She looked at Mills, who gave a small smile, and scoffed. “I don’t see how all of this is relevant.”
“No, perhaps not. Then may I ask what you were doing at the office of Mr Kerry Johnson?”
“He invited me over,” she replied tightly, squaring her shoulders and lifting her chin. “Thought I’d be a bit lonely over at the hotel.”
“To his office? Not, for a drink or to his house for dinner. You could have met his wife, why his office?”
“I don’t know,” she answered haughtily.
“You didn’t ask?”
“No. This is all very absurd.”
“Try to see it from my perspective here, Ms Renner. Mr Hughes had made plans to meet you and update you, most likely on the business arrangement you had come all this way to make. The arrangements keeping you from your home and brother.”
“How do you know about my brother?” She demanded, a protective flash in her eyes.
“You told us he was watching your plants, for you, Ms Renner,” Mills reminded her.
“He makes this plan,” I continued, “and on his way to engage in this plan, he walks into the local woodland and is killed. To our mind, the only person with any indication of his whereabouts during this time is you.”
“But I didn’t know!” she argued. “And there are plenty of people who might have been in the woods! It’s a local site. Dog walkers are always in there, and any one of them might have seen him!”
“None have come forward.”
“Why would they? If they don’t want to be suspects in this.”
“We don’t believe anyone in the village had reason, solid reason, to harm Mr Hughes.”
“What about that old lady? She hated him, didn’t want him ruining her land.”
“True. But her family was counting on that money. She’s now in a spot of financial concern, one that I highly doubt she would have brought upon herself and her family.”
“Well, then who does have a reason?”
“That is exactly what we are trying to figure out, Ms Renner. Why did he go to Oxeye Cottage? Would these,” I pulled out Jeannie’s notes and lay them before her, “have influenced his business plans? Perhaps this was what he wanted to update.”
She looked over them and scoffed. “There’s no profit for him in any of these, why on Earth would he bother? He’d be throwing money away.”
“Perhaps he felt like giving a bit back.”
“Not Samuel,” she said, “he was always so clever with business, always making a profit. This would have been waste,” she said coldly, “a sheer waste of time and energy and money.”
Mills looked at me from the corner of his eye, a slight twitch of his eyebrow.
“It’s a stupid venture.”
“And he would never have gone for something so stupid?”
“No,” she said firmly, “might have flirted with the idea if he was trying to impress someone, but it would never come to fruition. To actually go through with this, losing all that money? Wouldn’t have allowed it.” She shuddered.
“Who?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Who wouldn’t have allowed it, Ms Renner? Mr Hughes, or you?”
She went slightly pale, “Samuel, of course. What authority do I have?”
“None, I suppose.” I reclined back slightly. “You were just his assistant, after all, perhaps I shouldn’t have bothered showing you these.”
“Just his assistant?” she repeated, “I worked with him for twelve years. I was much more than just an assistant!”
“What were you then, Ms Renner? A friend who might pay attention to the whereabouts of the person she’s across the country with? A business partner who makes herself known of any updates to the business plan and such meetings to establish these changes? What were you to him, exactly?”
“The voice of reason,” she replied with a snap. “Whenever he started thinking with something other than his head, whenever he started daydreaming or falling off the course, it was me who put him back on.”
“You made sure he kept going?”
“Yes.”
“Made sure this business, this enterprise kept going.”
“Yes.”
“By whatever means,” I finished quietly. She sucked in a harsh gasp of air.
“What are you accusing me off, Detective Inspector?”
“Nothing, Ms Renner. I’m just trying to understand how you and Mr Hughes ran this operation. From what I can tell, somewhat haphazardly. Thank you for your time,” I smiled and stood up, strolling from the room without a backwards glance, back to Sharp who gave me a nod.
“Was that a good nod or a bad nod?” Mills asked as she walked away.
“Haven’t the foggiest. But I think we got what we wanted there. Don’t you?” I looked back into the room. Cynthia Renner’s shoulder sank, and the stone-faced mask finally slipped off.
Eighteen
Thatcher
It was another late one. I stayed in the station long after people went home, shooing a hesitant Mills out the door. The only other person lingering was Sharp, who sat herself down at my desk, turned the picture of my mother the right way round and glared up at me.
“Thoughts?” she asked.
“Ms Renner needed that job with Hughes,” I said, sitting on the edge of Mills’s desk, “but she needed it because it went well. Because he did good business because he made large profits. That’s how she earned as much as she did, how she got her bonuses and helped look after her brother.”
“And he was starting to look towards non-profit options...”
“So she’d lose a large chunk of that income.”
“I did think she’d had a good reason for working for him that long.”
“With him,” I corrected her, “I said for him, Ms Renner said with.”
Sharp frowned, leaning back in her chair and crossed one leg over the other. “Almost like they were partners?”
“Perhaps.”
“No proof of that.”
“No, ma’am.”
“Any word on this laptop?”
“Not yet. Site’s been searched pretty thoroughly, so I think it’s safe to assume that our killer took it.”
“If they were smart, they’d get rid of it.”
“Let’s hope they’re not that smart then.” Sharp smiled at that and glanced at her watch with a sigh. “It’s late, Thatcher. Go home.”
“I think I’ll stay awhile longer, double-check a few things.”
Her frown deepened. “I know this one isn’t easy, Thatcher. Lots of if’s and maybe’s and guessing, but you’re getting there, I can tell. Pieces will come together, always do, that’s why I give you these cases.”
“I thought it was just to keep me out of the station for extended periods of time.”
“That’s a bonus,” she stood up, fixing her coat, “but you’re a good detective. When,” she added meaningfully, “you look after yourself. Home, eat, sleep, that’s an order, Thatcher.”
“Ma’am.”
She rolled her eyes and squeezed my shoulder, striding off down the hallways, her heels clicking as she went.
I slumped down at my desk, rubbing my face again, peering at the photograph between my fingers. Too many guesses, too many hunches. Even after today, after making what felt like progress with Ms Renner and her association with Hughes and Johnson, I needed something concrete, something to prove my hunches right.
I made to leave, started shoving together bits and pieces into a folder to take home and scour through while I ate. My phone started ringing, the number blocked. I put down the folder and glowered down at the flashing screen, picking it up with a silent groan.
“Max Thatcher,” I answered robotically.
“Detective,” a slightly garbled voice came down the line, “I have some information that might be helpful.”
Oh good. One of these. I sat back down and waited.
“Well?”
“A few nights ago, a
fter you came to the village with the journalist, someone was down at the river that night. They threw something into the water, upstream, by the woods.”
I sat forward. “You saw this?”
“Yes. By the rocks.”
“What did they throw?”
“A bag.”
“Did you see who?”
“No. Too dark.”
“Who are you?”
They hung up, and I swore, quickly flicking through my contacts as I abandoned the folder and left the station.
“Sir?” Mills answered quickly. “Has something come up?”
“I’ve just had a strange call about someone being seen down at the village river the night Jeannie and I were there, throwing what looked like a bag into the water.”
“A tip?”
“Seems so.”
Anonymous tips happened sometimes, but also sometimes, they were just time wasters or traps.
“Any clue as to who it was?”
“No, the voice was fairly garbled, number blocked.”
“What do you want to do, sir?”
I swung my car door closed as he asked, the engine roaring into life. “I want to go down to the river and look.”
“Now? A bit dark for that, sir, isn’t it?”
“If our killer knows we have the phone, and I think by now they do, then a smart person would retrieve the other piece of evidence we’re looking for,” I explained. “Move it somewhere else, destroy it. There’s a chance that we can get Hughes’s laptop tonight, Mills, I’m going.”
There was a slight pause on his end. “I’ll come with you then, sir. Wait for me.”
“Good. Meet me there,” I ordered, hanging up and dropping my phone onto the passenger seat so I could focus on the road ahead. The sky was streaked with orange and red, night drawing in. We’d have to be thorough, and we’d have to be fast.
The river lay on the outskirts of the village, carving its way through the hills with several bridges laying over it. According to my tip, it had been upstream, not too far from where the woodlands stretched out to run alongside it. Not far, I realised as I pulled up and turned off the engine, from the hotel. We were on the right side, a few minutes’ walk. Nor was it far from Goodwin’s field, several barns and houses close to the perimeter. An easy enough journey for many to make.
Mills wouldn’t take long to get here; I knew he was the sort of man to abandon whatever he was doing for this. Almost had to kick him out of the station to make him go to his parents on time. I sat in the lingering warmth of the car for a moment, looking down towards the river. They’d have stood down on the bank, close to the edge, to have made sure it went in the water. From up here, odds are it just would have ended up in the mud or a patch of brambles.
I climbed out of the car, pulling on the waterproof coat I’d snatched from the station and wandered across the sparse, bristly grass.
It was dark out here without any streetlights; the river rushed past loudly, churning along with long strands of weeds running through it. It was cold too, cold enough that I pulled my scarf up around my face, flipped my collar up and stuck my hands into gloves as I inched towards the banks.
The rain had made them muddy and slippery, bits of earth sliding down like land spill. I used the ground behind me, the jagged bits of stone and roots to lower myself down the bank, my boots splashing in the shallow edge of the river.
Whoever called in the tip said they saw something over by the rocks; a pile of them slid into the water a few metres down. They shone in the moonlight, grown over with moss. I wasn’t sure how deep the river was. It was too dark to see through the surface. If I couldn’t find it tonight, I’d have to come back in the daylight, maybe even with a diver or two. But that wasted time and the killer wouldn’t likely leave it here long, especially if they knew we had the phone.
I inched my feet forward slowly, feeling for the rocks and mud beneath my feet. The water rose up to the top of my boots, sloshing in over the top. Cold water started to leak through my trousers and socks. I swore between my teeth, the sort of word that Elsie would give me a slap for, and waded further in. I was wet now, there was no point in dawdling.
The water came up to my knees, soaking the end of my coat. I slid my feet again, and the toe of my boot collided with something.
Something was nestled, caught in the reeds. For all I knew, it was a rock.
Grumbling, I wrestled a glove off, gripping it in my hand, fingers quickly starting to feel numb.
The trees behind me rustled; something snapped. I turned, squinting into the darkness, just able to make out the branches behind me. Fumbling for my torch, I flashed it into the woods. An animal would be startled, go skittering away. There was silence.
I placed my torch between my teeth and looked down to where my feet were. The light just about let me see the riverbed, the strange dark blob that my foot lay against. Didn’t look like a rock. As I kicked it gently, it gave way a little. Didn’t feel like a rock either.
I yanked my other glove off, shoving them both into my pockets, and more noise came from behind me. I tried to turn, slowly so as not to slip, and something caught me in the back, sharp and hard, knocking me off balance.
I yelped in pain, the torch falling from my mouth into the river and lost my footing, twisting over on my ankle and fell into the cold, dark water.
My legs tangled in the weeds, I scrambled, reaching for the light of the torch that had fallen upstream. The water was heavy, weighing me down, and my lungs ached and screamed as I tried to get my leg free. Pain stretched up my back, hot and shooting.
My cold hands wrestled with the weeds, slipping and failing to grip them.
Panic began to simmer, and I failed against the reeds, trying to push myself up to the surface above, trying to gulp down some air.
My hand collided with something, soft and hard and I gripped it blindly, yanking on it, trying to pull myself up with it. It gave way, colliding into my chest.
The water churned around me; muffled sounds barely visible over the rush. A hand gripped my shoulder, another under my arm, lifting me up. The weeds snapped, and I broke free, gasping down deep lungfuls of air, leaning against the body that gripped me.
“Come on, sir.” It was Mills, lugging me towards the riverbank. I collapsed against it, still clutching the strange object in my hands, gulping in air. Pain laced up my back and around my ankle and Mills knelt beside me, face flushed with panic.
“What happened?” He demanded.
“Something hit me,” I answered, struggling to sit up. Mills reached forward and helped me, glancing behind me and swore softly.
“You’re bleeding sir, through your coat.”
I looked down at the river, so peaceful now when you were caught beneath it, and glanced over my shoulder to the trees.
“Someone didn’t want me down there,” I muttered.
“Why didn’t you wait for me?” Mills asked. I didn’t have much of an answer for that, only Elsie’s voice ringing through my ears. Stubborn. Proud.
I looked down to the thing in my arms. A bag, it seemed, a leather satchel.
“Worth it, Mills. Have a look.”
He took it from me, unbuckling the heavy bag and pulled a few rocks out from inside.
“Laptop,” he breathed. “Hughes’s?”
“Must be.”
“If someone was willing to kill you to stop you getting it,” he muttered, throwing it over one shoulder and stood, offering me a hand, “I should probably take you to A&E.”
“No need.”
“You might have hypothermia.”
“I’ll be fine.”
“You almost drowned, sir,” he said severely.
“I know, Mills.” I took his hand, hoisting myself up. “I was there.”
“And your back?”
“I doubt it will need serious medical intervention.”
Mills frowned doubtfully.
“Don’t you have a first aid kit in that shambles you cal
l a car?”
“Yes, sir, and spare clothes.”
“Then let me get dry, buy me a pint for not dying,” I nodded down towards the village, “and we’ll go from there.”
He looked unhappy, staring grimly at me, but nodded and helped me up the bank to his car.
I was shaking all over, like a wet cat, my bones and teeth rattling together. He quickly opened the boot, shoving the bag in there and pulled out some of the spare clothes he kept, turning and looking into nowhere as I pulled the sopping clothes slowly off, the wind biting at my bare skin and pulled the t-shirt and jumper on, the trousers were a bit snug, but I wasn’t complaining. He even had clean socks. Very well prepared, I credited that to this mother I’d heard so much about.
“Why don’t we leave the village?” Mills asked, dabbing some antiseptic on the neat little wound on my back. Must have been a rock that was thrown.
“Pub,” I answered.
“Killer’s probably lurking around, sir, and they were ready to kill for this.” He nodded to the bag. “Let’s drive to the next village over at least, where I won’t be jumping at every shadow that moves.”
The numbness was wearing off, and I looked around us, something unpleasant sinking in. I wanted to be gone from this place for now. “We’ll go back to the city, drop that off at the station where it’ll be safe.”
Mills’s shoulders sagged in relief. “I’ll take the laptop. You should go home, get some extra layers.”
“Good lad. Meet me in the Bell.”
He gave me a nod and quickly packed away the first aid kit. I grimaced as I stood, heading for my car. Wouldn’t be sleeping on my back tonight, that was for sure. I felt uneasy, almost sick as I started the engine and followed Mills from the village. I felt something akin to a pair of large, oily eyes following me, finally slipping away when the lights vanished in the rear-view mirror.
It was one thing to kill a man. Another to hide the evidence. A third to go so far as to attempt a second murder to cover up the first. It wasn’t the first time someone had tried to get me off the scent with some rather obtuse methods, and Sharp would have a field day with it, harping on to me about therapy and back up and unnecessary risks. We had his laptop though, which I took as a plus, providing Wasco could rescue anything from the river-sodden machine.
DCI Thatcher Yorkshire Crime Thrillers: Books 1-3 Page 16