Sycamore Gap: A DCI Ryan Mystery(36)

Ryan grinned.

“He’s done well, there.”

“I’ll say,” Paddy agreed. Denise MacKenzie was a fine catch, whichever way you looked at it. “It seems that love is in the air.”

“Yeah, seems like.” There was a long pause, which Paddy did not interrupt. He knew the value of silence in drawing people out.

At length, Ryan spoke again.

“I don’t know how to say this,” Ryan searched for the right words. “When you’re in my business, there’s a lot of the darker side of life. If you’re not going over dead bodies, you’re at the morgue, speaking to the victim’s family, or you’re talking to victims of rape, or assault, or some other kind of violence. Like I say, there’s a lot of dark in that.”

“There is,” Paddy prompted.

“I worry that … without meaning to, some of that will slip over into the personal side of my life. I don’t want to spoil what I have with Anna, but I don’t know how to stop it.”

Paddy nodded, understanding his concern.

“Let me make an observation. Anna knew this about you, when she met you. You were thrown together in highly unique circumstances and, rather than pulling you apart, it brought you together.”

“Yeah, but what if that is all it was? The circumstances; a need for comfort?”

“Is that how you feel about her?”

“No,” the response was immediate. “But I’ve worked around murder long enough to know the difference. Anna hasn’t.”

“You worry that you’re a flash in the pan, for her?”

Ryan said nothing, but his silence spoke volumes.

“I think that, perhaps, the underlying issue here is not Anna’s feelings – though I can’t speak for her. Perhaps the issue is your own inability to trust. It would be natural to develop a certain defence mechanism, after all you have been through.”

“I trust her.”

“On one level, perhaps.”

Ryan ran a restless hand through his hair. Damn the man for shining a light on what he would rather lay buried.

“I’ll talk to her.”

Paddy smiled broadly.

“How are you feeling about the investigation, so far?”

“How much do you know about it?”

“Only what I’ve heard from Gregson. The body of a young woman was found up at Sycamore Gap and it’s leaning towards murder. I heard today that a second body was found this morning. Does the investigation bear some similarity to the Hacker’s crimes?”

“If it does, then my crime was in pointing out that similarity. The moment I breathe the words ‘Keir’ and ‘Edwards’ in the same sentence, people automatically think I’ve gone off my chump.”

Paddy roared with laughter.

“That’s one I haven’t heard before,” he said. “Don’t you think that this is all a matter of perception? From where you’re sitting, you find a young girl who is known to have had some link with Keir Edwards, an association which is highly personal and a source of great pain to you, for obvious reasons. From where Gregson sits, he respects your professional opinion and therefore doesn’t rule out the possibility of the connection with Edwards being relevant. But, he also has to think of your wellbeing. He wants you to remain clear-headed.”

“I’m always clear-headed.”

Paddy simply eyed him over the rim of his glass.

Ryan swore under his breath.

“Alright, I get it. He wants to make sure I’m not confusing things that happened before with what’s happening now.”

“Wouldn’t you agree with him?”

“Yeah, except, so far, I’m accomplishing that all on my own.”

“Good,” Paddy agreed. “I’m glad to hear it. Ryan, I don’t expect you to turn up at my office ranting and raving. It’s not your style. I want you to think of this room as a sounding board; an opportunity to get things off your chest and to clear out the clutter so that you go forward with a fresh outlook.”

“Makes sense,” Ryan had to admit. He glanced around the room while he searched his mind, considering if there was anything else he wanted to say. “To be honest, things are starting to pile up.”

“How so?”

“Every time I look at the body of Amy Llewellyn, I see Edwards’ fingerprints all over it. But then, I look at the rest and none of it fits. I can’t understand it.”

“It’s hard, sometimes, to admit when we’re wrong.”

Ryan frowned.

“It’s not that. When I’m wrong, I move on to the next point. Push forward. But this is different; he had her photo in his house; she was a medical student and the timing fits when he was doing his rounds at the RVI.”