Vicious Cycle (A DCI Thatcher Yorkshire Crimes Book 9)

by Oliver Davies

  “I think I’m happier being your sergeant for a little while longer, sir, if that suits you.”

  I grinned at him. “Fine by me, Mills. Let’s get this wrapped up. Then I think I’m ready to hit the hay.”

  It seemed anticlimactic that after finally solving something so long and complicated, we wouldn’t be heading to the pub for a few rounds. That I would go home and conk out.

  But Rosewall had been right. My failure had followed me, mingled with the memories of my mother. And now it was over. I had a name for the man who killed those women, and I knew his fate, knew he got his comeuppance. Harris had the others, the gang that had got the ball rolling, all tidied up and out of the streets. I might very well sleep better tonight than I had for years, but much of that might also be attributed to the painkillers I was taking.

  Either way, the riddle was solved, the past laid to rest, and I could rest with it.

  Epilogue

  By the time I had finished my story, Ena had fallen asleep, her head lolling against my chest, her small body rising and falling with every deep breath. Little snorts escaped her nose every so often.

  Sally sat, her body twisted towards mine, an incredulous look on her face. I wondered which part of the story bothered her in particular, the murdered girls, my past guilt, my mother’s death, any of it. Then she spoke.

  “Why would someone name their child Keith?”

  “Sally…”

  “I mean, who looks at a tiny newborn baby and thinks, yes, Keith is a good name.”

  “That’s what bothered you about this story? The murderer’s name.”

  “The whole thing bothers me, Max, but that’s the only thing I can really have an opinion on, isn’t it?”

  I shrugged. She might have a point. She sighed and looked out at the park in front of us, nestled against me from the chill, the shadow of the church hanging over us.

  “You solved it then, bravo.”

  “Thanks, Sally.”

  “Explains why I haven’t seen you for a while, too. With all that going on. How are your ribs, by the way, all the better?”

  “Thankfully. It’s nice to be able to get a jumper over my head without feeling like I’m going to pass out.”

  Sally snorted. “What a sight that would be. Sorry I wasn’t there for you,” she added.

  “You’ve just given birth,” I said. “And there’s not much you could have done, anyway. You know I can’t talk to you about my cases, really.”

  “Not with that,” she said, cutting her hand through the air. “I meant all the stuff with your mum. I was there, Max. I remember what happened. I know you don’t like to think about it.”

  I didn’t, but it was getting easier to think about it. I shuffled forward, gently laying Ena down in the pram, trying not to wake her. Thankfully she slept like her mum and stayed passed out as I pulled the blanket up to her chin. I sat back, my arms perched on the back of the bench, my body a little colder without her.

  “I suppose the more time passes, the easier it is,” I replied. “But I don’t think it’ll ever go, not really.”

  “Course it won’t,” Sally replied. “She was your mum,” she said softly, reaching into the pram to stroke Ena’s cheek gently. “You never get over things that happen to your mum, especially if you’re the one who did it.”

  “Is this supposed to make me feel better?” I asked. Sally was always the one to dish out tough love when it was needed, but she tended to avoid talking to me about my mother, always waited for me to bring her up first. Apparently, her patience was growing thin.

  “No. I’m your best friend, not your therapist. But I did know Marie, and I know what she would say to you.”

  “Something colourful.”

  “Absolutely,” Sally grinned. “I learnt all my best swear words from your mum.”

  “So did I,” I grinned right back. “Grandma hated it. Used to swat her with a tea towel every time, Elsie would sit there in the corner, howling with laughter.” It was a regular scene, whenever Elsie would shuffle over to the coaching house to have tea with us, sitting in the kitchen, her laugh echoing around the rafters, overpowering everybody else’s.

  “She has got a cracking good laugh, our Elsie.”

  We sat a moment longer, then Sally turned to me again, a crease between her eyebrows.

  “You saw her then?”

  “Elsie?”

  She whacked my arm with the back of her hand. “Jeannie.”

  “Oh. Yeah.” It was odd, given how much time I spent wondering over her, thinking about when I’d see her next, dreading it and hoping for it in equal measures, that the few minutes I’d spent in her company had faded into the background. I knew she’d written up about the case, covered everything well as she always did, but that was all. That was Jeannie, I supposed, breezing in and out of my life whenever it suited her. I had been staying busy, though, busy enough that I didn’t have time to really stop and think about her, where she was or what she was up to.

  “Have you seen her since?” Sally asked, an edge to her voice.

  “Spotted her in a crowd at a press conference,” I said. “But she didn’t stop and say hi.”

  “Still in the city, though?”

  “For now,” I said with a sigh.

  “You find out where she went?” Sally asked.

  “Nope.”

  “You going to?”

  “What’s with the inquisition?” I asked her.

  “You forget how long I’ve known you,” Sally murmured. “I was there when you first met her, and I’ve been here all the years since. The two of you,” she shook her head. “Gravitating around each other, crossing paths but never actually going anywhere.”

  “Thank you, agony aunt. Not that it matters,” I reminded her. “I’m with Liene.”

  Sally didn’t reply to that, just leant forward and fussed over her sleeping infant, fixing the blanket that didn’t need fixing and cooing under her breath.

  “Sally?” I prodded her in the back. “Sal.”

  “What?”

  “You’ve gone quiet. What is it? You like Liene.”

  “I love Liene,” Sally said, turning to look at me. “I think she’s wonderful.”

  “But?” I prompted.

  “But, I dunno,” she sighed. “You’ve been happy before, settled, until Jeannie came back. It always felt like you were waiting for her.”

  I used to, always. But this was different. Liene was different, and so was I.

  “Not this time,” I said.

  “Just be careful,” Sally said. “I know what you’re like, both of you. I think it’s better if you keep your distance from her, only see her for work, you know?”

  “That was my plan,” I said. “Not that we ever met for other reasons before.”

  Sally smiled. “I guess not. You are curious, though, aren’t you? As to where she’s been all this time.”

  “I am, weirdly. Curiosity’s part of the job, isn’t it?”

  Sally rolled her eyes. “Classic Max, snooping about, looking for answers,” she said, poking me with her fingers. “Never could sit still and let things be, could you? Not even when we were kids, you were always asking ‘why’ and taking things apart to see how they worked.”

  “And you were the one jumping in puddles, making mud pie and bringing bugs home to show your mum,” I reminded her. “Like a feral cat.”

  “Hurtful,” she jibed. “I’m a mother now. You can’t criticise me.”

  “That’s not how it works.”

  “I grew a human. Look.”

  “I’m looking. She’s very cute,” I repeated for what must have been the hundredth time this morning. It was a good way to distract Sally, and it worked for a bit.

  Sally sighed fondly, looking back down at baby Ena. “She is, isn’t she? Finish up then.”

  I frowned. “Finish up what?”

  “The story. What happened?”

  I leant back, tilting my head up to the sky. “Keith Rosewall’s
serving life, and so is Rory Bond. Sergeant Harris managed to wrap up the gang, got all the players off the street.”

  I didn’t know many of the finer details about that side of things. Harris had tied up her case beautifully and was now on the track to becoming an Inspector. About time, though she had avoided the promotion for the same reasons I avoided mine every time Sharp brought it up. It Seemed Tamara had had a change of heart after this recent turn of events.

  “And I went around to all the victim’s families,” I added. “Told them that the case was solved, that we’d found the man after all those years.”

  Sally breathed in a sharp breath. “How was that?”

  “Odd. Haven’t seen those people in twenty years, and the last time they saw me, it was me telling them that the case had gone cold. I couldn’t find the man who murdered their loved ones.”

  “And this time?”

  I shrugged. “It was a little easier.”

  Odd barely scratched the surface. Tracking them down wasn’t too bad. Most of them hadn’t moved far in the past years. But seeing them, the familiar faces, the resemblance between them and women whose bodies I had studied so well, it was jarring. Unnerving. The first one was the hardest, and there were mixed reactions that all culminated in tears, the breaking of a decades-long tension finally being let go.

  “Mr Miyara met up with Julia Brook’s family,” I told her. “They’ve set up a memorial garden for the girls, the others too. Eljas looks after it in his free time.” I’d seen him briefly at the court case with the Brook family, and I hoped that Julia would have been happy to have him there. Her pin, once we’d given everything back, was stuck to his collar, and I doubted that he’d ever take it off. Love cut short. It would be a rough few years for him, as well.

  “That’s something,” Sally offered quietly. “Something to help them grieve and remember them.”

  I nodded. Sometimes it didn’t feel enough. Nothing could ever bring those girls back, all I could do was help their families find peace, but even that could take twenty years. And all that time in the middle, and all the time that was coming, life without them, wouldn’t be made any easier. I’d saved a few lives, here and there, but for the most part, I dealt with death. Dead person to dead person, puzzle to puzzle. It wore on me, now more than ever, even with this new victory under my belt. I felt tired, and it was this case that made me think about how long I’d been going. Twenty years, longer, in fact. Plodding on from case to case with little breathing room in between each one. Maybe I should go on a holiday. Liene and I could go to the sea or something.

  “You’re dwelling, aren’t you?” Sally asked.

  “A little.”

  “Come on then,” she said, standing up. “Let’s walk a bit more, clear your head. Maybe we can stop in at Elsie’s for a cuppa and see if we can make her laugh like she used to.”

  “That laugh will wake up your baby,” I said, standing and following her along the path.

  “I’ll allow it just this once because Ena is not going through life without hearing Elsie’s laugh. Just not happening.”

  I chuckled and trailed alongside her down towards the village, the wind picking up again as we walked.

  We walked down towards the coaching house, the outside freshly cleaned, and paused for a moment at the top of the hill. It looked how it used to now: the roof, the windows, the painted green front door. No longer the eyesore of the village that it had become… that I had let it become.

  “You can’t sell it,” Sally said quietly. I hadn’t planned on it. The idea fell out of favour more and more every day, especially with Liene and Billie now in the mix, but hearing Sally say it solidified it in my head.

  “I know,” I replied.

  “That is what she would never forgive you for,” she added.

  “I know,” I repeated.

  My mother could forgive many things, and apparently, she had, not that I was there to receive that forgiveness, but if I let go of her father’s house, the place we both had grown up in, she’d likely return to haunt me like one of the Shakespeare plays Mills was always quoting.

  I had no desire to sell it, though, the more I remembered the old place. The little cupboard under the bar where Sally and I used to hide, the carvings in the old wood frames of the doors, the bizarre little windows and corners that would never be there in a modern building.

  “Okay, I’m cold now,” Sally announced, trundling down towards the little row of cottages on the other side of the road. We made it a few metres until the front door opened, and Elsie appeared there in her apron, hands on her hips, fixing us with that wicked stare of hers.

  “Took your time,” she snapped.

  “How did you know we were coming?” Sally asked, pushing the pram up to the front door.

  “Never you mind,” Elsie said, looking down at the baby. I thought about the route we’d taken, the houses we’d passed on the way here. We’d passed the old Vicarage.

  “Moira called you and said we were walking this way, didn’t she?” I asked. There really were no secrets in this place. I was right, and I knew I was when Elsie swatted my arm and ushered me into the cottage.

  “How are you, Max? I heard about your case. And your stint in hospital, you absolute toe rag.”

  “The case is solved, my ribs are fine, and I didn’t want you to worry.”

  Elsie narrowed her eyes at me, and Sally laughed, pulling the newly awake Ena from the pram and carrying her into the kitchen.

  I made to follow, but Elsie blocked my way and looked up at me. I stared back at her, bracing myself for whatever scold was about to come my way, but Elsie’s face softened, and she lifted her hand to cup my cheek.

  “You look tired,” she informed me.

  “Just a little.”

  “Don’t work yourself to nothing, Max. I’m supposed to keep you healthy and happy.”

  “Are you?”

  She nodded smartly. “Made a promise, didn’t I? Now get in there,” she pushed me towards the kitchen. “And pop the kettle on while I fetch something.”

  I shook my head and wandered in, grabbing the kettle and filling it as she pottered around her cottage, muttering under her breath. Sally sat, grinning at the whole thing as she fed Ena.

  Elsie returned with a great big photo album in hand that she placed on the table and shoved across to me.

  “Feeling nostalgic, Elsie?” I asked, sitting down and wiping the dust from the cover with my sleeve.

  “You’ve had the last twenty years thrown in your face in a not nice way,” she told me. “So, we’re to remember the good things.”

  It was an order more than it was a suggestion, and Sally shuffled her chair around to sit closer as I pushed the cover back, Elsie behind me grabbing mugs for the tea.

  I had never been one to think too much about the past, it never seemed to do much good for me, and I spent so long in other peoples’ history that I never bothered. But it was there, refusing to be ignored, and if I knew one thing, I knew that the past always came around again, and it was better to be ready for it when it came.

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  Special thanks and credit to Moonstruck Covers Design & Photography, the stud
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