DS Jessica Daniel series: Locked In/Vigilante/The Woman in Black - Books 1-3 (12 page)

‘I’m pretty busy at the moment,’ she said.

‘Just fifteen minutes. Tomorrow afternoon? There’s a coffee-shop place near my office.’

‘Right, whatever. Text me the address.’

‘Great. I’ll do it now.’

Before he could end the call, Jessica thought of one final thing. ‘Are you still there?’

‘Yes.’

‘Good. Don’t wear the jacket.’

Jessica hung up.

There wasn’t much coverage in the following day’s papers – it had probably been too late for their deadlines. The morning news broadcasts were running with
the line fed to them by last night’s release and everyone seemed fairly happy that a lid had been kept on the details. Jessica went to see Aylesbury in the morning to give him a brief rundown
on her conversation with Garry Ashford the night before. She didn’t really want to be part of an internal investigation so thought it was best to tell him she had agreed to meet with the
journalist later on that day. The DCI pointed out that, considering there were no test results back from the scene and they had been unable to speak to Sandra Prince, anything in the media about
the murders being linked could cause a panic.

‘They’ve already got us looking like blundering incompetents. What with this and the shambles of a court case going on, we’re in everyone’s sights at the
moment.’

A ‘shambles’ was certainly one way to describe how the case surrounding Harry’s stabbing was proceeding. After Harry’s no-show on the first day, the prosecution had asked
for an adjournment based on ‘illness’. Peter Hunt for the defence had vigorously opposed the request but, given the jury had yet to be selected, the judge had reluctantly delayed the
case for the rest of the week. Jessica had tried calling Harry but, as usual, there was no answer. Rumours were flying around the station that he would refuse to give evidence and the case would
fall apart. With the Christensen investigation going nowhere either, it was a tense time.

The case had begun the week after and Harry had been present each day. After the jury selection and opening argument, it was his turn in the witness box today. Jessica was not allowed to attend
because she was a witness and was relying on the desk sergeant – who seemed to know everything that was going on – and the television news.

‘What about whoever’s leaking this stuff to Ashford?’ Jessica asked.

Aylesbury looked at her as if to say, ‘I’m not convinced it isn’t you’. He didn’t follow it up, instead saying: ‘For now things are fine but if anything else
gets out it will become a matter for the Internal boys.’

The station was buzzing that morning. There was nothing like a body turning up to get everyone moving. Some people would be inspired to find the killer, others by wanting to do
something good to progress their own career. Most officers fell somewhere in the middle. A photo of Martin Prince had joined Yvonne’s on the incident room’s whiteboard to keep
everyone’s mind focused, while the morning’s briefing had gone on much the same lines as what Aylesbury had told her in his office.

He reminded everyone of the need to keep things in-house then Jessica talked the floor through what they knew. Jonathan Prince’s alibi had been checked and confirmed and, even though
Sandra Prince was still in hospital, it had been verified she had been in work the previous day too. Test results should be coming back later that day but, for now, everyone would operate under the
assumption the murder had been carried out in the same way, probably by the same person, as that of Yvonne Christensen. A uniformed officer had been placed at the hospital with Mrs Prince and
Jessica would be told when it was fine to interview her. Everyone was very careful not to mention the phrase ‘serial killer’. Until it was actually confirmed, those were dirty
words.

A phone number had been given out to all media the previous evening and officers were again needed to take calls. Some uniforms were going door-to-door in the area where Martin Prince had lived
and another sub-team had been given the job of trying to link the two victims. It was a possibility they had been killed at random but far more likely they had something in common that, if
discovered, could lead to a person who might want to murder the pair of them. The first thing they would do would be to contact Eric Christensen and ask him if he actually knew Martin Prince. It
was probably too much to ask for but sometimes you overlooked the obvious.

‘Find the link, we find the killer,’ Jessica told the assembled team.

To say Garry Ashford was nervous about his meeting with DS Daniel was an understatement. One of the first things you were taught as a journalist was to protect your source, so
there was no way he would reveal who had given him information about the killer. As for their conversation on the phone the previous evening, he wasn’t sure whether she actually thought he
was a suspect. If she really did think it was him, she would surely have him arrested so presumably she was just messing?

For now, he hadn’t told his editor that he had any extra information about the second killing. The basics had been released to the media and his boss had asked him what else he knew,
telling him to get back onto his contact and get the full story. He promised he would and had half told the truth when he said he would be meeting the detective sergeant to talk about the case. He
was
meeting her, of course, but only to confirm the information he already knew was true.

Since his boss’s editorial criticising the police the previous week, using Garry’s information and byline, he had been a lot more tentative about what information he gave up. He had
somehow managed to walk the line of staying in his editor’s good books while also feeling as if he hadn’t compromised his ethics. It wasn’t that he necessarily had a problem with
breaking any of the police’s embargoes or revealing information they hadn’t released but he did feel uncomfortable with how it was being used to bash them in a way that gave little
thought to the victims.

He was sitting in a small cafe around the corner from the newspaper’s office in the centre of the city. It was an old-fashioned place that looked drastically out of sync surrounded by
newly built or renovated glass-fronted buildings. He didn’t know but it looked as if it had been there for centuries. It had character and smelled of exotic tea in a way only old cafes could.
There were only half-a-dozen heavy round metal tables on the inside, with matching metal chairs that screeched every time they were moved. A couple of tables were also placed on the pavement
outside just in case the sun came out. It was where Garry went for lunch a couple of times a week, attracted by its cheap prices and good-looking waitresses. He didn’t know if the
cafe’s manager hired based on looks but it certainly seemed like it.

He ordered a cappuccino and told the blonde server he was waiting for a friend. He had just worn a regular coat over his shirt after the fashion advice he had received the night before. DS
Daniel was five minutes late so he checked his phone to see if she had called or sent him a message of explanation. She hadn’t but, as he looked back up, he saw her coming through the door
with her best scowl on. She spotted him instantly and made her way over to sit opposite.

The waitress made a move as if to come over to their table but the officer gave her a look that quite clearly advised her not to.

‘Hello,’ Garry said as she sat down.

‘Right, I’m here. What do you want?’

DS Daniel looked a little windswept; her long hair had clearly been blown around and she fiddled with it, trying to move it out of her face. For the first time Garry actually noticed her eyes.
They were kind of half green, half brown. He liked them but not the way they were looking at him.

‘I just wanted to check some things with you.’

‘Go on.’

He flicked through his notebook and read from it without looking up. ‘I’ve been told that the body you found last night was killed by the same person who killed Yvonne Christensen.
Not only that but both bodies were found in houses that were locked and that you have no idea how the murderer either got in or back out again.’

DS Daniel looked down and took a deep breath then looked back at him. Her expression had changed. She no longer looked angry, just weary. ‘Look, I’m not going to ask you who your
source is but you can’t print this stuff. We don’t know if everything you just said is true. People have died. What we want is help finding whoever did it, not sensational headlines
that are going to make people panic.’

Garry knew where she was coming from. He agreed with her to some degree but he was a journalist after all. Just because he had been given some information unofficially, he didn’t see why
it couldn’t be used as long as it was done responsibly. ‘I didn’t write those headlines, my editor did, but you can’t expect me just to sit on information when I get it. I
have a job to do too.’

‘That might be true . . .’ DS Daniel tailed off. ‘Right, print what you have but if I see the words “serial killer” anywhere in the article . . .’ She tailed
off again but the implication was clear.

‘I’ll do what I can but the editor writes the headlines and edits what I write. It’s up to him.’

‘Fine.’

‘So can I quote you?’

‘Don’t push your luck. I don’t trust anyone that can’t spell their own name properly.’

‘Huh?’

‘Garry has one “r”, you moron.’

Jessica was sitting on a bus that would take her almost the whole way back to the station. It would leave her with a five-minute walk but she didn’t mind that. She
hadn’t fancied driving into the centre for her talk with the journalist. It was always a nightmare to park and she hadn’t planned on spending too long with him.

She was actually quite pleased with the way her meeting had gone. She believed Garry when he said it was his editor who had written the stories up to have a go at the force. When Harry used to
take her out, he would speak about the value of journalists. ‘Just be careful which ones you trust,’ he told her. ‘Some of them would screw their own mothers over if it made the
front page.’ She was a pretty decent judge of character and Garry seemed all right. He actually seemed to care, which was always a good start.

She thought having someone she could trust in the media could be key to finding the link between Yvonne Christensen and Martin Prince.

As she wondered about that, the time the journey was taking was reminding her why she didn’t use public transport very often. In terms of distance, it wasn’t too far back to the
station but the time really added up when the bus waited at every single stop. There was some guy chatting far too loudly on his phone in the seat in front of her, with three teenagers listening to
some dreadful dance music through the speaker of one of their phones at the back. Near the front there was a baby strapped into a pushchair crying its eyes out while its mother chatted to her
friend in the seat next to her. It was just noise, noise, noise.

She closed her eyes for a moment but couldn’t blank any of it out. As she looked towards the rear of the bus, she saw one of the youngsters had just lit a cigarette. She sighed and
wondered whether she could be bothered with it.

She took a deep breath. ‘Oi,’ she snapped at them, pointing at the no smoking sign on the window next to them. They were about three rows behind her.

‘What?’ the one with the cigarette said, taking his first drag.

‘Put it out.’ By now most of the other passengers were looking at her.

‘Why? What the fuck are you going to do about it?’

This was all she needed. Jessica reached into her inside pocket and pulled out her police identification card, getting up from her seat and walking towards them. She hoped the bus wouldn’t
stop suddenly or she would stumble and look a right fool. She showed them her credentials, perching on the seat closest to them. ‘Just put it out and stop being dicks.’

‘You can’t talk to us like that,’ one of the non-smokers said.

‘And you can’t smoke on a bus, so put it out and we’ll forget it happened, right?’

The kid with the cigarette looked as if he was weighing up his options but eventually stubbed it out on the floor.

‘And watch your mouth in future,’ she finished, putting her identification away and walking back to her original seat. ‘Next time I’ll drive,’ she mumbled under her
breath.

Jessica would not have been in such a hurry to get back to the station if she had known the news that was waiting for her. Firstly the desk sergeant pulled her to one side to
update her about Harry’s court case. She didn’t know who the officer’s source was at the Crown Court but whoever it was must have had a front-row seat.

Harry had been called to give evidence that morning but things hadn’t gone well. Apparently, he had responded almost entirely with one-and two-word answers to the lawyer prosecuting and
only shown any animation when Peter Hunt had begun cross-examination. Before the judge had stepped in, Harry had called Hunt ‘scum’ and a ‘parasite’. He had eventually
responded to the questions but, with the jury present for everything, the damage had been done. If he couldn’t control himself in a courtroom, then why would they think he could control
himself in a pub? Jessica felt so sorry for him. She so wanted to help in the way he had helped her but you couldn’t do that if the other person wasn’t willing to engage. She decided
she would try to call him again that night. He probably wouldn’t answer but she didn’t want to abandon him.

As soon as she had finished at the front desk and before she could get back to her office, she ran into Rowlands. ‘What bad news has my spiky-haired harbinger of doom got for me today
then?’ she asked.

‘Funny you should say that . . .’

‘Go on.’

‘Sandra Prince. Her doctor won’t let us speak to her for at least another twenty-four hours. He says she’s not ready for it yet.’

‘Great. Anything else?’

‘We spoke to Eric Christensen. He says he’s never heard of anyone called Prince. We showed him pictures of all three family members and he doesn’t know any of them.’