“Surrounded by countryside,” I argued, “there are acres of field and farmland surrounding that place, finding the right spot could take days.”
“Then you’d better go and find Lena, be a nice detective and ask her how her report is coming along,” Sharp stood up again and waved at the door, “we need some physical evidence or at least something other than a hunch, Thatcher. Find one. Or the next time HQ calls, I’ll let you be the one who talks to them.”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
We left her office, returning to our own.
“If nobody in the village saw him, maybe he left?”
“Smith spoke to the hotel manager. His car hasn’t moved since they first got here. Someone would have noticed if he’d taken it out.”
“Maybe he went on a walk? Did a bit of sightseeing in the local area?”
“Odds are, Smith, but we’ve no way of knowing for sure. If we can just find something of his,” I scraped my hair back from my face, “if we can get his phone or laptop, we’ll be able to start tying things together with no problem. Until then, all we have is guesswork, and I,” I pointed a finger at him, “do not like guesswork.”
“Me either, sir.”
“Tell me more about Johnson. Ms Renner knew his name, mentioned him quite casually.”
“He did the same about her. They must have known each other through work. Maybe it was her that he spoke to when they were competing for the land?”
“Maybe. How did he seem?”
“Typical businessman, really. Well dressed, smoked, lots of books in his office. All leather-bound and neat except for the one on his desk.”
“Anything strange?”
“Nothing out of the ordinary, sir. A coat, pair of boots over by the door, a picture of his wife on the desk. Changed the subject a few times. I think he’s the sort who likes being in control of a conversation.”
I nodded. I was familiar with the sort of person he meant. A domineering man, in control.
“What about his staff? Seem happy?”
“Only saw one. Woman on reception, Helen. The whole place felt very medical.”
“Medical?”
“It was all white and glass and concrete. All too shiny and smooth like a doctor's office.”
“Stylish, I’d imagine.”
“Looked uncomfortable. A bit cold, I wouldn’t want to spend all day there. Especially on reception. All she can look at is the doors outside, nobody else milling around.”
“He runs that entire business, a successful business, without people running around for him? Photocopying, fetching coffee, doing the numbers nothing?”
“Not that I saw, sir. Maybe Helen’s a jack of all trades.”
“Maybe he doesn’t like too many people around him.”
“You sound suspicious of that, sir,” Mills observed, pulling his chair to my desk and folding into it.
“Do I? I am, a little. From what I understand companies like these need lots of people working for them, they usually even have partners, but both of these men are running their operations, on a national scale in Hughes’s case, with only his assistant there to help him.”
“Privacy.”
“But what for? She worked for him for twelve years, and all she could offer about him was a dim reflection on his love life. If she did everything, and odds are, she did, she’d know more. Have access to more.”
“You think she’s hiding something?”
“Not hiding, per se.” I leant back against my chair, flipping a pen between my fingers, “but there’s something she’s not quite telling us. Even if it’s just the fact that she fancied him.”
“What did Miss Gray think?”
He wasn’t looking at me when I glanced up, his gaze was fixed on our own glass wall, to the many people running the station.
“She thought something similar. Ms Renner worked there for twelve years for a reason, maybe her brother, maybe something else. How long has Helen been there?”
“Not sure, sir. Do you want me to ask?”
“Worth having a chat. Maybe she met Ms Renner or Hughes at some point. If she’s as integral to Johnson’s business as Cynthia was.”
“She might know something.”
I smiled and sighed, tipping my head back, “Jeannie said that he was the sort of person who barely ever noticed her. Barely ever noticed anyone who wasn’t, likely, rich and successful. Everybody, working people, were barely in his awareness.”
“Just because they’re not noticed doesn’t mean they’re as unobservant as the rest.”
“My thoughts exactly, Mills. So whilst men like Hughes and Johnson blunder around not seeing what most of the world does hour by hour, someone has to notice for them. Someone has to be there to thank the driver, tip the waiter, book the hotel room, do all the stuff that they wouldn’t. Cynthia packed his bags so she must have known what he was up to. Same goes for Helen, I’d wager. If those two men were ever in the same room together, their assistants could tell us a lot more about that interaction than they could.”
“But Ms Renner hasn’t told us anything. Doesn’t seem to want to.”
“No. But Helen might not be so closed off.”
“I’ll give her a call sir, see if we can get her away from the office, then we might have a better chance of hearing what she has to say.”
“What about his wife? What did she say?”
“According to Smith, she seemed fine enough. Polite, compliant. Answered her questions without getting snippy. Said that her husband was home with her all night.”
“Was there anyone else who could confirm that?”
“No, sir. Nobody else lives in the house, and it’s detached, no neighbours either side who might have seen something.”
“Right.” I dropped my pen and stood up, “we’ll talk about more of this later, first let’s go see Dr Crowe before Sharp comes in here and bites my head off.”
Mills rose from his chair, smirking,
“Yes, sir.”
We found Dr Crowe in the hallway downstairs, shoving her lab coat into a locker, a folder tucked under her elbow. Her hair stuck out from her head like she’d been shocked, and she rather looked it when she turned around and saw us.
“I was just on my way to you boys.” She smiled. “Follow me.” She led us away from the smell of bleach and chemicals to a small row of chairs and sat down.
“I was right,” she said proudly.
“You usually are, Lena. How so in this case?”
“Our friend Mr Hughes was definitely not killed in the field,” she explained. “No traces of blood large enough, and there would have been quite a bit. But it was blunt trauma. They gave him a good wallop, several of them. But the hits themselves were fairly shallow. They’d have needed to do a few times to actually kill him. So whoever it was, they had motivation but weren’t very strong.”
“Any clues as to what it was?”
“Metal, I’d say. Flat like a hammer.”
Mills made a quick note of that, his pencil moving without his eyes moving from the doctor’s face.
“And what about the location?”
“I checked the bottom of his shoes. The heels were muddy, mud from the field, as he was dragged along. But in the grooves of the shoes,” she opened the folder, “there were different traces of earth. Biodiverse, lots of different things that have broken down. Very interesting in fact,”
“Lena, may we have the biology lecture later on?”
“Sorry. Typically, we find this type of soil profile in woodlands.”
“The field runs alongside woodlands,” Mills reminded us.
“Quite a bit of it. We’d have to take a team down, scour the whole site.”
“I can take a closer look, but it won’t be easy to narrow it down,” Lena told me. “I’d guess that you’d be better off starting in a section with more coniferous trees.”
“Why?”
“The answer involves some information about acidic levels and mites. Do you rea
lly want to hear it?”
“Not now,” I handed her back the folder, “next Christmas party maybe. And the time of death?”
“I was then too. I’d put it at about six.”
When most of the village was at home, eating before heading out to the bonfire.
“Thank you, Lena.”
“Anything for you boys.” She tucked the folder back under her arm. “Find a map of the woodlands, and you’ll be able to spot which areas are more likely.”
“The woods,” Mills said excitedly as we headed back upstairs, “leads out to the river. Hotel is on the other side of it. Maybe he took a detour through the woods.”
“Or they lured him in.”
“Or he’s not used to countryside paths and got lost.”
I smiled at Mills. “Maybe he did. Find us a map, Mills. I’ll get the brews in.”
Eleven
Thatcher
It was one of those old, ancient stretches of woodland that carves through fields and hills, held in by hedges and fences.
Mills found several maps and printed them all out. One, following trails and paths that walkers use. Most of them circled around and ended up back at the pub, but a few took you out towards the river. Another was from the local woodland charity, identifying certain protected species or cloisters.
Dr Crowe joined us, Sharp hovering behind her, and Smith, all of us craning over the maps.
“The hotel is here.” I circled it. “We know that he stopped and looked at the bonfire because Goodwin saw him.” I checked with Smith.
She nodded. “Saw him standing by the field, but then he carried on walking. Mr Goodwin says he didn’t see which way he went, but it wasn’t towards the village, not unless he circled the whole thing.”
“So let’s say he was heading back to the hotel. This path,” I dragged a finger down the marked road, “is the straightforward one. The road goes from the village to the hotels, takes the bridge over the river.”
“But he walked in the woods.”
“Right. Coniferous trees?”
“Here,” Dr Crowe indicated the areas. “They’re scattered around, but some places are denser than others. He likely went off the path, given the soil.”
“Here then,” Mills circled one area, “and here. We can check them both.”
“Good,” I agreed, “if we find nothing there, we barcode search, but it’s a start. Ma’am?”
“Good work. Head out there now. I’ll send a forensic team with you.”
It wasn’t often that we got to head out into the woods, canine unit alongside. Mills’s voice drifted through the walkie talkie clipped to my vest every now then when he reached his area. The team scattered out, taking every direction.
The woods were nice, old and bent with age. But in the growing dark, they wouldn’t feel all that friendly. The path was less than a mile behind me as I wandered into the woods. I could hear everyone else, the dogs yipping with all there was to sniff out here.
Hughes was on the path, at least one of them, and he left it. He wandered away, closer to the trees. The river was a faint rush in this distance. He must have walked towards the noise.
Leaves blanketed the ground, most of them wet and rotting. A few freshly fallen ones crunched beneath my feet, hiding, sadly, any tracks or marks that would have been made those days ago.
I stopped and looked up, around at the trees that climbed over my head, the twisting arms of ivy coiled around them. It was cold and quiet, rain threatening to fall. I could do with it not raining and washing away any more evidence.
There would have been blood, lots of blood. Blood that would turn dark and dry. I kicked away leaves as I walked, disturbing the pattern, looking at the older leaves beneath them.
Blood splattered, I knew that much. And a hit to the head, several hits to the head, wouldn’t be clean. I bent down on my haunches, lowering my eyes to the tree trunks. Pine needles fell on my head, the rugged bark dark and strong.
He would have seen them. He would have stopped, turned maybe. Let them get close.
I walked a few more paces until I couldn’t hear the distance voices of the team anymore. Until the trees closed in around me. And then he stopped… and turned.
The right side of his head.
I twisted my neck to the side and slowly lowered myself down again.
There.
There was a stain on the trees. I pulled a bag from my pockets and walked towards it, gently scraping the mark with a gloved finger. Dry, flaking. I scraped some of it into the plastic and sealed it tight. Bending down again, I shifted the leaves around where I stood. A sharp, rotten smell rose up, and I pressed my scarf over my nose.
The leaves were matted down, blackened.
“Mills,” I called into the walkie talkie.
“Sir?”
“Come to me. I found it.”
“On my way, sir.”
I wandered a little distance from the blood, breathing down clean air, and looked westward, back where the village lay. I hadn’t strayed too far from the path, and from the maps that we looked at, the field wasn’t far away. He’d have been dragged through, straight across to the fence that bordered the farmer’s land.
The team joined me, forensics gathering around the bloody leaves. I gave them the scrapings, not that they probably needed it now and found Mills alongside me, also looking to where the field lay.
He cocked his head to one side and looked to where Hughes would have died, turned and walked backwards, arms out like he was dragging something.
“How many steps would you be able to drag a dead man for before you got tired?”
“It would take a while.”
“You’d stop.” I held up a hand, and he froze. “Every few metres you’d stop, drop him, gather your strength, and go again.”
“And each time you did, he’d move.”
“His clothes would shift.” I walked towards him and nodded. He staggered back a few more metres. “His coat would move, his pockets would jostle.”
I held up my hand and Mills stopped again, dropping his imaginary corpse and squatted down, resting his arms against his legs. He frowned, a lock of hair falling in his face, and bent lower, gazing intently into the plants around us.
“Sir,” he reached up a hand and pointed. Following his gaze and his finger, I reached for the leaves on the ground and shifted them aside. A small black rectangle stared back up at me, and Mills let out a disbelieving laugh. “His phone?”
I picked it up. It was dead, of course, the battery no doubt long drained. It was protected in a smart leather case, a thick screen protector lightly scratched.
“I really hope so,” I answered, dropping it into an evidence bag. “Let’s hope we can get into it, find something of use. Good work, Mills.” I gave him a hand back to standing and nodded to the invisible victim. “You can leave him here, I reckon. Good compost.”
“As you like, sir.”
We made our way back towards the path and Mills looked around. “Isolated out here. No wonder nobody saw anything.”
“It’s a shame nobody did. We’d be able to solve this a little faster if they did.”
“His family must be devastated.”
“We’ll get them justice soon, Mills.”
“I wonder what my family would do. I think my mum would be here threatening half the village. She’d have choice words for you.”
“I hope I never have to meet her under such circumstances.”
“What about you, sir? Are you close to your family?”
We’d never spoken about our personal lives before. Little tidbits here and there, but nothing else.
“Not much family left, I’m afraid. My mother died a few years ago,” I said darkly. Mills nodded solemnly and stayed quiet, not asking any more questions.
I did not speak about her. I barely thought about her, to be honest. Did no good. I had to get back out to the coaching house at some point, get the roof mended. I thought about her then, I couldn’
t help it. The memories didn’t so much as sneak in so much as they pounded down the door and swarmed in.
Sharp knew, but nobody else. Not even Jeannie, I realised. I talked to her about work, about puzzles and early morning calls and reading people. But not about anything else. And she never asked, but then again, nor did I.
“Sir?” Mills broke into my attention. He was scratching the back of his head, looking ahead as we came free from the trees.
“What is it?”
“Something about what we talked of earlier had been bothering me. I think you should speak to Johnson.”
“You don’t trust your own instincts? I certainly do, don’t tell me I was wrong to let you work alone.”
“No, sir, that’s not it. More about seeing what I might have missed, as it were.”
“Do you suspect him?”
“I can’t put a name on it, sir, but I can’t ignore either.” His voice sped up, brow furrowed deeply as he spoke. “Hughes died up here, far away from anyone he knew, anyone with real, personal motives. Up here, on bonfire night,” he gesticulated to the surrounding woods, “where he would have more or less just vanished from the face of the earth if things went right.” He broke off, turning to look at me, a muscle in his jaw twitching. “This doesn’t feel as much as of murder to me, sir, as it does a - a coup or a plot.”
“Like old Guy Fawkes?”
“Timing of it, sir,” he noted.
“The timing of is more likely the fact that there was a great big bonfire at their disposal.”
“That doesn’t fit, sir,” he argued, stopping a little ways away from the cars and the dogs. “They didn’t know about the bonfire being moved, and nobody here in the village had any particular call to want to harm him. So likelihood is, is that it was someone not from the village. Someone who knew him elsewhere. And they picked this place and this time, that night, to do it. This was planned, wasn’t it?”
I waited for him to finish talking, his face flushed and slightly nervous as he looked over my own, what I could only imagine being a very steely expression. I reached out and gripped his shoulder in one hand.
DCI Thatcher Yorkshire Crime Thrillers: Books 1-3 Page 10
