Cuthbert's Way: A DCI Ryan Mystery (The DCI Ryan Mysteries Book 17)

by LJ Ross

  Morrison ran a weary hand over the back of her neck.

  “Again, I have to ask—what proof do you have that any of this is true? Aside from one of your famous ‘gut feelings’?”

  Ryan’s eyes turned flat. It was true that, many times during the course of his career, his intuition had preceded the evidence, but he had always deferred to logic when it mattered and never taken important decisions based on intuition alone.

  Perhaps Morrison read some of the outrage on his face, for she relented on that score, at least.

  “All right,” she said, and held up her hands. “I retract that last comment, but my question still stands. Are you any further forward in understanding why DC Justine Winter was involved in all this?”

  “We know it wasn’t for any monetary gain,” Ryan replied, coolly. “We were able to check Winter’s bank accounts and searches were made of her home as part of the regular investigation. The problem arises when we try to focus on her relationship with her brother.”

  “Oh?” Morrison found herself asking. “You think he’s involved?”

  “Not in the crimes she perpetrated, but perhaps as an indirect motivator,” Ryan replied. “We suspect Justine bought into the so-called cult of Saint Cuthbert, perhaps because she wanted to procure a miracle on behalf of her ailing brother. He’s in a private care facility now, but, when Justine was alive, he lived with her and had a home-help who came in when Justine was at work. She worked part-time for Durham CID and, on the days when she was caring for him, she and her brother attended regular hospital appointments and carer meetings. Patient confidentiality is a major stumbling block to our being able to find out much in the way of the names of people Justine would have come into contact with.”

  Morrison gave up on the pretence and slumped gratefully into her desk chair.

  “Let me see if I have this straight,” she said. “Although you suspect Justine believed in the cult properties of Cuthbert’s relics, perhaps because she wanted to procure a miracle, you have absolutely no evidence to support it?”

  “Not yet—”

  “And, that’s the best theory you can come up with? That the theft, the explosion and Tebbutt’s murder was all perpetrated by a group of religious fanatics?”

  “Yes,” he said simply. “It’s the only logical connection, because we’ve exhausted everything else.”

  Morrison shook her head.

  “Ryan, I can’t allow this to go on,” she said. “You’ve had months, now. If something was going to turn up or if anything else was going to happen, it would have done so, by now.”

  “Something has turned up,” he said quickly. “Before you came into the conference room, Lowerson told me the forger most likely responsible for making the replica cross has turned up in London and is being held in police custody for other charges, as we speak.”

  Morrison remained unmoved.

  “I take it you have some sort of proof to support your belief that this person made the replica cross?”

  Ryan kept his frustration firmly in check.

  “Not yet, but that’s the point; Mathieu Lareuse has been off-grid. We assumed he’d skipped the country or that he was already dead somewhere. We’ve had no way of questioning him or conducting a search but, now he’s been found, I could easily head down there this afternoon—”

  Morrison was incredulous. “You have to be joking, Ryan. I’m not giving you carte blanche to scamper down to the other end of the country without good reason. You say this forger made the replica cross, but you haven’t given me anything concrete to support it. We need a causal link, not baseless theories.”

  “When I question him, he might talk,” Ryan tried again. “Now the Met have him in custody, they’ll be going through his personal effects and, with any luck, will have already secured a search and seize warrant. They might find something that links back to this.”

  “And they might not,” she snapped.

  “If I could speak to him—"

  Most of the time, it was true that Ryan could charm the birds from the trees or, in this case, a confession from a criminal. But, Morrison thought, everything had its limits.

  “You won’t be questioning him, Ryan, because he’s been charged for an offence outside your jurisdiction,” she said firmly. “Leave it to the Metropolitan Police. If they turn something up, they’ll let us know.”

  “Ma’am—”

  “That’s final,” she said, and her tone brooked no further debate. “I want Operation Bertie shut down, effective immediately. Finish up the public-facing investigation, for the benefit of the press and for the people of this region and, for God’s sake, put this business to bed.”

  When Ryan said nothing, she added a final piece of maternal advice.

  “On the subject of beds, you look as though you could use one,” she said, more gently. “I know you had a rough time with Anna in the hospital and that you’ve got a baby at home now, Ryan. You should know how happy we all are for you, but make sure you get a proper night’s sleep sometime soon because, frankly, you look as rough as a badger’s arse.”

  “Thank you, ma’am,” he muttered.

  “Anytime.”

  CHAPTER 8

  Ryan was a man of his word.

  When he agreed to a course of action, or acquiesced to an order from a senior officer, it was only in rare circumstances that he deviated. As he made his way back to the conference room, Ryan comforted himself with the knowledge that he had not explicitly agreed that he would follow Morrison’s order to shut down Operation Bertie. It might be a technicality, but desperate times called for desperate measures.

  Slippery?

  Most definitely.

  Necessary?

  “Abso-bloody-lutely,” he muttered, and resolved to follow the Chief Constable’s bidding just as soon as the day’s briefing was over, and all present lines of enquiry were exhausted.

  “What have I missed?” Ryan asked, once he was back in the room.

  “Nowt much,” Phillips said, eloquently. “But, never mind what we’ve been doing—what happened with Morrison?”

  Ryan blew out a long breath and told the absolute truth.

  “She told me to shut Operation Bertie down,” he said, conversationally. “Not enough progress, no real evidence, et cetera.”

  There was a momentary silence while the others considered this, then Phillips pursed his lips.

  “Well, now, usually, I’d have my lunch break around one o’clock,” he said, baffling them all for a moment. “But, since I’m on a bit of a health kick, I’d only be eating a quinoa salad at my desk while I try to forget the taste of bacon. Seems to me, I could do that a bit earlier, today—say, around now, since we’re just sittin’ around.”

  MacKenzie gave her husband a knowing smile.

  “Now you mention it, I didn’t have time for breakfast this morning,” she said. “I’d rather eat something a bit earlier today and now’s as good a time, as any. We could have something here and, if we happen to talk over a few things, it’d just be work colleagues chewing the fat, now, wouldn’t it?”

  Ryan leaned back in his chair, a slow smile spreading across his face.

  “It would,” he agreed.

  “I could take an early lunch,” Lowerson said. “My caseload is manageable, and anything urgent I can get to in an hour, or so. How about you, Mel?”

  “Funny enough, my stomach was rumbling, earlier,” she said, with a wink.

  Ryan looked amongst them and felt like the most fortunate of men.

  * * *

  Ten minutes later, it became clear that Phillips hadn’t been joking about the quinoa, which he pushed around with a plastic fork while they continued their friendly ‘discussion’ about the cult of Saint Cuthbert.

  “What about the other relics at Durham Cathedral?” Ryan asked. “Have we made any progress in finding out whether any more of them were switched?”

  If they were right about the motivations behind the original theft during the re
novation works three years prior, there was a strong possibility that other relics belonging to Cuthbert might have been taken at the same time.

  Lowerson had been chiefly responsible for that element of their investigation, and was sorry to be the bearer of disappointing news.

  “It would add a lot of weight to the investigation, if we could discover whether other relics had been taken,” he said. “The problem is, it’s difficult for us to investigate without alerting anybody at the Cathedral. We’d need to gain access to the relics, for one thing, and have their authenticity tested. But, as we’ve said before, there’s huge potential for an individual or a crew of people to have made a switch—especially if we’re dealing with a group that has cash to burn, and who could bribe somebody already working on the renovation works to swap the originals for forged replicas when the relics were being moved to their new display cases, for instance.”

  “All right,” Ryan said, and ran a frustrated hand through his hair, which was long overdue for a trim. “Maybe we’ve been focusing too much on the relics in Durham. What about further afield? Over the centuries, Cuthbert’s bits and bobs must have travelled to different parts of the country, maybe for safekeeping—and what about other museum exhibitions? They often loan out important pieces like that, don’t they? Perhaps they’ve been targeted by the same perp.”

  “I did a bit of digging around that,” Lowerson said, with more optimism. “And, actually, I think you may be on to something there, boss.”

  Jack paused to reach for a cardboard file, rifling through the papers until he found what he was looking for.

  “This is a picture of Cuthbert’s Gospel of Saint John,” he said, setting a colour print on the table. “It’s sometimes called the Stonyhurst Gospel, because it spent over two hundred years in the library at Stonyhurst College, a Jesuit school down in Lancashire.”

  Ryan leaned forward to study the image of a tiny gospel book, its front cover made of distinctive red goatskin and which was, he would later learn, the earliest surviving Western book binding in the world.

  “This was Cuthbert’s?” he asked.

  Lowerson made a rocking motion with his hand.

  “People used to think so, because it was made pretty close to the time Cuthbert was alive and it was stored inside Cuthbert’s coffin with his body for centuries, until around the time of the dissolution of the monasteries in the sixteenth century,” he said. “Nowadays, people think it was made by the monks at the monastery in Monkwearmouth—”

  “Down in Jarrow?” Phillips piped up, glad to be learning something new about his local heritage. “They made that little book?”

  “Yep, the current thinking is that they made the gospel book as an offering to Cuthbert, to be placed inside his coffin. That’s why it’s known as St. Cuthbert’s Gospel, even though the text is from St. John.”

  “Anna would be impressed with all of this,” Ryan said, thinking of his wife, who was a leading local historian and fountain of knowledge about all manner of things. “Where’s the book now?”

  “The British Library bought it from Stonyhurst for a cool twelve million back in 2012,” Lowerson said, and couldn’t help thinking it should have been donated to the library for free, as a public artefact of national importance. “Anyway, the book spends half of its time in Durham and half at the British Library in London, under lock and key.”

  Ryan perked up at that. “Where, in Durham? We could take a look—”

  But Lowerson shook his head. “At the moment, it’s in London.”

  “It doesn’t matter either way, does it?” MacKenzie observed. “If we’re dealing with people who aren’t afraid of large-scale heists, it wouldn’t matter to them whether the book was in Durham or London—if they wanted to steal it, they’d find a way.”

  Ryan agreed, and was about to say as much when they were interrupted by the sound of his mobile phone trilling out a rendition of Eye of the Tiger.

  “Sorry,” he muttered, and started slapping his pockets to find the offending block of plastic.

  He caught it on the last ring.

  “Ryan.”

  The others watched his face slowly alter, his eyes turning cool and detached as he listened to the caller at the other end.

  “I’ll be there as soon as I can,” he said eventually, and ended the call looking thoughtful.

  “Well?” Phillips asked the question on all their lips. “Howay then—who’s died?”

  “A monk,” Ryan said, and the light of battle began to shine once more in his bold blue eyes. “He’s been found dead—tortured, they think, in a similar way to Edward Faber. The SIO wants us to go down there and see if it’s the same.”

  “A monk,” MacKenzie murmured. “Seems an unusual choice of victim.”

  “One who happens to be a leading authority on Saint Cuthbert,” Ryan added, after a quick online search. “Now, isn’t that—"

  “A coincidence?” Yates said, teasingly.

  Ryan smiled, and they already knew what he would say.

  “There’s no such thing.”

  CHAPTER 9

  Phillips popped a handful of mixed nuts into his mouth, telling himself they were better than beefy Hula-Hoops, in many ways.

  Many, many ways.

  He didn’t know what those ways were, yet, but that was beside the point.

  Stuffing the offending packet of bird food back in his pocket, he looked over at Ryan and thought he bore the look of a man who needed more than a packet of crisps to see him through the rest of the day.

  “If you want a break, I can take over the driving?”

  Ryan laughed shortly. “Frank, if we want to get down to Yorkshire and back before midnight, it’s best if I handle the driving.”

  “Y’ nah, between you and Denise, I get nowt but cheek over my driving skills,” Phillips muttered, and crossed his arms over his paunch. “I always get us there safely, and in one piece.”

  “As do I,” Ryan said. “The only difference is, I don’t drive like I’ve got Miss Daisy in the back seat.”

  Phillips let out a rumbling chuckle. “Aye, you’ve got a littlun’ now,” he said. “How’s she doing? Missin’ her Uncle Frank, I s’pose.”

  He watched Ryan’s face soften, and was glad to see it. The man might have been his professional senior, but Ryan was a few years younger than himself in age and, from time to time, it showed. Phillips had never wished to step into any fatherly shoes, especially since Ryan had a perfectly decent father of his own; all the same, he felt something like a father’s pride when he saw his friend smile, for there was a time when that was a rare thing indeed. Maxwell Finley-Ryan, who preferred ‘Ryan’ at all times, was a stoic man with broad shoulders, a compassionate leader in the office, a loyal friend, loving husband and, now, a doting father. It took energy and commitment to become all of those things, and even more to remain so. Over the years, life had thrown a few curve balls that might have derailed the happiness Ryan now enjoyed and, amid the grief following the death of his sister, Natalie, he might have become a bitter cynic, unable to love or be loved in return.

  But he’d chosen a different path.

  “Frank, I can honestly say, I never thought I could love another being in this world as much as I love Anna,” Ryan said. “I didn’t think I’d have the capacity…but I was wrong about that. It feels as though my heart’s expanded for Emma, and I have the same amount of love to give her, all over again.”

  Phillips put a hand briefly on the other man’s shoulder as they watched the road ahead.

  “Aye, it takes you by surprise, doesn’t it?” he said softly. “After my Laura passed, I never thought I could feel the same way again—then, along came Denise. Then, just as I’m getting used to a new life, trying my best to keep up with her, along comes Samantha to shake us both up again.”

  Ryan chose not to imagine what his sergeant meant by ‘keeping up with’ Denise and focused on the safer topic of the man’s daughter instead.

  “She’s a
good kid,” he said. “Full of spirit, and sharp as a tack.”

  “She’s an absolute belter,” Phillips agreed. “Y’nah, we were only sayin’ the other day, it’s as though Sam was made for us—right the way down to her red hair and freckles. Who’d have thought a little girl would turn up lookin’ the double of Denise?”

  He sighed, happily.

  “I thought we were too late,” he continued. “Denise thought that n’all, but it’s never too late to give a child a good home.”

  Ryan knew the adoption process had been lengthy, fraught with bureaucracy and emotional turmoil. He’d been called upon to provide references for his friends, and the only problem he’d found in doing so was a lack of room on the paperwork, so he could list all the many and varied reasons why any child would be bloody lucky to have Frank Phillips and Denise MacKenzie as its parents.

  “That’s not to say there haven’t been teething problems,” Phillips said. “The thing is, you and Anna have known Emma from the very beginning. You’ll be there for her all the way through, and get to know what makes her tick. With Samantha, we missed out on the first eight years of her life, and those are some of the most important.”

  Phillips shifted in his seat, thinking of how best to express it.

  “Fact is, we might know her parents’ names, and what they did for a living, but we also know they left all kinds of trauma for Sam to deal with—"

  “It’s not every baby who remembers its mother being killed,” Ryan agreed. “Or has to live with the knowledge that their father was no good. Bearing in mind all that, she’s adjusted to her new life incredibly well.”

  “We’ve tried to do our best,” Phillips said. “There’s been a bit of counselling on the side and, to be perfectly honest, son, I’m relieved her birth parents aren’t on the scene, anymore. There’s no chance of either of them popping up, out of the blue, to claim her back and upset her all over again. God, I feel awful saying that.”

  “It’s understandable,” Ryan said, and indicated to take the slip road off the A1 as they neared the junction east towards the Howardian Hills, north of the ancient city of York. “Do you think Samantha’s settled in, now?”