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

Автор книги: Kerry Wilkinson

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Текущая страница: 18 (всего у книги 60 страниц)

‘It’s okay. I reckon I’ll get another story out of the bits you’ve told me. “Senior source”, yeah?’

‘Source.’

‘Whatever.’

Garry packed his things back into his bag and gave a little wobble as he stood up. Jessica could feel the alcohol inside her too. She walked him to the door and found herself giving him a little hug as they said goodbye. She thought his cheeks had reddened slightly afterwards but it could have been the booze for him too.

‘Thanks for your help tonight, Garry.’

‘No worries, Det . . . Jess.’

‘Good night.’ Jessica closed the door but instantly took her phone out and typed a reminder into the calendar for the next morning. It was probably nothing and possibly just the wine doing her thinking but she’d had an idea and didn’t want to forget it when she woke up.

34

Jessica had never had big hangovers in her life. There was always the odd morning after when Caroline had been at university and the two of them had gone out but nothing crazy and she had never lost days or anything silly like some of the stories people could tell.

She woke up on the Saturday morning with an aching neck, a world-class headache and the distinct taste of last night’s curry in her mouth. The room was ridiculously bright and she again cursed herself for not contacting the landlord. She fumbled her way out of the cocoon she had made of her duvet and realised she was still wearing the clothes she’d had on the whole of the previous day and evening. Craving water, she staggered out of her bedroom and made her way groggily towards the kitchen.

‘Caroline?’

She hadn’t heard her friend and Randall come in the previous night but, considering how much she had drunk, that was no particular surprise. There wasn’t any answer anyway, so presumably the two of them had stopped the night at the new flat.

Jessica turned on the sink’s tap and almost hypnotically watched the water gush out and hold her attention. Vague memories of her chat with Garry the previous evening came flooding back. Had she hugged him? She saw the three empty bottles of wine next to the bin.

She shook her head and snapped her gaze away from the water, snatching a glass from the draining board and filling it up. She downed the whole glass in one and filled it back up again. After that, she hunted around in the drawer under the sink for some aspirin and took three along with another full glass of water. She was pretty sure the recommended dose was two tablets but that was surely for a standard headache?

Regardless, she fumbled her way back to bed and lay down. The ceiling was still spinning but not too badly and she could hear a buzzing noise from somewhere. She looked from one side of the bed to the other, confused by the sound, before realising it was coming from her phone, which was face down on the nightstand. Her head had started to clear slightly but she still struggled to pick her phone up, unable to figure out what the specific tone was. It was definitely a different noise to her alarm and text message sounds. Her fingers didn’t seem to want to do what her brain was willing them to but she eventually managed to unlock the screen and saw there was a calendar alert and a separate text message.

She read the text first: it was from Caroline.

‘Been called into work CU later. X’

Jessica then pressed the button to read the note she had left herself the previous evening.

It may have been the ramblings of a drunk woman but she had nothing better to do – as soon as she’d had a shower, Jessica resolved to follow the note up, even if she did end up looking stupid.

‘Sorry, who are you?’

Jessica was listening to an irate voice from the other end of her phone.

‘Kim, it’s Detective Sergeant Daniel. We spoke at the station. Do you remember?’

‘What do you want?’ Kim Hogan’s tone didn’t indicate she was overly receptive to being called by a member of the police.

‘I just wanted to clarify a point or two with you if that’s all right?’

‘I read yesterday your lot had been booted off the case or something like that. Some super cop people brought in to clean up your mess and find that Collins psycho.’

‘That’s not really true, Kim.’ Jessica realised that in essence it actually was correct but she still wanted the girl to answer one question.

‘What do you want? I told you everything last time.’

‘I want to check one thing with you.’

‘Fine. Just get on with it.’

‘You know when you told me we hadn’t done much about kids harassing your mum, what did you mean?’

‘Well, you didn’t, did you? Your lot wouldn’t even come out.’

‘To what, though, Kim?’

‘It doesn’t matter now, does it?’

Jessica was already feeling exasperated and glad she hadn’t gone to see the girl in person, as had been her original plan. She’d had to phone the station and ask for a favour on the quiet to get someone to pass Kim’s contact details on to her. There were a few people she trusted to keep something like that under the radar.

‘I’m not trying to trip you up, Kim. I just want to make sure we’ve checked all angles.’

‘Fine. Look, it went on for a while. There was always kids knocking on the door and running and all that and harassing her on the street. But then one of them put glue in the front-door lock one night. We had to climb out the window. Your lot hadn’t done anything before and were always hassling Mum on the street so she couldn’t be bothered. She just got . . . someone she knew to fix things.’

Jessica’s heart was racing, all signs of a hangover long gone. ‘Who?’

‘I dunno. I wasn’t even in. Just someone she knew.’

Jessica didn’t want to ask the obvious but couldn’t see a way around it. ‘One of her clients?’

‘Piss off. Don’t talk about her like that.’

‘Please, Kim. I . . . Look, it could be really helpful.’

‘Whatever. I don’t know. It was just someone she knew.’

Jessica apologised for the call, ignored the sweary response and hung up. She was in her living room, sitting on the sofa in a still-empty flat. She took a deep breath, her heart still charging. She would have to make at least two more phone calls with the first to Garry Ashford to get Paul Keegan’s phone number. She didn’t want to risk another call to the station to get information that technically she wasn’t entitled to any longer. It most likely wouldn’t have got her in trouble but she didn’t want to alert anyone to the fact she was still doing background work on the case.

She kept the call to Garry short and didn’t give him any reason why she needed the number. He sounded more hungover than she did but text-messaged her the number. Straight away Jessica phoned Paul Keegan. The poor guy sounded shattered on the other end and she just couldn’t bring herself to ask him anything over the phone. She asked if he could spare an hour or so and they arranged to meet in a cafe local to him. He sounded grateful to be getting out of the house. Jessica thought about driving but didn’t want to risk still being over the limit from the night before. The place they were meeting was only a bus ride away and she figured it would give her time to consider how best to approach things.

Paul Keegan was already waiting for her when Jessica arrived. The place they had arranged to meet was his choice, a greasy-spoon establishment just off a main road not too far from his house. Jessica could smell the fat as she walked through the door, instantly reminding her of childhood. She and her parents used to spend two weeks every summer in Blackpool. At the time, the sea front was lined with places like this, dirt-cheap cafes competing to sell the cheapest cup of tea and fighting to get as many people in as possible to play bingo. This was the sort of place that had once been the lifeblood of a city like Manchester but had largely died out in the last few years, replaced by posher, more expensive chain restaurants. There were still a few remaining, mainly on the outskirts where defiant locals would still go for a fry-up and a brew a couple of times a week.

There was a low chatter as Jessica spotted Paul Keegan off to her right, not far from the counter. He had a mug of tea on the table in front of him. She said hello and asked if he wanted anything to eat or a refill but he shook his head to both. Jessica ordered and paid for a cup of tea, although she wasn’t entirely sure it would be of a much better standard than the ones from the machines in the station and then took it back to sit opposite Mr Keegan. ‘Thanks for coming,’ she said.

‘No worries, it’s fine. It’s nice to get away from the house to be honest. We weren’t allowed back for a couple of days and now it doesn’t feel right.’

Jessica didn’t know how to begin to respond to that. It was a horrendous thought to have to return to live in a house where your wife was murdered. He was clearly trying to sound positive but it was obvious he was struggling to cope. She didn’t think going straight in to ask the one question she wanted to would be that tactful.

‘How are you doing?’ she asked.

She knew the answer wouldn’t be terrific but she didn’t want to ask directly about his stepson. Magistrates had refused Scott initial bail, fearing he and the other two who admitted to assaulting Nigel Collins could run. They had all confessed to the crime and it was just a matter of time until it came to court.

‘I don’t really know,’ he said. ‘It’s Steven I feel sorry for the most. He’s had to go back to do his final exams with all this hanging over him. With all the funeral arrangements and everything I’ve not really stopped for the past few days. I even went to see Scott yesterday . . .’

Jessica must have looked surprised because he felt the need to justify what he had said. ‘He’s not a bad kid. He had a bad time when his dad and Mary split up. Don’t get me wrong, I know and he knows that what he did was wrong but . . .’

He didn’t finish the sentence but Jessica knew what he was alluding to. Most people did something stupid when they were younger. That wasn’t to excuse what Scott had done in any way but one stupid immature decision when he was barely a teenager had now cost him any semblance of an adult life. She couldn’t help but be impressed by his stepfather. Paul Keegan had every right to hate a son that wasn’t his own flesh and blood but had indirectly caused the death of his wife. Yet he didn’t; it seemed he had already forgiven him. Jessica was stunned by the man’s compassion.

‘Do you want another?’ she asked, nodding towards his now-empty cup on the table.

‘Yeah, okay.’

‘Anything to eat?’

Paul Keegan shook his head.

Jessica thought he looked as if he could do with a meal but knew she couldn’t force him. She went to the counter and ordered a new mug of tea before returning to the table. When Jessica sat down, he asked her why her team had been removed from the case. She gave the best answer she could, trying to sound professional and remarking that the Serious Crime Division had more training in this type of area now it had essentially become a search for one man. She thought it sounded good, even if she didn’t believe it herself.

‘I just wanted to check one thing with you, if that’s okay?’ Jessica said.

‘No worries.’

‘Do you remember when you told me you’d had a few problems with kids recently, what kind of problems did you mean?’

‘Oh, the usual. Kids out and about at night, just noise and that. Someone ended up putting Super Glue in our locks. We had to climb out the window, plus get someone to change them and get a bunch of new keys cut.’

Jessica struggled to respond. How had she not asked this question before? She went to speak but stumbled over her words. It almost seemed as if time had slowed down before she finally managed to reply. ‘How long ago?’

The penny had clearly dropped for Paul Keegan too. ‘Why, do you think . . . ? Umm, a few months, five or six.’

‘Do you know who fixed the locks?’

‘No, I was at work while Mary was off but um . . .’ He stopped speaking and was clearly mulling something over. ‘Yeah, yeah, I remember. Here’s the thing; we got this flyer through the door literally the day before it happened. It was some kind of special offer thing. Mary always kept the mail and everything so neatly on the table next to the door. It seemed like a piece of good fortune at the time.’

Jessica’s mind was racing and she prayed the answer to her next question would be positive. ‘Did you keep the flyer?’

‘Oh . . . I don’t know. Mary usually kept things like that just in case. I don’t know if it was one of those things you had to hand in.’

‘Can we have a look?’

‘Of course.’

Paul Keegan quickly stood up, clearly understanding what could be happening. He marched towards the door, Jessica just behind. His house was only a few minutes’ walk away and Jessica followed him along a cut-through towards the estate. Neither of them said a word. Jessica could feel the nerves in her stomach. Suddenly things seemed to be making sense, at least for the final two victims. Nigel Collins had tracked down Claire Hogan and perhaps befriended her as a client. Then he had sabotaged the lock on her front door by squirting glue into it and just happened to be there to fix it for her. It would have been so easy to keep a copy of the key for himself. He could have either let himself in, murdered her, then left, locking up on the way out, or he could have gone to her as a client, killed her and locked the door behind him.

Even the ‘why’ seemed clear. It was as Hugo had told her – misdirection. While the police were busy trying to find out how the crimes had taken place, they weren’t focusing on what linked the bodies. He had even used the trouble with local kids as another way of directing attention away from himself but this time for the victims. The victims had blamed local children for the trouble, not bothering to trust the police to do anything.

Something similar would have happened with Mary Keegan, except Collins had been even cleverer, all but ensuring the Keegans would come to him to get their door fixed. He cunningly posted a flyer through their door offering a cheap deal and then damaged their locks not long after. It wasn’t entirely foolproof but everyone liked a good bargain.

It would be a pretty good bet the Christensens and Princes had to have had their locks changed after being robbed too. Most people obviously wanted it doing for their own piece of mind but it was usually an insurance requirement after a burglary anyway. How Collins had managed to make sure he had a key for those properties wasn’t exactly clear and there were still gaps, such as how he knew where everyone lived – but she knew she had figured out a large part of everything.

Now she just had to figure out the final but largest part of the puzzle – where was Nigel Collins?

Paul Keegan unlocked the same front door Jessica herself had done not that long ago when she had discovered Mary’s body and they both went in. She remembered the tidy stack of post on the table next to the front door and it looked as if it had been added to. She was led into the kitchen and Paul opened a drawer to the left of the sink. ‘We keep things like menus and vouchers and so on in here. If it’s not here, it won’t be anywhere.’

He pulled out a big pile of glossy pieces of paper and put them on the kitchen table. Jessica was on one side as he sat opposite her. They each started looking through a very large heap. Jessica worked quickly. She could see from some of the vouchers that the expiry date was years old. The whole house was spotless but this seemed to be something of a forbidden drawer, where all sorts of miscellaneous junk was thrown just in case. Her dad kept a similar hoard at home.

She didn’t want to seem disrespectful and copied Paul by putting the pamphlets that weren’t useful in a separate pile. Her stack was twice the size of Mary’s husband’s, who was taking time to read each piece of paper, while she was far more ruthless. There were lots of menus, plus vouchers for money off fried chicken and pizza, various flyers for local supermarkets or the off-licence on the main road. Between them the initial selection was down to around a quarter of its original size.

Jessica started to put one more sheet on her discard pile and then she saw it. She had been so close to tossing it away but stopped in mid-action and brought the flyer back towards her so she could read it. She scanned the words, her eyes flicking from side to side and reading the contents twice over.

She knew where to find Nigel Collins.

35

Paul Keegan watched her take the flyer. He had stopped sorting himself and glanced up. ‘Have you found it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Can I see it?’

‘I’m not sure that’s a good idea.’ Jessica didn’t think he was the type to go storming off looking for revenge but she didn’t want to risk giving it back to him just in case. It looked as if he understood anyway.

He nodded gently and simply made one request. ‘Just make sure you get him,’ he said sadly.

Jessica followed the details on the flyer to the address it had given. Things almost made sense, though there were still gaps. The location listed would have almost certainly been the place closest to all four homes if they wanted to get keys cut. As well as being the nearest place, there was a good chance it would be the cheapest too. All of the victims were local and would have been well aware of those facts.

It was quite possible the person that ran the place would have had the skills to replace a lock for Claire Hogan too but, even if he didn’t himself, there was still a very reasonable connection. Jessica didn’t know if she would ever truly know the whole story – unless Nigel Collins was willing to talk after he had been caught. There was perhaps still some coincidence but maybe she just didn’t know the whole story yet.

The biggest problem Jessica had was that she couldn’t find the place listed. She knew she was roughly in the right area but found herself walking in circles. She had made at least two laps of the site, weaving in and out of the people and checking each possible location individually. She didn’t understand how she could be missing it.

Eventually she decided she just didn’t have enough knowledge of that precise area and that she should ask someone who did. She walked up to the closest person, took out the flyer and held it up to the man in front of her.

‘Hi. I was wondering if you knew where this place is?’

The man squinted to look at the paper in her hand. ‘Hang on a minute, love. I’ll need my glasses.’ The man fiddled with a pocket on the inside of his jacket and took out a case, before removing a pair of bifocals. He put them on and reached out for the flyer. Jessica was reluctant to let it go, given it could be used as evidence at some point, but released her grip nonetheless. The man took it and scanned through the words. ‘Sorry love, I’m only here on Saturdays. Not a clue.’

He gave it back but Jessica was silently fuming. ‘Why didn’t you just bloody say that in the first place,’ she thought to herself.

She decided to ask a woman close by, walking over and holding the flyer out once again. ‘Hi. I was just wondering if you know where this place is?’

The woman took the paper from her and gave it a read. ‘Do you know the offer’s out of date?’ Jessica felt like shaking the woman. ‘Of course I bloody know,’ she thought. ‘I do know how to read. Just answer the question.’

Instead, she actually said: ‘It’s okay. I was looking to find the place rather than use the offer.’

The woman shrugged at her, pointing the way Jessica had come from. ‘It should be on the end just over there.’

Jessica took the flyer back, put it in her bag, said ‘thank you’ and turned around. She was puzzled as she knew she had checked each place behind her. She figured the woman knew better than her, so walked back the way she had come and paid even more attention to her surroundings.

She reached the place on the end, where the woman told her she should be looking and got as close as she could without drawing too much attention. The woman must surely be wrong – this place didn’t deal with locks . . .

And then Jessica saw it.

It did deal with locks. It also engraved signs and trophies, plus sold batteries and various leather goods but that wasn’t the main function of the Gorton Market stall.

Now she could see why she had missed it. Each time she had walked past before she had simply seen the sign for shoe repairs.

And then she knew exactly who Nigel Collins was.