Cuthbert's Way (DCI Ryan Mysteries, #17)(34)

Unfortunately, that lifestyle came with a cost, and he’d run short of the kind of money needed to fund the lifestyle to which he’d become accustomed.

He’d begun to think about re-entering the scene, when news reached him about Cuthbert’s Cross having been stolen, then recovered again. He’d laughed himself silly, at first; then, he’d been angry at the prospect of having undersold himself, to some considerable degree. For, if the police had recovered a forged cross, checked it and believed it to be real, then he was even better at his craft than he thought he was.

He’d flown back to the UK soon afterwards, with the vague idea of extorting more money from his former client.

Then, he’d heard about what happened to old Eddie Faber.

Fabergé to some.

Tortured, brutally murdered—and for what? He had to have known about the cross or found out about it, but not from him nor any of his acquaintances. There was nothing his client valued more than privacy; they’d been explicit about that, from the start, and every stage of producing the replica had been done in the strictest of confidence.

But Faber had a discerning eye, and Lareuse could only think that the old duffer had spotted the switch by chance. He’d heard rumours about Eddie having turned into a police rat, and maybe that’s why pieces of him were now rotting in some godforsaken cemetery, already forgotten by most who ever knew him.

Suddenly, it hadn’t seemed so important to ask for more money. He could manage on what he had, and pick up odd jobs to tide him over, until another plum commission came along. At least he’d be alive, and not six feet under.

But Lareuse had barely gathered up his suitcase and passport—forged, of course—before a knock had come at the door. How the police had found him, he didn’t know.

Unless…

Unless they were tipped off, and the plan was to off him while he was behind bars, with nowhere to run.

He’d been demanding protection for days, now. Any one of his fellow inmates could have been hired to finish him; even the prison officers could be on the payroll, for all he knew.

The pigs thought he was lying.

Why would they believe a man who refused to give them a decent reason for demanding solitary confinement, or special treatment? If he wanted any privileges, he needed to start sharing some useful information, they said. Otherwise, he was just peddling lies.

Just another lie, from the man who sold lies for a living.

But this was no lie.

Not this time.

In fact, for the first time in Mathieu Lareuse’s thirty-one years, he was telling the absolute truth.

*

“Morrison won’t like this, mind.”

Phillips made this insightful remark while watching the slow, inexorable progress of the drinks trolley along the gangway of the train carriage, heading directly towards him laden with goodies.

Was that bacon he smelled, wafting from the dining cart?

Get thee behind me, Satan, he thought.

“She’ll blow a gasket, when she gets wind we’ve overridden her direct order not to go to London.”

“Maybe she’ll like it better when we speak to Mathieu Lareuse and he confesses to making that forged cross,” Ryan said mildly. “Besides, we’ll only be gone for a few hours—she’ll barely have time to miss us.”

Phillips leaned back in his chair, shuffled around in an attempt to get comfortable on the scratchy material, then sat up straight again as the train slowed to a crawl across the railway bridge spanning the River Tyne. He peered through the window and counted five other bridges to the east, including the curved ‘Millennium Bridge’ which had been repaired following a terror incident not so long ago.

“Y’nah, I haven’t felt the same about train travel since we had that bridge bomber,” he admitted. “I always get a bit nervy when we cross the river.”

Ryan looked at the long drop to the murky waters below, and was reminded of a different incident entirely; one that had happened years before, where a man accused of the Hacker’s crimes had plunged to his own death.

Then, there was that nun who washed up on the riverbank…

Come to think of it, still waters ran bloody deep in the Tyne.

“Well, the consolation is, you get to have a day trip to London,” he said, cheerfully. “I’ll even buy you a peppermint tea, when the trolley arrives.”

“You’ll turn my head with talk like that.”

*

A long klaxon reverberated through the corridors of Pentonville Prison, following which the doors to the cells opened to allow the inmates an hour of social time in the communal areas. There was a cacophony of sound as his fellow inmates filtered out, eager to go about their business…whatever that might have been.

Lareuse stared at the open doorway in horror, wishing he could drag the electronic mechanism shut again.

“Ain’t you comin’ out?”

One of the prison officers happened to stop outside, no doubt wondering why he wasn’t eager to walk around.

He shook his head.

When the officer shrugged and moved on, Lareuse looked around the cell for something—anything—that could be used as a weapon. If he’d been more experienced in these matters, perhaps he’d have known what to do, but he’d been out of the game for more than three years and didn’t know who to ask for protection on the inside.