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

by LJ Ross

  Faulkner hesitated, despite his orders from his commanding SIO. He fiddled with his car keys uncertainly.

  “Are you – ah – are you going to be OK here, on your own?”

  Anna looked around the empty space and felt a small wave of unease, but nodded cheerfully, batting him away with her hand.

  “Of course! Your suspect is dead and I’m in a building filled with police officers. Couldn’t be safer, could I?”

  “It’s not that … I, um.”

  He trailed off, feeling stumped.

  “Tom, give me some credit,” Anna smiled. “It’s obvious that Ryan left you here to watch over me. Now, there’s no need for you to bother.”

  Faulkner nodded, feeling much better about it. She was right, after all. Surrounded by police, she couldn’t be safer.

  But, as he left her in the quiet space, he wondered why the conversation with Ryan replayed in his mind; why he checked, then double-checked the instructions he had been given. He peered into the passing offices along the corridors of CID as he headed for the exit and was encouraged by the sounds of activity: phones ringing, men and women swearing at each other in jest and earnest, the tap-tap sound of fingertips hitting keyboards.

  With a final glance over his shoulder, he headed out into the twilight and prepared to journey out into the hills.

  * * *

  Colin stood west of Sycamore Gap, beside the ruined mini-fortress labelled, ‘Milecastle 39’. His thin shirt buffeted in the breeze, his hair repeatedly dashed against his face. Lost and lonely, he surveyed the world around him but with eyes only half tuned into the present. Beside him, he saw Claire as she had been in life. He could hear her voice on the air and he could feel her soft hand taking his. The brush of the wind was a caress and the broken stones a towering castle, rising nobly at his back and filled with people.

  Not alone, after all.

  “See, Mother,” he murmured. “Everything’s alright.”

  The present jarred for a moment when the tiny figures of real men and women intruded. They stole over the brow of a hill to the west, like black ants.

  Colin tried to focus on them but the ground shifted and moved. Voices of the women he had known droned on, an endless cycle of repeated rejection until another voice he recognised spoke loudly enough to drown them out.

  “Colin?”

  He turned, seeking its source.

  “Yes?”

  “Colin, do you remember me?”

  He squinted as the sun fell further into the horizon, up into the face of the tall man who stood a careful distance away from him.

  “Of course, I remember you. You’re DCI Ryan, aged thirty-five, six-feet three inches, dark hair, grey eyes. Mother and father living, sister deceased. Joined the Metropolitan Police aged twenty-three, moved to the North-East in 2008.” He reeled off the facts robotically, in a funny, detached voice.

  Ryan saw that the man’s hands were almost white and, in them, the fingers clawed at a bundle of shiny, pale pink fabric of the same type worn by waitresses at The Diner.

  “That’s right, Colin. I’m DCI Ryan, but you can call me ‘Ryan’, if you prefer.”

  “Thank you,” the other replied politely.

  “Pretty up here, isn’t it?” Ryan remarked, taking stock of their immediate terrain. A few more steps and Colin would be over the side of a steep hill.

  “Yes, very.”

  Ryan licked dry lips and fell back on training. Develop rapport; use the subject’s first name.

  “Colin, it’s getting pretty cold out here, why don’t we head somewhere warmer? We could grab a cuppa and talk things over. What do you say?”

  The man’s chin wobbled. He couldn’t leave, not until his friend came for him. Besides, Claire was here. He could smell her, he thought, lifting the material to his nose.

  “Colin?”

  “No!”

  Ryan held both hands out, in appeasement.

  “OK, Colin, just relax.” He tried another line. “Why are you here?”

  Colin butted out his chin, stubbornly.

  “Can’t tell you,” he said, childishly, as his mind began to regress.

  “How about I take a guess?”

  Colin glanced over at him. The rules only said that you couldn’t tell tales on your friends, but it was different if somebody happened to guess.

  Ryan took the silence as an invitation to try.

  “I think your friend, Doctor Edwards, sent you a postcard. Am I right?”

  Again, no answer, but Colin continued to watch him, waiting for the next guess.

  “I think he told you all about how real men break free, all about how to get a woman. Isn’t that right?”

  “He’s got swarms of them,” Colin mumbled, enviously.

  “He told you that you could be just like him,” Ryan continued, edging a little closer while he spoke in smooth, rounded tones.

  Colin nodded.

  “He told you there was something to find up here, didn’t he?”

  Colin remembered the gaping jaw of Amy’s skeleton and he shuddered visibly, bile rising to his throat as he tried to block the images.

  “I found her,” he cried, clawing at the pink material like a comfort blanket. “I found her.”

  “That’s right, Colin, you found Amy Llewellyn’s body hidden inside the wall.” Ryan spoke very, very gently. “Did you kill her, Colin? Do you know who did?”

  The other man was rocking on the spot, back and forth, back and forth.

  “No-o,” he wailed. “No, I didn’t. I’m sure I didn’t.”

  “All right, Colin,” Ryan was closer now, within touching distance. “What have you got there?”

  He indicated Claire’s uniform and Colin looked down at what he held in his hands with disconnected fascination before he wrapped his arms tightly around the material, fearful that it would be taken from him.

  “It’s Claire’s. I’m looking after it, for her.”

  Ryan sought to make eye contact with him, but Colin’s eyes were aloof and spaced out, as if he had been doped.

  “Where is Claire?”

  Colin’s chin wobbled again and he shook his head, a spasm of movement while his mind tried to rid itself of the awful truth.

  His jaw worked, struggling to form the words.

  “She’s … she’s de-ad,” he managed, voice breaking and tears blurring his vision.

  Ryan’s voice remained soft.

  “Did you kill her, Colin?”

  The other man shook his head vehemently.

  “I loved her. I didn’t. I swear I didn’t kill her.” But the tears started to fall as he remembered how angry he had been, how he had considered the possibility of ending her and then ending himself. Soft, encouraging words spoken over the telephone from a man who understood that terrible need.

  “Maybe I did,” he burst out, his voice carrying over the tranquil air, out into the night.

  Behind him, Ryan made a brief gesture to Phillips, who stepped forward. Together, they each took an arm in a gentle, but firm grip.

  “Come on, mate,” Phillips urged to the tearful man who was around the same age. “Let’s go and get a digestive to dunk in a sweet cup o’ tea. I’m freezing my bollocks off, out here.”

  Colin looked between them and allowed himself to be led over the padded earth, towards reality again.

  * * *

  DC Lowerson’s black Fiat pulled into an empty space on a wide, leafy avenue on the western edge of Jesmond, not far from the Town Moor. He pulled the hand brake and turned to his passenger with a nervous air.

  “You sure you don’t want company?”

  “No,” Denise MacKenzie took a moment to check her appearance in the side mirror. “You know I have to go in alone, if this is going to work.”

  “The others aren’t here yet,” Lowerson argued, glancing again at the digital clock on the dashboard, which now read 20:14.

  “They’ll be along soon. Ryan said eight-thirty,” MacKenzie replied, with a calm
ness she didn’t feel.

  “Phillips will lynch me, if anything happens,” Lowerson mumbled, and MacKenzie turned to him with a laugh.

  “Bless you,” she tugged his ears towards her and bestowed a kiss on his freckled forehead. Then, her face fell back into serious lines.

  “This is important to me, Jack. I think it’s important to you, too. Both of us have something to prove.”

  Jack nodded, turning away to stare out of the windscreen.

  “Be careful,” he muttered.

  “Got all the bases covered,” she returned, with a wink.

  MacKenzie stepped out of the car and into the darkening night, looking up and down the upmarket street of Georgian townhouses. The air was heavy around her; dampness clung to her skin and filmed her clothes, though the rain hadn’t properly started yet. She crossed the road and walked further down the street until she reached a house with a dark navy BMW parked on the street outside.

  The doctor was in residence.

  CHAPTER 23

  Detective Sergeant Frank Phillips considered himself an ordinary, reasonable man. A patient man, even. Well, after today, he would proclaim to all and sundry that he had the patience of a saint.

  He cast a disgruntled eye over at his SIO, who was driving with the precision of an eagle and the speed of a flying bullet. Phillips’ fingers gripped his knees in reaction. With Colin Hart safely strapped into the back of a squad car, under the supervision of two DCs and a medic, they raced back towards the bright lights of Newcastle.

  “You said Lowerson was already in position?”

  “Yep.”

  Always the conversationalist, Phillips thought, peevishly, before picking up the car radio.

  “No radio. Use the mobile.”

  Phillips let the radio fall back into its holder. Anybody could tune into a car radio and you never knew who might be listening.

  “He’s not answering,” Phillips said, after a few failed attempts to contact the young detective constable.

  Ryan’s lips hardened, as did his hands on the wheel.

  “He knows we’re on our way.”

  Ahead of them, the long stretch of road turned black as rain began to bounce off the tarmac.

  “If anything happens to her –”

  “I know, Frank.”

  Indiana Jones rang out, interrupting them. Phillips answered.

  There followed a short, tense conversation, which correlated with the mounting speed of the car.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Just keep your eyes on the road and try not to blow a gasket,” Phillips began, feeling his stomach heave as fields and trees whipped past them. “That was Faulkner.”

  “Faulkner?” Ryan was surprised. “Has something happened to Anna?”

  Phillips held up a hand, indicating that Ryan needed to shut up before he could answer.

  “Faulkner rang to say he’s on his way up to Sycamore Gap but he’s been delayed by traffic on his way out of the city. He’s sorry to be later than expected.”

  Ryan frowned in confusion.

  “What the hell is he talking about?”

  “I asked him the same question,” Phillips paused while he waited for his entrails to settle back into position after the latest bump in the road. “He was totally blindsided. Said you called him half an hour ago to say Colin was dead and you needed him up there, pronto, to work the scene.”

  “I never called him.”

  Phillips raised his eyes heavenwards.

  “I know that, guv. Anyway, I’ve told him to turn around and head back to CID.”

  “Anna?”

  “She’s still at CID, far as he knows, and the place is filled with uniforms. Keep your hair on.”

  “We were right, Frank. Who would know she had been left with Faulkner? Who would know how to draw him away?”

  “Aye, lad. Thank God my girl intercepted him first.” He thought of Denise, beautiful and brave.

  Ryan spared Phillips a brief glance and a muscle ticked in his jaw. The speedometer crept upwards, past eighty, dropping only when he made the sharp bends through the small villages and hamlets peppering the landscape as they edged closer to the city limits.

  “Fuck this,” he snarled, and flicked on the siren for the single flashing blue light, which he had stuck on the driver’s side of the roof.

  They raced through traffic lights, through bus lanes and one-way traffic with the kind of contempt for the Highway Code that impressed the local taxi drivers left in their wake. Lights began to appear in the windows of the houses and street-lamps flickered. The last of the sun’s rays bathed the city of Newcastle and the night came to life. Beneath the moon and stars, men and women looked to the heavens. Some hoped for salvation; others for redemption. A chosen few waged war upon whomever resided there, turning their back on conscience. One man closed his eyes to the beauty of the sky and offered himself up to the hedonistic pleasure he had fought against for too long.

  * * *

  Anna finished reading an article written by Jane Freeman, entitled, ‘Myths and Magic of Northumberland’s Greatest Historic Sites.’ It had proven to be an interesting yarn; short on historical sources but long on unsupported but entertaining arguments about the real reason behind the deaths of prominent historic figures in the region.

  Bored, she flung it on the desktop beside her and yawned, once more feeling small and insignificant in the open conference space. Though Anna knew there was a hive of police activity going on around her, she heard nothing outside the soundproofed walls of the Incident Room.

  She spent another few unproductive minutes propelling the foam-stuffed desk chair from one wall to another, before giving up on that too.

  Her eye fell on Ryan’s desktop computer, then on the small CCTV camera in the corner of the room. Nope, she thought. Better not to snoop.

  Presently, the doors whooshed open with a small gust, to reveal a figure in the doorway.

  “Jeff?” She raised her eyebrows and hastily wheeled herself back towards Ryan’s desk with the heels of her shoes, feeling slightly flushed. “Nobody’s here, I’m afraid. They’ve all gone up to Sycamore Gap.”

  Her brow puckered.

  “Shouldn’t you be up there with them? I thought they needed a pathologist to confirm death or something like that?”

  Pinter closed the door behind him with a gentle click and moved further into the room. He had discarded his navy blazer and stood in comfortable shirtsleeves. He placed his bag on the floor beside him.

  “Good news! Colin isn’t dead,” he said, expansively.

  “What? Why would Ryan say that he was? Faulkner’s on his way –”

  “Now, now,” Pinter shushed her, moving further towards the desk where she sat. “Nothing to worry yourself about. Everything’s taken care of.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Pinter held up a single, bony index finger and retrieved a small vial of liquid from his inner pocket. Anna squinted at the label, which read, ‘FLUMAZENIL’, in plain black lettering. With dawning horror, she watched him place it on the desk between them, the wrinkles beside his eyes creasing into a broad smile.

  * * *

  Doctor Paddy Donovan clicked off the lights in the hallway and checked his pockets. Keys, phone, wallet, bag, he rattled off his mental checklist and reached for the front door. He was already running behind schedule and couldn’t wait any longer.

  When the door swung open, an unexpected visitor awaited him, walking slowly up the flagstone pathway to his front door.

  “Denise?” His voice was laced with genuine surprise.

  “Paddy,” she began, apologetically. “I’m sorry to disturb you at home. It’s just that you said I could stop by anytime, if I needed to talk things over. I can come back on Monday …” she trailed off.

  Donovan looked beyond her to the quiet street and made a split-second decision. Stepping backwards into the hallway, he flicked the switch on again and gestured her inside.

  “You’r
e always welcome, Denise. Come inside, and we’ll talk.” He took another glance over her shoulder as she brushed past him and added, “Did you come alone or would Phillips like to come inside for a dram?”

  “Oh, no, I’m on my own tonight. Frank’s up at Sycamore Gap with Ryan. They found Colin dead, you know.”

  “Good heavens,” Donovan replied, with a sympathetic tut. “Poor, troubled soul. God rest him.”

  He hesitated in the hallway, wondering where to lead her, but decided upon the study towards the back of the house. It was quieter there and less likely that they would be disturbed.

  When she had settled herself comfortably into one of the expensive chairs, her copper hair fanning out against the mulberry leather headrest, he spoke again.

  “Can I offer you a drink? Something warm? Better yet – something alcoholic, or are you on duty?” He winked, charmingly.

  MacKenzie offered a cheeky half-smile in return.

  “We-ell, you know I probably shouldn’t, but … go on then. If you’ve got a glass of something red and fruity, I won’t say no.”

  “Don’t move a muscle,” he ordered, leaving her to survey the room while he nipped along to the kitchen.

  This was clearly Donovan’s personal retreat, MacKenzie thought, taking in the mementos encased in glass cabinets, the expensive sound system tucked away discreetly on a shelf to the side of an original Victorian fireplace. The colours were subdued, every surface clean of dust. Above the fireplace was a large, framed pen-and-ink drawing of Satan’s war against God, as told by Milton. It was a contorted, disturbed image and she was forced to look away. The French-style carriage clock on the mantle chimed eight-thirty in one loud strike.

  There was only one exit; back through the doorway she had entered.

  * * *

  As he watched his quarry from the interior of an unmarked police vehicle, Arthur Gregson replayed the last conversation held with his High Priest. In the glove compartment rested a small, double-edged knife with an ornate ivory handle, reserved for occasions such as these.

  “Do it now,” the man had urged. “He will be alone. The area is secluded.”

  Gregson reached towards the glove compartment with reluctant hands. He unsheathed the blade, admiring its craftsmanship whilst at the same time thinking of how many lives it had taken.