Cuthbert's Way (DCI Ryan Mysteries, #17)(48)

“That concludes the history lesson for today,” he said, and there was another flutter of laughter around the room. “All of this is relevant because we believe there may be a person, or group, who still buy into this cult—more so than the average devout church-goer, who de facto believes in miracles, if they believe the word of the Bible to the letter.”

He shrugged.

“Live and let live, but don’t harm anybody else, that’s what we say around here, isn’t it? The problem is, we’ve got person or persons unknown running amok, fuelled by their convictions. It’s hard to reason with a belief, at the best of times, but when you’re dealing with an organised, well-financed operation, it becomes a real problem.”

He brought up an image of Mathieu Lareuse, taken from his charge sheet less than a week ago.

“This is Mathieu Lareuse, street name, ‘Rodin’—”

“Why ‘Rodin’, sir?” somebody asked.

“Probably, after the French sculptor,” Phillips said, surprising them all. “What? I listen to Radio Four.”

“Whatever the reason might have been, the name suited him,” Ryan continued. “He was a French national with British citizenship, who worked in galleries around London for a couple of years—until it became clear he was selling forgeries on a regular basis, many of which he’d manufactured himself. He earned himself a name on the underground circuits as being one of the best in the business.”

He clicked the next slide, which showed the forged pectoral cross, taken by Tom Faulkner, who was the senior CSI attached to their department.

“Lareuse was found dead in his cell in Pentonville Prison yesterday afternoon,” Ryan said. “We believe the reason is that he was responsible for creating this replica cross, which is the one we recovered back in March and which has been returned to the exhibition space at Durham Cathedral.”

They all sat up a little straighter.

“The decision was taken to allow the deception to continue, to give us a chance to figure out why anybody would want to steal something they knew to be fake—”

“How did they know it was fake?” somebody asked, and Ryan could only be glad he wasn’t surrounded by morons.

“Timing,” he replied, shortly. “We believe Edward Faber discovered his competitor’s handiwork, perhaps by chance, and told his old contact from Durham CID—who happened to be DCI Joan Tebbutt, who’d previously worked in the Fraud Unit. Unfortunately, somebody must have got wind of Faber’s discovery because, the next thing, he winds up being tortured and killed. We believe that Faber admitted to informing Tebbutt, to try to save himself, but he was already a dead man. Thanks to him, so was she.”

Ryan hitched a hip onto the edge of the desk.

“The point is, Faber’s death took place prior to the Durham heist, and there’s no other plausible explanation. We know that the late DC Justine Winter was involved in both murders, prior to taking her own life.”

“Why’d she do it?” one of them asked. “Why would she turn?”

“Money,” another one sneered.

“There’s no present evidence to suggest money was a motivating factor,” Ryan said. “However, we do believe there may be some connection between Justine’s actions and Cuthbert’s so-called ‘cult’. She has a brother who is seriously ill, and for whom we believe she might have been persuaded to try and procure a miracle.”

There were a few disbelieving laughs around the room, and Ryan could hardly blame them.

“I know it’s a difficult mental leap,” he said. “I’m not a religious person myself, nor do I have a loved one who is terminally ill or suffering from a debilitating, degenerative disease. But, if I did, I have to ask myself what I wouldn’t do, to try to make them better.”

That silenced any further outbursts, because it was only the truth. There was very little that people wouldn’t do for those they loved; and, in some cases, that included committing murder.

“The idea of making sacrifices to one’s chosen deity isn’t new,” he continued. “It’s a practice that’s been followed around the world for centuries—probably, millennia. It’s harder to accept it happening in our modern, civilised society, because we’d like to believe we’re past all that, and more evolved.”

Ryan clicked onto the next image, which was a picture DCI Patel had shared with him, and showed the crime scene at Crayke College with the late Father Jacob front and centre.

There were horrified intakes of breath.

“Not a pretty sight, I’m sure you’ll agree,” Ryan said, and clicked onto a blank screen to give their eyes a break. “The deceased is Father Jacob Jamieson, a former monk and housemaster at Crayke College, in North Yorkshire. Prior to his conversion, he was a history teacher for a number of years and was a renowned authority on the life and times of St. Cuthbert.”

Ryan paused to polish off his coffee before continuing—talking of murder was thirsty work.

“Father Jacob was found tortured and murdered in a cider mill on Monday morning, which is on the Crayke grounds and is owned and operated by the monastery. As you can see from that picture, his death was slow and painful, and unnecessarily dramatic, in the end.”

“What did he do?” one of the intelligence analysts called out. “Fiddle with some of the kids?”