by LJ Ross
“Oh, yeah right. I’d just sit at home with a cuppa and a digestive while you sneak around here looking for clues, no doubt getting yourself arrested for perverting the course of justice.”
“There’s no need to be facetious.” She didn’t bother to point out that, of the two of them, he was the only one who had been arrested lately. There was a time and a place for everything and she doubted that he was ready to find humour in his situation.
Ryan dipped his head back into the hallway to listen for the sound of any imminent arrivals.
“Let’s save the chitchat for later,” he muttered. “Take a look around but don’t touch anything.”
Anna glanced at the grandfather clock in the corner of the room, which ticked methodically.
Ten-forty. Definitely time to get moving.
“We’re looking for connections,” Ryan said, running his eye over the books and smiling slightly at the complete works of Conan-Doyle. They had shared a love of detective fiction, he thought with a brief smile, which froze on his lips as he noticed a small, pocket-sized volume of Milton’s Paradise Lost propped against one of the shelves.
Connections, he had said, and here was a connection.
His fingers itched to pull the book from the shelf and rifle through its pages, to look for handwritten footnotes or hidden pockets. Good sense prevailed and he kept his hands to himself while his mind raced. On shelves stuffed with classics, it was not unusual to find Milton amongst their number, was it? It was important to remain logical. And yet, there had been a volume on the shelves of a murderer’s home six weeks ago, and scribbled quotes amongst the notes kept on each woman he had killed. Ryan had read Paradise Lost cover to cover in his attempt to understand what had motivated Doctor Patrick Donovan to kill. Had his warped mind led him to believe that Milton’s words gave him carte blanche to take lives? There was plenty of fodder in that evocative piece of poetry to inspire a madman to put his thoughts into action.
Very slowly, Ryan took a pair of nitrile gloves from the pocket of his jacket and drew them on. Logic had its place, he thought, but it was a foolish man who ignored his instinct.
Gently, he removed the book from its shelf and it came away easily. He dropped it into a transparent evidence bag, then into his coat pocket where he felt the guilty weight of it pressing against him.
Oblivious to the theft, Anna made a beeline for the large walnut desk beside the window and peered at the paperwork strewn across it, angling herself awkwardly so as not to disturb anything. Ryan turned a full circle in the room. He found himself facing a decorative fireplace cluttered with knick-knacks, overshadowed by a large, ornate sword hanging above it. The thin blade was highly polished and still looked sharp, which was unusual for a display piece. The hilt was finely welded with what appeared to be a blend of gold and silver, twisted to look like flames licking along the handle. Leaning closer, Ryan read a small inscription:
For Dr Mark Bowers, with grateful thanks for his dedication to the history of Northumberland, from his friends at National Heritage. February 2012.
“Ryan!” Anna broke his reverie and he spun around, instantly alert. “I think I heard somebody at the front door!”
Galvanised, they made for the back of the cottage, which led to a small garden and then onto a narrow street where Anna had parked her car out of sight from the main road.
The back door clicked softly shut behind them.
“I think we got away with it,” Anna said, a bit breathlessly, as they made for the creaking gate at the end of the garden.
“Don’t speak too soon,” he returned.
Following the direction of his gaze, she came to a shuddering standstill. Leaning idly against the side of Anna’s car stood DS Frank Phillips, puffing on an e-cigarette while he waited for them to join him.
“Well, fancy meeting you here,” he boomed, tucking the white stick back into his breast pocket. “You folks lost your way?”
“Phillips, listen—”
“Son,” Phillips held up a hand in warning. “Don’t insult my intelligence. Do I have ‘MUG’ written on my forehead?” He jerked a thumb at the forehead in question, which was deeply grooved.
“Alright, I won’t,” Ryan agreed, deciding to brazen it out.
“So,” Phillips took his time rubbing the side of his jaw. “I s’pose I don’t need to tell you how stupid that was?”
Anna and Ryan exchanged a glance but didn’t contradict him.
“With Gregson ready and waiting to pounce on any little infraction, you decide to break into a dead man’s home—”
“I had a key,” Anna said, weakly, but subsided at one look of patriarchal disapproval.
“—to break into his home,” Phillips continued, “and contaminate the scene.”
“I—” Anna opened her mouth again and then thought better of it.
“Gregson will have a field day with this,” Phillips concluded.
Ryan remained silent, ready to accept Phillips’ judgment, whatever it might be. He deserved to be reported for blind idiocy, if nothing else. Then, a thought struck him.
“How did you know we’d be here?”
Phillips favoured him with a knowing look.
“It’s my sixth sense as a policeman, that’s what it is.”
“Sixth sense, my arse,” Ryan replied. “You were planning to do the same thing yourself.”
Phillips pursed his lips and had the grace to look abashed.
“You—”
“Language, lad, think of your language in front of the lady,” Phillips said swiftly.
“You sly old fox,” Anna breathed.
Phillips barked out a laugh and then grew serious, his voice lowering to a stage whisper. “A little birdie tells me that Faulkner’s lot are still going over the church and will take the rest of the morning, at least.”
“Does this little birdie have red hair?”
Phillips tapped the side of his bulbous nose.
“She’s got Lowerson with her and he’s a good lad, but Gregson is breathing down her neck, watching everything she does.”
“He’s involved.”
There was a short silence following Ryan’s bald statement. There was an unspoken taboo discouraging overt accusations against your colleagues, but they were long past feeling any loyalty towards their superintendent.
“Aye, I know it,” Phillips cleared a sudden constriction in his throat and wished he could spit it out. “All these years—”
“Mean nothing, if he’s dirty,” Ryan finished flatly.
Phillips crossed his arms across his chest and clasped his elbows.
“Got to do this right,” he said. “We’re already taking too many risks.”
“Agreed,” Ryan let out a breath and looked up and down the street, partly to ensure there were no idle pedestrians to overhear them and partly to give himself a moment to think.
“The disciplinary hearing has been brought forward,” he said. “If Gregson gets his wish and I’m out, then it’ll be up to you, Frank, along with MacKenzie and Lowerson.”
“It won’t happen,” Phillips said quickly. “The brass would have to be out of their minds to let you go.”
“We have to plan for every eventuality,” Ryan kept his voice level, while the thought of being dismissed from the work he loved and that he had been born to do, burned a hole in his heart.
“Who’ll be chairing the disciplinary hearing?”
Anna’s calm voice broke through the tension and they were all grateful for it.
“I made some demands myself,” Ryan admitted. “I’ve requested that the Chief Constable chairs the hearing. She’s a fair woman.”
“Gregson’s been yapping at her heels,” Phillips warned. “Trying to win her over. Lost count of the amount of dinners, phone calls and whatnot.”
“I expected that.”
“All the same, he’s got the gift of the gab, that one.”
“Then, we’ll have to see how the cards fall,” Ryan said, wi
th finality. “I can have a representative with me if I want one, probably some snivelling union bloke who spends two hours out of every day being a policeman and the other seven writing policies. I’m better off going in alone.”
“I can come.”
Ryan looked over at Anna, into her steady brown eyes. He was caught off guard by the offer; shocked to need another person’s help when he had managed for so long without it.
“I—you don’t have to.”
“If you want me there, I’ll be there.”
Phillips looked on with approval. She might have looked like a gust of wind could carry her off, but underneath all that soft hair and soft skin, there was a will of iron.
“That’s a good idea,” he fixed Ryan with a beady stare. “It’d do you good to have somebody beside you, to keep things even. I’d be there myself, except—”
“I know. You’re required to give a statement. Look, I don’t need anyone to hold my hand,” Ryan began belligerently, then stopped himself and tried a more moderate tone.
“Thanks, Anna, that’d be great.”
Before he could change his mind, Phillips clapped his hands together.
“Right! Now that’s sorted, let’s get back to it. Did you touch anything while you were in there?” He butted his chin in the direction of Bowers’ cottage.
“We were careful,” Ryan kept his voice low. “But if Faulkner finds anything, we were here for dinner the other night. That should cover any prints, or whatever.”
Phillips nodded.
“I reckon I’ll leave you two to finish the job, then. I’ll tap on the door if you need to get moving. We can spare half an hour, then we’d better make like a tree.”
Ryan pulled a face.
“Make like a what?”
Phillips regarded Ryan with deep pity.
“Your ignorance of classic filmmaking never ceases to amaze me.”
CHAPTER 6
Keith Thorbridge was a meticulous man in his early sixties. After a dubious background in petty crime and peddling drugs during his formative years, he had subsequently seen the light, turned his back on the past and devoted himself to a life of regular worship and the serious business of keeping the church of St. Oswald’s clean and tidy.
Indeed, as the years passed, he began to feel that the little church at Heavenfield was more home to him than the poky ex-miner’s cottage he rented in Wall, which was the closest village and had been named unimaginatively after the Roman wall which cut through the fields nearby, all the way from the North Sea to Cumbria.
Seven days a week, Keith parked his ancient Volkswagen by the side of the Military Road and lumbered a hundred yards up the hill to spend a few hours polishing the stained glass, scrubbing the floors and waxing the wooden pews. The diocese of Hexham only paid him for one morning per week, but he didn’t mind working the rest of the time for free. It was the least he could do, to repay the deity who had spared him from an early grave, considering the amount of ale he had been in the habit of drinking.
He missed the taste of it; the wonderful, bitter, foul-smelling taste of it warming his belly and numbing his senses.
Clean and tidy, he would say to himself, forcing his weak mind away from temptation. Clean and tidy.
DI MacKenzie found him muttering while he tended the tiny patch of garden at the front of his cottage, greying shirtsleeves rolled up against the midday sun which beat down upon the perfect bald circle on top of his head.
“Mr Thorbridge?”
Keith surveyed the glamorous woman with bright red hair. A young man stood beside her, his face cleanly shaven and his hair gelled, reminding him of one of those limp-wristed posers who worked down at the estate agents in the village.
“Aye,” he replied sourly. “What’re y’after?”
MacKenzie pulled out her warrant card and made the introductions.
“DI MacKenzie and DC Lowerson, from Northumbria CID,” she said. “We’re sorry to disturb you, Mr Thorbridge, but we need to ask you some questions concerning a death at Heavenfield Church.”
Keith had already heard about the business up at the church. Nothing happened at Heavenfield without him knowing about it.
He grunted and dug his spade into the soil he had freshly turned.
“A man was found dead up there, late last night,” MacKenzie expanded.
“Aye,” he said again.
“Can you tell us when you were last at the church?”
“Saturday night.”
“I see,” Denise tried a friendly smile, which usually had the desired effect of softening up a male witness, but seemed to be having little impact. Tough nut, she thought. “Do you remember what time you arrived and what time you left?”
“I go up at five, come back at ten.”
Five hours? MacKenzie wondered how much cleaning could be accomplished in the tiny church in that time and concluded that it would be quite a lot.
“In the morning?”
“Evening,” he answered shortly.
“Do you go every Saturday?”
Realising that conversation was unavoidable, Thorbridge set the spade to one side and tucked his thumbs into the belt loops of his muddy trousers.
“Weekdays, I go up at seven in the morn’, come back at eleven. Saturdays I go at night, so as the church will be ready for a Sunday service next day.”
“I see,” MacKenzie nodded, but thought of her brief research on the journey here. She tapped the tip of her biro against the small notepad she held. “I understood that there aren’t many regular services at the church.”
“Aye, but you never know when folk might visit,” he replied, aggressively. “Might not get the same crowd as some, but we still have special services, weddings and that.”
“So, you like to keep the place spick and span just in case,” MacKenzie said, in friendly tones.
He nodded, just once, and calmed down.
“Getting back to Saturday night, then, can you tell me whether you noticed anything unusual?”
“The place was the same as it always is.”
MacKenzie pursed her lips.
“Were you alone, Mr Thorbridge?”
“Aye,” he nodded. “Get a rare few people up at that hour.”
“I understand that you’re only contracted to work on a Monday morning,” she prodded. “What motivates you to work the extra hours, Keith?”
His mouth flattened into a cat’s arse of lines, the price he paid for a forty-year smoking habit. Small price, considering.
“Gratitude, that’s what.” He tugged at his ear and shuffled his feet a bit, unsure of how to express himself. “I had nowt before the church gave me a chance. Got me off the booze, gave me something to do with my hands.” He held both hands up, gnarled with age and toil.
“You know what I used to be,” he said simply, correctly assuming that they had done a standard run on his background and had seen the list of convictions for possession, drunk and disorderly behaviour and theft. “That’s behind me now. Mayn’t seem like much to you, but looking after the church, looking after this garden, it keeps me straight.”
“I understand,” MacKenzie said quietly. “You care about your work.”
He nodded again.
“I’ll bet nobody knows that church as well as you,” she continued, conspiratorially.
“Could say that,” he was softening, just a bit.
“How did you leave the place?”
“Sparkling,” he said with pride.
“I’m sure. Do you think people might have wandered around it sometime on Sunday? Only, some of our team found a bit of debris on the floor. A bit of a lolly stick and an empty crisp packet.”
Thorbridge bristled and shuffled his feet again, this time in irritation.
“There’s a bin right outside,” he said angrily. “Don’t know why folk can’t just put their rubbish in there. Doesn’t take a bloody genius, does it?”
Lowerson stifled a laugh but recovered himself after one tellin
g look from his superior.
“I’m telling you, the place was clean when I left it. Didn’t know there was any service planned for Sunday morning, but the pilgrims were up there on Sunday night, like every year.”
“You didn’t choose to join them?”
Thorbridge seemed to withdraw, suddenly, his face taking on a shuttered expression.
“No, I didn’t.”
* * *
Back inside MacKenzie’s Fiesta with the air conditioning blasting, Lowerson turned to her.
“What did you make of him?”
“Dedicated, reclusive…weird,” she admitted. “But he seems adamant that there was no rubbish when he left the place on Saturday night. There could have been visitors during the day on Sunday, but the place isn’t exactly a revolving door.”
“Maybe Thorbridge isn’t telling us everything.”
“Quite possibly.”
There was a slight pause.
“Why do we always get the dodgy old blokes?” Lowerson complained. “I keep hoping for a young, female killer who left behind a modelling career for a life of crime. Naturally, she would have been forced to kill under extreme duress.”
“Oh, really?” Amused, MacKenzie slanted him a look. “And what if she decided to make you her next victim?”
Lowerson made a sound a bit like a raspberry and flashed his best smile.
“One look at this angelic face and she’d change her ways.”
* * *
The three conspirators left Bowers’ cottage as silently as they had arrived and did not choose to linger, preferring to quit the island before attracting any unwanted attention. The few hundred people residing on Holy Island had been rocked to the core, their peaceful solitude disturbed only months before by two killers who had lived amongst them. Anna had grown up on the island and was moved each time she visited by its atmospheric beauty, but could not bring herself to feel at home. Too much had happened, too many heartaches prevented her from enjoying the harmony of wind and sea. Yet, as she steered her car along the winding road leading from the island to the causeway, she felt a momentary lift in spirits. She could appreciate the natural grandeur of the windswept water, which lapped against the road and granted access to the mainland for a short time each day before the waves washed over it again.