Better the Devil You Know

by James Whitworth

  “DCI Miller,” the abrasive voice of Davis’ secretary said. “The Chief Constable has a window in his schedule in an hour’s time. He could see you then.”

  Miller swore under his breath, and then agreed to the appointment. He knew Davis could see him immediately if he had really wanted to; it was more likely to be one of the power games he seemed so fond of playing.

  Whatever Davis’s motives, the end result was that Miller had an hour to kill. He couldn’t visit the crime scene – that would hardly stand his case for reinstatement in good stead. An hour was just about enough time to call in at home.

  Miller pulled into the car park of his apartment block and parked adjacent to the side entrance. He climbed the two steps and passed through the large wooden doors. Turning right he climbed the communal staircase and passed into his third floor apartment.

  Without bothering to take his coat off, Miller headed straight for his music room. Earlier in the year he had turned the small third bedroom into a room dedicated to his ever-increasing collection of vinyl and CDs. Looking along a shelf dedicated to 1960s groups, he selected the Byrds’ debut album and walked into the living room. Taking out a CD by The Dreaming Spires, Miller loaded the disc and slumped down onto his sofa. He reached for the remote control and pressed play. Closing his eyes he let the jangling guitars and exquisite harmonies float over him. For ten minutes he barely moved.

  As the album reached its halfway point, Miller sat up and scanned his living room. He reflected that contrary to popular myth the eyes were not the windows to the soul; rather it was a person’s home. Give him five minutes with someone’s record collection, or studying their bookshelves and he was on his way to knowing what kind of person they were and by extension the acts of which they were capable. What would someone make of Miller’s own apartment?

  He tried to scan his home with the detached eyes of a stranger. There were the records and CDs, of course. But beyond that, what would they say? Miller looked around and was surprised to realise that there was very little to go on. Take his music and books out of the equation and what was left? There was a framed photograph of his parents on their wedding day. He stood up and walked over to it. It was taken in 1953, and seemed to Miller to contain so much life. For the thousandth time he looked into the eyes of his father and mother and was convinced he saw so many things there. Expectation, happiness, thoughts of the future. He knew it was probably mere fancifulness, but that old black and white photograph seemed to be a portal not just to his parents’ wedding day, but also to a different time.

  Miller stepped back. What else was there? The only other picture was a framed Krazy Kat cartoon that he had picked up in a Notting Hill antique shop. It wasn’t much, was it?

  On the other hand, it was all most people needed to know about him. His passions in life were music and books. He simply didn’t need much more. Of course, it wasn’t quite a simple as that. There was Dr Alice Laine. She had understood his love of music, she had even – miracle of miracles – seemed to share it, talking late into one night about Sinatra’s Capitol albums. But she was in Sheffield now and he had a murder to solve, if he could get anywhere near the damn case.

  Miller sat back down. He needed to get his argument just right for when he saw Davis in half an hour’s time. Push him too hard and he would make his immovability a matter of principle, be too contrite and he would become insufferable.

  He knew that no one thought of him as a suspect, it was the rather inconvenient fact that he had been the last person to see Samantha Thompson alive that had resulted in his suspension.

  Inconvenient? Miller shook his head. What was he thinking? He may have only spent a couple of hours in her company, but he had liked Samantha Thompson and she was anything but an inconvenience. What he needed to do was apply what he had been trying to do on his own home to her cottage. He was wasting time. He needed to be involved in the investigation and he was just going to have to persuade Davis.

  *

  Fifteen minutes later Miller was sitting on a hard wooden chair outside the Chief Constable’s office. He was in no doubt that Davis had chosen the furniture to remind staff of their schooldays. He always felt he might leave the office with a hundred lines to complete and a letter to take home to his parents.

  At that moment, Davis opened his office door and grunted what Miller assumed was an invitation to enter. By the time Miller had walked through the door and closed it behind him, Davis was already enthroned behind his large desk.

  “You do realise you shouldn’t really be in the station at all?” Davis said, his pot-marked face flushed either with anger or a suppressed enjoyment of Miller’s situation.

  “I know and I’m really grateful for you agreeing to see me,” Miller said. As much as Davis irritated the hell out of him, he had to admit that he was right. There had been no choice but to suspend him. All Miller could do was try to argue how important it was that he be allowed to recommence his duties.

  “Sir,” Miller began. The word always rankled when used in conversation with Davis, but Miller reminded himself why he was sitting here. “I want it to be known that I have absolute confidence in DS Riddle, but I think the investigation would proceed more quickly if you had two detective leading it.”

  Miller paused for Davis to argue, but the Chief Constable sat impassively like a northern Buddha behind his mahogany desk.

  “Allow me to give you my thinking so far,” Miller said. “Samantha Thompson left the Endeavour public house at eleven o’clock in my company.”

  Davis’ eyebrows lifted as if to indicate that the mention of this fact was not to Miller’s advantage, but he remained silent.

  Miller went on. “I left her at the foot of Church Street and last saw her as she passed the Whitby Bookshop. I do not know if she saw anyone else before she climbed the 199 steps to the headland. At this stage it seems unlikely, but it is possible. According to DS Riddle, the pathologist places time of death at between midnight and two in the morning. Her body was discovered in the chapel graveyard, which is opposite the cottage where she lived. I have also learnt that the victim worked for a surveyors that had been employed to work on the chapel. This may explain why she entered the chapel grounds. She may have wanted to check up on something. Or she may have met someone either by arrangement – although she didn’t mention it before – or by chance, at least on her part.”

  Miller looked up. He was beginning to be disconcerted by Davis’s silence.

  “The bottom line,” he concluded, “is that we have far too many questions unanswered. I need to begin by looking into the way her body was left. I have a couple of contacts in the alternate religion community.”

  Davis looked at him as if to say, “Of course you do,” but he still said nothing.

  “And I want to take a look at her cottage. I can only do that if I’m reinstated.”

  Miller slouched back. He had given it his best shot, but he had been wrong footed by Davis’s out of character refusal to interrupt.

  For a few moments Miller began to think Davis wasn’t going to say anything. He began to suspect he had only been allowed to come into the station so his boss could take some perverse satisfaction from telling Miller to leave again, but just then Davis spoke.

  “I agree,” he said.

  “Sorry?” Miller said.

  “I agree,” Davis repeated. “I have given the matter some serious thought and I am satisfied that you have had no involvement in the murder. I also am aware of the importance of having my most senior detective on the case, so I have pulled strings to make it happen. I hope you appreciate it.”

  Miller was stunned. Davis had never as much as opened a door for Miller, now he was pulling strings to get him back on the case.

  “Er…thank you,” Miller said, standing up. “I had better get straight to it.”

  Davis nodded serenely. It wasn’t until Miller had left his office that he swore, before asking his secretary to come in.

  “What was the n
ame of the couple who called in this morning?” Davis asked.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Wilson.”

  “And they definitely saw Miller enter his apartment block at midnight?”

  “They recognised him from the record shop in town. They’re regulars.”

  Davis nodded and dismissed his secretary.

  When he was alone, he poured himself a large whisky. He had never thought for a moment that Miller had been involved in the death of Samantha Thompson, but it had been all too enjoyable to see the music-obsessed South Yorkshire born pain in the arse suffer a little. And it would do Miller no harm to think that he had been instrumental in making that happen. Mr. and Mrs. Wilson’s evidence was need-to-know as far as he was concerned.

  *

  Miller had no intention of wasting any time. As soon as he had left the police station, he headed straight for the chapel. His conversation with Maria Riddle had provided as many questions as it did answers and he realised that however much he trusted Riddle to carry on the investigation in his absence, it had come to the point where he needed to ask the questions himself.

  As Miller reached the top of Green Lane, he slowed the car down before pulling up at the side of the road. The chapel was just a few hundred yards away, but he suddenly felt the need to collect his thoughts. Over the past twenty-four hours he had returned from Sheffield, met Samantha Thompson, learnt of her murder and been suspended from work – albeit only temporarily.

  Miller turned the engine off and got out of the car. He decided to walk the rest of the way, as the east cliff air was just what he needed to clear his mind.

  Whitby had been the focus of national media attention over three of the previous cases Miller had worked on and the last thing he needed was a murder that had some weird, possibly Pagan link that would bring the press hounds slavering all over the town.

  Turning left off Hawsker Lane, Miller barely noticed the change from tarmac to rough shingle. His attention was so focused on the SOCO tent that he barely registered the approaching figure of DS Riddle.

  “Good to have you back on the case,” Riddle said as the two detectives met at the gate to the chapel. The wind had picked up again and Riddle’s normally well-groomed hair was flapping around his eyes. “I’ve seen some strange things,” he said gesturing behind him to the graveyard, “but this takes the biscuit.”

  Miller took a deep breath. “So let’s take a look,” he said.

  Chapter 7

  As Miller approached the SOCO tent, PC Newbold emerged holding her arms tightly across her chest.

  “Hello Newbold,” Miller said. “Cold isn’t it?”

  Newbold smiled gratefully. She guessed Miller knew that it wasn’t the outside temperature that was making her shiver.

  “Sir,” she said, unable to hide how pleased she was to see Miller at the murder scene. “It’s pretty grim,” she added, turning to face the SOCO tent.

  The first thing that struck Miller was how accurate Riddle’s description had been of the scene. He had relayed almost perfectly the position of the body, the macabre use of a dead crow and the strange cuts to the soles of Samantha Thompson’s feet. What Riddle hadn’t managed to convey – how could he? – was the almost physical sense of outrage and horror that the sight of the body conveyed.

  There was something beyond the typical horror of a murder scene that struck Miller. It was as if the killer had not only taken the time to lay out the body according to some perverted idea of ceremony, but he had taken a demented pleasure in the dismissive way that he had left the body to be discovered.

  Miller walked slowly around the tombstone. “The killer obviously wanted the body to be discovered,” he said.

  “This is about as far away as concealing a crime as it’s possible to get,” Riddle agreed. He was vainly trying to pat his hair back into some kind of shape.

  “But why?” Miller asked. “Admittedly, he would have been unlucky for anyone to discover the body during the night, but there was always a chance. Regardless, he would know it would be discovered by the morning at the latest.”

  “So why didn’t he want to conceal the body?” Riddle asked, before answering his own question. “Because he wanted the body found. But why?”

  “I think if we had the answer to that,” Miller said, “we’d be on our way to solving the whole thing.”

  Riddle had given up trying to tidy his hair and was now attempting to get the east cliff mud off his polished brogues. “And there’s another thing,” Riddle said. “If we’re agreed that the killer wanted the body found, why here? I mean, if the murder has some religious or Satanic side to it, why the chapel?”

  “I don’t understand,” Newbold said. “It’s a chapel,” she said sweeping her arm around. “It’s a graveyard.”

  “I think I know what Riddle means,” Miller said. “Why the chapel and not Saint Mary’s at the top of the 199 steps? It’s by far the better-known church. It’s the one everyone thinks of when they picture Whitby. So why Curlew Lane Chapel? After all, it’s St Mary’s that has the Dracula connection and tends to attract all the Goths.”

  The three police officers fell silent. They were all now standing beside the body of Samantha Thompson. There was something unsettling about the tableaux that had been arranged by the killer which went far beyond the usual experience of dealing with death. All three were lost in dark thoughts. Finally, it was Miller who spoke.

  “Tell SOCO they can remove the body as soon as they want,” he said nodding solemnly at the body of the woman he had only met the previous day. It was time he went to work.

  Miller took a deep breath of the cold, but invigorating air. “Right,” he said with renewed force. “Let’s go and see the victim’s boyfriend.”

  Riddle nodded. “Do you think he had anything to do with the murder?” He knew all too well that in the majority of cases the killer knew the victim. It was basic procedure to question next of kin first, not that Miller always followed basic procedure.

  “It’s possible,” Miller said. “But I’m just as interested in his recent conversion to Paganism.”

  “What?” Riddle said, stopping abruptly. “He’s into all that Satanic stuff?”

  “I don’t think the two are the same thing,” Miller said, but it was obvious Riddle was far from convinced.

  *

  Tommy Gregory worked at a stationery shop in the centre of Whitby, although “worked” was a rather complementary view of his recent contribution according to the shop manager.

  Adrian Beaumont had inherited the stationery business from his father, almost thirty years ago. Back then he had grudgingly accepted the role of store manager, confident in the knowledge that he would soon be pursuing his own path in life. Travel first, then perhaps something in the theatre. But three decades later, Adrian Beaumont was still installed behind the wooden counter.

  “We used to be busier,” he said, forlornly gesturing around the shop, which was bereft of customers, “but these days people spend all their time on computers. There isn’t the demand for pens and paper that there once was.”

  “Why don’t you do something else?” Riddle asked.

  Adrian smiled sadly. “I’ve made my bed,” he said. “It’s too late.”

  Miller nodded his understanding. “But business can’t be so bad. You employ Tommy Gregory.”

  “True. But we used to employ five staff. Two retired ten years ago and we didn’t replace them; since then we’ve let another two go. Now it’s just Tommy and me.”

  “Why keep him on when he’s not such a great worker?” Riddle asked.

  Adrian shrugged. “He used to be a good worker, it’s only the past month or so that things have got worse.”

  “In what way?” Miller asked. He had been scanning the shelves behind the counter and had seen a box of Venus drawing pencils. He made a mental note to buy a few of those later.

  “His mind isn’t on the job. He seems to be off somewhere else. He isn’t rude or anything, it’s just…” Adrian tra
iled off trying to think of the right word to describe Tommy’s recent behaviour. “It’s just he seems to think we’re suddenly not worthy of his time. Almost like he has something more important to be doing. But I’ll be damned if I know what.”

  Miller said he understood, although he was far from sure that he did. “Just one more thing, did you ever meet Samantha Thompson?”

  “It’s terrible isn’t it?” Adrian said, his voice recalibrating to a sombre tone. “Who would do such a thing? But I didn’t know her. I think she met Tommy after work a few times, but we just said hello.”

  “He never talked about her?”

  “Not recently.”

  Miller thanked Adrian Beaumont and then followed him as he led them behind the counter and through a door that was covered in posters advertising events that had long since ended.

  “I told him not to come in,” Adrian said over his shoulder, “but he insisted. Not that he’s done anything since he arrived.”

  They found Tommy Gregory sitting on a stack of A4 paper reams. When he heard them approach he looked up with an expression that was both lost and confused, as if he had been working on a puzzle that continued to defeat him.

  “Hello, Tommy,” Miller said, holding out his warrant card. “I’m DCI Miller and this is DS Riddle. We’re really sorry about Samantha, but I’m sure you understand we need to ask you some questions.”

  Tommy looked up at the two policemen. He was in his early thirties, with tight, curly hair that bounced whenever he moved his head. His eyes were a sulky grey that seemed to suggest a languid indifference to those around him. He was dressed in worn jeans and a button down shirt, which he had unbuttoned. Riddle almost shivered at the sight.

  “Let’s get this question out of the way,” Miller said with what Riddle knew was a forced casualness, “where were you last night between say eleven and three in the morning?”