The Infirmary (DCI Ryan Mysteries prequel)(12)

There was a two-thirds split of those who sat up a little straighter in their chairs and those who slumped, defeated.

But nobody left the room, which gave him hope.

Just then, the doors opened to admit a latecomer. DCS Gregson entered and moved to stand on the sidelines, causing a mass rustling of chairs.

Ryan spared him a glance, then clapped his hands to regain their attention.

“Alright, listen up! Before she was murdered, Cooper believed that circumstantial evidence pointed towards one man. That man was John Edward Dobbs, a forty-six-year-old hospital technician at the Royal Victoria Infirmary who committed suicide at around noon today.”

There were a couple of unsympathetic snorts. Ryan made a mental note of their names then pushed away from the desk to add another face to the board, set apart from the others. Looking into Dobbs’ myopic brown eyes in blurry Technicolour, he felt a tug somewhere low in his belly he recognised as guilt. He hadn’t known the man, nor worked on building the case against him, but there was no denying the possibility that his department had driven Dobbs to take his own life.

It was more than possible, he amended swiftly. It was downright probable.

He stepped away, putting a physical and emotional distance between himself and the sad, milky-faced man whose bloated body now lay on an impersonal gurney down at the mortuary.

“Reading through DCI Cooper’s notes, I can see there were several good reasons why Dobbs was her prime suspect. First”—he ticked them off on his fingers—“the injuries sustained by Isobel Harris displayed a level of clinical precision and anatomical knowledge suggestive of a healthcare professional or someone working within that field. The investigation ran to veterinary surgeons and local butchers but, ultimately, came to focus on hospitals and GP surgeries after other facts came to light. John Dobbs worked as a hospital technician at the RVI, which isn’t the same as being a world-leading surgeon but it’s a start. Secondly,” he said, tapping his middle finger, “Isobel Harris was a member of an online dating community known as LoveLife. Data released by the company included a list of men she had dated over the course of her membership, which ran to four months in total. John Dobbs was one of them.”

He paused to check they were still paying attention before continuing.

“Finally, and perhaps most damning, CCTV footage from Fenwick department store showed an altercation between John Dobbs and Isobel Harris at the perfume counter where she worked, two days after their date on 17th June. Messages retrieved from her mobile phone provider and other social media sites tell us the date did not go well and she left early, apparently because Dobbs had not been honest in his online dating profile and because he was, in her own words, ‘old and weird’. She was twenty-two, he was a man in his late forties but passed himself off as being ten years younger and a senior consultant. Taken together with the criminal profile created by our forensic psychologist, the working theory was that Dobbs couldn’t stand to be rejected by Harris and so tortured and killed her in retribution.”

His eyes fell on the pretty, smiling face of Isobel Harris and he was silent for a long moment.

“But?”

Phillips’ voice interrupted his reverie.

“But what?”

“You were about to tell us why that theory was all wrong,” Phillips supplied, reaching for the emergency Kit Kat he had stowed in one of his pockets. “Unless you think Dobbs killed Harris after all?”

Ryan resisted the terrible urge to laugh.

“Until we hear from the pathologist and the CSI team, we only have initial observations to rely on. But,” he enunciated the word for Phillips’ benefit, “there’s a striking resemblance in the manner we found both women, and not just physically. Look at the behaviour leading up to their deaths: each time, their killer did his research to make sure they lived alone. The last thing he would have wanted is an interruption. That must have involved days or weeks of surveillance ahead of killing them, which suggests very high levels of control. That’s mirrored in the way each woman was killed. He took his time, he was methodical, he planned ahead and, unless we find a murder weapon, it looks like he brought his own tools and cleaned up after himself on both occasions.”

“But with Harris, the process was much longer,” MacKenzie said. “He kept her alive for almost fifteen hours before finishing her. It was a marathon.”

Ryan heard the wobble in her voice and chose to ignore it, not because he deemed it unworthy but because he knew MacKenzie was strong enough to handle herself.

“That’s true, which suggests Cooper didn’t interest him except as a vessel. At this point, it’s still possible that Dobbs murdered Harris, if not Cooper. Why else did he have such an extreme reaction? Why run like he did? If there was nothing to hide, he could have come in for questioning without any fuss.”

“Dobbs had a history of depression and anxiety,” Phillips put in. “That may explain the overreaction.”

“Maybe,” Ryan conceded, but was not convinced. “In light of what we discovered today, we can’t ignore the possibility that Dobbs didn’t kill either woman and that some other reason exists to explain why he ran.”

“Sir?”

Ryan searched the room for the source of the interruption and found Lowerson’s eager face.

“If Dobbs wasn’t responsible, does that mean we’ve got a serial on our hands?”