by LJ Ross
Tears ran down her face and Alfie began to wail.
“Are you going to kill us?” she whispered.
Ludo’s face remained impassive.
“That all depends on your husband. You’d better hope that he does the smart thing, too.”
CHAPTER 22
East Denton Hall was the formal residence of the Bishop of Hexham and Newcastle, only a few minutes’ drive away from the West Road Cemetery, from Karen Dobb’s house in Daisy Hill and from Newcastle city centre. It was also situated beside the major roundabout where motorists could join the A1 north or southbound, which made it the perfect base for a man needing direct access to his chosen hunting ground.
The large, Jacobean-style house stood empty while the Bishop remained in Italy but it was not the mansion that was of interest to the two specialist technicians from Ryan’s team. While Father O’Byrne was forced to supervise a search of the disabled toilet at St Andrew’s Church, they parked a safe distance from the Hall and made their way on foot up the long gravel driveway. The entrance gates stood open and they headed for a separate garage building which had been built away from the main house.
It took less than thirty seconds to unlock one of the garage doors and they slipped inside, tugging the door shut behind them.
A polished black Lexus sedan was the only car parked inside.
Back at St Andrew’s, Sergeant Phillips excused himself to take a phone call. Smiling across at Father O’Byrne, he confirmed that the man was safely tied up and would not be leaving any time soon.
With that assurance, the technicians went to work.
* * *
Conor O’Byrne paced around the small entrance portico of St Andrew’s Church, his simmering frustration almost at boiling point. He had spent four hours watching the band of police officers stumble and trip over their flat feet while they scoured the floor for a missing pearl earring that had belonged to one of the victims, though they wouldn’t name her.
They didn’t need to.
Since he had nothing better to do than stand around and watch their pitiful display of incompetence, he had spent the last four hours racking his brain to remember which of the women had worn pearl earrings. No matter how he cast his mind back over the past few days, he could not bring their faces to his mind and the details of their clothing was little more than a blur.
Eventually he had fallen back on a process of elimination.
The last one—Tanya, they called her—hadn’t been found yet and there was every chance she would never be found, which meant that they could not know if she was missing an earring or not. He had been careful, this time, to cover her body with enough soil and the gravesite had been ready and waiting for him as usual so there had been no unexpected surprises at Edgewell Cemetery as there had been last Thursday night at the West Road Cemetery.
He had been exhausted after that experience.
The one from the petrol station—Karen, or Carol? She had barely worn any clothing at all and, even if she had worn jewellery, it would not have been pearls, he was sure of that.
Which left the first one, from Thursday night. Now that he thought of it, she had been smartly dressed in workwear when he’d picked her up and it made her the most likely possibility.
His face fell into hard lines of anger at his own monumental stupidity.
In all these years, he had never left a trace; he had always been so cautious. But in overlooking this tiny detail, he had jeopardised his mission and everything he had accomplished so far.
It could not be tolerated.
The man looked as if he were in a daze, Phillips thought, from his position across the room. O’Byrne’s eyes were glazed with a faraway expression but his jaw was clenched and firm, as were the hands which had formed into fists.
“I’m not sure how much longer we can make this look genuine, sir,” one of the constables came over to murmur in his ear.
Phillips offered him a stick of gum and gave him a bolstering slap on the shoulder.
“Another half an hour, that’ll do the trick.”
* * *
Just before six o’clock, the Chief Pilot of the new helicopter Search and Rescue base at Humberside Airport headed home to see his wife and son. Andy Hayworth was an experienced man with fifteen years’ service in the Royal Air Force before he had taken up his new position working for the SAR. Previously, the RAF had supplied local SAR helicopters but the service was now provided through a private defence company which paid for brand new, state-of-the-art helicopters equipped with more advanced search technologies. The company opened new bases around the country and Humberside was one of them. Although it was not exactly local, it provided the rescue services for any unfortunate souls who found themselves stranded on the causeway at Holy Island or fell overboard from a fishing boat anywhere along the Northumbrian coastline.
The day had been a long but productive, delivering training to some of the new pilots who had recently joined the SAR team, and Andy was more than ready to read his son a bedtime story and settle down for a nice bottle of wine with his wife.
He let himself into their smart, red-bricked house not far from the air base and was surprised to find that the television was blaring but none of the lights were on around the house. It was getting dark outside and he reached across to turn on the hallway light.
“Helen?”
He dipped his head into each of the ground floor rooms but found them empty. The remains of Alfie’s snack still sat on a plate in the lounge but there was no sign of either of them.
“Helen? Alfie!”
He was starting to panic as he moved from room to room. He took the stairs two at a time and burst into the master bedroom, where he noticed stray clothing on the bed. Moving around the bed, he found Helen’s mobile phone crushed against the carpet.
“Oh my God,” he whispered.
Running from the room, he began to pull out his own mobile phone to dial 999 but as he looked into Alfie’s bedroom his hand fell away again. There, propped against the cot, was a large cream notecard. With shaking hands, he picked it up and read the instructions that had been left for him.
* * *
MacKenzie and Lowerson found Ryan back at CID Headquarters, standing at the helm of what had formerly been an Incident Room but now resembled the flight deck of a spaceship. Lights beamed, charts and diagrams covered the available wall space and telephones rang without pause while the men and women of Operation Angel bustled around. Amidst the organised chaos, Ryan stood kitted out all in black talking to the two specialist technicians who had recently returned from East Denton Hall.
“Sir?”
He turned and greeted them both with his usual direct stare.
“You look done in,” he commented.
“Thank you, sir,” MacKenzie replied, deadpan.
“What can you tell me about Tanya Robertson?”
“As you know, we located her beneath a gravesite at Edgewell Cemetery, which falls within the catchment area of Northumberland County Council but also within the remit of the Diocese of Hexham and Newcastle.”
“As we expected.”
“Yes, sir. Faulkner has requested additional forensic resources to help cover that site, because he’s overwhelmed with work at the other crime scenes. His preliminary view is that the interior of Tanya Robertson’s car has been thoroughly cleaned but he’ll need more time to confirm whether there is any remaining trace evidence.”
Ryan nodded. He had already approved the request and had it rubber-stamped by Chief Constable Morrison.
“And the staging of the body?”
“Identical to the other two redheads,” MacKenzie confirmed. “Her arms were positioned over her head with the elbows bent and her blouse was shredded to resemble a wing, as was the case with Krista Ogilvy-Matthews.”
“We found a note, too,” Lowerson pulled out an evidence bag and handed it to his SIO. “Looks pretty similar to the others.”
MacKenzie looked away while the
note passed under her nose and she thought of the other one she had found on the doorstep of her home earlier that day. She had scrutinized them both for clues and come to the same conclusion as before: they were not written by the same person.
Ryan cast his eye over the note.
“Yes, it’s the same wording and the same handwriting as the other two, by the looks of it.”
MacKenzie cleared her throat.
“Sir, it isn’t a priority at the moment but I should tell you that Lowerson and I found another copycat note hidden beneath my doormat when I returned home to shower and change earlier today. I can’t say how long it had been there.”
Ryan’s brows drew together in a dark, angry line.
“Another one?” He looked away and then back again. “Denise, I won’t risk you coming close to O’Byrne, not until we know for sure who sent you these notes. You match the physical type and age range of his victims and he’s met you in person. We’ll be bringing him in very soon but I don’t want you within grabbing distance.”
MacKenzie’s face flushed with annoyance.
“I can handle myself—”
“This isn’t about you being able to take care of yourself. This is about taking sensible precautions about your safety and the integrity of the operation we have in process. I’m sorry, Denise, I can’t compromise on this.”
She fell silent, which Ryan took as acquiescence.
“Good.” He turned to Lowerson. “Jack, I want you to stick with MacKenzie—”
“Oh, but—”
“I don’t need—”
Ryan held up an authoritative hand.
“It’s not up for discussion. Besides, there’s plenty to be doing here,” he waved around at the hub of activity surrounding them. “PC Yates has already found a host of potential victims from the last ten years and the number just keeps growing. It’s going to keep us busy for months, even after we collar him.”
Ryan nodded towards a large picture of Conor O’Byrne sitting beside a blown up image of the boy he had identified as Conor Jones, taken from the Orphanage group photograph found at Barbara Hewitt’s home.
“He’s been killing for years.”
* * *
Phillips was true to his word. Half an hour later, he instructed the police search team at St Andrew’s Church to pack up for the night. As they collected their gear, he wandered over to the entranceway where Father O’Byrne stood waiting for him.
“All done, Father,” Phillips said cheerfully. “Thanks again for being so accommodating.”
“I hardly had any choice in the matter,” came the terse reply.
It was like water off a duck’s back to the sergeant.
“All the same, we’re grateful for your cooperation. Obviously, we were all wrong about St Andrew’s. Tomorrow, with the Bishop’s permission, I think we’d like to look over St Mary’s.”
O’Byrne nearly laughed. Six hours spent searching every nook and cranny of the church for a phantom earring and they wanted to do it all again tomorrow, which meant they still had no clue at all about where the earring actually was.
Let them chase their tails, if they wanted to. They would find nothing and be forced to issue a grovelling apology at the end of it all; to the Church and to him.
He might have to consider a private suit against Northumbria Police Constabulary for—what did they call it?—pain, suffering and loss of amenity. He could certainly attest that he had lost considerable access to his amenities over the past twenty-four hours.
“I will be happy to oversee the search of St Mary’s,” he said. “Shall we say nine o’clock tomorrow morning?”
“That’ll be just fine,” Phillips smiled broadly and zipped up his coat. “Have a good evening.”
O’Byrne watched the short, barrel of a man and his group of idiot constables as they wandered off into the night. Back to their insignificant, meaningless lives, he thought unkindly.
He waited until the last of their vehicles had left before turning to lock up the church behind him. He jogged across the street to where a former bus station now served as a makeshift car park and hopped behind the wheel of his Vauxhall Corsa, then drove the short distance back to his home near St Mary’s Cathedral. He parked the car outside as usual, then sat behind the wheel with the engine off for another fifteen minutes while he watched for any movement on the street.
There was none. He could see no suspicious looking surveillance vans or cars he didn’t recognise as belonging to his immediate neighbours.
Slowly, he unfolded himself from the car but instead of walking the short distance to his front door, he turned and jogged quickly to the nearest bus stop beside Central Station that would take him to the West Road. Dressed in black trousers and shirt, he undid the priest’s collar at his throat and stuffed it into his pocket.
With his blazer draped over one arm, Father O’Byrne looked just like any other attractive man, making his way home after work.
CHAPTER 23
The rain that had threatened for most of the day finally broke free from the clouds and fell heavily over the city, engorging the river and pooling on top of the forensic tents so that they sagged against its weight. The darkness was a further cloak of invisibility to the man who walked briskly along the West Road in the direction of East Denton Hall, down the steep hill past the gateway to the West Road Cemetery where he had taken Krista Ogilvy-Matthews only a few days before.
It felt like a lifetime ago now, he thought, passing the cemetery gates without a qualm. He knew that the police had nothing on him. No CCTV, no DNA and no other link between him and the women he had killed, otherwise they would have arrested him by now. He worried that they might have made the connection between the old women and Father Healy, that they would be able to trace him back to the orphanage and to Grace. But a different boy had lived there nearly thirty years ago. A boy called Conor Jones who became the man known as Conor O’Byrne only after he was adopted in Ireland.
The records had all gone up in flames years ago, he’d seen to that.
The only thing that could possibly incriminate him was the missing earring, once they realised that the Bishop had entrusted him with the keys to his home and his car.
He must find that earring.
As O’Byrne approached the gates to the Hall, his steps slowed and he kept his head down, scanning the street for any signs that he was being watched.
They weren’t even close, he thought joyously.
Turning into the driveway, he ran across the gravel, feet crunching against the stones underfoot until he reached the garage and drew out the key fob to activate the electric door. Up ahead, East Denton Hall was a dark outline against the night sky, like a sleeping giant he did not wish to awaken.
The doors lifted smoothly and he ducked inside.
* * *
“It’s a go!”
The moment Phillips rang to tell him they had left O’Byrne to his own devices for the evening, Ryan and two specialist surveillance technicians made their way to the agreed rendezvous point in a suburban street around the corner from East Denton Hall. They sat inside a plain white van whose interior was kitted out with high spec screens which provided a direct link to the tiny surveillance cameras planted in strategic places around the Bishop’s Lexus. The cameras had night vision capabilities, if necessary, and the recording devices had good sound quality. The three men sat staring at the dark, grainy screens while they waited for the action to start, their ears covered by large headphones.
Phillips joined them a short while later, clambering into the back of the van. He nodded to the two technicians and scooted across to perch beside Ryan.
“Hot in here, like!” he observed, unzipping his jacket again. “Can’t we crack open a window?”
Ryan pointed towards the button for air-con.
“Where’s Denise?”
Ryan’s eyes didn’t move from the screens.
“Back at CID,” he replied shortly.
“I thought
she would be part of the clean up—”
“She had another note,” Ryan interjected, rendering further explanations unnecessary. Phillips told himself not to be annoyed by the fact that MacKenzie hadn’t called to tell him about it herself but approved of Ryan’s decision to keep her away from the action, where the walls of CID headquarters could protect her.
“Put it out of your mind now,” Ryan instructed him. “Lowerson is with her, back at the fort. If our estimations are correct, O’Byrne will be joining us any moment now and I want your full concentration.”
Phillips did his best to focus.
“Is everyone assembled?”
“Gathered and ready,” Ryan confirmed. “I’ve got two firearms specialists on standby around the corner in a separate unit, with another two detective constables. Air support are also on standby if he tries to rabbit his way out.”
They watched the fuzzy screens until the picture changed and the cameras positioned at either end of the garage, high up on the wall, showed that the garage doors were now opening. A moment later, the garage lights were turned on and O’Byrne stepped into view.
“Bingo,” Ryan murmured.
* * *
O’Byrne turned on the overhead lights and made directly for the Lexus, deactivating its alarm using the set of keys the Bishop had given him. He spent some time searching all around the front passenger seats, feeling along the felt flooring for a small pearl earring but he had vacuumed it thoroughly the day before and disposed of the contents, so if he had managed to suck up anything incriminating it was now long gone.
Then, he moved on to the car boot.
He could hear his own agitated breath as he searched feverishly, the sound of it reverberating around the empty garage. His fingers traced the edges but despite the garage lighting it was difficult to see. Muttering to himself, he looked around for a torch and found one on a shelf along the back wall where the Bishop kept his work tools.
O’Byrne returned to the boot and shone the torch beam in all four corners, eventually climbing fully into the boot himself to gain a better view. He peeled back the carpeted base with anxious hands to reveal the spare tyre underneath and searched all around it.
