by LJ Ross
“Who is it this time?” he muttered, heaving himself up to go in search of the culprit.
Felix Haynes, no doubt. Perhaps Peter Alverton, if the others spurred him on…
It wouldn’t be the first time either of them had been chastised for low-level property damage, but Jacob was disappointed to find that previous punishments hadn’t been enough to deter them from acting up.
He’d have to call their parents—again.
Jacob lifted the sash window higher and stuck his head outside, where the bracing December wind rushed against his face, stinging his cheeks. The grounds were illuminated all the way to the trees lining either side of the manicured grounds, and motion-sensor security lights shone brightly upon the pathway skirting the perimeter of the boarding house. They continued to shine, which told him that someone, or something, had activated the sensor very recently.
There was no sign of anyone there now and, when he opened the door to his study and stepped into the hallway beyond, there was not a soul to be seen nor a sound to be heard in any direction.
“Haynes? Alverton?”
He waited for the inevitable sound of scurrying footsteps and raucous laughter, but the air remained heavy and silent, as though the very walls were watching him.
Irritated by his own fanciful thoughts, Father Jacob trudged downstairs in the vague direction of where he’d heard the glass shatter.
“Who’s there?” he called out, flicking on the lights as he went. “Honesty is the best policy, remember—”
A stream of cold air touched his face, and Jacob turned to find its source.
“You’ve been warned about this kind of thing before,” he began again, for the benefit of any child who might be skulking in the shadows. “Come out now!”
Nothing moved except the rustle of Jacob’s long, black habit as he wandered from room to room, following the stream of air which seemed to grow colder with every passing step. Eventually, he came to the laundry room, which carried the faint odour of adolescent sweat and dried mud. Rounding the corner, he was met with a strong gust of icy wind rushing through a gaping hole in the window, whistling past shards of jagged glass that clung to the pane while the rest lay scattered across the peeling linoleum floor. The window latch was open, leaving the frame to rattle on its hinges, swinging back and forth to clatter against the wall.
If he’d been a different kind of man, Father Jacob might have sworn.
As it was, he took several deep, nourishing breaths and picked his way carefully across the floor to shut the offending window. The air continued to flow through the break in the pane, and he cast around for a board of some description to prop against it until the janitor could be called. He thought of the notice board hanging in the common room and sidestepped the glass on the floor, thinking he would leave it there as the evidence of wrongdoing and ask the offender to clean it up themselves.
Preoccupied by thoughts of how best to uncover the guilty party, he did not see the figure at the end of the corridor until they were less than ten metres apart.
“Oh!”
Father Jacob came to an abrupt halt.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you—”
He peered along the corridor, struggling to make out the face of his brother. Their hood was drawn and the lights in the corridor had been extinguished, which he found strange.
“Brother John? Is that you?”
The figure said nothing, but began to walk towards him, very slowly.
“There’s been another breakage, I’m afraid,” Jacob said, gesturing to the room he’d recently left. “Sixth formers, I suspect. They’ve been using the wood store on the other side of the rugby pitch to meet the girls and smoke. Some things never change…”
As the figure drew nearer, Jacob’s unease grew stronger.
“Brother Simon? Are you feeling well—?”
But it was not John or Simon who came to stand in front of him.
Outside, the security lights flickered on again as one of the children ran beneath its sensor, not stopping to look inside the darkened windows of St. Cuthbert’s House.
The light burst through a nearby window, casting a bright shaft of white light upon the floor between the two robed figures.
“Who—?”
Whatever Jacob had intended to say died on his tongue, the words turning to ash as the figure before him stepped forward into the light, illuminating a face that was not a face at all, but a grotesque mask, cut to resemble the image of a man who’d been dead for a thousand years.
But the eyes…
The eyes shone with madness.
“Help! Help me, please!” Jacob stumbled backwards, shouting and tripping over his own feet in his haste to get away.
Behind the mask, the figure smiled and said a single word.
“Run.”
CHAPTER 2
Elsdon, Northumberland
Monday 7th December
Doctor Anna Taylor-Ryan awoke with a start.
The room was in darkness and she was disorientated for a moment, unsure of whether it was late evening or early morning. Automatically, she turned to her left, where a white-painted cot stood empty beside the bed.
Empty.
Rearing up, she let out a sharp cry as the action tugged at the scar across her abdomen, then struggled out of bed.
The baby was gone.
Oh, dear God…
“Emma,” she whispered, gripping the edges of the empty cot.
Shaking hard now, Anna ran across the room, pulling open the bedroom door to search the other upstairs bedrooms, but found them empty, too.
Tears began to fall as she hurried downstairs and into the kitchen…
Where she nearly collided with her mother-in-law.
“Shh!” Eve warned her, pressing a finger to her lips. “There, now, everything’s all right.”
She took Anna’s cold hand in her own warm fingers and led her through the kitchen to the conservatory area, which remained in darkness but for the gentle glow of the fairy lights hanging from the Christmas tree they’d put up the day before. There, Anna saw her husband sleeping in one of the easy chairs, his long legs crossed at the ankles while he snuggled their baby daughter warmly against his chest, his capable arms supporting her tiny body while they both slept.
Anna felt relief wash over her, followed closely by a fierce wave of love.
Emma Natalie Sara Ryan had been born on a sunny day in July, by Caesarean section. Whilst her mother was indisposed on the operating table, it had been her father who’d been the first to cradle her in his arms and whisper that he loved her, before holding her against Anna’s chest so that she might hear her mother’s familiar heartbeat. That first, special bond had only strengthened over the passing months and, more often than not, it was Ryan who volunteered to change nappies or do the late evening feed, so that he could sit quietly with his daughter and marvel at how he could possibly have been party to creating something so perfect. For these reasons, Anna should have known that no harm would have come to her little girl while she slept; not while Ryan had breath inside his body to prevent it.
The two women stood there for a moment watching the man and his child, both smiling at the sight of Ryan’s blue-black hair sticking out at odd angles around his sleeping face. His daughter shared the same shade, but had inherited her mother’s brown eyes, which would open soon enough for her morning feed, if Anna wasn’t much mistaken.
“Ryan didn’t want to wake you,” Eve murmured. “Let’s leave them to it for a bit longer, shall we?”
With a gentle hand, she steered Anna towards the kitchen, where they found Ryan’s father, Charles, sipping a cup of coffee whilst thumbing through a copy of yesterday’s newspaper.
“Good morning,” he said cheerfully, while his sharp blue eyes made a quick assessment of Anna’s face, alarmed to find it looking pale and drawn.
“Morning,” Anna said, listlessly.
Exchanging a meaningful glance with his wife, Charles
came to his feet.
“Well,” he said, and made a show of checking his watch. “The corner shop will be opening in half an hour—I think I’ll put my shoes on and take a wander down into the village to pick up some fresh milk. Need anything, while I’m down there?”
“No, I think we’re all set,” Eve said, and gave him a peck on the cheek.
Her husband was far from perfect, she thought, but, at moments like these, she was grateful he knew when to make himself scarce.
“Why don’t we have a nice cuppa?” she suggested, casting a glance over her daughter-in-law, who remained standing inside the doorway, looking a bit lost. “Tea, or would you prefer coffee?”
Anna shook herself.
“Um, coffee, please. I can make it—”
“I don’t mind,” Eve said, tapping the edge of a chair to indicate the girl should sit down before she fell down. “Did you have a bad dream? You seemed upset, when you came downstairs.”
“I—I’m not sure,” Anna mumbled. “I woke up and—and when I looked across at the cot, Emma wasn’t there. I just panicked. Sorry, I feel like such an idiot—”
Eve paused in the act of slipping a coffee pod into the machine and turned to look at her.
“Never apologise for experiencing a perfectly natural emotion,” she said softly. “I can’t tell you how often I worried about Ryan and—and Natalie—when they were young.”
It hurt to say her late daughter’s name, sometimes, but it was getting easier the more often she tried.
“Emma may only be five months old but, I’m sorry to say, you never stop worrying about your kids, no matter how old they get,” she chuckled. “Especially the ones who decide to run off and become murder detectives.”
That brought a smile to Anna’s face. “Heaven forbid,” she said. “I don’t think my heart could cope with the stress of having two of them in the family.”
“Try being the wife of a former diplomat,” Eve said, not bothering to mention that Charles had been in military intelligence before that, when Ryan and Natalie were children.
Talk about sleepless nights.
She brought two steaming mugs over to the table, and decided the moment called for buttery croissants, too. Anna had always been a slim woman, but she was edging towards becoming thin and her skin was too pale, which spoke of anaemia.
Steak for dinner tonight, Eve thought, with a decisive nod.
“It’s been a stressful time,” she said, reaching across to give Anna’s hand a quick squeeze. “Bringing a baby into the world is hardly a walk in the park, especially when that baby decides to come a couple of weeks early.”
Anna took a swig of coffee.
“I’ll never forget the look on Ryan’s face,” she said. “He’s faced every kind of danger during his career but, I swear, I’ve never seen him look so terrified.”
“That’s all very well,” Eve said, carefully. “But you’re the one who’s borne the physical strain. One day, that little girl will thank you, but, until then, it’s a cycle of sleeping, feeding and changing…not to mention the constant worrying. Don’t be too hard on yourself, Anna. You’re doing a wonderful job, and you’re a wonderful mother, already.”
Anna’s eyes glazed over and she set her cup down, battling sudden tears. At times like these, when she doubted herself, she missed her mother terribly; Sara Taylor had been taken years before her time, by the hand of a madman. Most days, she managed to forget that part and remember her mother’s voice and sometimes her smell, if she closed her eyes and recalled old sensory memories that grew more distant by the day. When her own daughter had come into the world, she’d longed to share the occasion with Sara, to seek her advice and reassurance during those first few weeks, whilst they adjusted to the shock of becoming new parents.
But, of course, she couldn’t.
It was thanks in no small part to Eve Ryan’s unstinting warmth and kindness that she’d been able to overcome any sadness that threatened to spoil those precious first moments. Aside from loving Ryan, the two women shared a common bond, both having lost significant people in their lives: Eve, her daughter, and Anna, her entire family. There could never be any substitutions for those they had lost, but they had forged new bonds of deep and abiding friendship.
Not only did she like her mother-in-law, Anna thought.
She loved her.
How often could that be said, of modern families?
“Thank you,” Anna replied, with feeling. “I don’t know why I overreacted the way I did, just now. When I woke up, I just had this sudden, awful feeling that someone had taken the baby. It felt so real…I should have known it would have been her daddy, of course.”
“We’re programmed to know where our babies are at all times,” Eve soothed. “You were acting on auto-pilot, and you were probably still half-asleep. Besides, after everything that’s happened—”
She cut herself off, thinking it may be unwise to bring up a subject best avoided.
“You’re thinking of what happened at the cathedral?”
Eve could have kicked herself. The previous March, Anna had been an unfortunate bystander during a large-scale heist on Durham Cathedral, during which a priceless artefact had been stolen. Much worse, Anna had suffered serious head trauma and extensive injuries in the process, which had threatened her life and that of her unborn child. She’d come through the worst, but her hair had only recently grown back to cover the scar on her head and, instead of her usual long style, Anna now wore a fashionable crop which happened to suit her very much. But then, when you had a face like hers, you could wear your hair however you liked, Eve thought tenderly.
“I shouldn’t have mentioned it,” she said, and moved off in search of sugar and pastry. “It does no good to relive it all.”
“I don’t often think of it,” Anna admitted. “Or, at least, I don’t think about the explosion. I think about the reasons why it happened.”
Eve didn’t pretend to misunderstand. “Even after all this time, Ryan still thinks there’s a danger—?”
Anna nodded. “He doesn’t talk about it too often because I think he’s trying not to worry me, but by not talking about it…”
“He’s worrying you?” Eve finished, with a crooked smile.
“Exactly,” Anna murmured. “Ryan knows the cross they recovered was a fake, but he doesn’t know why anybody would orchestrate such an elaborate, high profile theft, if it wasn’t the real thing they planned to steal.”
“It could be that the thieves didn’t know it was a fake,” Eve suggested, but Anna shook her head.
“Ryan’s considered that, but he’s fairly certain DCI Tebbutt was murdered and that forger—Faber, I think he was called—was tortured because they knew the cross was a replica…” Anna shivered. “Faber died before the heist, which means that whoever planned the robbery already knew they’d be stealing a forged copy. What we don’t know is why. There’s something much bigger happening, here, Eve—maybe a new organised crime group operating in the area, one that’s well financed, with connections in high places.”
Eve said nothing, thinking of the private conversation she’d had with Ryan months ago, while Anna was still recovering in the hospital. His message to his parents had been stark: if person, or persons, unknown had seen fit to commission the assassination of a prominent chief inspector for no reason other than the fact she’d found out about the cross being a fake, there was every reason to think they’d do the same again, if word should ever get out that Ryan was in possession of the same information.
That meant he was in serious danger, and so was his family.
Yet, what could he do?
If Ryan pressured Anna to leave with the baby and stay with his family at their home in Devon, the action would look suspicious to anybody watching their movements, placing them all in greater danger than before. Besides, if the person or group responsible for the Durham heist had money and connections, it made little difference whether the object of their wrath was in
Northumberland or in Devon.
So long as the world believed Ryan was conducting a regular investigation into the death of his former colleague, they maintained a status quo. But it was not a long-term solution, and they could not live with the Sword of Damocles hanging above their heads, so he’d asked his parents to stay for as long as they could—to help with the new baby, and provide him with some reassurance that there would be people he trusted to watch over that which was most precious to him in the world, while he went about the business of quiet investigation to uncover the threat which now lay dormant but could erupt at any time.
Eve worried for her son, thinking of how much responsibility he bore in his private and professional life, but mustered a smile and set a warm croissant in front of her daughter-in-law.
“I’m sure Ryan will get to the bottom of it,” she said, lightly. “In the meantime, you need to take care of yourself.”
Anna raised the pastry half-heartedly to her lips, but her hand paused mid-air when there came the unmistakable sound of a baby’s cry, followed by the much deeper rumble of Ryan’s voice as he chattered to Emma on his way through to the kitchen.
“…and, Old Macdonald had a duck, ee-aye, ee-aye, oh…”
He appeared with the baby in one arm, his bright, silvery-blue eyes still misty with sleep as he gave a wide, jaw-cracking yawn. Spotting his wife, Ryan broke into a smile.
“Good morning,” he said, and leaned down to brush his lips against hers. “I was hoping you might have managed another hour’s sleep but, since you’re awake, Madam here is ready for some milk…is everything all right?”
He noticed that Anna looked tearful all of a sudden and moved quickly, shifting the baby in his arms to sit on the chair beside her.
“What is it, darling? What’s the matter?”
Anna merely shook her head and reached for Emma, who held out her chubby arms for her mother’s embrace.
“Nothing’s the matter now,” Anna said, rubbing her cheek against the baby’s soft, downy hair.
