Blood Ties

by Oliver Davies

  ‘Please tell me one of you saw something,’ I asked them in a voice considerably kinder and gentler than the one I had been addressing the family with. They exchanged a look between them and Maud, apparently their chosen spokeswoman, took a step forward.

  “I’m sorry, Inspector,” she offered kindly, “we haven’t.”

  “Where have you all been this morning?” I asked wearily.

  “I have been upstairs mostly,” she said proudly, “helping Eloise get the children ready for the day, tidying up their nursery and such like.”

  “Daria?” I turned my attention to her.

  “Kitchen,” she answered, “helping Ellen clean up after breakfast.”

  “One of them always helps cook,” Dennis informed me. “They take turns.” I studied Daria’s flushed skin and attributed it to the heat of a kitchen and focused on Lara.

  “Lara? Where have you been this morning?”

  She glanced almost imperceptibly towards Rupert before looking back at me. “Sweeping the fireplaces mostly,” she indicated her ash bedraggled self, “laying them again for later this evening. And cleaning up the dining room.”

  “Has anyone been by the house?” I inquired. “Have there been any deliveries?”

  “Only the usual ones,” Maud informed me, “milk and eggs from the farm up the lane.”

  “A package for Master Hocking,” Daria added, her eyes flicking to Rupert who nodded happily.

  “My new ski coat,” he announced.

  “Surely you don’t need a new one?” Rose scolded him. “You go through them like sweets, Rupert.”

  “Just because you’ve never been invited.”

  “Why would I want to be invited? You and your friends are awful company.”

  “Oh yes,” he drawled, “far better to spend my life in this fire hazard of a house doing jigsaws with father.”

  “Which is better than getting drunk in the Alps and almost being escorted from a ski slope by the French police!”

  “Children,” Lady Hocking snapped. They both shut their mouths and slumped back down where they sat, glaring at each other across the room. Lady Hocking looked furious at them, but behind her, where she couldn’t see, Lord Hocking was suppressing a smirk, his eyes flushed with amusement as he looked from one of his children to the other.

  “Please carry on,” I said to the maids after a drawn-out pause ran through the room.

  “There was a girl,” Lara said, “one of the wait staff from the party. A few things got left behind and she came to collect them. She drove into the yard, I put the things in the boot, and she left again.”

  “Must have been her!” Lady Hocking cried out. “She was there the night the painting got stolen in the first place!”

  But Lara kept looking at me, and I gave her another encouraging nod.

  “She never got out of her car, Inspector.”

  “Do you know who it was? Did she give a name?”

  Lara shook her head. Since she was new, I doubted she knew any of the hired staff by name, anyway.

  “Inspector,” Dennis called my attention and nodded to the window. Cars pulled up onto the drive and the familiar, hectic figure of Dr Crowe stumbled from one of them, half dressed in her white suit, curls of hair pinging from her head like corkscrews.

  “Please excuse us,” I said to the family, stepping out of the door. I left it open as Smith came up the stairs, her eyes homing in on the bloody picture.

  “Bugger,” she murmured, “waste of paper.”

  Mills laughed quietly, and I held the door open for her.

  “Take some official statements, please, Smith,” I asked. Normally I might not bother, but Sharp was breathing down our necks enough as it was about doing things properly. Smith straightened her uniform and ducked underneath my arm, her shoes clicking on the floor. A few more uniformed officers followed her, and I closed the door, leaning against it as Dr Crowe zipped herself up and bounded up the stairs.

  “Vindicta,” she read aloud, “revenge.”

  “Of course, you speak Latin,” I observed.

  “I am very wise,” she replied, squatting down and held out her hand. One of her team passed her a bag and Mills and I left her to it, strolling over towards one of the cars and looked back at the house.

  “Turn for the books,” he said.

  “Risky, doing it whilst we were here. Revenge,” I repeated, scratching my jaw, “we’ve got a fairly decent idea as to who might want revenge against Lord Hocking.”

  “Is it worth mentioning to him? That we’re looking for the child.”

  I considered this, staring at the house, but shook my head. There were too many unknown variables, and whilst the child in question might be a thief, they might also be unaware, innocent. And I wasn’t dragging them into all of this if I didn’t need to.

  “What did the groundskeeper tell you?” I asked him instead.

  “Says there are a few ways in and out of the estate, but if you were coming from the house and with a painting, he said some would be easier than others. To navigate the woods,” Mills told me. “You’d have to be familiar with them. According to the groundskeeper only himself and Rose Hocking are familiar enough with the woods to do that. Otherwise, it’s the driveway, or down and out along the fields.”

  “Lots of cars coming and going that night,” I mentioned, “easy enough to blend in with the rest.”

  “You’d probably need a nice car,” Mills pointed out.

  “We’re in the countryside. A Land Rover would suffice.”

  “You made a face,” Mills commented, “when I mentioned Rose.”

  “She was out in the woods before that,” I pointed over my shoulder, “was found.”

  “Why would she do it?”

  “I have not a single bloody clue.”

  “Well, let’s hope Crowe finds us one.”

  Fifteen

  Thatcher

  With the family unable to offer much more in the way of help, Mills and I left them with two uniformed officers keeping watch on the house and followed Dr Crowe back to the station.

  We hovered around, chatting to Sharp and Smith, trying to keep the media at bay with this particular advancement. Dennis sent over the footage from the security cameras, and as we waited for Crowe to analyse her nice new blood splatter, Mills and I slumped at a computer, watching the hours trickle by. We watched as we pulled up to the house ourselves, Dennis stepping out from the front door a few minutes beforehand and waited. There was nothing, I hated to say it, shifty in his manner. He simply stood and waited patiently, occasionally checking his watch. We arrived and went inside. The screen stayed the same, the minute ticking past and then a car pulled up and around, heading back towards the yard.

  “Pause it,” I told Mills.

  Leaning forward, squinting at the blurred image, I took a note of the number plate. I could just about make out a person in the car, and only one. They drove round the back, and as they slipped around the corner, a figure came from behind the camera. Mills and I sat forward as the hooded figure loped up the stairs, quickly dropped something down, dug into their pocket and pulled out a small bottle or vial, dipped their gloved finger in and scrawled on the wall, poured the rest over the photograph and scurried down the stairs. They were dressed head to toe in dark, plain clothing, hooded and shadowed. Nothing to give away who it was, not even a shape to determine if we were dealing with a man or a woman. A few minutes after they left, the car reappeared and drove straight away. Pausing it again, I could make out Nadia’s face in the driver’s seat, nobody else in the car.

  I sat back, toying with a pen. “Send it to Wasco,” I told Mills, “see if he can’t get a clearer image.”

  Shortly after, Dr Crowe called up and as expected, there were no fingerprints and it seemed that blood had once belonged to a pig.

  “But,” she had added happily, “a hair. Got a bit stuck in the glue used to stick the photo to the card.”

  “Any matches?”

 
“No.”

  I dropped by head in my hands, letting a slew of curse words drop out. This was a slow-going affair.

  That night, I headed to the coaching house, playing music and plastering wildly until my thoughts finally scurried away where they couldn’t bother me anymore.

  I trudged into the station the following morning, tired and aching. There was plaster in my hair that I hadn’t managed to get out and wondered if paint stripper would be too extreme. As I headed up the stairs, I found Sharp waiting for me.

  “You look awful,” she remarked.

  “Thank you, ma’am.”

  “Clean yourself up, you’ve got somewhere to be.” She sounded surprisingly cheerful, and I looked up, meeting her gaze properly. She was indeed, smirking at me.

  “Where?”

  She pulled out a scrap of paper from her pocket, an address and a name scribbled on the front. “The orphaned son of Selene Whitlock,” she announced, handing me the slip.

  “You found him?”

  “He goes back to the foster home from time to time,” she told me, “but if you want a birth certificate, you must wait a bit longer.”

  “No, no.” I leapt forward, clapping her arm gratefully and looked down at the slip of paper. He lived here, in the city, on the other side of the river. Sebastian Whitlock. “I’ll go now,” I decided, scratching my head.

  “Clean yourself up,” she repeated. “Think about what you’re about to do here, Thatcher. You’re going to a boy to ask about the father he never met.”

  I wanted to go now; I was itching to go now. But what she said made sense, and the voice she said it in left no room for argument. So, I headed to the bathroom and splashed my face with cold water, scrubbing at my head with soap until the plaster flaked out and then dried my head under the hand dryer. At one point someone wandered in, looked at me, and quickly wandered out again.

  Feeling a bit fresher, I fixed my shirt, and without any tie threw on a jumper and my coat, raking my slightly damp hair back from my face before charging back out towards the steps. Sharp still loitered there, looking me over and giving me an approving nod.

  “I’ll tell Mills where you’ve gone. He and Wasco are going to look over the footage some more and track down that car of yours.”

  “Thank you, ma’am.”

  She gave me a wry smile. “Get out, off you go.”

  I touched her shoulder as I darted down the stairs, out into the street and into my car. It was a short drive, no more than ten minutes and I ended up outside a modest little house, two up two down, with a nice enough front lawn and rickety little car. I felt sorry for the lad, if he had no idea who his father could be, but there was every possibility that he knew very well indeed.

  I inhaled deeply and stepped forward, ringing the bell and waited a beat. When the door opened, I was faced with a man who looked like a rougher, darker version of Henry Hocking. He had the same bone structure in the face, same round cheeks and upturned nose. His hair was dark, his eyes brown, but he was a Hocking, that much was clear to me.

  “Hello?”

  “Sebastian Whitlock?” I asked.

  “Yes,” he replied hesitantly. I pulled out my warrant card and held it aloft.

  “Detective Inspector Thatcher, North Yorkshire Police. Might I borrow a minute or two of your time?”

  “Can I ask what this is about?”

  “Hocking Estate,” I answered simply. His breath caught and his eyes widened, understanding clear on his face. It vanished into a grimace and a sigh, and he gave a reluctant jerk of the head, opening the door to let me in.

  The house was as simple inside as it was outside, like an Ikea catalogue of basic furniture with the occasional artwork making it more homely.

  He showed me up the hallway to the open-plan kitchen and living room,

  “Tea?” he asked, already setting to fill the kettle.

  “Please,” I replied, letting him busy himself. I waited quietly, sitting at the table as he filled the kettle with water and set it to boil, popping tea bags into mugs. He kept his back to me as he waited, his shoulders tight, hands gripping the surface with white knuckles. I kept quiet, looking around the 70s style house, the collection of books on the shelf, the admirable collection of DVDs by the television and the scattering of photographs. Only one was close enough to see; of him as a child in the arms of a very beautiful woman whose eyes and hair he shared. Selene Whitlock.

  He slid a cup of tea over. “Sugar?”

  “No, thank you.”

  He gave a nod and sat down, cradling his mug. “So,” he began slowly, “you know who I am?”

  “I know you’re the son of Selene Whitlock,” I answered. “I don’t know who your father is.”

  He laughed humorlessly. “That makes two of us. But you know,” he met my gaze, “who the candidates are?”

  I nodded, and he seemed to relax a little, slumping down in his chair.

  “Why?” he asked simply. A small word, a lot of questions. Why was I here? Why did I know?

  “I’m investigating the robbery of a painting from the Hocking estate,” I told him, “a very important painting to the Lord of the estate. One that your mother I am told was very fond of.”

  Sebastian let out a long sigh through his nostrils, glancing at the photograph on the dresser. “Sebastian Hocking Whitlock,” he said, “not that I ever use the whole thing.”

  “You knew it was one of them?”

  He nodded sadly. “She never did say who. Sometimes I wonder if she even knew.”

  “But you never cared to find out?”

  He looked up sharply. “Why should I? They never bothered to, did they? Why would they? They’ve got proper families now. They didn’t help her. D’you know how many jobs she had to have?” His tone grew bitter. “How much work she had to do, how much she had to scrimp and save and starve just to raise me? Just to keep me?”

  “More than she should have,” I answered. His expression softened in my direction, hopefully realising I was more his sort of person than theirs.

  “She died, without anything. And I went into a strange home, into the foster system.” He drank his tea.

  “You have good reason to be angry at them,” I told him. “All I want to find out is how angry you are.”

  He looked back at me. “I want nothing to do with them,” he said slowly, evenly, “nothing at all. Not even a stupid painting.”

  “Can I ask where you were, the evening of the eleventh?”

  “Parents evening,” he told me. “I’m a teacher at a primary school.” They were on half term now, most of them. That was lucky timing. “Last one before we broke up. I was there till after eight, helping to clean up. And was home by nine. Stayed in.”

  “Can anyone vouch for you?”

  “The school,” he answered, “but I live alone. Unless you want to ask the pigeon that steals all the food I put outside.”

  “How much easier my job would be if pigeons could confirm alibis,” I joked.

  He grinned. “My neighbour saw me in the morning. Next door on the right. I bumped into him when I picked up the milk. Around six, if that’s any help.”

  It wasn’t really, but I nodded all the same. “What about yesterday morning?” I asked.

  “Here,” he gestured around, “trying to get some lesson plans done so that I can enjoy the next few days.”

  “Again, can anyone vouch for that?”

  “I had a friend over for a brew,” he said. “She came at around eleven. I can pass on her details.” He pulled out his phone and a scrap piece of paper, copying her name and number down. I took it, sticking it in my pocket.

  “Do they know?” he asked me quietly. “About me?”

  “They know you exist,” I told him, “but they don’t know who you are. One of them tried to find out, but no luck.”

  He shook his head. “She wouldn’t have wanted them to know, I don’t think. At first maybe, but as the years went by,” he shrugged his bony shoulders, “she sa
id we only needed each other.”

  I studied his face, so conflicted in emotions and couldn’t help but feel sorry for him. “My mother raised me,” I told him, “with my grandparents, granted. But my father was never in the picture.”

  “Did you ever meet him?”

  “Only once. At her funeral,” I recalled darkly. “Called him a bastard, punched him in the face and never saw him again.” I took a sip of tea, smirking slightly at the memory. Still had the faint scars on my knuckles if I angled them right.

  Sebastian smiled too. “I don’t think I’m the man you’re looking for,” he said, “however angry at them I am. However, much I blame them for what happened to her,” he gave a slow shake of the head, “what would I get from it?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to figure out, Mr Whitlock. Someone’s getting something from it. What do you teach?” I asked him abruptly.

  “History,” he said proudly, “year eight.”

  “A good subject,” I acknowledged, “I imagine you pick up all sorts,” I thought of Mills and his bizarre collection of facts. “Probably random bits of Greek and Latin, eh?” I took another sip of tea.

  Sebastian angled his head, curiously. “Here and there. Inscriptions,” he said, “on tombs and documents.”

  “Any local history?” I asked. “Around the war or anything?”

  “The war yes, but nothing local really. I’m afraid most of my students are only interested in Henry the Eighth and all his blooming wives.”

  “Isn’t everyone?” I remarked. “Mr Whitlock. Did your mother ever talk about her time at the estate? About the painting or the land, itself?”

  “A little,” he said, “but not often. She said she missed the lake sometimes, missed the early mornings there. Missed the other maids, too and the steady pay-check.”