DS Jessica Daniel series: Locked In/Vigilante/The Woman in Black - Books 1-3 (10 page)

Garry thought of the victim as he wrote. He was excited about finally being in his editor’s good books but didn’t want to let that detract from the empathy he felt. Ray Wilson and
now his boss both seemingly wanted to use the murder almost as a springboard for their own aims. Ray’s were harmless and slightly pathetic but Garry hoped his boss wouldn’t push things
too far. Yes, it was a big story and he was going to be the one to break it, but he didn’t want the fact to be lost that someone had been murdered.

He finished typing and went to find the editor back on the main floor, receiving plenty of odd looks from his colleagues, unsure what he had done to receive such a warm welcome. Tom almost
skipped across the newsroom towards him and they both went back into the office. Garry’s boss sat in front of the computer and read through what had been written. He nodded frequently and
again repeated ‘good, good’ numerous times. When he was done, he turned back to Garry. ‘Top, top work, this, young man. Top work. Need to spice it up a bit in a few places but
this is really well done.’

Garry was nervous by what he meant by ‘spice it up’ but said nothing.

‘I think you’re just about done for the day,’ Tom added. ‘Go get yourself a pint and enjoy the evening. You deserve it. We’ll get this on the website tonight and
then tomorrow your name will be on the front page.’

He was being sent home
early
. Working unpaid overtime was something he had done many times but Garry had never been let go before his shift ended. This really was new ground.

‘I reckon there’ll be a press conference tomorrow and you’ll be right there,’ his editor added. ‘Maybe you can give your little source a call when you get in?
Y’know, see if anything else has happened?’

Garry had no intention of doing that but said he would, picked up his bag and made a beeline for the lift. He moved quickly as he didn’t want to risk his invitation to leave early being
revoked but also because he didn’t want to see the accusing stares from his colleagues as he walked out, wondering why he was suddenly so popular.

They would find out when they saw the front page.

After checking in again with his delighted editor on the Monday morning, Garry had been told he would be going to the press conference over at Longsight mid-afternoon. His
editor told him to ‘ramp up that two-day cock-up angle’.

What he meant was to ask questions about why it had taken two days for the police to successfully find Yvonne’s body after Stephanie Wilson’s phone call. Personally, Garry thought it
was a bit harsh. The police weren’t to know there was a dead body involved and, considering she could have just gone away for a few days, he thought they had done pretty well to act in that
time.

Regardless of his own thoughts, he would ask the question. At least with all the other media present DS Daniel couldn’t shout at him in quite the way she had on the phone the night before.
He found a clean pair of dark trousers and his favourite jacket. He had worn it out a few times after being assured by his friends it made him look interesting. He thought it gave him the air of
some type of philosophical deep thinker.

He made sure he was sitting at the back for the briefing, making notes as other people asked their questions, and spotted DS Daniel on the end. She hadn’t said much, simply sitting and
scowling at the audience in front of her. As he sat waiting to pluck up the courage to put his hand up, he thought she had looked directly at him. Her long almost-blonde hair was swept back out of
her face and he thought she looked kind of cute.

That thought began and ended as he asked his question. He saw her looking straight at him, a half-smile on her face with her eyes telling him one thing clearly: ‘You’re dead meat,
sunshine.’

Jessica wasn’t sure whether she liked Caroline’s new boyfriend. Perhaps she felt that way because the investigation was going nowhere and nobody would have
impressed her given her mood – or maybe it was because she had arrived home from another unproductive day and found him already in their flat?

Their flat was on the ground floor with another one above them which had been empty for a little while. Unlike some in the area, it was an actual apartment and not just a converted house. They
had a small garden at the front but it had been paved over before they moved in and they never did anything in it. As you entered the front door, Jessica’s room was immediately on the left,
while the entrance to the living room was opposite it. Next to her bedroom was Caroline’s, while at the end of the hallway directly opposite the front door was their bathroom. The kitchen was
a separate room, with its door opposite Caroline’s bedroom. The living room was the biggest in the flat but the two bedrooms were fairly equal in size.

It was a week and a half since Yvonne Christensen’s body had been found and Jessica had got precisely nowhere. They had already reached the point where constables from other districts had
been returned to their force while officers at Longsight were being moved on to other cases. It really was a disaster, with the finger of blame pointing squarely at her.

Nothing much had happened in the initial investigation with lead after lead finishing in a dead end. The hotline had come up with nothing, except for members of the public wanting a chat or
thinking their uncle looked a bit like the e-fit. Someone had even phoned up to say the sketch looked like the officer who had been on the news the night before. They were referring to Cole, which
brought plenty of quiet laughs around the station when he wasn’t present. All potential leads had been checked but there was nothing of any substance.

The day after the press conference, the
Herald
had gone to town on the force because of the two-day delay in finding the body. There was a big picture of the victim smiling out from the
front page, with an editorial inside asking why the body had been ‘left to rot’.

‘Nice and tactful for the family,’ Jessica said to Cole when they had seen the paper.

A few days after that, the force had been blasted again, this time for a lack of progress. The byline on both articles had been ‘Garry Ashford’. With the investigation not going
anywhere, Jessica would spend parts of her free time thinking up creative ways to make life miserable for the long-haired, tweed-jacket-wearing pain-in-her-arse.

With murders, in a huge majority of cases the killer was someone who knew the victim. In most of them it was either a family member or someone romantically involved. But anyone they knew of who
apparently fitted that description with Yvonne Christensen had been ruled out. They had looked into everyone from the husband, to his new girlfriend, to the son, to the neighbours and even
Stephanie and Ray Wilson, just in case. They checked her bank accounts and phone records, all of which seemed normal. No one seemed to have a motive for murdering Yvonne and, even if they had
stumbled across a reason, no one – least of all Jessica – had much of an idea how the murder had been pulled off.

With all of that running through her mind, she had driven home in the rain with a clear plan for the evening: take her shoes off and relax in the living room with a bottle of wine.

Jessica really liked her and Caroline’s living room. She found it incredibly cosy and relaxing, perfect after a bad day. There was a deep dark brown fabric sofa that allowed her to sink
into it. She had fallen asleep on it a fair few times in the past. They had a separate reclining seat made of the same coloured fabric but Jessica much preferred the sofa. There was a glass coffee
table in the middle of the seats too, which usually had some selection of celebrity magazines Caroline had bought on it. Jessica pretended she never read them but would often have a flick through
when she was alone.

Between the two of them, they didn’t really watch too much television and hadn’t bothered paying for anything like satellite or cable. Given their jobs, both of them lived pretty
busy lives but Jessica had never been much of a television-watcher in any case.

Caroline had plenty of DVD box sets but Jessica only really watched the news and late-night reruns of trashy morning talk shows. Not that she would have admitted the talk-show watching to her
colleagues, of course. You would lose plenty of credibility if you confessed that one of your hidden pleasures was staying up at night to see what the results of the previous show’s DNA tests
would throw up.

But, after arriving back in her flat, there was a man she didn’t know sitting on their sofa drinking from a can of lager.

‘Er, hello?’ Jessica said as his presence caught her by surprise while she had half-kicked off one of her shoes.

‘Oh, hi . . . is it Jessica? I’m Randall, Caroline’s boyfriend.’

Caroline had re-entered the main room at the sound of the voices. She said she had been changing in her room and added that she hoped Jessica didn’t mind Randall coming over. ‘It was
just that I wanted you both to meet but everyone is always so busy so, in the end, I just invited him over. I hope you don’t mind.’ Caroline explained.

Jessica didn’t mind, well not really, but it would have been nice to have been asked.

As it was they weren’t having a bad evening. Randall was decent-looking – just under six feet tall, with a shaven head and blue eyes. He clearly had a decent physique judging by the
tight fit of his T-shirt and must work out, though his muscles weren’t bulging in a grotesque way. There was some kind of spiky-lettering tattoo visible on the lower half of his right arm but
Jessica couldn’t figure out what it was. He wasn’t really her type; she didn’t go for guys who spent so much time working out and tattoos and piercings had never been too
appealing. He did seem nice and Caroline could barely take her eyes off him.

Although she preferred the sofa for comfort, Jessica had left it to Randall and Caroline to share while she took the recliner. They half-watched some nonsense game show, laughing at the
contestants’ lack of knowledge while Caroline tried to get her best friend and boyfriend to interact with each other. The bottle of wine the two women had shared was certainly helping in that
regard.

‘So, you met over shoes then?’ Jessica said after an hour or so of small talk.

Caroline and Randall looked at each other and giggled then had a mini argument over who should tell the story in full. If it had been anyone other than her best mate – and if they
didn’t look so happy – Jessica would have felt sickened by their show of affection. There was nothing more annoying to her than happy couples.

It was Caroline who spoke. ‘He did such a good job fixing them and they
are
my favourite going-out heels.’

She smiled and squeezed her boyfriend’s hand.

‘Isn’t it just a bit of glue?’ Jessica asked, not meaning the question to sound quite as blunt as it did. She was moderately interested but probably could have phrased the
question better.

Randall laughed. ‘Well, yeah. You just take the names, addresses and phone number if they’re cute, wait until they’re gone, get the old superglue out then charge ’em for
the privilege.’

Jessica assumed it was a bit more complicated than that but laughed along.

‘Wait, you only get the phone numbers if they’re “cute”?’ Caroline asked with mock indignation.

‘I got yours, didn’t I?’

‘Oh yeah, that’s all right then.’

‘At least you’ve got a story for the grandkids anyway,’ Jessica said. ‘Grandma fell over and broke her shoes, while Grandpa fixed them for her.’

‘Whoa. Who said anything about grandkids?’ Caroline laughed.

‘Or kids.’ Randall joined in.

‘And as for getting married . . .’ Caroline added.

They were already finishing each other’s sentences and, despite the public sentiment being a bit too much for her, Jessica was pleased that her friend seemed happy. She could just do with
a lot less of that happiness happening in front of her.

When the giggling had died down and Jessica had poured another glass of wine for each of them, Caroline said to her boyfriend: ‘Did I tell you Jessica works for the police?’

‘Yes. What is that, local?’ he asked.

‘Not too far.’

The conversation fizzled out as Caroline yelped due to Randall tickling her. Jessica went back to half-watching the television. Whatever game show it was they had on seemed to be lasting a
ridiculous length of time, the contestants definitely not getting any cleverer.

‘Are you single?’ Randall asked Jessica during an advert break.

‘Yep.’

‘I’ve got some mates – I could hook you up with someone.’

‘I’m all right, thanks.’

‘Come on, it’d be fun the four of us going out.’

Jessica didn’t feel comfortable with the conversation. ‘Nah, I’m okay. I’m busy at work.’

‘Well, if you change your mind . . .’

‘. . . You’ll be the first person I call.’

Jessica thought she had enough on her plate without complicating things with dates or boyfriends.

A short while after, Randall stood and asked if he could get a glass of water.

‘Lightweight, are we?’ Jessica asked playfully, considering he’d had three cans of lager.

‘I’ve got a bit of a headache coming on.’

‘There are painkillers in the drawer under the sink if you want some?’ Jessica said but Caroline cut in. ‘Oh, he’s allergic to aspirin and things like that.’

Caroline stood up, pushing her boyfriend back to the sofa. ‘I’ll go, you explain.’

Caroline left the room and Jessica said: ‘Sounds nasty?’

Randall made a face as if to indicate ‘sort of’. ‘I’ve kind of got used to it. You live with the headaches and so on. Some people have it really bad, their throats swell
up and within a few minutes they can’t breathe. With me it takes an hour or so.’

Caroline returned and gave her boyfriend a glass of water, which he drank a few mouthfuls from, then put the glass on the coffee table.

‘So what actually happens?’ Jessica asked.

‘It’s not happened in years because I just stay away from most medicines. Back then, my ears would start to ring slightly, then I’d come out in a rash on my arms. It’s
only after an hour or so when the inside of my throat begins to swell. That could stop you breathing and kill you in theory.’