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

by LJ Ross

  “How the hell did he manage to get up there?” Ryan burst out.

  The bus and train stations were heavily manned by police on foot patrol and the local news channels had the story of him absconding on permanent loop, yet the man had made his way to the station closest to Housesteads Fort.

  “I want a team up there, right now,” Gregson cut across whatever Ryan had been about to say. “The man is to be considered dangerous, approach with extreme caution.”

  “He’s disturbed,” Donovan felt bound to point out. It was a question of the sword and the shield, he supposed. Where he saw illness, others saw evil.

  “Whatever,” Gregson snapped. “Ryan, I want you to call in armed support.”

  Ryan frowned heavily, both at the tone of command and at the prospect of the firearms unit being deployed.

  “Sir, we have no reason to believe he will be armed with anything we would not be able to neutralise with proportionate force. Given the man’s previous crimes – if proven – the methodology does not suggest he will be armed with anything more than a manual tool.”

  “Objection noted and overridden,” Gregson retorted. “Ryan, I want you heading a team within thirty minutes. Get it sorted.”

  The room was suddenly galvanised. Pinter melted away, back to his friends in cold storage. Donovan returned to his patients and his books, worrying about the man wandering the hills and fells. Gregson remained long enough to ensure that his orders were obeyed, watching and listening while Ryan put together a team to find Colin with minimal fuss and then retreated to his office to handle some other pressing matters. Faulkner returned to his forensic taskforce, co-ordinating the on-going effort there.

  “Would it be best for me to go home?” Anna asked Ryan, at the first opportunity.

  He did not answer immediately, weighing up the safest options.

  “No, it’s best for you to stay here. I’m sorry,” he held her face in his hands, uncaring of the nudges and winks from his team.

  “Ryan, for heaven’s sake,” she muttered, “I don’t need babysitting. I’m perfectly happy to go back. We’ve just heard that Colin’s miles away from here, which means he’s not scoping out my little cottage, is he?”

  “Please, stay here.”

  It was on the tip of her tongue to argue and then he gave her that look. The one conveying just the right amount of vulnerability and just the right amount of pleading, to prey upon her soft heart.

  “Stop that!” She jabbed a finger into his chest.

  He just looked.

  “Oh for the love of –” She blew out a long breath, striving for patience. “Fine. Fine! I’ll hang around here like a lemming while you go off and play the hero, shall I?”

  “That would be great.”

  With a quiet word to Faulkner, Ryan turned to make the necessary arrangements.

  CHAPTER 21

  The wind whipped across the wide, open space, and Colin shivered. His body was in shock and beginning to react to the cold. Where were his backpack and his jacket? He looked around with vacant eyes, trying to remember where they might be. His mind didn’t choose to recall that they were tucked in the hallway cupboard of Number 32, because that would mean remembering what else lay hidden in that house.

  As far as he was concerned, his mother was alive and eagerly awaiting his return.

  He clutched Claire’s uniform to his chest, drawing comfort from it, imagining that the clothes were more than inanimate material. He could still smell Claire’s scent amongst them, which helped him to envisage that, perhaps, she was still with him.

  His eyes were troubled as he scanned the fields.

  Which way?

  White-tipped fingers clutched at the folds of Claire’s skirt as he tried to think which way to turn. Just a little further, he thought, just around the next bend.

  He wandered into the wilderness.

  * * *

  Sirens screamed along the Military Road as a team of police operatives made their way towards Sycamore Gap, in off-road vehicles complete with reinforced glass. Outside, the air was thick and muggy. The fine weather that the people of Northumberland had enjoyed of late was near breaking point, the heavens ready to let loose the rain which waited to fall over the hills and vales.

  Ryan held a car radio to his lips.

  “Sirens off,” he snapped.

  There followed an unnerving silence as, one-by-one, the vehicles obeyed. An army of blue and white crept closer to Sycamore Gap, with only the purr of well-tended engines and the crackle of rubber on tarmac to signal their approach.

  “Team A to approach from the east,” he continued. “If suspect is sighted, do not approach. I repeat. Do not approach.”

  There was a fizz of incoming messages to confirm that his order was understood.

  “Team B to approach from the west,” he continued. “Same rules apply. If suspect sighted, report, but do not approach.”

  The turning for Housesteads came into view and three cars peeled away from the convoy, while another three continued onwards to make their approach from the west.

  “Last sighting of Colin Hart was an hour ago outside Bardon Mill,” Ryan’s firm voice sounded down through the radio. “Assume that the suspect is now within a three-mile radius.”

  The fort and visitor centre had already been evacuated and the car park stood empty when the cars turned into the gate. There was no sign of any human presence, only the stone ruins and abandoned buildings to prove that, once, people had reigned here. To the men and women who exited their vehicles, it was as if the land had overtaken once again. Where Hadrian had sought to tame it and to separate it, the country had emerged triumphant. They were reverent; a hushed crowd of people who acknowledged that it was they who trespassed.

  * * *

  While Colin stumbled over rocks and water, Doctor Jeffrey Pinter looked down at the bloated body of Geraldine Hart, lying rigid on the gurney before him. He turned the music in the mortuary to something jolly, dancing along to the beat in his head. He had dismissed the rest of his team, telling them that the prime suspect would soon be apprehended and therefore they could afford to take a few hours’ break, after a taxing few days.

  “Just you and me, old gal,” he said gaily, snapping his mask into place.

  He began to hum as he selected a small rotary saw and enjoyed the familiar thrum of power as it trembled along the tendons in his arm. He looked at it a moment, detached and fascinated while the engine whirred, then drove it through flesh and bone with unflappable precision.

  He spoke clearly into the microphone on his lapel as he went and, after the job was done, he made his own hand-written record, which he added to a bright blue plastic wallet. Afterwards, he scrubbed his hands with antimicrobial soap and hung up his lab coat. In the privacy of his office, he thought of the evening ahead and of the woman who awaited him.

  He had worried, for a while, that he was too old for her. The mirror didn’t lie, nor did the date on his driver’s licence, which told him he was no longer a spring chicken.

  Drawing himself tall, he brushed self-doubt aside. Doctor Jeffrey M. Pinter had a lot to recommend himself and she was sure to realise that. Women appreciated a man of experience, or so the women’s magazines told him.

  ‘Is your man a dish, or a dud?’ That was how one such rag had posed the question.

  Jeffrey regarded himself in the elevator mirrors as it transported him from the basement mortuary of the hospital and out into the world once more.

  Dish, he decided.

  Emerging from the automatic doors at the entrance to the imposing building, impervious to the people who swarmed around him, he felt like a butterfly. A big, beautiful creature, ready to capture the attention of the world and one person in particular.

  * * *

  Anna watched Ryan leave with a gaggle of police staff in tow. He had another cloak on now, she thought. He was not only seeking out a man, he was seeking to avenge, which was something far greater. Watching him from the side
line, she could not help but feel like a spare part, although she did not envy him his job, nor the faces of the dead who haunted him.

  Thinking herself alone, she huffed out a breath and plonked down into Ryan’s desk chair, jiggling her knees and wondering whether it would be worth trying to do some work. The soft ‘tap’ of a keyboard sounded from across the room and with a start of surprise, she realised that Faulkner was still seated at his desk on the far side of the Incident Room. She wasn’t the only one who remained on the outskirts, while the cool kids went to play cops and robbers.

  “Tom? Sorry, I didn’t realise you were still here,” she said in friendly tones. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

  Faulkner looked up slowly, his unremarkable brown eyes squinting at her from behind thick glasses. His fingers halted on the keyboard and he rubbed at them to clear his vision.

  “Hi, Anna,” he said, a bit tiredly. “No, I don’t think there’s anything I can let you do without proper authorisation, much as I’d appreciate the help.”

  Anna nodded her understanding and swung the desk chair from side-to-side.

  “You look a bit worse for wear, hope you don’t mind me saying.”

  Faulkner had to laugh.

  “Believe me, I feel it.”

  “It’s been a strenuous few days.”

  “It’s been a strenuous few years,” he corrected her, giving up on the computer to rest his head in his hands for a moment.

  Anna frowned and rose to walk across to him.

  “At the risk of sounding like a broken record … anything I can do?”

  Faulkner knew that she wasn’t talking about paperwork now. Still, he shook his head. It was too late, he thought, much too late for anything to be done.

  * * *

  Keir Edwards couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong. It ate away at him, roaming in obsessive circles through his conscious mind until he could do nothing except try to understand what had escaped him.

  The feeling had begun after Ruth’s departure, he knew that much. That narrowed the window quite a bit. Initially, he put the wild, compulsive fantasies down to the fact that he had not seen a live woman in far too long. Even longer yet since he had seen a dead one, and Ruth had been very much to his taste, with her pale skin, rosy cheeks, bright green eyes and dark hair that rippled over one shoulder to tease him. She might have been a little older than his usual, but hey, he couldn’t afford to be picky. As soon as he had seen her, sitting there in the poky conference room, he had begun to calculate the ways in which he could tempt her to visit again. After that, how he could begin to use her as a contraband mule, bringing him all those little extra luxuries he missed in his daily life. All the while, he had allowed himself the freedom to imagine all the ways he could kill her.

  Freedom of thought was a marvellous thing.

  Yet, these thoughts did not cheer him. Why? What was different?

  Rising, he moved to the single drawer in the small wooden wardrobe and retrieved a stack of envelopes. He leafed through them until he found the one he was looking for.

  Ruth Grant.

  He re-read the letters he had received from her, the last one having arrived over three months ago. That was unusual. Normally, his adoring fans contacted him on a more regular basis. As he read the untidy, child-like writing, he could not help but notice the sloppy grammar and poor sentence structure.

  It didn’t fit the woman he had met earlier that day. She had been polished and seemingly well educated.

  A slow feeling began to spread in his gut and his lips trembled. Roused, he grabbed at the papers and began to tear through them, searching for the newspaper cuttings he kept in a large brown A4 envelope.

  His breathing was harsh in the quiet cell as he scanned the black and white images, his dark eyes passing over Ryan’s image more than once, often set against his own on a full page spread with the faces of the women he had killed lined up below, in chronological order.

  He wished he could have it framed.

  But that was for another time, he thought. He knew what he was looking for and he would not stop until he found it.

  Eventually, his fingers stilled their frantic search and he held a thin scrap of newspaper loosely before him. On it was an image of Ryan in the foreground, standing alongside DCS Gregson after the final press conference on Holy Island. In the background, a line of police officers stood proudly, their arrogant chests puffed out at their own self-importance.

  And there, amongst their number, stood Ruth Grant. Only, her hair was lighter. He couldn’t be sure what colour on the grainy picture, but it certainly wasn’t dark brown.

  He looked at the tiny print at the bottom of the image and traced a fingertip along the list of names until he found the one that matched.

  Detective Inspector Denise MacKenzie.

  With infinite self-control, he replaced the papers, re-stacking the envelopes neatly inside their drawer. Then, he turned and stared into the silent space, drowning out the distant sounds of prison guards walking the length of the corridor outside, or of the constant thudding of his neighbour’s boot against the cell wall.

  For, like Ryan, his anger was cold and his memory long.

  * * *

  Arthur Gregson stood in front of the square mirror he had drilled on the inside door of one of the cupboards in his office. Appearances must be kept up and never once had he been caught with his laces undone, or his tie askew.

  He had changed from his classic dark navy suit and white shirt, into a more casual outfit of black trousers and a dark polo shirt. He wore trainers, rather than his usual choice of highly-polished black brogues.

  “Ought to do it,” he murmured at his reflection.

  He met his own eyes in the mirror and tried to see what lay behind them. Was there a soul to find there, after all these years? When he had made his decision to convert, he had always known that there would be hard times, to temper the good. Yet he was finding the edict concerning DC Jack Lowerson a particularly difficult one to bear.

  He thought of the man he knew as the High Priest with a combination of fear and respect. Outwardly, he was a mild-mannered intellectual, someone who blended with the crowd, which was exactly why he had risen to his present position so easily. After a spate of disappointing, ostentatious leaders, the Circle had chosen a High Priest who would not draw attention to their select group.

  Yet the position was a poisoned chalice. No man who had worn the long animal pelt, the Master’s representative on Earth, had been able to resist the beguiling lure of power. There had been some who enjoyed the money, some who preferred the glamour and the prestige, and others whose violent tendencies could thrive whilst cocooned by the Circle’s unquestioning protection.

  Arthur had seen all of them. He had served under all of them. In the early days, when he had been a man of Jack Lowerson’s age, he had struggled to gain recognition. Nobody had seen his great potential, nor given him the chance to shine, until the Circle had invited him into their fold.

  It had been an awakening, when he had been included as a part of something greater than himself. The cause was a true one, so he had thought, and in exchange for loyalty he had been rewarded.

  Oh, how he had reaped the rewards.

  Once a skinny young man with few credentials and little charm, he had flowered. Under careful tutelage, he had changed outwardly and bloomed inwardly. Gone was the stuttering teenager he had been. The promotions had come in steadily. The women had started to notice him too. His wife was amongst them; the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, standing pretty as a picture next to her father, a prominent businessman who had guided him towards several lucrative investments over the years.

  Arthur combed the hair back from his face, thinking that he had aged better than his wife. There had been other women, too many to count, but he would always remember how she had been that day years ago, before life and everyday stresses preyed upon them both.

  It might have helped if the
y had been able to have children.

  He thought again of Jack Lowerson.

  CHAPTER 22

  The quiet of the Incident Room was broken by the loud ringing of Faulkner’s desk phone, which echoed around the walls with a tinny, old-fashioned ‘brrrrriiiiiiiing!’

  “Sorry,” he mumbled, trying to locate the receiver underneath the mountain of paperwork on the temporary desk space.

  Anna just smiled, as she thumbed through an old copy of The Northern Historian magazine she had found in the university archives, searching for an old article written by the now Professor Jane Freeman.

  “God! Are you sure?”

  She looked up again, at the unexpectedly harsh tone from Faulkner, who spoke urgently into the grimy beige receiver.

  “Yes. Yes, of course. I’ll head up there now.” His voice lowered and his eyes skittered over to Anna, who remained seated at Ryan’s desk a few feet away. “Are you sure it’s alright?”

  Another pause.

  “Right-oh. I’m on my way.” He replaced the receiver and looked at it for a couple of seconds while he pursed his lips.

  Anna glanced over at Faulkner with a question in her eyes. He began shrugging into his jacket, noting that dusk was falling outside the smudged windows and would soon bring with it a cold evening breeze.

  “They’ve found him,” he explained. “Colin, that is. They’ve found his body, up at Sycamore Gap.”

  Anna put a hand to her mouth, in reflex.

  “His body? You mean he’s dead?”

  It was funny, she thought, how human compassion worked. The man might have killed several women, but she could still find it in her heart to mourn the loss of another life.

  “Yes,” Tom rooted around for his glasses, then realised they were already tucked into the pocket of his trousers. He always kept a field kit in the boot of his car, containing all the materials and tools he would need for an initial walk-through of a crime scene.

  “How? I mean, was he killed?”

  “Don’t know yet,” Faulkner replied. “Ryan just said to get up there and make a start on the forensics. Might be that Colin killed himself.”