Better the Devil You Know

by James Whitworth

  “Apart from then,” Samantha laughed.

  “In which case,” Miller said, standing up and putting on his thick winter coat, “would you like me to walk you home?”

  He was worried that it sounded awkward and slightly old fashioned, but Samantha smiled warmly. “Thank you for the offer,” she said, “but despite my complaining I really rather enjoy the walk, especially late at night. I love the way the town can be so quiet in the evening.”

  Miller knew what she meant. He had often pondered what an odd place Whitby could be in the evenings. The centre along the harbour edge could be like any other town or city on a Friday and Saturday night. Stag and hen nights, drunken groups of older men, the noise and smell of sweaty pubs were similar to memories of Sheffield nights. Yet you could walk a few yards around a corner and all that seemed to melt away as if the ancient streets and paths of the town held a soporific power to quiet the hoards. It was one of the reasons Miller so loved the west cliff; even on a weekend evening it retained a peaceful ambience, standing aloof from the antics of the harbour front. If the developed west cliff was that peaceful the mostly desolate east cliff top must be a veritable sanctuary.

  “Are you sure?” Miller asked, knowing that Samantha was just that.

  “Walk me to the bend in the road. How’s that?”

  “All right,” Miller said, aware that he was feeling surprisingly happy.

  As Miller pulled open the door of the Endeavour pub, an icy blast of wind ruffled his hair. He shivered as he stood aside to let Samantha out. Turing to the right they followed the road as it began to climb slightly. As it swept sharply to the left in readiness to cross the swing bridge, Miller and Samantha stood at the point where cobbled Church Street began. From here it was a five-minute walk to the foot of the 199 steps that led to the east cliff and her cottage.

  “Thanks again for tonight,” Miller said, his voice muffled by his scarf.

  “We’ll have to do it again,” Samantha said. She put her left hand on Miller’s arm as she kissed him on the cheek. “Good night.”

  With that she turned and walked away.

  Miller waited and watched her for a moment before he turned to walk across the bridge and up the hill in the direction of his third floor apartment.

  Chapter 2

  The following morning dawned cold, but dry. Despite the near-apocalyptic forecast of the TV weatherman, no more snow had fallen during the night.

  As DCI Miller looked out of his living room window his mind drifted back to his first year in Whitby.

  After starting his career in Sheffield, he had happened to see an advert for a vacant DCI position in Whitby. It had been where he and his parents had holidayed every summer of his childhood and the town held nothing but good memories for him. Almost on a whim he had applied for the post and had been mildly surprised when a few weeks later he had received an invitation to attend an interview.

  Looking back now the whole period had a dreamlike quality to it. On the way up he had switched off his car’s satellite navigation and instead of the recommended motorway route, he had retraced the journey he had last made almost fifteen years ago.

  His first impressions on arriving in the town had been surprise at how little it appeared to have changed. Many of the features he recalled from childhood holidays were still there. His father’s favourite newsagents where he made the daily pilgrimage to get the local paper, the crazy golf course that had become almost a second home, and his mother’s favourite cake shop. It was almost unsettling how much Whitby seemed to resemble the town of his childhood summers.

  It was only after he had bought his flat and moved to the North Yorkshire town that he began to notice at first subtle and then significant changes. Fish and chips was no longer the only option for an evening meal, the boats that left the harbour were now far more likely to be pleasure trips than fishing trawlers, and a handful of food and drink chains had infiltrated the harbour front.

  Yet despite these and other changes, Whitby could sometimes seem almost timeless. Of course, at other times, the town could be all too modern. The spate of murders in the past few years had meant that Miller had been almost as busy as he had been when he worked in Sheffield.

  Turning from the window, Miller walked over to his CD player. The soundtrack album to Long Way Down had just finished. Thoughts of his hometown led him to take down a copy of Martin Simpson’s latest album and place it carefully in the player. Just as he was about to press the play button, the doorbell rang.

  “Hello?” Miller said impatiently, as he picked up the phone that connected the apartment to the intercom.

  “It’s me, sir,” crackled the voice of DS Riddle.

  “If Mrs. Riddle has sent you to check up on what happened after you left, you’re wasting your time.”

  He was joking, but if he was honest with himself, he was feeling almost as guilty as if he had somehow betrayed Alice just by enjoying himself.

  “We’ve found a body,” Riddle’s dismembered voice replied.

  “I’m on my way,” Miller said, but just as he was about to replace the receiver it crackled into life again.

  “I think I should come up,” Riddle said.

  A few minutes later Riddle was sitting on Miller’s settee cradling a hot cup of coffee in his hands.

  “All right, sergeant,” Miller said. “You’ve thawed out enough to tell me what’s going on.”

  Riddle took a long sip of his drink. He closed his eyes and then looked up at his boss.

  “It’s Samantha Thompson.”

  “What’s Samantha Thompson? I thought I said if Mrs. Riddle…” The words died on Miller’s lips.

  “We found a body this morning,” Riddle said. “It’s been identified as that of Samantha Thompson.”

  Miller had to stop himself asking Riddle if it was another Samantha Thompson. Surely it could not be the woman he had spent the evening with in the Endeavour pub.

  “Her identity was confirmed at the scene,” Riddle went on. “We’re treating it as suspicious.”

  “Suspicious?” Miller said, knowing all too well what that word meant.

  “Murder, sir. She was murdered.”

  “Jesus,” Miller said, slumping down opposite Riddle. “I was only with her ten hours ago.”

  Riddle grimaced.

  Miller’s eyes narrowed. “What is it, sergeant?”

  Riddle was finding it difficult to lift his eyes from Miller’s carpet. “So that would have been just before midnight?”

  “Yes – well closer to eleven. We left when they called time. I walked with her to the foot of Church Street and she walked home.”

  “Did you see anyone else?”

  “No. Why?” Miller stopped. “When was she killed? Where was she killed?”

  “The pathologist’s initial estimate is between midnight and two in the morning.”

  It was clear to Miller that there was something Riddle wasn’t telling him.

  “Her body was found in the chapel graveyard, although it’s possible that she wasn’t killed there.”

  Miller head was spinning. It was taking all his effort to put his thoughts into some sort of order. He tried to think back to the conversation with Samantha the previous night. “She said she lives – lived in that row of cottages on Curlew Lane. It’s pretty much opposite the chapel, but she wouldn’t have walked through it. It’s on the other side of the lane.”

  “As far as we can tell she never made it home,” Riddle said. “It looks like she was killed on her way to her cottage.”

  Miller stood up and walked to the window. The cliff top path was deserted and only a few cars were parked among the road. He watched as a herring gull circled above the road before landing on the roof of a parked Honda Jazz.

  “You said she might not have been killed where she was found. What makes you think that?”

  Riddle glanced at his watch before answering. “Her body had been…” he was searching for the right word. “Arranged,” he said fi
nally.

  “Arranged?” Miller said. “In what way?”

  Riddle glanced over Miller’s shoulder at the Karlsson clock on the living room wall.

  “She was found laid on top of a tomb.”

  Miller tried to recall the layout of the chapel’s small graveyard. It stood to the south of the chapel, running along the cliff top for fifty yards before a small stonewall marked its boundary.

  “I thought it was all gravestones,” Miller said. “I don’t recall any flat gravestones. Except…” he trailed off.

  Riddle looked up and nodded slowly. There was only one tomb in the chapel graveyard. It was well known by both locals and visitors.

  “The pirate’s grave?” Miller asked. At the far south of the chapel’s grounds was a small tomb that at one time had sat beyond the chapel boundary. It had been unconsecrated ground – the final resting place of a sixteenth century pirate who had wreaked havoc along the coast.

  “Christ,” Miller said, “there’s even a picture of me sitting on that tomb pointing at the skull and crossbones engraving as a young boy.”

  “Better make sure the press don’t get hold of that, sir.”

  Miller looked up sharply at Riddle and found his sergeant once again checking his watch.

  “Do you have somewhere more important to be?”

  Riddle looked as if he would rather be anywhere else that here right now.

  “Spit it out, sergeant.”

  “It’s Chief Inspector Davis. He sent me to collect you. He wants to see you in half an hour.”

  “Really?” Miller said. Davis was not above interfering in Miller’s investigations, but he had never known him to summon one of his officers before an investigation had even begun.

  “He wants me to follow some particular line of inquiry?” Miller asked.

  “No, sir.” Riddle said, looking at Miller directly for the first time. “He wants to suspend you from duty.”

  Chapter 3

  Miller froze with his coffee cup lifted half way to his mouth. He looked intently at Riddle for any sign that his sergeant was joking, however uncharacteristic that may have been. He saw none.

  “Say that again.”

  Riddle shook his head. “He didn’t tell me that, sir, but I overheard him on the phone. My guess was that he was speaking to someone in London.”

  Riddle’s emphasis on the last word was born out of his natural distrust of anyone who lived further south than Chesterfield.

  “Davis was saying to whoever was on the other end of the line that he was going to suspend you from duty as soon as you came into work.”

  “But why?” Miller said.

  Riddle looked even more awkward than before. “Isn’t it obvious?”

  Miller looked from Riddle to the pile of CDs and vinyl records next to his amplifier as if he expected them to provide some clarity of thought. Suddenly the reality of the situation dawned on him. It was as if the ocean mists had cleared and he could finally see how far he had drifted out to sea.

  “I’ve been so caught up with thoughts of Alice… Dr Laine that it didn’t even register.”

  Riddle stood up and put his hand on Miller’s shoulder. It was a moment that was as awkward as it was sincere.

  “As far as we know sir…” Riddle began, but Miller interrupted him.

  “I was the last person to see Samantha alive.”

  “Apart from her killer,” Riddle added a little too quickly.

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence, sergeant.”

  Riddle’s face was so full of desperation that Miller could not help but feel sorry for him. “Come on, sergeant. The sooner we get all this sorted out, the sooner we can find out what happened to Samantha Thompson.”

  “Exactly,” Riddle said with such resolve that Miller looked intently at him.

  “Oh, God. I was completely forgetting that you knew her, too. Was she a close friend?”

  How could he forget that she had been standing with Riddle and his wife when he had first seen her?

  “I hardly knew her at all,” Riddle said. “She was a friend of Maria’s. They met a few years ago at the university.”

  “I thought your wife got her degree at York.”

  “She did, sir. This was an evening class – something to do with religion and old paintings.”

  “So they were on the course together? Was she religious?”

  “Not in the way you mean,” Riddle said. “I think it was more the art side that interested her.”

  Miller wanted to ask what Riddle meant by “not in the way you mean”, but any further conversation was cut short by the shrill ring of Riddle’s mobile phone.

  “It’s the Chief,” Riddle said frowning at the screen.

  “I’ll get changed,” Miller said.

  *

  The drive to Whitby’s police station normally took five to ten minutes, depending on whether it was summer with its thousands of tourists or out of season. Ten days before Christmas definitely qualified as out of season. But the previous day’s snow meant that Riddle was obliged to drive with extreme care, especially as a group of teenagers were sledging down Chubb Hill Road.

  As Riddle stopped to let a hooded youth rescue his sledge from under a Range Rover, Miller looked to his left and the main entrance to Pannett Park. Only the previous summer he had been involved with a case that and come to a head in its grounds. Lifting his eyes, Miller looked to the far side of the park and the campus of Whitby University. He could just make out the building that housed Alice’s office. But its lights were turned off and its doors firmly locked.

  Riddle let out the handbrake and made his way to the bottom of the hill where he turned left before turning right and heading up Spring Hill to the police station.

  “We’re here,” Riddle said.

  “I think I knew that,” Miller said.

  “Sorry, sir. It’s just this whole thing is so ridiculous.”

  Miller smiled. “I think I can take it from here,” he said as he opened the passenger door and headed towards the main staff entrance.

  Miller walked along a bleak corridor that smelled of damp and bleach. It reminded him of the secondary school he had attended in Sheffield. Built in the early 1960s, it was all bleak corridors and soulless rooms.

  At the far end of the corridor was Chief Superintendent Davis’s room. He knocked and without waiting for a response walked in.

  His boss was sitting behind a large mahogany desk, his pot-marked face as blotchy as the walls. In front of him sat a large computer and keyboard that was hidden behind a number of brown files. Miller had the distinct impression that this was more for effect than any sign of significant workload.

  “Sit down,” Davis said, as usual dispensing with anything that could be mistaken for pleasantries. “Do you know why you’re here?”

  Miller rested the urge to bring metaphysics into the conversation. “Samantha Thompson?”

  “Indeed,” Davis said, arbitrarily rearranging the folders on his desk. “I understand you were in a public house with her last night.”

  Davis somehow managed to make “public house” sound like “knocking shop”.

  “We had been to the chapel’s Christmas tree service and decided to go for a drink afterwards.”

  “Miss Thompson lives opposite the chapel, does she not?”

  “So I found out last night,” Miller said.

  “So what you’re saying is that she was a matter of a few yards from her home but decided to accompany someone she had never met before all the way down the 199 steps into the town for a drink only to have to climb back up the same 199 steps to her home?”

  Miller bit his tongue and silently counted to ten.

  “No, sir. That’s what you’re saying.”

  Davis’s face reddened, but he said nothing.

  “Miss Thompson was at the ceremony with her friend, Maria Riddle. Maria had asked me to come along, so that was what I did. I had never seen Samantha Thompson before that night.”


  “But you still went for a drink with her.”

  “You know I did,” Miller said. “And it was all four of us who went to the pub. Maria and Sergeant Riddle left about ten. We decided to have another drink.”

  Davis grunted. It was clear to Miller that his boss considered being in a pub some kind of deviant behaviour. “Then what happened?”

  Miller took a deep breath. “I offered to walk her home…”

  “Did you?” Davis said, unable or unwilling to keep the leer out of his voice.

  “As a gentleman yourself, I am sure you would have done just the same.”

  This somewhat wrong footed Davis. “Well…”

  “Of course you would,” Miller said, pushing his advantage home. “But she declined my offer. She said she enjoyed the walk. I left her where the cobbled half of Church Street begins. The last I saw of her she was walking past the White Horse and Griffin. There was no one else about.”

  “And you went straight home?”

  “Yes.”

  “And did anyone see you?”

  Miller thought for a moment. “I did pass a couple of people,” he said vainly trying to recall any details. “But I had my head down against the wind. I doubt they paid me any attention either.”

  Davis grunted again.

  “So what happens now?” Miller asked.

  “I suspend you from duty,” Davis said. “I’ve no choice.”

  Miller didn’t like the man, but he had to admit that however much pleasure Davis may be getting from the situation, he wasn’t wrong. Miller had been the last person to see Samantha Thompson alive. He was off the case.

  Miller decided to call into his office before heading home. As he opened the door, he was surprised to see PC Lisa Newbold sitting in his office chair. She jumped when she saw Miller standing at the door.

  “Trying it out for size?” Miller asked. It was no secret that Newbold was highly ambitious, but unlike some of her colleagues, she had talent and a hard work ethic to back this up.

  “Yes, sir. I mean no sir,” she said.

  *

  Twenty minutes later, Riddle and Newbold found themselves sitting in the corner of Sherlock’s coffee house on Flowergate. Furnished to resemble the late Victorian rooms that would have been frequented by the characters from Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories, it had long been a favourite of Miller’s since he had arrived in the town. He was particularly fond of it on cold winter days, and so it felt like the perfect location for their meeting.