by LJ Ross
Ryan touched a gentle hand to his wife’s face.
“I love you,” he murmured, and smiled as the baby cast her deep brown eyes up at him, in accusation. “You, too, little one.”
Across the kitchen, Eve turned away to mask the fear which must have shown clearly on her face. For, if Ryan was right, everything could be taken away from them in a single stroke, and she could hardly bring herself to imagine the devastation that would cause.
CHAPTER 3
While Detective Chief Inspector Ryan revived his sleep-deprived body beneath the spray of an ice-cold shower, the headmaster of Crayke College watched the sun rise from his office window. Long, hazy rays of pale amber light spread across the frosted lawns, while clouds of mist rolled over the moors and blanketed the valley in white, leaving Father Peter with the lingering impression of having been cut off from the rest of the world. Which was, he supposed, exactly why he’d chosen a life in service to God, and why he’d come to Crayke in the first place.
But, for all its safety and seclusion, their small community was not without its fair share of drama.
“You say there’s been no sign of Father Jacob since last night?”
Peter turned away from the window to speak to Father Samuel, who was chaplain at the school and a key part of its monastic community. Crayke was a rare beast in the modern world, being both an elite, co-educational Catholic boarding school set in acres of stunning landscape, as well as home to one of a dwindling number of active Benedictine monasteries, with the abbey providing a shared focal point for both sides of the community.
“No,” Samuel said. “He hasn’t been seen since around five o’clock, yesterday afternoon, which is when the boys went off for their movie night in the main hall. When they came back to the boarding house later on, they couldn’t find Jacob anywhere, so they came to me, instead.”
“I’m amazed they had the presence of mind,” Peter was bound to say. “We must be doing something right, after all. What steps did you take?”
“I had a look around but, apart from finding the lights in his study blazing, there was nothing untoward…I assumed he’d been called away on some errand, so I told the boys to go to bed.”
“There was still no sign of him after lights out?”
Samuel shook his head. “I stayed in Father Jacob’s room, so that the children would be supervised throughout the night,” he replied, with a hint of irritation. “I hope there’s a reasonable explanation for his absence—”
“I’m sure there is,” Father Peter said, forestalling any tongue-wagging. The chaplain was a good man but had a tendency to gossip. “I hope our brother hasn’t come to any harm.”
This last observation gave Samuel pause for thought, and unlocked another memory from the previous evening.
“There was one more thing,” he said. “When I did my rounds, making sure all the doors and windows were locked, I found a breakage in the laundry room. A windowpane was shattered and there was glass all over the floor.”
Peter frowned at this.
“I thought it might have been one of the boys,” Samuel said. “I know there’ve been one or two incidents with Haynes and Alverton, so I spoke with them first.”
“And?”
“They strongly deny breaking the window,” Samuel said. “And, I must say, they seemed genuine, this time.”
“Perhaps,” Father Peter murmured. “In which case, there might have been an intruder. Has anybody at the abbey seen Father Jacob?”
It was unusual for any member of staff to go AWOL, let alone an experienced monk and teacher of more than twenty years’ standing, in possession of an impeccable track record.
A ripple of unease crept along the headmaster’s spine; something Ryan would have recognised as a forewarning of bad things to come.
“I’ve spoken with all of our brothers,” the chaplain told him. “Nobody has seen Jacob since yesterday.”
Peter was silent for a long moment, then came to a decision.
“Assemble the staff for a search party,” he said quietly. “Something isn’t right.”
* * *
When an initial search elicited no clue as to Father Jacob’s whereabouts, it became necessary to call in reinforcements.
The ‘Captain of Beagling’ was a spotty-faced youth of seventeen, whose love of beagles was matched only by his love of fried food and the yearly subscription he had for Horse and Hound. Though hunting for sport had been criminalised in the United Kingdom, it was still possible to kill small, unsuspecting creatures in the name of ‘wildlife management’ or ‘pest control’ and, for that reason, Crayke College had taken it upon themselves to appoint a dedicated youngster to lead the pack of dogs they kept for this purpose.
Some might have said it was overkill; however, in the rare case of a missing monk, having one’s own pack of sniffer dogs proved to be a very useful asset.
So it was that a crowd of teachers, monks and senior students gathered on the lawn in front of St. Cuthbert’s House alongside one of their most celebrated hounds, who answered to the name of Toby. It was somewhat ironic that a dog who’d been named by Father Jacob in deference to his appreciation of the works of Conan Doyle was now called upon to help in the effort to find him. As the crowd watched, the captain held one of Father Jacob’s unwashed vests in front of the dog’s face and gave the signal to pick up the scent.
“I’ve been training Toby to track different scents,” the boy said, proudly. “He’s got the best nose around.”
He slipped the vest back into a plastic bag and then gave the dog another signal, following which he began to sniff the ground beside the entrance to the boarding house, tail wagging as he turned this way and that, circling around and around until the onlookers began to give up hope.
Father Peter was on the brink of calling things off when the dog let out a bark and began trotting along the pathway leading to the back entrance of the boarding house, his nose stuck to the floor as his tail began to wag even more furiously.
The crowd hurried after him, older members of staff struggling to keep up with the dog’s lolloping pace.
“Tell the others to stay back,” the headmaster ordered one of the teachers, feeling a familiar tingle of apprehension snaking up his spine. “Father Samuel and I will accompany the search.”
By the time they rounded the corner of the boarding house, the captain and his beagle were halfway to the sports hall, and showed no signs of stopping. Picking up the cumbersome skirts of their black habits, the two men ran in hot pursuit, their boots crunching against the frosted turf.
When they finally caught up with them on the pathway running beside the sports hall, they found Toby circling again, having stuck his nose back inside the plastic bag to remind himself of Father Jacob’s unique scent.
They’d barely caught their breath before the dog let out another series of barks and took off again, even faster this time, chugging across the lawn towards the orchard on the far side.
“He’s definitely got a scent!” the captain called out in a puffed voice, as he struggled to keep up with the dog’s bounding strides.
Father Peter and Father Samuel followed at a more sedate pace, dragging in great gulps of cold air as they cleared the main grounds and entered the orchard, which was an area rarely used by staff or children at that time of year. In season, it was an impressive sight, with rows and rows of lustrous trees bearing juicy red and green apples ripe for the picking, but now the trees were bare, their branches long and spindly, like skeleton fingers, such that the orchard felt more akin to a cemetery.
“Over there,” the captain called out, from somewhere within. “Toby’s heading towards the cider mill!”
“Mallory!” the headmaster called out to the captain. “Wait, before you go inside! Call Toby back—”
Peter dissolved into a coughing fit, age and lack of exercise taking their toll.
“Mallory—” he tried again, but it was too late. The boy was too far away to hear him.
As they wound their way through the network of trees, they heard a loud cry, and exchanged a worried glance.
“Mallory!”
“Hugo!”
Both men called out for Hugo Mallory to hold back but, in his eagerness to display his dog’s skill—as well as his own—the boy had failed to remember what it was that one usually found at the end of a hunt.
Something that was dead.
* * *
The cider mill was a romantic building that would not have been out of place on the pages of a George Eliot novel. Built of crumbling sandstone and with ivy running up one wall, it was a regular meeting place for errant sixth formers seeking the perfect location for a tryst, or somewhere to smoke a joint without fear of being caught. The acreage at Crayke College might have looked impressive in the prospectus guide but, in practice, it made for a hard job policing the older teenagers, many of whom had the means and opportunity to push the strict boundaries set by the teaching staff.
At that moment, Father Peter wished wholeheartedly that they would find a couple of kids smoking their way through a pack of menthols, or even that they’d stumble upon a pair of hormone-addled sixth formers in flagrante delicto. Anything was preferable to the sight which awaited them as they followed Hugo Mallory into the cider mill.
They found the boy retching in the corner, his body doubled over as it violently expelled the horror of what lay sprawled in the centre of the room. As Father Samuel rushed across to help him, grasping Mallory’s shoulders to drag him away and back out into the crisp morning air, Father Peter remained standing inside the doorway and forced himself to look upon the waste of what had once been a man.
Father Jacob’s body lay face-down on the flagstone floor and had been stripped of its clothing. Had circumstances been different, Father Peter might have mourned such an ignoble end, but that was far from being the worst of it. Jacob’s skin bore dozens of slashing cuts, particularly around the sensitive tendons at the back of his knees and, had he been able to think clearly, Peter might have recognised these as clear signs of systematic torture.
But it was not the cuts that would replay in his mind’s eye for the rest of his days.
Oh, no.
It was the sight of Father Jacob’s head, contorted and crushed inside the heavy wooden vice they used to grind apples. Blood and brain matter lay splattered around it, forming a perfect arc, while congealed blood dripped into a waiting barrel.
“Deus adiuva nos…” he whispered, and fell to his knees to pray, with the stench of rotting flesh permeating the air around his bent head.
CHAPTER 4
Eighty miles north of Crayke College, in a quiet residential cul-de-sac on the western outskirts of Newcastle upon Tyne, Detective Inspector Denise MacKenzie raised her mascara wand to apply the final touches to her daily war paint. She’d almost completed this delicate task when the unexpected sound of a bedroom door slamming caused her to jump and jab herself in the eye.
Swearing bitterly, MacKenzie blinked and held a tissue to her streaming eye while she stuck an angry head outside the bathroom door.
“Hey! What’s all the racket about?” she demanded of her husband, who stood on the landing looking flustered.
Detective Sergeant Frank Phillips lifted his hands and let them fall again in a gesture of frustration.
“You might know, it’s non-school-uniform day, today,” he huffed. “Well, Samantha came downstairs dressed in a pair of bleedin’ hot pants and a crop top and I told her, no daughter of mine is stepping foot outside that front door unless she’s fully clothed!”
MacKenzie smiled privately at how easily he used the word ‘daughter’, especially now that they’d completed the formal process of adopting Samantha as their own.
“Are you talking about her little denim shorts?” she asked. “Usually, Sam wears them with a pair of tights underneath and those new trainers she likes so much, with the gold star on the side. It’s all the rage at the moment, Frank.”
“I don’t care if Kate Moss and half the known world is wearing them!” he raged. “She won’t be!”
He jabbed a finger towards Samantha’s bedroom door, which opened on cue to reveal a skinny girl of eleven, whose long red hair fell in crimped waves down her back.
“Who is Kate Moss?” she asked.
“A famous mo—never mind that!” Phillips blustered. “I thought I told you to go and find some proper clothes!”
“And I told you, I’m already wearing them! Tell him, mum,” Samantha appealed.
MacKenzie felt her heart flip over at the girl’s endearment, the novelty of being called ‘mum’ not having quite worn off, but she was determined not to find herself in the middle of their battle.
“Frank, all the girls wear the same kind of gear at school, so get with the programme,” she said. “Sam? Don’t start crowing too soon, because you know we made an agreement when I bought you that outfit. We agreed that you’d be wearing it with tights for the winter, and a proper jumper over that crop top, especially if you’re planning to wear it to school. You’re not heading out for a day on the beach, so don’t push it, young lady.”
Both of them stuck out mutinous chins and crossed their arms with the kind of synchronicity an Olympic swimming team might have been proud of.
“Don’t bother giving me that look,” she warned them. “We’ve got exactly—”
MacKenzie checked the time on her watch, and groaned.
“—minus five minutes to get out of the house, otherwise we’ll be late!”
Galvanised, all three members of the MacKenzie-Phillips household hustled towards the front door, only for MacKenzie to catch sight of herself in the hallway mirror and let out a small cry of alarm.
“Why didn’t anybody tell me I’ve got a black streak running down my face?” she wailed.
Phillips and Samantha exchanged a guilty look.
“You can hardly see it—”
“I didn’t even notice—”
“Oh, get in the car!” MacKenzie cried, and slammed the door shut behind them.
* * *
On the other side of the River Tyne, in the small, pretty village of East Boldon, Detective Constable Jack Lowerson and Detective Constable Melanie Yates awoke to the sound of a heavy crash.
Reverting to training, both sprang out of bed and into action, Lowerson throwing out a protective arm, which Yates duly swatted away.
“I can handle myself,” she reminded him.
“Sorry, it’s force of habit,” he said. “You can go first, if you like.”
It was on the tip of her tongue to make some smart comment about him being a real gentleman, but, given her recent complaint, she feared it would sound hypocritical.
“Happy to,” she declared, and began making her way down the corridor towards the living room of the lovely new house they’d recently bought together.
Trailing behind, Lowerson dragged his eyes away from the appealing sight of Melanie’s long legs cased in novelty Christmas shorts, and told himself to stay focused. There could be a dangerous intruder on the loose, or many a thing.
But it was not a murderous criminal who had wrought carnage upon their new home—that might have been easier to handle, in the grand scheme of things. The culprit was rather a tabby kitten, with markings like a tiger and a temperament to match, whom they’d rescued and named, ‘Sir Pawsalot’ in a fit of temporary insanity.
“Paws! What have you done?” Jack cried, while Melanie looked upon the devastation and began to laugh, a little hysterically.
The kitten was entangled in a long strand of red tinsel in the centre of their living room, amidst the wreckage of a fallen Christmas tree whose ornaments lay smashed and scattered across the floor. To top it all off, the tree had connected with their new flat screen television as it fell.
Lowerson whimpered.
No television meant no Nintendo…
On that score alone, Yates was already thinking of where she might procure some cat
treats to reward their furry friend for his public service.
As for the rest…
“The damage isn’t too bad, really,” she said, hauling the tree upright while Lowerson checked the cat’s paws for any nicks or cuts. “I can’t understand how he managed to get in here, though. We keep the door closed at night.”
Lowerson spotted a small mound of carpet fluff beside the door, where Paws had obviously tried to burrow his way in from the direction of the kitchen.
Probably best not to mention it, now.
He set the cat down and smiled as it wandered straight back towards the tree, having apparently forgotten the recent calamity.
“I think we may be fighting a losing battle,” he said. “Cats like to climb trees, and there’s a tree right there, decorated with all kinds of shiny, interesting things.”
Yates looked down at the cat, who belly-crawled its way towards a stray bauble before scuttling back again, in an attempt to appear nonchalant.
“After my sister died, my parents didn’t really bother celebrating holidays,” she said quietly, dropping down to ruffle the cat’s ears. “There were no more Christmas trees, no more Easter egg hunts or anything like that because…well, there was very little joy left in the house. Since having my own place, I’ve enjoyed being able to rediscover some of the magic again, but, if it means having to wake up to this kind of mess, every day…”
She shook her head.
“A cat can’t help being a cat; he doesn’t know he’s not supposed to climb a Christmas tree, but we can’t afford to keep replacing our television sets.”
Lowerson thought of Melanie as a younger woman, repressed within the confines of her parents’ home, and would never have denied her the simple joy of decorating a tree.
“I’ll be in charge of Cat Patrol,” he decided. “We’ll keep the door closed, for starters, and I’ll get him another scratching post and decorate that to look more like a tree, since he’s too young to go outside and play with the real things.”
Melanie looked across at Jack and felt a surge of emotion. They’d come a long way, she thought, and the road hadn’t always been smooth. But, standing there together, surrounded by gaudy Christmas tat, with a cat playing happily at their feet, she wouldn’t have it any other way.
