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

  THE ROCK

  – A DCI RYAN MYSTERY

  LJ Ross

  Copyright © LJ Ross 2021

  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.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Cover design copyright © LJ Ross

  OTHER BOOKS BY LJ ROSS

  The Alexander Gregory Thrillers in order:

  1. Impostor

  2. Hysteria

  3. Bedlam

  The DCI Ryan Mysteries in order:

  1. Holy Island

  2. Sycamore Gap

  3. Heavenfield

  4. Angel

  5. High Force

  6. Cragside

  7. Dark Skies

  8. Seven Bridges

  9. The Hermitage

  10. Longstone

  11. The Infirmary (prequel)

  12. The Moor

  13. Penshaw

  14. Borderlands

  15. Ryan’s Christmas

  16. The Shrine

  17. Cuthbert’s Way

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  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

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  This book contains some hard, but important, themes. It is therefore dedicated to all who have the bravery to question themselves and the world around them.

  To all the ‘Ryans’ and ‘MacKenzies’ out there: it is thanks to you that we strive for better.

  “There is something in the human spirit that will survive and prevail; there is a tiny and brilliant light burning in the heart of man that will not go out, no matter how dark the world becomes.”

  – Leo Tolstoy

  CHAPTER 1

  Saturday 13th February

  The North Sea, 03:17hrs

  Mick Donnelly could think of better ways to spend his time.

  After a plate of steak and chips down at Billy’s Chophouse, he might’ve lined up a couple of pretty lasses and spent a few pleasurable hours letting them tend to his every need—for a price, of course.

  Nothing in this world came for free.

  Then, after a suitable interval, he might’ve treated himself to a few beers and a few lines of coke with the lads—although, he was trying to cut back on the snow, after that last nosebleed. Weakness wasn’t a good look, in his line of work, and it could give people the wrong impression. They might start to think, and they weren’t getting paid to think.

  That was his job.

  Fixer. Courier. Postman. Whatever they wanted to call him, so long as they paid him half up-front, and half on delivery.

  The fishing vessel lurched ominously to one side as another wave crashed against its bow, and Mick’s hands gripped the boat’s wheel tightly as he fought to regain control. His square, weather-beaten jaw was set into hard lines as he steered the boat resolutely through treacherous North Sea waters, determined to reach the drop-off point before sunrise.

  “Mick!”

  The cabin door flew open to reveal a young man of twenty or so, his shaven head slick with water which ran in rivulets down his pasty skin, dripping into eyes that were wild with fear.

  “Mick!"

  “Shut the bloody door!” he roared, over the sound of the wind and sea which howled like a banshee around their heads.

  “Why aren’t you lookin’ after the cargo?” Mick demanded.

  The man they called ‘Noddy’ shoved the door closed, then shivered and dripped his way into the small cabin. Outside, there was a fathomless expanse of ice-cold water from which he would never survive, if anything was to happen while they completed the last leg of their journey, and the enormity of it all weighed heavily on his skinny, pimpled shoulders.

  “Well? Howay, man! Spit it out!”

  Mick narrowed his eyes against the torrent, watching all the time for the first, tiny lights that would signal they were drawing near to land.

  “It’s not good,” Noddy said, shifting from one foot to the other, feeling his stomach roll as the boat tipped back and forth. “Gaz says we’re takin’ on too much water—”

  Mick spun around at that.

  “What? What the bloody hell d’you mean? How much water?”

  “I—I dunno, but it’s a lot! Gaz is workin’ the pump, but he can’t shift it fast enough!”

  Mick turned back to the wheel, thinking fast. If the boat was taking on that much water, it wouldn’t last much longer in a storm like this one—especially without the benefit of the emergency life-saving facilities most vessels came equipped with, or the support of Her Majesty’s Coastguard. By his calculation, they were still a good hour away from the Port of Tyne…if they made it that far.

  “What’ll I tell Gaz?”

  “Shut yer gob and let me think,” Mick growled.

  Noddy hugged himself and stared out of the old, cracked windows. He didn’t know which was worse: seeing the terrifying vastness of the dark ocean, or merely imagining it from below deck, surrounded by the crashing of the waves from all sides and the putrid stench of their cargo.

  “Can’t we use the radio?” he asked.

  “Don’t be bloody daft,” Mick snapped, and then swore volubly. “Just bugger off back to the hold and stay there.”

  Noddy knew better than to question an order, and hurried off, skidding and swaying as he made for the cargo hold, head bent against the Arctic wind.

  Left alone again, Mick swiped a hand over his face, amazed to find he was sweating despite the frigid temperature.

  “Come on,” he muttered to himself. “Think, man. Think.”

  Just then, he caught sight of a tiny flicker on the horizon—no more than a pinprick, winking against the midnight sky. He peered through the rain and sea spray that crashed against the flimsy marine glass, rattling its rusty frame.

  Land.

  There were only a few lighthouses that remained fully operational on the North East coastline. Given their position, he guessed the light
he could see was coming from Roker, fifteen-odd miles south of the city of Newcastle upon Tyne. It wasn’t ideal, and he’d need to make a call to arrange a new collection point, but it was better than the alternative.

  Grinning fiercely, Mick began turning the wheel hard to port.

  * * *

  In the bowels of the fishing boat, Lawana tried once again to break free from the handcuffs which held her captive, forcing her skin through the metal as far as she could, uncaring of the blood and broken flesh. Meanwhile, icy water continued to seep through the cracks in the wall, forming a puddle around her feet.

  “Mae!”

  Panting, she looked across the room to where her daughter, Achara, was similarly chained, her body lying limply against the wall as she wept and cried for her mother. The fight had gone out of her, along with every ounce of the meagre energy she’d had to spare.

  “Poom jai, Achara!”

  She called back to her daughter and other female voices joined in, their sound a terrible, desperate cacophony. Around them, the air was heavy with a foul mixture of faeces and vomit, their bodies having rejected the nauseating rhythm of the boat and the toxic cocktail of drugs and bad food they’d been fed over the past week or more.

  Where was the boy?

  The young one, with the shaven head?

  He was cruel, and there was a look in his small, piggish eyes that spoke of more cruelty lying dormant within his wasted heart, but it worried her that he’d left them.

  To go where?

  Had he left them to drown?

  Lawana might have wept, but her tears had been spent long ago. Her mind was numb with pain and fatigue, her body frozen by fear, but she began to sing a Thai lullaby in as loud a voice as she could muster:

  Hear the song of the

  Wind in the trees,

  Singing softly through the leaves.

  Blowing from far, so far away.

  Bringing to a wee one

  Luck, they say.

  Listen to the breeze…

  She broke off as the door above them opened again and rain and seawater poured into the hold. Blinking the water from her eyes, Lawana saw a man’s silhouette against the dim light of the cabin at his back, and heard him shout something to the other one they called, ‘Gaz’.

  Relief blossomed into hate, then unmitigated joy as she watched him take his first step down the ladder, then lose his footing and fall into the shallow, festering water. Through the darkness she waited, hoping he would not raise himself up, knowing she would have held him down until his lungs filled.

  But, when she heard his gangly arms and legs thrash, and then the pitiful sound of him emptying his belly, she knew that he lived.

  At least, for now.

  * * *

  Lawana didn’t know how much time passed before the crash came.

  Since she and Achara had taken their first, fateful steps onto the van in Chiang Mai, they’d lost all real sense of time, but it might have been twenty or thirty minutes after Noddy re-entered the hold when there came the splintering sound of wood against rock. The boat lurched, tipping upward, where it was suspended for a second or two before crashing down again, at the mercy of the sea which rushed through a gaping hole in its starboard bow.

  The women screamed as their bodies were thrown forward, then back against the hard wooden walls of the hold, wrists in agony as the handcuffs held them tightly against the opposite force of the impact.

  “Mae! Mae!”

  Lawana thought she heard her daughter’s voice, and struggled again to free herself, prepared to break her own bones to reach the girl she’d borne and for whom she’d wanted a better life.

  “Achara!”

  The water level was rising fast now, and she saw the young man Nodi scurry towards the ladder to save himself, like a rat. He didn’t make it far, for the hold door was thrust open again and the devil they called Pos’man appeared, pushing the other back down before jumping into the water himself. He pointed towards the women and drew out a set of keys, throwing them at the younger man, who moved quickly to unlock their restraints while the other waited, counting them like cattle.

  Soon, the third man came, and Lawana watched them as the sea rose higher, until she could no longer feel her body and her chest felt so tight, she could barely breathe.

  Her eyes darted between them, knowing this would be her only chance.

  Finally, Nodi reached her, his thick hands fumbling with the lock at her wrist while he spoke cowardly obscenities she did not understand. She smelled his fear and felt stronger, even on the precipice of death, and watched the whites of his eyes while the sea surrounded them. Eventually her hand fell from the wall to slap against the water, and he might have moved on to the next woman, but she rose with a strength she didn’t know she had, teeth bared, fingers curled into claws.

  Taken by surprise, Noddy fell back, and his face was submerged. For a beautiful, blissful moment, she threw herself on top of him, fighting his flailing arms to hold him beneath the water, before a strong hand grasped a fistful of hair and yanked her away.

  “Bitch,” Gaz growled, and raised his other hand to exact revenge.

  “Get her off the bloody boat!” Mick shouted. “There’s no time!”

  Lawana was propelled towards the ladder to join the others, who scrambled upward as best they could, hurrying to abandon the boat before it sank into the murky depths of the sea to join the other skeleton ships that lay like sentinels on the ocean’s bed.

  Frantically, her eyes searched, but there was no sign of Achara.

  “Achara!”

  A fresh hell awaited her on deck, where the boat tipped and swayed perilously on its rocky pivot, scattering the women towards the gunwale and over it, into the sea. Lawana threw out her good arm and grasped a rough length of rope while she continued to search for Achara in the surrounding darkness, muscles screaming, begging her to let go and surrender. Beyond the wreckage, she saw nothing except the looming outline of an enormous rock rising up from the sea, its walls obliterating the lights lining the nearby shore like a dark reaper, come to claim their souls. She heard nothing but the waves and her own screams, felt nothing but her own grief.

  But there was more to come.

  The same thick, workmanlike hand covered her own and began to prise her fingers from the rope, and she let out a helpless sob as her body slid towards the edge of the rocking boat, like a ragdoll. Noddy followed, and she thought she heard him laugh; high-pitched and maniacal. Then, he was dragging her upward, turning her to face the water.

  “Swim,” he spat, and planted his boot in her back to send her sprawling over the edge of the boat, down and down, into deep, dark oblivion.

  * * *

  Only those with the will to survive were able to cover the short distance from the wreckage to the shoreline, which was little more than a thin sliver of pebble beach against the cliffs. Though the tide was beginning to recede, even in the shallows the current remained strong, and the rain drove down upon their exhausted bodies from all sides.

  Achara collapsed against the sand, her body shaking uncontrollably in a mixture of shock, cold and withdrawal, her fingers gripping the earth to anchor herself there while her body heaved and spluttered. Dimly, she heard voices carrying on the wind, and she curled into a foetal position, closing her eyes while the rain fell against her broken body.

  “There’s one o’er here!”

  Her fingers left drag marks against the sand as she was hoisted up again, her legs barely able to support her weight as the man pushed her towards the small corral of women who had been rounded up, under the watchful eye of Pos’man.

  “That’s eighteen,” he growled, as Achara stumbled to the sand at his feet. “We’re still missing two.”

  “Startin’ to lighten up a bit, now,” Gaz warned him. “We need to move.”

  Though she couldn’t understand the words, Achara followed his line of sight across the water to the far horizon, which was beginning to shift from
midnight blue to dark purple, as the sun began its slow ascent once more. She cast her eyes around the other women, scrubbing the salty water from her eyes to search their faces for the one she loved.

  But her mother was not there.

  “Mae,” she whispered, finding her voice croaky and hoarse. “Mae!”

  “Shut it,” Noddy said, and gave her a hard, back-handed slap which sent her weakened body sprawling against the sand.

  “Oi! Watch it, y’ stupid git,” Mick told him, without much rancour. “Remember, he doesn’t want any of them marked.”

  Noddy laughed.

  “Fat chance of that, after what we’ve just been through,” he said. “They’ll be fit for nowt—”

  “Not everybody’s as fussy as you,” Gaz said, and the three men laughed.

  “That’ll be Callum,” Mick said, pointing towards a flashing light further along the beach. “The Cavalry’s arrived, lads.”

  “What about the other two?” Noddy asked.

  Mick scanned the shadows of the beach once more, then looked back at the rock rising up from the water, where he’d once played as a child. Back then, there’d been an arch connecting the rock and a smaller stack of limestone, but it had crumbled away in the intervening years, leaving only the tall, rugged outcrop against which their boat had met its end.

  Maybe the boat wasn’t the only thing to have perished.

  “Collateral damage,” he said simply, and reached down to grasp one of the women’s thin arms. “Howay, let’s go.”

  CHAPTER 2

  Elsdon, Northumberland

  Forty miles northwest of where The Postman herded his living cargo along the beach and into a waiting van, Detective Chief Inspector Maxwell Finley-Ryan watched the rain patter against the skylight in his bedroom, unable to sleep.

  That wasn’t unusual; over the course of his life, Ryan had suffered with bouts of insomnia—which was hardly surprising, given the unique nature of his chosen profession. Investigating the most serious of crimes that one human being could inflict upon another, and witnessing the waste and destruction of its aftermath, was not often conducive to eight hours’ uninterrupted sleep. Throw in a new baby with nocturnal tendencies, and he might as well give up altogether.