The Infirmary (DCI Ryan Mysteries prequel)(81)

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 coming 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.”

Ryan’s eyes flew open.

“No, Frank. I can’t rest while Edwards is somewhere out there. We’ve got a manhunt on our hands. People are depending on us to bring him in.”

“You’re dead on your feet,” Phillips argued.

“That won’t stop him.”

Phillips couldn’t argue with that.

“Have we got a team stationed at Edwards house, in case he tries to go back?’

“Aye, MacKenzie took care of that. Faulkner’s going through the place and they’ve seized boxes of stuff, already. They found photographs,” Phillips added.

Ryan fell silent, thinking of the gruesome images a man like Edwards might choose to capture and keep for posterity.

“He needs the photographs to keep him going, between kills,” he said, in a voice devoid of emotion. “There may be other trophies. Other women.”

“He has a type,” Phillips said. “With the exception of Sharon Cooper, they’ve all been young brunettes. That’ll be for a reason.”

“We may never know the reason why,” Ryan said. “He as good as told me that, himself.”

Phillips gave him a considering look and wondered what passed between Ryan and Edwards in the tunnel. Perhaps that was another thing he would never know.

*

There was a rapturous welcome awaiting Ryan as he stepped back inside the Incident Room. The staff of Operation Summer broke into spontaneous applause and there was plenty of the kind of back-slapping that Ryan normally detested.

“Thanks,” he said, after the noise died down. “As you can see, I’m still in one piece. We have a name, we have a face. Let’s find him.”

The room was re-energised now that its leader had returned, and police staff scattered back to their desks dealing with a constant stream of information that was trickling through. Every media source was reporting the manhunt and the country was gripped in a state of fear and limbo, afraid once again to leave their homes or answer their door to strangers.

“Mac, tell me what we’ve got,” Ryan said, pouring himself a generous cup of what he assumed was coffee from an urn sitting on the side.

“We’ve issued an All Ports Warning,” she said, running a sharp eye over his face. “The stations, ferry ports and airports are on red alert. Gregson’s managing the press and they’ve plastered his face all over the news.”

“Good,” Ryan said. “People need to know what to look for.”

“That’s what we thought. Durham CID have drafted in extra patrol officers, so we’ve got a bigger presence on the streets.”

Ryan nodded.

“What about his credit card company? His bank? Has there been any activity?”