“You walking?” I asked. She nodded grimly, and I sighed. “Wait here.”
I strode out of the café, Mills hurrying after me, and headed back to the car.
“Call Lena and Miriam,” I told Mills as I popped the boot open. “Let them know we’re coming over.”
He nodded, already pulling his phone out of his pocket to find Lena’s number as I grabbed the umbrella from the boot and walked back to the café with it. Jeannie stood just inside the door, that same bleak look on her face that she had yesterday. It vanished when she noticed me, replaced by a grateful smile as I handed her the umbrella.
“I would offer you a lift—”
She waved a hand at me. “But you have a case to solve, and you can’t do that by driving around the city. No worries, Thatch, I have places to stop at, anyway. Thanks for the brolly.” She patted my arm before walking out, red hair bouncing on her shoulders.
I turned and walked in the opposite direction, hopping into the car. The radio was turned down, and Mills had his phone resting on his legs.
“She said they’re both in,” he told me as I started the engine and pulled away from the kerb. I nodded in response, focusing on the familiar route across the city to Lena’s house. I’d been over once or twice before, Lena was fond of a game night, so I happily knew how to navigate the irritating system of one-way roads and roundabouts that led to her house, down a quiet city street. The bricks had been painted white, like many others along the cobbled road, and a wisteria crawled along the front, blossoming bright purple in the spring. It was still green right now, but that didn’t stop the house from looking lovely. There was a railing on the first-floor balcony, potted plants growing up the rails, and a bike with a basket chained outside.
I parked on their driveway to not clog up the road and stop other residents from getting in and out. As we climbed from the car, the front door opened, and Miriam stepped out to meet us. Her hair was tied back again, strands falling around her face, and she was wearing the same clay spattered dungarees. She had wrapped a baggy cardigan around her, and she bounced lightly on her bare feet, a smile on her face as we walked over.
“Sorry about this, Miriam,” I said when we reached the front door.
“Don’t worry about it,” she said, stepping back to let us into the hallway. “She’s been muttering about you all morning, wondering if she should call. I told her that you’d be in touch when you had something worth telling her.”
Miriam led us down the brightly lit hallway to the kitchen at the end, large windows opening up to the small courtyard garden outside.
Lena sat on a kitchen stool, huddled in a large dressing gown, her pale curls hanging sadly down by her shoulders, a corgi sleeping by her feet.
“Hi, Lena,” I said as we walked in. She spun around, cradling a mug of what smelled like herbal tea.
“Maxie,” she said with a smile. Her eyes were still a little pink from yesterday, but she looked as if she’d had a good night’s sleep, if nothing else. “Mills.”
“Hi, Lena,” he replied, bending down to scratch the dog’s ears. “Hello, Biscuit.” The corgi lifted his head wearily before lying back down, head resting on his paws.
“Tea? Miriam offered, walking around the counter towards the kettle.
“We’ve just had one, thanks, and we’re not staying long.”
This perked Lena’s interest. She sat up straighter, abandoning her mug.
“What’s happened?” she asked. “What’s the report?”
“Can’t tell you much, Lena,” I reminded her. “But I have an interest in the remains that Dr Schmidt was working on. I think whatever happened to him happened because of them.”
“We don’t have his results,” Mills added, standing up straight. “All of his work on them is gone.”
Lena’s face smoothed out into the professional stoicism of Dr Crowe. “Where are the remains now?” she asked.
“Still at Schmidt’s lab,” I said. “Kept very safe.”
She nodded. “You want me to give them a look over?”
Before I could answer, Miriam leant across the counter. “Is that safe? What about getting someone else from the lab to do it?”
“Because of the connection between them,” I said, looking from Miriam to Lena. “There is a chance that this is not safe, which is why I’d prefer not to ask a civilian to step in. If you’re up for it, of course.”
Lena drank the ends of her tea and nodded smartly. “I’m your girl, Maxie. Give me ten minutes to change.” She slipped from the stool and padded towards the kitchen door, squeezing my arm as she passed. Miriam slowly drifted after her, the pair of them heading upstairs.
I turned to Mills, who was staring down at the dog with a look of puzzlement on his face.
“Mills?” I nudged him.
“Sharp might not like us bringing Lena in on this,” he said, scratching the back of his neck. “Conflict of interest and all that.”
I nodded; the thought had occurred to me too. “She would prefer to get someone from our own team to look at them, though,” I said. “And Lena is the best. Besides, she can be impartial over a skeleton, and if there’s any more doubt, it won’t be impossible to get a second opinion.” I stepped closer to him, bowing my head a little, keeping my voice low. “If we can’t trust Lena on this, then I don’t know what’s happening to the world, Isaac.”
His face cleared at those words, and he nodded. “Might be worth taking the remains back to the station,” he said.
“We won’t be able to do that unless we have proper cause to,” I said. “And to find proper cause, we need Lena.”
“Proper cause being…”
“Dr Schmidt told Dr Walton that those bones aren’t as old as any of them thought. Not Roman or Viking or Victorian. So, I’m guessing they’re recent, as in, recent enough for next of kin to still be wandering about the earth. Which means they don’t belong in a museum; they belong in a proper grave.”
“So long as we can figure out who they are,” Mills said, but he didn’t sound as though he needed much more convincing. I’d wager that the same theory was beginning to unwind in his brain as it had in mine. A theory that could take all the confusing aspects of this case and pull them all together in a neat little bow. Hopefully, it could anyway.
There were footsteps in the hall, then Lena bounded back into the kitchen, no longer bundled in a dressing gown. She opened the cupboard under the stairs and grabbed her work bag, handing it to Mills as she pulled her coat on. Miriam wandered through, looking at her wife nervously.
“I’ll bring her straight back,” I promised her. Lena scoffed, grabbed her bag, kissed her wife and turned to me.
“Let’s get going. I’ll see you later, my love,” she called to Miriam, striding down the hall. Miriam rolled her eyes but smiled and walked after us to see us out, shutting the door behind us.
We all piled into the car, Mills letting Lena take the passenger seat, and I turned us towards the lab for the second time today.
Thankfully, when we arrived, it seemed that Schmidt’s colleagues had not yet dispersed themselves, hanging around in the reception with cups of tea and coffee, sitting together and chatting.
As I pushed the doors open, Dr Bayat rose from her chair with a mixed expression of shock and worry.
“Inspector Thatcher,” she greeted me.
“Dr Bayat. We’re sorry to bombard again today, but we need to have a look at the remains that Dr Schmidt was working on.”
Dr Bayat blinked, glanced at the other employees half-listening in, and led us further away from them.
“I don’t understand, inspector,” she said once we were out of earshot.
“We believe that Dr Schmidt’s death might have something to do with the remains he was working on. Work and results that are, I might add, nowhere to be found.”
Dr Bayat listened to my rambling talking and nodded. “I’m sure I could ask one of the others—”
“I’m afraid since this i
s a police investigation, we’d need one of our own in there. This is Dr Lena Crowe,” I introduced her.
“Dr Crowe,” Dr Bayat shook her hand. “You were a friend of Stefan’s; I remember him talking of you.”
Lena kept the polite smile on her face as she nodded. “We were students together, some centuries ago.”
Dr Bayat laughed lightly. “I have heard good things about you, Dr Crowe.” She looked at all three of us, clearly in conflict, then before I had to go and pull out the warrant card, she nodded and led us through another sealed door into a long corridor.
She took us to a large cool room, a little friendlier than a morgue, where sealed bags were laid out on tables. She walked over to one, checked the tag and waved Dr Crowe over.
“This is it, though I’m afraid I have nothing of Dr Schmidt’s here to guide you.”
“Not a problem,” Dr Crowe said, dumping her bag down and pulling a lab coat from the wall on. “I’ve worked my fair share of remains, Dr Bayat.”
Dr Bayat nodded and drifted over to stand with Mills and me, watching as Lena pulled a pair of gloves on, tied her hair back and gently unzipped the bag. She looked better, to be working, to be in the thick of it.
We watched quietly as she pulled the bones out one by one, reconstructing the skeleton on the longer table beside her. Once the skull was in place, she stepped back, looking the bones over with a frown.
“Leading thoughts?” she asked Dr Bayat.
“A young man,” Dr Bayat said, studying the remains herself. I wondered if this was as close to them as she’d been able to get.
“Young,” Lena murmured, squatting down and gently moving the skull under the light. She tilted it towards us. “See this?” she asked, finger tracing something along the jaw.
“Teeth? Mills asked.
“Tooth,” she corrected. “Not fully out yet. See, the height difference to its neighbours.”
“Crooked teeth?” I asked.
Lena shook her head. “Baby teeth. I’d say that our boy here just lost his last one, and the adult one was coming through before he died.”
“A child?” Dr Bayat asked.
Lena nodded, gently replacing the skull. “It’s normal for kids to still have baby teeth up to thirteen or fourteen. They’re in good condition too. No fillings or anything, no staining. Modern dentistry. And no wisdom teeth, either.”
“He’s tall,” Mills commented.
“He is,” Lena replied, grabbing a measuring tape and running it down the leg. She checked the length, then stood back, looking him over in one sweep.
“At a guess?” I asked her.
“Young lad, thirteen or fourteen maybe. Tall, would have gotten taller when puberty really set in, most likely. I’d say he’s got tall parents, though. No sign of any bone deterioration,” she noted, then looked up at me. “He’s not been dead long, Thatcher. I doubted Schmidt needed the results to tell you that, just to prove it.”
“How long?”
“I’d have to run tests for a precise date,” she said. “But from a first glance…” She looked down at the bones. “No more than fifty years, but I wouldn’t say that long.”
“Modern man,” Dr Bayat muttered. “Not for a museum then.”
“Sadly not. No marking of a burial, no one in the village knowing who he is. Cause of death?” I asked Crowe.
She waved me over, showing me the skull. There was a dent on the forehead, bashed in.
“Sharp blow or knock to the head,” she said.
“Dr Bayat,” I turned to her, “I’m afraid that these remains are now part of a homicide inquiry.”
Dr Bayat nodded slowly, still catching up with it all. “You’ll be needing to take them to your own facility?”
“We will,” I answered.
Another stunted nod. “I’ll get the paperwork,” she said, walking to the door.
Crowe nodded and started returning the skeleton into his bag piece by piece. There was a faint crease between her eyebrows as she worked.
“Poor lad,” she murmured. “Look,” she indicated his arm before packing it away. “Broken here. Looks like it bent back and snapped.”
“Trying to break a fall?” Mills asked. Lena nodded, gently picking up the skull and placing it into the bag.
“No guarantee of a homicide though, Thatcher,” she said to me. “Could have just been a fall.”
“That led to him being buried in an unmarked grave outside the churchyard with nobody aware of it,” I said. “Doesn’t strike me as being a blameless crime, that, Lena.”
She nodded smartly and finished up securing the remains.
Mills wandered over to me.
“Fourteen-year-old boy,” he said softly. “Vanished from the face of the earth with nobody there to say where he went.”
I turned to look at him, his blue eyes full of grief. I turned back to the bag that Lena had secured.
“I don’t think Schmidt kept those articles as souvenirs,” I muttered under my breath, not wanting Lena to hear as she peeled off her lab coat, humming faintly. “I think he was collecting them for something else, piecing together the story as best as he could.”
“Collecting it for us, maybe,” Mills said. “The results he got that night were the last bit of proof he needed.”
I nodded.
The last proof for him to have discovered what happened ten years ago. Dr Bayat returned, a stack of papers in hand, and went over to go through them with Dr Crowe, leaving us stewing in the corner, staring at the table and the bag. Staring what I now believed, deep in my own bones, to be the remains of Jack Wellins.
Nineteen
Jack Wellins sat on the bus, staring out of the window. He always rather liked his drive back from school, the chance to sit and be by himself for a while, watching the landscape change outside. There were all sorts to see this time of year. Spring was just emerging, and the rain had stopped to let the sun through. Flowers were starting to bloom, at last, and mum would be delighted. And the farmers had let the animals out into the fields to graze, herds of cows meandering about, and sheep, like little white cotton balls on the hills.
Jack sat on his own, there weren’t many people who took this bus with him, and he sat up close to the front so that he could chat to the driver, Steve, when he felt like it. He didn’t feel like it today. Today had been long and boring, and he’d badly on a maths test that left him in an irritable mood for the rest of the day. He sat, staring out of the window, running his tongue along his teeth, feeling where the new one was still coming up. That was all of them now, mum said, no more baby teeth. Maybe he’d get wisdom teeth like she had, though they didn’t seem very comfortable.
The bus trundled along the country lanes, the sky clear and bright, a few birds cawing from the trees that lined along the hedgerows. Jack had always thought they looked like soldiers, standing watch to make sure no strangers came into the village to stir up a fuss. The village didn’t like fuss. They liked fetes and dogs on leads and pretty gardens. They also liked hard work and tough skin and smart thinking.
Jack had a few of those things, though not many. His skin was soft, and he could be smart, sometimes. Some of them told him that he worked hard, but he’d rather not work at all. He just couldn’t help but feel sorry for people when he saw them trudging along the road with their bags of shopping, slipping on the ice when snow fell over their pathways. That sorry outweighed any instincts to stay inside and watch cartoons, and before he knew it, he was out of the house, shovel in hand, ready to help. His mother said he had a big heart, and she knew best. Jack wasn’t sure about a lot of things, but he was sure of his mother; sure, she was the best person there was. She said the same about him, of course.
With the weather so nice and the roads so clear, they got back to the village earlier than usual. Jack picked up his coat and bag as Steve rolled the bus to a stop outside the village shop, standing up and grabbing onto the bar to keep himself steady. The bus sighed and hissed as the doors opened, and St
eve swivelled in his chair as Jack walked over.
“You have a good weekend then, Jack,” he said. “I’ll see you Monday morning.”
“Bye, Steve,” Jack replied, jumping down the steps onto the pavement.
Steve wouldn’t go just yet, Jack knew. He’d wait for the next load of people who wanted to go into town, and there was the other bus across the road that took people into the city. Jack checked his watch; they were early. Mum wouldn’t be home for a while yet. Jack turned and walked into the village shop, the bell jingling over his head.
The woman inside, Mrs Levitt, lifted her head as he walked in, a warm smile on her face.
“Aye up, Jack. How was school?”
“Boring,” he replied, grabbing a packet of crisps from the shelf and walking over. “Crossword?” he asked, nodding to the newspaper she was muttering over.
She nodded. “Tough one this one is, Jack. Here, widen, as in one’s nostrils.”
Jack handed her a fifty pence coin for the crisps as he thought. “Five letters?”
“That’s right.”
“Flare.”
Mrs Levitt looked back down and rolled her eyes. “I tell you, Jack, I used to be a whizz at these.” She ran his money through the till and handed him the bag. “You tell your mother that I’ve got some rhubarb in, by the way. I’ve set a few stalks aside for you.”
“I will, thanks, Mrs Levitt.”
“See you, Jack,” she called. As he walked out, he could hear her muttering again, catching the word “flare” as she shook her head.
Jack wandered outside and made his slow way home, chomping on his crisps. Despite the nice day, he didn’t see anyone else in the village. They must all be on the farms or in the garden, making the most of it. Jack finished his crisps, throwing the bag away in the first bin he came across and followed the road down towards the edge of the village.
He was about to turn the corner when his glance landed on the church. He stopped, biting the inside of his cheek with irritation. He’d promised the vicar that he’d help fix up the hymn books when he had the time. Another check of his watch. He did have time.
Cradle to Coffin (A DCI Thatcher Yorkshire Crimes Book 10) Page 15
