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

by Oliver Davies

  “I wondered if it would be worth talking to Lin Shui again,” he said.

  “I thought we’d ruled her out,” I replied, replying to Paige before putting my phone away again.

  “We have. But she might have heard about Michele Picard. Maybe they run in some same circles.”

  “Her brother probably does,” I added thoughtfully, scratching my chin, remembering that he was the one to tell us Kask’s name and be one of the protestors eight years ago. “One of us should be at the station when Paige comes in,” I pointed out.

  “I’ll stay at the station,” Mills answered, “Start working through the studies.”

  I glanced at him, his tense posture. “You sure?”

  “A few hours sitting down with a cup of tea? I think I bloody well need it.”

  I chuckled at that. “As you like then, Mills. I’ll see if I can catch her at the tattoo parlour.”

  We were back in the city now, the sandstone streets filled with people enjoying the summer weather. It was fairly hot now, I had to grudgingly admit. Mills pulled into the station car park, and I headed off on foot to the tattoo parlour, my coat off and slung over one arm. The sun beat down on the back of my neck, and I wished I’d grabbed a pair of sunglasses before leaving the house this morning. I’d be sure to keep some on hand from now on.

  I walked through crowds of people, tourists, shoppers, students, children, all milling from shop to shop, sightseeing, dog walking, playing in the parks. It was nice, and if I didn’t have a murderer to catch, I might consider joining in. Laying down in the grass, a cold pint and something to eat. Plans for the weekend, I supposed, though knowing my luck by that point, the rain would be back, and I’d be stuck indoors all day.

  I managed to recall my way to the tattoo place, which had its door propped open, letting the warm air into the reception. From behind the thin curtains, the faint whirring of the tattoo guns battled to be heard over the speakers blasting music. The lad at reception nodded to me, and I strolled over.

  “Is Lin Shui in today?” I asked.

  He nodded to the curtain. “She’s with a client. You’re welcome to wait,” he offered, indicating the sofas by the back wall. “She won’t be long now.”

  I nodded in thanks and made my way over to the sofas, settling down on the brightly coloured cushions and looked around the room. Sometimes I considered getting another tattoo, maybe getting the old one fixed. I’d not been in the best place of mind when I’d gotten it and sometimes thought it would be nice to have a piece of art like the ones on these walls. Something happier, less angsty, as Elsie and Sally had taken to calling mine. Not that Sally could talk, she’d been the one with me when I got it and one of her own that only I, her doctor and her husband Tom had ever seen. It was what Tom, and I had bonded over once, Sally, and her impulsive, creative larks being the only thing we have in common. She’d smacked us both over the head for it, but it did its work, we were friends now, and she couldn’t get annoyed with us for that.

  The man at reception was right, and I wasn’t there long before the buzzing stopped, and the curtain got swept aside. Lin Shui clocked me in the corner and nodded, before walking with her client and their awkwardly angled arm over to the desk to pay. Once they’d gone, she stretched her hands out and came and sat by me.

  “Inspector. Change your mind about that ink?”

  “Not today, I’m afraid. Maybe when the case is over,” I answered with a smile.

  Lin shrugged, “alright then. How can I help?”

  “We were wondering if during your protesting,” I pulled the picture of Michele’s website from my pocket and handed it over, “you’d ever seen this site before?”

  Lin took it and glanced down with a grimace. “What horrible font. I haven’t, but this is it, isn’t it? From back then?”

  “Yes. The site belongs to Michele Picard.”

  “Picard?” Her brows furrowed. “The name rings a bell. I think I’ve heard of her before, maybe from my brother.”

  “Her son is the reason the study got shut down,” I told her, “and she was protesting them for a while. Slowed down a few years ago.”

  “Her son? Was he on the research team?”

  “He was a volunteer in the study,” I told her. “Passed away about a month after. Hospital said it was a heart problem, but his mother’s not so convinced.”

  “Think they killed him?” she asked, passing the picture back. “Makes sense why my brother would have pitched up to it then. He’s not a big fan of these big, secret places just making all their mistakes vanishing. Letting other people suffer. But,” she added very quickly, “he’s not protested for a while. Like a long while, he’s got a fiancée now and a dog, so,” she trailed off with a shrug.

  “I’m not about to go and arrest your brother, Lin. I was just wondering if either of you knew much about Michele Picard.”

  “Her name’s definitely familiar,” Lin told me, leaning back on the sofa and swinging one leg over the other. “I might have been in the same protest as her before.”

  Looking at Lin, with her brightly coloured boots, tattoos, fishnets and jewellery, and then thinking of Michele Picard, I couldn’t imagine that they did.

  “Hang on,” she said, pulling her phone out and ringing someone. “Hey. You nearby? Sound. Can you come in? The police have got more questions, and you’ll know more than me.” She paused and made a face. “No, I am not in trouble. Am I?” She asked me. I shook my head. “No, see. Can you come? Thanks.” She hung up and looked at me. “He’ll be in five. Would you like a tea?”

  “I’ve not long ago had one,” I answered, “but do you have a toilet I can use?”

  “Through the curtain, on the right,” she answered, pointing towards it.

  “Thank you,” I stood up, knees cracking, and wandered through, shutting myself into the cool, eucalyptus-scented room.

  My business sorted, I headed back out to the reception, enjoying the smell of whatever hand cream they had in there and re-joined Lin on the sofa. She had a sketchbook on her knee and pencil smudged down one side of her hand as she bent over a drawing. I sat back, not wishing to pry.

  “Lin,” a tall boy wandered into the reception, and she looked up at him, patting the space beside her and tossing her sketchbook onto the table.

  “Wen, this is Inspector Thatcher. Inspector, my big brother Wen.” I stood up to shake his hand, and we settled around the sofas again.

  “This is about those two women?” He asked. “The ones from the botanic research place. Lin told me,” he added sheepishly.

  “It is,” I answered, looking at the two of them. There was a strong resemblance in their appearance, but it ended there. Wen had seemingly put his protesting day behind him, dressed in a casual looking suit, his haircut neat and trim. “I understand that eight years ago, you were part of the protest there?”

  Wen nodded. “Something to do with a volunteer,” he recalled dimly. “I don’t remember much. My girlfriend at the time is the one who dragged me along. But I remember learning about the place, the researchers.”

  “Have you ever heard of Michele Picard?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” he answered simply. “She was the organiser. I think her son was the volunteer or something.”

  “Jordan,” I told him. “Michele sent threats to several members of the research team,” I told him, “one is now in hospital and the other’s dead. Can you remember that far back?” I asked, leaning forward with my arms braced on my knees. “Remember what Mrs Picard was like?”

  Wen breathed in slowly, and his face turned thoughtful. “She was angry,” he said. “And when the study got shut down, we all packed it in, more or less, and she wasn’t happy about that. Kept trying to organise new protests we could do. And then she stopped after a few years.”

  “There’s been nothing from her since?” I asked.

  “Not that I know about,” Wen answered. “I saw her husband not long ago though,” he added, and my interest piqued. “I didn’t
speak to him,” he amended quickly. “Saw him, like literally saw him, through a window.”

  “That’s weird,” his sister told him. “Who watches people through windows?”

  “I was in a pub, and he walked past,” Wen argued. “That’s a very normal thing to happen. You’d know that if you ever went to pubs.”

  Lin glared at him and scoffed. “That’s not helpful to the Inspector’s investigation.”

  Wen rolled his eyes and turned to me. “Sorry about her.”

  I grinned back, thinking of a similar interaction between myself and Sally. “Don’t worry about it,” I assured him, “I know the feeling.”

  Wen chuckled and pushed his hair back. “I protested them a while back, with this one,” he nudged Lin with his elbow. “But for the most part, nothing happens. They’re too big and important really to care about us. We never really make anything happen.”

  I nodded slowly, wondering if someone like Michele Picard would want to make something happen.

  “Thank you, Wen. And Lin,” I added.

  “Do you think that all this is happening because of what happened back then?” Lin asked me quietly.

  “It looks that way,” I told her, not wanting to beat around the bush after the number of times we’d pestered her for information. She nodded and pulled her sketchbook out, ripping out the page and handing it over.

  “When you decide to come back for that tattoo,” she said, stuffing it into my hand. I smiled and thanked her, leaving the siblings to it and strolling back out into the street.

  When I was away from the tattoo parlour, I looked down at the image she’d drawn. It was a bird, of some description, holding a flower in its claws. I couldn’t tell what the flower was, but it bore an uncanny resemblance to a lily. I folded it up and put it in my pocket, striding off back to the station to help Mills with the mountain of research we had to go through.

  He was elbow deep when I arrived, and he poked his head out from behind his computer as I walked in, glasses gone from his face.

  “Don’t tell me you’re doing that blind,” I muttered, hanging my coat up.

  “Susanne brought my contacts in,” he told me.

  “She’s a good one,” I answered, dragging my chair over to his desk and looking down at the research with a barely held-in sigh.

  “How’d it go with Lin?”

  “I met her brother. He said he remembered Michele from back in the protest days, but that she’s been quiet ever since. They didn’t know much about the study or why it was shut down, and from what I can tell, Michele Picard’s kept her word to her husband on that front.”

  Mills blew out an annoyed breath. “There must be someone else then,” he muttered, looking down at the pages. “Someone else from back then with a grudge to pick. Oh,” he looked up at me. “Paige asked Grace some more about the man she saw with Abbie. Apparently, he had pink skin and muddy hair. Which I’ve translated to be a Caucasian male with brown hair.”

  I chuckled, “Sounds that way to me. So that rules out the Picard’s,” I muttered, annoyed to have lost another good lead. “The only person left that I can think of with a stake in all of this is Dr Quaid. He was there, knew both women, knew Kask, knew about Jordan. Maybe he’s trying to keep the truth from rabbiting out and ruining his business.”

  “Why now?” Mills asked.

  “If it was Sonia who wrecked that office looking for something, then maybe that’s what she was doing. Her and Abbie. Maybe they wanted to fix it, bring it to light.”

  “We don’t have the whole study because they took it as evidence,” Mills suggested thoughtfully.

  “Someone wants that study for themselves,” I pointed out, “for whatever reason.”

  But what about the study they’re doing now, a voice in the back of my head said. What about that missing plant from the greenhouse?

  Twenty-Five

  Thatcher

  I’d only just gotten into one of the folders Mills passed me when someone knocked on the door, and Sharp stuck her head in. Her clever eyes grazed over the mess on Mills” desk and landed on our faces. She offered us a charitable smile before walking in and pushing the door to, taking a seat on the edge of Mills” desk.

  “What’s new?” She asked simply.

  “We met with Michele Picard earlier,” I told her, Mills bending his head back down to the work at hand. “Her son, Jordan Picard, was a volunteer in the study that got shut down eight years ago. About a month after he volunteered, he passed away in an ambulance. The hospital ruled it as heart complications, but his mother’s convinced that the research killed him. She started up the protests to demand justice for the death of her son.”

  Sharp gave me a quick nod. “Any sign of her since then?”

  “No,” I shook my head. “According to her, and to the protestor Lin Shui and her brother, Picard stopped the protesting a few years ago. People moved on, and frankly, I don’t think anyone else blamed the research centre for what happened to him. Picard’s angry, but I don’t think she’s behind all this.”

  “So, they shut the study for what happened to Jordan Picard?” She asked.

  “They did. We’re taking a look into some of Abbie and Sonia’s research, seeing if there’s anything there to help us. But I’m planning on talking to Dr Quaid, seeing if he can shed any more light on what exactly happened eight years ago.”

  “What about the protestors themselves?” Sharp inquired.

  “Not suspects,” I told her. “They didn’t know about Jordan, not really. Nobody did. The whole’s thing been brushed over, swept under the rug. Even I don’t remember hearing about it.”

  “Nor me,” Sharp admitted a touch regrettably. “But I suppose it wasn’t the sort of thing to make the headlines was it?”

  I paused for a moment at her words, wondering if just because it didn’t make the headlines, doesn’t mean it didn’t catch some journalist’s eye. It’s the sort of story a certain red-headed writer would have sunk her teeth into like a shark.

  “You just got back,” Sharp went on, not noticing the thoughtful path I’d wandered down. I shook myself and nodded.

  “We stopped by Sonia Petrilli’s, to take a look into some of her work at home. Her office was a wreck, but it didn’t look like a break-in. We think it was her, looking for something, maybe traces from the study back then.”

  “Did she want to get rid of them?” Sharp asked.

  “Or bring them to light,” Mills called over, taking a momentary break from his work.

  “I spoke to Mrs Petrilli as well,” I went on. “Asked her if Sonia ever mentioned Jordan Picard or what happened back then.”

  “Let me guess,” Sharp said dryly, “She didn’t know a thing?”

  “Not a one. She knew that Sonia was upset about the study ending, and about the threat she received, but nothing about the boy.”

  “Sounds to me like people didn’t want that news getting out,” Sharp said, standing up properly. “Even rumours like those can damage an institution such as theirs beyond repair. I imagine they’d have wanted to keep it safe.”

  “Hence,” I said, “why we’re going to talk to Dr Quaid again. He stands a lot to gain if that came out. Especially back then,” I added. “He’d only just taken over as head researcher.”

  Sharp nodded slowly, thoughtfully. “Don’t waste time, Thatcher, if you think he’s involved, act on it. Will you call him in?”

  “We’ll head out there,” I decided. “I don’t want to stir anything up with the press by bringing him here.”

  “Thoughtful of you,” she said. “Maybe one day you’ll even do a proper press conference and spare me the snotty journalists and camera flashes.”

  “Maybe one day,” I told her with a grin. She smiled back, though her eyes were still concerned, and she turned and left the office.

  Once she was gone, Mills pushed his chair back from his desk with a sigh and groan, stretching his arms out. “I’m not finding much here, sir. But I think we are rig
ht that the women had copies of their side of things. I don’t think Abbie got sole credit; I think they received full credit on their share of the work.”

  “I think so too,” I added, drumming my pen thoughtfully on my desk. “Eight years ago, Abbie Whelan and Luke Campbell were still an item. Do you think he knew about what happened to Jordan Picard?”

  “Maybe,” Mills nodded. “Could be why his opinion of Abbie is so bleak.”

  “And why he wasn’t keen to stay in touch,” I added.

  “And why he came back?” Mills suggested. “If it looked like the story was coming out of the cracks, that could be what spurred his sudden paternal interest.”

  “Might be worth having another chat with him at some point,” I said. “Has there been any trouble with him?” I asked, wondering how much of her work Susanne shared with Mills.

  “None,” he answered. “I asked Paige as well when she dropped by. She said there’d been no word from him, but she’s keeping a watchful eye, anyway. She’s not letting anyone take that girl away from her,” he added with a touch of pride.

  “Nor should she,” I replied. “Though I worry it’s taking its toll on her.”

  “She’s got family liaison to help her out,” Mills told me. “And hopefully, Dr Olsen’s made some headway on getting Abbie back up and running.”

  “They’ll not let her out of the hospital for a while, I imagine. But we live and hope, Mills. Let’s finish this folder and then go and see Quaid. I’m bored with Latin names and chemical compounds now.”

  We hadn’t been plodding through the research long, finding a few traces and patterns that stuck out to us, names of plants that were vaguely familiar, when a call came through from the desk sergeant.

  “Thatcher,” I answered, leaning back in my chair with my knuckles rubbing into my temple.

  “Sir. We’ve got a man down here asking to see you. A Dr Sean Quaid.”

  I sat up straight. “Send him up,” I ordered, rising and yanking the office door open.