“I don’t want to go to jail,” she sobbed. “I don’t want to be alone.”
“You’ll be there longer unless you give me that rope.” I reached out a hand, palm side up for it.
She looked at my hand, her face pink, and chewed on her lip. There was a slight scuffle behind me, but I didn’t turn away from her. She focused on whoever appeared over my shoulder, her resolve wavering.
“Give him the rope, Nadia.” Sebastian came up to stand beside me. His hands were no longer cuffed, but Mills wasn’t far behind. He gave me a nervous glance.
“Come on.” Sebastian smiled at his sister. “Don’t do this. We’ll be home before you know it, right, Inspector?”
It was hard to tell what the court might decide. They both had clean records, slightly dubious, but given their backgrounds, they might garner some sympathy, Nadia especially.
“Give him the rope.” Sebastian didn’t give me much time to respond, thankfully. “Give him the rope, Nadia.”
She reached out, her arm trembling and placed the ratty, rough rope in my hand. I relaxed and secured it again to the mooring bollard on the bank. As I rose back to my feet, Nadia looked around, and panic seemed to settle on her again, feet taking her a few steps backwards.
She left the grass, stepping into a slope of mud that ran down into the river, and slipped, flailing down the bank.
“Nadia!” Sebastian yelled.
I swore and lurched after her, grabbing her wrist and hauled her towards me, hearing her cry out in pain as I lugged her against me, back up the bank. With my grip still on her, I held her wrists behind her back and fished my handcuffs out, watching Mills do the same.
“Thank you,” I said to Sebastian. He nodded sadly, looking at his sister and back at the mill.
“She deserved better,” he said quietly.
“You both did,” I replied, my tone bleak. Mills was right about what he said in the car. Sometimes, I did feel like I was on the wrong side. I sat Nadia down on the bank, her brother kneeling beside her as she leant against his chest, crying silently, and made my way carefully back to the bank. The four Hockings appeared through the gap, and Henry and Rupert ran over, each taking hold of the rope and together, we hauled the boat close enough to shore for Henry to clamber in and untie Rose, helping her out onto the bank. She clung onto them, shaking like a leaf, and I couldn’t help but look at the twins. Taking her only made matters worse for them, and it was more for their sake than for Rose’s that I wished they hadn’t. She glared at them with more venom than either of her brothers had, and Henry looked from the twins to me.
“Can I talk to them?”
Normally, I’d say no, but we got them back to the station, chance would be a fine thing.
“Quickly,” I said, giving Rose a slight nudge up to her father who met her with outstretched hands. As Henry made his way to the twins, I turned to Rupert.
“You went to your uncle’s?”
“Told him about the whole mess,” Rupert answered, looking blustered by the wind and sticking his hands into his pockets. “Told him to get his act together and put bygones be bygones. Brought him back to the house and told dad the same thing.”
“How well did that go down?” I asked.
He grinned with brilliant mischief. “Horribly. They started yelling at each other, wouldn’t listen to Henry or me. Then mum shows up in the doorway, snaps at both of them. By the time she was finished, they looked like two overgrown schoolboys who just got caught colouring on the walls. She kicked them out of the house and told them not to come back until they got her daughter and could behave like men. Lucky they knew about this place.”
“She’s a good woman, your mum.”
“The best. Good to have one brilliant parent, isn’t it?” He looked at his father, at his protective searching of Rose’s wrists and face, making sure she was alright. “Can’t help but wonder if he’d do that for me.”
“You’re his son. We have to believe he would.”
Rupert shrugged, his gaze falling on the twins, who were listening to Henry with strangely bright faces. “Not his only one,” he muttered darkly. He offered me a hand. “It’s been nice knowing you, Inspector. All things considered.”
“You’re a smart lad, Rupert,” I told him, taking his hand. “Don’t let your family get you down.”
“Don’t intend to,” he smirked, striding over to Henry and clapping an arm on his shoulder before walking over to talk to his uncle.
I went over to the twins just as Henry left them, and they looked up at me.
“He’s going to fix the mill,” Sebastian told me. “Make sure it’s all up and running. Safe for us when we come back.”
“Henry’s a good man,” I told them. “Nothing like his father. He’d probably have said yes if you’d just asked him.”
“It's a shame we never got to find that out for ourselves,” he only muttered. Mills and I hauled them to their feet, leading them away from the mill and back down the road, into the back of the car. We stood outside, letting them take one last look at the old ruin as the Hocking family appeared around the corner. Mills took a few steps aside, calling the station to get some uniform out here to finish the leg work.
“I told you I’d get your painting back,” I said to Lord Hocking.
“So, you did.” He offered me a hand. “Thank you, Inspector.”
I shook his head without much gusto. And he subtly looked past me into the car, to the twins huddled together in the backseat.
“I’d like to put all this right, somehow,” he muttered.
“Hard to know where to start,” I pointed out.
“I’ve got an idea,” he replied, looking over to where his brother conversed with his children.
“Families are complicated,” I gave him a wry smile. “Good day to you, Lord Hocking.”
He nodded, shook Mills’s hand as he came back, putting his phone away, and drifted back to his family.
“And you thought this would be an easy case,” Mills drawled.
“Stolen paintings usually are,” I said in my own defence. As the family headed back to their car, my phone rang. I pulled it from my pocket, gave a dry laugh and held it up to Mills, who grinned as Jeannie’s face flashed up on the screen.
Epilogue
I trailed off, looking down sadly at my empty glass.
“Blimey,” Gavin muttered, “I thought for sure it would have been the butler.”
“I’m confused.” Lois held up a hand. “How did Nadia even find Sebastian?”
“She went to her social worker just before she retired. Found out what she could.” I remembered talking to her about it all in the station, hunched over in her baggy cardigan, toying with the strands of hair. Her blonde roots had begun to show at that point, I imagined by now, the dye would have faded completely.
“There wasn’t much on her mother, but she tracked down Sebastian. The two of them spent some time getting to know each other, talked about what had happened to their mother and decided to do something about it.”
“It must have been a long time,” Sally muttered, “getting all that intel on the family.”
I nodded. “Some months. Lucky that they did, really, else Nadia would have wandered in there looking like a member of the family.”
“Did they ever find out which one was their father?” Ahmed asked me.
I shook my head. “Makes no difference to them. So long as one of them was, they could get what they wanted.”
“Only they didn’t,” Sally trailed off sadly. “What about the mill?” she asked.
Henry had kept his word, the place was no brilliant feat of architecture, but it had a roof and walls and floors. When the twins made their way back, it’d be a fine enough home for them.
“All that,” Gavin sighed, “from a missing painting.” He looked up at me and raised a glass. “No wonder you made Inspector.”
I ducked my head, not a fan of compliments, and Sally propped her arm upon my shoulder.
<
br /> “He’d be more if he didn’t make life so difficult for everyone.”
“Very unkind,” I told her. “Besides, they’d likely move me to a different station if that happened. Place would fall apart without me.” The thought of it made me anxious. A station without Sharp or Crowe or Mills. And all that responsibility, all that extra paperwork. No, I’d resolved myself to that long ago when Sharp had first brought it up.
“I’m sure Mills would step in,” she said sweetly. I narrowed my eyes at her and turned back to the group sitting opposite us.
“So, what happened to the family?” Alex asked, sitting eagerly forward.
I scratch the back of my neck. I’d heard tidbits, of course, seen some of them at the court. Rose had stayed put, still living in the house and gradually the tension there had eased. Rupert was rarely home, and when he was, he stayed in the other wing of the house with Henry and Eloise. The eldest sibling hadn’t wanted to stick around, but the estate couldn’t run with him. I dreaded the Christmas dinner they’d end up having this year.
“They’re getting on with it all,” I told them, “most everyone stayed. Though I hear Dennis took some convincing,” and that Eloise and Lady Hocking were the voices of reason there. “Only one of the maids, Lara, left because of it all.”
“Weren’t she and Rupert, involved?” Gavin asked with a wiggle of his eyebrow.
“Something along those lines. Not sure what happened there, but she’s probably better off. That family’s too complicated for most people.”
“But not for you,” Lois smiled at me, leaning forward.
“Nope,” I smiled and took Sally’s glass. “Excuse me, I’ll freshen these up.”
I stood up and picked my way through the tangle of legs that stuck out from the sofa and left the library, trying to find where the bar might have been placed. I passed through the fancy entrance, shoes clipping on the marble floor and through to another parlour style room. The layout of this house was not dissimilar to Hocking estate, and I was more comfortable now in wandering around than I would have been before.
I headed through a set of double doors to a dining room and spotted the bar at the far end of the room. A red-headed woman leant against it. I frowned and walked towards her, taking in the bright curls, the smattering of freckles across her shoulders, and grinned.
“Hello, Jeannie,” I greeted her as I placed the empty glasses on the bar. She turned around, offering me a brilliant smile. She looked me over, taking in the smart suit and fixed hair with her sharp eyes.
“Hello, Thatch. I liked your story,” she told me.
I blinked in surprise. I hadn’t seen her anywhere. “You were in there?”
“Behind you. Left at the end, I know what happens next. Do I feature in many of your stories?” she asked, tilting her head to one side.
I shrugged. “A few.” She featured in almost all my favourite ones, but I wouldn’t give her the privilege of knowing that particular little insight.
“Not that I was very useful in that one, was I?” she added with a curl of her lip.
“Your art dealer came in handy,” I assured her.
Her smile grew, and her gaze flicked over my shoulder, looking around the house with a slight sigh. “I hate places like these.”
That wasn’t surprising, Jeannie looked more comfortable in a coat and a set of boots, charging around the fields than she did now in her long black dress, small touches of makeup on her face.
“Why are you here?” I asked, surprised that both of us would be here at the same time. Chances were slim. “Are you on a date?” I asked carefully, not all that sure if I really wanted the answer.
She laughed. “No. Fret not. Covering a piece.” She picked up the notebook that her hand covered on the bar.
“You don’t usually do arts,” I mentioned.
“No. Never quite as much to say about a party full of fancy people as there is say about murder or robbery. That Hocking story,” she poked me in the arm, “never was fully released.”
It hadn’t been, Sharp’s orders mostly, and it had seemed strange to me at the time that Jeannie hadn’t pressed further for than she had when she called that day at the mill. It seemed our Chief Superintendent’s reputation could keep the journalist quiet as well as it could us.
“They wanted it quiet, them and the twins. It’s hardly my job to go around showcasing everyone’s family drama.”
“Family drama, no, how dull. But a stolen painting, knocked-up maid, missing girl, and an abandoned mill? Someone could do something with that. Make into a piece of fiction, a drama.”
“Like a BBC series?”
“Exactly. Not family-friendly, of course,” she said.
“Of course.”
“They’d showcase it on New Year’s.”
I smiled down at her and relaxed against the bar. “I’m glad you’re here,” I told her, “I don’t know how to talk to any of these people. Sally will be gone soon too, whisked away by her adoring fans.”
Jeannie chuckled. “It’s a hard life for you, isn’t it, Thatch? You’ll be swept away soon, I reckon. All those adoring fans of your own. That one girl,” she mused, looking down and running her fingers along the grooves of the wood, “the blonde. She looked most interested as you told your story.”
“People like hearing them, but they don’t like being in them. The reality of being with an inspector isn’t quite as interesting as it seems.”
Jeannie looked me over, a little crease forming between her eyebrows. “Trouble in paradise, Thatch?”
I rolled my eyes. “Bad schedules make for bad bedfellows.”
“I never minded it.”
“No,” I looked at her again, eyes glittering in the light of the many candles around us, “you didn’t, did you?”
“Nor did you,” she countered, “and I’m never as polite about it as you are.”
That was true. Jeannie was bad at making plans, especially after cancelling them, and even worse at not finding something more interesting to do. Arranging a date with her was like herding a cat into a bath. It was always much better to bump into her like this, so I took my refilled glasses and offered her my arm.
“How would you like to be introduced to the guest of honour at this very fine event, Jeannie?”
She grinned and looped her arm through mine, picking up her notebook. “I’d be delighted. What a gentleman.”
“I’m always a gentleman on dates.”
She scoffed. “No, you’re bloody not.”
“I can be.”
Jeannie rolled her eyes and tugged me from the bar. “Introduce to me to the right people then, Thatch. I want the fancy cats with red faces and heavy pockets. The sooner I get this story, the sooner we can leave.”
My smile grew, and as we walked through the crowds, I felt far more at ease now than I had before with Jeannie traipsing along beside me, scanning everything and everyone that we passed. Her hair was escaping the do she’d put it in, random, corkscrew curls flinging around her face. She blew one away and tugged on my sleeve.
“I like being in your stories,” she told me quietly as we walked back to the library.
“You should be in them more often, then,” I replied.
“I’ll make an effort,” she decided, “only if I can wear the hat, too.”
“What hat?”
“An inspector hat, like that tweed one you don sometimes.”
I laughed. “Deal.”
We rejoined the crowd, but once Sally’s speech was over, I doubted we would stay long.
A Message from the Author
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Blood Ties Page 25