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

Автор книги: Kerry Wilkinson

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Текущая страница: 23 (всего у книги 60 страниц)

5

There hadn’t been much more they could ask after that. Was Donald McKenna implying God had transported him out of prison for some sort of higher calling? Even if he was, Jessica wasn’t entirely sure the Old Testament-style eye-for-an-eye stuff would extend to killing some troublemaker who lived on a Manchester housing estate. There were surely bigger issues in the world that needed addressing first? She thought it was an odd thing to say though. Was McKenna really playing a game with them?

The governor, probably chastened by their refusal to give him much in the way of details, hadn’t returned to talk to them. They had been led back to reception by one of the guards and the prisoner returned to his cell. Jessica tried to walk behind Cole through the front office on their way out in order to not have to engage with Dennis. She feared he would offer her his number or something similar and, even though her superior was a fairly straight guy, he did have a sense of humour when he wanted to. There was no way Jessica could risk something that embarrassing getting around the station.

They were walking to the car when Jessica heard her phone ringing. She wasn’t a technophobe as such but had never really got her head around everything her phone could do. She could use the phone and text messages and the Internet was easy enough but she thought smart-phones were just one step towards robots taking over. She took the ringing device out of her pocket and fumbled with the screen before putting it to her ear. The conversation was fairly short and Jessica felt her mood nosedive further.

‘All right?’ Cole asked, clearly noticing her displeasure.

‘The new test results are back. It’s definitely Donald McKenna’s blood that was found.’

For a guy who usually held back his thoughts, even her superior looked annoyed. He sighed. ‘Great. We’re going to have to see the DCI and then come back here later or tomorrow.’

‘Let’s go to Bradford Park first. Best if we know what we’re talking about before we have to plan what we’re going to do next.’

The Bradford Park base was in the Clayton area very close to Manchester City’s football stadium. It was an important part of the area’s overall policing strategy and lots of money had been spent updating the facility in recent times. Not only was there a neighbourhood team on-site, which would deal with local enforcement, but there was a large number of administration workers based there too. They were not officers but employees of the police force who would deal with things such as Human Resources. The Serious Crime Division, who dealt with organised crime and terrorist threats, worked from there as well.

The reason for their visit was to talk to the forensics staff who had been dealing with the blood samples taken from Craig Millar. There was a whole section of the building given over to scientists and other laboratory workers. People were trained to analyse everything from finger prints to a computer’s hard drive. It was very specialist, technical work but did create divisions between the departments. A lot of officers believed they were on the front line doing the serious labour, with television programmes glorifying the work being done from the safety of a lab. On the other hand, plenty of the forensics workers felt constantly under pressure to prioritise jobs for certain departments, while balancing budgets that included private work and, if they were a member of the Scene of Crime team, getting called out at all hours of the day and night. Both groups seemingly felt underappreciated by the other.

To be fair to the scientists, it probably didn’t help that their Bradford Park base was openly referred to as ‘Geek Corner’ and ‘Virginville’ by certain officers such as Rowlands.

Jessica and Cole were shown through to a waiting area where they were told someone would come to see them. On occasion, officers would be permitted into sterile zones and autopsy rooms but there was no real need at this point. Jessica thought the room they were shown to was actually quite attractive, brightly decorated with a royal-blue carpet. The chairs they were offered were low to the floor but the material was bright red and comfortable. The person who led them through said they would bring some tea without asking if they even wanted one.

It was a far cry from the waiting rooms in their station. Back there, you would be offered a metal and plastic hard-backed seat like the ones you found in a school and the only refreshment on offer would be dodgy-tasting tea from a machine.

Jessica was just getting comfy in the chair, fiddling with her phone, when a man pushed open a glass door into the room. He was wearing dark trousers and shoes with a laboratory coat over a shirt. He had shoulder-length black hair and looked as if he hadn’t shaved for a few days. His stubble was dark and Jessica would have guessed he was around her age. As he came through the doorway, he tripped seemingly over nothing and Jessica giggled.

The poor guy looked embarrassed as he walked across the room towards them.

‘Detectives Cole and Daniel?’ The two officers stood up to shake hands with the man whose face had gone slightly red. ‘I’m Adam Compton. I’m one of the team who did the blood work on the body of Craig Millar.’

The three of them sat around a glass table. Jessica started speaking but they were interrupted by the receptionist returning with mugs of tea, putting them on the table. After she had left, Jessica began. ‘Mr Compton . . .’

‘Adam.’

‘Sorry, Adam. We just wanted to clarify a few things with you about the testing procedures. Obviously results like this aren’t what we would usually get.’

Adam nodded along in agreement. ‘How can I help you then?’

‘The obvious question is: could the results be wrong?’

Jessica didn’t want to sound as if she were accusing him of making a mistake but, given the fact Donald McKenna was very much behind bars, it was a question that had to be asked. She softened her tone as she spoke.

Adam sounded nervous. ‘That was what we thought at first. My boss wasn’t, erm, happy. He thought I had made an error cross-checking things with the database.’

‘Okay,’ Jessica said. ‘We may as well go back to the start for completeness’ sake. Can you talk us through the whole database procedure . . . and, er, feel free to talk to us as if we’re complete idiots.’

She knew most of it but hearing it from someone who knew for sure would clarify things. Either way, she didn’t want a stream of technobabble.

Adam’s accent definitely wasn’t local. Even face to face instead of over the phone, she couldn’t place it. ‘What happens is that every time you arrest someone, you take those mouth swabs, don’t you?’ Jessica nodded. ‘Those swabs give us a sort of pattern that is unique to the individual it’s taken from. They are stored by various companies but that pattern is kept in a database that all sorts of agencies have access to.’

‘That’s the National DNA Database, yes?’

‘Yes, the NDNAD.’

‘That sounds like some kind of STD.’ Jessica laughed quietly at her own joke but neither Adam nor Cole joined in and she quickly stifled her giggles into a fake cough.

Adam continued. ‘Say there’s a crime scene where you find hairs or blood or something like that, the people who work at the scene try to get as clean a sample as possible . . .’

‘How do you mean, “clean”?’

‘For instance, if you touched it with your fingers, you could transfer your own profile onto what you were picking up, which would contaminate it.’

‘Right.’

‘So anyway, assuming the sample is clean we would analyse it to get whatever pattern we could from it. That would then be matched against the victim to see if it belonged to them. If it doesn’t and there’s a chance it could belong to whoever committed the crime, we instead . . .’

‘. . . check the pattern against the database’ Jessica said, finishing Adam’s sentence.

The scientist smiled at her. ‘Exactly, yes.’

Jessica thought he seemed a bit awkward, perhaps nervous. He was quite fidgety, almost as if his body constantly wanted to be somewhere else. He started to continue speaking but the receptionist returned, telling him he had a phone call. He apologised and said he would be right back.

Cole picked up his mug of tea and took a big gulp. ‘I think you’ve got another admirer.’

Jessica laughed under her breath. ‘Stop it . . .’

‘Seriously. The poor guy can barely get his words out.’

‘Maybe it’s you he fancies? Perhaps he swings that way?’

Cole was still laughing as Adam returned, sitting back down. Jessica could see what her superior was talking about now. The scientist would glance up at her but not want to catch her eye, looking at the table while he spoke.

Jessica picked up where they left off. ‘I’m guessing that from the blood you found under Craig Millar’s fingernails, the profile of that matched back to Donald McKenna?’

‘Yes.’

‘So what happened then?’

‘Then I got shouted at for getting things wrong.’

‘Really?’

Adam looked a little embarrassed again. ‘Sort of. Look, mistakes can sometimes be made in labs. If samples haven’t been kept correctly or someone hasn’t followed the procedures or so on, like I said, they can be corrupted.’

‘But they weren’t in this case?’

‘We don’t think so, no. If there’s something that doesn’t seem right, we go all the way back to the original sample and re-test that, rather than rely on the pattern stored in the database. It doesn’t happen very often and usually takes days.’

‘How come you got it so quickly then?’

‘It only takes time because these samples are stored all over the country and it’s only the actual database itself which can be accessed anywhere. Because Mr McKenna was someone local, it turned out we were storing his original swabs.’

‘And it all matches?’

‘Yes.’

Cole spoke. ‘Is there any chance someone else could have the exact same, er, “pattern” that Donald McKenna does?’

‘Theoretically, yes but not really. It’s something like a one-in-a-billion chance of someone else having the same DNA profile. I guess there are six or seven billion people in the world so someone could but even that’s very unlikely.’

Jessica hadn’t checked for anything like birth certificates but had seen on their records that Donald McKenna had no known relatives. She felt she had to ask the question anyway. ‘What about a brother or something like that?’

‘You share half the same genes with your siblings or parents. What would happen then is we would see a partial match. Say for instance someone like Mr McKenna’s brother had done something, we would get that partial match to Mr McKenna himself and know it was someone related to him by the first degree. If it was an uncle, we might get a second-degree match or third for a cousin or something.’

‘It sounds simple.’

‘It’s not.’

‘Okay, so you’re saying it has to be his blood then and no one else’s?’

‘There is one other possibility. If you had an identical twin, you would share the same profile. It would have to be identical though, like you came from the same egg. Non-identical twins would show as first-degree matches like a regular brother or sister.’

Jessica looked at Cole, who spoke directly to her. ‘Does he . . . ?’

‘Nothing in the files I saw,’ Jessica said. ‘We’ll have to check the birth records properly when we get back but, if he did have a twin, I can’t believe it wouldn’t be on our system.’

Cole nodded. Jessica looked back to Adam, who had been watching her and quickly moved his gaze as she turned. ‘Okay, are there any other possibilities?’ Jessica asked. ‘Could someone plant evidence or anything like that?’

Adam puffed his cheeks out and blew through his teeth. ‘Maybe but it’s pretty hard. For one, if you had blood from Mr McKenna, you would have to keep it sterile in some way . . .’

‘. . . so the blood didn’t get contaminated.’ Jessica finished his sentence again and inwardly kicked herself for doing so. Finishing each other’s thoughts was what old married couples did.

Adam looked a little confused but didn’t react. ‘Exactly. If it wasn’t kept properly, you would contaminate the blood you had taken and it would be useless. But, even if that’s what had been done and you had kept it all clean, you would still be up against it because the crime scene would have to look right.’

Jessica knew exactly what he was talking about but let him continue. ‘Maybe if it was hairs or something like that on a body or at a scene, someone could have placed them in a clever way but it wasn’t hairs we found. There was blood which had mainly dried directly under the nail.’

He moved his hands up in front of his chest to illustrate his point. ‘If someone was trying to stab you, you might try to grab their wrist to stop the blade. If you snatched hard enough, you could break the skin and that’s how you would end up with someone’s blood underneath your fingernails. That’s exactly what it looks like; it’s not as if there was loads of blood but you wouldn’t expect there to be.’

‘In other words, it would be pretty hard to fake getting dried blood under the victim’s nails.’

‘Right. Not impossible but you would have to really know what you were doing.’

Adam risked another look up from the table towards Jessica but looked away when he saw she was still watching him. She noticed he had deep brown eyes, the type which sometimes looked as if there was no separate pupil because they were so dark.

Jessica looked to Cole and widened her eyes as if to ask, ‘Anything else?’

He took the hint and stood, offering his hand for Adam to shake. ‘Thanks very much for your help, Mr Compton.’ Jessica shook his hand too.

‘Can I, er . . . do you mind if I give you my phone number?’ Adam had clearly asked Jessica, not Cole. ‘Just in case, y’know . . . if you want to check anything else or whatever? You don’t have to . . .’

Jessica pulled her own mobile phone out and typed his details into it, ignoring the knowing smile she knew Cole would be giving her.

‘You already gave me your number, so I can text you if need be?’

Jessica had forgotten she had given Adam her number over the phone. Technically it had been for professional purposes but she guessed the ‘need be’ could end up being some sort of invitation for a pint or something. Given the guy’s nervous behaviour, she couldn’t imagine he had ever asked a girl out in person.

‘Okay,’ she said. Adam turned and walked back towards the door, tripping over in the exact same spot as before. Jessica smiled and turned back to her colleague.

‘I didn’t say a word,’ Cole said. He hadn’t had to, his raised eyebrow said it all.

Back at the station, it was now pushing late afternoon and clocking-off time. Jessica wasn’t too bothered by keeping to set hours and most of the team ended up working unpaid overtime as and when required. Jessica had gone over their records and, according to everything they had on file, Donald McKenna was an only child. He was born locally and she would send some poor constable out to check the register office’s records but there was no reason to think there would be a mistake in the information she had access to. Names could sometimes be spelled wrong but she had never known an instance where an entire person was simply missing from a record.

From everything Adam had told them, Jessica could only see three possibilities. First, someone had access to the inmate’s blood and somewhere to store it securely, plus the knowledge of how to plant it at a scene. Second, Donald McKenna had an identical twin, not just a brother or sister, who no one knew about. Third, the prisoner had simply walked unnoticed out of a maximum-security prison and stabbed someone to death before returning.

Regardless of which option was correct, it was going to take some figuring out.

6

The media hadn’t bothered reporting the stabbing of Craig Millar in much detail. Some crimes were given more prominence than others when it came to running orders on news bulletins or the front pages of newspapers. Jessica always made a point to look for how her cases were being reported. It seemed clear that whoever was in charge of the various decisions relating to the importance of the story had decided a dead young man on an estate notorious for anti-social behaviour didn’t rank too highly. Jessica sighed at the front-page story in the local paper about a soap star who was having a baby.

She was sitting on the corner of Rowlands’s desk on the main floor of the station and held the paper up for him to see. ‘Why are people interested in the contents of the uterus of whoever this person is?’

It was a rhetorical question she didn’t really expect an answer to. She got one anyway.

‘I’d pay special attention if it were me.’ Jessica rolled her eyes. ‘You’re a real charmer, Dave?’ He winked at her. ‘So what do you want me to do with this list then?’ he asked.

Jessica grinned. ‘Well, you know you put together all those names of people who might have it in for Craig Millar? I want you to put together another list for people who could have it in for, or be associated with, Donald McKenna. Then I want you to check the lists with each other to see if anyone shows up twice.’

‘You are joking?’

‘I’ll leave you this to keep you company.’ Jessica dropped the paper on his lap, with the front-page photo of the soap star on top. ‘Have fun.’

It was the day after her visits to see Donald McKenna and Adam Compton and Jessica knew she would definitely have to return to the prison. The governor would have to be put in the picture this time so Detective Superintendent William Aylesbury was going to make the initial contact and then Jessica and DI Cole would visit. DSI Aylesbury had been the DCI at Longsight up until six months ago. He had been the natural replacement when the previous incumbent had retired. Jessica hadn’t really got on with the chief inspector until the last few months of his spell at the station where she had begun to understand the way he worked. His promotion meant he was no longer based at the same station as her because he had jurisdiction over multiple stations in the area and the local chief inspectors were answerable to him. Jessica had seen him once or twice since his elevation and he always said ‘hello’ to her.

Given the strange nature of the test results, it was felt someone far more senior than them should be the one who filled the governor in. No one was directly accusing him of a failure but he would be asked to double-check the security arrangements on the particular wing Donald McKenna was housed on. Coming from someone as senior as the DSI meant he couldn’t complain. The key thing was, no one was accusing the prison of being negligent, they simply didn’t know what had happened.

Having spoken to Rowlands, Jessica exited the main floor and headed to Cole’s office. She found him typing on his keyboard. ‘Is he ready for us yet?’ Jessica flicked her eyes upwards, indicating the floor above and the DCI’s office.

‘Yes but he’s not in a good mood. I don’t think he liked having to make that call to Aylesbury earlier.’

‘I think he’s still pissed off at having to cross the border.’

Detective Chief Inspector John Farraday originally came from Yorkshire but had been asked to move to Manchester after Aylesbury had been promoted. Usually, there would have been an internal appointment from the local police force but DI Cole had only been promoted to his current position less than two years ago and was never in contention. There was no obvious choice in the other local stations so management had looked elsewhere for a suitable person.

To Jessica, it made absolutely no difference where someone came from; she treated people as she found them. To a few older members of the team, there was still some sort of bizarre cross-county resentment in relation to a Yorkshireman coming to Greater Manchester and telling them what to do. Before he started, a couple of the more experienced uniformed officers spoke about how ‘tight’ they expected the new appointment to be. It didn’t help that Farraday himself didn’t seem overly pleased at having to live in Manchester. In the past six months, Jessica must have heard him complain about the ‘pissing rain’ at least three times a week. Still, it did piss with rain at least three times a week, so he probably had a point.

Cole stood up from his desk and they both went up to the first floor. They walked past the windows of their boss’s office and knocked on the door before being waved in. ‘Cole. Daniel,’ Farraday said. He greeted everyone by their surnames and Jessica had a sneaking suspicion it was because he couldn’t remember their first names or titles.

Farraday was sitting in his chair doing something on his mobile phone. He was around six feet tall but seemed more imposing because of his large chest and shoulders. He was somewhere in his late forties but had only just begun to go grey. Jessica often thought he would have been an extremely good-looking guy when he was a little younger. He had a very symmetrical face and, although the wrinkles were building up with age, he still had a boyishness about him. That was until he spoke. The man had an enormous voice even when speaking at a regular volume, let alone when he shouted. His accent was thick and something he was obviously proud of.

The two officers sat and Farraday put his phone down and began.

‘I’ve just finished speaking to the superintendent. From what he says, the prison governor is not happy whatsoever. He reckons we’re telling him how to do his job. Personally, I think he probably needs to be told how to do his job but it wasn’t my call to make. Either way, it’s been cleared for you two to go back tomorrow. You can interview McKenna again and check whatever you want in his cell or wherever.’

He was drumming his fingers on the desk while he spoke. ‘Based on whatever you come back with, someone’s going to have to make a decision about what we do next. Do I think we’ll be able to charge him? I doubt it. We’ll have to get the CPS in or something.’ Her boss had an incredibly irritating habit of asking himself a question and then answering it. Jessica wasn’t sure if other people noticed it but every time he did it she had to battle not to clench her teeth in annoyance.

‘Surely we can’t charge him, can we?’ Jessica asked.

Farraday glared at her. He didn’t like being interrupted and clearly hadn’t finished his train of thought.

‘As I was about to say, I can’t believe the CPS would be recommending charging McKenna, given the guy is behind bars. You’d have to have a complete set of morons on the jury to find him guilty.’

Jessica knew there were plenty of ‘morons’ just ready and waiting to sit on a jury but doubted any of them were crazy enough to find beyond reasonable doubt that someone behind bars had committed a crime on the outside.

‘Given all that, we have to start looking into anyone that might connect Millar to McKenna.’ Her boss stopped talking and leant back slightly in his chair, an invitation for either of them to speak. Jessica didn’t want to point out she had already assigned Rowlands to look into anyone that connected the two men.

With Cole not looking as if he was going to speak, she did get in first though. ‘One of the constables was sent to the register office this morning and confirmed there was no twin registered alongside Donald McKenna. There’s no obvious record of any other brother or sister born to his mother either.’

‘Are his parents still alive?’

‘There was no father’s name on the birth certificate but the mother died years ago.’

Farraday shuffled in his chair, humming to himself. ‘Any bright ideas?’

Jessica didn’t have any. As far as she could tell, they were doing all they could. She looked at Cole, who looked as blank as she did.

‘No, Sir,’ Cole said.

‘Are we bringing in the media?’ Jessica asked.

‘Do I think we should bring in the media? Not yet. We’ll wait until after you’ve been back to the prison tomorrow.’ He paused for a second. ‘Anything else?’ Neither of them answered.

‘Right then. I’m off to the cricket.’ Jessica looked queryingly at the man sitting next to her but Farraday filled them in before either had to ask. ‘Lancashire–Yorkshire at Old Trafford. Last day of the County Championship season. Would have been there first-thing if it wasn’t for having to deal with the super.’

Jessica didn’t know what to say. If her boss wanted to go to the cricket, she guessed it was up to him. ‘Is there anything specific you want us to be moving with then, Sir?’ she asked.

‘No. Just try to connect Millar and McKenna. It’s only some scumbag kid, isn’t it? If it is McKenna, I hope he takes down a whole bunch more of these little shits with him.’

Farraday stood up to indicate the meeting was over and the other two officers followed his lead. Jessica went back to her office – Reynolds was again absent – and sat at her desk. There was something a little unnerving about her boss’s tone at the end of their talk. There was a lot of black humour in police stations and people got away with saying the most outrageous things because there was no real malice behind it but it didn’t sound as if he had been joking.

Jessica had consistently found the DCI hard to read since he started. In his first week in the job, some of the officers had decided to see how many references they could get to Yorkshire into conversations with him. Someone would slip the word ‘whippet’ into a morning briefing. One officer kept going on about ‘Batley’, a town in the county, for no obvious reason, while others spoke about ‘tea’ and ‘Yorkshire pudding’. Instead of using the word ‘you’, half the team were calling each other ‘thee’. Things were getting out of hand but he eventually clocked the game when one of the younger members of the team spoke about ‘Geoffrey Boycott’, a famous Yorkshire cricketer, and then burst out laughing.

It was all very childish but the chief inspector took it in the spirit it was meant and had even invited everyone who worked in the station to his new house for an introduction party of sorts. He owned a large property to the south of the city in a nice area. The fact he had saved up enough to buy a place such as that hadn’t helped his ‘tight’ reputation around the station. Apparently he had grownup children but no one had met them, although his wife came across well at the party. Jessica had gone but spent much of the evening hanging around with Carrie and Dave. Rowlands had been rather taken with one of the family photographs that centred on one of their boss’s grown-up daughters. Some of the other officers had made a big joke out of subtly moving items around, even if it was just switching ornaments with each other. Their host had taken a fair ribbing over a framed photo of Headingley cricket ground he had hanging in his hallway.

As well as that gentler side, Jessica had also seen him bellowing at various officers for perceived misdemeanours. His voice travelled and if someone was in trouble, everyone knew about it. He could be direct and abrasive and Jessica had never figured out if that was a genuine mean streak or just something about his manner.

The noise that indicated a text message went off on Jessica’s phone. She took it out of her pocket and skimmed through the messages, laughing to herself when she saw it was from Adam Compton.

‘Just wondrin if u fancied a coffee or sumthing?’

Given his clumsiness the previous day, she had wondered if he might contact her for some reason other than a professional one at some point. It seemed typical of his awkwardness that he wasn’t brave enough to ask her out for a proper drink. Coffee? No. Glass of wine? Maybe. He may have been a bit geeky but he wasn’t a bad-looking guy and seemed nice enough. She thought of the ribbing she would get from Rowlands if he found out she was thinking about going out with someone from ‘Virginville’.

She typed a message back, read it over three times to make sure there were no critical spelling errors or any possible way it could be misinterpreted and then sent it.

‘Maybe. Bit busy at mo. Will call u at some point.’

Jessica figured she would leave him hanging for a while longer. She had only given him her number for work reasons after all.

She tapped away at her computer’s keyboard and logged onto the internal computer system to search for a phone number. She had left Denise Millar her phone number and only half-expected a call but decided she would be proactive and contact her again herself. It wasn’t that Jessica believed she could add much more to the investigation, she just wanted to hear how the woman was. Farraday’s lack of feeling had sharply contrasted in her mind with that of the young man’s poor mother.

She dialled the number into the desk phone and it was answered on the second ring. ‘Is that Mrs Millar?’

‘Yes, who’s this?’

‘This is DS Jessica Daniel. I visited you a few days ago.’

The woman had sounded downbeat but the inflection in her voice raised slightly after Jessica had introduced herself. ‘Have you got some news?’

‘Not really. I’m sorry if I got your hopes up. I was just wondering how you and Jamie were coping?’

‘Oh . . . right.’ The woman sounded disappointed and Jessica instantly felt bad for inadvertently giving an impression she had something of any significance to say. Mrs Millar continued speaking. ‘We’re as well as can be expected. It’s hit Jamie hard. He’s not been out since.’

‘I just wanted to let you know we are working as hard as we can on this . . .’

Jessica didn’t finish her sentence before the woman started speaking again. ‘It wasn’t even the main story on the local news. I know he wasn’t an angel but you’d think someone would be interested? No reporter or anyone has even come to speak to me . . .’

She tailed off and Jessica felt awful. ‘I’m sorry . . .’

‘Oh, I know it’s nothing to do with you. It’s not your decision, is it? The girl you sent around has been nice enough. I felt a bit bad as there’s no food in the house. I told her I was fine and that she should nick off.’

She was referring to the liaison officer who was assigned to the parents or close relatives of victims in serious cases.