Vigilante (22 page)

Jessica felt in a daze for the rest of the day. She’d had no time to grieve and hardly any sleep but spent the entire time working hard. In the back of her mind was Farraday. She knew it was paranoia but just because she recognised it, that didn’t necessarily mean it was misplaced.

The afternoon had been spent talking to Carrie’s other neighbours. They all said roughly the same thing; she was a joy to live next to and John Mills was a nightmare. None of them had heard anything the previous night.

After finishing taking the statements, Jessica went back to the station to type them up herself. It wasn’t the kind of work she was expected to do but she felt she had to keep going. The rest of the day crew had already gone home by the time she had finished, with some of the night officers openly asking if she wanted them to help her out so she could go. In the end, to get some peace, she closed the door to her office and turned the lights out, with only the glow of the computer monitor stopping the room from being completely dark.

She looked through all the information that had come in that day then re-read everything they already had on file from the previous deaths. Although the killings weren’t being officially linked yet, she knew they were, even if the lab results weren’t expected for at least another twenty-four hours. She wanted to see something in their records that would either confirm her suspicions about the chief inspector or make her realise she was overreacting.

There was nothing.

Adam had texted her a few times during the day but she had deleted the messages without even reading them. She felt selfish but it was almost if she wanted to punish herself for not preventing what had happened the night before.

As Jessica sat staring at the computer screen, her thoughts drifted to cartoons from her youth for no apparent reason. She considered how simplistic it seemed when Bugs Bunny had a small devil on one shoulder whispering bad thoughts in one ear as a little angel sat on the other telling him the opposite. It sounded stupid but she could almost feel them there behind her, the devil telling her the chief inspector was the one and that she should shout it from the rooftops, the angel reminding her she was just struggling to deal with her friend’s death and seeing demons where there were none.

Jessica walked out to her car and got in, looking at the clock on the dashboard. She realised she had slept for barely four hours in the last day and a half. It felt as if someone else was driving as she pulled onto the road to travel home. Her feet and hands were moving over the pedals, gear stick and steering wheel but Jessica made no real conscious thought to control what she was doing.

Her mind snapped back as a car behind her beeped as she waited at a green traffic light. She wasn’t sure if she had fallen asleep for a few moments or simply if she hadn’t noticed the colour. She tried to pull forwards but the car lurched over the stop line and stalled. The car behind beeped again, swerving around her and speeding through a light which was now definitely red. Jessica started the engine again and felt that little devil in her ear, whispering mischievous ideas. The next time the light went green, she pulled away quickly and did a U-turn at the junction going back the way she had come.

She wasn’t going home.

Jessica couldn’t remember the exact directions but knew roughly which area she was going to. She found the estate fairly easily but drove through the maze of roads for fifteen minutes looking for the exact one she wanted. Eventually she parked on the side of the road and turned her headlights off. She had no plan or no real idea what she was going to do but in the darkness she sat and watched DCI Farraday’s house.

She had known the rough location because of the party he had thrown when he had first started the job. It was in a fairly affluent area and she knew her car would stand out. Jessica made sure she was stopped between street lights in the shadows and stared at the house. There was a light on downstairs but the rest of the property sat in darkness. Around the house was a mixture of fences and hedges around six feet high or so with an automated gate at the end of the driveway. It was the type where you pressed a button and waited to be buzzed through.

Jessica was thinking as clearly as she had done the whole day. She stepped out of the car and walked quietly up to the gate, making sure to avoid the glow of the street lights. She looked for a security camera but couldn’t see one. She first tried opening the gate but it wouldn’t budge, so instead she pushed it roughly to see if it was fixed sturdily enough in place to let her climb. It felt as if the bolts fixed into the ground were solid so she squinted into the distance towards the house to see if there were any obvious motion lights that would come on. She couldn’t see anything and, after looking both ways to check for approaching cars, Jessica quickly jumped up onto the middle bar of the gate and then flipped herself over the top.

She landed a little awkwardly on her ankle on the other side but gritted her teeth and refused to cry out. She followed the line of the hedge towards the house, stepping carefully in an effort to leave no footprints.

Jessica reached the garage attached to the house. The front door was only a few yards in front of her and a small alley on her right presumably led towards the back of the house.

She jumped as the downstairs light went out and held her breath, ready to duck into the alley if any of the doors opened. She wondered if it had gone out because someone had seen her but she started to breathe again as a light upstairs went on, figuring it was just the occupant going to bed. She gently rattled the garage door to see if it would open but it was locked from the inside.

Jessica realised she had no idea what she was doing. She had acted on impulse but ended up doing exactly what she had told the officers not to do at the briefing; she had let her anger cloud her judgement. She crept backwards but her heel clipped something hard, making it rattle noisily. Jessica quickly ducked, pressing herself towards the hedge. The sound might have seemed louder to her but she again held her breath, waiting for what seemed like an age. She could feel the wind starting to whip around the garden but nobody came.

When she was sure no one was going to discover her, Jessica looked to see what she had bumped into and noticed a black wheelie bin. Her head was telling her to turn and run, to get into her car and drive home to get some sleep but her eyes felt fixed on the plastic container that came up to her chest. She stepped towards it, flipping over the lid. A smell of rotting rubbish hit her but she looked inside anyway. She used the light of her phone’s screen to see in the dark but on top was an apple core and two banana skins, plus some sloppy leftover food.

Jessica knew it was time to go and could feel a voice in her head practically screaming at her but, without thinking, she was suddenly digging through the bin. It stank and she didn’t want to think about the slime she could feel on her hands but she pulled out small carrier bags full of rubbish, digging her nails in to rip them open and then dumping the contents back into the container as she fingered through whatever was in them.

She took out a supermarket carrier bag, which had been tied at the top, ripping the sides open. Some sort of liquid oozed down her arm as she dropped it back into the bin but, as she did so, something heavier fell out. She used her phone to light up the area and reached in to see what had dropped. In among a small pile of old filtered coffee and drained tea bags, Jessica used her thumb and forefinger to pull out a small plastic object. It was sticky and clearly damaged but Jessica had no doubt what it was and who it belonged to.

It was Carrie’s mobile phone.

TWENTY-SIX

It might have been the wind or the drying dampness stuck to her arms but Jessica felt a chill spiral down her back. She was fixed to the spot, sliding the top part of the phone upwards then downwards and staring into the pile of rubbish. The smell was no longer affecting her, the stinking aroma was nothing compared to the shock she felt at what she was holding. Jessica tried pressing the button to turn it on but then realised there was no back panel and no battery. She used her finger to scratch into the compartment where there should have been a SIM card but it was empty.

She quickly realised her mistake. Her fingerprints would be all over the phone now too. Even if she took it to a superior officer and said she found it in DCI Farraday’s bin, all he would have to do was deny it. If he had used gloves to lift it from the scene there would be only her marks on it and who would believe a mad woman who claimed to have found it rooting through other people’s rubbish?

Jessica had a connection from Farraday to Carrie’s death and John Mills’ stabbing. If the lab results came back the way they all expected them to, the latest attacks would also be linked to the killings of Craig Millar, Benjamin Webb, Desmond Hughes and Lee Morgan. That meant she had an indirect link from the DCI to everything that had happened but she couldn’t believe her own stupidity. She had blown it and was holding evidence she couldn’t use and a theory she would have to keep to herself. The only thing she could console herself with was that her paranoia hadn’t been misplaced. It wasn’t much of a relief though, given she knew she would have to act on her own.

There were still so many things she would have to figure out, not least how Donald McKenna tied into it all, but at least she knew who she was up against.

Jessica pocketed her own phone and Carrie’s, not even being careful to keep the mess that was on her hands from getting on her clothes. She put the lid down on the bin and stepped back towards the hedge line to walk towards the gate. She was almost halfway towards the exit when she froze. A car had turned off the road and its headlights were now shining through the gate. If she had been five yards further ahead, the lamps would have been pointing straight at her.

Jessica quickly walked backwards as she saw a silhouetted figure get out of the car and walk towards the gates. The person stood next to the box that was by the gate, presumably typing in some sort of code as Jessica dashed backwards towards the garage. She didn’t want to be caught by the headlights and moved into the alley that ran alongside the house.

There was a large plastic water butt next to a side door. Jessica was beginning to feel the pain in her ankle from where she had landed after jumping the gate. Each time she pressed down, she felt jolts flaming up through the joint. She could hear the car moving down the driveway and risked a look around the corner of the house but saw straight away she had made another error. The bin had initially been in an alcove next to the garage but she had bumped it so it was now partially blocking the door.

She watched as Farraday stepped out of the driver’s seat and walked towards the object. Jessica knew she should move backwards so there was no danger of being seen but instead felt transfixed. He pulled the bin backwards and Jessica thought he was going to move it back into place but then felt a twinge in her chest as he flipped the lid over and looked inside. She knew straight away there was something wrong. She had just dumped the torn-open bags on top and, instead of the sealed-up rubbish, he would have seen the unfiltered mess. The car lamps were illuminating the scene for her as she saw him reach in but quickly withdraw his hand, not wanting to touch what was inside. He closed the lid but stood next to the container apparently not knowing what to do.

Jessica crept backwards and hunched behind the water butt, grimacing because of the pain in her ankle and waiting to hear the garage door open or the engine rev again. Instead there was just the sound of the wind and the quiet hum of the car idling in neutral. The size of the water container shielded her from view but she felt watched. She didn’t want to risk peering around towards the end of the building. She closed her eyes and held her breath before finally hearing the garage door sliding upwards. She breathed out slowly as the car pulled in and then the door slid shut again. Jessica didn’t know if the man would have to come back out of the garage to go into the house or if there was an internal door. During the party they had all been to, she hadn’t really left the main living-room area.

Apart from the wind, Jessica couldn’t hear anything. She sat and waited, gently rubbing her ankle before eventually stepping back towards the side of the house. She almost expected to see the chief inspector standing beside the garage door as she looked around the corner but there was nothing. Gritting her teeth and ignoring the pain from her leg, Jessica ran as fast as she could to the gate. She could feel her ankle wanting to give way but ignored it, pushing off on her stronger leg and jumping up onto the gate. It had been much easier to get over the first time around but she used her shoulders and upper arms to pull hard on the top of the gate frames and haul herself over, carefully lowering herself down on the other side.

She didn’t look back as she half-ran, half-hobbled over to her car. She immediately realised that if Farraday had ever taken notice of the vehicle she drove, there was a good chance he would have seen it parked on the road as he pulled his own car in. But seeing as he didn’t seem to know anyone’s first name, that was far from a given.

She unlocked the door and slumped into the driver’s seat, finally feeling able to breathe properly. Jessica dug the key out of her pocket and realised for the first time just how dirty her hands and arms were. She turned the key and felt the engine roar to life but didn’t risk putting the headlights on.

Before she pulled away she looked back at the house and saw a lone silhouette standing in an upstairs window illuminated by the light from inside.

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

It took three people to ask if she was all right the next morning before Jessica finally snapped and launched into a barrage of swear words that would have shown them she definitely wasn’t.

She had showered when she got in the night before but barely slept, with vivid dreams waking her each time she dropped off. By the time she got to the station, it had almost become a game to add up how little sleep she’d had. She even wrote it down on the notepad she kept on her desk. Her head struggled with the maths but the computer’s calculator helped. She didn’t feel the same person as she wrote ‘6/48’ on the pad.

She estimated she’d had six hours of sleep in the last forty-eight – and that was being generous, adding up the ten minutes here and the fifteen minutes there from the night before.

For some reason she worked out how many of hours that would equate to over a week, writing ‘21’ on the pad. Then she looked on an Internet site and read you were supposed to get eight hours’ sleep a night. Again using the calculator to do the maths, she wrote ‘56’.

You were supposed to sleep for fifty-six hours a week but she was on for twenty-one, not even a full day. Jessica looked at the numbers and let her eyes drift in and out of focus.

Her mobile phone beeped and stunned her out of the daze. It was another text message from Adam. She had deleted two more the night before but clicked to open the latest one.

‘RU OK? Miss U. Worried. Pls call. Ad. X’

She read the words over three times and then deleted the message.

In the hours since finding Carrie’s phone, Jessica didn’t know if the figure in Farraday’s upstairs window had seen her or not. A couple of times when she had woken up in the night she had reached out onto her nightstand to make sure Carrie’s phone was still there and that she hadn’t dreamed it. When she finally pulled herself out of bed feeling worse than she had when she got into it, she knew she was on her own. Unless DCI Farraday challenged her directly, she would say nothing to him and not risk testing his authority again.

Herself, Reynolds and Cole had their regular briefing with the chief inspector that morning and if he had recognised Jessica the night before, he didn’t say anything. The first set of autopsy results were back but all they showed was that DC Jones had bled to death due to the stab wound in her neck. The weapon was consistent with the knife that had been used to kill the other four victims but the lab team still had a lot to do.

John Mills had stabilised in hospital and his life was no longer under threat but the doctors still had no idea if he would regain consciousness. He too had been stabbed in the neck and once in the chest but nothing major had been hit. Jessica thought about the injustice that he could survive while her friend hadn’t.

After the briefing, she went back to her office and phoned the labs. Jessica asked the receptionist to put her through to the supervisor directly, knowing there would be no risk of having to talk to Adam.

The lab manager explained that it would be a while until any results would be available because there was such a jumble of blood at the scene. As well as DC Jones’ and Mills’, the man’s girlfriend had contaminated the scene by touching the bodies before calling the police. There was also diesel on the driveway which had complicated matters and it would take time to separate it all out.

So far, nothing else had been found.

It didn’t really matter to Jessica if the results came back with another link to Donald McKenna, her priority was to try to connect the prisoner to Farraday. Given everything she had found, there had to be something. On the surface she was working with the rest of the team in the same way she should be but, when she had time alone, she was hunting for that link.

The obvious theory was that the DCI was somehow planting blood or hair from the inmate at the scenes although, apart from to cover his own tracks, she had no idea why it was McKenna in particular he was using. She knew from Adam how hard that would be but the chief inspector must have seen enough crime scenes over the years to have a pretty good idea how things should look.

She checked to see if McKenna had committed any offences out of the county that the DCI could have been involved with but there was nothing. Without going to the personnel department, she wouldn’t be able to find out things like the chief inspector’s exact age or place of birth so couldn’t tell for sure if there was anything in the past that connected them. She knew they must be roughly the same age and tried using the Internet to see if it threw up any links but there was nothing.

The thought occurred to her that perhaps the warden, Lee Morgan, had helped get the blood and hair samples for Farraday and maybe he had been killed to stop him revealing anything? There was so little she had to go on though. The prison officer had no criminal record and all she had were his basic details. With her boss’ personnel file beyond her reach and the Internet offering up nothing to pair him with McKenna, she had nowhere to go.

She thought about approaching Superintendent Aylesbury. The two of them had bonded before he had been promoted but it seemed like such a long time ago and he was always keen on using the correct authority structure. Jessica knew she had no evidence anyway. She couldn’t hand over Carrie’s phone and the constable’s personnel file might well have been returned by now. Even if it was still in the DCI’s drawer upstairs it didn’t show anything conclusive. The chief inspector being first at the scene could be easily explained by him being called by the desk sergeant as well. It was all circumstantial and proved nothing.

Jessica sat at her desk and leant back in her chair with her eyes shut allowing the exhaustion to grip her. As she drifted off to sleep, she realised she had absolutely no idea what to do next.