Cuthbert's Way (DCI Ryan Mysteries, #17)(7)

He noticed that Anna looked tearful all of a sudden and moved quickly, shifting the baby in his arms to sit on the chair beside her.

“What is it, darling? What’s the matter?”

Anna merely shook her head and reached for Emma, who held out her chubby arms for her mother’s embrace.

“Nothing’s the matter now,” Anna said, rubbing her cheek against the baby’s soft, downy hair.

Ryan touched a gentle hand to his wife’s face.

“I love you,” he murmured, and smiled as the baby cast her deep brown eyes up at him, in accusation. “You, too, little one.”

Across the kitchen, Eve turned away to mask the fear which must have shown clearly on her face. For, if Ryan was right, everything could be taken away from them in a single stroke, and she could hardly bring herself to imagine the devastation that would cause.





CHAPTER 3


While Detective Chief Inspector Ryan revived his sleep-deprived body beneath the spray of an ice-cold shower, the headmaster of Crayke College watched the sun rise from his office window. Long, hazy rays of pale amber light spread across the frosted lawns, while clouds of mist rolled over the moors and blanketed the valley in white, leaving Father Peter with the lingering impression of having been cut off from the rest of the world. Which was, he supposed, exactly why he’d chosen a life in service to God, and why he’d come to Crayke in the first place.

But, for all its safety and seclusion, their small community was not without its fair share of drama.

“You say there’s been no sign of Father Jacob since last night?”

Peter turned away from the window to speak to Father Samuel, who was chaplain at the school and a key part of its monastic community. Crayke was a rare beast in the modern world, being both an elite, co-educational Catholic boarding school set in acres of stunning landscape, as well as home to one of a dwindling number of active Benedictine monasteries, with the abbey providing a shared focal point for both sides of the community.

“No,” Samuel said. “He hasn’t been seen since around five o’clock, yesterday afternoon, which is when the boys went off for their movie night in the main hall. When they came back to the boarding house later on, they couldn’t find Jacob anywhere, so they came to me, instead.”

“I’m amazed they had the presence of mind,” Peter was bound to say. “We must be doing something right, after all. What steps did you take?”

“I had a look around but, apart from finding the lights in his study blazing, there was nothing untoward…I assumed he’d been called away on some errand, so I told the boys to go to bed.”

“There was still no sign of him after lights out?”

Samuel shook his head. “I stayed in Father Jacob’s room, so that the children would be supervised throughout the night,” he replied, with a hint of irritation. “I hope there’s a reasonable explanation for his absence—”

“I’m sure there is,” Father Peter said, forestalling any tongue-wagging. The chaplain was a good man but had a tendency to gossip. “I hope our brother hasn’t come to any harm.”

This last observation gave Samuel pause for thought, and unlocked another memory from the previous evening.

“There was one more thing,” he said. “When I did my rounds, making sure all the doors and windows were locked, I found a breakage in the laundry room. A windowpane was shattered and there was glass all over the floor.”

Peter frowned at this.

“I thought it might have been one of the boys,” Samuel said. “I know there’ve been one or two incidents with Haynes and Alverton, so I spoke with them first.”

“And?”

“They strongly deny breaking the window,” Samuel said. “And, I must say, they seemed genuine, this time.”

“Perhaps,” Father Peter murmured. “In which case, there might have been an intruder. Has anybody at the abbey seen Father Jacob?”

It was unusual for any member of staff to go AWOL, let alone an experienced monk and teacher of more than twenty years’ standing, in possession of an impeccable track record.

A ripple of unease crept along the headmaster’s spine; something Ryan would have recognised as a forewarning of bad things to come.

“I’ve spoken with all of our brothers,” the chaplain told him. “Nobody has seen Jacob since yesterday.”

Peter was silent for a long moment, then came to a decision.

“Assemble the staff for a search party,” he said quietly. “Something isn’t right.”

*

When an initial search elicited no clue as to Father Jacob’s whereabouts, it became necessary to call in reinforcements.

The ‘Captain of Beagling’ was a spotty-faced youth of seventeen, whose love of beagles was matched only by his love of fried food and the yearly subscription he had for Horse and Hound. Though hunting for sport had been criminalised in the United Kingdom, it was still possible to kill small, unsuspecting creatures in the name of ‘wildlife management’ or ‘pest control’ and, for that reason, Crayke College had taken it upon themselves to appoint a dedicated youngster to lead the pack of dogs they kept for this purpose.

Some might have said it was overkill; however, in the rare case of a missing monk, having one’s own pack of sniffer dogs proved to be a very useful asset.