DS Jessica Daniel series: Locked In/Vigilante/The Woman in Black - Books 1-3 (39 page)

Inside a separate lamp had been set up to illuminate the body but the gentle sunlight was now coming through the thin sides of the tent in any case. Jessica could see all she needed to pretty
easily. A young man’s body was slumped face-up on the pavement. His legs were straight out below him but one of his arms was bent towards his neck, the other limp by his side. He was wearing
jeans and some sort of black sweatshirt. Even though the top was dark, Jessica could see an even murkier stain on the man’s chest, matching a circle of deep red spread out on the ground.
There was an obvious gash in the middle of his neck where he had likely been stabbed and another hole was just about visible in his chest. In total there were two, possibly three, knife wounds and
a very dead victim.

Jessica stepped backwards and thanked the woman for holding the flap up for her. ‘Have you found anything yet?’ she asked.

The woman shrugged and gave a small smile. ‘Bit hopeful, aren’t you?’

‘You never know.’

‘There was something under a couple of his fingernails on the arm you see raised; he might have grabbed his attacker. There were a couple of other odds and ends but it will take a few
days. It should be easy to identify him though. His face is fairly clear and it’s not rained or anything to mess up the scene. We found this in his pocket too.’ She used a rubber-gloved
hand to delve into a plastic container on the floor, pulling out two sealed plastic pockets. One had a small bag containing what looked like cannabis, the other had a canvas money-holder in it.

‘There’s ID in the wallet,’ the woman added. ‘Do you want the name?’

‘I know who it is.’ Jessica said. The woman clearly looked a bit confused, so Jessica continued. ‘I reckon ninety-five per cent of the Greater Manchester Police force would
recognise that angelic face.’

It was fair to say Craig Millar was well known to the local police. Even though Jessica hadn’t had the pleasure of arresting him herself, he had a face most of the local officers would
know straight away. Jessica didn’t know his exact age but was confident he was in his early twenties. Off the top of her head, she reckoned he had a criminal record for drugs possession,
actual bodily harm, common assault and a drunk and disorderly or two. If she checked his full file, she would be fairly certain of finding more on there and probably a few police cautions or
on-the-spot fines thrown in for good measure too.

And that was just what he had been caught doing.

His friends would no doubt have similar records and owe hundreds of pounds in unpaid fines to the courts. Once young people like Craig Millar got caught in the cycle of criminality, it seemed to
continue until they ended up permanently in prison or, if they really annoyed the wrong people, dead on a pavement somewhere. She wondered who he could have upset. Maybe he was dealing drugs in an
area he shouldn’t? Or back-chatting out of turn to someone a bit higher up the criminal scale than he was? Or perhaps it was a stupid drunken argument with a friend who wouldn’t
remember much about it the next day?

Jessica found herself shaking her head as she walked back towards Cole. He clearly saw it in her face. ‘Recognise him then?’ he asked. His head was at a slightly sideways angle and
she found his face difficult to read.

‘That Millar kid. You noticed him too then?’

‘I couldn’t remember his name but the face was familiar.’

‘What do you reckon? Whoever it was didn’t bother taking his wallet so it wasn’t just a mugging.’

‘Drugs? Fighting? Who knows? If you’re sure of the name we should probably get the address and find out if he lives with anyone before word gets around here anyway.’ Cole
indicated behind him and Jessica could see faces at windows of the block of flats that backed onto the road, with other people passing by on the other side of the road trying to get a glimpse.

Jessica said she had confirmed the victim’s name with the officer who had the wallet. ‘Who called it in anyway?’ she added.

‘If you had twenty quid on you, who would you put it on?’

‘What makes you think I don’t have twenty quid on me?’

Cole smiled. ‘Reynolds reckons you still owe him a tenner and never bring money to work just so you don’t have to pay him back.’

DS Jason Reynolds was an officer Jessica shared an office with. She grinned back at the inspector and gave a small laugh. ‘It’s got to be a dog-walker who called us.’

‘Bingo.’

‘I reckon we need a new way of investigating things like this. In future, let’s just assume the bloke out walking his dog did it and work backwards from there; it’s the perfect
alibi.’

Cole’s smile widened. ‘I’ll call in for the victim’s address. It will almost certainly be around here anyway.’

Cole got Craig Millar’s last-known address by phoning their Longsight base. It was a flat somewhere nearby but neither of them knew exactly where the place was and, from
the records, they weren’t completely sure if the victim lived alone. According to their own files, there were other Millars associated with the address but unsurprisingly no one was on the
electoral roll. Jessica knew that anything seeming slightly authoritative would be roundly shunned in this area and doubted there were too many accurate records of who lived with whom.

Jessica crossed the road and asked the two teenagers in school uniform for directions to the victim’s address. She didn’t give the exact flat number but asked where the block was.
The pair pointed her in what she assumed was the right direction without much of a protest and she and Cole set off to find out who actually lived at Craig Millar’s address.

They crossed back over the road and cut through an alleyway that separated one set of flats from another. Jessica thought the whole area seemed fairly depressing, even with the sun now up and
shining. The estate was a mix of red-brick two-storey blocks of flats and small houses. Most of the area was administered by a housing association, with signs all around bearing the organ
isation’s logo and strict instructions that ‘Ball games are not permitted’. Jessica knew full well from various newspaper reports and word-of-mouth around the station that, even
if the association got tough on ball games, they weren’t so bothered about low-level drug dealing and other misdemeanours as long as rent was paid on time.

Everything looked the same and the small scraps of land that hadn’t been built on had patchy, muddied grass, graffiti littering many fences and walls. They continued walking and Jessica
noticed a run-down children’s play park on the opposite side of the road from them. She could see a pair of swings had been wrapped around the top of the frame they hung from and guessed that
much of the rest of the equipment was unusable or vandalised.

It was easy for the police to blame the people who lived here for making a mess of their own estate but Jessica knew well enough a cycle of poverty was hard to escape from. Kids would struggle
to get jobs, so sat around bored and hung about in gangs. Then when they were mature enough to have children of their own, which wasn’t that old for some of them, the cycle would start over.
Even if you wanted to get out, you would be up against it. A place like this would have a reputation, so it was easy to get left behind when it came to funding for things like education or anything
else that might aid social mobility.

It didn’t help either if you had to live close to criminal scumbags who cared about no one but themselves.

Jessica and Cole followed the teenagers’ instructions and soon came across the row of flats they were looking for. He pointed out that the ground-floor apartments all seemed to have even
numbers, so they took the nearby stairs up to the first floor. The concrete entrance to the stairwell stank and Jessica avoided looking towards the back of the area where the bins were overflowing.
The stairs opened out onto a full row of odd-numbered properties on their left and a wooden rail running the full length of the building on their right plus a hard stone floor underneath them. The
first thing Jessica noticed was a bank of satellite dishes overhanging the rail. It seemed as if every property had wires running from their front door across the ceiling covering the walkway and
back down to their own dish.

They made their way halfway along the row until they reached the door they were looking for. Jessica knocked and waited but it didn’t feel very sturdy. Most modern properties had
double-glazed entrances and windows but the whole rank of flats had old-fashioned wooden doors.

Jessica had grown to like working with DI Cole, although his coolness did sometimes unnerve her. When they ended up working together, he was the calm thoughtful one while she went in running her
mouth off. She had spent the past year trying to calm those instant reactions but it was a work-in-progress. In most situations, there was a tacit agreement between the two of them that Jessica
would take the lead when it came to talking to witnesses or suspects. It wasn’t a tactic they had ever spoken about, more something that had happened.

There was no immediate answer so Jessica knocked again, louder the second time. This time, she heard a voice from inside but couldn’t make out what was being said. It didn’t sound
too friendly. The door was wrenched open and a woman stood there in a light pink dressing gown. She had greying brown hair and was scowling before Jessica had even bothered to get her
identification out.

The flat’s occupant rolled her eyes. ‘What’s he bloody done this time?’

It seemed a pretty fair assumption the woman was Craig’s mum but Jessica asked the obvious question to make sure. ‘Are you Craig Millar’s mother?’

‘Yes, come on. It’s too early for all this. What’s he done now?’

The woman didn’t seem in a very good mood and had clearly only recently climbed out of bed. Jessica guessed this wasn’t the first time Craig’s mother had been woken up because
her son had been up to no good. Usually officers would make an effort to make sure people were at ease before giving bad news. At the absolute least, they would get the person to sit down. Quite
often someone from uniform would be specially trained and drafted in to do it. The ‘training’ actually entailed an afternoon of role-plays with someone paid a lot more than they were.
Ultimately, all officers knew there was never a good way to deliver bad news. Not acting like an idiot was rule number one – it was mainly about common sense.

‘I’m afraid I’ve got some bad news for you, Mrs Millar.’

The woman rolled her eyes and swore. ‘I don’t know how many times I’ve got to keep telling him. He’s out on his arse this time. I’ve had enough. I don’t want
his brother getting involved in all this shite.’ The woman nodded behind her as if to indicate towards another son, who was presumably in a different room. He certainly wasn’t visible
in the hallway.

‘I’m afraid your son is dead, Mrs Millar.’

Someone would have to formally identify the body but, given the wallet with his name in it and the fact Jessica recognised him, there was little point in making the poor woman suffer any
longer.

She shook her head, taking half a step back. ‘He’s what?’

Jessica put a hand on her shoulder. ‘I’m afraid he’s dead.’

Craig Millar’s mother took the news surprisingly well. Jessica sensed it was something she had probably had in the back of her mind for a long time given the lengthy list of her
son’s crimes. She introduced herself as Denise Millar and invited them into her kitchen, offering Jessica and Cole seats at a round dining table. The inside of the house was well maintained.
The hallway was clean and decorated with school photographs of Craig and another boy. The kitchen was small but as tidy as the hallway. The table was at the centre of it, with worktops running the
length of the room’s sides. Apart from the door they had come through, there was another leading towards what looked like the living room.

Denise explained that her other son Jamie was still asleep. He had finished his GCSEs a few months ago but didn’t want to stay on at school and hadn’t managed to find a job. ‘I
just didn’t want him going the same way as Craig,’ his mother said.

The woman carried on as if nothing had happened, making the three of them a cup of tea. Neither Jessica nor Cole had said they wanted one but Denise had made one for them in any case. As she sat
sipping from her mug, she asked the officers how it happened. Jessica replied that they wouldn’t be sure for a few days but it looked as if her son had been attacked.

Denise nodded as if it was the most natural thing in the world. ‘He wasn’t always bad,’ she insisted. ‘He got in with the wrong people at the wrong time. I knew some of
the things he got up to but he was my son. I couldn’t just kick him out. There was nowhere for him to go. He promised me he wouldn’t bring any of
it
home with him but I
don’t know what he got up to outside of here.’

Jessica realised the ‘it’ could mean anything but didn’t think it was worth pushing the point at that exact time. ‘Do you know anyone who might want to hurt him?’
she asked.

The woman snorted and put the mug down on the table. ‘Christ. You tell me. He’d only been back out of prison for a few weeks. I didn’t want to get involved with anything he
did. I stopped asking for rent because I didn’t want to be associated with wherever he got his money from.’

Jessica didn’t know he had been in prison quite so recently. She wasn’t surprised but there was a wide range of community punishments people like Craig Millar seemed to end up on
that kept them out of jail.

‘What was he in for?’

‘Some assault or something, he was on remand. It didn’t go to court in the end so they let him out. He told me he didn’t do it but then he always said that.’

‘Do you know who he was out with last night?’

‘No, I’d never remember the names anyway. I’ve got two kids with one always in trouble and a father that pissed off years ago. It all blurs into one in the end.’

Jessica nodded as Mrs Millar picked up her mug and took it over to the sink, washing it up. Jessica made a token gesture to sip some of the three-quarters of a mug she had left. ‘Would
Jamie know any of the names?’ she asked.