Gardners, Ditchers, and Gravemakers (A DCI Thatcher Yorkshire Crimes Book 4)

by Oliver Davies

  “We heard that you’ve been in South Africa,” he started off easily, warming the conversation. “A research project?”

  “That’s right,” Luke nodded. “It’s a lovely country.”

  “When did you come back?” Thatcher asked.

  “About a month ago,” Luke answered after a moment’s hesitation. “I was staying with some friends in London, and I heard about what happened to Abbie, so I came up. Tried to find my daughter.” He didn’t use her name, and I wondered dimly if he even knew it. We certainly hadn’t used it.

  “You’ve been in the country for a month, but didn’t come in search of Abbie and her child until you heard about the attack?” Thatcher clarified in a voice that I was very glad not to be on the receiving end of. Luke Campbell shifted in his seat and nodded.

  “So, you arrived in York, when exactly?”

  “Yesterday,” he answered succinctly. “I’m staying in the hotel across the road from the train station. This morning, I started looking into the custody issue.”

  “You went straight to welfare?” I asked him, confused by that particular detail. “Why?”

  “The Paige I knew a few years ago is very different from the one you do,” he answered. “I didn’t think the council would deem her fit enough to look after a child.” His voice was slightly bitter, and Thatcher’s hands curled and uncurled at the accusation towards the woman we had met.

  “What about Abbie?” He managed to ask without snarling. “You tried to visit the hospital?”

  “They wouldn’t let me in,” he sounded offended.

  “Abbie is the victim of a suspected attempted murder. Her room is under high security, and you’re not a blood relative. In fact, aside from the doctors, the only people who can go in there are Abbie and us.” Though we’d yet to go.

  “You and Abbie studied together at university?” I asked, trying to direct Thatcher away from the angry rabbit hole he was circling.

  “We did.”

  “You’re also a horticulturalist?”

  “Of a sort,” he deliberated. “My work is very different from Abbie’s.”

  “How so?” I asked.

  “I don’t make drugs, for one thing,” he said disapprovingly.

  “You’re familiar with her studies then?” Thatcher asked.

  “Some. Her name gets thrown around a lot. We’re in the same sort of circles. But like I said, it’s very different work.”

  “You sound as if you don’t approve of her work,” Thatcher observed aloud.

  “I don’t,” Campbell answered with a shrug. “She’s in it for the money nowadays. All drugs, chemicals.”

  “She started working there before you left,” I said, trying to visualise the timeline in my head. “So, you must be familiar with some of her studies.”

  “One or two. She was obsessive,” he said. “Controlling over them.”

  A perfectionist, Dr Quaid called her.

  “Go on,” Thatcher encouraged him.

  “She had this partner, this girl she worked with. Sophie, or something.”

  “Sonia,” I clarified.

  “That’s her. I always felt bad for her, you know. Abbie’s not the easiest person to work with. She can be mean, demanding, in a lot of things, not just work.”

  “What is she like?” Thatcher asked him. “Or what was she like when you knew her?”

  “She paints this image,” Luke began, “of being so nice and nurturing, you know. The way she is with plants. But she has this streak. Competitive, manipulative. It’s why I left her in the end. She was just too cruel, sometimes. Even to Paige, especially to Sonia.”

  “If that was the case,” Thatcher asked him in a worryingly calm voice, “why leave your child?”

  “I didn’t think she’d keep it,” he answered with a shrug. “I thought she’d give it up for adoption. But she didn’t.”

  “No, she didn’t. And yet,” Thatcher tilted his head to one side. “You didn’t come back. If you believed her to be such a strongly negative person, why not come back? Try for custody four years ago?”

  Luke looked down at the table. “It’s a long story. And not,” he added, “particularly relevant to Abbie.”

  Thatcher looked ready to argue with the man, looked ready to pound his head on the table, and it wasn’t hard for me to figure out why. A man who abandons a pregnant woman and his child; it was a narrative that cut close to the bone for Thatcher, and I could see him slowly losing more and more control over his emotions. I shifted my chair, the scraping sounds jolting him from his glare and cleared my throat, leaning forward to take a bit more control of the interview.

  “We know that Abbie and her place of work have been the focus of some protesting in the past. Do you know anything about that?”

  “I remember the first time it happened,” he said, casting his mind back and scratching his chin as he spoke. “Some protestors appeared outside her work with signs, shouting. There was a petition going around at one point too, but it didn’t last long. The second time,” he went on, “She received some threats. Letters in the post.”

  “What did you make of that?”

  “I wasn’t surprised,” he answered honestly. “I warned her about it, to be honest. I knew that place, the work they were doing would attract some negative attention, but she didn’t care. She was their crown jewel, you know. So long as she got the credit for her work, she didn’t care how many threats she got.”

  “What about Sonia? What about her credit?”

  “Barely existent. Not that Abbie ever tried to change that. Never got in touch with any of the funding or the articles and tried to correct it. She’s a narcissist,” he said simply.

  Something about that wasn’t lining up. The controlling, cruel narcissist he described was a world away from the woman we had been introduced to. A woman who went to work on her day off before spending her holiday with her children. She used her cat as a password and her daughter’s birthday for her phone, gave her sister a place to crash, and let her otherwise perfect garden be infiltrated by children’s toys and garden gnomes. Either motherhood had changed her drastically, or someone was giving us the wrong idea of the woman in the hospital bed.

  “What about the rest of her family?” I asked, trying to move the topic along.

  “Her father died when she was a child, her mother about eight years ago. It’s just her and Paige.”

  “And you? Did your family not want to know your child? Be in her life?”

  “My parents moved to Australia twelve years ago. And Abbie was hardly the sort of person to reach out to them, send baby pictures or anything.” He didn’t sound all that remorseful, all that invested, which surprised me, given his very sudden desire to fight for custody. Something had changed, and it wasn’t his opinion of either Abbie or Paige.

  “Have you ever heard of Nerium?” Thatcher asked casually. Luke frowned.

  “The plant? Of course. Why?”

  “It looks to be one of the main components used to attack Abbie,” he told him, sitting forward. “Do you know much about it?”

  “I don’t handle those sorts of plants,” Luke answered sternly. “I’m a succulent’s person, if you must know.”

  “And whilst we have you here, Mr Campbell, is there any way you can confirm your whereabouts Tuesday morning?”

  “I was in London,” he repeated with a twinge of venom in his voice. “I got here yesterday.”

  “Do you have anything to confirm that?” I asked him in a slightly more patient tone than Thatcher.

  “The train ticket,” he said with a shrug. “It’ll be with my stuff in the hotel.”

  “If you can get that to us, we’d be obliged.” I stood up and opened the interview door room, walking back to the stairs that led to the exit, handing him my business card. “I take it you’ll be staying in the city?”

  “I will,” he answered gruffly.

  “We might have more questions for you at some point. In the meantime, though,” I tol
d him solemnly. “It might be best for you to avoid the Whelan family altogether. We don’t want to be any more involved in the child’s life than we already are. I don’t doubt that Paige won’t take a legal route if she feels the need to.”

  “So, I’m supposed to do what, exactly? Sit in my hotel room and twiddle my thumbs?”

  “Wait for the hospital to treat Abbie. Wait for her to be healthy and recovered enough to be released, reunited with her daughter, and then if I were you, I’d speak to her, before you start suing her over her child.”

  He opened his mouth, looking ready to argue, but shook his head and trudged off down the stairs looking like a dog with a grudge. I watched him leave and checked my phone. Another text from Susanne. Paige’s guardianship of Grace was ironclad, and short of beginning a legal battle that wouldn’t go far until Abbie was awake and would take at least a year to get through, Luke couldn’t go near her. It was a small comfort, and one that I took to Thatcher, who was switching off the recording device and removing the tape.

  “That’s good,” he muttered. “The last thing Grace needs is a legal battle between two parents. One in a coma and the other she’s never met.”

  “Strange timing, don’t you think?” I asked as we made our way back to our office. “For him to suddenly spring back into Grace’s life.”

  “Almost opportunistic,” he agreed quietly.

  I knew that tone. “You think he’s involved in some way?”

  “He clearly isn’t the biggest fan of Abbie and doesn’t seem that bothered that she’s been hurt. In fact, it seems to be in his favour. Rather like somebody else.”

  “Sonia.”

  “What if they both needed a reason to get Abbie out of the way?” He asked, and I paused where I stood, my jacket halfway up my arms.

  “She gets credit on the research, and he gets a leading start on a custody battle. Why now, though?”

  “The research is nearly finished, in Sonia’s case. No point in doing it any earlier when Abbie could have made a full recovery, or any later when most of it was already complete,” Thatcher said, pulling his own jacket on.

  “And Luke Campbell?” I asked, watching as Thatcher’s eyes narrowed at his name, his jaw twitching.

  “Has been back in the country long enough to have an interest. Maybe the two stayed in touch,” he suggested. “Waited for the right moment.”

  “In that case, Dr Olsen would be right about them being spot on with the measurements.”

  “She would indeed.” He tossed my car keys over to me, and I caught them, already striding for the door.

  “The gardens,” I stated.

  “The gardens. Let’s have another good talk with Sonia,” he muttered, patting his pocket where his phone, and all the details he wanted about their studies lay in wait.

  I checked my belt for a pair of handcuffs before we jogged down the stairs, heading for the car park.

  Twelve

  Thatcher

  The idea that Luke Campbell and Sonia Petrilli were in some way entwined and involved in what had happened to Abbie Whelan took root in my head like a persistent weed. Sonia, who so needed this study for her PhD, who’d spent years of not receiving the fair share of credit for her work. And Campbell, though I wasn’t fully sure of what drew him back to York at this particular point of time, there was no doubting that he was keen to see his child, and people had worse things before in the name of parental concern.

  And yet, the description that Luke Campbell had given us of Abbie as this mean, controlling narcissist was such a far cry from the person Paige talked about that I didn’t quite know where to look. Perhaps Abbie had been that person before, and then Grace had come along and changed her way of thinking. Perhaps Luke was bitter at being so carefully kept away from Grace. A man who didn’t even really know her name, had never seen her face. It would make them a little desperate, angry, eager to lash out when the opportunity presented itself.

  I glared out of the window as Mills drove, I was too wound up, and he kept quiet as we made our way from the city, the radio turned onto some classic station that filled the car. He’d noticed, of course, he had, a smart man like Mills, that something had rankled me back in the station, face to face with Luke. It was an old wound, one that I couldn’t let get in the way of the job, so I was grateful for his surreptitious stepping in, glad that he had done so before Sharp had caught a whiff of my resentment and come swooping in herself.

  This was turning out to be a close cutting case. A mother in hospital, and an absent father. And it was August in a few days. I could have laughed at it all, really, the sheer ridiculousness of it. I’d never been a particularly religious person, but there was a God he or she was having a complete field day with this. I tipped my head against the seat, watching the landscape unravel, and felt myself cool down as it did. Maybe Abbie was on to something about getting a place out here, amongst the hills and heather and cows. Perhaps I’d move into the coaching house when it was fixed, just me and my ghosts knocking boots until I was too old to care.

  Mills started humming along to one of the songs on the radio, an elaborate piano piece that he could probably name without looking. It suited my mood and was starting to suit the weather. Out here, amongst the rising and sloping valleys, the clouds had gathered, the blue sky above the city turning grey, and the air grew crisper.

  “I really hope it doesn’t rain,” Mills muttered, more to himself than me. “I left my washing out on the balcony.”

  I laughed through my nose and shook my head. “Rookie mistake, leaving your laundry out when you’re not home.”

  “I know. I don’t normally bother, but it was the duvet cover, and getting on the dryer is just such a faff.”

  I nodded. “At least it’ll be nice to sleep in. Dried outside is always better for that.”

  “Once you’ve made the bed,” he added grumpily. “I hate doing it. Always get tangled up somehow. Bet you’ve got it nailed.” He added, giving me a sideways glance.

  I shrugged humbly; it was true. I used to help my grandmother around the coaching house, and she did proper bed making. Sheets and blankets and hospital corners that made my ex-army grandfather look on in admiration. Not like my own mother, who threw soft wrinkled duvets and pillows on haphazardly claiming, “it’ll only get messed up again later, anyway.” A fair argument, but not one that I carried with me. The memory of her voice, petulant face, arms folded as she stared down my neatly ironed grandmother was bittersweet. She’d been sick then, not that I had known at the time.

  “I’m glad there’s no sheep today,” Mills announced, breaking from my moody reverie as we hurtled along the country lanes without trouble.

  “Why would there be? How often do you think farmers move their flocks?”

  “I have no idea, sir, but I know the exact route of the 23 bus. So that’s useful.” I laughed, and he grinned, relaxing slightly in his seat.

  “Do you ever get the bus?” I asked him in the quiet moment once our laughter faded away.

  “Not anymore. I used to get the 23 to get to college before my brother learnt how to drive. The stop was right outside the old sweet shop, so it worked out pretty well for me.”

  “I’ll say. Straight out of school and straight into the toffees.”

  “Not toffee,” Mills laughed. “it wasn’t the nineteen-forties.”

  “Watch it,” I warned him. “Toffees were popular when I was a lad too. What did you eat then? Those horrible sour things that make your tongue bleed?”

  “Sherbet mostly,” he told me. “The odd Wham bar.”

  I nodded approvingly, my mood lifting for a moment before he turned left, taking us through the gates of the botanical gardens. We parked next to Abbie’s car, and I wondered briefly if we should bring Paige up here so she could take it home for her. As we walked towards the front door, a faint drizzle of rain began to fall on our heads, and Mills swore under his breath as I pressed the buzzer.

  “Hello?” I faintly recognised Dr
Quaid’s voice through the tinny intercom. I looked up at the camera and waved.

  “Dr Quaid. It’s DCI Thatcher, and DS Mills. May we come in?”

  “Certainly!” He replied quickly, and the door buzzed then. I pushed it open, and as we stepped into the foyer, he came running from his office, wrapped in a moss-coloured cardigan. “Inspector, Sergeant. Hello. Is it Abbie, is there news? How can I help?”

  I held my hands out, calming the man down. “We’re just here to speak to Sonia Petrilli again. Is she in?”

  “She’s outside,” he nodded to the windowed room that led into the gardens. “You should find her in the greenhouse. Can I show you there?”

  “We remember,” I told him. “Thank you, Dr Quaid.” There must have been something grim in my voice as I spoke, as he quickly nodded and happily hurried back down the hallway to his office. I jerked my chin at Mills, and he followed me through the room of glass walls and white surfaces, out into the chilly gardens. I rather wished I still had my big coat, sticking my hands in the pockets of my jacket as we navigated the paths towards the greenhouse.

  We found it after a momentary diversion, but I couldn’t see Sonia through the windows. I pushed the door open anyway, happy enough to step into the warm room and get out of the drizzle.

  The greenhouse had been tidied up again, benches pushed back into the place, the floor swept up and cleaned.

  “Sir,” Mills said darkly, his eyes homed in on something towards the back of the greenhouse. I followed his gaze to where a head of black hair spilt across the floor. Sonia.

  I ran over to where she was sprawled out on the floor, a broken phone just inches from her outstretched hand and gently rolled her to one side, moving her hair from her face so that I could press my fingers against her neck. Be asleep, I prayed, gritting the words between my teeth. I could feel nothing. No slow, steady pulse, not even the whisper of one. Her skin was cold, almost grey without the life running through. I sat back on my haunches, dragging my hair back from my face and stood up, swearing loudly and punching the bench.