Woeful Pageants (DI Mills Yorkshire Crimes Thriller Book 1) Read online

  Woeful Pageants

  A DI Mills Yorkshire Crime Thriller

  Oliver Davies

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  2. Mills

  3. Mills

  4. Mills

  5. Mills

  6. Mills

  7. Mills

  8. Fry

  9. Mills

  10. Mills

  11. Mills

  12. Mills

  13. Mills

  Chapter 14

  15. Mills

  16. Fry

  17. Mills

  18. Mills

  19. Mills

  20. Mills

  21. Fry

  22. Mills

  23. Mills

  24. Mintie

  25. Mills

  26. Mills

  27. Mills

  28. Mills

  Epilogue

  A Message from the Author

  Prologue

  I stared at the sign on my desk as I turned off the lights in the office.

  Detective Inspector Mills

  It felt odd to be called by that title, to hear someone call out “sir” or “Inspector,” and the slight delay until I realised that they meant me and not Max Thatcher. Odd that I walked in every morning to find him gone. No more slumping in his chair, nursing the largest cup of coffee known to mankind, turning his chair this way and that, grouchy and grim.

  I’d moved both desks around, almost in protest, so that they looked in at each other, rather than in the weird L shape they had been in before Thatcher retired. It had worked well for a while, as changing up the room meant that I could keep my old desk. Only, it also meant that every time I looked up from my work, Leila Fry was directly in front of me. After her promotion, which was rightly earned, Sharp had decided to keep us together. We’d worked well in the past, we knew each other, and we were both taking on new roles. The arrangement was a wonderful idea in every aspect but one—my schoolboy crush on Fry.

  It was ridiculous that I let Fry catch me off guard. She had no idea, I hoped, and I intended for it to stay that way until I got over it. Thatcher would be delighted by the whole thing, had been, in fact, when Fry had first started helping out on our cases. Working relationships were one thing, but considering it was unlikely that Fry was interested in me, holding out hope would be setting the scene for disaster. Or setting the table for it, as my mum liked to say.

  I shrugged my coat on, and then I closed and locked the door. As I turned to leave, I bumped into my boss, Sharp.

  “Look at this,” she mused as she looked me up and down while holding a stack of files to her chest. “Actually leaving on time for once, Mills. Not sleeping at your desk tonight?”

  “Not tonight, ma’am.”

  I hoisted my bag over my shoulder. Since the promotion and the failed case that I had first been assigned, I’d resolved to prove myself worthy of the job and had pulled one or two late nights in the effort.

  Sharp raised an eyebrow. “I’m shocked, Mills. I might have to have a lie down.” I chuckled and shook my head, and she smiled back. “Any plans for the evening, then?”

  “As it happens, yes. Thatcher’s in town.”

  “Is he?” she asked. “He didn’t tell me that, the bugger. I take it that’s why you’re not pulling overtime?”

  “He doesn’t like it when people are late,” I replied.

  “And you wouldn’t like it if he came in and dragged you out himself,” Sharp threw back. “Say hello for me and have a good time. Don’t get into trouble.”

  “Wouldn’t dream of it. Night, ma’am.”

  “Night, Mills,” she called after me.

  I waved over my shoulder, trudged down the stairs, and wound a scarf around my head as I walked towards the front doors. On the way out, I nodded to the desk sergeant. She was rather new in the position and got on well with the public, which had made Sharp happy.

  I pushed through the doors and flipped my coat collar up around my scarf. The air bit at my face, and it was already dark, with the streetlights filling the roads with their weak, orange light. It wasn’t bad, though, as the council had officially switched on the city’s Christmas lights the previous weekend. Hundreds of the light strings stretched between buildings, wound around posts and hanging over the streets. There was a buzz in the air, with it being the last few working days until the holiday officially arrived.

  People bustled around the streets, and most of them were bundled up for winter and laden with shopping bags as they hurried from place to place. Many of them clutched coffee cups, and the smells of hot chocolate and mulled wine caught my nose now and then. A tinny version of an old carol played somewhere, and the Christmas Market down the street was in full swing, as it had been for a few weeks. On one of my days off, I’d gone to check out the local stalls and picked up some horrid cheese that my dad loved.

  The market was crowded and noisy as it had been the day I visited, and just as hard to navigate, but luckily, I wasn’t going far.

  The Bell had served as the main watering hole for the North Yorkshire Police since before I was born, and would continue to do so for many more years to come. It was round the corner and down a side road from the station, and something about the vast numbers of uniformed and off-duty officers meant that the public didn’t often make their way into the old Victorian building. A few officers gathered outside, smoking, shuffling their feet in the cold, and they nodded politely as I walked past and let myself in.

  The moment the door shut behind me, I was hit by a pleasant, if somewhat stifling, warmth that had me unwinding my scarf as I walked towards the bar. The landlord, Paul, noticed me arrive and nodded as he carried on serving another customer. I leant with my back against the bar and looked around the room. I’d have seen Thatcher straight away if he was there already—as he was hard to miss, and a small group would have gathered around him at some point—but he wasn’t, not yet. I glanced at my watch. He was running late.

  “Evening, Inspector,” Paul called behind me.

  After a slight hesitation, I turned and smiled.

  “Evening, Paul.”

  He grinned and grabbed an empty glass from the shelf behind him. “Still not used to that, eh?” he asked knowingly.

  “Not yet,” I told him.

  “You’ll get there, lad. Usual pint?”

  “Please. How’s it going?” I asked, looking around again. “Place seems busy.”

  “Always is this time of year,” Paul said. He pulled the pint and slid it over to me. “Got the pub quiz next week, if you’re interested. Though no doubt you could win it all on your lonesome, from what Thatcher used to tell me.”

  “He exaggerates.” I took a sip of lager.

  “Does he now?” Paul asked slowly, taking me in again. “Well, it’s an open invitation, Mills. You come along if you can. Bring that sergeant too. She’s quick.”

  “Fry? I’ll let her know about it.”

  “Good lad,” Paul winked, and then pointed across the room. “Table by the fire’s empty if you move quick enough.”

  “Cheers, Paul.” I grabbed my scarf and made my way over to the table in question. It had been recently vacated, and empty glasses and a crisp packet hung around on the slightly sticky surface. A member of staff appeared quickly, and I held my pint out of the way as she cleared the table, sprayed it and wiped it down, offered me a quick smile, and then disappeared back into the crowd. I put my glass down, shrugged my coat off, and watched the fire burn for a minute.

  The door opened, a gust of cold air rushed inside, and a small cheer ran
through the room. I looked up as Thatcher walked in and met the cheer with a grin. He looked around the room, clocked me in the corner, and lifted a hand in greeting before heading to the bar. Paul beamed at him, and the two shook hands over the bar. Paul looked ready for a conversation, but Thatcher said something to him. Paul nodded, filled Thatcher’s glass, and waved away the cash he tried to give him.

  Thatcher walked over to me with such a look of determination on his face that nobody else bothered him, though a few nodded in his direction. He reached the table and grinned suddenly, as he put his glass down and removed his great old coat. I rose to meet him, and he shook my hand for a second before pulling me in for a hug, with one hand slapping my back.

  “Isaac,” he said happily as we took a seat, his grey eyes bright. “It is good to see you, lad.”

  “And you,” I replied. “How was the trip?”

  “Brilliant. You been to Scotland?”

  “Edinburgh once. University trip. You were in the highlands?”

  He nodded and took a swig of beer. “Beautiful out there, Mills. Like our moors, but bigger. More cows.”

  I chuckled. “Well, it’s good to have you back. What brings you into the city?” I asked.

  He looked at me like I was an idiot. “You.”

  “Me?”

  “Course. I don’t run errands down here, do I? Came to see how you’re holding up.”

  I warmed at the compliment. “I’m doing just fine,” I told him. “Adjusting, but I’m getting there.”

  He nodded slowly, with a knowing look on his face that I knew all too well. He’d heard something about me from someone. My money was Crowe. How she found the time to gossip in between dissecting homicide victims was beyond me, but she did.

  “How is the old place?” he asked, changing tact. “Everyone?”

  “All well. Sharp sends her best.”

  “Still running the place with an iron fist?”

  “You’ve not been gone that long,” I pointed out.

  “Doesn’t feel like it.” He sighed and stretched. He looked better for it, I had to say. Either being retired or being out in the countryside, it suited him. The shadows under his eyes were there, but they were faint, and his grey eyes were cheery for once. There was a lightness to him, a relaxed stance in his shoulders that hadn’t been there before. “And Lena?”

  “Same as ever,” I told him. “She told me that I needed to stay in her good books now that I’m an Inspector.”

  He nodded. “She can be very tricky with the DIs she doesn’t like. Buy her some fudge. She’ll love you forever. And Fry? How’s our new sergeant?”

  “More capable than half the station.” I said it quietly, as more than a few members of our station were cloistered around the pub with us. “More so than I was as a sergeant, I’m sure of that.”

  “Nonsense.” He dismissed the notion with a grin. “You were a brilliant sergeant, Mills, and I made sure everyone knew it.” He grinned at himself, happy to have snuck around my back singing my praises, and I’d had no idea of it at the time.

  “Found a way to fill your time yet?” I asked him.

  He snorted. “Not as yet, though I’ll find something soon enough. I always do. I knew this bloke,” he told me. “Was an Inspector in the MET, and when he retired, the man was practically pickled when he did, and he went on to write crime books.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Really?”

  “Oh, aye. Proper old Morse things, you know. He didn’t do much of the writing himself, mind, his grandchild did. But they were his stories and his experiences.”

  “I didn’t think there’d be much of a market for stuff like that,” I admitted.

  “People like a good crime story, Mills,” he told me. “There’s a macabre curiosity in it for people.” He took a long sip of beer, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and nodded at me. “Speaking of which, I caught the tail end of the news on the drive down. What’s this about a homicide in a theatre? Heard your name thrown about in it.”

  “Happened whilst you were away,” I told him. “Just what it says on the tin. Homicide in a theatre.”

  Thatcher leant back, shaking his head. “Well, I’ll be. What happened there?”

  “The usual,” I told him. He knew how things worked. If I started telling him the story, he’d probably have figured out who the killer was halfway through and left me feeling like an idiot.

  “Isaac,” he stated blandly. “I have just come back from a very long holiday in Scotland. I have been in a car with Liene and Billie for days now, and let me tell you, I need a good case story. I miss them almost. Not the cases themselves so much, but something to think about, you know? Something to mull over.”

  I grinned at him. “You could always read about it in the paper, sir,” I said.

  He stared at me blankly, flinging a rude hand gesture my way. I chuckled quietly, taking another sip of beer.

  “You and I both know there are things that the paper doesn’t know, that the public doesn’t know,” he said quietly.

  “You’re retired now,” I said. “Are you allowed to know?”

  “Crouse, I’m allowed to know. Come on, Mills, I trained you. I have to make sure you’re remembering all those wise lessons.”

  I rolled my eyes, fixing him with a hard look. “Who called you?”

  “What?”

  “Was it Lena? It was, I know it was.”

  He blinked, then shrugged. “She didn’t call, she emailed. Said something about you working yourself ragged overtime. This unsolved case of yours.”

  I rolled my eyes. “I can spare the odd hour for it now and then,” I told him. “And you’re hardly the person to criticise me for that.”

  “No,” he agreed, “but you can’t spare an hour of your own sanity, Mills, not for something that can’t be solved.”

  I leant back, staring at the fire again. My first ever case as an Inspector, unsolved. That missing girl, the face that followed me around, still missing.

  “But this one,” he said, as if reading my mind. “You solved this one, Mills, and from what little I’ve heard so far, you solved it bloody well.”

  “Not sure about that,” I admitted as I raked my hands through my hair.

  If I was being honest with myself, there were times throughout it when I had wanted to give him a call. Ask for his advice, his perspective. Once the case was over, I wanted to know what he thought. His approval meant everything to me, and I wanted to hear that I’d done a good job from someone who truly knew what the job was.

  I looked back over to find him watching me carefully, with a knowing look on his face.

  “Buy us another pint, then,” I told him, “and I shall regale you with my tales of blood and strife.”

  He chuckled as he got to his feet. “Same again?”

  “Please.”

  I watched as he wandered back to the bar to signal Paul, and then I got up to throw another log onto the fire. It was an unspoken rule of the Bell that whoever sat at that particular table tended the fire. I always liked the smell of smoke and the crackling sound of the logs. It gave me something to focus on as I thought about the case. I had to make sure that I remembered everything in the right order.

  Thatcher returned with two fresh pints and two packets of crisps. He sat in the chair opposite me, opened a bag, and nodded.

  “Whenever you’re ready, Inspector.”

  One

  Silas had always liked an empty theatre, liked to stare out at the rows of seats without the blinding lights or by the hundreds of daunting faces staring at him. He found his peace when it was just him, centre stage, the empty room turned to him as he paced along and delivered his final monologue. This one had taken him longer to learn than usual. The speech was clustered with political jargon that he was unfamiliar with, and quite honestly, it had taken him a while to get used to anything that wasn’t Shakespeare.

  At rehearsal that night, he finished the speech, paused for a moment, and then bowed hi
s head.

  “Curtain closed, and there we are!” Perry, the manager, clapped his hands from the wings. “Good rehearsal, everyone,” he said as the rest of the crew joined Silas on the stage. Silas watched as Mintie wandered on with her arms wrapped around herself. Hyde hung close to her, and Silas drifted over to her side to casually drape his arm around her shoulder. Hyde threw him a frown and went to lean against the wall.

  “A few notes for tomorrow,” Perry went on. “Azwer, take one of the prop knives home. I want those movements to be as fluid as possible. Hyde, Mintie, we’ll go over your scene again tomorrow. We’ll work on the bedroom scene, as well, so those lines had better be ingrained, alright?”

  Hyde nodded slowly. “Sure. Want to run some lines, Mints?”

  Mintie looked up at Silas. “Maybe. I think I’ve got them, though.”

  Silas wasn’t much of a jealous man, but he didn’t love the idea of watching his girlfriend acting in a love scene with someone who wasn’t him. Especially if that someone was Hyde, who was painfully aware of the way women, and some men, looked at him.

  “Fantastic. Silas, good job on the monologue. You’ve got the words down, so let’s work on the timing now. I want to believe that you’re a lawyer.”

  Silas nodded. “I’ll work on it.”

  “Excellent,” Perry said with a grin. He checked his watch. “We’d better start clearing out, let Joseph close up. Same time tomorrow, everyone, and I’ll bring coffee. Don’t be late, or I’ll let Martha drink it all.”

  Martha laughed as she clambered off of the speaker she’d sat on. “Everyone but Azwer’s.” She winked, grabbed her jacket, and headed to the stairs.