Country Lines (A DI Mitchell Yorkshire Crime Thriller Book 8)

by Oliver Davies

  We headed out of the office together, Sam in front. I scooped her up in a hug once we’d closed Rashford’s door, and she breathed a laugh.

  “What’re you doing, you silly man?” she said even as she hugged me back.

  “Showing my gratitude,” I teased.

  “Jeez, get a room, guys,” Stephen said, though he was grinning toothily. I gave him a slightly sheepish look and let Sam go.

  “Seriously, thanks for the info, Sam. It really helps.”

  She gave a one-shouldered shrug. “You know I work as fast as I can. I just can’t afford to prioritise for you specifically-”

  “I know, I know, I’d never ask you too. I wasn’t criticising, baby.”

  “Okay.” She blew out a breath and gave me a quick kiss. “I’ll see you at lunch?”

  “Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

  She headed out, and Stephen made a couple of childish retching noises, only after Sam was out of earshot, though. I gave him a shove on the shoulder.

  “Shut up, mate. You’re just jealous you don’t work with your wife.”

  “Damn right I am,” he said. “I want mid-morning cuddles.” He pouted, and I had to laugh.

  “Tough. Sam’s all mine.”

  He laughed, shaking his head. “I know, mate.”

  I became more serious as I looked over the email Sam had sent me, giving the technical detail of what exactly had been in the drugs from Victor’s house and how much. Even my inexperienced eyes could tell that they were abnormally strong.

  “Blimey, it looks like someone was trying to murder him,” Stephen said, looking over my shoulder at the email. His tone wasn’t entirely serious, but I went still.

  “Maybe they were.”

  He gave me a startled look. “Seriously? Why? Who?”

  “No idea. His dealers, I guess. You’re right. It makes no sense otherwise. We need to find out who he got this from, that’s for sure.”

  “Unless he was trying to kill himself,” Stephen offered quietly.

  “What, so he asked for an extra-strong dose?”

  “I guess,” Stephen said. I rubbed my hand over my chin as I considered the idea.

  “It’s possible, sure, but I still don’t get what the dealers would get out of that. They’d lose a customer. I think it must have been either an accident, or they deliberately wanted him gone.”

  “So what does he know that they don’t want us to know?” he wondered aloud.

  “I don’t know, but I wish we could talk to him.”

  A call on my desk phone made me jump and nearly knock over the remainder of my coffee. I drained the cold liquid, grimacing slightly before I picked up the call.

  “DCI Mitchell speaking.”

  “It’s Adams, got a minute?” she said, brisk as always.

  “If you’ve got good news, I do.”

  She made a noise of amusement. “I’ve got news, that’s all.” She hung up, and I set the phone back down with a faint smile.

  “We’re in business today. Adams has an update for us too.”

  “It’s like buses,” Stephen grumbled as we headed over to the tech room. “None for ages then three come at once.”

  “Pretty much, though I wouldn’t compare Adams to a bus in front of her if I were you.”

  He laughed at that. “I would never.”

  Keira didn’t look up as we came in, busy tapping away on her keyboard. She spared a second to tap a print-out on her desk before she went right back to typing. I picked the paper up and scanned over it, offering it to Stephen to look over as well.

  He swore quietly, his eyebrows raised high enough to set deep furrows into his forehead.

  The printout showed text messages, which had apparently been sent from one of Vic’s disposable phone. Who he was texting was a mystery, labelled only ‘P’, but the texts themselves were the interesting part.

  “Meet me tonight,” I read the final message aloud. It told us nearly nothing, and yet I thought I could read the threat underneath those words. The other messages talked about payment, about goods, about delivery. None of it was particularly well disguised to hide what they were really speaking of.

  “Look when this was sent,” Stephen said to me, tapping the time stamp on the last message. It was dated to Wednesday morning, earlier the same day that we’d found Victor barely alive and choking on his own spit.

  “Christ.”

  Keira cleared her throat, and I remembered that we were still standing beside her desk.

  “This is great, Adams, thanks. I don’t suppose you can track this phone, or whoever sent-”

  “Don’t you think I would have told you if I could?”

  “Uh, yes,” I admitted.

  She gave me a dismissive look and shook her head. I resisted the urge to ask if she had anything else for us because I already knew the answer; if she did have more, she would have already mentioned it.

  “What about the texts you’ve been getting?” Stephen prompted me. I’d shown Keira the first one I’d received, but not the most recent one.

  “I don’t know that she- you can do anything,” I said, redirecting my words to Keira herself. Still, I got my phone out and showed her the message.

  “I couldn’t track the first one, so I doubt I could do this one either,” she said, a tinge of apology in her tone. “Have you noticed anything else? People following you? Other threats?”

  “No, so it’s probably a bluff,” I agreed, seeing where her thinking was going. “Or I hope so, at least.”

  “Most likely,” Keira agreed.

  She got back to her work, and we headed off with a final thank you. She raised a hand in acknowledgement but didn’t look up. I took the print-outs back with us and managed to almost trip over because I was reading them. Stephen caught my arm as I steadied myself before plucking the papers out of my hand.

  “Let’s wait till we’re sat down to read ‘em, huh, Mr Clumsy?”

  “Aye, okay,” I sighed. My tiredness was getting to me, and I rubbed my gritty eyes. Another coffee was probably in order, and a few biscuits too so that I didn't give my poor stomach an ulcer with all the unadulterated caffeine.

  After I’d fetched us both fresh drinks, we settled down with the papers and read over them again.

  “Do you reckon this ‘P’, the person who sent these, could be the same one who’s been harassing me?”

  “I mean, it’s sure possible. It’s probably a dealer who’s seen us sniffing around Roberts’ house and got pissed off.”

  “The texts started before we went to Roberts’ house. In fact, I got the first one when we were outside Jackson’s mother’s house, remember?”

  “Yeah, that’s true. So what does that mean, that this person is connected with both Roberts and Jackson?”

  “Maybe you’re right, and it’s a dealer they’ve got in common or a friend in their circle. I don’t know, but it’s certainly weird.”

  We fell into a brief silence, considering it all. Stephen asked to see the texts on my phone, and I brought them up for him. I’d screenshotted them and kept a record on my computer, but I hadn’t deleted them off my phone yet either.

  “The way they type… it’s kind of similar, don’t you think?” Stephen said slowly, looking between the texts I’d been sent and the ones from Victor’s phone.

  “I mean, the ones to me are so short it’s hard to tell.”

  “True, yeah, I hear you. But there’s the same abruptness. And look here, they use ‘Vic’ here,” he pointed out, flipping through the pages of text messages to reach the older ones.

  “Aye.”

  “You’re not convinced?”

  “I think it’s a good spot, but to be fair, a lot of people would shorten Victor to Vic, right?”

  Stephen’s shoulders slumped slightly. “True. Still, I’d bet they’re the same person.”

  “So would I, mate. I wasn’t really disagreeing with you,” I assured him.

  “Not like you to be the one warning
me to hold my horses,” he joked. “You’re normally the one trying to make leaps bigger than an Olympic long-jumper.”

  I had to laugh at that. “Where d’you-? How did you even think that up?” I shoved him lightly. “And I’ll have you know my gut instinct is pretty good, thanks.”

  “I know it is,” he chuckled.

  “Okay, so what’s next on our list?” I wondered aloud.

  “I could call up Max’s parents, see how he’s getting on?” Stephen offered. I nodded in agreement.

  “Call the women’s shelter too, see how Faith and Elijah are getting on. I’m gonna look into Jackson’s mother a bit more,” I decided. “How and where she died, and why Jackson might’ve concealed it from his dad. Someone needs to break it to Stuart Lowe at some point, too.”

  Stephen grimaced. “I don’t fancy that job. I reckon he’ll explode when someone tells him.”

  I reckoned he was bang on the money, but it didn’t feel right to leave Stuart in the dark, no matter how gruff and unpleasant he’d been when we went to see him. But before I broke the news to him, it would be good to have some more information about what actually happened to her.

  Perhaps then I’d be able to explain why Stuart hadn’t been told in the first place and what was happening with the house in her name.

  Thirteen

  Lucy hefted the backpack back up as it tried to slip off her shoulders. She was breathing heavily, pink in the face and fine hairs sticking to her damp forehead, but she was nearly there. She hadn’t expected the packages to be so damn heavy, and she wished again that Jackson was here.

  She didn’t miss the prick. That wasn’t it. She missed the money he brought home to pay the bills and feed Eva. She missed him keeping the shady people that kept visiting off their backs, and right now, Lucy missed his car keys most of all. She didn’t know where they were because he’d never wanted her driving the car, so the useless hunk of metal was sitting on the drive while she dragged herself all the way across town with what felt like a dozen bricks in her backpack.

  She checked her cracked phone screen for the nth time, reassuring herself that she wasn’t going to miss the train. She had to get this one, or she might not be back in time to get Eva from school, and that was unacceptable. Her sister couldn’t know anything about this because even at six, she was too perceptive, and Lucy couldn’t stand for the girl to guess the truth; that Lucy was doing Jackson’s dirty work.

  She’d rather be literally anywhere else at that moment, but she didn’t have a choice. If she wanted Eva safe and Jackson’s scary jerk of a boss to stay away from their door, she needed to do as he wanted. Lucy’d never done this before, but loads of people did it every day without getting caught, didn’t they?

  She tried to reassure herself as she walked in towards York station on shaky legs, but her heart was still hammering loud enough to make the blood thump in her ears. She knew she looked guilty, covered in sweat and skittishly looking in every direction, but she couldn’t stop herself. There weren’t any cops around, but there were multiple cameras mounted on almost every corner of the old, stone building, and she swallowed thickly around her dry throat.

  Lucy kept her head down, the baseball cap on her head giving some semblance of anonymity, and tried to think what an innocent person would do. She was gasping for a drink and made her way into a nearby WHSmiths, figuring that using the self-service machines would be much better than talking face to face with a cashier. Doing that might make her crack, and she couldn’t afford to fall apart now.

  She grabbed some juice and a box of cigs, plus a kids’ magazine she could give Eva when she got home, a special treat. It had a cheap, bright pink, plastic tiara stuck to the front in a plastic bag, and Lucy kept her eyes on the toy as she waited in the queue rather than accidentally meet anyone’s eyes. Fretfully checking her watch again told her that she had enough time, but only just, and she fidgeted on the spot, wishing the line would hurry up.

  Paying at the self-service took longer than it should have because her hands were shaking so badly, but Lucy managed it. The train station was getting busier, and she had to weave between people, climbing up the stairs to cross the bridge to the platform she needed. She wasn’t good with heights, and glancing over the side of the bridge, catching sight of the hard train tracks below, made her feel slightly sick. She hurried on.

  The train was just pulling into the platform as she got down the stairs, out of breath and feeling faint. She hadn’t been able to stomach any breakfast this morning and was regretting it now. The last thing she needed was to draw attention by fainting, so she pulled the juice out of her bag and took a couple of long drinks. It was sickly sweet, but it wet her throat and did the job.

  She took her backpack off to stuff the plastic bag inside, unaware that there was someone close to her until it was too late. Lucy heard the footsteps clicking down the platform and looked up, meeting the woman’s eyes before she could stop herself. The woman, dressed to the nines in a clearly tailored business suit, glanced down at Lucy’s open rucksack and her pale eyes widened.

  Lucy froze for a moment too long before she made herself twist away, putting her back to the businesswoman as she struggled to tug the bag’s faulty zip closed. The woman’s clicking heels moved away, and Lucy looked up in time to see the woman board the train. They met eyes briefly before she disappeared from sight, and Lucy tried to breathe through the panic in her chest. She’d been so stupid, and she had no idea whether that woman was going to report her or not. With what she’d seen in Lucy’s bag, she’d be an idiot not to.

  The train was due to pull away at any moment, and Lucy desperately wanted to let it leave without. She could slip away back in York’s tourist crowds and escape notice before that woman had time to call anyone. But the drugs had to be delivered today without fail, and if she caught a later train, she wouldn’t be there when Eva got out of school.

  Swallowing her nausea, Lucy forced her legs to move and hurried down the platform towards the back end of the train. If she had to be on the same train as the businesswoman, maybe putting some distance between them would help. It was the only thing she could think to do.

  The doors beeped and closed moments after she’d sat down, out of breath and feeling uncomfortably sticky. She avoided looking around the carriage, dreading meeting anyone else’s eyes or having her face caught on any cameras, and hunched her shoulders, bracing for a long, tense journey. Once she’d dropped the packages off, she could relax and focus on how she was going to buy dinner for Eva tonight, but she wasn’t there yet.

  She’d done worse things than this in the past, but she’d never felt so exposed, so vulnerable to being caught. There were cameras everywhere, and she felt like she stuck out like a sore thumb. If she’d been dressed up as that businesswoman and had been able to keep her cool too, no one would have paid any attention to her, she was sure.

  “Anything to eat or drink?” the strident, cheerful voice and the rattle of a trolley startled her badly enough that Lucy almost jumped to her feet.

  The food cart hadn’t reached her yet, and she managed to settle herself back down in time for the train employee to pass by, keeping her head well down as she pretended to sleep against the train’s grimy window. The trolley passed by, and Lucy relaxed in increments, darting small looks from under her cap at the people sitting close by. One was typing away on her laptop, another was busy with his phone, and a third within sight was reading the paper.

  There was a discarded copy of the Metro on the seat beside Lucy, and she hesitantly picked it up. Her hands and arms felt as stiff as if she’d been lifting heavy boxes from all the tension, and she winced as she straightened them out. As she flipped through the paper, her heart stilled briefly in her chest as she reached the third page.

  A picture of Victor Roberts stared out at her, put right alongside another grainy photograph of Jackson. She froze, longing to scrunch the paper up and get it as far away from her as she could. But other people were readin
g the same damn paper on the train, and she couldn’t draw attention to herself by acting like a nutter, as badly as she wanted to.

  The sick feeling rose up stronger than ever as she couldn’t stop herself from glancing over the article. It talked about a surge in drug overdoses in York and how the police were warning the public to be cautious with what they took. There was no mention of her, no mention that they were hunting anyone, and Lucy didn’t know whether that was better or worse.

  Her mind raced. What if they knew and were keeping it out of the papers to give her a false sense of security? What if, right now, they were already stationed outside the house, ready to pounce on her?

  Eva. That was what she kept returning to. She could not lose Eva. Her sister was the most important thing in her life, and she couldn’t let her go into care. She was fully aware of how shaky she was as a parent figure, and she’d never asked for this, but she did her best, and it was good enough. Better than being locked up in an underfunded, filthy government kids home where there was barely any care and certainly no love. Lucy was doing this for Eva, to keep her safe from Jackson’s boss, but it was also the very thing that could get her separated from the little girl. The rest… she couldn’t think about it too hard. She’d done what she had to, and that was that.

  The train trundled on irrevocably towards Scarborough, and Lucy’s heart continued to race in her chest, speeding up every time she thought of another way she could be found guilty, another way that Eva could be taken from her. The stress had her feeling faint again, and she choked down some more of the juice, very careful about how she opened her bag this time. She wished that she had time to have a smoke before she got on the train. She was dying for one now, and nothing could calm her down like the nicotine. She should have bought some patches instead, but she hadn’t been thinking straight.

  Despite her panic, or maybe because of it, she fell asleep towards the end of the journey and woke up to the sound of movement and chatter around her. The rest of the train carriage was standing up, packing up their things and gathering their things to get off the train. Lucy only had her overfull rucksack, which she pulled onto her back with a grimace as she stood up. She shuffled along the aisle with the rest of the train as they slowly filed off the carriage, her anxiety returning in full force as she woke up and rubbed the grit from her tired eyes.