Cuthbert's Way (DCI Ryan Mysteries, #17)(24)

“Somebody went to town,” Ryan said, after a moment’s silence for the dead.

They were kitted out in protective suits and, with Patel’s nod of approval, stepped further into the large, barn-like space to get a better view of what had been laid out for them to discover.

Ryan stood there for long minutes, a tall, raven-haired man with an unreadable expression on his face, until Patel cast a concerned glance towards Phillips.

“Is he okay?” she muttered, jerking her thumb at Ryan’s back. “Does he always just…stand there, silently?”

“Oh, aye,” Phillips said, with a breezy wave of his gloved hand. “Don’t worry, he does it all the time.”

Ryan didn’t hear their by-play, his attention being otherwise occupied with tracing the details of the scene. There was a sense of drama here, he thought; as though everything had been arranged to the killer’s satisfaction. If one discounted the shattered and defiled body of Father Jacob, which took centre stage, nothing was unusual—but there were elements that struck Ryan as being out of place. For one thing, there were four multi-coloured jars sitting on one of the window ledges, no larger than perfume bottles, which most certainly did not look as though they belonged in a dusty cider mill.

“Have you looked at those bottles?” he asked, pointing to the ledge on the other side of the room.

“I’m sure the CSIs will get around to it,” Patel said, frowning in their direction. “I don’t see the significance—”

“Discounting the blood and gore, the rest of this place is covered in dust,” Ryan said, sweeping a hand around the airy space. “You said its rarely used out of season, right?”

Patel nodded.

“Then those bottles are significant, because they’ve been polished—very recently,” he explained. “It might be nothing, but—”

“It could be something,” Patel agreed, and made a mental note. “Thank you, I’ll see to it.”

When she moved off to speak to one of the CSIs, Ryan looked around him again, this time noting the placement of a heavy wooden worktable. It stood to the left of Father Jacob’s body and, judging by the marks on the floor, had been shifted slightly towards him.

Why, he couldn’t fathom.

No bloodstains marred its wooden surface, and it held nothing but a single white feather that hung precariously from the edge, as though it might fall to the floor.

A feather?

Ryan moved closer, walking with extreme care until he came to the edge of the worktable, where he could study the offending object.

“Patel?”

She looked up from her discussion with one of the CSIs and moved across to where he stood.

“Found something?”

“Ask them to look at this feather,” he said, flummoxing her again. “It seems out of place.”

Patel looked between him and the feather, wondering why Ryan wasn’t talking about the body and was instead wasting his time thinking about stray feathers.

“I’d be interested to know which bird this feather comes from,” Ryan continued, thinking that, as with soil samples, bird samples could prove to be a useful source of geographical information. “I wonder whether the killer brought it with him, because I don’t see any other signs of bird activity in here, nor any broken windows to allow a bird to get inside. Therefore, how did it get in here?”

Now, he had her attention.

“Another thing,” he said quietly. “There’s a steady breeze in here, but the feather hasn’t blown away…”

He trailed off and dropped down to his haunches, craning his neck to try to see if the underside of the feather was stuck on a splinter of the wooden countertop.

Then, he spotted it.

Blood.

“Look here,” he said, and drew Patel down beside him so she could see what he had seen. “They’ve used blood to keep the feather in place.”

He was right, she realised. Whoever placed the feather there had very carefully dipped the underside in some of Father Jacob’s blood, ensuring it wouldn’t blow away. They knew this, because there were no other bloodstains on or around the table, which made their discovery all the more significant.

She called across to one of the CSIs, who rustled forward to photograph it.

“Why would anybody do that?” she wondered. “The bottles, the feather…what does it mean?”

“I don’t know,” Ryan admitted.

“Aye, well, I do,” Phillips said, matter-of-factly, from where he’d been making a thorough job of inspecting the doorway. “It means we’ve got a fully-fledged fruitcake on our hands, that’s what it means.”

Ryan allowed himself to look properly at Father Jacob’s body, wincing at the multitude of cuts and gashes against the man’s waxy grey skin, then allowing his eyes to travel upward to where his skull had been crushed like a pumpkin.

“You know what, Frank? I think you might be right.”

*

An hour after they’d first entered the stifling interior of the cider mill, Ryan, Phillips and Patel stepped back out into the orchard to find that a light snow had begun to fall, coating the barren trees in a film of powdery white. They stood there for a moment breathing in the cold air, allowing it to cleanse their bodies and their minds.