DS Jessica Daniel series: Locked In/Vigilante/The Woman in Black - Books 1-3 (28 page)

Shaun Hogan was crying, not just small sobs but loud wails. The prison guards didn’t seem to want anything to do with what was unfolding in front of them. They
couldn’t have heard anything specific given the distance from them to Shaun, Jessica and Cole but they had stopped talking among themselves and all four were watching the prisoner, presumably
in case his sorrow became violent. His cries echoed around the empty visiting room. Jessica slid a packet of tissues from her bag across the table. ‘Shaun . . . ?’

‘I’m so sorry,’ he said. ‘I didn’t say anything.’

The case of Nigel Collins had been massive news at the time and a total embarrassment for the force. A dog-walker had found a teenage boy’s battered body on the site of an old factory. He
was in a coma with one of his legs was broken. He had a fractured jaw and broken ribs. His face was so badly beaten that the walker wasn’t even sure the victim was alive, let alone whether
they were male or female.

Jessica had been in uniform at the time and most of the GMP’s resources had been assigned to the case given its severity. The boy’s face had been on the front of every national
newspaper and at the top of every news bulletin. At first they had to find out who the victim was, which had taken a couple of days in itself.

Nigel Collins was an orphan who had lived in a children’s home on the outskirts of the city since his parents had died in a car accident when he was eleven. They had left behind nothing
but debts and Nigel. He had no relatives, no security and no future and was too old to realistically be adopted. Finding a foster family was always hard for a child on the cusp of being a teenager
and the home had offered him somewhere to stay, even though he had never fitted in either there or at school.

After he had been identified as the victim, the police had followed all sorts of leads, from former school pupils to ex-housemates at the home. No one knew anything. Nigel was a quiet child and
didn’t talk much at the best of times. He lived in his own world with no friends and little contact with anyone other than the staff at the home. He had finished school at sixteen but was
barely ready for the outside world. Staff had helped set him up with somewhere to stay through a housing association but, given his personality, he hadn’t achieved much else.

In the days after the media campaign, there had been plenty of reports of Nigel being harassed by other kids, younger and older. Some saw him on the streets and targeted the vulnerable, gawky
loner. With his poor social skills, even adults would tell their children to avoid people like
him
. No one could give any specific details though and the police had to assume he had been
attacked given the nature of the injuries and the place his body was found.

When Nigel regained consciousness, he either didn’t want to or couldn’t remember any details about how he had ended up there. He couldn’t say whether he was attacked, let alone
if he knew the people involved. A couple of the staff members from the home he had lived in as a child were brought in to speak to him but they couldn’t get him to open up. As they pointed
out, Nigel didn’t talk an awful lot before the incident. Some officers believed he simply didn’t want to say anything but no one could know for sure.

Five months after the attack he had been forgotten. He was released from hospital and, as he either couldn’t or wouldn’t cooperate with the police, any case against the people who
had attacked him was dropped. It was another unsolved file in a large stack of them but with a victim who couldn’t even point them in the right direction. The media had long since moved on to
other stories too.

Jessica knew all of that off the top of her head. It had been ingrained into them as officers during the morning briefings before things had slowly been dropped. One by one they were moved onto
other cases but those pictures of Nigel Collins’ brutally beaten face were something that had stayed with her. He didn’t even look human in the images, a mass of purple, black, blue and
red all merging into one.

Jessica took a deep breath. ‘Are you admitting to being part of a group who tortured Nigel Collins, Shaun?’

‘Yes,’ he sniffed.

Jessica didn’t know how to phrase the next question so just asked it in the simplest way possible. ‘Why have you told us all this now?’

‘I don’t know. I suppose I’ve been waiting to tell someone for ages.’

‘You do know everything you just told us could be used if the case is reopened?’

‘It’s fine. I deserve it,’ he said quietly. ‘But that’s why it’s my fault with my mum.’

‘I’m sorry, Shaun, I still don’t understand,’ Jessica said.

Shaun was still sniffing but his sobs had died down. He spoke slowly and quietly. ‘After it all happened, when Nigel had been found and was on the TV and everything, I couldn’t keep
it in. The four of us never really hung around together after that again but Scott told us all to keep our mouths shut. We were scared.
I
was scared but I told my mum . . .’

Things began to click into place for Jessica to explain the reason why Shaun believed the family falling apart was down to him. She didn’t say anything and allowed Shaun to continue
speaking. ‘Mum didn’t go to the police but it was never right. She never looked at me the same way; you could see it in her eyes. She had already started drinking after Dad left but
everything was under control. After I told her though . . .’

Jessica let him tail off. He composed himself again and used another tissue to blow his nose. ‘I’d just left school and was about to do my exams but I couldn’t get the images
out of my head. Scott made us all join in. That way, if any of us ever said anything, we would all be in it together. Jon – Jonny – he cried the whole time. Even Jamo didn’t want
to get involved when it got serious. As soon as my exams were done that’s when Mum said we were moving. We all knew the flat she took us to was too small but I think it was just her way of
saying she didn’t want me there any longer.’

Jessica nodded. ‘Is that what she said to you when you went to visit her on the day you ended up assaulting that man?’

‘Pretty much. She had been drinking and was in the flat on her own. It was horrible. I had heard from Em that Mum had started
working
and I had shouted at her about it. I said it
wasn’t right what she was doing to Kim. She wasn’t listening and just shouted back, “What about what you did?” It was the first time she’d ever said anything properly
about it. She said it was my fault and that she couldn’t even look at me because of what she saw every time she did.’

Jessica didn’t know what to say. You heard all sorts of harrowing tales from people working for the police but this was right up there. No one came out well from this, Shaun or his mother.
And what about the victims? Nigel Collins and poor Kim. Perhaps even Shaun himself and Claire were sufferers because of it all?

Shaun sniffed again. ‘I felt so bad. It was the last time I ever saw her. I came back to Leeds that night and just drank. I didn’t even know the guy I beat up. I’ve thought
about it a lot since. I wondered if maybe I wanted to end up somewhere like here and punish myself? I don’t know.’

There wasn’t an awful lot they could say. They would pass on the confession to their superiors who might decide to reopen Nigel Collins’ case. If that happened, someone else would
come to visit Shaun to ask him to repeat everything he had just said. Even if he refused, Jessica’s recollections and Cole’s notes could probably be enough.

Jessica’s mind was still working. ‘Who were the other boys, Shaun?’

‘I didn’t really know everyone’s name. It was all about nicknames and football usually, just having a laugh. It wasn’t always just the four of us. Big groups of us would
go off kicking a footy around. It was just that day it was the four of us bunking off. I’m still not really sure how it all happened. We were smoking around the back of this shop and Nigel
walked past. We all knew his name and face just through him being around. Everyone took the mick and called him names and so on. He kind of half-knew us and our mums because we were all from the
same area. He never seemed to forget anyone. Scott said he was the guy who had been looking at his girlfriend some other evening and we went with it. It was only a chase at first.’

‘Do you remember Scott’s last name?’

Shaun thought about it but shook his head. ‘I’m not sure I ever knew it. It wasn’t the kind of thing I would have asked. He was younger than me so we weren’t even in the
same class.’

‘What about “Jamo”?’

‘I don’t know. That was what Scott called him.’

‘Do you know if it was his first name, like “James”? Or last name like “Jameson”?’

‘No, he was always just “Jamo”. He was in Scott’s year, which is how they knew each other.’

‘What about Jon?’

‘He’s the only one I knew anything about. He was the year above me in school and had already finished. He lived quite close by but was waiting to do his A-levels or something like
that. I don’t remember exactly. We didn’t really talk again.’

‘Do you know his full name?’

‘Yeah I think . . .’ Shaun looked up to the ceiling trying to remember. ‘Price? Something like that.’

Jessica glanced at Cole and then spun around to look back at Shaun. ‘Could it be “Prince”? Jonathan Prince?’

‘Yeah, maybe. That sounds about right.’

It didn’t take much working out for Jessica to figure out that ‘Jamo’ would be James Christensen, the son of Yvonne. That still left them Scott to discover
but they knew three of the four gang members who had beaten Nigel Collins into a coma had now had a parent brutally murdered.

Jessica and Cole hurried out of the prison. One of the reception workers drove them back to the station and Jessica spent large parts of the car trip and train journey on her phone.

The first thing they had to do was find out who Scott was. What was his last name and where did he live? More importantly for now, where did his parents live? Someone had to find them to make
sure they weren’t the next victims. All they had to go on was that Scott was a few years younger than Jonathan Prince and Shaun Hogan and in the same school year as James Christensen. It
should be easy enough to find out what school they went to, check the intake for that particular year and look for anyone called Scott. Unless he had changed his name in the meantime, it would give
them maybe one person to look at if they were lucky but certainly no more than five or six if not. Complications could arise if people had moved but it still shouldn’t take long. Jessica
hoped the people at the station would have tracked down their man by the time the train pulled in. If any of that failed, they would bring in James Christensen to see if he could point them in the
right direction to find Scott.

The next concern was to track down Nigel Collins. Surely he had to be their man? He was connected to all three murders and, depending on the way you viewed things, had the motive. She
didn’t know why he would target the parents instead of those who had hurt him though.

Aylesbury told Jessica over the phone he would be setting one team up to find Scott and another to find Nigel.

The train journey took the same time to arrive back in Manchester at lunchtime as it had to get to Leeds that morning but Jessica was on edge. Every stop at a platform had her seething, checking
her watch and wondering what was taking so long. Again, Cole’s coolness infuriated her. He didn’t need to say anything, his posture said it all: Just wait, getting stressed can’t
help either of us. It was helping her, though. She watched people get on and off and had irrational thoughts about whether one of them was Scott or Nigel Collins.

Her phone rang as they pulled into the Oxford Road station. It was marginally closer to their Longsight base than the main Piccadilly station and Jessica thought they could get a taxi directly
from there, saving them a few minutes. Cole shrugged and went with it as Jessica talked on her phone and bounded out of the station. The inspectors wanted to see her ticket but she wasn’t in
the mood to be stopped, pulling out her identification card instead and telling them in not too polite terms to move out of her way.

The phone call hadn’t improved her mood. Far from finding ‘Scott’, it seemed as if the other officers had not got anywhere. Although he had returned to the area for a short
while, James Christensen had gone back to Bournemouth University according to his father and no one seemed to be able to get in contact with him. They had his mobile number but he wasn’t
answering and a couple of local officers had been despatched to find him. Perhaps the only thing they had managed to do was confirm which secondary school James had attended. That information had
come from his father who wasn’t too keen to be giving out that kind of information according to the person Jessica spoke to. ‘He kept asking if his son was under suspicion, then was
banging on about his rights,’ the officer told Jessica.

‘What is it with people and their bloody rights?’ Jessica said. ‘Everyone thinks they’re entitled to something.’

Officers had managed to go to the school and find an intake list from the year they needed, despite being told at first it was against the Data Protection Act. A call from the DCI had apparently
straightened that out but the officers had been told the superintendent had also spoken to someone at the Local Education Authority before the papers had been handed over. The school had emailed a
copy as well as handed over a photocopied version of the originals.

Even with that, the problem was that there were three people named ‘Scott’ in the same year as James Christensen. While Jessica had been on the train, the team had hit brick walls
with all of their potential gang-leaders.

There was a Scott Hesketh, a Scott Harris and a Scott Barry. Those names were being cross-checked with birth certificates, the electoral roll and other easily accessible name archives. The
school itself had a limited amount of information on past pupils. From what the officer told Jessica, it was basically just name, grades and home address. Given those addresses were six years old,
that didn’t give them much. Officers had been sent out to each of the three addresses to see if they could come up with something, while the other information they had was being run against
their own police databases.