Snakes in the Grass (A DI Mitchell Yorkshire Crime Thriller Book 5)

by Oliver Davies

  I wanted to try her address immediately, but Stephen dragged me into a Cornish Pasty shop for lunch, and we ate standing outside. There was a rare break in the clouds that split sunshine over the Cornish village and made it look idyllic enough for a postcard.

  “Nice place to live,” Stephen said, his mouth full of pasty.

  “Aye, it must’ve been a shock when people started turning up murdered. It looks so safe.”

  “Maybe that’s why he picked it.” Stephen’s expression darkened. “People here are used to tourists and more friendly than those in the city, no doubt. More trusting.”

  “It’s possible. I suppose we can ask him tomorrow.”

  We planned to stay in Cornwall overnight at the B&B and visit Exeter prison on the way back to York tomorrow morning. We had an appointment booked, so that they were expecting us, though I doubted Abe himself had been told, which was for the best. I didn’t want to hear rehearsed answers to the questions we had to ask him. Hopefully, with our visit being unexpected after all this time, we’d be more likely to get the truth from the guy.

  We finished our late lunch and ambled down the street. The brief sun had brought out the locals, and we passed several people on the pavement who nodded to us.

  Stephen leaned over to me. “They’re so friendly here.”

  “You’re such a city kid.” I chuckled. “In Lockdale, you knew most everybody by name.”

  Stephen shook his head. “I can’t imagine being like that, all up in everyone’s business.”

  “It wasn’t always the best,” I admitted with a smile, thinking about Alice, a woman I’d dated briefly, and how we’d had to keep our relationship quiet if we didn’t want everyone from the greengrocer to the local vicar to know about it. “But there was a nice sense of community. If a dog or even a sheep went missing, half the village would show up to look for it. And if you left your wallet in the cafe, you’d have it back in your hands within a couple of hours.”

  Stephen looked at me sideways. “D’you miss it?”

  “No, not really.” I shrugged. “I like the friends I have here.”

  “That’s just Sam and me and, well, you know Annie. It wouldn’t hurt if you expanded your circle a bit.”

  “Aye, probably,” I snorted. “I could certainly do with a running buddy.”

  Stephen grinned. “Is Sam too fast for you?”

  “She is!” I laughed. “The woman’s a machine. I don’t know how she does it. It’s sweet that she’s willing to slow down for me, but I don’t want to limit her.”

  “It’s cus she’s younger, mate,” he said wisely. “Once you’re our age, it’s all downhill.”

  “Our age?” I rolled my eyes at him. “You’re older than me, mate.”

  “Barely,” he retorted.

  I’m sure we would’ve continued to bicker, but we’d arrived outside Georgina’s address, or where she’d lived ten years ago, anyway. She’d been fairly young then, twenty-four, so I was trying not to get my hopes up that she’d still be here. But perhaps this was her parents’ home, and they’d be able to tell us where she was. Stephen and I looked at the terrace house, which was small but immaculately maintained.

  “Here it is, then.”

  I went through the front garden gate first and heard it click as Stephen shut it behind us. A dog barked when I rapped the door knocker, and a yellow labrador stuck its head around the door when it was opened.

  The woman who was holding back the dog looked to be about sixty and was wrapped in a fluffy dressing gown. She looked startled to see us standing there, and I smiled, trying to put her at ease.

  “Hi, I’m DCI Mitchell. This is DI Huxley.” I waved a hand towards Stephen. “We’re looking for Georgina Pratchett. Does she still live here?”

  The woman looked at me for a moment.

  “Georgina Pratchett? No, no, I’m sorry. No-one by that name lives here.”

  I couldn’t quite hide my disappointment. “Ah. Do you know where the previous house owners moved to?”

  She thought for a moment. “I’ll ask my partner, but I don’t think so. I couldn’t have said that they were definitely called Pratchett, either, though the name rings a bell.”

  Now that she knew why we were here, she quickly relaxed, telling us her name and inviting us in for a cup of tea. We had nowhere else to be today, so we accepted her offer. Sipping from delicate Wedgewood tea cups, Nicki and her partner Jean told us what they could remember.

  It was Nicki who’d answered the door to us, and she absently petted the yellow lab as she thought about our questions.

  “Pratchett does sound about right. It was a couple, a touch younger than us.”

  “It was Pratchett, alright, I remember.” Jean nodded. “They were ever so keen to leave the area. We got the house for a bargain.”

  I’d been focused on sipping my tea but looked up at that.

  “They were? Do you remember why?”

  Nicki shook her head, but Jean frowned thoughtfully. “Oh, something bad had happened.”

  “What was the name of the girl you were after?” Nicki asked.

  “Georgina Pratchett. She would be about thirty now.” She’s been twenty or thereabouts when she’d come forwards as a witness.

  A dark cloud passed over both women’s faces, and I looked between them in concern.

  “What is it?”

  The couple shared a look. “Just a moment,” Jean said, standing up and leaving the room. I watched her go in confusion.

  “Did I say something wrong?” I was worried I’d somehow upset them, but Nicki just shook her head. She stroked the dog and sipped her tea in silence as we waited for her partner to come back, and Stephen and I shared a look of bafflement.

  “Here it is,” Jean said as she returned to the room. She was carrying an electronic tablet and held it out to us.

  I took it with a nod of thanks and frowned down, wondering what it was she meant. The tablet screen showed a news article from a local newspaper website, and a bad feeling settled into my stomach as I read.

  Georgina Pratchett had been found dead on a local beach nine years ago, a year after the Snake Killer’s murders. She’d fallen from the rocks above the beach, and it’d been ruled a suicide.

  “Oh god,” I murmured. I silently passed the tablet to Stephen so that he could see it.

  “Everyone round here was awfully shocked when it happened,” Jean said quietly. “We didn’t live here, we were in the next town over, but we heard about it there, too. I couldn’t immediately place the name.”

  Stephen looked at me, a grim expression on his face, once he finished reading.

  “Found on the beach,” he said, his mouth twisted with unhappiness.

  “Aye.” I knew what he meant, but we couldn’t talk about it here. I reached to hand the tablet back to Jean.

  “We’re sorry to give you bad news,” Nikki said.

  I managed a small smile. “Aye, that’s usually our job.”

  The conversation slipped into lighter waters as we finished up our cups of tea. I left a business card on the coffee table as we were heading out.

  “Just in case you remember anything more,” I told them, and Jean nodded.

  They saw us out of the door, and Stephen and I climbed back in the car. Stephen was wearing an expression of unease, and I was sure it reflected on my own face. We drove in silence back to the B&B and parked up outside.

  “It could’ve been suicide.” Stephen tapped his fingers on the dashboard.

  “It’s possible.”

  “It did happen a whole year later.”

  I squeezed my hand around the steering wheel. “The killer could’ve bided their time.”

  “He’s locked up! Gaskell got him!” Stephen spat out a curse.

  I stayed quiet. Maybe Georgina had committed suicide, but I knew that we were both thinking that her being found on the beach was a damning coincidence. The Snake Killer’s victims hadn’t been found on the beach itself, but that’s where th
e authorities had pulled the bodies out of the sea. I wondered if it had happened on that exact beach and tiredly rubbed my forehead. All the driving and now this bad news had left me with a headache and irrepressible fatigue.

  I pocketed the car keys and reached into the back seat to grab my coat.

  “Look, I need a nap. We can talk again at dinner, if you want. How awake are you feeling?”

  “I’ll manage.” Stephen shrugged.

  “Alright, see if you can get in touch with the officers around here, find out who was in charge of ruling Georgina’s case non-suspicious. And find out whether the beach they found her on was the same one where they pulled the killer’s victims out. Sound okay?”

  “Yeah.” Stephen gave a firm nod. “I’d rather get on with some work than dwell on this. The poor girl was only twenty-one.” He shook his head and got out of the car.

  He was thinking of his own daughter, I guessed, and of Georgina’s parents. The death of a child was the worst thing a parent could imagine. But I was too fuzzy headed to think of anything but shutting my eyes for a while, so I followed Stephen out of the car and into the B&B. A brief rest would set me right, and then we could try to work out what had happened.

  In the end, I ended up sleeping right through the afternoon and evening, and Stephen left me to rest when I didn’t turn up for dinner. So he updated me on what he’d found out on our way over to Exeter prison the next morning.

  The sun had barely cleared the buildings as we set off, and a mist hung thick as smoke, dispersing the sunlight into a soft, white glow. It was pleasant to have a break from the constant rain we’d been having up north, I thought as I drove.

  “Did you get to speak to the officer in charge of Georgina’s case?”

  Stephen made a noise of affirmation in his throat. He swallowed down the dregs of the takeaway coffee he’d picked up before we left before he answered me.

  “I did, yeah, nice woman. There wasn’t any case, though. It was almost immediately ruled as a suicide.”

  My focus was on the winding Cornish roads, but I could hear the tension in his tone and picture his cheerless expression exactly. “Why?”

  He shrugged. “Because there was nothing to suggest it wasn’t. The fall badly battered her, and the coroner didn’t find anything to suggest anyone had pushed her or drugged her or anything.”

  “Did she have a history of mental health issues?”

  “No. Nothing. Her parents had no idea.”

  “And was the beach-?”

  “Yeah,” Stephen said in a rush, strength returning to his voice. “That’s the only bit of evidence we have. It was that beach where the Snake Killer’s victims were pulled out of the water.”

  “Did you get to have a look at other local beaches? Were there other options for tall rocks?” I chewed on my lip. “I mean, was it the only beach in the area she could’ve chosen if she had wanted to… take her life?”

  “I don’t know.” Stephen was already pulling out his mobile phone, and I stayed quiet while he looked it up on Google Maps. A moment later, he put the phone down. “There are at least three beaches with rocks that look tall enough to me. And one of them has a reputation for being chosen by, uh, suicidal people.”

  “But that wasn’t the one that Georgina was found at?”

  “No.”

  Silence fell between us as I thought over what Stephen had said. The evidence was scanty, and I wondered whether I was looking into it too much. But it seemed like another one of those too-convenient coincidences. Her witness statement had been the only evidence on the killer, and the only evidence that had gone against Abe Muldoon’s confession. Georgina’s statement had been quite clear in that she’d seen a tall, dark-haired man loading something large and carpet-shaped into his boat. Abe Muldoon was dark-haired, but he was significantly below average in height. Even in the dark, height was something that was harder to mistake.

  “If her death was murder,” I said quietly after several minutes, “perhaps Abe had an accomplice. Someone sympathetic to him who took revenge on Georgina? Abe confessed, remember. He wanted to be recognised as the killer, and Georgina gave evidence to suggest he wasn’t the right man.” I glanced sideways to catch Stephen’s expression and found him looking unconvinced.

  “Yeah, it’s possible,” he admitted. “Or perhaps the simpler explanation is the right one. Gaskell got the wrong guy, and the real killer pushed Georgina off a cliff to stop her from telling anyone else about what she’d seen.”

  I nodded. I’d been thinking the same thing.

  “Aye. I hope you’re wrong, but that does seem like a better explanation.”

  Stephen sighed. “That, or the poor girl did take her own life.”

  I gave a nod. We didn’t have enough evidence to rule it one way or the other. It was suspicious, but it wasn’t damning.

  We drove on towards Exeter, heading closer to the prison when we’d get to talk to the man who’d willingly taken the fall for the Snake Killer’s five murders ten years ago. I was both eager to hear what he might have to say and dreading it. I wanted answers and badly, and if we didn’t get something from this visit, I wasn’t sure which direction to go in next. Meeting the convict today felt like a crossroads in the investigation, with one road leading towards catching the York murderer and preventing any more deaths, and the other meeting a sharp dead end.

  Seven

  The guards expected our arrival at Exeter prison, and security ushered us through. We didn’t have to wait long once we were inside before we wound up in an interview room where we could talk to Abe Muldoon.

  I was laying out my notebook and recording device when Abe was shown in with two guards, who locked his hands to the metal table. He was an unassuming looking man, about five foot five and with a plain, doughy face. His eyes were dark and large, and there was a twitchy nervousness about him as he looked at us, lines of wary confusion on his forehead.

  I waited until the guards had stepped back before beginning, introducing Stephen and me.

  “We want to talk to you about the events of ten years ago, ten years this month, actually.”

  Abe looked between us.

  “What’s there to say?” he asked in a soft, rasping voice. He sounded like a smoker, and I wondered if he’d picked that habit up in prison.

  “You confessed to the murders. It’s on record,” I said. “Why did you do it?”

  Without knowing what had driven Abe to act as he had, I went for the direct approach. If I’d known more about him, perhaps I could’ve more subtly appealed to him, or riled him, but I didn’t. There was very little known about why he apparently killed five people, cruelly and in cold blood, and I found that bizarre.

  Abe looked at me for a long second, seeming taken aback. His hands twitched on the table, his pale fingers like worms.

  “I wanted to.”

  I blinked. “Why did you want to?”

  “Just did.” He shrugged.

  I frowned, staring at him. He couldn’t hold eye contact for long and looked away.

  “Why’re you asking this?” he asked, still keeping his head down. “It’s been ten years.”

  “Aye, well, we’re interested.”

  “Why?” Abe threw back defiantly.

  I went for an evasive response. “Because we aren’t too satisfied.”

  “How can you not be satisfied? I confessed, didn’t I?” Abe frowned. “I’m locked up. That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?”

  I tilted my head at him. “You say you’re the killer. Why did you choose to kill those particular women, then?”

  “‘Cus I wanted to.” He twisted his hands together atop the table.

  I shared a frustrated look with Stephen, who shook his head. I didn’t understand why Abe was like this. He wasn’t crowing about getting away with five murders before he turned himself in, nor did he seem to be taking deliberate pleasure in refusing to answer our questions.

  “Were you on drugs?” I ventured. “Do you not re
member doing it?”

  Abe looked over his shoulder towards the door, clearly wanting to leave, and didn’t respond. I leaned forwards.

  “Did someone tell you to do it? Were you acting under orders from someone else?”

  It had been a shot in the dark, but Abe tensed, only briefly and barely noticeable, but it was telling. I sat back.

  “Who was it, Mr Muldoon?”

  There was genuine, raw fear in Abe’s face when he looked at me then, and just for a moment, I felt truly sorry for him. He looked terrified, so scared that it made me want to look behind me. That expression of terror disappeared after half a second, but it had thrown me off, and I was silent, trying to put my thoughts in order. Stephen seemed to sense this and stepped in.

  “Why did you hurt the victims in the way you did?” he asked, moving us back to familiar ground.

  Abe looked almost relieved. “I- I wanted to hurt them.”

  “Why?” Stephen looked at him coldly. “And why in that specific way?”

  “Uh, so they couldn’t run.”

  I frowned at him. “There are other ways to achieve that.”

  “I wanted to do it that way.” Abe shrugged.

  “But why?”

  Abe didn’t look up from the table and didn’t respond.

  “Okay,” I sighed. “Tell me something else. What was your job before you went to prison?”

  Abe glanced up at me, his fidgeting hands going briefly still. “I ran a chip shop.”

  I gave a nod, having read that particular fact in the case files already.

  “Do you have any family? A partner? Kids?” Abe looked sharply away, and I saw that it was a sensitive subject. Still, I wanted an answer, and I wanted to hear it from him. I’m sure I could dig up whether or not he had a marriage certificate, but I wanted to see his reaction. “Mr Muldoon?”

  “I had a wife,” he said stiffly. “Lauren.”

  “You killed those women and then just went back home to kiss your wife?” Stephen said, an edge in his tone.

  I touched my hand to his arm, telling him to cool it. Abe curled into himself, but instead of looking more nervous, there was a set to his jaw that looked almost stubborn.