“Don’t start,” Ryan pointed a finger at his sergeant and hoped it would be enough to stave off the lecture.
“None of my business, of course,” Phillips mused. “But seems to me you’ve sent your lady packing after she waited here, patiently, not knowing what was going to happen. She trusted you to do right by her, Ryan.”
“D’you think I don’t know that? It’s because of me that she needed to be here at all!”
Phillips scratched at the side of his chin, the fingernail rasping against the stubble on his chin.
“Fancy yourself a bit, don’t you?”
Ryan was shocked. Never, in thirty-five years, had anybody suggested he was arrogant. That didn’t make it untrue.
“Look, lad, Donovan might have got his jollies at the thought of getting one over on you but, on the other hand, he might have targeted her anyway. Either way, no sense in beating yourself up about something you can’t change.”
“Thanks for the pep talk,” Ryan retorted.
Phillips sighed. There was only so much he could say on affairs of the heart before he started to sound like an agony aunt. He changed the topic.
“Donovan’s been checked into his cell for the night,” he confirmed. “He’s ranting and raving like a lunatic. We’ll get no sense from him this evening.”
Ryan nodded.
“And, Colin?”
“Fast asleep and dreaming,” Phillips yawned himself, imagining the feel of his own memory foam mattress with MacKenzie snuggled beside him. “So, what do you reckon has gone down?”
Ryan hitched a hip on the side of his desk and caught sight of the little framed picture of Anna. He snatched his gaze away.
“Edwards admitted to a relationship with Amy Llewellyn, which she called off, apparently because she didn’t like the direction it was taking. We’ve got the university GP records showing sex-related injuries around the time she would have been seeing him.”
Phillips grunted his agreement.
“For obvious reasons, she didn’t feel she could run and tell Mummy and Daddy. She became depressed, so she took herself off to Donovan for private counselling. Maybe she thought nobody would find out. Turns out she was right, as far as it goes.”
“Poor lass,” Frank commented. “Probably had no idea what she was getting herself into.”
“She stumbled into a spider’s web,” Ryan agreed. “One who hadn’t made his first proper kill and was desperate to start.”
“How does Edwards connect to Donovan?”
“From what Donovan told MacKenzie, it seems that Amy might have still harboured some feelings for Edwards. That would have made Donovan jealous; he can’t stand competition and wanted her for himself.”
“Aye, so he went to lay the smack down?”
That brought the ghost of a smile to Ryan’s lips.
“Seems like he and Edwards had a man-to-man chat, with Donovan coming out on top. I can’t imagine that happening with Edwards today, but ten years ago? He was a younger, more impressionable man. He said himself that he respected his mentor. Perhaps they exchanged notes, learned from each other, he became a kind of protégé.”
“Christ Almighty, it’s like a ‘members only’ club,” Phillips remarked, with distaste.
“Yeah, but Edwards wasn’t that good of a student. Obviously, he still made a play for Amy and that’s what flipped the switch for Donovan. He says he didn’t intend to kill her? Bullshit. He took her all the way out there, to Sycamore Gap, knowing that he would be coming back alone.”
Phillips settled himself in one of the hard plastic tub chairs, wiggling his hips to try to find comfort.
“He was stamping out his superiority,” Phillips agreed. “Which means that Edwards knew it was Donovan all along.”
“Edwards sent Colin that postcard of Sycamore Gap as a message, directing him up there, knowing all along there would be something to find. It’s his form of revenge. It’s a sinister thought, imagining him waiting for his moment to strike against Donovan; waiting until he had been lulled into false security. Don’t forget, he’s got a memory like an elephant.”
“His loyalty has limits, though,” Phillips observed.
“What do they say about ‘loyalty amongst thieves’? Maybe there’s a similar saying for whacked out murderers.”
“So, Edwards used Colin to lead us to Donovan,” Phillips summarised. “We could charge him with perverting the course of justice.”
Ryan huffed out a laugh.
“Yeah, right. I can see the CPS spending their money and resources prosecuting a man who’s already in prison for life.”