Cuthbert's Way (DCI Ryan Mysteries, #17)(51)

“Better still, cross-check them again, looking for any with a recent history of severe illness, or a close family member with a severe illness, or any recently deceased family members. We’re looking for people who are vulnerable to the idea of a miracle being their only hope—so let’s look for people who might be in need of a miracle.”

“We’ll get straight on it, this afternoon,” Yates promised.

“Good. Mac? I need you to pick up where we left off with those hospital records,” he said. “I want to know who Justine Winter and her brother would have seen on a regular basis at their regular appointments, as well as any support groups they attended. Interview the brother, if you can, and find out who they spoke to, or who his sister might have spoken of, more often than anyone else. There’s nothing in her work e-mail account, or even on her private e-mail accounts, so we need to come at this from another direction.”

“Leave it with me,” MacKenzie said, in her soft Irish burr.

“Phillips? I need the CCTV footage from all of the crime scenes, and a photofit. I want to know who the hell got on that train, yesterday, and how we missed them.”

“Nee bother,” he said, with a smile. “By the way, we’ve had an update through from Hassan, in London. He says they’ve managed to find Lareuse’s lock-up, on the Isle of Dogs. Apparently, he’d hardly used his UK current account in three years, then, all of a sudden, he’s buying lunch and dinner within five hundred yards of some storage place called, Storr-Eez.”

“Muppet,” Lowerson said.

“You can say that again,” Phillips agreed. “Apparently, it’s like a treasure trove inside, because Lareuse used it as his workshop. Left all his tools and everything. Anyhow, given all the stuff around Cuthbert, Hassan got in touch to say he’d found something that might be of interest.”

“Oh? What’s that?”

“Well, they’ve only had time to do a quick search, so they might come across even more, but they’ve found a stack of pictures of Cuthbert’s Cross. Close-ups, and all that.”

“You mean, the kind a high-class forger might use to produce a copy?”

“Exactly that kind of thing,” Phillips agreed, with a smug smile.

It was circumstantial, but still an important connection. More importantly, it confirmed Ryan’s theory about Lareuse’s involvement, and it was always a relief to know that he wasn’t losing his edge despite the endless rounds of ‘Old MacDonald’.

He looked around their faces, glad to see the energy running high amongst his team, because they’d certainly need it.

“All right,” he said. “Let’s get to work!”





CHAPTER 26


Durham was magical at all times of the year, but especially in winter, when frost clung to the roofs and chimney-tops of the stone cottages that lined its cobbled streets, and the uppermost spires of the cathedral were shrouded in mist so it seemed to be touching the clouds.

“Can you imagine what people must have thought, in the old days?” Lowerson said, as they walked along the pathway beside the river, at the foot of the cathedral. “If you were a lowly peasant, living in a hut somewhere, imagine coming to Durham and seeing that! It’d be easy to believe it was God’s house, wouldn’t it? You’d be in awe of it all.”

“I’m still in awe,” Yates confessed.

They took a moment to enjoy the sight of a swan and her cygnets swimming gracefully downstream, breathing in the damp air with its earthy scent.

“I can see why Anna enjoyed living here,” Lowerson remarked. “It’s peaceful.”

“And beautiful,” Yates added. “But too close to the Cathedral, for my taste.”

“Really?”

She shrugged, a bit self-consciously.

“You already know that my parents struggled when my sister died, and their personalities completely changed. It’s hard for me to describe how they used to be and it’s been so long now, I wonder whether I’m remembering correctly or if it’s just wishful thinking. Anyway, they can be quite antisocial…well, you’ve met them, so you know.”

Lowerson couldn’t disagree. The handful of times he’d met Melanie’s parents had been painfully awkward, and peppered with barbed comments around the fact they were ‘living in sin’. He happened to like their sinful life, with their lovely new home and their feral kitten, Mel’s good taste and his flair for taking out the bins. If that was ‘sin’, then he was most definitely a sinner, and proud of it.

But it was not so easy for Mel to laugh off these things.

“Losing a child is bound to have a terrible impact,” he said, kindly. “People cope with grief in different ways.”

“Well, my parents found a lot of solace in the Bible,” she said, staring out across the river. “Overnight, they went from being agnostic people who never stepped foot inside a church, except to attend weddings or funerals, to becoming missionaries. They’re over in China, now, trying to convert people.”

Personally, Jack could never see the attraction of travelling to distant lands with the express purpose of bashing other people’s belief systems, whilst simultaneously trying to flog your own—all under the banner of ‘do-goodery’, of course. So long as you built a well or something, while you were out there, being condescending towards others didn’t seem to be so frowned upon.