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

by Oliver Davies

  We practically fell from the car, me getting my legs all twisted as I tripped over the pavement in my dash to the hospital entrance. One of the PC’s approached me. The others stayed at their post.

  “Sir,” he nodded to me, walking with us to the door. It was Baker. He was who I spoke to over the radio.

  “Mills and I will head inside, go to Whelan’s room. If there’s a sign of him, let me know. Bear in mind, he might be armed with a drug of some kind.”

  Baker nodded his stern-looking face and squared his shoulders back. I nodded to Mills, and he followed me through into reception, where we received an acknowledging grim smile from the nurse on duty. We strode straight past, coats flying behind us, heading to the stairs, not in any mood to wait for the lift. The stairwell was empty, quiet, and nothing but the sound of our shoes on the stone slabs filled the echoing space as we legged it up several flights to the floor where Abbie was.

  I slowed down as we neared her hallway, walking around the corner at a pace that didn’t make us look mad, and gave me a chance to catch my breath. I ought to go on more runs, or at least, any runs. As I rounded the corner, I spotted the constable outside her room, slumped on his chair. Anger brewed, if he had fallen asleep on duty… then I spotted his arm. It hung limply by his side, and on the floor just beneath his fingertips was his radio. Shit.

  I charged down the hall, Mills dropping to the constable’s side and pressing his hand against his neck.

  “Alive,” he breathed, calling into his radio for help. I walked to the door, and my stomach dropped.

  Kask. Standing over Abbie’s bed, a horrible looking needle in his raised fist.

  I shouldered the door open and charged in, getting an arm around his waist and tackling him away from Abbie. Mills ran in after me and kicked the needle from Kask’s hand as he struggled against me. I got him on his front, arms twisted around his back and slipped the handcuffs into place before standing up and dragging him to his feet by the back of his collar. He’d stopped fighting and hung limply in my grip like a puppet with its string cut.

  “Toomas Kask, you are being arrested for the suspected murder of Sonia Petrilli and the attempted murder of Abigail Whelan. You do not have to say anything. But it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.”

  I shoved him towards the door, to the PCs from outside that came running to us, confused and bewildered as to how he got in.

  “Take him to the station,” I ordered Baker. He nodded, gripping Kask from the back of his arms and walked him towards the door. I leant against the wall, the adrenaline waning, and turned around to look at Abbie. A doctor and nurse had come running, and were bent over her, flustering.

  “We’ll check over her vitals,” the nurse said, ushering us to the door. “And call you when she’s ready to take visitors.”

  I didn’t want to leave. I wanted to talk to her now whilst everything was fresh, but Abbie looked so small in her hospital bed, wide-eyed and confused and so much like Grace that I led Mills drag from the room, the door shut in our faces.

  “By the time we’ve got Kask in the station and processed, she’ll be ready,” he muttered. I nodded, knowing he was right, and shrugged him off. We climbed into his car and drove slowly back to the station, where Baker had got Kask into a cell, and we got to begin the fun paperwork ahead.

  Someone from forensics came up to us, taking a sample of DNA to compare with the blood found with Abbie. Sharp stuck her head into us, sliding us both a cup of coffee. Weariness had begun to sink in, all the panic and rushing of the last few days, leaving me feeling bone-tired and nearly falling asleep at the desk. I slurped at the coffee Sharp brought, my head propped up on my fist as Mills” pen scratched across the page. When my phone rang, we both jumped like we’d been electrocuted. As I picked it up, Mills groaned, rubbing his face with his hands.

  It was Paige.

  “Miss Whelan,” I answered.

  “You got him?” She asked with no beating around the bush.

  “We’ve got him.”

  She laughed breathlessly, ‘thank God. And you, I suppose. Anyway, Abbie’s awake. You can come and see her.”

  “We’ll be there right away,” I told her, finishing my coffee in three big gulps, slipping my phone back into my pocket. Mills stood up, pulling his coat on with a slowness that I knew I had also had. The day had been long, and I was very much looking forward to bed now. But we got back into the car once more, pootling off the hospital.

  Everything here had settled down, which was a welcome change. We meandered our way slowly to Abbie’s room, where I tried to shake myself awake before knocking on the door. The nurse, who smiled politely and stepped aside to let us in, opened it.

  “Abbie,” the nurse said, clearing her throat and walking us over. “This is Detective Inspector Thatcher and Detective Sergeant Mills.”

  Abbie was sitting up in bed, looking pale and thin, but strong. Her eyes were clear and sharp, and she held herself up against a wall of pillows. The nurse quietly ducked from the room, closing the door with a click, and Abbie nodded to the chairs by the bed. As we sat down, she looked at us both.

  “Hello,” she said in a raspy voice.

  “Hello,” I answered with a smile. “It’s nice to finally meet you, Miss Whelan.”

  “I don’t really know where to start,” she admitted.

  “Grace told us that she saw Toomas Kask at your house a few weeks ago,” I began gently. Abbie nodded.

  “He came to see me. I wouldn’t let him in.”

  “Did he say what he wanted?” I asked.

  Abbie breathed in deeply, adjusting herself on the bed and toyed with her blanket. “He said he had an idea for a project. He wanted Sonia and me too—” she broke off suddenly, her face filled with panic. “Sonia. The doctor said she didn’t make it?”

  I shook my head, and Abbie sagged back, tears running silently down her cheeks. She cried for a moment, then girded herself up again. “He wanted Sonia and me to help him with it. But I said no. We had our own projects, and he couldn’t just show up at my house, anyway. He left, and I thought that was it.”

  “But he came back?”

  Abbie nodded. “I went into work that morning to make sure the plants were sorted for Sonia. Heard a noise that spooked me. When I turned around, it was Toomas. I thought he’d come to talk to Sean or something, and then,” she reached up to her neck, “he had something. He jabbed me in the neck with it. I don’t really remember what happened then. I think I fought him, and then I was outside. I heard someone shout right before it all went black. Next thing I know, I’m here. And he’s here, standing over me. Thank you,” she added, her voice breaking as she fixed her eyes on ours in turn. “Really, thank you.”

  “You are more than welcome,” I told her. She laughed slightly, wiping the tears from her face.

  “He killed Sonia?”

  “From what we know,” Mills said, taking the reins. “He was working on some sort of experimental drug. It didn’t work on you properly, but he got it right, and yes, he killed Sonia.”

  Abbie flinched. “Bastard.”

  “He also took your study,” I said. “The one the two of you were working on. Tried to pass it off as his own. From what we saw in his work, he combined his study with yours, to try to achieve whatever he wanted to achieve.”

  Abbie frowned and reached up to tuck her hair behind her ear. “I didn’t think he was in the business anymore.”

  “Because of Jordan Picard?” I asked.

  Her head snapped over to mine, her eyes sharpening. “What do you know about Jordan?” She spoke his name with a familiarity and fondness that took me by surprise.

  “We know he volunteered in a study eight years ago. And that about a month after, he died. His mother blamed you, sent you threats.”

  Abbie sniffed and nodded along. “We blamed ourselves too, she said. “Me and Sonia, anyway.
Said it wasn’t right to go on with the study after what happened. But Toomas didn’t care, said that we were getting somewhere with it, that we should carry on. It was him,” she said. “He played with the dosages, thought he got right. But we weren’t at that stage yet. Sonia and I were the ones who saw the study got shut down.”

  I sat back, crossing one leg over another. “But people still blamed you?”

  She shrugged. “Toomas left after that. He wasn’t there to take the blame for anything, and Sonia and I, well, it was our study after all. We shouldered what we could.”

  Here she was, after all this time of so many different people with so many different descriptions of Abbie Whelan. Here she was. She cared about Jordan, about Sonia. Took responsibility for what happened eight years ago.

  “The nurse told me, she said, that there was some trouble. With Grace’s father?” Abbie asked hesitantly.

  “There was. But it’s handled.”

  She nodded. “Thank you for looking out for them. Paige and Grace.”

  “You’ve got a good family, Miss Whelan,” I told her, rising from my chair. “We’ll need to get a formal statement from you, on everything that happened. But only when you’re ready.”

  “Can I send it in?” She asked.

  “You can.”

  “Better to do it whilst it’s fresh, I suppose,” she said with a shrug.

  “My thoughts exactly.” I walked over, offering her my hand. She shook it, then Mills’s hand before she looked at the door with a heart-breaking expression.

  “Can I see my baby now?” She asked, voice cracking.

  “We’ll send her right in,” I assured her, giving her once last warm smile before walking from the room.

  We stood in the hallway for a moment, letting it all sink in.

  “Bugger me,” Mills muttered.

  “Let’s get Paige and Grace in there, and then I say we hit the pub and call it a day. I’m knackered.”

  Mills laughed through his nose, and we walked down the corridor to find where Paige and Grace were waiting. As we walked, Mills stopped, and nudged me with his elbow. Sitting in the crisp white hallway on one of the ugly plastic chairs, his orange hair a beacon, was Luke Campbell. He sat awkwardly in a smart shirt, fidgeting uncomfortably with his collar and sleeves.

  “Wonder who told him,” I muttered. I spotted Paige along the way, walking out from some toilets with Grace, and lifted my hand in a wave. Her face lit up, though I could see that her eyes were pink from over here, and she made her way over. As she got near, Luke rose from his chair, his eyes fixed on Grace. Paige stiffened, pulling Grace closer to her side. I took a few long strides forward, reaching out a hand.

  “Do you want to see your mummy?” I called to Grace. A great big smile broke out on her face, and she pulled her hand from Paige’s running past Luke without sparing him a glance and took my large hand. Paige nodded to me, her eyes sternly sweeping towards Luke. Mills wandered nearer to them, stationing himself at her side as I led Grace down the hallway to Abbie. I inched the door open, and she skittered in. Abbie’s smiled, tears streaming again as Grace shouted,

  “Mummy!” And launched herself up onto Abbie’s bed, directly in her arms. Abbie laughed against her hair, cradling her close. She opened her eyes briefly to meet mine and nodded in thanks. I smiled back and lifted my hand in a wave, stepping from the room as Paige flew in, hopping up onto the bed too and adding herself to the vice-like hug. Abbie reached out a hand to stroke her cheek and hold her tighter, and I backed away, shutting the door and wandering over to Mills, a grin plastered to my face.

  “Alright, sir?” He asked, taking in my expression with amusement.

  “Where’s Campbell?”

  “Headed out. Paige said she’d talk to Abbie, and once she’s better, then they’d talk.”

  “Bastard,” I muttered.

  “Apparently,” Mills told me as we strolled away. “He just wanted to check that she was okay. He heard about what happened.”

  “Heard from who?”

  “Botanists, sir. They’ve got eyes and ears all over the place.”

  I laughed, and we left the hospital, walking into the warm early evening towards the nearest pub.

  Epilogue

  I trailed off after that, thinking that Liene probably didn’t want to hear about Mills and I sitting in a pub, staring into space whilst nursing our way through a few pints. Though we had made a good evening of it, even convinced Lena to come and join us when she was finished with all her work with Dr Olsen. We’d celebrated properly after the hospital got in touch to tell us Dunnes and the other constable from the hospital would be alright, that they’d make full recoveries. Which they had, and it was the little silver lining around an otherwise very bleak case.

  The story of that summer wasn’t a story that I wanted to tell often, and if anyone but Liene had asked, I’d have told them to piss off. We had let Sonia Petrilli down, and we almost led Abbie down in the end. It was a slip and an oversight that bothered me to this day, that we’d fumbled around so much in the beginning and cost Sonia her life.

  Not that, once the smoke had cleared, anyone else seemed to mind. The evidence held up strongly, from Kask’s own work at his house, Abbie’s statement and the DNA match that came through not long after Kask was arrested. And the Whelan family had held up throughout, the three of them sticking close together as Abbie recovered and then got released from the hospital. When I saw her at court, she’d stopped for a chat, and it was strange that a woman I had known so much about was still technically a stranger to me.

  She had stopped the study, stopped working at the research centre entirely, and now she worked solely with the plants, working in the arboretum. She’d gotten a house just outside the city, and Paige had moved in with her and Grace. All was well with them.

  I wasn’t sure what had happened with Luke Campbell, but we hadn’t been needed again, nor, as far as I was aware, had Susanne. The Petrillis had mourned and managed to find a way through their grief. Dr Quaid carried on at the research centre, with a new greenhouse built in memory of Sonia and Michele Picard had gotten the rightly deserved justice for her son. She’d even spoken to Abbie after the trial, and they tearfully talked about what had happened those years ago, swapping apologies back and forth until Paige stepped in and whisked Abbie off home.

  And Mills and I had carried on as before, pottering about the station with Sharp and Smith and the rest of them, waiting for the next case to show up in the middle of the night.

  Recounting the story took it out of me slightly. I’d forgotten just how weary the whole thing had actually made me, and I leant back in my chair, picking up my pint and looking at Liene as I took a long sip. She stared at me, her lips parted, brown eyes wide, her skin, where it wasn’t flushed by the fire, paler than usual. She sat forward in her chair, reaching out a hand to take mine, her slender fingers cold against my skin, rings pressing into me.

  She breathed in and out deeply, holding my gaze with sympathy written all over her face. “No wonder you were so tired when I saw you after all that,” she said with a soft smile. I smiled back, remembering that I hadn’t been the finest of company when she’d returned to York.

  “Seeing you at the end of it all was nice,” I replied, “Worth all of it.”

  Her smile grew, and she tightened her grip on my hand. “You’re a mighty fine, Inspector.”

  “How many Inspectors have you met before, Dr Dorland?” I asked teasingly.

  “Sadly, only you. Thank you for telling me that story,” she said.

  “Has it helped?” I asked, hoping that regurgitating the bleak case had at least soothed some of her anxiety. She nodded slightly, but the nerves appeared to creep back in, and she looked me over, eyes landing on my chest.

  “The tattoo that Lin Shui drew for you? Sounds like a familiar design. I’m sure it’s one I’ve seen before.”

  “I got it not long after the court case was all sorted. Went back to Lin Shui, she even g
ave me a discount,” I recalled happily, taking another sip of beer.

  It was a beautiful design. I’d carried it around with me for a while until, on the anniversary of my mother’s death, I wandered into the tattoo parlour with Sally for moral support. Now it sat on my chest, not far from my heart, and though it had hurt like hell, I was very fond of it, and Sally had enjoyed my blatant discomfort. I think she’d taken photographs, but they were never to see the light of day, not unless she wanted to be pushed into a pond again. I’d even gone so far as to put Lin’s original drawing in a little frame and keep it. It was somewhere in the house now, lost with all the other mementoes that I kept littered around the place, on shelves and mantle pieces and chests of drawers. I ought to find it, really. Ought to clean the house altogether, in fact.

  Liene still looked at my chest, her eyes tracing the shape that she knew lay under my shirt. The bird and its lily. Her smile faded slightly. “Will you ever tell me?” She asked quietly, hesitantly. “About what happened with your mother?”

  My breath caught slightly, and I looked away from her gaze, over to the fire that crackled. I watched the flames for a moment, the reds and oranges flickering in the dark hearth, her question rolling around my head. My hand was slightly clammy in hers, but she didn’t pull away, so neither did I. I took a deep breath.

  “Eventually,” I answered, looking back at her. “It’s not a nice thing to talk about. Very people actually do know quite what happened.”

  Very few, thinking about it. Sally and Elsie, of course, Tom and Mike knew the rough details, as did Sharp and Crowe. Mills undoubtedly had an inkling. We’d worked together too long for him not to. Other than that, those few people who’d known me so long, the people I considered family, the only other person who knew was,

  “Jeannie,” Liene said, startling me. I looked at her, watched as she ducked her face, her free hand drawing in the condensation on the table left by her drink. “Jeannie knows.” She spoke quietly, and I frowned at the sad tinge to her voice.