by LJ Ross
The first piece of footage from the bus company started to run automatically on Frank’s computer. Neither man noticed, at first.
“Kev thinks the devices must have been planted well in advance, otherwise it would have been captured on CCTV footage at any number of sites within the past two weeks. As it is…” Phillips paused to yawn widely before continuing. “As it is, most places only keep their footage for up to two weeks and half the cameras belonging to the Council don’t work. Same old story.”
“What about on the railway lines?”
“They only have cameras within fifty metres of the covered part of the platforms,” Phillips told him. On the main sections of the line, it’s only at irregular intervals depending on where they’ve assessed there are weak access points, where kids tend to get in and all that.”
“Wait,” Ryan said, suddenly, leaning over his shoulder.
“What? What is it?” Phillips said, spinning around in his desk chair.
“I can hardly believe it,” Ryan muttered. “Is that a tub of quinoa salad sitting on your desk?”
Phillips folded his arms defensively.
“Well, I’ve got my wedding suit to think of—can’t be sitting on my arse scoffing bacon butties all day, can I?”
Ryan gave a funny half-laugh, thinking of the conversation he’d just had with Frank’s future wife, when he spotted something that was worthy of genuine alarm.
“Wait,” he said again.
“Oh, aye. Don’t tell me,” Phillips said. “You’ve spotted the vegetable smoothie I had at lunchtime.”
“What?” Ryan looked at him in genuine disgust, then shook it off. “No, I think I caught something on that last video, Frank. Can we take it back to the beginning?”
Phillips turned back to his computer screen.
“It must have started automatically. Let me see now…” He made a funny little humming sound while his fingers flew over the keys with surprising dexterity. “This is the stuff the bus company sent through from their routes going over the High Level Bridge.”
He peered at the image, clicked to zoom in a bit closer and then nodded.
“This is from the driver’s windscreen camera. They all have those now, so they can cover themselves in case there’s ever an accident,” Phillips said. “This is the view of the lower level of the bridge just before that minor charge went off, on Sunday morning. This bus was just entering the bridge and ended up crossing over just as the bomb exploded. It was too small to cause any damage to the bus, so it crossed over without any trouble. Do you want me to skip ahead? Where was the bit you saw?”
Ryan simply leaned down and tapped the button, so it moved forward in extreme slow motion.
“There,” he said, and paused the footage. “Did you see it?”
Phillips had seen it, but he didn’t believe it.
“Rewind that one more time,” he muttered. “That can’t be right.”
They watched the footage again with mounting anger, until Phillips sat back in his chair and put a hand to his face.
“Unbelievable,” he growled.
“ ‘Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.’ Arthur Conan-Doyle,” Ryan muttered, and flicked his eyes up to the clock on the wall. “We need to hurry.”
“I’ll make the calls.”
CHAPTER 38
Sergeant Sue Bannerman swung a new canvas beach bag on her arm as she waited in the queue to pass through security and on to her departure gate. It had been a long time since she’d had a holiday, and even longer since she’d travelled somewhere exotic without being on active duty. She could hardly wait to sip caipirinhas on Ipanema Beach in a matter of a few short hours. Sun, sea, surf and, most importantly, awkward extradition arrangements with the UK. She’d wait a few days and then draw down all the bitcoins she could. There wasn’t anywhere near two million, more’s the pity, but she could still live like a queen in Brazil on a few hundred grand.
Her eyes remained alert and watchful, passing over the security personnel as they hurried people along and checked their over-stuffed cabin luggage through the scanning machines.
Nobody was looking at her.
Hardly anyone did, she thought with a self-deprecating smile. Good old Sue, she thought. Not too pretty, not too ugly, just presentable enough to fill a hole in a man’s life until somebody better came along.
Somebody younger, with bigger tits and a fake smile.
Stay calm, she told herself. Just stay calm, a little while longer.
She shuffled along the queue with her head slightly bent, trying not to draw attention to herself. She carried just the one canvas bag containing the essentials—and her phone, which was her prized possession. They could take anything else, but not her phone.
“Boots off! Jackets off! Any laptops, Kindles or iPads?”
She smiled pleasantly and bent down to take off her desert boots. Cheesy, maybe, but they were bloody comfortable. She might try out a whole new look, once she was in South America. Maybe she’d dye her hair a different colour and give herself a new, more exciting name, and wear sexier heels.
Her smile dipped.
Maybe if she’d tried those things sooner, Gary would have…
No, she thought. That bastard would always have a roving eye. It didn’t matter what she wore, or how she looked. He was the type who was never content with one woman, or even two.
She thought briefly of his wife, Madeleine. She’d met her dozens of times and could almost have written a book on her, considering how much Gary had told her in and out of the bedroom. Maddy Nobel was a sweet, trusting woman who’d married young and hoped for a faithful husband. She’d fallen for Gary’s specious charms just as they all had and, until recently, had been blissfully unaware of the kind of man she had married. She lived in a kind of willing ignorance, one where the world was all sunlight and moonbeams and her husband was a demi-god.
But she’d never seen Gary cry like a baby, never seen him struggle with the grief of having killed a man in combat. She’d never held him and rocked him, then soothed him with her body. Maddy could never know the depths of love that she had experienced with Gary because her house was built on nothing but sand.
Sand and lies.
“Miss?”
Sue jerked out of her reverie and realised she was holding up the rest of the queue.
“Sorry,” she said, and quickly shoved her jacket into one of the plastic tubs.
“Mobile phone? Tablet?”
She hesitated for a second, then retrieved it from the side pocket of her bag and placed it in the tub. It was standard procedure, after all. Nothing to worry about, and it would look strange if she didn’t.
“Go on through,” the security guard told her, with a nod.
She glanced around the security hall again and, seeing nothing unusual, stepped beneath the arched security barrier.
Bleep.
Sue let out a short sigh. Nothing to worry about; it happened all the time. Sometimes, they did random checks and it was all part of the procedure.
“Any jewellery, love? Any metal?”
She shook her head.
“Alright, can you step through again, please?”
Sue focused on taking deep breaths in and out.
“No problem,” she said, and barely recognised her own voice.
She stepped beneath the archway again.
Bleep.
She could have howled with frustration but, by now, the other security guard had come over and their faces were no longer smiling and approachable. They were suspicious.
“Come and step into this cubicle, please,” one of them said, pointing towards a plastic tube which detected dangerous chemicals and tiny metal devices. She should know; she’d been fully trained in their use. “Just put your hands above your head.”
She had seen one or two passengers being subjected to the same thing, earlier in the queue, so she tried not to panic. There was nothing to find
, anyway. She had already checked her body with a hand-held sensor they kept back at Otterburn and there had been no chemical traces.
“Higher, please,” the security guard said, and she raised her arms as the scanners whirred.
The lights began to flash red and there came a series of bleeps.
“This is ridiculous,” she told them. “I haven’t got anything dangerous on me. I have a plane to catch.”
“I’m sure you’ll still make your plane, Miss, but not before we’ve done our checks. You can’t be too careful, these days.”
She almost laughed at the irony of it all; a bunch of glorified monkeys in suits were lecturing her about enhanced security.
“Just let me grab my phone,” she said, casually. “I don’t want somebody stealing it out of the tub.”
“Matty? Look after this lady’s phone, will you?” the guard called out. “I’m just going to do a quick fingertip search in one of the private rooms and then we can all be on our way, alright love?”
Sue looked into the guileless eyes of the security guard and reminded herself that she was feeling overly paranoid. The place was awash with passengers hoping to catch long-haul evening flights, so it was little wonder they had extra security in place. She would have commended them for it, in her old life.
“No problem,” she said, and gave her best impression of a smile.
“Just through here,” the guard said, and led her to a small room with an unmarked door. Inside, there was a table and four chairs, a film camera and recording device, and two men waiting for her with stony faces.
“Hi, Sue. Long time, no see.”
She spun around to leave but found the exit barred, and her only insurance was lying at the bottom of a plastic tub beside a conveyor belt.
CHAPTER 39
Sue Bannerman started to laugh, and it was a sound close to mania.
“What’s all this about, Ryan? Thinking of coming on holiday with me?”
Ryan spoke very carefully, keeping his anger in check.
“The only holiday you’ll be taking is a bus trip at Her Majesty’s Pleasure.”
“I’ve already given most of my life to Her Majesty,” she said. “The rest belongs to me.”
“And what about the lives you took, Sue?” Phillips asked, softly. “What about them?”
Her throat worked, and she swallowed sudden tears, which rose every time she thought of the others who had died.
She hadn’t meant…
She wouldn’t think about that.
“In war, there is always collateral damage,” she said, in a shaky voice. “I was taught to cope with that, unlike the rest of you, who swan around pretending to save the world. Why don’t you leave it to the Big Boys, eh, Frank? You two are just small fish in a much bigger pond.”
“Small fish or not, we appear to be reeling you in,” Ryan shot back. “Any last words, before we arrest you on suspicion of murder?”
“Here’s a word for you, Ryan: BOMB.”
A muscle twitched in the corner of his mouth, but his demeanour never altered.
“The question you need to ask yourselves is: where have I planted the next bomb? You didn’t think I wouldn’t be prepared for this very eventuality, did you?” she said, affecting an air of supreme confidence. “I admit that I never thought you’d look further than Gary—the man has ‘guilt’ written all over him, in more ways than one—but that doesn’t matter now. I have my insurance.”
Phillips scratched the side of his face with a rasp of fingernails against stubble and let out a long, gusty breath.
“Ah, but do you, though? D’you know what I think? It’s all bluff.”
“Why do you think we waited until you’d passed through security?” Ryan asked. “We know you’re not carrying anything, Sue, because you’ve just been scanned and your phone is currently sitting in a secure lock-box awaiting its disposal.”
“We like to be prepared too,” Phillips said, cheerfully.
She looked between them and smiled again, shaking her head as though they were a pair of minor nuisances.
“How on earth did you guess it was me?” she asked, as if she was settling down for a cosy, fireside chat.
“How do you think, Sue?”
She thought of all the steps she had taken, all the careful planning, and drew a frustrating blank.
“I planned the perfect murder,” she said.
“There’s no such thing,” Ryan replied. “You were caught on camera, Sue. Nobody flinches before a bomb actually explodes, unless they know what’s about to happen.”
She followed the dots and closed her eyes in silent acceptance.
“The bus. The bloody bus on the bridge,” she said.
“Why’d you do it, Sue? Simple revenge?” Phillips asked.
She didn’t have to tell them her reasons and, in that moment, Sue was sorely tempted to remain silent. She could take her reasons to the grave and they’d carry on with their lives, make their own conclusions and live to fight another day.
Whereas she…
Sue reached out to grasp the back of the chair and she drew it closer, so she could sit. Her body felt exhausted, more tired than she could ever remember being in her whole life.
“You have to admit, I had you all going for a while,” she said, with a girlish smile they found vaguely nauseating. “I thought that, if I was on the bridge while an explosion went off, you’d never suspect me. What bomber would put themselves in danger like that?”
She laughed, a bit too brightly.
“Only a mad one,” she finished for them. “But you don’t need to know ‘how’, because you’ve already worked it all out, haven’t you? You’ve slotted it all together in your minds.”
When they remained silent, she glared at them.
“I did it for every woman who ever felt cheated. For every woman who was told, ‘I love you’ by some lying scumbag and believed it,” she said. “I gave that bastard eight years. Eight years of my life and then I find he’s been shagging some little receptionist on the side?”
“How do you think his wife feels?” Ryan put in, ever so smoothly.
“She’s different,” Sue muttered. “You don’t understand.”
“Try me.”
“Maddy was like a mother to him. She was his wife in name only. I was his wife. Me, not her.”
As Ryan listened to her ravings, he began to feel an emotion he had not anticipated.
It was pity.
“We all make mistakes, Sue. We recover from them and move on,” he said, thinking of his own history. “We don’t kill people.”
“No, you make excuses for them instead. Nowadays, it’s a sex addiction, right? It’s just a made-up label, so that people like Gary can be the victim and his wife can forgive him because she can tell herself it isn’t his fault.”
“Medical professionals would disagree with you,” Phillips pointed out.
“Quacks,” she told him. “Listen to me, Frank. I know you don’t want to hear this and I know the world will say I was just another crazy ex; some fragile little woman who was out for revenge. It might have started that way,” she admitted. “But it became more than that. So much more. It was about righting the balance in the world.”
“By killing?” Ryan said, just to be clear.
“Think of it like this,” she said, as if she was explaining the basics of trigonometry and not discussing mass slaughter. “By removing Kayleigh-Ann Dobson, I’ve removed one of the people responsible for causing heartbreak and for breaking up happy homes. If she did it once, she’d have done it again, make no mistake. Think of her as a lieutenant in a terrorist organisation, if it makes it easier for you.”
“And Nobel is—what? The leader of your fictional organisation?” Ryan asked.
“Yes,” she said. “But if he were killed, he’d be glorified. His name would be martyred in the ranks of the army, as if he’d been a poster boy for all that was good and right instead of all that was mendacious and wrong.”
>
Her hands started to tremble, so she held them together on her lap.
“So, I decided he could be tried in a court and found guilty.”
“Seems a bit one-sided,” Phillips said.
“Sometimes, the fairest outcome isn’t the one that conforms to the laws of man,” she snapped.
Ryan and Phillips exchanged a look. They had almost heard enough.
“And all those others who died, the child who almost died, the four other people who were seriously injured in your holy cause…where do they figure in all this?”
“They’re necessary losses. Sometimes, we must make sacrifices to serve the greater good. You wouldn’t understand.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Ryan mused. “For example, I’ve been forced to listen to your navel-gazing attempts to justify premeditated murder for, gosh, ten minutes now. But, as you say, it’s all in the service of the greater good.” He turned to Phillips. “Frank? Book her.”
“With pleasure,” his sergeant replied.
CHAPTER 40
Around the same time that Ryan and Phillips were securing hand-cuffs on the woman who had fashioned herself as ‘The Alchemist’ but who would come to be known as the infamous ‘Bridge Killer’, DCI Tebbutt opened the door to Jack Lowerson’s cell.
The expression in his eyes was one of such infinite sadness and she understood, now, what had caused it.
“We know the truth, Jack,” she said. There was no point in sugar-coating it; they both knew who had dealt the lethal blow.
He let out a deep sigh and leaned back against the wall.
“How did you find out?”
“DNA. How else?”
“I didn’t think—I just wanted to protect her. She’s in her late sixties and she’s my mum.”
Tebbutt nodded. She needed no other explanation for why he had tried to shield his mother. He felt responsible, as if it were his fault that the woman had taken it upon herself to teach Lucas a lesson and warn her off.
Besides, he loved his mother.
He thought she loved him but, in the end, she’d loved herself even more. That particular truth would be harder to accept, in the fullness of time.
