“Mac?”
Denise looked up from where she had been poring over the statements received from Claire Burns’ family, for the tenth time.
“Where are the rest of the team?”
“I left Phillips in charge of operations at Colin Hart’s house. Faulkner is still going over things there and he’s likely to be a few hours, yet.”
“I heard about Geraldine Hart,” MacKenzie said. “It’s pointing dead centre at Colin, isn’t it?”
Ryan pulled over a chair from a neighbouring desk, the metal legs scraping tracks across the thin carpet. He straddled the chair and rested his arms along the back of the seat, fixing her with his sphinx-like stare.
“Did you find any CCTV footage?”
MacKenzie sighed.
“No. I’ve referred it to the tech team, but they’ll be hours if not days …”
Ryan nodded. It was just as he had suspected.
“It’s looking like Colin fled the house through the back garden,” he said simply. “The DCs who had him under observation obviously didn’t account for the trellising along the back wall, which enabled him to climb over into next door’s garden. You can see where the ivy has been damaged and his footprints are all over the soil beneath.”
MacKenzie felt a twinge of fear.
“There’s an APW out, has been for hours,” Ryan was quick to snuff out any panic. “His car is still on the drive, so we know he didn’t have transportation of his own. There are no records of him having used his cards in the last six hours and certainly no car rentals from any of the agencies across the city.”
“The helicopter couldn’t find him?”
“We asked the traffic helicopter to have a sweep,” Ryan replied. “They couldn’t find him. No sightings, nothing. He’s vanished, Denise.”
“How?”
“Precisely my question,” Ryan smiled, the light of battle turning his eyes from dark grey to pale silver. “I think someone picked him up.”
MacKenzie frowned.
“How is it possible that the DCs missed that?”
“They were stationed outside Colin’s house,” he said. And happened to be two of the most hapless blokes he’d ever met. “The direction of his escape seems to end at the house three doors down. He climbed over the garden walls to get there and I’m betting he tried the back doors until he found one that was left open. In this case, the kitchen window at Number 28 was wide open to visitors. The DCs wouldn’t have seen him coming out of the front door of a house which lies much further down the street, outside their eye-line.”
“He’s like a poor man’s Pink Panther,” she said disparagingly, with a hint of her former flair. “What makes you think he had help?”
“Telephone records,” Ryan replied without pause. “Colin made two phone calls from his home line yesterday; one was to his solicitor.”
“And the other one?”
“Well, that’s the interesting thing, Denise. I know exactly who the other number belongs to. In fact, so do you.”
MacKenzie turned fully around in her chair, all ears.
“I’m wondering if you wouldn’t mind undertaking some reconnaissance?”
MacKenzie crossed her excellent legs and raised one finely arched eyebrow. She may have been spooked, but it would be a cold day in hell before Detective Inspector Denise MacKenzie wasn’t up to a challenge.
“Talk to me.”
Ryan walked across to the double doors of the Incident Room and with a sharp glance in both directions, locked them from the inside.
“This needs to be done properly,” he wanted to make that clear, from the outset.
“Naturally.” She paused. “Does Frank know?”
Ryan had thought about not telling Phillips for about a nanosecond before laying out the entire plan, in full. It was about knowing whom you could trust.
“He knows,” Ryan said evenly.
He couldn’t say that Phillips was entirely happy about it. In fact, when he had aired the idea to his sergeant, he had nearly found himself in a headlock. He had coaxed and cajoled but eventually Ryan had played his trump card.
“Phillips,” he had said. “Do you respect MacKenzie, as a good policewoman? Do you think she can handle herself?”
“’Course I bloody do! What the hell do you take me for?”
“Then, let her do her job. She can do this.”
“Ryan, I love that woman. Do you hear me? If anything happens to her, I’ll break your scrawny neck and I don’t care how much we’ve been through.”
They had shaken hands on it, because that was fair enough. If anything did happen to MacKenzie, Ryan would be ready to break his own scrawny neck.