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

public made of everything, and despite how complicated the case had turned out to be, people seemed to be in our favour for once.

“Detective Inspector Max Thatcher and Detective Sergeant Isaac Mills of the North Yorkshire Police,” Mills was reading, “were the lead investigating officers on the case. They have not given any statements themselves, but Chief Superintendent, at a press conference earlier in March, expressed her pride in her team and gratitude towards the public for their assistance and patience.” He folded the paper down, looking at me from over the top. “What sort of statement would they have wanted us to give?”

I shrugged. “God knows. Any pictures?”

“Not of us.”

“Shame that. Right.” I launched myself upright, leaning on my desk. “Back to it, I suppose.”

“Back to what?” Mills asked, folding the paper up and slapping it down on his desk.

“You know.” I waved my hands around the office. “General police business. We should probably sort out those files for Sharp,” I muttered, glaring at the filing cabinet with boredom already setting in. Mills followed my eye line and scowled.

“Sounds dreadful,” he muttered.

“I know. A necessary evil,” I announced as I stood up from my chair. “As my own grandad would have put it once.”

I walked over to the filing cabinet, yanking the first drawer open, and gazed sorrowfully down into the tangled mess of papers and folders. I heard Mills sigh from his desk, and then his feet padded over to me, and he stood at my side, looking down into the drawer. His black hair had grown, the curls falling down around his temples, and the early stages of a beard were beginning to grow along his jaw. He looked older than he had when he first joined us. His blue eyes darkened, his face more drawn. I wondered if that was my fault but shrugged it off. He’s the one who joined the force.

“Any word from Liene?” he asked, pulling out a handful of sheets which he started to separate into piles.

“Safe and sound in France,” I answered. “Apparently, the hotel’s nice. Got a pool and everything.”

“Some people have such fun jobs,” he muttered as we got stuck in.

“Our job is fun. Remember last week when that duck managed to get inside the station? That was good.”

Mills was staring at me from the corner of his eye, looking perturbed. “I’m not used to this,” he remarked. “You in such good spirits. It’s weird. I want gloomy Thatcher back.”

I clapped an arm around his shoulders. “Gloomy Thatcher’s never far,” I told him in fake earnest, tapping my chest. “He’s in here.”

“Christ,” Mills chuckled, shrugging me off. “If I’d known getting a girlfriend would make you so much nicer, I’d have helped Sharp ages ago.”

“She’s not my girlfriend,” I added morosely. “We’ve been on two dates.”

“Mmhm,” Mills hummed. I rolled my eyes and scowled at him, and he grinned. “There he is! Gloomy Thatcher. Start complaining about your knees next. You haven’t done that for almost a week.”

I swatted him over the head with the folder in my hand, and the office door opened, Smith standing in the doorway, looking at us with amusement and the slightest bit of concern.

“Sharp wants you,” she told us.

“Oh, thank God,” I muttered, shoving everything back in the drawer. “Come on, Mills. Did she say what?” I asked Smith as she walked with us from the office.

“Not to me, sir, but she didn’t seem happy,” Smith told us.

“She never usually is,” I pointed out, but my mood ebbed slightly as we reached her office, and I knocked on the door.

“Come in!” she called from inside.

Smith gave us a wry smile and drifted back over to her own desk while Mills and I headed inside.

I shut the door behind us, and we sat down opposite her as she finished scribbling something down. Her brown hair, with a few silver streaks running through, was tied up in a bun, and she shoved some escaped strands away as she dropped her pen and looked up at us.

“I’ve got something for you two.”

“Very kind of you,” I answered.

“A woman’s been found in Moorland Botanical Gardens.”

“The research place?” I asked. “Sort of like Kew Gardens?”

Sharp nodded. “That’s the one. SOCO’s on the way, Dr Crowe’s with them. I want you two on this. Nobody’s gone near her yet.”

“We’ll head straight there,” I told her, standing abruptly from the chair. “You have the address?”

She handed Mills a small sticky note, her neat writing already sprawled across it. “Keep me updated on this one,” she insisted.

I gave her one last nod and jerked my chin to Mills. We left Sharp’s office, returned to ours to grab our things and headed straight downstairs, out into the car park and piled into my car.

I pulled from the station as Mills set up the sat nav that took us out of the city, just out into the moors.

“You ever been there before?” Mills asked, making conversation as we drove through the city.

“No. I don’t think it’s much open to the public. Not all of it anyway,” I amended. “But I went to Kew Gardens once. If it’s anything similar, we should be in for an interesting day.”

“Sharp said that nobody’s gone near her yet,” Mills murmured thoughtfully. “Why?”

I shrugged. “I suppose we’ll find out soon enough.”

It was just over a twenty-minute drive into the rolling hills, to an old country house that now belonged to the horticultural research faculty. Mills and I parked and quickly jumped out, met by a uniformed officer who nodded briefly and led us around the side of the house to where the gardens sprawled out. They were vast, and I imagined it would be easy to get lost out here amongst the winding gravel paths. A few greenhouses poked up here and there, and at the back of the house itself, a large orangery opened out into the gardens. It was beautiful, the air scented, the wind gentle.

“She’s in the garden off-limits to the public,” the constable told