Sycamore Gap: A DCI Ryan Mystery(58)

Ryan paused to consider.

“How about this: can you tell me how many of those purchases were made in cash, versus card?”

“I can!” She beamed at him again and turned back to the spreadsheet.

“That’s certainly narrowed it down,” she said after a moment. “During that timescale, only nineteen bracelets were paid for in cash, ten of which were bought by the same person.”

“Ten?”

She nodded.

“How many of them preferred not to give a name or address for warranty purposes?”

“Well, now, I’m sure that most people …” she trailed off, a frown crinkling her face into a myriad of fine lines. “Well, look at that! There was one customer who didn’t give a name and paid in cash. In fact, he’s the one who bought ten bracelets in bulk.”

She turned back to them and her face remained troubled. “I remember exactly who he was.”

“You just said that he didn’t leave a name –”

“I know,” she nodded, her earrings glinting against her ears. “I remember him because he’s quite famous now and what with him making such a large purchase … he used to come in here regularly, to buy himself cuff-links and things like that. He liked his finery. He was … well, I suppose I should be honest and say that he was a good-looking young man. Quite memorable.”

“Who?”

“It was that man – the one they called The Hacker. It gives me the shivers to think that we used to see him all the time.”

Silently, Ryan took out his phone and brought up a picture of Edwards.

“Is this the man that you remember? Ten years is a long time.”

“Yes,” she nodded. “He’s older in that picture, but I recognised him on the news last year. I’m positive that’s him.”

Penny watched them exit the shop with a puckered brow. She really had liked the young man and even his gnarly sergeant. If she’d been a few years younger … well, if wishes were horses, beggars would ride, she thought sadly.

Smiling over at one of the shop attendants, she closed her office door behind her and rummaged around in the bottom drawer of her desk, until she found the little pay-as-you-go mobile she kept there for emergencies.

She made a short phone call and then considered her duty discharged.



Outside, Ryan turned to Phillips.

“Did you speak to HMP Frankland?”

“Aye, they’ve agreed to make a room available whenever we need it.”

“Put a call through, Frank. I want us there inside the hour, but I want everything by the book. He can call his solicitor, do a country jig, whatever the hell he wants, but by six o’clock I want this dirty laundry to be aired.”

“There isn’t a cat in hell’s chance of Gregson letting you run the interview,” Phillips said, matter-of-factly.

“Which is why you’re going to run it and I’m going to observe.”

Phillips didn’t relish the prospect.

“We’ve got Colin Hart sitting back at the station, ready to go.”

“He can wait. He’s attending voluntarily, because we don’t have enough to charge him. If we speak to Edwards, we might find something more.”

Phillips nodded.

“You still need to run this past Gregson.”

Ryan found himself more reticent than usual to report to his superior and put it down to the sensitive subject matter.

“Gregson knows this was my intention, from the start. Besides, I’m going to be in the observation area. Edwards doesn’t even need to know I’m there.”

Phillips looked up at Ryan with a dubious expression. It wasn’t so much a case of following protocols, as avoiding further heartache. Coming face-to-face with the man who had killed your sibling, even with a reinforced glass panel between you, was seldom a smart move.





CHAPTER 13


Her Majesty’s Prison Frankland was another architectural triumph, set on the outskirts of the city of Durham. The plain red brick buildings which housed an interesting mix of standard and high risk Category A male prisoners certainly fulfilled its raison d’être, being at once depressing to look at and well-fortified.

“Charming place,” Phillips muttered from his hunched position in the passenger seat of Ryan’s car. To say that he had misgivings about being here at all was an understatement.

“It’s not meant to be a holiday camp,” Ryan returned.

Phillips folded his lips.

The car slid along the driveway, past an enormous sign reading, ‘H.M. PRISON FRANKLAND.’ As if there could be any doubt that the boxy buildings with their flat, metal-topped roofs and strategically-placed cameras could constitute anything other than a place of detention.