“Big of you,” Ryan said and she looked at him with venom.
“You think you’re so clever, don’t you?” she said, moving toward him. “You think you’re doing the right thing and that society will give you a big slap on the back and say, ‘well done’. But they won’t. They’ll say you locked up a fragile old woman who lost her husband in one of the region’s biggest tragedies. They’ll say I was the real victim here, not that evil, rabid creature I put down last night. He hadn’t changed; you’re the one who said he killed Alice as well. He’d have kept going too, if I hadn’t stopped him.”
Ryan could feel her breath hitting the bottom of his chin and thought back to the grief-stricken faces of Alice’s parents.
“You’re forgetting something, Maggie,” he said quietly. “I don’t answer to the popular press, I answer to the laws of England and Wales. I answer to the common standards of decency that society expects, not some base urge to exact revenge.”
“He got what was coming to him!” she shouted, and a fine spray of saliva connected with his face.
“It is not for you to play God,” he said.
“You don’t understand what it feels like, to have lost someone—”
“I understand,” he snapped.
They stood almost nose to nose and didn’t even notice when the lights were turned on again and Phillips and MacKenzie joined them, standing a few paces further back.
“He took my husband—the father of my children!”
Ryan nodded.
“And now you’ve let him take something more important,” he said in a low voice. “You let him take your soul.”
She flew at him then, scratching and clawing.
Weary now, Ryan held her off, then stepped away and motioned the other two detectives forward to make the arrest. After they led her away amid a stream of obscenities, he let himself out the back door and into the courtyard outside. He didn’t bother to look at the ground where Victor had lain but kept walking around the side of the house until he was on higher ground and could rest against one of the craggy rocks and look up at the sky in momentary solitude.
The moon trickled glorious white light onto the slate roof of the house and washed away the darkness, cleansing it of the maleficent force that had, for a while, taken hold of the people who lived there. Ryan leaned back against the rough bark of a tree, wrestling with his conscience.
Should personal vengeance ever be allowed to take precedence over society’s laws?
He understood the terrible temptation to take an eye for an eye. He understood the pain of loss, the kind that gnawed at your spirit until there was little left but an embittered shell.
But there had to be something greater, something that was worth fighting for.
He watched a squad car make its journey along the driveway toward the city and resolved to keep fighting.
EPILOGUE
Anna stood in a long column of simple ivory tulle, clutching a bouquet of wild flowers as she stared into the mirror, hardly recognising herself.
Neither her mother nor her sister stood beside her, but another woman did.
“Bend your head a little,” MacKenzie told her, carefully securing a veil onto the top of Anna’s hair, which fell in long waves down her back.
She stepped aside and surveyed the effect in the mirror.
“You’re a vision,” she said, gently fluffing the yards of silk. “Are you ready to go and face the music, or should I order a couple of fast horses?”
Anna managed a nervous laugh.
Unlike herself, Ryan had a large and expansive family of aunts, uncles, cousins and second-cousins-twice-removed, all of whom would be joining them for the reception later. Thankfully, at his insistence, the numbers had been kept small for the ceremony so that the disparity would not be quite so obvious and she would not feel so nervous walking down a packed aisle of guests who looked as if they’d wandered off the pages of Tatler or Country Life.
Ryan had assured her they could drink the average Geordie sailor under the table, which was some small comfort.
Still, it might have been nice to have somebody to cling to.
Just then, there was a soft tap on the bedroom door.
“That’ll be the driver,” MacKenzie said, rushing about to scoop up her bridesmaid’s bouquet and other essential items, such as tissues.
But it was Phillips who stepped cautiously into the room, looking dapper in a navy-blue three-piece suit and a tie in a conservative shade of red.
He looked at Anna in a kind of wonder.
“You’re a beauty,” he said, then shuffled awkwardly, looking to MacKenzie for encouragement.
From her position over Anna’s shoulder, she gave him a nod and a ‘hurry up’ motion.
“Ah, there’s a favour I wanted to ask,” he said gruffly, working hard to keep the emotion from his voice. “I, ah, well, I know I’m not your Da and you might not want…that is to say, I don’t have any daughters and I wondered if you’d let me have the honour of walking you down the aisle.”
Anna couldn’t speak for a moment. She stood looking at the short, ruddy-faced man with twinkling brown eyes and realised she had been very wrong to think she had no family.
Here was her family.
“It would make me very happy, Frank,” she managed, blinking furiously against the tears that threatened to ruin her mascara. “There’s just one small thing I need to change.”
Phillips gave her a curious look and watched as Anna began rooting around one of the wardrobes. She came back holding a canary yellow tie with a pattern of tiny red love hearts and miniature cupids.
“I think this would suit you a lot better than the one you’re wearing—wouldn’t you say?”
Phillips’ smile was wide and genuine.
“Now you’re talking.”
*
They were married on a sunlit afternoon, on a swathe of sandy white beach beneath Bamburgh Castle. The mighty fortress burned a rusty gold as it soaked up the sun’s rays and, for once, the North Sea was gentle as it lapped against the shoreline. Anna made her way across the sand dunes and stopped to look out across the water where, further to the north, she could see the tower of Lindisfarne Castle on the island where she had been born. It was fitting, she thought, to be married within sight of her past but not overshadowed by it.
Phillips gave her a quick, comforting squeeze.
“Ready, lass?”
“Let’s not keep him waiting too long,” she smiled. “He doesn’t have you with him to crack any corny jokes.”
They made their way down the dunes, pausing to kick off their shoes like all the other guests who stood up from their chairs to meet her in bare feet. Beside a simple arch decorated in wild flowers with the sea as its backdrop, Ryan stood waiting for her in a matching navy-blue suit, his toes curling in the sand.