DS Jessica Daniel series: Locked In/Vigilante/The Woman in Black - Books 1-3 (101 page)

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.

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.