by LJ Ross
Ryan swallowed and prepared to ask the next question.
“When did you become seriously concerned?”
“I had a message from Emily’s mum, joking about how Emily was in the dog house for telling lies. She asked me how Beth was doing, but I couldn’t answer because she still hadn’t come home and she wasn’t answering her phone. I was beside myself. I rang every one of her friends and then rang the police.”
“What did her friends say?”
Speaking to the girls who had been with Beth the previous evening was next on Ryan’s list, but it never hurt to get a story from all angles.
“They said Beth told them she was going to get in a cab and go home early. They were drunk themselves, so they left her to it.”
Kelly’s lips shut so tightly they turned white at the edges.
“Ms Finnegan.”
She turned dazed eyes towards him and he knew that she was starting to shut down, so he asked the most important question as far as they were concerned.
“Did her friends remember seeing her with a man? Any man in particular?”
Kelly lifted shaking fingers to her temple as the ramifications of his question began to unfold. A man had recently escaped from prison, a serial killer who liked young, dark-haired women.
Oh, God. My baby.
“A-a man?”
“Yes.”
Snatched memories of conversations with her daughter’s friends replayed in her mind and she tried to sort through her jumbled recollection.
“I…I think Emily said that she’d seen Beth talking to a man. She didn’t say much, because—well, I’m her mother,” she finished inadequately.
Phillips made a note on his pad and circled it twice.
“Is it…is it him? That man from the news?”
“We don’t know for sure that your daughter is missing,” Ryan forced the words through stiff lips and felt like a fraud. “We’ll be searching for her, but let’s not jump to any conclusions.”
Silent tears rolled down her face and his jaw clenched hard.
“What happens now?”
Her eyes darted between them, wide and searching. Ryan retrieved two small white cards from his pocket and handed them to her.
“These are my contact details and those of the family liaison officer,” he explained. “If you need to get in touch, if you remember anything important, call either one of us on these numbers. Alright?”
She clutched the cards in a tight grasp and gave him another searching look. Something in his face must have reassured her because she seemed to relax against the back of her chair, finally giving in to the tiredness which laid claim to her body and mind.
“You’ll find her. Won’t you? Please,” she added. “Beth is all I have.”
Ryan did what he rarely did, and dropped to his haunches so that they were face-to-face. He rested his hand on top of hers, in a silent gesture of support.
“I’ll find her,” he promised, but he could promise nothing more.
* * *
They spent half an hour rifling through the contents of Beth’s bedroom but found nothing except the usual flotsam and jetsam of a teenage girl. With nitrile-gloved hands, they checked in all the usual, secretive crevices that a mother might overlook and still found nothing to suggest that Beth Finnegan had been groomed by Keir Edwards before his escape from prison. There were no letters stashed away, no suspicious, expensive gifts and the girl hadn’t owned a computer or a tablet. Faulkner’s team of CSIs would likely go over the room again but their instincts told them that, if Beth was indeed missing, she had not been complicit.
They said their goodbyes and took the creaking lift down to the ground floor, inhaling the unfortunate scent of stale urine and marijuana as they went.
“Impressive woman,” Phillips offered, as they stepped back out into the midday sunshine.
Ryan kept stride with him as they headed back to his car, parked nearby.
“Yes, she was.”
Phillips caught the note in his voice.
“We’ll find her, lad. Mark my words.”
Ryan stopped and raised his face to the sky, trying to clear the emotion swirling inside his head. A magpie swooped to land on the rusty green climbing frame of a children’s play area up ahead and he admired its colours, taking the time he needed to recover himself.
“The question isn’t whether we’ll find her, Frank. He wants us to find her so that we can admire his handiwork. The question is whether I’m going to be able to stand it when we do.”
Phillips tugged at his lip and wondered what he could possibly say, but Ryan beat him to it.
“I guess we’ll find out the answer to that soon enough.”
With that, he stalked towards his car.
CHAPTER 9
As a light afternoon drizzle began to fall, MacKenzie watched Edwards perform a series of semi-acrobatic moves from the window of her cell. She had ceased calling it a bedroom and had reverted to a more accurate description of the dingy box room that had now been her prison for over a week. Outside, Edwards completed a set of fast press-ups on the grass, then lifted a heavy log up and down in place of gym weights, pushing his muscles to the limit. He did the same thing every day, come rain or shine, and always with the same intense look of pleasure on his face.
It was sickening.
Last night had been a watershed moment for both of them. The sight of Edwards covered in human blood and wearing the same look of pleasure he wore now had brought horror but also the understanding that an invisible seal had been broken. She was reminded of an old nature programme on great white sharks, where David Attenborough had spoken in dulcet tones about the shark’s ability to smell blood up to a quarter of a mile away and to detect one single drop of blood among a million drops of water. The thought of it seemed too fantastic to be true, but watching Edwards on the lawn outside, she was not so sure. There was an animal inside him, she thought, one so close to the surface that it took very little to break free from the constraints of ordinary, decent behaviour. She had seen it in his eyes last night, more so than ever before.
MacKenzie recognised that she was starting to change too. She felt like one of those caged animals you see at the zoo, and probably looked similar with her bare feet and unkempt hair to match the wild look in her eyes. Her body was constantly poised for battle and when a fresh surge of adrenaline flushed through her, she paced the room like a tigress and would have sharpened her claws if she had any.
Instead, she focused on mending her ankle. Her ribs would have to make do with the splint she had fashioned from thin wood and strapped against her midriff using the dirty covering from her mattress. She couldn’t wear it when he was around, which admittedly could be at any time of the day or night, because the longer he believed her to be incapacitated, the greater the advantage she might have in the end.
She rolled her ankle and winced. It was still tender following her escape attempt yesterday and she had probably put back its healing process. For much of the day, she had forced herself to lie on the bed, using the upturned bucket as a stool to keep the ankle elevated. Hopefully, by tomorrow it would be good enough to use again.
It would have to be.
There was no other choice, she thought, watching Edwards dispassionately. She must try to find a way out. The animal had been given another taste of blood and it wouldn’t be long before he would go in search of his next kill.
* * *
Bethany Finnegan was immediately classified as a ‘high risk’ missing person and, after a short conversation with Chief Constable Morrison, it was decided that the investigation into her whereabouts would be managed by Ryan’s existing task force because of the potential link to Operation Ireland. If Beth’s body was found, it might provide a trail leading back to her killer and they needed all the help they could get. Still, it did not remove the dirty, unspoken truth that, to find one woman, the police were relying on another having lost her life.
Supposition and instinc
t played a disproportionately large role in their decision-making. However, the timing of her disappearance, Beth’s physical attributes and the fact that her behaviour was so out of character were also strong factors in the escalation of her case. The Missing Persons Bureau acted as a national and international point of contact for all missing people and would usually be informed after seventy-two hours had passed, but Ryan took an executive decision and called them himself, the same day.
Meanwhile, Ryan’s staff worked to trace the last movements of the Toyota Rav 4 and its driver. Although they were swamped and understaffed, Faulkner spared two of his CSIs to go over the vehicle, which had been recovered from the entrance of the Copthorne Hotel and impounded on the premises of one of CID’s authorised contractors. Dave’s Motors was a small but perfectly formed operation, nestled in a tin pot garage between two car rental giants less than five minutes’ walk from the railway station in Newcastle. The yard was crammed with cars of varying shapes and sizes and in a range of conditions, but the Toyota had been given pride of place in the covered garage area. Not a soul but Dave himself had touched it before the CSIs arrived and it took less than two hours for them to perform a thorough sweep of the vehicle.
While they waited for further reports to trickle in, Ryan and Phillips spent their afternoon in the west end of Newcastle holding lengthy discussions with a series of distraught teenage girls, some of whom had overcome their distress at losing one of their friends to stare in frank admiration at the chief inspector and with considerably less interest at his beefy sergeant. Such behaviour elicited embarrassed apologies from their parents and a degree of impatience from Ryan, who was in no mood to find humour in their raging hormones.
“I need a drink,” he fumed, once the last interview was concluded and they had returned to the safety of his car.
Phillips rubbed at his chin, to hide a smile.
“Bit nervy, are we?”
Ryan ran an agitated hand through his hair.
“I’m sure I was never that bad,” he said, emphatically. “I swear, when I was their age, I had more…”
“Decorum?” Phillips said sweetly. “Respect for your elders?”
“Yes!” Ryan said. “Their friend is missing—dead, for all they know—and that kid in there,” he jerked a thumb over his shoulder in the general direction of the house they had just left, “spent half the bloody interview asking me whether I liked Coldplay and if I would come over and show her some self-defence moves!”
“The cheek of it,” Phillips chuckled. “At least I was there to chaperone.”
“I’m old enough to be her father!”
“Nah,” Phillips said. “You’re still the right side of forty, which makes you fair game.”
Ryan sent him a fulminating glare and then leaned his head back against the headrest, allowing the irritation to seep out of his system before he spoke again.
“Their stories essentially match,” he said, feeling calmer than before. “We’ve got four teenage girls, all of them underage drinkers wanting to go to the student night at Eddie’s Beach Club, down on the Quayside.”
“Aye,” Phillips unrolled a stick of nicotine gum and began to chew it rhythmically. “That lass—Hayley—seemed to be the leader of the pack.”
“Pack?”
“They all move in packs,” Phillips said, sagely.
Ryan held out a hand for the gum and shoved some in his mouth, irrespective of the fact he had never been a smoker, because Phillips was right. He was feeling downright nervy.
“Hayley’s parents weren’t around last night, which is probably why the girls decided to use her house as a base for their little deception. The parents were, incidentally, out getting drunk themselves.”
Phillips made a sound like a harrumph.
“What day is it?”
“Tuesday,” Ryan answered. “I must be getting old.”
“You and me both, son.”
“Anyway, the girls headed straight to Eddie’s, not long after the place opened. They managed to talk their way into the club using some fake IDs. Apparently, nobody remembers how they came by them,” he added, with a roll of his eyes. “But that’s the least of our worries. Beth’s best friend, Emily, says she remembers seeing her speaking to a ‘really fit bloke’ at around ten-thirty, but she can’t be sure of the time. About twenty or thirty minutes later, Beth told them she was going home early and would get in a taxi.”
“That alone would ring alarm bells for me,” Phillips said. “What schoolgirl can afford a taxi home on her own?”
Ryan nodded.
“They were all too far gone by that stage to care. They waved her off and Emily thought that maybe Beth was heading off with the aforementioned ‘really fit bloke’.”
“She couldn’t say for certain it was Edwards, when we showed her his picture,” Phillips cautioned.
Ryan stared at the felt ceiling of his car.
“It was dark, she was drunk, and Edwards might have changed his appearance again,” he said. “D’you know what the worst of it is, Frank? The kid says that she wasn’t worried about her friend heading off with him because he was well dressed and didn’t look dodgy.”
Ryan propped his elbow against the window and leaned his head against his hand, only to be disturbed by the shrill of Phillips’ mobile phone. They exchanged a look before he answered it, and everything changed.
“Phillips.”
Ryan heard the distant voice of Lowerson at the other end of the line, but couldn’t make out what was said.
“They’re absolutely sure?”
Ryan turned to Phillips with an enquiring look, which was ignored.
“This goes no further until I say so. Meet us there in ten minutes.” He risked a quick glance at Ryan, then away again. “No, lad. Leave it to me.”
Phillips hung up and his mind worked quickly, thinking of how best to deliver the news he had just heard, while Ryan watched him with growing alarm.
“Spit it out, man.”
“That was Lowerson,” Phillips said finally, taking his time about returning the mobile phone to his inner breast pocket. “Apparently, Beth Finnegan’s mobile phone provider has pinpointed her last known location, down to a radius of twenty feet.”
Ryan began to smile, but Phillips hadn’t finished.
“They say her phone is still switched on and transmitting, right now, from the same address.”
“Well?” Ryan began to reach for the ignition key. “Tell me where we’re headed.”
Phillips gathered the courage to look him in the eye, before delivering the final blow.
“It’s your old apartment building at Wharf Square, down on the Quayside.”
CHAPTER 10
Ryan declined Phillips’ offer to drive and manoeuvred through the streets of Newcastle as if in a trance. His eyes were open and his hands and feet went through the motions of operating the car, but he didn’t respond to Phillips’ quiet pleas to reconsider and his face wore the ashen, shocked expression of someone who was reliving a nightmare. As they turned onto the Quayside, Ryan no longer saw a spring afternoon in April, but the early hours of a summer morning in 2014. He visualised himself as he had been that morning, exhausted from another endless day searching for The Hacker and begging for sleep. Phillips had driven him home to Wharf Square sometime after midnight, telling him to get some kip and start afresh the next day. His sister was staying with him and would probably be asleep already. Ironically, his parents thought that some company would be good for him; somebody to take his mind off work and help him out for a couple of weeks.
But in all the hours he had laboured, Ryan hadn’t thought to protect what lay under his own roof, and he would live with the guilt for the rest of his life.
“Ryan!”
Phillips’ sharp voice cut through the reverie and Ryan slammed his foot on the brakes to prevent the car running through a red light. His hands clutched the steering wheel as he struggled to get his bearings, feeling light-headed.
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“Son,” Phillips’ gravelly voice was filled with concern. “Pull over.”
Ryan gave a small shake of his head and put the car in gear as the lights changed again.
“You don’t have to do this,” Phillips tried again. “I can tell Morrison it was too much of a conflict and you decided to step back. It’s good sense, lad.”
“I need to see her,” Ryan said. “There’s always a chance.”
He tried to keep his mind focused on the road, until the courthouse appeared on their left. Its salmon-pink brickwork had aged badly in the years since it was built and it was fast becoming an eyesore compared with the glistening glass concert halls and classical townhouses surrounding it. The car slowed to a crawl as they passed and Ryan remembered the day he had given evidence at Edwards’ trial, when he had recounted every hideous detail of his sister’s murder so that twelve jurors could agree that her killer deserved to be locked away from the world. He saw their faces in his mind’s eye, with their eyes downcast so that they wouldn’t have to look at him while they listened to the unpalatable truth he had to tell. Ryan remembered the look of denial on their faces, the same disbelief he had seen earlier today in the innocent eyes of a teenage girl.
Not Doctor Edwards, they thought. Not him.
For it was only sinister-looking individuals who murdered people in the movies, not well-dressed, well-spoken men from the ‘right’ background who saved lives at the hospital. It wasn’t possible, they thought, even when faced with overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
Thankfully, justice had prevailed and Ryan remembered how he had felt after it was all over, stumbling down the steps outside the courthouse and through the crowd of reporters, running until he found somewhere to expel the acid rolling inside his gut.
Behind him, a car honked its horn and he snapped back to the present, urging his car the remaining distance until they arrived outside a smart, glass-fronted apartment building overlooking the river. It looked innocuous, just another quietly expensive block on the redeveloped waterfront with bars and coffee shops surrounding it, appealing to the young professionals who lived there.