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

by LJ Ross

“No, she’s not dead, as far as we know,” Ryan said quickly. “But I had a call from Edwards, less than ten minutes ago. He’s issued a deadline of eight o’ clock tonight. If I fail to show up wherever he’s hiding out, alone and unarmed, he’ll kill Denise.”

  Phillips felt himself sway and he gripped the back of a chair for support. There was a short silence while Ryan listened to his friend breathe in and out, commanding his body to remain calm.

  “What—what’s being done? How can we find him?”

  “Edwards gave me a clue to finding him but it seems like nonsense. He said I should ask the wife of his first victim.”

  Phillips shook his head and tried to slow his irregular breathing so that he could concentrate on what Ryan was telling him. He moved across to the kitchen table and the stack of files there, rummaging with one hand until he found the one he was looking for.

  “His first known victim was a woman called Isobel Harris,” Phillips read out the name printed neatly on the front of the plain cardboard file, then flipped it open to see her face smiling back at him. She had been twenty-two and worked on the perfume counter at Fenwick’s, one of the oldest department stores in Newcastle. “He followed her home one night after work, after he’d bought some aftershave from her counter earlier the same day. Seems he took a fancy to her.”

  Ryan remembered listening to Edwards’ cold dissection of her attributes, as if she had been an object for him to do with as he chose. But Isobel Harris had been a young, heterosexual woman who hadn’t been married with a wife.

  “He’s telling us she wasn’t his first victim.”

  Phillips sat down heavily at the kitchen table.

  “We had a list of other potential victims we hadn’t been able to pin on him but a lot of those were crossed off when we investigated Paddy Donovan last year.”

  Ryan pushed away from the wall to start pacing again, thinking back to another killer at another time.

  “Yes, Donovan was credited with most of those. Even if he hadn’t been, we come back to the same issue. Whether the victims were attributed to Donovan or Edwards, they were all dark-haired, young women who identified as heterosexual. We’re looking for the wife of Edwards’ first victim, so logic tells me the victim was male.”

  They fell silent for a moment, then Ryan sighed.

  “Faulkner is working his socks off to get those soil samples back to me so we can try to narrow the field but it won’t be enough to track down a specific address, only a more specific area. Have you found anything that might be useful? Is there anything at all we’ve missed?”

  Ryan wished he didn’t sound so desperate.

  “Edwards has been careful, right from the start,” Phillips replied. “There’s no mention anywhere of his life before the age of sixteen, of a family home address, or even somewhere he liked to go on holiday when he was a nipper. No mention of a traumatic experience on the fells around here or of a farm where he first learned how to kill chickens,” Phillips broke off as Anna walked back into the room, looking vaguely triumphant. “Just a sec, we might have found something after all.”

  Ryan waited while Phillips handed the receiver to Anna and felt a powerful wave of emotion wash over him when her soft voice came down the line.

  “Ryan?”

  “Anna,” he murmured. “Have you got something for me?”

  “Maybe,” she said. “I’ve just had a long and interesting discussion with the administrator at Shelford School. The new administrator, I should say.”

  “Were they more forthcoming than the battle axe I spoke with two years ago?”

  “Now, don’t get mad,” Anna said.

  Where have I heard that before? he wondered, while he waited to hear what new mischief she had been up to.

  “I decided to take a different approach, since I can’t very well claim to be a police officer. When I rang, I said I was calling from the Information Commission and that we’d received a complaint the school had been giving out personal data about an infamous former student of theirs, Keir Edwards.”

  Ryan waited for her to continue.

  “Well, as you can imagine, the administrator was mortified. I told him, to make matters worse, we’d received the complaint from a private individual whose address had been given out and they’d been receiving hate mail since the manhunt started last week. There was obviously a new family living in Keir Edwards’ former listed address, so I was calling to check that their old records were correct and to give them an informal warning. I suggested some refresher training for his staff at the school to ensure there weren’t any further slip-ups, in future.”

  Ryan grinned at the empty corridor.

  “You’re a tough cookie. Needless to say, he cooperated. What was the address?”

  His heart began to beat just a bit faster in anticipation of a fresh lead.

  “I can hardly believe it,” Anna said. “But the address they have on file for Keir Edwards is Castle Drewe.”

  Ryan was shocked into silence for a full ten seconds. Even with his limited knowledge of local history, he had heard of the Drewe family. They were landed gentry and, until recently, their estate stretched across hundreds of acres through the North Pennines.

  “If he’s a member of the aristocracy, I’ll eat my hat,” he said roundly. “But Castle Drewe is right in the middle of our search area. Who lives there now?”

  “I already looked it up,” Anna put in, delighted to be able to help. “Lady Drewe is still in residence.”

  “Then I’ll need to have a chat with her,” Ryan said decisively.

  “Ryan, there’s something else I found when I was looking into Shelford School. The Drewe family are listed as benefactors and have been ever since the early nineties.”

  Ryan nodded, finally beginning to feel the pieces slot into place.

  “Which coincides with the time Edwards joined the school.”

  “Yes,” Anna sensed Phillips pacing around the kitchen beside her. “There’s one final thing. The entire village of Blanchland is owned by the Lord Drewe Trust. We noticed it yesterday and even the pub is named after him. I did a bit of research into the family history and when the last Lord Drewe died, he left no heirs. Rather than the estate reverting to his wife, he left everything in trust for conservation purposes.”

  “Misogynist old git,” Ryan remarked. “What year did he die—and how?”

  “He was involved in an accident in 1992.” Anna had already guessed the direction of Ryan’s thoughts. “He fell from the cliffs at High Force waterfall after a late-night hike and his body was recovered on the rocks the following morning. If Lord Drewe was in any way connected to Edwards, the boy would have been sixteen when he died.”

  “The same year Edwards changed his name and went off to school, hundreds of miles away,” Ryan put in. “Another coincidence.”

  “I’m betting his school fees were paid for by Lady Drewe, which is why her address is listed on his record.”

  “It would also explain why Shelford fought tooth and nail not to let that information see the light of day when we were investigating two years ago. I could never understand why they kicked up such a fuss but now I see they were protecting a wealthy benefactor. What is Lady Drewe’s situation?”

  “All I have is what I’ve been able to pull up from the internet,” Anna said. “According to the Lord Drewe Trust’s website, Lady Drewe is permitted to live in the castle for the remainder of her life but when she dies, it reverts to the trust.”

  “The question is why she paid for Edwards’ schooling,” Ryan murmured. “He has to be connected to her husband—who must have been Edwards’ father. What happens to her if an heir is found?”

  “He could be entitled to the castle and have a legitimate claim that the estate should have reverted to him, not to the trust. But Ryan, there’s no mention of an heir, or at least no legitimate one.”

  “Does the Drewe family have a motto?” Ryan asked.

  “Invictus maneo.”

  “L
ooks like we’ve found his first victim,” Ryan said, and relief vibrated through his entire body. Here, finally, was the clue they had been waiting for. “Tell Phillips to hang tight. I’ll let him know when we’ve got a rendezvous point. It’ll take some careful planning so that Edwards believes I’m going in alone.”

  “Please, please be careful,” she begged him.

  “I will,” he promised.

  CHAPTER 25

  Twenty miles south of Blanchland, the medieval palace-fortress of Castle Drewe was surrounded by two hundred acres of deer park spanning County Durham to the east, the North Pennines to the west and the Wear and Derwent valleys to the north. Its foundations dated back over a thousand years and its walls and towers were so much a part of the verdant landscape that it seemed to Ryan that it had stepped straight out of a Turner painting.

  Ryan had telephoned the castle and asked to speak to its mistress, Lady Sophia de Jacquette-Drewe. Having suffered the ignominy of a double-barrelled surname for his entire life, Ryan could hardly cast the first stone, but it had to be said that if there were a prize for the most ridiculously elaborate surname, hers was a real contender. Unfortunately, the Lady herself was disinclined to talk to the police without her solicitor being present and certainly not over the telephone. Ryan had made a supreme effort to appear sensitive and even deferential but the prospect of a violent killer preparing to take another life was not enough to move her and his patience wore thin. Time marched sickeningly onwards and the skies were already turning a darker, cardinal blue as the sun fell lower in the sky, so he elected to override her protestations and drive out to the castle to make a personal appeal to her better nature.

  In times like these, Ryan felt he could draw upon his own family background in a manner he seldom chose to otherwise. It was embarrassing for him to admit that the Finlay-Ryans were listed in Debrett’s and Who’s Who. His own mother had formerly been a London debutante before meeting and marrying his father, a former British ambassador to France and a minor peer. He had attended the ‘best’ schools and had called a stately manor house in Devonshire his childhood home. He even knew how to play polo, if he had to. Ryan didn’t know who had been more uncomfortable when he had first confessed all of this to Anna but he suspected it was him. With the kind of innate class that was nothing to do with title or breeding, Anna had taken less than five minutes to settle into comfortable conversation with his parents, to laugh with them and see them for the real people they were. They might not be perfect, he thought—with hindsight, he would not send any child of his away to boarding school—but they were good people. But then, he had always gone his own way, setting himself apart from what he considered to be ‘The Establishment’. Perhaps it was why he preferred to be known simply as ‘Ryan’, because ‘Maxwell’ was a reminder of a privileged childhood from which he now felt very far removed.

  However, as he steered his car along the beautiful tree-lined driveway through the acres of woodland leading to the main entrance of Castle Drewe, he was thankful that his upbringing enabled him to cut through the usual hogwash that might intimidate somebody less familiar with the kind of exalted circles Lady Drewe preferred to move in. Then again, he was fairly certain that Frank Phillips could have achieved the same result by sheer force of personality if he were there.

  Ryan completely ignored the liveried butler who emerged from the gatehouse to point an imperious finger towards the service entrance. Instead, he swerved his car under the archway of the gatehouse and into the main courtyard of the castle, coming to a stop outside its dramatic entrance portico.

  “Um, shouldn’t we have gone around the back?” Lowerson worried, glancing nervously towards the red-faced butler now hurrying across the courtyard.

  “Bollocks to that,” Ryan muttered. “Stick with me, kid, and try to act snooty.”

  Lowerson affected an uppity tilt to his chin.

  “How about this?”

  “Not bad,” Ryan said, before slamming out of the car.

  “Stop! Stop right there, young man!”

  Ryan turned to glare at the puffed face of a butler in his late forties, wearing a severely disapproving expression on his shiny, rounded face. It was mildly amusing to be referred to as a ‘young man’ when there was only a handful of years between them, but it was just another example of the kind of ridiculous etiquette he hated.

  Ryan stared down his nose from a superior height of five or six inches.

  “Detective Chief Inspector Finlay-Ryan and Detective Constable Lowerson to see Lady Drewe,” he said, with an imperious flick of his own wrist as he whipped out his warrant card. “We are pressed for time, so we would like to see her immediately.”

  Ryan turned to walk inside the castle.

  “My Lady has already declined an audience with you,” the butler hurried to bar the entrance. “If you persist in this harassing manner, I’ll be forced to call the police.”

  “By all means,” Ryan said. “I was about to do the same thing, myself. Lowerson?”

  The younger man stood to attention, dragging his jaw from the floor at the sight and sound of Ryan conversing in his most cultivated accent, with an aristocratic demeanour he had only seen in small doses before now.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Put a call through to the Commissioner—” Ryan turned back to the butler with a self-effacing smile. “Norman will likely be at home at this hour but, thankfully, he’s a close, personal friend.”

  “What should I tell him?” Lowerson made as if to key in a number.

  “Tell him to authorise a full tactical response team. I want the works: sniffer dogs, helicopter search, CSI team. It’ll mean a lot of upheaval at this time of night and, of course, we’ll need to notify the press—”

  “Now, just wait a minute,” the butler looked between them. “You have no authority to order a search of the castle.”

  “I will have the proper authority within a matter of minutes,” Ryan said, in bored tones, holding out his hand to Lowerson while he made a pretend phone call. “Is he on the line?”

  “There’s really no need for you to disturb the Commissioner,” the butler interjected, with a pleading look towards Lowerson, who waited until Ryan bobbed his head like a Roman Emperor before sliding the phone back into his coat pocket.

  “Take us to see Lady Drewe,” Ryan snapped.

  * * *

  The Rt Honourable Sophia de Jacquette had been a plain-faced, mousy-haired girl of the best breeding and manners when she had made her debut into London society aged eighteen. It had taken three waltzes and one fumbling goodnight kiss for her to fall head over heels in love with Charles Drewe, who had been several years older and under pressure from his mother to find a suitable wife. Having only known the stolen pleasure of Barbara Cartland’s back catalogue, Sophia was expecting a lot from her would-be husband and was disappointed almost from the first night. For Charles had been completely uninterested in her and had performed his marital duties in a perfunctory fashion, always with the lights out. Over the years, her husband’s increasing distance and coldness towards her had killed any feeling she might have once had towards him. She maintained their home and social calendar for the sake of appearances but in all other respects they led very separate lives.

  When Ryan and Lowerson were shown into one of the smaller drawing rooms in Castle Drewe, they were met with a woman of around sixty who was almost unrecognisable from her former self, complete with extensive plastic surgery and six-inch designer heels.

  Ever the professional, Ryan kept his thoughts to himself and his face carefully neutral. Lowerson, on the other hand, still had a lot to learn in the way of tact and stared with goggle-eyes at the woman’s super-sized lips and bulging cleavage.

  “Lady Drewe,” Ryan removed his warrant card and showed it to her. She flicked a glance at it, then a much longer glance over him.

  “Chief Inspector Ryan,” she smiled slowly. “I must say you’re vastly more impressive in person than on the television scr
een.”

  Ryan wasn’t going to indulge her mindless flirtation, not when the grandfather clock standing against the wall had just chimed six o’clock. He rattled off the standard caution and watched her face fall dramatically.

  “You know why we’re here,” he continued.

  “I am not discussing my private affairs without my solicitor present.” She gave him a haughty look and began to signal for her butler.

  “That is your right,” Ryan shot back. “But if you fail to cooperate and it later comes to light that you are withholding evidence pertinent to our investigation, we will not hesitate to charge you with an offence. If your obstruction of our investigation leads to our suspect killing another innocent individual this evening, we will treat you as an accessory to murder. I can’t begin to imagine what the papers would have to say about that.”

  Her face paled beneath her tan.

  “I do not respond to threats. I never have.”

  “Who’s threatening you?” Ryan said, blithely. “I’m simply stating facts. Now, are you going to make the intelligent choice or not?”

  She looked at him, then around at the sumptuous drawing room that had been her home for forty years. With a sigh, she waved away the butler, who slunk from the room with a small bow.

  “You’ve found out about Keir, I suppose,” she said candidly, and offered them both a seat on the delicate little French lounger opposite her.

  Lowerson took his cue from Ryan and remained standing.

  “Tell us everything you know,” he didn’t beat around the bush.

  “You’re not much for small talk, are you?” she said coyly, but then her face fell again and she reached for her silver cigarette case on the coffee table between them. Ingrained manners had him leaning forward to light it with a mother of pearl cigarette lighter he swept up from the table. “Thank you,” she murmured.

  They gave her a moment to inhale.

  “Keir Edwards is the bastard son of my late husband’s mistress.” She delivered the words dispassionately and took another long drag. “She had the nerve to name him after Charles.”