DS Jessica Daniel series: Locked In/Vigilante/The Woman in Black - Books 1-3 (46 page)

‘Nothing . . .’

‘That’s right, nothing. Now get that mop out and clean this place up.’ Des released the man and turned back to Ben. ‘Let’s go.’

The two men banged open the double doors to leave the club and walked down the stone steps that led outside. They didn’t say a word to each other as they exited the building into the night
and started walking down the middle of the road.

It wasn’t a long journey home but Des had enjoyed one of the best nights he’d had in ages. They walked for a few hundred yards until they reached a junction. Des moved over towards a
street light and uttered a quiet, ‘hey’ to his friend to indicate for him to do the same.

He stood in a position where there was enough brightness from the lamp that he could see what he was doing but so he wasn’t directly under it. ‘Do you wanna take the phones?’
he asked, pulling the mobile he had taken from the club out of his pocket and offering it to Ben. His friend took it and Des added: ‘How much did he have in his pocket?’

Ben pulled the other man’s wallet out from his own pocket, replacing it with the phone. ‘I dunno, you take this and I’ll . . .’

He stopped talking as they heard footsteps from the path next to them. There was a man about to walk past them, hands in pockets. Ben was going to wait for him to pass before finishing his
sentence. He turned away slightly from the unwanted interrupter as they drew level but suddenly felt a huge pain in his neck. He thought he heard shouting but for some reason his eyes weren’t
focusing. He started to reach up to where the pain was coming from but felt himself falling backwards, still struggling to see clearly. All of a sudden there was a man’s face in front of him.
He thought he vaguely recognised the person’s features but then he felt another burst of pain and all he could see was black.

Jessica went to the station the next morning with the intention of getting into a marked car with Cole and heading back to the prison. She walked to the detective
inspector’s office but saw he was on the phone. He looked up, seeing her in the doorway, and waved her into the room. She could only hear his half of the conversation and couldn’t
figure out what he was talking about.

After a few moments he hung up. ‘Ready to set off?’ Jessica asked.

‘There might be a problem with that.’

‘How do you mean? Was that the prison?’

‘No. Someone from North Manchester.’

The GMP’s regular forces were divided up into around a hundred areas, each served by their own neighbourhood station, but the CID departments’ jurisdictions were much wider and
separated into North, South, East, West and Metropolitan. Jessica worked for the Metropolitan branch, generally dealing with anything central. There were sometimes tensions between the five
divisions, usually over who controlled certain areas, but nothing too serious. Metropolitan were often caught in the middle simply because geographically they were literally in the centre. Crimes
could originate in the centre of the city but then there would be obvious links to cases that had begun to be worked on by one of the other branches. Occasionally it worked in reverse but not that
often.

‘Why were they calling here?’

‘Someone up there actually has a brain.’

‘That’s the first I’ve heard of it.’

Cole gave a half-laugh. ‘They’d read about Craig Millar’s murder and the details had stuck with them.’

‘Because of some case from the past?’ Jessica’s instant fear was that another situation she had just started to get her teeth into was going to be snatched away because of
internal politics.

‘No, far from it. Two fresh bodies were found last night. Some DC was writing up his notes and spotted that the way the pair were stabbed to death seemed very similar to how Craig Millar
was killed. He was phoning me to see if things sounded familiar.’

‘Did they?’

‘One knife wound to the neck, two to the chest?’

‘On both of them?’

‘No, just one but it seems close enough. Then he told me the two names.’

‘Go on.’

‘Desmond Hughes and Benjamin Webb.’

‘You’re joking?’ Jessica recognised the names as easily as she had Craig Millar’s. Cole shook his head.

‘So three of Manchester’s most prolific criminals have been taken out within a week of each other?’ Jessica added.

‘Looks like it.’

Jessica shook her head in disbelief. ‘Wow . . . so what’s happening now?’

‘The Scene of Crime boys have taken the bodies and I guess we’re back waiting for test results again. If there’s anything to directly connect our killer to theirs then
we’ll have something pretty serious on our hands.’

‘It can’t be a coincidence though, can it? Killed in a similar way and all three with lengthy records.’

‘You wouldn’t have thought so, would you? It would seem to rule the Wright brothers out too.’ Kevin and Phil Wright had been bailed the previous week and weren’t really
considered suspects for Craig Millar’s murder but hadn’t been formally excluded either. If these new killings were confirmed as the work of the same person, it would make their
involvement even more unlikely.

‘What do you reckon, organised crime?’

Cole shook his head again. ‘No way. It’s not clinical enough. If it were something like that, it would either be far more brutal or there’d be a gun or something. Plus these
three might be thugs and nuisances but they’re hardly criminal masterminds, are they?’

Jessica nodded in agreement and breathed out heavily. ‘Did the guy say if the Scene of Crime team found anything on the bodies?’

‘Nope . . . but I guess you’ve got a little friend who could tell you.’ Cole had a serious look on his face throughout their conversation but, with the last remark, he broke
into a grin. ‘What was his name, Adam?’ he added mischievously.

Jessica felt herself blushing slightly. ‘Something like that,’ she said, trying to sound calm.

Cole went to tell Farraday about the development as Jessica made her way into the office she shared with Reynolds. Her colleague was already there at his spotlessly clean desk, typing on the
keyboard.

Reynolds had been in the job quite a while longer than her. He was black and heavily built but outwardly gentle with it. He was well known as a bit of a wind-up merchant but a really good
detective. Jessica often used him as someone to bounce ideas off, even though they rarely worked together directly. He was currently investigating a case involving a string of assaults on students.
His theory was that there was some sort of local gang initiation ritual linked to it all but it was difficult to get information either way. Often the students would be drunk or embarrassed, so
trying to tie one thing to the other was hard.

She wanted some privacy for her call, so made a quick excuse and walked through to the canteen. Jessica found an empty table in the corner and took her phone out of her suit jacket’s
pocket. She hadn’t contacted Adam since the text message and felt a bit awkward. Although she was phoning him for professional reasons, he would most likely ask her about that
‘coffee’. Jessica hadn’t been planning to give him a proper answer but figured she would have to come up with something. She pressed the screen to dial his number. It had barely
rung once when he answered.

‘Hello.’

‘Adam?’

‘Yeah, hi.’ He sounded a little nervy but certainly enthusiastic.

‘It’s Detective Sergeant Jessica Daniel. Have you got a couple of minutes?’ She made sure she emphasised her title as if to point out it was a phone call relating to the
job.

Adam didn’t take the hint. ‘Oh great. I’m quite busy but I can talk for a bit.’

‘I understand you might have a couple of new arrivals to be working on?’

‘Huh? Oh right . . . Are they yours?’

‘They might be. Have you found anything?’

Adam’s tone lowered as the penny dropped that Jessica was calling for business reasons. ‘Sort of. My boss is on it now. I’m about to go through and help. There’s all
sorts on the bodies though. It looks like they’ve both been stabbed but one of them has blood on his knuckles too. It’s going to take a bit of sorting out. I doubt you’ll get any
results today apart from formal IDs.’

‘What do you mean, “blood on his knuckles”?’

‘Just that. It looks like he’s been fighting. It’s hard to tell. I don’t want to tell you something that might not be true.’

‘Fair enough. Can you call me if you get anything?’

‘Er, we’re supposed to call it back through to the division it came from first.’

‘I know but I’m asking you to call me.’

‘All right.’ There was an awkward pause broken by Adam. ‘Did you get my text?’

He obviously knew she had.

‘Yeah. It’s pretty mad here at the moment though. I don’t really drink coffee either.’

‘Oh, right . . . ’

Adam sounded disappointed and Jessica felt a little bad. She sighed silently to herself and took a deep breath. ‘How are you fixed for Sunday evening?’ she added.

Adam’s response was instant, his words blending together as he spoke too quickly. ‘Yeah, brilliant, that’s great. I’ll see you there.’

‘Er, where? Do you want to sort out somewhere to meet?’

‘Oh right, yes.’

‘I’ll text you something, okay?’

‘Yeah, of course. Sorry, yeah. Sorry.’

Jessica hung up and giggled quietly to herself. He had given her something to start on though. She went back to her office and logged on to her computer to look at the details that had already
been entered for Webb and Hughes. She saw the area the bodies had been found in and clicked through to check details of the previous evening’s emergency calls. There were the usual things she
would expect to see but then one particular log jumped out at her: an incident in a snooker club where two men had been assaulted. It was the only call that seemed serious enough to perhaps be
linked to Webb and Hughes, given the area their bodies had been found in. If one of them had fresh blood on his knuckles, it would either be from something unreported – or the record she had
in front of her. She wrote down the details and picked up the phone, knowing she would have to play a little internal politics herself.

It took a few calls but she eventually pulled together everything she would need for the rest of the day. The prison visit was definitely off for now, given they might have a new crime to ask
McKenna about.

She went to find Cole to pass on the news and he was back in his office. ‘Hey,’ she said. ‘What did the DCI say?’

‘He didn’t seem too fussed and reckoned it was two less troublemakers we were going to have to deal with.’

‘I spoke to Ad . . . the guy from the labs.’ Jessica repeated the details Adam had told her and then the report from the snooker club. ‘There are two men who were beaten up.
Both are at North Manchester General Hospital. One is in intensive care but the other apparently looks a lot worse than he actually is. The local boys up there were going to talk to him this
afternoon but now we are. I had to go through Northern CID but they didn’t seem to be too bothered about handing the case over. I think they see it like the DCI does – two more
criminals off the street.’

‘How do you see it?’

‘That three people have been murdered, possibly by the same person, possibly by Donald McKenna or someone connected to him.’ Cole nodded but Jessica couldn’t tell if it was
because he agreed with her or because he was acknowledging what she said. ‘The northern boys say that wallets and IDs belonging to the two snooker-club victims had been found on Hughes and
Webb so I don’t think there’ll be much doubt where the blood on the knuckles came from. They’re going to pass that on to the forensics team, which might speed things up a
little.’

‘I guess it shows Hughes and Webb weren’t mugged either if phones and wallets were found on them,’ Cole added.

‘Exactly, just like Craig Millar.’

‘Are you off to the hospital?’

‘Yeah, aren’t you coming?’

‘No. Farraday wants me on some other bits for now. His exact words were, “scum killing scum isn’t a priority today”. He wants to wait for the test results to come back
before we go back to the prison too.’

There wasn’t much Jessica could add to that. She was still clear to go to the hospital but her boss’s attitude was starting to wear her down.

She went through to the main floor and made her way over to Rowlands’s desk. ‘Oi, grey head. Get your coat, you’ve pulled,’ she said, clipping him round the ear.

‘I’m not
that
desperate,’ he replied, swatting her hand away.

‘Neither am I but we’ve got a hot date with an assault victim at the hospital.’

‘Which hospital?’

‘North Manchester.’

‘That’s miles away. You’re not driving, are you?’ Jessica’s skills with a vehicle were widely questioned around the station. She would describe her driving as
‘specialist’, others used the word ‘reckless’.

‘Well, Detective Constable, you have two choices. One, you can come with me or two, there were two more bodies found last night that may or may not relate to our case. If you want, I can
get you drawing up a list of names connected to those two and then cross-checking everything back with what you’ve already done.’

Rowlands stood up quickly. ‘Fine, I’m coming but I hope someone’s checked the seatbelts. I don’t trust your capricious driving.’

Jessica looked at him again, narrowing her eyes.
‘Capricious?’

‘I told you, I’m raising the level of conversation around here.’

‘Did the letters in your alphabet spaghetti spell that out last night or something?’

‘Jealousy isn’t your best trait, you know.’

Jessica and Rowlands spent the rest of the day putting the pieces together. First they had been to the hospital where they spoke to the only one of the two snooker-club victims
who was capable of talking. He told them he had been hit over the top of his head with a snooker cue. There was a large gash and he had a black eye, plus two broken ribs where he said he had been
kicked on the ground. He had got off lightly compared to his friend though. The second victim was on life-support in the intensive care ward. He had swelling to his brain and the doctors
weren’t sure if he would survive or not. Jessica had shown the man some mug shots and he had identified Webb and Hughes as the culprits.