Текст книги "Jessica Daniel: Locked In / Vigilante / The Woman in Black"

Автор книги: Kerry Wilkinson

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Текущая страница: 10 (всего у книги 60 страниц)

19

Considering what happened between Jessica, Wayne Lapham and Peter Hunt had occurred behind closed doors, even she was impressed at how quickly the news had travelled around the station when she arrived on the Monday morning. As she walked through reception, it felt as if all eyes were on her. People were smiling but Jessica found it unnerving. She was so used to the gloomy ‘It’s Monday and whatever investigation we’ve got going on is in a complete mess’ looks that she didn’t know how to react to it all. She didn’t even bother to check in with anyone on the front desk, or visit her own office, she headed for the stairs and the DCI’s office.

She could see him sitting behind his desk and he looked up to notice her walking past the window before she had a chance to knock on the door. He beckoned her in and indicated towards the seat opposite him. His grey suit looked sharp and newly pressed, while he had a stern, harsh look on his face.

‘DS Daniel,’ was his greeting, as ever. Jessica sat and waited for her boss to speak. ‘On Saturday, I had a very brief conversation with Peter Hunt. Despite it being my day off, I had a further, much longer conversation with Mr Hunt yesterday over the phone. Today, I came into the station to be given a letter that had been hand-delivered by Mr Hunt for my attention.’ He paused for a moment, ever the showman. ‘Would you like to guess the contents of either those conversations or the letter?’

‘No, Sir.’

‘In that case, I should give you some good news and bad news – first the bad. Mr Hunt has alleged that in the interview room on Saturday, you threatened his client, Mr Lapham, with violence. He further alleges that your conduct was completely out of order throughout that interview and that you called him . . .’ The DCI paused, pulling a letter out of an A4 brown envelope. He scanned down through its contents then continued. ‘. . . that you called him a “shitbag”.’

He looked up from the letter straight at her. ‘How do you answer that?’

She didn’t answer him directly but instead said: ‘What is the good news?’

Aylesbury actually smiled and she saw a twinkle in his eye she had never seen before. ‘The good news for you, DS Daniel, is that I have listened to the recording made and, while some of your questioning may have been a little unconventional, I certainly could hear no threatening remarks. I have spoken to both Cole and the constable stationed outside of the room at the time, and neither of them are able to corroborate Mr Hunt’s version of events. Given that Mr Lapham has also refused to make any statement of any kind relating to what did or did not happen during questioning on Saturday, I have informed Mr Hunt that there is very little more I can do.’

It all clicked into place for Jessica. Cole had stopped the tape and left the room, leaving the door only slightly ajar. The constable outside heard nothing – or was happy to say that. Lapham, meanwhile, would not want any kind of coverage, either public or otherwise, to indicate he might have been intimidated by a female. That meant it was simply Hunt who was left with a problem.

Aylesbury continued. ‘Mr Hunt has indicated in his letter that he would wish to pursue this matter with Detective Superintendent Davies. I spoke with him a short time ago and informed him that I believed there was no basis for any action, especially given the lack of cooperation from Mr Hunt’s own client. I should tell you, however, that the superintendent has promised to meet with Mr Hunt at some point this week. He will make a final decision as to whether or not Internal will be called in.’

DSI Davies was their overall boss but was not based at the station and had been winding down to retirement for a while now. On most decisions he deferred to the local DCI and William Aylesbury was one of his particular favourites. Jessica guessed on this occasion Hunt’s profile meant a meeting had to be held. She hoped it would just be for courtesy and almost allowed herself a half-smile.

‘I just have one more question to ask, DS Daniel,’ Aylesbury said, this time giving her the biggest smile she had ever seen him give anyone. ‘Did you really call him a shitbag?’

Jessica said nothing for a moment, weighing up her options. She wasn’t entirely off the hook yet. Given her boss’s demeanour, she replied with the half-smile she had been trying to stifle. ‘I think it may have been “slimy shitbag”, Sir.’

The DCI laughed much like Harry had two days previously and once again Jessica found herself joining in, albeit it not quite so wholeheartedly as she had with Harry.

‘I would have loved to have seen his face,’ the chief inspector managed to say in between guffaws. It didn’t take long for the lighthearted moment to pass and Aylesbury looked at Jessica to indicate it was time to be serious again. ‘I should of course point out that behaviour like that will not be tolerated and, if you did say anything out of order towards Mr Lapham, that is exactly the type of practice we do not condone.’

‘Yes, Sir.’

From there it was straight down to business. With Wayne Lapham released and uncooperative about the mysterious man who sold him the stolen goods in the pub, who they both knew probably didn’t exist, they were back to having no suspect.

The morning briefing went much along those lines. They had found one link but there must either be more to it or something else that joined the two victims. Lapham wasn’t entirely in the clear either. His mug shot was on the whiteboard with a big question mark underneath it. Officers would be looking into his banking details and phone records to see if there was anything that could link him to the dates or victims. Jessica thought it likely another minor crime or three would be discovered but doubted he would have much more to do with the main investigation.

Jessica had resolved to go back to the crime scenes that afternoon. The Scene of Crime team had already been over them with little in the way of positive results. The Christensen residence was still boarded up at the front with the husband, who was still technically paying half the mortgage, deciding what to do with the place. It wasn’t going to be easy selling a house where someone had recently been murdered inside. Sandra Prince had been discharged from hospital the previous day and Jessica was also going to pay her a visit. It had been her who had first put them on the tail of Wayne Lapham and maybe she had something else tucked away. Jessica had been in such a hurry to get out of the hospital the previous time when she found out about the burglary, she could easily have missed something else. She knew the whole of Tuesday was going to be spent either in court or hanging around outside, so figured it was best to try to make something happen today.

The simmering undertone of the briefing was all about Jessica herself. More officers than ever before had said ‘good morning’ or ‘hi’ to her in the hallways. Everyone clearly knew about her incident, or at least the Hunt part of it, and seemed suitably impressed. She had already been offered six separate ‘drinks from the machine’ which was about as generous as anyone ever got in the station.

The briefing ended and she sent everyone on their way. The investigation was still in somewhat of a mess given the lack of suspect, motive or method but at least everyone was in a good mood. It seemed a silly distinction but sometimes people being positive could make something happen.

Officers had begun to leave the room when Jessica saw Rowlands calling her over, flicking his head and pulling a face. To others it might seem a somewhat disrespectful way to initiate a conversation but Jessica didn’t mind. He was standing near the back of the room, slightly away from any of the other departing officers. She walked over to him, fully expecting some crack about her car, Hunt, or something else that wasn’t very funny.

‘All right?’ she asked.

‘I’ve had a thought.’

‘Well, it’s been twenty-eight years. It had to happen sometime.’

Rowlands gave a half-smile but didn’t take the bait. ‘No, seriously.’

‘Go on then.’

‘There is this guy I used to go to uni with who is now a part-time magician . . .’

‘That’s a serious thought?’

‘No, honestly. Listen, I was asking him about how you could get in and out of something that was locked.’

‘Are you taking the piss?’

‘We don’t have any better ideas, do we?’

Jessica raised her eyebrows but had to concede they didn’t. ‘What did he say?’

‘It was complicated. I think he wants to meet you.’

‘You are joking?’

‘No, really. Look, it was just a thought.’

‘A shit one.’

She instantly felt bad about saying that. Rowlands was a cocky so-and-so but his face fell ever so slightly before returning to its previous state. In the briefings, they constantly encouraged people to ‘think outside the box’. That phrase was beyond a cliché but the intent behind it was the same: try to think around a problem rather than just go for it directly. A situation like this, where they genuinely had no idea how the murders had been committed, was exactly the time that type of thinking could possibly come up with a solution. Besides, she knew full well forces in other areas of the country used psychics in their investigations. From her point of view illusionists and psychics were more or less the same, except that magicians were upfront with their deception.

‘All right, fine . . .’ Rowlands said.

‘Look, I’ll tell you what. I’m in court tomorrow but come with me back to the scenes later today. If we don’t get anything from that, we’ll go see your mate on Wednesday. If you tell anyone that’s what we’re doing, you’re on your own.’ Jessica didn’t want it getting out that she was seemingly desperate enough to stoop to this line of thinking.

‘I’ll give him a call.’

‘He’s not a weirdo, is he?’

‘At university, he once nailed his trainers to the ceiling of his room in halls. He then set up a webcam and hung from the roof all the while streaming the whole thing over the Internet.’

‘Why?’

‘He said it was something to do with endurance and showing how differently the mind could work when it was put under stress but I think it was more to impress a girl.’

‘Did it?’

‘What do you think?’

‘Great, not a weirdo at all then.’

Garry Ashford was only a couple of days away from being fully back in his editor’s bad books. ‘If it bleeds, it leads’ had been the media’s motto for years and the Herald’s recent sales had borne that out. The day of Garry’s first exclusive had seen sales double. The attacks on the police force had helped keep the numbers up, while Garry’s second big story about the ‘Houdini Strangler’, which was his editor’s headline, had seen numbers almost triple.

It hadn’t all been good news for the reporter though. His colleagues had pretty much ostracised him, wondering how the hell some scruffy kid who had done nothing previously had suddenly managed to stumble across such good stories. On the other hand, his editor had been talking of awards, promotions, pay rises and all sorts of other positive things. Garry was fully aware he hadn’t yet been elevated, or given any extra money, and wondered how long he could keep his run going.

It was now Monday and it had been made abundantly clear by his editor that he had to come up with something good. His boss had questioned him about his source and asked if there was any more information they could use. It was all very polite on the surface but there was definitely an undertone.

That left Garry with something of a problem. He wasn’t going to just make things up and, while he had sent a text to his source’s unregistered number, he had not had any response yet. The last time they had spoken, his contact said they would have to talk sparingly and that information would be a little light on the ground for a while.

His meeting with DS Daniel the previous week had gone better than he expected. That said, anything that hadn’t ended with him being sworn at and threatened with varying degrees of physical violence would have been better than his previous phone calls with her. She had now slated his dress sense and name, so he thought his actual looks were the only thing she had left to go after him for.

He was supposed to be off over the weekend but received a call from the news editor on Friday evening asking what he knew about Wayne Lapham. He knew as much as anyone else, seeing as he had seen the same media releases and photos as the rest of the office when the police had put out the request for help finding him. Somehow, he had still been told to spend his Saturday getting some background on the investigation’s prime suspect. There seemed to be some assumption that he would know what he was doing.

He didn’t.

Lapham didn’t appear to exist on the electoral roll or in the phone book, which was unsurprising. Garry had texted his source for help but, with no reply, had ended up doing what all journalists hated doing: door-stepping. As part of their appeal, the police had put out information that Lapham had last been seen in the Prince of Wales pub in Moston. Garry didn’t really know the area but had found the address of the place on the Internet and taken two buses to get there. He kept the tickets, hoping he would at least get expenses, and armed with a copy of that day’s Herald – which had a photo of Lapham on the front, had marched into the pub hoping someone would be willing to point him in the right direction.

The barman, who Garry assumed was also the landlord, was a large bald-headed man with intimidating accusing eyes and a deep voice. Garry showed him the paper’s front page and started with a polite, ‘Hello, I was wondering if . . .’ but the barman finished his sentence for him.

‘. . . you were wondering if you could buy a drink? Yes, you can.’

Garry had ordered a coke and asked for a receipt. That would be going to the expenses department too. That first drink had got him the information that Lapham had been in the pub the day before and that ‘your lot’ had been on the phone all morning.

The second drink uncovered the fact that Lapham was often in the pub but wasn’t at that exact moment. Garry could see that for himself.

The third coke and first packet of crisps had helped Garry find out that Lapham didn’t live too far away and that this place was his local. With each ordered drink, the barman’s smile got wider and wider. Garry had always had a weak bladder and needed two trips to the men’s room already. In some ways, he thought, it was a bizarre type of torture that he was paying for the privilege of.

Garry’s first beer of the day, ordered out of exasperation, and second packet of crisps had finally prised out that Lapham lived in a row of flats not too far away.

‘Dunno more than that I’m afraid, mate,’ the barman told him after Garry had finished that final drink. Garry thought the word ‘mate’ was something of a subjective term.

After a third trip to the toilet on his way out, Garry followed the barman’s instructions to the row of flats where Lapham apparently lived. He had no answer from the first door, while the man behind the second looked at him as if he had two heads then slammed it in his face. After a rather sweary inquiry as to his identity from the woman behind the third door, he was surprisingly informed this was Lapham’s house and that the female was his ‘fiancée’, Marie Hall. Even more astoundingly he was invited in, with the woman promising to tell him how the police were ‘stitching up’ her partner.

The woman was still in her dressing gown, a particularly peach monstrosity. She invited him into her kitchen and chain-smoked throughout their conversation, which was more of a one-sided rant. Garry thought his flat was a mess but Lapham’s made his look like a hospital ward.

Despite the swearing, lack of cohesion and seemingly baseless accusations, Marie had at least given him some useful information. She said some officer had not long been sent back from her place because her fiancé had handed himself in and was currently at the police station being questioned. That was the first Garry knew of it. She reckoned the police had nothing on him and were ‘dredging up old things ’cos they’ve got it in for him’. But she gave him plenty of background on her fiancé and even let Garry borrow a photo ‘as long as you bring it back’. From what she said, Lapham was a misunderstood soul whom the police delighted in picking on.

Garry thought that, although those claims seemed unlikely, behind the bravado, Marie actually did care for Wayne Lapham and was genuinely worried for him. She certainly didn’t like the police and more than once went off on a tangent about ‘that posh bitch officer forcing her way in here’. Garry didn’t push the point but had an idea about who the ‘bitch’ could have been.

He thanked her for her time and caught the buses back to write the story up. By then news had come out that Wayne Lapham had been released. Garry linked everything together and turned it into something of a profile piece about the investigation’s prime suspect. His editor had called and said the piece was okay but sounded disappointed his reporter hadn’t got more. Quite what he’d expected, Garry wasn’t sure.

It was that tone which had continued into the Monday meeting but perhaps all that was about to change. On Garry’s phone was a text from the pre-pay number he had memorised.

‘Call me. It’s good.’

Garry phoned the number, feverishly taking notes throughout the call. It was good. Good enough to wreck the career of a certain detective sergeant.

20

Jessica’s day hadn’t been too productive. She had first taken Rowlands with her to Yvonne Christensen’s boarded-up house. They were let in through the back by the victim’s ex-husband, Eric, who had been given his son’s keys. Jessica didn’t know what she thought she would get from the visit and hadn’t expected a flash of inspiration where she discovered something others had missed. Things didn’t work like that.

Eric didn’t want to enter the house and told them he hadn’t been in since the murder. He said he was in the process of organising a company to go in and clean the house up. When that was complete, he would look to put it on the market. Finding a set of cleaners keen enough was proving a problem when he explained the situation.

Jessica wasn’t surprised.

The house itself looked more or less the same as it had the last time she had been there. The bed upstairs had been stripped with the sheets taken by the Scene of Crime team. Blood had soaked through to the mattress and was clearly visible.

Jessica and Rowlands walked around the house looking for something that might have been missed. She checked the attic for the first time herself, having seen the report that said there was no connection to the neighbouring property but wanting to check herself for completeness. It was exactly as the account had said – there wasn’t much to see with no way in, obvious or not.

She tried to walk herself through what would have happened, the direction Yvonne must have been facing when the wire was wrapped around her neck. She thought about where the killer’s feet must have stood and the angle their body must have been at as they held the murder instrument. None of it really helped.

She visited Sandra Prince at her house. It seemed odd that the woman had gone back to living at the property where her husband’s murdered body had recently been found but Jessica knew some people did that because there was nowhere else for them to go. The woman wasn’t in the best frame of mind but did say she was bemused as to why Wayne Lapham had been released. Sandra hadn’t been angry exactly but kept saying that he had already got away with it once, meaning the burglaries. It was hard to argue with her. Jessica asked if she knew of any connection to the Christensen family but Sandra didn’t recognise the name or photos.

In terms of the case itself, neither of the visits had really helped but it had focused Jessica’s mind on the bodies again with the viciousness of it all. It made her appreciate even more that the person she was looking for was definitely no fool. Setting up this kind of scene took the attention away from themselves because the police were busy trying to find out how the murders were carried out, rather than who carried them out. As for the why, they had as much idea about that as they did about the other aspects. She didn’t believe Lapham could be their killer but the connection he gave to the victims surely couldn’t be a coincidence either.

After returning to the station, Jessica checked in with Cole but there was little to report. The victims of the other three burglaries for which Lapham had been convicted of handling stolen goods had been visited again but reported nothing untoward. Jessica went to her office to get rid of some paperwork. Reynolds wasn’t in and she had the space to herself but she couldn’t focus on the work, her thoughts turned towards her appearance in court the following day and round two with Peter Hunt. Not to mention the case she was working on.

She had just pushed back into her chair and shut her eyes when her phone rang. She picked it up from the desk, looking at Garry Ashford’s name on the screen. She had reprogrammed his name properly into her phone after meeting him, reluctantly admitting that perhaps he wasn’t that bad after all.

He still dressed like a prat and couldn’t spell his own name though.

‘Mr Ashford,’ she answered. ‘How’s life in the gutters?’

‘Oh . . . hi. Are you alone?’

‘Yes but this isn’t a sex line. Well, unless you’re paying . . .’

‘Can I run something by you?’

Jessica’s first thought was that another body had been found and somehow the journalist knew about it before she did. Her mind was racing. ‘What?’

‘At lunch today, I spoke to a lawyer named Peter Hunt.’

Jessica winced at the mention of that name. She was aware that, even if she was exonerated by Aylesbury and the superintendent, there wouldn’t be too much they could do if a story about her threatening a suspect got into the papers. The police couldn’t be seen to have someone in such a prominent position who was embroiled in a scandal like that. As someone who could work as part of a big investigation, she would be finished, hard evidence or not.

Her response aptly summed up her mood. ‘Shit.’

‘He was only confirming what I had already heard.’

That was the problem the station’s whispers had caused. The legend of what had actually happened in the interview room had grown out of all proportion. In the car on their way to the Christensens’ house earlier, Rowlands had asked her about the incident. She hadn’t told him much – or anyone for that matter – but he had told her the things he had heard. They ranged from something actually approaching the truth to her having Peter Hunt up against the interview room’s wall by the throat. Other versions included her turning the table over and bellowing a string of abuse at both Hunt and Lapham, while somebody else had apparently said she’d attacked the pair of them with a fork from the canteen. She had realised on the journey things had got out of hand. People had obviously been talking and word would have been around most of the Greater Manchester Police force by now. That wasn’t even counting the people Peter Hunt had spoken to. It hadn’t crossed her mind at the time but this was exactly the kind of thing that could have happened.

‘What have you heard?’ Jessica asked.

Garry’s version of events was almost exactly as Jessica remembered. He certainly had a very good source considering there had only been three people in the room and she knew he hadn’t got the information from herself or Wayne Lapham. Hunt may have confirmed details but she doubted he would have tipped someone like Garry Ashford off in the first place.

‘I can’t really talk about it, Garry,’ she said after he finished telling her his story.

‘I know but I have to ask.’

‘What are you going to write?’

‘I don’t know yet . . . something.’

‘You know this could ruin me?’ Jessica wasn’t sure what to say. It wasn’t as if she had been too nice to him before. That had just slipped out.

‘Would you like to tell me what happened?’

Jessica didn’t know what had come over her in the past few days with the anger in the interview room, plus the emotion in the station’s toilet and over the phone with Harry. She had even enjoyed a laugh with the DCI, a person she had never really got on too well with before. And now she told Garry Ashford, a journalist and relative stranger, everything. Once she started speaking, she couldn’t stop. He didn’t try to interrupt or ask anything, he simply let her talk. She told him how Lapham had got under her skin and that Hunt had let him. She spoke about the investigation itself: how the police had got nowhere and were struggling. They weren’t even sure how the murders had happened, let alone who did them. She even told him about her own feelings of inadequacy amid a complete lack of leads.

If Internal Investigations were listening in, they would have had a field day. When she had finished, there was a short silence.

Garry eventually broke it. ‘That was a bit . . . more . . . than I expected.’

Suddenly she was laughing again and so was he. ‘I don’t know why I told you all that,’ she added once things had calmed down. ‘I could be ruined if all of this got out. They wouldn’t trust me to go into an interview room again.’

‘What would you like me to do?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘I have an idea but would need your help?’

‘Go on . . .’

‘Do you think you can trust me?’

‘I’m not sure I have much choice.’

Jessica listened as Garry told her to leave it with him but to make sure she got hold of the next day’s paper. ‘I think I’ve got a way to keep you and my editor happy,’ he said.

Jessica thought that, if he could manage that, he was definitely a lot cleverer than she had previously given him credit for.

Having read the Herald’s website on her phone the next morning and then bought the print edition on her way to the station, Jessica was beginning to think she had definitely underestimated Garry Ashford. But if the scruffy little genius had got her off the hook, he had also ensured her colleagues would be taking the piss out of her for weeks.

She had been impressed when she had seen the online version but it was the actual hard copy that really stood out. The front-page banner headline read: ‘HOUDINI HUNTER’. She wasn’t a fan of the ‘Houdini Strangler’ label but, good or bad, it had stuck. Garry’s front-page piece, which extended over a two-page spread on the inside, was a full profile of her. It was positive throughout, reassuring the public that she was looking out for them and hard on the trail of the killer. After the previous editorials slating the lack of progress, this piece praised the ‘behind the scenes efforts’. Very little of the information had actually come from her but, even if it had, it was written so cleverly no one could have known for sure. It quoted ‘sources close to Detective Sergeant Daniel’ and ‘senior members of the team’.

The journalist must have really done his homework the day before. They still didn’t have a great photo of her but had come up with one taken a few years previously when she was in uniform. She remembered it being taken but had no idea where the newspaper would have got it from. She definitely looked younger in the shot and she thought more naive too.

Jessica was planning only a brief stop at Longsight to pick up some paperwork on her way to court. It would give her something to do while she was stuck hanging around in the witnesses’ waiting room. Court duty was a mixed blessing for officers. On the one hand, you did get a day off work. She thought it was like when the teacher used to wheel in the video player at school and you knew you would get an easy ride for that lesson. The downside was the sheer amount of waiting around you had to do.

At the station, Jessica had walked into a rowdy, sarcastic cheer from the half-a-dozen or so people milling around the reception area. Before she could make her way through to her office, the desk sergeant pointed towards the stairs. ‘He wants to see you.’

She wasn’t sure if it would be a negative trip to see the DCI. He surely couldn’t be annoyed given the force had finally been painted in a good light? Jessica went up the stairs but, as she made her way past his office’s window, he didn’t appear to be smiling. ‘DS Daniel,’ he said as she knocked and entered. She instantly noticed a copy of that morning’s Herald on his desk. ‘So you have been making friends with the press then?’ he added, referring to their initial conversation in reception when details of the first murder had made the papers.

‘Not really, Sir. I don’t know where he got most of that information.’

‘But you know where he got some of it . . . ?’

Jessica said nothing but the half-smile on Aylesbury’s face indicated he wasn’t expecting an answer. He spoke again. ‘I talked to Superintendent Davies this morning and he was particularly pleased with today’s media coverage. Delighted, I would say. He asked me to pass a message on to you.’

Aylesbury paused, presumably waiting to see if Jessica would bite. She stayed silent, her face neutral and waited for her boss to continue. ‘He wanted me to tell you not to worry about either Peter Hunt or any internal investigation. His exact words were, “Tell Ms Daniel I’ll handle it”.’

Jessica half-smiled. ‘Thank you, Sir.’

‘I should of course remind you of your responsibilities when dealing with victims, witnesses, suspects and their representatives . . .’

‘I understand, Sir.’

‘Right then. Enjoy your day in court with Mr Hunt today. I’m sure he will be positively delighted to meet you again so soon.’