Seven Bridges

by LJ Ross

  “Worth putting some surveillance on her, just for a couple of days?”

  Ryan thought of the money and resources, then nodded.

  “Make the call, Frank. I’d rather be safe than sorry.”

  CHAPTER 29

  It was after dark by the time they arrived back at Police Headquarters and its cheap strobe lighting cast an unflattering, garish light over the tired faces of the task force assigned to Operation Alchemist.

  “At first, our perpetrator was a terrorist,” Ryan said, once they had reconvened. “Now, he’s a killer.”

  Ryan moved to stand beside the long whiteboard at the front of the room, which now displayed images of the victims of the Millennium Bridge Attack as they had been in life, with their names written in bold black lettering beneath. Pinter had come through with the dental records for the woman in the red coat, whose name turned out to be Kayleigh-Ann Dobson, and Ryan added her name beneath an image of her taken from her driver’s license.

  “If we assume that the same person who bombed the Tyne and High Level bridges is also responsible for killing four people and injuring two others today, they now have these people on their conscience,” he said, rapping a knuckle against the wall. “First off, we have John Walsh. He was a thirty-eight-year-old barrister, husband and father. Next, there’s Pritesh Joshi, a forty-one-year-old IT consultant, who was also married with children. Thirdly, we have Anouk Paradis, a twenty-one-year-old translator who was single, as far as we know. Finally, this was Kayleigh-Ann Dobson, a twenty-three-year-old receptionist at the courthouse.”

  He turned to them with serious eyes.

  “Remember their faces,” he said. “Because these are the people we’re fighting for.”

  “Do you think it’s the same person?” MacKenzie queried. “The MO is similar, especially coming so soon after the other bridges went up, but there was no advance warning message, no demand for bitcoins. There’s no motive.”

  “Other than the e-mail The Enquirer received after the event,” Ryan said. “That’s why I want us to focus on these four people, and to add another name to the list.”

  He tacked up a picture of Carole Fentiman, set a little apart from other others.

  “Carole Fentiman is a thirty-nine-year-old, married mother of one, a little girl called Amelia who also survived the bridge attack,” he told them. “They’re both recovering in hospital but it’s down to pure chance that they came out of that alive when the others didn’t. That means they were potential targets and I believe they should be counted.”

  “You think the target was one of the people on the bridge?” This, from Corporal Wilson.

  “I think we have to consider that as a strong possibility,” Ryan said. “The attack is a departure from the other bridges and it’s an escalation in behaviour. Remember, our bomber hadn’t hurt anyone before—”

  “Sue might have been more badly hurt,” Phillips pointed out and glanced across at Sergeant Bannerman, who had a small bandage on her left cheek and similar patches on her knees which were hidden beneath a loose pair of trousers.

  “I’ve had worse injuries taking my niece to the soft play,” she joked, and got a few laughs from around the room.

  Ryan smiled.

  “Besides, I assume our bomber would have known the first charge was not enough to cause serious damage because it was intended as a warning. The bomb this morning had a very different purpose.”

  There were nods around the room.

  “It’s still possible that we’ve got a copycat on our hands,” MacKenzie thought aloud. “It wouldn’t be the first time somebody has taken advantage of an existing crisis to further their own ends.”

  “Aye, but to make a bomb like that, they’d need to have the components already at hand and that’s no easy job,” Wilson replied. “There’s no way a copycat could have put together a nail bomb like that overnight without some forward planning.”

  Ryan agreed.

  “There’s something else to bear in mind, too. I’ve had a word with GCHQ, who’ve been looking into the bitcoin website and monitoring any movement there. In their opinion, the website is not genuine. Our own team agrees.”

  There were a few frowns around the room as the team considered the new information that had come to light.

  “You’re telling us the e-mail about the counter being rigged was correct?” MacKenzie said, leaning forward to rest her forearms on her knees. “It never hit two million?”

  Ryan shook his head.

  “I asked my contact at GCHQ whether they had gone over my head on this and falsely inflated the counter to make it look as though it had reached two million, to prevent another explosion. They say they didn’t and I’m minded to believe them.”

  “It wouldn’t have helped,” Yates muttered. “It would only have made the bomber angry when he found out the bitcoins weren’t there and that would risk repercussions.”

  “Exactly,” Ryan said. “I asked them whether it’s possible that some misguided hacker tried to alter the counter to make sure the target was reached, but they’re telling me the website hasn’t been interfered with from outside; they’re telling me it’s been manipulated from within.”

  “Hold on,” Phillips held up his hands. “Just hang on a minute, here. You’re telling me the bomber fiddled about with his own website? Why would he want to do that? I thought they wanted to get their hands on the cash?”

  “Perhaps that’s only what he wanted us to think,” Ryan said, and the light began to dawn. “What if everything that happened on the Tyne Bridge and the High Level Bridge was just an elaborate cover for what they always planned to do on the Millennium Bridge?”

  The clock on the wall ticked loudly in the ensuing silence.

  “By making it look as though the counter hit two million, The Alchemist let us believe the conditions had been met and the threat was over. The bridges were checked and re-opened, business as usual,” Ryan said. “We were lulled into a false sense of security because we believed it was over and, in any event, he’d send us a warning before anything else happened. That was our mistake.”

  Ryan turned and walked back to look at each of the faces on the wall.

  “We need to look at these five people because, if I’m right, one of them’s the reason for all of this.”

  “In that case, let’s get to work,” Phillips said, and rubbed his hands together.

  * * *

  As the room disbanded to begin working on each of the tasks Ryan had assigned, Tom Faulkner took his chance to have a private word.

  “I’ve got the team working on the samples we took from the bridge this morning,” he said, and Ryan nodded as he added a few significant timings to the murder board.

  “Mm, yeah, thanks, Tom. Just let me know when you find anything important.”

  “Right.”

  Faulkner still lingered there, and Ryan sent him a sideways glance.

  “Something else on your mind?”

  Faulkner tapped his fingers against the side of the folder he held in his hand and shuffled from side to side, looking extremely uncomfortable.

  “Spit it out, man,” Ryan told him. “You’re making me sea-sick.”

  Faulkner took a quick glance around the room to check nobody was listening and then lowered his voice to a stage whisper.

  “You, ah, you know I’ve been working on the Lucas case,” he said.

  Ryan nodded.

  “I…well, I shouldn’t—”

  Ryan held up a hand to stop him.

  “Tom, I don’t want you stepping outside professional boundaries…”

  “We found another set of DNA,” Faulkner said, in a rush of words. “Tissue and hair found on Lucas’ body that didn’t belong to her.”

  “Who—?”

  “We’re running it now. But, Ryan, if another person was there, Lowerson might not have done it.”

  Having already said too much, Faulkner tapped his nose and then scurried from the room, leaving Ryan to mull over
the news.

  The question remained: if not Jack, then who?

  CHAPTER 30

  John Walsh Esq. had lived in a very comfortable home in South Shields, close to the seafront. When Ryan and Phillips parked on the kerb outside, they could see the remains of a thawing snowman on the front lawn and wondered if he had made it with his kids over the weekend.

  “Ready?” Ryan murmured.

  “Aye, best get it over with,” Phillips replied, with a heavy heart.

  They steadied themselves while they waited for somebody to come to the door, preparing the right words to say, if there were any ‘right’ words that could be used to convey the worst possible news.

  When the door opened, a boy of around ten or eleven stood in the doorway wearing an Avengers t-shirt and a pair of scuffed jeans.

  “Who are you?”

  “Alfie! Wait, I’ll get the—oh.”

  His mother hurried downstairs but stopped on the bottom step as she saw them framed in the fizzy orange glow of the streetlamps outside.

  “Alfie, go and look after your sister,” she said, in a dull voice.

  “I don’t want—”

  “For once, please do as you’re told,” she snapped, and then put a hand to her eyes as he stormed off towards the lounge and shut the door with a slam.

  “Mrs Walsh?”

  She nodded, and tears began to spill from her eyes as she clutched the bannister rail.

  “My name is DCI Ryan, and this is DS Phillips,” Ryan said, as gently as he could. “We’re very sorry to inform you that your husband, John, was killed in an explosion on the Millennium Bridge earlier today. Our sincerest condolences.”

  It didn’t matter how many times he’d said the words, nor how trite they sounded, his sympathy remained real.

  She said nothing at first, just continued to stare at them while tears flowed freely and silently down her cheeks.

  “I can’t let the children—I can’t let them see me like this,” she lifted trembling hands to her face and tried to stem the flow of tears.

  “Can we come in, love?” Phillips asked, and simply stepped inside to take her arm while Ryan shut the door behind them. “Let’s go into the kitchen and sit down, shall we? Is it this way?”

  She nodded helplessly and leaned against his arm, allowing herself to be led through to a room away from the children, for now.

  Once they stepped inside the bright family kitchen, Phillips settled her into one of the antique pine chairs and Ryan grabbed a box of tissues he spotted on the countertop, which he offered to her.

  “I don’t believe it,” she whispered, after long minutes. She looked between them with pleading eyes. “Are you sure it’s him? It could be someone else.”

  “We’re sure, love,” Phillips told her. “But you’ll need to come down and make a formal identification, when you feel able.”

  Her whole body shuddered as she succumbed to grief and Ryan put a hand over hers.

  “Is there anybody we can contact? Perhaps one of the children’s grandparents could come?”

  “My—my parents are in Kent and John’s are too old; it’ll kill them, when they hear… There’s my sister. She lives in Alnwick,” she mumbled.

  “Do you have the number?”

  Ryan put a call through to her sister, who promised to come down straight away.

  “She’s on her way now,” he said. “Mrs Walsh, I’m sorry, but I need to ask you some questions. Do you think you can manage it?”

  She pressed her fingers to her lips.

  “Will it help?”

  “It might.”

  She nodded.

  “Thank you,” he said, and came to sit beside her.

  “Can you tell me, was it usual for your husband to cross the Millennium Bridge every morning?”

  She dabbed her face with a tissue and then clutched it in her hands as she thought.

  “Yes, I think John liked to park his car on the south side and walk the rest of the way into work because it saved him having to drive through the centre of Newcastle on his way home.”

  “Was he due to be in court this morning?”

  She seemed not to hear him at first, and Ryan was about to ask her again, when she finally answered.

  “Ah, I’m not sure. He’s in court most days, but his chambers are right next door to the courthouse, so he didn’t have far to travel most of the time.”

  “I see,” Ryan murmured, and exchanged a glance with Phillips. Here, they had found another victim with a regular routine and it made their job all the harder.

  “Would you say your husband had any enemies? Was there anyone who might have wanted to hurt him?”

  Her eyes were red and swollen when she looked up, but they were fierce.

  “John was a good, kind man. He never made an enemy in his life—”

  “Alright,” Ryan murmured, ever mindful of the fact she was in the throes of grief and required careful handling. “Did John ever mention any cases that gave him cause for alarm? A difficult client, perhaps?”

  She pinched the bridge of her nose between thumb and forefinger and tried to think clearly.

  “John never really spoke about his cases,” she whispered. “I’m sorry, I-I can’t take it in.”

  “Alright, Mrs Walsh,” Ryan said. “We’ll leave it there.”

  Just then, the door to the kitchen opened and two children looked on at them with frank suspicion. They saw their mother’s tears and hurried across to her.

  “Mummy! What’s the matter? Where’s Daddy?”

  She wrapped her arms around them and buried her face in their soft hair, holding them close as she wondered how she could say the words that would change their lives forever.

  “Daddy’s gone to heaven,” she managed. “A bad person hurt him, and he’s gone to heaven.”

  Ryan and Phillips left them to their grief but waited on the kerb outside her house until the woman’s sister arrived, twenty minutes later.

  Only then did he start the engine.

  “It probably isn’t real to them,” Ryan said, angrily. “To the person who killed those kids’ father, he wasn’t real. They just pressed a button and, boom! John Walsh is gone, alongside three other people.”

  “If they thought about it too much, they wouldn’t be able to go through with it,” Phillips agreed. “It’s a coward’s way.”

  Ryan released the handbrake.

  “Time to make our next stop,” he said, grimly.

  * * *

  Pritesh Joshi had lived in a smart area of Newcastle known as Gosforth, not far from the racecourse. As MacKenzie and Yates pulled up outside his large, newly-built property they found it brimming with people and cars, which spilled out of the driveway and onto the paved cul-de-sac outside.

  “Shit,” MacKenzie muttered. “This is all we need.”

  “Do you want to come back later?” Yates suggested, peering through the windshield. “It looks like they’re having a party.”

  MacKenzie drummed her fingers on the steering wheel, then shook her head.

  “His wife needs to be told, today.”

  They made their way across the darkened street and up to the front door, where they heard the sound of merriment coming from within.

  “Here goes,” MacKenzie said, and rang the doorbell.

  It took several attempts before anybody answered and, even then, it was not Mrs Joshi but a much older lady who looked them up and down, then shouted back into the house in a stream of Hindi.

  They stood awkwardly on the doorstep for long seconds until a stunning woman with a fall of black hair came to see what the fuss was about. Her wide, almond-shaped eyes flicked between them with the beginnings of something like fear, before she leaned down to kiss the old woman’s cheek and direct her back into the house.

  “Can I help you?” she asked, keeping one hand on the doorframe.

  “Mrs Joshi? My name is Detective Inspector Denise MacKenzie, and this is Trainee Detective Constable Melanie Yates. I’
m afraid we have some bad news. Is there somewhere private we could talk?”

  “Bad news? What do you mean?”

  MacKenzie met her eyes and steeled herself to keep going.

  “I regret to inform you that your husband, Pritesh, was killed earlier today in a bomb explosion on the Millennium Bridge. We’re terribly sorry for your loss.”

  She watched the woman’s knuckles turn white on the doorframe, and her skin drain of all colour.

  “No. No,” she repeated, daring them to argue. “Pritesh is working late tonight; he told me he would be home late.”

  When they said nothing, only continued to look at her with compassion, her eyes filled with tears and the noise from the party dimmed in her ears.

  “I’ll call him,” she decided. “I’ll call him, and you’ll see.”

  She looked around with dazed eyes searching for a telephone, and MacKenzie judged it was time to step in.

  “Mrs Joshi, let’s go upstairs, where it’s quiet.”

  The old woman had come back to hover in the hallway and Yates beckoned her forward.

  “She needs you,” she said, and although the woman spoke no English, she needed nobody to interpret the meaning.

  Something terrible had happened.

  Mrs Joshi looked up as her mother rushed to help and reached out a hand.

  “Maata,” she wailed.

  They went upstairs, walking slowly behind the two women until they reached what looked like the master bedroom. A man’s clothing was folded across the back of a chair and they spotted a pair of glasses on a bedside table, beside a bottle of aftershave.

  They waited while Mrs Joshi explained the situation to her mother and felt tears clog their own throats as the old woman’s face creased into lines of profound sorrow.

  “Mrs Joshi, the last thing we want to do is disturb you at this distressing time,” MacKenzie said. “But there are one or two very important questions we need to ask you.”

  “You’re—you’re sure it’s Pritesh and not some other man?”

  “Your husband was identified by his dental records,” Yates said, quietly. “I’m so sorry.”

  The woman raised a slender hand to her face, covering her eyes as her mother held her close and sang what sounded like an Indian lullaby amid her own tears.