DS Jessica Daniel series: Locked In/Vigilante/The Woman in Black - Books 1-3 (14 page)

‘You’re up,’ he said to Reynolds.

‘What was it like?’ Reynolds asked.

‘Fine. They didn’t really have much to ask me. I’m pretty sure they think it’s DS Daniel.’ He nodded at her and gave her a wink as if to say he believed her.

Reynolds told them to wish him luck and left the room.

‘Now you’re done, we can go see Sandra Prince,’ Jessica said. ‘The hospital called and said it was okay.’

She didn’t know if the DI would want to go but figured it was best to assume he would, rather than just head off with someone else in tow.

She was fairly surprised when he replied. ‘Let’s go.’

The drive to the hospital had been a bit of a nuisance. Rush hour had come and gone but it was Friday and the traffic patterns always seemed to be inconsistent at the end of
the week. As per usual it wasn’t too sunny in Manchester; grey clouds washed over the city, while winter and spring were still fighting over what the temperature should be. Cole had taken
them in a marked car. Jessica thought his driving matched his personality, steady and straightforward, nothing too crazy.

Some guy had obviously not noticed the car’s markings as he swerved late across lanes and cut them up. If it were Jessica, she would have unleashed a barrage of ‘coarse
language’, as Caroline might say and then pulled them over. At the absolute least, she would have given them the inconvenience of having to report to their local police station with all their
documents but Cole carried on as if nothing had happened without even beeping the car’s horn. In some ways, Jessica thought, his calmness was very disconcerting.

At the hospital their presence was queried by the receptionist. She was young and continued hammering away at her computer’s keyboard as she said: ‘I’ve not got a record of you
coming.’

The two officers had shown their identification cards and Jessica had put on her best ‘Pull your finger out, I’m a police officer don’t you know?’ face. It hadn’t
really got them anywhere.

Eventually the receptionist picked up the phone and a nurse had come to escort them. Sandra Prince had her own room on a third-floor ward which had a uniformed officer assigned to it. The nurse
told them that Mrs Prince’s doctor wanted to speak to them before he would allow them to talk to his patient, so they were left in a small cupboard posing as an office along the hallway from
the ward.

Jessica really didn’t like hospitals. She’d not had any particular traumatic experience with them as some might have done but she had been on a few call-outs while in uniform. She
had once come to see a victim of a domestic violence in this exact hospital. A young girl had had her face smashed in by a jealous ex-boyfriend. Jessica had to take the photos for evidence purposes
and every time she came here, she remembered the girl’s battered, bruised and swollen face. In the end, the girl had refused to testify in court.

Another time an assault had happened in the hospital itself. Somebody who had fallen down on a night out and was still drunk had tried to start trouble while in the waiting room. Jessica had
taken special pleasure in arresting him. Those incidents and more meant she was rarely keen on coming to this place.

Ideally she wouldn’t have had to for this case. Usually interviews would be done at the police station so anything that was said would be recorded. But Sandra Prince was not really a
suspect and, given her doctor’s advice, it had been felt the interview could be done here. Her presence at work had already been confirmed for the whole of the day the murder had taken place.
She could have killed her husband in the morning and then left the house but it did seem unlikely given the similarities to the first case. They had to check with Aylesbury but he had told them
they could speak to her out of the station.

When the woman’s doctor arrived, he told them Mrs Prince had gone into shock after finding out about her husband but had been fully coherent since yesterday evening. He said she had not
seen the day’s paper or any of the news coverage and asked if there were any more shocks they were going to spring upon her. He also wanted to know if she was under suspicion. If she was, he
told them they would have to move her to the station. Technically they didn’t have to tell him anyway but they reassured him and he showed them into the Sandra Prince’s private
room.

The room wasn’t massive but certainly bigger than most people’s bedrooms. It was spotlessly clean with a few pieces of medical equipment surrounding two single beds facing the door.
One of the beds was empty, while a woman was sitting up in the other. Jonathan Prince was in a chair next to his mother’s bed. She had greying curly hair that was cut fairly short. She wore
glasses but her skin was almost as pale as the white bed sheets, the tone in stark contrast to the wrinkles in her face. Aside from her colour, there wasn’t anything else noticeably wrong.
Not that there should have been but she seemed relatively perky when the doctor asked how she was and checked her blood pressure. He then said he would leave them alone but told his patient she
could ring the emergency alarm next to her bed at any time.

Jessica arranged two more seats next to the bed for herself and Cole, while he introduced himself and Jessica and explained that, although they were not in the station, he still had to caution
her for legal reasons. He told Sandra Prince that she was entitled to have a legal advisor present and that there would be a free one available at the station if that was what she wanted.

Mrs Prince pulled herself up into more of a seated position. She looked at Jonathan, then back at them and said: ‘It’s okay. I just want to find out who did this.’

Jessica said they were going to have to ask her son to leave the room. Jonathan seemed a little reluctant to go away from his mother but she told him it was fine. He closed the door behind him
and Jessica started the interview. ‘Could you tell us what happened on the day your husband was killed please, Mrs Prince?’

The woman cleared her throat. ‘I always get up for Jonathan. He has to go to work early and, even though he’s grown up now, I always think it’s nice for him to see someone in
the morning. He left and then I had some toast, watched a bit of TV and went to work myself.’

‘Did you see your husband that morning at all?’

‘Not really. I gave him a kiss goodbye on my way out. I always do that. He was still in bed and half-asleep. He said goodbye back.’

‘What time did you leave?’

‘Always eight twenty-five exactly.’

‘Did you have any contact at all with your husband that day? Call him? Text him?’

Sandra Prince took off her glasses and gave a small laugh. ‘Martin couldn’t text. He had a mobile but he didn’t really know how to use it. He could manage calls but not texts.
I didn’t call him, no.’

There were tears in her eyes as she spoke. Jessica gave her a few moments until she seemed fully composed. ‘Do you remember if you locked the door when you left that morning?’

‘I always locked it if Martin wasn’t up. If he was out of bed I wouldn’t bother but I think sometimes he would sleep a lot during the day. I would always make a point of
locking the door when he was still upstairs.’

Jessica looked at Cole, who gave her a half-nod. ‘Okay, Mrs Prince,’ Jessica said. ‘This might sound like a stupid question but do you know of any other way into your house
other than by the doors or windows?’

‘How do you mean?’ She paused and added: ‘We have a cat-flap at the back but it is always locked shut. We used to have a cat but she was run over years ago and we didn’t
want to replace her. Since then, we’ve kept it locked.’

‘Nothing other than that?’

‘No.’

‘Do you know of anyone who might want to cause your husband or your family any harm?’

Sandra Prince smiled a little. ‘No. Martin didn’t really have that much contact with other people. Since he lost his job, he stayed in a lot and I can’t think of anyone else.
We just kept ourselves to ourselves.’

‘Has your husband’s behaviour been any different recently?’

Mrs Prince shook her head. ‘He didn’t go out too often after he was made redundant. Since the burglary, he went out even less. He didn’t want to leave the house
empty.’

Cole and Jessica looked at each other. Jessica’s eyes were wide and she could feel her heart rate rising. ‘Since the what?’

‘The burglary. We were burgled around this time last year. Someone broke in while we were at a friend’s house. They didn’t take much but it was just the thought of someone
going through your things. Martin wanted to move but we didn’t have the money. He hated leaving the place empty after that.’

Jessica felt her stomach lurch as her heart continued to pound. She found it hard to stay in her seat. ‘Did the police find who did it?’

‘We thought so but the guy was let out.’

Jessica stood up and thanked Sandra Prince for her time, barely knowing what she was saying as the adrenaline powered through her. She left the room with Cole, thanking Jonathan, who was sitting
outside next to the uniformed officer, for his patience.

They didn’t say a word until they were outside of the main hospital building. ‘How did we miss this?’ Cole said to no one in particular. Jessica was already ahead of him. She
had taken out her mobile phone and dialled Rowlands. He answered with a standard put-down but she cut across him.

‘Are you near a computer?’

‘Yes, why?’

‘Do you have the Christensens’ address near you?’

‘Somewhere . . .’

Jessica and Cole were walking towards the car park as she heard Rowlands scrabbling around on the other end. ‘Hurry up,’ she muttered, not knowing if he still had the phone at his
ear.

After a second or two, which seemed a lot longer, he spoke again. ‘I have it here.’

‘Do a search to find out if their house was ever burgled.’

‘Okay, hang on.’ Jessica could hear him tapping away in the background. The police’s system was notoriously slow. She was now back at the car but standing next to it, leaning
on the roof above the passenger door. Cole was opposite her.

‘Right, I’ve got it,’ Rowlands said. ‘Hang on . . .’ She could hear him typing on the keyboard. ‘Yep, it was burgled around a year ago.’

The drive back to the station seemed to take an awfully long time and Cole’s coolness was really beginning to wind Jessica up. She was still buzzing, the excitement of
finally finding the link they had been waiting for almost too much to take – both victims had been burgled. Jessica was trying to stay calm but every red traffic light, every queue at a
roundabout and every time Cole stopped to bloody well give way made her clench her teeth and bite her tongue. If she had been driving, she would have had the sirens blaring and the lights flashing
as she tore down the Stockport Road to get back to the station as quickly as possible.

She had already told Rowlands to get all of the information they had relating to the burglaries either on her desk if they had a hard copy or on her computer screen if they didn’t. As they
finally arrived back at the station, Jessica barely waited for Cole to park before she had the passenger’s door open and was striding towards the main building. She bounded through reception,
past the desk sergeant and down the hallway into her empty office.

As she began to scan through the information that had been left on her screen, Jessica could see the burglaries of the Christensens’ house and the Princes’ had been linked to three
others that happened in the same area within a week of each other this time last year. The problem was that, in theory, the crimes were unsolved. Having looked through each of the five incidents
and cross-checked with the relevant notes, it was pretty clear the police
had
found their man though.

Wayne Lapham was a name Greater Manchester Police were very familiar with according to his file. As a fifteen-year-old, he had been sent to a young offenders’ institution for setting fire
to an empty office building. He had spent the past twenty-five years in and out of prison and on probation schemes for various offences including drug possession, thefts, assaults, drunk and
disorderly and threatening behaviour. Every eighteen months or so he would be picked up for a new offence and either sent back to prison or handed over to probation for another spell of
supervision.

The offence that most interested Jessica was his most recent one. Just over a year ago, police had been called to a pub in the Levenshulme area of the city, just south of Gorton, where the five
burglaries had taken place. A man had been attacked with a pint glass but, in the course of investigating that attack, they had ended up searching Lapham who just happened to be in the same pub.
Having seen his record Jessica knew full well there was a very good chance the officers had recognised him and were searching him because of who he was. He would have been given a vague reason so
he couldn’t press charges of harassment but everyone knew how it worked.

While searching him, they found a laptop and two mobile phones in his rucksack. He had first claimed they were his but, after police had been given a warrant to search his house and found the
rest of the items taken in the five burglaries, Lapham’s story had changed. Then he claimed he had bought everything in a pub for £300 a few nights previously from a man he had never
seen before or since.

Jessica smiled as she read that bit, shaking her head. Because
most
people would happily hand over £300 to a stranger in a pub. Obviously the police had delighted in picking holes
in his story and the fact he had already changed it once. They charged him with burglary and handed the case over to the CPS for it to go to court. Given his record, he had been denied bail and was
left sitting in a jail cell for three months as he waited for the full Crown Court trial.

That was where things got complicated. Although he had been caught with every item that had been stolen, there was no forensic evidence linking him to any of the scenes. Each burglary had been
committed in the same way. Given the unseasonably warm weather last year, Lapham – or whoever had prised open an unlocked and slightly ajar window – then made off with anything they
could get their hands on.