Unusual Remains

by Oliver Davies

  “Followed?” Sharp’s eyebrows flicked up, and she leant against the doorframe, her eyes looking over my shoulder to the office where Jeannie currently sat. “Did she see anyone?”

  “No. But it is mostly coats and umbrellas out there, and I trust her instincts. Given her involvement, I thought it best.”

  I waited as she considered this. After a moment, she gave a brief nod. “Not for long. And given her involvement, Thatcher,” she added as I made to leave. “Try not to draw any more attention to her. This is it now. She’s done.”

  “She’s done,” I agreed.

  Sharp walked away, shutting the door and I followed after Mills who looked from the stack of paper in his hands, to those in mine.

  “Do you want to take the phone records or Jeannie’s, sir?”

  “I’ll take the notes,” I told him. “Jeannie’s handwriting isn’t very accessible to the uninitiated.”

  We returned to our office where Smith and Jeannie sat in the corner by the radiator, talking quietly. They both lifted their heads as we came in.

  “Thank you, Smith.” She nodded and gave Jeannie a quick smile before leaving, and I sat at the desk, flipping the folder open.

  Jeannie dragged her chair over and curled her legs up beneath her, watching as I started to scan through her notes.

  It was slow, boring work, broken up by cups of coffee and the occasional question to her about what on earth something said. Mills trailed over the phone, sifting through messages and emails.

  “He was talking to Meena most of the day,” he said aloud. “None of it seems that important, but there’s this that he sent just after three: Changes made. I think you’ll approve. She replied with a thumbs up, and that was that. Nothing since.”

  “Changes?” I looked up. “Changes to what?”

  “The contract maybe? Ms Renner did say that Meena could have influenced his business choices.”

  “She also said that she didn’t think Meena was that important, that he sees a lot of girls.”

  “People change.”

  “Did he send it after he went to Oxeye Cottage?” Jeannie asked.

  “From the timing, I’d say so, yes.”

  “So, whatever he talked to Eudora about must have made him rethink something. What he planned to do with the land or the price?” I wondered aloud.

  “If he planned to change it for the worse,” Jeannie said, “that would give someone good motive.”

  “If it was for the first, wouldn’t Mrs Babbage have said as much?” Mills asked, “she claimed she didn’t know his plans for the land.”

  “Could have lied,” Jeannie suggested. “Protecting someone.”

  “Or if it was for the better, then what?”

  “I want to see that contract,” I leant back in my chair, “surely Ms Renner would have had access to it?”

  “Or a copy, at least,” Jeannie agreed.

  “We need to call her in,” I muttered, rubbing my face.

  “Sharp said we need something more substantial for that.” Mills reminded me.

  “Give me the phone,” I handed him the folders, Jeannie following her cryptic penmanship and took the phone.

  “You have handwriting like a doctor,” Mills muttered.

  “I know,” she grinned.

  I held back a smile, focusing on the lists in front of me.

  It was fairly blank, considering how much business he must have done from it. Mills had identified a few numbers from his recent calls, and Hughes had several missed calls from his mother, her number being only of the few it seemed that Hughes bothered to name. Though of course, I don’t think he was quite so bad a man as to not even keep his mother’s contact identified.

  I turned over a page, looking at the records from several days before the fifth, to when he first came up to York. One number appeared a few times, one I recognised.

  “He called Johnson’s office,” I said, “a few times. Each call lasted a good few minutes.”

  “Kerry Johnson?” Jeannie clarified.

  “The very one. Whose familiarity with Ms Renner’s name seems to change every time someone asks him about it.”

  “Did he ever call her? Cynthia?” Jeannie asked.

  “Get her number, Mills.”

  He quickly flipped open his notebook, skimming over the most recent pages, tore one out and passed it over.

  “You take very thorough notes,” Jeannie admired. “Are you sure you want to be a policeman?”

  “Don’t steal my sergeant, Gray. I want to keep this one,” I muttered, looking for the matching number.

  “He called her a few times a while back before they came here. But nothing recently.”

  “If he had wanted to meet her to discuss an update,” Mills questioned aloud, “you’d think he’d give her a call to make sure she was available.”

  “Yes. Unless she already knew about it.”

  “So, either he was a bit of an idiot, or she lied.”

  “Occam’s razor, Mills. Which is the more likely?”

  Cynthia’s been vague and dismissive on other details, as had Johnson for that matter but I had another fish to fry at present.

  “Did he call anyone on the fifth?” Jeannie asked.

  “Oxeye Cottage,” Mills had already found that number, “about an hour before he went there.”

  “So, we know he calls beforehand, he’s not that tactless.”

  “Latter’s more likely.”

  I groaned and pushed myself away from the desk, rubbing my eyes.

  “Sir,” Mills began tentatively, “shall I call her in?”

  “And risk the wrath of Chief Superintendent Mara Sharp herself?” I asked, my hands over my face. I pulled them away, sitting up straight, “yes. Call her in for tomorrow, Mills.” I’d at least give us a bit more time for some more concrete data.

  He gave a solemn nod and got up, calling for Smith as he left the office.

  “I’ll get out your way, now, I suppose.” Jeannie stood up and began winding her ridiculously long scarf around her neck.

  “No, no,” I waved a hand at her, “it might not be clear.”

  “I’ll be fine. My sister lives not far. I’ll go to hers for the night. She keeps a toothbrush for me, isn’t that sweet?”

  I frowned.

  “I’ll be very safe there,” Jeannie continued. “Her husband’s an ex-marine.”

  My face didn’t change, and a knowing smile slowly stretched across her lips.

  “Did you want to be the one keeping an eye on me, Max Thatcher?”

  “I’m not answering that,” I told her, standing up. I walked over, pulling her collar up around her chin. “Be careful. Keep an eye out.”

  She gave me a mocking salute and slowly pulled my hands away from her coat.

  “See you later, Thatch.” She smiled again, pressing a quick kiss on my mouth. She danced away just before Mills came back.

  Should have just done the research myself, I thought as her flash of red hair vanished from sight. I looked at the papers on Mills’s desk. They had better be worthwhile.

  “Uniforms are ready to bring Ms Renner in tomorrow morning,” he told me, halving the file and offering me a stack. “Might find something useful while we wait?” he suggested.

  I took one, displeased, but started sifting through.

  I was reading a random little side note Jeannie made, and after taking about fifteen minutes to decipher the bloody thing I realised, it was he had mentioned a nature reserve recently established over in the Lake District. From what I gathered, he didn’t seem to care that much about protecting the land he bought. Jeannie had made a note though and circled it, so I pulled the piece of paper away from the rest and stuck it to the board, just in case.

  Sixteen

  Mills

  Jeannie’s handwriting really was something awful. It looked rather like an insect had fallen into an inkpot and then gone skittering madly across the page. Most of it she had typed up, but Thatcher swore that the stuff
she had scribbled down, the random side notes that didn’t make the print, would be the stuff that we needed. He’d even pulled out a few sheets, torn off the little notes and added them to our board.

  I couldn’t see how they would help, couldn’t actually read half of them, but Thatcher knew her well, and he knew how to catch murderers well, so I slugged through my own pile of notes, occasionally pulling out things I thought would be useful. Occasionally, I found little mentions of Ms Renner, and those were the pieces that I set aside or circled. She showed up in some of Jeannie’s handwritten comments, but also in other articles from local papers where his other projects were. Mentioned to be with him as he opened a new site or signed a contract, her name flashing up here and there. Never the main subject, never stated very importantly, but consistently, over and over, always there.

  The station slowly grew quieter, and as the sky outside started to dim Thatcher pulled himself from his research induced stupor.

  He ended up sending me home early, muttering over his desk. I had gotten used to his mutters after a while, even managed to pick a few words. This time it was Jeannie, scarf and toothbrush. I didn’t ask, didn’t think I even wanted to know what that was. I avoided mentioning Jeannie entirely really, other than when I couldn’t make out a word. He could make complete sense of it, and I knew they were more than reluctant colleagues and friends, but whatever they were, it wasn’t my business, so I kept my head down.

  He’d remembered, quite suddenly, after Sharp had left, that I was due around at my parent’s house for dinner tonight, which had surprised me. I thought I’d be running over there late, tucking in my shirt at the front door, ready to receive a wallop for it. Instead, Thatcher sent me with enough time to go home and shower, pick up some flowers for mum, and be standing on the doorstep ten minutes early. She was, naturally, thrilled.

  I was ushered inside, my coat pulled from back and hung up in the hallway, and she shooed me along to where the family loitered in the living room, the flowers quickly snatched from my hands and carefully arranged in a vase. I greeted my brother and my nephews and joined my dad by the fire.

  He glanced up at me from beneath his bushy grey eyebrows. “You made it then?”

  “Did you think I wouldn’t?”

  “They keep you busy these days. That case is it? The murder of the businessman in that village?”

  “That’s the one,” I answered, taking the glass my mother handed me.

  “We’re all very interested,” she said hopefully. “How’s it going?”

  “You know I can’t tell you.”

  “Our son, solving a murder.”

  “Can we ease up all the m-u-r-d-e-r talk,” my sister-in-law hissed, nodding pointedly to her son playing with his car on the rug. “We’re all very proud. Of course, we are,” she added hastily, “but maybe when they’re not here?”

  “They’re always here,” dad grumbled.

  Mum gave him an irritated smack on the arm and wheeled me away slightly, smoothing down a few errant hairs on my head as she murmured, “You pay him no mind this evening, love. He’s had a difficult couple of days.”

  I looked back at him with concern. He leant against the mantelpiece, slowly sipping at a glass of amber liquid, glaring at himself in the mirror. It wasn’t an unusual place for him to be, but it had been some time since he stood there like that.

  “Why?” I asked her quietly. “What’s wrong, did something happen?” No one was ill, I believed. No one had called me with any grave news about some distant relative I was expected to remember.

  “His students didn’t do that well on their tests,” she told me in a low voice.

  Ah, that was it. Dad taught A level history, loved it and hated it in very equal measures. When things went well, he was thrilled, and when they went wrong, he took it very personally. History was a great love of his, rivalled only really by my mother. He was proud when I studied it, then politics at university afterwards. He was subsequently very disappointed when I joined the police. The promotion to DS made it easier. At least now he expressed an interest in what I do.

  I couldn’t help but think about Thatcher. As far as I could tell, from what he told me and what Sharp had hinted at, his family were long gone now. There was a picture of his mother on his desk, but she was often turned to face the wall. Not an easy history, Dr Crowe had told me quietly on my first week there, between the two of them. Not easy.

  I didn’t pry, never did. Only the odd question here and there that he begrudgingly answered. But it’s just work talk, between us and that seemed to suffice for now. Thatcher hardly struck me as the sort of man to enjoy small talk, or any talk, really, but I had caught the smile on his face when Jeannie called. Then I watched it very quickly fall away, replaced by worry when we caught her face as she tumbled in from the rain.

  Thatcher had shrugged off the fact that he felt someone watching him, but with Jeannie now in question, I could tell it was on his mind. We were getting there, slowly, drudgingly more like, but we were getting there. So much so I almost called and cancelled, but I’d done that three times in the last two months now and half believed that if I didn’t show up, mum would appear and drag me here by the ankles.

  Part of me, as happy as I was to see them all, wanted to be back in the station or at least at home, going through it all again, trying to fit the pieces together. We knew where he’d been, where he walked, where he might have been going, but none it made much sense. Yet. Maybe by the time I got in tomorrow morning, Thatcher would have solved it. Part of me wouldn’t be all that surprised. Sharp let him off on warnings rather than genuine punishments for a reason, and that reason was not that she regarded him like a vaguely exasperated aunt.

  “Are you listening to me, Isaac?” Mum’s voice broke into my head.

  “Sorry, mum. What were you saying?”

  “I was asking if you’ve met any nice girls recently?”

  “I don’t really have the time, mum.”

  “No, I suppose not. Do you know who’s nice? Angela, you know my friend Angela, her daughter, has grown up to be very pretty.”

  “I don’t want you to set me up, mum. Let me get used to the job properly, then we’ll see.”

  “Think about that, won’t you?”

  “Course, I will.”

  “I just worry about you--”

  “Leave him be, love,” my dad called over. “He’ll find someone when he finds them. Until then, be happy with this lot.” He jerked his thumb over to where my nephews played, their own mother watching them from her chair, a hand cradling her baby bump.

  “I am happy,” mum replied. “And hoping for a girl this time.”

  My sister-in-law looked up and smiled at that. “Me too.”

  “You’ll get what you’re given,” dad mumbled.

  I shook my head and wandered over to him, nodding my head to the side. He followed me across the room to the bookshelves, and we leant against it, the noise of the room fading back ever so slightly so that we could better talk. Thatcher would approve of my dad’s collection of books, and vice versa. The grumpy so-and-sos would probably be better friends than we were.

  “How’s that new DCI treating you then?” dad asked. “Is he fair?”

  “Going well. Seems to like me better than his previous DS’s. Everyone says so.”

  “You can tell?”

  “He learnt my name quickly,” I told him, “and he sends me on my own every now and then. Trusts me.”

  “So, he should. Been there a while, has he?”

  I gave a steady nod. “Seen a lot. Far more than me.”

  “Well, you’re a rookie, aren’t you? Did you read that book I told you about?”

  “The one about the civil war?”

  He nodded.

  “Not yet,” I admitted, “been a bit swamped.”

  “You should never be too busy to read, Isaac. Not ever.”

  I smiled and glanced up at the shelves. There was no real organisation to them, no alphab
ets or genres or timelines. Dad just shoved them in wherever he thought was right. There were signed copies in there, I knew, first editions, rare covers, new translations. If there was a special version of a book, he would have it, rather than the one they likely sold down the high street.

  One of them jutted out slightly, and I reached up, pushing it back in with the spine.

  “Good one that,” Dad acknowledged. “Only ever seen that one with that cover too, no other like it. You’ll find that with niche genres. Never meet two people with the same book. Unless you’re in Oxford or Edinburgh, maybe.”

  I brushed over his faint disgust with Oxford as his words rang through my head.

  You never meet two people with the same book.

  A niche genre.

  The Ridolfi Plot.

  The book that Kerry Johnson had on his desk when I went to question him. The only one in that great ugly room that wasn’t brand new and leather-bound, one that was cracked, sun-bleached, and dog-eared. The exact same one that sat on the table in the hotel beside Cynthia Johnson the first time we saw her.

  That’s why it bothered me, that’s why I couldn’t forget it. They had the same book.

  “Excuse me, dad.” I ducked away, into the hall to where my coat hung, grabbing my phone from the pocket and scrambling for the right name.

  It rang twice.

  “Please don’t tell me someone’s dead,” Thatcher grouched down the line.

  “You remember when I came back from meeting Johnson, and I was talking about that book he had?”

  “The history one?”

  “Yes, the Ridolfi Plot.”

  “You made a note,” he recalled succinctly. “What of it?”

  “I remember where I saw it before,” I hissed into the phone, drifting away from the open doors where my family’s voices leaked out from. “That exact one. Same cover, same state, the actual book.”

  “Where?” he asked, his voice more alert.

  “It was the one Cynthia Renner had in the hotel lobby when we first questioned her. She was reading that exact same copy.”

  He was quiet for a moment. “You’re certain?”