Woman in Black (20 page)

The DCI had been correct in that there were plenty of questions about her job from young people. The uniformed officers had the attention from the youngest children and they had a police car parked on the grass for people to sit in and look at the equipment they used. While the younger ones were drawn to the other officers, the teenagers who weren’t hanging around in small groups pretending they were too cool to be there came to talk to her. One girl in particular wanted to talk about becoming a detective and although Jessica wanted to tell her the pay, hours and expectations were all terrible, she stayed on-message and gave a balanced assessment, telling her it was a hard profession that had its good days and bad days – but that the successes felt so good they outweighed everything else. Jessica wasn’t sure if she believed it herself but it didn’t seem right to go out of her way to put someone off just because she was feeling cynical.

After the accident, the head press officer decided to stop any further games. The idea of the day was to engage with the public and perhaps get a nice few photographs of the event into the local papers and, if they were really lucky, on the local television news. A picture of two boys crying with blood pouring from their heads didn’t exactly give the right impression.

By the time it got to four o’clock, the crowds had started to dwindle. Cole returned and, along with some of the uniformed officers and the press office staff, began to pack the tables away. As they worked, the chief inspector broke away to answer his phone and, a few moments later, called Jessica over. He edged across into an area next to some benches where there weren’t any members of the public.

‘I’ve just had a fairly disturbing phone call,’ he said.

‘What’s up?’

‘Someone held up an off-licence on Stockport Road an hour ago.’

‘Our end?’ Jessica asked. Stockport Road was one of the main arteries in and out of Manchester city centre and ran for around five miles. Not far past the park they were in, it branched off.

‘About a mile away. They had a knife.’

‘Was anyone hurt?’

‘No but they took a few hundred pounds.’

Jessica wondered why he was telling her. ‘Why did you get the call? There must be someone at the station who can deal with things?’

Cole nodded. ‘They had been. It wasn’t because of the robbery that they called; it was because of the description of the person who did it.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘The robber was woman wearing low heels and a long black hooded robe.’

EIGHTEEN

Jessica was technically on a day off but didn’t think twice about getting one of the uniformed officers to drive her to the off-licence in question. It was only a couple of miles away from the Longsight Station and police tape was already set up around the premises, while Scene of Crime officers were on site.

One of the male forensics team let her into the shop and there was a beep as the front door opened. He led Jessica along an aisle which didn’t interfere with the area they were inspecting, before she was pointed towards a door behind the counter. If it hadn’t been for the presence of the officers and the fact she knew there had been a robbery, Jessica wouldn’t have realised anything untoward had happened. The only sign was that, as she approached it, she could see the cash register open and empty.

The officer told her the shopkeeper owned the upstairs flat and was currently waiting there. ‘Is there CCTV footage?’ Jessica asked, nodding towards a camera above the door.

‘Apparently but we haven’t looked through it properly yet,’ the officer said. ‘The owner showed it to us so we could get an idea of the path the person took. We’re going to take it back when we’re finished.’

‘Have you found anything?’

The officer shook his head. ‘The robber was wearing gloves so we’re not even looking for fingerprints but they didn’t touch anything anyway. We’re trying to isolate a few footprints. The video footage is going to be our best bet but we’ve got to get all of this done first.’

‘Do you know if someone’s taken the shopkeeper’s statement yet?’

‘I don’t know. Someone is upstairs with him.’

Jessica thanked the man and walked through the door, finding herself alone in what looked like a storeroom. The overhead lights were on and a fan in the corner was blowing cool air around as it rotated. On her left were boxes of unopened crisps and chocolate bars plus a mop, bucket and a few other cleaning items resting against a wide chest freezer. There was another door at the back that she could see a large bolt locked across while crates of beer cans and bottles were stacked underneath the staircase.

The stairs were old and wooden and each one creaked as Jessica walked up, holding onto the banister which rocked from side to side as she gripped it. There was a door at the top that appeared to be locked as Jessica pressed it, so she knocked instead. A uniformed female constable opened the door and they instantly recognised each other.

‘I was wondering if it would be you they sent along,’ the officer said.

‘Yep, I’m the queen of short straws,’ Jessica replied with a smile. The other officer went to turn around but Jessica continued, ‘Has someone taken a statement? I was in a bit of a rush to get here and haven’t come via the station.’

‘One of the officers took it all down. It was only midway through when he realised the connection because of the black cloak. He called it in for someone to pass on. It all goes a bit above us.’

The other officer turned again and led Jessica down a carpeted hallway into a joint living room and kitchen area. A man was sitting on a sofa but stood as she walked in. Jessica saw he was shorter than she was. He had slicked-back dark hair and didn’t look as if he’d shaved in a while, with a tufty beard on his chin. The man was clearly still stunned by what had happened. A full cup of tea sat on a table in front of him and he nervously looked at the other officer as Jessica came into the room.

Jessica introduced herself, showing her identification. The man said his name was Victor Burnham and confirmed he owned and managed the shop. He appeared to calm down slightly, offering her an armchair opposite the sofa. The seat was uncomfortable and Jessica had to force herself not to wriggle as what felt like a series of thin wires dug into her back. As she looked around, she could see a lot of the furniture in the flat seemed dated. The sofa and the chair she was sitting in were a dirty cream with a mix of pink and purple flowers on the material. Everything from the carpet to the lights appeared covered in a thin layer of dust and, as she scanned around, she could smell a musty unclean scent too.

Perhaps because that was now in the front of her mind, but also because she didn’t want to dive straight in and potentially unsettle the man, Jessica was careful with her first question. ‘Do you live up here, Mr Burnham?’

He shook his head emphatically. ‘No, no. Only sometimes when there’s a really early delivery. There’s a bed just through there.’ Victor pointed towards a closed door on the far side of the mini kitchen. ‘I have young children and they have school and so on. It’s not fair to wake them up at five when I have to get here.’

‘So do you own this whole property?’

‘Yes, I’ve got this and another shop a mile or so away then my wife and I have a separate house too. I manage this one and my brother runs the other.’

‘Can you talk me through a normal Saturday?’

Victor nodded solemnly. ‘I usually get here for around six, sometimes a little earlier. It’s a big day with the papers. You have to sort out all the magazines and get everything onto the racks before we open at seven but there are the paperboys to organise too.’

‘Does anyone help you?’ Jessica asked.

‘Only my wife sometimes, or my nephew. I guess…’ The man tailed off and swallowed hard. ‘I guess it’s lucky my wife wasn’t here today. We alternate Saturdays so we can each have time with the kids.’

Jessica allowed him a few moments to settle and made eye contact with the constable. The other woman went to the kitchen and returned with three glasses of water. Even though Victor hadn’t touched his cup of tea, he drank from the glass and said ‘thank you’.

‘What else would happen on a regular Saturday?’ Jessica asked when the man had re-settled.

‘After the papers, we would open and there would usually be a bit of a rush before nine o’clock. It’s not as bad as on a Sunday but we still sell a fair few newspapers on the weekends. Then it would calm down until lunchtime. On a weekday we get loads of people in for sandwiches and pasties. There’s a cafe just down the rank but not everyone wants to stop. It’s much quieter on a Saturday but we still get the odd workman in.’

‘Can you tell me specifically about the incident today? I know you’ve talked to my colleague already and you don’t have to go over things again if you don’t want to.’

The man seemed weary but didn’t object, finishing off his water. ‘No, it’s fine. It was around three o’clock and no one had come in for maybe fifteen minutes or so. I’ve got a little radio which sits under the counter. I was listening to the cricket and reading through one of the magazines. There’s a buzzer security thing that goes off every time the main door is opened. I looked up and couldn’t see anyone at first and glanced back to my magazine. It was just a moment but suddenly there was someone right in front of me.’

‘What did they look like?’

‘I don’t know really. You know about the cloak, don’t you?’

‘Tell me.’

‘It was a woman, maybe around my height, wearing this black robe thing. It had a hood pulled down over her face and I could only see her mouth.’

Jessica was hanging on his replies. ‘How do you know it was a female?’

The man shook his head slightly as if it were a stupid question. ‘The voice, it was a woman’s voice. She was just so calm.’

‘What did she say?’

‘“Open the till”.’

‘That was it?’

‘Well, she repeated it. It happened so quickly. You know when you think you’ve heard what somebody has said to you but it’s not really gone in? It was like that. Then I saw the knife.’

Jessica knew she had to be careful with her words. ‘What did it look like?’

‘It was a kitchen knife, like something you might cut meat up with.’

‘What did her voice sound like? Was there any type of accent?’

‘I…I don’t know. It just sounded normal, I wasn’t thinking about it.’

It was what Jessica would have expected. ‘Okay, that’s fine,’ she said. ‘What happened after she repeated herself?’

‘I just…it was like I was someone else. Have you ever felt like you’re in a corner of a room watching yourself do something? It felt like somebody else was controlling me and I was just looking at things. I only know because I showed the people downstairs the video. I opened the register and stepped backwards.’

‘What happened then?’

‘She reached across and pulled the notes out. It’s the one thing I clearly remember because there was a moment where she was on tiptoes stretching forward. It was just a fraction where I thought about…well, I don’t know, trying to grab the knife or something. She was off-balance but it wasn’t as if I really had time to think. As soon as it crossed my mind she had taken everything and stepped backwards.’

Jessica could see he was starting to get a little emotional and there were tears in his eyes. He wiped them away and was almost shouting as he continued. ‘It’s not even the money but it could have been my wife, y’know? We’ve had our kids in here before…and I just did nothing.’

Jessica knew there wasn’t much she could say. Even for a man who wasn’t sexist at all, she guessed it would be hard to be robbed by anyone but perhaps the fact it was a woman made it a little worse.

‘I’m sure there’s nothing you could have done, Mr Burnham,’ Jessica said as reassuringly as she could. The man shrugged, clearly fighting to stop himself crying. ‘Did anything happen after she had taken the money?’ Jessica added. ‘Did you notice anyone else in the shop?’

The man shook his head again. ‘I don’t really remember. I think she just left.’

‘Where is the camera footage stored, Mr Burnham?’

Victor pointed towards the bedroom door he had indicated before. ‘It’s in there, my brother put it in. The wires come up through the ceiling and it’s all stored on a hard drive. Once a week I have to switch them over but it looks after itself apart from that. The system has been in for almost two years and this is only the second time I’ve ever used it. The first was just some lads nicking porno mags.’

‘Did you report it?’

The man actually laughed a little as he answered. ‘No, I knew the parents of one of them. I could’ve come to you but he was so terrified of me telling his mum, he paid for everything. I could’ve still reported him or whatever but what’s the point? He’s only fifteen or so.’

‘Can you show me the footage from earlier?’

‘Okay – I’m not very good with the equipment though.’

Victor stood, leading Jessica into the bedroom. It was a little larger than she would have guessed but shared the same stale smell as the rest of the flat. The bed was unmade, a duvet cover half on the floor and the sheets ruffled into the centre. The room wasn’t very bright, the only illumination coming through one small window before the man turned on the lights.

A desktop computer was on a table with a large plastic-looking box next to it. Victor sat in front of the machine and pointed to the box. ‘Those are the external hard drives,’ he said, then indicated a set of wires running up the wall. ‘It all connects to the cameras downstairs. The computer doesn’t need to be on to record but it does if you want to watch anything back. I turned it on earlier.’

The man moved the mouse and the screen lit up, then he clicked around the screen to bring up a new window. ‘I’m not brilliant with this but my wife’s gone around to my brother’s family’s house so he can’t come over. He’d be the best one to explain the system. I can show you this though.’ After moving the mouse around some more, a new box appeared that had a still image looking at the front door of the shop from the inside. He then pressed a button on the keyboard and the view cut to the camera that was over the top of the cash register looking down. He pointed out to Jessica which buttons moved the action forward and backwards and where she needed to press to change the camera angles.