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

Автор книги: Kerry Wilkinson

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Текущая страница: 53 (всего у книги 60 страниц)

It was as she was about to hang up that Jessica realised she had overlooked the most obvious question. ‘Does your brother have any tattoos?’ she asked.

‘He’s got a few on his arms and a big one on his back,’ Luke replied.

‘Is that all?’

‘Why?’

‘It could just help us with identification purposes if need be.’

‘The one on his back is a dragon while he’s got some Chinese bits on his arms.’

Jessica didn’t want to give specifics about the tattooed letters she’d seen on the victim’s fingers in case it gave too much away. Nothing had been released to the media so far and if it did turn out to be the man’s brother, she would want the DNA confirmation first before telling him properly. ‘Are you sure he doesn’t have any others?’

‘I think there’s something on his calf . . . oh, and he’s got something on his knuckles too,’ the man added. Jessica held her breath as the man finished his sentence. ‘I don’t know why he got it but it says my name “Luke” on one hand and “Matt” on the other.’

Jessica kept herself calm as she thanked the man for his help and said she would contact him once the DNA results came back. She hung up and took a deep breath.

It seemed likely the fourth hand belonged to Matthew Cooper but, considering he neither played rugby – nor went to school – with the other three victims, she had no idea how he was connected to them.

25

The almost two-day wait to get the identity of the severed finger confirmed had been interminable. It seemed fair that the lab workers had to take their time given the state of the hand but that hadn’t stopped Jessica swearing silently at them in the privacy of her office.

Edward Marks, Lewis Barnes and Jacob Chrisp had all gone to the same school together and played in the same rugby team. Matthew Cooper had none of those connections and, apart from being roughly the same age and coming from generally the same area, Jessica hadn’t managed to find anything else to link him to the other victims.

After confirmation of his identity, she broke the news to Luke Cooper that his brother was most-likely dead and tried to get as much information as she could about the missing man. The problem was that, aside from an odd taste in tattoos, Matthew simply seemed too normal. He worked in accounts, had a small group of friends, was apparently happily single and, from everything they had found, had no obvious enemies or reasons for people to hurt him.

Jessica didn’t know if it was a good or bad thing but January Forrester had also been ruled out of their inquiries. At the time the fourth hand was being left, she was doing volunteer work at a hostel and had half-a-dozen witnesses to say where she was. Jessica was glad in a way as it closed that chapter but, on the other hand, didn’t give them much to work with.

While Rowlands and Diamond continued to look into Matthew’s background to see if there was something they had missed, Jessica had an up-to-date photograph of the missing man from his brother and was taking a day to visit relatives of the other people who had disappeared.

Vicky Barnes wasn’t ready to admit January was innocent and was still angry with the police for releasing the woman. She kept saying she didn’t feel safe in her house but, while Jessica had some sympathy, there wasn’t really anything the woman had to back her feelings up, other than the fact January had been freed. Either way she didn’t recognise the picture of Matthew Cooper and neither did Jacob Chrisp’s parents.

Her final call was to Charlie Marks, who invited her over to the house again. Jessica had no problems finding the place second time around and parked at the top of the driveway. The gardens looked as if they had been cut since the last time Jessica had visited and as the man strolled out of the house, it seemed clear he had now moved in properly. He looked like a man of leisure, wearing a different pair of baggy shorts and flip-flops, finished off with a loose-fitting cotton shirt and sunglasses. It was a slightly strange thing to do but, as he emerged into the sun to greet Jessica, he took the glasses off.

If anything his hair looked blonder and messier than before and he smiled as he welcomed her inside. For a moment, she thought he might try to hug her but he simply held out his hand for her to shake.

‘How are you keeping, Charlie?’ she asked.

‘Not too bad. I’m still sorting through some of my brother’s papers and I’ve been in touch with a couple of solicitors. Obviously I’m still hoping you’ll find him but there are bills that need to be paid and so on. It’s very complicated because Ed is still classed as “missing” rather than anything . . . worse. I don’t think he was very good at keeping up with things.’

Jessica nodded, knowing it was hard enough dealing with the legal issues when someone had died, let alone when they had just disappeared. ‘I don’t really need to stay for long, I was wondering if you might be able to take a look at a photo for me to see if you recognise the person?’

‘Sure, but if it’s anything to do with my brother, I’m not sure there’s much I’ll know. You’re aware of the . . . problems between us.’

Jessica slid the photo of Matthew Cooper out of an envelope. Charlie scanned it but stuck his bottom lip out and shook his head. ‘No idea, I’m afraid.’ He handed the photo back and she put it away.

‘Do you want a drink? I can sort you a tea or something? Maybe a cold drink?’

Perhaps it was because she didn’t fancy an afternoon in the stifling police station but Jessica surprised herself with her answer. ‘Sure.’

She followed the man as he led her through the house and Jessica glanced from side to side while they walked. Ed’s art was hung throughout the area, a stark contrast to some of the clutter which had simply been left around. Their footsteps echoed from the hard floor until they reached the kitchen.

While the rest of the property seemed a strange mix of being half-finished as well as old and new, the kitchen was impressive. There was a huge American-style fridge on the wall directly opposite the door, with a gas cooker that had six hobs and a huge extractor hood overhanging it pressed against the wall to her right. The rest of the area was taken up with thick worktops. Jessica blinked, trying to take in the difference in the room compared to what she had seen before.

‘Do you cook?’ she asked, almost feebly.

‘A little. None of this was here when I left, I guess my brother had it all put in. I’ve been playing around over the last couple of weeks though. It would be almost a shame not to, given everything that’s here.’

‘Why do you think so much effort went into this room?’ As Jessica asked the question, a mobile phone started to ring. Charlie at first looked surprised as the sound clearly wasn’t coming from his pockets. He tried a couple of drawers before eventually finding the device. Without answering it, he pressed a button to silence it.

‘Sorry about that. I have no idea what it was doing in there.’

‘Is it yours?’

‘Yeah, yeah. I’ve been looking for it for a couple of days.’

‘But I called your mobile not long ago to see if you were around,’ Jessica said, a little confused.

‘I’ve got a couple. I had one for work that I never ended up giving back. I should probably send it down to them to be honest.’

Jessica didn’t say anything but it seemed odd. He put the phone into his shorts pocket and opened the fridge. ‘I went shopping the other day. I’ve got lemonade, Coke, water, fruit juice . . . ?’

‘Lemonade’s fine.’

Charlie sat on a stool with his drink as Jessica walked slowly around the room. ‘Can I help you with anything?’ he asked.

‘No, sorry, just being nosy – force of habit. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a kitchen this nice before.’

‘I don’t know what to tell you. It’s not really mine.’

‘Can I look around the rest of the house?’

‘I guess . . . is there anything you’re after specifically? I know where most bits are now.’

Jessica shrugged. ‘I’m not sure. You found that rugby picture, perhaps there’s something else? People other than your brother have gone missing and it must be for a reason. There’s so much stuff here, maybe there’s something we’ve all missed because we’ve been looking in the wrong place?’

Charlie smiled and downed his drink. ‘That’s fine. I was going to be around all afternoon anyway, though I’ve got a few phone calls to make. All I’d say is to be careful if you go into the pool area. I’m still trying to get to the bottom of that. From what I can tell some contractors took the money, did half a job and that was that. Lot of gippos around here, so who knows? I’m getting someone in to do a proper job but he’s good so there’s a waiting list. He’s working on some footballer’s house just over the back at the moment then he’s going to come here. I need to get a bit of money released before then but it’s all with the solicitors.’

Jessica nodded but didn’t really have any need to go to the half-built room. She didn’t know what she was doing and was acting more on a whim than with any great purpose. After finishing her drink, she asked Charlie if he minded her going upstairs on her own but he was fine. Jessica walked across the hard white-stoned floor of the entranceway then up the carpeted stairs to the wooden landing. The kitchen also had a wooden floor and Jessica wondered quite why it was all so mismatched.

She felt strange about being given such free rein to root through someone else’s possessions. It wasn’t as if it was the first time she’d done something like it but there was usually a warrant involved. It occurred to her that Charlie didn’t mind because so little of it was directly his.

She ignored the room she had identified as Ed’s bedroom the last time she had been in the house and instead looked in the ones she had only glanced at before.

The first was in keeping with the rest of the half-finished house. The ground had bare floorboards with boxes stacked in one of the corners. She opened the flaps of the card but it contained only decorating items, with stiff old paintbrushes and tins of paint with logos that looked outdated.

In the second room was a single bed on a clean-looking carpet. It didn’t look new as such, more untouched, as if it had been set up for a guest who never arrived. Jessica looked out of the arched window over the back garden where Charlie was pacing, talking to someone on the phone. He saw her and gave a cheery wave which Jessica returned slightly less enthusiastically. She was finding him an odd man to read but there were a lot of strange things in his life. He had not long made up with his brother, only for Ed to disappear. That left him as the sole heir to the house, something he didn’t really seem to know what to do with. It seemed pretty obvious Ed was a little eccentric, given the state of the house he had been living in apparently alone since his father’s passing.

Jessica had never had money to spare, not that she had struggled financially for a long time either. She earned enough to pay her bills, tried to save a little, then have some left over for whatever she fancied during the course of a month. As she looked around at the vast expanse, she wondered how she would have reacted to inheriting something so large. Maybe it would have been in the same way Ed and apparently his father before him had – by only half-dealing with things. Some rooms, such as the kitchen and Ed’s own bedroom, were nicely maintained, others were a shambles. It seemed they had created as much comfortable space as they needed to live in and not much more.

Jessica had looked into the family dynamic as much as possible and couldn’t help but feel there was something not quite right. At the same time, everything Charlie said had been verified and it wasn’t as if there was anyone else to check the family issues with. She wondered why neither of the sons had any type of relationship. Charlie was apparently single while Ed, who had also been a decent-looking young man with artistic talent and plenty of money, was apparently unattached too.

Jessica knew she wasn’t exactly an authority on relationships but it wasn’t as if she had found any trace of former girlfriends, or boyfriends, connected to the brothers. When the media got hold of big cases, things such as murders or something akin to what Jessica was working on, people would often contact the police because they knew the victim. It might be a former girlfriend or boyfriend, sometimes distant relatives or old friends. They wouldn’t necessarily be able to add anything to the case itself but it might help them build up a picture of who the person was. With Ed, they’d had next to nothing, almost as if he lived in the giant house on his own and didn’t have anyone else in his life.

Jessica continued to look through the house. The bathroom was as impressively decked out as the kitchen – one large wet room with a tiled, slanted floor for the water to run into a drain in the centre. The taps and shower unit were made of stainless steel, the sink and toilet the same colour as the shiny black walls. Jessica had only seen a bathroom quite so well equipped once before. On that occasion, she’d had to visit Edinburgh for work purposes and the force had paid for a hotel room. Because the place was oversubscribed, the staff had put her in a suite at the top of the building. It had been so much classier than anything she’d experienced before, she ended up taking two showers and using a remote control to open and close curtains in the bedroom just because she could.

She finally found her way back into the room where Charlie had handed her the picture of the rugby team. She felt drawn to the window again, spending a few minutes watching birds flit into the back garden and chase each other before flying away. There was no sign of Charlie outside and the scene seemed incredibly peaceful. She could understand why Ed had spent his time painting in the room that looked out onto the back.

Jessica eventually turned away, peering towards the clutter of boxes around the room. She didn’t know what she was after but started to look through the one closest to her. Even the contents seemed to have no order to them. In the first one was a certificate for Ed from primary school because he had finished fourth in a maths quiz but underneath it was a tin of shoe polish, four wall brackets you would use to put up shelves, an empty glass milk bottle and a board game that had an old television presenter’s face on the box, despite the fact he’d been dead for over a decade.

After putting the items on the floor, Jessica did her best to repack them into the box they had come out of, although she wondered if they would ever be taken out again. The contents of the second crate were just as mismatched as the first. It contained golf balls, some old curtains, a snow globe, some tacky old sunglasses, a few candles and three newspapers from over twenty years ago. Jessica looked through the papers in case they had been kept for a reason but, if they had, she couldn’t see it.

As she put all the items back into the box, Jessica was beginning to question her own judgement about what she was hoping to achieve. She opened a third box and took out some wire coat hangers plus four empty tobacco tins. Underneath those were a set of framed photographs.

The first one was of two boys around nine or ten years old building a sandcastle on the beach. One was blond, the other had dark hair. Both were grinning at the camera and Jessica could just about see the resemblance to Charlie. When they were younger, the two brothers were fairly similar, although the brown-haired Ed was a little shorter. Jessica continued to look through the pictures. The next one was of Ed on stage in what looked like a school play. He was a little older, maybe thirteen, and appeared to be giving some sort of sincere soliloquy. Charlie was the subject of the next photo, riding a bike around a park though it could possibly have been the garden. There was also a photo of Charlie fishing, another of him playing football and a final one where he and Ed seemed to be doing their homework. The pair were sitting opposite each other at a table concentrating on separate work books.

Jessica thought the photo underneath those was hauntingly beautiful. It looked as if Ed hadn’t even known it was being taken. He was around sixteen years old and sat painting in the room underneath. Light streamed through the windows ahead of him with a misting of rain on the glass. She found the image incredibly compelling and wondered who had taken it. Perhaps confused by the way she had been drawn to that photo, Jessica almost failed to notice what the next picture was showing. She had gone to put it face-down on the other photos before realising its significance.

She turned it back over and stared at the contents. There were six young men, perhaps eighteen or nineteen, all toasting the camera with glasses of beer in their hands. They were all a mixture of tanned brown and burnt red and it seemed clear they were on a holiday of some sort. After studying it the second time, Jessica could clearly see Ed Marks in the middle with a huge grin on his face. Next to him on one side was someone who looked like a younger Matthew Cooper. She had only just got hold of an up-to-date picture of him but felt sure the resemblance was there.

Next to Matthew was someone she couldn’t place but, on the other side of Ed, Jessica could see something she had been waiting for since the first hand was found. There was one more face she didn’t know but the final two tanned faces grinning out of the photo undoubtedly belonged to Lewis Barnes and Jacob Chrisp.

26

On almost every occasion where Jessica heard or saw something that excited her relating to a case, she would feel her heart racing, ready to leap into action. Instead, she simply stared at the photo of the men. She looked at the hints of blue sky above them, wondering where it had been taken and who had been behind the camera. Was it a barman or a passing stranger? Was it a seventh young person somehow related to whatever the picture was showing her?

Jessica walked back down the stairs still looking at the photo, also holding onto the image of the two brothers doing their homework. She found Charlie in the kitchen. ‘Are you all right?’ he asked, adding: ‘What have you found?’

She handed over the holiday picture. ‘Do you know anything about this? When or where it was taken? Who might be in it?’

Charlie stared at the image and then looked back at her. ‘Are these . . . ?’

‘Four of them, including your brother, are missing. I need to find out who the other two people are, then what happened with the six of them.’

‘I don’t really know,’ Charlie said, slightly stuttering his words. ‘I vaguely remember him going to Faliraki when he left college but we had different friends.’

‘At least one of these people didn’t go to college with him though,’ Jessica said, thinking of Matthew Cooper.

Charlie shrugged. ‘I don’t know. All I remember is that it was the first time he’d gone abroad and he had to sort out a passport. It was the summer after he finished his exams but I guess it didn’t necessarily mean they were all people he was at college with. He did this art class thing once a week too. I just don’t know.’

‘So he would have been eighteen or maybe nineteen?’

‘I guess so.’

Jessica took the photo back. ‘Can I take this for now?’

‘No worries.’

She showed him the other one of the two boys doing their homework. ‘I found this. I didn’t know if you might want it?’

Charlie took the photo from her and smiled slightly. ‘I remember this being taken. It’s nice. Dad used to make us do our homework when we got home from school before he’d let us out. I remember him taking this.’ He used the support at the back of the frame to prop it up on the kitchen counter.

Jessica indicated towards the photo she was holding. ‘Can you keep quiet about this for a bit?’

‘Sure, it’s not as if I know anyone anyway.’

‘I mean from the papers.’

‘Whatever you want.’

Jessica drove back to the station trying to think things over but there were no obvious answers. If something had happened on the holiday, the person leaving hands around the city could perhaps be one of the two faces from the photo she didn’t recognise – or it could still be someone else entirely. The first priority had to be finding out who the remaining two people were and hoping neither of them had gone missing and that they would be willing to talk. Whether the holiday itself was relevant would be something they would hope to find out in due course – but at least Jessica now knew there was a connection from Matthew Cooper to the other three victims.

After parking at Longsight, Jessica called Charlie to ask if he could look through the rest of the boxes at his house and let her know if there were any others of Ed at a similar age. Two of her leads had already come from him and it would be irresponsible to not finish looking through things. With his agreement, she could have asked officers to go over but the house was so big, it would be easy to miss items and there would be no guarantee they would know what they were looking for. At least Charlie was aware of the type of photos she was after and, regardless of his odd circumstances, he did seem keen to help.

Dave and Izzy had already left for the day, as had Cole. Jessica would usually run ideas past at least one of them but, after looking around the station, she returned to her own office. DS Cornish was sitting at her desk and it was the first time Jessica had seen her in their office for a while.

‘How’s things?’ Jessica asked.

Louise sounded tired. ‘Slow and painful. I’m seeing red vans in my sleep.’

‘No luck finding out where it came from then?’

‘We’re getting there but not easily. We thought that once we had the make and model it would be a fairly small list – but Royal Mail’s records aren’t great. Instead of having a small list of vehicles it could be, we’ve got a long list of vans it isn’t. The DVLA are their usual shambles too – they really are the most incompetent, useless bunch of idiots I have ever known. We’ve got a couple of leads.’

Jessica walked around her colleague’s desk and sat at her own, turning to face the other woman. ‘What about looking into George Johnson himself?’

‘I’ve been left out of that a little but it’s fine by me,’ Louise said. ‘The superintendent has been talking to a few people. We’ve gone over his bank records and there are a few cash withdrawals that don’t seem quite right but they could be innocent enough. At some point we’ll interview him about them but there’s so much more we want to look at first. We had to jump through hoops but we’ve got a warrant for certain emails now too. You know we wanted to do it without him knowing? That created all sorts of problems but we’ve got tech guys looking over things.’

‘Expecting much?’

The sergeant sighed, adjusting one of the photos on her desk to make sure it lined up with the others. It was the longest conversation Jessica had had with her since the other woman started working at the station. ‘Who knows? Some people think that if they delete emails, there’s no trace of them. Some are too stupid to delete them. Others don’t send emails at all and our lab teams could spend the next few days looking over the dullest memos imaginable. I think it will come down to the cash that’s now not in his account and whether we can prove he’s done anything untoward with it.’

Jessica blew through her teeth. ‘You’ll struggle. It could have gone on secret love-children, mistresses, cocaine, hookers or a giant stuffed teddy bear just for the hell of it. He’s not obliged to keep receipts and all we can do is ask the questions.’

‘I know. There’s a steady amount of cash he takes out every month which might or might not be legit but there was one larger withdrawal last month and one the month before. We’ll ask him but only after we’ve gone over his emails. I think his attitude could turn then too because so far he’s been the confused husband. If it gets leaked he’s in the frame there really will be a shit-storm.’

Jessica wasn’t exactly shocked by her colleague’s language but it occurred to her it was the first time she’d heard the woman swear. As their conversation petered out, she spun her chair around to look at her computer monitor, then pulled up the file of the rugby team she was so familiar with to make sure neither of the two faces from the holiday photo matched the other players. They didn’t, which left her without an obvious way of finding out who the people were.

As she was thinking, Louise spoke out of the blue. ‘I’m sorry by the way.’

Jessica looked across. ‘Pardon?’

‘I’m sorry for being a bit of a cow. I know you weren’t having a go about me working. It was just a bit of a sensitive issue at the time.’

Jessica was a little taken aback as the statement was so out of the blue. ‘No, look, it was my fault. Sometimes I blurt out any old nonsense without thinking and it comes over wrong. It’s not a surprise I also have a problem of not being able to control my own facial expressions.’

Louise nodded and smiled. ‘I’ve been wanting to talk for ages but I always miss you; either I’m here and you’re not or presumably you are and I’m not.’

‘I know; if it wasn’t for the morning briefings every now and then I wouldn’t know you still worked here.’

‘How are things with your case?’

‘Moving but not exactly quickly.’ Jessica walked over to the other sergeant’s desk to show her the holiday photo. She pointed to the four young men. ‘I found this at one of the victim’s houses. These are the people the four hands came from. I have no idea who these two are. I’m hoping one of the other relatives does or we’re going to be stuck with putting it in the papers and our website with an “Is this you?” request.’

‘Those types of thing always look pretty desperate.’

Jessica returned to her own desk and phoned Vicky Barnes. Matthew Cooper’s brother and Jacob Chrisp’s parents could be visited at a later date if necessary but she figured she may as well start with the one person she’d had the most contact with. The woman was pleased to hear from her and invited her around that evening. Jessica was going to ask about visiting in the morning but it wasn’t as if she had anything else on.

She didn’t know exactly where she was going but the woman’s house was in the Abbey Hey district, just a few minutes away from where January and Lewis lived. Given the short distance between them, Jessica thought it was no surprise January was so annoyed at her boyfriend’s mother if she frequently came round. It was early evening as Jessica drove but there were still groups of children on the roads of the estate. Some seemed innocent enough as they kicked a football around in the late day’s sunshine, others had a more sinister look. If she’d been driving a nicer car, she might have felt wary of parking on the street but someone trashing her vehicle could give her the proverbial kick – and insurance payout – needed to get something better.

After parking a few doors down from Vicky Barnes’s property, Jessica thought about leaving the car unlocked, almost willing someone to at least attempt to steal it. Ultimately, she turned the key and walked to the woman’s house.

If the Markses’ was a mismatched property, this whole area was a disjointed estate. Jessica had driven past some properties with stale old mattresses and other items of furniture dumped in their front gardens, next to immaculately kept houses.

The Barneses’ fell somewhere in the middle; there was nothing on the front but the lawn had been allowed to grow out and it looked very tatty. Jessica rang the doorbell and a cheap-sounding version of ‘God Save the Queen’ played. Vicky Barnes opened the door looking almost exactly the same as the last time Jessica had seen her, wearing a tight cream crop top that was far too small for her and leggings that looked painted on. The biggest difference was that her hair was no longer greying and had been dyed a strange mix of purple and brown that definitely didn’t work.

‘You all right, love?’ Vicky said. ‘Come on in.’

Jessica walked into the house, following the woman into a living room. As she sat on the sofa and Vicky disappeared to get herself a drink, Jessica took the room in. Half of the area seemed to be a shrine to Lewis. There were photos of him from all stages of life, as well as various certificates and awards that had all been neatly framed and put on display. Jessica read the words on a certificate that must have been twenty years old and simply said the recipient had completed a ten-metre swim. Jessica was sure her parents had something similar from her childhood but it would likely be in a box somewhere, certainly not on a wall so long after its award.

She was beginning to see January’s point more than ever. Jessica knew Lewis was an only child because of their files. There were no pictures of anyone except for him on display and, if you assumed from that the father wasn’t present, it was a pretty sad situation for everyone. On the one hand you had a son who wouldn’t have wanted to leave his mother on her own but did want to move in with his girlfriend. Then you had the girlfriend who Vicky would never have thought good enough for him, no matter who she was. Finally, you had the mother who was missing her son but was, to be kind, a little overprotective.

With the fact they lived close together, it really wasn’t a good recipe for success.

Jessica looked around the rest of the room and there was a mass of trinkets and the types of ornaments people brought with them back from holiday. There were small statues of buildings as well as plate sets, candles and all sorts of other tat Jessica absolutely hated. The only item she ever brought back from a trip abroad was as much alcohol as she could get away with.

When Vicky returned she was carrying a cup of tea and sat in an armchair opposite the sofa Jessica was on. ‘Are you sure you don’t want one?’ she asked, holding her mug up.