by J. R. Ellis
‘This is a lovely little place,’ said Maggie. ‘I sometimes think I’d like to live in a little country town like this someday, where you could walk to things like shops and stuff and get to know a lot of people.’
‘Who then get to find out about everything you’re doing,’ replied Mark. ‘I think I might find it a bit claustrophobic. Anyway, forget it in the south – houses in places like this would be right out of our range.’
‘I suppose so.’
‘You’re sounding a bit middle-aged today.’ He laughed. ‘Is it time to settle down? Am I the lucky man?’
Maggie kept looking at the pretty old streets, the shoppers and the little parks. ‘You might be.’ She turned to him. ‘I feel different about things, you know, life and stuff after all this.’
‘How?’
‘Well, you never know what’s going to happen, do you? You’ve got to get on with life and do the things you want to do. I’ve drifted a bit since Oxford and my travels. I think I’m going to look at doing an MA. In London somewhere. Louise has inspired me. I’ve got the money saved up and I can carry on part time in the café.’
‘What will you do it in?’
‘Maybe something to do with social work. I enjoyed working in the refuge. Don’t worry, I’ll stay in London.’
They’d left Pickering and were now crossing the vale named after the town towards Malton. Cows and sheep grazed in the flat fields divided by hedgerows.
‘It’s been nice to see the countryside as well as the sea,’ said Maggie, enjoying the views.
Mark looked around without enthusiasm. ‘Yeah, but you can’t have everything. You’d get bored out here after a while and where would you practise your social work?’
‘You’d be surprised. Don’t think that all the social problems are in the inner cities. There’s a lot of rural poverty too.’
‘You wouldn’t think so around here judging by the gorgeous-looking villages we’ve passed through and the number of Range Rovers on the road.’
She looked at him and realised he was teasing her. ‘Get lost,’ she said, and leaned her head against his shoulder. ‘Louise’s dad was right, by the way,’ she said after a while. ‘You did the right thing to tell him about Dom’s plagiarism.’
Mark shifted in his seat. ‘Yeah, maybe. It’s probably made me a suspect though.’
She raised her head and looked at him. ‘A suspect? You weren’t even there when it happened.’
‘No, but I could have orchestrated it from a distance,’ he said in a mockingly sinister voice.
‘Rubbish,’ replied Maggie, putting her head back against his shoulder. ‘Anyway, you explained to him that it didn’t bother you that much. You’re hardly going to murder someone about a stolen essay from years ago, are you?’
‘No,’ replied Mark tersely; there was an angry glint in his eye. ‘I think Louise’s dad isn’t happy with what seem to be the facts of the case.’
‘Oh, I suppose he’s just humouring her. She still won’t give up the idea that somehow it didn’t happen the way we saw it. I think she’s in denial. I told her as much before we left. I expect her dad’ll go along with it for a while until she realises it’s nonsense.’
‘Maybe,’ said Mark. ‘But I don’t think we’ve heard the last of it or of him.’
It was a circuitous route to Manchester by rail from Whitby, involving a slow train to Middlesbrough, a change for York and then another change at Yorkshire’s old capital to the slightly faster Trans Pennine service across the hills to Lancashire. But Ben was glad he wasn’t driving. He was still feeling utterly exhausted after all that had happened. He hoped he would never have to go through anything like that again.
A couple of days with his parents would be very refreshing, he thought, as he relaxed in his seat and watched the countryside of Esk Dale pass by. Then he would have to get back to London, try to forget what had happened in Whitby and focus on his affairs in the capital. There were some important things he needed to do. He’d been struggling to get by on his part-time teaching contract for some time. The pay rate was poor and his art sales had been disappointing recently. It was so competitive in London to get any gallery space and what you had to pay often cancelled out any earnings from sales. Now he had thought of a way to do things differently. His phone rang. He looked at the caller ID and frowned.
He answered the phone. ‘Hi . . . Is everything okay? Yes, don’t worry, it’s all fine . . . I’m on the train – I’ll call you when I get to Manchester . . . It’ll be several hours . . . Yes, okay – speak to you later.’
He ended the call, shook his head and returned to looking out at the countryside. After a while he nodded off and only woke when the train arrived in Middlesbrough.
It was late at the end of another long day when Oldroyd, Steph and Louise arrived back in Harrogate. Leaving Louise in the car where she was dozing, Oldroyd and Steph went into HQ and found Andy in the office.
‘Okay, Andy, make a cup of tea, will you? It’s been a long drive. Perhaps we might even be allowed a biscuit.’ He turned to Steph with a questioning look. Steph had the key to the cupboard where the biscuits were kept, and she doled them out sparingly.
‘Just one,’ she said with a smile.
‘How have things been over here?’ asked Oldroyd as Andy put on the electric kettle.
‘Fine, sir. Fairly quiet, luckily. I’ve checked in on DCS Walker a couple of times and he’s happy.’
‘Good.’ As they drank their tea, Oldroyd explained his plan to Andy. ‘Steph thinks the case is over,’ he said, nodding towards her. ‘Holgate’s dead, apparently suicide. All the evidence points to him being the murderer. But I’m not sure we have the full story about what happened and the people most likely to lead us to further insights are the other members of that group, including the ones who weren’t actually in the escape room that day. They’re not the only suspects, but they are the people who knew Holgate and Barnes and may have had motives to commit murder. I know it’s a long shot, but I want you to go down to London and investigate them. There have only been very cursory enquiries into them so far and I’m sure your old mates at the Met will give you a hand. Find out anything you can about their pasts and their lives in London going back to their student days and even before. We’ve all seen many times how often the answer to a mystery lies in the past. Sometimes the distant past.’
Andy had sat quietly listening. Now he looked at Steph and took in a deep breath. ‘Sir, I’m sorry to have to say this, but your daughter Louise is part of that group. Have you got good grounds for eliminating her from any suspicion?’
Steph flinched as she saw how this hit Oldroyd hard. It was very bold of Andy to ask the question. Oldroyd also took a deep breath before replying.
‘The honest answer is no. I haven’t got any information that completely exonerates her so she’s not eliminated. If there was some plot going on I’m unable to say for sure that she wasn’t part of it.’ He was speaking very slowly as if it was a real effort to get the words out. ‘On the other hand, I don’t regard her as a likely suspect, mainly because if she was involved, I don’t think she would have been keen for me to help to solve the case.’ He sounded as if he was carefully reassuring himself. There was silence for a moment and then he turned to Andy. ‘That was brave of you. Well done. It had to be said.’
‘Sorry if it came out a bit abrupt, sir. It wasn’t easy.’
‘Don’t apologise.’ He smiled. ‘That’s the way I’ve taught you: don’t defer to authority in matters like that. You’re actually doing me a favour in case anybody ever accuses me of protecting her. It’ll be on record that I’m not and she will be on the list of people who need to be looked into, though she’s staying in Leeds at the moment and won’t be in London. So I’ll be asking Steph to keep an eye on her.’
‘Okay, sir,’ Andy said.
Oldroyd sighed and looked relieved. ‘Where are those biscuits? I think I deserve another in the circumstances.’
‘Ve
ry well, sir,’ said Steph, laughing.
Oldroyd continued as he munched a ginger biscuit. ‘You’ve still got some work to do,’ he said to Steph. ‘Though be careful it doesn’t take up too much of your time. You’re back here now and working for this station, so any work on cases here must come first, but try to get to Leeds and investigate Withington’s past. What kind of a jeweller’s shop did he have? And find out what happened to make him scarper over to Whitby. Make sure you report your findings to Inspector Granger as well as to me. And the same goes for you, Andy.’
‘That’s fine, sir,’ said Steph. ‘If I get here early in the morning I can leave early and do some investigating on my way home.’
‘Good. Well, it might turn out to be a wild goose chase, but at least we’ll know we were thorough.’
Oldroyd had a final word with Steph before he left. ‘As I said, I also want you to watch over Louise. Check that she’s okay, and also ask her some more about her activities and relationships with the group.’ He paused. The next thing was hard to say. ‘If at any time you have any grounds for suspecting she may have been involved in anything untoward, then you must report it immediately to Inspector Granger. Understood?’ He sighed. ‘That’s it; I’ve said it.’
‘Yes, sir, and don’t worry. You’re doing the right thing by covering yourself like this but I’m sure that nothing of that nature will come up. I’d stake anything on the fact that Louise is completely innocent.’
‘Yes, I’m sure you’re right,’ replied Oldroyd, unable to contemplate any other outcome.
That evening, Oldroyd and Deborah were relaxing with a bottle of wine in Oldroyd’s flat. Dusk had seemed to fall rapidly and Oldroyd got a sense of approaching winter as he looked out at the twilight early evening sky. A crow flapped past, a black outline against the darkening sky. It made him shiver.
‘The clocks will be going back next week,’ he observed in a rather glum tone of voice. ‘It’s going to get dark really early in the evening.’
‘Well, no need to be melancholy about it. It’s nice and cosy in here. Winter has its own charms.’
‘Yes.’ He drank some wine.
‘Are you okay?’
‘Not really.’ He told her about the conversation with Andy and Steph about Louise. ‘Of course I don’t suspect her, but I can’t leave her out, and I can’t really tell her she’s being investigated. It makes me feel awful, supervising an investigation into my own daughter.’
‘You must have known something like this would happen when you agreed to help that inspector over there. It must be very unusual for any police officer to be associated with a case in which a close relative is involved.’
‘Of course it is. It’s only happened because of my senior position. Also that I know Granger and she wanted me to help, plus Walker was understanding. I’m beginning to wish it hadn’t happened this way. Maybe I would have been better staying out of it.’
‘In the end, you didn’t have a choice, though. No parent is going to ignore a call from their daughter like that.’
Oldroyd looked thoughtfully into his glass. ‘I suppose not. It just feels such a betrayal that I’m having to get Steph to investigate her surreptitiously while also checking if she’s okay.’
‘She’s not stupid, though. She must realise that she’s part of that group of friends which is being looked into.’
‘Maybe. I don’t know and I can’t talk to her about it. At this point that would be really compromising. All she knows is that, like her, I’m not satisfied with aspects of this case and I’m continuing to work with Inspector Granger.’
‘Is that why she’s staying up here and not going back to London?’
‘Yes. She wants to be on hand if anything happens. She’ll be fine at Julia’s for a while. I think she’s going to look up some of her Leeds friends.’
‘Well, never mind. I’ll be there to keep up your morale.’
‘Yes, it will make a big difference. I’ve planned some interesting activities, but I’m not telling you about them.’
‘Good! I like surprises. It’s great to be having a little holiday late in the year like this. I’ve managed to rearrange my sessions with clients for a few days.’
Deborah was travelling back to Whitby with Oldroyd the following day and staying with him. A hotel had been booked.
‘Good. I’ve still got to work with Granger, but I’ll manage some time in between.’
‘That’s fine. But just remember, Jim, you can’t be right every time. If nothing crops up soon you’ll have to accept that the case is simpler than you imagined. Don’t make it into an ego thing.’
‘No, I won’t,’ replied Oldroyd, but he still felt in his bones that there was more to discover.
Andy and Steph lived in an apartment in a converted warehouse overlooking the River Aire in Leeds. They liked living in the vibrant centre of the city and were enjoying a drink in a hipster bar near the Corn Exchange.
‘That was very brave of you this afternoon to confront the boss with the possibility of his daughter being a suspect,’ said Steph.
‘Well, I thought we needed to get it into the open and it would come better from me as I haven’t really been involved up to now,’ replied Andy.
‘You did the right thing. I know it’s hard, but he appreciates being challenged when there’s a good reason. I did it during that Redmire Hall case, and he thanked me afterwards. He doesn’t want “yes” men and women. He wants people who think for themselves and speak out.’
‘Good,’ said Andy laughing. ‘I’ll have scored a few points today then.’
‘You will.’
Andy took a swig from his bottle of lager. ‘So the boss doesn’t think that you’ve got to the bottom of the case then?’ he continued.
‘No, and normally I’d follow him, given how amazing we know he can be.’ Steph sipped her glass of white wine.
‘What’s different this time?’
Steph frowned and twirled her wine glass. ‘I think he’s been influenced too much by his daughter. She was the one that got him involved and she won’t accept what seems to me the clear evidence that this bloke Holgate stabbed his girlfriend, ran off, lay low for a while and then killed himself. I know he behaved very strangely when he was in hiding, but the guilt and trauma of what he’d done must have affected his mind.’
‘Do you think I’ll be wasting my time, then? Investigating these people in London?’
‘I’d probably say yes, but at the end of the day you wouldn’t bet against the boss, would you?’
Andy shook his head. ‘You’d have to be very brave to do that. But nobody’s infallible and sometimes your judgement can be clouded by personal connections.’
‘Exactly. But all we can do is what we’re told and see what happens. At some point that inspector at Whitby will call a halt to things. She seems very sharp. She’s worked with the boss before. I think she’s humouring him because she admires him. Like us. But there will come a time when she realises the investigation is going nowhere.’
‘It gives me a chance to go down to see Mum. I’ll stay with her. I’ll also see what Jason’s up to.’
Steph looked at him sharply. ‘You know what he’ll be up to . . . so be careful!’
Jason Harris was an old friend of Andy’s. He worked in the city, made huge amounts of money and spent it on a wild lifestyle. He seemed unable to progress beyond the hedonism of adolescence. He was a colourful and entertaining person to be with. Steph liked him but considered him a bad influence on Andy. ‘Wasn’t he supposed to be getting engaged at some point?’
Andy laughed. ‘That fell through. As predicted. Jason’s not one to make commitments.’
‘No, I can imagine.’
‘Fancy another?’ asked Andy, finishing his drink and getting up to go to the bar. ‘Then later on we can have a pizza at that Italian by Leeds Bridge.’
‘Sounds good,’ replied Steph. ‘But one more drink will be enough. I don’t want you putting in training for
a boozy time with Jason.’
‘Don’t worry, you know me.’
‘I do,’ she replied, narrowing her eyes at him as she handed him her glass. ‘And that’s why I don’t trust you.’
Over in Whitby, there were fewer people around in the town’s old pubs in the harbour area now that the Goth Weekend was over, but there was still a lively scene for the locals in certain venues. Inside the Green Dragon, tucked away in a side street, there was a warm atmosphere, which was welcoming now that the nights were drawing in.
Philip Owen, the Dracula actor, was standing at the bar with some of his friends, describing what had happened at the escape room on that fateful day.
‘And there she was, on the floor . . . dead. You could see the knife sticking out of her chest, and the blood.’
‘Bloody hell,’ said one of the group, a tall man dressed in jeans and a leather jacket.
‘And the bloke who stabbed her was her boyfriend?’
‘So they say.’
‘Shit, that’s messed up big time.’
‘Yeah, well, I get sick of her sometimes,’ said another man with curly black hair, nodding towards the woman standing by him, ‘but I haven’t thought of stabbing her yet.’
‘Get lost!’ she said with a laugh and kicked him in the leg.
‘Then this bloke ran off?’ said the first man.
‘Yeah, then shot himself and ended up in the harbour. Haven’t you seen it all on the telly?’
‘Yeah, but it’s not the same as hearing it from someone who was there.’
The curly-headed man winked at his girlfriend. ‘From someone who knows all about it.’
Owen took a drink of his beer before replying. ‘What’re you getting at?’
‘Well, when the police find out about your past, Phil, they might start to wonder how much you really knew about what happened. They might think it was a bit of a coincidence that a man like you turned up at a murder scene.’
‘Bugger off. What do you mean, “a man like me”? That was years ago.’