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

  We headed towards the nearest bus station, since Sam had walked in, and Sam pointed out the boxing gym she went to as we walked past.

  “You could come and give it a go, if you were interested,” she offered, a touch shyly.

  “Aye?” I said, surprised by the offer, but I couldn’t have said exactly why. “I’d like that. Not that I’m much use right now.”

  “Tosh, Darren.” She gave me a small, wicked smile. “You can still work on your core, that’ll help your running too.”

  I chuckled. “I’ve got a feeling working out with you will leave me gasping like a beached fish.”

  She grinned brightly. “I’ll go easy on you, promise.” She winked, and I laughed, not believing her for a second.

  We reached the bus stop and clambered onto the next bus that rolled up, dropping down with a hiss to let us in. We settled into a seat as the bus trundled off towards Sam’s flat, which was on the way to Acomb. It was a little out of my way, but that didn’t matter.

  Despite my inability to run, meeting with Sam left me in a good mood for the rest of the weekend, and I looked forward to Tuesday, when Sam had invited me to join her at the gym. I called my old police partner, Kay, from when I’d worked in the small town of Lockdale. I missed her and the ragtag crew of Lockdale station, but I was happy here in York too. She commiserated with me over my shin splints and promised to send over some of the macaroons her wife had been experimenting with.

  Stephen shot me a hopeful look as soon as I came into the station on Monday. His expression of puppyish curiosity looked a little funny on him, being the bulky, crooked-nosed, ex-rugby player he was, but it was endearing all the same.

  “So how’d it go?” he said, only allowing me to grab a cup of coffee before he wanted details.

  “Good, thanks. How was your weekend?” I fought to keep a smile off my face, fully aware that he wanted a blow-by-blow account.

  “Good?” Stephen said, his lips parted in an outraged ‘o’. “That’s all I get? It was good?”

  I raised my eyebrows at him, but his disappointed pout made me laugh. “Alright,” I chuckled. “We got coffee, she’s got an impressive sweet tooth, and walked the walls. We had a nice time, okay?”

  “You talking about me, DCI Mitchell?”

  I looked up sharply and broke into a sheepish grin when I saw Sam. She’d done her hair up in a bun, and she’d put on a pale blue blouse that complimented her fair skin and blonde hair.

  “I might’ve been,” I admitted. “All good things, I promise. Huxley here was being nosy.”

  She shook her head, a smile at her mouth that faded as she switched focus back to the reason why she’d come over to see us, much as I would’ve liked it if she’d only come to say ‘hi’.

  “The blood results aren’t back yet,” she said preemptively. “The hairs you found on the pillow don’t match the victim’s hair.”

  I nodded slowly at that, not unduly surprised by the news. I’d thought that the hair colour was wrong for Maddie. I wasn’t yet sure whether it would be helpful or not for the case, but I had to view it through the lens that new information was a step in the right direction.

  “Thanks for letting us know, Sam, you’re a gem,” I said.

  “And a saint,” Stephen said cheerily, “for putting up with this one.” He jerked a thumb in my direction, and Sam blushed and looked away.

  “He’s not so bad,” she said before she made a hasty retreat.

  I pressed a hand to my face and sighed. “Did you have to scare her off?”

  Stephen laughed. “Just making sure she’s good enough for you.”

  I shook my head at him, turning my attention back to my computer screen. I pulled up the report I’d been writing last week and added the information that Sam had brought us.

  “What do you think of it?” I asked Stephen absently.

  “Of what?”

  “The hairs being a different person, probably a woman.”

  Stephen hummed, a deep rumble in his broad chest. “Alec could’ve been cheating. It would suggest he didn’t care for Maddie as much as Eloise was claiming, right?”

  “Aye,” I said with a nod. “It might be entirely separate, unrelated. They might even be old, belonging to a woman before he got with Maddie, if he doesn’t wash the bedsheets much.” The thought made me wrinkle my nose. “But that seems unlikely.”

  “I wouldn’t put cheating past him,” Stephen said darkly.

  I sighed. “Me either, mate.”

  A deep, loud voice called, “Mitchell, Huxley!” and Stephen and I looked up. It was Gaskell, and he gave us an expectant look, waving us over to his office.

  “He could just send us a ruddy email,” Stephen muttered as we got up to head over.

  “But that would deny him the joy of bellowing across the station,” I replied.

  Stephen huffed a laugh and shook his head. We headed into Gaskell’s office, taking a seat.

  “The hospital gave us a ring about the victim of your case,” he said. Stephen and I both stiffened, causing Gaskell to lift his hands. “She’s stable,” he said hastily, “they’ve taken her off the drugs that induced the coma, but she’s not awake yet.”

  Stephen and I shared a look, and I could see my own concern mirrored in his eyes. The longer Maddie went without regaining consciousness, the worse the stats were on recovery. Even if we managed to wrap up the case neatly, which I fervently hoped we would, it wouldn’t feel like a victory unless Maddie got up and about again. She was far too young to be lying in a hospital bed like she was.

  Gaskell took in our solemn expressions and gave us an almost apologetic nod. “Thought you’d want to be kept updated,” he said. “You’re doing good work, lads. Keep it up, aye? Get the girl the justice she deserves.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said, and Stephen echoed it.

  We were quiet as we walked out of his office and back to our desks.

  “What we’re short of,” I grumbled, once we’d sat down, “is people who’ll talk to us. Eloise won’t, Alec won’t, Isabel refused, and Maddie can’t.” I sighed. “All we’ve got is ambiguous physical evidence and that CCTV footage.”

  “Hey.” Stephen reached over to rub my shoulder. “It’s not as bad as all that. We’re getting there, okay.”

  I rubbed my forehead. “No one else has managed to get anything out of Banks, have they?” I wondered aloud.

  “Not as far as I know,” Stephen said. “But I can call downstairs and ask.”

  “Might as well,” I said with a nod.

  While Stephen put a call through, I checked my emails and frowned over a message that Alec’s solicitor, hired by Eloise, had sent me.

  “Nope,” Stephen said, once he’d finished. “He’s not talked to anyone. He’s keeping mute and being a general pain in everyone’s-”

  “And now his sister’s kicking up a fuss,” I said, turning my screen towards him so he could see the email.

  “He’s refusing to talk to them too, and she’s blaming it on us,” Stephen said, incredulous, after he’d read the email. “That’s flipping marvellous.”

  “We get the worse luck,” I agreed.

  “He’s right about us needing to charge Banks, though.”

  “I’ll send the report to Gaskell,” I said with a nod. “It’s not perfect, but it’s enough to get him charged with something. If it turns out somehow that he’s not guilty, he’s still perverted the path of justice by running off and refusing to talk.”

  Stephen made a noise of acknowledgement, his expression making it clear what he thought of Alec being let off the attempted murder charge. “Reckon he’s done a good deal more than that,” he said aloud. “But as long as we can keep him, that’ll be enough for now.”

  So I spent the next hour or so polishing up the report before I sent it over to Gaskell with ‘urgent’ marked on it. Gaskell would take it from there, better able to deal with the legal system than Stephen and I were. As long as we’d done our job well enough with coll
ecting the information, I had faith that Gaskell would see it through.

  Even as I was sending it off, however, my mind was on the parts of the case that didn’t quite fit. I thought of Peggy’s reported footsteps, the hairs on Alec’s pillows, and the art deco earring I’d found.

  The latter I could easily lay to rest, I thought. I drove my car home from work again and went into my flat only to put the sharp-edged earring in my pocket before I walked out onto the landing. From the questioning Stephen and I had done already, I had memorised who lived in each flat, and I tried all the ones where a woman lived. Blokes wore earrings too, and I considered that, but I hadn’t noticed any of the male flat residents wearing them when we interviewed them, and the earring itself looked, to my inexpert eye, more feminine in design.

  “No, that’s not one of mine,” Peggy told me, after she’d had a good look at the little stud.

  “Are you sure?” I asked. I’d tried all the other options, and none of the residents had claimed it.

  “My eyesight’s not that bad yet, lad,” she said with a small, warm smile. “I’ve never had a pair with that shape. Besides, it’s too tiny for me to use.” She wiggled her fingers at me. “I can’t thread a needle with these clumsy things these days, I certainly don’t fiddle around with earrings that tiny.”

  I cracked a smile. “Awh well. Thanks, Peggy. Have a good evening.”

  She nodded to me, a little bob of her head. “And you, young man.”

  I ambled back down to my flat, my shins aching again. My legs propped up on the coffee table with a bag of peas settled atop each of them, I turned the silver earring over in my hands, running by thumb over the irregular edge. Maybe it belonged to someone who’d visited, I thought. Or one of the forensics team, even, though that seemed unlikely considering the precautions they took.

  I rolled it between my fingers whilst absently staring out of the window. The earring wasn’t like any I’d seen before, but that didn’t necessarily mean much; I wasn’t one for taking note of people’s jewellery. Still, it was a distinctive shape, and I’d keep it safe for now, just in case.

  Ten

  As much as I wanted to see Sam again, and I did, the frustrating lack of progress on Tuesday left me drained.

  “It’s like running on a treadmill,” I complained as Sam and I began to warm up at her gym. “All the effort, but none of the progress.” Sam chuckled, and I raised my eyebrows at her. “What’s funny?”

  She shook her head. “Nothing, just, it’s clear you’re an outdoor runner, not a fan of the treadmill, huh?”

  I laughed at that. “Aye, you’ve got me there. Give me a bit of rain over a sweaty gym any day.”

  She grinned and playfully shushed me. “You are in a gym right now, you know?” she teased.

  “This is different,” I said, taking another look around the boxing gym. “This is nice, no manky socks left in the changing rooms.”

  I had been surprised by the quality of the place when Sam led me inside, introducing me as a guest to the guy at reception. The ceilings were high and vaulted, the skylights letting in as much natural light as the overcast day would provide. It was big enough that there wasn’t a wet, used feeling to the air, like it’d already been breathed and exhaled a dozen times before it got to me, that I so hated.

  It was also impressively stocked, with a long line of hanging punching bags, plenty of gloves and training pads available, mats propped up against the side as well as a small, well-padded ring. There was the usual fare of a regular gym too; treadmills, bikes, rowing machines, weights and the like.

  “You weren’t expecting it to be actually decent,” Sam said, sounding amused.

  I cracked a grin. “I am impressed,” I conceded as I bent down, stretching out my stiff legs with a grimace.

  Sam moved towards me and put a gentle hand on my shoulder. “Hey, don’t overdo it,” she said.

  I eased up, standing up and shaking off the ache. “I hate being injured,” I grumbled. “It’s not even a broken bone or something decent.”

  Sam snorted. “That’s such a guy thing to say. A broken bone would take months to heal properly, Darren. You really want that?”

  I gave a dramatic sigh. “You talk too much sense,” I said, smiling. Rolling my shoulders, I released a breath. “Okay, give me your worse, Rosanes.”

  She gave me a smile that was full of terrible promise, and she didn’t disappoint, either. Two hours later, I was left gasping on the floor, my core feeling like jelly set on fire. I wasn’t even in bad shape, but Sam was younger. It was only after I’d agreed to this that she confessed she worked out most days of the week.

  “Okay, okay,” she said as she looked down at me lying on the mat, shaking her head. She’d copied me rep for rep, and the damn woman was only just breaking a sweat. “You’re done. I think we both deserve a drink, right?”

  That made me sit up, though forcing my shaky muscles to drag me upright made me wince. “Sounds like your best idea yet,” I said.

  “And that’s the most enthusiastic you’ve sounded so far today,” she laughed.

  We split off to shower and change. I got myself sorted a couple of minutes before Sam was done and took the opportunity to have a nosy around the parts of the building I hadn’t seen yet.

  I found a row of rooms set at the back, one of which was set up with a hard floor, ballet barres, and floor to ceiling mirrors. Another was occupied with a class in progress, yoga I thought, or perhaps pilates. I only meant to have a brief look, but the teacher moved around the room and into my range of view, making me inhale sharply in surprise.

  I pulled away from the window, certain of who I’d seen without needing a second look. Isabel Davies was in there, teaching the class, and I shook my head at the coincidence. I walked away before Isabel could look out the window and see me there. She’d probably assume I was following her, and I didn’t want to scare her like that.

  I walked back to meet Sam by the changing rooms and smiled when I saw her, with her bouncy ponytail and healthy flush in her cheeks.

  “You’ll never guess who I just saw,” I said as we went out of the gym and headed for the bus stop.

  Sam looked up from checking her phone and gave me a curious look. “Tyson Fury?”

  “What?” I said, before breaking into a surprised laugh. “No, that would’ve been much cooler. It was the wife, estranged wife really, of the suspect in my case.”

  “Huh,” Sam said, taken aback. “Small world, I guess. What was she doing?”

  “Teaching yoga, or something like it.”

  Our conversation turned towards things unrelated to work and flowed easily between us. As we walked, I definitely felt like I’d been run over by a small golf cart, but Sam had carefully tailored the exercises to avoid taxing my shins, and I was relieved to find that they felt no more painful than before I’d walked into the gym.

  “You’d make a good personal trainer,” I told her. “You’ve got the right balance of fitness and mild sadism.”

  She barked out a laugh at that, giving me a light shove in token protest. “If you wanna charm a girl,” she huffed, “you’ll have to do better than whatever that was.”

  “Dammit,” I said, “you mean you weren’t charmed already by that show of manly stamina just then?”

  She snorted, which wasn’t particularly flattering. “You’ll do,” she said, still smiling at me. Her jacket wasn’t very thick, and she started shivering as we waited for the bus to turn up.

  “C’mere,” I said gently, and she tucked herself under my arm, pressing up close to my side. It was a sweet moment for a minute or so, until she decided to stick her freezing hand up my shirt, making me yelp.

  I wasn’t exactly sure how it happened, but somehow our playful wrestling turned into me kissing her. She gasped quietly and pulled back, more in surprise than anything, I thought, but I asked her to make sure, “Was that okay?”

  She blinked at me for a second before she grinned and pressed her mouth to
mine, the smile still on her lips.

  The bus turned up not long after, and we pulled apart, beaming at each other like teenagers.

  “Come to mind for dinner?” I asked her, once we were on the bus.

  She smiled warmly. “I’d love that,” she said, before she shifted closer to me and rested her head on my shoulder.

  A smile flitted across my face as I looked down at her, feeling relaxed and at peace as I looked out of the window at York rushing past. I remembered seeing Isabel Davies at the gym, but for now, I didn’t linger on it. Instead, I thought about what I could make Sam for dinner that she’d like and smiled to myself as I remembered the fun we’d had this evening. The case was never far from my mind, but I would take my breaks where I could get them.

  Stephen tapped his watch pointedly when I arrived, hair askew and running late, on Wednesday. He was grinning broadly at me, though, and I couldn’t help but smile, too.

  “Someone had a good date night,” Stephen laughed, leaning back in his chair.

  I gave him an unimpressed look. “What’s the rule, Steph?”

  He looked at me innocently. “The rule?”

  “No grilling me before coffee,” I said, faux sternly, as I scooped my mug off my desk. “I’d ask for you to quit being nosy altogether, but I gotta choose my battles.”

  He groaned. “Alright, alright, go get caffeinated, you old grump.”

  “Pot kettle black,” I tossed back as I headed over to the break room. I made Stephen a cup of tea, too, since I was there and walked back to our desks with the two mugs in hand.

  Stephen was on the phone when I got back, sat in my chair because it was my desk phone that’d rung. I tentatively hoped that it might be Isabel calling us, having changed her mind, but it was unlikely since we hadn’t even managed to leave her with a card.

  Stephen set it down a minute later and shifted out of my chair and back into his own. “That was Alan, Alan Smith. You know that older chap-?”

  I waved my hand at him. “Aye, I remember. What was he saying?”

  He shot a look at me for my impatience before he said, “He’s remembered something, apparently. He wants us to come and visit, so he can talk to us.”