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

by Oliver Davies

  Before I could get out of the car, though, Sam took my hand in hers and stopped me.

  “What is it?”

  “Nothing.” She gave me a warm smile and leaned forwards to press a light kiss on my lips. “I’m just happy.”

  I couldn’t help but grin at that, and we went inside, running through the rain and giggling like teenagers.

  Our brief break from reality couldn’t last forever, though, and Monday found Stephen and I back in the office, facing the unpleasant prospect of interviewing Nick Arnott. He was locked up in one of the custody suites downstairs, I knew, though he was due to be moved to a high-security prison very soon.

  “What d’you think he’ll be like?” Stephen asked, his hands wrapped around the cup of tea he’d just made.

  I took a sip of my coffee and leaned my hip against the side.

  “No idea, honestly. Clever, probably. And seriously messed up.” I combed a hand through my hair, brushing it back off my forehead. “Sam worried he’d, I don’t know, try to mess with our heads.”

  “Your woman’s a smart one.”

  “She’s not my woman.” I rolled my eyes at him, and he grins, enjoying getting on my nerves, just like usual.

  I checked my watch and straightened up, taking another sip of my too-hot coffee.

  “C’mon, we’ve still got paperwork to do before we go down.”

  “I reckon we’ll still have leftover paperwork when Armageddon arrives,” Stephen complained, but he followed me out of the break room and back to our desks.

  The paperwork, report writing, and form filling were all mind-numbingly dull, and my thoughts honed in on the murderer who was locked up right downstairs. I’d met people like him before, and I knew that he was secure and that there was no threat, but that didn’t stop me from feeling like looking over my shoulder every few minutes.

  There were people who killed because they were angry, or for money, or out of revenge for a wrong done against them. Some did it for success, or out of jealousy, or for a myriad of other reasons, most of which would make little sense to a jury but were powerful enough to an individual to drive them to kill. I’d seen a fair sample of these people, and heard about many more from other officers, and yet the thought of facing Nick Arnott still unsettled me. There were answers we didn’t have, and until he decided to give them, if he ever would, there would remain an uneasy unknowability to him. Monsters were so much easier to deal with when they were put out in bright daylight, but parts of Arnott were still very much in the shadows.

  I didn’t know exactly why he’d asked for Stephen and me to interview him, once he couldn’t have Gaskell, but I could guess. It was some part of his obsession, carried out right to the end. He’d harboured a desire to hurt or punish Gaskell for ten years and, if we hadn’t found Gaskell in time, I’m sure Arnott would have killed him, too. And Stephen and I were extensions of Gaskell, since we’d picked up the Snake Killer case and hunted him down in Gaskell’s place, a decade after Arnott should have been already locked up. I took comfort in knowing that this time, the right man was going away for good.

  When it was time to head down, I took a fresh coffee with me, making sure that it was lukewarm and in a plastic cup. I’d heard horror stories about how unruly prisoners would lash out with anything, if they got angry enough, and I wouldn’t put it past a man like Arnott.

  It was a touch surreal to walk into the room and come face-to-face with a man I wouldn’t have looked twice at on the street. He was on the shorter side, though it was harder to tell when he was sitting down, his hair was thinning slightly on the top, and he had a placid, ordinary face. He looked up unhurriedly as we came in, and his brows lowered slightly when he saw me, but that was the only emotion I could see. Stephen was tense beside me, scrutinising Arnott just like I was, and I wondered what he made of the plain, dark-haired man.

  We sat down opposite him, and I ran through the normal introductions, turning on the recording machine. There was an officer stationed behind us, ready to intervene if Arnott tried something, even though he was already cuffed to the table. Arnott’s expression didn’t change much as I spoke, nor did he show much interest in the interview itself or the fact that he’d be sent to prison for decades after his court date.

  “Why did you wait ten years, Mr Arnott?” I asked. Stephen and I had agreed a short while ago that we’d go with a direct approach, and this was a question I very much wanted answering.

  “Ten years is nothing,” Arnott said, the first words he’d spoken to me since Sam and I had subdued in the upstairs room of her house. He looked directly at me, as if he was thinking of the same moment.

  Really though, I had no idea what he was thinking. His blank eyes didn’t immediately reveal whatever evil was snarled up inside him, and his expression was rigidly neutral. He reminded me more of a bored customer service clerk at a bank or shoe shop than he did a man who could sadistically murder nine people.

  “Nothing? Most people would say it’s a bloody long time to hold a grudge, is that what it was?”

  “I suppose you could call it that. A grudge against the system, yes.”

  “The system?” I frowned, hesitant to even ask, but I knew Arnott wanted me to, and we needed him to talk.

  “The parasitic web of self-serving bureaucrats in this country. Useless and wasteful and feeding off everyone else.” He looked me over, and the curl of his lip said that he wasn’t impressed. “Just like you.”

  “Me, Gaskell, everyone here, we deserve to die, is that what you’re saying?”

  Arnott leaned back in his chair, at least as far as his chains would allow, and the plastic creaked beneath him.

  “You believe in punishment, don’t you, Darren?”

  I blinked at the use of my first name, but of course, Arnott would know it. He’d seen me at the press conference and done his research. I saw the hint of amusement in his face at my brief startle.

  “I believe in justice, yes. Killing innocents-”

  “Ah, yes, killing innocent people is something only governments can do, isn’t that right? All hushed up in the secret service.” He leaned forwards, fast enough to almost make me flinch. “It’s how they all keep us under control, don’t you see? You think murder is the greatest evil, but the real evil, the true one at the heart of the whole mess, that’s the brainwashing they’ve done to you all.”

  He sank back into his seat, looking smug in a mild sort of way, as if he’d just won an argument in the pub. His unassuming face was so jarringly different from the things he was saying that I struggled to digest it.

  “I’m showing you that everyone is the same. We all crawl, Darren. The rich, the successful, the egotistical bullies who like pushing people around… all they need is a bit of pressure and,” He waved his hand with a flick of his fingers, “they fold in minutes.”

  I stared at him for a long moment, trying and failing to comprehend how he thought murdering people was somehow fair, that it made a point about society. His own ego was so inflated that he thought his actions could alter or attack the country, but all he’d actually achieved was ruining the lives of the grieving individuals left behind.

  “Why did you wait for ten years?” I repeated stolidly. Annoyance passed briefly over Arnott’s expression before smoothing out again.

  “Why do you think, Detective? Give me your theories, and perhaps I’ll tell you if you’re warm or cold.”

  “You got scared, that’s what I think,” I said, flatly refusing to play into his game like he wanted me to. Crossing my arms, I put an unimpressed look on my face and regarded him derisively. “We got close to you, within a hair's breadth, and you freaked out. You’d built up this image of yourself as all-powerful, and suddenly we’d closed in on you, and you were wetting yourself.”

  “Really?” Arnott said coldly. “Is that the best you’ve thought up? With all the taxpayers’ money that goes into this place, that’s what you’ve come up with?”

  “You threw Abe Muldoon at us an
d ran. Ran all the way to York, in fact, why was that? Trying to get as far from Cornwall as possible, were you?”

  “That’s what you think, isn’t it?” he said, sneering like a mean spirited teacher over a struggling child. “That’s exactly what your superior did, running away from his doubts, his mistakes, because he couldn’t face it like a man. Pathetic.”

  “Gaskell, you mean?” I said, listening closely to Arnott’s caustic ramblings while trying to pretend that I didn’t much care. “He’s more of a man than you’ll ever be.”

  Arnott slammed his fists down on the table in a burst of rage so sudden that I jerked sharply backwards, the table rattling under Arnott’s outburst. His apathetic expression had very briefly shown the sheer, lethal anger pent up behind it, and that was the monster I’d been expecting when I’d first seen Arnott’s ordinary face, and which left the hairs on the back of my neck prickling.

  “He’s a stupid coward,” Arnott said, his voice flat again.

  The extra officer standing behind Stephen and I had made a move forward when Arnott smacked the table, but he hesitantly moved back again now. I took a sip of my coffee, which had spilt slightly, and waited for Arnott to go on, as I was sure he would.

  “He took the bait so easily. He was desperate, so pathetically desperate for someone to blame that he grabbed the first sorry sod I tossed at him. Morons, the lot of you.”

  “Really,” I said, quirking my eyebrow and echoing his own manner back at him. “We still caught you, and you never did get to finish what you started.” I tilted my head to the side. “And what was that exactly? A decade ago, you were killing older women, and then it was middle-aged men. You seem confused.”

  Arnott looked me in the eye for several seconds longer than was comfortable, and I considered him back calmly, even though my heart was thumping in my chest. Even as I sat there, keeping my voice even as I asked my questions and baited him, I was thinking of how he’d come so close to killing Sam. How those narrow hands of his resting on the table had cut open Gaskell’s feet, leaving him unable to walk normally for months. How he’d bled out, dragged, mutilated and arranged all those other victims, and clearly felt not one shred of remorse, nor seemed to even understand the gravity of what he’d done. Or if he did, then he seemed to revel in it.

  “Confused?” he repeated, with the same heavy flatness as a large stone thudding into sand after a long drop. “I understand better than any of you do. It’s useless to even talk to you idiots, so caught up in all the brainwashing you’ve been fed that you do everything you’re told whilst licking their boots.” His face was an ugly sneer as he glared at us across the table.

  “Try us,” Stephen said, looking both irritated and bored. I knew it was as much an act as my pretence at indifference, but he pulled it off well. “And start with why you killed innocent women in Cornwall.”

  Arnott turned to him slowly, like he’d barely noticed Stephen was there before.

  “The lackey speaks,” he said, his lips curled up at the corner. “It’s the women that bother you more, isn’t it? I bet you have a pretty little wife at home, don’t you? Or maybe a daughter, is that it?”

  Stephen did an admirable job of not punching Arnott in the face, I thought. Still, his jaw clenched, and Arnott zoned in on it immediately.

  “Oh, it’s the little girl, and you see yourself as her protector, right? Well, your system doesn’t protect her, not from people like me. People who actually know what’s-”

  “Alright,” I said sharply, sick of him already. “Why did you change from the women to men, Arnott? Did you get bored? C’mon, I’m sure you’re dying to tell us.”

  “Patience, detective.” The flat look had descended back onto his face, and he again looked disturbingly innocuous. “I’ve waited ten years for this.”

  I pretended to check my watch. “We won’t be wasting ten more minutes on you if you don’t start talking sense,” I told him. “The case is wrapped up, and you’ll be behind bars for several lifetimes, but you asked for us, and so here we are.” I spread my hands. “Don’t you want to explain it all? Dumb it down for us mere mortals?”

  “Since you asked so nicely,” he said, narrowing his eyes at me. “Sure, I’ll give you something that the papers will pay you for. The Snake Killer sheds his skin and rises again, poetic, no?”

  “Get on with it.”

  “You want to know why I killed those wrinkly, useless women?” He leaned forwards, his eyes bright and wet. “I imagined my mother. Her screams and little pleas and-”

  He was clearly enjoying shocking us, and the smug pleasure in his face was unbearable.

  “Why? Did she beat you?”

  “That would work well in the tabloids, wouldn’t it? Revenge always gives a nice, neat ending. It explains everything in ways your simple brain can understand.”

  “So? Did she?”

  “No,” he snapped. “I simply hated her.”

  I looked at him placidly while making a mental note to see when his mother had died, presumably before Arnott started murdering women that somehow reminded him of her.

  “And the men?”

  “Haven’t you figured that out?” He was back to being self-satisfied. “I thought the message was rather clear.”

  I had an idea, of course, but I wanted to hear him say it. If his earlier killings were based on anger against his mother, as he claimed, then my guess was that the shift towards men close to his own age had been an expression of his anger against Gaskell, for thwarting him.

  “I’m glad you think so highly of me,” I couldn’t help but say, “but, please, explain it to us. I wouldn’t want to have missed any of the… nuance.”

  Arnott looked at me for a long moment, and I wondered briefly whether I’d taken the taunting too far and he was going to clam up. He’d already said enough to condemn him for the Cornish murders, so it wasn’t as if we needed anymore from him, with the evidence already piled up. But I did want answers, and Arnott knew it, too. This was probably the last time he’d get to toy with us before he went away for good, and he was doing a poor job of hiding how much he was revelling in it.

  “Come on,” he said coaxingly. “Think of who wronged me, Detective. Who royally screwed me over because he was stupider than a wooden post and then ran away up the country to get away from it all? Think of how long I spent tracking the coward down and manoeuvring the pieces-”

  “Alright, so it was Gaskell you were-”

  “Don’t interrupt me,” he snapped. “I know-”

  “And what about Robbie?” I said, ignoring him. “Was he blackmailed or a willing volunteer?”

  “Oh, that little traitor,” Arnott said, his tongue flicking out to wet his lips, reminding me very much of a snake. “Of course, he was willing. He loved the thrill of it. He just got a case of cold feet, happens to us all.” He smiled.

  Well, now, he was lying, I was sure of it.

  “Really? I struggle to believe a man like you would let anyone into your little scheme without some sort of guarantee. Like a threat against his sister, for example?”

  “I got him access to quality stories. What more could a journalist want?”

  “I don’t think he’d agree, considering he’s currently recovering from bleach poisoning. You didn’t kill him, by the way. Bit of a clumsy slip-up on your part, wasn’t it?”

  Arnott’s jaw twitched. “He got his punishment,” he said, after a tense pause. “Better that he lives through the suffering than die quietly, don’t you think? More suitable for a traitor.”

  “And the men you killed? They deserved their punishment, did they?”

  “I know you can’t understand it, Darren,” he said patronisingly, “but yes, they did. Those greedy men were all part of the same system that-”

  “And the philanthropist? Who’d given away a great deal of his wealth?”

  “It’s all an act!” Arnott hissed, irritated that I interrupted him again. “They deserve to be shot, every one of them. They’re
all cogs in the machine, no different from ants! They don’t think for themselves. They spend their-”

  “Okay, okay, I think we’re done here,” I said, fed up with his ranting.

  Arnott slammed his hands violently down on the table as I was standing up.

  “No! You’ll listen to me!” he yelled. “This was my plan. I’m the only one who understands!”

  “You understand nothing about people,” I said contemptuously, before switching off the recording device and snagging my coffee cup and notebook.

  Arnott continued to shout at us, staggering to his feet with a jangling of his restraints as he promised answers and threatened us in equal measure. For a man who claimed to be superior to the rest of us, I thought, he’s awfully keen that we recognise his so-called brilliance.

  “An ego the size of Texas,” Stephen muttered as we left the other officers to deal with Arnott and headed upstairs. “And rotten right through the middle.”

  “Aye, he’s deranged.”

  Back on our office floor, I stepped away to make a new drink in the break room and thought about Arnott and the darkness under his unthreatening, unnoticeable face.

  But talking to him had given me a measure of comfort, in a strange way. When Gaskell had interviewed Muldoon after his confession, the man had been subdued and cagey in interviews, if not completely silent. There’d been a lurking unease about whether he really was the killer, and that unease had turned out not to be ungrounded.

  With Arnott, there was no doubt left in my mind, if there had been any before. The evidence was solid, and now we had a confession, of sorts, to go with it. Arnott had lied about Robbie, I was sure, to play with us, but he’d otherwise been so desperate to tell us about his genius that he’d laid it out on a plate.

  I finished making my coffee and took a scalding sip as I ambled back towards my desk. Once we finished up the paperwork, we could wrap up this case and put it on the back burner until Arnott’s court date arrived, when we could have him put away for good this time. In the meantime, there would be new cases, and a new Superintendent to get to know, but I knew Stephen, Sam, and I could handle it.