Vigilante (5 page)

It was definitely not the answer Jessica expected and she was aware he hadn’t really addressed the question. The prisoner’s words were clear, his local accent diminished. ‘Can you explain how your blood happened to end up underneath the fingernail of a man who had been stabbed to death?’

‘I’m afraid I cannot.’

‘Where were you three nights ago?’

The inmate could have laughed at her but didn’t. ‘I was in my cell reading until lights out and then I would have been sleeping.’

‘Do you have a cell to yourself?’

‘At the moment, yes.’

If the second set of results came back positive, they would return to have a proper look at the area the prisoner was housed in. For now, they were on a fishing expedition. ‘Do you know a man called Craig Millar? Until very recently he was on remand in this prison.’

‘I’m afraid I don’t have a great memory for names.’

Jessica took a photo from an envelope she had been carrying and slid it across the table. ‘This is the man who was killed. Does his face ring a bell?’

McKenna picked up the image with his cuffed hands and studied it, narrowing his eyes as if to make clear he was concentrating. ‘I don’t believe I know him. We may well have moved in different circles. This is a large establishment.’

Jessica nodded and took the photo back, unsure if she believed him. ‘Do you know anyone who might want to implicate you in a crime?’

He sighed slightly. ‘I’ve wronged many people. I wouldn’t blame any of them for wanting vengeance.’

A thought struck Jessica and she realised she had been a bit slow to understand the significance in the man’s choice of words. ‘Are you religious, Mr McKenna?’

The solicitor went to speak again but the inmate talked over him. ‘I believe the Lord Jesus Christ died to forgive the sins I committed. There isn’t a day that goes by where I don’t regret the things I did and praise God he sent us his son so that I might one day enjoy the gifts of heaven.’

There was a silence after he had spoken. Jessica realised why his demeanour had surprised her. Unlike a lot of criminals, he genuinely was sorry and, more importantly, he wasn’t bitter about being locked up. Religious services were held in prisons and there was a chaplain on offer for people to speak to. Some inmates did ‘find God’ when they were inside and, while there was a possibility McKenna was faking his conversion as prisoners were given benefits for good behaviour, she had a feeling he was being genuine.

Jessica went to ask another question but McKenna spoke before she had a chance. ‘You may ask how a man can walk from an institution such as this but the Lord Jesus walked on water and turned water to wine. If it is His will, a miracle is but the batting of an eyelid.’

FIVE

There hadn’t been much more they could ask after that. Was Donald McKenna implying God had transported him out of prison for some sort of higher calling? Even if he was, Jessica wasn’t entirely sure the Old Testament-style eye-for-an-eye stuff would extend to killing some troublemaker who lived on a Manchester housing estate. There were surely bigger issues in the world that needed addressing first? She thought it was an odd thing to say though. Was McKenna really playing a game with them?

The governor, probably chastened by their refusal to give him much in the way of details, hadn’t returned to talk to them. They had been led back to reception by one of the guards and the prisoner returned to his cell. Jessica tried to walk behind Cole through the front office on their way out in order to not have to engage with Dennis. She feared he would offer her his number or something similar and, even though her superior was a fairly straight guy, he did have a sense of humour when he wanted to. There was no way Jessica could risk something that embarrassing getting around the station.

They were walking to the car when Jessica heard her phone ringing. She wasn’t a technophobe as such but had never really got her head around everything her phone could do. She could use the phone and text messages and the Internet was easy enough but she thought smartphones were just one step towards robots taking over. She took the ringing device out of her pocket and fumbled with the screen before putting it to her ear. The conversation was fairly short and Jessica felt her mood nosedive further.

‘All right?’ Cole asked, clearly noticing her displeasure.

‘The new test results are back. It’s definitely Donald McKenna’s blood that was found.’

For a guy who usually held back his thoughts, even her superior looked annoyed. He sighed. ‘Great. We’re going to have to see the DCI and then come back here later or tomorrow.’

‘Let’s go to Bradford Park first. Best if we know what we’re talking about before we have to plan what we’re going to do next.’

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

The Bradford Park base was in the Clayton area very close to Manchester City’s football stadium. It was an important part of the area’s overall policing strategy and lots of money had been spent updating the facility in recent times. Not only was there a neighbourhood team on-site, which would deal with local enforcement, but there was a large number of administration workers based there too. They were not officers but employees of the police force who would deal with things such as Human Resources. The Serious Crime Division, who dealt with organised crime and terrorist threats, worked from there as well.

The reason for their visit was to talk to the forensic staff who had been dealing with the blood samples taken from Craig Millar. There was a whole section of the building given over to scientists and other laboratory workers. People were trained to analyse everything from fingerprints to a computer’s hard drive. It was very specialist, technical work but did create divisions between the departments. A lot of officers believed they were on the front line doing the serious labour, with television programmes glorifying the work being done from the safety of a lab. On the other hand, plenty of the forensics workers felt constantly under pressure to prioritise jobs for certain departments, while balancing budgets that included private work and, if they were a member of the Scene of Crime team, getting called out at all hours of the day and night. Both groups seemingly felt under-appreciated by the other.

To be fair to the scientists, it probably didn’t help that their Bradford Park base was openly referred to as ‘Geek Corner’ and ‘Virginville’ by certain officers such as Rowlands.

Jessica and Cole were shown through to a waiting area where they were told someone would come to see them. On occasion, officers would be permitted into sterile zones and autopsy rooms but there was no real need at this point. Jessica thought the room they were shown to was actually quite attractive, brightly decorated with a royal-blue carpet. The chairs they were offered were low to the floor but the material was bright red and comfortable. The person who led them through said they would bring some tea without asking if they even wanted one.

It was a far cry from the waiting rooms in their station. Back there, you would be offered a metal and plastic hard-backed seat like the ones you found in a school and the only refreshment on offer would be dodgy-tasting tea from a machine.

Jessica was just getting comfy in the chair, fiddling with her phone, when a man walked through a glass door into the room. He was wearing dark trousers and shoes with a laboratory coat over a shirt. He had shoulder-length black hair and looked as if he hadn’t shaved for a few days. His stubble was dark and Jessica would have guessed he was around her age. As he came through the door, he tripped seemingly over nothing and Jessica giggled.

The poor guy looked embarrassed as he walked across the room towards them.

‘Detectives Cole and Daniel?’ The two officers stood up to shake hands with the man whose face had gone slightly red. ‘I’m Adam Compton. I’m one of the team who did the blood work on the body of Craig Millar.’

The three of them sat around a glass table. Jessica started speaking but they were interrupted by the receptionist returning with mugs of tea, putting them on the table. After she had left, Jessica began. ‘Mr Compton…’

‘Adam.’

‘Sorry, Adam. We just wanted to clarify a few things with you about the testing procedures. Obviously results like this aren’t what we would usually get.’

Adam nodded along in agreement. ‘How can I help you then?’

‘The obvious question is; could the results be wrong?’

Jessica didn’t want to sound as if she were accusing him of making a mistake but, given the fact Donald McKenna was very much behind bars, it was a question that had to be asked. She softened her tone as she spoke.

Adam sounded nervous. ‘That was what we thought at first. My boss wasn’t, erm, happy. He thought I had made an error cross-checking things with the database.’

‘Okay,’ Jessica said. ‘We may as well go back to the start for completeness’ sake. Can you talk us through the whole database procedure…and, er, feel free to talk to us as if we’re complete idiots.’

She knew most of it but hearing it from someone who knew for sure would clarify things. Either way, she didn’t want a stream of technobabble.

Adam’s accent definitely wasn’t local. Even face to face instead of over the phone, she couldn’t place it. ‘What happens is that every time you arrest someone, you take those mouth swabs, don’t you?’ Jessica nodded. ‘Those swabs give us a sort of pattern that is unique to the individual it’s taken from. They are stored by various companies but that pattern is kept in a database that all sorts of agencies have access to.’

‘That’s the National DNA Database, yes?’

‘Yes, the NDNAD.’

‘That sounds like some kind of STD.’ Jessica laughed quietly at her own joke but neither Adam nor Cole joined in and she quickly stifled her giggles into a fake cough.

Adam continued. ‘Say there’s a crime scene where you find hairs or blood or something like that, the people who work at the scene try to get as clean a sample as possible…’

‘How do you mean, “clean”?’

‘For instance, if you touched it with your fingers, you could transfer your own profile onto what you were picking up, which would contaminate it.’

‘Right.’

‘So anyway, assuming the sample is clean we would analyse it to get whatever pattern we could from it. That would then be matched against the victim to see if it belonged to them. If it doesn’t and there’s a chance it could belong to whoever committed the crime, we instead…

‘… check the pattern against the database.’ Jessica said, finishing Adam’s sentence.

The scientist smiled at her. ‘Exactly, yes.’

Jessica thought he seemed a bit awkward, perhaps nervous. He was quite fidgety, almost as if his body constantly wanted to be somewhere else. He started to continue speaking but the receptionist returned, telling him he had a phone call. He apologised and said he would be right back.

Cole picked up his mug of tea and took a big gulp. ‘I think you’ve got another admirer.’

Jessica laughed under her breath. ‘Stop it…’

‘Seriously. The poor guy can barely get his words out.’

‘Maybe it’s you he fancies? Perhaps he swings that way?’

Cole was still laughing as Adam returned, sitting back down. Jessica could see what her superior was talking about now. The scientist would glance up at her but not want to catch her eye, looking back down at the table while he spoke.

Jessica picked up where they left off. ‘I’m guessing that from the blood you found under Craig Millar’s fingernails, the profile of that matched back to Donald McKenna?’

‘Yes.’

‘So what happened then?’

‘Then  I got shouted at for getting things wrong.’

‘Really?’

Adam looked a little embarrassed again. ‘Sort of. Look, mistakes can sometimes be made in labs. If samples haven’t been kept correctly or someone hasn’t followed the procedures or so on, like I said, they can be corrupted.’

‘But they weren’t in this case?’

‘We don’t think so, no. If there’s something that doesn’t seem right, we go all the way back to the original sample and re-test that, rather than rely on the pattern stored in the database. It doesn’t happen very often and usually takes days.’

‘How come you got it so quickly then?’

‘It only takes time because these samples are stored all over the country and it’s only the actual database itself which can be accessed anywhere. Because Mr McKenna was someone local, it turned out we were storing his original swabs.’

‘And it all matches?’

‘Yes.’

Cole spoke. ‘Is there any chance someone else could have the exact same, er, “pattern” that Donald McKenna does?’

‘Theoretically, yes but not really. It’s something like a one-in-a-billion chance of someone else having the same DNA profile. I guess there are six or seven billion people in the world so someone could but even that’s very unlikely.’

Jessica hadn’t checked for anything like birth certificates but had seen on their records that Donald McKenna had no known relatives. She felt she had to ask the question anyway. ‘What about a brother or something like that?’

‘You share half the same genes with your siblings or parents. What would happen then is we would see a partial match. Say for instance someone like Mr McKenna’s brother had done something, we would get that partial match to Mr McKenna himself and know it was someone related to him by the first degree. If it was an uncle, we might get a second-degree match or third for a cousin or something.’

‘It sounds simple.’

‘It’s not.’

‘Okay, so you’re saying it has to be
his
blood then and no one else’s?’

‘There is one other possibility. If you had an identical twin, you would share the same profile. It would have to be identical though, like you came from the same egg. Non-identical twins would show as first-degree matches like a regular brother or sister.’

Jessica looked at Cole, who spoke directly to her. ‘Does he…?’

‘Nothing in the files I saw,’ Jessica said. ‘We’ll have to check the birth records properly when we get back but, if he did have a twin, I can’t believe it wouldn’t be on our system.’

Cole nodded. Jessica looked back to Adam, who had been watching her and quickly moved his gaze as she turned. ‘Okay, are there any other possibilities?’ Jessica asked. ‘Could someone plant evidence or anything like that?’

Adam puffed his cheeks out and blew through his teeth. ‘Maybe but it’s pretty hard. For one, if you had blood from Mr McKenna, you would have to keep it sterile in some way…’

‘… so the blood didn’t get contaminated.’ Jessica finished his sentence again and inwardly kicked herself for doing so. Finishing each other’s thoughts was what old married couples did.

Adam looked a little confused but didn’t react. ‘Exactly. If it wasn’t kept properly, you would contaminate the blood you had taken and it would be useless. But, even if that’s what had been done and you had kept it all clean, you would still be up against it because the crime scene would have to look right.’

Jessica knew exactly what he was talking about but let him continue. ‘Maybe if it was hairs or something like that on a body or at a scene, someone could have placed them in a clever way but it wasn’t hairs we found. There was blood which had mainly dried directly under the nail.’

He moved his hands up in front of his chest to illustrate his point. ‘If someone was trying to stab you, you might try to grab their wrist to stop the blade. If you snatched hard enough, you could break the skin and that’s how you would end up with someone’s blood underneath your fingernails. That’s exactly what it looks like; it’s not as if there was loads of blood but you wouldn’t expect there to be.’

‘In other words, it would be pretty hard to fake getting dried blood under the victim’s nails.’

‘Right. Not impossible but you would have to really know what you were doing.’

Adam risked another look up from the table towards Jessica but looked away when he saw she was still watching him. She noticed he had deep brown eyes, the type which sometimes looked as if there was no separate pupil because they were so dark.

Jessica looked to Cole and widened her eyes as if to ask, ‘Anything else?’

He took the hint and stood, offering his hand for Adam to shake. ‘Thanks very much for your help, Mr Compton.’ Jessica shook his hand too.

‘Can I, er…do you mind if I give you my phone number?’ Adam had clearly asked Jessica, not Cole. ‘Just in case, y’know… if you want to check anything else or whatever? You don’t have to…’

Jessica pulled her own mobile phone out and typed his details into it, ignoring the knowing smile she knew Cole would be giving her.

‘You already gave me your number, so I can text you if need be?’

Jessica had forgotten she had given Adam her number over the phone. Technically it had been for professional purposes but she guessed the ‘need be’ could end up being some sort of invitation for a pint or something. Given the guy’s nervous behaviour, she couldn’t imagine he had ever asked a girl out in person.