The Moor (DCI Ryan Mysteries, #11)(30)

“Thanks for all this, pet, but we don’t expect you to cook for us. In fact, while you’re here, why don’t you let us take care of you, eh?”

She looked crestfallen.

“Don’t you like scrambled eggs and bacon?”

His stomach grumbled loudly, just at the mention of it.

“Is the Pope Catholic?” he replied, with a grin. “I’ll get the plates.”

*

Later, after an extensive clean-up operation, MacKenzie and Phillips sat down at the table beside Samantha.

“Sam, we need to talk.”

The girl looked between them and swallowed, already anticipating what was to come. They were about to tell her that it was no use; she’d have to go back into care and there was nothing they could do about it.

“I’m sorry about taking your keys,” she whispered. “I promise, I put them back in the drawer in the hallway, where I found them.”

That cleared up that mystery, MacKenzie thought.

“It’s okay,” she said. “We’re happy to know you’re safe, but it was wrong of you to run away from the foster family; they were very worried. In fact, we all were.”

Samantha blinked in surprise. In her whole life, nobody had told her they’d worried about her.

“You were?”

“Well, of course we were!” Phillips boomed, and patted her arm. “People care about you, lass. Don’t go running off like that again, alright?”

She nodded.

“I’m sorry,” she said, and then took a deep breath. “Are you sending me back?”

She focused on a spot somewhere above their heads, as she waited for the hammer to fall.

“Well, actually, we wondered if you’d like to stay here for a while.”

Samantha’s face broke into a smile.

“Really?”

“Aye, but we’ll need to set some ground rules,” Phillips said, folding his arms across his paunch. “First of all, there’ll be no quaffing of the shortbread biscuits without leaving one for me and Denise. Agreed?”

Samantha giggled, then nodded.

“Agreed. Anything else?”

Their faces grew serious.

“Yes, Sam, there’s something else. Something very important,” MacKenzie said, quietly. “It concerns your mum.”

She looked between them and read twin expressions of sympathy.

“It was her, wasn’t it?” she whispered.

Phillips cleared his throat.

“Yes, love. It was. We’re so sorry.”

Samantha’s eyes filled with tears and her lip wobbled.

“I already knew she was dead, but…but…”

MacKenzie could stand it no longer, and she threw her arms wide open. The girl sobbed and buried her face against the warmth of her shoulder, purging herself of the grief that racked her small body. Watching them, Phillips knew they’d stepped over an invisible line and they wouldn’t be able to step back again.

They could only move forward.

*

Later that morning, MacKenzie took Samantha back into Police Headquarters for further questioning. Once the worst of the tears had passed, anger had followed, bringing with it a determination to help find the person responsible for her mother’s murder. While she tried to remember any small details that could help them, Phillips made his way across town to one of the less convivial spots on a murder detective’s map: the mortuary.

He met Ryan by the side entrance and together they made the journey into the bowels of the Royal Victoria Infirmary.

“How’d you get on with Morrison?” he asked, as they walked along the long, uncomfortably warm corridor in the hospital basement towards a set of secure double doors.

“Fine, once she came around.” Ryan was cagey, thinking of the difficult conversation he’d had with their Chief Constable earlier that morning. “She’s a reasonable woman.”

Phillips gave his friend a knowing look.

“Well, whatever she said, you obviously convinced her otherwise. Thanks, lad.”

“Don’t thank me too soon,” Ryan muttered. “She also said that, if anything went wrong, she’d come down on the pair of us like a tonne of bricks.”

No idle threat.

As they reached the double doors, Ryan keyed in the entry code to the mortuary—the province of Doctor Jeffrey Pinter, Chief Pathologist attached to Northumbria CID.

“Morning!” he called out, from somewhere behind one of the enormous, dank-smelling immersion tanks on the other side of the room.

Ryan and Phillips tugged on their visitors’ lab coats and scrawled their names in the log book.

“Morning, Jeff,” Ryan said, and Phillips grunted, trying not to focus on the waxy outline of what had once been a heavily overweight man. “You look busy.”

Pinter emerged around the side of the tank, his face full of smiles despite having just had his hands in places Phillips would rather not think about.

“Suspicious death, came in the other day,” Pinter explained, with a shrug of his bony shoulders. It was an unfortunate coincidence that, thanks to a lack of Vitamin D and poor genetics, the pathologist bore a strong resemblance to most people’s notion of the Grim Reaper. Luckily, his cheerful personality made up for whatever physical deficiencies he might have had.