Cragside: A DCI Ryan Mystery (The DCI Ryan Mysteries Book 6)

by LJ Ross

  “We’ve got a green light,” he told them. “We’re bringing the bastard in for good this time.”

  Lowerson whooped and did a funny little dance in his chair, while Yates looked on in amusement.

  “Lowerson, Yates? I want you in position beside the service entrance to the estate, in case Henderson decides to make things difficult,” Ryan told them. “Phillips? You’re with me. MacKenzie? Do you want in on this?”

  She gave him a look that would have terrified a weaker man.

  “Ask a stupid question,” she muttered, grabbing her coat.

  Ryan grinned and clapped his hands together.

  “Let’s go.”

  * * *

  Oblivious to the convoy of police cars that were speeding towards him, Martin Henderson checked his watch again. Ten to nine.

  In a few minutes, he was due to meet with an unknown person but it had to be someone who was already inside the house or who had access to it. Unfortunately, that didn’t narrow down the pool of suspects or give him any hint as to their identity, since the house was still brimming with people.

  The Gilberts were enjoying dinner with some friends at a small dining table in the library downstairs and, as far as he knew, they were on to coffee and truffles. He’d seen Maggie and one of the other catering staff bustling in and out of the kitchen serving food but now their footsteps had fallen quiet.

  He left his office and poked his head into the staff room, where he was irritated to find Charlotte Shapiro chatting to Dave Quibble about their plans to restore the Victorian irrigation canals through some of the land and he decided to leave them to it before he was drawn into conversation.

  The main hallway was quiet, infused with lamplight.

  He didn’t feel threatened, now he knew there were so many people in the house, but their presence made his plans much riskier than before.

  He checked his watch again.

  Five to nine.

  Time to go.

  * * *

  Phillips slammed his foot against an imaginary brake in the passenger foot well of Ryan’s car as they swerved past a white van, which was a clear indication of just how low they had stooped in the driving stakes. Ryan appeared nonplussed and continued to manoeuvre between late evening traffic with all the speed and precision that came with advanced police driving certification. “There’s a squad car already up there keeping an eye on the house,” Phillips reminded him. “Henderson won’t be able to run off anytime in the next fifteen minutes.”

  “We’ve said that before,” Ryan muttered, flicking on his siren to get past a stream of slow-moving cars.

  Phillips shifted in his seat.

  “Can’t wait to see his face when we slap him in handcuffs,” he couldn’t help adding. “Do you think we should do it quietly, so as not to upset the old couple?”

  Ryan looked away from the road long enough to bestow a disbelieving glance.

  “Lionel Gilbert is as strong as an ox and his wife is just the same,” he said. “Honestly, you’re as bad as Lowerson. If I went around with the same kind of attitude towards anyone over a certain age, I’d have put you out to pasture long ago.”

  Phillips bristled.

  “Watch it, lad. There’s plenty life in this old dog yet.”

  Ryan laughed and flicked his indicator to take the slip road off the dual carriageway.

  * * *

  Henderson checked the hallway downstairs to make sure nobody was around, then slipped up the main flight of oak stairs next to the front door. Lamps fizzed atop the wide newel posts to guide his way inside the darkened house. He moved softly, with the gait of a much younger man thanks to a regular diet and exercise regime he’d implemented since giving up vodka and cocaine in the late nineties. It had been fun for a while, he supposed, but he needed to be in possession of all his faculties to act on the many small opportunities that life presented. He moved cautiously along a long corridor towards the Armstrong room, which was tucked in the furthermost wing on the first floor of the house. He approved of the choice of venue, at least. The room was used as an exhibition space telling the story of William Armstrong’s illustrious history and its impact on the North East but it was seldom used by the family or staff except when showing visitors around the house—it was bound to be empty at that time of day.

  He heard the faint sound of laughter trickling through the house from the library downstairs and reminded himself to leave via the front door, for the benefit of the surveillance officers who continued to lurk beside the gates.

  His eyes scanned the doorways as he passed, half expecting someone to step out.

  Nobody did.

  As he reached the end of the corridor, he entered a small hallway with several doors leading off it. To his left, there was a bedroom, the morning room and a second bedroom. To his right, there was another small hallway and a set of metal doors housing the old lift shaft, which was no longer in use. He knew Dave Quibble had ideas about bringing it back to life but it was a delicate project, spanning all three floors of the house, and for now the project was shelved. Just beside the lift doors, there was another oak panelled door leading to the Armstrong room.

  Henderson looked over his shoulder one last time before pushing open the door.

  * * *

  After an awkward stand-off over whose turn it was to drive, Lowerson had bowed to the old adage about ladies going first and found himself riding shotgun while Yates floored it all the way to Cragside. He had to admit, he was impressed.

  He was less impressed by the collection of CDs he’d found rattling in her glove compartment, consisting mostly of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Greatest Musical Hits and what he would have called ‘angsty’ indie music from the early millennium.

  Where were the dance floor hits? A token summer anthem, at least?

  “So, ah, what do you like to do in your downtime, Yates?”

  Her eyes didn’t leave the road ahead but she frowned.

  “What do you mean?”

  Lowerson rolled his eyes.

  “When you’re not working, what do you do? Apart from listening to The Phantom of the Opera, that is.”

  “I like to read.”

  Lowerson scratched the stubble on his chin and wondered what it was about this moody, uncommunicative woman he liked so damn much.

  “What do you read? Crime fiction?”

  Yates blushed and was glad it was too dark for him to see it. She had a penchant for sweet romance novels but she wasn’t about to tell him that.

  “Ah, you know, this and that.”

  Lowerson watched the lights of passing traffic as they zoomed along the fast lane.

  “I quite like romance novels,” he said, nonchalantly. “I get enough of the gritty stuff in my day job.”

  In the near darkness, he couldn’t see her smile.

  * * *

  Henderson pushed open the door to the Armstrong room and found it empty. He reached for the light switch on the wall then decided against it, not wishing to draw attention to himself in case anyone else should pass by. The light from the hallway was weak but sufficient for present purposes.

  He prowled around the room, which was a basic square with several wall-mounted placards and some exhibits inside a central unit with Perspex casing to protect it from damage. He held his watch up to the light and tried to read the dial.

  One minute to nine.

  Any second now, he would find out who they were and what they wanted.

  And then, he would find a way to get rid of them.

  Henderson positioned himself just behind the door, so that he would see them entering the room before they saw him. He stood there in silence, feeling the wall against his back, then frowned as he heard a creaking sound coming from somewhere close by.

  He was about to investigate, when the house was plunged into darkness once again.

  * * *

  Ryan swung his car through the gates and was forced to reduce his speed along the narrow driveway, for which Phill
ips was eternally grateful. They followed the road over the little stone bridge next to the Archimedes screw and heard the water bubbling furiously through its crushing blades as they passed. They rounded a bend and the house materialised through the trees, its windows flaming brightly against the inky blue-black sky. “It doesn’t look real, does it?” Phillips said, his eyes trained on the perfect backdrop.

  “It’s not going to disappear before your eyes,” Ryan muttered.

  Then, in a moment of extreme irony, that is exactly what happened.

  The two men looked on in shock as the house seemed to disappear, its walls blending with the colour of the night sky and the trees surrounding it.

  CHAPTER 30

  “What the hell?”

  Martin Henderson swore beneath his breath as the lights went out. He stepped away from the wall to begin feeling his way towards the doorway but the house was pitch black and he could barely see his own hand in front of his face. The circuit had blown again, he thought, which was hardly surprising when a couple of old crackpots insisted on living like Victorian throwbacks rather than relying on the National Grid like the rest of the known world.

  The sooner he could get away from here, the better.

  His fingers brushed against the architrave on the doorway and he began to retrace his steps using the wall as a guide, no longer concerned about keeping his meeting at nine o’clock. He only hoped the other person was having as much trouble as he was, finding their way through the maze of rooms in the old house.

  When his fingers touched nothing but air, he realised he’d reached the turning to lead him back into the small hallway outside the bedrooms and the morning room, and the lift shaft was somewhere over his left shoulder.

  Blind without any light source, Henderson’s other senses were heightened considerably. He shivered as he stepped in front of the doors to the lift shaft, feeling an icy breath of wind brush against his cheeks. His brain was slow to compute the fact and he did not realise the implication until it was too late.

  The doors were open.

  The figure stepped out in front of him, barely making a creak against the floorboards but it was enough to alert him to the presence of another.

  “For The Valiant,” they whispered.

  Two firm hands came up to thrust against his chest and Henderson stumbled in the darkness, a strangled gasp escaping his throat as he fell backward into the empty lift shaft. Down and down he fell, landing with a nauseating thud in the basement three flights below.

  * * *

  Ryan and Phillips pulled up outside the main entrance to the house just as the lighting was restored. The front door was open and they hurried inside, where they found a small crowd of people gathered in the hallway. Ryan made a mental note of who was present and added Dave Quibble to the list when he joined them from the direction of the fuse box in the servants’ corridor next to the kitchen. “I definitely need to call in a specialist,” he declared, cheerfully. “I’m damned if I know why the power keeps failing; there isn’t any shortage of hydroelectricity.”

  Ryan counted the faces he could see and found a very important one to be missing.

  “Where’s Martin Henderson?” he demanded.

  Only just registering his arrival, the crowd turned to look at him in surprise.

  “Hello, Ryan.” Cassandra Gilbert stepped forward, sliding easily into her role as hostess. “I think Martin was working in his office until recently. Maggie? Would you be a dear and ask him to join us?”

  The housekeeper headed off down the hallway to seek him out.

  “What happened here?” Ryan asked.

  This time, it was Lionel’s turn to respond.

  “What the devil do you think happened? The blasted lights went out again and I spilled port all over the ruddy place!”

  Ryan didn’t bother to comment because he had spotted Maggie returning to them and she was alone.

  “I’m sorry, he isn’t in his office,” she said, worriedly. “I had a quick look down the hall but I can’t see him anywhere.”

  “He’s not in the staff room,” Charlotte Shapiro put in. “I’ve just been in there.”

  Ryan slipped his mobile phone from his jacket pocket and put an immediate call through to the surveillance team outside the estate manager’s cottage, exchanged a few brief words and then slipped it into his pocket again.

  He turned to Phillips, keeping his voice lowered.

  “Henderson’s car is still parked in the staff car park and the surveillance team say he’s been in here all day.”

  “I’ll check in with Lowerson and Yates, just to be sure he hasn’t legged it,” Phillips said, then added, “I get a bad feeling about this.”

  “You and me both, Frank.”

  With that, Ryan turned back to the crowd. Other than the Gilberts, there were four people he didn’t recognise but assumed were friends given their evening attire. Dave Quibble stood in his anorak as if he’d been about to go home and Charlotte Shapiro stood beside him dressed in her favourite dark green gilet. Maggie stood beside a couple of women he recognised as part-time catering staff who sometimes worked shifts in the tea room or at the house.

  “If I could ask you all to stay seated in the library for the time being—”

  “Why?” Lionel demanded. “What gives you the right to order me about in my own house?”

  Ryan simply flipped out his warrant card.

  “This gives me the right,” he explained, in a flat voice. “We are about to conduct a search of the house but, before we do, I would like to issue a friendly warning. We are here this evening to arrest Martin Henderson on charges of murder. If any of you are aware of his whereabouts or have information that could help lead us to him, you should tell us now.”

  He paused but nobody was forthcoming.

  “I’m sure I don’t need to remind any of you that obstruction of justice is a serious offence,” he said.

  Looking among their faces, all he saw was stunned shock.

  “Alright, we’ll search the place from top to bottom.”

  * * *

  They agreed to separate, with Ryan taking the ground and basement levels of the house while Phillips concentrated on the upper floors, telling himself the stairs were good for his constitution. They searched with a single-minded intensity, leaving no door unopened and making a note of any that were locked. In the end, there was no need to trouble the housekeeper or the Gilberts for a key, because Ryan found the body almost as soon as he descended from the kitchen into the cellar. The lift shaft was located directly to the left of the stairs, in the chilly depths of the basement. There was no lift, since it had been removed to a specialist restoration company for refurbishment, leaving the shaft empty from the basement all the way up to the second floor. At first glance, there was no way of knowing how far Henderson had fallen, or from which floor, but his skull had smashed against the stone like an eggshell and he lay in a rapidly congealing pool of his own blood.

  Ryan stared at Henderson’s corpse, hardly believing his eyes.

  What the hell was happening?

  He felt a sudden chill and glanced over his shoulder, half expecting to find someone standing beside him, but the basement was empty.

  * * *

  A few minutes later, Phillips joined him. “Lowerson and Yates are upstairs taking statements,” he said. “Faulkner’s on his way.”

  Ryan nodded, moving to look at the body from a different angle.

  “He must’ve jumped,” Phillips declared. “It’s the only explanation.”

  “Is it?” Ryan wondered.

  “It has to be!” Phillips burst out, gesticulating towards Henderson’s lifeless body. “Because I’m damned if I know who’s going around popping people off like flies if it wasn’t him.”

  Ryan continued to take photographs for his file while they waited for the local doctor to pay her third visit of the week.

  “The fact Henderson is now dead doesn’t make him any less of a killer,” he sa
id quietly.

  Phillips grunted.

  “All the more reason for him to jump, if you ask me. The bloke knew we were onto him and couldn’t stand the thought of going to prison.”

  “It doesn’t fit his personality,” Ryan said.

  “He was a coward,” Phillips argued.

  “Yes, but too much a coward to take his own life. He valued himself too much and was arrogant enough to think he’d walk away from his crimes.”

  Ryan took another careful step, leaving a wide berth around the body. He studied the placement of the limbs and torso, the pattern of the injuries that he could see, and swore softly.

  “Henderson fell face-up.”

  Phillips frowned and edged forward until the full effect of blunt force trauma came into view.

  “Aye, it looks that way,” he admitted, swallowing hard.

  “The coroner will have the final say but in every case of suicide by falling I’ve seen in the past fifteen years, the body was found face-down, not face-up like this.”

  Phillips nodded slowly.

  “The jumper normally steps out, or leaps off whatever they’re standing on, so they land feet first or face-first,” he agreed thoughtfully, craning his neck to look up the dark lift shaft. “It’s a straight drop, too.”

  They heard a sound echoing around the walls of the basement and then the tread of footsteps, signalling the arrival of the doctor. Before she joined them, Phillips spoke in an urgent undertone.

  “If he was pushed, then we’ve missed someone or something along the way.”

  “Oh, yes.” Ryan let out a short, mirthless laugh. “We’ve been fools, Frank.”

  * * *

  Killing had been so terribly easy. It had been a surprise to find just how easy it had been. They’d worried whether it would play on their conscience or deprive them of a portion of their own soul in exchange for the taking of another. Was ‘an eye for an eye’ really the best way to avenge the deaths of all those who were lost so long ago?

  But they needn’t have worried.

  Their eyes had locked with Henderson’s in the darkness, just as he’d fallen backward into the abyss of his own making, and it had been beautiful. To see his fear, his comprehension—too little, too late but an awareness all the same—would surely be worth every momentary regret they might feel for the rest of their lives.