by LJ Ross
“How sure are we that Hunter—or Jepson—is responsible?” Phillips queried.
“The DNA evidence on record includes blood and semen in large quantities,” Ryan explained. “He was arrogant back then, just as he was arrogant before he died. It looks conclusive but the CSIs are doing a search of his cottage to see if anything turns up. It may be that he kept trophies of his victims, which would add even more weight.”
“Doesn’t that make it even more likely he killed Guy and Kate?” Yates asked, but Ryan shook his head.
“The MO is very important,” Ryan explained. “Bobby Jepson snatched his victims from the street, assaulted them and then broke their necks with his hands. They tended to be young, very slim women who would be easy to overpower. Neither Guy Sullivan nor Kate Robson falls into that category.”
“But surely it had to be Hunter who killed Kate Robson. He was the one who stole her horse,” Yates argued.
“Yes, and he was also armed with a shotgun,” Ryan reminded her. “Why would a man choose a copper pan as a murder weapon if he had a shotgun already strapped to his shoulder? It doesn’t make sense and it doesn’t match his style, either. He was more likely to have been in and out of there as quickly as he could.”
Yates felt the penny drop.
“But if not Hunter—then who?”
“That’s the million-dollar question, Yates. Let’s continue working backwards and look at our next person of interest.” He rose and walked across the room to retrieve a picture of Kate Robson, taken at a recent horse-riding event. “If we assume that Robson wasn’t murdered by Craig Hunter, we have to ask ourselves what possible reason somebody might have to kill her. Ideas?”
“Money,” Phillips said simply. “She had a few bob knocking around and that’s enough motivation for some people. Maybe they thought they could see her off and set Hunter up for the fall.”
“Precisely my thinking,” Ryan said. “Which is why I’ve requested the details of Robson’s next of kin and I want to know who benefits chiefly from her will.”
“I’ll get onto that,” Phillips offered.
“Great. Any other ideas?”
Ryan looked at Yates.
“Ah—sex? Relationships?” she suggested.
“It’s certainly possible but, as far as we know, Kate Robson had no romantic interests in her life. We’ll get a clearer picture once we’ve had a chance to interview her friends and neighbours.”
“And if it’s neither of those things, I’ll bet you another pint it’s to do with some skeleton or other rattling around in her closet,” Phillips declared.
“You still owe me a pint from your last round of betting,” Ryan said drily. “But let’s say for the sake of argument that you’re right and Kate Robson died for some other reason. That means her killer took their chance to murder her while another suspicious man was on the run, to take advantage of the timing of it all. How could they have known Craig Hunter was running loose?”
“They’d have to be on good terms with Hunter, or Robson, or both.”
“Precisely. One of them would have had to tell him, because it was much too soon for them to have got wind of the manhunt at that stage from us or the press. We hadn’t notified the local population, so news wouldn’t have travelled by word of mouth either.”
“So we check Robson’s phone records to see who else she called; we speak to her friends and colleagues to see who had the opportunity or the motive, and then we do the same for Hunter.”
“Yep,” Ryan said shortly. “But that still leaves Guy Sullivan, a young man with absolutely no connection to the area, no family or friends who live here, no personal relationship with Hunter or Robson. He died most brutally of all—and what do you notice about his injuries?”
“They’re all concentrated on his face,” Yates realised. “Guy’s killer obliterated the face but didn’t touch any other part of his body.”
Ryan nodded.
“Pinter hasn’t had a chance to finish the post-mortem but it’s safe to say that Guy Sullivan sustained no injuries other than around his head and face. Doesn’t that strike you as odd?”
“They didn’t want to see his face,” Phillips muttered, half to himself. “Whoever it was couldn’t stand to see his face.”
Ryan looked across at the picture of Guy Sullivan and nodded.
“That represents a different MO,” he said. “Kate Robson suffered fatal head injuries but she wasn’t attacked to the same degree and her features were still distinguishable. Whoever killed her had a different motivation.”
“Does that mean Guy Sullivan’s murder was a one-off? Unconnected to the others, I mean?” Yates asked.
Ryan ran an absentminded hand through his hair and moved to stand back from the murder board so he could look again at the faces on the wall.
“Everything about Guy Sullivan’s murder seems unconnected,” he said. “But look again and tell me what you see.”
“I see a twenty-something man and a woman in her late forties—”
“No, what do you see when you look at Guy Sullivan and Duncan Gray?”
“But, sir, Duncan Gray’s murder couldn’t be connected. It happened over thirty years ago and the injuries aren’t the same.”
“They look similar, though,” Phillips remarked. “The hair colour’s slightly different—Duncan’s is a bit of a darker blonde—but they’ve got a similar look about them.”
“Yes, I don’t think any of us saw it straight away because, taken individually, they don’t share many characteristics. But look at the cut of the hair, the line of the jaw, the open expression to the eyes… There’s enough of a similarity, if you were looking for it.”
“And you think somebody might have been looking for it?” Phillips asked.
“It’s one theory,” Ryan said. “Until we know more, a theory is all it is.”
Yates nodded, studying the pictures with a new-found understanding.
“What do we do in the meantime?”
Ryan smiled grimly.
“We did everything right beforehand, prioritising Guy Sullivan over Duncan Gray because we needed to extract as much fresh evidence as possible. The problem is, we assumed there was a reason to kill Sullivan—but what if there was no logical reason except that he bears a passing resemblance to a boy who died thirty-three years ago?” Ryan shook his head slightly. “If that’s the case, we should have been prioritising Duncan Gray right from the start.”
He looked up.
“Mel, you were right when you suggested that we re-work the original investigation and go back over the old files. It wasn’t a proper job the first time around in 1981, so this time we make it a good one. I want to know the full circumstances of Duncan’s disappearance, who his friends were, who his enemies were, his likes and dislikes. I want to know about the area where his body was found, what it was like before it was submerged in water, who used to live there. I want to know everything, because I think Duncan Gray could be the key to all this.”
Phillips tugged at his ear in a nervous gesture.
“There’s another possibility we haven’t mentioned,” he said, and when Ryan turned to him blankly he spelled it out. “The sergeant in charge of the case back in 1981 was Arthur Gregson and, knowing what we know now about his exploits over the past thirty years, that begs the question: was Duncan Gray one of The Circle’s early victims?”
Ryan felt something twist in his stomach, roughly where he bore a scar along his abdomen. Gregson had been one of the senior, most influential members of The Circle cult and had lived a life of corruption and murder in his quest for personal glory. In its heyday, The Circle had far-reaching tentacles stretching throughout the North East and their preferred method of execution had been to use a small-bladed dagger to carve the shape of an inverted pentagram on their victims’ bodies.
“There was none of the usual symbolism I’d expect to see from a ritual killing on Duncan’s body but you’re right, we need to rule it out even as a remote p
ossibility.”
“I’ll go and speak to Gregson,” Phillips offered, but Ryan gave a brief shake of his head.
“We’ll go together. Make the calls, Frank.”
CHAPTER 27
While Ryan and his team worked the case, Anna stopped by the visitor’s centre to extend her lease on the holiday lodge until the end of the week. The university had advised her to take at least three days’ special leave of absence after losing one of her students and, at first, she had resisted the Dean’s edict. But much as it pained her to admit it, he was right—Guy Sullivan’s murder had left her feeling thoroughly shaken up and a few days off work wouldn’t be such a bad thing.
But what to do with the time?
There was always work to do but the phone call with her boss had left her feeling restless. Another possibility was to pay a visit to the site where their new home was in the process of being built just outside the charming village of Elsdon. The land had been a wedding present from Ryan and they’d planned the design together, poring over architectural magazines late into the night. The construction would take months to complete, especially as winter was fast approaching, but it would be well worth the wait.
Instead of going for a drive, she found herself wandering down to the shoreline where she spotted Freddie Milburn hanging up his wetsuit to dry outside the little kiosk where he worked. A radio blasted music from the seventies and he hummed in time to Neil Diamond as he brushed off his equipment.
“Morning, Mrs Ryan,” he said, and gave her a friendly wave.
The name was still so new, it took her a moment to realise he was speaking to her.
“Morning, Freddie. Have you been out on the water?”
“Aye, I was out first thing. The lessons are winding down now since it’s that bit colder, but I still like to go for a paddle when I can.”
“Nice day for it,” she remarked, looking up at the cloudless sky.
He grunted and stuck his hands in the pockets of his jacket.
“Weather’s changeable in these parts,” he said. “You could drive from one end of the reservoir to the other and find sunshine in the east and a rainstorm in the west. The storm last night cleared the sky a bit for us today.”
“Have you lived at Kielder for long?”
He gave her a surprised look.
“My whole life,” he said. “But I had a bit of fun when I was younger, travelled around the Mediterranean doing boat trips, skippered a few privately-owned yachts, that sort of thing.”
“That sounds idyllic. What made you come back?”
His face twisted and he looked out across the water with a thoughtful expression.
“I s’pose there’s no place like home, is there? It pulls you back in.”
She nodded.
“Do you have family here?”
He looked back into her warm brown eyes and tried to see what lay hidden behind them. Was she asking these questions out of a sense of natural curiosity or had her husband sent her to snoop about? It was hard to tell.
“My parents are both gone,” he said shortly. “I live with my sister, now. She needs constant care,” he added.
Anna’s face fell into lines of sympathy.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” she said.
He scuffed a shoe against the shingle.
“Aye, well, that’s the way of the world. There’s a nurse who takes care of her while I’m at work and then one who comes in before bed to help her… you know, with all that. I keep her company the rest of the time.”
Anna put a hand on his arm in silent support.
“It’s hard.”
He nodded and cleared his throat.
“There’s folk worse off than us,” he said. “But it’s thanks to Mitch that I can afford a private nurse. When I came back home, he was the one who offered me a partnership in the business.”
“He seems well respected in the community,” she offered.
“Aye, he is. It was the same when we were nippers,” Freddie added, with a smile. “Always had the lasses running after him and all the lads wanted to be his mate. Mitch has that way about him.”
“Some people do,” she agreed, and thought of her husband. “It can rub some people up the wrong way, though.”
Freddie laughed shortly.
“You’re not wrong there, love. Most people around here like him but there’s one or two who’d gladly see him go down the pan.”
“Oh?”
“It’s because he’s done so well for himself,” Freddie explained. “Back in the day, Mitch’s family didn’t have two pennies to rub together and he always said he wanted to make something of himself so his kids wouldn’t suffer like he did. Now, he has his fingers in all kinds of pies. He owns a load of holiday cottages around here, puts a bit into stocks and shares, and he owns one of the cycle centres on the other side of the reservoir. Then, he’s got this place.”
Anna listened with interest.
“And he’s the local councillor,” Freddie added. “That’s a popularity contest in itself.”
“Mitch grew up here too?”
“Oh, aye,” Freddie said. “We grew up together, in the same class as—well, we were all in the same class together. Seems a long time ago now.”
Anna had a flash memory of being thirteen or fourteen and learning basic trigonometry from a classroom with views of the North Sea.
“It reminds me of my childhood,” she said. “I grew up on Holy Island and went to the tiny primary school there. All my friends were older because they mixed the kids in together, since there were so few of us. I suppose it’s the same around here.”
Freddie nodded.
“Lovely place, the island,” he remarked. “Got some good sailing routes around there, although the water can be a bit rough. D’ you ever get back to visit?”
A shadow passed over Anna’s face.
“Not as often as I’d like,” she replied, and soon after bade him a polite farewell.
Milburn watched her walk back towards her lodge and wondered again what lay buried behind those beautiful brown eyes.
* * *
A request had been made to the Police Archives to recall the boxed files pertaining to Duncan Gray’s original investigation but, until they arrived, Ryan’s team had to make do with the digital case summaries. As part of a separate police investigation into Arthur Gregson, every case he had ever directly worked on whilst he had been a police officer was in the process of being reviewed so that the Crown Prosecution Service could put together their strongest possible case against a man who put most criminals to shame. Unfortunately, that meant that many of Gregson’s archived files were missing or in bad order, but they made do with what they had.
According to statements from his parents, Duncan Gray went missing sometime after one o’clock on the morning of October 21st, 1981 and they raised the alarm later that morning at around ten o’clock. It had been a half-term holiday from school and they’d assumed Duncan was spending longer in bed, but when they went in to check they found his bed untouched and his rucksack missing. At first, Angela and John Gray called upon the help of friends and neighbours on their street and in the local community, who rallied around to search Kielder Village and surrounding areas for any sign of him. When that failed, they called in the local police and a full-scale search was mounted with the help of the Forestry Commission and local mountain rescue teams on the same afternoon, although back in those days, there wouldn’t have been helicopters and fancy 4x4s to help them.
As Ryan clicked through the various pages of reports, his anger grew. If there had been institutional failings in the handling of Duncan Gray’s case it had clearly not been the fault of the local police. He could find no discrepancy in their management of the search operation and their preliminary records were in good order. However, when the digital record switched to the centralised Missing Persons team operating out of Police Headquarters, things changed dramatically.
Under the supervision of Detective S
ergeant Arthur Gregson, the case of the missing boy at Kielder had dwindled to almost nothing. Statements had not been followed up, local transport staff had not been interviewed until almost three weeks after the event, and it was unclear whether Gregson’s team had ever gone over the area of ground where Duncan’s body had lain hidden and which was now submerged in water.
Why? Why hadn’t they covered every inch of ground?
Ryan looked up from his laptop screen and saw Yates bent over her own screen on a separate table while Phillips spoke in firm tones to the staff of Her Majesty’s Prison Frankland to arrange an urgent interview with one of their inmates. The local police had returned to their ordinary duties but promised their full support should it be needed and Ryan had thanked them; their response over the weekend had been invaluable but he knew better than most the juggling act that they must perform to meet their duties to the public.
“Yates?”
Melanie looked up and blinked to clear the glare from her screen.
“Sir?”
“You don’t have to call me ‘sir’ all the time. Unless you want to, of course,” he said, flashing a brief smile. “Have you had any luck researching the old landscape before the reservoir was filled?”
She huffed out a frustrated sigh.
“I could tell you all about the vital statistics of the reservoir, about the general geography and geology, but when it comes to finding out about the physical buildings, I’m drawing a blank.”
From the corner of his eye, Ryan spotted Anna chatting to Freddie Milburn through the window.
“Yates, if you’re having trouble getting to grips with the local history, I think I know the perfect person to help you out.”
“Oh? What’s their name? I’ll give them a call straight away.”
