‘It was when Mrs Wilson said she couldn’t let herself in to the victim’s house. When we were over there I remembered some keys hanging in the hallway but the front door was locked because we had to smash it down. I figured that, if her best friend didn’t have a key, then how did whoever killed her get in? The back door and windows are all locked too.’
‘So you reckon it was the husband then?’
Jessica let out a long “hmmm” noise. ‘Maybe but that doesn’t make much sense either. Firstly, we don’t know if he has a key any longer but, even if he does, if you were going to kill your partner, you wouldn’t make it obvious would you? If you knew you were one of a few people with a way in, you’d hide the fact that was how you’d done it. You could fake a burglary or something like that but it’s all so clean in there. It’s not like it’s one of those old-fashioned doors that just lock when you pull them shut, you actually have to try to secure it.’
‘Could she have let someone in?’
‘Possibly but how did they lock it when they were back out again given her key is in the hallway?’
‘Maybe whoever did it secured everything to get a few days’ head start?’
‘If they did then it’s not the husband. I phoned him a minute ago and asked if we could come pick him up. I didn’t tell him his wife was dead but he’s definitely around and gave me the address.’
She handed a piece of paper over to DC Rowlands then continued talking. ‘Can you take one of the trained Liaison Officers and tell him the news then bring him to the station? Ask which university his son goes to because someone’s going to have to tell him too. We’re going to have to find out who has a key for that house.’
DC Rowlands took one of the marked cars while Jessica walked back towards the victim’s house to ask DI Cole what he wanted to do next. He was just ducking under the tape by the edge of the garden as she approached. ‘I was supposed to be taking the kids to the zoo today,’ he said.
‘I don’t know why criminals can’t just stick to office hours,’ Jessica replied with a grin.
‘I’ve been saying that for years; if you’re going to commit a crime, can you at least have the decency to do it between nine and five, preferably Monday to Friday.’
Humour was frequently dark in the station. Perhaps to an outsider it would seem as if they were uncaring towards victims and other people that came through the doors. If the general public knew some of the comments that were made about them behind their backs, there would be uproar. Really, it was just the way members of the force coped. At any given time you could find yourself dealing with the lowest types of human life committing horrendous acts on some of the most vulnerable people imaginable. You had to care but it was essential you had some kind of detachment too. It was the banter and dark jokes that made that possible and fuelled people to work together.
Jessica gave a small laugh. ‘Dave’s off to pick up the husband. Have they found anything inside?’
‘Don’t think so, you know how long it all takes.’
Jessica nodded but was struggling to get her head around everything. ‘The thing is, even if they find a sample from the husband or the son, it wouldn’t necessarily show anything because they both lived here up until fairly recently. Unless the victim’s a habitual deep cleaner, there’s always going to be some trace of them in the house.’
‘Depends what they find, doesn’t it? Blood under nails or something like that would be a good lead.’
She blew out through her teeth and shook her head slightly. ‘Maybe.’
Jessica knew the forensic testing often gave them their best leads but sometimes it could throw up as many questions as answers. If the victim had scratched the attacker and there was a trace of them on her it would give the police a solid start but leads as concrete as that were rare. Just showing the husband had recently been in the house wouldn’t be enough and, after that, even if they did find blood or hair from someone else, they would still be hoping for a match on the National DNA Database.
Anyone who was arrested on suspicion of committing a crime had their mouth swabbed and details stored. If a person had never been in trouble, a sample taken from a crime scene could sit for years until paired with someone. The testing methods were great for ruling people out of an enquiry but, if you didn’t get a match, you still had to do police work the old-fashioned way.
‘All right, no need to be so negative,’ DI Cole said with a smile and wink. ‘Usually it’s someone the victim knows.’
Jessica gave a small smile but it wasn’t sincere. ‘I know but you’d make it less obvious, wouldn’t you? There’s something not right here. Did you ask about any estimated time for results?’
‘Nah, the hairnet brigade get a bit snotty if you start pushing them. Things move slowly at the weekend anyway. If we’re lucky, we might get a formal identification plus a time and confirmed cause of death by Monday. I’ll phone the Chief Inspector so he knows what’s going on and he’ll put a call in to say this is a priority. It doesn’t stop them being under-staffed though.’
‘Aren’t we all?’
‘Either way, some of the forensic guys are going to have to come in on a Sunday to wade through it all.’
‘I’m glad I’m not making that phone call. Someone’s going to get an earful.’ Jessica paused briefly then added: ‘Are we both going back to the station to talk to the husband?’
‘Yeah there’s not much more we can here. Scene of Crime team are doing their thing and officers are knocking on doors to ask if anyone saw or heard anything in the last couple of days.’
Jessica looked back down the street towards the Wilsons’ house. ‘There were lots of curtains twitching this morning but I doubt any of them were watching when it might have been some use.’
‘Always the way, isn’t it?’
Jessica never failed to be amazed by how many people apparently didn’t see anything when some kids were terrorising an old lady or some guy beating his missus up. ‘Shall I meet you back at the station?’ she asked.
‘Yeah, you head off and I’ll see you there.’
The journey back to the main base at Longsight wasn’t a long one but the traffic had started to back up on the main roads as people woke up and realised that, for once, the sun was shining and they could actually go do something with the day. It made a change from cowering from the rain in any case. Jessica often thought sunny days in the north seemed to bring out two types of people – those who hopped in the car and raced to the coast and those who went to the pub.
She parked at the front of the station and walked through to the canteen. Their base had been renovated relatively recently and its sandy brick colour on the outside was still visible, unlike a lot of the local stations where the dirt had long since taken hold. It was two floors high but also had a basement where the incident room was as well as a separate area for the cells. Many officers also worked down there who didn’t have set desks. The top floor was where the Detective Chief Inspector’s office was, along with a lot of storage and some other administration areas.
On the ground floor the main door opened straight into the reception where the desk sergeant would handle anyone who had been arrested. Some would be processed and put in the cells, while others would either be bailed to reappear or occasionally just given an on-the-spot fine or a bit of a talking to. Also on the floor were many of the slightly more senior officers’ individual offices plus the canteen, the Press area and the interview rooms. There were a few other places given over to holding witnesses or other people they wanted to speak to but who weren’t under arrest too.
The canteen didn’t have the greatest choice at the best of times but there was never any hot food available on a Saturday, so Jessica crouched in front of a vending machine before settling for a sandwich that seemed to have the least curled-up corners. She then made her way through to one of the station’s two interview rooms.
DI Cole was already in there, setting up the recording equipment. Eric Christensen wouldn’t be under arrest but he would be cautioned and interviewed plus told he could have a legal representative if he wanted. Unless time was absolutely paramount or someone’s life was at stake, all interviews had to be done at the station and documented.
Each interview was recorded on to three tapes. The Master would almost certainly never be listened to. It was there solely as a backup to prevent any allegations of tampering. It usually had a yellow seal around it to show it had not been opened since the interview. One of the copies would be for the police to use, while the third was the suspect’s.
Jessica swallowed a mouthful of sandwich. ‘We must single-handedly be the only organisation in the world keeping the manufacturers of cassette tapes in business.’
DI Cole jammed the final tape in the machine and looked around at her. ‘I’ve been saying for ages it’s ridiculous.’
Jessica pointed at the recording device. ‘I can get a better quality recording on my phone than off this thing. Did I tell you about the case I was at the other month?’
‘Go on.’
‘At the magistrates court we had some guy up for handling stolen goods. The quality of the recording wasn’t good enough and the written log was incomplete so the whole thing fell apart. I was just sitting at the back while the defence ripped us apart.’
‘Shame it’s not me that sorts out the budgets,’ DI Cole said with a smile.
As he finished talking, there was a knock at the door and DC Rowlands entered with two men just behind him. The first was wearing a suit and Jessica recognised him as one of the duty solicitors. His role was to offer free legal advice to people that had to be interviewed. That would often happen over the phone but, in serious cases, it was always in person. There were only a few duties for the area, so they were all familiar faces.
That meant the man behind him had to be Eric Christensen. He was tall and blonde and casually dressed in a pair of jeans and light-fitting shirt. On first impression, Jessica wouldn’t have said he looked upset at hearing of his wife’s death but he certainly seemed subdued.
DI Cole gave Eric Christensen the standard caution and the rest of the interview itself went pretty much as she suspected it would. The man said he was shocked by his wife’s death but insisted he would never have meant her any ill will. He explained their divorce was going to be a formality after they had separated five months ago and said they had just drifted apart over the years. Now that James had gone to university, they no longer saw the need to stay together for him.
He was seeing someone new who lived in Bolton and said he had been out with her on Tuesday night, playing snooker with friends on Wednesday, in with his partner on the Thursday, then out again last night. He claimed he didn’t have a door key to his old house and, as far as he was aware, Yvonne and James were the only people who did.
The husband was bailed without conditions but asked to contact the police if anything occurred to him. He had asked if he could tell his son about Yvonne’s death. It was an awkward decision but Jessica guessed there was never a good way to be told your mother was dead, whether in person by someone in uniform or over the phone by your father. Either way an officer from the local area was going to be sent out to speak to James, if only to formally exclude him from the inquiry.
When the room was empty except for the two detectives, DI Cole looked to her and raised his eyebrows. ‘What do you reckon? Think he’s our guy?’
‘I’d be surprised. It’s not as if he was thinking through his answers or anything. We can get someone checking the alibi but I’d be surprised if they weren’t solid. He answered all the questions too, even the intimate ones.’
‘I know. He’s either got nothing to do with it or is one of the most-natural liars I’ve ever seen. Son seems unlikely too. Unless there’s a huge life insurance policy neither of them seem to have a motive either.’
Eric had told them James went to Bournemouth University. It was a nine or ten-hour round-trip but his father reckoned he had gone that far just to get away from them.
‘He fell in with the wrong crowd a few years ago, then me and his mum were arguing all the time,’ he said. ‘He couldn’t have really found somewhere further away, could he?’
Jessica knew the logistics of getting from Bournemouth to Manchester and back again wouldn’t be impossible but James would surely have been missed if he had disappeared for that length of time.
‘Didn’t give us much else to go on did he?’ Jessica said.
‘No, sounds like he’s just moved in with his new girlfriend and wants to move on with his life.’ The two detectives tidied up the room and walked through to reception. ‘Are you heading home?’ DI Cole asked.
‘I guess so. Is there anything you want me to do here?’
‘No, I’ll call the higher-ups then get off myself. We’ve got officers going door-to-door and we’re not going to get any results from the labs through until Monday at the earliest. Not much more we can do.’
Jessica said goodbye to the desk sergeant and asked him to call her mobile if anything interesting happened. She walked out of the station on her own, taking her phone out to check for any new messages. It was now late afternoon and, though the sun was still out, it had lost much of its heat. She shivered slightly but, as she did, for the second time that day, the phone started to ring while in her hand. She shook her head thinking she should definitely change the ringtone to something less energetic and looked at the screen to see who was calling.
There was no name displayed, just a mobile number she didn’t recognise. She jabbed at the screen to answer. ‘Hello’.
The man’s voice on the other end was slightly shaky and whoever it was sounded nervous. ‘Is that Detective Sergeant Jessica Daniel?’
‘Yep, who’s this?’
The person paused for a moment. ‘I’m just calling to talk about the dead body you found this morning.’
Garry Ashford was not happy. The alarm on his phone he didn’t remember setting had gone off and he couldn’t get back to sleep. As he lay in bed, he didn’t think an electrical item could be smug but his phone certainly looked close to it as it showed him in big LED characters the time was 1pm. There was no way he would have set an alarm for that moment on a Saturday afternoon, not after being out until 3am that morning, so someone was taking the piss.