Less good enough for us, was that Abbie didn’t seem to carry anything of much interest. We had the purse that had been on her at the time, a set of car keys and house keys, a small folding umbrella and some of those reusable shopping bags that fold up into little pouches. It was a well-stocked bag, with wet wipes, a granola bar and a child’s juice drink. She had a makeup bag with a few tubes rattling around inside, a packet of sunflower seeds, hand cream, and a phone charger. No phone, though.
“Check her coat pockets,” I asked Mills, as I checked over some of the faded receipts. “See if her phone is there.”
Mills obliged, reaching into the deep pockets of the long dark purple coat, pulling out a lip balm, some pocket change and chewing gum from one pocket, and from the other, a phone, with a picture of Grace holding a cat almost the same size as she was on the case.
He handed it over, and I pressed the home button, happily cheering when it flashed to life straight away, almost fully charged for once.
“We’ll take it to IT,” I said. “Wasco should be able to get into it pretty quickly.”
“Grace is her background,” Mills pointed out.
“Yes?” I said.
“Sonia said that Abbie’s life revolves around her daughter. The code might be her birthday,” he suggested with a shrug. “Worth a shot, the worst that happens is we locked out for fifteen minutes.”
“Do we know her birthday?”
He reached over to his desk, where his notes from Susanne still sat. She’d left us with some basic information that we might need along the way, Grace’s date of birth included.
“The 14th of October,” he read quickly.
“1410,” I muttered as I typed it in. It went through, the phone unlocking, and I looked at Mills with surprise. “Well done, you.”
“I’ve noticed that a lot of parents are like that. It’s a set of numbers that get drilled into your head; you couldn’t forget them if you wanted to.” I wondered if he was thinking of his own nephews, and how it might then be to access his emails.
“Not exactly safe,” I reminded him.
“We’re in her phone, sir. Now’s not the time to be questioning technological safety measures.”
I grumbled, settling down in a chair and opening her messages. There weren’t many. A few too and from Paige, most of which I didn’t understand. The sisters seemed to know what the other meant with just a few words, and they discussed everything from what to have for dinner on Friday to that skirt that Paige apparently stole. She had a few between herself and Sonia, just standard little messages to tell each other that the greenhouse was locked, the plants were watered or if she’d be in late one day. The same with Dr Quaid, though he occasionally sent her links to articles in gardening magazines too. Aside from a few default messages about subscriptions or sales, that was about it. All of her other conversations were at least a year old, and there nobody in any of them that I took to be Grace’s father.
I opened her contacts list next and found much of the same people. Numbers for the doctor, the vet, Grace’s school, the electrician. And still no sign of anyone connected to Grace. No mention of a father, no skull emoji tied to a number. It was very much like he simply didn’t exist. It was enough to catch my eye, enough for me to tell Mills to make a note and stick it on the board.
Abbie’s emails were password-protected, and other than a few social media apps, there wasn’t much there. Her photo albums were almost full. Snaps of her and Paige, of Grace all the way from a baby up until now. Pictures of gardens, plants and a rather fat cat appeared in most of the backgrounds.
“Nothing on here that strikes my notice,” I told Mills. “Maybe Paige will be able to tell us a bit more about it.”
I put the phone back with the rest of her things and pried the gloves off of my hand.
“Anything from the receipts?” Mills asked me, pulling his gloves off and throwing them happily into the bin.
“They’re pretty old,” I told him. “Mostly supermarket receipts or petrol stations.”
“I didn’t think we’d find much on her,” he remarked, rubbing the back of his neck tiredly. “Her work seems fairly hush-hush, after all. Maybe we’ll have better luck in her home, with her computer and things.”
“I’d say so. We could try to get clearance to give the lab a proper look over, but since it’s not an actual homicide investigation, that might be a challenge, even for Sharp. Let’s stick to this for now,” I decided with a shake of my head. “Sort of Sonia’s alibi and cross that of the list, and we’ll look into the lab some more, find out what they do, who they do it with.”
“Who doesn’t like them doing it,” Mills added, blinking his eyes. “I’ll need a coffee. Want one?”
“Please. And some sort of biscuit if there are any left. I’ll give the hospital a ring,” I said. “See if anything’s changed.”
Mills nodded, and we parted ways briefly, me stepping out of the office for a moment, wanting a stretch of the legs.
As Mills fetched us some drinks and scavenged the cupboards for something to eat, I gave the hospital a quick call, hoping for a good update on Abbie and whatever it was she was drugged with. She remained in a coma, and the doctors had yet to identify what the drug was, but she was still stable, and they had informed Paige of as much too.
I hung up the phone, intercepting Mills as we walked back to the office, taking the larger of the two mugs he held, inhaling the lovely bitter smell of coffee.
“Any news?” Mills asked as we entered the office, pushing the door to.
“No changes,” I told him, settling down in my chair. “She’s still in the coma, and they’re working on finding the drug.”
“At least she’s still with us,” Mills pointed out.
“A small blessing. Now let’s figure out who put her there in the first place.”
I was not overly fond of research, never had been really, but with Abbie in the coma and without any strong leads to go on, our options were slim.
Sipping at my coffee, I turned my computer on and put in a search for Moorland Botanicals, surprised by the number of results that shot up across the page. The institute’s website came first, and I clicked on the link, having a brief scan of their about page, their past projects and recent studies. There wasn’t much on there, really. I imagined they couldn’t share a lot of what they did publicly. The website did not really suit the place as I had seen it, or the eccentric fleece wearing doctor behind all of its research. It was a clean, white, orderly website without any pictures, without anything at all really.
I went back to the main search results, scrolling down and pausing when I found several local news articles talking about the institute and the various protests that have been held against them. I opened the first one, dated from a few years ago, shortly after the researchers had brought out a new study for a drug to help with memory loss. The drug itself wasn’t mentioned. It seemed people had little issue with that. It was the methods that the researchers used, with animal rights activists at the forefront, condemning the studies for “immoral practices” and the lack of transparency the gardens offer to the public.
Going through some more articles, I found that some activist groups appear up time and time, constantly campaigning against the lab, with petitions, rallies and strikes outside their gates. Opening another tab, I put in a search for the name of the group that came up the most often and found their website, entirely dedicated to ending animal testing and cruelty. They had a whole page just for the botanical centre, listing its address, the studies it has completed over time, even the name of some of the researchers, Abbie’s included.
I put my mug down with a frown, concentrating on the site. They had archived posters from their various rallies, viciously coloured, graphically violent, old petitions that were shy a few signatures and images of letters that had been sent. Letters to the local council, governing boards, environmental agencies. And other letters, sent, though the names had been blacked out, to th
e researchers themselves with promises of violence and threats.
They were tactics, I knew they were. Fear mongering, and in my years in the force, I had rarely known anyone to actually act upon the sort of letters that they send. But someone had acted, so I sent some of the posters and the threatening letters to the printer, standing up from my chair with creaky knees.
I looked over at Mills, who had been murmuring quietly on the phone.
“Well?” I asked.
“Sonia’s parents confirmed her alibi, said she didn’t leave for work until half ten, quarter to eleven.”
I picked up my mug, taking a long swig. “She doesn’t live far from the gardens,” I observed, remembering her giving us the very specific time of ten fifty-two for her arrival to work.
“She could have gotten out and back again without them noticing she was gone,” Mills supplied.
“And whenever a parent gives an alibi, there’s always a grain of salt to be taken with it,” I remarked. “No matter how their child is now.”
“You don’t want to rule her out then?” Mills asked.
“Not just yet, I don’t think.”
Mills nodded and glanced over at my desk. “Found anything?”
“An activist group,” I answered, turning the screen around so he could see it. “Very hell-bent against the gardens and their research. They’ve been protesting them for a few years.”
“What are those letters?” Mills asked, squinting across the room.
“Threats. The names of the addressee have been blanked, but I’m sure we can guess who they went to.”
“Can we track down who owns the site?” he asked, getting up from his desk and stretching.
“I’m sure Wasco can,” I answered, bending down to the computer and sending the website link over to Wasco. I hoped he could. It was much harder trying to investigate a faceless organisation into attacking a woman. A name would be very useful.
I emptied my mug and stretched my arms out, distracted from everything momentarily by a text from Liene, who sent me a picture of the view from her hotel window. I replied, slightly jealous, unable to keep a smile off my face. I put my phone back down, pointedly ignoring Mills’s questioning smirk and strode from the office, heading to the printer. Smith was there, making some photocopies, and she’d stacked my printouts on the table, looking up at me as I arrived.
“Are they yours, sir? Are you joining a group?” she teased.
“Very funny,” I told her. “Hardly my sort of group,” I remarked, looking at one of the posters with its blood-red text and blurry, grainy images.
“To each their own, sir, that’s what my gran used to say,” Smith said. “They look hardcore. Who are they?” Her face turned a bit more solemn as she looked down at the images with me.
“Activist groups that are pretty against our botanical gardens and its work.”
“Really? I thought people liked botanical gardens,” she said with a shrug. “Good for the environment and all that.”
“The gardens are fine; it’s the research being done there that people take a stand against.” Smith frowned and pulled one of the pictures closer to her.
“I recognise this one,” she said, tapping one of the posters. “I think I brought in a girl a few years back with a load of these in her bag.”
“Was she part of the group?” Mills asked, leaning over my shoulder. Smith chewed her lip and nodded.
“Must have been. Let me check.” She walked over to her desk, and we followed as she whacked the top of her computer with a sheepish grin. “Due for an upgrade,” she told us, sitting down and opening up her bizarrely organised folders.
“Yep, here. Call themselves the Nine Lives,” she told us over her shoulder.
I nodded. That was the one.
“Who did you bring in?” Mills asked her.
“A young woman, about my own age actually. For vandalising private property.” We waited a moment as she sifted through her meticulous note keeping to the copy of the report she had drawn up for Sharp. “Here she is. Lin Shui. She was twenty-three when I arrested her two years ago. Paid a fine, went home. Has a few more things on her record. All very similar stuff. Trespassing, property damage, the usual reasons activists get brought in.”
“Lin Shui,” I made a mental note of the name. “Brilliant, thank you, Smith.”
“Happy to help, sir.”
I straightened up and turned to look at Mills. “We’ve got a name.”
Seven
Thatcher
I wasn’t sure quite what we would be able to get from the young activist, other than a good sense of what exactly the research team and Abbie were up against in their day-to-day work. Lin Shui’s record was enough to make me want to track her down and speak to her but wasn’t enough to paint her out as a murderer or attempted one in this case. I thought back to what Mills, and I had discussed in the car on the way back from the gardens, of our assailant causing enough damage to hinder the research, to muss things up without really getting their hands dirty. But I also agreed with the point that Mills had made about the plants that were still in the greenhouse. If someone really wanted to see the lab suffer, getting rid of all their work seemed like the best course of action. It was all too underhanded, too private for me to see it purely as an act of activism.
“Found her,” Mills piped up, drawing from the thoughts that I had sunk into when we returned to our office. He picked up his laptop and carried it over to my desk, sliding it before me. It was Lin Shui’s Facebook page, her profile mostly containing links to videos, speeches or articles for her cause. Mills clicked on one of the most recent posts she had shared. Another poster, this one was calling people to an anti-hunting rally in the city centre. Mills scrolled down to the comments, where Lin and her friends discussed their plans for the event, and then he pointed at the date and the time. I glanced at the clock.
“Finishes in an hour,” I noted. “We’d better get a move on.”
It was good luck that we had such a chance of finding her without needing to track her down fully through the system. We grabbed our coats and left the station, walking rather than driving, along the roads to where the rally was being held.
We heard it before we saw it. Raised voices through megaphones, disgruntled mutterings of passers-by and loud, heated debates ringing out through the small square. A young man stood on a box with the megaphone, dressed up as a fox with fake blood spilling over his head and down his clothes. His fellow activists were similarly dressed, some with fake bullets wounds, some with nets wrapped around them, some with toy antlers on their heads. One man, dressed as a quintessential hunter, sat in an animal crate, his hands red, looking very miserable to be in there. A few others had joined in the rally from the street and were helping to hand out leaflets and engage other shoppers in the discussion. Mills and I hovered back slightly, not wanting to be drawn in just yet, and scanned the faces.
I recognised Lin Shui from her profile picture, though it was a bit hard to make out her face from beneath the fake mud and leaves that she donned. We walked towards where she had chained herself to the railing behind her, sidestepping the other activists as we walked. She spotted us coming and held out some leaflets.
“Interested in joining our cause, gents? Or are you in favour of spilling blood for sport?” She spoke the last part of her sentence in a raised voice, drawing the attention of the others.
“Are you Lin Shui?” I asked her, stepping closer so that I didn’t have to shout over the noise.
“I am,” she confirmed easily, eyes narrowing with suspicion. “Why?”
“I’m Detective Inspector Thatcher, North Yorkshire Police,” I told her, showing her my warrant card. “I wondered if we could have a word.”
Before Lin could answer, the girl beside her spotted my badge and shouted out.
“The police! Trying to shut us down for speaking the truth!”
“We’re not breaking the law,” Lin told me in the casual voice of one who�
��d been here many times before. “I’m very acquainted by Section 14 of the Public Order Act, I can assure you, Inspector.”
“You can’t arrest us!” the other girl shouted. “The police don’t care about us! We have the right to speak our truths!”
“I’m not here to shut you down,” I told Lin Shui in a louder voice so that the others could hear. “I understand that you’ve protested against Moorland Botanicals before. The research facility.”
She nodded. “Poisonous bastards. You’re here about them?”
“I am. I just wanted to ask a few questions about them, and then we’ll let you get back to this.” I nodded to the others, to the shouting girl who had gone quiet and was watching us with a sour expression on her face.
Lin straightened her spine, lifting her chin and looking me dead in the eye, even as a bit of leaf stuck in her black hair fell into her face. “Is it more important than the welfare, sanctity, and lives of innocent animals?” she asked in a raised, haughty voice, the crowd echoing her in a cheer that rang around us.
“A woman is in a coma in hospital, nearly dead,” I answered in a clipped voice. “I’ll let you be the judge of that.” I walked away back to Mills. I heard some murmured voices behind me and some shuffling and clinking, and then Lin jogged a few steps to walk beside me.
“This had better be quick,” she muttered. I walked her over to where Mills stood a few metres from her friends and waved an arm in his direction.
“This Detective Sergeant Mills.”
She nodded at him and folded her arms. “Who’s in a coma?” she asked bluntly.
“Abbie Whelan, she’s one of the researchers there,” I told her, hoping that the name would ring a few bells.
Gardners, Ditchers, and Gravemakers (A DCI Thatcher Yorkshire Crimes Book 4) Page 6