I’d never heard Graham hint at discontent towards his wife, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t there. I nodded.
“Was there anything else you talked about? His life, any troubles?”
She shook her head, looking almost ashamed. “He deflected whenever I tried to ask. I let him ask me about my life since he didn’t seem to want to talk. I wish I’d tried harder now.”
“It’s not your fault,” I said quietly. “You couldn’t have known.”
She only nodded.
I asked a few more questions that Alice couldn’t answer before we ended the interview, and I shut the recording device off.
“Thank you for talking to me. All information helps, really.”
She was subdued as she left the station and I rubbed a hand through my hair, which was still damp from the rain.
What Alice had said gave me plenty to think about. I needed the results from the techs on Graham’s phone, but this was the Lockdale town police department, not the Met. It would be some time yet before we heard back and in the meantime, I had plenty to follow up. I was reminded again of a lesson my years on the force had taught me. It always hit me again when I was looking into the death of someone I’d known, usually just by name or their face but this time as a friend.
You never knew people as well as you thought. There were always things going on under the surface, deliberately kept hidden and which, perhaps, ought to have stayed hidden. But while people who suffered untimely deaths might take some secrets to the grave with them, it was my job to dig those truths up again.
Eight
Stopping by The Teaspoon cafe that afternoon didn’t give me any answers. Only one of the staff working there remembered Alice and Graham coming in, and they didn’t remember anything more than that Graham hadn’t eaten much, or asked for second helpings like he usually did. It confirmed Alice’s story, and I made a note on her file, but it didn’t add any more information. I still didn’t know what had been worrying Graham.
Sitting at my desk again in the station, I read through what we had gathered and felt like we were wading through sand.
“That’s not going to help,” Kay said, as I was making another coffee. She shook her head at the two inches of instant coffee granules I’d put in the bottom of the mug. “You’ll be as jumpy as Lexi if you have all that.” She snagged my mug and tipped half of the granules into her mug.
I pulled a face but didn’t protest. She was usually right.
“He was a teacher, you know,” I told her.
She nodded. “Biology, right?”
I hummed. “Up at St. John’s. I didn’t go there, but most kids around here did.”
“I went there,” Samuel said from behind Kay, and she jumped so badly, she almost sloshed coffee down her front.
“Christ, Sam!” she snapped.
He looked sheepish for a moment before grinning. “Oops.” He set to fixing himself a cup of herbal something or other.
“Is it meant to be that colour?” I asked, nodding at his purplish-grey tea.
He rolled his eyes at me. “Yep.”
“That’s ‘yep, sir’ to you, squirt,” I said, pretending to frown at him. He scuttled away, and I picked up my coffee, which might look like tar, but at least it wasn’t the same colour as old dishwater. Kay and I headed over to my desk to avoid Samuel’s wolf-like hearing, and I picked up where we’d left off.
“I think it might be worth a visit,” I said. Kay was silent for a moment too long, and I felt a sting of anger. “Or do you really agree with the chief about the case? Kay?”
“No.” She shook her head, her short, brown hair brushing her neck. “Look, not exactly. It’s only that we’ve still got that robbery case from last week, and the missing pedigree dog, and--”
“You really think a dog is--”
“Don’t bite my head off,” she said sternly, and I shut my mouth. “Of course I don’t think it’s more important that Graham, but we can’t just drop everything. Graham was important to you and to the community, but there are other people in this town to consider.”
“I’ll go to the school alone.”
She huffed at me. “No, you won’t. I’m just saying--”
Maha came inside, shivering from the cold. The wind had blown the tail of her hijab loose, and she carefully pinned it back in place. Kay glanced over as Maha entered, the rush of cold air unpleasantly intruding on the warm station.
“Forget it,” Kay sighed. “Let’s go to the school, alright?”
“Fine,” I said, trying to keep the bitterness out of my voice. We hurried from the station door to our shared police car, which was parked in the car park around the side of the station. We bundled inside, teeth chattering.
“Blimey it’s cold,” she muttered.
I turned the heat up and settled it, clicking in my seatbelt. I drove us up to the school, which wasn’t too far, but it served several of the local small towns, and I knew that there was a bus from Lockdale to take the kids there each morning.
“Did Hogan ask you to talk to me?” I said when we were getting close.
“Darren…”
“She did,” I said, not asking this time. Kay’s doubt hadn’t sounded like her. She usually backed me, had for as long as we’d worked together, but she respected Hogan a lot, and so did I.
“Only because she’s concerned.”
My hands clenched on the wheels. “It’s been less than a week. There are theories, sure,” I said, “but no post mortem, no concrete evidence either way. Right? Kay?”
“Yes.”
“I know that he wasn’t well when we were on the run, okay? Something’s going on.”
Kay was silent, and as I parked up at the school, I thought she was going to give me the cold shoulder and leave it at that. But before we got out of the car, she said, “Hogan wants the best for the town, and for the station.” I sighed and went to open my door, but she caught my arm. “That doesn’t mean I don’t agree with you, alright?”
I looked at her. “Really?”
She shrugged and sat back. “I believe that you saw him have symptoms. And you’re right. It doesn’t add up. We should keep looking into it, but we also can’t neglect other cases. You’ve got to be reasonable.”
“I know, but the longer we leave it--”
“The worse the stats get about solving it, I know. Just… don’t get obsessed. It won’t help your case with Hogan if you start burning yourself out over it. And it won’t help Graham either.”
“Yeah, I understand.”
She tried for a smile. “Good. I’ve got your back.”
“I know you do,” I said, and it was the truth. Her smile got a little more genuine.
We got out of the car and out into the cold, and I checked my watch. “Bit less than an hour till hometime,” I said, before pulling my coat tighter around me.
“That’s good.” Kay started walking towards the school, and I followed. “We can talk to the head and then catch any teachers who might’ve known Graham after the kids are let loose.”
I breathed a laugh. “You make them sound like zoo animals.”
Kay cast me a long-suffering look. “They are.”
“You don’t even have kids.”
Kay shuddered. “Thank goodness,” she said, and I laughed.
The school was relatively quiet when we went in, heading over to reception. I showed my badge and introduced us, and the receptionist showed us through to the headmistress’s office.
“Go on through there,” she said with a strong Yorkshire lilt. “She should be free round now.”
“Thanks,” Kay said.
I knocked on the door which bore the sign ‘Mrs. Freeman’, and we were called in. Unlike the historical outside of the school, the inside was modern and fresh, though the paint was peeling a little. Cut council budgets, I thought, as I noticed a bucket stood in the corner of the headmistress’s office, to catch the water dripping from the ceiling.
“Don’t mind that
,” Mrs Freeman said, indicating the bucket. “If the ceiling hasn’t come down yet, it won’t today.” She shook our hands.
Kay and I smiled politely and sat down where she indicated.
“How can I help today?” she said. “I hope it’s not the children?”
“Oh no,” Kay said quickly. “Nothing like that.”
Mrs Freeman visibly relaxed. “Thank goodness.”
“We’re actually looking into a teacher that once worked here,” I said. Mrs Freeman looked older than me, but that didn’t necessarily mean she’d been working here when Graham had. “A Graham Stewart? He would’ve been here around ten years ago, or a little more. Biology teacher.”
The headmistress looked thoughtful. “I started here around that time,” she said. “The name rings a bell, but I think he may have left shortly after I arrived, or perhaps before. But our music teacher, Mr Andrews, will probably have known him, and Miss Hassain may also have.”
“How long do you keep information on teachers who have retired?” Kay asked.
She rubbed the gold wedding band on her ring finger as she said, “I should think we’d still have them.” She smiled. “We have a basement full of old things here. We don’t throw much out. You never know when dress-up giraffe costumes from the 90s could come in handy.”
I chuckled. “I’m glad. Could we see those files, while we’re waiting for the kids to finish up and go home?”
“Of course.”
She took us down the hall back to the receptionist, who shot us an odd look but obediently led the way to the basement where all the files were apparently kept. It was cold down there and smelled faintly but pervasively of damp. Mrs Freeman seemed correct. It was stuffed full of random things that looked to have been here several decades, judging by the dust on the boxes and the cobwebs in the corners.
“It should be this one,” the receptionist said, unlocking one of the filing cabinets. She dug through and picked out the right file after a moment. It was fairly thin, and I didn’t hold out much hope of finding anything useful.
The receptionist handed it over and then took a few steps back to let us have a look.
“I wonder whether Graham wanted kids,” Kay said as I was flicking through the file and finding nothing more than we already knew.
“Mm, I don’t know,” I said. “I doubt Sarah wanted them, somehow. And Graham always kept himself busy.” I finished looking through the file and flicked it shut.
“Anything interesting?” Kay asked.
I pulled a face. “Not really.” I looked over at the receptionist. “We’re going to borrow this, to look over at the station.” The young receptionist looked uncertain whether she was supposed to protest. “You’re welcome to make a note, and we’ll return it when we’re done.”
“Alright, sir,” she said with a nod.
“Thank you.”
We headed back upstairs just as the kids were being let out of class and I chuckled as they all stampeded past.
Kay pulled a faux-horrified face. “Like a herd of zebras,” she said.
Once the first rush of children had gone through, the receptionist gave us directions to find the two teachers Mrs Freeman had suggested we talk to first, and we made our way over.
We tried the English teacher, but she hadn’t known Graham after all, so it was to the music room after that. It was a large space, lined with acoustic guitars round the edge, along with a number of electric keyboards and computer monitors. The teacher, who had a shock of white hair and a grandfatherly face, looked up as we came in. He’d been straightening the chairs and stopped, giving us his full attention. There was a young woman, mid-twenties I would have guessed, working on some paperwork at the back of the room. A teacher in training, I guessed, before I focused on Mr Andrews.
“Can I help you?” he said.
“We hope so,” I said. “We’re hoping you’ll remember a teacher who used to work here, Graham Stewart. He was the--”
“Biology teacher, yes,” Mr Andrews broke in, nodding. “I remember. We were friendly for a while before he left. Something about his wife’s job paying enough for both of them. He wanted to retire earlier, focus on his health.” He laughed kindly. “Don’t we all?” He looked at us again, expression sobering. “Why are you asking after him?”
I held in a sigh. Whilst it was good for the case that the teacher had known Graham, I didn’t relish having to tell him that Graham was no longer with us. “I’m afraid we’ve got some bad news, Mr Andrews.”
The older man’s expression saddened. “Please, call me David,” he said faintly. He seemed to pull himself together. “What happened?”
“Mr Stewart passed away under currently unknown circumstances. We’re looking into what might’ve happened.”
I noticed that the woman at the back of the room had stilled, listening, and I guessed that after this, the news of Graham’s death would be spread all around the community.
“I see,” Mr Andrews said. He sat down on the stool in front of the piano, which was at the front of the room. “What can I do? We haven’t spoken in years.”
“That’s a shame,” Kay said, and I was similarly disappointed. “Can you tell us about any… difficulties he had whilst working here? Were there any confrontations with anyone?”
Mr Andrews frowned. “Oh no, Graham wasn’t that kind of man. He was always even-tempered. If a student spoke back to him, he was always very calm.”
I swallowed, silently agreeing with Mr Andrews’ assessment. I’d never once seen Graham so much as irritated, let alone angry.
Kay made a note. “Were there any teachers he didn’t get on with?” Mr Andrews just shook his head in response. “Did he take a shine to any of the students, do tutoring or anything like that? Anyone he might still be in touch with?”
“Well I don’t know about anyone he’d talked to recently, but yes, Graham often tutored,” the music teacher said with a small smile. “He did it for free, you understand, simply because he wished to help.”
He perked up suddenly. “Actually, Miss Collins here,” he gestured to the young woman who’d been hovering at the back of the room and now froze like a caught rabbit. “You were tutored by Mr Stewart, I believe?”
Miss Collins straightened up. “That’s right,” she said, sounding a little wary.
Kay and I turned to her. “Have you interacted with Mr Stewart recently?” I said.
She hesitated, clearly thinking. “Only once,” she said finally. “He came to do a talk here, about his running. He was encouraging students to exercise, something like that. We talked briefly after that.”
Kay wrote it down. “What did you talk about?” I said.
She shrugged. “Just small talk, really. That he was retired and I’m working here. I’m a TA.”
I nodded. “And when was this?” She gave us a date, about nine months previous to now, back in January. Not nearly recent enough to warrant much interest. “And not since then?” I checked. She shook her head.
“You didn’t talk to Mr Stewart when he came for the talk?” Kay asked Mr Andrews.
He shook his head. “I’m not sure I remember that he’d even visited,” he said. “I might have been away or off ill. I’m not sure.” His mouth pulled down at the sides. “I regret that we didn’t catch up, now, after hearing what’s happened.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, and he just nodded.
We thanked them for their time, and I handed them both my card, in case they remembered anything.
“That wasn’t especially useful,” Kay said as we got back in the car, switching round our seats without needing to discuss it. She put the car in gear and drove us back towards the station.
“No,” I agreed.
“But it did rule out some possibilities,” Kay said, clearly trying to put a positive spin on it.
We seemed to be running into dead ends or picking up more information that didn’t add to anything. At this rate, I was concerned that the case would go cold before we’
d ever gotten our teeth into it at all.
Kay sensed my despondency and patted my leg. “It’ll be alright. We just need one big clue and the case will crack right open, like tumbling dominos.”
I wasn’t so sure. This whole mess felt so tangled that unpicking it was beginning to feel like a Herculean task.
Nine
“Mitchell?” Hogan called from her office.
I looked up. She was on the phone and waved for me to come over.
“The post mortem has come back,” she said, her hand over the phone’s speaker. “I’ll email them over now.”
I nodded and shut her office door again as she went back to her phone call, presumably with Dr Wong. I flopped back in behind my desk and impatiently refreshed my emails until Hogan’s popped up.
My heart sped up as I began to scan through the dense print, and then my stomach sunk. It had been ruled a suicide. The haemorrhaging had been caused by a massive overdose of a blood thinner just like the empty bottles of Sarah’s medicine they’d found at the house. He’d also taken aspirin, which had interacted with the huge quantity of blood thinner in his system and worsened things further. I groaned quietly, putting my head in my hands as I remembered Graham saying that he’d taken aspirin for his headache on the morning of our run. I swore quietly.
“Darren?”
I startled and looked up. Kay hovered over me with a concerned expression. My shoulders slumped. “Did she send you the email too?”
She nodded. “Maybe…” she said and then didn’t seem to know how to finish.
“I don’t believe it, I just can’t,” I said. “There’s too many,” I made a frustrated gesture, waving my hands, “parts of this that just--”
Kay made a noise of agreement. “I know. And Hogan hasn’t forbidden you from--”
“Yet.”
“Hasn’t banned you yet,” she agreed, “from looking into it. It’s good to want to be certain, that’s just being a good police detective.”
DI Mitchell Yorkshire Crime Thrillers: Book 1-3 Page 6
