DI Mitchell Yorkshire Crime Thrillers: Book 1-3

by Oliver Davies

  Stephen checked his watch. “It’s probably too late for prison visiting hours now.”

  I nodded. “Tomorrow, we’ll go and see what the smug jerk has to say.”

  Twenty

  “Darren, calm down.”

  I shot Stephen a look. “Thanks for saying that. I’m so much calmer now.”

  He huffed a sigh. His body language was more relaxed today, in contrast to my own, which was as tightly wound as a wire coil. His daughter was solidly on the mend, and he was much more like his normal, easy-going self. Unfortunately, I wasn’t in the mood. Memories of Will and I’s fight in the dark kept running through my head and making my fingers twitch on the steering wheel. I didn’t want it to have affected me, for Will to have dug under my skin, but it had.

  Stephen patted my shoulder, and I jumped. His expression was worried when I glanced over, before focusing my attention back on the road. We were driving over to Full Sutton and whilst I wanted more than anything to seal this case up once and for all, getting justice for Emma and Hannah and their families, I wasn’t convinced that this visit was going to help any.

  From what Gaskell had said, Sedgwick had already tried to grill Will and had got nothing but smirking silence, and legalese from his barrister. He didn’t have a private lawyer, I knew, and his parents hadn’t come to visit him, even though I knew they were aware that he was awaiting his court date in prison, so he wasn’t getting support from outside. No, he was smug because he thought himself too clever for us to have gotten anything on him, and, to a degree, he was right, and it was driving me up the wall. If he hadn’t tried to smash my head in, he would be back out and running free by now.

  “Seriously, are you okay?”

  I turned the radio on and ignored Stephen. I was fine.

  Getting through security at Full Sutton took the best part of half an hour, and then we were shown into a private room. Seton’s legal representative was already there and politely introduced herself as Ms Golding. I was a moment too slow to accept her handshake, but she didn’t seem too bothered.

  “I understand, DCI Mitchell,” she told me. “It’s a difficult situation.”

  “Is it?” I said flatly.

  “Yes. Every person in the criminal justice system is entitled to representation, but you feel like I’m choosing to argue for his side. That upsets you.”

  I pulled out a chair with a harsh scrape of metal over concrete and sat down. “Thanks for the psych analysis.”

  “Darren,” Stephen said gently. “I can handle this if you want.”

  I sent him a cold look that meant that he should shut his trap, and with a small nod, he acquiesced.

  Seton was shown in a minute later, and I watched him walk in. His throat was bruised, still, from where I’d hit him. Whilst my face was still sporting an ugly black eye, and I had stitches in my hand from Cal’s attack, I was darkly glad that Will hadn’t come off completely unscathed from our scuffle.

  There was a slight smile on his face as he was guided into a chair beside his representative by a guard. He watched me in particular, as if he was taunting me. While I hadn’t appreciated Stephen trying to nanny me, I couldn’t argue with the fact that I was emotionally compromised, what with my lingering anger over Will’s attack on me, how he’d terrified Taylor that night in the bar, and more than likely, murdered two young women. But we had no concrete evidence, and Will knew it. If we didn’t dig something else up, Will was going to get charged with assaulting me, and that would be it.

  I had my notebook out to take notes and focused myself on getting my pen out, calming myself down. I wouldn’t help anyone, except, possibly, Will himself by being so righteously angry I couldn’t think straight.

  “Darren,” Will said, startling me slightly. I looked up, meeting his cold eyes. “Nice to see you again. Taylor didn’t say that you were a cop.”

  Stephen looked between us, and I pulled my gaze away from Will to turn to him. “Taylor and I ran into Mr Seton one night near Halloween, remember?” I had told him about it and, after a reminder, he nodded.

  Will smiled that slimy smirk of his. “Nice to see her getting out there. She could do better, though.” He looked me up and down, while the look on his face stayed jovial enough that his taunt could be taken for teasing.

  “Seton,” Stephen interrupted Will. “Tell us about the night of the attack. What were you doing at the university?”

  Will glanced at his legal representative, who silently shook her head. Will looked back at Stephen and shrugged. “I wasn’t on private property. Just a late-night stroll, Officer, nothing illegal about that, is there?”

  I clenched my fist under the table. “What motivated you to attack me?” I asked, as evenly as I could manage. “That seems an extreme reaction, especially if you were only out on a nighttime walk.”

  Seton spread his hands innocently, his handcuffed hands clinking. “I overreacted, Darren. You were following me and, you know, I had a boxing scholarship once upon a time.” The look in his eyes was singularly unnerving, as dark and empty as mining tunnels. “Those sorts of reactions are instinctive.”

  I didn’t react to his revelation about the scholarship, which I’d had no idea about. Had he taken that out of his university file, or had the scholarship been to a high school or college?

  “You hit me on the head with a rock,” I said. “In an ambush. That’s hardly just an instinctive reaction, is it?”

  “My client has given his answer, DCI Mitchell,” Ms Golding said, her melodic voice firm. I resisted the urge to glare at her. She was, after all, just doing her job. I wondered whether it ever skeeved her out, to be representing remorseless pieces of work like Seton.

  Seton leaned forwards in his chair. Unlike the interview we’d had with Cal the previous day, where the young man had pleaded with us, Will’s movement was predatory, and I had to resist the urge to lean backwards.

  “Why’re you really here, Darren?” he asked warmly, in that charming voice of his that ought to have been on radio or narrating a documentary. I hated how he kept using my name, like he was my friend, or just rubbing it in that he knew something I didn’t. “If you wanted to hear my side of things, you could have asked your grumpy colleague. What was his name?” He snapped his fingers and looked expectantly at Ms Golding.

  She pressed her lips together but obligingly answered, “DCI Sedgwick.”

  Will smiled. “Yeah, him. He frowned even more than you, Darren.” He sat back, sprawling in his chair like he was completely at ease. “I told him everything. You’re really wasting your time, fellas, as much as I appreciate the visit.”

  “Is that so?” Stephen said. He opened the file in front of him, which he and I had made up this morning, before we came over here to confront Seton. He pulled out a sheet that I recognised at a glance and began to read one of the texts taken off Cal’s phone, listing an address and when to pick up the dead animals, not that it mentioned the poor creatures in so many words. I studied Will closely, but he didn’t react.

  “Recognise that?” Stephen asked.

  Will shrugged. “I’m sorry I can’t help you, but I’ve no idea why you’re reading addresses at me.”

  It was such a smarmy denial, and I briefly pictured punching Will in his blocky, handsome face. He turned to look at me, the picture of innocence, like he knew exactly what I was thinking and was enjoying it immensely.

  Stephen took out two A4 pictures from the file and turned them to face Will. I couldn’t look at them without my own stomach turning.

  Will leaned forwards and studied them. “Dead girls,” he said. “Nothing to do with me.” His expression was apologetic, and I clenched my jaw.

  Stephen took a deep breath beside me, and I knew he was trying to keep his temper, too.

  “You don’t recognise them?” I asked Seton, tilting my head at him as if I might actually believe him.

  Seton smiled gently, like I was going senile and he was kind. “Never seen them before.”

 
“That’s interesting,” I said. “Because you met both of them. One of them, Emma,” I pointed at the picture, “tipped a drink over you at a party-”

  Will scoffed. “Oh, come on. I can’t be expected to remember that. I was probably pissed, wasn’t I?”

  “And the other,” I continued, “Hannah, had a lot to say about your abhorrent behaviour online. Ringing any bells?”

  Will raised his eyebrows. “Nope. When was this supposed to have happened?”

  I ignored him again, reaching over Stephen to pull Abby’s picture from the file. “This woman, do you recognise her?”

  Obligingly tilting his head to look at the picture, he wrinkled his nose. “Looks vaguely familiar.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “You slept with her. Do you have a diagnosed memory issue, Mr Seton, or are you just lying through your teeth?”

  “Hey now,” Will protested. He grinned. “Maybe it’s different for you, Darren, since you’re getting on a bit, but I’ve got with plenty of girls over the years. Can’t be expected to remember them all, can I? Especially if they weren’t… memorable.”

  I stared at him for a long second, picturing images that were more violent than I might’ve liked to admit to. I gave him a tight-lipped smile as I put Abby’s picture back in the file. “I see.”

  We tried showing him the website we suspected he was in charge of, and Cal’s picture, too, but he kept the same expression of affable apology, claiming that he didn’t recognise any of it.

  I’d reached the end of my tether, and we didn’t have much else to throw at him. He was too confident, and though I’d been hoping it would cause him to make a mistake, so far he’d remained frustratingly collected.

  We were packing up to go when he leaned an elbow on the table and looked at me. “You know what I think, Darren?”

  I looked at him, unimpressed. “What do you think, Seton?”

  “I reckon you’re overthinking it. You want to impress your girl by bagging a big bad guy and playing the hero, right?” He leaned forwards, and the easy-going expression fell off his face, leaving him looking like a shark. “Sometimes girls just go missing, Darren,” he said coldly.

  My heart was pounding, and I couldn’t look away. Even his legal rep looked pale. Stephen had frozen beside me.

  “Sometimes they’re never found,” Will continue in that dead voice, his eyes locked with mine. “They’re not that important, really, are they? There are so many girls who think they’re special, that they’re going to cause waves. But no-one really misses them when they’re gone, or even notices. Not even you, Darren.” He leaned back, and his smiling mask fell back into place, all the creepier after seeing the soulless emptiness it covered. “But I wish you luck, Officers. Let me know if I can help in any way.”

  I felt sick and just turned around and left, leaving Stephen to grab the file and follow me out. As soon as I was through the door and out of Seton’s sight, I fell back against the wall and pressed a hand to my chest, which was painfully tight.

  “Mitchell?” Stephen hurried through the door and spotted me standing by the wall, trying to get breath into my lungs. He swore quietly. “Are you alright?”

  I really wasn’t. Seton was terrifying. He was worse than a shark. He didn’t care about killing because the look in his eyes said that he would not only tear you apart, but enjoy doing it.

  “Darren, breathe, okay? In and out.” Stephen was standing in front of me, his hand on my arm, and I hadn’t noticed him move. My hands felt numb and stinging, like they were buried in blocks of ice. “Deep breath for me,” Stephen coaxed. He was rubbing my shoulder, and I tried to focus on that and not the panic that was making me shiver. “That’s it, good. In and out. Steady, there, you’re alright.”

  My legs felt weak, and I propped myself up against the wall, finally managing to take full, gasping breaths of air.

  “Christ,” I muttered.

  Stephen grimaced. “I know.”

  “Did you hear him?” I said urgently. “All that about girls going missing-”

  “And them not being important?” Stephen finished. “Yeah, I heard.”

  “No,” I snapped. “About them going missing and us not noticing. No-one noticing. Get it?”

  Stephen frowned. “But we did notice,” he said. “He laid them right out- Oh hell.” Realisation dawned. “He’s saying there’s someone we didn’t find.”

  “Someone missing,” I agreed. “Not dead, missing. So they might still be alive.”

  Stephen spat out a curse, quiet and worried. “But he didn’t keep the others,” he pointed out. “They disappeared on the same night they were killed.”

  “He probably realised we were closing in,” I said. “So he kept someone.”

  “I feel sick,” Stephen muttered. “Are you sure? Are we sure? He might just be toying with us.”

  I winced. I was feeling stronger and stood up straight. “Aye, he might. It’s what he seems to be into, making people into puppets. Blackmailing Cal and arranging the dead-” My eyes widened.

  “What?” Stephen said sharply.

  “The scholarship!” I said, too loudly. “He arranged the women into their sports, right? And they had scholarships.”

  Stephen stared me like I’d lost it. “What are you talking about?”

  “He said he had a boxing scholarship. It wasn’t just that they’d gotten on the wrong side of him, but extreme misogyny too. He doesn’t think women are important, and yet they still had their scholarships even after-”

  “He got kicked out for bad behaviour, and had his scholarship stripped away.” Stephen nodded slowly.

  “He’d see it as being robbed of his future,” I said. “And he’s so damn angry that these women still have what he doesn’t.” I rubbed my forehead. “So… if there is another victim, a missing student, she’s likely to have a sports scholarship.”

  We’d started walking down the corridor towards the exit and paused our conversation whilst we had our phones and belongings returned to us. Being out in the fresh air rather than within the grey, oppressive prison walls made me feel immediately lighter.

  “That narrows it down some, at least,” Stephen said as we reached the car.

  I nodded, getting into the passenger seat. I got Gaskell on the phone as we pulled out of the car park and headed back towards the station, and filled him in on the situation.

  “You’ll have checked that the students you know had been targeted are accounted for,” he said. A cold tremor ran down my spine. Abby would be okay, I was fairly sure, but I hadn’t checked in with Taylor for a few days. “He might be messing with us, Mitchell, you know that?”

  “Yes, sir,” I said, a touch sharply. “I’m aware. But we have to assume that there is a student out there that needs help.”

  Gaskell sighed. “Agreed. I’ll leave you in charge of this. Sedgwick can support you if you need it, but he’s best utilised looking for evidence that’ll help put Seton behind bars for good.”

  “Understood, sir. We sent over Cal Melville-”

  “Yes, your interview with him was very illuminating. Sedgwick will be showing him different recordings of male voices, including Seton’s, to see if he can pick Seton’s out of a line-up.”

  I nodded. “That sounds good.” Cal picking Will’s voice out wouldn’t be enough evidence to be conclusive, but it was small pieces of evidence like that that all added up into a larger, more damning picture.

  Gaskell rounded up the call, and I dialled Taylor’s number immediately afterwards.

  “Hello?”

  I relaxed at the sound of her voice. “Hi, it’s Darren.”

  “Oh!” she said, sounding surprised. “Is everything alright?”

  “Aye, it’s all good. I just wanted to check-in.”

  “How’d your head?”

  We fell into small talk, chatting comfortably but with slightly stiff politeness, like old school friends who’d drifted apart.

  “I’ve meant to call, actually,” she said. />
  “Yeah?” I said uncertainly.

  She hummed. “I think… I enjoyed spending time with you, and you’ve been a huge support-”

  “Ah,” I said. I could see where this was going. “I understand, Taylor, it’s okay.”

  “It is?”

  “Yeah. I like you a lot, but it’s okay if good things don’t last forever. We don’t need to stretch it out until we start making each other unhappy.”

  I heard her exhale on the other end. “Good, okay.” She laughed quietly, less from amusement than from a release of tension. “I’m glad we’re on the same page. I wasn’t sure if you were looking for something more long term, and I’m focusing on my academic career right now.”

  “And I’m wrapped up with my work too,” I reassured her. “I hope you can still see me as a friend?” I added hesitantly. “If you ever need a hand in the future, I hope you’ll call.”

  “Thanks, Darren. And the same to you. I might not be able to tackle criminals, but I can write a mean CV.”

  I chuckled. “I bet you can.” There was a pause. “Goodbye,” I said finally, a little sadly.

  “Bye,” she returned softly. The phone beeped in my ear, and I set it down in my lap.

  “She was alright, then?” Stephen asked. His voice was quiet, and I knew he’d gathered the topic of the phone call.

  “She’s fine.”

  I gave myself a minute or so to look out of the window and feel sorry for myself, before I refocused back on task. Abby’s number was saved on my phone, and I called her next. The drive back to the station would take a little while, and there was no reason why I shouldn’t make use of the time.

  After calling Abby, who was safe and well with her parents, I tried the university next.

  “It’ll probably be second or third-year students,” Stephen said as the phone was ringing. “Since first-years-”

  “Won’t have known him,” I finished and nodded. Though, I couldn’t help but think, if Seton had sensed us closing in on him, he might’ve grabbed the first student or young woman he could get hold of, and not have stuck to his pattern. The thought was worrying.