Vigilante (17 page)

Jessica croaked out an ‘Oh, Adam…’ but couldn’t stop her voice from cracking.

He still hadn’t turned around but had put the kettle down and was stirring the drink. ‘It’s okay. It was a long time ago. I don’t even remember them.’

Jessica urged herself to think of something to say that wouldn’t sound pathetic. She felt embarrassed she had told him about her problems that seemed so insignificant in comparison when he had been living with this his entire life.

She reached her arms around his chest and hugged herself into the back of him. Neither of them said anything until Adam released himself. ‘I’d better take this through.’

He picked the mug up from the worktop and walked through with it to his grandmother. Jessica followed him into the living room. Pat was slumped to one side of the chair, snoring gently. Adam switched the television off and pulled a blanket from a drawer underneath the sofa and placed it over her.

‘She’ll sleep all night now,’ he said, walking back to the kitchen with Jessica and closing the door quietly behind them. Adam tipped the drink down the sink. ‘Thanks for today,’ he added.

Jessica could tell he didn’t want to say any more about his parents. ‘Not a problem, I had a good time. I’m not going to the bingo next time though.’

Adam laughed. ‘She’d never hear any of the numbers anyway and then start shouting at people.’

‘What have you got this week?’

He smiled as he spoke. ‘Well, now you’ve stopped firing stuff over to us, we can get through the backlog that’s built up.’

‘What have you got?’

‘All sorts. We’ve had stuff waiting in the freezers for two weeks relating to those student muggings. Is that one of yours?’

‘The guy who shares my office has been following that.’

‘We’ve also got the usual, a few burglaries and whatever comes in this weekend.’

Jessica had switched off for the last few words he said and he had clearly seen her drifting. ‘All right? I’m not boring you, am I?’

‘No, sorry. It’s not that, I just think I’ve had an idea.’

NINETEEN

Adam had dropped Jessica back at her flat late the night before but she rushed into work the next morning. She went to her office and signed into the computer system to check the phone logs from the past few nights. All emergency calls were automatically catalogued and she scanned through before finding the item she was looking for. She didn’t know for sure there would be a mugging report with the exact details she was after from the past few days but knew there would be something somewhere. She noted down the details and waited for DS Reynolds to arrive.

He looked up as he came into their office, noticing her sitting at her desk. ‘Hey, Jess, how was the weekend?’

‘All right. Look, can I ask you about this phone report from the other day?’

‘Um, yeah, whose is it?’ Reynolds hadn’t even sat down and clearly wondered why she was in such a rush.

Jessica read him the name as he sat down, adding: ‘This is one of yours, isn’t it?’

‘One of many.’

‘Can you talk me through it?’

‘Any reason?’

‘Can you trust me for now?’

‘You tidy up your side of the office and give me back the ten pounds you still owe me and you’ve got a deal,’ he replied with a big grin.

‘How about I think about tidying my side of the office and try to remember to bring your money in?’ Jessica was smiling too.

‘Fine. Obviously you know I’ve been working on the student muggings. The difficulty is that things aren’t very clear at all.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘For instance, we charged a lad last week with making up a complaint. He basically wanted a new phone and said he’d been attacked just to get a claim number for his insurance. But there are also real victims we know of who haven’t come forward – we’ve got some of them on CCTV.’

‘So you’re stuck with some people who have been attacked and won’t come forward but then having your time wasted by others trying it on?’

‘Exactly and that makes it all the harder.’

‘What about the gang initiation thing you had been talking about?’

‘The only reason the muggings started to be linked together was because we arrested someone early on. Poor kid was shit-scared, only about fourteen, and said he’d been put up to it by older lads because he wanted to join their group.’

‘So did you get any of the other gang members?’

‘No chance. It took us long enough to get that out of him, plus he was a youth of course so you can’t push it too far. He wouldn’t give any names and his mother was having none of it.’

‘Have you arrested anyone else?’

‘No. With the conflicting descriptions – or muggers wearing hoods – plus the dodgy CCTV and so on, we don’t really have anything other than a whole host of scared students. it doesn’t help that they go out and get themselves so pissed they can’t walk straight but I guess we’ve all been there.’

‘Speak for yourself.’

Reynolds laughed. ‘You’ve not been that drunk? Who are you trying to kid?’

‘Oh, I’ve been that drunk but I can
always
walk straight.’

Reynolds laughed again. ‘Why did you want to know then?’

‘I need another favour.’

‘What?’

Jessica took a deep breath. ‘It’s a big one.’

‘I’m not going to like this, am I?’

‘Can you get the fourteen-year-old back in?’

‘You are joking? He pleaded guilty to that other mugging and was released. What do you want me to bring him in for?’

Jessica read the name of the mugging victim she had taken from the phone logs. ‘Bring him in for that.’

‘But there’s no reason for us to think it was anything to do with him.’

‘We know that but he doesn’t. Please, it could help solve two cases.’

Reynolds looked at her. ‘What if it doesn’t? It could totally stuff mine up. He’s a kid too, we’ll have to get his mother in and maybe one of the specialist duty solicitors. It’s a lot to ask when we don’t even think it’s him. I don’t even know why we would suspect him.’

Jessica read the description of the assailant from the police log. ‘

That could be anyone,’ Reynolds said.

‘Exactly,
anyone
. Including some teenager who’s got previous for it.’

‘Are you going to tell me why you want him in so badly?’

‘I don’t just want him in, I want to do the interview.’

‘Come on, Jess…’

‘Please.’

‘You’re going to have to tell me. It’s my arse that will be on the line.’

Jessica told him what Adam had said the previous evening that had got her mind whirring then told him how she hoped to solve two cases in one.

Reynolds looked at her when she had finished. ‘It’s risky. He’s still only a kid.’

‘He’s old enough to threaten someone with a knife.’

‘If I didn’t know you better I would have said you had logged into those files before I got into the office and already knew all about our young offender. After that, you went through the phone archives to find a mugging description from a victim deliberately vague enough to bring him in on.’

Jessica smiled at him. ‘I think you know me well enough…’

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

Jessica had a reasonable idea what to expect having read the descriptions but the fourteen-year-old must have grown from the last time he had been in. Now fifteen, he was bigger than plenty of adults she knew. Despite his size, he still shrunk into the interview room’s chair like the scared schoolboy he was.

Reynolds and Jessica had done their best to keep her idea under wraps and had certainly kept it away from the ears of Farraday. There was no way they could have gone ahead without an okay from Cole though. He had listened to Jessica’s theory, put a few doubts in their minds and then said they could do it anyway.

The boy had promptly been arrested and brought to the station with his mother. He was told he had been arrested in connection with the mugging and cautioned. His mum repeated over and over they had no money for a lawyer, so a specially trained duty solicitor had been brought in, as Reynolds had suspected would need to happen.

The mother was fuming with both the police and her son. In the holding room, Jessica had heard her shouting, ‘What have you done now?’ at the boy.

Now in the interview, her displeasure was focused on them. Each time Jessica asked a question, the boy would nervously answer and then his mother would jump in; ‘See, I told you it weren’t him.’ She hadn’t told them anything of the sort but her anger was clear. Jessica had her secret weapon in an envelope on the table in front of them and was biding her time. They had already gone over the formalities of the mugging, asking where he was, who he hung around with and anything else they would usually include. He hadn’t helped himself by not really having an answer for where he was. It had been late on in the evening but, despite his age, he still claimed to be playing football in his local park.

‘Were you playing football with other members of the gang you’re in?’ Jessica asked.

‘I ain’t in no gang.’

‘That’s not what I’ve heard. I read that you robbed your first victim because you wanted to get in with the cool kids.’

‘So?’

‘So did you get in or not?’

He looked sideways at his mother. ‘No.’

‘That’s not what I’ve heard.’ The boy’s solicitor went to step in but Jessica had sewn the doubt in his mind. She showed the boy some photographs of the new victim’s injuries, having deliberately picked out the ones that looked the worst. Both the legal representative and his mother objected and she knew she was walking on a tightrope.

Eventually, she knew she just had to go for it. She opened the envelope on the table, took one final photograph out and held it facing her. ‘In a moment, I’m going to turn this photo around and I need you to answer one last question. I know your mum is here and you might not want to admit to certain…things but this is crucial.’ She tapped the top of the photo to emphasise her point that it could be him and then turned it around. The image was of Robert Graves and had been taken post-mortem after he had been cleaned up. When she had first seen his body she hadn’t known whether it was male or female but the photo was a lot clearer.

Both the boy and his mother reeled backwards while the solicitor tried to stop the interview. He was outraged but Jessica wouldn’t budge. She locked eyes with the boy. ‘Was Robert Graves in your gang? Do you know him?’

Amid the noise as Reynolds tried to calm everyone down, Jessica didn’t move. She stared at the teenager. She could see the answer in his eyes but needed him to say the words. ‘Tell me,’ she said.

‘Yes.’ The answer was quiet and barely audible over the objections from his solicitor.

Jessica put the photograph face down on the table and shushed everyone present, much to their annoyance. ‘Please repeat that. Was Robert Graves a member of your gang?’

Finally there was quiet. She hadn’t stopped looking at him.

‘He wanted to be.’

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

The teenager had been released without charge but Jessica had got what she wanted. Ultimately he seemed more scared of his mum than he did of them. Reynolds and Jessica had immediately passed the news on to Cole and the three of them were now sitting in DCI Farraday’s office listening to him tell them off for not informing him of what was going on.

Jessica was happy to step in and admit it was her fault but Cole didn’t give her a chance, instead saying he should be blamed. He said he knew the DCI was busy and that he didn’t want to concern him with matters that could come to nothing.

Jessica was grateful for what he had done but also saw it as an indictment of their boss that they had to work behind his back to get things sorted out.

When he had calmed down, Jessica got around to explaining her theory, leaving Adam out of the tale. ‘I had been talking to a member of the forensics team at the end of the week and they mentioned they were going to be able to start working on the student mugging cases this week. It got me thinking about Robert Graves’ age and the type of kid his parents said he was.’ She indicated towards Reynolds sitting next to her. ‘Jason has been working on connecting the robberies all together and had mentioned a theory about a gang initiation ritual.’

Farraday nodded along as she spoke, again drumming his fingers on the desk. She tried to block the noise out and keep talking. ‘I think we’ve all got it in our heads now that Robert isn’t connected to the other, er, vigilante cases but of course we didn’t know why he would have been killed. But now we’ve been told he wanted to become a member of this gang. So what if he picked on a student who wasn’t just some drunk? What if he picked on someone who fought back too hard?’

The chief inspector stopped tapping his fingers. ‘Why wouldn’t he have been identified with that sketch if that’s the case?’

Jessica knew she had to be careful how she phrased the next part. ‘Don’t forget the description of the attacker was from a bit of a distance in dim lighting but also…we were asking people to look for the wrong thing. We were saying, “This is your vigilante”, so people would have been looking at their mates and thinking, “Oh, it can’t be him because he was with me the night of the vigilante attacks”. But no one would have been reporting their friends for being unaccounted for on just that one evening where Robert Graves was killed.’

‘What do you two think?’ Farraday looked first at Reynolds, then DI Cole, standing behind the two sergeants. ‘Reynolds?’

‘I think it’s a better theory than anyone else has had.’

‘Cole?’

‘I think we should go to the local media and the universities themselves. Let’s tell them we were wrong and get the description of the person back out there. Let’s ask people to think just about the one night Robert Graves was killed instead of asking them to worry about who the vigilante is.’ There was a harshness to his tone Jessica had rarely heard.

Before the DCI could respond, Jessica started speaking. ‘We have the fingerprint and blood on file. If we get any useful leads, people can easily be ruled out. I know there are thousands of students but there can’t be too many who look like that picture.’

‘How do you know for sure it’s a student?’

Cole spoke. ‘We don’t, Sir. That’s why we would bring the media in too and admit we made a mistake. Either way, it has to be someone relatively local.’

Farraday was back to drumming his fingers and finally slapped his hand down hard on the wood. ‘Right, this is what we’re going to do. Reynolds, you get on with the gang stuff. If people are dying, we need to shut them down. Cole, you go to the papers and the university and do whatever you have to. Daniel, if you’re so clever you get us a lead on the other killer we have to catch.’

It was basically the same arrangement they already had – except that Jessica had solved at least one case she wasn’t directly assigned to and it didn’t look as if she was going to get any credit for it. Ultimately it didn’t matter as long as they found whoever killed Robert Graves and then, her case or not, she would be visiting his parents.

Jessica went to stand but Cole started speaking. ‘I think you should let Jessica close the Graves case, Sir. It was her theory after all.’

Feeling frozen to the spot, she looked from DCI Farraday to DI Cole, who were staring at each other. It was the chief inspector who finally spoke. His tone was steady but had an undercurrent of anger. ‘Fine. Sort it out among yourselves but I want some progress on all three cases by the end of the week or I’m going to start kicking some arses around here.’