The Moor (DCI Ryan Mysteries, #11)(10)

“Has the father reported her missing, yet?” Ryan asked, mildly. “It’s been nearly twenty-four hours. Has he rung the Control Room to make a report?”

Morrison hesitated, then acknowledged the point with a wry smile.

“No,” she muttered. “He hasn’t.”

*

“Why do you keep looking at him like that?”

Trainee Detective Constable Melanie Yates jolted in her seat in the staff canteen, and turned a slow shade of red.

“Like what? I wasn’t—”

“You keep looking at that man, over there,” Samantha insisted, between mouthfuls of bacon and baked beans that had spent so long sitting on the counter they resembled congealed orange gloop.

“Look,” she said. “He’s walking over, now—”

“Finish your breakfast, Sam,” MacKenzie said firmly, earning a grateful smile from Yates, whose burgeoning attraction for Detective Constable Jack Lowerson was the worst kept secret in Northumbria CID. The man in question was presently helping himself to a cup of coffee from one of the industrial vending machines lining a wall on the other side of the room and was, thankfully, oblivious to their conversation.

“He’s not bad,” Sam continued, blithely. “I like Ryan, better, though. He’s taller and has black hair and nice eyes. But I guess he’s already married.”

Her last observation was delivered with a distinct measure of child-like resentment, and both women laughed.

“He’s a little old for you, don’t you think?” MacKenzie teased.

Sam shrugged, and bit into another slice of toast.

“If you like him so much, why don’t you just tell him?” she asked, bringing the conversation neatly back around to Yates, who wished the ground would conveniently swallow her alive.

“I can see we’re going to need to give you a little fast-track introduction to the Girl Code,” MacKenzie said.

“What’s that?”

“I’ll tell you later, but it involves keeping schtum about certain matters of the heart.”

“Oh,” Samantha said, wisely. “You mean because the one over there doesn’t know Mel likes him?”

Yates wondered if it were possible to die from acute embarrassment, and was almost relieved when Lowerson arrived, effectively putting an end to the conversation which had revolved exclusively around him.

“Hello,” he said, sliding into a chair beside Samantha. “I’m Jack.”

“So that’s your name,” she said enigmatically, earning herself two hard stares from the other women at the table.





CHAPTER 7


On the marina at St Peter’s Wharf, on the banks of the River Tyne, Fred Marsons was not having a successful morning. In fact, it would be fair to say he was not having a successful year, nor a successful life, by many standards. He was a man of forty-seven but could easily pass for twenty years older, thanks to a life marred by hard drink and drugs. Those vices had cost him all he held dear: his family, his friends, his health, his home, and every job he’d ever had. He had no fixed address, had few of his own teeth, and his jaw had partially eroded, leaving him with a perpetual hangdog expression he could do nothing to change.

Many well-intentioned people had tried to help him claw back his identity over the years but, in truth, he hardly remembered the man he had once been. Young Fred used to like playing football, he remembered, and had loved a girl called Alison. They’d had a child, whom he hadn’t seen in more than twenty years. People didn’t understand how he could have let it happen, why he had fallen so far or how he could put his addiction before his own kin.

The same questions, every time, from different mouths.

Because it was a sickness, he’d tell them, that’s why. A disease that wormed its way into the soul and fed off the weakness it found there. It made a mockery of the pain and suffering he locked away in the depths of his heart and numbed it all, so he could pretend it wasn’t there, but it was. It festered away, rotting his mind. He knew all about it, understood his own reasons for poisoning his body, all the whys and wherefores, but he was too far gone to care. Even thinking about how bad it was made him hanker for the next hit.

“C’mon lad,” he mumbled to the dog, who loped alongside him as he shuffled towards the large dumpsters on the far side of the marina.

He happened to know that the Council had scaled back their collections and were not due to empty the big ones until the end of the day. If he was lucky, he might find something worth saving. On the other hand, the weather was warm, which did not bode well for the task that lay ahead.

“Stay,” he told the mutt, who plonked his bum down on the tarmac.

With considerable effort, Fred heaved the metal lid upward and swore volubly when he discovered the smell was even worse than he’d expected.

Stoically, he set an old plastic crate on the ground which he planned to use as a step to propel himself up and over the side. He retched a few times and spat the stench from his mouth as he drew closer and the odour grew even more potent. It was like mouldy fruit and something else…something meaty.

Fred curled his gnarled fingers around the rim of the dumpster and boosted himself up, intending to hoist himself over the edge. He never made it that far because, as soon as his chin rose above the rim, he spotted the cause of the foul smell.