DI Mitchell Yorkshire Crime Thrillers: Book 1-3

by Oliver Davies

  He nodded, uncharacteristically meek. “I will.”

  “And make sure Liam’s absolutely happy with it, get him to describe every last detail as much as he can remember. And don’t suggest things, leading questions, I don’t want his memory getting led in the wrong direction, because this was a while ago now.”

  “I got it,” Samuel said, looking put out. “I’ll do fine, sir.”

  I took a breath. “I’m sure you will, you’re a talented artist,” I said, and Samuel looked pleased, even as he tried to hide it. “But we don’t need a masterpiece,” I couldn’t help but add, “just an accurate picture, as simple as possible, alright?”

  “Yes, yes,” Samuel said.

  I clapped him on the shoulder. “Good man. Thanks, Samuel.”

  “Mitchell?” Hogan called.

  I winced. “Did you tell her I was here?” I hissed at Samuel, who hastily shook his head. Preparing myself to be told off, I headed over to her office. “I know you said I should take the day off but at the--”

  “Darren,” Hogan said flatly. I took note of her serious expression and came up short.

  “Yes, ma’am?” I said.

  “The tech team finished with Graham’s phone. They found some emails on there.”

  “Emails?” I repeated. Graham and I had never texted, only talked on the phone, and I knew he much preferred to use the house phone rather than any kind of technology. “What kind of emails?”

  “I’ve sent you the transcript,” she said. She paused. “You were right to keep looking.” I stared at her, and she met my gaze steadily. “There’s more to it than it seems on the surface. We’re still waiting on the Leeds postmortem, so I hope that’ll give more answers.”

  “Right,” I said, taken aback. “I hope so too.” I hovered awkwardly for a moment, before gesturing back to my desk. “I’ll go see the emails.”

  She waved me out, and I practically ran over to my desk, fumbling with my mouse to find the email containing the transcript.

  “Well damn,” I muttered, staring at what she’d sent me. “Kay!” I called, waving her over. She pulled a chair up next to me, Lexi coming over to settle at her feet, and swore quietly after she’d finished reading.

  “Guess you were right all along,” she said. I just nodded, still shellshocked over the news.

  The emails were brief and vague, but the malicious intent behind them was clear.

  May, I can’t keep quiet about it anymore, Graham had sent. The email history before then was blank. You need to tell the police or I will. I can’t do it any longer.

  Really? the recipient had replied, Not even for your wife? For Sarah?

  A long time passed before Graham replied again. She’s got nothing to do with it. She doesn’t know anything.

  Keep quiet, and she stays out of it.

  There was only one more email, sent not a week before Graham died. It was a blurry picture that I’d had to lean close to the screen to make out. It was Sarah, waiting at York train station with a suitcase. Someone had been watching her, and the picture sent a clear threat to Graham.

  I felt sick. The first email had been addressed to someone called May, and I thought again about the women’s-sized footprint outside Graham’s house before Kay interrupted my thought process.

  “Is Alice still with Sarah?” she asked.

  “Far as I know,” I said as I sent a text to Alice to confirm. “I want someone keeping an eye on the house.”

  Kay nodded, so I headed over to check that that was alright with Hogan, who agreed with me.

  “I thought Ahmed could do it,” she said, referring to Maha. “Once she’s out of the interview room.”

  “Yeah. There was a kid at the cafe who saw Graham, ma’am--” I started to explain, but she put up a hand to stop me.

  “Put it all in the report, Mitchell. I trust you’ve got a handle on it?”

  “Yes, chief.”

  As I left her office, Maha came out of the interview room with Liam in tow. I waited for her to hand the teenager off to Samuel before waving her over. I showed her the emails.

  She muttered something under her breath, her expression shocked. “I should keep watch on Sarah, sir,” she said.

  “Exactly what we thought,” I said. “Can you let them know what’s happening, in the gentlest terms?”

  “Something like ‘We’ve had some worrying new information, and your safety may be at risk’?”

  “Perfect,” I said. “Though Alice will probably quiz you on it.”

  Maha nodded. “No worries, sir, I got it.”

  “I know.”

  When she’d headed out, I checked my phone and saw a text from Alice.

  Sarah didn’t want me babysitting anymore, she’d texted. I’m back in Lockdale. Why?

  I called her, and she picked up on the second ring. In fairly general terms, I relayed what had happened.

  “It’s not urgent,” I said, “but I’ve sent Officer Ahmed up to keep an eye on her. Just… be alert, alright? If anything feels off in the slightest, call me.”

  Alice was silent for a moment. “You’re scaring me,” she said quietly. “What’s this about?”

  “Graham received some threats,” I said, rubbing my forehead. “Threats against Sarah too, but not against you. I just want you to be careful.”

  Her breath audibly caught. “It was definitely murder, then?”

  I made a noncommittal noise. “Look, we can’t say for certain, but someone definitely wished him harm.”

  “Someone like that woman at the cafe?” Alice said.

  My thinking hadn’t quite had the chance to work through everything yet, with what had been going on and my worries for Sarah, but once she suggested it, I found myself nodding.

  But what I said was, “Perhaps. I can’t say too much. I’m sorry. I promise I’ll let you know as soon as anything’s confirmed.”

  “Alright, thank you, Darren,” she said, a little stiffly, before hanging up.

  I turned Alice’s suggestion over in my head. The woman in the cafe had had a heated discussion with Graham, and then one of the footprints outside Graham’s house had been too small for an average man. But that had been the footprint for the break-in, not the recent one. Briefly, I longed for the prevalence of CCTV in the city where there were cameras in all the shops and down almost every street. Not so here in rural Yorkshire where only rich folk with antique cars bothered with a camera on the front of their house.

  I sighed. It was what it was.

  I looked over the emails again, zeroing in on the name, ‘May’. The email address was nonsense and didn’t mean anything to me. The email from the tech team that’d come in with the transcript said that they’d tried to trace the email, but it’d been sent via a VPN, and there wasn’t much they could do.

  Whoever had sent this was smart, I thought, just like whoever had left no traces in Graham’s house and almost no leads to follow up either. These emails had been deleted and had to be recovered by the tech team which suggested that the killer had had access to Graham’s phone before he died and purposefully deleted them.

  If the person who sent these and the killer were the same person, I cautioned myself. I couldn’t afford to jump to conclusions. This was a solid leg-up, but it wasn’t bulletproof evidence.

  I searched online for anyone called ‘May’ within Lockdale, and then checked the police database, looking for anyone with convictions or who’d filed reports with us. Nothing. The only people called ‘May’ in Lockdale were a couple of ladies over seventy who filed reports about minor crimes. None of them was a young woman in their twenties.

  I rubbed my throbbing head and chewed my thumbnail before going on to try school records and marriage certificates, looking for name changes or anything of the sort. But there were too many possibilities and not enough time.

  Kay patted me on the shoulder as the sun was beginning to sink beneath the hills. “Come on, you,” she said. “There’s always tomorrow. We’ve made huge pro
gress today.”

  I groaned and passed a hand over my tired eyes. “I know,” I said. “It’s just--”

  “You’ve got the bit between your teeth and want to finish it?”

  “Yes,” I sighed.

  “Yeah, well, even police detectives can’t live on nothing but coffee. You’ll end up with a stomach ulcer one of these days.”

  “Probably,” I said miserably, before yawning.

  “Home time, sleepyhead.” She called Lexi over from where the dog had been napping in the dog bed Kay had managed to sneak into the station. I had a feeling that Lexi’s presence in the station was becoming more permanent than temporary. I couldn’t really find it in myself to mind. The dog, though she frequently deposited fur on my trousers and tried to trip me up every time I went to get coffee, wasn’t actually ill-tempered or badly behaved, just keen for attention.

  Kay drove me the very short way home and prodded me until I got out the car. “Everything’ll look better in the morning!” she called through the open window.

  I shook my head at her and let myself into the house, shutting the cold out. The heating wasn’t on, so it wasn’t much warmer inside, but at least it wasn’t damp.

  Falling into bed, I had so much on my mind I doubted I’d sleep at all. But the day had been both exciting and exhausting, and I ended up passing out within minutes.

  Fourteen

  The first port of call for the next morning was going to see Sarah. Alice wasn’t with her anymore, but instead back in Lockdale, and I wished I could’ve gotten to see her.

  “So the name ‘May’ doesn’t mean anything to you?” Kay was asking as I came back into Sarah’s house after delivering a cup of tea to Maha, who was sat outside in a patrol car and gratefully received my offering of a hot drink.

  My heart sank as Sarah shook her head. “No, I didn’t know of him having any female friends, to be honest. He socialised with the men down the pub and you, really, Darren,” she said, nodding in my direction. “He never was one for having a lot of friends, even when we first met and were living down in town.”

  She sipped her tea for a moment, and I gathered my thoughts as I sat down.

  “Were you aware of him being in contact with anyone by email?” Kay asked.

  Sarah stilled, turning to frown at us both. “This woman… emailed him?” she said. “You’re not trying to tell me he--”

  “No,” I said sharply. “We have no reason to believe he was unfaithful, Sarah. There was nothing at all like that in the emails.” I let my tone soften into something more personal as I added, “I don’t believe he ever would’ve done that. He loved you very much.”

  Her shoulders sagged. “Thank God for that, at least,” she murmured. She gathered herself together again. “And no, I didn’t know he even used the laptop I bought him except for films occasionally, but he wasn’t big on those either. Big technophobe was my Graham.”

  “He sent the emails from his phone, actually,” I said.

  “Really?” Sarah looked even more surprised. “No, I had no idea.”

  I tried a different tack since we didn’t seem to be getting anywhere with this line of questioning. “Did you know he helped at a homeless shelter in York?”

  She blinked. “I knew he helped at a charity,” she said, “not a homeless shelter specifically.” She looked briefly troubled. “He was briefly homeless as a teenager, you know, but he didn’t like to talk about it.”

  I hummed. “That’s what we heard.”

  “He was always kind,” she said, her gaze on the floor. She seemed to be talking more to herself than us now. “He did extra hours at the school, and he was down at Maggie’s every other day.”

  “Maggie’s?” Kay said.

  Sarah waved a hand. “Yes, an elderly neighbour. Or as close to a neighbour you get up here, where the houses are five miles apart.” She gave a weak chuckle.

  It seemed a bit of a stretch, but I asked, “It couldn’t have been her that he was emailing?” Maggie had a slight similarity to May, but I wasn’t convinced.

  Sarah shook her head. “Oh, no. Maggie’s got dementia. She can’t work the telephone or the TV these days. It’s sad, but Graham often went to help her out, going for walks with her round the lanes.”

  I suppose it was a privilege to learn that my dead friend wasn’t only as kind and patient as I’d known him to be in my personal interactions with him, but even more so, with this charity work, I’d not known about and helping his elderly neighbour. It didn’t make it any less saddening, though.

  “Would Maggie remember Graham’s visits, do you think?” Kay said.

  Sarah shook her head with a regretful expression. “But her nurse would, I’m sure. I’ve forgotten the girl’s name, but she’s kind to Maggie, Graham said.” She glanced between Kay and me. “I hardly think this is going to help your investigation, Darren. She’s just a little old lady that Graham helped out.”

  “Thank you for telling us,” I said, neither agreeing nor disagreeing. I could admit it wasn’t likely to help, but I was determined to look at every possible aspect of this. If you examined every twist and turn of the maze, you would eventually find the centre. I hoped, anyway. Life wasn’t always as neatly planned as a country-house maze.

  I got up to head out, and Kay followed me, but Sarah gestured for us to wait.

  “Let me give you some cake to take with you. Alice’s way of distracting me was to bake a half dozen cakes, which admittedly was effective, but it’s not good for my blood clots to eat so many sweet treats, even if it is delicious.” She shook her head with a smile and pottered through to the kitchen.

  I watched her go, noting that she seemed, though not entirely herself, much better than she had been before Alice had stayed with her. It must have been hard rattling around this house by herself after sharing it with Graham for so long. Graham had often had the house to himself, of course, but Sarah must have been very used to his presence.

  “Darren,” Sarah called from the kitchen, taking me out of my thoughts. She didn’t say it loudly, but there was something in the tone of her voice that made me lurch forwards, hurrying down the hall.

  “Are you alright?” I said, glancing around worriedly. She was staring out of the window, a piece of half-wrapped cake in hand, and raised a hand to point outside.

  “There was— I don’t know,” she stuttered.

  “What did you see?”

  She turned to look at me. “A person? All in black, behind the wall.” She frowned. “But maybe it was just a bird or a sheep, I don’t know. I’m sorry, I’m probably—”

  “I saw something like that too,” I said lowly without meaning to, staring out of the window. There was nothing there now, but I could picture exactly what I’d seen right before I walked in on Graham’s slumped form in the hall.

  The implication that what I’d seen had been real and maybe a person, after all, made me launch into motion, running out of the kitchen and then out the front door without even pausing to respond to Kay’s baffled queries as to what was going on.

  Maha was in her car and threw open the door as I burst out.

  “What is it, what’s wr--?” she started, looking shocked at my sudden appearance.

  “Did you see someone? Someone in black?” I demanded. She shook her head, and I took off running around the side of the house, glad that I’d not taken my boots off when we went into Sarah’s house.

  It crossed my mind that this person spying on us could have a gun, but I doubted it. They hadn’t been attacking, just watching.

  I got around the back wall of the house and onto the moors, grunting at the effort it took to climb the incline. Stood on the nearest hillock, I scanned the area but couldn’t see anything. There wasn’t any shelter for miles, but the land itself was so uneven and rutted that a person might have plenty of places to lie low. I ran further out, almost stumbling in the mud and marshy grass, but I didn’t see anything. They’d run off too fast and hidden in the time it’d taken for m
e to get out the house. I cursed, slapping my thigh.

  We spent another hour up there, Kay and I, with Maha keeping watch on the front of the house. I called into the station to let them know what had happened, just in case anyone else in town or the neighbouring houses, such as they were, reported a strange figure in black skulking around. We checked Sarah’s small shed at the side of their garden, and walked a half-mile out onto the moor, but whoever had been watching the house had slipped through our fingers if, in fact, it had been a person at all.

  “Dammit,” I muttered.

  “Come on,” Kay said. She was beginning to shiver. “I’m starving. We’ll warm up, then head over to chat to Maggie, okay?”

  “Okay,” I conceded. There wasn’t much else to be done now.

  We headed back down, Kay almost slipping on the mud, and were greeted by Sarah with mugs of hot cocoa and slabs of victoria sponge.

  “You saw someone like that too?” Sarah said, looking at me intently. She’d not missed what I’d said.

  I sighed. Kay looked over at me, eyebrows raised. “You didn’t mention that,” she said.

  I shrugged back at her. “I did put it in my statement, but I wasn’t sure whether or not I’d imagined it.”

  “When?” Sarah pressed. “When did you see it?”

  I filled my mouth full of cake to delay having to answer, but Sarah’s expression was so determined I didn’t think I’d be able to get away with not telling her.

  “Right before I found Graham,” I said quietly. “I thought it was most likely to have been just an animal, but now I don’t know.”

  She stared down at her own cup of tea, which she’d not touched since we’d sat back down. “It’s either the spookiest coincidence I’ve ever heard or…” she trailed off, and I just nodded silently.

  Maybe I was leaping to conclusions, but it was entirely possible that the person Sarah just saw had killed Graham. The same one who had disappeared behind the garden wall when I’d found Graham dead. Maybe. We had no evidence, though.