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

by LJ Ross

  “You can’t be here. You’re dead,” Roly whispered.

  Guy Sullivan walked the short distance along the path towards the person who watched his approach with wide, frightened eyes.

  “Sorry, I didn’t hear—”

  The first blow took him by surprise, connecting hard with his left temple, and he stumbled backwards, dazed.

  “Leave me alone!” Roly hissed. “Leave me alone!”

  Guy held out a defensive arm but his faculties were already weakened and the adrenaline hadn’t kicked in yet, that crucial ‘fight or flight’ instinct that might have saved him. Instead, there was no time to think before the next blow came down, then again, harder and harder until blood began to pour into his eyes.

  “Wait! Stop…” he slurred.

  He waved his arms frantically to stave off further blows and then turned blindly to run, but his movements were sluggish and he stumbled, falling hard against the uneven ground. His fingers gripped the mossy earth to find purchase and the toes of his shoes slipped against the damp path as he scrambled to get up, but there was no time.

  Another blow came from behind, bouncing off his skull at first and then cracking through the bone until his body jerked once, twice, then stilled while blood pulsed away into the grass beneath him.

  The blows rained down for several minutes after Guy Sullivan died and they didn’t stop until his face was utterly unrecognisable, nothing more than a mass of bloodied flesh and cartilage, as if he had never existed at all.

  * * *

  Just before eight, Kielder Waterside began to awaken. Ryan watched a couple of small fishing boats head out onto the water from the deck of Anna’s eco-lodge and thought of how the discovery of a teenage boy’s body had scarcely broken the stride of this remote community. It was their way of coping, he supposed. They continued living and going about their ordinary routines to keep their hands and their minds occupied.

  “I’d better go and see if the postgrads are awake,” Anna said from the doorway, where she sipped from a steaming mug of coffee. “They seemed to be going for it last night, so I don’t know what state they’ll be in this morning.”

  “Nothing you can do about that,” Ryan remarked, turning back to face her. “They’re all over twenty-one.”

  “Yeah, except we’re supposed to be doing a full day’s hiking today. It’ll be a real hoot dragging them up and over hillsides to look at Roman ruins.”

  “Guess that’s their look-out,” he said with a grin. “They’ll have to drink a few litres of water and be brave.”

  Anna laughed and stepped out onto the deck beside him.

  “I’ve seen you the morning after a couple of pints with Frank,” she said, poking an accusatory finger against his chest.

  Before he could come up with a pithy response, Ryan spotted one of Anna’s students jogging along the woodland lane towards them.

  “Uh-oh,” he murmured.

  Anna hurried to open the front door and a dark-haired girl stepped inside with an air of urgency.

  “I’m sorry to disturb you, Doctor Taylor, but…oh!”

  The words died on her lips as Ryan stepped back through the patio doors to join them and Anna told herself to be patient in the face of raging hormones.

  “Isabella?” she said firmly. “What’s the matter?”

  The girl snapped back to attention and her face creased into lines of worry.

  “It’s Guy,” she said. “He—we all had a few too many last night and he was in pretty bad shape. I thought he’d gone to bed to sleep it off but when I went to wake him up this morning, he wasn’t in his room. We’ve been down to look around the main complex to see if he’s anywhere around there, but the place is practically empty and there’s no sign of him.”

  Over the girl’s head, Anna exchanged a look with Ryan.

  “Alright, Isabella, I don’t want you to worry. Guy has probably gone for a stroll and has forgotten to tell anybody. Have you tried ringing his mobile?”

  The girl nodded, and her fingers began twisting the material of her thick jumper.

  “It goes straight to voicemail because there’s no signal around here. I had to use the phone at the lodge to call him,” she explained.

  Anna’s heart began to pound but her face betrayed nothing of her turmoil.

  “Okay, what I want you to do is go back and stay with the others while I make some enquiries.”

  “What’s Guy’s phone number?” Ryan interjected.

  Isabella flushed and stammered out the digits, which he keyed into his own phone contacts.

  “Alright, do as Doctor Taylor says and stay in your lodge, for now. We’ll make enquiries.”

  The girl let herself out and Ryan reached for the landline to put a call through to the tech support team, back at CID Headquarters.

  “Steve? Yeah, it’s Ryan… Good, thanks. Look, can you run a search for me? No, it’s not on the system yet but we’ve got a potential missing person up at Kielder. It could save us a lot of time.” There was a small pause. “Thanks, I owe you one.”

  Ryan read out the number and ended the call, then looked across to where Anna was perched on the edge of the sofa.

  “He’s going to contact the telephone companies now and try to triangulate Guy’s position, or at least his phone. In the meantime, we need to alert the local police and Forestry Commission.”

  He paused to check his watch and found it was edging past eight o’clock. He was expected in the office by nine at the latest and he was already going to be late, since it was an easy fifty-mile drive back into the city centre.

  Then again, a young man had gone missing less than twenty-four hours after they’d fished another one out of the reservoir.

  “I’ll make the calls,” he said, and prepared to face the wrath of his new superintendent.

  * * *

  DC Jack Lowerson surveyed himself in the dingy mirror inside the gents toilets, checking everything was where it should be ahead of his meeting with the superintendent. He’d worn his best suit—a slim-fitting, shiny Air Force blue number—and a bold red tie because he liked the colour. He didn’t have Ryan’s stature to be able to pull off smart-casual, nor Phillips’ longevity to get away with wearing whatever he liked, so he made the best of what he had.

  And what did he have, really?

  Lowerson looked hard at his reflection, trying to see himself as others might. He was a man of thirty-one who looked several years younger despite his best efforts to inject a bit of gravitas with the addition of a designer beard that was more of a patchy goatee. He ran a hand over the fluffy hair, wishing he’d shaved it off, then patted his quiff, smoothing down the gel that held it rigidly in place while his thoughts inevitably wandered.

  The fact was, he’d been single for longer than he cared to remember and, with every passing day, his confidence ebbed. He’d tried all the dating sites and apps, had spent countless Friday nights and most of his bank balance hopping around wine bars in the city on the off-chance he’d meet someone special and, when that failed, he had even succumbed to the obligatory round of blind dates arranged by his mother. His mates told him he should enjoy his freedom because these were the ‘glory days’, but it was becoming harder to enjoy a no-strings, hedonistic night out without worrying about the inherent dangers of that lifestyle; an overactive imagination being one of the major side-effects of his line of work. Besides, he was honest enough to admit he wanted some permanence in his life, not a meaningless, transient relationship. He wanted love, companionship and a bit of a spark. Consequently, most nights he ended up sharing the sofa with the TV remote and Marbles, his cat.

  He wanted someone to walk hand in hand with and talk to at the end of the day.

  That wasn’t too much to ask, was it?

  Above all else, he was tired of looking through the window with his nose pressed up against the glass, watching Ryan with Anna, or Phillips with MacKenzie. It wasn’t that he begrudged them their happiness, it was only that he would like to fi
nd a little of his own.

  Snatching up a paper towel, he dried his hands and screwed up the paper with more aggression than was strictly necessary.

  For a while, he’d thought there might be something with Melanie Yates. He’d been plucking up the courage to ask her out, ever since the last time she’d turned him down, in fact. But there was only so much rejection a man could take and he wasn’t sure he could stand another polite ‘I’m busy, thanks’, at least not until he’d had sufficient time to recover from the last setback.

  Besides, much to his irritation, Melanie only had eyes for Ryan.

  No surprises there, he thought sourly. Even though the man was recently married, his appeal hadn’t dimmed and it was a constant and supreme effort not to hate his friend for simply being who he was. After all, Ryan didn’t seem to be aware of his effect on the women—and some men, too—who were drawn to the kind of easy confidence projected, and most people spent their lives trying to emulate.

  People like me, he admitted.

  Pushing his personal woes aside, Lowerson headed back out into the long corridor that would lead him to DCS Lucas’s corner office. CID Headquarters was quiet and mostly empty except for weekend shift-workers like himself and, apparently, the new superintendent. His heart began to hammer as he approached the door at the end and he injected what he hoped was a manly tone to his voice when he reached her personal assistant, who sat in a cubicle outside.

  “Go straight in,” the woman told him. “She’s expecting you.”

  Lowerson knocked and, when he pushed open the door, was momentarily blinded by the sun streaming through the windows. He turned and found himself pinned by a pair of bright blue eyes.

  “Good morning,” she said.

  Lowerson flushed and was instantly embarrassed by his own reaction. It wasn’t as if he’d never seen a woman before, it’s just that she wasn’t what he had been expecting. For a start, he’d expected a much older person. He’d missed the staff meeting the previous day and hadn’t been prepared to meet an attractive brunette who looked as if she’d just stepped off the pages of a glossy magazine.

  “Good morning, ma’am.”

  “Come and make yourself comfortable, Jack,” she said. “You don’t mind if I call you Jack, do you?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “Good. Thank you for being so punctual,” she said. “I appreciate punctuality in my staff.”

  She rested her chin on her hand and looked at him across the desk, her laser-blue gaze assessing.

  “You’re probably wondering what you’ve done wrong,” she said, with a tigerish smile.

  Lowerson laughed nervously.

  “I—well, yes.”

  “The answer is nothing. Nothing at all,” she said. “I called a meeting because I’ve been looking over your work record and I’m impressed, Jack. In fact, I’m surprised the topic of promotion hasn’t been raised with you before now. How long have you been a detective constable—three years?”

  Lowerson dragged his jaw off the floor and forced his lips to move.

  “Yes, ma’am, a little over three years.”

  “That’s what I thought. Seems a long time for a person of your capabilities to be stuck in the same position, wouldn’t you say?”

  Lowerson didn’t know what to say. He’d always thought his progression through the ranks had been quick but, if his superior thought otherwise, he wasn’t going to argue.

  “Take Ryan,” she said, presuming correctly that Lowerson used Ryan as a benchmark for all things. “He’s moved up the ladder at lightning speed and there’s no reason you shouldn’t do the same. Unless—”

  She stopped abruptly.

  “Unless?” he prodded.

  Lucas lifted a slim shoulder and let it fall again.

  “I was only wondering aloud,” she told him. “In my experience, I’ve sometimes found that senior detectives seek to repress younger, more talented members of their team out of a sense of rivalry. I’d hate to see you falling prey to that.”

  His hackles rose.

  “I’m sure that isn’t the case here, ma’am,” he said quickly. “DCI Ryan has always been fair with me. If anything, he’s gone above and beyond to make sure I’ve been included in the most high-profile investigations.”

  “But weren’t you the victim of an unprovoked attack during an investigation on Holy Island? I understood you were put in that position following a direct order from Ryan. I’m surprised you were left out to dry like that.”

  Lowerson swallowed, remembering the dark days when he’d come out of a coma having lost six months of his life.

  “That wasn’t his fault.”

  Lucas rose from her chair and moved around to the front of her desk, leaning backwards a fraction so that her suit jacket stretched, just a little.

  By virtue of being alive and red-blooded, Lowerson couldn’t help but notice. He dragged his eyes away and focused determinedly on her face, which was infinitely more dangerous.

  “I’m offering you an opportunity, Jack,” she said softly. “I need somebody trustworthy to help me get to grips with the department and to be my right-hand man while I clean things up. In return, I’ll promote you to the rank of sergeant.”

  Lowerson was silent for a full ten seconds.

  “I don’t understand,” he said eventually. “I need to take my sergeant’s exams, go through the training pathway—”

  “And you will,” she told him. “Except, rather than working for Ryan, you’ll be working for me.”

  His Adam’s apple bobbed.

  “Can I think about it?”

  “Of course,” she said, with a breezy smile. “As long as I have your answer by the end of the day.”

  CHAPTER 10

  “You should be ashamed of yourselves.”

  Phillips and Yates exchanged a look of confusion as they stood on the doorstep of Angela Gray’s 1950s terrace in the village of Kielder, a short drive away from the waterside complex where she owned a gift shop and where they had just informed her that her son had been found.

  Phillips recovered first, putting it down to a mother’s natural rejection of the worst possible news. It was often the case that the parents of missing children entered a long-term state of denial that prevented them from accepting the truth when it finally came knocking on their door.

  “Mrs Gray, please listen—”

  “I have nothing more to say to you,” she said, gripping the edge of the UPVC door so hard her knuckles glowed white. “I have a shop to run and I’m already late opening, thanks to you.”

  She made a show of checking her watch but she could barely focus on the dials. Angrily, she looked between them again, willing them to be wrong.

  “I’ve told you people time after time, it isn’t Duncan. Why won’t you believe me?”

  Across the street, people began to trickle out of their houses to watch the fresh drama playing out on their doorstep. Phillips noticed they were beginning to attract an audience and detested that part of human nature which led people to relish the misfortune of their neighbours.

  “Mrs Gray, why don’t we discuss this inside where you’ll be more comfortable?”

  “There’s nothing to discuss,” she spat, with unconcealed venom. “Don’t you have any sense of decency? Every time a body is found, you come knocking at my door telling me to prepare myself because it could be him. Well, why don’t you save your energy and find out who that poor soul really is? Stop harassing me, making me think—making me believe…”

  Her voice started to break and Yates took an involuntary step forward, but one look from Angela stopped her.

  “If you come around here making false claims again, I’ll make a complaint. I’ll write to my MP. Don’t think I won’t.”

  “Mrs Gray, these aren’t false claims and we’re not here to tell you that the body might be Duncan. We’re telling you that it is Duncan. A post-mortem has revealed a positive match with the dental records held on file belonging to your
son. We’re terribly sorry.”

  She shook her head back and forth repeatedly, closing her eyes so that she did not have to see the truth written all over Phillips’ face.

  “You’re wrong,” she whispered.

  Phillips continued to hold her gaze, speaking quietly and calmly.

  “We’re not wrong, Angela. The search is over.”

  For a long, suspended moment, Angela stared at him. Then her body crumpled. She doubled over at the waist and clung to the door for support as she made a low, keening sound redolent of an animal in torment.

  “Come on, now,” Phillips murmured. “Let’s go inside.”

  The fight drained from her body leaving her limp and, this time, she allowed them to lead her inside the house where Duncan had lived; along the hallway where he’d stored his bike and into the small living room where they’d once sat together as a family, laughing, playing board games or watching telly. She sank onto the old sofa with its plastic arm coverings and felt the last vestiges of hope drain from her body. All these years, she’d told herself he was alive somewhere and just unwilling or unable to come home. So long as she’d believed he was alive, there was always a chance.

  Not now.

  Not ever again.

  Tears began to fall, running into the network of fine lines on either side of her eyes, dripping from her chin onto the material of the plain white blouse she wore for work.

  “Angela?”

  Dazed, she looked up into a pair of kind brown eyes belonging to the young female detective whose name she’d forgotten.

  Yates sank onto the edge of the sofa beside her.

  “Mrs Gray, is there anybody we can contact for you? Your husband, perhaps?”

  “He’s gone.”

  John had left years ago. The strain of losing a child and her refusal—she could see that now—her refusal to acknowledge even the possibility of Duncan being dead, had been too much for him to bear. He was living with a woman a few miles away, now. Sometimes, she saw them in the supermarket or at the post office.

  “How? How…?”