That thought begun and ended as he asked his question. He saw her looking straight at him, a half-smile on her face with her eyes telling him one thing clearly: “You’re dead meat, sunshine.”
Jessica wasn’t sure whether she liked Caroline’s new boyfriend or not. Perhaps she felt that way because the investigation was going nowhere and nobody would have impressed her given her mood – or maybe it was because she had arrived home from another unproductive day and found him already in their flat?
Their flat was on the ground floor with another one above them which had been empty for a little while. Unlike some in the area, it was an actual apartment and not just a converted house. They had a small garden at the front but it had been paved over before they moved in and they never did anything in it. As you entered the front door, Jessica’s room was immediately on the left, while the entrance to the living room was opposite it. Next to her bedroom was Caroline’s, while at the end of the hallway directly opposite the front door was their bathroom. The kitchen was a separate room, with its door opposite Caroline’s bedroom. The living room was the biggest in the flat but the two bedrooms were fairly equal in size.
It was a week and a half since Yvonne Christensen’s body had been found and Jessica had got precisely nowhere. They had already reached the point where constables from other districts had been returned to their force while officers at Longsight were being moved on to other cases. It really was a disaster, with the finger of blame pointing squarely at her.
Nothing much had happened in the initial investigation with lead after lead finishing in a dead end. The hotline had come up with nothing, except for members of the public wanting a chat or thinking their uncle looked a bit like the e-fit. Someone had even phoned up to say the sketch looked like the detective who had been on the news the night before. They were referring to DI Cole which brought plenty of quiet laughs around the station when he wasn’t present. All potential leads had been checked but there was nothing of any substance.
The day after the Press Conference, the Herald had gone to town on the force because of the two-day delay in finding the body. There was a big picture of the victim smiling out from the front page, with an editorial inside asking why the body had been “left to rot”.
‘Nice and tactful for the family,’ Jessica said to DI Cole when they had seen the paper.
A few days after that, the force had been blasted again, this time for a lack of progress. The byline on both articles had been “Garry Ashford”. With the investigation not going anywhere, Jessica would spend parts of her free time thinking up creative ways to make life miserable for the long-haired, tweed jacket-wearing pain-in-her-arse.
With murders, in a huge majority of cases the killer was someone who knew the victim. In most of them it was either a family member or someone romantically involved. But anyone they knew of who apparently fitted that description with Yvonne Christensen had been ruled out. They had looked into everyone from the husband, to his new girlfriend, to the son, to the neighbours and even Stephanie and Ray Wilson, just in case. They checked her bank accounts and phone records, all of which seemed normal. No one seemed to have a motive for murdering Yvonne and, even if they had stumbled across a reason, no one – least of all Jessica – had a clue how the murder had been pulled off.
With all that running through her mind, she had driven home in the rain with a clear plan for the evening; take her shoes off and relax in the living room with a bottle of wine.
Jessica really liked her and Caroline’s living room. She found it incredibly cosy and relaxing, just perfect after a bad day. The bedrooms and hallway was carpeted with a thin brown carpet but the one in the main room was much thicker and felt good on her bare feet. There was also a deep-seated dark brown fabric sofa that allowed her to just sink into it. She had fallen asleep on it a fair few times in the past. They had a separate reclining seat made of the same coloured fabric but Jessica much preferred the sofa. The seats were angled in such a way that people could comfortably talk to each other, while also half-watching the television, which was in between two big windows. There was a glass coffee table in the middle of the seats too, which usually had some selection of celebrity magazines Caroline had bought on there. Jessica pretended she never read them but, when she was alone, she would often have a flick through.
While the bedrooms were individually coloured, this room matched the walls in the hallway with a creamy colour, while a few cabinets half-f of books and the like lined one of the walls. Between the two of them, they didn’t really watch too much television and hadn’t bothered paying for anything like satellite or cable. Given their jobs, both of them lived pretty busy lives but Jessica had never been much of a television-watcher in any case.
Caroline had plenty of DVD boxsets but Jessica only really watched the news and late-night reruns of trashy morning talk shows. Not that she would have admitted the talk show watching to her colleagues, of course. You would lose plenty of credibility if you confessed that one of your hidden pleasures was staying up at night to see what the results of the previous show’s DNA tests would throw up.
But, after arriving back in her flat, there was a man she didn’t know sitting on their sofa drinking from a can of lager.
‘Er, hello?’ Jessica said as his presence caught her by surprise while she had half-kicked off one of her shoes.
‘Oh, hi... is it Jessica? I’m Randall, Caroline’s boyfriend.’
Caroline had come back into the main room at the sound of the voices. She said she had been changing in her room and added that she hoped Jessica didn’t mind Randall coming over. ‘... it was just that I wanted you both to meet but everyone is always so busy so, in the end, I just invited him over. Hope you don’t mind.’ Caroline explained.
Jessica didn’t mind, well not really, but it would have been nice to have been asked.
As it was they weren’t having a bad evening. Randall was decent-looking – just under six feet tall, with a shaven head and blue eyes. He clearly had a decent physique judging by the tight fit of his t-shirt and must work out, though his muscles weren’t bulging in a grotesque way. There was some kind of spiky-type lettering tattoo visible on the lower half of his right arm but Jessica couldn’t really figure out what it was. He wasn’t really her type; she didn’t go for guys who spent so much time working out and tattoos and piercings had never been too appealing. He did seem nice and Caroline could barely take her eyes off him.
Although she preferred the sofa for comfort, Jessica had left it to Randall and Caroline to share while she took the recliner. They half-watched some nonsense game show, laughing at the contestants’ lack of knowledge while Caroline tried to get her best friend and boyfriend to interact with each other. The bottle of wine the two women had shared was certainly helping in that regard.
‘So, you met over shoes then?’ Jessica said after an hour or so of small-talk.
Caroline and Randall looked at each other and giggled then had a mini argument over who should tell the story in full. If it had been anyone other than her best mate – and if they didn’t look so happy – Jessica would have felt sickened by their show of affection.
It was Caroline who spoke. ‘Well he did do a good job fixing them and they
are
my favourite going-out heels.’
She smiled and squeezed her boyfriend’s hand.
‘Isn’t it just a bit of glue?’ Jessica asked, not meaning the question to sound quite as blunt as it did. She was moderately interested but probably could have phrased the question better.
Randall laughed. ‘Well, yeah. You just take the names, addresses and phone number if they’re cute, wait until they’re gone, get the old superglue out then charge ’em for the privilege.’
Jessica assumed it was a bit more complicated than that but laughed along.
‘Wait, you only get the phone numbers if they’re “cute”?’ Caroline asked with mock indignation.
‘I got yours, didn’t I?’
‘Oh yeah, that’s all right then.’
‘At least you’ve got a story for the grandkids anyway,’ Jessica said. ‘Grandma fell over and broke her shoes, while grandpa fixed them for her.’
‘Whoa. Who said anything about grandkids?’ Caroline laughed.
‘Or kids.’ Randall joined in.
‘And as for getting married...’ Caroline added.
They were already finishing each others’ sentences and, despite the public sentiment being a bit too much for her, Jessica was pleased that her friend seemed happy.
When the giggling had died down and Jessica had poured another glass of wine for each of the women, Caroline said to her boyfriend: ‘Did I tell you Jessica’s a detective?’
‘Yeah, what is that local?’ he asked.
‘Not too far.’
The conversation fizzled out as Caroline yelped due to Randall tickling her. Jessica went back to half-watching the television. Whatever game show it was they had on seemed to be going on for a ridiculous length of time, while the contestants were definitely not getting any cleverer.
‘Are you single?’ Randall asked Jessica during an advert break.
‘Yep.’
‘I’ve got some mates, y’know, I could hook you up with someone.’
‘I’m all right thanks.’
‘Come on, it’d be fun the four of us going out.’
‘Nah, I’m okay. Busy at work’
‘Well, if you change your mind...’
‘You’ll be the first person I call.’
Jessica thought she had enough on her plate already without complicating things with dates or boyfriends.
A short while after, Randall stood up and asked if he could get a glass of water.
‘Lightweight, are we?’ Jessica asked playfully considering he’d had three cans of lager.
‘Nah, just got a bit of a headache coming on.’
‘There are painkillers in the drawer under the sink if you want some?’ Jessica said but Caroline cut in. ‘Oh, he’s allergic to aspirin and things like that.’
Caroline stood up, pushing her boyfriend back to the sofa. ‘I’ll go, you explain.’
Caroline left the room and Jessica said: ‘Sounds nasty?’
Randall made a face as if to indicate “sort of”. ‘I’ve kind of got used to it to be honest. You just live with the headaches and so on. Some people have it really bad, their throats swell up and within a few minutes they can’t breathe. With me it takes an hour or so.’
Caroline returned and gave her boyfriend a glass of water, which he drank a few mouthfuls from, then put the glass on the coffee table.
‘So what actually happens then?’ Jessica asked.
‘It’s not happened in years because I just stay away from most medicines. But back then, my ears would start to ring slightly, then I’d come out in a rash on my arms. It’s only after around an hour when the inside of my throat begins to swell. That could stop you breathing and kill you in theory but that’s never really occurred.’
Caroline spoke then. ‘He had to tell me because if he ever had anything by accident, if I noticed a rash on his arms or anything, I would have to call an ambulance. That’s a telltale sign.’
Jessica just nodded but she was glad it wasn’t her. ‘Must be hard getting over hangovers,’ she joked.
Randall got up, saying he had to go to the toilet. He left the room and, as soon as they had heard the bathroom door close, Caroline wasted no time.
‘What do you reckon, then?’
‘He seems nice. You seem nice together.’
Caroline grinned. ‘It helps that he’s well-hot too.’
Jessica grinned back. ‘He’s not too bad. Bit young for you.’
‘Young? I’m only thirty. He’s twenty-three you cheeky mare.’
‘That’s toyboy territory. Mrs Robinson and all that.’
‘It is
not
.’
Both women were now laughing with each other. ‘You should take him up on the offer of going out with his mate, you know. The four of us. It’d be fun. Take your mind off the job, too. You deserve a night away from it all.’
‘Nah.’
‘Go on....’
‘Well maybe. Not now though, I’m busy. Maybe in a few weeks when things have quietened down?’ Having a fun evening in with her friend was beginning to take Jessica’s mind off the fact that things were not going well at work.
‘I’m glad you like him.’
‘He seems like a good laugh.’
‘Yeah, he is. He told me he was quite shy as a kid but says I’ve brought it out of him. He’s quite sensitive when you get him on his own.’
‘As long as he treats you all right.’
‘Well if he doesn’t I know a police officer that can put him right.’
The flushing of the toilet brought an end to their conversation but, before Randall could return, Jessica’s phone rang anyway. She had dumped her bag by her shoes next to the living room doorway and forgotten to take her phone out. She answered just a moment before it would have rung off. It was DI Cole.
Another body had been found.
The second murder scene was very similar to the first but with one massive difference. Just because there had been another killing, there would have been no instant reason to link it to the first – until you saw the crime scene. There were so many parallels to the first death. The property itself was less than half-a-mile from the Christensens’ but this time the victim was found in an armchair in the living room. It looked as if there had been more of a struggle but there were still deep, vicious wounds in the victim’s neck.
In stark contrast to Yvonne Christensen, this time the victim was male.
As Jessica walked into the interview room at Longsight, she didn’t know how to feel. She had been at work the entire day and the wine she’d shared with Caroline on an empty stomach was only just wearing off. Any crime scene could be enough to make you feel a bit queasy but, as time edged into the late evening, her stomach was rumbling and she just didn’t feel quite right. She guessed a large part of that was down to the mixed emotions she was having. There was a part of her exhilarated that something was now happening and relieved she wasn’t necessarily a failure. Then she felt disgusted with herself, ashamed of her selfish reaction to someone else’s death. It was hard to reconcile the two trains of thought.