DS Jessica Daniel series: Locked In/Vigilante/The Woman in Black - Books 1-3 (25 page)

‘I don’t have a dad,’ was all Kim would say.

Jessica wanted to ask about the boy she had seen in the photos in the living room but figured that could come later. Kim clearly didn’t like the police and hadn’t been overly
cooperative. She kept shouting: ‘You lot never gave a stuff when she was alive,’ and other similar phrases.

Jessica was torn between giving her space to grieve and actually needing to speak to her. The Scene of Crime team had taken over the flat and would be working on a time of death, as well as
taking photographs and chronicling everything that could be relevant. Jessica hung around just long enough to see them gently turn over Claire’s body and reveal the deep wounds in her neck,
just like those of the other victims.

The neighbour had been spoken to first, with Kim given time to calm down in a holding room. The woman clearly didn’t have an awful lot to add and had been released. She hadn’t seen
or heard anything out of the ordinary that week.

‘The only thing different is that it has actually been quiet the past two nights’, was perhaps the only useful piece of information she had. It gave Jessica a rough time of death
until a more accurate one came in from forensics. Presumably that meant Claire Hogan had been killed at some point in the last forty-eight hours.

It hadn’t taken long for Emily Hogan to arrive. She would have already been told about her mother’s murder by a trained officer who collected her. Jessica met her in reception and
took her through to see her sister. Emily and her sister looked a lot alike, although Emily was an inch or two taller. She didn’t seem too upset but cradled her younger sister, who cried
loudly.

Jessica gave them space until Emily turned to her. ‘I presume you want to talk to us?’

Before Jessica could answer, Kim cut across them. ‘Come on, Em, they were never bothered before. They were only interested in Mum when they wanted to bring her in.’

Emily had a softer tone than her sister. ‘I know but that’s gone now. We’re not going to find out who did this on our own.’

Kim shrugged and sat down as Emily stayed on her feet. ‘Do we do this here?’

‘No,’ Jessica said. ‘The interview room’s set up. You’re not under arrest and can leave any time you want but sometimes it’s better to get things on tape
anyway. It’s for your own protection.’

‘Okay.’

Jessica took Emily to the interview room where she had sat across from Wayne Lapham just seven days ago. A uniformed officer was left with Kim, who hadn’t run out at the mention of them
being able to leave. Cole was already waiting for them and Jessica said there was a solicitor available if Emily wanted it.

‘I’ve not got anything to hide,’ Emily replied. Before Cole could start the tape, she added: ‘Don’t mind her. She’s had it tough. She was always the closest
to Mum too.’

Jessica nodded as Cole made the introductions. ‘When did you last see your mother?’ Jessica asked first.

Emily spoke clearly and eloquently. She was obviously intelligent and came across very well. ‘Not for a while, we didn’t really get on. Maybe a month ago?’

‘Why didn’t you get along?’

‘I didn’t approve of her . . . job.’

‘I’m sorry to ask this but, for the record, can you say what she did?’ Jessica knew the answer.

‘She slept with men for money.’

Jessica didn’t want to dwell the point. ‘What was she like the last time you saw her?’

‘The same as always. High.’

‘She did drugs?’ Jessica hadn’t seen any obvious paraphernalia at the house but hadn’t gone looking too closely.

‘Where do you think all the money went?’ Emily said as if it was obvious. ‘She somehow scraped together enough to buy that dump a few years ago and the rest went up her
arms.’

‘How long ago did you move out?’

‘I don’t know. I didn’t spend a lot of time at home anyway. Maybe five years ago? I’m twenty-three now so work it out. That place was never going to be big enough for us
all.’

Emily went on to tell them that she lived with her boyfriend and year-old son in the north of the city. Somehow, despite everything, Emily had turned into a rounded adult. She and her partner
had founded a promotions company and were apparently doing well for themselves.

‘Tell me about your sister,’ Jessica said.

‘Kim? She’s only eighteen, a kid. She just moved out a few months ago and got a job selling bags and stuff. I would have got her something better but she wanted to do it for herself.
For a while I thought Claire was going to drag her down to her level.’

It was the first time she had directly referred to her mother. She hadn’t called her ‘Mum’ or anything similar.

‘Claire?’ Jessica queried.

‘If someone doesn’t act like your mother, you can’t really call them that, can you?’

Jessica nodded, trying not to give anything away through her expression. ‘So your mother lived alone?’

‘Yes.’

‘No boyfriend?’

Emily laughed but not with any conviction. ‘What do you think? A different boyfriend every night maybe, nothing more than that.’

‘What about your father?’

‘Who knows? He left a long time ago.’

‘How long?’

‘Eight or nine years back. Kim wouldn’t have even been ten by then.’

‘Do you know why he left?’

‘No.’

‘Wasn’t it something you ever talked about?’

Emily shook her head. ‘Claire did all of her talking through a bottle back then.’

‘Have you seen your father since he left?’

‘No.’

‘Whose choice?’

‘What choice? I wouldn’t even know where to start looking. One day he was there, the next he wasn’t. I was only fifteen or so. Claire spent the first two weeks telling us he
was away on business.’

‘How long has your mother been . . . working like this?’

‘Not forever. We had a pretty decent childhood, believe it or not. Two-up, two-down, summers at the seaside and all that. Then Dad moved out and Claire eventually fell apart. A few years
later we all ended up moving to that shithole. There was never much space for me, so I left straight away.’

Jessica took Emily’s dad’s name from her – they would check him out if possible. Some people dropped off the face of the earth when they walked out on their wife and kids.
Others hooked up with different women and paid child maintenance but, given Emily said she hadn’t seen her father in all that time, it seemed likely he would fall into the first category.
Jessica doubted there was any Child Support Agency file on him and thought finding him would prove quite a task – and that was if he had even kept the same name.

She stopped to think what to say next. From what she had seen at the scene, the neck wounds and the way the flat was secured, her first thoughts were obviously that this murder was related to
the other two. But while the first two had happened to people most of the public would consider ‘normal’, this was a bit different. That wasn’t to devalue a life, just that a
drug-addicted prostitute was always going to be likely to attract people who might see her as vulnerable and want to do her harm. Could Claire Hogan really be connected to Yvonne Christensen and
Martin Prince in some way?

Cole had brought in the hard-copy files they had for the other victims, the ones Jessica had caught Ryan looking through. She took out a photo of Yvonne Christensen from before she had been
murdered and handed it to Emily. ‘Do you know who this is?’

Emily looked at the photo and narrowed her eyes. ‘She sort of seems familiar.’ Jessica felt her heart give a slight jump but her hopes were instantly let down again.
‘She’s been in the papers and on TV, hasn’t she?’

‘Yes.’

‘She was killed too. This “Houdini” guy.’

Jessica still hated that nickname but it wasn’t the time to argue about it. ‘Yes.’

‘Do you think whoever killed her killed Claire too?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘I just thought . . . when the officer told me . . .’ She tailed off, struggling to find the words. ‘I suppose I’ve been expecting something like this for ages now. Given
what she did for a living . . .’

Jessica let the thought evaporate and then handed her a picture of Martin Prince. Emily knew them both but only from the media coverage. ‘Do you know of anyone who might want to harm your
mother?’

‘Her clients? I don’t know. No one specifically. Kim is closer to her than I am. She visits her a couple of times a week.’

‘Do you have a key for the flat, Emily?’

Emily laughed, again with nothing really behind it. ‘I’ve never had one.’

‘What about Kim?’

‘I don’t think so. You’ll have to ask her. Claire never gave any of us keys – she didn’t want anyone walking in on her. Kim used to come and stay at ours some
nights when she couldn’t get in. There was no room there anyway. When it was the three of them, Claire, Shaun and Kim, Shaun used to sleep on the sofa with Mum and Kim sharing. It was
ridiculous.’

‘Is Shaun your brother?’

‘Yes.’

‘Where is he?’

‘You should know.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You lot banged him up two years ago.’

Shaun Hogan had been very easy to track down. He was currently three months away from potentially being paroled in HM Prison Leeds.

Jessica had first gone to talk to Kim and then returned to her desk to look up their brother. Kim hadn’t been too keen to speak at first but they brought her sister in to sit next to her
and the aggression level dropped. Much of what she said confirmed what they had already been told by Emily.

Kim lived in a flat half a mile or so away from her mother and had reluctantly admitted she’d had enough of living with her mum a few months previously. When she had lived at home, Kim
wasn’t allowed a key and there were certain hours of the day where she wasn’t permitted to be inside, instead spending her time roaming the streets. Despite being only eighteen, she had
done that for the best part of five years.

Kim obviously cared for her mother and had wanted to try to help but had reached the end of her young tether. As she cried and made her admissions, Jessica felt devastated for her. She was so
young but her childhood had been ruined, having seen everything she must have done. Despite all of that, she refused to criticise her upbringing.

Given what connected the first two victims, there was one question Jessica had been waiting to ask: ‘Do you know if your mother was ever burgled?’

‘What would you have cared?’

‘We would always respond to something like that.’

‘You didn’t do much when those kids were harassing her.’

‘I’m sorry about that.’

‘You weren’t too bothered when your lot were threatening to arrest her and scaring her off the street.’

Emily helped calm her sister and Jessica eventually got her answer. ‘No.’

Jessica already knew Claire Hogan’s flat wasn’t one of the addresses Wayne Lapham had been caught in possession of stolen goods from but he was still their only link to the first two
victims. ‘Was’ now seemed to be the appropriate word. If the prostitute’s murder was linked to the other two, the one connection they thought they had – burglary – was
no more.

Shaun Hogan was an interesting character though. He was now twenty-one and there were a few minor crimes on his record, things like shoplifting when he was in his teens. He had been jailed two
years ago for a serious assault on a man outside a bar in Leeds city centre. Emily and Kim both seemed reluctant to talk about him but the older sister told them her brother left the area shortly
after Claire moved into the flat.

For reasons that seemed obvious, given the lack of room, he had apparently not been too keen on living with his mother and younger sister. When Claire had moved out of whatever house she shared
with her husband and moved into the flat, both of her eldest children had left home quickly, Emily at eighteen, Shaun at sixteen. Emily had somehow managed to turn her life around as Shaun had gone
the other way, moving to another city and ending up in jail. Kim, meanwhile, had stayed at home for almost the entire time.

Jessica thought it was a very mixed-up family, while realising how lucky she had been to be brought up well. It put her silly argument with Caroline into perspective.

She called the prison, arranging to visit Shaun on the Monday. Someone would break the news about his mother to him in the meantime. After that, she spent the rest of the day in meetings with
the DCI and Cole. At the moment, there was nothing concrete to link the latest killing with the previous two. The initial forensics results should at least confirm a similar murder weapon. Jessica
felt sure everything was somehow connected and that the property had been locked almost to taunt them. Whoever the killer was could easily have got access to the flat given Claire’s
profession. Getting out might have been more difficult but whoever was responsible had set the scene up similar to the previous ones for a reason. If initial results confirmed a similar method of
killing, the DCI said he would give another media briefing to ask for help.

A firm plan of action would be hard to come up with. Even if someone had seen a strange person entering Claire Hogan’s flat it wouldn’t have been anything out of the ordinary and the
police weren’t expecting too many of her clients to phone up either. It was going to be a hard thing to manage via the media. Getting members of the public to pay attention to a murder appeal
for someone who seemed a bit like them, suburban and respectable, was easy. Getting people to care about the murder of a prostitute would be harder to pull off. It was the last thing they wanted to
do but Cole suggested embracing the ‘Houdini’ name. Jessica hated the idea but had to admit it would keep the media on-side and give them their best opportunity of getting people to
contact them.

As she emerged from the discussions to head home, she noticed there were three missed calls on her phone. She’d had it on silent all day, moving from interviews to meetings. The
caller’s identity was obvious, her only surprise being he hadn’t called earlier. Jessica thumbed the redial button and the other person answered on the first ring.