by LJ Ross
“They’re still excavating the site around Hadrian’s Wall,” Lowerson said, hopefully. “We might uncover their bodies.”
“Anything’s possible,” MacKenzie said, dubiously. “It’s time those girls were brought home.”
“Do I get a bonus prize if I guess the dates they went missing?”
MacKenzie smiled without any humour.
“That would be too easy. We’re back around to the Circle again, Jack. I didn’t need a database to tell me that those girls went missing on or around 21st June.”
“Summer solstice,” Lowerson said.
“Here’s the really scary part,” MacKenzie continued. “We’ve got a bunch of girls confirmed missing around the summer solstice over the past ten years, but what about the winter solstice? Three people died around the winter solstice on Holy Island, but we haven’t even thought about how many others might have gone missing before that.”
Lowerson just looked at her, his jaw drooping at the thought of more dead women, more pointless waste of life.
“We should speak to Ryan,” he said firmly.
MacKenzie massaged an ache between her eyes.
“I know that, Jack. For what it’s worth, I agree with you. There’s just this little thing called ‘police misconduct.’ ”
“Ryan didn’t kill Bowers.”
MacKenzie rolled her eyes and told herself to be patient. Lowerson looked up to Ryan as some kind of demigod.
“Christ’s sake, I know he didn’t kill him, Jack. That’s not the point. We need to be able to record it in black and white, without any improper conduct or mishandling of the evidence. That includes bringing him in to consult on the case, at least until we can strike him off our list as a suspect. It’s a big help that no powder traces were found on his clothing but we’re still waiting for those phone records to come back to confirm his version of events.”
Lowerson jiggled one leg petulantly but he did not contradict her.
“Tell me what I can do,” he flicked a disgusted glance at his computer, a clear sign that he would rather be out in the field than sitting behind a desk.
MacKenzie fixed him with a stony green-eyed stare.
“I don’t need any fucking tantrums from you, boyo,” she ground out. The shock of it had him shrinking back in his chair. “You knew what this gig involved when you signed up. It’s not all car chases and fist fighting. Go and be a stunt man, if that’s the life you want.”
“I don’t—” he swallowed.
“Good, because the way we hunt a killer is through trial and error. We follow the dots and we use our heads. And we wait. Yeah, sometimes the waiting is a bitch,” she acknowledged dryly, “but it pays off. Thanks to the lab team, we might be able to give some grieving families an answer to where their daughters went. Thanks to the fact that we are investigating one man’s death, we can look into others…”
She trailed off, as the import of her words hit home.
“And…that’s no coincidence,” she said finally.
“You mean Donovan?” Jack Lowerson’s attention was rekindled as the conversation changed track. “He’s dead, Mac. Even if he killed those women up at Heavenfield, Donovan couldn’t have killed Bowers. He’s six feet under, himself.”
“Yeah…yeah,” MacKenzie said distractedly, turning to stare at the board. “But a good friend of ours is always saying that he doesn’t believe in coincidences.”
They both smiled, thinking of Ryan’s regular tag line.
“Come to think of it, neither do I,” she said. “Whoever killed Bowers up at Heavenfield wanted us to find that site. The church is too obscure for it to be otherwise.”
Lowerson ran his fingers through his hair, then rubbed them absently against his trousers to get rid of the crusted gel.
“So you’re saying that whoever killed Bowers knew about Donovan?”
“Yeah, that’s what I’m saying. I’ve got no evidence yet,” MacKenzie laughed shortly, “But that’s what I’m saying.”
“Which also means that whoever knew about Donovan might also know about the Circle?”
There was a pause, while MacKenzie thought of all the possible connectors, including those involved in their last two major cases. It was a gigantic thread to pull, but they were about to start tugging on it.
“Yes, we have to assume that the dates were significant to Donovan, as they were in the ritual murders on Holy Island. Whoever knew about Donovan’s habits must have guessed the reason for them, must have known he was part of the Circle. It’s fairly safe to assume that Donovan was a rogue member, considering the amount of attention he drew to himself.
“I’m asking myself why this person doesn’t just come and tell us all about it. Walk right up to the station and knock on my door.”
“They might be too scared,” Lowerson said quietly, but MacKenzie didn’t hear him.
“Why kill Bowers?” she continued. “It seems like overkill, if the point was to draw our attention to Heavenfield as a site of importance.”
Lowerson shrugged.
“Could have had another reason to pop him off.”
MacKenzie rose from the chair to pace a few steps and then turned back.
“Jack? Get Ryan on the phone.”
“Wha—? But you just said…”
“Forget what I said,” she snapped, and then took a deep, calming breath. It wasn’t every day that you went against your training. The law was there for good reason; at least that was what she had always believed.
She watched Lowerson retrieve his personal mobile rather than using the office desk phone, with a self-deprecating shrug at his own sneaky methods. He was learning.
MacKenzie watched him reflectively. Over the last year, the detectives of CID had begun to feel a presence in their lives. Interference from a negative force, one which had engulfed three men and convinced them to kill, which had convinced other men and women to assist them as accessories. It wasn’t like any of the other murders she had dealt with over the years, and MacKenzie had seen plenty. She had seen men, women and children violated so that her heart wept for them. It was a question of violence, control and mental illness, sometimes. Other times, it was a case of plain and simple bloody-mindedness. Warped animal instinct, whatever you wanted to call it.
This was different.
This was indoctrination, a fever in the minds of weak people. Some, like Patrick Donovan, were wired to kill. They liked it; they enjoyed doing it. But the Circle had given them a code, lending a specious legitimacy to their actions.
MacKenzie knew almost nothing about the Circle’s organisation, its structure or even how it came to be about. How did people join? Were they selected?
It was past time they found out.
CHAPTER 13
Ryan drove the short distance from Gregson’s home through the centre of Newcastle to the neighbouring city of Durham. He let himself into Anna’s cottage, which was nestled in a scenic spot beside the river in sight of the fairy tale outline of the cathedral. Conscious of the fact it was past ten, he was careful to close the door quietly behind him. There was no sound in the cosy sitting room, no sign that she had stayed up except the light burning in the hallway. He couldn’t blame her. Anna had hardly slept since finding out about Mark’s death and it had been an emotional few days coming to terms with it.
He padded through the house towards the kitchen, intending to forage for some kind of snack. He stooped to avoid the low beams in the higgledy-piggledy house, congratulating himself on his foresight, and flicked on the light.
Then, nearly squealed. Only ingrained manliness prevented him.
“Anna? What the hell are you doing lurking about in the dark? You nearly gave me a heart attack.”
She stood leaning against the sink, her face in profile as she sipped at a glass of water. Receiving no response from her, Ryan took a closer look. Her hand was shaking against the glass tumbler and she still had her coat on, despite the warmth inside the house.
Slowl
y, he ran a hand over her back and felt the automatic shiver run through her.
“Darling, what’s happened?”
“Nothing,” she said automatically, continuing to sip at the water.
Ryan looked away briefly and wished for a troubleshooting manual he could consult in moments like these.
“Ah,” he rubbed his hands along the sides of her arms while he thought of what he might have done wrong. “Sorry I’m back so late. We caught a big one, Phillips and me. It concerns Gregson.”
“No problem,” Anna replied tonelessly.
Something was definitely wrong, he thought worriedly. Normally, she was the first to chew his ear off about work, particularly where DCS Gregson was concerned.
“Anna,” he said gently, “please tell me what I’ve done.”
She looked up at that.
“Done? You haven’t done anything. I’m sorry…I…I’m just feeling under the weather.”
Most men would have taken that at face value, perhaps presuming that she was struggling with grief. Maybe they would offer to make her a cup of tea and tuck her up in bed with some aspirin.
Ryan was not ‘most men.’
“Yeah, nice try, sweetheart.” Abruptly, he set her away from him and crossed his arms. “You don’t like secrets between us? Well, neither do I, so start talking.”
“I—”
Her voice faltered, so she took another sip of water.
“I had a bit of a fright, that’s all.”
“What?” Ryan was instantly on guard, his body braced to search the cottage for intruders. “Was somebody in the house?”
Anna’s lip twitched.
“Stand down, soldier. Nobody has been in the house, apart from us.” She began to shrug out of her coat and, ever the gentleman, he leaned forward to help her.
“Thanks,” she murmured, finally meeting his eyes. “Look, don’t be angry.”
Ryan’s jaw set.
“That depends on what I’m not supposed to be angry about.”
To his chagrin, small-minded worries popped into his mind. Visions of Anna with another man, of her telling him that life with a policeman was not what she wanted after all. He waited for her to speak, heart thundering in his chest, blood pumping in his ears. Fear grabbed him by the balls and held on like a vice.
“I realise now that it was a bad idea, but…well, I drove up to Heavenfield.”
The torrent abated and his heart rate slowly returned to normal. Before he could think better of it, he snatched her up and pulled her against him in a crushing embrace.
“I thought you’d be mad,” came her muffled voice against the hard wall of his chest.
He closed his eyes and then slowly released her.
“I am. Of course, I am,” he said, more firmly, distracting himself by filling the kettle. The ordinary task steadied his schoolboy nerves and, when he turned back, his face was impassive. “You’re not with CID, Anna. You’re a historian, and a very good one.”
Anna got the message.
“Look, Mark was my friend. Nothing seems to be happening and I wanted to help, rather than sitting around growing old.”
“I understand that,” his voice was level. “And I can empathise.”
Of course he could, she realised. His own sister had died. He knew what it felt like to wait for long hours beside the phone.
“Sorry, I forgot,” she murmured. “I just wanted to help.”
Ryan flashed a lightning-quick smile.
“Since when have I been able to stop you interfering in police matters? The day that you actually follow my advice will be one for the record books.” He thought of their excursion to Mark Bowers’ home, the quick and nimble way she had searched the man’s belongings and concluded not for the first time that she would have made a good detective. “Why don’t you tell me what you found?”
He went about making coffee for both of them.
“Shouldn’t we have decaf? It’s getting late…” she broke off at one look of affronted disgust from the man in her life.
“If you’re a coffee drinker, you have to commit to it,” he said, then took a long and satisfying gulp from his own mug. All was right with the world again.
Anna warmed her hands on the cup he handed to her and began to regale him with her adventures of the evening.
“Let me get this straight,” Ryan held up a hand. “You drove out into the middle of nowhere, as darkness was falling, to a site where a man was recently murdered.”
“Yep.”
“You proceeded to breach the police ‘do not cross’ line and walked into a crime scene.”
“Correct.”
Ryan just stared at her.
“Haven’t I told you that murderers often return to the scene of their crime? You could have been hurt.”
Anna shivered violently and set the cup aside.
“I think I might have seen him…or her.”
Ryan’s face transformed into a neutral mask, an expressionless palette he wore so well.
“Tell me everything you can remember.”
* * *
Three men and a woman sat in the visitors’ car park at the foot of Bamburgh Castle, a towering edifice built into the craggy hillside overlooking the North Sea. Long ago, the first kings of England had looked out over its battlements, over the grey-blue water towards Holy Island, which was just visible eight miles further north. To the west, the village of Bamburgh huddled at the foot of the castle, quaint and postcard pretty with its tearooms and gift shops.
Night cloaked the car in darkness, protecting its occupants from any wandering eyes, but in any event the residents of Bamburgh would be home in their beds at this hour, doors closed to the chilly evening air.
“We couldn’t find the book anywhere in his house,” one of the men was saying. “And it’s not on the inventory or with forensics.”
“It’s missing,” another man said. “I’ve asked around and Bowers didn’t give it to anybody else for safekeeping.”
Jane Freeman felt indignant. Bowers dared to deprive her of her right? She wanted to see her name beside all the others, written in pen and ink as the first woman ever to act as their Master’s vessel on Earth. She needed to see it, to satisfy her own pride.
Where had he put the damn book?
A sudden thought struck her, as she looked through the windscreen at the enormous shadowed castle. Perhaps somebody else had taken it, somebody who was not part of their circle. There could only be a limited number of people who would have the means to do that and they were all part of DCI Ryan’s team. Her mind ran through the list of possibilities, starting with Ryan’s milky-faced girlfriend, she thought bitchily. Anna Taylor had been Bowers’ only weakness and it seemed that the woman had a talent for winding certain men around her skinny little finger.
Freeman might have admired her for it, if she didn’t already hate her so much.
Yes, she thought. It was possible that Bowers had given Anna access to his home, like the weak-minded idiot he had always been.
“I want all the loose ends tied up,” she said decisively. “It’s incredible that Ryan is still alive and kicking. He could ruin things for all of us.”
“He hasn’t said anything so far,” one man said, equably.
Freeman turned her head and the whites of her eyes shone in the reflected green light of her dashboard.
“The Master demands it.”
The man’s lips trembled shut. He knew better than to argue with the wishes of his Master.
“Ave satani,” Freeman breathed.
* * *
Keith Thorbridge brooded into the empty silence of his miner’s cottage from the discomfort of an understuffed armchair that badly needed re-upholstering. The living room was plain, sparse of furniture except for a boxy old television on a plastic stand and a cheap foam sofa he had bought third-hand from a thrift shop. There was an electric fire in the centre of the room that he never used, even in the winter when Northumberland grew bitterly cold
. He would rather wear another layer of clothing than pour cash into the hands of those fat cat utility companies.
At his feet, a fawn-coloured whippet sat with her head on his knees.
Thorbridge thought about the woman while his fingers stroked rhythmic circles against the downy fur.
“Shh,” he soothed.
What had she done?
The church was his solace. It was more than a building; it was his salvation, his penance to the deity that had shown him another life. He would do anything to protect its walls from taint, from misuse.
He had known about the doctor. He had watched him, driving like a madman in the dead of night, lighting the gas lamps. That’s how Keith had known, at first, that somebody was using the church late at night. He had left the lamps burning, running down the gas supply.
That, and the bloodstains, of course.
Did that fool of a doctor think that he would not have noticed? He knew every grain of wood in that place.
Now, the man was dead and buried. Apparently, after pulling a noose around his own neck in the police cells.
Rest in peace, Thorbridge thought with a snort, taking a long swig from the glass of ale resting loosely in his other hand.
His thoughts circled back around to the woman and his fingers dug into the dog’s fur until the animal yelped.
CHAPTER 14
Wednesday, 5th August
Ryan was up with the larks, leaving Anna to catch up on some sleep while he donned a pair of old trainers and warmed his muscles with a jog around the cobbled streets of Durham. He followed his usual route, keeping to the western bank of the River Wear. The route took him past the shopping centre and dipped underneath Milburngate Bridge, away from the grandeur of the oldest part of the city towards the industrial quagmire of government buildings and abandoned warehouses.
He passed one or two others who puffed out their exertion and passed him with a brief glance of recognition for a fellow morning jogger. If he had looked properly, Ryan might have recognised one of them from the pool of constables in CID.
