Vigilante (23 page)

TWENTY-SEVEN

Jessica spent the next nine days trying to act normally but her nightlife was catching up with her. Each evening she would drive to the estate Farraday lived on, park two streets away and then sit on a low wall opposite his house simply watching. Sometimes she would do it for half an hour but on one occasion she waited until half past five in the morning then went home, had a shower, got changed and drove to the station.

Jessica had no idea what she was hoping to see but justified the way she was acting by the fact no one had been killed since. She knew the chief inspector hadn’t left his house overnight and, in her mind, that meant she had prevented anyone else being murdered.

Sitting in on the daily briefings made her feel sick. She had to watch Farraday talk each morning and endure the cold way he said the word ‘Jones’. Jessica had hidden the mobile phone she found under her bed but would take it out each morning, sliding the top part up and down over and over.

Her obsession with sleep was consuming her. Each morning she would add to the numbers written on the pad on her desk. Sometimes she felt as if she were deliberately keeping herself awake just to have a little less sleep than the night before.

She felt an arm shaking her gently. ‘Jess?’

Jessica jolted awake and could hear the
rat-a-tat-tat
noise of the train she was sitting on speeding along its tracks. ‘Are you okay?’ the voice asked.

Jessica shook her head and opened her eyes. The flashes of green outside the window were disorientating as she tried to clear her head.

Rat-a-tat-tat.

‘Yeah, I just dropped off for a moment.’ She blinked a few times and looked across the table to see Rowlands’ concerned face. He had that sideways tilt to his head she so hated. ‘Where are we?’ Jessica asked, pushing herself back into the seat and trying to get comfortable.

‘Not sure. Somewhere Welshy.’ Rowlands was smiling but Jessica could tell it didn’t have the same feeling behind it as it might have done a few weeks ago.

‘How long was I asleep?’

‘Dunno but you’d started dribbling so I thought I’d wake you.’

Jessica reached up to wipe her chin but it was dry.

Her colleague winked at her. ‘Gotcha.’

She forced a smile but there was no sincerity. ‘Have you ever been before?’

‘Aberystwyth? Nope.’

After over a week of tests, Carrie’s body had been released back to her family for the funeral. Jessica was always going to be one of the officers representing the force but Rowlands insisted he wanted to go too. DCI Farraday said he had too much work to do and Jessica knew Cole had a lot on.

‘Did you see this?’ Rowlands said, holding up a newspaper.

Jessica shook her head but reached out to take it. She read through the front page and then turned inside, skimming through the article. ‘Changed their tune, haven’t they?’

‘Not surprising though, is it?’

‘Why did it have to take one of us dying before they finally decided killing people was wrong?’

A few days previously the labs had isolated the various samples taken from Carrie’s body and found a single hair that had a DNA match to Donald McKenna. There was a mixture of excitement and disappointment around the station with people not knowing if it was a good thing. Cole had been consistently talking to the CPS about the possibility of a prosecution but there was no way they felt a jury would convict.

The prisoner’s DNA was directly connected to four killings and one attempted murder and he was the prime suspect in Lee Morgan’s death too but they could do nothing. She and Cole visited the inmate again but hadn’t found out anything more than they had managed before. For the first time since they started working together, Jessica told her boss she wanted him to lead the questioning but the prisoner had nothing new to say.

Her own investigations into Farraday weren’t going anywhere either. She had even tried staying late on a couple of evenings in case the personnel department left their office unlocked but they were more professional than that. She knew she was clutching at straws but couldn’t think of anything better to do.

‘Nice piece about Carrie in the
Herald
, wasn’t it?’ Jessica added as the train continued to thunder along.

‘Terrific.’

‘Did you tell Garry you liked it?’

Rowlands said nothing, still refusing to acknowledge he knew the journalist. ‘Did you see the bit about Daniel Wilkin?’ he said instead.

Jessica skimmed through the pages until she saw what he was talking about. Everything that had happened in the past few weeks was blending together for Jessica and had been utterly overshadowed by her growing obsession with Farraday. She remembered the e-fit of the student and read the piece. He had pleaded guilty to a charge of manslaughter and been given bail with very strict conditions to reside at his parents’ house with a tagged curfew. From experience, Jessica knew people accused of murder or manslaughter very rarely got bail but Daniel Wilkin really was no threat to anyone.

She looked up to Rowlands. ‘I’m glad they gave him bail.’

‘He’s still going to end up going down.’

Jessica shrugged, knowing the constable was right. She wondered what Arthur and Jackie Graves would consider as justice for their son.

‘Have you heard anything from that stalker guy who confessed?’ Rowlands added.

‘Nothing. He’s tagged on a curfew as part of his bail. I didn’t really get the sense he was dangerous anyway, just weird.’

Jessica didn’t read the rest of the crime coverage in the newspaper but turned to the gossip and celebrity section. Usually these would be the pages she immediately skimmed past but something about the inanity of it all was reassuring. No matter who had died and how much of a mess the world was in, there was always some orange-skinned semi-naked nobody whining to the papers about her boyfriend.

In recent days, a few of the papers had started to carry angles about the mystery over the DNA evidence. Given the number of bodies and the people who knew within the station, there was always likely to be a leak at some stage. Ultimately, the media didn’t know how to report it either. There were a few smaller stories about the bodies being linked to the prison but McKenna wasn’t mentioned by name. Another article said there was confusion over the exact nature of the forensic evidence, which was true but not because they didn’t know what it was telling them, simply because they didn’t know what to do about it.

The train finally pulled into Aberystwyth’s train station and they took a taxi to the church. Jessica and Cole entered through enormous thick wooden doors at the front and Jessica felt tiny as she peered to either side and saw huge stained-glass windows stretching high towards the ceiling. The roof towered far above them, the soft organ music being played at the front echoing around.

The venue was old and majestic and reminded Jessica of being young when her school would go to the local church once a week. Back then, she was at an age where Jesus was as mystical a figure as Santa Claus and she firmly believed God had created everything around her in seven days. She enjoyed being in the school choir and singing hymns once a week was one of the things she looked forward to most.

Jessica sat next to Rowlands on the hard wooden bench. She was on the end of a row and stretched her ankle out into the aisle, rotating it gently. She wasn’t sure if she had sprained it jumping down from the gate but had strapped it tightly each morning to try to stop herself limping. If DCI Farraday had seen her shadow leaving his house he would have seen her hobbling and she didn’t want to give him any clues by limping around the station too.

The service was far more positive than Jessica would have expected. One of Carrie’s old friends told a story about how she had gone missing for an afternoon when they were still at school. It wasn’t like her to miss lessons and no one knew where she was. When people had realised she wasn’t at home either, there had been a panic over the missing girl. It turned out she had somehow managed to lock herself in a toilet cubicle and, in an age before mobile phones, hadn’t been able to tell anyone. A caretaker found her in tears as the school was being locked up. As the speaker finished the story, there was a mix of tears and laughs, which Jessica felt summed her friend up perfectly.

The woman’s mother spoke movingly about her daughter and, along with some readings and hymns, the ceremony engrossed Jessica more than anything had managed to in the last week or so. She didn’t even feel tired and had a clearness of thought she’d not felt in a while.

The burial was in the graveyard attached to the church. The casket was closed, which Jessica assumed was because of the work the forensic team had had to do to the body. At the smaller ceremony outside, the vicar said the Joneses were a major part of the local community and that Carrie was being buried next to her grandparents. It was heartbreaking for Jessica to watch the two parents say goodbye to their daughter and, while the mother was holding things together, the father was a mess and couldn’t stop himself breaking down.

There was a wake in the church hall a few hundred yards away and Jessica wasn’t surprised to see Carrie’s father hadn’t made it. As soon as they entered the hall, the dead officer’s mother sought them out.

‘You must be Jessica,’ the woman said before turning to Rowlands. ‘And David, yes?’ Her accent was far stronger than her daughter’s but there was a similarity to Carrie’s voice that stretched beyond just the accent.

Jessica introduced herself and DC Rowlands properly and the woman gave them both a hug. ‘I’m so glad it was you two who came down,’ she said. ‘Carrie would talk about you all the time. It was always hard for her being away from home but I know she valued the pair of you.’

Jessica felt embarrassed that, despite their friendship, she had never asked the obvious question about why Carrie lived so far away from home. She always assumed her friend had moved north to go to university or something similar but it seemed very selfish she had not been interested enough to find out for sure.

‘That’s nice of you to say,’ Jessica said.

‘Are you able to tell me anything about…what happened?’

It was the question Jessica was dreading. She stumbled over some vague-sounding, ‘We’re doing all we can’ nonsense, which was exactly the kind of police-speak the general public hated. In truth, she didn’t know what else to say. The only other options were either to give the official line, ‘No, the man we think did it is locked in prison and we don’t have a clue,’ or instead tell her, ‘I think our chief inspector did it but I made a mess of handling the evidence and have no idea how to fix things’. Neither of those options would be good enough even at the best of times, let alone now.

The woman looked disappointed but nodded sympathetically. ‘It’s okay, dear, I know you’ll be doing all you can.’

Carrie’s mother gave Jessica her phone number and both detectives left her a card just in case she wanted to call them. After that, they found a quiet corner and had a drink, trying not to catch anyone else’s eye. Jessica felt they had to stay for a while out of respect but she didn’t want to get into any further conversations with people.

‘That was awkward,’ Dave said.

Jessica shrugged at him as if to say, ‘What can you do?’

‘How’s Adam by the way?’ he continued. ‘He seemed like a really nice guy at the quiz. I know we didn’t really get a chance to talk afterwards but I thought he was a right laugh. Hugo was asking after him too.’

‘He’s all right.’

Jessica hadn’t seen Adam since the early hours of the morning after that night and he had stopped contacting her two days ago. She hadn’t replied to any of his texts and ignored the messages he had left at the station for her. She couldn’t explain the way she was acting but put him out of her mind, hating herself and Farraday for making her waste evenings watching a house instead of spending them with someone she liked.

‘The service was nice,’ Dave added.

Jessica nodded, not wanting to make small talk and then thought she heard her phone ringing. Because they had drifted off to a corner they had ended up sitting under a speaker and the music drowned out the ringtone. She took the device out of her pocket and realised she had three missed calls from DI Cole. She moved outside, edgeding into the car park towards the back of the building.

The air was cool and she shivered with the breeze but pressed the buttons to call him back. He answered straight away. ‘Jessica?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’ve been trying to get hold of you all afternoon. I forgot about the funeral. How did it go?’

‘It was good. Carrie’s mother asked us to pass on her thanks to everyone.’ Cole sounded distracted, which wasn’t like him. ‘Is everything okay?’ Jessica added.

‘Are you back tonight?’

‘Yes, we’ve got a train in an hour or so.’

‘Good, because you’re not going to believe what they’ve found in Donald McKenna’s cell.’

TWENTY-EIGHT

‘What?’ Jessica said.

‘They’ve pulled a mobile phone out of the pipe that connects his sink to the wall. It was wrapped in a plastic bag to stop it getting wet.’

Jessica remembered wobbling that exact pipe when she had been in his cell, not knowing she was millimetres away from something that could have given them a break weeks ago. ‘How did they find it?’

‘Some routine cell check. It sounds like they surprised him and he didn’t have time to put the tubing together again properly. A guard noticed it was a little out of place and they found the phone.’

‘What’s happening now?’

‘The phone is being examined by the labs to see if they can get anything from it. There’s a basic call history we’ve already got but it’s just numbers at the moment. Farraday’s been going crazy.’

Jessica wondered if the DCI was frantic because he was worried his number was on the list. ‘Do we have matches for any of the numbers?’ It was almost as if someone was playing a trick as the reception on her phone crackled at that point and she couldn’t make out what Cole was saying.

‘Sorry? I can’t hear you.’ Jessica moved quickly around the car park to see if she could find a better spot and his voice reappeared mid-sentence. ‘Can you say that again?’ she asked.

‘Can you hear me now? I said there are no matches yet. We don’t need a warrant to check numbers to names but there were only two people McKenna had called and as far as we can tell they’re both unregistered pre-pay numbers.’

It was a long shot and she doubted the DCI was careless enough to let the prisoner have his main number but they finally had a lead. ‘What’s happening now?’

‘McKenna’s in isolation at least overnight. He’s been charged with unauthorised possession of a wireless communication device.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘For us directly? Not much – he’ll probably get a few months tagged onto his sentence but he’s already in for life. I’m guessing he won’t have a cell to himself any longer. I’ve booked us in to go see him tomorrow afternoon. If he’s actually been in contact with someone on the outside it gives us a whole new set of questions to ask.’

Jessica was feeling positive about the case for the first time in a while and said she would see him in the morning. If she could just connect one of those pre-pay phone numbers to the chief inspector that would be enough.

She dashed back into the hall and told Rowlands they had to go. They said their goodbyes to Carrie’s mother and Jessica promised to call if they had any major breaks.

In the taxi back to the station and on the train journey home, they talked about the development. Both of them were excited, passing theories back and forth. Jessica kept her thoughts about the DCI to herself but found it nice to chat like friends again.

‘Do you think he got the phone from that warden?’ Rowlands asked.

‘It’s hard to tell, but probably. I know we didn’t find any hidden bundles of cash but there was definitely something not right about Morgan’s bank records. If McKenna was starting to be linked with crimes happening outside of the prison it’s no wonder the warden was getting twitchy if he had smuggled a phone in. If he’d said something to the prisoner about it, maybe that was the trigger – McKenna just phoned whoever he knew on the outside and gave the word for the prison officer to be killed.’

‘You know how they get phones in, don’t you?’

‘I don’t really want to think about it.’

‘I read this article about some guy who was in court for sentencing and knew he was going to get sent down. He bought this phone from the newsagents and got a SIM card off one of his mates. He put it in one of those plastic sandwich bags, then lubed it up and shoved it up his arse.’

‘Eew.’

‘I know. He only got caught as he’d given the number to the guy who’d given him the SIM card and his mate phoned to ask how he’d got on in court. He hadn’t put it on silent and, because his case had been delayed, he was stood in the dock and the bloody thing started ringing.’

‘No way…’

‘Seriously. The judge didn’t realise what was going on at first and was telling whoever the phone belonged to they were in contempt, then one of the security guys realised it was the defendant. They checked his pockets and couldn’t find it then he told them where it was.’

‘Trust you to remember something like that.’

‘I’ve not even told you the best part yet. The ringtone was “The Birdie Song”. Stupid bastard was in court with the tune sounding out.’ Jessica laughed and, for the first time since Carrie had died, wasn’t even faking it.

When she arrived home, there was still a little tickle in the back of her mind telling her she should be watching DCI Farraday’s house just in case but, for the first time in days, she ignored it. With McKenna safely in isolation, there was no way any further crimes could be pinned on him and Jessica was confident the chief inspector wouldn’t risk anything.

She went into her bedroom planning to take a towel to the bathroom for a shower but her bed suddenly seemed incredibly appealing. Jessica reached under the covers to look for her nightwear but the sheets and duvet itself had an almost hypnotic hold as she breathed in their smell and finally allowed herself to succumb to the tiredness.

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

Jessica was feeling clear-headed and determined the next day, eager for the afternoon trip to the prison. She had slept through the entire night in her clothes from the day before. An alarm was permanently set on her phone but she hadn’t needed it recently. It was her saviour in the morning though, waking her up when she could have dozed through the day.

At the senior officer briefing, Jessica could see something had changed in Farraday’s attitude. The week before he had been combative and happy to throw his weight around but now he seemed downbeat. She still followed her earlier pledge to not openly defy him or push issues such as Carrie’s phone records but there was something in his demeanour that almost seemed resigned to whatever was going to happen.

She had half-expected him to announce he was going to interview Donald McKenna himself but that would have been hard for him to justify as he hadn’t had much to do with things – plus, if the prisoner was looking to admit to anything, it wouldn’t have helped the chief inspector’s cause to be present.

At the prison, Jessica and Cole were greeted in the reception area by Dennis but she was relieved to see they weren’t the only visitors at that time. After they had been scanned, they were left to talk among themselves as the man continued registering the afternoon’s other visitors. Instead of the governor meeting them, it was someone Jessica didn’t recognise. They introduced themselves as one of the senior wardens and led the officers along the familiar path up to the interview room.

Cole checked the recording equipment and asked Jessica if she wanted to lead the questioning.

‘Just try to stop me.’

McKenna was brought in handcuffed alongside his usual solicitor but he was looking far more dishevelled than the previous time they had met. There was a five o’clock shadow on his chin and his dark hair had started to grow out. He was beginning to look his age too, his wrinkles far more defined, but it was his eyes that surprised Jessica the most. The cool confidence he had displayed before had been replaced by the same look of defiance and resignation most prisoners had when you looked them in the eyes.

‘How was the isolation cell?’ Jessica asked when they were all sitting. The prisoner said nothing and wouldn’t look at her directly. ‘I’ve seen those rooms,’ she continued. ‘Not very nice, are they? One big stone slab on the floor to sleep on, all that noise of the other prisoners screaming through the night. What was the smell like? That’s where all the dirty protestors end up, isn’t it? Bit of a difference from having a cosy double cell to yourself, I reckon.’

McKenna wasn’t reacting and Jessica could sense his solicitor was about to step in. ‘So let’s talk about the phone, shall we?’ The prisoner was staring at his own cuffed hands, refusing to speak or acknowledge he was being asked anything. ‘Oh, come on, Donald, you were so keen to engage the last few times we’ve been in. Aren’t we friends any longer? You can’t have been that quiet on the phone, well, unless you used it for dirty phone calls. Is that what gets you off, all that heavy breathing?’

‘You don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘So were you just using the phone to play games or something? Maybe you needed the calendar on there to manage your busy diary? What is it? Wake up 7a.m, breakfast at eight, table tennis at nine, pottery classes at eleven? I don’t think you need a phone to remind you of all that.’

McKenna’s solicitor finally interrupted. ‘Is there really any need to taunt my client?’

‘Oh, I’m sorry. I wouldn’t want to hurt his feelings. I know he must be of a delicate persuasion.’

The inmate had clearly had enough and banged his fists on the table. ‘Just ask your damn questions.’

‘Fine. Question number one: where did you get the phone that was found in your cell?’

‘No comment.’

‘It wasn’t a miracle then? It didn’t just materialise out of nowhere?’

‘Don’t ridicule my beliefs.’

‘Faith still strong?’

‘I fight temptation every day. Sometimes I don’t reach the levels I should.’

Jessica nodded. McKenna still hadn’t met her eyes but the final words did actually sound genuine. She had no idea if his religious conversion was genuine or not but pushing him on it wasn’t going to get her anywhere. ‘Who did you call? We know there were two numbers but who did they belong to?’

‘No comment.’

‘How long have you had it?’

‘No comment.’

Jessica sighed and looked behind her towards Cole, then at the man’s solicitor before finally focusing on the prisoner again. ‘What are you hoping to achieve by refusing to answer questions?’

‘What have I got to gain? I’m probably going to die in here so what do you want me to say? Grasses aren’t very popular around these parts.’

‘Okay, but if you are a believer and genuinely have no knowledge of everything that has been going on outside of here, then why wouldn’t you do everything possible to clear your name?’

‘I’m at peace with myself. I know I’ve done nothing wrong and if you don’t believe me then maybe it is part of His plan?’

‘So why not tell me about the phone? Tell us who you were talking to and why you had it.’

‘No.’

‘Did you have Lee Morgan killed because he smuggled you in the mobile and was beginning to ask questions?’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘It’s how you did it though, isn’t it? Is that why you allowed your accomplice to plant your blood and hairs at the scene, so that we’d be looking at you instead of them?’

‘No comment.’

‘Why won’t you give us the name? Is it because you’re scared?’

‘Mortals don’t frighten me. I’m only worried by His judgement when the day of reckoning comes.’

‘I thought you said you didn’t want to “grass” because of what could happen.’ McKenna said nothing. ‘If you’re so worried about your day of reckoning, wouldn’t it be better to tell us everything you know?

The prisoner clearly had no intention of adding anything and his solicitor spoke again. ‘Detectives, I’ve said before, if you want to charge my client with anything then please do so. You can’t keep returning here and endlessly ask him the same questions over and over. He has repeatedly told you he knows nothing.’

Jessica looked from the solicitor back to McKenna. She had one final question and wanted to make sure she could see any changes to his expression. ‘Final question then, Donald. Is the reason you won’t talk to us because there’s someone in authority you’re worried about? Perhaps a person that’s high up in the prison service or a senior police officer?’ She felt Cole fidget nervously in the seat next to her but more importantly thought she saw the smallest amount of recognition on the prisoner’s face. His top lip and the bottom part of his nose twitched as if he were about to say something but he stayed silent.

‘I think we’re done here,’ Jessica said. She had been thinking of Farraday and wondered if that was what had crossed McKenna’s mind when she thought she saw that flicker of movement.

After the prisoner had been escorted out, Jessica and Cole were left in the interview room waiting for someone to take them back to the entrance. ‘What was that last question about?’ he asked.

‘Nothing really, I was just wondering if there’s someone else working here who might have something to hide?’

Jessica wasn’t sure if her superior was convinced but he didn’t follow his question up.

‘Didn’t get much, did we?’ he asked instead.

‘I don’t think either of us were really expecting to. The problem with the life prisoners is they have nothing to lose by keeping quiet. It’s not as if their sentence is going to be overturned. I still don’t know if this whole religion thing is a front but either way he doesn’t have much to say.’

A minute or two later, a guard knocked on the door and led them back to the front office. Dennis asked them both to sign out and they walked through the main doors towards the car. As they got to the vehicle, Jessica started flicking through the files she was holding. ‘I think I might have left something in reception. Can you wait here a minute?’ she said.

Cole looked a little confused but shrugged his shoulders and nodded. Jessica walked quickly back to the office. She knew she hadn’t left anything but there was one more thing she wanted to do. She beckoned Dennis over towards the door away from any of the other staff in the room. He looked surprised to see her returning but moved over to her.

‘Are you okay?’ he asked.

‘Dennis, how long have you worked here?’

He seemed confused and a little shy given that she was talking to him directly. He stuttered as he replied. ‘A few years.’

‘Have you always been on reception?’

‘Yes but I’m in the training programme so I can move onto the wings.’

‘Do all visitors come through here?’

‘Yes, this is where the body scanners are. Even the governor and staff have to pass through them each day.’