Unusual Remains

by Oliver Davies

  “I don’t think it was him, ma’am. I really don’t. Get in touch with the son. See what he can confirm.”

  “We’ll need to round up his alibi for bonfire night,” she added, “but we can’t build a case based on testimonials from family members and nothing more. And the son is here. The family followed him up. I doubt he’ll be here long, Thatcher. Just as long as it takes Crowe. Now...” She faced me fully, hands braced on her hips, face stormy. “What on earth possessed you to go down in the area of a crime scene, into a river in winter, at night, without backup?”

  She was calm. That was bad. I didn’t like it when she was calm.

  “There was a chance of finding the laptop, I had to take it before the killer moved it again,” I reasoned, “which I think they tried to do. So, it’s a good thing I was there, really.”

  “It was a good thing Mills was there, you stubborn git. I can’t have one of my best DIs drowning halfway through a murder inquiry!”

  “One of your best?” I repeated.

  “You are lucky that he came when he did and lucky that you found that laptop because I swear, Max Thatcher, I should have turned absolutely monstrous with you if not!”

  “I believe that. Has Wasco found anything?”

  “Not yet. Have you been to see a doctor?”

  “Not yet.”

  “I’ll send you myself if I have to, don’t make me order you.”

  “I’ll let Lena have a look when I go down to see her.”

  “Fine.” Sharp held up a finger. “This will not happen again, Detective Inspector Thatcher. You follow protocol, you wait for backup.”

  “If I had, we might not have gotten the laptop.”

  “You also might have died.”

  She wasn’t backing down, I could tell. Her chin held high, jaw set, eyes blazing.

  I bent my head slightly. “Sorry, ma’am.”

  “Tell me you at least thanked Mills,” she said a little more softly.

  “I did, in fact,” I assured her. “I’ll do it properly when this is all tied up. Take him for a proper pint.”

  “Taking your sergeant out for a drink.” She shook her head. “Never thought I’d see the day. Stay in the station, wait for Crowe to call with the results.”

  “What about Jeannie?”

  “Someone else will handle the robbery. I need you on this. Understood?”

  “Even though it’s connected?” I cleared my throat. “Most likely, anyway.”

  “You can confer, but you will not leave this station with my knowledge. No poking around the newspaper office and missing Crowe when she finds something.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Good.” Sharp made a shooing motion. “Off you go then, see what your journalist can tell you.”

  I smiled down at her and picked up my coffee again, leaving her there and making my way to our office. The door was open, and Mills and Jeannie sat on two chairs, his notebook in hand. I walked in, kicking the door shut.

  Jeannie looked up, a bit tired but not harmed. I put my cup down on the desk and took her face in my hands, scanning her expression.

  “Are you alright?”

  “Physically, right as rain, but that’s about it. Bastard ruined my desk, Thatch,” she grumbled.

  Mills handed me the photographs of the scene. It was a mess. Computer screen smashed, drawers empty, snow globe broken. That sent a slight flicker of pain. It had been a gift from her dad. She’d be ready to bludgeon whoever did this.

  I pulled over another chair and joined them. “They took your drives?”

  “All of them.” She flailed her arms. “Every. Single. One. That was all my work, years of research!”

  “We think they were looking for your research on Hughes,” Mills told her, “the stuff you brought us.”

  “Well, they missed out on that, at least.”

  “We need to make sure it’s the same people,” I muttered, more to me than the others.

  “Well, they certainly don’t want me nosing around in anything, whatever it is. And considering my most recent article was about the new exhibit at the museum, I hardly think it was someone with a passion in Viking antiquities that did this. Look what they did to my bird,” she said sadly, pulling out another picture.

  It was a blackbird, emblem of the paper, that she’d been given after five years of working there. Beheaded, poor thing, it’s stuffing falling over the desk like dandruff.

  “I’m going to stitch his head back on,” she announced.

  “So, you should.”

  “I hear the murder weapon’s been found,” she drawled casually, crossing an ankle over her knee.

  “So it seems,” I murmured.

  “I don’t think that the farmer down there broke into my desk and decapitated my blackbird.”

  I nodded in agreement. “Can’t quite picture it myself.”

  “Set up then?”

  “Can’t really disclose all that with you just now, Jeannie. Barely know anything for sure myself.”

  “Dr Crowe works fast. She’ll get us an answer. Speaking off,” Mills crossed his arms, “you said you would go and see her.”

  Jeannie turned to me, intrigued. “Why?”

  “Because he almost drowned fishing out the laptop last night, got hit with a rock,” he said.

  Jeannie’s mouth fell open, and her wide eyes fixed on me. “What?”

  “Thank you for that, Mills,” I sniped.

  He grinned back, smug. “Figured you’d listen to her more than me, sir.”

  Jeannie rose from her chair, “show me,” she urged.

  “It’s fine,” I waved her away.

  “Bugger off, Thatch, let me see.” She yanked me from the chair and peeled my coat off, standing at my back, and pulled my shirt up. Her cold finger traced the bruise, and she sucked in air through her teeth.

  “Did you help him?” she asked Mills over my shoulder as she pulled my shirt back down.

  “I got there in time.”

  “Crikey, Max.” She walked around me, standing in front, looking up. “Are you alright?” she asked softly.

  “I’m fine,” I repeated.

  “Good.” She raised a hand, stroking my cheek and then quickly and lightly whacked me on the side of the head. “Idiot!”

  “What was that for?” I protested as she sat back down, a smug face not dissimilar from Mills’s.

  “Going out on your own and almost dying. Go and see Dr Crowe,” she ordered. “Now!”

  “We have this,” I held up the photographs, “to deal with.”

  She shook her head, curls bouncing as she snatched the pictures back. “Until you go and let a real, professional medical person look at you. The only person I will be discussing this with is Mills here. Maybe Smith, she seems nice. Just not you.”

  “Jeannie...” I growled.

  “Don’t growl at me. Go on, off you trot. I’ll be here when you get back, won’t I, Mills?”

  He suddenly looked a bit aghast but nodded all the same. “You wanted to go and talk to her anyway, sir. Two birds with one stone.”

  Jeannie grimaced at that, pouting down at the picture of her dismembered bird again. They were worse than Sharp, the two of them, and harder to evade, especially Jeannie.

  And I, apparently, was the stubborn one.

  “Fine,” I relented, “but no more bringing it up anymore, alright?”

  “Deal,” Mills confirmed.

  “I might bring it up again,” Jeannie said at the same time, “but I’ll be nice about it, swear.”

  I rolled my eyes and removed the photograph from her hands, taking it with me. I didn’t want to come back to find her almost weeping over it.

  “Is someone with the farmer’s family?” I checked before I left.

  “Smith is,” Mills told me. “They seem calm enough. Not rallying or raging.”

  “Why would they?” I muttered. They didn’t strike me as the sort of people who would, people like my own. Got on with things, struggle
d through the mud without too much complaining or crying out for a lawyer.

  I’d see them on my way back, hopefully with good news from Dr Crowe, providing she didn’t decide to do a full bloody examination on me. If Sharp had been in touch whilst I’d been in here, it was very possible that she would. I drained the rest of my coffee, letting my hand brush against Jeannie’s hair as I walked grumpily out from the office, past Mills’s triumphant face, down to Crowe’s lab, where a lot lay at stake in her impatient hands.

  Twenty-Two

  Thatcher

  Leaving Mills and Jeannie up there seemed to be something of a recipe for disaster, the two of them smug-faced as I slunk away from the office, the photograph of Jeannie’s bird in my pocket. My back was, in all fairness, aching somewhat, twinging every time I moved. It was slow going getting my shirt and jumper on this morning, and now I was about to repeat the whole sodding process again.

  I was grumbling when I got to her lab. She was waiting, looking me over with a sharp eye.

  “She told you, didn’t she?”

  “She did.” Dr Crowe nodded. “Come along, patient. Not in here.”

  I was grateful that Dr Crowe led me to another room to check over me; there was something about sitting on the chemical scented table she usually hosted dead bodies on that didn’t sit all that easy with me. She led to another room just down the hall, pulling on a pair of gloves as I tugged my clothes off with a wince.

  “So, I hear Sharp was delighted to hear about your late-night dip, Thatcher.”

  “Does everyone know?”

  “You know her.” She swabbed something on my back as she talked, with not a lot of gentleness. “She’s not one to keep her displeasure quiet, especially when it comes to you. You were lucky Mills turned up when he did, else you’d be in that other room with me. Only slightly less chatty than you already are.”

  “If I hadn’t gone when I did,” I repeated tiredly, “we wouldn’t have the laptop.”

  “No. Worthy trade that then in your eyes? This is fine.” She tapped my back. “Keep an eye on it though.”

  “Part of the job, isn’t it?”

  “Almost being killed?”

  “Not for the first time.”

  “You’re in for it though if there’s nothing on that laptop,” the good doctor warned. “Wasco’s good, but he can’t resurrect something long gone.”

  I was worried about that. So far I could justify all this with that laptop, but if it turned out to be useless, dead, Sharp would want my head on a stick.

  Crowe bustled around me, checking my breathing, my heart, my eyes. “Any nightmares?”

  “Nightmares?”

  “Near-death experience, not uncommon to have nightmares about it.”

  “No.” I shook my head. “But I’ve not got any plans to have a bath at the moment.”

  “Or go swimming?”

  “Never a fan of public swimming pools,” I told her.

  “Me neither. You wouldn’t want me to tell you what you can find in that water.”

  “Please, never do.”

  “Alright, Thatcher,” she handed me my clothes, “you’re all good.”

  “I knew I was all good,” I muttered as I pulled my shirt on. “Nobody up there seemed to believe me.”

  “They’ll stop hounding you now, at least.”

  “Thank goodness for that.” I jumped down from the bed, pulled my jumper on, and opened the door. “Got any news for me about this weapon?”

  “Oh, yeah,” she said, snapping her gloves off and tossing them in the bin. “Come on.” She led me down the hallway to another room, the air inside bitter and metallic. The sledgehammer sat inside a piece of machinery surrounded by glass.

  “No fingerprints,” she told me. “Whoever held it, they had gloves. Which, given the foul weather we’re having, was probably more coincidence than anything else since they’ve not taken much care with anything else.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning they didn’t give it a very good scrubbing, Thatcher. Blood samples were pretty easy to collect.”

  “And?”

  “This,” she slapped her hand on the lid of the plastic case, “is the weapon that killed Samuel Hughes.”

  “Any way of knowing where it might have come from?”

  “Funnily enough, there is. Sit down.” Dr Crowe indicated the chair behind me, herself taking a perch on the side of a desk. “Usually with hammers like these, especially found where it was with the usage it might have had, you’d find traces of other things. Wherever it was used, you know? Paint, oil, dirt, that kind of stuff.”

  “If it was a farmer who used it, I’d say it would be a bit of a circus of things,” I conjectured.

  “Yes. But it’s clean.”

  “Clean?”

  “Other than the blood, barely a trace of anything. Some fibres that got caught on the grains, just cotton, from a sheet most likely, but that’s it.” She shrugged. “No oil, no mud, no nothing.”

  I folded my arms. “So, the killer might have used it just this once?”

  “I’d wager so, yes.”

  “What about the rusty metal you found on the body?”

  “Well, how would you move a body from as far as the woods into that field?” Dr Crowe asked. “Not easy, he was a big guy, even for two people.”

  “Find something to carry him with.”

  “Who wouldn’t? Smart thinking. I myself,” she placed a hand on her chest, “might opt for a wheelbarrow or something. They can get very old and rusty. Or it just got caught in him as he was lugged around. Bit of metal thrown in with the wood or something.”

  “So not very important to this investigation?”

  “Not really. This is the weapon, and I’d bet my best hat on it. You find all sorts of things in the woods out there, Thatcher. Bits of nail or old signs. I’m telling you,” she said knowingly. “Soil. We can learn a lot from it.”

  “If this were our farmer’s hammer,” I looked at it from where I sat, “I’d imagine it would have quite a few fingerprints on it, used year-round.”

  “I’d say so unless he bought a new one especially for this. But,” she amended, “that’s your job. Not mine. I’ve done mine. Speaking of, I’ll give that laptop a little look over for prints too. See what I can find.”

  “Probably a few sets. I doubt he was the only one who handled it.”

  “Anything in the satchel?”

  “A few rocks. They’d have used them to make the bag sink.”

  “Rocks are useful. Must be similar to one they lobbed at you.” She reached over with a grin, patting my knee. “I’ll have a look at them anyway, see what I can see.”

  “Thanks, Lena.”

  “Anytime, Thatcher. Here, how’s Jeannie?”

  “She seems okay. Angry more than anything, that was a lot of her work they ruined. I feel bad,” I admitted, scratching the back of my neck. “It’s my fault she’s in all of this. I dragged her in.”

  “Jeannie’s a grown woman, Thatcher.” Dr Crowe rolled her eyes. “She’s here because he chose to be. You didn’t do this, get over yourself.”

  “Thanks so much, for your kind, reassuring words,” I said sarcastically.

  “You get in your own head too much,” she answered simply. “My wife does the same.”

  “Great minds,” I trailed off.

  “Come on,” she stood up, walking towards the hammer. I followed, looking to where she pointed at the flat edge.

  “That’s the part they hit him with,” I stated.

  “Shut up and let me talk. See the edge there?”

  “Yes?”

  “That’s where most of the strikes came from. To get it dead on the flat side,” she explained, “you need a lot of strength and quite a bit of accuracy. But, well you saw the body…”

  “It was a bloody mess.”

  “It was indeed. They didn’t line it up or anything, they just went for it. Most of the blood samples we found on the handle underneath th
at edge. So, they brought it up,” she demonstrated, “then swung it down.”

  “They took it with them,” I said aloud. “If it wasn’t left in the woods, they’d have taken it with them.”

  “Lugging that and a body wouldn’t be easy.”

  “Without being seen, as well.” I raked my hair back from my face. “A busy day in the village, people milling about all over, coming and going, and not one of them saw someone going into the woods with a sledgehammer or leave with said hammer and a body.”

  “Hard to miss that.”

  “Cotton fibres on the handle?”

  “Cotton fibres.”

  “From a sheet?”

  “Best guess. Might have wrapped it up, kept it hidden,” the doctor conjectured. “Could have been a blanket or a shirt.”

  “A sheet can be used to conceal things,” I said, “if you pop stuff in a wheelbarrow, cover it with a sheet, people aren’t likely to look twice. Especially if you’re around a bonfire, looking busy.”

  “Throw a few sticks on top, and nobody would be any the wiser,” Lena said.

  I turned to her, impressed. “If it were a local, nobody would think twice about it.”

  “No. An out of towner might draw attention, but it depends on whether they can blend in.”

  “If it’s the out of towners I’m thinking of, then not very well.”

  I suppressed a groan, burying my face in my hands. All this focus on Renner and Johnson, but they couldn’t have done it all without being seen, surely. A villager wouldn’t be questioned traipsing around the fields and woods. A villager could get down to the river without people asking questions, could know which one of the farmer’s barn he left unlocked. Could leave their own barn’s unlocked, perhaps.

  “Thanks, Lena,” I muttered, leaving the room and heading up the stairs, all the way, up to the roof. I stood, looking out over the rooftops of the city, my hands stuffed deep into my pockets and fought the urge to let out a sharp yell.

  I had disregarded him, brushed him off as a suspect. Had done for all of them, really. Perhaps I was biased when it came to places like that. I couldn’t imagine Mrs Babbage to be a part of this any more than I could Elsie. I’d known men like Goodwin growing up. They were my neighbours, the people who brought round spare eggs and baked a cake when someone new moved in. It was a rare occurrence, but they did it.