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

  “Let’s wait to hear from the pathologist, Jack. I can’t put my finger on it but something doesn’t feel right. She was a woman in good health, with a particular routine.” She took a slow survey of the street. “It could be something or nothing.”

  “I guess we’ll find out.”

  * * *

  Ryan and Phillips entered the Northumbria Criminal Investigation Department’s Headquarters on the western outskirts of the city and instantly felt at home in the squat, sixties building with its perpetual odour of stale sweat and cleaning detergent. They made directly for the coffee machine outside their open-plan office on the second floor but were intercepted in the corridor by the Chief Constable’s officious personal assistant before they’d had a chance to fortify themselves.

  “Ryan,” Donna Peters greeted him with her usual hauteur and ignored Phillips completely, which he accepted with good grace.

  “The Chief Constable wants a word with you.”

  Ryan held off a sigh.

  “Is it urgent?”

  Donna raised a single, tattooed eyebrow.

  “Have you got more important things to be doing?”

  “Don’t answer that,” Phillips murmured, under his breath.

  “Not at all,” Ryan smiled winningly. “Just trying to find a killer, nothing heavy. Tell the boss I’ll be with her in a moment.”

  Donna flipped her hair extensions and stalked away.

  “Charming woman,” Ryan drawled. “Frank, I want you to get straight on to the handwriting expert—”

  “Graphologist.”

  Ryan paused mid-breath and eyed Phillips with suspicion.

  “How do you know these things?”

  “Common knowledge,” Phillips beamed.

  “Right. Well, get onto whatever ‘ologist you can find and ask them to spare a couple of hours to look over that note. You never know.”

  While Phillips made his escape, Ryan tapped on the Chief Constable’s door and waited for a response.

  “Come!”

  Sandra Morrison was a deceptively able person. Over the years, her diminutive height and unglamorous approach to policing had led many to assume she owed her present position to a combination of positive discrimination and good luck. In truth, Morrison was a student of human behaviour; a keen observer of people and their foibles and that insight had enabled her to progress through the ranks. She believed in the law, in its due process, and she had her own firm ideas about what constituted ‘right’ and ‘wrong’. Her devotion to her work had cost her several relationships and a brief bout of alcoholism but you can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs.

  She looked up from a stack of paperwork as Ryan entered the room and indicated for him to take a seat in one of the uncomfortable visitor’s chairs. He folded his body into a foamy lounger and crossed one long leg over the other.

  Elegant, Morrison thought. He was an elegant man, something you didn’t see too often nowadays.

  She turned her mind to the matters in hand, preferring not to beat around the bush.

  “I heard you’ve caught a new case?”

  Ryan rolled his shoulder slightly and prepared to deliver his report.

  “Yes, ma’am. DS Phillips and I responded to a request to attend the West Road Cemetery earlier this morning. One of the Council’s grave diggers discovered a body left in a shallow grave.”

  Morrison waited patiently for more.

  “There are several interesting factors to this discovery, which I have determined to be a matter for CID given the injuries and manner in which she was found.”

  “Interesting factors?” she prodded.

  “Yes. Firstly, a shallow grave was dug—we believe manually—on a site which follows the existing Council map of grave sites at the cemetery. Second, the body may have been arranged before she was covered over.”

  He thought briefly of other bodies at other times.

  “Initially, ma’am, I considered the arrangement of the body to be a cruciform formation, or something similar, but the victim’s arms were drawn above her head and bent sharply at the elbow with her blouse torn around it, suggestive of something like a wing.”

  Morrison frowned but remained silent as he continued.

  “Finally and perhaps most revealing, a note was left with the victim. It consisted of one line of text, written in Latin, giving absolution. For these reasons, our current thinking is that we have a religiously-motivated crime.”

  Morrison leaned back in her chair and sighed deeply, her sharp brown eyes looking weary all of a sudden.

  “Do you feel there is any connection?”

  Ryan knew the question she was really asking him. Last year, they had brought down a band of fanatics who had taken lives and spread their malice far and wide, all in the name of warped belief. Morrison wanted to know if they had resurfaced.

  “No, ma’am, I don’t. There was ritual in The Circle’s crimes but not like this. For one thing, we appear to be dealing with someone who attaches significance to church dogma, rather than the other way around.”

  “True enough,” she acknowledged. “What steps have been taken?”

  “We’re working on finding out her identity. The lady was discovered fully clothed but without any identifying markers, so we’ll be looking into that as a priority. Meanwhile, the pathologist will be performing his post-mortem and we’ll await the results. We’ve requested all available CCTV and a canvas of the local area is being conducted as we speak.”

  Morrison nodded. It was no less than she had expected.

  “What about the grave digger—Wilson, did you say?”

  “Yes, Keith Wilson. We’ve taken a statement from him and we’ll be checking it out. According to him, he spent last night in a couple of bars followed by a club in the Bigg Market area. He tells us he got lucky at the end of the night but was unable to provide either a name or telephone number for the aforementioned lucky lady, ma’am.”

  “I see,” Morrison’s lips twitched.

  “We can check the bars and the club to compare his movements with the post mortem interval of the deceased, once we know it.”

  Morrison gave a satisfied nod.

  “I don’t need to tell you what the outcry will be, once the media gets hold of this.”

  It was Ryan’s turn to sigh.

  “No, ma’am.”

  “I want a press statement ready and on my desk by three o’clock. I want to get ahead of this and take charge of the direction early on. I won’t make the same mistake as last time.”

  Ryan didn’t respond.

  “Ryan? Is that understood?”

  He raised icy grey eyes.

  “With respect, I won’t be releasing any statement until we have identified the woman and contacted her next of kin.”

  Morrison stopped her mouth falling open, just.

  “I don’t think you appreciate the sort of backlash—”

  “I’m more than aware.”

  She acknowledged the hit and took a mental step backwards. Ryan had seen his fair share of media intrusion, both personally and professionally.

  She gave a brisk nod.

  “As soon as you’ve spoken to next of kin, then.”

  Ryan inclined his head.

  “Was there anything else, ma’am?”

  Morrison leaned forward again, all business.

  “Actually, there is. Ryan, as you know, there’s a vacancy available in the department.”

  There was a short pause.

  “Yes.”

  “Have you given any thought to it?”

  Ryan looked away for a moment, then back into her watchful eyes.

  “I thought about it, briefly.”

  “You’re young for the post but I believe you’ve earned it. More importantly, you would make a good job of it.”

  Ryan shifted in his chair and re-crossed his legs. He wasn’t ready to talk about the possibility, it seemed too soon.

  “We have a surplus of highly qualified men
and women who could easily fill Gregson’s shoes,” he said eventually. Their former Detective Chief Superintendent had fallen from grace in spectacular fashion, a few months before.

  “We need good people at the helm,” Morrison said. “You’re one of them.”

  Ryan found himself taken aback.

  “I—thank you, ma’am.”

  “Don’t thank me, just tell me you’ll give the matter serious thought.”

  “Alright.”

  Morrison searched his face and assumed correctly that was all he was going to give her for now, so she turned to the final item on her agenda.

  “As you know, the trial is coming up,” she steepled her fingers and met his eyes across the expanse of her beech desk. “The CPS are satisfied that we put together a solid case, that we dotted the i’s and crossed the t’s.”

  “That’s gratifying to know,” Ryan drawled. In his experience, there would always be a defence lawyer eager to find some technical loophole to enable his client to wriggle off the hook. Well, not in this case. Arthur Gregson, former Superintendent of Northumbria CID, would not be going anywhere except prison. He would personally slam the door shut behind him.

  “They want you to give evidence,” she continued. “Are you prepared to do that?”

  Ryan’s eyes turned flat.

  “I have no qualms whatsoever in setting out, in detail, Gregson’s many and varied crimes. When the call comes, I’ll be ready.”

  Morrison nodded her approval.

  “That’ll be all.”

  “Thank you, ma’am.”

  * * *

  Ryan escaped the confines of Morrison’s office and returned to the relative comfort of his open-plan office space further down the hall. He found Phillips sitting at his desk with a telephone handset wedged between ear and shoulder, while his hands completed the intricate task of unwrapping a steaming hot beef and onion pasty. To Phillips’ consternation, Ryan wasted no time in appropriating it for himself, throwing his sergeant a breezy smile as he fled to his own desk with the stolen goods.

  A few moments later, Phillips ended the call and hurriedly looked across to where Ryan was dusting the crumbs from his shirt.

  “You thieving—”

  “Now, now,” Ryan admonished. “What’s a bit of beef pasty, between friends?”

  “Aye, well, you can buy me another on the way to the hospital.”

  “I take it that was the pathologist on the phone?”

  Phillips nodded.

  “That’s a bit quick, isn’t it?” Ryan cast a glance in the direction of the large white clock on the wall and noted that the time was barely three o’clock. “It usually takes him a while longer to do a post-mortem.”

  “He hasn’t finished but he wants to show us something.”

  “That man loves an audience,” Ryan muttered, but rose from his chair and made a grab for his coat.

  * * *

  They found Doctor Jeffrey Pinter shaking his bony hips to a compilation of seventies disco classics. The music filled the wide, windowless space of the basement mortuary at the Royal Victoria Infirmary and managed to offset its inherently depressing atmosphere. A bank of metal drawers lined one wall and a row of metal gurneys had been placed at intervals in the centre, three of which were presently occupied by veiled bodies of the recently deceased. They spotted Pinter at the head of the room, a tall, spindly man whose grey pallor and narrow, sagging face matched his profession perfectly. He turned at the sound of footsteps against the tiled floor.

  “Afternoon, Jeff,” Ryan chose not to accept the outstretched hand, fearful of where it had been. Beside him, Phillips studiously avoided looking at the row of bodies and shivered at an icy blast from the air conditioning system whirring overhead.

  “You look busy,” Ryan commented.

  Pinter made a clacking sound with his gums which Phillips instantly disliked.

  “No such thing as a bank holiday in this business,” Pinter complained, moving towards the first gurney in the row. With theatrical flourish, he whipped back its paper covering to reveal the stiff body of the redheaded woman they had found a few hours earlier.

  “Cleaned her up a bit,” Pinter began matter-of-factly, as if he had just returned from the car wash.

  “What can you tell us?”

  “Well, first and most importantly, I’d say she’d been dead for somewhere in the region of twelve to fourteen hours when she was first brought in, accounting for ambient temperatures being colder overnight and her body having been exposed to the elements. I might have suggested a consultation with a forensic entomologist but, frankly, I don’t think it’s necessary at this stage. The body carries all the signs consistent with that timescale.”

  “So, we’re looking at something in the region of nine p.m. onwards, last night.”

  Pinter nodded, then drew on a pair of gloves and pointed at the underside of the woman’s body. It was a deep, ugly purple, in comparison with her face and torso which was an almost translucent grey.

  “Here, you can see that her body has undergone post mortem hypostasis—”

  “Speak English, Jeff,” Phillips grumbled.

  “The blood has congealed and succumbed to gravity, which tells us that she has been lying on her back for at least six hours. Factoring in rigor mortis, the core temperature…yes, I would say she had been dead anywhere up to fourteen hours when we found her. Nineteen hours, by now.”

  “You’re certain?”

  Pinter held both hands out defensively.

  “It’s your job to find out the ‘whys’ and the ‘wherefores’. All I can do is give you my medical opinion.”

  “Alright, Jeff, keep your hair on,” Ryan muttered. “How did she die?”

  “Ligature asphyxiation. There is clear evidence of violent compression around the windpipe; both the trachea and larynx have been crushed.”

  “In other words, she was strangled,” Phillips said, a bit testily.

  “Exactly. You can see the ecchymoses on her neck, just here—” he took out a retractable pointer and held it in front of the woman’s neck, where lurid bruising circled the hollow skin in garish shades of purple and black. “These bruises were sustained ante mortem.”

  Ryan forced himself to look and to muster the detachment he needed to do his job. He stared down at the shrunken body of what had once been an attractive woman of around forty and pity stirred in his chest. Despite the early stages of decay, he saw even features and high cheekbones. Her eyes were taped closed and her hands had been encased in plastic bags to preserve any remaining evidence. Dismally, he noticed they were starting to balloon as natural gases oozed from the woman’s pores and began to collect inside the plastic folds.

  “How about defensive wounds?”

  “I’ve swabbed the skin and nails; they’re with forensics now. I’m also waiting for the blood and toxicology reports to come through but it’s the bank holiday weekend, so we can’t expect miracles.”

  “Tell them I’ll authorise the overtime,” Ryan interjected.

  Phillips raised an eyebrow but said nothing. Resources were always stretched and paying for the ‘express service’ was a luxury reserved for urgent cases.

  Then again, he was inclined to think that every case was urgent.

  “Right you are. Even without the results, we can draw certain inferences. Three of her nails are broken, for instance, which would be consistent with a struggle. However, I will venture to say that the scratches you can see on her neck were self-inflicted.”

  “She fought to survive.”

  “Yes.”

  They fell silent as they imagined a woman fighting for her life but their reverie was interrupted by the unpleasant sound of skin being drawn together as a mortuary clinician stitched together the open folds of a man’s torso on the other side of the room.

  “Any signs of sexual assault?” Phillips asked.

  Pinter shook his head.

  “No evidence of trauma in the vaginal or anal tract but, again
, I’ve taken swabs to be sure. I found the vestiges of some chicken and bread or similar wheat-based food substance, alongside a quantity of white wine in her system, which appears to have been her last meal around twenty hours ago. That’s all I can really tell you at the moment but I’ll know more when the results of the tests come back.”

  Ryan turned to his sergeant.

  “Frank, get on to the Control Room and see who’s been reported missing this morning.”

  Phillips shook his head sadly.

  “No need, boss,” he tapped the edge of his work phone. “I’ve got a message here from Missing Persons. I think we might have found our Jane Doe.”

  CHAPTER 3

  “Her name was Kristina but everyone called her Krista.”

  Ryan sat on the edge of a plush green velvet sofa, having completed the unenviable task of informing Krista’s next of kin that she wouldn’t be coming home. A small, cowardly part of him wished he could have delegated it to somebody else, but that wasn’t his way. So he and Phillips had trudged the long journey from the car to the front door of a smart, newly built townhouse in an area of Newcastle known as Spital Tongues.

  You couldn’t make up a name like that.

  “We’ve only just returned from our honeymoon,” Nina Ogilvy-Matthews was saying. She swiped a hand over her eyes, which were red-rimmed and raw as the tears continued to flow. “We were together for years, ever since university, you know?”

  She looked up at Ryan, desperate for him to understand.

  “We decided to use a double-barrelled surname after the wedding,” she was prattling and she knew it. “Kristina Ogilvy and Nina Matthews became Mrs and Mrs Ogilvy-Matthews. Everyone said it has a posh ring to it.”

  She laughed, a bit hysterically, then her eye caught a silver-framed wedding portrait on the window ledge and she let out a long, low sound, like an animal in pain.

  Nina’s mother was seated beside her, saying nothing but holding her daughter’s hand as her own tears fell. Her father stood silently in the corner, looking shell shocked.

  “I’m very sorry for your loss,” Ryan murmured, though the words felt like sawdust on his tongue and he hated himself already for the questions he was bound to ask. “I need you to help us piece together Krista’s last movements.”