The brothers went still, looking at each other, and I kept a wary eye on Jake. His eyes flicked towards the window and then down towards a cricket bat lying against Henry’s bed. My heart rate sped up, waiting for him to decide, but finally, he just sneered.
“Whatever. We can’t tell you anything when we dunno where she is.”
“We’ll decide that down at the station,” I said and waved for Jake to go ahead of me on the stairs. They hadn’t been violent yet, and neither were they under arrest, so the handcuffs on my belt went unused for now.
Jake deliberately dragged his feet with getting his coat on and fetching his hat, while Henry kept sending his brother glances.
“I need the loo,” Jake said, just as we were about to leave.
“You can go at the station.” Kay’s tone was hard.
“You want me to piss in your car?”
“The sooner we get to the station, the less likely that’ll happen,” I said. Better to have a urine-soaked car seat than to risk Jake grabbing a razor from the bathroom before he left. I didn’t trust either of them as far as I could throw them, but especially him.
He all but growled at me like a feral dog, shoving me with his shoulder as he left the house.
Henry looked at me almost apologetically before following his brother outside into the rain.
We put them in the back of the car, the partition up between us and the back seats, and Kay took us carefully down the drive.
“You’re going too slow,” Henry said abruptly.
There was a muffled thud, and I glanced at the rear view mirror to see Jake glaring at his brother and Henry glowering icily back at him. I assumed Jake had hit him.
“Don’t help ‘em!” Jake hissed, not quite quiet enough to be inaudible.
“What do you mean?” Kay said.
I looked ahead at where we were going and the way the rain had made the entrance thick with mud.
“The tyres are going to slide on the mud, you won’t get over the bump,” I said quietly.
“What if a car’s coming up the road though?”
Yeah, I don’t like it either. I rolled down my window to listen for traffic as Kay sped up a little and I had my hand pressed against my thigh as we approached the entrance. But we made it over the slick mud well enough, and there wasn’t another vehicle on the lane outside, much to my relief. The wheels skidded sideways alarmingly when Kay tried to turn us down the small road, but she retained control and got us back onto the track.
The rest of the way back to the station was much less eventful. The brothers didn’t speak in the back, though when I glanced at them in the rear view mirror, I caught them glaring at each other several times, seeming to be trying to talk silently.
We pulled into the station with difficulty, with several York officers’ cars clogging up the car park. I looked back at the brothers before getting out into the cold outside air and pulling open the back door. Jake Collins got out, pulling himself up to his full height, which was a couple of inches taller than me. I gave him a cold look and refused to face off with him like we were boxers at the weigh-in.
“Come on,” I grumbled at him, waving for him to go ahead of me into the station. He just stood there for a second, and I wondered if he was going to try for a runner. Kay was having an easier time with Henry, who sent a look at Jake over the top of our car before going where Kay pointed him.
Watching his brother go ahead, Jake seemed to cave and, his shoulders pulled back, he strode into the station like it had been his idea all along. When I was sure he wasn’t looking, I rolled my eyes and followed him inside. I was cold, absolutely starving and craving a coffee and perfectly ready to hand off these two to someone else for interview.
When I came into the station, Kay was nearly bowled over by a wet and muddy Lexi who came running up to her.
“Lexi!” Kay chided, as Lexi’s paws smeared mud over Kay’s trousers. Jake watched her, and I caught a twitched smile on his face, my eyebrows raised. A fan of dogs, then. “Who got you in this state?” Kay grouched.
I noticed Samuel’s head duck down behind his desk, and I grinned. “Reckon the most likely culprit for that is sitting right over there.” I pointed over at Samuel’s desk, and Kay sighed, trying not to smile.
Stood a little way in front of me and glaring poisonously around the station, Jake had turned away from Lexi and seemed to be building himself up for another argument. I pointedly directed him into the interview room, not wanting to give him the time to get his knickers in a twist. Kay gave me a nod of agreement when I looked over at her; Henry would wait until we’d dealt with questioning Jake, who was the more difficult one by a mile. We only had one interview room set up for filming at Lockdale, so sometimes we had to prioritize.
I had to let Gaskell know what was going on and hopefully persuade him to get his own officers to deal with the Collins pair so that I could have my lunch. Kay asked Maha, now back at her desk, to keep an eye on Henry for a minute. Kay, in turn, went into the interview room, leaving the door open to sit with Jake. I trotted over to Hogan’s office, but Gaskell wasn’t inside, and I found him instead in the break room.
“Sir?”
He looked up from where he was making a coffee. “Did you find the brothers?”
“Yes, sir. Brought them both down here. The younger one’s aggressive.”
Gaskell nodded. “Let me know when you finish with them.”
My stomach sank. “You haven’t got an officer spare, sir?” I said, knowing that I was pushing it.
He gave me an unimpressed look. “No.”
“Right,” I sighed, heading back to the interview room and pulling the door shut behind me.
Jake was glaring murder at Kay, who was texting on her phone and pretending not to notice. She looked up when I came in and nodded. I took a seat next to her and looked at Jake, slouched in his chair across the table. The recording device flashed a red light when I turned it on, Kay and I introduced ourselves, and then I considered where to start.
“How close are you to Maisy, Jake?”
“Look, am I being arrested or what?”
Kay and I glanced at each other. “No,” I said. “We want to ask you some questions, that’s all.”
Jake shoved his chair back with a screech of metal and stood up, making me tense. “I don’t wanna answer them.”
“Do you want your sister to go to jail?” I asked, making my voice steady and cold.
He went still. “Don’t know what you mean. She’s done nothing.”
Kay leaned forwards slightly. “Why has she run off, then?”
He shrugged, but slowly sat back down, taking his time in answering. “I dunno. Probably needed a break or something, not a crime, is it?” He sneered.
I pressed my lips together and was silent for a moment as I rethought our tactics. “How well is the farm doing, financially, I mean?”
Jake blinked. “What?” He scowled. “What’s that got to do with anything? Why’re you asking that?”
“It doesn’t look like it’s doing well,” I pressed on. “Your house’s roof needs repairs, and your dad is clearly unwell--”
Jake banged his hand down on the table loud enough to startle Kay. I’d seen how his hands were screwed up into fists on the table and had been expecting him to blow up somehow. “Shut up about my dad!”
“Alright.” I put my hands up. “I’m just making the point that you need the money from Maisy’s job, don’t you?” He glowered at me. “She’s going to lose it if she doesn’t come back soon, and beyond that, she’s getting into more trouble every day by avoiding us.”
Jake curled his lip. “Yeah, and I’m sure if you just had a friendly chat with her, it’d all be sorted out right quick, huh?”
I looked at him flatly. “If she’s done nothing wrong, yes.”
He huffed, shaking his head as he leaned back in his seat and folded his arms over his chest. “You cops aren’t ever on our side. It’s all about money for you, isn’t
it? You get a nice fat cheque and look the other way, that right?”
I faltered, taken aback by the sheer venom in his voice and the sudden change of topic. “I’ve never taken a bribe in my life if that’s what you’re implying.”
Jake coughed out a harsh laugh without any humour in it. “Sure.”
I looked over at Kay, but she looked as confused as I was.
“Is this what Maisy said?” I took a guess. “That the police are corrupt?”
Jake didn’t reply, just looked at me like he held something against me personally. I didn’t think he was going to be willing to answer much more, and we didn’t have the solid evidence to arrest him or keep him here.
But I still suspected he’d been the one to shoot at me, though I’d not seen either of the men’s faces, and I asked him for his whereabouts on that night.
Jake looked briefly away and then back at me. “Can’t remember.”
Well, that wasn’t at all suspicious.
“Please try,” Kay said, a touch coldly.
Jake turned his hostility onto her. “Probably home, wasn’t I? Who wants to be out in this weather?”
“Can anyone verify that?”
He shrugged. “My parents, I guess, and Henry. Why?”
“Do you have a firearms licence?” I asked. I could look it up in the system, I knew, but I wanted to see what he said.
He left a long pause before answering. “Aye,” he said finally. “Rifle.”
“And your brother? Maisy?”
“No,” he said, and I hummed. In the brief silence where I thought about what to ask next, Jake snapped, “We done?”
I rubbed my forehead tiredly. Tension and hunger were beginning to give me a headache.
“Yes, that’s all for now,” Kay said when I didn’t respond.
Jake got to his feet immediately and glared at me as if daring me to charge him with something. Unfortunately, having a bad attitude wasn’t a crime, and though sheltering a suspected criminal was, I didn’t have the evidence to keep him here for it.
I rounded up the interview, switched off the recorder and stood up, following Jake as he yanked open the door and let himself out. Quickly getting in front of him, I steered him away from where his brother was sitting and told him to wait in the chairs near Hogan’s office.
Maha was still keeping an eye on Henry, though that didn’t seem too hard since Henry was completely still, sitting with his hands between his knees and a worried look on his face. He kept looking over at Jake, but I moved in front of him, blocking his line of sight.
“In you go,” I said, pointing to the interview room. He gave me a weak glare that didn’t have much effect after the visceral intensity of his brother’s. I turned to Maha while Kay followed Henry inside. “Jake Collins is over there,” I told her quietly. “He’s got a chip on his shoulder, so keep an eye on him but don’t engage, okay? If you need a hand, give us a shout.” She gave me a nod.
I looked around to locate Gaskell and frowned instinctively when I saw him sitting at my desk. It’s not like we had a great abundance of desks here, and mine was a far sight tidier than Kay’s, but it still rankled.
I gestured over at the DCI. “Or you can call Gaskell over.”
“No problem, sir.”
“Good.”
I left her to talk to Henry, who fidgeted whilst he waited for the questions to start and, though he looked up sharply when I came in, ducked his head back down soon after. He was the polar opposite of his brother, and I wondered what Maisy’s temperament was like in comparison.
She worked with kids, so I couldn’t imagine her to be as unlikeable, aggressive, and standoffish as Jake, and yet if she’d done what we thought she had, Henry’s apparent timidity seemed just as unlikely.
“Why am I here?” Henry asked almost as soon as I’d sat down.
“We want to find your sister, Maisy, to ask her some questions.”
“I don’t know where she is.”
He said it so evenly, meeting my gaze and wearing a worried expression, that I found myself inclined to believe him.
“When were you last in contact with her?”
Henry frowned and then patted his pocket. I tensed reflexively at his sudden movement, and he paused, shooting me a look. “I’m going to get my phone out,” he said. I nodded for him to go ahead.
He looked through it, and I watched him, hoping he wasn’t deleting things, but he didn’t seem to have it in his hands for long enough to have done that.
He offered it to Kay, who took it and leaned over to show me a number of text messages.
The most recent one was from the last day Maisy spent at work, and there wasn’t anything interesting in them, only discussion over family and the farm. I handed his phone back.
“Thank you for showing us. You haven’t seen or heard anything from her since then?” He shook his head. “Weren’t you concerned? Her going missing for several days like that can’t be normal.”
Henry shrugged and then gave a small nod. “Yeah, I was worried. I am worried. She won’t answer my calls. But she’s always been a bit wild. I think she’s just got sick of teaching and decided to run off for a bit.”
I hummed. Henry looked at me with a furrowed brow like he was concerned, but there was a sharp, analytical look in his eyes and I wasn’t sure what he was thinking.
Kay asked him about the night I got shot at. He told us that he was down the pub and that several people could verify him being there. I nodded at that and wondered whether this quieter brother had been kept out of all this by his other two siblings.
“What’s Maisy like?” I asked, curious.
Henry looked surprised and almost seemed to relax a bit. “She’s great,” he said warmly. “Just really driven, you know, and wanting to help the farm. She loves the place, been running crazy since she was a lass.”
“She’s the youngest?”
Henry nodded as he looked between us, his hands twisting together in front of him on the table. The light of the recording device flashed, and he glanced over at it.
“And Jake?”
Henry’s expression went a little sour, and his voice was sadder when he said, “He loves the farm too. Breaks his heart that it’s--” He broke off, glancing at us. His gaze was almost assessing as he took in our faces before he finished, “Falling apart, basically. He does the most work, with the animals, you know.”
“Sheep?”
“And some cattle, yeah.”
“And your dad’s sick?”
Henry’s jaw clenched. It was clearly a difficult topic for both brothers. “Yeah. Emphysema. He’s smoked like a chimney for years.”
“Your mum?”
Henry shrugged. “She looks after him. Saint, she is.” He looked up at us from where he’d been studying the table. “Why’re you asking this?”
“Just getting a better picture,” Kay said, soothingly.
I was thinking about whether it’d be wise to bring up Graham and Freddie’s deaths, or if that would be tipping Henry off too much to the direction our investigation was heading in. We weren’t holding either of the brothers after this, and I had no doubt that Henry would talk to Jake, who I then believed was in contact with Maisy. She knew from the news that we were interested in her, but whether she knew that we connected both Graham’s and Freddie’s deaths together, I didn’t know.
“Is there anything else you want to tell us?” I asked finally. “Maisy really is doing herself no favours by making us chase her.”
“I know,” Henry said, his expression guileless. “I don’t know where she is, really.” He paused, and I raised my brows at him. “I mean, if she has gone for a break, she might’ve gone to her friend’s place.”
“Yeah?” I said, trying to keep the hope out of my voice. I pulled out my notebook. “Where’s that, then?”
“Lake District,” he said. “Her friend’s called Rebecca Johnston.”
“You got a phone number for her? Address?” Kay said.
He shook his head, unsurprisingly. “No, sorry.”
“Alright, thanks for that,” I said and got up out of my chair. Henry followed me up quickly, looking nervous again after it had dropped away a little whilst he was talking.
“Sure,” he said, with none of his brother’s sarcasm.
I pulled out one of my cards, making a mental note to myself that I needed to print some more, and handed it to him. “Call me if you think of anything else, or find an address or phone number for her.”
“Alright.” Henry nodded, accepting the card.
I gestured for him to go ahead of me out of the room. To my relief, Jake had remained where I’d put him, though the glower in his face was so deeply etched that I could see where he was going to get wrinkles when he got older. He looked up sharply when Henry emerged and shot to his feet, looking between Kay, Henry and I as if he could read from our faces what had happened. I thought Henry would be smart not to tell Jake how much he’d shared with us; I couldn’t imagine Jake would be pleased about it.
Since we couldn’t keep the men, I asked them if they needed a lift back and when Jake snapped a refusal, I saw them out the door, watching them go with an uneasy itch at my neck. Henry had seemed relatively compliant, but I had a bad feeling about both of them and watching them walk out the door sat badly with me.
By the time I got the chance to go down to the shops for some lunch, I wasn’t sure I was even hungry anymore, but I ate the slightly tasteless sandwich anyway and thought about the two interviews.
Jake’s anger had all been on the surface, very obviously frustrated with the police and with the farm’s financial struggles. He seemed most likely to have been involved in something reckless and illegal, like shooting at a police officer in the nighttime. Henry, on the other hand, I couldn’t figure out. There seemed to be more layers to him, and the apparently nervous outer shell had cracked a fraction when he got into the flow of talking before it had closed up tight again.
Finishing my lunch, I looked first into Henry’s tip-off about this university friend of Maisy’s, Rebecca. I found someone by that name on Facebook who was located in the Lakes, though I couldn’t tell if she’d gone to the same uni as Maisy. I gave the woman a call using the phone number on her social media account and left a message when it went unanswered.
DI Mitchell Yorkshire Crime Thrillers: Book 1-3 Page 18
