DCI Thatcher Yorkshire Crime Thrillers: Books 1-3

by Oliver Davies

  “Didn’t deserve what, Ms Goddard? To die?”

  “The box,” she said through her teeth. “Her collection, all the praise from everyone all the time! I was in charge! I was the bright star, the one who brought in new pieces and more visitors. That was me! She was nobody! And she saw it, the stupid box. She knew. Wanted me to turn myself in, the stupid girl.”

  “And you didn’t want to do that, did you?” I asked softly. “So, she decided to do it for you.”

  Josephine paled, a nasty sickly colour as though she had just caught up with every word that came from her mouth.

  I sighed through my nose and stood up, reaching for the handcuffs on my belt. “Josephine Goddard, I’m arresting you on suspicion of murder. You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.”

  She hung her head, limply allowing me to cuff her hands behind her back and steer her towards the door. Harry and Rita stood up, looking numb and followed us outside towards the cars. As we shut Goddard in the backseat, muttering curses under his breath, Rita glared at her with venom.

  “It was her, wasn’t it?” she asked. “Who locked me down there?”

  “It was,” I told her heavily. “She was covering her tracks. You were smart enough to get there first. We’ll need the two of you to come to the station and give us a statement.”

  “I can give you a lift?” Harry offered Rita. She nodded, and he gave us both a grim nod before leading her down the road. I turned around and looked up at the house. Such a beautiful place for all this nastiness.

  “Ready, sir?” Mills asked, dangling the keys in his hand.

  I nodded. “Let’s wrap this up.”

  Epilogue

  It was strange, the small details of my stories that I remembered and forgot over time. I forgot most of what the house looked like, and the music box itself was a faint image in my head. But I could remember Rita’s small hands playing with her sleeves, the scratch on her brother’s car as he sat outside the house. I could remember the smell of Harry’s aftershave as he wafted around his long, elegant coats and yet, damn me if I could tell anyone the proper address of the house. I knew vaguely where it was, but the street name was lost to me now. It was nice, really, recounting it for Mike, remembering the details of the events again. Sometimes I figured out little threads or knots that I hadn’t seen before, but not with this one. As odd as it was, as odd as it had all felt at the time, it was a pretty open and shut case. Someone had been killed, and the killer was in prison. All that business with the cellar and the music box and Rita was just white noise, muddling that one fact.

  Mike had gone still as I finished the story, still enough for me to have polished off the rest of my chips and quite a few of his too, despite the sheer quantity of vinegar he had doused them in. I wiped my hands on my napkin and looked at him, waiting for his head to catch up with the rest of him. Mike liked to ask questions, and I knew they were coming, so I sat patiently, piling the plate together for the spotty youth who came over to pick them up, thanking him as he went before looking at Mike again. He gazed at the table, the small salt crystals that dusted the surface, his eyes following invisible patterns in the table surface, then he inhaled suddenly and rubbed his jaw, meeting my eyes and blinking a few times.

  “Bugger me,” he muttered. He smiled then, a crooked, uncertain smile, and a small laugh fell from him. “How the hell do you do that, Max?” He shook his head. “Mind-boggling.”

  “I could say the same about you,” I reminded him. “When you talk about computing, I get a headache right here.” I pressed my finger to the spot between my brows. “Lasts for about four hours.”

  Mike shook his head again and, his face looking clear of thoughts, looked me in the eye. “So, what happened after all of that?”

  I frowned, confused. “Josephine Goddard went to prison for murder.” Seemed fairly obvious. Horace Dibbit had faced several charges of his own and was locked up somewhere too, but neither myself nor Mills had been particularly bothered with his fate.

  “No, no.” Mike waved a hand. “I got that. I meant with the house, the museum, and Rita. And!” He leant forward, pointing at me, a boyish grin on his face. “Dr Dorland.”

  I restrained myself from rolling my eyes at him and instead slurped the last dregs of my coke loudly. I’d been oddly, uncharacteristically, as Sharp put it, invested in the others once court was over and the matter settled. I wasn’t sure whether or not it was brave little Rita who’d stood up in that stand, staring at the woman who tried to kill her without batting a lash or Harry, who stuck close to her side throughout. Maybe it was Viviane Charles herself, whose quiet, private little existence had pulled at all of these threads in a way that none of us could still fully wrap our heads around. Either way, I’d caught up with them after a while, curious as to what they planned to do after. I had a few guesses on what they might do, but they, Rita especially, surprised me.

  The museum was still open, run as a charity now, by Harry and Rita. Security had increased by tenfold, and they checked, authenticated, and inventories every single box, crate and bag from the attic to the cellar. Viviane’s parents had let Rita take the collection, and now, the hall she had died for exhibits Viviane’s work. Under Sybil Cuthbert’s watchful eye, a lot of the house had been done up slightly. A change in paint or wallpaper here and there to freshen the place up, the windows at the back thoroughly cleaned, and the garden spruced up, the life outside beautifully viewed from the windows in the hall. The macabre fascination around her death that the public had once held eventually faded, and once the court case was over and done with, everybody seemed to more or less forget about everything that happened during that wet, rainy spring. I’d seen Rita and Harry not long ago, in fact. They’d appeared at the station, hand in hand, to invite myself and Mills to the reopening of the museum. We’d happily obliged, and I’d even taken Dr Dorland along with me.

  I told Mike as much, as we made our way from the sticky, greasy chip shop and back out into the streets to walk along a bit more, breathing in the slightly chilled air.

  “Is it worth a visit?” he was asking me, narrowly avoiding getting tangled amongst some leashes and feet as an overladen dog walker came past us. “The house? I know it might be a bit grim for you to think about, but—”

  “No,” I interrupted him. “I’ve been back since then. It’s good, a nice place, lots of history.” I sent him a sidelong glance. “Didn’t think you had much of an interest in old houses, truth be told.” In fact, for as long as I had known Mike, he more or less hated going into old houses. Where my mother had dragged me to old castles for most of my childhood, Mike was more at home at an air show or science museum.

  “I don’t. The lady does,” he grinned. “We both suppose that we’ll need stuff to do for a while, getting used to being back.”

  “You mean you’re not going back to sitting in front of the telly watching Countdown and eating Jaffa Cakes?”

  “Well, yes, but not every day. It’s good to mix things up from time to time. So, you went on this holiday of yours after all that got sorted? Sal didn’t tell me much at all, now that I think about it.”

  “I did.” I paused to wave a bumblebee from my face and caught up with him with a few long strides. “Spent a few days in North Wales. It was nice,” I added thoughtfully. “A bit damp, but nice. Lots of walking around Snowdonia.”

  “It’s Wales,” Mike pointed out, kindly not picking on me for choosing to walk for my holidays, though I had also spent a lot of time inside the little camping hut, my feet propped up by the log burner reading some of the books Mills constantly referenced so that I could at least pretend to be as educated as him. “Of course, it was damp.”

  “I don’t think they’d appreciate you saying that, Mike,” I told him.

  He frowned. “Who?”

  “The Welsh.”

  Another dism
issive wave of his hand. “They won’t find out. Tell about this girl then,” he walked into my side, propping his arm up on my shoulder. “Sally’s met her. That’s not fair.”

  “Sally didn’t so much as meet her as she did turn up on my doorstep one Sunday morning with a bag of croissants and demand entrance. Plus,” I reminded him, “she’s been in the country.”

  And she’d also kicked me to get into the house that morning, bribing her way to the kitchen with a chocolate pastry. The bruise on my shin took a while to heal, but it was gone now, thankfully. As was the welt on my head, in fact. I’d chosen not to cut my hair until that had settled.

  “Nevertheless, I’m still hurt. Can I meet her?” he asked, jostling me eagerly.

  “You can.”

  “Her name’s Liene?”

  “Liene Dorland,” I confirmed.

  “Sounds, I dunno, not English.”

  “He dad’s Dutch,” I told him.

  He nodded wildly as if that explained everything and asked. “And she’s, what? An antiques person? Antiques doctor?”

  “She’s a curator at the museum,” I informed him patiently. “She’s got a PhD in the conservation of cultural heritage.”

  Mike looked at me, sympathetically. “That’s a mouthful and a half, isn’t it?”

  “No harder to say than what you do for a living, mate,” I quickly pointed out.

  “Fair play. So, tell me about her? Did you sweep her off her feet outside the courthouse? Prop your coat collar up to look all moody and brooding.”

  “Brooding?”

  “Yeah, you know. Brooding, like what’s his face in that book,” he said, hands fluttering.

  “You might have to narrow that down a tad, mate. There are quite a few books out there.”

  “The one on the moors,” he said. “The Bronte one. Well?”

  “Well, what?” I asked, almost protested against his unending rambling.

  “Did you? Sweep her up with your coat collar and countryside charm?”

  “I did not. I gave her a call, the old-fashioned way on the telephone, a few days later.” And I still couldn’t escape Sharp’s smug face around the station afterwards. She looked like a proud hen, and I’d even caught her and Dr Crowe huddled together, looking at me and whispering and smiling. They’d even pulled Mills into it a few times until I threatened to hide his notebook.

  Mike nudged me with his elbow. “I bet you did, you old charmer.”

  I ignored him and carried on talking. “I invited her out for a coffee, she said yes, and here we are.”

  “Here we are,” he repeated. “Well, I, for one, am delighted. Look at you, fresh haircut, spring in your step. The wonders of a good woman, eh?” I ran a hand through my short hair a little self-consciously. I’d nothing but good feedback, but it still rankled me to no longer have the wayward strands falling around my face. It would grow back, I supposed, eventually.

  I laughed and rolled my eyes, shrugging him from my shoulder. “Do you know how many people keep saying that to me? It’s getting ridiculous.”

  “Well, Max, you were getting a bit lonely there, weren’t you?” he said, throwing his arm up on my shoulder again. “I was concerned that you’d end up one of those funny old men with lots of dogs and an air rifle, yelling at kids for kicking their football onto your lawn.”

  “Where am I living in this situation where I have neighbouring children and a lawn, and an air rifle?”

  “Don’t nit-pick, you know what I mean.”

  “Sadly, I always know what you mean, Mike. And no, I would not have ended up as one of those, thank you kindly. I saw Jeannie from time to time,” I added thoughtfully.

  “Jeannie is not the sort of person you take to your friend's dinner parties and get a haircut for,” Mike pointed out, the humour on his face and in his voice dropping slightly as he spoke.

  I sighed but didn’t shrug him off again. He was right, and I knew he was right. Jeannie played entirely by her own rules, coming and going when she pleased. It was exciting, but not exactly stable. And Liene was great, better than great. She was brilliant.

  And yet I couldn’t help but feel that stab of excitement whenever a head of red curls passed me in the street, or a pair of bright green eyes met mine across a pub or cafe, and then the sinking feeling when it wasn’t her, and the nauseous guilt that inevitably followed.

  For all her faults, Jeannie knew me better than anyone, better than Mike, maybe even better than Sally. But so much so, I kept to myself. I was happy with Liene, happy to have Mike home, and happy that the dismal, wet spring was turning into rather a nice summer. Life looked alright until that next phone call came in at five in the morning. But Liene had changed my ringtone a few nights back after her only complaint was about the impersonal, boring ringtone itself, not the ungodly hour it started, so even that wasn’t too bad these days. She changed it to a song by Blue Swede that drew a few heads when it blasted out on full volume, especially in a crowded police station. Mills had choked on his tea the first time he’d heard it, still laughing even as I ran over to make sure the bastard could actually breathe. I didn’t know how to change it back, but I didn’t really want to.

  Mike was still talking, I realised guiltily, and I tuned back into his familiar, slightly nasal voice as we walked down a sloping street, the flowers in the boxes and hanging baskets in full bloom. It was the wrong street to walk down. Mike starting sneezing like a wet dog from all the pollen, so we quickly ducked into the next road, where he blinked and rubbed at his red nose and eyes.

  “All that time in Thailand,” he muttered, fishing a tissue from his pocket. “Not a single sneeze, and now I’m back home for no more than two sodding weeks and look at the state of me.”

  “I’m looking,” I joked as he blew his nose, hair mussed up all around his head like he had been lightly electrocuted. Mike groaned and looked around the streets.

  “Why do they do this? The flowers.”

  “It’s attractive,” I told him. “Brings people out and about, the beauty of nature and all that.”

  “All that. All very well and good for those of you who don’t get itchy eyes.”

  “Come on,” I smiled and tossed an arm around his shoulder. “I’ll get you some antihistamines, and then we’ll get a drink. Sit in the beer garden. It’ll be lovely.”

  “You’re paying,” Mike told me, still sniffing loudly.

  “For the beer, yes. I’m not buying you medicine.”

  “You should let me meet Liene indoors,” he said as we strolled down the street towards the river. “This would not make a very good first impression.”

  “Can’t be any worse than Sally’s,” I told him reassuringly. She’d met Liene arguing with me in the kitchen, both of us fighting over a croissant. She’d been close to biting me when Liene walked in, looking thoroughly amused.

  “Has Tom met her?” Mike asked as I beelined for the pub that overlooked the water.

  “Not yet. So, you can be the first one there. Does it make you feel better?” I asked him, my voice a little patronising. He didn’t seem to mind, blowing his nose once and perking up as the pub came into view.

  “It does, actually. Thanks, by the way,” he added. “For telling me the story. Got anymore?”

  I sighed deeply. “Not yet.”

  A Message from the Author

  Thank you, dear reader, for reading this book from beginning to end. I greatly appreciate you coming along with me for this adventure.

  If you enjoyed the book and wish to read more, you could do me no greater favour than to take a minute to leave a review. Even the shortest sentence can help other readers discover this tale, and every new reader helps enable me to write more stories.

  In addition, if you wish to receive the earliest knowledge of new books and other news, it would help for you to not only follow me as an author on Amazon, but sign up for my mailing list. It will give you far more up to date information than Amazon will.

  You can connect wit
h me through my Facebook author’s group.

  Also, don’t forget to Follow my Amazon Author page!

  Thank you!

  Special thanks and credit to Moonstruck Covers Design & Photography, the studio responsible for this book’s cover!