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

  I studied the police picture of Alec and grimaced. Without meaning to, when I’d imagined the sort of guy who could hurt a woman, I’d pictured a big, ugly bruiser, but Alec didn’t look like that at all. His face was fine-boned, with wide, blue eyes that looked entirely innocent, and he looked more like a suave stockbroker than like he belonged on a domestic abuse charity advert.

  “Him having a record still doesn’t automatically make him-”

  “Our man, I know,” I said.

  Stephen gave me an unimpressed look at my interruption. “But,” he said pointedly, “it does show he’s a nasty guy, capable of violence against women. Blokes like that…” He trailed off, pulling a face of disgust.

  “Aye,” I agreed quietly. “I wouldn’t trust a domestic abuser as far as I could throw ‘em.”

  “This wife of his,” Stephen said. “We got a picture of her?”

  “I don’t think so,” I said, “but that’d be helpful to know, for sure.”

  We did have her name on record, and I managed to dig up a likely looking candidate from Facebook, who lived locally and seemed about the right age.

  “Well, she’s not the woman in hospital,” Stephen said.

  “Thanks, captain obvious, that’s right helpful,” I said. The woman on the Facebook account had an entirely different face shape than the victim, and her hair, though dark, was thick and curly. She also looked older than the injured woman by five or ten years, with her dark eyes framed by laughter lines.

  He sent me a grin. “Helpful’s my middle name.”

  “Pretty sure it’s Charles.”

  “It is not.” He grimaced. “Charles? Seriously?”

  I chuckled. “What is then? Bill? Douglas? Ronald?”

  “None of your business,” he said, shaking his head at me with a grin that belied his pretence at annoyance. “Let’s focus on the case, yeah?”

  “Okay, okay,” I said, amused. “I’m convinced it’s something embarrassing now, though. Eustace? Augustus?”

  He shoved me lightly. “I don’t know how I put up with you, Mitch, I really don’t.”

  “It’s never boring.” I grinned.

  “Back to the case?” Stephen said pointedly, and I sighed.

  “Since when were you so responsible?” I wheeled my chair closer to my desk to focus back on our research. “So his wife isn’t the victim, but have we got anyone else connected to him? I don’t know how likely it is that he’ll turn up at his flat again, if he really is our guy.”

  “Good point.” Stephen nodded.

  “There’s a vehicle registered to him recorded on here,” I gestured towards the screen, “but I don’t know if he’s got a new one now. This was a short while back.”

  “Might as well put it into the system as an APW, in case he is still using it.”

  “Aye, no harm in it,” I said, typing in the necessary information so that anyone in the area would be on the lookout for Alec Banks’s vehicle, which was a black BMW. It was a car that would’ve been expensive a few years back but was getting past its prime by now. Still, it was a flashy-looking car, and I made a mental note that Alec seemed to like the finer things, and that he likely cared about appearances too.

  With that done, we moved onto trying to dig up someone who might know where Alec was, or how we could get in touch with him. Working with the help of several social media accounts that had helpfully, but unwisely, been left public, we managed to track down a sister for Alec Banks, Eloise. She lived locally and seemed to post pictures of her dog on her Instagram.

  “Do you think he could be staying with her?” I wondered aloud, not really expecting an answer. Stephen only had the same information that I did, after all.

  “Might be,” Stephen said with an easy shrug. “If he really is who you think.”

  I pressed my lips together at the scepticism in Stephen’s voice, but was he really wrong to be doubtful?

  “Yes,” I acknowledged. “If he is who I think he might be. The pieces fit, but that doesn’t always mean we’re building the right puzzle.”

  “Poetic.” Stephen smiled slightly.

  “I have my moments,” I said, my mouth quirking up at the side.

  I left a message for the sister, Eloise, letting her know who I was and that we would be grateful to talk to her. I didn’t say that it was about her brother, and perhaps the mere fact that we were police would lead her not to respond, but I had to be upfront. As things were, I didn’t have enough evidence to warrant bringing her or her brother into the station, if we could even find them, so the best I could hope for was that she was inclined to help us out.

  If she did agree to talk, we’d have to handle it delicately, I knew. As I sat back in my creaky desk chair, I was already running through ideas in my head for how the interview might go. I continued turning things over even as work ended and I saw Stephen off. My run home usually enabled me to let go of thoughts on whatever case or incident we were dealing with, unravelling the tightly wound ball of worries, ideas, and sometimes uncomfortable memories that made up my thinking process at work.

  But, as often happened when a case became intense and my emotions got tangled up in it, I couldn’t turn my analytical side off. Even as I was preparing dinner and then watching the telly, I was still rolling the problem around my head, as if I just looked at it from enough different angles, I’d find a way to pull it loose. But, lying restless in bed, I had to force myself to admit that we didn’t have enough information yet.

  It would turn up with enough persistence and patience, I was sure, but I wouldn’t find a solution tonight.

  Four

  The apartment block CCTV turned up in my email inbox mid-morning the next day. I’d been sipping my newest cup of coffee and sloshed some of it over my fingers in my haste to set it down and open up the email.

  The computer took a while to download the video files the company had sent me, and I sat back in my chair, wiping up the coffee I’d spilt as I waited.

  “You get something interesting?” Stephen asked. I looked over and found him looking at me with a mixture of amusement and curiosity. “Not like you to knock your coffee over.”

  “I didn’t knock it over,” I protested, turning back to my monitor as the loading bar slowly filled up. “And it’s the CCTV we asked for.”

  “Oh,” Stephen said, leaning forwards. “Did they say anything in the email?”

  “Nope,” I said distractedly as the video finished loading, and I opened it up. They’d been helpful in including a good stretch of time from the early afternoon right into the night for the evening in question, and I impatiently skipped through it towards the time I’d arrived.

  “There.” Stephen pointed at the screen.

  I’d seen it too and reversed it a short way, before we both studied the recording.

  “That’s her,” I said quietly. On the grainy CCTV, the dark-haired woman I’d found on the floor walked towards the camera which was placed above the apartment block’s front door. It made my stomach turn over with a mixture of sadness and anger to watch her walk, whole and healthy, inside and know that she was now in a hospital bed, fighting for her life.

  My hand moved towards the mouse to fast-forward the video, thinking to jump it forwards to where I’d arrived. But, as I was skipping forwards through the footage, a figure crossed the camera’s view so quickly I almost missed it, stopping the recording after they were already out of frame. Stephen and I both pulled backwards instinctively, and I shot him a look, finding the same shocked look on his face that I was sure was on mine.

  In silence, I rewound the video, watching again as the victim walked calmly and confidently into the building. She was wearing a coat here, I realised, and carrying a handbag on a strap on her shoulder, too. The CCTV was sped up slightly, but it was twenty minutes in real-time before the figure we’d only briefly seen appeared.

  I narrowed my eyes, slowing the video. It was a man, coming running out of the apartment block at a shambling run. He did
n’t turn around, so the camera never caught his face, but he looked to be tall and skinny, from what I could make out as he dashed across the screen. I rewound it again, and then a third time, watching closely.

  “That’s our man, then,” Stephen said quietly.

  “Aye.” I tilted my head in a half-nod. “Looks likely.”

  I let the video carry on running, tensing when I saw myself show up. On the screen, I was in my running gear, still breathing heavily from my run, and I’d had no idea what I was walking into. I grimaced, jabbing the pause button, so I didn’t have to watch myself walk inside. I could picture it all too clearly, anyway.

  “This makes it certain it’s foul play, wouldn’t you say?” Stephen said after a moment. “He’s not running off to call for an ambulance, is he? And he can’t have come out the front without going right past her.”

  I hummed. “Depends on the timeline. We can’t see inside the building. I’m inclined to agree, but it is possible that she fell down the stairs after he’d run out.”

  “Yeah, true,” Stephen conceded reluctantly. “Sometimes the simplest explanation is the right one, though. He shoved her, saw what he’d done, and ran off.”

  “Aye,” I said, wishing I didn’t have such a vivid imagination. Sometimes it helped with policing, to reimagine the scene, but it wasn’t pleasant to imagine the poor woman being shoved down a set of concrete stairs clearly.

  “Who is he, though?” Stephen muttered.

  I hummed. “Hard to tell from the back. Could be the bloke from the downstairs flat, though, considering he was the only one who wasn’t in when we knocked round.”

  Stephen didn’t look quite convinced, but he inclined his head in acknowledgement. “He’s certainly not the older guy from the third floor, with the big moustache.”

  “Aye, no, it’s not him,” I agreed. The runner on the CCTV had been slender, and he moved like a young man. I shook my head, reaching for my coffee, which had gone a little tepid. “What people do to each other…”

  Stephen patted my shoulder. “We’ll make sure there’s justice. What’s the next step, then, do you think?”

  I looked blankly at the frozen CCTV on my screen as I thought about his question. “I’d like to know if forensics have found anything yet,” I decided aloud. “If you could try to contact the sister, Eloise Banks, again, that’d be helpful.”

  Stephen rubbed his nose before nodding. “She might be at work, but I’ll leave a message, yeah.”

  “Thanks.”

  I downed the bitter dregs of my coffee and picked up my jacket, shrugging it on before I headed off towards the lab. It had been a little while since I’d been over there and I looked curiously around the room when I arrived, but found that not much had changed.

  There were two members of staff there, only one of which I recognised, and I squinted at her for a moment as I pulled her name up from my memory. We’d met during an investigation in the autumn last year, and I’d seen her around the station since but we hadn’t talked much since then.

  “Rosanes,” I said finally, clicking my fingers. “Sam Rosanes.”

  She looked up, seeming surprised to see me there. “That’s me.” Her startled expression morphed into a friendly smile. “DCI Mitchell.”

  I cracked a grin. “That’s me.”

  I’d forgotten how tall she was. She must have been close to six-foot, considering how we were almost level. Her hair looked longer than I remembered and was a pretty honey-blonde, pulled back in a practical bun that highlighted her arched cheekbones. I realised I’d been studying her when a tint of colour rose in her cheeks, and her colleague, who’d I’d completely forgotten, cleared his throat pointedly.

  “What can we help you with?” he asked.

  Embarrassed, I gave Sam an apologetic, sheepish smile and turned to her co-worker.

  “I was hoping there’d be some forensics results for the case I’m on,” I said, before reeling off the date and location it had happened.

  He made a noise of acknowledgement in his throat but, to my disappointment, shook his head. “I’m afraid we’ve not got that back yet. I’d expect it in the next few days.”

  I held back a sigh. “Okay, thank you.” I sent Sam a glance, nodding to her. There remained a slight flush of colour in her cheeks, and she sent me a wry smile that told me that I hadn’t made her uncomfortable, at least, which I’d certainly not intended to.

  I found my heart beating faster than normal as I left, and the memory of Sam’s smile tempered my dismay over the lack of forensics. I headed back over to Stephen, hoping he’d had more success than I had.

  “No luck?” he guessed as I approached.

  “Aye, nothing yet. You?”

  “Yeah, I got her on the phone.” He grinned cheerily. “She seemed a touch reluctant, but she agreed to talk to us.”

  I released a breath. “Good work. Is she coming here or are we going to her?”

  “She gave me her address, so I guess we’re going over there,” he said. “It’s not too far. She wanted us to come sooner rather than later, said she’s got someplace to be.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Well, alright then. Better get a move on, hadn’t we?”

  I gathered up my coat, and Stephen and I headed out. I drove, the car’s SatNav taking us on a circuitous route through the small back streets to avoid the lunch-time traffic. Stephen’s stomach grumbled as we drove over to Eloise Banks’ home and I chuckled.

  “We can have lunch when this is done,” I promised him.

  He sighed dramatically. “I’ll try to survive until then.”

  Eloise lived at a small terrace house, the garden neat as a pin and the door freshly painted a rich shade of green. The clouds had thickened overhead into a dense, grey layer as we’d driven over, and it was just starting to spit down with rain as Stephen and I climbed out of the car and headed up the short path to Eloise’s front door.

  She must have been watching out for us, as the door opened before I could even raise my hand to knock, startling me. Pale and blue-eyed, Eloise might have looked angelic if she’d smiled, but the displeasure in her tight frown and pressed-together lips made her look icy. She was wearing a floor-length, blue banyan and her blonde hair was up in curlers. A party to go to, I assumed, struggling to keep my face entirely neutral.

  “I’m DCI M-”

  “I know who you are,” she said, her voice steely. “You might as well come in, but this’ll need to be short. I’m not done getting ready.”

  She turned away to move back inside the house, and Stephen and I shared an amused look. This woman seemed more like a London socialite than the usual type you found in Yorkshire.

  She showed us into an elegantly decorated living room, but didn’t offer us a seat, let alone a cup of tea. I sat down on one of the plush leather sofas regardless, ignoring the glare she was shooting, and Stephen followed my lead. With a long-suffering sigh and a pointed look at her watch, Eloise Banks lowered herself to perch on the sofa that was furthest away from Stephen and me.

  “Why are you here?” she demanded.

  “We were hoping you would be able to confirm some information for us,” I said. “We’re looking to identify an unknown woman and believe that your brother may have known her.”

  She arched a plucked eyebrow. “Why aren’t you asking him, then?” she said, examining her nails as she spoke.

  I kept my tone patient as I said, “Because we’ve been unable to contact him so far.” I left a pause for her to fill in if she wanted to, but she continued to study her nails, making it very clear that we were wasting her time.

  I cleared my throat, before moving into describing the victim as best I could. I wish we had a photo to show Eloise, but without a name, that wasn’t possible, and I certainly wouldn’t take a picture of the injured woman lying unconscious in hospital.

  “Do you know anyone connected to your brother who matches that description?” I asked.

  Eloise pressed lips together. “Obviously,
” she said. “That’s his girlfriend.”

  A tingle of both excitement and relief went through me at her words, and I reached for my notebook.

  “Thank you,” I said, trying not to show how interested I was in the information. “What’s her name?”

  Eloise narrowed her eyes at us. “Look, what’s this regarding? Why’re you asking these questions?”

  Resisting the urge to demand she answer my question first, I said, “We’re looking to identify an unknown woman-”

  “You’ve said that,” she interrupted. “Why are you looking into this woman? And what’s it got to do with my brother?”

  “It may have nothing to do with your brother,” I said, trying to find something to say that wouldn’t make her clam up. “It’s the woman we’re investigating so that we can contact her family.” I deliberately didn’t say that the woman was injured, and the victim of the case. I got the strong sense from Eloise’s tone that she would jump to defend her brother.

  Eloise narrowed her eyes at me like she knew I was leaving things out, but, after a long moment, she said, “Her name’s Maddie.”

  “Great, thank you,” I said automatically. “And her surname?”

  Eloise wrinkled her nose. “How would I know that?”

  I resisted the urge to sigh. This was a start at least, but I wished Eloise might at least pretend to try.

  “Can you hazard a guess?” I asked. “Or remember what letter it started with?”

  Eloise pulled out her phone, paying us no attention as she tapped at the screen, her long nails clicking against it. I stiffened, frustrated to have finally found someone who had relevant information, only for her to be less than interested in sharing it with us. I glanced over at Stephen, and we shared a look of annoyance.

  “Eloise…?” I started, attempting to call her attention back to us, but she silently put up a finger, telling me to wait. I released a breath, resigning myself to the fact that we might be done here.

  “Ah,” she said abruptly, and I looked over at her. “Packham.”