The Rock: A DCI Ryan Mystery (The DCI Ryan Mysteries Book 18)

by LJ Ross

  “They’re renovating this area,” Yates explained.

  “What about other access points?” MacKenzie asked, not being especially familiar with that stretch of coastline.

  “You can usually get down using the elevator beside the grotto,” Lowerson said, and pointed towards a tall, boxy grey building similar to a chimney, which spanned the full height of the cliffs, and was connected to the promenade by a walkway. “It gives access to the pub and hotel which is built into the grotto, and the beach on the lower level—but it’s only open at certain times of day. It saves people having to walk down the narrow cliff stairs, which run down the side.”

  He pointed towards the steps, and they were pleased to see another cordon had been set up, in front of which a constable had been posted, warding off the crowd that continued to grow larger by the minute.

  “You can also get down to the beach at low-tide, if you walk from the direction of Souter,” Yates chimed in, referring to a disused lighthouse which stood at the southern end of Marsden Bay. “You can go even further and walk all the way from Seaburn and Roker lighthouse, if you time it right, but that’d be a good stretch of the legs.”

  As they approached the top of the stairwell leading down to the beach, they caught sight of Marsden Rock, standing tall and proud against the bold blue sky. From their vantage point to the north, its girth blocked any sign of a shipwreck, but they could see tiny, ant-like figures dressed in polypropylene suits scattered on the sand nearby and were reminded that it was no ordinary day at the seaside.

  “Could have been a nasty accident,” Phillips said, with his usual optimism. “Storm Edith was blowin’ a gale, last night, so it’s small wonder a fishing boat ended up adrift.”

  “Yes, but the question is, why did the coastguard have no record of a mayday signal, nor any record of its position?” Ryan put in.

  All four jumped at the sound of his voice, and spun around to find him grinning at them.

  “Howay, man! You can’t go around scarin’ folk half to death, like that!” Phillips patted his heart through the layered folds of his bright green puffer jacket, for effect. “How the heck did you get here so fast, anyhow?”

  “Because I don’t dawdle on the motorway singing along to Barbra Streisand’s Greatest Hits, unlike some I could mention,” Ryan drawled.

  Phillips lifted his chin, while the others chuckled.

  “The woman’s a musical legend,” he said, with dignity. “And, if you ask me, she was robbed of the Oscar for Yentl.”

  Ryan exchanged a look with MacKenzie, who held up both hands as if to disclaim any involvement.

  “Just don’t get him started on Tina Turner,” she warned.

  “The mind boggles,” Ryan muttered, and then made a bee-line for the nearest constable, who came to attention at the arrival of their Senior Investigating Officer.

  There was a momentary pause in the wake of his departure, before Phillips piped up again.

  “Look, all I’ll say is, What’s Love Got to Do With It? was a crackin’ film.”

  There was a collective groan, and they began trudging down the stairs, deciding that working on a crime scene would be preferable to any further debate about songstresses of a bygone era.

  CHAPTER 7

  It was a pitiful sight.

  Their first, jarring look at the decomposing carcass of what had once been a person was never easy, and it certainly didn’t get any easier with time or experience. Though Ryan and Phillips had seen more than their share of human waste, this time was particularly difficult, the sea having swollen the woman’s body to twice its normal size before leaving it beached on the sand for carrion to have their pick—which they had, with ruthless efficiency.

  “Poor lass,” Phillips said, gruffly, and scrubbed a hand over his mouth.

  Ryan cut a striking figure beside him; a tall man who stood perfectly still while the wind brushed the hair from his brow, revealing calm eyes which surveyed the scene and missed very little.

  “Look at her left wrist,” he said.

  Phillips shuffled around to get a better look, and promptly wished he hadn’t.

  “Looks like some sort of restraint has been used,” he said. “Wire, maybe?”

  But Ryan shook his head.

  “It’s hard to see, considering the skin is so swollen, but the injury line seems heavier than if wire or cord had been used,” he murmured. “Faulkner, what’s your take?”

  The Senior CSI looked up from where he’d been in the process of photographing the woman’s feet, which were clad in cheap white trainers.

  “Size four,” he muttered. “Quite small, on average, these days.”

  “I meant the wound on her wrist.”

  “Oh, that,” he said, rolling back onto his heels. “Yes, definitely some kind of restraint. You can see there’s a deep, even lesion all the way around the wrist and several other semi-circular marks from where she may have tried to detach herself. Obviously, decomposition has been vigorous in that area since the skin was already broken when she died, and you can still see some faded bruising which would suggest injuries that were sustained ante-mortem. Pinter will be able to tell you more, of course.”

  “He’s expecting to receive the body sometime this morning,” Ryan said, referring to their Chief Pathologist.

  “Sooner the better,” Faulkner said. “We’ve tried to protect it from the elements, but we’re fighting a losing battle, here, and we need to get the wreck transported elsewhere before the tide comes in again, after lunch.”

  It was true; the small forensics tent they occupied had been driven into the sand surrounding the woman’s body, but it remained at the mercy of the North Sea wind which buffeted against its eastern wall and leaked through the cracks, leaving it liable to blow away at any moment.

  “Weather report said to expect another storm in the next day or so,” Phillips said. “Dennis, or Wayne, or Kevin. Don’t know, for the life of me, why they always have to name it after some bloke who plays darts down at the Working Men’s Club.”

  The other two laughed.

  “Doesn’t look like she was from around these parts,” he continued, now they’d had a moment to recover themselves.

  What remained of the woman’s skin was of a medium tone and her hair was long and black, suggestive of Asian or Indonesian heritage.

  “That doesn’t necessarily tell us where she was born,” Ryan said. “But I know what you’re thinking, Frank, because I’m thinking the same thing.”

  People trafficking.

  “Any paperwork found on her at all, Tom?”

  Faulkner shook his head.

  “Absolutely no personal effects,” he said. “I’ve got my team combing the sand, in case anything interesting has washed up, but there’s been nothing so far, except a few clothes and the usual rubbish you might expect. You might have more luck finding something inside the boat.”

  Ryan nodded.

  “How old would you say?”

  Although Faulkner was no clinical expert, he’d seen enough cadavers to make an educated guess.

  “Hard to estimate,” he replied. “Twenties—early thirties, maybe?”

  They fell silent, each man thinking of a life that had barely been lived. Ryan forced himself to look again at the woman’s ravaged face and thought of Anna’s words to him, that very morning.

  There are others who are vulnerable to the wrong sort of person…

  Perhaps he was still needed, after all.

  * * *

  Outside the stifling confines of the forensics tent, they drew in some deep, nourishing breaths to cleanse themselves of the cloying scent of death, then cast their eyes around the vicinity. Immediately to their right was the broken fishing vessel, hanging limply on its side at the base of the rock, which rose up over a hundred feet and was teeming with cormorants, kittiwakes and seagulls whose colonies nestled in its limestone crevices. A short way off, MacKenzie was in discussion with the coastguard, whilst they could see Lowerson
and Yates further up the beach, tracing the cliff wall to the south, towards Souter.

  “I remember when there used to be another limestone stack, and an arch connecting the two,” Phillips said, suddenly. “I think the arch finally collapsed in ’96, and the smaller stack was unsafe, so they demolished it the year after. I came down to watch it crumble.”

  “I’ve seen pictures of how it used to look,” Ryan said, shielding his eyes against the sun as he craned his neck. “I think Anna mentioned that people used to sit on top and have picnics.”

  “Aye, they built a stairway up the side, back in Victorian times, and folk used to sit up there, for a jolly. Wouldn’t fancy it, myself; all those birds, doin’ their messy business? Probably honks to high heaven.”

  Ryan grinned, and raised a hand to MacKenzie as she crossed the sand to join them.

  “I just had a quick word with Marine Services at the Port of Tyne in North Shields, and there’s no record of this boat having been logged on the VTS,” she told them. “It’s the same story at the Port of Sunderland, which is the only other obvious place the boat might have been heading.”

  Phillips cleared his throat.

  “VTS…aye, that would be the…ah, Vessel…Tugging…’”

  “Vessel Traffic Service,” Ryan told him. “It’s a monitoring system, similar to air traffic control, which uses a boat’s Automatic Identification System, radar and VHF radio to keep track of all the vessels coming in and out of port. It’s a public system, which means that, when another boat comes within range, it’s flagged up, to help avoid collisions. If a boat wants to dip under the radar, all it has to do is disable the AIS system—we’ve seen it before.”

  “Exactly,” she said. “The coastguard were busy last night, thanks to the storm, but there was no call-out to Marsden and no report made whatsoever.”

  Ryan had already ascertained the same thing, since he’d been the one to call in the coastguard shortly after receiving word from the Control Room.

  “Do they know anything about the boat, itself?”

  “Nothing, so far,” she said. “But they say they’re ready to transport it out of the tidal zone so we can assess it safely, whenever you’re ready. We might find some more answers once Faulkner’s had a chance to go over the boat’s interior.”

  “Agreed.” Ryan nodded, and cast a weather eye towards the waterline, which was creeping ever closer towards the shore. “I want to have a quick look around, first, then they can take her away. Tide’s coming in, again.”

  “Why are boats always female?” MacKenzie found herself wondering.

  “It’s tradition,” Phillips said. “Mariners believed a mother or goddess protected a ship on its voyage, so they got into the habit of referring to their boats as ‘she’.”

  Ryan glanced over in surprise.

  “How d’you know that?”

  “Common knowledge,” Phillips said, and then nodded towards the pub that was built into the cliffside. “Has anybody checked with the people at the grotto, to see if anyone at the pub saw anything, last night?”

  The unusual architecture of the building meant that its windows all looked out towards the sea, which should have provided a panoramic view of the action.

  “The local team have taken preliminary statements but, given the time of year, there was nobody staying at the hotel last night, and the pub closed for last orders at eleven. The landlord—who’s also the owner—locked the doors around midnight and went straight to bed, with his wife. They battened down the hatches and tried to sleep through the storm, so they didn’t see a thing,” Ryan said. “The first they heard of any shipwreck was when they got up and looked out of the window, but, by that time, the first responders had already been alerted.”

  “Unlucky.” Phillips tutted.

  “Or convenient?” Ryan wondered aloud, before stalking off to take a look around what was left of the boat.

  * * *

  The ‘boat’ was, in fact, a fishing trawler.

  At twenty metres long, by Ryan’s estimation, it was middling in size: not anywhere near as large as some commercial fishing vessels he’d seen, but not especially small, either. He’d learned to sail as a child and had taken the helm on one or two memorable occasions since then, but he couldn’t claim to be an experienced sailor. All the same, he could see by the cut of her rusted jib that the blue and grey trawler had seen plenty of action in its time. Added to which, the absence of any painted name or number to identify her seemed to confirm that they were dealing with a suspicious vessel.

  A thorough inspection of the boat’s perimeter confirmed there were no safe entry points to allow Ryan access to the interior of the vessel, but he’d seen enough to draw some reasonable conclusions.

  “Jack!”

  He jogged across the sand to speak to Lowerson, who met him halfway.

  “How was the sand, when the first responders made their way down?” Ryan asked. “Specifically, were there any footprints, and where did they begin?”

  Lowerson turned and led him towards a series of small yellow forensics markers.

  “Here’s where the concentration of footsteps began,” he said, pointing to a spot due west of the rock, near the cliffside. “They lead back towards the stairway that’s under renovation.”

  Ryan followed their direction, then stuck his hands in his pockets.

  “What time did the tide go out, this morning?”

  “I can find out,” Jack said.

  “Do that. While you’re at it, find out whether the witness took any photographs of the beach this morning—if she did, we’re commandeering them. I want to know what the sand looked like, before half of Northumbria CID trampled all over it.”

  “Why?”

  Ryan smiled.

  “If we know what time the tide started to go out, when it was fully out, and where the footprints began, we can estimate the earliest possible time they could have been made by calculating the average distance the tide recedes per hour.”

  “Elementary,” Lowerson said, with a grin.

  “I want you to get hold of any CCTV footage you can, and look for mini-vans, transit vans or people carriers, in particular.”

  “You think there were others, besides the victim?”

  Ryan cast his eyes back towards the tent, where a black body bag was now being stretchered out.

  “The kind of low-life who traffics people for a living tends to go by the old maxim that things are cheaper by the dozen,” he muttered. “I’ll set up a meeting with somebody from Vice, Drugs, Fraud and the Serious and Organised Crime Squad. There may be something useful they can tell us.”

  “Fraud?” Lowerson didn’t see the connection.

  “Traffickers like to exploit their victims in lots of different ways, Jack. If they’re not being forced into servitude, of some form or another, they’re being used as the vehicles to perpetrate identity or benefits fraud. People forget that side of things, but it’s often the way to unravel the bigger picture.”

  “I’m surprised we don’t see more of it,” he said.

  Ryan merely shook his head. “On the contrary, Jack. It’s all around us, hiding in plain sight. People trafficked to this country don’t always know they’re being trafficked, until it’s too late. They might know they’re being smuggled, or find themselves tricked into debt bondage, where they believe they’re paying for an immigration service which ties them in to working for free at the other end until they’ve paid back the astronomical ‘fees’ their captors charge. They live in squalid housing, and work the hardest, menial jobs, for a pittance that they won’t ever see. Car washes, nail bars, fisheries…you name it. They don’t speak out, and they’re often supervised under extreme coercion, in any case. That’s the rosy end of the spectrum,” he added.

  Lowerson’s eyes filled, and he looked away in embarrassment.

  “Bloody wind,” he mumbled.

  “There’s no shame in feeling it,” Ryan said, and put a hand on his friend’s shoulder. �
��In fact, we should feel it. We should feel ashamed that we can’t root these bastards out, once and for all, and protect the people they exploit.”

  On that note, he took out his phone and gave the order for an All-Ports Warning to be issued, with immediate effect, knowing he might already be too late to prevent the onward transit of whichever poor souls had escaped the water, but not the fate that awaited them on land.

  CHAPTER 8

  Mick Donnelly awakened shortly after noon in a puddle of his own piss.

  He swore half-heartedly, since it was hardly the first time, and tried to remember how many beers he’d drunk before passing out on the bed, sometime around dawn.

  Eight? Nine?

  There’d been a couple of tequila shots, too…

  He rolled into a sitting position, his paunch bursting over the rim of his sodden underpants, and hoisted himself up. The action made him dizzy, and the dull ache in the back of his neck swiftly became a full-blown headache.

  He reached for the stale remnants of whichever amber liquid floated inside the glass on his bedside table, and knocked it back, just to take the edge off.

  Then, he reached for his phone to check the messages, and swore again.

  The Dragon wanted an update.

  Well, he wanted a shower, first.

  “Mick? You awake?”

  Gaz didn’t bother to knock, uncaring of whatever he might have found on the other side of the bedroom door.

  “You’d better come and see this,” he said, and wandered out again.

  Mick pulled on some fresh boxers, considered himself decent, and made his way down the landing of his nondescript semi-detached house, then downstairs to the living room, where an enormous television took up the entirety of one wall and was currently streaming the local news channel. Noddy was stretched out along one sofa, his skinny, sunburned legs covered in nicks and bruises, while Gaz sat on the other sofa beside a caramel-coloured cross-bred Staffie and a chubby boy of sixteen called Ollie, who happened to be his son.

  “I’ve heard enough news about the Royal Family,” he said, yawning widely. “Who gives a flyin’—”