by LJ Ross
“It’s still spectacular,” Ryan said quietly, taking in the view. “Despite everything, the place looks as if it could stand another thousand years, come what may.”
Anna accelerated over the causeway, feeling the wind buffeting against the sides of the car and slipped on a pair of sunglasses to shade the bright sunshine reflecting off the water.
“Yes, it’s still lovely,” she agreed, but she felt a shiver of remembrance.
Ryan didn’t miss much.
“It’s over,” he murmured. “He’ll never try to hurt you again.”
She glanced across and wasn’t sure whether he referred to her father, who was long-dead, or more recent encounters. Either way, she hoped he was right.
“Did you find anything interesting at Mark’s house?”
Ryan shifted mental gears, happy to accept a change of subject.
“Couple of interesting items,” he said vaguely. “Nothing concrete. Bowers was liked and respected. It’ll take a while to work through the full list of people in his immediate circle, without any helpful indications from forensics to guide us.”
“Mm,” she chewed on her lip as they reached the mainland and headed towards the main road. “I suppose MacKenzie will be in touch?”
Ryan watched a seagull swoop and dive into the sea, rising again to soar into the sky.
“I would be, if I were running the investigation. It’s likely they’ll inform next of kin, speak to any material witnesses and then work up to close friends and acquaintances.”
Anna smiled to herself.
“Oh, stop pussyfooting around. I know you’re dying to ask me some questions.”
Ryan grinned at his reflection in the passenger window and relaxed into his seat.
“Did I ever tell you, you’re a wonderful woman?”
“Not often enough.”
“Well, I’m saying it now. First question is, who would be Bowers’ next of kin?”
Best to start nice and easy.
“His sister,” Anna replied. “She lives somewhere down in County Durham, although I’ve never actually met her.”
“Were they on good terms?”
It was on the tip of her tongue to answer in the affirmative but she gave the question deeper consideration.
“He didn’t talk about her very often, come to think of it. Now and then, he mentioned a family dinner. I suppose it’s unusual that, in all the years I’ve known him, I never met her.”
Ryan made a mental note to dig into Bowers’ family history.
“We can keep it in mind,” he said. “You can never jump to conclusions when it comes to family relationships.”
“Speaking of which, you owe your mother a phone call,” Anna interjected, as smooth as you like.
He scowled across at her, but she kept her profile towards the road ahead, forcing him to agree that a telephone call was a few days overdue.
“Sorry to drag us back to the point,” he said caustically, “but I have a few more questions for you. I knew Bowers to be an intelligent, academic bachelor who liked living alone and fiddling about with old relics.”
She had to laugh at his description of the work of a talented archaeologist.
“He was polite and a bit reserved,” Ryan continued. “But, he hardly knew me. He took on the role of father figure and treated me as the man you brought home for tea. I expected him to be a bit standoffish, and he was.”
Anna nodded her understanding. Mark had taken her under his wing, in more ways than one.
“What can you tell me about the man? You’ve known him since you were a child.”
Unexpectedly, tears filmed her eyes and the thin sunglasses did little to disguise them. Ryan stifled a sigh. He hated himself for this, for doing what needed to be done. Whilst MacKenzie and Lowerson would do a stellar job, he felt a personal duty to clear his own name, to give Anna some answers and help to bring justice to the dead. He couldn’t do any of that without raking over painful ground but he was sorry for it all the same.
Anna thought of Mark and all that he had meant to her. As a child, he had known about the kind of home life she had grown accustomed to: domestic spats, violent episodes from a father who liked to drink too much and periods of emotional absence from a mother who shut herself off from the world. Yes, Mark had known, as the village and consequently the entire island had known about what happened in Andy Taylor’s house.
There had been whispered gossip about her mother and another man, until they found Sara Taylor crumpled at the bottom of a flight of stairs, her lovely neck broken.
The whispers continued and there were many who believed Andy had pushed his wife in a jealous rage, regardless of his own indiscretions, believing that Sara was his property. The village had grown frightened, for themselves and for the two little girls who no longer had a mother to fend off the blows.
Until, one day, Andy Taylor’s body had been found, half-eaten by the fish and washed to shore by a merciless tide.
The violence might have stopped, but the whispers didn’t. Had Andy jumped, unable to live with what he had done, or had he been pushed?
Through it all, Mark had offered Anna shelter, an alternative reality where she could learn about the history of Northumberland. She spent weekends at the Heritage Centre, listening to him giving tours and bringing the past to life. She learned how to treat the relics with care, how to sweep the ground for artefacts and log her finds. Eventually, he helped her find a place at university in Durham and now she was a recognised authority herself. Yes, she owed much to Mark and his quiet, undemanding presence in her life.
“Mark is…was,” she said after a long moment, “a kind and generous man. I loved him, in a way I wish I could have loved my own father.”
Ryan said nothing, but waited for more.
“Our family was notorious,” she murmured. “In every town or village, you’ve got that one family who are renowned in the area. Well, we were that family.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, inadequately.
Anna shook her head, not needing sympathy, not any more.
“What I can’t understand is how my father never came in for more trouble with the law, or with social services. They came to our house once, then never again.”
She didn’t bother to add that she and her sister had kept their mouths firmly shut about what really happened behind closed doors, and Ryan didn’t push for answers. He didn’t need to: in his line of work, he’d seen plenty of other cases just like hers.
“I remember Mark had words with my father, at least once that I know of,” Anna remarked. “I’d forgotten all about it, but I remember now. It was after my mother died and Mark walked me home after a shift at the visitors’ centre. He said it was because it was getting dark, but back then, nothing sinister ever happened on the island. People walked home by themselves all the time.”
“He wanted to speak with your father?”
“Yes. I remember he met us on the doorstep and told me to go to my room, but I snuck into the dining room where you could hear the conversation outside from the open window there.”
“What did they say?”
“I don’t remember everything—it was ten years ago, or more. But, I do remember Mark telling my father that he should save his anger for those who could fight back. He said something like, ‘You should channel your anger into the real fight, which is out there and not in here. You’ve lost her, take it as a warning—you’re drawing too much attention.’ ”
“That’s an odd thing to say.”
Anna nodded, reflectively.
“I suppose he meant that people were talking and that he’d have the police around, if he wasn’t more careful. Well, whatever Mark said to him worked pretty well, because my father left us alone after that.”
Ryan filed the information away and moved on to the next point.
“Let’s skip ahead to recent times. We had dinner with Mark on Friday night at his place, and as far as I remember it was all social chitchat and s
paghetti bolognese. Nothing noteworthy. Am I right?”
“Sounds right,” Anna agreed.
“OK. When was the last time you saw him, prior to that?”
Anna waited until she had overtaken a large lorry before speaking again.
“I met him for lunch in town, last Monday,” she replied. “We took a stroll along the river and stopped for a bite to eat.”
“How did he seem? Was he concerned about anything?”
“No, not concerned. Distracted, perhaps,” she mused.
“About what?”
“He didn’t say. I was thinking of his demeanour. He seemed short-tempered, which isn’t like him.”
“Tell me about it,” Ryan advised.
Anna tried to arrange her thoughts, aware of how important any minor detail could be in finding whoever had killed her friend.
“I met Mark outside the station at around eleven-thirty. He seemed happy to see me. We walked along Dean Street towards the Quayside, along past your apartment building,” she paused, retracing her steps. “We doubled back towards the courthouse because we wanted to go to that little gastro place beside it. Honestly, I can hardly remember what we talked about. Nothing important, nothing that stands out.”
“All right,” Ryan soothed, sensing that she was berating herself for not being more useful. “This is all helpful. It gives us a better idea of his movements, so we can piece together a timeline.”
Anna nodded.
“We sat down to lunch and his manner changed. Suddenly, he seemed a bit snappish with me.”
“What triggered it, do you think?”
Anna shifted in her seat, feeling disloyal.
“I told him that I’m thinking of starting a new project at work which would revisit some of the conclusions drawn by another historian. You remember her from the investigation at Sycamore Gap—Professor Jane Freeman?”
“How could I forget?” Ryan answered, thinking of a sleek woman with a tendency to micromanage and interfere in police work.
“Yes, well, I found some of her old publications when you asked me to look into her background and credentials. She and Mark were at Durham together. In fact, he signed off her doctoral paper a few years ago. Since then, she’s had a lot of success in her field.”
Ryan watched the passing scenery with unseeing grey eyes, while his mind scrolled back in time.
“I also remember you telling me there had been talk, at the university, about Freeman having been awarded her doctorate. There was some suggestion that her work hadn’t been up to standard, but Bowers passed it anyway.”
“Yes, that’s right,” Anna confirmed, unhappily. “But, Mark was such a straightforward man. He was so honest, Ryan, I can’t believe it of him.”
Ryan shook his head.
“You never truly know what people are capable of,” he argued, thinking of all the quiet, mild-mannered men who had killed, or raped, or kidnapped. He’d put many of them behind bars. “Believe me, Anna, it’s the quiet ones you want to watch. Was there anything romantic between Bowers and Freeman, which might lead him to forget his principles?”
She thought of Mark and tried to see him objectively, as a woman and not as the girl she had been, or the daughter she had tried to be. She supposed he had been handsome, in an older, outdoorsy sort of way. He had been intelligent and—it was a stretch to imagine it—but perhaps he had been charismatic. Yes, he had been, she admitted.
“Maybe you’re right,” she said, eventually. “It’s still hard to see him with Jane Freeman. They’re such different people.”
“So are we,” Ryan rebutted, with a smile. “Freeman is an attractive, successful woman. Maybe they had something going on.”
Anna’s face twisted.
“You could be right, but she’s so…so…” she lifted a hand from the wheel and made a turning motion in the air as she searched for the right word, without being unkind. Ryan took pity on her.
“Go ahead, just say it,” he grinned.
“Alright, then, I think she’s like a shark dressed as a fancy poodle. I can’t imagine the two of them getting along.”
“Miaow,” Ryan said, earning himself a shove in the ribs. “What was Mark’s reaction, when you mentioned the project you’re thinking of starting?”
“He was angry. He told me to leave well alone and that a good historian doesn’t need to fly on the coattails of someone else’s work. He said that if I was so desperate for a project I should stick to teaching. It was a hurtful thing to say, considering that the body of academic history is made up of people taking pot shots at other people’s research, using polite language of course.”
“He didn’t want you touching Freeman’s publication, picking holes in it?”
“I suppose not.”
Ryan stretched his legs in the cramped space of her Mini and looked across at Anna, who was driving strictly at the speed limit. Safety first, and all that.
“I think it’s about time I took more of an interest in local history, don’t you think?” he said, with a roguish smile.
“Wonders never cease,” came the dry reply.
CHAPTER 7
MacKenzie could almost hear Lowerson’s stomach churning as they walked along the long corridor in the basement of the Royal Victoria Infirmary towards the mortuary. She was mildly embarrassed to admit that she, too, found the sight of death arranged clinically on a metal gurney infinitely more disturbing than if it were stuffed in a dumpster, or bloated from the river. Somehow, the detachment of the morgue, with its white walls and its squeaky clean floors was more dehumanising than the violent act itself.
“Y’alright there, Jack?”
He cleared his throat manfully and affected a cheerful expression.
“All part of the job, isn’t it?”
MacKenzie nodded wisely and hid a smile. He was looking green around the gills.
“All the same, it’s been a while for both of us. If you feel like you’re going to throw up—”
“I won’t.”
Lowerson wore an affronted expression and she was sorry to have wounded his pride, but the last thing any of them needed was projectile vomit over the cadaverous remains of their victim.
They gathered themselves together as they approached the double doors, which led to an open-plan examination room flanked by rows of metal drawers. A unique scent assailed their nostrils: an indescribable mix of chemicals and natural gases, which could only be associated with death. Lowerson’s stomach did a small somersault, but he followed MacKenzie into the airy room and began to tug on a lab coat, adding a squirt of hand sanitizer, for good measure.
“This way,” she made directly for the other side of the room towards the office housing the senior pathologist attached to Northumbria CID. After a peremptory knock, there came a brief call beckoning them to enter.
“Jeff?”
Doctor Jeffrey Pinter rose from his swivel chair with a broad smile and an outstretched hand, which he withdrew again after realising that he still wore gloves bearing the human debris from his most recent examination, in gleeful disregard of the bright yellow biohazard bins dotted around the mortuary.
“Sorry,” he chuckled, removing them in exchange for a fresh pair. “Jack? Good to see you, too. You’re looking well.”
“Thanks,” Lowerson replied, laconically. Would people ever forget?
“You’re here to talk about Mark Bowers? Follow me.”
They followed his tall, spare figure into a separate examination room and Lowerson came to a hasty stop inside the doorway. Ahead, their victim lay underneath a paper sheet and a tag dangled from the protruding big toe of his left foot, which was grey and beginning to distend as his body began the process of putrefaction.
“Here’s your man,” Pinter began gaily, whipping back the sheet to reveal Bowers’ lifeless face then stepping back to clutch at the lapels of his lab coat in the manner of a forties schoolmaster. Lowerson gulped and looked away, counting the wall tiles to distract himself from the w
ave of nausea which rocked over him.
“What can you tell us?” MacKenzie’s voice was level, even if her gut wasn’t.
“First and most obviously, you can see that we’ve got a case of serious perforating head trauma—”
“We picked up on that one ourselves,” MacKenzie remarked.
Pinter chuckled, a bit nervously. Denise MacKenzie had that effect on him.
“Um. Well. The lead ball passed through the cranium at the sphenoid bone here,” he indicated the hole in Bowers’ right temple. “It went cleanly through the skull, breaking through the parietal bone on the posterior side—”
“Give us the Idiot’s Guide, will you?”
“You’ve been spending too much time around Phillips,” he said and then cackled at his own joke while MacKenzie and Lowerson looked on with straight faces. He subsided quickly.
“Put simply, the ball went in at the right temple and then passed through the left hand side at the back of his head. The entrance wound is fairly small, as you can see, with a bit of scorching around the skin,” he pointed to the area in question. “Whereas the exit wound is somewhat larger and shaped a bit like a plug, which would suggest that the bullet was fired at close range—or rather, the lead ball.
“Unfortunately, it did a hell of a lot of damage on its way,” Pinter continued in a slightly condescending tone, as if Bowers could somehow have prevented it. “It burned straight through the cerebral hemisphere, passing through the ventricles in the brain causing extensive lacerations—it would have killed him instantly.”
“We’re waiting for the ballistics report but, from your experience, what kind of weapon are we looking for?” MacKenzie asked.
Pinter tugged at his lower lip while he thought about it, which was a pointless display considering he had already spent considerable time pondering the question.
“I haven’t seen anything like this before,” he said gravely, drawing out each word for dramatic effect. “In usual cases of bullet wounds, particularly to the head, I’d expect to see damage consistent with a bullet fired from a semi-automatic, a rifle, or some kind of hybrid, home-made variety you can pick up if you know the right people.”
