Date with Malice Read online

  Julia Chapman

  DATE WITH MALICE

  PAN BOOKS

  In memory of Sandie George

  A lady who loved books.

  (I think you would have loved Bruncliffe, too, Sandie!)

  Contents

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  Acknowledgements

  DATE WITH DEATH

  DATE WITH MYSTERY

  1

  ‘She’s trying to kill me!’

  Samson O’Brien resisted the urge to let his head drop into his hands in despair. Knuckles white with the effort, he tightened his grip on his biro and smiled at the elderly lady sitting opposite him.

  ‘Mrs Shepherd . . .’ he began, ‘I really don’t think—’

  ‘She is. I know she is,’ the old lady interrupted him. ‘I saw her, you see. And now she wants me gone.’

  He tried again. ‘Mrs Shepherd, you can’t just accuse someone like that without—’

  ‘Proof!’ Two frail hands flapped away his protestations. ‘It’s up to you to get the proof. That’s why I want to hire you, young man.’ She smiled, a gentle face under curly white hair, eyes faded behind her glasses, and leaned towards him. ‘You come highly recommended. I heard all about the incident up at High Laithe. Such a dreadful thing. All those dead people. And the fire. Poor Lucy. Suffering all that after what she’s been through. Oh, and I heard about you in your boxer shorts, too . . .’ A dreamy look drifted across her features, her smile becoming even wider, and Samson felt his cheeks beginning to burn.

  He doubted the day could get any worse.

  What a morning. Could it be any better? Delilah Metcalfe reached the top of the fell, her breath coming in short gasps that punctuated the December air. Lungs burning, she paused, bent at the waist, hands on thighs as she drank in the view before her.

  Malham Tarn sparkling blue as the sun crept above the horizon, the dark mass of Darnbrook Fell rising from the red-tinged moor in the distance and, arching over it all, a sharp sky that warned of colder weather to come.

  A heavy warmth came to rest against her left leg.

  ‘How you doing, old boy?’ She reached down and patted the familiar grey head of her Weimaraner. ‘Not too much for you?’

  Tolpuddle leaned into her, panting slightly. He’d run well. Considering.

  Considering that he’d been stabbed only a month ago.

  She tried not to think about it. About the fire at her sister-in-law Lucy’s caravan, the mad chase after a killer, the poor people who’d been murdered. Taking a deep breath, she focused once more on the tarn. It was over. And Tolpuddle was back running with her.

  ‘We’ll take it easy going home, eh?’

  The dog regarded her solemnly, amber eyes bright, no signs of distress. Herriot, the vet, had pronounced him fit enough to accompany her once more, even though she’d not been sure. Not that she hadn’t wanted Tolpuddle back out on the fells. It had been torture going off every morning without her companion, no large shadow stretching out in front of her and pulling her on.

  Equally torturous had been returning from a run alone to her cottage at the top of the hill in Bruncliffe, her dog waiting anxiously inside. Usually with some cushion or shoe, or something she’d unwittingly left within paw-reach, torn to shreds beside him.

  Separation anxiety. She had a Weimaraner riven with separation anxiety. As well as two businesses in debt, a bank manager on her back, an ex-husband, and a trouble-making tenant who shared her office building – all at the tender age of twenty-nine.

  After the last month, none of that seemed to matter any more. She was simply glad that she and Tolpuddle were still alive.

  ‘Come on then.’ Delilah turned her back on the view with the confidence of a local, knowing it would be there, albeit different, when she ran the next day. And the day after that. And the day after that. As a native of the Yorkshire Dales, she felt part of this landscape, her family history sewn into the fabric of the hills and dales that surrounded her. She pitied any person who wasn’t part of it too.

  ‘Last one down buys breakfast,’ she shouted, starting to run.

  The dog barked and fell into place alongside her. It wasn’t long before his loping stride was outpacing hers, pulling her faster and faster down the hillside towards home.

  ‘. . . Little things – things no one would notice – they’re going missing. My watch. Arty’s cufflinks. Clarissa’s headscarf . . . Little things. But I notice. I see her. Prowling the corridors late at night—’

  ‘Did you report your watch missing, Mrs Shepherd?’ Samson asked, trying to rein in the woman’s wandering flow of conversation.

  ‘Why, no.’ She gave him a fierce look. ‘Why would I report it? It wasn’t my watch that went missing.’ She pulled back the sleeve of her coat to reveal a delicate gold timepiece on her frail wrist. ‘It was Edith’s.’

  ‘But you just said . . .’ Samson felt his spirit draining from him. Thirty minutes Mrs Shepherd had been in the office. He’d popped out to get milk for his breakfast and she’d been waiting on the doorstep when he returned at barely eight o’clock. It had been half an hour of his life that had sapped him of years to come.

  Turning his focus to the window and the large initials D D A spanning the glass, he found himself praying that someone would barge in, asking him to fix their love life. It had happened a couple of times in the last few weeks, unsuspecting lonely hearts mistaking the newly formed Dales Detective Agency for the Dales Dating Agency – an easy misunderstanding when the two businesses were located in the same building and shared the same initials. But while it had irritated him before, right now it would be a welcome diversion from the befuddled waffling of the old lady opposite.

  ‘Mrs Shepherd,’ he said, deciding it was time to get firm. ‘I’m confused as to why you are here—’

  ‘Confused?’ She laughed, a tinkle of sound, her eyes sparkling. ‘That’s what they all tell me. I’m confused. But I’m not. I know what I saw. And I know what she’s up to. She’s trying to kill me.’

  Bruncliffe. A huddle of houses down below, the town fitted perfectly into the curve of the landscape, a limestone crag towering over the back of it, fells rising on three sides. Standing guard to the north and the south were twin mill chimneys, both now defunct, and cutting through the middle were the direct line of the railway and the meandering path of the river.

  It was home, that collection of slate roofs and stone buildings. The only place Delilah Metcalfe had ever lived. On a day like today when the sun was shining, that wasn’t something she was in a hurry to change.

  Taking the steps two at a time, she jogged down from Bruncliffe Crag onto Crag Lane, high above the back of the town. Tolpuddle was already heading off to the right towards the small cottage where they lived. But Delilah was looking at her watch.

  It was gone eight-thirty. She might as well go straight to work and change there. Especially now it was no longer a secret that she was running again. Since the events the month before, the whole place knew that Bruncliffe’s former champion fell-runner – the woman who’d turned her back on the sport years ago – was back in training. How could they not? She’d chased a killer across the hills. Something like that wasn’t going to stay quiet for long.

  ‘This way,’ she called, beckoning the dog. �
�Come on.’

  Tolpuddle’s ears picked up at the change in direction, he tilted his head sideways and started trotting, making for the steps that would take them down to the town. Like every morning for the past month and a half, he was eager to get to the office. To get to him.

  She sighed. Was it worse to have an anxious dog or one that was besotted with the local black sheep? A black sheep with a mane of dark hair and a wicked smile . . . and the ability to turn an entire community upside down within a matter of hours on his return from a fourteen-year exile.

  She jogged after her faithless hound. Tolpuddle wasn’t the only one finding being at work a lot more appealing of late.

  ‘So, will you do it?’

  ‘Find out who’s trying to kill you?’ Samson asked, incredulous at the words coming out of his own mouth.

  ‘No. You’re not listening,’ said Mrs Shepherd, her small fist thumping the desk. ‘I told you. I know who’s trying to kill me. I need you to catch her. Preferably before she succeeds.’

  ‘But I—’

  ‘And don’t worry,’ she continued, cutting across his excuses. ‘I’ll pay.’ She delved into her bag, placing a compact mirror on the table along with a lipstick, a crumpled tissue, a half-eaten roll of Polo mints and an unusual pillbox with a rainbow of inlaid semi-precious stones across the lid. ‘Here! How much will it be?’ She held up a small black purse and opened the clasps, smiling at him expectantly as she shook coins out into her hand.

  ‘I don’t think—’

  The door crashed open and a large figure loomed in the doorway. ‘Ralph!’ boomed a voice. ‘He’s gone missing!’

  Outside the office window, down the narrow confines of Back Street, across the cobbled marketplace where the butcher was just raising the shop blinds and a young woman was opening the estate agent’s, past Peaks Patisserie, which was already busy serving early morning coffees, turning right up Fell Lane with the police station on the corner and the library opposite, up the hill and through the entrance of Fellside Court retirement complex, up on the first floor in a small apartment overlooking the courtyard at the back, a hand was opening a bedroom door.

  The shadow that fell across the thick pile of the carpet crossed to the bedside table, where the same hand placed a rainbow-coloured pillbox next to a photograph. With silent steps, the shadow shifted once more and the room was vacated, the door left open.

  2

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Samson said, addressing the man who’d barged into the office, ‘but we’re in the middle of a meeting. I’m going to have to ask you to wait outside.’

  Clearly, the man was stone-deaf, as he continued to enter the room regardless, tipping his cap briefly at Mrs Shepherd before perching his bulky frame on the edge of the chair next to the old lady. Samson caught the familiar perfume of farmyard.

  Clive Knowles, from Mire End Farm up the dale towards Horton, a place notorious under the management of old Ralph Knowles for the ramshackle state of the yard and the neglect of the fields. Samson remembered his mother making his father laugh years ago when she’d pointed out that the Knowles’ farm should be renamed Mire Start, given the state it was kept in.

  Judging by the stale smell of beer and body odour issuing from across the desk, in the time Samson had been away from Bruncliffe the current generation hadn’t had a sudden conversion to cleanliness – personal or otherwise.

  ‘This can’t wait,’ the farmer said forcefully, pointing a thick, dirt-smeared finger in Samson’s direction. ‘Ralph’s gone missing and I need you to find him.’

  ‘As I’ve already explained, Mr Knowles—’

  ‘It’s okay, Samson dear,’ said Alice Shepherd. ‘I’m not in a hurry to go home.’ She smiled at the farmer, tiny beside his bulging jacket, and encouraged him to continue. ‘Now, when did you last see Ralph, Mr Knowles?’

  The farmer turned to the old lady. ‘Yesterday evening. I checked he was all right before going to bed. He’s been a bit under the weather, you know, a bit out of sorts.’

  ‘And this morning?’ she enquired.

  ‘He wasn’t there at breakfast.’

  She tutted, shaking her head, a finger on her chin as though pondering this mystery.

  ‘He won’t cope out there on his own,’ continued the farmer, a crease of concern across his florid forehead.

  ‘Don’t worry, dear.’ Alice Shepherd patted his knee, releasing another waft of animal aroma. ‘Samson will make us both a cup of tea and then we can get to the bottom of this.’ She turned her pale blue eyes on the man behind the desk and smiled sweetly.

  Samson was halfway up the stairs to the kitchen on the first floor before he realised the absurdity of the situation. It was so typical of Bruncliffe. Everyone involved in everyone else’s business. And now he had a confused pensioner doing his job for him. He groaned. This was precisely the reason why he’d left his home town in the first place. The claustrophobia. The lack of privacy. The tea that could kill an ox.

  He filled the kettle, throwing four teabags into the pot, and consoled himself that in April he would be moving on, hopefully returning to London and the police work he was currently suspended from. There’d be no more old ladies making wild accusations. No more smelly farmers. No more Bruncliffe, and no more being the black sheep.

  The back door banged and a familiar voice called out, accompanied by a sharp bark. No more Delilah Metcalfe, either.

  The intervening months couldn’t go quickly enough.

  ‘You don’t know where he is?’

  ‘No. I told you already.’

  ‘That’s why he needs Samson.’

  ‘I don’t need Samson. I need bloody Ralph back where he belongs. Time’s running out—’

  ‘Have you told the police?’

  ‘Lot of good that’ll do—’

  ‘Oh, a cup of tea. Just what we need. Samson, you are a dear.’

  Samson stood in the doorway of his own office, tray in hands, feeling like a tea boy intruding on the three-way conversation. Alice Shepherd and Clive Knowles were sitting in front of his desk; Delilah Metcalfe, in her running kit, was sitting behind it, notepad on her lap as she cross-examined his potential clients.

  ‘Tea! Thanks, Samson,’ said his landlady, reaching to take the third, and last, mug. ‘Didn’t you want one?’

  He sighed, placed the empty tray on the floor and perched on the edge of his desk, Tolpuddle’s head immediately coming to rest on his thigh. As an undercover police officer working within the country’s premier law-enforcement agencies – the Serious Organised Crime Agency and its replacement, the National Crime Agency – Samson O’Brien had had his fair share of bizarre working environments. But nothing had prepared him for working life in Bruncliffe, where everyone had an opinion. And, being Dalesmen and women, they felt the right to express those opinions forcefully. And often. The Metcalfes – Delilah and her five older brothers – were fine examples of this cultural trait, as Samson knew better than most.

  He ran a hand over his chin, which had been on the receiving end of Delilah’s infamous right hook the day he returned to town. The reasons hadn’t been clear. Her frustration at the fact that Samson, the idol of her childhood, had left Bruncliffe in a moonlight flit and hadn’t been heard of in the intervening fourteen years. Her anger at Samson’s absence from the funeral of his best friend, her beloved brother Ryan, who’d been buried two years ago. But also her realisation that if she hadn’t hit the returned black sheep, her oldest brother Will would have. And that, thought Samson wryly, would have been far more catastrophic. Although his reputation wouldn’t have suffered quite so much. Being laid out cold by a woman, no matter how pretty she was, wasn’t the beginning he’d envisioned for his new detective agency.

  ‘So where were we . . . ?’ Delilah’s attention was back on the farmer. ‘No police.’

  ‘Why not?’ asked Samson. ‘Surely, in a case like this, you need to notify them as soon as possible? You don’t want Ralph wandering around in this cold.’


  ‘He’s got a good coat, so the cold won’t bother him,’ muttered Mr Knowles. ‘I’m more worried about him being run over.’

  ‘Has he done this before? Wandered off?’

  Mr Knowles nodded. ‘Every chance he gets. We’ve got to keep an eye on him. Normally I’d know where to start looking. But this time . . .’ He shrugged, the air seeming to thicken around him at the odour released from the creases of his clothes.

  Samson looked out of the window. Despite having lived away from the Dales for more than a decade, he wasn’t some tourist to be fooled by the blue skies above. It was almost freezing out there, and the clouds he’d seen gathering over the west side of town when he’d gone for milk had the ominous presence of snow in them.

  An elderly person wouldn’t last long out in this, good coat or not. And Ralph Knowles must be well into his eighties by now. Suffering from dementia too, given the way his son was talking about him.

  ‘You need to call the police,’ Samson insisted.

  Mr Knowles shrugged. ‘He’s done this before. They won’t want to know about it.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ Samson stood, shocked at the nonchalance of the reply. ‘Of course they will. I’ll call Danny at the station.’ Fingers already scrolling for the number on his mobile, he didn’t notice Delilah’s surprised expression. ‘The sooner they get looking, the better. There’s snow coming—’ He paused as the youthful voice of PC Danny Bradley came on the line.

  ‘Samson?’

  ‘Hi, Danny. We need to mobilise a search party. Ralph Knowles is missing. Last seen . . .’ He glanced at the farmer.

  ‘At Mire End Farm yesterday evening,’ muttered Mr Knowles.

  ‘Ralph Knowles?’ asked the young constable as Samson passed on the information. ‘Is that Clive Knowles’ Ralph?’

  ‘Yes.’ Samson couldn’t help but hear the weary sigh emitted at the other end of the phone.

  ‘I’m not sure Sarge will agree to sending out men again.’

  ‘Make him agree! We need to get people out looking. Ralph won’t survive the weather that’s coming, at his age.’