“Hello,” I walked over, trying to keep my voice light-hearted and friendly as I joined them. “I’m Detective Inspector Thatcher, and you can call me Max. You must be Holly,” I looked at the older girl, “and Grace?” A received two shy nods. “This is Susanne, she works for child protection, and she’s going to be staying with us until your aunt Paige arrives.”
“Paige called me,” Holly told us, her voice wavering slightly. “Said to make you show me your badges.”
I smiled at that and pulled out my warrant card as Susanne offered her own id for Holly to look over. She nodded once and then squatted down to look at Grace.
“The policeman and the lady are going to look after you until Paige comes, okay?”
Grace nodded, and Susanne bent down beside her. “Hi, Grace. My name’s Susanne. We’re going to go upstairs, alright, and maybe do some drawing or something until your auntie’s here.”
Holly gave her a light nudge forward, and Grace took Susanne’s hand, face brightening lightly as she skipped alongside her to the stairs, Susanne asking her questions about the stickers on her jumper.
“Is Abbie alright?” Holly asked once they had bounced up the stairs. “Paige didn’t tell me anything.”
“She’s in the hospital right now,” I told her. Holly nodded, her face a bit grim. “Are you alright? Getting home and things?”
She nodded, pulling her coat further up her shoulders. “I have my brother’s old car, so I’m good. Thanks for looking after her,” she added with a nod to the stairs.
“Thank you for bringing her here,” I answered. “You’re a very good babysitter, Holly. I hope you get paid well.”
She scrunched her nose and smiled. “About as well any babysitter. Bye then,” she said, drifting away to the door. I gave her a small wave and turned around, thanking the constable and making my way upstairs.
Mills had set up a small area over by a desk for Grace, some blank paper, a few pens and what sorry excuses we had for toys in this place. She didn’t seem to mind, and was sat on the floor with Susanne, tipping her rucksack upside down and spilling everything out.
I stood and watched for a moment, and Sharp drifted over to stand by me.
“Sweet girl,” she muttered, her eyes full of rare sympathy. “When’s the aunt arriving?”
I checked my watch. “Should be about an hour now.”
Sharp nodded. “Alright. Get her some juice or something. A biscuit, too,” she ordered before striding away.
I chuckled, ducking into the kitchen to see what I could find. There was a bottle of Ribena tucked away in one of the cupboards, so I made her a drink in a plastic cup, whisked the packet of ginger nuts from the tin and carted it all over, setting everything down on the desk. Grace was playing with Susanne, showing her the paintings she had done that morning for Abbie.
Mills and I left them alone, heading into our office and began constructing a very empty, very boring board of what we knew. We had a rough time when she’d been attacked, and only one person on the grounds had been there the whole time. That didn’t bode well for Dr Quaid. The hour passed quickly, and shortly, the constable reappeared, a young woman walking behind him with her face drawn with worry. As we left the office, Grace looked up and saw her, clambering to her feet and running over.
“Paige!” The young woman managed a smile, dropping her bag and catching Grace, swinging her up into a tight hug. As I drew near, I could see the tight grip Paige had on the girl, her eyes closed, face pressed into the curls of hair. She opened her eyes at the sound of our feet and gently dropped Grace to her feet.
“I’m just going to have a chat with the policemen, okay?” she said, kneeling down and fixing the hair clip that dangled down Grace’s cheek. “Then we’re going to go home, and auntie Paige is going to come and stay at your house!” She smiled.
“Where’s mummy?” Grace asked, and Paige’s face fell.
“Mummy’s a bit poorly right now, poppet. So, she has to stay with the doctors, but we’ll go and see her soon. And when she’s all better, we’ll bring her home.”
Grace didn’t look too pleased by this, but Paige stroked her hair back from her face and kissed her forehead.
“You and I can build a den, and we’ll sleep in it until she’s better. How about that?”
Grace perked up then and nodded, curls bouncing on her head.
“Good girl. You go and put everything back in your bag then, and I’ll chat to the policemen, then we’ll go home.”
She stood up, and Grace ran over to Susanne, who helped her pile everything back into the ladybird shaped bag. Paige turned to Mills and me, her face falling completely, worry etched over her face. She was young, I realised, in her early twenties with her eyeliner smudged around her eyes, her bright pink nail polish chipped, and her heeled boots topped by a pair of frilly socks. I could see some of the family resemblance. She and Grace both had deep brown eyes and freckled skin, but Paige’s hair, unlike her sister and niece’s, was brown, swept over one shoulder.
“Abbie?” she asked frantically. I indicated a spare chair, and she sank down.
“She’s in the hospital, in a coma,” I told her gently, and she pinched her eyes shut. “We’ve got officers outside her room to keep her safe.”
“Someone did this to her?” she whispered, opening her eyes.
“We think so.” I wanted to ask more questions, but her scared eyes constantly flicked over to Grace, her fingers winding nervously together and apart. “We’ll have some more questions for you, Miss Whelan. But for now, if you’d like to get Grace home and call the hospital, we’d understand.”
She whipped her head around to look at me, relief all over her face. “Thank you,” she sighed. “You’ve got my number, right?”
I nodded, handing her my own after scribbling it on a piece of paper. “We’ll be in touch shortly, Miss Whelan. The sooner we ask you some questions about your sister, the sooner we can help her.”
Paige nodded. “I understand. Once I get Grace settled, you could come to the house?” she suggested. “Most of Abbie’s stuff will be there, anyway.”
“That would be great, thank you.” She nodded again, standing up at the same time as me, and I gave her a smile, shaking her cold, trembling hand. She wandered over to Grace, speaking quietly with Susanne for a moment before taking her niece’s hand and leading her away.
“Say thank you,” she told her, and Grace looked up at us with a smile and a wave.
“Thank you!” she called. Paige managed another smile and nodded in my direction once more before taking Grace over to the stairs.
Mills stood at my shoulder and sighed. “Back to the gardens, then?” he asked.
“We’ve got to start somewhere,” I answered, shooting him a grin. “I’m driving.”
Four
Thatcher
We ended up having lunch before going back to the gardens, bringing Susanne with us to the small café around the corner until she had to go back to the office. It wasn’t hard to see why Mills was so taken with her. She had an easy presence to be around, funny and caring. I noticed that she was quiet as well, listening patiently as Mills rambled on about things, his head and mouth in competition for processing something first, all the while with a smile on her lips, her eyes fixed on his face as he spoke.
After she left, we jumped back into my car, and I drove us back out towards the gardens, at a far more leisurely pace this time so that we could enjoy the scenic hills and fields that we drove through. I gave Mills my phone as we went so that he could put Paige’s number in, along with the hospital number, to save myself fiddling with it all later.
“What did you make of her?” Mills asked, putting my phone away and shifting in his seat so that he could read my face.
“Who?” I asked, mindful that he could be referring to Susanne and not wanting to put my foot in it.
“Paige Whelan,” he said. “She’s younger than I thought she would be.”
“Early twenties,
I’d say,” I agreed, casting my mind back to the young lady. “She seemed to know what she was doing with Grace, though, and Susanne had no issues.”
Grace seemed hugely fond of her aunt, in fact, and Paige’s note to Holly to see our ID’s was a clever thing to do. Grace was in good hands, that much I was confident in, and it made it easier now to focus on getting her mother back to her.
“Not one. Kind of her to invite us over to Abbie’s house as well to question her,” he added. “Especially since we’d need to have a poke around there at some point, odds are.” We usually did, but it all depended on what happened. For all we knew, Abbie would wake up tomorrow.
“She’s worried about her sister,” I murmured. “And I’m guessing that if Abbie were to die, she’d be the legal guardian for Grace. She has every reason to want to help us and see things made right.”
“Do you think it might be worth asking her about Grace’s father?” Mills asked after a short pause. “Just so that we know a little about him.”
“We’ll ask her about the relationship, of course. If he harbours any bad will towards Abbie, but otherwise, if he doesn’t have an involvement with Grace, I don’t see why we should bring it up. We’ll wait,” I decided, “and see what Paige tells us about him.”
I could see Mills nod in the corner of my eye, and we sat quietly for a while, listening to the radio and watching the landscape whirl past.
“What did you make of Dr Quaid?” he asked suddenly. “He was the only other person in the gardens. That doesn’t shine the best light on him right now.”
“Sadly not. He seemed pretty shaken up by it all and was happy to comply with everything.”
“Maybe because someone he injected with a drug managed to survive,” Mills pointed out.
“Maybe. But let’s not go counting our chickens before they hatch. There’s plenty of places round there where a person can hide, and I wouldn’t doubt they’ve got people coming and going all the time,” I said. But Mills made a good point, and I kept it tucked away in the back of my head. Dr Quaid had been the only one there, and I was sure he knew exactly how to make or access a drug like that.
The thought mulled over in my head as we reached the gardens again, a few more cars loitering outside the house. We went about things more slowly this time, scanning the surrounding hedges and the road that ran past, the farm across the way and the house itself. There were two cars that had been here when we arrived this morning, and I headed over to them, clocking a child’s seat in the back of the small, red Mini. It was an old-fashioned make, I noticed, walking around and peering in the windows.
“Looks like a Noddy car,” Mills said, making me laugh, and he bent down and looked through the back seats. It was a fairly clean car, a few dropped pens on the floor and some left-over gloves and scarves in the backseat. One of those shields that stuck to the window to keep the sun out of children’s eyes had been taken down.
“Other one must belong to Quaid,” I murmured, looking over the rickety Land Rover with its collection of bumper sticks and the dog crate in the boot.
We left the cars, heading back into the house where more people had gathered and were bent at desks or standing around in little groups, others with their elbows deep in soil as they tended plants. They all wore lab coats like Abbie did, some of them with muddy boots or wellies on underneath. As we walked in, Dr Quaid spotted us and hurried over, cradling an empty pot in his hands.
“Detectives,” he greeted us quietly, aware of the eyes that had looked over at us curiously. “How is she? Abbie? Grace?”
“Abbie is in a coma, but she’s stable,” I told him, and he sagged slightly with relief. “Grace is with her aunt. Can we talk somewhere, Dr Quaid?” I asked, giving a pointed look to the other people that were staring over at us.
“Certainly. Come into the office. It’s much quieter.” He put the pot down and gave his team a polite nod before leading us away from the busy room to the small office we had sat in before. Mills walked over to a row of hooks on the wall where bags and coats hung.
“Which one is Abbie’s?” He asked politely.
“Third from the right,” Dr Quaid informed him, sitting down behind his desk and indicating the seat opposite him. Mills pulled Abbie’s coat and bag from the hook and dropped them by his feet to take back to the station with us, and likely then to Paige.
“Sorry for disturbing you, Dr Quaid, but we didn’t get much time to talk this morning.”
He waved a hand, taking his glasses off to clean them with a handkerchief. “You had to make sure Abbie was alive, and Grace was taken care of. I’d say you had your priorities just right, Inspector.”
“I was wondering if you might talk us through this morning,” I asked him, hoping that now that the shock had worn off a little, his memory might be clearer.
“Of course, yes. Well, I was in at half eight. Got everything open and running for everybody else. And I fetched myself a brew and sat down to start ploughing through some emails when Abbie came in.”
“How did she seem?” Mills asked him.
“She seemed her usual self. Cheery, but a bit annoyed.”
“Annoyed?” I repeated.
“Grace is on holiday now,” he explained. “She’s been looking forward to spending some time with her before she goes to school in September. I think she was a bit annoyed about having to come in and finish some of her work. She didn’t need to,” he added hastily, “but she’s a bit of a perfectionist, our Abbie, and she likes to see things done properly.”
I nodded, resting my elbow on the arm of the chair. Must rub people up the wrong way that, I thought, noting Mills scribbling something down himself.
“Go on, doctor.”
“Right. Well, she came in, dropped her stuff off and said she’d be out in the greenhouse. She got herself a tea and then headed out. After a few hours, I went out to get her approval for an order she needed and to see if she fancied another cuppa, but I couldn’t see her in the greenhouse.”
“Did you go into the greenhouse?” I asked, and he shook his head.
“You can see straight in from along the path, and she wasn’t there, but the door was open, so I figured she’d stepped out. Maybe needed a stroll or something.”
“So, you went looking for her,” I supplied.
“That’s right. Around the corner where some of the old tool sheds are, and I saw her down there, in amongst the off-limit plants.”
“Poisonous plants,” Mills clarified.
“Useful when used properly, Sergeant and I can assure you both that my staff need clearance from me and express permission to access any of those plants.”
“What was Abbie doing there?” I asked.
“She was just standing,” he recalled, his voice distant. “She looked unsteady, wobbling a bit, so I called her name and then she just collapsed. I ran over, and she wasn’t moving. When I got close, I couldn’t see her chest rising or falling.”
“Why didn’t you call the ambulance?” Mills asked him. “Why call us?”
“I thought she was dead,” he said quietly. “And I panicked.”
“That’s alright, Doctor,” I assured him. “You called the right people, as it turns out. Was anyone else in at that point?”
“Not then. People started turning up not long after you had left yourself. Had a strange time explaining to them why the police had closed off that part of the garden.”
Forensics had left not long after we did, I knew, and as suspected, there wasn’t much to be found where Abbie had been.
“What exactly was Abbie’s research?” I asked him. “It must be important for her to come in and finish it up.”
“It’s a long-term study,” he answered, his voice getting clearer, more confident as he spoke, “into natural treatments for cardiovascular diseases. Not easy work, but Abbie always enjoyed it. She understands plants, you see,” he said. “Knows how they can work if they’re treated properly.”
“Who else is on the re
search team?” Mills inquired.
“Abbie worked with her partner, Sonia Petrilli. They’ve worked together on several studies now. They’re my best team,” he added proudly. “Abbie came in today to check the stability of a compound they’d been experimenting with.”
I frowned. “Why not wait for Sonia to come in?” I asked. “Surely she could have done that.”
“She certainly could. But that was Abbie’s side of the research, and like I said before, Inspector, she’s a perfectionist when it comes to working.”
“Is Sonia here now?” Mills asked him.
“She came in a few hours ago. She’s rather shaken up. She’ll be grateful to hear that Abbie’s alive, and that Grace is okay too.”
“We’ll be sure to reassure your team, Dr Quaid,” I told him. “What’s the security like here?”
“Oh, we take a lot of care with it,” he told me. “What with some of the materials and substances we have on-site. Most of our more dangerous studies happen upstairs, which is where Abbie and Sonia are most of the time. We have a key card system with restricted access up there, CCTV on the entrances and exits and a top of the range alarm system. It’s why I have to come in at half-eight,” he said with a faint chuckle. “To turn the blasted thing before everyone comes in.”
“What about out in the gardens themselves?” I went on. “In the greenhouses or around the deadly plants?”
“The whole facility is surrounded by a metal fence,” he told us, and I nodded. We’d spotted it on our way in. “The greenhouses are always locked with unique keys that only the necessary staff have. In terms of cameras, we’re a bit stuck out there. The place is old, so we’re short on access. There is a camera by the deadly plants. I can access the footage for you.”
“That would be much appreciated,” I told him. “What’s the access to the greenhouse itself like?”
“You can reach it from anywhere on the property, the same with the other greenhouses.”
Gardners, Ditchers, and Gravemakers (A DCI Thatcher Yorkshire Crimes Book 4) Page 4