She jumped into the car. Nick had already turned the ignition, hitting the accelerator hard and spinning the wheels as they set off in pursuit.
‘Let’s get this bastard,’ said Ruth. She could feel the adrenaline beginning to pump inside her as she buckled her seatbelt with a clunk. Little bastards like Ethan Reid have no respect for anyone or anything.
‘Yes, boss,’ Nick said as he hit sixty miles per hour. She knew he was enjoying the feeling of power from driving fast. Typical bloody boy, she thought. He was a good copper. And he was a much better copper now he had stopped drinking.
Ruth gripped the door handle with one hand and the front of her seat with the other as they screamed around the curves in the road. She had been in car chases with Nick before, and even though he was an excellent driver, the speed still terrified her. She tried to straighten herself in her seat before the next bend.
As they rounded the tight corner, the Astra’s wheels squealed as they gripped the road, but the scooter seemed to have disappeared around the next sharp bend. Ruth sat forwards a little, peering through the windscreen. ‘Where are you, you little bastard?’
The black scooter came into a view again, speeding up a hill about a mile ahead of them. Got you, you fucker.
‘Central from three-six. We’re still in pursuit of a possible suspect on black Honda moped. About two miles north of Ffestiniog on the A-three-four-three. Speed seven-zero.’
Ruth felt the Astra’s back tyres losing grip again as they cornered another bend. Her stomach lurched.
Nick came hammering up a hill and pulled out to overtake a car towing a caravan, which went past in a blur. Ruth closed her eyes as they missed a car coming the other way by a matter of feet. Jesus, please don’t let me die!
‘Pussy!’ Nick teased her.
‘Unlike you, I don’t have a death wish.’
The radio crackled again. ‘Three-six. Unit tango-two-one is now heading east on B537 to assist,’ the CAD operator informed them. CAD stood for Computer Aided Dispatch.
‘Received,’ Ruth said as she saw that now they were on the straight road the boy’s scooter was no match for the Astra. They were gaining fast as the car ate up the road ahead.
‘He’s going nowhere,’ Nick growled under his breath.
Within seconds, they were only fifty yards behind. Ruth watched as Nick pulled closer – it was getting dangerous. Reid could see them in his mirrors. Nick touched the brakes and they lurched back.
‘Careful, Nick,’ Ruth said.
Reid slowed the moped suddenly, reached up for his helmet and pulled it off. He turned and waved at them.
‘Shit!’ Ruth exclaimed.
‘What a little wanker,’ Nick muttered.
They both knew the chase was over.
Ruth had seen this tactic all too often in the Met with the increasing rise in moped gangs. Her fellow officers had been hindered by the current rules that stated that officers could only chase criminals on mopeds without helmets if the safety risk to them was proportionate to the crime. She had seen one officer in court for dangerous driving when a teenager without a helmet had come off his bike while being chased. The youth had been awarded damages for his injuries. It was crazy. But it meant that many police officers in the UK now followed an unwritten rule to stop chasing mopeds if the rider wasn’t wearing a helmet. It was either that or risk their career.
Given that they only wanted to question Reid and had no concrete evidence against him, both Ruth and Nick knew that to pursue him helmetless wasn’t a risk worth taking. And Reid knew it.
They pulled up to a reluctant stop.
‘Maybe I should just run the little scrotum over anyway. No witnesses,’ Nick said dryly.
Reid turned, his blonde hair blowing in the wind, grinned and gave them the middle finger. He then pulled the scooter to the middle of the road and turned down a single track before disappearing.
‘Follow him?’ Nick asked, but he knew the answer.
‘No point,’ Ruth replied. Sometimes she thought that the world had gone mad. She wasn’t for a return to the heavy-handed or corrupt policing of the 1970s, when suspects could be ‘fitted up’ as long as there was a strong suspicion that they were guilty. However, when they had to suspend chasing a possible criminal who might be robbing and tying up pensioners because they had chosen to deliberately take off their helmet, that didn’t sit comfortably with her either.
Her radio crackled. ‘Three-six. This is Dispatch. We have reports of the discovery of a body at the foot of Snowdon. Halfway up Miners’ Track. Uniform are on site.’
Nick looked over. ‘Hope you’re feeling fit, boss.’
‘Why?’ Ruth asked, not liking the subtext of his comment.
‘That’s a two-mile walk uphill in the freezing cold,’ Nick said with a grin.
‘Bollocks. At least the housing estates in Peckham had stairs,’ she said.
IT WAS LUNCHTIME BY the time Andy Gates had settled his wife Kerry down in the comfort of their small sitting room. Gates had cared for Kerry for twenty years. She had multiple sclerosis, which had been diagnosed in her early twenties, a month to the day after she and Gates had married. He didn’t mind. He loved her dearly. If it was God’s will, so be it. However, the symptoms were getting worse and he was having to carry her around the house to wherever she needed to be more frequently. He could see that she felt guilty, but he reminded her that he had agreed, in front of God, to love and cherish her ‘in sickness and in health.’
Gates, now in his mid-forties, was fit and healthy. He ran three miles a day and generally looked after himself. He wore thick-rimmed, tinted glasses to stop the migraines that he had suffered from since he was a boy. Gates didn’t care that they made him look a bit odd. His migraines could see him retreat to a darkened room for a whole day, so anything that could stop them was welcome.
They lived in Llantysilio, a small, friendly hamlet a few miles to the west of Llangollen, on the eastern borders of Snowdonia. The Gates’s home was cosy and tidy, if a little dark. There were a few religious pictures and paintings of the Snowdonia landscape on the walls. Gates thought it was perfect. They had lived in the bungalow for six years. Having a bungalow meant that Kerry didn’t have to struggle with the stairs anymore. It also had an annexe building with a self-contained bedroom, bathroom and lounge. Gates kept promising that he would redecorate it so they could let it on, possibly on Air BnB. He had started work on it but kept getting distracted by other projects.
Sitting on the edge of the patterned sofa, Gates began to lace his trainers. His routine on his days off ran like clockwork because he enjoyed having structure. He loved his work as a freelance building surveyor and, as a side-line, he was developing a property over in Pentredwr. He would take a run via the spectacular Horseshoe Pass. Then he would go to the house where he would do some more work. He hoped to let out the property to give him and Kerry a reliable income. He worried how she would cope if anything ever happened to him. Although he knew that God was looking out for him. Thy will be done.
Gates reached over, took the remote and turned on the television. ‘There you go, love,’ he said, handing the remote to his wife. Her hand shook a little as she took it from him.
‘Oh, a true-life movie. She Led Two Lives. Fantastic,’ she said with a wry smile. She pulled her blonde hair back and made it into a ponytail. She reached for her glasses but her hand was now trembling too much to pick them up.
Gates smiled, and handed her the glasses. ‘Here you go.’
‘Thanks. That’s better, I can see now.’
‘Hammy acting, bad plots. Perfect.’ Gates smiled as she gestured to the television. Afternoon movies were Kerry’s guilty pleasure and she would no doubt tell him all about it later and make him laugh.
‘Be careful out on the pass, will you?’ she warned him. Her blue eyes seemed a little smaller behind the lenses of her glasses. That’s what he first noticed about her. Piercing blue eyes and blonde hair. Every man’s dream, wasn�
�t it?
‘Scout’s honour.’ Gates winked at her and made a Scout salute. He loved the fact that she worried about him so much. He felt truly blessed.
Despite Kerry’s illness, Gates thought their little world was perfect. It was those ‘out there’ that were in true pain. It was his mission in life to help them. He grabbed his things and closed the front door behind him.
Twenty minutes later, Gates hit the Horseshoe Pass, or Bwlch yr Oernant, ‘The Pass of the Cold Stream.’ Stopping to catch his breath, he took in the spectacular view. He knew that local mythology told of an enormous wolf-like animal that inhabited the pass. It was a story that dated back to the eighteenth century. They said that a stagecoach travelling between Denbigh and Wrexham was attacked and overturned by an enormous black beast. It was described as being as big as the coach horses. The attack had taken place just after sunset, with a full blood moon on the horizon. The sightings and stories continued after that. In 1903, a nearby snow-covered field had been turned into ‘a lake of blood’ dotted with carcasses of sheep, cattle and even the farmer’s dog. The tracks of an enormous wolf had been found. The sightings of large wolf- or cat-like animals in the area had continued into the twenty-first century. Gates was told that it was a family of pumas that had continued to survive out in Snowdonia for centuries. He wondered if he would ever see the beast on his daily run.
Now standing at 1,400 feet above sea level, Gates looked down into the pass that curved for over five miles in a horseshoe shape and was scattered with patches of snow. Disinterested sheep watched him. The ridges were clad with purple heather. As the wind picked up, black grouse and curlew flapped and rose into the sky. What a fantastic way to spend an afternoon, Gates thought to himself.
The clouds passed across the winter sun and cast dark shadows over the steep sides of the valley. The ground was hard underfoot and Gates lost his footing on part of the icy footpath. He didn’t care. He drew in a deep lungful of fresh air. As he gazed out across the landscape, he felt like calling out, ‘This is God’s country, God’s work, and it is a miracle.’
Running was Gates’s time to think and plan. It was a form of meditation. Projects, ideas, the future. His important work.
By the time Gates arrived at his property development, the sun was completely hidden behind the thickening clouds and his rucksack had cut into his shoulders a little. He let himself into the house as his pulse began to slow. He liked how it smelt of drying plaster and paint. It smelt of progress and hard, honest work. It was redolent of the blissful times he had helped his taid paint and decorate when he was a boy. He would watch with sheer joy as his taid measured and rolled out wallpaper on the old wooden trestle table, before applying the rich-smelling paste and then hanging it with meticulous precision. That was before his taid had died suddenly when he was eight. It was a day he would never forget.
There was, however, another odour. At first, Gates thought it was the smell of sulphur or rotting eggs. Although it seemed more putrid than that. Maybe it was the drains? There had been a lot of rain and sleet in recent days and Gates had been working on the house’s drainage and pipes in the garden.
Pushing through the protective plastic sheeting, Gates went to get brushes, paint and overalls. Pouring himself a glass of water, he gulped it down as he went to look for his paint-splattered radio. An afternoon with Classic FM would be just the thing. His plan was to finish the painting of the main bedroom upstairs. Then he would go home, shower and cook him and Kerry dinner. He had a bottle of white wine in the fridge. Kerry wasn’t meant to have alcohol with her medication but she didn’t have many pleasures left in life. He liked to see how the alcohol relaxed her and even made her a little giggly.
There was a knock at the door. A shadow appeared at the frosted glass. For a moment, Gates felt uneasy. He wasn’t expecting anyone. He hated being disturbed.
Opening the door, he saw a man in his twenties standing on the doorstep. He was tall and skinny with spiky brown hair. He seemed awkward.
‘Oh, hiya. I’m Steve from next door.’ The man avoided making eye contact and gestured left to show which way he meant. ‘Erm ... We’ve just moved in and there’s a horrible smell. We think it’s coming from your garden.’
Even though he felt a little defensive, Gates nodded. ‘Yeah, I thought that when I arrived. I did some work in the garden about a month ago. Drains seemed okay.’
Steve shrugged. ‘Maybe it’s the cold weather? Doesn’t take much to crack an old sewage pipe. Or it could be the pipe coming out of your boiler?’
Gates raised an eyebrow. ‘You know your stuff?’
‘I’m a plumber by trade. Do you want me to take a look?’
‘Erm ... Okay. If you don’t mind.’ The smell had bothered him. Now that they were out of the house, it seemed worse away from the smells of the paint and plaster. But he wasn’t sure he wanted a neighbour meddling in his business.
‘Do you know where the access point is to the drain? Steve asked.
‘Yeah, the manhole is just at the back.’
It started to spit with rain as Gates showed Steve down the side of the house and out into the untidy garden. There were rusty iron garden chairs, overgrown plant pots and the patio was covered in leaves and moss. It would need a lot of work before he could rent the property.
Around the cast-iron manhole cover, Gates could see that there were a few inches of opaque liquid, which was turning the patchy lawn into a muddy mess. There was definitely a problem. And the smell was now unbearable.
‘Looks like the sewer is blocked,’ Gates gasped, pinching his nose.
He watched as Steve took a broken piece of metal from the patio. ‘Mind if I have a look?’
Gates wasn’t sure, but he shrugged. ‘Help yourself.’
Steve levered off the heavy manhole cover, crouched and looked down into the hole. He pushed the metal bar down into the sewer.
‘There’s stuff down here that must be blocking it.’
‘Do you need a torch?’ asked Gates.
‘Hang on.’ Steve used both arms to lever something out of the sewer. He pulled it out and plopped in down on the ground. It was white, pulpy and looked like a cross between lard and porridge.
‘What on earth is that?’ Gates said. The smell was overwhelming.
‘God knows.’ Steve fished around in the gloop. Something gold and metallic appeared. It was a gold ring.
‘Looks like a wedding band,’ he observed.
‘I’d better call someone to come and sort all this out,’ Gates said shaking his head.
The man pushed and prodded more. As Gates looked, he could see something emerge from the liquid. Dark and solid. It looked like some kind of meat.
‘What the hell is that?’ Steve exclaimed, clearly revolted.
Gates could now see the entire shape. He knew exactly what it was. ‘I’d better call the police. I think it’s a human heart.’
CHAPTER 3
The weather had worsened by the time Ruth and Nick began to make their way up Snowdon’s Miners’ Track to where the body had been discovered. Clouds had formed a low and claustrophobic blanket over the heathland, and none of the mountain tops were visible anymore. Grand buttresses of silvery rock rose slowly beside them, while Snowdon’s majestic shadows darkened the two lakes that lay to the left.
As Ruth climbed, a stoat stuttered and loped across the scree to her right and then disappeared into a hole at the foot of the cliffs. She puffed as her heart thudded at the strain of getting up the path. It had been months since she had been for a run. When she thought about it, probably not since the summer. Sian, Ruth’s partner and work colleague, had made her promise to quit smoking but she had only managed a couple of weeks before succumbing again. She put her foot firmly on the grey, rectangular stones that marked the pathway towards the top of the ridge. Bloody hell, this is hard work, she thought.
The walk gave Ruth time to think, but that wasn’t always a good thing. She had always promised Sarah that she w
ould take her to Snowdon and they would climb it together. And this was the first time since she moved to the North Wales Police Force from London that she had been on Snowdon. Sarah would have loved it. But she left the ghost of Sarah – or at least tried to – behind in London.
It had been a few months since Ruth had had any kind of information about her girlfriend Sarah’s unexplained disappearance in 2013. For several years, Ruth had been crushed by the lack of progress in the search for Sarah or any answers as to why she had vanished off the face of the earth. Ruth felt it was time for her to start doing some more investigating of her own.
Ten minutes later, the cloud had thickened further and visibility was down to about two hundred yards. Ruth could see that if you weren’t careful, walking off an edge and falling down a crevice or steep, rocky slope was a distinct possibility.
Nick had already told her that there were several deaths a year on Snowdon. At this time of year, not only were the conditions and weather very dangerous, but the speed at which they could change made it even more deadly.
‘Come on, Grandma,’ Nick quipped as he stopped and waited for her.
‘Oi. You need to remember that I’m in my forties,’ Ruth grumbled.
‘How much longer are you going to be in your forties?’ Nick joked.
‘Another month. So I’m milking it.’ Ruth stopped. ‘Bloody hell. How much further?’
Nick pointed. ‘Just over that ridge.’
‘Great,’ Ruth puffed sarcastically. ‘I could have done with a nice, long surveillance job in a warm car. Hot coffee and a ciggie.’
‘Stop moaning. You’re looking at the site of King Arthur’s final battle,’ Nick said.
‘Yeah, and you must have mistaken me for someone who gives a shit,’ Ruth groaned.
As they trudged on, Ruth saw the luminous jacket of a uniformed police officer on the brow of the ridge. Above their heads, a northern goshawk glided on the air currents looking for prey. It was a blue-grey colour with a large wing-span and tail. Suddenly it dived from the sky and disappeared out of sight.
The Dee Valley Killings Page 2