The Moor (DCI Ryan Mysteries, #11)(14)

“Everything alright?” he asked.

Phillips made a show of tucking his pen back into the breast pocket of his suit blazer, to buy himself a few seconds.

“Fine,” he lied, then thought better of it. They’d known each other too long for him to fob Ryan off with social pleasantries. “We’ve just never had a case quite like this, before. Funny, after all these years, the job can still catch you off guard.”

“We’ll do our best for her, Frank, same as always.”

“Aye, I know, but…she seems all on her own.”

Ryan sighed inwardly.

“You can’t save them all,” he murmured and, in the next breath, realised he was a hypocrite. He lost sleep, trying to save people. He spent his days trying to avenge the dead, whose names and faces lived on in his deepest psyche, tormenting him.

“There must be hundreds—no, thousands, of kids who’ve seen things like that,” Phillips said. “Children out in war-torn countries who see their parents blown to kingdom come, kids who go through…well, more than either of us ever had to.”

“That’s all true, but we haven’t met them,” Ryan said. “It’s easy not to think about it until one comes and knocks on your door.”

“And then eats you out of house and home,” Phillips chuckled.

“I’m already used to that, with you around,” Ryan grinned, and clapped his friend on the back. “Chin up.”

Phillips drew in a deep breath and nodded.

“Aye,” he said, and turned back to business. “What d’you make of what she said?”

“I think her account ticks two major boxes for us,” Ryan said. “Firstly, she remembered what the victim was wearing. She said her mum was wearing light blue jeans and a pink t-shirt. Well, the body they found back in July 2011 was still clothed, and the pathology report lists a pair of light blue jeans and a pink t-shirt.”

Phillips turned away to look out of the window. It overlooked the car park outside and, across the tarmac, he spotted the girl’s red head bobbing up and down as she chatted to the bloke who ran the Pie Van.

“Too much coincidence,” he murmured. “It has to be her mam.”

Ryan nodded grimly.

“Secondly, her description of what happened to her mum is consistent with strangulation, which was listed as the cause of death,” he continued. “The odds are stacking up in favour of this being a match.”

“Are the DNA results in yet?” Phillips asked.

Ryan took a moment to check his messages, then shook his head.

“Nothing yet,” he said. “They should be in by the end of the day but, while we’re waiting, I think it’s high time we paid her father a visit.”

Phillips needed no further bidding.

“This should be interesting,” he muttered.





CHAPTER 9


As the sun reached its highest point in the sky, Detective Constable Jack Lowerson steered his car eastward along Walker Road and through the old streets of Newcastle, with its rows of 1950s pre-fabs that had once housed the shipbuilders and miners who had made up the majority of the city’s workforce. After those industries died, many of the communities were forgotten; fractured and laid to waste, like the skeleton yards which still lined that part of the river as it curled through the city towards the sea. But there was plenty of pride in these streets, and the kind of grit and determination no amount of money could buy.

The kind he’d been forced to learn, through hard experience.

“Penny for them,” Yates asked, from her position in the passenger seat where she’d been covertly watching the emotions dance across his face.

Lowerson kept his eyes on the road.

“I wasn’t thinking much,” he said. “Just wondering what we’ll find when we get down to the wharf.”

The report had come in from the Control Room less than half an hour ago but the details had been scant; all they knew was that a body had been found inside a dumpster underneath one of the fancy apartment blocks lining St Peter’s Wharf, an area that had been redeveloped and now attracted yuppies, investors and high-rollers who liked to moor their boats in its marina.

“I can hardly wait,” Yates joked, as he parked the car along one of the side streets near the water.

“Nobody said it would be a glamorous job,” came the surly rejoinder.

Yates stared at him for a long moment, wondering how long it would take for the ‘old’ Jack to return. He’d been through hell and back, there was no denying it, but life moved on and it was time he did, too. If he would only take the trouble to ask, she might have told him that she’d been through her own share of problems, and they could have helped one another.

Instead, he seemed content to wallow in his own self-pity.

“You know, it wouldn’t hurt you to crack a smile, sometimes,” she snapped. “The job’s hard enough without having to partner up with Mr Miserable, day in and day out.”

With that, she slammed out of the car and began to make her way down to the marina, which had been cordoned off by the first responders.

Lowerson watched the sunshine bouncing off her hair as she stormed down the street and started to tell himself that she was out of line talking to him like that, but innate honesty gave him pause.