Scarred for Life (17 page)

‘I’ve been on my fair share of buses and trains.’

‘You know what it’s like then.’

‘Yes.’

‘The plan was for me to get the car fixed, then pick her up after yoga.’ He delved into his pocket, taking out his mobile phone and pressing the screen, then tossing it across to Jessica. ‘Look.’

Jessica turned the screen around and read:

Nick: ‘Sorry hun. Car’s still shite. Shall I meet you?’

Grace: ‘Don’t worry babez. I’ll get the bus.’

Jessica stood and passed the phone back to him.

‘That was the last I heard from her,’ Nick said. ‘That stupid heap of shite car . . . we’ve only been married for four months. She was talking about little wee bairns . . .’

Jessica finished getting the rest of the details as Nick chain-drank his way through mugs of tea. Cassie and Grace had gone missing from a similar spot within days of each other.

When they were done, Jessica and Izzy got back into the car ready to head back to the station and swap cars. Their shifts had finished more than an hour ago.

‘I know that look,’ Izzy said from the passenger’s seat.

‘What?’

‘Cogs whirring, hamster wheels turning.’

‘It’s probably nothing.’

‘If you don’t want to trust anyone else at the station, you can tell me.’

Jessica flicked the headlights on and pulled onto the road. ‘It’s not that – I just don’t want to be wrong. Not now; I feel like there are people waiting for me to fail.’

‘All the more reason to run things past me.’

‘You, me and Dave walked along Oldham Road but it’s all blocked off. Did you know that before we went?’

‘No.’

‘Me neither – and you can only see the “road closed” signs when the barriers are already in view.’

‘Okay . . .’

‘So it’s not been well advertised and it’s not well signposted. Let’s assume most people don’t know that the road’s closed, even if they know the area. Cassie lived in Failsworth, Grace in Moston – the areas are right next to each other; they probably live a five- or ten-minute drive apart and they’d take a similar route home.’

‘That’s still a big area for them to go missing from.’

‘I know; too big to have everyone out on the streets checking every small side street they could have cut through. When we were in that area with the roadworks, I thought then that it was where Cassie disappeared from; I had this feeling.’

‘You think Grace was taken from around there too?’

‘Maybe . . . it was something Nick said. Have you ever been out in town late and you’re the last one standing? You’ve only got a few quid left, not enough for a taxi but just enough for the late bus. He called people “window-lickers”, which I nearly laughed at, but it means the people who are catching that last bus home. Most of them are either pissed, high, horny, or all three. Perhaps when Cassie was walking along the road, she thought she’d get the bus. Grace texted Nick to say she was either going to walk or get the bus. She might have started walking and then realised it was too far and that she’d get the bus instead. They’d have both been catching it from the same road.’

Jessica indicated to turn onto the main road but she could sense Izzy figuring it out herself. ‘When we were by those roadworks, there was a cover over the bus-stop sign.’

‘Exactly – and if there were no buses running along that route, who do you think might have been hanging around?’

‘Taxis.’

‘Bingo.’

Izzy didn’t reply for a moment. Jessica thought it was because she was thinking how brilliant her friend was, but the response was far more devastating than that: ‘“
Bingo?
” You’ve been hanging around with Archie for way too long.’

Despite her reservations about Jessica’s choice of words, Izzy did agree that it was something worth looking into. Without making too much of a fuss, she asked one of the night-crew constables who she claimed ‘wasn’t a total dick’ to see what they could come up with.

Jessica arrived home to a smell she didn’t recognise: cleanliness. She went into the living room, where Adam was sitting in his chair with his feet up watching television. ‘What’s going on?’ she asked.

Adam nodded towards the kitchen and smiled. Jessica walked through the hallway into the kitchen to find Bex sitting at the table reading a magazine. She glanced at Jessica and instantly apologised. ‘Sorry, I found this in the other room. You can have it back.’

Jessica batted it away. ‘It’s just some celebrity shite, which means it’s Adam’s.’

‘Oh.’

‘Why does it smell funny in here?’

‘I, er, don’t know . . . I cleaned . . .’

‘You cleaned?’

Bex peered at her feet, cradling her knees into herself again. She was so tiny, arms nearly as thin as the mop handle resting against the wall behind her. ‘Sorry, I wanted to do something to help.’

‘Don’t apologise, it’s just . . .
I’ve
never cleaned in here.’

‘I did the bathroom too.’

‘Whoa!’

‘Sorry . . .’

‘Stop saying sorry. It’s a good thing . . . well, sort of. You don’t have to clean up after us.’

‘I thought because you were both working hard and I was sitting around, that I should do something to help.’

Jessica sat on the chair next to her and rested a hand on the girl’s knee. ‘It was very kind of you. I hope you spent the day looking after yourself, too.’

That grin spread across Bex’s face again. ‘I had a bath.’

‘Did you enjoy it?’

‘I don’t think I’ve ever had a bath before. It was amazing.’

‘Good.’

The smile shrank to its minimum once more. ‘I don’t want to be a burden.’

‘You’re not.’

‘Adam . . . ?’

‘He’s happy for you to be here.’

‘He told me off for cleaning.’

‘That’s because he’s an old woman who likes to do it himself.’ They swapped grins as Bex reached across the table and picked up a letter. ‘This came for you, by the way.’

The only items of mail Jessica usually got were bills (Adam’s), junk (the bin’s), bank statements (Adam’s), or vouchers for the booze shop around the corner (Jessica’s).

Jessica took the letter but it was different from the type of thing that generally came through the door – the envelope was padded but thin. On the front, her first name was written in block capital letters but there was no last name and no address – this had been hand-delivered.

She was about to flip it over to open it when she noticed a small, sketched symbol in the top-right corner. It was a fork shape, with three prongs: one curling to the left, one straight up, one curling to the right. Holding them together was a loop at the bottom, making it look like some sort of sheaf. Jessica tried to place it, but wasn’t sure if she had ever seen it before.

Jessica could already feel the tension beginning to slink along the top of her neck as she ran a finger under the flap and opened it. Reaching in, she pulled out a single sheet of thin card with five words written on it in the same handwriting that had put her name on the envelope. Jessica read them three times then returned the card to the envelope before Bex asked about it. She wouldn’t be forgetting them any time soon though because, assuming the words referred to Holden, they were telling her what she already knew.

‘You’ve got the wrong man.’

19

Jessica’s first thought was to hand in the envelope and note – but that would have been what she’d have done when she thought she could trust people around the station. She spent a partially sleepless night wondering who else the words could relate to if it wasn’t Holden, but there was no one. She already believed that someone, somewhere, was trying to put pressure on them to make sure Damon’s death was pinned on Holden and now this note seemed to confirm that. Not only was there a person trying to make that happen, there was now somebody else trying to make sure that she was the one who stopped it.

Somebody who knew where she lived.

In the end, her Wednesday morning didn’t begin in the way she thought it would – it began in the way her Tuesday morning had: supermarket cafe, pensioners, single mums, bored-looking waitresses, orange juice, sausages in a bap, brown sauce, newspaper on the table and Garry Bloody Ashford. This time it was at his request.

Jessica peered around at the surroundings, wondering if this was what her life had come down to: the faint smell of coffee and the wafting aroma of fried egg, together with intermittent public address announcements for Janice to go to the front of the store.

‘So you couldn’t quite get enough of me,’ Jessica said, watching Garry cover his chin in brown sauce again. There really was no elegant way to eat a sausage sandwich. Still, if you were the one with the sausage sandwich then you were winning anyway.

Garry rolled his eyes. ‘Yes, I’m here to declare my undying love for you and this is the best place I could come up with.’

‘What do you really want?’

Garry wiped his lips and nodded at the paper in front of him, which showed a photograph of Holden being led into court the previous afternoon. As she had predicted, he hadn’t been given bail.

Jessica glanced across the page and shrugged. ‘Didn’t we talk about this yesterday?’

Garry shook his head. ‘This wasn’t supposed to happen. When the story came in on the wires that you’d found that second girl’s body out at Little Hurst, we started pulling things together about the fact two young women’s bodies had been found a few days apart. No one at your end was giving details but we got a camera down there and were trying to get a name.’

‘We couldn’t have told you before we told the victim’s family.’

‘I know; that’s not the issue. The point is that we’d cobbled something together anyway. Admittedly it mainly went over the first body find – Cassie Edmonds’ – but we had something. It was all lined up ready for the front page when the editor was called out of conference. Usually, he refuses to take calls when we’re in those meetings but his secretary told him it was important and he left the room. A few minutes later, he came back and everything had changed. Suddenly, he was saying we didn’t have enough to run the young-women-being-killed story properly and that we’d lead on Holden. Within a few minutes, your press office was on giving us every tiny detail we might possibly want about the decision to charge Holden Wyatt. We’d normally have to coax each morsel out, but we were given it all on a plate.’

‘So your main story was changed?’

‘Yes – it was the same on the radio and TV this morning. They might not have had the same call but the fact you were so cooperative with details for Holden meant that story was always going to be the easiest to run.’

‘Who’s your editor?’

‘You won’t know him. He’s been in place for about a year. The old one was making too much money, so the parent company made him redundant and parachuted in some guy from down south. He doesn’t know the area but no one in management really cares about that, as long as the paper comes out and the ads get sold.’

‘Do you know who called him?’

‘No. The old editor would do things like that all the time – decide what he wanted, then blow his top at anyone that disagreed – it’s just the way he was. But the new bloke is different. We all know he’s the management’s guy, there to make a few cuts. He usually leaves the news order to those of us who’ve been there a while and know the area. He doesn’t get angry because he’s got nothing to be angry about. Half the time, he’s itching to get back outside and have another fag. Yesterday was different, though. When he said we should change the order, one of the lads asked if he was sure and he totally lost it. He was going on about people questioning his authority, asking if unemployment was an attractive prospect and so on. Everyone sat in silence because he’s usually so passive.’

‘What was he like before he took the phone call?’

‘The same as ever; slumped in his seat fiddling with his phone. I thought you were just moaning yesterday but—’

‘“
Moaning
”?’

Garry hid behind the final mouthful of his sandwich. ‘You’re always going on about something.’

‘Justifiably!’

‘Either way, there’s something going on. I’ll see what I can find out and give you a call if I come up with anything.’

‘“
Moaning
”? You’re back on my shit list.’

At the station, results were beginning to come in from Grace Savage’s body but it was a similar story to everything that had been found on Cassie Edmonds’. Neither had been sexually assaulted, both had broken ribs from the beating their upper torsos had taken, and both had had a finger and part of an ear cut off. The rain had washed away much of the evidence at both scenes, with the fingertip search a waste of time too. They hadn’t been able to find anything to link the two victims, other than their age and the fact they lived in roughly similar areas.

As Jessica waded through her overnight emails and memos, Izzy knocked and entered her office with a sheaf of printouts. ‘This is your list of registered black cab drivers,’ she said.

‘What about people who drive pre-booked taxis?’

‘Shite, I didn’t think of that. I’ll get someone to do it. Everyone’s got to be registered with the city council, so it’s not too hard to pull it all together.’

‘Get Archie to contact all the companies and find out who was on duty that night. I know a driver could’ve gone out anyway but it’ll give us somewhere to start – and let’s start running the plates through ANPR. Even if we haven’t got CCTV, we’ve got enough number-plate cameras along the main road to look for a match from one database to the other.’

Izzy nodded and headed out of Jessica’s office just as DCI Cole stormed in, making the door bang against the frame. Jessica was so taken by surprise that she bashed her knee against her desk, sending a cardboard folder flying off the edge, which created a domino effect of things collapsing around the floor. Her office really was a tip.

Cole had one hand on his hip, the other clinging onto a printout. ‘What’s going on with Holden Wyatt?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You’re supposed to be one of my inspectors and you don’t know?’

‘I didn’t even know you’d charged him! You can’t expect me to know every aspect of a case if you tell me one day you’re charging him, then you hold off and continue questioning him about something else, then he ends up getting charged for the first thing. I went to see Grace Savage’s husband last night and we’re trying to sort a possible link to taxi drivers this morning. I—’