by LJ Ross
* * *
Ryan moved quickly through the trees, following the roar of the engine as it disappeared further into the forest’s fold. He picked up its trail and followed it, arms shoving at the wispy branches that snaked like tentacles across his face. He could hear it, gears grinding and engine blasting up ahead and he commanded himself to move faster.
Faster!
His thighs burned and he drew short, gasping breaths of the stagnant air into his lungs, labouring to cover the ground without losing his footing. He was almost there. He could see the artificial glimmer of a red taillight up ahead.
Then came a growl of tyres and the heavy clunk of metal hitting the forest floor, followed by a skid and the crashing of leaves and branches as the bike and its rider were dragged down into the gorge.
Ryan skidded to a halt less than a minute later, following the track of the motorcycle until it disappeared. He peered down the steep incline and saw it smashed against a tree at the bottom, metal twisted and headlight still flickering on and off.
Then he spotted the man shaking himself off, limping away from the motorcycle but otherwise unharmed. Ryan watched him stalk through the trees, looking for his prey. Ryan cast his eyes around and in a burst of almost paternal love, found her lying a short distance away, curled up in the foetal position.
MacKenzie.
He swiftly crouched down to check the pulse at her neck and found it uneven but strong. He might have wept at the sight of her bruised, torn face and feet; at the ankle that had now swollen to the size of a cricket ball. But it was the blood seeping from her leg that gave him most cause for concern. He didn’t hesitate and removed his jacket to keep her warm, then felt around for a thin, sapling branch, rubbery and pliable which he used to wind around her calf to stem the blood.
Ryan heard rustling leaves nearby and he did the only thing he could, which was to create a diversion. Reluctantly, he left MacKenzie and stepped forward to look down into the steep incline.
“Edwards!” he called out.
He stood at the top of the incline as the other man crouched at the bottom, poised like an animal about to take flight. Edwards’ head whipped around and up, following the sound of his voice.
Then he let out a snarl and began to charge back up the hill.
Ryan had the better of him to start with. Being on higher ground allowed him to choose his moment and, as the shadowy figure drew near, he charged down to meet him. They met like two rutting stags, light and dark clashing together, melding and rolling down the ravine. Arms thrashing, legs kicking out as they slid down and down through the trees, hurtling towards the whinstone rock overlooking the river at the bottom.
CHAPTER 30
“It’s been too long,” Phillips muttered.
Anna looked up and met his worried eyes. They were still huddled in their position on the north side of the river in the visitors’ car park near High Force waterfall. There had been no report of MacKenzie emerging safely from the farmhouse about a mile further south and it was now almost eight o’clock. Another five minutes and Ryan had given orders for the armed response team to go in.
Lowerson spoke in urgent tones into his radio, querying positions, asking for updates, but finding there were none. Beneath the yellowish-green light of the solitary street lamp, his young face appeared faded and worn down by worry.
“Ryan said to give it until five-past-eight,” he said, for the tenth time.
The three of them looked among themselves and Phillips fixed his young protégé with a meaningful stare. Understanding it, Lowerson nodded and spoke again into his radio.
“They’ve heard gunshots,” he said. “Response Team A is going in now.”
It felt like a lifetime while they waited for the response team to make their way to the farmhouse. Through their radios, they heard raised voices and gas canisters being released as armed officers made the premises safe. When they did, the news was not good.
“Target clear,” came the ultimate response. “But there are signs of assault beside the door. The chief inspector’s headgear has been found discarded on the grass outside.”
Lowerson listened as the response team searched the immediate area in expanding circles, while Anna sank into a crouched position, breathing hard. Phillips stooped to put a protective arm around her shoulder, but then rose again and removed the headset he wore, slinging it onto the back seat of the squad car.
“Frank? Frank, where are you going?”
“I’m going after Denise,” he told them. “If they’re not at the farmhouse, it’s because they’ve gone off on foot. The only place that isn’t cordoned off is the river, down there.”
He jabbed a finger towards the wooded entrance leading down to High Force waterfall and the river flowing into it.
“That’s where they’ll be.”
When he lumbered off towards the tourist entrance leading down into the falls, nobody tried to stop him.
Nobody could.
* * *
MacKenzie was lying face down in the mossy undergrowth when she came around. She must have fallen unconscious at some point after Edwards’ crash, her body giving in to stress and exhaustion after her desperate flight through the forest. The rifle still lay beside her, blending into the dark brown compost and she reached for it like a comfort blanket.
Pain ricocheted through her body and suddenly everything came back to her. The flash of his knife, the sight of him chasing her atop the angry, monstrous roar of the motorcycle. Her teeth began to chatter and she reached down to rip a blood-soaked strip of denim from the bottom of her frayed jeans, already cut short to use as strapping for her feet. Her right eye was blurry and stung painfully, and she knew a branch had caught it somewhere through the trees.
She forced her fingers to work but then realised somebody had already tied a long, rubbery shoot just above her knee to stem the blood loss. Then she noticed a thick black parka jacket had been draped across her back to keep her warm. She recognised the scent and feel of it.
Ryan!
MacKenzie started to cry silent tears of relief, unable to believe they had found her when it seemed like all hope had been lost. She struggled to her feet and, using the rifle as a walking stick, moved to the edge of the incline to peer down into the darkness. She saw the flashing headlight of the motorcycle but in the thin light surrounding it she could make out no sign of Edwards or Ryan.
Fear made her tremble again and, for a moment, she didn’t know if she could carry on. It was hopeless. Then she heard a voice, one she thought she might never hear again.
“DENISE!”
It seemed to come from very far away, across on the other side of the trees and for a moment she thought she’d imagined it, like a mirage.
Then it came again.
“Frank,” she croaked happily, and began picking her way down the hill towards the river.
* * *
Ryan and Edwards tumbled down the steep incline in a flurry of leaves and twigs, battering against the sides of trees until the land evened out towards the edge of the forest. A hard ridge of whinstone rose up ahead of them, flanking the river gorge on either side, and they were thrown apart as each man tried to stop himself falling over the high edge of it and down into the rocky waters below. Winded and bruised, Ryan recovered himself as quickly as he could and stood on shaking legs, absurdly grateful for the stab vest that had cushioned some of his fall.
Edwards was on his feet again and Ryan looked at him properly in the fading light. His face was covered with blood from the injuries MacKenzie had inflicted and the wounds were caked with dust and soil. His clothing was torn—
His clothing was torn, Ryan corrected, noticing that Edwards seemed to be dressed entirely in clothes stolen from the cottage in Durham before it had been burned to the ground.
As he studied Edwards, he felt as if he were coming face-to-face with a rabid dog; an animal that had returned to its natural habitat and knew every inch of it better than he did. Edwards was un
recognisable from the pampered man he had known and the only thing that shone clearly through the mud and grime was the white flash of his teeth.
“I believe I said ‘no police’,” Edwards growled, in a voice so low Ryan struggled to hear it.
“I must have misheard you,” he countered. “I thought you said ‘bring all the police’.”
Edwards started to laugh and it was an ugly sound.
“I’m going to miss the banter we have together, when you’re gone,” he hissed.
“Really? Because the moment you’re back behind bars, I’m not going to miss anything about you.”
Edwards took a step closer, then another.
“That’s far enough,” Ryan snapped. “Come quietly, now. There’s no way out of here; the entire place is surrounded by armed police.”
They must have made it to the farmhouse by now, Ryan thought quickly. They would be combing the area in circles that would lead them here, eventually.
The question was whether it would be soon enough.
And was Denise alright?
“Where’s Denise?” Ryan added, feigning ignorance. “I couldn’t see your usual efforts up at the farmhouse, so I presume she got away from you.”
Edwards felt his anger grow to fever pitch.
“I dumped her body in the forest.”
“I think not,” Ryan said. “If that were the case, you’d be parading around telling me how brilliant you are. Instead, you’re standing there looking like a poor man’s Rambo.”
Ryan took a step forward himself, risking a quick glance over the edge of the whinstone cliff to his right. It was a high drop to the waters below and the stone was wet and slippery.
“I’ll find her easily enough,” Edwards said. “It won’t be hard hunting down that lame bitch.”
“You’ll never get that far.”
“Want to know how far I got? Or shall I wait to share that with Phillips? I’m sure he’d love to hear about it.”
Ryan just laughed.
“You know something, Keir? You’re full of shit. You couldn’t get it up even if you wanted to. Those days are long gone, aren’t they? The only time you feel like a man is when you’re killing women who look like your mummy. You’re pathetic.”
Edwards began to shake violently.
“Shut up. Never speak of my mother.”
“Why not? We were just chatting to her earlier. She’s been living right under your nose these past few years, Keir, and you never knew it.”
“You’re lying. You’re lying!”
Ryan threw his arms out wide, deliberately goading him.
“Look at me. Take a good, long look. I don’t need to lie. I don’t need to change my name or kill people just to feel normal. It’s a sickness, whatever has made you the way you are, and it’s something I can’t and don’t even want to understand. Maybe you had a bad mother—who knows? But people get over things like that. They grow up and they move on. You never did. You wanted her all to yourself, didn’t you? But she gave it all to him. And even after you’d killed him, got rid of him for good, she still wanted him and not you.”
Edwards made a deep sound in his throat unlike anything Ryan had ever heard before.
“She’s dead. She told me she was going away, that she couldn’t stand living anymore.”
“No, she’s not dead,” Ryan shook his head and felt a queer sense of pity creep into his bones, something he never thought he would feel for this man. “She’s alive. But you’ve tried killing her so many times before, haven’t you? Did you feel robbed—is that what sent you spiralling two years ago? She’d robbed you of the dream of killing her yourself.”
Edwards closed his eyes. Fleeting images of dark-haired women popped into his mind and every one of them looked like his mother.
He opened them again and began to clap slowly, the noise reverberating around the rock face.
“Bravo, chief inspector. That was an excellent effort. Eight out of ten for delivery but I’d have gone with the daddy angle, myself. Charles Drewe really was a bastard, you know. Completely insane, when you think about it,” Edwards cocked a hip, as if settling down for a cosy chat. “The things he used to do to her…well, is it any wonder that the apple didn’t fall far from the tree?”
Edwards gave a self-deprecating laugh, then surveyed Ryan with his own measure of pity.
“Poor Ryan,” he said. “Always looking for an underdog. Always hoping for the best in people. Always trying to understand the reasons why.”
Ryan inclined his head.
“It was worth a try.”
Edwards snorted.
“Didn’t it ever occur to you I like who I am—who I’ve come to be? I’ve never felt more free, more liberated. For years, I had to pretend to be just like everybody else. I moved among the herd, smelling their stench, but all the time I was waiting. Waiting to flourish; to be my finest, basest self. The self that we all want to be, if we ask the voice buried deep inside.”
He dropped his voice to a murmur, coaxing Ryan to agree with him.
“If you listen to it, that voice will whisper the same thing to you. We’re like two sides of the same coin, you and me, but only one of us has been brave enough to grasp life. I don’t go through the motions anymore and I don’t answer to the laws that man has made for me. I am my own law.”
Ryan listened to his ravings and he heard the search team moving closer through the trees.
“Don’t tell me you’ve never looked at a body and wondered,” Edwards continued.
He had also heard the approaching officers and started to step backward along the whinstone, his feet parallel to the jagged edge and an eighty-foot drop below.
“You must wonder what it feels like.” He watched Ryan with his hypnotic black eyes. “The indescribable power when their blood runs through your fingers. The look in their eyes when they realise you’re the last thing they’ll ever see before they die. The pleasure is exquisite,” he moaned.
Ryan felt bile rise up in his throat but he kept a sharp eye on Edwards’ movements.
“I remember the look of blind fear in your eyes, when I had my hands around your throat. Is that the kind of thing you’re talking about?”
Edwards smiled at the tactic, then looked downward as Phillips’ cries echoed up from the pathway below.
“Let’s see if you can recreate the magic, shall we?”
Before Ryan could stop him, he turned and ran long the whinstone wall, his footsteps barely an inch away from the slippery edge and Ryan could see he was going to try making a break for it along the eastern path of the river, over the top of the waterfall.
He threw caution to the wind and sprinted after him.
CHAPTER 31
Phillips burst through the small tourist gate leading down to High Force waterfall, intending to cut across the river to the other side. It would save time, rather than running all the way to the bridge and circling around to the south side. But either way, he knew anyone in their right mind would head for the river; it was a natural pathway to civilisation.
His feet skidded on the narrow, tarmacked path leading down to the falls. It was damp from the wet air rising from the bubbling water and trees had grown in a natural arch above the pathway, some of them fallen and crushed after high winds. He almost lost his footing and threw out a hand to grab the wooden handrail separating him from a steep fall to the river on his left.
Eventually, Phillips came to the bottom of the pathway and heard the waterfall even before he saw it. Thundering gallons of water from the River Tees cascaded over the jagged outcrop of rock known as Whin Sill, eroding the softer limestone and sandstone beneath the hard dolomite that had risen as molten lava some three hundred million years ago. He stood overlooking it, squinting in the very last light of day and scanning the riverbank and the rocky clifftop on the other side.
“Denise!”
The sound erupted from him like a primal scream that could not be contained. When there was no reply, he tried ag
ain.
“DENISE!”
Again, there came no reply and he was about to start picking his way across the rocks when two tall, male figures appeared silhouetted atop the cliff on the other side of the gorge.
Phillips tugged his firearm from its holster and aimed it high.
He lowered it again when he realised that, in the near-darkness, he couldn’t distinguish one man from the other.
* * *
Anna stood beside Lowerson’s squad car with her hands in her pockets, staring out at the trees and fields surrounding the visitors’ car park at High Force. There was an inn directly opposite the tourist entrance where walkers could stay overnight and enjoy the warm hearth and convivial atmosphere after a long day hiking the fells. It had been evacuated but the landlord had left it open for the police to use as a temporary base of operations. Lowerson bustled off in that direction to help formulate a new action plan as it became increasingly clear that The Hacker was at large again, and on foot. They were yet to find Ryan or MacKenzie, although blood trails had been reported through a wooded area to the south side of the river, alongside a fresh motorcycle trail leading north.
Anna’s right hand closed around the heavy firearm in her pocket, burning a hole through the material.
Police in full safety gear talked among themselves and some of them sent her a friendly smile every now and then, recognising her as their chief inspector’s fiancée. They were probably trying to be kind, to reassure her that she was not alone and that everything would turn out for the best.
But Ryan was out there, against a man without principle and without conscience. There was no reasoning with somebody like that and no mercy either.
She brushed her fingers against the firearm and thought again of how Ryan had once overcome his natural aversion to violence to save her life.
He might be out there right now, desperately needing her.