Crossing the Line (Kerry Wilkinson) (26 page)

it didn’t feel right – they were public, targeting people who had a crypt full of skeletons in their

cupboards. This was more private and almost certainly a targeted act, especially given the spray-

painted message.

Jessica pulled Izzy to one side as the bedlam continued around them, leading her into the corridor.

‘How’s it been working with Louise?’

Izzy’s hair was greasy but her eyes attentive. She was in her element when she had a dozen things

to do at the same time. ‘Fine, I don’t know why everyone has such a problem with her.’

‘Did you manage to get the other stuff for me?’

‘Half of it. You must’ve called as soon as you got to the house because it had all kicked off here

and I had a hundred things to do.’ She passed Jessica a small pile of Post-it notes. ‘The Stretford

Slasher – Colin Rawlinson – had a son, Jake. He would have only been nine or ten when his dad was

jailed. He had been living with his mother but ended up being taken into care until he was sixteen.’

‘Any up-to-date details?’

‘Not on a Jake Rawlinson but I did some digging. There’s a “Jake Forester” who lives not far from

here. He’s claiming jobseeker’s allowance under that Forester name – but his national insurance

number matches the one given to Rawlinson.’

Jessica flicked through the notes until she got his address. ‘Is Dave still here?’

‘Louise has been hammering him to get stuff done – I’ve never seen him work so hard.’

‘All right, I’ll go and rescue him.’

Jessica started to walk back towards the main area but Izzy stopped her. ‘Jess . . .’

‘Yep.’

Izzy sounded reluctant to ask, half-facing away. ‘It can’t be Jake, can it? The Slasher’s son taking

the grandchildren from the officer who arrested his dad? It seems too . . . I don’t know, clean –

obvious.’

‘I’m only checking all the scenarios. I’m sure it’s nothing but it can’t do any harm to go and say

hello. Are you going to go home any time soon?’

Izzy shook her head. ‘I could ask you the same thing.’

‘Touché. If you are going to stay around, can you check the prison thing for me?’

‘I’ve already put the request in. Someone’s doing me a favour.’

Jessica thanked her again, called Adam to apologise for working late – again, promising she’d

make it up to him even if he’d have to put it on her ‘tab’, and then she went to save Dave from having

to do some real work for DS Cornish.

They were only halfway to Jake’s house when Jessica received the text message from Izzy. Dave

read it for her, but she had already expected the outcome. The Stretford Slasher had had a single

visitor in prison the month before he died: J. Forester.

27

Jessica had seen many things around the estates of Manchester. When she had been in uniform, she’d

once been called to Trafford to reports of a robbery at a toy shop. They’d arrived with the full lights

and sirens treatment, sending the robbers scarpering. As the police spread out, Jessica had arrested

someone making their escape on a liberated Space-Hopper with a blow-up Spider-Man under their

arm. Another time, she’d been on a drugs raid at a house in Eccles, where the owners kept a pet pig

that was given the freedom to roam wherever it wanted, including the bedrooms. Straw lined the

hallway and the stench had seeped into every part of the house to the extent that the bricks themselves

reeked of pig shit. Out in Levenshulme, someone had tried to build a do-it-yourself extension on their

house – but instead of removing the tree that sat next to it, they had built around it, making it part of an extended living room.

Even with those memories, the area in which Jake Forester lived just outside Longsight was

extraordinary. At the edge of a green in the middle of a U-shaped block of flats, a collection of traffic control items had been rearranged into a sculpture of a couple having sex. The ‘woman’ was made

from scaffolding, plastic barrier boards and a beer-garden umbrella, all topped off with traffic-cone

breasts. Her male friend had a bin for legs, a wooden-board chest, a rounded bush for a head and a

three-foot night-owl bollard sticking out of this groin. In its own way, it was one of the most

incredible pieces of community art Jessica had ever seen, especially given the delicate lighting from

the overhanging street lamp. If she had been a member of the public, she would have had her picture

taken in front of it. Unfortunately, she knew there would be unsignalled roadworks somewhere nearby

with someone waiting to fall into it. Jessica called it in – and then she and Rowlands took each

other’s photographs in front of it.

The rest of the estate didn’t share the same creativity: long terraced flats spread across two floors,

dirty once-red bricks, missing roof tiles, grimy doorsteps, barking dogs, screaming babies – and

satellite dishes jammed onto every stationary surface. Somewhere on the far side, dance music

thumped out of one of the flats, echoing across the green. Even though there should be at least another

hour of daylight at this time of year, darkened clouds were massing, the hazy glow of lights from

inside the flats pooling into the centre of the clearing.

Jake lived in a top-floor flat facing the square. The route to his front door took them up a concrete

stairwell that smelled of any number of bodily fluids and along a passageway lined with front doors

on one side but open to the elements on the other. Up close, everything looked even dirtier than it did

from a distance. A trail of oil led along the stairs to an engine that had been left opposite someone’s

front door, blocking half the path. A few doors down, there was an upturned bicycle missing its

wheels. Along from that was a mound of rubbish bags, its corners torn open by rats, the contents

spilling onto the ground.

The force’s health and safety department could have spent a week here and not cleared the place

into somewhere they’d be allowed to work safely.

It was the type of housing block even Jehovah’s Witnesses would look at and think, ‘Sod that’. In

their suits, Jessica and Rowlands stood out like pensioners in a nightclub. Not wanting to attract any

attention they didn’t need, Jessica knocked quietly on Jake’s front door. The window was covered in

a thin layer of grime, with tatty crimson curtains obscuring all but a sliver in the centre. Rowlands

leant in close to the glass, trying to peer inside.

‘See anything?’ Jessica whispered.

‘There’s too much glare.’

‘So push yourself against the glass then.’

‘It’s filthy.’

‘Stop moaning.’

Rowlands leant closer, pressing onto the window. ‘Eew, I think this is shit.’

‘Who’d smear shit on a window?’

‘I don’t know, who’d leave half an engine outside their front door?’

‘Perhaps you’re right – if you want to stop someone peering through your window, there can’t be

many better ways to do it than by covering it in shite.’

‘It’s in my hair . . .’

‘Stop whingeing and tell me what you see.’

Jessica heard a slight squeak as Rowlands’ hands slid around the glass. ‘There’s a light on at the

back. Telly’s off, couple of chairs – it looks empty.’

Jessica crouched and quietly opened the letterbox, pushing the bristles to one side and staring into

an empty hallway. She eased the flap back into place and sorted through the Post-it notes in her

pocket. When she’d found the right one, Jessica dialled Jake’s phone number. Inside a shrill pop song

began.

‘Something’s flashing,’ Dave said.

‘It’s his phone, you dimwit. Is he moving towards it?’

‘No, it’s on the arm of the chair.’

The phone stopped ringing.

‘I think we can safely say that he’s not in and has probably forgotten his phone. There’s no way he

could have resisted going for it otherwise.’

Dave extracted himself from the window, using his fingers to rub away the dark smear from his

cheek. ‘Are we going to get a team down here?’

‘Everyone’s off searching and we’re only here on a hunch. Hang on.’

Jessica took her phone out and called Izzy, who answered while halfway through shouting at

someone else. Jessica waited until she got the ‘hello’.

‘Gone home yet?’

‘What do you think?’

‘When you were looking into Jake’s national insurance number, did you notice what day he signs

on?’

‘Where am I supposed to find that out?’

‘I don’t know, where do you ever come up with stuff?’

Jessica could hear the general bustle of the station in the background and somebody shouting a

request that sounded anatomically impossible. Izzy sounded distracted: ‘I know someone who knows

someone but the office will be shut. Give me ten minutes and I’ll see what I can do.’

Eight minutes later, back in the relative warmth of the car with Rowlands scrubbing at his skin with

a tissue, Izzy text-messaged Jessica a one-word answer: ‘Monday’.

‘What time do you knock off?’ Jessica asked.

Rowlands looked at his watch. ‘Forty-five minutes ago.’

‘What are you doing tonight?’

‘Not much.’

‘There’s a dingy little all-night cafe around the corner. How do you fancy going home, having a

shower, and then meeting me back here for a late-night dodgy fry-up at eleven o’clock?’

‘Who’s buying?’

‘As an extra-special treat, I’ll pay up to the value of five pounds.’

‘Wow, last of the big spenders. Want to tell me why?’

‘No – if I’m wrong then we’re just out for a late tea, if I’m right then I end up looking like the

genius that I am.’

To call the cafe a greasy spoon was underplaying it. A greasy, grimy, oily, lardy, scuzzy spoon was a

far more accurate way of describing the all-night breakfast place where Jessica sat opposite Dave

eating a black pudding and fried egg sandwich. Aside from the Rottweiler-faced owner scuttling

between the kitchen and the counter, muttering under his breath, banging saucepans around, the place

was empty. The brown plastic table and matching chairs were bolted to the floor, giving the place the

feel of a post-riot prison canteen. Jessica and Dave were sitting in the window, dressed down in

jeans and warm tops as the outside frosty air crept through the thin glass.

Dave held a cup of tea in one hand, using a piece of toast in the other to mop up the remains of a

fried egg. ‘If this was a date – which it obviously isn’t – it would comfortably be the worst one I’ve

ever been on.’

‘What’s not to like?’ Jessica replied. ‘Fried food, relative peace and quiet. If you were someone

else, this would be straight into my top five.’

She polished off the final bite of her sandwich and then stole a piece of Dave’s toast to start

mopping up the remaining egg on her plate.

‘Oi!’ Rowlands protested.

‘I paid for it.’

‘The first meal you’ve ever bought me and you’re eating it yourself anyway.’

‘How’s your granny?’

‘She’s—’

‘Yeah, yeah, not a granny. How’s your age-challenged girlfriend?’

‘We’re meeting up this weekend – well, hopefully, if this all blows over.’

‘No sign of the kids yet but the night crew are working their balls off as we speak. Izzy said they’ve

got a partial shot on a traffic cam of our kidnapper – but only from the nose down. He had his sun

blind down and we haven’t got a full face. Definitely a bloke though – well, either that or a very hairy woman. No idea what the “confess” message means. Stop changing the subject. Where does she live

again?’

‘I’ve never told you.’

‘Maybe I’ll just do my mind-reading trick then. North or south?’ Jessica leant in, narrowing her

eyes to stare at him.

Rowlands waved his hands in front of his face. ‘Sod off. All right, she’s from the north-east. She’s

coming down here.’

‘Are you going to dazzle her with the best of Manchester? Trafford Centre, canal boat, curry mile,

quick feel in the bushes and then home?’

Dave checked his watch. ‘Something like that. Why are we here?’

Jessica let the change of subject go, peering at the clock on the wall above Dave’s head. ‘What

time have you got?’

‘Eleven fifty-one.’

Jessica nodded across the road towards a bank of shops that had their metal shutters clamped to the

ground. The only thing exposed was a cashpoint sticking through a gap in the metal and a beer

company’s neon logo burning out from a sign high on the wall above a minimart. ‘The clock above

your head’s five minutes fast, so let’s say eleven fifty-six on your watch and see what happens.’

Jessica knew she was going to look like an idiot if she was wrong but three and a half minutes later

a woman with pyjamas and slippers sticking out of a long overcoat began hovering on the pavement

next to the shutters. A minute later and there was a second woman there with a pram.

Dave finished his tea and blew into his hands. ‘What’s she doing out this late with a kid? It’s

freezing.’

‘Just wait.’

Over the course of the next five minutes, seven more people turned up, half of them in pyjamas and

slippers, the others wrapped up in hats, scarves and coats.

Jessica took a folded-up piece of paper out of her pocket and held it up for Dave to see. ‘This is

our guy. We’ve got two possibles over the road, both with their hats down. Don’t let him run.’

‘Why are they there?’

‘You get it most days of the week around here. Everyone gets their benefits paid into their account

three days after they sign on. If you go in on Monday, you get paid at midnight on the Thursday. They