Seven Bridges

by LJ Ross

  “If it was a shock,” she put in, smooth as you like. “Whatever happened here tonight, Jack Lowerson is a grown man. You should remember that.” She raised a hand to greet her sergeant, who trotted along the pavement towards them, then gave Ryan one last searching look. “I’ll be in touch.”

  With that, she tucked her chin inside the collar of her coat and headed off.

  “She’s good,” Ryan remarked, once she was safely out of earshot.

  “Aye. Maybe too good,” Phillips muttered. “She doesn’t know Jack like we do. What if she walks in there and assumes they had some sort of lover’s fight that went wrong? God only knows what he told her.”

  Ryan had a brief flashback to the times he’d fended off similar quarrels with Lucas and of how close each one might have been to the grim scene they’d just left.

  He pasted a reassuring smile on his face.

  “Tebbutt knows her business, just like we do. We have to trust her to do the job.”

  * * *

  The foyer of the Northumbria Police Headquarters bustled with activity when Ryan and Phillips stepped through its reinforced glass doors, just before midnight. There were few industries that truly came to life in the Witching Hour but theirs happened to be one of them. People in varying degrees of inebriety and undress were sprawled in the waiting area and they represented a cross-section of society; there were as many in smartly-tailored business suits as there were in muddied rags, men and women of all ages and races who congregated together under one uninspiring, boxy roof.

  “Home, sweet home,” Phillips declared, breathing deeply of the comforting smell of pine-scented bleach mingled with a variety of bodily odours.

  “You’re becoming institutionalised—”

  Just then, Ryan caught a movement in his peripheral vision. Across the foyer, one of the newer police constables was thrust against the wall as a woman elbowed him squarely in the stomach and made a valiant bid for freedom, racing towards the automatic doors with single-minded panic.

  Ryan covered the ground between them with lightning speed, stopping the woman in her tracks. The timing was perfect, and he braced for impact as she hurtled into his torso, nearly winding them both in the process. His arms banded around her skinny body like steel rods and she began wriggling against him like an angry wasp in her desperation to break free.

  “Calm down,” he muttered. “Calm down!”

  She began to kick out and he narrowly avoided a sensitive encounter.

  “Hey! Do you want to make things worse for yourself? Calm down, or find yourself booked for evading arrest and assault on a police officer.”

  His words must have penetrated her brain because she stopped struggling suddenly, her thin arms falling limply to her sides as she sagged against him.

  By now, the arresting officer had recovered himself sufficiently to hurry across and lend a hand, while the crowded foyer watched the brief drama play out with avid interest.

  “Sorry, sir, I don’t know how she managed to—”

  “It happens,” Ryan said, holding the woman’s arm in a gentle grip. He looked down at her crestfallen face and realised she couldn’t have been more than nineteen or twenty.

  “What’s your name?”

  Her lips trembled, and she swiped the back of her hand beneath her nose. Absent-mindedly, Ryan rummaged around his jacket pockets for a packet of tissues and offered one to her.

  She hesitated, then snatched it up and blew her nose loudly.

  “Charlie,” she muttered.

  Ryan sighed.

  “Why are you here, Charlie?”

  She craned her neck to look up at him, surprised to find there were no aches or pains where he had restrained her.

  “Soliciting,” she whispered, and a tear escaped.

  “First offence?” he enquired of the constable, who watched the exchange with goggle-eyed fascination.

  “Yes, sir. A pop for shoplifting but nothing else on record.”

  Ryan watched as she blew her nose again. He didn’t consider himself a bleeding heart and he’d certainly heard his share of sob stories over the years. But, every now and then, he met one who had barely begun their path into the cycle of drugs and crime and it gave him pause.

  He warred with himself, then reached inside the pocket of his jeans for some change.

  “There’s a vending machine over there,” he said, quietly. “Go and get something to eat and drink.”

  She searched his face but there were no conditions attached.

  “Th-thanks,” she mumbled and walked directly to the vending machine to do as he suggested.

  “Sir? What should I do now?”

  Ryan waited to see whether the girl would run, but she scooped up a can of coke and a variety of sugary goods and then took them to one of the plastic seats nearby, where she settled down to eat.

  Good.

  He turned back.

  “What do you think, Webster? You could book her for assaulting you and for soliciting and nobody would question it,” he said, with a meaningful pause. “On the other hand, you could give one of the women’s charities a call to see if they can give her a bed for the night. They’re usually full but it’s worth a shot. If not, book her in here. If she’s got a pimp, he’ll be waiting for her to come out or he’ll have one of the other girls waiting to snatch her up and they’ll have her straight back on the streets before sunrise. Let’s at least give her a fighting chance,” he murmured.

  “But it’s not our job—”

  “Our job is to protect,” Ryan said.

  The younger man’s eyes strayed across to the pitiful sight of a girl savouring her first chocolate bar in a very long time.

  “I’ll call them now,” he decided.

  Ryan gave the constable a manly clap on the shoulder and then moved quickly to re-join Phillips, who was standing on the far side of the foyer with a small, knowing smile on his face.

  “What?” Ryan demanded, a bit defensively.

  Phillips lifted a shoulder.

  “There was a time when I thought it was all black and white for you, all ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ with no shades of grey.”

  “There’s black, white, grey and everything else in between,” Ryan told him. “Come on, let’s go and find out where Lowerson lies on the colour chart.”

  * * *

  They had barely made it down to the interview suite when they were met by MacKenzie, who headed them off at the door.

  “They’re not letting any of us see him,” MacKenzie said, without preamble.

  “What d’you mean? The lad’s not under arrest,” Phillips fumed.

  She laid a gentle, restraining hand on his chest.

  “They’ve booked him on suspicion of murder.”

  “What?” Phillips growled.

  “They have to,” Ryan said. “You saw the scene back there, Frank. There’s no way Lucas fell and hit herself repeatedly. It looks suspicious and Jack was the one who found her. Tebbutt needs more time to gather evidence and she has to treat him in the same way she’d treat any civilian suspect, or there’d be hell to pay.”

  “His solicitor’ll get him straight in front of the Mags and he’ll be out on bail, if the charge isn’t dropped by then, anyway,” MacKenzie put in, to reassure herself as much as anybody else. Phillips ran a frustrated hand over his thinning hair.

  “Oh, aye, and in the meantime, he’ll be suffering all kinds of torture down there,” he said.

  “It’s not so bad,” Ryan mused, and two pairs of eyes swivelled towards him. “I spent a night in the cells after Bowers died up at Heavenfield Church, remember? And I seem to recall it was you, Frank, who did your duty back then and booted my sorry arse behind bars.”

  Phillips turned an embarrassed shade of red.

  “Oh, aye. I forgot about that,” he admitted, sheepishly. “It was nothing personal, y’nah. I was just—”

  “Doing your job,” Ryan nodded. “Just like Tebbutt.”

  Phillips glowered.
>
  “That’s as maybe. But the lad’s traumatised, he needs to see a doctor.”

  “He’s seen one.” MacKenzie took the wind out of his sails. “Tebbutt saw to it. Jack’s been fed and watered, and the medics have pronounced him fit as a fiddle, just a bit shaken up. A solicitor was in with him when he made his statement and he had a change of clothes and a shower after his prints and swabs were taken. Even before he was formally arrested, he volunteered the swabs,” she added.

  Their ears pricked up at that. Lowerson was unlikely to volunteer anything if he felt there was something to hide.

  “That’s encouraging. Did he tell you anything else on the journey over?” Ryan lowered his voice.

  MacKenzie scrubbed a tired hand over her face and let it fall away again.

  “Not much more than you already know,” she said. “Jack says he went around to Lucas’s house after his shift, at around seven-thirty. He used the door key she’d given him and let himself inside, where he found her dead on the floor. He went across to see if she was still alive and that’s how he ended up covered in blood. He says he panicked and drove to the safest place he could think of.”

  She looked across at Ryan, who gave a brief nod of understanding.

  “And we know the rest. Where are his parents?” he asked. “Are they here?”

  MacKenzie nodded.

  “They’re in conference with his solicitor now,” she said. “His mother was almost hysterical when she came in.”

  “It’s not every day your baby boy is arrested for murder,” Phillips said, heavily.

  All three turned at the sound of running footsteps echoing down the corridor and spotted their colleague, Trainee Detective Constable Melanie Yates, hurrying towards them with a sheet of paper flapping in her hand.

  “Uh oh,” Ryan murmured, and put a hand on her arm as she came to a skidding halt. “What’s the matter, Mel?”

  Yates didn’t waste any time on pleasantries but came straight to the point.

  “Sir. This e-mail has just been forwarded to us from The Enquirer news desk.”

  She thrust the paper into his hand and Ryan skim-read its contents in the surrounding silence, his face darkening into a worried frown.

  At midnight tonight, the Tyne Bridge will burn.

  This is the first.

  You have been warned.

  A second ticked by, then Ryan looked up and checked the time on his watch.

  Eleven-fifteen.

  “Yates, I want you to get straight on to Morrison and tell her we’ve got a major bomb threat. Then, I want you to call the news desk back and ask them why the hell it took them so long to report this to the police. When they give you some bogus answer about how they didn’t pick it up, I want you to threaten them with the full force of the law if they so much as breathe a word of its contents before we’ve made the area safe. There’s probably a battalion of reporters already down there, waiting for bad news.”

  Yates seemed rooted to the spot while the reality of the situation set in.

  “Now, Yates. There’s no time to lose.”

  Galvanised, she rushed off and Ryan turned to the others with blazing eyes.

  “We need to get on to the bomb squad,” he said shortly, not stopping to wait for them as he began to move swiftly towards the Criminal Investigation Department.

  “Wha—?” Phillips demanded, of Ryan’s retreating back.

  “It’s a bomb threat,” he threw over his shoulder. “Somebody calling themselves The Alchemist wants to see the Tyne Bridge burn at midnight, tonight.”

  They pushed through a set of security doors separating the interview suite from the main office building, all thoughts of Jack Lowerson temporarily forgotten.

  “It’s probably a hoax,” Phillips said, huffing a bit to keep up with Ryan’s longer strides. “It might be some whacko looking for attention. It happens all the time.”

  “Yes, but there’s usually a ransom of some kind,” Ryan said, as he shouldered through a set of double doors and into the long corridor that led to the bullpen.

  “And they’re not asking for anything?” MacKenzie was incredulous.

  Ryan shook his head and lengthened his stride, never more conscious that the clock was ticking.

  “It’s like firing a warning shot, to show us they’re serious.” His eyes strayed to an enormous, white plastic clock fixed on the wall and felt his stomach jitter.

  “It’ll be some daft kid,” Phillips was adamant. “Or maybe some crackpot fanatic looking to make a name for themselves. We’ve dealt with their type before.”

  “Yes, but there was always a motive or ideology behind those,” Ryan muttered, tightening his fist around the paper he still held in his hand. “And if it was a terror attack, they wouldn’t go to the trouble of sending us a warning first.”

  “It has to be a hoax,” MacKenzie reasoned. “Otherwise, they’d ask for something. They always do.”

  Ryan gave a slight shake of his head.

  “But they are. They’re asking for it to be splashed all over the news, or why else send that message to The Enquirer? They want everybody to admire their handiwork.”

  “If that’s the case, they’d have a better audience on a Saturday afternoon,” MacKenzie said.

  “Not necessarily,” Ryan argued. “Flames look so much better at night, don’t they? It’d be like a beacon, visible for miles around.”

  “There’ll be crowds of people on the streets tonight,” Phillips said. “It’s a Saturday and there’s clubs and bars scattered on both ends of the bridge, not counting the night buses and pedestrians crossing the bridge.”

  As they reached the door to the open-plan office space that housed the Criminal Investigation Department, Ryan pulled out his phone and punched in the number for the Explosives Ordnance Disposal Unit, who were part of a military regiment based out of Otterburn Training Camp and Barracks. It was a cool, thirty-minute drive west of the city and he knew it would be a miracle if the EOD Unit made it into the city before midnight. As the phone began to ring at his ear, he thought of the quickest way to evacuate the area around the bridge.

  “Mac, I need you to speak to Control. Tell them we need all available units down at the Quayside. We have no way of knowing if there’s a real threat or where it might be on the bridge, but we need to start evacuating everybody within two hundred metres of either entrance. We need police covering north and south sides of the river. We can’t take any chances, I want the whole area locked down.”

  “Consider it done,” she said simply.

  “Frank? I need you to speak to the fire and ambulance services and have them on standby.”

  “Aye, I’ll get on to it,” he said. “What’re you going to do?”

  Ryan finally heard the click of a telephone being answered at the other end of the line.

  “I’m going to hope I’m wrong.”

  CHAPTER 4

  The river undulated between the cities of Newcastle and Gateshead in waves of inky-blue, all the way to the North Sea. The bridges spanning the river were illuminated by a series of enormous floodlights, reflected in the rippling water below. In the centre of it all, the Tyne Bridge rose in towering arches of bottle-green steel, a matriarch to six smaller bridges fanning out on either side in the space of a mile. Swathes of people hopped between the twinkling lights of numerous bars and clubs lining the water’s edge, while lovers braved the cold weather and shuffled along the Quayside as they made their way home, hand in hand. There was a steady chorus of happy noise, a thrum of merriment that followed the crowd from one drinking hole to the next and, from his position on higher ground, Ryan watched them with a sinking heart.

  There was no time.

  It was ten minutes until midnight and police squad cars had formed a barrier on the main access roads above and below the bridge. Officers in high-vis gear spilled onto the streets to push back the crowd and set up a cordon but were inevitably outnumbered as they struggled to deal with all the usual scuffles and
misdemeanours that were the by-products of an alcohol-fuelled Saturday night in town.

  “Any sign of the bomb squad, yet?”

  It wasn’t their official name, but Phillips was a creature of habit.

  “They’re on their way,” Ryan said, and turned his collar up against the biting wind. It rolled in from the water and curled its way through the cobbled streets, up to the exposed rooftop of the multi-storey car park where they’d made their temporary base.

  “Fingers crossed, it’ll be a wasted journey for them.”

  Ryan nodded.

  On the southern side, MacKenzie was helping to coordinate the evacuation effort and her disembodied voice crackled down his police radio, informing them that a roadblock was now complete at either entrance to the Tyne Bridge and traffic was being diverted. Apartment buildings and hotels within striking distance of a blast had been informed and residents were being removed, although there was little chance of completing that mammoth task in the time they had left.

  “Five minutes to go,” Phillips said, with a nervous glance at his watch. “Still no sign.”

  “It’s like having a talking clock,” Ryan muttered and raised his field glasses to look down at the roads below, which were deserted in every direction.

  His police radio fizzed again and, this time, the distant voice of one of the officers stationed on the Quayside came down the line.

  “Sir, we’ve got a police line in place but quite a large crowd has gathered and is refusing to budge. Over.”

  Ryan sighed.

  “How large?”

  “A couple of hundred,” came the reply.

  There would be no way to move that kind of crowd in the space of three or four minutes, Ryan knew that much.

  “Just keep them back,” he ordered.

  “Yes, sir. There are some television crews, they’re stirring it all up—”

  Ryan sighed inwardly. He understood the need for a free press and believed it was important, but there was a time and a place for everything. The last thing any of them needed was vultures circling around an already loaded situation, just so they could secure a headline for the morning papers. There may be lives at stake.