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

by LJ Ross

  She nodded wearily.

  “I know that,” she said. “It’s just, sometimes, I feel like I carry bad luck around with me. Why here? Why now?”

  Ryan gave a short, mirthless laugh.

  “Why anytime? Duncan Gray’s body had been gradually rising from the reservoir bed for years until Lisa Hope gave it the final push. Who could have predicted she’d be there, at exactly the right spot, at the right time?”

  He stepped forward to cup her face in his hands.

  “You didn’t kill that boy, Anna.”

  A single tear leaked from the corner of her eye.

  “I heard it was brutal,” she said in a choked voice. “That they’d mutilated his face—”

  “Whoever it was, they’ll pay for what they did. Believe me.”

  * * *

  Back at CID Headquarters, Denise MacKenzie lifted a hand to rub a sudden cramp in her leg and was convulsed with pain as her nerves contracted around the thick scar tissue left over from the knife wound a few months earlier. She bore down, taking several deep breaths while her hand kneaded the skin as the physiotherapist had shown her. Not that it made much difference, but it made her feel useful in the face of a crippling reminder that she was forever changed, thanks to the actions of a monster.

  When the pain receded, she blew out a shaky breath and rose carefully, hobbling around her desk to get the blood circulating again. The open-plan office assigned to the Cold Cases Team was smaller than she was used to and it appeared she had it all to herself. The clock on the wall told her it was quarter-to-five and she guessed the other staff must have taken themselves off for a cup of tea to kill the last fifteen minutes of what had, admittedly, been a long and uneventful weekend shift.

  MacKenzie had spent the day trying to re-familiarise herself with the list of priority cases that had been identified as such because they continued to crop up in the media or the victims’ families continued to shout the loudest. It was belittling to know that something as fickle as public opinion could mean the difference between extra resources or a lack thereof, but that was reality. It was more likely that an attractive missing person would gain traction with the press and drum up public sympathy than an unattractive one would; just as a woman with a blonde, curly-haired young child stood more chance of achieving justice than a woman of the same age with a history of drug abuse and prostitution.

  People were prejudiced.

  Including herself, MacKenzie admitted. She’d seen plenty of things over the years to make her hair stand on end and it was hard not to develop stereotypes. Though she worked hard for every victim, she was as human as the next person and therefore fallible.

  And that just wasn’t good enough. Not in her line of work.

  Guilt pricked at her conscience and she dismissed the notion of heading home just yet. There was time for one more case file and, this time, the case concerned a woman who was neither attractive nor squeaky clean.

  MacKenzie gave it her full attention.

  Jade Tan.

  The image of a nineteen-year-old girl filled the computer screen and MacKenzie felt her heart contract at the picture that followed, taken after she’d been found in a farmer’s field. In life, Jade worked as a prostitute in Newcastle to fund a long-term drug habit and had a sheet for solicitation and shoplifting. Yet her body had been found miles away from the city, on the way to Cumbria.

  Time slipped by as she clicked through the pages of the digital files, reading and re-reading statements to see if there was something they had missed and, by the end of the day, there were six faces pinned to the wall to greet her new team on Monday morning.

  * * *

  The nearest police station had recently shut its doors and transferred operations further afield to Hexham, a cool two-hour round trip from the crime scene at Kielder. Ryan supposed it was a testament to the low crime rates in the area that the Constabulary felt it was no longer necessary to keep an office within easy reach of a major tourist destination, but it posed an immediate problem from a logistical perspective.

  Where to set up an Incident Room?

  There were conference facilities attached to the inn overlooking the reservoir at Kielder Waterside, with access to high-speed broadband that would enable his staff to access the police mainframe from their secure laptops. The room could be locked and, therefore, its contents secured overnight. It was the sensible choice all round and he’d taken it.

  However, it would require him to approve a non-regulation building as the Incident Room for the duration of their investigation. To top it off, fate had chosen to put his wife within a stone’s throw of the investigation once again, through no fault of her own.

  He could only imagine what Lucas would have to say about that.

  “Sir?”

  Ryan turned to find Yates standing a few feet away carrying a file beneath her arm. He glanced at his watch and saw that it was almost five o’clock and officers attached to the aptly-named ‘OPERATION STARGAZER’ would soon begin to file through the doors.

  “Phillips asked me to pass on the message that he’s running five minutes late but he’ll get back as quickly as he can.”

  Ryan nodded and returned to his task of setting up the murder board ahead of the briefing.

  “Fabulous, isn’t it?”

  For a moment, he thought she was referring to the unsightly ‘before and after’ images of Duncan Gray and Guy Sullivan tacked to the wall. Then he realised she was talking about the view. The conference room overlooked the reservoir, where the late afternoon sun burnished the water so it rippled like liquid gold. The forest backdrop was picture-perfect and it was tempting to stand and watch out for the first stars to appear.

  Instead, Ryan made a mental note to tweak the blinds so there would be no distractions once the briefing began. He wanted the full attention of his staff so they would focus their minds and hearts on the task ahead.

  The stars weren’t going anywhere, after all.

  “It’s not hard on the eyes,” he agreed. “But that view also represents thousands of acres of land and water, twenty-seven miles of shoreline scattered with houses and tumbled down shacks; campers, hikers, forestry staff…it’s a minefield for the investigation, Yates.”

  She dragged her eyes away from the window as the enormity of it hit home. For a certain breed of killer, it was an ideal hunting ground and a perfect place to conceal themselves.

  “Do you think it’s one of the locals?”

  Ryan continued to tack up images.

  “I don’t know,” he admitted. “There’s such a transient population. If somebody owns a holiday cottage or is just renting one, they could come and go as they please. It doesn’t have to be someone living in the area permanently.”

  “It looked like a frenzy killing,” she remarked. “It could be someone with existing mental health issues.”

  Ryan smiled to himself and thought that his newest recruit was learning fast.

  “Good thinking. Only problem is, surgeries and outpatient centres won’t give out sensitive data about their patients without a warrant, which we’re unlikely to secure at this point without further evidence against a specific suspect. It would be great if that weren’t the case but, on the other hand, there needs to be checks and balances.”

  She nodded, only slightly disheartened.

  “Speaking of data, all five of the remaining students volunteered to give a DNA sample, so we’ve sent those off to the lab straight away.”

  “That’s good,” Ryan said. “The sooner we can rule out their involvement, the better—let’s just hope the killer’s left us some trace evidence to work with.”

  Before they had a chance to say anything further, members of the local police and forest rangers began to file into the room. Bringing up the rear, Tom Faulkner joined them with a tray of steaming coffees.

  “Thought we might need sustenance,” he explained.

  “I always said you were a good bloke, Tom,” Phillips said, completing their nu
mber. “Got any biscuits?”

  “Is the Pope Catholic?”

  Faulkner retrieved a packet of custard creams from his back pocket and jiggled them proudly.

  “If we’ve all finished settling in, I thought we might talk about murder,” Ryan said, with an air of sufferance.

  “Aye, keep your hair on,” Phillips said, gesturing with a half-chewed biscuit as he made his way across the room. “Have a swig of this cuppa.”

  Ryan snatched up the cup Phillips offered him, downing a few mouthfuls straight off the bat.

  “Thanks, I needed that.”

  Phillips grunted, cast his eye around the small crowd of men and women who had assembled, and noted immediately that one person was absent.

  “Where’s Lowerson?”

  Ryan downed the rest of the liquid in his cup, scalding his tongue in the process.

  “Not here.”

  “Aye, I can see that,” Phillips turned his all-seeing eyes on Ryan and berated himself for failing to notice before now that there was something badly wrong. Their colleagues continued to chatter, going through the usual niceties of hand-shaking and back-slapping before they got down to the serious business of policing, so he lowered his voice and prodded for answers.

  “What’s happened?”

  Ryan stuck his hands in the pockets of his jeans in a gesture Phillips had come to realise was a sign of stress. Well disguised to the casual onlooker, but stress all the same.

  “He’s taken a job with Lucas, who says she’ll promote him to sergeant,” Ryan said, trying valiantly to keep the disappointment from his voice. “It’s a good opportunity for him.”

  But Phillips hadn’t been born yesterday.

  “That sounds like a load of old hogwash to me. Lowerson is a good lad but I wouldn’t have thought he was ready—”

  “Yeah, well, Jack doesn’t want to hear it,” Ryan said. “In fact, as it turns out, I’m the last person he wants to get any advice from.”

  There it was, Phillips thought.

  “He’s only young,” he said. “You know as well as I do, Jack thinks you walk on air. Probably thinks you shit gold nuggets, n’ all.”

  Ryan smiled at that.

  “Young people say things they don’t mean and then regret it later. I was the same, myself, and so were you,” Phillips continued.

  “That’s exactly the point. I was the same as him, once upon a time. Naïve, idealist, ready to think the world consisted of good people who just did bad things from time to time. Now, I know better. There is evil out there, Frank, and it takes many forms.”

  “I can speak to him—”

  “You can try, but he’s on a crusade to prove himself.” And to prove me wrong, Ryan added silently.

  He thought of Lowerson’s earnest young face and swore softly.

  “Tell him—tell him whatever you have to, just make sure he’s alright.”

  Phillips patted his shoulder.

  “Leave it to Uncle Frank.”

  CHAPTER 15

  “This is Guy Sullivan.”

  Ryan looked at the young man as he’d been in life, smiling out of a blown-up photograph taken recently at a party. He looked relaxed and slightly cocky, safe in the knowledge that he would live to be an old man, never thinking anything would remove that privilege without warning. And it had not been cancer or some other debilitating terminal disease, but the will of another person who extinguished his life for no reason other than because they could.

  Ryan turned and cast watchful grey eyes around the room, compelling them to listen.

  “I want you to remember his face. Think of him when you’re tired or hungry or when you think you’ve come to a dead end. Think of him when you’re frustrated or angry; channel it to find the animal who did this.”

  He held up an image of Guy Sullivan in death and heard shocked murmurs from those who had not yet seen the aftermath of such violence. Sometimes, shock could be motivating.

  Ryan set the image aside and moved further along to where a photograph of Duncan Gray had also been tacked to the wall. It was an enlargement of a polaroid taken back in 1981, the same year Duncan died, and it had the grainy quality people tried to replicate nowadays to be artsy on social media.

  “This is Duncan Gray,” he said, looking at a boy of sixteen who could have passed for eighteen. “He went missing on 21st October 1981, when he disappeared from his home without a trace sometime during the night. His body was found yesterday morning by a scuba diver and recovered by the Marine Unit.”

  Ryan nodded towards a second image of Duncan, showing his mummified remains.

  “He was well preserved, thanks to the uniquely anaerobic peat conditions in sub-strata levels of the reservoir, deep beneath the bed. If you’re interested in the science, it’s all in the report in Appendix C of your packs.”

  There were a few rustles.

  “Sir? Are the two deaths being treated as linked?” This from one of the local constables.

  “No, for the moment we are not treating them as linked given the timescales and different MOs. However, we’ll be running the two investigations from this room and under the same umbrella for the sake of convenience. Whilst you should remember that the cause of death is different in each case and, obviously, there is a significant gap in time, it would be prudent to bear in mind that there may be a connection between these two deaths and if any facts come to light that would support a connection, you should flag it up.”

  There were more nods around the room.

  “Alright, let’s turn to Guy Sullivan first,” Ryan said, hitching his hip onto the edge of a table. “Twenty-two-year-old postgraduate history student, originally from York. His parents were informed this morning and they’ll be taking the first available flight back from where they’ve been holidaying in the Canary Islands.”

  Ryan thought back to what had been a very difficult conversation. It never got any easier with practice and he knew he would have to do it all over again when the Sullivan family arrived the next day, demanding answers.

  “As far as we can tell from the statements given by his friends and fellow students, Guy and his five companions stayed up in their lodge drinking and chatting into the early hours. At around four in the morning, they called time and went to their respective bedrooms. Sometime after then, Guy decided to take an early-morning walk. He took nothing with him except the clothes he was wearing, a mobile phone and his wallet, which we recovered at the scene.”

  “Not a botched theft, then,” Phillips surmised.

  Ryan gave a slight shake of his head.

  “There’s no suggestion of drugs, either. His mates were honest enough to admit they smoked some weed before stumbling into bed, but that’s as heavy as it got.”

  “Unlikely to have been meeting a dealer, then?”

  Ryan turned to look at Yates.

  “No, it doesn’t look that way. There were no text messages or calls from unknown numbers to suggest the interlude was planned. Guy left his lodge without any maps or means of navigating his way around the forest. However, his supervisor, Doctor Anna Taylor, states that the students were all informed of safety procedures whilst staying in the area and were provided with maps and compasses in case of emergency, which has been corroborated by the other students.”

  It felt strange to talk about his wife in such impersonal terms, he thought, but it was best not to muddy the waters.

  “Guy probably thought he could use the GPS on his phone,” Yates reflected. “It’s an easy mistake to make these days.”

  Ryan nodded.

  “Our best guess is that he found himself lost in the woods and ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time. Then again, not all those who wander are lost.” He gave a slight shrug. “If there isn’t any apparent motivation for why Guy was killed, that’s a worry because it means—”

  “Fruitcake,” Phillips said baldly.

  Ryan sent him a frustrated glare and there were a couple of guffaws around the room.

>   “I was going to say, it was an unprovoked attack.”

  “Aye, well, if there’s no logical reason for it, that means we’ve got someone on our hands who’s a few chips short of a butty, haven’t we?”

  Ryan opened his mouth then snapped it shut again. Call it what you like, the man had a point.

  “If our killer is disorganised,” Ryan said, with emphasis, “there is a chance he’ll strike again, without warning. That being the case, we’ve already taken steps to ring-fence the area and record everybody entering and leaving.”

  Ryan walked over to a large map pinned to the adjacent wall and chair legs scraped against the carpet as his audience shuffled themselves around to get a better look.

  “There’s only one major road giving access into and out of Kielder Forest and Water Park. That’s the C200, otherwise known as ‘Shilling Pot’,” he said, tapping a biro against the map. “It runs northwest from the A68 motorway and is the most direct route for anybody wanting to get to or from Newcastle, or to connect with the road north to Scotland or south to—well, almost anywhere.”

  He pointed at a cluster of red pins stuck into the map.

  “The first major checkpoint has been set up at Stannersburn. It’s not much bigger than a hamlet but the road runs directly through it, parallel to the River North Tyne which is fed by Kielder Water.”

  Ryan waited for them to find the spot on their own smaller maps before continuing.

  “After Stannersburn, the main road continues west and curves around the south side of the reservoir, passing the turn-offs for Kielder Waterside—where we are now—until it reaches Kielder Village at the north-western tip. The village has a ferry stopping point, a castle which is now used as a visitor’s centre and some other amenities. The C200 runs through it and continues north towards Jedburgh and the Scottish border. So that’s where we’ve set up a second cordon,” he said, tapping another cluster of red pins on the map. “We’ve also set up a smaller cordon at the entrance of the Forest Drive, but that still leaves a lot of unbeaten track.”

  “What’s the Forest Drive?” Faulkner enquired.

  “It’s an unsurfaced road out of Kielder Village. It gives access to some outstanding views of the valley but you’d need an all-terrain vehicle, especially at this time of year.”