Longstone: A DCI Ryan Mystery (The DCI Ryan Mysteries Book 10)

by LJ Ross

  Morrison sighed.

  “Look, I’ve had a word with Smythe-Weston’s Commander,” she said. “He’s agreed to make an exception on this occasion to allow the police to enter the wreck for the sole purpose of continuing our investigation.”

  Ryan could have argued further, but he was a firm believer in picking one’s battles.

  “Whatever helps them to sleep better at night,” he said. “I don’t care which hoops I have to jump through to get down there, so long as I can do it sooner rather than later.”

  “What’s stopping you?” Morrison asked.

  “Right now? Gale force winds,” he replied, taking another sip of coffee as he watched the rain driving in from the sea. “It’ll be a miracle if we can get a diving team down, today.”

  A few minutes later, he ended the call and slipped the phone back into his pocket, thinking about the person he believed to have killed three people. There was malice in each case, a kind of vicious spite that revealed itself in the manner of their deaths and served as a useful insight into the mind of the person responsible.

  The killer had acted swiftly and without remorse, their own needs ranking far higher than those of the people around them. A person like that was volatile.

  As the rain began to ease off, Ryan turned back to his team.

  “Jack? Get Phillips on the phone and tell him there’s been a change of plan. I want Daisy Jones brought in for questioning. Tell him to think up some pretext.”

  Lowerson blinked.

  “I thought we had everything we needed from her, for the time being? And isn’t that contrary to the PACE guidelines?”

  “We do,” Ryan said. “And it is. I’m bringing her in for safe-keeping, Jack, but I don’t want her to know that, just yet.”

  “Or anybody under the same roof,” Yates realised.

  Ryan turned back to watch the sea, willing the storm to pass.

  CHAPTER 34

  “Can you tell us about your relationship with your brother, Mr Hutchinson?”

  Hutch had elected to be questioned first, waiving his right to a lawyer in the hopes of speeding things up a bit. They were seated in his cubby-hole office once more where, Phillips happened to note, he had scaled back his photographic shrine to the woman they would be questioning next.

  “He—Kris was my younger brother. You can imagine what that’s like.”

  “Not really,” MacKenzie said. “Why don’t you tell us?”

  “He was—”

  Selfish.

  Unreliable.

  “Kris was very outgoing,” he said, after a second’s pause. “Very gregarious, with a lot of charm. Women loved him.”

  “Women, or one woman in particular?” MacKenzie asked, so easily he almost missed it.

  “I—you mean Gemma.”

  They waited patiently for him to elaborate.

  “It’s no secret that I’ve loved Gemma for a long time,” he said, lifting his chin. “But if Kris had been alive, I’d have put her out of my mind, or tried to.”

  “Did you argue over Gemma?” Phillips asked. “Wouldn’t be the first time a woman had come between two brothers.”

  “No, we didn’t argue.” I never told him, and Kris was too egocentric to notice.

  “All the same, it must have been hard seeing the pair of them together, in the old days,” Phillips pressed.

  Hutch clenched his hands, then deliberately unclenched again. He needed to remain calm.

  “I was too busy to notice,” he lied.

  “Come on, mate. When a man loves a woman the way you love Gemma, there had to be moments when you felt like fate was against you, eh? Especially when he went missing. You must have felt mixed emotions, then.”

  “I—I felt worried, obviously.”

  “And?”

  “And nothing. I felt worried for my brother, especially as I knew by then that Gemma was expecting his child. I was angry he would leave her at such an important time and I was worried something might have happened to him.”

  MacKenzie made a murmuring sound.

  “It’s funny, you know, when we looked back over your brother’s file something struck us: there was hardly any coverage. Nothing on the evening news or in The Evening Chronicle. Can you explain that?”

  Hutch swallowed and reached for the glass of water sitting on the desk beside him.

  “I can hardly control what the newspapers choose to print,” he said.

  “No, but you could have kicked up more of a fuss. You could have shouted a bit louder, Paul, when your kid brother disappeared.”

  Hutch went red and then a deathly white as the blood drained from his face. They were right, he thought. He could have done more but he didn’t because…

  “Did you see an opportunity, Hutch?”

  His eyes dropped away from the woman’s face, unable to maintain eye contact any longer.

  “I wanted to help, that’s all.”

  “Aye, and maybe if she was grateful, that wouldn’t be such a bad thing would it, eh?” Phillips prodded. They needed to see how angry this man could get, and this was the best way they knew how.

  “No,” Hutch snarled. “I was a friend to her, an uncle to Josh…”

  But they were right, he thought. He had coveted his brother’s partner and child, wanted them for his own. Nothing had changed, just because time had passed and that child had grown. When Josh succeeded, he felt all the pride of a father, and when he was knocked down, he felt the same deflation.

  “Yes,” he admitted, with a harsh sob. “I wanted Gemma and Josh. I was glad Kris had gone. God forgive me, I was glad he had gone. I hated him for having everything I wanted and for squandering it, when I’d have given anything for even a look from her.”

  * * *

  Gemma had composed herself by the time Phillips and MacKenzie caught up with her again. Her hair and make-up had been refreshed and she was making a note to stock up on certain drinks in the bar. At first glance, they might have thought she’d never heard the news about Daisy, which must surely have come as a severe blow, not merely to her family but to her own self-esteem.

  They followed her into the kitchen, which was empty now. It was a modern affair, with big stainless-steel range cookers and countertops that gleamed. They took their trade seriously, MacKenzie thought, and hadn’t scrimped on the costs.

  “Can you tell us about your relationship with Kris?” she asked, as they settled on three stools.

  Gemma cast her mind back, all the way.

  “Kris was…well, he was gorgeous,” she said. “Good-looking but with a twinkle in his eye, you know?”

  “I know,” MacKenzie said, with a smile for her husband.

  “He was the sort of person who could command all of your attention,” Gemma recalled. “When he spoke, people listened. When he gave you his attention, it was his full attention. He made you feel special.”

  “But?” MacKenzie prompted her.

  Gemma gave a wry smile.

  “He didn’t have much of a work ethic, and that could be stressful. We started up Shell Seekers together and it was mostly my money that went into it, money I’d saved working as a barmaid for years. It was mostly me who did the work, too,” she admitted, with a sad shrug. “It didn’t change how I felt about him. I knew what he was like, when I first met him while we were at school. If there was a way to get out of something, or a shortcut he could take, Kris would take it.”

  “Were you happy?”

  Gemma opened her mouth, then shut it again as she thought back. Yes, she thought. She had been happy.

  “He was my world,” she admitted. “We made each other happy. I couldn’t understand it when I thought he’d left me; it made no sense. At the time, I thought it was a reaction to the news about the baby…it wasn’t planned, you see.”

  They nodded, without any kind of judgment.

  “Most babies aren’t, or so I hear,” MacKenzie smiled.

  Gemma nodded.

  “From the moment I found out
I was expecting Josh, I wanted to build a home, to get our lives on track. But Kris…” She shook her head slightly. “He just wasn’t built that way. He was a risk-taker, a man who liked to live a bit on the edge. He hated ‘normality’ whereas I think I’ve always craved it.”

  “You’d have found that with Hutch,” Phillips remarked.

  Gemma nodded.

  “I agree. At the time, I just didn’t see him as anything other than a friend who happened to be Kris’s brother. As more time passed…well, I realised he might have had feelings for me. I felt empty after Kris left, or after I thought he’d left. I wasn’t ready to love anybody else or even to try. It’s taken me this long to take a gamble again.”

  She smiled.

  “All’s well that ends well?”

  “I hope so.”

  CHAPTER 35

  Hours ticked by until the weather finally changed, and the police divers took their chance to head out to Knivestone and seek out the answer Ryan needed. The tides meant there would be only a short window of time to search the cabin inside HMS Bernicia, and there was every possibility its walls might be so thickened by kelp and algae that it would be impossible to find anything beneath.

  But they had to try.

  Ryan stood with Alex Walker in the Coastguard’s Office, watching the progress of the Jolly Roger across the marine radar shown on a large monitor.

  “You’re confident you’ve got the right one?” Walker asked, after a few minutes had passed.

  Ryan blew out a noisy breath.

  “It’s a fifty-fifty chance,” he said. “Not bad odds.” And he had a favourite.

  The outer door opened to admit Phillips and MacKenzie, both of whom looked as though they’d been through a car wash.

  “Enjoy your swim?” Ryan asked, with a grin.

  “Aye, very funny,” Phillips said, shouldering out of his raincoat. “Got caught in a rain shower on our way back from the inn.”

  “How did it go over there?” Ryan asked.

  “As well as can be expected,” MacKenzie said. “We told Gemma and Paul about the DNA match between Kris Reid and Daisy Jones—they joined up the dots quickly enough.”

  “How did they react?”

  “Both of them seemed to be floored by the news,” Phillips replied. “If their shock wasn’t genuine, they’re two of the finest actors I’ve ever seen. Both seemed more concerned about how the kids would feel, once they found out.”

  “And how did they take it?” Ryan asked.

  “They don’t know yet. We agreed to give the family until the morning to lay it out for Josh and Daisy, in private,” MacKenzie said. “It’ll be better coming from one of them than one of us.”

  “Not necessarily,” Ryan muttered, but let it go. “It’ll be a hard knock, however they hear about it.”

  “Daisy was none too happy about being dragged in again for questioning; Carole Kirby came up with some old blarney about Mandy knowing some people connected to Vernon’s Salvage, so she had Daisy looking through mountains of known-person files to see if she recognised any, the last time we checked.”

  “Tell Kirby to keep her there as long as she can,” Ryan said, watching the little illuminated dot on the radar flash from a stationary position as the Jolly Roger reached the dive spot. “Another half an hour should do it.”

  Ryan’s radio crackled into life.

  “Receiving, over.”

  He held a brief conversation with the police sergeant in charge of the Underwater Search and Marine Unit, a team they had worked with on several cases before, and then settled down to wait for news.

  * * *

  After the police had gone and Josh had retreated upstairs, Hutch went in search of Gemma. It was time, he realised, to lay his cards on the table; to open himself up to the woman he loved and hope she would accept him once he had. It was risky, the kind of gamble Kris might have taken, but not him. He felt giddy with nerves, unsure of how much to say or whether to say anything at all.

  “Gem?”

  He found her stoking the fire in the main dining room ahead of the dinner crowd, such as it was. Their door hadn’t been opening so frequently since news of the murders had got around and, even though nobody had died at the inn, they were tainted by association.

  Hopefully, it wouldn’t last. These things never did.

  “Hi,” she said, with a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. He wondered if it was because of the news about Kris, about Daisy…or because she knew.

  “I thought we could sit for a while,” he said, and indicated a comfy-looking sofa they’d arranged near the fire for those visitors who preferred to have a coffee and catch up on the daily news.

  He sat down on the sofa and waited for her to join him, taking her hand when she did.

  “We’ve known each other a long time, haven’t we?”

  Gemma looked down at their hands, sensing what was to come.

  “Yes, we have.”

  “You know how much I love you, Gemma. Everything I do…everything I’ve done, I’ve done for you.”

  Tears filled her eyes, but she managed a short nod.

  “I know,” she said heavily.

  “I hope…I hope after so long, you know I’d never do anything to hurt you,” he said and, again, she nodded.

  If her hand tensed beneath his, he chose to ignore it.

  “When the police first came around to talk to us about Iain Tucker—you remember?—you told them I’d come upstairs not long after you had, on Thursday night.”

  She nodded, turning to him with wide eyes that shone with fear.

  “But I didn’t come straight up to bed, Gemma. I didn’t do that, at all.”

  * * *

  A full twenty minutes had passed since the last communication and, when the radio signalled again inside the Coastguard’s Office, Ryan snatched it up.

  “Ryan, receiving. Over.”

  “Sir? We found a name. Over”

  The room fell silent as the disembodied voice of the police sergeant came down the line, describing the task of checking all the walls of the cabin inside the HMS Bernicia, only to find that Kristopher Reid had a touch of Michelangelo in him and had written the name of his killer on the ceiling, instead.

  When they said the name, spelling it out clearly so there could be no misunderstanding, Ryan turned to his team with blazing eyes.

  “Let’s move.”

  CHAPTER 36

  When Ryan entered The Cockle Inn, he found Paul Hutchinson seated alone at a sofa in front of the fire. He didn’t bother to turn around but continued to stare into the flames, mesmerised by the flickering light. His neck was bent and, for the first time, he looked defeated.

  “Where’s Gemma?” Ryan asked him, moving carefully so as not to startle him. “Where’s Gemma, Hutch?”

  “She left,” he said, his heart broken. “Josh, too.”

  “Her car isn’t in the car park,” Phillips said, joining them via the side door. “Should I put out an APB out on it?”

  Ryan lifted a shoulder.

  “May as well,” he said, and Phillips spoke swiftly into his police radio. “But it isn’t the car I’m concerned about. Where’s Gemma’s boat, Hutch? Which one is hers?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “She knew that I—she knew that I suspected,” he said, swiping away tears. “I tried to ignore it but the feeling kept niggling away at me, until I couldn’t think about anything else. It was when she told the police that she’d heard me coming up to bed just after she had. It was a lie, because I’d stayed up for another hour in my office after closing time. I couldn’t understand why she told them that…then it struck me that she needed me to agree with her. She needed them to think she’d been tucked away in bed and that somebody else had been the last person awake, the last person to lead Iain Tucker astray.”

  “Where is she now, Paul?” Ryan wasn’t interested in the man’s introspection and he needed to move quickly.

  “I couldn’t understand w
hy she hated Daisy so much,” he muttered. “Even before Josh started showing an interest, she was so hard on the girl and it wasn’t like her. I realised today, when you told me about Kris being Daisy’s father, I realised she knew all along. She never breathed a word because she’d have had to admit she knew Kris had been having an affair with Mandy.”

  “She couldn’t have killed Mandy because of that,” Ryan said. “If jealousy were the reason, she could have killed Mandy Jones at any point in the last twenty-three years.”

  Hutch shook his head.

  “She didn’t tell me. But I think Mandy must have seen something. Maybe she wanted money.”

  Ryan thought of Mandy’s internet history, her plans to move away. She hadn’t said anything about Daisy’s parentage, either—but when things developed between her daughter and Josh, she knew she needed to move them apart.

  “Neither of them spoke out,” he said, disgustedly. “They let their children fall in love, knowing they shared the same father.”

  Hutch pressed his lips tightly together, thinking of how Josh had looked when they’d told him, less than half an hour before.

  “I told you, she’s gone. I don’t know where.”

  “If you’re lying to us now, you’ll be prosecuted for perverting the course of justice,” Ryan warned him. “You knew she’d lied and you said nothing. You did nothing.”

  He didn’t bother to deny it. He’d live with the knowledge for the rest of his days, wondering when and how Gemma had changed, how he’d failed to make her happy.

  “She found out about Mandy, didn’t she?” Ryan realised. “That’s why she killed your brother.”

  “They found those wrecks twenty-three years ago,” Hutch said softly. “She told me before she left. They’d hit the jackpot and it would set them up for life. They’d planned to report it, register it all and go on to run the biggest diving school in the country. It didn’t work out that way. The same night, Gemma heard him speaking to Mandy, arranging their next meeting. So, when they went down to the wreck site the next day, she left Kris there to rot.”

  Even saying the words made him feel sick. All these years, he’d lived and worked alongside her and, all the while, she had blood on her hands.