by LJ Ross
They exchanged a brief word with Faulkner, whose sad brown eyes stared through the gap in his mask, then donned shoe coverings upon entering their friend’s home, where they had shared dinner and countless good times in the past, and which was now a crime scene.
They made their way through to the kitchen, following the sound of voices in hushed conversation.
“…officers are going door-to-door now, sir…”
The local bobby trailed off as they entered the room.
“Give us a minute, son,” Phillips told him, and gave him a grateful pat on the back, as he left.
Ryan’s eyes were wide, swirling pools of misery in his ashen face.
“Frank,” he said, brokenly. “They took her, Frank. They took my Anna.”
Phillips half-ran across the room to pull his friend into a hard embrace and didn’t care who the hell saw it. He let Ryan cry, the great, shuddering sobs of a soul in torment, and said not a word.
MacKenzie bore down and moved across the room to take a seat beside Ryan’s father, who held the baby in his arms and watched his son with such terrible grief, it tore at her heart.
“Let me take her, for a minute,” she said gently, so as not to startle him.
He seemed reluctant to let go of his granddaughter, but saw the sense of it.
“I need to check that Eve is all right,” he said. “She needed a couple of stitches above her eye, but she refused any further treatment because she wanted to be near Ryan. She wouldn’t desert him; she said she couldn’t live with herself, if she did.”
MacKenzie nodded. “Look after her,” she said. “There are no rights or wrongs here, Charles. Caring for your wife is the right thing to do now. We’re here to help, and we’ll stay for as long as necessary.”
She’d already put a call through to the mother of Samantha’s closest schoolfriend to arrange childcare cover for the immediate future.
“Thank you,” he said, rising from his chair. He hovered there for a moment, seeming lost and unsure, and started to move towards the stairs.
“Dad,” Ryan said, in a thick voice. “What now?”
Charles Ryan wanted to enfold his son in his arms, as Phillips had done. He wanted to be the one to dry his tears and tell him all would be right, but that was far from certain. He was a man with backbone, of substance built over the course of seventy years or more of living—and if it had taught him anything, it was that, in moments such as these, there was a time to fold and a time to fight.
Now, it was time to fight.
He corrected his stance, so he was no longer the world-weary old man who had failed his family. He was a veteran, and a former diplomat, and would behave as such—if not for himself, or even for Ryan, but for the woman who had shown the presence of mind to protect her child, even in her darkest moment.
“What now?” he said, sharply. “Now, we bring her back home, using all means necessary. On your feet now, son.”
Phillips opened his mouth to say something, but MacKenzie shook her head.
His father’s words seemed to penetrate, re-igniting the fire in Ryan’s belly, and he rose up from the table to stand tall.
“That’s better,” Charles said. “Now, gather the intelligence and formulate your strategy, as only you know how. Anna is relying on it.”
With those words hanging in the air, Charles turned and went in search of his wife, who was relying on him at that moment.
Ryan looked at his friends, then at the sleeping bundle in MacKenzie’s arms.
“Anna hid Emma in the cupboard in her study,” he said, forcing himself to think logically. “When I left this morning, the plan was for them to leave within half an hour. The car was already packed, but Dad tells me they’d run out of nappies, which is why he went down to the shop. It would only have taken five minutes, but they timed it just right—that can’t have been deliberate, since they had no way of knowing he’d be leaving then. However, they could have waited until I left.”
Phillips cleared his throat. “Aye, that seems logical. What else?”
Ryan paced around a bit, running his hands back and forth over his dark hair, actively fighting the panic that threatened to choke him.
“It makes no sense for her to have been in the study,” he said, and turned suddenly to stride across the room towards the stairs.
MacKenzie made a sweeping motion with her free hand, encouraging Phillips to follow after him.
“We’ll have some girl time, eh, sweetie-pie?” she said to the baby, who was fast asleep in her arms. “Don’t you worry, darlin’, we’ll find your mummy and bring her back.”
She could have set the baby down in her cot, but MacKenzie stayed there in the quiet kitchen a while longer, listening to the comforting sound of Faulkner’s team brushing and swabbing around the front door and in the hallway, searching for the tiny clues that would bring those thugs to justice, one day. She sang a soft, Irish lullaby to the baby girl and said a prayer for her mother, wherever she may have been.
* * *
Anna was sick twice in the back of the van, the motion having been so violent as to turn her stomach, while the gag she wore made it difficult to breathe or to prevent the acidic bile from pooling in her throat, suffocating her.
Heaving, gasping for breath, she lay in the foetal position on the floor of the van, surrounded by at least two others that she could smell.
She could see nothing at all, and could barely move, but she could hear and she could smell, so she used those faculties to make extensive notes in her mind. She counted ‘elephants’ between one road turning and the next, taking an educated guess at the average travelling speed of the vehicle and noting whenever the van turned left or right. Knowing the county as she did, Anna was fairly certain they’d travelled cross-country towards the Northumberland National Park, but even one misjudged turn could have completely skewed her sense of direction.
She smelled engine oil and sweat.
In the darkness of the van, a man’s hand travelled up her thigh, and she kicked out, scuttling away to another corner, only to be thrown against the edge of the metal casing.
Male laughter echoed around the interior, and she thought of Ryan.
She would do whatever it took, to stay alive and return to her family.
Whatever it took.
CHAPTER 36
Yates and Lowerson indulged in a private, five-minute break at Police Headquarters, during which time they poured out the grief they felt for their friend, his wife and all their family. They cursed themselves for being slow-witted and lazy; for not working hard enough to prevent this from happening; for not seeing this action as the next logical step, even though it seemed to be entirely at odds with the perpetrator’s previous modus operandi.
But it was too late for personal recriminations and regrets; all they could do now was act.
They re-emerged stronger, an emotional state that was sorely tested when they returned to the open-plan offices of CID to find every single available officer in the building crammed into the room.
“They want to help,” Morrison said, from a desk she’d commandeered at the front of the room. “Without my asking them, they began to gather, asking how they could be of service. I’ve set them to work.”
Another testament to the loyalty Ryan inspired in his staff, Morrison thought, and hoped the goodwill and added manpower would be enough.
“MacKenzie and Phillips picked up a new lead, yesterday,” Yates told her. “An account of a man trying to peddle miracles to a vulnerable woman whose husband had recently been diagnosed with a degenerative disease. She described him as being at least thirty, well-spoken, well-dressed, wearing a toupee. This man told a story of how he’d beaten a brain tumour, twice, and credited that to St. Cuthbert having worked one of his miracles.”
“Ring the oncology department,” Morrison suggested.
“Already done,” Lowerson was pleased to tell her. “They say the senior oncologist will be back in his office at nine.”
Morrison checked the time on the big, plastic wall clock and nodded.
“Ten minutes,” she said. “What else?”
“When we speak to the oncologist, we’re hoping she’ll be able to give us a name for this guy,” Yates said. “It will make our work much easier, if she can. If she can’t, which is also possible, we plan to visit more of the people on our list. If we have to flush him out by more old-fashioned methods, so be it.”
Morrison nodded.
“There’s an APW out for a white van matching the description Charles Ryan gave us but, without a plate, it’s not going to help much. Word has gone out to highway patrol, and officers in all neighbouring command divisions are searching, as we speak. I’m assured they will leave no stone unturned.”
None of them spoke of the fact this seemed to have been a professional job, which meant it was more likely the owners of the van in question would drive it straight to a lock-up and re-spray it or change the plates, which would make it almost impossible to find them.
“Anna doesn’t have any communication devices on her, which means she was probably stripped of her mobile phone before she was taken.”
Again, a professional detail.
“What do they want with her?” Yates wondered.
Morrison tapped the mobile phone which sat on the desktop beside her.
“We’re waiting to hear,” she replied. “I’ve ordered a media ban, until we know their demands. The last thing we want to do is antagonise whoever’s holding our friend.”
When they said nothing, she looked up and nodded.
“Yes,” she said. “It’s personal for me, too. Get to work.”
* * *
Ryan side-stepped the CSIs who were sweeping through the first floor of his home, and made directly for his wife’s study at the end of the hall. There wasn’t much to it; just a wall of bookshelves, the window, a desk and chair, and another wall of cupboards. His eye was drawn to the corner cupboard, where the door was still open, and he moved across to look inside at the makeshift bed his wife had cobbled together for their daughter, under extreme stress and in fear for their lives.
If she could do that, then he could do this.
Reaching down, he picked up Anna’s coat and held it to his face, closing his eyes to inhale the lingering scent of her that clung to the seams.
“Anything?” Phillips asked, from the doorway.
Ryan let the coat fall away, and scanned the surfaces of the room until his eye fell on one of her textbooks which was lying open on top of the desk. The page had a bookmark she must have bought from Durham Cathedral, sometime.
“Maybe,” he replied, moving to the desk to get a better look.
The page showed a black and white image of the ‘Bishop’s Throne’ in Durham Cathedral, the cathedra, or seat, of the bishop. Knowing his wife, there must be some reason why she’d highlighted this image, and he slid into her chair to scan the text beside it:
“…Bishop Hatfield asked some of his monks to travel to the Vatican and measure the height of the Pope’s throne. When they returned, he told them to make his throne one inch higher, so that it would be the highest throne in Christendom…”
Ryan’s lips twisted into a smile, and he looked across to where Phillips stood, waiting.
“She found the answer for me, Frank.”
“The answer? To what?”
Ryan explained the significance of the gospel book, and the coded message it contained. Until then, they’d been in the dark about what it meant to ‘look atop the highest throne’, but now he knew exactly where to look—or rather, where the man who had his wife would be looking, for he was also in possession of the clue Father Jacob had left inside St. Cuthbert’s Gospel.
“We need to know what’s on top of that throne,” Ryan said. “I want a team over there, right now.”
Phillips nodded, and reached for his phone so he could put a call through to Morrison.
“We need a surveillance team watching that throne, at all times,” Ryan added. “He’ll want to know the answer, too, and we need to be waiting for him, if he’s stupid enough to try.”
“Let’s hope he is,” Phillips said, and raised the phone to his ear.
Ryan doubted it, but there was no harm in hoping.
* * *
Cancer services for those with an established diagnosis were centralised through the Northern Centre for Cancer Care, based out of the Royal Victoria Infirmary in Newcastle. It was a full-service clinical directorate, offering radiotherapy, palliative care, chemotherapy and complementary services and more, and its comprehensive care facilities confirmed their understanding of the perpetrator’s reason for being at the canteen at the University Hospital of North Durham—namely, that he had no reason at all to be there, except to conduct a fishing exercise, targeting vulnerable people who may be prone to indoctrination.
Lowerson spoke with the Clinical Director of Oncology, Dr Chowdhury, on the dot of nine o’clock, and proceeded to have an illuminating conversation with the woman in charge of the largest cancer services facility in the North East. After Lowerson forcefully set out the ways in which she and her team were legally compelled to share medical information in order to facilitate the prevention, detection or prosecution of one or more serious crimes, she was disposed to be generous with the information at her disposal. Given that he had no specifics to give her, including either a name or date of birth, it was impossible for her to produce a medical record. However, based on the unique patient history this man had given to Kim, from the support group, Doctor Chowdhury promised to ask all of the staff in her directorate whether they remembered any such patient having been in their care.
As soon as he ended the call, Yates came to find him.
“Morrison’s just heard from Frank,” she said, hurriedly. “Before she was taken, Anna figured out the answer to a coded message she found inside the gospel book.”
“Wait—what message?” he asked.
“Never mind that, now, there’s no time to explain. Ryan needs us to go over to the cathedral, right now, and have a look on top of the Bishop’s Throne.”
Lowerson had never been shy of acting first and asking questions later, and made a grab for his coat.
“Any joy with the Clinical Director?” she asked, as they jogged downstairs and out into the staff car park.
“No, but she’s asking around as a matter of urgency. I think we’ll hear back from her, if anything comes through—she seemed to be on the ball.”
“There are plenty more people on the list of potentials,” Yates said, as she climbed into the driver’s seat of her car. “Hopefully, if Chowdhury comes through for us, we won’t have to go through that process of elimination.”
“For Ryan’s sake, I hope not,” Lowerson said. “I can’t imagine what he’s going through, right now. They don’t deserve this to happen—he and Anna have already been through enough.”
“It seems to come with the territory,” Yates said, sadly. “He’s like Icarus, isn’t he? If he flies too high, too close to the sun, he gets burned.”
“Some people are born to fly high,” he said, and thought that Ryan just wasn’t suited to a life of comfortable mediocrity. “But you’re right. The more cases he solves, the higher he flies, and the more of a target he becomes.”
“Him, and his loved ones.”
They were quiet for a moment as Yates manoeuvred them through the morning rush hour towards the Tyne Tunnel, which would take them beneath the river to Gateshead, and from there, on towards Durham.
“Mel, what if—”
“Don’t say it, Jack. Don’t even think it.”
CHAPTER 37
The ‘highest throne in all Christendom’ had been built for one of the longest serving ‘Prince Bishops’ of Durham Cathedral, namely Thomas Hatfield, who held the office from 1345 until 1381. At that time in history, a Prince Bishop had nearly all the same powers in the ‘County Palatine of Durham’ as the King did in the rest of Engl
and, which made them all powerful in the important buffer region between ‘civilised’ England and the raucous, unpredictable land of Northumbria and the Borders, which was constantly at war with the Scots. In addition to all his ecclesiastical and secular powers, Bishop Hatfield was a vainglorious man who embarked upon an ambitious programme of architectural improvements, including the building of the Castle Keep in Durham and the erection of an ostentatious throne for himself, in order to remind others of his rightful place in the pecking order.
But, as Ryan had always maintained, death was an incredibly good leveller.
Nowadays, Hatfield was no longer seated upon his mighty throne but was little more than dust inside a tomb which sat at its base.
“Bit of a come down,” Lowerson remarked.
He and Yates were accompanied by Derek Pettigrew, whose surprise at seeing them so soon after the previous day’s interview was swiftly overtaken by his outraged rejection of their appeal to set up a ladder and climb to the top of the Bishop’s Throne, to see what might be on top of it. It had taken a swift call from their Chief Constable to the Dean of the Cathedral, who allowed it on condition that he be present at all times.
Though he could have done without an audience, Lowerson found himself climbing a long ladder, which the head caretaker of the Cathedral had procured for them.
“Be careful,” Yates called up to him.
“Now she tells me,” he muttered, and made the mistake of looking back down to where four heads looked up at him, each displaying varying degrees of concern.
Don’t swear in the House of God, he told himself, and pressed on until he drew level with the top of the throne.
