The Red Room (Atticus Priest Murder Mystery and Crime Thrillers Book 3) Read online

  THE RED ROOM

  AN ATTICUS PRIEST MYSTERY

  MARK DAWSON

  CONTENTS

  Part I

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Part II

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Part III

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Part IV

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Part V

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  Chapter 81

  Chapter 82

  Chapter 83

  Chapter 84

  Chapter 85

  Chapter 86

  Chapter 87

  Chapter 88

  Chapter 89

  Part VI

  Chapter 90

  Chapter 91

  Chapter 92

  Chapter 93

  Chapter 94

  Chapter 95

  Chapter 96

  Chapter 97

  Chapter 98

  Chapter 99

  Chapter 100

  Chapter 101

  Part VII

  Chapter 102

  Chapter 103

  Chapter 104

  Chapter 105

  Chapter 106

  Chapter 107

  Chapter 108

  Epilogue

  Afterword

  Acknowledgments

  Want more Mark Dawson?

  Also By Mark Dawson

  In the John Milton Series

  In the Beatrix Rose Series

  In the Isabella Rose Series

  About Mark Dawson

  PART I

  MONDAY

  1

  The glass roof of the refectory reverberated with the drumming of the rain as the clouds opened and thunder boomed overhead. Clive Mouton paid for his breakfast and took his tray to the table in the corner he preferred. He removed his green and yellow sash and folded it neatly, leaving it on the seat next to him. He had a bacon bloomer, and the last thing he wanted to do was to spill ketchup onto the sash; also, it marked him out as a guide, and it wasn’t unheard of for visitors to ask him questions while he was eating. He was an enthusiastic member of the volunteer team at the cathedral, but he liked to spend the half hour he took before he started by checking his social media accounts to see the updates from his daughter and grandchildren. He was distracted from his phone today by the storm. A skein of lightning split across the sky, thunder boomed, and the rain kept thudding down, a deluge that raced down the slope of the glass. The gutters had quickly overflowed, and now they spilled the water down the windows in a sudden wash. The southwest of the country had seen an enormous amount of rain since Christmas with the result that several of the five rivers that converged on Salisbury—including the Avon—had burst their banks. The water meadows were full, and some of the lower-lying villages had flooded.

  The refectory served the cathedral and had been built in the space between the nave and the cloisters, replacing the unsightly 1970s prefabricated buildings that had once stood here. Mouton had been head of history at the nearby Chafyn Grove school and had always had a keen interest in his subject. He had studied the cathedral and taught his students about it; volunteering to show tourists around the building was an obvious way for him to fill the spare hours of his retirement. He always finished his tours by taking his guests to the refectory, explaining how it stood on the site of the old plumbery the cathedral’s masons would once have used to repair the leadwork on the roof. Mouton would show them how the design had incorporated the ancient buttresses of the cloisters, and then he would point up, through the modern glass and steel roof, to the glorious view of the tower and spire. He was one of the handful of guides who was allowed to conduct tours of the tower itself, and showing visitors the spectacle from the ground just after they had descended the three hundred and thirty-two steps from the top was an excellent way to bring the tour to a close.

  He looked up now and noted how the pale stone contrasted against the dark grey clouds. The forecast had been for more storms today, and it hadn’t been wrong; dawn had broken with the sky an angry purple, and it had quickly grown gloomier and more ominous. The spire stood proud against the fast-moving clouds like the prow of a ship cutting through furious waves.

  “Morning, Clive.”

  Mouton looked up and saw that the dean had stopped at his table. “Morning.”

  “What a start to the day.”

  “It’s supposed to rain all week,” Mouton said. “I was listening to the radio in the car.”

  “They’re saying it’s what’s left of Hurricane Louise.”

  “As if we haven’t had enough. You know the Avon’s burst its banks? Britford’s flooded. I’ve got friends there. The river’s going right through the middle of it.”

  “Same with the Ebble. Berwick St. John and Bowerchalke look like they might flood. Stoke Farthing, too.”

  Mouton nodded. The Met Office was saying that a jet stream strengthened by the warm tropical air pushed northwards by Louise would push low pressure across the country, and that it wasn’t likely to move for days.

  The dean pointed up at the tower. “You know who I feel sorry for? Apart from anyone in those villages? David.”

  “No. Seriously? He’ll still do it today?”

  “Just saw him. He’s only got another week to go, and then he’s done. And he’s stubborn as a goat.”

  Mouton looked up again at the tower. David Campbell—the cathedral’s clerk of works—was a keen amateur photographer and had been undertaking a fundraising project where he took a photograph from the same parapet of the cathedral tower every day for a year. An exhibition was planned for when the project was completed. A lot of money had been raised—over fifty thousand pounds—and it had been earmarked for the restoration of the statuary of the West Front of the cathedral. Campbell had been blogging about it, too, posting daily pictures and his reflections as he looked out over the city from the same vantage point. Mouton had been following the blog and knew the dean was right; Campbell’s stubbornness was legendary. He had continued with the project through autumn winds that registered at more than a hundred miles an hour on the anemometer atop the spire, and then again through the snows in February; he wouldn’t let today’s rain stop him and would probably see the storm as a perfect opportunity to take a particularly striking image.

  They both looked up to the parapet. “He’s going to get soaked,” Mouton said.

  “Rather him than me.”

  The dean wished Mouton a good day and took his coffee into the gift shop. Mouton tucked a napkin into his collar. He looked up again as another clap of thunder rumbled overhead. Rainwater swept down the camber of the glass, a ripple that passed through his view of the tower and the spire. Another fork of lightning spread out across the sky as he noticed something up at the juncture where the tower ended and the spire began.

  Movement.

  A dark blur against the stone.

  It took him a moment to realise what it was.

  A person.

  Arms and legs flailing.

  Falling down the side of the tower.

  He watched for a second and then another.

  The body caught against the stone, flipped into a spin and then bounced off a buttress. It spun again, head over heels, limbs flailing, and then disappeared.

  Mouton heard the muffled thud of impact as it hit the ground.

  He froze, slacked-jawed with confusion and
not sure what he was supposed to do. The café was quiet for a moment, the silence interrupted by the sound of a dropped tray and then, finally, the first scream.

  2

  “Come on,” Mackenzie Jones said. “We need to get in the car or we’re going to be late.”

  She was trying as hard as she could to keep a sunny temperament despite the challenges that two tired and irritable children were presenting. It had been her weekend to have the two of them and, despite the occasional argument, they had been on their best behaviour and a pleasure to be with. Mack had taken them to enjoy the rides at Paulton’s Park on Saturday and then to the cinema to see the latest Pixar movie, followed by a visit to the city and lunch at Nando’s on Sunday. They had gone to bed much later than would have been the case had they been staying with Mack’s estranged husband, Andy, but now—after allowing them to stay up until ten for a midnight feast—she was paying the price. It had been difficult to get them out of bed, and their truculence looked like it was permanent, despite Mack’s threats of a trip to the headmaster’s study should they be late.

  “Daddy never shouts at us,” pouted Daisy.

  Mack was about to retort that perhaps they should stay with Daddy, then, but bit her tongue. Andy’s constant exhortations that she needed to be more patient with them hadn’t helped their relationship as it entered its terminal phase, and she couldn’t help but imagine his version of the morning routine—beatific smiles and “pleases” and “thank yous,” whereas all she received were exasperated frowns and grunts, and that was if she was lucky.

  Thinking of Andy brought her back to what he had said on Friday night, just after dropping the kids off. He had admitted he was in a relationship with a woman from work and that the two of them were thinking about moving in together. Mack had long since suspected that they had been more than just colleagues, and, keeping her voice down for fear of upsetting the children, had asked him how long it had been going on. Andy had confessed that he had been seeing her for six months, their relationship starting when he and Mack had still been together. It would have been the height of hypocrisy for Mack to criticise him for that given her own dalliance with Atticus Priest, but, as she had lain in bed that night thinking about what he had said, she found that it made her feel a little better about what had happened. She had convinced herself that the end of the marriage was all her fault, but that wasn’t fair. They had both been miserable. Perhaps, if they had been more honest with each other, they might have been able to emerge from the wreckage of their union with a better chance of staying on good terms. That seemed like a lost cause now.

  Mack knelt and helped Sebastian as he struggled to tie his laces. “All right,” she said with a smile. “Let’s get into the car and off we go.”

  Mack navigated the knot of traffic as parents deposited their kids at school, waited until Sebastian and Daisy were safely in the playground, and then repeated the feat as she drove slowly and carefully back toward town. She hadn’t had time for her morning coffee and decided to stop and try the café that had opened at Parkwood gym on the London Road. She left the car outside the gym, and, sheltering from the rain beneath Daisy’s Peppa Pig umbrella, she hurried inside. She bought a coffee and a pastry to go and was making her way back to the car when she felt the vibration of her phone in her pocket. She climbed back into the driver’s seat, rested the coffee on the dashboard, wiped her sugary fingers against her trousers, and took out the phone.

  It was Robbie Best. “Good morning.”

  “You might want to hold on before you say that, boss.”

  She sipped her coffee. “What’s happened?”

  “We’ve got a death. A bad one.”

  She put the cup back on the dashboard. “Go on.”

  “It’s at the cathedral. The clerk of the works was up in the tower, and he fell off.”

  “Jesus.” She paused, allowing that to sink in. “Jesus.”

  “I’m there now. He fell into the space at the side of the refectory. I’ll be honest—he’s made a right mess. I think you’d better get down here.”

  Best was right: a death that macabre had the makings of a story that could get picked up nationally, and was something that she would need to supervise herself.

  “Secure the scene,” she said. “I’m on my way.”

  3

  “Bandit!” Atticus yelled. “Bandit!”

  The dog raced away, ignoring Atticus’s forlorn attempt to call him to heel. The two of them had gone up to Old Sarum, the ancient settlement that had once been the site of Salisbury itself. It had been defended by way of a motte-and-bailey castle, and the large mound of earthworks remained. It was one of their favourite spots for a walk. Bandit had sprinted away, and Atticus watched as he launched himself down into what was left of the old cathedral. Atticus jumped down into the foundations and jogged over to where the dog was standing over what looked like a rabbit hole.

  “What was it, boy? You see a rabbit?”

  The dog stood in the classic pose of the breed: one foreleg raised, snout pointing down. Atticus scrubbed the back of his head, clipped the lead to the ring on his collar and gave him a biscuit. He munched it happily and then looked up for another.

  “I don’t think so,” Atticus said. “You only get two biscuits when you listen.”

  The dog stared up at him plaintively and, his resolve melting, Atticus tossed him a second treat. Bandit caught it in his mouth and wagged his tail happily as he crunched down on it.

  Atticus led the way out of the foundations and back toward the monument. The rain was still lashing down, but Atticus was wearing his waterproofs, and Bandit didn’t care. Atticus didn’t care, either; it had been a good few weeks, and he had been happier than he could remember for months.

  His professional reputation had been rehabilitated by two cases that had both received national attention. The first had involved his piercing of the veil surrounding the death of the Mallender family at their house in Grovely Woods. The second, trumping even the first, had seen him solve the mystery of the bodies that had been found in the graveyard of a church in Imber, the village in the middle of Salisbury Plain that had been abandoned to the army. Atticus had been mentioned on the television and radio and had been interviewed in national newspapers. He had been shrewd in anticipating the publicity and had made sure that he was able to take advantage of it; there had been a flood of enquiries for his assistance and, after quickly filling his own diary, he had cultivated relationships with ex-police officers who were striking out on their own as private investigators in Andover and Devizes. Atticus passed them the cases for which he had no interest in return for healthy finder’s fees.