Angel: A DCI Ryan Mystery (The DCI Ryan Mysteries Book 4) Page 5

“What were your impressions of her?”

  “Barbara was a self-contained person, as I’m sure you’ve heard. I must tell you that I rarely spoke to her, or saw her, for that matter. She preferred her own company.”

  They crossed the main square and made their way towards the church, tucked along a side street.

  “We understand that Barbara was not a religious woman. Is that correct, to the best of your knowledge?”

  He stopped outside the doors to the church and spread his hands, laying it out for them.

  “Actually, Barbara was brought up as a Catholic and both of her parents were regular churchgoers until her father’s stroke, after which he was unable to make the journey. I fell into the habit of stopping by their house to hear confession, give communion and so on.” He paused. “Barbara tended not to be present at those times but, when I did see her, she was perfectly cordial.”

  Lowerson interjected.

  “One or two people have told us that Barbara had some animosity towards the church. Would you agree with that?”

  Father Healy smiled genially at the young man.

  “God granted us free will and Barbara certainly exercised that from time to time in conversation with me. I always enjoy a healthy theological debate, an opportunity to allay concerns, clarify a point of doctrine…” he trailed off.

  When he looked back, Lowerson was watching him closely.

  “We understand there was an argument. Last Friday?”

  Healy looked taken aback.

  “I don’t remember any argument…perhaps you’re mistaken.”

  MacKenzie and Lowerson exchanged a look.

  “Are you sure she didn’t stop to…speak to you, at all?”

  “Not that I recall.” The priest was adamant. “Detectives, I don’t know what caused Barbara to lose her faith but it certainly didn’t trouble her overmuch, certainly not enough to strike up arguments with me. She might have spent more time alone, she might have liked things a certain way, but—”

  “Her routine was well known, then?” MacKenzie slipped in the question.

  “I suppose so, yes,” he replied. “She shopped at the supermarket on certain days, went to the post office on others, that sort of thing. In a community like this, people talk.”

  MacKenzie continued to regard him.

  “Yet despite all that, nobody reported her missing,” MacKenzie observed.

  The priest made an expansive gesture.

  “It’s true that she wasn’t a popular member of the community. But who would want to hurt her? She lived an ordinary, solitary, life. I’m sure you will find a reasonable explanation for her death, inspector, and I’m only sorry that she wasn’t discovered sooner.”

  MacKenzie looked back at the main square where people went about their business and then back up at the priest’s contrite face.

  “I hope you’re right, Father. Thank you for your time.”

  He bade them a smiling farewell and retreated indoors, whistling a hymn. MacKenzie and Lowerson began to stroll back towards the cul-de-sac where Barbara had lived, until they were well out of earshot.

  “It’s a sin to lie, isn’t it?” Lowerson said, eventually.

  CHAPTER 4

  The sun was setting by the time Ryan’s team of detectives reconvened. It dropped low into the horizon, spreading wide arcs of flaming light over the city while stars began to pop in the cardinal blue sky far above. The temperature had dropped so that the air was crisp and cold, wiping away the cloud to leave a blank canvas for the night sky in all its splendour.

  The beauty of the natural world was lost upon the occupants of CID, whose minds were collectively engrossed by the more prosaic question of murder. Ryan hitched a hip onto the corner of his desk and began to swing a leg idly back and forth as he skim-read MacKenzie’s report. Phillips took the trouble to water the dying plants on the long window sill, which some thoughtful soul had arranged in an effort to brighten the place up a bit. MacKenzie watched him putter about with an indulgent smile, thinking that he was a man who liked to nourish living things. Beside her, Lowerson slouched in one of the uncomfortable plastic tub chairs while he fiddled with his shiny new smartphone. Judging by the number of times he was swiping his screen to the left, he was not having a successful day in the world of internet dating.

  Eventually, Ryan looked up again.

  “Sorry, Mac, you’ll probably have to wait another day for the pathologist to get around to looking at Barbara Hewitt, unless you want to draft in someone from Durham or Teesside. We monopolised Pinter’s time today,” he explained. “I have to say that, on the face of it, you seem to have a straightforward case of a lonely older woman who died in her own home. Pretty standard, don’t you think?”

  MacKenzie rolled her shoulders while she considered her answer.

  “I know that’s how it looks. The locals all agree that she was—”

  “—a miserable woman,” Lowerson interjected smoothly, with a smirk that was met by a green-eyed glare from his superior.

  “—an insular lady, who preferred her own company,” MacKenzie corrected him, then turned back to face Ryan. “There’s something about it that doesn’t sit right with me, boss.”

  “Suffering from a bout of intuition again?”

  “Call it my sixth sense as a murder detective,” she gave a lopsided grin.

  Ryan looked down at the report in his hand and thought quickly of the workload and resources at his disposal. There had been an influx of serious crime over the past few weeks, so he needed to be pragmatic. On the other hand, MacKenzie had a nose for the business and he trusted it.

  “Alright, listen. If nothing turns up after Pinter’s post-mortem, I need you to close it down. There’s too much going on at the moment and I don’t know how this cemetery murder is going to pan out. We might need to re-allocate your time.”

  “Understood,” she said. “Lowerson has been looking into Barbara’s next of kin but so far we’ve been unable to find anyone. By all accounts, she was an only child, no marriages, divorces or children on record.”

  “Another windfall for Her Majesty’s Treasury,” Ryan pronounced.

  “That’s just sad,” Phillips couldn’t help but remark. It had been his great pleasure to love three women during the course of his fifty-two years: his mother, his late wife and the delectable redheaded Irishwoman who was seated beside him. It was hard to imagine a life without having formed any lasting or meaningful relationships, but then, not everybody was as fortunate as he.

  He leaned across and gave MacKenzie’s fingers a quick squeeze.

  Ryan began to fiddle with a biro while he thought back over the events of the day.

  “Phillips and I have made decent progress identifying the woman found up at the West Road Cemetery this morning. Her name was Kristina Ogilvy-Matthews—she went by ‘Krista’. Thirty-eight years old, long red hair and blue eyes. She was found strangled early this morning, buried—no, arranged—in a shallow grave.”

  “Arranged?” MacKenzie queried.

  Ryan took out an enlarged copy of one of the crime scene photographs which he handed to her. As she looked down at the image of a woman around her own age, with hair and eyes of a similar shade, MacKenzie felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end.

  “She looks…”

  “I know,” Ryan said flatly. “A bit like you, but don’t let it get under your skin. Focus on the facts. Phillips and I are taking care of this one for the moment.”

  MacKenzie nodded and tried to get past the superficial similarity between herself and the dead woman. Looking with fresh eyes, she began to see what Ryan had seen that morning.

  “She looks like a dancer, with her arms looped above her head.”

  She passed the image to Lowerson, who took his turn to scrutinize it.

  “Maybe her arms fell into that position accidentally when she was laid out?” he suggested, and Ryan had to admit it was a possibility.

  “It’s a good thought, Jack, but he
r clothing was torn at the arms and the material spread out deliberately. And there’s something else to consider.” Ryan reached into his box file and withdrew a photocopy of the note they had found buried with the body. He watched them pore over it and waited to see if they followed the same thought process he had.

  “Roman Catholic?” MacKenzie began. “Absolving her of sin? Not much of an original, is he?”

  Ryan shrugged.

  “Religion, sex, money, jealousy…same old justifications, brand new victims.”

  “What sin did she commit, in his eyes?”

  Ryan pointed the biro, as if to capture the thought.

  “As far as we know, Krista had no criminal record, an exemplary employment history as a teacher, a concerned group of friends and a loving wife.”

  “Wife?” Lowerson’s eyebrows rose all the way up into his gelled quiff.

  “That’s what the man said,” Phillips sent him a mild look. “What’s the matter, lad, has it offended your sensibilities?”

  “No, I mean…no,” he finished lamely, and wondered if he could ram his foot any further down his own throat.

  “Good,” Ryan said smoothly. “It would hardly be worth mentioning, except for the small matter of same sex relationships having been viewed unfavourably by certain traditional factions in days gone by, Roman Catholics included.”

  “It still happens,” MacKenzie said.

  “Which is why we need to treat this as a potential hate crime. Krista Matthews was a happy, well-regarded woman. The circumstances of her death suggest a degree of premeditation; a person who planned ahead, wrote their little note, dug the grave and knew how to enter the cemetery without drawing too much attention. The note suggests that the killer considered Krista a sinner but we don’t know why. We need to look deeper into her life to see if there’s something we’re missing but who’s to say she wasn’t stalked and selected because she had the temerity to fall in love with a woman?”

  “It’s a definite maybe,” Phillips said, unrolling a fresh stick of nicotine gum without much enthusiasm. Over a year since his last cigarette and he still missed the little tar-infested buggers. “On the other hand, it could have been a purely opportunistic kill. Let’s not forget that it’s Easter either.”

  Ryan nodded slowly.

  “The timing could be significant for him, if we presume that he or she is a religious fanatic—”

  “We’ll live dangerously,” Phillips put in.

  “Let’s hope it isn’t significant,” MacKenzie sliced through the banter. “There are a hell of a lot of dates on the Catholic calendar.”

  “Let’s just deal with the here and now,” Ryan was determined to keep morale high from the outset. “Krista’s wife, Nina, tells us that she was due to have some social drinks with her workmates and was expected to be home by nine-thirty last night. We’ve spoken to Krista’s colleagues, who confirm they all left work together. They made their way into the centre of town to the All American Diner, where she left them at around quarter past nine.”

  MacKenzie’s head snapped up.

  “The Diner?” They all knew the man who owned it. He was currently being investigated by a team of forensic accountants regarding his association with their former Detective Chief Superintendent Gregson.

  “I’ll be asking for copies of the CCTV footage. It’s all we can do without disturbing the ongoing investigation into his actions last year.”

  He wouldn’t allow past events to divert them from the needs of the present.

  “The pathologist thinks that Krista died somewhere between eight and ten p.m. Factoring in what we know about her movements, it’s looking more likely that she was picked up or snatched sometime shortly after nine-fifteen, when she left The Diner.”

  Phillips linked his fingers over the paunch just visible through his baby blue shirt.

  “I’ve requested footage from the cameras in the local area. I also had a word with the local taxi firms and they’re going to ask their drivers about it, but that’s a bit of a needle in a haystack until we know whether she walked or hailed a cab.”

  “It’s a good start,” Ryan said.

  “The cemetery has a few cameras but they’re mostly trained around the main entrance and none of them actually work,” Phillips added, with a note of apology.

  “Wait—what?”

  “Budget constraints,” Phillips grimaced. “Apparently crime rates around council-run burial sites are low, so its not high on their list of priorities.”

  Ryan swore loudly and threw the biro back onto his desk in disgust. Financial constraints were a fact of life and there was nothing he could do about it. He knew it; they all knew it. Yet when he looked down at the picture of Krista Ogilvy-Matthews smiling happily into the camera on her wedding day, he couldn’t help but think of his own wedding which was due to take place in the summer. The thought of Anna ever being taken from him was like a knife in his chest. He wanted to believe it could never happen and that he could promise to keep her safe, always, but life had taught him not to make promises he could not keep. He knew that there were people out there who acted without mercy, sometimes without rational thought and at other times in full awareness of their actions. All the while, he was usually powerless to stop them until it was too late.

  Krista continued to stare back at him and Ryan added her face to the catalogue of others he kept locked in his mind.

  When he looked up again, his eyes were a fierce silver.

  “We might not have any helpful footage of our perpetrator coming and going but he’s already made his first mistake. By writing that note he left a piece of himself behind. Now we have his scent.”

  His gaze passed over the trusted faces of his team, who were more like family.

  “Let’s go hunting.”

  * * *

  The pounding in the man’s head had abated, just for a moment, when he felt her body go limp and die in his arms. She had been a gift, an opportunity to save another soul and he could not ignore God’s work. For surely that was what it had been. Placing the redheaded woman in front of him had not been a matter of chance but a question of divinity.

  He looked down at his hands and was amazed at how little they trembled. He hadn’t wanted to kill her, of course he hadn’t, but how could he ignore her plight? God had thrown her into his path so that he could help her. He had been chosen. This work and the salvation he could bring was the reason he had been born.

  He was God’s holy vessel.

  He slept peacefully afterwards, the sleep of the righteous. But the next night, the pain in his skull had returned stronger than before. It throbbed along his nerves, into his ears and across his eyes so that his vision blurred and he felt sickness roll in his gut. He hadn’t known how he would get through the day.

  Then he had seen her.

  For a moment, it was her. The one who filled his dreams. His heart had soared, beating like an eagle’s wings in his chest. His loins had surged, like they had years ago, at the thought of finding her.

  But it was not her, only a cheap imitation.

  Still, he had chosen to save her; it was the only humane thing to do. Now another soul resided in Heaven and he could have sworn he had seen it rising from her body, celestial and ethereal.

  As he looked out of his bedroom window into the darkening night, the city lights spread out before him in a blanket of yellow and white. On higher ground above the city, he knew, an iron angel stood watch over the people of Newcastle. It was another sign that his work was meant. It was sacred. The people had erected a towering angel to watch over their city but they had no idea that God had rewarded them by investing one of their number with His holy spirit.

  He wondered if he was worthy of such a task and if he was capable of fulfilling his purpose. He was only one man and there were so many other souls to save. Then he felt her beside him. He could smell the sweet scent of her hair, could hear her voice whisper on the air as the lines of reality and unreality blurred.

&n
bsp; They stood side by side for a while looking across the city and he wondered when God would send him the next one.

  * * *

  Ryan bypassed the apartment he owned on Newcastle’s Quayside and drove south along the A1 towards the neighbouring city of Durham. Revellers enjoying a Friday night in the ‘party city’ stumbled through the streets and Ryan decided he must be getting old because he was eyeing the short skirts and gravity-defying heels with the kind of expression he imagined his father would wear.

  Glad to make the turn over the bridge, he accelerated and enjoyed the breeze which whistled through the gap in the car window. Something about the investigation was bothering him more than he had expected. Perhaps it was the religious element. Why did these crackpots insist upon attaching some sort of moralistic code to their killing? Why couldn’t they be honest and admit that they liked killing people, no strings attached?

  He smiled to himself, thinking of what Anna would say to that.

  They’re unwell, she’d say, her natural compassion leading her to pity the men and women who extinguished lives.

  They have a mental illness, she’d say, it’s a disease of the mind.

  He slowed for the inevitable traffic along the main road leading from Newcastle to Durham and considered his own views on the subject. Yes, there was mental illness. He saw it daily from those who walked through the doors of CID and into lockup. There were many kinds of madness, so many syndromes and labels a person could choose from. Some of them might even be real. He had spent hours listening to pen-pushers who expounded the virtues of rehabilitation and remorse, lamenting the evils of retribution and recidivism.

  On the other hand, he had also spoken to the victims of crime. He had seen the implosion of lives, the breakdown of confidence and capability. He was one of them, Ryan thought bitterly. One of the unlucky few who lived with only memories to sustain him. His sister lay six feet under, her body little more than ashes and dust because one madman decided it was his prerogative to snatch her life away. Well-meaning people told him that he had brought her killer to justice and that was all that mattered. Keir Edwards—or to give him his more evocative title, The Hacker—could not kill any young women while he was behind bars. Other families had been spared the torment that the Ryan family had experienced and he should take comfort from that.