Jessica knew all of that off the top of her head. It had been ingrained into them as officers during the morning briefings before things had slowly been dropped. One by one they were moved on to other cases but those pictures of Nigel Collins’ brutally beaten face were something that had stayed with her. He didn’t even look human in the images, a mass of purple, black, blue and red all merging into one.
Jessica took a deep breath. ‘Are you admitting to being part of a group who tortured Nigel Collins, Shaun?’
‘Yes,’ he sniffed.
Jessica didn’t really know how to phrase the next question so just asked it in the simplest way possible. ‘Why have you told us all this now?’
‘Dunno really. I guess I’ve been waiting to tell someone for ages.’
‘You do know everything you just told us could be used if the case is reopened?’
‘It’s fine. I deserve it,’ he said quietly. ‘But that’s why it’s my fault with my mum.’
‘I’m sorry, Shaun, I still don’t understand,’ Jessica said.
Shaun was still sniffing but his sobs had died down. He spoke slowly and quietly. ‘After it all happened, when Nigel had been found and was on the TV and everything, I just couldn’t keep it in. The four of us never really hung around together after that again but Scott told us all to keep our mouths shut. We were scared.
I
was scared but I told my mum...’
Things began to click into place for Jessica to explain the reason why Nigel believed the family falling apart was down to him. She didn’t say anything and allowed Shaun to continue speaking. ‘Mum didn’t go to the police but it was never right. She never looked at me the same way after that; you could see it in her eyes. She had already started drinking after dad left but everything was under control. After I told her though...’
Jessica let him tail off. He composed himself again and used another tissue to blow his nose. ‘I’d just left school and was about to do my exams but I couldn’t get the images out of my head. Scott made us all join in, y’know? That way, if any of us ever said anything, we would all be in it together. Jon, Jonny, he cried the whole time. Even Jamo didn’t want to get involved when it got serious. As soon as my exams were done that’s when mum said we were moving. We all knew the flat she took us to was too small but I think it was just her way of saying she didn’t want me there any longer.’
Jessica nodded. ‘Is that what she said to you when you went to visit her on the day you ended up assaulting that man?’
‘Pretty much. She had been drinking and was in the flat on her own. It was horrible. I had heard from Em that mum had started
working
and I had shouted at her about it. I said it wasn’t right what she was doing to Kim. She wasn’t listening though and just shouted back, “What about what you did?” It was the first time she’d ever said anything properly about it. She said it was my fault and that she couldn’t even look at me because of what she saw every time she did.’
Jessica didn’t really know what to say. Working for the police, you heard all sorts of harrowing tales from people but this was right up there. No one came out well from this, Shaun or his mother. And what about the victims? Nigel Collins and poor Kim. Perhaps even Shaun himself and Claire were sufferers because of it all?
Shaun sniffed again. ‘I just felt so bad. It was the last time I ever saw her. I came back to Leeds that night and just drank. I didn’t even know who that guy I beat up was. I’ve thought about it a lot since. I wondered if maybe I wanted to end up somewhere like here and punish myself? I don’t know.’
There wasn’t an awful lot they could say. They would pass on the confession to their superiors who might decide to reopen Nigel Collins’ case. If that was what happened, someone else would come to visit Shaun to ask him to repeat everything he had just said. Even if he refused, Jessica’s recollections and DI Cole’s notes could probably be enough.
Jessica’s mind was still working. ‘Who were the other boys, Shaun?’
‘I didn’t really know everyone’s name. It was all about nicknames and football usually, just having a laugh. It wasn’t always just the four of us. Big groups of us would go off kicking a footy around and that. It was just that day it was the four of us bunking off. I’m still not really sure how it all happened. We were smoking round the back of this shop and Nigel walked past. We all knew his name and face just through him being around. Everyone took the mick and called him names and so on. He kind of half-knew us and our mums because we were all from the same area. He never seemed to forget anyone. Scott just said he was the guy who had been looking at his girlfriend some other evening and we went with it. It was just a chase at first.’
‘Do you remember Scott’s last name?’
Shaun thought about it. ‘No, sorry. I’m not sure I ever knew it. It wasn’t the kind of thing I would have asked. He was younger than me so we weren’t even in the same class or anything.’
‘Okay, what about “Jamo”?’
‘I dunno. That was what Scott called him.’
‘Do you know if it was his first name, like “James”? Or last name like “Jameson”?’
‘No, he was always just “Jamo”. He was in Scott’s year, which is how they knew each other.’
‘Right. What about Jon, then?’
‘He’s the only one I really knew anything about. He was the year above me in school and had already finished. He lived quite close by but was waiting to go do his A-levels or something like that. I don’t remember exactly. We didn’t really talk again after all that.’
‘Do you know his full name?’
‘Yeah I think...’ Shaun was clearly thinking about it. ‘Price? Something like that.’
Jessica looked at DI Cole then spun around to look back at Shaun. ‘Could it be “Prince”? Jonathan Prince?’
‘Yeah, maybe. That sounds about right.’
It didn’t take much working out for Jessica to figure out “Jamo” would be James Christensen, the son of Yvonne. That still left them Scott to discover but they knew three of the four gang members who had beaten Nigel Collins into a coma had now had a parent brutally murdered.
Jessica and DI Cole hurried out of the prison. One of the reception workers had offered to drop them back at the station, while Jessica spent large parts of the car trip and train journey on her phone. The first thing they had to do was find out who Scott was. What was his last name and where did he live? More importantly for now, where did his parents live? Someone had to find them to make sure they weren’t the next victims. All they had to go on was that Scott was a few years younger than Jonathan Prince and Shaun Hogan and in the same school year as James Christensen. It should be fairly easy to find out what school they went to, check the intake for that particular year and look for anyone called Scott. Unless he had changed his name in the meantime, it would give them maybe one person to look at if they were lucky but certainly no more than five or six if not. Complications could arise if people had moved but it still shouldn’t take long. Jessica hoped the people at the station would have tracked down their man by the time the train pulled in.
If any of that failed, they would bring in James Christensen to see if he could point them in the right direction to find Scott.
The next concern was to track down Nigel Collins. Surely he had to be their man? He was connected to all three murders and, depending on the way you viewed things, had the motive. She didn’t know why he would target the parents instead of those who had hurt him, though. DCI Aylesbury told Jessica over the phone he would be setting one team up to find Scott and the other to find Nigel.
The train journey took the same time to arrive back in Manchester at lunchtime as it had to get to Leeds that morning but Jessica was on edge. Every single stop at a platform had her seething, checking her watch and wondering what was taking so long. Again, DI Cole’s coolness infuriated her. He didn’t need to say anything, his posture said it all: “Just wait, getting stressed can’t help either of us”. It was helping her, though. She watched people get on and off and had irrational thoughts about whether or not one of them was Scott or Nigel Collins.
Her phone rang as they pulled into the Oxford Road station. It was marginally closer to their Longsight base than the main Piccadilly station and Jessica thought they could get a taxi direct from there, which could save them a few minutes. DI Cole had shrugged but gone with it. She was talking on her phone as she bounded out of the station. The inspectors wanted to see her ticket but she wasn’t in the mood to be stopped, pulling out her police badge instead and telling them in not too polite terms to move out of her way.
The phone call hadn’t improved her mood. Far from finding “Scott”, it seemed like the rest of the detectives had got nowhere. Although he had returned to the area for a short while, James Christensen had returned to Bournemouth University according to his father and no one seemed to be able to get in contact with him. They had his mobile number but he wasn’t answering, while a couple of local officers had been despatched to find him. Perhaps the only thing they had managed to do is confirm which secondary school James had gone to. That information had come from his father who, according to the person Jessica spoke to, wasn’t too keen to be giving out that kind of information. ‘He kept asking if his son was under suspicion, then was banging on about his rights to know,’ the officer told Jessica.
‘What is it with people and their bloody rights?’ Jessica said. ‘Everyone thinks they’re entitled to something.’
Officers had managed to go to the school and get an intake list from the year they needed despite being told at first it was against the data protection act. A call from DCI Aylesbury had apparently straightened that out but the officer had been told the Superintendant had spoken to someone at the Local Education Authority too before the papers had been handed over. The school had emailed a copy as well as given over a photocopied version of the originals.
Even with that, the problem was that there were three “Scotts” in the same year as James Christensen. While Jessica had been on the train, her team had hit brick walls with all three of their potential gang-leaders.
There was a Scott Hesketh, a Scott Harris and a Scott Barry. Those names were being cross-checked with birth certificates, the electoral roll and other easily accessible name archives. The school itself had a limited amount of information on past pupils. From what the officer had told Jessica, it was basically just name, grades and home address. Given those addresses were six years old, that didn’t give them much. Officers had been sent out to each of the three addresses to see if they could come up with something, while all the other information they did have was being run against their own police databases.
So far no links for any of the three had turned up. ‘Great,’ Jessica said into her phone. ‘Any luck with Nigel Collins?’
The situation with him was even worse. It was as if he had dropped off the face of the earth the day he walked out of hospital. They had checked the housing association records to the address he had been living at when he had ended up in hospital but the association said he never returned. There were forty seven Nigel Collins’ living in the country and a team was currently working on bringing that number down based on age. It had already been established there were no Nigel Collins fitting the age bracket living locally. The caller told Jessica that was the first thing they had checked.
‘Even better,’ added Jessica before telling the officer she was on her way back with DI Cole.
Jessica told their taxi driver they were both detectives and said she was giving him her authorisation to do whatever it took to get them back to the police station as soon as possible. DI Cole simply raised an eyebrow as if to point out she couldn’t authorise speeding in a private vehicle like that but she wasn’t bothered. The driver was good and, after they got back, she gave him a £20 note without asking for a receipt or change and ran into reception.
In all honesty, she didn’t know why she was in such a hurry. The team knew what they were doing and there wasn’t an awful lot more she could add but she wanted to feel part of things now they finally had a lead they had waited so long for. She bounded past the front desk, past her office and on to the main floor where... everything seemed normal. Officers were on the phone, doing their jobs, which is exactly what they should have been doing. She didn’t know why she thought things would look different just because they were on to something. DC Rowlands approached her. ‘All right?’
‘Yeah, what’s going on?’
He told her that one of their three Scotts had been ruled out. Scott Barry had been found. He and his family had moved to a place in the Bristol area not long after he had finished school. It turned out Scott Barry had become a successful auctioneer and one officer had struck lucky simply by searching for his name on the Internet. A quick phone call had established he was the person they were looking for and that his parents were alive and well living in Portugal.
That left Scott Hesketh and Scott Harris to track down. Apparently police officers had been to both addresses given on the school records. At the address they had for Scott Harris, there was no answer but the house was registered to a Paul and Mary Keegan according to the land deeds. At the other, whoever had answered said they had never heard of anybody with the last name “Hesketh”. Apparently whoever it was had only lived there a few months themselves.
‘Anyone been able to get hold of James Christensen yet?’ asked Jessica.
‘What do you think?’
Jessica went straight upstairs to tell DCI Aylesbury exactly what had happened that morning. DI Cole was already there. She had given him a reasonable outline over the phone but things still had to be done officially. As they were speaking a call came through to say they had finally been able to get hold of Yvonne Christensen’s son in Bournemouth. There was nothing sinister going on, he had actually been in lectures and had his phone off. His classmates would have had quite a spectacle as he was taken out to be spoken to by police officers.