DS Jessica Daniel series: Locked In/Vigilante/The Woman in Black - Books 1-3 (102 page)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jessica interrupted the man. ‘Matt!’

‘Er, no, I’m Ian.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘How much have you got through?’

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

‘Have you got a list of names?’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.’