DCI Ryan 06 Cragside

by L. J. Ross

  “Hello, Maggie.”

  She raised a shaking hand to her eyes, trying to see who it was.

  “Who’s there?” she whispered.

  “Don’t you recognise me?”

  Her eyes were frantic, searching the darkness for a means to escape. The back door leading to the courtyard wasn’t far. If she could push past them and run…

  “It’s over, Maggie.”

  She recognised the voice and knew then that it was over.

  CHAPTER 35

  “Ryan.”

  The housekeeper said his name and he lowered the spotlight to her hand, which still rested on the little timer device plugged in to the power socket of the washing machine in the very depths of the basement.

  “What have you got in your hand, Maggie?”

  Her fist clutched the clever little piece of plastic and she thought of coming up with some excuse, some reason why she’d known to come here when the lights went out, but there was none.

  She was the only person who had known it was there.

  “How did you know?” she asked as she stood up slowly, the timer still clutched in her hand.

  “Your name,” he said simply. “It’s Ramshaw.”

  Ryan saw her nod in the light of his torch.

  “Joe’s name.”

  “You set the timer on the plug beside the washing machine so it would turn on for a few minutes at eleven o’clock last Saturday night, then you set it again for nine o’clock last night. You knew the surge of power would be too much for the circuit to handle. It was so easy.”

  She didn’t bother to deny it and looked down at the timer in her hand.

  “I was sure I had put the timer on the single setting but it’s set for a daily repeat at nine o’clock. I thought I had better come down and get rid of it. I must be getting old…” she trailed off, understanding spreading across her face. “You set this up, didn’t you?”

  Ryan shrugged his shoulders, his half-smile not quite reaching his eyes.

  “What are you going to do now, lad?” she said the last word as a kind of endearment, as if she were speaking to her own child. “What do you think is the right thing to do?”

  “I think you know the answer to that,” he said flatly.

  “Is it really that simple?” she demanded. “Think of all the lives lost aboard that ship, all the children who grew up without fathers because of that snivelling little bastard!”

  Gone was the softly-spoken grandmother now, he thought. Her tone was hard and filled with hatred.

  “You blame him for The Valiant?”

  “Yes, I blame him,” she snarled. “Who else was responsible? I searched for answers for years afterwards because I believed those poor men who checked the oxygen valves. I spoke to them and I believed them, so there had to be another cause.”

  “The inquest ruled it accidental.”

  “The inquest was a cover up,” she spat, her eyes flashing at him in the darkness. “They didn’t know then what I only found out years later. Martin Jennings, as he was, had been siphoning oxygen from the tanks to re-sell, so he could make himself some pocket money. It was a commodity and, as we all know, Martin loved nothing more than buying and selling. His single, self-centred action cost a hundred and eight lives but he never lost a moment’s sleep.”

  “You told Victor this?”

  Maggie gave a short nod.

  “That was a mistake,” she admitted. “I trusted him and I needed somebody else to know. Still, I was sorry he died.”

  “Big of you,” Ryan said and she looked at him with venom.

  “You think you’re so clever, don’t you?” she said, moving toward him. “You think you’re doing the right thing and that society will give you a big slap on the back and say, ‘well done’. But they won’t. They’ll say you locked up a fragile old woman who lost her husband in one of the region’s biggest tragedies. They’ll say I was the real victim here, not that evil, rabid creature I put down last night. He hadn’t changed; you’re the one who said he killed Alice as well. He’d have kept going too, if I hadn’t stopped him.”

  Ryan could feel her breath hitting the bottom of his chin and thought back to the grief-stricken faces of Alice’s parents.

  “You’re forgetting something, Maggie,” he said quietly. “I don’t answer to the popular press, I answer to the laws of England and Wales. I answer to the common standards of decency that society expects, not some base urge to exact revenge.”

  “He got what was coming to him!” she shouted, and a fine spray of saliva connected with his face.

  “It is not for you to play God,” he said.

  “You don’t understand what it feels like, to have lost someone—”

  “I understand,” he snapped.

  They stood almost nose to nose and didn’t even notice when the lights were turned on again and Phillips and MacKenzie joined them, standing a few paces further back.

  “He took my husband—the father of my children!”

  Ryan nodded.

  “And now you’ve let him take something more important,” he said in a low voice. “You let him take your soul.”

  She flew at him then, scratching and clawing.

  Weary now, Ryan held her off, then stepped away and motioned the other two detectives forward to make the arrest. After they led her away amid a stream of obscenities, he let himself out the back door and into the courtyard outside. He didn’t bother to look at the ground where Victor had lain but kept walking around the side of the house until he was on higher ground and could rest against one of the craggy rocks and look up at the sky in momentary solitude.

  The moon trickled glorious white light onto the slate roof of the house and washed away the darkness, cleansing it of the maleficent force that had, for a while, taken hold of the people who lived there. Ryan leaned back against the rough bark of a tree, wrestling with his conscience.

  Should personal vengeance ever be allowed to take precedence over society’s laws?

  He understood the terrible temptation to take an eye for an eye. He understood the pain of loss, the kind that gnawed at your spirit until there was little left but an embittered shell.

  But there had to be something greater, something that was worth fighting for.

  He watched a squad car make its journey along the driveway toward the city and resolved to keep fighting.

  EPILOGUE

  Anna stood in a long column of simple ivory tulle, clutching a bouquet of wild flowers as she stared into the mirror, hardly recognising herself.

  Neither her mother nor her sister stood beside her, but another woman did.

  “Bend your head a little,” MacKenzie told her, carefully securing a veil onto the top of Anna’s hair, which fell in long waves down her back.

  She stepped aside and surveyed the effect in the mirror.

  “You’re a vision,” she said, gently fluffing the yards of silk. “Are you ready to go and face the music, or should I order a couple of fast horses?”

  Anna managed a nervous laugh.

  Unlike herself, Ryan had a large and expansive family of aunts, uncles, cousins and second-cousins-twice-removed, all of whom would be joining them for the reception later. Thankfully, at his insistence, the numbers had been kept small for the ceremony so that the disparity would not be quite so obvious and she would not feel so nervous walking down a packed aisle of guests who looked as if they’d wandered off the pages of Tatler or Country Life.

  Ryan had assured her they could drink the average Geordie sailor under the table, which was some small comfort.

  Still, it might have been nice to have somebody to cling to.

  Just then, there was a soft tap on the bedroom door.

  “That’ll be the driver,” MacKenzie said, rushing about to scoop up her bridesmaid’s bouquet and other essential items, such as tissues.

  But it was Phillips who stepped cautiously into the room, looking dapper in a navy-blue three-piece suit and a tie in a conservative shade
of red.

  He looked at Anna in a kind of wonder.

  “You’re a beauty,” he said, then shuffled awkwardly, looking to MacKenzie for encouragement.

  From her position over Anna’s shoulder, she gave him a nod and a ‘hurry up’ motion.

  “Ah, there’s a favour I wanted to ask,” he said gruffly, working hard to keep the emotion from his voice. “I, ah, well, I know I’m not your Da and you might not want…that is to say, I don’t have any daughters and I wondered if you’d let me have the honour of walking you down the aisle.”

  Anna couldn’t speak for a moment. She stood looking at the short, ruddy-faced man with twinkling brown eyes and realised she had been very wrong to think she had no family.

  Here was her family.

  “It would make me very happy, Frank,” she managed, blinking furiously against the tears that threatened to ruin her mascara. “There’s just one small thing I need to change.”

  Phillips gave her a curious look and watched as Anna began rooting around one of the wardrobes. She came back holding a canary yellow tie with a pattern of tiny red love hearts and miniature cupids.

  “I think this would suit you a lot better than the one you’re wearing—wouldn’t you say?”

  Phillips’ smile was wide and genuine.

  “Now you’re talking.”

  * * *

  They were married on a sunlit afternoon, on a swathe of sandy white beach beneath Bamburgh Castle. The mighty fortress burned a rusty gold as it soaked up the sun’s rays and, for once, the North Sea was gentle as it lapped against the shoreline. Anna made her way across the sand dunes and stopped to look out across the water where, further to the north, she could see the tower of Lindisfarne Castle on the island where she had been born. It was fitting, she thought, to be married within sight of her past but not overshadowed by it.

  Phillips gave her a quick, comforting squeeze.

  “Ready, lass?”

  “Let’s not keep him waiting too long,” she smiled. “He doesn’t have you with him to crack any corny jokes.”

  They made their way down the dunes, pausing to kick off their shoes like all the other guests who stood up from their chairs to meet her in bare feet. Beside a simple arch decorated in wild flowers with the sea as its backdrop, Ryan stood waiting for her in a matching navy-blue suit, his toes curling in the sand.

  There was a sea of familiar faces, Anna realised, and every one of them wished her well.

  Alex Walker, her childhood friend from the island, stood next to his new boyfriend and winked as she passed. Her good friends from university, making silly, ecstatic faces. Tom Faulkner and Jeff Pinter, both welling up. Jack Lowerson, wearing a brand new shiny grey suit that caught the glare of the sun, and then Ryan’s parents, who smiled at her as if she already belonged.

  Then, Ryan.

  He stood looking out across the water but then he turned to look at her. In that moment, there might have been nobody but the two of them in the world. She would never forget the quiet love in his eyes that were fathoms deep and filled with promise.

  * * *

  While Anna and Ryan stood hand in hand, a woman watched them from the sand dunes. “Lovely day for a wedding, isn’t it?”

  An old man with a cocker spaniel stood beside her, taking in the charming scene.

  “Looks like they’re having a reception on the village green,” he added, looking over his shoulder at an impressive marquee. “Local wedding, I reckon.”

  “He’s not local.”

  “Well, they’re a good-looking couple,” he commented cheerfully.

  “Yes. They are, aren’t they?”

  There was a note in her voice he didn’t like, and the dog let out a bark.

  “Well, I best be getting on,” he said, but there was no friendly rejoinder and he moved on across the dunes, leaving the woman to her quiet thoughts.

  DCI Ryan will return in

  Dark Skies: A DCI Ryan Mystery

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  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Some readers may already be aware that Cragside house is a real place, bought and improved upon by the industrialist William Armstrong (later Lord Armstrong) in the 1800s. Nowadays, it is looked after wonderfully well by the National Trust and, should anybody wish to visit, it is open to the public and you may see for yourself the fabulous scenery and ethereal house nestled among the trees that provided the inspiration for this story. As a child, I remember falling in love with its perfect setting and I hope I have been able to convey its spirit on these pages. For the purposes of the story, the ‘Gilbert’ family and a number of other fictional staff members provided the list of characters (and suspects!) in a closed community setting. In reality, a large and highly skilled staff is on hand to run the house and grounds, none of whom were used as the basis for any of the characters herein.

  The true inspiration for this story came from my own family history. My grandparents both herald from the eastern edge of the city of Newcastle and grew up on the streets I have described. Despite moving to a different part of the city, my late grandfather used to return time and again to the ‘Bottom Club’ to revisit his roots and his friends, to play the drums and sing songs. Both families were affected by the decline of the shipbuilding industry in years gone by, but it is also fair to say they picked themselves up and adopted a stoic attitude toward the vagaries of life. It is this pride and ‘can do’ attitude I see time and again when I return to my home region and it is important to mention it here.

  LJ ROSS

  June 2017

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Born in Newcastle upon Tyne, LJ Ross moved to London where she graduated from King’s College London with undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in Law. After working in the City as a regulatory lawyer for a number of years, she realised it was high time for a change. The catalyst was the birth of her son, which forced her to take a break from the legal world and find time for some of the detective stories that had been percolating for a while and finally demanded to be written.

  She lives with her husband and young son in the south of England but will always be a northern girl at heart.

  If you enjoyed Cragside, please consider leaving a review online:

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  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Cragside is the sixth novel in the DCI Ryan series and, much to my surprise and delight, it became a UK number one bestseller on the Amazon Kindle chart as a “pre-order” even before it was released in July 2017. This is undoubtedly thanks to all those lovely readers who have shown such kindness in supporting my books from the very outset, when I released Holy Island and wondered whether a few of my family and friends might like to read it! Now, almost a million people in the UK and around the world have read about DCI Ryan’s adventures and I am so grateful to every one of them.

  A number of special people have contributed to the making of this book, most importantly my husband, James. He has his own busy career and yet always finds the time to offer encouragement and insight, not to mention emergency bars of chocolate when a tricky scene presents itself. My parents and sister have been unstinting in their love and support, as have all my wonderful friends. I am so grateful to the many book bloggers and beta readers who have invested their time reading my books (too numerous to name here) but special mention must be made of: Neats, Bev, Amanda, Kate, Shell, Noelle, Jo, Joseph, Michelle, Kelly, Nadine, Alexina, Emma, Caroline, David, Craig, Dave, Claire, Fiona, Maxine, Netta, Sarah, Susan, Tina and Victoria who have all given up their valuable time to read my books!

  In no particular order, my thanks go to all the team at Cragside House and
Gardens, who do such a wonderful job of preserving an important piece of local and national history; Mike, a tour guide whose knowledge of the house and its history was unrivalled; Paul Goom, whose electrical expertise was very helpful; Jon Elek and Millie Hoskins; and, all the team at Amazon KDP whose ground-breaking publishing platform has allowed my books to connect with hundreds of thousands of people.

  Finally, a big “thank you” to Michelle Shapiro and Jen Lucas, whose incredibly generous charitable donation to The National Autistic Society entitled them to a character in the book—I hope you enjoy reading about your respective alter-egos!