Cuthbert's Way (DCI Ryan Mysteries, #17)(38)

“Well, now, just hold your horses there, lad,” Phillips said. “There’s nothing to say he couldn’t have been killed for another reason. Blokes like him have got their fingers in all kinds of pies—”

Pies, his mind whispered. Steak and ale pies…

“Not every pie involves the death of a senior murder detective, a monk and a forger, not forgetting a high-profile heist targeting a UNESCO World Heritage Site.”

“Will everyone stop talkin’ about pies?” Phillips burst out.

Ryan gave him a funny look. “You brought it up—”

“Aye, well…why are we headin’ down this way, anyway?” Phillips asked, having only just realised they’d wandered off the beaten track. “Isn’t it quicker to head down the main road?”

“Not to get to where we’re going,” Ryan said. “If we continue along here, we’ll hit St. Pancras station, and one street over from that is the British Library.”

Phillips sighed.

“You’re wantin’ a look at that gospel book, aren’t you?”

“You read my mind.”

“They’re hot on protocols, these places,” Phillips cautioned. “You can’t just rock up; you’ve got to make an appointment.”

“Lucky I made one for four o’clock, then, isn’t it?”

Phillips pursed his lips. “Anyone ever tell you, you’re narf a jammy bastard?”

“You have, daily, for the past ten years.”

“Aye, well, I stand by it.”

“Duly noted,” Ryan grinned. “C’mon, it’s up here, on the left.”

*

Morrison ambushed Lowerson in the break room.

“Jack?”

He nearly choked on the Christmas gingerbread latte he’d been in the process of quaffing.

“Ma’am?”

She stalked towards him, eyeing her prey very much as a lion might have done on the plains of Africa.

“I was looking for Ryan or Phillips. Have you seen either of them?”

On the countertop, a message flashed up on his mobile phone which read, ‘CC on the war path. Watch your back! Mac x’

He snatched it up, before Morrison could read the offending text, and vowed to change his phone settings.

“Anything urgent?” she asked, innocently.

“N—no, not at all. Ah, you were asking me something?”

“Yes, Jack,” she said, very patiently. “I was asking you where Ryan and Phillips are.”

“I don’t exactly know where they are…right now,” he said, and told himself these things were all a matter of interpretation. It was perfectly true that he didn’t know where they were at that precise moment.

Morrison waited five full seconds, to let him sweat a while.

“They wouldn’t happen to be in London, would they?” she asked, silkily.

“London? Ah—”

Luckily for him, MacKenzie must have sent a Code Red warning to Yates, who bustled into the room at all speed.

“Oh! Jack, thank goodness, I’ve been looking for you everywhere. There’s somebody on the desk line for you—they said it was important…and urgent!”

“Gosh,” Morrison said, widening her eyes. “Important and urgent.”

“I’d better take that,” Lowerson said, and scarpered as fast as his legs would carry him.

In the awkward silence following his departure, Yates offered a shaky smile, and Morrison smiled in return.

The third zebra, she thought.

“Looks like it’s just the two of us left standing, Melanie,” she said.

Yates told herself not to crack. It was a bluff…she couldn’t know for sure where Ryan and Phillips had gone.

Could she?

“Would you like a cup of tea?”

Yates frowned, wondering if it was a trap.

“No, thank you,” she said, politely. “In fact, I’d better get back to my desk—”

Morrison looked her squarely in the eye.

“That’s it,” she snapped. “Enough of this nonsense. What time are they due back from London?”

“W—who, ma’am?”

Morrison stared at her for a long moment then, to their mutual surprise, began to laugh. Whatever she thought of Ryan at that moment, one thing was certain.

He could inspire loyalty unlike any other person she’d ever known.

“Oh, go on, bugger off,” she told Yates, without any malice. “Before I change my mind.”





CHAPTER 19


The British Library was an imposing, red-brick building of 1970s design, boasting a slanted roof and a piazza, of all things, as well as the largest library catalogue in the world, estimated to be somewhere in the region of two hundred million individual items—some dating all the way back to 2000 B.C.

Shortly before four o’clock, Ryan and Phillips made their way through the aforementioned piazza to the library’s main entrance. Venturing inside, it became clear to them that the British Library was far more than a collection of books—it was a temple to reading.

“Well, look at that,” Phillips whispered.

“Not bad,” Ryan agreed, with his usual flair for understatement.