fingers away and found him smiling at her with laughter in his eyes.
“Have a nice day, bonny lass.”
MacKenzie gave him a long, level look, and then deliberately turned away.
But, when she glanced back, she found him watching her with a fixed intensity she found unnerving.
“Come on, Sam,” she murmured. “Let’s go back.”
* * *
After their meeting with Anna, Jack kept his promise to Melanie and they went for a lunchtime stroll along the river in Durham, stopping off for some provisions on the way. He would have liked to stay much longer, whiling away the hours on the riverbank with a beautiful woman by his side, but there was work to be done and all the talk of extreme Odinism was deeply unsettling.
Matters did not improve when, almost as soon as they were back on the road to Police Headquarters, Jack received another call from the Control Room.
This time, the target had been a successful black footballer for the local premiership team, whose home had been letter-bombed in a style similar to the attack on the Central Mosque, the day before.
“That’s two in as many days, which means they’re escalating quickly,” Jack said. “We need to consult with Ryan on the best approach, and have a word with GCHQ to see if they have anything on their radar that can help us.”
Melanie nodded.
“I can’t imagine how terrifying that would be, waking up to find an explosion in your own home.”
Jack nodded.
“It’s lucky that nobody was home. The family are away on holiday, apparently, so the fire only caused property damage.”
“Do you think they knew he was away from home?” Melanie wondered. “If Anna’s right, and the group we’re looking for aren’t afraid to die to secure an eternal place at the table in Valhalla, why would it matter to them if he was at home or not?”
“True,” Lowerson admitted. “On the other hand, thinking of the psychology behind these groups, it strikes me that most of the people perpetrating these offences are cowards. They don’t use normal modes of communication to express any dissatisfaction with politics, or the system, or whatever it is they have a problem with. They turn to hate crime, and mythology. They’ve had three opportunities to cause grievous bodily harm, or even commit murder, but they haven’t gone that far. That means they might talk a good game but, when it comes down to it, maybe they’re not ready to have murder on their conscience.”
“It’s encouraging to think they might have one,” Melanie said, and pressed the accelerator to the floor so they practically flew up the A1 dual carriageway back towards Newcastle.
* * *
The dog was back.
He’d worried about the stupid mutt all through the night and, now that it was back, he was unreasonably angry.
He didn’t want to worry about anyone, or anything.
Never again.
Never again would he care too much about another living thing; it was only a recipe for heartache, and loneliness.
Deliberately, he collected up his meagre possessions and walked away from the dog’s uncomprehending face, determined to find himself a new patch.
But, when he looked back, he found that the dog was following.
“Bugger off,” he snarled, but the animal wasn’t fooled.
There had been no conviction in his voice, and no menace in his heart.
The soldier and the dog stared at one another for an endless moment, and then the dog seemed to tense, its skinny body going on alert.
“What is it?” he asked. “What’s the matter?”
When he heard Alfie Rodger’s unmistakeable, high-pitched voice echo through the underpass, he knew they’d come for him again, and would keep on coming until he capitulated.
It was only a matter of time.
“Run,” he told the dog. “Run, before they see you.”
The dog continued to sit there, looking up at him with a trusting expression on its face.
Thinking quickly, he settled himself against the wall and arranged his sleeping bag in a heap beside him, creating a cave of sorts in which the dog could be concealed.
“Here! C’mon, boy. C’mon, that’s right,” he said, and managed to coax the animal beneath the protective covers of the sleeping bag, just in the nick of time.
CHAPTER 18
Ryan and Phillips set up a makeshift Incident Room in one of the conference rooms at the Otterburn Camp, which was well equipped with telephone lines and printers, should they need them. Ordinarily, Ryan would have taken the time to set up a ‘Murder Wall’, to provide a visual aid for members of his team to use during the course of their investigation. However, since the conference room door had no lock, he felt it prudent to go without, on this occasion.
The only exception he made was to stick a single photograph on the wall, front and centre, for his team to focus on throughout their discussions. They were a small band, consisting of himself, Phillips, Major Malloy of the Defence AIB, Tom Faulkner, and two crime analysts he’d seconded from his team back at Police Headquarters. Once they were all assembled, he moved to the front of the room and pointed towards the large colour photograph. It depicted a pretty girl of seventeen, dressed in a prom outfit for a high school dance. It had been taken by her parents, four years ago, only weeks before she’d gone missing, never to be seen again.
“This is Layla Bruce,” he said, looking across into her smiling, pixelated blue eyes. “She’s the woman who died on the ranges yesterday morning. She was twenty-one.”
The room became so silent, he could have heard a pin drop.
“A comparison with dental records managed to throw up a match with one of our cold-case ‘Missing Persons’ files,” he explained. “Layla was first reported missing on 1st March 2015 by her parents, who became concerned when she didn’t return home from school.”
He wondered whether it would give them any comfort to know where she was, now, or whether they would rather have lived with the dreadful, desperate hope that she was still alive, somewhere out there in the world. Unfortunately, the choice would be taken out of their hands, soon enough.
“Layla came from St Boswells, a village on the south side of the River Tweed, just over the border into Scotland.”
“All that time, she’d been so near,” Phillips said, with a small shake of his head.
“We don’t exactly know where she’s been, for the past four years. It’s possible she travelled around a bit, especially at first. Although we have no criminal records to back this up, the pathologist report indicates that she was sexually active, and the lack of permanent address suggests to me she may have been getting by as a sex worker.”
<
br /> “It would explain the reason why nobody’s reported her missing for a second time,” Phillips said. “People who live on the other side of the law don’t rush to make reports, in case it puts them on our radar.”
“Exactly,” Ryan agreed. “The lack of oversight means that people—and particularly women—like Layla are very vulnerable individuals, prone to exploitation and attack.”
It upset Ryan to know there were probably thousands of people out there without home or family; vulnerable people who had fallen between the cracks of society to become targets for a very specific kind of predator.
He stuck his hands in his back pockets, while he gathered his thoughts.
“Until now, the only thing we knew about Layla was that she was an unwitting casualty in a routine military exercise. The initial pathology report confirms she sustained a fatal gunshot wound to the head. Other than the bullet, there’s no mystery surrounding the cause of death.”
“Other than the bullet?” Malloy queried.
“Is the reason we’re all here,” Ryan said. “The bullet recovered from her skull was a .308 Winchester, suitable for use with a long-range hunting rifle. None of the firers during the tactical training exercise were in possession of a rifle of that kind, and they aren’t listed as part of the weapons armoury, here at Otterburn.”
“We found no shells matching a .308,” Faulkner threw in. “The only cartridge shells we found belonged to the 5.56mm bullets issued to the firers before the exercise, and all were present and accounted for.”
“So, you believe there’s a mystery gunman,” Malloy said slowly.
Ryan shook his head.
“I don’t believe it,” he said. “I know it.”
“But—why? Why would anyone shoot a woman who was already running into the pathway of a live-fire exercise?” Malloy demanded.
Ryan scanned each of the faces in the room.
“Isn’t it obvious?” he said. “They were hunting big game—a human target—and didn’t want to be deprived of the kill.”
