Vigilante (16 page)

It was a picture of Jessica.

EIGHTEEN

Jessica had gone face-to-face with many characters most people would find intimidating but nothing had ever shocked her quite as much as the images Cole was holding up. She wanted to speak but couldn’t even form the words. The pencil drawings were so accurate and it dawned on her she knew exactly which photos they had been copied from.

She looked around the room but couldn’t see what she was looking for, so walked back through to the hallway, opening doors in equally cluttered cupboards and then heading quickly but carefully up the stairs. More junk littered the wooden steps and Jessica could hear Cole behind her. ‘Jess, are you okay?’ In the years she had worked with him, he had called her ‘Jessica’ less than half-a-dozen times but she could never remember him calling her ‘Jess’.

‘Jess?’

She carried on walking to the top and kicked a toy car out of the way as she reached the landing. She didn’t know where she was going but opened the first door in front of her.

‘Whoa,’ she said quietly.

Cole arrived just behind her and put his hand on her shoulder. ‘Are you all ri—’ he started to say then interrupted himself. ‘Whoa.’

Jessica pushed the door all the way open and the pair went inside. In complete contrast to the rest of the house, the room was immaculate. There was a new clean cream carpet on the floor and the only smell was the faint odour of paint. The room was decorated light brown, the only furniture an easel with a stool and a small table facing it directly in the centre. The new-looking curtains were pulled open, letting light spill in. Her eyes took a few seconds to adjust from the gloom of the rest of the house to the brightness of this room. She looked behind her to make sure there was nothing else there but it was completely empty apart from the items in the middle.

Then she saw what she was looking for.

Jessica walked over to the small table and picked up two folded newspapers from underneath. She held the top corner of one, allowing it to flap open for Cole to see.

‘Remember this?’ she said.

Jessica had been in the news the previous year. On the first occasion she was on the front page of the
Manchester Morning Herald
and they had used an old photo of her taken from the police’s website. On the second, Garry Ashford had written a large profile of her. The main photo for each article was an exact match with the drawings Cole still had in his hand.

She no longer felt intimated, just creeped out. Cole looked at the papers and then the drawings he had. He didn’t say anything at first but his expression said it all.

Jessica responded in the only way she could. If she didn’t try to laugh, there was a good chance she would cry.

‘If he wanted a date, he could have just asked.’

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

The formalities had to be gone through but Graham Hancock’s mouth swab hadn’t matched anything relating to the case they were working on – or anything else on file. The knives had been tested too but there wasn’t even a faint trace of blood on any of them. Given his hoarding of the newspapers there was every chance he could have memorised as many details as he felt necessary.

The truth was no one would know anything other than the fact he was a very talented artist. The likeness of her had been unerringly accurate compared to the photos they were based upon.

In subsequent interviews, which Jessica chose not to sit in on, he insisted he was the vigilante killer but refused to speak to anyone except her. Farraday claimed he always suspected the guy was a ‘loony-bin nutcase’, despite never talking to him but had at least been sympathetic to Jessica and told her to go home for a day.

Aside from knowledge he could have taken from the media, Graham Hancock had no connections to the case whatsoever. He had no criminal record, nothing that linked him forensically and no obvious motive. On advice, they charged him with wasting police time. The maximum sentence would be six months in prison but no one thought he would get that. Cole did try to talk Jessica into applying for a restraining order against the man but she refused. If she ever saw him again, she would want him to approach her, anything that would give her a reason to take matters into her own hands.

Even before his confession, Jessica had been feeling delicate and questioning her own judgement. Everything that happened with him had shaken her more than she was ready to admit. In the old days, she would have put away a couple of bottles of wine with Caroline and got on with things. But Adam’s question was haunting her: did she enjoy the job? She hadn’t answered because she didn’t want to admit what the answer might be.

After Farraday sent her home, Rowlands had tried to cheer her up in his own inimitable style with a text message:

‘Some ppl will do anything to get off work. X’

It made her laugh at least and she messaged him back something suitably insulting. He texted back:

‘Come to the quiz. Will b a laugh. Carrie’s in. X’

Jessica didn’t reply and wasn’t keen to commit to anything. Carrie called to make sure she was all right and offering to take her out for a drink but Jessica wasn’t in the mood. Instead she waited until she knew Adam would be back from the labs and called him.

He answered on the first ring. ‘Jessica?’

‘Yep, call me “Jess” though.’

Despite going out a few days previously, he hadn’t asked what she liked to be called.

‘What’s up?’

He had obviously guessed something had got to her from the tone of her voice. Jessica had always found something attractive about the impersonal nature of a phone call. She had found it easier to tell her parents awkward things over the phone and, aside from with Caroline, could not really remember opening up too much with anyone in any other way. There was some irony at how she had almost demanded Adam be more confident and direct with her, while now she felt the only way she could talk about anything serious with him was if he wasn’t in the room.

Jessica took a deep breath. ‘The answer is, “I don’t think so”.’

‘Answer to what?’

‘You asked if I enjoy the job.’

‘Oh…’

Jessica told him everything, about the case with Randall from a year ago, about the way she and Caroline had drifted apart and then about Graham Hancock and the way the overall case was drifting. He listened to everything.

‘Are you going to be okay? I’d love to come over but…’

Jessica felt better just putting everything into words. ‘It’s fine. Are we going to do something this weekend?’

‘I’ve got to work Saturday.’

‘Sunday?’

‘That sounds good.’

Jessica went to speak but Adam quickly cut in. ‘Oh no. I promised Nan I’d take her to the seaside if it’s dry. I could—’

Jessica interrupted. ‘That sounds good if you’ll have me?’

‘Umm, I don’t…are you sure?’

‘Yeah, you better drive though, I wouldn’t trust my car.’

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

The investigation had again gone nowhere during the rest of the week. The case of Robert Graves had formally been separated from the other four killings and given to DI Cole, with Jessica still trying to connect a jailed man to a case it seemed implausible he was actually involved with. Without Donald McKenna’s name they had no other leads. DCI Farraday had barely left his office but had gone quiet on trying to prove Lee Morgan was corrupt and the media had moved on to other stories.

Jessica spent large parts of the rest of the week insisting she was fine. People’s concern was satisfying in one way but incredibly annoying in another. She tried to keep her focus on the victims and had another phone conversation with Denise Millar to see how the woman was doing. She was coping but, like the police themselves, had been confused by the conflicting coverage in the media. Jessica reassured her as best she could but the hostility towards Farraday certainly increased.

On Sunday morning, Adam picked her up. His car was only marginally newer than hers but certainly bigger. His grandmother, Pat, was already in the front seat but Jessica didn’t mind sitting in the back. The older woman certainly seemed keen on getting to know Jessica. She asked what she did, how old she was, where she came from, what her parents did for a living and everything in between. Everything took twice as long to explain because, as Adam had said, his nan’s hearing wasn’t too great.

Even from their car journey, Jessica could tell the woman was a politically incorrect nightmare. After being introduced to each other, Adam had barely reached the end of Jessica’s road when his grandmother embarrassed him. ‘I thought he was gay all these years,’ she said.

Adam coughed and tried to quieten her but she either didn’t hear him or didn’t care and continued to talk. ‘Not that there’s anything wrong with all of that. You wouldn’t have had it in my day. Well, I guess you probably did but it was all behind closed doors back then. Sometimes you don’t know if they’re boys or girls nowadays, do you? There’s one that works at the local shop. You’re afraid to ask, aren’t you?’

Jessica didn’t really know if you should laugh or be offended but it was clear the woman had no malice.

Adam drove them the two hours or so it took to get to Prestatyn in north Wales. She had never been to the Welsh resort before. It wasn’t the best seaside place she had visited but she had definitely seen worse. Adam parked the car and Jessica helped him take a wheelchair out of the boot. They took it in turns to push Pat along the front. It wasn’t a particularly warm day but at least it was dry. The woman had an opinion on everything from seagulls to local politics to what was clearly her favourite topic of conversation: ‘kids today’.

A car had parked next to Adam’s and three children clambered out of the back seat. His grandmother spent fifteen minutes telling Jessica that when she was that age, she would have walked everywhere. She described two lads playing football on the beach as ‘hooligans’ and thought a young child who dropped an ice lolly was a ‘troublemaker’. Everything was punctuated by her opinion that they would be fine because Jessica was a police officer, as if two lads playing football needed the full force of the law bringing down upon them.

On their stroll down the front, they had been walking behind an older man, likely in his fifties, holding hands with a girl twenty years or so his junior. ‘Do you think that’s his daughter?’ she said plenty loud enough for the couple to hear.

Adam had tried to mumble something about not being sure so, even louder, she asked a second time. ‘Bit odd if it is his daughter,’ she continued. ‘Can’t be his wife or anything. Look at them.’ If they heard, they didn’t react.

Jessica knew she probably shouldn’t but she found Pat quite charming. As they reached the end of the front, Adam went into the public toilets and left Jessica sitting on a bench with his grandmother. He had whispered a ‘sorry, I can’t hold it’ in her ear before dashing inside. When they were sitting together, the older woman reached out a hand towards her. ‘Jessica?’

‘Mrs Compton.’

‘Call me Pat.’

‘Yes, Pat.’

‘I just wanted to say thank you for coming.’ The woman was looking directly at Jessica, the wrinkles in her face and lack of hair betraying her age, even though her eyes were full of youth.

‘It’s not a problem.’

‘He’s a good lad. I keep telling him I can look after myself but he won’t have it.’

‘I think it’s sweet.’

‘Do you know he speaks French? And Spanish or something…?’ Jessica went to say that she did know but didn’t get a chance. ‘…I don’t know where he gets it from. It must be his mother, his dad could barely speak English properly. I don’t know why you need it myself.’ The woman laughed gently to herself.

Jessica knew Adam’s parents had died when he was young. ‘How did they die?’

The woman stopped mid-laugh. Her eyes almost transformed, from showing young enjoyment to pure sadness. ‘Hasn’t he told you?’

‘I never asked.’

‘I think he would tell you if you did.’

Adam came back from the toilets, shaking his hands to get them dry. They walked back the way they came and his grandmother almost instantly returned to the way she had been, complaining and inadvertently making Jessica laugh.

Clouds had started to gather by the time they arrived at the car and the journey back took longer as Adam drove carefully in the rain. Pat slept for a lot of the trip and Adam asked Jessica if she minded him dropping his grandmother back before her. The two of them helped her back inside and made her a cup of tea as she sat in an armchair watching television.

Adam’s house looked as if an old person lived in it. Jessica could tell it hadn’t been redecorated in years but it still had a homeliness to it.

‘Sorry about her,’ Adam said when they were alone in his kitchen.

‘It’s all right, she’s fun. I’m not sure she should take up after-dinner speaking though.’

‘At least she didn’t say anything bad to you. When she was going on about me being gay in the car I thought she was going to ask if you were a bloke in drag.’

‘Christ, I don’t look that bad, do I?’

‘No, of course not, I just meant…’

‘I’m joking, Adam.’

‘Oh right, yeah, sor…of course.’

‘Can I ask you something?’

‘Yeah, no worries.’

‘How did your parents die?’

Adam gulped and stared at her. It clearly wasn’t a question he had been expecting. ‘Um…’

‘You don’t have to tell me.’

‘No, it’s…I don’t really talk about it. People don’t find it easy to deal with…’

‘It’s okay, I don’t need to know.’

Adam turned around and picked up the kettle, pouring hot water into a mug. With his back to her, he started to speak. ‘When I was a baby, my mum got upset a lot. Nowadays people would call it post-natal depression and be able to help her but back then…’ Jessica wanted to say something but her mouth had gone dry. She shivered as a tingle went down her back. ‘…She ended up killing herself when I was two. I don’t even remember her. Then dad, well, I don’t know for sure. He killed himself a few months later. No one wanted to tell me about it but I went back and looked in the papers from the time. I think he just wanted my mum, not me.’