DCI Thatcher Yorkshire Crime Thrillers: Books 1-3

by Oliver Davies

  Mills nodded. “It might be worth talking to the groundsman then,” he suggested. “They probably know more about the land itself than the family does.”

  I smiled. “Good thinking. I’ll leave to you that whilst I talk to Lord Hocking again. I get the feeling he won’t want much of an audience when it comes to digging up past indiscretions.”

  “I know I wouldn’t. But then,” he gave a light shudder, “I don’t think I’d ever be with the same girl as my brother. Bit weird, isn’t it?” He grimaced.

  “Very weird,” I agreed. But then, as my grandad would say, that was the rich for you.

  We moved away from work talk then, and Mills deftly dodged my leading questions about Smith, coming right back at me with questions about Jeannie. Eventually, we ended up on the rugby as the evening wore on and the spring sky slowly started to darken.

  Thirteen

  Thatcher

  I got home that evening and went straight to the boxes in my spare room, rooting out the numerous frames that were wrapped up and stowed away. With the television filling the house with noise, I set about propping the pictures up, on a chest of drawers, on the mantelpiece against the wall. Images of my grandparent’s faces, ones that I had long tried to ignore, and myself as a boy. Me and Sally outside the coaching house in mud-speckled wellies, toothless grins and buckets of mud. And my mother. As a young girl, cradling a pregnant stomach; holding a swaddled baby; teaching the baby to walk. Soon, their faces were everywhere, and there was no longer a room I could walk into without seeing her. It was jarring, and I felt some of the shame I had seen on Richard Sandow’s face. Guilt boiled up, sour and unpleasant and I fought against the urge to take them all down again and bury them underneath blankets and old winter coats.

  All the talk of family, the Hocking family mostly, but Sharp’s quiet, fierce attitude towards her son, Mills’s blatant disgust at how the Hocking family tore itself apart; all of it, inescapable. I took no pictures into my bedroom, deciding to have at least one place, other than the bathroom where I could be without being haunted. There was something about sitting on the toilet with a family member looking down at you that was just plain unnerving. I went to bed earlier than usual, no real desire to stay up and do anything, and crawled into bed like a sloth, letting myself wallow beneath the blankets, trying to tell myself that it was all for the sake of tomorrow, where I’d need my wits about me to navigate the difficult conversation with the family.

  Mills’s mention of the groundskeeper had been a stroke of genius, and a small lucky shot. As good as he was, as good as he was getting, I wanted to handle this particular conversation alone. I’d had many years of dealing with people like the Hocking’s, many years of confronting people with the one thing they wanted to forget, many years taking the blows for it. Mills would come to that in time, but for now, he was more useful to me when he was still bright and optimistic. I didn’t want to push him towards an early retirement; the only one of the sergeants I’d worked with for whom I’d had such compassion before, the rest of the time I just left them to it. It could be a nasty job, and they ought to learn that quickly.

  It was I who picked Mills up in the morning, my car better suited for the country lanes that led us to the estate. He did bring coffee though, sliding into the car, cheeks red from the surprisingly cold wind of the early hour, and smiled breathlessly.

  “I have a question,” he stated as we drove from the city, the usual morning greetings swiftly gotten out of the way.

  “Go ahead,” I answered.

  “Will we mention any of this to the children? Henry and Rupert, I mean?”

  I had been wondering over that myself. “No, I don’t think so. It’s not our place, and it might not even affect them. That’s Lord Hocking’s business to figure out.”

  “They might know something,” he pointed out, a little reluctantly.

  I sighed. “They might. But they might not. I’ll speak to Lord Hocking first, get a sense of it all and go from there. I’m not about to make the family rift even deeper.”

  “They deserve to know,” Mills said quietly.

  “They deserve to be told by the right people,” I countered. “We’re strangers Mills. In a few weeks, they’ll have forgotten us entirely. We’ll just be the random policemen who found their missing painting.”

  “Optimistic of you, sir,” Mills observed.

  “I’ve been known to be,” I replied, “from time to time.”

  We drove on for a few more miles, and then he said, “I was thinking about the painting.”

  “What of it?” I asked.

  “Ragsdale painted the estate, maybe the groundskeeper could show us where. The view he painted, there might be something there worth taking note of.”

  It was a long shot, but I gave him a nod. “Cover every possibility,” I muttered. “Maybe there's something in the painting itself that’s worth taking note of.”

  “Not an unheard-of phenomenon,” he said. “I read about it last night. Some artists used to hide things in their pieces. Often themselves, a little face in the background somewhere, but other things too. Symbols, metaphors, that sort of thing. If we can’t see the painting itself, we can at least take a look at the inspiration.”

  “Old land often carried lots of secrets of its own,” I added, “with or without artistic license.”

  “I have my camera.” He patted his coat pocket. “We can have a proper close look back at the station.”

  “Smart thinking,” I approved. Mills straightened up slightly, a faint glimmer of pride on his face as he looked out of the window at the land that passed us. Farming land mostly, broken up by patches of woodlands and new developments of houses. All built in the same sort of stone. We drove through the village just beyond the estate borders, the one that Ragsdale had been born in, not the one on the estate itself. There was probably one of those little blue plaques somewhere, identifying the exact house, if it still stood. And no doubt we’d find his name on the war memorial outside the church.

  For now, though, I carried on driving, out of the village to the estate, pulling up outside the front steps, where Dennis the butler already waited. As we climbed out of the car, he didn’t move, waiting for us to climb the steps to the front door.

  “Lord Hocking is in his study,” he told us, leading us into the house.

  “Thank you,” I remarked. “We wondered if we might have a word with the groundskeeper while we were here?”

  Dennis looked surprised for a moment but understanding dawned on him quickly. “Certainly. He’ll be out in the garden.”

  “Would you mind showing sergeant Mills the way?” I asked. “I can make my own way to the study.”

  Dennis hesitated slightly, probably because I was throwing decorum out the window, but he nodded, and gestured for Mills to follow. The sergeant gave me a nod and pat his camera once more, trailing after the tall butler.

  I myself headed down the confusing layout of halls to the study, where the door was open. I spotted the Lord at his desk, bent over some paperwork and knocked on the door frame. His head lifted.

  “Ah, Inspector. Do come in.” He rose from the desk and indicated the chair opposite him.

  I shut the door behind me, then crossed the room, shook his hand, and sat down.

  “Lord Hocking,” I began carefully, “yesterday I went out and met with your brother, Richard Sandow.”

  His face blanched slightly, and he sat slowly down. He said nothing for a moment, and I didn’t push him.

  “He told you about Selene,” his voice croaked out after a while.

  “He did,” I confirmed. He nodded, and looked around the room, to the blank space on the wall and then out towards the gardens.

  “Might we walk, Inspector? Walls have ears, you know.” His eyes drifted upwards to the ceiling, and I wondered whose room we might find above.

  “Of course,” I allowed. He nodded and stood up, showing me the way back through the house, the door locked behind him. We wen
t out through the breakfast room, into a garden occupied by rose beds and elegant little benches.

  “I always been ashamed of what I did then,” he said quietly. “I was a young man, you know. Young men make mistakes.”

  I nodded in agreement.

  “Richard,” he went on, “wanted so much to make things right. But it would have been bad for the family. These things mattered more back then, all that scandal and mystery. I couldn’t risk having a child with a woman who wasn’t my wife.”

  “You could have let Richard claim himself as the father,” I suggested carefully.

  “And watch him raise what could be my child?” He shook his head. “If indeed it was one of ours. She never did say. I thought it was for the best that she went, found herself a new home. When I heard that she died,” he shook his head remorsefully, hands trailing along the early buds of roses, “I made myself look at that painting every day.”

  “I heard it was she who admired it.”

  “Her favourite view of the summerhouse down by the lake. They don’t know.” He stopped walking and faced me, suddenly very serious, the face of a Lord. “My wife and children. They don’t know. The children about Selene at all, my wife knew about her of course. But not about…” He trailed off.

  “The possibility of a child.”

  “The repercussions it could have,” he started walking again, “for Henry especially.”

  I was surprised with how open he was being, how complacent with all my nosy questions.

  “Lord Hocking. Why did you not share any of this with me? Or even your brother? It’s all very useful for me to know.”

  “I didn’t think it was important,” he replied honestly. “I know that it was not Richard.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because despite the distance between us,” his voice dropped, “and despite the years, I know my brother. And he wouldn’t do this, especially to my wife and children. Being burgled, it gives one a tremendous feeling of unsafety, vulnerability. My wife has been triple checking the locked doors every night, and then Dennis does so again after her. For all Richard might blame me for Selene,” he sounded certain, “he would not do this.”

  “You have a lot of faith in your brother.”

  “He was always a good man. Always a better one than me. Sometimes, often, I used to wonder why it was me who was born first.”

  “Why not patch things up?”

  “Not enough fabric in the world, I fear.” He stopped walking again, something catching his eye across the garden and his face brightened suddenly, reaching up a hand to wave. I followed his gaze to a young girl making her way through the flower beds.

  “My daughter,” he told me as she approached, “Rose.”

  I could see the resemblance to her brothers. She had the same ruddy curls as Rupert, the same coloured eyes as her father too, round cheeks and an upturned nose. She was smiling as she neared, her cheeks dimpled.

  “Morning, dad,” she said breathlessly as she came to a stop before us. Her boots were muddied, her hands stuffed into the pockets of a thick tweed coat, her face pink.

  “Nice walk, darling?” Lord Hocking asked, giving her a swift kiss on the cheek.

  “Very nice. Lovely to be home,” she replied, her eyes falling on me. “Who’s this?”

  “Ah, Rosie, this is Detective Inspector Thatcher. He’s the one on our case. Inspector, my daughter, Rose.”

  “Pleased to meet you,” I said.

  She nodded back. “Where’s Rupert?” she asked her father.

  “Still asleep.” His voice was disapproving. She rolled her eyes and nodded to something behind us.

  “I think Dennis wants you,” she said to him. Lord Hocking glanced back over his shoulder, as did I, to the butler who stood in the glass doorway, hands tucked apologetically behind his back.

  “I shall be back in a moment, Inspector,” Lord Hocking told me. “Rose, stay with him.” He clapped me on the shoulder and darted off the doors. I turned back to Rose, who was studying me strangely.

  “Since when do Inspectors handle robberies?”

  “Since it’s a very important case.”

  She sniffed, “I see.”

  “I understand you weren’t at the party the other night?”

  “No. Sort of my own doing really,” she told me conspiratorially. “I hate parties.”

  My eyebrows rose. “You stayed away on purpose?”

  “There’s something about having your home invaded by a bunch of your parents and brother’s friends, loaded up on gin, that just doesn’t appeal to me. I’d rather stay at school for a few extra days. But I was sorry not to be here,” she looked behind me to her father, “it might have been useful to have a sober person around. Or at least in the study.”

  She caught sight of my confused expression. “I used to hide in there when I couldn’t stand the party anymore. Dad gave me the key, and I’d go and squirrel myself away, read a few books until everyone went home.”

  “Why not go to your room?”

  “Study’s quieter.”

  “You often went in there then?”

  “Every year,” she replied.

  That was interesting. I wonder how many of the guests were aware of that, and who exactly would have known she wasn’t at the party, that for once, the study would have been empty.

  “Are you close with your family, Miss Hocking?” I asked her.

  She frowned, surprised. “Yes. Dad mostly, and Henry. Rupert annoys me more than anything, but you have to love him. Mum and I argue.” She sighed. “She thinks I should be more like her.”

  “How so?”

  “Lady of the house,” Rose said in an exaggerated clipped voice, “rather than scuffing about in the early house of the day. Not that it matters. It’s not like I’m the one inheriting the place.” She stared at the house, a slight disapproving curl to her mouth. I got the feeling that if she were here, she’d have stuck up for the staff who shouldered most of the blame, that was the closest thing to a voice of reason in the place. Less noble, more normal.

  “What about your extended family?”

  “Mum was an only child,” she said, “and her father died when she was young. We visit grandmother sometimes; she lives in the Cotswolds now. Dad’s parents are both dead and I’ve never met Uncle Richard.”

  “You never tried to get in touch?”

  Rose shook her head, her expression turning angry. “He just left dad here. With all this,” she gestured to the estate, “to deal with alone. They were going to do it together before he left. And now he doesn’t even associate with us. Not even a card at Christmas.”

  “Did your father ever tell you why?”

  “No. And lesson one of being a Hocking is that you don’t ask,” she said dryly.

  “Inspector!” Lord Hocking shouted from the doorway.

  I turned around, finding his panicked face coming closer as he jogged down the path.

  “What’s wrong, dad?” Rose inquired.

  “We’ve received something of a threatening note,” he panted.

  Fourteen

  Thatcher

  I followed Lord Hocking back up to the house, Rose behind us. The butler led the way back through the room to the main entrance of the house where Lady Hocking had slumped onto a chair, one hand pressed to her chest. Rupert had emerged, padding around the tiled floor in a dressing gown and bare feet.

  “Darling!” Lord Hocking raced over and knelt beside his wife, whose skin had turned pale and she trembled as she snatched his hand in hers.

  “What’s happened?” I asked Dennis.

  “I’m not sure, Inspector,” he replied. “I heard Lady Hocking cry out, and I came running at once. She found this.”

  He led me to the front door and out onto the steps. A photograph had been left on the stone, an image of what I took to be our missing painting, of a circular sunroom beside a lake. It had been struck through the middle with a small knife, red liquid pooling down and staining the i
mage. The same liquid has been used to write a word on the stone wall, a crude scrawling of the word vindicta.

  “Has anyone touched this?” I demanded at once.

  “No,” Dennis assured me. “I took the Lady inside and came straight for Lord Hocking and yourself.”

  I nodded, pulling my phone from my pocket and called Mills.

  “Sir?” he answered quickly, voice breathless as he walked.

  “Something’s happened,” I told him. “Get back to the house quickly. Call Dr Crowe, we’ll need her and get some uniforms in the area, now.”

  “Yes, sir,” he replied. I hung up and gestured for the butler to return into the house, ensuring all the family were in the hall before shutting the door.

  “Security camera?” I asked Dennis.

  “I’ll get right on it.”

  “Stay for now,” I ordered him. The tape could tarry a moment.

  Lord Hocking now stood behind his wife, his hands resting on her shoulders. Rose sat on the floor at her feet, holding her hand and Rupert continued to pace around the floor. He paused when Dennis and I returned,

  “Don’t suppose you can get me a coffee, Dennis?”

  “I’m afraid coffee will have to wait,” I snapped in quickly. “I have a team on the way in,” I assured them, knowing Mills would have made the calls by now. “We’ll sweep the area, see if whoever left that outside is still here. Did any of you see anything?”

  Lord Hocking and Rose had been with me, though where she’d been before joining us in the rose garden, I didn’t know. Rupert looked as if he’d rolled straight out of bed and Lady Hocking looked ready to faint. None of them, butler included, had any red stains on their hands or clothes.