High Force: A DCI Ryan Mystery (The DCI Ryan Mysteries Book 5)

by LJ Ross

  Her legs trembled as fresh adrenaline coursed through her body, pushing through the leftover groggy feeling from the sedative he had given her. She realised what he had done when she’d first woken up with a throbbing headache and a dry mouth but she hadn’t been surprised or angry. In fact, she was relieved it hadn’t been anything worse.

  Now that the grogginess had worn off, she readied herself for action, arms poised and feet placed in the spot she had earmarked as being the perfect distance to strike.

  Feet coming up the stairs.

  She stood perfectly still in the silent room, eyes accustomed to the darkness and trained on the locked door. Then, at the top of the stairs, she heard him turn in the opposite direction towards the bathroom. A moment later, there came the sound of a bath running.

  “’Night, Ruth!”

  MacKenzie felt hot, angry tears flood her eyes and course down her cheeks. After all the build-up, he’d denied her another opportunity to break free. It would have to be the morning, now, but she didn’t know how long her courage would last and a lot could happen in the small hours of the night.

  * * *

  “Gotcha!”

  Lowerson bellowed across the breadth of the Incident Room and did a funny little victory dance on the spot. Ryan watched him indulgently and then crooked a finger.

  “Jack, stop pretending to be Shakira and get your arse over here.”

  “It’s often been said that my hips don’t lie.”

  “Among other things,” Ryan muttered, with a raised eyebrow towards the freshly printed papers Lowerson was clutching in his hand.

  “These are screen shots of the Toyota,” Lowerson waved them triumphantly. “We’ve got it heading south along the A68 from the Styford Roundabout on the night MacKenzie was taken, as far as Carterway Heads,” he named a small village where the road once again became a crossroads. “We checked it against footage for the missing Mercedes and—guess what? It took exactly the same route during the early hours following Beth Finnegan’s murder. We’ve traced the Mercedes as far as Carterway Heads again, thanks to a CCTV camera at the petrol station which is angled to face the road. It seems to take a right turn, bearing west towards the North Pennines and Weardale.”

  Ryan was less familiar with that part of the countryside, which was the usual province of Durham Constabulary. He rose from his chair to walk across to the enormous map on the wall so that he could get his bearings and one of the first things he noticed was that the village of Blanchland lay only a few miles west of Carterway Heads.

  His heart began to pound.

  “What about after then?” he asked, already reaching for the phone in his jeans pocket to put a call through to Anna. “Where did the cars go after Carterway Heads?”

  Lowerson tried not to feel deflated. It was progress, just not quite enough.

  “That’s all we’ve got so far. That whole area is like a black hole—for mobile signal, for CCTV, you name it. Edwards probably chose it because he knew it would act like a force-field.”

  Ryan gave him a look.

  “This is the twenty-first century. Edwards can’t survive indefinitely without using modern conveniences. He’ll need to go to the shop, access money from somewhere, fill up on petrol. Actually, there’s a thought,” he said. “Call the petrol station at Carterway Heads and see if he’s been in.”

  Lowerson nodded and made a mental note.

  “I’ll speak to Faulkner and ask him to focus his attention specifically on the soil samples usually found in that part of the world. We might be able to narrow the field even further.”

  Lowerson flicked a finger against the papers he held in his hand.

  “There’s something else,” he added, before Ryan hit ‘call’ on his mobile phone.

  “What’s that?”

  “We’ve got the Mercedes heading back north through Carterway Heads at 21:17 this evening. I’ve got the analysts working to trace the other checkpoints, to see where it went after then. But…”

  “He went hunting again,” Ryan concluded, wrapping his fist around the mobile phone in his hand. “What he did to that girl wasn’t enough to sustain him so he came back for a second helping.”

  Lowerson looked down at his shoes, trying not to think about what could be worse than decapitation.

  “I don’t understand how it wasn’t…wasn’t…”

  “What? Enough for him?” Ryan put in, then shook his head. “That’s because you’re thinking like a normal person, Jack, and you need to remember that Keir Edwards isn’t normal. He’s barely even a person.”

  * * *

  He could hear them going at it again on the other side of the wall, and it was the same sound every time.

  Thud, thud, thud.

  The sound of the bedstead hitting the wall, mingling with the sound of her gasping cries. It didn’t sound like pleasure, he thought. It sounded like the keening wail of an animal in pain or the awful whine of foxes mating in the night. He often heard them, from his bedroom window.

  And still, the noises continued.

  Thud, thud, thud.

  At first, he tried holding his hands against his ears or burying his head beneath the bedclothes, but nothing drowned out the sound. The partition walls in the old house had been added sometime after it was first built and they were cheap and thin, providing no sound insulation at all.

  After another minute, the banging stopped and he heard other sounds. The groan of floorboards in his mother’s bedroom as the man stepped from her bed, followed by the creak of the bedroom door opening. Three heavy steps to the bathroom next door and the sound of a tap running and water sloshing onto the floor. A moment later, the tinkle of piss hitting the porcelain and the toilet flushing.

  Three steps back to the bedroom.

  The sound of her pleading with him to stay with her, just for a little while. His curt response in the negative, then clothes rustling as the man tugged on his trousers and prepared to leave.

  More pleading.

  Please, Charles.

  He heard her tugging at the man, pawing at him to stay with her and he felt sick with disgust. His body jerked in reaction as he heard the unmistakable sound of flesh hitting flesh, followed by her whine.

  Footsteps clattered down the stairs with indecent haste and there came the dim sound of the front door opening and slamming shut again.

  He froze in his bed and waited for the final, inevitable sound that would lull him to sleep. He was not disappointed, for his mother began to sob harsh, gut-wrenching tears that carried through the wall and filled the air of his room, flooding his young mind with the sound that would haunt him for the rest of his life.

  * * *

  MacKenzie woke with a start, covered in sweat. Her first thought was that she had not meant to fall asleep. Her second thought was gratitude that she was still alive and he hadn’t stolen into her room to murder her while she slept. Anything was possible when you were dealing with a disordered mind like Edwards’. She cast dazed eyes around the room, seeking out the source of the sound that had woken her, creeping softly from the bed to stand in the centre of the cracked wooden floor.

  It came again, a long wailing cry.

  The sound of it tore through her, piercing the silent night air like a banshee. She stumbled to the window and shivered against the night air, peering through the gloom to see if an animal had come to harm. But she realised that it had not been a fox, not this time. The cry had come from the room next door, where Edwards slept.

  CHAPTER 19

  Wednesday 6th April

  Less than five miles away from the old farmhouse where MacKenzie was being held captive, Anna awoke in a strange bed in the village of Blanchland to the sound of birdsong, alongside an odd, rumbling sound which reminded her of a steam engine. Rubbing sleep from her eyes, she padded barefoot down the narrow stairs of the holiday cottage to seek out the source.

  She found Phillips half sitting, half lying in an armchair he had dragged from the sitting roo
m into the hallway to face the door. After Ryan’s call last night, they had re-doubled their efforts to go through the old files from Edwards’ past, searching for any mention of a location in the North Pennines region to the west of Durham. When nothing had turned up and they were unable to stay awake any longer, Frank had resolved himself to protect her in Ryan’s stead but Anna was glad to see he had obviously fallen into a fitful sleep at some point during the night and his snores now filled the small house. She stood quietly watching him, wishing there was something she could do to help put an end to his heartache, when she noticed that he clutched a firearm against his chest.

  Her heart skidded at the sight of the small handgun, which she knew to be the same model as Ryan’s, currently in a locked box upstairs. The Glock-17 was the semi-automatic pistol of choice for Authorised Firearms Officers at Northumbria CID and she knew that Phillips, Ryan and MacKenzie had completed their training at the same time before she’d met any of them. It was the kind of knowledge she often forgot about, having rarely seen them holding a gun or having one anywhere within sight. It was only when she queried the little metal box Ryan chose to bring with him from their cottage in Durham that he had reminded her of its contents.

  The knowledge left her feeling uneasy.

  That same uneasy feeling returned as she watched her friend sleeping, his jowly face relaxed into a puppy-dog expression that was at odds with the dangerous weapon clutched in his inert hand. Her father had owned a hunting rifle and she remembered a time when she and her sister had been young, when he’d taken them out to a nature reserve with the long rifle slung over his shoulder.

  “Where are we going, Dad?”

  “You girls need to learn how to defend yourselves,” he’d slurred, through his usual measure of alcohol before midday. “Can’t rely on anybody else and there’s evil in this world.”

  He’d ushered them under the fence into the wildlife reserve, a place where rare birds and mammals should have been free to roam without man’s interference. Her father had warned them to keep back while he shot a kestrel sitting in a nearby tree.

  The image of its falling wings was something she had never forgotten.

  Another memorable occasion had seen Ryan bursting into the tower room at Lindisfarne Castle two years ago, firing his Glock to wound a man who would have killed her without his intervention. At the time, she was grateful to be alive and didn’t overthink the processes. But now that she knew Ryan better, she realised how much it must have cost him to pull the trigger. He devoted his life to preventing human destruction so the very act of discharging a weapon went deeply against the grain, as it did for the gentle man snoring in the armchair in front of her.

  Anna clutched her woollen jumper close to her chest and stepped forward, making little sound. She hesitated, then reached out her hand to remove the handgun, intending to put it on a shelf somewhere out of reach. The moment her fingers brushed the metal, Phillips’ eyes flew open and his hand tightened.

  “Morning, lass.”

  * * *

  Ryan stared at the buttons on the vending machine and eventually selected the one claiming to dispense espresso. As he watched the steaming liquid hit the bottom of a white polystyrene cup, his thoughts wandered back to the investigation. He and Lowerson had been up all night with a skeleton team of staff trying to trace the whereabouts of the stolen Mercedes. They strongly believed it to be the vehicle Edwards was using and they had made some progress tracing it as far as the A69 heading towards Newcastle. There were three smaller exits from the motorway before the next main checkpoint, where a camera would have caught the Mercedes if it had driven past. Since there was no such recording, they had to assume Edwards exited earlier via one of the smaller back roads. Any one of them would lead to the area around Ponteland, Darras Hall and the western edge of the city around CID Headquarters, so it was another kick in the teeth to know that Edwards had practically been on their doorstep and they still hadn’t captured him. Lowerson was in the process of obtaining footage from any local businesses or private residences along those back roads, but it was a slow and difficult task which had reaped few rewards so far. Privately, they realised that any progress they made in finding the Mercedes would come long after Edwards had finished his exploits the previous evening, whatever they might have been.

  They were constantly playing catch-up.

  Ryan experienced a sense of insult to go alongside the feeling of acute failure that intensified with every passing day. Logically, he knew they were doing everything they could. No expense had been spared in their quest to bring MacKenzie home and Edwards into custody. But still, this was a very personal investigation and he felt a peculiar sense of ownership regarding Keir Edwards. He didn’t usually care about who received credit for a final collar but, in this case, he wanted to be the man to plant a boot in the small of Edwards’ back as he kicked his sorry arse back into prison—preferably one with a wire net covering over its exercise yard.

  It was becoming increasingly clear that, despite all their hard work, the forensic examinations, the television, newspaper, digital and radio coverage, they remained at the mercy of a man who had gone deep undercover with all the skill of a veteran spy. If Faulkner came through with a lead on the geographical origin of the mud found on the Toyota’s tyres, they could start going door-to-door in a manageable radius. Likewise, if they stumbled across something buried in one of the old files, it was possible it might lead them straight to Edwards’ front door.

  On the other hand, they might search and find nothing, leaving him free to kill again. Time was not on their side. Ryan had hoped and believed that Edwards would have contacted them with his demands, using MacKenzie as leverage for a free ticket out of the country or something equally outlandish. It would have been welcomed by all of them because then there would be a chance she was still alive.

  But Edwards had not been in contact and Ryan’s confidence in his own assessment began to wane.

  He took a sip of the heinous coffee and frowned, reconsidering. Perhaps Edwards had made contact, just not in the usual manner. It was common for serial killers to employ a signature with each of their victims—Shipman liked his victims to be fully dressed and sitting up to resemble his dead mother; the Wests preferred to bury their victims vertically rather than horizontally—and Keir Edwards was no different. In his case, the signature had always been the anatomically precise way in which he mutilated his victims using a surgical scalpel, after first dosing them with a sedative. Edwards had employed the same methodology with each of his five previous known victims, including Ryan’s own sister. In the case of his most recent victim, Beth Finnegan, he had not been able to access his usual pharmaceutical sedative and had opted for an excessive volume of alcohol, according to the toxicology analysis in Pinter’s pathology report. It was a variation but still broadly in keeping with his MO. Likewise, he might not have had a scalpel or surgical saw available but he had performed a decapitation and incisions on her body with a high level of skill, which was in keeping with his style of killing.

  However, he had added the word ‘INVICTUS’, which was a departure from his usual style and signature method. Ryan thought at first it had been a last-minute message to show his dominance but now he wondered whether there was something more to it than met the eye.

  He drained his coffee, crumpled the cup and tossed it into the recycling bin.

  Much as he hated to admit it, perhaps it was time to delve into the psychology of the man he hunted. He detested head-doctors at the best of times and resented the wishy-washy diagnoses they dished out to desperate murder detectives looking for a miracle to help them track down killers who would be found quicker with a bit of common sense and hard graft. But, since he was a pragmatist, Ryan admitted that any insight could be useful so long as it was not given disproportionate weight over hard facts and evidence.

  He turned and went in search of somebody who could read minds.

  * * *

  MacKenzie wa
s startled awake by the sound of Pavarotti singing ‘Nessun Dorma’. Rather than being able to enjoy his rich tenor, she was almost deafened by the sound of music playing so loudly the notes became distorted. There was no escape. As before, Edwards had positioned an old cassette radio directly outside her bedroom door so she was forced to listen until he grew tired of torturing her.

  She tore scraps of material from what was left of the mattress covering and rolled it up into two balls, which she stuffed in her ears to dim the noise. It was all she could do and at least it gave her the comforting feeling of being underwater.

  She examined her ankle and wondered whether Edwards’ mood was linked to the night terrors he had experienced during the early hours of the morning. It was a question many psychologists must have asked before: did serial killers suffer terrible nightmares? She would have thought Edwards slept peacefully each night, judging by his general demeanour and feckless attitude towards the sanctity of human life. But, on the other hand, she couldn’t forget his ear-splitting shriek and she wondered whether the dead came back to haunt him with their white, expressionless eyes and trailing fingers after all.

  She truly hoped so.

  * * *

  To wake himself up, Ryan made a quick detour to the shower room in the basement. It was situated next to the locker room and had all the decorative charm of a Stalinist reconstruction but he didn’t let that put him off and gladly stepped beneath the hot spray in the hope that it would cleanse his mind as well as his body.

  It was there that Lowerson found him, calling out above the pounding water to attract his attention.

  “What?” Ryan shouted. “Wait a minute.”

  He grabbed a towel and slicked back his wet hair, feeling a bit more human and a little less bleary-eyed.