Campus Killings

by Oliver Davies

  My vision went white, and I was clawing at Cal’s arms, trying to get him to let me breathe, but my head was too full of pain to think.

  I blurrily saw Cal’s head jerk up, and the distant sound of voices, and the pressure pushing my head into the ground eased up.

  Think, I ordered myself, think!

  My free hand scrabbled on the ground off to my left, searching for anything. The metal grate was icy under my searching fingers, which were starting to feel numb. My vision was swimming, but when I felt something smooth, I still had enough awareness to realise what I had to do.

  Holding the small piece of glass tight enough that it cut into my skin, I brought my arm up and towards Cal as hard as I could. I’d been aiming for his ribs but managed to hit his shoulder. My thick head hadn’t realised that the glass wouldn’t make it far through Cal’s winter coat, but the shock of my hit was enough to make Cal flinch backwards, and I re evaluated and hit out again.

  My aim was still off as I struggled to control my movements, so the glass ended up scratching deep into his wrist, rather than his hand, which was where I’d been aiming for.

  I heard his shriek of alarm even over the ringing in my ears, and he fell backwards, clutching his bloody wrist. I gasped in a deep, desperate lungful of sweet air and coughed. The glass shard was still in my hand, and I’d only given him a bad scratch. Still, the sight of his blood had scared him, and he was trying to get his feet under him to run off again. I tried to will myself to get up to go after him, but I was still gasping, my chest heaving, and I was shaky enough that I didn’t think my feet would carry me further than a couple of meters.

  The ringing in my ears had lessened, and my head jerked up as I heard shouts calling my name. Cal shot me a panicked look, before turning to stumble away just as a number of officers ran into the street.

  “Here,” I said, but couldn’t get enough breath to make my voice louder than a croak, so I waved my arm instead.

  “DCI Mitchell!” A young constable came running over, looking horrified to see me on the ground, my hand covered in blood, and I could only imagine what kind of expression was on my face.

  I threw out a hand towards the street Cal had disappeared down.

  “He went down there?” the officer checked, and I nodded, only to wince at the awful pain at the back of my head. I wondered if it had hurt this bad when I first did it, because right now it felt even worse.

  With my confirmation, the constable stood up and jogged over to the street while calling out to the other officers. Relieved that the onerous for catching the guy was no longer on me, I cradled my bloody hand to my chest and let my breathing settle back to normal.

  A couple of officers, the ones who hadn’t run off after Cal, came over to me and crouched down. I reached hesitantly behind my head and was pleasantly surprised to find no blood on my fingers. I’d bashed it badly, and it’d probably swell up again, but at least the stitches hadn’t gotten torn in the fight.

  My hand, on the other hand, probably needed stitches, judging from the raw gash the glass I’d grabbed had left in the meaty part of my thumb. The officers carefully helped me to my feet, where I swayed briefly before getting my balance.

  They supported me back to where they’d parked fairly close by, and I gratefully lowered myself inside. I drifted off on the way to the hospital, but when the constable in the passenger seat turned around to look at me, I blinked myself back to focus.

  “They got him, thanks to you holding him up,” she told me, grinning.

  I summoned a smile. “Thank God.”

  The night had gone wrong in almost every way, but at least it had turned out well.

  Nineteen

  A different doctor treated me at A&E and tutted over the swelling on my head, and the gash in my hand, like I’d been intentionally careless. But I was too tired to mind overly much. After the scuffle with Cal and the long wait at A&E, I didn’t get to bed before nearly four in the morning and fell asleep immediately.

  Waking up to my phone buzzing incessantly, I groaned and struggled to pull it out of the pocket of the jeans that I’d never taken off. My hand smarted badly, and my head was worse, my phone’s vibrating already giving me a headache.

  “Mitchell,” I said gruffly. My face felt strange, puffy and tight, and I winced when I touched the skin beneath my right eye. Cal’s punch, I remembered. So I had a black eye too, great.

  “You are alive, then.” Stephen’s voice was heavy and flat.

  I wasn’t awake enough to figure out his tone. “How’s your kid?” I asked.

  Stephen sighed. “She’s okay. The doctor came out to see her and her temperature went down about six this morning.”

  “So you were up all night too.”

  “Yeah.”

  I checked my watch and winced to see that it was one in the afternoon. “You think that Gaskell will forgive me for sleeping in?”

  “Probably,” Stephen said. “You’re his favourite.” He was trying to be his usual, teasing self but I could hear how tired he was.

  I snorted. “Hardly.” We lapsed into silence for a long minute.

  “Gaskell texted to tell me to take the day off,” he told me. “I expect you’ll have the same. So, see you tomorrow?”

  “Sure. Get some more sleep.”

  “You too, Mitchell.”

  I hung up and sighed as I leaned back against my pillow. Gaskell had sent a number of texts, the last one telling me that if I still wasn’t awake, I should just take the day off. That’d been several hours ago. I sent him off a message to let him know I was okay before dragging my sorry, aching body out of bed.

  Much as I wanted to get back stuck in, I was sore all over with various bruises I didn’t even remember getting, and any sudden movements made my head ache something fierce, so I spent the day on the sofa.

  By the following day, although my head was still swollen, I was eager to get to the bottom of this damned case and got myself down to the station at the usual time.

  I found Stephen in the break room, making himself tea. He looked rough, even after the day off, and I frowned at him.

  “You alright?”

  He gave me a weak smile. “Yeah. My kid’s doing better, finally. Scared the hell out of us, I can’t tell you. Don’t have kids, Darren, they’ll turn you grey.”

  I patted him on the shoulder. “I’m glad she’s on the mend.”

  Stephen looked over my face and winced at the black eye I was sporting. It’d turned an impressive greenish-purple overnight, and I looked like a boxer who’d lost a few rounds.

  “Are you alright?” he asked.

  I waved it off. “Fine. Looks worse than it is.” He sent me an unconvinced look but didn’t press as I settled into making myself some potent coffee and sipped at it as Stephen and I ambled back to our desk.

  I’d barely gotten a few mouthfuls of coffee before Gaskell appeared at the door of his office and waved us over. He looked faintly irritable, but that was his usual expression, and I didn’t take it to mean much.

  “Glad you’re back at it,” he said, looking between the sorry pair of us. “You both need a long week off, but we can’t afford it right now.” He sat down behind his desk as we settled into the seats opposite. He handed over a bundle of papers to both of us.

  “We’ve had some small progress while you were out of action,” he said as I flicked through the paperwork.

  My eyes widened. “Cal’s-”

  Gaskell nodded. “His fingerprints matched the one on the student’s windowsill.”

  Stephen swore quietly. “Does this mean Will-?” he started.

  Gaskell pulled a face and cut him off too. “We’re not ruling him out yet, but, honestly, the evidence is pointing to this Cal Melville.”

  “And we’re holding him, sir?”

  Gaskell nodded. “Even without the fingerprint match, his attack on you would mean we could keep him for now, even though his record’s clean.” I made a noise of acknowledgement. “We’ll
need your statement on that,” he added.

  They’d taken pictures of my injuries at the hospital, including the bruise on my face which had grown much more impressive since, but I’d barely been able to keep my eyes open after that, let alone give a coherent statement.

  “Sure thing, sir.”

  “We haven’t got much of anything out of Seton,” Gaskell continued. I flicked through the papers to an interview transcript and grimaced. Seton’s lawyer had shut down most enquiries, and Seton had kept mute. “He’s a right smug prick.” I raised an eyebrow and Gaskell got back on track. “We’ve left Melville to stew for a while, and you two can interview him later. It is your case, after all.”

  “Abby was looked after, after I got picked up, sir?” I asked. I’d told the other officers that Abby was still at the club and needed to be looked after, but I hadn’t heard the follow-up.

  “Yes. She came in to give her statement yesterday, while you were off. She’s gone back to her parents again, I think.”

  “Good.”

  “Melville and Seton’s houses are being searched today,” he added, glancing at his watch. “You might catch the team if you go now.”

  Stephen and I shared a glance and nodded.

  “Alright,” Gaskell said, and waved a hand at us. “You’ve got plenty to be going on with, off you go.”

  Feeling a little like a schoolboy getting dismissed, I stood up and headed out, Stephen following.

  “What’s first, then?” Stephen asked.

  I rubbed my forehead and tried to get my thoughts in order. “We’ve got the fingerprint connection for Cal,” I said, thinking aloud. “But not much else. Nothing to link him to the murders, so I vote we go and see if forensics has picked up anything from Will’s place, then Cal’s.”

  “Sounds good.”

  But we were bound for disappointment. Will lived in a bedsit, and though forensics scoured the small space, they found nothing. Cal’s student room was much the same, no physical evidence from either. Once the team had approved it, I gathered up Cal’s laptop to take to the tech team alongside Will’s, in the hopes that we might find some cyber evidence to link either or both of them to the killings.

  “That was a waste of time,” Stephen grumbled, as we ate a belated lunch. The pain in my head and hand was killing my appetite, but I chewed on a tasteless sandwich regardless, knowing that having some food in the tank would help me think even if I wasn’t hungry.

  Stephen had been in a black mood all day, staying silent unless I asked him a question, and glowering at everyone and everything.

  I turned to him with a long-suffering sigh. “If you’re worried about your kid, go home, Stephen. Gaskell will understand. Or if not, you’ve got some holiday left, haven’t you?”

  He glared at me for a minute, before his shoulders slumped and he took another bite of his pasta salad. I let him stew in silence.

  “I want to solve the case,” he said finally. “I need to be here. And my wife’s got it in hand, I know that. But I just… you didn’t see her the other night, Mitchell.” His voice grew tight, and I looked at him in concern. “There’s nothing worse than seeing your child in pain and not being able to do anything.”

  I didn’t know what to say. “I’m sorry.”

  He just nodded, and we ate the rest of our lunch in silence. I couldn’t push this, I realised. He’d process it in his own time, and hopefully, it would get better once his daughter was back on her feet. The only problem was that I needed him to at top form when we spoke to Cal later today. We wouldn’t get around to talking to Will today, since visiting him would require a trip out to Full Sutton, but we did need to get to Cal before he had too much time to think and plan his responses.

  Stephen seemed to guess what I was thinking and took a deep breath. “We’ll be fine, Mitchell. I got this.”

  “I know you do.”

  We made our way to the custody suite on the lower floor, where Cal was being held for the time being. He’d probably end up released on bail, because this was his first time committing an offence. I wondered whether I was uneasy about sitting opposite a man who had seemingly tried to suffocate me not two days ago, but I wasn’t sure whether I was apathetic or had just pushed my nerves away to better focus on the job. You couldn’t show someone you were interviewing that you were nervous, it was counterproductive, and usually ended badly.

  Plus, even though I was wearing the results of Cal’s violence on my face, I looked through the two-way mirror and couldn’t summon up much fear. The student looked like a mess, and the shadows under his eyes, combined with the bright lights overhead, made him look practically gaunt.

  I glanced over at Stephen, and he gave me a nod. “What’s our strategy?” he asked. “What do we want to focus on?”

  I chewed my lip, frowning at Cal as I thought. “I think he’ll cave. He was mouthing off at me about it not being his fault when he was trying to,” I scowled, “choke me.”

  Stephen’s brows pulled into a scowl. When he was his usual happy-go-lucky self, it was hard to imagine him being scary, despite his bulk and a face like a bruiser, but he looked fully intimidating right now.

  “Sounds like a nice bloke.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “We know it was him that left the birds at Abby’s, so we can presume it was him who left them at Taylor’s and the others.” Stephen nodded. “But I still have this sense that Will’s involved,” I said. “The only link between the victims that we could find was Will, and it fitted together. And it was him that was lurking about the uni with that plastic bag-”

  “And he’s certainly not shy of violence,” Stephen added. “He was the one who almost cracked your skull.”

  I grimaced. “Yeah, thanks for the reminder.” I paused. “That’s the difference between them, too. Will hid in wait for me and bashed me over the head. He planned and acted and nearly took me out. Cal was all over the place, and he chose to run rather than attack until I was trying to grab him.”

  “I hope you’re not getting sympathetic towards the little weasel.”

  I huffed. “Hardly. I was pointing out their differences in style. The end result, me looking like I took on a gorilla, was the same.”

  Stephen grunted, something flickering across his face. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there, mate. I didn’t mean to leave-”

  “Hey, hey,” I said quickly. “Don’t do that. It wasn’t your fault. Any parent would’ve done the same, and your kid needed you. I’m fine. So let’s focus on nailing the culprit, okay?”

  He rolled his eyes at me but looked more fond than anything. “Yeah, alright.”

  I nodded. “Okay. So I want to shake him up a bit, get him worried. He doesn’t know about the fingerprints yet, I don’t think, so we’ll spring that on him at a good point. I want him spilling his guts by the end of the hour.” I paused. “Metaphorically.”

  Stephen chuckled, the first time I’d heard him laugh all day. “Metaphorically,” he agreed. “Literally would be hella messy.”

  I cracked a grin. “Sure would.” Bless dark humour, I thought wryly. Sometimes, when you’re black and blue and about to face the criminal who did that and maybe much worse, a bit of gallows humour doesn’t hurt.

  We shared a look and headed into the interview room where Cal had been left by the constable who was now on the door. Cal looked up when we came in, and his eyes widened as he saw me and, presumably, the big, nasty bruise around my eye and cheekbone. He winced and, when I met his eyes as we sat down, he looked away. That was a good start, I thought, if he felt even remotely ashamed of what he’d done.

  “Quite the mess you’ve got yourself into,” I said, after the recording device had been set up and we’d introduced ourselves. “How about you start by telling us what you were doing outside the Nix nightclub?”

  Cal hunched his shoulders. “Nothing.”

  Stephen glared at him. “Really?” he growled. “So why the running? Why hit my partner in the face, before you tried-?” He was riling h
imself up, and I wasn’t sure it was entirely just an act to scare Cal, so I put out a hand to stop him.

  Cal was frozen in place, looking very much like a rabbit that didn’t know whether to stay or bolt. “I didn’t mean to,” he mumbled after a long pause.

  “Didn’t mean to do what?”

  He gestured with his hand, making his cuffs clink against the metal table. “Hurt you. Sorry.”

  I gritted my teeth, determined not to let my emotions get the best of me, even if Cal’s half-arsed apology made me want to thump him one.

  “What did you mean to do, then?” Stephen asked, perhaps sensing that I was getting my thoughts together.

  Cal shifted in his chair. “Nothing.”

  I decided this route was getting us exactly nowhere and tried a different tack. “Do you know the penalty for attempted murder? Attempted murder of a police officer, at that?”

  Cal looked aghast. “It wasn’t- I didn’t mean- I didn’t want to kill you!”

  I raised an unimpressed brow. “So when you cut off my breathing, you were trying to do what exactly?”

  Cal held out his hands, pleading. “I’m sorry, okay? I panicked. I don’t want to go jail, please, you’ve got to understand.”

  I leaned forwards. “Then stop lying to me and give me the truth, Melville. What were you doing outside the nightclub?”

  Cal shrunk back into his chair, looking down at his lap. I wondered if I’d pushed too soon, but his face crumbled, his lip trembling.

  “I was waiting for the girl,” he mumbled, quietly enough that I almost didn’t hear him.

  I glanced over at the recording machine. I didn’t really want to break the tension by making him repeat it, but I wasn’t sure the tape would have picked his quiet admission up.

  “I need you to repeat that.”

  Cal shot me a wounded look, and it took him several seconds before he said, louder, “I was waiting for her, okay? There weren’t meant to be police.”

  “Why were you waiting for her?” Stephen said. He’d dropped some of the intimidation, but his face wearing a frown was enough to make Cal look pale.