DS Jessica Daniel series: Locked In/Vigilante/The Woman in Black - Books 1-3 (56 page)

‘What?’

‘“While feral youths run wild on our city’s streets, the city’s police officers are more focused on prosecuting motorists than catching the real
criminals”.’

‘Oh right, yes, the article.’

‘“Policing has been too soft for too long and I for one am sick of it”.’

‘I’m not sure what you want me to say.’

Jessica could remember perfectly the choice quotes from his article. They had been spinning around her head throughout the drive from the station to the council chambers as she got angrier.
‘“There’s fear on the city’s streets tonight but for once it’s the right people who are scared”.’

‘Look—’ the councillor started to say but Jessica cut across him.

‘Have you ever had to break the news to a parent that their child has been murdered, Councillor Coleman?’

‘I don’t see what that has—’

‘How about identifying a dead body, have you ever done that?’

The man stumbled over his words as Jessica put both palms face down on his desk and leant forwards, daring him to meet her gaze. He looked down at the computer keyboard on his desk and nervously
glanced sideways towards the phone.

‘“Vandals once wrecked my car but all I got was a token visit from the police. You have to ask yourself in these situations, is this a good enough service?”’ Jessica was
quoting him again.

‘That particular incident is true, Detective—’

She cut him off once more. ‘Do you know why you didn’t get more than a “token visit”, Councillor?’

‘What? No—’

‘It’s because you’re a complete arsehole. It’s because officers have better things to do than chase around after complete dickheads like you. We don’t have the
manpower to list the hundreds of people who think you’re an idiot, let alone narrow it down to one person who might feel the need to graffiti your car.’ The man didn’t know
whether to be angry or upset. He spluttered words out but there was nothing cohesive and Jessica was on a roll. ‘I’ll be honest with you, Councillor; I don’t care if you slam the
police – we’re a public service and we don’t get everything right – but I do mind when you start telling mothers who’ve lost their sons that their kids deserved
it.’

‘I wasn’t trying to—’

‘Is that what you think about girls who get raped? Do they deserve it for wearing a short skirt too?’

‘No, that’s not what I . . .’

Jessica narrowed her eyes and leant further across the table. The councillor shuffled slightly but he didn’t push backwards hard enough to move the chair and he was stuck trying not to
look at her. ‘The type of statements you’ve been making are completely out of order. Do you understand what I’m saying, Councillor?’

The man looked at her, his face red with a mixture of embarrassment and rage. ‘You can’t just storm in here, you know—’

‘I asked you a question. Do. You. Understand. What. I’m. Saying?’ Jessica punctuated each word with as much venom as she could manage.

‘Yes, fine, whatever. Get out of my office.’

At first Jessica didn’t move but then quickly took a step backwards, again standing tall and towering over the seated man. ‘If I were you, Mr Coleman, I would hope there’s
nothing you’re trying to keep under wraps. No dodgy deals, no made-up expenses, no secret mistresses hidden away. Believe me, if you even have so much as an out-of-date tax disc, I’ll
make sure it’s on the front page of as many papers as I can leak the story to.’

The man reached for the phone on his desk. ‘I’ll be contacting your superintendent about this, you know. I play golf with one of the commissioners in this area . . .’

Jessica stomped back over towards the man and he slid his chair backwards, trying to get away from her. She pulled out one of her business cards and slammed it down on the desk. The noise echoed
around the room. She pointed to the various lines on the card. ‘I don’t care if you play golf with the fucking Prime Minister. That’s my name, that’s my ID number,
that’s my rank and that’s my phone number. Tell them whatever you want.’

She spun around and walked quickly out of the office, slamming the door as hard as she could. Without talking to anyone, she paced back the way she had come and returned to the car.
Jessica’s anger hadn’t gone but she definitely felt better as she drove back to the station. She knew full well there were official ways to go about things. Usually a senior officer
would have written a letter back to the newspaper or something similar but she didn’t care.

It wasn’t that she even disagreed with all of the points Councillor Coleman had made in the article but if he was serious about getting things done, he would have asked questions through
the proper channel, especially if he did know the area’s commander. As it was, he was simply looking to score cheap political points, not just at their expense but in a way that would cause
maximum hurt to people like Arthur and Jackie Graves.

Jessica doubted if the councillor would speak to anyone about her visit. She had no intention of trying to find dirt on him but he didn’t know that. She wasn’t sure if there was
anything he was desperate to hide or not but if there was, the last thing he would want to do would be to draw further attention to himself.

After parking the car at the station and switching the engine off, Jessica sat for a few moments listening to the relative silence. She jumped as her phone rang, picking it up out of the storage
well underneath the handbrake.

It was Adam again. ‘Hi, Adam, are you okay?’

‘Hi, Jess, we’ve finished working on the fingerprint.’

‘Whose is it?’

‘Well, we don’t know. Whoever it belongs to doesn’t have their prints stored in our files.’

‘So it’s not Donald McKenna?’

‘No, definitely not.’

Jessica didn’t say anything for a few moments. It wasn’t that she had been certain the results were going to come back as a match but the outcome hadn’t left them with very
much to go on.

‘Are you still there?’ Adam asked.

‘Yes, sorry. Did you find anything else?’

‘Maybe. We’ve got some blood scrapings which don’t belong to the victim but we’ve been working on the fingerprints and it takes time.’

‘Have you phoned the station yet?’

‘As soon as we’ve finished talking.’

‘Okay, right, I’ll leave you to it. Thanks for calling.’ Jessica went to add, ‘I’ll text you about next weekend’, but heard the beep to indicate the call had
been terminated.

The next two days consisted of one dead end after another. The public responses to the e-fit had dried up and nothing had come from the list of names that had been suggested.
Despite not having a match for the fingerprints, they had been anxiously awaiting the results on the blood the forensics team had found.

Jessica and Cole were in their regular morning briefing with Farraday in his office when the bad news arrived. A call was put through to his desk phone and, after a short conversation, he hung
up and told them the blood had also come back without a match. Whoever had killed Robert Graves was someone with no criminal record.

The chief inspector sat drumming his fingers on his desk for a short time and then started to speak. ‘Do I think we made a mistake with releasing that sketch to the media? Maybe. I think
we might have to look at treating this murder separately from the first four victims.’

Jessica was annoyed not only by the way he had asked himself a question and answered it but also by the use of the word ‘we’. It certainly wasn’t her or Cole who had authorised
releasing that photo; it was the DCI alone who had made an enormous error.

The news broadcasters had spent the last few days reporting on the five victims of the so-called vigilante, where they actually only had three for definite and four in all probability. All the
while Farraday had let the speculation build and now it was coming back to bite him. He almost shrunk in front of them, sinking further into his chair, before looking at Cole. ‘What have we
got on the bent prison guard?’

‘Nothing, Sir. We’ve checked his house and his locker at the prison. His wife insists they own no other property and, as far as we can tell, there’s nothing else in his name.
We’ve looked into records for things like storage units and allotments that might have a shed or something like that but again there’s nothing registered to him. That’s not to say
he hasn’t used a fake name but we don’t have anything to go on. Short of digging up the entire garden or ripping up every floorboard I’m not sure there’s much else we can
do.’

Jessica couldn’t remember seeing Cole angry but there was certainly an undertone as he spoke. Their boss simply nodded, his jaw clenched. ‘Daniel, what have you got?’

‘Not much either I’m afraid, Sir. The search of Robert Graves’s room turned up nothing. The labs have been looking at his mobile phone, which was recovered from the scene, but
there’s nothing from that either. I’ve been helping with the phone tip-offs. We had been trying to link the suggestions to Donald McKenna but nothing matched up. We’ve also looked
into anyone else who seemed legit separately but there were no obvious hits. We haven’t been able to either find a suspect for Robert Graves’s murder or link him to the other
killings.’

Jessica didn’t say it but was pretty sure the reason they hadn’t come up with anything was because of her boss’s insistence on connecting cases that it now seemed clear had
been carried out by different people.

Farraday nodded and continued drumming his fingers on the desk. His calmness was as disconcerting as his enthusiasm from the previous days. Jessica looked at the man and genuinely had no idea
what he would do or say next. The rhythmic tapping was the only noise in the room and was almost hypnotic.

Tap-tap-tap-tap.

The noise was broken by a knock on the door. The glass windows ran the length of the wall behind her and Cole. If the chief inspector had seen anyone walking past, he hadn’t said anything
and the knock made Jessica jump. ‘Come in,’ Farraday said loudly. His voice boomed around the room. A nervous-looking constable in uniform came through the door.

Jessica recognised most of the faces from around the station but they had recently hired some new recruits and the man in the doorway must be one of them because she didn’t know him.
‘What is it, erm, Constable?’ the DCI asked, clearly not knowing the man’s name either.

‘Um, I’m not sure, Sir. A man just walked into reception and confessed to being the vigilante killer.’

No one said anything for a couple of seconds but it seemed like an age. Farraday had stopped drumming his fingers and they were all waiting for him to speak.

‘I’m sorry, what?’ he spluttered.

The constable repeated himself but the DCI barely reacted, before eventually replying: ‘You two deal with it.’

Jessica didn’t think she could have been surprised by anything the chief inspector said given his erratic behaviour recently but his dismissive tone wasn’t what she expected at all.
A few moments ago he had seemed part-angry and part-upset that the investigation was going nowhere and now someone had walked in and confessed, it was as if he wasn’t interested.

Cole stood first, peering towards the constable. ‘Where has he been taken?’

‘I’m not sure; everyone downstairs was a bit shocked. Someone handcuffed him then they sent me up to tell you.’

Jessica and Cole went down to the reception area where there were far more officers than there might usually be. Word had clearly gone around that something big had happened. Jessica caught the
eye of the desk sergeant. ‘Where is he?’

‘Locked downstairs in the cells. He’s refusing to talk to the duty solicitor.’

‘Do you know who he is?’

‘No idea. He just said he was the vigilante killer and that he wanted to talk to whoever was in charge of the case. He wouldn’t give his name.’

Jessica was struggling to hear him over the voices in the area. She moved closer to the desk and spoke louder. ‘Does he seem legit?’

‘Dunno. He’s got the build for it. He seemed quite calm but you never know who’s a nutter nowadays, do you?’

They made their way to the interview room and Cole told the uniformed officer outside to bring the prisoner upstairs. It was just the two of them in the room.

‘What do you reckon?’ Jessica asked.

‘It’s hard to know.’

‘If he is who he says he is then he’ll have heard about Donald McKenna’s DNA being found at the scene. None of that’s been in the papers so if he’s just an
attention-seeker, that’s how we should know.’

‘True but if he is for real and wants to confess it doesn’t necessarily mean he’s going to put everything on a plate for us.’

As the prisoner was brought into the room, Jessica glanced up and quickly did a double-take. The man looked a little like Donald McKenna – he had a similar build and hair that was the same
style and colour but facially he was completely different. It was her reaction that really made Jessica start to feel as if the case was getting to her. Perhaps her verbal assault at the council
chambers should have been the first indication but she felt as if she was beginning to see Donald McKenna everywhere. First it was in the description of the person who killed Robert Graves and now
the person who had confessed. She hadn’t spoken to the prisoner in a week but he was still playing on her mind, along with the parents of the victims.

The man in handcuffs was offered the seat across the desk and the uniformed officer looked at them to ask if he should stay or wait outside. Jessica motioned with her head to say he could leave.
When it was just the three of them, she asked the man for his name.

‘Are you in charge?’ he replied, staring directly at Jessica. His voice was higher-pitched than she would have guessed.

‘We’re both senior detectives,’ she replied.

‘Perfect.’ The man told them his name was Graham Hancock and gave them his date and place of birth, address and, without prompting and for no obvious reason, his national insurance
number. Now they knew his name, Cole reminded him he was entitled to a solicitor. The man refused to listen to anything they said, despite being told there was a legal representative on site who
would talk with him for free.