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

by LJ Ross

  Looking beyond the decay, he noticed that the dissection lines were clean and precise.

  If he had been a religious man, Ryan might have said a prayer. Instead, he made a promise to find the person responsible. He was inclined to think it was a more productive outlet for his grief, for that was what he felt.

  The sound of Faulkner’s suit rustling as he moved around taking photographs of the area brought him out of his reverie.

  “Initial thoughts?”

  Tom blew out a long breath and took another survey, though he too had committed much of it to memory.

  “Might be able to pick up something, but the ground was dry last night. No juicy mud for us to capture a boot print, if that’s what you’re thinking. Jeff should have a lot more to work with on the body since the tissues are still there,” he looked across at the pathologist, who was crouched near the cavity, mask covering his face, hairnet protecting his hair. “There’s no clothing on this one and zero in the way of personal possessions, which is disappointing. On the upside, there’s white tape strapped around the body, which we might be able to trace. We’ll do a fingertip search for anything else.”

  Ryan could see what he meant. There were no obvious tracks on the ground, no blood spill to indicate a kill site.

  “Might be something on the skin,” Faulkner carried on, sounding tired. His body seemed to hunch inside its white suit. “We’ll look for chemicals, fibres, DNA. The usual.”

  “I’ll leave you to it,” Ryan was about to turn away, but placed a hand on Faulkner’s shoulder before he left, the only thing he could think of to express solidarity, because it got to you sometimes. “Call me if you find anything.”

  Faulkner nodded and snapped his mask back into place.

  Ryan left the CSIs to their work and re-joined Phillips at the top of the hill.

  “How bad is it?”

  “How long is a piece of string?” Ryan muttered, shrugging out of the overalls before dropping them into a sealed container. They would be inspected for trace evidence later. “It’s bad enough. Looks like another young, dark-haired female, but this time the body has been dismembered.”

  Phillips pursed his lips in distaste.

  “It’s hard to believe she was still a person eight or nine hours ago.”

  “You reckon that’s the timescale?”

  Ryan ran a hand through his mop of black hair.

  “Rough estimate. Pinter will be able to give us a better idea. For that matter, give it a couple more hours and Ambrose would have a field day down there.”

  Phillips took his meaning, straight away. Doctor Ambrose was an insect man and he held off scratching the phantom itching, which began whenever he thought of the forensic entomologist.

  “Thought it’d be a bit early for maggots and all that,” he muttered.

  “It was warm last night …” Ryan trailed off and looked away. Some things didn’t require exhaustive explanations.

  “If it weren’t for that Professor, blabbing about it all on the morning news –”

  “No,” Ryan shook his head decisively. “This girl was killed overnight, before the discovery of Amy’s body was made public.”

  Phillips tugged at his ear while he tried to make sense of it all.

  “Word spreads, boss. You know that. Got more leaks in the department than a drippy tap.”

  Ryan had to admit it was an unhappy truth. Members of CID ended up having a few pints after work and blabbing about their exploits of the day to all and sundry. He had always shunned the local booze hole, on the basis that his presence might make others in his team feel uncomfortable. It was hard to relax with your boss hanging around, even after you’d clocked off.

  He remembered one occasion when Gregson had invited him along to one of his wife’s drinks soirees. The event could only be described as a soiree; it far exceeded the classification of ‘informal gathering’, taking into account the five-star catering, professional cocktail waiters and uniformed serving staff. For Ryan’s part, his background had provided him with extensive training in the business of soirees, but it didn’t necessarily follow that he enjoyed them. When he entertained … if he ever entertained friends, he was more of a barbeque and plastic cup sort of man.

  It saved time on the washing up, for one thing.

  In any event, the evening had been nothing more than a gigantic bore, from start to finish. As soon as it was polite to do so, he had extricated himself and caught a taxi home.

  Rousing himself from his recollection, he was amazed to find that his disdain for the Gregsons’ invitation had apparently conjured up the man himself, for the Chief was at that very moment battling his way through the pack of journalists at the car park barrier.

  “It was only a matter of time,” Phillips thought aloud, unconsciously straightening his tie.

  Gregson cut a debonair figure as he promenaded across the car park, his dress suit spotless and his steel grey hair brushed back from a strong face, which bore a pleasingly grim expression for the benefit of any photographers who happened to be observing his progress.

  “Boys,” he greeted them with his usual baritone. “I hear there’s been another one. I want a progress report.”

  “Pinter and Faulkner are working over the scene. They’ll transport the body back to the mortuary shortly.”

  “Female?”

  “That’s correct, sir. Twenty-something, mixed race, dark-haired. She was found dismembered.”

  Gregson harrumphed. He was the only person Ryan had ever known to make a noise that could be described as such.

  “Who was first on the scene?”

  “That would have been MacKenzie. She was here early, to oversee the work of the archaeologists.”

  “Yes, Professor Freeman tells me she was dismissed from the scene in a very high-handed manner.”

  “Yes, sir,” Ryan replied easily, without a hint of apology.

  “Freeman seems to think she has a right to be here.”

  “She can think what she likes,” Ryan countered. “CID has been granted oversight because this is a murder investigation, not an archaeological dig. Her presence here yesterday was much appreciated, but there are other forensic archaeologists we can use if she finds my management style clashes with her own.”

  “Playing hard ball?”

  “It’s the only way.”

  Gregson’s eyes narrowed a fraction at Ryan’s newfound defiance and he wondered whether it might be time to burn the man’s ego a fraction. Phillips cleared his throat and looked between them.

  “Perhaps we should give those vultures something, so that they’ll back off a bit and let us get on?”

  At Phillips’ well-timed intervention, they all turned to look across at the group of reporters who waited with mounting impatience for a press statement.

  “I’d rather we took control of PR. So far, you’ve allowed Freeman to run rings around the department,” Gregson said, pointedly. “Why don’t you do the honours?”

  Ryan recognised the challenge for what it was: a test to see if he could deflect the inevitable questions surrounding Amy’s connection with The Hacker. When her image had been discovered among his possessions last year, they had done their best to keep her name out of the limelight, but as Phillips had rightly observed, there were always departmental leaks. Any journalist with half a nose would have recognised her name and sniffed out the connection.

  Ryan turned on his heel and made for the crowd of media affiliates. When his intent became clear, they parted like the Red Sea, allowing him centre stage while they fired up their cameras and microphones.

  “Good lad,” Phillips muttered, under his breath.

  “Thank you for taking the trouble to come all the way out here into the wilderness, I’m sure out of concern for the memory of a young girl whose life has been sadly cut short,” Ryan began smoothly, with a liberal sprinkling of sarcasm.

  “Can you confirm a second body has been found, only hours after the first?”

&nb
sp; Several more voices shouted out the same question and he waited for their calls to die down before answering. He had received his public relations training alongside all the other senior police officers, but he needed no training to project an air of authority. That came as standard.

  “Yes, I can confirm that a second body was discovered early this morning. Until she has been identified and her next of kin have been informed, that will be all I have to say on the subject.”

  He ignored the inevitable follow-up questions.

  “It was reported on the morning news that the body of a girl who has been identified as Amy Llewellyn was found at Sycamore Gap yesterday. Her family have been informed and we offer them our sincere and heartfelt condolences. Northumbria CID will use all means available to bring her killer to justice.”

  “How did she die?”

  Ryan sighed inwardly. Would they never learn?

  “I am not going to divulge the specific details of an ongoing investigation. To do so might prejudice the task we have ahead.”

  “Amy Llewellyn went missing in 2005. How has it taken so long to find her?”

  “Her disappearance was widely reported at the time,” Ryan made sure to note. “There was an extensive police appeal and a thorough forensic investigation. Unfortunately, the trail went cold, as is the case with many unfortunate people on an annual basis –”

  “But you knew who her killer was!” A persistent young reporter made sure that his voice carried. “Amy was named as one of The Hacker’s unclaimed victims, only last year. Do you deny it?”

  Fatalistically, Ryan accepted that he was not going to be offered a reprieve. It was therefore better to face the question, head on.

  “Last year, there was some circumstantial evidence linking Amy Llewellyn to Keir Edwards but not enough to charge him, or anyone else for that matter. At this stage, we are concentrating our efforts on gathering the forensic evidence which may, in time, confirm or deny any connection.”

  “Was Amy murdered in the same way as your sister? Is it wise to continue running the investigation given your personal interest?”

  Ryan’s face betrayed no emotion whatsoever. To all the world, he appeared unmoved by the question, but from her office at Durham University where she watched the interview later that day, Anna knew that he buried his pain somewhere deep in the alcove of his mind. He erected an emotional barrier around himself, one she suspected he renewed each morning, to ward off the demons he still fought at night.

  “I will not be discussing any specifics. To do so would be highly improper and, speaking on the question of propriety, I should remind you that this is an open investigation. We are following all available leads, which calls for a Senior Investigating Officer with experience. You are all aware of my track record in the field, so I won’t bother to list the cases I have closed during my years of service.”

  He cast his eyes over his audience, then trained his gaze directly into the television camera which had been set up squarely in front of him.

  “What I will say is that, after what happened to Natalie Finlay-Ryan,” he could manage to get the words out, just so long as he didn’t say, ‘my sister’, “There is no-one better qualified to hunt the person who has deprived another family of a daughter, or of a sister. I won’t make Amy’s family any promises, except these: I will follow every line of enquiry. I will knock on every door and shine a light on every shadow. I will do everything within my power to find whoever is responsible. If fortune finds that they are already serving time for another offence, then I can promise that there will be no barrier to further prosecution, because I understand that their loss is just as important. That’s all.”

  Ryan stepped away and didn’t bother to look back. That was enough wind-bagging for now.

  * * *

  Another man tuned in to watch the interview when it was broadcast on the local news later that morning. He admired the seemingly effortless way that Ryan managed to bury his feelings beneath a professional exterior, projecting an air of strong dependability.

  Bravo! He thought, with a touch of malice.

  They would see how long his emotional reserves lasted, before the end.

  He listened intently to the answers Ryan gave when the question of Amy’s connection to The Hacker came up and he found himself very, very dissatisfied.

  In point of fact, he was furious.

  How long would it take him to catch up? He knew that the police were slow, but he had given Ryan credit for being endowed with some small measure of intellect. Clearly, he had been over-generous in his assessment of the man.

  For who could fail to see that only a person of the finest, most acute intelligence could have kept Amy’s death hidden from the world for so long?

  Oh, how he wanted to tell him how it happened. He wanted to tell the story in all its magnificent detail, to savour it and have Ryan look upon him with amazement. In his heart, he knew that Ryan was just like him. Beneath that controlled exterior, there was an animal longing to break free of its boundaries and do what man was designed to do.

  To kill. To exert his power. It was survival of the fittest and a punishment to those who were not worthy of mating with men such as himself.

  It had taken him a while to understand his purpose and to appreciate fully why he had been born, but that night ten years ago had given him the answers he craved. Since then, life had been one long dance.

  Ryan’s words re-played themselves over and over in his mind. Despite their kinship, he was severely disappointed in the Chief Inspector. He seemed prepared to credit Amy’s murder to a man who had been caught, of all things.

  He would never have been so careless.

  CHAPTER 7

  “Claire Burns, aged twenty-two,” MacKenzie began without preamble. “We saw her straight away, as soon as we made it down the hill at around eight-thirty this morning.”

  A large colour photograph of Claire Burns, taken from her driving licence, had been tacked up on the wall to the right of Amy Llewellyn. Casting his eye around the room, Ryan could see the men and women of CID committing her face to memory. They had convened in the Incident Room for a lunchtime briefing and Ryan even had the foresight to order in some sandwiches from the nearby deli, which his team attacked with gusto.

  Clearly, he was turning soft.

  “Whoever put her inside the wall cavity wasn’t fussed about returning the stones back to where he found them, because they were dumped on the ground beside it. We could speculate that whoever did this wanted her body to be found, because she’s been open to the elements for most of the night,” MacKenzie continued.

  “I bet Professor Freeman wasn’t happy,” Ryan said mildly.

  “No indeed,” MacKenzie replied, only just managing to rein in her glee. “She was doing her ends about the damage to the wall. I took the trouble to remind her that the damage inflicted on the person found inside the wall was a more pressing matter.”

  Ryan flashed a grin.

  “Anyhow, after I rang you, the area was cordoned off and I contacted Doctor Pinter to examine the remains. Faulkner’s team arrived around the same time, at nine-fifteen. You and Phillips arrived shortly after then.”

  “Out of interest, when did the press hounds turn up?”

  MacKenzie consulted the logbook entries from that morning.

  “Early. The first one arrived just after eight, before we’d even discovered Claire’s body.”

  Ryan’s brow furrowed darkly.

  “Name?”

  MacKenzie consulted the log again.

  “Ophelia de Lacy-Brown, from the local news.”

  “Are you kidding me with that name?”

  Denise laughed.

  “I thought the same myself, sir. I hope it’s a professional pseudonym.”

  “If it isn’t, then her parents should be reported,” Phillips mumbled as he bit off a chunk of ham and pease pudding stottie.

  “Have a word with her, MacKenzie. I want to know who tipped her off to g
et up there so early. The press already had their interview with Freeman last night, so why the urgency this morning? As far as they knew, we would be picking over the scene from yesterday, which is old news.”

  MacKenzie nodded and made a note. Watching them, Phillips felt an odd twinge of envy at the easy manner of exchange that his SIO enjoyed with Denise. In fact, with any woman between the ages of sixteen and sixty. If Ryan weren’t such a decent bloke, he’d be minded to hate him for it.

  “Claire was identified quickly, as well,” Ryan continued. “She wasn’t reported as missing until her landlady called in this morning, by which stage we’d already found her.”

  “The body matched the description from the landlady,” MacKenzie nodded. “After then, it was an easy job.”

  “What’s the word from Pinter?” The pathologist had spent the morning compiling a report on Claire Burns’ remains.

  “He hasn’t completed the post mortem yet, but he’s sent through some observations. Other than the dismemberment, there’s no obvious head trauma or other major impact, as there was with Amy,” MacKenzie supplied.

  Phillips replaced the flapjack he had just unwrapped. His appetite had vanished as quickly as it had come.

  “Do you have any idea what sort of timescale we’re looking at?”

  “Taking into account ambient temperatures overnight, the condition of the body and early stages of decomposition, he seems to think that she had been dead between eight and ten hours when she was found.”

  Ryan took a pen and drew a long line beneath Claire’s image. He added the time that she had been found and the time they thought she had died.

  “Here’s what we know about Claire,” he flipped the pen from hand to hand, feet planted firmly on the thin brown carpet.

  “She was an attractive girl,” he noted, taking in the sleek dark hair, simply cut and pulled away from a face that was a perfect oval with smooth, caramel-toned skin and big, dark eyes. “Aside from the colour of her skin, she conforms to the same physical type as Amy, and Edwards’ previous victims, for that matter.”