Cradle to Coffin (A DCI Thatcher Yorkshire Crimes Book 10)

by Oliver Davies

  I smiled back, then turned to Mills to see if he had any more questions for our priest. Frankly, he just looked a little out of his depth, so I rose from the sofa and extended a hand to Miles.

  “Thank you for your time,” I said. “It may well be that you see either us or some of our fellow officers close by to where Dr Schmidt was working. Please don’t be alarmed.”

  “Certainly, certainly,” he said, shaking my hand.

  “And please get in touch,” I added, handing him a card. “If you think there is anything else we ought to know or anything that you can think of us.”

  The vicar placed the card on his desk and nodded, then indicated the door and led us out. We walked down the aisle, our shoes clicking on the stone to the main entrance, and he swung one of the doors back with a groan.

  “They don’t make them this sturdy anymore,” he muttered, more to himself than to us, I thought.

  “How old is the church?” Mills asked, lingering on the threshold. I smirked at his question. Of course, he had to ask.

  “17th century,” the vicar replied with a wink. Mills nodded, trailing after me, and the door shut with a clang behind us.

  “It was draughty in there,” Mills muttered as we walked through the rain back down to the car.

  “It was.” I waited until we were in the car, no longer pelted by wind and rain, to talk properly. “Schmidt was hired by the Yorkshire Museum to excavate and identify the remains. Wouldn’t they have their own people for that?”

  Mills shrugged. “Both Schmidt’s boss and Lena have said that he was the best in the game, and with this one, they didn’t want to take chances.”

  Not with it being so close to the church, I thought to myself.

  “I am curious to learn more about this dig,” I said. “I don’t like going into a case barely understanding what exactly our victim was doing. I say we head out to the museum, meet whoever was funding this dig and see what they can tell us.” I handed Mills the leaflet and started the engine.

  “Can we get lunch on the way?” Mills asked.

  “We can,” I said, turning the car around to head back through the village. Mills was studying the leaflet as I drove.

  “I used to go here a lot with my dad,” he said, looking at the photographs of the exhibits. “They have all sorts.”

  “What’s one more skeleton worth to them, then?” I wondered, the thought latching in my head and digging its claws in as we drove through the wind back to the city.

  Eight

  Mills

  I’d been surprised by how well Thatcher had seemed to get on with the priest. In my mind, I’d assumed him to be the tough, stoic atheist, but he’d spoken to Miles Harte with more civility and insight than I’d imagined him too. Perhaps he’d had religious leanings of his own some years ago.

  But Thatcher wasn’t the sort of man to keenly revisit his past, and I knew better than to try to make him. But at least we knew a little more about Dr Schmidt, or at least, a better image of the man was forming in my head. Devoted to his work, strong religious principles, it made me doubt that he was in this business for the money, else why wouldn’t he have moved upwards in his career as Lena had suggested he could? I didn’t say as much to Thatcher, but Dr Schmidt was reminding me a little of my own dad, minus the sobriety and faith. Dad had little of either.

  Thatcher himself said very little as we made our way from the village and headed back to the city, the rain continuing to fall in an endless grey sheet. Good for the garden, my gran had liked to say. We didn’t bother stopping at the station for anything. There wasn’t much we could do until we had some more facts or until Wasco worked his magic and got us into Schmidt’s laptop. Thatcher did stop for some food as we left the village, picking up some coffee and sandwiches from the little local café that we ate in the car. The radio was on, playing classical music, which I thought was odd, then I realised perhaps Thatcher had turned it on for Lena earlier, a quiet act of kindness.

  My phone chimed as Thatcher navigated us to the museum, and I fished it out as he found a place to park, turning off the engine and hovering so that I could check the message without walking my phone through the rain.

  “It’s from Fry,” I told him, scanning the brief text. “She says SOCO finished at the scene, and she’s back at the station now. Does she want us to start working on next of kin?”

  “We absolutely do. Is Lena still there?” Thatcher replied as he fiddled with his car keys, one arm braced on the slight window ledge as he turned to look at me. I sent back his reply and waited. Fry’s reply came quickly.

  “She is. Happy to help with this next stage, but then Sharp’s ordered her to go home.”

  Thatcher chuckled and opened his car door, standing out in the rain. “I thought her wife would have taken her by now,” he commented. I climbed from the car and walked around to join, and together we made our way to the front of the museum. The grand Victorian building attracted many tourists, and people were hurrying in out of the rain. I was used to seeing people sitting on the grass outside, but that was understandably empty. A few ducks were parading around, enjoying the absence of people.

  “I suppose Lena thinks she’s too useful to go home,” I replied as we walked into the building.

  “She’d be right about that,” Thatcher replied. “But she’ll need to rest and recover at some point, and that’s a much easier thing to do at home.”

  I nodded thoughtfully. “Sharp will kick her out soon enough,” I said with a shrug.

  Thatcher chuckled. “You’ve not met Lena’s wife yet, have you?”

  “Not properly,” I said, fidgeting with my damp coat collar. “Briefly at a Christmas party.”

  “Well,” Thatcher said as we walked to the information desk. “If Lena doesn’t leave soon, she’ll be dragging her out of the building. Mark my words.”

  He sounded, unsurprisingly, very admiring of that. We fell quiet as we reached the information desk, and Thatcher looked down at the woman sitting there. She smiled up at us sympathetically.

  “Just miss the rain, did you?” she asked.

  “Just about,” Thatcher replied.

  “How can I help?” She stood up, taking her glasses from her nose. They hung on a chain around her neck.

  “Detective Inspector Thatcher,” he said, showing his ID. “And Detective Sergeant Mills, North Yorkshire Police. We were hoping to be able to see Peter Wadham.”

  The woman looked surprised. “Dr Wadham?”

  “Is he in?” Thatcher inquired.

  “Oh, yes, he is. One moment please,” she backed away to the phone on her desk, and Thatcher turned away.

  “Nice building,” he remarked. I looked around too. A few people milled in the gift shop; a couple absently wandered around, probably looking for a toilet. The Roman exhibit was just down the hall, in memory served, and people shuffled along or stood at the desks, dripping with rain as they bought their tickets.

  “You know museums in London are free,” I commented.

  “Sure, but they charge a fiver for a cup of tea, so who’s winning there?” Thatcher replied.

  The woman at the desk cleared her throat politely, and we turned back to her. She offered another friendly, practised smile.

  “Dr Wadham will be down in a moment. You gentlemen are welcome to wait, peruse a few exhibits,” she said, extending her arm to the museum.

  Thatcher and I shared a quick look. Free of charge? Yes, please.

  “Very kind. Thank you,” Thatcher said, smiling back at her with more warmth than he usually mustered, and we walked through to the nearest exhibit. We stood by a Roman statue, trying to appreciate it.

  “Always preferred looking at skeletons,” I said. “Mummies, that sort of thing.”

  “Me too,” Thatcher replied. “I went to the British Museum last time I went to London. Saw the bog man.”

  I grimaced. “What a way to go.”

  “I dunno. Resting in a bog seems alright.”

  “I
’ll be sure to put you in the nearest bog when you die then, sir,” I told him with a grin. “Out in the moors, is it?”

  Thatcher nodded, a smirk growing on his face.

  “Inspector Thatcher, I presume?” A voice interrupted us. We spun around to find a man watching us with an amused expression. He was on the short side but was impeccably well dressed in a suit that was probably more than my rent, a fancy watch shining on his wrist as he clasped his hands together.

  “I am,” Thatcher nodded, and the man extended a hand.

  “Dr Peter Wadham.” Thatcher shook his hand then turned to me.

  “This Detective Sergeant Mills.”

  “Pleasure,” Dr Wadham said as I shook his hand. “How can I be of assistance, Inspector?” he asked.

  “You were funding a dig,” he said. “Involving Dr Stefan Schmidt.”

  Dr Wadham nodded happily. “That’s right. Bones found outside a churchyard. Fingers crossed for Medieval, we’re looking a bit bare down there,” he added with a knowing chuckle.

  “Dr Wadham,” Thatcher said carefully. “I’m sorry to tell you, but Dr Schmidt was found dead this morning.”

  Dr Wadham’s face fell, turning the same pale white as his shirt. He looked away, a hand to his face and closed his eyes briefly.

  “Good God. How?” he asked, turning back to look at us, his eyes wide.

  “It’s still early in the investigation to say for sure,” Thatcher replied. “But we are investigating his death as a homicide.”

  “Good lord. Stefan?” He shook his head. “Seems madness. I—I saw him only the other day! Popped by the church to see how he was getting on.”

  “Could we talk somewhere quieter?” Thatcher asked, glancing at the other visitors that were milling around.

  Dr Wadham blinked and looked around, too, recognition dawning on him. “Yes, of course. This way, gentlemen.”

  He led us through the exhibit to a small door marked Staff Only, a keypad on the wall. He punched in a code, and the door buzzed open. Wadham stepped aside, holding it for us. A small thrill went through me as we walked in. I’d always wanted to see the behind the scenes of a museum. But it was just a hallway, long and beige and boring. A few boxes were stacked here and there, but nothing of interest. Thatcher cast me a knowing look as we followed Dr Wadham to a set of stairs and went up, walking out onto a large landing with several rooms. Large rooms, all set up as offices now.

  We walked into one, and Dr Wadham shut the door and waved us over to the desk, where two chairs sat opposite the one he sank into, looking forlorn. As I sat, I looked around the office, impressed.

  Huge shelves lined one wall, stacked with a few books, but mostly with artefacts; some carefully sealed in glass cases, some on stands or racks, others just propping up books. Photographs of archaeological sites hung on the wall, and I could spot Wadham in a few of them. He cleared a lot of documents off his desk, shoving them in a drawer, and turned his attention to us.

  “Stefan,” he prompted.

  Thatcher nodded. “We understood that you were funding his current work, is that correct?”

  “More or less. Dr Schmidt is—was—the finest forensic anthropologist I’ve ever met. I hired his services because I thought we’d need a professional hand on this one, and he was always happier to be out in the field rather than in the lab. A reciprocal situation, entirely.”

  “Had you worked with him before?” I asked.

  “Not directly. But his company has always been close to the museum. It’s always handy to have a good relationship with people you may come to rely on in the future.”

  Thatcher nodded. “What can you tell us about his current work?” he asked.

  Peter Wadham propped his elbows on his desk, lacing his hands together. “We got a call from the vicar, saying that some remains had been found. They wanted to determine if it was safe to move them, to bury them properly, what have you. I went down and took a look at the site, and,” he shrugged. “It caught my eye. Not a usual burial, I knew that much. So, I brought my findings to the museum, and we arranged the proper circumstances to take control of the findings. I hired Dr Schmidt to do the excavation and identify the remains.”

  I paused and frowned slightly. “Not an archaeologist?”

  “Not on this occasion. It would have taken too long to tell you the truth, and Schmidt knows what he’s doing. The board agreed, and there we are. As I said before, I went down the other day to see how it was going.”

  “What day was this?” Thatcher asked.

  “Wednesday,” Wadham replied. Thatcher nodded, making a mental note.

  “And I do have to ask, Dr Wadham, where you were last night?”

  He looked shocked to be asked but nodded. “At home. The wife and I had a quiet night in.”

  Thatcher nodded, then asked, “How was it going? The dig?”

  “Pretty well. He’d managed to get most of the skeleton together and was in the process of getting it all back to his lab. No other findings, though. We’re used to finding brooches, pins, sometimes arrowheads or pots with remains, but this was just the body.”

  “Unusual?” I asked.

  “Generally speaking, yes. No sign of a coffin, no sign of any formal burial. It could be that the body was killed violently, back when that land was mostly field, in a battle or something and was just left there. We’d have to do a much larger dig for that,” he said. “Really out into the surrounding landscape for any other finds.” His voice sped up as he talked, excited by the prospect. “What Dr Schmidt found would have determined all this.” he added, dropping his arms.

  “Would he have found anything by now?” I asked.

  “I’m sure he would have,” Wadham said with a nod. “But he wouldn’t have brought any findings until he had the full picture. And anything he did find would likely be in his lab.”

  Thatcher and I shared another look; it seemed we were due a visit to Schmidt’s lab. Maybe he was the sort of man who didn’t bring his work home with him if he could avoid it, though from what Lena had said, I wasn’t sure.

  “Well, Dr Wadham, thank you,” Thatcher said, rising from the chair. He dug a card from his pocket and slid it across the desk. “We may well be in touch again, but until then, if there’s anything that comes to mind that you think may be useful to us, please do get in touch.”

  Wadham rose, tapping the card. “I certainly will, Inspector. And best of luck to you. Dr Schmidt was a talented man.”

  He walked around the desk and led us all the way back through the hallway, down the stairs and through to the main museum rooms. He held the door open for us again with a polite smile and a nod as we walked through, retracing our steps back to the main entrance, passing through the gift shop.

  “Fancy a pencil sharpener?” Thatcher asked. “Magnet? Postcard? Novelty sword?”

  “They really do sell the weirdest things,” I replied as we walked through, back out into the rainy day outside.

  “What did you make of him?” Thatcher asked once we were back in the car, sheltered from the rain.

  “Not sure,” I admitted. “I found it hard to get a reading on him, truthfully.”

  Thatcher nodded, seemingly satisfied with that answer. “As did I. But so far, everyone we have met has done nothing but sing the man’s praises. Which is odd, given that he was murdered.”

  “Someone didn’t like him,” I agreed. “We just need to figure out how.”

  “Or why,” Thatcher muttered, starting the engine. “Maybe he trod on some toes. Found something, did something. People don’t just get killed like that in their own home, Mills. It wasn’t a robbery, no sign of a break-in. So what the hell did happen?”

  I shrugged. “Maybe his family could offer an answer to that,” I said. Fry and Lena would have gotten an address together for us by now.

  Thatcher groaned at the thought, the emotionally exhausting task that was telling people their loved one was dead. Telling parents that their child was dead was always the harde
st. He pulled out from the car park, turning onto the road.

  “Perhaps it’s a good thing that Lena’s still around,” he said, turning the windscreen wipers onto a higher speed as the rain picked up. “Having someone they know there, if they do know her, that is.”

  “It doesn’t sound like Schmidt had the busiest of social lives, so I’d imagine what few friends he did have, his family would know about.”

  Thatcher nodded, making a thoughtful face. Perhaps he was thinking the same of himself and the few friends he picked up along the way. There weren’t many of us, but I had met them all, and they had all met me.

  Though Thatcher had people of his own that were secret, and I had people too. Perhaps Schmidt did have other friends. Only Lena never met them, never even learnt about them. It wasn’t unheard of for secrets to come out like that.

  However, it wouldn’t be easy for her if they did.

  Nine

  Thatcher

  We made our way straight back to the station once we were finished in the museum, driving through the rain. I parked in my usual spot, and we jogged to the doors, pushing into the dry building. The desk sergeant cast us a sorry look as we dripped along the hallway, up the stairs and into the office. I slung my coat off and draped it over the radiator to dry, ruffling my hair to get some of the wetness out. Mills peeled his coat off with a grimace. The rain had gotten through to his shirt in our brief time outside.

  “I need a proper raincoat,” he muttered, pulling a fresh shirt from his bag. As he pulled the damp one off, a knock came at the door, and Fry wandered in. She stopped short, Mills also freezing with his new shirt in hand, then she turned to me and held out a sheet of paper.

  “Sorry,” she said to no one.

  “Mills needed a dry shirt,” I said, explaining his bare-chested state. Fry nodded, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear.