DS Jessica Daniel series: Locked In/Vigilante/The Woman in Black - Books 1-3 (110 page)

‘Some garage not that far away.’ The sergeant wrote out the address for Jessica. She first went to check on Dave and Izzy, who were working their way through a few names that had
been put forward that morning but, as yet, no one who had been suggested matched ‘their’ Sam.

Jessica left them to it and drove herself to the site where Christine’s body had apparently been found. She was grateful it hadn’t happened a day earlier, else there was no way she
would have had any coverage to help find Sam. As she neared the location, Jessica could tell someone had said something they shouldn’t. A helicopter belonging to a news station was hovering
overhead while vans with enormous satellite dishes were parked nearby, meaning some one had tipped the media off. Jessica shoved her way through a small crowd that had gathered, ignoring questions
being shouted at her by the waiting journalists.

The garage was only a ten-minute journey from their station, the type of place that looked as if it had been there for years and was easy to ignore. A sign at the front promised cheap MOT prices
with a wide driveway leading towards the working area. The public and media were being penned back at the end of the drive as Jessica walked quickly towards where she could see other police
officers in a courtyard, as well as a couple of the Scene of Crime team standing around.

‘What are you doing here?’ Cole asked as Jessica strode towards him.

Jessica shrugged. ‘I don’t know. My team are handling the calls back at the station so I thought I’d come take a look. Have you really found her body?’

The chief inspector nodded towards a set of large doors ahead of them that were closed. ‘Probably. It looks as if it could be her but we don’t know for sure. The body is a little
decomposed and was being stored in the well underneath where they work on the cars.’

Jessica could tell from the placement back and away from the main road that it would be easy to conceal things at the garage. ‘Do you mean the pit things that mechanics stand in and then
work above them? How were they keeping her down there, they’re not exactly deep? Or was it just her body they had dumped?’

‘We don’t know,’ Cole replied. ‘You’re right about it not being big enough to leave someone, it’s not like a mine shaft or anything, it’s an area
roughly five feet deep. She could have climbed out. It’s a mess of oil and diesel so the forensic boys aren’t happy. We’re assuming it’s where her body was
dumped.’

‘How did you find it?’

‘That red van. Someone scrapped a red former Royal Mail van down in the Midlands on Saturday. The guy who was working handed over the money and so on but the scrapyard’s owner
noticed the transaction this morning and luckily he watches the news. Because you need the DVLA documents, it would be pretty hard to fake an address. He phoned us, gave us this place and, when we
came around earlier, there was the body.’

‘Has anyone been arrested?’

‘No, we’re looking for the guy who runs this place but he’s not here and not at his house. We reckon he might have seen the police cars this morning and made a run for it. We
know who he is though so I don’t reckon he’ll be able to hide out for long. Any luck with your woman?’

Jessica hadn’t been thinking about her case. ‘Not yet. We’d have been screwed if this had happened a day earlier. At least we made the news this morning. Has anyone told George
Johnson we might have found his wife?’

Cole pointed at the helicopter overhead. ‘Bit hard to keep it from him. He’s in London but someone’s gone to see him.’

‘Do we have anything on him?’

The chief inspector stopped looking at the closed garage doors, peering towards Jessica. He lowered his voice. ‘Some of his emails showed he was certainly
friendly
with his PA and
there were the regular cash withdrawals but nothing really. All we can do is ask him but we’ve been delaying bringing him in to see if we can connect any more dots. He’s clean though;
he’ll be able to say the emails were harmless flirting and I’m sure he’ll have a reason for the cash. Our best hope is finding the garage owner. If he was acting alone then
we’ll have our man, if not then hopefully he’ll be willing to tell us.’

‘Why are you here?’

‘The super’s on his way so I’m waiting for that. I suspect he’ll say something to the cameras. We’ve got to try to get the garage owner’s photo distributed as
far and wide as possible so it’s going to be one of those days.’

‘You wait all year for a manhunt to come along then two pop up at once.’

Jessica hoped Cole would smile but he was unmoving. He looked as if he was about to say something but his phone rang. Overhead the helicopter moved swiftly away from the area, flying towards the
city centre. Because of the noise, Jessica missed the first part of the conversation but the second was clear enough and, if she was in any doubt, it evaporated when the chief inspector handed her
his phone.

Another hand had been found.

Jessica leant back into her office chair, closing her eyes. She couldn’t remember a busier day than the previous one at Longsight. A hand she assumed belonged to Steven
Povey had been left not far from Piccadilly train station. Jessica arrived there to find the news helicopter overhead and a handful of officers trying to keep the scene fresh while bemused and
annoyed commuters hurried past, oblivious to what was going on.

The appendage had been recovered but tests were going to take a while to confirm the identity because the forensics team were tied up with what everyone assumed was Christine Johnson’s
body. Jessica had managed to contact Steven’s wife, who said she hadn’t seen her husband since the previous morning. She had reported it to her local force but not much had happened
because it was only a little over a day since he disappeared. Jessica didn’t reveal anything specific that she knew but did feel bad about the whole affair. Though Steven had refused
protection because he didn’t want to talk to his partner. Jessica wondered if she could have forced him to accept protective custody but it was unlikely, especially with their lack of
resources.

The hunt for Sam hadn’t got much further than where it had been the previous morning, largely because the discovery of Christine Johnson’s body had overtaken everything, both at the
station and in the media. A few phone calls were coming in relating to the woman in their photograph but nothing that seemed to match their criteria for age and appearance.

If everything happening at the station wasn’t already enough, the company had finally arrived to fix the station’s air-conditioning unit and had been clattering in and out of
reception as confused journalists stood at the front gates wondering what was going on.

Jessica breathed in deeply enjoying the relative quiet and, for the first time in a while, not feeling sweaty in her own office.

‘Jess? You awake?’

She jumped, wondering if she actually had dozed off for a few moments. She certainly hadn’t heard her office door go. Opening her eyes, she saw Izzy standing in between her desk and DS
Cornish’s.

‘I’m just having a rest after a long few days.’

The constable clearly thought Jessica had been asleep for some time. ‘I just wanted to make sure I was fine to get off?’

Jessica looked at the clock above the door and realised she had been sleeping for almost an hour. On most days, it wouldn’t have been possible but with everyone dashing around to find the
garage owner, people hadn’t been bothering her. ‘Of course. I take it nothing came in on the phones to match our Sam?’ she asked.

‘No, but I guess it’s going to be over now, isn’t it?’ Jessica must have had a confused look on her face because the constable followed it up. ‘I mean, that’s
six men from the photo and all of them are either dead or missing.’

It seemed an obvious point but, for whatever reason, Jessica had missed the significance of the find. She was feeling tired after working through the weekend but Izzy was right. Unless they had
missed something major, the six men involved in the assault Steven Povey had described were all accounted for in one way or the other. Barry Newcombe had been killed in a car accident but Jessica
wondered if the other five men’s bodies would ever be found, assuming they were dead.

‘I don’t know what we’re going to do if we can’t find Sam,’ Jessica said. It was an honest statement but not something she would have revealed to many of her
colleagues.

‘She’s bound to show up somewhere.’

‘Maybe, but we’ve only got a picture that’s eleven years old and we can’t get too much attention for that at the moment.’

‘She won’t be able to hide forever though.’

Jessica sighed. ‘Don’t you think it’s a really rough way of doing things? The only thing we’ve got to connect her to the six men in the photo is the say-so of Steven
Povey and he’s disappeared. What if it’s nothing to do with her at all? What if we’re going after someone who’s spent eleven years trying to forget everything and
we’re punishing her for it?’

Izzy paused, thinking it over. ‘Do you think Steven was lying?’

‘No, you saw him; he was genuinely frightened but I wonder if we’ve missed something else.’

‘Like what?’

Jessica shrugged. The truth was she didn’t know. It wasn’t as if they had any other suspects or leads but she felt very uneasy with making assumptions about the woman whose face she
had been responsible for getting in the papers and on the news. ‘I have no idea.’

She had spent the morning going through more CCTV footage. The hand had been left in very similar circumstances to the others. A figure wearing a black hooded gown had dropped it near the train
station in the early hours of the morning. With so many people hurrying past, it had somehow been ignored for almost six hours. Jessica wondered how people could be so oblivious but, as she watched
the footage, it was clear everyone leaving or arriving at the station was in a rush. As before it seemed clear the person knew where the cameras were and, from what Jessica had seen, they had no
clear views of the person. She wondered if it was the sheer amount of time staring at monitors over the past few weeks that was making her feel so tired.

Izzy scratched her chin. ‘What about the woman in black?’

Jessica weighed up the question. ‘Who knows? It could be Sam. Whoever she is knows the area well. Her photo has been in the local papers so you’d assume she would be recognised but
we’ve not had anything so far. Honestly? I just don’t know.’

Another package arrived for Jessica the next day but, once again, she didn’t get to see it before it was taken away by the science team. The previous ones had bothered her but Jessica had
pretty much expected another finger to arrive. If it was Sam, she wondered if the woman knew who she was because of the media reports.

The biggest development of the day again didn’t relate to her case. The garage owner was found hiding in a caravan in a field north of the city. His photo had been everywhere and a member
of the public had called the police after spotting him. He had spent the first twenty-four hours no-commenting but there were hints from his solicitor that he might have information to reveal.
Jessica thought he might have been more willing to speak given the fact he was likely to be charged with murder but people could do strange things when they were either frightened or felt they
could be battling for their life. What had perhaps been telling was that George Johnson hadn’t said anything to the media since his wife’s body had been found. For someone who had been
only too keen to speak beforehand, it really was a turnaround and, from what Jessica could tell, had convinced Cole and Reynolds even further that he was somehow involved.

On the Thursday, Jessica finally got confirmation the hand they’d found belonged to Steven Povey. She’d thought all along that it did but actually getting the test results had her
wondering what might happen next. With the final finger also identified, Jessica debated if things really were now over in terms of finding body parts. It was an odd feeling, thinking a killing
spree had started and ended on her watch.

Also playing on her mind was the fact it was Caroline’s wedding in two days. Jessica had done her best to stay in touch over the past week and gone to the final dress fitting but things
had been so busy it was proving almost impossible to be involved. Caroline seemed to be calm but Jessica felt she was neglecting her friend by not having the time to visit her with the day so
close. Jessica was due to sleep at the bride’s house on the Friday night but hadn’t packed anything to take. She was frequently disorganised but had wanted to get everything ready a day
or two ahead of time.

Jessica was sitting in her office thinking about marriage when her desk phone rang. The noise surprised her and it was almost as if she didn’t know what to do. When she answered, the man
on the other end sounded nervous. He introduced himself as an officer from a force somewhere around Nottingham. He waffled for a little bit but, when he finally got to the point, Jessica was left
worrying whether or not she would be back in time for Caroline’s wedding as there was no doubt she was going to have to travel to see him the next day. A woman named Sam Kellett had handed
herself into her local police station, identifying herself as the person in the holiday photo.

Jessica made an awkward phone call to tell Caroline she was going to be spending the day before her wedding in Nottingham. Jessica assured her friend she would be back to stay
at hers that evening but wasn’t actually certain herself. Caroline took it well – they had known each other for long enough for her friend to realise sometimes the police work took
over. The final thing Caroline said was, ‘Please don’t miss it’.

Because she didn’t want to rely on trains to get her back to Manchester on time, Jessica called Rowlands to ask if he would drive them down to the Midlands the next day. He was still
roaring around in a boy racer-style car but it did at least seem reliable, something her vehicle most certainly was not. Jessica updated Cole with what was happening and was surprised at how much
attention he gave her given the break in the Johnson case. He even offered to go to Nottingham with her but she knew he should probably be at their station with the clock ticking on the garage
owner.