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

by LJ Ross

While Detective Constable Jack Lowerson pulled together a team of firearms specialists to accompany him to the last known location where their star witness had been found collapsed by the roadside, the man who had been her captor slowly returned to consciousness.

  His left eye burned, there was a dreadful ache in his groin, and the side of his head had swollen to the size of a golf ball.

  Reality came flooding back, and he sat up slowly, looking around at the spattered blood that was, for once, his own.

  Stupid bitch!

  He struggled to his feet, clutching a hand to his eye, and searched the floor. When he found no sign of her, he noticed the door hanging open on its hinge, and let out a raw sound of anguish.

  No.

  No!

  Still half naked, he hurried out of the cellar and into the main outbuilding, which was empty, too. An inspection of the floor showed a twin trail of drag marks through the damp earth, which he followed until they disappeared. He spent useless minutes scouring the immediate area, roaring like a wounded tiger, until he was forced to admit that he’d been remiss. It could only have been the dosage, he realised. He hadn’t given the woman enough to keep her sedated.

  He stood there, in the middle of a nearby field, and let out another long roar, blood still streaming from his eye and down his chest.

  When he had expended himself, he acted quickly.

  If she’d been picked up, they would have taken her straight to the police, who could be making their way to his special place at that very moment.

  He ran back across the field to his car, where he fumbled for the key to open the boot.

  When it popped open, he made a grab for the small can of petrol and matches he kept for emergencies such as these.

  He ran back into the outbuilding and across to the cellar, where he stuffed his personal items back into his rucksack and selected one or two of his favourite images from his collection on the wall. It angered him to have to leave this place; he’d used it for the past ten years without fear of discovery and yet, thanks to the actions of one woman, he was now forced to abandon his one sanctuary from the drudgery of his ordinary life.

  Furious, enraged, he began swilling the petrol around the cellar, then around the edges of the outbuilding, until the can was empty. Then, he began striking matches, watching the flames lick and crawl along the bodies of the women covering the walls, until the paper curled and turned to ash and he could no longer bear the heat.

  He waited until the outbuilding had begun to burn, its walls charring as the fire took hold, then got into his car and left his special place for the last time.

  He’d have to find a new one, now.

  * * *

  “The place was incinerated,” Lowerson said, when he took his place at the team briefing, an hour later. “Whoever had been there beat us to it, maybe only by a few minutes.”

  “Did you manage to salvage anything?” Ryan asked.

  “The fire was too strong,” Jack replied. “By the time the Fire Service arrived, the place was burned out.”

  “The Fire Investigator will go over it with Faulkner,” Ryan said. “There might be something left.”

  It never hurt to remain optimistic.

  “How about the witness?” Jack asked them. “Could she tell you anything?”

  “She was in no fit state,” Phillips said, placing a can of Lilt in front of him. “Go on, wrap your laughin’ gear around that—it’s got a totally tropical taste.”

  “Bring, bring,” Yates said, pretending to hold a telephone to her ear. “Hey, Frank, 1990 just called. It wants its drinks advert back.”

  They all laughed.

  “I can’t help it, if I don’t like all this modern muck,” he said. “I’ve tried all the smoothies and the juices and the soya-whatsits, but it just isn’t the same.”

  “I could be converted,” Lowerson said, after a satisfying gulp. “I can tell you one thing about the place, though. There was no sign of any other occupancy, or of there being any other women. The main outbuilding was mostly a ruin, and wouldn’t have been suitable to house anyone. As for the back room, it looked pretty small. I don’t think you could have kept more than ten people in there, at one time.”

  “I don’t understand this,” Ryan muttered, half to himself. “If it wasn’t the same gang of traffickers we’ve been looking for, then who the hell was it who took the woman there?”

  “If we assume the anonymous caller was Oliver Nicholson,” Yates said, “and we also assume he did see a woman trapped in that cave beneath the sink hole at the bottom of The Leas, which is the information that ultimately got him killed, it may be safe to assume this woman was the same one that was once inside that cave.”

  “A lot of assumptions, not a lot of hard evidence, but I’m still with you,” Ryan said. “Go on.”

  “Why did it have to be the same gang who removed her from the cave?” she finished. “Couldn’t it have been some other unknown party who is responsible for abducting her to the location at Slingley Hill?”

  It felt like a shot in the dark.

  “Seems fantastic,” he said. “The probability of some other third party having taken her before either we or the gang recovered her is incredibly low. How would they happen to be looking in the right place?”

  “It’s not impossible,” Phillips said.

  “No, not impossible,” Ryan conceded, and let the idea roll around his mind. “It’s not too much of a stretch to imagine that the type of person capable of abducting a woman is also the type of person who would turn up to have a snoop around the crime scene at Marsden. We won’t know until our witness comes around and talks to us.”

  “I’ve been looking into local translators,” Yates said, and handed him a list of names and contact numbers. “Any of the first three on that list are available to attend the hospital tomorrow.”

  “Excellent,” Ryan said, and folded the paper into his back pocket. “Morrison has given her approval for twenty-four-hour security on the ICU ward, with access granted to authorised personnel only. She’s also given the go-ahead for three days’ surveillance of the Nicholson property. Have there been any developments on that score?”

  Lowerson and Yates had been left jointly in charge of the crime scene.

  “Faulkner’s due to go in and sweep the boy’s home,” Yates said. “But, given this recent turn of events, we may have to prioritise the site at Slingley Hill, unless he has the capacity to do both.”

  “They’re very stretched,” Ryan said. “Prioritise, if you have to.”

  She nodded. “According to the owner of the pub in the Grotto, he found the body while he was heading out for a few supplies, this morning,” she said. “He lifted the body down, to check if he was still alive.”

  And compromised any trace evidence, Ryan thought.

  “It’s a natural reaction, to want to help,” he said. “But it doesn’t make our job any easier. I take it the camera beside the car park is still not working?”

  Yates nodded, miserably. “Yes, I’m afraid so. The Grotto doesn’t have CCTV coverage on that side of the building, either. They say it’s usually a very safe place.”

  “Okay, so we don’t have any shortcuts on this one,” Ryan said, and paced around the room, to ease out the kinks in his shoulders. “Oliver Nicholson was the only son of Gavin Nicholson, a known drug dealer, albeit one who dresses like he’s off to the races.”

  Phillips chuckled.

  “Dig out known associates—starting with Michael Donnelly, who runs ‘Donnelly’s Scrap Yard’.”

  “We’ll pay him a visit,” Lowerson said.

  Ryan nodded. “If Oliver’s death was a message, or a punishment for disloyalty, I have to ask myself how they knew he’d put the call through,” he said.

  Lowerson leaned forward. “My mate at the Control Room—Robbie—rang me because he thought it was wrong it had been labelled a prank call,” he said. “I suppose anyone with access to the system could have checked for particular c
alls coming through, but that seems pretty labour intensive. It’s more likely Robbie, his supervisor, or someone eavesdropping decided to leak the details.”

  Ryan moved across to the window and thought about the sequence of events.

  “Oliver made the call at nine-forty-five on Saturday night,” he said quietly. “He made another call to National Heritage fifteen minutes later, reporting the sink hole. The next morning, you got a message from your friend, Robbie, to say he thought the caller was genuine and worth checking out—this was around lunchtime on Sunday.”

  Then, a thought struck him.

  “There were television cameras,” he remembered. “On the clifftop, while we were checking out the sink hole. There were cameras filming for the afternoon news.”

  “Aye, and they’d be keeping an eye on things, since they’re probably holed up somewhere,” Phillips said. “They’ll have seen the police presence.”

  Ryan swore beneath his breath.

  “One of them clocked us, and began to be suspicious about why we were so interested in that sink hole,” he said. “They flushed the poor kid out, so it might not have been anybody on the inside who leaked information about the call. We might have been the hapless morons to arouse their suspicions.”

  “We couldn’t have known,” Phillips argued, knowing that his friend would berate himself, more than anyone else. “Our first duty was to preserve life, and that’s what you were trying to do by checking out the cave. You had to be sure she wasn’t still down there—dying, or in pain.”

  Ryan knew it was true, but it didn’t make the rest any easier to bear.

  “We know they’re without mercy, and that they have a strict code,” he said. “What we need to do is find out where these women and girls go, once they arrive on our shores, and who profits from them.” He checked the time.

  “Jack? Frank? I’ll meet you outside Voyeur just before ten,” he said. “We need to arrive suited and booted, to give the right impression.”

  “I suggest you invest in some fake moustaches,” Yates said, and three heads turned to her in surprise.

  “Why?” Jack wondered.

  “I dunno,” she said. “Whenever I see a man with a moustache, I automatically think, ‘perve’.”

  There was a short silence, before they erupted into laughter.

  CHAPTER 33

  “Frank, what the hell are you wearing?”

  Ryan stared at his sergeant’s chosen ensemble, and struggled to keep a straight face. His friend had opted for a snazzy pinstripe suit and a black tie embroidered with tiny red hearts, to go with the red silk square he’d stuffed into his breast pocket and the shiny black patent shoes which hadn’t seen the light of day in at least thirty years. To top it off, he’d adorned his upper lip with what Ryan could only describe as the rear end of a dead animal.

  “You look like Lucky Luciano,” he declared. “The only thing missing is a cigar and a bowler hat.”

  Phillips scowled.

  “You said we had to jazz it up a bit,” he argued. “And, with us sort of being under cover, I thought—”

  “You’d take your style inspiration from Some Like it Hot?” Ryan finished for him. “We’re not looking to find ourselves a gangster’s moll, you know.”

  He grinned, and reached across to rip off the fake moustache.

  “I’m pretty sure Mel was only joking about that,” he said. “And besides, it looks like you picked it up from the joke shop.”

  Phillips couldn’t argue with that, since the receipt was still burning a hole in his pocket.

  “Well, I just don’t want anyone to recognise me, that’s all,” he said, casting a nervous glance around the street corner where they were awaiting Lowerson’s arrival.

  Ryan gave him a lopsided grin. “Are you embarrassed, by any chance?”

  “Eh?” Phillips waved that away with one knobbly hand. “Nowt embarrasses me, lad…I’ve seen more pairs of…well, I’ve seen plenty of…plenty in my time, don’t you worry.”

  Ryan chuckled, and raised a hand to Jack, whose shiny grey suit reflected the light from the streetlamps overhead.

  “Very dapper,” he said, as the younger man approached.

  Lowerson smoothed a hand over his hair, which had been gelled to within an inch of its life.

  “If we’re supposed to look like a certain kind of punter, I thought I’d get into the guise of a local bachelor with money to burn,” he said. “What’s your persona, Frank?”

  “I’ll be Dirty Old Git Number Two,” Phillips said.

  “Who’s Number One?” Ryan enquired.

  “Look in the mirror, son,” Phillips said, and let out a booming guffaw.

  “I had that one coming.”

  “Aye, you did. What’s the game plan, once we’re inside?”

  “Let’s get the lay of the land, first,” Ryan said. “Check out the layout of the club, watch where they take people for private dances or anything else. Chat to anyone who’s open to it, ask the right questions. We want to know where to go if you want fresh blood, straight off the boat.”

  They nodded.

  “What about the girls?”

  “Let them approach you and see if you can engage them in conversation. You’ll need to buy them a drink, otherwise they won’t be allowed to sit and talk to you. This might be the only time in your lives that buying a half-naked woman a drink will be acceptable to our other halves, so make the most of it and see what they can tell you. The name to mention is ‘Fuchsia’,” he reminded them. “We don’t want to stay any longer than necessary, so let’s see what we can find out and try to be out of there by midnight.”

  * * *

  They were ushered inside Voyeur by two tall, stony-eyed bouncers in dark suits, who frisked them all for weapons and issued a warning about taking any photographs or videos on their mobile phones. Their eyes might have lingered on Phillips’ eccentric get-up, but they said nothing, and he shuffled in behind Ryan and Jack.

  The walls of the club had been painted a deep, burgundy red, and dark red and black voile was draped from the ceiling of the main space, gathering in the middle around the edges of an enormous gold chandelier, whose lights were dimmed. The room itself was large, with one main stage lit by professional spotlighting and several smaller stages dotted around. Rather than one bar area, there were at least three, each of which boasted its own array of topless waitresses ready to serve up whatever was required. Tables seating two, four and six were arranged around the space in between, with larger ‘VIP’ booths being reserved for those willing to pay extra for the relative privacy afforded in the shadows.

  “Let’s get one of those,” Phillips said, but Ryan shook his head.

  “We’re trying to elicit information, not hide ourselves away,” he said. “Don’t worry, they won’t bite you.”

  Phillips wasn’t so sure.

  “Welcome to Voyeur! My name’s Candy. You fellas lookin’ for a table?”

  As if she’d read his mind, a woman in an itsy-bitsy neon pink bikini and skyscraper heels approached them, armed with a menu.

  “Ooh, do you do food, love?”

  “Er, just nibbles,” she said, with a degree of confusion. Food wasn’t usually the first thing her regular punters ordered. “This your first time here, sweetie?”

  She ran a delicate hand over Phillips’ arm, and he had to stop himself from snatching it away.

  “He’s just shy,” Lowerson said, with a wink.

  “Oh! That’s so cute. Well, let me explain how it works,” she said. “There’s a minimum spend: if you want to sit at one of these tables, you need to spend more than a hundred quid. If you want to sit at one of the V.I.P. booths, you need to spend more than five hundred. You can sit at the bar for fifty, each.”

  She waited for them to make their choice, batting a set of enormous false eyelashes.

  “We’ll take a table in the main space,” Ryan said, and cast his eyes around for one which would afford the best view—of the punters, r
ather than the dancers. “Is that one free?”

  He pointed to one in the middle.

  “Sure! Follow me,” she said, and all three men averted their eyes as she led the way, bare butt-cheeks sashaying as she went.

  She set the menu down on the table, and leaned across Ryan to light the candles in the middle of the table. To avoid suffocation, he turned his face away, but had an easy smile in place once she stepped back again.

  “I’ll have a rum and co—” he started to say, before remembering he was supposed to be playing a part. “Make that a bottle of champagne. Four glasses—have one yourself.”

  Obviously pleased with his choice, and the mark-up on the bottle of Laurent Perrier he’d ordered, she gave him a slow smile.

  “Don’t go anywhere,” she said.

  “Champagne?” Phillips squeaked, once she’d moved off. “I thought I’d have a swift half and be done with it—”

  “My treat, and we don’t have to drink it,” Ryan said, keeping his voice down as he looked at the faces of the men around the room. “It’s for show. They inflate the prices by a few hundred per cent, and the girl gets to meet her quota for the evening. That puts us in her good books, and she’ll be more likely to feel chatty.”

  Phillips relaxed again. “Oh, aye, I forgot. How d’ you know about all this, anyhow?”

  “I had a word with a friend,” he said, thinking of one of the women in the office he happened to know had funded her university degree stripping on the side. “She gave me a few pointers about what to expect, from the inside track.”

  Their conversation was forestalled by the arrival of two other women, who stalked towards them in similarly scanty outfits.

  “You boys look lonely,” one of them said. “Why don’t we keep you company. I’m Honey, and this is Sugar.”

  Both were blonde, perma-tanned, and wore heavy make-up which made it hard to judge their ages, at first. However, upon closer inspection, Ryan wouldn’t have put either of them at more than nineteen or twenty, whereas the average age of the punters in the room looked to be forty plus.

  They pulled up a couple of spare chairs, and pouted at the menu.