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

by Oliver Davies

  I sat back, folding my arms and studied the pale, clammy, blinking man.

  “Not a rhetorical question, Dr Wadham.”

  Twenty-Seven

  Mills

  I had never known much what to make of priests, I had met very few in my time, and I didn’t have the same attitude that Thatcher did. I supposed it was the result of growing up in a small village like this one, where everyone knew everyone and the priest or the vicar or whoever was the centre of all that. I had watched Father Ted, but I wasn’t sure if that would offer me much in this instance.

  All the same, it made sense that it would be me to talk to him whilst Thatcher took on Wadham. Wadham wasn’t a man to take being pulled into the station lying down, and Thatcher, the bruise growing around his eye, seemed in just the right mood to take on a man of his sort. I didn’t mind much. I let Thatcher take most of the files, just snagged the one we had on Jack Wellins. Mostly Jeannie’s notes, the DNA reports that Crowe had hurriedly thrown together and sent up with Fry.

  Before Thatcher had joined us, Fry told me that Crowe had picked up on the decaf and was now buzzing around downstairs fully caffeinated, but at least Dr Cavell was down there now to stop her bouncing off of windows or something, and there was very little to do whilst they waited for the carbon dating results. Not, as Fry had said, that we really needed them now. Not with the DNA match in hand. Someone knew exactly when Jack Wellins had been killed, and I got the sneaking suspicion, as I pushed open the door to the interview room, that I was about to confront the very man.

  Though it was hard to see.

  Miles Harte sat demurely in his chair, his face calm and passive, his hands folded gently on his lap. There was a cup of tea steaming in front of him, and as I walked in, the constable who’d been with him in the corner gave me a ‘seems decent’ sort of luck as she passed, heading out into the adjoining room.

  I set everything up, the folder, the recording device, as Thatcher would be doing himself across the hall. Miles Harte watched me quietly as I worked, a look of faint curiosity on his face. He said nothing, just sat, occasionally sipping tentatively at his tea, until I sat myself down in the chair opposite, rested my arms on the table, and cleared my throat.

  “Are you ready to begin?” I asked him.

  He waved a hand in the air. “Quite ready, sergeant. Though I am a little confused as to what it is I am doing here, I must admit. I did tell you that I only met Dr Schmidt a few times outside the church. And the one afternoon he stopped in from the rain.”

  “I remember, Mr Harte.”

  “Then why am I here, sergeant? I don’t know Dr Wadham well enough to be able to shed any light on what he might be up to.”

  “I’m not here to ask you about Dr Wadham,” I said.

  “No? Then I confess myself lost, Sergeant.”

  “I shall clear things up for you,” I said, pulling a photograph of Jack Wellins from the folder and laying it flat on the table between us. Fry had brought it from the Wellins house in case we needed a proper image of his face, not just his bones.

  Miles Harte looked down at the photo, the colour leaching slightly from his face. He cleared his throat.

  “Jack Wellins. Poor boy. I am here because of him?”

  “Yes. The remains found outside the church, vicar, the ones that Dr Stefan Schmidt was working on identifying, are, as you know, in our possession.”

  “Yes.”

  “They have been identified as the remains of Jack Wellins. We found a DNA match from a sample of his hair that his mother provided, as well as a sample of her own DNA to compare. It’s him.”

  Miles Harte seemed to shrink a little in his chair, and he lowered his chin and his eyes, bowing his head, muttering under his breath. I couldn’t hear it well enough to know if it was a curse or a prayer.

  “Good God,” he said softly. “That poor boy.”

  “Poor boy is quite right, vicar. We also have this,” I pulled another sheet from the folder. “This is another match. Confirming that a sample of blood we found was also Jack’s. Though that was tricky,” I had to admit. “It was old, very worn into the surface, but we managed to pull it off. Our forensics team is very talented.” And most of them called in on their days off, I thought to myself. We owed them something for that. Some cake usually went down a treat here. Never lasted long, in any case.

  “Blood?” Harte asked. “Pray tell me, sergeant, where this blood was found?”

  “In your church,” I told him shortly. “Under the rug.”

  Harte blinked. “My church?”

  “You recall Inspector Thatcher mentioning that we stopped by the village to look for you?”

  He nodded.

  “We checked the church first, and as we walked through, he couldn’t help but notice an odd number of pews on each side. He has an eye for stuff like that; you should see the renovation work he’s done. Anyway, we thought it interesting, so we had a closer inspection, moved the rug back and found blood. Staining the floorboards. Old, too. And with wood, with that sort of grain, if you don’t get it out right away, it’s hard to ever get it out then.” I sat back in my chair, looking at him. “Did you try?”

  “Try?” he rasped.

  “To get the blood out. You must have done. Then when it wouldn’t shift, nothing a rug can’t hide.”

  “Sergeant,” he blustered. “I have no idea what it is that you’re talking about.”

  “I’m talking about the fact that Jack Wellins died in your church, Miles Harte and somebody else was there. Somebody who removed his body and buried it in the earth without a coffin. Somebody who tried and failed to clean up the blood, so they placed down a rug. Somebody who hid his school bag, who looked his mother square in the eye and told her that Jack hadn’t been seen at the church. Who lied to the police too, though I don’t find that quite as intolerable, I must say.”

  “Sergeant—”

  “Every year for the past ten years, you have held a service for that boy,” I said, getting angrier and angrier. “A service in his name, directly in the place where he died. His mother will have walked over that spot, maybe even sat in that pew. And somebody,” I was close to shouting now, “was there that day. And that somebody can tell me whether or not Jack was murdered, or whether it was an accident. Though there was nothing accidental about burying the poor lad without anything to protect him and lying to his mother every day for ten years.”

  Miles Harte was shaking his head slightly. “I don’t like what you are insinuating, sergeant.”

  “Insinuating?” I interrupted. “That’s a rather gentle word for what it is I am doing here, vicar.” I practically spat the word. “I’m theorising, painting a picture. It’s a Friday. Jack Wellins gets home off the bus with lots more time on his hands than usual. He has to wait for his mother, doesn’t he? So, smart boy that he is, he thinks, I might as well get some chores over with, save doing them at the weekend. But none of his neighbours asked him to do anything. And sometimes, you did.” I met his stare. “You’ve asked him to help you at the church once or twice before. Maybe you asked him again. So, Jack goes to the church, and this is where things get hazy, vicar. Were you already there? Or was Jack alone for some time, working on whatever it was you asked him to do? Did you make him a cup of tea? Did you talk about school? Or did you frighten him? Turn up out of the blue? Because something happened that day in the church, vicar, and sad as it is, I had seen enough of this world to have a strong suspicion as to what it was you did or tried to do, to Jack when he was there.”

  Harte spluttered, shaking his head harder. “You are wholly wrong, sir!” he snapped.

  “Am I? Explain it to me, then Mr Harte. Tell me what happened when Jack got to the church.”

  “He was already there!” he cried. “When I got back, he was already there, he’d been fixing the hymn books, and he was leaving.”

  I sat back quietly, not wanting to make a single noise or expression that might stop him in his tracks.

  “
It was dark, and I knew he couldn’t see me properly, but I could see him, and he looked so lovely all lit up by the light through the window. Like an angel,” he sighed. “I just wanted to talk to him, just wanted to—to make him stay a bit longer.”

  “What happened?” I asked softly.

  “I took his hand,” he said with a shrug. “I’d taken his hand before. Sometimes he minded, sometimes he didn’t. But he fought against me; he couldn’t see me.”

  “He thought you were a stranger,” I said. “A stranger or a shadow in the dark, not someone he could name.”

  “He had this face,” Harte said wistfully. “Like his mothers, all angled and pretty. Golden sort of skin.” He lifted a hand absently to his own face, running the back of his fingers down his cheek. Then he dropped his hand with a thud.

  “He didn’t like being touched,” he muttered.

  “Did he fight against you more?”

  Harte nodded, eyes welling with tears. “I just wanted to talk to him, to make him stay in the church a little longer. Stay with me a little longer.”

  “Why not say that?” I asked. “Why didn’t you talk to him, Harte? Tell him who you were, put him at ease.” When the vicar fumbled, I grimaced. “You liked the anonymity, didn’t you? He couldn’t say who it was in the church who had scared him, who had touched him. He didn’t know, so nobody else would know.”

  Harte started shaking his head again.

  “Did he get loose?” I asked. “Did he try to run?”

  “He’d had a growth spurt,” Harte recalled. “Earlier that spring, grown a few inches overnight. He was still getting used to it, I supposed. Wasn’t sure what to do with his long legs.” A small smile touched his face. “He skittered about like a newborn giraffe, all long legs and arms.

  “Did he try to run?” I asked again.

  “He got all tangled,” Harte continued in that same faint, dreamy tone of voice. “Got his legs all tangled up beneath him.”

  “Because he was in a hurry,” I said. “Because he was trying to get away from you.”

  “He fell,” Harte said through a thick voice. “One moment, I held his face in my hand, and the next, he was falling. There was a thud and a snap.”

  I pulled my hands, balled in fists, from the table and held them on my knees, teeth grit.

  “I was going to call an ambulance.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  Harte shook his head again. “No point. He was already gone. This great big black hole in his head and all this blood,” he broke off with a shiver. “All this blood, sergeant, just from one little knock on the head. His arm, too, bent underneath him like a bird with a broken wing.”

  I breathed in once, tightly, deeply. “Then what happened?”

  “I turned the lights on,” he said. “Locked the doors. And then I stood there for a while, looking at him, fallen and crumpled like an angel.”

  “He wasn’t an angel, Harte,” I said. “He was Jack Wellins, and he was a boy. A living, human boy with a mother. What did you do next?”

  “I buried him.”

  “Outside the churchyard?”

  He nodded.

  “Without a coffin?”

  He nodded again.

  “And then?”

  Harte was looking down at his hands. There’d have been blood on him too, and lots of it. “I tried to clean it up. The blood was on the floor and on the stone of the pew. But it wouldn’t come out.” He scrubbed one hand over the idea. “I tried soap, bleach and vinegar. It wouldn’t come out.”

  “So, you got rid of the pew and got the rug?”

  “It was in storage,” he said. “Someone had mentioned missing it before, so I pulled it out, rearranged the pews. Cleaned myself up. All the blood, sergeant.” He sighed again. “All the blood and soil.”

  “And I imagined you were just calming down,” I said. “The realisation sinking in when his mother started calling. Rushing around the village, frantically looking for him. And you looked her in the eye and told her that you hadn’t seen him. You’ve been letting that woman live in doubt and fear and uncertainty for ten years, letting her trust you and believe in you for ten years.”

  My anger rose again. I tamped it down, breathing rapidly.

  “But for ten years, that was fine. Nobody knew, and nobody would have known. And then, all of a sudden, the pipes need fixing, and that means digging down. And then he’s been found, hasn’t he? And not only has he been found, but the museum is here now, and they’ve brought one of the best forensic anthropologists in the country with them to look at Jack. And he’d have figured it out. And those ten years of trying to make amends, being a loyal, reliable figurehead for your village was about to go down the drain. Schmidt knew, didn’t he? Maybe he even mentioned Jack when he had that long talk with you. Talked about religion, didn’t he? Philosophy, ethics. Most religions take the same approach when it comes to murder, Mr Harte.”

  “It was an accident!”

  I kept my voice calm. “That you covered up. Jack fell because he was running, and he was running because he was scared, and you had scared him. You had grabbed him. You had scared him, and that’s why he fell. You could have left it there, could have called for help. But you didn’t. You buried that boy in the cold earth, completely unprotected. And Schmidt figured that out.” I leant back, folding my arms. “Schmidt figured it out, Mr Harte. So, he had to go, didn’t he?”

  Harte stared at me, his eyes wide and white, skin pale, flushed in some places. Suddenly he slumped in his seat, like a puppet that had its strings cut short. And he wept.

  Twenty-Eight

  Thatcher

  “I’d like to call my lawyer.”

  The words fell flat, predictably, the only thing that Peter Wadham could say with the accusation I had just laid across the table.

  “A lawyer?”

  “Yes, it is my right.” He squared himself up, trying to look important, which from his general clammy, flushed demeanour wasn’t all that effective. “I refuse to speak anymore with him here.”

  I sighed heavily, bloody bureaucracy. “As you like, Dr Wadham,” I said, rising from my chair with a nod to the mirror so that the constable knew to make the call. I left the images on the table, let him sit with them for a bit, and walked through the door, leaning against the wall outside with my eyes closed.

  Why was it that men like him always turn to their lawyers so quickly rather than just deal with where they were and why? I opened my eyes, about to knock onto the other room and check in on Mills, when Fry came careening round the corner, almost knocking into me.

  “Easy, Fry,” I murmured, grabbing her shoulders to hold her upright.

  “Sorry, sir,” she panted. “The teams are back, and they’ve found something.”

  “Show me,” I ordered. She nodded, turning on her heel and leading me back along the corridor towards the main room.

  The team had returned, slouched in chairs with cups of tea in front of them, their coats and jackets draped over them.

  “Paulson,” Fry said, jerking her head to the constable in the corner.

  “Paulson!” I called.

  She looked over, slipped from the desk she had perched on, and strode over to meet me. “Sir,” she greeted me, looking curiously at the growing bruise on my face before meeting my eyes.

  “Fry tells me you found something.”

  Paulson nodded, pulling out her phone to show me some photographs.

  A crucifix, as I had thought. A gilded, ornate thing that looked heavy. It looked rusty, too, with dark patches on the shaped metal.

  “Where is it now?”

  “Forensics,” she said. “They’re running the substance found there in all the cracks and things.”

  I handed her back the phone. “Where?”

  “Dr Wadham’s shed, sir. We checked the house first, but then his wife said he was spending some time out there the other day. She didn’t have a key but gave the green light to break the door down, and there it was
. Looked like he was trying to clean it.”

  I nodded. He really will need a lawyer then.

  “Good work, Paulson. Is everyone back?”

  “They are, sir.”

  “Alright. Get your report written up pronto, and when the forensics have a match, you bring it all straight to me.”

  Paulson nodded once, smiled at Fry, then turned and walked to her desk. I flexed my fingers together, the knuckles popping and cracking.

  “We have a murder weapon then Fry, and our lead suspect sitting pretty in there waiting for his lawyer.”

  “Be hard even for his lawyer to wriggle him out of this one,” she remarked.

  “So long as we have the hard evidence,” I murmured. “And possibly word from our friend the vicar,” I added, walking back along the corridor. Fry trailed after me, and we were nearing the corner when Mills appeared, looking drained.

  “Alright, Isaac?” I asked, taking his shoulder in one hand when he just blinked at me. I walked him back out, sitting him at the first desk we reached. Fry mumbled something about tea and slipped away, and I dragged another chair over to sit with Mills.

  “Sergeant?” I prompted.

  He blinked again and shook his head. “Sorry, sir,” he said, closing his eyes and rubbing his brow. “Wasn’t expecting all that.”

  “All what? What did he say?”

  “He told me what happened to Jack,” Mills replied in a dull, stinted voice.

  I breathed in sharply. “Bad?”

  “Nothing worse than what we’ve seen before, I suppose,” he said. “Just ten years, sir,” he opened his eyes, fixing them on me. “Ten years.”

  “I know. He confessed?”

  Mills nodded. “Jack was leaving the church when he got there, and it was dark, so he didn’t know that it was the vicar.”