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

by LJ Ross

  Phillips’ radio sounded, and he moved away to speak to his colleague.

  “They’ve picked up Gemma’s car travelling southbound on the A1,” he said. “Josh was driving.”

  Ryan set aside the automatic feeling of disappointment; the woman was still his mother and it was a hard bond to break, even when that mother was a stone-cold killer.

  “Have him arrested,” he snapped. “This one, too.”

  But Hutch had different ideas.

  “If she’s taken a boat, you should bring me with you. I might be able to talk some sense to her,” he said. “Make her come in, of her own accord.”

  Ryan was sceptical.

  “Why should we trust you? You’re blinded by her.”

  “The blinders are well and truly off, now.”

  “If you mess us about, I won’t hesitate,” Ryan said, and then turned to his sergeant. “Phillips? Get in touch with the others and tell MacKenzie to set up a command centre. Put the Coastguard on alert to intercept a diving vessel by the name of—”

  He looked towards Hutch and the other man knew he’d reached a crossroads. Speak now, or be cast out.

  “She’ll have taken Josh’s boat,” he said. “It’s the Misty Morning.”

  * * *

  Gemma steered the boat parallel to the shoreline, dodging all the rocks and islets she knew were scattered across the water like pebbles, holding the wheel firm against the wind and rain which came down in a sheet and had almost soaked through her clothing. She hadn’t brought much; no supplies, no practical clothes and she’d broken a cardinal rule of boating by failing to wear a life jacket.

  Perhaps because, in her heart, she knew she wasn’t really going anywhere.

  At first, she’d had some crazy notion of using the islands as camouflage; of dipping in and out of the shallow, narrow channels she’d grown up with and waiting until the coast was clear before making a break for Scotland or just sailing towards the horizon and hoping for the sea to envelop her.

  She thought of her son and of the look on his face as he’d overheard the conversation with Hutch. He’d looked so lost, so forlorn, as though she’d crushed the last vestiges of his boyhood; that sweet, innocent core of idealism that had somehow endured was now gone.

  You killed my father.

  Murderer.

  Murderer!

  Tears mingled with the rain as she fought her way across the water and the howl of the wind resembled the cry of a young boy with dark, curly hair whose smile had reminded her that, once, she’d done something good.

  She’d made him.

  Please, Josh. Just drive the car as far as you can. It’s the last thing I’ll ever ask of you.

  Get out! Get out, and don’t come back. You’re nothing to me, now.

  A thousand memories rose up and fell before her eyes.

  Josh as a tiny baby cradled in her arms.

  Josh taking his first steps and then tumbling down again.

  The first time she’d seen Kris.

  The last time she’d seen Kris.

  Josh kissing Daisy.

  Josh looking at her with revulsion, as though she was nothing.

  Gemma’s hands loosened on the wheel and then let go for a second as she laughed, a hysterical sound, and waited for the wind and sea to do the rest.

  But then she caught sight of the Coastguard’s powerful beam shining across the water as it approached from the north.

  Her hands clutched the wheel again.

  It wasn’t over yet.

  CHAPTER 37

  The Coastal Area Commander acted quickly, deploying a rib from the base at Holy Island as well as Seahouses, where Ryan, Phillips and Hutch joined him and his deputy at the boathouse. From there, it took only minutes before they were out on the water and motoring through the harbour into open sea.

  “Misty Morning hasn’t got its AIS switched on, either!” Alex Walker shouted, as rain and sea spray ran down his face. “Without any idea of its location, we’ll have a devil of a job finding her around the Farnes in these conditions!”

  Ryan nodded, gripping the safety handles as it flew over waves almost as tall as him.

  “She doesn’t have anywhere to go!” he called back.

  “The Holy Island rib is already on the water,” Alex said, bracing himself against the violent rocking of the boat. “It’ll intercept her from the north and head her off in that direction.”

  “There!” Hutch shouted, over the deafening sound of the waves. “There’s a light, there!”

  “That’s the rib!” Walker called back, recognising the sister boat immediately. “I can’t see the Misty Morning, though.”

  Ryan leaned over to where Phillips clung to the safety rail like a limpet.

  “You alright, Frank?” he shouted.

  “Oh, aye!” came the queasy reply, as Phillips worked valiantly to keep hold of his lunch. “Can’t wait to go ‘round the block again!”

  Ryan slapped a hand on his back in support and then braced himself against another strong wave that seemed to rear up like a wild animal in the darkness before thundering down again, the force of it sweeping against the sturdy lifeboat so that her prow tipped up for endless seconds before dipping down again, as if in slow motion.

  “We’ll take the southern end of the Farnes while the other boat heads north,” Walker told them. “We’ve got twice the speed of the Misty Morning, so she can’t outrun us!”

  Hutch wasn’t listening to the boat talk; he was thinking of Gemma and of where she might go. Ryan was right when he said there was nowhere for her to run to, nowhere to hide—at least not for long. He gripped the rubbery edge of the rib as it wound around the cliffs of Staple Island, the rocks jutting upward like silent soldiers all around them, guarding entry to a protected world. He thought of the times when they were young, when he, Kris and Gemma would head out on the water together, back when it was the three of them. They’d explored every inch of the place, whether they were supposed to or not, but Gemma had always preferred the diving to the east of the Farnes. The water was wilder there, she’d said. Untamed and dangerous, which had always seemed to draw her in.

  “Further east!” he called out, with a heavy heart. “She’ll head east.”

  * * *

  As Alex Walker brought the boat around to starboard, Gemma started to make the turn to cut through Brownsman’s Gut, a narrow channel of water separating Staple Island and Brownsman island, flanked by tall cliffs on both sides. As she did, she caught the flash of a coastguard beam approaching from the northern end of the Gut and brought her boat back around quickly, changing her mind at the last moment. Her stomach performed a violent somersault as the boat lurched to one side in response and she had a very near miss off the Pinnacles, fighting the tide as it urged her closer and closer to the rocks, pushing the throttle as far as it would go as she fought against the inevitable.

  * * *

  “There!” Ryan shouted.

  He pointed towards the outline of a small white-and-green diving boat that was struggling against winds coming up from the south and threatening to toss her against the sheer cliff face of the Pinnacles on the underside of Brownsman island.

  “Where’s she going?” he shouted.

  Hutch shook his head, trying to think clearly but experiencing a crippling fear as he watched the woman he’d loved—still loved—battling the power of the North Sea in her bid to escape.

  He was ashamed to love her, to feel anything for a woman who had murdered three people, but he did.

  “Harcar!” he called out. “She’ll cut under Big Harcar and make for Longstone!”

  Walker brought the boat around, avoiding the hazardous cliff edges and rocks so he could follow the tide rather than battle against it.

  The light from Longstone lighthouse cut through the darkness and illuminated the tiny dive boat with its single passenger, an insignificant speck on the ocean landscape. The rocks loomed all around, beautiful and unthreatening by day but sinister and immorta
l at night.

  “She’s trying to skirt around the bottom of Big Harcar,” Ryan said. “Get the other boat to cut her off at the Craford’s Gut!”

  “Stop talking about guts, for pity’s sake!” Phillips shouted. “Mine’s only just hanging on!”

  “Better keep tight hold of it, then, Frank! We’re coming in!”

  With that, Walker performed a series of expert moves so that the rib appeared to dance across the waves, bobbing up and down but never tipping too far in the wrong direction as he moved in to close the net.

  * * *

  After three years of knowing Maxwell Charles Finlay-Ryan, his wife, Anna, had developed a sixth sense for when something was amiss. Such as the time he borrowed a horse and gave chase to a serial killer through Kielder Forest. Or the time he’d commandeered a surveillance van and entered into a high-speed car chase with an insane vicar who was making ‘angels’ across Newcastle. And not forgetting the time he took a fishing boat and made his way across the water from Budle to Holy Island to save her from harm, endangering himself in the process. When news reports started to trickle in about two lifeboats being deployed by HM Coastguard to chase down a missing dive boat, it had raised a red flag in her mind and she grabbed her bag and coat without further ado.

  She stepped inside the Coastguard’s Office to find it heaving with police and coastguard staff but no Ryan or Philips. She had only to seek out MacKenzie to have her suspicions confirmed.

  “Let me guess,” she said, weaving through the crowd. “Shark attack?”

  “Not yet,” her friend replied. “Try again.”

  “Extreme fishing?”

  MacKenzie snorted.

  “He’s on one of the coastguard ribs with Alex, Frank and a couple of others. Gemma Dawson took her son’s boat and she’s making a run for it. Or should that be a sail for it?”

  “Gemma?”

  MacKenzie nodded.

  “Are you so surprised?”

  “Now you mention it, no, I’m not. Ryan told me he suspected her, and I couldn’t believe it at the time. But I suppose that anybody is capable of murder.”

  “I’ll murder Frank, if he doesn’t come back in one piece,” MacKenzie grumbled. “We’ve only been married for six months and I’m too young to be a widow.”

  * * *

  As the lifeboat drew closer to the channel separating the islands of Big and Little Harcar, and the larger island of Longstone to the east, the Misty Morning came fully into view.

  She was in severe distress.

  Those aboard the rib could make out Gemma’s tiny figure as she wrestled with the wheel of the boat, begging the engine to work harder against the waves that pummelled her from the south and thrust her towards Big Harcar and its unyielding rock face. Nearly two hundred years before, the engines of the Forfarshire steamship had failed, and she’d raised her sails in a treacherous North-Eastern gale, the force of which had swept her crashing onto those rocks. As if history were repeating itself, they watched in horror as an enormous wave rose up against the Misty Morning and drove it against the rocks, wood splintering.

  * * *

  As they drew closer, Hutch let out a cry of panic and, a moment later, he was in the water.

  “Man overboard!” Phillips shouted, and the remaining crew were galvanised as they watched him swim single-mindedly towards the wreck and to the tiny outcrop where Gemma clung, her body shaking with shock and exposure, ready to let go and allow the sea to claim her. Ryan spotted a winch tethered to the lifeboat and shouted across to the others.

  “I’ll go in after Hutch! Reel us in from here—it’s too dangerous to go any closer!”

  The others knew he was right. In the slick, icy-black water that hissed and roared, they saw Hutch was already tiring, his head only just managing to keep above water.

  “Go steady!” Walker told him, and didn’t bother to put up a token protest. He knew Ryan to be a strong swimmer and easily fit enough to be one of the lifeguard crew, whereas he needed to stay on board to steer.

  It made sense.

  Phillips clipped the back of the winch onto Ryan’s life jacket and gave him a nod.

  “Come back to us, lad.”

  “I will.”

  Moving like lightning, Ryan tucked an arm around the life ring and, with a nod for Phillips, dived cleanly into the water. The shock of the temperature hit him like a brick wall, sending his whole body into instant shock—and he’d watched Titanic enough times to know that wasn’t a good thing. He began to pump his arms and legs, slicing through the water with a powerful front crawl to reach Hutch, who was fifty feet away and beginning to flounder in his desperation to reach Gemma.

  The force of the waves was terrifying, unlike anything he’d ever experienced. The fear he felt was primeval, a deep-rooted animal urge to guard himself against ending up in situations such as these, but he couldn’t let a man die. Not when he was almost within his grasp.

  Ryan’s arms and legs began to tire, shaking with the early stages of hypothermia and fatigue as he worked against the tide, his face going under as another wave swept over him. He surfaced again, gasping for air, blinking water from his eyes to orientate himself.

  He spotted Hutch and made one last push to reach him before the man submerged.

  * * *

  As Ryan finally reached Paul Hutchinson’s flailing body, he grabbed a fistful of the man’s jacket and heaved him up and over the life ring with blue, shaking fingers before tugging on the line at his back.

  Before they could be pulled to safety, Hutch began to shout, his body rising up and struggling against Ryan and the life ring.

  “Gemma! No! No!”

  When Ryan felt Paul’s body go limp and nearly submerge for a second time, he knew that Gemma Dawson had fallen. The sea had claimed another soul for its underwater graveyard; soon to be another woman whose legend would outlive her, and although it pained him to think it, perhaps there were some that could not be saved.

  Ryan believed that a life was a life—it was worth saving regardless of whether the person living it was ‘good’ or ‘bad’. It was the same principle that led him to fight for the dead, no matter their walk of life or personal attributes, whether they cheated on their girlfriends, let down their families or taken bribes from salvage companies.

  Life, in and of itself, was important.

  EPILOGUE

  Nine months later

  Paul Hutchinson closed the inn for the afternoon, which was a glorious, picture-perfect summer’s day. The village was packed with tourists, all waiting and eager to spend their hard-earned cash, but he wasn’t thinking about business just now; he was thinking about family.

  He wandered down towards the harbour, stopping to wave and say ‘hello’ to the people he knew before making his way down towards the slipway, where an events organiser asked for his name. He was ushered down to a large, brand new diving boat, designed for specialist archaeological excavations. During the past year, the excavation team had found and preserved countless artefacts carefully recovered from the Viking warship Iain Tucker had found. It had been established as the largest and oldest surviving example of early Nordic construction, dated to at least fifty years before the first recorded attack on Lindisfarne and had, after a nifty interview with Detective Chief Inspector Ryan, come to be known as the ‘Tucker Hoard’.

  Excavation of the site had been an enormous task and archaeologists and historians from around the world had expressed their interest in working on the project. But it had been a key goal of the project to use local talent, wherever possible, and that had included making use of some of the best divers in the region.

  It had included Josh.

  Somewhere amidst the grief of losing everything he’d known, Josh had been given a purpose. He’d put on his tanks each day and gone down with the rest of them, the underwater world providing the quiet, peaceful space he’d needed to heal. And, along the way, Josh had made new friends, including the coastguard, who’d suggested he mi
ght like to put his skills to a different use and become a part of another important community.

  Each night, he came home to the little apartment at the inn, which he was slowly redecorating so that it no longer resembled his mother’s space. Forgiveness was too much to ask, and Hutch understood that.

  He was working on it, himself.

  “Hutch!”

  Josh waved him over to where he stood by the water’s edge in his new uniform, ready to see the christening of the new boat he’d commissioned for his diving school, where he now employed two other local divers.

  Walking towards the young man, Hutch was filled with pride, and tried to find the words as he came to shake the boy’s hand.

  “This—it’s wonderful, Josh. I’m so proud of all you’ve achieved.”

  “I had a bit of help from my family and friends,” Josh said, with a smile. “It’s been a hard road, this past year, but we’re starting to see light at the end of the tunnel, aren’t we?”

  Hutch nodded, looking around at all the people who had gathered to watch the boat launch.

  “I’m your uncle,” he said, gruffly. “I wouldn’t have missed this for the world.”

  Josh put a hand on his arm.

  “You’ve been a father to me, Hutch. I know that, now.”

  It took him several seconds until he could trust his own voice to speak, and then he tried out a word he hadn’t dared to speak.

  “Thanks, son.”

  Josh nodded towards the harbour wall, where most of the village and more besides had gathered.

  “Daisy came, look.”

  She’d moved away to make a clean break of it, down to Newcastle. They hadn’t heard from her for the first six months; it had been too painful. But then, something had shifted for her, too. She’d found someone new, someone who knew nothing of her old life in Seahouses, and she’d realised she had a brother and an uncle, if she wanted them.

  It had been strange and uncomfortable, that first meeting, but it was getting easier each time.

  A few minutes later, Josh’s boat took to the water. ‘The Kraken’ had smooth, elegant lines even Viking shipbuilders would have been proud of, and a host of high-spec machinery to enable another generation of adventurers to explore the seas.