The Moor (DCI Ryan Mysteries, #11)(32)

Phillips had never particularly liked the man, but now he laid a grateful hand on his shoulder.

“She’d thank you, if she could.”

*

When Ryan and Phillips emerged from the basement, they took a moment to breathe deeply of the fresh morning air. Mist had rolled in from the sea overnight and the air around them was damp, leaving a thin layer of moisture on the surface of their skin.

“Pinter couldn’t really tell us anything new,” Phillips remarked, as they stood beneath the plastic canopy outside the service entrance to the mortuary. “Just confirmed what we already knew, I s’pose.”

“Not entirely,” Ryan said, leaning back against the wall of the hospital. “He told us the body had been burned, and that jewellery had been recovered. That’s interesting, because it means Esme’s killer was intelligent. They could have dumped her in a ditch, but instead they took her to somewhere unconnected with the circus and used two methods to try to conceal her body. That could also signify a desire to obliterate her, from a psychological perspective—”

“That’s reaching a bit far,” Phillips said, and Ryan nodded.

“Maybe. But the most interesting fact is that Esme hadn’t been wearing her wedding ring when she died. Somebody might have removed it, or…”

“She’d been intending to leave her husband, after all?” Phillips finished for him.

“Exactly, which brings him right back into the frame.”





CHAPTER 18


As it happened, the task of identifying the body found in the dumpster at St Peter’s Wharf was not so very hard, after all. Dan “The Demon” Hepple had been well-known to the police, with an extensive criminal record including pops for drug dealing and possession, aggravated assault and other violent crimes.

“I just got off the phone with the Drugs Squad,” Lowerson said, as soon as Yates walked into the office. “It looks like our DB was already on the books. He’s Daniel Hepple, resident of Whitley Bay, aged forty-one.”

“And, ‘good morning’ to you, too, Jack,” she muttered, dumping her handbag on the floor.

“That tip has saved us a lot of time,” he continued, as if he hadn’t heard. “We’re still waiting for the DNA analysis to come back but, in the meantime, all the Drugs Squad had to do was chat to one of their informants. Pity we don’t have somebody similar we could turn to.”

“We do have informants,” she said. “But they’re old and past their sell-by date because there’s a constant turnover amongst the ruling gangs. We could use some new blood, people who have something useful to tell us.”

Lowerson looked at her in surprise.

“How do you know about it?”

“Common knowledge,” she said, breezily.

“Right. Well, I think we should head down to Hepple’s place in Whitley Bay and see what we find.”

“Whatever you say, Guv.”

*

While Lowerson and Yates made their way to the coast, Ryan went about the business of setting up a Major Incident Room. Esme O’Neill’s murder was an active investigation now, and had been assigned the dubious code name, ‘OPERATION SHOWSTOPPER’. A whiteboard lined one wall of the conference room and he’d spent some time tacking up images of Esme as she’d been in life, as well as candid stills of how she’d been found after a violent death. Beneath that, he’d drawn a timeline and listed any pertinent dates, including when Charlie O’Neill claimed his wife had gone missing, as well as the date she’d been found, a month later. He’d also tacked up pictures of those who formed part of the victim’s inner circle: her daughter, Samantha; her husband, Charlie; and, his brother, Duke. It was already known that her mother had died following a battle with cancer and her father was living in Canada. He’d emigrated just after Esme’s eighteenth birthday, leaving her in the care of the circus, where Charlie’s father had employed her to look after the horses before he’d had a stroke and passed on the running of it to his eldest son.

When Phillips joined him with a steaming mug of coffee in each hand, a few minutes later, Ryan cast his eyes around the empty room.

“Where the hell is everybody? Didn’t they get the message?”

“Aye, but MacKenzie’s with Samantha, who’s giving another statement in the Family Room, downstairs,” Phillips said, and set the cups on one of the laminated tables which formed a semi-circle around the whiteboard area. He saw that each place had been set, with a small pack of printed summaries and materials on each chair. “Lowerson’s Acting SIO on this Bin Body case—”

“Acting SIO?”

Phillips paused.

“That’s alright, isn’t it?”

“It’s great,” Ryan said, and smiled. In fact, it was the best news that week. For a long time, they’d worried Jack Lowerson wouldn’t come back to work at all, so to hear that he’d taken the opportunity to better himself was music to his ears.

“Well, he’s got Yates with him and they’ve headed off to look over the victim’s last known address. One of the crime analysts said they’d pop upstairs later to see if you needed anything but they’re under the cosh, themselves, with an influx of gang murders lately. The rest of the rabble are either off on holiday or dealing with their own caseload.”