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

by Oliver Davies

  “Address for the Schmidt family,” she said. “Dr Crowe got it for me. She says she’s certain they still live there. I double-checked in the system to be sure,” she added.

  “Thank you, Fry. Is she still here?”

  She nodded to the door. “They found a sofa to claim in the kitchen.”

  I sighed. “I’ll handle it. Did SOCO find anything of use?”

  “No fingerprints and no DNA as yet, sir. Some traces of mud in the carpet, but they don’t know if that comes from Schmidt or the killer.”

  “Tell them to trace it either way,” I said. “Better to have too much data than not enough.” Fry nodded, and in the corner of my eye, I saw Mills amble over, pulling a jumper over his head. “Anything from Wasco or Dr Cavell?”

  “Not yet,” she said. “But I think Dr Crowe might be waiting around on account of the second one there, sir.”

  I wasn’t surprised by that. “Thank you, Fry,” I said, dismissing her. She nodded, glancing at Mills, who had thankfully dressed again, and walked out of the room. I turned to face Mills, who had the faintest tinge of pink across his cheeks and nose.

  “You really do have wonderful timing, don’t you, Mills?” I asked, tapping him on the arm with the paper Fry had given me.

  “Better hope Sharp doesn’t hear about it and give me a lecture about proper workplace decorum.”

  “Being fully dressed is, sadly, a commonplace standard, Isaac, but in this instance, I’d say we’ll let it slip. I doubt Fry’s going to go around talking about it, anyway,” I added. She wasn’t the sort to gossip, nor to expose herself to the sort of gossip that the station would strike up if they knew. Sharp would sit us all down for a lecture about office romances if she felt the need to, and we should all be spared from those when we could.

  “I’m going to go talk to Lena,” I told Mills. “See why she’s hanging around.” Mills nodded and walked over to the board in the corner of the room, traces of our last investigation still stuck to the white surface. As he got to work clearing it off, I slipped outside and wandered to the kitchen. A constable stood waiting for the kettle to boil, and in the corner of the room, on the ratty sofa that had been here for at least as long as I had, Lena sat holding her wife’s hand.

  “Miriam,” I greeted her as I walked in. She smiled up at me, rising to her feet to give me a quick hug.

  “Hiya, Max,” she said as she pulled away. She looked like she had come straight from her studio, smudges of clay on her cheek and dungarees, her thick hair tied back from her face with a bright bandana.

  “Still here?” I asked Lena as I sat beside her, hitting her on the knee.

  “I’m of use,” she protested.

  I hummed. “You’re waiting to see what Dr Cavell has to say.”

  Lena shrugged innocently. “Should I not be?”

  “How would you like it if the roles were reversed?” I asked. “And you like, Love, she’s a good pathologist, even if she isn’t you. And I might remind you that we can’t exactly tell you what she does find, can we? Unless you’ve hoodwinked some scared little PC into passing messages to you.”

  Lena scoffed as Miriam laughed lightly. “He’s got a point, dear.” She wrapped an arm around Lena’s shoulders. “There’s no use in sitting here twiddling your thumbs. Best to just go home,” she added, her Irish accent softening the words.

  Lena sniffed. “I should at least come with you,” she said, tearing her case from her wife to look at me. “To tell his parents.”

  I hesitated, wondering if that really was the best. I caught Miriam’s eye over Lena’s shoulder, and she made a face that I understood as “try talking her out of it”. It would be a challenge and not one that I was particularly in the mood for.

  “You can come with us if—” I said firmly. “If you let me do the talking, and once we leave that house, Miriam brings you straight home.”

  Miriam nodded, and Lena looked between the two of us before sighing and nodding her agreement.

  “But I still think I’m of use,” she muttered.

  “I think so too,” I agreed quietly. “But I do have your number, Lena, and it’s not like I don’t know where you live if I need you.”

  She grimaced and pushed herself to her feet. “Let’s go then,” she said, wobbling slightly. Miriam steadied her.

  “Have you eaten since this morning?”

  “I had a biscuit.”

  “One biscuit?”

  “I’m in shock!”

  They bickered softly as Miriam ushered her from the room, and I watched them go with a slight sigh. Of all the ways of processing such a shock, Lena’s was one of the oddest. I supposed that it would hit her soon. It always did. Far better to have her out of the station when it did, for her own comfort.

  I popped back into the office to fetch my coat, and Mills had started work on the board, a few photographs in place.

  “Lena’s coming with us,” I told him. “But then Miriam will take her straight home.”

  He nodded, pulling on his wet coat with a miserable looking expression and followed me from the office and down the stairs. Miriam and Lena waited by the doors, and Mills smiled at them both.

  “Hi, Lena. Hello again, Miriam.”

  “Hi, Mills,” she replied warmly.

  “Let’s go then,” I said, fishing my keys from my pocket. “You’re alright to follow me, Miriam?”

  She nodded, and the four of us hurried through the rain to our cars. Once inside, Mills turned the heaters on full blast and angled them at himself.

  “I might have a spare jacket in the boot,” I told him, pulling out of the car park. “Take that one off before it gets into your bones.”

  He shrugged it off, placing it on the back seat and huddled in his jumper as I followed the directions across the city and to the south, to the rambling little suburbia where Dr Schmidt’s parents lived.

  Thankfully, the rain decided to ease up as we arrived, enough for Mills to jump out once I’d parked on the side of the road and rifle through the boot. I did have one, thankfully. It wasn’t as smart as his usual work coat, I think I left it in there after going for a walk with Elsie the other weekend, but Mills didn’t object as he pulled it on. It swamped him a bit, too big and baggy, but he simply stuck his hands in his pockets and turned to the road as Miriam’s mud-splattered old Beetle rattled to the kerb.

  The two of them climbed out, and Lena gripped her wife’s hand, looking at the house across the road. It was a nice place, three stories, old brick, probably bigger on the inside than it seemed, with a low brick wall covered in ivy surrounding the garden.

  I turned to Lena. “Ready?”

  She nodded, so I led the way across the road and up to the front door, ringing the bell. A shadow moved in the little stained-glass window on the door, then it opened, held back by a chain. A man’s face, very similar to Dr Schmidt’s, peered through. He looked at me, then at Mills, and then he spotted Lena behind me. The door shut, and I heard the scraping of the chain before it opened again, and the man beamed.

  “Lena, is that you?” he asked, stepping outside in his slippers to take her hand. He had the same unruly curls as Stefan had, the same tawny skin and small frame huddled in a cardigan, the glint of a chain around his neck.

  “Hello again, Professor Schmidt,” Lena said, smiling up at him.

  “And this must be your wife,” he turned to Miriam with a little bow. “At long last.” Miriam smiled back, and then he turned to us. “And these young men?”

  “These are my colleagues and friends, Professor Schmidt. Detective Inspector Thatcher,” he shook my hand, “and Detective Sergeant Mills.” He looked Mills over with a knowing look as they shook hands.

  “And to what are we owed this visit?” he asked, sticking his hands in his cardigan pockets.

  “I’m afraid we have some bad news for you, Professor Schmidt,” I told him. “Perhaps we could talk inside?”

  “Bad news?” he repeated.

  I nodded. “Regard
ing your son.”

  The old man’s face fell, and he nodded, shuffling back into the house. He stopped at the bottom of the stairs and looked up. “Natalia!” he called before turning back to us. “Through to the kitchen,” he said, waving a hand down the hall.

  We wandered down, taking seats around the round wooden table in the middle of the room. The kitchen was lovingly cluttered with knick-knacks and photographs, jugs full of flowers and paintbrushes and pens. We sat in silence until Professor Schmidt returned, holding a woman’s hand. She looked straight to Lena with a smile.

  “Lena,” she walked around to kiss her cheek.

  “Hello, Natalia. My wife, Miriam.”

  “Hello, Miriam. And the police?” she asked us as her husband pulled out a chair for her. They sat side by side, studying us.

  “Detective Inspector Thatcher and Detective Sergeant Mills,” I introduced us.

  “And you have news about our Stefan?” she asked, pushing her brown hair back from her warm face.

  “We do,” I said. God, how I hated this. “I’m so sorry to tell you this. Your son was found dead in his flat this morning.”

  There was a second of agonising silence.

  “Dead?” Natalia asked. “Our Stefan?” She turned to Lena, who nodded, tears running down her cheeks. Natalia fumbled for her husband’s hand and gripped it tight.

  “He—” Professor Schmidt broke off and cleared his throat. “Was there an accident?” he asked.

  “We don’t believe so,” I said solemnly. “We believe your son to have been killed.”

  Natalia sobbed, her free hand flying to cover her mouth, and Professor Schmidt looked straight ahead, his face blank. Then he shook his head and turned to Lena.

  “Lena?” he asked.

  She nodded, still crying. “I recognised him as soon as I got to the flat.”

  “You were there? My poor girl,” he said softly.

  “They got me out,” she said, nodding to Mills and me. “And they will do everything they can to find who did this.”

  Professor Schmidt studied us for a moment, then turned his attention to console his wife. We gave them a few minutes, during which Miriam got up and filled a few glasses with water and brought them over before sitting quietly beside Lena again, clutching her hand with both of hers.

  Natalia was the first to recover, and she looked directly at me. “You have solved these cases before?”

  I nodded, and Professor Schmidt studied me again.

  “Too many?” he asked simply.

  “Sadly. I am so sorry that this has happened to you,” I added. “And we will do everything that we can.”

  Natalia nodded, sipping at her water and dabbing her face. “What happened to him?” she asked, her voice breaking. “What happened to my boy?”

  “It’s still too early to tell,” I kept my voice gentle. “And I’m afraid we can’t share too many details with you.”

  “Of course not,” Professor Schmidt said, patting his wife’s hands.

  “We do have a few questions for you, though,” I said. “If you’re feeling up to it?”

  “Better to rip off the plaster, as they say, Inspector,” Natalia answered with a nod. “Ask away.”

  I gave them another moment. “When was the last time you saw or spoke to Stefan?” I asked.

  “We saw him last week,” Natalia answered straight away. “He came for dinner on Friday and called us on Wednesday to tell us he wouldn’t be able to make it this week.”

  “Work,” Professor Schmidt said. “It kept him busy.”

  “We hear that he was one of the best,” I said.

  Natalia nodded proudly. “Clever boy. Always has been.”

  “How did he seem last week?” I asked.

  They shared a look. “After he left,” Professor Schmidt said. “We talked about him. We were a little worried that he seemed more…” He struggled for the word.

  “Erratic,” Natalia supplied. “He couldn’t focus much, and his mind kept wandering.”

  “Did he seem scared in any way?” I asked.

  “No, no,” she said. “Just preoccupied. Like he had a big decision to make about something. I thought maybe he had a new girlfriend but,” she shrugged. “He didn’t say as such.”

  I nodded as she broke into fresh tears. Now wasn’t the time to ask them to pick apart their last visit with their son, so I left a card on the table and told them to get in touch whenever, and Mills and I made our exit, leaving Lena and Miriam behind to say their goodbyes.

  Once outside the house, I breathed a deep lungful of cold air.

  “Something was weighing on him,” I murmured. “I wonder what that could have been.”

  “Something personal?” Mills wondered. “Or something to do with work?”

  I shrugged and shook my head slightly. “Hard to say at this point, isn’t it?”

  The front door opened, and Lena and Miriam wandered out, Lena looking pale and teary-eyed still. I looked at them, then at Mills, and sighed.

  “Who’s for a coffee?”

  Ten

  Thatcher

  Everyone seemed rather defeated after we left the Schmidt household, and even I was reluctant to return to the station and begin slogging through what little evidence we had so far. Coffee was required, somewhere to sit and talk that wasn’t a crime scene or a police station. The others all seemed to be in agreement, so we drove back to the city and found ourselves in the café, where Mills ran in ahead as I found a place to park to give Billie a heads up on what had occurred this morning.

  I waited for Lena and Miriam on the pavement outside, the two of them slowly making their way over. Lena was looking more and more ready to collapse. Miriam held the door open for her, hanging back with me.

  “I think a cup of tea and something to eat,” she muttered as we walked in, “and then I’ll take her home. She looks done in.”

  “Let me know if there’s anything I can do,” I said. Miriam smiled and touched my shoulder.

  Mills had secured the table towards the back with the two sofas, and Lena had joined him over there. I knew his usual order, so Miriam and I headed to the counter where Billie stood, looking a little thrown off by the news.

  “Hi, Max,” she said as I walked up.

  “Hi, Billie. This is Miriam.” I indicated her. “Lena’s wife.”

  “Nice to meet you,” Billie said with a smile.

  “And you. I’ve heard good things about these lattes of yours,” Miriam said warmly. She had the uncanny knack of making everybody feel at home around her, a stark contrast to Lena, who made you feel like you were being observed by a clinician with high standards and a bad bedside manner.

  Billie seemed to brighten up a bit. “Usual for you two?” she asked me, already grabbing the mugs.

  “Please and thank you. Miriam? It’s on me.”

  Miriam winked at Billie. “Knew there was a reason I came. A cup of tea for Lena and a slice of that carrot cake, please. And a latte for me.”

  “I’ll bring it all over,” Billie said, taking the cash I handed over. Miriam moved away, joining the others as Billie sorted out my change and passed it over.

  “Is Lena okay?” she asked softly.

  I let out a long breath. “She’s putting on a brave face,” I said, dropping some coins into the tip jar. “But he was her friend, you know. It’s a horrible thing to happen. Part of the job.”

  Billie grimaced. “Well, I promise if you ever get called to a crime scene that I’m at, it will only be for, like, vandalism or something.”

  I chuckled, “noted. How’s your day been? Thought you had today off.”

  “Pablo called in sick. Agnes will be here in a few hours, though, to take over.” I nodded, giving her a quick grin before walking over to the sofa and taking a seat beside Mills.

  “She’s a nice girl,” Miriam said.

  “I think so,” I replied, shrugging my coat off. “You alright, Lena?”

  “I’m fine,” she said, her
voice muffled by the tissue she used to dab her face with. “You’re a mother hen, Maxie.”

  I sighed dramatically, “it’s a real burden.”

  Mills snorted a laugh beside me and leant back against the sofa.

  “I’d rather talk about him,” Lena said after a while. “I don’t want to talk about something else and try to forget it.”

  I nodded, leaning forward, my elbows braced on my knees. “Can you tell me a bit more about his work? What did he actually do?”

  “In layman’s terms,” Lena paused to blow her nose. “In layman’s terms, it means he analyses human remains. A lot of the time, forensic anthropologists are the people you see on mass graves or after a big disaster like a plane crash. They can get in, quickly start working identities so that the authorities know what they’re dealing with. Schmidt used to do that,” she said, “but his interest was always with history.”

  Mills looked thoughtful. “Is there much of a difference between that and forensic archaeology?”

  Lena deliberated. “Not much. Forensic archaeology is more of a subfield. But Schmidt had the right training for either, and depending on the job, you might need someone with both.”

  I nodded. That made sense for his current dig. The suspicious remains could be a job for a museum or for us, and Dr Schmidt would likely have been the best person to determine that.

  Billie wandered over then, the tray of mugs in her hands. She slid the cups onto the table, a slice of carrot cake landing before Lena, who poked at it a bit with the fork, then took a careful bite. The slice was gone before her tea had properly brewed, and Miriam relaxed at the sight of the empty plate, sinking into the sofa with her coffee cradled in her hands.

  “How long would it have taken him?” I asked, stirring milk into my coffee. “To identify remains?”

  Lena shrugged. “He was good. Usually, he could look at a skeleton and tell you the sex and the age. The trickier bits would be dating the remains, and he’d use a similar carbon dating process as I do. But by now, I think he’d have gotten it. It would just be the paperwork, really, like me getting a full autopsy report done.”