I gave him a hard look. “We’re asking the questions here, and we’d appreciate you answering them.”
Stephen decided to take on a ‘good cop’ role and added more gently, “We’re just looking into a case, Mr Smith, and being thorough. We’re not here to get you into any trouble if you don’t give us a reason to.”
Andy looked between us and nodded. “Okay, I guess I scared them by following them, you know, the classic stalker thing.” He grimaced, looking embarrassed. “I sent them scary letters, emails, texts if I could get their number. I made up lies about them and told their friends.” He was looking down at the floor again, his leg bouncing. “I tried to make them as miserable as me, really.”
“Did you send them anything else?” I pressed. “Anything physical?” I didn’t want to ask leading questions, but I did need to know.
He shot me a confused look and then nodded. “I sent weird presents, sometimes. Not nice things. Like, a knife once. Or chocolates that I’d put laxatives in.” His face was hot, and his shoulders hunched. “Look, I’m really sorry for what I did then, seriously. It was so messed up. I’ve not talked to any of them recently and I never will, okay?”
I kept my face blank but sighed inwardly. No mention of dead animals, no sign he was holding something like that back, nothing that really suggested that this guy was anything other than a reformed creep.
Stephen leaned forwards slightly, and Andy focused on him. “Did you ever think about taking it further?” Stephen said, his voice quiet.
Andy blinked. “Further? Further than scaring them?” He pressed his lips together thinly and shrugged one shoulder. “Think about it? Yeah,” he admitted. “But I never would’ve. Not even back then, in the worst of it. I didn’t really- Well, I did want to hurt them, I guess, but I didn’t want to really hurt them. Just… scare them.”
He looked genuinely upset and repulsed by his own actions, and I accepted his words with a nod.
“I really have got help, moved on,” he said quickly, as if we’d misconstrue what he’d said. “Went to see a psychologist, went on meds for a while. I’m tee-total now, don’t touch alcohol. You can ask Lindy, or my parents, or-”
I held up a hand, and he broke off. Looking over to Stephen, I gave him a shrug that meant ‘I don’t think this is useful,’ and he nodded back.
“Alright,” I said to Andy, who was looking anxious. “Thanks for your time, Mr Smith, we appreciate you talking to us.”
I stood up, and Andy looked surprised. “That’s it?” he said.
“Aye,” I shrugged, before pausing. “You seemed to have gotten yourself together,” I said, “I don’t think you’re who we’re looking for. Keep it up, okay? You’ve got it good, and your Lindy seems nice.”
Andy’s shoulders sunk in relief, and he gave me a hesitant grin. “Yeah, I know. She’s a keeper.”
I gave him a nod, and we saw ourselves out, leaving Andy sitting on the sofa.
“You believe him?” I asked Stephen in the car.
“Yeah, reckon so,” he said, looking disappointed. “Which means we’re no further forward.” He put the car in gear and headed off down the road. “We off to see this Will bloke next, then?”
“Might as well,” I agreed. “Though I don’t have high hopes. The address we’ve got is a few years old and is probably only his parents’ address, anyway.”
“Hopefully they’ll know where he is, though.”
I nodded in agreement, fiddling with the dials to get the heat turned up and then flicking the radio back on before settling back in my seat.
The address in Will’s file had been on the other side of Yorkshire, and well up in the hills, so it would take us a couple of hours to get there, I reckoned. Stephen seemed happy to drive for the first half, and we stopped at the services around eleven to grab a bite to eat and swap over.
Picking out some coffee and a blueberry muffin, I found myself thinking about how many runs I’d done recently, before Stephen’s words from yesterday came back to me. He was seemingly not paying attention, but I bought the muffin almost out of defiance and munched it happily in the car.
“Nice, huh?” Stephen said, watching me enjoy it.
“Aye, and all for me,” I said, hoovering up the crumbs.
He snorted. “I’m good with my bacon butty, ta for the offer, mate.”
“You’re welcome,” I chuckled. He was still eating, and getting ketchup all down his chin, as I pulled back onto the motorway. We pulled off on an exit soon after and began to climb. The streets turned into little, winding roads with stone walls and more fields more full of sheep than buildings.
“They’re way out in the country, if this is where his parents are,” Stephen noted, looking out of his side window and watching the bare landscape go by through glass still speckled with the rain that’d come down earlier.
I nodded. “Even my old station wasn’t as remote as all this.”
Stephen snorted. “You getting nostalgic, Mitchell? Maybe we can ask if they have any missing sheep you can track down.”
I sent him an unimpressed look, and the brief distraction made me miss our next turn, which only made Stephen smugger. I muttered curses at him as I struggled to do a three-point turn in the tiny road. Then I pointedly turned the radio up when he tried to tease me further.
We finally got up to the address, which belonged to an old house situated amongst a cluster of similar dwellings, too small to even be called a village, just an isolated high hamlet. At least a couple of the houses looked to be boarded up and abandoned.
“Place looks friendly,” Stephen said dryly.
“Mm,” I agreed, looking up at the old place, which looked dull and quiet.
We got out of the car and headed up the front path to the door.
“Can I help you?” an older looking man asked, when our knocking was answered.
“We’re looking for a Will Seton, is he here?”
The man’s eyes widened slightly, before he grunted and stepped back. “Y’better come in.”
We trooped inside, into a drafty hallway that was only fractionally warmer than the outside had been. The grey-haired man led us into a living room, where an open fire was burning heartily, to my relief. A woman, about the same age as our host, was sitting in an armchair and drinking tea. Her only response to our arrival was a raise of her thin eyebrows.
“This about Will?” she said.
“Aye,” the man said. He gestured vaguely for us to take a seat which we did. Although the house had looked somewhat neglected on the outside, the inside was decorated with warm furnishings and smelled like baking bread.
“Are you Will’s parents?” I asked, getting straight to the point.
“Aye,” the man said. “Aidan, and this be my wife, Julie.”
I introduced Stephen and myself, and I was about to begin asking questions when Julie cut me off.
“Has something happened? To Will? Has he done something?”
I paused. “Nothing has happened to him. We’re looking into a case and knowing his whereabouts would be helpful to him and us both .”
Julie glanced over at Aidan, who was staring into the fire with an unfathomable expression on his drawn face.
“We don’t know where he is,” Aidan said in a deep voice, like stones grating together. “He doesn’t call, and he doesn’t visit.”
Julie nodded, her face downcast. “We haven’t seen him since he emptied out his room and left, drove off with nary a word.”
Stephen and I shared a look. “Do you know where he might be living?”
Aiden curled his lip. “If he doesn’t talk to us, how’d we know?”
Julie hushed him gently. “Last we spoke, he was living in York,” she told us. “That was right after,” she trailed off.
“Right after?” Stephen prompted.
Julie blinked, her fingers rubbing against the side of her teacup. “Yes, that was following his expulsion.” She sighed quietly and took a sip of tea. The fire crackled in the backgroun
d.
“Can you give us that address?” I prompted.
Julie hummed and nodded, standing up with a faint grimace as her knees clicked. We were left alone with Aidan, who seemed determined to pretend as if we weren’t there. I could hardly blame him. This seemed to be a difficult subject for them, that of their wayward son whose whereabouts they seemed to have no idea of.
“What’s he like, Will?” Stephen asked. I wasn’t sure Aidan was going to answer with how long he stayed silent for.
“Trouble,” he said finally, before he gave a humourless laugh. “He was always difficult. Something we did wrong, I s’pose. Smart as a whip, but always in trouble.”
“What kind of trouble?”
Aidan made a disgruntled noise in his throat, before he turned to look straight at us. “The kind that makes you regret becoming a father,” he said darkly.
I blinked, pulling back from the intensity in Aidan’s expression, before he turned back to the fire. Julie returned with the address I’d requested before I could pry more information from Aidan, and yet I was almost relieved. Aidan’s haunted eyes unnerved me, and this old, remote house up on the high moors was making me think of my last case, where my friend had been murdered up in his own secluded home.
“And places of work?” Stephen asked, when I stayed quiet, lost in my thoughts. The wind was bumping up against the windows, and I looked out them onto the moors.
Julie thought for a minute. “He worked in a bar while he was at university,” she said slowly. “I forget the name. Dear, do you remember?” she asked Aidan.
He grunted, which I took for the negative. I sighed.
“A phone number for Will?” I asked, a little desperately.
Julie still had her address book in her lap and flipped back to the right page. “We don’t use those smartphones,” she said, emphasising the word like it was unfamiliar in her mouth, “but this is his, or it was back then anyway.”
“Good, thank you,” I said, hesitantly hopeful. A mobile number, if registered to a contract, could be traced back to an owner.
“Do you remember anything about the bar he worked at?”
Julie hesitantly shook her head. “I’m sorry, Officer.” She paused. “It might have started with a ‘b’.”
I held back a grimace and just nodded. I glanced over at Stephen to make sure he was writing this down, which he was.
There wasn’t really any nice way to put my next question, so I just asked it. “Is there a possibility that your son might have engaged in… harmful behaviours towards others?” I said. There, that wasn’t quite as bad as asking ‘do you believe your son capable of murder?’.
Julie drank her tea, avoiding looking at us and Aidan kept his silence.
“He’s always been troubled,” Julie said finally, looking down at her teacup. Her thin hand was shaking. “He could be charming, and then cruel, all at once.”
Charming. That was the word Taylor had used too.
“Did he have a history of harming animals?” Stephen asked.
I saw from Julie’s wince the answer to that question even before she nodded wordlessly.
“Did he follow people? Harass them?” I asked.
But Julie shook her head at that. “No,” she said faintly. “He preferred to…” she broke off.
Aidan stood up abruptly, and both Stephen and I started, though Julie didn’t.
“You’re upsetting my wife,” he said. “It’s time you left. You have your information.”
I looked back at Julie, hoping she’d finish her sentence, but other than setting her teacup down on the little table by her side, she didn’t move to intercept her husband, nor to look at us again.
“Aye, we’ll go,” I said. I still had my coat and shoes on, and it was a matter of walking to the door. Aidan followed us out, like he didn’t trust us not to go poking our noses around.
Honestly, I would’ve loved to have asked if they still had Will’s childhood bedroom set up, but Aidan’s attitude made it clear that further intrusions wouldn’t be welcome. It would be better not to sour them completely, I thought, in case we needed to talk to them again.
Outside, the wind buffeted us with an unexpectedly strong gust, and Stephen momentarily lost his footing on the slick paving stones of the path. He only just caught himself by grabbing onto the rickety wall, thickly coated with a layer of verdant moss.
“You alright?” I asked, as he recovered his balance.
“Yep.” He shook off his wet hand, and we made our way carefully back to the car. I was paying attention to where I was putting my feet, of course, but I also had half an eye on the moors visible not so far away. I felt an ache to be up there that was almost as strong as my pull towards caffeine in the morning.
“Hey, Stephen?” I said as we got into the car.
“Yeah?”
“You know how you wanted to be my favourite partner?”
He frowned suspiciously at me. “What do you want?”
I cracked a smile. “I’m a fell runner at heart. And we’re up in the hills.”
Stephen groaned dramatically, but a smile was twitching at his mouth. “You better not expect me to come up with you?” he said.
I held up my hands. “Wouldn’t dare. But Google says there’s a good pub near here…”
He snorted. “A pub where I can wait for you to get done with your love affair with the moors? And then sit in the car with you all sweaty all the way home.”
“I’d owe you?” I offered.
Stephen shook his head with a chuckle. “What’s the address of this pub then?”
I grinned at him. “Thanks, mate.”
We set the sat nav up to take us down to the pub, Stephen neatly navigating through the tight lanes.
“What did you think of Will’s parents?” I asked as Stephen drove.
He blew out a breath between his teeth. “I don’t know, really. I can’t imagine your kid doing something so bad you… regret having them,” he said slowly, his mouth pulled down at the corners.
“No,” I agreed quietly. “That’s pretty extreme.”
Stephen made a noise of agreement. “So either Will’s really that bad,” he said, “or he’s got bad parents. Or both.”
“Yeah,” I said. I was leaning towards the first one, if I was honest.
Stephen glanced over at me. “You met this bloke, right? What was he like then?”
“Will?” I said, though I knew who Stephen had meant, I was just thinking about my response. “He was- he’s even bigger than you, mate. He was charming in a way, but it was like a crocodile’s smile type thing, you know? Just a veneer. And Taylor, she was more shaken than she’d been when we saw her about that fox.”
“Jesus,” Stephen hissed. “Sounds like a nasty guy.”
I didn’t go into details of why Taylor had been so upset by Will’s appearance, since I felt like she’d told me that in confidence, and instead nodded silently.
“Do you think he’s the one we’re after?” Stephen asked after a heavy second, and his question hung in the air, because that was the question, wasn’t it? Did I think William was not just a stalker but a killer?
“I don’t think we have enough evidence,” I said, bitterness creeping in. “But to be blunt, my gut feeling is that he’s capable of it. Just from the feeling that I got from him and his parents. That’s not evidence, though.”
“No,” Stephen agreed, but he sounded sympathetic.
We pulled into the gravel car park of the pub called The Oak and sat in the car for a moment. Stephen looked like he was thinking, and I left him to it.
Eventually, he sighed. “I’ll go eat my body weight in chips, then,” he said, and sent me a weak smile. “Carbs always make me feel better.”
I gave him a look. “You can always come running?” I offered. “Always helps me burn off the bad feelings.”
Stephen grimaced, but he patted my shoulder. “Thanks, but no thanks.” He gestured down at his clothes. “Plus, I don’t ha
ve any kit. Have you even got your trainers?”
“I stuck my kit bag in the boot before we left,” I said.
Stephen smiled as he pushed his door open, letting in a rush of cold, wet air. “You’re such a boy scout.”
“Enjoy your chips,” I said, before he shut the door and headed into the pub with his shoulders hunched up against the cold.
Bracing the chill, I fetched my gear from the boot and clumsily got changed in the back of the car. The warm pub looked pretty tempting, and I considered just heading inside to grab lunch with Stephen. But, cold as it was, the lack of hills in York had left me desperate for some proper wilderness. It was that that drove me out of the car.
While I’d been looking for a pub for Stephen, I’d also looked up well-rated walking paths and found a track close by. This wasn’t like Lockdale, where I’d known enough of the area not to get completely lost, and I wanted a good path to stick to. It was still solidly daylight too, so though I did pull on my high-viz running jacket in case of the mist coming down, I had no plans to be running in the dark.
Being back up on the moors again, feeling the wet, wild air and the wind on my face, gave me an energy I’d been lacking recently. Running on concrete was all well and good, but there wasn’t the same thrill.
I returned to the pub to meet Stephen with my face hot with exertion, my stomach growling for lunch.
“You look better,” Stephen commented, as I was wolfing down a large plate of shepherd's pie.
“Aye, I feel better, too,” I agreed.
Stephen smiled warmly. “Good,” he said. “Because I’m calling in my favour you can drive us home.”
I groaned, rolling my eyes, but didn’t really mind. The moors had left me feeling brighter and with a renewed determination to find the killer who’d cut short the lives of two young women.
Fifteen
We were most of the way back to the station when my phone started buzzing loudly in my pocket. I was focusing on going around a busy roundabout and didn’t have a spare hand to grab it.
“Stephen, can you…?” I said, watching the road.
“Sure, mate.”
He reached over and plucked the phone out of my pocket, pressing the button to pick up.
Campus Killings Page 16
