Blood Ties

by Oliver Davies

  “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.”

  I pressed a hand to my mouth to stop the disbelieving laugh coming out. A ledger? They were going to find it, find it before I did. A string of curses ran through my head, and I gritted my teeth, hand curling into a fist.

  “You do that then, might take a minute. I’ll start on the paintings,” Thatcher grumbled. “I’m guessing, anything to do with the lake or the library.”

  “Better place to start than any other.”

  “On your bike then, Mills.”

  They parted ways, Thatcher ducking into the room beside him as Mills strode along, opening doors, peering in, and closing them again. A ledger, a favourite book. That struck me as more her style than anything else. But with the two of them here, finding it would be a fine thing. I needed to leave; we both did. Figure out the next step, move onto the backup plan we had in place. She didn’t like it, buts needs must. First things first, I left the broom cupboard and slipped my shoes off, my socks making no noise as I padded gently down the hall after Mills, carefully slipping past the door Thatcher had gone into.

  A door down the hall and around the corner was open, held that way by a tall stack of boxes. I peeked around the frame to spot the sergeant sitting on the floor, surrounded by boxes, sifting through the pages of a ledger, dust in his black hair. I crossed the space to stand closer to the boxes, tripping and scuffing my heel on the floor. I froze, hiding behind the door as he called out,

  “Is that you, sir? I might have something here.” I bit down on my lip, hoping the Inspector wouldn’t hear him. I carefully lent forward, bracing myself against the door and pushed. The boxes held for a moment, but eventually, they shuddered with the impact, scraping forward and toppling over, the door pushing them into the room as it swung shut.

  “Thatcher!” came a muffled shout from inside, fists hammering on the door. Time to go. I yanked my shoes back on and took off down the hall, passing Thatcher’s door as he came to the hall. I was gone before he saw me, but I heard him shout something in my wake.

  I sprinted from the house, not caring about being seen as I took off through the yard and back into the woods. She saw me coming, dashing towards her and took off too, and we ran quickly and quietly back to the footpath and to the car. We hurtled inside, and she rammed the engine into life, peeling off down the road.

  “What happened?”

  “Police,” I panted, “were there.”

  She cursed. “What do we do next?”

  I flopped my head to the side to look at her. She was staring at the road ahead, but she glanced around at me. I couldn’t get the words out, didn’t have the air, but she blanched somewhat and grimaced, turning back to look ahead with a set jaw. Our back-up plan wasn’t nice, but it would be effective.

  “Rose?” she asked.

  “Rose.”

  Twenty-One

  Thatcher

  If I had an eye for art, I might have appreciated this more. The number of paintings seemed almost endless. They were stacked against the walls like an exoskeleton, overlapping each other, draped in sheets or wrapped in paper.

  I shrugged my coat off and stood, staring at the frames with my hands braced on my hips. Ah well, as Elsie liked to say, you can’t bake a loaf by staring at it. I pulled the first one towards me, surprised by its weight and untied the string holding the paper together, peeling it back just far enough to get a grasp of whatever was painted. It looked like a bowl of fruit, fairly unremarkable but no doubt it was worth more than my car. I replaced the wrapping carefully, reminded of how I used to sneak a glance at Christmas presents before the big day, and replaced them with no-one being any the wiser. I had later learnt that I wasn’t quite as sneaky as I thought I had been, and my mum had gone as far as to not wrap some presents or wrap up random things around the house instead.

  It was slow going, a nice sheen of sweat running down my back as I hefted frames around. I found a few of the house, one of a woman sitting in an armchair reading, one of a couple in a boat on a lake, and these I set aside, curious to see if they might be the ones Selene had any particular interest in.

  A shadow shuttled past the door, and I glanced up, but nobody came in. Probably a mouse, I thought. Houses like these must always have mice crawling about, especially down here.

  I set a few more frames aside, but the pile of discarded ones grew and grew, and with them, my impatience. I wondered if Mills was having any more luck with his ledger, but doubt had begun to swirl in my mind, curdling all the brilliant thoughts we’d had about this case. Maybe Selene wasn’t so clever a girl. Maybe she didn’t leave a note. Maybe there wasn’t some great seeking of justice. Maybe someone stole a painting to get rich. Maybe they left the note as a prank. Stranger things had happened, stranger things would happen again.

  I leant back against the cold stone wall, dusting a cobweb out of the way, and closed my eyes, pinching the bridge of my nose. Something wasn’t right, I could feel it. Something I’d missed or overlooked. Jumped to a conclusion, perhaps, it wouldn’t be the first time for me to do such a thing. I was surprised Sharp hadn’t called me up on it, to be perfectly honest. Usually, she revelled in such a task.

  Shaking my head, I forced myself to sit up, determined not to give up on this task just yet, and pulled another frame towards myself, unwrapping the white dust sheet that protected the painting. It was beautiful, I knew that much about it. It was a portrait of a woman, a young woman, who bore an uncanny resemblance to Rose Hocking. Her hair was loose about her shoulders, her wide eyes gazing straight out through the image. A necklace hung between her collarbones, a small, ornate R resting against her skin.

  Rosemary, I realised. The painting was of Rosemary Hocking. I frowned, wondering why it had been shut in the dark down here. But then, perhaps her face stirred up bad memories, unwelcome feelings. I had done much the same with my own photographs.

  A loud thud broke me from my thoughts, the sound of something falling and then shutting. I gently placed Rosemary’s portrait against the wall and clambered to my feet. No sooner had I reached the doorway than something, someone, hurtled past me in a blur of colour. I reached out to stop them,

  “Oi!” I shouted, taking a few steps after them, but they ran like they were on fire, leaping up the stairs two at a time and out the door. I made to race after them, but paused, glancing back to the hall they had come from. The hall Mills had gone down, where the thud had come from.

  I muttered a curse that would earn me a slap over the ear from Elsie and turned away from the fleeing intruder, running down the hall. I could hear a faint hammering and Mills’s quiet voice.

  “Thatcher!”

  “Mills?” I roared back, trying to find which door he was calling from. Most of them opened, revealing empty, dusty storage rooms.

  “Mills?” I shouted again.

  “Sir?” His voice was muffled by the doors.

  “Mills?” This was absurd, I felt like I was playing Marco Polo. I rounded the corner, met by more and more doors.

  “Thatcher!” His voice was louder. I sped up, ramming doors open and moving past. I came to one, reaching for the handle which didn’t budge. I shouldered the door, and it barely moved. Clearly it was locked. I made to move on, but then the hammering started.

  “Sir?” Mills’s voice was right behind it.

  “I’m here,” I called, trying the handle again. Nothing. “It’s locked.”

  There was silence.

  “Locked?” His voice was muffled. “It wasn’t locked before.”

  Maybe whoever came hurtling past me had locked it, but they’d probably need a key for that.

  “Is there a window in there?” I asked him, running my hands over the door. Cold, it was, metal. Couldn’t really kick through metal.

  “No, sir,” he answered. “It’s airtight. Built like a bunker.”

  Ai
rtight? Bollocks.

  “Alright,” I called through, “stay calm, hang in there. I’ll get this door open. There’s no handle from your side?” It seemed a stupid question, but if Mills panicked, he might have missed it. People missed obvious things when they panicked.

  “No,” he answered calmly.

  I stepped back, letting out a long breath as I raked my hand through my hair. Mills, in an airtight room, locked in said room. Not good. It was a small room, too, I imagined, like the rest of them. Poky little cupboards stuffed with forgotten artefacts. I let out another curse just as feet came rattling down the stairs.

  “Inspector!” Rose came skidding down the hall, Rupert and the butler on her tail. “There was a man!” She panted and caught her breath. “We saw him from the window. There was a man in the house!”

  “I know,” I muttered darkly.

  “You know?” Rupert repeated. “What on earth are doing down here then? Go and get him!”

  “Is there another way into this room?” I ignored them both, my question pointed to Dennis, who shook his head.

  “No, Inspector. Why?”

  “My sergeant’s in there, and it’s locked.”

  The butler, to his credit, paled slightly, his eyes widening. The Hocking siblings didn’t share his worry, looking more peeved at me for having stayed down here rather than pursuing the intruder.

  “Is there a key?” Rupert inquired calmly.

  “Is there?” I demanded of Dennis.

  He gave a nod. “Upstairs, I can fetch it.”

  “How did it get locked if the key is upstairs?” Rupert asked. Good lad.

  “It’s an old door, sir,” Dennis informed him patiently. “Reinforced in the early 1940s, of course, it was. It automatically locks if it’s not closed properly.”

  “That’s absurd, we should fix that,” Rupert drawled, he looked over his shoulder. “The key, Dennis?”

  The butler nodded, skittering off back down the halls. I looked away from the siblings and pressed myself closer to the door,

  “Mills? Don’t speak to me, alright? Save your air. Knock once for no, twice for yes. Understood?”

  Two dull knocks came in reply. I wasn’t entirely sure if it was better than talking, but it seemed the appropriate measure.

  “Are you feeling lightheaded? Dizzy?”

  Two knocks.

  “Did you see someone down here?” I asked, hoping to keep him awake.

  One knock.

  “Did someone shut you in there, old boy?” Rupert called over my shoulder.

  Two knocks.

  “I’ll bet it was our intruder,” the young man said amiably. “Didn’t want to get caught.”

  “You saw them through the window?” I asked.

  “Went past the garage,” Rupert told me, “running like his feet were on fire. Out into the woods.”

  “The woods?”

  “Why would he go out there?” Rose asked.

  “There’s a public footpath not far from where our land ends,” Rupert said easily. “Takes you right to the village pub.”

  “Why do you know that?” his sister asked.

  “Because I like the pub,” he answered, “and I’m not as hopeless as you like to believe.”

  I turned my back on them, letting them squabble away. I was worried about Mills, more than I usually would be. Usually, I’d have gone straight after the intruder, chased him over hills and fields, devil may care. But I liked Mills. He was a good sergeant, a good friend. Didn’t deserve to suffocate in a musty old room full of old library knick-knacks.

  “You with me, Mills?” I called. The siblings fell quiet so we could hear the faint two knocks. Very faint.

  “Dennis!” Rupert hollered over his shoulder. The butler appeared shortly after, a ring of keys in one hand and a bottle of water in the other. Smart man, I noted, stepping aside so that he could search through the ring of keys, looking for the right one.

  I wasn’t surprised to find out that it was an ancient, rusted thing. This didn’t seem the usual place for the family to come and spend any time. He carefully slid it into the lock, the mechanism clunking loudly, and together, we heaved the door open. Mills must have been leaning against it, because when it opened, he sprawled out into the hallway, head knocking against the stone floor. He groaned, blinking rapidly, eyes unfocused, his skin a bad, almost bluish tinge. Dennis and I hauled him up, draping his arms around our shoulders as we dragged him quickly through the hallway and up the stairs, Rose behind us, clutching the water bottle tightly. We passed a flustered looking Daria in the hall, and I kicked the door aside, easing Mills out into the yard. I settled him on a bench as he gulped down air, slumping forward, resting against his knees. Rose opened the water and passed to me, and I sat beside Mills, pulling him upright as I held the bottle to his face. He took a few gulps, and with my hand against his neck to keep him upright, I could feel his pulse hammering like a bird under my fingers. He leant back against the hedge behind us, eyes closed, taking slow, deep breaths, eyes pinched together.

  “I’ll fetch some ibuprofen,” Dennis told me. “I won’t doubt he’s got a lovely headache to come.”

  “Thank you,” I answered. He gave me a nod and ducked back into the house, passing Rupert on the way. He had Mills’s coat in his hands.

  “I’ve propped the door open,” he told me. “I think he might have found something in there.” He passed his coat over, draping it on the bench beside Mills, who gave a very feeble thumbs-up.

  The siblings exchanged a look and then turned to me.

  “So, it’s true?” Rupert was the one to ask. “We might have a sibling out there? Or a cousin?”

  “Yes.”

  “And he never told us,” Rose muttered.

  “It’s not exactly the thing he would share, is it?” Rupert replied. “’By the way, children, I impregnated a maid before I met your mother and never bothered to care for the child I may have borne. Now, who’s up for some Trivial Pursuit?’ He clapped his hands together, chest puffed out in not a bad impersonation of his father.

  Rose didn’t look impressed, but I smiled.

  “You think that she might have left a clue as to whose the child was?” she asked me.

  “We think so.”

  Mills sat forward with a groan, looking groggily around. “That wasn’t fun,” he croaked.

  “Oxygen deprivation rarely is,” I answered, handing him the water. He took it, taking slow sips.

  “You eat some spinach,” Rupert told him, “lots of iron in spinach.”

  “Noted,” Mills replied, rubbing at his forehead. “Did you go after them?” he asked me, taking a moment to focus his gaze on me.

  “No. I heard the thud, realised they came from wherever you were, and lucky I did,” I clapped him on the shoulder, “else you’d be a little blue shrivel by now.”

  “You can last awhile without oxygen for a few hours,” he pointed out.

  “In a room that size?”

  He shrugged, taking another sip. He looked rather as if he’d just been on an exceptionally fast carousel and very much regretted the fact.

  “Have you met him?” Rose asked quietly. “The child?”

  I nodded.

  “Does he look like us?” Rupert asked.

  “A little. You father and uncle share some strong genes.”

  “Does he want to meet us?” Rose asked.

  “No.” I couldn’t tell if she was disappointed or relieved by that, but Rupert slung an arm around her shoulders.

  “We should probably have this nice chat with mum and dad about all this. And then, Trivial Pursuit.”

  Rose rolled her eyes but gave us a parting smile before wandering back into the house with her brother. I watched them leave and turned to Mills.

  “Did you find something useful?”

  “I think so. Did you?”

  “Might have done.”

  He looked over my shoulder to the door and the cellars beyond. “I’m guessing our robber
didn’t. Not if they came back.”

  “They certainly didn’t want you finding it,” I answered, taking in his steadily improving appearance. His skin was turning pink again, his eyes focused, his breathing settled.

  “Let’s find it then.”

  Twenty-Two

  Thatcher

  I offered Mills a hand, hoisting him to his feet. He wobbled slightly, clutching the water bottle in an iron-fisted grip, but he gave me a nod, so I released him. Once I was certain he was steady, I picked up his coat and handed it over.

  We headed back into the house, bumping into Dennis, who offered Mills a sheet of painkillers. He took two with a grateful nod, and the butler accompanied us down into the cellar.

  “Lady Hocking wasn’t sure if the police should be called,” he told us as we walked, “on account of the intruder. But seeing as you’re both already here, I thought it unnecessary.”

  “It might be worth getting a few uniforms out to scour the woods,” I thought aloud, “see if we can’t figure out how they”re getting in and out so easily, but you can leave that to us.”

  Dennis nodded, looking a tad relieved. “You believe it was the same robber?” he asked. “The one from the party?”

  “It currently looks that way.”

  “Why would they come back?”

  “Perhaps whatever they were looking to find in Lord Hocking’s painting wasn’t there,” Mills suggested. “Maybe they stole the wrong thing.”

  “Or maybe they just wanted another go,” I muttered, “make a little more profit.”

  “Has Lord Hocking’s painting been sold?” Dennis asked.

  “Not to our knowledge,” Mills replied. He stopped in the hallway outside the door that Rupert had propped open, this time with a much sturdier looking trunk that left dragged scuff marks all along the pale stone floor. Dennis looked at the marks with a fatigued expression as I ducked into the room. It didn’t look like the youngest Hocking son had moved anything. An open box lay in the middle of the room, a ledger atop it. I picked it up, tucking it under one arm and left, jerking my head to Mills who gratefully backed away from the small room, following me to where I had been, searching through paintings.