Holy Island: A DCI Ryan Mystery (The DCI Ryan Mysteries Book 1)

by LJ Ross

  “I knew things hadn’t worked out with Alex,” Anna said slowly. “I heard that they broke up not long after I left the island but I was still surprised to find her living above the pub after all this time. She had such big plans.”

  The vicar nodded, understanding perfectly.

  “We find comfort in familiar landscapes,” he said quietly.

  “There wasn’t much comfort to be found in her apartment,” Anna commented. “The place was a pigsty, paint peeling and everything. I even took it up with Bill afterwards; he said she wouldn’t let him touch the place.”

  Ingles considered for a moment. “Perhaps she wanted to be in control of her own environment?” He thought of his wife and her obsessive stacking of scatter cushions around the vicarage. “Perhaps, in her own way, she was a meticulous woman.”

  “Perhaps,” Anna agreed and then shook herself. “Anyway, I told her that I was on the island for a short time and that it would be nice to spend some time together. It was intended as an olive branch.”

  “Did she accept it?”

  “I don’t know why I offered it in the first place, Father. In all my life, I can’t remember ever having wronged my sister and yet I found myself running to her. Why was that?” She turned baffled eyes to him and he smiled that kind smile again.

  “Because you loved her and didn’t want old hurts to separate you forever. You drew on a strength that Megan couldn’t, because she simply didn’t have it.”

  Anna nodded. “I honestly forgive her for her betrayal with Alex,” she said openly. “I stopped loving him a long time ago, if I ever really did. He was a port in a storm, in many ways. Perhaps he was the same for her.

  “I said the same thing to her,” she recalled. “Told her to put it behind us and that it didn’t matter anymore. She laughed at me.”

  Ingles frowned.

  “Yes,” Anna nodded. “She told me that he had never mattered to her, that he was only ever useful as a means of hurting me.”

  Megan had used different words which she didn’t care to repeat to the vicar. Anna could picture her sister as she’d stood in the doorway, her curves spilling through the ratty dressing gown she wore. Even without make-up, her face had been striking, all the more so as she spewed her venom.

  Do you think I care about Alex? She had laughed. He was a quick fuck, as far as I was concerned. A laugh between the sheets and it was all the sweeter for him because then he could say he’d had both sisters.

  Didn’t you care about my feelings? Anna had asked pathetically.

  Why should I? Megan scorned. There’s nothing that you have that I couldn’t take away from you.

  Those words seemed to convey a wealth of emotion and standing on the doorstep, cold and wet, Anna had known there was no shared feeling to draw on. She remembered all the years she had been tormented by this woman, all the little hurts and little lies which Megan had told.

  I love you more than Anna does, Daddy, she would say as she crawled on Andy Taylor’s lap, desperately seeking his drunken affection and thinking it might save her from the blows he would later inflict.

  Shaken, Anna pulled her hand away from the vicar’s clasp.

  “Thank you for listening, Father. I need to head back now.”

  Ingles stood and watched her as she stepped out of the hallowed walls into the world again.

  When she left the church, morning had truly broken and the village was starting to come alive. Walking across the main square towards the road which led to the fort and her cottage, Anna saw the pitying looks and heard the whispered comments as she passed a group of local women. Back rigid, she carried on and didn’t once look at the pub or the police tape as she passed it. Consequently, she didn’t see the man who leaned idly against the stone wall, an ordinary fixture of the community. He watched her progress and wondered.

  CHAPTER 11

  He was waiting for her when she arrived back at the little white-washed cottage just before eight-thirty, as she had known he would be. She watched Ryan push away from where he had been leaning against the porch and allowed herself a moment to appreciate him. His dark hair whipped wildly around his face in the morning breeze and the ends brushed the collar of his navy jacket. He stood tall and sombre, with a cardboard file tucked under one arm, reminding her why he was there.

  Those watchful eyes followed her progress up the path and she was annoyed to find that she was stalling, her steps slowing to prolong the moment before he would formally tell her that her sister was dead.

  “Dr Taylor.” He took in the shadowed eyes and pale cheeks, the unmistakeable signs of a sleepless night.

  “Hello, Chief Inspector,” she responded politely. If he wanted to be aloof, that was fine with her. Head high, she moved past him to open the front door. Her fingers fumbled once with the keys.

  She moved along the narrow hallway towards the kitchen at the back of the house and didn’t wait to see if he followed. She could hear his quiet tread behind her.

  “Do you want coffee?”

  He always wanted coffee.

  “Thanks, if you’re making some for yourself.” They waited a few moments in uncomfortable silence while he prowled around the room and she ground coffee beans. Eventually, she poured the fragrant liquid into cheerful spotted mugs.

  Anna sat at one of the homely wicker chairs which had been placed by a set of French windows which led directly out onto the beach. There was a little bistro table and another chair, which she gestured for him to take.

  He folded his long body into the chair, drank some of the coffee and let it burn his mouth before he looked at her again.

  “I regret to inform you that your sister, Megan Taylor, was found dead late last night.” He fell back on rigid formality.

  She had known, Anna thought. She had seen the blood for herself, the police tape as she’d walked through the village. She had seen it in the sympathetic eyes of the vicar that morning and she had shed her tears through the long hours of the night and in the empty church pews. Still, the words cut through her defences and she had to look away, to stare out across the lonely stretch of sand.

  “I’m very sorry for your loss,” he carried on inadequately. He had never been any good at this part. He wanted to shove out of the chair, pace a bit. Instead, he stayed seated and watched her battle with unspoken feelings.

  She almost smiled. “Got any more clichés you want to roll out, Ryan?”

  He was glad that she could find humour even in her despair. Tenderness washed over him and he found himself reaching for her hand, rubbing his thumb over the soft skin of her palm.

  She would pull her hand away, she thought. In another minute, she would tug it away and remember that he was a moody, arrogant son of a bitch who had left her without a second glance last night. Yet, she let her hand stay where it was and enjoyed the sensation of comfort being given from one person to another.

  “I’m sorry, Anna. The CSI team need to take some prints from you, as next of kin, and a swab.”

  Anna was surprised but couldn’t quite work herself up to being bothered by the prospect.

  “That’s fine,” she said and then asked the burning question. “Where did you find her?”

  He sighed.

  “She was on the roof of the pub, beside the weather vane.”

  Anna said nothing for long minutes.

  “Why there?” she asked eventually.

  He didn’t have any answer to that but he planned to.

  “I never really understood her,” she found herself saying into the silence, her eyes looking far out to sea. “There was only eighteen months between us, but it could have been a lifetime. I struggled for years to find things we could agree on, but never did.”

  “Siblings always argue,” he said quietly, thinking of his own sister with affection, before he remembered. Unexpectedly, he felt another jab of emotion he recognised as homesickness. He pushed it to one side and focussed on the woman in front of him, huddled into a thick cream knitted jump
er which made her seem even smaller than she was.

  “Not like this,” she answered softly. “I never understood her, never liked her,” she swallowed that painful truth, “and I’ll live with the guilt for the rest of my life.”

  “It’s not your fault that she died, Anna.” The words were easy, but he knew that believing them was much harder.

  “It depends what you mean,” she answered. “I didn’t kill her, but I think that the Megan who was, or who might have been, died a long time ago. I did nothing to stop that.”

  She lost herself for a moment, thinking of when she had been very young. They had both escaped from the house her family used to own. Her father had stayed out all night, probably spent with another woman, she knew that now. Her parents had argued and then the violence had started. Self-preservation had forced the girls to run out of the back door down to the beach in their bare feet. Megan’s legs held faded bruises just visible beneath the hem of her pinafore dress and Anna’s back was a criss-cross of marks from the brown leather belt her father had used on her the previous day. She hid them underneath a thin t-shirt with scuffed shorts. To escape, they had played in the sand together, Megan directing her on how to build a proper sandcastle. Megan always liked to be in charge.

  Anna had wandered off to play in the surf, dangling her toes in the cold water and collecting shells to make into a necklace. She went too far out, she remembered. Unknowingly, she had wandered along what was called the ‘Pilgrim’s Causeway’; a stretch of sand which lay parallel to the tarmacked road of the causeway and was only visible when the tide rolled out. Christian pilgrims had walked along the sandy route for centuries.

  The water had risen deceptively, though, only in shallow pools at first then a few inches above her ankles. The seven-year-old child had known real panic when she had looked around her and seen her sister waving frantically for her to come back to the safety of the beach. Gripped with fear, she had dropped her shells and tried to wade through the water, which was rising fast. Over a hundred metres from the shore, she had tried to swim the rest of the way, thin arms and legs exhausted and struggling against the material of her clothes. Her mouth went under and she remembered a fatalism had crept over her which made her stop flailing, almost allowing herself to drown.

  That was when she had seen Megan, tired and desperate herself, swimming a ragged breast stroke. She had dragged her the rest of the way to shore and up out of the water. To this day, Anna didn’t know how they had both survived the current; she only remembered Megan’s words as they had spluttered on the beach.

  “Don’t you dare scare me like that again, Anna! We’re sisters, we have to stay together.”

  Remembering those words, she found that she disagreed with Reverend Ingles. Her sister had had strength inside her. What was more, Megan had used it to save Anna, but she hadn’t been able to do the same.

  “Anna?”

  Ryan watched the play of emotions and wondered what memories ran through her mind.

  “How did she die, Ryan?” Anna fixed her gaze on him again and he knew that she didn’t want soft platitudes or half-answers.

  “Badly,” he answered truthfully. “She had her throat cut, Anna.”

  Her face paled even more, but her gaze didn’t waver.

  “In the nude, washed, her body marked?”

  Ryan frowned, dark brows drawing together. Those details had not been made public.

  “Yes. How did you know?”

  “I remembered the image of Lucy. I presume whoever killed that girl also killed my sister.”

  “We haven’t determined that yet,” he said. “Have you discussed your thoughts with anyone?”

  “Of course not,” she said wearily.

  He paused for a few moments, considered how to begin.

  “Best keep it that way. I need to ask you some questions, on record.” He waited for her slight nod and went through the standard cautions before beginning. “When did you last see your sister, Anna?”

  She had been expecting this, even welcomed the routine questions as a diversion from the relentless guilt.

  “Around four, yesterday afternoon.” She relayed the same information she had told the vicar and watched him make careful notes.

  “You say she looked like she was going out?”

  “Yes, she was still in a dressing gown, hair washed and blow-dried. There was nice underwear laid out on the bed and I think I remember seeing a pair of high-heels sitting at the foot of it. It seemed an odd time of day to get changed, unless she was planning to go out.”

  Ryan nodded. Megan had been found in the nude, as Lucy had, but this time there had been crumpled clothing strewn all around her flat. He was pretty sure he remembered a dressing gown on the CSI inventory but he would check. He thought back to the statements he had received from Bill and Pete. Megan had claimed she was ill in bed with a bout of the flu and, as far as they knew, she hadn’t left her apartment that day. It didn’t add up.

  “Did you notice anything else unusual?”

  Anna considered. “At first, I thought it was strange that she didn’t invite me inside but afterwards I realised that could have been another way for her to keep me in my place, so to speak.”

  Ryan knew that his next line of questioning would be hard, maybe for both of them.

  “Your relationship with Megan was strained,” he began. “Can you tell me why that was?”

  “How long do you have?” she shrugged one shoulder, fingers fiddling with the mug of coffee she held in both hands. “As I said before, we were never close. You would think that, growing up in our household, it would have brought us closer together. That wasn’t the case.”

  She paused, saw the understanding on his face and smiled. Of course he would know about her family history, he was a detective. Still, the invasion of her privacy stung. Away from the island, she was just Anna Taylor and she was free to tell or not tell whoever she liked about her past. More often than not, she chose to forget all about it. On the island, the choice was non-existent.

  “My father wasn’t a model citizen,” she confirmed. “You could say that Megan and I both rebelled in our own ways.”

  “How so?” His voice was professional and somehow that helped her to talk.

  “She went off in search of admiration and so did I, but in very different ways. She was never without a Friday night date,” Anna remembered, not unkindly, “but unfortunately being popular with the guys can translate to being easy on an island this size. It didn’t take long for her to get through the population of males under thirty, by the time she was sixteen.”

  Ryan nodded, understanding.

  “And you?” his voice wanted to tighten but he deliberately kept it loose and unhurried.

  “I was happy to watch from the side lines. I spent most of my teens working weekends at the Heritage Centre, helping out on archaeological sites or visitors’ tours.” She paused, suddenly understanding where this was leading.

  “You’ve heard about Alex,” she said with a slight smile which seemed to mock him.

  He tried to bank down the anger which was suddenly so near the surface and completely out of character.

  “I’d like you to tell me about your sister’s relationship with Alex Walker, yes.”

  Anna looked into his impassive face, schooled into a bland expression and would have been forgiven for thinking that he was completely disinterested, until she caught the spark behind eyes which were molten.

  She took a deep breath.

  “Alex is…was,” she amended slowly, “the same age as Megan. We were all in the same class at school because on an island this size the school is tiny. They put the children of similar abilities together in the same class, so we three spent a lot of time together growing up.

  “Alex was always just a friend, to both of us, for many years. He was a confidante; he must have seen how often we came to his father’s surgery after ‘falling down the stairs’ and ‘walking into doors’.”

  Ryan
’s jaw tightened, thinking of the girl she had been. Anna took a small sip of coffee and moistened dry lips before continuing.

  “Anyway, I don’t know, around the time I turned sixteen there was a lot going on. Megan was wild,” she recalled sadly, thinking of the nights they had worried for her, “I was the opposite. I spent every waking moment hiding from my father, reading about the Dark Ages or getting under Mark’s feet at the Heritage Centre.”

  “You said that you worked there?”

  “It started off as a Saturday job but by the time I left for university I was doing shifts through the week, too. I spent Sundays helping out on digs or preservation work.”

  He nodded, made a note.

  “So,” she picked up the story. “When I was around sixteen, things were getting pretty bad at home. Alex had always understood me, or so I thought. We started spending time together, first as friends but then I suppose he awakened something inside me which I hadn’t wanted to see. He’s an attractive man.”

  Ryan tried hard not to snarl. It was all he could do not to yank her out of the cosy chair and into his arms; if there was anything to be awakened then he wanted to be the man to do it.

  Instead, he said nothing.

  “He has the kind of confidence which comes from being brought up in a loving, secure family. His parents are wonderful,” she spoke affectionately of Yvonne and Steve Walker. “For a while, they sort of adopted me.”

  She thought wistfully of the times she had been invited to the Walker household for family dinners, nights spent laughing in the warmth of their comfortable home.

  “We became an ‘item’. All very young, very sweet. He was my first,” she said openly because somehow she felt he needed to know. “He was kind and more experienced. Oh,” she laughed, “you know what he’s like with women. Back then, he was only just beginning to hone his considerable charm.”

  He was amazed that she could smile with affection at the man who had used and discarded her. He waited for her to continue.