Cradle to Coffin (A DCI Thatcher Yorkshire Crimes Book 10) Read online

  Cradle to Coffin

  A DCI Thatcher Yorkshire Crime Thriller

  Oliver Davies

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  2. Thatcher

  3. Thatcher

  4. Mills

  5. Thatcher

  6. Thatcher

  7. Thatcher

  8. Mills

  9. Thatcher

  10. Thatcher

  11. Thatcher

  12. Thatcher

  13. Thatcher

  14. Thatcher

  15. Thatcher

  16. Mills

  17. Thatcher

  18. Thatcher

  Chapter 19

  20. Thatcher

  21. Mills

  22. Thatcher

  23. Thatcher

  24. Thatcher

  25. Thatcher

  26. Thatcher

  27. Mills

  28. Thatcher

  Epilogue

  A Message from the Author

  Prologue

  It was raining, yet again. A few, brief weeks of warmth had enveloped the country, and now came the obligatory onslaught of storms and drizzles. It wasn’t the sort of weather you’d want for your day off, grey and damp, not quite cold enough for the heating and a large coat, but not the sort of weather where you’d leave the house without an umbrella. I was, also, on my own, staring out of the front window at the empty street outside. My girlfriend, Liene, was at work, the museum working her hard to make sure everything was ready for the busy summer season. My sergeant was at work, my friend Sally was stuck at home with her ill daughter and had forbidden anyone to stop by in case they woke her up, and Billie had made the brave decision to head to Newcastle for the day to see her father. That had been an interesting turn of events.

  He had sent her an email, out of the blue, after not seeing her all through winter, not even over the holidays, to tell her that he had some days off if she wanted to meet. Billie had paced around my living room, holding her phone, face furrowed as she decided what she wanted to do. Their relationship was not a good one, ever since her little sister Stella had died. Before that, in fact, when Billie had moved them both out of his house and into her little flat above the café. It had been a long time of grieving for them both, and then he had reached out, out of the blue.

  “What do you think he wants?” Billie had asked, pacing in front of the fireplace.

  “I think he wants to see how you are,” Liene had answered, leaning over the back of the chair.

  “He could just ask me that,” Billie replied, waving her phone in the air.

  “I think he wants to see you, though,” Liene emphasised, walking over to Billie and making her sit beside me on the sofa. “With his own eyes. Make sure that you’re looking well. Be in your company for a bit.”

  Billie folded her arms, frowning. “Just like that? After all this time?”

  “Maybe he needed all that time to be able to see you again,” I offered. “You don’t have to go. You can wait until you’re ready, then reach out to him.”

  Liene nodded. “You don’t have to do anything that you don’t want to. And we can come,” she suggested. “If you want? Drive you there, wait in a café somewhere.”

  “You’d do that?” Billie asked, her eyes wide.

  “Course we would,” Liene said, taking her hand. Billie turned to me, and I nodded once, slowly. I’d walk her to his house myself if she asked me to. Billie looked down at her phone once more, chewing her bottom lip.

  “I’ll think about it,” she decided. “But I won’t say no. Not yet.”

  Liene had been satisfied with that, rising to her feet and wandering softly into the kitchen. She had a close relationship with both of her parents and had done since she was a child. This territory, she could sympathise with it, but she didn’t understand it. I did.

  “I think you should see him,” I told Billie quietly once Liene was gone. “You might regret it if you don’t.”

  She looked at me, holding my gaze. I hadn’t told her much about my mother, but she’d pieced together enough of the breadcrumbs I’d scattered here and there. So she nodded.

  And this morning, I’d dropped her off at the train station and now had the rest of the day to wander about, twiddling my thumbs until it was time to pick her up again. I had kept the offer of driving her there, but she said she wanted the time on the train alone to think, and I couldn’t blame her for that. She had allowed me to drive her to the station, though, which I took as a good sign unless she got cold feet and ended up hopping on a train to London or something.

  I made sure my phone was fully charged all day, the ringer on high volume, just in case she called. But for now, it was still the morning, and I still had an entire day before me. One that Mara had insisted I take, claiming that I was “working myself ragged”, it “wasn’t good for my health”, and that I had “far too many unused holiday days”, or some nonsense like that. They’d ganged up on me in the end, as they had done many times before, her and Dr Crowe, even Mills, pushing me into booking a day off.

  This one had worked out rather well, the same day that Billie needed a lift; it was just a shame about the weather. I wasn’t in the mood for mooching around the city, and I couldn’t do anything in the coaching house, not with all the ground floor ripped out, ready to put down new floorboards. That didn’t leave me with many options other than wandering around the house looking for something to do. I could always clean or watch tv, but neither of those sounded particularly appealing.

  I leant my head against the cold glass of the window, watching a cat outside try several times to jump up onto a wheelie bin and failing. Poor little thing. I stood and watched until it made the jump, slipping over the garden wall. It was entertaining, but I couldn’t exactly spend my day here in the hope that the cat would come back. I needed to get out of the house, stop pacing around like a tiger in a zoo before I started climbing the walls for something to do.

  I pushed myself away from the window and raked my hands through my hair, strolling around the flat, moving things around that didn’t really need moving. I shifted the angle of a photograph on the bookshelf, a picture of my mother taken on her twenty-first birthday. She wasn’t looking at the camera. Her attention was to the side, where a three-year-old me had been standing, impatiently waiting for her to be done with pictures so that she’d come and play with me again. You couldn’t see me, just my pudgy hand in the corner of the shot. Another one had been taken, one where she was looking in the right direction, where I’d been taken by my grandmother, and that one had gone into the family photo album, but this was the one that she kept. Put it in a frame and kept it on a shelf.

  I was older than she was in the picture now, older than she had been when she passed, and that was a strange thought. Most children outlive their parents, but I didn’t think that many actually ended up living more years. She’d never got the random stiffness in her joints or the wrinkles around her eyes, never had her dark hair get streaked with silver, the way mine was due to start going soon. I studied the photo for a while, memorising her eyes and the bright, warm smile on her face. It was always there that smile had been right up to the end. So, I was told, anyway.

  As I stood there, looking at her face, I thought again about Billie, her bravery in seeing her father for the first time in a few years, and before I could talk, or rather think, myself out of it, I was yanking my boots onto my feet, grabbing my coat and my keys, and stepping out into the drizzle. I locked the front door, flipped my coat collar up around my neck and hurried to the car, head bent down as I climbed
in and started the engine, peeling away from the kerb before the heaters had fully kicked in.

  The city was fairly quiet, the steady traffic of the post morning rush making it easy for me to get out through the city centre. The road to the village was ingrained in me now that I didn’t have to think where I was going or why, I just watched as the city turned into fields and as the fields turned into hills, and then I was passing the rows of cottages, past the coaching house and down the lane to the church.

  I parked on the road and climbed out, looking around at the grey sky. I locked the car and walked across the road to a patch of wildflowers that looked rather sorry in the rain, their heads starting to bow. I picked a few, a handful of cornflowers, some little white things I didn’t know the name of, then took my umbrella from the boot and popped it open as I walked through the little church gate and around to where the graveyard lay, the grey stones sheltered by trees and the shadow of the church itself.

  As I walked along the little path, I realised that I didn’t actually remember quite where she was. I’d been here at the funeral, but I hadn’t been since. The guilt of that hit me in the guts, but I pushed on, walking towards where I knew for a fact that my grandparents were both buried together in one grave.

  She was there, beside them.

  Marie Thatcher. Loving daughter and mother. “Dreaming of pretty things, dreaming of pleasure.”

  The quote had been mine doing, the last line of her favourite poem, one she used to recite to me. It was the only poem I knew; I didn’t have the head for them like Mills did, one by Christina Rossetti. I hoped she was dreaming of pretty things, no longer bogged down by all the grimness that we plodded our way through here. If anyone deserved it, it was her.

  I lay the flowers against her headstone and slowly sat down on the cold earth, the umbrella propped over my shoulder, my eyes tracing the engraved words over and over again.

  Regret swam through me. That I hadn’t been here in so long, that I hadn’t come to speak to her, that I’d let moss gather. I reached out, my fingers grazing the rough stone and blinked back the stinging tears that threatened to fall, clearing my throat.

  “Hi mum,” I managed to say, swallowing the lump in my throat. Too long, I’d left it. Far too long. “I’m sorry for not visiting you. I know I should have come sooner.” I should have come every day, once a week, Christmas, her birthday, my birthday. I’d tried a few times, once or twice. Walking up to the church and stopping at the little gate. I’d never made it through, though, never managed to make myself walk that little farther.

  The graveyard was empty, and I was grateful for it as my throat caught on my words. There was no one around to see, just me and a couple of crows hanging around, squawking. The rain fell on the umbrella, loud enough that I didn’t feel too self-conscious as I started talking again.

  “The coaching house is nearly done,” I told her. “Upstairs is finished, all painted. I’ve put your room back the way it was. I think you’d like it. I think you’d be proud. Elsie thinks I’m an idiot for labouring over it the way I have these past years, but even she says it’s worth it now. Now that it’s almost finished.” I scratched my jaw. “Not all that sure what I will do when it’s finished, though. On to the next thing, I suppose.”

  I breathed in deeply, letting out a heavy sigh as I settled against the stone. “I’ve met someone. Her name’s Liene. She’s a doctor, or she has a doctorate, that is. Works in the museum, a friend of Mara’s. And I have, well, I suppose I have something of a daughter, in a way. She has a dad, but she’s family. Her name’s Billie. You’d like her a lot. She’s very clever and funny. And Sally’s had a baby, but I’m sure someone’s told you that by now. A little girl, Ena. I’m her godfather, and she’s ridiculously cute. Poorly right now, though. And I have a friend, a proper one. My sergeant, name of Mills. You’d like him too. Knows a lot about plays and poetry, which has been surprisingly useful. The two of you would have talked about books until the cows came home. He’s a good friend too, brilliant detective, but a good friend. Keeps me level-headed.”

  I stopped, sitting and listening to the rain for a bit.

  “Work’s been a lot recently, though, mum. Seems as soon as I finish one case, get justice for someone, that another one appears in front of me out of thin air. We had this one.” I groaned, rubbing my face. “It was awful, mum. Started off with one thing and unravelled into something else altogether. It’s left me a little exhausted, to be honest. Makes me wish you were here,” I said. “Talk about it, you’d say. Get it off your chest. Elsie says the same thing.” I turned and looked at her headstone. “Wouldn’t be a very easy rest for you, though, if I came here telling you sordid tales of murder. Though to be fair, you did make me watch a lot of Morse as a lad, so I suppose you expected it to happen.”

  I sat there a little longer, trying to imagine what she would say, the tone of her voice as she’d say it. She’d sit me down; I knew that much. Sit me down at the kitchen table and make me stay there until I’d said all I needed to say. She was good at that, making people talk until their heads felt lighter and they could carry on with their lives. It was a talent, a gift, and one that I wasn’t sure I was exactly deserving of. Not now anyway, not with all that had happened and all that I had done. It felt selfish of me.

  I touched the stone again. “Would you want to know?” I asked, trying to know how she’d answered.

  “Of course,” she’d say, her voice clear as a bell in my head. “Talk to me, little one.”

  Even when I was a good head taller than her, that’s how she spoke. As though she could pick me up again and carry me somewhere nicer.

  I sighed and looked over at the crows.

  “It’s not a nice one this one, mum,” I warned her. “But I need to tell someone, I suppose. I hope you don’t mind me coming here and telling you.”

  I stretched my legs out once, then pulled my knees up to my chest, toying with the flowers I’d laid on the grass.

  “Started a few months ago,” I told her. “It was a man who we were called out to. He’d been murdered.”

  One

  The lab had gone quiet, the last of the staff making their way out into the dark car park, the intern hurriedly scurrying out after them before anyone saw him and tried to make him clean anything.

  Dr Stefan Schmidt was the last one to remain there, his table a small island of mess in the otherwise tidy room. He stayed in his lab with all the lights turned on, all the blinds up so that he could see through all the windows. The CCTV feed was turned on, and his eyes darted to the monitor to check on anyone who passed and any shadow that moved. He jogged in place as he waited, nervously chewing on his nails as the machine whirred. He hated this, the waiting. Though normally it didn’t bother him so, normally he was the first one to leave.

  The results were taking their sweet time. Any longer, and he’d have no nails left to chew.

  Stefan walked over to the table in the middle of the room, looking down at the bones that lay there in a rough skeleton. A few bones were missing, but he had enough to piece together who this might have been. He had theories and his theories, as long as he had been doing this, were almost always right. All he needed was the proof. He picked up the skull, on the smaller side, the left side of the forehead bashed in. It was a wound he had seen many times before on many different skeletons. A violent death, head trauma. Usually, the result of a conflict between two tribes or settlements, a war waged on a battlefield. Most times, wounds like these were inflicted by rocks or clubs, hard dents that fell inwards, cracking, rather than the neat cut of an axe or a sword.

  But these remains hadn’t come from an old burial site or the middle of a field. This one had come from a graveyard, or near to one, anyway. Close to an ancient church, but not quite on the land. Either way, it had caused enough curiosity that a forensic anthropologist had been needed, and Schmidt had been at the site most days, carefully exhuming the bones and bringing them back here to clean and analyse.


  There was a running bet amongst the others as to how old the bones were. Usually, in York, they found Viking remains, Saxon and the odd Roman. Sometimes later, but they were never of much interest. The site itself was an old place, probably saw many deaths throughout the ages, and Stefan was sure that there would be remains scattered all around that could trace them back to the early civilisations of the county.

  Middle Ages, his colleague Lina had said, likely a plague victim who’d been put out of their mystery. Usually, Lina was as right as he was, but on this occasion, Stefan wasn’t so sure. The bones looked old, he supposed, but they’d been buried straight in the earth, no coffin to protect them from the elements, and he had never been a gambling man. He needed proof, and he needed facts, and only then would he decide what it was he wanted to do next. He gently placed the skull back, the hollow eyes staring straight forward at the wall. A sorry thing to end up on his table, anyway. It was a conflict of his, every time remains were brought his way. The excitement of unravelling history, of finding out who people were and how they ended up here, at war with the side of him that hated to think of anyone’s remains being disturbed. Dragged from their burial sites in the name of science. He hoped he didn’t get dug up when his time came. Perhaps that’s why people seem to favour cremation more and more these days.

  That and the worms.

  Headlights flashed outside, making him jump, and he turned to the window only to see his colleague’s car turn around outside and head for the gate. Stefan breathed in and out slowly, trying to ease his racing heart. He was far too jumpy; he couldn’t stay here like this. He walked over to the computer, setting it up to send the results to his email address as well, so then at least he could worry about it at home, without the cavernous lab and its many corners spooking him out. He could sit on his sofa and lock the door, and at least that would bring him some small comfort.