by LJ Ross
She was congratulating herself on the success of all her efforts, even thinking idly about enrolling on one of those artsy retreats somewhere in the forest or by the sea, when a call came through on her desk phone.
“Ma’am? Somebody from King’s Cross Station for you. Says she’s some kind of railway controller…”
“What? Did she say what it was about?”
“She says there’s a couple of your officers demanding she stops a train, but she needs high level authorisation to do that, especially as it’s not local Met Police and the matter’s urgent.”
A couple of my officers, Morrison thought. I might have known…
“Put her on.”
A moment later, the voice of an extremely harassed-sounding railway controller sounded down the line.
“Ah-hah,” Morrison said. “Ah-hah. I see. Can you put the gentleman on the line, please?”
A second later, Ryan came on the phone.
“I wouldn’t have believed it, if I hadn’t heard with my own ears,” she growled. “Especially as I distinctly recall our conversation during which I told you, very clearly, not to travel to London to interview Mathieu Lareuse.”
“Look, you’ve a right to be angry, but can we take a rain check on the lecture? I’ve got an assailant on the run, and he boarded the 16:26 to Newcastle. That was almost ten minutes ago, and I need these jokers to stop the train and turn it around, so we can make the arrest. Will you help?”
“Just a minute,” Morrison snapped. “What do you mean ‘an assailant’? There’s local police to deal with local issues, Ryan—”
“This isn’t just any assailant,” he said, growing increasingly impatient. “This one was dressed as a dead man—the monk, who died at Crayke College—and managed to gain access to the British Library, where he knocked a young woman unconscious and stole another priceless artefact. He has St. Cuthbert’s Gospel, and he’s getting away with it. We need to stop him before it’s too late—we need to stop that train before it reaches its next calling point.”
Morrison was silent for long seconds, weighing up the risks on either side, and knew she would regret the decision she was about to make.
“All right, Ryan. I’ll authorise it, but you better be right about this.”
“Thank you,” he said, with relief. “I won’t forget this.”
“Neither will I,” she grumbled, before the line went dead.
CHAPTER 21
Ryan, Phillips and a number of police officers from the local Serious Crime Command were gathered at the head of the platform as the 16:26 rolled back into King’s Cross Station, under the pretence of there being a fault with the mechanics of the train. All passengers were told to remain in their seats, since the doors would not be opening and required repairs, which afforded a degree of cover while Ryan and his makeshift team made their way through each carriage, in turn.
They split into two teams, with Ryan and two officers beginning at the front of the train, while Phillips began at the back. Both were armed with a T-Key to open doors and cupboards on board, and protective clothing, on loan from the Met.
They made their way through the carriages systematically, checking every bathroom door and the face of every person seated or unseated on the train, but none resembled the late Father Jacob, and nobody was conveniently dressed in monk’s garb.
“He’s had time to change,” Ryan muttered. “He probably stuffed the habit out of a bathroom window, during the time it took us to get the train back.”
His face was a mask of anger, and instead of looking for a man who was already dead, he searched for a person who looked uncomfortable or out of place, perhaps perspiring heavily.
Unfortunately, that accounted for almost everybody, since the air conditioning was on the blink and hundreds of people were packed like sardines on a train going nowhere.
After a full forty minutes of painstaking searching, Ryan and Phillips met in the middle of the train.
“Nowt at my end,” Phillips said. “I take it you haven’t found him, either?”
Ryan shook his head and ran angry fingers through his hair, while his mind raced.
“Let’s swap,” he said. “I’ll go over the ground you’ve covered, you go over mine.”
Another half hour later, they stepped off the train and onto the platform, where they were watched through the windows by the angry, staring faces of passengers, who were now becoming irate at the delay to their schedule.
As was the Controller, who stormed towards them.
“Well?” she demanded. “Where’s this dangerous criminal, then?”
“He’s obviously jumped the train, or changed his disguise,” Ryan said. “We acted too slowly.”
“We did nothing slowly, mate,” she threw back. “But it’s us who’ll get it in the neck for the train being held, that’s for sure. You’ve messed up all my slots—there’ll be delays across the network for the rest of the day now!”
Ryan opened his mouth to launch into all the many and varied reasons why disruption to train schedules didn’t compare with violent murder, but Phillips laid a steadying hand on his arm.
“We appreciate that, and we’re grateful for all you’ve done,” he said, and gave her one of his best smiles. “We’re sorry for the inconvenience.”
That brought a reluctant smile.
“You’re welcome,” she said, in a more measured tone. “Safety has to come first, doesn’t it?”
“Exactly,” Ryan put in, and her smile fell again. “Which is why I’d like to put another call through to my superior to ask about searching the passengers’ belongings.”
Phillips slapped a palm to his face, because he already knew what the outcome of that conversation would be—but he also knew that Ryan had to try.
* * *
“Absolutely, categorically, out of the question,” Morrison told him, a few minutes later.
“Ma’am, the gospel book must be on the train. There was no realistic opportunity for anybody to leave before it turned around. If our perp has changed his appearance, that’s one thing, but he can’t hide the book.”
“First of all, Ryan, have you heard yourself? What’s all this about suspects changing into different costumes, now?”
“It’s happened before,” he reminded her.
“Even so, you’re wrong about not being able to hide that book. The point is, it could be anywhere on the train, inside any number of bags, slipped down the side of a chair or God only knows what. You’re expecting me to authorise a full search of that magnitude whilst six hundred or so people twiddle their thumbs as you interfere with their private belongings—without a proper warrant?”
She was incredulous.
“I’m sorry, Ryan. I can’t allow it. Stand down, and come home. If you’re lucky, there might be a seat for you both on that train and, if you’re luckier still, you’ll have a job to come back to, tomorrow morning.”
Ryan sighed, and looked across at the stationary passenger train.
He understood that Morrison was considering the impact of another failed search attempt, and the domino effect that would have on their public relations efforts, amongst other things. Nobody liked to be held up, especially not people at the end of a working day who were eager to get home.
“At least send a couple of officers to meet the train, in Newcastle,” he begged her.
“And, if I do, who would they hope to see? Do you have a description of the perpetrator?”
Ryan only had a description of a dead man.
“Exactly,” Morrison said, when the silence dragged on. “Do your homework, Ryan. Work with the Met to acquire the CCTV footage, get some eyewitness accounts…then come to me with demands about search and seizure warrants, and not before.”
* * *
Ryan and Phillips spent some considerable time on site at the British Library liaising with the Met team, who were in attendance taking statements from material witnesses, and overseeing the forensic investigation into the theft o
f St. Cuthbert’s Gospel. Finally, they boarded a train home at seven-thirty, world-weary and exhausted.
“Well,” Phillips said, slumping back in his chair. “That was certainly an eventful day.”
Ryan closed his eyes—not to sleep, but to think.
“You know what this calls for? A bacon butty,” Phillips said, his mouth watering at the prospect. “Can I get you one?”
Ryan wasn’t about to deny the man any carbohydrates at that juncture; they’d spent much of the day on foot, walking or running, and had barely eaten or drunk a thing.
“Make mine a ham and cheese toastie,” he said, embracing the risk of a heart attack, in later life. “I’ll get them, it’s my turn.”
“Nah, stay where you are. You look as if you might keel over,” Phillips said.
Soon after, he returned with Ryan’s food, a couple of bottles of water, a coffee and a peppermint tea.
“Where’s yours?” Ryan asked.
Phillips held up a small, plastic-wrapped salad.
“I felt too guilty when I got to the counter,” he confessed. “I went for the egg salad.”
Ryan chewed the first bite of his toastie and tried not to look like he was enjoying it.
“I heard from Hassan, while you were gone,” he said, between bites. “He had an update about Lareuse.”
“What did he say?”
“There was a full-scale riot, after we left,” Ryan replied. “Four prison officers injured, nine inmates hurt, too, but no other casualties. But that’s not even the bad news.”
“It gets worse?”
“Laueuse’s body was damaged during the riot,” Ryan said. “They didn’t move him because the forensics team hadn’t attended, and the electronic cell doors remained open throughout—apparently, they had a hell of a task trying to get all the prisoners contained.”
“I bet,” Phillips murmured, and took a reluctant bite of his egg salad, finding it depressingly un-meaty.
He liked animals, he really did, and agreed that the circumstances of killing them for food should be as humane as possible, whilst upholding the highest standards on all fronts. But there was no escaping his basic biology: Frank Phillips was a carnivore and, much as he tried to convince himself otherwise, boiled eggs just didn’t cut it.
“The whole crime scene was compromised,” Ryan said. “That’s not counting the obvious fact that Lareuse’s cell was hardly The Ritz—the standards of cleanliness were already atrocious, so there would’ve been multiple historic samples to wade through and make sense of. The chances of the CSIs being able to find meaningful evidence that could be relied upon in court have drastically reduced, as have our chances of finding out who was paid to do the hit.”
He watched Phillips eating his eggs disconsolately, looked down at the remaining half of his toastie, and decided he was full.
“Finish mine, if you want,” Ryan said casually. “I couldn’t eat, after all.”
Phillips’ face perked up. “Y’sure?”
Ryan smiled, and pushed it across the table.
“Have it while it’s still hot.”
“What about CCTV?” Phillips asked, and sank his teeth into the first bite. “Oh, that’s the Food of the Gods, that is!”
Ryan grinned.
“Hassan’s requested the footage but, wouldn’t you know it? The camera circuit on B Wing was down for a period of three hours, today.”
“Wonders never cease,” Phillips muttered.
“Quite. Hassan says they’ve got Lareuse’s mobile phone and a few other personal items, so they’ll start going through that today, and they’ve already got an order to access his UK bank account—not that there’ll be much in that; he’ll have squirrelled it away in a Swiss account. They’ve found a key amongst his gear, presumably to a lock-up of some kind, but there’s no telling where that might be.”
“Aye, that’ll be tricky to find, in a city this size,” Phillips agreed.
“If it’s even in London, at all.”
They fell into a brief silence, watching their own reflections in the window which was little more than a black mirror against the darkness outside.
“We might have more luck at the library,” Phillips said. “They’ve already sent us the CCTV footage from today and it’s good quality, too. We can get one of the techie fellers to enhance it and try to get a photofit.”
“If by ‘techie fellers’ you mean a member of our esteemed Digital Forensics Unit, then yes, I’m sure we could, but it won’t be us doing that—the case belongs to the Met. They shared that footage with us as a favour, but we’ll need Morrison to broker it for us if we want to work jointly.”
“D’you think she will?” Phillips asked.
Ryan shrugged. “She’s angry now, and rightly so. It was a calculated risk we took, coming here today, and things haven’t exactly gone to plan. However, events have proven certain things beyond a shadow of a doubt.”
“There’s still a possibility that Lareuse was killed for other reasons,” Phillips warned him. “You can’t rely on that in support of our theories.”
“I know. I was thinking more of the theft at the library, and the attack on that girl. In the first place, Jacob Jamieson is lying in a mortuary in Yorkshire, so he couldn’t have been running around King’s Cross. The security team at the library have already confirmed that the perp gained access using Jamieson’s Researcher Pass, and that he swiped in through the turnstiles at 15:28 for a three-thirty appointment with Dr Malone. How else could he have procured Jamieson’s pass, if he didn’t take it from the man himself?”
Phillips nodded.
“I’ve already contacted DCI Patel,” Ryan continued. “I told her that a man posing as Father Jacob gained entry to the Library using his pass, or a copy of it, to attack a woman and steal the gospel book. She’s come back to confirm that they’ve searched his belongings at Crayke and there’s no sign of a British Library pass amongst them.”
“He can’t have been killed just for his pass,” Phillips muttered.
“No,” Ryan agreed. “I think that was a question of convenience. Whoever used Jamieson’s pass had to act quickly before his name was made public, otherwise they ran the risk of somebody querying his identity, after seeing the news of Father Jacob’s death. At the moment, all they’ve reported is the death of a monk at Crayke College; Patel deliberately ordered a media embargo on the details being released until they’d had a chance to try to track down his next of kin. Unfortunately, somebody took advantage of the window of opportunity.”
“So, if they didn’t kill him for a bit of plastic—then what?”
“As we said when we looked at that poor man’s body, Father Jacob was tortured for a reason. We didn’t know what that reason was, until today, but I think it has to do with the gospel book.”
“Might just be a collector,” Phillips argued. “Somebody who wants to acquire everything to do with St. Cuthbert, including anything he might have had inside his coffin, which is why the pectoral cross was taken, as well. It might not be anything more than that.”
Ryan ran a hand over his mouth, considering.
“I agree, we’re dealing with a collector,” he said eventually. “But the timing is significant, here, don’t you think? They orchestrated the switch of that pectoral cross three years ago, and arranged an elaborate heist to steal their own copy, rather than risk discovery. That takes a lot of planning and investment. Today, the same person walked into the national library of the UK, alone, dressed up as a dead monk but otherwise without protection, with the specific goal to steal that book. Choosing to pose as Jacob Jamieson was a risky strategy and took very little time or money investment. He ran the risk of capture—which is something we very nearly achieved, today.”
He set aside bitter disappointment on that score.
“It feels like an escalation,” Phillips said, brushing toast crumbs from his jumper. “I wonder what’s driving them to take risks.”
“That’s the question, Frank.
Something about that book was important—not just historically, but to those who believe in St. Cuthbert’s cult.”
He looked his friend in the eye.
“We need to find out what that something is.”
CHAPTER 22
Ryan arrived home shortly after eleven, and felt his heart thud against his chest when he caught sight of a tall, well-built figure silhouetted in the porch light wielding a gun.
Charles lowered the rifle and secured the safety.
“Not exactly the warmest welcome,” he said. “But you can’t be too careful.”
To Ryan’s surprise, he leaned in to give him a manly, one-armed hug.
“Glad to see you back in one piece,” his father said gruffly. “The little one’s fast asleep, and Anna and your mum are in the living room.”
Ryan stepped inside the house and felt a blast of heat warm his icy cheeks.
Home.
“Go on through and see your wife,” Charles said, once Ryan had toed off his boots and hung up his winter coat. “I’ll bring you a bowl of soup.”
Ryan couldn’t have said why that, of all things, was enough to breach his defences, but it was.
“Thank you,” he managed.
“Don’t mention it,” Charles said quietly, before moving off towards the kitchen.
Ryan found two of the three most important females in his life sitting in the cosy living room, with the log fire burning. It was a festive scene, with a garland of ivy and mistletoe draped over the mantlepiece and Nat King Cole playing quietly from a speaker hidden behind the sofa.
“You’re back,” Anna said, and rose to her feet to return his kiss.
“Hi,” he said, simply, and drew her in for a close embrace. “How are you?”
“Better,” she assured him. “Emma’s had a lovely day. We went for a walk by the river, then practised our crawling, didn’t we grandma?”
“We did, indeed. Another month or so, and there’ll be no stopping her,” Eve replied, and patted her son’s cheek as he leaned down to kiss her.
