by LJ Ross
HIGH FORCE
– A DCI RYAN MYSTERY
By LJ Ross
Copyright © LJ Ross 2017
The right of LJ Ross to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or transmitted into any retrieval system, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Original cover photograph copyright © Charlie Charlton
Cover design copyright © LJ Ross
OTHER BOOKS BY LJ ROSS
Holy Island
Sycamore Gap
Heavenfield
Angel
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
EPILOGUE
AUTHOR’S NOTE
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
“Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt.”
—Sun Tzu
PROLOGUE
Tuesday 29th March
As soon as she awakened, MacKenzie knew that he meant to kill her.
There was no confused, fumbling recollection of what had happened. On the contrary, she remembered everything with horrifying clarity.
Dark eyes. White smile.
A flash of his fist, and then nothing.
The car lurched sideways and she was thrown violently against the hard interior of the boot. It was impossible to brace herself against the impact because her wrists and ankles were bound tightly with wire cord. The darkness was heavy and impenetrable, suffocating her.
She drew great, shuddering gulps of air into her lungs and felt the warmth of her own breath surround her in the cramped space. Perhaps she could pretend it was all a terrible nightmare and she would open her eyes to find Frank sleeping peacefully beside her. But the scent of diesel invaded her nostrils and the dream evaporated, leaving only blunt reality. Her mind was shockingly awake and would not be fooled.
The car wound its way up and over a steep hill. MacKenzie’s stomach heaved and she recognised the symptoms of shock: she was shivering uncontrollably whilst also sweating profusely. Her head felt fuzzy and it was as if she were floating above her own body, watching another woman she barely recognised. She sucked air through her teeth, chest tight with anxiety. Her bowels wanted to loosen but she bore down and tried to think clearly.
How long had she been here?
It was impossible to know for sure whether it was night or day; not a shred of light glimmered to relieve the oppressive blackness of the small space and she had no idea how long she had lain unconscious. But she knew the terrain had changed. They were no longer travelling on smooth tarmac and the car jerked unsteadily across uneven ground as it trundled towards its unknown destination.
She lay there without any idea of the passage of time nor the distance she had travelled and thought of Frank Phillips.
I love you, Frank.
* * *
The car sped through the desolate countryside, away from the men and women who began a frantic search for Detective Inspector Denise MacKenzie. Slow clouds passed across the moon but occasional beams of white light broke through and illuminated the solitary vehicle as it crawled up and down the peaks and troughs of the dales. When the clouds shifted again, night fell like a shroud and was relieved only by the light of the car’s headlights as it motored further away from civilisation. Now and then, they passed through a hamlet or village but there were no people on the streets and no lights in the windows at that hour. The driver and his passenger continued onward, alone amid a vast expanse of land and water, of ruined farmhouses and the remains of hefted sheep who had wandered too far from home. The whirr of the car’s engine pierced the silent sky as it rose over the brow of another hill, where it was suspended for a moment before disappearing down into the protective, secretive fold of the valley.
CHAPTER 1
Monday 4th April
One week later
The sleek grey car slowed to a crawl, its tyres sloshing through deep puddles at the edge of the road as Detective Chief Inspector Maxwell Finlay-Ryan peered through the windscreen at a row of unremarkable houses.
“This can’t be the place.”
He glanced down at the scribbled note he’d made on the back of a dog-eared envelope and then up at the street ahead.
“Nothing but a dead end,” he muttered.
The street was tucked away in an area of Newcastle upon Tyne known as Benwell. It was a poor part of town, west of the upmarket city centre and not far from the river. Years ago, a colliery and munitions factory had fuelled a booming industry and rows of uniform terraced houses had been built for the workers. Now, they stood derelict or run down, some of the red bricks around the doors and windows bearing the evidence of arson. Ryan’s ordinary duties as a murder detective took him into the city frequently but it was easy to forget the old heart of the metropolis.
He turned on the windscreen wipers as rain started to fall again. It was barely eight o’clock in the morning and the sun was struggling to break through the blanket of thick grey cloud overhead, lending an even more depressing air to proceedings. He was about to turn the car around when he spotted the place he had been looking for.
Buddle’s Boxing Gym was little more than a seventies prefab consisting of a square, boxy building with a flat roof, sagging with rainwater. It rested on the foundations of two demolished houses and nobody had bothered to do away with the remaining concrete which surrounded it like a dystopian moat. It lacked the kind of warm, welcome feel he might have found inside one of the higher-end city gyms but, since Ryan never bothered to go to any of those, he wasn’t in any position to judge. He sat for a long moment, then took a deep breath and slammed out of the car to stride purposefully through the rain.
* * *
“Howay, man! Is that the best you’ve got?”
Detective Sergeant Frank Phillips wiped the sweat from his brow with a threaded grey towel and threw it back into the corner of the ring.
“We’ve had a good spar, Frank, let’s call it a day—”
“Aye, if you can’t take the pace,” Phillips jeered.
Irritation won over tiredness and the other man tapped his gloves together, signalling that he would go another
round after all. A boy of eleven or twelve took his cue and banged an old brass bell with the edge of a spoon and the two men began to dance around the ring.
Ryan pushed through the swing doors into the main gymnasium, ignoring the frankly enquiring and suspicious looks from the locals, who huddled in groups to watch the fight that was underway. Testosterone was palpable on the air and he almost reeled at the smell—a heady combination of male sweat and cigarette smoke. Several pairs of eyes continued to watch him, clocking the striking, raven-haired man who looked vaguely like someone they had seen on the television. He gave them a friendly nod. They didn’t return the gesture but turned back to the fight, so Ryan moved further into the room and settled himself against the back wall to watch along with the rest of them.
“How’s he doing?”
The man beside him could have been anywhere between the ages of fifty and eighty. His head was completely bald and it shone like a halo around his weather-beaten face.
“Which one?”
“The shorter one,” Ryan said, nodding towards the stockier of the two fighters.
“Frank,” the man provided. “He’s like a man possessed, t’day. Pummelling the bloody life out of anybody who’ll come close. Billy’s doing his best but he’ll not last much longer.”
Ryan said nothing and continued to watch the two men who stood centre stage in the old-fashioned boxing ring, illuminated by a row of bare light bulbs hanging from cheap ceiling squares. Both were stripped to the waist and perspiration gleamed against their skin, flickering as they moved in and out of shadows thrown by the patchy light.
“Who’s the ref?”
“Nobody in particular, since Frank floored him an hour ago. He’s gone home to his missus, for a bit of tender loving care.”
Ryan frowned at that, black brows drawing together.
“What if things get out of hand?”
The man cast him a wary glance.
“You’re not from the Boxing Association?”
Ryan gave a slight shake of his head. Turning away again, the man took out a leather pouch of tobacco and began to roll himself a thin cigarette.
“We’ve had men boxing in here since before you were born. We know how to handle our own. It’s you who should watch yourself, else you might spoil your smart clothes.”
The ghost of a smile passed across Ryan’s face. Buddle’s was what he might have described as a ‘no frills’ establishment but he admired its lack of pretension. It wasn’t the dirt that worried him, it was the apparent absence of safety measures. He folded his arms across his chest and continued his silent observation, wondering why they bothered to wear gloves at all if the object was to inflict as much damage as possible.
Frank Phillips was oblivious to the crowd. All he felt was anger, deep and raw, coursing through his body like a torrent. It needed to get out and this was the best way he knew how.
Whack, he took a blow to the midriff and felt the air rush out of his body but a second later he was back again, coming at the man who had ceased to be ‘Billy from the gym’ and now represented everything he hated in the world.
Smack, left hook.
Smack, right hook.
Billy stumbled backward against the safety barrier, arms flailing, and Phillips hopped impatiently from one foot to the other before going at it again.
Ryan watched his sergeant inflict a series of fast jabs, face contorted into something almost unrecognisable from the cheerful, mild-mannered man he had come to know.
Another thirty seconds and Billy fell to the ground, defeated.
There was a smattering of half-hearted applause and people began to chatter and disperse. Billy crawled out of the ring on legs that were less than stable, sporting a face that was already beginning to swell.
“Howay then, who’s next?” Phillips shouted, to nobody in particular.
There was a series of rumbles in the negative.
“This place has gone downhill since my day,” he called out. “If a bunch of lads are too precious to take on an old man like me. What’s the matter wi’ ya?”
His friends looked among themselves and wondered what to do. They’d all heard about what had happened to Frank’s girlfriend and they sympathised, but there were limits to how much baiting they would take and the mood was becoming tense.
At the back of the room, Ryan came to a decision and pushed away from the wall.
“If the offer’s still open, I could do with the workout.”
Phillips squinted at the sea of faces from his elevated position inside the ring and watched a tall figure materialise. When he saw who it was, he shook his head slowly from side to side.
“I’m in no mood for games.”
“If you’re feeling tired, I’m sure one of these other gentlemen will go a round or two with me,” Ryan said, bobbing his head towards the crowd that had gathered once again to see how this fresh drama would play out.
He began to shrug out of his navy wool overcoat and thanked one of the teenagers who took it from him. Next, he unbuttoned his shirt.
“Don’t test me, boy. I won’t fight you.”
Phillips’ face was hard as granite but Ryan could see deep shadows beneath his eyes, the evidence of sleepless nights. Another few minutes and the fight would drain from him entirely, Ryan thought.
Keeping a dubious eye on the other man’s thick-set physique and murderous expression, he unclasped his watch and entrusted it to a spotty-faced teenager, who palmed it and scuttled away.
Shouldn’t he be in school?
Shrugging philosophically, Ryan dropped his shirt onto a nearby bench and then boosted himself up and under the heavy elasticated barrier of the ring.
“Didn’t you hear me?” Phillips growled. “I told you I won’t fight you.”
“If you’re feeling the strain, just say so,” Ryan returned.
He accepted a pair of gloves and began to pull them on. There was no offer of taping or headgear.
“How did you know I’d be here?”
“Does it matter?”
“It matters to me.”
Ryan lifted one bare, muscled shoulder.
“I asked around.”
“You had no business coming to find me,” Phillips ground out. “If I’d wanted you to know where I was, I’d have told you.”
“In case you’ve forgotten, I’m still your superior officer,” Ryan said flatly, although the words stuck in his throat. “You can’t expect to go AWOL for two days and have nobody come looking for you. You have responsibilities; to the department, to yourself…and to Denise.”
“Don’t you dare bring her into this!”
With that, Phillips lunged forward and planted a gloved fist squarely into Ryan’s face. The force of it snapped his head backward and sent him careening into the barrier behind. There was a collective gasp from the crowd.
In the silence that followed, Ryan shook himself off and accepted a towel to dab at the trickle of blood which ran from his nose. A quick wriggle told him it wasn’t broken, at least. He didn’t like to think what Anna would have to say about that.
Phillips swallowed and began to apologise.
“Sorry, lad, I—”
But Ryan waved it away.
“I think that was the bell for Round One, wouldn’t you say?”
With that, he landed a hard blow to Phillips’ stomach.
“If you think that I’m going to go easy on you—”
Phillips fought back and Ryan had a fleeting moment to regret his earlier decision before raising his gloves to block a series of blows. He parried, circling the ring to tire them both out, but Phillips had energy to spare.
“You don’t need to do me any favours, boy,” he said, feigning a left before planting his right glove into Ryan’s chest.
Ryan doubled over, winded.
“You’re stubborn as an old mule,” he panted.
Phillips cupped a hand to his ear.
“What’s that? You’ve had enough of a beating for
today?”
Ryan looked up, slowly.
“Hard of hearing, as well,” he concluded, before surprising Frank with a sharp jab to his midriff, followed swiftly by a solid crack to his jaw.
Phillips landed hard on his arse and looked up in shock.
“Where the hell did you learn to box?”
“Boarding school,” Ryan puffed. “And the Rocky franchise.”
Phillips’ lips trembled.
“Have you had enough?” Ryan asked, eyeing the red marks he’d inflicted with a small stab of conscience.
Phillips looked around at the faces in the crowd, let out a long sigh and then pushed himself back to his feet.
“Aye, I’ve had enough.”
Ryan unstrapped a glove and held out a hand. Phillips did the same and, swearing roundly, pulled him in for a hard hug.
“I needed that,” he said roughly.
“Any time, any place,” Ryan said dryly.
They pulled apart and faced each other again.
“I don’t know what to do,” Phillips said simply. “I can’t stand to think of Denise, of whether she’s still alive, somewhere out there—”
Ryan could imagine, only too well. Her abductor was an infamous serial killer called Keir Edwards, a former medical doctor better known in the press as The Hacker. Less than a week ago, Ryan and his team had been dealing with the fallout from another murder case. While their backs were turned, Edwards had escaped from his maximum-security prison in Durham and kidnapped Detective Inspector Denise MacKenzie from her own home. Every man and woman in Northumbria CID knew the violence Edwards was capable of inflicting but none more so than Ryan himself, who had brought the man to justice and lost his sister in the process.
The memory of it still haunted him.
Now, he looked into the bleak eyes of his sergeant. Neither of them knew what had happened to Denise and history was not on her side. Ryan understood the feeling of failure that had driven Phillips back here to the people who knew him from the old days. He remembered the driving need to fight back, to expel the hate and the anger that grew stronger every day that he was without the woman he loved.