Gaskell sighed. “There was a letter through the door this morning. They want you to go to a specific set of coordinates this evening, and then they’ll return Ahmed and Sarah.”
“What are the coordinates? When did you get this letter?” I spoke to Gaskell, but it was Hogan that replied.
“The coordinates are nearby-”
“Not the Collins’ farm, ma’am?”
“No. And the letter was picked up by me an hour ago.”
“Why didn’t you wake me then?” I tried to keep the hurt and frustration out of my tone but didn’t manage it.
Hogan did give me a sharp look then. “Because you were exhausted, we needed to plan, and you don’t need to show your face there before five o’clock tonight.”
This time of year, it’ll be dusk by then if not full dark. Harder for both parties to see the other coming.
“Okay, ma’am.”
After frowning at my face, where I no doubt had dark bags under my eyes, she said, “Go get a coffee, Mitchell.”
I thought about telling her I’d already had one, but a minute to process my thoughts and another dose of caffeine wasn’t an opportunity I was about to pass up. I left the office and leaned against the cabinets with a quiet groan as I made up a coffee.
Samuel came in, looking young and nervous, and I tried to bring up a smile for him. He didn’t return it.
“Will she be okay, sir?” he said.
“Maha?” I guessed. He nodded. The kettle boiled, and I poured my tea as I thought how to reassure Samuel without making promises I might not be able to keep. This was a precarious and difficult situation. “We’re all going to do our best,” I said, meeting Samuel’s worried eyes, “and Maha is a smart and capable officer. We’re going to have back-up from York and the best resources available. There’s no reason why it shouldn’t go to plan. Okay?”
He nodded and then shrugged. “I’m just scared for her. For them both.”
“I know.” I wrapped my hands around my mug. “I’ll do everything I can, Samuel, and I know the others will as well. We care about Maha and Sarah too.”
He nodded. “Thanks, sir.”
I patted him on the shoulder. “Chin up. I’ll let you know as soon as we have news, but it’s going to be a long wait, so try to distract yourself, alright?”
He agreed, and I left him to go back to Hogan’s office. Everything I’d told Samuel was true, and yet I was as worried for Sarah and Maha as he was, if not more. Hostage situations, and that’s what this was, were incredibly difficult. And it was clear that Jake had some sort of deep-set hatred for me already, and Maisy would likely be no more fond of me considering I’d been the one originally investigating the case. I couldn’t help but picture the worst-case scenarios, fearing that I’d turn up only to find that I couldn’t do anything to help Maha and Sarah and that the Collins’ wouldn’t listen to reason. Because these weren’t the actions of someone being reasonable; they felt like vengeance.
Returning to Hogan’s office, I found that Hogan had a map up on the computer, presumably showing the area around the coordinates that had been named on the letter.
I came nearer to look over her shoulder. “What’s at the coordinates?”
“There seems to be hardly anything there,” she said. I studied the map and couldn’t help but agree with her. It appeared to be a stretch of moorland with nothing on it.
She zoomed in further, scanning the area. “Wait,” I said. “There, look.”
It would’ve been easy to miss, but there was a small, grey building that looked like it was hardly bigger than an animal shelter and which was nothing more than a cluster of pixels on the screen.
Hogan hummed, looking displeased. “They’ve made it so they can see anyone coming,” she said, pointing at the map’s contours. The coordinates were on top of a small hill, not especially high up but well out of Lockdale and with a view of the surrounding area.
“Damn,” I muttered. “At least one of them’s smart.”
Gaskell came over to my side and offered me his tablet. “Here.”
I took it and looked down at the picture on it, frowning before I realised what it was. “This is the letter?”
He nodded. “The actual one’s been sent to the lab, but I don’t reckon we’ll get anything off it.”
I sighed, focusing back on the letter. It’d been printed out and was short and to the point. They had Sarah and Maha, and they wanted me, alone, to come to meet them. The sick feeling in my stomach intensified as I read, and I passed the tablet back to Gaskell in silence. When I looked up, I found all three of them looking at me.
I shrugged and tried to be nonchalant. “They want me dead.”
Gaskell and Kay looked pained, but Hogan just nodded, completely serious. “Yes. But we’re getting Sarah and Ahmed back, and we won’t sacrifice you to do it.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Have you got a plan?”
“Not yet,” she admitted.
That was the focus of the rest of the morning: trying to work out how I could comply with their terms without ending up shot in the head, if they’d managed to find another gun, that was.
“We’ve got to assume they’ve armed themselves,” Gaskell said. “We’ve got a firearms team from Leeds primed on the situation, but it’s going to be hard to get them close without being noticed.”
I nodded. “I’ve got to go in first,” I said. “Distract them, so that the rest of you can get in close.”
“They might be smart enough to put someone on guard,” Kay said.
I grimaced. “True. And we’ve got to expect that there’ll be all three siblings. The parents are still at the farm, so they’re accounted for.”
Gaskell rubbed his forehead, looking tired. “Worse case, there could be more than that, if they’ve roped friends into it.”
I considered. “Maybe. But I think we can rule that as a lower possibility. Friendship is strong, but a hostage situation against the police takes a great deal of loyalty. They’d have to have accepted the likelihood of years in prison.”
“Hell, that’s a lot of loyalty even for a family member,” Kay said.
We moved onto picking over the area with a fine-tooth comb, planning where I’d be dropped off, where the York and Leeds officers could park up and how to keep it all quiet.
After barely having breakfast, I was ravenous by lunchtime and Hogan waved me off to get some food when my stomach growled for the fourth time in a row.
I ate my sandwich at my desk, researching the siblings I didn’t have much information on, Henry and Jake. Jake’s social media was almost exactly what I might’ve expected, full of pictures of nights out in York alongside him doing wheelies in the fields on the farm. There were also posts where he’d been trying to sell things, an old Xbox and an expensive-looking phone. They were definitely short on cash.
Henry’s was the complete opposite and hadn’t been updated in recent years, showing out-of-date pictures of his school prom and pictures of girlfriends he’d had at uni.
I looked into the posts from his time at uni further, and a tremor went through me when I read what someone else had posted to his wall.
Congrats on your first class degree, it said, you’ll be making the cure to cancer in no time!
To which Henry had responded, I’m a chemist, not a medic.
A chemist. That would be the sort of person who’d know that Sarah’s medicine contained the same chemicals as rat poison. That the two might be confused and Graham’s death taken for a suicide. Christ.
I sat back in my chair, dragging a hand through my hair. Maybe it’d been Maisy who’d started this by threatening Graham into keeping quiet about the accident that killed Freddie, but I was willing to bet that Henry had been a key player in Graham’s death.
Thinking back on our interview with him, where he’d seemed so outwardly nervous and polite, I inwardly seethed at how he must have been laughing at us. If what I suspected was true, he was far more manipulative than I co
uld have anticipated.
“I think Henry Collins could have killed Graham,” I said, coming back into Hogan’s office. Kay, Gaskell and Hogan all looked over at me like I’d lost my marbles.
“But… Maisy?”
“The evidence never fully added up,” I pointed out. “There were men’s sized footprints we found alongside the smaller one, and by all accounts, Maisy isn’t a very tall woman. There always seemed to be another person involved. And plus, Henry is trained as a chemist.”
“So he’d know that warfarin is present in both rat poison and Coumadin,” Hogan said quietly.
“Exactly.”
“God,” Kay said, looking disgusted. “So we had Graham’s killer sat right across from us? He seemed so…”
Gaskell held up a hand, shooting me a warning look. “Let’s not jump to conclusions. It’s a valid theory, Mitchell, but there’s no definitive evidence either way just yet.”
I conceded that with a nod and we went back to discussing how the operation would take place and the timing. I couldn’t help but anticipate how the plan may go entirely wrong. I’d have to improvise on the spot, gambling on not only my own life but on Sarah’s and Maha’s. I hoped the Collins were treating them humanely and, though it gave us little time to prepare, I was at least glad that the meeting time had been set for tonight so that the two hostages wouldn’t be with the Collins for more than a day. We didn’t know where they were being kept or in what kind of conditions and so having it done with tonight, one way or another, was a relief. I could only imagine that I would become increasingly on edge if it’d been left any longer.
On the other hand, if this thing went wrong because of a mistake on my part, I’d carry that for the rest of my life, and maybe then I would’ve wished for more time to plan for unexpected eventualities.
I sighed, pinching the bridge of my nose to shift the headache that had burrowed its way into my skull before I excused myself to go and fetch another coffee. I couldn’t predict the future and no amount of time to plan could guarantee success.
We would just have to work with what we had.
Twenty-Three
Late afternoon came too quickly, and the clock was fast approaching five o’clock when I’d have to be there.
Hogan checked her watch and nodded to me. “Time to go, Mitchell.”
The firearms team, such as could be summoned on such short notice, were up in their position already, and a hostage negotiator had been transported up, though they were all remaining out of sight of the coordinates the Collins’ had set.
Gaskell drove me up in the car, and my leg bounced nervously as I stared out the window at the stunning landscape, fast fading into dusk, as we climbed out of Lockdale and up into the hills. I ran over the plan repeatedly in my mind, imagining it all going smoothly and exactly as intended. Graham’s memory would never forgive me if I let anything happen to Sarah, and I’d never forgive myself if either of them were hurt.
“It’ll go fine, lad,” Gaskell said, wheeling us around a corner. “Everything’s in place.”
I pressed my lips together and forced a nod. Adrenaline was buzzing through me already, but the tension of the day had left me feeling almost like I was watching myself and my own actions.
The feeling ceased the moment Gaskell pulled up in the car park nearest the coordinates, where the rest of the back-up would be based, ready to rush in on my signal that Maha and Sarah were safe. But the car park was still a short way from where the hostages themselves were being kept, and it would take several minutes for them to arrive after I called. We couldn’t put them any closer because the road winds around and their presence would have been revealed to the Collins.
I smoothed down my shirt, damp under the arms from sweat, and switched places with Gaskell. I would drive the car the rest of the way up the road from here, and Gaskell would remain with the other officers.
“Good luck, Mitchell,” he said. “You’re a fine officer.”
“Thank you, sir.”
He nodded to me before climbing out, and I took a deep breath, clipping in my seatbelt before starting off down the road. Even though I knew I wasn’t yet close, I couldn’t help but scan my surroundings for the grey building we’d seen on the map, or any other signs that the Collins were up here. Not for the first time, I worried that they wouldn’t uphold their end of the bargain, that we might have planned all of this for nothing and that neither the Collins nor Maha and Sarah would be there.
My hands tightened on the steering wheel, and I forced my stiff shoulders down. It would be fine. It had to be. I rounded a corner, and my eyes widened as I spotted the building, my foot pressing down on the accelerator without meaning to. I eased off again before checking the time. I was early, but that was acceptable, and I climbed the rest of the way up the road with my gaze fixed on the grey hut which dipped in and out of view amongst the hillocks.
It really was nothing more than an animal shelter. I pulled up at the side of the road, as close to the shelter as I could manage, and turned the car off. I felt sick with nerves, but anger and determination pushed me on as I got out of the car. The wind buffeted against me, making my coat flap and I zipped it up with a shiver, hoping that the Collins had given Sarah and Maha adequate protection against this cold air. It wasn’t raining, but the overhanging clouds gave no promises that it wouldn’t.
The car locked up, I double-checked that everything was ready and then pressed the button on my radio.
“This is Officer Mitchell. I’ve got the building in view, and I’m about to walk towards it, over.”
“Go ahead, Mitchell, over,” Gaskell responded, sounding as collected and steady as he always did.
“Understood, over and out.” I nodded to myself and started the short trek across the uneven ground to the shelter, finding a small animal track to follow through the dying-off bracken and prickly gorse.
“Why did you pick all the way out here?” I muttered aloud as I got closer, continuously, warily scanning the area as I approached.
There, movement. My step faltered for a minute as I stared at the figure standing by the wall of the animal shelter, and they stared back at me. I couldn’t make out their face or any detail other than their green coat from here, but I thought their height looked shorter than Henry or Jake’s.
I forced myself forwards, moving carefully closer and ready to drop to the ground the second I heard gunfire. I had no assurances that they hadn’t just lured me out here to shoot me in revenge and so took it slowly.
But no shots rang out as I came closer. The one figure became two and this one I recognised; Jake. They both appeared empty-handed, for now, and I was glad at least for that, even as I didn’t dare let my guard drop for a second.
“I’ll be damned,” I said under my breath when I got close enough to see their faces. It was Maisy, the Collins sibling I’d been chasing all along. It was almost surreal to see her in the flesh, like a figment of my obsessive mind come into being.
She held some resemblance to her brothers, especially in the frown she wore which matched Jake’s glower exactly. She was a good foot shorter or more than Jake but still held the same threat of violence in the way she stood, though she was holding no weapon. There was just something in her eyes that said she’d do what she felt she had to, and when I met her gaze, she didn’t flinch from me. Her brother, on the other hand, looked away when I regarded him, surprising me. He’d not blinked or turned away from me in the police station when he’d looked ready to tear my throat out.
There were no face coverings on either of them now, just an open acceptance that the police already knew who they were, and they weren’t trying to hide anymore. People with nothing to lose were exceptionally dangerous, I reminded myself.
I looked around for Sarah and Maha, but I couldn’t see them and so had to assume they were hidden from sight inside the shelter. I wondered whether Henry Collins was here too, but perhaps he’d only planned the poisoning of Graham and didn’t like to get
his hands dirty with the actual crime. That would make the most sense with how nervy he’d seemed down at the station.
I came to a stop several yards from Maisy, and we stared at each other.
“Darren Mitchell.” Her voice was quiet, but it carried, even in the wind. She looked younger in person, and if I’d met her on the street, I never would’ve seen the coldness in her tanned face.
“Maisy Collins,” I acknowledged. Or do you prefer May? I thought, but I didn’t say it. Maha and Sarah’s lives might depend on me keeping the Collins calm. “Where are they?”
A tiny smirk lifted her lips and hatred stirred in my stomach. “We’ll get to that,” she said, as calmly as if she’d been doing nothing more difficult than taking my order in the teashop.
“I want— I need to see them,” I said, trying to keep my nerve. “I need to see that they’re alright.”
Maisy narrowed her eyes at me. “You’ll just have to take my word for it.”
Jake hadn’t said a word yet, and I glanced over at him. His jaw was clenched as he stared at the ground, his expression tight with tension but difficult to read.
The wind coming over the moors hit me with another gust, and I swayed. “Do your parents know you’re doing this?” I said, raising my voice.
“Shut up!” Jake snarled, sudden enough to make me flinch. Maisy put a hand on her brother’s arm, only for him to pull away from her.
Maisy turned back to me, her expression even colder than before. “You don’t ask the questions, I do. Tell me what you know, what you suspect.” Her tone was mocking.
I wanted to demand to know what they wanted, and how I could get Maha and Sarah out of there, but I didn’t think they’d answer me.
“The… investigation suggests Graham’s death wasn’t an accident,” I said slowly, uncertain how much I should say. Maisy may already know that I suspected her and Henry of Graham’s murder, and Jake of trying to shoot me, but I couldn’t know for sure. Perhaps they knew no more than what Kay and I had discussed with the brothers during questioning.
“Obviously,” Maisy said.
DI Mitchell Yorkshire Crime Thrillers: Book 1-3 Page 22
