by LJ Ross
“Did you kill Mark Bowers?” MacKenzie had to ask.
Thorbridge looked hurt.
“I done lots of things in my time, not all of them good. But I never killed no-one.”
“You saw Anna though, didn’t you?” Ryan threw the question at him, to catch him off guard, and Thorbridge shifted his attention to him.
“Don’t know anyone called Anna.”
“The woman you scared half to death that night up here in the church,” Ryan added, helpfully, and noticed Thorbridge’s eyes fritter away, somewhere in the distance.
“Feel badly about that,” he admitted.
“What were you looking for, Keith? What was on the wall?” Ryan pointed a finger towards the wall directly facing the altar.
Thorbridge said nothing but his eyes strayed tellingly towards a large chip on the surface of the limestone. Ryan followed his gaze and turned to trace a finger over the chipped stonework, which looked fresh.
“Was this what you were looking at?”
“The wall is damaged!” Thorbridge complained. “It’s one thing to bleed all over the place, that can be mopped up, but chipping the old stonework—”
Ryan’s dark brows dipped and MacKenzie gave him a questioning nudge as she came to stand beside him and stare at the chip, hoping that it would give her the answers.
“What is it? What am I missing?”
Ryan pushed his hands in his pockets and smiled to himself, appreciating the game, the forethought, the planning. He may not have liked the man for the harm he had caused, but he could appreciate a good mystery.
“We’ve been missing something right under our noses,” he said, then dipped down to the floor, indicating that MacKenzie should step back a couple of paces.
He felt around for the loose flagstone and lifted it upwards to reveal a hollow space beneath, like a roughly hewn well, several feet deep. He reached for his phone and turned it to the torch setting, shining it inside. Intrigued, Phillips and Lowerson abandoned their football chat and moved to join them.
There, deep in the darkness, lay an antique duelling pistol. A clear plastic bag was attached to the grip, to prevent powder residue transferring onto the hand of the man who discharged it. A thin rope was tied firmly around the butt of the weapon, and a heavy weight was attached to the other end of the rope. Beside them, they could just make out the other half of the wooden ice lolly stick.
“I don’t understand,” Phillips said. “How did the pistol get down there? Did somebody dispose of it?”
Ryan let the flagstone fall back into place for the moment and stood up again, rubbing an absent hand against his healing stitches, which were starting to itch.
“Bowers took care of everything,” Ryan explained. “Down to the finest detail. He set up his own suicide to look like murder, implicating me in the first instance because—well, he hated my guts.”
Four faces nodded awkwardly.
“My guess is that Bowers sent me that text message from somewhere near Gregson’s house using an unregistered phone. That was his first pointer towards Gregson but he also wanted me to suffer for a while, probably because of Anna. I got the girl, you see.”
“Standard motive,” Phillips pronounced.
“He had a tumour, so he knew he didn’t have long for the world and he wanted to leave a legacy—as the High Priest who brought down his own Circle from beyond the grave. He collected that weapon from the auction house, posing as Daniel Mathieson, and used it to put a hole in his own head.”
“If Bowers killed himself, how did the pistol find its way under that flagstone?” Lowerson asked, with a suspicious glance in Thorbridge’s direction.
“Clever trick using a weighted rope,” Ryan provided. He thought of their shared love of Conan-Doyle and smiled at the man’s audacity. “He made sure the pistol was weighted down and the rope was pulled taut, so that when his hand fell away after discharge, it would ping away from him as the weight fell. He used a wooden ice lolly stick to prop open this flagstone where he’d found or dug a hole fairly deep underneath. When the pistol sprang out of his hand, it smacked against the wall and chipped the stonework before it was pulled underneath the flagstone. The lolly stick was knocked aside as the pistol was pulled down and it snapped in half under the weight of the falling flagstone, as we know.”
“Conceited of him to think it would work,” MacKenzie snorted, but had to admit she was mildly impressed that it had. “How did he know there was a dug-out hole, under there?”
Ryan cast his eyes downward, his own version of prayer.
“It’s been there a while, I think.” There were other things down there, mixing with the scent of decay. “I could be wrong, but I think we haven’t just found Donovan’s kill site, we’ve also found what remains of his victims.”
They fell silent, a mark of respect.
“I think it’s awfully convenient that we haven’t been able to come up with any CCTV evidence whatsoever, throughout our investigations,” Ryan went on, after a minute. “Not at the post office where Gregson was supposed to have sent that package, not at 17 Haslemere Gardens and not at the auction house. The administrators told us that the cameras were working just fine until recently.”
“Freeman made sure that Bowers’ tracks were covered?” Lowerson suggested.
“Precisely,” Ryan agreed. “I think we might find that Bowers picked botulinum as his poison of choice as an ironic two fingers to his former flame, Jane Freeman. It’s the protein used in tiny quantities to make up the Botox compound. I expect he added the cyanide just to make sure she got a lethal dose.”
“They normally mix a very small quantity of the powdered botulinum with another solution. Freeman’s beauty salon reported the loss of a sachet of powdered botulinum to the authorities less than a month ago,” MacKenzie had done her homework.
“Twisted sense of humour,” Phillips muttered.
“We can’t prove it yet, but I strongly suspect Bowers sent that package to Freeman by courier with a postponed delivery date and registered Gregson as the sender, to set him up. He stole the botulinum and prepared the envelope. The pathologist said he found glue residue on Bowers’ hands, didn’t he?”
MacKenzie and Lowerson nodded.
“But he couldn’t have managed the rest—what about Gregson’s wife, Walker and Mathieson?”
“Freeman must have arranged that,” Ryan shrugged. “We know that she tried to have Gregson killed in hospital and that she ordered the attack on me.” They had already heard the confessions of several young police constables and a junior doctor who had turned up the other day seeking police protection from the Circle.
“Perhaps Freeman and Bowers made a deal of some kind on the basis that Gregson would be removed, with me as the bonus prize. Freeman could never have anticipated what Bowers already had in store for her or that he double-crossed her.”
“Whoever heard of a man killing people from beyond the grave?” asked MacKenzie. “It’s a fantastic notion.”
“Some might say, folk like Freeman and Gregson, they had it coming to them,” Phillips scratched his ear uncomfortably.
“No good wastes of space,” Thorbridge agreed soundly and they all turned startled eyes in his direction, having forgotten he was still there.
They stood for a long moment, considering the ramifications of what they had discovered under the flagstones of Heavenfield. They thought of the ones who had died and the families who lived on; of the people who had been terrorized for generations by a band of men and women who had risen above the law.
Ryan jiggled his car keys.
“It’ll take weeks to tie up all the loose ends but it looks like we’re finally going to be able to close these files.”
He looked around the simple church and thought of its history.
“It’s funny,” he murmured. “Men died here fighting for what they thought was right. The Circle tried to sully it, to claim back the land. But, you know what?”
He shook his hea
d in wonder.
“The land doesn’t belong to anybody. It’s seen good and bad times, light and darkness. It’ll still be here long after we’re gone,” he said softly, then shook himself. “But, until then, Phillips has got paperwork to fill out and I need to find something sparkly and expensive.”
Phillips scowled.
“Paperwork?”
Ryan grinned, then turned and walked back outside into the light.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
The landscape of Northumberland is truly unique and has attracted many thousands of visitors over the years. In writing the DCI Ryan series of mysteries, I have always tried to remain authentic in my descriptive passages of some of the best loved parts of the region. This is equally true of Heavenfield, where I have endeavoured to stay loyal to the character of St. Oswald’s Church and Bamburgh Castle, that mighty fortress by the sea.
From time to time it has been necessary to embellish the layout of the castle or the church to fit the fictional story and enhance the reader’s experience. However, for the most part, readers choosing to visit any of the sites mentioned in this book should find them very similar to the descriptions herein and well worth seeing for yourself.
As a final point to note, the inclusion of a cult ‘Circle’ is entirely a work of fiction. To my knowledge, there is no such circle in existence and visitors needn’t worry that they will receive anything other than a very warm welcome from the people of the North-East.
DCI Ryan and his team will return later in 2016 in the next book in the series, Angel – keep reading to the end of this e-book for a sneak preview!
LJ ROSS
25th February 2016
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Born in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, LJ Ross moved to London where she graduated from King’s College London with undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in Law. After working in the City as a regulatory lawyer for a number of years, she realised it was high time for a change. The catalyst was the birth of her son, which forced her to take a break from the legal world and find time for some of the detective stories which had been percolating for a while and finally demanded to be written.
She lives with her husband and young son in the south of England, but will always be a northern girl at heart.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Writing the DCI Ryan series has been both a pleasure and a revelation. When I left a legal career, I never imagined that writing could bring so much joy, or that I could come to care so much about the characters I have created. I am even more humbled to know that there are so many readers out there who have enjoyed the series so far, many of whom have taken the trouble to send me an e-mail, drop me a line on Facebook or leave a kind review on Amazon. I am so grateful to them for their unstinting support and for understanding my kooky sense of humour.
The process of writing a story, even one that you enjoy, can have its ups and downs and I am thankful to my family and friends for putting up with my ‘creative mood swings’! How mortifying to think that I have conformed to the writer’s stereotype! Special thanks go to my husband, James, and my son, Ethan. Two blue-eyed darlings who keep me smiling even through the writer’s block. Special thanks also to my mum, my dad and my sister, whose support and confidence in LJ Ross has been amazing.
A number of other individuals have offered their expertise and assistance with particular elements of the story so that it remains authentic, albeit a work of fiction. In no particular order, many thanks to: George Pask for his forensic insights; to Roger Clegg for his image of Heavenfield Church which graces the cover of the book; to the curators of Bamburgh Castle; to Liz Hands; to Jon Elek and Millie Hoskins; to the team at Audible; to Jonathan Keeble for his wonderful narration of the previous two books and his forthcoming voice talents in Heavenfield; and as always, to the wonderful Geordie girls.
Finally, most particular thanks go to Jim Kitson—my dad—for his location scouting and evocative description of Heavenfield which provided the inspiration for this book.
ANGEL
– A DCI RYAN MYSTERY
By LJ Ross
ANGEL – PROLOGUE
Easter Sunday, 1982
The hallway was quiet as the grave in the early morning light, which shone weakly through the grubby window panes. The dark wood panels were musty with age and the floorboards creaked as the girl tiptoed along, as quickly as she dared.
Time was short; her child’s mind knew the concept and understood its scarcity.
She counted off the nuns’ quarters as she scurried past, keeping to the shadows.
One, two, three, four.
Finally, she reached the doorway at the end and twisted the old brass knob, slipping inside. She cast furtive glances to either side and dropped onto her haunches to peer underneath the rickety bathroom stalls. Satisfied that she was alone, she made directly for the end cubicle and climbed on top of the cracked toilet seat, then pushed her spindly legs up onto the peeling window sill above that. Layers of old paint had sealed the window permanently closed, but over the past weeks she had chipped away at it so that when she shoved her weight against the dirty brown pane, it cracked open.
Sweat beaded her forehead as she tussled with the window but eventually it swung open, letting a rush of cold air into the stale cubicle. The girl raised her face to the wind, like a caged animal scenting freedom.
It was intoxicating.
Eager for more, she eased her skinny body through the gap and out onto the sloping roof beyond. Her feet clutched at the mossy tiles and she began to crawl towards the guttering. A loose tile broke away and clattered over the edge of the roof, landing distantly on the ground below. In the silent morning the noise was deafening and the girl froze until she could be sure that the sound had not disturbed the people inside.
After a moment, she shuffled towards the edge of the roof and peered over the side, jerking sharply back at the sight of a sheer fifty-foot drop to the hard ground below.
Struck by doubt, she glanced behind her, back towards the tiny bathroom window. For a moment, the window became an eye, cracked open and watching her, ready to report her flight.
She shivered and turned away from it, looking out over the lawns to the fields and woods in the far distance. Tears stung as she crouched there, surveying the landscape of her childhood with fresh hope that was more potent and more powerful than she had ever imagined.
Carefully, she began to lower herself over the side of the roof. She swung her legs along the stone wall to wrap around the drainpipe, which strained against her weight and let out a long metallic whine as if it were crying out to the nuns to come and stop her.
Her body was shaking with fatigue by the time she managed to shimmy halfway to the ground. Her legs were cut and bleeding and it was bitterly cold. The first wave of adrenaline was starting to wear off, leaving her chilled and hungry, her stomach raw. The girl faltered, her muscles shaking as she fought against the fatigue. Her fingers scraped at the old metal and a sob escaped her, echoing into the quiet morning.
With slow inevitability, her grip loosened. She let out a strangled gasp as her body fell backwards, down and down until it crumpled onto the tarmac below.
In the east, morning had risen. Pale sunshine broke through the mist to cast warm rays over the hills and glades of Northumberland, illuminating the girl’s body as it lay twisted and broken. Her pale arms were outstretched, as if to embrace oblivion. Hair the colour of spun gold fell in a tangle around her head in a bright halo, like an angel.
* * *
The next book in the DCI Ryan series, Angel, is due to be released later in 2016. If you would like to be notified when it is released, please complete a contact form