DS Jessica Daniel series: Locked In/Vigilante/The Woman in Black - Books 1-3 (9 page)

There were three local television cameras on tripods at the back of the room blocking the door. If there was a fire in the station they would all no doubt burn – but at least the cameras
would have a good angle on it all. In front of them were around fifteen people, some journalists and some seemingly technical people to deal with the audio and visual quality. Jessica recognised a
couple of the faces; one or two she had watched on the local television news and another female print journalist she had seen a few times over the years.

In the past, she had never really had cause to speak to the media because there was always someone above her to do the talking. That fact hadn’t even crossed her mind as they had spoken
about doing the press conference that morning. She didn’t really get nervous but might have dressed up a bit if she had known she was going to be on TV. Before she had gone in, one of the
uniformed female officers had given her a trick about wearing extra eye make-up to look more ‘serious’ on camera. Jessica thought the implication was really that she would look more
‘awake’ on camera but had taken the advice with a quick trip to the toilets before entering the room. Regardless of her efforts, Aylesbury was wearing enough make-up for the three of
them.

One face she did make a special point of looking out for was Garry Ashford. She didn’t know what he looked like but, as everyone assembled in front of them, she had started to narrow down
her list of suspects. She had ruled out the females and the older male journalist who she had seen on TV. There were a couple of technical-type people, which left her with three possible options
for who this Ashford character could be.

First was a grossly overweight bloke sitting in the front row. She had never seen him before but he looked as if he was in his early forties. He had short patchy black hair and blotched skin on
his face. He was talking to a much younger female journalist next to him who didn’t seem too interested in making conversation.

Second was a guy in his late twenties or possibly early thirties. He was tall, good-looking and seemed far too sharply dressed to be a journalist. He had nicely styled brown hair and certainly
stood out in the room. He was in the second row of seats, sitting behind the station’s press officer, already writing in his notepad and seeming attentive. If this was Garry Ashford, she
might just about feel guilty about kicking his arse considering how good-looking he was.

Suspect number three was sitting at the back and had barely looked up since Jessica had started watching him. He was young, maybe mid-twenties, and had shoulder-length scruffy black hair which
stood out against his pasty white skin. She stared closely at him and noticed he was wearing a brown tweed-like jacket with elbow patches.

Who the hell was this guy? Tweed? Elbow patches?

He had that kind of look some people seemed to think made them look like a quirky rock star, or tortured writer. It didn’t; it made them look like dicks.

As she compared all three ‘Garry Ashfords’, Jessica hoped this guy was the real one. She would actually enjoy bullying him.

Aylesbury opened the conference, introducing himself and the other two officers and welcoming everyone present. Without naming names, he criticised ‘uninformed reporting’ and said
that any leaks should be properly checked with the station’s press office. After telling the assembled media off, he then effectively confirmed that every detail already reported by the
Herald
was true.

Each journalist had been given a pack with the photos and details the force was happy to release. It included the phone number members of the public should call if they had any information, as
well as the sketch based on the person the neighbour had seen walking past the victim’s house a few times the previous weekend. That had only arrived moments before the briefing had begun but
the assembled media had been assured they could download a better-quality version from the force’s website. Jessica had seen the sketch itself and didn’t expect any useful leads. It
looked so plain it could really be anyone. Whoever was manning the phone lines the following day would have a lot of useless information to wade through, she thought.

The media were told that Yvonne Christensen’s husband and son had helped the inquiry but were not suspects and the point was reinforced that the public should feel safe. Aylesbury made a
special instance of looking into the camera to emphasise his words and enforce that point as if he was making an Academy Award acceptance speech.

After that he opened the floor to questions. Most of what was asked was simply going over what was already known. The first question came from the obese man at the front, who immediately ruled
himself out of Jessica’s list of suspects by saying, ‘Paul Davies,
Bury Citizen
,’ before asking something particularly bland.

One down, two to go.

After a few more questions, the DCI pointed at the hand from the back – suspect number three. The man ruffled his hand through his hair and said: ‘Garry Ashford,
Manchester
Morning Herald
. I was just wondering why it took the force two days to respond to Stephanie Wilson’s concerns?’

Jessica narrowed her eyes and stared at him. ‘Got you,’ she thought.

The last couple of days had seen a complete turnaround for Garry. After the call from his source about Yvonne Christensen’s murder, he had phoned the number he had been
given for that detective sergeant but not really got anywhere. She seemed like a right moody so-and-so.

When she asked how he had found out her number, he made up something about a friend from a phone company but didn’t think she’d bought it. They would struggle to find his source even
if they got into his own phone records. The person that contacted him had at least two SIM cards and had called from the unregistered pre-pay one.

After getting a ‘no comment’ from her, he made the call he had been waiting eighteen months for – to tell his editor he actually had a story of note for him. It was both of
their days off and he had never called his boss on his mobile before. He figured this was as good a time as any. Garry reckoned Tom Simpson would have been a good journalist at some point in the
past but, being in the job for as long as he had while he worked his way up to editor, he had lost something along the way. Garry had taken a year and a half to become cynical about the industry
but his boss had been in the job for over twenty years, so who knows what he thought of it all?

The editor was in charge of managing the paper’s content and staff but recently there increasingly seemed to be pressure to make savings. Everyone had seen the memos from management about
cost-cutting and, along with the length of time he had been doing the job, Tom Simpson had appeared to lose any courtesy he might have once had.

As editor, his one concern was getting a paper out on time and not getting fired. He frequently swore and bawled out other reporters in the newsroom, warning them that costs had to be brought
down and, if they didn’t get him better stories, perhaps
they
would be expendable. Some of the older production staff and journalists had told Garry it hadn’t always been like
that. When Tom had first been promoted to editor eight or nine years ago, the atmosphere had been much better but declining sales, the rise of free content on the Internet, and rifts with
management had taken their toll.

One of the older reporters, who was eagerly awaiting retirement in a year or two, had explained to Garry in the pub one evening just why he thought things had got so bad.

‘All those government departments and councils and police and fire and everyone else have these bloody press officers now,’ he said. ‘In the old days you could buy someone a
pint and get the full story on everything. It was all cock-ups galore and you could really go to town on these idiots. Now you just get stuck rewriting these nonsense statements about
“diversity” and “ethical funding”, whatever the hell that means.’

Garry didn’t know whether that was right but it was clear the only time the editor’s mood seemed to improve was when somebody brought in a story that raised sales.

The finance department and editor received daily figures for how many copies of the paper had been returned by newsagents and street sellers. This allowed them to work out how many copies of the
paper had actually been sold. Garry thought his luck had finally turned with his ‘bin fury’ story. On the back of that, sales had gone up twenty per cent for three straight days. His
editor was delighted. He had praised Garry’s work ethic in a group email and hovered around his desk for those days asking about follow-up stories. Eventually it had to end – there were
only so many articles you could churn out about rubbish before people stopped buying and moved on to something else. Sales dropped to where they were before and Garry had been forgotten about
again. In many ways, that had made things worse. Before, he was just some anonymous reporter in the newsroom but after that, he had shown he could get stories that spiked sales, just not
consistently.

Garry’s editor answered his phone with a ‘who’s this?’ Not even a ‘hello’ and definitely not a ‘hi’.

‘This is Garry, Garry Ashford.’

‘You do know it’s my day off?’

‘Yes . . . but I think I have something big for you.’

‘You “think” you have something big? I’m on my way to the football.’

Garry stumbled his way through telling his editor about the phone call he had just received. He talked about the murder and how the body had been found locked in a house as the police took two
days to find it. His editor asked for the source and Garry gave it.

‘You scruffy little genius! Why didn’t you use them before?’

It sounded good-natured but Garry wondered if the ‘genius’ part outweighed the ‘scruffy’ comment to actually make it a compliment. He told his boss that his source had
never really come up with anything of note before.

His editor didn’t sound as if he was really listening anyway. ‘Right, right,’ he continued. ‘Look, get hold of this witness. Just turn up at her door and find out what
she told the police, then get into the office tomorrow. No point in wasting something like this for tomorrow’s edition – the city’s empty on a Sunday. We’ll get everyone
with a blinding front page on Monday. Blow the nationals out of the water.’

Despite a few pangs of uncertainty about turning up at the front door of a potential witness, Garry did what he was told. He first did a few online searches through his phone to find the correct
address. His source had given him Stephanie Wilson’s name and the road she lived on but not the exact house number. Luckily, there was a Ray and Stephanie Wilson on the electoral roll, so he
knew where he had to go. He had also found them in the online version of the phone book too. Not many people seemed to be in the book now, given the widespread use of mobiles, but the Wilsons were
obviously old-fashioned and had a landline number. Garry called it and spoke to the husband, Ray, who seemed delighted the press were involved. They arranged for the journalist to visit the house
the following morning.

The interview with Stephanie herself was largely taken over by her husband who, from what he said, had been single-handedly responsible for uncovering the whole story. He kept saying how he had
been a journalist in his youth and that it was his idea to call the police.

The way he had spoken, you would have been forgiven for thinking it was he who had uncovered the body and was in the process of cracking the case. Stephanie hadn’t said too much and was
clearly highly affected by her friend’s passing. As Garry managed to coax the truth from her, it became clear her husband had had pretty much nothing to do with any of it. That didn’t
stop him asking if the paper wanted to send a photographer over to take photos of them both. Garry thought he was a bit of a nuisance but seemed relatively harmless and thanked them both for their
time. He had what he needed.

The offices of the
Morning Herald
were spread across two floors midway up one of the taller buildings in the centre of Manchester. Editorial and advertising shared a
floor, production and finance occupying the one above it. Other businesses had various floors within the property but the whole place was like a ghost town on a Sunday. Garry used his security pass
to get through the staff door at the back and then again for the lift.

He had barely stepped out of the elevator when he heard his editor’s far-too-cheery voice from across the other side of the room: ‘Garry.’

While the few heads who happened to be working that day turned to look in his direction, no doubt confused why their boss was so pleased for once, Tom was bounding towards him. Garry started
walking towards his desk but his editor caught up and put a fatherly arm around his shoulders, ushering him into his own office. Even when he had been popular in the past, he had never been invited
into the editor’s office.

Garry had a good look around. The view was as impressive as it could be considering what Manchester had to offer. Garry’s usual desk offered various angles of the back of some girl’s
head who worked in advertising. Admittedly, she looked more attractive from the back than the front but that wasn’t the point. The editor ushered him into a plush leather swivel chair, where
the mechanism to move the seat up and down actually worked, which was significantly more than you could expect from a chair on the main news floor. He then offered to make Garry a cup of tea.

What on earth was going on?

Garry thought his boss making him a hot drink was perhaps pushing things too far, so declined.

He told his editor how the morning interview had gone and repeated what he had said on the phone the day before. His boss nodded furiously throughout, making the odd note and just repeating
‘good, good’ over and over. Garry was aware that the magnitude of someone being brutally murdered seemed to be lost in the moment. He was told he could use the editor’s own
computer to type up the story so, still feeling as if he were in some bizarre alternate universe, he used his notes to do just that.