“Go ahead.”
“Your research into Samuel Hughes,” I leant forward, bracing my arms on my knees, “all the stories and pieces you collected for the interview,” I began.
“And the series,” she interrupted.
“And the series,” I acknowledged. “Any chance of me having them?”
She spun her chair, looking curious. “All of them? I know you wanted some of my notes, but...”
“Everything. I want everything you have on him.”
Her eyebrows rose, and she leant back, tapping the end of a pen against her lips. “Even his birth certificate?”
“Jeannie...” I chided.
“Alright, Thatcher. I’m only teasing.” She uncrossed her legs and opened her computer. “Not all of it’s here. Remember the memory stick I told you about?”
“Very important,” I recalled. She nodded solemnly.
“Very,” she repeated. “And at home. I’ll bring it in, load everything into one folder for you. Bring it round once it’s done.”
“How long will that take you?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I have a job to do, as well, Thatcher,” she pointed her pen at me, “don’t forget that. And me helping you is a favour. So play nice and be patient.”
“I always play nice.”
Her eyes widened, and she let out a single, disbelieving laugh. “No, you don’t.”
“I can learn to.”
She spun in her chair again, looking me over. “You look better,” she remarked, “easier. Case going well?”
“It’s moving,” I shrugged a shoulder, “at last.”
“Bravo, detective. And your sergeant is still around? Hasn’t buggered off to Oxford or anything?” She teased, leaning towards me.
“Not yet.”
“Playing nice, indeed.” She stayed there for a moment, smiling at me, the smell of her perfume drifting towards me. And then sat back. “Give me a day, alright.” She turned serious again, “I’ll have it to you by tomorrow evening.”
“Evening? I won’t be in the station.” I feigned confusion. “However will you get it to me?” I lifted a hand to my chest in mock scandal.
She sneered at me. “Morning after then, I suppose.”
“No tomorrow evening’s better,” I quickly said.
“But how will I get it to you?” She mocked my fake confusion, her eyes wide, a small smile at the corner of her lips.
“You’ll have to endure looking at my messy house again, won’t you?”
“Blimey,” her nose crinkled, “I mightn’t bother putting myself through all that.”
“See you tomorrow,” I stood up, kissing the top of her head.
“Goodbye, Max,” she called after me. I glanced over my shoulder, but her playful expression had already gone, and her fingers flew over her keyboard.
Ever the professional. So should you be, I told myself, leaving the building. I pulled my phone out, scanning the message that chimed up from Sharp. She seemed pleased. And another one. A delivery at the coach house for the roof.
I sighed and put my phone away, pulling my coat collar up around myself. I couldn’t put it off much longer, even with a case in play. The whole place would flood and rot if I avoided it any longer.
As I walked to the car, I froze and looked up at the street. I felt eyes on me, from somewhere. I looked back up the building, half expecting to see Jeannie’s face at the window. Nobody. I looked around the quiet street, an old man strolled along wrapped up in a ratty coat, a cat slunk down into an alley, but nothing else. I got into my car and went back to the station, unable to shake the feeling.
Twelve
Thatcher
It was never easy driving into the old town. If it could even be called a town, but everybody did. Settled several miles from the city, surrounded by farmlands and the onlooking wildness of the moors a faint dark line on the horizon.
I came back as infrequently as needed; there was nothing much to come for, anyway. The buildings I drove past never changed. They were the same pale stone squares that had existed before I was ever born and would be here many years longer. A few of them still housed familiar people, but none well enough for me to stop and call.
I followed the road away from the town, down around the green to where my grandfather’s building sat. I waited in the car for a few moments with the engine off, looking out at it before I girded myself up and stepped outside, walking along the gravel path to the front door.
For a few minutes, I just stood there and stared up at the wrecked building, hands tucked deep into my pockets. Just looking at it made me feel exhausted, muscles aching, head pounding, and I had yet to even step one foot inside. From down here I could see the hole in the roof, a few broken shingles lay on the ground by my feet. I was quietly thankful that it wasn’t thatched anymore. The rest of the building was in a similar state. I could barely remember how it used to look, all in one piece, the windows lit up with light, laughter and music trickling from the door. Flowers used to grow in little window boxes, the sash windows held open, soft curtains billowing gently outwards. The sign above the door didn’t use to make quite so much noise, and you could still see the horse and wagon. Now they were faded, creaking and peeling.
Most of the windows I had boarded up a while back until I could get them replaced and the window boxes were nothing more than a handful of dirt and dying leaves that had fallen in from the oak tree that stood to one side. At least that was growing along quite happily, though the rope swing that used to hang on its branches was long gone. I pulled a hand free, dragging it down my face. Today felt longer than most days, and I hadn’t been able to shake the feeling I got when I left Jeannie’s office, it hung around as I returned to the station, not really leaving until I’d reluctantly left for this place.
There was nothing else I could do yet; I’d got back to the station to find Mills with IT, trying to get into Hughes’s phone. It would take them a bit of time, and until Jeannie got back to me with her notes, there wasn’t anything I could use to distract myself with.
I’d put it off too long, anyway, and it was getting dark, the sky striped with red and orange. It was now or never, I supposed.
“Max?” a voice came from the row of cottages that stood behind me. “Max Thatcher, is that you?”
I turned around, peering into the dim street lights to the woman who stood by her garden wall, hands propped on her hips.
“So it is,” she said. “I half thought I saw a ghost.”
I couldn’t help but smile at her, “not today, Elsie. Just me.”
She hummed, looking me up and down. She hadn’t changed. Still small and old, silver hair in tidy curls around her face. She walked over to me in her coat and slippers, glancing behind me to the coaching inn and let out a deep sigh.
“I don’t know why you bother, Max. Let the place go. Sell it or tear it down, son.”
“You know I can’t do that. It’s a landmark of the town.”
“It’s a wreck, Max. And fond of the old place as I might be, I know it’ll be some time before it’s fit for people to walk into again. It’s not worth it, lad,” she said, resting her hand on my arm.
“Mother always wanted to see it mended, remember?” I replied, looking up at it, “I owe her that much.”
Elsie tutted, shook her head, “she wouldn’t want you wasting away over this. She forgave you, pet. Stop beating yourself up over it.”
I bent down and kissed her fondly on the cheek. “It’s getting dark, Elsie. You should head in, get that fire going.”
“Like I can relax,” she smacked my arm, “knowing you’re out here.”
“I won’t stay long,” I promised. “I’m just here to get that hole patched up.”
She frowned up at me doubtfully, but let my arm go, sighing and muttering as she shuffled back to her home. I smiled as she went, waiting until she was safely back in her house, giving me a quick wave before shutting the front door.
She’d hate if I
sold this place, not that it was worth what it used to be.
It was after grandfather died that the place started to fall to pieces. Mother always said that she wanted to see it back to its old glory, but she never made it. And forgiveness or not, forgiveness that I wasn’t even here to receive, I owed her that much.
Shrugging the image of her away, I opened the padlock and ducked inside. Most of the lights still worked, thankfully. But they didn’t help the situation and illuminated the disaster that awaited me.
Inside was worse than the outside. The walls were blackened with damp, the wallpaper peeling and chunks of plaster flaked onto the broken floorboards. There was the faint plink plink plink of water dripping into the various bowls and basins I had dotted around the place. I emptied them, replaced them, and headed up the wobbling staircase, flicking on lights as I went. Several bulbs refused to come on, a few outright popped when I tried them, but there was enough light for me to walk around with tripping or striding headlong into the wall.
In one of the rooms, a thin stream of light came in from the ceiling, bits of the roof scattered on the floor. I walked under the hole, staring up at it, grimacing. Elsie might be right about this place; it might be beyond saving. But I would try, at the very least.
I took my coat off and swept all the wreckage aside, taking several trips up and down the stairs until I had everything that I needed.
Balanced on a ladder, slowly patching up the hole, my mind wandered.
My attention was caught on Hughes’s phone, how easy it felt to find it. It was just lying there in the woods, not too challenging to find, you’d think, and the killer at least would have known where to begin their search. But they hadn’t taken it from him, they hadn’t gone back for it, or if they had, they couldn’t quite get their bearings. Most killers, the ones I had met, did not forget where it happened. It was scored into their minds: a particular alley or lane, a certain tree, and a certain window that helped them come and go and clean up behind themselves with ease.
This felt, almost sloppy, I realised. The bonfire was clever, it failed, but it was clever. And they had taken the laptop since there was no sign of that anywhere around the woods. But nothing else seemed right. Desperate remedies, Jeannie had said. Mills got the feeling it was planned, but not very thoroughly. Whoever did it, must have done it at the last minute then, something spurred them on.
Whatever Hughes had done, whoever he had spoken to, or decisions he had made would have been that catalyst. He’d made a choice, and then they had acted.
I nailed a board into place, shutting out the moonlight, and thought more about what Dr Crowe had said. Multiple hits, not very strong, but determined.
Panicked, maybe. Or simply someone who wasn’t very strong. A woman, perhaps. From what Ms Renner had told me, I wagered that Hughes was the sort of man to leave several women angry and desperate. But so much so that they’d follow him up here and kill him? No. It was considered, desperate, but for a better reason than a spurned heart.
He was supposed to burn, supposed to disappear. Someone didn’t want him simply dead. They wanted him gone, out of the way.
I wiped away the sweat from my forehead, sealing up the patch I had made.
“Babbage would have lost her money,” I muttered aloud as I worked. “She and sons needed it. Killing him would be pointless, the contracts weren’t yet signed, she could have found a different buyer if she wanted.”
The farmer? Mr Goodwin had the misfortune of finding a dead man on his land, but there was no cause I could see for him being the one to put him there, especially with the fire unlit. He’d have known about that. He’d have been able to change the plan, burn it anyway.
Ms Cynthia Renner. Something about nagged at me. But on paper, there was nothing there. She was his assistant, a steadfast worker supporting her brother. Losing her boss jeopardized that, surely.
Then there was Johnson. Mills wanted me to go and meet the man myself and businessmen had a long, bright history of screwing each other for profit and success. It was an old system that existed in every century and every country. In the business world, there were only so many big fish that could thrive. Only one king of the castle, Jeannie had joked. And when people wanted the king gone, there was only one clear way to do it.
But he was leaving, I thought, finally climbing down the ladder, sweat soaking through my shirt as I slumped down on the floor, grabbing a bottle of water from the things I had brought up. Hughes would be back in London now, nothing more than a name on the bottom of a contract. Johnson would be back on top, no competition around, so why kill him?
None of them fit properly. I groaned, letting my head roll back against the wall, looking around the now much darker room.
It was her room, back when she was a child. He’d left the wallpaper the same, vines of flowers stretching out up to the ceiling. She was the one who told me that things don’t always make sense. People do things because they’re people, not because they’re logical.
One of them had a reason. One of them killed him, maybe not because of any logic, any reason, but because they simply did. I’d figure out which one. Getting Hughes’s phone would change the game now. Once the killer knew we had it, they wouldn’t sit still. Something would change, they would have to move. And when they did, there was a chance I’d spot them doing it.
It was tiring, always was. It was an effort to make myself stand and clear up the mess I’d made. I placed a bucket under the patched-up hole just in case, but at least the place should make it through to the spring. Maybe then I could work on getting rid of the damp and mould that had started to colonise.
I slowly pulled my coat back on and flicked the lights back off. I stood in the doorway, looking back into the room, my hand tracing the pattern on the wall briefly before I swung the door shut and lumbered back downstairs. Outside, I gathered up the roof tiles, some of them still in one piece and put them all inside, on the bar. A thin blanket of dust covered everything, light marks on the wall behind from the pictures that used to hang there. They were all in my house now. Grandfather’s medals, Gran’s cross-stitching. A picture of myself and mum used to hang pride of place right behind where grandfather kept his chair. That was still in the box, still wrapped up safely, where I didn’t have to look at it.
It was enough for now. When the case was done, I’d see about those tiles, but the place was watertight, so I shut off all the lights and locked the door tightly, heading back to my car.
There was a movement in the house over the lane, a figure in the upstairs window, peering out through the curtains. I raised a hand to Elsie and climbed in the car, hunching over the wheel slightly as I left the town behind, driving in the darkness back to the light and noise of the city.
My house was a stark contrast to the inn. Stuff was everywhere, lights on almost all the time, the floor hidden with rugs. I dumped my coat on a chair, grabbed a beer from the fridge and went into what had been a study, and now was a life-size Jenga of moving boxes. I took a swig of beer, sitting down and pulling one of the boxes towards me.
It was buried a little beneath tablecloths and napkins, but the oval frame was easy enough to locate. I put my beer down and gently unwrapped the picture, holding it in my hands. I was seven or so when it was taken. Outside under the oak tree, in her arms. She was smiling, her grey eyes, my eyes, lit up. I was smiling too, dimples and all. Don’t know where they had gone. There was a scab on my knee. I’d been pushed at school, landing on the hard floor of the playground.
“People do mean things,” she had told me as she patched it up, “when they don’t think they have a choice. When they get pushed into a corner, they push back.”
Apparently, that was what I did to the boy at school. Something about a girl’s ponytail getting pulled and me wanting to tell the teacher. You get pushed, when you put them in a corner, when you scare them, when they don’t know what else to do. Back then though you got a kiss and a biscuit from your mum, a Spiderman plaster on your k
nee. Now, you got killed in the woods and buried in a bonfire.
I put the picture back in the box, but I didn’t wrap it back up, nor did I shut the lid.
Hughes backed someone into a corner, and they could find one way out of it. They pushed back.
I leant back in the chair, taking another swig of beer, spinning around the room.
If someone ever found Mills’s notebook, they could tell a lot about him. All his thoughts laid out for anyone to see. He made notes of place and times, if ever anyone wanted to know where he was, that’s where to check. I hoped, I begged in fact whoever might be listening, that Hughes’s phone was much the same.
Tomorrow’s business, though. Tonight, it was beer and whatever I could find in the cupboard.
Thirteen
Thatcher
My timing with the roof was well done. Rain streamed down from the sky, endlessly bouncing off cars and umbrellas. People scurried along, hunched under their coats, running towards buildings and buses, splashing up puddles from the cobbles as they went. I kept my umbrella held high, trying to avoid colliding with anyone else. Perhaps not the best day to walk into work, but I’d wanted to stop for coffee on the way.
“Sir!” Mills waved at me across the road, jogging across, his coat over his already wet head of curls.
“Morning, Mills. Did you have a quick swim on your way here?”
He sent me an unamused stare that had a grin growing over my face. I held my umbrella out slightly, letting him shelter beneath his, fixing his coat and tucking his hands into his pockets.
“My umbrella broke,” he told me over the rain, “right as I left the house.”
“Only the one? Always be prepared, Mills.”
“I’ll bear that in mind, sir.”
“You at least have a spare change of clothes? Sharp won’t think well of you dripping all over the station.”
“Luckily, yes. My gym bag is there. I always have a spare shirt.”
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