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

Page 26

by LJ Ross


  He smiled slowly.

  “Happy hunting, Chief Inspector.”

  CHAPTER 35

  Ryan’s hands were curled into tight fists as he watched Armstrong drive away from Police Headquarters, his eyes burning with unshed tears as a guilty man walked free. It went against everything he stood for, and the prospect of being unable to fulfil his promise to Duncan Gray’s mother made him sick to his stomach.

  Phillips found him there, standing in one of the empty conference rooms looking out of the window.

  Ryan sensed his presence but didn’t turn around.

  “She let him go,” he said simply. “After everything, all the man hours, all the effort, she let him walk free.”

  “I know,” Phillips replied. “She’ll spin it a different way.”

  He walked across the room to join Ryan beside the window and they both watched darkness fall over the city. There were fewer stars to be seen here than in the clear skies over Kielder, but the twinkling lights were beautiful all the same.

  “There’ll be more victims to find,” Ryan said softly. “Armstrong was too cool, too calm under fire. He’s spent a lifetime perfecting his craft, so there must have been others.”

  Phillips agreed.

  “We’ll find them, lad.”

  “Will we?” Ryan murmured. “I don’t know. He’s clever, that one. And conceited.”

  “Those ones tend to make mistakes,” Phillips reminded him. “Their vanity trips them up, sooner or later.”

  “Armstrong travels all over the world,” Ryan added. “This will be multi-jurisdictional. It’s an enormous task.”

  Phillips put a hand on Ryan’s shoulder.

  “We can start tomorrow. D’ you know what we need before then?”

  Ryan turned.

  “What?”

  “We need a pint. Besides, I owe you one.”

  “You owe me a whole bloody barrel, if we’re keeping count.”

  “Aye, but with you being such a lightweight I thought we’d better round the numbers down. The others are going to meet us at the pub and Anna’s on her way back from Kielder.”

  Ryan nodded and turned away from the window, regret and disappointment etched into every line of his body.

  “C’ mon Frank, let’s go and get drunk.”

  * * *

  Jack Lowerson watched his old friends walk out of the office, a small tribe of people banded together by their shared beliefs. On days like these, they pulled together and, ordinarily, he’d be down there with them.

  But not today.

  He shivered as two fingers walked up his back.

  “Everything alright?”

  Jennifer’s voice melted like warm honey and the rest of the world seemed to fade into the background. She was all he could see; all he wanted.

  “Everything’s fine,” he told her.

  “What do you have planned this evening?”

  “I usually have dinner at my mum’s house on Wednesdays,” he said, nervously.

  “It’s late,” she said softly. “And Priya’s gone home.”

  “Oh, do you need me to put in some overtime?”

  She gave a husky laugh and walked back over to her desk, leaning against it with her hands braced.

  “Lock the door, Jack.”

  Lowerson did as she bade him, silently locking away the past, discarding his old friends and his old life. He couldn’t know what awaited him; couldn’t see the danger until it was too late. He turned the key and stepped willingly into the rabbit hole.

  EPILOGUE

  One week later

  Nathan Armstrong sat inside the Café Laurent in Paris with a champagne cocktail and a copy of Le Monde. On the small stage of the famous jazz venue, a woman crooned softly about her lost love, while a man in a black trilby accompanied her on the antique Steinway grand.

  Armstrong reached across to take a sip of the bubbling liquid as his eyes skim-read the newspaper, flipping each page until he found what he was looking for.

  There was a small paragraph covering the story on page thirty-three.

  A young waiter had gone missing after leaving work at one of the city’s premier restaurants and police were appealing for any word on his whereabouts.

  By tomorrow, the story would have disappeared altogether.

  And by then, he would be in Vienna.

  He set the newspaper aside and settled back to listen to the music, keeping one eye on the door and another on his fellow occupants in the room. They were a mixed crowd of locals and tourists who were staying at the hotel which housed the café, but they shared the muted, understated glamour of upmarket middle-class people, the kind of people he preferred to be around. Their scent was different, he thought; more cultivated and distinctive than elsewhere. One could almost detect the meat in their national diet, although that was no drawback. He was nothing, if not a carnivore.

  A tall, dark-haired man entered the room and Armstrong’s chest contracted at the thought it might be Ryan making good on his threat.

  But, of course, it wasn’t.

  He relaxed against the cushions and thought back over the years. It was possible that he had left something of himself behind, as he had foolishly done with the postcard, but he forgave himself for that oversight. Duncan Gray had been his first and most memorable victim, and everything that followed had been shiny and new. There were bound to be little hiccups in the early days but there was nothing to connect him to his other victims, he was sure of that.

  He raised his hands to applaud when the music ended, and wondered what delights Vienna would hold.

  DCI Ryan will return in early 2018

  If you would like to be kept up to date with new releases from LJ Ross, please complete an e-mail contact form

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Kielder Water and Forest Park is a very special corner of the world. I remember first visiting the area as a child and have since visited many times, most recently on a research trip where my husband and four-year-old son joined me in exploring the pretty village of Stonehaugh. We followed the burn towards Low Roses Bower in search of the Long Drop, an extraordinary stone-built outdoor toilet reputed to be England’s tallest ‘netty’ that sits at the top of a gorge high over the burn. I was very tempted to include this site as part of the story of Dark Skies but the opportunity never quite presented itself—perhaps another time!

  There is a real sense of isolation when you visit a place like Kielder and the tranquillity is incredible, affording a writer of crime fiction so much inspiration. The forest is lush during the day and, thanks to the wonderful observatory, stargazing pavilions and other sites dotted across the landscape, you can look up at the stars and begin to discover your own place in the universe. We are so fortunate to have dedicated organisations and individuals who look after the area and nurture its wildlife and eco-systems, encouraging the next generation to explore the best of what the natural world can offer.

  In my fictional story, I wanted to convey some of the enormity of sky, water and forest, although it is no substitute for visiting the area and seeing its beauty for yourself. I have tried to remain as faithful as possible to the friendly atmosphere of Kielder Waterside and the villages surrounding the reservoir. Whilst it is true that a number of farmhouses were demolished and submerged beneath the new reservoir back in the late seventies and early eighties, I should point out that ‘Reedmere Farm’ is a figment of my imagination and should not be confused with any farmhouse that existed at the time. Likewise, the hamlet of ‘Adderburn’ is a work of pure fiction and does not exist on any map; although, I’m sure there are many pretty woodland clearings where you may stumble across a gingerbread cottage or two if you feel like exploring, which I heartily recommend that you do!

  LJ ROSS

  November 2017

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Born in Newcastle upon Tyne, LJ Ross moved to London where she graduated from King’s College London with undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in Law. After working in t
he City as a regulatory lawyer for a number of years, she realised it was high time for a change. The catalyst was the birth of her son, which forced her to take a break from the legal world and find time for some of the detective stories that had been percolating for a while and finally demanded to be written.

  She lives with her husband and young son in the south of England but will always be a northern girl at heart.

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  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  I can hardly believe that Dark Skies represents my seventh full-length novel in the DCI Ryan series. It has been a wonderful three years and I have been so fortunate to have found such a fantastic readership. Your e-mails and messages on social media have been so kind and have sustained me through difficult patches and times when the words haven’t flowed as easily as others—thank you.

  At the time of writing, Dark Skies has been a UK #1 bestseller on the Amazon Kindle chart for eleven days whilst only available to pre-order, for which I am incredibly grateful. Each time I write a book, I feel a very real sense of responsibility: to myself, to the characters I have grown to love and, most of all, to the readers who have shown such affection for them. For those of you who have read other books in the series, I hope you enjoy this latest adventure of DCI Ryan as much as the others. For those who are new to the books, I hope this has been a good introduction!

  There are so many people I would like to thank. First and always, there is my husband, James. He is a constant rock in a sometimes stormy sea of creative ups and downs and I am so grateful for his unwavering positivity, love and support over the fourteen years we have known each other. In the hope that (one day, when he is much older) my son might read these words, I would like to tell him how much he is loved and to thank him for bringing such happiness to our lives. To my mother, father and sister, I would like to reiterate my love and gratitude to them for being my greatest champions; I feel very fortunate to have such a wonderful family. To my friends and to all the kind bloggers and bibliophiles who have supported me and my books over the past three years, I can’t tell you how much your enthusiasm has meant to me—I am indebted to all of you. I should also thank the innovators—those people who dreamed up a concept where anybody, regardless of background or contacts, could write a story and see it published independently by the author. Without them, my first book, Holy Island, might never have seen the light of day and over 1.5 million people might never have read about Phillips’ love of the humble bacon stottie.

  Finally, special mention goes to the real-life Jennifer Lucas, who made a very kind donation to charity and whose name is now immortalised in print (though it goes without saying that she is much lovelier than her fictional counterpart!).

 

 

 


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