The Valley of Longing 14

‘Damn! Damn! Damn!’ Mitchell swore, punctuating each profanity by slamming his clenched fist down on the counter. Melissa could see that he was furious at having been forced to release Jack Wild - she was not prepared to say so, but she could understand to say so, but she could understand the position to say so, but she could understand the position taken by Wild’s lawyer, there was no evidence, so he had to be released without charge - and wanted to get out of the way before that anger was turned on her. Unfortunately, a quick exit was not possible, there was still things to be done, the end of day chores, and the matter of Ollie, who was still in his cell. She doubted that Mitchell was going to get around to sorting out Ollie’s situation before morning, which meant an officer was going to have to stay at the station overnight to watch him. She didn’t imagine that that officer was going to be the sergeant. ‘Do you want me to stay and keep an eye on Ollie?’ she asked. It was not a job she wanted, it would afford her little opportunity to sleep, but she felt it was better to volunteer than to have the job put on her. Mitchell thought about that briefly before shaking his head. ‘No, you head on home, it’s been a long day, I’ll sort Ollie out,’ he said once he had his fit of temper under control. Melissa was relieved that she was not going to be getting the annoying, if easy, job of babysitting Ollie through the night, but could not help wondering what Mitchell meant by ‘sort Ollie out’. There was something vaguely ominous about the phrase, something that made her think he had a meaning other than that he would be the one to spend the night at the station. She dawdled over closing up chores, delaying so she could try and find out what the sergeant was going to do. Mitchell headed down the passage to his office, where he fell into his chair, before reaching for the phone on his desk. As angry as he was with how the situation had turned out, he disliked what he had to do next, tell his superior that he had been forced to release Jack Wild, even more. Like him, Inspector Stevens had been hoping that the arrest of the author meant the investigation was going to be resolved speedily, and before Raymond could hear that anything had happened to his beloved great - niece. They could not avoid Raymond finding out that Lily had been killed, but Mitchell, along with Stevens, had been hoping that by having her murderer in custody before he knew what was happening they could show they had done everything possible. He had his hand on the receiver, and was about to lift it to his ear, when a thought occurred to him, making him freeze. He turned his idea over in his mind a couple of times, while he looked for anything wrong with it; there wasn’t, as far as he could see, so he took his hand from the phone and got to his feet. The phone call to the inspector could wait. Ollie paid no attention to the footsteps that approached his cell, he had been checked on several times since he was put in there, and was sure the steps, merely preceded another check. His eyes flew open, however, when he heard the rattle of keys and the door swung open. ‘What d’you want?’ he asked sharply of Mitchell. ‘Isn’t it way past time an office monkey like you was home? You don’t normally work this late.’ ‘I’ll be on my way home soon, Ollie,’ Mitchell said. ‘I thought you’d want to get out of here first, though.’ Ollie looked at the sergeant in surprise, not sure he had heard him right. ‘What’re you talking about?’ he wanted to know. ‘You don’t normally release me ‘til you have to.’ ‘If you want to stay here you can,’ Mitchell told him. ‘I thought I’d save someone the job of keeping an eye on you, thought. I can’t see the point in putting anyone out for the sake of a pain in the ass like you.’ He made to shut the door and lock Ollie in again, but the young man was on his feet in an instant. ‘If you think I’m staying here any longer than I have to, you’re a bigger idiot than I thought,’ Ollie said, slipping quickly through the door before Mitchell could change his mind. The moment he was out of the cell, he stopped; he wanted to head straight for the nearest door, so he could get out of the station and find something to eat and drink, especially something to drink. He also wanted to find Kerwin Wright, so he could finish what he had started before being dragged away by the sergeant. Before he could leave, however, he had to get the things that had been taken from him. Mitchell saw the eagerness in the teen and moved to curtail it. ‘There is a condition to me letting you go tonight,’ he said. ‘Under no circumstances are you to go near Kerwin Wright. I”ll be speaking to him in the morning, and I’m sure I can convince him not to press charges against you; if you go anywhere near him again, though, I’ll have no choice but to charge you with assault, attempted murder, and anything else that occurs to me. I don’t think you’d like that; if you added up all the sentences you’ve had previously, I don’t thin they’d come close to what you’d get for attempted murder.’ He was not sure how long a person could expect to get for attempted murder, but he had seen someone in the news recently who got ten years for it. ‘That bastard deserves whatever happens to him, and if I have to be the one to give him what he deserves, so be it,’ Oliver said, heedless of the possibility that he could en up right back in the cell he had just left. ‘If you’d do your job, I wouldn’t have to deal with the sick bastard. Why the hell haven’t you arrested that murdering rapist?’ ‘Because Kerwin Wright isn’t a murderer,’ Mitchell said. ‘Nor, as far as I know, is he a rapist.’ ‘Didn’t Mel tell you what I told her earlier, about what that bastard did to Lily?’ Ollie demanded. Mitchell nodded. ‘She told me, but as I explained to her, even if Kerwin did attack Lily and try to rape her, there’s nothing we can do because it happened a while ago, and the report hasn’t come from Lily herself. Since we can’t establish that the incident took place, we’ve got no reason to question to him over what has happened to Lynne and Lily, especially when we already have another suspect.’ ‘Who?’ Ollie had no sooner asked that question when he realised what else the sergeant had said. ‘What’s happened to Lily? What’s happened to Lily?’ He repeated the question without giving Mitchell, whom he grabbed by the front of his shirt, a chance to answer the first time. Mitchell freed himself form Ollie’s grasp, at the cost of a button, and straightened his shirt as best he could. ‘The same thing happened to Lily has happened to Lynne,’ he said, ‘Inspector Stevens and the search team found her body in the woods while examining the area around where Lynne’s body was found; as far as we know right now, they were killed by the same person. And before you go off on one about Kerwin, we believe that both of them were killed by Jack Wild.’ ‘Who?’ ‘He’s the guy that moved into the old Vermaak Cottage.’ ‘How d’you know it’s him?’ Ollie wanted to know, to whole body trembled as he fought the urge to race from the station in search of Jack Wild. ‘I can’t go into evidence I have,’ Mitchell said pompously, as though he actually had evidence, rather than just a belief that Jack Wild was guilty of the murders. ‘But trust me, Wild’s the one who killed Lynne and Lily, not Kerwin, so stay away from him, and you’ll stay out of trouble.’ ‘If you’re so certain he killed them, why the hell haven’t you arrested him?’ ‘I did, but he’s got some expensive lawyer who forced me to let him go. Believe me, I ‘m no happier about it than you are, but until I can find enough evidence to charge him, he’s a free man.’ Down the corridor in the small locker room, Melissa listened to the conversation taking place between Mitchell and Ollie in disbelief. It was not the fact that Ollie was being released without charge that she had a problem with, she could understand that, even if she did not wholly agree with it, what she had a problem with was Ollie being told that Jack Wild was their one and only suspect in the murder of his sister and his girlfriend when he already been arrested for attacking the person he believed responsible. Her first thought was to confront Mitchell and demand to know what he was doing; she quickly realised what a mistake it would be for her to do that, though. Confronting her superior would only get her in trouble, and she didn’t want that, especially when she couldn’t say that he had done anything wrong. Her mind raced as she considered her options, but she came up with no answers; she needed advice, and could think of only one person to get it from - her gran. Not wanting to give Mitchell reason to think that she had been listening to his conversation, even thought that was what she had been doing, Melissa grabbed her things and headed for the door. It was a walk of a little over five minutes from the police station to her gran’s, and Melissa spent it thinking not only about what she had overheard, but also about recent events in the village. She could not believe how quickly the atmosphere had changed; always before, Doring Draad, even at night, had seemed a pleasant and peaceful place, almost idyllic, but now there was an unease in the air that made her walk more quickly than she would have normally, while looking around constantly. When she reached her gran’s house, she found that all the lights were out, a sure - sign that her gran had gone to bed and was most likely asleep. She could have knocked, Melissa knew her gran would not be annoyed with her, but she decided against doing so since there was no urgency to what she needed to talk about. Since she could not seek the advice she wanted, and she felt a need to unwind, Melissa turned around and headed for the Bar. She found it crowded, as though everyone in the Dorpie over the age of eighteen had come in for a drink, including a number of people who did not normally go to the Bar. She wondered why so many people were there, and could only assume it was because they hoped to learn something about recent events. On her way to the bar she saw Ollie, he was in a corner of the Bar with some friends, and was knocking back shots as if he was trying to make up for lost time. While she waited for her drinks to arrive, Melissa watched Ollie, she could not hear what he was saying to his friends over the noise from everyone else, and wanted to move closer so she could. She had not yet shaken the presentiment of trouble inspired by the conversation she had overheard between Ollie and her superior, and she wanted to know if Ollie was plotting that trouble. Before she could follow up on her intention, a conversation further along the bar, involving Mitchell, distracted her. ‘…Killed them girls,’ Terry Dickens, who had the thickest accent in the Dorpie and was fond of pointing out that his family had been farming in Doring Draad for more than fifteen generations, said. ‘Who were it?’ he wanted to know. ‘Jack Wild,’ Mitchell answered the farmer after draining half his beer in one long swallow. ‘Who’s dat?’ The question made Melissa wonder how many people in the village, or how few to be more accurate, knew who Jack Wild was. She had always thought Doring Draad a friendly and welcoming town, but the day’s events made it hard for her to believe that - it seemed that only about half the residents knew the name of their newest neighbour, and only a fraction of those who did knew anything about him beyond his name. ‘He’s the guy that bought the Vermaak Cottage a few months back.’ ‘What makes you think it’s him?’