She looked over at me like she’d nearly forgotten I was there and her eyes narrowed. “Why’re you poking around Freddie now? It’s been what, half a year now?”
“The case is still officially closed,” I said, trying to be light on details. “We’re just thorough.” I reached into my back pocket and pulled out a business card. “Look, Miss…?” I paused, hoping she’d fill in the blank.
“Jones,” she said with clear reluctance. “Liz Jones.”
“Thank you. Miss. Jones, if you remember something or hear about anything strange, give us a call.” She took it, and I looked down at the gravestone, feeling a painful tug of sadness at the dates etched into the stone. “There’s probably nothing more to it, but just in case.”
“Alright,” she said warily, looking at me askance. None of what I’d said probably made much sense to her, but I didn’t want to go spreading details of Graham’s case around so I couldn’t explain it to her. “Thanks, I guess.”
I waved away her half-hearted thanks and headed back towards the station, walking slower than usual. Seeing the graveyard had troubled me and I wasn’t in the right headspace for trawling through scientific lingo and a bunch of paperwork once I got back to my desk.
I bought a cup of coffee that was far nicer than the kind I usually bothered to make for myself and sat on a bench to watch Lockdale’s stream rush past until I felt ready to tackle the case again. Hogan looked up when I re-entered the station and waved me into her office before I could pretend like I hadn’t seen her. Tossing my empty cup into the bin, I reluctantly headed over.
She looked at me intently, managing to look both stern and concerned. “You don’t usually take a lunch break, what’s wrong?”
I shrugged. “I just went for a walk, ma’am.”
She let it drop with a sigh. “The York lot will be invading us soon, likely by tomorrow there’ll be a city DCI and their team to take over the investigation.”
“Great,” I muttered. I had already guessed that this would happen. Sometimes I did wish I was a DCI myself, for this very reason, not that we’d had many murders at all in Lockdale whilst I’d been here. “Maha will get a break from watching over Sarah, at least, ma’am.”
Hogan made a noise of agreement. “Least there’s that.” She nodded for me to head out. “Go on, get some work done before you’re benched. They’ll be expecting us to hand it all over tomorrow, so be ready for that.”
“Got it, ma’am,” I said. Back at my desk, I looked at my watch and figured that it was close enough to three to head to the garage. The sarge was on the phone again, so I sent an email to let her know where I was going and nodded to Kay before leaving.
Despite the bright sunshine remaining, the weather had turned blustery, and I pulled my jacket closer around me as I walked briskly to the garage. I could have driven, but I thought it would be better for my head to walk again. Plus, there was still the Three Tops race that Graham and I had intended to do coming up. Though I wasn’t decided on whether I could face going without him, any bit of exercise in the run-up would help.
Neil’s Tyres had a surprisingly smart front for a garage, with fresh paint and an evidently new sign pinned to the wood above the open door. It was relatively close to the centre of Lockdale which, while not exactly a tourist town, did keep itself tidy and attractive for any passers-through, so it made sense that the garage itself wasn’t a mess, at least on the outside.
“I’m DI Mitchell,” I introduced myself to the spotty teenager chewing gum behind the desk in the office, which was off to the side of the main mechanics’ space. “I talked to Mike earlier?”
“Andy,” the teenager said, his voice surprisingly deep considering he looked barely seventeen. “Mike’s round back, but he left the things you wanted.” He stood up, moving around the desk to pick up a bundle of papers from the top of a dusty filing cabinet.
“Records?”
Andy nodded, handing them over. His thumb was black with engine oil and left a smear on the papers.
“Thanks,” I said. “Mind if I read them here?” I didn’t want to head off before I was sure that Mike had found the right information, or if there were any questions I needed to ask him. Andy just shrugged, going back to his phone.
I brushed dirt or sandwich crumbs off one of the office chairs and sat down to read. The records weren’t detailed, but they had the basics. It listed, in terms too technical for me to follow, what had been wrong with Freddie’s bike, as well as who’d owned it, what had happened and then, there at the bottom who it’d been sold on to.
“This… Simon Muldoon,” I said, gesturing to the name of the buyer. “He took the bike without getting it repaired here?” I wasn’t sure I’d read it right.
Andy looked at me like I was dim. “Yeah, that’s his thing, isn’t it?”
“Pardon?”
“He’s got a blog or something. Does stuff for the town paper too, about cars and bikes and that. He mends them and sells them on again.”
“Have you got the name of this blog?” I asked hopefully.
Andy just shrugged. I sighed and went back to reading the report, trying to see if any of the damages to the bike would leap out and mean anything to me, but it didn’t seem too helpful. I got up, preparing to call this dubious lead a dud and move on when Andy waved a hand at me.
“Found it,” he said and offered me his phone.
My eyebrows raised in surprise, I thanked him and took it, frowning at the small screen. Andy had found the blog entry about Freddie’s bike, and my heart sped up when I saw that he’d included before and after pictures. I tried to zoom in on the before picture, but the quality on Andy’s phone wasn’t any better than the police pictures, if not worse.
I made a note of the blog address as Andy started fidgeting, wanting his phone back.
“Thanks for finding that,” I said, handing it back. The kid had been more helpful than I’d first expected.
“No problem.”
I left the garage after asking Andy if I could take the records with me and getting a nonchalant shrug back in response.
At the station, I pulled up the guy’s blog on my computer and found a phone number for him.
“Hello?” a deep voice said, a little raspy in the way of a smoker’s.
“Simon Muldoon?” I asked.
“Speaking.”
“It’s DI Mitchell from Lockdale police department,” I started. “We’re looking into the owner of a motorcycle you bought about six months ago.”
“That so?”
“Yes. I’ve seen your blog, and I was hoping you still had the pictures of it.” I looked back at the blog page and repeated the specific make and model of the bike.
Simon hummed. “I remember that one. Real beauty. Such a shame.”
“It was,” I agreed after a moment, not entirely sure if he was lamenting the accident itself or the condition of the bike. “Do you still have the before pictures?”
He grunted. “‘Spect so. Got an email I can send ‘em to?” I told him. “Alright, I’ll do that,” he said, before hanging up without another word.
I blinked and put my phone down with a shake of the head, wondering whether the bloke would actually do what he’d said he would.
But sure enough, it was barely ten minutes before several emails, each with a high definition picture in, arrived in my inbox and I fumbled to click on them.
I stared at the pictures for a fair while, trying to spot anything out of place. Maybe there was nothing, and I was looking for a needle in a haystack that contained no needle at all.
My phone rang, and I jumped, picking it up without looking at the screen. “DI Mitchell,” I said distractedly.
“I sent the photos over,” Simon’s voice said.
“Aye, thanks.”
There was a pause, and I was about to ask why he’d called me when he said. “Y’know, I don’t know what you’re looking for, but there were a couple of bits strange about that one, now you bring it up.�
�
“Yeah?” I said, sitting up straighter. “Strange how?”
“They said ‘e ran into a wall, didn’t they?”
“The rider? Yes. Or skidded round the bend.”
“Tosh,” Simon said. “I gave ‘em a call after I bought the bike--”
“Called who?”
“You lot. Police.”
“York or Lockdale?”
“City folk. Didn’t have the time for me.”
“Go on,” I said when he paused, keen to hear what his opinion was on the bike.
“I fix bikes that been in accidents all day long, mate. This one’d been hit by something, and it wasn’t a wall or the road. Scratch marks and that weren’t right. And there were paint streaks on it.”
I sat very still. “Really?” I said slowly, scrabbling for my ever-present notebook to write this down. “What colour paint?”
“Oh I don’t know, this was ages back. Maybe it’s on the pictures, like.”
“What kind of scratches was it?” I asked, instead.
“Stuff you’d normally get from a collision, like. It’s different with a wall, more damage for starters cus walls don’t crumple, do they?”
I hummed in agreement. “So a car? Van? Another bike?”
“Car, probably,” he said. “Any bigger and it’d have been totalled. Much smaller and well, the kid’d probably be alive still.”
“Right,” I said, rubbing my cheek, which was distractingly itchy. I needed to shave. “Anything else look odd?”
“Nah, not really. I reckon it was a hit and run. I did try to tell yous,” he added defensively. “You got a record of my call or something, I bet.”
“I’m sure,” I said. “I really appreciate this information, Mr Muldoon, thank you for telling me.”
He grunted. “S’nothing,” he said, before abruptly hanging up on me for the second time.
A collision, I thought, practically buzzing with that feeling of a breakthrough after hitting nothing but dead ends for days.
Freddie’s accident hadn’t been an accident at all in the way the York police had said. Freddie’s girlfriend had been right. Freddie had most likely been driving carefully. It was someone else who hadn’t been.
Things clicked into place in my head. The threatening emails to Graham telling him not to go to the police. Freddie dying just up the lane from Graham’s house.
“You saw something,” I said to the computer, feeling like my skin was buzzing at the revelation.
It fitted. I was convinced now that whoever had killed Freddie, most likely by accident, had very deliberately killed Graham to keep him quiet. Now I just had to find out who had killed Freddie and stop them from getting away with a second murder.
Seventeen
That evening, I headed off for a run up the hills, desperate to do something that used my body and not my head. Staring at a computer screen and willing it to provide answers was all well and good, but it wasn’t getting me any further.
I’d left work a little earlier than I usually did to catch as much of the remaining daylight as I could. It was still close to dusk by the time I reached the top of the tor near Graham’s house, and I flicked on my head torch as I stopped to catch my breath.
There was a large stone trig point up here. I leant on it, looking idly at the height I’d climbed written on the metal plaque, even though I’d been up here countless times over the years and had the height memorised. It wasn’t the highest peak in the area by a long shot, but it was nearby and tall enough to tire me out without exhausting me so much that I’d be groaning around the station tomorrow, wincing every time I stood up or went up the stairs.
It was beautiful up here. The only other humans I’d met had been a couple of determined dog walkers, well wrapped up against the cold, and a farmer I’d seen herding his sheep in the distance. Otherwise, it was just me, the moors, and a pair of wheeling birds of prey in the distance. The undergrowth rustled with small, nocturnal animals beginning to wake up and there was a shadowy edge to the moor that gave it the look of a liminal space, not quite of this time or earth.
The sky had clouded over again, and the moon came through in brief snatches like a torch flicked on and off as it sent a morse code warning.
Turning up the brightness of my own head torch, I turned my back to the moortop and the moon and started to make my way back down towards the village before I got too cold and my legs seized up.
My knees complained about the jarring running as I picked my path down the rocky slope, my head torch only illuminating so much.
I was so engrossed in not falling head over heels down the slippery hill that I didn’t hear the crunch and rustle of approaching footsteps until they were almost on top of me.
I looked up sharply and came to a sliding stop, my heart thudding more out of surprise than fear. The two figures were a little way up the slope, beyond the reach of my head torch. They weren’t carrying their own lights and were only visible as dark silhouettes against the purple-grey sky, the shape of their outlines making me think that they were male.
“Evening?” I said, my unease turning the greeting into a question. They didn’t respond, and I started moving down the hill even before my conscious brain had caught up with my gut sense of danger.
The figure on the right was carrying something long in his right hand, and they brought it up now. I might’ve thought it was a walking pole if not for the thickness of it and the all too undeniable way he brought it up to his shoulder and pointed it down at me, the gleam of the moon hitting the metal.
I swore and bolted down the slope, skidding on the loose rocks with my arms wheeling as I tried to keep my balance.
A bang went off behind me, the metallic clink of metal hitting rock far too close by. Over the rushing in my ears and the noise of the stones beneath my feet, I heard the clunk of the bolt-action rifle reloading and heavy footsteps following me down the hill.
Twice in one week, there were people trying to kill me, I thought, half-hysterically as I careened down the path. I reached a part with a sharp drop off that I usually took at a careful walk even in daylight, but barely slowed as I scrambled down, jolting my knees as I took a shortcut and jumped back onto the path.
The way was smoother from there, so I burst forwards. The rifle went off again, loud enough to make me startle and almost lose my footing. I thought about all the movies I’d seen where people got shot, blood pumping as they were thrown forwards.
But the shot didn’t land, and I kept running, only daring to look back once I was onto the paved path near the bottom of the fell. I caught movement up the path before the shadow disappeared, and I was left alone.
I folded over my knees and threw up, hands on my shaking thighs. If nothing else, getting shot at would make me fit, I thought bleakly. I patted my pocket and found my phone, which I’d brought on this run after getting ambushed last time. Not that there’d been much chance to call for backup when I was running down a tor and drying not to break my legs.
“Christ,” I muttered, scrubbing sweat and my damp hair out of my eyes. I thought about Alice for the first time in hours, and imagined how nice it would be to go and curl up on her couch, let her distract me from whatever the hell had just happened.
But I needed to go to the station and see if any York officers were free to go trekking across the moors looking for two faceless, possibly-men with a gun. It wasn’t exactly much to go on.
I made myself start walking again, already wincing at the pain in my knees and ankles from tearing downhill at a pace I’d not managed since I was in my twenties.
Returning to the town felt surreal, with all the bright lights and people. It felt safer for sure, but also like I’d just been dropped into an alternate universe. The shock must have still been on my face, too, because several people looked at me funny and one evening shopper even crossed the road to avoid passing next to me.
Still, I got to the station and rapped on the door, unsurprised when Hogan came to p
eer through the murky glass at me. She looked at first disapproving and then worried before she got the door open and gestured for me to come into the warm.
“What’s happened now?” she said.
“Someone really wants me dead, ma’am,” I managed, heading for the break room so that I could drink straight from the tap. My mouth felt like sticky sandpaper, and my hands shook as I tried to turn on the stiff tap.
“What happened?” Hogan repeated once I’d taken my head out of the sink after drinking about a litre of water. She didn’t even look too unimpressed by my lack of manners.
“Up the moors, near Shining Tor,” I wiped my mouth and gestured vaguely, trying to get my thoughts in order. “Two guys, I think they were men. Fired two shots at me from a rifle.”
“Did you see their faces?”
“No. It was too dark, ma’am.”
“Did they say anything?”
I shook my head again. Hogan pulled out a chair from Samuel’s desk, indicating for me to take it and I gratefully flopped down.
“I’m glad you’re alright,” she said sincerely. “You didn’t hurt yourself? Any cuts?”
I was still so buzzing with adrenaline that I honestly wasn’t sure, and I looked down at myself, scanning my arms and legs. I didn’t seem to be bleeding.
“Reckon I’m alright,” I said. She looked relieved.
“I’ll call York,” she said. “Get them to send some people out there as soon as possible. Can you show me on a map where it was?”
“Probably, ma’am,” I said, nodding. She pulled up a map on the computer screen in her office, and I squinted at it, eying the path I usually took and estimating where they’d been standing when they started shooting at me and what direction they’d disappeared off in. I pinpointed the likely locations and Hogan got on the phone to York.
I was tempted to make myself a coffee just for the familiar and comforting taste of it, but I was already buzzing with enough adrenaline to make me feel like I could run all the way to York.
DI Mitchell Yorkshire Crime Thrillers: Book 1-3 Page 14
