The Infirmary: A DCI Ryan Mystery (The DCI Ryan Mysteries Book 11)

by LJ Ross

  “He’s gone into the Victoria Tunnel, sir,” she replied. “It runs beneath the city from east to west, built to transport coal from the colliery to the river in the Victorian era.”

  “How the hell did he get down there?”

  “Phillips seems to think the route was unplanned, but we can’t be sure. If he’d planned several murders in detail, it isn’t outside the realms of possibility that he would have considered an escape route, if the time came.”

  “Get Ryan on the phone,” he ordered.

  “That’s not possible, sir. Ryan went down into the tunnel in pursuit and the scaffolding collapsed behind him, probably orchestrated by Edwards. He hasn’t made contact via radio yet and there’s no telephone signal down there,” she explained. “Phillips has a team working to dig out the rubble and go in after him.”

  Gregson swore.

  “Show me the access points,” he said.

  “We haven’t been able to find a map of the tunnel,” she said, not bothering to hide her concern. “I’ve got Lowerson looking into it now. He’s speaking to Northumbrian Water and Newcastle City Council to see what they have because there’s nothing online.”

  Gregson thought of one of his best detectives trapped underground with a killer and felt something he hadn’t experienced in a long time.

  He felt frightened.

  * * *

  The rain continued to fall as Phillips stood with a team of police personnel outside the Hancock Museum entrance on Claremont Road, watching and helping as a crew from the renovation works team dug furiously to clear a safe pathway through the rubble.

  Phillips tried the radio again.

  “Ryan? Ryan, come in. Over.”

  Nothing.

  Phillips gnawed at his lip, wondering what to do for the best, then rang MacKenzie’s number.

  She answered immediately.

  “Frank, tell me some good news.”

  “I wish I could, love,” he said unthinkingly, and immediately suffered a coughing fit.

  “You alright?” she asked.

  “Aye, sorry. I had some dust caught in my throat. Listen, it’s been nearly twenty minutes and we still haven’t got through the worst of it—and I haven’t heard from Ryan. I’m worried.”

  “We’ve heard nothing here, either,” she said. “We’ve got a team watching Edwards’ house, in case he finds another exit and tries to go home.”

  “He can’t hope to get out of the tunnel without being caught,” Phillips said, then felt his stomach dip. “Unless he doesn’t plan to escape.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Ryan’s down there with him, alone.”

  Back at CID Headquarters, MacKenzie looked across at the photograph of their friend, Sharon Cooper, and felt her heart tighten.

  “Get in there after him, Frank, as quick as you can.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  CHAPTER 35

  Ryan continued onward, heading along the tunnel as it passed beneath St Thomas’s church, a quarter of a mile further east of where Phillips worked hard to clear the entrance beside the museum.

  “There’s no way out of this! Turn yourself in!”

  His voice ricocheted around the walls, spiralling until it was lost somewhere in the darkness.

  There was no reply.

  His feet continued their careful progress and he was grateful to find that the floor had been laid with rough concrete at some stage or another, which made the going easier underfoot.

  He raised his phone torch again to shine a miserable white light a few paces ahead, then heard the ominous ‘beep’ that signalled his battery was running low.

  “Uh-oh,” a voice called out, sounding closer this time.

  Ryan held the torch aloft and peered into the darkness, but he could see no further than the end of his own arm.

  “You want to know why, don’t you, Ryan?”

  Edwards’ voice whispered along the scaly edges of the wall, reaching into Ryan’s mind and toying with what he found there.

  “You’re desperate to know, aren’t you?”

  “You’re desperate to tell me,” Ryan called out. “Why don’t you?”

  Why don’t you…why don’t you…

  More soft laughter.

  “I’ve watched you, Ryan. I watched your face when the woman died and wondered what it would be like to feel the way you do for all the miserable nobodies in the world.”

  Ryan followed the voice, edging closer while Edwards spoke.

  “Come now, this is very one-sided,” Edwards said, and his voice sounded further off again. “Tell me, how did a man of your breeding and education come to be a murder detective? Surely, your future was mapped in a very different way.”

  Ryan stopped again, unnerved to know that Edwards had looked into his background.

  “You like playing the hero, don’t you, Maxwell? The name suits you, by the way. Can’t imagine why you’d want to change it.”

  Ryan walked into something solid and stumbled backwards, bracing himself for impact, ready to face another attack, but it was only a concrete wall blocking the pathway ahead.

  It seemed Edwards had vanished into thin air.

  * * *

  Ryan ran his fingertips around the edge of the concrete and found a narrow gap running down the edge, just narrow enough for a man to squeeze through. He realised he had stumbled into a blast wall and common sense told him it must have been installed sometime during the Second World War. It presented another challenge because the tunnel had gone quiet again and it was impossible to know if Edwards would be waiting just around the other side, if he risked moving around it.

  Once again, Ryan thought of turning back and taking his chances that Phillips would have cleared the entrance at the Hancock Museum, but he had gone too far to turn back now. Instead, he flattened himself against the wall and edged slowly, moving inch by inch as he felt his way around it.

  The blast wall curved around into a zig-zag, a tunnel within a tunnel that he followed with extreme caution until he emerged on the other side and back into the main tunnel.

  Suddenly, he sensed a presence nearby.

  “Hello, Ryan.”

  Instinct alone had him sidestepping Edwards’ arm as it swung out to attack and Ryan felt a slight gust of air against the side of his face. He could see nothing; there wasn’t a single shard of light inside the tunnel and his movements were guided by his other senses.

  He hunkered to the floor, listening.

  There.

  Ryan wasn’t sure if he heard or felt the tiny motion, but he took his chance, rising up to catch Edwards in a tackle that brought them both crashing to the floor. He heard the air gushing out of the man’s chest and then they were writhing, spitting, clawing at one another, little more than two animals battling for survival.

  He tried to pin Edwards’ arms, but they were a physical match and Edwards would always have the upper hand for he had nothing to lose and everything to gain.

  He was also entirely without scruples.

  Ryan felt something sharp sink into the skin of his upper arm and realised it was Edwards’ teeth. He kicked out, bucking away from the animal that sought his blood, and a moment later there came the sound of light footsteps retreating into the darkness.

  His skin burned, and Ryan stemmed the blood flow as best he could. His hands were shaking as he reached for the police radio in his jeans pocket, but he found it missing.

  Ryan felt around the ground in case it had been dislodged during the tussle and was relieved to find it had been thrown clear. He grasped it again, clutching it tightly as his only means of communication with the outside world.

  CHAPTER 36

  Phillips told himself not to despair when the workmen retreated from the entrance to the tunnel, shaking their heads despondently.

  “Sorry,” they said. “The ceiling’s completely caved in. Every time we clear a path, more starts falling down. We’d need to get a proper scaffolding team in here and a bigger
team just to make a dent.”

  Phillips put a call through to MacKenzie.

  “Mac? I need to know where the other entrances are to the tunnel. There has to be more than one.”

  “We’re looking for them now, Frank,” she said, and he took comfort from the warmth of her voice resonating across the wires. “Lowerson had no luck with the council or the water board, so he’s trying to chase down one of the volunteers who give tours of the tunnel. If anybody knows, it’ll be them.”

  “Tell him to hurry up,” he said. “We can’t get through here; the entrance is completely sealed, and it’d take too long just trying to make it passable. God knows what might be happening in there while we waste time trying.”

  Suddenly, his radio crackled into life and he ended the call abruptly, hurrying to snatch up his receiver.

  “Phillips? This is Ryan. Over.”

  Phillips breathed a sigh of relief.

  “Ryan? You gave us a run for our money there, lad. Are you okay? Over.”

  “I’m okay, just a couple of scratches. He’s still in the tunnel, approximately a quarter of a mile ahead if he’s moving at a steady speed. Have you been able to clear the rubble from the entrance? We need an armed response team and some lights down here. Over.”

  Phillips wished it could be that easy.

  “There’s no way in. The entrance is still blocked and can’t be cleared. We’re looking to find the next available exit. Over.”

  Ryan felt a shiver of fear as he leaned back against the blast wall. The cold was sinking into his bones and the darkness was beginning to play games with his head.

  For one thing, he thought he smelled gas.

  He did smell gas.

  “I think there’s a gas leak somewhere nearby,” he told Phillips. “I need to move forward because it’ll spread. Contact me when you have a map of the exits. I’ve just passed the first blast wall after the museum, heading east. Over.”

  “Will do. Chin up, lad. We’ll get you out of there as quickly as we can.”

  Ryan clipped the radio onto his belt and left it crackling. The noise alerted Edwards to his location, but he didn’t care anymore; he needed the familiar sound of it fizzing away as he was forced to continue into the darkness that seemed never to end.

  * * *

  Lowerson re-entered the Incident Room at a run, armed with a faxed copy of an archive map belonging to the trust who operated guided tours.

  MacKenzie hurried across to meet him.

  “What’ve you got for me, Jack?”

  He caught his breath after taking the stairs two at a time.

  “There are technically seven entranceways into the tunnel,” he said, rolling out a civil plan dating back to wartime. “This plan was made when the council was converting the tunnel into an air raid shelter, so you can see where the blast walls are located.”

  “Phillips heard from Ryan. He’s okay. He says he passed the first blast wall after the museum entrance on Claremont Road.”

  “What about Edwards?”

  “Somewhere down there, not far ahead of him. Let’s focus on getting Ryan out and getting some teams in place beside the other entranceways.”

  They found Ryan’s last known position on the hand-drawn map and estimated he had walked half a mile east of the museum.

  “The tunnel follows Claremont Road,” she said. “It runs past the hospital into the city centre, skirting past the Hancock Museum and St. Thomas’s church, then through the city centre towards Byker and Shieldfield in the east, eventually ending up in Ouseburn beside the water.”

  “Only two entrances are in general use,” Lowerson said. “The entrance beside the Hancock Museum wasn’t supposed to be operational and the same can be said of an entrance on Crawhall Road. According to the tour guide I spoke to, an emergency exit was installed at Crawhall Road around 2008 or 2009, which could be opened from the inside and gives access to street level. They say the entrance beside St Thomas’s church is impassable as the ramp leading to ground level hasn’t been cleared of years’ worth of debris, but you never know.”

  MacKenzie nodded.

  “We need teams on the ground outside all working exits,” she said. “We’ll flush the bastard out.”

  “What about Ryan?”

  “He has to follow the same direction as Edwards,” she said. “We’ll tell him to head for Crawhall Road.”

  “It’s a way off,” Lowerson said. “Another mile further along the tunnel. That’s a long way in the dark.”

  “I know that, Jack. But there’s no other choice.”

  CHAPTER 37

  Police response teams were stationed outside every known entrance to the tunnel and roadblocks were set up in a quarter-mile radius of each one. While Ryan made his slow, painstaking journey through the long tunnel below, Phillips traced its pathway above ground, estimating Ryan’s position.

  “Sir, it would be easier if we just headed to the first exit,” one of the constables suggested, and Phillips rounded on him.

  “Don’t tell me what would be easier. Easier for who? For me?” He shook his head. “My lad’s trapped down there with that bloody nutter gunnin’ for him and a gas leak spreading. I’ll walk alongside him, even if one of us is below ground.”

  He spoke into his handset again.

  “Ryan? You still down there? Over.”

  The radio crackled into life.

  “Where else would I be, Frank?”

  Phillips smiled.

  “I dunno. Might have dug your way out, by now. That’s the trouble with your generation; always expecting to have things handed to them on a plate.”

  Somewhere beneath the ground twenty metres further east of where Phillips walked, Ryan managed a laugh.

  “Yeah. Nothing but lazy. If it’d been you down here, I’ll bet you’d have dug a new tunnel, by now, eh, Frank?”

  “Darn right, I would,” Phillips told him, keeping an even pace as he consulted the directions MacKenzie had given him. “You passed that second blast wall, yet?”

  “No, not yet.”

  “It’ll be coming up soon. There’ll also be another disused entrance coming up on your left, in around fifty metres,” he said, looking up at St. Thomas’s church. “Sorry to tell you, there’s no way out of there.”

  There was a prolonged silence as Ryan dealt with that blow.

  “How much further, Frank?” He asked quietly, as his feet stumbled onward through the darkness.

  Phillips heard the anxiety in Ryan’s voice and did his best to keep things light.

  “Ah, just a bit further. I’m walking with you, lad.”

  Ryan thought of his sergeant tracing his footsteps above ground and was deeply moved.

  “Frank?”

  There came a crackle.

  “Aye, lad?”

  “Don’t think you’re going to get a pay rise out of this, mind. You just had one, back in January.”

  Phillips grinned.

  “It was worth a try.”

  * * *

  Ryan continued his slow journey east, stopping every so often to touch a hand to the wall. It was stupid, he supposed, but after walking so far in complete darkness a sense of unreality had crept in, as if it were all a bad dream conjured up by his imagination.

  But the dream was real. He felt the damp wall on either side of him and could sense there was not much clearance above his head. He had no way of knowing whether Edwards was fifty paces ahead of him, or five; he might have passed him along the way.

  His body was attuned to every change in atmosphere, every scent on the air. If the man was near, he would know it.

  * * *

  “You still there, lad?”

  Ryan lifted the receiver again, feeling the wound in his upper arm ache.

  “Yeah, I’m here.”

  “Not much further now,” Phillips said.

  “You said that half an hour ago,” Ryan muttered.

  “Yeah, but this time I mean it. The Crawhall Street exit is comin
g up in another thirty yards or so.”

  Phillips spotted the police vehicles up ahead and it was like reaching the Promised Land.

  “Any sign of Edwards?” Ryan asked.

  “No word yet,” Phillips replied, and found that odd. Edwards must have heard the police presence above ground and decided to push on towards the next exit. “There’s only a finite number of ways he can get out of that tunnel. He has to show himself, eventually.”

  As they were talking, Ryan paused to sniff the air. It was heavy with the thick aroma of sewage and a thought struck him, suddenly.

  “Is there a sewage track nearby?”

  “I can ask MacKenzie to check,” Phillips told him. “Why’d you ask?”

  “I can smell it,” Ryan said. “And rats are drawn to sewage, aren’t they?”

  “Aye, they are. I’ll get onto it.”

  Ryan felt a light gust of rancid air hit his face at the side and knew he must be passing an adjacent tunnel. He couldn’t be sure, but he thought there was a sliver of light shining from somewhere inside it, from the streetlamps above.

  “I think he found a manhole,” Ryan muttered. “He’s back on the streets.”

  CHAPTER 38

  When Ryan reached the emergency exit at Crawhall Street, he understood for the first time what it meant to see light at the end of the tunnel. Up ahead, Phillips was waiting for him just inside the entrance and was surrounded by several film lights on loan from the CSIs, creating a blinding halo around his stocky figure.

  “Took your time, didn’t you?”

  Phillips clasped Ryan’s hand and tugged him the rest of the way out into the open air, then watched him turn his face up to the sky and inhale a series of deep breaths. After a moment, he slipped his anorak over Ryan’s shoulders and steered him gently towards one of the squad cars, where he slumped against the car seat.

  “Thanks for keeping me sane,” Ryan muttered.

  “Some things are beyond the power of my magic,” Phillips quipped. “But, as far as it goes, you’re welcome.”

  The car moved away, back towards CID Headquarters.

  “I’m going to drop you off at home,” Phillips said. “You need some rest.”