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

by LJ Ross

  Ryan sat back and made a weary sweeping gesture with his hands, signalling for the camera crew to stop the tape. The room was buzzing with excitement as the journalists imagined the headlines they could spin but Morrison stepped through the chattering crowd to put a slim hand on Ryan’s tense shoulder.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  He rubbed a tired hand across his eyes.

  “If that doesn’t tempt him, I don’t know what will.”

  “What happens now?”

  “Now, we wait.”

  CHAPTER 23

  Just before six o’clock, Anna stood beside the radio in the small kitchen of the holiday cottage, the paperwork forgotten. Her hands shook against the countertop as she listened to the news bulletin that had interrupted the constant stream of easy-listening classics she and Phillips had been using to keep them company through their repetitive task.

  “Did I—did I just hear Ryan send out a challenge to Keir Edwards?”

  She turned wide, horrified eyes towards Phillips and he hurried across the room to take her arms in a gentle grip.

  “It’s talk, lass,” he tried to reassure her. “It’s fighting talk, to flush the man out. Ryan knows Edwards has an ego the size of a small planet and he’s using it against him. He knows if he lays down a challenge, Edwards won’t want to lose face. He’s baiting him, that’s all.”

  Anna held a trembling hand to her lips.

  “Frank, what if Edwards finds him? What if it isn’t all talk and Ryan wants to face him, to risk everything to see it through to the bitter end?”

  Phillips pulled her into his barrel chest for a bear hug and ran a hand over her head, much as he might have done his own daughter, if he’d ever had one.

  “I don’t know if I ever spoke to you about the last time,” he said quietly, casting his mind back. “But on the night Natalie Ryan died, I was nearly too late. Ryan had called for back-up but I was driving and in those days, we didn’t have hands-free. I had an old brick of a thing and we had clocked off our radios. I dropped him off at Wharf Square in the early hours and we were both exhausted. I carried on driving home, thinking that his sister would be there to look after him. We never thought—”

  Phillips drew in a shuddering breath, filled with remorse.

  “We never thought Edwards would stalk Natalie. It didn’t fit the pattern of his crimes but his intention was payback. He planned to kill Natalie in front of Ryan and he managed that much. He planned to kill Ryan next and, by rights, he should have. To this day, I don’t know where Ryan found the strength—he was badly injured and souped up with sedatives.”

  Anna knew that part of the story and the image of Ryan reduced to crawling, barely able to raise his head, was almost unbearable.

  “He found the strength,” Phillips continued, in the same quiet tone, while Anna rested her head on his shoulder and allowed herself to be held. “God knows how but he found the strength. By the time I got his message and rushed back, Natalie was dead and he had his hands around Edwards’ neck. The man had four broken ribs and his pretty face was smashed up. I’ve never seen that look on Ryan’s face before or since. It was pure hatred, sheer animalistic hatred. In that moment, I believe Ryan could have killed him.”

  “Ryan always told me you stopped him,” Anna whispered.

  “No, lass. Wild horses couldn’t have stopped him unless he’d wanted to be stopped. The fact is, Ryan just doesn’t have it in him to kill, not in cold blood like that. He’d already overpowered Edwards and that was enough. Even through his pain and his grief, lying in a pool of his sister’s blood, he still had enough humanity to step back.”

  Anna let the tears come and held on tightly.

  “That was back then, before he’d met you,” Phillips added. “He has a lot more to lose now. There’s no way he’d sacrifice everything he has with you, the chance of a happy future, just to finish Keir Edwards.”

  “I hope you’re right, Frank.”

  * * *

  The radio had been playing all day long.

  At some point, MacKenzie heard him walk along the landing corridor to stop and remove the cassette playing Pavarotti but instead of unlocking her door to allow her the usual toilet break, or some measly scraps to eat, he had merely turned up the radio and walked away. She didn’t know why today was different or why he had deviated from the usual prison routine but she knew that it didn’t bode well.

  Edwards never left food or water in her room; whenever he brought her anything she was required to eat and drink it straight away and he removed the crockery afterward. Consequently, she hadn’t drunk anything for hours—perhaps nearly twenty hours—and she had a pounding headache as well as a scratchy, dry mouth.

  She closed her eyes and did something she hadn’t done in years: she meditated.

  MacKenzie had laughed at it before, putting it down as one of those ‘New Age’, jingle-jangle, tie-dye fads. But as she forced her mind to drown out the deafening sound of the radio outside her door and asked it to ignore the clawing hunger in her stomach, she began to see what all the fuss had been about.

  In her mind, she walked along the beach at Caherdaniel, the village where she had been born in County Kerry in Ireland. She and Frank walked hand in hand along that bracing, windswept stretch of the Atlantic coast, arms swinging like a couple of teenagers. She smelled the sea air, she felt its breath against her face and the warmth of his rough palm clutching hers…

  The loud music was interrupted by a news bulletin.

  “This is Mike McCauley’s Drive Time Show! If you’re just tuning in, we’ll be playing five of your favourite power ballads, back-to-back, right after this important news bulletin which was pre-recorded earlier today.”

  MacKenzie’s eyes flew open.

  She hadn’t heard any news of the outside world in over a week and she waited impatiently for the report before Edwards could come and turn it off.

  “Chief inspector, thank you so much for agreeing to talk to us today…these are worrying times…Detective Inspector Denise MacKenzie…missing and presumed dead.”

  The voice of a female reporter boomed into the hallway and through the door to MacKenzie’s cell, where she listened with detached fascination as they spoke of her in the same way she had discussed the dead, so many times before.

  When Ryan’s voice followed, it was all she could do not to burst into hysterical tears at the welcome sound of it.

  “Nobody presumes she is dead,” he said, and his words rang out clearly. “We are searching for her, night and day.”

  MacKenzie started to sob uncontrollable tears of relief.

  They had not forgotten about her.

  Nobody presumes she is dead. We are searching for her, night and day.

  She held her head in her hands and listened to the remaining interview, hearing for the first time the names of the victims whose blood had covered Edwards’ clothing the previous two nights. She said a quiet prayer for the girl Bethany, who had died simply because she looked a certain way and Edwards needed somebody to kill. She even prayed for Jimmy Moffa’s soul despite all he had done because, as Ryan had said that very morning, nobody deserves to die like that.

  Then she heard Edwards’ footsteps charging upstairs. She braced herself against the bed and tried to hold Ryan’s voice inside her head, to take it with her when she needed it the most. It was the closest thing she had to Frank, and she knew they would be working in partnership.

  Unexpectedly, she heard Edwards stop beside the radio but he did not switch it off.

  He turned the volume back down to a manageable level as the interview drew to its conclusion and he heard the final, most important piece of Ryan’s message.

  “I want to tell him one, very important message. You’ve won… your actions over the past week have been a demonstration of your power… now is the time to claim your prize. I stopped you…I nearly killed you, as you nearly killed me. That gives us a connection and I understand that I am no better than you.” />
  MacKenzie listened with bated breath, realising that Ryan was bargaining with Edwards to keep her alive.

  “If it’s me you want, Keir, then I invite you to call me directly on the number for the Incident Room and I will meet you at any place of your choosing, on the condition that you do not harm another person until then. You remain unvanquished but for how long? Call me, to find out.”

  There was a momentary pause before the radio presenter began again, recapping for listeners who had just tuned in. He was cut short as the radio was finally turned off and silence fell in the old farmhouse. MacKenzie pushed her worn out body up from the bed and took up her usual position, in case Edwards decided to pay her a visit after all. Although Ryan had pitched his message exactly right, playing on Edwards’ personality traits to perfection, it was impossible to know how he would react.

  As he had said once before, he could kill her any time he chose.

  Once again, she heard him move off down the hall but this time he turned into one of the other bedrooms to drag an old chest of drawers out onto the landing, straining to wedge it against the locked door to block her inside. Then came the sound of his footsteps, quick and light on the stairs before she heard the front door open and close again.

  MacKenzie rushed to the tiny window and watched him stride around the edge of the house, towards the other side where she had found the worn pathway leading back towards the road. He must have hidden his car somewhere down there, she realised, and he was heading out.

  She sent up a final prayer, and this time it was for Ryan.

  * * *

  “Sir!”

  Ryan spun around from the display board in the Incident Room, where he’d been adding a series of notes following his consultation with Dr Gregory earlier in the day.

  He saw one of the telephone operators waving a feverish hand to attract his attention and hurried across the room.

  “What is it?”

  The operator covered the small mic attachment on his headset and simply said, “It’s him.”

  Ryan felt an odd little tremor, as if somebody were walking across his grave, but he motioned for the operator to hand over the headset and he slid into the chair instead. Nearby, people dropped what they were doing and gathered around to listen to the conversation.

  Before speaking, Ryan checked to make sure the call was being recorded and traced, then took a deep breath.

  “This is Ryan.”

  “I received your invitation.”

  It had been over a year since Ryan had last seen or heard from Keir Edwards. Even then, it had been within the safe confines of a prison interview suite, while the other man was handcuffed and guarded by two armed officers. It had been unpleasant to see him face-to-face again after the trial but somehow listening to his voice at the other end of the telephone line was even more so. The medium lent a strange sort of intimacy to the situation, one that he could happily have done without.

  “So I see,” Ryan replied. “I presume you’re calling to arrange a meeting?”

  Edwards chuckled hoarsely.

  “Not so fast. Why ruin all my fun? I’ve always considered you a worthy opponent, Ryan, so don’t disappoint me now. I’m ringing because I’ve decided to give you a clue.”

  Ryan continued to listen, all the while watching Lowerson for any news of the caller’s whereabouts.

  “Landline,” the other mouthed, and immediately began running a search for its registered address.

  “You’re getting sentimental,” Ryan said aloud. “It isn’t like you to want to play games.”

  “I think it’s only fair to give you a sporting chance,” Edwards snarled, gripping the telephone so tightly his knuckles turned white. “And there’s a very big incentive for you to perform well in this little game.”

  Ryan’s stomach plummeted.

  “Oh? Do I get a certificate?” He tried to keep his voice strong but it wavered because he knew what was coming next.

  “I will kill Denise MacKenzie at eight o’clock this evening if you do not arrive, unarmed and alone, to replace her. That gives you nearly four hours, Ryan. Plenty of time for a man of your capabilities, I should have thought.”

  Ryan’s eyes flew across to Lowerson, who scribbled a note on his pad to say, ‘PETROL STATION, CARTERWAY HEADS’.

  “Tell me the clue.”

  “It’s very simple,” Edwards said, with a laugh. “Just ask the wife of my first victim where to find me.”

  “Your first victim was a young woman and she was unmarried.”

  “It’s a conundrum, then, isn’t it?”

  Ryan heard his soft, malicious laughter down the line and he asked the most salient question.

  “How do I know MacKenzie is still alive?”

  “You’ll have to take my word for it,” Edwards replied silkily.

  “No offence, but your track record doesn’t exactly inspire trust in our relationship.”

  “Ouch,” Edwards rasped. “That really hurt.”

  “If she’s hurt, in any way—”

  “Save your threats for somebody who cares,” Edwards interjected. “The clock is ticking.”

  With that, the line went dead.

  CHAPTER 24

  Ryan made an immediate request for an armed response team to be sent to the petrol station at Carterway Heads but by the time they drove from the nearest police station to that remote spot, The Hacker was long gone. At the petrol station, they found a young service assistant hunkered down behind the counter with blood streaming from a deep cut to his eye, courtesy of an ‘angry-looking’ man who had walked into the empty shop and demanded to use their landline telephone.

  Evidently, the assistant hadn’t noticed that the man bore a remarkable resemblance to a dangerous serial killer on the loose, whose image graced a poster on the wall right beside the till. It was a stark reminder of how unreliable eyewitness statements were, Ryan thought, because people rarely remembered the physical details of one person to the next, not even when there was a photograph to remind them.

  Thanks to a statement from Jimmy Moffa’s housekeeper, Irene, they had already determined that a vintage 1929 Harley Davidson Two-Cam motorcycle had been stolen from the extensive selection of luxury vehicles in Moffa’s garage. CCTV showed the stolen motorcycle making its way through the quiet streets of Darras Hall with a single male driver matching Edwards’ description, along his favoured route via the A69 to the Styford Roundabout and from there along the A68 towards Carterway Heads. As before, the petrol station camera confirmed that the motorcycle had made a right turn into the dales but they had no way of knowing which direction he had taken from there.

  Being unfamiliar with two-wheeled vehicles, Ryan had deferred to Lowerson’s superior knowledge of flash engines and was reliably informed that a Harley Two-Cam in good condition could easily sell for six figures at auction, owing to its rarity. It was not the choice of a shrinking violet, or indeed an obvious choice for a fugitive wishing to maintain a low profile, but it was certainly the perfect choice for someone like Keir Edwards.

  Looking at its classic lines on a computer screen, Ryan thought that the motorcycle was better suited to the Californian hills than the fells of the North Pennines but, on the plus side, it was a very rare vehicle with a loud engine. There was every chance that Edwards would have been seen on his journey to and from the petrol station, but they simply didn’t have the time to complete door-to-door enquiries. Edwards had issued a four-hour warning and that gave them very little time to spare, so Ryan asked local Durham police to canvas the area for a motorcycle matching the description while he and his team focused on deciphering Edwards’ cryptic clue.

  But before all that, Ryan had an important call to make.

  * * *

  Anna was speaking to the School Administrator at Shelford, in Somerset, when Phillips’ mobile phone began to shrill. Noting the caller, he snatched it up immediately.

  “Well, lad? Any word?”

  Ryan didn’t answer
directly.

  “You saw the interview I gave? Morrison sprang it on me out of the blue.”

  “We heard it on the radio. It was good,” Phillips said. “But Anna’s worried about you offering yourself up like that.”

  Ryan leaned his back against the whitewashed wall, next to a faded poster about mobile phone theft and another touting a forthcoming police comedy improv night. He didn’t think it would be well attended.

  “Edwards is escalating,” Ryan answered. “If he were thinking straight, he would never have killed Jimmy Moffa. Now there’s an army of violent criminals hell-bent on avenging his death and it makes no sense. Edwards must have known we would find out about Moffa’s involvement but there was no need to finish the man, not in such an obvious way.”

  “He did it because he needed to kill,” Phillips guessed.

  “Yes,” Ryan switched the phone to his other hand and closed his eyes, just for a moment. “There’s something else, Frank. He killed Moffa’s new bodyguard. It was the same one from The Diner.”

  “Tony?”

  “Yeah.”

  Phillips inhaled sharply, thinking of how he had gone to school with Tony’s father before he’d been killed in an accident on an oil rig. His only hope would have been for Tony to make something of himself and keep his widow company. Instead, the young man had become a stooge for a gangland boss and been killed on his first day on the job.

  He cleared his throat.

  “I warned him, when I saw him there. I told him to go home.”

  “I know you did,” Ryan murmured. “There isn’t anything more you could have done. Tony was a free agent and he knew the risks associated with a man like Moffa.”

  “Aye, but it’s sad, all the same.”

  Ryan opened his eyes again and looked at the opposite side of the corridor, feeling numb.

  “There’s something else, Frank. It’s worse than Tony.”

  “Denise. She’s—?”