“That’s classified information,” he smiled. “But let’s just say, I have something up my sleeve.”
He turned and held out a cup with a picture of a Christmas elf on the side, then nodded toward the table.
“Take a seat, the others won’t be long.” He settled himself on one of the chairs and crossed one long, suit-clad leg over the other.
He waited for her to select a chair.
“How did you find it today?”
Yates cradled the coffee in her hands and wondered whether she should give him the short answer or the honest one.
“I prefer honesty,” he added, reading her mind with ease.
“It was—well, it was hard to see the body like that. I’ve seen one before, sir, when I responded to a call out on the Hacker case but this one seemed more disturbing, somehow.”
Ryan understood what she meant. The victim she had found previously had been a local gangster whose badly mutilated body had been The Hacker’s handiwork. In CID, it was a point of principle that every victim was afforded the same standard of care and the same level of professionalism as any other, but they were only human. It was far easier to feel sympathy for a young woman who had died badly than a man who had made his living from the misery of others.
“We do our best for all of them,” he said. “But sometimes you feel it more than others.”
He looked up from his coffee.
“Lowerson tells me you held up well at the scene,” he remarked. “If you’ve got a good stomach for the darker side of life in CID, that’s half the battle. You need to be able to look at a set of facts objectively but be unafraid to follow your gut when it feels justified. Do you think that’s for you?”
Yates drank her coffee and let the warm liquid settle the butterflies in her stomach.
“Yes, sir, I think I can do it.”
Ryan nodded and gave her a direct, unwavering stare.
“Tell me, Yates, why do you want to work in my department?”
She had expected the question to come at one stage or another but her palms still turned clammy.
“When I was sixteen, my twin sister was murdered. It devastated my whole family, particularly because they never found her killer. They could be out there, right now, killing other people.” She swallowed the acid rolling in her stomach and met his eyes. “When I was younger, I thought I wanted revenge. I don’t feel that way anymore, but I do feel compelled to try to stop the same thing happening to other people, or at least try to give the families closure so they can move on with their lives.”
Unlike my family, she added silently, thinking of the stale environment of her parents’ home and the tears her mother still shed every night.
Ryan listened and heard the pain buried beneath the softly-spoken exterior. Nobody was better placed to understand the pain of losing a sibling but it also meant he was uniquely placed to warn her of the potential pitfalls of policing for the wrong reasons.
“Is this a personal crusade, Yates? Vengeance has a time and place”—he could hardly argue otherwise, given his chequered past—“but you need to be able to see past your own life experience. Not every victim is your sister.”
She set her cup down on the table and lifted her chin.
“I can do it,” she repeated firmly.
Ryan nodded and stood up again to answer the doorbell.
“Good. In that case, consider yourself part of CID from now on; I’ll square it with Morrison and we’ll see about getting you on the training pathway to become a detective. Six months’ probationary period.”
Her eyes lit up, animating her face.
“Thank you, sir.”
As he left the room to open the front door, Melanie smiled broadly and thought that everything was beginning to slot nicely into place.
CHAPTER 16
The sun was low in the sky by the time Ryan’s team had all gathered around the kitchen table. For now, he had decided to keep things simple and brief his core staff, leaving the various support staff based out of CID Headquarters—administrators, intelligence analysts, telephone operatives, IT specialists, to name a few—to provide their assistance remotely. The only exception to this rule was the presence of Tom Faulkner who, although not employed by the Northumbria Police Constabulary as a permanent member of staff, fulfilled that role in all but name.
Forensic services were outsourced, as were the services of their police pathologist, who could usually be found in the basement mortuary of the Royal Victoria Infirmary in Newcastle. Ryan planned to pay a visit to the pathologist as soon as he’d had an opportunity to assess Alice Chapman’s body and Victor Swann’s post-mortem had also been bumped up the list.
For now, Ryan waited while his team availed themselves of coffee and let off a bit of steam before they got down to business. Phillips had taken a seat next to Lowerson and was pulling his leg about being vegetarian, gluten-free and lactose-intolerant, which were three cardinal sins in Phillips’ carnivorous world. Yates watched them from her position on the other side of the table while giving a very good impression of listening to Faulkner droning on about various flora and fauna he’d spotted in the gardens at Cragside.
Ryan judged it was time to step in.
“Alright, let’s get started.”
The group fell quiet and looked at him expectantly.
“First, I want to thank you all for your hard work today. It’s not a barrel of laughs, dealing with a DB on one of the hottest days of the year but I’m sure Alice’s family appreciate everything you’ve done for her today.”
There were nods around the table.
“Second, I want to formally welcome Melanie Yates to the team. She’ll be joining us in CID and I know you’ll make her feel welcome. Lowerson? I’m hoping you’ll show her the ropes.”
Lowerson barely held off a grin.
“Happy to,” he said, keeping his face as nonchalant as possible.
If Yates was disappointed that she would not be taken under Ryan’s wing, she didn’t let it show.
“I’m looking forward to working with you all,” she said, and meant it.
“Just give us a shout if you need anything, lass,” Phillips smiled at her warmly. “We don’t stand on ceremony round here.”
“He’s right. I’m constantly faced with insubordination in the ranks,” Ryan said, before tapping his fingers against the pages of the summaries he’d printed earlier. “Now we’ve got the preliminaries out of the way, let’s talk about Victor Swann.”