“And has this happened before?” I asked again.
“No.”
“Any threats, or other incidents? Anyone following you?” I didn’t want to scare her, but I needed to be sure.
“No,” she said again, before looking less sure. “I mean, not that I’ve noticed.”
“Alright, thank you,” I said.
“And the… birds,” Stephen said, hesitating before he continued, “they didn’t mean anything to you? It wasn’t a message of any kind?”
Abby looked confused and shook her head again, before tucking her hair behind her ear, which had several piercings up the side. “No,” she said. “I have no idea. I’m sorry.”
“Did the university remove them?”
“Yeah, a couple of the maintenance guys, I think,” she said.
Stephen nodded. “Did you happen to take any photos before they got taken away?”
Abby wrinkled her small nose. “Oh no,” she said. “I couldn’t look at them. It freaked me out, seeing them like that. I locked myself in until they were taken away. I couldn’t even step over them.” She shuddered.
“And you’re a second-year?” Stephen asked, taking a different tack. She nodded. “Is there any rivalry academically there, or-?”
“No, no,” Abby said. She laughed awkwardly. “I do okay at work, but I’m not top of the class or anything. And lectures don’t start for a while yet, anyway.”
I nodded. “Okay, thank you. Is there nothing else you want to tell us?” She shook her head silently. “Alright, then.” I reached into my pocket for a business card, before realising I hadn’t had any York ones printed off with my new rank yet.
Stephen shot me a knowing look and already had one of his cards pulled out.
“If you think of anything, or see anything, call us right away?” he said gently. “Even if it seems like something small.”
“Thank you,” she said, taking it. “It’s really weird,” she added, “I don’t get why someone would do this to me.” She was tearing up. “I’m sorry, I’m not usually-”
“Have you got a friend in the halls?” I asked. “Someone you can talk to?”
“Yeah, I’ve got friends in Vanbrugh,” she said, sniffling. “I’ll go over there.” She’d pulled a tissue from the box on her desk and summoned a weak smile. “I’m okay, really. Thanks for coming over.”
“No problem.”
We saw ourselves out, heading down the multiple flights of stairs and out the front door into the balmy September late afternoon. I knew that the university term hadn’t even started yet, and it seemed strange that this had happened so early, before the first years had even arrived. If it was related to university matters, it would make more sense for something like this to happen later on, after relationships and friendships had broken down. But Abby said she had no idea who it could have been, and her ex-boyfriend waiting a month to retaliate seemed unusual.
“I don’t like this,” I muttered as we walked through the court and followed the signs towards Halifax reception. I wanted to ask whether someone had taken pictures of the birds before they were removed.
“It’s all pretty weird,” Stephen agreed.
We entered reception and found a lady sitting behind the desk on the left. She looked to be about sixty, her hair starting to grey slightly near her hairline.
“Hi, I’m DCI Mitchell, this is DI Huxley,” I said. “We’re here about the incident that was reported.”
“Oh yes,” she said. “Michael dealt with that, I think. He’s in the post room, just over there. Here, I’ll let you in. The students need their keycards for it, so none of the post goes missing.”
She’d gotten to her feet while she talked and opened the door for us.
“Michael?” she said, and the man inside turned around. He looked surprised to see us for a moment before he nodded.
“You’re here about the dead bird thing?” he asked, as the receptionist left the room.
“We are. Was it you who removed them?” Stephen asked.
“Yeah, nasty business. Horrible thing to do to someone.”
“And did you take any photos before removing them?”
To my relief, he nodded. “Yeah, just in case. You want to see?” He took out his phone, flicking through it before handing it to me.
I frowned down at the picture for a long moment before passing it to Stephen.
“Can you send us that, please?”
“Sure,” Michael said agreeably. “You got an email or something?”
Stephen gave Michael’s phone back to him and pulled out another of his business cards. Clearly, I really needed to get some printed.
“Email’s there,” he said, pointing. “If you can send any pictures that you have to that as soon as possible, that’d be hugely appreciated.”
“Yeah, ‘course, no problem.”
“Thank you,” I said. “And what did you do with the birds themselves? Have you still got them?” I really wished they’d left the birds where they’d been put until we had gotten here, but I understood that that was hardly practical when it’d been in a block full of students.
Michael’s thick eyebrows lifted in surprise, but he nodded. “Yeah, I didn’t get round to burying them yet. They’re out the back here.”
He led the way out of the building and round the side, walking a short distance before he reached a fenced-off area, which he unlocked.
“Stuck them with all the gardening stuff,” he explained. “Since it can be locked off and all.”
The plastic bag on the floor looked harmless, but knowing what was in it made me reluctant to pick it up. I stepped forwards and picked it up anyway, glancing inside to check that both birds were there. They were and beginning to reek too. Thank god it’s not summer, I thought.
“Alright, thanks for that.” I nodded to Michael.
“Glad to help,” he said, locking up behind us as we left.
I held the bag away from me as we headed back to the car park. It was a blustery day, but the wind itself was mild, and the sun was out. The leaves were starting to fall, but they hadn’t all turned yet, and it’d be a while before winter set in properly.
“What do you think, then?” Stephen asked as we were getting back in the car. I dumped the bag in the boot and shut it, wishing I could wash my hands, but that’d have to wait until we got back to the station.
“I don’t know yet,” I admitted. “I think we need to go drop these birds off at the station and then visit the ex-boyfriend.”
“Sure.” Stephen checked his watch. “Tonight, though? It’s already half five.”
I shot him a look. “You got someplace to be?”
He shrugged. “Home? Back to my missus?”
I huffed. “Fair enough. We’ll track down the ex-boyfriend in the morning.”
“Thanks.” He paused. “No partner waiting at home for you, then?”
I rolled my eyes. “No.”
Heading back to the station, I turned the pictures of the birds over in my mind. On the small phone screen, they hadn’t been terribly easy to see, and I was looking forward to seeing them blown up on the computer. But I’d seen enough to think that the birds, because there had been two of them left outside Abby’s door, had been carefully placed there, rather than dropped or tossed. It left the interesting question of why the birds had been put there at all, and what purpose they were meant to achieve, if there had been any other purpose intended than just to upset Abby.
It wasn’t the murder case I’d been tentatively expecting, but the puzzle of the thing intrigued me, and I looked forward to delving deeper into the case.
Three
The next morning, I got up early to go for a run around York before work. It was a beautiful city, especially in the quiet, golden light before the crowds of tourists, locals, and commuters started to flood the streets. I took a winding route towards work, exploring the surrounding area and using my phone map to keep myself from getting lost. I knew York well enough, but
all the little back streets were a maze and, though it wasn’t a huge city, it was easy to get turned around.
I turned up at work, sweaty and pink in the face, and headed immediately for the showers, which I’d asked Stephen about yesterday. He’d seemed bemused by the idea of running to work, and I took it that he didn’t have the running bug himself.
The showers were hot and pleasant, and I headed towards my desk with my hair dampening my collar. My curls went flat when wet but would spring up as they dried.
Stephen wasn’t in yet when I arrived, nor was Gaskell. It seemed like the folk here tended to stick to the nine-to-five, at least normally. They had enough personnel to do that, I thought absently as I made myself comfy, unlike Lockdale’s small staff.
I opened up my email, but Stephen hadn’t sent over the bird pictures yet, if he’d received them from Michael, so I started on the paperwork from yesterday, writing up what Abby had said and what we’d found out so far, which wasn’t exactly an overwhelming amount.
I looked up the ex-boyfriend Abby had mentioned and blinked in surprise, before my stomach turned. The guy had been reported for domestic abuse about two years ago, not by Abby but by another woman. I hoped that Abby not mentioning it meant that the boyfriend, Gerry, hadn’t done anything to her, and she hadn’t known about it, not that she’d kept that from us.
A man with a record like that might do something as disturbing as leave dead birds, I thought, but it didn’t really add up that he’d waited so long after they’d split up to do it.
Stephen turned up after I was getting into my second coffee and looked unsurprised to see me.
“Run into work, did you?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said absently, still focused on my computer. “Did the university guy send you the pictures?”
“I’ll check,” Stephen said as he sat down at his desk with a sigh, loading up his computer. The email was there, and he sent it over to me.
I opened it up and sat back, scanning the strange arrangement the birds had been put into.
“It’s weird,” Stephen said, looking at the same picture. “Like they’ve been… displayed or something.”
I nodded, taking a sip of coffee. “Like they’ve been positioned deliberately,” I agreed. “Why, though? If someone wanted to unsettle her, they could’ve just dumped the birds and booked it, but instead, these were laid out, like this.”
Both birds had their wings spread, like they were flying, and their heads turned to the side so that their blank eyes stared out. It was unnerving, and a cold shiver went up my back.
“Gross,” Stephen muttered.
“I’m going to see if the lab’s got anything for us.” I stood up, closing down the picture.
“Cool, and I’m going to get some tea.”
I shook my head and walked away towards the back of the building, heading down a level. I’d handed over the dead birds to the labs yesterday in hopes of getting some information from them for us, though what exactly they’d be able to find, I wasn’t sure.
“Hi,” I said once I’d arrived, speaking to a woman in a white coat who was focused on a machine I couldn’t identify. She looked young enough to be freshly out of university and had her blond hair tied back in a neat bun. She was almost as tall as me, and slender like a long-distance runner.
She looked up, like she hadn’t heard me come in. “Hi, DCI Mitchell, right?”
“Yeah,” I said, surprised. “I don’t know your name, though, sorry.”
She laughed, not unkindly. “Don’t worry. You’re the new kid. We’ve only got to learn your name, you’ve got about fifty new names.”
I smiled. “Sounds about right.”
“I’m Sam, or Sammy, Rosanes. Good to meet you. You’re here about the birds?”
“Sure am,” I said, amused by this whirlwind.
“Right.” She left the machine whirring away and went over to a desk near the back, where the two birds were laid out. I wrinkled my nose as I followed her over and Sam pulled a sympathetic face. “They’re getting a little ripe, I know. I get used to it.” She pulled on a pair of plastic gloves and gestured to the right-hand bird.
“So we’ve got a juvenile male crow here, and an adult female magpie,” she said, and I nodded. I didn’t know much about birds, but these weren’t exactly rare. “They’re common as dirt, so we’re not looking at any help with finding where these were caught because of their breed. We did have a poke through their stomachs, and though we haven’t got the resources to analyse the contents properly right now, it looked like local plant matter to me.”
“So probably caught in York?”
She nodded. “Probably. Then there’s how they were killed, which was very neatly. We’re looking at probably a snare, something that strangled them. Done by someone who knew what they were doing, I would think.”
“Interesting,” I said. “So they weren’t just picked up dead, they were killed for this specifically?”
“That’s my best guess,” she said, gesturing with her hands as she spoke. “I know they’re starting to smell a bit, but they’re not actually too old, maybe a day or two. I think this was done to order, so to speak.”
I grimaced. “I almost wish you’d said they’d just died of old age or something.”
She shook her head. “Yeah, no, sorry. This was deliberate. Not especially sadistic, I have to say, but neat and careful.”
“Like someone’s had a fair bit of practice,” I noted.
She hummed. “Maybe so.”
“Right, thank you, Sam. You’ve been very helpful.” I glanced around the lab which wasn’t especially large but was impressively full of equipment. “I gotta say, it’s nice to work in a station with its own lab, much more convenient.”
She chuckled. “I bet. I couldn’t stand being out in the sticks; much too far away from all the science.”
I huffed. “We did alright. Thanks again, Sam.”
“No problem.”
I went back upstairs to update Stephen on what Sam had said.
“Not especially comforting,” was his muttered response when I was finished.
“My thoughts exactly.”
“So we’re off to pay the old boyfriend a visit?”
“Yeah, and he’s a piece of work,” I said, shrugging my coat on as I moved towards the corridor and Stephen followed after.
“What’d he do?”
“Got a record for domestic abuse.”
“Against Abby? She didn’t-”
I waved my hand. “No, it was the woman he was with before Abby.”
Stephen hummed, frowning, as we left the station and headed towards our shared patrol car.
Stephen yawned as he was doing up his seatbelt, and I glanced at him. “Did you have a late one?”
He chuckled. “My daughter’s been sleepwalking,” he said. “She walked into our room three times last night to jump on our bed.”
I tried to put on a sympathetic face, before it broke into a grin. He rolled his eyes at me. “Yeah, you can laugh,” he said, “but it’s not so funny when you’ve got a bony six-year jumping onto your belly at two am.”
I snorted, starting up the car as I said, “Crikey. Has she done it before?”
“Sleepwalk?” Stephen shrugged. “Yeah, a couple of times. But not usually three times in the same night.” He sighed, looking tired.
“Take her to a sleep specialist?” I offered.
“We’re trying. On a waiting list with the NHS.”
“Well, good luck, mate.”
He gave me a nod, and then put the address of the boyfriend, Gerry, into the car’s navigation system. Other than the electronic directions telling me where to go, the car was quiet, and I didn’t mind it. Stephen looked on the verge of taking a nap with his head against the window, and the traffic was busy enough that I had to focus. Whilst I’d had oodles of practice navigating tiny, winding lanes in the country and getting stuck behind tractors, dealing with multiple lanes and heavy traffic wasn’t
something I’d had much experience with recently.
I got us to Gerry’s place on the other side of York and pulled up outside. Stephen had nodded off, and I gave him a nudge on the shoulder, making him start awake.
“You in the land of the living?” I teased.
He sent me a blear-eyed glare. “Just about,” he grumbled. He looked around, peering up at the run-down terrace house we were parked outside. The neighbouring houses were nice enough, with neat little front gardens, but this one had a sagging porch, bits of rubbish scattered about and mouldy furniture lying on the lawn.
“We here?” Stephen said, his voice thick with sleep.
“This is the one,” I said. “If he hasn’t moved since Abby got his address, of course.”
“What’s his surname again?”
“Pollock,” I said after a second where I struggled to remember. He’d had a Facebook account, but nothing posted on there within the last couple of years. “Gerry Pollock.”
Stephen nodded. “Alright, then.” He got out of the car, and I followed, patting my pockets to check for my phone, wallet and badge, before locking up the car.
Stephen knocked on the door, and I came to stand a little way behind him, looking up at the upstairs windows to see if there was anyone about. There was a flicker of movement in the left-hand downstairs window as a blind was tweaked open, and then I heard footsteps coming to answer the door.
“Hello?” It was a young man, around Abby’s age, with a boyish face and hair like a surfer. He frowned at us, looking vaguely wary but not outright alarmed.
“Mr Pollock?” Stephen said. His voice was steady but stern, completely unlike the tone he’d used with Abby. He’d straightened himself up, too, emphasising every inch of his height, and with a face like a fighter’s, he looked intimidating.
Gerry Pollock clearly noticed it too, and he took an instinctual step backwards, even though he was nearly as tall as Stephen.
“Uh, yeah?” Gerry said.
Stephen raised his eyebrows. “Can we come in?” It wasn’t a question.
“Sure.” Gerry backed up and led the way into the sitting room, strewn with piles of laundry and old dinner plates. “Why’re you here?” Gerry asked. He stayed standing, and so did we.
DI Mitchell Yorkshire Crime Thrillers: Book 1-3 Page 26