He considered following her. Desire was palpable; he could feel his body urging him onwards, to claim his prize. He started to shake, the force of it pumping through his veins, but the urge abated sharply when he noticed two men walk in the direction Anna had taken. Both wore dark suits hanging badly over rounded shoulders and scratched loafers, the ubiquitous signal that they were police. He congratulated himself on a cautious, careful approach. That’s what made him the best, he thought, enjoying the sensation of having made yet another narrow escape. With some regret, he told himself to be patient and turned back along the High Street with a whistle.
Besides, it wouldn’t be long now.
CHAPTER 12
“It has to be someone with inside knowledge.”
Ryan’s bald statement was met with a satisfactory level of awed hush around the Incident Room, as his team reconvened. He was plagued with doubt regarding his decision to have his girlfriend put under police observation, but told himself that it surely fell under the heading of ‘police matter’ rather than ‘relationship issue’. He was also perturbed by the immediate urge to discuss the matter with Doctor Donovan. Never before had he required anybody else’s input on how he chose to conduct his life and the intrusion into his daily thought processes was one more irritant to bear.
He got up to pace around a bit and burn off some of the restless energy.
“You think he’s with the police?”
MacKenzie’s question was a loaded one. The thought of him being one of their own number was almost inconceivable. Yet Ryan remembered reading somewhere that the greatest number of functional psychopaths could be found in those professions where the individual could feel in control of others. That included the police, top-tier business and medicine. How anybody could abuse such a position of trust was a question for others to ask. CID was left with the consequences and there was little time to worry about whether the perpetrators committed their crimes by reason of nature or nurture.
Ryan looked around the room and saw the stony faces, read correctly the instant defence of their colleagues and understood how that unquestioning loyalty developed. It came from shared experiences, often unimaginable to the general public. He thought of his relationship with Phillips and tried to conceive of his sergeant stalking through the streets of Newcastle or luring young women to their deaths. At that moment, Phillips looked up from where he had been trying, without success, to replace a tiny pin in his sunglasses with stubby fingers that were not designed for such an intricate task.
Ryan simply couldn’t imagine it.
But that was sentimentality. The facts spoke for themselves and every man and woman under his command must be made to understand that personal feelings had no place in his Incident Room. If he told them often enough, perhaps the message would eventually filter through to his brain too.
“I’m saying that whoever we are looking for has had access to information which has not been made public. That doesn’t necessarily make him police, but he’s getting his information from someone inside or he was part of it in some other way.”
“Information leaks –”
“Consider this,” Ryan interjected, pointing a finger at nobody in particular. “How did our killer know where to dump Claire Burns on Sunday night, when the facts surrounding the discovery of Amy Llewellyn’s body had not been made public?”
“Professor Freeman gave an interview –” MacKenzie started to say.
Ryan shook his head.
“I spoke with the film crew, as well as Freeman. The interview was pre-recorded but not aired until the breakfast news the following day – on Monday. The film crew check out, every last one of them.”
“I spoke to that journalist with the silly name – Ophelia Whatsherface. She said she had to ‘protect her sources’ or some rubbish and said that we could come to her with an appropriate warrant, otherwise she wouldn’t be saying shit.”
“Helpful, as always,” Ryan observed caustically. “So, I repeat, how did the bastard know?”
“Somebody blabbed,” Phillips said, roundly.
“Obviously,” Ryan nodded. “The question is who, and why? Was it a case of two colleagues discussing the incident, one of which is suspect? Or, was it a case of somebody overhearing something they shouldn’t?”
“Impossible to know,” MacKenzie surmised.
“At this stage,” Ryan agreed. “But a pattern has emerged, which we can use to help us.”
He opened his mouth to give them the details, but was intercepted by Phillips.
“It’s all to do with muggins, over there,” Frank shook his thumb in Ryan’s direction. “It’s looking like we’ve got someone with a big old crush on the Chief Inspector. He’s wanting a bit of attention.”