Heatwave

by Oliver Davies

  Heatwave

  A DI Mitchell Yorkshire Crime Thriller

  Davies

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Epilogue

  A Message from the Author

  Prologue

  “I’ve never seen the grass so brown.”

  I looked up from where I was kneeling in the soil, which was dry as biscuit crumbs and coarse beneath my bare knees. My wife came over with a tray of ice water, and I accepted one gratefully.

  “Thanks, love.” I got to my feet with a grimace and brushed the dirt off myself as I looked over the parched lawn. “It’ll need watering again tonight.”

  “If they don’t put out a hosepipe ban.”

  I drained half of my glass, the condensation dripping down the sides. It was another broiling summer day, with the endless blue skies and unrelenting sun that felt so foreign. It felt very much like someone had hopped off to Greece or Spain and smuggled the weather back to rainy old Yorkshire.

  My gardening was making me sweat, my upper lip tasting like salt, and I moved over into the shade, joining my wife in one of the creaky deck chairs that were still dusty and mothballed from languishing in the garage for months.

  Off in the distance, there was an ice-cream van tinkling away, plying its sweet treats. Closer by, a mower was grumbling away, the neighbour’s children were playing in their shallow paddling pool with happy squeals, and hovering flies whined above my head.

  “How long d’you think it’ll last?” I asked my wife, pressing my glass of ice water to my cheek and relishing the numbing cold.

  “Oh, a week, perhaps,” she guessed.

  “We should have a barbeque.”

  “We’ll have to get to the shops early. Everyone else will have had the same idea.”

  The ice had melted in my drink, and I finished it off, savouring the coolness. The ice blocks had dissolved in minutes, even here in the shade, and the washing we put on the line seemed to dry almost as fast as you could string it up, especially when there was a warm, sluggish breeze like today. The weather forecasters had been talking about the heat in London topping thirty-five degrees this weekend, and it didn’t feel much cooler here.

  “When’s your lad due round?” she asked after a few quiet minutes. The mower had stopped, and the quiet that hung over the garden felt physically laden by the heat, pressing me down into my seat and making me reluctant to lift a finger. It took an effort to open my eyes and turn my wrist to look at the time.

  “Twenty minutes or so,” I said, resting my head back and closing my eyes.

  “Don’t go falling asleep, you old lump.” My wife prodded me teasingly in the side, and I faked a wounded groan. “Go on, up you get.”

  “You’re a cruel woman,” I complained good-naturedly before dragging myself upright and grimacing at the way my shirt stuck to my back.

  I’d not travelled a great deal in my life, and I’d always been more at home in the cold, blustery wet than any type of heat. This hot weather seemed to turn the air into a whole different beast with its syrupy substance, a film of fine dust hanging on the wind, and a smell like an open oven and overripe fruit.

  I made my way slowly into the kitchen to put a bottle of lemonade in the freezer to cool it down in time for Liam’s arrival and climbed the stairs to freshen up. Inside the house, with its thick brick walls and the curtains all pulled closed, it was cool and dark and felt far more familiar than the sunshine outside.

  The doorbell went as I was drying my face, and I slung the towel over the rail and headed downstairs. Out in the garden, my wife probably wouldn’t hear the doorbell, so I was alone as I opened the porch door and greeted Liam and his dad. The boy had grown another inch or so, and he’d turned brown as a nut in the time since I’d last seen him, even though I could see the oily smear of suncream on his face.

  “Hi, Mr Mitchell,” Liam said cheerfully, all but vibrating with energy. The heat piled lethargy on me, but the kids seemed to soak the sunlight up like plants, charging them up to a fever pitch. Or it might be all the ice creams and fizzy pop they got this time of year, I thought wryly.

  “You’re looking tanned, lad,” I said, stepping back to let them into the house. “Come on through to the back. We’ve got lemonade and strawberries if you fancy it.”

  “And chocolate sauce?”

  “No, sorry, kid,” I said, amused. “But I can probably dig up some ice cream if your dad doesn’t mind.”

  “The kiddo must be ninety per cent ice cream at this point,” Douglas said, taking off his broad-brimmed hat to fan his red face. “Another scoop won’t do any harm.”

  I showed them through to the garden, where the chairs were set up in the minimal shade cast by a parasol and our rickety wooden shed. The grass felt stiff and bristly under my sandals, crunching beneath them in a manner that reminded me oddly of fresh snow. Not that I could hardly imagine the sharp, biting scent of winter at this time of year. Strange, I thought, how a week or two of consistent weather, be it heavy rain, or snow, or boiling sunshine, felt unending, like the country had never been anything but dry and simmering with heat.

  I fetched the lemonade from the freezer and fixed up four bowls of strawberries and ice cream. I made Douglas an iced coffee and carried the tray out into the heat, ice cubes chinking quietly against each other inside the glasses. The ice cream melted into liquid almost in the time it took to cross the grass, and Liam wolfed it down, along with the strawberries.

  “No laptop?” I queried as I ate more slowly, the sweetness of the strawberries tasting tart against the ice cream.

  “Dad said it was too hot, it might overheat,” Liam said as he dug through his rucksack for a pen, his notebook on his lap. “I’ll have to type it all up when I get home.”

  “You could do with a Dictaphone,” I mused.

  “I’m saving up for one!” Liam told me, before explaining which dictation machine he wanted and his dad’s suggestions, and how he was already saving for driving lessons, even though he had a fair way to go until he turned seventeen because a journalist has to be able to drive around.

  I scraped my bowl clean and licked the spoon, setting it down on the grass for the ants. A wasp was bothering Douglas, and I batted it away.

  “This is delicious, thanks,” he said, gesturing to his iced coffee, which was half-gone.

  “Yeah, it was great,” Liam agreed. “Much better ice cream than at home.”

  Douglas cleared his throat, looking slightly embarrassed. I chuckled gently.

  “Expensive tastes, lad? You’ll have to be a high-flying journalist if you want to afford the best ice cream.”

  “I will be,” Liam said, confident as ever. His dad and I shared an amused look.

  “I’m sure you will,” my wife agreed. She stood up, stretching her legs. She was wearing a lovely, cornflower-blue sundress today, and her pale hair looked golden in the warm light. “I’ll leave you boys to it.”

  I reached out to snag her hand, drawing her back so I could kiss her palm. She looked down at me fondly, the laughter lines around her eyes as familiar to me as her voice.

  “Enjoy your afternoon,” I sai
d, and she gave me a soft smile.

  “And you, love.”

  She left, taking the bowls and empty glasses with her so the wasps would stay away, and I watched her go. Liam, when I looked back at him, had an unimpressed expression on his young face, and I couldn’t help but smile. I hadn’t been much interested in love at that age, either, and it had taken me a longer time than some to find my wife, but I’d never regret the waiting.

  “Alright,” I said, taking a sip of lemonade and settling back into the deckchair. “What are you looking for today, lad?”

  “A summertime case?” He gave a shrug. “All anyone talks about lately is the weather, and everyone at school will be talking about their summer when we go back in September.”

  “That’s right enough.” I rubbed a hand over my chin as I thought. A case had immediately come to mind, but I wondered whether it was suitable. I was sure the kid had seen more disturbing things on evening TV by his age, but it’s different when the story is real and happened close to where you live.

  As I was mulling it over, Douglas excused himself to go to the loo before we got started, and I turned to Liam.

  “Tell me truthfully now, have my stories ever given you nightmares, Liam?” I watched him closely as he shook his head vehemently.

  “No! Never, I promise.”

  “Not even a small bad dream?” I put up a hand when he went immediately to deny it. “I won’t stop telling you about the cases if you have had one, okay? I just want to know what kind of story to tell.”

  “There was maybe one,” Liam admitted after a second, avoiding my eyes and squirming. “But it was only the one time.”

  “And which story was that about?” I asked, keeping my expression neutral. It was a skill I’d learned in the police, but it’d proved useful throughout the years in situations as varied as keeping my cool against some drunkards in the pub and when opening a Christmas present I didn’t much like.

  “It was uh- the first one,” Liam explained. “With the man, your friend, who was poisoned.”

  “Ah.” I gave a nod. Honestly, that case had a strong hold over me, too. Graham had been a good friend, and I still thought of him every so often. His niece, Alice, and I exchanged Christmas cards each year. “So the one involving the kids didn’t bother you? The kidnappings?”

  “No, I was fine with that, really fine.”

  “Have you started without me?” Douglas said as he arrived back and looked between us.

  “No, not yet,” I said with a smile, taking a sip of my now-lukewarm lemonade. “I was checking with Liam about which story to do.”

  Liam’s expression was hopeful, even puppyish, and I smiled.

  “Alright. There was a summertime case that happened during a heatwave that lasted for weeks-”

  “Hotter than today?” Liam interrupted.

  “Aye, on some days, it was. Everyone’s grass died, and the river was the lowest I ever saw it, I can tell you.”

  Liam had his notepad ready, and I could see that he’d already written out the date and made some scrawled notes that were entirely illegible to me. I turned my mind to the case I was planning to tell the lad and his father and sobered as I remembered how it had all developed.

  “In truth, the case actually began in April, though we didn’t realise it right away. There was a group of teenagers - your age, Liam, or a tad older - who started to kick off. The hot weather seemed to seed a bit of madness in all of them and, before we knew it, we had a serious problem on our hands.”

  One

  Jules approached the school gates with a couple of mates, striding up leisurely and loitering against the chipped railings. It was another baking day, and he wore a sweat-darkened grey tank, showing off the results of his efforts in the gym since he’d turned seventeen.

  The little kids came streaming out of the school, dressed up in uniforms smarter than Jules had ever worn, baulked at the sight of him and his friends and skirted warily around them. Jules hid a crooked smirk behind a half-smoked cigarette.

  He was here because he wanted something or, more accurately, someone. Word had gotten around about one of the kids, a fourteen-year-old squirt that looked about as intimidating as a kitten in his social media pictures, but Jules had plans for it. The younger ones were always keen to please, hanging off his every word and scurrying off to do what Jules wanted in the hope of getting into his good graces and being rewarded. Their worship and fear never failed to give Jules a thrill that he got from little else.

  “Where is he, then?”

  “Yeah, I’m boiling out here.”

  Jules ignored the pair of them, taking his cigarette back and sucking deep. The smoke left his fingernails yellow and got caught in his clothes, but the heady relief of the nicotine made it worth the cost.

  “There- That’s him,” Jules said, straightening up. His friends stirred, craning their heads to pick out the kid, who couldn’t have been taller than five foot and was sporting a ragged haircut that looked like it’d been done by his mum while she was drunk.

  “Jesus, Jay, you can’t be serious.”

  “Shut up.”

  Jules wouldn’t usually pay any attention to a kid like that, nerdy and pale unless he was pushing him around for his snack money, but this particular one had changed his mind. Plus, the kind of kid who had been bullied since primary school always turned loyal as a bulldog to a guy like Jules if he took them under his wing. He had every belief that this would turn out to be a sweet deal.

  The lad was wearing a black rucksack that resembled a leech that had sucked itself fat and swollen, his shoulder all hunched up. Jules makes a mental note to himself about what the kid would have to change if he wanted to get in with Jules’ group, and that dorky haircut would be the first to go.

  When the boy got near the school gates, Jules stepped out, heading straight for him. One of the school teachers had been lingering by the school bus, keeping an eye on Jules’ lot in a way she probably thought was subtle. She straightened up as Jules made his move, clearly debating whether to intervene or to fetch help. Jules ignored her.

  “Hey, kid, hold up.”

  If he was expecting wariness or fear from the skinny nipper, which he was if he was honest with himself, Jules was disappointed. The kid was cool and seemingly unbothered as Jules and his three bulky mates blocked his way, even though the boy had to tilt his head up to look at them.

  “Who’re you?” His voice hasn’t broken yet, and he sounded like a choirboy. The hard look on his pale face wasn’t angelic, though, and his dark hair hung limp and greasy.

  Jules’s mate mocked the kid’s squeaky voice, and Jules watched the lad, taken aback when the kid didn’t so much as blink. No anger or embarrassment was visible, and there was certainly no fear. He just looked at them. Jules’s habitual scowl deepened, hiding an uneasiness he wasn’t used to feeling.

  “Doesn’t matter who we are, squirt,” Jules said roughly. “You’re Ali Pumphrey, am I right? We’ve heard about you, Ali.”

  The kid, Ali, stared back at him evenly, his chin tilted up fearlessly. He didn’t fidget on his feet, and his dark eyes were weirdly unnerving, considering he was nothing more than a rat-faced little kid.

  “So?” he said finally.

  He took a purposeful step to the side and made to go around them, but Jules blocked him immediately. In his peripheral, he saw that the school teacher had joined forces with a frumpy dinner lady, but Jules didn’t pay them any mind. If they thought that some stern glares, hands on hips, and scolding would make him leave before he’d got what he wanted, they were going to get the shock of their lives.

  “So,” Jules said, drawing the word out. “We’ve got a use for you.”

  “Yeah? What do I get?” Ali said.

  “What do you get?” Jules’ best mate grunted, a guy who topped Jules’s height and was as wide as this kid was tall. “You get to stay outta hospital, y’little-”

  Jules put a hand out when his friend pushed forwards. It was a
n act, of course. Beating up a scrawny kid like Ali would look weak, like Jules was scared of dealing with anyone his own size. And he’d rather cut off his own hand than look weak. A little push, though, was different, and Jules took a step forward and gave the insolent squirt a firm shove in his bony chest, sending him sprawling back on the hot tarmac.

  The teacher was hurrying over now, ready to pounce, so Jules made a show of leaning down to grab Ali’s skinny arm and heaving the kid back to his feet, patting him on the shoulder and brushing imaginary dust off him.

  “Are these young men bothering you, Alistair?” the teacher demanded, slightly out of breath from her scurrying over to them. The dinner lady turned up behind her, giving Jules a narrow-eyed look that meant she’d seen Jules around or knew of him.

  Jules gave them both a bright smile, flicking his blond hair out of his face. Sure, he wasn’t a cute fourteen-year-old anymore, but having blue eyes and blond curls could charm even the most irritable adults.

  “Bothering him?” he said warmly, straightening out Ali’s second-hand blazer and stepping back. “We’re friends, aren’t we, Ali?”

  “Of course,” Ali said immediately, his thin voice flat and certain. Jules had expected some hesitation or uneasiness, but the kid was either a born actor or genuinely unafraid. “Excuse me, Mrs Peters.”

  He moved around Jules and walked away purposefully. Jules watched him go, surprised, before turning to give the frowning teacher an innocent smile and helpless shrug as if to say, ‘Kids, right?’

  He didn’t wait for her to protest before he headed off after the kid, his mates following after him. He had no intention of letting Ali run off before they’d gotten him to join the gang, by persuasion or otherwise. Jules got what he wanted. He always did.