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

  “Aye,” I said. “There’s been an… accident. My name is DCI Mitchell.” I pointed up towards the second floor. “I live upstairs.”

  “Oh!” she said, clicking her fingers. “I knew you looked familiar.”

  I gave her a tired smile. “We’re looking into what happened, so if you could stay in your room, I’d greatly appreciate it.”

  I could hear raised voices from outside, and the other resident and I turned to look down the stairs. The woman seemed to notice the blood pooled at the bottom of the stairs for the first time, and her face paled.

  “Did they- Are they alright?” she asked, her voice reasonably steady.

  “They’re receiving medical treatment at the hospital,” I said, “that’s all I know.” She gave a small nod of acknowledgement. “We’ll let you know when we’re done. If you could remain in your apartment until then, that would be helpful.”

  “Okay,” she said. She looked shocked, still, but quickly collected herself. “I hope they’ll be alright, whoever was injured.”

  I nodded seriously. “As do I.”

  She disappeared back inside, closing the door quietly like she didn’t want to make too much of a disturbance. Sighing, I picked my way carefully back down to the ground floor, skirting the small pool of darkening blood, and went out the door.

  Gaskell and Stephen had to deal with a resident, one I didn’t recognise, who was infuriated not to be allowed back inside. They were handling it just fine, so I kept back and watched out for the arrival of the forensics team. I still wasn’t at all sure that there had been foul play involved here, but I did want the area looked over by professionals, in case there was something there that I hadn’t noticed. Stripping off the booties and gloves, I put them in the nearby bin as I waited, since they were now possibly contaminated and reusing them would defeat the purpose of wearing them in the first place.

  The angered resident had backed off to sulk, tapping his foot impatiently, but was at least not verbally berating Stephen and Gaskell any longer. Stephen stepped over towards me and raised his eyebrows in a silent question.

  I shrugged. “I didn’t find much. Bit of blood on the stairs. I asked one resident to stay in her room, but we’ll have to warn the others too.”

  Stephen made a noise of agreement. “Yeah, before the commotion out here draws them out.” As he spoke, the forensics van rolled up, and we all straightened slightly.

  Efficient as always, forensics worked quickly once they’d been filled in on what had happened and who might’ve contaminated the area. I stood at a distance, helping to fend off another irritated resident who’d turned up, and watched the forensics sweep the stairwell, looking for fingerprints on the bannister and collecting a sample of the blood for DNA. I would be very surprised if the blood on the stairs didn’t belong to the victim, and I was sure the pool at the bottom was hers, because I’d seen her bleeding.

  “You’re looking a little peaky,” Stephen noted with concern. “Are you okay?”

  I shook my slightly fuzzy head to clear it. “Aye, just dehydrated from my run, I think.”

  “Reckon I’ve got a water bottle in the car,” Stephen hummed before heading off to fetch it.

  The water was lukewarm and tasted of plastic, but it wetted my dry mouth, and I gave Stephen a grateful nod.

  “That’s better, thanks.”

  He cracked a smile. “You know me, always fixing your problems,” he teased.

  I pretended outrage and tossed the water bottle at him, which he managed to catch. I had a sharp comment ready on my tongue to retaliate with, but Gaskell shot us both a quelling look, and I sobered. Now wasn’t the time or place for joking with Stephen, however much it helped me not dwell too much on the poor woman now at the hospital.

  In time, the forensics team finished up, the stairwell was cleaned, and the residents aggravated with being unable to go inside could head up to their flats. I thanked the forensics team for their work, and they informed us that they’d let us know as soon as they had results. Some of the evidence might be sent to the lab at Hewford, if we had the equipment to deal with it, and the rest would go to another, larger lab, which would take longer to process.

  Despite it being fairly inappropriate considering the circumstances, my stomach had started growling as we waited. It felt like it’d been a long time since, when I’d only had a sandwich, and I’d expected to eat immediately after I’d got home from my run, which had been over an hour ago now.

  It would be some time yet before I could make myself dinner, though, since it would be best to question each of the flat inhabitants tonight, before any of them had the chance to slip away, or forget anything they might have seen or heard earlier this evening.

  That didn’t stop me from nipping into my flat to grab a cereal bar and an apple, which I munched on as the forensics team headed out.

  “You two have space in your schedule for this, don’t you?” Gaskell said, coming over to us.

  “Am I enough of a disinterested party in this, considering I live here, sir?” I queried.

  Gaskell grimaced slightly. “You’re not related to the victim,” he said, before he narrowed his eyes at me, “and you didn’t know her, did you?”

  I shook my head. “Never seen her before, sir,” I said, which honestly surprised me. The building wasn’t the largest, and I’d lived there for nearly a year now. I knew most of the faces of the residents and was on small talk terms with a couple of them, but I hadn’t recognised the face of the victim.

  “Then it’s fine,” Gaskell said decisively. “I’ll leave you to handle it.”

  “G’night, sir,” Stephen said before Gaskell turned on his heel and headed back to his car, which I was pretty sure he’d shared with Stephen on the way over here.

  “You’re going to need a lift home, aren’t you?” I said with a sigh.

  Stephen sent me a sideways smile. “Afraid so,” he agreed.

  It was going to be a long evening, I just knew it.

  “Alright,” I said, patting my side for my notepad, but of course, I was still in my running gear and had no notepad on me. Stephen gathered what I’d wanted and pulled out his pad of paper, offering it. I waved for him to keep it.

  “I’ll trust you to take notes,” I said. “We should probably talk to the residents together, anyway. I might not have much authority dressed like this.” I gestured down to my running shorts, with the leggings underneath, and running shirt.

  Stephen raised an eyebrow. “You’re not going to change?”

  I was getting a bit chilly as the temperature dropped, but I shrugged. We’d be going inside the building in a minute. “It’ll be fine,” I said. “It might help to have me looking more like a civilian, when we try to get something useful out of them.”

  Stephen made an unconvinced noise, but didn’t press it.

  “First job,” I decided, “is finding out who the heck this woman was.”

  “Did you get a good look at her face?”

  I sent Stephen a disapproving look. “I sat with her for ten minutes, Steph, with nothing to do other than make sure she was breathing. Of course, I got a good look at her face. She didn’t look at all familiar.”

  “Alright,” Stephen said. “So, a visitor? Or a recluse?”

  “Aye,” I said with a nod, “or she just leaves the building at different times to me.” I shrugged. “Let’s go ask the folk indoors. Better talk to them before they start to want to head out or drift off.”

  Stephen agreed, and we headed inside, where it was warmer. The blood had been completely cleaned up, though I could picture clearly where it had been, like a translucent image pasted over the top of reality. I thought again about the victim, the mystery woman, and whether she was doing alright. Her injuries seemed severe, and she’d certainly hit her head, so there was no guarantee that this wouldn’t turn into a murder inquiry, if we did come up with proof of foul play.

  “What are your first thoughts?” Stephen asked as we headed up th
e first set of stairs. His voice bounced off the walls, and I understood his instinctive feeling to keep his voice down.

  “She wasn’t carrying any bags,” I said. When Stephen sent me a confused look, I expanded on the thought. “No phone, no keys, just the dress she was wearing. Why would she go downstairs like that?”

  Stephen looked thoughtful. “Cigarette?” he wondered, before shaking his head. “No, you’d have seen the packet, probably. I suppose she wasn’t wearing a jacket, either?”

  “No.” I shook my head. “I didn’t notice if she was wearing shoes, but that would be pretty definitive. There’s no reason to go out without shoes.”

  “Unless you’re fleeing,” Stephen noted.

  “Aye, there’s that,” I said grimly. “But otherwise, it would suggest she never meant to go outside and was pushed down the stairs.”

  Stephen nodded slowly. “I mean, it’s jumping to conclusions a bit, but I see what you’re thinking, and it makes sense.”

  We were standing on the first-floor landing, and I nodded towards one of the doors. “Let’s get on with it, then.”

  We talked to the residents one by one. Most of them I knew by sight, and they clearly recognised me back, and it surprised them to find out that I was in the police. That wasn’t surprising considering I usually came and went wearing my running kit and only changed in uniform at the station.

  We didn’t have a picture of the victim, but I did my best to give a description of her as best I could remember and visualise.

  “Dark brown hair about this long,” I told the resident of flat 1a, indicating somewhere around my sternum, “middle twenties to thirties, white, about five foot six or seven, I’d guess.” I’d never seen her standing up, so I was mostly going on an estimate there.

  But the tenant didn’t recognise the description, and neither did any of the others we spoke to. Out of the eight flats, there were two where we didn’t get an answer at the door, so we had five people to talk to, excluding me.

  “Did you hear anything strange around an hour ago?” I asked one older man who lived in a second-floor flat, his tabby cat currently winding itself around his legs.

  He pulled his dressing gown closer around him. “Now you ask,” he said, “there was some yelling.”

  I felt Stephen tense at my side and knew without looking at him that he was paying extra attention.

  “What kind of yelling?” I asked. “Did you hear male or female voices?”

  The man scratched his salt-and-pepper stubble as he thought about it. “Both, I think,” he said. “A man and a woman, maybe.” He shrugged apologetically. “It’s not too uncommon. Comes from one of the downstairs folk. They’re often playing loud music or whatnot.”

  I glanced over at Stephen, who was taking diligent notes, before looking back at the resident. “Did you ever go down to speak to them?”

  He shook his head, curling his lip slightly. “I’m not one to whinge,” he said. “They usually shut up before midnight.”

  I nodded. “And tonight, did you hear of what was said?”

  “Nah.” He wrinkled his nose. “The walls aren’t too bad here, pretty thick.”

  “Aye,” I nodded in agreement. I’d not had too much of a problem with noise whilst I’d been living here, which I was grateful for. With the hectic job I had, I couldn’t afford to be losing sleep to loud neighbours and thin walls. Still, that didn’t make our job any easier. I wouldn’t have protested at all if we could’ve wrapped the case up quickly thanks to an eavesdropping neighbour.

  We questioned the others in the building one by one and knocked again on the doors we’d gotten no answer from. One woman seemed to have some recollection of seeing a woman around like the one I described, but she couldn’t say anything more about when or where she’d seen her. None of the others seemed to have heard this argument, either, though that didn’t mean I would ignore the information. It was another small titbit that suggested foul play had been involved in the woman’s fall down the stairs, and I wanted to be absolutely thorough.

  It was approaching eight o’clock by the time we finished, and Stephen had been checking his watch for a bit now.

  “That wasn’t especially illuminating,” he said, unusually pessimistic, but he did tend to get that way when we had to stay late.

  I sighed. “Go on home to your family. I think we’re done for today.”

  He visibly perked up, putting his notebook away. He patted me on the back and didn’t wait around for me to change my mind.

  “See ya tomorrow, Mitchell,” he said as he headed off. I shook my head, amused by his fast departure, and slowly made my way up to my flat. My legs ached from the running I’d done today, and they’d stiffened up badly since my post-run stretches and warm shower had been interrupted.

  Later, lying in a warm bath as I slowly relaxed, I turned the day over in my head. We had plenty to investigate, particularly since we hadn’t yet figured out the woman’s identity. I hoped that this would be a solvable case, rather than one of the too many that got left open and abandoned due to a lack of resources, time, or leads. What would help most though, I thought as I sunk deeper into the warm water, would be if the victim could tell us what happened.

  The day caught up with me as I lay in the bath, and I drifted off into a half-sleep. When I woke, it was with a painful jolt and my heart racing, finding the water tepid around me. Breathing too fast as I tried to get my bearings, I couldn’t recall the details of the dream, but I could vividly picture myself falling backwards, knowing that no-one would catch me. I had woken with that terrible drop in your stomach that told you that gravity had failed you and the unforgiving floor was rushing up to meet you. The rest slipped through my fingers as dreams tended to, but I was left feeling like my skin was crawling as I got out of the now-cool bathwater and shivered.

  I tried to put the day out of my mind as I got ready for bed, but the memory of the woman with a halo of blood matted into her hair wouldn’t leave me alone.

  Three

  I left early for work the next morning so that I could take it easy on my run. I’d hoped the cool air would liven me up in the way my morning coffee, toxically strong, had categorically failed to. I’d had a disturbed night with chaotic dreams and woke up feeling more tired than when I’d gone to bed.

  I was used to getting emotionally invested in my cases. It was what drove me on when the work got tedious and difficult, but I wasn’t used to feeling quite so unsettled by a case.

  “You look like you woke up on the wrong side of the bed.”

  With my second coffee of the day in hand and my hair damp from the shower, I gave Stephen an unimpressed look.

  “You didn’t find a half-dead woman at the bottom of your stairs,” I told him acidly, his teasing rubbing me up the wrong way today. I flopped down into my seat, behind my desk.

  Stephen’s easy-going expression dropped into something more serious, and compassionate, as he sat down. “No,” he agreed. “That must have been pretty upsetting.”

  I huffed a half-amused and half-despairing breath, taking a sip of coffee hot enough to scald a layer off my tongue before I replied.

  “Don’t therapist me,” I said, my voice light enough to take the sting from the words. “I’m fine. I just want to know what happened to make her end up how she was.”

  I found myself tapping the desk with my fingers as I waited for the computer to load up and made myself stop.

  “Yeah, we both want to know that,” Stephen agreed. “It’d be really useful if there were cameras, but I didn’t see any.”

  “Aye, that’s next on my list,” I said, “calling the company. Hopefully, they can shed some light on this.”

  As I spoke, I thought again about the woman being rushed off to the hospital and hoped that she’d survived the night. Her injuries had been serious, and we hadn’t heard any news.

  “Gaskell’s in his office,” Stephen said, making me realise I’d gone silent.

  “Okay?” I sa
id, confused by his change of topic.

  Stephen nodded his head towards Gaskell’s door. “He might have heard from the hospital.”

  “Oh,” I said, staring at Stephen for a minute. “You really need to quit doing that.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Noticing when you’re preoccupied and offering solutions?” he said cheekily.

  “No, weirdly accurately reading my mind,” I said, lightly cuffing him over the head as I stood up. His hair was buzzed short, making it impossible to mess up, and he just sent me a cocky grin.

  “I can neither confirm nor deny being psychic,” he called after me after I headed over to Gaskell’s office and I rolled my eyes at his antics.

  I knocked on the office door’s cheap wood, and Gaskell called me inside. He looked more alert than I felt as he straightened in his chair and turned an expectant expression on me.

  “Yes?”

  “I was wondering if there was any news from the hospital, sir?” I asked hesitantly, wondering if I ought to have waited until the end of the day to ask. If it was bad news, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to focus properly on the case today, but the uncertainty was surely worse.

  Gaskell hummed, his face staying neutral in a way that didn’t tell me anything. “Yes, they called me late last night to let me know the woman was currently stable. She’s in the ICU, and they’re monitoring her closely.”

  I released a breath. “I’m glad to hear it, sir.”

  Gaskell sent me a look of understanding. “She’s in a medically induced coma as of now,” he said, his tone warning me to temper my optimism. “But they were pleased she’d come through surgery.”

  “Aye,” I agreed. “I don’t suppose they found any ID on her either?” I didn’t think they would have. My memory of her dress was that it didn’t look like the type to have pockets, but I thought it worth asking.

  “No, I would’ve told you if they had.” His mild tone said that he didn’t really mind me asking. “I’ll update you if there’s any more news.”