“No,” he said. “It’s more likely she interrupted somebody who was in possession of Victor’s things. Putting two and two together, Alice came up with the correct number and ran toward the bridge, where there was a struggle and Victor’s bits and pieces ended up at the bottom of Debdon Burn with her.”
“Why would she head for the bridge?” Lowerson asked. “Why not run toward her car?”
“It was raining heavily,” Ryan postulated. “If she was running in fear, she might have been disoriented…”
He trailed off as the truth hit him.
“Ah, God,” he ran an angry hand over his neck and then swore viciously. “The pathway over that bridge and through the trees leads to nowhere except the cottage I’m renting with Anna. She was running to tell us what she’d discovered,” he said, sadly. “Alice was running for help but we weren’t there for her.”
“There’s no way you could have known,” Phillips said, always the voice of reason.
Ryan shoved the guilt to one side for now. He would deal with that later and add Alice to the reel of other victims whose faces crowded his dreams.
“All of this suggests Victor knew something important enough to extort regular payments from our unknown perp.”
“But who?” Yates asked, beginning to come out of her shell. “We’re still no closer to discovering who was paying these bribes, if that’s what they were.”
Ryan smiled knowingly.
“That’s where a bit of common sense comes in,” he said. “If we assume Victor was pushed and, the following day, Alice was chased down and then bodily thrown over the side of the bridge, there’s one important characteristic our killer needed.”
“Physical strength,” MacKenzie murmured.
“Exactly.” Ryan pointed his finger to capture the thought. “Turning to our list of suspects, there are several we can cross off straight away.”
He shuffled some papers and found copies of their photographs which he laid out in a row on the table.
“We can strike Lionel and Cassandra off the list, and Maggie,” Phillips said. “They’re all at least seventy and none of them could have chased a girl half their age, let alone forced her over the side of a bridge.”
“Agreed. Added to which, Maggie was within my sight throughout Saturday evening when Victor went missing and Cassandra was around for most of it, too.”
Ryan removed three of the photographs so they could see who remained.
“Although those two under-gardeners are physically able, they’re both well alibied,” MacKenzie said.
“If we work on most likely probabilities, I would say that leaves three serious contenders,” Ryan murmured. “Dave Quibble, Martin Henderson and Charlotte Shapiro.”
He was suddenly reminded of Charlotte Shapiro’s scratched hands, and remembered she had been the one to find Alice’s body. It was a well-known fact that killers often returned to the scene of their crimes, especially if they were looking for something they’d lost.
There was a short silence, then Ryan turned to address Yates.
“I think that’s a short list the FIU can work with, don’t you?”
She nodded happily.
“I’ll get onto it right away, sir.”
As Yates sprang up to alert the finance unit and set the wheels in motion for special account monitoring orders, Ryan looked back down at the three faces staring up at him and wondered.
*
There was no time. Any moment now, the police could burst in with a warrant to search and seize and that would be the end of everything. All their careful plans would turn to dust, all the years of trying and grasping at every little opportunity would be wasted.
What, then, would they have to show for taking a life?
They shuddered and carried on pulling out papers from the hidden unit at the back of the desk. Once the unit was cleaned out and they’d had a good feel around for any stray papers, they bundled the stack into a plain canvas bag and headed out to stuff it into the boot of their car.
Come nightfall, they would find the perfect spot for a bonfire.
*
Back at CID Headquarters, Ryan’s good mood was vanishing rapidly. “What the hell is this? Amateurs Anonymous?”
He glared at each of them in turn and at least they had the grace to look sheepish.
“I don’t know how we missed that one, guv,” Lowerson was the first to speak, and the others in the room silently commended his bravery.
“Neither do I, considering you all have two eyes and a brain inside your heads,” Ryan shot back.
“We’ll get onto it straight away,” Phillips assured him, with a nervous glance toward MacKenzie.
“Don’t look at me,” she said, holding her hands up.
Ryan watched them pass the proverbial parcel among themselves and shook his head.
“Count yourselves lucky I’m not sending you all back to cadet training school for a refresher course,” he muttered. “As it is, I’m going to overlook the fact that nobody has contacted Victor’s mobile phone company yet, despite it being one of the first and most obvious things we look for.”
“I suppose I didn’t think an old bloke like him would have a mobile phone,” Lowerson confessed, drawing disbelieving glances from around the room.
Ryan told himself to remain calm.
“Jack, I realise that anyone over the age of thirty-five seems ‘old’ to you. But, to the rest of us, age is just a number. We might have a few more lines but we’re mostly the same as we always were, which includes Victor Swann. You need to get the idea out of your head that age equates to incapacity.”
“I narf feel the draughts, now, like,” Phillips threw in, and Ryan slapped a hand to his face. “And my knees creak a lot more than they used to.”
“Fascinating insight,” Ryan muttered, and came back to the point.
“Look, if Victor Swann could run a highly successful cottage business in blackmail and extortion, he sure as hell could operate a mobile phone. That’s probably what our perp was looking for when they raided his locker.”
MacKenzie looked at the inventory of items found scattered around Alice Chapman’s body.
“No mention of a mobile phone on the list,” she confirmed.
“Yet we know Victor must have had one.”
“Somebody took it?”
“It looks that way, doesn’t it? I want to know what was on that phone and where it is now.”
“I’ll get in touch with the phone company,” Lowerson offered, and fled the room.
As the door clicked shut, Ryan turned to the other two with a private smile.
“Ah, youth.”
*
Anna spent most of the day finalising details for the wedding, which was fast approaching. She grappled with last-minute cancellations and tussled with caterers, spoke to friends who were due to attend and organised for a large donation to be made to the food banks in Newcastle. She thought it only fair that, if they planned to enjoy a hearty wedding breakfast, they should spare a thought for others who were not so fortunate while they stuffed their faces with fruit cake. Her wedding dress was now safely ensconced in the spare bedroom with the door firmly shut. She had never considered herself to be a superstitious person but it was an established tradition that the groom should not see her dress before the big day and she planned to stick to it.
Anna sat down briefly on the bed, looked at the long white protective cover hanging on the back of the door and thought of one thing.