Cross had always been a light sleeper. It didn’t take much to wake him. So when his phone vibrated early next morning with a text he was immediately alert. He assumed it was work. No one else would get in touch with him this early. Certainly not if they knew him well. He was surprised to see that it was Stephen asking him to ring him urgently. He gave himself a couple of seconds to fully come round then called.
‘George. It’s the church. We’ve been burgled.’
Cross and Ottey arrived there just after seven. It was a wet morning with the kind of persistent drizzle that seemed innocuous until you realised big drops had accumulated on your chin and were trickling down the neck of your shirt.
‘I wouldn’t normally have bothered you, George. But what with Alexander’s murder, I don’t know, maybe my imagination got the better of me,’ said the agitated priest as soon as they arrived.
‘Is anything missing?’ asked Cross.
‘Nothing from the church or sacristy. But they went through the vestment drawers.’
‘What makes you say “they”?’ asked Cross.
‘No reason. He, she, they, whatever. The office has been ransacked but I don’t know if anything has been taken.’
The office was a mess, the contents of the drawers thrown all over the floor.
‘They found the petty cash, only about a hundred quid, but they left it. I’m not really sure there’s anything to steal. To be honest with you the most expensive thing here is probably the lead on the roof,’ said Stephen.
‘And that’s still there?’ asked Cross.
‘I haven’t actually looked. But I’m sure I would’ve heard if anyone had been up there.’
‘Has there been anyone new to your Sunday services?’ asked Ottey.
‘Not that I’ve noticed. No.’
‘Any strangers just popped in recently or knocked at the parsonage door?’ she went on.
‘Not recently.’
‘The funeral,’ Cross began. ‘Did you talk to anyone there?’
‘Several people, yes.’
‘Anyone strike you as odd? A little strange in their approach?’
‘I don’t think so, no. Gosh, I’m not really being any help, am I?’
*
Back at the MCU Alice had been looking for Cross and nabbed him as soon as he came in. She had, as he’d asked, managed to get hold of a lot of the congregation’s photographs from the Palm Sunday christenings. In two of them a man was seen, as bold as brass, walking through them with the painting under his arm. His face could be made out partially in one of them.
‘Recognise him?’ Mackenzie asked.
‘No,’ replied Ottey.
‘We need to go to the abbey now,’ said Cross picking up Brother Dominic’s bible as he got up to leave.
‘Well, he obviously did,’ said Ottey following him.
*
‘I would ask you what’s going on, but I’ve learned from experience that it’s so much more fun just to watch,’ Ottey said to Cross in the car.
‘“So much more fun?” There you go again. This is a murder investigation, DS Ottey. I fail to see the fun in any of this,’ Cross replied.
She smiled as she knew perfectly well that he also didn’t want to tell her what he was up to as he too preferred to let it play out and show it. It was his way of having fun. He just didn’t know it. They arrived at the abbey thirty minutes later. Parked and walked over to the bookbindery. William and Robbie were working inside.
‘Good morning, Sergeants,’ said William.
He saw the bible in Cross’s hand.
‘One of our bibles?’ he asked.
‘Brother Dominic’s, in fact. I’d like your opinion on something. About the marbling on the inside covers,’ replied Cross.
‘Of course,’ replied William taking the bible.
‘Brother Dominic covered all of the monks’ bibles here at the abbey. So beautiful,’ William informed Robbie, who then walked over to him to look at it.
William examined the marbled paper inside the front and back covers of the bible then looked up.
‘They’re definitely different. Quite hard to see. But they are.’
‘Exactly what I thought. The question is why? Why wouldn’t he have used the same paper for both covers?’ Cross asked.
‘I have no idea,’ replied the monk.
‘Examine the back cover more closely,’ Cross instructed him. ‘Run your fingers over it.’
William did so. He looked away from the book as if by not seeing it his sense of touch would be greater.
‘There’s something in it,’ he replied.
‘I thought so too, which is why I brought it to you. As you know the bible has been given to Brother Dominic’s brother, so I don’t want to cause any unnecessary damage. Given your expertise I thought it better for you to find out what’s concealed in there.’
‘Of course,’ replied the monk, who reached for a scalpel.
‘If you could put these on,’ said Cross, holding out a pair of latex gloves.
William put them on. He then delicately tried to peel the paper back without success.
‘I can’t preserve the paper. Perhaps it’s best I just get it off and then replace both the front and back with new marbled paper,’ William offered.
‘I think Stephen would appreciate that,’ said Ottey.
So, William became bolder in his approach and cut the paper away. It revealed a shallow panel cut out of the book’s cover which was packed with what looked like tissue paper. He held the book out for Cross.
‘You have the gloves on, Brother William,’ Cross pointed out.
‘Of course.’
He removed the tissue to find a folded-up piece of paper below. He pulled it out and unfolded it. It was an A4 printed sheet with a signature and official stamp on it. William read it.
‘It appears to be a bill of sale for a painting,’ he said.
‘Presumably not a Victorian painting of the Virgin Mary, but something of similar dimensions,’ said Cross, who already knew the answer. Ottey was astonished. How on earth had he come up with this one? She was beginning to feel maybe she should keep a diary of these moments. Become a Watson to his Holmes.
‘It’s for a small Lucien Freud oil,’ said William.
‘Date of sale?’
‘Twenty-seventh of June 2008.’
‘And the purchase price?’ Cross asked.
‘Five million, seven hundred and fifty thousand pounds,’ William said slowly as if trying to ensure while reading it out that he was reading it correctly.
‘Made out to?’
‘Alexander Mount.’
‘Gosh. What do you think that would be worth now, DS Ottey?’ Cross asked.
‘I have no idea. But I’m guessing we now know what Alexander did with his money,’ she replied.
‘What do you think, Nick?’ asked Cross. But Robbie had slipped out quietly. Seemingly unconcerned, Cross turned back to the monk and produced an evidence bag which he held out in front of the monk. William dropped the bill of sale into it. Cross sealed it correctly then produced another for the bible.
‘Nick?’ said Ottey, in case she’d misheard.
‘Nicholas Cubitt, yes,’ replied Cross.
‘Okay, two questions. How did you know that was him, and why have we just let a prime suspect go?’ Ottey asked.
‘He used the name of Charlotte Hoskins’s cottage as his fake surname, Weald, which could have been a coincidence, but I doubted it. Then I recognised him in the photographs Alice unearthed.’
William looked completely at sea with this turn of events.
‘Who is Nicholas Cubitt?’ he asked.
‘Long story, but I’m afraid we need to go,’ replied Ottey.
‘But you just called him a prime suspect. Does that mean all this time—’
But Cross interrupted him by taking the evidence bag with the bible in it from him.
‘It seems he duped us all, Brother William. Don’t feel badly about it,’ said Ottey.
‘Shouldn’t I fix it first?’ William asked, indicating the book.
‘It’s evidence now. That’ll have to wait till after the trial,’ Cross informed him.
‘But I’ll bring it back for you to fix before it goes back to Father Stephen,’ Ottey assured him.
They walked out towards her car as a black Range Rover Evoque sped down the lane and out of the abbey. Robbie was at the wheel.
‘Shit, did you get the licence plate?’ she asked.
‘No,’ he replied casually and marched off towards the abbey house.
‘Oh, okay. Don’t worry I’ll just wait in the car,’ Ottey said to herself, not for the first time.
Thomas was tending his lawn. He was standing in the middle of it and looking down at a section, perplexed. Cross arrived in the courtyard and stood to one side. He knew better than to trespass on the lawn without permission.
‘Everything all right, Brother Thomas?’ Cross asked, reading the consternation on the monk’s features.
He summoned the detective onto the lawn unceremoniously then pointed at a patch of grass.
‘Stellaria media,’ he said solemnly. ‘Common chickweed, the devil’s work.’
Cross saw he was pointing to the tiniest little weed in the perfect lawn.
Thomas produced a penknife from his leather toolbelt and knelt down. Then, with all the care and precision of a neurosurgeon faced with a brain beneath an open skull, he began to cut into the ground around the sides of the offending weed. He lifted a square inch of lawn from the ground and carefully extracted the weed and root from it. Satisfied he’d excised the whole thing, he replaced the small square piece of turf back into the lawn. Cross bent down and took a closer look. You couldn’t see where the repair had been made.
‘Perfect,’ he commented.
‘Yes,’ agreed the monk.
‘Brother Thomas, I have a question for you. The guest Robbie – do you know the registration number of his car?’
‘LT20 YJT,’ came the immediate reply. ‘Something off about that one,’ he commented as Cross walked away and smiled.
*
‘George, what is going on? What are we doing?’ Ottey asked wearily when he got into the car.
Instead of answering her Cross pulled out his mobile phone and called Mackenzie. He put her on speaker.
‘I need you to check a licence plate number for me,’ he said.
Normally these kinds of requests were issued over the radio. Cross didn’t like to do this as he said that the radio channels should be kept open and free for urgent police business, which of course this was. They were in actual fact in pursuit of a car. Ottey had her own theory about this idiosyncratic reluctance. She thought that speaking over the radio for him was like speaking in public. Something he didn’t like to do.
‘A black Range Rover Evoque?’ Mackenzie checked before giving him the name.
‘Correct.’
‘Okay, well, that car is registered to Nicholas Cubitt. Why are you asking?’
Cross cut off the phone without providing her with an answer.
‘So, Robbie is actually Nicholas Cubitt. I got that much. But why didn’t we just arrest him?’ Ottey asked.
‘Because he still has the painting and our best chance of recovering it and catching him red-handed was to let him go. I’m fairly confident the attraction of a possibly ten-million-plus painting is too much to resist, and that he’ll let his guard down.’
‘So, Brother Dominic hid the painting in another painting?’
‘Yes, bought it with his fortune before entering the abbey. That’s where he put all his money,’ Cross explained.
‘Saving for a rainy day, perhaps?’
‘Who knows, but it crosses my mind that Stephen is now a very rich young priest,’ he commented.
‘Oh my God,’ she said at the thought of this.