Cuthbert's Way (DCI Ryan Mysteries, #17)(43)

He watched Phillips eating his eggs disconsolately, looked down at the remaining half of his toastie, and decided he was full.

“Finish mine, if you want,” Ryan said casually. “I couldn’t eat, after all.”

Phillips’ face perked up. “Y’sure?”

Ryan smiled, and pushed it across the table.

“Have it while it’s still hot.”

“What about CCTV?” Phillips asked, and sank his teeth into the first bite. “Oh, that’s the Food of the Gods, that is!”

Ryan grinned.

“Hassan’s requested the footage but, wouldn’t you know it? The camera circuit on B Wing was down for a period of three hours, today.”

“Wonders never cease,” Phillips muttered.

“Quite. Hassan says they’ve got Lareuse’s mobile phone and a few other personal items, so they’ll start going through that today, and they’ve already got an order to access his UK bank account—not that there’ll be much in that; he’ll have squirreled it away in a Swiss account. They’ve found a key amongst his gear, presumably to a lock-up of some kind, but there’s no telling where that might be.”

“Aye, that’ll be tricky to find, in a city this size,” Phillips agreed.

“If it’s even in London, at all.”

They fell into a brief silence, watching their own reflections in the window which was little more than a black mirror against the darkness outside.

“We might have more luck at the library,” Phillips said. “They’ve already sent us the CCTV footage from today and it’s good quality, too. We can get one of the techie fellers to enhance it and try to get a photofit.”

“If by ‘techie fellers’ you mean a member of our esteemed Digital Forensics Unit, then yes, I’m sure we could, but it won’t be us doing that—the case belongs to the Met. They shared that footage with us as a favour, but we’ll need Morrison to broker it for us if we want to work jointly.”

“D’you think she will?” Phillips asked.

Ryan shrugged. “She’s angry now, and rightly so. It was a calculated risk we took, coming here today, and things haven’t exactly gone to plan. However, events have proven certain things beyond a shadow of a doubt.”

“There’s still a possibility that Lareuse was killed for other reasons,” Phillips warned him. “You can’t rely on that in support of our theories.”

“I know. I was thinking more of the theft at the library, and the attack on that girl. In the first place, Jacob Jamieson is lying in a mortuary in Yorkshire, so he couldn’t have been running around King’s Cross. The security team at the library have already confirmed that the perp gained access using Jamieson’s Researcher Pass, and that he swiped in through the turnstiles at 15:28 for a three-thirty appointment with Dr Malone. How else could he have procured Jamieson’s pass, if he didn’t take it from the man himself?”

Phillips nodded.

“I’ve already contacted DCI Patel,” Ryan continued. “I told her that a man posing as Father Jacob gained entry to the Library using his pass, or a copy of it, to attack a woman and steal the gospel book. She’s come back to confirm that they’ve searched his belongings at Crayke and there’s no sign of a British Library pass amongst them.”

“He can’t have been killed just for his pass,” Phillips muttered.

“No,” Ryan agreed. “I think that was a question of convenience. Whoever used Jamieson’s pass had to act quickly before his name was made public, otherwise they ran the risk of somebody querying his identity, after seeing the news of Father Jacob’s death. At the moment, all they’ve reported is the death of a monk at Crayke College; Patel deliberately ordered a media embargo on the details being released until they’d had a chance to try to track down his next of kin. Unfortunately, somebody took advantage of the window of opportunity.”

“So, if they didn’t kill him for a bit of plastic—then what?”

“As we said when we looked at that poor man’s body, Father Jacob was tortured for a reason. We didn’t know what that reason was, until today, but I think it has to do with the gospel book.”

“Might just be a collector,” Phillips argued. “Somebody who wants to acquire everything to do with St. Cuthbert, including anything he might have had inside his coffin, which is why the pectoral cross was taken, as well. It might not be anything more than that.”

Ryan ran a hand over his mouth, considering.

“I agree, we’re dealing with a collector,” he said eventually. “But the timing is significant, here, don’t you think? They orchestrated the switch of that pectoral cross three years ago, and arranged an elaborate heist to steal their own copy, rather than risk discovery. That takes a lot of planning and investment. Today, the same person walked into the national library of the UK, alone, dressed up as a dead monk but otherwise without protection, with the specific goal to steal that book. Choosing to pose as Jacob Jamieson was a risky strategy and took very little time or money investment. He ran the risk of capture—which is something we very nearly achieved, today.”

He set aside bitter disappointment on that score.

“It feels like an escalation,” Phillips said, brushing toast crumbs from his jumper. “I wonder what’s driving them to take risks.”