Blood Ties

by Oliver Davies

  “I’m not scared of you,” he muttered.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Are you sure you’re not scared of Jeannie?” he retorted. I turned back to the window. “Any news from her? Thought she’d been hanging around trying to get this story from you.”

  “Let news of Rose’s abduction get out and about, and she’ll be here. At the moment, it’s just a rich man with a lost fortune. She won’t care about it yet.”

  “Bring in a missing girl and a family secret of illegitimate children?”

  “She’ll cling to it like a bee to lavender.” Mills snorted a laugh. “Good thing we learnt that Ragsdale came from this village,” he mused after a pause, “rather than the estate one.”

  “You’ll have to tell your mother her book was wrong.”

  “She’ll be heartbroken. She’ll have to fix it.”

  “Writing in books? I do that.”

  Mills grimaced at me. “That’s dreadful.”

  “Only my own books,” I defended myself, “never a library book or anything.”

  We fell into a companionable silence then, weaving along bumpy country lanes. The rain had stopped at long last, a pitiful amount of sun trying to break through in its stead.

  The village we trundled into looked like it belonged on a postcard, or a tourist website for visiting England. Little stone cottage with tidy gardens, low-lying walls where dog walkers stopped to sit, sharing a flask between them. Apple trees growing along the road, the perfect height for nicking an apple or two on your way home from school.

  We followed the long windy road through the village, slowly, so as to gawp at a few shop fronts, and then we were out the other side, along a muddy track of farmland and houses. We crossed a bridge over the river and then turned, following it along for a while until the shadow of the old mill came into view.

  “Stop here,” I told Mills, and he pulled into a little layby. “We’ll go on foot.”

  Mills looked at the muddy ground outside, riddled with puddles, down at his own shoes and then back up to me. “Really?”

  “Really.” I plastered on a fake smile, climbing from the car and studying the road. Looking over the field, I could see the rooftops of the village, little chimneys sticking up, the trees in the distance. When I turned around, I saw fields, still a little barren, with the odd tufts of green poking up from the cold earth. A line of trees ended them, and through them, if my geography was correct, the Hocking estate would be found sprawling out along the hills.

  There was only the one road leading down to the bridge. It went up past the mill, but I doubted it went far. There was nowhere else to go but more fields.

  The mill itself was a sorry affair. There were hundreds just like it, I knew, scattered about the country. It was mostly a shell of a building now, open to the elements so that you see straight through to the other side on the higher floors. The lower looked mostly intact. It rather looked like it had been salvaged a little, reinforced with random bits of wood and scraps of corrugated metal. The river ran beside it, brown with mud and strewn with weeds. The wheel itself was rotting, almost half fallen into the river, the iron bolt securing it to the building whistling and creaking as the wind shifted around.

  “Sir,” Mills called me quietly, pointing down at the road. Tyre tracks ran along, up towards the back of the mill. “Someone’s been here recently.”

  “Someone’s made the place sound,” I pointed out, jerking my thumb to the ground floor of the mill.

  “Still in use. Could be squatters,” he said offhandedly.

  “Could be. Doubt it,” I answered. I buttoned my coat up against the wind and started off down the path, avoiding the puddles and softer, squelchy patches of mud. We ended up walking like a dance troupe, leaping from solid dry land to solid dry land, only a muffled cry from Mills when he misstepped and got mud splattered up the side of his trousers.

  I waved a hand to quieten him as we reached the mill itself. We walked around the back, following the road, and as we walked around, I could see where the building had been patched up and held together all the way around. The materials were random, everything done a little haphazardly, but it held. Someone cared about this place, I realised. They were putting the same sloppily devotion into it as I was with my coaching house… though I’d never abducted anyone to my coaching house before. If anything, I tried to keep them away.

  The road passed between the boundary of the next field, the hedge overgrown and gnarled, odd, straggled arms of thorns falling into the road. The mill was on our right, and as we rounded the corner, we ended up in a small yard, a little car left in the driveway. I knew that car, I realised, and checked the number plate.

  Sebastian.

  Mills caught up with me, stopping by my elbow and we looked around. Another long hedge grew along the side of the river, up to the wheel itself, the area beyond hidden slightly by stacks of wood leant up against the side of the building. It was quiet, very quiet.

  I turned to the mill, to the reinforced walls with its boarded-up and newspapered windows, and found a door. I rapped on it as I gently eased it open.

  “Sebastian? Nadia? It’s DCI Thatcher.” I kept my voice friendly. “Do you remember me?”

  I’d been a friend to them both, in a way, I had liked to think. Listened to them, believed them. God, that was annoying, but I swallowed my anger and stepped inside the building, muscles tense.

  The inside was not quite as held together as the outside. In the main chunk of the ground floor, the ceiling was open to the floors above, residual raindrops plinking down onto the concrete floor. But to the side of it, a makeshift ceiling had been propped up, a small kitchen area, and a desk protected from the weather. A little heater was on, glowing orange. Two armchairs were placed by it with blankets, and thick jumpers left lying around. A few mugs were littered about the space, left on tables and on the floor.

  “Sebastian?” I called again. “Nadia? We only want to talk to you both.”

  We walked further in, shutting the door gently behind us. The place was exposed to the elements enough without us leaving the door open. Mills wandered to the open section of the mill, staring up at the skeletal rooms above. There was another door that led into an enclosed room stacked with dusty old barrels and crates, but no sign of the twins or Rose.

  I headed over to the enclosed area, which felt vaguely homely. A few magnets had been stuck to the fridge, snacks lay in the cupboard, a shopping list even sat on the counter by the kettle, nothing nefarious in its contents. Unless there was something weird you could do with oranges, bread, and cheese that I didn’t know about. I walked past the little seating area, spotting a fold-up table propped against the wall. The heater churned out enough heat to warm my shins, and I bent to touch the blankets and jumpers. Cold, no one had worn them recently, but I supposed they kept the heater all the time. I was surprised the place had any electricity, to be honest.

  The desk was next for me to check, and most of it was covered by an old bed sheet with some cartoon characters on. I pulled it back, and sighed, looking over my shoulder to Mills.

  “Found it,” I called, and as he came over, I pulled the sheet fully away. There were the small painting and its frame. It was, I had to admit, a nice painting. The details were good and the light nice to look at. But hardly worth all the fuss it had been. Mills stopped by my side,

  “I was expecting something a bit grander,” he admitted somewhat sullenly.

  “Me too. Well,” I put the sheet back to keep it protected, “at least we found it.”

  I looked over the rest of the desk, but there was little on top save for a few tools used to pry off the frame and two empty mugs. So, I checked the drawers and found them to be far more useful than anything I’d found on this case.

  In the first one were maps of the estate and the surrounding countryside, and in the one below, a slightly bent photograph. It was of Selene, holding a little Sebastian, wearing a thick, slightly ugly jumper. She was smiling down a
t him, her hands grasping him tightly. I picked it up, looking at it closely. Her sleeves were pushed up slightly, the skin of her wrists just visible, and the faint shape of a tattoo was just clear to me.

  “Time’s like this I wish I had a magnifying glass,” I muttered.

  “Here.” Mills handed me one, and I stared at him. “It was with the tools,” he defended himself. “Must be fiddly business.”

  I took it and held it to the picture, frowning down. It looked like three loops, all intertwined.

  “I never knew what the three knots were for,” a voice startled me, and I dropped the photo, turning to find Sebastian standing in the doorway. “What do you think, Inspector? Her, Lord Hocking, and Richard Sandow? Or her, me, and Nadia?”

  On cue, Nadia appeared by his shoulder.

  “Hello, again,” I greeted them.

  “Might we take this outside?” Sebastian asked politely. I nodded, and the twins left, Mills and I following after them. They were in the yard, making to walk past the wheel, when a car screeched into the yard, Rupert Hocking falling out from the driver’s seat, staring at me, at Mills, and the twins.

  “Where,” he demanded, fixing his jumper, “is my sister?”

  I paid him no mind, not as more car doors opened and Richard Sandow climbed out, followed by Lord Hocking.

  “So much for leaving this to us, Rupert,” I said dryly, as Henry appeared next.

  Twenty-Nine

  Thatcher

  Mills and I stood halfway between what felt like an old-fashioned shootout. I half expected some lads in long coats and flat caps to emerge from the shadows with pistols. The only thing that came from the building behind us was a faint sigh of the wind through the cracks.

  Lord Hocking and his brother, by some miracle performed by Rupert, were struck still, staring at the twins who had shuffled away from them, Sebastian’s arm wrapping around Nadia’s shoulders.

  “Shall I make some introductions?” I offered, trying to keep everyone as calm and civil as I could.

  “We don’t want to know,” Nadia told me hastily, her eyes wide and pleading. “Whichever one of them it is, we don’t want to know.”

  “Alright,” I assured them. “Sebastian, Nadia, this Lord Hocking, Richard Sandow, and Henry and Rupert Hocking.” I turned to them. “This is Sebastian Whitlock and Nadia White. Selene’s children.” I fixed my attention back to the twins who scanned the four semi-strangers warily.

  “You’ve got Rose?” I asked. Sebastian nodded. “Is she safe?”

  “We haven’t hurt her,” Nadia snapped.

  “Where is she?” Henry asked, more gently than I imagined he would.

  “No, no.” Sebastian pulled his arm away from his sister. “You don’t get to ask questions. You don’t get to make demands.”

  “You stole Lord Hocking’s painting, didn’t you?” I asked.

  “We thought it would be there,” Nadia told me. She had turned to face us, looking like she was desperately trying to ignore the other.

  “Your mother’s letter?”

  She gave a shaky nod, jaw clenching slightly at the mention of her mother.

  “But it wasn’t,” I pieced it all aloud for them, “so you came back to the house, didn’t you? But we were there. And you shut my sergeant in an airtight room.”

  Sebastian flinched, turning to Mills. “I didn’t realise.”

  Mills raised a shoulder. “I’m alive.”

  “So, you had to leave without the letter, knowing that we’d seen you there. You came back, left another note and took Rose.”

  “It was easy,” Nadia told us. “She was out in the grounds, close to the woods.”

  “Why Rose?”

  “You’re smart, Inspector. You know why Rose.”

  “Rosemary,” Richard spoke aloud, looking at his brother, “you named her after her.”

  “Of course, I did.”

  “We couldn’t save our sister.” Richard looked away. “We can save Rose.”

  Nadia scoffed. “Who saved me?” she asked bitterly, her face shadowed, eyes welling. Sebastian took her hand, her fingers gripping his like a vice. “You know how many children actually get adopted? And how many are shuffled about like spare furniture from place to place? I was alone, my whole life.” She snapped then. “I got beaten, abused, and abandoned over and over again because you—” She broke off, breathing heavily. “You turned your backs on her. I never even got a mother.”

  “Selene gave you up,” Richard countered. “She gave you up for adoption.”

  “Because she was scared!” Sebastian retorted. “She could barely even raise me, let alone two of us! If one of you had bothered to step up, we’d have been together, Nadia would have been safe, and she might not have died.”

  “Sebastian,” Lord Hocking tried.

  “Don’t you dare call me that,” he quickly interrupted. “She named me that. You don’t have the right.”

  “Did you really love her?” Nadia asked them quietly.

  “We did,” Richard said earnestly.

  “Then why did you leave her? Why did you leave us?”

  “It’s complicated,” Lord Hocking told them.

  “No, it’s not,” Rupert piped up, looking at all of them with unveiled disgust. “You love a girl, and she had children that are certainly your blood relation.” He sidestepped just who was the father, and I was grateful to him for that. “The least you can do is pay a passing interest. Send over a check every now and then at the very least.”

  “Rupert’s right.” Henry slung an arm around his brother. “You had a duty to Selene and to her children and you failed, both of you, and tore our family apart in the process.” He took a few, hesitant steps towards the twins. “Why did you take Rose?”

  “To bring you all here,” Sebastian said. “We got impatient with all the sneaking around, leaving little notes.”

  “Can I have my little sister back?” Henry asked.

  “When we’re done here.”

  “What do you want? A scandal?” Lord Hocking asked. “To drag our name through the mud?”

  “We thought about it,” Nadia told him. “There’s plenty of people who’d pay for that story. Thought we could even blackmail you. Money, for our privacy.”

  “More money than the painting is worth,” Rupert realised.

  “What would you even do with that much?” Lord Hocking exclaimed.

  “We’re owed a family,” Sebastian practically snarled at him. “We’re owed a home and a family and to be together.”

  “You want to fix the mill,” I voiced the thought aloud, “make it your home.”

  “It was hers.” Nadia looked around her brother to me. “If we lived here, it’d be like she was here too.”

  “Happy families,” Mills muttered.

  “Why not just do that then? Why not make your demands clear?” Lord Hocking’s face was turning purple. “Why abduct my daughter?”

  “To make sure you were taking us seriously, Lord Hocking,” Nadia spat the name out, “to make sure you wouldn’t just laugh it off or involve them.” She pointed at Mills and me.

  “They needed the proof,” I explained to the Lord and his brother, “that Selene had borne children of the Hocking family bloodline. If they didn’t have proof, they had no leverage over you. They needed something else. Something of equal importance.”

  “Rosie.” Rupert turned to look sourly at his father. “you might have made it less obvious that she’s your favourite, you know? If not for our sake, then evidently for hers.”

  “She’s not my favourite.”

  Henry laughed outright. “Course she isn’t,” he drawled sarcastically.

  “We have the painting,” I eventually ended this tiresome argument. “Maps of the Hocking estate. Sebastian Whitlock and Nadia White, I’m placing you under arrest for theft and kidnapping. You do not have to say anything. But it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something you later rely on in court. Anything you do say m
ay be given in evidence.”

  I walked toward them as I spoke, pulling the handcuffs from my belt, Mills behind me.

  “This isn’t right!” Nadia protested, taking a few steps back. “They’re in the wrong!”

  “Morally, I can’t argue with you. But they haven’t broken the law,” I told her gently.

  “No!” Nadia scuttled further back, even as Sebastian bowed his head and let Mills secure his wrists behind his back.

  “It’ll be alright, Nadia,” he called out to her. “We’ll be alright!”

  But Nadia, face flushed with fear, eyes wide and tears falling, turned and ran.

  “Nadia!”

  I raced after, following her past the stack of wood and the water wheel, to where the bank thinned out, and the mud stretched down to the water’s edge. In a sorry excuse of a boat, held to the shore by an ancient piece of rope, Rose Hocking sat with her knees under her chin, ankles and wrists bound, a piece of cloth around her mouth. I spared her little time, focused on Nadia who stood precariously on the bank, holding the rope in her hand. I wasn’t sure where the river led, but from the look on Nadia’s face and the state of the boat Rose was in, I doubted it mattered. This wouldn’t end well.

  I slowed down, holding my hands out before me, tucking the handcuffs back into my pocket.

  “Nadia,” I pleaded with her, “don’t do this. You’re not this person. You’re not going to hurt her. None of this is her fault.”

  “I never had a mum,” she said through her teeth, through her tears. “Never had a dad or a sibling. I was alone, for so, so long. And then I found Seb. I have a brother, Inspector. I have a family now. And I learnt what those people did to my mother, what they did to all three of us. Why do we deserve to lose each other and not them?” Her grip on the rope slackened, the boat drifting slightly in the current.

  “If you let that rope go, Rose might die. And then you’ll never see Seb again,” I tried to reason with her, slowly taking little steps closer. She wiped at her face with her sleeve. “And then what? You’ll be no better than them, Nadia. At the moment, your brother’s right. You’ll probably be okay. But not if you do this.”