Sarah swore abruptly, surprising me. Graham would occasionally swear, jovially and somehow mild, but I’d never heard Sarah do it.
“You will catch them, won’t you?” she demanded, staring at me. “Darren, promise me.”
“Mrs Stewart,” Kay started, but Sarah didn’t even glance at her.
“We don’t have confirmed evidence it was a murder,” I said regretfully, but wasn’t able to stop myself from adding, “yet.” I couldn’t make a promise to her that, though I desperately wanted to keep, wasn’t sure I’d be able to.
Sarah exhaled sharply. “Just be careful,” she said finally.
We finished our cake and drinks in near silence, all three of us lost in our own thoughts.
Once the feeling had returned to our fingers, Kay and I departed.
I stopped to talk to Maha, who was back in her car, bending down by her car window. She wound it down. “You’ll keep a close watch,” I said. “I’m not certain what’s happening, but I’m worried about her.”
Maha nodded seriously, her mouth in a thin line. “I will,” she promised.
Climbing back into our car, Kay and I headed over to Maggie’s home address, which Sarah had jotted down for us. It was as remote as Graham and Sarah’s and took us a good while of twisting along winding lanes to get there.
“An old lady living alone all the way out here?” Kay said when we arrived. The house itself was small and slightly run-down, whilst still managing to look old and proud.
“Guess so,” I said, getting out of the car and shivering at the cold.
We walked quickly up the short drive and knocked smartly on the door. A tired-looking woman in her mid-thirties, perhaps, opened the door to us. She was wearing a blue nurse outfit, which she smoothed down upon seeing us.
“Can I help you?” she said.
“We’re looking for Maggie?” I said, realising that we hadn’t asked Sarah for Maggie’s surname. “Are you her nurse?”
She gestured for us to come in. “I am, yeah.” She squinted at our uniforms. “You’re here to ask about Freddie?”
I frowned. That name rang a bell. “No, actually. We’re here about Graham Stewart. He called on Maggie every so often.”
She waved us to sit down. “Yeah, almost every day,” she said. “Some people don’t do that for their own mother, you know? He rarely missed a day, though, not that she’d have noticed.” She paused. “I just got Maggie out of the bath. Stay here, and we’ll be in in a minute, okay?”
“Sure, thanks.”
She moved towards the back of the house, her steps making the floorboards creak, and I could hear low talking.
“Freddie?” Kay said, echoing my own thoughts. “Who was that?”
“And why did she think we’d come to ask about him?” I said.
I looked around the sitting room as we waited for Maggie and the nurse to return. There was a glass cabinet full of china ornaments, and a number of dusty photographs on the mantelpiece over the gas fire. I got up to look at them and found them to mostly feature a young man, dark-haired and often in a rugby uniform. He looked around university age, and he was grinning widely in every photo.
“Grandson?” I wondered aloud.
The nurse and Maggie’s footsteps were clearly audible as the pair came towards the living room.
“You’ve got visitors, Maggie,” the nurse said as she helped the old lady inside and then into an armchair.
I stood up, and so did Kay, and we introduced ourselves. “Maggie, isn’t it?” I said, approaching the old lady and taking a seat on a chair beside her.
She was petite and as fragile as a sparrow, her wrists and fingers spindly. She had a wave of combed, white hair and pale blue eyes, which were trained on me with a frown of uncertainly.
“Len?” she said. “What’re you doing here?”
“Len was her late husband,” the nurse put in quietly.
“Sorry, I didn’t catch your name,” Kay said to the nurse, who told us that her name was Donna.
I turned back to Maggie. “I’m DI Mitchell,” I said. “We’re here about Graham Stewart. He visited--”
She didn’t seem to have heard me. “Shouldn’t you be at the races? I’ll drive you,” she said decisively and tried to stand up.
I gently took her arm and eased her back down as I said, slightly louder than normal, “No need, Maggie. I’m not going to the races. They’re cancelled today.”
Kay was talking to Donna in the background, writing down what she could remember about Graham’s last visit, a couple of days before he died. It was the most recent interaction with someone who wasn’t his wife or me before his death.
“Oh good,” Maggie said, settling back down. “I don’t think I filled the car up again.”
“Do you remember Graham coming to visit you?” I asked.
“Graham?” she repeated. “He’s a lovely young man. He fixed the radio for me.”
“That was about six months ago,” Donna said, and I nodded. Maggie’s short term memory wasn’t good, and I didn’t think she’d remember Graham’s last visit at all.
“He is a good man,” I agreed with Maggie. “Was he worried about anything, Maggie?” She cupped her hand around her ear, and I repeated myself louder.
“No, no,” she said. “Always such a help. He fixed my radio for me, and he mowed the lawn.”
“That was nice of him,” I said, my throat a little tight.
Kay was still questioning Donna, and I turned to look over at them as she asked, “Who’s Freddie? You mentioned him at the door.”
Donna sighed. “Maggie’s late grandson. He was a good boy, only twenty or so, I think.”
“What happened?”
“Motorcycle accident,” she said. “Not so long ago, six months, perhaps?”
I remembered the incident now that she’d said it. The whole community had been upset by it. Freddie hadn’t had alcohol in his blood, I recalled, so it’d just been a freak accident on the roads. Perhaps he’d swerved to avoid a deer, or just lost control round the bend. There hadn’t been any CCTV, so we would probably never know.
Our unit hadn’t handled the case, as a passing patrol of York officers had gotten there first. Kay had written up the report, I thought, but using the information the York officers had sent over.
“I’m sorry to hear it,” I said to Donna, and she nodded.
“It was hard. Maggie kept asking for him, still does sometimes. She mistook the electrician for him the other day, and her whole face lit up.” Donna sighed.
We didn’t have many more questions and left soon after, the atmosphere in the car on the way back to Lockdale quiet and solemn.
“I’d completely forgotten that accident till she’d said,” Kay said, “isn’t that awful? It was such a big thing not so long ago, everyone was sad about it, and now we’ve all just forgotten.”
“We have to move on, Kay,” I said. “It’s what people do when someone dies.”
She released a breath. “I know.”
“And us especially,” I said, “with the amount of death and violence we see, even in a small town like Lockdale we still get it. We can’t dwell for too long or… it’s not healthy.” I wasn’t sure I was talking about Freddie anymore.
Kay put a hand on my shoulder. “You’re right,” she said.
Investigating Graham’s death required me to be logical, and not to get wrapped up in sadness and nostalgia, wishing I’d known him better. The thing that mattered most now was finding answers for Graham's family.
Fifteen
Back at the station, Kay and I set to helping Maha catch up with the small mountain of paperwork that had accumulated.
“We should talk to Alice and Lyle about this ‘May’ Graham was emailing,” I said. “And about Maggie, too, maybe.”
Kay gave me a look. “We’ve got plenty of paperwork to be doing,” she said.
“I know, but--”
“So I’ll stay here, and you go talk to Alice. And Lyle.”
She grinned.
I held back the urge to roll my eyes since Kay was offering to deal with the mound of paperwork we’d been neglecting.
“You’re a saint,” I said.
“I know.”
“You’re also an incorrigible matchmaker,” I couldn’t help but add.
Her grin widened. “I am that too.”
I did roll my eyes then, before gathering up my things after I had sent Alice a text asking if we could talk about the case.
She replied almost immediately, offering that I come over to hers. A flush rose in my face, and I swallowed, replying with clumsy fingers to say that I’d be right there.
As much as my heart rate had been raised by stress and coffee today, I hadn’t yet been on a run and running over to Alice’s seemed like a good compromise, even if it would leave me looking dishevelled when I saw her, again. After I’d left the station and gone home, I changed into my running gear and strapped a rucksack with a change of spare clothes and some water onto my back.
I got quickly lost in my thoughts as I jogged through the village and down the several small lanes towards Alice’s family home. It was a gloomy, cloudy day but not raining yet. I kept my pace steady, not wanting to injure myself, and relaxed into the rhythm of it.
I was so wrapped up in my own thoughts that I almost didn’t hear the growl of a car, accelerating somewhere behind me. Veering closer to the bushes at the edge of the road, I glanced behind me reflexively and almost froze in horror.
A large green Land Rover was hacking right towards me, its bulk taking up almost the entirety of the small lane and it wasn’t stopping.
Jerking into motion almost too late, I sprinted forwards towards a gap in the hedge and threw myself over a metal gate into a field full of cows.
The car tore past, easily going fifty miles an hour, and I lay on the wet ground, panting, before forcing myself to my feet. My legs felt weaker than if I’d just run up a tor, but I made them take me one step back towards the gate and then another.
Pulling myself warily over the gate, I edged around the hedge to look down the road, but the car was gone. I released a breath that was almost entirely relief, but which was followed by a tiny amount of frustration. I’d barely noted the car’s colour, let alone its number plate or a look at the driver. It had all happened so fast, and my heart was still thumping. I’d almost died. If the gap in the hedge hadn’t been only a few yards away and I hadn’t reacted as fast, I would’ve been hit with two tonnes of speeding metal.
I swallowed thickly, looking both ways up and down the lane again, but it was still empty. I started walking towards Alice’s and then broke into an agitated jog again as the adrenaline made me want to move.
The longer I spent on the road, the more nervous I got, and I was almost sprinting by the time I got to Alice’s, more glad than I could say to see her parent’s house as I came round the bend.
“Christ,” I muttered, panting hard, and flopped down on their manicured lawn without caring that it was wet.
“Darren?” I heard someone calling and made myself sit up. Alice stood in the doorway to the house and was staring at me. “Are you alright?” she said, her voice carrying across the lawn.
Imagining myself as she was seeing me, I hastily brushed down my clothes and ran a hand through my wild hair before walking over, my legs feeling stiff and cold.
Alice must have caught the shock on my face and looked worriedly at me. “What happened, Darren? What’s wrong?” I tried to find words and couldn’t. She waved me into the warm house and ushered me into a chair. “You get your breath back,” she said, “I’ll make some tea.”
Tea would be good, I thought. My heart was already going too fast, and I was on edge enough without drinking any more coffee.
“Thanks, Alice,” I said weakly as she gave me a big mug. I took a sip and then pulled off my backpack, rummaging through it for my phone. “I need to call the station,” I explained. She looked immediately alarmed, but didn’t try to question me further.
“Darren?” Kay said when she picked up the phone.
“Kay, there’s— Something happened,” I rubbed the bridge of my nose. “Someone tried to run me down. I need you to check in with Maha and tell Hogan.”
“What?” Kay said sharply. “Tried to run you down? Who? What was the car like?”
“Land Rover, green,” I said, knowing it was useless information.
Kay paused. “That’s it?” she said. “You know there’s about a hundred million green Land Rovers in Yorkshire?”
“They almost killed me,” I snapped. “I didn’t see the driver or the number plate. I was too busy jumping a goddamn gate, alright?”
“Alright, Darren,” Kay said evenly. I took a deep breath.
“Sorry, I wish I’d seen something more, but they raced off.”
“I’m glad you’re alright,” Kay said quietly.
“Me too.”
When I hung up the phone, Alice was looking at me worriedly. “This is to do with Graham, isn’t it?” she said.
“I don’t know,” I said, “but I can’t imagine why else someone would try to run me over.” Alice looked pale and nervous. “You’re not in danger, I’m sure,” I tried to reassure her.
“What about Sarah, though?”
I didn’t want to admit that I was worried about her too. “I think today suggests that whoever that was, just wants me to stop investigating. Sarah doesn’t really have anything to do with that.”
Alice didn’t look convinced.
“Alice,” I said, “does the name ‘May’ mean anything to you?”
I wasn’t surprised when she shook her head, but I asked her the same questions I’d asked Sarah.
“This May,” Alice said once I’d finished. “Is that who you’re looking into? Who might have tried to… you know, just now?”
“I don’t know that,” I said, wishing I did know something more concrete. “But whoever ‘May’ is, they’re tied up in all this.”
I finished off my tea. My hands were still shaking, and I looked down at them, feeling faintly sick.
“Darren?” Alice came to sit down on the sofa beside me. “Are you alright?”
I met her eyes briefly before sighing. “Not really.” I ran a hand through my hair. “Scared the hell out of me.”
I tried to laugh but couldn’t manage it, and Alice just looked at me, concerned for me, like she really cared.
“I’ll be fine,” I added, twisting my hands together in my lap.
She took one of my hands gently in hers and turned it over like she was going to read my palm. Her touch was slightly ticklish, her hands warm around mine.
“It’s okay if you’re not fine. It must have been terrifying.” She looked away, chewing on her lip with such an expression of worry that I couldn’t bear it.
I tilted forwards and pressed my lips to hers, just to get her to stop looking so upset. Her lips were warm against my chapped ones, and when I pulled back, she was looking at me in shock.
I leaned back further, not sure if the kiss had been unwanted. “Sorry, I didn’t mean--”
She released my hand only to wrap her fingers over my shoulder and pull me forwards again, kissing me hard.
I eased back after a moment, her forehead still pressed to mine.
“Are your parents home?” I asked, feeling a little like a teenager sneaking around after prom even though I was thirty years old.
She seemed to find the same humour in it that I did and smiled. “No, we’ve got the house to ourselves,” she said lowly.
I grinned and kissed her again as she leaned back on the sofa.
Sixteen
At some point the previous day, we’d made it up to Alice’s old bedroom. It’d been mostly turned into another guest room by Lyle and his wife, but there were still several posters on the wall, and I woke up to a poster of Sam and Dean Winchester staring down at me. I only knew of the show because Kay had gotten really into it a few years ago and tried to
make me watch it with her.
“Darren?” Alice said from beside me, her hair mussed. She looked about as rumpled as I’d ever seen her and it was adorable. I leaned over to kiss her on the head.
“You and Kay should talk about Supernatural some time,” I said, nodding at the poster. “She still bugs me sometimes to watch it.”
Alice laughed. “Not a fan?”
“Made me jump way too much.”
“And that would have nothing to do with your coffee consumption?”
I nudged her playfully. “Definitely not. Although talking of coffee…”
She rolled her eyes and climbed out of bed. “You’re an addict,” she said reprovingly, and I couldn’t really deny it. I was about to follow her to the bathroom before my phone rang and stopped me.
I heard the shower start in her ensuite and sighed as I picked up the phone. The station’s number had flashed up on the screen.
“DI Mitchell here,” I said.
“We’ve got the second post mortem back,” Hogan’s voice said, direct and urgent. “Get down to the station asap.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She paused. “Good morning, Mitchell,” she added before hanging up, and I chuckled quietly.
Still, the news of the Leeds post mortem being back woke me up fully and I clambered up to throw on the spare set of clothes from my rucksack, which I’d never actually gotten to change into yesterday, and stuffed my wet ones inside with my nose wrinkled.
I didn’t fancy running back down the lane that linked Alice’s house to Lockdale, so I called Kay instead to ask her to pick me up. I could hear the smirk in her voice when I told her where I was, but she pointedly didn’t comment.
Alice came out of the bathroom, wrapped in a towel, and looked rather disappointed to see me dressed. Honestly, so was I.
“Station called,” I said apologetically. “I’ve got to go. I’m sorry.”
“Before coffee?” she said lightly. “Must be urgent.”
“It is,” I said seriously, and she nodded.
“Text me, okay?”
I smiled, coming over to kiss her gently. “I will,” I told her before jogging down the stairs.
DI Mitchell Yorkshire Crime Thrillers: Book 1-3 Page 12
