Dark Skies: A DCI Ryan Mystery (The DCI Ryan Mysteries Book 7)

by LJ Ross

  But what was the alternative? To pretend to be somebody else, a man who was cowed by those who sought to undermine and create division?

  He could never be less than he was, not even to soothe Lowerson’s ego.

  He should have warned Jack. He should have seen it coming. He should have known.

  Ryan turned the radio up loud to blot out the sound of his own thoughts and concentrated on the grim task that awaited him at the other end of the road.

  CHAPTER 12

  Guy Sullivan lay where he had fallen, face-up on a stretch of remote public bridleway running alongside Adderburn, around three miles west of his lodge at Kielder Waterside. It was picturesque, the kind of place where you could walk for miles without ever seeing another living soul. The journey might have taken an experienced walker a couple of hours on foot but, factoring in his inexperience, they estimated it had taken Guy at least three to walk from the front door of the lodge to the rough patch of earth where he eventually died.

  What had motivated him to wander off in the early hours of the morning?

  Had he intended to meet someone?

  These were the thoughts circulating around their collective mind as Ryan, Phillips and Yates stood a few feet away from the remains of what had once been a person. The man’s face had been reduced to little more than mashed flesh and bone, a feast for the flies that were already beginning to swarm, and each of them knew it was a sight that would remain imprinted in their memory for years to come.

  “Good God,” Phillips muttered, holding the back of his hand across his mouth to repel the ripe scent of death carrying across the early-afternoon air.

  “God had nothing to do with this,” Ryan said, darkly.

  “I-I can’t—”

  Yates found she was unable to speak and Ryan gave her a level, searching look. She was the most junior member of his team and it was his duty to help her to come to terms with moments like these.

  “Are you alright?”

  Melanie dragged her eyes away from the body and he could see that her face had taken on the kind of fixed expression he recognised as a symptom of shock.

  “Take a couple of minutes,” he ordered. “Focus on your breathing and get some air.”

  “No, I can stay,” she argued, but her eyes were glassy, her pupils dilated.

  In answer, Ryan took her arm in a gentle grip and steered her firmly away from the body so she was forced to keep pace. He didn’t stop until they reached the edge of the burn, where light bounced off the water and the sound of it babbling through the trees was a balm to their senses.

  “Sit down for a few minutes and clear your head,” he urged.

  Yates plonked herself down onto the mossy grass, feeling as wobbly as a fawn and utterly humiliated.

  “You know, you’re not the first or the last to be affected by a scene like that. Reacting normally doesn’t make you weak, it makes you human. I’ve done the same thing myself,” Ryan told her.

  “I doubt it.”

  He cast his mind back to a time, not so long ago, when he’d keeled over like a felled redwood.

  “No word of a lie. Phillips and Lowerson practically had to carry me out of there.”

  His chest tightened at the mention of Lowerson’s name but he kept a smile fixed on his face.

  “And if you think that’s bad, you should have seen Frank over the years.”

  Finally, that brought a tentative smile to her face.

  “I thought I was cut out for this,” she confessed. “Maybe I was wrong.”

  “That’s crap,” he waved it away. “I’ve seen you work a scene like that before, more than once, and you held it together. Sometimes, it just depends on the circumstances, the body…the day of the week. Who the hell knows? Some days are easier than others, so don’t beat yourself up about it.”

  Yates opened her mouth to protest, then snapped it shut again because he was right. Sometimes, it was just a bad day.

  “I’ll take a minute,” she agreed, and realised she was feeling better already.

  Satisfied that she wasn’t about to collapse, Ryan made his way back to the scene where he found Tom Faulkner, the senior crime scene investigator attached to CID, crouching down beside the body. A couple of other CSIs were brushing the undergrowth in a perimeter around the body.

  “What happened here, Tom?”

  Faulkner’s polypropylene suit rustled as he rose to his feet. His face was almost completely covered by the hood, with a hairnet and face mask on top of that, but beneath the layers they knew he was an average man in his forties with wispy, mid-brown hair and a propensity for knitted jumpers and thick-rimmed glasses. He raised a gloved finger to prop them back onto his nose and then made his way across to where Ryan and Phillips stood on the sidelines.

  “The back of his head is almost completely caved in,” Faulkner said. “That would have been enough to kill him, but that’s not the half of it. Somebody really went to town on his face. We’re looking at multiple lacerations and contusions, some slashing blows. You can barely identify his facial features.”

  Ryan wondered how he would be able to tell Guy Sullivan’s family. That was an unfortunate bridge he would have to cross when he came to it.

  “Did you find a murder weapon?”

  “There was a rock discarded on the ground not far away, covered in blood and brain matter. I’ve bagged it up for analysis.”

  “What kind of animal does this?” Phillips asked, reaching inside the pocket of his jacket for a stick of nicotine gum. At times like these, the old habit made him wish for a tab, just to take the edge off.

  Faulkner turned to look again at the whole scene, which was cordoned off from the public by a radius of a quarter-mile. The killer had to make his escape in one direction or another and they never knew what evidence might be left behind.

  “That’s your department,” he said, with a helpless shrug. “But I can tell you the ground was damp earlier this morning, which works in our favour. We’ve been able to trace the path Guy took to get here,” he pointed along the bridleway heading south-west. “About a hundred feet in that direction, there’s a yellow marker which shows the point at which he joined the bridleway. Before then, he was in the woodland, probably weaving through the trees as he lost his bearings.”

  “It’s possible he arranged to meet someone here,” Phillips suggested.

  “The local police are taking statements from his fellow students. We’ll look at his text messages and call history to see if we uncover anything helpful there. If he planned to meet someone, it will probably be in his digital history. You never know, there might be a trail of helpful breadcrumbs leading back to the killer,” Ryan said.

  “Aye, and pigs might fly,” Phillips grumbled. “Where’s the nearest house from here, anyway?”

  He unfolded a dog-eared map from the inner pocket of his jacket and the three men huddled around to look.

  “We’re here,” Ryan said, pointing to a dashed line on the map marking the public bridleway where they stood. “If you walk through the trees in a north-easterly direction, you’d come to the burn and, beyond that, the reservoir.”

  Phillips turned to face that direction to get his bearings.

  “If you follow the bridleway along that way,” Faulkner turned to indicate a westerly direction, “you come to a few cottages and a track that leads back up to the main road. We found tracks leading here from that direction.”

  “You think the killer came from the direction of those houses?”

  “I can’t say for certain,” Faulkner cautioned. “The tracks are fresh and, although I wouldn’t like to say conclusively, I’d put my money on them belonging to the killer. They stop at the scene here, then double back on themselves at a longer stride, which suggests the perp ran away afterwards. Unfortunately, they trail off further down the pathway and we’re still trying to trace them through the undergrowth. Whoever those footprints belong to might have headed south through the trees to pick up the main road if t
hey parked a car there; they might have gone north towards the burn, or west towards those houses. We’ve taken some casts of the footprints and sampled the soil, so I guess we’ll see what we see.”

  “Any blood trails?” Phillips asked.

  Faulkner turned to look back at the floor where Guy lay, then gave Phillips a meaningful look.

  “Plenty.”

  “In that case, the killer should be covered in it,” Ryan put in. “That kind of blood spatter is hard to hide.”

  “Yeah, but look around you,” Faulkner argued. “The place is deserted. This whole area is so enormous, it’s possible to come and go without being seen, especially in the early hours of the morning. It’s obvious from the state of the pathway that it doesn’t see much traffic.”

  “Unless, of course, you happen to live nearby,” Ryan mused. “That’d be convenient, wouldn’t it Frank?”

  “Awfully convenient,” Phillips agreed.

  Ryan waited a beat.

  “What do you say we go and pay a few friendly house calls?”

  “I’d say it’s good to have you back.”

  “Naw, you’ll make me blush.”

  “That’d be a first.”

  * * *

  Yates met Ryan and Phillips on the pathway and they covered the remaining distance on foot towards the isolated hamlet of cottages located half a mile further west of the burn. They were careful to walk off the main bridleway and continued to wear plastic shoe coverings until they emerged from the forested area and out into direct sunlight, where they transferred them into evidence bags. Overhead, the sun had begun its slow descent and there was not a cloud in the sky.

  “I love days like these,” Phillips said, turning his face up. “Nice bit of breeze on the air, a bit of sun an’ all. Blows away the cobwebs.”

  “You’ve turned soft since you got engaged,” Ryan told him. “I hope MacKenzie knows what she’s letting herself in for.”

  “Women love a man with a sensitive side,” Phillips said, in dignified tones. “What do you reckon, Mel?”

  Yates chuckled.

  “Oh, no, I’m not getting dragged into one of your little macho tête-à-têtes.”

  “Y’ hear that?” Phillips said to Ryan. “I think she’s got us pegged.”

  “Doesn’t take much.”

  They rounded a corner and came to a small clearing where a cluster of three stone cottages nestled like something from the pages of a Hans Christian Anderson fairy tale. They were each of a similar size but only one seemed to be occupied, judging from the truck parked on the edge of the track beside it, so they headed towards that one first. As they approached, a dog began to bark against one of the interior windows.

  “Good doggy,” Phillips muttered.

  There was an almighty bellow and the dog instantly stopped. A moment later, the door swung open and a man filled the doorway, blotting out the light from the passageway beyond. They judged him to be somewhere in his late forties or early fifties, with close-shaven hair and a jaw so firm it could have been cut from marble.

  “Who’re you?”

  His voice boomed out into the clearing and ricocheted around the trees.

  “We’re from Northumbria CID,” Ryan said, pulling out his warrant card. “Can I have your name? We’d like to ask you a few routine questions following an incident earlier this morning.”

  “Oh, aye, I bet you do,” he said belligerently, and Phillips gave him a keen look.

  “Easy lad,” he warned, although the man was probably only a handful of years younger than himself. “We’re only doing the rounds, gathering information.”

  “Gather all the information you like,” he said, butting out his chin. “I’m telling you, I had nowt to do with keying that woman’s car and I’m getting sick and bloody tired of having to say it!”

  There was a short pause.

  “I think there’s been a misunderstanding,” Ryan said. “We’re here in connection with a murder.”

  The man’s face registered shock.

  “Oh, aye? Right. You’d better come in, then.”

  He turned and heaved his considerable bulk along the passageway towards a small living room, where the phantom dog lay with its tail tucked between its legs. Their eyes tracked the floor and adjoining rooms for traces of anything suspicious, such as blood or the stench of bleach, but found nothing other than a single pair of discarded wellies flecked with dried mud and nothing else.

  “Thank you for being so co-operative,” Ryan said, as they entered the living room.

  “S’ alreet,” the man replied. “I’ve got nowt to hide.”

  Ryan smiled thinly.

  “Can I have your name, please?”

  “Craig Hunter.”

  While Ryan took down a few particulars, Phillips and Yates scanned the room, finding very little to discover. There was a two-seater PVC-leather sofa and matching armchair facing a large, flat screen television mounted on the wall above a fireplace that was obviously still in use. Perhaps incongruously, there was a large bookcase in one alcove, stuffed with books of all genres. A magazine rack was also full of old papers and magazines and, to Yates’ distaste, she noted a couple of porno mags peppering the broadsheets.

  When she looked up, Hunter was watching her intently as he petted the dog who had come to settle itself at his feet.

  “What’s all this about, then?”

  “A man was found dead this morning, not far from here,” Ryan said, diverting Hunter’s attention away from Yates. “We’re eager to know if you saw or heard anything in the early hours, particularly between four and seven a.m.?”

  Was it their imagination or did the man’s eyes turn shrewd?

  “Naht,” he said clearly. “I was tucked up in bed all night.”

  “I see. May I ask what you do for a living, Mr Hunter?”

  “Aye, y’ can ask, it’s no secret. I’m what you might call a ‘Jack of All Trades’. I do a bit of handyman work, odd-jobs here and there, bit of painting and decorating if the mood strikes and a bit of gardening and clearing, if I can be arsed.”

  “Do you have a fixed employer?”

  “I do a bit for the equestrian centre, over the way,” he told them. “But I go where the jobs take me.”

  Ryan nodded and made a note.

  “Were you at work this morning?”

  “Aye, I did an early-morning shift with the horses. Mucking out and whatnot, since they’re always short a hand or two.”

  “What time did your shift begin?”

  Hunter gave them a knowing look.

  “Should I be asking for a solicitor?”

  “Only if you feel you need one,” Ryan replied, smooth as you like.

  Hunter considered the three of them, then shrugged his enormous shoulders.

  “Makes no difference to me,” he said. “I started work at Hot Trots just after seven.”

  “Hot Trots?” Phillips thought he must have misheard.

  “Aye, bloody stupid name,” Hunter said, with an unexpected burst of laughter. “Woman who runs it is batty as a box of frogs.”

  “And her name would be?”

  “Kate Robson,” he supplied. “You can ask her and she’ll tell you I was there on the dot of seven this morning.”

  “Can you tell us who occupies the other two cottages?” Ryan asked.

  Hunter absentmindedly scratched his crotch while he thought.

  “Nobody lives in the cottage opposite,” he told them. “Been empty at least two years, far as I know. There’s talk about renovating it and turning it into another bloody holiday cottage. The one to the right is already owned by some city bugger who comes up in the summer and rents it out the rest of the year.”

  “Thank you for your time, Mr Hunter.”

  * * *

  The dog barked again as they filed out of the cramped little cottage and, by mutual accord, they said nothing until they had walked well out of earshot. Ryan made a discreet note of Hunter’s registration plate and they stoppe
d at each of the nearby cottages to check nobody was at home. Finding them empty and the doors securely locked, they continued along the track that would lead them up to the main road, where their cars were parked alongside the vehicles belonging to the CSIs and local police who guarded the perimeter of the crime scene.

  Once they’d put an adequate distance between themselves and the clearing, Phillips broke the silence.

  “I still can’t get over the name of that equestrian centre.”

  “Clearly, the owner admires the work of Charlie Sheen,” Ryan replied, as if it were an everyday occurrence. “But to drag ourselves back to the point, what did you think of Mr Hunter?”

  “He likes power play,” Yates said thoughtfully. “He kept the dog beside him throughout, holding onto its collar, even though he could have put it in a different room so he wouldn’t have to. I think he enjoyed knowing he could unleash it.”

  “Agreed. Anything else?”

  “He enjoys making people—especially women—feel uncomfortable. He was eyeballing me quite blatantly in there, despite the fact you were both on hand, and that tells me he’s complacent. Added to which, I don’t believe him when he says he saw nothing this morning. He’s lying. He saw something or heard something. I’m sure of it.”

  “Also agreed,” Ryan said. “Are you after my job, Yates?”

  She grinned.

  “Not yet, sir. Did I miss anything?”

  “You forgot to mention the part where you handled his behaviour with professionalism. Well done.”

  “Aye, he’s a creep, that one,” Phillips chimed in. “And what was that business to do with keying a woman’s car?”

  “Mm,” Ryan said. “Shouldn’t be too hard to find out, if we stop into the nearest drinking hole. The pub is the apex of all local gossip and Phillips still owes me a pint.”

  Frank made a rumbling sound of agreement.

  “Well, if it’s all in a day’s work,” Yates joked. “Do you think he’s the man we’re looking for?”

  “Guy Sullivan was young, easily six foot with an athletic build. Even so, a bloke like Hunter could overpower him without too much bother,” Phillips said. “He’s built like a brick shithouse.”