by LJ Ross
“Next of kin?” This, from one of the constables.
“Her family moved to the Isle of Man while Claire decided to stay here. I notified her mother and father earlier,” Ryan thought briefly of that difficult telephone call. “They’re travelling over later today. She had some friends at the bar where she worked. We’ll be speaking to them by close of play today.”
“D’ you reckon it’s a copycat?”
“The style doesn’t ring any bells with Amy’s murder, except the similarities in physical type and the fact that her body was dumped in the same place. At this stage, it could easily have been some crackpot looking to make a name for himself.”
Ryan thought of all the men and women who answered public appeals for information, claiming to be murderers and rapists. Often, they were sad, unwell individuals who lived mundane lives. Their claims to a morbid kind of fame only hindered police investigations, wasting hours of police time. It was possible that one of them had taken their opportunity to bask in the limelight, turning fantasy into reality and picking on an unsuspecting young girl as their vessel. Had one of them tipped off the local press, to ensure the story was covered? It was worth looking into.
“Have you heard anything from Faulkner?” Phillips asked.
Ryan swallowed a bite of steak pasty and washed it down with a gulp of something fizzy and sugary before answering. He never claimed to have highbrow culinary tastes.
“He’s still up at Sycamore Gap, working around the site. It’ll be tomorrow at the earliest before he’s able to tell us anything solid but the basic summary is that Claire was found nude, her body cut up, no identifying features on or around her. No obvious kill site where he might have expected to find major blood spill but they’re expanding the search.”
Phillips dabbed at his chin with a napkin.
“Unless it was part of this guy’s ‘plan’, or whatever the hell you want to call it, I don’t see the point in dismembering Claire’s body, if she was going to head up there with him anyway.”
There was a short silence while they thought it over.
“He might just enjoy it,” MacKenzie said. “There’s no telling what some of these wackos like to do in their spare time.”
Ryan was usually the first and last to agree that it was often a waste of time trying to apply logic to the machinations of an illogical mind but, sometimes, there was a practical reason behind their actions.
“Could be for transport,” he offered. “With Amy, it’s fairly certain that she walked out to Sycamore Gap on her own steam and was killed there, where she was interred still in one piece. In the case of Claire Burns, we don’t know yet whether she walked the distance herself, or whether she was killed elsewhere and required transporting afterwards. Much easier to transport a body in pieces than as one dead weight.”
Phillips had always admired Ryan’s unique skill for putting himself into the mind of a killer, but sometimes the image was so vivid that it worried him. It was good to keep a healthy distance from the kind of mind they were seeking to find.
Ryan appointed a reader-receiver from a selection of keen young detective constables who had begun filtering into the room. They would sieve through all the paperwork that was already piling up and try to order it. He felt absurdly guilty choosing someone to fill the shoes usually worn by DC Jack Lowerson, but it couldn’t be helped. He made a mental note to stop by the hospital on his way home.
“MacKenzie, I’m delegating the legwork on Claire Burns to you,” he began simply. Denise sat up straighter in her seat and professional pride bloomed. Knowing that Ryan would trust her to run the investigative work into their most recent victim was a huge compliment coming from a man whose perfectionism was a bit of an urban legend around CID.
“Let’s start looking at the CCTV footage. Claire was taken on her way home from work, she must have been. That means that our perpetrator needed some kind of transport to get her from there to Sycamore Gap, stopping off somewhere to make the kill. There are a bunch of ANPR cameras in a ring around the city. He would have to be a lucky bugger to miss going through one of them, so let’s start getting the footage back.”
MacKenzie made a quick note.
“What sort of timescale should I ask for?”
Ryan paused to consider.
“The place where she works closes at ten-thirty on a Sunday. Factor in some clearing up and you’re looking at her leaving work any time after eleven.”
He started to say something else, then considered the geography of the city.
“He will have headed out west, most likely, because it’s the most direct route. Going along the A69 would be quicker, so check the footage there first. On the other hand, if he took the B6318 his journey would have been more scenic, it would have taken longer, but there are fewer cameras.”
MacKenzie sighed.
“Let’s hope he didn’t put that much thought into his route.”
Ryan said nothing. They all knew that a person who was able to kill and transport a body with the kind of attention to detail that they had seen, would be the same kind of person to consider CCTV cameras.
“Bollocks.”
The room turned to Phillips, whose statement captured what they were all thinking.
Ryan moved back to the board and gestured towards the picture of Amy Llewellyn.
“Let’s catch up on our progress with Amy. I don’t want any of us losing sight of the fact that both girls are equally important and should be treated as such.” He could not forget Rose Llewellyn’s misery the previous day. She deserved some answers. “Claire’s body will demand much of the forensic effort, given how recently she died, but in all else I want to see a strong effort on both lines of enquiry.”
There were nods of agreement around the room.
Phillips had taken over the bulk of the work digging into Amy Llewellyn’s background and cold case file, alongside looking into the missing persons reports relating to any similar women who had gone missing over the past few years. Ryan concentrated his attention on the forensic evidence found on Amy’s person.
“I didn’t know that you could do a tox report on a set of bones?” Phillips was always the curious one in the class.
“The technicians look at the hair. It’s one of the few parts of the body that remains stable, even after a long period of time. It can also tell us a lot of interesting things about her diet and what was swimming around in her system, because it grows at a rate of around on centimetre per month so we can compare her system, month-on-month.”
“So, you can see if she was drinking or doing drugs or whatever?”
“Yep,” Ryan agreed, picking up the printed copy of Doctor Pinter’s summary. “In this case, Amy lived a healthy life with a balanced diet and, judging from the older portion of her hair, there were no unusual chemical substances. However, more recent growth indicated a different chemical balance. ‘Poor diet alongside an altered chemical composition for approximately three to five months prior to her death’, Pinter says.”
Ryan considered the new information and thought of the statements taken from the Llewellyn family around the time Amy went missing.
“Her family said that she became withdrawn and that this seriously affected her health and disposition. There was some suggestion of mental health issues.”
“You mean she was a bit down in the dumps?” Phillips asked.
“Thank you, Frank, for distilling an entire field of psychological disorder into one handy catchphrase,” Ryan drawled.
“Always happy to help. When you say there was a ‘different chemical balance’, what do you mean by that? In layman’s terms,” Phillips emphasized.
“Pinter seems to think we’re looking at artificially increased levels of phthalates. That says to me that she was on some kind of SSRI-based anti-depressant.”
“What the hell is a farthlate?” Phillips could feel a headache coming on.
“A ‘phthalate’ is a large group of chemicals which are produced when
certain drugs metabolise in the body. Usually, they find it when someone has ingested one of a group of antidepressant drugs known as ‘selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors’.”
“You could have said that in the first place,” Phillips grumbled. “But I guess the point here is that if she was on anti-depressants, that’s consistent with what her family said about her being unhappy. Only thing is, there’s nothing about it in the medical history we’ve got from her doctor.”
Interesting, Ryan thought.
“Phillips, see if you can double check those records from her GP to make sure that there wasn’t an administrative oversight. Failing that, see if there’s a record of her picking up a prescription at any of the local pharmacies. There probably won’t be anything, given the length of time, but it’s worth a shot.”
“Her mother’s a pharmacist,” Phillips offered. “But categorically denies dishing out any drugs to her daughter. The records at the pharmacy where she used to work support her story.”
“Amy might have been depressed, but that isn’t how she died,” MacKenzie brought the discussion neatly back around and Ryan nodded his approval.
“Pinter confirms that Amy would almost certainly have died following one or more hard blows to the side of her skull. We’re looking at a hard blunt object or impact with something flat and solid.”
“She didn’t just fall and crack her head on something?” Phillips popped a stick of nicotine gum in his mouth.
“Sometimes happens,” Ryan agreed. “But that goes against Pinter’s opinion that she suffered multiple blows.”
“Poor lass,” Phillips said gruffly. MacKenzie walked her fingers across the space between them and squeezed his hand. Catching it, Ryan raised a single black eyebrow and she snatched her fingers back again.
“Faulkner has come up trumps,” Ryan picked up another printed report and re-read it while he paced the room. “His technicians were able to extract several samples of skin cells which had imprinted on the underside of Amy’s bracelet. While it remained attached to her wrist, it was largely preserved while the body decomposed around it.”
“I’m surprised there was anything to extract at all,” Phillips commented idly.
“Low copy number DNA profiling,” Ryan explained. “It’s a brilliant advance in the field because it picks up even the tiniest samples. In this case, just a few skin cells.”
“Bet her killer never thought of that,” Phillips said.
“I can only hope he’s quaking in his murderous boots,” Ryan replied, without looking up.
“Faulkner has found a total of three separate DNA samples on the bracelet and on Amy’s clothing fibres. One of these samples is a match to Amy Llewellyn’s own DNA.”
“What about the other two?”
“There are a further two male samples. No matches found on the database.”
Ryan was disappointed at the outcome, because it seemed the evidence was not in support of it being Keir Edwards’ handiwork. His DNA was very firmly on record, yet there was no match with the samples found on Amy Llewellyn. It wasn’t absolutely conclusive, but it certainly didn’t support his working theory. He wasn’t in the habit of swallowing humble pie and it slid down his throat with difficulty.
“That’s still great work, despite the fact we couldn’t find further matches on the system. ‘Every contact leaves a trace’, or so they say,’” he said laconically.
“Any idea where the bracelet came from?” MacKenzie asked.
“I showed a picture of it to Amy’s family,” Phillips interjected. “They don’t recognise it.”
“So, that’s something to look at. Once Faulkner has finished with it, I want you to research where it came from. Does the father check out?”
Phillips nodded.
“I’ll get around to talking to him again, but so far, both parents are clean. They had dinner, then stayed in the house all night when Amy went missing.”
“Blood runs thicker than water,” Ryan commented, thinking that family members often corroborated each other’s alibis.
“It does,” Phillips agreed, “but the original investigators could find no hard evidence against either of them.”
“Yet,” Ryan snapped. Now, they had Amy to help them find out the clues to her death and, so thinking, he turned back to Faulkner’s report.
“Faulkner’s still examining the fibres, so we’ll have to wait for the results.” He let the papers fall back onto his desk and rolled his shoulders. Time was marching on and he could feel his team starting to get restless.
“We interviewed the victim’s family this morning and the bottom line is that Amy was a clean-living girl, with a medical career ahead of her. At the time she went missing, her family were solid, too. Since then, her mother has suffered from recurrent anxiety and depression, which is common given the circumstances. Her father seems to have coped pretty well, all told.”
“The mother – Rose Llewellyn – didn’t have depression before Amy went missing?”
Ryan met MacKenzie’s sharp gaze and understood where her mind had wandered.
“That’s good thinking, but there’s no suggestion that Rose Llewellyn suffered from depression, or was prescribed any SSRI-based medication before Amy went missing.”
MacKenzie shrugged.
“Phillips has been looking into like crimes. Bring us up to speed, Frank.”
Phillips tore off a scrap of paper and wrapped his gum in it before speaking.
“Right. Aside from the number tallied up by The Hacker last year, there are a few cases which might be worth a second glance.” Phillips shuffled in his chair to ease the numbness in his rear, which was beginning to react to the hard plastic seat cover. “I had a bit of a gander at Missing Persons since 2005, locally, that is. Happens that I found a few other women who’ve gone missing since then.”
“That’s hardly surprising, Frank,” Ryan felt obliged to point out.
Phillips shooed away the comment with one broad hand.
“Give us a minute! I was going to say, all these women who went missing are the same type. They were all early-twenties, slight build, dark-haired. What’s more, they all went missing around June.” He wiggled his brows and thumbed through his notepad to find the list he had made. “Here we are: June 20th 2006, June 21st 2008, June 21st 2009, June 18th 2011 and then June 21st 2012.”
“Well,” Ryan clapped his hands together, to wake them all up. “Call me crazy, but I think there’s a pattern in there somewhere.”
“You’re darn tootin’ there is,” Phillips agreed.
“We’re looking at one or two-year gaps, if we work on the basis that these crimes are connected. Phillips, can I rely on you to carry on looking into the cold files and report back to us?”
“On it like a car bonnet, boss.”
Ryan flashed a grin. He could feel renewed energy building in the room.
“Hasn’t anybody noticed something else which is a bit … peculiar?”
MacKenzie rose from her chair and picked up a bright marker pen, then circled the dates.
“They’re all on or around 21st June.”
Phillips leaned back in his chair and looked heavenward. Ryan felt his stomach plummet to the floor. The young reader-receiver asked the obvious question.
“I don’t get it. Why’s that date so special?”
Ryan remembered having asked the same question six months’ earlier, on the windy summit of an island priory.
“It’s the summer solstice,” he said quietly. “Neo-pagans and several other religions including Christianity consider the date an important one.”
“Aye,” Phillips said, turning to the detective constable. “But what you really need to know is that those loonies we caged up on Holy Island thought that the solstice was important. Now, we’re wondering if there isn’t somebody else out there thinking the same thing.”
“Or if it’s somebody else, at all.” Ryan muttered.
CHAPTER 8
The list of ‘Mor
e Important Things’ that he could be doing was many and varied, Ryan thought. He could be investigating two murders, which, unless he was very much mistaken, was about to turn into an investigation of several older murders, too. When he had, with rigid calm, tried to explain this to his superior officer less than thirty minutes’ ago, his remonstrations had been met with a bland look and a force as strong as iron.
“We made a deal, Ryan. An appointment has been made for you. If you choose not to keep it, you will be removed from this investigation.”
With almost anybody else, Ryan might have been tempted to call his bluff and blow off the appointment with the departmental psychiatrist and to hell with the consequences. But one look at Gregson’s face told him that the man was serious.
That was how, instead of interviewing potential suspects, he found himself sitting awkwardly in the waiting room of the serviced office building where Doctor Patrick Donovan worked. He had been here many times before, mainly to attend what they liked to call ‘psychological supervision’, which all officers in his line of work were required to submit to from time to time, particularly following a difficult case. Over the years, he had seen more than his fair share. Those sessions had never bothered him greatly. They constituted a sixty-minute chat with someone who had, much to Ryan’s surprise, turned out to be a very amiable person. Patrick “Paddy” Donovan was a man very comfortable in his own slightly sagging skin. Hair which had once been as black as Ryan’s was now peppered with grey as he edged closer to fifty and there was a definite paunch beneath the linen shirt he wore, but in general he was a man unfazed by the passing years.
No, Ryan mused, he had no personal grievance with Paddy Donovan, but he did have a problem with what he represented. Voluntarily arranged, promptly-attended sessions which came part-and-parcel with his job had morphed into strictly enforced appointments recommended by the occupational therapist attached to the Northumbria Police Constabulary. Following his sister’s death, he had not been left to grieve in private. The press had hounded him, hungry for a glimpse of the detective who had failed to stop the man who killed his own sister. Then, pressure had come to bear from the Powers That Be, who felt that it would be in everybody’s best interests if he attended some sessions with Doctor Donovan.