DS Jessica Daniel series: Locked In/Vigilante/The Woman in Black - Books 1-3 (8 page)

‘Do we know why she was in the bedroom?’ someone asked.

Cole answered. ‘Probably. If you were being strangled, the obvious thing you would do is try to pull away the other person’s hands or the rope but there are no cuts to the
victim’s fingers. Given that and the estimated time of death, it seems likely she was throttled in her sleep. If she did wake up, it would have been too late.’

Jessica nodded along and then carried on speaking. ‘Obviously this makes it more difficult to figure out what actually happened. Even if the victim had let someone in we wouldn’t
know how he or she got out. Because of the findings, it seems very unlikely the killer was a person she opened the door to. The obvious answer is that either her estranged husband or son was
involved. As far as we know they are the only family members still alive but there are no life insurance policies in place and no other obvious motive.’

Jessica paused for breath. ‘Since Saturday, we have been able to pretty much rule out the husband Eric and son James. Confirming their respective alibis was complicated because of the
period between the time of death and the body being found. James is at university in Bournemouth and, given the distance along with everything we’ve been able to verify, there aren’t
any gaps long enough for him to have come up here and been able to return again.’

Jessica looked at Cole and raised her eyebrows. He took the hint and picked up the story. ‘James does at least have a set of keys which he showed to our colleagues down south but he
insists they are kept with his other keys and are always on his person or somewhere nearby. Eric Christensen, on the other hand, says he gave his set back to his wife when he moved out. We
don’t know if this is true but his alibis for the past few days certainly do check out.’

He looked back to Jessica, who turned again to face the floor and spoke. ‘Essentially, with the lab teams not coming up with anything and the only family members we know of unlikely to be
involved, we don’t have an awful lot to go on. We’re not even sure how the killer got in and out, let alone who it was. We’ve examined all the usual things and know there is no
basement, while the attic is full of junk. There was certainly no one hiding up there waiting for us to clear out.’

‘Can you cross over from the attached property?’ someone asked from the floor.

‘No, good thinking though. It is semi-detached but the brickwork goes all the way up to the top. It was one of the last things we checked.’

Jessica asked the assembled officers if anyone had any suggestions for how someone could have managed it. One constable got a laugh by putting forward the name of a popular TV magician, with a
sensible suggestion to look at the previous owners. It had already been established the Christensens had lived in the place for just over five years but theoretically the previous owners might have
kept a key. It seemed unlikely but it was something that should be formally ruled out.

‘Did the door-to-door inquiries come up with anything?’ one of the constables asked.

Jessica and Cole snorted at the same time. ‘Nope,’ Jessica said while Cole expanded. ‘The best we got was one neighbour at the other end of the street who thinks they saw the
same person walk past their house three or four times in a short period. She was a little elderly and it could be the postman for all we know. Her description was fairly bland and didn’t
really give us too much but they are going to work with the profilers today to get something onto the evening news. It does seem a long shot though.’

Someone made a crack that any picture without a gormless grin being on the front of tomorrow’s papers would be an improvement. Jessica made a mental note so she could give the joker
something tedious to do when the jobs were given out. She had read the witness’s description and doubted there was anything in it but thought it perfectly summed up Cole himself, given the
normality of it.

Cole continued. ‘We’ve set up a phone line for people to call in with information but we haven’t had anything yet, despite the media coverage.’

Neither the inspector nor Jessica had anything further to add, so Aylesbury told everyone there was going to be a press conference in the station at three in the afternoon and pressed the point
they should all look busy. He sent them on their way with a slightly cheesy attempt at inspiring them into action. It was probably better than what Jessica could have managed, so she was grateful
for it.

As the floor thinned out with various people being given their jobs for the week, Jessica waved Rowlands over and told him he was coming with her to the locksmith.

The two of them walked out to the car park at the back of the station. The morning had taken a lot longer than Jessica thought it would but at least things now seemed to be moving. She wished
she had thought to bring a jacket to work, her trouser suit offering little resistance to the chilly spring breeze as they walked towards the car pool. Saturday’s warm weather seemed long
gone and Rowlands must have taken one look at the morning’s grey skies and thought ahead as he was wearing a long trench coat to guard against the cold, while his hair was back to its full
spikiness.

‘We’re not going in yours, are we?’ Rowlands said sarcastically as they reached the bank of vehicles.

Jessica grinned and shivered at the same time. ‘I’m not sure, we do need something to distract from your flasher’s mac.’

‘Careful with that smile, there might be a
Herald
photographer around.’

Jessica thought she might as well remind the locksmith who they were if he started looking at his watch too quickly so they took one of the marked police cars. She told Rowlands the address and
said he could drive. Her mood was better than it had been in days but she still couldn’t be bothered with the other idiots on the road. Sometimes being in a marked car simply aggravated
things. You could always tell the worst drivers; they were the ones who slammed on their brakes and pretended they were doing the speed limit the minute they saw you in their mirror.

The journey wouldn’t take very long but they had barely reached the bottom of the road when Jessica’s phone rang.

‘Will you change that bloody ringtone?’ Rowlands moaned as she fumbled in her bag for the device.

The caller was one of the other officers from the station. They had done some checking on the house’s previous owners. The couple that owned it before had emigrated to Canada when they
moved out five years ago and were still living there.

‘Not a bad alibi,’ Jessica said to the caller. She hadn’t thought the previous occupiers would be a serious avenue to explore but also hadn’t reckoned another lead would
fall through quite so quickly.

She hung up and turned to Rowlands. ‘Perhaps we should see if that TV magician has an alibi after all?’

The locksmith’s white van with company branding was parked on his drive, making the house Rowlands and Jessica were looking for easily identifiable. Just to fit the
stereotype, he even had a red-top tabloid flopped across the dashboard as they walked around it to get to the front door. The man invited them in and offered to make some tea. Jessica never really
drank hot drinks when she was younger but when you joined the force it became almost inescapable. Every time you went to a house to interview someone you were offered one and whenever you were on a
training course you would have tea shoved down your throat at every opportunity.

One of Harry’s favourite places to get himself out of the station, aside from the pub, was a cafe which refused to serve coffee. On questioning this, the owner had told Jessica:
‘This is England, we drink tea. The French drink coffee.’ She didn’t really get that statement then or now. Even when you were at your desk in the station, whoever you were
sitting next to seemed to ask at least once every hour or so if you fancied a tea from the machine. Whether what the machine spewed out could be classed as ‘tea’ was another issue, of
course. She would love to get forensics involved in that particular investigation.

After their phone call, Jessica thought it would be a quick ten-minute trip where the locksmith would want them back out the door as soon as possible. But, far from keeping an eye on his watch,
he actually seemed to enjoy showing off his knowledge. He talked about multipoint locks, five-lever dead locks, security hinges, double-locking handles and all types of other things that generally
washed over the two of them. Rowlands wrote it all down but he might as well have written down ‘super special double-locking lock locks that can’t be opened, not even with special fairy
dust’ for all the use it was to Jessica.

‘Could someone pick this type of lock?’ Jessica asked.

The guy rocked back in his chair, almost spilling the cup of tea he was cradling, and laughed as if she had just told a particularly funny joke no one else got. ‘You’ve been watching
too much TV, love.’

She forced Rowlands to ask about a skeleton key, although that brought even more laughter. The locksmith’s point was pretty clear – as long as they had been fitted correctly, it was
more or less impossible to break through double-glazed doors and windows that were secured.

Aside from the fact their visit hadn’t really got them anywhere, being called ‘love’ was the final straw for Jessica. They said their goodbyes and set off back to the station,
Rowlands clearly trying to suppress a smirk at the term of affection she had been called.

The desk sergeant pulled Jessica to one side as soon as they arrived back at Longsight. ‘Has anyone told you about what’s happened in court this morning?’

She hadn’t forgotten that Harry’s case was beginning that day; it had been in the back of her mind all morning. With so much going on, and the fact Harry was still ignoring her,
there didn’t seem much she could do. She was supposed to be acting as a prosecution character witness at some point during the proceedings. It was booked into her schedule that she would
appear but she wasn’t completely sure when that would be. Most cases were allocated a set number of days or weeks for a trial and both sides had a rough idea what the order would be.
Witnesses had to be booked in, whether civilian or professional, but there could sometimes be a day or two’s leeway.

‘No, I’ve been out,’ Jessica replied.

‘Harry hasn’t turned up. They’ve delayed selecting the jury for now but, if it goes on much longer, the case is in danger of being dismissed. Apparently they can get through
the first day or two without him as they have all the photos and the knife and so on but, after that, if there’s no Harry they don’t really have a case.’

Jessica sighed and cursed under her breath.

‘We’ve sent uniform around to knock on his door but there’s no answer. His phone’s off too so no one knows where he is,’ the desk sergeant added.

‘That lawyer guy is going to be furious.’

Jessica had met with the prosecutor heading up the Crown’s case on a couple of occasions. First he had come to her to ask what she could offer as a character witness for his side, and then
he had returned not too long ago to give her examples of the types of question he would ask her in court. All officers were trained in regards to court procedure but this was a case the CPS really
wanted to win. They knew Peter Hunt would be claiming Harry was an alcoholic who had started some sort of fight where Tom Carpenter had defended himself against a violent drunk.

Jessica didn’t have to lie to refute that. Harry did drink, sometimes more than he could handle, but she had never seen him get aggressive with it. In fact the opposite was true. He would
calm down significantly and start to tell his stories. He was full of tales from the ‘old days’. Some of them weren’t very politically correct and certainly not in keeping with
the modern police force but he certainly knew how to tell a good anecdote.

That was what she would say on the stand; he was a good man and, though she hadn’t been present, she didn’t believe he was the type of person to instigate something that would end up
with him being stabbed. None of that would matter if they couldn’t get Harry himself to court.

‘Hunt can’t believe his luck, of course,’ the sergeant added. ‘The guy I spoke to reckons he’s had a huge grin on him all morning. He’s been swanning around
like it’s already in the bag.’

‘Great. Any other good news?’

‘The computer system is down again.’

‘Again? What’s happened this time, did someone stop feeding the hamster?’

‘The what?’

‘Y’know, giant hamster wheel, powering the station . . . ? All right, forget it.’ Her humour was obviously far too advanced for the likes of her colleagues. ‘Is the DCI
around?’

‘Getting ready for the press conference, of course.’

A few years ago, somebody had decided the force wasn’t open enough to the general public. They wanted the police to be far friendlier with the media, who would in turn get across a better
positive message on their behalf to the general public. To do this, some of the ground-floor offices had been knocked through, repainted and reassigned as an area where they could host press
conferences, or bring select members of the media in for cosy briefings.

The major problem had been that, for some reason, that same person had called the new room the ‘Longsight Press Pad’. No one really knew what the name was supposed to mean and anyone
with any sense would have just called it a media or press room. Even the journalists thought it was ridiculous and, given the negative reaction, the whole initiative had been swiftly forgotten with
the police effectively given the green light to go back to treating journalists with the contempt most of them thought they deserved.

Despite that the name had stuck, almost as a badge to remind people not to be so stupid in the future. The Pad was almost full that afternoon, Aylesbury sitting in the middle of a table at the
front with the Greater Manchester Police branding across the wall behind him. Cole was on his right, with Jessica sitting on his left. Jessica was sweating and thought that whoever had named the
room should have spent more time getting air-conditioning installed and less time coming up with a ludicrous title for it.