DS Jessica Daniel series: Locked In/Vigilante/The Woman in Black - Books 1-3 (108 page)

‘Let me go,’ she said fiercely. Ed had taken a pair of shorts from the floor and put them on. He stood and tried to hand some clothes to Sam but Barry snatched them away and flung
them across the room.

At seeing her clothes being tossed around, Sam repeated her words but it sounded far more of a plea second time around. ‘Let me go.’

Steven finally found his voice but it faltered and cracked as he spoke. ‘I think we should just leave things.’

Jacob glared across at him furiously, then he used his free hand to point at Steven and the other two standing next to him. ‘If any of you fucking move, I promise you won’t be
getting on that plane back home in one piece.’ He then turned to Ed. ‘And if you try anything, you’ll get the same treatment.’

He yanked the young woman fully onto the bed by only her wrist. She started shouting but Jacob put a hand across her mouth and pushed her hard into the mattress. Steven would never forget his
next words. ‘Bazza, she’s all yours.’

As Steven finished talking, he was in tears. Jessica felt a sickness in her stomach that she’d only had on a few occasions and she was furious. ‘Did you just stand
and watch?’ she said, barely trying to control her anger. Izzy looked close to tears next to her.

The man shrugged. ‘I tried not to watch.’

‘Well, that’s all right then. Some innocent girl was attacked by two men while you did nothing but because you were staring at the ground, everything’s just fine.’

Jessica rarely lost her temper when interviewing but she couldn’t control it. She hadn’t thought throughout speaking to Steven that he was involved in cutting off people’s
hands but they now had someone who had a motive as good as any. There couldn’t be many better ways to tell people to keep their hands to themselves than by cutting them off. It was also now
obvious why they had been left so publicly – the poor woman wanted the police to know what the men had done.

Jessica realised she was jumping to conclusions but wondered if ‘Sam’ was the person responsible or if it was someone she knew. An enormous part of her wished the woman luck but
there was still a part of her thinking rationally as a police officer, trying to calm herself. Steven hadn’t said anything and was still crying gently to himself.

‘Do you know her last name?’

‘Sam’s?’

‘Who else?’

‘Sorry, I don’t remember. I’ve tried to forget.’

‘Do you have any photos or anything from the holiday?’

Steven was snivelling. ‘I think I might have a copy of the one you’ve got somewhere but that would be all. When we got back no one ever talked about it. It was as if it never
happened. I didn’t really see them after that, only Barry.’

‘Could you describe Sam?’

Jacob gave them a vague description of a girl with blonde hair and brown eyes. Jessica said she would arrange for him to see someone who could digitally create an image from his description but
she doubted it would do much good.

‘Do you think I’m in danger?’ he asked.

Jessica forced herself not to say what she was thinking, ‘
You should be
’, but instead answered professionally. ‘I don’t know, possibly. We might be able to
arrange someone to come around and be with you.’

‘What about my wife and children?’

‘What about them? We would protect them too.’

‘I’d have to tell them why there was someone here.’ Steven seemed frightened, his eyes wide and teary.

‘That would be up to you,’ Jessica said.

‘Couldn’t you put someone . . . I don’t know, like a secret plain-clothes officer or someone across the road or something?’

‘It doesn’t work like that,’ Jessica said. ‘Besides, they would have to follow you wherever you went. If you want protection, I can ask and see what we can arrange.
It’s up to you if you want to explain that to your wife.’

The man nodded dejectedly. ‘Am I going to be in trouble?’

Jessica stood and Izzy followed. ‘I don’t know, we’ll come back to you. We’ve got to get back to Manchester but I’ll leave you my card. If you want me to ask
someone about sending an officer here, you’ll have to let me know.’

The drive back to Longsight was a lot shorter as the motorway had been cleared but the two women sat in near silence. Although Jessica had said she would get back to Steven
about whether he’d be in trouble, she knew he most likely wouldn’t be. She would check the records but unless a crime had been reported in Faliraki itself, there would be no record of
the attack. Not only that but, without a victim or formal complaint, all they actually had was his confession to watching an assault happen. She didn’t want to tell him that straight away
though. Jessica also doubted he would contact them for any sort of protection because he would want to keep things from his wife and children. If she thought for a moment his family could be in
danger, she would have gone out of her way to arrange it regardless but, so far, no one else had been harmed except for the four men.

Jessica thought back to her own meeting with Jacob and the cocky way he had eyed her and Izzy. At the time she had ignored it but she could see it in a different light now and was a little
unnerved.

Back at the station she went straight to see Cole, taking Izzy with her and passing on everything Steven had told them. It was tough to know where to go from there because they had so little
information on Sam. At some point Steven could be brought in for a formal interview but Jessica doubted he would have much more to add than what he’d told them. If anything, he’d offer
less because he’d be more nervous with a tape running.

Izzy left to see if she could find anything from the police in Faliraki. None of them had ever liaised with the Greek police in the past but there were interpreters available if the language
proved too much of a barrier. If the crime had been reported, the woman’s full name would have been recorded. Meanwhile, Jessica and Cole talked through the few options they had. Steven
insisted the girl had an English accent but, because the attack had happened overseas, they had no idea what part of the country she might come from. They couldn’t exactly launch a national
‘Were you assaulted eleven years ago in Faliraki’ media campaign and they had nothing else other than a first name to work with.

Jessica decided she was going to revisit the victims’ families to see if any of them had come up with any further photos from the trip. Given the nature of what had happened, she doubted
many of the young men involved would have kept too many mementoes but Vicky Barnes was her best bet simply because she seemed to keep a record of everything relating to her son. From what Steven
had said, Lewis had been an onlooker in the same way he had but Jessica doubted he had told his mother anything about what had happened. If that was true and he brought home photos from the trip,
Vicky might have kept them for herself.

She went back to the main floor of the station where Diamond and Rowlands were both working. Usually Jessica would have a bit of a joke with them but it was clear Izzy had told her colleague
everything and they were both working quietly and determinedly.

‘How are you doing?’ Jessica asked.

Izzy seemed annoyed. ‘I’ve had to jump through all sorts of hoops to get through to the right person but the head of police on Rhodes actually speaks really good English. He checked
the records of crimes reported from eleven years back but there was nothing that suits our case. There were a few sexual assaults and all sorts of violent crimes but the ones caught were fined and
deported and a huge majority are unsolved because the people would have gone home. He looked at the sexual crimes but there was nothing reported by anyone called “Sam” and nothing
matched the circumstances Steven described.’

Jessica sat on the edge of their desk. ‘Bollocks.’

Rowlands looked up at her. ‘I’ve checked outstanding warrants passed from their police to ours but there’s nothing on there either. As far as we can tell, the attack was never
reported. We don’t have a clue what her last name was.’

Jessica stood back up. ‘I checked with the holiday companies before and they didn’t have records going back that far.’

‘What are we going to do then?’ Rowlands asked.

‘You come with me and we’ll visit Vicky Barnes again,’ Jessica said. ‘Maybe Lewis brought back some photos or he kept a diary? If she doesn’t have anything
we’ll go to Charlie Marks’s house to look.’ Jessica looked across to Izzy. ‘Can you do something else for me?’

‘What are you after?’

‘It’s not nice.’

‘Go on.’

‘Get an officer and check back through any unsolved sexual assaults from the past thirteen years or so. See if any of the descriptions match Jacob Chrisp. If there was DNA it would have
been matched when his hand was identified so look for cases where we don’t have that. It might be nothing but, if Steven’s account is right, he might well have form for it. We would
have to visit the victims with a photo of Jacob if anything does compare but it could at least give them some closure if he was responsible.’

Jessica let Dave drive to Vicky Barnes’s house. The Markses’ might have been the more obvious choice but it was going to be a big job to hunt through all of the
junk and Charlie had already said he would. Vicky was apparently doing the same but Jessica didn’t know if she was looking for the right thing. They travelled more or less in silence, Jessica
still upset by everything they had found out that day. Asking Izzy to check other unsolved cases had been done on something of a whim but, if Jacob was as sinister as Steven had made him sound, he
certainly seemed the type who wouldn’t have stopped at one attack. They would probably examine Barry’s background at some point too but he had died a fair few years beforehand and would
have had a smaller amount of time to be involved in anything.

Jessica had called Vicky Barnes to let her know they wanted to come around again and she’d said that was fine. As she welcomed them in, the woman assured the officers without prompting she
had the kettle on. Jessica wasn’t bothered by that but let the woman fuss. Dave seemed as disturbed as Jessica had been by the shrine Vicky kept to her son. They whispered in the living room
as the woman was in the kitchen.

‘This is really weird,’ Rowlands said quietly as he looked around at the pictures.

‘It might be a bit
unconventional
but it’s really a mother who loves her son,’ Jessica pointed out.

‘I’d be creeped out if my mum kept all these things for me.’

On another day, Jessica might have said that was because he had a face not even a mother could love but she wasn’t in the mood. ‘I wouldn’t fancy being her son’s
girlfriend like January was. It’s no wonder there was a clash between mother and potential daughter-in-law,’ she replied.

‘Yeah, sod that.’

They stopped talking as Vicky walked back into the room with a cup of tea for her and two glasses of water. ‘I’ve been looking through the photos as you asked,’ she said.
‘I couldn’t see any others of Lewis with those other boys or I would have called.’ She sat in the same armchair she had the other day as the two officers leant forward on the
sofa.

Jessica spoke next. ‘Do you keep photos of Lewis’s friends as well as him?’

‘Yes but I didn’t have any of the two you were asking about.’

‘How about Edward Marks? He was one of the ones who played in Lewis’s rugby team. Do you have any more of him?’

‘Rugby photos?’

‘Anything, maybe ones from the same holiday the other photo we were looking at was taken on?’

Vicky pulled a face as if thinking. ‘There were a few but they’re mainly of Lewis . . .’ She took a long slurp from her cup and then stood. ‘Everything is upstairs. You
can come up if you want.’

On the way up the stairs, there were more photos of Lewis pinned to the walls, along with more certificates. Vicky led them into a bedroom that had Rowlands gasping.

‘Do you like it?’ Vicky asked, hearing his surprise. ‘It’s as he left it.’

The room was decorated as if a teenage boy lived in it. There were posters of girls and footballers on the wall, a few toys and a duvet cover of an old cartoon character. Jessica rolled her
eyes, knowing Dave’s reaction was because this was his ultimate bedroom.

‘It’s great,’ he said.

Vicky crouched and pulled two huge boxes out from under the bed. ‘This is everything I kept. You might have noticed some of it on the walls but I rotate things around.’ She pointed
to the first box, then the second. ‘Everything from when he was born up until eighteen is in that box, everything eighteen to now is in there.’ Jessica could see stacks of photo albums
as well as small wallets which likely contained loose pictures. Vicky continued to describe the contents. ‘He got a digital camera and took some photos on his phone but I had them printed
out. There might be some bits on the computer at his flat but this is everything I know of.’

As the woman mentioned her son’s ‘flat’, Jessica realised she could be on the brink of another rant about January so she stepped in before she could start. ‘If Lewis went
to Faliraki when he was almost nineteen, which box should it be in?’

‘Everything’s in chronological order, it will be easy to find.’ Vicky sat on the edge of the bed and picked a few albums out, skimming the contents, returning them, then taking
another. It was less than a minute before she handed Jessica one small album and Dave a wallet. ‘Everything is in those. I checked the other day after we’d spoken but there’s
nothing of the other two; it’s mainly pictures of Lewis. I remember because it was the first time he had gone away without me. I didn’t want to let him at first but he kept on about it
and eventually I said he could as long as he took photos of everything.’

Jessica started to look through the album as Dave sat on the bed and took out the pictures one by one. It was clear straight away Vicky knew what she was talking about. Every picture in the
album Jessica had was of Lewis. In most of them he seemed to be forcing a smile and was either sitting by a pool, on a beach or in a bar. Neither Barry, Jacob nor Steven were in any but there were
odd shots with Ed and Matthew in.