I nodded and handed her my card. “If you think of anything that might be useful, anything about Viviane, please let us know. Or if you see anything strange around her flat.”
Mandy took that card and nodded, and I gave Mills a little jerk of the head to follow me back to the car.
“So, she was definitely somewhere yesterday morning,” I said aloud, starting the engine.
“Maybe her parents will know,” Mills suggested. Though for some strange reason, as something akin to guilt curled up in my guts, I very much doubted it.
Six
Thatcher
As we drove back to the station, Viviane’s things balanced on Mills’s knee, my phone rang. I fished it from my pocket and handed it to him.
“Smith,” he told me quietly before answering. “This is Mills.” He listened for a beat, her voice faintly muffled through the phone, nodding along. “Got it, thank you. We’ll be there in fifteen.” He hung up and looked at me.
“Viviane’s parents have just arrived. She’s got them settled with some tea, but wants us back quickly,” he told me.
“Dealing with these sorts of situations are never particularly easy,” I muttered, navigating a multi-lane roundabout.
“Especially when the next of kin are ‘impatient,’” he said with air quotes. “And wanting this all over and done with.”
I frowned at that, annoyance building within me. “Their daughter was found dead this morning, and they want it all over and done with? Want what all over and done with exactly?”
“Some people are like that with suicides,” Mills pointed out. “They struggle to think that someone they knew would do it. They get angry.”
That was a fair point, and as far as Viviane Charles’s parents knew, it was a suicide. We finished the drive in taut silence, and once inside the station, I sent Mills off to deliver the laptop to Wasco and took myself upstairs to Viviane’s parents.
They sat together on the uncomfortable plastic chairs, cradling paper cups of tea. I could see the resemblance Viviane would have had with her mother. Her father was rounded, pale skin slightly flushed, mousy brown hair in a trim and tidy cut that looked like he’d had the exact same style since the late eighties. He bundled in a suit, a jumper thrown over his knees, his scuffed shoes moulded with time to his wide feet. A pair of glasses poked out from his jacket pocket, and he constantly twitched, checking his watch like a nervous bird. His wife beside him, was a stark contrast. She was tall, like Viviane, and lean, with the same olive skin Viviane had. Grey streaked her hair, and she had pulled into a tight ponytail that swung down the back of her sharp white coat. Heeled boot tapped the floor impatiently, loudly, and nothing about her was out of place. Her eye makeup had not a single smudge. Neither of them had been crying, I noted, as I made my way properly towards them.
“Mr and Mrs Charles?” I greeted them with my hands folded behind my back. They both looked up, and he nodded in my direction. “I’m Detective Inspector Thatcher. Thank you for coming in.”
Mrs Charles stood up. “What happened?” she asked with an exasperated sigh, like I was a schoolteacher who told her Viviane had just gotten a detention.
“We’re still trying to get to the bottom of it, so anything the two of you can tell us about your daughter will be very beneficial. I do have to ask if you would come and identify the body before we begin.”
Mr Charles looked a bit sick at that, but his wife nodded, and as she took a few steps from the chair, he lumbered after her, following along the hallways. Mills caught up with us as we headed downstairs to Crowe, introducing himself quietly. It was a very tense experience. I was used to shock, used to sobbing and denial. But this strange resolute coldness was something new. I didn’t like it. I preferred the sobbing, I could do something about the sobbing. Offer a tissue or a biscuit at the very least.
Dr Crowe was waiting for us, on the other side of the window in the room we entered, the white, pale lab behind her still. Viviane lay on the metal table, a white sheet pulled up over her head. I looked to Mr and Mrs Charles, who set their jaws, and when Mrs Charles nodded to me, I looked through the window to Crowe. She walked to the table and gently pulled the sheet away from Viviane’s face, the crude red marks on her neck standing out painfully. Mr Charles sucked in a tight breath and looked away. Mrs Charles simply stared for a moment and then cleared her throat.
“Yes. That’s Viviane.” I nodded to Crowe, and with the gentles of a parent tucking a child into bed, she pulled the sheet back up over Viviane’s face.
“Thank you,” I said to the couple, opening the door for them. “Take them back upstairs,” I murmured to Mills. “I’ll be there in a moment.”
He looked over his shoulder to where my gaze had fallen on Dr Crowe and nodded, clapping me on the shoulder as he passed. I waited for them to turn the corner and for the stairs and joined Crowe.
“They seem stoic,” she muttered, still looking down the hall to where they had just stood.
“I know. I don’t think it was a close relationship.”
Crowe sniffed. “I had a terrible relationship with my dad, but I still cried when I saw him in his coffin. That,” she jerked a disapproving thumb in Viviane’s parents’ direction, “was something else. Weird.” She shivered suddenly, shaking her head, the frizzy white curls springing out and narrowly hitting me in the face.
“How goes it?” I asked her. “Found anything?”
“I was hopeful about the angle,” she told me, “but from what we know about how she would have done it, it makes sense. Some bruising on the body, but nothing conclusive.” Lena reached up and propped her elbow on my shoulder. “You’ll have to wait for me to cut her open, I’m afraid, Thatch.”
“You’ll find something,” I assured her. “You always do, even sometimes at the last minute.”
She smiled at me proudly. “Though with the situation you’ve got upstairs, I’d say last-minute won’t cut it this time around.”
“Not really. Soon as possible, ideally.”
“You’re lucky I like you, Thatcher.” I was aware. Crowe could be picky about her DIs, especially when they rushed her. “Speaking of,” she added, “not that it’s really the right time or place for it, but before I forget… the wife is throwing together a little soiree for my birthday. I’d love it if you came. Mills too.”
I winked at her, “I wouldn't miss it.”
“Bring a girl if you want. What’s the news on the paper girl?”
“Jeannie?”
“She’s good fun,” Crowe said keenly.
“Nothing on her. It’ll be just Mills and me,” I said, not that it would be such a bad thing. He was good company, and a night over at Crowe’s was bound to be enough of a riot that I doubted I would miss her.
“Her loss,” she sniffed, patting me on the cheek. “Back to it then, eh? Before they skin your bagman.” She gave me a light shove down the hall, and I wandered back, my hands stuffed into my pockets.
“Send me the time!” I called over my shoulder. She saluted back, pulling her gloves back on with a loud snap and ducked into her lab.
I headed back upstairs to rescue Mills, shaking the uneasy reminder of Jeannie away and wandered over to the empty desk Mills had sat them at. I joined him, grabbing a chair from a neighbouring desk and sitting down.
“Her neck,” Mr Charles was saying, his own pudgy fingers lightly brushing his neck. “Is that how it happened?”
“At first glance, yes,” I answered for Mills, who sank back in his chair subtly, gratefully. “But we won’t know until Dr Crowe performs her full autopsy.”
“Why would she do that?” her father asked, sounding thoroughly confused. His wife, face twisted like she was biting a lemon, just sniffed.
“We were hoping you might help us figure that out, Mr Charles. When was the last time you spoke to Viviane?”
He blinked, bewildered, and cast his mind back. “Oh, gosh. Let me think. Christmas, it would have been. Right, Maya?” he asked his wife.
She gave another stiff nod. “Christmas Day. She came over for dinner with the rest of the family.”
I could feel Mills looking curiously at them.
“You haven’t spoken to her since?” he asked. “Not even a phone call?”
“No,” she answered primly. “She did not call us, so we did not call her.”
Well, now that sounded petty. I tried to keep my face from showing that.
“What can you tell us about her personal life?” I asked. “Any friends or romantic partners she had?”
“She had a girlfriend last year,” her father told us. “A costume designer or something. But when she came for Christmas, she said they were done.”
“Messed it up again,” her mother added. “Bit of a habit.”
“Viviane,” her father tried to explain a bit more gently, “was not very good at relationships. Preferred to be working.” There was a touch of pride to his voice as he said that, a faint touch that was quickly shot down when his wife butted in.
“Too busy to find herself a husband.”
I raised an eyebrow at her tone.
“Viviane was bisexual,” Mr Charles kindly informed me, “but Maya always hoped she’d settle down with a man, start a family.” I decided to not nit-pick at that issue this time around, not with a dead girl to see put to right.
“We found a few photographs in Viviane’s home,” I said instead. “Of her and her grandfather.”
“My father,” Maya informed me, but that much was obvious from looking at the photos. “Amir. They were very close.”
Her husband nodded in agreement, cleaning his glasses on his shirt sleeve. “He’s who got her into all of it. The museum stuff.” He waved his hand. “Used to take her all over the country to look at exhibitions. We worked full time, so we didn’t mind,” he added. I looked at Maya Charles and got the impression she rather did mind.
“Are they still close?” I asked, wondering if we were barking up the wrong tree here.
“He died,” Maya told me, her voice finally softening a fraction. “About four years ago or so.”
“I am sorry.”
“They were close up to the end,” Mr Charles added, pushing his glasses back onto his face.
I nodded and sat back slightly, letting Mills have a crack.
“When you saw her last Christmas,” he began, his gentle voice catching their attention. “Did she seem in her usual self? Was there any mention of any struggles she might have been having at work or within herself?”
“None that she made known to us. She never much shared anything with us,” she added bitterly.
“What about the collection she had?” he asked instead.
“Oh, she never talked of that!” her mother cried. “God, no. We never asked, she never said. I always thought it was a waste of time. When she’s not working, she’s pouring her life into those relics!”
“Viviane was never very open with us,” Mr Charles said somewhat mournfully. “About anything in her life, really.”
I was sorry to hear it, and a little glad to see that he appeared to be too.
“Evidently,” his wife added in a clipped voice, “since she bloody killed herself.” Her husband winced, but Maya Charles seemed to run on her venom right now, so I simply passed her husband my card and stood up from the desk.
“We are looking into every possibility as to what has happened to your daughter. If you think of anything that might help us, please call.”
“We will,” Mr Charles stood and took his wife’s arm. “Thank you, Inspector. Sergeant.” Mills stood and returned his nod, and we watched them leave, Mrs Charles’s shoes clicking all the way to stairs. Once they left, Mills blew out a long breath and ran his hand through his hair, the other stuck in his pocket, I imagined in a fist.
“Bugger me,” he slumped back into the chair. “If my mum were in her place, there wouldn’t be enough tissues in the world. Everyone would need noise-cancelling headphones.”
I smiled at that and sat beside him. “Not every family is as close as yours.”
“I know, sir, but still…” He waved a hand in their vague direction. “Madness.”
I had to agree, as I had with Crowe and what she said about her father. My mother and I had not parted well, but I still spent several days buried under my duvet after she passed. Long enough for Elsie to bustle over and drag me out by the heel.
“Anyway,” he muttered, glancing at his phone, “Wasco texted me during all of that. Apparently, he’s got something.”
“Already?” I asked, slightly blown away. Either we weren’t paying him enough, or Viviane Charles was not the most careful when it came to device safety.
I left my coat slung over the bag of the chair, and we headed over to Wasco’s office, the room hot with the number of monitors, the faint buzzing of fans fighting to be heard over the classical music that belted from the radio. Mills turned it down as we walked in with a thoughtful expression.
“Mozart,” he announced.
“Clever boy,” came Wasco’s dry voice. He stuck his head up from behind the laptop, black hair in disarray, his brown skin strangely lit by the glowing screen.
“You got in quickly,” I commented as we joined him at his desk.
“She used the same password for her phone,” he answered in a disapproving tone, turning the laptop around. We were looking at an excel spreadsheet, careful lines of figures very much more organised than her flat had been.
“What are we looking at here?” Mills asked.
“Well, as old fashioned as she appears to be,” Wasco replied. “She kept track of her finances herself. Income, outcome, phone bill, car, all that jazz. And here,” he scrolled along and pointed to another column, “a regular amount transferred to another account, every month.”
“Savings account?”
“No, this is her savings account,” he corrected me. “She even named it as such. This is another one. And she was holding a lot of money in it.”
I looked closer and frowned. If Viviane Charles was going to commit suicide, why would she have almost a quarter of a million pounds saved in her account, and where the hell was she getting that money from?
Seven
Thatcher
What Wasco had pulled up from Viviane Charles’s computer, her strange savings, and the seemingly stolen object from her collection, was enough for Sharp to give us more time and loosen her strings. She had a contact, a friend, at one of the local museums and arranged a meeting with her to discuss Viviane’s collection, and see if she could identify what exactly the strange missing box really was. And of course, how much it was all worth.
Mills and I parted ways not long after, but once at home, I still couldn’t settle. I couldn’t shake Viviane’s parents from my head, no matter what I did. Their daughter was dead, found hanging from the ceiling, and the most they could offer about any of that was a mournful shake head. I wondered if what Mills had theorised was right; that they were angry at her now, but that might change later. I also wondered what type of reaction we might get from them if we can call her death a homicide. In a way, I didn’t really want to find out. I was angry at them, more so than I ever usually got, enough that after pacing my living room for the better part of half an hour, I called Elsie.
“Hello?” she answered quickly, the sound of the radio playing faintly in the background.
“It’s me, Elsie. Max.”
“I know who you are, lad. To what do I owe this surprise?”
I sat down in my armchair, scratching the back of my head. “Got a case, looks like a suicide.”
“Is it one?” she asked.
“Hard to tell. But the girl’s parents were in today to identify her. And they seemed,” I struggled for the right word, “unbothered.”
Elsie paused, and I could hear her turn down the radio and shuffled about the kitchen. There was a soft grunt as she sat herself down, most likely in her usual seat by the fire.
“I see,” was all
she said then. “Got you thinking did it, my boy?”
“A little.” That was a lie, and Elsie knew, as she laughed softly down the phone.
“You want to know, that despite all the two of you went through, she’d have been bothered?” Elsie was never one to soften her voice or mince her words. She was direct, frank, and even down the phone. I could picture her face looking down at me with her distinct blend of steely affection.
“Yes,” I answered quietly. “Yes, I suppose so.”
“Your mother, however angry she got, however disappointed,” I winced at that, “never once was not bothered about you, Max Thatcher. Every week she over, asking if I’d heard from you. You never drove her away, no matter what you think. You’re not quite as smart as you think you are.”
“Kind of you, Elsie.” I chuckled despite myself.
“I know.”
“Thank you,” I told her earnestly, “for being there. And here.”
“My pleasure, lad. Now it’s late, bugger off before I miss my show.”
I laughed, raking my hair back from my face. “Goodnight, Elsie.”
She hung up abruptly, no doubt shuffling off to turn her television on. I leant back in my chair, flipping my phone around in my fingers, coming to something of a decision. If Viviane Charles’s parents weren’t going to be bothered about whatever happened to their daughter, I would be. She’d been somewhere yesterday morning, something had happened about her collection, and she was slowly saving a small fortune. All Mills and I had to do was figure out where, what and why.
I picked Mills up when morning came, waiting outside the house in the drizzling rain, watching a family down the road try to organise their children for the school run. Monday morning, how dreary. Mills’s front door opened, and he darted out, locking the door and sliding into my car before the rain could get him.
“Morning, sir,” he greeted me, clutching a travel mug of coffee tightly. This man and his caffeine, I might have to hold an intervention one day.
DCI Thatcher Yorkshire Crime Thrillers: Books 1-3 Page 56