The Infirmary (DCI Ryan Mysteries prequel)(4)

He was still grinning when he turned the corner and almost collided with Denise MacKenzie.

“Sorry,” he muttered, drawing himself up to his full height.

She smiled slowly and folded her arms across her chest.

“Didn’t expect to see you in the office today, Frank. You’ve heard, then?”

Phillips hastily pulled himself together.

“I’m just on m’ way to see Gregson, now,” he answered, striving for nonchalance. “How bad is it?”

She pulled an expressive face.

“Bad enough. Cooper lost a prime suspect today and the IPCC’s already making noises about negligence. The Chief Constable’s on the warpath.”

Phillips cleared his throat.

“Well—”

“I should—”

“Right. Thanks for the heads up.”

Phillips scurried away, trotting to keep up with Ryan who was standing a discreet distance away.

Before the man could pass comment, Phillips growled a warning.

“Not one word,” he said.

Ryan held both hands up, smiling broadly.

“Wouldn’t dream of it.”

Their smiles faded as they approached a door bearing a shiny brass plaque. Phillips checked his tie—a jazzy little number in a shade of sunflower yellow—before rapping a knuckle against the wood.

“Come!”

They stepped inside the private domain of Detective Chief Superintendent Arthur Gregson and found the room brimming with senior police staff from at least two area command divisions. Conversations ended mid-flow as they entered the room and heads swivelled to greet the newcomers.

“Ryan, Phillips, come in,” Gregson gestured them inside and closed the door behind them before returning to his desk. “Take a seat, if you can find one. The rest of you, clear out!”

While the room emptied, they remained standing like sentries to their general.

“Thanks for coming in on your day off,” Gregson said, in the kind of tone that suggested he expected nothing less. “I suppose you’ve seen the news?”

He looked between their blank faces.

“Have you been hiding under a bloody rock? There’s been a major incident,” he told them, without preamble. “Less than an hour ago, our prime suspect in the Harris case ran around half of Newcastle while Hitchins and Jessop chased after him. He threw himself off the Tyne Bridge in full daylight, to a crowd of spectators who streamed the whole thing on social media. I’ve already had the IPCC on the blower wanting answers and the phones are ringing off the hook in the press office.”

Ryan frowned.

“Cooper’s the SIO on that one, sir. It’s regrettable that the suspect has taken his own life, but I don’t see that it qualifies as a major incident.”

Gregson linked broad, workmanlike hands on the desktop and took a moment before answering. He was an imposing man with a shock of steel grey hair, a permanent golfer’s tan and over thirty years on the force. A man in his position knew how to handle difficult situations and difficult people with detachment, but he could only admire the clinical way Ryan cut straight to the heart of the matter.

“John Dobbs isn’t the problem, Ryan. It’s Cooper.”

Only then did they realise that their colleague, DCI Sharon Cooper, was nowhere to be seen. Ryan swung his gaze back to Gregson.

“Where is she?”

“Cooper’s been uncontactable since around eleven this morning,” Gregson replied. “She sent a message to say she needed to take an hour’s personal and that’s the last we heard. John Dobbs had been under surveillance for three days. Jessop and Hitchins were on shift this morning when he made them and took off along the Quayside. They tried radioing her for instructions but heard nothing. We sent a response team and a crisis negotiator to the bridge, but it was too late.” He lifted his shoulders and let them fall again. “While Cooper was AWOL, Dobbs offed himself. They did their best in the circumstances but Hitchins and Jessop don’t have the authority or the experience. They were expecting to watch the bloke and make an arrest if necessary, not talk him down after running the length and breadth of the city. God knows, it’s not the outcome any of us wanted.”

“Or what the Harris family might have wanted,” Ryan added, thinking that it was a cowardly way out for a killer. “Where’s Cooper now?”

It was unthinkable that the SIO tasked with commanding their most high-profile murder investigation in recent years was MIA. It wasn’t just negligent, he thought, it was unforgivable.

But he kept his thoughts to himself, at least until he had spoken to his colleague.

“There’ll be hell to pay once the media gets wind of it,” Phillips put in.

“They already have,” Gregson intoned. “I’ve got the media liaison managing that side of things, but I want to get ahead of the evening news before the next disaster unfolds.”

Ryan felt a coldness begin to spread inside his chest, a creeping dread he recognised as the kind of sixth sense murder detectives develop after a while on the job. In the face of what looked like gross professional negligence, Gregson was displaying a surprising lack of enmity. It begged the question why.

“Where’s Cooper, sir?”

Gregson sighed deeply.

“Her police tracker’s still transmitting from her home in Tynemouth,” he replied calmly. “There’s a response team on their way there now. They’re under orders not to force entry until a senior officer arrives. Ryan, I need somebody I can trust to be there on the ground before they go in, making sure everything’s done by the book. I can’t have a bunch of squaddies trampling over the place; Cooper’s one of our own, after all.”