Sycamore Gap: A DCI Ryan Mystery(31)

“Have you heard anything from Faulkner?” Phillips asked.

Ryan swallowed a bite of steak pasty and washed it down with a gulp of something fizzy and sugary before answering. He never claimed to have highbrow culinary tastes.

“He’s still up at Sycamore Gap, working around the site. It’ll be tomorrow at the earliest before he’s able to tell us anything solid but the basic summary is that Claire was found nude, her body cut up, no identifying features on or around her. No obvious kill site where he might have expected to find major blood spill but they’re expanding the search.”

Phillips dabbed at his chin with a napkin.

“Unless it was part of this guy’s ‘plan’, or whatever the hell you want to call it, I don’t see the point in dismembering Claire’s body, if she was going to head up there with him anyway.”

There was a short silence while they thought it over.

“He might just enjoy it,” MacKenzie said. “There’s no telling what some of these wackos like to do in their spare time.”

Ryan was usually the first and last to agree that it was often a waste of time trying to apply logic to the machinations of an illogical mind but, sometimes, there was a practical reason behind their actions.

“Could be for transport,” he offered. “With Amy, it’s fairly certain that she walked out to Sycamore Gap on her own steam and was killed there, where she was interred still in one piece. In the case of Claire Burns, we don’t know yet whether she walked the distance herself, or whether she was killed elsewhere and required transporting afterwards. Much easier to transport a body in pieces than as one dead weight.”

Phillips had always admired Ryan’s unique skill for putting himself into the mind of a killer, but sometimes the image was so vivid that it worried him. It was good to keep a healthy distance from the kind of mind they were seeking to find.

Ryan appointed a reader-receiver from a selection of keen young detective constables who had begun filtering into the room. They would sieve through all the paperwork that was already piling up and try to order it. He felt absurdly guilty choosing someone to fill the shoes usually worn by DC Jack Lowerson, but it couldn’t be helped. He made a mental note to stop by the hospital on his way home.

“MacKenzie, I’m delegating the legwork on Claire Burns to you,” he began simply. Denise sat up straighter in her seat and professional pride bloomed. Knowing that Ryan would trust her to run the investigative work into their most recent victim was a huge compliment coming from a man whose perfectionism was a bit of an urban legend around CID.

“Let’s start looking at the CCTV footage. Claire was taken on her way home from work, she must have been. That means that our perpetrator needed some kind of transport to get her from there to Sycamore Gap, stopping off somewhere to make the kill. There are a bunch of ANPR cameras in a ring around the city. He would have to be a lucky bugger to miss going through one of them, so let’s start getting the footage back.”

MacKenzie made a quick note.

“What sort of timescale should I ask for?”

Ryan paused to consider.

“The place where she works closes at ten-thirty on a Sunday. Factor in some clearing up and you’re looking at her leaving work any time after eleven.”

He started to say something else, then considered the geography of the city.

“He will have headed out west, most likely, because it’s the most direct route. Going along the A69 would be quicker, so check the footage there first. On the other hand, if he took the B6318 his journey would have been more scenic, it would have taken longer, but there are fewer cameras.”

MacKenzie sighed.

“Let’s hope he didn’t put that much thought into his route.”

Ryan said nothing. They all knew that a person who was able to kill and transport a body with the kind of attention to detail that they had seen, would be the same kind of person to consider CCTV cameras.

“Bollocks.”

The room turned to Phillips, whose statement captured what they were all thinking.

Ryan moved back to the board and gestured towards the picture of Amy Llewellyn.

“Let’s catch up on our progress with Amy. I don’t want any of us losing sight of the fact that both girls are equally important and should be treated as such.” He could not forget Rose Llewellyn’s misery the previous day. She deserved some answers. “Claire’s body will demand much of the forensic effort, given how recently she died, but in all else I want to see a strong effort on both lines of enquiry.”

There were nods of agreement around the room.

Phillips had taken over the bulk of the work digging into Amy Llewellyn’s background and cold case file, alongside looking into the missing persons reports relating to any similar women who had gone missing over the past few years. Ryan concentrated his attention on the forensic evidence found on Amy’s person.