Cuthbert's Way (DCI Ryan Mysteries, #17)(35)

Through the doorway of his open cell on the upper level of a quadrangle-shaped cell block, he could see a large clock which read a couple of minutes after ten.

He stared at it with wide, frightened eyes, and willed the hands to move faster.

When the second hand had passed ‘twelve’ another eighteen times, a shadow fell across the doorway.

“You the bloke they call ‘Rodin’?”

Lareuse knew then that his time was up.





CHAPTER 17


London never changed, Ryan thought, and yet it never remained the same, either.

There was always some new skyscraper being built, to rival the last one and claim the ‘tallest building’ award—or a new road system being laid, to give the cabbies something to complain about. It was a vibrant, colourful and cosmopolitan place with a character of its own, home to super-rich oligarchs and the impecunious alike, both walking the same network of streets that baffled tourists on a regular basis. Wheeler-dealers, Del Boys, Wide Boys, Rude Boys, Royal Convoys…London had it all, and much more besides.

“It’s got a special kind of smell, London,” Phillips declared, when they stepped off the train at King’s Cross. “A delicate aroma of exhaust fumes, river water, street food and…”

“Dog shit?” Ryan offered, and raised an eyebrow towards the floor, where Phillips had wandered into a pile, unwittingly.

The air turned blue as Frank hopped around for a minute, trying to clean it off with a tissue.

“Bloody filthy sods!” he raged.

Ryan made a sympathetic sound while his eyes scanned the crowds milling around them, looking out for a familiar face.

“Who’d you say we were meetin’ again?”

“DCI Hassan,” Ryan replied. “He was a DI in the same command unit when I was down here in London, although I didn’t report directly to him. My DI at the time was Jennifer Lucas, if you remember.”

“Least said about that, the better,” Phillips replied, and pulled an expressive face. “God rest her, an’ all.”

Years earlier, Ryan had graduated from the police academy and taken his first job at Scotland Yard, moving up the ranks at breakneck speed until he’d joined their Homicide and Serious Crime Command. The unit was split into eighteen Murder Investigation Teams, nowadays; but, fifteen years earlier, when governmental budgets had been more generous, there had been over thirty teams tasked with investigating the most serious crimes in one of the largest cities in the world. Ryan had cut his teeth as a young detective in one such team based out of the Command’s ‘Central’ unit, which covered most of the city centre. He’d reported to a Detective Inspector Jennifer Lucas who had, ultimately, changed the course of his life—for, had she not been the abusive woman she was, Ryan might not have taken the decision to carve out a better life at Northumbria CID. Had he not done so, he would never have met Anna—and the rest was history.

Still, he had many happy memories of his time down south, and one of them weaved his way through the lunchtime crowd towards them with an enormous smile on his chiselled face.

“Here he is,” Ryan told Phillips, who followed his line of sight and simply gaped.

“You didn’t tell me your mate was Idris Elba!” he whispered, in outrage. “Between the two of you, I must look like a bloody hobbit…”

Ryan chuckled, and moved forward with hand outstretched to greet his old comrade.

“John,” he said, warmly. “It’s good to see you.”

Hassan looked at Ryan’s hand, then brushed it away in favour of an expansive hug.

“C’mere, big guy! Max Finley-Ryan, in the flesh! Let me look at you,” he said, and released him from the embrace to cast his warm brown eyes over the boy he’d known, who was now a man. “Still breakin’ those hearts, my friend?”

“Not any more,” Ryan said. “I married a wonderful woman, and I’m a father now.”

“God almighty! Well, congratulations—congratulations!”

He turned to Phillips.

“This is my sergeant and very good friend, Frank Phillips,” Ryan said, and the two men shook hands.

“Been keeping this boy in line, I hope?”

“Tryin’ to, but it’s a losin’ battle,” Phillips said, liking the man more and more. “We’ll have to exchange notes, over a pint, sometime.”

“Now you’re talking my language,” Hassan said, and clasped an arm around Phillips’ shoulders, already the best of friends. “But first, it’s a sunny day. Let’s walk up the road here, towards Pentonville—it’s not far. It’ll give us time to talk, and you can tell me what this is all about.”

“Lead on, Macduff.”

*

Pentonville Prison was many things and, chiefly amongst them, a misnomer; for the Category B men’s prison was not in Pentonville at all, but rather on the Caledonian Road, in the borough of Islington and a short walk from King’s Cross station. Having housed a number of high-profile inmates since its inception in 1842, the prison had formerly enjoyed some vicarious fame, which had more latterly descended to infamy, since the publication of a recent, damning report that described its conditions as squalid, inhumane and overcrowded. Just as worrisome for the justice system was the prison’s chronic staff shortage and seeming inability to prevent contraband from entering its walls—though new windows had gone some way to easing the situation, as had anti-drone netting to prevent the micro-machines from landing in the prison yard and offloading their wares.