Dark Skies: A DCI Ryan Mystery (The DCI Ryan Mysteries Book 7)

by LJ Ross

  Immediately, a fit-looking man of around fifty and dressed in a company-logo polo shirt ran out of the kiosk carrying a white canvas bag emblazoned with a green cross. He was met by two or three other locals who ran out of the inn to see what all the fuss was about.

  Anna slipped her mobile phone out of her pocket, intending to call the emergency services, but was frustrated to find she had no signal.

  “Stay here!” she called out to her students, without much success. An edict from a history professor held no weight against morbid curiosity and they began edging forward to see what had caused the ruckus.

  Anna felt honour-bound to offer up her services as a first aider, so she jogged towards the water’s edge and slipped through the gathering crowd of onlookers.

  “Has anybody called 999?”

  She spoke to a woman somewhere in her late forties, wearing classic country garb and a concerned expression.

  “An ambulance is on its way but Mitch is already down there with Freddie, doing what he can.”

  Anna nodded and fell quiet, waiting with bated breath to see if his efforts would do any good. A little way off, she could see the swift rise and fall of a man’s shoulders performing CPR on the still, unresponsive figure of a young blonde woman whose body lay inert on the deck of the motorboat. The boat’s captain stood a few feet away, his wiry arm gripped tightly around a younger man who was ashen with shock, his eyes trained on the woman lying at his feet. Across the tense silence, they could hear the rasping breath of the first aider as he worked hard to keep the woman alive.

  “Come on,” he muttered roughly.

  One, two, three, four, five.

  “Come on!”

  “She’s not going to make it!” Oliver’s voice cracked, and Freddie’s arm gripped more tightly around his shoulders.

  “There, lad,” he said, with more conviction than he felt. “She’ll pull round, you’ll see.”

  After another endless moment of taut silence, there came the sound of an enormous splutter as Lisa Hope expelled water from her lungs and gasped for life.

  “Oh, thank God,” Anna murmured, and relief rocketed through her system.

  She blew out a long breath and looked down to find her hand clasped tightly by the woman standing beside her, whose eyes were closed as she mumbled softly-spoken words of prayer.

  Anna gave her fingers a squeeze and held on for a moment longer, for there was worse to come.

  CHAPTER 2

  Detective Chief Inspector Maxwell Finlay-Ryan entered the new headquarters of the Northumbria Police Constabulary with a spring in his step. He supposed he could have waited until Monday before returning to work but, since Anna was away on a residential weekend with her students, he might as well surprise his team and see whether the wheels of justice had fallen off the proverbial wagon while he’d been away on his honeymoon.

  Ryan strode through the wide reception area and grinned at the shocked expression of the duty sergeant at the front desk, who had probably never seen a senior officer sporting a tan—or a smile, for that matter. He gave her a jaunty wave and let himself through the secure double doors leading to the main office area that housed the Criminal Investigation Department.

  He jogged up a single flight of stairs and bounded onto the first floor, whistling under his breath as he passed along a wide central corridor in an unimaginative shade of taupe. The smell of fresh paint had dissipated since the new building had opened and it was starting to develop a ‘lived in’ feel, with undertones of chicken casserole and stale sweat, not to mention the scent of drains wafting from the general direction of the gents toilets.

  However, when Ryan entered the open-plan office shared by staff assigned to the Major Incident Team, the place was like a ghost town. Desks were suspiciously empty and there was none of the usual half-drunk coffee cups, crisp packets and other paraphernalia he would expect to find littering the room by the end of the working week. A telephone rang plaintively across the room and he frowned at it, black brows drawing together.

  “Where the hell is everyone?”

  So much for his dramatic entrance.

  Ryan dumped a plastic carrier bag of novelty souvenirs on his desk, then turned and headed back out into the corridor, poking his head into the neighbouring offices but finding them equally deserted. By a process of elimination, he made his way to the conference suite on the second floor, situated beside the executive offices belonging to upper echelons of the police hierarchy. When he reached the largest conference room, bold black lettering declared a ‘MEETING IN PROGRESS’ and Ryan pushed through the door to find it brimming with police staff, from the humblest administrator all the way up to the Chief Constable. At the front, the constabulary’s newest member of staff, Detective Chief Superintendent Jennifer Lucas, addressed the room.

  Ryan’s jovial mood evaporated immediately at the sight of his new boss and he leaned back against the wall, arms folded, to listen to her inaugural speech.

  The audience was rapt, he thought scathingly, hanging on her every word.

  And why not?

  They knew nothing about their glorious new superintendent; nothing of her manipulative character or desire for control at any cost. It had been his misfortune to learn those things many years ago, when he had been a much younger man working at the Met in London. Naivety and misguided pity had prevented him from making a formal complaint at the time and now it was too late to rectify that mistake. It would be his word against that of a more senior officer, just like it had been all those years before.

  Still, he supposed a lot of water had passed under the bridge. Lucas had given no indication that she harboured a grudge or that she had followed him to Northumberland with any other intention than to progress her career. He had spent a long time trying hard to forget any memories of their former relationship and he could only hope she had done the same.

  Perhaps they could work together amicably enough, with a little effort on both sides.

  But his eyes narrowed as her clear, well-rounded voice carried across the room.

  “I want to assure you all that I will be your biggest ally, whenever you need me. I won’t sacrifice you to the bigwigs when things get tough or play the blame game when things don’t go to plan. In return, I expect your loyalty and diligence as we work together towards a better, brighter Criminal Investigation Department.”

  There were murmurs of assent and a spattering of applause.

  Sycophants, he thought.

  Lucas scanned their faces with satisfaction and registered a degree of shock as she spotted Ryan’s tall figure at the back of the room, watching her with an unreadable expression that could have signified contempt or boredom. She gave him a tight smile, acknowledging that she’d been caught out. The meeting had been planned in his absence, in the full knowledge that he was not due to return to the office until Monday. No doubt he understood her motivations and resented her for trying to exclude him. There were many in CID who would have preferred to see Ryan as their new superintendent but, since he’d turned the job down, they’d have to make do with her instead. She intended to make very sure that they knew who called the shots, right from the start.

  As for Ryan, he’d come home to a New Order and the sooner he came to terms with it, the better.

  If he didn’t…well, it wouldn’t be the first time she’d brought him to heel, would it?

  Her smile widened.

  “The department has taken quite a hammering, in recent times,” she continued smoothly. “I need hardly mention the actions of my predecessor”—she referred to DCS Gregson, who was now ensconced behind bars at Her Majesty’s pleasure, thanks to Ryan and his team—“nor the times when impulsive decision-making rather than solid policing has brought the Service into disrepute.”

  Ryan recognised the oblique reference to his sergeant’s disciplinary action a few months ago, not to mention the times when he’d been forced to step outside the bounds of strict procedure to get the job done, and his jaw tighten
ed.

  “But from now on, things are going to change. We’re going to instil public confidence and gain back the ground that’s been lost.” She spread her hands in an open gesture. “Let’s do it together.”

  She stepped away to allow Chief Constable Morrison to move forward, clapping her approval like a circus seal.

  “I want to formally welcome DCS Lucas and to thank her for those inspiring words, which I’m sure we can all agree with and get behind, one hundred per cent. We’re in the business of law and order, so let’s start on home turf…”

  Ryan could stand no more. He pushed away from the wall and out of the room, uncaring of who might see. He would not stay and listen to a lot of crowd-pleasing nonsense which had, ever-so-subtly, shoved a knife in the back of his team of detectives. They were dedicated men and women who had committed themselves to seeking justice for victims of the most serious crimes one human being could inflict upon another.

  And now, Lucas wanted to undermine everything they had done, to bolster her own public persona?

  It was sickening.

  Ryan cast a fulminating glare back over his shoulder and was almost outside when he heard the unmistakeable heavy tread of his sergeant’s feet against the carpet-tiled floor.

  “Oi! Hold your horses!”

  A frantic hustle along the corridors of CID and out into the staff car park had left Detective Sergeant Frank Phillips out of breath but pride prevented him from saying as much. Instead, he sucked crisp autumn air into his lungs as he recovered and cast a wary eye over the stony-faced man standing beside him.

  “What was all that about? You took off like the hounds of hell were yappin’ at your heels.”

  Ryan shoved his hands in his pockets.

  “I’ve heard enough propaganda to last me a lifetime,” he said shortly. “It turns my stomach to hear all that bumf about public opinion. The public would have a much worse opinion if we failed to catch the bad guys, and that’s a fact.”

  Phillips pulled an expressive face.

  “Aye, but the Supers always like to pretend they’re giving the Sermon on the Mount when they first start out. It’s expected.”

  “It’s bullshit.”

  Phillips scratched his chin to hide a smile.

  “I guess it’s the wrong time to mention that your speedy departure was noted by the Powers That Be?”

  Ryan gave him an eloquent look.

  “Aye, I thought as much.”

  Phillips hastily changed the subject.

  “Looks like you’ve got that post-honeymoon glow,” he offered, gesturing a broad hand towards Ryan’s tanned forearms. “But you’re not in Bora Bora any more, son. You’ll catch a cold if you don’t put a coat on.”

  “Thanks, Mum,” came the rejoinder.

  Just then, Ryan’s mobile phone began to shrill, serving as a timely reminder that his first duty was to the victims of crime. When he saw that the caller was Anna, his face softened.

  “Missing me already?”

  But his smile soon faded into professional interest and, when he ended the call a few minutes later, he turned back to Phillips.

  “Fancy a drive into the country?”

  Phillips’ eyebrows raised into his receding hairline.

  “Have we got a live one?”

  “Just the opposite, Frank. We’ve got a dead one, trapped beneath a few billion gallons of water.”

  * * *

  The first thing Ryan and Phillips noticed when they arrived at the small tourist development known as ‘Kielder Waterside’ was not the sweeping landscape but the unnatural hush. People had begun to whisper about what Lisa Hope had seen in the depths of the water but now they fell silent and stood in huddles outside the visitor’s centre watching the police divers, who were suited up and ready to begin their grisly task, cadaver dogs stretched out on the ground beside them.

  Ryan swung into the car park and was distracted briefly by the sight of Anna’s old banger of a minibus, parked forlornly a few bays along. There was no sign of his wife but he guessed she was settling her students into their accommodation—that is, if she wasn’t calling a local mechanic to have that rust-bucket towed away.

  “I’ll eat my hat if those dogs can sniff out a body in the middle of all that water,” Phillips declared, as they slammed out of the car.

  “I’ve seen them do it before,” Ryan said. “It’s incredible what they can smell.”

  Phillips was dubious.

  “A dead body isn’t a T-bone steak.”

  “A pint says those dogs will take them to the right spot,” Ryan replied, very casually.

  Phillips knew a sucker-bet when he heard one but decided to take the risk anyway.

  “Aye, you’re on.”

  Ryan flashed a grin, then his face fell back into serious lines as they crossed the tarmac to meet the sergeant in charge of the small team of police divers attached to the Underwater Search and Marine Unit. There were several divers, each sporting a ‘dry’ suit to guard their skin against poisonous or dangerous substances in the water, although the reservoir was so clear it almost rendered the precaution unnecessary. A brief conversation confirmed what they already knew: a local diving instructor had taken a couple down earlier that morning as part of an advanced diving course. The witness, Lisa Hope, had the misfortune of unsettling a small mountain of earth on the reservoir bed and had become panicked and disorientated, dislodging her oxygen supply and inhaling a large quantity of water, but not before she saw the body of a young man.

  “Did she say anything else about the state of the body?” Ryan queried.

  The sergeant shook her head.

  “Lisa Hope has been transferred to hospital for observation and one of the local constables is with her. They’ll take a full statement as soon as she’s been given the all-clear.”

  Ryan nodded. To determine whether it was a case for CID he needed to recover the body. That was a matter for the Marine Unit and, as far as specialist teams went, he knew there was none better.

  “There was one other thing,” the sergeant added as an afterthought. “She said the body looked stained.”

  “Stained?” Phillips repeated.

  “That’s what she said—might have been all the dust surrounding it.” The sergeant shrugged and made a low whistling signal to one of the dogs, whose nose lifted from the floor. “We’ll find out, soon enough.”

  They looked out across the water and watched a late-season osprey swoop low over the water, which rippled gently on the morning breeze.

  “Safe diving,” Ryan murmured.

  CHAPTER 3

  They didn’t have to wait long.

  Freddie Milburn provided a good approximation of where his motorboat had dropped anchor that morning and after an hour of careful sniffing by the cadaver dogs, the divers were able to narrow down a search area. An inflatable buoy marked the spot and a line ran from there to the police boat, where four divers remained while one went down to begin a coordinated search in expanding circles. When that didn’t immediately yield results, they moved into a necklace formation, working their way through the sludge on the bed of the reservoir until they found what they were looking for.

  Back on dry land, Ryan received the news via radio and felt an all-too-familiar tug of sadness for the dead and those they left behind.

  “Unfortunately, it looks like you owe me a pint,” he murmured to Phillips, who stood at his shoulder.

  “Aye, I think we’ll need one,” Phillips said quietly. “I’ve got the mortuary on standby.”

  Ryan nodded, shading his eyes against the glare of the sun as he watched the divers re-emerge and in no time, the boat began its return journey to the shore. Ryan instructed a couple of local police constables to keep the crowd well back from the water’s edge, where a cohort of local onlookers remained. He took a moment to scan their faces, finding them a curious mix of young and old, men and women who worked at the marina or in neighbouring developments that had sprung up at intervals around the
waterside. If there had been foul play, it wouldn’t take long for news to spread in a sparsely populated area like Kielder, even across thousands of acres of wood and sky.

  “Guv?”

  Ryan followed the direction of Phillips’ gaze. A plastic tunnel had been erected at the end of the jetty to preserve a degree of dignity, while professionals from the coroner’s office wheeled a squeaky metal gurney along the wooden slats to transfer the body.

  They waited beside a plain, private ambulance vehicle parked nearby and prepared to witness the unpleasant evidence of Nature’s handiwork. It would not be the first time either man had seen a body abused by air and water, and they made a conscious effort to divest themselves of emotion as the gurney approached. But when Ryan donned a nitrile glove and reached across to unzip the heavy black body bag, he almost fell back in shock.

  The mummified face of a boy in his late teens stared up at him, the skin wasted and weathered to a deep shade of terracotta brown. At the side of his matted head there was an obvious gash, which had crusted into a deep groove and was unbelievably well preserved.

  But surely that wasn’t possible.

  “Frank?”

  Ryan gestured for his sergeant, who hung back until his stomach finished performing slow somersaults, then manfully stepped forward.

  “Well, that’s a first,” Phillips managed, peering closely at the shrivelled figure in its rubbery shroud. A wave of sympathy came next, for the young man whose face was still recognisable, even down to the fledgling stubble growing against his chin.

  “I’ve never seen a body so well preserved,” Ryan muttered, and took a photograph to compare with Missing Persons. “Did you notice the head injury?”

  Phillips eyed the deep cut in the skull and cleared his throat again.

  “Aye, that’d do it.”

  They committed what was left of the boy’s face to memory, then Ryan resealed the body bag and stepped back.

  “What do you reckon?” Phillips said. “Should we hand him over to Missing Persons?”

  Ryan thought of budgets and resources, then again of the boy’s face that was forever frozen in time. What was his name? How old had he been and how did he die? A person rarely sustained a head injury like that if they’d merely fallen or drowned in the water. More likely, the injury happened on dry land, which begged the question of how he’d found his way underwater.