Cragside: A DCI Ryan Mystery (The DCI Ryan Mysteries Book 6)

by LJ Ross

  I KNOW ABOUT THE VALIANT.

  MEET ME IN THE ARMSTRONG ROOM

  AT 9 P.M. TOMORROW.

  DON’T BE LATE.

  Henderson felt his stomach heave and thought, at first, that it was a message from the grave. Victor Swann had been the only person to know about The Valiant and the role he’d played in its devastation so many years ago. He must have told someone, Henderson thought frantically, or somebody had worked it out the same way Victor had.

  Either way, he needed to find out what they knew and negotiate terms to his satisfaction.

  He could still hear the screams, even now.

  They sounded inhuman, like pigs being slaughtered or foxes mating in the night. The sound of the fire drowned them out eventually but he imagined he still heard them, softer now, as they choked on the smoke fumes that billowed up in black clouds to fill the sky above the river.

  He remembered hearing wood splinter as the long ladders leading down into the half-built ship succumbed to the flames and the crackle of metal as it bent against the heat.

  Hundreds ran down to the shipyard to watch The Valiant go up in flames, to stand by and stare mutely as husbands and fathers died before their eyes, and it seemed as if the world paused. Sounds were drowned out and it was as if he were swimming underwater, cushioned by his own disbelief. The screams of his neighbours grew closer and closer until everything came back into sharp focus.

  The lucky ones stumbled out of the shipyard to catch their breath, coughing and spluttering, unable to fight the blaze that continued to burn its way through the ship from the bottom up.

  Beside him, a woman turned to clutch his arm, her eyes wild with grief.

  “You should be glad you’re one of the lucky ones,” she told him.

  He wanted to shake her off, to thrust her away so he didn’t have to see the devastation on her face or hear it in her voice. But then she sat down, right there on the cobblestones at his feet and hugged her arms around her knees. He wanted to shout at her to stand up.

  Instead, he ran.

  She called after him but he kept on running, his skinny legs pumping faster and faster so he didn’t have to see it. If he didn’t have to see it, maybe he could convince himself it never happened.

  But he could still hear the screams.

  CHAPTER 26

  Wednesday 17th August

  The dawn broke over the hills and glades of Northumberland in one seamless fusion of colour, casting out the darkness to bring forth a new day. It could not come a moment too soon for the people who lived and worked in the small community of Cragside, whose equilibrium had been rudely shattered in the wake of a double tragedy. Theirs had been a charmed existence, filled with beauty and culture, funded by an old couple who had created a living museum to the past. Now, it was beginning to feel more like a mausoleum.

  Fully dressed and polishing off his second coffee, Ryan watched the morning awaken and thought philosophically of the human condition. There were two types of people in the world: those who controlled their base urges and those who didn’t. Everyone had those urges, to one degree or another, but their visibility varied from one person to the next. He had only to look to his own life experiences to illustrate the point: four months ago, it had been within his power to kill a murderer with his own bare hands. Many would have forgiven him and called it self-defence or public service. Controlling the primal instinct had almost cost Ryan his own life but in taking that decision he had retained a part of himself he held very dear: the part which had a fundamental respect for all human life.

  There were other types of urges, ones that could be more easily disguised day-to-day but, when unleashed, could be the most destructive of all. He thought of Martin Henderson as he swilled the last of his coffee, then downed it in one gulp. There was a man who had spent sixty-two years trying to prove himself the alpha in any given scenario, like a rutting stag whose antlers had never fully grown. The thought of it was almost laughable but Ryan didn’t break a smile. Henderson’s desire to acquire more prestige had already led to the deaths of two people. Ryan had frequently observed that, once a person took a life, they found it considerably easier to take a second or a third, especially where emotion did not come into it.

  He was very much afraid that, if they did not act quickly, Henderson would not hesitate to kill a third time, should the occasion arise.

  The day beckoned.

  * * *

  Phillips and MacKenzie arrived at the cottage at eight o’clock sharp to brief their senior investigating officer. Lowerson and Yates had been given the morning off, in recognition of their late night spent in surveillance, but would join them after lunch. Anna had already bidden them farewell and taken herself off to Durham for a day spent inside the university library, which he understood to be code for telling him she missed the old place and was looking forward to the start of a new term when they returned from honeymoon in September. Until then, there was the small business of murder to attend to.

  “Mornin’ boss,” Phillips said as he made himself comfortable in the kitchen and began to make a pot of tea.

  “Help yourself, why don’t you?”

  “Aye, I will, ta very much.”

  Ryan and MacKenzie settled themselves at the kitchen table, where they were joined by Phillips a moment later. He set three steaming mugs of milky tea in front of them and, while he went in search of sugar, they decided to make a start.

  “Alright, let’s recap what we know so far.” Ryan leaned his forearms on the table and linked his fingers together.

  “Got any biscuits?” Phillips called out, his head concealed by a cupboard door.

  “Jar next to the toaster,” Ryan told him, then continued as if there had been no interruption. “Beginning with Victor Swann, Lowerson tells me that he spoke to the compliance officer at the telecoms company on the dot of seven this morning. They’ve started to send through the text messages they store remotely from Victor’s account, although there’s still no sign of the phone itself. I’ve had a quick glance at the texts recorded from the week before he died and they make for interesting reading.”

  He handed Phillips and MacKenzie a sheet of paper containing copies of the most pertinent text messages.

  “TR at 6,” he read aloud, giving the date of the message. “TR at 10.”

  Ryan looked up.

  “I’ve already checked the dates of these messages against the dates of cash deposits into Victor’s current account and they match very closely. Depending on the time of day, cash was deposited into the account on the same day before closing time or the very next morning.”

  “What a coincidence,” MacKenzie observed. “And were there any matching cash withdrawals from Martin Henderson’s account on the same day, or possibly the day before?”

  “Funnily enough, there were.” Ryan smiled wolfishly.

  “What does ‘TR’ stand for?” Phillips queried.

  “I’ve been trying to figure that out and it’s no easy task, since there are endless meeting places on the estate. It’s also possible they made their exchanges somewhere else altogether.”

  “Turbine room?” MacKenzie suggested. “Turret room?”

  “Could have been either of those,” Ryan agreed. “But it doesn’t matter so much now. What matters most is that we needed a direct link between Victor Swann and Martin Henderson. Unfortunately, the sender’s number in each of these messages seems to change on a weekly basis, even though the form and content remains the same.”

  “Burner mobile,” Phillips said. “Maybe he’s not quite as thick as we thought.”

  “Let’s not jump to conclusions,” Ryan quipped.

  “We’ve still got the accounts data,” MacKenzie steered them deftly back to the point. “That should be enough to bring him in for questioning.”

  “It is,” Ryan confirmed. “But it would make for a stronger case all round if we could throw more at him. Thanks to the accounts monitoring order that’s been in place since late yesterda
y afternoon, we could see he used his debit card at a roadside service station thirty-five miles north of here, close to Jedburgh and the Scottish border.”

  “Bit late to go for a scenic drive,” Phillips remarked.

  “That’s what I thought, which is why I’ve e-mailed a request for all available CCTV footage from the roads between here and there. There may not be much if he took the back roads but I want to know where he went and who he saw last night.”

  MacKenzie nodded and tapped her finger against the file she’d brought along with her.

  “I’ve pulled together everything I could find on Martin Henderson,” she said. “It makes for interesting reading, especially when you discover that his name isn’t Henderson at all, it’s Jennings.”

  “The plot thickens,” Phillips pronounced and took a dramatic slurp of his tea.

  “He changed his name legally in 1975 and has been known as Henderson ever since. The work history on the CV he provided to the Gilberts seems to show a man who’s been in steady employment for most of his life, working in various roles to do with estate management.”

  “But?”

  “Half the employers listed on those records don’t seem to exist and never have; or, if they did, their company records have since vanished from the digital trail. I’ve sent to Companies House for copies of any paper records they might have but that’s going to take time.”

  “How about his last employer, before he got the job here at Cragside?”

  “It’s listed as some wealthy so-and-so in Ireland,” she replied. “I took the trouble of checking it out and I can tell you, there’s no such place as Longvenney Manor.”

  “Henderson lied again, you think?”

  “Aye, he sounds like he’s been in the game a while,” Phillips said. “We just have to prove it.”

  “There’s the difficulty.” Ryan pushed away from his chair, needing to pace around a bit. “Besides, while fraud is all very interesting, it doesn’t provide any direct link to the deaths of Victor Swann and Alice Chapman.”

  “Unless Victor found out about his tall tales and decided to milk him for pocket money,” Phillips suggested.

  “It’s supposition,” Ryan said. “Not enough to charge him with anything, especially with no previous. Tell me there’s been some good news on forensics?”

  Phillips let out a blustery sigh.

  “Faulkner’s been up half the night with his team, poring over the stuff he brought in. They’re still at it now, poor sods. Anyway, the top and bottom of it is, they’ve identified the fibres found beneath Alice Chapman’s nails and it’s a match for black leather, the type you might find on a pair of gloves.”

  “We’d need to search Henderson’s cottage but, without being able to prove reasonable grounds for suspicion, we won’t get a warrant.”

  “Not like the old days, when you could just barge in,” Phillips complained.

  “We’re a police service now, not a force, remember?” Ryan said.

  Phillips snorted.

  “What about the DNA testing?” Ryan asked.

  “They’re trying to match it now but all they’ve been able to get is tiny particles—low copy number DNA. If there was anything else, it was washed away by the storm or else the river.”

  “Any match on the DNA database?”

  “None so far.”

  Ryan leaned back against the kitchen counter and tried to remain objective. The CSIs and forensic specialists were doing all they could, he knew that and he trusted it. It was not their fault that there was no convenient hair follicle or clump of skin to lead them directly to their prime suspect. Instead, all they appeared to have was LCN DNA which was notoriously weak evidence in court. The trace particles were so minute that any decent defence barrister would argue that they could have been transferred when Alice Chapman stood too close to somebody or brushed against them earlier in the day.

  It was that easy.

  “Let me know when they’ve matched it up, all the same,” he told them. “Individually, it may be flimsy but, collectively, we might be able to put something together that’ll hold up.”

  Ryan turned to the next line of enquiry.

  “I spoke to Yates this morning, who’s been in contact with the investigator in the FIU. They’ve been scouring their databases to try to follow the money, as it were, but the best they’ve got is a series of large cash transactions reported by car and antique dealerships, that sort of thing. None of the purchases match up on Henderson’s accounts, or at least not on the accounts we’ve been able to find.”

  “Surely—?” Phillips began.

  But Ryan shook his head.

  “If I worked in the FIU, I’d be looking forward to a nice juicy case of fraud, identity and financial. Given his age and apparent means, they might find a nice bit of boiler room fraud thrown in there.”

  “Retro,” Phillips commented.

  “Sadly, we’re interested in whether the man has gone further than dishonesty offences and has dabbled in murder as well.”

  “Can’t you work together with the FIU and pull him in for an interview on their turf, sweat him out a bit?”

  They looked among themselves and Ryan snatched up his phone to make the call.

  CHAPTER 27

  Martin Henderson took his time getting ready, grooming himself until he was fully satisfied with the result. His vanity routine took almost an hour, factoring in the time spent blow-drying what was left of his hair and twenty minutes using his new ultrasonic ‘lifting and firming’ device that was designed to keep jowls at bay.

  It wasn’t working.

  He had a good mind to make a complaint to the charlatans who’d sold it to him down at the salon in Newcastle.

  His routine was interrupted by a knock at the door and a quick glance at the time told him it was almost nine o’clock. He patted his tie and told himself to remain calm, then moved downstairs to answer the door.

  But it was not Ryan standing on his doorstep, as he might have expected.

  A good-looking woman of diminutive height stood before him, dressed in what he would have described as smart-casual wear, with a blazer over well-cut jeans. Beside her was an older man, also dressed down. They removed their warrant cards and held them out.

  “Martin Henderson?”

  He squinted at the little plastic cards.

  “Yes?”

  “Good morning, Mr Henderson,” she said, politely. “My name is Detective Inspector Anika Salam and this is my partner, Detective Sergeant Henry Tomlinson.”

  “What do you want?”

  “We would like to ask you some questions under caution regarding certain financial transactions of yours. Would you be willing to attend an interview with us?”

  “Now?”

  “If you wouldn’t mind.”

  Henderson looked down his nose at her.

  “I’m not one of the plebs you’re probably used to dealing with,” he sneered. “If you want an interview, you’re supposed to send me an invitation in writing. I know my rights.”

  Salam and Tomlinson looked at each other with mock embarrassment.

  “Oh, darn. In that case, I guess we’ll just have to arrest you on suspicion of fraud, conspiracy to defraud and false accounting. Don’t even get me started on the money laundering offences,” she said cheerfully.

  Henderson broke out in a cold sweat.

  “I bet that interview under caution is looking pretty good right now, son,” Tomlinson said, man-to-man. “If I were you, I’d reconsider.”

  “I’m calling my lawyer,” Henderson stuttered and almost ran to the phone.

  As he disappeared into the hallway, Salam and Tomlinson took a good survey of the space they could see inside the house and shrugged.

  “I think this one’s going to be fun,” she said.

  * * *

  After a hasty phone call to his solicitor and a fabricated story to his employer about needing to go into the city, Henderson followed Salam and Tomlinson to the po
lice station in his own car. Thanks to round-the-clock surveillance of his home and vehicle, he still hadn’t been able to get rid of the shoes he’d worn on the day Alice Chapman died. He’d tried to light a fire in the living room grate, hoping to burn the offending articles, but unfortunately there was no kindling or firelighters. If he had left the house to get some, he would have risked being seen by the surveillance team and being asked some extremely awkward questions about why he was seen buying firewood and lighters in high summer. He only hoped they wouldn’t procure a search warrant before he’d had time to think of a plan. When he arrived at police headquarters in Newcastle, Henderson was met by the same solicitor who had been present on the day of DNA testing at Cragside. They were shown into a small meeting room inside the interview suite where they held a lengthy consultation, following which they were taken to an interview room where they were left for a further fifteen minutes to stew in their own juices.

  At quarter-past ten, the door opened and Henderson’s face registered shock.

  “DI Anika Salam entering interview room 1 with DCI Maxwell Finley-Ryan, the time is sixteen minutes past ten on Wednesday the seventeenth of August,” she stated clearly, for the record.

  The two detectives took their seats at a table for four, with Ryan sitting directly opposite Henderson.

  “If you could please state your names for the recording,” Salam instructed them.

  “Melissa Kettering of Kettering, Quinlan and Associates.”

  There was a pause until Henderson realised it was his turn.

  “Martin Henderson,” he snapped, unable to meet Ryan’s eye.

  Salam recited the standard police caution, making sure they went by the book.

  “Do you understand all that, Mr Henderson?”

  “Of course, I do. I’m not an idiot. I want to know what he’s doing here.” He jabbed a bony finger towards Ryan’s face and his solicitor gave him a warning look.