Sycamore Gap: A DCI Ryan Mystery(11)

Her fingers hovered over the broken wrist, which looked more like a mass of jumbled bone matter to Ryan’s untrained eye. Still, all manner of possibilities presented themselves; had their victim struggled, fallen or been forcibly restrained around the time she died?

“Mm hmm,” was all he said. “What about post mortem interval?”

Millie crossed her arms neatly.

“I’ve estimated the age of the remains to be approximately ten years old,” she supplied. “This takes into account average temperatures in the region, the accessibility to wildlife and the general state of the body when we found it. Jeff agrees with me and Doctor Ambrose has added his thoughts. We are definitely of the view that this victim died no more than ten years ago.”

“Less than we thought,” Phillips murmured.

“Yeah,” Ryan’s voice was flat. He checked his watch.

Four-fifteen.

“Arrange a briefing for six-thirty, Frank. I want all hands on deck.”





CHAPTER 3


Phillips had done little more than make a quick detour to the gents toilet before they received a call from Jeff Pinter to say that their female victim had already been identified by her dental records, which had flagged as a priority given that she was already registered as missing at the National Crime Agency’s UK Missing Persons Bureau.

“Amy Llewellyn, reported missing on the evening of 21st June, 2005, aged twenty-one.” Ryan held out his smartphone, which displayed a departmental photograph of Amy, stored on the Missing Persons Database from the original case file and taken on the night of her birthday. She had been lovely, he thought. Petite, with dark curly hair worn in a playful bob and laughing green eyes which smiled up at the camera. He wondered if it was the fact that her features were even; the kind of generic, symmetrical beauty, which made hers the kind of face that people found familiar.

Because, he couldn’t for the life of him think why, but she was familiar.

Naturally, her details were registered on the database, so it was possible that he recognised her image from the original police appeal, back in 2005.

Except, in 2005, he would have been in London, cutting his teeth at the Met. He had been too busy around that time to pay much attention to one of the thousands of young women who were reported missing every year. No, he shook his head at the image in front of him. It had to be something else.

Phillips came to stand beside him and peered at the image on the screen.

“He liked to pick ‘em,” he said knowingly.

Ryan looked across at his sergeant.

“You recognise her?”

Now, it was Phillips’ turn to look bemused.

“You’re telling me that you don’t recognise her?” He shuffled his feet, clearly discomfited. “She’s one of the missing, presumed dead that we chalked up as being one of The Hacker’s earlier efforts, not that he ever confessed to it. She fits the physical type and we found nude photographs of her in his house, after the arrest last year.”

Ryan looked away from Phillips, back at the young girl he held in the palm of his hand.

“You really don’t remember?”

Ryan shook his head slowly.

“I need some air.”



Phillips stood outside the service entrance to the mortuary and drummed his fingers against the material of his trousers, wishing for a cigarette. Or any product containing tobacco. Bugger it, even one of those e-cigs would do the trick, so long as it gave him something to do with his hands.

He put his fingers to work re-knotting his tie, which was a tropical explosion of miniature pineapples and bananas embroidered on a lime green silk background. The way he saw it, just because the job involved death, it didn’t mean that he was required to dress as an undertaker. A man needed a bit of cheer to offset the gloom.

So thinking, he risked a glance across at the man who stood a few steps apart, still and silent while hospital staff moved around them and vehicles came and went.

Ryan hadn’t said a word. Not one solitary, buggering, blasted word since he’d stalked out of the hospital fifteen minutes’ earlier. He’d offered Ryan coffee in a cheap plastic cup from one of the vending machines; weak and steaming hot, but still better than nothing.

For the first time in living memory, Ryan turned him down.

“You want to get it off your chest?”

Phillips crossed his arms and turned to the man who, despite being fifteen years younger, was his professional superior. That didn’t seem to matter; Ryan never pulled rank and Phillips never felt the pinch. They had a mutual respect. Hell, more than that.

They were family.

“Son,” Phillips’ gravelly voice gentle, designed to soothe. “I know what’s going on inside your head.”