Separated at Death (The Lakeland Murders) (9 page)

Ian Mann had been for a run after work that night, as he usually did, and felt much better for it. When he left the military and joined the police one of the things he missed was the physical activity, and he’d been shocked by how unfit most of the other beat cops were.

But he’d enjoyed the work right from the start and, slightly to his own surprise, he’d found that he didn’t lose his temper, even when dealing with the saddest and the maddest of the station’s most regular customers. And because Mann was also more than handy to have around when a brawl broke out or a domestic really flared up he soon got the reputation as being a really good copper. The fact that the local tough lads knew exactly where he came from, and where he’d been away to, probably didn’t do any harm either.

He liked being back in Kendal too, and saw his widowed father three or four times a week. He’d hoped that his ex-wife, who’d been his childhood sweetheart, would like it too, but the marriage hadn’t lasted long enough to see him swap from one uniform to another, and now she was down south somewhere with a couple of kids and a husband in IT.

Mann had made sergeant quickly, sailing through the exam with a score that would have shamed many a graduate entrant: in fact he’d done better than Andy Hall had. And just the year before he’d bagged a CID job, much to the annoyance of the uniformed inspector in Kendal, who felt he was losing the best sergeant in the county. He might also have noted Mann’s outstanding attendance record, because in his five years on the force he had yet to miss a single shift for any reason.

His first few months in CID had gone pretty well too. The cuts meant that he’d been on fewer courses than he’d expected, but as far as Mann was concerned that was no bad thing. As a beat cop he’d seen the impact of the local drug trade, and attended two fatal ODs, and maybe because of that, or perhaps because of his own sense that the body is something to be properly fuelled and cared for, he found himself taking a particular interest in the local drugs scene.

As a result he’d become the station’s go-to guy when it came to the local pushers and drug-based crime, which is how he’d come to be dealing with young Ryan and his doors full of dope. And while the tourists probably thought that no-one living in and around the Lakes ever consumed anything stronger than tea and sticky toffee pudding Mann knew that the truth was different. Always had been, probably always would be.

Friday, December 10th

Mann beat Hall into work by half an hour, and since his shift didn’t start for over an hour he used the time to catch up on a bit of other work: in particular Ryan Wilson and that car full of drugs.

Various emails had been sitting unread in his inbox since the previous day, not least because Ryan still had a few days to go before he had to answer bail. The first one that he opened didn’t surprise him much, because the techies confirmed that Ryan had indeed received instructions in the way that he’d said, and that the sender of the messages would prove ‘very hard, if not impossible, to trace.’

Mann would have been surprised if Ryan had lied, and astonished if they’d been able to trace who his employer was. Because while Ryan may have been only a sporadic attender at school he was far from stupid, and he’d been in trouble often enough to understand how the system worked. A car full of drugs bought him a higher level of police resource than his usual level of offending did, so Ryan would have known that his story would be subject to a decent level of investigation. And the chance of him voluntarily giving the police any useful information, about anything or anyone, was as close to zero as made no difference.

But the next email was surprising, and Mann was re-reading it when Andy Hall walked in and came over to say hello. Mann realised that he must have been frowning.

‘Morning Ian, what’s up?’

‘Morning Andy. Nothing really, just an odd email about Ryan Wilson and all the gear we got out of that car.’

‘Oh yes, what about it?’

‘You know I told you it had a street value of upwards of a hundred grand? Well I was wrong. A few hundred quid would be more like it.’

‘But I thought the doors were stuffed with it?’

‘They were, but its nearly all rubbish. Yes, there’s enough class A for a possession conviction, but it’s absolutely cut to buggery. Our friends in forensics say that it’s ‘not of merchantable quality’, the sarcastic bastards.’

Hall smiled. ‘So where does that leave you?’

‘With one less thing to worry about I suppose. Ryan was looking at serious charges, but I doubt the CPS will be interested now. Ryan will probably get off with yet another caution.’

‘How many is that now?’

‘Who knows? Twenty probably. Seriously, I’ve lost count. But it is a bit strange though, isn’t it? Why would someone go to all that trouble to load a car up with all that crap, and do all that cloak and dagger communication stuff with Ryan? Let’s face it, Ryan’s usual speed is nicking computers, not using them.’

Hall picked up the hand weight that Mann kept on his desk. It was surprisingly heavy, but having lifted it he tried to look as if he knew what to do with it, and tried a few front raises. Mann didn’t look all that impressed, so Hall put it back.

‘I wonder if it might have been some kind of test for Ryan’ suggested Hall, ‘to see if he’d go through with it? Or maybe it was one of his former pals setting him up. How come he got stopped again? Tip-off?’

‘Yes, it was, but it wasn’t from a known informant, just an anonymous call in, which is why traffic stopped him rather than the drugs boys. They didn’t reckon it at all as a tip-off apparently. Ryan’s name wasn’t mentioned, all we got was the make, year and that it would be on the M6 late that night. Funny enough the car Ryan was driving was fine otherwise; taxed, insured, MOT, the lot.’

‘Blimey, that must have been a first for our Ryan.’

‘Yes, the traffic boys said his face was a picture when they told him that the car was actually legal. But that was before they found the gear of course.’

‘So what’s next? Just cut him loose when he answers bail? Shame; it would have been nice to get that little bastard on something that would have brought him a bit of proper jail time finally. I assume he’s old enough?’

‘Yes, he’s twenty one now, believe it or not. But you can bet your life that when Ryan got the key to the door it actually belonged to someone else.’

Hall laughed quietly and made for his office. That DNA result should be in any time now, and he was banking on it helping, if only with elimination. Hall knew the statistics as well as the next copper, though not perhaps quite as well as CS Robinson, so he knew that most murders are actually cleared up remarkably quickly. But Amy’s death was never going to be one of those, and Hall was now becoming seriously concerned about the lack of any eye-witness evidence.

While he waited for his computer to boot up, always a lengthy procedure since it was now well past its planned replacement date, Hall took stock, not of the case, but of his own state of mind. Would he be able to concentrate? Should he grass himself up to Robinson and take a couple of days compassionate leave? That one was easy: absolutely no way. No matter how he felt he would never do that.

And when he thought about his ability to concentrate, and to put in another really long shift, he decided that he would actually be fine. To his considerable surprise he actually felt better rested than he had done in days, and if this case was going to turn into a marathon then he’d need all the stamina he could muster. His focus felt fine too. He wasn’t sure how it had happened, but the moment that he’d walked into the station Amy’s death became the only thing that he could think about, and he was sincerely grateful for that.

So Hall picked up his phone, and asked Jane Francis to bring her laptop in, and take him through what she’d found on Amy’s machine so far.

‘It’s a wonder that kids ever get any work done these days’ she said, when she’d set up on Hall’s meeting table and they were sitting side by side. ‘Amy had only had this computer for a few months and the hard drive was already clogged up with all sorts. But I’ve been able to go through her emails and I’m pretty sure we’ve found the lad who she’s been hanging about with, name of Ryan. Have a look at these emails.’

Hall had a bit of trouble deciphering the abbreviations, but the meaning was clear enough. He felt slightly uncomfortable sitting next to Jane as he read through them.

‘We’ve got an actual address for the IP location’ she added, ‘and though the whole family are known to us there’s only one lad in the right age range living there. And, by happy coincidence, he’s a Ryan; Ryan Wilson.’

‘Ryan? Bloody hell, talk about opposites attracting. You probably haven’t had the dubious pleasure of nicking him yet, but he’s not exactly your Brando style anti-hero. Does Ian Mann know about this?’

‘No, I only got the address about half an hour ago, and I was just looking at what we had on the whole family. That took quite a long time.’

‘I’m sure it did.’ Hall got up, went to the door, and called Ian Mann. ‘You’re seriously not going to believe who Amy’s boyfriend was.’

Hall was right, Mann didn’t believe him. ‘Jane’ he said, ‘is there any chance that the IP address thing is wrong? Maybe BT have got their wires crossed or something. Ryan’s an absolute little shitbag, honestly.’

‘No chance Sarge, it’s him all right. Look at these emails he sent Amy.’

Mann read them. ‘The spelling’s bad enough to be Ryan’s I suppose’ he conceded. He looked up at Hall, who was standing at the far end of the table. ‘So the question is...’

‘..could Ryan be a killer? What do you think Ian? He’s always been a bad lad.’

‘Yes he has.’ Mann went quiet, and Hall knew better than to interrupt. Jane Francis wanted to say something, but as she went to speak Hall shook his head. He wanted to hear what Mann’s assessment was. ‘He does have a bit of form for violence, and if I remember rightly he got expelled from primary school when he hit a woman teacher. I think he was ten.  But since then it’s been the usual gang crap: just a lot of handbags, vandalism, thieving and drugs. The usual progression really, nothing out of the ordinary. Anti-social as they come, and the whole family must be a nightmare to live next door to, but I just don’t see Ryan as a killer. Sorry, but I don’t.’

Hall sat down next to Jane, and opposite Mann. ‘I hear you Ian, but young Ryan Wilson has just got himself back on your to-do list for today. So why don’t you...”

Hall tailed off, because he could see Robinson walking quickly towards his office. He looked pleased enough to polish his buttons. ‘Have you seen the DNA results? There’s a match. It’s Ryan Wilson. Looks like we might be on our way to a result now, Andy. I’ll let the Chief know we’ve got a serious development. That family’s been trouble for all the time I’ve been a copper, and it looks like young Ryan might have done something really, really stupid this time.’

At Robinson’s insistence they went mob-handed to Ryan’s mum’s house, and to hell with the overtime. Mann thought that it was total overkill, and he was far from sure that Ryan was guilty of anything beyond punching above his weight in the girlfriend department. They already knew that Amy and Ryan had been having a relationship, and the DNA results simply confirmed that. But Robinson didn’t seem to see it that way at all.

Mann and Hall waited in the car while a van full of cops, plus a couple of lads from the armed response team took up position at the back the house. Another team covered the back door and side alley. When they got the word that everyone was in place the two detectives walked to the front door. Mann was the only copper not wearing a kevlar vest.

Mann gestured the two cops with the battering ram to move aside from the front door and he knocked loudly. The door didn’t open, and the two cops with the battering ram moved forward again, hoping to do a bit of door splintering. The council would have to fix it anyway. But Mann gestured again, and they fell back. He knocked once again, louder and longer this time.

The swearing from inside was equally loud and long. It seemed that Ryan’s mum must have finally looked out of one of the upstairs windows. They heard Ryan’s name being shouted. Eventually he opened the door, looking shocked at the police presence outside the house, but Mann didn’t feel the need for any muscular antics. ‘I’m going to have to cuff you Ryan’ he said, and the young man held out his hands immediately. ‘I expect you know why we’re here’ said Mann, and for once Ryan decided not to come back with anything clever. He didn’t like the look of the dog at the end of the path, barely being held onto by a handler, but he guessed that was the whole idea.