“I’d like to point out that I am also brilliant,” she began, and I nodded. Her name was vaguely familiar, and I had no doubt that she was as useful to us as she was to the hospital. “But even I was stumped on this one. Straight away, we ruled out any of the usual suspects,” she told me, her face turning serious, her voice too as she settled into her confident, familiar role.
“It looks like a handmade sort of situation,” she told us, showing us a page of chemical compounds that I couldn’t possibly understand. “Some of the ingredients we know, but there’s not enough of them to have had the effect on the patient that we’ve seen. So, I started working on some of the unfamiliar compounds.” She ran a finger down a list. “And luckily for all of us, I recognised one of them from a study in Beijing from about ten or o years ago. These compounds,” she pointed to the top of the list, “are all found in a plant, Nerium oleander. Or just Nerium.”
“A plant?” I asked, leaning forward.
“It’s a sort of shrub,” she told me. “Rather a widespread plant, but it tends towards temperate climates; the Mediterranean, South Asia, Northwest Africa. Quite pretty, but only to look at. These,” she tapped the list again, “when ingested can cause nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea, irregular heart rhythm. It’s not hugely deadly. Very few people have ever actually died from ingesting it, but its effect on the cardiac and nervous system can affect circulation, cause seizures, and comas, often leading to death.”
“Christ,” Mills breathed. “I’ll be sure not to get any from the garden centre,” he said.
Dr Olsen smiled at him. “Good lad. The amount you’d need for that effect on the body, I’m sure about. But the fact that it’s been blended with some other chemicals, means that whoever made it knew what they were doing.”
“What about treatment?” I asked.
“Now that we know what it is, we can begin working on getting it out of her system,” Dr Olsen said. “The biggest worry right now is the coma itself.”
“How would someone make this?” I asked, looking down at the pages of what looked to me like Klingon or something.
“They’d need access to a place not unlike this,” she indicated her own lab. “And knowledge, more than anything.”
“If they were playing with the chemicals,” I asked, something nagging at my thoughts. “Could it be that they were trying to kill her?”
“Potentially,” Dr Olsen weighed. “Could be that they got it wrong, and that’s why she’s still with us. Or they got it just right.”
“Do you have a copy of this?” I asked, tapping the clipboard. She turned around to the desk, pulling a paper folder from a stack of others, checked the label and cavalierly slid it across to me.
“Thank you,” I told her with as much earnestness as I could muster.
“Pleasure. Give my best to Lena,” she said, walking us from the lab and back to the lift. “And I’ll be in touch with any changes,” she added, hitting the button for us and walking away, whistling.
“Plant-based poison,” Mills muttered as the doors slid open, and we stepped inside. “What are the odds?” I hit the ground floor button and leant against the mirrored wall.
“What are the odds that we might find Nerium growing in those gardens?” I added. And I’d bet good money that most of the staff in the place knew exactly what it could do when ingested, how much would be needed, and likely had access to everything else that Dr Olsen managed to find in her report.
“Do you want to head to the gardens again?” Mills asked. I did, but now might be too soon. If we were going there with the hope of bringing someone in, we’d need a little more to back up our claims than a plant that could theoretically be growing in half the gardens in the city.
“Not just yet. I want to find out a bit more about Abbie’s work,” I told him, Lin Shui’s words echoing around my head. “Let’s take this back to Sharp and give Paige a ring,” I decided as the lift stopped and we stepped on into the busy reception, making a beeline for the car park. “We’ll need a stronger cause to bring someone in.”
And something told me that at Abbie Whelan’s house, we’d likely find one.
Nine
Thatcher
We left the hospital feeling hopeful. With Dr Olsen’s toxicology report, and with the right treatment for Abbie coming in, I felt like we were getting somewhere. From what the doctor had told us about Nerium, my suspicion towards Lin Shui was fading more and more. I couldn’t see her being behind the greenhouse, the stolen plants. Couldn’t imagine her going through all of this just to take down a woman whose research she wasn’t even protesting right now. Sonia Petrilli was another thought entirely. But all we had was suspicion, driven mostly by our own theories and from what Lin had told us about not even really knowing who Sonia was. I decided that going to Abbie’s house, taking a look through her own work and talking properly to Paige, would give us the right footing to proceed.
The day was growing warm, and even though there was a chill to the breeze, I shrugged my coat off when we returned to the station, and fished out a lightweight jacket, slipping it on and feeling less hot, but significantly lacking in something. I didn’t seem to be the only one who thought so either, as when we entered Sharp’s office for the second time this morning, she looked me over from head to toe with mild alarm on her face. She looked from the jacket, to my face, to the window and back at me.
“Warm out there?” She asked.
“It’s heating up,” I answered, sliding Dr Olsen’s report across the desk to her. “I’d say we’re in for a hot summer.”
“Bout time,” she muttered, flipping the folder open. “Last year was all muggy air, mosquitoes and storms. Nerium?” She looked up at me questioningly.
“Dr Olsen said that it’s the main source of the compounds that have affected Abbie,” I told her. “Combined with the other chemicals, it’s not a very mix. Something that someone put a lot of thought and time into as well.”
“Professional? Well, at least we don’t have to bring in a narcotics team,” she said simply, closing the folder. “I’ll give this a proper read through. What’s your next move?” She asked us, propping her chin up on her hands, elbows braced on the desk.
“We’re thinking of going around to Abbie Whelan’s house,” I told her. “Taking a look through some of her work, see if we can find something there that might give a more solid lead. And have another chat with Paige while we’re there too. I haven’t ruled out the possibility that Grace’s father might be involved in some way.”
“Good. Who are you leaning towards?”
“The researcher partner,” Mills told her. “Sonia Petrilli. She has access to the greenhouse, likely knows a lot about Nerium. We just don’t have a good enough motive to bring her in, and her parents confirmed her alibi.”
Sharp solid and sat back in her chair, using her foot to spin it gently from side to side. “How ironclad?”
“Not very,” I put in. “There’s some leeway in there that could put her at the gardens.”
Sharp nodded slowly, twiddling with a pen on her desk. “You’d better get to it, then,” she said to us dismissively.
We left her with the report, backing out from her office and retreated to our own, where Mills started throwing our new knowledge up on the, otherwise pretty scant, whiteboard. I dug out my phone, calling Paige Whelan, and listened to it ring, and ring, and ring, until finally it clicked, and a breathless Paige answered.
“Hello?”
“Hello, Paige. It’s Detective Inspector Thatcher. Sorry to bother you.”
“No, that’s no problem. Just trying to find the bloody cat. What can I do for you? Is it about Abbie?”
“We do have a little information for you from the hospital. I wondered if we might take you up on your offer and pop round this afternoon, talk to you about your sister and maybe have a quick glance around the place?”
“Sure. Me and Grace are heading this afternoon, though. I have a work thing that they wouldn’t let me
move. You could come now?” she suggested hopefully.
“Now’s fine. See you in a bit.”
“Bye,” she called back, hanging up with a speed that made me wonder if she’d spotted the cat at long last.
“Paige Whelan?” Mills asked, looking over his shoulder at me.
“She’s out this afternoon, but she’s free now. You good to go?” I asked him. He nodded, slotting the pen he was twirling between his fingers away and picking up his jacket from the coat stand, slinging it over one arm.
We left the office, nodding to Smith, who came strolling by with enough cardboard boxes in her arms to build a fort, and with an unamused expression on her face.
With Abbie’s address plugged into the satnav, I tipped my head against the seat and closed my eyes as Mills pulled out from the carpark.
“I feel like we only sat down for five minutes,” he muttered.
“We did. Should have stayed in the car,” I added. “Or called from the hospital. Though,” I opened my eyes and sat up straight. “Sharp might have had us for dinner if we didn’t get her that report as snappily as we did.”
Mills chuckled. “Dr Olsen was interesting. Imagine being in a room with her and Dr Crowe for longer than ten minutes.”
“You’d need a stiff drink for that, Mills,” I said, imagining the company to be just as bracing.
“I thought I’d take a closer look into Nerium,” he went on, casually spinning us round a roundabout with a deftness that I was slightly jealous of. “I’m guessing our suspect would have needed a large amount of it, so I could look into suppliers, large sales of it.”
“That’s a lot of time bent over a computer screen,” I told him. “But good thinking. Even if Sonia is high on the list, I doubt she’d be careless enough to steal the plants from her own lace of work.”
“Especially knowing that we’d be there,” he added. “What about the missing plant of theirs? We never did ask what it was.”
“Maybe Abbie will have all of that in her house,” I suggested hopefully. “Might be better for us to read about it ourselves than to hear whatever version of events the gardens or Lin Shui can give us.”
Mills nodded in agreement, and before we knew it, we had pulled up in the driveway of a small, terraced house. A cookie-cutter copy of the entire row of two-up two-downs, there was a small blue car in the driveway before us, and the house itself looked to be nothing special. The garden was something else. In the middle of a road of patchy grass, weedy drives and the odd sprig of lavender or ivy bushes, Abbie’s garden exploded. And it was the only front. Sunflowers towered against the wall of the house, neat little beds laid out in front that overflowed with colour and smells. Bees bounced around happily, and amongst the leaves and flowers, a few little paper windmills and some gnomes hung about. A cherry tree sat in the corner, stretching over the garage roof, and wisteria climbed up and over the front door. We climbed from the car, in awe and pushed the garden gate open, walking to the yellow front door and ringing the bell.
It opened quickly, Paige’s face faintly visible through the stained-glass window, and then she was there before us, looking better than the other day. Her face was clean from the smudged makeup she’d worn before, her hair loose around her shoulders, and she wore a bright jumper underneath a pair of dungarees.
“Come on in,” she wasted no time, stepping aside so that we could walk into the narrow hallway. Noise came from the stairs before us, and once she shut the door, Paige looked up. “Grace,” she said. “I put on a Disney film on the telly in Abbie’s room to keep her entertained.”
“Which one?” Mills asked her as she walked down the hallway to the kitchen at the end of the house.
“The Jungle Book,” she answered brightly. The kitchen was snug, as they all were in these houses, but a small table and chairs sat against the wall, a teapot and some mugs already waiting. I glanced at the window over the sink to the garden outside, pleasantly surprised to find it full mostly of Grace’s things. A tree with a swing tied to a large branch, a Wendy house in the corner, the plants all plain, mostly green. Things that I assumed were safe to let a four-year-old run wild in. The grass was long, and dandelions and daisies cropped up all over the place, attracting yet even more bees.
“Have a seat,” Paige waved to the table. “Tea?”
“Thank you,” Mills said as we sat down. “Thank you for letting us come.”
“That’s alright. Sorry, it’s a bit rushed. Work is being somewhat unfair, I think, given the circumstances.” She sat down, pouring the brewed tea into mugs and slid one to both of us, a jug of milk in the centre of the table too.
“What do you do?” I asked her.
“I work in antiques,” she answered. “There’s an auction later today that I apparently cannot miss. But I can take Grace there, and she always likes looking around.” Auctions could be interesting, something of an Aladdin’s cave at times. “You said you had some information about Abbie?” Paige asked, wringing her hands together.
“Yes. We were at the hospital earlier, speaking to the toxicologist there. She’s identified what was used on Abbie, so they can begin the proper treatment for her.”
Paige let out a long breath, her shoulders sagging as she dipped her head. “Thank God,” she breathed.
“Have you been to visit her yet?” I asked. Paige shook her head and started stirring her tea.
“Yesterday was a bit of a blur. Got here and realised there wasn’t much in, so me and Grace had to nip to the shops. Then today work called so…” She shrugged and trailed off. “This evening, we’ll go.”
“How much do you know about the work your sister was doing?” I asked her.
“Not much,” she said. “Honestly, most of the time, whenever Abbie told me about her work, it was like static in my head. She’s a lot cleverer than me. But she worked from the garage sometimes,” she looked to the backdoor. “So, you might find some of her notes out there.”
“Is there anything else in the house that might be useful to us?” I asked.
Paige thought for a moment, chewing the inside of her lip. “Her laptop? I can give that to you. Her password’s Marmalade and then Grace’s birth year.”
“Marmalade?” Mills asked with a smile.
“The cat,” she explained, nodding to the beast in question who padded in and jumped onto the kitchen counter. Abbie leant back, reaching out and waving an arm at him until he jumped down and slunk from the room again.
“How did Abbie seem?” I asked her once she finished glaring at the cat’s vanishing tail. “The last time you spoke to her?”
“She was good. Great, actually. We talked about the holidays, maybe the three of us doing something together, going to the beach or something. She’s been really good for a while now, actually.”
“And what can you tell us about Grace’s father?” I asked carefully, watching as her face instantly darkened, like storm clouds passing over.
“They met at uni,” she managed to say once she got a grip of her anger. “He’s a plant man too. When Abbie got pregnant, he was there for the first few weeks. Then he got offered this research thing in South Africa, and he just left. No word, no warning. One day, he was there, and the next, he was halfway across the world. Never answered a call, never answered an email. He’s still there, I think,” she practically spat the words out. “Has had nothing to do with Grace. I don’t think he even knows her name.”
“So, there’s been no contact with him at all?” I asked.
“None,” she enunciated the word clearly. “Not even on the birth certificate.”
I nodded, happy to have all of that cleared up. “Did Abbie talk to you about her co-workers? Her research partner?”
“Sonia? A couple of times. I’ve met her once or twice at some of Abbie’s work events. Seems nice, a bit stuck up her own arse though,” she added. Mills and I grinned at Paige’s expression.
“Paige!” Grace shouted down the stairs. Her aunt’s head shot up, and she unt
angled herself from where she was balanced cross-legged on the chair.
“Coming!” she called back, opening a drawer and tossing me a key. “For the garage. Have at it. I’ll get her laptop whilst I’m up there too,” she added, already walking out the kitchen.
I stood up, Mills following once he’d drank the rest of his tea, and as I opened the back door, I could hear Paige’s feet hurtling up the stairs. I smiled and stepped out into the garden, to where the back of the garage was. I unlocked it, and stepped in, surprised. It wasn’t a garage anymore, that much was clear. There was a skylight in the roof that let in streams of sunshine, and when I switched the lights on, the place flooded with light. There was a radiator on one wall, an impressively stocked bookshelf on another, a few plants hanging here and there, and a desk. By the main garage door, the suspect cluster of gardening equipment, wellies, a wheelbarrow, bags of compost and a small child’s bike were kept out of the way.
“Pretty good home office,” Mills remarked, nodding to the small kettle that was even kept in here, like the kind you got in hotels. I nodded in agreement, walking over the shelf above the desk where Abbie had carefully stored and labelled her various research projects from the years. I pulled the first one down, and then the next. Mills joined me, and we noticed a pattern through them all. Cited as the lead researcher, both on the papers and in the corresponding reports, was Abbie Whelan. Sonia Petrilli, if she was mentioned at all, was only given a small amount of credit, the same as Dr Quaid in most cases.
“Solid footing?” Mills asked, a concerned look on his young face.
“For someone who just does the plants, this doesn’t add up. If I were Sonia,” I said, taking a few pictures of the studies before putting them back into place. “I’d be rather sore about all this.”
“Sore enough to take over the next project entirely,” Mills murmured. We left the garage, returning to the kitchen when Grace now was, sitting on the counter as Paige pulled a smoothie from the fridge for her.
Gardners, Ditchers, and Gravemakers (A DCI Thatcher Yorkshire Crimes Book 4) Page 8