Country Lines (A DI Mitchell Yorkshire Crime Thriller Book 8)

by Oliver Davies

  “We’ve got them now, at least. I’ve got the letter too.”

  “Time to head to the station, then?” Stephen said.

  “Aye. We need to get Jackson’s phone over to tech, and Max’s too, probably.”

  “What about the baggie we found near Jackson, has that-”

  “Sam went into work this morning, too. I gave it to her so that she could get started on it.” Stephen lifted his eyebrows at me, and I rolled my eyes. “Yes, okay, it’s not the best practice to take evidence home, but I wanted her to get a headstart on things.”

  Stephen snorted. “I won’t tell if you don’t,” he chuckled.

  “Oh, thank goodness,” I said, putting my hand on my heart and pretending to release a big breath of relief. He shook his head at me.

  “What about the puppy? Are you leaving the poor thing all alone?” Stephen looked more worried about Chance’s care than he had about taking the evidence home.

  “He’s at my mum’s. She came to pick the little tyke up this morning. He’s okay for a morning, but we don’t like leaving him all day, not when he’s so young,” I said, and Stephen nodded in agreement.

  On a usual weekday, we’d drop Chance off at a local dog creché where they’d keep him entertained for the working day and give him some preliminary training, too. The place was pricey, and we weren’t planning to keep him there forever, but it seemed the best option when he was still growing and full of beans. He needed the socialisation, and we could do without coming home to a torn-up sofa. Plus, it meant that Sam and I weren’t distracted at work, hoping that he was okay.

  We drove over to Hewford with the radio on in the background, both of us lost in our own thoughts. I went to greet Sam up in the lab, where she looked to be in her element. I’d brought her a cup of coffee, and she waved me off with fond exasperation.

  “You know I can’t have food and drink in here, love. How many times do I have to tell you?”

  “Once more, at least,” I said with an apologetic smile.

  “Leave it outside, will you?”

  “You’ll forget about it, and it’ll be Monday before you remember,” I teased, speaking from experience.

  “You drink it for me then. Now shoo! If you want me home by this afternoon, I’ve got a million-and-one things to get on with.”

  “Can I make it a million-and-two?” I asked sheepishly, holding up the evidence bag with the Riders’ letter.

  “Oh, so the coffee was just a bribe, huh?” she said, rolling her eyes at me. She huffed but gave in within a moment, taking the bag off me and giving me a kiss before she nudged me out of the door. “Go away, now. You’re distracting me!”

  I laughed at that. “I am very distracting,” I chuckled, throwing her a wink before I shut the lab door behind me and left her to it. I was still smiling as I headed back to Stephen, and he sent me an amused look when he saw me.

  “Let me guess. You went to see Sam.”

  “I can neither confirm nor deny,” I said lightly, taking a sip of Sam’s rejected coffee. I’d made it for her, so it was milkier than I liked it, and I grimaced. “Sam didn’t want this. You fancy a milky coffee?”

  “Hell yeah.” Stephen happily accepted it, and I went off to make myself a coffee more to my liking, i.e. the same consistency and strength as rocket fuel. After the late, stressful night we had yesterday and the early morning start today, I certainly felt like I was in need of it.

  “So, mate, tell me what that was about at the hospital?” Stephen asked when I got back, settling down in my chair with a sigh.

  “What was that about?” I said though I could guess what he was referring to.

  Stephen waved his hand. “You know, that look you gave me when you were asking all the questions. The ‘are you thinking what I’m thinking’ look.”

  “Clearly, you weren’t thinking what I was thinking,” I said with a slight smile.

  “Yeah, yeah, okay, Mr Big-shot DCI, explain it to us mere mortals.”

  “I didn’t mean it like that,” I said, apologetic now. He waved it away with a grin.

  “I’m teasing you, mate. Spit it out, now, c’mon. What were you thinking?”

  “Everything they were saying about Max getting frequent calls, about his travelling out of York, skipping school, all of that rang alarm bells for me.”

  “Alarm bells for what?” Stephen’s brow was furrowed, and I gave him a second to think about it. He pieced it together a moment later. “You think he was dealing, not just taking the opioids.”

  “Aye, but maybe not willingly. They said he came home injured, right? So he might’ve been bribed with the money and designer shoes or whatever, but he probably got in over his head.” Stephen was nodding thoughtfully.

  “So who was coercing him, then, if that was the case?”

  “I’m not sure, but I bet Jackson was involved somehow,” I said.

  “Shame we can’t interview him then,” Stephen said grimly.

  Aye, not without a seance, I thought but didn’t say. Dark humour came with the job, but I knew better than to speak it when it wasn’t appropriate. Jackson might not seem like an angel from what we’d heard of him, but he’d still died far, far too young, and it wasn’t right to joke about it, even only with my partner.

  I rubbed a hand over my face, wincing at my dry eyes. My hair was too long, the curls getting in my face and tickling the back of my neck, and I irritably pushed them back.

  “Next steps?” Stephen asked.

  “We need to find someone who did know Jackson, I think. The Riders didn’t know who his friends were, but he must have an employer. Mrs Rider said that his mum was dead, didn’t she? But what about his dad?”

  “D’you want me to see if Adams is about?” Stephen asked, correctly guessing my plan of action.

  Keira Adams was the station’s most qualified and talented tech expert, and she was ace at getting information out of recalcitrant tech if she could squeeze the time out of her busy schedule.

  “Aye. I hope she’s actually having a weekend off, but I doubt it.”

  “Okay, I’ll go and look. Where are the phones and wallets?”

  I bent down to fish the evidence bag from my desk drawer and handed it over to him. He headed off, and I got to work on my computer, intending to run a basic search online to see if I could get anything just from social media.

  As I was waiting for the slow internet connection to load up, I found my thoughts drifting back to the conversation I’d just had with Stephen. The thing was that I didn’t just suspect Max of being coerced into transporting the drugs from city to city, but that this might only be one piece of a far bigger puzzle. There was a specific brand of drug dealing known by the force as ‘country lines’, and that’s what I suspected to be happening here, though I would need more proof.

  Perhaps I was dramatic or overly pessimistic, but in my experience, incidents like these didn’t usually happen in isolation. The key at this point was gathering information because without knowing what exactly was going on in the city we worked to protect, we couldn’t fight it. And I had every intention of fighting it.

  Five

  Though Keira was at the station on Saturday like I thought she’d be, she didn’t manage to get to our case by Monday. It took me a short while, taken up with calls and being passed around on the phone, but in the end, I managed to get the information we needed from the hospital.

  Jackson’s next of kin had been listed on their records, and his father’s name was on there, giving us a place to start. From there, I dug up a LinkedIn account for him and then a phone number.

  “He owns a small construction company?” Stephen said, leaning over my shoulder.

  I gestured to the phone at my ear, and Stephen mouthed a ‘sorry’ and mimed zipping his lips shut. I had to bite back a smile when the call was answered by a rough male voice, one that reminded me of Max’s dad.

  “Who’s this?”

  “My name is DCI Mitchell. Am I talking to Stuart Lowe?�
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  There was a long pause, and I waited tensely, hoping that I wasn’t about to have the phone hung up on me.

  “What d’you want with him?” he demanded.

  I wouldn’t usually share information with someone before they’d confirmed they were who I wanted to talk to, but I was reasonably sure I was talking to Jackson’s dad right now. Why exactly he’d be reluctant to confirm his identity to the police or talk to me was another issue.

  “I’m looking to talk to Mr Lowe about his son, Jackson,” I said evenly.

  “What’s he done now?” he said, his voice taking on a sneering tone.

  “Would it be possible to talk to Mr Lowe in person? This is important.”

  “I’m busy, y’know, I haven’t got time to be yakking with you lot over nothing. I dunno where he is.”

  “We’re not going to waste your time. It really is crucial that we speak to you in person.”

  “Fine. I s’pose if you found this number, you got the address too, eh?”

  “For your house? No.”

  “For the company,” he snapped. “You get ten minutes at eleven o’clock sharp.”

  The phone beeped in my ear as he hung up, and I raised my eyebrows.

  “What a nice man.”

  “I’m guessing that’s sarcasm,” Stephen said wryly.

  “Aye, pretty much. He’ll meet us for ten minutes.” I checked my watch. “We’ve got an hour to kill until we need to leave, though. I’m going to check on Adams and Sam. D’you mind doing some more research into the delightful Mr Lowe? Look him up on the system too, since he seemed none too keen to talk to cops.”

  “Gotcha. Say hi to Sam for me.”

  I grinned. “Will do.”

  I mimed a salute and headed over to Sam’s lab. I thought of it as hers even though she shared it with another full-time colleague and several part-time ones.

  “No, I’m not done with them yet,” she said impatiently when I stuck my head around the door. Her colleague, a grouchy bloke who’d never liked me much, sent me a disgruntled look, but I ignored him.

  “Any sort of timeframe, love?”

  She sent me an exasperated look. “If you keep pestering me, I won’t be done ‘til Christmas.”

  “Okay, okay,” I said with a wince, holding my hands up. I slipped out to leave her to it before remembering what else I’d wanted to ask her. I opened the door again, and she pressed her lips together.

  “What now?”

  “We still on for eating lunch together?”

  The weather was set to be pleasant for the rest of the day if it obeyed the weather forecast, and it was just getting warm enough this time of year that, when it wasn’t raining, it was nice to sit outside the station on the wall and eat our lunch there.

  Sam’s expression softened at the question. “Yes, of course.”

  “See you then.” I grinned and left her alone to get on with her work.

  I’d been tempted to ask her to let me know as soon as she had the chance to look at the baggie and the letter, but I knew she wouldn’t dawdle with something like that. She was a professional, and I ought to have enough faith in her to trust that she’d do her job properly. I knew that she was thoroughly diligent with her work. Of course, I did, but sometimes my impatience got the better of me, which Sam no doubt already knew.

  I popped in to see Keira, but she was on the phone. She looked about as unimpressed as Sam to see me and pointed to a pair of post-its she’d stuck on the side of her desk.

  No, I haven’t done it yet, the one read, written in a thick, black marker. I WILL EMAIL YOU, the other read, underlined twice. Keira waved me off once I’d read them, and I let her be.

  Hewford staff were overworked, I thought as I headed back up to Stephen. Even though Stephen and I did end up working overtime on occasion, as last night had shown, it wasn’t so bad for us because there were other officers who could step into our shoes, at least in the short term. More specialised jobs like Sam and Keira’s were in high demand, and they got requests from officers across the station. We could do with a second lab and a half-dozen more tech employees, but when did Hewford ever have the funding for that?

  “No luck?” Stephen said as I approached our desks.

  “Nope. Both of them are busy. Did you get anything on this Mr Lowe?”

  “A bit. He got picked up for a couple of drug offences in his twenties and a drink-driving incident in his thirties, but he’s kept his nose clean these last ten years or so.”

  I nodded as I thought that over. “He could still be involved.”

  “Yeah. He might’ve got smarter, better at keeping it under wraps.”

  “And pulled his son into it, too? His nephew maybe, as well?”

  “Possible,” Stephen said.

  “Alright. We’re due at his company site soon, you good to head off? We can grab a drink on the way.”

  “Sounds perfect.” He grinned, grabbing his coat and following me out.

  It wasn’t a long drive over to Stuart Lowe’s construction company, which turned out to be housed in a squat, shabby building with a peeling sign and grimy windows. We sat outside in the car for a few minutes to finish off the drinks we’d picked up on the way, and I tried to think of what we were going to say. As unpleasant as Lowe had been on the phone, I was still dreading telling him that his son had died. No parent deserved to hear that. Stephen looked serious, too, giving me a nod as we got out of the car and headed towards the building.

  The receptionist, if he could be called that, was a teenage boy who was far more interested in his phone than us. He grudgingly waved us over towards Stuart’s office.

  I knocked on the door to be polite, and a gruff voice called us inside. I glanced over at Stephen, who looked grim but steady, before pushing the door open and heading in.

  “You got badges?” were the first words Lowe said once we’d stepped inside. He looked similar to Jackson in many ways, with the same facial structure and light hair, though his was streaked with grey.

  “Aye.” I obliged by getting mine out of my pocket, and Stephen did the same. “I’m DCI Mitchell, and this is my partner, DI Hux-”

  “Get on with it, will you? Why’re you here?”

  “May we sit down?”

  “No,” he snapped.

  I kept my expression carefully neutral and looked Stuart in the face. He glared back at me, defiant and irritated. Perhaps it was masking the uncertainty underneath, but I couldn’t be sure.

  “I’m afraid we’ve got some bad news for you, Mr Lowe.”

  “What? Jack wants me to bail him out again, does he?”

  “I’m sorry to tell you that on late Friday night, your son passed away in York city centre.”

  Stuart stared at us both for a long time, his rheumy eyes wide.

  “Get out of here.” His tone was harsh, but it cracked, and when he raised a thick-fingered hand to his mouth, it was shaking.

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” I tried.

  My attempt to comfort him had the opposite effect, firing him up. He pinned me with a cold look, ignoring Stephen for now, and staggered to his feet. He wasn’t a tall man, and he’d gone to seed in recent years, but there was still a threat inherent in the fierce look on his face and his clenched hands.

  “Like hell you are. You pigs don’t give a shit about anyone. What happened, eh? You thumped him with your baton too hard?”

  “No,” I said, too loudly. I swallowed down my reaction and told myself that he was shocked and grieving and that I wouldn’t let myself get riled up. “No, Jackson was found around one A.M. He’d taken too many opioid drugs, and it caused an overdose. The ambulance was too late to save him.”

  Stuart looked lost at that, his hands were still clenched on top of the desk, but the fire had gone out of him all at once. He stared down at his keyboard and didn’t speak for a long moment.

  “I told him- I told him-” he muttered before slumping back down into his seat, shoulders hunched.

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bsp; “When was the last time you saw your son, Mr Lowe?” I asked.

  “I dunno.” He paused long enough that I was about to open my mouth to prompt him. “Friday morning, I guess.”

  “Aye?” My eyebrows lifted at that, and I got my notebook out of my pocket. “Does he live with you?”

  Stuart snorted. “Hell no. I’d have murdered the kid within days. He buggered off when he was sixteen.”

  I filed that information away.

  “So when you saw him, what did you talk about?”

  “This and that. Look, here, why’re you grilling me? If he took too much, that was his own bloody fault, wasn’t it? Nothin’ to do with me.”

  Stephen stepped in when I couldn’t immediately think of a tactful response to that.

  “We want to be certain we understand all the circumstances around your son’s death. It’s important for our investigation, that’s all.”

  We both looked back at Stuart, who seemed unconvinced. He’d shut himself off since we’d told him the grim news, and I couldn’t quite read his craggy face.

  “He wanted money,” he grunted finally. “He always wanted another loan, forget that he never paid me for the last one.” He shook his head with a grimace.

  “Did you give it to him?” I wondered aloud.

  “A bit. More than he deserved.” He grimaced.

  “Were you aware that Jackson was taking these drugs?”

  “Look, he’s an adult, isn’t he? Isn’t my fault he’s a stupid dolt. You should blame his useless mother for pissing off before he was grown.”

  I thought that was a strange way of putting the fact that Jackson’s mother had died.

  “Did you not get on with Jackson’s mother?” I couldn’t help but ask.

  “We got on just fine,” he sneered, giving me no doubt as to his meaning.

  “Did you have much in the way of contact with Jackson’s aunt, Angela Rider, after Jackson’s mother died?”

  Stuart went still before fixing me with a thick frown. “What d’you mean she died? Lou didn’t die. She buggered off, that’s all.” He twisted his lips. “And I don’t have anything to do with that stuck up-”