Cuthbert's Way (DCI Ryan Mysteries, #17)(78)
Beneath the insignia was another coat of arms that, at first glance, appeared the same as the one Ryan had found on the wall at St. Cuthbert’s Cave. However, this one had a key difference, which was the inclusion of a tiny pectoral cross, sitting in between the traditional fleur-de-lis.
Ryan looked at it for a long moment, and wondered if he should feel more excitement at the possibility of having found Cuthbert’s last resting place.
But he couldn’t muster the emotion, or anything like it.
Just then, his phone rang again, from a different number he didn’t recognise.
“This is Ryan.”
“How are you getting along in your quest? Well, I hope?”
“Very well indeed,” Ryan said. “I’ve found what you’ve been looking for.”
There was a quick intake of breath, and Ryan could feel the other man’s excitement transmitting itself down the line.
It was sickening.
“Where should we meet?” Ryan asked.
“Nine o’clock, at the head of the causeway on Holy Island,” Chatterley said.
“Land side or island side?”
“Island side. Don’t be late, and remember my warnings, Ryan—I’m a man of my word.”
The line went dead and Ryan smiled down at the gravestone, wondering whose bones really lay slumbering at his feet.
It hardly mattered, for his purposes.
Turning, Ryan headed back to his car and thought of what he kept in the boot, for emergencies.
That would do the trick.
*
Anna couldn’t stop her teeth chattering.
She was frozen to the bone, her body shivering so badly it jarred the restraints on her hands and wrists, cutting into the delicate skin.
But she hardly felt it.
The wind had picked up outside the car, rolling in from the sea to rock the vehicle back and forth, seeping through the cracks and crevices to swirl around the woman who lay trapped inside, with no possibility of escape.
She’d spent hours trying to gnaw through the gag on her mouth, and had eventually made some progress there, nudging it past her chin so she could drag in enormous gulps of air and moisten her lips, which were cracked and bloody from a lack of water.
Anna had come to terms with the knowledge that her captor had no intention of coming back. She knew this, not only because he had never looked at her face or cared to see her as a person, but because she knew exactly where he’d left her—and the only possible reason for that would be to let her die.
She’d given up on shouting for help, after the first two hours. Nobody would be crossing the causeway by foot in these temperatures; they would be heading home by car, back to their cosy lives, never suspecting that the car they passed by had a person inside it.
Anna had no idea of the tide times for that day, but if there was one thing she knew for sure, it was that tides waited for nobody. They would roll in, sooner or later, bringing the might of the North Sea in midwinter to bear on the causeway.
When that happened, the waters would seep into the car, rising quickly to extinguish Anna Taylor-Ryan, forever.
CHAPTER 42
One of the strangest things about crime fiction, Ryan had always thought, was its insistence that every baddie must be in possession of above average intelligence, or even genius. With a couple of possible exceptions, most notably in the case of Keir Edwards, he’d always found the perpetrators of violent crimes to be depressingly average, without any charisma or glittering intelligence to speak of.
He suspected this would be the case with William Chatterley, when they finally came face-to-face.
Though he must have some creative skill as a painter and art restorer, it only took a bit of careful planning and a degree of specious charm to prey on the impressionable, or vulnerable. In his line of work, Ryan only came into contact with the victims and criminal associates who had found themselves entangled in the perpetrator’s web, but he would have been interested to know how many others didn’t become embroiled, and he suspected that number would be much higher.
In Chatterley’s case, Ryan could hardly believe his luck that the man wanted to meet on an island he knew would become cut off from the mainland when the tides rolled in, shortly before nine o’clock. Unless he was planning to make a speedy getaway by boat—which was nigh impossible during December and at night, for the waters around the Farne Islands were treacherous—William would be stuck there with nowhere to go except down to the local nick, the next morning. There was another possibility, which was that he hoped to beat the tides after making the exchange and drive like the wind to get to the mainland.
Never advisable, considering how many vehicles were swept away from the causeway on an annual basis.
Ryan’s headlights cut through the long, winding roads leading towards the causeway, and his stomach grew tighter with every passing mile. It was comforting to know that Lowerson and Yates would already be on the island by now, in plain clothes, while Phillips and MacKenzie remained in Elsdon, helping his parents to care for Emma while his mother recovered and, he dared say, his father recovered from the shock of it all, too. Despite all that, Ryan could not know for sure whether his wife was still alive, or whether Chatterley had subjected her to the same fate as so many others, until he was able to hold her in his arms again and see with his own eyes that she was safe and unharmed. There was an unpredictability to Chatterley’s behaviour, something already noted by his former oncologist, and that was a source of grave concern to Ryan. Predictability was a desirable thing, despite what people said, because it allowed you to plan with confidence. In the case of William Chatterley, his delusions—some of which may have been caused by the cancerous tumour in his brain—made him an unknown quantity, and Ryan would not be able to relax until it was all over.