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

Автор книги: Kerry Wilkinson

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Текущая страница: 6 (всего у книги 60 страниц)

11

Just because there had been another killing, there would have been no instant reason to link it to the first – until you saw the crime scene. There were so many parallels to the first death. The property was less than half a mile from Yvonne Christensen’s but this time the victim was found in an armchair in the living room. It looked as if there had been more of a struggle but there were still deep, vicious wounds in the victim’s neck.

The second murder scene was very similar to the first but with one major difference: this time the victim was male.

As Jessica walked into the interview room at Longsight, she didn’t know how to feel. She had been at work the entire day and the wine she’d shared with Caroline on an empty stomach was only just wearing off. Any crime scene could be enough to make you feel a bit queasy but, as time edged into the late evening, her stomach was rumbling and she didn’t feel quite right. She guessed a large part of that was down to the mixed emotions she was having. A part of her was exhilarated that something was now happening and relieved she wasn’t necessarily a failure. Then she felt disgusted with herself, ashamed of her selfish reaction to someone else’s death. It was hard to reconcile the two thought processes.

Cole was already sitting at the table opposite the station’s duty solicitor, who was next to a terrified-looking young man.

Jonathan Prince still lived at home with his parents, despite being twenty-two. He had come home from work and found the body of Martin Prince, his father, in an armchair which the Scene of Crime officers were now taking photos of.

Cole started the tape and Jessica spoke to confirm everyone’s name plus the time and date before pausing for a moment. ‘Are you okay, Jonathan?’ she asked.

No response.

‘Jonathan?’

‘Yeah, yeah. I’m okay. Well, sort of . . .’ The young man spoke slowly, dazed.

‘Okay, Jonathan I have to ask you these questions, all right? I know you’ve had a horrible time but anything you can tell us will help us find out who did this. Do you understand?’

‘Yeah, yeah . . . I know.’

‘Can you tell me what you’ve done today?’

Jonathan took his time and was frequently tearful. The solicitor said he didn’t have to do this now but Jonathan wanted to. He said he had got up and gone to work as normal. He was employed as a builder and left the house at half-past six every morning. His mum, who worked as a secretary for the council, was always up at that time too, although he rarely saw his father before he got home. He told them his dad used to work for a printing company but had been laid off a few years ago. He hadn’t found work since and rarely left the house.

‘He just couldn’t find anything to do with himself and no one wanted to give him a chance because of his age. He became a different person. Not bitter . . . just sad.’

It was hard not to be touched by the way Jonathan spoke about the father he had found dead just hours before. Jonathan himself had been unemployed for a period after leaving school but had now been in the building trade with a local firm for just over two years. He had thought a few times about moving out but his rent helped pay his parents’ mortgage and he didn’t want to leave them in a tough situation.

‘Okay, this is going to be hard, Jonathan, but can you talk us through finding the body?’ Jessica asked.

‘It was about three o’clock or so and we were finished for the day. I didn’t really have anything on so went to the pub for a bit with a few guys from work. After that, I was just going to go home and play on the PlayStation or something.’

‘Did you drive home?’

‘No, God no. Got a taxi.’

‘And what happened when you got there?’

‘I let myself into the house . . .’

This was the part Jessica had been waiting for, even though she was pretty sure what the answer would be. ‘So the front door was locked when you arrived?’

‘I guess . . .’ Jonathan paused and then started nodding emphatically. ‘Definitely. It was locked because I still had my keys in my hand.’

‘Is it usually locked when you get home?’

‘Sometimes. I mean, if my mum has left for work and Dad’s not up yet I know she’ll leave it locked just in case. It depends if he’s out of bed.’

‘Okay. What happened then?’

‘I’d gone into the living room to say “hello”. Usually the first thing you hear when you walk in the front door is the TV but it was quiet. I walked into the room and he was just there . . .’

Jonathan tailed off.

At the crime scene before they came back to the station it had already been established each window and the back door was locked. It was the first thing Jessica had asked to be checked when she arrived. The front door was of course open but Jonathan had told the 999 operators he had let himself in before finding the body. Martin Prince’s own house keys had been found next to his wallet upstairs on the nightstand adjacent to his bed.

Again, there was no obvious way in or out.

Jonathan’s alibi of being at work all day would be checked with his workmates and boss but, again, Jessica had no doubt it would be legitimate. His mother looked like posing a slightly different problem. Sandra Prince had arrived home as the police were arriving at the scene. When she realised the authorities were entering her house and had the news broken to her about her husband, she had collapsed, unable to accept what she had been told. She had been taken to hospital herself in an ambulance – much to the delight of all the curtain-twitchers on the road, Jessica thought.

Before she had gone in to talk to Jonathan, Jessica had spoken to someone in charge at the local hospital who said Sandra was now conscious but not capable of being interviewed. It sounded like the shock had been too much for her. She had been in the hallway of their house when she fainted as the officers present didn’t think it was a good idea for her to see the living room and the state her husband was in. That did mean her handbag had been left in the house. Jessica felt terrible but had looked inside to see if her house keys were in there. They were, of course, as she had known they would be.

They would interview Sandra when the doctors said she was up to it. Given the circumstances – and the fact she had likely been at work all day, which was easy enough to check – she wasn’t going to be treated as a suspect. That didn’t mean she wouldn’t have any useful information though and Jessica would still want to talk to her sooner rather than later.

They released Jonathan and she told one of the uniformed officers to give him a lift to the hospital.

After finishing the interview, someone in uniform had given Jessica a message from Aylesbury that she and Cole should go up to his office. She had only seen him in the station this late once or twice. Counting the basement incident room, the station had three floors. After her promotion, Jessica had been given one of the smaller offices on the ground floor. She shared it with another detective sergeant, Jason Reynolds, who was a big imposing black officer a few years older than her. He was funny and helpful but currently heavily involved in a complex fraud case. If it wasn’t for that, there was a very good chance the murder case would have been given to him instead of her, which was an idea Jessica would have been very receptive to at that moment.

She and Cole took the stairs up to the first floor and made their way past some of the rooms used for storage into the DCI’s office.

‘What do we reckon,’ Aylesbury asked when they were inside, ‘is it the same killer?’

It was clearly what both Jessica and Cole had been thinking. Cole spoke first. ‘We think so, Sir. Obviously there are no forensics yet but the neck wounds look similar and the house at least seems to have been locked up like the first one.’

‘Did you get much useful from the son?’

Jessica spoke this time. ‘Not really. He was pretty shaken. He just confirmed he had unlocked the front door to let himself in, then found the body.’

‘And all the other windows and doors were locked?’

Jessica and Cole nodded in unison. ‘Yes,’ Jessica said. ‘The house could have been unlocked during the day, we won’t know that until we speak to Mrs Prince, but the son says it was locked when he got home in any case.’

‘We’re going to have to keep this out of the media for now. We can’t have talk of a serial killer at this stage, especially one killing people in their own homes. We should at least wait for the lab tests to come back and then maybe we can talk about releasing information. I’ll draft a press release with the office, just something about a body being found and so on. You two, keep your mouths shut – and tell all the other officers that too. We can’t have this getting out, not like last time.’

They were dismissed with Aylesbury’s words ringing in their ears. Jessica walked through the station’s reception. She was going to mention something to the desk sergeant about contacting her if any news came through about Sandra Prince but he was talking on his mobile and didn’t seem too keen to be bothered. Jessica hung around for a few moments but felt too tired to wait. She hadn’t driven in because of the wine she’d had but one of the other officers was going to drop her home. She was walking towards the bay of marked cars when the familiar sound of her ringtone started, muffled from being in her bag. She fished around and pulled out the device. The caller’s name was only half a surprise. She had saved the number as something she thought particularly appropriate. ‘Tweed wanker’ the display said.

Jessica pushed the touch screen to answer and put it to her ear.

‘What do you want?’

She didn’t know if Garry Ashford knew anything about what had happened that evening but she definitely wasn’t going to give away any information by accident.

‘Hi, it’s Garry Ashford. Can you speak for a minute or two?’

‘I know who it bloody is. What do you want?’

‘Can I run something by you?’

‘What?’ Jessica was shouting now. Did he know or didn’t he?

‘I’ve got it on good authority another body was found tonight.’

‘Whose authority?’

‘You know I can’t tell you that.’

Suppressing a sigh, Jessica tried to stay calm. ‘Like before, you are going to have to talk to the press office. They deal with media requests, not me.’

‘Are they going to put out a statement about this murder being linked to the first one?’

Jessica winced. ‘I don’t know who told you that, Garry, but I think someone’s pulling your leg.’

‘Or maybe you are now?’

Jessica was fuming, not really knowing how to respond. How could he know? He might have found out a body had been discovered – there had been plenty of people having a nose on the street the Princes lived on – but how could he know how the victim had been killed? Or that the house had been locked?

Either someone involved with the investigation was feeding him information or . . .

‘Are you my murderer, Garry?’

‘What . . . no. Of course I’m not.’

‘You seem to know a lot about the murders. Maybe things only the killer would know?’

‘No, no, you’ve got it wrong. It’s not like that.’

Jessica didn’t think for a moment he was her man but thought she would give him a bit of his own medicine anyway.

‘So what is it like? You’ve got to look at things from my point of view. I’ve got some guy who seems to know an awful lot about my case but doesn’t seem willing to speak about it. Meanwhile, he’s writing stories blasting me and my fellow officers. Maybe I should bring you in for questioning?’

She could almost hear him squirming at the other end.

‘No, no. Look, I didn’t write all of that. My editor, he . . .’

‘He what?’ On the other end of the line, Jessica heard the caller give a large sigh.

‘Can we meet?’

‘Are you asking me on a date? I don’t go out with killers, Garry.’

‘Not like that. It’s just . . . I’d like to talk to you. Two people have died.’

It was the last line which brought an end to the charade between them. Jessica was still annoyed with him but she could hear in his voice that the journalist, like she did, recognised the two dead people were almost becoming a side issue.

‘I’m pretty busy at the moment,’ she said.

‘Just fifteen minutes. Tomorrow afternoon? There’s a coffee-shop place near my office.’

‘Right, whatever. Text me the address.’

‘Great. I’ll do it now.’

Before he could end the call, Jessica thought of one final thing. ‘Are you still there?’

‘Yes.’

‘Good. Don’t wear the jacket.’

Jessica hung up.

12

There wasn’t much coverage in the following day’s papers – it had probably been too late for their deadlines. The morning news broadcasts were running with the line fed to them by last night’s release and everyone seemed fairly happy that a lid had been kept on the details. Jessica went to see Aylesbury in the morning to give him a brief rundown on her conversation with Garry Ashford the night before. She didn’t really want to be part of an internal investigation so thought it was best to tell him she had agreed to meet with the journalist later on that day. The DCI pointed out that, considering there were no test results back from the scene and they had been unable to speak to Sandra Prince, anything in the media about the murders being linked could cause a panic.

‘They’ve already got us looking like blundering incompetents. What with this and the shambles of a court case going on, we’re in everyone’s sights at the moment.’

A ‘shambles’ was certainly one way to describe how the case surrounding Harry’s stabbing was proceeding. After Harry’s no-show on the first day, the prosecution had asked for an adjournment based on ‘illness’. Peter Hunt for the defence had vigorously opposed the request but, given the jury had yet to be selected, the judge had reluctantly delayed the case for the rest of the week. Jessica had tried calling Harry but, as usual, there was no answer. Rumours were flying around the station that he would refuse to give evidence and the case would fall apart. With the Christensen investigation going nowhere either, it was a tense time.

The case had begun the week after and Harry had been present each day. After the jury selection and opening argument, it was his turn in the witness box today. Jessica was not allowed to attend because she was a witness and was relying on the desk sergeant – who seemed to know everything that was going on – and the television news.

‘What about whoever’s leaking this stuff to Ashford?’ Jessica asked.

Aylesbury looked at her as if to say, ‘I’m not convinced it isn’t you’. He didn’t follow it up, instead saying: ‘For now things are fine but if anything else gets out it will become a matter for the Internal boys.’

The station was buzzing that morning. There was nothing like a body turning up to get everyone moving. Some people would be inspired to find the killer, others by wanting to do something good to progress their own career. Most officers fell somewhere in the middle. A photo of Martin Prince had joined Yvonne’s on the incident room’s whiteboard to keep everyone’s mind focused, while the morning’s briefing had gone on much the same lines as what Aylesbury had told her in his office.

He reminded everyone of the need to keep things in-house then Jessica talked the floor through what they knew. Jonathan Prince’s alibi had been checked and confirmed and, even though Sandra Prince was still in hospital, it had been verified she had been in work the previous day too. Test results should be coming back later that day but, for now, everyone would operate under the assumption the murder had been carried out in the same way, probably by the same person, as that of Yvonne Christensen. A uniformed officer had been placed at the hospital with Mrs Prince and Jessica would be told when it was fine to interview her. Everyone was very careful not to mention the phrase ‘serial killer’. Until it was actually confirmed, those were dirty words.

A phone number had been given out to all media the previous evening and officers were again needed to take calls. Some uniforms were going door-to-door in the area where Martin Prince had lived and another sub-team had been given the job of trying to link the two victims. It was a possibility they had been killed at random but far more likely they had something in common that, if discovered, could lead to a person who might want to murder the pair of them. The first thing they would do would be to contact Eric Christensen and ask him if he actually knew Martin Prince. It was probably too much to ask for but sometimes you overlooked the obvious.

‘Find the link, we find the killer,’ Jessica told the assembled team.

To say Garry Ashford was nervous about his meeting with DS Daniel was an understatement. One of the first things you were taught as a journalist was to protect your source, so there was no way he would reveal who had given him information about the killer. As for their conversation on the phone the previous evening, he wasn’t sure whether she actually thought he was a suspect. If she really did think it was him, she would surely have him arrested so presumably she was just messing?

For now, he hadn’t told his editor that he had any extra information about the second killing. The basics had been released to the media and his boss had asked him what else he knew, telling him to get back onto his contact and get the full story. He promised he would and had half told the truth when he said he would be meeting the detective sergeant to talk about the case. He was meeting her, of course, but only to confirm the information he already knew was true.

Since his boss’s editorial criticising the police the previous week, using Garry’s information and byline, he had been a lot more tentative about what information he gave up. He had somehow managed to walk the line of staying in his editor’s good books while also feeling as if he hadn’t compromised his ethics. It wasn’t that he necessarily had a problem with breaking any of the police’s embargoes or revealing information they hadn’t released but he did feel uncomfortable with how it was being used to bash them in a way that gave little thought to the victims.

He was sitting in a small cafe around the corner from the newspaper’s office in the centre of the city. It was an old-fashioned place that looked drastically out of sync surrounded by newly built or renovated glass-fronted buildings. He didn’t know but it looked as if it had been there for centuries. It had character and smelled of exotic tea in a way only old cafes could. There were only half-a-dozen heavy round metal tables on the inside, with matching metal chairs that screeched every time they were moved. A couple of tables were also placed on the pavement outside just in case the sun came out. It was where Garry went for lunch a couple of times a week, attracted by its cheap prices and good-looking waitresses. He didn’t know if the cafe’s manager hired based on looks but it certainly seemed like it.

He ordered a cappuccino and told the blonde server he was waiting for a friend. He had just worn a regular coat over his shirt after the fashion advice he had received the night before. DS Daniel was five minutes late so he checked his phone to see if she had called or sent him a message of explanation. She hadn’t but, as he looked back up, he saw her coming through the door with her best scowl on. She spotted him instantly and made her way over to sit opposite.

The waitress made a move as if to come over to their table but the officer gave her a look that quite clearly advised her not to.

‘Hello,’ Garry said as she sat down.

‘Right, I’m here. What do you want?’

DS Daniel looked a little windswept; her long hair had clearly been blown around and she fiddled with it, trying to move it out of her face. For the first time Garry actually noticed her eyes. They were kind of half green, half brown. He liked them but not the way they were looking at him.

‘I just wanted to check some things with you.’

‘Go on.’

He flicked through his notebook and read from it without looking up. ‘I’ve been told that the body you found last night was killed by the same person who killed Yvonne Christensen. Not only that but both bodies were found in houses that were locked and that you have no idea how the murderer either got in or back out again.’

DS Daniel looked down and took a deep breath then looked back at him. Her expression had changed. She no longer looked angry, just weary. ‘Look, I’m not going to ask you who your source is but you can’t print this stuff. We don’t know if everything you just said is true. People have died. What we want is help finding whoever did it, not sensational headlines that are going to make people panic.’

Garry knew where she was coming from. He agreed with her to some degree but he was a journalist after all. Just because he had been given some information unofficially, he didn’t see why it couldn’t be used as long as it was done responsibly. ‘I didn’t write those headlines, my editor did, but you can’t expect me just to sit on information when I get it. I have a job to do too.’

‘That might be true . . .’ DS Daniel tailed off. ‘Right, print what you have but if I see the words “serial killer” anywhere in the article . . .’ She tailed off again but the implication was clear.

‘I’ll do what I can but the editor writes the headlines and edits what I write. It’s up to him.’

‘Fine.’

‘So can I quote you?’

‘Don’t push your luck. I don’t trust anyone that can’t spell their own name properly.’

‘Huh?’

‘Garry has one “r”, you moron.’

Jessica was sitting on a bus that would take her almost the whole way back to the station. It would leave her with a five-minute walk but she didn’t mind that. She hadn’t fancied driving into the centre for her talk with the journalist. It was always a nightmare to park and she hadn’t planned on spending too long with him.

She was actually quite pleased with the way her meeting had gone. She believed Garry when he said it was his editor who had written the stories up to have a go at the force. When Harry used to take her out, he would speak about the value of journalists. ‘Just be careful which ones you trust,’ he told her. ‘Some of them would screw their own mothers over if it made the front page.’ She was a pretty decent judge of character and Garry seemed all right. He actually seemed to care, which was always a good start.

She thought having someone she could trust in the media could be key to finding the link between Yvonne Christensen and Martin Prince.

As she wondered about that, the time the journey was taking was reminding her why she didn’t use public transport very often. In terms of distance, it wasn’t too far back to the station but the time really added up when the bus waited at every single stop. There was some guy chatting far too loudly on his phone in the seat in front of her, with three teenagers listening to some dreadful dance music through the speaker of one of their phones at the back. Near the front there was a baby strapped into a pushchair crying its eyes out while its mother chatted to her friend in the seat next to her. It was just noise, noise, noise.

She closed her eyes for a moment but couldn’t blank any of it out. As she looked towards the rear of the bus, she saw one of the youngsters had just lit a cigarette. She sighed and wondered whether she could be bothered with it.

She took a deep breath. ‘Oi,’ she snapped at them, pointing at the no smoking sign on the window next to them. They were about three rows behind her.

‘What?’ the one with the cigarette said, taking his first drag.

‘Put it out.’ By now most of the other passengers were looking at her.

‘Why? What the fuck are you going to do about it?’

This was all she needed. Jessica reached into her inside pocket and pulled out her police identification card, getting up from her seat and walking towards them. She hoped the bus wouldn’t stop suddenly or she would stumble and look a right fool. She showed them her credentials, perching on the seat closest to them. ‘Just put it out and stop being dicks.’

‘You can’t talk to us like that,’ one of the non-smokers said.

‘And you can’t smoke on a bus, so put it out and we’ll forget it happened, right?’

The kid with the cigarette looked as if he was weighing up his options but eventually stubbed it out on the floor.

‘And watch your mouth in future,’ she finished, putting her identification away and walking back to her original seat. ‘Next time I’ll drive,’ she mumbled under her breath.

Jessica would not have been in such a hurry to get back to the station if she had known the news that was waiting for her. Firstly the desk sergeant pulled her to one side to update her about Harry’s court case. She didn’t know who the officer’s source was at the Crown Court but whoever it was must have had a front-row seat.

Harry had been called to give evidence that morning but things hadn’t gone well. Apparently, he had responded almost entirely with one-and two-word answers to the lawyer prosecuting and only shown any animation when Peter Hunt had begun cross-examination. Before the judge had stepped in, Harry had called Hunt ‘scum’ and a ‘parasite’. He had eventually responded to the questions but, with the jury present for everything, the damage had been done. If he couldn’t control himself in a courtroom, then why would they think he could control himself in a pub? Jessica felt so sorry for him. She so wanted to help in the way he had helped her but you couldn’t do that if the other person wasn’t willing to engage. She decided she would try to call him again that night. He probably wouldn’t answer but she didn’t want to abandon him.

As soon as she had finished at the front desk and before she could get back to her office, she ran into Rowlands. ‘What bad news has my spiky-haired harbinger of doom got for me today then?’ she asked.

‘Funny you should say that . . .’

‘Go on.’

‘Sandra Prince. Her doctor won’t let us speak to her for at least another twenty-four hours. He says she’s not ready for it yet.’

‘Great. Anything else?’

‘We spoke to Eric Christensen. He says he’s never heard of anyone called Prince. We showed him pictures of all three family members and he doesn’t know any of them.’

‘Has anyone come up with any other link?’

‘Nope and door-to-door haven’t got anything either.’

‘Phone lines?’

‘Got a few things to check out but probably not.’

‘Are forensics back yet?’

‘Just the basics. It looks like it’s some kind of steel rope again. It’s all on your desk but cause of death and the weapon seem to be the same as before. All the blood matches Martin Prince and, for the moment, they’ve not got anything else.’

Jessica sighed. ‘Right. Do you actually have any good news?’

Rowlands beamed at her. ‘Tomorrow night I’m off out with that new girl uniform have hired.’

Jessica rolled her eyes. ‘You’re a dick.’