Holy Island: A DCI Ryan Mystery (The DCI Ryan Mysteries Book 1)

by LJ Ross

  Ryan’s head whipped up like a bloodhound.

  “But none in Lucy’s?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Fancied a bit of the other with Megan but not with Lucy?” Phillips offered in his usual forthright manner.

  “For God’s sake, Phillips,” Faulkner protested.

  “Look,” Frank spread his hands in a conciliatory gesture. “I’m just saying it like it is. From what I hear, Megan put it about a bit. Maybe she’d been friendly with the bloke before he did her.”

  “It’s not outside the realms of possibility that Megan knew her killer, since everybody knows everybody on Lindisfarne.” Ryan responded.

  “Aw, now, Guv…” Phillips pulled a face.

  “What makes you think she ‘put it about a bit’?” Ryan cut across him.

  Phillips leaned forward, flipped open his notebook.

  “I got chatting to some of the residents at breakfast this morning. Very decent breakfast, too,” he added conversationally and Ryan snapped his teeth together to stop an expletive slipping out. “None of them had a bad word to say about Lucy Mathieson. Alison and Pete Rigby– they own the place – they were pretty torn up over it. Pete and Lucy used to play together as kids, went to the same school all the way through, their mums are good friends, that sort of thing. I guess we knew that already,” he added as an afterthought.

  “Never hurts to have it confirmed. Go on.”

  “Well, I didn’t even need to ask before I heard the first bit of gossip about Megan. I was just sitting at the breakfast table and I hear Alison– that’s Pete’s mother - talking to one of the regulars, some old biddy who helps out at the church centre,” he consulted his notebook, “Mrs Ivy Felton.”

  “What did they have to say?”

  “Well, Mrs Rigby starts by saying what an awful tragedy it is and isn’t it terrible to have two murders on the same day. They chatted for a while and both seemed a bit scared by it all, to be honest. Can’t blame them, the old bird – Mrs Felton – said that she’d lived on Lindisfarne her entire life and there’d never been so much as a serious assault, never mind a murder. She looked to be in her seventies, too.”

  Ryan grunted.

  “They talked for a while about Lucy and what a nice girl she’d been, both had a few tears. They sort of got conspiratorial when the chat turned to Megan, boss. Leaned in closer, lowered their voices like women do when they want to say something nasty…” he trailed off as he caught the eye of one of the female officers in the room and cleared his throat.

  “Upshot is, these two seemed to think Megan had always been trouble. If she wasn’t with one man, she was with another and the way she went around was asking for trouble. They reckon it was some sex maniac from the mainland who she spurned or some such.”

  “Was this all eavesdropping, or did you manage to actually commit any of this to paper?” Ryan asked dryly.

  “Got it all signed and sealed,” Phillips grinned.

  “OK.”

  Ryan gripped the top of his chair angrily and pushed away to pace. Megan’s killer could conceivably have been from the mainland since she was murdered while the causeway was open. On the other hand, there were too many similarities between the murders and they were too close together to be coincidence.

  He said none of this but gestured with his hand for Phillips to round it up.

  “It gets better,” Phillips puffed out his chest a bit, fiddled with the latest in the line of ridiculous ties he chose to wear. This one was blue with tiny red hearts.

  “Christ, Frank, give me a break. Just spit it out.”

  “She was engaged to Alex Walker,” Frank blurted out. “Word is that she stole him from her sister.”

  “From her sister?” Ryan’s voice was dangerously quiet.

  Phillips didn’t pick up on the nuance.

  “Yep,” he confirmed cheerfully, pleased with his work that morning. “Anna Taylor and Alex had been an item since they were sweet sixteen. Turns out he preferred her older sister because apparently he upped and dumped Anna for Megan, right after Anna found them rolling around in the hay together, as it were.”

  Ryan dropped his head and gave himself a full thirty seconds until the red haze of anger cleared and he could see clearly again. With brute force, he pushed away the unexpected, biting jealousy which clawed his insides and tried to focus on what was important. It was none of his damn business who Doctor Taylor chose to shack up with.

  He would make it his business.

  Ryan made a show of flicking through the typed statements he had received from his officers last night, to give himself time to calm down. He pulled out Alex Walker’s and skim read it again before lifting stormy grey eyes.

  “Now, isn’t it interesting that, when directly questioned as to his relationship with Megan Taylor, our lothario once again failed to mention his prior involvement. Bit unusual, don’t you think?”

  His team looked on, the light of battle beginning to shine.

  “He says he spent yesterday morning assisting with the police investigation, after which he went to his parent’s house to spend some time with the family. How touching,” Ryan growled. “Then he decided to pop into the pub around seven-thirty and I can personally vouch for the fact that he was sitting in there playing up to a crowd of women at eight-thirty.”

  “Puts him in the vicinity,” Phillips said eagerly.

  “Pathologist confirmed time of death as roughly between four and seven yesterday afternoon,” Faulkner added. “He’ll have something more concrete by tomorrow, after the post-mortem.”

  “Have the Walkers confirmed that Alex was with them?” Ryan turned to one of the uniforms, who looked crestfallen.

  “Sir, we haven’t been able to complete a house-to-house yet. Alex Walker was questioned late last night but there’s been no time to conduct the remaining interviews. It’s going to take the whole morning, if not the whole day, once we factor in transient visitors who were present on the island yesterday.”

  “Shit.” Ryan tapped his fingers on the kitchen chair. “Get around to it as soon as you can, as a priority.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Ryan turned back to the two photographs on the wall behind him.

  “What else do you notice about these two?”

  “The markings,” said Lowerson, who had been acting as reader-receiver but didn’t plan to for the rest of his career.

  “Go on,” Ryan said.

  “They seem to be the same, sir.” Lowerson carried on. “It seems to me that the lines are in the same place on each body.”

  “It seems that way to me too,” Ryan said approvingly. A large, upside-down triangle had been drawn on Lucy’s torso with her own blood, with a long vertical line cutting through it. A similar marking had been etched onto Megan’s body, but this time it had been cut into her flesh. It was more aggressive.

  “Any word on the murder weapon?”

  Faulkner came to attention.

  “We’re most likely to be looking for a small, double-bladed knife, with a short handle I would think; it took quite an effort for him to saw down into Megan’s throat and the line isn’t neat, it’s ragged. Nothing has been located, sir.”

  “Same implement used to mark the body?”

  “The pathologist agrees that the incisions are consistent with that type of blade. The markings were made post-mortem, sir.”

  Ryan let that information sink in and found he was mildly surprised. The type of person capable of inflicting such pain would surely have relished drawing out the final kill while Megan was still alive to feel, to watch.

  “The pathologist says he can give us his report on Lucy by the end of today, but it’s going to be tomorrow at the earliest before he can get to Megan,” Faulkner continued. “Having said that, from my side of things I can tell you that there are a number of good print sets found around Megan’s apartment, which we will run through the database on the off-chance.”

  That reminded Ryan to double-check wheth
er any background checks had come back for people on the island.

  “Presuming the islanders are clean and we don’t already have prints on record, that leaves us with an open pool, doesn’t it?”

  “We would need consent to take fingerprints for a speculative search, sir,” Faulkner commented. “We have a couple of decent-ish footprints, smudged but suggestive of a male sized between eight and ten. Still, even if we limit fingerprinting to males resident on the island, that doesn’t narrow down the pool much.”

  Ryan thought of the outcry it would cause amongst the islanders if he were to ask for the fingerprints for every male with an average-to-large shoe size. He was fairly sure that at least one of them would be savvy enough to make a complaint. Violation of human rights, or some crap.

  He was more inclined to think that Megan’s human rights overrode anything else.

  “Wait until we have something more concrete from the pathologist, we can always come back to it later.” Faulkner nodded his agreement. “Frank, what about that quadrant search? Buildings near the Priory?”

  Phillips’ eyes twinkled in his broad face as he smiled.

  “Turns out the nearest buildings are the vicarage and St Peter’s church, which is just beside the Priory. The garden backs onto the edge of the Priory graveyard.”

  Ryan thought back to the statements taken from the vicar and his wife. Both at home, tucked up in bed, at the time of Lucy’s murder. Each corroborated the other’s whereabouts.

  “Then,” Phillips continued, “you’ve got the tail end of Church Lane and the cottages there; both Alex Walker and the Mathiesons live there. Next lane along is St Aidan’s Road and Bill Tilson has a house there. Slightly further along, just off the main square, you’ve got the Heritage Centre, the doctor’s surgery and the Lindisfarne Inn. All three back onto the stretch of beach which runs past the Priory.”

  As Phillips ran through the possibilities, Ryan flicked through his recollection of the witness statements they had received. The Mathiesons had been at home in bed and Bill Tilson had been closing the pub with Megan. The Heritage Centre would be closed, as would the surgery. The surgery formed part of the Walkers’ large home but both Yvonne and Steve Walker had been enjoying a late dinner and drinks with Alison Rigby over at the Lindisfarne Inn, which went on until the early hours. They were all accounted for, apart from Alex Walker, who claimed to be at home alone in bed at the time Lucy died.

  “Doubling back over the other side of the Priory,” Phillips continued, “there’s just the beach, the lane leading to the fort and the Coastguard station right at the end of the harbour. There’s a few holiday cottages here and there. Anna Taylor’s got one of them and the other three are empty at the moment. But,” he said triumphantly, “there are a load of old upturned fishing boats sitting on the beach, practically at the foot of the Priory. People use them for storage or fishing sheds.”

  The two men exchanged a long look.

  “Owners?”

  “Local fishermen, mostly, but then there’s Alex Walker. He owns the blue one nearest the Priory.”

  “MacKenzie,” Ryan turned to the flame-haired detective with a charming smile. “Get me a search warrant, would you?”

  CHAPTER 10

  While MacKenzie pulled together the paperwork for a warrant and chased around for a local magistrate who would grant it, Ryan put two men on Walker. They would guard his movements because the last thing Ryan needed was his only real suspect rabbiting off the island and holing up somewhere. It would be inconvenient, to say the least.

  He dispatched Faulkner to set a fire under the pathologist’s arse so they could take a look at the blood and toxicology analysis on both women. Phillips was overseeing door-to-door interviews and talking to the group of students who had gotten drunk on the beach last night in the name of Mother Earth, or the Wicker Man, or whatever the hell. However much Phillips disliked doing the rounds, people found him easy to talk to and that made him the best person to go out gossip-mongering.

  Maybe it was the ties he wore.

  Ryan looked again at pictures of both women and swore. He knew what he had to do and he knew that he needed help to do it.

  * * *

  Anna had been up for hours, unable to sleep, thinking of everything and nothing. She had shed tears for the sister she had wanted to love but for Megan, love had been an elusive thing to be feared and coveted at the same time. Now, her tears dried up, she was hollowed out.

  Not especially religious, Anna surprised herself by walking through the quiet village to the little island church. The doors opened early and closed late, so she knew that there would be shelter there even just before six in the morning. Sure enough, the large curved doors were unlocked and rows of white candles burned inside.

  She found the little church empty of sinners – clearly, it was too early in the day – but not silent. The strains of a requiem echoed around the stone walls from the organ in a recess beside the vestry and she followed the sound. Sitting in one of the church pews, she listened for a while letting the music wash over her.

  “Hello, Anna.”

  She looked up from her daydream and was pleased to find an old friend watching her.

  “Reverend Ingles,” she managed a half-smile for the Anglican vicar of Lindisfarne. Mike Ingles was well-matched to his profession, both in temperament and looks. He was reasonably tall and trim but with the slight paunch of a man who enjoyed being middle-aged. Salt and pepper grey hair was neatly combed and mild brown eyes peered at her from behind jazzy red glasses. A nod to fashion which contrasted with the bobbled olive green jumper he wore over his collar with brown chinos.

  “May I join you?” He smiled kindly and she shuffled further along the pew, giving him room to sit down next to her.

  He said nothing at first but together they enjoyed the play of morning sunshine as it broke through the large, stained glass window which dominated the vestibule wall and illuminated the church.

  He let out a long sigh and then took one of her hands in his.

  “It’s a hard day for you, my dear.”

  Anna realised that she had come here with the subconscious need to talk to somebody. She had known this man all her life; she had been baptised by him when he had been a younger man. She remembered coming to church with her mother every Sunday morning to listen to his melodic voice as he spoke of forgiveness and love.

  She had never agreed with those sermons. She remembered sitting beside her mother as the locals would gossip and point at the bruises marring Sara Taylor’s pale skin, which she consequently tried to hide with make-up. Anna remembered the anger, the shame and the frustration of a child wishing that she could fight back. Still, she went along every Sunday because that was one place Andy Taylor would never follow them.

  “The loss of a loved one is one of the hardest burdens we face,” Ingles was saying, his eyes crinkled with sympathy.

  Anna took her time, tried to find the words.

  “Megan and I had a difficult relationship.”

  Ingles liked to think he knew everything about island life and the people in his flock. He knew all about the young woman sitting beside him and more besides. He had married her parents and could remember Sara Taylor standing radiant before him as a bride next to the handsome devil she had married before God. He remembered the vows both had taken and both had broken. His heart was heavy for the lives lost and damaged through that union but he drew strength from his faith and tried to give comfort.

  “Your sister had a troubled soul, Anna. ‘Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us’.”

  “I’m trying, Father.”

  “Your sister loved you, Anna, I’m sure of it.”

  She had thought that there were no more tears to shed but in the quiet of the church, she found there were a few more.

  “She hated me,” Anna whispered.

  “’We hate that which we often fear’,” Ingles said quietly. Anna frowned, trying to remember which part of the B
ible he had quoted from and then her brow cleared.

  “Shakespeare,” she murmured appreciatively.

  Ingles patted her hand. “Megan was an unhappy child, who became an unhappy woman. She didn’t have the tools to find herself, to go out and get what she wanted from life, because she never realised that you have to build your own tools. Unfortunately, your sister envied your capability to move on with life towards happiness, or to put it another way, from darkness towards light.”

  Anna considered the words and tried to be honest.

  “In many ways, I don’t feel that I’ve truly moved on with my life. The work I do, it’s all about the past, about other people’s lives, never my own. I haven’t had a relationship since Alex,” she pulled a face.

  “We all need time for healing, Anna. Perhaps you need to learn to forgive yourself, as well as others.”

  There was truth in that. How long could she go on battling against the terrible rage inside her, the consuming anger against her father, her mother, even her sister?

  “I tried to talk to her yesterday,” she said, thinking of the day before. “I saw her in the morning,” she thought back to the scene in the pub where she had first met Ryan.

  “I took some time, cooled off a bit,” and then went to have a good rant at Ryan, she added to herself, “but I decided to try again later. I went back over there around four. I don’t know, but I could have been the last person to see her alive.”

  Ingles didn’t bother to pretend that he hadn’t already known what had happened to Megan. His wife, Jennifer, had heard it all from Alison Rigby, who had heard it from Pete, who had been working at the pub last night. For a holy island, there was little that was sacred on it.

  “How did your conversation go?” He asked.

  “It was an unmitigated disaster.” She thought back to the day before, tried to visualise the scene.

  “I think I caught her at a bad time,” she recalled. “When she answered the door, she was still in a bath robe from the shower and she had laid out some nice underwear on the bed. It looked like she was getting ready to go out. She didn’t invite me in, just left me standing outside in the cold.” Anna paused, registered the hurt she had felt.