DS Jessica Daniel series: Locked In/Vigilante/The Woman in Black - Books 1-3 (4 page)

‘I guess so. Is there anything you want me to do here?’

‘No, I’ll call the higher-ups then get off myself. We’ve got officers going door-to-door and we’re not going to get any results from the labs through until Monday at the
earliest. There’s not much more we can do.’

Jessica said goodbye to the desk sergeant and asked him to call her mobile if anything interesting happened. She walked out of the station on her own, taking her phone out to check for any new
messages. It was now late afternoon and, though the sun was still out, it had lost much of its heat. She shivered slightly but, as she did, for the second time that day, the phone started to ring
while in her hand. She shook her head, thinking she should definitely change the ringtone to something less energetic, and looked at the screen to see who was calling.

There was no name displayed, just a mobile number she didn’t recognise. She jabbed at the screen to answer. ‘Hello.’

The man’s voice on the other end was slightly shaky and whoever it was sounded nervous. ‘Is that Detective Sergeant Jessica Daniel?’

‘Yes, who’s this?’

The person paused for a moment. ‘I’m just calling to talk about the dead body you found this morning.’

Garry Ashford was not happy. The alarm on his phone he didn’t remember setting had gone off and he couldn’t get back to sleep. As he lay in bed, he didn’t
think an electrical item could be smug but his phone certainly looked close to it as it showed him in big LED characters that it was one in the afternoon. There was no way he would have set an
alarm for that time on a Saturday, not after being out until three in the morning, so someone was taking the piss.

It didn’t help that he was being charged thirty-five pounds a month for the privilege either.

His head throbbed slightly as he remembered the previous evening. Not only had he endured a bad week but he had spent nearly seventy quid the night before and ended up in the same position he
always did with the opposite sex – precisely nowhere. As one of his supposed mates had pointed out in the taxi a few hours ago, this was more than a sexual barren spell; it was becoming a
life choice.

Garry threw the duvet off and went to the window to see what the day had to offer him. Opening the curtains, he was surprised to see the bright light of the sun shining into the room. Nice day
or not, there wasn’t an awful lot the sunlight could do about his shambles of a home. He had never been sure whether his rented accommodation actually counted as a flat, a bedsit or a
hovel.

Everything was in one room, or two if you counted the fact that the bathroom had a door that didn’t quite shut all the way. In the main room, which also doubled as the kitchen and dining
room, his bed folded out from the sofa. It didn’t matter whether you used it as a couch or a bed though; either way the springs had gone. He had a small old-fashioned portable television on a
nearby table with an indoor aerial that never seemed to work properly planted on top pointing at the window. There was a cooker and microwave next to a sink a few feet away and a dining table with
two plastic garden chairs in the centre of the room. On the other side of the bed was a chest of drawers that was, for some reason, the largest item of furniture in the entire flat. Aside from the
faded flowery wallpaper, that was it for the main room.

The bathroom had a shower cubicle, laughably called a ‘suite’ in the advert he had answered. It had long since been taken over by a black, mouldy damp-type substance Garry was in no
rush to have a fight with. If that wasn’t bad enough, the toilet had a cracked seat and there was no sink in the bathroom; he had to use the one in the kitchen.

Although he knew it was awful, it was cheap and placed perfectly for his needs. It was very close to the centre of Manchester towards the back of the Oldham Street area, above a shop. Or, as one
of his less-eloquent friends put it, ‘Where all those artsy pricks live’. Its location meant he could walk to work and manage to get to all the bars on his doorstep without too many
problems. Even if he did need a taxi home every now and then, it didn’t cost too much.

Garry ran his hands through his thick black straggly shoulder-length hair. There had been a time when he thought longish hair would give him a rock-star look all the girls would go for. All
these years down the line and that thinking had definitely gone out of the window but he still couldn’t be bothered to get it cut.

He looked at the scene in front of him and thought that, even though his choice of home wasn’t that appealing, he probably wasn’t helping himself. Clothes were strewn over most of
the free floor space, while the sink that was supposed to act as somewhere to prepare food, clean dishes and wash his hands, was overflowing with a mix of pots, pans, cups, plates and a folded-up
pizza box.

‘Right,’ he said out loud to the empty room. ‘Let’s get this mutha sorted.’

It wasn’t the type of thing he would have said if anyone else was present.

Garry was fairly slim and unimposing with his hair his most striking feature. His pasty frame was covered only by a pair of blue boxer shorts he had worn the whole of the previous day then slept
in overnight. He put on some music to play through his phone, the rock tracks blending into one and sounding tinny through the device’s underwhelming speaker. Garry could hear them well
enough and, safe in the knowledge he was on his own, he sang along to the words he knew, made up the ones he didn’t, played a bit of air-guitar and danced around in a way he never would on a
night out.

Slowly but surely the scuffed wooden floor began to become visible. Clothes were shoved into the oversized chest of drawers or dropped in a giant supermarket carrier bag he had kept so he could
do his own laundry.

As he was finishing, the playlist of songs he had set up on his phone came to an end and the room went quiet. Not knowing what to do with the rest of the day, Garry folded his bed back into the
sofa and flicked on the TV. The indoor aerial was, as usual, not giving much of a signal into the cheap digital box he had hooked up. He fumbled around with it but the television just kept spewing
out a hum of dissatisfaction. Annoyed, he turned it off and picked his phone up, skimming through his contacts until he got to a certain name.

Mark Llewellyn was one of the quieter people he knew and, although Garry fancied a drink and a chat, he didn’t really want to spend the rest of the day in the pub. He dialled the number
and, after a brief conversation, the pair arranged to meet at his local in half an hour.

It dawned on him that spending his Saturday afternoons in the pub was hardly embracing life but he didn’t have much else better to do.

Garry had already drunk a third of his pint when Mark slid into the booth opposite him, plonking a full glass of beer on the table between them. The pub was only two
minutes’ walk from Garry’s flat and usually full of locals. Because it was away from the main street, the tourists didn’t really see it, although most would have opted for a
significantly posher bar anyway. It was a mile or so away from the student district and, whenever he went for a drink, Garry was convinced he was the youngest person there.

‘You all right, mate?’ Mark asked.

‘Not too bad, just work and that.’ Garry’s tone clearly gave his mood away.

Mark had picked up his drink but put it back down to avoid spilling it as he laughed. ‘Blimey, it can’t be that bad? Want to talk about it?’

‘Maybe. It’s a bit girly, isn’t it?’

Mark looked at him and laughed again. ‘What, talking? You really have got problems.’

Garry knew Mark through a mutual friend but, because they lived in close proximity to each other, they often went for a quiet drink together. They shared quite a bit in common but Mark earned a
very good salary, which was a little intimidating. Garry pushed his hair behind his ears and took another mouthful from his drink.

‘You just think things are going to be better than this, don’t you?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Well, I always wanted to be a journalist. You watch all these programmes and read the papers and everyone seems to be doing something worthwhile. I wanted to be a travel writer. From what
I thought, you’d just be sent off to explore the world and get to stay in all these plush hotels and flirt with the exotic barmaids. You’d send through a few hundred words then move on
to the next place.’

‘I don’t think most jobs are like that,’ his friend laughed.

‘I know but I want to do things like go to the football and interview the players and so on. As it is, I can’t even get into movies for free.’

‘Why should you be able to?’

‘Well, someone’s got to review these things.’

‘Not you though?’

‘No chance.’

‘So what do you do? I thought you at least got to interview some famous people?’

‘Sort of. You remember that reality TV girl who slept with that guy? You know that presenter bloke? It was all over the news.’

Mark looked blankly at him and shook his head. ‘That’s not the most accurate portrayal of someone I’ve ever heard.’

‘Well, I don’t know their names.’

‘Neither do I from that description.’

‘Whatever,’ Garry said shaking his head. ‘Anyway, I went to interview her. She had a book she was supposed to be promoting but talked in one- and two-word answers. If
that’s how she spoke then God knows how bad the writing was. Aside from her own fingernails, she wasn’t interested in anything. After fifteen minutes of not answering questions, she was
whisked off to some other appointment by her PA.’

‘Was she hot though?’

Garry smiled. ‘In a glowing orange radioactive-type way.’

‘You’re too picky.’

‘I wish I had the opportunity to be fussy.’

Mark finished another mouthful of his drink then laughed again.

‘You don’t know the half of it,’ Garry continued. ‘Most of the time I get stuck talking to councillors about all sorts of nonsense.’

‘That does sound pretty boring. What’s the name of your paper again?’

‘The
Manchester Morning Herald
. I’ve worked there for eighteen months now. How many front-page stories do you reckon I’ve had in that time?’

‘I have no idea. I don’t really look at papers to be honest. Twenty?’

‘Two – and both of them were about how often people’s bins get emptied.’

‘Ooh, big-time.’

It was Garry’s turn to laugh. ‘I know but it’s mad out there. People will put up with most things: gangs on the streets, giant pot holes in their roads, rising crime rates, you
name it. But stop emptying their bins every week and it all kicks off.’

‘Funnily enough, my dad was moaning about his bins over the phone the other week.’

Garry flailed his arms around and banged his pint on the table as if to emphasise the point. ‘See what I mean? It’s crazy and these are the people I’m out talking to every
day.’

‘Go on then, tell me about your worst encounter.’

After a drink to calm himself, Garry continued. ‘Do you remember how freezing it was last winter with all the snow and everything? On the coldest day for six years, I got sent out onto the
streets to ask people their views on local government.’

Mark spat half a mouthful of beer back into his glass. ‘Bloody hell, mate, no wonder you’re annoyed.’

‘That’s not even the worst bit. Most people told me to eff off or whatever, or just ignored me. It was about eleven in the morning and there were these kids who I’m sure should
have been in school. They were about thirteen or something. Anyway, they were standing just across the street shouting “kiddy-fiddler” and “paedo” at me.’

‘What did you say back?’

‘Nothing, I mean what kind of funny comeback is there to that?’

‘Hmm, good point. I might remember that next time my boss is giving me a hard time.’

‘What, you’re going to call him a “paedo”?’

‘Well, as you pointed out, what’s he going to say back?’

‘Probably “you’re fired”.’

Mark seemed to be in a perpetual state of laughter but Garry could hardly blame him. ‘Why don’t you just quit and look for something else?’ his friend asked.

‘I don’t know. There’s not much out there. Besides, I keep telling myself it’s going to get better. I don’t want to end up having to move back with my mum and dad.
It can’t get much worse than a twenty-five-year-old moving back in with his parents.’

‘If your mum’s anything like mine, at least you’d get your washing done for free.’

Garry laughed half-heartedly. ‘That’s one thing I guess.’

‘You know what you need? A girlfriend or a big story – or both.’ Mark stood up after downing the rest of his drink and shook his glass. ‘You want another?’

‘Yeah, go on. Same as usual.’

Mark walked off to the bar and Garry slumped back into the seat thinking about his parents. He came from a small town just outside Ipswich, the kind of place that was great to live as a kid. All
his mates lived within a few minutes of his house and there were loads of wide-open spaces to kick a ball around and get into trouble. But it was also the type of area that became decidedly duller
as you got older. Everyone pretty much knew everyone else and, no matter who you were, your parents would always end up finding out anything you got up to.

His mother’s inquisitorial technique was often as basic as, ‘Is there anything you would like to tell me, Garry?’ It was hardly ‘Columbo’ but, given the number of
things some nosy neighbour could have spotted him being up to, he frequently confessed to things she had no knowledge of.

If that wasn’t bad enough, the pubs wouldn’t serve anyone under age because they knew who everyone was. There was nowhere to hang out or buy fast food and not even a decent cinema or
bowling alley. All of that, along with the fact that none of the girls you had grown up with were now remotely interested in you, meant by the time you reached eighteen, you were desperate for a
chance to get out into the real world.

University had given him that option. Garry was at least pretty good at school, albeit lazy, but he had earned the A-level grades needed to study journalism at Liverpool, which was exactly what
he wanted. As with most teenagers, he had seen plenty of enormously appealing American movies about college life and thought university would provide something similar. In a way it did but only if
you saw yourself as one of those anonymous kids in the back of the parties in all those films.