A phone number had been given out to all media the previous evening and officers were again needed to take calls. Some uniforms were going door-to-door in the area Martin Prince lived and another sub-team had been given the job of trying to link the two victims. It was a possibility they had been killed at random but far more likely they had something in common that, if discovered, could lead to a person who might want to murder the pair of them. The first thing they would do would be to contact Eric Christensen and ask him if he actually knew Martin Prince. It was probably too much to ask for but sometimes you overlooked the obvious.
‘Find the link, we find the killer,’ Jessica told the assembled team.
To say Garry Ashford was nervous about his meeting with DS Daniel was an understatement. One of the first things you were taught as a journalist is to protect your source, so there was no way he would reveal who had given him information about the killer. As for their conversation on the phone the previous evening, he wasn’t sure whether she actually thought he was a suspect or not. If she really did think it was him, she would surely have him arrested so presumably she was just messing with him?
For now, he hadn’t told his Editor that he had any extra information about the second killing. The basics had been released to the media and his boss had asked him what else he knew, telling him to get back on to his contact and get the full story. He promised he would and had half told the truth when he said he would be meeting the detective sergeant to talk about the case. He
was
meeting her of course but only to confirm the information he already knew was true.
Since his boss’ editorial criticising the police the previous week, using Garry’s information and byline, he had been a lot more tentative about what information he gave up. He had somehow managed to walk the line of staying in his Editor’s good books, while also feeling as if he hadn’t compromised his ethics. It wasn’t that he necessarily had a problem with breaking any of the police’s embargoes or revealing information they hadn’t released but he did feel uncomfortable with how it was being used to bash the police in a way that gave little thought to the victims.
He was sitting in a small cafe around the corner from the newspaper’s office in the centre of the city. It was an old-fashioned place that looked drastically out of sync surrounded by newly-built or renovated glass-fronted buildings. He didn’t know whether it was the case or not but it looked as if it had been there for centuries. It had character and smelled of exotic tea in a way only old cafes could. There were only half-a-dozen heavy round metal tables on the inside, with matching metal chairs that screeched anytime they were moved. A couple of tables were also placed on the pavement outside just in case the sun came out. It was where Garry went for lunch a couple of times a week, attracted by its cheap prices and good-looking waitresses. He didn’t know if the cafe’s manager hired based on looks but it certainly seemed like it.
He ordered a cappuccino and told the blonde server he was waiting for a friend. He had just worn a regular coat over his shirt after the fashion advice he had received the night before. DS Daniel was five minutes late so he checked his phone to see if she had called or sent him a message of explanation. She hadn’t but, as he looked back up, he saw her coming through the door with her best scowl on. She spotted him instantly and made her way over to sit opposite.
The waitress made a move as if to come over to their table but the officer gave her a look that quite clearly advised her not to.
‘Hello,’ Garry said as she sat down.
‘Right, I’m here. What do you want?’
DS Daniel looked a little windswept, her long hair had clearly been blown around and she fiddled with it, trying to move it out of her face. For the first time Garry actually noticed her eyes. They were kind-of half green, half brown. He liked them but not the way they were looking at him. ‘I just wanted to check some things with you.’
‘Go on.’
He flicked through his notebook and read from it without looking up. ‘I’ve been told that the body you found last night was killed by the same person who killed Yvonne Christensen. Not only that but both bodies were found in houses that were locked and that you have no idea how the murderer either got in or back out again.’
DS Daniel looked down and took a deep breath then looked back at him. Her expression had changed. She no longer looked angry, just weary. ‘Look, I’m not going to ask you who your source is but you can’t just print this stuff. We don’t know if everything you just said is true or not. People have died, Garry. What we want is help finding whoever did it, not sensational headlines that are going to make people panic.’
Garry knew where she was coming from. He agreed with her to some degree but he was a journalist after all and, just because he’d been given some information unofficially, he didn’t see why it couldn’t be used as long as it was done responsibly. ‘I didn’t write those headlines, my Editor did but you can’t expect me just to sit on information when I get it. I have a job to do too.’
‘That might be true...’ DS Daniel tailed off. ‘Right, look, just print what you have but if I see the words “serial killer” anywhere in the article...’ She tailed off again but the implication was clear.
‘I’ll do what I can but if the Editor writes headlines and edits what I write. It’s up to him.’
‘Fine.’
‘So can I quote you?’
‘Don’t push your luck. I don’t trust anyone that can’t spell their own name properly.’
‘Huh?’
‘Garry has one ‘r’, you moron.’
Jessica was sitting on a bus that would take her almost the whole way back to the station. It would leave her with a five-minute walk but she didn’t mind that. She hadn’t fancied driving into the centre for her talk with the journalist. It was always a nightmare to park and she hadn’t planned on spending too long with him.
She was actually quite pleased with the way her meeting had gone. She believed Garry when he said it was his Editor who had written the stories up to have a go at the force. When Harry used to take her out, he would speak about the value of journalists. “Just be careful which ones you trust,” he told her. “Some of them would screw their own mothers over if it made the front page.” She was a pretty decent judge of character and Garry seemed all right. He actually seemed to care, which was always a good start.
She thought having someone she could trust in the media could be key to finding the link between Yvonne Christensen and Martin Prince.
As she wondered about that, the time the journey was taking was reminding her why she didn’t use public transport too often. In terms of distance, it wasn’t too far back to the station but, when the bus waited at every single stop, the time really added up. There was some guy chatting far too loudly on his phone in the seat in front of her while, on the back seat there were three teenagers listening to some dreadful dance music through the speakers of one of their phones. Near the front there was a baby strapped into a pushchair crying its eyes out while its mother chatted to her friend in the seat next to her. It was just noise, noise, noise.
She closed her eyes for a moment but couldn’t blank any of it out. As she looked back towards the rear of the bus, she saw one of the youngsters had just lit a cigarette. She sighed and wondered whether she could be bothered with it.
She took a deep breath. ‘Oi,’ she snapped at them, pointing at the no smoking sign on the window right next to where they were sat. They were about three rows behind her.
‘What?’ the one with the cigarette said, taking his first drag.
‘Put it out.’ By now most of the other passengers were looking at her.
‘Why? What the fuck are you going to do about it?’
This was all she needed. Jessica reached into her inside pocket and pulled out her police badge, getting up from her seat and walking towards them. She hoped the bus wouldn’t stop suddenly or she would stumble and look a right fool. She showed them her credentials, perching on the seat closest to them. ‘Just put it out and stop being dicks.’
‘You can’t talk to us like that,’ one of the non-smokers said.
‘And you can’t smoke on a bus, so put it out and we’ll forget it happened, right?’
The kid with the cigarette looked as if he was weighing up his options but eventually stubbed it out on the floor.
‘And watch your mouth in future,’ she finished with, putting her badge away and walking back to her original seat. ‘Next time I’ll drive,’ she mumbled under her breath.
Jessica would not have been in such a hurry to get back to the station if she’d known the news that was waiting for her. Firstly the desk sergeant pulled her to one side to update her about Harry’s court case. She didn’t know who the officer’s source was at the Crown Court but whoever it was must have had a front row seat.
Harry had been called to give evidence that morning but things hadn’t gone well. Apparently, he had responded almost entirely with one and two-word answers to the lawyer prosecuting and only shown any amount of animation when Peter Hunt had begun cross-examination. Before the judge had stepped in, Harry had called Hunt “scum” and a “parasite”. He had eventually responded to the questions but, with the jury present for everything, the damage had been done. If he couldn’t control himself in a courtroom, then why would they think he could control himself in a pub? Jessica just felt so sorry for him. She so wanted to help him in the way he had helped her but you couldn’t do that if the other person wasn’t willing to engage. She decided she would try to call him again that night. He probably wouldn’t answer but she didn’t want to abandon him.
As soon as she had finished on the front desk and before she could get back to her office, she ran into DC Rowlands. ‘What bad news has my spiky-haired harbinger of doom got for me today then?’ she asked.
‘Funny you should say that...’
‘Go on.’
‘Sandra Prince. Her doctor won’t let us speak to her for at least another twenty four hours. He says she’s not ready for it yet.’
‘Great. Anything else?’
‘We spoke to Eric Christensen. He says he’s never heard of anyone called Prince. We showed him pictures of all three family members and he doesn’t know any of them.’
‘Has anyone come up with any other link?’
‘Nope and door-to-door haven’t got anything either.’
‘Phone lines?’
‘Got a few things to check out but probably not.’
‘Are forensics back yet?’
‘Just the basics. Looks like it’s some kind of steel rope again. It’s all on your desk but cause of death and the weapon seem to be the same as before. All the blood matches Martin Prince and, for the moment, they’ve not got anything else.’
Jessica sighed. ‘Right. Do you actually have any good news?’
DC Rowlands beamed at her. ‘Well tomorrow night I’m off out with that new girl uniform have hired.’
Jessica rolled her eyes. ‘You’re a dick.’
The next morning as Jessica looked through the paper, she thought the coverage could have been worse. Admittedly not
that
much worse but definitely worse. Once again, all the other papers and TV broadcasts had stuck to the information given out by the Press department. She knew the Herald was going to print the information Garry Ashford had and she had even told him to write it. In fairness, the phrase “serial killer” wasn’t present at all in that morning’s front page story. The problem was the headline: “HOUDINI STRANGLER” in giant capital letters. If that didn’t get members of the public panicking, then the article explaining how “Houdini” was breaking into people’s locked houses, murdering apparent strangers and getting back out again completely undetected certainly would.
The officer manning the front desk that morning told her they had already had two-dozen phone calls from worried members of the public and he didn’t even need to tell her where her first stop of the morning would be. She headed straight up the stairs towards DCI Aylesbury’s office. As she walked past the window, she could see DI Cole was already in there, as was DS Reynolds and a man and woman dressed in suits that she didn’t recognise. She could make a good guess at who they were though.
When you became a police officer you were fully aware there would be plenty of people who don’t like you. In uniform if all you got was the “oink” noises and the odd swear word then you had got off quite lightly. Over the course of a career most officers would be spat at or assaulted in some way or another. Being disliked by certain sections of the public was a given – but if you wanted to be
really
hated then you joined the Internal Investigations department. Not only were you disliked by the public for being a police officer but you were also hated by other officers for investigating your own.
Each police force in the country had a set number of officers who had moved from regular duty into the Internal division. The reasons, of course, were to work against corrupt officers. Everyone had heard the stories of the “old days” where certain members of the force would be paid by various criminals to turn a blind eye to the very acts they were supposed to be preventing. Jessica was sure some of those tales were exaggerated or possibly even based on television shows and movies, rather than fact. Certainly she had never come across any type of double-dealing in her time. Some officers even got a bit edgy if they were offered a free cup of coffee just in case.
Almost everyone in the force would be against those types of practises too but changing sides and investigating your own was not a popular way of doing it. In the same way a grass would be ostracised in the criminal world, the Internal Investigators were shunned by a lot of officers. Leaking information to the media was not as serious as taking money to turn a blind eye of course but, when it affected investigations, it was still treated accordingly. If that information caused a public panic that just made things worse.
Jessica went into DCI Aylesbury’s already pretty full office. The room wasn’t massive, with a large desk that had a computer and some photographs on top. On the walls were various commendation certificates and the like. The DCI was sitting on his side of the desk, while DI Cole and the two strangers were sitting in front of it. DS Reynolds was standing and, as there were no seats left, Jessica stood near the door.