Cuthbert's Way (DCI Ryan Mysteries, #17)(68)

They exchanged a brief word with Faulkner, whose sad brown eyes stared through the gap in his mask, then donned shoe coverings upon entering their friend’s home, where they had shared dinner and countless good times in the past, and which was now a crime scene.

They made their way through to the kitchen, following the sound of voices in hushed conversation.

“…officers are going door-to-door now, sir…”

The local bobby trailed off as they entered the room.

“Give us a minute, son,” Phillips told him, and gave him a grateful pat on the back, as he left.

Ryan’s eyes were wide, swirling pools of misery in his ashen face.

“Frank,” he said, brokenly. “They took her, Frank. They took my Anna.”

Phillips half-ran across the room to pull his friend into a hard embrace and didn’t care who the hell saw it. He let Ryan cry, the great, shuddering sobs of a soul in torment, and said not a word.

MacKenzie bore down and moved across the room to take a seat beside Ryan’s father, who held the baby in his arms and watched his son with such terrible grief, it tore at her heart.

“Let me take her, for a minute,” she said gently, so as not to startle him.

He seemed reluctant to let go of his granddaughter, but saw the sense of it.

“I need to check that Eve is all right,” he said. “She needed a couple of stitches above her eye, but she refused any further treatment because she wanted to be near Ryan. She wouldn’t desert him; she said she couldn’t live with herself, if she did.”

MacKenzie nodded. “Look after her,” she said. “There are no rights or wrongs here, Charles. Caring for your wife is the right thing to do now. We’re here to help, and we’ll stay for as long as necessary.”

She’d already put a call through to the mother of Samantha’s closest schoolfriend to arrange childcare cover for the immediate future.

“Thank you,” he said, rising from his chair. He hovered there for a moment, seeming lost and unsure, and started to move towards the stairs.

“Dad,” Ryan said, in a thick voice. “What now?”

Charles Ryan wanted to enfold his son in his arms, as Phillips had done. He wanted to be the one to dry his tears and tell him all would be right, but that was far from certain. He was a man with backbone, of substance built over the course of seventy years or more of living—and if it had taught him anything, it was that, in moments such as these, there was a time to fold and a time to fight.

Now, it was time to fight.

He corrected his stance, so he was no longer the world-weary old man who had failed his family. He was a veteran, and a former diplomat, and would behave as such—if not for himself, or even for Ryan, but for the woman who had shown the presence of mind to protect her child, even in her darkest moment.

“What now?” he said, sharply. “Now, we bring her back home, using all means necessary. On your feet now, son.”

Phillips opened his mouth to say something, but MacKenzie shook her head.

His father’s words seemed to penetrate, re-igniting the fire in Ryan’s belly, and he rose up from the table to stand tall.

“That’s better,” Charles said. “Now, gather the intelligence and formulate your strategy, as only you know how. Anna is relying on it.”

With those words hanging in the air, Charles turned and went in search of his wife, who was relying on him at that moment.

Ryan looked at his friends, then at the sleeping bundle in MacKenzie’s arms.

“Anna hid Emma in the cupboard in her study,” he said, forcing himself to think logically. “When I left this morning, the plan was for them to leave within half an hour. The car was already packed, but Dad tells me they’d run out of nappies, which is why he went down to the shop. It would only have taken five minutes, but they timed it just right—that can’t have been deliberate, since they had no way of knowing he’d be leaving then. However, they could have waited until I left.”

Phillips cleared his throat. “Aye, that seems logical. What else?”

Ryan paced around a bit, running his hands back and forth over his dark hair, actively fighting the panic that threatened to choke him.

“It makes no sense for her to have been in the study,” he said, and turned suddenly to stride across the room towards the stairs.

MacKenzie made a sweeping motion with her free hand, encouraging Phillips to follow after him.

“We’ll have some girl time, eh, sweetie-pie?” she said to the baby, who was fast asleep in her arms. “Don’t you worry, darlin’, we’ll find your mummy and bring her back.”

She could have set the baby down in her cot, but MacKenzie stayed there in the quiet kitchen a while longer, listening to the comforting sound of Faulkner’s team brushing and swabbing around the front door and in the hallway, searching for the tiny clues that would bring those thugs to justice, one day. She sang a soft, Irish lullaby to the baby girl and said a prayer for her mother, wherever she may have been.

*

Anna was sick twice in the back of the van, the motion having been so violent as to turn her stomach, while the gag she wore made it difficult to breathe or to prevent the acidic bile from pooling in her throat, suffocating her.

Heaving, gasping for breath, she lay in the foetal position on the floor of the van, surrounded by at least two others that she could smell.