Cuthbert's Way (DCI Ryan Mysteries, #17)(66)

Back at his desk, Phillips answered on the first ring. “DS Phillips.”

“They’ve taken Anna.”

Phillips thought he had misheard. “What? What was that?”

“Anna. They’ve taken her.”

Ryan undertook a vehicle doing seventy, and returned to the fast lane. The landscape whipped past him in a blur of blue and green, but he saw nothing except Anna’s face when he’d left her this morning.

He’d left her…

“When?” Phillips demanded. “Where?”

“The house, less than ten minutes ago,” Ryan said, in a horrible, toneless voice he barely recognised. “Send help.”

Phillips was already keying in the order to the Control Room to dispatch squad cars, and planned to contact the forensics team as soon as he’d spoken to Morrison.

But, first, he needed to be sure Ryan wouldn’t drive himself off the road.

He needed to keep him very, very calm.

“Where are you now,” he asked, in an even, unthreatening voice.

“Morpeth junction. A1, northbound.”

“Good. All right. Do you feel competent to drive? If not, you need to pull over.”

“I need to get there. Time is slipping away.”

“I’ve got squad cars on the way, and an ambulance, if one hasn’t been dispatched already,” Phillips said.

Across the bank of desks, Lowerson and Yates had fallen silent, listening intently to the one-sided conversation with growing alarm. When MacKenzie entered the room with cups of vending machine coffee, Yates held up a hand to warn her something was amiss, and she hurried across to take a seat beside Frank.

Spotting her, he wrote a single word on his notepad, and circled it twice.

‘MORRISON’.

Rising again, she hurried from the room to fetch their Chief Constable, hardly knowing what to tell her, except it was a matter of extreme urgency, judging by the pale, horrified expression on her husband’s face.

There could be only one reason for that, and she could hardly bear to speak it aloud.

“Ryan, give me an update. Where are you now? What speed are you doing, son?”

“Passing Longwitton,” he said, in a voice that was barely audible. “Sixty or seventy.”

“All right, I need you to slow that down, you’re going through a village. I know you don’t want to cause any accidents. I’ve just been told that the ambulance has arrived, for your mum.”

Ryan heard the words from far away, as if he were swimming underwater, but some part of him recognised the good sense in what his friend had said, and he eased his foot off the accelerator.

“She’s gone, Frank. They’ve taken her; she’s gone.”

Phillips closed his eyes, knowing this particular nightmare only too well.

“We’ll get her back, you just wait and see. Keep that speed under forty for the rest of the way, now.”

“All right, Frank,” Ryan said, and kept his friend on the line until he reached Elsdon.





CHAPTER 34


Ryan arrived home soon after the ambulance, bringing his car to a jerky stop beside it. He walked unsteadily to the front door, trance-like, not quite in command of himself in that moment, so great was the shock of her loss.

He stepped through the broken doorway to find his mother being tended to by a couple of paramedics, her face covered with blood which had spattered across the wall. His father stood a short way away, holding Emma in his arms while she fed from a warm bottle of milk.

Even in the midst of it all, he had looked after the child.

Spotting Ryan, his father’s face crumpled, and tears began to fall.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I failed you, son.”

Ryan shook his head and stepped inside the house, moving like an automaton.

“Nobody touches this doorway,” he said, in a faraway voice. “Nobody touches anything, until the forensics team arrive.”

“Ryan?”

He held up a hand for quiet, and moved closer to speak to his mother, who was conscious again.

Seeing the damage done to her face, he flinched and closed his eyes for a moment, turning away. Bearing down, Ryan turned back again, and became the murder detective, his face shuttered against the pain of a loss so great, it could not be quantified.

“What did you see?” he asked. “Mum? What did you see?”

A description, he thought. I need a description.

“Son, now isn’t the time—”

“There is no more time,” Ryan said, simply.

“Black masks,” Eve mumbled, lifting a hand to shove her oxygen mask out of the way, ignoring the protests from the paramedics at her side. “Tried to warn Anna, but…they were too quick. Four of them, all men. Shorter than you, taller than Anna. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry—”

Ryan knelt beside her and clasped her shaking hand.

“Thank you,” he whispered. “Rest now, Mum. Let the doctors look after you.”

“But, what about—”

He stood up again, and signalled that the paramedics should move in. Both men watched as Eve was strapped to a stretcher and lifted outside, where she was taken to the ambulance.

“You should go with her, Dad,” Ryan said.

“I can’t leave you like this,” Charles said, scrubbing a hand over his swollen eyes. “Not like this.”