Angel: A DCI Ryan Mystery (The DCI Ryan Mysteries Book 4) Page 6

  That may all be true, Ryan thought darkly, but not a day went by without him wishing that it was Edwards’ body that lay rotting beneath the ground.

  CHAPTER 5

  Saturday, 26th March

  In the early hours of Saturday morning, Karen Dobbs staggered to the front door of her house in a part of Newcastle known as Daisy Hill. Its name suggested fields of white flowers where one could frolic but the reality was very different. Rows of council and ex-council houses lined the streets, many with boarded windows and splintered doors. Years ago, proud coal miners and dock workers had lived there, toiling to raise great ships onto the water. When those industries died, some of the community spirit had died with them. There was talk of regeneration, of fancy new houses and a community centre, but progress was slow. In the meantime, the CCTV cameras didn’t work and there was no money for dead bolts to protect the residents against the thieves and vandals who preyed upon what little they had.

  Not that Karen would have cared if vandals trashed her house. It couldn’t get much worse and she didn’t notice the filth unless she was sober and shaking, desperate for her next hit, as she was now. At those times, the last thing she felt like doing was cleaning. The comedown hit her hard, dragging her body and her mind back to life, leaving her nauseous and aching for the pain to go away. She wanted the blissful, mind-numbing serenity that only the dragon could bring and she knew what she had to do to get it.

  She stumbled out of the house, wrapping her thin arms around herself to stave off the chill. A solitary streetlight fizzed its brash orange glare as she stumbled towards her usual corner. A group of teenage boys jeered and she smelled the marijuana, heard the crass insults thrown at her back. She felt the spit hit her bare legs and she closed her eyes against the shame, focusing on her need.

  Not far to go now.

  She hurried around the corner, shuffling on thin, wasted legs she’d tried to dress up in cheap black heels. She ran shaking fingers through her hair and tugged at the skirt which fell just beneath her hips. As the petrol station came into sight, she smiled beautifully, gazing upon it as if it were the promised land.

  Careful to avoid the cameras, she scurried around to the back of the gents toilets and prepared to wait.

  She didn’t have to wait long.

  She saw him before he saw her. Karen wasn’t fussed about what they looked like; any kind of fastidiousness had left her long ago, the drugs had taken that along with her pride and her three-year-old son. Still, this one wasn’t bad looking.

  “Hiya handsome,” she slurred. Long-term drug abuse had taken her faculty for clear speech too.

  He looked up from his distracted inspection of the tarmac and seemed to come to a halt, his eyes fixing on her in a kind of wonder.

  “Whatsamatter sweetie?” she purred. “No need to be shy.”

  “Is it you?” he whispered.

  Karen didn’t understand the reverent tone in his voice but she did understand that his clothes looked smart and pricey.

  Plenty of money.

  “Why don’t you take me for a ride, feller?”

  He remained where he was for a second, then he cast a swift glance in either direction and nodded, leading her quickly back towards his car. She trotted after him and decided she had hit the jackpot when he held the door open for her.

  “Ooh, this is nice!” she giggled, reaching across to grab his crotch as he slid into the driver’s seat. One strong hand intercepted her wrist with a vice-like grip and her smile slipped, leaving her face slack and prematurely aged. Fear quivered along her spine as she looked at his hard profile. It was a gamble every time and after so many years in the business she could usually spot the kinks. But every now and then, one slipped through the net.

  With a sinking stomach, Karen resigned herself to a few cuts and bruises and hoped that she could avoid another trip to the Accident and Emergency department. It would still be worth it, she reasoned, feeling the fever slick through her blood. Self-preservation would never win against that kind of euphoria.

  He started the engine.

  * * *

  Spring sunshine illuminated the city of Durham in a golden light, touching the towering stone walls of the cathedral with gentle fingers and sweeping over the castle which seemed to rise mystically from the banks of the river. From her position at the window, Anna looked out across the water and watched as a pair of swans made their graceful journey upstream. She sipped at a mug of strong coffee and turned as Ryan padded into the room, ready for work.

  “Busy day today?”

  He paused in the act of searching for his car keys, baffled as to their disappearance.

  “We’re tugging the usual threads, following the avenues.”

  “But?”

  Ryan smiled slowly.

  “You don’t miss much, do you?”

  “Not usually,” she replied, sweetly. “What’s troubling you?”

  Distractedly, he shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans and immediately found the keys.

  “There was a note left on the woman we found yesterday, giving absolution in Latin.”

  Anna nodded her understanding. If there were two things that Ryan hated, they were religious dogma and murder, especially put together.

  “It’s not the same,” she murmured.

  “Isn’t it? Last year, we had a bunch of devil-worshippers killing in the name of an imaginary being with a forked tail and horns. Now we’ve got another nut-job killing in the name of a beardy bloke in leather sandals, with a castle in the sky. Whatever happened to people killing out of jealousy or hate or sex? Since when was money not good enough?”

  Anna leaned back against the window sill, trying hard not to laugh.

  “I think those are still the main reasons people commit crimes,” she corrected him gently. “However people choose to dress it up.”

  Ryan stared at her for a long moment, then his face cleared and he walked across to set an arm on either side of the sill, boxing her in. She tipped her face up and looked into a pair of silver-grey eyes, shining with intent.

  “Ever thought of changing profession?”

  “What? And give up my mediocre teaching salary and long hours as a university historian?”

  “You could have all those perks working for Northumbria CID, and you’d get to spend more time with me,” he purred.

  “You’re really winning me over.”

  “Am I?” He leaned down and bestowed the barest of kisses beneath her left ear. His eyes closed when he felt the tremor ripple over her skin.

  “You’ve got work,” she murmured.

  “So have you,” he returned, lifting his head again to brush kisses over her jaw.

  “Well, now you mention it, I think I heard the sound of the gas boiler breaking down.”

  “That’s funny, because my car won’t start,” he replied.

  “What can you do with half an hour?”

  “Is that a question, or a challenge?”

  * * *

  Ryan arrived at work just before nine, humming along to something he’d heard on the car radio. Naturally, his buoyant mood had absolutely nothing to do with spending an hour playing truant at home, nothing whatsoever. He slung his jacket over the back of his desk chair and surveyed the mountain of paperwork awaiting him with resignation. There was a skeleton staff in CID today as many of the PCs and support staff were off work over the holiday weekend and consequently the long corridors were quieter than usual.

  From his vantage point, Phillips leaned back in his ugly green desk chair and raised a bushy eyebrow.

  “Morning,” he narrowed his eyes at Ryan. “Managed to get your car sorted, did you?”

  “Hmm? Oh yeah, all sorted.”

  “The mechanic must’ve come pretty quickly.”

  Ryan kept his eyes averted and decided not to make any obvious jokes about servicing of parts.

  “Mm hmm.”

  “There! I saw that!” Phillips pointed an accusing finger at Ryan’
s face and squeaked out of his chair. “I know that face.”

  “What face?” Ryan schooled his features into a neutral expression but Phillips wasn’t fooled.

  “Listen to your elders, son,” Phillip confided. “Never, ever, say you have car trouble, because it only holds water if you can talk about cars and car-related things.”

  “I can talk about cars,” Ryan said, defensively.

  Phillips crossed his arms over his broad chest.

  “Lad, what you know about cars could be written on the back of a postage stamp.”

  “I’ll remind you, sergeant, that could be classed as insubordination.”

  Phillips sensed victory was near.

  “And I’ll remind you, chief inspector, to always use the boiler as an excuse. Gas leaks are a classic ploy to get time off work.”

  Ryan smirked at Phillips’ retreating back, then called out belatedly, “Hey! You rang in four times last month to say you were having boiler trouble!”

  “Aye, lad, and it’s far from being fixed yet.”

  Ryan snorted but, before he could offer a witty riposte, his phone began to rumble. He answered without checking the screen and all amusement left his face when he realised who was speaking at the other end of the line.

  Ending the call quickly, he shouldered back into his jacket and turned to Phillips with a face like thunder.

  “We’ve got another one, Frank. Damn it, the bastard has done it again.”

  * * *

  “I should start charging for entry.”

  Pinter chuckled at his own weak joke as MacKenzie and Lowerson buzzed through the secure doors of the hospital mortuary on the dot of nine.

  “Morning, Jeff,” MacKenzie said, drawing on a visitor’s coat. “Thanks for getting around to this so quickly, we appreciate you taking the time out of your weekend.”

  Pinter flushed from the neck upwards, a reaction he often experienced in the presence of DI MacKenzie. It wasn’t worth mentioning that he only had a fridge full of microwave meals and The X Factor to look forward to at home and so he’d rather be at work. Instead, he mumbled something unintelligible and then turned towards Lowerson in an effort to deflect attention from himself.

  “Looking a bit worse for wear, Jack,” he waggled a finger at Lowerson, who was breathing hard at the sight and smell of death.

  “He’ll be grand,” MacKenzie said shortly. “Talk to me about Barbara Hewitt.”

  Pinter led them over to one of the metal gurneys.

  “Got a ripe one, here,” he began, in his usual tasteless fashion. Whipping off the paper sheet, they were faced with the decomposing body of what had once been a woman. “I can tell you straight away that this lady did not die as Mother Nature intended.”

  MacKenzie looked up from the waste with a gleam in her eye.

  “Don’t tease me, Jeff.”

  The man flushed again.

  “Ah, um. Well. As you can see, she’s decaying rapidly which can make it difficult to pick up on nuances, but there is one little thing,” he said, gesturing for them to move closer to the body. “Just here, on her neck.”

  MacKenzie pulled a mask over her nose and mouth and bent down, telling herself not to react, though her stomach muscles quivered dangerously. Lowerson remained exactly where he was, at a safe distance. Surely, it wasn’t necessary for both of them to look? He would take their word for it.

  “What am I looking for?”

  “Here,” Pinter lowered his steel grey head and pointed towards an area of advanced decomposition around Barbara’s neck, indicating the presence of severe injury. The skin was raw and mottled, so MacKenzie would never have been able to distinguish it from the other lurid colours of the woman’s decomposing skin.

  MacKenzie stood up again and crossed his arms.

  “Jeff, you’ve got eyes like a hawk,” she said, appreciatively.

  “I’ve got extra strength magnifying glasses, but I’ll accept the compliment.”

  “You’re thinking strangulation?”

  Pinter nodded.

  “Even if she hadn’t been found for another week, or even weeks, we would still have been able to detect the fracture to her larynx. A clear indicator that a person has been asphyxiated.”

  “How?”

  “Oh, almost certainly manual. There are compression marks which indicate a forward direction, as opposed to the ‘u-shape’ mark of a garrotte or ligature of some kind that we would usually expect to find.”

  “Any idea about the hand span?” Lowerson threw out the question from his position by the door.

  “Fairly large, judging from the markings. Almost certainly male but don’t hold me to that.”

  Lowerson flexed his own fingers, wondering what counted as ‘large’.

  “How about defensive wounds?”

  “I’ve swabbed her nails and skin, so we’ll see what turns up. I’m hopeful that something useful will come back, considering the direction of attack. It’s common for a victim to lash out at their aggressor, isn’t it?”

  MacKenzie nodded silently, thinking of possible motives.

  “No evidence of forced entry,” she mused. “Either somebody let themselves in or Barbara opened the door and trusted them enough to walk back through to her living room. The CSIs think she died where she fell in her living room, rather than being moved from the doorway or the hall.

  “Any indications of sexual assault?”

  Pinter pulled an expressive face.

  “No, and it was no easy task to find that out, I can tell you.”

  “For God’s sake,” Lowerson muttered from the corner of the room.

  “It’s funny,” Pinter continued blandly. “That makes two victims of asphyxiation in as many days. I’ve never seen that before.”

  MacKenzie looked down at the body and then cast her eyes around the clinical space; over the trays of sharp implements and the electric saw gleaming on the countertop.

  “Yeah,” she said eventually. “Funny is one word for it.”

  The basic white phone attached to the wall beside the main doors began to shrill, its sound reverberating around the four walls of the mortuary. When none of his other staff answered it, Pinter made an apologetic face and hurried across to pick it up.

  “Pinter.” A brief pause. “Alright, give me fifteen—no, twenty minutes and I’ll be there. Don’t move her.”

  He rang off and stood there for a moment, lost in thought.

  “Jeff?”

  His body jerked in surprise and he seemed to focus again.

  “That was Phillips,” he explained. “They’ve found another redhead.”

  There in the chilly room, surrounded by death, MacKenzie felt a tremor pass through her whole body.

  CHAPTER 6

  The journey across town from CID Headquarters to Heaton Cemetery should have taken a lot longer than it did; the cemetery lay towards the east of the city, along the road from the city centre to the coast and the expansive North Sea. However, thanks to a powerful German engine and Ryan’s blatant disregard for the traffic laws, they arrived outside the large iron gates scarcely twenty minutes after receiving word from the Control Room that a second body had been found.

  Ryan slammed out of the car and made directly for the jittery police constables who were standing guard over the entranceway, while Phillips exited at a more sedate pace to allow his heart rate to return to normal.

  Ryan caught Phillips’ eye and motioned towards a large blue and white forensics tent which was being erected in one of the far corners of the cemetery. They fell into step and began to make their way across the lumpy ground, their feet crunching over a long, plastic-covered gangway that the CSIs had laid, running all the way from the chapel to the crime scene.

  “What’s the word?” Phillips asked, puffing slightly to keep pace with Ryan’s long strides.

  “Our killer tried to be sneaky, this time,” Ryan smiled, without mirth. “He dumped a body inside a grave which had already been dug out in preparation
for a funeral at ten o’clock this morning. The groundskeeper found her while he was doing a quick check of the site at around nine-fifteen, ahead of the funeral party arriving.”

  Phillips glanced back towards the chapel building and noticed a few mourners gathered in a huddle outside, craning their necks to see what was happening. He’d also noticed the long black hearse parked on a side street outside the main entrance, waiting to be allowed access.

  “What should we do about them?”

  Ryan gave an irritable shrug.

  “We can’t let anybody inside, this is a crime scene. Tell them to make alternative arrangements.”

  Phillips folded his lips and contemplated the merits and demerits of entering into a heated debate about the pitfalls of such an undiplomatic approach to public relations.

  “I’ll speak to the funeral director,” he said.

  As they neared the tent, they spotted Tom Faulkner speaking to one of his junior staff. He was covered from head to toe in a white paper suit, nitrile gloves, hair cap and face mask. The only distinguishing marker was his glasses, which were a jazzy blue rather than his usual thick-rimmed brass. Phillips wondered if the man had met somebody he wanted to impress but decided to save the small talk for a more salubrious occasion.

  “Faulkner, you got here quickly.”

  “Same goes,” came the muffled reply, followed by a sympathetic glance in Phillips’ direction. Faulkner had ridden shotgun with Ryan several times before and could testify to the loosening effect upon one’s bowels.

  “I have to admit I was intrigued when I got the call. Two graveyard bodies in as many days? It’s too strange to be coincidence.”

  “Precisely what we thought,” Ryan said, gesturing towards the tent. “Are we right?”

  Faulkner sighed.

  “Take a look for yourself.”

  Ryan donned his protective gear and squared his shoulders before opening the flap.

  Inside, two large freestanding film lights shone a beam down into the grave which, at first sight, appeared to be unfilled given the mound of soil piled neatly to the side of it. Two CSIs knelt beside it and didn’t bother to look up as Ryan walked in. The air was thick and hot like a greenhouse, with the unwanted addition of a faint but unmistakeable earthy scent of death which circulated inside the confined space.