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

by LJ Ross

  “What did you say?”

  Lowerson looked worried.

  “It’s the Mercedes, boss. It’s been found abandoned on some farmland, not far from here.”

  “That was quick. Get Faulkner or one of his team to meet us there,” Ryan ordered. “Is the scene secure?”

  “The farmer walked all over it before he thought to call the police but the first attending officer has closed off a perimeter.”

  Ryan towelled off and wandered through to the locker room to rummage around in his locker for a change of clothes. He found a pair of jeans and a thin wool jumper, which would have to do.

  “Who’s the farmer?”

  “Some bloke called Healey.”

  “That wouldn’t be Roger Healey, would it?” Ryan replied, tugging on a pair of socks.

  “Uh, yeah, it is,” Lowerson replied, wondering what he had missed along the way. Catching the look, Ryan elaborated as he tied the laces on his boots.

  “You have to ask yourself why Edwards would be driving to some farmland, rather than heading into town where there’s an abundance of dark-haired young women he can maim and murder. Why would he be driving to a patch of farmland, Jack?”

  Lowerson realised he still had a lot to learn.

  “He was meeting someone.”

  “You’ve got it. I can also tell you Roger Healey is more than just a farmer. He’s a local businessman who wasn’t above the odd pyramid scheme in the nineties, or a boiler room fraud in the noughties. A man like that doesn’t mind turning the other cheek for the right price. I don’t know if he has it in him to get himself mixed up with anything violent,” Ryan mused, trying to remember the man he had met only a handful of times. “I seem to remember he was more of a tweed-jacket-wearing sort.”

  Then Ryan remembered something else and made an immediate connection.

  “He’s also president of the plushest golf course in the city. D’you know who else likes to work on his handicap at the weekends? Jimmy Moffa,” he smiled grimly. “If we’re right and Moffa has been financing Edwards all along, they’d need a safe, private meeting place that was off-road, to be sure that some unlucky pedestrian wouldn’t stumble across their little tête-à-tête. Neither of them would want to meet on their own turf, so they’d have looked elsewhere for some neutral ground. Healey is the perfect choice for something like that. He probably woke up this morning, found the Mercedes still on his premises and promptly shat himself, because it’s been all over the evening and morning news. He couldn’t get rid of the car, so he’s hoping to come off looking like a concerned citizen by calling it in and playing dumb.”

  Lowerson listened with admiration.

  “How do you put that all together so quickly?”

  Ryan huffed out a laugh and led the way from the locker room.

  “You develop a nose for sniffing out the bullshit,” he said roundly.

  * * *

  Irene turned her little mint green Mazda into the driveway of Jimmy Moffa’s home as she sang along to Dolly Parton’s Greatest Hits. It was just shy of seven o’clock and she was running exactly on time, as usual. She noticed that Jimmy’s big black Porsche Cayenne was still sitting in front of the house and that one of the garage doors had been left wide open, which gave her pause. The garage was filled with expensive cars and motorcycles and, although it was an upmarket area, there were still plenty of thieves about. It wasn’t like Jimmy to tolerate that kind of carelessness and she’d have to mention it when she saw him.

  She parked the Mazda in her usual spot and reached for her handbag containing the comfy slippers she liked to wear while she was cleaning and a stash of her favourite snacks. She paused to refresh her coral pink lipstick and to fluff her hair, then made her way across the gravel towards the front door.

  She was still humming Nine to Five when she caught sight of the heavy blood trail leading from the Porsche towards the front door, which stood wide open. When she turned bemused eyes to look at the car, she saw that the windscreen was painted red with spattered blood, so thickly congealed that she couldn’t see through it. With wide, frightened eyes, she crept forward to look through the open doorway and into the marble entrance hall beyond. Drying bloodstains cut across the gleaming tiles in a single, thick track towards the staircase.

  * * *

  Phillips stood at the window in the small galley kitchen of the holiday cottage, looking out at the North Pennines Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty stretching from the village of Blanchland down into the Derwent Valley towards Weardale. The village itself was nestled beside the river in a wooded section of the valley and was a chocolate-box example of medieval conservation, being mostly built from the ruined stone of a twelfth century Abbey which formerly dominated the landscape. Location scouts for period dramas loved its unspoilt character and old-world charm but all Phillips could see was a pretty collection of houses surrounded by acres of land and forest filled with ruined farmhouses and outbuildings where an escaped convict could hide.

  It was like searching for a needle in a haystack.

  Anna brought him a cup of sugary tea and looked out at the panorama.

  “Beautiful,” she remarked, watching sunlight spread over the fields and trees.

  Phillips drank some tea and felt the liquid warm him from the inside.

  “Denise is somewhere out there,” his eyes swept over the landscape. “After what Ryan told us last night, we know they’re somewhere south of the Styford Roundabout and west of Carterway Heads. Hell, they could even be in this bloody village.”

  Anna shivered involuntarily.

  “We’ll search,” she said quietly, setting her cup on the window ledge. “We’ll do it now because neither of us will rest easy until we’ve eliminated the possibility.”

  Phillips nodded and downed his tea like a pro.

  “Let’s go.”

  * * *

  What the Chief Constable didn’t know couldn’t hurt her. At least, that was what Anna and Phillips told themselves as they questioned the villagers of Blanchland. It was still early yet, not even eight o’clock, but they were past caring about social niceties. There was a killer running amok in the area and the residents deserved to know about it. Admittedly, there was a fine line to tread between fearmongering and genuine policing, but it was one they were willing to cross in their effort to find Denise MacKenzie. As Phillips had said from the start, there was no stone he would leave unturned.

  But after all the kind offers of tea and biscuits, all the concerned nods and promises to be vigilant, they found themselves walking a full circle around the village without uncovering any information that was remotely useful.

  “What we need is a pub,” Anna thought aloud.

  Phillips barked out a laugh.

  “I couldn’t agree with your more, but it’s a bit early, don’t you think?”

  Anna grinned and shook her head.

  “Don’t worry, living with Ryan hasn’t reduced me to drinking before 9 am. I only meant that the village pub is the epicentre of all local gossip. Particularly in a place like this,” she gestured around the main square, with its tea room and gift shops. “People live here, they come to visit and they pass through it. It’s a local hub.”

  The Lord Drewe was a stately historic drinking hole with an enormous fireplace and a rustic atmosphere but it was presently closed and so they decided to pay a visit later in the day, to give the locals a chance to warm up and loosen their tongues.

  As they walked back, Phillips seemed to notice the details of the village for the first time.

  “Why are all the doors painted the same colour?”

  “It’s a conservation village, owned by the Lord Drewe Trust,” she explained. “There are strict rules on the upkeep and look of the place, to preserve the historic ambiance.”

  “Huh,” Phillips grunted.

  It was very pretty but his mind wandered back to the old street where he had been born and he couldn’t help but think it had more character. Horses for cour
ses, he supposed.

  “Who the hell was Lord Drewe, anyway?”

  Anna stopped mid-step and realised that it was the first history question she hadn’t been able to answer for quite some time.

  “No idea,” she said, honestly. “I’ll have to look it up.”

  They strolled back along the cobbled roads towards the holiday cottage and to the stack of files awaiting them, hoping that one of them would hold the key to Edwards’ location. As they passed by the visitors’ car park, they failed to see the large, rain-damaged sign providing a potted history of the village and the charity set up in the name of the Lord who used to own all the land thereabouts. At the top of the sign there was an image of the Drewe coat of arms, which was also scattered throughout the village on plaques and walls. Above it was written their family motto in Latin:

  INVICTUS MANEO

  CHAPTER 20

  Ryan never made it to see Farmer Healey or the grey Mercedes abandoned on his land. Leaving that task in Lowerson’s capable hands, he made a shorter journey from CID Headquarters towards the exclusive housing estate of Darras Hall, to one of its premier but most disreputable addresses.

  A crowd had already assembled outside the imposing black gates of Jimmy Moffa’s home, clamouring to see what had befallen a man whose shady dealings had been widely known. They wittered about it ‘only being a matter of time’ before he got his comeuppance, and about the sad decline of the local area thanks to people of ‘his sort’. Others speculated whether his house would be offered for sale for a cheap asking price, always on the look-out for a bargain.

  Ryan parked his car further down the street, since the driveway was part of the crime scene, and opted to walk the remaining distance. This stretch of Darras Hall was filled with expensive houses but Moffa’s was the only house on the street with a high perimeter wall; too high for anyone to climb without injury. Several cameras were positioned at the entrance and at intervals in between a series of enormous plasterwork lions and what appeared to be gargoyles emulating those gracing the north wall of Notre Dame.

  Ryan approached the crowd with an ominous expression.

  “Move along please!”

  Instead, they surged forward with a series of inane questions.

  “You are obstructing a crime scene,” he said. “If you don’t go about your business, I will call a squad car to come and arrest any of you who continue to cause a nuisance. A police caution goes on record,” he added silkily.

  With satisfaction, he watched them scatter like rats deserting a sinking ship.

  “Yates?”

  As he approached the gates to Moffa’s big, semi-circular driveway, he recognised the police constable guarding the scene.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Melanie Yates was a capable woman, whom he’d already earmarked as having a lot of potential after some solid police work over the past couple of years and particularly over the course of the last week. He also happened to know that Lowerson had been working himself up to asking her on a date for at least six months.

  Ah, youth.

  “Report please,” he said, and looked over her shoulder towards the house, getting a lay of the land.

  “At approximately ten past seven this morning, Control Room received a report of suspected foul play from a Mrs Irene Duggan. She works as the housekeeper at this address, sir. After arriving for work at seven o’clock, she immediately noticed bloodied drag marks leading from the car to the entrance of the property. Mrs Duggan ran immediately to a neighbouring house to call it in.”

  Ryan nodded, searching the vicinity for a woman matching her description. He spotted Yates’ squad car parked further up the street and assumed Irene Duggan was in there.

  “Is the housekeeper in your car?”

  “Yes, sir. My partner is with her, taking a preliminary statement.”

  “Good. Have you been inside?” He nudged his chin in the direction of the house, which was a large red brick affair with white balustrades and columns in a mix of Grecian and Colonial styles.

  Yates adopted a shuttered expression and concentrated on relaying the facts, whilst blocking the images branded in her mind’s eye.

  “Yes, sir. My partner and I were the first officers to attend the scene. We met Mrs Duggan at the neighbouring property,” she pointed to the gigantic house directly across the street, “following which we accessed the property using the secure code provided by her.”

  Ryan nodded, watching her face lose a bit of colour.

  “Take your time, constable,” he murmured.

  Yates nodded gratefully.

  “It’s…sir, it’s a bloodbath in there. It appears to me that at least one person died in the Porsche sitting on the driveway, losing a lot of blood judging by the interior. That person seems to have been dragged from the car inside the house, although I can’t imagine why.”

  Yates swallowed.

  “We needed to ascertain whether anybody was in urgent need of medical attention, so we took the decision to enter the house. I’m sorry, sir, we weren’t wearing protective clothing.”

  “Don’t worry about that now,” he said. “Keep going.”

  “Yes, sir. We followed the obvious drag marks through the hallway and upstairs to the first floor. The blood trail leads to one of the main bedrooms, where we found…we found…”

  Yates thought for one humiliating moment that she would vomit, but then Ryan placed a hand on her shoulder, to focus her attention elsewhere.

  “Alright now?”

  “Yes. Sorry.”

  She still looked a bit peaky, he thought, but she’d hold up.

  “How many victims?”

  “Two, as far as I could see. We—they were found in a—compromising position,” she stuttered, trying to find a professional way to say that Jimmy Moffa and his driver had been staged on the bed in a gross parody of lovemaking, their dismembered bodies covered in blood and gore.

  Ryan read between the lines.

  “Anything else?”

  “We—ah—we didn’t enter the room, sir, but we made a sweep of the property to ensure there weren’t any other individuals on site. It was clear.”

  Ryan blew out a long breath.

  “Alright, Yates, you got through it. That’s the first step on the ladder to becoming a murder detective; you have to be able to look at a scene like that with dispassion.”

  And preferably without passing out, he added to himself.

  “Thank you, sir.”

  With that, he left Yates to her sentry duty and stepped over the threshold.

  * * *

  Ryan pulled on his protective overalls and crunched across the driveway, careful to walk on the plastic sheeting that had been laid down to protect areas of interest pinpointed by a series of yellow markers. He spotted Tom Faulkner standing among a group of similarly clothed CSIs outside a tent that had been erected to protect the scene around the entrance to the house. Weathercasters had predicted a fine, sunny day with scattered showers, which naturally meant that the people of Newcastle took up their umbrellas and prepared themselves for torrential rain. With a dubious glance towards the sky, Ryan had to agree that things did not look good. Storm clouds were gathering high in the sky, blotting out the sunshine and threatening to wash away DNA evidence. He heard the tread of heavy footsteps and half-expected to see Phillips ambling along behind him but was disappointed to find that it was only Jeff Pinter, come to look at the bodies in situ.

  “Morning, Ryan!”

  The Chief Pathologist loped across the drive in an oversized suit, waving a small holdall in his right hand.

  “Morning, Jeff. Thanks for getting over here so quickly,” he shook the man’s hand and together they walked the remaining distance towards the group of forensic specialists.

  “Tom,” Ryan shook the senior CSI’s hand and nodded to the rest of his team.

  Faulkner frowned.

  “Where’s Frank?”

  Ryan rolled his shoulders.

  “Ind
isposed,” he said curtly. He would not speak of Phillips being suspended. As far as he was concerned, it was a travesty and he didn’t want news of it spreading any further than necessary.

  “Let’s get this over with, shall we?”

  A cursory glance at the interior of what had been a brand-new Porsche SUV told Ryan that whoever had died inside that vehicle had not died well. Blood coated much of the driver’s area and was spattered in an arc across the steering wheel and dashboard, reaching as far the windscreen.

  “Throat slashed, I reckon,” Faulkner said.

  Ryan nodded, eyes tracing the line of blood leading from the car to the front door.

  “The body was moved. Why? It’s a messy, heavy job. Why not just leave it in the car?”

  “Couldn’t say,” Faulkner pulled a face as he thought of the possibilities. “Perhaps he was trying to hide it?”

  Ryan looked pointedly at the obvious blood trail and Faulkner shrugged.

  “Let’s take a look inside the House of Horrors.”

  Ryan led the way inside the double doors of Moffa’s house, resplendent with abstract art on the walls and glitzy gold clocks which were probably the real thing but were so garish they appeared fake. The hallway was large and square, tiled with white marble to match the walls and giving the place a clinical, hospital feel. Directly ahead was a staircase leading to a galleried landing on the first floor and an ostentatious Louis XVI chandelier hung in the centre of it all.

  Pinter raised his eyebrows at the décor.

  “It’s, ah—”

  “Yeah,” Ryan snapped. “I’m not interested in how the man lived. I’m interested in how he died.”

  With extreme care to avoid touching the banister or the crusting trail of blood tarnishing the pale grey carpet on the stairs, they made their way to the first-floor master bedroom.

  The first thing Ryan felt when he opened the door to Jimmy Moffa’s bedroom was overwhelming relief. The tableau was viciously brutal but he didn’t feel a tenth of the emotion he had experienced when they discovered Beth Finnegan’s body. He found that he could look at the details of the room with his usual objectivity tempered by compassion. Moffa might have been a criminal who lived off the misery of others but he could not bring himself to feel anything but pity because nobody deserved to die in that way.