Blood Ties

by Oliver Davies

  “It’s the stuff we do for family,” he replied simply, handing me a great stack of books. I glanced down at them, the muscles in my arms protesting at the sudden weight.

  “It might take me awhile to get through these,” I remarked.

  “That’s alright. Take all the time you want. She won’t mind.”

  “She won’t?” I double checked.

  “So long nothing gets spilled on them, and they don’t get ripped or dented or anything,” he shrugged. “It’ll be fine.”

  “Won’t happen in my home,” I assured him. “Books are very well looked after there.”

  He looked dubious. “I’ve seen your filing system, sir. And I know you dog ear pages.”

  “There is nothing,” I defended myself, awkwardly balancing the books, “nothing wrong with dog earing a page in my own book. A library book, no. But mine? Who cares? It’s not like I lend them out.”

  “Not to anyone?” he asked, amused.

  “Well, two or three folks, I suppose.”

  Exactly three, in fact. The first being Sally who was worse with her books than me. And Jeannie, who I didn’t so much as lend them to as much as she just sort of left with them. They made their way eventually. And the only other person who borrowed a book was my friend Mike, who honestly couldn't care less. I was silently striking Mills off my list of potential borrowers, if I’d have to go through this discussion every time.

  “Two or three?” he repeated. “That’s all of your friends, sir. I’m impressed.”

  I tried to point a finger at him. “Don’t push your luck, Mills. I hear they need a sergeant in Grimsby.”

  He rolled his eyes and started for the front door. “You wouldn’t. Sharp would have your head. She’d send you to a new station or give you a promotion,” he added menacingly.

  I grimaced at the very thought.

  Mills opened the door for me and helped me to the car where I carefully set the books down in the boot alongside some equipment from the coaching house, an itchy blanket and a fishing rod. I needed to sort that lot out. A job for the weekend, so long as nothing else got stolen or nobody got stabbed.

  He gave me a quick wave from the door as I drove away from his house, making my way through the slowly darkening city to home. Streetlights flickered on, the spring evenings still too dark and groups of people still roamed the streets. Men in suits heading home from work, night shift people only just emerging from their homes. Young girls and boys, moving in packs to the nearest pubs, tugging off ties and letting their hair down. There was a time I’d be there myself, down the Bell, chatting to Paul. But there always seemed to be more important things going on now.

  I got home and jumped out the car as the neighbouring door swung open and my landlady trotted out, helping me carry the books upstairs and into the house. She followed me in, fussing over the mess, picking things up and folding them as I set the books down on the coffee table. I turned to finding her holding a blanket, staring at me.

  “What is it?”

  “Working again?” she asked, her lips pursed, soft green eyes filled with sternness. She’d been watching from the window again, I realised. Sometimes I wondered if she and Elsie had a conspiracy going.

  “Not necessarily,” I countered, taking the blanket from her, “maybe I have a new hobby.”

  She laughed in my face. “When you take a new hobby that has nothing to do with your work I shall run down the street in my great-nieces fairy costume, singing God Save the Queen and playing the bagpipes.”

  “That’s quite the image,” I told her, looking over her white curls and wrinkled skin. “You might have to start practising now you know. Bagpipes are a tricky instrument to master.”

  “I can already play the bagpipes,” she told me proudly. “My husband taught me. Played for a living, he did. He was Scottish.”

  “Really, Mrs McIntosh, was he?”

  “Save your sarcasm, boy. What’s all this for?” She indicated the books, plonking herself down on a chair. I didn’t argue, Mrs McIntosh was a good woman and whenever she got lonely she popped over for tea or to give me a life lesson. I didn’t have it in my heart to send her away.

  “A missing painting,” I told her, “I’m wondering why someone would steal one, but not sell it.”

  “Everything has its own value, Max,” she told me sagely.

  “I know. I’m hoping to find something that can find me a thief.”

  “From a painting?” She sounded dubious.

  “Yes, from a painting.”

  She shook her head. “The way your mind works, Max Thatcher, I’ll never understand. And this lot is meant to help you do that?”

  “That’s the hope. Maybe they’ll know something that I don’t, something useful.”

  “Well, then. I’ll not keep you,” she said, rising from the chair.

  “You can stay,” I assured her quickly, “if you want to. You’re always welcome, Mrs McIntosh.”

  She smiled at me and pinched my cheek. “Some other time, lad. Some other time.” She shuffled outside, going down the front steps and up the ones directly next door. I could hear her through the walls sometimes, she liked to play Queen on Sunday mornings, loudly, singing along.

  After fetching myself some dinner, eating it at the kitchen table to avoid getting anything on the books, I had a shower and changed, collapsing onto the sofa with a drink in hand and pulled the first book towards me.

  I opened it onto Mills’s notes; pieces of paper jammed in between the pages, post-it notes pointing to specific paragraphs of words. I started with Brynmor Ragsdale, finding nothing more interesting about him that Mills had not already told me. A short, somewhat sad life that ended as most lives ended back then, struck short by war, unfairly and suddenly.

  I skimmed through pages about oil paintings and old masters, Pre Raphaelites and royal portrait artists and ended up looking at a skull, painted onto a portrait that, apparently, symbolised death. A common occurrence it seemed, and I remember Mills saying as such. Artists left things in their work, an allusion to something, an image of themselves, letters or numbers of words that held some hidden meaning. And then I remembered Da Vinci. Not the mad himself, naturally, but the book and the film, Tom Hanks. Hidden meanings, hidden clues. All painted into the backgrounds and reflections, smuggled amongst crowds, in shapes. I flicked through to find Michelangelo, the shape of the human brain on the Sistine Chapel.

  Without Ragsdale’s painting, it was impossible for me to know if he had hidden something in the background. Perhaps some figure or cryptic meaning painted onto the house or the lake. But why take it? I wondered. Why bother with all of it and how on earth did it have anything to do with Selene Whitlock and the brothers?

  They took the whole thing, frame and all.

  The frame.

  I stood up, almost knocking over the table with my knee in the process and strode over to my mantlepiece. I’d put out the photographs, after all this time, but I couldn’t remember where. I scanned the dressers and the walls, looking for it, delved into some older boxes and sat back on my haunches, annoyed.

  It was here, I knew it was. I had taken it from the coaching house with everything else, wrapped it up in an old newspaper. Standing up, I went into my bedroom and opened the wardrobe, pulling out an ancient leather bag that had belonged to my grandfather during the war and heaved it out onto the bed. Inside were mostly his belongings. His medals that I really ought to frame, his and grandmothers’ weddings rings that had been left to me and might bury with me, silver spoon from his Christening and one from mine. An early photograph of the coaching house when he first bought it, still youthful, his hair still dark, stood beneath the oak tree with grandmother. Their faces were blurry now, the photograph itself tinged brown with age. I placed delicately aside and reached my hand into the bag again, feeling for the wrapped rectangle, and found it.

  I pulled it from the bag and took off the string, carefully unfolding the newspaper wrapping. It was one photograph t
hat I had not looked at for years. Not since she died. I sat on the bed, holding it in my hands. It was worse than one on my desk in the station, worse than ones I had put up all around the house.

  It was of the two of us, when I must have been around twelve. We were sitting outside Elsie’s house in the garden, it had snowed, and we’d built her a snowman using her husbands’ old hat and pipe. The photo itself was lovely, we were both staring at the camera with huge grins, bundled in scarves and mittens. That was not why I kept it away. I kept it because it was her favourite picture, the one she’d used.

  I flipped the photograph over, carefully pulling away the backing of the frame. On the other side of the photograph, she’d left a note. In her curling, sprawling handwriting, slightly shaky and smudged she’d written in, on her last day.

  This is how I remember us. This is how you will too.

  That was why I kept it wrapped up, kept it in grandad’s old bag in the top of my wardrobe. Those few words that I hadn’t deserved to be given, but she had given me, anyway.

  I wiped at my damp eyes with my sleeve and sniffed loudly, replacing the frame and took the picture downstairs, propping it on the coffee table. I hadn’t gone in search of it for the memories, not really. But for what she’d done. A picture she knew I loved, a picture we both loved. And she’d hidden something inside it, a note for me to find, a message for later on. Tucked away behind the frame.

  I reached for the phone, calling Mills and cleared my throat a few times before he answered.

  “Sir,” his voice came through, slightly muffled and I glanced at the clock.

  “Too late to be calling, Mills?”

  “No, sir,” I heard him rustling about, “what is it?”

  “I think I know why our thief took the whole painting. What if there was something hidden behind it, not in the painting itself, but in the frame?”

  “Like a letter?” he asked, his voice getting stronger and clearer.

  “Like a letter.”

  “From Selene,” he was thinking aloud again, his mouth trying to keep up with his brain, “maybe a letter for Lord Hocking, a letter about Sebastian.”

  “Maybe she wanted to tell him who the father was, tell him about Sebastian.”

  “But someone didn’t want him to find the letter?” Mills questioned.

  “What are the odds he’d ever find it?” I asked. “More likely is, they wanted to find it. Wanted the contents of it to use for themselves.”

  “Against the Lord?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Would explain a lot,” he muttered. I could picture him up and about, staring out of a window or something, one hand curled around the back of his neck. “Why they took that one, why it hasn’t been sold.”

  “Why nothing’s happened yet. Remember what Harrer said?” I asked. “Those older paintings need a professional hand. You can’t just pop the frame on and off.”

  “Explains why nothing much has happened at all. Save the threatening note on the doorstep.”

  “I think you were right about that one,” I told him. “It was placed there to keep them on their toes.”

  “Vindicta,” he recited. “They want revenge, and they want to use Selene to do it.”

  My mind whirled back to Sebastian. When I met him, I couldn’t imagine him being the one behind this, but maybe that initial hunch was right. Maybe Richard still wanted revenge and wanted that last letter from Selene to achieve it. Or indeed, the butler, who would have known Selene, who might have even known that she left something behind in the painting.

  “Would anyone know if she left something there?” Mills asked.

  “Dennis, perhaps,” I said, “maybe Maud.”

  “She didn’t say as much.”

  “No. But I don’t think there’s anything vindictive about that.”

  “What about the Hocking children?” he asked. “What we talked about before? Them learning about Selene and Sebastian. Maybe they took the painting to find what could be a shred of proof. And now they want revenge for being lied to.”

  “Speculation,” I murmured. “Until we know what was so special about that painting to Selene, it’s all we have. But it might be worth going back to the estate, seeing if anyone has anything more they’d like to offer about what happened back then or since.” Since Maud had stayed in contact with Selene, had helped her with Sebastian, maybe somebody else did too, and wanted to help look after her in any way they could.

  “Should we bring up Sebastian to the other children?” Mills asked hesitantly. “Try to gauge their reaction?”

  “If they don’t know, we’d be throwing a bit of a grenade into the family,” I pointed out.

  “But if they already know…?” Mills trailed off suggestively. “It might help. Once the secret is out there, they might be more willing to talk about it.”

  “Leave it for now,” I told him. “We’ll go over it again tomorrow at the station with Sharp. For now, get some rest. Enjoy your evening.”

  “Will do, sir. How did you guess about something being inside the frame?” Mills asked suddenly. “It’s brilliant, I wouldn’t have thought of it.”

  “I’ve seen it before,” I told him, slightly annoyed that it had taken me this long to consider it. I looked at the photograph in front of me on the table. “Good night, Mills.”

  “Good night, sir.”

  Eighteen

  Thatcher

  It was raining again, dribbling from the sky like sweat down a middle-aged man’s back. The sort of rain that didn’t really get you wet or leave puddles, just left everything slightly damp and sticky. Humid; the worst kind of rain. Meant that storms were due though, Dr Crowe always reminded me on days like this.

  Mills and I headed into the station early, hoping to catch Sharp before she was greeted by the usual torrent of messages and emails that greeted her every morning and ruined her otherwise, not unfriendly, temper. I liked the city at this hour, when everything was slowly waking up, only a few stragglers on the roads, making the most of light traffic and empty pavements. The sunlight was faint through the clouds, but there was enough of it to keep away a chill.

  “Have you thought much more about Sebastian, sir?” Mills asked as we drove.

  “About telling the family about him?” Mills nodded. “I have.” Reluctantly. “We can’t be tiptoeing around this, not if he’s as involved as we think, and certainly not given how much his mother is.” I breathed in deeply, staring out at the passing buildings. “Though I will be sorry to mess up the family like this.”

  “You’re not messing anything up, sir,” Mills replied, sounding surprised. “It’s Lord Hocking and his brother who messed up the family. All you’re doing is telling the truth they should have told years ago.”

  I regarded him, my hand curled under my chin. “You’re awfully moral for someone who studied politics at university.”

  He laughed at that, stopping to let an old man cross the road. “Suppose that’s why I never stuck with it then.”

  “Good,” I told him, “else I’d be stuck with some other sergeant.”

  Mills would have been wasted in politics, maybe he was even wasted here. That brain worked quickly, I envied it at times, but the heart of the man was even better, he wasn’t just here to solve puzzles, not like the rest of us.

  “So, what’s our next approach?” he asked, looking chuffed with the compliment.

  “Give Sharp a rundown,” I answered, “and head back out to the estate. I want to talk to the family and the staff, this time very specifically about Selene and her son. And let’s see if there are any other works of art in that house that she was partial to.”

  “Sir?”

  “Perhaps,” I had been mulling over this last night, “the reason nothing has happened with the painting is that it’s the wrong one.”

  “The wrong one?”

  “They didn’t know for sure where Selene might have left her letter,” if indeed she did, I left unsaid. “Maybe they took the wrong one
?”

  “If that’s the case,” Mills added, “they’ll likely be back.”

  “They already came back,” I reminded him, “only we were there. Weren’t we?”

  “That painting,” Mills started piecing together aloud, “was Lord Hocking’s favourite. But if she wanted to leave a message for Richard Sandow, surely she’d have put it somewhere he would have found it.”

  I turned and looked at him. “You’re quite brilliant sometimes, Mills, especially given the early hour.”

  He grinned. “I woke up early sir. I’ve had time to think.”

  “Then in that case, we’ll be needing a little inventory of the paintings in that house. I want to know which ones are favoured by which family members.”

  “Would Richard Sandow have not simply taken his favourite painting?”

  “I doubt he’d have been allowed,” I pointed out, “places like those have rules. And I’d like to think that if he had, he’d have known about Sebastian by now.”

  “Not if he never swapped the frame.”

  Yes, that was something. They would have had to have had some clue from Selene that she would leave something behind, if she had. We were pinning a lot on this little theory but, and I intended to make as much clear to Sharp when we saw her, I felt right about it. We were on the right path. I knew it, could feel it in my gut.

  We arrived to a fairly quiet station, only a few tired faces milling around in the pale morning light. I headed straight upstairs, flicking on the kettle and dug out a travel mug. Mills followed me, leaning against the fridge.

  “Tea?” I offered.

  “I’m alright, sir, had three this morning already.”

  I shook my head with a smirk, made my tea and walked back to our office to look hopefully at our board whilst we waited for Sharp to appear.

  Our timeline had formed and grown. It now spanned the past few decades, from the death of Rosemary Hocking, to Richard’s quitting of the estate, Sebastian’s birth, Selene’s death. The timeline of the evening itself remained full of gaps, but there was little use I could really imagine it having. Other than the arrival and departure of the guests and the staff, nobody’s memories of the night were clear or promising enough to pin any one person down on. What I wanted to figure out was who, not so much as when.