Cradle to Coffin (A DCI Thatcher Yorkshire Crimes Book 10)

by Oliver Davies

“Nor did his mother ask him to do anything,” Thatcher added. We were upstairs now, dipping into the office to grab our things. “But someone did. Someone said to him, ‘Oh, Jack, when you’ve got the time, pop round and do this for me.’”

  “And you think that someone might have been the vicar?”

  Thatcher nodded. “I think those bones are that close, and Jack was that far from home because he knew he had time. Maybe he went there. It’s only up the road and around the corner from their house. Close enough to pop by for a chore, but far enough away that he’d have done it when he had more time on his hands than usual.”

  I nodded, grabbing my coat. “To the church then?”

  “Mills.”

  “Sir?”

  “You’re still wearing the suit.”

  I looked down. So I was. I handed him my coat and started unzipping myself from the rustling garment.

  “Could have told me that downstairs, sir,” I pointed out.

  Thatcher grinned. “Could have.”

  Twenty-Two

  Thatcher

  I’d barely been able to hide my shock when Elizabeth Wellins not only went upstairs to retrieve Jack’s hairbrush from wherever he had left it but also offered us a sample of her own DNA to compare it with. I decided there and then that I greatly admired Elizabeth Wellins, and it was to no surprise of mine that she fit into this hardy little village as well as she did. Straight to the point, no muss, no fuss.

  I sent Fry out to grab the swab kit from the car boot, taking the little blue hairbrush and popping it into an evidence bag with the promise to return it in one piece. Considering the fact that she was being confronted with the hard possibility of her son’s death, she was very calm. I supposed she expected it, ten years later, and at least we offered that much-needed answer, that clarification, the truth of what had happened to her boy. If indeed, it is her boy.

  I made sure my phone was on, the volume high when Mills and I left the station, ready for when Lena got in touch with that much needed yes or no. Though I did have to admit, if those bones weren’t Jack Wellins’s, this would all unravel into quite the mess. I was sure they were, as sure perhaps as Dr Schmidt had been, and I would wager that whoever had buried Jack Wellins down by the church was the same person who killed Dr Schmidt. A hasty, urgent attempt to keep the secret of what had happened to Jack from getting out. But Schmidt had realised, started pulling together the clues he had seen. Maybe he’d heard Jack’s name around the village, maybe the vicar himself mentioned the boy the time they’d stood inside together and talked. All these little pieces, these breadcrumbs, alongside all the articles and news reports that he found, put together like a complicated jigsaw puzzle, just waiting for that last bit of proof, that last piece that he had never got to put in. It was all there for us, though, and I ignored the momentary guilt from suspecting him of having been behind Jack’s disappearance himself and focused on the facts that we now had.

  Ten years ago, Jack Wellins went missing after his return from school. He made it to the village and didn’t leave, certainly not if his bones ended up less than half a mile from his house. He went somewhere, spoke to someone. I wondered what had happened, though. Had Jack stumbled onto something he shouldn’t have? Did he unearth some other secret, overhear some horrid conversation or had the boy been in the wrong place at the wrong time? Had he started it? Got violent at someone else and ended up in a fight?

  The possibilities ran through my head like mice, and it was only when Mills spoke up, telling me that I was about to miss our junction, that I snapped out of it and focused on the road, quickly indicating and swerving down the right road. I could feel the sergeant staring at me.

  “You alright, sir?” he asked.

  “Just a bit distracted there. Thinking about what happened to Jack, why it happened.”

  Mills nodded. “I’ve been stuck on that too, sir. Can’t see why anyone would want to harm the lad, let alone bury him out there and cover the secret for ten years.”

  “Not only cover it,” I said. “But kill Dr Schmidt to make sure it stayed hidden.”

  We both looked straight ahead, stewing with the thought.

  “It is one hell of a cover-up,” Mills said after a while. “And whoever did it knew that Schmidt was there, knew what he was working on, but held off until the last minute. Until they really suspected that he knew.”

  “I’d wager that’s why they went over there, to begin with,” I answered. “To see what he knew and go from there. They get to the flat, realise that Schmidt’s put two and two together, and act on it there and then.”

  “But they don’t clean up after themselves like they did with Jack,” Mills added. “They just leave him there, make a quick getaway instead.”

  “A bit harder in a flat,” I said. “They’d have had to drag him from the building, risk getting caught.”

  “Seems badly planned,” Mills commented. “Especially when they had all that time out in the village with nobody else around.”

  “Except the church and the vicar,” I said, “who kept an eye on him.”

  “Still,” he said.

  “Your critiquing of murderers really is quite exceptional, Mills. We’re lucky you have such a good conscience. Otherwise, you’d be a rather uncatchable criminal, yourself.”

  “I’m not sure if that’s a compliment or not,” Mills murmured.

  “Bit in between, I’ll admit. A compliment to the way your brain works, if nothing else,” I said, pulling the car to the side of the road just outside the church. I parked, pulling the handbrake on, then slumped against the wheel. “If I have to drive out here one more time today, I’m actually going to blow a fuse.”

  “It is a lot of back and forth,” Mills said, climbing out of the car. “Why did you not just look around with Fry?”

  “Because I wanted to get the samples to Lena, and I wanted you with me. I like Fry, but she’s still a pup. You’ve started to harden at least,” I told him over the roof of the car.

  “Gee, thanks,” he said, swinging the car door shut. “Really feeling the love today, sir.”

  “Oh, you are snarky, aren’t you? Come on,” I walked over and clapped him on the shoulder. “A bit of fresh air, a bit of interviewing a priest, and you’ll be right as rain in a bit.”

  Mills muttered something under his breath as we strode up to the church, ducking through the lychgate and heading up the path to rattle the front doors. They swung open, and I imagined that they were rarely locked to the public.

  Inside was as dark and gloomy as ever, the chill running through the church, both from the lack of central heating and the general coldness that came with a centuries-old building. A few candles flickered on the table, some of them recently snuffed out.

  “Always reminds me of birthday candles,” Mills said as we walked in.

  “The smell of blown-out candles?”

  He nodded, then cupped his hands to his mouth. “Hello?” he called, the word echoing around the cavernous nave.

  Our shoes clicked against the stone floor until we hit the carpet, but there was no reply to Mills’s call.

  “Vicar?” I called, walking down to where his little office was and knocking on the door. There was no answer, but I twisted the doorknob, and it opened. Inside was dark, lights off, curtains partly drawn. Everything was tidied neatly on his desk, the computer switched off, and the coat rack in the corner was empty.

  “Nobody’s home,” Mills murmured. “He left the door open?”

  “Keeps it open to the parishioners,” I replied. “I doubt any locals will sneak in to steal candle sticks or drink communion wine.”

  “I thought that was Catholics.”

  “You’d be surprised by the overlap,” I replied, wandering into the office. I looked at the little shelf by the desk, stacked with a few bibles, several other books, pots of pens and pencils, a tube of book binding glue, a crucifix and, oddly enough, a small tin of biscuits. I wondered if that was for Sunday school or just his own
enjoyment.

  Mills was over at the cupboard in the corner, cracking it open.

  “A man of simple taste,” he remarked, looking at the small selection of identical black cassocks.

  “Look down there,” I said, pointing to the bottom of the cupboard. The floor was dusty, rather dusty in fact, except for a large clean space in the corner.

  “Like Schmidt’s shelves,” Mills said, squatting down. “There was something here for a while.”

  “A box?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “Not square enough. A bag, maybe?”

  “Wonder where that’s wandered off to,” I murmured, offering Mills a hand and hauling him to his feet. “The vicar’s not here,” I said. “But the vicarage is over the road, might be worth knocking on.”

  “And if he’s not there?”

  “He’s probably out visiting someone,” I said. “Or doing whatever it is that vicars get up to when they’re not preaching.”

  “Who was your local vicar growing up?” Mills asked curiously, taking a photo of the dust pattern before closing the cupboard and following me from the room.

  “Little old lady we all called Rev Wendy. Lovely lady. Still lives in the village and still makes the best lemon drizzle cake you could ever ask for. Performed as many baptisms as she did funerals.”

  Mills hummed thoughtfully as we walked, and I looked around the pews as we strode to the doors. Then I paused.

  “Sir?” Mills asked, a few steps ahead.

  “There’s an odd number,” I told him. “Eight on that side, seven on the other.” It wasn’t immediately noticeable. The pews on the left were arranged so that, at first glance, they looked to be in line with the ones on the other side. A bookshelf at the end added to the effect.

  “Maybe one broke?” Mills suggested.

  “Look at these things, Isaac,” I tapped one of the heavy wooden seats. “They’ve been here decades; they don’t just break.” There were plenty of reasons why one of the pews had gone missing, but it struck me the same way as the dust pattern in the cupboard did. Not right.

  I walked over to where the missing pew ought to be, in the middle of the row, squarely over the thin rug that ran down the aisle.

  “They must be cold to have a rug in here,” I muttered, shoving against the pew until it squealed over the floor and shoved to the side. Mills stood by, looking confused but not saying anything. Not as I squatted down and pulled the carpet away to reveal the floorboards beneath.

  I looked at what was there and pinched my eyes shut for a second before looking over my shoulder to Mills.

  “Time for your favourite game, Isaac. Wine or blood?”

  He hurried over, peering across my shoulder to the floorboard I looked down at. The pale grey was stained, almost black, a deep splotch here, a few splatters there.

  “If it is wine,” Mills said in a stiff voice. “It’s the whole bloody bottle.”

  I leant back on my haunches, hands pressed to my mouth. “See if you can’t loosen it, Mills, we can see what forensics can say about it.” I hopped to my feet.

  “Where are you going?” Mills asked.

  “Over the road,” I answered bleakly. “To see what the vicar might want to tell us before we rip up his whole floor.”

  I left Mills there to try to shimmy the board loose with my pocketknife and stormed through the church, bursting through the doors and down the path. My glowering stride was broken when I stopped by the road to let a cyclist pass. Then I carried on to the little cottage opposite the church. It was likely the same age as its neighbour, or at least nearly as old, and the faded bricks were covered in ivy, crawling up past the door and windows, even up the side of the chimney. I wondered if the plant was more or less holding the building together.

  I pushed through the low gate, up to the front door, yanking on the doorbell. It rang hollowly through the house, and I waited on the step, seething. When no answer came, I rang again, and then I rattled on the heavy knocker before stepping to the side to peek through the front window. I couldn’t see any lights on in the house, nobody moving within.

  “Vicar’s out,” a voice called. I spun around to find an old woman at the end of the path, a shaggy looking dog by her side. I calmed myself down as I walked towards her.

  “He’s out?” She nodded. “You know where I might find him?”

  “Gone from the village lad, his car’s gone,” she pointed to the driveway barely visible by the side of the house.

  “So it is,” I realised. “Silly me.”

  “Will I let him know you stopped by?” she asked. “I only live next door.”

  “That’s alright, miss, thank you.” She nodded again and moved on, clicking her tongue at the dog.

  Muttering under my breath, I walked, my energy draining as I made it back to the church. Mills was still hunched on the floor, his jacket discarded as he fidgeted with the floor.

  “Isn’t the place Grade II listed or something?” he asked, peering up at me, face flushed, hair sticking to his brow. “I don’t think the council will like this.”

  “Tough,” I replied. “We have a murder to solve, and if that is blood, then we need to know.”

  “If it is blood, it’s been here a bloody long while,” Mills said. “Why has it not been cleaned up? Bit of scrubbing would have got this out.”

  It was in there now, in the grain of the wood, a black stain that to passer-by wouldn’t be worth taking much notice of, but I’d seen a lot of blood stains, I knew to look for them now. Besides, I imagined he’d have been too busy digging a grave to worry about the floorboard. Nothing a rug couldn’t fix.

  I just stared down at Mills, letting all of those thoughts cross my face. He sighed, blew his hair from his brow, and pulled out a small plastic bag. He adjusted his angle, leaning on his forearm and used the knife to start scratching at the board, scraping up dust and flecks. When he had a good enough sample, he carefully pushed it into the bag, sealed it and got to his feet, looking thoroughly annoyed.

  “Should have done that to start with,” he muttered.

  “Well, we know where to find the board if we need it. Did you take a picture before?” I asked.

  “Luckily yes,” Mills said, sticking the bag in his pocket and handing me my knife. I folded it up as Mills pushed the carpet back into the place, then the two of us shoved the pew back where it was.

  “I take it the vicar’s gone out?” Mills asked as he pulled his coat on.

  “Car’s gone too,” I told him. “Let’s get that to the station and see about getting an officer outside his house in case he comes back whilst we think of where he might have gone.”

  “Could have gone to the shops,” Mills suggested as we walked from the church, shutting the doors behind us. “Popped out for some milk.”

  “There’s a village shop.”

  “Popped out for some saffron.”

  He’d gone somewhere, I knew that much. I also knew that we’d find him, one way or another.

  Twenty-Three

  Thatcher

  There was a definite buzz at the station when we got back, more so than there ever usually was on a Sunday. News of the remains had spread across the different floors, the sudden re-emergence of a decades-old cold case sparking interest in everyone from detectives to HR. Mills and I more or less ignored everyone that we passed, heading straight to forensics with the samples from the church. They would identify what the stain was, and if it was blood, Crowe would be able to tell us if it was Jack’s. I thought about heading down there now to see how she was doing on the DNA matching, but I knew better than to hurry her along, especially when dealing with bones. It wasn’t as easy as plucking someone’s hair from their head to run a test. I wasn’t quite sure what the process would be, but I did know that I wasn’t about to get in the way of it.

  Instead, I headed upstairs to find a PC to send to Miles Harte’s house, in case the vicar made a sudden return. Waters was on duty and was more than happy to be out on a specia
l job, rather than sitting here, waiting for someone to happen, or to drive around the city listening to the radio. He perked right up when I approached him and was on his feet and pulling his coat before I’d even finished talking. I did make him take another officer with him, just to be on the safe side. If the vicar was directly involved with this, then there was the chance he had killed two people, and none of our PCs was in any way expendable. I saw Waters and his chosen partner, Thompson, out the door, then went off in search of Mills.

  He was in our office, studying the boards we had assembled with a frown on his young face, one foot tapping the floor. A habit, I had noticed, that he employed when he was particularly stuck on something, struggling to piece it out. Sometimes a case, other times a word that had slipped his mind, once or twice even a crossword puzzle had managed to drag this reaction from him.

  “What is it?” I asked, pushing the door shut to keep the outside noise to a minimum.

  Mills unfolded his arms and reached out to tap the photograph of Peter Wadham. “He knew about the dig, knew that Schmidt was there, hired him too, so he likely had access to his personal information.”

  “Why kill him, though? What would Wadham have to do with the death of Jack Wellins?” I asked, wanting to see where Mills was going with this.

  “Nothing. But those remains,” Mills shook his head and turned to me, “remember all the buzz around them? Remains found in a small local village. The possibility of a Saxon or Viking burial, something like that, would be huge for the village, yes, but also for the museum. A new exhibit, something to grab people’s attention. Not only was this skeleton found with a bashed-in head, but it was also found a mile from where dear old Mrs Cabbage eats her Sunday roast.”

  I leant back against my desk, folding my arms over my chest. “He was counting on those bones being something worth digging up, something for the museum to celebrate.”

  “And Dr Schmidt was about to blow that find clean out of the water and take away the site altogether. It’s a police site now, not a historical one.”