The Infirmary (DCI Ryan Mysteries prequel)(10)

“We don’t have days, Tom,” he said quietly. “What happened to Cooper is a clear escalation. They won’t wait long for the next one.”

Faulkner hissed out a frustrated breath, weighing things up. His choice to forego dinner with his wife’s family and come into work had caused a vicious argument, something that was becoming more and more frequent these days. It troubled him, but not half as much as it should have done; not half as much as the prospect of being excluded from the investigation.

“I’ll do what I can,” he conceded.

Phillips slapped a manly hand on Faulkner’s shoulder.

“Good lad,” he said.

“You’re the best there is,” Ryan said, without rancour. He made no effort to flatter the man, merely stated the fact.

“That remains to be seen,” Faulkner muttered. “So far, I can’t tell you very much. You already know the front and back doors to the house were locked. Well, it turns out we have a considerate killer because they posted the door keys back through the letterbox. We found them lying on the floor.”

“Cocky bastard,” Phillips spat. “Any prints?”

“Plenty, but I’ll bet they all belong to Sharon. No way he’d have left them unless he was sure there’d be no risk.”

The three men fell silent as they rounded the corner onto the high street. The village slumbered again now that the locals and visitors had returned to their homes and they could hear the faint sound of waves crashing against the shore, somewhere in the twilight.

“What about weapons? Did he leave anything behind?”

By mutual accord, they headed in the direction of the sea wall.

“I’ve bagged everything that could possibly have been used but frankly I’m not holding out much hope,” Faulkner replied, with a trace of apology. “The kind of implement he’d need to get through…well, to saw through the bones, that would take a hacksaw or something similar. We didn’t find anything that fits the bill.”

“He could have dumped it somewhere,” Phillips put in. “We’ve got the local team rifling through bins, just in case.”

“He’s meticulous,” Ryan overrode him. “He’s not averse to spending time researching his victims’ lives, finding out where they live, when they leave home, whether they live alone… He probably prefers to use his own tools, in which case he brought what he needed and took them away again. We won’t find anything in a bin.”

He looked across to find both men watching him strangely. It was an occupational advantage but a personal hazard, the uncanny knack of being able to step inside the mind of a killer.

“We never found a murder weapon after Isobel Harris, either,” he reminded them.

Phillips grunted.

“One thing we did have from the scene at the Harris place was trace DNA,” Faulkner said. “Once we’ve had a chance to analyse the samples we’ve taken today, we’ll see if any of them match up. We still don’t have a name but it’s better than nothing.”

“We have John Dobbs,” Ryan put in. “We can compare his DNA and it’ll bring us one stage closer to ruling him out of the Harris murder—or not, as the case may be.”

It was becoming increasingly unlikely that Dobbs had taken the girl’s life, but they couldn’t discount the possibility. Not yet.

“I’ll make it a priority,” Faulkner agreed.

They reached the sea wall and Ryan leaned forward, resting his forearms on the top to stare out to sea as the tide rolled in. The wind had picked up, buffeting against them as night drew in and he shivered, imagining what it had taken for a man to plunge himself into the water.

Abruptly, he turned away.

“There was one other thing we found,” Faulkner broke the silence, fiddling with the plastic bottle he still held in his hands, not looking at either of them.

“What’s that?”

“He left a calling card.”

“You mean a note?”

“No, it’s a gentleman’s calling card, like something from another era.”

“What did it say?”

Faulkner shook his head.

“It was so blood-stained, I’ve sent it back to the lab to have it cleaned up, so we can read what it said.”

“The minute you do, call me,” Ryan told him and, to their surprise, broke into a wide grin.

“Dunno what you’ve got to smile about,” Phillips blurted out. “We’ve got two brutal murders on our hands, a pack of ravenous reporters yappin’ at our heels and the wrath of the Superintendent to contend with when we get back to HQ. And there you are, grinning like a muppet.”

Ryan laughed richly.

“Don’t you see, Frank? Whoever killed Cooper broke their own rules by leaving that card. They were so careful, so controlled. But leaving that card? That’s loss of control because they needed the challenge and the chase. They want us to come after them.”

“There won’t be any DNA on the card,” Faulkner promised him.

“There doesn’t need to be,” Ryan shot back. “It’s an insight into their mind, the type of person we’re hunting.”

“And what kind of person is that?” Faulkner enquired. Behind his head, the priory was illuminated as night fell rapidly and cast his face into shadow.