Blood Ties

by Oliver Davies

  “Sir?” I followed his gaze, not seeing anything.

  “Thought I heard something,” he muttered. He shook his head and carried on. “The maids?”

  “A few useful bits. Richard and Selene spent some time in the library together, the view from there looks down over the lake.”

  “To the sun house?” he asked.

  “Yes. Apparently, they kept a ledger for when books were removed so if I can find the right year, we can see if there are any particular favourites Selene or Richard had.”

  Thatcher nodded, looking pleased with the result. “You do that then, might take a minute. I’ll start on the paintings.” We stopped in front of a fair-sized room, stacks of sheet-wrapped paintings leaning against the wall. “I’m guessing anything to do with the lake or the library.”

  “Better place to start than any other,” I answered.

  He nodded, scratching the back of his neck. “On your bike then, Mills.”

  I nodded and carried on down the draughty hall, glancing in and out of rooms, looking for the sort of storage that looked like it came from a library.

  I opened one door, the heavy door scraping against the flagstones, a cloud of dust whirling with the motion and peered in. A few boxes stacked one atop the other, and a large armchair, covered in a grey chest. Must be it, I thought. The door was heavier than it had any right to be, and there was no window in the small room. I held the door open, reaching forward for a large box and dragged it across the room to prop it open.

  I stepped back and looked at it, then added another box. Once I felt sure that it wouldn’t slide shut, I walked deeper into the stuffy, air starved room and started rifling through. It was a nasty room and reminded me vaguely of one those old priest holes houses like these used to have. Or a bomb shelter. Sure enough, I doubted there was any way out from the inside, no handle in any case.

  Most of the boxes were labelled, which seemed good, but then I realised that they were labelled with complete disregard to what was actually in them. One box, claiming to be filled with doll clothes, actually housed a rather nice clock and table lamp. Seemed a shame to be keeping them down here, but I was grateful for the absence of creepy dolls.

  I rolled my shirt sleeves up, hoisting boxes around in puffs of dust that left me coughing and sweat started to gather down my back. It felt like I was moving to a new house, only it was Mrs Havisham’s house and I wouldn’t be all that surprised if I came across an old wedding dress or a horrid mountain of spider webs. A shudder went through me, I never liked spiders. Too many legs and eyes for something so small, what did they need all of them for? Other than scrabbling round in the dead of night terrifying little boys when they find one on their favourite teddy bear.

  I shoved one box aside and pulled another towards me, the tape several layers thick. I wish I had a knife on me but no such luck. It took me a while to find purchase on the corner and ripe the tape back, peeling off a layer of cardboard as I did.

  The box was fairly full, and heavy, and lying on the top was a small painting of a dog. A bloodhound, I think, with a little bow tie on around its collar. Cute. I put it aside and let out a small cheer when I looked down into the box. Ledgers. Nice ones too, red leather bound, the years engraved in gold. I wonder how far back they went, if we could trace the Hocking family down the centuries through the books they chose to read. I picked them out one by one. Selene would have been here just under thirty years ago, so I discarded the most recent ledgers until I found myself in the right decade, at least.

  I settled down on the cold floor, flicking through year by year. It seemed Richard certainly was an avid reader, and I found it humorous that he checked out books from his own home. With so many of them though, it made sense to keep track on where they all were at any given time. Insurance, most likely. It usually came down to insurance.

  I stumbled across Selene’s name eventually, only here and there for the first few pages, but as the months went by, and she got more at ease, her name appeared constantly. More than any other. There was one page where only her name and someone called ‘Sticks’ appeared. I pulled out my notebook and started to jot down the titles that she and Richard shared. There were several, and then the ones she read over and over again. There were several of those as well.

  It was sad to think of her. A young woman, a good job, clearly with passions and interests, and all of it snuffed away just because of those brothers. I’d never say it aloud, but it wasn’t hard to imagine why someone might want revenge for that. Thatcher thought so too, he’d yet to say it, but I could see it on his face. Clear as day when he looked at Lord Hocking.

  I pulled out the next ledger and flicked through, finding more of the same books borrowed again and again. I wondered why she didn’t just buy her own copy. A pattern was emerging though. She’d borrow a book, and a few days later, Richard would borrow the same one. Maybe they had a little book club between them. Or maybe it was something else. I underlined those books in my notes.

  Something outside in the hallway scuffed, and I glanced around. I couldn’t see anything.

  “Is that you, sir?” I called. “I might have something here.” I turned back around to my notes.

  The shuffle came again, louder this time, a thump, a scrape, and I turned to see the boxes in a pile before me, the door swinging shut. I scrambled up to catch it, but as my fingers brushed the door, it shut itself with an ominous thud. Bloody hell. No handle, no window. The room was built like a bloody bomb shelter and already everything started to settle, the dust fell back in thick heavy blankets, the wind was shut off in deafening silence. I licked my finger and held it up. No air. There was no air.

  I hammered on the door, pounding it with my fists.

  “Thatcher!”

  No handle. No way out. No air.

  Shit.

  Twenty

  It wasn’t there; for all the effort I had just been through to get the sodding painting, and all that work to get the ancient old frame off, it wasn’t there.

  I pushed myself back on the chair, wheeling from the desk, and looked up to the ceiling, letting out an enraged shout. Wrong painting, I realised morbidly. The thought was unpleasant, a bitter, bile like feeling at the back of my throat. We’d have to go back.

  “What’s wrong?” came a soft voice from behind me. I craned my neck back and spotted her there, upside down in the doorframe.

  “Not there,” I muttered, lifting my head back up. Her feet clipped across the concrete floor as she walked to look over the painting on the desk. Her hand rested reassuringly on my shoulder.

  “I thought you said that was the one,” she muttered accusingly.

  “I thought it was,” I snapped back, standing up and raking my hand nervously through my hair. “Should have been,” I muttered, glaring out of the smeared windows.

  “So,” she began carefully, “it’s still in there?”

  “It is.”

  “And they might still find it?”

  “They might,” I spat through gritted teeth.

  “Okay then.” She took my arm and steered me over to an armchair, sitting on her own with her legs curled up underneath her. “Think. There must be something else, some other painting or object she mentioned.”

  “I thought it was that one,” I groaned, again head falling into my hands. “She never mentioned any other one.”

  “She must have done! It can’t have been the only interesting painting in that bloody house. Any one of them would be worth our rent until we’re sixty.”

  “And then some.” I nudged her with my elbow. “Could be a good retirement scheme.”

  “If you want to retire in Paraguay, then absolutely.”

  I smiled at her and then leant back against the sofa, staring up at the tall ceiling. “Can you fetch us a brew, if I’m to be doing all this thinking?”

  She rolled her eyes but stood up anyway and punched me on the arm. “Don’t spend too long thinking. The police are still looking for that.” She nodded
to the dismembered frame. “Might not be too hard for them to put two and two together.”

  I sent her a withering look. “Because the British police are so well known for their astounding intellect?”

  “That Thatcher is,” she reminded me. “If he can figure out why someone would kill another person, he can bloody well figure out why someone would steal a painting. Especially after that extra little stunt you left on the doorstep.” She hadn’t liked that, my going off-book with the blood.

  “It did what I needed it to,” I shouted after as she wandered over to the kettle.

  “Oh yeah?”

  “It did.” I got up from the sofa and followed her across the room. “They should be wary of us, need I remind you?”

  “Won’t have much to be wary about though, will they? Not if we’ve got the wrong painting.”

  I reached up and scratched the back of my head. She was right. It was annoying when she was right. She calmly kept her back to me, drying some mugs as the kettle boiled noisily by her elbow.

  “Think,” she repeated. “Where did she like to go?”

  “The summer house.” I dropped my arms to my side. “I’ve told you this a hundred times! The summer house and the lake, they were her favourite places.”

  “She couldn’t have gone there all the time.” She turned around, arms folded across her chest. “What about rain?”

  “When it rained?”

  “Yes, you stupid pillock. When it was cold and rainy, there must have been some other place she liked to spend her time. The kitchen?”

  “No, she never much liked the kitchen,” I answered quietly, hopping up to sit on the table. “Always smelt a bit too garlicky in there for her.”

  “The parlour? Or the dining room?”

  “No, nothing in there to do. They’re not the sort of family who keeps books and things in the living room.”

  I froze. Of course. Books.

  “The library,” I muttered. She had turned back around to fill the mugs, but she glanced over her shoulder at me.

  “The library?”

  “She would have liked it there,” I carried on excitedly, slipping down from the table, “anywhere there were books. She loved books.”

  I was on a roll with this, but she didn’t look impressed. She passed me a mug of tea and scratched her nose, grimacing.

  “What?” I asked her. “What is it?”

  “How are we going to get into the library?”

  “Same way we got in last time,” I reminded her, taking a swig of tea, “through the cellars.”

  “Last time, there was a party, and the house was full of drunks. This time, it will be empty, and thanks to your pig blood, everyone will be on rather high alert. Won’t they?”

  I hadn’t thought about that. They’d all be shaken up, that much I had counted on.

  “Maybe they won’t even be there then?” I said with a shrug. “Maybe they’ll all be sticking to a few rooms, not wanting to traipse around too much.”

  “In their own home?” she murmured. “That’s a bit sad.”

  I glared at her over the top of the mug. “That’s a bit sad?” I parroted back/ “I think you and I have a better understanding of sad than those people.”

  “I know,” she sighed.

  “Because of those people,” I grunted, “and so did she.”

  We looked at each other for a long moment, and then she sighed and lowered her mug.

  “We should go soon,” she decided. “They’ll be less on edge during the day, and there will probably be more people coming and going, anyway.”

  I nodded and drained most of my still fairly scalding tea. “I’ll drive.”

  “We need a plan,” she halted me, “an actual one. Like last time. Better than last time.”

  “Better? My last plan was brilliant.”

  “It was,” she allowed, “but you knew what you were getting. We don’t even know what in the library you want to take.”

  “I’ll know,” I assured her, emptying my mug. “When I see it, I’ll know.”

  She didn’t look overly convinced, but I knew more about all this than she did, so she drank her tea and nodded. “Back to the lions’ den, then.”

  We did much of it as we had before. We dressed in plain, uninteresting clothes, myself with a flat cap pulled over my head like the local men wore in the surrounding fields and villages, not looking too unlike a local, stray dog walker. I parked us in the same place, hidden in the thinning woods again, not unlike a local walker, close to the public footpath that swept around the estate and ended up in the village, not far from the pub. It was a good thing that the car was already filthy, splattered in mud, and I made sure a few stickers were up in the window of the boot. National Trust memberships and all those. Cars like these were a ten-a-penny around here. No one would think too much of it.

  It was nice out here, peaceful, and I rather enjoyed our walk along the footpath, noticing the sprouting blooms of flowers and the odd squirrel rocketing from tree to tree. We reached a bent old pine, a small, tattered ribbon tied to one of the higher branches and from there, we left the path, skewering east towards where the public woodland and private Hocking land merged. A small, low wooden fence marked the perimeter, not so much of a deterrent as it was a reminder. We climbed over it easily enough and pushed into the woods that circled the estate. Not too far ahead, the woods would thin out towards the gardens and the lake, the smell of geese droppings somehow always lingering in the surrounding air. It was a hearty walk, got the blood pumping and tinged our faces with colour as we huffed our way almost completely around the estate until we ended up on the side of the house, the garage roof just visible between the branches, the little yard that led into the kitchens just behind it.

  We stopped for a moment to gather our strength, leaning against a trunk, sipping water.

  “So,” she dabbed at the sweat on her forehead with her sleeve, “plan?”

  “I go in, get to the library, find what we need, and get out,” I told her.

  “And if someone sees you and asks what the hell you’re doing in their house?”

  “I’m sorry,” I deepened my voice, taking on a stronger accent of the countryside, “I was walking down to the village, and I was so desperate for the toilet that the young man downstairs let me in. I’m afraid I’ve got a bit lost.” I added a hearty chuckle. “Beautiful home, you have.”

  She glared at me, at the accent I put on that wasn’t hugely dissimilar to her own. “You think it’ll work?”

  “Who wouldn’t let a local rambler in to use the bog?”

  She shrugged. “Risky.”

  “This whole thing is risky,” I reminded her, handing her back the water bottle.

  “And if they catch you with a painting in hand?”

  “I’ll figure something out,” I sighed at her. “Have a little faith.”

  “And what do you want me to do?”

  “Be here,” I told her. “It might be a case of me getting it to you and you legging it.”

  “Give me the keys then.” She held out her hand, and I passed them over.

  “I might need you to make a disturbance,” I added, glancing over towards the house. “Distract them, you know?”

  “Alright.”

  “I’ll text you. You’ve got your phone?”

  She pulled it from her pocket and waved it in my face. “I don’t leave mine lying all over the place like you do,” she said smugly.

  “Shut up,” I grumbled, pulling my hat firmly down on my head, letting the rim shadow my face.

  “If I’m not back in forty minutes,” I told her, “go home.”

  She nodded sternly, though she didn’t seem quite enthused by the idea. I gave her a pat on the arm and made my way to the garage, slowing inching from the trees and towards the walls. It was quiet, nobody outside. There was CCTV by the garage door, I knew that much. Hocking cared more about his cars than he did his house. Easily avoided, though, much like last time.

&
nbsp; I made it to the yard where again, it was silent. That was odd. I had thought there was always at least one person out here, emptying things or carting them about. We’d spent enough time watching the place to see how busy it gets. But there wasn’t a soul. I ignored the nerves that such a fact gave me but carried on, crossing the yard, sticking close to the walls and making my way to the door. It opened without fuss, not bothered to be locked. For a family that just got robbed, I thought as I stepped inside and carefully closed it behind me, they were awfully cavalier when it came to securing their entrances and exits.

  Again, more silence. The usually busy corridors that connected the kitchen to the rest of the house was meant to be a busy place. I was grateful for the quiet, happily making my way towards the hall. Shadows moved into the entrance, and I dropped down into the cellars, pressing myself against a wall.

  “How’d that go then, sir?” a voice filtered down the hall.

  Sir? They were coming this way, and I ducked into a small broom cupboard as they passed, feet trudging down the stairs.

  “Better than I thought it would,” came a deep, grumbling reply. “They didn’t seem all that surprised.”

  I knew that voice, I realised, and stuck my head out from the cupboard. Detective Inspector Thatcher. I retreated quickly as he paused and made to glance over his shoulder. I pressed my head to the door, a lump in my throat as my head thudded annoyingly loudly.

  “Sir?” I could still hear them, their voices slightly muffled.

  “Thought I heard something.” There was quiet, and then I heard their feet moving again, further into the cellars. “The maids?”

  “A few useful bits. Richard and Selene spent some time in the library together. The view from there looks down over the lake.”

  I froze. They knew that? I was right then, that was a relief. So why were they down here? I inched the door open a fraction, straining to hear them.

  “To the summer house?” Thatcher was asking the sergeant, I realised, the younger man with the gangly legs.