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

Автор книги: Kerry Wilkinson

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Текущая страница: 30 (всего у книги 60 страниц)

The smell was certainly stronger in the kitchen and Jessica saw why. Resting against the back door was a pile of rotting food, with maggots and small flies on the top. She quickly turned around and walked back into the living room. Cole was crouched down, unwrapping a balled-up piece of paper that had been left on the floor. ‘We’ll never get through all of this,’ Jessica said. ‘This guy hoards everything, be it newspapers or leftover food.’

Cole dropped the paper back on the floor and hunched further over to pick up another ball of paper from the ground. He started to open it out as Jessica continued speaking. ‘Unless there’s some dead body under the bed upstairs I have no idea what we’re going to get from this place. I just hope his DNA comes back as a match for . . . something. God knows how McKenna fits into it all.’

She tailed off as she saw Cole’s expression. ‘What?’ she said. The DI reached back across for the first piece of paper and held both sheets up for her to see. The pages had been torn from a lined notebook and the horizontal guides clashed with the crumples in the paper. On both pages was a beautifully drawn pencil illustration, the likeness terrifyingly perfect.

It was a picture of Jessica.

18

Jessica had gone face-to-face with many characters most people would find intimidating but nothing had ever shocked her quite as much as the images Cole was holding up. She wanted to speak but couldn’t even form the words. The pencil drawings were so accurate and it dawned on her she knew exactly which photos they had been copied from.

She looked around the room but couldn’t see what she was looking for, so walked back through to the hallway, opening doors in equally cluttered cupboards and then heading quickly but carefully up the stairs. More junk littered the wooden steps and Jessica could hear Cole behind her. ‘Jess, are you okay?’ In the years she had worked with him, he had called her ‘Jessica’ less than half-a-dozen times but she could never remember him calling her ‘Jess’.

‘Jess?’

She carried on walking to the top and kicked a toy car out of the way as she reached the landing. She didn’t know where she was going but opened the first door in front of her.

‘Whoa,’ she said quietly.

Cole arrived just behind her and put his hand on her shoulder. ‘Are you all ri—’ he started to say then interrupted himself. ‘Whoa.’

Jessica pushed the door all the way open and the pair went inside. In complete contrast to the rest of the house, the room was immaculate. There was a new clean cream carpet on the floor and the only smell was the faint odour of paint. The room was decorated light brown, the only furniture an easel with a stool and a small table facing it directly in the centre. The new-looking curtains were pulled open, letting light spill in. Her eyes took a few seconds to adjust from the gloom of the rest of the house to the brightness of this room. She looked behind her to make sure there was nothing else there but it was completely empty apart from the items in the middle.

Then she saw what she was looking for.

Jessica walked over to the small table and picked up two folded newspapers from underneath. She held the top corner of one, allowing it to flap open for Cole to see.

‘Remember this?’ she said.

Jessica had been in the news the previous year. On the first occasion she was on the front page of the Manchester Morning Herald and they had used an old photo of her taken from the police’s website. On the second, Garry Ashford had written a large profile of her. The main photo for each article was an exact match with the drawings Cole still had in his hand.

She no longer felt intimidated, just creeped out. Cole looked at the papers and then the drawings he had. He didn’t say anything at first but his expression said it all.

Jessica responded in the only way she could. If she didn’t try to laugh, there was a good chance she would cry.

‘If he wanted a date, he could have just asked.’

The formalities had to be gone through but Graham Hancock’s mouth swab hadn’t matched anything relating to the case they were working on – or anything else on file. The knives had been tested too but there wasn’t even a faint trace of blood on any of them. Given his hoarding of the newspapers there was every chance he could have memorised as many details as he felt necessary.

The truth was no one would know anything other than the fact he was a very talented artist. The likeness of her had been unerringly accurate compared to the photos they were based upon.

In subsequent interviews, which Jessica chose not to sit in on, he insisted he was the vigilante killer but refused to speak to anyone except her. Farraday claimed he always suspected the guy was a ‘loony-bin nutcase’, despite never talking to him but had at least been sympathetic to Jessica and told her to go home for a day.

Aside from knowledge he could have taken from the media, Graham Hancock had no connections to the case whatsoever. He had no criminal record, nothing that linked him forensically and no obvious motive. On advice, they charged him with wasting police time. The maximum sentence would be six months in prison but no one thought he would get that. Cole did try to talk Jessica into applying for a restraining order against the man but she refused. If she ever saw him again, she would want him to approach her, anything that would give her a reason to take matters into her own hands.

Even before his confession, Jessica had been feeling delicate and questioning her own judgement. Everything that happened with him had shaken her more than she was ready to admit. In the old days, she would have put away a couple of bottles of wine with Caroline and got on with things. But Adam’s question was haunting her: did she enjoy the job? She hadn’t answered because she didn’t want to admit what the answer might be.

After Farraday sent her home, Rowlands had tried to cheer her up in his own inimitable style with a text message:

‘Some ppl will do anything to get off work. X’

It made her laugh at least and she messaged him back something suitably insulting. He texted back:

‘Come to the quiz. Will b a laugh. Carrie’s in. X’

Jessica didn’t reply and wasn’t keen to commit to anything. Carrie called to make sure she was all right and offering to take her out for a drink but Jessica wasn’t in the mood. Instead she waited until she knew Adam would be back from the labs and called him.

He answered on the first ring. ‘Jessica?’

‘Yep, call me “Jess” though.’

Despite going out a few days previously, he hadn’t asked what she liked to be called.

‘What’s up?’

He had obviously guessed something had got to her from the tone of her voice. Jessica had always found something attractive about the impersonal nature of a phone call. She had found it easier to tell her parents awkward things over the phone and, aside from with Caroline, could not really remember opening up too much with anyone in any other way. There was some irony at how she had almost demanded Adam be more confident and direct with her, while now she felt the only way she could talk about anything serious with him was if he wasn’t in the room.

Jessica took a deep breath. ‘The answer is, “I don’t think so”.’

‘Answer to what?’

‘You asked if I enjoy the job.’

‘Oh . . .’

Jessica told him everything, about the case with Randall from a year ago, about the way she and Caroline had drifted apart and then about Graham Hancock and the way the overall case was drifting. He listened to everything.

‘Are you going to be okay? I’d love to come over but . . .’

Jessica felt better just putting everything into words. ‘It’s fine. Are we going to do something this weekend?’

‘I’ve got to work Saturday.’

‘Sunday?’

‘That sounds good.’

Jessica went to speak but Adam quickly cut in. ‘Oh no. I promised Nan I’d take her to the seaside if it’s dry. I could—’

Jessica interrupted. ‘That sounds good if you’ll have me?’

‘Umm, I don’t . . . are you sure?’

‘Yeah, you better drive though, I wouldn’t trust my car.’

The investigation had again gone nowhere during the rest of the week. The case of Robert Graves had formally been separated from the other four killings and given to DI Cole, with Jessica still trying to connect a jailed man to a case it seemed implausible he was actually involved with. Without Donald McKenna’s name they had no other leads. DCI Farraday had barely left his office but had gone quiet on trying to prove Lee Morgan was corrupt and the media had moved on to other stories.

Jessica spent large parts of the rest of the week insisting she was fine. People’s concern was satisfying in one way but incredibly annoying in another. She tried to keep her focus on the victims and had another phone conversation with Denise Millar to see how the woman was doing. She was coping but, like the police themselves, had been confused by the conflicting coverage in the media. Jessica reassured her as best she could but the hostility towards Farraday certainly increased.

On Sunday morning, Adam picked her up. His car was only marginally newer than hers but certainly bigger. His grandmother, Pat, was already in the front seat but Jessica didn’t mind sitting in the back. The older woman certainly seemed keen on getting to know Jessica. She asked what she did, how old she was, where she came from, what her parents did for a living and everything in between. Everything took twice as long to explain because, as Adam had said, his nan’s hearing wasn’t too great.

Even from their car journey, Jessica could tell the woman was a politically incorrect nightmare. After being introduced to each other, Adam had barely reached the end of Jessica’s road when his grandmother embarrassed him. ‘I thought he was gay all these years,’ she said.

Adam coughed and tried to quieten her but she either didn’t hear him or didn’t care and continued to talk. ‘Not that there’s anything wrong with all of that. You wouldn’t have had it in my day. Well, I guess you probably did but it was all behind closed doors back then. Sometimes you don’t know if they’re boys or girls nowadays, do you? There’s one that works at the local shop. You’re afraid to ask, aren’t you?’

Jessica didn’t really know if you should laugh or be offended but it was clear the woman had no malice.

Adam drove them the two hours or so it took to get to Prestatyn in north Wales. She had never been to the Welsh resort before. It wasn’t the best seaside place she had visited but she had definitely seen worse. Adam parked the car and Jessica helped him take a wheelchair out of the boot. They took it in turns to push Pat along the front. It wasn’t a particularly warm day but at least it was dry. The woman had an opinion on everything from seagulls to local politics to what was clearly her favourite topic of conversation: ‘kids today’.

A car had parked next to Adam’s and three children clambered out of the back seat. His grandmother spent fifteen minutes telling Jessica that when she was that age, she would have walked everywhere. She described two lads playing football on the beach as ‘hooligans’ and thought a young child who dropped an ice lolly was a ‘troublemaker’. Everything was punctuated by her opinion that they would be fine because Jessica was a police officer, as if two lads playing football needed the full force of the law bringing down upon them.

On their stroll down the front, they had been walking behind an older man, likely in his fifties, holding hands with a girl twenty years or so his junior. ‘Do you think that’s his daughter?’ she said plenty loud enough for the couple to hear.

Adam had tried to mumble something about not being sure so, even louder, she asked a second time. ‘Bit odd if it is his daughter,’ she continued. ‘Can’t be his wife or anything. Look at them.’ If they heard, they didn’t react.

Jessica knew she probably shouldn’t but she found Pat quite charming. As they reached the end of the front, Adam went into the public toilets and left Jessica sitting on a bench with his grandmother. He had whispered a ‘sorry, I can’t hold it’ in her ear before dashing inside. When they were sitting together, the older woman reached out a hand towards her. ‘Jessica?’

‘Mrs Compton.’

‘Call me Pat.’

‘Yes, Pat.’

‘I just wanted to say thank you for coming.’ The woman was looking directly at Jessica, the wrinkles in her face and lack of hair betraying her age, even though her eyes were full of youth.

‘It’s not a problem.’

‘He’s a good lad. I keep telling him I can look after myself but he won’t have it.’

‘I think it’s sweet.’

‘Do you know he speaks French? And Spanish or something . . . ?’ Jessica went to say that she did know but didn’t get a chance. ‘. . . I don’t know where he gets it from. It must be his mother, his dad could barely speak English properly. I don’t know why you need it myself.’ The woman laughed gently to herself.

Jessica knew Adam’s parents had died when he was young. ‘How did they die?’

The woman stopped mid-laugh. Her eyes almost transformed, from showing young enjoyment to pure sadness. ‘Hasn’t he told you?’

‘I never asked.’

‘I think he would tell you if you did.’

Adam came back from the toilets, shaking his hands to get them dry. They walked back the way they came and his grandmother almost instantly returned to the way she had been, complaining and inadvertently making Jessica laugh.

Clouds had started to gather by the time they arrived at the car and the journey back took longer as Adam drove carefully in the rain. Pat slept for a lot of the trip and Adam asked Jessica if she minded him dropping his grandmother back before her. The two of them helped her back inside and made her a cup of tea as she sat in an armchair watching television.

Adam’s house looked as if an old person lived in it. Jessica could tell it hadn’t been redecorated in years but it still had a homeliness to it.

‘Sorry about her,’ Adam said when they were alone in his kitchen.

‘It’s all right, she’s fun. I’m not sure she should take up after-dinner speaking though.’

‘At least she didn’t say anything bad to you. When she was going on about me being gay in the car I thought she was going to ask if you were a bloke in drag.’

‘Christ, I don’t look that bad, do I?’

‘No, of course not, I just meant . . .’

‘I’m joking, Adam.’

‘Oh right, yeah, sor . . . of course.’

‘Can I ask you something?’

‘Yeah, no worries.’

‘How did your parents die?’

Adam gulped and stared at her. It clearly wasn’t a question he had been expecting. ‘Um . . .’

‘You don’t have to tell me.’

‘No, it’s . . . I don’t really talk about it. People don’t find it easy to deal with . . .’

‘It’s okay, I don’t need to know.’

Adam turned around and picked up the kettle, pouring hot water into a mug. With his back to her, he started to speak. ‘When I was a baby, my mum got upset a lot. Nowadays people would call it post-natal depression and be able to help her but back then . . .’ Jessica wanted to say something but her mouth had gone dry. She shivered as a tingle went down her back. ‘. . . She ended up killing herself when I was two. I don’t even remember her. Then Dad, well, I don’t know for sure. He killed himself a few months later. No one wanted to tell me about it but I went back and looked in the papers from the time. I think he just wanted my mum, not me.’

Jessica croaked out an ‘Oh, Adam . . .’ but couldn’t stop her voice from cracking.

He still hadn’t turned around but had put the kettle down and was stirring the drink. ‘It’s okay. It was a long time ago. I don’t even remember them.’

Jessica urged herself to think of something to say that wouldn’t sound pathetic. She felt embarrassed she had told him about her problems that seemed so insignificant in comparison when he had been living with this his entire life.

She reached her arms around his chest and hugged herself into the back of him. Neither of them said anything until Adam released himself. ‘I’d better take this through.’

He picked the mug up from the worktop and walked through with it to his grandmother. Jessica followed him into the living room. Pat was slumped to one side of the chair, snoring gently. Adam switched the television off and pulled a blanket from a drawer underneath the sofa and placed it over her.

‘She’ll sleep all night now,’ he said, walking back to the kitchen with Jessica and closing the door quietly behind them. Adam tipped the drink down the sink. ‘Thanks for today,’ he added.

Jessica could tell he didn’t want to say any more about his parents. ‘Not a problem, I had a good time. I’m not going to the bingo next time though.’

Adam laughed. ‘She’d never hear any of the numbers anyway and then start shouting at people.’

‘What have you got this week?’

He smiled as he spoke. ‘Well, now you’ve stopped firing stuff over to us, we can get through the backlog that’s built up.’

‘What have you got?’

‘All sorts. We’ve had stuff waiting in the freezers for two weeks relating to those student muggings. Is that one of yours?’

‘The guy who shares my office has been following that.’

‘We’ve also got the usual, a few burglaries and whatever comes in this weekend.’

Jessica had switched off for the last few words he said and he had clearly seen her drifting. ‘All right? I’m not boring you, am I?’

‘No, sorry. It’s not that, I just think I’ve had an idea.’

19

Adam had dropped Jessica back at her flat late the night before but she rushed into work the next morning. She went to her office and signed into the computer system to check the phone logs from the past few nights. All emergency calls were automatically catalogued and she scanned through before finding the item she was looking for. She didn’t know for sure there would be a mugging report with the exact details she was after from the past few days but knew there would be something somewhere. She noted down the details and waited for DS Reynolds to arrive.

He looked up as he came into their office, noticing her sitting at her desk. ‘Hey, Jess, how was the weekend?’

‘All right. Look, can I ask you about this phone report from the other day?’

‘Um, yeah, whose is it?’ Reynolds hadn’t even sat down and clearly wondered why she was in such a rush.

Jessica read him the name as he sat down, adding: ‘This is one of yours, isn’t it?’

‘One of many.’

‘Can you talk me through it?’

‘Any reason?’

‘Can you trust me for now?’

‘You tidy up your side of the office and give me back the ten pounds you still owe me and you’ve got a deal,’ he replied with a big grin.

‘How about I think about tidying my side of the office and try to remember to bring your money in?’ Jessica was smiling too.

‘Fine. Obviously you know I’ve been working on the student muggings. The difficulty is that things aren’t very clear at all.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘For instance, we charged a lad last week with making up a complaint. He basically wanted a new phone and said he’d been attacked just to get a claim number for his insurance. But there are also real victims we know of who haven’t come forward – we’ve got some of them on CCTV.’

‘So you’re stuck with some people who have been attacked and won’t come forward but then having your time wasted by others trying it on?’

‘Exactly and that makes it all the harder.’

‘What about the gang initiation thing you had been talking about?’

‘The only reason the muggings started to be linked together was because we arrested someone early on. Poor kid was shit-scared, only about fourteen, and said he’d been put up to it by older lads because he wanted to join their group.’

‘So did you get any of the other gang members?’

‘No chance. It took us long enough to get that out of him, plus he was a youth of course so you can’t push it too far. He wouldn’t give any names and his mother was having none of it.’

‘Have you arrested anyone else?’

‘No. With the conflicting descriptions – or muggers wearing hoods – plus the dodgy CCTV and so on, we don’t really have anything other than a whole host of scared students. It doesn’t help that they go out and get themselves so pissed they can’t walk straight but I guess we’ve all been there.’

‘Speak for yourself.’

Reynolds laughed. ‘You’ve not been that drunk? Who are you trying to kid?’

‘Oh, I’ve been that drunk but I can always walk straight.’

Reynolds laughed again. ‘Why did you want to know then?’

‘I need another favour.’

‘What?’

Jessica took a deep breath. ‘It’s a big one.’

‘I’m not going to like this, am I?’

‘Can you get the fourteen-year-old back in?’

‘You are joking? He pleaded guilty to that other mugging and was released. What do you want me to bring him in for?’

Jessica read the name of the mugging victim she had taken from the phone logs. ‘Bring him in for that.’

‘But there’s no reason for us to think it was anything to do with him.’

‘We know that but he doesn’t. Please, it could help solve two cases.’

Reynolds looked at her. ‘What if it doesn’t? It could totally stuff mine up. He’s a kid too, we’ll have to get his mother in and maybe one of the specialist duty solicitors. It’s a lot to ask when we don’t even think it’s him. I don’t even know why we would suspect him.’

Jessica read the description of the assailant from the police log.

‘That could be anyone,’ Reynolds said.

‘Exactly, anyone. Including some teenager who’s got previous for it.’

‘Are you going to tell me why you want him in so badly?’

‘I don’t just want him in, I want to do the interview.’

‘Come on, Jess . . .’

‘Please.’

‘You’re going to have to tell me. It’s my arse that will be on the line.’

Jessica told him what Adam had said the previous evening that had got her mind whirring then told him how she hoped to solve two cases in one.

Reynolds looked at her when she had finished. ‘It’s risky. He’s still only a kid.’

‘He’s old enough to threaten someone with a knife.’

‘If I didn’t know you better I would have said you had logged into those files before I got into the office and already knew all about our young offender. After that, you went through the phone archives to find a mugging description from a victim deliberately vague enough to bring him in on.’

Jessica smiled at him. ‘I think you know me well enough . . .’

Jessica had a reasonable idea what to expect having read the descriptions but the fourteen-year-old must have grown from the last time he had been in. Now fifteen, he was bigger than plenty of adults she knew. Despite his size, he still shrunk into the interview room’s chair like the scared schoolboy he was.

Reynolds and Jessica had done their best to keep her idea under wraps and had certainly kept it away from the ears of Farraday. There was no way they could have gone ahead without an okay from Cole though. He had listened to Jessica’s theory, put a few doubts in their minds and then said they could do it anyway.

The boy had promptly been arrested and brought to the station with his mother. He was told he had been arrested in connection with the mugging and cautioned. His mum repeated over and over they had no money for a lawyer, so a specially trained duty solicitor had been brought in, as Reynolds had suspected would need to happen.

The mother was fuming with both the police and her son. In the holding room, Jessica had heard her shouting, ‘What have you done now?’ at the boy.

Now in the interview, her displeasure was focused on them. Each time Jessica asked a question, the boy would nervously answer and then his mother would jump in; ‘See, I told you it weren’t him.’ She hadn’t told them anything of the sort but her anger was clear. Jessica had her secret weapon in an envelope on the table in front of them and was biding her time. They had already gone over the formalities of the mugging, asking where he was, who he hung around with and anything else they would usually include. He hadn’t helped himself by not really having an answer for where he was. It had been late on in the evening but, despite his age, he still claimed to be playing football in his local park.

‘Were you playing football with other members of the gang you’re in?’ Jessica asked.

‘I ain’t in no gang.’

‘That’s not what I’ve heard. I read that you robbed your first victim because you wanted to get in with the cool kids.’

‘So?’

‘So did you get in or not?’

He looked sideways at his mother. ‘No.’

‘That’s not what I’ve heard.’ The boy’s solicitor went to step in but Jessica had sewn the doubt in his mind. She showed the boy some photographs of the new victim’s injuries, having deliberately picked out the ones that looked the worst. Both the legal representative and his mother objected and she knew she was walking on a tightrope.

Eventually, she knew she just had to go for it. She opened the envelope on the table, took one final photograph out and held it facing her. ‘In a moment, I’m going to turn this photo around and I need you to answer one last question. I know your mum is here and you might not want to admit to certain . . . things but this is crucial.’ She tapped the top of the photo to emphasise her point that it could be him and then turned it around. The image was of Robert Graves and had been taken post-mortem after he had been cleaned up. When she had first seen his body she hadn’t known whether it was male or female but the photo was a lot clearer.

Both the boy and his mother reeled backwards while the solicitor tried to stop the interview. He was outraged but Jessica wouldn’t budge. She locked eyes with the boy. ‘Was Robert Graves in your gang? Do you know him?’

Amid the noise as Reynolds tried to calm everyone down, Jessica didn’t move. She stared at the teenager. She could see the answer in his eyes but needed him to say the words. ‘Tell me,’ she said.

‘Yes.’ The answer was quiet and barely audible over the objections from his solicitor.

Jessica put the photograph face down on the table and shushed everyone present, much to their annoyance. ‘Please repeat that. Was Robert Graves a member of your gang?’

Finally there was quiet. She hadn’t stopped looking at him.

‘He wanted to be.’

The teenager had been released without charge but Jessica had got what she wanted. Ultimately he seemed more scared of his mum than he did of them. Reynolds and Jessica had immediately passed the news on to Cole and the three of them were now sitting in DCI Farraday’s office listening to him tell them off for not informing him of what was going on.

Jessica was happy to step in and admit it was her fault but Cole didn’t give her a chance, instead saying he should be blamed. He said he knew the DCI was busy and that he didn’t want to concern him with matters that could come to nothing.

Jessica was grateful for what he had done but also saw it as an indictment of their boss that they had to work behind his back to get things sorted out.

When he had calmed down, Jessica got around to explaining her theory, leaving Adam out of the tale. ‘I had been talking to a member of the forensics team at the end of the week and they mentioned they were going to be able to start working on the student mugging cases this week. It got me thinking about Robert Graves’s age and the type of kid his parents said he was.’ She indicated towards Reynolds sitting next to her. ‘Jason has been working on connecting the robberies all together and had mentioned a theory about a gang initiation ritual.’

Farraday nodded along as she spoke, again drumming his fingers on the desk. She tried to block the noise out and keep talking. ‘I think we’ve all got it in our heads now that Robert isn’t connected to the other, er, vigilante cases but of course we didn’t know why he would have been killed. But now we’ve been told he wanted to become a member of this gang. So what if he picked on a student who wasn’t just some drunk? What if he picked on someone who fought back too hard?’

The chief inspector stopped tapping his fingers. ‘Why wouldn’t he have been identified with that sketch if that’s the case?’

Jessica knew she had to be careful how she phrased the next part. ‘Don’t forget the description of the attacker was from a bit of a distance in dim lighting but also . . . we were asking people to look for the wrong thing. We were saying, “This is your vigilante”, so people would have been looking at their mates and thinking, “Oh, it can’t be him because he was with me the night of the vigilante attacks”. But no one would have been reporting their friends for being unaccounted for on just that one evening where Robert Graves was killed.’

‘What do you two think?’ Farraday looked first at Reynolds, then DI Cole, standing behind the two sergeants. ‘Reynolds?’

‘I think it’s a better theory than anyone else has had.’

‘Cole?’

‘I think we should go to the local media and the universities themselves. Let’s tell them we were wrong and get the description of the person back out there. Let’s ask people to think just about the one night Robert Graves was killed instead of asking them to worry about who the vigilante is.’ There was a harshness to his tone Jessica had rarely heard.

Before the DCI could respond, Jessica started speaking. ‘We have the fingerprint and blood on file. If we get any useful leads, people can easily be ruled out. I know there are thousands of students but there can’t be too many who look like that picture.’

‘How do you know for sure it’s a student?’

Cole spoke. ‘We don’t, Sir. That’s why we would bring the media in too and admit we made a mistake. Either way, it has to be someone relatively local.’

Farraday was back to drumming his fingers and finally slapped his hand down hard on the wood. ‘Right, this is what we’re going to do. Reynolds, you get on with the gang stuff. If people are dying, we need to shut them down. Cole, you go to the papers and the university and do whatever you have to. Daniel, if you’re so clever you get us a lead on the other killer we have to catch.’

It was basically the same arrangement they already had – except that Jessica had solved at least one case she wasn’t directly assigned to and it didn’t look as if she was going to get any credit for it. Ultimately it didn’t matter as long as they found whoever killed Robert Graves and then, her case or not, she would be visiting his parents.