Blood Ties

by Oliver Davies

  “Rosie wasn’t at breakfast,” she managed to say through a thick throat, “which wasn’t odd considering what happened yesterday.” She hiccupped. “So, I took her a little tray up,” she wiped at the fresh tears that sprung up, “but she wasn’t in her room. She likes a morning walk, and she wanted to clear her head. But then she didn’t come back, not for hours. So, I called her, no answer.” She shuddered and swallowed loudly. “So Rupes tried and no answer. Then Henry and Eloise.” She sniffed loudly, and I dug out a tissue from my pocket. It was crumbled and had a piece of lint on it, but she took it anyway.

  “So, we all came out, started walking around the gardens and things, looking for her. Dennis too, he hadn’t seen her leave this morning, and she usually says hello to him. Henry’s been down at the lake, but no luck yet. And then we came home,” her voice hitched and rose, her breathing speeding up again, “and it was there!” She jerked a hand over her shoulder. “And they took my baby!”

  I placed a hand on her arm. “We’ll find her, Lady Hocking. I promise, I’ll get your daughter home to you.” I stood up and offered her a hand, helping her to her feet. “Let’s get you inside and warm and dry.”

  As I walked into the entrance with her leaning on my arm, Eloise appeared, cradling a baby to her chest. Rupert was behind her, holding its twin. They must have been only one, still a bit bald, chewing on little teething beads. Eloise handed the child over to Rupert, came over and took her mother-in-law.

  “Let’s get you changed,” she said soothingly, “and a cup of tea. Rupert?”

  He nodded. “On it. Come on,” he said to the babies, one hoisted on each hip. “Help your uncle Rupes.”

  As Eloise pulled Lady Hocking away, Rupert’s easy smile fell flat off his face. He paced over to me with a surprising speed, given the large children in his arms.

  “Well?”

  “We’ll find your sister,” I assured him. “We know who’s taken her.”

  “Who?”

  “The twin,” I told him, following him to the kitchen where Mills now sat with Dennis and the maids. I raised my voice as we walked in, so that they could all hear. “Selene gave up the other twin, a girl for adoption. We found a match from Selene’s DNA on the letter to a hair found with the first note. It’s her daughter, Nadia.”

  “Nadia?”

  “She was one of the catering staff here the night of the party.”

  “She’s the one who came the day the note was left,” Lara piped up, taking one of the babies from Rupert, “but she never left her car!”

  “Someone else must have left it for her,” Rupert pointed out, dropping the twins carefully into highchairs.

  I looked at Maud, who was drooped over the table, her head in her hands. Daria rubbed circles on her back, muttering quietly. I turned to Dennis, whose face was an unsavoury shade of grey, his uniform and hair uncharacteristically rumpled.

  “The note?” I asked him.

  “We’d all gone to look for Miss Rose. Only the maids,” he nodded to them, “stayed put.”

  “With the babies,” Daria informed me.

  “We didn’t see anyone come up to the house,” Lara said quickly. “We swear we didn’t. We were in here.”

  “We believe you,” Dennis assured her, patting her hand.

  “Security footage?” I asked.

  “Lord Hocking is getting it now,” Dennis told me.

  I nodded and turned to Mills. “Let’s see this new threat then.”

  We got back into the hall as Henry bundled in, lowering his umbrella. I urged Mills onwards, in search of Dr Crowe.

  “Anything?” Henry asked quickly.

  “Not yet.”

  Henry’s face fell, and he glanced around. “Mother?”

  “Upstairs with your wife. Rupert’s in the kitchen,” I told him, “with your children.”

  He sank a little in relief, looking directly down that hall as if he could see through the walls to his twins.

  “Your father’s checking the security footage,” I called his attention, and he nodded. “Where might we find him?”

  “I’ll take you,” he decided, tearing himself from the corridor he had inched towards and led us to the back of the house, past the kitchens and Lord Hocking’s study to a set of small connecting rooms. The first was lined with filing cabinets, a large desk pushed to one wall, leather-bound folders on a shelf behind it.

  “It’s where we keep the accounts,” he told us as we walked through. “The whole estate is run from here.”

  It was rather an unglamorous room for such an important one. Through the door, was an even more dull room whirring with computers. Lord Hocking sat inside, fiddling with a screen, watching the day unroll before him.

  “Inspector Thatcher’s here,” Henry announced, quickly giving me a nod and turning his back on his father.

  Lord Hocking turned around at his son’s voice, face falling as he watched him walk away. He focused on us.

  “I have the day,” he tapped the screen, “but I’ve not much of a head for this type of thing.”

  “May I?” I asked.

  He nodded, rolling his chair away from the computer. I bent forward, taking the mouse and began to shift through the hours. I stopped when Rose Hocking inched from the front door in her tweed coat, jumping down from the steps and striding off into the early spring morning. No umbrella, that wasn’t smart. I sped up the time, but it wasn’t long before another figure appeared on the screen, creeping over slowly to the front door and dropping something on the step.

  “An envelope,” Lord Hocking informed me quietly, “we brought it inside to open it.”

  As the figure turned to depart, I paused the feed. They hadn’t bothered to disguise themselves this time, no need for it anymore. Nadia’s face was clear enough to me as she jumped down the steps in a move very much like Rose and ran off behind the camera.

  “Is that--?”

  “Nadia White,” I told him. “Selene gave her up for adoption.” I removed the disc and dropped it into a little plastic bag to hand to someone on my way out.

  Lord Hocking didn’t move, just remained slumped in his seat.

  “You’ll find my daughter?” he asked as I made to leave.

  “I will, Lord Hocking. Both of them.”

  I didn’t look back, angry enough at this entire situation as I stormed through the house. I found Mills in the living room, where the family had left the envelope. Crowe wasn’t there though, her white-clad, curly-haired form vanished.

  “She’s gone to check outside,” Mills told me without my needing to ask. “See if they’ve left any boot prints or anything.”

  “It was Nadia,” I told him, holding up the disc. He ran a hand through his hair and swore.

  “Well?” I jerked my chin to the piece of paper on the table.

  “Crowe reckons it’s pigs’ blood again,” he told me as I walked over and grimaced. Spikey red letters, slightly pungent in smell scrawled across the page.

  Vindicta, it read, and beneath it, there was a rather beautifully drawn rose, dripping blood and bent over.

  “Get this all to SOCO,” I ordered, handing him the disc and turned on my heel, hunting down Crowe.

  I found her outside, close to where the driveway met the grass, squatting on her haunches.

  “Lena.”

  “Sorry state of affairs, Maxie,” she said sadly, rising to her feet. “Nothing much to help you, I’m afraid.”

  “Get the confirmation on what that letter is written in, for me?”

  She nodded, peeling her gloves off with a snap and followed me back to the house. I waved down Mills who gladly jogged away from the distraught maids that had emerged from the kitchen and followed me back to the car.

  “What’s next then, sir?”

  “Station. You join Smith,” I instructed. “Try to get some more information on her childhood. See if Daureen Mitts has had any contact with her recently. I’ll follow up with Sebastian, call him into the station for a chat
. Let’s try to narrow down where Nadia might be.”

  Mills nodded. “Right.”

  Sharp intercepted us as we climbed the stairs in a tidy suit, her hair perfectly swept into place as she tapped her foot on the ground.

  “Well?” she asked, arms folded across her chest.

  “CCTV showed Nadia White leaving the envelope at the house, just over an hour after Rose Hocking left. We’re in the process of trying to figure out where she might have gone, but we don’t believe Nadia’s done this all on her own,” I carried on. “She’s had help.”

  “Who from?”

  “Richard Sandow was unaware of her existence until this morning. Everyone else in the house was in the house, present and accounted for. They all left to go and look for Rose, and the letter was there when they got back.”

  “But in that time, they were all split up around the estate?” she asked, a brow arched.

  “You didn’t see them, ma’am,” I assured her. “Nobody in that house had anything to do with it. A threat, maybe, a stolen painting, maybe. But harming Rose? I don’t think any of them would be capable of it.”

  “Someone else then?”

  “Prime suspect is Sebastian Whitlock,” Mills told her. “If he became aware of Nadia’s existence, it’s not unlikely that the two of them might want some recompense for their childhood. And being angry at Rose makes sense.”

  “Hocking has three children,” Sharp pointed out.

  “Rose is his favourite,” I muttered. “Doesn’t take a genius to notice that he’s hardly subtle about it.”

  “From what we gathered from the start,” Mills added, “was that the thief paid attention to the family. They’d have seen Rose as the most poignant one to go after.”

  “Made the right call,” I agreed, thinking of the family’s desperate faces.

  “Any word on Sebastian Whitlock?”

  “I left it with Smith.”

  “Go,” she ordered Mills, who hesitantly looked at me before ambling away to Smith’s desk. I stayed put, shifting my weight underneath Sharp’s intense stare.

  “Ma’am?”

  “You disregarded Sebastian.”

  “I did.”

  “That might have been a mistake, Thatcher.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  She pursed her lips. “This has happened before, Max,” she added in a gentler tone. “When it comes to families, fathers and mothers, you’re off your game a little.”

  I averted my eyes, staring at the stairs with a scrunched face before turning back to her.

  “Still working on that old coaching house?” she asked.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  She shook her head. “It’s time to move on, Thatcher.” She reached out and touched my arm. “Get back to work.”

  I walked away, somewhat thrown back by that. Sharp rarely brought up my personal life, had only ever asked the most basic of questions, nodded and moved on. She was right, just like Mills. I couldn’t blame Sebastian, not the way I blamed myself.

  “Sir,” Mills waved me over to Smith’s desk. “No word on Sebastian Whitlock. He hasn’t answered any of the calls, and his neighbour hasn’t seen him for two days.”

  I cursed. “Daureen Mitts?”

  “Tracked her down to Cumbria, sir,” Smith told me. “Moved there after she retired about ten years ago.”

  “I bet that felt good for Nadia,” I muttered, raking my hair back from my face. “Where the hell would they go?”

  “It won’t be far from the estate.” Mills opened a map on Smith’s computer. “Close enough for them to come and go as easily as they have, to be familiar with the local area and access.”

  “Somewhere she can get pig’s blood,” Smith pointed out.

  “You can get pig’s blood from a butcher,” I dismissed. “It doesn’t make sense. They want them to know they took her, but won’t say where?”

  “Like Selene and the letter,” Mills suggested. “Maybe they’re supposed to work it out.”

  I paced around Smith’s desk, chewing the inside of my lip. It wouldn’t be any old place, nowhere random. They’d have picked it on purpose. A place with history, like my stupid old coaching house I realised dimly. I paused.

  “Where was Selene from?” I asked.

  Mills flipped open his notebook. “A village a few miles north of the estate,” he answered and showed me the page.

  I frowned as the name rang a bell. “Ragsdale,” I remembered. “That’s the village where Ragsdale came from.”

  “The painter?”

  I found the village on the map, scooting around the fields. There was a butcher, of course, there was, a little mark over the cottage Ragsdale had lived in and just outside, sat against the river.

  “Whitlock Mills,” I muttered in disbelief, clicking on the name. “An old watermill, closed down in the nineteenth century.” I noted the postcode and nodded to Mills, who followed me from Smith’s desk.

  “You think they went there?”

  “I think it’s as good a place to start as any. And if the Hocking brothers cared about Selene as much as they claim to, they might think of it too.”

  Twenty-Eight

  Thatcher

  My phone rang again as we reached Mills’s car, the rain lightening up now despite the ominous clouds above. I didn’t recognise the number, but answered it quickly, shutting the car door behind me.

  “Thatcher,” I answered.

  “Inspector? It’s Rupert. Rupert Hocking.”

  “I know who you are, Rupert,” I answered dryly, waving for Mills to pull away from the street and head out of the city.

  “I was wondering,” he trailed off a little. “I was wondering if you had my Uncle Richard’s address.”

  I paused, listening to the dull thud of the rain, the dimmed radio Mills had turned down and the squeaking of the windscreen wipers.

  “His address?” I repeated for clarification.

  “Yes. You do have it, don’t you?”

  “I do.” I found Mills’s notebook and skimmed through the pages, rattling off the address. I could hear him repeat it quietly to himself as he wrote it down.

  “Rupert?”

  “Yes, Inspector?”

  “What do you plan on doing with it, if I might ask?”

  “I can’t help but think that all of this might go a lot smoother if we stopped beating around the bush. My little sister might be hurt, damn their ancient pathetic squabble.”

  I laughed at that, a short sharp bark that had Mills glancing at me from the corner of his eye.

  “Good luck with that, Rupert. Leave your sister to us, though,” I added in a more severe tone of voice.

  “Yes, yes, of course,” he answered absently, the dull ring of the ended phone call following a beat later.

  “You think he’ll leave us to it?” Mills asked.

  “Not a chance,” I muttered, putting my phone down on my knee, screen side up in case anyone decided to reach out.

  “He wanted Richard’s address?”

  “He did. That boy’s smarter than most of them. Hadn’t expected that when we first met him,” I admitted. “I may have been a tad harsh.”

  “You usually are on first impression,” Mills pointed out. “I doubt you liked me straight away.”

  I didn’t answer that, only grinned at him and patted him on the head. “I like you plenty, lad. Just keep your foot down.”

  He was quiet for a few minutes, listening to the quiet radio. “Do you think they’ll hurt her?” he asked me in a low voice.

  “Rose? I don’t know. It won’t do them any favours if they do. Whatever they want from all this,” I still couldn’t quite figure that out, “they’re going about a very strange way of achieving it.”

  “Money?”

  “Perhaps. But why not sell the painting?”

  “Maybe they need more. The amount they might get from exploiting a secret like theirs against Lord Hocking.”

  “I wonder if they know,” I muttered t
houghtfully, staring out the window. “They never found the letter, we did. Do they even know they’ve picked the right brother?”

  “Maybe they’re hoping that Richard would come to her aid in any case,” Mills suggested, “or just going for Lord Hocking since he’s the one with all the cash.”

  “Risky business,” I added, “for all they know they’ve been barking up the wrong tree. I doubt they’d get much from Richard.”

  “They’re still a family. And the scandal would reach Hocking’s name as well,” Mills said. “He’d still do what he could to protect that image. And fall out or no, I’m sure he wouldn’t let that happen to his own brother.” His tone turned slightly bitter, and I knew how much he was annoyed by the brothers for tearing themselves apart like this. He was close to his own brother, regular family meals together if his calendar was anything to go by. Mills did a good job of keeping a lid on his displeasure, unlike myself, and it did amuse me somewhat when it came to light.

  “I’m not sure everyone’s as noble as you are, Isaac.”

  “Not sure anyone is.” He let out a long, loud sigh, fingers slackening on the wheel, shoulders slumping slightly. “Do you ever feel like we’re helping the wrong people? If this were a book I was reading, I’d be in favour of Sebastian and Nadia. Taking a stand against the men who gave them their childhoods. The Hockings are in the wrong, all of them. Sandow included.” His voice fell slightly as he spoke, and I shifted in my seat so that I could see his face properly.

  “That perspective,” I assured him, “makes you an extremely good detective, Mills. Most people wouldn’t bother thinking about the other side of it all. They see a criminal, find the criminals, and end of. Job done. You see things from their side, see the whole picture. They’re not bad people for one thing they’ve done, and Hocking isn’t a good man for being their victim. People aren’t nearly that simple, Mills and bearing that in mind the way you do is precisely why I haven’t had you shipped off to Lincoln yet.”

  He hazarded a glance at me. “You agree with me?”

  “I do. There will be times when I don’t, but I’ll listen to you, anyway. You’ve got good instincts, lad. Sharp logic. Don’t be scared of it. Or of me,” I added with a smirk.