Gardners, Ditchers, and Gravemakers (A DCI Thatcher Yorkshire Crimes Book 4)

by Oliver Davies

  “Type in his address,” I told Mills in a low voice, now that we were far enough out into the moors. He obliged, quietly doing so without any more attempts at conversation. We drove the rest of the way in relative, comfortable silence, with the odd mutter at something on the radio, or observing something outside as we passed.

  Soon enough, we trundled through a village, out onto a long road that wound up the side of the hill where a few large houses were sequestered in the trees and heather. Toomas Kask lived in a rather large home; the steep points of its roofs visible above the trees as we climbed up the hill towards it. A large fountain, slightly grubby and covered in moss, sat outside the house, with its crumbling façade, peeling paint and gothic features.

  “Why is it,” Mills was muttering as we climbed from the car, ‘that we can’t ever work a case in a nice, normal house that doesn’t make me feel like I’m walking into an episode of The Twilight Zone?”

  “Because you’re not stationed in Leeds, that’s why,” I told him, marching over the stones up to the house, pausing at the door. The knocker was an old, worn head of what I think was once a dog. Mills looked at me pointedly as I opted not to use it and rapped my knuckles hard against the door instead.

  We waited there for a while, with no answer. I turned around. There was a car over by the garage, and up in the house, several lights were turned on in the windows. Perhaps I hadn’t knocked loud enough. This time, I closed my palm around the metal head and knocked with it, the action sending vibrations through the door and up my arm.

  This time, it wasn’t long before a muffled voice called out from inside, and the door was heaved open. The man who stood before us was not what I was expecting. I expected someone like Dr Quaid, huddled in a fleece and some oversized trousers, covered in soil and looking like he’d just been blown in from the gardens. Toomas Kask was a tall man, dressed in a pair of what looked like ironed jeans and a plain jumper, the collar of a crisp white shirt peeking out over the top. He smiled at us, brushing a piece of pale brown hair back from his face.

  “Hello,” he said. “How can I help?”

  “Are you Toomas Kask?” I asked.

  “I am,” he said, the smile on his face not dropping.

  “I’m Detective Inspector Thatcher, and this is Detective Sergeant Mills,” we showed him our cards. “North Yorkshire Police.”

  His smile faded from his face then, and he nodded bleakly. “Is this about Sonia Petrilli? I just heard on the news.”

  “It is. And Abbie Whelan.”

  His eyes widened, and he stepped aside, waving us in. “Please, come in. I think that rain’s due again,” he said pleasantly, leading us through the hall. It was old fashioned, with sturdy furniture, dark, heavy fabric and old oil paintings. Mills” face twisted at it all as we looked around, following Kask through to a large conservatory at the back of the house. Mills stopped and whistled slightly.

  “Impressive,” he said, looking through the windows to the gardens outside. Row upon row of flowers and plants led all the way down the long garden, interspersed with trees and shrubs. It was far tidier than the botanical gardens, far neater than Abbie’s own garden. There were poly tunnels over some of the bed, long climbers and wooden obelisks, small greenhouses tucked into corners, and compost bins pushed to one side.

  “Are you gardeners?” Kask asked, looking outside with us.

  “Afraid not,” I answered. “It is very impressive.”

  “Would you like to look around while we talk?” Kask unlocked the conservatory door. “I find it’s better to walk while such conversations are had.”

  Mills and I exchanged a look, happy enough with this familiar set up and followed him outside, strolling along the worn-down path between the beds. Mills sneezed behind me, and I paused, looking back as he fished a tissue from his pocket. He waved me on, and I walked beside Kask, happy to take the lead as Mills reigned in his allergies.

  “We understand that you used to work with Sonia Petrilli and Abbie Whelan,” I began. “Over at the botanical research gardens.”

  “My goodness,” Kask sighed. “That feels like a lifetime ago. Eight years it must be now,” he added.

  “Can I ask why you left?”

  “The study we were working on,” he told me, running his hands through a bed of herbs. “It didn’t go all that well, and when it got stopped, the girls were both so devastated. I thought it was for the best,” he told me. “Decided I’d rather put my attention back into actually gardening, you know. The whole, drug side of things, it wasn’t me. Not really.”

  I nodded along. “What exactly was the study?” I asked. “We know it had something to do with finding a drug for immune diseases.”

  “That’s right. You’ll forgive me, Inspector. My memory’s fickle, and I don’t remember all that much about the gritty details.”

  “Do you remember having protestors standing against it? Receiving threats.”

  Kask paused where he stood, looking out over his garden. “Not any to me, but I remember the girls mentioning some. I was just the plant man, Inspector.”

  I nodded, and we walked along quietly for a bit longer. I glanced over my shoulder to Mills, who was frowning down at a bed of flowers.

  “When was the last time you saw either of them?” I asked Kask. “Sonia or Abbie?”

  “I’m afraid we really went our separate ways after that. I came out here,” he held his arms out to the hills that rolled out in the horizon. “I got in touch after Abbie had her child, paid her a little visit, naturally. But I’m afraid other than the optimistic love of plants a few out of university kids had, there was little to keep us together. I was sorry to hear of everything that’s happened, though,” he added mournfully. “Sonia didn’t deserve that. Nor Abbie. Is there any news on her?” He asked.

  “She’s still in the coma,” I told him. He nodded, as if expecting that answer.

  “Perhaps I should visit her,” he said, strolling along again, his hands looped behind his back. “She’s got no family after all, except for her sister. Oh, she was a wild card,” he added with a laugh.

  “She’s grown up now,” I told him, feeling defensive over Paige. “She’s a terrific aunt.”

  “I don’t doubt it,” he answered. “Those Whelan girls were nothing if not loyal.” I watched his face as he spoke, a slight dark tone to his words. I wondered if he was another who didn’t particularly like Abbie or her little sister. Before I could ask, his phone rang, and he apologetically dug it from his pocket. “Forgive me, Inspector. It’s my mother.”

  “No problem,” I assured him, walking back over to Mills while he answered. Isaac had his notebook out and was scribbling down some things when I reached him, his eyes and nose pink, and he sniffed loudly.

  “Perhaps we should have conducted this in the kitchen,” I remarked as he put his notebook away, only to sneeze violently into his tissue.

  “Perhaps,” he agreed. “Anything?” He asked, nodding over to Kask, who paced back and forth on the phone.

  “Nothing much. He’s untied himself from that world,” I told him. “I think we’ll be relying on whatever Abbie and Sonia have left from that study.”

  “He didn’t have any threats?” Mills asked, blinking his eyes like he’d just come out from a swimming pool.

  “Nope. But Lin Shui and her brother remembered his name for some reason,” I added, looking towards the man again. He had put his phone away and was striding over to us now, a concerned look on his face.

  “You must forgive me, chaps. My mother called. Apparently, my dad has had some sort of fall. I’ve got to run.”

  “Certainly,” I answered, and we followed him quickly back through the house. He stopped by a small table in the hall and pulled out a business card.

  “I’d be happy to answer some more of your questions, Inspector. Just give me a call.”

  “Thank you, Mr Kask. I hope your dad is okay,” I added as Mills, and I strode out towards the car. He left a moment after us
, locking up the front door and running over the car by the garage. I started the engine and quickly got out of his way, watching as we headed down the road and he skirted off further into the hills.

  “I know you said you wanted to go back to the city for lunch,” Mills said, wiping at his stinging eyes as I looked away from where Kask’s car vanished into the distance. “But we might need to make a stop.” I looked at his sorry face and nodded, unable to shake that there was something about Kask that hadn’t added up right.

  Seventeen

  Mills

  Thatcher kindly made a stop at a little roadside café that we passed so that I could clean myself up in the bathroom. I left him at a table, ordering for the both of us and ducked into the toilet, splashing my face with cold water. Stupid hay fever, I muttered under my breath. That garden had near enough closed my chest up tight. Quite the array of plants he’d had out there too. I headed back out into the café, sitting down in the chair opposite Thatcher with a huff. There were two cups of tea on the table, and he slid one my way, his expression halfway between pity and outright amusement.

  “My gran used to say that you should eat a spoon of local honey for hay fever,” he mentioned casually.

  “Old wife’s tale,” I answered, having already tried such a remedy, in fact. “Besides, Kask’s garden is hardly local.”

  “True,” he replied with a shrug. “What were you making notes of back there, by the way?”

  “Some of the plants were familiar,” I told him, “I thought we could get in touch with Dr Quaid and see if he can tell us about them.”

  Thatcher nodded as a waitress came over and placed some dishes down on the table.

  “Any of them ring a bell from this morning?” He asked, from the research we’d done into wholesalers.

  “No. But I might know them from somewhere else,” I remarked, picking up a chip. “Maybe a glimpse from one of Abbie’s studies or out in the greenhouse.”

  “Well, it can’t hurt to find out,” Thatcher said. “Maybe we can run a few past Dr Olsen too,” he added.

  I looked over at him, chewing on his sandwich. He’d been quiet as we drove, and I had pegged as much down to what Sharp discussed with me earlier. But perhaps I’d been wrong on that foot.

  “You suspect him of being involved?” I asked. I couldn’t quite see it myself, but then I hadn’t really spoken to the man.

  “I think there’s something there that’s making me pause,” he told me. “Maybe the same thing that made you stop and take notice of those plants.”

  I nodded, chewing thoughtfully on my chip. Kask must know more than he let on; he’d known both Sonia and Abbie, had probably even met Luke Campbell at one point in time. He’d been on the study, would have been there for the protestors and the threat, and yet, he barely had anything to offer us that was genuinely useful. It seemed most of our information was having to come from the two people who couldn’t actually tell us anything. What I wouldn’t give to have Abbie Whelan suddenly waking up, the name all ready to go and all the pieces carefully slotted together. But that was our job, making sense of all the muddle, doing right for the people who couldn’t do anything themselves.

  In the midst of my rambling thoughts, Thatcher’s phone rang, making us both jump a little. He pulled it from his pocket with a grimace, looked down at whoever was calling and relaxed slightly.

  “Lena,” he answered, taking another bite. He listened to whatever Dr Crowe was saying with a thoughtful expression, nodding along and then swallowed his mouth. “Got it. We’ll be there soon.” He hung up and put his phone face down on the table, and looked at me.

  “Lena’s finished her autopsy, and she’s ready to give us her report.”

  “That was fast,” I observed.

  “Sometimes these things are just as obvious as they seem,” Thatcher replied. “I could talk to her alone, if you wanted to head out and talk to Dr Quaid.”

  I nodded, better to split up and get through these things as fast as we could rather than wasting time pottering around together. We finished our lunch fairly quickly after that, with me practically shoving half a plate of chips into my mouth and trying not to choke on them. We paid the bill and jumped back into Thatcher’s now very muddy car, making our way back to the city, the tall hedges, trees and fields blurring around us on all sides.

  I looked over at Thatcher as we drove, his grey eyes staring straight ahead to the road. I’d meant what I said earlier, about him moving out here. The further away from the moors and the countryside we got, the tenser Thatcher became. By the time the city came into view, he looked ready to rip the steering wheel off with his bare hands. I wondered if being out here stirred up old memories for him. Sharp had told me very little, and not much more than I already knew. Whatever had happened between Thatcher and his mother, whatever the sad, bitter story for why he was always turning her photograph around or worked himself to the bone trying to pay some promise, wasn’t my business. But Sharp had told me that when his mother had died, it had been in August, and that every year was the same for him. He got distant, careless, surlier than usual. It must have been bad, whatever had happened there, bad enough for him to still feel it so keenly all these years later. Whatever the case, I didn’t press, and so far, that seemed to be working well for us. I kept quiet, tuned the radio into a station that blasted eighties music all the livelong day and sat back in my chair.

  He pulled into the station car park, and I jumped out, beelining directly to my car.

  “Ring me if there’s trouble,” Thatcher called as he walked into the building. I gave him a wave over my head, sliding into my own car and dug through the glove compartment to find the small box of antihistamines I kept there for days such as these and swallowed one of the small white pills before turning the engine on.

  Dr Quaid had closed the gardens for the time being, so I was glad to not have to suffer my senses through that again today, and he had given us his home address. I dug through my notes for it and put it into the sat nav, following the directions out of the city, to a quiet little place that bordered the hills.

  His house was not unlike Abbie’s. A fairly standard place with a beautiful garden marking it out amongst the others. His car sat in the driveway, so I happily made my way from the car and over to the front door, pressing the bell, grateful once again to not be at a house that was old, dark and terrifying.

  I saw his face in the little window in the centre of the door, his eyes wide with surprise, and then the sound of a chain moving, and the door was opened.

  “Sergeant Mills do come in,” he said, ushering me into the house. “To what do I owe this?” He closed the door and directed me into a warm kitchen. “I hope all is well. Is Abbie alright?”

  “No changes there,” I told him, taking a seat around the rickety table. He moved some things aside and sat down as well, looking at me with his glasses halfway up his nose. “I was wondering if you could help me out with some plants I’ve noticed. I’ve only got the Latin names, and I was hoping to figure out what they were and what they might do.”

  He seemed surprised by my request, “and you thought to ask me?”

  “You are the expert, Dr Quaid.”

  He puffed a little with pride and nodded heartily. “At your service, lad.”

  “Terrific.” I pulled my notebook out and turned to the page that I had copied the names down. It was useful that Kask kept those little pegs in the soil to identify them with. The ones that didn’t, I had first attempted to draw, and when that failed, I simply took one of the flowers and pressed it between the pages.

  “Right,” Dr Quaid pushed his glasses firmly up his nose, and I ripped out a spare sheet, ready to go. “Tanacetum parthenium,” he read. “Commonly known as Feverfew, which as its name suggests used to be used for treating fevers. Also, quite good for headaches,” he added.

  “Is it dangerous?” I asked.

  “It can be meddlesome if it’s taken with other medication, but otherwise, it’s f
airly safe. This one,” he tapped the next name, “is St John’s Wort.”

  “Used for depression,” I knew that one.

  “It is. Again, taken with the wrong things and it can be a bother, but otherwise, very useful. This next one is Valerian, useful for sleeping and underneath that, Digitalis purpurea, otherwise known as foxgloves. You didn’t know them?” He asked me with a little judgement in his voice.

  “They weren’t flowering,” I defended myself. “They’re poisonous, aren’t they? My mum used to tell me that so I wouldn’t pick them.”

  “Some species, yes. But it can be very bad, anything from vomiting to seizures and irregular pulses. Were these all growing together?” He asked.

  “Around each other. Why?”

  “Well, it’s a fairly standard botanist tool kit, this is. Taxus baccata, English Yew. Can cause paralysis and convulsions, these buggers can.” It was one of the names that jumped out to me most of all, so I underlined that little note.

  “What’s this?” He tapped the tissue I had folded up with the page, and I opened it up, revealing the little flowers I had subtly picked from their stems.

  “These ones weren’t labelled.”

  “Nor would they be,” Dr Quaid murmured, looking over them. “Aconitum,” he pointed to one, “usually called Wolfsbane or Monkshood.” He looked up at me with a frown. “I hope you’ve washed your hands.”

  “I used the tissue to pick them,” I admitted, never one to go traipsing around plants that I didn’t know. Dr Quaid nodded approvingly, and I made a note of the plant’s name. “Why would someone grow all of these?” I asked.