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

by LJ Ross

  “Frank? Now, don’t overreact—”

  “D—don’t overreact?” he burst out. “The lass is barely eleven years old, and she’s courtin’ already? What year are we livin’ in—1500? She needs to be at least…twenty-one before there’s any talk of boyfriends!”

  MacKenzie sighed, and let him rant.

  “In my day, the kids were still climbin’ trees at that age! What’s his name?” he suddenly demanded.

  “Now, Frank, don’t go thinking you can check up on the poor boy. He’s only eleven, you know.”

  “I only want to ask him about his intentions,” Phillips muttered, and folded his arms across his chest.

  “Frank, I don’t think you really understand what eleven-year-olds mean when they say ‘boyfriend’,” MacKenzie said gently. “All it means is that she’s picked her current favourite—probably the one who wears the coolest trainers—and they’re walking around the playground holding hands for a while, while the others giggle about it. At worst, there’s probably a peck on the lips, quickly wiped clean, to everyone’s disgust.”

  “Aye, that’s how it starts,” Phillips grumbled.

  “Yes,” she said. “It is how it starts, Frank, for all normal kids. Years of innocent handholding, of crushes on pop stars and, when she gets older, there’ll be a perfectly ridiculous pre-teen obsession with some TV character who’s a vampire at a high school in America. She’ll do her hair in all kinds of ways and, because she’s a redhead—and I speak from experience—she’ll go through the inevitable phase of wanting to chop it all off or dye it brown, after some muppet calls her a ‘ginger’.”

  “Only a ginger can call another ginger, ‘ginger’,” Phillips acknowledged. “I hope she doesn’t change, Denise. I don’t think I could stand it.”

  “Of course you could—and you will,” she said. “We signed up to be parents, Frank, and, for the most part, Sam makes a hard job seem easy. She can do many things, but she can’t promise not to grow up.”

  Phillips looked out across the car park, remembering the first time he and Samantha had met.

  “She’ll always be my little girl,” he said. “No matter how big she gets, I’ll love every hair on her head—even if she changes the colour of it.”

  MacKenzie took his face in her hands and gave him a long, lingering kiss.

  “I’ll remind you of what you’ve just said, in a couple of years,” she said. “Come on, let’s go and see what we can find out from the General Support Group.”

  “Aye, we can ask them if they accept fathers tryin’ to cope with their daughters growin’ up too fast,” he mumbled, as they headed across the car park towards the main entrance.

  “If they don’t, you can always start up a special support group. Ryan can be your second member.”

  “I think we have one of those, already,” he said. “Lifetime membership.”

  MacKenzie smiled, and wondered what on earth one would do without the other.

  Hopefully, they’d never have to find out.

  * * *

  Following their discussion with Derek Pettigrew, Yates and Lowerson made their way back through the nave of the Cathedral and along towards the exhibition galleries, stopping beside an unmarked door, this time with a coded entry box.

  “This is the security office,” Lowerson said, and rapped his knuckles on the outside.

  They remembered the Head of Security, Mike Nevis, as a skinny, balding man, whose face bore a hollow look, giving the overall impression of one who spent far too much time indoors reading the latest news on how to combat cybercrime. He’d been in his post throughout the renovations to the exhibition galleries and would undoubtedly have been able to gain access to the displays, particularly since he knew how to manipulate a system he was in charge of running.

  However, the man who opened the door to the security office was at least ten years younger than Nevis, and easily fifty pounds heavier. He had been seated on a plush-looking ergonomic wing-backed chair at the head of an enormous desk arranged in a zigzag formation, allowing him to view several screens at once.

  Judging by the way his mobile phone had been propped upright and its screen paused halfway through an episode of Keeping up with the Kardashians, he’d been otherwise engaged.

  “This area’s private,” he said. “If you’re lookin’ for the loos, they’re further along—”

  “DC Yates and DC Lowerson, Northumbria Police,” Melanie said. “We were looking for Mike Nevis.”

  The man—who turned out to be David “Call me Davey” Huxley—looked between them and then back at his phone.

  “Never mind about that,” Lowerson said. “Where’s Mike?”

  “He’s on annual leave, this week,” he replied. “Not due back on shift until Monday.”

  “Did he say what he’d be doing?” Yates asked.

  Huxley just stared, and she tried a different question.

  “Was he planning to go abroad, or visit family, perhaps?”

  He was sweating profusely, rivulets running down the sides of his temples.

  “I don’t know—probably. He didn’t say.”

  Lowerson and Yates exchanged a glance.

  “How long have you worked here, Davey?”

  “About six weeks,” he said. “I’m still in my probation period.”

  “I see. Look, we’re not bothered if you’re using the cathedral’s internet connection to watch Kim and Khloe on your phone,” Lowerson said. “What we really want to know is Mike’s home address. Do you have it?”

  The man brightened, visibly.

  “I know he’s over somewhere in Dalton-le-Dale, but I can’t remember the street. Derek will know.”

  “All right, Davey. Thanks for your help,” Yates said, and then pointed towards one of the screens at his back. “You might want to look at Screen 4; somebody just swiped a box of biscuits from the gift shop.”

  They left Huxley scrambling about for his radio and made their way back through the cloisters towards the exit.

  “What did we find out about Mike Nevis, in terms of personal history?” Lowerson asked, once they stepped back outside.

  Yates consulted her notebook.

  “Divorced, one kid, aged nineteen; no previous record. Tried to enlist in the army, then the police academy, but rejected both times,” she said. “That’s pretty much all we know.”

  “Wonder why he was rejected,” Lowerson said.

  “Let’s ask him, later, but first, on to our next stop on the Magical Mystery Tour of Durham.”

  “The university?”

  “Via the pulled pork stand,” she said.

  “Did I ever tell you, you’re a wonderful woman?”

  “Actions speak louder than words,” she said, with a glint in her eye. “Why don’t you show me later?”

  CHAPTER 28

  The University Hospital of North Durham looked much the same as any other modern building of its era; made of concrete and brick, it was blocky, uniform and was intended to serve, rather than inspire.

  “Justine came here with Danny every Monday morning,” MacKenzie said. “He had a couple of regular appointments to see his neurologist and neurophysiologist.”

  “Poor kid.” Phillips tutted. “And, now, after what’s happened to his sister…how old is he?”

  “Eighteen,” MacKenzie replied. “At least Justine had the foresight to make sure he would be looked after. If you remember, she had a comprehensive life insurance policy that wasn’t rendered void by suicide, and he’s the sole beneficiary. I think they managed to find a place for him at a specialist care facility, though I can’t imagine that was an easy task; Danny has MND, and all that goes with that, but he has learning difficulties on top.”

  “Makes you feel grateful, doesn’t it?” Phillips said. “We’re so lucky not to have those worries. I s’pose I’m guilty of forgettin’ how hard it must be for other folk, at times.”

  “You’re always a thoughtful person,” his wife assured him. “It’s impossi
ble to be perfect.”

  “You make it look easy.”

  MacKenzie stopped dead and turned to him, reaching out a hand to straighten his preposterous tie—which consisted of a pattern of tiny reindeer faces, each with a red, sequinned nose.

  “That was very smooth,” she said. “You can be a charming devil, when you want to be.”

  “It’s often been said.”

  She curved a hand around the tie and tugged him a bit closer, right there in the car park.

  “I won’t tolerate flirting in the office place,” she said, with mock severity. “Luckily, we’re not in the office, right now.”

  She yanked him forward to administer a thorough kiss.

  “That’s for being wonderful,” she said. “Come on, sergeant. We haven’t got all day.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  * * *

  There was a certain smell associated with hospitals.

  A combination of bleach-based cleaning products, canteen food and something more subtle, like meat gone bad. Both MacKenzie and Phillips had spent some considerable time in and out of hospitals, and the smell never improved.

  They made their way to the reception desk, where they were directed towards the Neurology department.

  “I thought we could have a word with Danny’s specialist, on the off-chance he heard or saw anything unusual during his meetings with Danny and Justine,” MacKenzie said, as they made their way through the hospital corridors.

  Phillips nodded, and deliberately slowed the pace so that MacKenzie’s leg would not be put under too much pressure. Three years earlier, she’d suffered terrible injuries, leaving her with deep scar tissue that could often be painful, especially if she over-exerted the muscles in her leg, as she often did. Incapacity did not come naturally to a woman like Denise, who could do almost anything she put her mind to.

  There had been times when he’d seen her cry tears of pure frustration, and times during the first few months after the attack when she’d been so depressed, he’d worried she’d never come back to him—and, he supposed, she hadn’t. It was not the same Denise he awakened to each morning; just as he was not the same Frank as the one he’d been aged twenty, before he’d known anything about love and loss. Life changed you, for better or for worse, and it was a question of rolling with the punches, where you could. He’d fallen in love with a strong, independent woman, and he still loved that woman, for she was even stronger than before.

  She was a survivor.

  Then, there had been his first wife, Laura, who’d succumbed to cancer back in 2010. She’d been his first love and, God’s truth, he’d never looked at anyone else while she’d been alive. He was a loyal man, not driven by the kind of ego that led some to seek their thrills where they could. No, he’d been happy and satisfied with what he had at home, and it had come as a terrible shock when they’d learned the news of her illness. He’d tried to help her fight the disease and, for two years, they’d held off the inevitable, fighting the insidious illness eating away at her from the inside. He’d taken time off work to nurse her; bathing Laura’s poor, wasted body, wiping her clean, making sure she had her pain medication, drying her tears and listening to her occasional anger about the futility of it all. He’d wheeled her along corridors much like the one he was walking now, smelling the same bloody smell, until all he’d been able to do was hold her, rocking her against his chest until she slept and never woke up again.

  “—Frank?”

  He shook himself and reached across to take MacKenzie’s hand.

  “I was just rememberin’,” he said quietly. “All this talk of miracles has got me thinkin’, I s’pose. Maybe Ryan was right—who’s to say what any of us would do, if we were desperate enough? If someone had come along during those final few months when Laura was dyin’, and they’d told me there was any chance of a miracle…I’d like to think I’d have seen through them and that I’d have told them to bugger off and darken somebody else’s door, but who’s to say? Plenty of people turn to religion in their darkest moments, and believin’ in miracles isn’t far off.”

  MacKenzie nodded. “I can only imagine what you went through,” she said, softly. “I saw pieces of it, when you’d come into the office looking so sad. I didn’t know it at the time, but I think I started falling for you all the way back then, when I had no business to. I couldn’t help admiring the way you looked after Laura, right to the very end. I thought to myself, to be loved like that would be a grand thing.”

  Phillips brought her hand to his lips.

  “I’d do the same again, in a heartbeat,” he said, deeply. “No matter what the future holds for either of us, I’ll be here beside you for as long as I can, my love.”

  MacKenzie felt the warmth of his words seep through her body, and felt as rich as a queen.

  “I can’t agree with what Justine Winter did,” she said, keeping her voice low. “There’s no justification for killing Tebbutt, or being a party to what was done to Edward Faber; it was inhuman. But, when I consider the demands on her mind, the stress of her situation and all the emotions that must have been swirling, I can find a bit of pity in my heart. Perhaps it’s pity for the life she might have had, if she’d had a bit more support at home, or for the little girl who lost her mother, her father and couldn’t save her brother. She must have been so lonely that she lost sight of herself.”

  Phillips nodded.

  “If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times. Life isn’t all black and white. We can hate what she did, and still feel sorry about the fact she went off her chump.”

  MacKenzie felt laughter bubble up in her throat. “Frank?”

  “What’s that, love?”

  “Never change.”

  CHAPTER 29

  After an abortive attempt to locate Andrew Duggan-West in his college rooms, they finally caught up with him at the university’s Student Theatre, which was based from the Assembly Rooms on North Bailey, a street running directly parallel to Palace Green and within spitting distance of the cathedral. The theatre itself was over one hundred and fifty years old, but it had been modernised during the intervening years to create a performing arts space for the bright young things who came through its doors and was now a trendy arts venue boasting comedy, drama, dance and more.

  Lowerson and Yates made their way inside and, finding the foyer empty, carried on through to the auditorium, following the sound of crashing seas and wailing voices through a door marked, ‘STALLS’.

  “Now, would I give a thousand furlongs of sea for an acre of barren ground, long heath, brown furze, anything. The wills above be done! But I would fain die a dry death…”

  They listened to a young man who had been dressed to look older, complete with false beard and sixteenth-century seafarer’s costume, prance about the stage, gesticulating wildly.

  “Wonder what he’s tryin’ to do,” Lowerson whispered.

  “I think he must be Gonzalo, from Shakespeare’s The Tempest,” Yates whispered back.

  “I know that—I was wondering whether he was trying to murder it…”

  She gave him a sharp jab in the ribs.

  “I haven’t seen you treading any boards, lately,” she said.

  Shh!

  A young man in his mid or late twenties shushed them, and then, with an irritable clap of his hands, called the rehearsal to a halt.

  “Stop! Everybody stop!” he called out, and the actors came to an abrupt halt, peering through the glare of the stage lights to see what had caused the disruption.

  “Uh-oh,” Lowerson said, and wondered if they could make a speedy getaway.

  The young man moved swiftly along the row of red velvet seats and the two detectives braced themselves to receive the brunt of an artistic temperament.

  “It’s the height of rudeness to interrupt a dress rehearsal,” he raged. “Even worse to talk through it. Who the hell do you think you are?”

  They might have felt suitably chastised, were it not for the dis
tracting nature of his apparel—dressed in tight black jeans, a billowing white shirt and leather blazer, complete with a silk headscarf and black fedora hat, they might have been talking to a Cap’n Jack Sparrow lookalike.

  Lowerson was tempted to ask him where all the rum had gone.

  “We’re very sorry to have disturbed your rehearsal,” Yates said, reaching for her warrant card. “Unfortunately, it can’t be helped. DC Yates and DC Lowerson, Northumbria CID. We’re here to speak to Andrew Duggan-West. Can you tell us if he’s here, please?”

  The young man went very pale.

  “I—I’m he. Him. I mean, that’s me.”

  Yates smiled, indulgently.

  “Do you have five or ten minutes to spare us, please?”

  “Ah—can’t it wait? No, no, I suppose not,” he muttered. “Just a sec, let me wrap this up and I’ll be with you.”

  Lowerson and Yates made themselves comfortable on a couple of theatre seats, and watched him hurry off down the aisle to disband the company, at least for the present.

  A moment later, he returned, and the sound effects reel was turned off.

  “What did you think of it?” he asked, unwisely.

  Lowerson scrambled about for something to say that wasn’t scathing but, thankfully, Yates came to his rescue.

  “The Bard is always great material to work with, isn’t it?”

  This non-answer seemed to appease him, for Andrew broke into a wide smile and nodded vigorously.

  “I always say, ‘less is more’ when interpreting Shakespeare,” he said, without any irony whatsoever. “In fact—”

  They judged it a wise moment to forestall a lengthy discussion on the topic of Shakespearean interpretation.

  “Thank you again for making time for us, Mr Duggan-West,” Lowerson interjected. “We appreciate your time is precious, so we’ll come straight to the point. We’re investigating a number of serious crimes pertaining to the relics of St. Cuthbert and, in the course of our investigations, your name has come up in relation to the renovation works that were undertaken at the Cathedral three years ago. Do you know why that might be?”

  Andrew raised his eyebrows—or would have done if he’d had any, for they had been shaved off and all that remained was the vague shadow of where they might once have been.