by LJ Ross
“You’re saying they’re a plant?”
“Yes, sir. They fit Nicola Cassidy’s front door and her mother has confirmed she recognises the key ring. Draycott was out of his office all day but people still go in and out. Easy enough for someone to slip inside and stash the keys somewhere incriminating.”
“You can’t mount a case against someone on the strength of some keys,” Gregson nearly shouted.
“I’m well aware of that. But this takes Draycott out of the equation for up to seventy-two hours, if we can manage to hold him.”
“The magistrate will never allow it,” Gregson argued.
“They might, if you weigh in.”
“And why should I do that?”
“Because I expect him to strike again, very soon, and I need to be sure it isn’t Sebastien Draycott. He might be many things but, if I’m right, a killer isn’t one of them.”
Gregson drummed his fingers against the desktop, following Ryan’s train of thought.
“And we have no way of knowing who?”
Ryan swallowed, finding his throat painfully dry.
“Not yet, sir, but we’re narrowing the field. If somebody wants us to believe Draycott is a killer, then we need to force the issue. They’ll have to choose between their better judgment, knowing the man is in police custody, and their overriding need to sate themselves.”
“You’re talking about somebody’s life hanging in the balance, Ryan.”
“It gives me no pleasure to say that, sir.” It nearly killed him, knowing he could do nothing to stop it. “We don’t have the manpower to set up surveillance for every person who falls within the frame. There are too many of them. But we’ll go over the results of the fingertip search, today. We’ll seek voluntary DNA samples and compare them with what we found at the first two crime scenes. We have the hospital pharmacist in custody alongside Draycott and we’ll question them both. We’ll continue to check every alibi. We won’t stop.”
Gregson looked up at Ryan with sudden pride.
“I know you won’t stop,” he said, quietly. “But, sooner or later, you’ll have to.”
Ryan’s body swayed, as if it had heard him.
“I know that, sir. Just not yet.”
* * *
The interview suite had never been so busy. Aside from the usual rounds of drunken assault and petty crime, the corridors rang with the sound of medical staff giving their version of events. While MacKenzie and Lowerson turned their attention to the hospital pharmacist in the hope of extracting her client list, Ryan and Phillips faced Sebastien Draycott and his solicitor across the metal table of Interview Room A. They might not believe he was the man they were seeking but it was a foolish detective who failed to exhaust every line of enquiry.
“Mr Draycott, you were arrested earlier today on charges of murder. Do you have anything you wish to tell us?”
“No comment.”
He had received a thorough briefing from his solicitor, but they were undeterred.
“Sebastien, in a statement dated 8th July 2014, you told us that you were at home on the evening of 20th June and did not leave until it was time to go to work the next morning. Is that correct?”
Draycott looked across at his solicitor, then gave a brief nod.
“Yes, that’s correct.”
“Is there anybody who can vouch for your whereabouts?”
“No, I live alone.”
“You didn’t speak to anybody on the telephone, or answer the door?”
“No, Chief Inspector, nobody happened to pass by at an opportune moment.”
Ryan turned to the next significant date.
“How about the morning of last Sunday 6th? In your previous statement, you told us that you were, once again, at home throughout the relevant time period. Can anybody vouch for that?”
“No, Chief Inspector, as I’ve already said, I don’t keep a lodger in the house for the express purpose of providing me with an ongoing alibi. The last time I checked, we don’t live in a police state. Citizens are usually free to go about their lives without fear of being arrested on trumped-up charges of murder.”
Ryan raised an eyebrow at that.
“So, in summary, you do not have an alibi for either of these dates?”
Draycott pressed his lips into a tight line.
“Turning to the most recent events of Tuesday 8th July, we already know you were at your workplace at the Royal Victoria Infirmary at the time Nicola Cassidy died. Can you tell us your whereabouts after your shift ended on Sunday 6th?”
“My client has already given his whereabouts in his statement dated 8th July,” his solicitor said.
“I’d like him to remind us,” Ryan said, politely.
“I was at work until nearly ten o’clock,” Draycott snapped. “I didn’t get home until more like eleven, at which time I collapsed into bed.” After taking a hit, to help him sleep.
Ryan said nothing, but both he and Phillips knew that the time recorded on the hospital’s CCTV camera confirmed Draycott’s story, at least on that day. He hadn’t left work until more like ten-fifteen, which put him outside the timescale for snatching Nicola Cassidy. It would have been too late.
But their faces revealed none of that.
“This afternoon, Sebastien, we found keys belonging to Nicola Cassidy hidden in the architrave above the window in your office. Can you tell us how they came to be there?”
“No comment.”
“Oh, and we were doing so well.”
“You already denied any knowledge of those keys,” Phillips said, reasonably. “You seemed to think somebody planted them there. Any idea who’d want to do that?”
“I have no idea.”
“Anybody hold a grudge against you? Anybody who’d want you out of the way?”
Draycott pulled a face.
“Leading a team won’t win you any popularity contests,” he said, then turned to Ryan. “I’m sure you know all about that.”
Ryan said nothing, but had to admit there was a grain of truth in it.
“You’re saying nobody stands out above the rest, nobody who springs to mind?”
“No.”
“How about this,” Ryan tried another tack. “If you were removed from office, who would be a shoo-in to replace you on the hospital committee?”
Draycott’s mouth turned down as he thought of that scenario, which would come soon enough once the committee and the GMC got wind of the drugs investigation.
“There are several suitable candidates,” he said. “Chowdhury, Edwards, O’Rourke,” he rattled off a few names. “They all have the authority, at a push.”
Ryan brought up their faces in his mind’s eye and agreed that, given the right circumstances, each of them had the gravitas to run a busy department.
The question was whether any of them had the inclination to kill.
CHAPTER 28
Heavy rain clouds were gathering in the sky by the time Ryan’s team gathered in the Incident Room at six o’ clock, reflecting their general mood. It had taken several hours to take statements from every member of the Emergency Medicine Department. The interview with the hospital’s senior pharmacist had elicited no real information; she was lawyered up to the hilt and prepared to give a ‘no comment’ interview despite their best efforts. It was another blow to their already strung-out nerves.
To counteract the gloom, Ryan flicked on the overhead lighting and looked at the assembly. It was a hotchpotch of stalwarts from his own division, plus a significant number of ‘new’ faces from Durham CID who had been working remotely until now. It was heartening to know that they had made the effort to be there, in solidarity as much as anything else.
“You’ve all seen the papers,” he began, coming to stand at the front of the room with his hands tucked in the back pockets of his jeans. “You’ve seen the headlines and you know our killer has a name, just not the one we’re looking for.”
Ryan looked around at their tired faces and wondere
d how much longer they could stand to work at the rate he was asking of them.
Not much longer.
“You’ll all be aware by now that we have a man in custody,” he said, which drew a few claps and cheers from the back row. He waited for the spontaneous outburst to die before crushing their hopes. “I very much doubt he’s the man we’re looking for.”
He watched their shoulders droop and was sorry for it.
“Our killer made a strategic move today,” he said. “He planted a set of Nicola Cassidy’s house keys in another man’s office to incriminate him. We can hypothesise that he did it in reaction to Draycott giving an interview to the press which may or may not have been instrumental in them coining the nickname, ‘The Hacker’. It could also have been done out of professional rivalry, or simply as a means of deflecting attention away from himself. Whatever the reason, Draycott has a partial alibi for the time Nicola Cassidy is supposed to have been taken on the evening of Sunday 6th, so we have to look elsewhere.”
He turned to Faulkner, who was leaning against one of the walls in the packed-out room.
“Tom? Can you give us a quick summary of where we are with forensics?”
Faulkner shuffled forward, his face bearing the evidence of many sleepless nights.
“Um, okay. You already know we have trace DNA from the first two crime scenes but, without any record on the database, it’s just data. We can’t compel a DNA swab from people without some kind of material link to the crime but, since Draycott was arrested, we’ve been able to take a swab from him to compare with the samples we already have on file. Hopefully, that will eliminate him from the enquiry—or not, as the case may be.”
Faulkner scratched his ear, battling tiredness to hold onto his train of thought.
“Before, we couldn’t go into the hospital and demand DNA samples without some sort of justification but now that there’s enough of a link between the victims and the Emergency Medicine Department—especially after those keys were found—we can start processing voluntary swabs.”
“And note down anyone who refuses to provide one,” Philips chimed in.
“Exactly,” Faulkner said, then turned to Ryan. “We’ll get through the samples as quickly as we can, but it would be helpful to narrow the field a bit.”
“I’ll come on to that,” Ryan told him. “How about the fibres at Nicola Cassidy’s house? Did you find a match?”
“We couldn’t isolate any DNA from the sample, but I can tell you the fibres were a blend of black polyester and cotton. It’s the kind of thing you’d find in a core-spun, canvas yarn.”
“Used in jackets?” Lowerson queried.
“This particular sample was quite thick,” Faulkner said. “It’s more likely you’d find it in a rucksack.”
Ryan thought back to the scene at Nicola Cassidy’s home, stepping through the motions in his mind’s eye.
“So, he wore a backpack containing his tools and it brushed against the doorframe as he was moving her into the bedroom,” he surmised.
“Who have we seen wearing a backpack like that?” MacKenzie asked, following the trail of breadcrumbs.
“Almost all of them,” Phillips replied, turning to face her. To his everlasting shame, he found himself reddening again.
Damn. Damn. Damn.
It was starting to become an occupational hazard.
“Frank’s right, unfortunately,” Ryan said, providing a timely distraction. “Several of them carry backpacks because they cycle or walk into work. But once we narrow down that field, we can take samples from each of them and compare the fibres.”
Faulkner tugged at his lower lip, thinking of the next point he needed to make.
“We tested the semen we found on Cassidy’s sofa but, as I thought, it’s ancient and we couldn’t get a decent DNA profile. The fluid we found in the hallway belonged to Nicola, too.”
Ryan chalked that up.
“Okay. Did you have any luck with the tape?”
“Yes, it’s definitely surgical tape,” Faulkner confirmed. “My team have compared its make-up with three of the best-known brands used by hospitals and I think we can be fairly certain it’s Elastikon, by Johnson & Johnson. Comes in a three-metre roll you can fit in your pocket; easy enough to carry about.”
“Not big enough to be noticed, if a roll went missing,” Ryan said. “And I’m betting you could buy it over the counter at any high street pharmacy, if you wanted to.”
Faulkner agreed.
“Yes, the tape’s a bit of a dead end, I’m afraid. No handy prints or fluids found on it either, other than Nicola’s own.”
“Okay, thanks, Tom. I appreciate the work your team’s put in to get us this far. We’ll start taking DNA samples first thing tomorrow morning and courier them across to your lab.”
Faulkner thought about how they would possibly process them all, then simply resigned himself to another few days without sleep. Looking at Ryan, he could see that the man was expecting no more of him than he expected of himself.
“We’ll be ready,” he said.
“Mac? Lowerson? Any further leads from the hospital pharmacist or Will Cooper?”
“We’re fairly confident Cooper’s given us everything he has,” MacKenzie said. “He blames himself for Sharon’s death because he thought it was linked to the drugs ring he managed to get mixed up in. This is just the start of his worries,” she said. “But he’s got some family left who still care and he’s done the right thing, albeit later than anyone would have liked.”
“No helpful names?”
MacKenzie shook her head.
“Nope. He says his role was to move the stash from one place to another. His only contact was a bloke named Hopper, who is already known to us. He’s small-time but looking to expand.”
“How about that pharmacist? What’s her role in all this?”
“Drugs Squad are with her now,” Lowerson said. “She’s totally clammed up, sir. We worked on her for a good couple of hours but she’s like a vault.”
“We’ve still got the pharmacy records, although they appear to have been heavily doctored,” MacKenzie said. “So, we went all the way back to the pharmaceutical companies, who sent through a record of what they’ve supplied for the last six months. It’ll take some time because there are several different companies and we’re still waiting for some of them to come through with their disclosure. But from the ones we’ve already received, it’s obvious there are significant discrepancies.”
Ryan nodded.
“Good work,” he told them. “What about CCTV?”
The enormous task of reviewing the footage collated from several agencies and businesses had been split into smaller teams, each tasked with managing a different portion of the relevant victim’s timeline.
“Let’s start with Isobel Harris. We already know there was no CCTV to be had from her previous visit to the hospital and most of the cameras along her journey home were out of action. How about vehicles? Have we found any footage of a vehicle crossing paths with all three victims?”
Lowerson started to raise his hand, then remembered what Ryan had told him about speaking out.
“We haven’t found a vehicle belonging to anybody from the Emergency Medicine Department, but we have found something interesting,” he said. “We might have found a bicycle.”
“A bicycle?”
Lowerson nodded.
“Yes, sir. Snapshots of footage along the high street in Tynemouth have captured partial images of a male riding a bicycle in the direction of DCI Cooper’s home just after midnight.”
“Can’t have been long after her son left,” Phillips put in.
“Yes,” Lowerson nodded.
“Have you picked up a bicycle on any of the other footage?” Ryan asked, but Lowerson shook his head.
“Not yet, sir—and the footage we do have is so blurry it’s next to useless. It’s mostly guesswork that the rider is male because all we can see is a dark shape on wheels. I’ve forward
ed the footage to the tech team to see if they can sharpen it up.”
Ryan gave him an encouraging smile.
“That’s good work. Keep looking.”
“Who do we know who rides a bike?”
“Nearly all of them,” Phillips said, testily. “It’s the council to blame, putting in all these bike lanes, pretending to be Amsterdam. Everybody and their grandma is riding a bike, these days—weaving all over the place, too.”
“Don’t you just hate it when the council tries to curb your unhealthy lifestyle?” Ryan mused.
“Aye, I do. My car gets me from A to B without any bother. Can’t see who’d want to gad about in all weather wearing a bleedin’ Lycra jumpsuit—”
“I would, for one,” MacKenzie interjected. “Unlike some people, I take an interest in my health and keeping fit. Besides, the Lycra helps with the aerodynamics.”
Phillips was lost for words, largely thanks to a delectable vision of Denise MacKenzie in skin-tight Lycra.
“On that note, let’s take a break and douse ourselves in coffee,” Ryan suggested, and was glad they could still find something to smile about.
* * *
Natalie Finlay-Ryan meandered along the riverbank with a large, multi-coloured umbrella to protect herself from the freak monsoon rainfall that covered the city in a blanket of water. She didn’t mind the rain so much; it was the isolation that was the most difficult thing to bear.
She paused to look across the swollen river, wondering how Ryan could stand it.
He was enigmatic at the best of times and always had been, she supposed. He was like their father, bred to be a stoic and toughened by years at one of the country’s most famous boarding schools. It was a family tradition, just as it had been traditional for her to attend an equivalent establishment for Young Ladies. Had it not been for their mother, whose natural warmth softened the situation to a degree, either or both of them might have ended up very differently.
She turned her face into the wind, feeling it rush through her hair, and she began to understand what had drawn Ryan to the North. Here, the elements reminded you that you were truly alive; your body hardened to the colder temperatures and, before you knew it, anything more than a few degrees became almost tropical.
