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

by LJ Ross

  CHAPTER 18

  Wednesday, 18th March

  “I think I could walk home faster than this!”

  Ryan had collected Anna from the hospital as soon as its doors opened. Since then, he’d treated her as though she was made of finely-cut glass, liable to break at the slightest touch. Whilst it was true that her body had been through a traumatic ordeal, Anna could feel her strength returning by the hour and she had no wish to be treated like anybody’s maiden aunt.

  Or to be driven around the countryside like Miss Daisy, for that matter.

  “Better safe than sorry,” Ryan said. “There are a lot of idiots on the road.”

  Anna held off remarking that, by driving as slowly as he was, some might say he was the aforementioned idiot. However, she knew how worried Ryan had been, and so held her tongue and resigned herself to a leisurely journey home.

  “How are you feeling?” he asked, for the fiftieth time that hour.

  “Just the same as I was before,” she replied. “Stiff and sore, but ready to re-enter the land of the living.”

  Ryan knew it was more than a little soreness, and checked the dashboard clock to see when she was allowed her next dose of pain relief. At least her speech had improved, which the doctors told him was an excellent sign.

  “How’s the baby?” he asked, to take her mind off things.

  “She’s full of beans, this morning,” Anna said, and then sent him a startled glance. “I wonder why I keep thinking of the baby as a girl.”

  “Perhaps, because she is a girl,” he said softly.

  Anna closed her eyes, trying to snatch at the thread of a memory which floated to the surface of her mind.

  “Did—did you tell me that before?”

  “I spoke to you about it while you were sleeping. The surgeon told me the sex of the baby by accident, and I thought it was unfair to keep you in the dark.”

  He glanced across at her.

  “Did I do the right thing?

  Anna smiled, the pain in her head forgotten.

  “Yes, you did the right thing,” she said, rubbing absent circles over her belly.

  A girl.

  “I was so scared we’d lose her,” she murmured. “I wish I could remember what happened, so I can help you try to find who did this.”

  “It’ll come back to you,” Ryan said.

  And, even if it doesn’t, I’ll still find the bastard responsible, he added silently.

  Anna stared out at the passing scenery, one hand pressed to her temple as she tried to remember.

  “It’s no good,” she said, frustrated with herself. “I just keep seeing the cross hanging there in its case, all shiny and golden, then the smoke and the explosions, and people screaming. There’s a crash, and then nothing.”

  “A crash?” Ryan queried.

  She nodded.

  “Yes, I’m almost certain there was a kind of loud crashing or cracking sound. Didn’t I mention that before?”

  “No, that’s new, so it must have just come back to you,” he said, with an encouraging smile.

  “Still, it doesn’t help much, does it?” she said. “I wish there was something more I could do—I feel like a big, useless lump.”

  “Don’t say that,” he said. “You’re looking after our baby, and you don’t have a useless bone in your body. In fact, there may be something you can help us with, if you’re feeling up to it.”

  She turned to him with curious brown eyes.

  “What is it?”

  “Some historical expertise,” he replied. “You already know that the explosions at the cathedral caused no real damage to the building. It seems their entire purpose was to cause a diversion while Cuthbert’s cross was stolen.”

  Anna nodded.

  “It’s been all over the news.”

  “I understand that the cross is made of gold, but I’m more inclined to think its value lies in its historical significance, rather than its materials,” Ryan said. “Would you agree?”

  “Yes, definitely. It’s the cultural significance that makes it irreplaceable.”

  Ryan nodded.

  “We think some kind of small axe or other implement was used to break into the polymer display casing,” he explained. The information was, after all, something that might easily be ascertained in the public domain. “There was a major robbery in Dresden last year, where thieves made off with jewellery worth hundreds of millions. They managed to break into the same kind of high-spec display casing, without ever being caught.”

  “You think the same thieves who stole the jewellery in Dresden may now have taken Cuthbert’s cross?”

  “We have to explore the possibility,” Ryan said. “But, in the Dresden case, the jewellery could be broken down and sold in bulk. It isn’t the same here.”

  Anna could see his predicament.

  “If somebody stole the cross to order, then it was probably all arranged on the black market,” she said. “How will you ever trace it?”

  Ryan flicked the indicator to come off the dual carriageway.

  “There are ways and means,” he said. “But it’s a long and difficult process, with only a small chance of success—which is why I’m coming at it from the other direction. To understand who might want it, and try to build up a picture of a perpetrator who may already be known to us, I need to know: why that cross, in particular? Why not any of the other pieces on display at the cathedral, or at any of the other museums around the country?”

  “It’s small, so could be easily transported,” she thought aloud. “But there are other small pieces they might have taken from other museums and stately homes, so it’s safe to assume the local connection was important. To cause such a commotion and go to such lengths to create the optimal conditions to take it, I doubt the size or weight of the artefact was too much of a factor in the decision-making process.”

  Ryan agreed.

  “I think whoever did this had an order to fulfil, and they would have formulated a plan regardless of the artefact they’d been asked to take.”

  They were silent for a moment, each considering the kind of person who could plan and execute such a heist.

  “It’s a beautiful cross,” Anna mused. “But there are other beautiful items from that time period. If the significance relates to Cuthbert, rather than to the cross itself, then that’s a more interesting question.”

  Ryan realised that, although he’d heard the name of the saint bandied around, he actually knew very little about the man himself, or how he’d risen to prominence.

  “I know that Cuthbert was a monk at the priory on Lindisfarne,” he said, and thought how strange it was that so many strands of their life seemed entwined with that little holy island. It was where Anna had been born and where, years later, they had met during the course of a murder investigation.

  He imagined things were different, back in Cuthbert’s day.

  “Can you give me a kind of executive summary?” he asked.

  “How much can you handle?” she asked, with a chuckle. “I could talk for hours about early religious history in these parts.”

  “I’ve missed hearing your voice,” he said, quietly. “You can talk to me all day about anything you want, but it might as well be Cuthbert, since it’ll help the case.”

  Anna pressed a kiss to her fingertips, then reached across with her good arm to brush it against his lips.

  “Charmer,” she said.

  “I’ve been taking lessons from Frank.” He grinned.

  “He’s a good teacher,” she agreed, and then settled in for a chat about one of her favourite topics. “Let’s see. Well, growing up on Holy Island, it was hard to escape the Cuthbert connection, even if I’d wanted to. He was actually born in Dunbar in the mid-630s AD, which is part of Scotland now but, back then, was part of Anglo-Saxon Northumbria. The area had converted to Christianity just before he was born, but it was going through a violent transition around that time, interspersed with episodes of pagan rule.”


  “It can still be a source of disagreement,” Ryan muttered.

  “Around the same time Cuthbert was born, the king at the time, Oswald, invited monks over from Iona to establish a monastery at Lindisfarne.”

  “I remember Oswald,” Ryan said. “Not personally, of course,” he added, to make her laugh.

  Anna nodded, and was relieved that her ramblings about local history hadn’t fallen entirely on deaf ears.

  “He was one of the first kings of England, and very powerful at the time. Getting back to Cuthbert, he was essentially a travelling missionary, who tried to spread the Christian message to remote villages around the kingdom. Apparently, he was very adept with royalty and nobility, as well as being able to converse with everyday people, which made him very popular. For all that, he lived the life of a hermit whenever he could, receiving the odd visitor when he felt like it.”

  “Sounds blissful,” Ryan said.

  “You’d miss people more than you think,” Anna said. “Cuthbert had a reputation for miracles and healing. He carried on being a missionary for most of his career, even after he was made Prior of the Monastery at Melrose. Then, around 676 AD, he took himself off to what’s now known as ‘Saint Cuthbert’s Cave’, near Holburn.”

  “That’s not far from us,” Ryan said. “I’ve been meaning to go.”

  “I’m surprised a dead body hasn’t turned up inside there,” Anna remarked. “Seems a good spot for it.”

  “Too obvious,” Ryan said simply, and braked gently so as not to jolt her neck.

  “Yes, I suppose the cave is on the pilgrimage trail,” Anna said. “Hundreds of people walk the trail each year, following in Cuthbert’s footsteps all the way to the island. A killer wouldn’t have too much privacy, with all those pilgrims stomping about.”

  Ryan looked across at her with shining eyes.

  “Every time, I’m amazed at how bloodthirsty you are,” he said. “And you, a quiet historian.”

  “It’s always the quiet ones,” she reminded him.

  “True. What did Cuthbert do after he’d finished being a hermit in his cave?”

  “He moved to the island of Inner Farne, to be a hermit there,” she said.

  “Too many wolves around the caves, I expect,” Ryan said, with the flash of a smile.

  “Life on Inner Farne wouldn’t have been much better,” she said. “It’s tiny, hardly more than an oversized rock, and completely open to the elements. You know what the weather can be like, in the Farne Islands.”

  They both did, especially after a recent investigation that had taken them on a journey of exploration in the Farnes, to the graveyard of shipwrecks far below the murky waterline. The coastline in the North East was treacherous, and Mother Nature could be merciless to those who ventured out in a storm.

  “Cuthbert built a tiny cell for himself, and stayed there,” Anna said. “He kept mostly to himself, only receiving visitors very rarely. The records say one of the few interviews he granted was to the Holy Abbess and Royal Virgin, Elfleda—”

  “Elf-leader?” Ryan repeated, and was struck by a terrible thought. “Promise me, you’re not thinking of calling our daughter some old Anglo-Saxon name like that?”

  Anna wriggled her eyebrows.

  “Elfleda was the daughter of Oswiu, who succeeded Hilda as abbess of Whitby in 680,” she said. “You know, Hilda Taylor-Ryan has a certain… ring to it,” she said.

  Ryan sent her a panicked look, wondering what the parenting manuals said about moments such as these. He followed the turn for Elsdon and told himself there was still plenty of time to talk her out of any rash decision-making.

  “What happened after he was visited by the, ah, royal virgin?” he asked. “Or would it be impolite to ask?”

  Anna laughed.

  “You’d be surprised how many crazy theories there are about Cuthbert’s legacy,” she said. “Anyway, he was elected Bishop of Hexham in 684 AD, but didn’t want to take up his post and leave his life as a hermit.”

  “All the cold weather must have sent him off his chump,” Ryan said, and she laughed again.

  “You’ll be glad to know, they managed to talk Cuthbert around, on condition he could return to monastic life and take up the duties as Bishop of Lindisfarne, instead of Hexham. As it turned out, he wasn’t in the post very long before he went back to his little cell on Inner Farne, which is where he died on 20th March 687 AD, only three years after he was made bishop.”

  “Seems fitting he died in the place he loved,” Ryan remarked. He knew better than most that it didn’t always happen that way. He thought again of Joan Tebbutt, and took some comfort in the knowledge she had died quickly, and at home.

  “There’s a shrine at Durham Cathedral to Cuthbert, and his remains are buried underneath the stones there,” he said. “How did he end up all the way down in Durham, if he died on Lindisfarne?”

  It was over an hour’s drive in a modern car, on clear roads, so it would have been a considerably longer journey back in the seventh century.

  “Cuthbert was buried at Lindisfarne on the same day he died, but his remains didn’t stay there—the monks carried his body over hill and vale, to escape the Danes. There is a trail to show the journey his remains took before eventually settling in Durham.”

  “So, even back then, he was important enough to protect—even in death?” Ryan asked.

  Anna nodded.

  “Bringing him to Durham was the catalyst for the foundation of the city and Durham Cathedral. Cuthbert—or, rather, his remains—were responsible for the city as we know it.”

  Ryan wound the car through Elsdon, and slowed to a crawl to allow one of their neighbours to stick their head through the window and wish Anna a speedy recovery.

  Once they’d waved her off again, the conversation continued.

  “I’m trying to put myself into the shoes of someone who’d want to take that cross,” Anna said. “Lindisfarne is important from a historical perspective because it was the site of one of the earliest recorded Viking raids on the United Kingdom. It has religious significance because of its strong Christian history, and it has literary significance, too. The Gospels were written there, after all.”

  “But if they’d wanted to steal something of literary value, they could have taken either of the two copies of the Magna Carta which are held at the library, right there on Palace Green,” Ryan pointed out.

  “Or they could have taken St Cuthbert’s Gospel,” Anna said. “It’s the earliest known example of a bound book, and was buried with Cuthbert shortly after his death. It’s also held in the Cathedral, so it would have been easy enough to take that, instead.”

  Ryan accelerated as they climbed towards the top of the hill.

  “It has to be someone local or with strong ties to the region,” he decided. “Or else, a collector with a particular interest in monastic history, specifically Cuthbert.”

  Anna yawned, feeling tired all of a sudden.

  “If this Cuthbert was such a humble man, why did he have such a flashy cross?” Ryan asked. “Surely, that would have been worth a pretty penny, even back then.”

  Anna smiled.

  “He may be a saint now, but he was only a man then,” she replied. “He was a good man, by all accounts, but that didn’t mean he was oblivious to all that glitters.”

  “I wonder if there were other things he wasn’t oblivious to,” Ryan said.

  “Historians are discovering new things all the time,” Anna said. “We analyse clues to the past and formulate theories about what they might mean. There are probably countless treasures, not all of them made of gold, that we haven’t found yet.”

  Ryan brought the car to a standstill, pleased to have made it home with his precious cargo still in one piece.

  “I can understand your love of the past, and your desire to study objects which represent our shared history,” he said. “I can’t understand why any one person alone would covet something that should, by rights, belong to all the world.�
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  Anna reached across to run a hand over the stubble on his cheek.

  “You forgot to shave,” she said. “You don’t understand it, because you’ve never coveted anything. You didn’t have to.”

  Ryan thought of all the children who’d grown up at home with their families, living a normal life, where their parents didn’t delegate their job to bodyguards or nannies.

  “Didn’t I?” he asked, with an enigmatic smile. “If I ever did, I don’t have to anymore.”

  He turned his face to kiss the underside of her palm.

  “Welcome home, my love.”

  CHAPTER 19

  The Headquarters of Durham Police Constabulary were based on a large site in Consett, a small town to the west of the city, where Joan Tebbutt had spent much of her working life. Like many government-owned buildings, it was unlikely to win any architectural awards for its general aesthetic, but its functional space was designed to inspire hard graft, not oil paintings.

  Although a much-depleted unit, the Major Crimes Team was still required to assist MacKenzie with her investigation into the robbery and attack on Durham Cathedral. Amid all the work surrounding that incident, Tebbutt’s staff barely had an opportunity to come to terms with their loss. It therefore came as something of a shock when Ryan and Phillips presented themselves in the foyer of the building, like distant cousins from another branch of the same large and unwieldy family, whom they’d rather only see once or twice a year.

  “Feels funny, doesn’t it?” Philips said, under his breath.

  “I wouldn’t like to comment on your prostate,” Ryan shot back.

  “Har bloody har,” Phillips replied. “It’ll be your face that looks funny, if you keep on crackin’ jokes like that. I’m saying, it feels funny—being here, rather than over on our own turf.”

  Ryan nodded, watching a young constable pass by with a wide, gaping look on his face.

  “That one should be careful he doesn’t catch flies, walking around with his mouth hanging open like that,” Phillips said. “I keep tellin’ myself, we’re only here to interview the people who knew Joan, just like we would in any murder investigation, but the fact is—”