by LJ Ross
A moment later, she was smiling again, having read the most innocent of childish exchanges about flavours of ice cream and favourite movies.
“I don’t see any problem with you going to have ice cream together,” she said, handing the phone back to her daughter and giving Frank a reassuring nod. “I’m proud of you for coming to ask us, first. If you don’t mind, once we’ve dropped you off, we’ll sit on another table, a little way away so we don’t spoil things. That’s just so that we get to meet him and his mum or dad, and everybody stays safe. Okay?”
Samantha decided it was a fair deal. Unlike some children, she already knew there were good and bad people in the world—and had developed wisdom enough to know when to argue, and when to feel grateful that she now had two people in her life who cared about her so much.
“Okay, cool! I’ll tell him. Thanks!”
She skipped off, already wondering which flavour of sundae she’d choose.
“I’m not sure about this,” Phillips grumbled, folding his arms across his chest. “What do we know about him? His family might be notorious. What—”
“Are his intentions?” MacKenzie finished for him, with a loving smile. “Probably just the same as yours, at that age—to pinch a kiss, but settle for holding her hand. They’re not all reprobates, Frank; it’s just that we see more than our fair share of the wrong sort and it skews our perspective, sometimes.”
Phillips supposed there was a grain of truth to that.
“Aye, well, I’ll be keepin’ my eye on him,” he said. “It might be ice cream tomorrow, but then it’ll be fish ’n’ chips and MacDonald’s happy meals down at the multiplex…I mean, where will it end?”
At that precise moment, his stomach gave a loud rumble.
“With a bacon sandwich?” MacKenzie laughed, and then shooed him out. “Go on—I’ll have a cuppa, while you’re at it!”
CHAPTER 5
When Anna joined Ryan and Emma downstairs a little after eight, she found them both in the living room, stacking wooden alphabet blocks. She stood for a moment in the doorway and watched her husband, whose long body was stretched out on the rug beside Emma, dressed in the tartan pyjama bottoms gifted by his mother the previous Christmas, bare-chested as the morning sunshine shone through the window at his back. He might have been a statue cast in bronze, were it not for the blossoming welt on his left shoulder.
Sensing her presence, he looked up with penetrating eyes that could, on occasion, be ice-cold, but were now as gentle as a calm sea.
“Morning, beautiful,” he said.
Six years, Anna thought, and his voice could still make her stomach flutter.
“Thanks for letting me sleep,” she said, and leaned down to kiss him, before lifting Emma up into her arms for a snuggle. “I take it this is the little nipper responsible for that injury on your shoulder?”
Ryan shrugged it off. “Looks worse than it is,” he said, and rose to his feet to stretch out his back. “She’s still teething.”
“I think you could be right,” Anna said, and grimaced as she felt a line of drool slither down her back. “Do you have work, today?”
“I’m not on shift, unless there’s a major incident,” Ryan said, and decided to broach the subject uppermost in his mind. “Actually, I was hoping we could have a chat.”
Anna searched his face and found it troubled, which was not a good omen.
“Is it about one of your cases?” she asked, and held the baby a little tighter.
Ryan noted the protective gesture and was sorry for it. A mother’s instinct was to ensure her child’s safety against external threats—she should never have to worry about threats from within.
“It’s not any specific case,” he said, and led her through to the kitchen, where he began to make a fresh pot of coffee. “It’s the job, itself. I’ve been thinking…it may be time to move on.”
Anna was shocked.
“From Northumbria Constabulary?” she asked. “Why would you want to do that? You’ve got such a great team, there.”
When he said nothing, she realised he hadn’t been talking about transferring to another regional area command.
“You mean, you want to leave the Force altogether?”
Ryan’s lips twisted.
“We’re not supposed to call it a ‘Force’, now. It’s a ‘Service’, don’t you know.”
She couldn’t quite work up a smile.
“Are you serious?” she asked. “Why would you want to leave a job you love so much?”
Ryan looked her squarely in the eye.
“Because I love you, and Emma, much more.”
Anna looked away, blinking rapidly.
“You don’t need to choose—”
Ryan shook his head.
“The job I do has brought danger into our home, which should be sacrosanct. I look at the front door and remember when it was smashed open. I look at your study and remember when you were forced to hide Emma in the cupboard, before you were taken. It should never have happened.”
Anna was quiet for long seconds before she replied.
“The selfish part of me would like to accept your decision at face value,” she said quietly, turning back to him with shining brown eyes. “I’d like to think of long, easy days without stress or drama, without any fear of history repeating itself.”
“It wouldn’t—” he started to say, but she put a gentle finger to his mouth.
“That’s only the smallest part of me,” she continued. “It’s the fearful, risk-adverse little girl who longed for stability and security, when I was growing up. Did I ever tell you about my childhood dream? It was to glide through life working as a historian, burying myself in the past so I didn’t have to worry about the future, too much. I wanted to marry and have a couple of kids, and bake cookies or whatever ‘perfect’ mothers do. Maybe write a blog about how best to organise my kids’ wardrobe and puree organic vegetables, or something equally banal.”
“Are you sure this wasn’t a childhood nightmare?” Ryan joked.
“Really, I wanted an ordinary life,” she explained. “Everything I didn’t have, I suppose. And, if I didn’t happen to find the right partner, well, I told myself I’d be happy on my own.”
“Then, you met me,” Ryan said. “I didn’t give you your dream.”
Anna stared at him—at the tall, raven-haired, blue-eyed, half-naked dreamboat who was her husband—and laughed richly.
“Yes,” she said, composing herself. “It’s a real hardship.”
When he looked at her blankly, she gave him a playful shove.
“You know, for an intelligent man, you can be a numpty, sometimes.”
Ryan had been in the north east of England long enough to understand the vernacular, and he knew that ‘numpty’ was only a shade away from full-blown ‘moron’.
“But you don’t have that life with me,” he said, still not understanding her. “Our life can be unpredictable, at times.”
“It can also be exciting,” she admitted. “Ryan, my old dream was built on fear. It was a child’s idea of what the perfect life would be, because I had no idea of knowing what it would really look like when I found it; I only knew what it didn’t look like. From the moment I met you, my assumptions have been challenged. Just by being who you are, you’ve chipped away the old fear I used to have about life…about living, really.”
“You haven’t really had a choice,” he said.
“I’ve always had a choice,” she reminded him, firmly. “I’ve always known about the job you do, and you’ve never sugar-coated it. I’ve also seen the impact you’ve had on the families of victims, their communities…you have a positive effect on almost everyone you meet, including me.”
Emma began to chatter, and slapped her hands against her chubby knees.
“And Madam,” Anna added, with a smile.
But Ryan wasn’t so easily convinced.
“Did you think that when you were trapped in the boot of that car?” he
asked, quietly. “And, before then, when your cottage was burned to a cinder?”
“You didn’t lock me in there, or strike the match,” Anna said. “You aren’t responsible for the actions of others—only your own, and yours have always been exemplary. It’s the reason your team loves you, and why I love you, too. Your moral compass never wavers, even in the face of intense provocation.”
“I’m no angel,” he said.
“Don’t I know it,” she quipped, with a private smile that drew a reluctant smile from him, too. “Look, I know it’s been especially bad, lately. A lot of people have asked how I’m doing, after my experience, but I wonder how many people ask how you’re doing?”
Ryan shook his head, ready to brush it off.
“My feelings are nothing in comparison—”
“I disagree,” she said. “I can’t imagine the pressure you were under when I was missing. Then, when you found me, you were the one who kept me alive, performing CPR until the paramedics arrived. That’s traumatic, too.”
To Ryan’s embarrassment, a lump rose to his throat and he swallowed hard.
“I thought I’d really lost you,” he said, huskily.
Anna reached across to take his hand.
“You didn’t,” she said, and gave his fingers a squeeze. “I’m right here, and so is Emma. It does no good to live in the past—I know that, better than most. Life is for living, Ryan.”
He looked down at her fingers and lifted them to his lips.
“I feel torn,” he admitted. “If I stay and do the job, I worry I won’t be a good husband or father—at least, not the kind you both deserve. If I leave, and find something else to do, I worry I’ll leave a part of myself behind with it.”
Anna gave him a reassuring smile.
“I’ve always known your work was a part of who you are. Oh, I don’t mean that you’re institutionalised, or anything like that. I mean, it’s a vocation for you, not just a job.”
She lifted her hand to curve around his cheek.
“You have special skills, and it would be a shame not to use them where they’re most needed. As for thinking you’re not a good husband or father—do you see either of us complaining?”
Ryan looked down into his daughter’s happy face, then back at his wife, whose eyes were warm and loving.
“Remember, how you see yourself isn’t always how the rest of the world sees you,” Anna told him. “Do you want to know what it is that we see? A wonderful, kind person—an idealist, who makes us want to be better people. There’s a spark inside you, Ryan; a fire that ignites others into action. The world needs people like that.”
She shook her head.
“Trying to keep you at home, wrapped in cotton wool, would be like trying to cage a bird. It’s not right, and I’ll never be the one to do it.”
“It wouldn’t be a cage for me,” Ryan said, but a part of him wondered if that was true. “I’ll only ask you one more time, then I won’t ask again. What do you think is for the best?”
“I think you already know the answer to that,” she said. “But, if you want it from me, then I’ll tell you my view. I think that, whatever makes you happy is for the best. There’s no such thing as the ‘perfect’ life, but I’d say ours is pretty close. We love each other, we have wonderful friends and family, and work that we enjoy. What more could we ask for? There are others who can’t say the same, and it makes them vulnerable to the wrong sort of person. They need you, Frank and Denise, Jack and Mel, all of you, to help them. Otherwise, who will?”
Ryan was still digesting her words when his phone began to jingle. At that hour of the morning, he knew it could only be a call from the office.
He looked at it, then at Anna.
“Answer it, chief inspector,” she said, with an encouraging smile.
After a second’s hesitation, he answered, then paced a few steps away, his back straightening as he heard the news. When he ended the call, his eyes were hard.
“A body’s been found at Marsden Bay,” he said. “I need to get down there, as soon as possible.”
“It’s a sign,” Anna said. “You’d better hustle.”
Ryan nodded, and began striding from the room, before turning back to enfold her in his arms.
“Thank you,” he murmured, and kissed her deeply.
A moment later, he was gone.
CHAPTER 6
Marsden was only a short drive from where Detective Constables Jack Lowerson and Melanie Yates had recently purchased their first home together, in the village of East Boldon, which meant they were the first of Ryan’s team to arrive at the scene shortly after eight-thirty. They parked in the same car park as Jill Price, whose Suzuki remained stationary in one of the bays, surrounded by a number of squad cars belonging to the local police unit and a dark, unmarked van they recognised as belonging to Tom Faulkner, the Senior Crime Scene Investigator attached to the Northumbria Criminal Investigation Department. Despite the best efforts of the first responders to cordon off all access points to the beach, the usual complement of ‘lookie-loos’ had gathered along the promenade, some still in pyjamas and overcoats, uncaring about social propriety in their haste to catch a glimpse of the drama.
“Bloody rubberneckers,” Jack said, as they slammed out of the car. “How does the word spread so quickly?”
“Twitter, Snapchat, Facebook…” Mel replied, tugging the hood of her ‘big coat’ around her ears as the wind blasted them from all sides. “Social media’s like a wildfire and it only takes one person to set it off.”
“Here we go…shipwreck down at Marsden Bay,” Lowerson said, scrolling through his phone. “There’s a picture of the boat, but you can’t see it in detail because it must have been taken from the clifftop. That’s something, at least. The Evening Chronicle has picked up the story, so it won’t be long before the others do. We’d better make sure everything’s secured before the press rock up.”
“And Ryan,” Mel said.
Their boss might also have been their friend, but he didn’t suffer fools gladly, no matter who they were. Too many prosecutions had failed at the final hurdle—or been quashed on appeal thanks to sloppy procedural oversights—for them to ever take the basics of their job for granted.
“It’s too early for a bollocking,” Jack agreed. “This wind is Baltic, mind. Wish I’d brought gloves—”
Yates fished out a spare pair from the pocket of her coat. “Thought you might forget them, so I grabbed them as we were heading out.”
Jack smiled broadly, and then pulled a face. “Am I that predictable?”
“Yep,” she replied, with a laugh. “You forget where you leave your phone, and it’s always in one of three places: on top of the toilet cistern—which is gross, by the way—on the hallway table, or down the side of the sofa. Don’t get me started on your morning routine.”
Jack chuckled.
“One of these days, I’ll surprise you,” he said, and thought of his plans for Valentine’s Day with a mixture of trepidation and excitement.
Was it too soon? he wondered.
“Jack?”
He snapped out of his daydream to find Mel looking at him with a quizzical expression.
“Sorry, I was miles away. What did you say?”
“I said, I’m going to ask Ryan if I can take the morning off, on Tuesday,” she repeated. “I meant to put in the request before now, but the date sort of crept up on me. I hope it’ll be all right.”
He was confused for a moment, then he remembered and could have kicked himself.
February 16th was the anniversary of her twin sister’s death, and Mel liked to mark the occasion by spending a few hours at the site where they had chosen to scatter Gemma’s ashes, at Bolam Lake. The loss was still a gaping, open wound for Mel and her family; one she tried and often succeeded in patching up, so she could carry on living. But he knew that she brought out the old case file, sometimes, and picked over the facts to check she hadn’t missing anything crucial—though, o
f course, she hadn’t. It remained one of those unfortunate instances where a perpetrator had never been found, though not for want of trying.
“I’m sure it’ll be no problem—Ryan is a decent bloke, and he knows how important that date is to you.”
Mel nodded.
“Would you like me to come with you, this time?” he asked.
She hesitated and then, to his surprise, nodded. “All right—if you can get the time off, it would be nice to have the company.”
Despite the circumstances, his heart swelled. Mel had never chosen to share that special time with anyone, not even him, before now.
At that moment, they spotted Phillips’ Volvo pulling into the car park, and talk turned back to the business at hand.
“Mornin’, lads ’n’ lasses! Bit nippy today, isn’t it?”
Phillips rubbed his mitten-clad hands together, sucked in a lungful of air and made a loud brrrrgh sound between his cheeks.
“Any sign of the Big Man?” he asked.
Lowerson and Yates shook their heads.
“I had a message to say he’s on the way,” Jack said. “He’ll be another fifteen minutes, I reckon.”
“If Ryan’s at the wheel, make that seven and a half,” Phillips joked.
“Where’s Sam, today?” Mel asked.
“At a friend’s house—a few of the girls are having a sleepover tonight,” MacKenzie replied. “It’s our turn next weekend.”
“God almighty,” Phillips muttered, and wondered if there was any legitimate way he could manage to be out of the house while his daughter and five of her friends stayed up till all hours giggling and watching telly.
“Don’t even think about it,” MacKenzie told him, with a warning note to her voice. “We’re in this together.”
Was the woman telepathic? he wondered.
They made their way from the car park towards the police line, which cordoned off a slipway leading from the main cliff road down towards the beach. At the end of the slipway, the road turned into a series of wide, concrete steps which were closed to the public by a set of tall freestanding gates.
