by LJ Ross
She caught the murderous look in his eye.
“You have to understand, Ryan,” she spoke quietly. “I was young, emotionally needy. He offered me my first taste of love and stability and I wanted it, so desperately, that I think I overwhelmed him. He loved me, in his own way, but he was an eighteen-year-old boy. He wasn’t ready for that kind of commitment.”
“He was ready to commit to your sister,” the words escaped him before he had a chance to clamp a hand over his own stupid mouth. He saw her swallow another shaky mouthful of coffee.
He stood up abruptly.
“Let’s get some air,” he opened the French windows without waiting for a reply, but took her arm and led her outside onto the little deck area which overlooked the beach.
Anna allowed herself be led outside and stood beside him while the crisp breeze swept over her face. She waited until she was calm again before continuing.
“Megan dazzled him, as she dazzles a lot of men. Alex was a boy and in those days, believe it or not, Megan was vastly more experienced than he was. I don’t think there was a thought process involved; she offered him escape of the sweetest kind, no strings attached. Consequently, because there was no pressure, he was happy to offer a kind of commitment.”
Ryan considered the reasoning and understood, to a point.
“Weren’t you angry?”
“I was immeasurably hurt, at the time. I felt betrayed, unattractive, all the things a woman feels. Once I had given myself some time, I found I could forgive Alex because he was a boy who wasn’t yet a man. I could never forgive Megan, because she was my sister.”
“Did she love him?”
“No, not at all. She told me that only yesterday,” she came back to the conversation they had had before Megan died. “She told me outright that Alex had only been an exercise in proving her superiority as a woman. She did a good job of that one – I left the island two weeks later and never came back.”
Anna looked down at the sand lodged in the cracks of the deck while Ryan wondered what kind of woman would set out to hurt her sibling in such a calculated way.
“Do you know if they maintained any kind of relationship, more recently?”
Anna looked up again, her eyes troubled.
“I really have no idea,” she said honestly, “but if you’re asking me whether Alex is capable of killing Megan, or Lucy, or anyone for that matter, then the answer is no. He may be a philanderer but he’s not vicious. He just doesn’t have it in him.”
Ryan reserved judgement.
“Do you know of any reason why he might not wish it to be known that he had a relationship with your sister?”
Anna’s eyebrows raised but she thought carefully before answering.
“I suppose if he hadn’t told his wife that might be a bit awkward for him. He could have been a bit embarrassed by it,” she pondered.
Ryan was mollified to realise that Anna hadn’t kept up to date with Alex Walker’s life. She didn’t, for example, appear to know that his wife had left him.
“When was the last time you saw or spoke with Alex?”
“Yesterday afternoon, at the pub. We exchanged a few pleasantries as I was leaving Megan’s apartment.”
His ears pricked up.
“Tell me about it.”
“Must have been around twenty past four,” she cast her mind back. “He was standing having a smoke in the courtyard as I left. I stopped, said ‘hello’, he said ‘hello’ back, asked how long I would be staying and that sort of thing.”
Ryan could imagine just the sort of thing. He thought of the younger man swanning around like a young Robert Redford, charming Anna with his toothy grin.
He ordered himself to get a grip.
“You can’t really suspect Alex,” she said again. “The very thought of him committing murder is ridiculous. He loves women.”
Ryan said nothing for a very long time. So long that she became restless. She angled towards him and was about to put a hand on his arm to shake him from his reverie when he spoke, his voice unexpectedly harsh.
“It isn’t always about liking or disliking women, or at least not always. Sometimes it’s about the sheer bloody hell of it, the power that comes from taking a life.”
Anna stayed silent, waiting for him to continue.
Once he started, Ryan found he couldn’t stop the words as they tumbled out of his mouth.
“I’ve chased killers who claimed they killed and battered women and men alike because the voices told them to; I’ve seen some who said it was because they had a crappy childhood. It’s all bullshit, Anna,” he turned to her and, for a moment, he thought of another dark-haired woman. “Some people kill and there isn’t any reason for it other than for the pure fucking enjoyment of it.”
She watched emotions too deep to fathom swirl in his eyes. She couldn’t begin to understand the horrors he might have seen, or the pain he was feeling, but she felt herself drawn to him. She hesitated and then slid her arm around his waist. He stiffened and then seemed to relax, drawing her closer to him.
“I’m sorry,” he said softly.
She shook her head. “You’ve no need. I understand what it’s like to feel helpless.”
He stared out at the sea and the clouds which were forming over the island, turning the sky from blue to an overcast grey. Funny, he thought, that she should understand how helpless he felt, when he hadn’t fully understood it himself.
CHAPTER 12
“I need your help, Anna.”
Ryan spoke the words and found them easier to say than he had imagined. He pulled away from her and walked back into the cottage, aware that things had already gone too far. He knew where it would end between them.
Anna thought that he needed her help in more ways than one. It was a novelty to feel needed by another person, even if the other person was a complex, inscrutable man with his own demons, who irritated her more often than not. On the other hand, she had seen signs of sensitivity and keen intelligence.
He wasn’t hard to look at, either.
Disgusted at herself, she followed him back inside the cottage. How could she be thinking of sleeping with the lead detective investigating her sister’s murder? Was she insane? Nervously, she cleared their cups away, the china clattering in the quiet space.
“How can I help you? I’ve told you everything I remember about yesterday.” Her words were brusque as she scrubbed at the china with more force than was necessary.
“You may remember more, in time,” he said, watching her tense movements. His timing had been way, way off on this one. He needed to spend more time focussed on the two women who now lay in the mortuary and less time thinking about the woman currently standing with her back to him as she tried to scrub away her remorse.
Even as he told himself to stay professional, he was moving towards where she stood at the little sink.
Her body went taut as she felt him move to stand behind her. The hairs on the back of her neck prickled as he trailed surprisingly gentle hands up and down her arms to warm her. She felt her body straining against the wild attraction she felt for him but at the same time he brought her comfort by the simple gesture. His breath was warm against her neck and everything inside her quivered, wanting to turn into him and lose herself for a few hours.
But she couldn’t. It would be good; she didn’t need anyone to tell her that but what about afterwards? Her sister would still be dead and they would be no closer to finding the man who had killed her.
“I’ll let you know if I remember anything else, Ryan.” She moved pointedly away from him and rubbed her arms to stave off a sudden chill.
He didn’t follow her. The logical part of his mind agreed with her unspoken decision, he only wished his glands would catch up with his brain.
“You told me to contact you if the department needed your professional help,” he began, watching her eyes widen in surprise. “Ordinarily, your appointment as a consultant would automatically be terminated owing to t
he fact that you are both a material witness and a relative of the de…Megan, that is.”
“Go on,” she leaned back against the counter and crossed her ankles. The movement drew his eyes to the floor and he realised she had been barefoot all this time. Her slender feet were lightly tanned and tipped with red polish. He forced his gaze upwards again.
“On the record, I’m going to terminate your appointment; there won’t be a lot of paperwork since you haven’t provided a formal consultation.”
Anger simmered, balanced by an equally heavy weight of impotence, but she remained silent.
He blew out a breath and prepared to throw out the rule book.
“Off the record, I still want you to consult with us on this, if you’re able to.”
She tilted her head to one side, considering him. Clearly, he had no idea that she would have badgered him to let her help until he agreed. She had no intention of sitting on the side lines any longer. If she could help to find the monster who had butchered Megan, then she would.
Still, it wouldn’t hurt to toy with him a while.
“You’re asking me to break the rules?” she injected a note of shock into her voice.
He looked uncomfortable and she watched him fidget from one foot to the other and drum his fingers on the countertop.
“I realise it’s not orthodox,” he began in a bureaucratic tone and she tried hard not to laugh. Another minute and she would put him out of his misery.
“Orthodox?” she said with a sound of astonishment. “You’re asking me to ignore police procedure, to consult with you without police approval. What would the professors at Durham University think? This from you, a man of the law; a sheriff of the people.” she slapped a hand on her heart and wondered if she had laid it on thick enough.
He opened his mouth to speak again and then narrowed his eyes at her. The look in her eyes was altogether too innocent.
“You’re making fun of me.” He crossed his arms and huffed out a breath.
She did laugh then, a bright sound which he’d never heard from her before. It lit up her whole face and seemed to make her shine. That moment, when he saw her, truly saw her, etched itself onto his memory.
“Oh, Ryan,” she said when the laughter died. “Do you really think you could have stopped me?” Her smile died too as reality returned. “I want to do everything in my power to help you find the man who did this.”
“Thank you,” he said, deeply grateful that she would risk her professional reputation. “I’m asking a lot of you, Anna. Nobody would blame you for saying ‘no’; the details and the circumstances are very close to home.”
She moved around the counter to look out at the sea again and saw two little girls playing sandcastles. She turned back with resolve.
“All through the night and this morning, I wept for my sister. She was never my enemy, but I became hers, I think…I don’t know for sure,” she shook her head, cleared it. “All I know is that I owe her a debt too large to repay. I left it too long to thank her and now she’s been taken from me. If justice is all I can give her now, then I’ll do everything I can to get it.”
Ryan picked up the brown folder he’d left on the counter.
“I need you to look at some pictures and tell me what I’m not seeing.”
She swallowed and rubbed sweaty palms on the back of her jeans but she took the folder to the table.
Before she could open it, he slapped a palm on the top.
“Are you sure about this?”
She nodded and he removed his hand, went to stand by the window in silence.
The folder contained close-up images of the markings found on both women. Anna closed her eyes automatically against the grotesque aberration of a woman’s body, but she remembered her own words a moment earlier and opened them again to look.
Lucy’s torso held the remains of what had been an upside-down triangle with a vertical line drawn through it. She presumed, correctly, that it had been drawn in Lucy’s own blood. Otherwise, her body was scrupulously clean, her hair neat. She avoided looking at the girl’s face. There were no secrets there.
Taking a shaky breath, she placed the image carefully to one side and braced herself for the next. With iron will, she blanked out her mind using every meditation technique she had learned over the years. Eventually, she looked down at the image and felt her stomach turn.
Here, there was more brutality than before. Her killer had not dipped his finger to draw his image on her body; he had carved the markings into her skin. The cuts weren’t neat, either, she thought distractedly. The lines were torn with jagged, untidy edges. The symbol was similar and her body was likewise clean.
There was a third image, she realised and placed the clinical photograph of what had been her sister to one side. The third photo showed her back, mottled and dark red. Anna’s vision wavered for a moment but she breathed through the fog and forced herself to look.
Carved into her sister’s left shoulder was a tiny pentagram.
She set the photograph to one side and Ryan moved back to join her. He scanned her face and found her pale but steady.
“This,” she began, pointing at the first image of Lucy, “is an ancient symbol normally associated with femininity and fertility.”
Ryan took out his notebook. “A pagan symbol?”
Anna shuffled in her chair and shifted into work mode. “It depends what you mean by ‘pagan’, Ryan. In the dark ages, ‘pagans’ were simply people who believed that ceremonial prayers to the elements would ensure a good harvest.”
“And now..?” he pressed.
She laughed. “You’re asking me to condense an entire field of study into a sentence?” she shook her head. “I can’t do that, but I can give you certain generalisations. When Christianity came along, ‘paganism’ became a derogatory word that people used to refer to peasants or the general underclass. Eventually, it was used to describe unbelievers, people whose beliefs were seen as ungodly and perhaps evil.”
He set his jaw. “Look, I get that there’s probably a lot to think about here.”
“Oh, really?” her eyes widened.
His lips twitched but he carried on. “I need basic principles at this point. We can look into specifics later.”
She rubbed at her eyes. “OK, I understand. Let’s start again. During the Palaeolithic period…”
She caught the pained look in his eye.
“Sorry. The first recorded findings of cave art date back to 12 or 13,000 BC. Drawings of male figures dancing, sometimes dressed as animals and so on.” She paused to check that he was still with her. “Images like this,” her finger hovered over the image of Lucy but didn’t touch it, “were very common throughout Europe. It is generally accepted that the downward triangle is a pictorial representation of the female womb, particularly with the vertical line intersecting it.”
“Does it have any other meaning?”
“Some historians have suggested that it could be an animal’s claw,” she admitted but didn’t sound convinced. “Together with the fact that the image is drawn in blood, I would still lean towards the idea of femininity.”
“Why is the blood relevant?” he thought aloud.
“It represents life force, particularly female menstruation. The colour red was generally important at that time.”
“How so?”
“Red was symbolic in various ways,” she explained. “People were buried in clothing that had been dyed red, bodies were sprinkled with red ochre…”
“But not blood?”
She raised her shoulders and let them fall again. “Red ochre isn’t as easy to come by these days and he had a ready supply of blood to hand, didn’t he?”
They both fell silent for a moment.
“Here,” Anna gestured to the image of Megan, “the image is slightly different. The triangle is upward with a vertical line through it.”
She frowned and rested her head on her hand, fingers kneading the tension there.
&nbs
p; “I’m confused by the meaning,” she confessed. “Normally, an upward triangle is recognised as the symbol of masculinity, but if that were the case, why draw the vertical line through it? That’s contradictory.”
Ryan absorbed the information.
“So, he made a mistake on the second marking?”
“Maybe,” she murmured.
“Fair enough. Anything else?”
“Oh, yes,” she brought her eyes to his and fear lurked in their depths. “There’s a lot more to talk about.”
CHAPTER 13
Alex stood on the beach outside his hut, flanked by two police officers. Phillips was lounging in the little doorway which had been cut into the upturned boat while the CSI team scoured the interior. He popped a stick of gum in his mouth and wished it was a cigarette. He had decided to give up the cigs after twenty years and it was certainly nothing to do with the fact that DI MacKenzie had let it be known around the station-house that she detested the smell of smoke.
Nothing to do with that at all.
Chewing resentfully, Phillips looked across at the pretty-boy coastguard standing on jittery legs in the sand.
“Sure you haven’t got anything you want to tell us, son?”
Alex seemed to twitch and he lurched towards Phillips.
“You have to listen to me,” he spoke quickly. “I didn’t kill anyone. I’ve got nothing to do with this.”
Phillips sighed.
“Look,” Alex’s voice grew firmer for a moment. “I’m not under arrest, am I?”
“Not at all,” Phillips agreed reasonably. “You’re simply exercising your right to be present while we search your hut.”
And we’re exercising our right to put the willies up you, lad, Phillips thought with a fierce grin while he eyed the two officers he’d placed either side of Alex deliberately to make the young man uncomfortable.
“You won’t find anything,” Alex said clearly and for a minute, looking into his clear green eyes, Phillips believed him.
“We’ll know for sure in a bit, won’t we?”