Close to Home (A DI Mitchell Yorkshire Crime Thriller Book 4)

by Oliver Davies

  “Isabel caught word of their relationship somehow,” she said, “perhaps a mutual friend, or social media. It certainly didn’t come from me. Alec told me that she came around to his flat and harassed him over it, saying that he didn’t deserve happiness and so on.”

  I raised my eyebrows as I made a note of that. I wondered whether the cameras at the flat would bear out Eloise’s story and show Isabel visiting. The footage may have been deleted already, though, since it had now been three weeks since it had happened.

  Eloise passed a hand over her forehead, looking as if telling this was distressing her, though she appeared completely put together to my view. She paused to drink some water.

  “I urged him to report Isabel’s little visits to the police, of course,” Eloise said in an earnest tone I didn’t believe for a minute. My gut feeling was that Eloise had suggested some other means of making Isabel leave Alec alone, like some kind of petty revenge on social media. “But he refused completely.” Eloise shook her head.

  “And what do you know about Maddie being injured?” Stephen put in. He was clearly getting impatient for Eloise to get to the point, as was I. Eloise looked briefly irritated, her blue eyes flashing, before she composed herself.

  “She was there that night,” she said. “Isabel.”

  Stephen and I both went still. “Really?” I said slowly. “And how do you know that?”

  “Alec told me afterwards, of course.” She gave me a contemptuous look before she glanced away from me and shifted in her seat, looking, for the first time, genuinely uncomfortable. “This is what Alec didn’t want me saying.” Her voice lowered slightly, like her brother might overhear her. “He’s adamant that the police won’t believe him, so he won’t even try. I think he’s protecting Isabel, even after all she’s done. He wants to be some kind of martyr, or he thinks he deserves it, I don’t know.”

  “He told you this?” I asked. “Or is this your opinion?”

  “I’m his sister.” She looked at me icily. “I know him better than he knows himself.”

  That meant it was her postulation, then, I thought, and made a note. “And what was she doing there? Why hasn’t Alec told us this?”

  She sighed. “He didn’t do it,” she said firmly. “That’s what I’ve been telling you all along, if you would’ve only listened. Isabel was there with him, and she pushed that girl down the stairs, not Alec.”

  There was a brief, taut silence, and Eloise looked sharply between us like she was trying to gauge our reaction. Whatever was on our faces must not have been what she wanted because she went on hurriedly.

  “Alec told me himself, on the night,” she insisted. “Once I’d agreed to have him to stay, he told me everything. How he and Maddie had argued, how Isabel had shown up and pushed her way into the apartment, got into the middle of it all. Maddie stormed out, and Isabel ran after her and pushed the daft girl straight down the stairs.”

  I had to hold back a flinch at that, picturing too clearly the events that Eloise claimed had happened.

  “And, assuming we believe you, what happened after that?” I said, my pen hovering over my notebook as I noted down my thoughts, queries, and any parts of Eloise’s story that I didn’t think fitted quite right.

  “Alec didn’t really get into it,” she admitted after a moment. “He said he ran off, even though he was only wearing slippers. He claimed that he knew right away that Maddie was dead and went right past her, couldn’t look at her properly.”

  “But she wasn’t dead,” Stephen said, a rigid edge to his voice. “If your brother had stopped to call an ambulance for her, she might be awake by now.”

  Eloise frowned at him. “That’s hardly my fault, is it?” she snapped before she pulled back, straightening up. “Besides, Alec was traumatised. Panicked. He wasn’t in his right mind. He was afraid for his life with that lunatic wife of his charging around. He had the right to protect his own welfare, didn’t he?”

  “And when he was at a safe distance?” I said flatly. “He didn’t think to call then?”

  If Eloise had frowned at Stephen, she positively glowered at me. “He knew you’d lock him straight up, didn’t he?” she said. “He’s not stupid. He knew what it all looked like, with his history. And, as I already said, he was convinced that Maddie was dead, and I believed him.” She gave an elegant, one-shouldered shrug. “He was truly shocked to hear that she was alive.”

  “How did he hear about that, exactly?” I asked. “While he was staying with you, I presume.”

  “I don’t know.” She looked uneasy. “He’d probably stopped staying with me by then.”

  “I see,” I said. “So you weren’t sheltering him at your home when we came to ask about him?”

  She met my gaze defiantly. “No.”

  I made a noncommittal noise in my throat at that, not believing it for a moment.

  “Was Alec injured when he came to stay with you?” Stephen asked. I glanced over at him, understanding the change of topic after a moment’s thought. The blood in the kitchen. We still didn’t know who it belonged to but, if Eloise’s statement that Isabel had pushed her way into Alec’s flat, it could very well be hers.

  “Oh yes,” Eloise said, a little too quickly. “He was awfully bruised. Isabel hit him, you see, she was so angry.”

  I hummed. “Do you have any evidence to back up your side of things?” I asked.

  She seemed startled by the question and then offended. “I came here and betrayed my promise to Alec to try to help you,” she all but snarled, “and you accuse me of lying?”

  “I’m not saying you’re lying,” I said, continuing over her when she tried to cut in. “We appreciate you bringing us this information, but we work primarily off facts and evidence. If we were going by face-value, we’d have charged Alec and moved on, wouldn’t we?”

  She blinked at me, parting her lips before closing them again. “I suppose so.”

  “We want to get to the truth, to the bottom of things,” Stephen said, backing me up. “Have you got anyone who could stand to witness for Alec being at your house? Anyone else who he’s shared this with?”

  “He hasn’t told anyone else,” she protested. “He trusted me, just me. I’m his sister.”

  “Has he got any close friends he-”

  “No,” she said definitively. “After what happened with Isabel,” Her lip curled when she said Isabel’s name, “he lost all of his friends, and their mutual friends, too. They all abandoned him. I was the only one who stuck by him. He’s been trying to make a new life.”

  “And his parents? Your parents?” I asked.

  Eloise twitched. “They aren’t around.”

  “They passed away?”

  “They aren’t around,” Eloise repeated flatly.

  “Okay,” I relented, making a note to look into that.

  We continued our questioning, pressing Eloise for specific timings for when the events she’d described had happened. She repeatedly embellished her answers with descriptions of how upset her brother had been or other details that worked on painting her and Alec in a positive light. I ignored them, as did Stephen, and we focused on the bare facts of her story, such as they were.

  After nearly two hours, Eloise was looking frayed, and her tone had become snappy, her answers short and sharp. She flicked her wrist to look at her slim silver watch.

  “I must be going. I’ve got an appointment this afternoon.”

  I nodded, closing my notebook. Though I didn’t entirely trust Eloise and was inclined to take her word with a grain of salt, I still felt sympathy for her. She clearly loved her brother, despite his glaring character flaws, and saw herself as his only defender. Talking for two hours about difficult topics would be challenging for anyone, and I knew that delving into the memory and trying to recall specifics was extremely tiring.

  “Thank you for coming here, Ms Banks,” I told her. I stood up and offered her a hand to shake. “We really appreciate you coming forward to tell us this
.”

  “Better late than never,” Stephen muttered, apparently not as willing to play nice as I was.

  Eloise sent Stephen a venomous look before giving me a sweet smile and limply shaking my hand. “You’re welcome, detective.”

  I patted my pockets for a business card and handed it over to her. “If you remember anything more, please call us immediately.” I stressed the last word because, as useful as this might prove to be, it had taken her three weeks, and two wasted interviews before she finally coughed it up. That didn’t make her the most reliable of witnesses, if we wanted to use her statement in court in the future. Three weeks was plenty of time for a person to fabricate a series of events, after all. If she had any more to say, she would have to say it soon if she wanted us to believe her.

  She took the card delicately, glancing at it before putting it away in her purse. She gave me a small nod before she swept out of the room, ignoring Stephen entirely. Stephen turned to raise his eyebrows at me in amusement before he followed her out, and we saw her to the front of the station, watching her stroll away.

  “This could change things,” Stephen said quietly beside me.

  I made a noise of acknowledgement, stepping away to make our way back upstairs as I replied.

  “Aye, we’ll have to look into her statement. She’s making some serious allegations.”

  “Do you think she’s lying?”

  “Absolutely,” I said. “But how much of it is a lie? I don’t know. There’s truth in there somewhere, but we’ll have to dig it out.”

  “We will,” Stephen said firmly.

  I tried to be as confident as he was, but it was difficult. Eloise’s statement muddied the waters just when they had seemed to be clearing. While her story was possible, I couldn’t say whether it was true, or even likely. If Alec really was innocent, we’d have an uphill battle to prove it, with his violent priors and his running away from the scene stacked against him. And I was still far from convinced that he was innocent.

  The problem was that, in the cold blue eyes of the Banks siblings and Isabel’s dark, angry ones, I could envisage any of them having pushed poor Maddie. All of them gave the impression of being people given to scheming, holding grudges, and getting their own personal justice.

  But while many of them had seemed, to me, capable of harming Maddie, our job was to find out who actually did.

  Sixteen

  I’d only just finished typing up my thoughts on Eloise’s account when Keira approached our desks looking serious and purposeful, but then, she almost always did.

  “Adams, afternoon,” I said, surprised to see her.

  “What can we do for you?” Stephen asked, before Keira could respond to me.

  She sent him an unreadable look. “As usual, it’s what I can do for you two, rather than the other way around.” She turned her attention back to me. “You owe me half a dozen favours, Mitchell.”

  “I sure do,” I admitted cheerfully. “Say the word, and I’ll buy you some nice wine.”

  She scoffed, though she looked amused. “Do you assume I can’t buy my own wine?” She shook her head. “I dug something up for you on your mysterious Isabel Davies.”

  Both Stephen and I sat up slightly. I’d been half-hoping that was why she was here, but I’d thought about it too soon for her to have the time to look. I waited expectantly, keen to hear what she’d found.

  “I read your report,” she told us. “You stated that you spoke to Davies at the hospital, which I found curious. I called in a favour at the hospital,” She sent me a look then, clearly telling me that I owed her for that, too, “and asked whether they’d seen her around, if she’d been to visit the victim, or if she’d been asking questions.”

  “And?” I said.

  Keira held up a finger. “I’m getting to it. He didn’t recognise her, but he had a quick look at the system.” She lowered her voice slightly, which I took to mean that her having information on the hospital’s records might not be entirely legal. “She was at the hospital, in A&E, on the night of your victim getting hurt.”

  “What?” Stephen said sharply.

  Keira went on as if she hadn’t heard him. “This was late into the night, near one o’clock. She came in with a bad gash on her arm, and her record said she’d lost some blood. It seems she’d been bleeding before some time before she went to the hospital about it. Strange, no?”

  “She cut her arm?” I repeated.

  I’d been making hasty notes as Keira spoke, so I wouldn’t forget what she was saying. I understood why she hadn’t given me a write-up of this information, though, if she hadn’t gone down the proper channels to acquire it. That might pose a problem later, for when we’d need to present the information to court if it was relevant, but for now, I was focused primarily on finding out what had happened. We’d deal with the rest after that.

  “Yes. On broken glass, she’d told the doctor. An accident. Apparently, the doctor was concerned it may have been a case of self-harm. She needed three stitches and was close to needing a blood transfusion, too.”

  I shook my head in surprise at what Keira had shared with us.

  “This is really helpful,” I told her warmly. “I don’t suppose you can tell me the name of your ‘friend’ at the hospital?”

  “Afraid not,” she said simply.

  “This is huge, Keira.” I nodded, sitting back with my mind already working to fit this new piece into what we already knew. “Thank you.”

  She gave me a small smile. “You owe me,” she reminded me.

  “I won’t forget,” I promised her, smiling back at her.

  She turned neatly and walked away. I turned to look at Stephen, who looked as taken aback as I was.

  “Looks like Eloise was telling the truth,” I said slowly. “Isabel could right well have gotten that cut while fighting in Alec’s kitchen.”

  “And it was her blood on the floor,” Stephen finished. “Crikey.”

  “This doesn’t prove that it wasn’t Alec who hurt Maddie,” I said, reminding myself as much as anything, “but it might prove that Isabel was there, and that things got violent.”

  “She may be another victim,” Stephen agreed. “Eloise has every reason to lie to support her brother.”

  I dragged a hand through my tangled hair. “What’s for sure is that we need to talk to Isabel, one way or another. I think it’s past time we brought her in for questioning.”

  “Even if we have to release her after?”

  “Aye,” I said, making the decision as I said it. “We’ll take the risk. We need to speak to her.”

  Before we could get started on deciding how to best bring Isabel in for questioning, Gaskell called me over to his office. He’d called my name specifically, not Stephen’s. I sent a perplexed glance in Stephen’s direction and headed over to Gaskell’s office. If he’d had bad news regarding Maddie, he would’ve called Stephen over as well, so I hoped that all he wanted was a progress update from me.

  “Sir,” I said as I came in, shutting the door behind me.

  “Mitchell,” Gaskell said gruffly, giving me a nod. There was something tense about him, and his brows seemed drawn further together than usual, which put me on edge as I took a seat.

  “Is this about the case, sir?”

  “No,” he said. He put his hands on top of his desk and looked at me for a moment. “This is a delicate issue, no mistake. I’m not reprimanding you, do you hear me, but I am… advising you.”

  I kept still, not sure where he was taking this. He’d caught me off guard, and that made me vaguely defensive. I made myself relax.

  He paused, giving me a chance to speak, but when I didn’t, he went on, “There’s been talk of you associating with one of the lab scientists, Rosanes.”

  What? I thought, pressing my lips together, so I didn’t say anything I’d regret later. I’d imagined Gaskell had some kind of issue with how I was handling the case, that he even wanted me to step back. Instead, he was bringing up
that Sam and I had seen one another and I couldn’t see how it was any of his damn business.

  “Is that true?”

  I was silent for a moment too long as I wrestled myself into being polite to my superior. “Yes, sir,” I said tightly.

  Gaskell grunted and sat back, his chair creaking. “It’s not considered totally, uh, appropriate to be having a relationship with your work colleagues, Mitchell.”

  I fought the flush of heat that wanted to rise in my cheeks, partly from embarrassment and partly from irritation that Gaskell was sticking his nose in. Maybe it did say in the employee manual that relationships within the station weren’t permitted, but I didn’t see how it mattered as long as neither Sam nor I allowed it to affect our work, and we hadn’t, had we?

  I remembered Sam’s disapproving colleague in the lab who’d sniffed at the pair of us when I’d dropped by a short while back. I bet it’d been him who’d told Gaskell, or maybe Sam’s superior, who’d passed it on. More than Gaskell’s disapproval, it was the thought of Sam getting told off for associating with me that made my stomach tighten painfully. I hated the thought of her being made to feel uncomfortable or embarrassed.

  When I didn’t speak, Gaskell sighed.

  “Look, you’re a decent detective, I’ve got no problem with your work. And, to be blunt, I don’t see an issue with you larking around with this Rosanes woman either.” I gave him a surprised look, and he nodded. “But others have been taking note, and it’ll harm your chance at promotion if you’re seen as letting your personal and professional lives get muddled up, do you see what I’m saying?”

  “You wouldn’t put me forward for promotion because of this, sir?” I said, hurt making my tone sharp.

  He cleared his throat. “It’s not that I wouldn’t put your name in, it’s that it might get dismissed right quick. See, to be on the safe side, find somebody outside of work, that’s my recommendation.”

  But I didn’t want to find someone else. I felt a connection with Sam stronger than I’d felt in a while, and I wanted to see where it would take us, rather than cutting it off before it could even begin.