DS Jessica Daniel series: Locked In/Vigilante/The Woman in Black - Books 1-3 (40 page)

Mrs Millar had her back to them but Jessica saw her freeze momentarily before turning around. ‘He better not.’

‘Could you ask him anyway?’

She met Jessica’s eyes. The look told her that Jamie probably did know who his older brother had been out with but that his mother still hoped he was innocent and unaffected by the trouble
Craig had consistently been in.

‘I’ll get him up and you can ask.’

Denise returned to the hallway and they heard her knocking on a door, then two muffled voices speaking. A few moments later she came back into the kitchen, her son trailing behind her. From what
his mum had said, Jamie was sixteen years old but looked a little younger. He was pasty and skinny, while only wearing a pair of boxer shorts. He had what would be spiky brown hair when styled but
for now it jutted out at random angles. His mother must have told him about his brother because there were tears in his eyes, although he was clearly trying hard to force them back.

He sat in the chair his mum had been in and she went through the other door into the living room. Jessica guessed she didn’t want to hear whatever her youngest son might have to say but
legally they couldn’t speak to a child without their guardian present. Cole realised the problem so followed after Mrs Millar.

It was the two of them left at the table. ‘Are you Jamie?’ Jessica asked.

‘Yeah.’ The boy wouldn’t meet her eyes and didn’t look up from the table.

‘I want to ask you a question or two if that’s okay?’

‘Fine.’

Cole and Mrs Millar returned and stood in the doorway. Jessica’s colleague nodded to indicate he had told the mother why they needed her back. ‘Okay, Jamie. I only really need to ask
you two things. First, do you know of anyone who might want to hurt your brother?’

‘No.’ The reply was short and Jamie didn’t look up from the spot on the table.

‘Do you know who he would have been out with last night?’

Jamie finally glanced up from the table over to his mother in the doorway. She was looking at the floor herself. ‘Maybe.’

‘If you know their names, we can look into it if you’re not sure. No one has to know it came from you.’

Jamie nodded slowly to himself as if weighing up his options. ‘There’s this guy Kev who he hangs around with, then Kev’s brother Phil.’

‘Do you know their last names or where they live?’

‘Wright. Kev and Phil Wright. They live at opposite ends of the estate.’ Jamie didn’t know the exact addresses but had given them enough information so they could find out for
themselves. If the Wright brothers were anything like Craig, the police would have plenty in their records.

They had all the information they could realistically need for now. Jessica told Denise they could arrange for a uniformed officer to come around if she wanted. The woman shook her head and
Jessica said she would be asked to do a formal identification at some point in the near future. The woman shrugged and Jessica took out a card, turning it over and writing her mobile phone number
on it, before handing it over.

‘Call me if you want to talk,’ she said.

Usually, she would leave a card for professional reasons if anyone remembered anything further relating to the case. In this instance, she thought the woman might simply need someone to talk to.
There would be a family liaison officer appointed, as was the case in any killing, but Jessica genuinely felt for her.

‘Poor woman,’ Cole said softly as they walked out of the flat back towards the stairs. Jessica didn’t reply but she was thinking the exact same thing. Craig Millar was clearly
a right piece of work. He might have brought plenty of misery to the people he dealt drugs to but he had surely brought no greater unhappiness than to his own mother.

Another call to the station had established that Kevin and Phillip Wright did indeed share lengthy criminal records in common with Craig Millar. Jessica asked the officer she
spoke with to read her the highlights of Craig’s run-ins with the law too. She had remembered most of his record pretty well but there was a handling stolen goods she hadn’t known
about. She also checked why he had been in prison. As his mother had said, he had been remanded on suspicion of grievous bodily harm but charges were dropped by the Crown Prosecution Service
because potential witnesses hadn’t cooperated and the victim didn’t want to give evidence in court. With someone who had a record like Craig, likely a well-known figure on the estate,
it was no surprise that people stopped cooperating with the law. No one wanted to be seen as a grass, even if they’d had their face smashed in.

Kevin and Phillip, meanwhile, had two separate addresses but both were on the estate where Craig Millar’s body had been found. Neither of them were necessarily suspects but they were
apparently the last people to see Craig alive and would be arrested and taken to the station to be interviewed under caution.

Jessica and Cole made their way back to the murder site where the Scene of Crime team looked as if they were finishing up. Jessica went with one of the uniformed officers in a marked car to
arrest Kevin, Cole going with a different officer in another car to pick up Phillip. They would both be spoken to separately. It was only a short journey and Jessica sat in the front of the car as
the uniformed officer drove. Jessica knew the constable’s first name was Jonny but didn’t really know him.

They made small talk as Jonny weaved around the parked cars. ‘One less for us to worry about,’ he said, clearly talking about the body of Craig Millar. Jessica had never really been
one of the laddish types at the station. Some of the females were and the gender boundaries had certainly blurred in recent times compared to the kind of stories some of the older officers would
tell.

If there were any doubts as to her attitude regarding catching Craig Millar’s killer, they had disappeared as Jessica sat with his mother. Regardless of what her son was like, his mum
deserved the truth. Jessica didn’t reply to Jonny’s jibe. She just nodded.

Jonny clearly took her silence with the intent it was meant – she was his superior after all – pulling the car up outside a row of flats that looked almost identical to the one
Jessica had just left. Kevin Wright’s apartment was on the ground floor. The two of them went to the front door and Jessica rang the bell before knocking loudly. She was ready to start
hammering for a second time when the door opened.

A man stood in the door in his underwear, smoking a cigarette. He had a shaven head and was fairly well built with broad shoulders and tattoos across his chest. ‘Oh for f—’ he
started before Jessica interrupted him.

‘Are you Kevin Wright?’

‘Yeah, look, I ain’t done nothing wrong, okay?’ he said. There was a hint of aggression in his voice but he sounded more exasperated than anything else.

Jessica gave the standard caution she had given to people hundreds of times over.

Kevin interrupted her throughout. ‘Craig? He’s dead? What? I didn’t do it.’ Jessica would hate to admit it but she already believed him.

The interviews with both Kevin and Phil had thrown up very little of use. Jessica hadn’t really thought they would. The fact both men had been picked up in their own
flats the morning after the killing was a fairly safe sign neither of them had done it. If they had stabbed their friend, it was unlikely they would have hung around for the police to come knocking
the next day. Their records showed they were clearly thugs but they were not idiots.

They shared the same solicitor. Jessica knew him well as one of the cheaper ones from the centre of the city. He was a frequent visitor to the station and an apparent favourite of the low-lifes
who lived in the area. That meant they had to be spoken to one at a time, so Jessica handled both interviews with Cole. Each brother was clearly stunned that Craig had been killed the night before
and Jessica believed most of their respective stories with both versions matching up fairly well. They each said they had spent the previous evening with Craig but insisted they had just been
playing computer games at Phil’s house, before spending the early hours hanging around chatting on the streets. There were very minor discrepancies around exact timings and Jessica strongly
suspected there was a decent chance they had been up to no good while out and about but ultimately there was nothing they could hold either of them for in relation to the murder itself. Phil said
he had left the group first and Kevin conceded he was probably the last person to see Craig alive. Both claimed they knew nothing about the death, with Kevin especially vociferous. Jessica had no
reason to doubt them.

The forensics team would currently be working on Craig’s body and the autopsy results would be released in a day or two. Given their lengthy records, Kevin and Phil’s DNA profiles
would both be stored in the National Database but new fingerprints and samples would be taken. The police were entitled to take a mouth swab on arrest and that would be sent off to update the
database. Seeing as they had spent the evening together, there was every chance the DNA of the two brothers would appear on Craig’s body, so linking them to him wouldn’t necessarily
prove anything untoward.

Neither of them said they had seen anything out of the ordinary and both claimed they didn’t know anyone who would want to harm Craig. That last part sounded particularly ridiculous given
the list of people he must have wronged at some point. Jessica was fully aware not much would happen until those initial forensics results came back. Both of the brothers’ flats would be
searched on the off-chance the murder weapon was found. Jessica thought they may well find drugs or
a
weapon but she didn’t believe either of them was a killer.

For now the team would get cracking on a list of people who had a grievance with the victim. Starting with a suspects list of zero was always a big problem. Beginning with a list that would
comfortably reach double figures was barely a better result.

Jessica would leave compiling that list to someone else – seniority did have its advantages and she knew just the man for the job: Detective Constable David Rowlands.

Jessica found Rowlands sitting in the canteen with DC Carrie Jones. Jessica outranked both of them but had great relationships with the pair of constables. Rowlands was cocky
and frequently bragged about his female conquests but, underneath all that, Jessica saw him almost as an annoying younger brother who was there for her amusement. She was an only child, so
didn’t really know what it was actually like to have a sibling.

Fifteen months ago, Jessica had been involved in the first big case of her career. A complicated trail of murders had ultimately led back to her best friend Caroline’s boyfriend, Randall,
who had tried to kill Jessica. She had caught him and he was now secured in a hospital having been deemed unfit to stand trial. He hadn’t spoken a word to anyone since being arrested.

It had been a tough year back at work for Jessica. Given her injuries, both physical and mental, she had been granted leave but wanted to quickly return to the job. Any officers hurt in the line
of duty were obliged to undergo counselling sessions and Jessica had gone along with everything asked of her. It had been the support of the two DCs that had really helped her get her mind back on
the job.

For one, Rowlands continued to poke fun at her, even when other officers were going out of their way not to say anything that could accidentally upset her. It was that normality which helped her
as much as any formal counselling.

Her friendship with Carrie was something that had grown enormously since her return to work. Before they had just been colleagues but now they were firm pals. It was a bitter-sweet friendship
however as it had most likely grown because Jessica and Caroline had drifted further and further apart since the incidents of last year. It wasn’t that they had fallen out but they had become
different people. They had been friends for all of their adult lives but had gone from living together and talking every day to simply not speaking and seemingly having very little in common. At
the time, Caroline had been planning to move in with Randall but, following his arrest, she had ended up moving out of the flat she and Jessica shared and settling into a place on her own.

The two constables were sitting opposite each other at a table with four seats. Jessica sat next to Carrie, who wasn’t eating but cradling a mug of tea, pulling out the chair with a
scrape. Both were in their late twenties, although Rowlands was due to turn thirty in a few months – a source of much amusement to Jessica.

‘Is that a new wrinkle around your eye, Dave?’ she asked with a grin.

The man looked up from the food he was eating. ‘Hardee-har-har. You do know you’ll always be those few years older than me, don’t you?’

‘Yeah, but I look younger. No greys either,’ Jessica replied, holding out a few strands of her long dark-blonde hair as if to illustrate her point.

Rowlands was eating some sort of spaghetti concoction but put his fork down and touched his own spiky dark hair. ‘I don’t have any grey hairs.’

‘Only ’cos you dye it,’ chipped in Carrie with a wink to Jessica. DC Jones had a strong Welsh accent. She was short and slim with light blonde hair and a cackling laugh that
carried across rooms. Jessica always marvelled at how even her laugh sounded as if it had an accent. She was the type of person that, due to her slight frame, was easily under estimated by people
who didn’t know her. She was incredibly sharp though and Jessica liked her a lot.

‘Oh aye. Female union again, is it?’

Jessica and the other woman laughed together. ‘I’ve got a job for you actually,’ Jessica said when things had settled down.

Dave had now finished eating and was fiddling with something stuck between his teeth. ‘It’s something you don’t want to do, isn’t it?’

‘You’re very perceptive in your old age.’

‘Go on then.’

‘The body we found this morning, Craig Millar, he will have annoyed a fair few people . . .’ The constable rolled his eyes, guessing where the request was heading as Jessica
continued. ‘We’ve got a few uniforms on his estate knocking on doors but you know what it’s like around there, people won’t want to be seen talking to us. I want you to put
together a file of people who may have had it in for him. It’ll be a big list.’