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

Автор книги: Kerry Wilkinson

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Текущая страница: 52 (всего у книги 60 страниц)

It took a little while for the youngsters to move away from questions relating to guns. Given the security gates below it could have been a little unsettling but there didn’t seem to be any malice, simply kids asking about the things they had no doubt seen on television. She was asked the fastest speed she had ever driven at and whether or not she knew someone’s dad because they were in prison along with a series of other things she couldn’t have predicted.

The final question was the one that tripped her up the most. A young girl near the back asked how they could get away with a crime. Jessica didn’t know if she was just talking about stealing sweets from a shop but either way she couldn’t responsibly answer the question. ‘You’ll always get caught,’ she said, not really believing it herself but at least feeling she might have put someone off committing a crime at such a young age.

After the children left for lunch, the various teachers thanked Jessica and she left to walk back to the station.

The last question had stuck with her because she knew the answer. If you wanted to get away with something, the best way was to make people like her think the crime was committed by someone else. If George Johnson had arranged for his wife to disappear, maybe that was where he had gone wrong? He had left them nothing to go on, instead of something misleading to follow up. With her case they had the woman in the black cloak from the very first day and Jessica wondered if that was where their problem lay? The hands were being left in public places for a reason and Jessica felt as if whoever was behind things wanted her to put the pieces together. There was definitely a degree of showing off, which the wave to the CCTV camera proved, but the full reasoning seemed beyond her.

As she walked, Jessica remembered her phone was still on silent. She took it out of her pocket and thumbed across the welcome screen, noticing she had a text message from Rowlands.

‘Call me, urgent.’

She pressed the button to phone his mobile and the constable picked up on the first ring. ‘Jess, are you on your way back?’

‘Yeah, I’m walking. I’ll be about five minutes.’

‘Are you all right?’

‘Why wouldn’t I be?’

‘Another finger has arrived for you.’

23

Jessica instantly asked the question she knew Rowlands wouldn’t have the answer to. ‘Whose is it? We’ve not found a hand.’

‘We don’t know. The forensics team have already been and gone. The envelope was exactly the same and the mail room staff got the DCI involved straight away.’

Jessica raised her voice. ‘Why didn’t anyone call me?’

Rowlands’s tone sounded softer than usual. ‘It was the DCI’s decision. I guess he thought there wasn’t much you could do anyway. None of us could because the science lot were called immediately. The finger and the envelope and all of that have been taken back to the labs.’

Jessica hung up without saying goodbye. She felt angry at not being called, even though there was nothing she could have added if she had have been. As she neared the station, she sat on a wall for a couple of minutes to compose herself. She realised the fury wasn’t something she felt against her colleagues, more towards the person who was sending her body parts. Jessica felt targeted but figured the only way she could escape those feelings was to find out what it was the person was trying to tell her.

Once at the station she acted as calmly as she could as Cole gave her the information she already knew. He put a hand on her shoulder and asked if she was okay. Jessica nodded and replied she was fine.

She had already decided what she wanted to do. ‘I know it’s loads of work but I’m going to take constables Rowlands and Diamond with me to look through CCTV footage from the past few mornings. Before this, we’ve only received fingers after a hand has been found so perhaps it’s still out in the open somewhere?’

‘What exactly are you going to look for?’ Cole asked.

‘Our woman in black I suppose – someone leaving the hand. If things follow the pattern of the others in that it happens early in the morning in a public place, we’ll hopefully come up with something. It’s going to be lots of locations to search through and it could have been left any time in the last few days.’

Cole nodded in agreement. ‘I have one other thing for you. The person from the labs who handled the package said the finger had a letter “A” tattooed just above the knuckle.’

Jessica crinkled her eyes in surprise. ‘Like the “love– hate” thing people put on their hands when they’re in prison?’

‘Possibly. If it’s a ring finger like the others, that could fit but the others were a right hand, so that would make it “hate” on the right hand and “love” on the left. It’s usually the other way around.’

‘You’re right. It’s worth looking at though. Can you spare me some officers?’

Cole shook his head. ‘Not many. How many do you want?’

‘Someone to update our missing persons list with anyone reported since the last time we went through it. After that, I want them to check the names against lists of former prisoners. It could end up being worthless but at least we’re ahead if it does turn out to be from a prison tattoo.’

‘Fine, you go do what you need to and I’ll set someone on this and give them your mobile number.’

After checking with the private security firm that there was space for three officers to invade their offices for an afternoon at least, Jessica drove Dave and Izzy the few miles into the city centre. She drove very carefully given it was apparently open-season on her abilities but that seemed to amuse Rowlands even more. ‘Who stole our DS and replaced her with my gran?’ he asked.

When she wasn’t having the mickey taken out of her, Jessica spent the rest of the journey briefing the constables about what was required. The company said they would set up three individual terminals so they could work separately. Between them, they put together a list of public spots in the city they would watch footage from. To start with, they were assuming the previous three locations wouldn’t be revisited.

The plan was to look at footage from dawn until eight in the morning from the past four days and to work their way through the list of places one by one. If they came up with nothing, they could either go for other locations, a wider time period or even days from further back. Jessica feared the worst in terms of wasting hours and coming up with nothing but began to feel a little more confident as they arrived. She was going to examine footage from the bus and train stations, while Izzy had the outside of the arena, theatres and the remaining public squares. Dave would look at cameras covering the streets around the shopping areas.

Jessica felt sure they would find something – it seemed too inconsistent for the finger to arrive before a hand had been found. It broke the pattern and, considering the way the person had worked in the past, that structure had been consistent.

With no second person to check what she was doing, Jessica kept the speed of the footage at double and watched two monitors at the same time. Izzy worked on two other screens at the back of the small office they were in while Dave was in the room next door. The two female detectives chatted despite having their backs to each other.

‘How was school this morning?’ Izzy asked.

‘Not too bad. All the kids just wanted to talk about shooting each other.’

The constable laughed gently. ‘My brother was all about toy guns and football until he became a teenager, then he’d lock himself in his room and play computer games all the time. Well, that and moan about girls not being interested in him.’

‘Maybe that was because he was in his room all the time?’

‘That’s what Dad used to tell him.’

Jessica had taken on one of the harder jobs because there were more people around the train and bus stations, even in the early hours of the morning. She stopped and scrolled back a piece of footage but realised the person who had grasped her attention was someone wearing a dark jacket.

‘How are things with Mal? He seemed nice enough on Saturday,’ Jessica said.

‘He’s still going on about kids. He ended up playing in this impromptu dads versus lads football game at the park while we were out. I think he was trying to make a point.’

‘I don’t know what to tell you. I’m terrified about being bridesmaid alongside two youngsters next month.’

‘It’s not just that,’ Izzy replied. ‘He wants to carry on working but for me to give all this up. I don’t know if I want to do that at all – but certainly not at the moment.’

‘Have you told him that?’

‘Sort of, it’s not easy. All our friends are expecting me to be pregnant soon as well. It’s part of getting married I suppose.’ There was a short pause before she added, ‘You got anything?’

‘Nothing. One particular cleaner who picks his nose and eats it but that’s not a crime.’

‘It bloody should be. The theatres I’ve been looking at have all had a homeless person sleeping next to them or in the doorways, even after the sun’s up. Maybe they feel safer because people can see them? I don’t know but I think I’m wasting my time with these.’

‘Do you want to start on something else? We can always go back to the theatres, I’m just wary of time.’

‘Yes, can you remember where that tech guy said the other feeds could be accessed from?’ Jessica paused her screens and walked across to her colleague. She brought up a new window with a list of available footage. ‘Thanks,’ Izzy said.

Jessica returned to her seat. ‘What are you going to go over?’

‘Hotels are next on our list.’

Jessica knew the constable didn’t mean every hotel but there were a handful around the city centre that had been converted from old buildings. The former Free Trade Hall on Peter Street was the site of a nineteenth-century massacre, as well as a place where famous musicians had given concerts and politicians made speeches. Others were actually listed buildings, while the tallest property in the city was also owned by a hotel chain.

All of that meant there were certain hotels that were almost as famous for the building they were in than for the brand. Jessica finished looking through the camera angles from outside the main Piccadilly train station and uploaded footage from Victoria instead.

‘Did you hear Erica Tomlinson and Jordan Benson were remanded this morning?’ Izzy asked.

‘I caught it just before I went to the school. If they keep blaming it on each other, they’ll both get sent down for robbery. I hope the CPS do him for it as well and don’t downgrade the charges.’

‘Did you see the statements about how she was actually caught?’ Izzy asked.

‘Sort of, it was a mad day. Some bloke hiding in the toilet, wasn’t it?’

‘Almost. I took the statements from the shopkeeper. The other guy who phoned us was his mate. His friend had let him use the staff toilet in the back and, on his way out, he’d seen the woman with the knife. He called us then shoulder-charged her.’

‘Brave thing to do considering Erica had a knife,’ Jessica said.

‘He was called Frank something. The funny thing was he kept saying he’d never hit a girl before. I was telling him he wasn’t in trouble but he was saying how he’d just got a new girlfriend and he didn’t know how she’d take it if she knew he was going around bashing women.’

Jessica laughed. ‘I think it’s a bit of a special circumstance.’

‘I told him that but he wasn’t having it and the shopkeeper kid kept saying how he’d be in trouble with his dad for letting a non-staff member use the toilet.’

Jessica flicked a dial on the dashboard in front of her. ‘People are strange, don’t you think? We’ve got this one guy worrying about being a woman-beater because he tackled a female threatening his mate with a bloody great knife but, meanwhile, there’s some lunatic cutting off people’s hands seemingly without bothering about it.’

‘That’s the job though, isn’t it?’

‘That’s the job.’

Jessica tried not to sound too disheartened but it was hard not to let things get to her considering whoever was responsible for leaving the hands knew who she was.

‘What do you think about the rumours about the MP?’ Izzy went on.

Jessica paused before replying, wondering how she should respond. ‘We’ve got to keep it quiet.’

‘Sorry, I wasn’t meaning to . . .’

‘No, I know. The minute something is supposed to be kept under wraps everyone starts talking about it.’ Izzy didn’t say anything and Jessica sighed before continuing. ‘I wasn’t telling you to stop, just that you’ve got to be discreet if it comes up at the station. I trust you and Dave enough to talk about it in front of you but it can’t go beyond us.’

‘What’s going on then?’ Izzy asked.

Jessica could almost hear herself from a few years ago, fishing for information and trying to learn the station’s internal politics.

‘What have you heard?’

‘That we’re now looking into George Johnson himself.’

‘Who told you that?’

‘Everyone knows.’

Jessica sighed again. ‘It’s supposed to be a secret. We got a warrant this morning to look at his bank records. We want to go through his emails too but don’t want to let him know anything yet. We don’t need to tell him to obtain a warrant but his emails are more complicated because they could contain sensitive information due to his position. I think Jack’s hoping there’s something in his finances because it’s going to be too hard to keep things from him otherwise. The super’s looking into how it all stands legally. There was even some talk about MI5 but I think that’s just because no one knows the law.’

‘What do you reckon?’

‘Who knows? I think everyone automatically assumes it’s the husband, wife, boyfriend or girlfriend. I really don’t think he knew about the camera. At the time I thought the look on his face was surprise but perhaps it was panic because he had an idea of what might have been captured?’ Jessica switched the footage she was watching onto another day and yawned. ‘You bored yet?’

‘Yeah, I wonder how Dave’s getting on?’

‘Probably zooming in on any women wearing a low-cut top.’

‘Ha! He is pretty good, y’know?’

‘I know. Why do you think I pick you guys to work with? Just don’t tell him I said that.’

Izzy’s voice suddenly raised in pitch. ‘Hey, look.’ Jessica stopped her footage and spun to look over her colleague’s shoulder. ‘I think that’s her,’ the constable added.

Jessica could see what she meant. There was a figure in the distance from one of the camera angles but it was hard to see. ‘Where are you looking at?’

‘One of the street cameras on the bottom of the road that leads to Oxford Road train station. It points down the side of the Palace Hotel.’

‘Is that the one with the giant clock tower?’ Jessica asked.

‘Exactly.’

‘Is there a different angle?’

Izzy clicked through a couple of windows and brought up some new footage, scrolling through it to get to the same time as the frames she had been watching. ‘This one is pointing in the other direction,’ she said.

They watched in silence as a figure in a long dark cloak walked into frame. Jessica said nothing but knew it was who they were after. It felt like the constable had read her mind as she slowed the footage, zooming in.

‘She knows where the cameras are again,’ Izzy said.

‘I know. Where’s she going though?’

The constable had learned the system quickly and was easily able to swap from one shot to another. They had the figure from three separate camera angles but there was a blind spot before they first appeared in the frame and any number of alleys or side streets the person could have emerged from.

Once they established they couldn’t narrow down where the cloaked figure had come from, Izzy moved the footage forward again and they watched in real-time as the person walked along the side of the ancient building and bent down to place the hand under the canopied corner entrance. Given the thousands of people who walked past the spot on a daily basis, it was inconceivable no one had contacted them. The drop had happened two days previously. Jessica looked at the timestamp at the bottom of the screen. It was just after five in the morning and, though the streets were almost empty, people would have been around.

‘Shall we phone it in and get someone to visit there?’ the constable asked.

‘Let it play through first,’ Jessica said.

Izzy left one of the two screens focusing on the corner where the hand had been placed, while, on the second one, she switched to the camera that gave them the best view of the figure walking away. The figure started by returning the way they had come but then crossed the street – a different direction to the one from which they had entered the shot.

Throughout the footage, the figure moved in the exact way they had done on the other occasions. They kept their head angled away from the cameras, the robe dropping to just above their ankles leaving a little flesh and the choice of footwear, the low black heels, on display.

The person in the cloak disappeared out of the shot. ‘Is there another camera watching that spot?’ Jessica asked.

Izzy had already stopped the footage and was looking through the list of cameras available. She clicked through a few options but they weren’t the ones she wanted. ‘Do you know what that road’s called?’

‘No idea.’

They could have looked it up but it was as quick to use trial and error. Izzy continued to scan through the options until eventually they stumbled across the one they had been looking for. The figure in the cloak walked confidently down the street, moving past a couple of shops towards the camera which, from the angle of the images, was high up on the corner of a building. After passing the stores, they paused next to the entrance of an alley and, without turning towards it, gave a thumbs-up to the camera.

Izzy gave a little laugh in disbelief. ‘I didn’t expect that.’

‘Unbelievable,’ Jessica said. ‘Right, we’ll have to get someone else to clean this footage up and get us a zoomed-in still-shot. Let’s find out what happened to the hand though.’ She pointed at the first screen and asked the constable to speed the footage up.

Almost fifteen minutes had passed since the hand had been dropped and one person had walked past it completely oblivious to what was on the ground. The two detectives then saw why the appendage hadn’t been found. A stray dog bounced down the street, sniffed the hand and picked it up before trotting down the road the person in black had first come from and disappearing into an alley that ran along the back of the hotel.

24

Jessica drove more loosely without the other two detectives in the car. She left Izzy and Dave to see if there was any trace of either the dog or their figure in black emerging from the alleyways. Someone was also working on enhancing the still frames they had.

She told the constables to contact the station as she weaved through traffic to get to the Palace Hotel. It wasn’t too far from the offices of the security company who operated the cameras but the traffic was barely moving. She wondered if she would have been better walking as she hammered the horn on her car in protest at a driver who was indicating to change lanes, blocking her path. He flicked her a V-sign and shouted an insult that would have certainly made her pull him over if she wasn’t in her own vehicle and in such a hurry. Regardless of that, he did finally move and she powered through an amber traffic light, swerved late to avoid a cyclist and parked on double yellow lines blocking the alleyway that not long ago she had been watching on the CCTV cameras.

Other officers hadn’t yet arrived but the area would be taped off when they did. Her vehicle was causing an obstruction as it blocked half a lane of a main road and cars beeped their horns as they waited, before swerving around her. She ignored the protests and started to walk slowly down the alley looking from side to side. It was littered with rubbish but, despite the ongoing good weather and brightness of the day, the narrow walkway was completely in the shade.

Jessica moved a few boxes with her hands, scanning the verges on each side as car horns blared behind her. In the distance were police sirens, which she hoped meant her colleagues were on their way as opposed to some other major incident happening.

As Jessica neared the area where the hotel’s large metal bins were, the smell of something rotting increased. There were scraps of food and a few takeaway wrappers on the floor but Jessica was struggling to breathe because of the stench. She took a few steps backwards and inhaled a large breath of clean air before moving quickly down the alley.

Her eyes darted from side to side before being drawn to an object just past a fire exit. She crouched and, although she didn’t want to touch it, she could see clearly it looked like a hand. It had been badly chewed, either by the dog or, given its proximity to the bins, possibly by rats. It reminded her of an undercooked piece of steak she had once spat out in a restaurant: a mixture of lumpy soft meat. The only thing that really identified it as a hand was the fact three of the fingers and a thumb still had nails attached.

Jessica stepped away and made her way further down the alley to take another breath. She didn’t know if the stink belonged to the hand or the bins and scattered takeaway leftovers. With a fresh lungful, Jessica returned to the hand. The digits themselves were largely mangled but she looked closely to see if she could pick out any further letters on the skin. According to what the lab worker had told Cole, the finger that had been sent to her had an ‘A’ tattooed on it, which would be the second letter in whatever was spelled across the knuckles. There was definitely a gap where the ring finger had been removed and on one of the other fingers she could make out what she first thought was a ‘W’, before realising she was looking at it from the wrong way and that it was actually an ‘M’.

She squinted to see if it was possibly an ‘H’, which would have backed up the love–hate theory, but it really did look like an ‘M’. The markings on the other two fingers were difficult to work out because of the scratches and teeth marks. They could have been ‘I’s, ‘L’s, ‘T’s or possibly ‘P’s, or any combination of those.

Jessica stood, walking back towards her car. There were still plenty of vehicles beeping their horns but she could also hear police sirens very close too. In her head, she tried to work out what the word could be if it wasn’t ‘hate’. Without anything to write on, she struggled slightly but none of ‘malt’, ‘halt’, ‘hail’ or ‘mail’ made much sense, unless the victim had been a postman and was particularly proud of it.

As Jessica was trying to think, she could hear vehicles braking loudly and saw the flash of white as police cars stopped either side of her car at the end of the alley. A few uniformed officers started to look at the Fiat Punto but Jessica emerged from the alley showing her identification. ‘It’s mine,’ she said. The officer nodded. ‘Are the Scene of Crime team coming?’ Jessica added. ‘It stinks down there.’

‘I’m surprised they’re not here now to be honest.’

Jessica interrupted the man. ‘Matt!’

‘Er, no, I’m Ian.’

‘No, sorry, I didn’t mean you. The tattoo: it could say Matt.’ The man looked at her, confused, but Jessica dismissed him. ‘Don’t worry. I’m going to head off. Don’t let anyone else down there until the lab team arrive. Tell them what they’re looking for is on the right past the bins and the fire exit. It’s in a proper state.’

Jessica got into her car and manoeuvred herself out of the small gap that was left now the police cars had parked either side of her. As she drove back to Longsight, she tried to remember if any of the players from the rugby photo were called either Matthew or Matt. Off the top of her head it didn’t ring a bell but the photo itself, as well as the bits of research they had on each person, was back at the station. If either Dave or Izzy had been back there, she would have called them but they were stranded at the CCTV offices.

After parking at Longsight, Jessica called Izzy to tell her the hand had been found. The constable said there were no camera angles that had caught their figure in black emerging from the alley. She made a crack about having to catch a bus back to the station and added that they had a good grab of the person sticking their thumb up to the camera. A digital version of the footage had also been sent off to the police’s own labs to be analysed officially.

Jessica thought about going to tell the DCI what had happened but was more interested in the name Matt. She went to her office and shuffled around the papers and files that were, as usual, cluttering her space. She finally found what she was looking for but couldn’t see a player whose name matched what she thought the tattoo could say.

Given the possible letter combinations, she was struggling to match anything before it occurred to her the letters could represent someone else, for instance the person’s son or daughter. It seemed an odd place to tattoo a different person’s name but then she had once arrested a woman who had a tattoo of a fully naked female on her breast, so anything was possible.

Temporarily giving up, Jessica walked through the main floor to find the officers who had been working on the updated list of missing persons. After asking a few people, she was directed to two officers sitting opposite each other in the far back corner of the room. Aside from when she was at either Izzy or Dave’s desks, Jessica didn’t spend too much time on the main floor but when she herself had been more junior, her own area had been exactly where the two people were sitting.

Jessica had always found the corner hot and stuffy in the summer, cold and draughty in the winter. As she made her way over, Jessica could almost feel herself sweating because of the temperature. She had stopped asking for updates about the state of the station’s air-conditioning. The part the refrigeration company were apparently waiting for had gone missing somewhere in Eastern Europe, its replacement impounded by customs officers. No one seemed to know what was going on beyond the fact it was far hotter inside than it was out. Jessica had persuaded the admin department to give her the number for the company supposed to be fixing things but the customer service department had almost left her wanting to cut off various body parts from the clowns who worked there. Twenty-five minutes of having to press ‘one’ to get through to another set of options where she needed to press ‘four’ followed by ten minutes on hold, five minutes of someone not helping her and then another ten minutes on hold hadn’t put her in a good mood and she’d given up.

One of the two officers was on the phone, the other was typing on a keyboard. Jessica knew their faces but not their names. She sat on the edge of their desk and both officers acknowledged her. The one who wasn’t on the phone was a new recruit, a young woman somewhere in her twenties. ‘Are you all right, Ma’am?’

‘Yeah, don’t call me that though. Seriously, “Jess” is fine or “DS” or “Sarge” if you really must.’ Some officers preferred the formality of using titles. Jessica did understand it in that it could make it easier to separate ‘real’ life from the job but, from her point of view, each time anyone called her by anything other than her actual name, it just made her feel old.

‘Sorry, the DCI asked us to start working on bits for you but we haven’t called because there wasn’t much to report,’ the constable said.

‘How much have you got through?’

‘We brought together all the missing persons reports from Greater Manchester, Lancashire, Cheshire and a few others we managed to get. They’ve all gone onto the list we had to start with and we’re working our way through a bit of background to see if any were former prisoners.’

‘Have you got a list of names?’

‘Only on screen.’ The constable pointed at the computer monitor and Jessica crouched over to look.

‘Can you search for anyone called “Matt” or “Matthew” please?’

The officer clicked through a few screens and brought up a list. There were only two names and one of them had been missing long-term. The second had disappeared the previous week and Jessica felt a familiar tingle down her spine as the operator brought up the details they had.

Matthew Cooper lived locally and had been reported missing by his younger brother. Not only that but, give or take a couple of months, he was the same age as all the other victims who’d had their hands left around the city.

‘Can you find out as much as you can about this guy for me?’ Jessica asked, noting the phone number of his sibling.

Jessica went to brief Cole about everything that had happened and then, as Rowlands and Diamond arrived, annoyed at having to use public transport, the three of them called the remaining members of the rugby team who they knew were alive. They also looked over their list of college-leavers but Matthew Cooper wasn’t on it.

She let the two constables leave for the day but, not entirely willing to give up her theory, called the missing man’s brother, Luke. The details around his sibling’s disappearance seemed fairly straightforward – he had gone to the pub one night and not returned. The missing man’s friends said he had left as he normally would and, as Jessica had seen from the brief information they had on record, there hadn’t been anything the local force to the west of the city had found. Although missing people weren’t exactly common, Matthew wouldn’t have been the first person to stumble into the canal after having too much to drink.

Because there was no other obvious way to identify who the hand had come from, Jessica asked Luke if an officer could visit to take a mouth swab that would be tested by the labs against the mangled hand. She tried not to give the man any hope his missing sibling had been found but it was a tough situation. Either way, he agreed and Jessica figured they might have a match one way or the other in the next twenty-four hours if they were lucky.