Close to Home (A DI Mitchell Yorkshire Crime Thriller Book 4) Read online

  Close to Home

  A DI Mitchell Yorkshire Crime Thriller

  Oliver 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

  Epilogue

  A Message from the Author

  Prologue

  It wasn’t like Liam to be late. I sat in my armchair and frowned out at the rain. The lad was surely fine, but I couldn’t help but be concerned.

  My wife startled me by coming into the living room without my noticing, laying a hand on my shoulder.

  “It’s raining cats and dogs out there,” she noted.

  I gave a nod. “The lad’s late.”

  She squeezed my shoulder. “He’s a teenager, love. He’ll be along soon enough.”

  I grunted, gratefully accepting the cup of tea she offered me.

  It was another half an hour before I spotted a small, dark figure coming up the road through the heavy rain. I hurriedly set my mug aside and winced at the stiffness in my knees as I got to my feet, moving to open the front door.

  The boy came running up the drive, his hair plastered to his face and a big lump under the front of his coat suggesting he’d shoved his rucksack under there. He was panting like a racehorse, and I almost expected his breath to steam in the air.

  “Crikey,” I muttered as I stood back to let the kid inside. “You ever heard of an umbrella?”

  Liam’s teeth were chattering too much for him to answer, though his eye roll spoke loudly enough.

  Ever thoughtful, my wife came up behind us with a couple of old towels as Liam was stripping off his sopping coat. He was dripping all over the place, and I resigned myself to having to mop the floor after the kid had left. Despite shivering like a leaf, Liam was more preoccupied with checking his rucksack to make sure it’d stayed dry than getting himself warm.

  “You’re dripping water all over that,” I pointed out, handing the lad the towels to dry his fiery red hair, which reached to his shoulders when it was wet and limp.

  Liam leaned back, so his hair wasn’t getting water all over his bag and scrubbed the towel over his head. At least his coat seemed to have kept his top half mostly dry.

  “Come on,” I said, when Liam had gotten the worse off. “We’ll get you some blankets and a cup of cocoa.”

  Liam fretted over his laptop and finished patting dry his trousers as I warmed up some milk for the cocoa. Liam’s socks and shoes were absolutely sodden, and I directed Liam to the radiator in the hopes that they’d be, if not dry, then at least warm by the time Liam headed off again.

  “More sugar?” I asked, when Liam pulled a face like he’d bitten into a lemon when he took a sip of the cocoa. I pushed the sugar bowl towards the lad who looked like he’d grown another inch in the time since I’d last seen him, and watched in amusement as he dumped no less than four teaspoons of sugar into his drink.

  His expression was much happier when he took another sip, and I chuckled to myself as I put the sugar bowl away. We made our way through into the living room, where Liam sat down on the sofa and huddled up in the thick blanket I had found him.

  “Better?” I asked as I went to turn the gas fire on. I’d been starting to get chilly too, and it wouldn’t do for Liam to catch cold.

  Liam nodded, no longer shivering. “Much better,” he said cheerfully. “I was starting to lose feeling in my hands.” He had his hands cupped around his mug at the moment, but he wiggled his fingers experimentally as he spoke.

  I sipped at my cocoa as Liam got fully warmed up, drinking his cocoa down in record time before getting his laptop out of his rucksack and fussing over it as he made sure the rain hadn’t reached it.

  “We can wrap that in some plastic for your way back,” I said, thinking aloud. “Keep it dry better. And you can borrow an umbrella.”

  Liam sent me a bright grin. “Thanks, Mr Mitchell.”

  He went back to tapping away on his laptop and, amused, I stayed quiet. The small amount of sugar I’d put into my own cup of cocoa had settled at the bottom of the cup in a sweet, thick layer and I hummed, pleased, after I’d finished it. I ought to have cocoa more often, I thought. There was nothing like it when it was cold and tipping it down outside.

  “Okay!” Liam announced suddenly. I turned to him with raised eyebrows. “I’m ready now.”

  “Yes?” I said. I settled back comfortably into my chair. “And what kind of case do you want this time?”

  Liam leaned forwards. “So, I was doing some extra research,” he started eagerly, “and I found out that you were in the local paper for doing marathons!”

  I blinked. That hadn’t been what I might have expected Liam to say, but then he was like that. Now that Liam said it, I thought I vaguely remembered that article. It’d been late into my career, and I’d been somewhat embarrassed by it, but Stephen had found it charming that the paper was interested and prodded me into agreeing.

  “Yes,” I said after a moment. “I do remember that.”

  Liam fidgeted on the spot. “I can’t believe you could run twenty-six miles,” he said. “That’s- that’s crazy!”

  I couldn’t help but chuckle. “I know I don’t look like that now-”

  “Oh, no!” Liam said hurriedly, holding up his hands and looking wide-eyed. “I didn’t mean it like that! Just, I can’t run the mile to school without getting all out of puff! I can’t even imagine doing twenty-six miles!”

  I smiled. “It’s just training, lad. You could do it if you wanted, when you’re older.”

  Liam wrinkled his nose. “I don’t think I’d have the stamina,” he said, sounding out the last word like he was pleased he knew it. “I’ll stick to typing up articles for now.”

  “And running through the rain,” I noted wryly.

  Liam sent me a sheepish look. “I was worried about my laptop! I’ll dry out, but my laptop won’t.”

  “Is it backed up?”

  Liam grimaced, shaking his head. “My dad says I should, but I dunno really how to do that.”

  “You ought to get him to show you,” I hummed, “or I can teach you. You wouldn’t want to lose all your work.”

  “So,” Liam nodded, beginning to look impatient, “I thought you might have a case to do with one of your marathons?” he asked, getting back to his original question.

  I tilted my head up to look at the ceiling as I considered that. “Nothing immediately springs to mind, sorry, lad.”

  “Oh,” Liam said, visibly disappointed. “I was hoping to put the original article in, you know? Link the two. It’d be cool.”

  “It’s a good idea,” I agreed gently. I thought back, trying to remember any case that might have been tied up with one of my running events. So far, I’d mostly ended up telling the cases roughly in chronological order, though that hadn’t been by any particular design, and I thought back to my very first marathon.

  “Well…” I began after a minute. Liam had waited while I was thinking, if not patiently, then at least quietly, evidently seeing that I was trying to remember. “There was a case that ha
ppened at the same time as my first marathon. It wasn’t directly related but-”

  “That’s fine!” Liam said quickly. “Tell me that one! Please,” he added belatedly.

  “Okay then,” I said with a small smile at his enthusiasm. My wife and I didn’t get too many visitors these days who weren’t our own age, or close to it, and Liam’s energy was infectious.

  “My first one was the Yorkshire Marathon,” I started. “And at the same time, there was an incident that happened rather close to home.”

  One

  The marathon route was almost entirely flat, and I had been training solidly and consistently since May. There was really no reason I should be worried about it, but, as we approached the autumn, I couldn’t help but think about all the ways the event could go wrong. Stephen and his family would be there to cheer me on, I knew, and he’d paid my entrance fee, too. If it all ended badly, I didn’t want to see his expression of disappointment.

  After a long but uneventful Monday in the office, I was gathering up my things. Stephen was staying a little late, unusually, in order to get a last bit of paperwork done, and he looked up as I put my coat over my arm.

  “Off on another run?” he asked. The evenings were beginning to close in as we approached October, but it was still light at the moment. I nodded, and Stephen cocked his head. “You’re going to fly through this race,” he said. “They’ll be a bunch of folks who didn’t train enough huffing and puffing along, and then there’ll be you, finding it too easy, you overachiever.”

  I gave him a crooked smile. “As long as I don’t get injured,” I couldn’t help but say. “Or the weather closes in. I still haven’t run the full distance-”

  Stephen waved a hand at me. “Mate, you’re going to be overprepared, trust me. Go on home, before you lose the light.”

  “Aye aye, captain.” I gave him a sarcastic salute.

  Running home relaxed me, the rhythm of it, allowing both my concerns about the race and thought of work fade away. Out on the pavement, it was just me, my trainers and the last of the evening light.

  We hadn’t had a major case since the kidnapped children last April, and I couldn’t say I was sorry for the reprieve. We’d been kept busy, of course, herding drunk students on nights’ out and dealing with other, more difficult situations, but there’d been nothing on the same intense and complicated scale as what had happened in the spring. I’d taken some time off in the summer, too, to visit the Lake District and get myself painfully sunburnt as I ran over the hills.

  Now, I was looking at my second autumn at Hewford station, and it felt good to no longer feel like a newcomer. The folk at the station knew my name now. I’d visited the pub with them and felt a part of the team, even if I did tend towards the outskirts. Stephen was the soul of any party, when he let his hair down, and he usually ended up dragging me into the mayhem, especially if I’d had a few beers. He was a good friend, and it touched me that he’d paid for my entry into the Yorkshire Marathon. He’d shown faith in my ability to rise to the challenge, and the thought helped push me even on the days when I really felt too tired to go on another run in the miserable British wet and cold.

  This evening, the weather was pleasant, with the air still clinging onto the tail end of the summer. The wind wasn’t too sharp, but it was cool enough that I felt fresh rather than overheated, and I ended up back at my apartment building feeling better than when I’d left work.

  I unlocked the front door of the block, before being met with a sight that made the good feelings I’d gained from the run drain out of me all at once. My stomach soured, and I pressed a hand to my face as I stared. Shock froze me for a long moment, before my police training kicked back in and I mentally shook myself, forcing myself to take in the scene as objectively as I could manage.

  At the bottom of the concrete stairs, a woman laid crumpled on the floor, one leg at an unnatural angle. There was a pool of blood around her head, and she was facing the stairs, so that I could mostly only see her back and the bloodied tangle of her loose brown hair.

  It’d probably only been a few seconds since I’d stepped into the building, but the jarringness of it made it seem like longer. I forced myself into action, careful about where I was stepping and what I touched as I came to the woman’s side.

  I swore aloud when I saw that she was breathing, the slight movement of her ribs making her blue dress shift slightly. Scrabbling for my phone, my hands held thankfully steady as I dialled an ambulance, reeling off the address as I recalled my first aid training and checked the woman’s breathing and her airways. I didn’t dare move her into the recovery position, fearing that her spine could be broken, and instead kept a close eye on her to make sure that she kept breathing.

  After the initial rush of adrenaline, the side of me that would always be a detective made me look around the small entranceway, and then up the stairs. It was completely possible that the woman, who was younger than I’d first thought, had tripped and fallen. But it was also possible that this hadn’t been an accident.

  I couldn’t leave her alone to search the building, but it didn’t stop me from keeping a wary eye out for anyone who might come back to finish off the job. While I waited for the ambulance, I talked gently to the woman on the floor in case she could hear me. Her eyes were closed, and she showed no sign of waking. But if there was a small chance of her being able to hear me, I wanted her to feel reassured that help was on the way.

  Thinking ahead, I gave both Stephen and Gaskell, my superior and the station’s superintendent, a call. They’d need to be here when we looked over the building and forensics searched the place. My head was still spinning to have found something like this so close to where I lived, where I relaxed and slept, but I pushed the thoughts away to deal with later. For now, I was on autopilot, running through the practicalities and trying to be the professional that the injured woman needed.

  Though weak, her breathing stayed steady as the wailing of the ambulance sirens got increasingly louder as they approached, until they pulled up right outside. I was forced to leave her side briefly to open the apartment door for the paramedics, who came rushing inside when they saw me.

  “Is she breathing?” one asked as they quickly got to work.

  “Yes. Unconscious, though,” I added, probably unnecessarily.

  “When did you find her?” the other questioned as they checked the woman over, careful not to move her.

  “Ten minutes ago?” I hazarded, checking my watch. I’d timed my run and knew what time I’d stopped the clock at. The evening had closed in now, and the only light was the silent, rotating red and blue lights of the waiting ambulance and the ambient glow of the city beyond.

  The paramedics worked extremely quickly and were loading the woman into the ambulance on a stretcher just as Gaskell and Stephen rolled up. The ambulance accelerated away as I waited for Gaskell and Stephen to walk over. The sirens turned up loud as the paramedics speeded back towards the hospital. I watched them, dearly hoping that the young woman would be alright.

  “What have you got yourself into this time?” Stephen asked as he approached. His frown deepened as he looked me over, and I knew I must look a sight, still sweaty from my run and shaken by what had just happened.

  I shook my head. “I honestly don’t know.”

  Stephen put a hand on my shoulder. “Whatever it is, we’ll get to the bottom of it. We always do.”

  Two

  Forensics hadn’t arrived yet, but I didn’t want to leave it any longer to search the building. Since I’d been sitting with the injured woman in the entrance hall, no-one could’ve gotten by me, but I didn’t know if there could be someone hiding upstairs, waiting for when we were all distracted.

  Gaskell and Stephen stayed outside to minimise contamination of the scene, and to set up the police tape, while I fetched some plastic booties and gloves from the car and carefully made my way back outside. I didn’t touch the handrail and walked up the side of the staircase as I clim
bed slowly, studying the concrete for anything out of place. There was a clot of congealed blood about half-way up, and I suspected it had come from the woman’s head, but nothing else immediately caught my eye as being out of place. This could very well have been nothing more than an accident.

  It was odd though, I thought, that the woman had had nothing on her. If she was leaving or entering the building, she’d surely have had some kind of bag on her, or at least her keys. But as I pictured her, I remembered the blue dress she’d been wearing and her bare arms. Dresses usually didn’t have pockets, and it was too cold outside to be walking around without a jacket.

  I carried on up the stairs, keeping my eyes open as I studied the area. The apartment block had four floors, with mine being on the second, and each floor housed two apartments. Both doors on the first-floor landing were shut, and I could hear no noise coming from either of them.

  With the knowledge that Gaskell and Stephen were outside the front door, and so would catch anyone who tried to run out, I carried on up to the second floor, third and fourth. I saw nothing on those sets of stairs, nor on the landings, and I descended again with a frown on my face.

  I was caught slightly off guard by one of the doors on the first-floor opening suddenly and took a step backwards quickly enough that my shoulder bumped the wall. But the person who came out looked more concerned than threatening, and she blinked at me, her eyes widening as she saw the booties on my feet and my plastic gloves.

  “What’s going on?” she asked. She looked to be around thirty, and I knew her face from passing her in the stairwell, but not her name. “Was there an ambulance?” Her tone was of someone asking a question they already knew the answer to.