DS Jessica Daniel series: Locked In/Vigilante/The Woman in Black - Books 1-3 (75 page)

‘I think it has to be me.’

Cole spoke next. ‘He was somewhat smitten with Jessica at the prison, Sir.’

‘You don’t think he’s going to confess to everything just because he has a bit of a crush?’

‘No, Sir,’ Jessica said. ‘I think he’s going to confess because we know something he doesn’t.’

Jessica was sitting in the interview room as Cole set up the recording device. ‘Are you sure you’re going to be okay?’ he asked.

‘Yeah, I’m fine.’

‘You can’t do anything . . .
silly
.’

‘You know me.’

‘Yes I do and that’s my point.’ Jessica said nothing as the heavy door clanged open and Dennis Doherty was led into the room handcuffed with his solicitor just behind him.

The lawyer was someone Jessica recognised from one of the local firms, convincing her even more the suspect wasn’t too bothered whether or not he got off. If he was really desperate, he
would have either hired one of the better-known defence solicitors himself or waited for the ones who were desperate to get their faces in the papers to come along. Jessica knew she was playing a
dangerous game and that if Dennis really did want to be acquitted, he would bring up their various meetings. The possible entrapment would muddy the waters further for a jury when it came to trial
if a solicitor mentioned it.

‘I’m just wondering if we can have a bit of a chat, Dennis?’ she said.

He said nothing, staring at his own hands. His nose still had flecks of dried blood around it and was flattened to one side. Jessica thought she should probably feel guilty for doing it but
there was no remorse.

She wanted to stare into the blue eyes of the man who had killed her friend but he wouldn’t look up. ‘You and I both know you did this but I don’t think anyone else in this
room understands why you did it. You see, I think you worked on the front gate for all those years and you saw people coming in and out and in again and you got sick of it all.’

No response.

‘First there was Craig Millar. He was a bit of an unsavoury guy, wasn’t he? Drugs, intimidation, all sorts. Bit unimpressive though, wasn’t he? On his own I bet he was a
pushover?’

Dennis didn’t acknowledge her, still staring at his own wrists.

‘Then it was the big two, Webb and Hughes. I wondered if you planned to hit the two of those together. Still, it worked out all right, didn’t it? What about the prison guard, Lee
Morgan? It must have driven you crazy seeing him walk in and out of work each morning knowing what he was up to on the side?’

‘No comment.’

‘Is that all you’ve got to say? Here’s my point, if you wanted to deal with those people, why wouldn’t you want to be inside with them? Couldn’t you operate better
from the inside?’

The man shuffled slightly in his seat and Jessica wondered if he was understanding what she was trying to say. She pointed towards the solicitor. ‘This man in the suit who’s been
telling you to not say anything, you don’t think he’s interested in your work, do you? He’s the exact kind of person who gets all these criminals off. All those ones you hear
about on the news, all those people you see walking in and out of the prison, they’re all represented by people like him.’

The lawyer leant in across the table. ‘You’re out of line – and the actions of other people have got nothing to do with my client.’

‘Do you hear that, Dennis? You’re his “client”. Does that sound like someone who’s remotely interested in what your reasons were?’

Dennis again fidgeted nervously in his chair but didn’t say anything.

‘Obviously you know you have a brother in prison. All the coverage through the papers would have told you if you didn’t already know. Now I’ll be honest with you – we
don’t know whether you were working with your brother or not. We have no idea. But isn’t it strange that you want to get these types of people off the streets and yet one of them is
your brother?’

‘No comment.’

‘Here’s my second point, Dennis. Does it strike you that maybe this kind of thing runs in the family?’

Dennis was clearly getting agitated. He raised his cuffed hands to scratch at his head.

‘And then your sister’s in prison too . . .’

He moved in his chair, shuffling backwards and then looking up at her. His solicitor went to cut in but the prisoner spoke over the top of him. ‘I don’t have a sister.’

‘Did you always know you had a brother?’

‘You’re making it up.’

‘I’m not. All three of you have the same eyes.’ Jessica opened an envelope that was on the table between them but didn’t take any of the contents out. ‘Can you see
the irony, Dennis? I know you’re someone who’s very intelligent. You want to cleanse the streets but at the same time you, your brother and sister are all criminals
yourselves.’

The solicitor stood and physically tried to pick his client up by the arm. ‘No chance, you’re not doing this,’ he said angrily. ‘This is over. You can’t blackmail a
confession out of someone by holding back knowledge of a relative.’

Dennis rose too and his lawyer started bundling him towards the door but then the prisoner pushed his solicitor back before he could be taken out of the room. The man in the suit looked at his
client, weighing up whether he should try moving him again. He clearly didn’t fancy his chances.

The suspect looked at Jessica and his head sank. He started to speak in a quiet, more solemn tone. ‘I was in a bad car accident when I was younger.’ Everyone in the room froze.
Dennis’s lawyer looked panicked while Jessica said nothing, giving the prisoner space to talk. ‘That’s why we look different.’ He lifted his cuffed hands to his face and ran
them along the length of his scar. ‘That’s how I got this. I didn’t really have much of a face left.’

He slumped to the floor as Jessica rose from her seat, crouching near to him. He spoke in a broken voice. ‘I didn’t know I had a brother, let alone a twin. He’s been in and out
over the years and, on the few times we’ve seen each other, there has always been this sort of familiarity. But if you were brought up as an only child, you wouldn’t necessarily assume
you had some long-lost brother just because someone looked a little like you, would you?’

He indicated his scar again. ‘Have you ever seen a person on the street or on TV and someone says you look a bit like them? Because of this I didn’t even know if that’s what I
should look like anyway. I just kind of saw him and forgot.’

The lawyer sat back at the table, defeated. Cole was opposite him, with Jessica settling cross-legged on the floor across from Dennis.

‘When did you find out?’ she asked.

‘Officially? In the last couple of days with all the questioning and everything. Obviously it got around the prison after you had been to talk to McKenna because you had matched him to the
crimes. I suspected then of course. I checked his birthday on our system and saw it was identical to mine. It’s not like I could have just asked him though.’

‘Do you know you have the same mother?’

‘No. Is it true we have a sister?’

‘Yes.’

‘What’s her name?’

‘Mary.’

‘And she’s in prison too?’

‘Yes.’

Dennis sniffed away a tear. ‘I spent all my life thinking I was on my own then it takes all of this to find out I actually have a twin brother and a sister.’

‘Do you know anything about your parents, Dennis, or why you might have been separated?’

‘No. We travelled around a lot when I was a kid then ended up back here. They were getting on a bit in years and said they were to ready to settle. I knew I’d been born here but
didn’t know anything specific.’

‘We know you and Donald McKenna have different mothers on your birth certificates but I don’t think we’ll ever be able to tell you who your parent actually was.’

The man shrugged. ‘I don’t think it really matters any more. Whoever it was would probably be ashamed of us.’

‘Why did you kill them, Dennis?’

The man shrugged again. Jessica had been annoyed at herself for beginning to feel a little sympathy but the casual way he moved his shoulders showed he had no real regret. ‘I just got sick
of it. The same faces doing the same things over and over and no one does anything about it.’

‘You must have known you’d get caught?’

‘Maybe but I planned carefully and watched everyone so I knew their routines. I knew I wasn’t on any databases or anything because I’d never been arrested. Even if I left some
traces at the scene I didn’t see any way you could ever link it back to me.’

Jessica could see he was right. If it wasn’t for the link to McKenna, they would have just had some random DNA without knowing whose it was. ‘What about the police
officer?’

‘Your friend?’

‘Yes, my friend.’

‘I didn’t hear her. She had nothing on her feet and was on me before I could think. I didn’t mean to but she was really strong. You were the last people I would have
targeted.’

Jessica wasn’t going to push her luck by mentioning the fact he’d gone after Farraday a few nights previously. She asked Dennis if he could sit back at the table and give them the
full details they would need. Facially he barely reacted but he did what she asked, resigned to whatever was going to happen to him.

When he had finished speaking, he was taken back to the cells as Jessica passed the details of the man’s sister to his solicitor. She didn’t know if there would be any cooperation
between the prisons to allow people to meet and, given everything that had happened, didn’t really care.

Jessica walked along the gravel path and listened. The few birds that hadn’t yet flown south were chirping noisily but, aside from that, she couldn’t hear anything
other than the scrunching of her own footsteps. She realised the quiet was almost more deafening than the noise she was so used to. Living in a city, even on the outskirts, you grew accustomed to
the low hum of traffic and people and it became the norm. She didn’t know if the tranquillity was better or worse. In some ways the constant clamour she was so familiar with was
reassuring.

She followed the trail around the church and then moved onto the grass, walking carefully in between the gravestones to find the one she was looking for. There had been dew earlier in the
morning and the ground felt soft underfoot. Jessica looked from side to side, taking in the names and wondering how everyone came to be there. Most of the dates on the stones would have meant it
was simply old age but, every now and then, there were names of people who died young. She found it humbling, seeing the details of people born after her but who were already buried beneath her
feet.

The graveyard was bigger than she remembered but Jessica eventually saw the stone she was looking for. The whole area was a mix of old weathered monuments and new chiselled markers. Carrie
Jones’s stood out as the wisps of morning sunlight reflected off its surface. Jessica crossed towards it and placed the flowers she had been carrying next to the fresh ones already there. She
stood looking down at the engravings, with Carrie’s name, date of birth and death, and a simple message.

‘Always in our hearts.’

Jessica sat between the plot and the one adjacent to it, leaning gently on the gravestone. For a while she listened to the breeze and the birds and then she smiled. ‘I can see why you left
this place,’ she said with a small giggle. ‘Bit quiet, ain’t it?’

The ground was wet underneath her and she could feel the dampness seeping through her jeans but it was already too late to do much about it. ‘Your mum’s a character, I can see where
you got the laugh from now. I don’t know how you stayed so thin though, all she wanted to do last night was feed me. She’s doing all right, looking after your dad and shouting at the
rugby players on the TV. I’m not sure if she shouts louder when they’re winning or losing.’

She moved her head to the side so it was resting on the stone. ‘Everyone keeps telling me I did a good job for figuring things out and getting Dennis to talk but no one wants to tell me
the truth. Maybe if I’d been a better mate we would have been able to talk about your bloke and things would have happened differently? I’ve not told anyone about things but Farraday
– your John – quit last week. He called me into his office to tell me first and then announced it officially to everyone else. I think he felt guilty.’

Jessica was wearing a thick jacket but felt a chill go through her as the breeze picked up. ‘I think I lost it for a while somewhere along the line. I was seeing things that weren’t
there and acting without thinking things through. I look at it now and it doesn’t even seem like me, it’s as if I was watching someone else doing those things.’

She tried to suppress a shiver as she continued talking gently to the stone. ‘I spoke to Denise Millar a few days ago. She’s keeping everything together for Jamie and says he’s
got a job now. I think catching the person that killed her other son has helped her come to terms with it all.’

She stood and wiped as much of the dampness from her trousers as she could, peering back at the stone. ‘I’m just here to say goodbye and thanks for being a mate when I needed
one.’

Jessica turned and walked briskly away back to the cemetery’s entrance. There was a wide wooden gate which she unclasped and moved through before shunting it back into position. She leant
back onto it and took out her phone, skimming through the first couple of contacts. She highlighted Adam Compton’s name and typed out a simple text message.

‘I’m sorry. J’

She pressed the button to send and walked quickly out towards the waiting taxi on the main road before getting into the back seat. ‘You all right, love?’ the driver asked.

‘Yeah, can you take me to the train station now?’

The driver pulled away as Jessica leant back into the seat and closed her eyes. She felt her mind beginning to drift but was snapped back to the present as her phone beeped to say she had a new
message.