Vicious Cycle (A DCI Thatcher Yorkshire Crimes Book 9)

by Oliver Davies

  “Eljas?” She asked with a nod. “He does. Why?”

  “Is he here now? I’d like to speak with him.”

  The woman nodded, rising from her chair and smoothing the fabric of her top down. “Is he in trouble?”

  “No,” I replied. Not that I knew of, anyway.

  “I can take you to him if you like?”

  “Lead the way,” I said, following her around the desk and through the building. We walked out to the green, the lawn looking like it had benefited from the recent rain. The woman walked us down away from the building. Surrounded now by trees and green, it was easy to forget that we were only a mile or so from the city centre. A few birds were hanging about, building nests and looking for worms, and across the green, a man stood tending to some plants.

  “Eljas!” The woman called. He lifted his head, pushing his cap back.

  “Alright, Amanda?” He answered.

  She stopped a few steps back, wrapping her arms around herself. “This is Detective Sergeant Mills. He’s here to see you.”

  Eljas blinked, surprised and dropped the pitchfork he held, wiping his muddy hands on his trousers.

  “Detective?” He asked, walking over to shake my hand. “How can I help?”

  “There’s just something that I wanted to talk to you about, no need to worry. Thank you, Amanda,” I said to the young woman. She nodded and wandered back to the clubhouse, glancing over her shoulder a few times. When she was far enough away, I turned to Eljas. He was a tall chap with broad shoulders. Clearly, the laborious work he did here did him a world of good. His skin was tanned and a little sweaty, and he confusedly wiped his brow with his sleeve.

  “What’s this about?” he asked.

  “You used to be in a relationship with Julia Brook, I believe?”

  His face fell. “Is she in trouble?” He asked instantly.

  “I’m sorry to have to tell you that Julia Brook was found dead this morning.”

  Eljas froze, the words slowly sinking in, then he turned his head, swearing. When he turned back to me, his eyes were lined with tears, and he sniffed loudly, rubbing his nose with his arm.

  “Julia?” he asked. I nodded, and he turned away again. “How?”

  “She was killed,” I said softly.

  “Someone killed her? Julia? Why would anyone do that?”

  “That’s what we’re trying to understand, Mr Pentti.”

  He nodded, then looked over at me. “Is that why you’re here?” He asked defensively. I looked over to a bench by the path and waved my hand towards it.

  “Why don’t we sit?” I suggested.

  Eljas nodded, stepping over the pitchfork to the bench, sitting down on the edge.

  I sat down and turned to him. “We know that Julia was seeing someone new, that she met him at her place of work about a month ago, only we’re having trouble finding out who he is.”

  Eljas looked surprised. “Did you ask Lisa? Her sister?”

  “Neither she nor her parents know who he is.”

  “That’s weird,” Eljas said, pulling his cap from his head and running his hand through his hair. “Julia tells Lisa everything. Everything,” he emphasised. But not this, that was interesting.

  “Was it like her to keep secrets?”

  He shook his head, wiping a few tears from his cheeks. “Not Julia. She was an open book. She’d tell you something regardless of whether or not you wanted to hear it,” he said with a faint chuckle. “You said she met him at work?”

  I nodded. “I’ve just been there, but they can’t name him either.”

  “They named me, though?” Eljas asked. “Antoine did.”

  “Not much love there, is there?”

  “He doesn’t like me. Never did. Probably danced a jig when Julia called it off.”

  I turned to the green ahead of us. “Can I ask what happened?”

  Eljas let out a long, loud sigh. “I couldn’t tell you, really. I guess we were together for a long time, and she wanted to try things on her own for a bit. I suggested moving in together, and she wasn’t ready. My own fault.”

  “People move at different paces,” I offered.

  He hummed. “You ever get dumped like that, detective?”

  “Along the same lines, yes. Can I ask when the last time you saw Julia was?”

  “A few weeks ago, actually,” he said, lifting his head and looking at me. He was hunched over, his elbows on his knees, hair falling in his face. “I hadn’t seen her for ages, and then one day I’m out here trying to catch a mole, and she just turns up.”

  “She came here?” I asked.

  He nodded. “Thought that was weird too. She looked, and seemed, out of sorts.”

  “How so?”

  He shrugged. “Squirrely, is the word I used to use for her. Something was up, making her anxious.”

  “Did you ask what?”

  He shook his head. “I’ve known her long enough to know that’s not what she needed. So, I just let her follow me around the green and told her what I was doing until she relaxed a bit. Then she went home. I think she just wanted to be distracted for a bit, and I was safe, I suppose.”

  I nodded. “Did that happen often? Her getting anxious?”

  “Comes and goes. Usually, she’s just tired or overworked. Sometimes, something sets her off. When Lisa was giving birth, that was a bad one. It wasn’t an easy birth, and I stayed up with her for hours playing video games until she fell asleep.”

  I had to admit, I was struggling to see why Antoine and Aiden were not a fan of Eljas. He seemed a decent enough chap.

  “You didn’t see her again after that?” I asked.

  “No,” he shook his head. “Maybe I should have checked in. How are they, by the way? Her family?”

  “Distressed,” I answered simply.

  He nodded. “She kept the peace between them,” he told me. “I should send them some flowers or something. People send flowers, right?”

  “They do.”

  “I’m sorry I’m not more useful, detective,” he said, looking sideways at me. “I really am.”

  “Is there anyone she would have told about him? Any friends?”

  “Only person I would have said for sure she spoke to would be Lisa,” he said. “If she doesn’t know, then I don’t know who would. Antoine doesn’t know? They’re pretty close.”

  “He doesn’t. We think he was a customer,” I told him.

  Eljas made a face at that.

  “What is it?”

  “Just…” He shrugged. “I know some of the sort of customers they have there, and, I dunno, I don’t like the thought of her going out with one.”

  Given that whoever the customer was is likely the person who killed her, I would say that his instincts were bang on the money.

  “What sort of customers?”

  “Just,” he cut a hand through the air, “men in suits, lots of cash, not very many manners. I went in there to see her there a few times, and I felt like Robert De Niro should have walked in at some point.”

  I chuckled. “An interesting testimony.”

  Eljas shrugged. “They get lots of regular joes as well but, I always just thought that some of the people in there were a bit shady, is all.”

  “I’ll bear that in mind, Mr Pentti,” I told him.

  He nodded. “I should get back to work,” he said, placing his hands on his knees and pushing up to his feet.

  “Before I go,” I said, ring too. “I do have to ask where you were yesterday, late afternoon, early evening.”

  He clenched his jaw but nodded. “I was here until five,” he said. “Amanda can tell you that. And then I went to the pool, got home around seven.”

  “Thank you, Mr Pentti. And thank you for your time. I am sorry for your loss,” I offered.

  Eljas shook my hand then pulled his cap back onto his head. “I hope you find the bastard. I really do. Let me know if I can help anymore.”

  “I will. And here,” I passed him a card. “
In case there’s anything that comes to mind, don’t hesitate to give me a call.”

  Eljas looked down at the card, slipping it into one of the many pockets on his trousers and, with a nod, bent to pick up his pitchfork.

  “Take care, Eljas,” I said, sticking my hands in my pockets and walking away.

  “Good luck,” he called after me, getting back to his work. His voice broke as he spoke, and I imagined he wanted me gone just so that he could actually process it all. Poor lad.

  He’d been useful, though. He’d seen Julia a few weeks ago, and she’d been anxious about something. It was interesting that she sought him out rather than her new beau or her sister. And that Lisa didn’t know about the boyfriend was of much interest to Eljas, so that made it of interest to me. Why wouldn’t she tell her sister, and did it have anything to do with her being anxious and wanting to see Eljas?

  Questions bubbled up in my brain faster than I could sort them, and I stopped halfway up the green and leant against a tree to grab my notebook from my pocket and scribble everything down before it had the chance to escape me. A few pages later, I put the notebook away and started back up to the clubhouse, wandering through to the reception where Amanda stood with a middle-aged man.

  “You must be the Inspector?” The man said brusquely, his voice carrying in the quiet room.

  “Sergeant,” I corrected him. “Detective Sergeant Mills.” I offered a hand.

  He shook it, his grip unnecessarily strong. “Ralph Newman, I’m the manager here.”

  “Nice to meet you, sir.”

  “I understand you’ve been interviewing one of my members of staff?” He asked pompously.

  “I wouldn’t call it interviewing, sir,” I replied.

  “No?”

  “No. Eljas Pentti is acquainted with someone who’s sadly passed away. I was just talking to him.”

  “Oh no,” Amanda sighed. “We should send him home,” she said, looking up at Ralph. He seemed to have lost some of his nerve, almost deflating a bit as I held his gaze.

  “Well, we shall offer it to him, of course,” he said, rubbing his jaw. His eyes strayed to the windows, to the green that unrolled outside. He didn’t want to send him home. Of course not. Who would tend to the lawns? From the look of Ralph Newman, certainly not him.

  “I suppose it’s a good thing you’re out of season,” I said. “Sorry for taking up his time. It was a pleasure to meet you.”

  “So, he’s—” he hesitated, “he’s done nothing wrong?”

  “Nothing at all, Mr Newman. If anything, something’s been done to him. Good day. Amanda,” I gave her a nod, and she smiled, opening the door for me. As I passed her, I lowered my voice.

  “You were here working until five yesterday with Eljas?” I asked.

  She nodded. “I lock up once we’re all gone.”

  “Thank you, Amanda.”

  I strolled out, let out a sigh, and wandered back to the car. As I got in, my phone started to ring, and I fished it from my pocket to find Thatcher’s caller ID flash across the screen.

  “Sir,” I answered.

  “Mills. Where are you?”

  “Just leaving the golf club now, sir. Be with you in about ten minutes.”

  “Did you get anything from him?” He asked, his voice muffled. “Thank you, Fry,” I heard him say to the side.

  “Nothing concrete, but definitely some interesting things.”

  “Is he a suspect?”

  “He’s got an alibi around the time of death,” I told him. “Working here until five, which rules out our biggest window.”

  Thatcher hummed down the line.

  “How goes the walk down memory lane?” I asked.

  “Interesting. Fry’s pulled a few things together. Get back here, and I’ll walk you through.”

  “On my way now, sir.”

  “See you then,” he said, the phone line going dead a second later. I dropped my phone onto the passenger seat and revved the engine, leaving the golf club behind. I was a bit muddled by the attitude Antoine and Aiden had had towards Eljas. They’d said that even Victor didn’t like him. And according to Eljas, some of their customers were less than reputable. Perhaps he’d tried to convince Julia to work somewhere else, and that’s why they weren’t so fond of him.

  Either way, I was curious to learn a bit more about these so-called shady customers and whichever one of them had caught the eye of Julia Brook. Hopefully, something that Thatcher and Fry had pulled up would be a help to us, and I smiled as I made my way back to the station. Normally we only saw Fry fleetingly, popping in here and there, but she’d be with us all the time on this case. I was surprised by the nerves that set off in my stomach and dutifully ignored them. This was a case, and it was probably just because she was the first person I’d thought about at all after Suzanne, which wasn’t fair to Fry at all.

  Better to keep my head down and crack on with the job and hope that Thatcher wouldn’t start up with his side comments and facial expressions that were a pleasant change from his usual gruff look but weren’t half irritating to be on the receiving end of.

  Seven

  Thatcher

  Once I’d spoken to Mills, Sharp headed back to her office to answer what she called an endless torrent of phone calls and emails, leaving myself and Fry to create some sort of ordered chaos on the board. It sounded as though Mills had had a successful outing, and I was a little jealous not to have been able to tag along with him. Fry wandered off to grab us all a cup of tea, and we were sitting in the office, staring blankly at the board when Mills wandered in, smiling at us both, two books under his arm.

  “Nice board,” he commented, dropping the books down, peeling his coat off and grabbing the tea that Fry had left on his desk and wandered over. “What’s the verdict then?”

  “Lots of similarities so far,” I told him. “All the victims were taken to a rural location, killed the same way and left there the same way. Fry made some good points about the style,” I added. Fry sat up a little straighter.

  “The way that he’s left them there,” she said, “left them looking peaceful, somewhere they’d be found—”

  “Shows a level of care?” Mills quickly hopped a thought ahead.

  “Like a hunter with a stag,” Fry nodded, looking happy that he’d caught up to her train of thought so quickly.

  “Well, if he was seducing them, that makes sense,” he said, sitting on my desk beside me. “What else?”

  “The locations themselves are all an equal distance from the city, so we can assume he is based here,” I pointed to the map that Fry had drawn dots on.

  “All the previous victims were solitary, though,” Fry added. “Julia wasn’t.”

  “I wouldn’t say that. She was close to her family, but otherwise, she seemed a bit of a lone wolf,” Mills told us. “The person she was closest to was her sister, and even she didn’t know about the boyfriend.”

  “No other friends?” Fry asked, tilting her head to one side.

  “Not really. She had her family, her work, her love life, and that was it,” Mills said with a shrug.

  “How was her love life?” I asked. “You mentioned an ex-boyfriend?”

  Mills nodded, putting his mug down and getting up to grab his notebook from his coat pocket.

  “According to the family who owns the restaurant, they were together for a long time. None of them seems too fond of him, but neither does he about them,” Mills said. “Eljas Pentti works at the golf club. He said that it’s weird that Julia didn’t tell Lisa about her boyfriend, and he saw her a few weeks ago.”

  Fry straightened up. “He did?” Mills nodded, handing her his notebook.

  “Apparently, she came to the golf club when he was working. He said she looked anxious, so he hung out with her, let her trail along as he worked until she settled down. A common occurrence, apparently, but I thought it was interesting that she went to him for comfort rather than her new boyfriend.”

  “They were
only together for a month,” Fry pointed out. “And Eljas would be familiar, safe. What was the breakup like?”

  “The restaurant staff said it wasn’t great, but I didn’t get any bad intentions from Eljas. I think he was probably hoping she’d come back at some point.”

  “Poor guy,” Fry muttered. “I wonder what she was anxious about.”

  “He didn’t tell you?” I asked Mills.

  “He didn’t ask her,” He replied. “Apparently, he’d helped her with it before and asking her wasn’t a part of it.”

  “What does this say?” Fry asked, holding up Mills’s notebook.

  “Shady.”

  “Who’s shady?”

  “The customers in the restaurant,” Mills said, “according to Eljas anyway. Said he didn’t like the thought of Julia going out with one.”

  “That’s interesting,” I muttered, finishing my tea and putting the mug down, folding my arms. “He thinks they’re bad news, she sees him all anxious, and a few weeks later, she’s dead?”

  “You don’t think it’s a coincidence?” Mills asked.

  “Neither do you,” Fry handed his notebook back, “you’ve written it down.”

  Mills glanced at the page. “Oh, yeah,” he said, surprised.

  “What happens to you when you write?” I asked. “It’s like bloody automatic writing. Who’s possessing you, Isaac?”

  “Maybe it’s Arthur Conan Doyle,” Fry suggested. “That would be handy.”

  “I’m not possessed,” he said defensively.

  “Mills doesn’t like ghosts,” I told her, slipping from the desk. “Remind me of his alibi again?”

  “He worked until five. Amanda, the receptionist, was with him until then. She locks up, then he goes to the pool and is home around seven.”

  “Sounds like a routine evening,” Fry commented.

  “And that’s all he had to say?” I asked.

  Mills nodded, “that’s the lot.”

  “What about the restaurant?”

  “Seemed alright to me. Family-owned place, they’re all very fond of her. The son, Antoine, I suspect he had a fancy for her at one point.”

  “Unrequited love can be a dangerous thing,” I said. “The place itself?”