by LJ Ross
“Glue?” As she had hoped, news of progress in her investigation distracted him from thoughts of Ryan.
“Yes, that’s the composition. I’ve no idea what the significance is, yet, but it’s another piece of the jigsaw, isn’t it?”
Phillips nodded.
“I also heard from Bowers’ GP, who finally sent through the medical records. Turns out Bowers had only known about his tumour for around a month but the prognosis was terminal from the outset. Chances of radiotherapy or chemotherapy reducing the size of the tumour were very low and Bowers was offered information on respite care instead.”
“Bumps up the probability of suicide,” Phillips commented, but MacKenzie shook her head.
“I thought about that, but all the other evidence points to a third party and we’re still missing a weapon.”
Phillips tugged at his lower lip as he thought.
“What about the pistol registered in Mathieson’s name?”
“Lowerson checked that out and the CCTV footage is useless—it was pointing in the wrong direction. All the auction house can tell us is that the pistol was paid for in cash by a man claiming to be Daniel Mathieson. The make and model are both so old that they’re exempt from the usual legislation requiring a certificate and he didn’t buy any ammunition, so they had no need to ask for paperwork of any kind. He showed them I.D. and the sale was registered in Mathieson’s name.”
Phillips frowned into the distance, imagining the different pieces of the jigsaw.
“But we know it wasn’t Mathieson, because he was in prison and now he’s in a body bag. Either someone sorted out fake I.D. in Mathieson’s name in advance or he had access to Mathieson’s belongings. Still, it’d have to be someone who resembled him, at least a bit,” Phillips said. “Dark, greying hair, in his fifties. Put on a pair of glasses, wear the right clothes…it’s possible.”
“We know quite a few men who match that description.”
Phillips scrubbed a hand over his eyes.
“You said there was another possible weapon matching the type used to kill Bowers—a pistol missing from Bamburgh Castle?”
“Yes, that’s right. Lowerson spoke to the curator up at the castle, who says it went missing a few weeks ago. They went through the usual channels and reported the theft, got a crime reference number. Upshot is they think it was swiped by a tourist when the castle was busy. The kind of duelling pistol we’re looking for was displayed on the wall in the armoury there.”
“So far, every new link has been deliberate, to point us towards another person of interest. I’m wondering whether there’s something or somebody up at Bamburgh we should be watching out for?”
MacKenzie racked her brain for an answer.
“There’s a National Heritage office up there,” she began.
“There’s the link,” Phillips unrolled a new line of nicotine gum. He was going to need it. “Bowers worked for National Heritage, and there’s bound to be somebody in the office who links to him. I seem to think Jane Freeman is based up there.”
“Bowers worked on an excavation at Bamburgh,” MacKenzie added. “It was the last one before he died.”
“Let’s get cracking.”
* * *
Jane Freeman drew the next batch of books across the desk towards her, pen poised to scribble her name inside. She spent a few minutes happily engrossed by how pretty her own name looked on the front cover, when her eye fell on a small brown parcel resting to one side.
She picked up a silver letter opener and slit open the thick paper. A copy of her new book, alongside a notecard and a folded pre-paid envelope fell onto the desk in front of her. She read the notecard first:
Dear Professor Freeman,
I have been a great admirer of your work for many years and am very much looking forward to reading, ‘Sex, Scandal and Northumbrian Legend.’ Unfortunately, I am unable to attend your forthcoming appearance and book signing, much to my regret. However, I would consider it a great honour if you would kindly autograph the enclosed copy and return it via the pre-paid envelope provided.
Yours faithfully,
Professor Gregory Chambers
Freeman’s lips curved and her hand lifted unconsciously to smooth her hair. She had heard of Professor Chambers, though she had never met him in person—yet. He was a popular figure in the public eye following several successful history documentaries he had fronted for the BBC and her avaricious mind spun with the thought of the doors that such an admirer could open for her.
She tapped her fountain pen against her lips as she imagined herself leading a series of glamorous historical documentaries based around Northumberland. Just as quickly, anger and pique followed at the realisation that she had not been asked already.
The nerve of it.
Who did those television producers think they were? Didn’t they know who she was? She closed her eyes and told herself to remain calm. Rome was not built in a day and neither was a Northumbrian empire.
She thought for a moment, then wrote a short note inside the book:
For Professor Chambers,
From one historical expert to another, with warmest regards.
J.L. Freeman
She decided that she would give it a couple of days, then follow up with a personal call to his offices in Cambridge. The more she thought about it, the more she realised how limiting it would be to confine her talents to the North-East.
With a feeling of deep satisfaction, she ran her tongue along the flap of the pre-paid envelope and set it aside to be posted along with the other mail.
CHAPTER 24
Gregson lolled between sleep and wakefulness as the hospital attendant wheeled him back from his MRI scan, accompanied by the ever-present PC Yates, whose footsteps squeaked against the hospital flooring in time with the metal clang of the gurney’s wheels. Soon after, a doctor stepped in to inform him that he was making an excellent recovery and could expect to fully regain his speech and fine motor skills over the next couple of weeks. Two nurses assisted in removing his brace and changed the bandages at the back of his head, which felt impossibly heavy now that his neck was once again required to support its weight.
After they left, Gregson strained to hear PC Yates’ muted telephone conversation in the corridor outside. He couldn’t make out whether she was updating a member of the Circle or one of the team handling his case in CID. Not knowing for certain on which side of the battle lines she rested was slowly driving him insane. He watched her mouth moving and tried to make out what was being said through the gap in the blinds but eventually he snatched his gaze away, frustrated by his inability to lip-read.
The clock on the wall read three-fifteen. At four, another constable would be along to relieve Yates from her present shift. That was their pattern, he had noticed. Usually, one of Ryan’s own trusted team replaced Yates to guard his door but he suspected that would not be possible today. The man himself was recovering in another hospital a few miles yonder and, though Gregson was still the man’s professional superior, he was under no illusions that he outranked Ryan in the pecking order, especially when it came to safeguarding his life against a mob of Satan worshippers.
That was another illusion, he thought. Ryan claimed the guard on his door was for his own protection but Gregson knew it was little more than house arrest.
He let out a laugh which bordered on hysteria, then glanced at the clock again.
At four o’clock, the constables changed their guard. Then, around four-thirty, the medics would do their usual rounds. There might be a small window; just a few minutes, that’s all he would need.
Gregson’s fingers clutched and unclutched the bed sheets as he thought of all the possible outcomes and concluded that the longer he stayed here like a sitting duck, the more chance there was that somebody would come along to shoot him in the pond.
Gingerly, he raised his head from the pillow and battled the searing pain. He retched but managed to half pull himself upright, leaning he
avily on one arm which shook under the weight of his torso. Determination propelled him upwards and he swung his legs heavily over the side of the bed, where they hung like dead weights for a moment while the pins and needles tingled in his feet. He didn’t need any doctor to tell him that he wasn’t fully recovered, he could feel that for himself. But he needed to know if his legs would support him and if escape was even worth contemplating.
He slid off the bed slowly like a newborn fowl, the greying hair on his legs quivering as his body worked against the pain. He swayed for a moment and thought he might faint but his body seemed to right itself and his vision cleared again. He shuffled a couple of steps forward and checked the blinds to see that Yates was looking in the other direction.
She was.
Gregson tugged on an imaginary rope in the air, counting out each step between gritted teeth until he reached the bathroom. Only a few steps from his bed but he felt like he had just crossed Antarctica.
He leaned against the doorframe for a moment and clutched at the wide plastic handles that were conveniently placed to help ailing men like himself to make it to the toilet, but he wasn’t concerned about his bladder. The doctors had removed his catheter the previous day and he had already endured that first humiliating pee into a cardboard bowl, to make sure his system still worked. He had never felt more base, lying there with his withered old dick in his hand, peeing in front of a young nurse who looked at him as if he were a specimen, not a flesh and blood man.
He exhaled a weak sob, then gripped the doorframe harder before he pushed away again, making for the bag which held his meagre belongings. They had taken his mobile phone, car keys and wallet for ‘safekeeping,’ and his clothes had gone to the lab for analysis in connection with his attack. But he had some small change, a free toothbrush from the hospital and some basic clothing the police had brought from his home in the event that he would need something other than the pyjamas he now wore.
It took fifteen minutes to remove his pyjama bottoms, don jogging pants, then replace the pyjama bottoms on top of them so as not to arouse suspicion. If a nurse happened to look underneath the bedclothes, they would notice the difference immediately, but he hoped it wouldn’t come to that.
He dragged his feet back to the bed, clutching socks and some cash in his hands and when Yates glanced back through the crack in the window blinds, she saw Gregson lying under the bedclothes, apparently asleep.
She turned back, to await the change of guard.
* * *
As the clock struck four, Anna returned to the University Hospital with a small bag of essentials for Ryan. She was relieved to find that DC Lowerson was seated outside the door to Ryan’s room, eyes trained on the corridor to assess any new visitors that approached. He had already turned away a number of resourceful journalists over the course of the day but now he relaxed at the sight of a familiar figure.
“Hi Anna,” he stood up to greet her, uncaring for once that his new suit was badly wrinkled or that he would have liked to freshen up his aftershave.
“Hello, Jack. How’s the patient?”
“Doctors came round about half an hour ago,” Lowerson said. “They’ve reduced the painkillers and checked his stitches. Everything’s looking good, so far.”
Pent-up breath whooshed out of her body.
“Let’s take a look at him, then,” she smiled.
Inside, Ryan was starting to feel the effects of reduced pain medication. The wound on the right-hand side of his abdomen was tender and he could feel the stitches beginning to burn. The constant stream of news on the television screen fixed to the wall flickered with muted sound and he watched the broadcasters delivering their reports at the foot of Heavenfield Church. Their message was always the same: the police knew nothing, the police had solved nothing, it was all connected to the cult circle and now the people’s champion—Ryan himself—had fallen. They likened his attack to that fateful arrow which had brought down Achilles. They prophesised the downfall of the people of Northumbria, while Ryan watched from his hospital bed with a growing sense of annoyance at the unnecessary drama of it all.
So, he had been knifed and thrown into a river.
So, three, possibly four people had died in as many days and another had been attacked and was drinking through a straw at another hospital a few miles away.
Alright, Ryan acknowledged, it didn’t sound good. But he would be out of these clinical walls in no time, back in the thick of it. All he had to do was be patient—ha ha—and let the dust settle, then he would have a nice, friendly chat with one of the doctors and convince them that he was only taking up bed space. He was determined to sleep in his own bed again as soon as possible, serious injury or not.
The impotence of being forced to remain inactive subsided when Anna walked into the room, armed with spare clothes and a carrier bag full of non-hospital-regulation goodies which he spotted immediately.
“How’s the invalid?” She leaned down to press her lips to his.
“Grumpy and irritable,” he replied.
“No change, then.”
“Humph,” he muttered. “Have you come to torment me?”
Anna smiled and snuck him a chocolate bar, which he snatched out of her hand like a toddler.
“Knowing you as well as I do,” she continued, “I’m fully aware that even though it’s only been few hours since you nearly died, you’re probably wondering how soon you can get out of here.”
Ryan chewed the chocolate in silence.
“You’re probably also wondering if you might be able to use your charms to convince one of the unsuspecting junior doctors to discharge you in time for dinner. Am I right?”
A smile tugged at the corner of Ryan’s mouth.
“Know-it-all.”
“There’s no way you’re getting discharged before you’re good and ready,” she said flatly. “And it would be over my dead body, so you might as well stop thinking about how you can rush back to work.”
Ryan glowered at her.
“However, since you can’t go to work, I thought I might bring a bit of work to you, as long as you’re not too tired.”
“I knew there was a good reason I was marrying you,” he said, smugly.
“I don’t see a ring on my finger, yet.”
“All good things…” he grinned, eyeing the bag she had brought for the familiar outline of a police file.
Following his eyes, she shook her head.
“Everything we need for the work I have in mind is in here,” she tapped the side of her head.
* * *
Richard ‘Rick’ Upton was a junior doctor at the Royal Victoria Infirmary. He had a good, friendly rapport with colleagues and patients alike, in part thanks to the innocent, open-looking face he had been born with. His big brown eyes and average features instilled trust and he was possessed of a well spoken voice that conformed nicely with what most people expected of a middle-class doctor.
In his present role attached to intensive care and acute medicine, he was never known to grumble over the long shifts or lack of resource, over rude patients or incompetent judgment calls from his fellow staff. He went about his business in a tireless fashion, greeting each new patient with professional cheer.
But beneath the harmless façade, there festered a burning desire for recognition. He didn’t want to spend the rest of his days at the beck and call of stinking drunks who had fallen over their own feet, or drug addicts with their gaunt, staring faces. He wanted to rise above the rabble, to take his true place in society. He had earned it. He hadn’t slaved away for all these years to save these people.
He wanted to be the man the celebrities called upon. He wanted to be the consultant in the three-piece suit standing outside the private hospital where a royal baby had just been born, giving a self-deprecating statement to hoards of press.
Over the first few years spent on the wards, he had realised a very important thing. It was down to him whether these people lived or died. He m
ade the order to operate in time, or he didn’t. He could lean on a tube, block an airway, ‘miss’ something vitally important and people wouldn’t lose sleep over the loss of an old tramp who, to him, was just taking up oxygen.
Then, one night last Christmas, he had seen the news. Three ritual murders on Holy Island and the discovery of a cult circle. The police claimed it was all over, that the circle had been disbanded, but Rick had been inspired. He knew then, there was another way. A better way.
He’d searched for them but come up with nothing. He’d gone to the island and stayed there during his summer vacation, gone out walking late into the night, hoping to stumble across a ceremony.
Nothing.
Then, to his amazement, they found him, and the rest was history.
“The Master seeks you out,” they’d told him. “Because he senses your devotion.”
Now, Rick made his way up the hospital’s service stairs, conscious of the small window of opportunity the Circle had given him. There would be a change of police guard, a mere five minutes when Gregson would be unattended. It was his only chance, that had been made very clear from the outset. At four-fifteen exactly, the police constable would take himself off for five minutes and would return at four-twenty. By four-thirty, Rick was due back on his rounds and would be one of the first to ‘find’ Gregson’s body. He panted slightly as he ran up the final flight of steps and stepped onto the ward, with a nervous glance in either direction.
Four-sixteen.
He moved quickly along the corridor, eyes focussed on the door which stood unguarded, as promised.
In his right hand, he held a syringe, already prepared with a lethal dose of morphine.
Four-seventeen.
He heard footsteps in the distance and froze, but the sound melted away and he continued onward. His face was set into hard lines and his eyes were clear. There was no question of him altering his course now.
Rick reached the doorway and he didn’t pause but opened it quickly, his movements smooth and practised. His eyes locked on to the huddled figure in the bed in the centre of the room. Rick slid his thumb to the top of the syringe and closed the distance, needle poised to finish the job.