Seven Bridges

by LJ Ross

  At the other end of the line, Anna’s lips curved into a smile, which dimmed as she thought of what might have been.

  “It looked bad out there,” she said.

  “It was,” he admitted, but decided against telling her just how close they’d been to the wire. It would serve no purpose other than to make himself feel better and would only cause her pain.

  Instead, he lightened the mood.

  “You had some competition today,” he told her.

  “Oh?”

  He smiled at the sudden chill in her voice.

  “Yeah, from a blonde with a lovely smile. She got a bit handsy, too.”

  Back at home, Anna tucked her feet up onto the sofa and savoured the sound of his voice, deciding to humour him.

  “Well, it’s good to know you’re not past it,” she agreed. “Have you set a date for the elopement?”

  Ryan chuckled.

  “It might take some special planning, since she’s nearly ninety.”

  Anna’s soft laughter came down the line.

  “You old flirt,” she said. “I hope it made her day.”

  “It made mine,” he replied. “Until I heard the sound of your voice.”

  From his position a few feet away, Phillips made kissy-kissy sounds and Ryan flipped him the bird.

  “Gotta go,” he said, as manfully as he could muster. “Duty calls.”

  “Take care, Chief Inspector.”

  “You too, Doctor.”

  * * *

  “Sir?”

  Ryan’s smile died when he was flagged down by Yates, who looked anguished.

  “Is it another one?” he asked, and was terrified of the answer she might give. There had been no time to regroup and recover from the last two bombings, which had been only hours apart. They had a task of monumental proportions on their hands and were badly under-resourced.

  When she shook her head, his relief was short-lived.

  “No, sir,” she said. “It’s—I’ve just had a text from Jack’s mum. She knows me,” Yates explained, babbling a bit. “It’s bad news. She says Jack’s gone missing and she can’t find him. She’s worried he might have hurt himself or done something stupid.”

  “I’ll call the hospitals,” Phillips said, already pulling out his phone.

  “I’ll call Tebbutt,” Ryan began, but then caught sight of Chief Constable Morrison weaving through the crowds of people, craning her neck to look for him. “Hold that thought.”

  He ran across to meet her.

  “Sandra?”

  Morrison spun in the direction of his voice and hurried through the hoard of passengers. Her first thought was that he looked even worse than she felt, but she couldn’t possibly feel any worse and therefore retracted the comment even before it was said.

  “Ryan. There’s been a development.”

  “Another bomb?”

  Morrison sucked in a breath and her forehead furrowed at the acrid smoke riding on the breeze.

  “Not in the way you mean. It’s Jack.”

  Ryan’s heart slammed against his chest in one hard motion and his eyes became shuttered as he prepared himself to hear the worst news. It had been a hard few months for his friend and an even harder twenty-four hours. If he had gone missing from home, there was no telling what he might have done…

  “Say it quickly, please.”

  Morrison looked him in the eye.

  “He’s confessed to Lucas’s murder,” she said.

  Ryan’s elation that the man was still alive was followed by total disbelief.

  “What? You can’t be serious,” he said, angrily. “He’d never kill anybody.”

  Morrison had been prepared for his reaction; it was the same reaction she expected to receive from every member of the constabulary. Jack Lowerson was a gentle young man, the kind who watered the ailing plants on the window-ledge in CID and cared about his fellow man. There was not a violent bone in his body, except insofar as the line of duty demanded and, even then, the slightest hint of force upset him for months afterwards.

  “I’m sorry, but it’s true. I’ve just heard from Tebbutt and I thought you should hear it from me before you find out through the grapevine, or the papers.”

  “And who would have told them?”

  “Come on, Ryan. You know these things have a habit of finding their way out.”

  Ryan was shaken to the core, unable to accept what she had just told him. He would be lying if he said the possibility of Jack having killed Lucas hadn’t crossed his mind; he was a murder detective, so the prospect of foul play was never far from his thoughts. But the idea had been so ridiculous, so far outside the character of the Jack Lowerson they all knew, as to be almost unthinkable.

  “All last night, Jack consistently denied any involvement in her death,” Ryan argued. “Why has he changed his story?”

  “Tebbutt doesn’t think he’s changed his story,” Morrison told him. “She thinks he’s come around to admitting guilt out of a sense of basic decency.”

  There was a pause while Ryan considered the likelihood of that, then his brows drew together in one dark line.

  “I want to speak to him,” he demanded.

  “I can’t allow it,” Morrison said.

  “Under full guard, properly recorded, whatever you want,” he insisted. “But I need to hear this for myself.”

  Morrison looked across at the smoky trail rising into the sky following the blast and thought of the simmering threat that another bridge would be targeted. Then she thought of how this man and others had put themselves in danger to save others.

  She owed him. They all did.

  “You get five minutes,” she said. “I’ll clear it with Tebbutt, although she won’t like it.”

  “Neither would I,” Ryan said, evenly. “But I’m still going to speak to him.”

  Ryan began to turn away to tell the others, when Morrison stopped him again.

  “There’s one more thing.”

  “What else? Don’t tell me Lowerson’s being blamed for a bunch of unsolved cases, now that he’s apparently turned into a killer overnight.”

  She ignored the sarcasm because she knew it came from a place of hurt, and raised her phone to show him the screen.

  “The counter’s just hit two million.”

  He looked down at the bomber’s website and watched a cartoon dragon dance across the screen blowing a speech bubble containing the word, ‘CONGRATULATIONS!’

  “Whoop-de-doo,” he snarled, before striding away to break the news to the rest of his team.

  CHAPTER 21

  Ryan left MacKenzie in charge of overseeing the aftermath of the bomb on the High Level Bridge and headed back to CID Headquarters with Phillips in tow. Both men were physically and mentally exhausted but there was no opportunity to take stock, not when their friend had confessed to murder.

  The moment they stepped inside Police Headquarters, they were intercepted by DCI Tebbutt, who wore an expression of extreme displeasure.

  “I’d like a word with you, please.”

  Ryan turned to look at her.

  “Let me say it for you, shall I? You find it both overbearing and inappropriate that I’ve requested to see my colleague and friend, especially in light of the fact he’s confessed to the murder of our former superintendent. You’re concerned it will appear incestuous within the police hierarchy and it bothers you that I called on the Chief Constable for a special favour. Is that about it?”

  Tebbutt folded her arms.

  “In a nutshell.”

  “Good, so long as we understand one another,” he muttered, and would have headed off again but paused long enough to ask an important question.

  “Tell me something, Joan—off the record, just one detective to another. Do you think he did this thing? Do you truly believe it?”

  It was on the tip of her tongue to give him another ticking off, to tell him to go to hell and not bother asking any questions she was not at liberty to answer. But she knew him
to be an honourable man and there were times in life when there was more to be gained by giving a little.

  “Before I answer your question, do me a favour and answer one of mine,” she said.

  Phillips eyed her with suspicion, but Ryan gave a brief nod.

  “Go on. What do you want to know?”

  “Why would a man confess to a murder he didn’t commit?”

  “It’s your job to find out the answer to that,” he shot back. “There must be DNA evidence on the body that isn’t Jack’s—”

  “It’s being analysed,” she went so far as to say. “I’m expecting to hear back from the lab today. They’ve been held up a bit, for obvious reasons.”

  Ryan nodded. It was true that their technicians had been working flat out to determine the components of the bomb used on the Tyne Bridge the previous day and would be called upon again to find out whether the same ingredients were used in the double explosion on the High Level Bridge.

  “Have you contacted his family?” he asked. “They’re worried sick.”

  Tebbutt shook her head.

  “Lowerson didn’t want them to be told straight away and he declined a solicitor,” she said. “It’s up to him,” she added, when he would have argued. “I gave him the opportunity several times; listen to the tape, if you don’t believe me.”

  Phillips took a step closer, lowering his voice so that only they would be heard.

  “Now, look here, Joan. Tell the CSIs to put a rush on it,” he said. “They might be run off their feet, but the lad’s life is hanging in the balance and he’s one of our own. We need to know. You need to know.”

  “Don’t tell me how to do my job,” she snapped, but a flush crept its way up her neck. Perhaps she could have hassled the forensic team a little more, she thought. “You’re forgetting that he’s is the one who made a confession. It isn’t for us to disprove…”

  “Excuse me,” Ryan interrupted her, and brushed past them towards the custody suite.

  He’d heard from everybody aside from Lowerson himself, so he decided it was time to go and get it from the horse’s mouth.

  * * *

  They found Jack sitting on the edge of a narrow bed, lost in thought as he counted the breeze-blocks on the wall of his cell.

  Twenty-eight, in total.

  It was the same cell he’d occupied the night before and there was a funny sort of comfort in that, as if he were coming home.

  There came a rattle at the door, followed by the sound of metal brushing metal as the bolt was released and it swung open.

  “Got some visitors,” the custody officer told him, and nodded to Ryan and Phillips. “Make it quick, mind. Morrison said five minutes.”

  “Haddaway, man,” Phillips muttered, and waved him away with the kind of authority that came from knowing everybody across four command divisions, and beyond.

  Lowerson looked up at them with a pitiable mixture of joy and sorrow.

  “Budge across,” Phillips said, before the silence could grow awkward. “I’m knackered, after the morning we’ve had.”

  Lowerson shuffled across the bed so Phillips could perch beside him, then cast a wary glance towards Ryan, a man he had looked up to throughout his career on the force. He’d always wanted to be like him, to walk in his footsteps and, he supposed, to make him proud.

  But Ryan remained silent, looking at him as though he could see inside his mind and read what was hidden there.

  “Why, Jack?” he asked. “Why are you saying you killed her?”

  Lowerson said nothing and turned away from Ryan’s eyes, which saw altogether too much for comfort.

  When no answer was forthcoming, Phillips stepped in.

  “You know you can tell us anything, son. We’re not here to judge, we’re here to help you, if we can.”

  Jack swallowed painfully, and his Adam’s apple bobbed precariously as he fought his own emotions.

  “I don’t need any help,” he said. “It’s all taken care of.”

  “Nothing’s over yet,” Ryan cut in, and in a couple of long strides he covered the distance between them and dropped to his haunches, so they were on a level. “D’you hear me, Jack? Nothing is done and dusted yet. If you made a mistake, you can sort it out—explain why you would say…”

  Ryan trailed off, struggling to understand. He searched the younger man’s face for any clue of what might have led him to make a false confession, never believing that it could be real.

  He stood up again to pace away, turning his back on the pair of them until he had gathered the strength to say what he needed to say now, in front of two of his closest friends.

  “Jack, I never really told you—I never told you what happened, between Jennifer and me.”

  Lowerson rubbed his hands up and down his upper arms to warm them.

  “You don’t need to.”

  “Yes, I think I do. But I’ll save the details for another time, when all this is behind you. For the moment, I want you to know just one thing,” Ryan said, turning around again to face them. “I understand that you might have wanted to kill her, even when you thought you loved her.”

  Lowerson’s lips trembled.

  “I understand you might have felt as though you couldn’t break free, that you were trapped. I understand these things because I’ve been there myself. It’s worse because we stepped through the hoops to get there, inviting her into our lives so she could turn us inside out, chew us up and spit out whatever was left.”

  Phillips sat beside the two younger men and could not have felt for them more deeply had they been his own kin. He wished he could have done something, anything, to protect them from the pain that was still so fresh, but there was nothing. It was an old scar for Ryan, one that had healed but had been scuffed and bruised over these past five months, like a phantom ache in his chest that gave him discomfort every now and then. But for Jack, it was still an open, bleeding wound that would take time and care to heal.

  Time that he would not be given behind bars, where every criminal worth their salt would be gunning for him from the outset.

  “I’m telling you this, Jack, because I don’t want you to feel guilty for imagining what might have been, or what you might have done, given the right provocation. But thinking about killing someone is a long way from doing it.”

  Lowerson didn’t trust himself to speak, so remained silent.

  Ryan shook his head in frustration and Phillips reached across to put a hand on Lowerson’s shoulder.

  “What happened, lad? Why’d you say that you did it?”

  “You came to my home, shocked, shaken,” Ryan reminded him. “But the one thing that never wavered was your story. You said you hadn’t hurt her, that you couldn’t hurt her. I believed you, Jack,” Ryan finished, and his voice almost cracked. “I believed you would never lie to me.”

  “I haven’t lied to you,” Lowerson whispered.

  The door opened to reveal Tebbutt, who tapped a finger against her watch.

  “Time’s up.”

  CHAPTER 22

  It was almost two-thirty by the time Ryan and Phillips climbed the stairs and headed along to the incident room, having first made a pit stop for some essential provisions. It had been one of the most difficult days on record and their need for sustenance was great. The owner of the legendary Pie Van had come through in their hour of need, filling two large cardboard carriers with all manner of favourites, ranging from sandwiches to Scotch eggs and from pease pudding stotties to quinoa salad, which had elicited a suspicious glare from Phillips.

  “Don’t know why everything’s got to be organic this and vegan that,” he muttered, as they headed down the corridor towards CID. “Whatever happened to good, old-fashioned cholesterol?”

  “I think they call it progress,” Ryan said, dryly.

  Phillips gave an eloquent snort.

  “Half the vegans I know sneak a sausage sarnie after a big night out,” he said. “I’ve never seen anybody hoover a lamb kebab as fast as
a drunk vegetarian.”

  “You give them a run for their money.”

  “Waste not, want not,” Phillips replied.

  They shouldered into the incident room and watched heads slowly rise from computer screens as the appetizing scent of a late lunch carried across the room.

  “Grub’s up!” Ryan called out. “Refuel yourselves before we sit down and talk about what happened today.”

  Phillips watched several younger members of the task force tuck into the quinoa salad and sent Ryan a pained look.

  “Younger generation,” he said, sadly. “They don’t know they’re born.”

  * * *

  After his team had eaten their fill and taken the time to splash some water on their faces after a long shift, Ryan moved to the front of the room to begin a briefing. On the front row, Phillips had been joined by MacKenzie, who was polishing off the remainder of a Scotch egg. On Phillips’ other side, Melanie Yates balanced a clipboard on her lap and was sipping an extra-large mug of tea emblazoned with a motif which read, ‘CANNY GOOD.’ Sitting at the end of the row, Gary Nobel represented the EOD Unit and Tom Faulkner, the senior CSI attached to Northumbria Police, slipped in to join them and took a seat beside Jasmine Patel, head of computer analytics.

  “Thank you for showing up,” Ryan said. “I don’t need to tell you it’s been a bloody hard couple of days and I’m sure everybody is ready for some shut-eye. That’s going to come but, before I let you all go home for a few hours, we need to be sure that we’ve made the cities of Newcastle and Gateshead as secure as possible.”

  There were nods around the room.

  “We’ve had a total of three explosions across two bridges in as many days,” he said, “causing massive disruption to all concerned. You’re all aware that The Alchemist asked for two million pounds worth of bitcoins to be donated via the website www.savethebridges.org. As of the last count, we had over two million in donations from the general public, which was reached shortly after the last bomb went off.”

  “Does that mean it’s over?” Yates asked.

  “On the face of it, the bomber has got what he wanted but I’ve already heard from GCHQ, who tell me none of those bitcoins have been drawn down yet. When they are, they’ll do their best to trace where they’ve been cashed in but, for the moment, there’s no movement. That could mean something, or nothing,” Ryan said. “In the meantime, all we can do is hope that’s an end to it and make the bridges safe again.”