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

by LJ Ross

  You know, just to get a few things off his chest.

  He could understand that the department wanted to cover its own arse. The last thing they wanted was a prominent murder detective suing them for post-traumatic stress disorder or something equally predictable.

  Not that he ever would have. He considered Natalie’s death to be his fault and his alone. He may not have wielded the knife, but he had enabled a dangerous man to keep killing.

  There was nobody who could convince him otherwise, though they had tried.

  Ryan leaned forward to rest his forearms on his knees and looked at the beige carpet. It was the same colour as the carpet tiles in the Incident Room, but managed to look a whole lot more plush. That was what a career in private practice gave you, he surmised. Healthy-looking potted palm trees, a fancy coffee machine, magazine subscriptions on a glass coffee table and thick-pile carpet.

  Presently, the door to Paddy’s office swung open and the man himself appeared in the doorway, his healthy bulk filling most of it. With a gentle arm, he ushered a young man through the door who had the mottled skin of someone who had recently been crying.

  “Keep in mind what we discussed today. Drive safely and I’ll see you at the same time next week.”

  He watched the man leave and sighed deeply before turning to his next patient with a smile that lit up his entire face.

  “Maxwell!”

  Ryan winced as he rose from his chair. Only a small handful of people knew his full name, Maxwell Charles Finlay-Ryan, let alone called him that.

  “Ryan. Just, Ryan.”

  The other man boomed out a laugh and held both hands up.

  “Honest mistake!” But his eyes twinkled with humour. If it was intended to be an icebreaker, it worked, because Ryan found himself smiling too.

  He followed Paddy into his office, which was really more of a cosy sitting room. Deeply cushioned chairs were arranged in a circular setting with a small table in the middle holding a box of tissues and a jug of water. A large window on one wall gave the room a feeling of light and space. There were built-in shelves along the length of another wall, stuffed full of books of diverse genres spanning A.A. Milne to Jung. For a clinical space, it was far from clinical.

  Ryan took one of the offered chairs and it was on the tip of his tongue to decline water, but his system was pumped with too much caffeine and it would do him good to flush it out a bit.

  “So,” Paddy sat down heavily and the leather cushions wheezed a bit. “You don’t want to be here.”

  Ryan just stared. Should he think of something polite to say to the contrary? Honesty was usually best.

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Don’t worry about my feelings, will you?” Paddy chuckled, folding his arms across his middle. “Why don’t you tell me why Arthur Gregson thinks you should be here?”

  Ryan deliberately avoided looking at his watch. Again.

  “It’s the investigation I’m working on,” he supplied. “It bears some connection to the events of last year. Coming to see you is a condition of my continuing to work on it.”

  “So, you feel that Gregson’s condition is motivated from a desire to make sure that the department is seen to be following procedure, should you make any mistakes?”

  “I rarely make mistakes,” Ryan said quietly. It wasn’t an arrogant assertion, just a simple fact.

  “We all make mistakes,” Paddy averred. “It’s part of being human.”

  “Let me rephrase, then,” Ryan leaned back, crossing one long leg over the other. “I rarely make mistakes which could bring the department under fire.”

  “I don’t think anybody is questioning your dedication to the force.”

  “Aren’t they? The fact I’ve been corralled into coming here tells a different story.”

  “You see this appointment as a mark of distrust in your abilities, or as a mark of disloyalty?”

  Ryan lifted a shoulder.

  “Could it be that Gregson simply wishes you to take advantage of the outlet, as an acknowledgement of the serious impact that your work has on your wellbeing? He cares about his staff.”

  Ryan let the air hiss out between his teeth.

  “Look, whatever the motivation, I’m here now. What the hell do you want me to talk about?”

  Paddy sighed inwardly. As a person, Ryan was intriguing. He had seen him numerous times, over the years, yet he was such a hard nut to crack.

  “At the risk of sounding like a cliché, it’s more a question of what you would like to talk about.”

  “The weather?”

  Paddy let out another booming laugh.

  “You’re a slippery one,” he said. “Let’s start with something simple. How are things with Anna?”

  Paddy had spoken with Ryan after the events on Holy Island last Christmas and had found a man disturbed by the things he had seen, but also a man regenerated. He wondered if it wasn’t due in part to his attachment to the woman he had met along the way.

  At the mention of her name, Ryan’s shoulders relaxed.

  “Things are … really great, actually.”

  Somehow, the words seemed inadequate, but he wasn’t in the habit of waxing lyrical about personal relationships. That was why they called them personal.

  “She seems like a very lovely woman,” Paddy agreed.

  “One day, I’m sure the bubble will burst.”

  Paddy raised a bushy eyebrow.

  “What makes you say that? She’s seen some of the good, the bad and the ugly, hasn’t she?”

  Ryan thought back to their first meeting, on Holy Island. He had been in the early stages of a fast-paced investigation and out to prove himself. He had been prickly, at best, and downright rude, at worst.

  “Yeah, I guess she’s seen some of the ugly.”

  “Well, then.”

  “She hasn’t run for the hills.”

  Paddy nodded sagely.

  “So, all is ticking along nicely, on that score. How about Phillips? Haven’t seen that old hound dog in a while.”

  Ryan knew that Paddy had a lot in common with Frank Phillips. They were both burly, dedicated men who had made a good life for themselves from modest beginnings. Aside from that, they both enjoyed Irish whiskey and a game of chess or a round of karaoke, depending on the mood.

  “Solid as a rock, as always,” Ryan answered without a second thought. “He’s enjoying a blossoming relationship with Denise.”

  “MacKenzie?” Paddy’s eyebrows shot up. “Well, blow me down.”

  Ryan grinned.

  “He’s done well, there.”

  “I’ll say,” Paddy agreed. Denise MacKenzie was a fine catch, whichever way you looked at it. “It seems that love is in the air.”

  “Yeah, seems like.” There was a long pause, which Paddy did not interrupt. He knew the value of silence in drawing people out.

  At length, Ryan spoke again.

  “I don’t know how to say this,” Ryan searched for the right words. “When you’re in my business, there’s a lot of the darker side of life. If you’re not going over dead bodies, you’re at the morgue, speaking to the victim’s family, or you’re talking to victims of rape, or assault, or some other kind of violence. Like I say, there’s a lot of dark in that.”

  “There is,” Paddy prompted.

  “I worry that … without meaning to, some of that will slip over into the personal side of my life. I don’t want to spoil what I have with Anna, but I don’t know how to stop it.”

  Paddy nodded, understanding his concern.

  “Let me make an observation. Anna knew this about you, when she met you. You were thrown together in highly unique circumstances and, rather than pulling you apart, it brought you together.”

  “Yeah, but what if that is all it was? The circumstances; a need for comfort?”

  “Is that how you feel about her?”

  “No,” the response was immediate. “But I’ve worked around murder long enough to know the difference. An
na hasn’t.”

  “You worry that you’re a flash in the pan, for her?”

  Ryan said nothing, but his silence spoke volumes.

  “I think that, perhaps, the underlying issue here is not Anna’s feelings – though I can’t speak for her. Perhaps the issue is your own inability to trust. It would be natural to develop a certain defence mechanism, after all you have been through.”

  “I trust her.”

  “On one level, perhaps.”

  Ryan ran a restless hand through his hair. Damn the man for shining a light on what he would rather lay buried.

  “I’ll talk to her.”

  Paddy smiled broadly.

  “How are you feeling about the investigation, so far?”

  “How much do you know about it?”

  “Only what I’ve heard from Gregson. The body of a young woman was found up at Sycamore Gap and it’s leaning towards murder. I heard today that a second body was found this morning. Does the investigation bear some similarity to the Hacker’s crimes?”

  “If it does, then my crime was in pointing out that similarity. The moment I breathe the words ‘Keir’ and ‘Edwards’ in the same sentence, people automatically think I’ve gone off my chump.”

  Paddy roared with laughter.

  “That’s one I haven’t heard before,” he said. “Don’t you think that this is all a matter of perception? From where you’re sitting, you find a young girl who is known to have had some link with Keir Edwards, an association which is highly personal and a source of great pain to you, for obvious reasons. From where Gregson sits, he respects your professional opinion and therefore doesn’t rule out the possibility of the connection with Edwards being relevant. But, he also has to think of your wellbeing. He wants you to remain clear-headed.”

  “I’m always clear-headed.”

  Paddy simply eyed him over the rim of his glass.

  Ryan swore under his breath.

  “Alright, I get it. He wants to make sure I’m not confusing things that happened before with what’s happening now.”

  “Wouldn’t you agree with him?”

  “Yeah, except, so far, I’m accomplishing that all on my own.”

  “Good,” Paddy agreed. “I’m glad to hear it. Ryan, I don’t expect you to turn up at my office ranting and raving. It’s not your style. I want you to think of this room as a sounding board; an opportunity to get things off your chest and to clear out the clutter so that you go forward with a fresh outlook.”

  “Makes sense,” Ryan had to admit. He glanced around the room while he searched his mind, considering if there was anything else he wanted to say. “To be honest, things are starting to pile up.”

  “How so?”

  “Every time I look at the body of Amy Llewellyn, I see Edwards’ fingerprints all over it. But then, I look at the rest and none of it fits. I can’t understand it.”

  “It’s hard, sometimes, to admit when we’re wrong.”

  Ryan frowned.

  “It’s not that. When I’m wrong, I move on to the next point. Push forward. But this is different; he had her photo in his house; she was a medical student and the timing fits when he was doing his rounds at the RVI.”

  “You’re saying that it puts him in the vicinity? Surely, that’s circumstantial.”

  “I know that it is. He was questioned repeatedly about those photographs last year and his story never changed: he says that they aren’t his and he has no idea how they got there. There’s not a cat in hell’s chance of me being able to interview Keir Edwards about the same thing, without something more.”

  “You would want to interview him yourself?” Paddy was surprised.

  “It’s my case.”

  “Is that all?”

  An unreadable look passed across Ryan’s face.

  “No, it’s not all.”

  * * *

  Ryan made it to the hospital in time to catch the last ten minutes of afternoon visiting hours. It was a refreshing change to walk along the plastic-coated floor of an ordinary ward, rather than the intensive care unit. Instead of the incessant ‘beep’ of monitors, Jack Lowerson’s new ward carried the sound of quiet laughter. Here, there was positivity.

  He headed to the bed at the end, where the curtains weren’t drawn, signalling that it was alright to approach.

  “Jack.”

  Lowerson didn’t look unwell, Ryan thought, aside from being a bit thinner. In the six months that he had been in the hospital, the deep skull fracture had mended following emergency surgery to remove several blood clots in his brain. His wavy brown hair had grown back, hiding the scar that lay beneath it. His cheekbone and nose had both been broken and, after some impressive plastic surgery, the only evidence that his face had been smashed could be seen in the slight dent which leaned his nose a little to the left. Looking closely, his face was ever so slightly asymmetrical, but it was better than the alternative.

  “Ryan,” the man pushed himself up into a sitting position and rested against the pillows at his back.

  Almost immediately, a young nurse bustled over and plumped those pillows. With a parting smile, she bustled off again.

  Ryan raised a single black eyebrow.

  “You might be onto a winner, there, mate.”

  “I wish. She’s breaking my heart.”

  It was fantastic to be able to sit here bantering with the lad, Ryan thought. It was a miracle that Jack was alive at all, that he suffered no permanent brain damage …

  Don’t dwell on it.

  “You’re looking well.”

  “Thanks, every day I feel better and better.”

  Ryan nodded.

  “Look, ah –”

  “Ryan, I –”

  They spoke in unison. Jack gestured for him to speak first.

  “Lowerson … Jack. I never got a chance to apologise.”

  “There’s no need –”

  “There’s every need,” Ryan interjected firmly. “You’re one of mine. I let you down.”

  Jack shook his head and looked down at his hands against the crisp white sheet.

  “You told me to bring them in for questioning. I went beyond that; way beyond that. I entered a suspect’s premises without any support. It was basic training and I ignored it.”

  Ryan swallowed. That much was true, but it was a bloody hard way to learn his lesson.

  “You didn’t deserve this.”

  “No, I didn’t. But that’s not your fault.”

  Ryan rubbed clammy hands over his jean-clad legs.

  “Look, I just wanted to say that we’re all glad you’re back in the land of the living.”

  “Me too.” Jack cleared his throat. “I appreciate you coming down here. My mum was telling me that you and Phillips visited every Saturday afternoon, while I was out of it.”

  Ryan gave a quick, short nod.

  “It was the least we could do.”

  “It means a lot.” Jack looked away, embarrassed to find that tears were brimming. Ryan saw them and gave the man a moment to compose himself before changing topic.

  “Thing is, Jack, you can’t loll about here for the rest of your life flirting with Nurse Nancy over there. We’ve got work to do.”

  Lowerson smiled.

  “I caught the news,” he pointed a finger at the old-fashioned TV fixed to the wall in the corner of the room.

  Ryan lowered his voice and leaned forward so that only Jack could hear.

  “We found another one,” he murmured. “Same wall cavity, but this one’s brand new.”

  Lowerson’s eyes turned dark and serious.

  “You’re thinking it might be a copycat?”

  “Could be.”

  “They worked fast,” Lowerson muttered. “Someone looking to cash in on the media hype?”

  “They killed her before any of the news channels had even picked up the first murder.”

  Jack frowned.

  “If not that … you think it’s the same guy, returning to the scene of th
e crime?”

  Ryan smiled slowly. There was no lasting damage to Lowerson’s brain.

  “We’re waiting for the autopsy to come back. Faulkner’s running his samples. But … there’s a possible connection with Keir Edwards.”

  Lowerson searched Ryan’s face for any sign of distress, but he only saw resolve.

  “If it turns out to be someone else, then it’s a long time to wait to kill again.”

  “My thoughts exactly,” Ryan approved. “That’s why I asked Phillips to look into like crimes. We’ve found several other missing girls who fit the physical type.”

  “Whichever way the cookie crumbles, it looks like we’ve got another serial on our hands,” Lowerson mused, with a hint of excitement. Ryan rolled his eyes. Attempted murder and grievous bodily harm couldn’t dim Jack Lowerson’s enthusiasm for detection.

  “You’re a morbid bastard,” he joked.

  “Yeah, great, isn’t it? There’s only so much Murder, She Wrote that one person can stomach before needing the real thing.”

  With an eye on the time and the growing tiredness on Lowerson’s face, Ryan rose from the mint green wingback visitor’s chair.

  “Any idea how much longer until they let you out?”

  Jack shrugged.

  “Another few days, maybe. They’re running brain scans, to double check there’s nothing amiss. They’re a bit concerned about the amnesia.”

  “You still don’t remember what happened?”

  A shadow passed across Jack’s face.

  “No,” he shook his head. “The last thing I remember is seeing the greenhouse in Ingles’ garden on Holy Island, thinking ‘Morning Glory!’ and then the lights went out.”

  “It might come to you, when you least expect it.”

  Jack’s fingers became restless, tugging at the sheet, folding and re-folding it as he struggled.

  “I have nightmares,” he said. “But when I wake up, I can’t remember what they were.”