Rita shook her head. “Not him. It was an Indian restaurant, not far from the University. Sorry if it’s useless, but you said if I think of anything. I just remembered, Nia mentioned making a curry tonight and.” She shrugged.
“Would you know him again if you saw him?” Mills asked from over my shoulder, close enough that I could smell his aftershave.
“I think so,” she said slowly. “He was dressed pretty snappily.”
“Thank you, Rita.” She nodded and let the door close, returning to the library. Mills opened the outer door, and we both stumbled onto the wet pavement.
“A new partner?” he suggested, righting his coat.
“Could be. Let’s check the café, see if Viviane saw somewhere there.”
“The café is not far from the University either, sir,” Mills said as we climbed back into my car.
“And they do like their antiquities in universities,” I muttered. “Don’t they, Mills?”
Eleven
Thatcher
We left the museum behind us, heading for the café where Viviane had been the morning she died. Rita’s words bounced around my head like an old pinball machine, and it seemed Mills was having the same trouble as he piped up.
“Do you think she was telling the truth?” he asked. “Rita, I mean. Do you think she saw Viviane with a man?”
“I can’t see why she should lie,” I muttered, focusing on the road, “other than to throw the scent off herself. But we ourselves were betting on Viviane not being alone. Could be a partner in the antiques market.”
“But there are no recent calls on her phone,” Mills pointed out. “None from any repeating numbers, anyway.”
“Maybe she preferred emailing,” I suggested. “Send Wasco a text, see where he is on getting into her emails, some of her other files.”
Mills nodded, bending over his phone as I followed the navigation through the city. I had never liked driving in the city, preferred the roads out in the countryside, as bumpy and winding as they could be. I found a place to park a few streets over from where the café was, and as we made our way there, Mills had a quick check of his map for local restaurants.
“Over there.” He pointed a finger over his shoulder behind us. “There’s a park down the road and an Indian restaurant on the corner. Could be the one,” he said with a shrug, placing his phone away.
“Rita said it was a few weeks ago,” I muttered. “I doubt there’s much they can tell us.” Of all the receipts in her purse, I had no recollection of one for an Indian restaurant. Thai, yes, and there was every possibility Rita had been mistaken, but there was also every possibility that Rita had fabricated the entire story.
The coffee shop we found ourselves at was a renovated townhouse, smaller than the museum but likely just as old. The ground floor was entirely open, leading out into the garden that drew most of the customers in. Plants hung from the rafters, the furniture all made from natural wood, patterned rugs and cushions filling it with colour. It was fairly quiet now. A few students clustered around tables with books and laptops. Some were even outside, under the large umbrellas, cradling their mugs like little old ladies. Music filled the space, relaxed and youthful.
Mills and I entered, flicking the rain from our coats as we strode over to the counter. Two people stood behind it, a young woman and a man, smiling at each other. I felt rude to interrupt, but dead body and all that. There was a little bell on the counter beside the tip jar, and I hit it lightly. The man looked up, hurrying over, rubbing a hand over his short curly hair, a faint tinge of red on his dark skin.
“Sorry, mate. What can I get for you?”
“Americano for me. Mills?”
“Same,” he called from where he stood studying the cakes.
“Two, both white, please, to go. And I was wondering if you were by chance working here on Saturday morning?”
He looked surprised, fingers stilling over the screen of his cash register. “I’m sorry?”
“Detective Inspector Thatcher, North Yorkshire Police.” I showed him my warrant card and slipped it away just as quickly, reluctant to draw the attention of the other customers. “I’ve just got a few questions about a customer who would have been here then.”
The man nodded in understanding. “I didn’t work Saturday. Lola did, though.” He turned around, calling to the girl behind the counter. “Lola?” As she came over, he muttered to her quietly. She looked at us with wide eyes as Mills left the cakes, strolling over casually to stand beside me.
“How can I help?” she asked, wiping her hands on her apron and then tightening her blonde ponytail nervously.
“I’ll get your drinks,” the man said hastily over her shoulder, moving away to the coffee machine. I pulled out the picture we had of Viviane, her work photo we had taken from the museum.
“This girl was in here on Saturday morning. I know you must have been busy, but is there any chance you remember seeing her?” I put the photo down, letting Lola pick it up to examine it properly. She frowned for a moment and then nodded.
“Yes! I remember. We chatted for a bit while she waited for her friend.”
Mills and I shared a look. “Her friend?” he asked.
Lola nodded again. “A man. Came in looking a bit frazzled, poor bloke. Running late. She was nice.” She handed me the picture back. “We talked about music, the playlist here.” She waved around the room. It was a good playlist, though, for the life of me, I barely knew any of the songs.
“What about her friend? The man?” I asked.
“Well, when he came, I left them to it,” she explained.
“What did he look like?” I inquired.
“He was tall, maybe your height, fancy dresser,” she added. Snappily dressed, Rita had commented on the man in the restaurant. “Longish hair, sort of to his ears, curly. I think he was mixed race and had green eyes.”
I nodded, and spotted Mills in the corner of my eye, making a quick note of his appearance. “And how long would you say that they were here?”
Lola’s face screwed up in thought. “Just under an hour, maybe? She left pretty quickly; said she was running late.” Late to work, that added up. “He stayed and finished his coffee before taking off.”
“You’ve got a good memory,” I praised. It was impressive. Normally, we struggled to get anything from visits like these.
“She was nice. It’s not hard to remember the nice customers. Pretty too,” she added, smirking at her co-worker as he slid the coffees over. Mills reached around me to pay, and I smiled at Lola.
“You’ve been a big help, thank you,” I added, and she smiled, relaxing slightly. “Has the man been here before? Her friend?”
“No. Most of our regulars are more…” She looked at the students huddled around with shadowed eyes and messy hair. “Loyal,” she decided with a grin.
“Well, thank you, both of you,” I added, raising my cup.
“If he comes back,” she began asking hastily, “should I… should we… do anything?”
I thought about giving her my card, but there was no guarantee we’d be able to get down here in time and accosting someone in a coffee shop felt a little misplaced. We’d find him through Viviane. Something in me said that the man wasn’t trouble, but there was no way of my knowing that.
So, I pulled a card out and slid it over the counter. “Ask for Thatcher or Mills, and we’ll get here quickly.”
“Is he dangerous?” the man asked worriedly as Lola pinned the card to a small board behind her.
“No,” I assured them. Not to them, in any case. Whether or not he had been a danger to Viviane was a whole other question. “Thank you, again.” I dropped a few coins in the tip jar and nodded to Mills, who turned and walked to the door, wrenching it open.
We walked back to the car, collars turned up against the weird sideways rain and happily slid back into my car. We sat there for a while, drinking our coffees.
“Think it’s the same man?” Mills asked after
a while of listening to the radio.
“I hope it is. Lola and Rita both commented on how he was dressed. Fancy.”
“Snappily,” Mills recalled. “Must be the same unique fashion sense if both of them picked up on it.”
“Picked up on it, yes, but then also bothered to mention it to us. He seems to have caught their eye.”
“Maybe he also caught Viviane’s,” Mills muttered, digging out his phone with one hand as it chimed. “It’s Wasco. He’s into her emails and some of the other files. It’s in your office.”
I gave a small sigh, reluctant to be spending the next however many hours bent over a computer screen and placed what remained of my coffee in the cup holder, pulling away from the curb and heading back to the station. As we lumbered up the stairs, Sharp met us, her face drawn.
“Well?” she asked.
“Viviane was with a man at the café on Saturday morning,” I told her, giving Mills a nod to head off to the office without me. “Rita Jones mentioned seeing Viviane a few weeks ago in a restaurant with a man, and we think it’s the same one. We’re hoping what Wasco’s found will help us track him down.”
Sharp nodded. “And the staff themselves? Alibis?”
“Nia Jenkins was home all night with her husband and children. Josephine Goddard met up with a friend in a pub across the city around when Viviane was killed, and Rita Jones was home all night. Shares a place with her brother.”
“Was he home?”
“She said he went out to the cinema for a few hours. We’re going to determine when that was, but she offered that up easily.” Sharp didn’t look all that convinced, and her eyes narrowed.
“I spoke to Viviane Charles’s parents,” she told me, walking me to the office.
I winced, grateful to her for taking that off my shoulders. “How did that go?”
“As well as it usually does. I told them to get in touch if need be, but they didn’t seem to have anything new to offer.”
“Any remorse this time?” I muttered under my breath. Sharp caught it and gave me a withering look.
“Hard to tell over the phone,” she stated simply. We stood in the doorway, looking in at Mills, who had shrugged his coat off, removed his tie and now stood at the board, adding bits and pieces of what we had learnt today, tugging his sleeves up to his elbows.
“He means business,” Sharp muttered. “Don’t keep him here too long, Thatcher.” She patted me on the shoulder before striding away. I walked in, pushing the door to, and threw my empty cup away, removing my own coat and joining Mills at the board. He seemed to enjoy himself, plotting out the events of Saturday. So I went to my desk, finding Viviane’s laptop there with a post-it note stuck on top. Wasco had written down the passwords I needed, so I sat down and opened the laptop, rubbing my eyes, ready to get stuck in.
I checked her folders first, finding what looked to be more research akin to the stuff in her flat. Articles on excavations, anthropological debates about repatriation and other complicated-sounding terms. She had a folder for her insurance and rental agreements, a few more financial documents and a copy of her CV, but little else. Shutting all the folders, I went into her contacts and frowned.
“Initials,” I muttered. Mills looked over from where he was perched on a chair, looking at his board.
“Sir?”
“She used initials for her contacts instead of names,” I groaned, dropping my head into my hands. She wasn’t making this easy for us. I heard steps as Mills walked over to my desk, reading over my shoulder.
“M.C.,” he read. “Maya Charles? R.J. Rita Jones.” He leaned over, clicking on R.J., and all that came up was a number, but sure enough, it was the one we had on record for belonging to Rita Jones.
“Bit of a puzzle,” Mills remarked, pulling back.
“You like puzzles,” I said, turning around to look at him. He looked how I felt. Drained, a bit hopeless. Sharp was right. It wasn’t good to keep him here for too long, staring at his board. The last thing I needed was to watch the only good sergeant I’d worked with turn into what’s-his-face from The Shining.
“Well,” Mills pulled his own chair round and grabbed a scrap of paper and a pen, “if we work through all the ones we know, we’ll be left with ones we don’t. Then maybe we cross-reference them with some other things of hers, see what we can narrow down.”
“Sounds exhausting,” I told him. But he seemed to perk up slightly, jotting down the ones we knew, checking the numbers to see if they correlated. No email addresses, I noted. Nothing to make our lives a little bit easier.
We noted her parents and Rita. Josephine and Nia, and the number for her doctors. All the rest were strangers.
“Could be anyone,” I groaned, leaning back in my chair. “Anyone! Old school friends, exes, old co-workers.”
“Other than calling every single one of them,” Mills muttered, putting his pen down. “I don’t know how else to go through this.”
“We can check her records again and her emails. See if there have been any recent communications there.”
“I’ll fetch us some tea,” Mills decided, wheeling away from the desk and hopping up.
I closed my eyes for a moment, pinching the bridge of my nose. I needed to do something. Actually, get up and physically do something. Maybe I’d head to the coaching house tonight, try to get a few floorboards nailed down. I could take Mills with me, give him the chance to clamber out of his own head. He’d work more, if I sent him home, as I knew I would if I went home myself.
I sat back up, opening my eyes as I pulled Viviane’s emails open. I was slightly blown away to find them in a state of chaos. Viviane seemed organised, careful. Everything labelled, everything where she kept it. If not in her flat, then certainly in her records. But her emails were several unread hundreds of messages and promotions from websites. Everything from clothing stores, the charities she supported, expired offers, reminders, January sales from last year. Sorting through these would be fun.
I started sifting through them, noting down any names or contacts that didn’t seem to offer sales or asking for more donations, startled as my phone rang. I answered it without looking, pressing it between my ear and shoulder as Mills returned, sliding a mug of tea my way.
“Thatcher,” I called.
“Inspector? It’s Dr Dorland. Liene.” I froze, almost dropping my phone as I turned to the window, holding it properly against my ear.
“Liene. Hello.” I could feel Mills smirking at me. “How can I help?”
“Well, I did a little digging into that antique you’re looking for. There were a few markings in the image that I took note of.” She sounded excited, and I couldn’t help but smile slightly. “If it’s the real deal, then it’s one out of only ten ever made. Mid 1800s Romanticism. The artist was a young man from Bath who spent a lot of time in Paris. Made all sorts of things, but his music boxes were very sought after.”
“Romanticism,” I repeated. “Like Byron?”
“Like Byron,” she confirmed. “It’s one of those pieces that a historian and an art dealer might squabble over a bit. If it’s real,” her voice lowered, almost whispered into the phone, “we’re looking at a lot of money. It’s rare, Inspector.”
“Is it something a person might kill for?” I asked.
She was quiet for a second. “Yes,” she answered firmly. “It is.”
Twelve
Mills
Once Thatcher hung up the phone from Dr Dorland, with a slight blush on his face that I decided not to mention, we put out word to keep tabs on the antique markets in case any sign of our music box cropped up. Thatcher had made a start on sifting through Viviane’s emails, but it would be a while before we found anything of particular use in there and in all honesty, it was difficult to concentrate.
I kept thinking about Viviane, about the man she had met, about the stolen music box from her flat. Had she known it was gone? And where had she even gotten it from, and where, in all of this, did that money fi
t in? I wondered if she was trading under the table. Maybe the music box had been a sale that went badly. Maybe that’s why the records on it were gone, too. But why kill her in the museum? Why take that risk of being seen? Our suspects and our motive didn’t line up, and it was getting to me. It was getting to Thatcher too, who’d taken to pacing around the office, occasionally stopping to stare at the board with his arms folded.
We’d paused for lunch, caught up with Smith, who had nothing much to share with us and had worked on confirming Viviane’s co-worker’s alibis, which had turned stale quickly. Nia’s husband confirmed she was home all night, but we had yet to hear back from the friend Josephine Goddard was said to have met, or from Rita’s brother. Either one of them had access, knew the layout of the house, knew about the cameras and their blind spots. But neither of them had a motive, not as far as we could tell. If Viviane’s death was to do with her involvement with antiques, to do with the music box and the dangerous market she could have gotten caught up in, then her colleagues at the museum didn’t seem in any way likely.
I was trying to make sense of it, trying and slightly failing. Thatcher was compiling a list, finding names in the emails that could be Viviane’s initials contacts, but it was slow, it was time-wasting, and with every scroll of the mouse, Thatcher grew tenser, the crease between his brows deepening and every breath he took was stiff and tight. I thought it was probably best to take his mind away for a bit before he did something stupid, like punching the laptop or throwing the blasted thing out the window, as he had threatened to do earlier when he hit the wrong thing and got logged out. Thankfully, Sharp appeared, sticking her head in the door with her coat draped over one arm.
“Go home,” she ordered. “Get some rest.” Thatcher gave her a lifeless wave from his desk, and she rolled her eyes at him, smiled at me, and turned away. I sighed, pulling my sleeves back down and pulled my coat on as Thatcher finally turned the laptop off and stretched backwards like a cat.
DCI Thatcher Yorkshire Crime Thrillers: Books 1-3 Page 60
