DS Jessica Daniel series: Locked In/Vigilante/The Woman in Black - Books 1-3 (11 page)

Caroline spoke then. ‘He had to tell me because if he ever had anything by accident, if I noticed a rash on his arms or anything, I would have to call an ambulance. That’s a telltale
sign.’

Jessica just nodded but she was glad it wasn’t her. ‘Must be hard getting over hangovers,’ she joked.

Randall got up, saying he had to go to the toilet. He left the room and, as soon as they had heard the bathroom door close, Caroline wasted no time.

‘What do you reckon?’

‘He seems nice. You seem good together.’

Caroline grinned. ‘It helps that he’s hot too.’

Jessica grinned back. ‘He’s not too bad. Bit young for you.’

‘Young? I’m only thirty. He’s twenty-three, you cheeky mare.’

‘That’s toyboy territory. Mrs Robinson and all that.’

‘It is
not
.’

Both women were now laughing with each other. ‘You should take him up on the offer of going out with his mate. It would be fun with the four of us and take your mind off the job, too. You
deserve a night away from it all.’

‘Nah.’

‘Go on . . .’

‘Well, maybe. Not now though, I’m busy. Maybe in a few weeks when things have quietened down?’

Having a fun evening in with her friend was beginning to take Jessica’s mind off the fact that things were not going well at work.

‘I’m glad you like him,’ Caroline added.

‘He seems like a good laugh.’

‘He is. He told me he was quite shy as a kid but says I’ve brought him out of it. He’s quite sensitive when you get him on his own.’

‘As long as he treats you all right.’

‘Well, if he doesn’t I know a police officer that can put him right.’

The flushing of the toilet brought an end to their conversation but, before Randall could return, Jessica’s phone rang anyway. She had dumped her bag by her shoes next to the living room
doorway and forgotten to take her phone out. She answered just a moment before it would have rung off.

It was Cole telling her that another body had been found.

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.