Campus Killings

by Oliver Davies

  “That’s good, thanks. Anything else? You see his face?”

  Doug pulled a doubting expression. “Not prop’ly. He looked a bit weasley, like a sneak ought’a look.” I hummed and wrote that down too. “Oh!” He put up a finger. “I thought t’myself that he looked young, like, too. Gangly, he was. Not all that tall, no, but long y’know. Like kids that aren’t grown fully yet, right?”

  “Great,” I said absently as I scribbled. “You see which way he went after he left?”

  Doug gestured off down the street, the opposite direction of the small shop. “Straight down there. Right weird it was.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed, scanning the street for cameras, but I couldn’t see any. It was just a regular residential street. I wondered if the small convenience store had any.

  “They don’t,” Doug said.

  “What?”

  He shrugged. “No cameras at the shop, lad. That what you were looking for?”

  I cracked a smile. “Yeah, I was.”

  Doug didn’t have much else to add and ambled off soon after, after he wished Taylor well.

  “You know him?” I asked her, surprised.

  She smiled. “Yeah, he’s sweet. I take him soup and tea in the winter.”

  “That’s really kind,” I said, my heart feeling a little soft at her admission.

  Stephen elbowed me, interrupting the moment. “We’ll take these off to the lab, then?” he said.

  I glared at him. “Sure,” I gritted out, before giving him a small shove towards the car. “See you in the car, Huxley.”

  He grinned crookedly at me and pretended to salute before wandering off. Taylor was chuckling, and I turned to smile.

  “He’s such a pain,” I complained.

  “I can’t believe you’ve only known him for a month or so,” she said. “You seem like old pals.”

  “Feels like he’s been winding me up forever, yeah,” I agreed. I paused. “See you soon, then?” I asked.

  Taylor came forwards to wrap me in a tight hug, her head tucked into my chest. I hugged her back. “I’d like that,” she said.

  “Good. Me too.”

  I headed back to the car with a light feeling in my chest, and Stephen started laughing the second I got into the passenger seat.

  I flipped him off. “Shut up.”

  “You’re lit up, mate,” he said. “Positively glowing. Adorable.”

  “I am not-” I cut myself off and sighed. Taylor was standing in the doorway to the house, and I waved back at her as we drove off.

  “What now then?” Stephen said.

  “Oh, I’m allowed to decide this time?”

  Stephen snorted. “Only if you’ve got some good ideas.”

  “All my ideas are genius,” I said, deadpan. “For example, I reckon we go back to the station and get me a massive cup of coffee to wake me up.”

  “Stayed up a bit late, did we?”

  “It is a bleedin’ Saturday today.”

  Stephen sighed. “Yeah, trust me, I know.”

  We listened to the radio the rest of the way to the station. The lab team weren’t in today, but we put the birds in the fridge for Monday. I fetched myself the coffee I needed and set to writing up this morning’s incident and what Doug had said whilst Stephen uploaded the photos he’d taken.

  “Not much else to be done, is there?” Stephen said, once he’d finished.

  I polished off my last paragraph and nodded. “Yeah, you’re free to run off home again.” I patted his shoulder as we were logging off and getting our coats back on. “Thanks for coming in, though. Good of you.”

  “You’re definitely babysitting the kids at some point, in return,” he told me.

  “No!” I protested. “Stephen, that’s the opposite of a genius idea. The absolute worst-”

  “Nonsense. You’ll be fine.”

  We bickered about it on the way back to Stephen’s car. He gave me a lift home, since I wasn’t exactly in the right clothes for a morning run. My headache had mostly been conquered by the painkillers Taylor had given me, but it was beginning to come back again. I was glad to be back home.

  “See you Monday, then,” Stephen said as I got out. “And not before!” he yelled after me. I waved at him without turning around, and he drove off as I went inside.

  Thirteen

  Sedgwick was at the station on Monday, as opposed to busily running around taking people’s interviews, and when he was in the break room, I headed over to talk to him.

  “Good weekend?” I asked.

  He dropped a tea bag into his mug and sent me an unimpressed look. “What do you want?”

  Faintly annoyed, I flatly said, “I want updates on the case.”

  “Of course you do,” Sedgwick muttered. I thought he was going to walk off and leave me to have to go and ask Gaskell to send me the details, but he just sighed and leaned against the counter.

  “There haven’t been any major jumps forward,” he said steadily, as he fetched milk from the fridge for his tea. “There’s the obvious link to sports that we’re looking into as well, even though I’m aware of the work you and your partner have been putting in on that.” I bristled slightly at his use of the word ‘obvious’, like I hadn’t been the first one to realise that Hannah’s position had been football-related. But he was telling me what I wanted to know, so I kept quiet. “We interviewed a number of students at Emma’s ballet class,” that was the name of the second victim, I remembered, “and a couple of them had seen a man nearby, keeping his head covered. He left the moment the class finished, apparently, so only students who’d left early for some reason saw him.”

  I rubbed my jaw as I thought over the new information. “Did any of them see-?”

  “No,” Sedgwick said tightly. “There are no cameras nearby, and no-one got a good look at his face. We do have some descriptions of height and build, but nothing very clear to go on.”

  “Great,” I muttered, and Sedgwick nodded.

  “We had someone stationed outside the last time there was a class, on Wednesday, but no such man was seen.”

  “He’s probably moved on,” I said.

  “Unfortunately, I think you’re right.”

  “With the university and its societies closed, hopefully-”

  Sedgwick waved his hand, cutting me off again. “There’ll be no more deaths, yeah, I know,” he said. “Doesn’t get any closer to closing this case, does it?”

  “No,” I agreed. I’d been making myself a cup of coffee as he spoke and we stood for a minute in silence before Sedgwick shook his head and walked away without another word.

  “Sedgwick!” I called.

  He paused, with clear reluctance and gave me a cold look. “What?”

  I walked over to him. “Did you ask the flatmates about dead animals being left outside their doors?”

  Sedgwick pressed his lips together, frowning, and I took that for a clear ‘no’. He hadn’t believed that the cases had been connected at the time he did the interviews, if he even really did now.

  “You should,” I said. He grunted and walked away. I watched him go before heading back to my own desk. I’d not gotten as much out of him as I might have liked, but I’m not saying that he actually knew much more. The case was still locked up tight.

  My phone buzzed in my pocket as I was about to get started on some more research that was likely to get us nowhere. I tugged it out almost gratefully and smiled at the name on the screen.

  “Taylor?” Stephen guessed.

  I rolled my eyes at him. “No, actually. My old partner.”

  He huffed. “I hope you grin like that when I call you,” he grumbled.

  “Of course I do, mate,” I lied cheerfully, smacking his shoulder as I headed out of the office to take the call. Honestly, I liked Stephen just as much as a partner as I had Kay, my previous partner, but I hardly smiled when Stephen called, because it no doubt meant that something bad had happened. Whereas Kay had nothing to do with these cases, and theref
ore couldn’t give me any bad news.

  “Kay!” I said when I picked up in the corridor. “How’re you?”

  “Hey, stranger,” she said brightly. “Have you forgotten about all the little people, now you’ve become a big shot?”

  I pulled a face. “Hardly, bit hard to forget you.”

  “Or my wife’s baking, you mean.”

  “Maybe,” I laughed.

  “How’s the job going? Have you been dazzling everyone with your genius police work?”

  I winced. “Hardly,” I said again, sighing. “Been wrestling with the same unsolved case for too long.”

  I got into talking about it as Kay made interested noises and asked pertinent questions. It was good to run through the case with another police officer, someone who hadn’t been lost in the minutiae of the thing right from the start.

  “Anyway,” I finished, “I’m rambling-”

  “Hold up, hold up,” Kay said. “Don’t change the subject. You’ve tried talking to the uni about any other cases of dead animals that might’ve been reported, right?”

  “Yeah. Nothing.”

  “Alright.” She paused. I could just about hear her thinking and picture her face perfectly, and I waited to hear what she’d come up with. “Well,” she said slowly, “have you tried asking them about problem students? Any with a violent background, anything like that?”

  Struck with surprise, I was silent for a second. “Yeah,” I said when I’d managed to process that. “Yeah, that’s a damn good idea. Don’t know why I didn’t think of that.” I rubbed my forehead in annoyance at myself.

  She tutted me gently. “Don’t go beating yourself up. It might not come to anything, and anyway, it’s easy to come up with fresh ideas from the outside. I’m sure you would’ve gotten there, eventually.”

  I huffed. “Maybe,” I conceded. “Not before Christmas, though, probably.”

  “What about your new partner?” Kay said curiously. “Are they as brilliant and beautiful as me?”

  I laughed. “Never,” I promised. “He looks like he went a couple of rounds with a yeti. Big lad. He’s a good one, though. Takes the mick out of me even more than you do.”

  “Wow,” she sounded impressed. “Good luck.”

  We chatted for a little longer, about her wife and the gossip around Lockdale, before we both decided that we had to get back to work and said goodbye.

  I hurried back to my desk after that, looking up the university’s vice-chancellor’s number on our records before I started plugging it into my phone.

  Stephen had been watching me with a curious expression. “What’s set your tail on fire?”

  I held my phone to my ear while it rang. “My old partner had a good idea,” I told him distractedly.

  He lifted his eyebrows. “Great. Now I’ll never be your favourite partner.”

  I grinned at him. “Don’t worry, Huxley. There was never any risk of that happening.”

  He feigned outrage, readying a riposte when the vice-chancellor picked up and I had to focus on that. I waited while I was transferred to the appropriate office after stating my need to see some student records. Some twenty minutes later, my request was finally agreed to, and a man called Dr Ngan agreed to show me the records later today.

  By the time I’d hung up, Stephen had gone off to get himself a drink, and I leaned my elbows on my desk, thinking. When Kay had mentioned problem students, I couldn’t help but remember mine and Taylor’s encounter with the utterly dislikeable Will last Friday night, which had scared her so badly. But that would’ve been a hell of a coincidence, and I tucked the thought away, not dismissing it, but not focusing on it either, until I could see these records.

  When Stephen had come back, grumbling about the break room being out of tea, we headed over to Sainsbury’s to pick up more tea bags and some lunch. I’d gone for a run at the weekend, but that was the only one I’d had recently. I told myself I wasn’t allowed any tasty meatball baguettes until I’d gotten some more real runs in, so I bought myself a salad. Stephen shot me a frown.

  “You’re not punishing yourself, are you?” he said seriously.

  “What?”

  He gestured to the salad I’d been pulling a face at. “Darren, you’ve had a stressy week and a disrupted weekend, you’re allowed to eat stuff that makes you feel good. Your running should be, like, an enjoyment, not because you’re punishing yourself for eating nice food.”

  “I do enjoy running,” I protested, but after a moment, I put the bland-looking salad back.

  “Good,” he said. “So if you’re not doing it to punish yourself, you shouldn’t mind eating food that actually tastes good, even when you haven’t been running, hm?”

  I snagged the baguette I’d been eyeing. “Happy?” I said. He smiled genuinely. Outside, after we’d paid, I looked sideways at him. “What was that about? Why’re you worried about my eating habits? I’m just trying to stay trim.”

  He rolled his eyes at me. “Because you don’t eat enough, mate. You drink gallons of coffee and only come to get lunch if I go too. It’s not healthy.”

  “You don’t exercise enough,” I said, feeling unsettled and not a little defensive. “That’s not healthy.”

  “No, not healthy up here, I meant,” he said, tapping his head.

  We walked back to the station in silence, and I thought over what he’d said. Maybe I did have something of a weird relationship to food. I knew I had a tendency of eating something fattening and mentally thinking about the amount of running I’d need to do afterwards, and I knew it got worse when I was stressed. Still, it was uncomfortable to be called out on it, and I wasn’t sure quite what to say to Stephen after that. To my relief, he left it alone and instead chatted easily about what shenanigans his kids had been up to recently as we ate our lunches.

  I was still unsure how to talk to Stephen afterwards and was almost relieved when Sedgwick approached, looking faintly annoyed. At least that was something I had experience with dealing with.

  “Mitchell?” Sedgwick said, even though I was already looking expectantly at him.

  “Yes?”

  Sedgwick released a breath, like I’d already managed to irritate him and I frowned at him. “I… did as you suggested,” he said finally. A smile began to creep over my face at Sedgwick having to admit he’d been wrong. Then the implications of what he was saying caught up with me and I sobered. “One of the flatmates of the first victim told us that Hannah had had a dead squirrel left outside the flat’s door, some months ago. She thought it was a prank in bad taste and didn’t report it.”

  “And the second victim?” I asked, leaning forward. Both Stephen and I were listening closely.

  Sedgwick gave a short nod. “The same. A good while back, there was an incident of a rat being left outside the flat, and then a bird. They also neglected to report it.”

  “Huh,” I said quietly, the thrilling buzz of being proved right mingling with a sickness in my stomach at the knowledge that Abby and Taylor had also been ‘marked out’ by the dead animals left outside their houses. According to this new information, it might take months before the killer chose to do something else to them, but now they had the police’s interest, maybe they’d move their schedule up.

  I swore quietly and rubbed my face.

  “I apologise for…” Sedgwick didn’t seem entirely clear on what he was apologising for and waved his hand.

  I nodded. “Thanks for telling me. Have you got a plan from here?”

  Sedgwick seemed surprised to be asked. “I was planning to advise you that the two women involved in your case should move temporarily-”

  “Agreed,” I said, thinking of Taylor. “One of them, the student, has already returned home for a while. The other one, I’ll talk to.”

  Sedgwick seemed satisfied. “Good. We’ll need to work together further to solve this.”

  “Fine with me,” I said, shrugging.

  He grunted, looking if not thrilled then willing, and that
was an improvement, to be honest. He walked away, and Stephen nudged me in the side.

  “Look at that. You’ve gone and made a friend.”

  I snorted. “If you think that’s friendship, you need better friends.”

  He sent me a smile that was all genuine, and I raised my eyebrows. “I think I’ve got pretty good friends,” he said.

  I found myself flustered despite myself and rubbed a hand through my hair. “Well, er, back at you, Huxley.”

  He broke out laughing and thumped me good-naturedly on the shoulder. “Ah, your face, Mitchell! You’re horrible at emotions.”

  “God, I know,” I groaned. “No more mushiness, I beg you.”

  “Alright, alright,” he said. “You call Taylor and give her a heads up,” He paused, “you know, without scaring her, and I’ll… er, let the university know, if Sedgwick hasn’t already.”

  “Good plan.”

  I called Taylor up and warned her, as gently as I could manage, that she was in some danger and should move back in with her friend, if at all possible. And she should be careful. She sounded tired but resigned as she agreed and I hung up soon after, sensing that she didn’t have the energy to talk further.

  I still had my appointment with Dr Ngan at the university that afternoon and checked my watch. Stephen had just got off the phone with the university, updating them, and he sent me an enquiring look.

  “Come with me to the uni?” I asked.

  “Sure,” he agreed.

  We headed out to the car, and I explained on the way about Kay’s idea of looking into problem students.

  “It might not be a student or ex-student who’s the killer,” Stephen said.

  “I know, I know.” I got into the passenger seat. My head was whirring with so many thoughts at the moment that I felt it would be better for Stephen to drive, even with his tendency to see the speed limit as a personal challenge. “But it does seem more likely. Someone who looked roughly student-aged would be far less noticeable on campus, so people would be less likely to say something if they saw them, say, lurking outside a flat’s door.”