Phillips tugged at his ear while he thought.
“You’re right there, lad. There was no ritual stuff in any of his previous victims, more just a certain method of killing, which isn’t the same thing. I don’t see Edwards dancing around naked calling to the Forces of Darkness.”
“Neither do I,” Ryan was forced to agree. “He might be bat shit crazy but, as far as I know, he never believed he could conjure up Hell’s fury by howling around a campfire.”
“What about if there’s more of them?”
Ryan thought of the men and women who had been uncovered as belonging to a ‘circle’ on Holy Island. People who had created their own subversive moral code, to justify the killing of innocent human beings.
“We can’t rule it out,” Ryan replied, at length. “We still don’t have all the answers. We still haven’t found Mike and Jennifer Ingles, for one thing.”
He referred to the vicar and his wife, who had disappeared from Holy Island without a trace. There was still an active All Ports Warning and a warrant outstanding for their arrest. None of those who had been apprehended claimed to know their whereabouts and denied any knowledge of the attack on DC Jack Lowerson.
It could be that one or two bad apples had fallen through the cracks in their investigation.
“It feels like somebody’s playing with us.”
He crushed the remainder of the cigarette beneath the heel of his boot and turned back to Phillips, who was looking at him with an odd expression on his mole-like face.
“What?”
“There’s something else to factor in here. With Claire’s murder, you’ve got shades of The Hacker and shades of Holy Island, not to mention physically similar types of victim. What do they all have in common?”
Ryan had guessed the answer, but he let Phillips do the talking.
“You, lad. The common denominator is you.”
Ryan nodded once, just a quick jerk of his head.
“I want Anna to be kept under observation at all times,” he started to reach for his phone, but Phillips put a hand on his arm to stay the action.
“She won’t like it, if you don’t speak to her first.”
Ryan nearly snarled.
“She’ll have to deal with it,” he snapped, shrugging Phillips off. “You said yourself, we’re looking at victims who are young, dark-haired women, just like Anna. Whoever it is seems to be fixated on two of my previous cases. It’s obvious where they might look next.”
“It’s guesswork –”
“Common sense,” Ryan argued, then turned his back to put the call through.
Anna couldn’t pinpoint exactly when the prickle began. It started as a tingle along her spine; a shiver of sensory understanding, which told her that something in her immediate surroundings were not as they should be. Yet, when she looked around her, along the busy streets of Durham where shoppers and students mingled with young families and office-workers, she told herself she was imagining things. There were no hidden faces in the crowd, no madmen dressed in animal masks with murderous intent.
Yet, there it was again. That tingle.
It was a sorry state of affairs when she could no longer trust her own instinct to guide her, but Anna admitted to herself that six months had not been long enough to dispel the memories of that last day on the island. At first, the flashbacks had come frequently, replaying the horror over and over until she was almost desensitized. Gradually, they had abated, but Ryan was not the only one who still suffered from broken sleep. Her treacherous mind enjoyed nothing more than reminding her of how close she had come to death and it made her distrustful of her own psyche.
She looked again into the crowd, searching the faces of those men and women for a clue of some kind.
There was nothing.
Shaking herself, she continued her brisk walk along the High Street, back towards the university. If her steps were a little quicker than usual, she put it down to the sudden chill in the air. Passers-by brushed against her as she zigzagged through the crowd and the contact made her tense. Coat tails were like fingers, clutching at her arms. Panic was rising steadily and she fought for composure, mentally counting her footsteps as they slapped against the pavement until the walls of the university came into view once more.
She broke free of the mass and ran the rest of the way, back into the safety of those hallowed walls, which rang with the gentle din of student chatter.
Outside, a man watched her flee the High Street, admiring the ripple of dark hair swaying from side-to-side as she ran with long, limber strides. He replaced the camera inside its leather holder and slung it over one shoulder, just another tourist snapping pictures of the city.