“Deadly?” Mills repeated.
“Poisonous,” the constable said. “It’s why we’ve been told to keep our distance. Dr Crowe’s just arrived.” He nodded to the curly haired figure just down the path, donning her white suit.
“Thank you.” I gave him a pat on the arm and headed down to where Crowe stood, looking down between a row of overflowing beds, signs stuck all around them with warnings clearly marked.
A woman lay on the ground, her white lab coat sprawled over her, pale ginger hair scattered around her head.
“Morning, Lena,” I greeted Crowe as we joined her, and she passed us both a pair of gloves.
“Morning, boys.”
“We’ve heard that no-one’s gone near her,” I said, pulling my gloves on.
“Apparently not,” Lena remarked. “Let’s found out what’s amiss.” She snapped her own gloves on and heading down the path. Mills went with the constable to talk to whoever called it in, and I stayed put, looking around the surrounding gardens. I could see the house beyond, and even though we were surrounded by trees and towering plants, it was an open area, somebody must have seen here.
“Holy—Thatcher!” Crowe shouted. My head snapped around, and I jogged over, falling to a squat beside her. Her fingers were on the woman’s neck, and she looked up at me with wide eyes. “I’ve got a pulse.”
“What?”
“It’s faint. Very faint, call an ambulance.”
I didn’t hesitate, reaching for my phone and rattling off the information as quickly as I could with the words slurring and mixing. When they were on their way, I returned to Crowe, who had gently rolled the woman onto her back, and I winced at the sight of her.
She was bruised almost from the top of her head to her toes. Marks around her neck and her face, her arms, her bare legs, a nasty cut that had scabbed on the side of her head. Crowe was bent down, studying her neck.
“I’ve got a puncture wound,” she told me, letting me close enough to see the small hole in the woman’s neck.
“Someone tried to hurt her,” I muttered.
“I think someone tried to kill her, Maxie,” Lena corrected me. “I don’t know how she’s alive, but bugger me, she is. Just about.”
“Ambulance is on the way. Who is she?” I asked.
“Abbie Whelan,” Mills told me as he jogged over. “One of the lead horticulturists. Her boss, Dr Sean Quaid, called it in.”
“Don’t touch anything,” Crowe snapped at us, eyes narrowed to the plants that grew around us.
“She’s alive?” Mills asked, eyes wide.
“Barely. Looks like attempted murder. What did her boss say?” I demanded.
“Said he came out looking for her to go over some things. Saw her lying there, and when he got near, she was still, didn’t move when he touched her back, so he called it in straight away.”
“She does look dead,” Crowe pointed out, her fingers still carefully placed on the woman’s neck. With her other hand, she reached into the woman’s pocket and pulled out a purse, tossing it over to me. I caught it, quickly opening it up as the wail of sirens came down the road.
Mills and I stepped to the side as paramedics came charging in, and Crowe assisted them with Abbie Whelan, hopping in the ambulance beside her. SOCO moved in once they were gone, and we let them at it, though I doubted there would be much to find out here.
“Abbie Whelan. Thirty-one years old,” I said as I read her driver’s licence. I moved the purse in my hands, and a few loose things fell out that Mills bent to pick up.
“Sir,” he called me, his voice dark.
“What?”
He held up one of the pieces of paper that had fallen loose, a photograph. It was Abbie, looking much healthier and less bruised, a little girl in her arms.
“Bloody hell,” I muttered. “Does she have any belongings?”
“In the house,” he told me, leading me up from the rows of poisonous plants, through the warm glass orangery and into the house. What would have once been a beautiful old house was now a fully functional research space, with glass walls and sleek computers. Mills led me past the whirring machines, down a hall to a room that was as old as it ought to. Books lined the wall, a wooden desk buried beneath potted plants, gardening tools and an ancient computer that could probably kill someone if you dropped it on their head.
A man stood at the window, watching the ambulance disappear, wringing his hands together. Mills cleared his throat, and he spun around, pushing his glasses back up his.
“Dr Quaid, this is DCI Thatcher. Sir, this is Dr Sean Quaid, the lead researcher here.”
I shook his slightly clammy hand, and he seemed to relax slightly, eyes turning to the window again.
“She’s alive?”
“Just about,” I answered. He cursed under his breath, looking around the room for something, checking his pockets until he pulled out a pipe.
“I should have checked. I just– She was so still, Inspector, I couldn’t see her breathing.”
“It’s alright, Doctor,” I assured him, indicating the seat. “It’s natural you would have panicked.”
I sat down opposite him, carefully avoiding putting my arms in the soil on the desk as I leant on it.
“Her name is Abbie Whelan?” I confirmed.
“Yes, Abbie.”
“How long has she worked here?” I asked.
“Oh, going on eight or nine years. She joined us straight out of uni, brilliant girl. Plants love her,” he added with a feeble laugh. “She’s resurrected more than her share of goners here, I’ll tell you that, Inspector.”
I smiled slightly and pulled the picture from the purse. “We found this, in her purse.”
He looked at it, and his face fell. “Grace,” he told me. “Her daughter. She’s, well, she’s two in that, I think. But she’s four now.”
“Her father?”
Now the doctor scowled, face darkening like a storm cloud. “Not in the picture.
