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

  “Thank you, sir,” I said, taking that for the dismissal it was and seeing myself out.

  Stephen looked up hopefully as I came over and I smiled at him.

  “She’s stable,” I told him. “In a coma, and not out of the woods-”

  “But alive,” Stephen said, looking pleased to hear it. “Thank god. I’d really rather this didn’t turn into a murder case.”

  “Absolutely,” I muttered. Dealing with the worst of humanity was a staple of the job, even here in a relatively placid city like York. But I could never become entirely numb to the horror of one person killing another, and I didn’t think I wanted to.

  With that question answered, we settled back into work. Stephen set to paperwork and report writing, copying up the notes he’d made from the interviews yesterday evening, whilst I pulled up the name of the building’s owner from my personal emails. It was part of a group of apartment blocks, owned by a company called Pursell Homes. I didn’t have particular complaints about the building or the company. The fixtures in my flat had yet to break, and minor issues were usually promptly dealt with. We’d had some loud building work in the summer, but I’d been away in the Lake District then, and it hadn’t bothered me.

  I dialled the company’s number and went through the usual palaver of being passed from pillar to post before I finally got to talk to someone who was able, and authorised, to give me the answers I wanted.

  “Okay, that’s great, thank you,” I said as I finished writing down the names of the tenants in my building. I recognised most of the names from interviewing them yesterday, and I hoped that the two I didn’t recognise would match neatly with the two flats who hadn’t replied to our knocking.

  “And my second query, about the CCTV?” I asked.

  The Pursell employee hummed on the other end of the phone. “I’ll have to put you in touch with the security company we outsource to,” he said, and I held back a sigh.

  The morning was mostly over by the time I had gotten verbal confirmation from the security company that they’d send over the building’s CCTV.

  “There’s a camera out the front,” I was told by a polite woman. “Which dates were you interested in? We hold on to the footage for a month before it’s automatically written over.”

  “There are no cameras inside the building?” I asked. Like Stephen, I’d never noticed any cameras inside the entrance hall or on the landings, but I had to ask.

  “I’m afraid not,” she said.

  “Alright,” I said, before letting her know the time period we were interested in, which she agreed to email to the station post-haste.

  Stephen was coming back with two mugs in hand as I finally put the phone down and I perked, giving him a hopeful expression. He grinned, holding out a mug towards me.

  “Figured you’d need it after all that.”

  “You are the best,” I said emphatically. He’d made my coffee exactly as strong as I liked it, which was roughly strong enough to put a hole in the desk.

  “Did you get anything useful?” he asked as he sipped his tea.

  I pulled a face. “Yes, though I could’ve been told it all in ten minutes tops, if I hadn’t had to speak to half a dozen different people.”

  Stephen raised his eyebrows. “And?” he prompted, unimpressed by my whinging.

  “The CCTV is on the way, and we have the tenants’ names,” I said shortly.

  “Yeah?” Stephen said, leaning over to have a gander at the list I’d made. “Could any of them be the woman you found?”

  I grimaced. “I doubt it. The two names I didn’t recognise,” I pointed them out to him, “are both blokes’ names.”

  Stephen hummed. “She could be a girlfriend to one of them?”

  I gave a one-shouldered shrug. “Aye, it’s possible. We won’t know until we talk to them.” I scratched my jaw. “Knowing her name would open this case up significantly.” I frowned. “She hasn’t even got family by her bedside right now,” I added quietly.

  Stephen looked down at his desk. “We’re overdue for our lunch break,” he said, turning back towards me. He ignored my confused frown, continuing on to say, “we might drop by the hospital with some flowers for her. Brighten the place up.”

  “Oh,” I said, startled by his thoughtfulness. “Flowers are good, but you know what you really want in hospital? Good food.”

  Stephen snorted. “Yeah? I don’t think she’ll be as appreciative of a spinach smoothie as you, Mitchell.”

  “Hey,” I protested, smiling, “I made a kick-ass green smoothie. But I was thinking more along the lines of biscuits. Something that’ll keep awhile.”

  Because we don’t know when, or if, she was going to wake up, I thought silently.

  Stephen’s smile became very slightly stiff, as if he’d heard what I’d been thinking, but he nodded. “Sounds good, partner.” He stood to gather up his things, shutting off his laptop, and I did the same. “I vote for custard creams as the superior biscuits,” he said as we were heading downstairs. His expression was innocent, but I knew the quirk to his mouth that said he was teasing me, wanting to provoke a reaction.

  “No!” I said, playing along and pretending outrage. “Chocolate bourbons, mate. That, or good old digestives.”

  We bickered back and forth as we made our way over the street towards the food shops, where we picked up lunch, flowers, and, after much discussion, a box of mixed McVities biscuits.

  We settled into a comfortable silence in the car as Stephen drove us over to the hospital, the quiet broken only by the murmur of the radio.

  The staff seemed surprised to see us at the hospital, and they escorted us up to the young woman’s room. She was out of the ICU for now, partly because of the shortage of beds there, I thought, but they were still keeping a close eye on her condition.

  “Is there word on the family yet?” the nurse asked as she opened the door.

  I shook my head as we entered, taking in the small private room and the still figure lying on the bed.

  “No, we haven’t tracked down her identity yet,” Stephen said, as I fell silent.

  I turned to the nurse. “How’s she doing?”

  She winced slightly. “I can’t give details to anyone who’s not-”

  I waved a hand. “Of course, I’m sorry. We’re hoping to identify her soon.”

  The nurse nodded, giving me a small smile. “I hope you do. I’m sure they’re worried about her.”

  “Aye,” I sighed, because that was another thing to worry about. Depending on how close this woman was with her friends and family, they might be frantically worried, or they might not have noticed her silence yet. Though it felt like much longer, she had only been injured yesterday evening. I wondered if it was better or worse if her loved ones had noticed she’d not been answering or not. If they had noticed, they would be worried, but it might prepare them for the bad news. If they hadn’t, hearing of her injuries would be a terrible shock.

  Stephen laid a hand on my shoulder. The nurse had slipped out while I was frowning down at the hospital bed. I shook my head, giving Stephen a nod to say that I was alright, and stepped forwards to put the box of biscuits on the side table.

  “Where’d the flowers go?” I asked, turning to Stephen and finding his hands empty.

  Stephen smiled gently. “The nurse took them to put them in water.”

  I blinked. “Oh, didn’t notice. Some detective I am,” I added.

  Stephen pushed my shoulder lightly. “Rubbish. You’re a fine detective.”

  I pulled a smile. “I knew I’d win you over with my charm one day, Huxley.”

  He chuckled. “Yeah, whatever you say.”

  We looked back to the woman on the bed, who might’ve looked like she was only sleeping if it wasn’t for the bandages wrapped around her head and the bruising around both her eyes.

  “Do you think she was beaten?” I asked quietly, looking down at her.

  Footsteps coming up behind us stopped Stephen from reply
ing, and I turned to see the nurse coming back in with the flowers in hand, now in a vase. She set it down carefully at the end of the woman’s bed, spending a moment moving the flowers around before she stepped back and looked over at me.

  “I doubt it,” she said. I lifted my eyebrows in brief confusion, before I realised she’d overheard my question. “That kind of bruising can happen after a hit to the head. It’s not a good sign, but we’ve been monitoring her closely.”

  I nodded. “Did you notice anything else?” I asked. “That you’re allowed to tell me,” I added, not wanting to put the nurse in a difficult position.

  She cocked her head slightly, before sighing. “Her injuries look consistent with a single, bad fall down the stairs, in my view,” she said, her voice slightly lowered. “This is just my opinion, you understand?” I nodded quickly. “I didn’t see any older injuries that would indicate ongoing abuse, if that was what you were wondering,” she said. “But I wouldn’t necessarily assume it was an accident, either.”

  She looked hesitant as she said that last statement, looking between Stephen and I like we might jump into interrogating her.

  I left a slight pause before asking gently, “What makes you think that?”

  She winced slightly, shifting on her feet. “It’s not particularly common for young people to fall downstairs and be so badly injured. Older people, yes, but people her age tend to be able to react fast enough to catch themselves.”

  “They were concrete stairs,” I offered.

  “One set?” she asked, and I nodded. Her mouth tightened as she thought about, finally giving us an apologetic shrug. “I’m really not an expert, so don’t quote me, but…” Her gaze drifted back towards the woman on the bed. “I just wouldn’t rule out her being pushed, you know?”

  She seemed keen to leave after that, probably thinking she’d said too much. We thanked her for what she’d told us and she bobbed a nod before seeing herself out.

  “Thoughts?” I asked Stephen once we were alone. I could hear the clatter and motion of the busy hospital through the door, but the room still felt like a bubble, an area of stillness within the larger workings of the industrious building.

  “I don’t know what to think,” Stephen replied with a slight frown. “The most important thing is finding out who the heck she is.”

  “Aye, I can agree with that,” I said. Privately, I thought the nurse was right, and that foul play couldn’t be ruled out, but while there were enough crumbs for me to have my suspicions, we’d yet to hit on any substantial evidence.

  We headed out of the hospital, and I lost some of the tension in my shoulders as we stepped out in the fresh air. The hospital was a good place, and I respected the folk who worked there immensely, but it still smelled unpleasantly of chemicals, and the grief and fear on some people’s faces in there put me on edge.

  Stephen seemed more relaxed, too, once we were back in the car and he hummed along to the radio as I drove us home. At his request, we stopped to pick up a couple of Costa coffees, which I liked about as much as the coffee at the station. The quality of the beans was better, sure, but I could make my drink as strong as I liked at the station where Costa tended to make mine a little weak.

  At the station, we knuckled down to work, writing up the necessary paperwork on what we’d found out so far, before I got stuck into trying to figure out the woman’s identity. Cross-referencing the tenants’ names the company had given me against the people we had spoken to on the night gave me the two male flat owners who we hadn’t spoken to, and who might know who this woman was. One lived on the first floor, the other on the third. I checked my watch and found it to be near three o’clock.

  “We could try knocking doors again?” I said to Stephen.

  He hummed. “Sure, why not? We need to get hold of those guys one way or another.”

  So, only half-an-hour after we’d gotten back, we headed out again, this time towards my home. I forgot for minutes at a time that the case we were looking into had happened right there in my apartment building, before I remembered again with a jolt. It was illogical to feel unsafe, I knew that, because we still didn’t have confirmation this was even deliberate, and no-one in the building had a reason to target me. Still, it left an uneasy feeling in my stomach.

  We knocked on the door of the downstairs flat first and received a stony, empty silence. I watched the little peephole in the door but saw no shadow beyond it, and when I cautiously put my ear to the door, I heard nothing. My gut told me the place was empty, but we didn’t know for sure.

  “Second time lucky?” Stephen offered.

  I grunted in tired agreement, and we climbed the stairs up to the third-floor apartment. There was a lift round the back, but it was old, and it was quicker to take the stairs. That didn’t stop my achy legs from complaining as we climbed, protesting the treatment they’d had yesterday, though my run this morning had loosened them back up to a degree.

  Knocking on the third floor led to an audible shuffling on the other side of the door, and Stephen and I waited patiently for the occupant to open up.

  He finally did so, leaving the chain on the door as he looked out at us with a frown, his walrus moustache adding to his expression of irritated disapproval at our presence on his doorstep.

  “What?” he said, his gaze moving between the two of us. I pulled his name out of my memory and started to introduce Stephen and me, but he cut me off. “What do you want?”

  I resisted the urge to raise an eyebrow at his tone and instead said, evenly, “We’d like to know your whereabouts yesterday evening, sir.” I tacked on the honourific because he seemed like the type of person who’d respond to that sort of thing.

  He harrumphed. “What’s it to you?”

  I did raise my eyebrows this time. “We’ve got a young woman in hospital, sir. We’re investigating how she came to fall down the stairs yesterday evening.”

  He looked at me for a long moment. “I was at my daughter’s,” he grunted finally, looking at me like I’d kicked his cat. “Y’can call her if you don’t believe me.”

  “Thank you for telling us. We’d be grateful if you could give us her contact details, yes,” I said. It wasn’t precisely necessary to check up on the alibi of someone we had no reason to believe was involved, but I wanted to be thorough, and this guy seemed heartily defensive.

  He gave me a filthy look at the request, but grudgingly reeled off a name and number. Before I could ask another question, the door was shut in our faces.

  “Jeez,” I muttered, stepping back. “Nice bloke.”

  Stephen looked about as irritated as I’d seen him and made a grunt of agreement in his throat. “He could’ve at least pretended to care,” he said, disgusted.

  “Aye,” I said. We moved by silent agreement back towards the stairs and headed down. I looked over at the one door where we’d had no answer as we passed it.

  Back in the car, it was my turn to drive, but I sat for a moment, turning things over in my head.

  “Depending on whether that guy’s alibi checks out,” I said, musing aloud, “there’s just the downstairs flat where we haven’t met the occupant.”

  Stephen nodded. “Might be unlucky,” he said neutrally.

  “Aye, or they might’ve scarpered,” I offered. “And their door was on the first floor, closest to the staircase the woman fell down.” Stephen shot me a look I couldn’t quite read. “What?” I asked.

  “You’re leaping to conclusions a bit fast there, mate,” he said.

  I rubbed my forehead and considered if he was right, glad I had a partner who felt comfortable enough to question me like this. We bickered like irritable school kids, but I never wanted to feel like I’d bite his head off for voicing his disagreement.

  “Yeah, maybe,” I conceded. “But you’ve got to admit that there’s something off about it all.”

  Stephen tilted his head in a nod. “Sure, I agree with that. But you can’t go jumping to thinking that the guy in the
lower flat did it, just ‘cus we haven’t managed to talk to him yet.”

  “Alright, alright,” I sighed. “Point made.”

  Our talk turned to lighter topics as I started up the car and drove us back towards the station. It was late afternoon but not yet rush hour, so we didn’t hit the worst of the traffic.

  I fetched us both fresh drinks once we were back at our desks. The heating in the car hadn’t seemed to be working properly, and I gratefully wrapped my hands around the warmth my mug radiated.

  “You’re a lifesaver,” Stephen said, reaching out eagerly for the cup of tea I offered him.

  Once we’d warmed up somewhat, Stephen settled into running through recent, local missing person reports, hoping to find somebody who was missing the woman who currently lay in a hospital bed.

  Despite what Stephen had said, I couldn’t help but be slightly suspicious of the man who lived in the downstairs flat and who’d we’d seen no trace of. I checked my notes and idly typed his name, Alec Banks, into the police database. I wasn’t expecting much of a result, but I would’ve been lying if I said I hadn’t been hoping for something. So far this case, all we’d had was suggestions that it wasn’t a simple accident and I was eager for something more solid.

  The name was common enough for me to have to do a little sifting before I was sure the guy on our system was definitely the one who owned the downstairs flat. With not a small amount of triumph, I turned my monitor towards Stephen.

  “Look at that,” I said.

  Stephen took in at a glance how tense I was with suppressed energy, before he turned his attention back to the screen. I watched his face as he read it over, with his eyes going from narrowed in concentration to wide with surprise.

  “Well, hell,” he said.

  “My thoughts exactly,” I murmured. Turning the screen back towards myself, I read over the information again. Alec Banks had had a restraining order taken out against him by his wife for domestic abuse two years ago. It had gone no further than that, on our records, but that in no way meant that the abuse had stopped. It might have done, if Alec had gotten help or his wife had left him, but there was never any guarantee.