The Shrine: A DCI Ryan Mystery (The DCI Ryan Mysteries Book 16)

by LJ Ross

  “And, these are all…priceless?” Ryan asked.

  Pettigrew nodded emphatically.

  “We considered moving them,” Nevis said. “But, with the security system still intact, and no structural damage to the cathedral—”

  “It seemed unlikely they’d chance a second robbery, sir,” Carter put in. “They’d know police would be crawling over the cathedral after what happened yesterday, for one thing.”

  Ryan had known criminals for whom the chase, the risk, was everything, but he happened to agree with the younger man’s assessment.

  “I agree, they’d be fools to chance coming back here again. Besides, they had time to break into more than one case, if they’d wanted to take the lot.”

  “Which brings us back to your question,” Winter said, in her quiet, no-nonsense way. “Why take the cross, and nothing else?”

  “Maybe they wanted the gold?” Carter suggested.

  Ryan gave a distracted shake of his head.

  “Gold is readily accessible,” he said. “They could hit any number of jewellery shops and save themselves the drama. No, it’s far more likely there’s a private buyer who wanted that cross, somewhere on the black market.”

  And, if that was the case, their job just became much harder.

  “I don’t understand how it could have happened,” Nevis said, clearly nervous about any ramifications there may be for his ongoing employment. “Those display cases are state-of-the-art.”

  “Where there’s a will, there’s a way,” Phillips replied, and cast his sharp eye over the industrial plastic casing which now lay broken in several pieces on the floor.

  “What do you know, so far?” Ryan asked.

  “The explosions went off around noon,” Nevis replied. “The alarm was raised shortly afterwards as people began to exit the building and all staff began to evacuate the premises, and a separate alarm went off when the casing was breached. Unfortunately, this wasn’t picked up as quickly as might otherwise have been the case—”

  “What’s the procedure for evacuation?” Ryan asked, as an image began to form in his mind. “Every man for himself?”

  “Not at all!” Pettigrew was offended. “We check all the rooms, to ensure nobody—”

  He trailed off and flushed with embarrassment as he realised his blunder.

  “Nobody is left, bleeding on the floor?” Ryan finished for him, very softly. “Certainly, not in the House of God.”

  “Visibility was very poor,” Nevis put in, hurriedly. “It’s possible the volunteers didn’t see your wife.”

  “Anything’s possible,” Ryan agreed, and gave the man a smile that would have chipped glass. “What happened after you finished your checks?”

  “Control Room received an alert linked to the cathedral’s alarm system, at twelve-oh-four,” Carter said, a bit nervously. “First responders attended the scene, arriving at around six minutes past. The matter was referred to me, as I was the senior officer on duty at Major Crimes, and I contacted the Bomb Squad and the Counter-Terrorism Unit. We were fortunate that two members of the Bomb Squad were already in the city and had kit available, as they were due to attend a training seminar at the university, so they were able to attend shortly afterwards—otherwise there would have been a delay waiting for them to travel from the Explosive Ordnance Disposal Unit based at Otterburn. They accessed the building at around quarter past twelve, sir.”

  “Swift action,” Ryan was bound to say. “When—ah, when did they find—”

  “Your wife was discovered at around twenty past the hour, sir,” Winter said. “Paramedics were already in attendance, and she was transferred to hospital.”

  He nodded, only too able to imagine the scene.

  “Where was she found?” he asked, turning to face the room.

  “Very close to the display case, here,” Carter said, moving to indicate a yellow marker not far away.

  “How had she fallen? What direction?”

  When an answer was not immediately forthcoming, he spun back around.

  “It goes to motive,” he explained. “Was she running away, or was she defending herself? Was the attack more likely to have been accidental, or intended to immobilise? Has a weapon been recovered?”

  His eyes tracked over the worn stone floor, but he could see no large implements capable of causing the kind of damage Anna had suffered.

  “She was found lying on her right side, in this direction,” Winter stepped forward and used her arms to describe the motion. “The display case would have been at her back.”

  “We haven’t recovered any weapons, sir,” Carter added. “But we’re still in the process of searching the cathedral.”

  Ryan was silent for a moment, visualising his wife turning, seeking out the exit. As she turned, she was struck at the back of her head, hard enough that she fell forward as a dead weight, snapping her right ankle as her body fell awkwardly to the ground.

  “How many explosions?” he asked. “Where were the devices found?”

  “The Bomb Squad recovered one device in here, in the corner over by those pillars,” Carter said. “Another three were detonated in total, two of which were found in the nave, hidden beneath some of the pews. The other one was found beside the font.”

  “Seems as though they were mostly for noise and show,” Phillips said, keeping a weather eye on Ryan’s taut profile. “Was any other damage caused?”

  “We’re delighted to say, none whatsoever,” Pettigrew replied, clasping his hands together in a manner that was vaguely distasteful. “There’s been some slight chipping to the woodwork, but nothing a good joiner couldn’t buff out.”

  “Well, that’s a great relief,” Ryan snarled.

  His wife had just come through life-saving surgery, but so long as their bloody woodwork was alright…

  “What’s been done so far?” Phillips asked.

  “The Dean has been informed, of course,” Pettigrew said. “He’s very concerned, and has asked to be kept informed—”

  Ryan raised an eyebrow, then looked sharply at Carter and Winter.

  “All staff and volunteers of the cathedral should have been interviewed, or be in the process of being interviewed,” he said. “Is that underway?”

  “We have begun the process, sir,” Carter said, looking uncomfortable. “The Dean had a prior engagement yesterday, so we haven’t had an opportunity to speak with him yet.”

  Ryan turned to face Pettigrew.

  “What could possibly have been more important than speaking with the police, at a time when the cathedral had come under attack and, as it turns out, one of its most prized possessions had been stolen?”

  “I am afraid the Dean was indisposed,” Pettigrew said, with some dignity. “He isn’t responsible for leading ordinary prayers in the Cathedral, and, as you know, I take care of the day-to-day administration. He can hardly be blamed for not having been available, and he’s a very busy man, at the best of times.”

  Ryan was unconvinced.

  “I want a full and complete list of all staff and volunteers associated with the cathedral,” he told Carter and Winter. “I want everybody interviewed—I want to know precise movements and, wherever possible, timings.”

  “But—you can’t possibly think anyone of us would have been involved?” Pettigrew stammered.

  Ryan looked at him for a long moment.

  “You said it yourself, Mr Pettigrew—thousands of people visit the cathedral. It’s possible that a gang of professional thieves orchestrated this, but it occurs to me how much easier it might have been, for somebody who already knew their way around—don’t you think?”

  “Derek’s right,” Nevis insisted. “The staff here know how sophisticated the security systems are and, besides, nobody could get past me—”

  “That’s just it,” Ryan interjected. “What better way is there to hide than in plain sight? You wouldn’t notice a familiar face, because they’d be part of the fabric here.”

  Nevis fe
ll silent, and the crestfallen look on his face told them it was not outside the realms of possibility.

  “Chief inspector,” Pettigrew said, recovering himself. “The people who work inside this cathedral and on behalf of its community believe in Christian values. It isn’t possible that any one of them could have done this, nor been complicit in any way.”

  Ryan found himself wondering how many times over the course of human history actions and misdeeds had been excused on account of the perpetrator professing to follow religious ideals. And yet, as Samantha had learned at a very young age, talk is cheap.

  “Very laudable,” he said. “But, as somebody once said, to err is human. You say that cross was priceless, but somebody was willing to name a price, or it wouldn’t have been worth stealing. The price was obviously sufficient incentive for person—or persons—unknown to risk their safety and the safety of others, not least my wife and child.”

  Ryan looked back at the spot where Anna had fallen, then back into the slightly myopic eyes of the Cathedral’s Chief Operating Officer.

  “I’ll leave forgiveness to the Divine, Mr Pettigrew.”

  CHAPTER 11

  For the second time in as many days, Jack Lowerson grappled with an overwhelming feeling of nausea.

  During his time as a policeman, then as a murder detective, he’d seen plenty of things that turned his stomach and kept him awake at night.

  However, it seemed there was always room for more.

  “You alright there, Jack?”

  The enquiry came from Doctor Jeffrey Pinter, Chief Pathologist attached to Northumbria CID and their long-time associate. He was a tall, lanky man in his early fifties, with an eclectic taste in music and a cheerful demeanour that belied his grisly profession. Lowerson didn’t mind so much that ABBA’s greatest hits were blasting out of the speakers in the hospital mortuary; he was more concerned with the odour emanating from the immersion tank at the other end of the room.

  He cleared his throat.

  “I’m fine,” he said, making a valiant effort to sound nonchalant. “Ah, is that new?”

  Pinter looked over at the tank.

  “She’s a beauty, isn’t she? Not new anymore, mind you. I suppose it’s been a while since we’ve seen you in here, Jack. Would you like me to show you how it works?”

  Pinter began to move towards the tank, presumably to reveal its contents.

  “Ah, no—no, we haven’t really got time,” Lowerson said. “Have we, Mel?”

  But, to his horror, Yates was already making her way across the room to peer inside the shiny metal tank.

  “Fabulous new design…” Pinter was saying, cranking a wheel mechanism at one end. “We use it mostly for teaching, you know.”

  “I suppose it’s helpful for the university students to learn their anatomy,” Yates replied.

  “Yes, indeed. Embalming, dissection—”

  Another minute, Lowerson thought, and he was going to embarrass himself.

  “Ah, we really should get down to business,” he said, making a show of checking his watch. “We’re due to have a briefing later this afternoon.”

  “Are we?” Yates was surprised.

  He didn’t quite meet her eyes.

  “Probably,” he mumbled, and moved swiftly on before she could grill him further. “So, Jeff, what can you tell us about Joan Tebbutt?”

  Pinter gave a light shrug and stuck his hands in the pockets of his lab coat.

  “I’ve put her in one of the private examining rooms,” he said, and began leading them along a separate corridor. “I wasn’t well acquainted with DCI Tebbutt, but colleagues in County Durham speak very highly of her, so I felt it was only right and proper she should be afforded her own room.”

  “That’s good of you, Jeff,” Yates said.

  To ensure the investigation into Tebbutt’s death remained as independent as possible, the decision had been taken to use specialist services normally associated with Northumbria CID, rather than their counterparts in Durham. It meant that her body had been transported to the Royal Victoria Infirmary in Newcastle, where Pinter kept an office, and Faulkner’s team of CSIs had management of the forensic crime scene at her home in Seaham, rather than a local crew. Though nobody wanted to say as much, the fact was, it reduced the chance of any information being tampered with from an inside source.

  They were shown inside one of the smaller examination rooms, where a shrouded figure lay on a metal table in the centre. A computer monitor hummed on a desk pushed against one wall, while an industrial strength conditioning unit rattled somewhere above their heads, keeping the temperature chilly. There was little it could do to mask the odour of chemicals, but it was better than the alternative.

  “Here she is,” Pinter declared, as the door clicked shut behind them. “Are you ready to dive in?”

  It was a fact universally acknowledged that Jeff Pinter had a unique, ill-judged turn of phrase, which they forgave on account of him being one of the best in the business.

  Lowerson gritted his teeth.

  When the shroud was lifted, the overriding sensation both detectives experienced was sadness; not for the cruel damage to the bodily shell Joan had inhabited in life, but for the emptiness her broken body left in its wake, now that her soul had departed.

  “Joan was fifty-seven, and in excellent physical shape,” Pinter said, and they could see that had been true. She’d been trim, with good muscle tone. “A couple of old breaks and scars—one, where she gave birth by caesarean section, as you can see.”

  They nodded, and thought of the woman’s daughter, who they’d spoken with the day before to convey the unhappy news.

  “Generally good diet, although I found something interesting in her bowel,” Pinter said. “Looked to me like a small tumour, which I’ve sent away for further testing. There’s no mention of it in her medical notes, so my guess is that she was unaware of it, when she died.”

  Bowel cancer was one of the most aggressive types of cancer, but she should still have been given the right to fight it and stand a chance of survival, Yates thought.

  “We can check with her daughter,” she said. “Anything else?”

  Pinter sucked in a long breath, as if preparing to deliver a theatrical monologue.

  “Time of death corresponds with the police reports,” he said. “The temperature outside was warm, yesterday, so her ambient body temperature was also warmer than might otherwise be the case. Given the circumstances, we can be fairly certain that Joan died on or around twelve-fifteen, yesterday afternoon. I’ve sent off her blood work for analysis but, frankly, I don’t expect anything out of the ordinary on that score. It’s quite clear that the lady died from a penetrating, cranial gunshot wound.”

  With a bit of a flourish, he produced a retractable pointing device from his pocket.

  “There were two gunshot wounds,” he continued. “The first grazed her neck, here, without causing much more than a tear in the skin—”

  He indicated the spot.

  “If that had been the end of it, Joan would still be alive today. Unfortunately, the second bullet entered her brain through the frontal cortex, not far from the parietal lobe.”

  Lowerson and Yates both nodded, neither wishing to admit they hadn’t the faintest idea where to find a parietal lobe, or many other types of lobe, for that matter.

  “Would it have made a difference, if the emergency services had arrived sooner?” Yates asked.

  The conversation with Tebbutt’s daughter was still fresh in her mind, as she suspected it would be for a long time to come, and she knew that, if it was her own mother lying before them on a cold metal slab, she would want to know.

  But Pinter shook his head.

  “When a bullet enters the brain, it’s moving at a speed much faster than the speed at which bodily tissues tear. That means it pushes the tissues aside, like a pressure wave, creating a cavity three or four times larger than the diameter of the bullet itself. This pressure wave is what ten
ds to be fatal to the central nervous system,” he explained. “If the cavity reaches the deep midline structures of the brain, or the brainstem, this significantly reduces the chance of survival, which would never be terribly good in any event.”

  He paused, and looked down at Tebbutt with compassion.

  “I’m sorry to say, in this case, the bullet created a devastating cavity in Joan’s brain. It’s likely she died almost instantaneously.”

  “At least there was no pain,” Lowerson said softly.

  “There’s that, at least.”

  “What about the calibre of the bullet?” Yates asked, and Pinter produced a small, sealed evidence bag which he held out to her.

  “I removed this from her brain earlier today,” he said. “Thought you might like to see the bullet before I send it off to ballistics for further testing.”

  Yates took the bag in her gloved hands and peered through the clear plastic at the little chunk of twisted metal inside.

  So small, she thought. Such a tiny thing, to reap such devastation.

  “Does it match the other bullet Faulkner recovered from the scene?”

  “This one is a 9mm,” Pinter said. “I haven’t had sight of the other one because it was sent straight to ballistics, but I understand it was the same size.”

  “Standard handgun,” Yates said, and handed the bag to Lowerson.

  “It’s incredible to think that something so small could cause so much damage,” he said, echoing her own thoughts.

  “It’s not the bullet that causes the damage,” Pinter remarked. “It’s the person who pulls the trigger.”

  With that, he pulled the shroud back over Joan’s lifeless body, tucking it around her waxy skin as tenderly as he might a child at bedtime.

  “There were no defensive wounds,” he added, quietly. “She didn’t stand a chance.”

  CHAPTER 12

  Ryan left Carter and Winter to oversee the work of the CSIs and make arrangements to interview the staff and volunteers, while he and Phillips made their way back to the hospital to check on Anna. It had only been a couple of hours since he’d left her bedside but it felt considerably longer, especially having seen where she’d sustained her injuries. Whenever he thought of his wife lying injured and alone, he was overcome by an emotion that fell somewhere between impotence and rage.