Angel: A DCI Ryan Mystery (The DCI Ryan Mysteries Book 4)

by LJ Ross

  “St Mary’s is only a short drive from where Karen Dobbs lived, in the west end of town.”

  Phillips made a rumbling sound.

  “Both of them are within the Hexham and Newcastle Diocese and both fall under the Deanery of Newcastle City Centre.”

  “And we found a leaflet for Narcotics Anonymous at Karen’s house, which is held at St Andrew’s on Friday nights. I want you to ring Nina Ogilvy-Matthews and Oliver Robertson. Ask whether their spouses had any known connections with either church.”

  * * *

  On Sunday afternoons, St Andrew’s Catholic Church hosted a soup kitchen to feed some of the hungry people who lived on the edges of Newcastle society; the homeless, the poor, or those who were simply in need. As MacKenzie and Lowerson stepped through its beautiful arched doorway they were struck by its hospitality and, had he been there, Ryan might have agreed. Community spirit leaked from every orifice. The last vestiges of murky daylight streamed through the pretty stained glass windows and provided a stunning backdrop for the modest, unprepossessing altar at the head of the church. Everywhere else was crammed with people chatting and laughing in huddled groups or in a long line waiting patiently with mismatched crockery bowls for their turn at the tables holding four large soup cauldrons. The ladles were ministered by a group of volunteers and, as they moved closer, MacKenzie recognised one of them as Paul Cooke.

  “Well, well,” she murmured under her breath, fixing a smile on her face.

  Lowerson clocked him and made a funny whistling sound between his teeth.

  “Wonder what Cooke’s doing here,” he muttered.

  As if sensing their regard, the owner of The Lobster Pot looked up suddenly and the soup ladle he held in his hand froze in mid-air. He sent Lowerson a polite smile across the room but his eyes passed quickly over him and came to rest upon MacKenzie.

  Once again, she found herself the uncomfortable subject of his scrutiny and it made her angry because he had not said anything inappropriate, nor had he even acted inappropriately. If he had, she might have had recourse to say something but in the meantime she was left with the muddling sensation of being the object of his unwanted desire.

  At that moment, another man appeared at her shoulder.

  “Can I help you?”

  MacKenzie turned and was greeted by a pair of arresting blue eyes framed inside the handsome, slightly tired-looking face of the priest of St Andrew’s. Though she would proclaim to all and sundry that she loved DS Frank Phillips, she was only mortal and could mourn the loss of this particular man to the rest of womankind, given the vows of chastity he must surely have taken.

  “Hello,” she held out a hand and found it clasped in a brief but firm handshake. “DI MacKenzie and DC Lowerson, Northumbria CID.”

  “Father Conor O’Byrne,” he replied.

  “You’re the parish priest?”

  “No, Seamus is accompanying the Bishop on a trip to Italy, so I and another of my colleagues are sharing his duties while he is absent.” He paused and smiled down at MacKenzie. “Do I detect a fellow native of the Emerald Isle? County Kerry, perhaps?”

  MacKenzie could not help but smile back.

  “Right enough, Father. You’ve got a good ear,” she turned her mind to business. “We’re investigating the death of a woman called Barbara Hewitt.”

  Lowerson produced a picture and showed it to O’Byrne.

  “We’re trying to trace this woman’s last movements. Do you recognise her?”

  “Yes, I do. She never told me her name but I recognise this lady from, perhaps, a week ago?”

  MacKenzie and Lowerson held off doing the happy dance. Here, finally, was the breakthrough they had been waiting for.

  “We’d be grateful if you could tell us everything you remember about your interaction with this woman.”

  “Of course,” he gestured for them to follow him along the aisle towards a more secluded spot inside one of the front row pews, away from the din of diners beside the entranceway. When they had settled themselves, he began to recount his story.

  “The lady came in seeking to give confession last Saturday…no, it would have been Friday.” He pulled a face and then cleared it again. “Yes, definitely Friday. I remember because she was really quite insistent that somebody should hear her confession. As I say, I am not the parish priest of St Andrew’s and there are set times when confession is heard. Still, she would not take ‘no’ for an answer, so I agreed to hear it.”

  MacKenzie already knew the answer to her next question, but she asked it anyway.

  “Can you tell us what was discussed?”

  He looked at her as if she should have known better.

  “A priest is specifically required, on pain of excommunication, not to divulge anything discussed in a confessional. It is part of my vocation and part of the sacrament of confession. I’m sorry, inspector, that I can’t help you on this occasion.”

  Lowerson looked on in disbelief.

  “Are you kidding me? The woman has been murdered—surely, that’s more important than some church rule?”

  The Dean adopted a patient expression, one that he had worn many times before.

  “It can be a difficult concept to explain to those who do not follow the faith but let me try. God’s law is considered higher than any man-made law and, as such, we should seek to cleanse our souls through His forgiveness. For the many everyday minor or venial sins we commit, a direct confession to God through prayer will suffice. However, in the case of grave or mortal sins, confession is necessary otherwise those sins will crush the spiritual life out of the person’s soul.”

  Lowerson was about to say something when MacKenzie put a restraining hand on his arm.

  “What kind of mortal sins would require confession, Father?”

  The Dean smiled, pleased that she had caught on.

  “In the simplest of terms, a mortal sin is that constituting a grave or serious matter. It must have been committed with the full knowledge of the individual, both of the sin and of the gravity of the offence. A person must have committed the offence whilst in full possession of their free and God-given will.”

  “When I was a girl, the priest told me to look to the Ten Commandments to understand what constituted a mortal sin.”

  “It’s a good source,” the Dean agreed.

  Lowerson managed to drag his jaw from the floor to ask another pertinent question.

  “Do you remember how long she stayed? Is there anything you can tell us about her movements?”

  The Dean relaxed again now that the ethical questions had passed.

  “Yes, I can. I seem to think that she arrived sometime late morning, or perhaps around noon, then left an hour later. Her confession was…extensive.”

  “How can you be sure about the timings?”

  The Dean flushed.

  “Ah, well, I remember feeling quite desperate for a trip to the gents,” he gave them a pained smile. “As I say, her confession was a long one. I glanced at the clock when we finished and then made directly for the amenities. I’m fairly sure it was just before one o’clock.”

  Lowerson grinned as if they had shared a manly joke.

  They asked him a few more questions but they had already learned something important; Barbara Hewitt had returned to her faith for some reason, something she was compelled to confess or run the risk of losing her immortal soul. MacKenzie and Lowerson decided to renew their search into the woman’s past, convinced now that it held the key to everything.

  CHAPTER 15

  MacKenzie drove swiftly along the A1 towards Rothbury. Traffic in the opposite direction was heavy with people returning from a weekend by the sea, but the road north was blessedly clear and she put her foot down hard to beat the setting sun.

  Lowerson sat beside her with his smartphone in hand, skimming through the data they had accumulated on Barbara Hewitt. The light from the screen glowed white against his face, lending it a rakish air as he frowned down at the screen a
nd chewed thoughtfully on his lip.

  “I’m getting an ‘out of office’ message from the compliance officer at the bank and no response from anybody at HM Revenue and Customs but the telephone company is feeding through its data.”

  MacKenzie signalled to overtake a slow-moving lorry.

  “And?”

  “There’s hardly any activity on her account and nothing since last Wednesday, two days before she died. As for the numbers she called, a few of them are ‘0800’ numbers, call centres and things like that.”

  “One of them will probably be the company that runs the New Bridge Street car park,” MacKenzie commented.

  “Yeah, to make her complaint,” Lowerson nodded. “As for the rest, I’d need more time, guv.”

  “Speaking of the car park, did we ever hear back from Mick about that CCTV?”

  “Nope,” Lowerson said roundly. “I’ve called the office a bunch of times but nobody is picking up.”

  “Alright, Jack, we’ll stop by on our way home later and try speaking to the other security guard. Mick is a liability at the best of times. Until then, let’s use our heads,” she murmured, and flipped down the sunshield to protect her eyes from the glare of the sun as it glimmered low on the horizon. “We need to find out what was so bad, what affected Barbara so much that she went back to church. It’s there somewhere in the fragments of her life, we just need to find it.”

  “Everybody has told us she led a boring life,” Lowerson said. “She probably ran over a pigeon on the road and decided she was in danger of losing her place in Heaven.”

  MacKenzie flashed a grin.

  “There’ll be a skeleton rattling around in Barbara’s closet and I bet it’ll be a bloody big one. We’ll root around her house and see if we missed anything on the first sweep. She was obsessive about routine and order; there’s bound to be something in one of her drawers or in one of her old picture albums.”

  “Can I at least put some music on until we get there?”

  “Sure, I think there’s a CD of The Corrs: Greatest Hits in the glove compartment.”

  Lowerson sent her a pained expression, which was studiously ignored.

  * * *

  Sister Mary-Frances Creighton was a sprightly woman of eighty-five. After spending nearly sixty of those years in the service of God, she believed that she had Him to thank for her robust constitution. That, and her daily walks along the river. Those quiet, stolen moments away brought her peace from the rest of the world and allowed her to commune with her God.

  Not that there had ever been any answer. In any other sphere of life, talking to yourself for sixty years would be grounds for committal. But Mary-Frances had always followed her heart and in weaker moments she had allowed the majesty of the natural world to remind her of God’s creation.

  Now, as she neared the end of her life, she found herself doubting everything she had ever believed. With each passing day her body grew weaker. She could hardly sleep and, when she did, her mind recalled the events of the past and she wondered if she had done enough to atone for that single, unforgettable misstep.

  She hoped so.

  Dear, merciful God, she hoped so.

  A spasm of rheumatism shot through her right hip and she stopped at one of the benches scattered at intervals along the river, sheltered by high banks on either side. She eased her weary body onto the weathered pine and heard it creak alongside the metal joints in both of her hips. She could still remember how slender her hands used to be, before arthritis riddled the bones and swelled the knuckles which now rested on her plain black habit.

  Vanity, she thought, with a small shake of her head.

  Looking out across the water, she didn’t mind that the day was overcast and grey, or that night would soon fall. The cold weather didn’t help her old bones but the sounds of the river eased her soul while she rubbed absently at the ache in her leg. It was restful sitting there surrounded by God’s handiwork. She watched a seagull swoop down to fish for its dinner in the shallows and smiled.

  Sister Mary-Frances remained there for a while longer huddled inside her thick coat until she began to feel her legs stiffening up again. She was on the verge of manoeuvring herself off the bench when she spotted the tall figure of a man walking towards her along the pathway.

  He walked quickly, glancing behind him and across the riverbank regularly but this particular stretch of the River Tyne was hardly ever busy, a fact he was relying on for the next few minutes.

  Sister Mary-Frances decided to wait on the bench in case he turned out to be one of the local residents who might be able to help her home. She pasted a friendly smile on her face and, to all the world, was the epitome of a kindly old nun.

  As he approached, he felt the rage consume him. It rushed through his veins until his hands began to shake and it was an effort to keep himself under control. To make matters worse, she continued to look up at him with that ridiculous smile on her face. He wondered what she could possibly have to smile about. Surely, she must know that her time had come.

  But when he looked more closely it became obvious that she hadn’t even recognised him.

  Of course she hadn’t.

  She had absolutely no idea why she was about to die but she should. She should have spent every day for the last twenty-six years wondering and worrying about when this moment would arrive. Perhaps, after so long, she thought that the truth would never come out. That he wouldn’t find out about her mendacity, the lying bitch that she was.

  “Good afternoon,” she said.

  Her face crumpled as she spoke. It reminded him of an apple gone bad, its skin collapsing and rotten all the way to the core. He didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, but neither emotion dulled the all-consuming fury.

  “You know me.” His voice sounded ragged, even to his own ears.

  Her face remained politely blank and then it cleared again, the skin stretching back across her bones like a paper fan.

  “Oh, hello! I’m sorry, it sometimes takes me a moment. Help me up, would you?”

  He considered his next move. The place was deserted; there were no dog walkers on this lonely section of the riverbank. He decided to made a quick alteration to his plans and then stepped forward to haul her out off the bench.

  “You have sinned.”

  She let out a small sound of pain when his hands clamped brutally on her upper arms and he yanked her upwards.

  “You’re hurting me!”

  He began dragging her towards the choppy water, hardly needing any strength at all against her pathetic mewling cries and the featherweight blows she inflicted.

  “Help! Help!”

  He silenced her with a heavy gloved hand which blocked her nose and mouth. He felt the need rise up inside him, the terrible pleasure he found in taking life and was tempted to move his hands to her neck.

  Not this time, he thought, regaining control of himself.

  He leaned in close to her ear, so that the last thing she would hear was his voice inside her head.

  “For Grace,” he hissed.

  He flung her into the river and afforded himself the luxury of watching as the old woman’s arms flailed around her and the heavy material of her habit began to drag her beneath the cold water. The current finished the job and, within thirty seconds, she was fully submerged.

  He closed his eyes and gave thanks to God, tugging the rosary from beneath the folds of his shirt and touching it to his lips.

  Amen.

  * * *

  When MacKenzie and Lowerson arrived in Rothbury, the place was a ghost town.

  They drove through the empty streets, past the shuttered window of Sally’s Snips and around the war memorial in the town centre until they reached the cul-de-sac where Barbara had lived. A single street lamp shone its scanty light beside the entrance but the remainder of the street was shadowed. The sound of their car engine elicited a couple of twitched curtains but nobody emerged from the safety and warmth of their homes because most of B
arbara’s neighbours were pensioners or couples with young families and neither demographic was inclined to stick their necks out.

  Standing outside Barbara’s little bungalow in the falling darkness, MacKenzie could easily see how a killer could have come and gone without being observed. All they needed to do was park a couple of streets away and approach on foot to ensure that nobody heard a thing.

  MacKenzie pulled back the police barrier tape which still hung across Barbara’s front door and slid the key into the lock. As the door swung open, Lowerson flicked the light switches on and off a few times but to no effect; it seemed the power had already been turned off at the mains. Instead, he selected the ‘torch’ setting on his phone and shone the beam into the hallway.

  Inside, the air still reeked of a noxious combination of hydrogen sulphide, methane and other gases which made for the unique scent associated with death, mingled with a fetid odour of spoilt milk and rotten vegetables wafting from the direction of the kitchen. Lowerson coughed and held the cuff of his jacket in front of his nose and mouth but there was no escaping it. It saturated their clothes and hair.

  “Let’s try the cupboards, first,” MacKenzie said, reaching for a small tub she kept inside the inner pocket of her coat.

  One of the advantages of being older than her detective constable was being able to predict unpleasant situations such as this. She dabbed a little of the minty cream underneath her nose to alleviate the smell and then held it out to Lowerson.

  “I want to see family records, medical records and any employment or financial records we haven’t been able to recover so far. If you see any albums or mementos, grab those too.”

  “The CSIs brought in a bunch of stuff on Saturday but I’ve already looked through it and there’s nothing out of the ordinary.”

  “That’s why we need to go further back in time,” MacKenzie reiterated. “If it isn’t obvious, then we need to dig deeper.”

  As they moved from room to room, they experienced the odd sensation that they were not alone. Barbara’s presence followed them through the house, watching over them as they rifled through her things and picked apart the fabric of her lonely life. Neither detective uttered a word but they both felt it and they worked quickly, eager to return to the land of the living.