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

by Oliver Davies

  “Can you think of anyone who might have done?” I asked.

  “Nobody else I know who has lost what I’ve lost, Inspector.”

  “Mrs Picard, can I ask where you were last night? Around two-thirty am.”

  “Two-thirty am?” She repeated, alarmed. “I was here. Sleeping. Where else would I be?”

  “Can anybody vouch for that?”

  She shrugged. “My husband. He was asleep, too, mind.”

  “And what about Tuesday the 23rd, between ten and eleven in the morning?”

  “I would have at home,” she said simply. “My husband came home at twelve for lunch.”

  It was the same case for when Sonia had died, too, though at that time, her husband would have been with her.

  “Where is your husband, Mrs Picard?”

  “At work,” she answered firmly.

  I nodded and rose from the chair. “Thank you for your time, Mrs Picard. And we are sorry to have brought all this back up.”

  She stood up, sniffing again and walked us to the front door. “Will she wake up?” she asked, holding the door open, not meeting my eyes as she spoke.

  “Abbie Whelan?” A small nod. “We hope so. For the sake of the investigation, and for her daughter and sister.”

  She looked up at me then, and Mills and I left the house. I glanced at another picture in the hallway before she shut the door, a wedding picture of herself and her husband. We’d likely be in touch with him at some point, I decided. Just because she stayed out of it all doesn’t mean he did, and there was a man at Abbie’s house. Sharp would question me for believing the word of a child so strongly, but children didn’t have to lie, they said what they saw, and usually, they were right. I made a mental reminder to send a text to Paige and find out if the man Grace saw had dark skin, like Michele’s husband and son. It might not be much, but at least we might be able to cross them off our list.

  Twenty-Three

  Mills

  Thatcher was deep in thought when we left Michele Picard’s house. Aspects of this case weighed on him. Michele’s love for her son, Abbie and Grace, given the time of year, it wasn’t surprising that he would be dwelling on those things. We climbed into the car and sat there for a moment, pouring over everything she had told us. Her alibi wasn’t solid, and out of anyone else we’d met, she had the clearest motive. She’d known Abbie and Sonia, maybe even Toomas, despite what he said. Thatcher didn’t trust the botanist all that much, and if it weren’t for the intruder in his house, nor would I.

  “Shall we call Sonia’s parents?” I asked him, turning the radio down. Thatcher jumped slightly, so lost in thought that my voice startled him.

  “Sonia’s parents?” He repeated.

  “To look for the hard drive that Wasco mentioned. Maybe we can ask them if she ever talked about Jordan as well, whilst we’re there.”

  “Right,” Thatcher mumbled, searching through his pockets for his phone. He found it eventually and thumbed his way through his contacts, looking for the number that the Petrilli’s had given us. Holding the phone to his face, he then proceeded to glare out the window until they answered.

  “Mrs Petrilli?” He spoke in a much lighter voice. “Inspector Thatcher, here. No, no, I’m afraid not. Sergeant Mills and I were wondering if we could come out to you and have a little look at some of Sonia’s work things?” He was quiet for a pause, listening. “Fantastic. Thank you so much. We’ll see you in a bit.”

  “I take it we’re off?” I asked as he put the phone away, already putting the car into first.

  “That we are, Mills.” He reached over to put the address into the SatNav, and I peeled away from the kerb, heading out towards the moors.

  “I’m so looking forward to bed later,” I muttered, more to myself than anyone, reaching up to push my glasses up my nose. Stupid things. They kept fogging up whenever I drank something hot and sliding down my face. I’d never been much of a morning person, especially when that morning was two am. Poor Susanne, I’d checked in with her earlier, and luckily, she had managed to get back off once I was gone. At least one of us was firing on all cylinders today.

  “Let’s hope our killer doesn’t go four round two,” Thatcher grumbled in agreement. “Else I’ll bloody well kill them myself.”

  Thatcher was the least morning person I had ever met in my life. But to his credit, he had made me a coffee when I picked him up, so I wasn’t doing any complaining. Not out loud anyway, or to his face, I wasn’t an idiot.

  The more often I did this drive, the easier it became. I stopped easing around the bends like an old granny and managed to navigate the random potholes and muddy slopes with relative ease. I still rattled us around like a pinball machine, managing to coax the odd curse word and blasphemous yelp from Thatcher, but we reached the Petrilli’s house with little damage done. As we climbed out of the car, boots crunching the gravel path, the front door opened, and Mrs Petrilli stood in the doorway, smiling and throwing us a little wave of the hand.

  “I’ll talk to them about Jordan Picard,” Thatcher told me under his breath as we walked towards her. “You see about this hard drive.”

  I nodded, just as we stepped to the door, and then we both fixed our troubled expressions and smiled at Sonia’s mother. She looked tired, naturally, and rather like she had been crying a lot. But she ushered inside, into that gloriously warm kitchen where she pressed large mugs of tea into our hands. I’d never seen Thatcher look so grateful for tea in all the time I’d known him, his large frame huddled into the small wooden kitchen chair.

  “Thank you for letting us intrude, Mrs Petrilli,” he said to her.

  “Oh, not at all. Anything that will help. I’m sorry my husband’s not here. He’s handling some things with the funeral directors.” Her voice rasped and fell at the end of her sentence, and Thatcher leant over to pat her arm comfortingly. “Now,” she wiped her eyes and looked at me, “you mentioned wanting to have a look at some of her work things?”

  “If that’s okay,” I quickly threw out.

  “Of course. She worked outside,” Mrs Petrilli stood up and walked to a large bureau and opened a small drawer, pulling out a key. “It used to be my home office, but when I retired, I let Sonia use it.” She handed me the key and opened the back door for me. “It’s just there, at the end of the garden.”

  “Thank you,” I said earnestly, taking myself and my mug of tea out of the house, down through the neat rows of flowers, bees humming in the air, butterflies flitting around. I’d taken the antihistamine today, thank goodness, a short while out here, and I’d be sneezing all over the place.

  The home office was a small wooden cabin, painted red, that would have made a good granny flat at some point. There were two windows on either side of the door, curtains drawn so that I couldn’t see inside. I unlocked the door, gently pushing it open and walked in, flicking the lights on.

  The first thing I thought was that it was a nice room. A day bed sat against the far wall, covered in a quilt and blankets, a desk at the other end overloaded with books and papers. A small table with a kettle and cups, little jars of tea. It was eerily similar to Abbie Whelan’s garage. Only it was a complete wreck. The desk drawers had been opened, rifled through, with stuff thrown over the floor, hanging from the top. The books on the shelf were pushed aside, some fallen off the shelves completely.

  Someone had been in, I thought as I stepped into the room. Someone was looking for something. I highly doubted that it was Sonia’s mother popping in to find a specific gardening book.

  I stepped carefully over everything on the floor, wondering whether or not it should be called in. But the lock on the door was fine, the windows too, once I pulled the curtains back. There was no sign of a break-in, and despite the mess, everything looked to be carefully placed. Nothing had been broken. Nothing had been ripped or smashed or torn apart. An image darted through my head of Sonia herself, hurriedly looking for something she had put away somewhere safe. I wondered if she’d foun
d it, wondered if she’d died for it.

  I stepped back, taking a few pictures of the room to show to Thatcher later, and then took a large sip of tea, put the mug down and pulled a pair of gloves on, ready to begin my own search.

  I started with the desk, searching through the drawers before sliding them back into place. Half searching, half tidying, I supposed. There was nothing in there to catch my eye, no hard drive, no studies. The bookshelf came next, where Sonia had some of their research projects lined up in leather folders rather like Abbie had done. I pulled one of the shelves, flipping it open, and blinked in confusion. Their names had switched. Sonia’s then Abbie’s, rather than the other way around. I took a picture of that too and then put the folder back on the shelf. Nothing from eight years ago.

  Over by the day bed was a large wooden chest that looked pretty untouched compared to the rest of the room. I headed over to it, dropping to my knees and pulling it over, lifting the lid.

  Bingo. A chest full of memories. Pictures of Sonia as a child, winning awards and at science fairs; old university work that she hadn’t gotten rid of, and old research. Most of it when I picked it up was just theories, ideas she must have had that nothing happened with. I rooted through the box, through little trophies and medals and certificates until I found another folder, thinner, plastic, with big letters running across it reading, “Project Terminated”. I whooped triumphantly and stood up, sitting at the table and sipping my tea as I opened up the folder.

  There were only a few pages in there, the main hypothesis, a few statements about what they were doing and how that I didn’t know enough about science to understand. Most of the sheets had been redacted, large black stripes blocking out the few things that were actually in there. I sighed heavily, sounding like Thatcher. Of course, we find the study, and it’s all gone. I closed the folder and tucked it under my arm, grabbing another from the shelf before looking around the room once more.

  My eyes fell back on the books, scanning the titles. Mostly factual, gardening and cookbooks. A few pieces of fiction, some classics and plays. Hamlet, I noted with a small chuckle. Why that quote about gardeners and gravediggers had lodged itself in my brain was beyond me. I didn’t even do Hamlet at school. There was something about the gardeners in this case, though. The study aside, Jordan Picard aside, Abbie and Sonia had both been attacked in the greenhouse. Not at home, not in their car, not anywhere else. In the gardens themselves. The thought stuck with me for some reason I couldn’t shake, and I left the office, locking the door tightly and drinking the rest of my tea as I strode back up towards the house.

  I knocked lightly on the back door before pushing it open, finding Thatcher and Mrs Petrilli in a conversation at the table. They both looked up as I walked in, shutting the door gently.

  “Did you find anything, dear?” Mrs Petrilli asked.

  “Some things,” I answered, placing my mug in the sink. “Is it alright if I borrow these?” I held up the folders, Thatcher’s gaze homing in on the top one quickly. “I’ll bring it back.”

  “Of course,” Mrs Petrilli said. “If it helps Sonia, borrow whatever you need.”

  “I think we’ve taken up enough of your time,” Thatcher announced, slapping his knees and rising from the chair. “Please give our best to Mr Petrilli, and we hope you’re both doing alright.”

  “We’re surviving,” she answered with a beautifully sad smile. “Which is, I suppose, the most anyone can do.”

  “I’d say so,” Thatcher agreed mournfully. Mrs Petrilli walked us to the door, standing and waving as I pulled away from the house.

  Thatcher pulled the folder into his lap and looked through with a frown.

  “Typical,” he muttered.

  “I know. And here.” I passed him the phone, left unlocked on the photo album. He flicked through the pictures I had taken in the office.

  “Someone was in a hurry,” he muttered.

  “No sign of a break-in,” I told him. “And nothing’s damaged, doesn’t look like anything’s missing. I think it was Sonia looking for something.”

  “Looking for what?” He wondered aloud, looking back at the folder. “Maybe there were some pages in here she wanted gone.”

  “Or the hard drive Wasco suggested,” I added. “Check the others,” I told him.

  There was a small bout of silence as he leafed through them. “She’s credited first,” he observed.

  “I wonder if they just got them with their names on top, or if they’re slightly different. Different roles, so maybe they have different records of the study.”

  “Might be worth comparing them, then,” he said. “I’ll ask Paige if she can drop some of the folders round at the station.”

  “You think she’ll have gotten anywhere with who the man Abbie saw was?” I asked. Thatcher had filled me in on that earlier, and I was surprised. Not that he believed Grace, that was of no shock, but the amount of importance he placed on it. It seemed to him that if we found this mystery visitor, we found our killer, which was optimistic, almost uncharacteristically so of him.

  “I hope so. I’ve asked her if she could find out the man’s skin colour. After seeing a picture of Mr Picard, it occurred to me that he might have gotten more involved after his wife stepped back.”

  “You haven’t ruled them out then?”

  He shook his head. “Eight years aside, if you’re that certain that a place like that is the reason your son died, if you send threats and make websites, surely that just doesn’t all go away. Especially,” he added emphatically, “when those people are bloody well thriving beneath your very nose. I mean, Abbie was their golden goose, as Lin put it, and Sonia was on her way to getting her PhD. Can’t be easy to sit and let all that happen without getting angry, dredging up the past.”

  I considered that, considered what it would be like if it were one of my nephews, or even my brother.

  “It would certainly light the fuse up again,” I had to agree. “But to what extent? Michele Picard seemed upset when she learnt about Grace.”

  “Because she was worried or guilty?” Thatcher pointed out. “Maybe that’s the face of a woman who just made a child motherless without realising it.”

  “Could be why she asked about her when we were leaving,” I muttered, slowly agreeing with Thatcher’s point of view on this. “And explains why our killer’s gone after all three,” I added. “Anyone else, someone like Lin Shui, might have only gone for Abbie and Sonia. But whoever it is went for Kask too. They knew he was there eight years ago and held him just as accountable.”

  Thatcher was nodding along with me as I rambled, happy to see us both on the same train of thought.

  “So, what’s our next move?” I asked.

  “We need to look into her alibis for those nights, and her husbands. And I want to understand this.” He held up the folder properly. “Which means we’re looking into some archives, maybe getting in touch with the hospital and seeing if they’ve got any knowledge about Jordan Picard. If they really believe that the research team killed their son, we need to be on that same thought process. Cross-reference with Abbie’s work and maybe, give old Dr Quaid a rattle and see if he’ll tell us what they clearly, not wanting anybody to know,” he added thoughtfully, looking over the blacked-out sentences again.

  It was shifty, that much was clear. Shutting down a study, blacking out the records, hushing everything over the way that they had. Something was wrong with this, but I wasn’t sure how wrong. Not yet, anyway.

  Twenty-Four

  Thatcher

  My conversation with Mrs Petrilli had left me feeling bizarrely fatigued, and I happily tipped my head back and closed my eyes for the remainder of the drive, listening to the quiet music Mills had turned on. Christ, it had been a long day, and it wasn’t even over yet. I waited for Paige to reply to my text about the man Grace had seen and the files we were hoping to borrow. I knew she’d be around, she and Grace headed out to the hospital the same time every day, and I was hoping
to look over these strange study records before it was time to call it a day.

  As I suspected, and maybe somewhat feared, Mrs Petrilli didn’t know anything about Jordan Picard, or what had happened to make the study shut down. Apparently, Sonia liked to keep her work and home life very separate, and her mother had pinned her low mood down to the threats that she received and the fact that her study was off. She’d been saddened when I told her about it, and I rather wished that I didn’t have to, but the whole thing had been wrapped up tight. Unusually tight. So much so that I debated whether or not we were due another audience with Dr Quaid, though I wasn’t really sure of how much he’d actually be.

  Mills was quiet as he drove, and when I peeked my eyes open, squinting in the sunlight, I glanced over at him. He was frowning slightly, his glasses pushed up on his face, chewing his bottom lip and drumming his fingers against the wheel. Deep in thought, I recognised the expression well. He’d done good work finding what we needed, however strangely useless they now appeared, and the state he had found Sonia’s office in clearly rattled him. I couldn’t blame him. Either Sonia made that mess trying to find and get rid of something, or someone else went in there and took it themselves. It seemed that the further we got into this case, the harder it all appeared to be. Nothing made much sense.

  My phone dinged loudly, making the both of us jump, breaking the strange, lulled silence we’d fallen into. I flipped it over, looking at the text that came through.

  “Paige,” I told Mills. “She’ll drop some of the folders off on her way to the hospital.” He nodded, clearing his throat, still looking rather shocked by the sudden noise.