The woman looked sideways at her without a smile but did say: ‘All right?’
‘What are you waiting for?’ Jessica asked, trying not to sound too aggressive.
‘Live upstairs,’ the woman said pointing towards a second door next to the first. ‘Kim woke me up with all the shouting. She was round yesterday wanting to know if I’d seen her mum.’
‘Have you?’
‘Have I heck.’ There was a clear hostility to the answer.
‘You don’t get on?’
‘Would you get on with someone working as a whore in the flat underneath you? Door going at all hours of the night and all that
noise
? You lot don’t do anything.’
Jessica hadn’t introduced herself as a detective or member of the police force but the woman clearly knew. Jessica also had to admit the woman had a point. Kerb-crawling was illegal but prostitution in itself wasn’t. Her “lot” almost certainly hadn’t done anything but there wasn’t a whole lot they could do. The daughter who Jessica assumed was “Kim” came stomping back across the yard towards the two of them. ‘I bet you’re loving this, aren’t you?’ she said to the woman.
‘Leave me alone, Kim. I told you yesterday I haven’t seen Claire.’
‘Oh piss off. You were always moaning, banging on the bloody ceiling. Calling the pigs.’
Jessica stepped in between the two of them. ‘Okay Kim, I think you should go over there,’ she said pointing towards a piece of grass between them and the tactical team. ‘It won’t be long.’
Kim just looked at her. She was wearing jeans and a tight fitting dark T-shirt. Her long blonde hair was tied into a loose ponytail. She would have been pretty if it wasn’t for the snarl on her face. She turned from Jessica to the other woman. ‘You better not have anything to do with this,’ she spat, then walked off quickly towards the spot Jessica had indicated.
‘That’s what I get all the time,’ the woman said to Jessica. ‘You’d think I was the one causing trouble.’
‘How long have you lived here?’
‘Year or so. I want to move out but am just stuck on the housing association waiting list. Because I’ve got a place to live I’m not a priority for them.’
‘Has the mother lived below you this whole time?’
‘Claire? Yeah. Convenient location for her, ain’t it?’ There wasn’t much else they could say to each other but moments later a marked police car pulled up next to Jessica’s Punto behind the van. Two officers got out and went over to the two tactical officers, who took some heavy-looking equipment out of their van. The flat’s door was double-glazed and very similar to the Christensens’ and Princes’. From everything the locksmith had told her a couple of weeks ago, they weren’t very easy to kick in.
As the other officers had arrived, Kim again marched over to the tactical team before all four officers and the girl went towards the front door. Jessica walked over to join them. Everyone was asked to stand back while the team smashed their way through it using a two-man battering ram. The door certainly took a fair amount of bashings before eventually succumbing to the brute force. Jessica wanted to be first through the door but Kim beat her to it, dashing inside and disappearing from view. Jessica went to lead the other officers in but, as she heard the ear-piercing scream, she knew exactly what they would be going in to find.
The woman may have been a prostitute and caused misery for her neighbours but she certainly didn’t deserve to die in the brutal way she had been found. Jessica followed the screams into a room on her left as she entered and saw Kim standing over a double bed. She was screaming and hysterical. Jessica’s first thought was a selfish one; Kim had blood on her hands and had already contaminated the scene. The biggest uniformed officer physically picked up the shouting, kicking daughter and took her outside.
The woman sprawled across the bed was naked but face down. Aside from the unclothed limbs, there was just a mass of bleached blonde hair spread out but discoloured in parts by the deep red blood. Jessica stopped any of the other officers from entering the room while she stood at its entrance. She told them to leave and help calm down Kim, while also making sure the woman who lived upstairs went nowhere either. She would need to be taken in for formal questioning later on. Jessica took her phone out of her pocket and called the station to report what they had found, then called DI Cole herself. She would leave it to him to pass the news up the chain, while a Scene of Crime team would be requested.
Jessica took the whole of the bedroom in. The scene of this murder seemed much more vicious than the first two and Claire must have fought harder than the first two victims. The obvious first response was that whoever had killed her had been a client but Jessica knew full well that, if the killer was the same as that of the first two victims, a locked door was no obstacle in any case.
With the rest of the flat empty, she took the chance to look around. The kitchen was a grubby room at the end of the hall. The room had certainly once been white but had a distinctive yellowy-brown tinge to it now. There was a round dining table in the centre of the room with four cheap-looking stools around it. Jessica could see a washing machine still full with a light flashing by the dial at the top. It was bright white and looked new, standing out from everything else in the room. The floor itself was some cheap linoleum that looked years old and was peeling away from the surface. There was also an old-looking cooker, its top covered with hardened food stains.
Jessica scanned the scene and saw a handbag, mobile phone and some cash on the counter top. She didn’t want to risk touching the paper notes in case the killer was a client and this was what he had paid. It seemed unlikely that, even if that were true, their mystery man would have left such an obvious clue but Jessica didn’t want to risk it. She could see how much was there, a crumpled dirty ten pound note and a much newer, crisper twenty pound note. Thirty quid was the cost of someone’s life nowadays, she thought shaking her head. Jessica saw a kitchen roll next to the sink and tore off a sheet, using it to cover her fingers while she looked through the woman’s bag. She didn’t have to look far and found exactly what she was looking for straight away – a set of keys in the main part.
The detective went back out into the hallway. She could still hear a commotion outside as the officers presumably tried to calm Kim. She tried the door opposite the bedroom, still using a piece of kitchen roll to shield her fingers, and it led into a second room. There was another bed but this one was neatly-made. The room had a lot of purple in it, with both the duvet cover and carpet having a matching colour. The walls were light but the room was full of clothes. Jessica didn’t enter but simply scanned the scene from the doorway. She could see a wardrobe towards the back of the room but the doors were open. Even from this distance, Jessica saw it was packed with dresses, outfits and attire that would only really be suitable for indoor use, or at best on the main road the other side of the flat. The floor was scattered with more regular clothes, jeans and tops. Jessica’s own room was messy but this was far beyond that.
She backed out and re-closed the door, then tried the other door leading from the hallway, which opened into a bathroom. It was pretty basic, just a shower, toilet and sink. She could see a few soaps and shampoos but nothing out of the ordinary, so closed that door and made her way back through the kitchen into the living room.
The main room of the house was fairly cluttered but a lot cleaner than the kitchen and second bedroom. There was a large flatscreen TV pinned to the wall and a couple of big comfy-looking light pink sofas facing it. Jessica could see some assorted celebrity-type magazines on the floor but there were tidy racks full of DVDs and CDs. She scanned the titles, noticing names of films she herself had seen and liked. On top of the racks were some photographs. Jessica could see the smiling face of the woman most-likely lying face-down in the other room. She saw a picture with a younger-looking Kim in it and another with a separate young teenage girl. Then she saw a final photo of Kim, who looked around twelve or so, the other girl from the photographs and a boy. They were all young children, standing on a beach somewhere grinning at the camera. In none of the pictures was there a sign of a man or anyone who could be the children’s father. Having seen the bedrooms and kitchen, this whole room seemed to be in contrast to the rest of the house.
Untainted.
It sort of made sense to Jessica. When you gave up a massive part of your life in the same way the victim apparently had, perhaps you just needed something to separate yourself from it? Money was exchanged in the kitchen, while the first bedroom was where it was earned. Seeing as the lifestyle couldn’t be kept away from the other bedroom, nor the bathroom, that left this one room as a haven of sorts.
She went back to the first bedroom to have a final scan before the Scene of Crime team arrived. The room itself was dark. The main light on the ceiling had been left on but it wasn’t spilling out much in any case as a black light shade ensured the room’s dimness. The brightest thing in the room was the victim’s hair, despite the blood that had seeped into it. The bed had dark purple satin sheets but there were obvious bloodstains there too. Jessica couldn’t see any cuts in the victim’s neck as that was shielded by the woman’s hair.
With not much else she could do, Jessica left the flat. There was only one door in, while the only two windows were in the living room and the bedroom which didn’t have a dead body in it. With all the curtains pulled, Jessica hadn’t bothered to see if they were locked but she knew they would be.
Misdirection.
Kim was now allowing herself to be comforted by one of the officers, while the second woman was talking to the one of the others. Jessica could hear sirens in the distance. She told one of the tactical officers that they needed to take both Kim and the neighbour back to the station. She was going to follow along shortly. ‘Don’t arrest them or lock them up,’ Jessica said. ‘Holding room with an officer, not a cell.’ It was going to be yet another busy Saturday.
Back at the station, they first had to make sure Kim was eighteen or older. From her appearance, it was hard to tell. If she was younger, it would have been necessary to have someone there to act as her guardian. Although Kim had continued to veer from sheer aggression to outright grief back at the station, it had quickly been established there was another daughter who lived nearby. Once they had the full name and address from Kim, a police car had been sent out to pick up her older sister: Emily Hogan. The other thing it hadn’t taken long to find out was that there was definitely no father present.
‘I don’t have a dad,’ was all Kim would say to them.
Jessica wanted to ask about the boy she had seen in the photos in the living room but figured that could come later. Kim clearly didn’t like the police and hadn’t been overly cooperative. She just kept shouting: ‘You lot never gave a stuff when she were alive,’ or other derivatives.
Jessica was torn between giving her space to grieve and actually needing to speak to her. The Scene of Crime team had taken over the flat and would be working on a time of death, as well as taking photographs and chronicling everything that could be relevant. Jessica had hung around just long enough to see them gently turn over Claire’s body and reveal the deep wounds in her neck, just like the other victims.
The neighbour had been spoken to first while Kim had been given time to calm down in a holding room. She clearly didn’t have an awful lot to add and had been released. The woman hadn’t seen or heard anything out of the ordinary that week.
‘The only thing different was that it has actually been quiet the past two nights,’ was perhaps the only useful piece of information she had. It gave Jessica a rough time of death until a more accurate one came in from forensics. Presumably that meant Claire Hogan had been killed at some point in the last forty eight hours.
It hadn’t taken long for Emily Hogan to arrive. She would have already been told about her mother’s murder by a specially-trained officer who would have gone to collect her. Jessica met her in reception and took her straight through to see her sister. Emily and her sister looked a lot alike, though Emily was an inch or two taller. She didn’t seem overly upset but cradled her younger sister, who cried loudly. Jessica gave them space until Emily turned to her. ‘I presume you want to talk to us?’
Before Jessica could answer, Kim cut across them. ‘Come on Em, they were never bothered before. They’re only interested in mum when they wanted to bring her in.’
Emily had a softer tone than her sister. ‘I know but that’s gone now. We’re not going to find out who did this on our own.’
Kim just shrugged and sat down, while Emily stayed standing. ‘Do we do this here?’
‘No, no,’ Jessica said. ‘The interview room’s set up. You’re not under arrest and can leave anytime you want but sometimes it’s better to get things on tape anyway. It’s for your own protection, really.’
‘Okay.’ Jessica took Emily to the interview room where just seven days ago she had sat across from Wayne Lapham. A uniformed officer was left with Kim, who hadn’t run out at the mention of them being able to leave. DI Cole was already waiting for them and Jessica said there was a solicitor available if Emily wanted it.
‘Nah, I’ve not got anything to hide,’ Emily said.
Before DI Cole could start the tape, Emily added: ‘Don’t mind her, y’know, she’s had it tough. Always been the closest to mum too.’
Jessica nodded while the DI Cole gave the introductions. ‘When did you last see your mother?’ Jessica asked first.
Emily spoke clearly and eloquently. She was obviously intelligent and came across very well. ‘Not for a while, we didn’t really get on. Maybe a month ago?’
‘Why didn’t you get along?’
‘I didn’t approve of her... job.’
‘I’m sorry to ask this but, for the record, can you say what she did?’ Jessica knew the answer.
‘She slept with men for money.’
Jessica didn’t want to dwell the point. ‘What was she like the last time you saw her?’