Sycamore Gap: A DCI Ryan Mystery (The DCI Ryan Mysteries Book 2)

by LJ Ross

  “Yes, sir.” What more could he say?

  “It’s one thing to return to the job, to investigate other deaths …” Gregson thought of the events on Holy Island and tried to search for the right words. “It would be healthier, surely, to put the past behind you?”

  “If there is another victim, or indeed victims plural, our investigation into Keir Edwards remains unfinished.”

  Ryan baulked at the thought of more lives lost, of more waste to be found, more families to ruin.

  “Another detective can handle it. Phillips could run this investigation, easily.”

  He could, Ryan agreed, thinking of his sergeant with fondness. The man was a terrier, experienced and capable, with a nose for the business.

  Still.

  “This is my case.”

  Gregson sat back in his chair and considered, weighing up his own options.

  “I want you to attend regular counselling sessions.”

  “Not necessary –”

  Gregson overrode the immediate denial.

  “You won’t fob me off this time, Ryan. You got away with it once, so don’t push your luck. It is for me to decide what is necessary, if you insist upon remaining the Senior Investigating Officer in this investigation. Now,” he fished around in his drawer for a business card. “Here’s the number for the departmental psychiatrist, in case you’ve managed to mislay it.”

  Gregson smiled triumphantly.

  “I expect you to make an appointment by the end of the day, failing which an appointment will be made for you. Non-attendance will signify to me that you no longer wish to be part of this investigation. Do we understand one another?”

  Ryan’s jaw ached from the effort of restraining himself.

  “Perfectly.”

  Recognising dismissal, Ryan rose from his cramped position and prepared to leave.

  “Oh, one last thing.”

  “Sir?”

  “I hear that young Jack Lowerson has finally come out of his coma?”

  Ryan managed to work up a weak smile.

  “Yes, just yesterday. His family are overjoyed, as are his team.”

  “Wonderful news,” Gregson agreed. “Has he been able to remember anything?”

  “Unfortunately, not.” So far.

  “Ah, that’s a pity,” Gregson was sympathetic, his tone aggrieved.

  “One day, that might change.”

  “Perhaps he may wish to put the past behind him, even if you would rather not.”

  “We’ll see,” was all Ryan said.

  Gregson watched the door click shut again and took a moment to contemplate some of the memorabilia on the shelves and the walls of his office, which told of thirty years’ service. There were pictures of him shaking hands with the Police Commissioner and the Mayor of London; snapshots of garden parties spent with minor royalty and local hoi polloi. He had seen his department go through many changes, in policy, management and staffing. The inevitable edicts that a new government handed down every few years did little to change the work force; he saw to that. He knew the best way to run his staff and there would be no political upstarts to tell him otherwise.

  Above and beyond, there was an order to his life, a careful balance, which he was unwilling to change.

  He thought of Ryan and began to feel uneasy.

  * * *

  It took a confident man to recall several tired and irritable members of CID, depriving them of their well-earned Sunday roast dinner and sofa time with their families.

  Ryan was, fortunately, such a man.

  After his meeting with Gregson, he headed straight to the large conference room at the other end of the hall and tacked up a sign, which read, ‘OPERATION HADRIAN’. He spent another fifteen minutes pinning salient images to the large board at the front of the room, scrawling a long black line along the length of it to signify Amy Llewellyn’s timeline. He knew that there were computer programs that could do all of this for him and he would use them as well. Still, seeing those images enlarged on the wall and creating a mental picture of the work they had done that day could not be bettered in terms of visual impact. When Phillips finally trudged into the room, heavy-footed and flustered after his latest dealings with a certain detective, he was prepared.

  Ryan waited until Phillips had settled himself into one of the faded orange, scoop-back plastic chairs before he asked the pertinent question.

  “Everything alright?”

  Phillips crossed his arms over his bulky chest.

  “Well you might ask,” he muttered. “I knew that woman would be trouble, I told you that woman would be trouble.” He jabbed a finger towards Ryan in accusation.

  “You’re going to have to be more specific. Which woman? What trouble? If you need me to speak to Professor Freeman –”

  “MacKenzie!” Phillips blurted out. “Who else would I be talking about? Who else could manage to make a man feel guilty, just for doing his job?”

  “Ah –”

  “I rang to let her know there was a briefing at six-thirty,” Phillips paused briefly to glance behind him before continuing. You could never be too careful. “Next thing I know, she turns up just as I’m dealing with that archaeologist – Freeman – in the foyer downstairs. Then, she tells me I was flirting with her. Me!”

  He jerked his thumb into his chest to punctuate the statement.

  “You were flirting with Professor Freeman?” Ryan asked mildly.

  “Don’t you start,” Phillips huffed. “Can’t even go about my business without someone or other sticking the knife in.”

  “Aw,” Ryan cooed.

  “Freeman only turned up to drop off her report,” Phillips continued, waving the report in front of him to prove it. “She said she wanted to hand it over and thank me personally for treating the site with respect.”

  “You cad.” Ryan grinned widely. “Breaking hearts, left, right and centre.”

  “Can I help it, if I have superior people skills?”

  “If those skills include superior buffoonery, then …” Ryan trailed off, thinking that Phillips had seen enough mockery for the present.

  They turned their attention to Amy Llewellyn, whose smiling face crowned the top of the murder board.

  “Why her?”

  “Why anybody?” Ryan countered.

  If she had been younger, from a less secure background, homeless or with a history of alcohol or substance abuse, Ryan might have thought Amy was a random choice. Young, vulnerable men and women often ended up on the streets, in one form or another. Some wanted to escape, others had no choice. Nameless, faceless, with no family to care whether they went missing or not.

  The perfect hunting ground for a certain breed of killer.

  But Amy?

  “Nice girl, nice home, nice family. What happened?” Phillips voiced the same thoughts.

  “Keir Edwards is what happened.”

  “We don’t know –”

  “Yeah, yeah, I’ve heard the party line.”

  Phillips refolded his arms mutinously.

  “Just trying to keep things on a level playing field, guv. Last thing we want to do is barge into HMP Frankland, guns blazing at Edwards, only to uncover some other bit of evidence pointing to the bloke in the cell next door.”

  Ryan agreed with him, but it did little to dilute the sense of driving urgency, which he felt whenever anybody mentioned the man’s name.

  While he ruminated on it, the rest of the team began to file into the room. The first thing they saw was the large, colour photographs of Amy Llewellyn. One clearly showed her in life, the other showed her in death. Ryan waited until they had settled themselves, after all the handshaking and backslapping they seemed to need before they concentrated on finding a killer. With admirable poise, he watched DI Denise MacKenzie stalk to the front and take a seat, leaving a pointed gap between herself and Phillips. Ryan wondered how opposites often attracted. There, on the one hand, was his sergeant: gruff, canny and loyal as a basset hound, but he w
as no oil painting. There, on the other, was MacKenzie: feisty and smart with a striking mane of golden red hair and a quick brain beneath it.

  Ah, l’amour.

  Briefly, he thought of his own Anna. She was probably sitting in her little study, immersed in some old book or another. He loved to find her like that, her elegant neck bent over an inscrutable text while she toyed with the ends of her dark hair.

  The sooner he got on with the briefing, the sooner he could go home to her.

  “Alright, settle down.”

  Chairs scraped, conversations died.

  “Welcome to the first briefing of ‘Operation Hadrian’. Another original name from the Powers That Be,” he added. “Thanks to all of you who worked at the scene today and to those of you who have abandoned your day off to join us. Your commitment is much appreciated.”

  He tapped a knuckle on the board behind him.

  “For those of you who need to catch up, here’s a potted summary. Our witness, Colin Hart, found what we now know to be the remains of Amy Llewellyn, inside a hollowed-out cavity of the stretch of Hadrian’s Wall known as ‘Sycamore Gap’. Early this morning, around five-thirty, he was out walking along that stretch. He parked his car at Housesteads, walked west towards that spot to catch the sunrise and natural curiosity got the better of him.

  “He reported his find to the Control Room, who referred the incident directly to Gregson before dispatching Phillips and myself to the scene. The Chief felt it was necessary to call out the infantry on this one, given the potential media intrusion alongside the active presence of interested parties.”

  “That’s one way of putting it,” MacKenzie sniped, with a deadly sideways look at Phillips.

  Ryan decided to let the interruption pass.

  “Professor Freeman is the senior archaeologist for National Heritage in this region. She has been vocal in her objection to any undue interference with the site. Regardless, we were able to confirm that the remains fall under our remit. Faulkner,” he eyed the senior CSI who had discarded his customary overalls in favour of navy cords and a matching blue jumper. It made him seem less like a scientist and more of an ordinary man; not somebody who picked over the scenes of violent crime on a daily basis. “Special thanks to you and your team for such sympathetic handling of the excavation site, particularly under that level of supervision.”

  The CSI mumbled something and adjusted his glasses. He was not a man who enjoyed attention.

  Ryan turned back to the board and tacked up a large copy of the diagram the anthropologist had given him earlier that day, which showed the presence of injuries on Amy Llewellyn’s skeleton.

  “Phillips and I paid a visit to the pathologist this afternoon. He and the forensic anthropologist agree that, aside from childhood injuries, there are two main things to note. The first is the presence of a fairly large skull fracture running along the squamosal suture, which divides the left temporal and parietal lobes,” he tapped a finger behind his left ear to illustrate. “The second is a break in her left wrist, which happened on or around the time she died.”

  He turned back to the room and stuck his hands in the back pockets of his jeans.

  “They’re running further tests on the body, to see what else flags up, but in the meantime it’s looking like there was some kind of violent struggle, resulting in massive head trauma.”

  There were a few sympathetic murmurs around the room.

  “Tom? What can you add to the forensic side of things?”

  Faulkner fiddled with his notes before answering. He never enjoyed public speaking, even when the crowd was small and comprised solely of colleagues and friends.

  “As predicted, we’ve found very little in the way of trace evidence. Due to the age of the body, as you can imagine, any prints or drag marks are long gone. We deconstructed the grassed area in a radius around the wall cavity to see if any items might be found underneath the first couple of layers of grass and soil. We’re analysing the soil to see if there’s a DNA match so that we can locate the site where she was killed.”

  “What about inside the wall cavity?”

  “There were no identifying markers on the body, other than a silver bracelet and the remains of the clothing she was wearing at the time she died. The clothes have deteriorated to the extent that we can only presume they were made from an organic fabric, cotton probably. We’re running the tests for prints and DNA – the lab boys are looking into it now, but it’ll be another twenty-four hours before we’ll have something more definitive.”

  Ryan nodded his thanks.

  “That’s good, fast work. Let’s look into the origins of that bracelet – Phillips, check the file or call her family to see if they reported any articles of jewellery missing. Maybe check with her old university housemate, too. It would be good to know if any of them recognise it, or could tell us who gave it to Amy. Failing that, let’s look at the jewellery shops. In the meantime, I’ve got another spanner to throw into the works.”

  That re-captured the attention of the room.

  “Amy Llewellyn is already known to the department,” he said, keeping his voice carefully neutral. “She went missing on 21st June, 2005 and it was reported the following day. Phillips will be going over her case file, but the basics are these: Amy was a medical student in her third year at Newcastle University, from a solid family background. She left the house she shared with another girl, without telling anyone where she was going, or who she was going to meet. Her mobile phone was never recovered. There were no financial leads, no family connection to give us cause for concern. She was twenty-one.”

  “There was no physical evidence and no witnesses, so the investigation went cold,” Phillips added. “Amy just, sort of, ‘poofed’ into thin air.”

  “‘Poofed’? Is that a technical term?” MacKenzie drawled.

  “It is now,” he replied haughtily. “Anyhow, the original team initially put her disappearance down to suicide, on account of the fact she hadn’t been herself before she died.”

  “We now have something that the original investigative team didn’t have, and that’s a body. They don’t call them ‘silent witnesses’ for nothing,” Ryan put in. “But that’s only the half of it. Amy was also known to us because her photograph was found amongst a collection recovered from Keir Edwards’ home, after his arrest last year.”

  Instantly, an awkward silence descended on the room, which Ryan almost found funny. He could see the doubt in their minds and read the questions on their faces. Was he able to look at this dispassionately? Could he separate his own feelings on The Hacker, from the facts of this case?

  He hoped so.

  “You’re looking at Edwards? He confessed to five murders,” MacKenzie said, breaking the uneasy silence. “He was quite chatty about his exploits in general. Wouldn’t he have owned up to it, if he had killed her?”

  “Aye, it’s worth remembering that he’s always been full of himself,” Phillips agreed. “Nothing he loves more than bragging about what a loony he is.”

  MacKenzie’s lips broke into a smile, against her better judgement.

  “It doesn’t seem like his style, to hide her away all these years, rather than displaying her for everyone to see his handiwork.”

  Ryan had thought of that.

  “I agree that it isn’t his usual style, but we’ve known others who changed their MO to avoid capture,” he leaned back against the desk at the front of the room and reached for his cup of lukewarm coffee. “It’s also relevant that Amy died back in 2005. Ten years can make a big difference to a budding serial killer. Who’s to say that she wasn’t one of his earlier efforts? Back then he was a young doctor, working in the hospital where she was a student. Their paths would have crossed; obviously did cross, for him to have such an intimate photograph.”

  “Edwards dismembered his victims,” Phillips spoke without thinking and wished he could claw back the words. As if his SIO could ever forget how Edwards preferred to kill, having been an u
nwilling witness to it, first hand. “Ah, that is, I mean to say that Amy Llewellyn died in a different way to his other victims.”

  Ryan deliberately blocked the image of Natalie and looked into the bottom of his cup while he did.

  When he looked up again, his eyes were a flat, stormy grey.

  “Full marks,” he said. “The style is, as you say, completely different. But we’re still left with the simple fact that he had a picture of her in his house. We don’t know enough about what lies in his past. He might have been killing for years before he had his summer spree last year.”

  The prospect of that was terrifying.

  “We cover every eventuality and we follow all leads. That’s why I’ve asked Freeman to oversee a wider survey of the surrounding area at Sycamore Gap.”

  “You reckon there might be more out there?” Phillips asked.

  “It’s possible.”

  “What do you need?” The quiet words spoken by Faulkner signified to Ryan that he had his full co-operation and that of his team of CSIs. There might be hard times to come, but they would do their jobs. He was stupidly grateful and it made his voice gruff when he answered.

  “Professor Freeman’s team of archaeologists will start the geophysical prospecting first thing tomorrow,” Ryan began, holding up a finger to stem the inevitable question from Phillips. “Never mind what that means. As far as we’re concerned, it will answer the question of whether there are any other missing women lying out there in the wall, or around it. I’ve instructed her to cover a radius of half a mile, in both directions, from the excavation site.”

  “How long will that take?”

  “We’re looking at weeks, with a full team of archaeologists on board, working full pelt.”

  “Expensive,” MacKenzie commented.

  “Necessary,” he countered.

  “Another question,” MacKenzie held up a slender finger topped with bright red polish. “I was under the impression that this professor was the leading lady of all things old and decrepit.”