The Infirmary: A DCI Ryan Mystery (The DCI Ryan Mysteries Book 11)

by LJ Ross

  Besides, there was the small matter of his wife leaving him. She had upped and left, clearing out her things sometime while he’d been at the lab helping to find a serial killer.

  But they didn’t want to know about that.

  “Can you tell us anything yet?” Phillips asked, peering at the man’s sketch with admiration. “Hey, Tom, you’ve got a good hand there, mind.”

  “I do a bit in my spare time,” Faulkner said, tucking the sketchbook under his arm. “Usually more attractive scenes than this.”

  He bobbed his head in the direction of the front door.

  “Let’s start at the point of entry. I can walk you through what I think happened,” he said, as they congregated in the narrow passageway. There were pictures on the wall of Nicola with a variety of friends; smiling, happy.

  Alive.

  “There’s no sign of forced entry, so my bet is that he used her door keys to come and go,” he said. “Unlike the last two, we haven’t found them yet.”

  “He’ll still have her keys, unless he’s thrown them in the Tyne by now,” Phillips said.

  Ryan said nothing but thought privately that her killer might choose to keep them as a trophy. A small memento, to remind himself of the power he’d wielded.

  Faulkner indicated a small yellow marker on the wall in the narrow hallway.

  “We found some fluid here,” he said. “There’s a slight scuff mark, too. We don’t know whether it belongs to Nicola or her killer yet; time will tell.”

  He turned and faced the flat’s interior.

  “Straight ahead, you can see one of the picture frames on that little console table has been disturbed at one time or another,” he said, pointing to the next yellow marker. “If we presume the same pressure syringe was used on Nicola as the others, it’s possible he knocked the picture while he moved her into the bedroom.”

  They said nothing, imagining the struggle.

  “There’s no sign that she was injured in any room other than the bedroom,” Faulkner continued. “We found traces of semen on the living room sofa but it’s old, embedded in the material. If the flat is a furnished rental, it might be older still.”

  “Test it anyway,” Ryan said.

  Faulkner nodded.

  “There were trace fibres on the bedroom door frame. I’ve sent them for testing, too. There’s usually a decent chance of finding some LCN DNA,” he said, referring to Low Copy Number DNA, found on the tiniest samples of trace evidence. A feat of forensic science but notoriously unreliable in court.

  “What about on the bed, or the frame?”

  Ryan watched two CSIs dressed in white hooded suits rustling around the small bedroom Nicola had painted in a sunny yellow.

  “We’re looking now,” Faulkner said. “It’ll take hours, yet.”

  There was a long pause while they surveyed the evidence of Nicola’s captivity with heavy hearts. Blood and other fluids matted the bedclothes, which had once been a pretty floral cotton. The curtains were closed at the single sash window overlooking the garden but the last of the day’s rays filtered through the heavy linen and lent the room a sinister orange hue. Small, tightly wound circles of plastic hung from the slatted bedhead, coloured pink from Nicola’s struggle to free herself.

  “What’s that?” Ryan asked.

  “We think it’s surgical tape,” Faulkner said. “That’s another deviation from the previous two, where he didn’t need to tie them down at all.”

  “This one was a keeper,” Ryan muttered, in disgust. “Can we get a line on the brand used?”

  “It’s possible,” Faulkner said. “It’ll take a few days.”

  Ryan thought of their stretched finances and of the politics, then overrode any potential objections. He’d put his hand in his own pocket, if need be.

  “Draft in more contractors to cover the lab work,” he said. “I’ll approve the resources. Just get it done.”

  Faulkner nodded, thinking of his own staff workload and coming to the same conclusion as Ryan. Public safety overrode any other objections.

  There was no sign of body parts having been left in the bedroom.

  “She had digits missing,” Ryan said, heavily. “Have you found them?”

  Faulkner sighed and fiddled with his glasses.

  “We found them in the freezer,” he said. “We always check in there…just in case. Killers aren’t all that original, I’m afraid, and the old methods are the best.”

  Neither Ryan nor Phillips bothered to ask why; they’d seen enough to understand the logic.

  “I’m surprised he couldn’t get his hands on some formaldehyde,” Phillips said. “Seems more clinical.”

  “Even for someone working at the hospital, it’s hard to get hold of,” Faulkner explained. “It’s a protected substance, so he’d need to fill out all kinds of forms. Harder to fly beneath the radar.”

  Unless you were a pathologist, Ryan thought suddenly.

  “They keep a locked box on the wards, including A&E,” he said. “One or two people have a key for it, depending who’s on shift at a given time. If it’s on rotation, it’d be easy enough to swipe a few vials here, a few vials there, whenever the opportunity arose.”

  The other two nodded in agreement.

  “There’s the hospital pharmacy, too. He’s using lorazepam at a steady rate—he might need a bigger supply,” Phillips put in.

  “Or someone who could get their hands on it,” Ryan said, then came to a decision. “Tell Lowerson to bring Will Cooper in for questioning. I want it official, all whistles and bells. He needs to feel afraid enough to tell us who his contacts are.”

  “The lad’s been dying to play Bad Cop,” Phillips chuckled. “Might be a good time for him to try.”

  Ryan was on the cusp of ruling it out; there was too much to lose and no room for error. On the other hand, Lowerson would never gain the experience he needed if he was never given the opportunity to try.

  “Alright. Tell him to bring Cooper in. MacKenzie can brief him on a few pointers if we’re not back in time.”

  Phillips nodded his agreement and stepped outside to put a call through to Lowerson. In the remaining silence, Ryan turned to Faulkner.

  “It’s a big ask, Tom, but I need you to work round the clock on this. Whatever it takes. He’s not stopping now; he’ll have the next one lined up already.” He lifted a hand to encapsulate the room and let it fall again. “He planned all this, right down to his choice of victim. There are any number of women in this city but how many of them could he have vetted personally, spoken to and struck up an acquaintance?”

  “Not only that,” Faulkner said. “We’re within walking distance of the hospital where she worked and came into contact with hundreds of people. It wouldn’t take much to strike up conversation and find out that she lived nearby, then to follow her home one day to find out exactly where. If he works at the hospital or anywhere in the vicinity, he could pop back regularly to top up the drugs, so she was always doped up.”

  “Yes, he needed to strike a very careful balance. He couldn’t risk an early overdose, or she might die before he had time to play. On the other hand, he had to give her enough so she’d be unresponsive while he was away. He couldn’t risk her making an escape, as she did today.”

  “He made a mistake,” Faulkner observed.

  “Yes. That tells me he’s either losing control, he was held up, or both.” Ryan took one final, sweeping look around the room. “Whichever it is, it brings us one step closer to finding him. I only hope we can do it before he kills again.”

  “He wouldn’t do it so quickly,” Faulkner argued. “He has to know there’s an army of police looking for him.”

  Ryan’s mouth flattened into a hard line as he thought of Nicola’s killer prowling around the city, his lust for blood unsated.

  “It’s the nature of the beast.”

  CHAPTER 22

  Back at Police Headquarters, the sun blazed through Gregson’s office window, setting the s
ky aglow in shades of ochre and cardinal blue but its splendour was lost on the two men who faced one another across the room.

  “Ryan, take a seat.”

  “Thank you, sir. I’m fine standing.”

  “Suit yourself,” Gregson muttered, feeling at a disadvantage. He rose from his chair and walked around to lean against his desk.

  “Report,” he said.

  “Sir, since my last update, I can confirm we have completed the initial stages of securing the scene of crime at the victim’s home. Nicola Cassidy was twenty-two years old and a medical student at the university, completing her training through the RVI. Her last rotation was spent in Paeds.”

  “What?”

  “Paediatrics, sir.”

  Gregson grunted, and Ryan continued.

  “We’re in the process of interviewing her former colleagues in that department but our current focus is centred on A&E.”

  “Why?”

  Gregson had never been a man to waste words.

  “Isobel Harris attended the department within weeks of her death. If our working theory is that her killer works in A&E or is associated with the department, the timescale would have given him enough time to research her personal situation and plan his approach. DCI Cooper was known to the A&E department already given her professional duties and our most recent victim, Nicola Cassidy, completed a rotation in Emergency Medicine late last year. There’s enough of an opportunity, sir, for somebody minded to kill.”

  “You’re reaching, Ryan.”

  “It’s the only thing that connects the three of them so far,” Ryan argued.

  “Cooper believed LoveLife connected them,” Gregson said. “What makes you think she’s wrong?”

  “I don’t think she was wrong. Cooper thought Harris’s killer had clinical training and I happen to agree. In fact, everybody other than the Head of Emergency Medicine agrees with that working theory. The only difference is that Cooper focused on the dating site whereas I believe we should focus on the hospitals. The fact that two of our victims have associations with the RVI narrows down the search radius.”

  “What if you’re wrong?”

  Ryan had thought about that. He’d lain awake most of the previous night asking himself the same question, without any satisfactory answer.

  “All I can do is my job,” he said. “If I’m wrong, then I’ll have more names on my conscience and I’ll have to live with that.”

  Gregson’s eyebrows drew together.

  “You didn’t kill those women,” he said. “You needn’t have them on your conscience.”

  Ryan said nothing, only continued to stare at the wall above Gregson’s head until the older man let out a long sigh.

  “Speaking of the Head of Emergency Medicine, I’ve had Draycott on the phone. He wants to make a formal complaint about how you barged into a protected area and threw your weight around, thereby obstructing the work of his team. Care to comment?”

  “Utter bollocks,” Ryan said, with such refinement that Gregson burst out laughing. “Phillips and I were both there to witness Nicola Cassidy’s arrival at A&E. She was in a bad way, that much was obvious, and her injuries resembled those we’d seen on two dead women. I helped bring her in and she was wheeled into the resuscitation area. As the attending officer, it was my duty to observe at a distance—to see how events panned out.”

  He paused, the echo of the heart monitor ringing in his ears.

  “Unfortunately, as you know, Nicola Cassidy didn’t survive.”

  “Yes,” Gregson cleared his throat. “Sad business. You said she came around and then they lost her a second time?”

  “Yes,” Ryan said, and a thought struck him like a bolt from the blue.

  What if she’d seen her killer?

  “—something we could do without.”

  Ryan tuned back into the conversation.

  “I’m sorry, sir?”

  “I said, a complaint from a senior member of the hospital’s management committee is something we could do without. Particularly since it’s the second complaint I’ve received today.”

  Ryan’s face remained impassive.

  “It’s from PC Jessop,” Gregson elaborated. “He’s threatening to make a formal complaint about bullying, harassment and—ah—discrimination.”

  “Oh? On what grounds? Unless you count his stupidity as a formal disability.”

  Gregson laughed appreciatively.

  “I’ve already asked around and heard the full story from MacKenzie,” he continued. “Jessop’s behaviour is already on record following his exploits with John Dobbs and it’s no great secret that he resents your rank and background. It’s an occupational hazard,” Gregson shrugged. “But he took a swing at you and that crosses the line.”

  “I handled it.”

  “Yes, you did. But he’s a liability to the team. I’m seeing to it.”

  Ryan thought of Jessop and his attitude.

  “I offered him the chance to make an apology,” he said. “Clearly, that was rejected in favour of making spurious complaints. I agree, he’s a liability.”

  “Good. Now, what to do about Draycott? Have you seen the evening news?”

  Ryan shook his head. There had been no time to surf the internet or tune in to the evening round-up, so Gregson walked around to his desktop computer and brought up a selection of articles.

  The first headline screamed at him, in bold black capitals:

  HACKER CLAIMS NEXT VICTIM

  Northumbria Police have confirmed that a woman who has been named as Nicola Anne Cassidy (22), a medical student, died in hospital today from extensive knife injuries. Her death is being treated as murder and is being investigated alongside others believed to be perpetrated by the man people are now calling, ‘The Hacker’, after sources close to the hospital claim her body was ‘hacked apart’.

  Ryan read the remainder of the article and stepped away from the computer, swearing viciously.

  “They’ve given him a name,” he said. “It feeds into his ego and it’ll spur him on. He’ll feed off the attention. He craves it.”

  Gregson chose not to pass comment on how Ryan could possibly know that. He was used to the way he operated by now.

  “It was bound to happen, sooner or later,” he said. “A name like that is clickbait for the masses.”

  “Sources at the hospital. It had to be Draycott,” Ryan said. “He was given clear instructions not to speak to the press. They all were. When we spoke to him earlier today, he said anybody could have hacked those women apart and he meant it as a professional slur. I think he knows it’s one of his own.”

  Gregson sat down at his desk and tugged open one of the drawers, feeling around for the cigar box he kept hidden there. There were countless signs around the building reminding its occupants that smoking was strictly prohibited but he wasn’t about to traipse all the way downstairs to the depressing Perspex smoking hut outside. For one thing, he couldn’t be arsed. For another, he was the boss, and he hadn’t spent thirty years clawing his way to the top only to be thrown in with the plebs.

  Ryan watched him strike a match and eyed the smoke alarm above his head with mild concern.

  “Sir—”

  “If you’re about to lecture me about my health, or yours, you can shove it up your jacksie.”

  “I was about to say, I need more resources. I’ve allocated work to everyone in the division with a minute to spare but I still need more eyes on this. We’re drowning, just trawling through the CCTV, let alone anything else. I’d like your permission to set up a joint task force with Durham CID.”

  “He hasn’t killed anyone within Durham’s catchment…yet,” Gregson amended.

  “He’s been north and south of the river,” Ryan said. “Speaking frankly, sir, I think this has gone beyond lines on a map. We need all the help we can get, and we need it yesterday.”

  Gregson breathed deeply of the pungent smoke and eyed him through the developing haze.

  “If y
ou’re wrong about the hospital, it’ll be your head on a block.”

  Ryan’s eyes turned icy at the poor choice of words.

  “No, sir. It’ll be some other poor soul’s head we failed to save.”

  Gregson raised his cigar in the parody of a toast.

  “Alright, Ryan. You’ve made your point. Take the resources you need. As long as you keep your end up, I’ll take care of mine.”

  But when the door closed behind him, Gregson stared at the door for long minutes and wondered whether he’d made the right decision.

  * * *

  Ryan put an urgent call through to his equivalent at Durham CID requesting all the manpower they could spare. He had expected some haggling over protocols, maybe some debate about who should be heading up what would be a joint task force but, for once, he was pleasantly surprised to find they were in complete agreement.

  It seemed The Hacker’s reputation preceded him, and Durham CID jumped at the chance to help—especially with a police detective as one of his victims.

  When Ryan replaced the landline receiver at his desk, it was only to find his mobile phone ringing instead.

  “Ryan.”

  “I’ve been trying to get hold of you all day,” his sister complained. “I thought you were going to try and get back before seven? I cooked something or, at least, I tried,” she laughed. “Maybe we could spend some time catching up? I feel like we haven’t chatted in ages.”

  Ryan closed his eyes, exhausted both physically and mentally.

  Some part of him knew that Natalie wasn’t to blame; it wasn’t her fault they were facing a threat unlike any they had seen in recent times. She knew very little of the destruction he had witnessed, or of how fractured and impotent he felt as the investigation dragged on. Her world was very different; it was beautiful and innocent and all the things he would wish it to be.

  But he couldn’t help the anger that rose up and threatened to overflow.

  What time did he have to sit around, chatting? There was no time for frivolity, not while there was a predator in their midst.

  “… I don’t even know if you have a girlfriend,” she was saying. “What happened to that girl you were seeing a few months ago? Emma, was it? Or Gemma?”