by LJ Ross
“What was that for?”
“For caring,” she answered simply. “Time was, I’d have missed being out on those moors with you—and I suppose part of me is missing the chase. But I’m on leave, and I intend to stick to it. I’ve paid my dues, and earned this time with Samantha.”
“More than paid your dues,” he murmured, and glanced down at the leg he’d been helping to massage. “How’s it feeling, now?”
MacKenzie gave him a broad smile, so he wouldn’t worry.
“Much better,” she lied.
The truth was, the pain returned every day, and the exercises the physio had given her no longer made any kind of difference, and she was scared.
She loved to run, and to walk, and to swim.
She loved her work, which required a certain level of fitness despite her seniority. She missed the hard, lean strength she used to have, when she was kickboxing and doing pilates every day.
Now, she was lucky to manage once a week, and she was starting to think the effort was making her injury worse.
It was the anger that scared her the most. The weak, impotent anger of knowing she couldn’t turn back time, so she’d never opened the door that day she was taken. She wished she’d known, somehow, or had some prescient, sixth sense to guide her.
But she hadn’t, and she lived with the consequences now.
“Are you alright, love?”
She shook herself, and squeezed her husband’s hand.
“I’ll be just fine.”
* * *
The soldier hadn’t slept, for all the bed was cosy and warm.
He waged a battle in his own mind, between the boy he’d once been, and the man he was now. He remembered so clearly the day he’d enlisted; the excitement and promise of finding a place in the world, and of having a family for the first time. He remembered the laughter and tears of basic training, and the friends he thought he’d made for life.
He remembered sitting by the canal with Naseem, and of their long talks about the differences between their lives—and the similarities. Naseem, who had begun life as an orphan, on the streets of Lashkar Gar, and he, who’d begun life on the streets of Byker.
The memories ran through his mind like a showreel, both good and bad, as the hours ticked by and the dog continued to sleep by his side.
Before leaving him, the group had talked for over an hour the previous evening. They’d spoken of him having a place in the world again, and of having a purpose and the respect of his comrades. They talked about the erosion of ‘good’ values and the kind of society ‘good’ people should want to live in. Their leader had taken off his mask to reveal an average-looking joe, with thinning hair and pale blue eyes. He’d never made it into the Army, he’d said, and the others assured him it had been their loss; that he was a great military leader, nonetheless.
The leader, whose name was John, had asked him to join their cause. He told him they needed good men, with the right values. There would be a roof over his head, and food in his belly, for as long as he was with them.
And he’d been tempted.
Just the thought of never having to lie on the hard floor of the underpass had been enough; never having to beg for change or a kind word, ever again. They needed an intelligence man; somebody who could be invisible and go to all the places they couldn’t. He’d be the one to do the recce, they’d be the ones to do the rest. He hadn’t asked what ‘the rest’ would entail; he didn’t need to.
Besides, he’d heard enough by then.
The leader said he’d be back to collect him in the morning, and they’d drive together to the place where the group met. It was more than a collective, he’d explained; it was a religion. They worshipped the god Odin, who would reward them in the afterlife, if they served him in the present. Their mission was simple and straightforward: they wanted an Aryan race, one which followed the only true faith. Theirs was an old religion, John said, and had existed long before the Christians came to despoil it. Such an old religion was deserving of an ancient monument; a proper and fitting place of worship to draw their strength.
And, he said, to celebrate the acquisition of a new bulk delivery of weapons.
After they’d left, the soldier thought of what it meant to defend his country, and remembered one very important thing.
His duty was to defend the United Kingdom from enemies within, as well as without.
He would not stand by, albeit broken and half-blind, to watch them burn all that was sacred and holy in the land where he’d been born. For all its imperfections, for all the disappointments and hurt, he’d been proud to wear his uniform, once. He remembered the feel and the weight of it, as well as the burden of it. He hadn’t lost so much, and grieved so long, for a band of hate-mongers.
That isn’t what he fought for—but it’s what he would fight against.
CHAPTER 30
When Lowerson arrived at his desk at Police Headquarters, he opened his computer to find a stack of messages waiting for him. It was always the case that, following a televised police appeal, they received an influx of calls ranging from the bizarre to the ridiculous. However, it was sometimes the case that, hidden amongst all the fake confessions and false sightings, there was a hidden gem.
And, as he scrolled through the electronic notes taken by their call-handlers, his eye fell upon one in particular:
18.08.2019
06:42
Call duration: 1m50s
The caller wished to remain anonymous, but is described by the handler as male, approximately 30–50 years of age, with moderate North-Eastern regional accent / Geordie dialect. The caller sounded nervous, but delivered message clearly. Transcript follows.
OPERATIVE: You’ve reached the Northumbria Police non-emergency helpline. How can I help you today?
CALLER: I saw the report on the news about the Odinist group, and I need to speak to the detective in charge.
OPERATIVE: They aren’t available at the moment, but will be back in the office during normal working hours. Can I take a message?
CALLER: Just tell them the group meets at the Duddo Stones at eight o’clock every Sunday night. There’s at least four of them, and their leader’s called John. He’s around forty, white, blue eyes, thinning hair, and slim build. He’s the brains. They have that symbol, the one with the little triangles, tattooed on their wrists. They’re fighters, with links to the military, and they say they’re expecting a big delivery of weapons. They’re planning more attacks this week.
OPERATIVE: Thank you for calling this in. Can I have your name, please, so the investigator can call you to obtain further information?
Lowerson pushed back from his chair and walked swiftly to the break room, where Yates was in the process of stirring milk into two mugs of tea.
“Mel? An anonymous call came through early this morning. The caller said the Odinist group meets at the Duddo Stones every Sunday night. They tried to warn us about numbers, and the fact they’re fighters, some ex-military. It sounds genuine.”
He referred to the Duddo Stone Circle, an ancient Early Bronze Age site of five large sandstones arranged in a circle just north of the tiny village of Duddo, less than five miles from the Scottish border.
“Today’s a Sunday,” she said. “So let’s get authorisation to put together a sting.”
“We don’t have much to go on,” he said.
“It’s more than we had yesterday,” she replied. “The Odinists in the south were meeting at Avebury Stone Circle and defacing the side of the stones, appropriating them for their own use. It makes sense that their northern contingent is doing the same thing, at a similar site up here.”
“I never thought of Duddo,” Lowerson said, and was mildly angry at himself. “It’s out of the way, and not everybody knows about it. Mostly hikers, or people with a special interest in historic landmarks.”
“It doesn’t matter, we’ve got time.”
“I wish I knew who called it in
,” he muttered, as they hurried along to the Chief Constable’s office. “Whoever decided to pick up the phone has probably saved lives, not to mention thousands of pounds of property damage and untold emotional heartache.”
“There are still some decent people in the world.”
* * *
In another part of the city, Ryan and Phillips made their way along the stuffy, basement corridor towards the mortuary at the Royal Victoria Infirmary for the second day in a row. Even in their line of work, that was highly unusual, and neither man hoped it was the start of a new precedent.
“I’m surprised Pinter turned things around so quickly,” Phillips remarked, as he fanned himself with the back of his notebook. The walls of the corridor were lined with enormous cylindrical fans that pumped out hot air, in an effort to keep the interior space of the mortuary very cold. The resulting effect was a corridor that felt very much like the Gobi Desert, in the summertime. “Normally, we have to drag him away from home on a weekend.”
“He’s being paid overtime,” Ryan said, with a wry smile. “But aside from that, Joanne isn’t back yet from Center Parcs. He has to find something to fill the long, lonely hours without her.”
“Aye, and that’s another thing,” Phillips mumbled. “Do we even know if this woman’s real? Has anybody ever seen her?”
Ryan merely shook his head.
“You’re far too cynical. It wouldn’t be the first time an attractive woman has fallen for the dubious charms of an older man, would it?” he said, with a pointed look in his friend’s direction.
Phillips’ mouth fell open.
“That’s completely different,” he blustered. “For one thing, I look at least ten years younger than my actual age, especially in soft lighting. For another, Denise was practically chasing me around the office, I think you’ll recall.”
“Uh-huh,” Ryan said. “I seem to recall you walking into pillars and doors whenever she was around the office, too.”
On that note, he pushed open the double doors and stepped into the frosty interior of the mortuary, where Pinter was already waiting for them.
“You got my message, then?” he asked.
“You said it was urgent,” Ryan replied. The pathologist had sent an email to him early that morning, requesting a consultation at his earliest convenience. Pinter could be theatrical, at times, but he was not prone to exaggeration.
“It’s about the soldier—Jessica Stephenson,” he said, and they saw that his eyes were bloodshot from a long night spent working on her post-mortem. “I’ve found something important.”
He led them through the main mortuary space and back into the private corridor, where they’d viewed Layla Bruce, the previous day. This time, he opened Examination Room B, and ushered them inside. There was no bedside manner, this time, and he gave them no opportunity to prepare before he whipped back the paper shroud to reveal her purplish-grey head and shoulders.
Phillips let out a long, slow breath, and counted to ten inside his head, fighting a sudden wave of nausea. It was demeaning for a murder detective to have to admit to feeling squeamish at the sight of a corpse, but there it was.
Ryan took a long look at the woman’s face, which now resembled a kind of glazed marble—it had a waxy white sheen about it, livor mortis having set in overnight whilst she was still hanging from a tree in the woods, causing the blood in her body to settle in her lower legs and feet. He was suddenly grateful to Pinter for not revealing that part of her body, which he knew would be horribly distended and almost black in colour.
Looking at the top half was hard enough.
The fine capillaries in Jessica’s face had burst as she’d fought for breath during her final moments, leaving a web of dark lines just visible beneath her skin. Around her neck was a thick, angry line of purplish-black bruising, and her head rested at an odd angle on the examination table.
“Poor kid,” Phillips muttered, and Ryan nodded.
He stood there for an endless moment, studying what was left of a bright, promising soldier who’d liked spy novels. His face was unmoving, and his jaw was hard, but his eyes were swirling pools of emotion when he turned back to the pathologist.
“What can you tell us?” he asked softly.
Pinter looked him dead in the eye.
“I can tell you, almost certainly, that she didn’t commit suicide.”
CHAPTER 31
Pinter’s bombshell hung on the air of the mortuary examination room, suspended there with the chemicals swirling around their heads, before the two murder detectives recovered themselves.
“What do you mean, Jeff?”
The pathologist took a retractable pointer out of the pocket of his lab coat and clicked it a couple of times, before tracing it over a purple-black area of Jessica’s neck.
“See here?”
Phillips took his stomach in his hands—quite literally—and shuffled forward a step or two, while Ryan peered down so he could get a better look.
“I’m sorry, I don’t see anything unexpected,” he said, eventually.
“It could be the advanced state of rigor mortis making things a little harder to see clearly,” Pinter muttered, and walked back around to a computer which sat on a table by the wall. After a couple of fast taps on the keyboard, he brought up a series of close-up, enhanced photographs taken from the woman’s neck as soon as she’d been admitted to the mortuary, the previous day.
“This may be easier for you to see,” he said, and gestured both men forward. “Here’s the part I was pointing out to you.”
He was right, Ryan thought. The intervening hours had made a big difference, even though the mortuary technicians did their best to preserve the tissues.
“Yes, I can see more clearly.”
“I still don’t understand the significance,” Phillips complained. “It looks like the shape of her belt buckle, when it tightened around the side of her neck.”
“Exactly right,” Pinter nodded, and clicked on another image of the belt, taken by the forensic team. “You see here, the belt has a silver, rectangular-shaped buckle?”
Ryan remembered holding it in his hands, having been the one to cut her down.
“Yes, it’s standard issue for all privates,” he said.
Pinter took them back to the first image.
“What you’re seeing here is two injuries,” he said, and turned around in his chair to explain. “When she first came to me, I couldn’t understand why the buckle imprint didn’t match the bruising and imprint of the one found around her neck. It’s quite a distinctive pattern, you see; whatever was used to strangle her—I believe, a different belt—had an oval buckle, with a series of pins at the back, presumably where the metal was welded together, or where the manufacturer added some detailing.”
He turned back to tap the screen, and they could see it now; five or six tiny purple dots, where the underside of the belt had dug into her skin.
“If you look at the belt that was found around her neck, you’ll see it has no such detailing. It’s a very simple design, with a larger buckle,” Pinter continued. “You can see that it’s made much less of a mark.”
“Why?” Phillips asked. “Loss of circulation?”
Pinter nodded.
“Exactly, Frank. If the poor woman was already dead when that silver buckle went over her skin, there’d have been no blood circulating around her body. If there’s no blood, she can’t bruise.”
Ryan felt a surge of anger so forceful, he needed to turn away and pace for a bit.
“You’re telling me somebody strangled her using a different belt, and then tried to stage it as suicide, later, using Jessica’s own belt?”
Pinter nodded again.
“It’s the best explanation of her injuries,” he said. “There are other evidential factors that add weight to my theory. Firstly, the fact there was no tree bark or leaf residue found on her skin or beneath her nails, whatsoever. I’d have expected to find at least one particle to show that sh
e’d clambered onto the top of the quad bike and hoisted herself up onto that branch. It wouldn’t have been easy.”
Ryan considered the new information, and turned to Phillips.
“Frank, would you give Faulkner a call? I want to know his preliminary results from the scene in the forest yesterday. Particularly, around the quad bike.”
“Use the landline in my office,” Pinter offered. “There’s no mobile signal, down here.”
“Will do.”
* * *
When Phillips returned a few minutes later, it was to confirm their worst suspicions.
“Turns out, Faulkner’s been trying to call your mobile,” he said. “Great minds, and all that. He’s got an update for us, on both crime scenes.”
Ryan waited.
“In terms of the quad bike, there are a few interesting details that he believes point towards a suspicious death. Firstly, there were no prints found on the quad bike whatsoever, apart from Jessica’s right thumb and index finger, which were found on either side of the ignition key. However, that’s highly unusual; firstly, because the prints were so complete and, secondly, because nobody inserts or turns an ignition key that way. They use the thumb and the bridge of the index finger, to support the key. It would be an awkward distance, otherwise.”
Ryan pinched his two fingers together, and realised Faulkner was right.
“Somebody used her fingers to plant the prints on the ignition, and give the impression she’d driven up there herself?”
“That’s what Faulkner reckons.”
“You said there were a couple of things,” Pinter prompted.
“Aye, there were. Those prints on the ignition key that are suspect, and the fact no other DNA or prints were found on the entire quad bike is unusual in itself. However, there are two really damning bits of evidence Faulkner’s uncovered. The first is a small amount of blood, which was found near the back-left tyre, which he’s confirmed belongs to the victim. The second is some partial footprints he found on the ground near the site. It’s been fairly wet these past few days, so they managed to get a couple of decent casts that Faulkner thinks correspond to a size eight or nine walking boot.”