The Hand of Ronan Hawke

By Barry Litherland

Cyrus is trapped in a nightmare from which he cannot escape. He must hunt down those responsible for what happened. He must know why. 

His journey takes him from the darkest corners of the city to the remote and lonely highlands where he must face the evil "Mr Smith" and discover the awful truth.

But he cannot do it alone.  

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bleaknorth Publishing
• Release date: Jun 17, 2019
• ISBN: 9781393094661

Barry Litherland

Barry Litherland lives and writes in the Far North of Scotland. He has written several crime and paranormal crime novels and Middle Grade children's novels. You can find out more about him and his work by visiting his website.

Book preview

Chapter 1

Davy slipped out of the dark alleyway and didn’t look round. At this time of night, the Glasgow street was only dimly lit. There were just a few people about, probably heading home after a night in the clubs and bars in the city centre. A solitary car passed him, its headlights momentarily lighting up windows and doors, while streetlights cast a reflected glow in pools of recently fallen rain. A heavy sky glowered overhead and the air was still. It was after two.

Davy remembered his instructions. He pulled his hood over his eyes and kept his head down. He looked like any other lad after a night out with the boys – blue jeans, a dark hooded coat - like he belonged on those streets, a creature of the night hurrying to his burrow.

‘There are three cameras on the road but they won’t identify you if you don’t look for them. Keep your head down and your hood up. Turn down the second street on your right. There’s another camera on the corner and another outside the club. That’s the one to avoid. It’s monitored from inside.’

He crossed the first junction and walked quickly towards the second. It was silent at that time of night and full of shadows. The buildings were all in darkness, their doorways drawing back into deeper dark to hide their secrets. Halfway along the narrow street, dull lights emerged from one building. As he stepped towards it he could hear music from within. He slipped into a doorway on the left, some distance short of the entrance.

Now he had to wait.

He knew what happened within those doors, inside that club. The man who’d hired him had told him. He knew the sort of people who went there, rich people who could do what they wanted because they had money and power and friends. He had none of those things. The man knew that and he was going to help him. This was his way out, his way up.

His eyes narrowed and his hunched shoulder tightened. He held the leather-strapped gun grip and pushed it deeper into the pocket of his coat. He glanced at his watch – two twenty-five. ‘Two thirty,’ the man had said, the man who called himself Mr. Smith. ‘He’ll come out at two thirty and he’ll turn to walk to the main road. He’ll be alone.’

Well, you don’t advertise those sorts of habits, do you, not when you’re in his sort of position and come from a country like his? He wouldn’t last long if they knew back home. No wonder people wanted him dead; they weren’t fit to live, his sort. Mr. Smith had told him everything. He said he trusted him.

‘He deserves to die,’ Davy told himself now. He said it again and again. Davy knew all about people like him. Even without the other crimes Mr. Smith told him about, he deserved to die.

Still, as the moment came closer, his hands were trembling and he was sweating. Fear gnawed his stomach. For a moment he wanted to turn away and run and forget the whole thing. For a moment he wondered what the hell he was doing out there in the early hours of the morning, with a gun in his pocket, waiting to pull the trigger and kill a man. Christ, he was seventeen – what was he thinking?

Then he remembered he was being paid and he remembered the man who was paying and he knew he had no alternative. He’d made his choice. His life would be worth nothing if he failed. He gripped the gun tightly and shrugged away his doubts.

A door opened down the street and light and sound belched momentarily from inside. There were some hurried words; he heard a deep, foreign voice. Then the door closed and someone turned to walk towards him. The boy drew himself into the darkness and slipped the gun from his pocket.

His heart was beating faster now and his breath came in quick bursts. He was no longer just trembling, his whole body shook and the strength had gone from his arms and legs.

‘I can’t do it,’ he told himself. ‘I don’t want to be here. I want to go home.’

Then he remembered how Mr. Smith became suddenly very fucking scary and how he described the fate that awaited him if he failed, and he remembered that home wasn’t worth going to and he saw the target pass him, a swarthy, corpulent figure, swaggering towards the main road, oozing self-importance, indifference and power. Hate surged like phlegm to his throat and he blocked out the consequences. He stepped out of the darkness. He took steady aim and he fired.

Chapter 2

He didn’t run when he left the body. He walked quickly down to the main street and he didn’t look up. Even when he heard the club door open behind him and a blare of music burst out, he didn’t alter his course or his pace. People were running down the street but he was around the corner and across the street before anyone reached the body. He turned right and then left and then right again, keeping to darker streets now and narrow alleyways between high, terraced buildings. As he approached an open piece of waste ground, littered with the rubble of demolished homes, a car slowed beside him, a black car with darkened windows. The front window slipped silently down. Davy glanced at the driver and then slipped quickly into the back seat.

‘Is it done?’

Davy nodded. He could hardly breathe but whether fear or exhilaration had gained supremacy he couldn’t tell. He tried to speak, to brag of his prowess, to describe the murder but his companion remained silent and eventually, feeling foolish now to have exposed his immaturity like that, he fell back on the seat and looked out at the moving streets.

‘Where are we going?’

The driver didn’t answer. Davy tried to catch his attention in the rear view mirror but to no avail. Two cold, emotionless eyes, stared at the road ahead.

‘Can’t you tell me?’

The driver lazily turned on the radio. ‘Somewhere you’ll be safe,’ he said at last. ‘Don’t worry. It’s all been taken care of.’ He turned the music louder.

Half an hour later, Davy saw the Clyde to his right widen towards the estuary and the car slowed and turned down a steep road towards a small harbour. The driver pulled up beside a deserted warehouse and turned off the engine. He climbed out and opened the rear door for the boy. By the time Davy had clambered out, the driver was already walking quickly along the quay. Without hesitation or even breaking his stride, he swung onto an iron ladder and dropped down onto the deck of a small leisure craft. Davy clambered after him. A moment later the engine spluttered into life and the boat moved slowly out of the harbour.

Davy stood in the wheelhouse behind his new companion.

‘What happens now?’

‘There’s a merchant ship three miles out. You’ll be on board in an hour or so. You’ll be picked up in Hamburg and taken somewhere safe. Someone will be waiting for you.’

‘Is there anything to drink?’

‘Only water, but there’s some cocaine in the drawer. He thought you might need it.’

Mr. Smith thought of everything.

‘You want a line?’ Davy asked.

A flicker of a smile broke momentarily across the man’s lips but it was quickly suppressed.

‘I don’t feel the need,’ he said dryly.

Davy disappeared down steps into the low cabin.

The man in the wheelhouse didn’t move. He kept his eyes on the distant horizon and steered out beyond the land and into the open sea. Even when he heard a cry from below decks and then a gurgling scream he didn’t move. He listened. The noises continued for a moment; a table fell, crockery smashed and he heard an unearthly groan and a thud as of a body falling heavily on a wooden floor. Eventually he checked his watch and cut the engines; he waited a moment more, listening intently, and then stepped away from the wheelhouse to open the door of the cabin. He stood for a moment looking down at the boy. The body lay contorted and twisted, the head turned upwards and the eyes staring blankly.

‘Jesus, what a mess,’ the man muttered.

Blood trickled silently from the corners of the boy’s eyes and from his mouth. A single red line trailed from his ear and gathered in a pool on the floor. His yellow face was twisted and his mouth lay open in a grotesque smile.

The man sighed and stepped down into the cabin. He grabbed the boy heavily by the feet and dragged him, step by step until he lay flat on the deck. He stood up and, in a businesslike manner, walked past the wheelhouse to the prow where he raised a piece of tarpaulin and removed a heavy circular weight. He carried it back and put it down beside the body, then returned to the tarpaulin, gathering up a second, circular weight. Finally, he returned with a length of rope.

Despite his exertions he breathed easily, with the assurance of a man in peak condition. He quickly secured the weights to the boy’s arms and legs and then rolled him to the side of the boat. A moment later the body vanished with little sound and sank into the abyss. The man leaned over the side and watched for a moment then he drew himself up and gathered a mop and bucket from the wheelhouse. He checked his watch.

‘Plenty of time,’ he murmured.

An hour and a half later, the boat slipped unobserved back into the silent harbour. Efficiently, but without haste, he secured it to the jetty and clambered up the iron ladder. Five minutes later, his car turned quietly up the narrow slope to the road. Half an hour after that, it turned into a scrap yard and five minutes after that a motor bike emerged and sped towards the motorway and the east. The next morning, the car would be crushed and nothing would remain.

‘Easy,’ he said to himself as he left Glasgow behind. Mr. Smith would be pleased.

Chapter 3

Cyrus Vance was sitting by a table in the centre of a bare room. Two men sat facing him and a third, in uniform, stood beside the door. One of the men, his arms folded casually across his chest, yawned; but even as he yawned his narrow, dark eyes didn’t move from Cyrus. The other man leaned forward in a businesslike manner, thumbing through the papers on the table.

Cyrus stared back, his blue eyes resentful and sharp despite the signs of recent distress in their dark shadows. He wouldn’t be intimidated. He knew the truth, even if they didn’t.

‘Are you sure you don’t want a solicitor?’ Detective Inspector Burton looked up from his papers. ‘Just say so for the record.’ He nodded towards the digital recorder beside them.

‘I don’t need a solicitor. I haven’t done anything.’ He clenched his fists together, long, artistic fingers curled, knuckles white. He was fighting back feelings that threatened to overwhelm him, but he wouldn’t let those emotions show, he couldn’t, not in front of these people who didn’t know him and didn’t know Leah and didn’t know how he was hurting.

Detective Sergeant O’Leary leaned suddenly forward. His chair clattered heavily on the wooden floor.

‘You’ve been saying that for the last three hours. I still don’t believe you.’

‘That’s your problem.’

Burton looked up. He smiled; white teeth, neatly cut brown hair, tidy nails on tidy hands. He was about thirty-five; his suit was fashionable and new. Even his flashy watch looked as if it wanted to be looked at. D.I. Burton was on his way up the professional ladder.

‘On the contrary, Cyrus; I think it most certainly is your problem.’

D.S. O’Leary laughed and then coughed. He looked as if he’d been left on the ladder at some time in the past and forgotten about.

‘It’s your problem,’ he repeated.

‘Then why don’t you charge me?’

A dry, professional smile broke from one, a narrow-lipped smirk from the other.

‘We intend to.’

Cyrus stared moodily. Ninety-six hours, ninety-six long hours had passed, with each minute burnt painfully into his mind – a mere four days – and the spiral of investigation had curled inwards and now span only around him. They barely gave him time to grieve. He was cold now, sustained by an icy anger. But one day soon he would have to grieve.

‘We have two witnesses who can place you at the scene just before Leah died.’

‘They’re lying.’

‘They described you in some detail. There’s no doubt it was you they saw.’

‘They’re still lying. You should be asking why.’

D.I. Burton picked up a printed statement and read it closely.

‘You say here that you left Leah at ten o’clock outside her house. You walked back to the city centre and then, rather than taking a bus or taxi, you walked the rest of the way home. You were home by twelve thirty.’

Cyrus nodded. ‘I’ve told you all this. Why are you going over the same ground time and time again? There’s a murderer out there.’

‘We think we have the murderer in here,’ O’Leary muttered.

‘Then you’re obviously pretty poor detectives.’

O’Leary leaned forward. His narrow, bloodshot eyes indicated a narrow, bloodshot mind not far beneath. ‘We’re good enough to catch you.’

‘I guess that confirms my point.’

Burton smiled and put the paper back on the table top.

‘Why did you walk? It’s a long way.’

‘It was a nice night and I didn’t want it to end.’

‘It’s strange that no-one saw you. There must have been other people about.’

‘Perhaps I don’t have a particularly memorable face. How hard have you tried to find someone?’

‘Your account just doesn’t make sense, you see. There are too many problems with it. Let’s look at it in detail.’

‘Again?’

‘Yes, again.’ O’Leary pressed his pugilist’s face closer. ‘And again and again and again until we hear the truth.’

‘You wouldn’t recognise the truth if it wore a funny hat and waved a flag.’

Burton was unruffled and calm. ‘You left Leah at her front gate and you saw her walk towards the door. She was found an hour later half a mile away. How do you explain that?’

‘I can’t.’

‘Humour me. Speculate.’

‘She must have gone out again. Perhaps she got a phone call.’

‘Her parents say she didn’t enter the house that night. Her phone doesn’t indicate any call received after ten o’clock.’

‘Perhaps someone was waiting for her.’

‘Did you see anyone?’

Cyrus shook his head.

‘For the tape, Mr. Vance shook his head,’ O’Leary said in a monotone.

‘But you would have seen someone on the path or by the door,’ Burton continued, ‘if there was anyone waiting. There’s a streetlight on the road just outside.’

‘Yes, unless they were hiding. It’s the sort of thing a murderer might do, don’t you think?’

Burton ignored him. ‘So, as far as you’re aware, there was no-one waiting for her.’

‘I saw no-one.’

‘Then you see our dilemma. She never entered her house that evening. Her body was found half a mile away. No-one saw you on the street where you say you left her. There’s nothing to suggest that you walked her home at all. However, we do have two independent witnesses who place you at the exact scene of the murder in the presence of the body and they are willing to swear to it.’

‘They’re lying. I was never there. It wasn’t even on our route.’

Burton looked at O’Leary and sighed. ‘Let’s take a break,’ he said. ‘The DNA tests will confirm what we already know.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘This interview terminated at 16.40.’ He switched off the recording device and looked at Cyrus. ‘You could have made it so much easier on yourself, you know.’

‘I could have made it easier on you, you mean. You don’t want to find the real murderer, not when you’ve got me.’

The police officer by the door took Cyrus back to the small cell where he had been housed since his arrest. He lay back on the hard mattress and rested his head against the wall. He tried to close his eyes but the grief he had restrained during the long hours of interviews would not be held back any longer. He held his head and sobbed silently.

‘He’s guilty,’ O’Leary said.

‘Of course he’s guilty. We have two witnesses to prove it. But I’d be happier if we had a motive and CCTV footage.’

‘We’re looking but there’s nothing so far.’

The door opened and a young WPC entered. She whispered something to Burton and handed him a sheet of paper. He frowned and handed the paper to O’Leary.

‘No traces of blood on his clothes, nothing incriminating at all.’

‘We can still charge him. We’ve got witnesses.’

‘Keep checking the cameras,’ Burton said, ‘and find a motive.’

Chapter 4

‘T ell me about Leah ,’ Burton said. ‘How did you meet?’

Cyrus didn’t speak. His eyes, red and deeply shadowed with lack of sleep, caught the officer in a dark stare and didn’t let go.

‘Don’t you remember?’ O’Leary smirked. ‘I thought she was special to you.’

They would never know how special. They would never understand. He wouldn’t waste his words on them and he wouldn’t speak about Leah. To talk about her to the cynical O’Leary and the cold, officious Burton would be like a desecration. But he remembered. How could he forget? It was the most important moment in his life.

It was snowing when he emerged from the theatre. It must have been snowing for two hours or more. The road was filling slowly despite the vehicles. It was that soft snow which falls in large flakes as if buoyed and floating. The dark sky was full of it. His thoughts fled from the town to fields slowly filling, to silent cattle breathing wreaths of mist, to trees, their branches outstretched, as if to show off their new clothes.

‘It’s like Christmas,’ he murmured. He disturbed the snow on the step with his foot.

A girl on the theatre steps beside him laughed softly. He looked up and she smiled. She had blue eyes, like ice. Fair hair flowed over her shoulders. She was hopelessly dressed for the snow. She wore a flimsy jacket over her theatre clothes, fashionable jeans clinging to her slender legs.

‘It’s clean,’ he said to her. ‘It’s like a fresh start.’

She looked up and down the road but the last taxi had moved away.

She said, ‘I think I’ll walk, I love the snow.’

‘Do you have far to go?’

‘And miles to go before I sleep,’ she quoted. She laughed again and her eyes were bright and to Cyrus she looked as fresh and vibrant as the snow against the dark sky.

‘Can I walk with you?’

‘You don’t know where I’m going,’ she laughed.

‘I don’t care,’ he said, quite seriously. ‘I like the snow.’

She nodded. ‘Okay.’

That was how it began. He walked with her away from the city centre towards northern suburbs. At one point he slipped his coat off and put it around her shoulders.

‘Don’t be offended,’ he said. ‘You’re cold and I’m not.’

‘I’m not offended.’

He left her at the end of a quiet street of semi-detached houses surrounded by tidy gardens and dwarf trees.

‘Can I see you again?’ he called, as she walked away, her feet marking soft prints on undisturbed snow.

‘Call me,’ she said. She ran back and wrote her number on the back of his hand. ‘Soon,’ she added.

He had his own flat in the west end in those days. It was a long, long walk from Leah’s house. Months later, he tried to recall that walk. It must’ve been difficult because the snow was growing steadily deeper. No vehicles were out on the smaller roads he was using. Even the traffic on the main routes was thinning out. It was a night to be at home unless you had no alternative. He must have trudged through snow at times shin deep and he must have been cold and wet to the skin. He couldn’t remember. When he thought of it he saw himself gliding over the surface as if he had no weight. When he reached home he fell asleep with her image in his mind.

He couldn’t say that to O’Leary and Burton. He could imagine how they’d snort with laughter. ‘How sweet, how sentimental; that’s very Mills and Boon, Cyrus. Do you expect us to believe it?’ They were hard men from a hard world with no room for emotions like these. ‘Have you been reading your mother’s romances again, Cyrus? Shame on you!’

But it was true, every word of it, so he stayed quiet.

Burton drummed the table impatiently. ‘Playing the strong, silent type won’t work with us, Cyrus. We’ve got all the time in the world.’

‘I think I’ll have that solicitor now,’ Cyrus said quietly.

O’Leary smiled unpleasantly. ‘The first action of a guilty man,’ he murmured, just loud enough for Cyrus to hear. ‘I think we’ve got you.’

The two men left the room and Cyrus was returned once more to the bare cell.

He should have waited a few days before he called Leah. That was how you were supposed to act. It wasn’t cool to act hastily. But he didn’t care. He called her shortly after breakfast the next day and they met that evening. The snow was still heavy on the ground but there had been no new fall and the main roads had been cleared. They walked along the banks of the Clyde and, as the night grew colder, they sat in a quiet bar overlooking the dark water. Streetlights from the bridge stretched and flickered as ripples, raised by a gentle breeze, broke, sparkling silver, on the embankment.

That night as he left her by the gate to her house they kissed for the first time.

Winter gradually gave way to spring. Flowers emerged in the woodlands and hedges in the countryside and soft leaves burst fresh from branches. They went for a few days to Loch Lomond and walked beside the loch and strolled up hillsides and through woods.

Spring rolled seamlessly into an unusually warm and dry summer and they made plans to move in together the following spring. Until then, they would save. They were both working. Leah taught in a big secondary school and he was a computer technician for the council. Everything was perfect. They couldn’t have been happier.

He should have known it wouldn’t last. He could see now that nothing ever did - except pain and grief and the endless nightmare of loss. He knew that now. You could trust nothing,