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

Автор книги: Kerry Wilkinson

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 7 (всего у книги 60 страниц)

13

As Jessica looked through the paper the next morning, she thought the coverage could have been worse. Admittedly not that much worse but definitely worse. Once again, all the other papers and TV broadcasts had stuck to the information given out by the press department. She knew the Herald was going to print the information Garry Ashford had – she had even told him to write it. In fairness, the phrase ‘serial killer’ wasn’t present at all in that morning’s front-page story. The problem was the headline: ‘HOUDINI STRANGLER’ in giant capital letters. If that didn’t get members of the public panicking, then the article explaining how ‘Houdini’ was breaking into people’s locked houses, murdering apparent strangers and getting back out again completely undetected certainly would.

The officer manning the front desk that morning told her they had already had two dozen phone calls from worried members of the public and he didn’t even need to say where her first stop of the morning would be. She headed straight up the stairs towards Aylesbury’s office. As she walked past the window, she could see Cole already there with Reynolds and a man and woman she didn’t recognise dressed in suits. She could make a good guess at who they were.

When you became a police officer you were fully aware there would be plenty of people who didn’t like you. In uniform if all you got was the ‘oink’ noises and the odd swear word then you had got off quite lightly. Over the course of a career most officers would be spat at or assaulted in some way or another. Being disliked by certain sections of the public was a given – but if you wanted to be really hated then you joined the Internal Investigations department. Not only were you disliked by the public for being a police officer, you were also hated by other officers for investigating your own.

Each police force in the country had a set number of officers who had moved from regular duty into the Internal division. The reasons, of course, were to work against corrupt officers. Everyone had heard the stories of the ‘old days’ where certain members of the force would be paid by various criminals to turn a blind eye to the very acts they were supposed to be preventing. Jessica was sure some of those tales were exaggerated or possibly even based on television shows and movies, rather than fact. Certainly she had never come across any type of double-dealing in her time. Some officers even got a bit edgy if they were offered a free cup of coffee just in case.

Almost everyone in the force would be against those types of practices but changing sides and investigating your own was not a popular way of showing it. In the same way a grass would be ostracised in the criminal world, the Internal Investigators were shunned by a lot of officers.

Leaking information to the media was not as serious as taking money to turn a blind eye of course but, when it affected investigations, it was still treated accordingly. If that information caused a public panic that just made things worse.

Jessica entered Aylesbury’s already pretty full office. The room wasn’t massive, with a large desk that had a computer and some photographs on top. On the walls were various commendation certificates and the like. The DCI was sitting on his side of the desk with Cole and the two strangers on the other side. Reynolds was standing and, as there were no seats left, Jessica stood near the door.

The two officers she didn’t know looked up at her then back down before she could make eye contact with either of them. They were both fairly young, the male maybe early forties with side-parted brown hair and a suit clearly a size too big for him. The female was around the same age with long brown hair tied back into a ponytail.

Aylesbury greeted her presence with a ‘DS Daniel’. He paused to let her settle and then continued, acknowledging the two people sitting next to his desk.

‘As some of you already know, these are officers Finch and McNiven. They work for Internal Investigations and will be speaking to everyone today about the information leaked to the media. I’m sure you are all aware of what has been in the papers.’

He held up a copy of that morning’s Herald just to emphasise his point. He was speaking fairly calmly but Jessica could see anger bubbling below the surface. He was probably holding back because of the presence of the Internal officers. She wondered whether the anger was aimed at the leaker or at the people brought in to investigate his officers. She had never quite seen eye-to-eye with the DCI but, when it came to your fellow colleagues, most people would back them over the Internal team.

‘We all know the value of using the media but whoever has leaked this information has not only made the force look incredibly stupid but put the investigation at risk. We have not been able to speak to Sandra Prince yet and headlines like this are hardly going to help her condition if she were to see them. People need to feel safe in their homes and to trust us. Recklessly giving information like this out helps no one.’

He made a special point of emphasising the last two words. ‘During the day officers Finch and McNiven have been given one of the offices down the hallway from here. They will be talking to pretty much everyone in the station but you three will be spoken to first. At least then it will allow you to get on with the rest of your jobs. You know how these things work.’

No one said anything, not that there was much they could add. Jessica didn’t know which officer was Finch and which McNiven but, as the DCI finished speaking, the female of the two looked up from a sheet of paper in front of her and said: ‘We wanted to start with DS Daniel if that’s okay?’

It was exactly what Jessica had suspected.

Cole and Reynolds filed out of the room back towards the stairs, while she went down the hallway with the two other officers. The male officer led the way, the female walking in between him and Jessica. They went down the passageway, turned left and kept walking until they reached the final room at the back of the building. It was an area Jessica had never really been to. As far as she knew there were only storage rooms back there. The male turned the lights on and Jessica could see it almost certainly was just storage. Boxes with files sticking out of the top had been shoved to the back wall and someone had brought up a table from what looked like the canteen. There was a dusty smell as the male offered her the seat across from them.

The woman started talking first. ‘Okay, DS Daniel, I’m Officer McNiven, this is Officer Finch. We’re from the GMP’s Internal division as you already know. Can I start by asking if you know why you’re here today?’

‘To be bollocked by you lot,’ was what Jessica thought. What she said was: ‘So we can all work together to stop information getting into the papers that could harm the case I am working on.’

She made a special point to stress the word ‘together’.

Officer McNiven smiled. ‘Something like that.’ She paused and shuffled through her papers, before continuing. ‘Okay, tell us about your relationship with Garry Ashford.’

Jessica told the investigators that she had spoken to him three times on the phone, once on the Saturday after the first victim had been found when he phoned her, once the day after to ‘clarify’ the article she had seen on the Herald’s website and then he had called her again after the second body had been discovered. She left out the part where the middle conversation had been largely an exercise in creative swearing. She then said they’d had a very brief talk in a cafe the previous day.

‘How did he get your number?’ McNiven asked.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Why did you call him?’

‘I wanted to ask who his source was.’ A half-truth.

‘Why did you meet him yesterday?’

‘I wanted to explain why causing a panic was not a good idea. I told Detective Chief Inspector Aylesbury I was going to meet him.’

‘Did you give him any information?’

‘He already had it. That’s why we met.’

‘Did you give it to him?’

‘What? Information about the second killing? No. I’ve not given him any tips at all. I wouldn’t even let him quote me.’

‘Have you ever met or had contact with this journalist before the incidents we have spoken about?’

‘No.’

‘Why do you think it was you he contacted?’

‘I don’t know.’

They went around in circles for another five minutes or so with the two officers asking essentially the same questions in a slightly different way. Jessica didn’t know anything further to tell them, while they seemingly didn’t believe her. They were at a stalemate when Officer McNiven thanked her for her time, said she could leave, and asked if she could send Cole up to meet them.

Jessica stomped her way back past Aylesbury’s empty office and down the stairs. She found Cole in his office and told him the bad news.

‘You’re up. Rosie and Jim want a word.’

She thought about calling Garry to ask what the hell the headline was all about. Considering the conversations she had just had – and the fact the investigators could and probably would check her phone records – she figured it was a bad idea. He would almost certainly say it was his editor who wrote it anyway. Maybe that was true, maybe not.

She would have to wait until Cole came back down before they could go through the morning briefing. A few more test results had come back but nothing very helpful with yesterday’s phone leads chased up and ruled out. She spoke to two of the DCs who were trying to link the two victims. They had come up with nothing of note. Some of the victims’ kids had gone to the same school but, given they lived relatively close to each other, that was to be expected. Other than that, it was yet another brick wall.

She went to the canteen to have some breakfast. Although she hadn’t expected the Internal team to be waiting at the station for her, she had known it was going to at least be a trip to the DCI’s office, so had come straight in that morning. Randall had stayed over for the first time the night before too and she felt a bit awkward after waking up, so left without seeing either him or Caroline. The station’s canteen was on the ground floor along the hall from her office. At best the food could be described as ‘poor’. Reynolds refused to eat there and claimed he had once needed three days off after eating some stew.

‘The tea’s bad enough here,’ he advised her. ‘Don’t risk the food too.’

Jessica wasn’t as passionate about not eating there as her office-mate but she did try to avoid it where she could. She risked beans on toast, thinking no one could really make a mess of that. As it was, it wasn’t too bad. She was sitting on one of the plastic chairs using the Internet on her phone. Word would have flown around the station that the Internal team were interviewing upstairs and it was a good bet everyone would know she was the first person who had been called in. She didn’t want to talk about it too much, so was fiddling with the phone’s front just to look as if she might be busy to hopefully stop anyone coming up to her.

She had wasted around twenty minutes before the first person tried their luck. One of the DCs assigned to try to link the two victims approached her table. DC Carrie Jones had a very strong Welsh accent that Jessica loved but others didn’t. Piss-taking was a given in any work environment. Jessica got it for her car, Rowlands for his hair and girl-chasing, while Carrie Jones got it for her accent.

‘I’ve got some news,’ she said.

Jessica couldn’t help but smile at her. ‘Good news?’

‘Good news and bad news.’

‘What’s the bad news?’

‘Sky News, ITV, the BBC and the local radio stations are now also using the phrase “Houdini Strangler”.’

The smile disappeared from Jessica’s face immediately. She put her hand to her forehead and sighed. ‘You could have sugar-coated that a bit.’

‘Er, sorry. Do you want the good news?’

‘Go on.’

‘The hospital has phoned to say you can go see Sandra Prince.’

14

Jessica returned to her office to make a few notes before heading off to the hospital. Reynolds was sitting at his own desk opposite hers. It was clear their office was occupied by two very different people. On Reynolds’s side closest to the door, everything was in meticulous piles or filed away. On Jessica’s half, papers, notes and files were carefully ordered on the floor, around the bin, under her seat and spilling over from her desk.

Shortly after she had been moved into the same space as him, Reynolds asked why she was so messy.

‘To the untrained eye, this may look like a disordered shambles but to an experienced organiser such as myself, there are levels to this filing system you can’t even begin to imagine. I know exactly where everything is.’

It was more or less true. She knew in the rough area where everything was but ‘exactly’ was probably pushing it.

Although he had been ranked above her before Jessica was promoted, there had never been any issues between the two of them after she was elevated. He had laughed as she explained her ‘filing’, while she had spent most of the day giggling when he had told her about taking three days off thanks to the canteen’s stew. Their work didn’t overlap at the moment and they shared a fun relationship.

As she checked through the papers on her desk for the information they had on Sandra Prince, Cole knocked and entered.

‘You’re up,’ he said to Reynolds.

‘What was it like?’ Reynolds asked.

‘Fine. They didn’t really have much to ask me. I’m pretty sure they think it’s DS Daniel.’ He nodded at her and gave her a wink as if to say he believed her.

Reynolds told them to wish him luck and left the room.

‘Now you’re done, we can go see Sandra Prince,’ Jessica said. ‘The hospital called and said it was okay.’

She didn’t know if the DI would want to go but figured it was best to assume he would, rather than just head off with someone else in tow.

She was fairly surprised when he replied. ‘Let’s go.’

The drive to the hospital had been a bit of a nuisance. Rush hour had come and gone but it was Friday and the traffic patterns always seemed to be inconsistent at the end of the week. As per usual it wasn’t too sunny in Manchester; grey clouds washed over the city, while winter and spring were still fighting over what the temperature should be. Cole had taken them in a marked car. Jessica thought his driving matched his personality, steady and straightforward, nothing too crazy.

Some guy had obviously not noticed the car’s markings as he swerved late across lanes and cut them up. If it were Jessica, she would have unleashed a barrage of ‘coarse language’, as Caroline might say and then pulled them over. At the absolute least, she would have given them the inconvenience of having to report to their local police station with all their documents but Cole carried on as if nothing had happened without even beeping the car’s horn. In some ways, Jessica thought, his calmness was very disconcerting.

At the hospital their presence was queried by the receptionist. She was young and continued hammering away at her computer’s keyboard as she said: ‘I’ve not got a record of you coming.’

The two officers had shown their identification cards and Jessica had put on her best ‘Pull your finger out, I’m a police officer don’t you know?’ face. It hadn’t really got them anywhere.

Eventually the receptionist picked up the phone and a nurse had come to escort them. Sandra Prince had her own room on a third-floor ward which had a uniformed officer assigned to it. The nurse told them that Mrs Prince’s doctor wanted to speak to them before he would allow them to talk to his patient, so they were left in a small cupboard posing as an office along the hallway from the ward.

Jessica really didn’t like hospitals. She’d not had any particular traumatic experience with them as some might have done but she had been on a few call-outs while in uniform. She had once come to see a victim of a domestic violence in this exact hospital. A young girl had had her face smashed in by a jealous ex-boyfriend. Jessica had to take the photos for evidence purposes and every time she came here, she remembered the girl’s battered, bruised and swollen face. In the end, the girl had refused to testify in court.

Another time an assault had happened in the hospital itself. Somebody who had fallen down on a night out and was still drunk had tried to start trouble while in the waiting room. Jessica had taken special pleasure in arresting him. Those incidents and more meant she was rarely keen on coming to this place.

Ideally she wouldn’t have had to for this case. Usually interviews would be done at the police station so anything that was said would be recorded. But Sandra Prince was not really a suspect and, given her doctor’s advice, it had been felt the interview could be done here. Her presence at work had already been confirmed for the whole of the day the murder had taken place. She could have killed her husband in the morning and then left the house but it did seem unlikely given the similarities to the first case. They had to check with Aylesbury but he had told them they could speak to her out of the station.

When the woman’s doctor arrived, he told them Mrs Prince had gone into shock after finding out about her husband but had been fully coherent since yesterday evening. He said she had not seen the day’s paper or any of the news coverage and asked if there were any more shocks they were going to spring upon her. He also wanted to know if she was under suspicion. If she was, he told them they would have to move her to the station. Technically they didn’t have to tell him anyway but they reassured him and he showed them into the Sandra Prince’s private room.

The room wasn’t massive but certainly bigger than most people’s bedrooms. It was spotlessly clean with a few pieces of medical equipment surrounding two single beds facing the door. One of the beds was empty, while a woman was sitting up in the other. Jonathan Prince was in a chair next to his mother’s bed. She had greying curly hair that was cut fairly short. She wore glasses but her skin was almost as pale as the white bed sheets, the tone in stark contrast to the wrinkles in her face. Aside from her colour, there wasn’t anything else noticeably wrong. Not that there should have been but she seemed relatively perky when the doctor asked how she was and checked her blood pressure. He then said he would leave them alone but told his patient she could ring the emergency alarm next to her bed at any time.

Jessica arranged two more seats next to the bed for herself and Cole, while he introduced himself and Jessica and explained that, although they were not in the station, he still had to caution her for legal reasons. He told Sandra Prince that she was entitled to have a legal advisor present and that there would be a free one available at the station if that was what she wanted.

Mrs Prince pulled herself up into more of a seated position. She looked at Jonathan, then back at them and said: ‘It’s okay. I just want to find out who did this.’

Jessica said they were going to have to ask her son to leave the room. Jonathan seemed a little reluctant to go away from his mother but she told him it was fine. He closed the door behind him and Jessica started the interview. ‘Could you tell us what happened on the day your husband was killed please, Mrs Prince?’

The woman cleared her throat. ‘I always get up for Jonathan. He has to go to work early and, even though he’s grown up now, I always think it’s nice for him to see someone in the morning. He left and then I had some toast, watched a bit of TV and went to work myself.’

‘Did you see your husband that morning at all?’

‘Not really. I gave him a kiss goodbye on my way out. I always do that. He was still in bed and half-asleep. He said goodbye back.’

‘What time did you leave?’

‘Always eight twenty-five exactly.’

‘Did you have any contact at all with your husband that day? Call him? Text him?’

Sandra Prince took off her glasses and gave a small laugh. ‘Martin couldn’t text. He had a mobile but he didn’t really know how to use it. He could manage calls but not texts. I didn’t call him, no.’

There were tears in her eyes as she spoke. Jessica gave her a few moments until she seemed fully composed. ‘Do you remember if you locked the door when you left that morning?’

‘I always locked it if Martin wasn’t up. If he was out of bed I wouldn’t bother but I think sometimes he would sleep a lot during the day. I would always make a point of locking the door when he was still upstairs.’

Jessica looked at Cole, who gave her a half-nod. ‘Okay, Mrs Prince,’ Jessica said. ‘This might sound like a stupid question but do you know of any other way into your house other than by the doors or windows?’

‘How do you mean?’ She paused and added: ‘We have a cat-flap at the back but it is always locked shut. We used to have a cat but she was run over years ago and we didn’t want to replace her. Since then, we’ve kept it locked.’

‘Nothing other than that?’

‘No.’

‘Do you know of anyone who might want to cause your husband or your family any harm?’

Sandra Prince smiled a little. ‘No. Martin didn’t really have that much contact with other people. Since he lost his job, he stayed in a lot and I can’t think of anyone else. We just kept ourselves to ourselves.’

‘Has your husband’s behaviour been any different recently?’

Mrs Prince shook her head. ‘He didn’t go out too often after he was made redundant. Since the burglary, he went out even less. He didn’t want to leave the house empty.’

Cole and Jessica looked at each other. Jessica’s eyes were wide and she could feel her heart rate rising. ‘Since the what?’

‘The burglary. We were burgled around this time last year. Someone broke in while we were at a friend’s house. They didn’t take much but it was just the thought of someone going through your things. Martin wanted to move but we didn’t have the money. He hated leaving the place empty after that.’

Jessica felt her stomach lurch as her heart continued to pound. She found it hard to stay in her seat. ‘Did the police find who did it?’

‘We thought so but the guy was let out.’

Jessica stood up and thanked Sandra Prince for her time, barely knowing what she was saying as the adrenaline powered through her. She left the room with Cole, thanking Jonathan, who was sitting outside next to the uniformed officer, for his patience.

They didn’t say a word until they were outside of the main hospital building. ‘How did we miss this?’ Cole said to no one in particular. Jessica was already ahead of him. She had taken out her mobile phone and dialled Rowlands. He answered with a standard put-down but she cut across him.

‘Are you near a computer?’

‘Yes, why?’

‘Do you have the Christensens’ address near you?’

‘Somewhere . . .’

Jessica and Cole were walking towards the car park as she heard Rowlands scrabbling around on the other end. ‘Hurry up,’ she muttered, not knowing if he still had the phone at his ear.

After a second or two, which seemed a lot longer, he spoke again. ‘I have it here.’

‘Do a search to find out if their house was ever burgled.’

‘Okay, hang on.’ Jessica could hear him tapping away in the background. The police’s system was notoriously slow. She was now back at the car but standing next to it, leaning on the roof above the passenger door. Cole was opposite her.

‘Right, I’ve got it,’ Rowlands said. ‘Hang on . . .’ She could hear him typing on the keyboard. ‘Yep, it was burgled around a year ago.’