Jessica turned around. ‘That is one mighty fine arse ye’ve got there. I would
love
to have a go on that.’ He used both hands, still handcuffed, to grab his crotch. ‘I’ll bet ye are a real goer, yeah?’
Hunt went to say something but Jessica acted on instinct. She took two strides across the room and leant over the table so she was at eye level with Lapham, around a foot away from him. ‘You think you’re a real hard man, don’t you Wayne?’
Lapham eyeballed her, while Hunt said something about the interview being over. Jessica ignored him and stared Lapham right back in the eyes. ‘It must take a really hard man to break into people’s houses and take their possessions then get some slimy shitbag like this to get them off.’
She heard Hunt splutter, while Lapham’s gaze flickered away it only for a fraction of a second, perhaps unnerved by how close they were. ‘I don’t think you’re hard Wayne. I don’t think you’re hard at all. Do you know what I think? I think you’re a pathetic little man who’s pissed their life away. And do you know what else? I think you’re all talk.’
She moved even closer to him, just six inches between them now. ‘Do you know how to fight Wayne? I bet you think you do. Most people start by throwing a few punches.’
Her gaze hadn’t shifted but Lapham’s had. He had shunted his chair backwards slightly and he looked towards his speechless lawyer. Neither Jessica’s tone nor eye line had wavered. ‘The thing is, Wayne, it’s not about how you throw those punches, it’s where you target them. For instance, if you punch someone hard in the windpipe, that would crush their larynx. They would go into an instant shock. But, because they’d be in shock, they wouldn’t quite be aware of how to fight back. Do you know punching someone in the nose isn’t really an effective way of breaking it?’
She used her left hand to rub her right palm but otherwise didn’t move. Hunt was frozen to the spot while Lapham desperately looked from side to side. ‘The best way to truly put someone out of action is to use the base of your palm to hit upwards through their nose. As well as the crushed larynx, the nose would be shattered and that person would be going nowhere.’
Jessica finally moved backwards, albeit only half a step. There was absolute silence. Hunt hadn’t moved and Lapham was just staring back at Jessica not knowing what to say. ‘So there you go Wayne. You think I’m a goer, how about you
fucking
try me?’
Jessica saw a visible bead of sweat appear on Lapham’s forehead. She held out her hand towards him. ‘Just touch me and let’s see what happens shall we?’
Jessica was in the ladies’ toilets at the station. She locked herself in a cubicle after checking the rest of the facility was empty and sat on the closed seat. Her heart rate had only just started to drop but she felt a complete mess. Her day-old clothes were beginning to feel uncomfortable and she just had an overwhelming feeling of being trapped. Something had happened in the interview room that had never come over her before.
She sat with her head in her hands and sobbed silently to herself. Jessica didn’t even remember everything she had said or done with Wayne Lapham. It was less than five minutes ago but already she could see only flashes of the incident. It was as if she had watched herself from the corner of the room, an out-of-body experience of sorts. She remembered Peter Hunt shouting for an officer and calling her “out of control”. She remembered DI Cole returning and looking slightly bemused as she stomped out of the room, past the uniformed officer and down the hallway into the toilets she sat in now. But the parts between DI Cole leaving the room and him returning were patchy.
What on earth had come over her? She didn’t even know where all that stuff had come from. She had never hurt anyone like that in her entire life. You got basic combat training in the force but they didn’t go out of their way to hurt anybody. She had read a few guides on Internet sites and knew how to look after herself, while Harry had given her those tips about targeting people’s windpipes and noses if you were in trouble. She could only assume that, as her emotions had got the best of her, the things she had absorbed had just all come out in the most venomous way she could have managed. In some ways it could be fearfully impressive but that wasn’t how she felt.
Jessica heard the main bathroom door open and someone enter. She held her breath and lifted her feet off the ground, though didn’t really know why she was doing it. She listened to the other person enter one of the cubicles next to her and waited for the flush, then the sound of water gushing from the sinks. Eventually the door went and she was alone again.
Jessica had never really been an emotional person. The last time she remembered crying was when Caroline’s parents had died almost a decade ago. Caroline’s devastation had affected her significantly but helped them bond. Jessica genuinely felt her friend’s pain and they had cried together at the funeral. They were such good friends but also such opposites. Jessica generally didn’t get attached but Caroline would cry at everything from videos on the Internet, to movies at the cinema, to articles in the paper and even, on one occasion, an advert on television. While Jessica was fiery and easily angered, Caroline was consistently cool and very little fazed her. They constantly ribbed each other about things. If they were watching some TV show with an animal in, Jessica would throw a box of tissues at her friend “just in case you go off again”. Caroline, meanwhile, had devised a sliding scale of Jessica’s moods, ranging from “a tad sweary,” to “particularly sweary,” to “volcanic sweary with bells on”. Who knows what she would have made of her mood in the interview room?
It was all in good humour but Jessica sat wondering if perhaps her temper had become too much of a problem. She was also struggling to figure out why she was crying. Was she upset, embarrassed or even fearful for her future after what had happened? And why had she let Wayne Lapham wind her up so much?
Jessica took a deep breath and stopped to think. In truth, she didn’t believe Lapham was the man they were looking for. His list of crimes was long but didn’t have anything on it that indicated he was capable of two brutal murders. She also believed his life was as pathetic as visiting the pub and going home, probably with a little bit of criminality on the side. He didn’t seem intelligent enough to set up the scenes either. Someone had very cleverly and deliberately covered their tracks by not only making sure they left no trace of themselves with the bodies but also hiding the very way the murders had even been conceived.
Could Wayne Lapham really have figured a way out to get into a house and out again undetected? He was a thug and a bully and Jessica had no doubt he’d broken into those houses a year ago. Sneaking in through partially-open windows was his style. Subtlety was something she doubted he could spell, let alone pull off.
That left her wondering about her own behaviour. Why had she threatened him? Whatever the reasons and whether she had simply lost it or not, she had at least achieved one thing. She had seen it in Lapham’s eyes as he panicked and looked to Peter Hunt for assistance. He hadn’t touched her, he wouldn’t have dared. He was the most scared person in that interview room and, despite his bravado, he was no murderer.
Jessica dried her eyes and unlocked the cubicle’s door. She checked herself over in the mirror, smoothed her hair down and retied it into a ponytail, thinking it was definitely getting too long. She straightened her suit and left the room.
The hallway was unnervingly quiet. It was a weekend but, even so, the silence boomed in Jessica’s ears. She wasn’t actually due to be in that day but, given the nature of her job – and the case itself, was pretty much always ready to come in at short notice. She walked down the hallway towards her office, wondering if she should just go home or if there was anything else she could do. Lapham had been released and there would be paperwork to go with that.
As she walked around the corner that would take her to her office, she almost walked straight into DI Cole. They both stepped back. ‘You okay?’ he said.
‘Yeah, yeah. Fine.’
‘What happened in there? Hunt was fuming, stomped up to see the Chief Inspector then stormed out with Lapham a few minutes later.’
Jessica had pretty much expected that would be the lawyer’s reaction. ‘Not much. We exchanged words.’
DI Cole gave her a sideways look as if to say he knew it must have been much more than that but he said nothing. ‘Think the DCI wants a word.’
‘Right.’
Jessica went to head towards the stairs but, as she half-turned, DI Cole added: ‘You reckon he’s our man?’
She looked back towards him. ‘Do you?’
Neither of them said anything but Jessica could tell from her superior’s look that he was thinking exactly what she was: “No”.
She made her way up the stairs and could see DCI Aylesbury in his office through the window. She knocked and he waved her in. ‘DS Daniel,’ he said, indicating for her to sit down. She did but said nothing. They looked at each other as if waiting for the other to talk first. He eventually broke the silence. ‘Is there anything you want to tell me, DS Daniel?’
Jessica paused for a moment. ‘No sir.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Right. DI Cole says Wayne Lapham has been bailed. I think we all know we don’t have enough to keep him in.’ Jessica nodded but said nothing. ‘I think you should go home for the weekend then we might need to talk again on Monday, yes?’
‘Yes, Sir.’
Jessica was back in the exact position she had been in what seemed like barely hours ago. She was sitting with her feet underneath her on the sofa in her flat, mulling over yet another shambles. It was now the early afternoon and the flat was once again empty. Caroline had left her a note on the coffee table in the living room.
“Gone to lunch and shops. Call if you want to join us. X. C.” Jessica didn’t fancy either lunch or shopping at that particular time. She wondered how many more times she could mess something up before someone stepped in to remove her from the case. There were already rumours the Serious Crime Division were looking to swoop in to hunt the “Houdini Strangler”. The SCD had been set up a few years previously and had a wide-ranging scope for which crimes they dealt with. No one in CID was really sure whether what they were dealing with would fall under the brief of the SCD or not. Certainly any larger gang crime would usually be referred to them but a lot seemed to come down to how busy the SCD were at any given time. It was often felt that, if they were having a particularly quiet month, they would look for anything decent CID were handling, then take the case on themselves in order to not have their budget cut. They were just one in many confusing layers of law-enforcement where Jessica often felt not even those involved knew who answered to whom. Everyone just fought hard to make sure their own departments looked busy and successful when the time came for budgets to be allocated.
She only knew two things about the upcoming week. First, she would be in DCI Aylesbury’s office first thing on Monday, probably for a dressing down, possibly to be taken off the case and maybe to be suspended outright. Second, she was due in court on Tuesday to face Peter Hunt again. She hoped she would make a better fist of it second time around.
Thinking ahead to her court date, she figured now was as good a time as any to phone Harry. It was now pushing six months since they had last talked. She flicked through her phone’s list of contacts and pressed the call button when it got to “Harry Thomas”.
It rang once. Twice. Jessica was about to leave a message, as she had done many times, when the line clicked and went silent for a moment. ‘Hello,’ came a voice from the other end.
‘Harry?’
‘Yeah.’
‘It’s Jessica… I… I didn’t think you’d answer.’ Silence. ‘Are you okay?’ she continued.
‘How’s the case going?’ He clearly didn’t want to make small-talk but would have seen coverage of the “Houdini” case in the papers and on the news.
‘Not great.’
‘Aye, it’s a weird one…’
Jessica had no idea what came over her but, for the second time that day, she broke into tears. ‘Oh, Harry…’ He didn’t say anything but she tearfully continued. ‘I don’t know what I’m doing. Things are a mess. We’ve had no leads, no idea how these killings link together and then, when we finally link it together, I blow it. I let Lapham get away and, even when we got him back, I screw it all up and he’s back out again.’
‘You got him back?’
‘Yeah, he walked into the station with Peter Hunt this morning.’
‘Hunt?’
‘Yeah.’
‘What a shitbag.’
Jessica laughed slightly through the tears. ‘That’s what I said.’
‘You said that?’
‘Yeah.’
‘To him?’
‘Yeah.’
Jessica could hear Harry laughing. Huge belly laughs and snorts. And then she was giggling too. She had barely heard Harry that happy even when they worked together. ‘What did he say?’ Harry managed to ask in between the guffaws.
‘Nothing really. He didn’t get a chance to say anything.’
Harry just continued to laugh. ‘That is bloody fantastic.’
Jessica grabbed a box of tissues from the table and blew her nose, the tears now gone. She smiled and tried to stop herself joining in but Harry’s laugh was infectious. It took a while until both of them had finally stopped. ‘Are you okay, Harry?’
‘Me? Yeah, I’m just a stubborn, silly old man. Don’t you worry about me, Detective Sergeant.’ He had never had the chance to call her that before. It sounded good. He sounded proud.
‘We all worry…’ Harry said nothing. ‘What happened in court?’
Harry didn’t say anything for a few moments and she wondered whether or not he would but then the answer came. ‘Nothing. He wound me up.’
‘He winds everyone up.’
‘Kid’s gonna get off, y’know.’
Jessica didn’t even want to acknowledge that. She didn’t know if it were true or not. ‘What would you do with the case, Harry?’
‘Link the bodies. People don’t kill at random, not really.’