Vigilante (4 page)

The new flat was in quite a respectable area but there was distinct lack of decent takeaways. There were a few but they weren’t as downmarket and full of grease as the ones Jessica preferred back near her old flat. Perhaps the best part was that her neighbours were nothing like Carrie’s. If anything, Jessica herself was the blight on the area, given the age and state of the car she owned. Her flat was part of a block of six newly built three-storey townhouses that were all converted into apartments. Jessica lived on the middle floor of one and didn’t really know her immediate neighbours, other than faces to say ‘hi’ to. Everyone pretty much kept themselves to themselves.

Jessica liked the flat itself but it was mornings like this that made her wish she had stayed closer to the station. Technically it was a fifteen-minute drive from where she lived to Longsight. Given the traffic lights and sheer amount of vehicles piling into the city centre, it rarely took her less than half an hour on a weekday.

In the time since Craig Millar’s body had been found they still only had some very basic information back from the forensics team. Essentially, there was confirmation of the victim’s identity and that he had been killed by either the second or third of the three stab wounds.

Jessica stomped into the station through the front entrance in a mood because of the traffic. She started to head down a corridor towards her office but the desk sergeant caught her eye and called her over. ‘I’ve got a phone number for you,’ he said, offering her a Post-it note.

‘Whose?’

‘Someone at Bradford Park.’

The location referred to one of the force’s main bases, where GMP’s forensics team was located.

‘What did they want?’

‘Dunno. To talk to either you or Jack – whoever got in first.’

Jessica took the paper, on which was written a number and the name ‘Adam Compton’. She went through a set of double doors down a hallway the short distance to the office she shared with Reynolds. He wasn’t in and she walked over to her half of the room, sitting down after navigating a few piles of paper she had left on the floor the night before.

She dialled the number and a male voice answered on the third ring. ‘Is that Adam?’

‘Yes, who’s speaking please?’

His accent definitely wasn’t local. It sounded southern but she couldn’t place it. ‘It’s Detective Sergeant Jessica Daniel from Longsight. You left me a note to call you.’

‘Yeah, yeah,’ came the voice from the other end of the line. From the undercurrent of noise, it sounded as if he were doing something in the background. ‘Did someone tell you we found some blood scrapings under the fingernail of Craig Millar?’

‘I heard yesterday. Did you get a match?’

‘Well, sort of…’

‘How do you mean, “sort of”?’

‘According to the National Database, the blood belongs to someone called “Donald McKenna”.’

‘Isn’t that a good thing?’

‘Perhaps. Our records could be out of date but, according to the system, Donald McKenna is currently serving life in Manchester Prison.’

FOUR

Adam Compton told Jessica his boss would be re-checking all samples and everything would be compared for a second time to the main National DNA Database. He did say that they had never had a false match as far as he was aware.

‘Very rarely something can be missed or contaminated but I’ve never known the system simply throw up a wrong name,’ he said.

Jessica gave him her mobile number and told him to call as soon as the second set of results came back. She checked their own files – likely the same one the forensics team would have access to – which also confirmed Donald McKenna was in prison. After that, she went to tell Cole about the phone call. He had arrived a few minutes after her and went to pass on the update to the detective chief inspector, who was based on the floor up from them. Jessica got back on the phone, this time to the prison to ask a question that most times wouldn’t need asking: whether or not an inmate was actually on the premises.

Whoever had answered her call in the first instance had clearly thought she was winding them up but Jessica had eventually managed to be passed through to one of the wardens who worked on the wing McKenna was housed on. He also seemed a little confused by Jessica’s question but took her phone number and called her back five minutes later to assure her he had walked to McKenna’s cell and personally seen him there. With the obvious matter out of the way, Jessica had to arrange going to interview the prisoner.

Talking to inmates in relation to other crimes they hadn’t yet been convicted of wasn’t entirely dissimilar to the process if they weren’t locked up. It was made easier by the fact you didn’t need to go out to find someone but a prisoner would still be entitled to legal representation, would still have to be cautioned and could potentially be tried for a crime in a court like any other person. In instances such as that, the jury wouldn’t necessarily be told the defendant was a current prisoner so they couldn’t risk being prejudiced. Jessica arranged to interview McKenna at lunchtime, with someone from the prison helping to sort out a solicitor.

Her mind was already buzzing. The prison that had been rebuilt on the old Strangeways site was definitely not the type of place you could just walk in and out of. During the years she had been in the force, she had visited there on a couple of occasions for various reasons. It was a Category A, maximum-security establishment for some of the most dangerous prisoners in the region. Without even visiting McKenna or viewing his cell, Jessica was pretty sure there was no real way he could have got out of his room, escaped the wing, found a way off the premises, murdered Craig Millar and then gone back again with no one noticing.

And that was before they could come up with anything approaching a motive.

That said, she never would have guessed her best friend’s boyfriend could have got himself into locked houses and murdered four people either. With those memories constantly in the back of her mind, she wouldn’t be ruling anything out, no matter how improbable.

Jessica went to wait in Cole’s office. She didn’t fancy a conversation with the DCI and was slightly surprised to find Cole already back downstairs.

‘That didn’t take long,’ she said.

‘I think he’s busy with some other stuff. Did you sort out the prison?’

‘Yeah. Surprise, surprise, our man is actually there.’

‘Do you reckon it’s just a forensic mess-up?’

‘Probably but it’s not really like them. Maybe this Adam guy is new or something? Either way, while we’re waiting for them to re-check everything, we may as well go have a word with Mr McKenna. If the results
are
correct, we’re either going to have to look at him being out of the prison somehow or someone having access to his blood.’

The fact it was blood not hair that had been found under Craig Millar’s nails complicated the issue. It seemed obvious to Jessica that hairs could be obtained easier than blood, so if someone was trying to fix up Donald McKenna they were going about it the hard way.

‘Was it Strangeways Craig Millar was on remand at?’ Cole asked.

‘Yes. He and McKenna would have been in at the same time but it’s a massive place. It doesn’t mean they knew each other.’

‘True but it is a connection.’

Jessica knew he was right but it was circumstantial at best. She printed herself off a hard copy of the prisoner’s criminal record to go over as Cole drove to the prison. She wasn’t a big fan of his careful style of driving and figured a bit of not-so-light reading would keep her occupied.

The jail was based just outside of the centre of the city, only a few hundred yards away from the main indoor arena where gigs, boxing matches and comedy shows took place. In a recently designed city, its location would be odd given it was so central but it was nearly a century and a half old and, at least in terms of where it was placed, belonged to another age.

McKenna’s record was extensive and perhaps the only thing he had going for him was that he hadn’t actually murdered anyone yet – or at least hadn’t been convicted of anything quite that serious. He did have quite the record though. He was fifty-two years old and had spent almost twenty years of his life in prison for various offences. The crime he was currently residing at Her Majesty’s pleasure for was an armed robbery four years ago. He and another career criminal had held up a post office with sawn-off shotguns and escaped with a few thousand pounds. The money had been tracked back to them after they started spending it and both had been given life sentences. From reading his record it seemed pretty clear he was a thug but he didn’t seem like a criminal mastermind to Jessica.

She gave Cole the rundown as he drove. ‘What else has he got?’ the inspector asked.

‘Burglary when he was a teenager, a couple of serious assaults, threatening behaviour, a few drunk and disorderlies. Some thefts and a few other bits and pieces.’

‘No drugs?’

‘Surprisingly not.’

They parked at the prison and made their way into the front office where they would be frisked and have to go through the metal detectors. The man working in the area seemed overly keen to make friends. He introduced himself as Dennis and shook both of their hands. The name strip on his jumper read ‘Doherty’.

‘The governor is coming down to take you through,’ he said, indicating some seats. ‘You can sit there. He should only be a few minutes.’

Jessica thought Dennis Doherty was a slightly odd man. He had a scar across the left side of his face running from his jaw to his ear but it wasn’t that which made him stand out. She couldn’t quite place it. It wasn’t that she regularly hung around prisons but, from her experience, a lot of the people who worked in places like this were overly officious and distant for obvious reasons. Dennis checked their credentials, as would have been expected, but then sat next to them and made small talk.

He was the person who had taken Jessica’s call that morning and apologised for not passing her on quicker. ‘I couldn’t really understand what you were asking,’ he said.

‘No worries,’ Jessica replied, trying not to get into a conversation with him.

The phone rang at the other end of reception and Dennis went back to take the call.

‘I reckon you’ve got an admirer there,’ Cole said with a smile, nodding towards the man’s back.

Jessica shook her head. ‘Blimey, it’s all downhill from here if that’s the case. He’s old enough to be my dad.’ She figured it really was time to re-evaluate her life if the harmless flirting of an older man was enough to get the alarm bells ringing. In the old days, she’d have told him where to go.

Soon enough a man she assumed was the governor breezed in through the back door. Dennis had turned around at the sound of the door but the entrant nodded to him, making his way straight towards Jessica and Cole.

They both stood up to acknowledge him and he offered his hand for them to shake. ‘Good afternoon. I’m Christopher Gallagher, the governor here.’

He was a thick-set man somewhere around six feet tall with white swept-back hair and a tightly cropped beard of the same colour. He looked as if he were approaching retirement age and was wearing a light grey suit that was struggling to hold in his bulging stomach. They both shook his hand and DI Cole introduced the pair of them.

‘I’m not sure I’m clear why you’re here,’ the governor said. ‘I know you want to talk to one of our inmates in relation to a current investigation…’ He was obviously fishing for information. They weren’t obliged to tell him any more than that. Given the bizarre nature of the crime, they had agreed that no other details should be given to him at that point. They couldn’t really storm into the prison accusing the governor of being negligent in letting a prisoner escape, especially when the inmate was apparently sitting in his cell.

‘That’s correct,’ said Cole, without elaborating any further.

The governor waited for a few moments, obviously wanting to be told more but it was pretty clear DI Cole wasn’t going to give him extra details. There was an awkward silence broken by the clearly peeved prison boss. ‘Right, well, if you want to follow me this way…’

HMP Manchester had been almost completely rebuilt and renamed after a riot in 1990. The locals still called it Strangeways but the older Victorian buildings had either been knocked down as part of the construction or seriously damaged by fire during the protests. Jessica had visited a few prisons and, even though this was for the more serious offenders, its conditions were far better than some of the other places she had seen.

Most prisons had their own interview rooms for situations exactly like this. Sometimes officers would speak to prisoners in the regular visiting room but that only occurred if they weren’t suspected directly of a new crime. The governor brought them across a yard and through lots of sets of locking doors. He didn’t say a word throughout the entire journey, leading them down a host of identical-looking murky yellow corridors and up a flight of steel stairs before stopping outside a heavy metal door and holding it open for them. ‘We’ve set some recording equipment up for you.’

It was hard to label Donald McKenna as a full suspect given the fact he was incarcerated. But, assuming the second test came back as the first had done, his DNA
had
been found at a murder scene, which would take some explaining. As such, he would be cautioned and the interview would have to be recorded.

The two officers entered the room. ‘This is nicer than our place,’ Jessica said after the governor had left them alone, referring to Longsight station’s own interview room.

Cole started making sure the recording equipment was working correctly. The recording decks seemed to be newer and more reliable than the equipment they had back at the station.

The inspector finished getting things ready and they both sat in silence waiting for their prisoner to arrive. A few minutes later, the door opened again and a man in a suit followed by another male in handcuffs entered. Jessica could see prison guards hovering around the door as it was shut behind them.

The suited man introduced himself as Donald McKenna’s solicitor. Jessica vaguely recognised his face but couldn’t place where from. A lot of people’s features from the legal profession’s defence and duty teams blended into one when you saw them so regularly. McKenna was dressed in regular prison attire. He had dark trainers, dark tracksuit bottoms and a sweatshirt which looked as if it were being worn over a T-shirt. Jessica thought he was in pretty decent shape for a man in his fifties. Like most inmates, his dark hair was cut short and he definitely looked younger than he was. He must work out given the way his muscled shoulders were stretching his top.

Jessica was pretty good at judging how a suspect would react in an interview by the way they held themselves when they first sat in front of her. Some would try to be intimidating, especially as she was female. They would lean forwards and glare at her, almost inviting her to make them angry. A lot of the younger ones, the cocky gang members who still thought being arrested was cool, would slouch back in their seat, legs splayed wide and stare at the floor answering ‘no comment’ to every question. Every now and then, you would get someone who was genuinely scared, either because they were innocent or because they were guilty but terrified of what might happen to them. They would often fidget in the seat, looking to their solicitor for advice and talk far too quickly.

But McKenna was seated in a way Jessica had never seen before; he was simply relaxed, as if lounging at home watching television or in his local pub with a pint. His wrists were handcuffed but he had interlinked his fingers and put them on the table between them. He was looking at her but not in an intimidating way, he was smiling. It wasn’t even a menacing gaze; he genuinely seemed pleased to be talking to them. Jessica could deal with aggression and thugs who thought they were big-time but a person being nice was something she wasn’t used to.

Cole formally cautioned the suspect and briefly explained why they were there. The solicitor looked on unbelievingly at the two of them, shaking his head. After her superior had finished speaking, he moved his chair backwards away from the table a few inches.

She never really planned out how she was going to tackle an interview, instead trusting her instincts. Something about Donald McKenna unnerved her though. He was still smiling and had gone from watching Cole speak to looking at her expectantly.

Jessica felt off-guard and ended up asking the one question she hadn’t planned to, the one that made her sound stupid. To compound things, she asked it first and instantly felt ridiculous as soon as the words came out of her mouth. ‘So, Mr McKenna, how did you get out?’

She sensed Cole shuffling nervously slightly behind her but he said nothing. The man’s solicitor instantly started to interrupt but the suspect nodded along, lifting his hands from the table as if to indicate he was happy to answer. ‘It’s okay.’

His solicitor stopped speaking and the prisoner looked directly at Jessica again. He was still smiling but his light blue eyes had no menace in them. ‘Detective, I really have no wish to escape the punishment I have been given. I sinned and I deserve to pay the price for that.’