by LJ Ross
“People tend to buy them a size up,” Ryan put in.
“The point is, they don’t match Jessica Stephenson’s shoes, which were trainers rather than walking boots.”
“That suggests she had no intention of going far,” Ryan said. “As well as telling us there was another person present. Faulkner’s sure it couldn’t have been one of the soldiers who discovered the body—Amanda Huxley, for example?”
“Those witnesses claim they didn’t touch or go near the quad bike area, which is where a lot of these partials were found,” Phillips said. “But that’s always subject to error.”
Ryan nodded. Even factoring in the usual uncertainties, the evidence was certainly stacked in favour of murder, and that put an entirely different complexion on matters.
“We assumed Jessica Stephenson was troubled because she thought she was in some way responsible for Layla Bruce’s death. Instead, I wonder if her anxiety was coming from another direction, or person. Frank, when we interviewed Huxley yesterday, didn’t she say that Jessica had talked about needing to ‘check’ something?”
Phillips nodded.
“Everybody thought she meant the scene of the fatality, the previous day, but she might have been talking about something completely different.”
Ryan looked down at the woman’s body and grieved.
“We need to find out what she was checking, or what she knew, that was dangerous enough to get her killed,” he said. “The probability is that it’s one of her platoon.”
“How d’you want to play it?” Phillips asked.
Ryan was staring at the picture of the belt marks on her skin, and tried to place where he’d seen somebody wearing such a belt before. An image skittered around the edges of his mind, just out of reach.
“We keep it quiet, for now,” he decided. “I want whoever killed Jessica Stephenson to believe they’ve got away with it, so they’ll relax and carry on as usual. In the meantime, we go back over all her personal possessions, Frank, and we chase up digital forensics, too. Have the team managed to unlock her phone, yet?”
Phillips nodded.
“We can collect it on the way back,” he said. “We could draft in Jack and Mel, to help?”
But Ryan shook his head.
“They’ve got their hands full, with this Odinism investigation. They had a good tip-off this morning about a meeting taking place this evening, so they’re working towards setting up a bust.”
“He’s come right, that lad,” Phillips said, proudly.
“About bloody time,” Ryan agreed. “But it means we’re on our own with this one.”
They thanked Pinter for his superlative efforts, and headed back out of the mortuary and into the rain.
CHAPTER 32
“You said Faulkner had an update on Layla, too?” Ryan asked, once they were back inside his car.
Phillips dabbed water from his face using the edge of his tie, which was a relatively sombre choice in comparison with his usual jaunty designs, being a dark navy blue with a pattern of tiny white stars.
“Oh, aye, that’s right. He says the sniffer dogs were hampered by the rainfall, but they still managed to find blood spots from the underside of Layla’s feet.”
Ryan remembered they’d been bloody and torn.
“Anyhow, he’s mapped the coordinates where the blood spatter was found, so we can have a look and see the general direction she was running.”
“That’s excellent,” Ryan said. “Anything else?”
He had no sooner asked the question, when his phone began to ring. Ryan saw that it was the Control Room, and felt his stomach perform a slow flip.
“Ryan,” he answered.
“Sir, we have a witness on the line by the name of ‘Willow’, who states she has information regarding your investigation into the death of Layla Bruce. Are you able to take the call?”
“Put her straight through,” he said, urgently.
A moment later, he heard a beep, followed by the sound of a woman’s voice. Even over the telephone line, he could tell she was frightened.
“Hello, this is DCI Ryan. Thank you for calling in, we appreciate it very much. Can you tell me your name, please?”
“Willow,” the voice whispered. “I’m calling because I saw you on telly yesterday, and I saw the picture of Layla. Is it true she’s really dead?”
“Yes, I’m sorry,” Ryan replied. “Can you tell me how you knew Layla?”
“I—” He heard her swallow the nerves. “Um, we both worked in the same place.”
“I’m sorry to put you on the spot, Willow, but it’s important that I know the truth. Can you tell me, was Layla a sex worker?”
He heard a small sigh of relief from the woman at the end of the line.
“Yeah. We both were. I still am,” she admitted.
“You told me you worked in the same place—where was that?” Ryan asked, and retrieved a small notepad from his jacket pocket.
“You promise you won’t come for me?” she asked, in a voice that shook. “I need the money.”
Ryan agreed.
“In that case, we used to work the patch around the back of the petrol station,” she said, and named a spot just over the border, only a handful of miles away from where Layla’s family still lived.
“How long had you both worked there?”
“Layla had been all over,” she said. “In the early days, she had some pimp from Melrose who tried to take most of everythin’ she made, and she thought she loved him. Told her some old tale about being a photographer, or something. Turned out he wanted her to do porno pictures, and all that. Eased her into the business, like they all do.”
He heard her sigh down the phone.
“Anyway, we’ve worked the back of the station for the past six months,” she said. “I don’t know where she was before, she just said somewhere up north, near Aberdeen.”
Ryan jotted it all down.
“This is very helpful, thank you, Willow. Can you tell me, when was the last time you saw her?”
“It was about six o’clock, maybe seven, last Wednesday night,” she said. “There wasn’t much happening, so I decided to drive over to the next station and see if there was any business there. She said she’d wait a bit longer where she was, and then follow me if she didn’t have any luck.”
Her voice broke a bit, as she remembered.
“I left her alone, and somebody took her.”
* * *
Ryan spoke to Layla’s friend for a while longer, consoling her and taking any other pertinent details she was able to share. When he hung up, he looked across to where Phillips was scrolling through a document on his phone.
“I asked one of the analysts to put together a list of all the missing women—especially those in the sex trade—who’ve gone from the area surrounding the Northumberland National Park, as well as any bodies that’ve been discovered in the last ten years,” he said.
“And? Has it thrown up anything?” Ryan asked.
“As a matter of fact, yes.”
Phillips leaned across the passenger seat, and showed Ryan a map.
“Two other women over the past three years have gone missing from the area, one of which we know to have been in the sex trade—the other one is less certain, but she was without a permanent address. The first went missing from here back in May of 2016.” He pointed to a spot on the map near Berwick-upon-Tweed.
“Where’s that?”
“It’s a petrol station,” Phillips replied, and sent alarm bells ringing in Ryan’s ears. “The other lass went missing from…here,” he said, pointing at another part of the map, not far from the village of Rothbury. “That was last year.”
“I remember that one,” Ryan said. “We looked at it for a connection with one of the cases we were working on at the time.”
“Well, she’s still missing, unfortunately. She was last sighted—”
“Don’t tell me,” Ryan interjected. “At a petrol station?”
&
nbsp; “Bingo.”
Ryan studied the map, and thought it was interesting that the earlier missing persons cases were the furthest distance from the National Park, whilst more recent cases had been closer to it. That seemed consistent with the general theory about serial killers’ preferred geographic areas, but it didn’t help them much, now.
“They sent through that list you were after, too,” Phillips said, pulling up a different file to show him. “This is all the petrol stations they’ve been able to come up with so far, with links to the sex trade.”
Ryan scanned the list, recognising some of the names and places as ones Willow had told him about, during their recent conversation.
He closed his eyes to think.
“Alright,” he said. “Our killer likes to hunt in big landscapes, with plenty of space to hide. Where else is it possible to do that, other than the Northumberland National Park? Bearing in mind, he has an added layer of protection since the Army training ranges cover a chunk of that area, which means people are less likely to wander over his turf.”
“One of the other training ranges?” Phillips said, immediately. “Or otherwise, some of the more remote parts of the Scottish Highlands, for example.”
Ryan nodded.
“It seems to me that our killer prefers the north—perhaps he’s tied to it, for work. Let’s focus our attention on spaces like that over the border into Scotland. Get in touch with our colleagues in Edinburgh, and ask for the data on Missing Persons, specifically those in the sex trade, with links to any of the petrol stations on this list.”
“Consider it done,” Phillips said.
CHAPTER 33
Throughout the night, the woman remained hidden beneath the mud. She stayed there until she could no longer feel her limbs; until she became so cold, she was forced to move, or risk hypothermia and die anyway. Concealed by the darkness and the noise of the river, she’d crawled slowly east. She couldn’t be sure where he was; she had no way of seeing or hearing him. For all she knew, he had seen her sad, slow struggle through the bog and was following only a few paces behind, waiting to take the perfect shot.
But it didn’t come, and so she’d continued, the movement of her arms and legs providing some little warmth to raise her core temperature—enough to keep her alive, but not enough to be seen through the thermal lens on the goggles he wore.
She didn’t know how far she travelled; she’d only known that she must never stop.
Eventually, though, the mud ran dry.
Forced out into the open again, she’d smeared cold mud on her body and kept low to the ground, moving at a snail’s pace over the surface of the wide, empty landscape. She stopped dead when she thought she heard footsteps not far behind and stayed still, with her ear pressed to the ground as the rain began to fall.
Eventually, she’d moved again, making for a small patch of trees she spotted in the distance—so near, and yet so far away. If she ran, she would be there in under a minute; but, if she ran, he would see her, and she’d be dead before she ever made it that far.
And so, she’d continued to edge across the moor, her knees and feet so cut and torn, and her body so cold and weary, she thought she’d never make it. She floated in and out of consciousness, her body pushed far beyond its limits, but when she was lucid again, she pushed herself a little further.
Once, she thought she’d heard a gunshot further west of where she lay, and then another that sounded much closer, but she could no longer trust her own senses. Hyperawareness made her sick and shaky, and the impenetrable darkness played tricks with her mind.
The first light of dawn was beginning to rise behind the trees when her fingers touched the first pinecone on the forest floor, and she’d known that his night vision goggles would be of no use to him now. She’d been desperate to cry out for help, but knew it would be madness to make a sound in the silent valley.
Instead, she’d risked a glance over her shoulder.
In the early light of day, she’d seen not a single other living person.
There was nothing except endless land and sky and, in the far distance, the dim outline of a pele tower to remind her of how far she had come.
Not far enough.
She’d dragged herself into the protective fold of the forest and moved from tree to tree, her fingers clutching the bark for support as she went in search of shelter.
And later, when he picked up her trail and tracked her to the same spot, he saw the imprint of her hand against the tree and smiled.
The day was only just beginning, and he had all the time in the world.
He settled down to wait.
* * *
It would have been easy to take the dog and leave, the soldier thought, but that would have attracted suspicion. They’d know he’d contacted the police, and would have come looking for him, or cancelled their plans to meet at the Duddo Stones. If the police were to apprehend them, the group needed to believe they were still beneath the radar.
“I speak for all of us here, when I say we’re glad you decided to join us,” John, the leader, told him. “I know you’ll be a tremendous asset to our company.”
He enjoyed using military-sounding words, the soldier noticed, even though he’d never been in the services.
He could wear a tutu all he wanted, but it wouldn’t make him a ballerina.
“How’s your dog today, mate?” the other one asked, handing him a sausage and egg sandwich, wrapped in paper.
The soldier looked down at the dog, who was cradled in his arms on the back seat of the car, and stroked a tender hand over its nose.
“Better, thank you,” he said politely.
“Don’t mention it,” John said, magnanimously. “We look after our own, don’t we lads?”
There were obligatory murmurs of agreement around the large SUV.
“Right, well, I thought I’d take you over to see your new digs, then we’ll pick you up again later on and take a trip up-country. Sound alright?”
The soldier nodded.
“Aye, thanks.”
He listened as they talked over their plans for the coming weeks, and pontificated grandiose theories to support plainly fascist beliefs. He made the right noises and nodded whenever one of them should happen to glance his way but, all the while, he thought of Naseem.
He looked down at the dog to find it looking up at him, and thought he saw it smile.
CHAPTER 34
Back at Police Headquarters, Ryan and Phillips stole into the building like thieves in the night, bypassing the Chief Constable’s hawk-eyed personal assistant and making directly for their colleagues in the Digital Forensics Department—affectionately known as the ‘techies’. There, they retrieved Private Jess Stephenson’s mobile phone, which had been unlocked, and the report on its contents—which included a long list of messages, photographs, social media content and books she’d downloaded to read on the journey between camps across the country.
There was a lot of John le Carré, Ryan noticed, and a bit of Frederick Forsythe.
Next, they went in search of Tom Faulkner, whose employers had recently purchased the rights to use the top floor of the building to facilitate easy discussion and reduce transportation between their high-tech lab space and the police evidence store. They made their way upstairs and found Faulkner hunched over a microscope.
“Morning, Tom.”
Faulkner looked up and smiled.
“Been a long couple of days,” he said. “Hard to tell what time of day it is.”
Outside, the rain continued to pound the pavement, forming deep puddles in the staff car park. The sky was a uniform shade of grey, obliterating the sun so that the landscape appeared drab and dreary.
At least we’d finished the outdoor work,” Faulkner said, counting his blessings. “I’m sorry, if you’ve come for any more news, I don’t have anything for you, yet—”
“No, thanks, Tom. Phillips already passed on your update. We’re here to see the personal items we
took from Jess Stephenson’s bunk area.”
Faulkner raised an eyebrow.
“Of course,” he replied, and reached for a box of disposable gloves. “You know the drill, by now.”
They did indeed.
* * *
Thirty miles away, in Elsdon, Anna, Samantha and Denise enjoyed a rare moment of all-female company and threw themselves into the spirit of things with gusto. Love Actually was playing on the widescreen television, all of them having been in total agreement that it was a film ‘for all seasons’, and there was a pile of fashion magazines on the coffee table. Having raided Anna’s collection of nail polishes, Samantha was presently treating the two women to a pedicure—of sorts—while the log-burner roared in the corner.
“Sweet Mary, Mother of…would you look at this, now?” MacKenzie declared, and showed the other two the page she was reading in a fashion magazine, depicting a woman with impossibly long legs wearing pink platforms whilst balanced on the edge of a boat off the coast of Capri.
“That’s an accident waiting to happen,” Anna grinned. “D’you ever think our lives aren’t glamorous enough, Mac? Maybe we should get ourselves some pink platforms.”
Denise snorted.
“What, and give up weekends in the Mystery Machine for long holidays in the Neapolitan Riviera? Chance would be a fine thing!”
“Well, Frank was thinking of Greece for your anniversary, but—” Samantha clamped her lips together and winced, belatedly remembering that it was supposed to be a secret.
“What was that?” MacKenzie asked, leaning down and wincing herself at the red nail polish smeared halfway across her feet.
“Argh! I wasn’t supposed to say! I’m sorry, Denise…”
But MacKenzie was grinning like a fool.
“Sorry? That’s the best news I’ve had all month,” she said, and turned back to her friend. “Didn’t I always tell you, Frank would never forget our anniversary.”
As far as Anna recalled, MacKenzie had expressed serious concerns that, as Phillips struggled to remember any of the usual Hallmark dates in the diary at the best of times, there was little chance he would have remembered to book anything nice for their first wedding anniversary.
