DS Jessica Daniel series: Locked In/Vigilante/The Woman in Black - Books 1-3 (24 page)

‘Sorry. X’

Caroline was obviously staying at Randall’s that night. In contrast to the day before, Jessica had a terrible night’s sleep, waking up frequently before finally giving up in the
early hours and going to watch the rolling news on television.

It was a Saturday the next day and, even though she could have had the day off, Jessica didn’t want to be in the flat if Caroline returned, wanting to make her friend
suffer a little longer. Jessica had already been up for hours and got dressed to go into the station. She was going to have to go in at some stage, having left her car there the previous day
because she had been to the pub after work. She knew some officers would have driven home after a couple of pints, safe in the knowledge they were unlikely to be turned in by their colleagues.
Everyone knew the ones who did and, while most didn’t approve, they didn’t want to be the one who said something. Breaking the law in such a blatant way was a line Jessica hadn’t
crossed and didn’t want to.

The station was only a bus ride and five-minute walk away and she figured that she might as well put in a few hours if she was going anyway. When she arrived not long after nine in the morning,
reception was busier than it usually was on a weekend. All the drunks and troublemakers from the night before would be in the cells under the station and things were usually fairly steady by this
time.

She asked one of the uniform officers what was going on. ‘Nothing much,’ came the reply. ‘Probably a missing person. The call came in last night. We’re off to support the
tactical entry team.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know. You now know all I do.’

Jessica checked the details with the desk sergeant, who seemed to be the bearer of all knowledge. ‘That’s pretty much it,’ he said. ‘A call came in from a woman last
night who said she’d not seen or heard from her mother in a few days. She wasn’t answering her front door and the daughter reckons she can hear her mum’s mobile phone going off
inside.’

‘Why doesn’t she let herself in?’

‘I don’t know. I suppose she doesn’t have a key.’

‘Why didn’t you call me?’

‘It’s just a missing persons thing. They come in all the time.’

‘Maybe. I’m going with them.’

‘You’re not in today, are you?’

Jessica didn’t hear him and was already off to get the address from one of the men in uniform. Something seemed a bit too familiar. Missing persons reports
did
come in all the
time but how many left their phones at home and locked the door before going missing? If you wanted to disappear, you just did it.

She got in her own car and headed towards the address. She knew roughly where it was but not exactly. It was generally in the same area as the first two victims but on a main road where you
wouldn’t want to be out after dark. The street was notorious for street prostitutes and kerb-crawlers and there had been a couple of vicious assaults in the past year or so. Jessica found the
address fairly easily, mainly because there was a police van parked outside.

It was a ground-floor flat at the end of a row of dingy-looking shops. The main door was next to another on the side of the building which backed onto some sort of delivery yard for the shops.
Beyond that was a patch of grass and some wasteland. Jessica went to talk to the two members of the tactical entry team, introducing herself and showing her identification. It wasn’t usual
policy but the tactical entry team said they were under instructions to wait for the uniformed officers to arrive. Jessica soon saw why; a girl who certainly looked as if she was still a teenager
came storming up to her, pointing a finger. ‘Are you in charge?’

‘No.’

‘Well, who is?’ The girl looked back towards the tactical entry officer. ‘Why can’t you just hurry up and go through the bloody door? My mum could be hurt in
there.’

Jessica quickly weighed the situation up. Tactical had arrived ready to go in but, given the daughter’s hostility, had called in for uniform to escort them just in case. There was another
woman standing on her own not far from the flat’s front door smoking. She was quite a bit older, certainly in her fifties. Jessica first went to try the door handle but it was locked, so she
walked across to the other woman.

‘Hi,’ she said.

The woman looked sideways at her without a smile, replying: ‘All right?’

‘What are you waiting for?’ Jessica asked, trying not to sound too aggressive.

‘I live upstairs,’ the woman said, pointing towards a second door next to the first. ‘Kim woke me up with all the shouting. She was round yesterday wanting to know if I’d
seen her mum.’

‘Have you?’

‘Have I heck.’ There was a clear hostility to the answer.

‘You don’t get on?’

‘Would you get on with someone working as a whore in the flat underneath you? Door going at all hours of the night and all that
noise
? You lot don’t do anything.’

Jessica hadn’t introduced herself as a member of CID but the woman clearly knew. Jessica also had to admit the woman had a point. Kerb-crawling was illegal but prostitution in itself
wasn’t. Her ‘lot’ almost certainly hadn’t done anything but there wasn’t a whole lot they could do. The daughter who Jessica assumed was ‘Kim’ came
pounding back across the yard towards the two of them. ‘I bet you’re loving this, aren’t you?’ she shouted at the woman.

‘Leave me alone, Kim. I told you yesterday I haven’t seen Claire.’

‘Oh, piss off. You were always moaning, banging on the bloody ceiling. Calling the old bill.’

Jessica stepped in between the two of them, pointing towards a piece of grass between them and the tactical team. ‘Okay, Kim, I think you should go over there,’ she said. ‘It
won’t be long.’

Kim glared at her. She was wearing jeans and a tight-fitting dark T-shirt. Her long blonde hair was tied into a loose ponytail. If it wasn’t for the snarl on her face, she would have been
pretty.

She turned from Jessica to the other woman, hissing a reply – ‘You better not have anything to do with this’ – before walking towards the spot Jessica had indicated.

‘That’s what I get all the time,’ the woman said to Jessica. ‘You’d think I was the one causing trouble.’

‘How long have you lived here?’

‘A year or so. I want to move out but am stuck on the housing association waiting list. Because I’ve got a place to live I’m not a priority.’

‘Has the mother lived below you this whole time?’

‘Claire? Yes – it’s a convenient location for her, ain’t it?’ There wasn’t much else they could say to each other but moments later a marked police car pulled
up next to Jessica’s Punto behind the van. Two officers clambered out and crossed to the two tactical officers who were taking some heavy-looking equipment out of their van. The flat’s
door was double-glazed and very similar to the Christensens’ and Princes’. From everything the locksmith had told her a couple of weeks ago, they weren’t very easy to kick in.

As the other officers arrived, Kim again marched over to the tactical team before all four officers and the girl went towards the front door. Jessica joined them and everyone was asked to stand
back while the team smashed their way through using a two-man battering ram.

The door took a fair amount of hammering before eventually succumbing to the brute force. Jessica wanted to be first through the door but Kim beat her to it, dashing inside and disappearing from
view. Jessica started to lead the other officers in but, as she heard the ear-piercing scream, she knew exactly what they would find.

The woman might have been a prostitute and caused misery for her neighbours but she didn’t deserve to die in the brutal way indicated by how she had been found. Jessica
followed the screams into a room on her left as she saw Kim standing over a double bed, hysterical. Jessica’s first thought was a selfish one; Kim had blood on her hands and had already
contaminated the scene. The biggest uniformed officer physically picked up the shouting, kicking daughter and took her outside.

The woman sprawled across the bed was naked and face down. Aside from the unclothed limbs, there was a mass of bleached blonde hair spread out but discoloured in parts by the deep red blood.
Jessica stopped any of the other officers from entering the room, waiting at its entrance. She told them to help calm down Kim, and ensure the woman who lived upstairs went nowhere either. Jessica
took her phone out of her pocket and called the station to report what they had found and then called Cole. She would leave it to him to pass the news up the chain, while a Scene of Crime team
would be requested.

Jessica took in the whole of the bedroom. The scene of this murder seemed much more vicious than the first two and Claire must have fought harder than the previous victims. The obvious first
response was that whoever had killed her had been a client but Jessica knew full well that a locked door was no obstacle if the killer was the same as that of the first two victims.

With the rest of the flat empty, she took the chance to look around. The kitchen was a grubby room at the end of the hall. It had once been white but now had a distinctive yellowy-brown tinge.
There was a round dining table in the centre of the room with four cheap-looking stools. Jessica could see a washing machine still full with a light flashing next to the dial at the top. It was
bright white and looked new, standing out from everything else in the room. The floor itself was years old cheap linoleum that was peeling away from the surface. There was also an old-looking
cooker, its top covered with hardened food stains.

Jessica scanned the scene and saw a handbag, mobile phone and some cash on the counter top. She didn’t want to risk touching the paper notes in case the killer was a client and this was
what he had paid. It seemed unlikely that their mystery man would have left such an obvious clue even if that was true but Jessica didn’t want to risk it. She could see how much was there, a
crumpled dirty ten-pound note and a much newer, crisper twenty. Thirty quid was the cost of someone’s life nowadays, she thought, shaking her head.

Jessica saw a kitchen roll next to the sink and tore off a sheet, using it to cover her fingers while she looked through the woman’s bag. She didn’t have to look far and found
exactly what she was searching for straight away – a set of keys in the main part.

Jessica moved into the hallway. She could still hear a commotion outside as the officers presumably tried to calm Kim. She tried the door opposite the bedroom, still using a piece of kitchen
roll to shield her fingers, entering a second room. There was another bed but this one was neatly made. The room had a lot of purple in it, both the duvet cover and carpet a matching colour. The
walls were light and the room was full of clothes. Jessica didn’t enter but scanned the scene from the doorway. She could see a wardrobe towards the back with the doors open. Even from this
distance, Jessica saw it was packed with dresses, outfits and attire that would only be suitable for indoor use, or at best on the main road on the other side of the flat. The floor was scattered
with more regular clothes, jeans and tops. Jessica’s own room was messy but this was far beyond that.

She backed out and re-closed the door, then tried the other one leading from the hallway. It opened into a basic bathroom, containing a shower, toilet and sink. She could see a few soaps and
shampoos but nothing out of the ordinary, so closed that door and made her way to the living room.

The main room of the house was cluttered but a lot cleaner than the kitchen and second bedroom. There was a large flatscreen TV pinned to the wall and a couple of large comfy-looking light pink
sofas facing it. Jessica could see some assorted celebrity-type magazines on the floor but there were tidy racks full of DVDs and CDs. She scanned the titles, noticing names of films she had seen
and liked. On top of the racks were some photographs. Jessica could see the smiling face of the woman most likely lying face-down in the other room. She saw a picture with a younger-looking Kim and
another with a different young teenage girl. In the final photo, Kim looked around twelve and was with the girl from the other photograph and a boy. They were all young children, standing on a
beach grinning at the camera. In none of the pictures was there a sign of a man or anyone who could be the children’s father. Having seen the bedrooms and kitchen, this whole room was a
contrast to the rest of the house.

Untainted.

It almost made sense to Jessica. When you gave up a massive part of your life in the way the victim apparently had, perhaps you needed something to separate yourself from it? Money was exchanged
in the kitchen, while the first bedroom was where it was earned. Seeing as the lifestyle couldn’t be kept away from the other bedroom, nor the bathroom, that left this one room as a haven of
sorts.

She returned to the first bedroom to have a final scan before the Scene of Crime team arrived. The main light on the ceiling had been left on but a black lampshade ensured the room’s
dimness. The brightest thing was the victim’s hair, despite the blood that had seeped into it. The bed had dark purple satin sheets but there were obvious bloodstains there too. Jessica
couldn’t see any cuts in the victim’s neck as it was shielded by the woman’s hair.

With little else she could do, Jessica left the flat. There was only one door in, while the only two windows were in the living room and the bedroom that didn’t have a dead body in it. The
curtains were pulled and Jessica hadn’t bothered to see if they were locked but she knew they would be.

Misdirection.

Kim was allowing herself to be comforted by one of the officers as the neighbour spoke to one of the others. Jessica could hear sirens in the distance. She told one of the tactical officers that
they needed to take both Kim and the neighbour to the station and that she would follow shortly.

‘Don’t arrest them or lock them up,’ Jessica said. ‘Holding room with an officer, not a cell.’

It was going to be another busy Saturday.

Back at the station, they first had to make sure Kim was eighteen or older. From her appearance, it was hard to tell. If she was younger, it would have been necessary to have
someone there to act as her guardian. Although Kim had continued to veer from sheer aggression to outright grief, it had quickly been established there was another daughter who lived nearby. Once
they had the full name and address, a police car was sent out to pick up her older sister: Emily Hogan. The other thing it hadn’t taken long to find out was that there was definitely no
father present.