Sycamore Gap: A DCI Ryan Mystery(92)

“Please, stay here.”

It was on the tip of her tongue to argue and then he gave her that look. The one conveying just the right amount of vulnerability and just the right amount of pleading, to prey upon her soft heart.

“Stop that!” She jabbed a finger into his chest.

He just looked.

“Oh for the love of –” She blew out a long breath, striving for patience. “Fine. Fine! I’ll hang around here like a lemming while you go off and play the hero, shall I?”

“That would be great.”

With a quiet word to Faulkner, Ryan turned to make the necessary arrangements.





CHAPTER 21


The wind whipped across the wide, open space, and Colin shivered. His body was in shock and beginning to react to the cold. Where were his backpack and his jacket? He looked around with vacant eyes, trying to remember where they might be. His mind didn’t choose to recall that they were tucked in the hallway cupboard of Number 32, because that would mean remembering what else lay hidden in that house.

As far as he was concerned, his mother was alive and eagerly awaiting his return.

He clutched Claire’s uniform to his chest, drawing comfort from it, imagining that the clothes were more than inanimate material. He could still smell Claire’s scent amongst them, which helped him to envisage that, perhaps, she was still with him.

His eyes were troubled as he scanned the fields.

Which way?

White-tipped fingers clutched at the folds of Claire’s skirt as he tried to think which way to turn. Just a little further, he thought, just around the next bend.

He wandered into the wilderness.



Sirens screamed along the Military Road as a team of police operatives made their way towards Sycamore Gap, in off-road vehicles complete with reinforced glass. Outside, the air was thick and muggy. The fine weather that the people of Northumberland had enjoyed of late was near breaking point, the heavens ready to let loose the rain which waited to fall over the hills and vales.

Ryan held a car radio to his lips.

“Sirens off,” he snapped.

There followed an unnerving silence as, one-by-one, the vehicles obeyed. An army of blue and white crept closer to Sycamore Gap, with only the purr of well-tended engines and the crackle of rubber on tarmac to signal their approach.

“Team A to approach from the east,” he continued. “If suspect is sighted, do not approach. I repeat. Do not approach.”

There was a fizz of incoming messages to confirm that his order was understood.

“Team B to approach from the west,” he continued. “Same rules apply. If suspect sighted, report, but do not approach.”

The turning for Housesteads came into view and three cars peeled away from the convoy, while another three continued onwards to make their approach from the west.

“Last sighting of Colin Hart was an hour ago outside Bardon Mill,” Ryan’s firm voice sounded down through the radio. “Assume that the suspect is now within a three-mile radius.”

The fort and visitor centre had already been evacuated and the car park stood empty when the cars turned into the gate. There was no sign of any human presence, only the stone ruins and abandoned buildings to prove that, once, people had reigned here. To the men and women who exited their vehicles, it was as if the land had overtaken once again. Where Hadrian had sought to tame it and to separate it, the country had emerged triumphant. They were reverent; a hushed crowd of people who acknowledged that it was they who trespassed.



While Colin stumbled over rocks and water, Doctor Jeffrey Pinter looked down at the bloated body of Geraldine Hart, lying rigid on the gurney before him. He turned the music in the mortuary to something jolly, dancing along to the beat in his head. He had dismissed the rest of his team, telling them that the prime suspect would soon be apprehended and therefore they could afford to take a few hours’ break, after a taxing few days.

“Just you and me, old gal,” he said gaily, snapping his mask into place.

He began to hum as he selected a small rotary saw and enjoyed the familiar thrum of power as it trembled along the tendons in his arm. He looked at it a moment, detached and fascinated while the engine whirred, then drove it through flesh and bone with unflappable precision.

He spoke clearly into the microphone on his lapel as he went and, after the job was done, he made his own hand-written record, which he added to a bright blue plastic wallet. Afterwards, he scrubbed his hands with antimicrobial soap and hung up his lab coat. In the privacy of his office, he thought of the evening ahead and of the woman who awaited him.

He had worried, for a while, that he was too old for her. The mirror didn’t lie, nor did the date on his driver’s licence, which told him he was no longer a spring chicken.