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

Автор книги: Kerry Wilkinson

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Текущая страница: 2 (всего у книги 60 страниц)

3

It hadn’t taken long to establish that every window in the house was also secured from the inside. There was no sign of forced entry, none of the locks had been damaged, nothing was broken and no obvious items had been stolen. There was still a flatscreen television on the wall and a laptop computer on a desk in the living room. Jessica knew that didn’t mean other things hadn’t been taken but, with a standard burglary, something like a laptop – light, mobile and worth a few quid – would have been one of the first things out the door. Yvonne Christensen’s mobile phone, which had been heard ringing, was on the nightstand next to the bed as well. It wasn’t a top-of-the-range model but she knew some scroat somewhere would have paid a tenner for it.

Jessica left Cole, who said he was going to have to phone his wife, and walked back to the Wilsons’ house, asking Rowlands to come outside.

‘Why did you dash off like that?’ he asked.

‘It was when Mrs Wilson said she couldn’t let herself into the victim’s house. When we were over there I remembered some keys hanging in the hallway but the front door was locked because we had to smash it down. I figured that, if her best friend didn’t have a key, then how did whoever killed her get in? The back door and windows are all locked too.’

‘So you reckon it was the husband then?’

Jessica let out a long ‘hmmm’ noise. ‘Maybe but that doesn’t make much sense either. Firstly, we don’t know if he has a key any longer but, even if he does, if you were going to kill your partner, you wouldn’t make it obvious, would you? If you knew you were one of a few people with a way in, you’d hide the fact that was how you’d done it. You could fake a burglary or something like that but it’s all so clean in there. It’s not like it’s one of those old-fashioned doors that just lock when you pull them shut, you actually have to try to secure it.’

‘Could she have let someone in?’

‘Possibly but how did they lock it when they were back out again given her key is in the hallway?’

‘Maybe whoever did it secured everything to get a few days’ head start?’

‘If they did then it’s not the husband. I phoned him a minute ago and asked if we could come pick him up. I didn’t tell him his wife was dead but he’s definitely around and gave me the address.’

She handed a piece of paper over to Rowlands then continued talking. ‘Can you take one of the liaison officers and tell him the news – then bring him to the station? Ask which university his son goes to because someone’s going to have to tell him too. We’re going to have to find out who has a key for that house.’

Rowlands took one of the marked cars as Jessica walked back towards the victim’s house to ask Cole what he wanted to do next. He was just ducking under the tape by the edge of the garden as she approached. ‘I was supposed to be taking the kids to the zoo today,’ he said.

‘I don’t know why criminals can’t just stick to office hours,’ Jessica replied with a grin.

‘I’ve been saying that for years; if you’re going to commit a crime, can you at least have the decency to do it between nine and five, preferably Monday to Friday.’

Humour was frequently dark in the station. Perhaps to an outsider it would seem as if they were uncaring towards victims and other people that came through the doors. If the general public knew some of the comments that were made about them behind their backs, there would be uproar. Really, it was just the way members of the force coped. At any given time you could find yourself dealing with the lowest types of human life committing horrendous acts on some of the most vulnerable people imaginable. You had to care but it was essential you had some kind of detachment too. It was the banter and dark jokes that made that possible and fuelled people to work together.

Jessica gave a small laugh. ‘Dave’s off to pick up the husband. Have they found anything inside?’

‘I don’t think so, you know how long it all takes.’

Jessica nodded but was struggling to get her head around everything. ‘The thing is, even if they find a sample from the husband or the son, it wouldn’t necessarily show anything because they both lived here until fairly recently. Unless the victim is a habitual deep cleaner, there is always going to be some trace of them in the house.’

‘It depends what they find, doesn’t it? Blood under nails or something like that would be a good lead.’

Jessica blew out through her teeth and shook her head slightly. ‘Maybe.’

She knew the forensic testing often gave them their best leads but sometimes it could throw up as many questions as answers. If the victim had scratched the attacker and there was a trace of them on her it would give the police a solid start but leads as concrete as that were rare. Just showing the husband had recently been in the house wouldn’t be enough and, after that, even if they did find blood or hair from someone else, they would still be hoping for a match on the National DNA Database.

Anyone who was arrested on suspicion of committing a crime had their mouth swabbed and details stored. If a person had never been in trouble, a sample taken from a crime scene could sit for years until paired with someone. The testing methods were great for ruling people out of an inquiry but you still had to do police work the old-fashioned way if you didn’t get a match.

‘No need to be so negative,’ Cole said with a smile and wink. ‘Usually it’s someone the victim knows.’

Jessica gave a small smile but it wasn’t sincere. ‘I know but you’d make it less obvious. There’s something not right here. Did you ask about any estimated time for results?’

‘No, the hairnet brigade get a bit snotty if you start pushing them. Things move slowly at the weekend anyway. If we’re lucky, we might get a formal identification plus a time and confirmed cause of death by Monday. I’ll phone the chief inspector so he knows what’s going on and he’ll put a call in to say this is a priority. It doesn’t stop them being under-staffed though.’

‘Aren’t we all?’

‘Either way, some of the forensics guys are going to have to come in on a Sunday to wade through it all.’

‘I’m glad I’m not making that phone call. Someone’s going to get an earful.’ Jessica paused briefly and then added: ‘Are we both going back to the station to talk to the husband?’

‘Yes, there’s not much more we can do here. Scene of Crime are doing their thing and officers are knocking on doors to ask if anyone saw or heard anything in the last few days.’

Jessica looked back down the street towards the Wilsons’ house. ‘There were lots of curtains twitching this morning but I doubt any of them were watching when it might have been some use.’

‘Always the way, isn’t it?’

Jessica never failed to be amazed by how many people apparently didn’t see anything when some kids were terrorising an old lady or some guy was beating his missus up.

‘Shall I meet you back at the station?’ she asked.

‘Yes, you head off and I’ll see you there.’

The journey to the main base at Longsight wasn’t a long one but the traffic had started to back up on the main roads as people woke up and realised that, for once, the sun was shining and they could actually go and do something with the day. It made a change from cowering from the rain in any case. Jessica often thought sunny days in the north seemed to bring out two types of people – those who hopped in the car and raced to the coast and those who went to the pub.

She parked at the front of the station and walked through to the canteen. Their base had been renovated relatively recently and its sandy brick colour on the outside was still visible, unlike a lot of the local stations where the dirt had long since taken hold. It was two floors high but also had a basement that housed the incident room, as well as a separate area for the cells. Many officers also worked down there who didn’t have set desks. The top floor was where the chief inspector’s office was, along with a lot of storage and some other administration areas.

On the ground floor the main door opened straight into the reception where the desk sergeant would handle anyone who had been arrested. Some would be processed and put in the cells, while others would either be bailed to reappear or occasionally just given an on-the-spot fine or a bit of a talking to. Also on the floor were many of the slightly more senior officers’ individual offices plus the canteen, the media area and the interview rooms.

The canteen didn’t have the greatest choice at the best of times but there was never any hot food available on a Saturday, so Jessica crouched in front of a vending machine before settling for a sandwich that seemed to have the least curled-up corners. She then made her way through to one of the station’s two interview rooms.

Cole was already in there, setting up the recording equipment. Eric Christensen wouldn’t be under arrest but he would be cautioned and interviewed plus told he could have a legal representative if he wanted. Unless time was absolutely paramount or someone’s life was at stake, all interviews were supposed to be done at the station and documented.

Each interview was recorded onto three tapes. The master would almost certainly never be listened to. It was there solely as a backup to prevent any allegations of tampering. It usually had a yellow seal around it to show it had not been opened since the interview. One of the copies would be for the police to use, while the third was the suspect’s.

Jessica swallowed a mouthful of sandwich. ‘We must single-handedly be the only organisation in the world keeping the manufacturers of cassette tapes in business.’

Cole jammed the final tape in the machine and looked around at her. ‘I’ve been saying for ages it’s ridiculous.’

Jessica pointed at the device. ‘I can get a better quality recording on my phone than off this thing. Did I tell you about the case I was at the other month?’

‘Go on.’

‘At the magistrates’ court we had some guy up for handling stolen goods. The quality of the recording wasn’t good enough and the written log was incomplete so the whole thing fell apart. I was sitting at the back as the defence ripped us apart.’

‘Shame it’s not me that sorts out the budgets,’ Cole said with a smile.

As he finished talking, there was a knock at the door and Rowlands entered with two men just behind him. The first was wearing a suit and Jessica recognised him as one of the duty solicitors. His role was to offer free legal advice to people that had to be interviewed. That would often happen over the phone but, in serious cases, it was always in person. There were only a few duties for the area, so they were all familiar faces.

That meant the man behind him had to be Eric Christensen. He was tall and blond and casually dressed in a pair of jeans and light-fitting shirt. On first impression, Jessica wouldn’t have said he looked upset at hearing of his wife’s death but he certainly seemed subdued.

Cole gave Eric Christensen the standard caution and the rest of the interview itself went pretty much as she suspected it would. The man said he was shocked by his wife’s death but insisted he would never have meant her any ill will. He explained their divorce was going to be a formality as they had separated five months ago and said they had simply drifted apart over the years. Now that James had gone to university, they no longer saw the need to stay together for him.

He was seeing someone new who lived in Bolton and said he had been out with her on Tuesday night, playing snooker with friends on Wednesday, in with his partner on the Thursday, and then out again last night. He claimed he didn’t have a door key to his old house and, as far as he was aware, Yvonne and James were the only people who did.

The husband was bailed without conditions but told to contact the police if anything occurred to him. He had asked if he could tell his son about Yvonne’s death. It was an awkward decision but Jessica guessed there was never a good way to be told your mother was dead, whether in person by someone in uniform or over the phone by your father. Either way an officer from the local area was going to be sent out to speak to James, if only to formally exclude him from the inquiry.

When the room was empty except for the two officers, Cole looked to her and raised his eyebrows. ‘What do you reckon? Do you think he’s our guy?’

‘It’s not as if he was thinking through his answers – everything was natural. We can get someone checking the alibi but I’d be surprised if it wasn’t solid. He answered all the questions too, even the intimate ones.’

‘I know. He’s either got nothing to do with it or is one of the most natural liars I’ve ever seen. The son seems unlikely too. Unless there’s a huge life insurance policy, neither of them seems to have a motive either.’

Eric had told them James went to Bournemouth University. It was a nine– or ten-hour round trip but his father reckoned he had gone that far just to get away from them.

‘He fell in with the wrong crowd a few years ago, then me and his mum were arguing all the time,’ he said. ‘He couldn’t have really found somewhere further away, could he?’

Jessica knew the logistics of getting from Bournemouth to Manchester and back again wouldn’t be impossible but James would surely have been missed if he had disappeared for that length of time.

‘He didn’t give us much else to go on, did he?’ Jessica said.

‘No, it sounds like he has just moved in with his new girlfriend and wants to get on with his life.’ They tidied up the room and walked through to reception. ‘Are you heading home?’ Cole asked.

‘I guess so. Is there anything you want me to do here?’

‘No, I’ll call the higher-ups then get off myself. We’ve got officers going door-to-door and we’re not going to get any results from the labs through until Monday at the earliest. There’s not much more we can do.’

Jessica said goodbye to the desk sergeant and asked him to call her mobile if anything interesting happened. She walked out of the station on her own, taking her phone out to check for any new messages. It was now late afternoon and, though the sun was still out, it had lost much of its heat. She shivered slightly but, as she did, for the second time that day, the phone started to ring while in her hand. She shook her head, thinking she should definitely change the ringtone to something less energetic, and looked at the screen to see who was calling.

There was no name displayed, just a mobile number she didn’t recognise. She jabbed at the screen to answer. ‘Hello.’

The man’s voice on the other end was slightly shaky and whoever it was sounded nervous. ‘Is that Detective Sergeant Jessica Daniel?’

‘Yes, who’s this?’

The person paused for a moment. ‘I’m just calling to talk about the dead body you found this morning.’

4

Garry Ashford was not happy. The alarm on his phone he didn’t remember setting had gone off and he couldn’t get back to sleep. As he lay in bed, he didn’t think an electrical item could be smug but his phone certainly looked close to it as it showed him in big LED characters that it was one in the afternoon. There was no way he would have set an alarm for that time on a Saturday, not after being out until three in the morning, so someone was taking the piss.

It didn’t help that he was being charged thirty-five pounds a month for the privilege either.

His head throbbed slightly as he remembered the previous evening. Not only had he endured a bad week but he had spent nearly seventy quid the night before and ended up in the same position he always did with the opposite sex – precisely nowhere. As one of his supposed mates had pointed out in the taxi a few hours ago, this was more than a sexual barren spell; it was becoming a life choice.

Garry threw the duvet off and went to the window to see what the day had to offer him. Opening the curtains, he was surprised to see the bright light of the sun shining into the room. Nice day or not, there wasn’t an awful lot the sunlight could do about his shambles of a home. He had never been sure whether his rented accommodation actually counted as a flat, a bedsit or a hovel.

Everything was in one room, or two if you counted the fact that the bathroom had a door that didn’t quite shut all the way. In the main room, which also doubled as the kitchen and dining room, his bed folded out from the sofa. It didn’t matter whether you used it as a couch or a bed though; either way the springs had gone. He had a small old-fashioned portable television on a nearby table with an indoor aerial that never seemed to work properly planted on top pointing at the window. There was a cooker and microwave next to a sink a few feet away and a dining table with two plastic garden chairs in the centre of the room. On the other side of the bed was a chest of drawers that was, for some reason, the largest item of furniture in the entire flat. Aside from the faded flowery wallpaper, that was it for the main room.

The bathroom had a shower cubicle, laughably called a ‘suite’ in the advert he had answered. It had long since been taken over by a black, mouldy damp-type substance Garry was in no rush to have a fight with. If that wasn’t bad enough, the toilet had a cracked seat and there was no sink in the bathroom; he had to use the one in the kitchen.

Although he knew it was awful, it was cheap and placed perfectly for his needs. It was very close to the centre of Manchester towards the back of the Oldham Street area, above a shop. Or, as one of his less-eloquent friends put it, ‘Where all those artsy pricks live’. Its location meant he could walk to work and manage to get to all the bars on his doorstep without too many problems. Even if he did need a taxi home every now and then, it didn’t cost too much.

Garry ran his hands through his thick black straggly shoulder-length hair. There had been a time when he thought longish hair would give him a rock-star look all the girls would go for. All these years down the line and that thinking had definitely gone out of the window but he still couldn’t be bothered to get it cut.

He looked at the scene in front of him and thought that, even though his choice of home wasn’t that appealing, he probably wasn’t helping himself. Clothes were strewn over most of the free floor space, while the sink that was supposed to act as somewhere to prepare food, clean dishes and wash his hands, was overflowing with a mix of pots, pans, cups, plates and a folded-up pizza box.

‘Right,’ he said out loud to the empty room. ‘Let’s get this mutha sorted.’

It wasn’t the type of thing he would have said if anyone else was present.

Garry was fairly slim and unimposing with his hair his most striking feature. His pasty frame was covered only by a pair of blue boxer shorts he had worn the whole of the previous day then slept in overnight. He put on some music to play through his phone, the rock tracks blending into one and sounding tinny through the device’s underwhelming speaker. Garry could hear them well enough and, safe in the knowledge he was on his own, he sang along to the words he knew, made up the ones he didn’t, played a bit of air-guitar and danced around in a way he never would on a night out.

Slowly but surely the scuffed wooden floor began to become visible. Clothes were shoved into the oversized chest of drawers or dropped in a giant supermarket carrier bag he had kept so he could do his own laundry.

As he was finishing, the playlist of songs he had set up on his phone came to an end and the room went quiet. Not knowing what to do with the rest of the day, Garry folded his bed back into the sofa and flicked on the TV. The indoor aerial was, as usual, not giving much of a signal into the cheap digital box he had hooked up. He fumbled around with it but the television just kept spewing out a hum of dissatisfaction. Annoyed, he turned it off and picked his phone up, skimming through his contacts until he got to a certain name.

Mark Llewellyn was one of the quieter people he knew and, although Garry fancied a drink and a chat, he didn’t really want to spend the rest of the day in the pub. He dialled the number and, after a brief conversation, the pair arranged to meet at his local in half an hour.

It dawned on him that spending his Saturday afternoons in the pub was hardly embracing life but he didn’t have much else better to do.

Garry had already drunk a third of his pint when Mark slid into the booth opposite him, plonking a full glass of beer on the table between them. The pub was only two minutes’ walk from Garry’s flat and usually full of locals. Because it was away from the main street, the tourists didn’t really see it, although most would have opted for a significantly posher bar anyway. It was a mile or so away from the student district and, whenever he went for a drink, Garry was convinced he was the youngest person there.

‘You all right, mate?’ Mark asked.

‘Not too bad, just work and that.’ Garry’s tone clearly gave his mood away.

Mark had picked up his drink but put it back down to avoid spilling it as he laughed. ‘Blimey, it can’t be that bad? Want to talk about it?’

‘Maybe. It’s a bit girly, isn’t it?’

Mark looked at him and laughed again. ‘What, talking? You really have got problems.’

Garry knew Mark through a mutual friend but, because they lived in close proximity to each other, they often went for a quiet drink together. They shared quite a bit in common but Mark earned a very good salary, which was a little intimidating. Garry pushed his hair behind his ears and took another mouthful from his drink.

‘You just think things are going to be better than this, don’t you?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Well, I always wanted to be a journalist. You watch all these programmes and read the papers and everyone seems to be doing something worthwhile. I wanted to be a travel writer. From what I thought, you’d just be sent off to explore the world and get to stay in all these plush hotels and flirt with the exotic barmaids. You’d send through a few hundred words then move on to the next place.’

‘I don’t think most jobs are like that,’ his friend laughed.

‘I know but I want to do things like go to the football and interview the players and so on. As it is, I can’t even get into movies for free.’

‘Why should you be able to?’

‘Well, someone’s got to review these things.’

‘Not you though?’

‘No chance.’

‘So what do you do? I thought you at least got to interview some famous people?’

‘Sort of. You remember that reality TV girl who slept with that guy? You know that presenter bloke? It was all over the news.’

Mark looked blankly at him and shook his head. ‘That’s not the most accurate portrayal of someone I’ve ever heard.’

‘Well, I don’t know their names.’

‘Neither do I from that description.’

‘Whatever,’ Garry said shaking his head. ‘Anyway, I went to interview her. She had a book she was supposed to be promoting but talked in one– and two-word answers. If that’s how she spoke then God knows how bad the writing was. Aside from her own fingernails, she wasn’t interested in anything. After fifteen minutes of not answering questions, she was whisked off to some other appointment by her PA.’

‘Was she hot though?’

Garry smiled. ‘In a glowing orange radioactive-type way.’

‘You’re too picky.’

‘I wish I had the opportunity to be fussy.’

Mark finished another mouthful of his drink then laughed again.

‘You don’t know the half of it,’ Garry continued. ‘Most of the time I get stuck talking to councillors about all sorts of nonsense.’

‘That does sound pretty boring. What’s the name of your paper again?’

‘The Manchester Morning Herald. I’ve worked there for eighteen months now. How many front-page stories do you reckon I’ve had in that time?’

‘I have no idea. I don’t really look at papers to be honest. Twenty?’

‘Two – and both of them were about how often people’s bins get emptied.’

‘Ooh, big-time.’

It was Garry’s turn to laugh. ‘I know but it’s mad out there. People will put up with most things: gangs on the streets, giant pot holes in their roads, rising crime rates, you name it. But stop emptying their bins every week and it all kicks off.’

‘Funnily enough, my dad was moaning about his bins over the phone the other week.’

Garry flailed his arms around and banged his pint on the table as if to emphasise the point. ‘See what I mean? It’s crazy and these are the people I’m out talking to every day.’

‘Go on then, tell me about your worst encounter.’

After a drink to calm himself, Garry continued. ‘Do you remember how freezing it was last winter with all the snow and everything? On the coldest day for six years, I got sent out onto the streets to ask people their views on local government.’

Mark spat half a mouthful of beer back into his glass. ‘Bloody hell, mate, no wonder you’re annoyed.’

‘That’s not even the worst bit. Most people told me to eff off or whatever, or just ignored me. It was about eleven in the morning and there were these kids who I’m sure should have been in school. They were about thirteen or something. Anyway, they were standing just across the street shouting “kiddy-fiddler” and “paedo” at me.’

‘What did you say back?’

‘Nothing, I mean what kind of funny comeback is there to that?’

‘Hmm, good point. I might remember that next time my boss is giving me a hard time.’

‘What, you’re going to call him a “paedo”?’

‘Well, as you pointed out, what’s he going to say back?’

‘Probably “you’re fired”.’

Mark seemed to be in a perpetual state of laughter but Garry could hardly blame him. ‘Why don’t you just quit and look for something else?’ his friend asked.

‘I don’t know. There’s not much out there. Besides, I keep telling myself it’s going to get better. I don’t want to end up having to move back with my mum and dad. It can’t get much worse than a twenty-five-year-old moving back in with his parents.’

‘If your mum’s anything like mine, at least you’d get your washing done for free.’

Garry laughed half-heartedly. ‘That’s one thing I guess.’

‘You know what you need? A girlfriend or a big story – or both.’ Mark stood up after downing the rest of his drink and shook his glass. ‘You want another?’

‘Yeah, go on. Same as usual.’

Mark walked off to the bar and Garry slumped back into the seat thinking about his parents. He came from a small town just outside Ipswich, the kind of place that was great to live as a kid. All his mates lived within a few minutes of his house and there were loads of wide-open spaces to kick a ball around and get into trouble. But it was also the type of area that became decidedly duller as you got older. Everyone pretty much knew everyone else and, no matter who you were, your parents would always end up finding out anything you got up to.

His mother’s inquisitorial technique was often as basic as, ‘Is there anything you would like to tell me, Garry?’ It was hardly ‘Columbo’ but, given the number of things some nosy neighbour could have spotted him being up to, he frequently confessed to things she had no knowledge of.

If that wasn’t bad enough, the pubs wouldn’t serve anyone under age because they knew who everyone was. There was nowhere to hang out or buy fast food and not even a decent cinema or bowling alley. All of that, along with the fact that none of the girls you had grown up with were now remotely interested in you, meant by the time you reached eighteen, you were desperate for a chance to get out into the real world.

University had given him that option. Garry was at least pretty good at school, albeit lazy, but he had earned the A-level grades needed to study journalism at Liverpool, which was exactly what he wanted. As with most teenagers, he had seen plenty of enormously appealing American movies about college life and thought university would provide something similar. In a way it did but only if you saw yourself as one of those anonymous kids in the back of the parties in all those films.

He had a reasonable time living on campus, made a few good mates he was still in contact with and got a decent grade at the end of it all. He even had an on-off girlfriend for a few months, although the ‘off’ part was definitely her choice, before becoming her permanent decision.

Like most people about to graduate, he had left the job-hunting a tad late, although he resolved pretty quickly he didn’t have any intention of returning to his home area. Big cities were definitely for him and he had spent two years in Liverpool, somehow making a living from freelancing around and doing a bit of bar work cash-in-hand. Generally he didn’t do much of any note but then he got his big break, or so he thought.

He responded to an advert to become a junior reporter on the Herald and miraculously didn’t mess up the interview. He even had his hair cut for the occasion, albeit not that short. After eighteen months, he was gradually coming to the conclusion he had made a huge mistake.

Garry looked over to see Mark still standing in line at the bar and then heard his phone ringing. The number wasn’t one he was familiar with but he answered anyway. ‘Hello?’

The caller introduced themselves.

Garry was confused at first, asking why they were calling from a different number but, by the time the person on the other end had finished telling him their story, the reason was obvious.