Authors: Kerry Wilkinson
A
s Jessica looked
through the paper the next morning, it was clear the coverage could have been worse. Admittedly not
that
much worse, but definitely worse.
The other papers and TV broadcasts had stuck to the information given out by the media department. However, she’d known the
Herald
was going to print the information Garry Ashford had. The phrase ‘serial killer’ wasn’t present at all in that morning’s front-page story. The problem was the headline: HOUDINI STRANGLER in giant capital letters. If that didn’t get members of the public panicking, then the article below, explaining how ‘Houdini’ was breaking into people’s locked houses, murdering apparent strangers and getting back out again undetected, certainly would.
The officer manning the front desk that morning told Jessica they’d already had two dozen phone calls from worried members of the public. He didn’t even need to say where her first stop of the morning would be. She headed up the stairs to Aylesbury’s office. As she walked past the window, she could see DI Cole already there, with DS Reynolds and a man and woman she didn’t recognise, who were dressed in suits. She could make a good guess at who they were.
Any police officer was fully aware there would be many members of the public who weren’t their greatest fans. In uniform, if all a constable got was the ‘oink’ noises and the odd swear word, then he or she had got off lightly. Over the course of a career, most officers would be spat at or assaulted in some way or another. Being disliked by certain sections of the public was a given.
But if a person wanted to be
really
hated then he or she joined the Internal Investigations department.
Not only were these officers disliked by the public for being police, they were also hated by other officers for investigating their own.
Each police force in the country had a set number of officers who had moved from regular duty into the Internal division. The reason for this, of course, was to work against corrupt officers. Everyone had heard the stories of the ‘old days’, where members of the force would be paid by various criminals to turn a blind eye to the very acts they were supposed to be preventing. Jessica was sure some of those tales were exaggerated or apocryphal. She had never come across any type of double-dealing in her time. Some officers even got a bit edgy if they were offered a free cup of coffee. Not many, mind.
Almost everyone in the force would be against that type of thing now, but changing sides and investigating your own was not a popular way of showing it. In the same way a grass would be ostracised in the criminal world, Internal Investigators were shunned by a lot of officers.
Leaking information to the media was not as grave as taking money to turn a blind eye but, when it affected investigations, it had to be treated seriously. If the leaked information caused a public panic, that only made things worse.
Jessica entered Aylesbury’s already full office. The room wasn’t massive, containing a large desk that had a computer and some photographs on top. On the walls were various commendation certificates and the like. The DCI was sitting behind the desk, with Cole and the two strangers on the other side. Reynolds was standing and, as there were no seats left, Jessica waited near the door.
The two officers she didn’t know looked up at her, then back down before she could make eye contact. They were fairly young: the male maybe early forties; the female around the same age, with long brown hair tied back into a ponytail.
Aylesbury greeted her presence with a, ‘Sergeant Daniel.’ He paused to let her settle and then continued, acknowledging the two people sitting next to his desk.
‘As some of you already know, these are 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…’
He held up a copy of that morning’s
Herald
to emphasise his point. He was speaking calmly, but from the way his eyes were twitching, 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 the people brought in to investigate his officers. She had never quite seen eye to eye with the DCI but, when it came to fellow colleagues, most officers would back them over the Internal team.
‘We all know the value of using the media,’ Aylesbury said, ‘but whoever 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 them. 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 more or less everyone in the station, but you three will be spoken to first. At least it will allow you to get on with the rest of your jobs afterwards. You know how these things work.’
No one said anything, not that there was much they could add. Jessica didn’t know which was Finch and which McNiven but, as the DCI finished speaking, the female 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.
Cole and Reynolds filed out of the room back towards the stairs, while Jessica headed along the hallway with the two other officers. The male officer led the way, the female walking in between him and Jessica. The final room at the back of the building was an area that Jessica had never been to before. As far as she’d known, there were only storage rooms back there. The male turned the lights on and Jessica could see it
was
largely storage. 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. She noticed a dusty, stale smell as the male officer offered her the seat across from them.
The woman started talking first. ‘I’m Sergeant McNiven, this is Inspector Finch. We’re from the GMP’s Internal division. Can I start by asking if you know why you’re here today?’
To be bollocked by you lot
, was what Jessica 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 of stressing the word ‘together’.
Officer McNiven smiled. ‘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
had phoned
her
; once the day after to ‘clarify’ the article she had seen on the
Herald
’s website – she left out that this had been largely an exercise in creative name-calling; and then a third time when he had called her after the second body had been discovered. She explained that they’d also had a very brief talk in a café the previous day.
‘How did he get your number?’ McNiven asked.
‘I don’t know. He said I was in one of their contacts books, but I doubt that.’
‘Why did you call him?’
‘I wanted to ask who his source was.’ A half-truth.
‘Why did you meet him yesterday?’
‘I wanted to explain why causing a panic was not a good idea. I told Chief Inspector 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?’
That was about as direct as it got. Jessica took a moment to compose her reply. ‘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 about which we have spoken?’
‘No.’
‘Why do you think it was you he contacted?’
Jessica pressed back in her chair, held her palms up. ‘I don’t know.’
They went around in circles for another five minutes with the two officers asking essentially the same questions in a slightly different way. Jessica didn’t know anything further, but felt she wasn’t believed. They were at a stalemate when Officer McNiven thanked her for her time and said she could leave. They asked if she could send DI Cole up to meet them.
Jessica stomped her way back past Aylesbury’s empty office and down the stairs. She found 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 Houdini headline was about. Considering the conversations she’d had, though – 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’d written it, anyway. Maybe that was true, maybe not.
She would have to wait until Cole came back down before they could go through the morning briefing. A few more test results had come back, but nothing very helpful. The previous day’s phone tips had been chased up and ruled out. She spoke to two of the constables 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.
Jessica went to the canteen for breakfast. Randall had stayed over for the first time the night before and she’d felt slightly awkward after waking up. She’d left the flat early, to avoid seeing either him or Caroline.
The station’s canteen was on the ground floor, along the hall from her office. At best, the food could be described as ‘poor’. It certainly wouldn’t be racking up positive TripAdvisor reviews. Jessica’s office mate, DS Reynolds, refused to eat there, and claimed he had once needed three days off after eating some canteen stew.
‘The tea’s bad enough here,’ he’d advised her. ‘Don’t risk the food too.’
Jessica wasn’t as passionate about not eating there as Reynolds, but she did try to avoid it where she could. Today, she risked beans on toast, thinking no decent cook could make a mess of that.
As it was, it wasn’t too bad. She ate it sitting on one of the plastic canteen chairs, fiddling around with her phone. One of the constables assigned to try to link the two victims approached her table. DC Carrie Jones had a very 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, Rowlands for his hair and girl-chasing – Carrie got it for her accent.
‘I’ve got some news,’ she said.
Jessica couldn’t help but smile. ‘
Good
news?’
‘Good news and bad news.’
‘What’s the bad news?’
‘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. She rubbed her forehead and sighed. ‘You could have sugar-coated that a bit.’
‘Do you want the good news?’
‘Go on.’
‘The hospital has phoned to say you can visit Sandra Prince.’
J
essica returned
to her office to make a few notes before heading off to the hospital. With her promotion, Jessica had been given one of the smaller offices on the ground floor. She shared it with another detective sergeant, Jason Reynolds, who was an imposing black officer a few years older than her. He was funny and helpful but currently heavily involved in a complex fraud case. If it wasn’t for that, there was a very good chance the murder case would have been given to him instead of her.
DS Reynolds was sitting at his own desk, opposite hers. Their office was occupied by two very different people. On Reynolds’ side, closest to the door, everything was in meticulous piles or filed away. On Jessica’s half, papers, notes and files were carefully ordered on the floor, around the bin, under her seat and spilling over from her desk.
Shortly after Jessica had been moved into the same space as him, Reynolds had asked why she was so messy.
‘To the untrained eye this may look like a disordered shambles,’ Jessica had told him, ‘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 Reynolds had been ranked above Jessica before she was promoted, there had never been any issues between the two of them after she was elevated. Their work rarely overlapped, and they shared a fun relationship.
As she checked through the papers on her desk now for the information they had on Sandra Prince, DI Cole knocked and entered.
‘You’re up,’ he told Reynolds.
‘What was it like?’ Reynolds asked.
‘Fine. They didn’t have much to ask me. I’m pretty sure they think our mole is Jessica.’ He nodded at her and gave her a wink as if to say he believed she was.
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, but figured it was best to give him the option. That was why it was something of a surprise when he replied that he’d drive.
T
he journey
to the hospital was something of a nuisance. Rush hour had come and gone, but it was Friday and the traffic patterns always seemed to be inconsistent at the end of the week. It wasn’t too sunny in Manchester, grey clouds washing over the city as winter and spring fought over what the temperature should be. Cole had taken them in a marked car. 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 probably have given the driver the inconvenience of having to report to their local police station with all the documents – but Cole carried on as if nothing had happened, without even beeping the car’s horn. His calmness was very disconcerting.
Usually, interviews were carried out at the police station, so that anything that was said would be recorded. But Sandra Prince was not really a suspect and, given her doctor’s advice, it had been felt the interview could be done at the hospital. 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 and then left the house, but it seemed unlikely.
At the hospital, their presence was queried by the receptionist. She was young and continued hammering away at her computer’s keyboard as she said, ‘I’ve not got a record of you coming.’
The two officers showed their identification cards and Jessica gave her best, ‘pull your finger out, I’m a police officer’ face. It didn’t get them anywhere
The receptionist eventually picked up the phone and a nurse came to escort them. Sandra Prince had her own room on a third-floor ward, but they weren’t allowed to see her straight away.
‘Mrs Prince’s doctor wants to speak to you before you can speak to the patient,’ the nurse said, leaving them in a small cupboard posing as an office along the hallway from the ward.
Jessica didn’t like hospitals. She’d not had any particular traumatic experiences, but had been on a few call-outs while in uniform. She had once come to see a victim of domestic violence in this exact hospital. A young girl had had her face smashed in by a jealous ex-boyfriend. Jessica had had to take the photos for evidence, and every time she came here, she remembered the girl’s battered, bruised and swollen face – and the fact that, in the end, the girl had refused to testify in court.
When Sandra Prince’s doctor arrived, he told them that she had gone into shock after finding out about her husband, but that she had been fully coherent since the previous evening. He 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 before he let them see her.
Sandra’s hospital room wasn’t massive, but it was certainly bigger than most people’s bedrooms. It was spotlessly clean, with a few pieces of medical equipment surrounding two single beds facing the door. One of the beds was empty, while a woman was sitting up in the other. Jonathan Prince was in a chair next to his mother’s bed. Sandra Prince had greying curly hair that was cropped short. She wore glasses, and her skin was almost as pale as the white bed sheets, the tone a stark contrast to the wrinkles in her face. Aside from her colour, there wasn’t anything else noticeably wrong with her. She seemed relatively perky when the doctor asked how she was and checked her blood pressure. He then said he would leave them alone, but told his patient she could ring the emergency alarm next to her bed at any time.
Jessica arranged two more seats next to the bed for herself and Cole, while he introduced himself and Jessica and explained that, although they were not in the station, he still had to caution her for legal reasons. He told her that she was entitled to have a legal advisor present and that there would be a free one available at the station if that was what she wanted.
Mrs Prince pulled herself up into more of a seated position. She looked at Jonathan, then back at them and said, ‘It’s okay. I want to find out who did this.’
Jessica said they were going to have to ask her son to leave the room. Jonathan seemed reluctant to exit, but she reassured him that it would be fine. He closed the door behind him.
‘Mrs Prince,’ said Jessica, gently. ‘Can you tell us what happened on the day of your husband’s death?’
The woman cleared her throat. ‘I always get up for Jonathan. He has to go to work early and even though he’s grown up, I think it’s nice for him to see someone in the morning. He left and then I had some toast, watched a bit of TV and went to work myself.’
‘Did you see your husband that morning at all?’
‘I gave him a kiss goodbye on my way out. I always do that. He was still in bed and half asleep. He said goodbye back.’
‘What time did you leave?’
‘Always eight twenty-five exactly.’
‘Did you have any contact with your husband that day? Call him? Text him?’
Sandra Prince took off her glasses and gave a small laugh. ‘Martin couldn’t text. He had a mobile but he didn’t know how to use it. He took photos of the floor all the time. He could manage calls, but not texts. I didn’t call him.’
There were tears in Sandra’s eyes as she spoke. Jessica gave her a few moments, until she seemed fully composed, then continued: ‘Do you remember if you locked the door when you left that morning?’
‘I always locked it if Martin wasn’t up. If he was out of bed, I wouldn’t bother.’
Jessica glanced to Cole, who gave her a half-nod. ‘Okay, Mrs Prince,’ Jessica said. ‘This might sound like a stupid question, but do you know of any other way into your house other than by the doors or windows?’
‘How do you mean?’ Sandra asked. She paused and added, ‘We have a cat-flap at the back, but it’s always locked shut. We used to have a cat, but she was run over years ago and we didn’t want to replace her. Since then, we’ve kept it locked.’
‘Nothing other than that?’
‘No.’
‘Do you know of anyone who might want to cause your husband or your family any harm?’
Sandra smiled a little. ‘Martin didn’t really have that much contact with other people. Since he lost his job, he stayed in a lot. I can’t think of anyone. We kept ourselves to ourselves.’
‘Has your husband’s behaviour been any different recently?’
Mrs Prince shook her head. ‘He didn’t go out too often after he was made redundant. Since the burglary, he went out even less. He didn’t want to leave the house empty.’
Cole and Jessica shared a glance. ‘Since the what?’
‘The burglary. We were burgled this time last year. Someone broke in while we were at a friend’s house. They didn’t take much, but it was the thought of someone going through our things. Martin wanted to move, but we didn’t have the money. He hated leaving the place empty after that.’
‘Did the police find who did it?’
‘We thought so, but the guy was let out.’
Jessica stood and thanked Sandra Prince for her time. She left the room with Cole, thanking Jonathan for his patience.
They didn’t say a word until they were outside the main hospital building.
‘How did we miss this?’ Cole said, to no one in particular – Jessica was already ahead of him. She had taken out her mobile phone and dialled Rowlands. He answered with a standard put-down, but she cut across him.
‘Are you near a computer?’
‘Yes, why?’
‘Do you have the Christensens’ address?’
‘Somewhere…’
Jessica and Cole were walking towards the car park as she heard Rowlands scrabbling around on the other end. ‘Hurry up,’ she muttered, not knowing if he still had the phone at his ear.
After a second or two, which seemed a lot longer, he spoke again. ‘I have it here.’
‘Find out if their house was ever burgled.’
‘Okay, hang on.’ Jessica could hear him tapping away in the background. The police’s system was notoriously slow. She was now back at the car but standing next to it, leaning on the roof above the passenger door. Cole was opposite her.
‘Right, I’ve got it,’ Rowlands said. ‘Hang on…’ She could hear him typing on the keyboard. ‘Yep, it was burgled around a year ago.’