DS Jessica Daniel series: Locked In/Vigilante/The Woman in Black - Books 1-3 (13 page)

‘Has anyone come up with any other link?’

‘Nope and door-to-door haven’t got anything either.’

‘Phone lines?’

‘Got a few things to check out but probably not.’

‘Are forensics back yet?’

‘Just the basics. It looks like it’s some kind of steel rope again. It’s all on your desk but cause of death and the weapon seem to be the same as before. All the blood matches
Martin Prince and, for the moment, they’ve not got anything else.’

Jessica sighed. ‘Right. Do you actually have any good news?’

Rowlands beamed at her. ‘Tomorrow night I’m off out with that new girl uniform have hired.’

Jessica rolled her eyes. ‘You’re a dick.’

As Jessica looked through the paper the next morning, she thought the coverage could have been worse. Admittedly not
that
much worse but definitely worse. Once again,
all the other papers and TV broadcasts had stuck to the information given out by the press department. She knew the
Herald
was going to print the information Garry Ashford had – she
had even told him to write it. In fairness, the phrase ‘serial killer’ wasn’t present at all in that morning’s front-page story. The problem was the headline: ‘HOUDINI
STRANGLER’ in giant capital letters. If that didn’t get members of the public panicking, then the article explaining how ‘Houdini’ was breaking into people’s locked
houses, murdering apparent strangers and getting back out again completely undetected certainly would.

The officer manning the front desk that morning told her they had already had two dozen phone calls from worried members of the public and he didn’t even need to say where her first stop
of the morning would be. She headed straight up the stairs towards Aylesbury’s office. As she walked past the window, she could see Cole already there with Reynolds and a man and woman she
didn’t recognise dressed in suits. She could make a good guess at who they were.

When you became a police officer you were fully aware there would be plenty of people who didn’t like you. In uniform if all you got was the ‘oink’ noises and the odd swear
word then you had got off quite lightly. Over the course of a career most officers would be spat at or assaulted in some way or another. Being disliked by certain sections of the public was a given
– but if you wanted to be
really
hated then you joined the Internal Investigations department. Not only were you disliked by the public for being a police officer, you were also
hated by other officers for investigating your own.

Each police force in the country had a set number of officers who had moved from regular duty into the Internal division. The reasons, of course, were to work against corrupt officers. Everyone
had heard the stories of the ‘old days’ where certain members of the force would be paid by various criminals to turn a blind eye to the very acts they were supposed to be preventing.
Jessica was sure some of those tales were exaggerated or possibly even based on television shows and movies, rather than fact. Certainly she had never come across any type of double-dealing in her
time. Some officers even got a bit edgy if they were offered a free cup of coffee just in case.

Almost everyone in the force would be against those types of practices but changing sides and investigating your own was not a popular way of showing it. In the same way a grass would be
ostracised in the criminal world, the Internal Investigators were shunned by a lot of officers.

Leaking information to the media was not as serious as taking money to turn a blind eye of course but, when it affected investigations, it was still treated accordingly. If that information
caused a public panic that just made things worse.

Jessica entered Aylesbury’s already pretty full office. The room wasn’t massive, with a large desk that had a computer and some photographs on top. On the walls were various
commendation certificates and the like. The DCI was sitting on his side of the desk with Cole and the two strangers on the other side. Reynolds was standing and, as there were no seats left,
Jessica stood near the door.

The two officers she didn’t know looked up at her then back down before she could make eye contact with either of them. They were both fairly young, the male maybe early forties with
side-parted brown hair and a suit clearly a size too big for him. The female was around the same age with long brown hair tied back into a ponytail.

Aylesbury greeted her presence with a ‘DS Daniel’. He paused to let her settle and then continued, acknowledging the two people sitting next to his desk.

‘As some of you already know, these are officers Finch and McNiven. They work for Internal Investigations and will be speaking to everyone today about the information leaked to the media.
I’m sure you are all aware of what has been in the papers.’

He held up a copy of that morning’s
Herald
just to emphasise his point. He was speaking fairly calmly but Jessica could see anger bubbling below the surface. He was probably
holding back because of the presence of the Internal officers. She wondered whether the anger was aimed at the leaker or at the people brought in to investigate his officers. She had never quite
seen eye-to-eye with the DCI but, when it came to your fellow colleagues, most people would back them over the Internal team.

‘We all know the value of using the media but whoever has leaked this information has not only made the force look incredibly stupid but put the investigation at risk. We have not been
able to speak to Sandra Prince yet and headlines like this are hardly going to help her condition if she were to see them. People need to feel safe in their homes and to trust us. Recklessly giving
information like this out helps no one.’

He made a special point of emphasising the last two words. ‘During the day officers Finch and McNiven have been given one of the offices down the hallway from here. They will be talking to
pretty much everyone in the station but you three will be spoken to first. At least then it will allow you to get on with the rest of your jobs. You know how these things work.’

No one said anything, not that there was much they could add. Jessica didn’t know which officer was Finch and which McNiven but, as the DCI finished speaking, the female of the two looked
up from a sheet of paper in front of her and said: ‘We wanted to start with DS Daniel if that’s okay?’

It was exactly what Jessica had suspected.

Cole and Reynolds filed out of the room back towards the stairs, while she went down the hallway with the two other officers. The male officer led the way, the female walking in between him and
Jessica. They went down the passageway, turned left and kept walking until they reached the final room at the back of the building. It was an area Jessica had never really been to. As far as she
knew there were only storage rooms back there. The male turned the lights on and Jessica could see it almost certainly was just storage. Boxes with files sticking out of the top had been shoved to
the back wall and someone had brought up a table from what looked like the canteen. There was a dusty smell as the male offered her the seat across from them.

The woman started talking first. ‘Okay, DS Daniel, I’m Officer McNiven, this is Officer Finch. We’re from the GMP’s Internal division as you already know. Can I start by
asking if you know why you’re here today?’

‘To be bollocked by you lot,’ was what Jessica thought. What she said was: ‘So we can all work together to stop information getting into the papers that could harm the case I
am working on.’

She made a special point to stress the word ‘together’.

Officer McNiven smiled. ‘Something like that.’ She paused and shuffled through her papers, before continuing. ‘Okay, tell us about your relationship with Garry
Ashford.’

Jessica told the investigators that she had spoken to him three times on the phone, once on the Saturday after the first victim had been found when he phoned her, once the day after to
‘clarify’ the article she had seen on the
Herald
’s website and then he had called her again after the second body had been discovered. She left out the part where the
middle conversation had been largely an exercise in creative swearing. She then said they’d had a very brief talk in a cafe the previous day.

‘How did he get your number?’ McNiven asked.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Why did you call him?’

‘I wanted to ask who his source was.’ A half-truth.

‘Why did you meet him yesterday?’

‘I wanted to explain why causing a panic was not a good idea. I told Detective Chief Inspector Aylesbury I was going to meet him.’

‘Did you give him any information?’

‘He already had it. That’s why we met.’

‘Did you give it to him?’

‘What? Information about the second killing? No. I’ve not given him any tips at all. I wouldn’t even let him quote me.’

‘Have you ever met or had contact with this journalist before the incidents we have spoken about?’

‘No.’

‘Why do you think it was you he contacted?’

‘I don’t know.’

They went around in circles for another five minutes or so with the two officers asking essentially the same questions in a slightly different way. Jessica didn’t know anything further to
tell them, while they seemingly didn’t believe her. They were at a stalemate when Officer McNiven thanked her for her time, said she could leave, and asked if she could send Cole up to meet
them.

Jessica stomped her way back past Aylesbury’s empty office and down the stairs. She found Cole in his office and told him the bad news.

‘You’re up. Rosie and Jim want a word.’

She thought about calling Garry to ask what the hell the headline was all about. Considering the conversations she had just had – and the fact the investigators could and probably would
check her phone records – she figured it was a bad idea. He would almost certainly say it was his editor who wrote it anyway. Maybe that was true, maybe not.

She would have to wait until Cole came back down before they could go through the morning briefing. A few more test results had come back but nothing very helpful with yesterday’s phone
leads chased up and ruled out. She spoke to two of the DCs who were trying to link the two victims. They had come up with nothing of note. Some of the victims’ kids had gone to the same
school but, given they lived relatively close to each other, that was to be expected. Other than that, it was yet another brick wall.

She went to the canteen to have some breakfast. Although she hadn’t expected the Internal team to be waiting at the station for her, she had known it was going to at least be a trip to the
DCI’s office, so had come straight in that morning. Randall had stayed over for the first time the night before too and she felt a bit awkward after waking up, so left without seeing either
him or Caroline. The station’s canteen was on the ground floor along the hall from her office. At best the food could be described as ‘poor’. Reynolds refused to eat there and
claimed he had once needed three days off after eating some stew.

‘The tea’s bad enough here,’ he advised her. ‘Don’t risk the food too.’

Jessica wasn’t as passionate about not eating there as her office-mate but she did try to avoid it where she could. She risked beans on toast, thinking no one could really make a mess of
that. As it was, it wasn’t too bad. She was sitting on one of the plastic chairs using the Internet on her phone. Word would have flown around the station that the Internal team were
interviewing upstairs and it was a good bet everyone would know she was the first person who had been called in. She didn’t want to talk about it too much, so was fiddling with the
phone’s front just to look as if she might be busy to hopefully stop anyone coming up to her.

She had wasted around twenty minutes before the first person tried their luck. One of the DCs assigned to try to link the two victims approached her table. DC Carrie Jones had a very strong
Welsh accent that Jessica loved but others didn’t. Piss-taking was a given in any work environment. Jessica got it for her car, Rowlands for his hair and girl-chasing, while Carrie Jones got
it for her accent.

‘I’ve got some news,’ she said.

Jessica couldn’t help but smile at her. ‘Good news?’

‘Good news and bad news.’

‘What’s the bad news?’

‘Sky News, ITV, the BBC and the local radio stations are now also using the phrase “Houdini Strangler”.’

The smile disappeared from Jessica’s face immediately. She put her hand to her forehead and sighed. ‘You could have sugar-coated that a bit.’

‘Er, sorry. Do you want the good news?’

‘Go on.’

‘The hospital has phoned to say you can go see Sandra Prince.’

Jessica returned to her office to make a few notes before heading off to the hospital. Reynolds was sitting at his own desk opposite hers. It was clear their office was
occupied by two very different people. On Reynolds’s side closest to the door, everything was in meticulous piles or filed away. On Jessica’s half, papers, notes and files were
carefully ordered on the floor, around the bin, under her seat and spilling over from her desk.

Shortly after she had been moved into the same space as him, Reynolds asked why she was so messy.

‘To the untrained eye, this may look like a disordered shambles but to an experienced organiser such as myself, there are levels to this filing system you can’t even begin to
imagine. I know
exactly
where everything is.’

It was more or less true. She knew in the rough area where everything was but ‘exactly’ was probably pushing it.

Although he had been ranked above her before Jessica was promoted, there had never been any issues between the two of them after she was elevated. He had laughed as she explained her
‘filing’, while she had spent most of the day giggling when he had told her about taking three days off thanks to the canteen’s stew. Their work didn’t overlap at the moment
and they shared a fun relationship.

As she checked through the papers on her desk for the information they had on Sandra Prince, Cole knocked and entered.