“I’d wager so, yes.”
“Johnson?”
“Perhaps. Is there anything in the files that might relate to him?”
“Nothing in the old stuff, but Wasco managed to get a few more. Very hard to make sense of these,” he sounded tired already, voice strained down the phone.
“Keep looking. If Renner knew about these plans, there’s a very good reason why she hasn’t been sharing them. Not with Mrs Babbage and not with us.”
“Yes, sir. What will you do?”
“I’m heading back. Fill in Sharp on a few finer details. And I want to have a closer look into Johnson’s business, take a gander at some of his more recent projects.”
“Right, sir. See you then.”
“See you then.” I hung up, tossed my phone onto the passenger seat and pulled out from the cottage. As I drove from the fields, my phone lit up again, Dr Crowe’s name and face flashing on the screen. Should really invest in Bluetooth, or at least figure out how to get the blasted thing working.
Better to hear her in person, anyway, easier to understand.
Twenty-Six
Mills
“I’m off to the village. Call me if anything changes.”
“Will do, sir.”
Thatcher flipped his collar up, shouldering the bag of notes and sent me a quick nod before striding out of the office. I slumped down at my desk, glaring at the stacks of paper that still needed sorting. It was slow going, and Hughes had worse handwriting than Jeannie. Without Thatcher here to interpret, it would be even slower.
I pulled a stack towards myself, documents from a trade deal in the Lake District. None of it meant very much to me. I was scrawling through, pen in hand, when Sharp rapped on the open door and wandered in, sitting opposite me.
“Mills.”
“Ma’am,” I dropped the pen, lifting my head to hers.
“Where is he?”
“He went to the village, Ma’am, has some things he wants to clarify with Mrs Babbage, about Hughes’s plans for the land.”
“On his own?”
“Yes, Ma’am. I think we should just be grateful that he waited until morning.”
She let out a dry laugh. “Yes, I suppose we should. How goes it with you, Mills?”
“Still working through these files.”
“Bit sluggish, is it?”
“Very.”
“Then I am sorry to tell you that Wasco’s managed to rescue a few more. Working on getting them too, you know.”
I suppressed a groan, loosening my shirt collar. “Suppose it’s a good thing, all in all.”
“Suppose so. But I hear these aren’t in quite as good condition.”
Blimey. This lot was hard enough to read as it was. “I’ll manage, Ma’am.”
“I can send in Smith, if you want an extra set of eyes.”
“That’s alright. I know what to look for.”
“As you like,” she stood up, smoothing out the faint wrinkles in her skirt, “Miss Gray will be by later to pick up some of her things.”
“Any lead on the break in?”
“Not as yet, but I suppose you and Thatcher might be able to help connect a few lines there.”
“That’s the hope.”
“Any word from Crowe on that wheelbarrow?”
“Not yet, Ma’am.”
“A wheelbarrow. Why had that only come up now?”
“Now we know where he was killed and how they’d have gotten him there, seems obvious now.”
“Never is at the time,” she sighed, tucking a piece of hair behind her ear, “back to work then Mills. Let me know of any updates.”
“Yes, Ma’am. Did you have a chance to read up on my notes?”
“I did. You’re right, lots of coincidences. Too many, in fact.”
“Useless without evidence.”
“We’ll get there,” she tapped her nails on my desk, “we’ll get there.”
She gave me a rare smile, swanning away back into the bustling main room. She passed Wasco on her way, who appeared in the doorway looking a little demented. His hair was wild around his head like, as my mum would say, he’d been dragged through a hedge backwards. Bags hung under his eyes which were surprisingly bright, but I attributed that to the large mug in his hand. No doubt, not his first coffee of the morning. He had another smaller stack of sheets in his hands which he slid onto my desk and pushed in front of me with an apologetic smile.
“Good morning, Isaac.”
“Morning. Anything useful?” I inquired, lifting up a sheet with the end of my pen.
“For your sake, I very much hope so.” He grinned and skittered away, back to hunching over the ruined machine.
I let out a long, deep sigh and got up, opening the window to let in the cold air, took my tie off and unbuttoned my collar before sitting back down. I was beginning to work out a system for these. I took any that had Hughes’s own little notes and set them in one pile. Then I sorted through the rest looking for any sign of Ms Renner, Oxeye Cottage, Johnson or the allotments.
It was dull, and a small part of me protested that this was not why I had chosen to become a detective. But nor had I done so to pull my boss out of a freezing Yorkshire river in the early days of winter. At least both of these things would hopefully lead to why I had chosen to do all this. Solve a puzzle, justify wrongdoing. Ought to be worth it, in the long run. When all was said and done, I doubt I’d even remember this, slow trudging through endless, boring documents that made my brain feel like custard.
Never was one for paperwork, in truth. Never very organised. If Thatcher wasn’t a fan of my car, I dread to think what he would say if he ever saw the inside of my flat. Though from what Jeannie had suggested to me the other day after he went down to see Dr Crowe, his own home was no better. Full of things, she said, from an old family home. I wasn’t sure what she meant, but if it was to do with the reason why he sometimes came into work with plaster in his hair and the smell of damp on his clothes, it wasn’t too difficult to imagine. Nor, for that matter, why on those days, the picture of his mother on his desk would be facing the right way, looking at him.
Don’t pry, I reminded myself. Lesson one, that had been. The first day on the job and Sharp had led me to the office, stopped me just outside the door and hissed in my ear,
“Do not pry. When it comes to Detective Inspector Thatcher, do not pry.”
It was a piece of advice which has served me well so far. I wondered, dimly, what had occurred with his other sergeants that such a warning had been so sternly administered. That was one thing I very much did not want to pry into. Think it would be somewhat off-putting and better off being ignorant, like learning how sausages are made.
“Knock-knock,” a light, lilting voice called from the door. I looked up, finding Jeannie there, wrapped in her scarf and coat, flames of hair falling around her face, flushed from the cold.
“Jeannie,” I gladly turned away from the files, blinking my sore eyes and welcomed her into the room.
“You look bored,” she commented, collapsing in the chair.
“Lots of reading,” I told her. She leant forward, glancing at one of the files,
“Oof. Business talk.”
“Any good at understanding it?”
“Bits and pieces, comes with the territory sometimes.” She shrugged her coat off,
“Do you mind? Apparently, I have to wait awhile for my things to process.”
“By all means. Tea? Coffee?”
“You’re alright. Where’s Thatcher?”
“The village.”
She looked up, sharply. “On his own?”
“Yes.”
“Git.”
“Him or me?”
She smiled. “Him. Well, at least he went during daylight, for once.”
“I take it,” I began slowly, “that this isn’t the first time he’s gotten into a spot of bother working a case?”
Jeannie snorted. “No, Mills, it is not. I think you st
ill have a few things to get used to in that regard.”
“What was the worst one?” I asked, thankful for the distraction.
“The worst one?” She leant back, sucking on a tooth, “would have been after we met. The second case of his that I covered. Girl was found dead on the riverbank, under a bridge. Long story short,” she waved a hand, “idiot almost fell off the city walls.”
“Almost fell off the walls?”
She nodded, “well he did, technically. Only not all the way down, fell the other way and landed on the walkway.”
“Ouch.”
“Broke his leg, cracked a rib or two. Poor thing, was out of work for a few months, almost went completely stir crazy.”
“I can imagine.”
Thatcher reminded me of one those wind-up toys, the kind that just kept going and going and going until it was forced to stop. I doubted he was the kind of man who could sit still for more than a few hours. I couldn’t imagine him on holiday, sitting by the pool or by a fire. Probably went hiking for a holiday, mad man.
“Found the killer though?”
“Course he did. Always does. All this,” she indicated the mass of paperwork, “all works itself out.”
“There’s useful stuff in it,” I agreed, “just hard to make much sense of any of it. Hughes had worse handwriting than you, Jeannie.”
“Really? I thought I was a winner there. Hoping for a certificate one day. May I?” She reached out a hand. I deliberated a moment, but these things needed interpreting, and the longer I took, the longer this case dragged on for. I passed her a few sheets since she was waiting here, anyway.
Her eyes flicked over the page, and one eyebrow quirked up, a slow whistle dragging out from her mouth. “Got writing like a doctor. Or an engineer.”
“Engineers have bad writing?”
“The ones I’ve met do. Blimey. No wonder it’s taking you so long, poor lad.”
“Can you make any sense of it?”
“Yeah. Give me a moment.” She leant over the table, her head held up on her fists, frowning over the pages. “Double check,” she deciphered aloud, “double check numbers with Fisk.” She looked up. “Who’s Fisk?”
“Lake District,” I pulled it from underneath her, tossing onto the appropriate file.
“What a sad name. Fisk. Sounds like a crime in itself. Get caught fisking.”
“Jail time or just a warning?”
“Depends on how many times,” she grinned, “or whether or not you fisked publicly.”
I laughed, and she turned her face down to the next sheet.
“Bugger me. Is that a ‘g’? That can’t be a g.”
“Bad, isn’t it?”
“Is this what it’s like reading my writing?”
“Not far off.”
“New figures,” she muttered, “from gourd,” she bent even closer to it, “Goudhurst? I think that says Goudhurst.”
I nodded. “Kent.” I took it away, placing it in the relevant pile. “You’re good at this,” I said. “Really speeding up the process.”
“Happy to help. Sooner this is all squared away the sooner I get to write my story,” she looked up and winked, “and pin down the pricks that broke my snow globe and massacred my bird.”
“Any word on that?”
“He’s at my gran's, getting stitched together again.”
“I meant the robbery.”
“Oh. Not really. They were careful, and we don’t have much security up in the newsroom. Never needed it before. Not like those fancy papers down in London, you know.” She made a face as she said it, not a city girl. She had a thicker accent, not unlike Thatcher’s.
“Well, once we catch them,” I supplied, “we can probably get your memory sticks back.”
“Providing they haven’t destroyed them.”
“Providing. But I think they took them because they needed them, not to destroy them.”
“Very optimistic of you Mills. I can see why Thatcher likes you.”
“Does he? Hard to tell.”
Jeannie looked up, looking very much like she was about to make a joke or sarcastic comment, but her eyes trailed across my face, and her expression softened.
“Yes. He does. And he doesn’t like very many people.”
“There’s you.”
“Me.”
“Sharp and Crowe. Smith. What about his personal life?”
“I am his personal life. Nobody else really puts up with the lifestyle and schedule of a copper.”
“I’ve noticed,” I mumbled.
“He’s got a friend,” she said, “from when he was a kid. Sally, but he doesn’t like her husband very much. A university chap, I’ve heard.”
“Ever met them?”
“No. Our personal wires don’t stretch that far. Give me another one,” she held out her hand for a sheet, “I like being useful.”
I handed her a few which over a few minutes she slowly decoded and gave to me to put in the right place. None of them about our case, no mention of Mrs Babbage or even Yorkshire. Nothing, even, about Ms Renner, but Jeannie mentioned, as both Thatcher and I suspected, that the notes would be for her. Changes to make on each new copy. She’d have seen them all.
As Jeannie took a short break by spinning around in Thatcher’s chair and messing up the height, my phone rang, his name flashing across the screen.
“Sir. How is it going?”
“Interesting. Apparently, according to our Mrs Babbage, she saw Ms Renner recently in the hotel. She gave no mention about Hughes’s plans for the land and even told her she could put her in touch with another buyer.”
“Another buyer? So soon?”
“Either she’s a very fast worker and has got herself back in business, or she never left it.”
“Working with somebody else.”
“I’d wager so, yes.”
“Johnson?”
“Perhaps. Is there anything in the files that might relate to him?”
“Nothing in the old stuff, but Wasco managed to get a few more. Very hard to make sense of these.”
Jeannie drifted back to my desk, picking up a new note.
“Keep looking. If Renner knew about these plans, there’s a very good reason why she hasn’t been sharing them. Not with Mrs Babbage and not with us.”
“Yes, sir. What will you do?”
“I’m heading back. Fill in Sharp on a few finer details. And I want to have a closer look into Johnson’s business, take a gander at some of his more recent projects.”
“Right, sir. See you then.” I hung up and looked at Jeannie.
“he’s on his way back.”
“Look at this,” she stood up, walking around to my side, bringing the sheet of paper with her, pointing at the scrawl.
“I don’t know what that says.”
“She was a partner.”
“Who was?”
“Ms Renner, Cynthia. She was a partner on a previous project. A small one in Oxfordshire.”
“A partner?”
“Name’s on the contract. Just about,” she amended. I picked up the sheet, holding it closer to the light.
“Might she have partnered on a few others?”
“I’d wager so, yes.”
“Keep looking,” I told her, pushing more handwritten notes her way.
After another few minutes, waiting for Thatcher to come hurtling through the door, Jeannie kicked me under the desk.
“Ow!”
“Cynthia, go ahead for new initiative. Make arrangements,” she read aloud. “It’s part of a contract and look at the site.”
“That,” I pointed, “is Oxeye Cottage.”
“He wanted to go ahead with a new initiative?”
“And he told her to do so. Would he have scanned this into the laptop?”
“Maybe. Or took a picture. Look at the page. It looks more like a photograph than an actual document.”
“And if he did this the day he died, he wouldn’t have had time to go ba
ck and scan it in. But he didn’t have any pictures on his phone.”
“Once he sent it, he wouldn’t really need it anymore would he.”
I stood up, adrenaline surging just as Thatcher appeared in the doorway. He looked at Jeannie, a bit surprised and smiled at her, then turned to me.
“Mills, with me. Crowe wants a word. What’s that?”
“Note from Hughes. He wanted to go ahead with the new initiative.”
Thatcher let out a sudden breath, his fingers drumming on the door frame.
“Go talk to Crowe,” Jeannie took the sheet and shooed us out, “I’ll see if there’s anything more.”
“Talk,” Thatcher said as I joined him, practically jogging down the hallway, “tell what you found.”
Twenty-Seven
Thatcher
“Cynthia Renner partnered with him on a small job in Oxfordshire, not just as an assistant. She invested, worked on the project, took a share of the profits,” Mills told me as we went in search of Dr Crowe,
“Likely that she would repeat that again, especially on a small job like this.”
“Odds are. Given that she was the one in constant communication with Mrs Babbage and in between the bidding between Hughes and Johnson, she might have also been financially involved.”
“And the new initiative?”
“A photograph, we think. Of the contract he had with Mrs Babbage, his note says to go ahead with the new plans.”
“The allotments.”
“Yes, sir.”
“So, Renner knew he wanted to change the course of plans, and if she was a partner in the project, that might not have gone down too well.”
“No, sir.”
“Making changes without your partner’s agreement. Is that allowed in the business world?”
“Haven’t the foggiest, sir. But it would certainly inspire resentment.”
“And then some,” I muttered. “Any sign of Johnson in all of this?”
“Not in the slightest. Other than the fact they were bidding over the same site, it seems Hughes was barely aware of his existence. His ties to this come almost entirely from Renner.”
“New buyer, new employer. New partnership.” She’d need one, with all the unsettling changes Hughes was making.
DCI Thatcher Yorkshire Crime Thrillers: Books 1-3 Page 23