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

by Oliver Davies

  The receptionist didn’t seem to recognise the description, but he obligingly ran through the camera footage from half-past eight onwards while Stephen and I watched closely. A figure dressed in a dark, loose-fitting raincoat and boots came in, and I jabbed a finger at the screen, startling the receptionist, who paused the video.

  “That’s him,” I said, low and certain.

  “Are there any shots of his face?”

  “Even better,” I interrupted, “have you got his details on your records? His name and address?”

  “Uh, we should do.”

  It took a painfully long half an hour before we thought we had the right person out of the company’s records. He’d been logged as depositing something in his storage locker at half-past nine this morning, and he’d been renting the locker for a long time. His name was Nick Arnott.

  I looked down at the printed letters for a long pause, hoping that we’d got it right, that this was the man currently holding Gaskell captive. And, if we had everything lined up properly, this Nick Arnott was the original Snake Killer, for whom Muldoon had spent ten years in jail for a series of murders he didn’t commit.

  “We need to look in his locker,” I decided. “To be sure this is our guy.”

  The receptionist looked nervous at that. “I should call my boss and-”

  “We haven’t got time for that. Do you want to see my badge? Would that help? We’re dealing with a serial murder case, and we really need to see in that locker.”

  That got through to him, and he showed us through to the back, where there was a long row of painted blue doors, each secured with thick locks. The receptionist unlocked Arnott’s with an ominous clanking of the bolt and stepped back so that we could look inside.

  Glancing into the dark room, I had an impulse that most likely came from paranoia and watching too many thrillers on TV, but I’d never yet regretted being careful when on a case.

  “Steph, watch the door, would you?”

  “What?” He sent me a confused look.

  “Stand at the door, please, mate,” I repeated. “We can swap in a minute.” I sent a glance at the receptionist, who’d been perfectly pleasant and normal so far. Still, I lowered my voice, “I don’t want us both inside here. Only Keira knows we’re here.”

  Stephen didn’t look entirely convinced, but he stayed outside the storage room while I ventured further inside. With the light on, the place felt a lot like a cell, albeit an extremely cluttered one. It was narrow enough that I could’ve reached out and touched both walls comfortably. I had to push away a brief surge of claustrophobia that was caused more by the fact that the room could be tightly locked and was most likely owned by a killer, than by its actual size, though that wasn’t helping.

  Focusing on the job I had to do helped, though, and I moved towards the clutter of cardboard boxes piled atop each other, which were at least two feet deep and made the small room even tighter. The boxes further back were layered with dust, while the ones nearest to me seemed to have been recently disturbed.

  I tried the box right in front of me first and found a jumble of paper documents, print-outs, pictures, loose CDs, amongst other paraphernalia. I rifled through at random, my breath catching when I pulled out a photo with Sam’s face on it. It was blurred, and she wasn’t looking at the camera, but it was definitely her, wearing that tan coat she liked so much.

  The picture confirmed three things in my mind. One, this storage locker really did belong to the killer. Therefore, the killer’s name, or at least an alias for him, was Nick Arnott. And three, the murderer had been spying on Sam, just as we feared when that threat turned up. He’s still out there, I thought sickly, and he knows where Sam lives.

  I forced myself to set the photo aside and dug hurriedly through the rest of the box with renewed haste. As soon as we got out of this place, I was calling Sam to check on her, and to warn her.

  Deeper in the box, I found more pictures; Gaskell, Stephen, Keira, Robbie. There was a number of me, too, that’d clearly been taken whilst I was running to work. I wore a different outfit in several of the photos, so the killer had staked me out for several days. Unease crawled over my skin, but I didn’t have the time to confront the strange sense of violation I was feeling.

  In this box alone, we had enough evidence to make a solid start, and I grabbed it before heading gladly back towards the entrance. Stephen, who was leaning against the doorframe and looking bored, startled at my sudden appearance and straightened up.

  “Well? Find anything? Is it him?”

  “Yes, it’s him.” I hefted the box up into my arms and looked around for the receptionist, but couldn’t see him. “Where’s that guy gone?”

  “He said he needed the loo, but that was right after you went in.”

  I’d been inside the room for maybe ten minutes, and I frowned, feeling uneasy.

  “Let’s go, Steph. I’ll fill you in in the car.”

  Whatever expression was on my face seemed to be enough to convince him not to argue this once. He took the box when I handed it to him so that I could lock up the storage room again. I pocketed the key, and we headed quickly out. I couldn’t pin down why I was so keen to get out of the place, but I was, and the fresh air on my face felt like a profound relief.

  “You’re sure it’s him? This Arnott guy?” Stephen said as he loaded the box into the car boot and climbed into the passenger seat.

  “Yeah, I’m sure. The name and address could be fake, though.” I’d pulled out my notebook again and looked down at the innocuous information, scrawled down in my own hand.

  “Could be,” Stephen agreed. “But how could we guess that we’d track him back here?”

  “I don’t know, but I wouldn’t put it past him,” I said darkly, thinking uneasily of the receptionist and how he hadn’t turned back up. “Let’s just get over there now, okay?”

  “To the address? Without back-up?” Stephen gave me a stern look, and I knew he was thinking of my recent reckless behaviour, and how it had landed me in hospital, even though I’d been just fine.

  “Fine, call Sedgwick on the way.”

  Stephen grumbled, but he called up Hewford’s other DCI while I got the car started and drove away. I glanced in my rearview mirror as we were leaving the storage facility’s car park and caught the briefest glimpse of a young man standing in the doorway, watching us go. Maybe the receptionist had wanted a breath of fresh air, I thought, disquieted.

  Stephen’s conversation with Sedgwick distracted me a second later as Stephen swore quietly and put a hand to his mouth.

  “You’re sure it’s him?” he said quietly, and I felt my whole body go cold at the words. I flicked the indicator light and turned into the nearest lay by, twisting to stare at Stephen, who glanced sideways at me but didn’t say anything as he listened to Sedgwick.

  “Alright, we’ll be there,” he said finally and hung up.

  “What did he say?” It was almost physically painful to ask, when I was so worried that I already knew the answer.

  Stephen’s face was pale as he said, “A video got sent to the station, on a memory stick.”

  “What?” That hadn’t been what I’d expected him to say. “What was on it? Gaskell?”

  “Yeah. He’s alive in the video at least, but the killer’s cut his feet.”

  I slammed my palm against the steering wheel, horror making me baulk at the news. I’d been afraid that Stephen would tell me that Gaskell had turned up dead, but hearing that he was being tortured was awful in an entirely different way.

  “Sedgwick is waiting for us at the station.”

  “No.” I was shaking my head even before Stephen finished. “We’ve got to try this address for this Arnott bloke. We have to.”

  “We can’t go haring in without backup, it’s-”

  “Gaskell might not have even half an hour! We can’t wait.”

  Stephen clenched his jaw and looked away. I waited anxiously for his response because, as much as I was th
e senior partner in this relationship, he was still my friend and what I was asking went beyond the call of duty. Protocol told us to wait for back up and not run into a potentially lethal situation half-cocked to try to save someone we weren’t sure was even still alive. And this video was clearly a taunt, daring us to charge in there and fall for the trap.

  I knew all of this, and I still couldn’t stand to wait. But I wasn’t going to drag Stephen into a situation like that without his explicit consent. He had kids and a family to think of before he went off risking his life; I didn’t.

  “We’ll go,” Stephen said, after what felt like ages. “But we’re not racing in there, d’you hear me, Darren? We’ll scope it out and see if it looks like the real deal. We’ll be careful.”

  I’d take what I could get. Twisting the ignition, I put my foot down and the sirens on. I drove us towards the address we’d been given, all the while fearing that we might not be going in the right direction, that the information was fake, and we were wasting time that Gaskell didn’t have. But we didn’t have any other leads, and I couldn’t stand by any longer.

  Twenty

  The address listed by Nick Arnott brought us to a terrace property near Holgate, where the trains passed close by, and the street felt disarmingly harmless.

  I’d pulled the car up a couple of streets away, and we walked cautiously towards the right house. We were trying to move casually, I knew, but I reckoned that we were broadcasting anxiety and intensity, and anyone watching out would pick us out immediately.

  My hope, as unlikely as it might be, was that the killer had been careless. That he’d gotten too wrapped up in his own invincibility after getting away with murder for a decade, and he’d put his real address and name on the record at the storage facility.

  The more that I thought about it, I recalled how his face hadn’t been on any of the cameras because he’d kept his head well down, and the chance of him being so careless or reckless seemed damningly slim. But we had to try.

  The house Arnott had listed as his address was a mid-terrace, and there wasn’t any way around to the back if I didn’t want to have to go jumping over other people’s garden fences. We’d just have to knock on the door.

  “Stand back a bit,” I told Stephen. “Watch the windows, okay?”

  He was looking distinctly uncomfortable but, when I left a pause for him to express any last-minute reservations, he didn’t. Once he’d backed up to be able to see if anyone appeared in the windows upstairs, I went ahead and knocked heavily on the door. There was no doorbell or knocker, and the cracked paint flaked when I rapped it with my knuckles.

  It was mid-afternoon, and most working-age people would be at work this time of day, I thought as no-one came to the door. I tried to avoid the sinking doubt that the Snake Killer, because that’s who we were dealing with here, had led us on a wild goose chase, and this was a random house picked out on a whim. Gaskell wasn’t here, and neither was this Arnott guy.

  I knocked again, hard enough to bruise my knuckles.

  “Darren.”

  I ignored Stephen’s quiet call, assuming that he was going to tell me that this was pointless. I rapped sharply again and then froze, certain that I’d heard something.

  “Darren.”

  “What?” I turned around to give Stephen an annoyed look. He was glaring at me right back and gestured that I come towards him. I relented and stepped over.

  “The curtain moved. It definitely did.” He pointed up to the top left-hand window, and I narrowed my eyes at it.

  “How sure are you? Could it have been a draft?”

  “I’m sure. It moved like someone shook it.”

  I chewed my lip, thinking of the slight noise I thought I’d heard from inside.

  “It could be nothing more than a cat,” I admitted aloud. “We have no way of knowing if this is the right address or if Gaskell is even here.” I resisted the urge to kick something, anything.

  “What d’you want to do then? We haven’t got a warrant.”

  My phone rang before I was forced to think of a solution to that, which was good, because I have no idea what I would’ve said. Keira’s face came up on the screen, and I accepted the call.

  “Mitchell speaking.”

  “Where are you?” she said, and I frowned at the sharpness of her tone, instantly more alert.

  “At the address we got for Nick Arnott, from the-”

  “He’s not there. It’s his house, alright, I’ve been looking him up-” She cut herself off. “Look, get back in the car, alright? I’m tracing his phone, and he’s on the move.”

  “Have you called the traffic units?” I asked, taking an automatic step towards the car, before I hesitated.

  “Yes,” she said impatiently, “but you’re the closest. And, Darren, they’re heading towards Rosanes’s place.”

  I was so used to thinking of Sam by her first name that it took me a second to catch up.

  “What?” I snapped. “How do you know?”

  “We don’t have time for this! If you want explanations, I’ll tell you when you’re moving.”

  I took another step towards the car with Stephen watching me, a puzzled frown on his face. But the house was right there, and Keira had confirmed that it was the right house, that it did belong to a Nick Arnott. And if Arnott was our killer, he wouldn’t take a prisoner with him while he was on the move. Gaskell could be in that house, right now. He could be bleeding out.

  But what about Sam? I had to make a decision.

  “Stephen, call Sedgwick and update him,” I said, taking the phone away from my ear. “Get officers out here as soon as possible. I want you to break in. Find out if Gaskell’s in there, okay? Keira says it’s the right house.”

  He stared at me. “Where are you going? What if the killer’s in there?”

  “I’m ninety-nine per cent sure he isn’t,” I told him. “But wait for back up if you want to. I’ve got to go.”

  “But where?” Stephen demanded as I climbed into the car. “You’re just leaving me here.”

  “He’s heading for Sam,” I snapped, before slamming the door shut. I could see Stephen’s shocked, hurt face through the window, but I didn’t have time to explain it all to him. I put Keira on speakerphone, strapped myself in and jabbed the key into the ignition.

  “Are you still there?” Keira said impatiently, just as I took the car out of neutral and drove out of the narrow street towards the main road.

  “Where is he?” I asked tightly, trying to figure out in my head the quickest route towards Sam’s house from here. She was fierce, young, and fit. She’d had boxing training, and usually, I’d trust her to more than hold her own. But right now, she was unprepared to defend herself, most likely alone with her wrist was broken. My hands clenched tight around the steering wheel, and I turned the sirens on.

  “He’s about five minutes away from Rosanes.”

  “Have you called her?”

  “I’ve tried. Her phone’s off, and she didn’t answer her landline either.”

  I swore, pushing my foot down on the peddle as I navigated impatiently through the afternoon traffic.

  “How do you know he’s aiming for Sam?”

  “He sent her a threat, didn’t he?” Keira said. Her voice was steady and even, but with an undercurrent of intensity that came out only when she was absolutely focused. “I couldn’t see any other reason for him to be heading that way.”

  “How did you know-?”

  “She held a New Year’s party once, Darren,” she said, sounding exasperated now. “That’s how I know she lives over there. Are you done with asking irrelevant questions?”

  “What’re the relevant questions, then?”

  I had to brake hard as a van failed to get out of my way like all the other vehicles on the road. Completely leisurely, it manoeuvred itself gradually out of the way, and I barely restrained myself from slamming my palm on the horn as I accelerated past.

  “What did you say?” I a
sked a moment later when I realised that I’d missed her answer to my question.

  “I said, the relevant questions would be; what do we know about him? Will he be armed? Is he alone? What vehicle does he drive?”

  “Alright,” I said. “Imagine I asked all of those.”

  “I didn’t have long to research him, but he’s been done for fraud in the past. He clearly has a thing for collecting other people’s information and using it against them. Regardless, he’s wealthy. His father owns big shares in some supermarket.”

  “How is this relevant?”

  “It’s relevant because it means he’s driving a flashy supercar that I can trace. He’s got no record of owning a gun, but his father has a licence for a shotgun, for pigeon shooting.”

  I clenched my jaw at that, wishing that I had a bulletproof vest in the boot of the car, but I didn’t.

  “You think he’ll have it?”

  “I have no idea,” she said curtly. “I’ve alerted the nearest units for dealing with that, but they’re going to be ten minutes after you, at best.”

  “You don’t think I should wait for back up?” I said as I turned a tight corner, now only minutes from Sam’s.

  “I don’t think you’ll want to wait,” she said tersely. I grunted, because she was right there.

  “Where is he now?”

  “You’re less than five hundred yards off him. He’s closing in on Rosanes’ house from the other end of the street.”

  “Jesus,” I muttered. “Call Sam again, will you?”

  “I have someone doing that already. Focus on what you’re doing.”

  “I am.”

  I’d slowed my car to a crawl, inhaling sharply when I saw an obnoxiously red car up ahead, slung close to the ground and with blacked-out windows. I was in a police car and about as inconspicuous as the ketchup-coloured vehicle I’d been following. Now that I’d seen him, I suddenly wasn’t sure what to do.

  “It’s there,” I told Keira in a rush. “He’s probably seen me too.”

  “What’s he doing?”

  I’d frozen when I’d seen the car, coming to a halt in the middle of the road with my back rigidly straight. I’d expected Nick Arnott, if it was him who was driving, to do a runner, either in his garish supercar or on foot. I hadn’t expected him to stay there, sitting in the road like I was.