“There seem to be some startling similarities between Sedgwick’s case and the birds, sir,” I started.
“Really?” Gaskell said, sounding extremely doubtful.
I nodded, ticking items off my fingers. “There're links to the university and the students, and both incidents happened pretty close together, but that could be a coincidence. Then there’s the neatness of the killings, and, most significantly, the positioning of the body into a pose and then being left out to be discovered. Those aspects track across the birds and the student.” Gaskell frowned at me. “The birds were strangled, we were told, so if the student’s post-mortem examination points to her having been strangled too, we believe it would be likely that the cases are linked, sir.”
Gaskell was silent for a long moment. “I’m not convinced,” he said finally. “But,” he held up a hand when I went to argue, “we’ll see what the post-mortem tells us shortly.”
“I’m concerned about Abby’s safety,” I said. “If it is the same person, then they might target her next-”
Gaskell hummed. “It’s a reach, Mitchell.” He looked at me for a long moment, and I looked back. “The post-mortem will be done by tomorrow or the day after,” he concluded. “We’ll see what measures need to be taken after that comes back. Until then, tell the student to stay with her friends and not go out alone.”
I pressed my lips together. Gaskell hadn’t entirely dismissed us, but he also hadn’t been convinced enough to have someone stationed outside Abby’s building.
“Yes, sir,” I said reluctantly. I thought about the student who’d died at the club. She’d arrived with her friends, and yet she’d still been targeted. “Do we know the identity of the student who died?” I asked.
Gaskell glanced down at the paperwork on his desk. “Hannah Clements. She’d only been in York a week. Her parents have been informed.”
I closed my eyes briefly, a wave of sadness passing over me, before I focused back on the task of catching the person who’d done this.
“And did they find the footage-?”
“Mitchell,” Gaskell cut me off. “This isn’t your case. Until there’s more evidence that it really is linked to yours, this is Sedgwick’s, and I trust him to deal with it. You’ve got until the end of the week on the case you’re on, and then you’ll both be moved to something else. Understood?”
“Yes, sir,” I gritted out. It was a Wednesday, so that only gave us three days, including today.
As Stephen and I walked back to our desks, I promised myself that I’d try my damnedest to figure this one out before Gaskell booted us onto another case. I hoped the post-mortem would show that my hunch was correct, but until then, we had work to do.
Seven
Despite Stephen and I’s best efforts, we didn’t manage to extract any new leads from the information we had, and by the time Friday rolled around, I was getting frustrated.
“The post-mortem’s meant to come in today,” Stephen offered, as I was brooding over another cup of coffee, my third already, and it wasn’t yet lunchtime.
I sighed. “True.”
We’d worked with the tech guys to try to get anything more from the website, but there was nothing. I’d checked with Sam in the lab, but she’d only been able to confirm that the second bird killings hadn’t been the same as the first, which we knew. We’d talked again to Dan, who was out on bail and didn’t know any more about the first dead birds left outside Abby’s door than we did. In fact, he knew even less, because he’d not even seen them before they were removed or seen the photos of them. We talked again to the flatmates, particularly the ones that’d been out the first time we visited but didn’t gain much from them. We talked to Abby herself again too, but I’d hoped the flatmates might be able to tell us something that Abby was too afraid to. No luck there.
I was staring at my computer, trying to think of another angle we could come at the case by, before Gaskell broke my thought process by beckoning us over to his office. I perked up, hoping it would be something useful, and preferably about the post-mortem. Gaskell had his office phone to his ear and was nodding as he listened as he waved us inside and I closed the door.
“Thank you for informing us. We’ll be over shortly.” Gaskell hung up the phone and looked at us, steepling his hands on the desk. He looked serious, his mouth set in a thin line.
“There’s been another case of dead creatures being left outside someone’s door,” he said, frowning. “This time, it’s a university lecturer.”
“Oh,” I said eloquently. I hadn’t been expecting that, or not exactly. I had thought that Abby’s case wouldn’t be the end of it, but I’d not quite expected it so soon. “Birds again?”
Gaskell shook his head. “A dead fox.” Stephen made a softly disgusted sound beside me.
“We’ll head over straight away,” I said, and Gaskell nodded, writing down the address and the lecturer’s name for us.
“It’s off-campus,” Gaskell said. “So even if the first case with the student was, for some reason, picked at random, this one certainly wasn’t. Whoever did it had to have known a university teacher lived there.”
I hummed. I didn’t think Abby had been picked at random. The birds left had been too precise to suggest that the person who did it was striking completely without reason, which was unlikely in any case. But it did seem significant that this time, it had happened off campus, as if the perpetrator was deliberately saying that they could reach anywhere.
Gaskell sent us off, and we almost bumped into Sedgwick, who was heading towards Gaskell’s office as we were leaving. He sent us a cold look that was verging on a glare, and I looked at him coolly in response, watching him stalk into the office and pointedly close the door behind him.
“Yeah, he doesn’t like us,” Stephen said. “Or mostly, he doesn’t like you.”
“You think?”
We grabbed our coats from our desks and got on our way, leaving the station and driving back towards the university. I certainly didn’t need directions to navigate the route anymore, with the number of times we had travelled it in the last week or so.
We didn’t go directly to the university, though, but turned off slightly beforehand, and Stephen told me which lanes to take until we reached the lecturer’s house. Her name was Taylor Solomons, Gaskell had written down, and her house was a small but neat terrace, lined up in a tidy row with a number of other such houses along a street a little way off the main thoroughfare. She had a boxy front garden, only about six feet by six feet, which was lined with colourful flowers, despite it being late September now.
We parked up nearby, drawing a few curious looks from people passing, and walked over to Taylor’s door to knock. The dead fox certainly wasn’t still on her doorstep, and I frowned, hoping that it hadn’t been thrown out without any pictures being taken, or thrown out at all in fact.
Taylor answered the door almost immediately, as if she’d been hovering nearby. She was about medium height for a woman and wearing jogging pants and a tank top with a woollen cardigan over the top. Her brown hair, which lay in layered waves, was rumpled and there was a worried line on her brow. She wrapped her arms around herself after she’d opened the door, and I felt immediately protective of her, somehow. She looked about my age or slightly older, but her hunched shoulders made her look smaller and in need of reassurance.
“Hi,” she said quietly. A large tortoiseshell cat rubbed against her leg, its tail curled around her ankle. Taylor lifted a slender hand to point behind us, pulling my attention back to her, and Stephen and I both turned around instinctively, but there wasn’t anyone there.
“Down there,” Taylor prompted, pointing towards the corner of her small garden. I blinked, realising that somehow, I’d failed to spot the dead fox that’d been tucked in amongst the plant pots.
“Is that where you found it?” I asked, surprised that she’d even seen it.
But she shook her head. “No, it was on my doorstep, just in front of where y
ou are standing. I didn’t want the neighbours seeing it,” she said apologetically, “so I shifted it down there.”
I hmmed, wishing that she’d left it where it was, but what was done was done. “Did you take a picture before moving it?”
She chewed her lip and shook her head. “Sorry, no. But I didn’t change its position or anything,” she added, “just put it on the cardboard.” She pulled a face that communicated how little she’d wanted to touch the animal, then focused on me, her eyes a very pretty shade of blue. “I’m sorry, I didn’t ask your names?”
“Oh,” I said, “we forgot to introduce ourselves.” I fished my badge out of my pocket and offered it to her. “I’m DCI Mitchell, and this is DI Huxley.”
She smiled shakily. “Hi. Taylor Solomons.” She held out a hand, and after a second of surprise, I reached out and shook it. Her small hand was cooler than mine, and she lingered a moment before letting go, turning to shake Stephen’s hand briefly.
“Do you want some tea?” she asked, looking at me again.
“Uh, sure, thanks,” I said, and Stephen nodded too.
She headed back into the house, the cat trotting after her with its tail in the air, and I released a breath. Stephen started chuckling beside me, before he elbowed me.
“What?” I said, though I couldn’t put much conviction into my glare. Stephen wiggled his eyebrows.
“I think someone’s got a crush on the teacher, hm?” he teased.
“Oh, shut up,” I muttered. I pulled my thoughts away from Ms Solomons’ blue eyes and walked over to frown down at the poor fox on the piece of cardboard. It laid in the shadow, and I couldn’t make it out too clearly in today’s dull light.
Getting my phone out, I turned on the torch and crouched down beside the dead animal, running the light over it. No blood. Again, it was neat. I didn’t know what position foxes naturally adopted after death, but the arrangement of the creature’s limbs didn’t look at all natural to my inexpert eye. It looked poised, in a way, with its front legs tucked up close to its furry chest, and its back legs extended.
“Arranged again,” Stephen agreed with my thinking, and I nodded. Stephen cocked his head, considering it. “Looks like its jumping.”
I nodded. “You’re right.” The fox did look like it was mid-leap. Just like the birds had been arranged as if they were flying. Dead animals made to look alive and killed so neatly that no injury was obvious. It was all strange, and unease itched at me.
I sighed and stood up, looking down at the animal for a long moment. If it wasn’t for how stiff it was, it almost looked like it might turn its head and sit up at any moment. But it didn’t move as I looked at it, and it couldn’t tell me who had done this.
Taylor returned with two mugs of tea and invited us into the house to drink them. Her house was a pleasant space, tidy and bright, and her kitchen was done up in an old, farmhouse style that I always associated with a cosy homeliness. The cat purred like a motorbike and butted its head up against my leg until I petted it, making me chuckle.
We sat down at her oak dining table, and I sipped absently at my tea while Stephen asked the basic questions of when Taylor had found it, and whether she could think of anyone who might have done this.
“I don’t know. I have no idea,” she said, as Abby had. “I don’t have any creepy exes, if that’s what you mean. I almost thought at first that the fox,” she waved vaguely towards the front garden, “might’ve died on my porch, you know?” I nodded. This wasn’t like the birds, which had been left inside Abby’s flat. “But I’d heard about the incident with the student,” Taylor said, “and the fox didn’t look… normal, somehow.”
I nodded again. “How did you hear about the student?” I wondered aloud. “Do you teach her? Did she attend any of your lectures for her courses?”
She shook her head, and my hope of a connection deflated. “Ah, no.” She shrugged with one shoulder, before pulling her cardigan more tightly around her. “News travels fast at the uni, and I do teach second-years, which is what I believe the student was?”
I nodded. “Have any of your students seemed particularly anti-social?” I asked. A perpetrator of student age could make sense, considering the focus on the university, but Taylor shook her head.
“Not really, nothing that would suggest this, at least not that I’ve noticed.” Her cat rubbed up against her and Taylor bent down to pick it up, settling it in her lap. She looked up and saw me watching, so she gave me a smile. “This is Wanda. She let me know the fox was there. She never claws at the front door like that normally.”
“A guard cat,” I said, smiling slightly. “Nice.” We shared eye contact for a moment before Taylor looked away, and I cleared my throat. “We’ll take some pictures of the animal, and then take it away for you,” I said. I checked my watch. “Are you due at the university today?”
Taylor nodded. “At twelve.”
I made a noise of acknowledgement. “Do you walk in?”
“I can drive today?” she said, a question. I nodded.
“Might be a good idea. I don’t really think there’s anything to worry about,” I added honestly, when she looked justifiably worried, “just don’t go walking alone at night, if you can help it, okay?”
“Sure,” she agreed easily enough. There was still a wrinkle of worry at her forehead, and it made me want to fix things for her in a way that would smooth it away.
I checked my watch and finished off the dregs of the tea before standing up, and Stephen followed me.
“Thanks for talking to us,” I said. I patted my pockets and cursed quietly. Stephen looked at me in surprise and then started laughing.
“Still, Mitchell?” he said. I sent him an exasperated look.
“Huxley,” I said, giving Taylor an apologetic look though a smile lingered at my mouth, “would you be so kind as to give the lady one of your cards?”
“Sure,” Stephen said, making a performance of getting out one of his cards and offering it to Taylor, who looked amused but a little confused.
“I need to get some printed,” I explained. “But it hasn’t exactly been high on my list of priorities recently.”
Stephen rolled his eyes. “You’re welcome to keep stealing mine until you get some.”
“Gee thanks,” I said before my expression settled into seriousness as I looked over at Taylor. “We’ll be following this up and doing our best to get to the bottom of it. But call us the moment anything feels off, okay? If there are any more incidents, or you see anything that worries you, give us a ring.” I pointed to the card in her hand, and Stephen nodded, too.
“I will,” Taylor said. “Thank you both.”
We saw ourselves out and went back to the car to fetch a bag large enough for the fox, only to find that there wasn’t one. I ended up carrying the unnaturally arranged fox on the slightly damp cardboard Taylor had put it on and setting it down in the car boot.
“I want the car deep cleaned after all this,” I muttered.
Stephen grunted. “It’s not exactly messy,” he pointed out.
I pulled a face, closing the boot and hiding the fox from sight. “It’s the principle of the thing.” Then, as I got into the front passenger seat I mused, “That Dan kid’s out on bail, but I truly doubt that this was him.”
Stephen nodded, turning the car key in the ignition. “Yeah. It’s completely in the style of the first incident, not the second.”
“He’ll go to magistrates soon enough and probably get off with a fine and community service.”
Stephen made a quiet grunt of agreement as he took us back towards the station. “Maybe it’ll be enough,” he said. “He’s not done something like that before.”
I wrinkled my nose. “Horrible thing to do.”
“I know. Still, I reckon he’s nothing more than an entitled, spoilt kid, not actually bad all the way through.”
“Hope so,” I said, “for his sake.”
“Not like whoever killed that student, Hann
ah,” Stephen added quietly. “That was evil.”
I glanced at him, catching the furrow at his brow, and wondered if he was thinking of his own little girl. I reached over and squeezed his shoulder.
“You’ve said yourself that we’ve got to trust the other officers,” I said gently. “Sedgwick will do a good job investigating, and that’s all we can do too right now.”
Stephen sighed. “Guess so.”
The car radio crackled, and Gaskell called in. I answered it, since Stephen was driving, and Gaskell told us to get a move on back to the station. He didn’t explain any further and Stephen and I shared a glance.
Stephen took us over there and parked up, before we walked in a determined silence up to Gaskell’s office.
“Sir?” I said politely. His door had been open, and he told us to come in right away. He was standing up and straightening the papers on his desk. He didn’t make a move to sit as we entered, and I watched curiously as we waited for him to talk.
“The post-mortem came back,” he said, confirming my thoughts on why he’d called us in. He looked up and met my eye. “You were right. She was suffocated.” A buzz went through me at the news, a mixture of tension and adrenaline as I thought about what the next step would be.
“Sedgwick isn’t entirely convinced the cases are connected, but we both agree that the similarities are striking.” Gaskell didn’t seem to need a response, so I just nodded. Picking up his papers, Gaskell gestured for us to head out and followed after us, before leading the way towards the meeting room as he spoke.
“I want you to run through the basics of your case with everybody, to fill them in. It might come to nothing, but we’re following all leads. Alright?” He turned to look at both of us as we arrived at the door of the full meeting room, and I nodded. Stephen looked a little pale and Gaskell noticed. “I’ll give you a minute,” he said, before heading inside.
DI Mitchell Yorkshire Crime Thrillers: Book 1-3 Page 31
