Unusual Remains

by Oliver Davies

  Unusual Remains

  A DCI Thatcher Yorkshire Crime Thriller

  Oliver Davies

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  2. Thatcher

  3. Thatcher

  4. Thatcher

  5. Thatcher

  6. Thatcher

  7. Mills

  8. Thatcher

  9. From the shadows

  10. Thatcher

  11. Thatcher

  12. Thatcher

  13. Thatcher

  14. Jeannie

  15. Thatcher

  16. Mills

  17. Thatcher

  18. Thatcher

  19. Thatcher

  20. From the shadows

  21. Thatcher

  22. Thatcher

  23. Thatcher

  24. Thatcher

  25. Thatcher

  26. Mills

  27. Thatcher

  28. Thatcher

  Epilogue

  A Message from the Author

  Prologue

  It was one of those parties where nobody really has anything new to say. A bizarre, long, stretched-out evening of dinner and drinks that seemed to drag on longer than was ever really necessary. We’d all seen each other throughout the week, had exchanged pleasantries over the holidays, and now it didn’t take long before talk drizzled down to weather and politics and sport. The weather was always the same, politics were a nightmare, and I had not much of a head for sport. As people drifted off into corners of the room, I found myself by the fireplace where a fire was burning at least, not that our host tended much to it. I hovered there, occasionally throwing another log on when needed, and sipped slowly at a glass of whiskey. It was too early to make my excuses, sadly. I’d already tried after pudding. I resorted to staying put, with a fire, a whiskey, and the small, battered window to look out of.

  It was also one of those nights where the rain fell and fell and saw no sign of stopping until it flooded the streets and people were wandering aimlessly around the snickelways and alleys in wellington boots. The sort of night where clouds and fog and smoke all mingled together in a heavy cloak that blocked out the light. Chimneys stuck out like stout brick trees, windows glowing orange through the haze, and there was a strange quietness to the city. January, I thought, there was never a nice January. At least the streets were empty of tourists. It was just us, moping about the damp, dismal city waiting for spring to come back.

  I found strange how long the evening wore on, seeing as I’d arrived late, waylaid by the chief superintendent before making my escape. I almost wished I were still there, listening to her chastise my poor record-keeping than here, catching faint conversation from others that barely kept their own interest.

  “There’s a glum face if ever I saw one.” Our host, Mike, appeared beside me to refill my glass. “Don’t tell me you’d rather be out there?” I glanced out the window once more to the city. Things would be happening out there tonight as people took advantage of fog and rain and shadows.

  I smiled at him. “You know me, love a night like tonight. Think of all the things people get up to on nights like tonight.”

  “You get a phone call at two in the morning on nights like tonight, Max, don’t go wishing for that.” He wasn’t wrong. In fact, I had that gnawing sensation you get when you just know your phone will flash up with that too-familiar number on the screen. Superintendent Sharp’s voice piercing down the line.

  “Better than being bored,” I told him. Mike clapped me on the shoulder and shook his head, circling the room again, adjusting things as went. A plumped cushion here, twitch of the curtain, coaster under a chilled glass.

  He’d tidied up the place well, more than his usual standard. I never understood how he lived in such a muddle. Usually, every surface was smothered in those large, unfolded maps and half-empty cups of tea. The man was making an effort tonight, and the pretty blonde in the kitchen seemed worth the fuss. He was even fixing his own appearance, constantly tidying his hair and fiddling with his cuffs and collar all through dinner. Mike got nervous. I had little doubt that the moment we were all gone, the place would tumble back into the usual disarray the scatterbrained scientist liked to keep it in.

  “I heard about it on the radio this morning,” a conversation crossed the room, catching my ear as the others were all drawn to the warmth of the fire. I threw another log on and reluctantly turned around to join in with this new train of thought.

  “It’s such terrible business,” Molly was saying as she dropped into one of the armchairs, “and so soon after the holidays, such a shame. I could hardly believe it when I heard.”

  “Did you hear about it, Max? Must have,” Sally joined him by the fire, sticking her hands towards the flames.

  “Hear about what?” I asked as a few others joined us.

  “That grizzly business that happened the other day down in, where was it, Tom? Oxford?”

  “Wiltshire.”

  “That’s it, Wiltshire. A man was murdered in some tiny little village out in the middle of nowhere. His son found him in the pond, poor thing.”

  “It’s always where you’d least expect it, stuff like that,” Molly added, “always in those pretty little postcard villages, you know? The kind that tourists like to go to.”

  “You’d think the worst thing to happen in those old places would be someone letting their lawn grow too long or leaving their Christmas lights up till February.”

  I smiled down into my glass. My lights had been up for two years. Didn’t seem worth the hassle of going up and down the roof all that often. Sally nudged me with her elbow. She’d help me put them up back then.

  “Nothing else to do in a village,” Tom commented, “they need more going on.”

  Sally rolled her eyes, “since we’re so spoiled for choice when it comes to entertainment here?”

  “At least we’re in a big city, love. But There’s bugger all to do in those poky old villages. Right, Max?” I looked at Tom and took another long sip.

  “Why are you asking me? I only live fifteen minutes away.” I never liked living in the city. I belonged on those few straggling streets that bordered the countryside but avoided a long commute.

  “My point exactly,” he looked smug, “you grew up in one of those little places and now look! Big city detective. I doubt you hung around that place long, eh?”

  I looked back to the fire, trying to remember why I’d accepted the invitation. Something about not spending another night on my own, or along those lines. My landlady’s idea after she called me mardy all through Christmas and New Year’s. To be honest, I’d rather be out in that cramped little village under a leaky roof than joining in with this tedious tale. I’d heard the news, of course, I had. I knew one of the DIs down there. I also knew those nice little villages were very rarely simply nice and little, and that they’d eat a man like Tom alive. I knew farmers whose hands were bigger than his head. But it was true. I didn’t hang around the old place for long. There wasn’t much to hang around for, though. I could feel Sally looking at me, she knew why I left all too well, and I wouldn’t surprise me if she half-chewed Tom’s ear off later tonight.

  “I didn’t,” I replied simply, hoping Tom would move onto trade policy or the unusual snap of snow that we were getting. The price of petrol, anything really. I didn’t like talking shop, especially with those who didn’t actually know what my shop was. Tom was smart, and he liked to be smart and know things that other people didn’t. When the shoe was on the other foot, he could be a trifle irritating.

  “Barely any of his cases are actually in the city,” Sally pointed out for me, “they’re always dredging you out into the middle of nowhere.” Also true, and for the same reason as som
eone like Tom wouldn’t be all that welcome in those places is that I fit in like a duck in a pond.

  “But he still lives here, or near enough, he still left. Boredom,” he stated wisely, making sure that everyone was looking as he confirmed his intelligence. Not that we didn’t already know. He was a professor at one of the universities. Professor of philosophy, classics, or something. He wore tweed coats and quoted Socrates, though, which was quite enough by my standards. Sally left the fireplace and perched on the arm of his chair, sending me a familiar apologetic glance as she did.

  Oh, that’s why I was here. She’d convinced me with a bottle of whiskey and promised to lend me her brother’s old cement mixer. When an old family friend summons you to an outing, you go to the outing. Especially when that friend was Sally, and she knew all your embarrassing childhood secrets and had a very devilish kick. She was one of the few friends I had, despite her strange choice in a husband. She liked him well enough, and he made her happy, lucky for him.

  “Wasn’t there something like that around here a while back?” The instigator of the conversation, Molly, loudly returned to what she’d originally talked about. Rather than the private lives of village people. “I think I remember reading a story in one of the papers about it. Similar sort of situation.”

  “A dead man in a pond?”

  “Or a field or something? Out in the countryside somewhere,” she chewed her lip, “last autumn maybe?”

  “There’s been quite a few murders out here over the years, Mol,” Tom told her, “I doubt we can remember them all.” Molly’s face fell slightly, and to my annoyance, I felt for the girl. I’d only really met her a few times. She was a new friend of Sally’s. But I couldn’t let her battle Tom on her own, not since I knew the exact case she was talking about.

  “In one of the small villages,” I confirmed for her, “out up nearer the moors. Found in a field morning after Bonfire Night. London chap,” I remembered it well, “Samuel Hughes.” There had been a strange investigation, lots of coming and going. Things were never simple when rich men in nice suits from big cities were involved. Almost got bloody hypothermia.

  “That’s right!” She smacked the arms of her chair and stuck her tongue at Tom, “Bonfire Night! Local village, you know, where you’d not think something like that would happen. Samuel Hughes,” she muttered to her herself, “I remember reading it in the paper. He was a businessman, wasn’t he? Someone did an interview with him.”

  “You remember it then?” Tom had leant forward onto his knees, studying me from beneath his bushy eyebrows.

  “Course he remembers it, Tom. He was the bloody detective on the case! Honestly,” Sally sighed and got up to fill her empty glass from the tray beside me.

  “Were you?”

  I nodded silently, distracting myself with the bowl of crisps Sally pushed my way, wishing, dearly wishing, I hadn’t said as much. Tom’s silence was not long lasting, nor was Molly’s quiet victory.

  “I barely remember the story myself,” he pushed on, “too much in the old noggin already. You should tell us about it.”

  I raised a brow at that,

  “Hardly the sort of evening to be telling those sorts of stories, mate,” I glanced to our host in the kitchen, “I doubt Mike wants to have murders being talked about on a night like this.” Mike had insisted they all come over to meet his new girlfriend, Ave, or Eve, or something along those lines. Alice? No. I didn’t have much of a head for names. Faces, easy, but not much for names. It had taken me about a month to learn my new sergeant’s name when he first arrived. Kept called him Oscar, poor lad.

  “We all talk about our work, Max. I talked about my recent lecture over dinner,” he reminded me. Not that I needed reminding of that. I didn’t half feel bad for his students. Or his wife.

  “You talk about old dead Greeks and whether It’s a sin or a virtue or to be happy. I talk about bodies and murder weapons. Hardly the same thing.”

  “All good stories are a little gruesome.”

  They weren’t just stories, not like his, not some long-forgotten history. This was my life. Poor buggers found dead and me, trying to figure out why anyone would do something like that. Not always too difficult, people weren’t very creative when they were desperate.

  “You’ve barely spoken a word all night,” Molly added, “except when you asked me to pass the salt, and even then, I could barely hear you. Go on, tell us this one story, Max.”

  “Not the time,” I told her, “nor the place.”

  “What’s this?” Mike had joined us at last, his new lady looking at us all nervously. It was quite the venture to meet someone’s friends all in one evening, especially Tom. Whatever her name, she did not strike me as the sort of person who would enjoy listening to a story about murder; I’d been telling them long enough to figure that much out.

  “The murder down in Wiltshire reminded us of one that happened here before. One that Max solved over in some village. By the moors, was it Max?”

  “Few miles away still.” Thankfully. Finding a murderer was hard enough with traipsing over the moors like a bloody Bronte novel.

  “He won’t tell us the story,” Tom added. Mike frowned. Surely, he would take my side.

  “Why would he?” Sally piped up in his defence, “hardly dinner party talk is it?”

  “Oh go on, Max,” Mike betrayed me, “we all love a good detective story. Ava does, don’t you, love?” Her face brightened up, her grip on Mike’s arm lessening slightly. Ava, I was right.

  “I really do. I’ve always loved Agatha Christie.”

  “Do I look like Agatha Christie?”

  She blushed.

  “You should grow a little Poirot moustache,” Sally grinned over her wine glass, “would frame your face very nicely, I think.”

  “You don’t like my stubble?”

  “Never have. Never since it first started growing when we were twenty.”

  “Sixteen.”

  “Tell the story, Max, host’s orders,” Mike interjected, settling himself down beside Ava on the sofa. “You can’t refuse me tonight.”

  “You did catch the bad guy, right?” Molly checked.

  I glared at her a little incredulously. “I always catch the bad guy.”

  She straightened up in her seat and smiled.

  “Spin us a yarn, Max, go on. And once you have,” Mike pointed a finger at me, “once you have, you can leave. Promise.”

  He knew me too well, I thought, the wily old git. He and Sally shared a smile, and she looked over expectantly. One story, I thought, then home. And to be fair, not a bad story all told. One of the nicer ones I had, I suppose, except for the victim of course. I drained the rest of my drink and placed my glass down on the mantle and, after shaking my head at Mike’s triumphant smirk, took a seat beside Molly who shuffled up to make room.

  “Bonfire Night, you said,” she said enthusiastically.

  “I did.”

  “Must have been last year then was it?” Ava asked. “Don’t remember any such thing from this year.”

  I nodded,

  “Last year. Guy Fawkes night. Or rather, the morning after. One of those early calls,” I grimaced towards Mike.

  One

  Samuel had been in many villages like these before, they were all the same and looked identical the more you went to, in fact, the more he went to the more he thought they were all the same. Small, ramshackle lanes of mud and ancient stone cottages. Acres of farmland and gnarled trees, small little communities who watched him as he walked along in a way that reminded of how cats watch birds in the garden. Not that it mattered, he didn’t plan to stay long, and already he was missing the familiar noise and business of London. It was cold up here. The sooner business was done, the sooner he could return to civilization.

  The land he was here to buy belonged to an old widow, Eudora Babbage, who according to the address his assistant Cynthia had given him lived in “Ox-Eye Cottage”. It looked exactly how he imagined it to, ex
actly like every other cottage in every other village. A small stone building, almost sunken into the earth with two chimneys at either end and a damp thatched roof. The garden was overgrown, the weeds pushing their way through everything, the paint on the front door peeled and flaked, and the windows were lined with dust. A sad little place, but the view, oh the view. Samuel stopped on the little path and turned around to the overflowing fields across the way. A prime piece of land that the old dear couldn’t afford to keep anymore. The grass had grown as tall as his shins, crops long since abandoned. The bordering hedges had grown inwards, long stems of brambles and thorns coiling into the land. It was a good thing I was here really, he thought to himself, to salvage whatever dignity the place had.

  He had left the comfort of the hotel for an informal chat, a spur-of-the-moment thing that he had been thinking about for a while. But this morning, looking out the windows over breakfast, he had finally decided to act upon. Cynthia had chosen to stay at the hotel, but he wouldn’t miss her and any decision he made she could hardly contend with. That was the way of things for Samuel. He made his choices, and everyone else dealt with them.

  Turning back to the cottage, he lifted the rusty door knocker, the force of which almost dislodged the horseshoe that dangled above his head, and took a step back as the door swung aside. A large man stood there, his face red, his sturdy frame stuffed into a threadbare coat. He had hands the size of coal shovels, and he covered from head to toe in a faint dusting of soil. One of the lady’s sons, Samuel recalled dimly, she had three. He wondered if they were all this big and whether he should have brought Cynthia along after all.