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

by LJ Ross

  Except, perhaps, in one regard.

  Twice, now, he’d given her a dose of some narcotic, and twice she’d wakened from it sooner than he might have expected. That was the effect of having been fed heroin for the week prior to his abduction—her body had developed a degree of tolerance that would not have been the case in other women.

  She could use that to her advantage.

  Lawana lay back down on the bed and began to meditate, taking herself away from the confines of that awful place, with its rancid odour of dried blood, far away to the land of her birth. She imagined clear blue seas—though, she’d never seen them, herself—and swaying palm trees. She saw a small house with a beautiful garden, where vegetables could grow. She saw Achara, her beautiful Achara, as a mother with a kind, well-mannered husband by her side, and herself as a grandmother.

  It was a good life, she thought. Too good to give up dreaming of, just yet.

  * * *

  Achara woke up in a new bed, in a room with another locked door.

  It was better than the last, insofar as she had the room to herself, and it was reasonably clean, with fresh linens on the bed and even a small en-suite bathroom she was allowed to use. There was soap and clean towels, and she’d enjoyed her first bath in over a week.

  The man they called ‘Dragon’ had brought her to her new home, in the back seat of his car, which smelled of expensive leather. He’d driven through the night, watching her in the rear-view mirror, passing rows of houses which all looked alike, until he came to one in particular.

  He’d even walked around to open the door for her, and had given her his coat, for warmth.

  “I’ll buy you new clothes,” he said, as he’d taken her arm and led her towards the front door. “Until then, you’ll be safe here.”

  All the while, he’d spoken in a language she could understand.

  Inside the house, there was another woman who looked like her, who smiled warmly and ushered her inside.

  “I’ll be back tomorrow night,” he’d told her, and the woman nodded.

  “She’ll be ready.”

  Achara was so tired, and so hungry, she hadn’t really been listening. As she entered the house, she could smell the familiar scent of homemade curry, like her mother used to make.

  Her mother.

  She’d begun to cry again, and the woman held her close, murmuring, soothing, rubbing slow circles around her back.

  It would be better now, she’d said.

  You’re very lucky to have been chosen, she’d said.

  Do as you’re told, and everything will be fine.

  Then, she’d ladled big spoonfuls of curry and rice into a dish and watched her eat every morsel, before leading her upstairs, to her room.

  This is your room, she’d said. Keep it tidy and clean.

  To Achara, it seemed like a palace.

  “Where has he gone?” she’d asked, peering behind the other door to see if he was waiting for her.

  The woman laughed.

  Take your chance, she advised. You won’t get another night like this, so make the most of it.

  Achara hadn’t understood.

  Nothing is free, she’d said. You have to earn your keep, like everyone else.

  “I thought I’d be working in a nail bar,” she said.

  The woman only shook her head, and pulled a fresh syringe and a small brown cube from the pocket of her colourful kimono.

  You’ll learn, she said.

  Now, Achara stared at the locked door and wondered when her first ‘lesson’ would be. During the night, she’d heard a stream of knocks at the door, and the tread of footsteps back and forth on the stairs. She’d heard banging from the room next door, and a woman’s cries, until she could hear no more and had shut herself away in the bathroom to escape the sound.

  Her mother had wanted an education for her, she’d always said.

  But, not this.

  Never this.

  CHAPTER 30

  Lawana’s eyes flew open at the first sound of his key entering the outer lock.

  By the time he entered, she was rolling back and forth on the bed, moaning softly, as if in pain. She instructed her body to tremble, and it obeyed, so that he truly believed she was in the throes of withdrawal.

  “I’m sorry I have to do this to you,” he said, not meaning a word of it.

  She heard his rucksack thud against the floor, and the turn of his key in the lock. Afterwards, he placed the key on the edge of the sink, and began to remove his clothes.

  “I have a sandwich for you,” he said. “But let’s have that later.”

  She didn’t understand the words, but she didn’t need to. She had already calculated what she would do, and how she would do it.

  So long as he stayed true to form.

  She’d read somewhere, once, that killers stalked their victims and learned their routines. The more predictable a person, the easier it was for them to fall prey.

  It worked the other way around, too.

  If she was right about him, and she hoped she was, this man was a creature of habit. He liked to collect women, and images of women he would eventually hurt. But he liked the anticipation of it, most of all. She’d felt his hand tremble as he’d washed her body, and his need had escalated until he’d been unable to contain himself, any longer.

  Like an animal—though, in truth, no animal she’d ever known had been so cruel.

  They hunted for food, or killed in defence; they rarely inflicted pain for sport. That was an entirely human trait.

  She listened to him setting up the tripod for his camcorder, and heard the click click as the metal legs snapped into place, just as he’d done the day before. She heard him whistle the same tune—something she didn’t recognise—while he filled a small bucket of water. To her disgust, it was a child’s bucket, the kind they used to build sandcastles, with a little black handle.

  He added a squirt or two of soap, the same one he’d used the day before, and set it on the floor beside her bed.

  Then, he rummaged inside his rucksack for his implements of choice, which he laid out at the end of the bed, beside her feet.

  “All right, let’s get you all cleaned up,” he said.

  She remained perfectly still, trembling now and then, as she might have done if she hadn’t been fully lucid.

  She endured his hands rubbing her body with the soapy water, training herself not to react, not to vomit or claw at him, too soon.

  There was time for that.

  Then, came the photographs of her glistening body, still wet from the water. He seemed to like taking plenty of those, perhaps as a counterpoint to the end product he planned to create.

  He snapped pictures from every angle, the strap of the camera dangling low as he shifted her body this way and that. She suffered the abuse, waiting…waiting…

  When he moved to straddle her, so he could take a picture of her confused, disorientated face, he didn’t capture the image he was expecting.

  Instead, he saw a woman, wide-eyed and full of hatred, teeth bared and ready to fight.

  There was no time to react.

  She reached low and grasped his erect member punishingly hard and twisted it, until he screamed and fell back against her dead legs. He dropped the camera but, when it would have slid from the bed to the floor, she made a grab for the strap and swung it, hard, rearing up with all the strength she had to aim for his head.

  She didn’t miss.

  Howling from the pain in his groin, surprised by the blow to his head, the man fell to the floor.

  But he would not stay down for long, and she acted like lightning.

  Forcing herself upward, she grabbed the first thing she found from his crude assortment at the bottom of the bed, which happened to be a wire coat hanger.

  She had the jagged edge ready between her fingers when he reared up, eyes wild with anger and outrage.

  She aimed for those black eyes, scoring a line across the left one.


  He howled, clutching both hands to his bleeding eye, and stumbled backwards, half blind for the crucial moments it took her to take aim once again with the blunt end of the camera.

  The sound she made as it swung back was guttural, like an ancient war cry, and she could have wept with happiness when she heard it crack against the side of his skull.

  He went down again, but she knew it was not the time to stop.

  She needed to finish the job.

  Still armed with the camera, she rolled off the bed and onto the floor beside him, and he made a blind grab for her legs, ready to bite her flesh.

  She raised herself up and drove the camera back down upon his head…

  Again…

  And again.

  Until he lay still, a thin line of blood trickling from his temple and onto the dusty floor.

  Shaking, sobbing, she discarded the hateful device and looked for a way to move around him, but there was none. The only way to get past his body was to climb across it.

  Terrified he should suddenly wake up again, she placed her hands on the other side of his torso, then lowered onto her elbows to begin commando crawling towards the sink, where she knew he’d left the key. Her legs trailed after her, dragging across his body, and she made small, whimpering sounds of fear, expecting him to grasp her feet and pull her back.

  But he didn’t and soon enough she heard the thud of her feet hitting the floor, once she was clear of him.

  She glanced back over her shoulder, sweating from the effort, and thought she saw him twitch.

  Galvanised again, she crawled over to the pedestal and reached up to curl her fingers around the rim of the sink, pulling her body up with all her might so she could determine where he’d left the key.

  Beside the right tap.

  Exhaustion forced her back down again, and she panted for endless seconds, watching his body for any further signs of movement, before she had recovered enough to try again. This time, the strain was worse, for it required her to support her own body weight with one hand, leaving the other free to reach for the key, without knocking it down the drain.

  It took three attempts before she was able to grasp the small silver key in her sweaty palm and, by the time she did, his fingers had begun to move.

  She held the key between her teeth and crawled across to the door, but found the lock too high for her to reach. Adrenaline riding high, she looked around for a means to propel herself upward, and her eye fell on the tripod.

  She made a grab for it, wincing as the camcorder fell from its perch with a crash, and she froze for a moment, waiting for him to come around and fall upon her with all his fury.

  Still, he didn’t.

  She grasped the legs of the tripod in both hands, her teeth clenched hard around the key, and used it as a support until she was in a kneeling position, her floppy legs held at a right-angle for just long enough to allow her to push the key inside the lock.

  When she heard it click open, she sobbed.

  * * *

  The cellar was at the back of a much larger, long-abandoned stone outbuilding, in the middle of open fields. It took Lawana another fifteen minutes to make it outside, dragging herself over sharp pebbles and crusted earth, over the droppings of rabbits and sheep, until she emerged into the open air.

  It was raining, and bitterly cold, but she didn’t care.

  She was free.

  But, only so long as he remained unconscious—and he might come stumbling out of the cellar at any moment to drag her back again, snatching away this small moment of triumph before it had really begun.

  She saw his car parked nearby, but knew he would not have left keys in the ignition.

  Where were all the houses, and other people?

  Where was the road?

  She heard the distant sound of a car’s engine and knew it could not be far away, if she headed in the right direction, but it was so hard to see from the ground, and her body was almost done.

  She began to crawl, placing one arm in front of the other, counting each movement until she reached one thousand, before starting again.

  CHAPTER 31

  Ryan and Phillips were on their way back to Police Headquarters when the call came through, and the former performed a swift, illegal U-turn to begin making the journey to the Royal Victoria Infirmary, with all possible speed.

  “Gan canny, lad,” Phillips told him, as he was thrown against the side of the passenger door. “I fancy makin’ it to m’ next birthday, if it’s all the same t’ you.”

  Ryan responded by leaning on his horn to usher another car out of the way.

  “The woman was picked up just past Slingley Hill, not far from Houghton-le-Spring,” he said. “The driver took her to the local walk-in clinic, but they’ve transferred her to the RVI, given the extent of her injuries.”

  He paused to overtake a speeding Porsche.

  “I want a team down there, right away,” he continued. “I want a statement from the driver who picked her up, with full details of the exact location. Tell Jack he needs to take a full support team, once he has the precise location,” he said. “Whoever transported the woman to that location should be considered armed and dangerous.”

  Phillips nodded, and put a call through to Lowerson, who was still managing the scene in Marsden.

  “Jack says he’ll get onto it straight away.”

  Ryan nodded. “If this woman is still alive, and can talk to us, we might have found the missing piece of the puzzle, Frank.”

  * * *

  The two men made their way directly to the Accident and Emergency Department, and were informed that their witness had been transferred to the ICU, where she was being treated for multiple injuries.

  “I’m sorry, Chief Inspector, but she isn’t in any condition to talk to you, at the moment,” her consultant told them. “She’s in a critical condition, and requires urgent surgery to repair the vertebrae at the base of her spinal cord, in addition to having suffered multiple breakages to her ribs and fracturing her wrist. She’s in severe shock, aside from anything else, and is suffering from pneumonia.”

  “Will she recover?”

  “Mentally, or physically?” the physician asked. “Hopefully, we can repair the broken bones, although we’re awaiting the results of a further MRI scan to assess the extent of the damage to her spinal cord. Her legs are unresponsive at the moment, which is a very worrying sign. I can’t imagine what she’s been through to sustain injuries like these and, unfortunately, she speaks very little English.”

  “We’ll source a translator,” Ryan said. “This woman may be a key witness to a murder investigation, so her safety is paramount. We’d like her moved to a private room, if possible, where there’ll be an armed guard on the door, around the clock. I want a total media ban, which includes all the staff in your department. Can I rely on your cooperation?”

  The consultant looked between their serious faces, and nodded.

  “Of course,” she said, briskly.

  Ryan watched a nurse enter the ICU with a small bowl of warm water and a sponge, making directly for their witness.

  “Stop that nurse!” he said, and the consultant spun around in confusion.

  “She’s only going to clean up the patient’s hands and feet,” she explained. “The poor woman is covered in cuts and bruises—”

  “You don’t understand,” Ryan said, urgently. “We need to take swabs from her hands and feet, for forensic analysis.”

  The consultant understood immediately, and hurried inside to intercept the nurse, who was on the cusp of lathering up the woman’s feet.

  “Good thinking,” Phillips murmured, approvingly. “You never miss a trick.”

  Ryan wished that were true.

  When the consultant returned, she confirmed that the woman remained largely in the same condition as when she’d arrived—albeit, more comfortable, with the necessary pain relief and fluids to flush out some of the impurities in her system.

  “We
’ve taken various blood samples for our own analysis,” she said. “We’ll be glad to procure more, for toxicology purposes.”

  Ryan nodded.

  “Thank you,” he said. “We have reason to believe this woman may have been exposed to heroin, and possibly other narcotics.”

  The consultant made a swift note on the pad she held in her hand.

  “That’s very helpful,” she murmured, and altered the dosage of opioid-based pain medication she’d planned to give her patient. “Do you know anything else about her?”

  “Only that she’s been through hell and back,” Phillips said, sadly. “We think she may be a victim of trafficking, so it’s worth checking her for sexual assault.”

  The consultant nodded.

  “We already noted some trauma in that area,” she said, looking down at her chart so they wouldn’t see the grief in her eyes. “She’ll be treated accordingly. We have specialist counsellors who would normally help, but, with the language barrier—”

  “Leave it with us,” Ryan said. “We’ll find someone.”

  He thought immediately of Niki, and wondered if she had any contacts through her refuge who might be able to help the poor woman.

  He’d pay another visit to the bookshop café, as soon as he could.

  “Has she said anything?” Phillips wondered.

  “Just one word,” the consultant said. “Achara. She’s repeated it several times.”

  They looked back through the long window overlooking the ward and watched the woman sleep, wondering what secrets lay inside her troubled mind.

  “We’ll take the first watch,” Ryan said. “Until a member of the firearms team arrives.”

  The consultant looked between the two men and was glad the woman had somebody to watch over her, in her most critical hour.

  Once she’d moved off, Phillips spied a vending machine down the hall and sent his friend an enquiring look.

  “Fancy a cup of sludge?” he asked.

  “Tempting, but I think I’ll opt for an Irn-Bru, this time.”

  “Drink of champions,” Phillips proclaimed, before trundling off in search of sugar.

  CHAPTER 32