Locked In (14 page)

The room wasn’t massive but certainly bigger than most people’s bedrooms. It was spotlessly clean and painted in a magnolia-type colour, 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, with 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 DI 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. ‘Okay, could you tell us what happened on the day your husband was killed please, Mrs Prince?’

‘Well 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 then I had some toast, watched a bit of TV and went to work myself.’

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

‘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 8.25 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. ‘Okay. Do you remember if you locked the door or not 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’d sleep a lot during the day, so I would always make a point of locking the door when he was still upstairs.’

Jessica looked at DI 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: ‘Well no I guess.’

‘So you don’t know of a way to enter your property except for through the regular means?’

‘We have 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 just kept it locked.’

‘Nothing other than that?’

‘No.’

‘Okay Mrs Prince. 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 anyway. 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. ‘No, he didn’t go out too often anyway after he was made redundant then, since the burglary, he went out even less. He didn’t want to leave the house empty.’

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

‘The burglary. We were burgled around this time last year. Someone broke in while we were round 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?’

‘Yeah, well we thought so. Guy got let out.’

Jessica stood up and thanked Sandra Prince for her time. She didn’t even really know what she was saying with the adrenaline powering through her. She left the room with DI Cole, thanking Jonathan, who was sitting outside next to the uniformed officer, for his patience.

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

‘Are you near a computer?’

‘Yeah, why.’

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

‘Somewhere...’

Jessica and DI Cole were walking towards the car park as she heard DC Rowlands scrabbling around on the other end. ‘Hurry up,’ she said, not even knowing if he still had the phone at his ear. After a second or two, which seemed a lot longer, he spoke again.

‘Yep, got 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 was standing next to it, leaning on the roof above the passenger side’s door. DI Cole was standing opposite her, waiting.

‘Right, got it,’ DC 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 DI 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 was 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 DI 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 DC Rowlands to get all 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 DI Cole to park up before she had the passenger’s door open and was striding towards the main building. She stomped 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 all 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 the 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 Levensholme 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 some 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 previous 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 left sitting in a jail cell for three months while 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-open window then made off with anything they could get their hands on.

With evidence linking him to the stolen goods but not the scenes and with the CPS nervous over whether they would get a conviction or not, they had offered Lapham’s lawyer a concession on the morning of the trial. If his client pleaded guilty to handling stolen goods, they would drop the burglary charges. It was exactly the kind of deal that infuriated officers who had worked hard on cases and victims who wanted to see justice but it kept conviction rates up, meaning the CPS hit their own targets. Lapham, of course, couldn’t believe his luck. He pleaded guilty and walked free that afternoon after the judge ruled the time he had spent in prison on remand was sufficient punishment.

It couldn’t be a coincidence that two of the houses that had been burgled had now seen murders happen inside them. Regardless of whether he had been found guilty of burglary or not, Lapham was the man they needed to bring in. Jessica checked the address they had for him, printed off a copy of his mug shot, went to tell DCI Aylesbury what was going on then set off to go pick up their only suspect.

This time she would drive.

Uniformed officers had been sent out to check on the three other burglary victims from last year. There was no obvious motive for why a burglar would return to the scene of their crimes and kill the person who lived there but it’s not as if they had anything else to go on. Seemingly it was the only link between the two murder victims too.

DI Cole had thought it best they didn’t take marked vehicles, given Lapham’s likely attitude towards the police. That meant Jessica taking her own car, along with DC Rowlands and a uniformed officer. DI Cole was also taking his vehicle – a spotlessly-clean silver 4x4 – along with two other regular constables. Six officers may have seemed a bit over the top but no one knew how Lapham would react to the police turning up at his door, especially given his history with the force. A marked car would also be sent along behind them so they could transport their suspect back to the station when they had him. They would radio for the driver to move in when they were ready.

Despite DC Rowlands’ complaints about the sound of her exhaust tipping the suspect off while she was still a mile away, Jessica roared down Alan Turing Way towards Oldham Road on their way out to Moston. It was late afternoon now and the Friday traffic had reached its peak with everyone heading off towards the motorway and home. They had barely got out of the station when Jessica had left DI Cole far behind. He had given way at the junction next to the station’s exit while she had put her foot down, probably cut up the guy behind – who beeped his horn – then accelerated away through a traffic light that was
definitely
still on amber. Well, probably.

If the roads would have been clear, the journey would have taken around twenty minutes but Jessica did it in less than that regardless of the traffic. As she pulled up outside the grubby block of housing association flats Lapham was supposed to live in, DC Rowlands admitted he had been impressed, if mildly terrified, with her driving. The uniformed officer in the back didn’t say anything but his pale face and relief to get the seatbelt off when she put the handbrake on told the story well enough.

‘Should we wait...?’ DC Rowlands went to say but Jessica already had her door open and was making her way round the front of the car. DC Rowlands looked around to the officer in the back seat and shrugged as if to say, “I know”.

They found the flat number fairly quickly; it was on the ground floor and established there was no back door out. Jessica sent DC Rowlands round towards the rear of the building anyway, just in case Lapham tried to make a run for it out of the window.

After he gave her the message to say he was in position, Jessica, with the uniformed officer by her side, knocked on the door. The wood felt thin and the colour was hard to distinguish. It had probably been blue at some point but it didn’t look like it had ever been cleaned. There was no answer but they could hear a television on inside. Jessica knocked again, louder the second time. They heard a female voice from the behind the door, then it was opened.