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

by Oliver Davies

  “But what? They have his notes on the remains from his lab, and whatever he printed off here, what else would they have needed?”

  “The folder?” Mills suggested.

  I hummed, unsure, and looked down at the printer. It was a shame we couldn’t make it re-print anything, for all the values of technology.

  “He printed it from his laptop,” I said. “But there was nothing about the remains on his laptop.”

  “Printed from his emails?” Mills suggested. “I’m always emailing stuff to myself, so I can print it off at my parent’s house.”

  I nodded. There were a few years where I had done the same with Sally and Tom’s printer… until they made me buy my own, anyway.

  “His emails aren’t on his computer,” I said. “At least, he didn’t give himself a shortcut to them. He’d have logged in every time.”

  “Do we know what account he used?” Mills asked. “If we know his email address, Wasco might be able to pull some strings.”

  “We can get it, I’m sure,” I replied. “I am curious to know why he didn’t print it at the lab, though. He came home to do it. Why?”

  Mills looked out of the window and sighed. “Maybe, he didn’t want anyone else seeing it? So, he sent it to himself to print it off at home.”

  “Why wouldn’t he want anyone else seeing it?” I pushed.

  “Because—” Mills hesitated. “Because it wasn’t good? Something about the remains or the church itself?”

  I nodded slowly, happy to hear his thoughts. I was just as muddled as he felt, though, and watched as he looked around. Of course, he didn’t get to have a proper look around yesterday. We’d come in, see the body, then he had taken Lena outside whilst I scoured around.

  He looked now, wandering over to the bookshelves, scanning them for any familiar title, picking up a few ornaments and studying them intently.

  “I feel like we’re missing something,” I murmured. “And I don’t even know where to begin looking for it.”

  I replayed the scenario again. He was home, came home from the lab. He’d eaten dinner. There were dishes on the side that he’d left to drain. He’d put on his pyjamas, probably showered, got himself a cup of herbal tea and then what? Decided to do some work at eight in the evening?

  He got an email from himself that he needed to check, so he printed it off, left the laptop there on the coffee table, didn’t care when it shut itself down. His phone rings. It’s Dr Walton, so he answers, and they talk, but he hangs up. A short conversation. The phone goes into his pocket, falls out when he falls down later. He’s got pages in his hands. He reads them, maybe paces, maybe sits down.

  Then someone knocks on the door. Someone who didn’t buzz into the building. He leaves the pages, gets up, goes over, knows whoever’s there, maybe in his head, he wonders if it’s a friend, Lena or Dr Walton. He lets them in, puts the wine on the table, but doesn’t open it. No glasses, not even water. Just his cup. It’s not a long visit, and it’s late. He doesn’t want them there, Lena said he didn’t like having people over, but this person came over. Maybe they see the sheets, maybe they know what it means.

  They leave, and Schmidt empties his bag for something… or did the killer empty it? He shoves the pages into the desk, and he’s there, wondering what to do. He doesn’t hear the killer approaching. The cat makes a sound, so he turns, and as he turns, he gets stabbed. Steps forward, falls. The killer grabs the sheets from the desk and leaves. The cat leaves, too, until he comes back clawing at the door that morning.

  I could see it all playing out in my head so clearly.

  The killer saw the sheets, that much I knew. And they took them. And Dr Schmidt had not wanted anyone to see them, brought them home just to be safe. Put them in a drawer. So, what were they? What was on them?

  I imagined whatever it was, had to do with Jack Wellins. Was it another article for his collection, taken by the killer as proof? Something was there, some small link.

  “Sir?” I looked up to find Mills standing by the far shelf.

  “What is it?”

  “Dust patterns,” he said, tracing the shelf. “Something’s missing that used to be here.”

  I blinked and walked over to stand next to him. It was on a higher shelf. Dr Cavell had said that our killer was tall, and the dark wood was covered thinly with dust. If something moved, one of the books or frames, it left that telltale clear block from where it had been.

  There was one in the corner, a small sort of square that the dust hadn’t resettled over yet. Moved recently. The shelf was home to a few ornaments, a stone carving of a woman, a Lucky Cat, a wooden carving of a cow that looked like it had been brought from India, a carving of Buddha and what looked like a rabbit’s foot.

  “Cultural icons,” I said, looking closer at the cow. “Souvenirs?”

  Mills nodded. “I suppose anthropology, even forensically, comes with an interest in other cultures.”

  “So, what was here?” I asked, tapping the empty space.

  “Who knows?” Mills replied. “A menorah, a crucifix, a tree of life? A miniature bust of Michelangelo’s David?”

  “Sounding a little put-out there, Mills,” I commented.

  “I just think if he’s been killed with one of them, it shows very bad taste.”

  I rested a hand on his shoulder. “I think the murder on its own shows bad taste.”

  He rolled his eyes. “You know what I mean.”

  “I do,” I assured him. “I also think that the dust and blood fumes are very bad for our brain, so maybe it’s time we leave.”

  “We didn’t get anything,” he protested.

  “We got a clearer understanding of what happened that night,” I countered, steering him over towards the door. “Now we just need to figure out why it happened, and I’m guessing that means we need a better understanding of that dig.”

  “Meaning?” he asked as we pulled off our protective layers and headed out into the hallway.

  “Meaning we’re going back to the church and peeling back that tarp.”

  The officer outside looked confused, hearing the last few words of our conversation, but he nodded politely and locked the door after us before settling back down on his chair.

  Mills didn’t look all that happy at the thought of getting up close and personal with an unmarked grave, but something told me that heading out there was the right call. Instincts, as Sharp said, over evidence. They hadn’t let me down before, and I wasn’t about to let them now.

  “And if it makes you feel any better,” I said. “I’ll buy you some lunch afterwards.”

  “I’m not a child,” he muttered, “but alright then. If the vicar comes back out and asks what we’re doing, I’m blaming you,” he warned, pointing his finger at me.

  I grinned and gripped his shoulders, walking him down the stairs and towards the front door. “It’s Sunday, Mills. If we have any luck, he’ll be in the middle of a service. Quick sticks though, they don’t go on as long as Catholic ones do.”

  “You seem to know a lot about it,” Mills remarked as we walked outside, breathing in the clean air.

  “Let’s hope it comes in useful then.”

  Sixteen

  Mills

  With Thatcher’s promise of lunch in my hand, I offered no other objection as we left the city and drove back out towards the village and the church. It was still a grim, grey day, but at least the rain had decided to take some time off, saving us from sloshing around in the mud, if nothing else.

  Still, the idea of hanging around a dug-up grave wasn’t all that appealing, and the weather didn’t contribute to that. I wondered how people stomached it. Death and dead bodies were difficult enough to deal with without getting the flu at the same time. Though I supposed in instances such as this, where the remains were often nothing more than a barely complete skeleton, this one without even a name, it was easy to remain detached from the memory of it once being a person. Unlike for us, when our victims had names and lives
and loved ones and faces; once, one of them still had her eyes open until Dr Crowe had arrived and gently closed them.

  There was something about a grave that seemed far more personal to me, though, the place where people rested after all of this. To be dug up and removed to a lab and poked and prodded with brushes and machines seemed disrespectful, however useful to history it was. I hoped that if we could identify the remains, at least then they could be properly interred again. They deserved that much, I was sure.

  As I sat stewing, watching the world go by, Thatcher was also silent as he drove along. He wasn’t angry, I had checked. No steely grip on the steering wheel, no muscle twitching in his jaw. He was oddly calm, in fact, despite the fact that we had very little to make sense of with this case. I’d have thought that he’d be angrier or more annoyed by now, muttering under his breath as he was sometimes prone to do.

  But not today, today he sat and drove quietly, the radio playing softly and occasionally spoke to comment on something we passed outside or to complain about a song that played. I was surprised he knew as many tracks as he did and imagined that Billie had something to do with that. Music seemed to follow that girl around, filling the silence that she had otherwise sat in until Thatcher had taken her under his wing.

  “What are you hoping to find?” I asked eventually, unable to sit with my own thoughts for much longer without going mad.

  “Honestly? I’m not that sure. Something we didn’t spot last time, I suppose. Something that might stick out now that we know a little bit more about Schmidt himself, something he would have seen. I’m prepared to take some pictures as well,” he added. “And we can always get another expert to give our findings another quick scan.”

  “No doubt one of Schmidt’s colleagues will take over the remains at some point,” I said. “But finding those results now would make things easier.”

  “And quicker,” Thatcher agreed as we drove into the village and along the road to the church.

  We parked on the road again, hopping out and pulling on a thin raincoat and some wellingtons just in case. Then we trudged down towards the church, where the faintest singing came from inside, and down through the churchyard to the dig.

  “You were right,” I said as we walked through the maze of headstones and soggy flowers. “They’re in service.”

  Surprisingly, Thatcher frowned at that and checked his watch. “Odd timing,” he muttered. “Maybe they have a midday service,” he added, pushing through the iron gate and over to the dig.

  I stood to the side, watching as Thatcher crouched down and unpegged the tarp on two corners, folding the whole thing back. I wasn’t really sure what I was expecting, but it was something a little more than this.

  This being a hole in the ground.

  It was the size of any other grave, a few metres long, a few feet deep, but it wasn’t as cleanly shaped as other graves. The edge wobbled and curved like a natural hole rather than a man-made one. I wondered how Dr Schmidt had decided on the perimeters of his dig. Thatcher sat down, lowering his legs over the side and dropped in, his head just bobbing in sight.

  “A bit of light if you don’t mind, Isaac,” he called. I fumbled for the torch and switched it on, shining it down into the hole. Thatcher, seemingly very at ease inside a grave, wandered about in the small space, scratching at the walls, crouching to the floor.

  “It’s oddly warm down here,” he said, peering up at me with a childish grin on his face. “I always thought it would be cold.”

  “The vicar said the gas and plumbing ran this way,” I suggested. “Could be the pipes.”

  “If the pipes are warm enough to warm up the soil, then it’s no wonder they’re in need of replacing,” Thatcher muttered. “Get the light over here, Mills.” He walked to the far end.

  I shuffled round to where he stood and crouched down, pointing the torch down between my feet. Thatcher pulled on a pair of gloves and bent down, digging faintly at the floor.

  “Anything?” I asked after a short time of silence.

  “Nope,” he muttered, straightening up and stretching his arms. “Thought I saw something, but it looks like a plant root. I’m guessing anything worth finding, Schmidt already found.”

  I hummed. “And didn’t think to make copies.”

  Thatcher chortled down in the grave, and at the same time, the iron gate was pushed open with a nasty squeak that had me shooting to my feet, swinging the torch up with me and shining it in the face of the woman who stood a few metres away. She squinted, cursed, and held her hands up to her face.

  I swore, quickly turning the torch off and walking over. “I am so sorry, miss. Are you alright?”

  “I think I’ll be seeing stars for a bit.” She blinked. “But there’s no need to go calling me miss, lad,” she added, lowering her hands.

  I smiled. She was an older woman, white hair half poking out from a woollen hat, her face lined with wrinkles around her mouth and eyes.

  “Now, what on earth are you doing, and shall I be calling the authorities?” she demanded, placing her hands on her hips.

  I laughed quietly and pulled my warrant card from my pocket, holding it out. “We are the authorities, miss.”

  She checked it, looked up at me, then over at the hole. “He alright down there?”

  Crap. I turned away, hurrying over to the hole, peering down at Thatcher. He was looking up at me with an unimpressed face.

  “Sorry, sir,” I said, crouching down and extending my arm. He reached up, gripping it, and I helped him clamber up to the side and swing his leg over. He stood up, brushing dirt from his clothes and hair as he spotted the woman.

  “Good afternoon,” he greeted her cheerily. “Detective Inspector Thatcher, North Yorkshire Police.”

  “Gillian Warren,” she replied. “That’s an odd place to be, Inspector, I must say.”

  “Not the sort of place I hope to find myself again soon,” he replied. “We’re investigating what happened to Dr Schmidt.”

  Gillian nodded. “Him that was digging,” she murmured, peering over the edge of the hole.

  “Did you ever meet him?” I asked.

  “Can’t say I did, to be honest. Saw him once or twice coming in and out of this place,” she said, pointing to a headstone just on the other side of the fence. “Visiting the old man. Never spoke to him though, he always seemed busy, and I’ve always thought you should never interrupt someone when they look busy.”

  “I wish more people shared that point of view,” Thatcher answered. “Lived in the village long, Ms Warren?”

  “My whole life,” she said proudly, her eyes narrowing slightly at Thatcher. “Local too, aren’t you, lad? Or hereabouts.”

  “About four miles that way,” he said, pointing across the hills, naming his village. Gillian nodded.

  “You should know that this is one of the most exciting things to ever happen to our village,” she said, looking at the hole again. “Unless you count the great flood of ’94, that is. And poor Jack,” she muttered, looking back at the church.

  Thatcher and I shared a look.

  “Jack Wellins?” he asked her. She turned back and nodded.

  “It’s the service for him today,” she said, indicating the church. “Poor lad.”

  Thatcher walked around to lean against the fence. “What can you tell us about him? We’ve only heard bits and pieces.”

  Gillian Warren sighed deeply with the slight shake of her head. “Awful business, that. His mother, Elizabeth, lives down in Fox Cottage. She moved them out here when he was still a little toddle of a thing. The boy grew up here, sweetest lad you’d ever meet. He was a little on the slow side,” she admitted, “but there was no better boy. Always there to help you with your bags or the garden. Proper handsome boy, he’d have been too, all ruddy hair and rosy cheeks. Then one day, he doesn’t come home. Only the bus driver swears that he saw him get on and off, but there’s no sign. Not from the school, not in the village. Elizabeth’s beside herself, call
s your lot. We had police officers down here scouring around, asking everyone everything that might find him, but…” She trailed off with a shrug.

  “Been not a sign of him since. Course most suspect the worst, he was fond of going down the river, was our Jack, and the current this time of year can’t be friendly.”

  Thatcher nodded knowingly. “And it was today, was it? Ten years ago.”

  Gillian nodded. “I’d be inside myself, Inspector, only it’s my husband’s birthday today as well. Besides,” she said with a loud sniff. “I’m more useful to Elizabeth taking her something to eat than standing in there with that stuffy lot singing Bread of Heaven.” She fixed her woolly hat pointedly as she spoke, earning a little smile from Thatcher.

  “It is a nice church, though,” he said, sticking his hands in his pockets and leaning further back. He blended in here well, I thought. Mussy hair, face tinged red from the wind, dressed in his coat and boots. Knew how to talk to people like Gillian Warren in a way that made them keep talking back. She nodded at his statement and looked over her shoulder at the old building.

  “Never thought we’d have something like this here, though,” she said. “You get the odd buried pet cropping up here and there when people take up their lawns or something. We found a hamster once in a shoebox, but this?” She waved a hand over the hole. “Tell you the truth, Inspector, I suspect the poor bugger just got left behind when they moved the fence here.”

  “When did they move the fence?” Thatcher asked.

  Gillian blew out a long breath as she thought. “Let’s see. My Patrick was still with us, and Imogene wasn’t married yet so… twenty-odd years ago now,” she concluded. “Just after the flood, I reckon.” She scratched her chin. “It’ll be why, I dare say, the riverbank burst down the end of that field there and came up and over this way.”

  “Trouble with valleys and flat fields,” Thatcher muttered as one who was familiar with the nuisance. Gillian nodded understandingly.