“It’s heavy.” Fry panted, bending down to it. “But probably wool.” She checked the label. “Wool,” she confirmed with a nod.
I squatted down beside her, feeling through the pockets. They buttoned up, by some miracle, so the contents had not been displaced by the river. I pulled out a set of keys, tossing them back to Mills, the key to his room in the inn from one pocket, then turned to the other. It was empty, and my nerves grew as I searched it.
“Come on,” I muttered, growing annoyed. I reached for the front pocket by the breast of the coat and fumbled with the button, managing to reach inside, grabbing whatever was there. I sat back on my heels, clutching a phone in my hand.
Fry beamed. “Let’s just hope it still works.”
I tried the button, seeing if it would turn on, but no such luck.
“Let’s get this back to Wasco,” I said, handing the phone to Mills, who was ready with an evidence bag to drop it into. “If anyone can salvage something from that, it’s him.”
Fry was still looking over the coat, and she folded back the collar, looking at the inside tag.
“A.R.,” she said, showing me the initials on the label.
“Bag it up and bring it back,” I told her. “Get it to forensics and have them sweep it over for anything, and I mean anything. Hair, blood, DNA, whatever.”
Fry nodded, shoving the coat into the bag and dragged it up. Mills reached forward, giving her hand to lug it over to one of the cars and dumping it in the boot. She jumped into the driver’s seat and peeled away, leaving us behind to wrap everything up here.
It didn’t take long. They had another quick sweep in the river, but there was no sign of anything else, not even the other shoe, so we called them out, letting them change and warm up, plying them with tea in the process. The cold meant they all made fast work of it, and once we called out the others from the perimeter, we packed everything up and got them all back on the road.
Before we left ourselves, Mills and I scoured over the area once more, then climbed into my car. I turned the heaters on full blast, very grateful that I had splurged for seat warmers. Mills leant back against his chair with a sigh as we sat there, waiting for the car to warm up properly.
“We found it then. That’s good. And his keys.”
“Very good,” I agreed, “providing the thing isn’t too dead.”
Mills hummed, scratching his chin. “Nice hat, by the way. Very fetching.”
I was surprised he’d waited this long to make a comment. I’d forgotten I was wearing it, truth be told, and my ears had never been warmer. I’d owed Sally my thanks.
“Sally made it,” I told him. “Her daughters got a few years of lumpy cardigans and jumpers in her lifetime.”
“At least she’s got you to practice on.”
“Tom too,” I said. “You should see the jumper she made him.” I was warm enough now to get going, sliding the car into gear and pulling away from the river, hurtling up the wobbly muddy bank to the road and trailing after the others to the city.
“Good call bringing the tea,” Mills said after a few minutes of silence. “I don’t think you’ve ever been so popular.”
“All your whinging the other day made me think I’d better be more prepared,” I said.
I couldn’t see him as I was focused on the road, but I knew he rolled his eyes at me.
“Fry’s got a good pair of eyes,” Mills said. “Spotting that boot, I can’t believe we didn’t.”
“Maybe we’ve been looking at that river too long,” I said. “We needed a fresh perspective. You’re right, though. She’s a good’un.”
“Good of her to put that map in our office. When did she even do that?”
“No clue, but I’m glad she did. We could have used it the other day.”
“Hindsight’s a beautiful thing.”
“Truer words, Mills, truer words.”
We sat in silence for the rest of the drive, aside from a few random comments about things or people that we passed.
When we got back to the station, I haphazardly parked, jumped out, and headed directly to Wasco. He was there, at his desk, looking like he had been waiting for me.
“I heard the hubbub when Fry came in,” he said, rubbing his hands together. “Word in the herd is that you’ve got something for me.”
Mills caught up with me, and we walked into his office, fishing out the evidence bag and handing it over.
“It’s wet.”
“Keen observation, Wasco,” I said, taking a seat. “Maybe we could use you upstairs.”
“It was in the river,” Mills told him. “But it was in a coat, fairly protected. Think you can get anything from it?”
Wasco slid the phone from the bag and turned it over, prying off the back. “Where there’s a will, there’s a way. Inside doesn’t look too soggy. I should manage.” He looked up at us. “It’ll be slow going, I think. Bring me his laptop,” he told Mills. “If he was a smart lad, they’ll be synced, and that should help me out a little.”
Mills nodded, turned, and strode from the room.
“He’s an eager beaver, isn’t he?” Wasco said, looking back down at the phone. “Remember the old days when a sergeant could barely work with you for more than a month? You never learnt any of their names.”
“People keep bringing that up,” I muttered. “Why do people keep bringing it up?”
“It’s funny.” Wasco shrugged. “How the times change. How is he, by the way?” he added. “The whole breakup scenario?”
“He’ll be alright,” I said. “I think he’s on the mend faster than he realises.”
“My brother always said that the best way to get over someone—”
“Do I want to hear this?”
“—is to get under someone.”
“No, I didn’t want to hear that.”
“But I’d take my brother’s advice with a grain of salt, to be honest. Man’s a tad barmy.”
Must run in the family.
“Right, well, thank you for that, Wasco. I’ll be sure to let Mills know.”
Wasco just grinned at me, his teeth stark white against his brown skin. “Got all sorts of advice I have, Thatchy boy. Always salt your pasta water.”
“Wasco?” I interrupted him.
“Yes?”
“The phone.”
He nodded, curls falling in his face, and dragged his stool over to the desk, hopping up and bending over the phone. How his back managed to keep him upright was beyond me. Must have a very good chiropractor.
Mills skidded back into the room, handing Wasco the laptop. He barely looked up, focused on the task at hand now, and I rose from the chair I’d claimed and steered Mills back towards the door.
“Give us a shout when you get something, Wasco.”
He gave me a wave, and I shook my head, wandering from the room.
“Fry’s got the coat to forensics,” Mills told me as we stepped outside into the hallway. “So, I suppose we’ll see who finds us something first.”
“Maybe we should have told them that,” I said as we walked to the stairs. “Pitted them against each other, made it a sport.”
“Not sure how Sharp would take to that,” Mills said dryly.
“Me neither. Well, while we wait, I say we grab some food, come back and have another little look through our list of suspects, see what we can drum up.”
Mills checked his watch. “Lunchtime already? The day’s flying past.”
“Isn’t it just? Come on. It’s on me today.” I stopped him from walking up the stairs, steering him back towards the door.
“Think we’ll manage to sit down for longer than ten minutes today?” He asked as we pushed the front doors open.
“Don’t jinx it,” I told him. “We’ll be desk-bound for hours now, pouring over boring information until the sun sets.”
“It’s winter. The sun sets at like four.”
I just tutted at him and hopped back into the car, a little annoyed myself to
be on the move again, but at least this was for food, and until Wasco or forensics found something for us, there wasn’t much we could do anyway, so we might as well enjoy our lunch break, rather than eating limp sandwiches from a vending machine at our desks.
Apparently, that thought occurred to Mills as well, because he sped up and slid into the passenger seat, looking a little cheerier. I was only taking us across the city to the café, but the rain was starting to pick up again, and I got the feeling that if I dragged Mills through the elements a few too many times, I’d end up with him putting in a transfer or something. Or at least, threatening to. I drove away from the station, hoping that by the time we got back, this case would have started going somewhere.
Twenty-Two
Thatcher
The café was busier than usual by the time we got to it. It seemed that the miserable weather had people scuttling indoors to take refuge in the warmth. Agnes, the owner of the café, spotted us the moment we walked in and waved us over to a table in the corner that we could claim. Mills went over, dumping our things there and sprawling out over one of the chairs as I ambled to the counter and got in the short line. It didn’t take long for me to get to the front.
“Inspector Thatcher,” Agnes smiled warmly at me. “Long time, no see. How are things?”
“Fairly well, Agnes, thank you. And yourself?”
“Oh, plodding along, Inspector, as usual. Billie’s on her break,” she told me. “I’ll send her out. What can I get for you?”
I put in our orders and paid, then grabbed our coffees and joined Mills at the table. I’d just pulled my coat off and sat down when Billie emerged from the back room and strolled over, snatching a random chair and dragging it along behind her, swinging it into place between us.
“Hello,” she said, slumping down, clutching a plate of food.
“You alright?” I asked, looking over her pale face and shadowed green eyes, shoulders hunched forward.
She nodded, pushing her food around with a fork. “Just tired.” I strongly doubted that was all there was to it, but I didn’t pester her.
“What have you been up to?” She asked us.
“Working.”
“The dead soldier? I heard about him on the news.”
I nodded. “That’s the one.” She made a face and didn’t ask any more questions. Mills and I shared an alarmed look. Normally Billie pestered us for details on the case for hours, refusing to back down.
Mills gave me a look, then rose from his chair and headed over to the counter to talk to Agnes for a bit. I reached out, giving Billie a nudge.
“What’s up?”
She shrugged. “Just, stuff. Stella,” she admitted glumly. Ah. I sat there, a little awkwardly, not sure quite what to do. My instinct was to hug her, but I wasn’t sure how she’d take that, so I settled with giving her hand a light squeeze.
“You want to talk about it?”
“Not really. I’m seeing Dr Kumar tomorrow, though.”
“That’ll be good. Here, if we get this case wrapped up by the weekend, you want to come and see Sally’s baby with me?”
Billie lifted her head, a little light in her eyes. “Sure. Babies are cute.”
“When they’re not vomiting and pooping, very cute.”
Billie scowled at me. “I’m eating.”
“You’re not. You’re messing with your plate.”
She gave me a fixed look, skewering a piece of pasta and ate it purposefully. I held in my smug smirk, and a moment later, Mills was back, handing me my plate of food and sliding into his chair with his own.
“So, how did he die?” Billie asked.
“None of your business.”
“You’re no fun,” she said, turning pleadingly to Mills. “You’ll tell me, won’t you?”
“Nope.”
She sighed. “Why do I bother? The news barely tells us anything,”
“Because we don’t reveal everything to the public, Billie, you know that.”
“Stupid rule,” she muttered. “I could be useful. You never know.”
“Rules are rules, Billie Helman,” I said, picking up my cutlery. “And we’re not going against Sharp. Tell us about you. How are things?”
She chatted a little, but her glum mood didn’t really lift at all, and her break ended not long after. She gave us a weak smile before clearing her stuff away and taking her place behind the counter with Agnes, tying an apron around her waist.
“She alright?” Mills asked.
“Stella,” I answered simply.
He nodded. “Say no more. The case?”
“Back to it. We’re going off the idea that Riggs overheard that conversation when he was back at the inn. Which means it would have been locals who were talking.”
“Farmers,” Mills reminded. “You said it might have been farmers.”
“Yes. Or the inn itself?”
Mills frowned. “They love the baroness, remember? I don’t think they’d want to be rid of her.”
“The baroness, yes, but what about Sara Graham? If Teddy dies, then the whole estate goes to Sara, which might not sit well with people who like the way that things are run there. They could be worried, same as the baroness, that she’ll change things too much, ruin them.”
“They mentioned saving the business,” Mills recalled. “Remember what the baroness said when we first met? About how closing the inn would be a bad idea?”
I nodded, chewing my mouthful of food. “Similar attitudes. If they’ve heard how bad Teddy’s gotten, the likelihood of Sara being the one to take over, maybe they felt the need to act on it.”
“Over the inn?” Mills asked. “I know that they’re fond of the place, but you have to admit it seems like a rash reaction.”
That was true, but I knew villages like those, in a way that Mills never would. I had one of my own, my own inn, the coaching house. When my grandparents had died, when I’d inherited the place, unsure of what to do with it, I’d contemplated selling it. Even over the last few years, I’d been unsure of what to do when the renovations were complete.
When the locals had caught wind of my thinking of selling, courtesy of Elsie, it had gone down like a lead balloon. The village council had been on the case, sitting with me and talking about the bones of the community and all that. They hadn’t swayed me much. It had been my mother’s death that had done that and then working on the coaching house since with Liene, Billie, and Elsie. But the fear was there. More than anger or annoyance, they had been scared that a place that had once been so vital to the village would be taken away, knocked down, intruded upon.
Slow, slightly backwards thinking? Sure. But that was how it was. If it looked like the inn, or indeed, the whole estate could be lost to the people of the village to someone they neither knew well nor loved, then a rash reaction was very much possible.
But if they had wanted to hurt Sara, why wasn’t she hurt? She’d been in the inn for hours before Riggs got back, they all would have had access to her room, but she was fine, completely unharmed. It didn’t really make sense, and to be honest, I still couldn’t quite wrap my head around it.
But I thought about what Sharp had said, the order and warning she had issued. We had an actual murder on our plate that needed solving, rather than trying to unpick the mystery of someone who was wanted dead but actually wasn’t dead.
“Whoever Riggs overheard was likely one of the ones who killed him,” I said, quietly enough that we weren’t overheard in the quiet murmur of the café around us. “We need to figure out who was having that conversation.”
“There were people coming and going,” Mills reminded me. “We don’t know when he heard that conversation, so we can’t know for sure who was in the building at the time and who wasn’t.”
True, irritatingly true. If Wasco could get into Riggs’s phone, then there was a chance we could narrow down our window of time, but that was a very strong “if”. We were putting a lot of hope and energy into if’s and maybe’s
, and whilst they usually served us very well on cases, they would be enough to convict a person, enough to bring justice for Alexander and his family.
“He was a big guy,” Mills started saying. “And in the army, so it’s safe to presume he was trained.”
I nodded for him to continue, digging into the remnants of my lunch as he spoke. He’d already finished, cutlery on the plate, hands propped together over the top.
“So, whoever killed him would have been strong enough to do it with one blow, then strong enough to get him to the river.”
“There was a man, according to Riggs.”
“More than one person,” Mills said. “A group effort?”
“Likely. But they must have taken Riggs by surprise, catching him off guard, his back to them. A group of people would have been easier to spot. I think one person took him out, and then maybe the pair of them worked together to get him to the river.”
I thought about the staff from the inn we had spoken to. The old man, I ruled out, despite his access to gardening equipment. The cook was possible, as was Helen. Daisy, I wasn’t sure. The girl was strong but strong enough to kill a man with one blow? I doubted it but didn’t rule her out.
“Farmers are usually strong,” Mills pointed out.
Also, true. Jim had been a wiry lad, but he’d be used to handling equipment and animals, any of the farmers there would be. We did know that he had been at the inn, knew that his farm had a view of the building and wasn’t a huge leap away from the river.
But he had come to us, tracked us down that day in the village, taken us to his farm and showed us what he had seen. It wasn’t exactly the style of a guilty man unless he was smart and relying on the double bluff, but otherwise, we probably wouldn’t have really learnt about Jim. He’d done us a favour, gotten us closer to the end goal if anything. But he didn’t run that farm alone, and there was the other one, the one that Teddy Flitting had told us about.
“You know what is odd,” Mills began.
“What’s that?”
“If Teddy did die and Sara wasn’t here, who would the estate go to?”
I shrugged. “Some distantly related cousin or something, most likely. Or it would just be divvied up amongst the tenants.”
Buried With Honours: A DCI Thatcher Yorkshire Crime Thriller Page 18