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

by Oliver Davies

  Stephen blinked at me.

  “If the DNA has a match on the system-” he started.

  “We’ll have the murderer.”

  For now, we couldn’t rely on a positive ID of the DNA, and I’d not stop working until we were sure. But if it was, this could be the breakthrough I’d been so desperately hoping for.

  Eighteen

  The news that the threat that came in the form of a bottle of blood matched the DNA of the most recent victim wasn’t a surprise.

  “The bloke’s on the system, too,” Stephen told me after he’d got off the phone. He’d been the one Sam’s colleague from the lab had called, not me.

  “Yeah? Who is our John Doe, then?”

  Stephen’s expression was grim as he said, “A senior firefighter. He was done for drink driving years back. That’s the only reason he was on our records.”

  I swore quietly, dragging a hand over my face. A civilian was bad enough, but a firefighter felt like a taunt against us, and was painfully close to being one of the police’s own.

  “Call his team, let them know. Maybe they can break it more gently to the family. The media will demand another press conference soon, no doubt. They have to have heard about the newest killings.”

  “If they haven’t yet, they will soon,” he agreed, before getting on the phone to the local fire department.

  I decided that I needed to speak to the folk in the lab myself, whether or not Sam was in yet. The lab door was open and, when I looked in, I saw only Sam’s grumpy colleague. Sam must be out getting a cuppa, I thought as I stepped inside.

  “Hi,” I prompted, since the scientist still had his back to me. “Thanks for the ID on the blood. Any news on-”

  I broke off when I caught the look on his face. He’d been busy looking at some kind of machine when I came in, and he was still wearing safety goggles, but his expression was one of shock.

  “What is it?” I asked urgently.

  “The blood on the threat, the threat to Sam,” he said faintly. I felt sick as I waited for him to carry on.

  “It’s not Sam’s, is it?” I stared at him, silently begging him to say that I was wrong. To my huge relief, he shook his head.

  “No, it’s not hers. It’s, it’s the Superintendent’s.”

  I stared at him. How was that possible? I’d spoken to Gaskell earlier today. How could the killer have possibly covered the paper bag in Gaskell’s blood and left it with Sam yesterday?

  “Where is Sam?” I asked absently, my mind racing. I needed to talk to Gaskell and tell him. He’d need some sort of security detail.

  “She hasn’t come in yet.”

  “What?” I snapped, my tone hard and sharp. “What do you mean?”

  I looked frantically down at my watch. It was almost ten; there was no way Sam would be this late in unless something had happened. Maybe a relative had needed her suddenly, I thought desperately, trying to think of any scenario that didn’t involve Sam having been hurt. That didn’t involve Sam having been caught by the killer. She’d been sent a threat after all.

  I should never have left her alone this morning. I cursed myself as I fumbled to get my phone out to call her. We should have driven in together, so I could have made sure she was alright, but it was too late for recriminations.

  Her phone rang and rang, and I fidgeted impatiently as I waited.

  “You think something’s wrong?” Sam’s colleague ventured nervously.

  “Why didn’t you report her late to work?” I snapped, rounding on him as Sam continued to not answer the phone. “After she was sent a bloody threat yesterday? Are you a complete idiot?”

  I shook my head. I wasn’t as angry at him as I was at myself.

  “Look, call Gaskell’s office. Tell him about the blood, alright?” I ordered, my phone still pressed to my ear. He sent me a resentful look, no doubt for my yelling at him, but did as I asked.

  “Darren?”

  The sound of Sam’s voice, however quiet, made my heart jump.

  “Sam? Where are you? Are you okay?”

  “I’m alright, I think,” she said, after giving a shaky laugh. “I was in a little accident.”

  “Accident?” I said sharply and had to force myself to calm down. Sam’s colleague had turned abruptly when he heard the word and was staring at me.

  “Is she okay?” he demanded. He let the phone he’d been using fall to his side.

  “Are you okay?” I echoed into the phone. “Seriously, where are you?”

  “I’m at the hospital. It was just a little bump. I slid on the ice.”

  “If it was only a little, why’re you at the hospital?”

  “I might’ve twisted my wrist slightly. A small break,” she admitted.

  I groaned, pressing a hand to my face. “A broken wrist? Christ. Have they fixed you up? Are you on painkillers?”

  “Yes and yes,” she said, and I realised the slightly dreamy tone to her quiet voice was probably the effect of the drugs.

  “I’ll be right there as soon as I can-”

  “Darren, Darren, no, I’m fine. I was about to call in to reception to tell work, but I’m alright. You’re busy.”

  I hesitated. She was right. With everything else going on, I couldn’t really drop everything to rush to her side like I wanted to.

  “I really want to,” I said finally.

  “I know you do.” Her voice was soft, and I missed her terribly. “I’ll need you more when the meds wear off, okay? Come round and cook for me tonight, alright?”

  “Alright,” I promised, smiling slightly. “Have you got someone to take you home from the hospital? They won’t keep you long, will they?”

  “No, they haven’t fitted the cast yet. I’ve got friends, Dee, don’t worry. Go back to work. I’ll be alright.”

  I sighed. “Okay. I’ll see you tonight.”

  Sam’s colleague had gone back to trying to call Gaskell’s office once he seemed reassured that Sam was relatively okay and in no immediate danger. As I hung up the phone, he turned towards me, a puzzled look on his face.

  “There’s no answer at his desk.”

  “Christ,” I spat out, hurrying out of the room and making my way towards Gaskell’s office. The door was shut, the light turned off inside, but I stuck my head inside anyway, as if Gaskell might sit there in the dark. He wasn’t.

  I tried the break room next, startling a couple of junior officers with how I was rushing around. He wasn’t there either.

  “Have you seen the Supe?” I asked the folks standing by the counter, making their hot drinks. They shook their heads.

  I strode back towards Stephen’s desk, muttering curses under my breath. Gaskell was probably out at a dental appointment, or he’d gone to the shops for brunch, or he was somewhere else in the station.

  I called him on his mobile as I walked back towards Stephen, who looked up as I approached, reading the alarm in my expression immediately. Gaskell’s mobile rang and rang in my ear before it hit his pre-recorded phone message, and I hung up. I tossed my phone down on my desk and bent down, putting my hands on the wood.

  “Have you seen Gaskell?”

  “Not since this morning?” Stephen said slowly, his statement turning into a question; he wanted to know why I was acting so frantic.

  “The blood on the threat sent to Sam?” I said tightly, and Stephen gave a nod. “It matches Gaskell’s DNA. It’s his.”

  “But how?” he said, baffled. “It was sent to Sam yesterday!”

  “I know, I know,” I said. “But I don’t know where he is. Can you check his calendar?”

  I tried Gaskell’s phone again while Stephen did as I asked, leaving a sharp voicemail message telling Gaskell to call me back immediately.

  “He doesn’t have anything booked in according to this.”

  I groaned, dragging a hand through my curly hair before giving a bitter laugh. Stephen looked at me like he doubted my sanity.

  “You know what else? Sam’s broken her wr
ist. ‘Small’ car accident this morning, she said.”

  “Jeez,” he said, frowning sympathetically. “But, I mean, Gaskell’s fine, right? He’s out at the shops or something. We saw him this morning.”

  “This killer moves fast,” I reminded him. “And the pattern had been consistently the same, right? Blood of the victim, then the victim.”

  “But how can-? Oh, look at this.”

  “What?”

  Stephen was pointing at his computer screen, which was still opened up to show Gaskell’s online diary. Stephen pointed to yesterday’s appointment, and there, amidst his other duties, he’d booked in an hour off to donate blood.

  “That explains it, then,” I said flatly. “The killer got hold of the blood Gaskell donated somehow.”

  “So, if he gave it willingly then, he might be fine.”

  The phone on our desk started ringing, and I pressed a hand to my forehead, wishing that everything wasn’t coming at us at once. I felt certain that Gaskell was in danger, but I didn’t have any concrete proof, just the killer’s previous pattern.

  “Can you get that?” I asked Stephen, reaching for my phone to make my own call.

  So Stephen answered the incoming call while I placed one to Sedgwick, briefly filling him in. I didn’t much like the bloke, it was true, but I trusted him to be a decent police officer, loyal to the force and a good worker.

  “Gaskell didn’t mention heading off-” I tried, half-desperately since Sedgwick had already said that he didn’t know where Gaskell was and hadn’t seen him today.

  “No, not that I know of.” I heard him take a breath at the other end of the phone. “I’m out on a case, Mitchell. I can’t just drop everything-”

  “From the killer’s previous actions-” I rushed to say, trying to get him to understand how urgent this was, but he cut me off.

  “If you’d let me finish,” he snapped. “I can’t drop everything, but I’ll be back at the station as soon as I can. We’ll find Gaskell and put this worry of yours to rest.”

  He hung up before I could respond, and I set the phone down, feeling both irritated that he didn’t seem to consider the situation to be as worrying as I did, and relieved that he was coming back to the station, regardless.

  Stephen was on the phone for a good while longer than I was, and from what I could hear of his side of the conversation, I was tentatively hopeful that he was talking to the Leeds postmortem team.

  “Well?” I said as soon as he’d hung up. His flat expression prepared me for more disappointing news.

  “They analysed the skin under the victim’s nails, but there’s no match for the DNA on the system.”

  “Seriously?” I groaned. “Christ’s sake. Alright. We have to push on, regardless. It’ll help us confirm that we’ve got the right person when we do catch up with them.”

  I checked my phone, looking for a message from Gaskell, but there wasn’t one.

  “Call him again,” Stephen prompted. He hadn’t shown the same worry that I had when I first told him, but I could see the concern growing on his face as we continued to be unable to track him down.

  “Put a call out on the radio, would you?” I asked, already plugging Gaskell’s contact into my phone to call him. “Maybe he’ll respond to that.”

  Stephen gave a nod. I stared unseeingly ahead as I listened to the phone ring in my ear. No answer. I left another answer message, even sharper than the last one.

  “I swear to god, if he’s disappeared off to the pub and got me this worried for nothing…”

  But I didn’t finish that, because finding out that he’d been skiving off work would be so much better than the other option.

  “No response on the radio yet.”

  I got up to pace back and forth again, unable to stay still, and tried to force myself to think. For the first time since we’d been told that the blood matched Gaskell’s, I asked myself why the killer would want to target him.

  At that moment, Sedgwick came up the stairs and into the office and Stephen and I looked over at him as he strode towards us. Despite his entrance, I was in the middle of a thought process, and I turned back to Stephen.

  “It’s revenge, isn’t it?” I said. “Gaskell ran the original case, and he caught the wrong guy.”

  “But… didn’t we agree that Muldoon was blackmailed into stepping forwards? Why would the killer be pissed that Gaskell took the bait? The killer themselves set it up.”

  I continued pacing. It was a good question, and I tried to run through the options. Sedgwick was standing to the side, clearly listening. Since he wasn’t badgering to get my attention, I ignored him for the moment.

  “Maybe he wanted Gaskell to be smarter than that, to realise that it was a set-up. Or maybe,” I paused, my mind turning over, “Gaskell got too close to the truth, forcing the killer’s hand.”

  “Oh, with Georgina, you mean?” Stephen asked, his eyebrows raised in thought. “She was Gaskell’s only witness.”

  “Yes!” I clicked my fingers. “And she knew something key, didn’t she? Because we reckon that the killer took her out of the picture because of it.”

  “On the other hand, Gaskell does fit the pattern in general,” Stephen pointed out. “He’s middle-aged, successful. Not as rich as those other blokes, true, but he must make a decent amount from being the Supe.”

  “That doesn’t contradict the other theory, Steph,” I said, standing still as I tried to figure out how this could fit together. “Maybe he’s the reason for the pattern, for the changed pattern, remember? The killer targeted older women before-”

  “Because they wanted to kill one particular older woman?” Stephen guessed. “And now they’ve done the same, and Gaskell…”

  “Was always their final target,” I finished.

  I collapsed into my desk chair and wished fervently that I was wrong, but it didn’t feel like it.

  “There were five killings last time.”

  “And Gaskell would make the fifth,” Stephen said bleakly. I swore.

  “Alright,” Sedgwick broke in. I’d mostly forgotten that he was standing there, and his rough voice made me jump slightly. “If you’re serious about this, we need to coordinate a search, find out who last saw him and where.”

  “Stephen and I saw him this morning,” I said. “Here, in the office.”

  “When?”

  “It couldn’t have been much after eight,” Stephen said.

  “Then we’ll find out who saw him after that.” Sedgwick nodded as if it was decided. And he was right that this needed to become a station-wide incident. Any officer being taken by a killer was cause for an emergency, not least when that officer was the ruddy Superintendent.

  “So you’ll organise things from here,” I said, looking to Sedgwick for his assent, so he wouldn’t think I was trying to steamroll him. He gave a nod. “Stephen and I need to go to his house. There must be something there that can tell us more.”

  “It’s a start,” Sedgwick admitted, before turning sharply away to begin coordinating the station’s efforts.

  Dealing with teams and delegating jobs to numerous officers had never been my favourite thing to do, so I was more than happy to leave that aspect in Sedgwick’s capable hands and focus on the actual investigative side.

  I’d always been more hands-on than a DCI perhaps should be, getting involved in interviews from the very beginning of an investigation and doing the legwork alongside Stephen. I didn’t think there was any better way to get a read on a case than from the ground, talking to the actual people involved.

  Stephen and I made our way hastily downstairs to reception, where I concisely and urgently explained that we needed to know Gaskell’s address, because we feared for his safety. It took longer than I’d wanted to persuade the administrator, but my promise that they could blame me entirely if Gaskell was angry about it did the trick. Gaskell’s home address in hand, we hurried out to the car park, where Stephen took the wheel, and we sped off.

&nb
sp; “There are cereal bars in the glove box,” Stephen told me abruptly, when we were about half-way there. Until then, we’d sat in mutually tense silence.

  “What?”

  “You’re fidgeting. You fidget more when you’re stressed and hungry. Eat something, and your brain’ll work better. And gimme one while you’re at it.”

  I considered protesting his nannying, but I was hungry despite the tight, sick feeling in my stomach, and I popped the glove compartment. There was a good handful of snacks and bars stuffed in there, and I raised my eyebrows before picking out a couple of Nature Valley bars. I opened Stephen’s for him, and we ate without talking for the remainder of the journey, my stomach settling with the hit of sugar and oaty energy.

  We pulled up outside Gaskell’s and paused for only a moment before climbing out of the car.

  “Nice place,” Stephen said, looking up at the Victorian semi-detached.

  I was focused only on making sure that this was the right place and, once I was certain it was, I strode up the path and prodded the doorbell repeatedly. Stephen came up behind me, and we both listened for footsteps, or creaking floorboards, or even a voice yelling that they’d be down in a moment.

  I jabbed the doorbell again, but heard nothing but the echoes of the ringing in the empty house. I took a step back and looked up at the old property, which was admittedly attractive and much like one I wouldn’t mind owning myself someday. The curtains were open upstairs, but none of the lights were on.

  “We need to get inside.”

  “We don’t have a key?” Stephen offered.

  “Go and ask the neighbours if they have a spare, would you? And ask if they’ve seen Gaskell today, too. I’ll look round the back.”

  I moved round to the side gate and unlatched it. Whether or not any of the neighbours could let us in, I was determined that we’d get into Gaskell’s place one way or another. I had to be sure that Gaskell wasn’t inside, unconscious on the floor after falling down the stairs and unable to reach the phone. I doubted that that would be the case, but we also needed to check for signs of a struggle. It was possible that Gaskell had been taken from his own home, though why he would’ve returned home after getting into work early, I wasn’t sure.