The barman, who Garry assumed was also the landlord, was a large bald-headed man with intimidating accusing eyes and a deep voice. Garry showed him the paper’s front page and started with a polite, ‘Hello, I was wondering if...’ but the barman finished his sentence for him.
‘...you were wondering if you could buy a drink? Yes you can.’
Garry had ordered a coke and asked for a receipt. That would be going to the expenses department too. That first drink had got him the information that Lapham had been in the pub the day before and that “your lot” had been on the phone all morning.
The second drink uncovered the fact that Lapham was often in the pub but wasn’t at that exact moment. Garry could see that for himself.
The third coke and first packet of crisps had helped Garry find out that Lapham didn’t live too far away and that this place was his local. With each ordered drink, the barman’s smile got wider and wider. Garry had always had a weak bladder and had needed two trips to the men’s room already. In some ways, he thought, it was a bizarre type of torture that he was paying for the privilege of.
Garry’s first beer of the day, ordered out of exasperation, and second packet of crisps had finally prised out that Lapham lived in a row of flats not too far away.
‘Dunno more than that I’m afraid mate,’ the barman had told him after Garry had finished that final drink. Garry thought the word “mate” was something of a subjective term.
After a third trip to the toilet on his way out, Garry had followed the barman’s instructions to the row of flats where Lapham apparently lived. He had no answer from the first door on the rank, while the man behind the second just looked at him as if he had two heads then slammed it in his face. After a rather sweary enquiry as to his identity from the woman behind the third door, he was surprisingly informed this
was
Lapham’s house and that the female was his “fiancée”, Marie Hall. Even more astoundingly he was invited in, with the woman promising to tell him how the police were “stitching-up” her partner.
The woman was still in her dressing gown, a particularly peach monstrosity. She invited him into her kitchen and chain-smoked throughout their conversation, which was more of a one-sided rant. Garry thought his flat was a mess but Lapham’s made his look like a hospital ward.
Despite the swearing, lack of cohesion and seemingly baseless accusations, Marie had at least given him some useful information. She said some officer had not long been sent back from her place because her fiancé had handed himself in and was currently at the police station being questioned. That was the first Garry knew of it. She reckoned the police had nothing on him and was “dredging up old things ’cos they’ve got it in for him”. But she gave him plenty of background on her fiancé and even let Garry borrow a photo “as long as you bring it back”. From what she said, Lapham was a misunderstood soul who the police delighted in picking on.
Garry thought that, although those claims seemed unlikely, behind the bravado, Marie actually did care for Wayne Lapham and was genuinely just worried for him. She certainly didn’t like the police and more than once went off on a tangent about “that posh bitch officer forcing her way in here”. Garry didn’t push the point but had an idea about who the “bitch” could have been.
He thanked her for her time and caught the buses back to write the story up. By then news had come out that Wayne Lapham had been released. Garry linked everything together and turned it into something of a profile piece about the investigation’s prime suspect. His Editor had called and said the piece was okay but sounded disappointed his reporter hadn’t got more. Quite what he’d expected, Garry wasn’t sure.
It was that tone which had continued into the Monday meeting but perhaps all that was about to change. On Garry’s phone was a text from the pre-pay number he had memorised.
“Call me. It’s good.”
Garry phoned the number, feverishly taking notes throughout the call. It
was
good. Good enough to wreck the career of a certain Detective Sergeant.
Jessica’s day hadn’t really been too productive. She had first taken DC Rowlands with her to Yvonne Christensen’s boarded-up house. They were let in through the back by the victim’s ex-husband, Eric, who had been given his son’s keys. Jessica didn’t really know what she thought she would get from the visit and hadn’t expected to have a flash of inspiration where she discovered something others had missed. Things didn’t really work like that.
Eric didn’t want to enter the house and told them he hadn’t been in since the murder. He said he was in the process of organising a company to go in and clean the house up and, when that was all complete, he would look to put it on the market. Finding a set of cleaners keen enough was proving a problem when he explained the situation.
Jessica wasn’t surprised.
The house itself looked more or less the same as it had the last time she had been there. The bed upstairs had been stripped with the sheets taken by the Scene of Crime team. Blood had soaked through to the mattress and was clearly visible.
Jessica and DC Rowlands just walked around the house looking for something that may have been missed. She checked the attic for the first time herself. She had seen the report before, of course, saying there was no connection to the neighbouring property but wanted to check herself for completeness. It was exactly as the account had said – there wasn’t much to see with no way in, obvious or not. She tried to walk herself through what would have happened, the direction Yvonne must have been facing when the wire was wrapped around her neck. She thought about where the killer’s feet must have stood and the angle their body must have been at as they held the killing instrument. None of it really helped.
She visited Sandra Prince at her house. It seemed odd that the woman had gone back to living at the property where her husband’s murdered body had recently been found but Jessica knew some people just did that because there was nowhere else for them to go. The woman wasn’t in the best frame of mind but did say she was bemused as to why Wayne Lapham had been released. Mrs Prince hadn’t been angry exactly but kept saying that he had already got away with it once, meaning the burglaries. It was hard to argue with her. Jessica asked if she knew of any connection to the Christensen family but Sandra didn’t recognise the name or photos.
In terms of the case itself, neither of the visits had really helped but it had focused Jessica’s mind back on the bodies again with the viciousness of it all and it made her appreciate even more that the person she was looking for was definitely no fool. Setting up this kind of scene took the attention away from themselves because the police were busy trying to find out
how
the murders were carried out, rather than
who
carried them out. As for the why, they had as much idea about that as they did about the other aspects. She didn’t believe Lapham could be their killer but the connection he gave to the victims surely couldn’t be a coincidence either.
The two detectives returned to the station. Jessica checked in with DI Cole but there was little to report. The other three burglary victims for which Lapham had been convicted of handling stolen goods had been visited again but reported nothing untoward. Jessica went to her office to get rid of some paperwork. DS Reynolds wasn’t in and she had the space to herself. She couldn’t really focus on the work, with her thoughts turned towards her appearance in court the following day and round two with Peter Hunt, as well as the case she was working on.
She had just pushed back into her chair and shut her eyes when her phone rang. She picked it up from the desk and looked at the front. The caller was Garry Ashford. She had reprogrammed his name properly into her phone now after meeting him, reluctantly admitting to herself that perhaps he wasn’t that bad after all. He still dressed like a prat and couldn’t spell his own name though. ‘Mr Ashford,’ she answered. ‘How’s life in the gutters?’
‘Oh, er, hi Detective. Are you alone?’
‘Er, yeah but this isn’t a sex line, you know. Well, unless you’re paying…’
‘Can I run something by you?’
Jessica’s first thought was that another body had been found and somehow the journalist knew about it before she did. Her mind was racing. ‘What?’
‘Well at lunch today, I spoke to a lawyer named Peter Hunt.’
Jessica visibly winced at the mention of that name. She was fully aware that, even if she were exonerated by DCI Aylesbury and the Superintendant, there wouldn’t be too much they could do if a story about her threatening a suspect got into the papers. The police couldn’t be seen to have someone in such a prominent position who was embroiled in a scandal like that. As someone who could work as part of a big investigation, she would be finished, hard evidence or not. ‘Shit.’
‘He was only confirming what I had already heard.’
That was the problem the station’s whispers had caused. The legend of what had actually happened in the interview room had grown out of all proportion. In the car on their way to the Christensens’ house earlier, DC Rowlands had asked her about the incident. She hadn’t really told him much – or anyone for that matter – but he had told her the things he had heard. They ranged from something actually approaching the truth to her having Peter Hunt up against the interview room’s wall by the throat. Other versions included her turning the table over and bellowing a string of abuse at both Hunt and Lapham, while somebody else had apparently said she’d attacked the pair of them with a fork from the canteen. She had realised on the journey things had got out of hand. People had obviously been talking and by now word would have been around most of the Greater Manchester Police force. That wasn’t even counting the people Peter Hunt had spoken to. It hadn’t crossed her mind at the time but this was exactly the kind of thing that could have happened.
‘What
have
you heard?’ The journalist’s version of events was almost exactly what Jessica remembered. He certainly had a very good source considering there had only been three people in the room and she knew he hadn’t got the information from herself or Wayne Lapham. Hunt may have confirmed details but she doubted he would have tipped someone like Garry Ashford off in the first place.
‘I can’t really talk about it Garry.’
‘I know but I have to ask.’
‘What are you going to write?’
‘I don’t know yet … something.’
‘You know this could ruin me?’ Jessica wasn’t sure what to say. It wasn’t as if she had been too nice to him before. That had just slipped out.
‘Would you like to tell me what happened?’
Jessica didn’t know what had come over her in the past few days with the anger in the interview room and the emotion in the station’s toilet plus over the phone with Harry. She had even enjoyed a laugh with DCI Aylesbury, a person she had never really gotten on too well with before. And now she told Garry Ashford, a journalist and relative stranger, everything. Once she started speaking, she couldn’t stop. He didn’t try to interrupt her or ask anything, he just let her talk. She told him how Lapham had got under her skin and that Hunt had let him. She spoke about the investigation itself; how the police had got nowhere and were struggling. They weren’t even sure how the murders had happened, let alone who did them. She even told him about her own feelings of inadequacy amid a complete lack of leads.
If Internal Investigations were listening in, they would have had a field day. When she had finished, there was a short silence. Her caller eventually broke it. ‘That was a bit…
more
… than I expected.’
Suddenly she was laughing again and so was he. ‘I don’t know why I told you all that,’ she added once things had calmed down. ‘I could be ruined if all of this got out. They wouldn’t trust me to go into an interview room again.’
‘What would you like me to do?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘I have an idea but would need your help?’
‘Go on...’
‘Do you think you can trust me?’
‘I’m not sure I have much choice.’
Jessica listened as Garry told her to leave it with him but to make sure she got a hold of the next day’s paper. ‘I think I’ve got a way to keep my Editor and you happy,’ he said.
Jessica thought that, if he could manage that, he was definitely a lot cleverer than she had previously given him credit for.
Having read the Herald’s website on her phone the next morning then bought the print edition on her way to the station, Jessica was beginning to think she had definitely underestimated Garry Ashford. But if the scruffy little genius had got her off the hook, he had also ensured her colleagues would be taking the piss out of her for weeks.
She was impressed when she had seen the online version but it was the actual hard copy that really stood out. The front page banner headline read: “HOUDINI HUNTER”. She wasn’t a fan of the “Houdini Strangler” label but, for good or bad, it had stuck. Garry’s front page piece, which read over a two-page spread on the inside, was a full profile of her. It was positive throughout, reassuring the public that she was looking out for them and hard on the trail of the killer. After the previous editorials slating the lack of progress, this piece praised the “behind the scenes efforts”. Very little of the information had actually come from her but, even if it had, it was written so cleverly no one could have really known for sure. It quoted “sources close to Detective Daniel” and “senior members of the force”.
The journalist must have really done his homework the day before. They still didn’t have a great photo of her but had come up with one taken a few years previously when she was in uniform. She remembered it being taken but had no idea where the newspaper would have got it from. She definitely looked younger in the shot and more naive too she thought to herself.
Jessica was only planning on stopping at Longsight to pick up some paperwork on her way to court. It would give her something to do while she was stuck hanging around in the witness waiting room. Court duty was a mixed blessing for officers. On the one hand, you did get a day off work. She thought it was like when the teacher used to wheel in the video player back at school and you knew you would get an easy ride for that lesson. The downside was the sheer amount of waiting around you had to do, either at the back of court or sitting in one of the various rooms provided.