by LJ Ross
“Freeman’s death is looking like poison,” she commented, “and there was a package on her desk. They’ll run tests, but I’ve just spoken to the courier. The sender on their records is listed as Arthur Gregson, though the letter inside apparently came from some history boffin down south. He doesn’t know anything about it,” she added, thinking of the short telephone call she’d had with Professor Chambers. “He’s never heard of Freeman and definitely didn’t send her a package. If Gregson is responsible for this, we’ve got hard evidence against him now.”
“He’s a bloody nutcase,” Phillips reeled. “I’ve told the boys back at CID to put out an all-ports warning. They’ll arrest him on sight.”
He turned to look at MacKenzie, who was starting to show signs of strain. He took her elegant hand in his broad, knobbly fingers and smiled at the difference between them.
“Ryan and Anna are tying the knot,” he said quietly, looking intently at her.
“Ah, that’s grand,” she said, her face clearing into a smile. “There’s nothing like young love to cheer up an otherwise crappy day.”
Phillips gave her fingers a squeeze and looked down at their joined hands. It was enough, for now.
“Come on, let’s go and find some killers.”
“You’re such a romantic, Frank.”
CHAPTER 27
Gregson watched the flashing blue lights heading back towards Newcastle and shivered. His body was exhausted, his energy supply depleted after a difficult climb which had almost finished him off. Several times, he had fallen forward, his face buried in the damp grass, somewhere between consciousness and unconsciousness. He thought that was the end, there on the grassy hill leading up to St. Oswald’s Gate. It had felt oddly appropriate that he should meet his Master at a place which had played such an important part in his life.
But the Master was good. Gregson had risen up again and found the strength to carry on, scratching and tearing at the grass as he clawed his way to the top. He supposed that was appropriate, too, considering that was what he had done for most of his life. Always clawing his way up the ladder, reaching for more success, more money, more women. He wondered what the blokes at the tennis club would think of him now, a shrivelled fugitive.
At first, he presumed that the blue lights had come for him, that they had found him already. He sobbed at the thought of all that wasted, painful effort coming to nothing and had let himself into one of the disused passageways at the base of the castle walls, staggering through the tunnels to hide from the sirens. After a while, he heard the faint sound of their retreat and he had surfaced again, letting himself into the clock tower to look out of one of its diamond-shaped windows. There was an ambulance and two police cars remaining, and he thought he recognised the familiar lines of Faulkner’s CSI van.
Who had died?
He heard shuffling on the floor above and voices in the stairwell. He shrank back against the stone wall, holding his breath.
Phillips and MacKenzie, he realised. He listened for a moment, enough to know that they were looking for him now and that Freeman was dead. He frowned and shook his head to clear it. He thought they had said something about him sending a poisoned package.
Freeman was dead? He couldn’t believe it. Who would kill her? His head was spinning. Who else might be lurking in the tunnels? He must move quickly, take what he needed and leave. He would make for the vault, help himself to whatever he could find and get out of the castle now.
All bets were off.
The voices became louder and he retreated back to the tunnels, melting into the castle’s walls like an apparition.
* * *
The vault was empty.
The hollowed stone with its heavy iron door had served as a purpose-built secure space for Circle business since the late eighties. Gregson had been here a hundred times before, deep in the cellars beneath the castle, to make a deposit and more often to make a withdrawal. But now, gone were the boxes of cash, the trays of false identification documents, the armoury and special manuscripts recording the Circle’s evolution.
It was all gone.
Desolation swept over him and tears swam in his eyes. Dreams of escape, of starting a new life and rebuilding his small empire evaporated. He was just an ageing man standing cold and alone, deep under the ground. The thought of just finding a quiet spot and curling up there, of handing himself over to whichever Power would have him, appealed to him unlike ever before.
Bitterness rose in his throat like acid, hard and strong so that it nearly overwhelmed him. He hadn’t come this far, he hadn’t lied, cheated, stolen and swindled, sanctioned murder and covered up his own wife’s murder, to die in an underground tunnel. Gregson was damned if that was how he would go out, while men like Ryan lived on to bask in the sunlight, swanning around the countryside lapping up the adulation while he rotted underneath the earth.
He tugged the iron door shut again and thought that it was time to do a little more borrowing from the people who roamed inside the castle.
* * *
Ryan was pale as a ghost after the drive north, albeit Lowerson had driven like his maiden aunt, taking each turn at what felt like five miles per hour. The act of sitting upright placed pressure on the new stitches at his side and he held the seatbelt away from his torso to avoid the painful crush against his flesh. When the car finally came to a standstill, his forehead was clammy and his jaw was rigid with control. He let himself out of Lowerson’s black Fiat and waved him away while he threw up his earlier chocolate bar into a nearby hedge, his stomach muscles contracting to cause even more pain in his abdominal stitches.
Lowerson watched him with a look of extreme worry on his boyish face.
“Sir? What can I do for you?” He should never have listened to him, he fretted.
Ryan took some deep, nourishing breaths before turning around again.
“You can stop mothering me, for a start,” he snapped, but the statement lacked its usual assertiveness and did little to allay Lowerson’s fears.
“At least let me call Phillips,” Lowerson begged.
“I was told to come alone.”
“Let me drive you up to the castle gates,” Lowerson turned, as if to usher him back inside the car. “You can’t manage that hill, not in your condition.”
The thought was tempting but Ryan considered the risks which may lie ahead. Already, he carried the guilt of having put Jack Lowerson in the path of danger too many times before. He wouldn’t—couldn’t—do it again.
“Stay here,” he said firmly. “Trust me to do my job, I know my limits.”
He almost flinched at another twinge from the wound at his side, but managed to control the muscles of his face, enough to convince Lowerson to step away while he limped towards the castle mount.
* * *
Like a slumbering giant, the castle waited for Ryan to ascend Vale Typping through the great arched gates to the inner courtyard. Lights from the clock tower shone a welcoming glow and cars were still parked outside, which told him that MacKenzie and Phillips were still on the premises. There was a small prick of guilt as he turned deliberately away to skirt around the perimeter, away from where people congregated, away from the safety of numbers.
He made for the southern side of the castle grounds, towards the site where archaeologists were excavating. The prospecting sites were abandoned now, and moonlight cast a thin light over the trenches. Even to his practical mind, they transformed into shallow graves and his stomach shuddered as he wove between them, expecting to see men in steel armour rising up with pale faces from the past. Light and shadow played over the castle walls and there was only the crash of the sea and the sound of Ryan’s own thundering heart for company as he walked over the ancient ground.
St. Oswald’s Gate lay further ahead, a gaping archway in the western perimeter wall of the castle which opened out onto a chasm of air and sky, with a hundred and fifty feet of steep ground between where he stood and the road far beneath. Standin
g just inside its arch, Ryan narrowed his eyes against the darkness and tried to make out the visitors’ car park where Lowerson waited, but could only see a dark abyss which held certain death if he should fall into its vacuum. Still, he drew strength from knowing that the young constable was safely inside a locked car, somewhere in that darkness.
The wind whistled through the cracks in the stone and knocked against him, taking him by surprise. Ryan threw out a hand to steady himself and pulled away from the archway to lean back against the inner wall, flinching as his coat snagged against the aching wound underneath. He sucked a breath between his teeth and prepared to wait.
* * *
Lowerson slammed the car door shut behind him and set off at a run. Halfway up the hilly road leading to the castle’s main entrance, he paused to shake off his suit jacket, which he discarded in a heap by the road and sprinted the rest of the way to the top unhindered.
He ducked under the archway gates and entered the main courtyard, stopping to scan the area for signs of Ryan, but he was nowhere in sight. Lowerson stood there panting, partly from the exertion and partly from panic. He knew he should have gone with him. He should never have listened to Ryan in the first place; the man was ill and should never have been taken from the hospital.
Only a prize moron would have taken him out, Lowerson thought with self-loathing.
He ran a fraught hand through his hair and wondered which way to turn. The castle compound was enormous—one of the largest in the country—and there were several different entrances. His eye was drawn to one of the smaller towers where lights blazed in the windows and, with a sob of heartfelt relief, he recognised MacKenzie’s red fiesta parked beside two other police vehicles.
* * *
Ryan listened intently to the wind. It carried the scent of the sea and was loud enough to obliterate most other sounds but, if he really concentrated, he could make out the whisper of birds nesting in the cliffs beneath the seaward wall. He closed his eyes and let it brush against his face while he concentrated on emptying his mind and blocking out the pain radiating from the wound at his side.
Then, he heard another sound and his eyes snapped open again.
Stone scraped against stone and there was a rustle somewhere up ahead, from the dug-out trenches dotted between the crumbled stone walls. Ryan focussed on the direction of the sound and then, as he had feared, a man seemed to rise from the earth. The figure unfolded its body to stand a few feet away, nothing more than an inky shadow without a face.
The world seemed to pause as they did; each recognising the presence of another, instinct guiding their senses while their eyesight hurried to catch up. Ryan stared into the gloom and watched the figure walk towards him, slowly negotiating the potholes and the uncovered soil. He pushed away from the wall to stand with his feet slightly apart, arms by his sides, ready to defend or attack if necessary.
Gregson could feel his body wilting, ready to give up on him, but his mind refused to allow it. This would not be his end; he would go on to live again, even better than before. The Master would make sure of it, he had to believe that. Hysteria had taken a firm root as all remaining logic flew out of his muddled mind. When Ryan gave him a searching look, he saw a man who had aged ten years in a few days, with cuts and bruises on his face, wearing dirty, mud-sodden clothes. Mania glinted behind his eyes.
“I see you got my message.”
There was a tense silence.
“It was you,” Ryan ground out. “I wanted to believe I was wrong, but I knew that it was you.”
To his shame, Gregson felt a frisson of fear at the harsh tone. He wanted to turn away from the look in Ryan’s eyes; contempt, mingled with disgust.
“You will show respect to a commanding officer!” he burst out.
Ryan noted that one of Gregson’s hands remained in the pocket of his filthy jogging bottoms and braced himself while the wind continued to roll around them and through the gap between them.
“Where’s your wife?” He had to shout it, to be heard.
Gregson swiped away the spittle at his mouth with the back of his hand.
“Gone. Cathy’s gone,” he sliced his hand through the air, as if to draw a line under it, but Ryan ignored the flimsy gesture.
“You killed her. How did you do it, Arthur? Who helped you cover it up?”
“I haven’t killed anyone! I never did!” Gregson shouted over the wind and Ryan frowned slightly.
“You’re full of shit,” he returned, taking a step forward.
Gregson wanted to step back, but he held himself firm, reminding himself that he needed Ryan to organise his ticket out of here.
“Why did you kill her?”
“I never touched her!” Gregson shouted again, but he remembered the casual slaps over the years and the change in Cathy’s eyes as her love had curdled to hate. He had caused that.
He pushed the thought away.
“I’m taking you back in,” Ryan was saying. “Your wounds will be treated, that’s the law. But then, you’re going to talk. I want names, I want dates, I want to know it all. It’s over, Gregson.”
Gregson shuffled away and Ryan followed him, impatient and hurting.
“Are you listening to me? I didn’t kill anyone!”
He thought of the others who had died, of the men who hadn’t been particularly unwilling to sink a dagger into another person and told himself he wasn’t responsible. He had known, but he wasn’t responsible.
“You’re going to help me out of the country,” he carried on. “Why do you think I brought you here? I need your help, damn it! I need money and a passport—”
“Are you mad?” Ryan laughed mirthlessly. “Why in the name of God would I help you? You’re an arrogant bastard. What gave you any idea that you’d be allowed to walk off into the sunset?”
Ryan moved closer still, baring his teeth, anger in full flow.
“Men and women have died. Some of them barely more than girls, because of you. Because of what you have allowed to happen—”
“They’ll kill me!” Gregson grasped Ryan’s shirt front as they came face to face, so close that Ryan could count the lines on the other man’s face. In reflex, he took a fistful of Gregson’s cotton pyjama top to even things out.
“Who? Tell me who, damn it!”
“I don’t know! I don’t fucking know anymore!” Gregson struggled free of Ryan’s grasp and he let his hand fall away from the man’s collar. “You don’t have the first idea about what you’re dealing with. Freeman’s dead. Just like Bowers, except I thought she killed Bowers,” Gregson said wretchedly. “If it wasn’t her, then I’ve got as much of an idea as you have.”
* * *
Lowerson found Phillips and MacKenzie on the first floor of the clock tower, conferring with Faulkner. All three of them turned at Lowerson’s shout for help as he ran up the stairs towards them. Phillips’ brows lowered and he was across the room in two strides to grasp Lowerson by the scruff of the neck.
“You’re supposed to be with Ryan,” he growled, shoving his weather-beaten face into Lowerson’s personal space.
Jack nodded and—to all of their surprise—shoved Phillips away with a strength none of them knew that he had.
“I can’t find him,” he said urgently. “He got a message at the hospital, apparently from Gregson offering him answers if he met him at St. Oswald’s Gate on his own.”
“And you let him?” Phillips shouted.
“He’s my commanding officer!” Lowerson shouted back but he was barely holding off tears. The knowledge that he could humiliate himself at any moment made things even worse. “I made a mistake,” he said miserably.
MacKenzie put a warning hand on Phillips’ shoulder and stepped forward to speak to Lowerson in clear, calm tones.
“He was meeting Gregson at St. Oswald’s Gate?”
“Y-yes,” Lowerson nodded. “I would have gone there straight away, but I—I don’t know where it is,” he confessed.
�
�Follow me,” she shouldered him out of the way and ran down the stone stairs.
* * *
Gregson cast a nervous glance around, sniffing the air.
“You said you’d give me the answers,” Ryan said flatly. “Has that changed?”
“I want to deal—”
“And I want a unicorn for my birthday,” Ryan snarled. “Never going to happen.”
Gregson stared at him, trying to judge if there was room for manoeuvre, if there was any way Ryan could be convinced to let him go.
Then he let out a short laugh.
“Bowers was right about one thing,” Gregson mused, while he considered his next move. “You could never have been one of us.”
Ryan nearly hit him. His fists bunched and it was an effort to loosen them again.
“Yeah, he was right about that. I wouldn’t meet the entry criteria,” he bit out. Not having a severe personality disorder or a thirst to kill innocent people tended to rule him out.
“You could have risen high,” Gregson continued, in the same sleepy voice. “The Circle would have chosen you.”
“Aww, now I’m really upset,” came the sarcastic response. “Save the bullshit, this has gone on long enough and I’m tired of hearing your whining voice. We both know where we stand. I’ve got enough evidence to take you in.”
Ryan stepped forward and grasped Gregson’s upper arm in a firm grip.
“Arthur Gregson, I am arresting you on suspicion of murder—”
With sudden strength, Gregson pulled his arm free and stumbled backwards, fumbling inside his trouser pocket until he found the little dagger, one of the few things he had been able to salvage from the underground tunnels.
Ryan caught sight of the knife and thought of that very morning, which seemed so long ago. He felt sweat trickle between his shoulder blades and the muscles of his abdomen contracted, reliving the pain. For a moment, he was submerged again, water suffocating him as he tried to fight his way back to the surface. He fisted his hands, this time to fight off the anxiety and the panic attack which threatened to overtake him. In his peripheral vision, he saw the blurred lights of the clock tower to the north and knew that anybody who happened to look out of one of the little diamond windows would see nothing but darkness.