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

by LJ Ross

“I’m surprised he didn’t shout for a solicitor the minute we stepped into his office,” MacKenzie frowned. “And I nearly swallowed my tongue when he agreed to give us the CCTV footage.”

  “Maybe he doesn’t think he has anything to hide.”

  MacKenzie snorted inelegantly.

  “His closet must be so full of skeletons rattling, it’s a wonder he sleeps at night.”

  “He probably sleeps like a baby,” Phillips mused. “And that’s the tragedy of it.”

  * * *

  “Oswald was King of Northumbria from 634 until he died at the hands of the pagan Mercian army at the Battle of Maserfield in 642,” Anna was saying. “The account given by the historian, Bede, suggests that he was a saintly king, following his widespread efforts to bring Christianity to Northumberland.”

  She tapped a button on her laptop and the screen behind her flipped to the next slide.

  “Oswald’s remains were interred alongside those of St. Cuthbert, with whom he has been associated posthumously, but it is worth bearing in mind that the two did not know each other in life. Cuthbert became Bishop of Lindisfarne forty years after Oswald’s death.”

  Ryan slipped into the back of the lecture theatre at the History Faculty in Durham. Tonight, Anna was delivering a late lecture to a group of postgraduate historians and it looked like he had caught the tail end of it. He leaned back against the wall, his lean frame barely visible in the darkened theatre.

  Yet, she sensed him. He saw her pause for a moment and scan the room until she found him. He mouthed “hello”, even though she wouldn’t be able to see it from where she stood.

  Anna smiled and felt suddenly self-conscious. It was curious how he still managed to have that effect on her. Thankfully, it was nearly the end of her lecture.

  “Cuthbert’s shrine here in Durham was a major pilgrimage centre, until it was despoiled during the reign of Henry VIII as part of his dissolution of the monasteries. Your essay topic for this week will be as follows: ‘To what extent do you agree that Oswald’s victory at Heavenfield defined his reign?’ Answers under three thousand words, please, due by Friday. That’s all.”

  The lights in the theatre came up and there was a collective stretch and yawn before people gathered up their belongings. Ryan waited while a few stragglers took the opportunity to ask a question before he jogged down the steps to the front of the theatre.

  “Hello,” she said happily. “This is a surprise.”

  He took her by surprise again when, without so much as a pause, he plucked her off the ground. She wound herself around him, hoping that none of her students would wander back in to find their instructor locking lips with today’s answer to Neolithic man.

  “What was that for?” She mumbled once he let her feet reach the floor again. Not that she was complaining.

  “I felt like it.”

  “Well, Mr Spontaneous, let’s head home. You wanna carry my books?”

  He liked this, Ryan thought. He liked the giddy, youthful feeling she gave him whenever he was with her. Whoever heard of DCI Ryan holding hands? Next thing, he’d be asking her to Prom.

  “How was your day?”

  They walked along the river as twilight fell, casting purple-blue shadows over the water. Above them, the cathedral loomed, dominating the city with its towering silhouette and, beside it, the castle rested like a younger sibling. Anna could tell him all about the history of those buildings and, despite himself, he would be interested because of the way she brought the inanimate to life.

  But, not tonight.

  “It was long,” he began by stating the obvious, then rattled through the events of the day as they strolled along the riverside, allowing the charm of the scenery to offset the unpalatable subject matter.

  “Gregson worked fast, didn’t he?”

  Ryan watched a family of ducks paddle along the gentle water beside them. Once again, she had isolated the part of his day that had bothered him the most.

  “Yes, but it could be worse; Donovan is a decent guy.”

  Anna didn’t know how to prod him for further information if he didn’t want to share it, so they scuffed along the riverbank a few more paces.

  “Did you find the meeting … useful?”

  Without speaking, Ryan slung an arm around her shoulders so that he could hold her close, while he let it out.

  “The upshot is, Doctor Donovan thinks I’m overreacting about the referral. I should see it as Gregson taking good care of his staff, rather than any kind of affront to my abilities.”

  “Do you agree?”

  “It makes sense, I get that on a logical level. But it’s here,” he tapped two fingers on his chest, somewhere near his heart. “That’s the problem.”

  Anna felt the warmth of him through the thin jacket he wore, smelled the scent of him that was both familiar and edgy at the same time. She had fallen for a complicated man.

  “Perhaps, try to see it as something designed to help you, until your heart catches up with your head. You said yourself, you like the psychiatrist.”

  “Have you been exchanging notes? He told me to see him as a useful outlet only hours ago.”

  “Well, why not? If nothing else, you can let some of the frustration out.”

  “Yeah.” He thought of what else had emerged during the session and wondered whether to broach the subject.

  They were almost home; he could see the little row of cottages set on the hillside overlooking the river.

  Tomorrow. He would talk to her tomorrow. It wasn’t urgent, after all.

  * * *

  Ryan could feel the shirt clinging to his back as he slammed out of the car. The day had dragged on, hour after painful hour and there was no end in sight. He was still out there, somewhere in the night, and his lust for blood had not been sated.

  The river shimmered to his right, like a black snake. His eyes were blurry with fatigue and stress, his heart heavy with a deep sense of failure.

  There would be another one, tonight. He knew it.

  “Try to get some sleep, son,” Frank was saying, from the driver’s side of the car.

  He mumbled something unintelligible and scuffed his way to the entrance of his building. It was a modern complex on the Quayside and in the daylight hours his apartment held unspoilt views of the river. A quaint market popped up on Sundays and the air smelled of frying onions and rich fudge as traders sold their wares from colourful stalls.

  Now, the streets were quiet. The hour was well past midnight and only a handful of lights flickered in the windows around him. Squinting up to the top floor, he saw that one of them was his.

  Natalie must have waited up for him.

  He thought of his sister: bright and beautiful with a mane of long black hair and eyes the same shade of silvery grey as his own, inherited from their mother. He didn’t expect Natalie to look after him; in fact, he wished she wasn’t there to fuss over him when he dragged his tired body through the front door. All he wanted was bed and oblivion.

  The first thing he noticed when he stepped off the elevator was that the front door to his apartment was open ajar. The security on the building was top-of-the-line … had Natalie left the door unlocked? He frowned, his brows drawing together into a dark, angry line.

  At a time like this, when women in Newcastle were fearful to walk home, to travel without a car, or to be alone in the house knowing that there was a homicidal maniac killing women just like them, she had no right to be so reckless.

  He pushed open the door, ready to give her a lecture on home safety and then froze in the doorway. His stomach flipped over and fear hit him like a fist to the face.

  With slow steps, Ryan moved forward, the blood rushing in his ears as he crouched beside the small white tray, which had been placed directly inside the hallway. On it, three human fingers, bloodied and greying, had been arranged into a makeshift wigwam. A cream card bore the message, ‘Catch me if you can!’ in neat lettering.

  Ryan wanted to throw up, to give
into the sickness that rolled in waves through his shattered body, but instead he reverted to training. His eyes scanned the room, searching the corners and crevices for anybody hidden there, but he found nothing. His hands fumbled in his pockets until he found his phone and he pressed the speed-dial for Phillips.

  “Pick up. For God’s sake, pick up.”

  But the man was driving.

  Ryan put a call through to the control room, requesting backup. The ETA was eight minutes.

  Eyes wide and unblinking, he moved from room to room, heading in the direction of his bedroom and the firearm lying hidden in a box on the top shelf of his wardrobe.

  He didn’t make it that far.

  When he pushed open the door to the spare bedroom, he saw that his sister was seated, so that she would immediately be seen. The central lights blazed overhead, illuminating the sickly pallor of her skin. She lay slumped and motionless, her body tied into place with long bands of surgical tape. He didn’t know if she was still alive.

  Tiredness forgotten, he surged forwards, intending to check her pulse and to release her from the ties. Panic and love swamped him in equal measure, overtaking self-preservation. The man who watched him judged it the perfect moment to strike.

  He lunged from behind and Ryan turned too late, seeing the flash of movement as the man plunged the sharp point of a pressure syringe into the side of Ryan’s neck.

  Almost immediately, he fell to his knees and into the oblivion he had wished for earlier.

  Ryan opened his eyes some time later to a blistering headache. His pupils were like pinpricks against his pale face. He was seated in one of the armchairs in the living area of his apartment and, remarkably, his arms and legs had not been tied.

  Across the room, he saw the monster hovering beside his sister, and he made to leap from the chair. It soon became apparent why no binding had been necessary; the drugs swimming around his brain prevented his body from responding to his frantic order that he move! Just move, damn it!

  Doctor Keir Edwards glanced behind, to where Ryan now lay crumpled on the floor, struggling to drag himself upwards.

  “Sedative,” he offered conversationally. “It’s obviously doing its job.”

  The bastard was right, Ryan thought. He hadn’t been able to feel a thing, yet he lay on the floor like a beached whale, unable to move his legs at all. But his arms still worked. With silent, subtle movements, he reached for the pocket of his jeans, feeling around for his mobile phone.

  It wasn’t there.

  Of course, it wasn’t there.

  With hate-filled eyes, he looked across to the dining table and could see the contents of his pockets gracing the top.

  “What do you want?” Ryan ground out, beginning to feel the effects of the blood loss.

  “I want this ridiculous game of cat and mouse to end,” Edwards replied. “It’s been fun, I’ll admit. Don’t think I haven’t enjoyed knowing that you were always a few steps behind me, plodding along in your interminable way, but I want to regain my freedom. A bird needs its wings to be able to fly freely.”

  He smiled genially.

  “Get out.”

  “Tut, tut. After all the time you’ve spent hunting me, I would have thought you’d be rather more welcoming. If I hadn’t invited myself over, who knows when you might eventually have found me?”

  “Oh, excuse me,” Ryan gritted between panting breaths as he continued his painstaking journey across the carpet. “Welcome.”

  “That’s better.”

  Edwards strolled across to one of the dining chairs and dragged it towards Natalie. He seated himself beside her, crossing one elegant, suit-clad leg over the other.

  “Get away from her!”

  Ryan tried to heave himself upwards and cried out in frustration when his body would not cooperate.

  “Calm yourself,” Edwards snapped, trailing a finger over Natalie’s unconscious cheek. “She should be coming around anytime now, so we’ll have a nice little chat, the three of us.”

  “Not her,” Ryan muttered, fisting his hands. “Please. Not her.”

  Edwards raised an eyebrow.

  “I bet that hurt your pride, just a little. The mighty DCI Ryan reduced to begging … on his knees.”

  “I’ll beg, if that’s what you want. I’m begging you now. Don’t kill her.”

  Edwards sighed dramatically.

  “You don’t understand, do you? You must have known that I would be following your movements, just as closely as you followed mine. By having her here, you placed her in front of me like an offering. A challenge to the brave. You must have known I would not be able to resist her.”

  Edwards trailed another finger over Natalie’s bare thigh, dressed only in short pyjamas that she had obviously worn for bed.

  “She’s a real beauty, this one.”

  Ryan felt bile rise in his throat.

  “Take me, instead.”

  “Oh, I will.”

  Edwards turned to give Natalie a couple of sharp slaps. Her head lolled around her shoulders as she struggled to the surface again. He drew out a long, surgical knife and flicked the end of it, preparing himself for the next stage.

  “No!”

  Ryan dragged himself across the carpet and Edwards watched with the open-eyed stare of someone viewing a strange oddity.

  “Save your energy,” he remarked. “You may need it.”

  “My team are on their way,” Ryan shouted at him, but wondered where the hell they could be. It had been more than eight minutes, surely.

  Edwards smiled, pleased with himself.

  “I rang them again and explained there had been a false alarm,” he said. “We really do sound very alike, you and I, and you had given your passcode in such a helpful way earlier.”

  Ryan felt hope drain from him.

  Natalie’s large grey eyes flickered open, her long lashes sweeping upwards until her gaze locked onto Edwards’. Confusion and terror played across her features and she looked away, meeting Ryan’s desperate face across the room.

  In that moment, Ryan knew. He read the acceptance, the dreadful knowledge of what was to come.

  “No!” Frantically, he dragged himself forward again, like a dead weight.

  “Say ‘Goodbye’, now,” Edwards chuckled.

  The blood pounded in Ryan’s ears and a scream broke free as he watched the man tug Natalie’s long hair back, exposing the slim column of her throat. The silver knife swept a graceful line across it and a river of red gushed forth, fanning a warm arc over Ryan’s upturned face.

  * * *

  Ryan jerked upright in bed with a shout, his fists bunched in the duvet and the pillow soaked in a mixture of sweat and tears.

  Anna sat beside him, fully awake, with a look of extreme concern on her face. She held his forearms firmly, to steady him.

  “Ryan? I’ve been trying to wake you. It was a nightmare – a bad one, by the sound of it,” her voice was soft and mellow, barely above a whisper. She had turned on the small lamp beside the bed, so that he would not waken in darkness.

  Ryan said nothing straight away, but rubbed a shaking hand over his face. He looked across at the bedside clock.

  Three-fifteen.

  Hours left of the night and he was awake, without any desire to return to the world he had just left.

  Anna rubbed a hand in soothing circles over the planes of his back and up to the tight cords of muscle in his neck.

  “Ssh,” she soothed, drawing his brittle body towards her, offering what comfort she could.

  He allowed himself to be enfolded and drank deeply of her warmth, inhaling her scent, clutching her soft body to him.

  “What can I do?”

  “Nothing. There’s nothing anybody can do.”

  Those disconsolate words concerned her more than anything else. A long time later, when he fell into a light, fitful sleep at her breast, she lay awake and worried.

  CHAPTER 11

  Tuesday, June 23rd 2015


  Northumberland was an overcast grey the following morning. Thick blocks of cloud sat heavily in the sky and seemed to accentuate the cheap grey-tinged exterior of CID Headquarters. The building was an anachronism sandwiched between more classic structures, having been built during the 1960’s which had, in Ryan’s view, been a bad era for architecture.

  He glanced at his watch as he headed for the stairwell.

  Seven-fifteen.

  After a disturbed night, he had eventually woken up for good just after five. To jumpstart his system, he’d left Anna to sleep peacefully while he grabbed his muddied trainers and went for a long, muscle-warming run around the empty streets of Durham. There was an eerie beauty to the place, which reminded him of fantasy elven cities in The Lord of the Rings. It had stateliness; grandeur blended with classic town planning which spoke of untold wealth in days gone by.

  While his feet pounded the cobbled streets, things had begun to order themselves in his mind.

  That was why he was here, in the chilly Incident Room, long before his contractual hours formally began. Hell, who was counting anymore? It took however long it took, until the job was done.

  Alone, he spent fifteen silent minutes staring at the murder board, sipping intermittently from a take-away coffee cup he’d purchased from the little van parked along the street. It was owned by a man who worked as an estate agent from nine ‘til five, and then sold tea, coffee and steak pies outside those hours.

  Possibilities roamed his mind, twisting this way and that, until the lines of enquiry presented themselves.

  He took another hour and a half to re-read all the relevant paperwork that had been generated so far. Telephone enquiries, witness statements, forensic and archaeological reports.

  “Morning, guv.”

  He could have predicted that Phillips would be the first to step over the threshold. As always, his eye was drawn to his sergeant’s colourful ensemble and he noticed that today’s tie of choice was a sporty little number: bright green, covered with tiny black-and-white footballs.

  Ryan pointed to the large take-away cup sitting atop Phillips’ desk. Caffeine was one of life’s basic needs, after all.

  “You’re a lifesaver,” Phillips said, making a grab for the cup and gulping down some of the murky brown liquid, which had been sweetened according to his preference.