Cuthbert's Way (DCI Ryan Mysteries, #17)(22)

There was a second’s pause, then Ryan began to laugh—not at Phillips, but at himself. There were all kinds of riches, he thought, but some things were priceless.

“Did I miss something?”

“You haven’t missed a thing, Frank,” he said, warmly. “Not a damn thing.”

*

When they approached the front entrance, which consisted of a large, circular gravel driveway in front of a pillared portico, they spotted several police vehicles parked off to one side. Assuming correctly that the local police were keeping the gravelled area clear for forensic analysis, Ryan followed their example and pulled up alongside the others.

Spotting their arrival, a woman in a plain black trouser suit peeled away from a group of police and forensics staff and crunched across the gravel to meet them.

“DCI Ryan? I’m DCI Dina Patel,” she said, after he’d unfolded himself from the car. “Glad you could make it down.”

Patel couldn’t have been more than five feet tall, and Ryan found himself stooping slightly so as not to loom over her diminutive height. She wore a thick winter coat over her suit and, as the air began to penetrate, he decided she definitely had the right idea.

“Thanks for reaching out to us,” he replied, shaking her hand. “This is Detective Sergeant Frank Phillips.”

Patel shook his hand, too, and then gestured to the building at her back.

“Impressive, isn’t it?” she remarked.

“Not bad,” Ryan agreed, opening the boot of the car to retrieve his ski jacket. “I hear they’ve had some trouble, here, lately.”

“Bad business,” she muttered, and looked out across the lawns to clear her head of the images she’d seen that day and would likely take home with her, later that night. “As I said on the phone, we got a call from the headmaster around nine o’clock this morning to report a murder. Control dispatched a couple of first responders to the scene, who were here by twenty-past, at the latest. They took one look at the scene and called in the cavalry.”

Her throat worked, as if she was still fighting nausea.

“Gets to you sometimes, doesn’t it?” Phillips sympathised. “Thirty years in the business and it still turns my stomach.”

She gave a brief nod, then seemed to pull herself together.

“Worse I’ve seen in a long while, and I’ve got fifteen years under my belt,” she told them. “The man was tortured, possibly for hours, and aside from the Faber case you had a few months ago, it’s the only one of its kind we’ve seen in these parts for a good, long while. That’s what prompted me to call you—I thought there might be a link.”

“It’s appreciated,” Ryan said, and meant it. Not all Major Crimes Units were as cooperative, nor were Senior Investigating Officers always as communicative as Patel appeared to be.

She nodded, rubbing her hands together for warmth.

“It benefits both of us to know if there’s any connection,” she said. “It makes sense to share what information we have, and perhaps you can tell me if there are any facets of the killing that strike a chord with what you’ve seen before.”

“We’ll help however we can,” Ryan said, carefully.

“All right, then. Let’s walk and talk.”

Patel led them towards a narrow pathway running behind the sports hall, which bore a pretty, hand-painted sign marked ‘ORCHARD & CIDER MILL’.

“Vic’s name was Jacob Jamieson—or Father Jacob, as he was known around these parts,” she said. “Born in 1968, he’d been a monk for the past twenty years. Prior to that, he worked as a history teacher.”

Patel raised a hand to one of her team, who passed them on the way.

“From what we can gather, Father Jacob was well respected in the community here, and well-liked by the staff and pupils. He was housemaster of one of the larger boarding houses, named after St. Cuthbert,” she said, pausing to point towards a two-storey, stone-built edifice on the far side of the sports hall. “It’s that one over there.”

“St. Cuthbert?” Ryan asked.

“Yes, funny for that name to crop up, after what happened in Durham,” she remarked. “Actually, before he became a monk, I’m told Father Jacob was an authority on the life and works of St. Cuthbert, and it seems that he was able to maintain his interest as part of his monastic occupation.”

Ryan and Phillips exchanged a meaningful glance.

“Really? I suppose it’s not uncommon in Benedictine circles,” Ryan said. “Cuthbert is a major saint, particularly in this part of the world.”

“I wouldn’t know much about it—wrong religion,” she said, with a smile. “But we’ll do a full dive into his background when the preliminaries are underway.”

Ryan nodded. “What are the circumstances?” he asked, bringing their discussion back around to brass tacks. “You didn’t go into too much detail, over the phone.”

Patel gave him a watery smile. “It was still pretty fresh, when I rang you,” she explained. “As far as we can gather, Father Jacob went missing from St. Cuthbert’s boarding house while the boys were enjoying their weekly Sunday Movie Night over in the main school hall.”

“So, he was left alone in the boarding house?”