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

by LJ Ross

“What about you, Father Samuel? Can you tell us when you last saw Father Jacob?” Patel asked.

  “It was probably around the same time,” he said, and pushed his glasses a little higher on the bridge of his nose. “I led the prayers at four o’clock and could see our brother sitting with the children from St. Cuthbert’s House on the pews towards the back. We didn’t have an opportunity to speak before he left, which I will lament for all my days.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” Patel said, with apparent sincerity. “When did either of you first become aware that something was wrong?”

  “Not until later,” Samuel said. “A couple of the boys came to find me at around nine o’clock. They’d returned from their Movie Night half an hour before, to find Jacob missing. There had also been an accident in the laundry room, or a break-in, as we now fear, and they thought it best to report it.”

  “Why to you?”

  “S—sorry?”

  “Why report it to you, specifically?” Ryan asked. “Do you live near to the boarding house?”

  “I—no, my cell is in the Abbey. The children came to find me in the Abbey Church, where I was spending some time in quiet contemplation.”

  “Part of the Chaplain’s role is to provide ongoing pastoral support,” the headmaster explained. “Father Samuel has been a source of guidance and advice to many of our children, over the years, and they find him very easy to talk to.”

  “Around what time did the children come to find you?” Patel queried.

  “I’d say around nine o’clock, or shortly thereafter. I went with them to the boarding house and, when I couldn’t find Jacob, I oversaw Lights Out and supervised them for the remainder of the evening. I communicated this to Father Peter at around nine-forty-five.”

  “Was anybody with you in the abbey?” Patel asked.

  A slow flush crept up Father Samuel’s neck.

  “Not—not at the exact moment the children found me, no. But—”

  “I, myself, was with Father Samuel in the abbey, directly prior to the children’s arrival,” Father Peter interjected. “I can vouch for the timing.”

  There was an infinitesimal pause.

  “Yes, sorry, I’d forgotten,” Father Samuel mumbled.

  “Thank you,” Patel said, with another of her unthreatening smiles that Ryan was growing to admire. “Father Peter, weren’t you worried when you heard Father Jacob couldn’t be found?”

  It was remarkable, Ryan thought, but the man’s face barely moved. It had remained fixed in more or less the same genial expression throughout, and didn’t alter at the implied suggestion that there might have been grounds for action long before he’d taken it.

  “Of course, I was surprised,” he said. “However, I naturally assumed Father Jacob had been detained with some urgent matter, perhaps in helping another child or one of our brothers. As you can see, the campus here at Crayke is large, and it’s not always possible to keep tabs on all people at all times.”

  “How about the children?” Ryan asked, ever so smoothly.

  For the first time, a flicker of irritation passed over the headmaster’s face.

  “You may rest assured, the children at Crayke are always well supervised, chief inspector, and follow a regular routine.”

  “We’re sure that’s the case, Father Peter,” Patel said, and her eyes flashed a warning for Ryan. Don’t push too far.

  He nodded.

  “We understand a search was made for Father Jacob early this morning,” Patel said. “Then a report was made to the police control room at…nine-oh-four.”

  She looked up from her notebook and fixed the headmaster with a stare.

  “Can I ask why the decision was taken not to telephone the police straight away?”

  Father Peter leaned back in his chair and linked his fingers over the front of his habit, favouring her with another of his mildly condescending smiles.

  “As you may be aware, the grounds here at Crayke are extensive. They include various types of terrain, as well as a number of different buildings on the complex, discounting the abbey and monastery. It remained perfectly possible that Father Jacob had taken the opportunity, whilst off-duty, to go for a walk or something of that kind—only to find himself hurt or stranded somewhere, without the means to raise an alarm.”

  It all sounded so reasonable, Ryan thought.

  “We were concerned not to waste police time,” the headmaster tagged on. “The nearest police station is miles away and, besides, we had Toby to help us.”

  “Toby is…the dog?”

  “Not just any dog,” Samuel cut in, with a genuine show of enthusiasm. “He’s the best hound we’ve had in the pack for years.”

  “Yes, our Captain of Beagling was able to guide Toby along the way until eventually…well, you know what we found,” the headmaster said, and whispered a prayer under his breath before kissing the cross that hung on a long chain around his neck.

  “How’s he doing?” Ryan asked. “It must have been quite upsetting.”

  “Yes, Toby was quite upset at having to be dragged away from his find—”

  “No,” Ryan said. “Not the beagle. The boy.”

  The headmaster turned a slow shade of red, giving Ryan all the answer he needed.

  The boy was long forgotten.

  CHAPTER 13

  “Did I ever tell you about Hot Pants Harry?”

  Ryan added a few kisses to a text he’d been composing to Anna, clicked ‘send’, then turned to look at Phillips, who’d insisted upon driving the return journey—much to their mutual relief. Whilst he could function admirably on chronic sleep-deprivation for long stretches of time, he was as human as the next and wasn’t too proud to admit when it was time for a break.

  “Who’s that?” he asked. “Some collar from the olden days?”

  Phillips smiled into the passing darkness. Despite it being only a little after six, the sun had already set, and the road stretched before them like an endless tunnel of blurred lines and flashing headlights against an ink-blue sky.

  “Nah, Harry was a lad who lived on my street, growin’ up,” he said, casting his mind back. “Bearin’ in mind I’m talkin’ about the seventies, I s’pose you could say it was the olden days.”

  He reached across to turn up the temperature in the car, so that the warm air would thaw them both out.

  “I’m surprised you can remember that far back,” Ryan joked. “Why did they call him ‘Hot Pants Harry’—or is that a stupid question?”

  “Well, he never actually wore any hot pants, that I know of,” Phillips said. “But he did occasionally like to wear his mam’s dresses. Somebody caught him, one day, and word got about…not long after, somebody thought up a name and it stuck.”

  Phillips kept his eyes straight ahead, as they pootled along behind a lorry.

  “I probably don’t need to tell you, lad, but, where I grew up, people lived hard lives. They lived hand-to-mouth, most of the time, and only just scraped by—it was the same with us. Thatcher came along, the recession…there was a lot of anger amongst working folk, all round the country.”

  Ryan nodded.

  “We saw the remnants of it, after that case in Penshaw,” he murmured. “People have long memories.”

  “Aye, they do,” Phillips agreed. “Fact is, most people back then were spoiling for a fight. We all knew Gladys down the road was gettin’ beat up by her husband, probably plenty more, as well, who were too ashamed to mention it. There was a lot of people turnin’ to drink, especially, which made things worse…”

  Phillips thought of his own father, then shoved the memory away.

  Nobody was perfect, after all.

  “Growin’ up around that, feelin’ like you’ve got no way out…it was hard,” he admitted.

  There was nothing Ryan could say that wouldn’t sound trite, so he simply listened. It wasn’t often that Phillips spoke of his early life, so he knew the reason for doing so now must be an important one.

  �
�Well, you can imagine, Harry got it in the neck more often than not,” Phillips said, his voice full of regret. “Me? I went to Buddle’s and made myself tough, so I could use my fists to fight off anyone and anything that came at me—but Harry?” Phillips shook his head. “He wasn’t made for fightin’,” he said. “God knows, he tried.”

  There was a long silence in the car, until he spoke again.

  “One night, Harry’s Da’ came home early and found him playin’ with his mam’s clothes again. Ol’ Terry, he’d had a skin-full and went straight for him. I know, because I heard Harry’s screams from three doors down the street.”

  Ryan’s stomach turned, as he thought of it. “What happened?”

  “I ran downstairs to tell my Da’ and ask him to help make it stop,” Phillips said. “He told me to go back to my room and mind my own bloody business.”

  He let out a mirthless laugh.

  “I was only young, and I did what I was told. I went back upstairs, put a pillow over my ears and my parents turned the telly up loud. Y’ know what happened? The screams stopped, just like that,” he said, and clicked his fingers.

  Ryan felt his heart stutter, already knowing what his friend would say.

  “Aye,” Phillips said, turning briefly to look at him. “Turns out, Harry fell down the back stairs. Funny, as he’d never had trouble going down those stairs before. Police came, they heard Terry’s version, and we watched them come and take Harry’s broken body away in the dead of the night. Like he’d been nothing, and nobody.”

  He swallowed, hard.

  “I’ve never felt more of a coward than the day I went back up those stairs to my room,” Phillips said. “I’ve never felt more trapped or confined in a community that believed family problems should stay in the family. Harry’s the reason I wanted to get out, the reason I joined the Force. The first day I walked into CID, I asked my DCS to re-open the case, and I kept asking, until Terry Fletcher was charged with manslaughter, back in ’98.”

  “You never told me that,” Ryan said softly.

  “Aye, and you know why?” Phillips said, rhetorically. “I was doin’ the same thing as my Da’. Thinkin’ it was just my problem, thinkin’ it was all about where I came from or the fact that we didn’t have a pot to piss in…and that it was somethin’ you wouldn’t understand. But, over the years, I’ve realised that’s only half the story. It doesn’t matter if you come from a two-up, two-down miner’s cottage in Elswick, or a rambling stately home that looks like Crayke bleedin’ College. You can still feel trapped, and you can still be surrounded by folk who think there are some things best left unsaid.”

  Ryan spoke, when he could be sure he could trust his own voice.

  “You’re right, you know,” he said, eventually. “About lots of things, it pains me to admit, but one thing, in particular—I grew up in a place like Crayke, away from my family and my home. I lived by rules, schedules, expectations…and craved love like an addict, whenever any was thrown my way. You talk about feeling trapped? I know that feeling, Frank, and what it takes to break free from the chains that bind you to it. You can’t change the past, but you can live in the here and now.”

  Phillips nodded, and thought of one more thing he wanted to share, in the quiet space of the car.

  “Before he died, my Da’ talked about what happened that day,” he said. “He told me he’d lived with the guilt and shame of having turned the other cheek, and was proud that I’d done the right thing by re-opening the case. I know he got a lot of stick for it from some of the neighbours, but he was instrumental in gettin’ others to come forward and give statements. It made all the difference.”

  Ryan smiled into the darkness.

  “I s’pose, now I’m a father, I wonder about how good of a job I’ll make of it,” Phillips continued. “I think about all the mistakes I’m makin’ and ones I might make in the future. Then, I remember my old Da’, and how, when he died, he was a better man than the one he’d been in the years before. It gives me hope.”

  “You don’t need to worry—”

  “I’m no saint,” Phillips said, before Ryan could go on. “Another reason I never told you about Harry is because…well, it was me who thought up that awful nickname. It was me who labelled that poor kid, to get a few laughs from the other kids on the street. Little Frankie Phillips, with his big gob and his spotty chin, who wanted to be tough like all the rest—”

  “Frank—”

  “No, listen to me, lad, because this bit’s important,” Phillips said, more quietly now. “I’ve made my mistakes, God knows, but I’ve tried my best to correct them. I worry about Samantha, about Emma, about all the young ones because, in the world we live in, it seems like nobody’s allowed to make a mistake and feel sorry about it. But how else do you get to be a better person? It’s never too late to change…I’m livin’ proof of that.”

  Ryan inhaled a long breath and let it out slowly, unaccountably thinking of his own father, and of whether he’d judged him too harshly over the years.

  Food for thought.

  And, speaking of food…

  “Well, I never thought I’d see the day you chose quinoa over a bacon butty, so I’d have to agree,” he said.

  Phillips grinned. “See? It was fear of the quinoa that kept me from tryin’ it, more than the taste itself.”

  Ryan gave him the side-eye. “And the taste?”

  “Okay, bad example,” Phillips admitted. “It still tastes like death, warmed up. But you know what I’m tryin’ to say.”

  “I do,” Ryan said, and yawned. “Doesn’t all this warm air make you feel sleepy?”

  “Nope,” Phillips said. “You should rest your eyes for a few minutes. I’ll wake you up when we’re nearly there.”

  “Well, maybe…just for a minute.”

  Seconds after his eyelids closed, Ryan fell into a deep, dreamless sleep, safe in the knowledge that his friend watched over him.

  Phillips drove on through the night thinking of all the lessons he’d learned during his lifetime, and of how much he owed to Harry Fletcher. Through the windshield, he looked up to see a blanket of stars overhead, glittering like diamonds.

  “Rest easy, Harry,” he said softly. “Things are gettin’ better by the day.”

  CHAPTER 14

  “Splish, splash, splosh!”

  Anna stood in the doorway of the bathroom with the baby’s towel tucked beneath her arm and a bottle of milk in the other, smiling.

  “Well now, let’s get that tummy all washed…”

  She watched incredulously as Charles Ryan, a distinguished former diplomat and member of the minor aristocracy, bathed his granddaughter gently, making quacky-quack noises as he went.

  “I think you’re all done, baby girl…ah! Here’s your mummy…”

  Anna stepped forward to lay out the towel and swaddle Emma, whose indignant cries at being snatched up from her warm bath could probably be heard all the way from Land’s End to John O’ Groats.

  “I just heard that Ry—ah, Maxwell’s on his way home now,” she said, awkwardly. It was a sticking point for Charles that his only son chose not to answer to his given name and had, instead, appropriated his surname for regular use, and she had no wish to stoke the fire.

  Charles heaved himself to his feet with a slight click of the knees, which wasn’t bad for a man over seventy.

  “That’s good to hear,” he said, and began tidying the bathroom while Anna dried and dressed the baby.

  He was about to head back downstairs, when his daughter-in-law called for him.

  “Charles?”

  He stuck his head around the door and in the dimly-lit nursery, just for a fraction of a moment, she caught a glimpse of how Ryan might look in a few years’ time.

  The idea of her husband as an older man brought no sense of sadness or remorse for the passage of time—in fact, if he was planning to stay as fit and healthy as his father, she’d be a very happy woman indeed.

  “Yes, dear?”
<
br />   “I was wondering if you’d like to give the baby her bottle? Eve happened to mention that you didn’t have the chance to do it when Natalie and Max were babies and I thought—well, you haven’t had much of an opportunity here, either, since one or the other of us is always fighting over the privilege. Would you like to try?”

  Charles felt as nervous as a new driver. “Ah—well, yes. Yes, if you really don’t mind—”

  “Of course not!” Anna smiled. “Why don’t you come and sit over here?”

  She settled Emma’s grandfather in the comfy nursing chair and turned the lights down low, before reminding him of the best position to hold the baby while she fed.

  “I’m all fingers and thumbs,” he muttered, while his hands shook slightly at the unexpected responsibility.

  “There you go,” Anna whispered, stroking her daughter’s head as she began to suck noisily at the bottle. “You’re a natural, grandad.”

  Charles smiled, and might have been fifteen years younger.

  “She’s all right like this?”

  “I’d say so, wouldn’t you?”

  He looked down into his granddaughter’s beautiful brown eyes, and found himself smiling.

  “She’s a corker,” he murmured. “I remember—”

  It seemed he wasn’t going to say anything further, but then he continued.

  “I remember the day Maxwell was born,” he continued, keeping his voice low. “I’ve handled artillery rifles, shotguns, hand grenades…you name it. But I can tell you, holding his little body in my arms when we brought him home that first night was the most nerve-wracking thing I’ve ever done.”

  “R—Maxwell felt the same way, when we brought Emma home,” she said.

  “You should call him by the name you’re used to,” Charles said, gently. “I can’t quite bring myself to call him ‘Ryan’ just yet, but I’m working on that.”

  Anna thanked him, and wished whole-heartedly that Ryan could have been there to witness the moment.

  “Emma has Ryan’s black hair…and yours,” she said.

  Charles looked down at the baby he held.

  “More grey than black, these days,” he said, and wondered where the time had gone. “She has her mother’s eyes…just as Ryan has Eve’s shade. They’re more silvery-grey than blue, really.”