Gardners, Ditchers, and Gravemakers (A DCI Thatcher Yorkshire Crimes Book 4) by Oliver Davies (free e books to read online TXT) 📕

There were only a few pages in there, the main hypothesis, a few statements about what they were doing and how that I didn’t know enough about science to understand. Most of the sheets had been redacted, large black stripes blocking out the few things that were actually in there. I sighed heavily, sounding like Thatcher. Of course, we find the study, and it’s all gone. I closed the folder and tucked it under my arm, grabbing another from the shelf before looking around the room once more.

My eyes fell back on the books, scanning the titles. Mostly factual, gardening and cookbooks. A few pieces of fiction, some classics and plays. Hamlet, I noted with a small chuckle. Why that quote about gardeners and gravediggers had lodged itself in my brain was beyond me. I didn’t even do Hamlet at school. There was something about the gardeners in this case, though. The study aside, Jordan Picard aside, Abbie and Sonia had both been attacked in the greenhouse. Not at home, not in their car, not anywhere else. In the gardens themselves. The thought stuck with me for some reason I couldn’t shake, and I left the office, locking the door tightly and drinking the rest of my tea as I strode back up towards the house.

I knocked lightly on the back door before pushing it open, finding Thatcher and Mrs Petrilli in a conversation at the table. They both looked up as I walked in, shutting the door gently.

“Did you find anything, dear?” Mrs Petrilli asked.

“Some things,” I answered, placing my mug in the sink. “Is it alright if I borrow these?” I held up the folders, Thatcher’s gaze homing in on the top one quickly. “I’ll bring it back.”

“Of course,” Mrs Petrilli said. “If it helps Sonia, borrow whatever you need.”

“I think we’ve taken up enough of your time,” Thatcher announced, slapping his knees and rising from the chair. “Please give our best to Mr Petrilli, and we hope you’re both doing alright.”

“We’re surviving,” she answered with a beautifully sad smile. “Which is, I suppose, the most anyone can do.”

“I’d say so,” Thatcher agreed mournfully. Mrs Petrilli walked us to the door, standing and waving as I pulled away from the house.

Thatcher pulled the folder into his lap and looked through with a frown.

“Typical,” he muttered.

“I know. And here.” I passed him the phone, left unlocked on the photo album. He flicked through the pictures I had taken in the office.

“Someone was in a hurry,” he muttered.

“No sign of a break-in,” I told him. “And nothing’s damaged, doesn’t look like anything’s missing. I think it was Sonia looking for something.”

“Looking for what?” He wondered aloud, looking back at the folder. “Maybe there were some pages in here she wanted gone.”

“Or the hard drive Wasco suggested,” I added. “Check the others,” I told him.

There was a small bout of silence as he leafed through them. “She’s credited first,” he observed.

“I wonder if they just got them with their names on top, or if they’re slightly different. Different roles, so maybe they have different records of the study.”

“Might be worth comparing them, then,” he said. “I’ll ask Paige if she can drop some of the folders round at the station.”

“You think she’ll have gotten anywhere with who the man Abbie saw was?” I asked. Thatcher had filled me in on that earlier, and I was surprised. Not that he believed Grace, that was of no shock, but the amount of importance he placed on it. It seemed to him that if we found this mystery visitor, we found our killer, which was optimistic, almost uncharacteristically so of him.

“I hope so. I’ve asked her if she could find out the man’s skin colour. After seeing a picture of Mr Picard, it occurred to me that he might have gotten more involved after his wife stepped back.”

“You haven’t ruled them out then?”

He shook his head. “Eight years aside, if you’re that certain that a place like that is the reason your son died, if you send threats and make websites, surely that just doesn’t all go away. Especially,” he added emphatically, “when those people are bloody well thriving beneath your very nose. I mean, Abbie was their golden goose, as Lin put it, and Sonia was on her way to getting her PhD. Can’t be easy to sit and let all that happen without getting angry, dredging up the past.”

I considered that, considered what it would be like if it were one of my nephews, or even my brother.

“It would certainly light the fuse up again,” I had to agree. “But to what extent? Michele Picard seemed upset when she learnt about Grace.”

“Because she was worried or guilty?” Thatcher pointed out. “Maybe that’s the face of a woman who just made a child motherless without realising it.”

“Could be why she asked about her when we were leaving,” I muttered, slowly agreeing with Thatcher’s point of view on this. “And explains why our killer’s gone after all three,” I added. “Anyone else, someone like Lin Shui, might have only gone for Abbie and Sonia. But whoever it is went for Kask too. They knew he was there eight years ago and held him just as accountable.”

Thatcher was nodding along with me as I rambled, happy to see us both on the same train of thought.

“So, what’s our next move?” I asked.

“We need to look into her alibis for those nights, and her husbands. And I want to understand this.” He held up the folder properly. “Which means we’re looking into some archives, maybe getting in touch with the hospital and seeing if they’ve got any knowledge about Jordan Picard. If they really believe that the research team killed their son, we need to be on that same thought process. Cross-reference with Abbie’s work and maybe, give old Dr Quaid a rattle and see if he’ll tell us