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

by LJ Ross

  He rested his forehead against the glass pane and thought of how their lives had altered in the space of one short phone call.

  CHAPTER 5

  Police Constable Melanie Yates grasped the opportunity to work on Ryan’s team with both hands and bundled herself quickly into the blue VW Golf parked on her parents’ driveway. She was saving up a deposit for her own little place closer to the centre of town, where she could be on hand for any urgent cases at the new CID Headquarters. Until then, she was relying on her parents’ goodwill.

  As she pulled onto the A1 and headed north from the city towards Cragside, her thoughts strayed back to her first week out of cadet training and the first time she had seen Ryan striding down the corridor. Melanie had been grappling with the vending machine and, with a distracted air, he’d paused to thump the side of the ancient metal frame, giving her a friendly smile when the machine had promptly coughed up a chocolate bar.

  “Don’t be afraid to give it a good kick,” he’d said, with a smile.

  On that occasion, she had stared at him like a rabbit caught in the headlights and he’d moved off again, already having forgotten she existed. Melanie imagined she wasn’t the only person ever to be affected by him and the fact he was engaged to be married seemed to have no dimming effect on the people who mooned over him in the staff canteen or down at the pub after work.

  As she drove towards the Northumberland National Park, the rolling countryside eventually gave way to a dense forest that grew all the way up to the tarmac, its tall emergent trees blotting out the morning sun except for a few beams of white light cutting through the branches. She enjoyed the way the sunshine played through the trees and sent dappled streams of light across the windscreen until, a few minutes later, she slowed for the turn that would lead her along a winding driveway towards Cragside. The driveway curved past a large lake on her left, then over an old stone bridge leading through the trees until the house appeared, its towers and chimneys peeping through the uppermost branches.

  Melanie schooled her features into a professional mask. It would be disastrous if Ryan were ever to read her innermost thoughts, the childish desires she harboured only in private. Work was her passion and she had been given an opportunity to shine.

  She planned to make the most of it.

  * * *

  Ryan stood outside the main entrance to Cragside fielding irate questions from Martin Henderson. The estate manager’s balding head reflected the glare of the summer sun and, as she parked her car in the circular driveway, Yates could see pearls of sweat glistening against his skin. By contrast, Ryan looked very much at ease with his hands tucked into the back pockets of his jeans, in a stance that could have signified boredom, or contempt. Catching sight of her, he looked across the driveway and raised a hand in greeting before turning his attention back to Henderson. Yates locked the car and made her way towards them, smoothing a nervous hand over the curly brown hair she’d bundled into a ponytail.

  “I’ve told you repeatedly,” Ryan was saying. “We will do all we can not to disrupt the normal running of the estate. The area surrounding where Victor fell has been cordoned off, as has the drawing room and exterior staircase but otherwise people should be able to move freely.”

  Henderson shifted his feet.

  “I don’t know whether you’re aware, but I have a responsibility—”

  “As do I,” Ryan interjected, very quietly. “My first responsibility is to Victor Swann, not to a stack of bricks and mortar, pretty though it is, or to your employers. If the Gilberts have any grievances to raise, I’m sure they know where to find me.”

  With that, he gestured for Yates to follow him inside the house, leaving Henderson blustering on the steps outside.

  “Thanks for getting up here so quickly,” he said, barely glancing in her direction.

  “Not at all, sir, I’m happy to help. Thank you for bringing me on board.”

  Ryan jerked his head back over his shoulder.

  “That was Martin Henderson, otherwise known as The Big Cheese. He’s the estate manager and seems to spend most of his time being high-handed with the other staff. Giving them all a pain in the arse, no doubt.”

  “I understand.”

  Ryan’s lips twitched.

  “Good. Are you up to speed?”

  “Yes, I read your summary. It doesn’t seem to be a priority case,” she said.

  Ryan stopped briefly inside the dim, wood-panelled hallway.

  “First rule of CID, Yates. They’re all priority.”

  She filed that little nugget away and followed him into what appeared to be a staff common room, through a door to the right of the reception area. Formerly the butler’s pantry, it was a mixture of old and new, with corniced ceilings and antique side tables offset by jarring, overstuffed foam easy chairs and plastic coffee tables. A bank of metal lockers, the kind you might see in the changing rooms of a leisure centre, lined one of the walls. It was nearly empty except for a man and a woman who were huddled over one of the tables in hushed conversation.

  The man looked across at their arrival and stood up.

  “Morning, Ryan.” He stepped towards them and held out a hand.

  “Dave.”

  “Hell of a business,” the other remarked, with the long-faced expression of one who didn’t know what to say. “We’re all still in shock.”

  Ryan angled his body and made the introductions.

  “This is PC Melanie Yates,” he said. “She’ll be handling some of the loose ends relating to Victor’s death.”

  She held out a hand, which was shaken enthusiastically.

  “Dave Quibble, conservation manager.” He gave her an appreciative smile. “I’m responsible for overseeing the general conservation of the site here, thanks to the Gilberts’ generosity. There’s a team of specialists who take care of all the different elements, from the gardens to the artefacts and the electrics. Anything we can do to help you, just say the word.”

  “Thank you.” She nodded towards the lockers. “Did Victor have one of those?”

  “Yes, indeed. Alice? Do you know which one was Victor’s? Alice is one of our specialist staff members working on painting restoration,” Dave explained.

  A pretty, dark-haired young woman in her late twenties looked up from a copy of Cosmopolitan.

  “Ah, I think it was the one at the end.”

  “Let me see if I can find an access key,” Dave began but Ryan shook his head and they watched as Yates drew on a pair of nitrile gloves and used her index finger to open the locker. It let out a metallic whine as it fell back on its hinges.

  “It’s empty,” she said. “And the lock appears to have been forced, sir.”

  Ryan flicked his eyes back to Dave’s face, which was a comical mask of surprise. He turned to Alice, who gave a startled shrug of incomprehension.

  “Yates? I want to know where Victor lived. If somebody’s cleaned out his locker, it’s possible they also paid a visit to his home.” Ryan turned to the other two people in the room. “Unless either of you happen to know his address?”

  “It was somewhere in Rothbury,” Dave piped up. “But if you ask the Gilberts, or Maggie, she might know exactly. I think she’s working down at the tea room today, helping out because one of the staff is off sick.”

  “Maggie?” Yates queried.

  “The housekeeper,” Ryan provided. “She and Victor were close, I think.”

  Alice nodded her agreement.

  “It was nice to think of two people finding love later in life,” she said wistfully. “Sort of makes you think it’s never too late. But I suppose accidents happen all the time.”

  Her sentiments echoed Ryan’s own thoughts when he’d found Victor the previous evening. But if Victor’s death was an accident, why had somebody broken into the dead man’s locker?

  He came to an instant decision.

  “Yates, I’m bumping this back up to ‘suspicious’. See what else you can dig up around here and have a
word with the Gilberts to make them aware. Make sure nobody touches that locker in the meantime, or any of them, for that matter. I’ll be back shortly.”

  With that, he made a beeline for the tea room.

  CHAPTER 6

  Ryan walked along a narrow access road from the main house towards a grand cluster of buildings which had formerly been the stables but was now an education centre and a tea room. He entered the latter and found Maggie arranging scones on a frosted glass display plate on the stainless-steel countertop running along one wall. She was dressed in the ubiquitous black and white uniform of a waitress and her hands moved deftly as she fiddled with sachets of butter, turning them so their little cow-faces could be seen. The tea room was full of visitors enjoying a mid-morning snack as they wandered the vast grounds of the estate and there was a pleasant aroma of baked goods and minced meat which foretold of shepherd’s pie on the lunch menu.

  Sensing his presence, Maggie looked up from her task and gave Ryan a watery smile.

  “Hello, pet. Why don’t you take a seat? I’ll be with you in a minute.”

  Ryan selected a chair beside the window and waited while Maggie hung up her apron, exchanged a quick word with one of the other waitresses and joined him at the table. She seemed to be full of energy and her feet were quick but he noticed a pronounced hobble to her gait. Reading his thoughts, she tapped a hand against her right hip.

  “Rheumatoid arthritis,” she explained, settling herself opposite him. “I need another hip replacement but to be honest I can’t face it.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s just a fact of life. Not that I should be complaining, after what happened to poor Victor.” Fresh tears welled in her eyes and Ryan noticed they were a very pale blue. He found himself wondering if they had been a bolder shade in her youth, and whether their pigment had faded with the passage of time.

  Ryan gave her a moment to compose herself.

  “I know you gave a statement last night but I was hoping to ask you a few more questions, if I may.”

  Maggie blew her nose into a cloth handkerchief and Ryan was reminded of his grandmother, who had always kept one tucked inside her sleeve.

  “I’ll do my best,” she said, her voice muffled by the material.

  “Tell me a bit about your relationship with Victor.”

  She tucked her handkerchief away again and gave him a no-nonsense look.

  “We were friends,” she said emphatically. “Oh, I know everyone else around here thinks there was more to it but, really, it’s ridiculous. At our time of life—”

  “Don’t tell me you’re a day over forty,” he put in, with the flash of a smile.

  “Oh, go on!” She made a dismissive gesture but the fine lines at the corners of her eyes crinkled and she flushed with pleasure. “You could charm the birds from the trees.”

  Ryan had heard ‘grumpy’ and ‘bastard’ used frequently in the same sentence when describing his character but seldom ‘charming’.

  He came back to the point.

  “Can you tell me anything about Victor’s family? We’re having difficulty locating his next of kin.”

  Maggie shook her head sadly.

  “I asked him if he’d ever been married or whether he had any children but he told me he’d always been happy living alone. I think life as Lionel’s valet suited him and he loved to travel, which was a big perk of the job.”

  “Any brothers or sisters?”

  “He never mentioned any.” Her hands flapped as she tried to remember. “I’m sorry, love, but Victor was one of those people who could talk about everything and nothing. He knew all about the history of the house and grounds and he could write a book about art and culture. But when it came to the everyday stuff, he just clammed up.”

  Ryan considered the little he had seen of Victor Swann and thought it was an accurate description.

  “He never spoke of anything troubling him? Nobody who had given him cause for concern?”

  Maggie’s eyes widened a bit.

  “No, nothing like that. Why? I thought…I thought it was an accident?”

  Ryan reached across to clasp her hand, which had started flapping again as the enormity of his question struck her.

  “These are all routine questions I have to ask. There’s just one more thing, for now. Do you know where Victor lived?”

  Maggie put a shaking finger to her temple and squeezed her eyes shut.

  “Yes!” Her eyes flew open again. “It was in one of those new-builds on Windy Drive in Rothbury.” She referred to the nearest town, a couple of miles away. “I seem to remember him saying he’d painted the front door bright red. He has a room in the big house but he decided to buy a place of his own in one of those sheltered housing estates. He was long past retirement age and I think he knew there would come a day when he’d have to stop.”

  “He didn’t live in, like you?”

  She shook her head.

  “The Gilberts only ever spend four or five months of the year at Cragside,” she explained. “The rest of the time, I keep the home fires burning for them and it makes sense for me to live in. But Victor travelled everywhere with them and used a spare room whenever he needed one. Since they’ve started spending longer periods at home, he decided it was time to buy his own place nearby. I suppose I’ll have to think about that, one day,” she said. Time had a worrying habit of marching on.

  Ryan gave her hand a final squeeze.

  “Thanks, Maggie. Save one of those scones for me.”

  * * *

  While Ryan drove the short distance to Victor Swann’s former residence, Frank Phillips struggled to concentrate on the computer screen at his desk at the new CID Headquarters. Everything was horribly new, from the ultra-modern glass frontage to the carpet tiles and white-washed paint. It still smelled new, too, but that would change soon enough. Offices like these were not built to last, not like the fine Victorian buildings in the city centre that had withstood over a century of wind and rain. The creamy-white rendered walls would quickly fade to murky-grey and damp spots would develop on the ceiling tiles. Peculiar stains and scuff marks would appear overnight and, instead of paint, the corridors would begin to smell of tuna casserole and drains. As far as Phillips was concerned, all would be right with the world again.

  “You should try one of these smoothies from the juice bar.”

  Detective Constable Jack Lowerson strolled across the open-plan office to join him, draining the last of a bright pink concoction from an eco-friendly, recyclable plastic container in the shape of a miniature milk bottle. Phillips spun around in his ergonomic desk chair and surveyed the young man with incredulity.

  “Juice bar? Lad, you might as well ask me to scale Everest. Give me a cup of milky tea and a few digestives any day of the week.”

  Lowerson grinned, displaying a row of freshly-whitened teeth.

  “Did you know, the bloke who used to run the pie van outside the old offices has moved over here with us? He’s tripled his business because all the other office buildings want a piece of the action.”

  Phillips scowled.

  “Probably because all they’ve been getting is vegetable juice and quinoa until now. The pie van was one of our best-kept secrets,” he grumbled. “I’ll have to queue up to get a corned beef pasty, now.”

  Lowerson shrugged inside his trendy Air Force blue suit.

  “Heard anything from Ryan?”

  “He’s reclassified the body he found at Cragside. Apparently, the victim’s locker was broken into sometime during the night.”

  Lowerson didn’t miss the fact that Swann was now being referred to as a ‘victim’.

  “Why would anybody want to hurt a harmless old man?”

  Phillips linked his fingers across his paunch.

  “You should know by now, there’s no such thing as ‘harmless’.”

  Lowerson nodded, then licked his lips.

  “Ah, I wanted to ask how MacKenzie’s getting on? I don’t wa
nt to be a nuisance, if she’d rather be left alone.”

  Phillips looked away and cleared his throat.

  “Aye, she’ll be grand.”

  Jack might have been a bit green around the edges but he still recognised a dodge when he heard one. Denise MacKenzie had, after all, been the one to teach him how to see beneath the surface to the bones of a case and to read a person’s body language rather than just the words they said. For Phillips to brush him off like that, things must be bad.

  He laid a hand on the older man’s shoulder.

  “It’s only been a few weeks,” he said quietly. “She just needs more time.”

  In the silence that followed, they wondered whether time would ever bring back the woman they loved, in their different ways.

  * * *

  Anna decided to take a break from Northumbrian history and drive into the city. The morning’s sunshine had given way to an overcast afternoon and rainclouds now gathered over Newcastle, threatening a downpour later in the day. The house MacKenzie shared with Phillips was in a cul-de-sac on an estate in Kingston Park. The area was well-kept, with fresh paint on the doors and neatly trimmed front gardens. Children played out in the street under the watchful eye of their parents and she could hear an ice-cream van booming out a tinny rendition of Greensleeves somewhere nearby. Anna scanned the houses and pulled up at the kerb outside one with a green door. She rested her hands on the steering wheel for a moment before reaching across to retrieve a bouquet of flowers sitting on the passenger seat, then slammed out of the car.

  When MacKenzie heard the doorbell ringing, she nearly dropped the kettle of boiling water she held in her hand.

  She stood, frozen for a moment, until the sound came again.

  Buzz, buzz, buzz.

  The kettle clattered onto the countertop and she reached for one of the carving knives from a wooden block, remembering another time when she’d answered the front door without thinking and without protecting herself. It had nearly cost her life.

  She edged into the hallway and waited.