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

by Oliver Davies

  Jack stood on the corner, halfway home, struggling with an internal battle. The vicar was nice, and the hymn books really were falling apart. Just the other week, Gillian had muttered about the fact that the spine had nearly fallen off in her hand. But Jack also wanted to go home, take his uniform off and watch the telly. It was Friday, he supposed, and he had all weekend to do that, and mum always said it was better to get your chores done sooner rather than later. He supposed it would be better to go now than to be called out on Sunday when he was still in his pyjamas.

  Jack groaned quietly and turned his feet in the direction of the church, shuffling up. He didn’t much like the church, neither did mum, but there wasn’t a Catholic one nearby, so that made do with coming here for the odd service, mostly for Christmas or Easter.

  It was an old, gloomy, cold building that smelt like wax and paper. The organ seemed to rattle and roll of its own accord, and once, Jack was sure he’d opened the door and had a pigeon fly out.

  The graveyard was another problem. They had nobody buried here, so he never spared the stones much more than a fleeting glance on his way past. Seemed sad, though, to be stuck down there with the worms. He’d told mum that he wanted a burning boat like the Vikings they had learnt about in school. She’d laughed in that way she did when she knew something he didn’t and said, “as you like, darling”. She often said that.

  The church doors were open; they were always open. The vicar said there was no point in having a public church if the public couldn’t actually come in. There were flowers lining the church, a few candles burning. They were always burning; people were able to come in and light one whenever they liked. Jack was used to seeing the odd pensioner inside, usually kneeling in prayer, but today the church was empty.

  He wandered through to the vicar’s room, knocking on the door. It was already leaning open, and he pushed it when he got no reply. Empty. The vicar must be out visiting someone, Jack thought. But he saw the glue he needed on the vicar’s desk, probably left there for him, so he grabbed it and walked back, grabbing all the books from the pews as he walked. He had about an hour until mum would be home, a little later today, she had said, because she was talking to some parents, so Jack decided that he’d get through as many of them as he could now and do the rest Monday after school. Most of the villagers knew all the words by heart anyway and only really held the books for show.

  Stacks in hand, Jack walked to the middle pews, where it always seemed to be a bit warmer and dropped his school bag beside him. He sifted through the books, finding the ones that were in the most urgent need of repair and put them in one pile, then the less urgent ones, and then the ones that could probably hold on until the end of the year, and got started.

  It was very quiet in the church, the wind whistling around outside, and as clouds moved across the sky, blocking the sun, it got a bit darker too. Not that Jack needed much light. He took the cover off the book, spread glue down the spine and then put the cover back, holding it there for as long as it took him to hum the Doctor Who theme song before making sure it was intact and moving on to the next book.

  He’d gotten through the urgent books and was halfway through the others when his watch beeped at him. Time to go home. He obediently stuck the lid back on the glue and picked up all the books again, leaving his bag to grab on the way out.

  Jack shuffled back to the vicar’s office, which looked rather unfriendly without any lights on, and left the books and the glue on a neat pile on the desk. Then he shut the vicar’s door and walked back into the church.

  It has gotten dark now. In all the many corners and crevices of the church, shadows lurked like monsters from a book. No sunlight came streaming in through the windows, and Jack was only really able to navigate his way from the blocks of pews and the sheer familiarity of the building. He was halfway down the aisle when something scuffed in the shadows.

  He froze, wondering if it was the pigeon again. Or a mouse, churches always had mice, mum had said. Jack squinted his eyes and looked around, but he couldn’t spot anything move in the darkness. Still, his hands were shaking now, and there was a lump in his throat and cold sweat across his head and back that made him feel like he was going to be sick.

  You’ll be fine, he told himself. Just get your bag and go home. Everything’s fine at home, that’s where mum is.

  He carried on walking, getting past a few more pews when the scuff came again, only this time louder. Jack swung around again, furiously terrified.

  “Someone there?” he asked quietly, his voice no more than a whisper. He cleared his throat, ready to try again, fighting down the trembling of his body. Before he could, the scuffing moved closer as someone rounded the corner up by the altar and wandered towards him.

  They were just a shadow. Jack couldn’t see their face, just a shadow wandering towards him. Mum would tell him off, say it’s rude to gawp at people, and what was he doing watching so many scary shows anyway that made his mind so prickly. Jack took a skittish step back as the person walked closer.

  They weren’t saying anything, so Jack didn’t either, just took another step back towards where his bag was.

  He studied the shadow as it moved, then turned his head to the side, to where his bag might be. He didn’t need his bag, he supposed. He could just run home now, tell mum he’d left it here, and make her come with him to get it back. She would if he asked. She always did.

  Yes, Jack decided, best to just leave now and go and find mum.

  He spared one last glance towards the altar and the person cloaked in shadows before turning and twisting his long legs towards the door. He made it all of one step before a hand grabbed his, and he skidded to a funny stop, almost falling over.

  “Get off!” he cried, trying to pull his arm free, battering at the hand that grabbed him.

  “Calm down,” the person spoke, their voice lost in the darkness, in the panting breaths coming out from Jack and the roaring in his head.

  “Get off!” he said again, twisting his arm. The shadow had a firm grip, though, and kept a hold on Jack as he wriggled like a fish on a hook. The shadow seemed to split, another arm reaching out and touching Jack’s face.

  Jack froze. The hand was warm, the shadows cold. His stomach sank down to his shoes, and the feeling of sick rose up again as the hand gently stroked his cheek. People didn’t touch Jack’s cheeks. People didn’t touch Jack at all. Only mum and Gillian and sometimes the doctor or his teacher when he skinned his elbow on the playground, but that was it. Jack didn’t like touch; it made his skin crawl like there was a beetle on his flesh.

  He let out a strangled sort of cry, fighting harder against the shadow, the hand that trailed down his face and over his shoulder now, down and down it went. Jack shoved once more, hard this time, knocking the shadow hard that it went “oomph” and its hand fell.

  Jack could breathe now. He could focus. He grabbed the other hand, the one that held his tight, and tried prying off the fingers, scrabbling and scratching. His thumb scraped the shadow, and he heard a hiss in the darkness. The hand let go, and Jack spun and scuttled for the door.

  Something grabbed at his hoodie, his hoodie, and he flailed, twisting and sprawling. His ankle bent as he moved, and then his legs were under him, and he was falling. After he fell a long way, in fact, his head rocketing off something hard, his arms lowering to the floor. The floor was a long way away.

  Jack was dead before he reached it.

  The shadow froze. The sound of Jack’s head hitting the stone was sickening, and it played in the shadow’s mind louder than anything heard before. Over and over, the sick thunk of skull against stone. There’d been another sound as Jack’s body had neared the floor. The snap of his arm as he tried to brace.

  The shadow slowly moved over, reaching into a deep pocket. There was the sound of rustling, the strike of a match, and then a horrible small light danced around as the shadow bent down towards Jack. An ambulance, perhaps, would make this all right.

&n
bsp; But there was blood on the floor, a great deal of it, all coming from Jack’s head, and the boy’s back wasn’t rising and falling anymore, no raspy breaths to be heard in the quiet of the church.

  Twenty

  Thatcher

  It seemed that the fog that Lena had been clouded in since looking at Stefan’s body faded with every passing moment that the remains were in her possession. This was Lena’s element, studying a body and looking for clues from the bones and the teeth and the body. She strode directly from Sharp’s office down to her lab, a member of her team scuttling after her, ready to begin her real work.

  Sharp looked over the desk at me and Mills with a curious expression. Once we’d theorised that the bones might be those of Jack Wellins, we’d called Sharp to get her input on transferring them into our care. She’d been at the station when we arrived, dressed in her home clothes with her hair tied back with a colourful ribbon.

  “So,” she said once Lena had gone. “Jack Wellins.”

  “Fourteen-year-old boy local to the village. Vanished ten years ago to the day,” I said, with a sudden recollection of what we’d seen at the church. “He was a boy who stuck to his routine rigidly, never made it home.”

  Sharp nodded, toying with a pen. “And somehow, he ended up dead and buried only half a mile or so from his home.” She clicked her tongue, “poor lad.”

  “We got most of our details from Jeannie Gray,” I told her, handing her the file that Jeannie had given us. She lifted her eyebrows once in surprise, but took the file and flipped it open. “We know he got off the bus, know he went into the village shop and left again all within ten minutes. The only thing is that nobody else in the village saw him.”

  “It was a nice day,” Sharp remarked, looking at the notes Jeannie had made. “Spring, most people might have been working still. He walked home from the bus stop?”

  “Every day. Then he’d get home and wait for his mother. Sometimes he’d go out to help a neighbour with an odd job, but nobody saw him.”

  Sharp hummed darkly. “Someone saw him. Might be worth finding out more specifically what those odd jobs were, Thatcher. If there was one, in particular, he might have seen to it on a nice day before the weekend.”

  I nodded. “I thought about seeing some of the other witnesses from the report as well,” I said, thinking of the woman in the village shop and the bus driver, the one who saw Jack every single day.

  Sharp nodded, handing me back Jeannie’s file. “Go easy on it, though, Thatcher. It has been ten years; their memories might have gaps. And be very, very gentle with his mother. It’s one thing to tell her you might have an answer about her boy, another thing to tell her he’s dead. Tread carefully.”

  “We will,” I promised, not wanting to cause the woman any more pain than the last ten years would have already caused her. “I can take family liaison if you think that would be wise.”

  “Not until we know for sure that it’s him,” Sharp answered. “And does Crowe’s wife know that she’s here?”

  “I doubt it,” I said, thinking of the determined look on Lena’s face that probably wouldn’t account for five minutes to call her wife.

  Sharp rolled her eyes, already reaching for the phone on her desk. “I’ll head home soon, but I’ll keep my phone on me if you need me. And I think Mills should stay.”

  “Ma’am?” he asked.

  “Lena’s fine right now, but I’m not risking her crashing, and she still remains a conflict of interest. This is your case. One of you needs to be here to oversee it.”

  Mills looked at me, and I nodded once.

  “Alright then,” he said, rising from the chair. “But I draw the line at touching bones. Good luck, sir,” he touched me briefly on the shoulder before fixing his coat collar and walking from the room.

  “On your bike then, Thatcher,” Sharp said, picking up her phone to call Miriam. “Let me know if you need anything else from me.”

  “Will do, ma’am. Thank you,” I added, standing up. She nodded, already focused on the phone, so I turned and slipped from the room, leaving her to it.

  I stopped in my office long enough to grab everything else we had found on Jack Wellins, including the articles that Schmidt had put together. I doubted that I’d show them to his mother, but I wanted to make sure that she knew we were doing this properly, that I wouldn’t be digging this up again unless there was good cause.

  I paused in the doorway, not looking forward to this next encounter, rolled my shoulders back, lifted my chin and strode from the office. I was halfway down the stairs when I noticed someone waiting for me at the bottom.

  Fry tightened the end of her plait and smiled, fixing her jacket.

  “You’re supposed to be off today,” I said, stopping by her.

  “Sharp called as she was waiting for you,” she answered. I raised an eyebrow. I was sure that there were other constables Sharp could have called in to assist, but Fry being singled out was a good sign of praise. She seemed to think so too, a glimmer in her eye as she told me.

  “Right. Well, Mills is staying here with Crowe to oversee the remains. Acquaint yourself with this lot,” I said, handing her the bundle of files. “you’re with me.”

  Fry nodded, taking the stack and following me outside the building and over to my car.

  “Jack Wellins,” she murmured. “The missing boy.”

  “We think the remains are his. Is him.”

  Fry’s eyes widened, and she stared at me as we climbed into the car.

  “Where are we going, sir?” she asked.

  “To ask a few questions about what Jack Wellins was up to that day. And to talk to his mother.” Now that I thought of it, having Fry there would be helpful. She was nicer than I was, gentler in situations like these. She breathed in once, sharply, then dutifully clicked her seatbelt into place and started skimming through Jeannie’s notes as I started the car and pulled out of the station. A lot of coming and going today and my petrol was starting to take the brunt of it.

  The Wellins’s address was included in our report, and I gathered that from seeing Elizabeth Wellins at the church today, that address hadn’t changed. Why would it if she was still hoping that one day Jack might turn up at the front door?

  By the time we got to the village, Fry had read through the entire stack of papers that I had given her and tucked them safely under one arm as we climbed from the car, parked on the other side of the road to a pretty looking cottage.

  “Looks like the house from The Holiday,” Fry murmured, walking around the car to join me.

  “It does,” I agreed.

  Fry looked at me with a crooked smile. “Wouldn’t have struck you as a rom-com fan, sir.”

  I shrugged. Sally had made me watch it, in fact, probably when it first came out, but I enjoyed it.

  “How do we proceed with this?” Fry asked, turning her gaze and attention back to the house and the case.

  “Delicately,” I sighed. “Very delicately.”

  I gritted my teeth and crossed the road, walking up to the painted front door and ringing the bell. It clanged, an old-fashioned sound, through the house, and shortly, Gillian Warren opened the front door.

  She looked up at me and blinked with surprise. “Inspector.”

  “Miss Warren, hello again. This is Detective Constable Fry. Fry, this is Gillian Warren. She was helpful to answer some questions myself and Mills had this morning.”

  Fry smiled warmly. “Hello, Ms Warren.”

  Gillian nodded back, still looking suspiciously at me. “What brings you back?” she asked. “And here, of all places?”

  “We’re here to see Elizabeth Wellins,” I said. “I think we might have a development on what happened to Jack.”

  Gillian’s eyes widened, and she glanced back into the house. “Just wait here one moment,” she said. “And I’ll let her know.”

  I nodded, and she hurried back into the house, leaving the door open. Fry tightened her grip on the files.

&nb
sp; “How soon will Crowe be able to know?”

  “The age and date of death very soon, but getting a DNA match would be pivotal.”

  “How do you even go about asking for that?” Fry sighed softly.

  I didn’t bother answering. The question seemed more rhetorical than anything else. We stood on the threshold for a bit, looking at the front garden. There was a gnome outside, standing guard by some potted plants. He looked hand-painted, the sort you’d get from one of those paint your pot places. I wondered if we were looking at Jack’s handiwork.

  After about a minute, Gillian appeared back in the doorway, holding the door open for us. “I told her who you are,” she said quietly, showing us in and shutting the door behind you. “Said that I met you earlier and all that, so she’s happy to talk.”

  Gillian led us through a low door into a cosy living room, with well-loved sofas and chunky blankets, a steadily burning fire in the grate and photos on the walls. There was a soft toy, a bear, on one of the chair’s, its fur matted in places, and there were pictures of the family here and there, many following a boy as he grew up. I studied the one closest to me as we walked in, of him standing outside this very house. He was tall, with fair hair and a sweet smile.

  “Elizabeth,” Gillian was saying. “This Detective Inspector Thatcher and Constable Fry.”

  “Miss Wellins,” I greeted the woman who rose from the chair. She was tall, almost my height, and she had the same fair hair as her son, her pale blue eyes watery and tinged pink.

  “Inspector,” she replied in a strong voice, shaking my hand. “Constable.” Fry nodded back.

  “We apologise for coming to you like this,” I said, “but I felt it urgent enough.”

  Elizabeth nodded, indicating the other sofa. We all sat, Gillian carefully moving the teddy bear to sit beside it.

  “You said this is about Jack?” Elizabeth asked, pulling the sleeves of her jumper down to fist in her hands.