Angel: A DCI Ryan Mystery (The DCI Ryan Mysteries Book 4)

  ANGEL

  – A DCI RYAN MYSTERY

  By LJ Ross

  Copyright © LJ Ross 2016

  The right of LJ Ross to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or transmitted into any retrieval system, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  Original cover photograph copyright © Phil Pounder Photography

  Cover design copyright © LJ Ross

  OTHER BOOKS BY LJ ROSS

  Holy Island

  Sycamore Gap

  Heavenfield

  For my sister Rachael, whose beautiful red hair was the inspiration for this story.

  With all my love, now and always.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  EPILOGUE

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  “I was a strong lad and survived; but the poison was in the wound, and the wound remained forever open.”

  —Vladimir Nabokov

  PROLOGUE

  Easter, 1990

  The hallway was quiet as the grave.

  Early morning light shone through the grubby window panes and sent dust motes dancing on the air, which smelled of old wood. The floorboards creaked as the girl tiptoed along, as quickly as she dared. She counted off the nuns’ quarters as she scurried past, keeping to the shadows.

  One, two, three, four.

  Reaching the doorway at the end, she twisted the old brass knob and slipped inside the communal bathroom. She cast furtive glances to either side and dropped to her knees to peer underneath the rickety stalls. When she was sure she was alone, she made directly for the end cubicle and climbed on top of the cracked toilet seat, then pushed her spindly legs onto the peeling window sill above it. Layers of old paint had sealed the window permanently closed but over the past weeks she had chipped away at it. When she shoved her weight against the dirty brown pane, it began to crack open.

  Sweat beaded her forehead as she struggled with the window but eventually it swung wide open, letting a rush of cold air into the stale cubicle. The girl raised her face to the wind, like a caged animal scenting freedom.

  It was intoxicating.

  Eager for more, she eased her skinny body through the gap and onto the sloping roof beyond. Her bare feet clutched at the mossy tiles and she began to crawl towards the guttering. A loose tile broke away and clattered loudly over the roof, landing distantly on the ground below. In the silent morning, the noise seemed deafening. She froze until she could be sure it had not disturbed the people inside, but she heard only the rush of her own frantic heartbeat drumming in her ears.

  She shuffled towards the edge and peered over, jerking back at the sight of a fifty-foot drop to the hard ground below.

  Struck by doubt, she glanced behind her, back towards the tiny bathroom window. For a moment, the window became a dark, angry eye.

  Come back!

  She shivered and turned away from it to look out at the fields and woods lying beyond the perimeter of the grounds. She crouched there, surveying the landscape of her birth and hope bloomed at the prospect of a brighter future, one she had never allowed herself to imagine until now.

  Carefully, she swung her legs over the stone wall and wrapped them around a drainpipe, which strained against her weight and let out a long metallic whine, as if it were crying out a warning to those who still slumbered inside.

  Her body was shaking with fatigue by the time she managed to shimmy halfway to the ground. Her legs were cut and bleeding and the first wave of adrenaline was wearing off, leaving her chilled and hungry. She faltered, her muscles shaking as she fought to hold on. Her fingers scraped at the old metal and a sob escaped her, echoing out into the quiet morning.

  With a slow inevitability, her grip loosened. She let out a strangled gasp as her body fell backwards, down and down until it crumpled onto the tarmac far below with a sickly crunch.

  In the east, morning had broken. Sunshine burned through the mist, casting warm rays over the hills and glades of Northumberland, illuminating the girl’s body where it lay twisted and broken. Her pale arms were outstretched and long strands of red hair fell in a tangle around her head in a bright halo, like an angel.

  * * *

  Twenty-six years later

  Like the shutter of a photographic lens, the man’s eyes closed but the memory of her face was imprinted upon him forever; the soft skin of a girl blossoming into a woman. Tears clogged his throat and began to fall down the man’s face. The pain was still fresh. It followed him as a constant, unrelenting ache that festered and fed off his flesh like carrion.

  His angel.

  All these years later, she still walked beside him. Each day he saw her—a reflection in a shop window, a glimpse in the face of a passing woman—and each night when he slept they were together again.

  As he thought of her, his hands began to relax their tight grip on the woman’s neck and he realised she had stopped struggling a while ago.

  His vision cleared and he stared in wide-eyed fascination as the woman’s body slumped to the floor at his feet. He watched her soul depart her body, rising up to meet her Maker, and he was filled with contentment. He had saved her; he had redeemed her.

  God was good.

  With two trembling fingers, he made the sign of the cross.

  CHAPTER 1

  Friday, 25th March

  Good Friday

  There was an eerie hush among the gravestones at the West Road Cemetery. Fog swirled, snaking its damp tendrils across the man’s face as he tugged on a neon yellow safety jacket and prepared to head out across the uneven ground. Above, the sky was a leaden grey but the sun fought its way through the blanket of thick cloud to shine a trickle of weak light upon the city of Newcastle upon Tyne. Beyond the cemetery gates, people were awakening all across the city. They yawned, stretched and looked forward to a long Easter holiday weekend without the drudgery of work.

  But for Keith Wilson, today was a day like any other. The dead still required burial, even if the living would rather not be burdened on what would usually be their day off. Keith made his way along the worn pathways and fired up a mini digger. The sound of its engine jarred with the quiet solemnity of the enormous cemetery but that didn’t trouble him. His hearing wasn’t what it used to be after twenty years operating heavy machinery—and only ten of them using protective headgear. Even now, it felt silly to don a hard hat and ear muffs just to operate what he considered to be little more than a glorified golf buggy.

  He steered the digger along the perimete
r of the cemetery past the plain lawn graves and then turned along a wide central avenue lined with expensive tombstones decorated with effigies of the Virgin Mary and angels cast in white granite. He supposed that long, solitary hours surrounded by monuments to dead people who lay under the ground, their bodies spent and wasted, was not an obvious career choice for many people. But then, Keith had always preferred his own company. He didn’t put much stock in ghost stories and he didn’t bother much with the church, either.

  Once you’re dead, you’re dead.

  The digger wheezed along, running parallel to the outer wall of the cemetery. The sound of traffic carried over it to remind him that life went on, but Keith didn’t hear it. Under his breath, he whistled a football chant and looked forward to chewing the fat with his mates down at the Hope and Anchor at the end of the day.

  He steered his machine down a row of fresh graves until he reached the spot earmarked for some old bloke who had popped his clogs at the beginning of last week.

  He turned off the engine and leaned over the gear sticks to stare down at the ground.

  The earth had already been freshly turned.

  It wasn’t a very neat job, certainly not up to his standards. The edges were ragged and didn’t follow the clean lines of a digger’s shovel but there was certainly a fresh mound of soil where there should have been none.

  Keith huffed out an angry breath and looked back across the acres of ground he had covered, over to a cluster of stone buildings and the crematorium in the far distance. The council administrator had probably made some simple ‘computer says no’ error between episodes of Geordie Shore, he thought peevishly. Now, he was left standing like a prize muppet waiting to dig a hole that had already been dug.

  He looked down at the map again, then at the note he had made in thick biro beside it which clearly stated this was the correct spot. He chewed the inside of his cheek as he considered what was for the best and then retrieved his old brick of a mobile phone to key in the number for his supervisor’s office with one chunky index finger. When that didn’t work, he tried calling the Council directly.

  The number went straight to the messaging service for Newcastle City Council, reminding him, “Our offices are now closed. Ordinary hours of business are between nine and five…”. He barked out a request for them to call him back, pronto, then stepped down from the digger to stretch out his aching back while he waited. He happened to know that messages were automatically forwarded to the Bereavement Services team and, from there, to the bunch of limp-wristed morons in charge of his section. Most likely, they were still tucked up in bed and he wouldn’t hear a peep out of them. Keith’s heavy, steel-capped work boots squelched into the grass underfoot and he thought absently of the rain that had fallen the evening before. The turf smelled of dew and he inhaled deeply.

  Much to his surprise, the mobile phone in his pocket began to vibrate and he fumbled around to answer it.

  “Keith? It’s Kayleigh. I got your message. What’s up?”

  “Somebody’s stuffed up royally, here, love,” he said forthrightly, with just enough condescension to imply that the person was her. “I’m standing here ready to dig a grave, but the site already has somebody in it.”

  There was a brief sigh and a pause while she booted up her laptop and logged into the work system remotely, keying in the reference number he gave her.

  “Okay, Keith, I’ve got the database in front of me here.” Another pause. “Are you sure the site is already in use? I can’t see any record of a burial there.”

  Keith rolled his eyes and glanced over at the small mound of earth.

  “Aye, pet, I’m sure. I’m standing here looking at a fresh pile of muck.”

  There was a long pause.

  “Alright, listen, I’ll try to get a hold of the ground staff and see if we’ve missed something. I’ll speak to Suzy, too, because she might have forgotten to update the system.”

  With an upbeat ‘cheery-bye!’ she rang off, telling him to stay put.

  Keith stared at the phone in his gnarled hand and then shoved it back in his pocket. The sun was winning its battle against the clouds and it burned through the vapour to shine a comforting light over the quiet graveyard. There were worse places to be, he thought, and leaned back against the hood of his machine. He scratched at the stubble on his chin and ran a hand over his head, which sported thick blonde hair that was just beginning to grey at the temples. Women were always surprised to find that he dug graves for a living, somehow imagining it was only sinister-looking, balding old men who needed to earn a crust—not somebody who looked vaguely reminiscent of Alan Shearer when he made the effort.

  Smiling at the thought, Keith cast his eyes downward and focused properly on the messy, upturned soil. It was a rich, dark brown, interspersed with tufts of grass. The rain had dislodged it overnight and there were tracks in the mud where the water had run in rivulets on either side. Idly, he daydreamed, tracing the path of the lines.

  Then his heart ground violently to a halt, slamming against his chest in one hard motion.

  He crept closer and his heart restarted, this time skipping and skidding frantically while his mind processed what he could see, very clearly now.

  It was a single dead eye, peering sightlessly at him through the soil.

  * * *

  A few miles further south, Detective Chief Inspector Maxwell Finlay-Ryan examined his bedroom floor with a similar kind of bemused horror. Wedding magazines were strewn across the carpet and a small cork board was propped against the dresser, bearing all manner of paraphernalia. He was reliably informed this was something known as a ‘mood board’, which every bride must have. Naturally, people couldn’t just head down to the nearest registry office, say a few words and live happily ever after. No, no, no. There needed to be suits and ties, frocks and hats and—God help him—fascinators. He could only presume these magical items of headwear were designed to fascinate those who looked upon them, otherwise he would be vastly disappointed.

  Ryan took a hasty slug of strong coffee from the mug in his hand and told himself not to panic. He was a murder detective, after all. He had toppled a cult circle; he had diced with death and survived to tell the tale.

  But he hadn’t seen anything like this.

  The author of his present misfortune sashayed into the room. In her arms, she clutched another pile of magazines and a stack of unopened envelopes. Her dark hair was bundled into a ponytail and she wore a red jumper over jeans and bare feet. Through the open door, he heard the strains of an eighties ballad and surmised that, once again, the radio had found its way back to her preferred station.

  Catching sight of him, Doctor Anna Taylor stifled a chuckle.

  “I was thinking we could look through these together, maybe decide on some of the final touches for the wedding.”

  Ryan’s face remained admirably calm as it drained of colour.

  “What else can there be?” He was dumbfounded. “We’ve been planning this state event for nearly seven months—”

  “We need to think about wedding favours,” she said, with a glint.

  “Favours?”

  “Mm hmm,” she said cheerfully, dumping the pile of magazines on the bed. “Then, there’s some of the late RSVPs to open and sort—”

  That clinched it. Ryan could see the rest of his day stretching before him in a haze of stationery and spreadsheets and decided that enough was definitely enough.

  “Ah, you know, whatever you choose is fine with me,” he said, edging towards the door. “I was thinking of taking a drive out.”

  Anna’s lips twitched.

  “Well, if you’re sure.”

  Ryan was nearly out of the door when his mobile phone began to shrill out a tinny rendition of the Indiana Jones theme tune and the number for the Control Room flashed on the screen.

  “Work!” he exclaimed, gleefully.

  * * *

  Detective Sergeant Frank Phillips yawned widely and dipped under the
police tape which hung across the imposing iron gates at the entrance to the West Road Cemetery, raising a hand to greet the two constables who stood guard with a log book to record everybody entering and leaving. The West Road itself was steep and a line of traffic made its way upward with an angry jerk of gears as people continued their slow journey into the city from the west, no doubt disgruntled at the prospect of having to go to work on a day earmarked as a national holiday.

  Much like himself, he thought, imagining the sleepy-eyed redhead and crispy bacon sandwich he had sacrificed to be here.

  Best not to dwell on it.

  Ahead of him, two stone chapels were linked by a cloister and clock tower whose large wrought iron hands told him the time was now half past nine. Behind the cloisters, he knew, there was a Garden of Remembrance where his father’s remains had been scattered, years earlier. Phillips’ mind wandered back to that windy morning in the late eighties and he could see himself clearly; a man with considerably more hair and less paunch, dressed in a beige anorak and clutching a small urn under his left arm. It had been a cold day in January, colder than it was now, but he had been numb to the frost. Hastily pushing the memories aside, he glanced around the main complex, noting the CSI van and the ambulance which was turning around to give easier access to its double doors at the back.

  Phillips found his Senior Investigating Officer standing on a carpet of thick plastic sheeting that had been laid over the damp ground, several feet away from the site of an open grave on the far side of the cemetery. Ryan cut a striking figure; a tall man standing perfectly still while the wind occasionally ruffled the shock of black hair against his brow. Beneath it, calm grey eyes surveyed the scene and missed very little. Tom Faulkner, the senior CSI, hovered nearby brandishing a hefty-looking camera as he prepared to record his initial walk-through of the crime scene.

  Presently, they heard his heavy footsteps approaching.

  “Morning Phillips,” they said in unison.