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

by LJ Ross

  d. December 1537

  Beneath the insignia was another coat of arms that, at first glance, appeared the same as the one Ryan had found on the wall at St. Cuthbert’s Cave. However, this one had a key difference, which was the inclusion of a tiny pectoral cross, sitting in between the traditional fleur-de-lis.

  Ryan looked at it for a long moment, and wondered if he should feel more excitement at the possibility of having found Cuthbert’s last resting place.

  But he couldn’t muster the emotion, or anything like it.

  Just then, his phone rang again, from a different number he didn’t recognise.

  “This is Ryan.”

  “How are you getting along in your quest? Well, I hope?”

  “Very well indeed,” Ryan said. “I’ve found what you’ve been looking for.”

  There was a quick intake of breath, and Ryan could feel the other man’s excitement transmitting itself down the line.

  It was sickening.

  “Where should we meet?” Ryan asked.

  “Nine o’clock, at the head of the causeway on Holy Island,” Chatterley said.

  “Land side or island side?”

  “Island side. Don’t be late, and remember my warnings, Ryan—I’m a man of my word.”

  The line went dead and Ryan smiled down at the gravestone, wondering whose bones really lay slumbering at his feet.

  It hardly mattered, for his purposes.

  Turning, Ryan headed back to his car and thought of what he kept in the boot, for emergencies.

  That would do the trick.

  * * *

  Anna couldn’t stop her teeth chattering.

  She was frozen to the bone, her body shivering so badly it jarred the restraints on her hands and wrists, cutting into the delicate skin.

  But she hardly felt it.

  The wind had picked up outside the car, rolling in from the sea to rock the vehicle back and forth, seeping through the cracks and crevices to swirl around the woman who lay trapped inside, with no possibility of escape.

  She’d spent hours trying to gnaw through the gag on her mouth, and had eventually made some progress there, nudging it past her chin so she could drag in enormous gulps of air and moisten her lips, which were cracked and bloody from a lack of water.

  Anna had come to terms with the knowledge that her captor had no intention of coming back. She knew this, not only because he had never looked at her face or cared to see her as a person, but because she knew exactly where he’d left her—and the only possible reason for that would be to let her die.

  She’d given up on shouting for help, after the first two hours. Nobody would be crossing the causeway by foot in these temperatures; they would be heading home by car, back to their cosy lives, never suspecting that the car they passed by had a person inside it.

  Anna had no idea of the tide times for that day, but if there was one thing she knew for sure, it was that tides waited for nobody. They would roll in, sooner or later, bringing the might of the North Sea in midwinter to bear on the causeway.

  When that happened, the waters would seep into the car, rising quickly to extinguish Anna Taylor-Ryan, forever.

  CHAPTER 42

  One of the strangest things about crime fiction, Ryan had always thought, was its insistence that every baddie must be in possession of above average intelligence, or even genius. With a couple of possible exceptions, most notably in the case of Keir Edwards, he’d always found the perpetrators of violent crimes to be depressingly average, without any charisma or glittering intelligence to speak of.

  He suspected this would be the case with William Chatterley, when they finally came face-to-face.

  Though he must have some creative skill as a painter and art restorer, it only took a bit of careful planning and a degree of specious charm to prey on the impressionable, or vulnerable. In his line of work, Ryan only came into contact with the victims and criminal associates who had found themselves entangled in the perpetrator’s web, but he would have been interested to know how many others didn’t become embroiled, and he suspected that number would be much higher.

  In Chatterley’s case, Ryan could hardly believe his luck that the man wanted to meet on an island he knew would become cut off from the mainland when the tides rolled in, shortly before nine o’clock. Unless he was planning to make a speedy getaway by boat—which was nigh impossible during December and at night, for the waters around the Farne Islands were treacherous—William would be stuck there with nowhere to go except down to the local nick, the next morning. There was another possibility, which was that he hoped to beat the tides after making the exchange and drive like the wind to get to the mainland.

  Never advisable, considering how many vehicles were swept away from the causeway on an annual basis.

  Ryan’s headlights cut through the long, winding roads leading towards the causeway, and his stomach grew tighter with every passing mile. It was comforting to know that Lowerson and Yates would already be on the island by now, in plain clothes, while Phillips and MacKenzie remained in Elsdon, helping his parents to care for Emma while his mother recovered and, he dared say, his father recovered from the shock of it all, too. Despite all that, Ryan could not know for sure whether his wife was still alive, or whether Chatterley had subjected her to the same fate as so many others, until he was able to hold her in his arms again and see with his own eyes that she was safe and unharmed. There was an unpredictability to Chatterley’s behaviour, something already noted by his former oncologist, and that was a source of grave concern to Ryan. Predictability was a desirable thing, despite what people said, because it allowed you to plan with confidence. In the case of William Chatterley, his delusions—some of which may have been caused by the cancerous tumour in his brain—made him an unknown quantity, and Ryan would not be able to relax until it was all over.

  He saw the causeway looming up ahead, and checked the time on his dashboard.

  Eight forty-five.

  The causeway was due to close in ten minutes, and he could see the ripple of the tide as it rose inexorably higher, creeping across the causeway inch by inch, until it would be completely immersed. Ryan knew he had to cross now, or miss his chance.

  Accelerating through the shallow puddles that were starting to form, Ryan focused on the road ahead, which was becoming less distinct as the water rose up around it. Presently, he came to the middle of the causeway, where the road widened so it could be used as a passing place, or a place for people to park at low tide to get out and take pictures, dip their toes in the sand, or walk across the ‘Pilgrim’s Way’. To his surprise, he spotted the outline of a parked car in one of the passing places, which would be submerged in another ten minutes, if he was any judge.

  Though he was eager to find his wife, and conscious of not being late, Ryan’s sense of decency won out, as it always did, and he slowed his car to peer inside the windows of the other vehicle and check whether there had been a breakdown or somebody in need of help.

  But all the windows were empty, and there was nobody inside the car.

  Thinking of how angry the coastguard would be, when they had to fish the vehicle from the water the next day, Ryan continued across the causeway, where Chatterley awaited him.

  * * *

  Anna thought she heard the rumble of a car’s engine somewhere nearby, but it was hard to be sure above the crashing of the waves outside, and the whistle of the wind. She kicked out at the wall of the boot, in case anybody could hear her, and screamed Ryan’s name over and over again.

  When the car continued on, and a few minutes later she felt the first ice-cold trickle of water seep through the sides of the boot, Anna knew real fear. The kind that stops your heart, and loosens your bowels; the kind that came from knowing this was the end of the line.

  She fought wildly to be free of the ties at her wrists and ankles, but they were too tight.

  Water began to pour in, no longer a trickle but a continuous flow, and she was paralysed for
a moment, unable to think, unable to move in the terrifying blackness.

  Until the back of her fingers brushed against something rubbery.

  Spare tyre.

  Anna tried to feel for the air cap, but her fingers were numb with cold, making her movements slow and clumsy.

  As the water reached her waist, Anna tipped her head high to gasp at the remaining water, whilst working her fingers against the air cap on the spare tyre, twisting and twisting for what seemed an eternity, until it came loose in her hands and she felt a stream of bubbles against her palm.

  She took one last gulp of air and dived beneath the freezing water, feeling her way to the air cap so she could clasp her mouth around it and release small sucks of air. She tried to hold her breath for thirty seconds at a time, using the side of her face as a plug until she needed to take another breath.

  She knew, eventually, that the air in the tyre would run out.

  Ryan, she silently screamed. I’m here. Please find me.

  * * *

  Chatterley was indeed a man of his word, and Ryan found him waiting at the designated rendezvous point, on the beach at the head of the causeway on the island side.

  He looked almost exactly as Ryan might have pictured him; a man in his late forties, of medium height and build, with a balding head and clean-shaven face. He could blend into a crowd, and had ‘one of those faces’, so it was easy to see how Chatterley could have impersonated the late Father Jacob with a few well-chosen accessories, such as the beard and habit, because they were of a type.

  It was difficult for Ryan to keep the disgust from showing clearly on his face, when he thought of all this man had done.

  “Where are the remains?” Chatterley demanded. “Where are they?”

  Ryan indicated a large, brown leather holdall sitting at his feet. “Where’s Anna?”

  He couldn’t see the man’s vehicle, nor any sign of his wife, and Ryan felt panic begin to rise.

  Chatterley held up a set of car keys, and jiggled them.

  “In the boot of the car,” he said, with a flash of his teeth.

  “Which car?” Ryan asked, and then a dreadful, dawning realisation hit him like a sucker punch to the gut.

  He spun around, eyes searching for the shadow of the car he thought had been abandoned, but it was too dark to see it from where they stood.

  “Give me the keys!”

  “Ah-ah! The bones, first,” Chatterley said, curling his fists around the keys he still held in his hand.

  Something in Ryan’s face must have frightened him, because he took an involuntary step backwards.

  Ryan lifted the bag and flung it forward, where it landed with a heavy clatter at the other man’s feet.

  “Here,” he said. “Now the keys. Give them to me!”

  “These?” Chatterley said, jingling them again, giggling like a schoolboy now he had what he wanted. “Go and get ’em.”

  To Ryan’s horror, he flung the keys high in the air, in a wide arc over the sand dunes on either side of the road where they stood. The keys seemed to remain suspended for a fraction of a second before falling again, towards the water and oblivion.

  Ryan shouted something—he didn’t know what—and made a dive for the keys. The tide was still rising—up to his knees already—and he scrambled about for precious moments trying to feel where they had landed.

  Dimly, he heard the man’s maniacal laughter, before he scuttled off in the direction of the village and the harbour on the other side, where he had a boat ready to go.

  Ryan swept his hands along the sand under the water, trying desperately to judge where the keys had landed. Finally, his fingertips brushed against something metallic and he pulled them out of the water. Keys clasped in his hand, Ryan made a dash for his car, but the water was already too deep to drive back across to where Anna was trapped inside a metal box. There was half a mile between where he stood and where the car was half-submerged—and the current too strong to swim the distance and have enough energy to get her out.

  Thinking fast, Ryan jumped back inside his car and a minute later was roaring through the quiet streets, with its pretty lights and squat stone cottages, towards the harbour. He passed Chatterley on the way, but didn’t care; he had one goal in mind.

  Ryan came to an emergency stop outside the Coastguard’s Station, and was relieved to see the light burning inside.

  Throwing open the door, he was met with a pair of lively green eyes and a broad smile.

  “Well, look what the tide dragged in.” Alex Walker, the Chief Coastguard in those parts, was an old friend of Anna and Ryan’s, but this was no time to catch up.

  “Anna’s trapped, over on the causeway. I need a boat—now!”

  Walker took one look at his friend’s face and grabbed the keys to his rib.

  “Let’s go.”

  * * *

  A few minutes later, they rounded the harbour and headed out onto the open water, racing towards the channel to where Anna remained trapped inside the boot of Chatterley’s car. Alex knew those waters like the back of his hand, and handled his boat with the ease of long experience. Ryan was look-out, blinking the cold spray of water from his eyes as he searched the water for any sign of the car.

  As they neared the causeway, they found it fully covered by the tide, and Alex cut the engine so they could search for any sign of the car.

  “It was here!” Ryan cried, wild with anguish. “Anna!”

  Just then, the waves buffeted the car so it rolled upward, revealing itself to them in the powerful beam of the boat’s search lights.

  “There! Over there!” Ryan cried.

  “I see it!” Alex shouted, and moved them a bit closer.

  Before he could object, Ryan had removed his life jacket to enable him to swim more freely, and dived headfirst into the icy depths of the sea.

  * * *

  Anna knew the air was running out.

  The tiny sips of air she rationed herself from the air cap were becoming thinner and thinner, and wouldn’t last much longer. Her body felt numb and lifeless, and a terrible fatalism threatened to take over, as a prelude to the end.

  The last thoughts she called to mind were of Ryan’s face, laughing as they walked along the beach, and of her daughter, the first time she’d opened her eyes to look up at her mother.

  Exhausted, hypothermic, she let go for the final time.

  * * *

  The first shock of water hit Ryan like a brick wall, but he powered through the waves, thrusting his legs hard until his hands reached the car boot. He rose to the surface to take in a huge gulp of salty air, then dived beneath the surface again, clutching the key in his hand.

  The waters were too dark to see, despite Alex’s efforts to shine the search light in the right area, and Ryan felt his way along the back of the car until he found the keyhole.

  His lungs were starting to scream, but he persevered until the key turned and the boot opened. He had to force it higher, battling the downward pressure of so much seawater, but in a final, monumental effort, reached down to grasp his wife’s limp body and pull her free.

  Alex dived in after him, armed with a life ring, and took the weight of Anna’s inert body as Ryan broke the surface.

  No words were spoken, but the two men dragged her back to the rib and through strength of will alone heaved her up onto the boat in record time.

  Once there, Ryan went to work on her immediately.

  One…two…three…

  Breathe, Anna, breathe!

  One…two…three…

  Ryan performed CPR while Alex rushed to start the engine, radioing his colleagues a couple of miles further down the coast in Seahouses to expect their arrival and order an ambulance.

  One…two…three…

  Stay with me, Anna.

  One…two…three…

  Ryan continued to pump his wife’s chest, breathing air back into her exhausted lungs, while their friend waged his own battle with the sea, hands gripping the
wheel tightly as they negotiated some of the worst waters of the British Isles, passing over the skeleton graveyards of sunken ships as they went.

  When the lights of Seahouses Harbour came into view, Ryan didn’t so much as look up.

  He didn’t stop CPR until a paramedic was ready and waiting to take over, this time with a defibrillator device.

  CLEAR!

  He watched his wife’s body jerk once, then twice.

  Again!

  CLEAR!

  Ryan saw his past, present and future pass before his eyes in that one dreadful moment. He heard her laughter, her tears, her singing in the shower. He saw her face as they made love, as he kissed her goodnight, and as he kissed her good morning. He saw all the mornings that might never be, stretching out before him.

  Then, she reared up, and took another breath—before twisting onto her side as her body convulsed, expelling what seemed like gallons of seawater.

  Only then did he break down, pouring his heart out to the wind as he wept for all that could have been lost, and for all that had been saved.

  CHAPTER 43

  Christmas Day

  It had often been said that the sea was a cruel mistress, who did not like to be scorned.

  Though Mother Nature had been unable to claim Anna that night on the causeway, she had claimed another soul, instead.

  William Chatterley’s joy at having been united with Cuthbert’s bones was short-lived, and dissipated as soon as he opened Ryan’s leather holdall. For, rather than containing the precious relics that he believed would cure the cancer in his brain, the bag contained nothing more than a collection of trainers and gym gear, which Ryan had thrown in the boot of his car the previous day, in anticipation of some lunchtime running sessions with Phillips.

  There had been nothing to live for, then; no hope of a miracle, and William had experienced another epiphany.

  It was all meant to be—and in accordance with Cuthbert’s plan.

  Why else bring him to Lindisfarne, where he had been bishop, and why else steer the boat out towards Inner Farne, where Cuthbert himself had died? It would be a fitting end to a distinguished life and perhaps, one day, others would look upon him as they looked upon Cuthbert.