The two officers she didn’t know looked up at her then back down before she could make eye-contact with either of them. They were both fairly young, the male maybe early-forties with side-parted brown hair and a suit clearly a size too big for him. The female was around the same age with long brown hair tied back into a ponytail.
DCI Aylesbury acknowledged her presence with a: ‘DS Daniel’. He paused to let her settle then continued, acknowledging the two people sitting down next to his desk.
‘Some of you already know. This is officers Finch and McNiven. They work for Internal Investigations and will be speaking to everyone today about the information leaked to the media. I’m sure you are all aware of what has been in the papers today.’
He held up a copy of that morning’s Herald just to emphasise his point. He was speaking fairly calmly but Jessica could see anger bubbling below the surface. He was probably holding back because of the presence of the Internal officers. She wondered whether the anger was aimed at the leaker or at people who had been brought in to investigate his officers. She had never quite seen eye-to-eye with the DCI but, when it came to your fellow colleagues, most people would back them over the Internal team.
‘We all know the value of using the media but whoever has leaked this information has not only made the force look incredibly stupid but put the investigation at risk. We have not been able to speak to Sandra Prince yet and headlines like this are hardly going to help her condition if she were to see it. People need to feel safe in their homes and to trust us. Recklessly giving information like this out helps no one.’
He made a special point of emphasising the last two words. ‘During the day officers Finch and McNiven have been given one of the offices down the hallway from here. They will be talking to pretty much everyone in the station but you three will be spoken to first. At least then it will allow you to get on with the rest of your jobs. You know how these things work.’
No one said anything, not that there was much they could add. Jessica didn’t know which officer was Finch and which McNiven but, as the DCI finished speaking, the female one of the two looked up from a sheet of paper in front of her and said: ‘We wanted to start with DS Daniel if that’s okay?’
It was exactly what Jessica had suspected. DI Cole and DS Reynolds filed out of the office back towards the stairs, while she went down the hallway with the two other officers. The male officer led the way, while the female walked in between him and Jessica. They went down the passageway, turned left and kept walking until they reached the final room at the back of the building. It was an area Jessica had never really been to. As far as she knew there were only storage rooms back there. The male turned the lights on and Jessica could see it almost certainly was just storage in that area. Boxes with files sticking out of the top had been shoved to the back wall and someone had brought up a table from what looked like the canteen. There was a dusty smell as the male offered her the seat across from them.
The woman started talking first. ‘Okay, DS Daniel, I’m officer McNiven, this is officer Finch. We’re from the GMP’s Internal division as you already know. Can I start by asking if you know why you’re here today?’
“To be bollocked by you lot,” was what she thought. What she said was: ‘So we can all work together to stop information getting into the papers that could harm the case I am working on.’
She made special point to stress the word “together”.
Officer McNiven smiled. ‘Yes, something like that.’ She paused and shuffled through her papers, before continuing. ‘Okay, tell us about your relationship with Garry Ashford.’
Jessica told the investigators that she had spoken to him three times on the phone, once on the Saturday after the first victim had been found when he phoned her, once the day after to “clarify” the article she had seen on the Herald’s website and then he had called her again after the second body had been discovered. She left out the part where the middle conversation had been largely an exercise in creative swearing. She then said they’d had a very brief talk in a cafe the previous day.
‘How did he get your number?’ McNiven asked.
‘I don’t know.’
‘Why did you call him?’
‘I wanted to ask who his source was.’ A half-truth.
‘Why did you meet him yesterday?’
‘Because I wanted to explain to him why causing a panic was not a good idea. I told DCI Aylesbury I was going to meet him.’
‘Did you give him any information?’
‘He already had it. That’s why we met.’
‘Did you give it to him?’
‘What? Information about the second killing? No. I’ve not given him any tips at all. I wouldn’t even let him quote me.’
‘Have you ever met or had contact with this journalist before the incidents we have spoken about?’
‘No.’
‘Why do you think it was you he contacted?’
‘I don’t know.’
They went around in circles for another five minutes or so with the two officers asking essentially the same questions in a slightly different way. Jessica didn’t know anything further to tell them, while they seemingly didn’t believe her. They were at a stalemate when officer McNiven thanked her for her time, said she could leave, and asked if she could send DI Cole up to meet them.
Jessica stomped her way back past DCI Aylesbury’s empty office and down the stairs. She found DI Cole in his office and told him the bad news.
‘You’re up. Rosie and Jim want a word.’
She thought about calling Garry to ask what the hell the headline was all about. Considering the conversations she had just had – and the fact the investigators could and probably would check her phone records – she figured it was a bad idea. He would almost certainly say it was his Editor who wrote it anyway. Maybe that was true, maybe not.
She would have to wait until DI Cole had come back down before they could go through the morning briefing. A few more test results had come back but nothing very helpful, while yesterday’s phone leads had all been chased up and ruled out. She spoke to two of the DCs who were trying to link the two victims. They had come up with nothing of note. Some of the victims’ kids had gone to the same school but, given they lived relatively close to each other, that was to be expected. Other than that, it was yet another brick wall.
She went to the canteen to have some breakfast. Although she hadn’t expected the Internal team to be waiting at the station for her, she had known it was going to at least be a trip to the DCI’s office, so had just come straight in that morning. Randall had stayed over for the first time the night before too and she felt a bit awkward after waking up, so left without seeing either him or Caroline. The station’s canteen was on the ground floor just down the hall from her office. At best the food could be described as “poor”. DS Reynolds refused to eat there and claimed he had once needed three days off after eating some stew.
‘The tea’s bad enough here,’ he advised her. ‘Don’t risk the food too.’
Jessica wasn’t as passionate about not eating there as her office-mate was but she did try to avoid it where she could. She had risked beans on toast, thinking no one could really make a mess of that. As it was, it wasn’t too bad. She was sitting on one of the plastic chairs using the Internet on her phone. Word would have flown around the station that the Internal team were interviewing upstairs and it was a good bet everyone would know she was the first person who had been called in. She didn’t really want to talk about it too much, so was fiddling with the phone’s front just to look as if she might be busy to hopefully stop anyone coming up to her.
She had wasted around twenty minutes before the first person tried their luck. One of the DCs assigned to try to link the two victims came up to her table. DC Carrie Jones had a terrifically strong Welsh accent that Jessica loved but others didn’t. Piss-taking was a given in any work environment. Jessica got it for her car, DC Rowlands for his hair and girl-chasing, while Carrie Jones got it for her accent.
‘I’ve got some news,’ she said.
Jessica couldn’t help but smile at her. ‘Good news?’
‘Good news and bad news.’
‘What’s the bad news?’
‘Well Sky News, ITV, the BBC and the local radio stations are now also using the phrase “Houdini Strangler”.
The smile disappeared from Jessica’s face immediately. She put her hand to her forehead and sighed. ‘You could have sugar-coated that a bit.’
‘Er, sorry. Do you want the good news?’
‘Yeah, go on.’
‘The hospital has phoned to say you can go see Sandra Prince.’
Jessica went back to her office to make a few notes before heading off to the hospital. DS Reynolds was sitting at his own desk opposite hers. It was pretty clear their office was occupied by two very different people. On DS Reynolds’ side closest to the door, everything was in meticulous piles or filed away. On Jessica’s side, papers, notes and files were carefully ordered on the floor, around the bin, under her seat or hanging out from her desk.
Shortly after she had been moved into the same space as him, DS Reynolds asked why she was so messy.
‘To the untrained eye, this may look like an unordered shambles but to an experienced organiser such as myself, there are levels to this filing system you can’t even begin to imagine. I know
exactly
where everything is.’
It was more or less true. She knew in the rough area where everything was but “exactly” was probably pushing it.
Although he had been ranked above her before Jessica was promoted, there had never been any issues between the two of them after she was elevated and moved into the same office as him. He had laughed as she explained her “filing”, while she had spent most of the day giggling when he had told her about taking three days’ off due to the canteen’s stew. Their work didn’t overlap at the moment and they shared a fun relationship.
As she checked through the papers on her desk for the information they had on Sandra Prince, DI Cole knocked and entered.
‘You’re up,’ he said to DS Reynolds.
‘What was it like?’ Reynolds asked.
‘Fine. They didn’t really have much to ask me. I’m pretty sure they think it’s DS Daniel here.’ He nodded at her and gave her a wink as if to say he believed her.
DS Reynolds told them to wish him luck and left the room.
‘Now you’re done, we can go see Sandra Prince,’ Jessica said. ‘The hospital called and said it was okay.’
She didn’t know if the DI would want to go or not but figured it was best to assume he would, rather than just head off with someone else in tow.
She was fairly surprised when he replied. ‘Yep let’s go.’
The drive to the hospital had been a bit of a nuisance. Rush hour had come and gone but it was Friday and the traffic patterns always seemed to be a bit inconsistent at the end of the week. As-per usual it wasn’t too sunny in Manchester, grey clouds washed over the city, while winter and spring were still fighting over what the temperature should be. DI Cole had taken them in a marked car. Jessica thought his driving matched his personality, steady and straightforward, nothing too crazy.
Some guy had obviously not noticed the car’s markings as he swerved late across lanes and cut them up. If it were Jessica, she would have unleashed a barrage of “coarse language”, as Caroline might say, then pulled them over. At the absolute least, she would have given them the inconvenience of having to report to their local police station with all their documents but DI Cole just carried on as if nothing had happened without even beeping the car’s horn. In some ways, Jessica thought, his calmness was very disconcerting.
At the hospital their presence was queried by the receptionist. She was young and just kept hammering away at her computer’s keyboard as she said: ‘I’ve not got a record of you coming.’
The two officers had shown their badges and Jessica had put on her best, “Pull your finger out, I’m a police officer don’t you know?” face. It hadn’t really got them anywhere. Eventually the receptionist picked up the phone and a nurse had come to escort them. Sandra Prince had her own room on a third floor ward which still had a uniformed officer assigned to it. The nurse told them that Mrs Prince’s doctor wanted to speak to them before he would allow them to talk to his patient, so they were left in a small cupboard posing as an office just down the hallway from the ward.
Jessica really didn’t like hospitals. She’d not had any particular traumatic experience with them as some might have done but she had been on a few call-outs while in uniform. She had once come to see a victim of a domestic violence in this exact hospital. A young girl had had her face smashed in by a jealous ex-boyfriend. Jessica had to take the photos for evidence purposes and every time she came here, she remembered the girl’s battered, bruised and swollen face. In the end, the girl had refused to give evidence in court.
Another time an assault had happened in the hospital itself. Somebody who had fallen down on a night out was still drunk had tried to start trouble while in the waiting room. Jessica had taken special pleasure in arresting him. Those incidents and more just meant she was rarely keen on coming to this place.
Ideally she wouldn’t have had to for this case. Usually interviews would be done at the police station so anything that was said would be recorded. Sandra Prince was not really a suspect and, given her doctor’s advice, it had been felt the interview could be done here. Her presence at work had already been confirmed for the whole of the day the murder had taken place. She could have killed her husband in the morning then left the house but it did seem unlikely given the similarities to the first case. They had to check with DCI Aylesbury but he had told them they could speak to her out of the station.
When the woman’s doctor arrived, he told them Mrs Prince had gone into shock after finding out about her husband but had been fully coherent since yesterday evening. He said she had not seen the day’s paper or any of the news coverage and asked if there were any more shocks they were going to spring upon her. He also wanted to know if she was under suspicion. If she was, he told them they would have to move her to the station. Technically they didn’t have to tell him anyway but they reassured him and he showed them into the Sandra Prince’s private room.