Campus Killings

by Oliver Davies

  I repressed a sigh and just nodded. “No problem.”

  Stephen and I ran through some more of the usual questions and asked her to try to pinpoint where she’d first realised that she was being followed, so that we could try to follow it up on CCTV.

  Stephen went to find a tablet so that we could show her a map of the streets, so Taylor and I were left alone for a moment. I told the recording that we were taking a break and then turned it off.

  “Are you doing alright, really?” I asked her. “Ian’s been supporting you?”

  She exhaled heavily. “Yeah, he’s been a gem. It’s all a lot, isn’t it? I feel on edge all the time.”

  “I know the feeling,” I said honestly. “I’m sorry, Taylor.”

  She nodded, before reaching out across the table to squeeze my hand. “I know.”

  Stephen returned with a tablet and flicked a glance between us, but he didn’t comment. Taylor took her hand back and sat up straighter as Stephen put the tablet down in front of her.

  I set up the recorder again, and we returned to the questioning after Taylor had given her best guess for the route she’d taken through York’s streets.

  Glancing at my notebook, I remembered my question from earlier. “This yoga class,” I said, and Taylor glanced up, giving me her attention, “was it run through the uni, or is it separate?”

  “Oh,” Taylor said, looking surprised by the question, which probably didn’t seem related in the slightest from her perspective. “It’s linked to the university yoga soc. The campus classes stopped when the uni temporarily shut, but the yoga soc also rents a place in town.”

  “I see,” I said, clenching my jaw in annoyance at the university’s negligence in letting this happen, not at Taylor. I made a note to make sure any further off-campus classes were stopped with immediate effect. I’d hoped that by stopping the university running sports society meetings, we’d keep people safe, but it seemed that the stalker or killer was willing to follow his targets off campus too.

  “Is that a problem?” Taylor asked hesitantly, clearly having picked up on my heightened emotions.

  “We asked the sports societies to close with the uni,” I said, as evenly as I could manage. “We’ll have a word with them about any others continuing off campus.”

  I paused and glanced over at Stephen. Time to ask about Will, now, and I wasn’t looking forward to it.

  “We’re currently looking into an ex-student of yours,” I told her, not sure quite where to start.

  When I paused, Stephen stepped in. “His name is Will Seton,” he said, his voice gentle but serious. I saw the shock register on Taylor’s face and held back a wince.

  “You think he did it-?” she stuttered, looking over at me, but it was Stephen who answered.

  “We’re looking into him,” Stephen said. “Can you tell us about your experience of having him as a student?”

  Taylor’s gaze flickered over me again, a frown between her eyebrows, and I wished that I had told her before the interview that I hadn’t broken her confidence about Will, just outlined what was necessary to the investigation.

  But whatever she was thinking, she nodded and started to run through the same story she’d told me, though more sparsely and with her emotions much more tamped down.

  “So you thought him capable of violence?” Stephen checked.

  Taylor nodded. “There’s a look in his eyes.”

  I agreed. “Have you seen him before- before recently?” I said, stumbling over my words as I couldn’t decide whether we wanted on record that Taylor and I had dated. It wasn’t exactly against protocol, but I’d be furious with myself if it ended up muddying the water in the future, during court proceedings.

  She gave me a perceptive look, before her eyes drifted away as she thought back. “I… saw him around campus once,” she said slowly. “It was a few months ago, but it shook me up a bit.”

  “Which month, do you think?” Stephen asked.

  She shrugged. “Maybe June? I don’t think he saw me. It was dusk. I’d stayed late, working.”

  I tried to fit an incident in June into our timeline, but couldn’t immediately think of how that would fit in. Had he been casing the university, looking for students to target? Just refamiliarising himself with the campus, or had it been close to when dead animals had been left outside the two murder victims’ doors?

  “Okay.” I glanced over at Stephen, but I didn’t think we had too many more questions. “I think we’re about done, unless there are any other details that might be helpful?”

  Taylor shook her head, the dark waves of her hair moving around her face. So we wrapped things up, closing down the interview and leaving the room.

  “Do you fancy a drink before you go?” Stephen offered her. “We can get you one if your throat’s a bit dry.”

  Taylor gave him an appreciative look. “No, I’m okay. I’ll have something at home- at Ian’s, I mean.”

  I saw her down to the lobby where she checked out again and fetched her brolly from where she’d left it, dripping, at the door.

  “Thanks for coming, Taylor.” I wasn’t quite sure what to say, and my words came out oddly formal.

  She gave me a nod. “No problem. I… I hope it helps.” She wrinkled her nose, as if she wasn’t sure she’d added much new information.

  “It all helps,” I assured her. I looked up to glance out of the windows. “I think there’s a break in the rain.”

  “Thank goodness for that,” Taylor said, her smile wan. We both lingered for a moment, and perhaps she was as unsure as I was about where we stood. This was my place of work, and she’d been through a lot of frightening experiences recently. It had carved a distance between us.

  But when I thought that she might leave, she stepped forwards to give me an awkward but heartfelt hug. I returned it, holding her warmly. I had the sense that we might not get a moment like this again, like I could feel the threads that had initially pulled us together fraying and loosening.

  “See you later,” she said with a small wave after she’d eased away. She popped up her umbrella and headed out into the light drizzle while I watched her go, feeling heavy.

  I wasn’t left thinking about it for long, at least, because Sedgwick came striding over the minute I sat back down at my desk. I quirked an eyebrow at him, still faintly annoyed with him and his attitude.

  “Mitchell,” he said gruffly.

  “Yes?”

  He exhaled heavily. “Your hunch was correct,” he grumbled. “I talked to the flatmates and friends, and both of the victims had dealt with this ‘Will’ bloke.”

  “Yeah?” I said, perking up.

  “Yeah,” he said, looking like it physically pained him to admit it. “Took a bit of digging, but Emma poured a drink over him at a party, after he’d acted inappropriately.” Good for her, I thought, before my stomach sickened. She’d paid dearly for her courage in standing up to him.

  “And the other one?”

  “Hannah apparently spoke out against him online, turning a lot of the year against him. Called him out for being a- well, a jerk.”

  I hummed. “Good to know,” I said.

  Sedgwick jerked a nod. “I’ll send the report when I have it,” he said, already walking away.

  Stephen and I watched him stride off. “Wow, I think he pulled a muscle admitting you were right.”

  “I know,” I said, unable to hold back a grin. “Almost makes it worth it that he stole the lead.”

  Stephen snorted. “He did follow it up thoroughly,” he pointed out.

  “I wouldn’t have allowed anything less.”

  My mind had been turning as we talked, thinking about Emma and Hannah and how Will, if he was indeed the killer, had targeted them for their acts against his awful behaviour.

  “There will be others,” I muttered.

  Stephen shot me a confused look. “Back up, Mitchell. What?”

  “Other people, students and teachers, who spoke out against him.
They could be in danger too.”

  Stephen blinked. “Yeah, especially the teachers who got him expelled,” he said grimly.

  “And we know he managed to get his hands on his own file,” I realised with a wince. “So he might’ve been able to find the uni’s records on that too.”

  Stephen swore quietly. “I’ll call them.”

  I nodded and let him manage dealing with the university as I thought it over again. It was possible that Will was going by after people who he thought had wronged him, because incidents like what happened with Emma likely weren’t on any official record. But that worried me too, because the list of possible victims would be much longer if he was targeting anyone who’d ever angered him.

  Stephen got off the phone. “The uni’s going to put out a general warning to teachers, plus the dean’s gonna forward a list of teachers who were involved with Will’s expulsion.”

  I nodded. “Good.”

  We spent the remainder of the afternoon talking to a range of people who weren’t sure why the police were calling them to ask whether there’d been any dead animals left outside their doors recently. They probably thought I was nutty. It was tiring, saying the same thing over and over, and trying to pick my way carefully along the narrow line between scaring them too much, and putting them in danger by not scaring them enough. I had to play it by ear, seeing how concerned each person sounded on the phone.

  I had a headache by the time we’d worked through the list of teachers who’d been involved with Will, either by teaching him or by having a hand in his dismissal from the uni.

  “He sounds like a right piece of work,” Stephen said, once we’d heard why exactly he was expelled, since the incident with Taylor hadn’t been the deciding factor.

  “A violent, manipulative piece of work,” I agreed.

  There had been a number of different incidents that had added up, including an attack on another student, threatening teachers, creeping out his flatmates, and stalking students online.

  The day had left me feeling worn out both emotionally and intellectually, and I was glad when it hit five o’clock. Since we’d warned everyone as best we could, and Taylor was about as safe as she could be right now, there was no reason to hang about any longer.

  “Going running?” Stephen asked.

  I glanced out at the weather, which was wet again. “Aye. Need to get my brain to shut off somehow.”

  “I find a beer and a good rom-com works for me.”

  I chuckled. “That’s too mundane for me, Huxley.”

  “Oh ‘course,” he laughed. “You can’t be darkly brooding while watching Bridget Jones’s Diary and eating ice cream. Running in the dark and wet, however, is perfect for it.” I snorted and rolled my eyes at him.

  We got into a light squabble over rom-coms as we packed up, splitting up as I headed off to get changed and Stephen left to go home.

  I set off running without any clear idea of where I wanted to go exactly. Usually, I headed in the general direction of home and took as many detours as it took to wear me out, including a couple of slopes if I could fit them in. It all felt substandard after my moorland run, and I decided that I needed something to look forward to. I should sign up to another race, especially since the organised races got scarcer the deeper into winter we went, so I ought to make the most of the ones available.

  I found my feet taking me in the direction of the university, which wasn’t really surprising considering how much of my focus had been based around it recently, and how many times I’d driven over that way. I reached the flat expanse of grass over the road from Market Square, where the student shops were. There were students on the path, even in the dark and wet, coming back from the library. Usually, there’d be students heading to and from campus, I thought, but that was still shut down for now. They’d moved classes online as much as possible. I knew the dean was eager to open up again, since it hardly looked good for the uni to be closed up for long, even though it was for student safety.

  Glancing side to side, I jogged across the road and onto the campus, running down the winding paths and getting myself briefly lost. Slowing down, I had to ask a student which way Halifax was, and followed his instructions.

  I don’t know exactly why I wanted to go over there, except that Taylor had mentioned her run-in with Will at dusk earlier this year, and the investigation had taken us away from Halifax college for a while. I was curious, I suppose, to see what it looked like in the dark and when it was quieter.

  It wasn’t as abandoned as I’d imagined, though, as students came and went, going to the laundry and the small Nisa next to reception. I paused by one of the bike sheds to catch my breath, looking around to get my bearings.

  There wasn’t enough space to run properly, and I wanted to give my legs a proper stretching out before I headed back. My mind jumped back to looking out of Abby’s window, and I remembered the sports fields behind Halifax. That’d do, I thought.

  Heading back the way I’d come, I found a gate onto the fields and slipped through. It was dark back here. Only the faint lights from the windows of the Halifax student housing blocks off to the left cast a faint glow over the field. The grass was waterlogged, and damp seeped through my trainers into my socks as I ran across it and down towards a kids’ playground in the corner.

  My breathing rushing in and out of my lungs was the only sound for a long moment, the light breeze rustling through the dry autumn leaves of the trees lining the edge by the fence. I walked idly over to the playground, the surface firm but spongy under my feet.

  A crunch of gravel caught my attention, and I lifted my head, listening closely. I couldn’t see anyone around, but the sound had come from the space past the end of the field. Curious, I jogged over, my wet trainers making little noise on the sodden grass.

  There was a gate here, in between the high hedges, and I looked over it as I found the latch. There was what looked like a small, circular car park beyond the gate, and for no other reason than that I was on edge, I froze when I heard the crunch of more footsteps and watched silently.

  A man crossed the car park, heading towards the only car still left there, and I narrowed my eyes at him, wishing that there was more light. The man was tall and broad, bigger than I was for certain, and my stomach twisted. Surely not, I thought, as I kept watching.

  The man reached his car and popped open the boot, the car’s insides lighting up as he did so, but I was at the wrong angle to see his face. There was a crinkle of plastic, and then he pulled back, holding a plastic shopping bag in one hand that sagged with something heavy inside it.

  I’d been keeping quiet, barely breathing, but the man went suddenly still and looked up, scanning the car park. I held myself motionless, telling myself that I was in the shadows and, if I didn’t move, there was no reason that he’d be able to see me.

  The way he’d become so wary further persuaded me that he was doing something he shouldn’t, and something instinctual told me not to announce my presence and start asking questions.

  The man turned away, shutting his boot, and starting to walk off to the left, where I saw that there was a path that led back towards the Halifax courts. Fumbling in my pocket, I pulled out my phone and winced at the brightness of the screen. I was glad I’d been on my way back from work, since I didn’t usually carry my phone when I was running.

  I turned my screen brightness down as far as it would go and then hurried to send a message to Stephen, glancing up repeatedly to keep an eye on the bloke who was just about to leave the car park. I could just about make out the car’s number plate in the dim light, and I stuck that in the text message.

  Then the man was out of sight, and I jammed my phone back in my pocket, reluctant to lose him. Maybe I was paranoid, and this man had nothing to do with our investigations, in which case I’d come out of it feeling like a pillock, but it wouldn’t do any harm. Leaving this man to roam about the campus unchecked, if he was involved in the case, could lead to serious harm
. Following him was probably risky and stupid, but letting him get away… well, I didn’t want to imagine what the consequences might be.

  I tried to ease the gate open quietly, but the blasted thing creaked loudly even though I only opened it half-way. I squeezed myself through the opening and crept around the outside of the car park, keeping to the grassy verge and avoiding the noisy gravel.

  I couldn’t see the tall man anymore, and the path leading back towards Halifax was as dark and forbidding as a railway tunnel, seeming to swallow up any ambient light. My heart was hammering as hard as it had been when I was running as I moved carefully forwards towards the path, straining my eyes in the darkness. My night vision had been completely thrown off from using my phone. I couldn’t make out much of anything apart from the distant lights of Halifax further ahead.

  I came to a halt, listening hard. It seemed almost too quiet, and I was rigid with tension, thinking that maybe this wasn’t one of my best ideas. This had begun to feel less like me watching the man, and more like he was watching me.

  I took a step back towards the car park, and my jaw clenched with tension. I wasn’t in my police gear, so I wasn’t even carrying handcuffs, let alone any of the defensive tools they gave us.

  Stupid, stupid, I thought, taking another step backwards. The leaves rustled noisily beneath me, and I cringed. I wanted more than anything to turn on my phone torch, but I didn’t dare. I hoped that the bloke had walked down the path quicker than I’d expected and that was why I couldn’t see or hear hide nor hair of him now, but my gut was telling me to be afraid; that he’d heard the gate being opened and was watching me now.

  I was weighing up whether my best bet would be turning and running for it, or turning on my torch and announcing who I was when there was a sudden noise along with movement off to my left.

  I turned towards it, instinctively raising my arms above my head as some huge shape seemed to come down on me from above, and then I was on the ground. A vicious kick to my stomach knocked the wind right out of me, and I couldn’t seem to move or react to defend myself.