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

Автор книги: Kerry Wilkinson

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 49 (всего у книги 60 страниц)

17

With little more she could contribute, Jessica cheekily asked Garry Ashford for a lift back to the station as Reynolds was going to be a little while and would need the car. The journalist obliged and she told him he might want to make a check-call or two to the police press office a little later.

Back at Longsight, Cole already knew what they had found and had been in contact with one of the computer technicians to discover how long things would take. Jessica didn’t understand the technical talk entirely but there was some sort of problem they were trying to sort out with George Johnson’s son that wasn’t proving easy as he was having problems accessing the Internet wherever he was.

Jessica checked in with Rowlands and Diamond, neither of whom sounded like they’d had a fun day. Cornish had made them talk her through each step of where they were up to in the investigation, telling them how she would have done things differently. Jessica thought it was a sign she had matured, even if only a little, that those revelations hadn’t sent her into an instant rage. A few years ago it certainly would have done but she was at the point where, if someone thought they could do a better job, they were welcome to try – and have severed fingers addressed to them instead of her. Either way, it didn’t seem as if they had got any further and, once again, it looked as if they were going to have to work their way through the full list of college-leavers in an effort to find anything to move the case forward.

That evening, Reynolds called Jessica at home. He thanked her for her help, refusing to accept her point that the afternoon’s discovery was just luck and not much to do with her. From the tone of his voice, she figured a lot of the gratitude was simply down to relief that something had happened. She knew both the inspector and Cole were under a lot of pressure to make a breakthrough. He told her the computer experts had finally managed to figure out with the Johnsons’ son what was going on with the stored images. There were tens of thousands to scan through and the naming of the files wasn’t too efficient but, after hours of work, they had isolated three still-shots ‘of interest’.

From the day Christine Johnson had gone missing, one image showed the maid heading out via the gate at the front which was presumably to go shopping as she had told them, leaving Mrs Johnson alone in the house. Twenty minutes later a faded red van pulled up outside the large double gates at the end of the driveway. The vehicle was in the next three pictures before disappearing, meaning it had been outside for less than four minutes. In the final image, the rear door of the van had been open and there was a faded logo visible which they were now trying to identify.

The bad news was that, with the gap in between the photos, no actual people had been seen but it did at least give them something to work with. With the high-profile nature of the case, experts were going to spend the weekend enhancing the images as best they could in order to release them to the media. Reynolds also said he was looking into either getting permission to go to Luxembourg to visit the son, or seeing if they could arrange for him to return home to be interviewed. The man insisted he had set up the camera at the request of his mother and assumed it was done with his father’s knowledge. Given the lack of time his dad spent at the family home, it was plausible but certainly unusual.

When she woke up the next day, Jessica had almost forgotten that she had to go to the summer fete as part of the dreaded community engagement plan. She had finally read Cole’s email properly and it was clear a lot of it had been written under duress from people above him. Three separate times it mentioned that instructions had come down from the superintendent, presumably to stop the rest of the officers thinking too badly of him. The event was at Crowcroft Park, the recreation area closest to their station, and there was very little information other than the venue and a rota for the times they should arrive.

It was another scorching day and Jessica couldn’t remember a longer spell of uninterrupted good weather since she had moved to the area. When she arrived, Jessica could see the park itself was parched with large areas of sand-coloured grass. A lot of people had come out seemingly because of the weather and the whole spectacle took Jessica back to a different age when she was young.

In the village where she’d grown up, there would always be a summer fair once a year. The whole population would descend on their local park where there would be a funfair, stalls selling homemade cakes and biscuits, various tables offering jumble-sale items for charities and all sorts of games going on. It was probably selective memory but it never seemed to rain on those days and she could remember her father with his big tanned arms carrying her around on his shoulders.

Jessica thought it was amazing how one thing could give you flashes of another. It was the smell of candyfloss as she walked through the park gates that most reminded her of the village fetes where she used to live. She couldn’t even remember the last time she’d eaten any but the stall next to the entrance had a queue of children and she could almost see herself as one of the younger girls in line.

Jessica had arrived early and didn’t know where the police’s stall was so decided to go for a walk. She had her work suit on as it wouldn’t have seemed right representing the force wearing her everyday clothes but she was feeling a little sweaty given the heat. A small ferris wheel was the obvious thing Jessica noticed as she strolled around. It was playing a cheesy fairground tune but the other noise that stood out was laughter. In doing a job that could be so dark at times, it was easy to forget the little things like this. Children weaved in between adults, running around excitedly as parents pushed empty pushchairs. A group of youngsters had started a game of rounders against a hedge and Jessica couldn’t help but smile.

Her thoughts were interrupted by a tap on her shoulder. She turned around and Izzy stood there grinning. She wasn’t in her work clothes, instead wearing a long flowing white skirt and pale vest top. Jessica thought the woman’s hair looked a brighter red, most likely because it wasn’t tied back or perhaps because her clothes were lighter than usual. She was arm-in-arm with a man she introduced as her husband, Mal. He was a little older than her with greying patches of hair above his ears.

‘You not on the stall today?’ Jessica asked.

‘Nah, just thought I’d come down and have a look at everything seeing as the sun’s out.’

‘Do you know where we’re based?’

Izzy pointed towards an area on the far side of the park. ‘It’s over there. Jack’s on the stall but not looking too happy. I think his wife and kids are around somewhere. It’s mainly uniform but there are a couple of other detectives from the area there too. It’s not just our lot.’

‘Was it looking busy?’

‘The press office team have got some games set up and are taking photos for the website. You can tell they’re mad keen to make us look good in all of this. They’d just collared one of the local newspaper photographers too.’

Jessica didn’t think it sounded her type of thing. ‘I’ll hide over here for a bit then. If they’re looking for a good impression, the last thing they need is me telling off a bunch of kids.’ Jessica remembered her colleague talking about the dispute over children she was having with her husband and saw what looked like an awkward glance sideways from Mal to his wife. ‘I’ll leave you to it,’ she added.

Izzy said goodbye and the couple walked away still arm-in-arm. Jessica slowly made her way around the rest of the park towards the direction the constable had said their stall was in. The ambulance service and fire brigade had setups of their own and Jessica watched as the paramedics showed people how to perform CPR. She nodded at one of the workers she recognised and they shared a ‘What are we doing here on a Saturday?’ look.

The fire officers had a much larger stall and were showing people the dangers of chip-pan fires by deliberately pouring water on hot oil. Huge flames shot into the air and Jessica saw a group of gathered youngsters gasping at the heat. She wondered if the display was aiding awareness or simply putting ideas in the minds of potential young pyromaniacs. She concluded her suspicious mind was getting the better of her.

Eventually she saw the force’s stall. Cole was handing out pencils to children and she could see the forced smile on his face. With the rota he had sent around, she was due to do a two-hour shift on the stall which would take them up to the day’s end. He seemed relieved she was there, wiping the sweat away from his forehead as the line of children thinned.

‘Are you all right?’ Jessica asked.

‘Yes but I’m glad you’re here.’ The man explained that press officers were running games of cops and robbers every half hour and there was a big pile of certificates for her to sign and give out to the participants. He said the day had gone well but his tired eyes told a different story. ‘Did Jason call you last night? He said he was going to.’

‘Yes, he told me about the stills from the camera. What do you reckon?’

Cole shrugged. ‘I’m not really sure. The quality isn’t great but the lab boys reckon they can enhance them. I guess we’ll find out on Monday.’

‘How is Jason?’

‘Between you and me, I think he needs a day off. He’s gone to the labs today just to watch.’

‘Maybe he didn’t want to get stuck here?’

The chief inspector knew her well enough to know she was joking and smiled back. ‘I know it’s a pain but the idea behind all of this is a noble one.’ He nodded towards the children running around nearby. ‘If we can get this lot not hating us from an early age it will be better for everyone.’

Jessica knew he was right. ‘Are you off home now?’

‘No, I said I’d help put everything back down later. The super was around earlier too. I’m going to nick off for a bit. My kids were definitely around here somewhere. I’ll be back later, have fun.’

Jessica wouldn’t have said she had ‘fun’ but the afternoon wasn’t as bad as she thought it might have been. During a round of cops and robbers, two young boys collided with each other and the game had to be abandoned. It was the type of accident that would have health and safety officials filling in forms for the rest of the day but, with the ambulance service just a few stalls down, there was no harm done except for two bumped heads. At first, Jessica had to force herself not to laugh because of the comical way the youngsters had fallen over. They had both been racing in one direction while looking in another and run head-first into one another before bouncing and falling to the floor. There was an audible gasp from onlooking parents but Jessica was convinced she saw other adults trying not to laugh as well.

The DCI had been correct in that there were plenty of questions about her job from young people. The uniformed officers had the attention from the youngest children and they had a police car parked on the grass for people to sit in and look at the equipment they used. While the younger ones were drawn to the other officers, the teenagers who weren’t hanging around in small groups pretending they were too cool to be there came to talk to her. One girl in particular wanted to talk about becoming a detective and although Jessica wanted to tell her the pay, hours and expectations were all terrible, she stayed on-message and gave a balanced assessment, telling her it was a hard profession that had its good days and bad days – but that the successes felt so good they outweighed everything else. Jessica wasn’t sure if she believed it herself but it didn’t seem right to go out of her way to put someone off just because she was feeling cynical.

After the accident, the head press officer decided to stop any further games. The idea of the day was to engage with the public and perhaps get a nice few photographs of the event into the local papers and, if they were really lucky, on the local television news. A picture of two boys crying with blood pouring from their heads didn’t exactly give the right impression.

By the time it got to four o’clock, the crowds had started to dwindle. Cole returned and, along with some of the uniformed officers and the press office staff, began to pack the tables away. As they worked, the chief inspector broke away to answer his phone and, a few moments later, called Jessica over. He edged across into an area next to some benches where there weren’t any members of the public.

‘I’ve just had a fairly disturbing phone call,’ he said.

‘What’s up?’

‘Someone held up an off-licence on Stockport Road an hour ago.’

‘Our end?’ Jessica asked. Stockport Road was one of the main arteries in and out of Manchester city centre and ran for around five miles. Not far past the park they were in, it branched off.

‘About a mile away. They had a knife.’

‘Was anyone hurt?’

‘No but they took a few hundred pounds.’

Jessica wondered why he was telling her. ‘Why did you get the call? There must be someone at the station who can deal with things?’

Cole nodded. ‘They had been. It wasn’t because of the robbery that they called; it was because of the description of the person who did it.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘The robber was a woman wearing low heels and a long black hooded robe.’

18

Jessica was technically on a day off but didn’t think twice about getting one of the uniformed officers to drive her to the off-licence in question. It was only a couple of miles away from the Longsight station and police tape was already set up around the premises, while Scene of Crime officers were on site.

One of the male forensics team let her into the shop and there was a beep as the front door opened. He led Jessica along an aisle which didn’t interfere with the area they were inspecting, before she was pointed towards a door behind the counter. If it hadn’t been for the presence of the officers and the fact she knew there had been a robbery, Jessica wouldn’t have realised anything untoward had happened. The only sign was that, as she approached it, she could see the cash register open and empty.

The officer told her the shopkeeper owned the upstairs flat and was currently waiting there. ‘Is there CCTV footage?’ Jessica asked, nodding towards a camera above the door.

‘Apparently but we haven’t looked through it properly yet,’ the officer said. ‘The owner showed it to us so we could get an idea of the path the person took. We’re going to take it back when we’re finished.’

‘Have you found anything?’

The officer shook his head. ‘The robber was wearing gloves so we’re not even looking for fingerprints but they didn’t touch anything anyway. We’re trying to isolate a few footprints. The video footage is going to be our best bet but we’ve got to get all of this done first.’

‘Do you know if someone’s taken the shopkeeper’s statement yet?’

‘I don’t know. Someone is upstairs with him.’

Jessica thanked the man and walked through the door, finding herself alone in what looked like a storeroom. The overhead lights were on and a fan in the corner was blowing cool air around as it rotated. On her left were boxes of unopened crisps and chocolate bars plus a mop, bucket and a few other cleaning items resting against a wide chest freezer. There was another door at the back with a large bolt locked across while crates of beer cans and bottles were stacked underneath the staircase.

The stairs were old and wooden and each one creaked as Jessica walked up, holding onto the banister which rocked from side to side as she gripped it. There was a door at the top that appeared to be locked as Jessica pressed it, so she knocked instead. A uniformed female constable opened the door and they instantly recognised each other.

‘I was wondering if it would be you they sent along,’ the officer said.

‘Yep, I’m the queen of short straws,’ Jessica replied with a smile. The other officer went to turn around but Jessica continued, ‘Has someone taken a statement? I was in a bit of a rush to get here and haven’t come via the station.’

‘One of the officers took it all down. It was only midway through when he realised the connection because of the black cloak. He called it in for someone to pass on. It all goes a bit above us.’

The other officer turned again and led Jessica down a carpeted hallway into a joint living room and kitchen area. A man was sitting on a sofa but stood as she walked in. Jessica saw he was shorter than she was. He had slicked-back dark hair and didn’t look as if he’d shaved in a while, with a tufty beard on his chin. The man was clearly still stunned by what had happened. A full cup of tea sat on a table in front of him and he nervously looked at the other officer as Jessica came into the room.

Jessica introduced herself, showing her identification. The man said his name was Victor Burnham and confirmed he owned and managed the shop. He appeared to calm down slightly, offering her an armchair opposite the sofa. The seat was uncomfortable and Jessica had to force herself not to wriggle as what felt like a series of thin wires dug into her back. As she looked around, she could see a lot of the furniture in the flat seemed dated. The sofa and the chair she was sitting in were a dirty cream with a mix of pink and purple flowers on the material. Everything from the carpet to the lights appeared covered in a thin layer of dust and, as she scanned around, she could smell a musty unclean scent too.

Perhaps because that was now in the front of her mind, but also because she didn’t want to dive straight in and potentially unsettle the man, Jessica was careful with her first question. ‘Do you live up here, Mr Burnham?’

He shook his head emphatically. ‘No, no. Only when there’s a really early delivery. There’s a bed just through there.’ Victor pointed towards a closed door on the far side of the mini kitchen. ‘I have young children and they have school and so on. It’s not fair to wake them up at five when I have to get here.’

‘So do you own this whole property?’

‘Yes, I’ve got this and another shop a mile or so away then my wife and I have a separate house too. I manage this one and my brother runs the other.’

‘Can you talk me through a normal Saturday?’

Victor nodded solemnly. ‘I usually get here for around six, sometimes a little earlier. It’s a big day with the papers. You have to sort out all the magazines and get everything onto the racks before we open at seven but there are the paperboys to organise too.’

‘Does anyone help you?’ Jessica asked.

‘Only my wife sometimes, or my nephew. I guess . . .’ The man tailed off and swallowed hard. ‘I guess it’s lucky my wife wasn’t here today. We alternate Saturdays so we can each have time with the kids.’

Jessica allowed him a few moments to settle and made eye contact with the constable. The other woman went to the kitchen and returned with three glasses of water. Even though Victor hadn’t touched his cup of tea, he drank from the glass and said ‘thank you’.

‘What else would happen on a regular Saturday?’ Jessica asked when the man had re-settled.

‘After the papers, we would open and there would usually be a bit of a rush before nine o’clock. It’s not as bad as on a Sunday but we still sell a fair few newspapers on the weekends. Then it would calm down until lunchtime. On a weekday we get loads of people in for sandwiches and pasties. There’s a cafe just down the rank but not everyone wants to stop. It’s much quieter on a Saturday but we still get the odd workman in.’

‘Can you tell me specifically about the incident today? I know you’ve talked to my colleague already and you don’t have to go over things again if you don’t want to.’

The man seemed weary but didn’t object, finishing off his water. ‘No, it’s fine. It was around three o’clock and no one had come in for maybe fifteen minutes or so. I’ve got a little radio which sits under the counter. I was listening to the cricket and reading through one of the magazines. There’s a buzzer security thing that goes off every time the main door is opened. I looked up and couldn’t see anyone at first and glanced back to my magazine. It was just a moment but suddenly there was someone right in front of me.’

‘What did they look like?’

‘I don’t know really. You know about the cloak, don’t you?’

‘Tell me.’

‘It was a woman, maybe around my height, wearing this black robe thing. It had a hood pulled down over her face and I could only see her mouth.’

Jessica was hanging on his replies. ‘How do you know it was a female?’

The man shook his head slightly as if it were a stupid question. ‘The voice, it was a woman’s voice. She was just so calm.’

‘What did she say?’

‘“Open the till”.’

‘That was it?’

‘Well, she repeated it. It happened so quickly. You know when you think you’ve heard what somebody has said to you but it’s not really gone in? It was like that. Then I saw the knife.’

Jessica knew she had to be careful with her words. ‘What did it look like?’

‘It was a kitchen knife, like something you might cut meat up with.’

‘What did her voice sound like? Was there any type of accent?’

‘I . . . I don’t know. It just sounded normal, I wasn’t thinking about it.’

It was what Jessica would have expected. ‘Okay, that’s fine,’ she said. ‘What happened after she repeated herself?’

‘I just . . . it was like I was someone else. Have you ever felt like you’re in a corner of a room watching yourself do something? It felt like somebody else was controlling me and I was just looking at things. I only know because I showed the people downstairs the video. I opened the register and stepped backwards.’

‘What happened then?’

‘She reached across and pulled the notes out. It’s the one thing I clearly remember because there was a moment where she was on tiptoes stretching forward. It was just a fraction where I thought about . . . well, I don’t know, trying to grab the knife or something. She was off-balance but it wasn’t as if I really had time to think. As soon as it crossed my mind she had taken everything and moved away.’

Jessica could see he was starting to get a little emotional and there were tears in his eyes. He wiped them away and was almost shouting as he continued. ‘It’s not even the money but it could have been my wife, y’know? We’ve had our kids in here before . . . and I just did nothing.’

Jessica knew there wasn’t much she could say. Even for a man who wasn’t sexist at all, she guessed it would be hard to be robbed by anyone but perhaps the fact it was a woman made it a little worse.

‘I’m sure there’s nothing you could have done, Mr Burnham,’ Jessica said as reassuringly as she could. The man shrugged, clearly fighting to stop himself crying. ‘Did anything happen after she had taken the money?’ Jessica added. ‘Did you notice anyone else in the shop?’

The man shook his head again. ‘I don’t really remember. I think she just left.’

‘Where is the camera footage stored, Mr Burnham?’

Victor pointed towards the bedroom door he had indicated before. ‘It’s in there, my brother put it in. The wires come up through the ceiling and it’s all stored on a hard drive. Once a week I have to switch them over but it looks after itself apart from that. The system has been in for almost two years and this is only the second time I’ve ever used it. The first was just some lads nicking porno mags.’

‘Did you report it?’

The man actually laughed a little as he answered. ‘No, I knew the parents of one of them. I could’ve come to you but he was so terrified of me telling his mum, he paid for everything. I could’ve still reported him or whatever but what’s the point? He’s only fifteen or so.’

‘Can you show me the footage from earlier?’

‘Okay – I’m not very good with the equipment though.’

Victor stood, leading Jessica into the bedroom. It was a little larger than she would have guessed but shared the same stale smell as the rest of the flat. The bed was unmade, a duvet cover half on the floor and the sheets ruffled into the centre. The room wasn’t very bright, the only illumination coming through one small window before the man turned on the lights.

A desktop computer was on a table with a large plastic-looking box next to it. Victor sat in front of the machine and pointed to the box. ‘Those are the external hard drives,’ he said, then indicated a set of wires running up the wall. ‘It all connects to the cameras downstairs. The computer doesn’t need to be on to record but it does if you want to watch anything back. I turned it on earlier.’

The man moved the mouse and the screen lit up, then he clicked around the screen to bring up a new window. ‘I’m not brilliant with this but my wife’s gone around to my brother’s family’s house so he can’t come over. He’d be the best one to explain the system. I can show you this though.’ After moving the mouse around some more, a new box appeared that had a still image looking at the front door of the shop from the inside. He then pressed a button on the keyboard and the view cut to the camera that was over the top of the cash register looking down. He pointed out to Jessica which buttons moved the action forward and backwards and where she needed to press to change the camera angles.

‘I’ll let you look for yourself because you know as much as me now,’ he said.

Victor stood and offered the seat to Jessica. He clearly didn’t want to watch the footage again, moving across to the bed and starting to make it. Jessica sat as the constable stood behind her. It took her a few moments to get used to how everything worked and the thought crossed her mind that so much of what she’d been working on in the past few weeks revolved in one way or another around cameras.

The shop owner had left the video at the start of the morning’s footage and, using the timestamps at the bottom of the screen, Jessica moved it forward to a little after half past two. She watched it at triple speed but there was only one visitor into the shop, a middle-aged man who didn’t buy anything, before the timer clicked over to three o’clock. Jessica set the camera angle to the one watching the front door. At two minutes past, Jessica saw what she was waiting for. The door opened and a figure in a black cloak walked confidently into the shop. They shut the door behind them and turned into one of the aisles without looking up.

Jessica had to switch to the second camera angle and saw everything happen exactly as Victor said it had. It was chilling to watch the coolness the person moved with. There was no hesitation and not even a trace of anything that could be seen as emotion in the body language. If anything, the shop owner had underestimated the size of the knife. From the footage, Jessica could see it had been concealed in the wide sleeve of the gown and then taken out when they were halfway into the shop. It had a wide fearsome-looking blade and she could see why Victor had almost switched off mentally at the sight of it.

Jessica rewound the recording and watched it three times in a row, each time looking for different things. She tried to see if the gloves the figure was wearing looked like the ones that had been seen in the footage of the person leaving the hands. On the third viewing, she watched the shape of the robe and the way the person moved. The only time she could see the person’s shoes properly was when they stretched across and snatched the cash, then walked away. There were only a few brief frames but they looked very similar to the style of low dark heels from the recordings taken in the city centre.

When she had looked for all she could, Jessica realised Victor wasn’t in the room. She found him at the sink in the kitchen area washing up. ‘Are there any cameras outside, Mr Burnham?’

He replied without turning. ‘Not that belong to me. I’ve never noticed anything else.’

Jessica didn’t know what else she could add. The forensics team would take the video and try to enhance some of the still frames in case there was a clear image of the person’s face. From what she had seen, Jessica didn’t think they would get one. The entire time she had been watching the video, Jessica had been looking for any sign to disassociate the robber from the person leaving the hands. When she had first heard about the robbery and throughout Victor’s description, she had been thinking the person was a copycat.

Now, having watched the footage over and over, she just didn’t know.