Vigilante (20 page)

With all the scores in, it turned out they had finished third. The team in first place got two free drinks each, while the ones in second got a single drink apiece.

Jessica’s team ended with nothing. ‘Good job Carrie’s gone,’ Dave said. ‘She wouldn’t have been happy with third. She’d have probably tried to break our legs like that kid.’

The quizmaster announced that they were going to do karaoke until closing time and Jessica pulled a face. ‘What’s up, moody bum?’ Dave asked.

‘Karaoke’s for idiots.’

‘You’re not getting up then?’

‘No chance. Why, you’re not having a go, are you?’

‘Hell yes, that’s why I come.’

‘What do you sing?’

‘Robbie Williams, “Angels”. Pitch perfect.’

‘Piss off, is it.’

The first person had started singing. Jessica recognised the opening bars of Elvis’ ‘Burning Love’. It was one of her dad’s favourite tunes and something she could remember dancing around to as a child without having a clue what the song was about.

‘Hang on a minute, where’s Hugo?’ Rowlands said. Just when she thought she couldn’t laugh any more for the evening, Jessica was off again. Hugo was stood on the bar, microphone in hand singing along with the karaoke. He was doing all the Elvis moves and getting every word right despite not being anywhere near the screen with the lyrics.

‘What’s he doing?’ Rowlands asked. The servers didn’t seem too pleased as Hugo danced in between people’s drinks, conducted the crowd for the chorus and then ended with a big jump off the bar.

Jessica didn’t think she’d ever stop laughing. Within moments of the song ending, Hugo was sitting back in their booth playing with his yo-yo as if nothing had happened.

‘What was
that
?’ Rowlands asked.

‘What?’

‘I didn’t even know you sang?’

‘Sometimes. I’m still working on the act.’

Jessica exchanged a look with Adam as if to say, ‘Don’t ask me’.

Rowlands got up to sing his song and, as Jessica had suspected, it was terrible. He closed his eyes for the chorus as if anguished and even sung the final part directly to a table of girls near the bar.

‘I think it’s time to head off,’ Jessica said to Adam. ‘You coming, Hugo?’

The magician looked back at them and shrugged. ‘I’ll wait.’ He stood and hugged them both, saying goodbye.

‘It’s been good meeting you again anyway,’ Jessica added.

She waved over to Rowlands, who was finishing the final note and was on his knees by the girls’ table. He gave her a small nod to show he had seen her but didn’t break from his performance. Jessica and Adam walked out of the pub hand in hand and crossed the road to the small taxi rank next to a row of shops opposite. There was only one vehicle waiting. ‘You take this one and I’ll get the one after,’ Adam said.

Jessica squeezed his hand and pulled him towards her. ‘Maybe…or you could just stay at mine tonight?’

TWENTY-THREE

Detective Constable Carrie Jones had quite enjoyed her evening until the flood of text messages towards the end of it. She just wished he would stop playing with her head. She didn’t know if she should call him her boyfriend or not. One minute they were on, the next off again. He didn’t seem to know what he wanted and the more he messed her around, the more she ran to back him. She hated herself for doing it but couldn’t stop.

As she sat in the taxi, her phone beeped again with another message.

‘Sorry for earlier. Will make it up to you.’

The woman snapped the phone shut, put it on silent and dropped it back into her bag. The thing that frustrated her most was that today had been one of those days you waited for, the ones where things got figured out and some poor parents, such as Robert Graves’, got their closure. These were the nights you were supposed to go out, have a few drinks and a laugh and forget about the rest of the cases that were going nowhere.

She had really wanted to get Jessica alone for a few moments to say how pleased she was for her. The two had become good friends over the past few months but Carrie could see how badly things had been getting to her superior. In quiet moments she had spoken to Dave about the pressure their friend seemed to be under but, aside from solving the case, neither of them had any firm ideas of how to cheer her up.

Meeting Adam for the first time had been nice. Carrie had never known Jessica to have a boyfriend. Behind her back a few people at the station made cruel jibes about her sexual habits but they soon stopped after Dave had pinned one of the other constables up against the wall by the throat. Adam came across really well though. He was a little quiet but had been meeting them for the first time so was bound to be a bit shy. He was obviously clever and had a sharp sense of humour when he opened up. She hoped Jessica would come over later in the week so they could have a proper chat about Adam…and her own problems.

The taxi was on the main road a hundred yards or so away from the turn-off to her street and started to slow down. The driver looked over his shoulder and shouted back. ‘Do you mind if I pull in here, love? It’s one-way down there. I end up having to go half a mile out of my way to get back again.’

‘Yeah, no worries.’

The driver pulled over and the constable gave him a ten-pound note, telling him to keep the change. Carrie stepped out onto the pavement and walked a few steps towards her junction but the high blue heels were hurting her feet. They looked great with the dress but weren’t that practical for walking in. She sat on a nearby wall and pulled the shoes off, standing up in her bare feet. Her house was a couple of hundred yards away and it wouldn’t be the first time she had walked back to the property with no shoes on.

She walked slowly down her road, placing her feet carefully in case of loose stones. As she got towards the end of her pathway, she heard a faint noise coming from further down the street. She squinted into the darkness but couldn’t see anything.

Because of the way John Mills, her troublesome neighbour, had converted two properties into one, the blind spot from the street lights coincided with the end of the driveway he had created.

At first it was hard for her to figure out what the noise was but then the constable remembered the smashed-up face of his girlfriend. Even though she had refused to give evidence against him previously, the last thing Carrie wanted was for her to get beaten up again.

She put her bag and shoes down on her pathway and crept forwards into the dark down the pavement towards the noise, crossing onto Mills’ front lawn in an effort to track down where the sound was coming from.

The constable was wearing a short dress and no shoes and didn’t even have her identification, let alone anything else, so didn’t want to be seen walking on his property if it was something innocuous. She felt the dew-soaked grass through her toes and a shiver went down her back. She couldn’t make out what the noise was and couldn’t see anything. She was standing completely hidden by a shadow when she heard a large shout.

Carrie ran towards the sound. There was a small open-topped van parked on the drive that came into view as she reached the end of the lawn. She ran towards the back of the vehicle and saw two men struggling. They were both silhouettes in the gloom and she shouted towards them. Both men turned to face her but, even in the darkness, she could see that one of them was badly hurt. He had twisted around to face her, screaming in agony as he did so. The shout was muffled, almost as if it were being heard from far further away than it was.

Without thinking, Carrie ran towards them, grabbing for the man still standing. She didn’t know if it was John Mills or someone he knew but something serious had happened. She could feel liquid around her toes as she hung on to the man’s top. He grunted and tried to bat her away with his forearm. The blow half-caught her across the head but she didn’t let go and lashed out with her feet, trying to trip him. She could feel the man on the floor still moving near her other foot but wasn’t sure if he was trying to help her.

The man who was standing continued to flail but she managed to duck under his arm and crash her shoulder into him. She might be small but she knew how to look after herself and heard the man exhale loudly and painfully. As he reeled, the constable tried to work her leg behind his to trip him and send him backwards. The man was bigger than she thought though and, as she tried to push, the only noise she heard was her own leg snapping. The pain screamed through her and, as she fell backwards, the last thing she saw was a knife reflecting the moonlight crashing down towards her neck.

TWENTY-FOUR

Jessica couldn’t begin to comprehend what DI Cole was trying to tell her on the phone after it had woken both her and Adam up in the early hours. She wasn’t good in the mornings at the best of times but the alarm clock showed 4.22 and none of her senses seemed to be working. Adam had groaned and rolled over when the phone had begun to ring but she knew she had to answer it.

She heard the words ‘Carrie’, ‘stabbed’, ‘infirmary’ and finally, ‘sorry’ but couldn’t figure it all out. Cole repeated the sentence four times before the significance finally dawned on her. ‘Jessica, I’m at the Royal Infirmary. It’s Carrie, she’s been stabbed. I’m so sorry.’

It was what he hadn’t said that suddenly became clear. He hadn’t told her that Carrie was fine. He hadn’t told her they were waiting for results. He hadn’t even called her Detective, or Constable, or Jones.

He had called her Carrie and he had said sorry.

Jessica offered a quick goodbye to Adam and apologised. She told him she didn’t know what was going on but that she had to move quickly. She pulled on whatever clothes were closest and drove as fast as she could to the hospital, not caring if someone tried to pull her over for speeding. Given the mood she was in they wouldn’t have caught her anyway.

Jessica parked her car in one of the emergency vehicle spaces and ran into the main part of the hospital. She held her identification out in front of her and, without even being given Carrie’s name, the receptionist gave her directions.

As she ran down the corridors, Jessica’s vision was blurred, a mix of tears and tiredness. She soon reached the correct ward, bursting through a set of double doors into a waiting area that was empty except for Cole. He was sitting looking at the floor but immediately got to his feet as soon as he saw Jessica. It looked as if there had been tears in his eyes at some point recently too. ‘Jess…’

‘Where is she?’

‘Jess, stop.’

Jessica was trying to push past him to go through another set of doors but he was holding her back. ‘Stop.’

She stopped trying to fight past him and took a step backwards. ‘Is she…?’

‘Yes.’

‘What happened?’

‘We don’t know. She was found with a stab wound in her neck on the driveway of a property a few doors down from her house.’

‘Did Mills do it?’

‘Her neighbour? He’s been stabbed too but he’s alive in intensive care. It was his girlfriend who called us.’

Jessica stared at the inspector, unable to understand what he was saying. ‘So they’ve both been stabbed?’

‘Yes.’

‘But why would someone hurt Carrie?’

‘I don’t know.’

A slow realisation came across Jessica and she sank backwards onto a plastic seat, looking down at the floor. ‘You don’t think…this vigilante guy was going after Mills?’

Cole looked back at her. The thought had obviously crossed his mind but he didn’t want to say anything. Jessica stood straight back up again. ‘Where’s Farraday?’

‘Pacing around outside of John Mills’ intensive care ward at the moment. The last thing I saw he was shouting at the nurse because the victim was in a coma and unable to talk to us.’

‘He’s already here?’

‘Yes, one of the paramedics said he had arrived at the scene as they were leaving and then followed them here. He called me.’

‘He was at the scene?’

‘Jessica, I don’t know. You have to slow down.’

She wasn’t listening to him though. ‘Which direction is intensive care?’

Cole looked at her with obvious concern. ‘I think you should go home. I shouldn’t have called you.’

Jessica wasn’t ready to listen. She spun around, banged back through the double doors and started reading a sign on the wall opposite. With an arrow giving her a vague direction, Jessica walked as quickly as she could down the corridor. The signs led her up some stairs and down more corridors. Given the time of the morning, there weren’t too many other people around the passageways and she quickened her pace.

Farraday’s behaviour had been troubling her for a while and Carrie’s death had brought everything colliding together. She knew she was feeling emotional but a very clear picture was emerging in her head. Everything that had hindered the case came down to her boss. She was as certain as she could be that it was him who leaked details about the prison warden to the media claiming he was corrupt.

It was him who wrongly put Robert Graves on the list of the vigilante’s victims – and allowed the e-fit of Daniel Wilkin to be associated with it. It was even him who let the branding ‘vigilante’ stick.

He was the one who wanted more ‘shits’ off the streets, he took Cole off the case, even though he was her superior, and he had been seen arguing with Carrie the afternoon before she had been killed.

Jessica didn’t know how he had done it or why. She had no idea what his connection was to Donald McKenna but it was as clear as it could be to her that Farraday was somehow involved in what had been going on. She knew it sounded utterly irrational on the surface but it explained so much. Was the reason he was so desperate to see John Mills because the man in a coma could identify him?

After a few minutes of walking, she pushed her way through another set of double doors into a waiting room. Straight ahead of her was Farraday, pacing the area himself. He stopped and looked at her as the doors banged against their frames. ‘Daniel?’

Jessica immediately realised she had no idea what she was doing. She couldn’t jump in and accuse him of being a part of what had gone on in recent weeks. She stumbled over what to say. ‘Sir…I…’

His eyes were fuelled with anger but she didn’t know who it was aimed at. ‘He’s still unconscious,’ he said.

‘Who? Mills?’

‘Yes. The doctor says he’s stable but they don’t know if he’ll wake up.’

‘Do you know what happened?’

The man was gazing through her. ‘How would I know?’

‘I don’t…Jack said you were there?’

Jessica saw his eyes bring her properly into focus. ‘Who told…?’ He moved quickly from standing on one foot to the other, grunting in frustration before quickly striding past her. As he neared the door, he turned around and shouted over his shoulder. ‘I want to know the
second
he wakes up. No one speaks to him before me.’

His reaction confused Jessica even more but, before she could begin to think about things further, she noticed a woman sitting in the corner of the room. Despite the way Farraday had raised his voice the woman seemingly hadn’t moved and was sat on a bolted-down chair holding her knees up to her chest, gazing at the floor.

‘Hello?’ Jessica said, walking towards her.

The woman said nothing. She looked in her early twenties with long shiny black hair tied into a ponytail and would have been very attractive if it hadn’t been for the tear-stained black eye she was sporting. ‘Are you all right?’ Jessica asked.

The woman spoke without looking up from the ground. ‘Just leave me alone.’

‘Are you John Mills’ girlfriend?’

‘Are you deaf? I said leave me alone.’

‘I’m Jessica.’

‘You’re a pig is what you are.’

Jessica sat opposite the woman, wriggling into the chair to get comfortable. The row of hardened seats were screwed onto thick metal bars that were bolted into the ground and offered little relief except for thin pads underneath and behind her.

‘Whoever stabbed your boyfriend killed my friend.’

The woman said nothing for almost a minute before finally spitting her words out. ‘I already spoke to someone at the house and told them everything. I’m not talking to you too.’

Jessica knew she could read the statement when she got back to the station but there was one thing she wanted to ask which definitely wouldn’t have been brought up by the officers at the scene. ‘Perhaps I’ve got better questions?’

The woman snorted with mock laughter and finally looked across at Jessica, putting her feet down onto the floor. ‘Fine, here you go. No, I didn’t
see
anything. No, I didn’t
hear
anything until the girl screamed and, by the time I got out there, it was just them. No, I don’t know who might want to harm John. No, I don’t know why your girl was on our drive and no, I don’t know why she had no shoes on. Yes, I called you straight away and, finally, yes, I walked into a door. Now piss off.’

It sounded pathetic but Jessica could only think of one thing.

‘She wasn’t wearing shoes…?’

Whether it was the tone of her voice, she wasn’t sure but Jessica glanced up to see the woman staring directly at her.

She was running her fingers through her long hair and letting it fall back over and over. Her manner had changed again by the time she spoke next. ‘I know she was one of yours but I’ll always remember the red of the blood and the blue of her dress.’ The woman sighed loudly and looked back at the floor. ‘Her shoes were on her own pathway with her bag or something like that. I only know because I heard one of them talking. It was dark and then they took me inside to talk.’

Jessica took a deep breath. ‘The man who just stormed out of here, was he there?’

‘What, afterwards? He was the one directing people.’

‘But before that, did you see him?’

The woman looked back at the floor. ‘I’m not doing your job for you.’

Jessica could tell straight away the moment was lost. She wasn’t sure what she had expected. Cole had told her Farraday was at the incident. It was the first time she had known him go to a crime scene but it was likely he would have been the first call when the dead body’s identity was discovered by the paramedics or responding officers.

She wondered if he was already there somewhere, watching and waiting for his phone to ring. Jessica stood and stepped closer to the woman. As she was leaving her flat, her business cards had been next to her identification and she had picked them up just in case. She took one out of her pocket and put it on the seat next to the woman. ‘Just in case you do want to talk.’

She turned around and walked back out of the waiting room, heading downstairs towards the room Cole had been outside of. As she approached the double doors, she was almost hit by Cole pushing them out towards her. She stepped backwards quickly to avoid them and he did the exact same thing.

‘I was just leaving,’ he said. ‘They’re taking the body back to the labs to do the tests.’

‘So was she alive in the ambulance?’

‘I guess so; she wouldn’t have been brought here otherwise.’

‘Sorry, of course. I’m not thinking clearly this morning.’

‘I’m going to go home for a bit and then I’ll be back at the station in an hour or so. You should go home too.’

‘Maybe.’

Jessica had no intention of going anywhere except for the station.

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

The sun was beginning to come up as Jessica drove along the nearly deserted roads from the hospital to Longsight. She kept to the speed limits for the second journey and felt guilty about her selfishness earlier on. Given her state of mind and the speed she had driven at, she could have ended up causing harm not only to herself but someone else through her recklessness. Her mind was still in overdrive, not knowing if her suspicions of Farraday were irrational and down to shock, or if Carrie’s death had instead given her the jolt needed to put the pieces together.

Finding out what had happened the night before would be crucial. DC Jones had been found on John Mills’ property so was he the target and the officer had been killed accidentally, or was something else going on? Until Mills woke up, she was unlikely to know.

Although it was early and most officers would still be at home, Jessica could sense the atmosphere of sadness and anger as she walked into the station’s reception. The overnight desk sergeant asked if she had any updates on what exactly happened but Jessica shook her head. ‘Do you know if we’ve had a list of things recovered from the scene yet?’ she asked.

‘No idea. I know Bradford Park have called some of their staff in to start working straight away because they phoned here to check some details. It’s still a bit early but it could be on the system.’

Jessica knew the procedure anyway and had only said it to stop the sergeant asking how she was. She nodded and walked towards her office but instead found Rowlands in the corridor. He looked as if he were still in shock. The skin around his eyes was red and, while he was usually smartly groomed, his hair hadn’t been spiked and his clothes were creased. ‘Jess…’ he said when he saw her.

‘Dave, I should have called you.’

‘Do you know what happened? I read the first report through the system but there’s pretty much no detail and no one here knows anything other than the fact she’s…’

Jessica wanted to put an arm around him. She had long-known his outward confidence was the side he showed to everyone else and he was a different type of person when you got to know him. ‘No one’s really sure yet. I’ve come from the hospital. Her body has been taken to the labs while her neighbour is unconscious. Both of them had been stabbed.’

‘I saw the stuff about John Mills, she was always talking about him. Do you think it’s our vigilante?’

‘I don’t know.’ Jessica didn’t want to expand on what she had actually been thinking through the morning.

‘What’s going on now then?’ Rowlands asked.

‘Jack will be here soon. We need to get people out knocking on the other neighbours’ doors to see if they heard anything. I think she took a taxi home last night so we’ve got to find out who the driver was. The labs are doing their thing and someone’s going to have to talk to the media this morning too.’

Rowlands was nodding, clearly wondering what he could do. ‘Hey, are you okay?’ Jessica added.

‘Yeah, I…’

‘Did you say you’d read the initial reports?’

‘There’s not much in them, just the emergency call log and a few other bits.’

‘Was there a list of evidence recovered?’

‘There was something, I don’t remember completely.’

‘Show me.’

Rowlands and Jessica walked through the hallways to the main floor and his area of the room. He was already logged in to the force’s computer system and clicked to bring up the file that had been created just a few hours ago. Jessica asked if she could sit and the constable stood behind her watching as she read the screen. First she scanned through the emergency call details and then looked for the attached information.