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

by Oliver Davies

  “He’s not moving,” I said quietly, as it mattered how loudly I talked. I unclipped my seatbelt, in case I had to move quickly, and touched my belt to make sure that my radio was there. “Has Stephen radioed in?”

  “No, he’s waiting for the other officers to arrive.”

  “Sensible.” It wasn’t what I would’ve done, but I wasn’t with him to back him up, and I’d told him that it was up to whether he wanted to wait or not. “Any back up coming my way by any chance?”

  “Still five minutes out.”

  “Has Sam-?” I started, before breaking off. The supercar’s door had just opened, and a lean figure suddenly darted out of the car and bolted towards Sam’s house.

  I swore viciously and threw my own car door open, sprinting down the street. But the man who’d lurched out of the car had been nearer than me, and he got there first, ignoring Sam’s front door entirely and leaping over her side gate. He was clearly familiar with the place, I thought bitterly as I skidded onto her drive and vaulted the gate myself, stumbling on landing and almost twisting an ankle.

  I heard an awful smashing sound and ducked instinctively before realising the noise had been the sound of Sam’s french doors being shattered. I pushed off again, skidding on the moss-covered patio as I approached the back of the house and ducked through the broken back door.

  I heard a yell upstairs and knew immediately that it was Sam’s.

  “Sam!” I shouted as I lurched forwards, glass breaking under my boots as I ran, heavy-footed and desperate, towards the stairs.

  My legs throbbed as I raced up, hearing a crash of wood and a yelp of pain as I reached the landing. I didn’t bother with stealth as I ran down the short hall towards the room at the end where all the noise was coming from.

  I burst inside, throwing the door against the wall hard enough to leave a dent. Inside, Sam had a man, shorter than she was but wiry and vicious, shoved up against the wardrobe and was trying to keep him there with a hand on his wrist and an elbow against his neck.

  “Sam!”

  She twisted around at the sound of my voice, and her split-second distraction let the killer, Arnott, get free. I realised too late that he had a knife in his hand, which Sam had been stopping him using, and he lunged towards her at the same moment that I scrambled forwards, desperate to stop him hurting her.

  She threw up her arm to protect herself as he came at her, just as I threw myself at him, and we crashed sideways into the wardrobe. I struggled up to my knees, terrified that I’d find Sam stabbed and bleeding. Before I could go towards her, Arnott dragged himself up and threw his elbow up at my throat, painfully knocking all the air out of me and throwing me backwards. Still gasping, I tried to fend him off as he went straight for my throat, his eyes narrowed with hate and teeth gritted in a grimace of hatred.

  But before he could reach me, an arm wrapped around his neck from behind, and he was dragged backwards, his eyes bulging and face turning an awful shade of puce. I dragged myself up to seated, my hand at my bruised and aching throat and found that Sam was the one choking Arnott.

  “Damn it, Darren,” she said, just as Arnott’s eyes rolled back, and he went limp. She released him immediately, moving away from him with an expression of evident disgust. “I had him before you barged in here.”

  “How was I to know?” I said with a grimace, patting my pockets to find zip ties and dragging Arnott’s skinny wrists behind his back before he could wake up.

  “You could’ve trusted me!” she snapped, glaring at me with a level of frustration I’d never seen on her before. “I’ve had training on how to defend myself. I didn’t need you to come charging in like some white knight!”

  I reeled back. “You’ve got a broken wrist,” I said, fighting to keep my voice even despite my hurt. “And you were on heavy painkillers from the hospital. Of course, I know you’re a fighter. You’ve had plenty more training than me. But how was I supposed to know that he hadn’t caught you while you were asleep?”

  Sam’s shoulders had lowered as I spoke, my hands extended towards her, and she pressed a hand to her head.

  “Sam!” I said sharply, before swearing.

  “What?”

  I grasped her hand gently, and she inhaled when she saw the knife embedded in the plaster cast on her arm. A thin trail of blood was leaking out onto her palm. Her face was abruptly completely white, and her hand was clammy beneath mine.

  “Woah,” I said, alarmed. “Look at me. You’re alright. Put your head between your knees, okay?”

  The killer was stirring nearby, but I ignored him, confident that the wrist ties would hold him up for a moment while I made sure that Sam didn’t faint. I helped her into a better sitting position, and she put her head down, taking a couple of deep breaths.

  “I’ve got to call this in,” I apologised as I rubbed her back.

  I stayed beside her as I pulled my radio out of my belt, keeping an eye on Arnott, sprawled on the floor and groaning. His shoulder twisted at an ugly angle, and I assumed that I had dislocated it when I had tackled him from the side and landed half on top of him.

  I radioed in that I had the suspect restrained and let them know our location, before requesting an ambulance.

  “Should I pull the knife out?” Sam said, her voice a touch shaky.

  “Uh, no, let’s wait till the paramedics come, okay? It’s probably just a shallow cut, though,” I tried to reassure her.

  The knife itself was pretty short, and Sam’s cast had saved her from a seriously nasty gash.

  “What’re the chances?” she said with an ironic smile. “Breaking my wrist saved me from getting stabbed. Almost makes you believe in fate.”

  I twitched a smile at that and shook my head. “If fate can stop you from getting any more injuries at all, then it’ll be worth believing in.”

  She smiled back, and I looked at her, thinking about how lucky I was that she wasn’t badly hurt. I would never have forgiven myself if my distracting her had ended up with her getting anything more than a scratch. The fact that she’d been injured enough to spill blood was bad enough.

  “I’m sorry I raced in without thinking,” I started quietly.

  “Forget it.” She put her fingers to my mouth, effectively cutting me off. “You meant well, and I would’ve done the same for you.”

  “Nah,” I said fondly. “You would’ve been much smarter.”

  “You said it, not me.” Her smile widened into a grin and what I’d meant to be a quick kiss deepened almost immediately.

  Someone cleared their throat at the door, and Sam and I startled away from each other guiltily. Stephen was standing in the doorway, looking like he was trying and failing to keep a serious face.

  “You guys are doing fine, then?” he said, breaking into a grin.

  I laughed awkwardly and stood up, helping Sam to her feet. I sent a wary look down at Arnott, sprawled on the floor and glaring resentfully, his jaw clenched in pain.

  “Uh,” Stephen said, drawing our attention back to him. “Sam, do you know there’s a knife in your arm?”

  Sam huffed out a breath in amusement.

  “She knows,” I assured Stephen.

  “Oh good,” he said, looking slightly dazed.

  “Let’s get this guy downstairs and out of Sam’s house, okay?” I jerked a thumb at Arnott on the floor and pulled Stephen’s attention back to the task at hand.

  “Yeah, I don’t need any more police tracking muck up my stairs.”

  It was such a bizarrely mundane worry that I couldn’t help but laugh, and Sam grinned too. Stephen and I manhandled Arnott down the stairs while he complained and swore at us, yelling about the pain in his shoulder even though we weren’t touching that arm.

  Upstairs, with Sam, I’d felt a kind of half-hysterical, giddy relief, both that she was okay, and we had caught the killer. The awful tension that I’d racked up, terrified that she’d end up another of his victims, had released all at once and left me almost dizzy.

/>   Descending back to the pavement outside, clustered with flashing police lights and officers warding off curious bystanders, felt much like coming back to earth. Stephen felt it too, his face going stiff and focused, and we manoeuvred Arnott into the back of a police car, locking him up securely so that there was no damn chance he was going anywhere.

  A pair of officers drove him off, and we watched them go, the lights whirling their alternating colours. No doubt he’d need to see a doctor about his shoulder, but after that, he’d been locked up somewhere safe.

  After a second, I had to ask the question that had been burning on my tongue ever since Stephen appeared upstairs, even as I was dreading it.

  “Did you find Gaskell?”

  “Yes,” Stephen said, and I turned to look at him, trying to read the answers in his face. He looked back, serious but not grief-stricken. “He lost a lot of blood and was in shock. They’ve taken him to hospital.”

  “But he’s alive.”

  “He’s alive,” Stephen confirmed.

  “Thank god for that.”

  Sam came down the stairs behind us, and I turned around hurriedly, reaching out towards her to make sure she was steady, but she waved me off.

  “Don’t fuss.”

  “And you said I was a bad patient,” I complained.

  “You almost drowned!”

  “You’ve got a knife in your arm!” I tossed back at her.

  “At least that wasn’t my fault that you’re the one who jumped into a river!”

  I threw up my hands. “I was saving someone’s life!”

  “Oh my god,” Stephen muttered, waving his hands at the pair of us. “Quit the bickering. You sound like an old married couple.”

  Sam flushed red, and I looked down, shuffling my feet.

  “Let’s go get you some medical attention,” I said after an awkward pause. “You’re still bleeding, for Christ's sake.”

  “Alright, alright,” Sam relented, letting me loop an arm around her and guide her over to the ambulance that had rolled up no more than a minute ago. Nobody else had ended up injured, so the ambulance gave us a ride to the hospital so that Sam could get her arm sorted out and her cast fixed up.

  Sitting together in the back, my arm around Sam’s waist and her head on my shoulder, exhaustion and relief made me want to sleep for days. I could see through the ambulance’s windscreen that we hadn’t even hit dusk yet, but if it hadn’t been for Sam, I reckoned that I would have already passed out.

  Sometimes, the end of a case left me feeling euphoric, riding the high of success after so much work and tension. But worrying for Sam and Gaskell’s safety had completely drained me, and I wanted nothing more than to curl up with Sam on the sofa and take a few days off. Until that could happen, knowing that they were both alive and feeling Sam’s comforting warmth beside me would have to be enough.

  Twenty-One

  “Here, turn the TV on,” Gaskell said, after glancing at the clock on the table beside his hospital bed.

  I got up to fetch the remote off the windowsill and flicked the screen on, before handing it to Gaskell to choose what he wanted. That was, apparently, the local news.

  Sam and I shared a glance before she went back to reading her book. It had been Tuesday when Arnott had been caught, and Sam and I had taken the rest of the week off. Three days, and feeling much more like ourselves, we were sitting at Gaskell’s bedside in the hospital, where he was still being treated for the deep cuts to the soles of his feet.

  His face looked pale and hollow, somehow, as if he’d aged years in the hours he’d been missing, but his gaze was as sharp and intense as ever.

  “Mitchell, look.” He pointed at the screen after getting my attention, and I obligingly looked up.

  My eyebrows rose as I saw that there was a press conference happening, and that Sedgwick was there. Sam picked up on my interest and turned to watch the TV as well, just as a woman I didn’t recognise was about to start answering the journalist’s questions.

  “The new Superintendent of Hewford,” Gaskell grunted, and it took me a couple of seconds to realise what he was saying. “Arabella Green.”

  “You’re retiring?”

  “Of course I am, lad,” he said, gruff amusement present in his tone. “If I didn’t, I think my family would take me out back and shoot me. Besides,” He cleared his throat and avoided my gaze, “I cocked up with the Snake Killer case, didn’t I? I’ve done my best for the force, but it’s time for fresh blood now.”

  I wasn’t sure what to say, and I looked at him, knowing that I’d miss his brusque manner and craggy face around Hewford. But I could entirely understand why he wanted to step down, and why the higher-ups might’ve encouraged him to. When the tabloids caught wind of there having been an innocent man in jail for a decade while a killer ran loose, there’d be a frenzy for a scapegoat.

  “If you get bored in retirement,” I said clumsily, after a moment, “I’m sure you could talk the traffic police into taking you on a spin.”

  He laughed at that, before turning his attention back to the press conference on the TV, and I did the same. The new Superintendent was a petite, Black woman with a short-cropped afro and an elegantly confident manner, and she was beginning to speak. Gaskell thumbed the volume button on the remote, and we listened as she explained in even, reasonable tones the barebones of the case. Even the scarce facts were shocking enough, though, with nine dead over ten years and a police Superintendent very nearly becoming number ten.

  “Have you interviewed him yet?” Gaskell asked abruptly.

  “Who?” I said, caught up in the press conference and briefly confused. “Oh, Arnott? No, not yet. We’re still collecting the evidence against him.”

  “His DNA matches, doesn’t it?” Gaskell said impatiently. “What’re you waiting for?”

  Gaskell was right, Arnott’s DNA did match the samples that had been taken from beneath the last victim’s nails, and that was enough to reassure me that we definitely had the right guy this time. Still, there was always more evidence to gather and gaps in the timeline that needed filling in to give a full picture.

  “I want the case watertight. A search of his found tools in his shed; sharp knives and the like. We’re waiting on the forensic analysis of those, along with other things.”

  “I suppose I can’t fault you for being thorough. You always have been,” he grunted.

  “Also, you’re not my superior anymore,” I teased gently.

  When Sam and I had first come to visit Gaskell in the hospital, he’d waved away my calling him ‘sir’. We’d become more informal in three days than we had at work over a year, and I liked speaking to him more casually, quickly finding out that he had a dry wit he’d not much shown at work.

  “Aye,” Gaskell laughed. “That’s right true.”

  Sam and I sat with Gaskell for a while longer, watching the end of the press conference on the TV before Gaskell and Sam got to talking about the book she was reading. I settled back in my chair, more than happy just to watch and listen as Sam talked animatedly, she and Gaskell debating back and forth good-naturedly.

  I fetched us all drinks and biscuits a while later, mutually lamenting the abysmal tea and coffee. Gaskell proclaimed it tolerable after pouring three packets of sugar into it, and Sam tried not to laugh and failed.

  We left a short while after three, my arm through her uninjured one. Her broken wrist was in a sling and, though she’d had some soreness and itching, she’d reported little pain. If all went well, she could get it off within the next few weeks and get back to driving, which she was understandably nervous about.

  “It wasn’t your driving that was the problem, though,” I pointed out, when the subject came up as I drove us over to her place. “It was the other driver. Even his insurance company admitted it.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know,” she sighed. “I keep thinking, what if I’d swerved sooner? Or been more alert?”

  “He pulled out in front of you,” I remind
ed her gently, though she could hardly have forgotten. “And besides, thinking about all the things you wish you’d done will drive you up the wall, trust me.”

  I’d spent plenty of time in the early hours of the morning, when Sam was deeply asleep beside me, and not even the birds were up, thinking about how I could’ve stopped those other men getting killed. I doubted I’d ever forget them, or stop trying to think of ways I could’ve found Arnott sooner and prevented their deaths. But perhaps that was how it should be. They shouldn’t be forgotten, and if I could improve my police work in any way in order to save more lives in the future, then I should.

  “When are you and Stephen due to talk to- him?” Sam asked, her voice going tight at the end.

  “Monday morning.” I released a sigh. “I’ve no idea what to expect from him. Apparently, he’s admitted nothing so far. He wants to speak to Stephen and me only. Well,” I corrected, “he wanted to speak to Gaskell, but was firmly told that Gaskell had retired, so me and Stephen were the next available option.”

  “Please be careful, won’t you?” Sam said, briefly putting a hand on my arm. “I don’t mean just physically. He’s a twisted man. I don’t like that he wants to speak to you and Steph in particular.”

  We were close to her house now, which was coming up at the end of the street.

  “I’ll be careful, promise. The station wants me to do a mandatory series of counselling, anyway. Standard practice or something.”

  “Doesn’t sound like a bad idea,” she agreed carefully.

  “Aye, well, I’m looking forward to putting this behind us, anyway.”

  I knew that it shouldn’t, and I’d had no problem supporting Stephen when he told me about the counselling sessions he’d been booked in for, but the subject still made me uncomfortable. I shifted in my seat and focused on parking the car up in front of Sam’s house, turning my thoughts towards what we’d have for dinner tonight and the possibilities for the weekend ahead.