DCI Thatcher Yorkshire Crime Thrillers: Books 1-3

by Oliver Davies

  “But he hadn’t made that official, had he? Not until you came up here, not until he went to see Mrs Babbage?”

  She shook her head, shoulders sagging, “no. I only to keep it one more day; we’d have signed the contracts, and everything would have been fine. And then he changed his mind, without consulting me,” she added, “and that my money too, you know.”

  “Did he give any explanation?”

  “Said it would be easier in the long run,” she sighed, “that it would give us a good image, make more people likely to sell.”

  “Not a terrible idea.”

  “Not if you’re like him and have money in the bank for a rainy day. Not all of us do.”

  “No, we certainly don’t. So, after he went to see Mrs Babbage, he made his way back to the hotel, to discuss the changes with you. Only he never made it to the hotel.”

  I leant forward again, bracing my arms against the table,

  “He took a detour through the woods, got off the path and heard someone behind him. Someone he knew well enough to let them get that close. Someone he wouldn’t have thought of as a threat, someone who would never kill him.”

  Her eyes darted around the room, from the sheets before her to the blinking red light, to the ceiling and back, over and over again like she was following a fly.

  “Why then? Why bonfire night? Coincidence? That was the day he made the changes. But you knew these changes were in the works for some time, that note on the contract was just, forgive the expression, the nail in the coffin. Wasn’t it?”

  “He was supposed to burn,” she muttered, caving in on herself. Mills straightened up beside me, glancing to the mirror.

  “But he didn’t, did he? So, you had to make sure that his laptop was gone, that any research done on him or into the business was gone. That the weapon would be found somewhere else, somewhere to throw us of course.”

  “And that Detective Inspector Thatcher wouldn’t find the laptop that night at the river,” Mills added bitterly. Her head shot up,

  “That wasn’t me!”

  “We know you didn’t do this all alone, Ms Renner.”

  She looked away again.

  “Why don’t you tell us? The whole story, from the start.”

  Another sigh, a great deep one and she raised her hands up to her hair, grasping at the strands. “He wanted to do a project like this for some time,” she muttered eventually. “I managed to play him and Johnson off each other, figured if he invested a lot of money into it, he’d have to play ball properly. Not waste it all on some fanciful garden dream. But he kept talking about it, all the time, and Johnson said that if I could get him to stop the deal, then he would give me a share, out of gratitude. I said we would wait, see what he does. And if it comes to it, we’ll deal with it properly, no need for lawyers or anything. We’ll do things the old-fashioned way.”

  “Like taking down a monarch,” I added.

  “They did things right back then. Getting rid of the people who were using them and neglecting them.”

  “And bonfire night was only around the corner,” Mills pointed out. “Perfect timing.”

  “I waited for him, in the woods. Waited to see what decision he had made,” she shrugged simply, “he chose the wrong one.”

  “He didn’t choose death.”

  “Maybe not directly.”

  “Where did you get the sledgehammer from?”

  “The hotel. They have a few in the tool sheds.”

  “And you killed him.”

  She nodded.

  “Please let the record show that the suspect nodded in confirmation,” Mills said towards the microphone.

  “Then what?” I prompted her.

  “I moved him to the bonfire,” she half-whispered.

  “And then you went back to the hotel, quite content with everything, but the next day, it had all gone wrong. The fire hadn’t been lit, had it?”

  “No,” she croaked.

  “So, you needed to do what you do best, Ms Renner. Get everything back on course.”

  “And it was Johnson who helped you?”

  She said nothing, her eyes boring holes into the table.

  “That’s alright,” I said, standing up from the chair. “We’ll talk to him ourselves.”

  “What will happen?” she asked in a creaking voice.

  “To you?”

  “My brother.”

  “He’ll be looked after,” I assured her, shoving my chair back under the table. I left the room, Mills behind me as the custody sergeant took our place.

  I went straight over the hall into the next room. Johnson had, unsurprisingly, requested a solicitor who sat beside him in a perfectly tailored suit. His wife had mentioned that he would have good connections in the legal world.

  “Mr Johnson,” I greeted him as we sat.

  “My client will not be answering any of your questions,” the solicitor immediately countered.

  “I see.” I nodded. “Well, Mr Johnson, I thought you might like to know that Ms Cynthia Renner has confessed to the murder of Mr Samuel Hughes.”

  “She has?” He looked surprised. “Well, then, why am I here?”

  “Because she didn’t do it alone. You were found with her today with belongings taken from the office of Jeannie Gray.”

  “Cynthia had them,” he said quickly. “She bought them to me. I had no part in it.”

  “I see. Mr Johnson, when you were brought in today, we took your fingerprints.”

  “I’m aware.”

  “And we found a match,” I told him, taking the sheet Mills handed me, lying it flat on the table. “The nick of time, really. Our forensic team got this to me just before we came down.”

  “A match in the system? I’ve never been arrested before; this is a mistake.”

  “Not in the system, no. These were found on a wheelbarrow on the hotel grounds.”

  “A wheelbarrow?” he scoffed. “What business would I have with a wheelbarrow in the hotel of some poky little village?”

  “None that I can see,” I admitted.

  “No--” he began, but I cut him off.

  “Except this wheelbarrow was also found with traces of blood inside. Blood belonging to Samuel Hughes. We believe his body was moved from the site he was killed at, to the bonfire in the field of Mr Goodwin, in this wheelbarrow.”

  “And your prints,” Mills reminded him, “on said wheelbarrow.”

  “You’ve made a mistake,” Johnson said smartly, folding his arms and sitting back, like he hadn’t a care in the world.

  “That is always a worry. So, we did a double check,” I told him, “and they’re still yours.”

  “Don’t say anything, Mr Johnson,” his solicitor snapped. He leant forward himself, glaring at us. “Are you charging my client with anything, sirs?”

  “Ms Renner claimed that you were involved with her business between herself with Mr Hughes from the start,” I continued. “That the two of you had a plan to resolve business ‘the old-fashioned way,’ if it came to it.”

  “My client has an alibi, if you recall.”

  “Yes. Unfortunately, that alibi is longer useful.” I crossed my arms. “According to your wife, Mr Johnson, on the night of the fifth, you were home late. Half seven, quarter to eight, according to her, which is within our window, of when Mr Hughes was killed.”

  “Ridiculous.”

  “And that two nights ago, when I was retrieving the evidence Ms Renner hid, you were also out all night.”

  “I was,” Johnson said firmly. “That’s no secret. She’d have told you where I was.”

  “She told us where she believed you to be.”

  “And that’s where I was! Visiting my brother.”

  “Actually, she says you were at a friend’s house,” I said, “playing poker.”

  His face fell, his mouth opening and closing like a fish. “She’s wrong. She’s always getting mixed up,” he finally spat out.

  “She seemed quite certain.”r />
  “I don’t see what business it is of yours to be questioning my wife, anyway.”

  “When you are involved in a murder investigation, Mr Johnson,” I countered, “it is my job to question her.”

  “I did not kill him,” he said sternly.

  “Ms Renner killed him,” I agreed, “she said so herself. But she’d didn’t move the body alone, she didn’t break into the newspaper alone, and she was not alone two nights ago at the river. Your fingerprints are on the wheelbarrow, you were found in possession of the stolen items from the paper, and you have no alibi for either of the nights these things took place. It is enough for us to charge you.”

  “My client--”

  Johnson waved him quiet with a hand, his face fallen and defeated.

  “I did not kill him,” he repeated.

  “But you were an accomplice.”

  “It was supposed to be much more straightforward than this,” he grumbled, ignoring his blabbering lawyer beside him.

  I stood up, Mills following suit, and glared down at him. “So, I’ve heard.”

  We left him, leaving the matter to the custody sergeants and Sharp who gave us an approving nod and slight wink as we made our way to our office, collapsing in our chairs. Well, I collapsed. Mills stood, staring at the board.

  “We did it,” he muttered to himself.

  “We did. CPS will find enough evidence to charge, and they’ll go to court. Well done to us.”

  “Well done you, sir. This was all you.”

  “Nonsense,” I tutted. “You’re a vital ally, Mills, and I’m glad to have you around. You’re a fine sergeant.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “And I’ll never say that again, so enjoy it.”

  “Shall do, sir.”

  “Boys,” Sharp interrupted, leaning against the doorframe, “very well done.”

  “Happy with our work?”

  “I am.”

  “Enough for the CPS?”

  “Enough for them, and they’ve both confessed. I wasn’t expecting that. They folded rather easily, didn’t they? After all that.”

  “I suspect they got tired,” I said, standing and pulling on my coat. “It’s not easy keeping something like that going for so long.”

  “No. Where are you going?” She frowned at me.

  “Pub.”

  “Report,” she shot back, pointing at my desk.

  “Can’t I do it tomorrow?”

  “No. Sit down and do it. Once it’s done you can go. Both of you.”

  She walked away, and I slumped back down.

  “Not the heroic ending I was hoping for,” I grumbled, turning on my computer. Mills laughed quietly, flipping open his notebook.

  As soon as we were done, the report gracefully slapped down onto Sharp’s desk, and we headed out of the station.

  “Where did Jeannie go?” Mills asked as we wandered into the street.

  “Who knows?”

  I thought she might have stuck around, taken a look at the people who ruined her things, trashed her belongings. I was hoping she would have, but Jeannie came and went like the tide, and now she had free rein to write the story. Maybe I’d make an effort and read this one when it came to print, earn some extra points for the next time we bumped into one another.

  “So then, sir. You mentioned the pub?” Mills stuck his hands into his pockets, looking lighter in the shoulder, looking a little proud.

  “I did.”

  “Your turn to buy,” he reminded me, strolling off.

  “You’re on thin ice, sergeant,” I called after him, catching up in a few long strides. A few hours peace, until the next bloody phone call.

  Epilogue

  It was still raining, and the sound of it filled the streets, splattering the windows. Droplets ran down the pane, blurring the city outside. I had forgotten, until remembering the story, that Jeannie had taken off so suddenly. She’d even vanished from my house when I got back that evening, a little note left on the mantelpiece reminding me to tidy up every once in a while.

  I looked back around the room, no longer lost in the cold fields of the village, no longer strolling along the river or the woods, picking up loose strands of evidence that somehow made a case. Back in Mike’s house, the fire burning, the room lit up with lamps and candles, giving everything and everyone a strange orange glow. Mike sat beside his girlfriend, their hands intertwined, looking at me a little gaping mouthed. Mike had heard lots of my stories before, was one of the few people I didn’t hate sharing them with, but he had the same expression each time, it was the same expression he wore whenever we watched Morse.

  Molly also looked impressed. She sat not far from me, her eyes lit up, scanning my face over and over. Not the usual reaction I was used to receiving, but, I had to admit, as I took in her expression, it wasn’t a bad one.

  I turned my head to where Sally and Tom sat, the latter of the two looking quietly impressed, but ultimately defeated in being proven wrong, his face bent down, focusing on the wine he swilled in his glass.

  Sally’s face never changed whenever I told her a story. She wasn’t even looking at me. She was looking at the others with a proud, smug look on her face as if she were daring them to not be impressed. After so many years of friendship and having heard just about all of my stories, it was hard to impress Sally. She was proud, of course, always, but never excited by the stories, never blown away. It was a reaction that was constant, one that I appreciated; she reacted almost the way a person might react to a surgeon, admiring their work, but there are only so many stories about surgery you can really hear in one lifetime.

  I finished the story, not seeing much need to tell them all about what Mills and I got up to at the pub, though I did buy the drinks that time. The room was quiet, too quiet for my liking, and I got up, threw another log on the dwindling fire and crossed the room to refill my glass.

  The sudden motion seemed to break the fog around the rest of them; they snapped quickly into moving, talking.

  “Brilliant,” Mike was the first to say, “I’d never have been able to figure that out.”

  “There are things you do that I can’t figure out,” I replied, uncomfortable with the compliment, replacing the stopper on the bottle and sitting back down beside Molly who regarded me with those bright eyes.

  “That was the one you remember reading, wasn’t it?” I asked her.

  She nodded, “the article in the Post.”

  It had been a good story, in all fairness. I’d even brought a copy, read it over breakfast. Jeannie was a bloody good reporter.

  “Good old Jeannie,” Sally said, happy to move on from me now. “How is she anyway? I haven’t seen her in months.”

  “Me either. Not since the summer,” I added, annoyed. I could have used her help at getting through these last few months. I saw her briefly, around October, at a police conference. She had been standing in the back, the only reporter without a recording device, phone or notebook. She just stood there, arms folded, red hair framing her face as she listened, a faint crease between her brow, her lips pursed together. The crowd had dispersed before I could reach her, but she glanced back at me before getting into a taxi, winking across the road.

  “Does she often help you?” Molly asked, drawing me from the memory. I turned to her, confused. She had looked away from my face, toying with the sleeve of her jumper, “with cases?”

  “When they interest her.”

  “Surely they all interest her.”

  “Not necessarily.” Some were very boring. Boring enough that I tried to forget them. Sharp liked to give me dull cases every now and then, to remind me how good she was to me, and how awful things could be if I continued, and I quote, “getting yourself into more trouble than you’re worth and landing me with paperwork, Max Thatcher.”

  She hadn’t gotten over the river incident, but at least it distracted her from that time on the city walls. Silver linings, I suppose, and all that.

  “They in
terest me,” Molly smiled at me, “I’d like to hear a few more of them one day.” She lowered her voice, so that others couldn’t overhear. I took a sip of my drink, regarding her, and nodded.

  “I’m sure we can arrange that.”

  “Arrange what?” Sally called, ears like an owl.

  “Some more of his stories,” Molly replied, “I’d like to hear them. I like a good puzzle.”

  “More haunting tales from the moors, eh, Thatcher?” Tom called with a smug grin plastered on his face, still swilling his wine. Sally poked him with her elbow, but I nodded.

  “Most of them are,” I had to hand it to him, Sharp did have a tendency to send me out there. Apparently, I got on well with the locals, better than some of the other DIs she knew, anyway. I think it was a compliment, either way, a good excuse to get out of the city every now and then for something other than fixing up the old coaching house.

  “You just don’t expect it,” Molly said breathlessly, “in places like those. The countryside is meant to be nice and peaceful.”

  “Hear, hear,” Tom raised his glass, “I’m sure Wordsworth never imagined such horrors on his strolls around the countryside. Every great poet and author would agree with you, Molly, the countryside is a place of tranquillity.”

  “I’m not so sure that the Brontë’s would agree with that, Tom,” Mike’s girlfriend argued. I let out a chuckle, smiling gratefully in her direction.

  “The gothic sisters aside,” he said dismissively, earning an irritated look from Mike, “on the whole, the sort of cases Max here tends to work would be more likely found in the city, no? Not out there, where people have local markets and vegetable growing competitions.”

  Those competitions could be violent at times, I thought.

  “The lowest and vilest alleys in London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside,” I recited quietly, my face half-buried in my glass. Sally caught my eye across the room, grinning.

  “What was that?” Tom asked, unsettled.

  “Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,” she told him, “which one again, Max?”

  “The Adventure of the Copper Beeches.” I think I’d shared that one with Mills, in fact, when we were dragged out to the countryside again. He liked it, even made a note of it. That time had been a particularly picturesque place, apart from the dead body.