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Sycamore Gap: A DCI Ryan Mystery(47)

By:LJ Ross




Ryan could feel the shirt clinging to his back as he slammed out of the car. The day had dragged on, hour after painful hour and there was no end in sight. He was still out there, somewhere in the night, and his lust for blood had not been sated.

The river shimmered to his right, like a black snake. His eyes were blurry with fatigue and stress, his heart heavy with a deep sense of failure.

There would be another one, tonight. He knew it.

“Try to get some sleep, son,” Frank was saying, from the driver’s side of the car.

He mumbled something unintelligible and scuffed his way to the entrance of his building. It was a modern complex on the Quayside and in the daylight hours his apartment held unspoilt views of the river. A quaint market popped up on Sundays and the air smelled of frying onions and rich fudge as traders sold their wares from colourful stalls.

Now, the streets were quiet. The hour was well past midnight and only a handful of lights flickered in the windows around him. Squinting up to the top floor, he saw that one of them was his.

Natalie must have waited up for him.

He thought of his sister: bright and beautiful with a mane of long black hair and eyes the same shade of silvery grey as his own, inherited from their mother. He didn’t expect Natalie to look after him; in fact, he wished she wasn’t there to fuss over him when he dragged his tired body through the front door. All he wanted was bed and oblivion.

The first thing he noticed when he stepped off the elevator was that the front door to his apartment was open ajar. The security on the building was top-of-the-line … had Natalie left the door unlocked? He frowned, his brows drawing together into a dark, angry line.

At a time like this, when women in Newcastle were fearful to walk home, to travel without a car, or to be alone in the house knowing that there was a homicidal maniac killing women just like them, she had no right to be so reckless.

He pushed open the door, ready to give her a lecture on home safety and then froze in the doorway. His stomach flipped over and fear hit him like a fist to the face.

With slow steps, Ryan moved forward, the blood rushing in his ears as he crouched beside the small white tray, which had been placed directly inside the hallway. On it, three human fingers, bloodied and greying, had been arranged into a makeshift wigwam. A cream card bore the message, ‘Catch me if you can!’ in neat lettering.

Ryan wanted to throw up, to give into the sickness that rolled in waves through his shattered body, but instead he reverted to training. His eyes scanned the room, searching the corners and crevices for anybody hidden there, but he found nothing. His hands fumbled in his pockets until he found his phone and he pressed the speed-dial for Phillips.

“Pick up. For God’s sake, pick up.”

But the man was driving.

Ryan put a call through to the control room, requesting backup. The ETA was eight minutes.

Eyes wide and unblinking, he moved from room to room, heading in the direction of his bedroom and the firearm lying hidden in a box on the top shelf of his wardrobe.

He didn’t make it that far.

When he pushed open the door to the spare bedroom, he saw that his sister was seated, so that she would immediately be seen. The central lights blazed overhead, illuminating the sickly pallor of her skin. She lay slumped and motionless, her body tied into place with long bands of surgical tape. He didn’t know if she was still alive.

Tiredness forgotten, he surged forwards, intending to check her pulse and to release her from the ties. Panic and love swamped him in equal measure, overtaking self-preservation. The man who watched him judged it the perfect moment to strike.

He lunged from behind and Ryan turned too late, seeing the flash of movement as the man plunged the sharp point of a pressure syringe into the side of Ryan’s neck.

Almost immediately, he fell to his knees and into the oblivion he had wished for earlier.

Ryan opened his eyes some time later to a blistering headache. His pupils were like pinpricks against his pale face. He was seated in one of the armchairs in the living area of his apartment and, remarkably, his arms and legs had not been tied.

Across the room, he saw the monster hovering beside his sister, and he made to leap from the chair. It soon became apparent why no binding had been necessary; the drugs swimming around his brain prevented his body from responding to his frantic order that he move! Just move, damn it!

Doctor Keir Edwards glanced behind, to where Ryan now lay crumpled on the floor, struggling to drag himself upwards.

“Sedative,” he offered conversationally. “It’s obviously doing its job.”

The bastard was right, Ryan thought. He hadn’t been able to feel a thing, yet he lay on the floor like a beached whale, unable to move his legs at all. But his arms still worked. With silent, subtle movements, he reached for the pocket of his jeans, feeling around for his mobile phone.