Murder on the Record Read online

  Murder on the Record

  DCI Miller - Book 5

  James Whitworth

  © James Whitworth 2017

  James Whitworth has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published in 2017 by Endeavour Press Ltd.

  This edition published in 2018 by Endeavour Media Ltd.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Epilogue

  To my mother in memory of West Cliff walks.

  And for Lisa for continuing the tradition.

  Chapter 1

  Detective Chief Inspector Frank Miller dropped the stylus onto a piece of vinyl and retreated to his favourite chair.

  He picked up the Sennheiser headphones from the armrest and placed them snuggly on his head. A moment later he sighed contentedly as The Rolling Stones’ Aftermath album began to play. ‘What a drag it is getting old …’

  His eyes closed as his mind wandered back to the events of 18 months ago.

  ****

  Following the culmination of the Samantha Thompson case, Miller had instinctively known that he needed a break. His heart was no longer in Whitby; it was a hundred miles to the south in the place of his birth. But it wasn’t the pull of his past that had drawn him back to Sheffield; it was very much the present.

  Dr Alice Laine had been staying with friends over the Christmas holidays in the south west of Sheffield, and so Miller had booked into the St Paul’s Hotel in the city centre.

  It had been nice to be back in Sheffield. He had met friends for drinks, caught up with old acquaintances, and even managed to read some of the books that had been gathering dust on his bedside table.

  Then, the day after Boxing Day, he had managed to bump into Alice in The Itchy Pig pub, situated in the heart of the leafy suburb of Broomhill. He had known it was one of her favourites, and a tip-off from a mutual friend had been all it had taken to find himself nursing a pint of Plum Porter with a clear sightline of the door.

  He had only been there ten minutes when Alice came in, brushing snow from her Pre-Raphaelite hair. She looked beautiful and Miller found himself both captivated and awkward in equal measures.

  Alice seemed to sense Miller’s gaze, and as she had turned towards him a smile crept across her face.

  Alice introduced him to her friends. There was an architect called Paul who had a beard so luxurious that Miller thought it may win a design ward; a journalism lecturer called Clare with kind eyes and a very dry sense of humour; and finally Richard, whose good looks disturbed him more than he would like to have admitted.

  They were fortunate that a group was just leaving and so they slid into the vacant seats with the air of people who had no intention of giving up their prized location.

  Miller was disappointed to note that none of Alice’s friends seemed to have heard of him, but he gamely explained what he did and where he lived. It transpired that Clare, like Miller, had holidayed in Whitby as a child and they shared a pleasant ten minutes reminiscing about Whitby in the late 1970s and early 1980s. But Miller always had one eye on Alice. She seemed more relaxed that he had ever seen her, although this was hardly surprising considering she was in the company of friends. What was more surprising was that every now and then she caught Miller’s eye and smiled.

  As the evening progressed and a number of rounds had been drunk, Miller began to realise that he was actually enjoying himself. This feeling was only heightened when conversation tuned to the vagaries of Sheffield City Council, and Miller and Alice suddenly found themselves sidelined and talking just to one another.

  Miller knew that he had to resist the urge to show just how happy he was to see Alice, and he certainly wasn’t going to mention that his sole reason for coming to the city was to meet up with her. He was all too aware that would be too much for her, so he kept the conversation light. Even so, he could not resist the urge to tell her how lovely she looked. To his pleasant surprise she seemed to appreciate the compliment. Despite this, it was only as time had been called and the group spilled out onto the frosty pavement that Miller asked Alice if he could see her again over the next few days. She seemed to consider the question for a few moments before smiling and saying yes.

  ****

  Miller’s eyes opened and he focused on his surroundings. The third-floor apartment’s blinds were drawn against the early autumn sun. Its light diffused across the living room into shafts of orange and purple.

  He had replayed memories of that late December in Sheffield numerous times over the past 18 months. Like a favourite record, he kept taking it out and letting it spin on the turntable, delighting in the emotions it conjured. But like all records, it had to end.

  ****

  Throughout the dying days of that year, Miller and Alice had spent an increasing amount of time together. They had trudged through the snow in the city’s Weston Park, they had drunk together in the Ranmoor Inn, and they had gone for long walks through the Porter Valley.

  Alice had promised her friends, who she had begun to feel guilty about for ignoring, that they would spend New Year’s Eve together. They had suggested she bring Miller along, so as the seconds slipped away from the old year she found herself in a suburban back garden as slurred voices counted down from ten. Then as people cheered and fireworks exploded, Dr Alice Laine kissed DCI Miller.

  But when Miller woke the following morning something had changed. It was as if the New Year had dawned colder than expected and a frost had replaced the anticipated sunshine.

  Alice was already up and dressed. She had said that she needed to get back to her friend’s house to say goodbye as she was going to drive back to Whitby that afternoon. Miller had suggested breakfast but Alice had politely, even formally, declined. She was suddenly professional and detached. The last few days seemed a very long time ago.

  As the door on Miller’s city centre hotel room clicked shut, he got out of bed and walked towards the large window. Pulling back the curtains, he looked down onto a series of fountains. It was quiet, almost eerie, and as Dr Alice Laine emerged into the pale winter sun, walking across the Peace Gardens in the direction of the taxi rank, Miller felt a sense of a creeping desolation.

  ****

  Eighteen months had passed. Miller had applied for a secondment and had stayed in Sheffield, teaching on the local force’s Inspector course. Alice had moved back to Whitby. Miller needed distance so he threw himself into his work. But as his second summer in the city began to fade, Whitby started to play on his mind. Sheffield may have been his place of birth, the place where he had grown up and joined the police, but Whitby was now his home. He knew it was time to head back. So as September entered its second week he found himself driving north.

  As he passed the ‘Welcome to Whitby’ sign, he felt a sudden sense of belonging. He would always love Sheffield, but Whitby was where his heart was; he just wished it were in better emotional health.

  Despite this, he found himself smiling. He was home.

  Over the next week – the final before he was due to return to active duty – he cleaned his apartment from top to bottom, bought some more records, and enjoyed walking along the West Cliff, letting the wind fill his lungs with salt
y air. The days passed slowly. He walked around the town, nodding at familiar faces but avoiding Pannett Park and the grounds of the town’s university.

  Finally the day of his return arrived. He was due in to see Chief Constable Davis at midday. With just a couple of hours to go before he would have to leave, he was turning to side two of Aftermath and wondering what Dr Alice Laine was doing at that exact moment. Perhaps when he saw DS Riddle later, he would casually ask if his sergeant had heard or seen anything of the academic.

  ****

  But at that moment, Dr Alice Laine was the last thing on DS Riddle’s mind. He was standing in the premises of Gerry’s Gaming Emporium at the bottom of Church Street, where the cobbles met the tarmac. Gerry Gifford was shaking his head. “Look at this,” he said holding out a box, “this is vintage. Wizzword from the 1980s! It’s difficult to get now and some idiot, some thug has covered it with splinters and glass.”

  “I’ll take that,” PC Lisa Newbold said. Her petite hands took the boxed game from the shop owner’s agitated grip. “There may be fingerprints,” she said, her lopsided smile doing more to placate the man than Riddle could have managed given the rest of the morning.

  Normally an officer of Riddle’s level would not have been involved on what was essentially a minor break-in, but recent events meant that Riddle was more than usually interested in what may have happened.

  He stepped closer to Gerry Gifford, making sure his polished brogues didn’t get any debris on them. “Has anything been taken?” he asked.

  “That’s what’s so weird,” Gerry said. He was late middle-aged, with a grumpy countenance which hid a quick mind. “Nothing at all. I suppose they could have been disturbed.”

  “Any CCTV?” Riddle asked, turning to face Newbold. “Nothing,” she said.

  Riddle licked the tip of a pencil and held it above his notebook. “So there was nothing taken,” he said. “Was there by any chance something added?”

  Gerry Gifford’s eyes grew wide. “How the hell did you know that?”

  Riddle ignored the question. His eyes were scanning the shelves. Vintage editions of Cluedo, Monopoly and Scrabble took pride of place in the window display. Inside the shop were board games old and new, with many MB Games Riddle remembered from his own childhood.

  “What was added?” he asked, with the air of a man who already knew the answer.

  “A record,” Gerry said. “An LP,” he added with a glance at Newbold who he clearly thought was too young to have much idea what a vinyl record was.

  “And what was the album?” Riddle asked.

  Gerry Gifford bent below the window display and pulled out a new-looking copy of Nick Drake’s Bryter Later.

  PC Newbold took the album, looked at Riddle, and said: “We’ve got another one.”

  ****

  The record had finished. Miller took it from the platter, replaced it into its sleeve, and then put it back in the correct place on his shelves. He lowered the lid on the turntable, switched the power off and sat back down. So, that was it. His 18 months away from work was over. He felt like he had as a child when the sudden realisation that the summer holidays had come to an end had hit him. Not that Miller had been on holiday as such, but teaching was not the same as actually being a Detective Chief Inspector. There had been no murders, no serious crimes. No unsociable hours. No Alice.

  He shook his head in a vain attempt to get rid of the thought. He wondered what he had missed. Riddle had kept him updated with any headline news once a month or so, but there hadn’t been anything major while he had been away. A few missing person enquiries; a couple of serious assault charges – the result of too much alcohol on a Saturday night; and some rather vague mention of a series of burglaries. But certainly no murder investigations. And as the summer season was fading into memory, the chances were that things would quiet down.

  Miller looked at his watch. It was just after 11. A quick shower and then change for his first day back. He stood up, stretched, and ran a hand through his mousy blond hair. It was thinning, slowly but irrevocably. Perhaps he should have a weave like Elton John. The thought made him laugh. He put his hi-fi’s remote control in its cradle to charge and walked past the window, opening the blinds and glancing out onto the cliff-top road and beyond to the north sea.

  He walked on in the direction of the kitchen to make an espresso when he suddenly stopped. What with thoughts of his first day back at work, memories of those winter days with Alice and the anticipation of his first coffee of the day, his mind had taken a few moments to catch up. Had he seen what he thought he had seen? When he had glanced out of the window there had been a solitary woman standing across the road facing his apartment block. As he had opened the blinds, she had been waving. Had she been waving at him? Unlikely, he thought. But then …

  He had moved on another couple of steps when he stopped again. For some reason he felt compelled to look again. He retraced his steps and looked out of the window. For a moment he thought she had gone, but then he saw her. She was no longer waving. She was lying down on the pavement, her right leg unnaturally crossed underneath her body. He glanced about but there didn’t seem to be anyone else around.

  Suddenly his instincts kicked in. He grabbed his keys from the coffee table and ran for the front door. Jumping two and three steps at a time, he finally bolted out through the security doors onto the West Cliff. Sprinting across the road he knelt next to the body of a woman. She looked to be aged around 40, with shoulder-length dark hair. She had a satchel-like bag across her body and was dressed in a mixture of browns and dark greens. And she was bleeding from a massive head wound.

  Miller felt for a pulse. It was faint. Very faint. He reached into the back pocket of his jeans and pulled out his mobile phone, dialing 999. “DCI Miller,” he said, his voice tight but controlled. “I need an ambulance at once to North Terrace. A woman has suffered a serious head trauma. I need that ambulance now,” he added before ringing off.

  Miller was still holding the woman’s hand when he felt her fingers weakly grip his and saw her eyes flicker open.

  “It’s all right,” Miller said. “I’m a police officer. An ambulance is on its way.”

  The woman looked as if she was trying to speak.

  “What’s your name?” Miller asked. “Are you local?” He had certainly never seen her before, but then he’d been away for 18 months.

  The woman’s lips started to form the shape of words, but no sound came out. Miller looked around and could see no one. Then a dog walker emerged from a house a few hundred yards away, and a car turned onto the road. But they hadn’t noticed him and just went about their business.

  Suddenly he heard a gurgling sound and looked down to see blood bubbling at the corner of the woman’s mouth. She seemed to want to speak so he lowered his left ear to her mouth. Finally, painfully slowly, he heard what she was saying:

  “Fr … Fran … Frank …” Miller pulled back in amazement. How did she know his name? “It’s Frank …” the woman said and then sunk backwards. Her eyes closed as she gave a long sigh.

  She was dead.

  Chapter 2

  Miller gently let the dead woman’s head rest on the cold pavement. His natural instinct was to take his jacket off and place it under her head, but he knew that would be tampering with the scene. He stood up, careful not to tread in the blood, and took another couple of steps backwards. Where the hell was the ambulance? He was feeling strangely exposed as if he was somehow in danger. The murderer could come back, of course, but it was extremely unlikely.

  Just then he heard the sound of pounding feet coming from behind. He tensed and took up a defensive position, blood pumping as adrenaline kick in.

  “Jesus!” A voice said. Miller relaxed. The man opposite was dressed in lycra. A jogger. He looked at Miller and there was a real sense of tension until Miller realised what the scene would look like. He put his left hand out in a conciliatory gesture, while his right had slipped into his jacket.

>   “It’s okay,” he said, immediately realising that it was anything but okay. He pulled out his warrant card. “I’m a police officer,” he explained for the second time in five minutes.

  The jogger visibly relaxed. “What happened?” he asked, grimacing at the corpse Miller was trying to shield with his body.

  “I’m afraid there’s been a serious incident,” Miller said, automatically falling back on standard police terminology. Then a thought suddenly occurred to him. “Which way have you come from?”

  “From over there,” the man said, pointing north along the cliff top. “I live in one of the flats on the Crescent behind here. I’ve just run to Sandsend and back.”

  “And you are?” Miller asked.

  “Deacon,” he said. “Giles Deacon.”

  “As you were running back along the cliff,” Miller said, glancing in the direction he would have run, “did you see anyone?”

  “Not really,” Giles said. Then his face lost some of its colour. “Oh, God. I see what you mean. The person who did this.”

  He was handsome, Miller thought. Well groomed. Probably had a bathroom cabinet full of products. Seemed quite bright.

  “There was a dog walker. An old man. He was walking in the opposite direction. A couple of cars passed. That’s it. It can be really quiet up here.”

  Miller nodded. He was right. It had always been one of the things that attracted him to this part of Whitby. It was close to the town centre, but for some reason people seldom ventured this far, especially out of season.

  The thought made Miller look down at the woman’s body. He was sure he had never seen her before, but she had been waving at him. Or had she? He turned to look up at his apartment block. There were what … another five apartments that faced the road? She could have been waving at any of them, and yet Miller somehow felt it was in his direction she had been facing. But if that was the case, who the hell was she?