by LJ Ross
“That’s ridiculous.”
“Don’t think for a second,” Ryan continued menacingly, “that I won’t be looking at you, Alex, and looking hard. Your cottage isn’t far from the Priory, is it?” He bared his teeth. “Not difficult for you to arrange to leave the pub separately and then meet at your house later on. You’re a fit guy, too. I’ve seen your morning runs along the beach and I bet you bench a decent weight. It wouldn’t have been too hard for you to drag Lucy up to those ruins, after you’d finished with her.”
Alex had turned sheet white.
“Have you got an alibi for last night, Alex? Where were you between the hours of midnight and five-thirty?”
“I was asleep, in my bed.”
“Alone?”
Alex swallowed. “Yes, alone.”
“How unfortunate for you,” Ryan drawled.
Alex swallowed again, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “I would never - I couldn’t do what was done to Lucy.”
“That remains to be seen,” Ryan finished quietly. “Don’t go anywhere, Alex, will you?”
He stood there for a while after the coastguard stumbled back inside. He watched the man walk with significantly less confidence towards the table he had left, retrieve his coat as if preparing to leave. Rob Fowler rose, put a hand on Walker’s arm in a gesture of solidarity. Ryan had seen enough. He walked briskly around to the side of the pub, intending to call on Megan and clear a few things up.
As he rounded the corner of the wide stone building, he nearly collided with Anna. With instinctive timing, both pulled up short at the foot of the cobbled stone staircase which led to the apartment above the pub. A light burned dimly behind the single unwashed pane on the door at the top.
They stood, sizing each other up.
She saw a darkly attractive man with a face like thunder, wearing a thick navy parka jacket and worn jeans. She let her eyes wander over that sculpted face and caught herself wondering what his stubble would feel like against her skin. Horrified, she ordered herself to get a grip on her hormones and was glad it was dark so he couldn’t see the pink flush working its way up her throat towards her face.
He saw a tall woman standing silhouetted in the light of the pub kitchens, dark hair peeping underneath a green woolly hat, framing pale skin and big brown eyes. He found himself smiling at her, wondering if she knew how much of her emotions showed on that expressive face of hers.
“Doctor Taylor,” he said, “we really must stop meeting like this.”
Anna scowled. The man seemed to spend his life trying to rile her. Worst part was that it was working.
She sniffed. “It’s a small village.”
“Indeed it is,” he agreed. “Were you just visiting your sister?” He glanced up towards the apartment.
“No, I was on my way there.” Anna’s mouth turned down, her voice losing some of its natural warmth. He didn’t think she was aware of it.
“I was on my way to see her, myself.”
Anna’s mouth flattened, her eyes became sharp.
“Don’t let me interrupt you,” she replied, turning to walk away.
He caught her arm and she automatically braced. He frowned and slowly took his hand away, palm upward. Bill had been right, he thought. This woman knew what it was like to be held by hard hands and he berated himself for putting that look in her eye, making her compare him with what had happened before.
“I’m sorry,” he said simply and watched confusion wash over her. She nodded and crossed her arms over her chest defensively. Not for the first time around this woman, he felt frustration burn. He wanted to grab her, shake her…
He wanted to do a hell of a lot more than that, he admitted, but now was definitely not the time.
“I need to ask Megan some questions,” he added.
Anna felt like a complete fool. Not only had she acted like a jealous fishwife, she had jumped like a startled rabbit when all he had done was put his hand on her arm. He must think she was some kind of idiot.
She stopped and reconsidered swiftly. Naturally, she hadn’t been jealous. She’d been surprised, that was all.
Oh, hell with it. She hoped he would have better taste than her sister.
What kind of person did that make her? She thought guiltily.
“Why don’t we just go up together?” His quiet voice with its smooth tone broke into her thoughts and she found herself nodding. Having him there might make things a bit easier between them, she thought. Megan could hardly rant and rave while a total stranger, who also happened to be a murder detective, stood between them.
“Ladies first,” Ryan swept a hand towards the staircase.
Anna swallowed back the sudden fear, the shiver which raced across her skin as she stood at the foot of the stone steps. Her hand shook slightly as she gripped the rail because she knew she was standing exactly where they had found her mother eight years earlier.
Ryan watched her hesitate and wanted to say something but found himself uncharacteristically lost for words. Instead, he placed a hand very slowly, very gently on her arm.
“Slippery there,” he said quietly, puncturing the silence of the evening. “Watch your step.”
Anna turned grateful eyes towards him and found that he was closer than expected. Her face was nearly level with his as she hovered on the first step, clutching the old iron rail. She could smell the slight aroma of alcohol on his breath and could see the shape of his lips in the light of the solitary window.
“Thank you,” she said eventually.
He said nothing, moved nothing as he waited for the heavy tension to pass.
When it did, she turned again and began to ascend, her head a jumbled mess. Ryan let out a breath and followed her, trying not to notice the fit of her jeans as she climbed the stairs ahead of him.
There was no answer when Anna rapped on the small wooden door and yet muffled sounds of a radio or television seeped through the cracks.
Anna shrugged and tried again, thinking that Megan could be in the bathroom.
Still no answer.
She tried telling herself that Megan could be ignoring visitors, unable to hear beyond the sound of the TV, or any number of other plausible reasons why she wasn’t standing in the doorway in her filmy dressing gown telling her to piss off, as she had done earlier that day.
Anna rapped louder, the movements panicked now.
Ryan shouldered her gently to one side and gave a knock himself.
“Megan?” he called out. “It’s DCI Ryan. I’d like to ask you a few more questions. Megan?”
A sick feeling began to roll in Ryan’s gut; that sixth sense that all murder detectives were either born with or worked hard to develop. He supposed he’d always had it and, right now, it was telling him that Megan wouldn’t be answering the door to anyone.
“Anna,” he kept his voice deliberately light. “It looks like your sister isn’t home. Why don’t you head back? I’ll hang around here, just in case she turns up.”
Anna turned to face him directly.
“I appreciate what you’re trying to do. I really do,” she added. “But, I’m not a fool. If something’s happened to Megan,” she swallowed when her voice hitched, “then I should be here.”
Ryan battled annoyance. Why wouldn’t the woman just accept help when it was offered? Save herself the unhappiness for another few hours at least? But no, when he searched the serene, obstinate face looking up at him, he saw resolve and something else he would have called grit.
“If that’s the way you want to play it, go down and get a key from Bill. If he asks any questions, tell him to keep a lid on it for now. I’ll speak to him later.”
She turned without a word.
CHAPTER 8
“Frank? I need you back on the island.”
While Ryan instructed his sergeant to drive back to Lindisfarne with the team before the tides rolled in for the night, Anna sat shivering on the bottom step.
There had been so much blood. It covered the be
dspread, dripped onto the worn grey carpet to dry in congealed clumps here and there. It sprayed over the wall behind and to the left of the bed in high arcs and spattered over the rickety dressing table, the perfume bottles and jewellery boxes.
Nobody could have survived blood loss on that scale, she thought logically, while her heart broke into quiet pieces.
When Ryan had opened the door, Anna tried to prepare herself and had moved to stand beside him, just inside the doorway. The devastation had been there for all to see, but in a room filled with the everyday items which were so very much a part of Megan, covered in what had to be her blood, there was no Megan.
“Where is she?” Ryan had asked himself, those grey eyes remote as they scanned the room. She had a feeling he had committed every detail to memory, down to the pile of the carpet.
“You have to find her,” she had choked, before stumbling out into the night, gasping for air over the putrid stench of pints of wasted blood.
Ryan had indeed committed the scene to memory. He saw the drag marks from the bed across the floor towards the bathroom where he imagined Megan’s body had been moved, presumably for cleaning. His eyes dismally tracked the direction of the blood spatter and he knew that an artery, or indeed arteries, had been severed here. Nothing else could cause the wash of blood which seemed to bathe the room and was made worse by the cheap red satin sheets and curtains. Red was everywhere.
Except the bathroom, he noticed. The spray had reached the tiny doorway off the main room which doubled as living area and bedroom, yet there were no spots on the white tile floor. He cast his eye around again, looking past the blood this time. The room was disordered and bordering on dirty. Clothes were draped over the single faded armchair and piled high on the mismatching two-seater sofa pushed against one wall. The coffee table was cluttered with magazines and other paraphernalia, and filmed with dust. The countertop in the small kitchen area and almost every other surface was either filmed with dust or other clutter. The few patchy areas of carpet which were not dosed in blood were stained or unkempt. Clearly, Megan was not house-proud, which led him to assume that her bathroom was sparkling clean due to the efforts of her killer.
There was no use pretending that they would find her wounded after a nasty accident. Turning away from his position in the doorway – he knew better than to walk into a crime scene – Ryan closed and locked the door behind him and left the radio playing. He needed a field kit, needed to orchestrate a search party once his team arrived. Had circumstances been different, he would have called on the Coastguard, but circumstances weren’t different.
He dragged a hand through his hair and wished for coffee. Better yet, something stronger. It had been a brutally long day and it was far from over yet.
Then he saw her, huddled and shaking at the bottom of the stairs. Quietly, so he wouldn’t startle her, he moved to sit beside her. The fact that she didn’t tense when he laid an arm around her worried him more; Doctor Taylor was habitually tense in his presence and ordinarily he found the fact amusing.
“Anna?”
She turned haunted eyes vaguely in his direction but had trouble focussing.
“I think we should get you inside.” He started to move.
“No!” she realised her voice was nearly a shout and moderated it. “No, I can’t face…” she waved a hand towards the bar, “everyone.”
He looked at her then and saw the fear but also the weariness.
“I’ll walk you home.”
“I don’t want to…”
“You need to go home, Anna.” His voice was firm and more from fatigue than anything else, she found herself complying. He stood up and held out his hand to her. Anna had never held a man’s hand in her life. Oh, she wasn’t inexperienced, but nobody had offered her the simple gesture. Perhaps it was fairer to say that she had never welcomed it.
She took the hand which was offered now and, together, they walked quietly back along the main street towards the fort.
Minutes passed while they walked along the single track lane which led from the village and forked off towards the little cottage Anna rented. All the while, she felt hazy, dream-like. Reality hadn’t set in.
“I suppose you’ll want to ask me some questions,” Anna said as they approached the door to her cottage, voice calm.
Ryan said nothing but continued to watch her with his enigmatic eyes.
“I understand that Megan is - I mean, she might be…” saying the words, or trying to, broke the flimsy barrier she had erected for herself. Hot tears flooded her eyes and Anna looked away furiously before she swiped a hand to brush them away. The sound of the sea lapping on the shore was a roar in her head and the cosy lights of the village were a harsh blur behind her as she stumbled unseeingly along the garden path, fumbling in her bag for the keys.
He simply held her there under the porch light, one hand cradling her head, the other banded around her waist as she let the emotion of the day wash out of her. Old regrets, old resentments churned through her and her fingers gripped and loosened rhythmically on his jacket as she battled against the guilt which threatened to overcome her. Grief was bitter. All these years, when she thought she had grieved for the loss of a family which never really existed, she had been wrong. This was real pain, this sharp, tearing sense of loss.
When her tears were spent, embarrassment started to creep in. She realised her face was nestled comfortably against his broad chest, her arms twined around him. His fingers gently massaged the nape of her neck and soothed the tension there. She drew in the earthy scent of him and wanted to burrow deeper but knew that this moment was given in sympathy.
“Thank you,” she mumbled and tried to push away. “I’m sure it’s not part of your job description to comfort hysterical women.”
He looked down at her and thought that embarrassment only made her more attractive. He knew that he should let her go, move away now. He had already overstepped the professional mark. Hell, he had sailed over it with cheerful abandon.
And yet.
He lifted one tentative hand to cradle her face and watched her eyes darken. Another hand turned her, lifted her face to his.
She watched his eyes glow silver before he took her mouth. If she had expected him to conquer her by force, she was mistaken. This was a slow overtaking of her senses, a gentle seduction which left her blindsided.
As her hands lifted to frame his face, tracing the rough stubble she found there, she felt his momentary shock and it made her reckless. Her fingers arrowed into his black hair to pull him closer, urging him to go on.
There was a battle waging inside him. She was so soft, so eager. The full lips tempted him while her hands tugged him closer. He wrapped his fingers around the fall of silky hair and watched her head fall back, saw the smooth column of her throat. Her eyes were almost closed, fanned by dark lashes which rested on the smooth curve of her cheek. Incapable of thought, he plundered her mouth, tasting, touching, desperate for whatever she could give him. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he felt the desperation in the kiss, could still taste the salty tears on her skin.
Her tears.
Sharply, he pulled away, held her away from him.
“I apologise,” he said bluntly. “That should never have happened. I took advantage of a vulnerable moment and you would be well within your rights to report me.”
Anna stood dumbfounded. Silently, she added ‘prudish’ and ‘officious’ to his list of attributes.
“Don’t flatter yourself,” she snapped out and was satisfied to note his surprise. “I may be upset, but I’m not the victim here.”
She would never be a victim again. That was a promise she had made to herself a long time ago.
“I’m well aware of that. The timing only makes my actions more inappropriate.” He began to turn away.
“There’s a well-worn saying that it takes two to tango, Ryan. I wanted that as much as you did, if only for the comfort.”
That brought his head around a
gain, she thought triumphantly. Like a strung bow, he seemed to quiver for a moment before he melted away from her, back into the shadows.
“Lock your door.” He said harshly, then turned and went in search of death.
* * *
“Bloody hell.”
Phillips stood in the doorway of Megan’s apartment and covered his nose with a handkerchief which had formerly been electric blue but was now greying after numerous washings.
“Quite.” Ryan stood beside him whilst Faulkner and his team worked the room, covered in white overalls and hairnets. “Any word from MacKenzie?”
Ryan had braved the wrath of his sergeant and called in the services of DI MacKenzie and a troupe of additional uniforms, who had arrived on the island less than an hour ago, leaving their families and partners even at the late hour. He’d put them straight to work.
Phillips shook his head, feeling twin sensations of admiration and irritation as he thought of the detective with the siren-red hair currently overseeing the team of police constables scouring the island for a missing girl. “Nothing yet, boss.”
Ryan swung out of the room and down the stairs and waited for Phillips to follow. The small courtyard had been cordoned off from the high street and was manned by two policemen who flanked the entrance like sentries. A small crowd of locals had gathered outside and were moved on.
“I want Bill Tilson, Pete Rigby and any other staff in the bar lounge in ten minutes,” Ryan barked. “Keep them separated. I want their statements taken now. I don’t give a fuck whether they’re having the best wet dreams of their lives. Drag them out of bed and get them down here.”
Phillips had heard the tone before and didn’t bother to remark that it was highly unlikely any of them would be asleep. Instead, he looked around him. The stairs and a perimeter around the courtyard had been cordoned off as part of the crime scene. Large, photographic lights had been placed at intervals to provide continuous light in jarring comparison with the night sky.
