DI Mitchell Yorkshire Crime Thrillers: Book 1-3 Read online

  DI Mitchell Yorkshire Crime Thrillers

  Books 1 through 3

  Oliver Davies

  Contents

  Moorland Murders

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  2. Six months later

  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

  Campus Killings

  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

  Epilogue

  The Stolen Children

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  2. One month ago

  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

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Epilogue

  A Message from the Author

  Moorland Murders

  Book 1

  Prologue

  I had just put my feet up when the doorbell rang.

  “Sod’s law.” I shook my head, put my mug of tea down and pushed myself up. “I’ll get it, I’ll get it,” I called when I heard my wife’s footsteps making the old stairs creak as she came down.

  The late morning was bright out, and the winter sun still low enough in the sky to make me squint.

  “Hello.”

  I raised my eyebrows at the lad on the doorstep. He was wearing the green-trimmed blazer of the local senior school as he fidgeted on his feet.

  “Oughtn’t you be at school?”

  The boy coughed, scrunched a hand through his gel-sticky hair and gave me a grin.

  “Nope. Here on a school project, Mr Mitchell. Was hoping you’d help?”

  I fought a smile at the boy’s cheeky expression, braces still on his teeth.

  “What kind of a project?”

  “Won’t take long!”

  “Not what I asked,” I huffed, but I stood aside to wave the lad in.

  “Who is it?” my wife called from upstairs.

  “Lad from St. John’s,” I called back gruffly as I directed the boy into the living room. “School project.”

  He looked around our sitting room curiously, taking in the beige walls, windows, the TV, and my wife’s cabinet full of china figurines. I personally couldn’t stand the little things, but whatever made her happy pleased me. And then there was the wall, almost entirely covered by bookshelves, but the kid didn’t seem too interested in that.

  Standing close to the little gas fire, I leaned my sore hip against the wall and nodded at the lad. “So, you got a name?”

  The boy gave me a look of amusement. “Aye, most people do.”

  I coughed to hide a laugh. “Alright, alright. Spit it out, then.”

  The lad held out his skinny hand. “Liam Perry, nice t’meet you.”

  Bemused, I stepped forwards to shake his hand. “Darren Mitchell, but you apparently know that already.”

  “Done my research,” Liam said.

  I humphed. “Cup of tea? Or do you lot only drink pop these days?”

  “I’m good.”

  I shrugged and sank back down into my chair with a sigh. I picked up my tea and looked at Liam through the steam. Lockdale wasn’t a large town, but it wasn’t small enough that I knew every one of the people living there, even though I’d hardly left the place in the nearly ten years since I’d retired early. This Liam didn’t look familiar, and I couldn’t think of any Perry families I knew either. I’d ask my wife later.

  “What’s this about researching me, then?”

  Liam looked proud of himself as he sat down on the sofa opposite me and started tugging sheaves of paper out of his rucksack, followed by a clunky-looking laptop.

  “I’m a journalist for the St. John’s monthly paper,” he said as he clacked away on his laptop keyboard. “I’ve won Best Student Journalist for three years running.”

  “That so?” I smiled.

  “Yep. I want an article on the history of Lockdale.” He wrinkled his freckled nose. His hair was an astonishingly bright red, and I bet his mother worried about his pale skin getting burnt in the summer. “Nothing boring, though. You were the police- a DCI, right? You’ve seen all the cool- I mean, all the interesting stuff.”

  “I was a detective inspector and then a detective chief inspector, yes.” I took another sip of my tea. My wife would chide me for the two spoonfuls of sugar I’d snuck in if she’d seen me do it. “I’ve not been that for a long time now though-”

  “Yeah, ages,” Liam agreed. “But that’s good!” His eyes were bright, and his energy was infectious. “You’ll know all the old stuff no-one remembers anymore. All the forgotten- I don’t know, scandals and mysteries and that.”

  I chuckled. “Right you are.” I checked my watch. “You’ve got me for a couple of hours, lad. Then I’ll be off to the railway. So fire away.”

  “Railway?”

  I was already anticipating the cascade of questions I was going to get from this kid. “Model railway,” I said. “I run a model steam engine round the track at Badgewood, keeps me out of trouble.”

  Liam nodded, his attention on his laptop. “You go with other police people?” he said, looking taken with the idea. “Talk about the ‘good old days’?” Liam made quotes with his fingers, and I smiled. “The cases- murders?”

  “‘Fraid not. Just about oil changes and old joints.”

  Liam sighed before perking up again. “Is that because you’re the only one left? The last police officer from,” he waved his hand while I looked at him, eyebrows raised, “your time, you know?”

  I was silent for a moment, and Liam’s face flushed. “Sorry,” he mumbled.

  “No, they’re not all dead.” Liam’s face darkened further. “I left that life behind. These days I’m more interested in catching the mice raiding our pantry than criminals running about the place.”

  Liam sat forwards. “Yeah but, you must have stories. Crazy stuff that happened.”

  “It’s not all like it is on TV,” I cautioned, though I was unwillingly touched by his keenness. “Small town like this, you get to know people. It can be sad.”

  Liam looked away briefly. “I get that,” he
said before rushing on, “but you got to help people, too, right? Bring justice?”

  I hummed, drank more tea. “We did alright.”

  “So what was your- most exciting case?”

  “There’s been a few of those. Too exciting, I’d say.”

  Liam looked like I’d told him the winning lottery numbers. “Yeah? What like? Tell me one?”

  I huffed, wrapping my stiff fingers around the remaining warmth left in my tea mug. I thought about it while he waited impatiently, trying to think of something… appropriate for a school newspaper. But, looking at his blazer with the school badge on, my stomach tightened.

  “There was a case,” I said without meaning to. He nodded. “Linked to your school, actually.”

  “Really?”

  “An old friend of mine worked there and he- well.” I took another sip of tea to wet my throat, but Liam broke in before I could speak again.

  “A murder?” he said. “At St. John’s?” He looked far too excited.

  I sighed. “There was. Messy business, all in all.”

  Liam started tapping away at his laptop. “Tell me about it?” he pleaded.

  I wondered whether this was really the right subject matter for a young’un like this one, but kids these days watched all sorts of gore on the TV that turned my stomach.

  “Well, alright, then.”

  One

  Graham was used to being alone. The quiet house was his own, the bleak moors outside empty of all but sheep, which would be huddled against the stone walls to get out of the lashing rain. When the chimney howled, or the floorboards upstairs creaked, he knew it was just the wind and an old building complaining about the ache in its bones. The weather up here on the moors was unforgiving, but since the house had stood steady on this spot for a hundred years, Graham was confident that it’d stay standing for at least the rest of Graham’s time under its roof.

  The old kettle whistled on the stove, and Graham pulled himself up from the sagging sofa with a grimace. He’d overdone the running yesterday, perhaps, but it was the good ache of exercise done, rather than the brittle stiffness of getting older.

  “I’m coming, I’m coming,” he muttered as the kettle whistled piercingly and he made his way to the kitchen.

  Sarah was out, staying in York again for some conference or event, Graham wasn’t entirely sure. She’d always been on the move, never stopping, and she hadn’t slowed down yet. Graham didn’t mind, even though he missed her. That’d been the woman he married, and he wouldn’t change her for anything.

  He made his tea and returned to the warmth of the living room, with the open fire crackling quietly. He’d never wanted a TV, and Sarah never stopped long enough to care either way. Getting it all set up out here would’ve been too much of a palaver, regardless. Having electricity put in when they’d first arrived had been enough of a fuss, what with the thick stone walls and haphazard floor plan. Everything was a bit off-kilter, and Graham rather liked it like that. Rustic, he called it, when Sarah threatened to have the uneven floors pulled up after she’d tripped over them again.

  Settled back for the evening, Graham fished out his latest library book and started reading about marathon training. Sarah said he was too old, but Graham liked proving her wrong, and she knew that.

  With no radio or TV chatter to dull his hearing, Graham perked up at the sound of a vehicle approaching outside, turning his head away from his book and towards the window. It was awful late for anyone to be going along those small lanes, especially with the rain and the wind churning about outside.

  The engine noise increased in volume and, against his better judgement, Graham put his book aside and shuffled over to the window to hook the curtain aside.

  Pitch black. Graham frowned, listening as the vehicle got increasingly closer. As he looked out on the lane past the end of his and Sarah’s scrubby garden, bright headlights approached and flashed by with a splash of wheels passing through puddles.

  Graham tutted and shook his head, letting the curtain fall. Going far too fast.

  He’d only taken a step back towards his seat when there was an awful clash of metal and stone, shockingly loud over the snapping fire and the rain.

  “Oh god,” he murmured, before shaking himself into motion.

  Kitted out in his wet weather gear and wellies, he hurried out the door with a flashlight and the mobile phone his niece, Alice, had insisted on buying for him in his hands.

  He slipped and skidded down the lane, the rain so cold it had turned to wet snow. It stuck to his trousers and fell down the gap between his neck and his shirt collar, making him shiver.

  The car’s headlights came into view further up the lane, and Graham swallowed thickly at the sound of an awful wailing. He cursed quietly and hurried up, his torch beam bumping up and down on the lane.

  A figure came into view, and Graham shone the torch over them, blinking when he recognised the face. It was one of his old students, a bright one he’d liked to teach.

  “Are you alright?” he said, breathing a little heavily. He got nothing but crying in response.

  “What happened?” he asked gently. “Did you hit the wall?”

  A hand pointed towards the front of the car made Graham reluctantly move forwards, his hand shaking where he gripped his torch.

  “Lord,” he said softly.

  The car had hit a motorcycle, and the man was lying sprawled on the ground. Graham edged around the steaming metal of the ruined bike and crouched down. The man was dead.

  “I’m going to go to j-j-jail.”

  Graham looked up at the driver. “Breathe,” he said. “It’s going to be okay.”

  “Noooo, I w-won’t- not okay.”

  Graham winced at the slurring. Not just reckless driving, but drunk. He stepped away from the broken man on the ground, the wet snow already falling on him.

  Standing nearer, he could smell fruity alcohol on the student’s breath. Not a student now, he reminded himself, an adult.

  “I didn’t m-mean to, I s-swear-”

  “You’re cold and in shock,” he said. “My house is a hundred yards that way.” He pointed. “We’ll warm you up and call for- an ambulance, for him.” He only stopped himself saying ‘police’ at the last moment.

  “P-please, you can’t- It was an accident, Mr Stewart. I can’t get a-arrested.” More sobbing.

  “Alright, alright, let’s just go and both get warm? No use being out here, and you’ve got no coat either.”

  “O-okay.”

  They made their way slowly back to Graham’s house. Graham wasn’t sure whether his own shaking was from cold or shock, but he made fresh tea for them both and fetched more blankets.

  “I can’t g-go to prison, I was just so stupid, my parents w-will lose their home-”

  “Why’s that?” Graham said before he could tell himself not to.

  “There’s no money, I have t’work or else it all g-goes.” The pleading was followed by the kind of hitched, awful crying Graham couldn’t stand. Like a baby’s helpless crying, it made him want to fix it in any way he could. But there was a dead man down the lane, and nothing was mending that. “I swear, I’ll never do it- never drive l-like this again, I’m so so sorry.”

  Graham made awkward hushing noises. “I’ve got to call them, I’m sorry, but I have a duty, and you do too. A duty of care. Tisn’t right not to.”

  The driver’s head dropped. “Nooo, please, please.”

  Graham made quiet noises of apology and slipped out of the room. His hands were clammy as he took the phone up from where it hung on the wall and dialled the numbers for the police. The dead dial tone rang in his ears. He groaned, dropping his forehead to the wall.

  He jumped when he turned, putting the phone back, and finding his old student stood in the doorway. “Couldn’t get through?”

  Graham shook his head silently and heard a sigh of relief from his visitor.

  “We’ll- sort this out in the morning,” he said tiredly. �
�I had better put up some signs in the lane, or somebody else might…” he trailed off.

  He left the driver sipping tea in his living room to fetch the waterproof camping lanterns from his garage and a warning sign he kept in the boot of his car.

  When he returned from outside, dripping water everywhere and shivering convulsively, he found his old student still sat on the sofa. There was no more crying through, only an almost blank, steely expression. Graham found himself suddenly uneasy.

  “You won’t tell, will you, Mr Stewart?” Graham couldn’t move away. His feet felt nailed to the floorboards. “You know it was a mistake? Losing my parent’s home, it’s not fair.” Graham tried to speak, but his throat felt blocked. “It won’t bring… him back, will it? Please, Mr Stewart.”

  “It’s not that. I--” He broke off. “I have to, I--”

  When the student suddenly stood up, Graham frowned slightly. “But you don’t have to tell them. It won’t fix anything.”

  Graham cleared his throat. “You broke-”