Campus Killings

by Oliver Davies

“If we survive Mr Johnson’s self-entitled whining.”

  Stephen huffed a laugh. “Yeah, that’s a big ‘if’.”

  It occurred to me that we were getting on far better now than when we’d first met, and I glanced at Stephen, wondering what had changed. He’d pretty quickly stopped talking down at me, and we were gelling fine as a team now, even working pretty effectively as we had today.

  Stephen noticed my look and my sudden quiet and squinted at me. “What?” he said, almost suspiciously. “Have I got food in my teeth?”

  I broke into a grin. “No, nothing so terrible.”

  He gave me an expectant look. “What, then?”

  I shrugged. “I thought that we seemed to be getting on better today.” Stephen pressed his lips together, and I wondered briefly if I’d just messed up all our progress. “I mean, I’m glad,” I added quickly. “I just-”

  “-wanted to know why I was grumpy with you to start with?” Stephen said, flatly.

  I winced slightly. “Well, yeah.”

  He looked pained, rubbing his palms together in his lap as he avoided my eyes. “I didn’t really think you deserved to be a DCI, okay?” he said finally, sounding somewhat defensive. I kept quiet. “You’d come from who-knows-where, and Gaskell seemed to think a lot of you, and there’s little old me, hoping for the promotion that got handed to you.” Stephen glanced at me, looking apologetic.

  “You were jealous,” I said tightly, not as sympathetic as I probably should’ve been. I couldn’t help but be slightly annoyed that he’d unprofessionally let his own hang-ups get in the way of our working together, even if he had changed his tune fairly quickly.

  Stephen glared at me for a second before he sighed. “Yeah, I was jealous. I didn’t get why Gaskell was so hyped about you when he hadn’t even met you, but then I figured that you actually worked together or something, since he seemed to already know you the other day.”

  I nodded. “He came in to help with a case in Lockdale.”

  Stephen’s eyebrows rose. “Oh,” he said. “The poisoning one that everyone was saying was suicide-”

  “-and it wasn’t, yeah.”

  “Huh.” Stephen looked grudgingly impressed. “We heard about that.”

  “So did I pass the test or...?” I said, knowing I was pushing it a bit, but I wanted to put this behind us.

  Stephen looked sheepish. “Yeah, I’ll get over myself, no worries.”

  “Okay,” I said and gently punched him on the shoulder. “Now, let’s go interview the kid.”

  Stephen exhaled heavily. “Oh, joy.”

  Dan looked up almost eagerly when we came in. “Look, you’ve got to hear me out, I didn’t-”

  I held up a hand. “Steady tiger. You’ll get to say your piece.”

  We sat down, Stephen shooting me a resigned look before we flicked on the recording device and got down to business.

  “Alright, Mr Johnson, did you or did you not leave dead birds outside Abby Gibson’s room this morning?”

  “I didn’t mean any real harm, I can’t get arrested, I-”

  Oh, man, I thought. “Yes or no,” I said sharply, cutting in.

  Dan sagged. “Yeah.”

  “Did you kill the birds?” I asked. Dan’s head stayed down, but he nodded slightly. “I need that response to be verbal, Mr Johnson.”

  “Yeah, okay, yeah. They’re pigeons though. They’re not some rare- rare eagle or something! What’s the big deal here, exactly, no-one got hurt did they?” He held out his hands plaintively as he looked between Stephen and me. If my partner was feeling anything like I was, I doubted there was an ounce of sympathy in either of our faces.

  “Why did you leave the birds outside Miss Gibson’s room?” Stephen said coldly. The look on his face would’ve made me turn and walk quickly the other way if I saw it in a bar.

  Dan seemed to wither under Stephen’s glare. “I only- I mean- It was a joke.”

  “And had you done this ‘joke’ before?” I said, making it clear how uncomical I thought his actions to have been.

  “No!” Dan said sharply. “No, I didn’t do the first ones, right, it wasn’t my idea! I was just- just messing around. I wasn’t doing anything that bad. I’ll pay for like, cleaning the carpet or whatever. Or- or if Abby wants therapy or something.” He looked reluctant even as he said it and my opinion of him went even lower. A kid who was used to paying his way out of stuff, or his parents did it for him. I wondered whether we’d find anything on Dan’s record from his school days when we had a look.

  “Do know who did leave the first birds?” Stephen said.

  Dan shook his head. “Look, I didn’t even see them. I heard Abby going on about it, you know. I don’t know who came up with the whole thing, I mean that’s a pretty weird idea, right? To do that?”

  I hummed noncommittally. I thought it was pretty damn weird for someone to see their flatmate get upset and decide to upset them further by murdering a couple of pigeons.

  “Where did you get the animals?” I asked.

  He shifted uneasily. “There’s a bunch near the river close to town. I took some birdseed, you know, and…” He shrugged, trailing off.

  “Can you elaborate?” I pressed.

  He almost glared at me before catching himself. “I’m not some sadist, man, I didn’t enjoy it if that’s what you’re thinking, alright? I like, grabbed a couple, that was it.”

  “And then?” I didn’t really want to know, but we needed all the details for the recording if Dan wasn’t going to get anything more than a rap on the wrist. The fact that he hadn’t asked for a lawyer yet spoke to either his arrogance in believing he didn’t do anything wrong, or his stupidity.

  He made a stabbing motion with his hand, and Stephen twitched slightly at my side. “Used a barbeque skewer,” he muttered. “I did it fast. Didn’t really want to make them suffer or anything, I’m not evil.”

  I grunted. “Didn’t leave it at that though, did you?”

  He did glare at me then, long and intent. I raised my eyebrows at him coldly. Annoying me with his attitude was hardly going to help, and he seemed to realise after a minute.

  “I wanted to scare her a bit,” he admitted. “So I made it a bit more… gory. I wanted to creep her out a bit. I was giving her something to talk about! She likes the attention really…”

  He eventually fell silent, perhaps finally noticing my and Stephen’s stony faces. I’d wanted to cut him off a while back, but he was digging his own grave, and I was fine with letting him.

  He pulled a worried face. “I’m sorry, I won’t do it again, right? I’ve never done anything like that before. It was a mistake. I was, like, annoyed at her. I’ll stay away from her and all.”

  I looked over at Stephen, and he nodded at me. “I think we’re done here,” I said. Dan was cruel, arrogant and frankly irritating, but I didn’t think he’d had anything to do with whoever had so precisely left the first birds. And it was those that worried me more, with the deliberateness and carefulness of how they’d been killed. It spoke of practice and focus, and I didn’t like the picture that painted of the sort of person who would do that, and would want to.

  “Come on, can’t you give me a break-”

  We escorted Dan back down to the custody cells, ignoring his rambling protestations that he didn’t mean to do it, like he could’ve killed and mutilated two birds and then left them outside Abby’s door by accident.

  “Glad that’s over with,” Stephen grumbled after we’d snagged a cup of coffee for me and a tea for him from the break room.

  “For sure.”

  He peered over at my coffee and pulled a judgemental expression that reminded me of the look on the face of my previous partner, Kay, when she’d first seen how I liked my coffee.

  “You don’t have milk in that?”

  I snorted a laugh. “And ruin it, no thanks.”

  Stephen’s eyebrows rose higher. “Ruin what? I doubt you’d even taste the milk, to be honest. That looks like a-
ten espressos in a cup.”

  I took a sip. Yep, piping hot and pretty lethal. “Sounds about right.”

  Stephen shook his head in disbelief. “I’ll stick to my builder's tea, then. Anyone ever tell you that’ll give you, like, a stomach ulcer or-”

  “Or a heart attack, or stain my teeth, or make my hair fall out?”

  He looked at me. “Someone told you strong coffee would make your hair fall out?”

  I grinned. “They did. Some older guy who I was talking to in his house, he offered me a drink, and then said I’d lose all my hair by forty if I drank anything stronger than tea.”

  Stephen blinked. “Sounds like an interesting guy.”

  “Sure was.”

  Stephen’s stomach grumbled aloud, and my own belly felt a little unhappy with only coffee in it. “Second lunch?” I suggested.

  We headed over the road for more sandwiches and ate at our desks. In my case, I was trying not to get mayonnaise on my paperwork, but the sandwich was tasty enough to be worth it when I eventually did.

  Looking back over everything, I thought again about how different Dan’s extremely messy killing of the birds had been to whoever had snared and strangled the first ones.

  “How do people learn that kind of thing?” I wondered aloud, my chin in my hand as I frowned.

  “What?” Stephen said, breaking me out of my thoughts. He was looking at me like I was short of a marble or two. “Learn what?”

  I waved a hand vaguely. “Killing birds so neatly. Like, it could’ve been practice, sure, which would be creepy enough. But absolutely everything’s on the internet these days…”

  “So you were thinking they like, what, watched a YouTube video on murdering birds in a discreet way?”

  “Yeah?” I said. “People do hunt with snares, don’t they? It’s not illegal in wild places.”

  “Not the centre of York, though.”

  “No,” I agreed. “But, still, they could’ve gotten the skills online.”

  Stephen shrugged. “Maybe so, but how does that help exactly?”

  I pulled a face. “I don’t know, really. I was spitballing.”

  Stephen looked unconvinced by my theory but still offered, “Well, you could see if the tech guys have a minute to look into it. See if they can, I don’t know, see if anyone local’s been doing that sort of thing.”

  I sighed. “I don’t know if they can do that, it’s basically all wizardry to me.”

  Stephen looked sympathetic. “Oh, I’m the same. My wife’s a tech expert, where I struggle to even get the TV to work sometimes. Who needs a goddamn smart TV, anyway, right? I was fine with dumb TVs that you could operate with buttons and-”

  “Gave you a static shock when you touched the screen? The ones that were as deep as they were wide?” I joked.

  He gave me a false glare. “Yeah, those. At least I didn’t need, like, a ritual offering to make those old things play Gardeners’ World.”

  I shook my head, laughing quietly. “Sure, mate.” I patted him on the shoulder. “It’ll all be controlled by your mind soon enough, so I wouldn’t bother learning to be honest.”

  Stephen smiled back. “That’s what I tell my other half! But she doesn’t seem to find it funny.”

  I left him to his paperwork and went off to talk to the tech guys in the hope that they wouldn’t laugh at me when I told them what I was looking for.

  And they didn’t laugh, to my relief, but the tech guy did pull a dubious expression.

  “I’ll give it a shot,” he said, with a Yorkshire accent thick enough to rival mine when I was annoyed. “But I don’t promise anything, alright? We usually need a bit more information than that.”

  “Yeah,” I said apologetically. “Sorry. It’ll probably be someone fairly young, since their attention seemed focused on this university student. And it’ll be primarily methods of snaring birds, not shooting or anything. We thought there might be some kind of hunting forum, or YouTube channel, one local to Yorkshire or something.” The guy, Andrew, nodded, but he still looked hesitant. I sighed. “Well, don’t worry about it. If you find something, that’d be magic, but I know I’m asking a lot.”

  “I’ll have a go, no worries.”

  “Ta,” I nodded and jogged back down the stairs.

  “Any luck?” Stephen asked.

  I shrugged. “He didn’t say it was impossible.”

  We spent the rest of the afternoon dealing with the paperwork from Abby’s second incident report, following up a couple of calls to the university, and filling in Gaskell on what had gone on so far. Gaskell was somewhat distracted by another case that was commanding more of his attention and only wanted the CliffsNotes version, trusting us to deal with the case best as possible.

  Stephen left at half five on the dot, wanting to be back home to see the kids and made tea for his wife, no doubt, and I headed out fairly soon after, since there wasn’t much more to be done right now.

  I switched into the running gear I’d stashed in the locker I’d been given downstairs and took the long way home.

  It was a pleasant day, still surprisingly warm even as the autumn evenings began to close in. It was getting towards mid-September, but still mild enough that I only needed a base layer when I was out running, and for work, a blazer over my work shirt in the cool mornings was more than enough.

  The leaves had started to turn too, which brought the attractiveness of York out best, with the sunset oranges and reds setting off the yellow stone walls and buildings. But the leaves hadn’t started falling yet, so I didn’t have to watch out for slippery patches as I ran and so I made quick progress through town up towards Clifford's tower and the museum which looked stately against the faded blue sky.

  I ran alongside the river for a short way, before dusk started setting in and my legs were getting heavy. I hadn’t been running as much here in York as I had in Lockdale, and the evening run was enough to tire me out fully, even with barely any hills involved. York was definitely beautiful, but it was also stubbornly flat, which was a damn shame for a fell runner. I’d have to hunt out some hilly parts, or maybe sprint up and down the Clifford’s tower hill a few dozen times, if I got really desperate. There was a sign telling people not to do that, however, and it might look a little naff for a police officer to go ignoring public safety signs, I told myself wryly.

  Overall, I felt relatively peaceful as I headed back towards my rented flat, which was probably going to be chilly, since I’d forgotten to put a timer on the heating. I was looking forward to a hot shower and watching TV with a beer or a glass of wine, if I had any in. I hadn’t forgotten Abby’s case, and I knew it’d stay ticking over at the back of my mind, probably for most of the evening, but the run had given me something of a break from my brain picking it all apart and putting it back together over and over. Stephen and I would get stuck back in tomorrow, but the success of at least getting Dan to own up had earned both of us a quiet night.

  Five

  The heavens opened as I was jogging to work in the morning and left me looking like I’d gone for a swim by the time I arrived. The lady at the front desk hid a smile behind her hand, and I gave her a sheepish grin in return. I headed straight for the showers to get myself presentable, before climbing up the stairs to the third floor. My legs protested on the way up, and I tutted at myself. My fitness level had dropped since coming to York, and I was getting to the point where it would only become much harder to get back to peak condition if I didn’t do something about it soon. I really did need to find some hills, or God forbid, go to a gym and use an uphill treadmill.

  “Why’re you looking so glum?” Stephen asked as I came in. He was dressed warmly and had an enormous mug of tea on the table in front of him.

  “Is that a soup bowl?” I asked, coming over.

  Stephen looked at me, unimpressed. “It’s mine. You’re not stealing it to fill it with your deadly coffee.”

  “The thought never crossed my mind,” I lied cheerfully.

>   “You dodged my question,” Stephen noted. “Why the long face? Isn’t running meant to give you a high or something?”

  I huffed, flopping down into my work chair with a slight wince at the ache in my thighs. “Oh, I’m missing running on the fells.” Stephen groaned, tipping his head back. I looked at him in amusement. “What?”

  “Really?” he said. “Not only do you run for fun, but you run up mountains?”

  I snorted, waiting for my computer to load up while Stephen looked at me like I was an alien for liking exercise. “They weren’t exactly mountains. Though I did run up Snowdon once.”

  Stephen rolled his eyes. “Of course you did. And probably while you were on holiday, too. For fun.”

  “Yep,” I said chuckling. “You should try it sometime.”

  He glared at me, a smile still twitching at his mouth. “Are you saying I’m fat, DCI Mitchell?”

  “Wouldn’t dare, DI Huxley.”

  He shook his head at me. My computer finally loaded up, and I opened up my emails, leaning forwards when I saw that there was one from the lab team.

  “Anything interesting?” Stephen said.

  I scanned the email and nodded in satisfaction. “Sam, from the lab folks, says her investigations confirm the conclusions we came to. And what Dan said.”

  “The birds weren’t strangled; they were killed with a skewer?”

  “Yes, followed by a lot of messiness afterwards.”

  “Grim.” He paused. “And the tech team? Anything back about your internet hunch?”

  “Not yet, but they’re probably busy with bigger cases-”

  My desk phone rang as I was speaking. Surprised, I leaned forwards to pick it up, wondering if it was Gaskell wanting an update.

  “Hi, this is Andrew,” a strong Yorkshire accent said on the other end, and it took me a second to place the name. Andrew, the tech guy.

  “Hi,” I said, “have you got something?” I couldn’t keep the hopefulness out of my voice.

  “We might have,” Andrew said. “I thought it was going to be looking for a needle in a haystack… in the dark, kind of thing, you know? And we didn’t find any forums on hunting with snares specific to York, or not any that looked useful to you.”