by LJ Ross
Morrison drained the last of her coffee.
“Good. That’s all I needed to know.”
She gave them a small nod. Taking their cue for dismissal, both men exchanged a look and rose hastily to their feet. They had almost made it to the door when she called out.
“Ryan?”
He turned back and raised an eyebrow.
“Don’t let me down.”
A muscle ticked in his jaw but professionalism won out, as it always did.
The door clicked shut behind them and Morrison sat staring at it for a long time afterward, wondering if she had just made the biggest mistake of her career.
CHAPTER 3
Water sluiced over MacKenzie’s bare skin in a miserable, icy-cold trickle. She stood facing the wall, focusing her vision and her mind on the dated bathroom tiles.
Cream with a pattern of faded brown flowers and she’d counted forty-seven of them in total.
The bathroom suite was bottle green and equally old. The cheap plastic tub was cracked and mould grew in the corners. Every other surface was covered in a layer of dust and insect decay.
“Turn around.”
She fought back tears of humiliation.
Stay calm. Survival is key.
She wasn’t ashamed of her body and her mind was far, far away, somewhere he could not touch. Slowly, she turned from the wall and fixed her eyes on a point above his head. She had learned that it was possible to remain in control if she could avoid looking directly into his eyes. Somebody had once said that the eyes were the windows to the soul, but what did they say of a man without a soul? When she looked into Keir Edwards’ eyes, she saw nothing but dark emptiness, a fathomless chasm where his soul should have been.
The man himself lounged against the wall and took a leisurely survey of his prisoner.
“You know, Ruth, you’re really not bad. Not bad at all,” he said, with the tone of one making a great concession. “Not my type, regrettably.”
Relief must have shone in her eyes because he added, “I could always make an exception. It would certainly pass the time, wouldn’t it?”
He smiled, enjoying the fear and confusion racing across her face.
The arms she had thrown around herself to protect her naked body tightened, fingernails digging small arcs into her own skin.
“Would you like that, Ruth? I seem to remember you sending me several very flattering letters while I was incarcerated. Perhaps you’d like a demonstration, now that you have the real thing?”
He spread his arms and caught his own reflection in the spotted mirror above the pedestal. Like a true narcissist, he took a moment to admire himself, flexing his considerable muscle and watching it ripple beneath the woollen jumper he wore.
She wanted to scream, to shout, to lash out. But she’d tried all three and had earned herself a smattering of injuries in return. Her left ankle was sprained and she suspected that at least one of her ribs was fractured. Dark purple bruises covered her torso and kidneys.
“My name is Denise,” she whispered, then instantly clamped her lips shut again.
“She speaks,” Edwards exclaimed, clapping his hands together in delight. There was no fun to be had while she retreated behind her silent armour.
He stepped closer and was gratified to see her shudder and cringe away from him. He ran an idle finger along her leg, feeling the goose pimples against her frozen skin.
“In prison, you told me your name was Ruth. Don’t tell me that was a lie?”
His voice was mild, as if remonstrating with a small child.
“Tut tut,” he continued, tracing a fingertip around her belly button. “I don’t like liars.”
MacKenzie clenched her jaw so tightly it cracked. She understood that he was punishing her. A year ago, she had worked undercover, assuming the persona of ‘Ruth’ to elicit information from him about another case. She had worn a wig and played the part of a sad, lonely woman obsessed with a charismatic serial killer. She had flattered and cajoled him, gone through the motions of being infatuated by him. In short, she had played him for a fool.
Somehow, he had found out her real identity and it must have made him even angrier to find that she was part of Ryan’s team, the man responsible for putting him behind bars. She wondered how long Edwards had planned his revenge, this campaign of psychological torture, or whether he improvised as he went along. It didn’t really matter.
She continued to stare at the wall and eventually, he sighed.
“I have to go out soon, Ruth. I hope you’ll manage without me?”
MacKenzie’s heart quickened, beating like a bird in her chest.
He was leaving her alone?
“Here you go.” Solicitous all of a sudden, he handed her a moth-eaten towel. She snatched it from him and quickly wrapped it around her skin.
Then, he held out a hand to help her step out of the bathtub. She imagined herself slapping it away, clawing at his face, his eyes, crushing his skull against the porcelain sink.
But her body was so broken and stiff with pain, she could barely move.
She stared at his hand and thought about the violence it was capable of inflicting, then took it and struggled over the edge of the tub. She winced as the movement jogged her ribs and sent shards of pain arrowing through her chest.
“Thank you,” she mumbled.
It did no good to provoke him, she thought. So long as she was courteous and polite, agreeable and conformist, she stayed alive.
At least for now.
* * *
Immediately after getting the green light from their Chief Constable, Ryan called a briefing. It was held in the largest conference room at CID, designated as a ‘Major Incident Room’ to investigate what had affectionately been named ‘OPERATION IRELAND’. Within the space of half an hour, it was brimming with staff ranging from admin support to trainee detectives and data analysts, all of whom had set aside their other work and foregone their lunch in a display of solidarity. Ryan had taken a moment to rearrange the board—which was the entire length of one wall—to redirect their attention to the facts in their possession. He knew there were computer programs that could do it all for him, but he was of the old school and believed that there was no substitute for the visual impact of seeing MacKenzie’s image front and centre, reminding them why they were all there.
As the clock struck twelve, Ryan strode to the front of the room and shoved his hands in his pockets, sweeping a glance around the sea of faces. He watched Tom Faulkner, the senior CSI, hurry through the doors with a gaggle of CSIs in tow while Phillips took his seat in the front row next to Lowerson, who clucked around him like a mother hen. He opened his mouth to quieten the chattering din but, for once, the room fell silent of its own accord.
“It’s been a week,” Ryan said without preamble. “And, before we go any further, I want to thank all of you. Nobody could have asked for a more loyal or hardworking team. The sad fact is, despite our efforts, we still haven’t found our friend.”
He didn’t give them time to mourn before moving swiftly on.
“Current thinking is that we’ve missed something, somewhere. So, we’re going to do the only logical thing and go back over our tracks. That includes re-opening every one of Edwards’ old case files.”
It was a tall order to retrace every report, every sighting and every piece of forensic evidence generated over the last seven days in addition to every year Edwards was an active killer, but it was the only way forward.
“I don’t need to tell you that we’ve ground to a halt.” He met Phillips’ stare and didn’t flinch. “Until Edwards shows himself, we’re treading water. But experience tells me there has to be a trail, one that we’re not seeing. I propose we start again and, this time, we find it.”
There were murmurs of agreement, nods of heads.
“As you know, Durham Police have been leading the investigation into Edwards’ escape,” he moved across to a large board with a list of action points and pinn
ed photographs. “To recap, at approximately eleven-thirty on the evening of last Monday 28th March, a Sikorsky S-92 helicopter belonging to the Search and Rescue base at Humberside Airport landed in the central courtyard at HMP Frankland, in Durham. It was able to land thanks to a lack of wire netting to protect the overhead space, something Edwards exploited—”
“Not to mention the press,” somebody piped up. “The Prison Service has come in for a hammering since it happened.”
Ryan lifted a shoulder.
“They were unlucky. That prison houses hundreds of dangerous men under one roof for years at a time. Only one of them had the means and the sheer bloody audacity to organise a helicopter pick-up.”
“He always was an arrogant bastard,” Phillips spat.
“The helicopter was piloted by this man,” Ryan continued, pointing to a headshot photograph of an average-looking, middle-aged man in dress uniform. “This is Andy Hayworth, Chief Pilot at the SAR base in Humberside. He has over fifteen years’ experience behind him in private employment and the Royal Air Force.”
Ryan paused to check he had their undivided attention, then continued.
“Hayworth has an exemplary track record and a string of commendations, so the first thing our colleagues in Durham have done is ascertain what led a man of his standing to forget his principles and help The Hacker to escape.”
He picked up a marker pen and drew a line from Hayworth’s photograph to one of a woman holding a blonde-haired toddler with a gummy smile.
“His wife and child are the reason why,” Ryan explained, circling their photograph with a swirl of red pen. “We tracked the helicopter to open farmland approximately four miles northeast of MacKenzie’s home, not far from here in Ponteland. The helicopter was intact, but its pilot was found unconscious with severe lacerations to his face and head, alongside the beginnings of hypothermia after being stripped of his clothing and left out in the elements. Hayworth was taken by ambulance to the Royal Victoria Infirmary, where he was treated for exposure under police guard. When he regained consciousness, he was able to tell us that he had returned home from work on the same day to find his wife and child missing. A note had been left giving detailed instructions about what he should do to avoid either of them being killed. The time constraints and gravity of the situation led him, under severe duress, to carry out the instructions in that note. Hayworth proceeded to commandeer the helicopter without proper authority from his air base and flew northward without radio support.”
Ryan shook his head, remembering the conditions that night.
“Let me remind you that last Monday night we saw four inches of rainfall, winds of up to thirty miles per hour and he was flying low across the North Sea.”
Phillips cleared his throat and looked down at the stack of paperwork resting on his knee. He wanted to feel pity. Looking at the faces of the pilot’s wife and child, he almost did. Then he thought of Denise, who was now at the mercy of a madman thanks to the actions of Andy Hayworth, and his heart hardened.
“He got his wife and son back, didn’t he?”
Ryan pulled an expressive face.
“They’re both alive, but severely traumatised after their experience. They were found dumped at the side of the A1 at Scotch Corner, terrified. Traffic police picked them up on the Tuesday morning.”Phillips’ eyes strayed to the picture of the little boy and his mother.
“Aye, that’s tough,” he conceded. “Nobody would want that for the little feller. But surely the mother can tell us who’s behind it all?”
Ryan rubbed a hand across the back of his neck and prepared to deliver more unwelcome news. “She gave a preliminary statement with a physical description of the assailant who gained entry into her home, posing as a steam cleaning salesman. He proceeded to kidnap them both in a blue van bearing the logo of a company we now know to be false.”
“We tried tracing the whereabouts of the van, guv,” one of the support staff said. “We have patchy footage of Mrs Hayworth and her son being dropped off near the junction at Scotch Corner and more footage of the van heading southbound along the A1 as far as Wetherby Service Station. After that, nothing.”
“We have make and model,” Ryan said. “What progress has been made to trace all abandoned vehicles matching its description?”
“No blue vans—”
“Forget the colour,” Ryan interrupted. “It’s an easy job to spray over the bodywork if you know the right people. This man was a professional and the pick-up was slick. The whole operation was slick, for that matter,” he was forced to admit. “Go back and check again.”
A scribbled note was made.
“She got a good look at him,” Phillips picked up the thread of their earlier conversation. “That means she could do a line up.”
“That’s the issue,” Ryan hitched a hip onto the edge of his desk. “Since making her initial statement, Mrs Hayworth has clammed up. She claims that she can no longer be sure that her description of the assailant was correct.”
“Somebody got to her—” Phillips burst out.
Ryan shook his head.
“We’ve had the Hayworths in a safe house under surveillance for the past week. They haven’t been compromised but it’s highly probable she was threatened before she and her son were dropped off. Now she’s scared to talk.”
“Let me speak to her.” Phillips tried to remain calm, though he wanted to punch the closest hard surface. Sensing it, Lowerson moved a fraction further away.
“I can’t allow that,” Ryan swiped a hand through the air. “Two senior personnel from the Durham Constabulary will be re-interviewing Mr and Mrs Hayworth first thing tomorrow morning.”
“But—”
“Frank.” Ryan’s tone was uncompromising. “Durham Constabulary have been fully cooperative so far. The last thing we need right now is to jeopardise that relationship. Leave it to our colleagues in Durham; they know their business as well as we do. As soon as something breaks, they’ll tell us.”
Phillips leaned forward to rest his forearms on his knees and stared down at the grubby brown carpet tiles covering the floor, hands clenched tightly together.
“So, we just sit around, twiddling our thumbs?”
Ryan chose to ignore that remark.
“As for our side of things, over the past week we’ve retrieved and analysed every available piece of CCTV footage within a ten-mile radius of MacKenzie’s house thanks to a very prompt turnaround from local businesses and the Council. As it stands, we know that Edwards had the nerve to walk from the helicopter drop-off site across open farmland to the taxi rank at Newcastle Airport, and this was all in plain sight. We have extensive footage of him approaching the main entrance to the airport, wearing Hayworth’s clothes, then making his way to the taxi rank where he got in a cab. We have partial footage of the cab making its way from the airport—”
“Past our front door, under our noses,” Phillips interjected.
Ryan continued as if he hadn’t heard.
“We have no footage around MacKenzie’s house, unfortunately, but we do have footage of the taxi entering the top of her road at 12:18 and leaving two minutes later. Phillips and Lowerson have told us that they drove directly there in the early hours of last Tuesday morning, as soon as they became concerned by MacKenzie’s lack of response. They arrived at the scene at around half past midnight. Prior to that, we have a record of eighteen missed calls from DS Phillips’ mobile to MacKenzie’s, the first one being received at 12:24. Factoring in average journey times and the footage we do have, we can make an educated guess that MacKenzie was taken sometime between 12:18 and 12:30.”
Phillips’ jaw clenched and his eyes burned holes in the carpet.
Minutes, he thought. They had missed her by only a few minutes.
“We believe Keir Edwards used MacKenzie’s red Fiesta as a means of transport. He didn’t take her mobile phone or bank cards, so the telephone companies and banks won’t be much use to us this time. However, her ca
r is equipped with police GPS tracking and we were able to trace its whereabouts quickly. It was found abandoned near the Styford Roundabout, off the A69 heading in a westerly direction. Lowerson?”
His head snapped up in surprise.
“You’re in charge of CCTV accumulation and analysis. Give us a rundown of what has been done to trace her movements since then.”
Lowerson got to his feet and turned to face a roomful of stony-faced police staff.
“Right. Yes.” His voice wobbled like a teenager. “We believe that the Styford Roundabout was carefully chosen by Edwards as a changeover point. It’s like a compass, with roads turning off in all directions and there is no Automatic Number Plate Recognition nearby. In fact, very limited CCTV footage on any of the roads leading off that roundabout, since you’re getting right out into Northumberland, away from the city—”
“There has to be something,” Phillips put in.
Lowerson swallowed and moved across to the giant map on the wall. He pointed to the location of MacKenzie’s home in Ponteland, less than a mile away from where they were all gathered now.
“Edwards drove the Fiesta through Ponteland along this road,” he traced his index finger along the high street, “and then he must have taken the back roads to avoid cameras. He picked up the A69 motorway here,” he tapped his finger above a bright blue pin on the map. “We know that he didn’t turn east into the centre of Newcastle, he travelled west until he reached the Styford Roundabout. Once there and under cover of darkness, we believe that he transferred himself and MacKenzie to a new vehicle. That leaves four possible routes for him to take: the A68 southbound through the North Pennines towards Weardale; the B6530 southwest into Corbridge town; he could have continued further west along the A69 with an option of picking up the road north towards Scotland; or he could have doubled back and taken the country road that runs parallel to the route he had just taken, sneaking back towards Newcastle without using the motorway.”
