Authors: Kerry Wilkinson
T
he last couple
of days had seen a complete turnaround for Garry. After the call from his source about Yvonne Christensen, he had phoned the number for that detective sergeant but not really got anywhere. She’d seemed like a right moody so-and-so.
She hadn’t sounded convinced by his lie about finding her number in an office contacts book, either, but it would do for now. The person that
had
given him the number had at least two SIM cards and had called from the unregistered pre-pay one.
After getting a ‘no comment’ from her, he’d made the call he had been waiting eighteen months for – to tell his editor he actually had a story of note. It had been both of their days off, and Garry had never called his boss on his mobile before. Garry reckoned Tom Simpson would have been a good journalist at some point in the past but, being in the job for as long as he had while he worked his way up to editor, he’d lost something along the way. Garry had taken just a year and a half to become cynical about the industry, but his boss had been in the job for over twenty years, so who knows what he thought of it all?
The editor was in charge of managing the paper’s content and staff. Recently, pressure to make savings had grown significantly. Everyone had seen the memos from management about cost-cutting, and no doubt due to the stress of these, along with the length of time he had been doing the job, Tom Simpson had lost any courtesy he might have once had.
As editor, his one concern was getting a paper out on time and not getting fired. He frequently swore and bawled out other reporters in the newsroom, warning them that costs had to be brought down and, if they didn’t get him better stories, perhaps
they
would be expendable. Some of the older production staff and journalists had told Garry it hadn’t always been like that. When Tom had first been promoted to editor eight or nine years earlier, the atmosphere had been much better – but declining sales, free content on the Internet, and rifts with management had taken their toll.
One of the older reporters, who was eagerly awaiting retirement in a year or two, had explained to Garry in the pub one evening why he thought things had got so bad. ‘All those government departments and councils and police and fire and everyone else have these bloody press officers now,’ he said. ‘In the old days you could buy someone a pint and get the full story. It was cock-ups galore and you could really go to town. Now you get stuck rewriting these nonsense statements about “diversity” and “ethical funding”, whatever the hell that means.’
The finance department and editor received daily figures for how many copies of the paper had been returned by newsagents and street sellers. This allowed them to work out how many copies of the paper had actually been sold. Garry had thought his luck had finally turned with his ‘bin fury’ story. On the back of that, sales had gone up twenty per cent for three straight days. His editor had been delighted. He had praised Garry’s work ethic in a group email, and had hovered around his desk for those days asking about follow-up stories. Eventually though, it had had to end – there were only so many articles that could be churned out about rubbish before people stopped reading them. Sales dropped to where they’d been before, and Garry had been forgotten about. In many ways, that had made things worse. Before, he’d been some anonymous reporter in the newsroom, but after, he became a reporter who had once spiked sales but was failing to do so any longer.
But now, with this information about the murder, Garry thought that perhaps his luck was on the turn.
Garry’s editor answered his phone with, ‘Who’s this?’
Not a ‘Hello’ and definitely not a ‘Hi’.
‘This is Garry, Garry Ashford.’
The reply dripped with derision: ‘You do know it’s my day off?’
‘I think I have something big.’
‘You
think
you have something big? I’m on my way to the football.’
Garry stumbled his way through telling his editor about the phone call he had received. He talked about the murder and how the body had been found locked in a house, that the police had taken two days to find it. His editor asked for the source and Garry gave it.
‘Great stuff,’ he was told. ‘Look, get hold of this witness. Find out what she told the police, then get into the office tomorrow. No point in wasting something like this for tomorrow’s edition – the city’s empty on a Sunday. We’ll get everyone with a blinding front page on Monday. Blow the nationals out of the water.’
Despite a few pangs of uncertainty about turning up at the front door of a potential witness, Garry did what he was told. His source had given him Stephanie Wilson’s name and the road she lived on, but not the exact house number. Luckily, there was a Ray and Stephanie Wilson on the electoral roll. Garry found a landline number in the online phone book, and he spoke to the husband, Ray – who seemed delighted the press were involved.
The interview with Stephanie was largely hijacked by her husband who, from what he said, had been single-handedly responsible for uncovering the whole story. He kept saying how he had been a journalist in his youth and that it was his idea to call the police.
The way he spoke, a person would have been forgiven for thinking it was he who had found the body, and that he was in the process of cracking the case. Stephanie didn’t say too much, but as Garry managed to coax the truth from her, it became clear her husband had had pretty much nothing to do with any of it. That didn’t stop him asking if the paper wanted to send a photographer over to take photos of them both. Garry thought he was a bit of a nuisance but seemed relatively harmless, and he thanked them both for their time. He had what he needed.
T
he offices
of the
Morning Herald
were spread across two floors, midway up one of the taller buildings in the centre of Manchester. Editorial and advertising shared a floor; production and finance occupied the one above it. Other businesses had various floors, but the whole place was like a ghost town on a Sunday. Garry used his security pass to get through the staff door at the back and then again for the lift.
He had barely stepped out of the elevator when he heard his editor’s far-too-cheery voice from across the other side of the room: ‘Garry.’
While the few heads who happened to be working that day turned to look in his direction, no doubt confused as to why their boss was so pleased for once, Tom was bounding towards him. Garry started walking towards his desk but his editor caught up and put a fatherly arm around his shoulders, ushering him into his own office. Even when he had been popular in the past, he had never been invited into the editor’s office.
Garry had a good look around. The view was as impressive as it could be, considering what Manchester had to offer. Garry’s usual desk offered various angles of the back of some girl’s head who worked in advertising. Admittedly, she looked more attractive from the back than the front, but that wasn’t the point.
The editor ushered Garry into a plush leather swivel chair, on which the mechanism to move the seat up and down actually worked – significantly more than could be expected from a chair on the main news floor. Tom then offered to make Garry a cup of tea.
What on earth was going on?
Garry thought his boss making him a hot drink was perhaps pushing things too far, so declined.
He told his editor how the morning interview with the Wilsons had gone, and repeated what he had said on the phone the day before. His boss nodded furiously throughout, making the odd note and repeating, ‘Good, good’ over and over. Garry was aware that the magnitude of someone having been brutally murdered seemed to be lost in his boss’s excitement. He was told he could use the editor’s own computer to type up the story so, still feeling as if he were in some bizarre alternative universe, he used his notes to do precisely that.
Garry thought of the victim as he wrote. He was excited about finally being in his editor’s good books but didn’t want to let that detract from his own sense of empathy. Ray Wilson and now his boss both seemingly wanted to use the murder almost as a springboard for their own aims. Ray’s aims were harmless and slightly pathetic, but Garry hoped his boss wouldn’t push things too far. Yes, it was a big story and he was going to be the one to break it, but he didn’t want the fact to be lost that someone had been murdered.
He finished typing and went to find the editor back on the main floor, receiving plenty of odd looks from his colleagues, wondering what he had done to receive such a warm welcome. Tom almost skipped across the newsroom towards him and they both went back into the office. Garry’s boss sat in front of the computer and read through what had been written. He nodded frequently and again repeated, ‘Good, good’ numerous times. When he was done, he turned back to Garry. ‘Top, top work, this, young man. Top work. Need to spice it up a bit in a few places but this is really well done.’
Garry was nervous of what he meant by ‘spice it up’ but said nothing.
‘I think you’re about done for the day,’ Tom added. ‘Go get yourself a pint and enjoy the evening. You deserve it. We’ll get this on the website tonight and then tomorrow, your name will be on the front page.’
He was being sent home
early
. Working unpaid overtime was something he had done many times but Garry had never been let go before his shift ended. This really was new ground.
‘I reckon there’ll be a press conference tomorrow and you’ll be right there,’ his editor added. ‘Maybe you can give your little source a call when you get in? Y’know, see if anything else has happened…?’
Garry had no intention of doing that but said he would, picked up his bag and made a beeline for the lift. He moved quickly as he didn’t want to risk his invitation to leave early being revoked but also because he didn’t want to see the accusing stares from his colleagues as he walked out, wondering why he was suddenly so popular.
They would find out when they saw the front page.
A
fter checking
in again with his delighted editor on the Monday morning, Garry was told he would be going to the press conference over at Longsight mid-afternoon. ‘Ramp up that two-day cock-up angle,’ his editor instructed.
What he meant by this, Garry knew, was to ask questions about why it had taken two days for the police to successfully find Yvonne’s body after Stephanie Wilson’s phone call. It was a bit harsh, really, he thought. The police weren’t to have known there was a dead body involved, and considering Yvonne could simply have gone away for a few days, he thought they had done pretty well to act in that time.
Regardless, he would ask the question. At least with all the other media present, DS Daniel couldn’t shout at him in quite the way she had on the phone the night before. He found a clean pair of dark trousers and his favourite jacket. He had worn it out a few times after being assured by his friends it made him look interesting.
He made sure he was sitting at the back for the briefing, making notes as other people asked their questions, and spotted DS Daniel on the end. She hadn’t said much, simply sat scowling at the audience in front of her. As he sat waiting to pluck up the courage to raise his hand, he thought she looked directly at him. Her long, almost-blonde hair was swept back out of her face. She looked kind of cute.
That thought began and ended as Garry asked his question. He saw her looking straight at him, a half-smile on her face, with her eyes telling him one thing clearly: ‘You’re dead meat, sunshine.’
I
t had been
a week and a half since Yvonne Christensen’s body had been found, and Jessica and her team had got precisely nowhere. Constables from other districts had been returned to their respective forces, and officers at Longsight were being moved on to other cases. It was a disaster, and the finger of blame was pointing squarely at Jessica.
Nothing much had happened in the initial investigation, with lead after lead finishing in a dead end. The hotline had come up with nothing, except for members of the public wanting a chat or thinking their uncle looked a bit like the e-fit. Someone had even phoned up to say the sketch looked like the officer who had been on the news the night before – DI Cole. That went down well. All potential leads had been checked but there was little of substance.
The day after the press conference, the
Herald
had gone to town on the force because of the two-day delay in finding the body. There was a big picture of the victim smiling out from the front page, with an editorial inside asking why the body had been ‘left to rot’.
‘Nice and tactful for the family,’ Jessica said to Cole.
A few days after that, the force was blasted again, this time for a lack of progress. The byline on both articles had been ‘Garry Ashford’. With the investigation not going anywhere, Jessica spent parts of her free time thinking up creative ways to make life miserable for the long-haired, tweed-jacket-wearing pain-in-her-arse.
In a huge majority of murder cases, the killer was someone known the victim – a family member, or someone romantically involved. The clichés were true. But with Yvonne Christensen anyone they knew of who apparently fitted that description had been ruled out. None of them even had a slightly dodgy alibi. Everything was solid. The police had looked into everyone from the husband, to his new girlfriend, to the son, to the neighbours and even into Stephanie and Ray Wilson. They’d checked Yvonne’s bank accounts and phone records, all of which seemed normal.
No one seemed to have a motive for murdering Yvonne and, even if they had stumbled across a reason, no one – least of all Jessica – had much of an idea how somebody could have got into and out of the locked house. There
must
be another key out there – but where?
With all of that running through Jessica’s mind, she drove home in the rain with a clear plan for the evening: take her shoes off and relax in the living room with a glass – or bottle – of wine.
Jessica and Caroline’s flat was on the ground floor, with another above them which had been empty for a while. Unlike some in the area, it was an
actual
apartment and not a converted house. They had a small garden at the front, but it had been paved over before they moved in and they never did anything in it.
The flat overall might not have been anything particularly special, but the living room was the definition of cosy and relaxing. The sofa was nicely worn in – and could pretty much swallow Jessica. She had fallen asleep on it on far too many occasions, and she was looking forward to curling up on it with her wine tonight, ready for a good session of TV-watching. Caroline had plenty of DVD box sets, but Jessica only really watched the news and late-night reruns of trashy morning talk shows. Not that she would have admitted the talk-show watching to her colleagues, of course. Still… who could resist a good DNA test reveal?
But when she arrived home and opened the door to her living room, there was a man there who Jessica didn’t know, drinking from a can of lager and sitting on her and Caroline’s sofa, in the precise spot where Jessica had been looking forward to parking her backside.
‘Er, hello?’
‘Oh, hi…’ he replied. ‘Jessica, right?’
‘Are you psychic, or do you know me?’
He offered a hand. ‘Randall.’
‘Ah… The boyfriend.’
They shook hands.
Caroline had re-entered the main room at the sound of the voices. ‘I was just changing,’ she explained to Jessica. ‘I hope you don’t mind Randall coming over. I wanted you both to meet.’
Jessica
didn’t
mind, not really – but it would have been nice to have been asked. She looked Randall over. He was decent-looking – close to six foot, shaven head, blue eyes, decent physique on show in a tight-fit T-shirt. There was some kind of spiky-lettering tattoo on the lower half of his right arm, but Jessica couldn’t figure out what it was. She didn’t particularly go for guys who spent so much time working out – and tattoos and piercings had never been too appealing to her. Caroline, however, could barely take her eyes off him.
Although she preferred the sofa for comfort, Jessica left it to Randall and Caroline to share as she took the recliner. The three of them half-watched some nonsense game show, laughing at the contestants’ lack of knowledge, while Caroline tried to get her best friend and boyfriend to interact with each other. A bottle of wine, opened and shared between the two women, certainly helped.
‘So, you met over shoes…?’ Jessica asked, after an hour or so of small talk.
Caroline and Randall looked at each other and giggled, then had a mini-argument over who should tell the story in full. If it had been anyone other than her best mate – and if they hadn’t looked so happy – Jessica would have felt sickened by their show of affection. There was nothing more annoying, she felt, than happy couples.
It was Caroline who spoke. ‘He did such a good job fixing them, and they
are
my favourite going-out heels.’
She smiled and squeezed her boyfriend’s hand.
‘Didn’t it just take a bit of glue?’ Jessica asked.
Randall laughed. ‘Well, yeah. You take the names, addresses and phone number if they’re cute, wait until they’re gone, get the old superglue out then charge ’em for the privilege.’
‘Wait, you only get the phone numbers if they’re “cute”?’ Caroline asked, with mock indignation.
‘I got yours, didn’t I?’
‘True… That’s all right, then.’
‘At least you’ve got a story for the grandkids,’ Jessica said. ‘Grandma fell over and broke her shoes, then Grandpa fixed them for her.’
‘Whoa,’ Caroline replied. ‘Who said anything about grandkids?’
‘Or kids!’ Randall joined in.
‘And as for getting married…’ Caroline added.
They were already finishing each other’s sentences and, despite the public display of sentiment being a bit too much, Jessica was pleased that her friend seemed happy.
Still, she would prefer a lot less of that happiness to be happening in front of her.
The conversation fizzled out as Caroline began yelping due to Randall tickling her. Jessica went back to half-watching the television. The game-show contestants were definitely not getting any cleverer.
‘Are you single?’ Randall asked Jessica during an advert break.
‘Yep.’
‘I’ve got some mates – I could hook you up with someone.’
‘I’m all right.’
‘It’d be fun, the four of us going out.’
Jessica didn’t feel comfortable with the conversation. ‘I’m okay. I’m busy at work.’
‘If you change your mind…’
‘I won’t – but you’ll be the first person I call.’
Jessica had enough on her plate without complicating things with dates or boyfriends.
A short while after, Randall stood and asked if he could get a glass of water.
‘Lightweight, are we?’ Jessica asked playfully.
‘I’ve got a bit of a headache coming on.’
‘There are painkillers in the drawer under the sink if you want some?’ Jessica said, but Caroline cut in.
‘Oh, no, he’s allergic to aspirin and things like that.’ She stood up, pushing her boyfriend back to the sofa. ‘I’ll go for the water, you explain.’
She left the room and then Randall shrugged. ‘Yeah, I’m allergic. You get used to it.’
‘Everyone’s got an allergy to something nowadays,’ said Jessica.
‘My throat swells up. Some people can’t breathe after a few minutes. With me, it takes an hour or so. I have to tell anyone I know well, in case anything happens and they need to call an ambulance.’
Jessica was glad she didn’t have such an allergy. ‘Must be hard getting over hangovers,’ she joked.
As Caroline returned with his water, Randall clambered up, saying he had to go to the toilet. He left the room and, as soon as they had heard the bathroom door close, Caroline wasted no time.
‘What do you reckon?’ she whispered.
‘Seems nice. Bit young for you.’
‘
Young
? I’m only thirty. He’s twenty-three!’
‘That’s toyboy territory. Mrs Robinson and all that.’
‘It is
not
.’
Both women were now laughing. ‘You should take him up on the offer of going out with his mate,’ Caroline said. ‘It would be fun with the four of us, and it’d take your mind off the job, too.’
‘I’m all right.’
‘Go on…’
A shake of the head. ‘Not now. I’m busy. Maybe in a few weeks.’
Caroline sank into the sofa. ‘I’m glad you like him,’ she said.
‘He seems like a good laugh.’
‘He is. He said he was quite shy as a kid but says I’ve brought him out of it. He’s quite sensitive when you get him on his own.’
Jessica winked. ‘They all are.’
The flushing of the toilet brought an end to their conversation but, before Randall could return, Jessica’s phone rang. It took her a few seconds to locate it. She had dumped her bag by her shoes next to the living room doorway and forgotten to take her phone out. She answered a moment before it would have rung off.
It was Cole.
‘DS Daniel? Another body’s been found.’