Woman in Black (4 page)

The chief inspector leant forward in his chair. ‘Okay. Jason, can you go and deal with Mr Johnson? Take Louise with you and it will at least look like we’ve got two senior people working on things. Jessica, pick a constable or two and do what you have to. Take a sample from the woman downstairs and get it off to the labs before you do anything. Regardless of whatever’s in the girlfriend’s past, it’s pretty much irrelevant if the hand doesn’t belong to the woman’s son. After you’ve got that, go and bring the girl in. It can’t do any harm to talk to her, especially as we’ve got a missing person anyway.’

Jessica and Reynolds nodded in agreement before leaving. ‘I’m not sure who’s got the shortest straw here,’ the inspector said as they walked down the stairs together.

‘Definitely you,’ Jessica replied. ‘While all the TV cameras are focused on what you’re up to I can just go about my business.’

They separated at the bottom and Jessica went to sort out the saliva sample from Mrs Barnes. After the woman’s swab had been passed on to the labs it was going to take until the morning at least before they knew whether the hand belonged to her son. Jessica told the woman one of the other officers would take a statement because they were going to pick up her son’s girlfriend. Usually they would have spoken to the mother properly beforehand but if January did turn out to be involved in some way, the news coverage could have spooked her and the last thing anyone wanted was for her to disappear. Jessica already had the basic facts as well as January’s criminal record, which at least gave them a reason to question her.

Mrs Barnes seemed delighted they were going to pick up her son’s girlfriend and Jessica had to make clear they weren’t arresting January, merely bringing her in so they could ask her questions about Lewis’ disappearance. She checked the address they had was still valid and then walked through to the main floor. The person she was looking for was at a desk by himself so she walked around out of his eye line, creeping behind before cuffing him across the rear of his head with the back of her hand.

‘Oi!’ he yelled.

‘All right, Dave. Fancy a road trip?’

Detective Constable David Rowlands spun in his chair, holding the back of his head. He had turned thirty just over six months ago and was a little delicate over it – especially as the string of girlfriends he’d had over the past few years had started to slow down. He liked to maintain an air of being young, free and single but Jessica wasn’t sure the last two were by choice any longer. She was an only child and considered Rowlands her best friend in the force, even if he was more of an annoying brother-type than anything else. They had been good mates before but, if anything, had become even more so since the death of their colleague and friend Carrie Jones the previous year. Both of them had been close to her and, in some ways, hadn’t got over her death. Their way of coping was by constantly winding each other up. Regardless of that, Rowlands was one of the few colleagues Jessica was happy to spend time with away from the station.

‘What did you do that for?’ Rowlands said. At first he’d had an angry scowl on his face but, once he saw who it was that had hit him, it turned into an aggrieved grin.

‘I was just flattening down a sticky-out bit of hair for you.’

‘Is this because I signed you up for careers day duty?’

‘You did what?’

Rowlands seemed surprised, then his smile widened. ‘Oh, you hadn’t noticed?’

‘Did you really sign me up?’

‘Erm, maybe. You know the DCI would have sent you anyway. This way you come off looking positive about things. You should thank me.’

‘You do know you’ll never beat me in this escalating war. I outrank you so you sign me up for careers day, I get you to work your way through that giant pile of freedom of information requests no one else wants to do.’

‘Oh come on. That’s playing dirty. What did you want me for anyway?’

Jessica explained they were going to collect January Forrester for questioning but they weren’t going to arrest her. She chose two uniformed officers to go with them just in case and the four of them set off in two marked cars.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

January lived in a flat above a row of shops in the Abbey Hey area. There were far worse districts in Manchester but, as they arrived, Jessica could see a grubby rank of stores with a dirty-looking and smelly pizza shop, a hairdressers and a convenience store. Each shop was separated by a single door leading to three upstairs flats. Frome what they could see, there was no back entrance to the properties, only loading areas for the shops.

Jessica rang the doorbell as Rowlands and the two other officers stood behind her. They had parked the cars in the alley which led to the delivery yard in order to not be too obvious.

There was no answer so Jessica rang and knocked again.

‘Did Lewis’ mother tell you if January worked?’ Rowlands asked.

‘She said she’d never known her have a job and that she was always in.’

‘It doesn’t bode well if she’s gone missing, especially with everything that’s been on the news.’

‘She could have just popped out to the shops.’

Jessica turned, leaning against the store’s window next to the front door. The other three officers were looking at her but Jessica saw a swish of long black hair out of the corner of her eye behind them. Someone had been walking towards where they were but quickly turned around. The person was moving quickly but not running. It was clearly a woman and, despite the ongoing June heat, she was wearing knee-length black leather boots with a short black dress. The woman reached the corner where the shops met the first house of a row and her head disappeared behind a hedge.

Jessica started walking quickly in the direction the woman had headed. ‘I think she was just here,’ she said as the three detectives followed her.

They got to the corner and could see the woman walking quickly away from them. As she moved, the girl turned and noticed the police officers, breaking into a run.

Jessica started sprinting too. It was a warm day and she didn’t think her dark grey work suit was really the best attire to be running in. The other officers followed, one of the uniformed constables bolting past her in pursuit, weaving in and out of the other people on the pavement. Jessica was trying to watch where she was going while also keeping an eye on the woman and officer ahead.

The figure in front dashed across a patch of grass but Jessica could see the constable was right behind her. She gave another half-look backwards and, when she saw how close the man in uniform was, stopped running, turning around and holding her hands to the side.

Jessica slowed as she neared them.

‘Are you January Forrester?’ she asked as she came to a stop, trying not to sound too exhausted.

‘Yeah, what’s it to you?’ January didn’t seem out of breath but the officer who had caught had barely broken sweat. Jessica thought she would remember his face if she ever needed to take another team out with her.

The other uniformed officer had kept pace with her while Rowlands finally arrived at the scene and instantly bent over with his hands on his knees, sweat drenching his forehead. Jessica tried not to smile. She wanted to give him a ‘where were you?’ look but he was staring at the ground trying to catch his breath.

Jessica took out her identification and introduced herself. ‘Why did you run, January?’

‘No reason, I run a lot. I didn’t know you were chasing me.’ She pointed at the officer who had caught her. ‘As soon as I saw this guy, I stopped.’

‘Do you always go out for a run in knee boots and a dress?’

The young woman sounded defiant. ‘Sometimes. Why, is that a crime?’

‘No but we’re here to talk about your missing boyfriend.’

‘Did you find Lewis?’ January’s voice had raised an octave. She could have been putting it on but it did sound as if there was hope in the tone.

‘Not exactly, no,’ Jessica said.

January rolled her eyes. ‘Oh, right. His cow of a mum has been to see you, hasn’t she? What is it this time?’

Jessica explained that they didn’t want to arrest her but would really like it if she came with them to the station. ‘We want to ask you about your boyfriend’s disappearance, that’s all.’

January pointed out that she’d already given a statement but, after some swearing, she finally agreed to go. Jessica didn’t want to arrest her but they were allowed to keep people without charge for up to twenty-four hours. If she caused them any more hassle in the interview room, given the fact she had run as well, Jessica had half a mind to see if the custody sergeant would keep her in the cells in the hope the forensic results from the hand would be back before the time was up.

Jessica put January in the car with the two uniformed officers and let Rowlands drive her back to the station in the other vehicle.

‘I didn’t realise you were so unfit,’ she said as the man drove.

‘You guys got a bit of a head-start on me, that’s all.’

‘Rubbish. You were stood next to us. Are you sure it’s not your age?’

‘You’re older than me.’

‘Yeah and look who got to January the quickest. I’d already dialled nine and nine on my phone. I was waiting for you to drop to the floor before pressing the final nine and calling an ambulance.’

‘It was all an act to get her off her guard. If she’d started to run again I’d have been right on her.’

‘If she’d started to run again I don’t think you’d have even noticed, considering you were bent over double trying not to throw up,’ Jessica laughed.

‘You’re obviously not familiar with how we trained athletes work.’

‘In perpetual agony by the looks of it.’

The afternoon rush-hour traffic was beginning to build up as the two cars pulled into the station. The pair of uniformed officers took January through the front entrance to be processed while the two detectives went to move past them to set up the interview room. As they were walking, the desk sergeant held out a hand to catch Jessica’s attention. He was already dealing with a member of the public over the counter, so she waited as Rowlands carried on through.

Once the sergeant had finished speaking, he turned back to Jessica and reached under the desk.

‘This arrived in the afternoon post van. Dunno who should open it really. I didn’t want to send it upstairs to the DCI but the inspector is out and he’s taken the new girl with him.’

He took out a thick padded brown envelope and passed it to Jessica. The station’s address had been printed out and taped  to the front while it was simply addressed ‘Senior Detective’. Jessica turned the parcel over to see if there was any return address but there was nothing. It felt fairly light in her hand and she couldn’t make out the shape of anything bulky through the packaging.

‘Why didn’t you put it through to the mail room?’ Jessica asked.

‘It only came half an hour ago or so, I haven’t had time. You should be all right to open it, shouldn’t you?’

‘I guess…’

Jessica tore along the strip at the top, placing the envelope on the edge of the counter as she opened the flap. She couldn’t see what was inside so turned the package upside down, emptying it onto the reception desk until an object dropped out and landed on the table top. Jessica looked at it and then glanced up to meet the desk sergeant’s horrified eyes.

The neatly severed finger rolled along the edge of the desk and fell to the floor with a soft plop.

FOUR

It seemed like an age before anyone moved. Jessica eventually put the envelope down on the counter then told one of the uniformed officers to get some evidence bags. The desk sergeant stood next to her, shielding the finger from January’s view. The girl was still on the other side of reception and had seemingly not noticed anything untoward.

Jessica tried to keep cool. The finger itself was fairly shocking and she felt a little sick looking at it but she couldn’t react with other people present. Jessica knew she had made a mistake; her fingerprints would be all over the envelope, which was bad enough, let alone the finger being allowed to fall to the floor. Jessica crouched to look at the object, which had already attracted a few bits of grit and dust from the ground. It was hard to tell for sure without touching it but it looked as if it had been frozen, starting to thaw as it had gone through the mail. There were drips of a clear liquid she assumed was water that had a faint trace of blood in it.

She stood back up and looked at the envelope. Using the end part of her sleeve to prevent getting any further fingerprints on it, she turned the packet over so she could see the front. The postmark was smudged and it was stamped, not franked, meaning there was a good chance it had been put into a post box, as opposed to being sent via a post office. The date was just about visible through the smeared ink and Jessica noticed it was yesterday’s. That meant it had been collected the previous day, so it could have been sent anytime between the night before that and roughly late-afternoon yesterday; a period of twenty hours or so. In other words it was posted within a few hours of the rest of the hand being left and found.

The constable arrived back with the evidence bags and Jessica sealed everything up. January had begun to get annoyed behind the counter at having to wait but Jessica knew she couldn’t have seen the finger from the angle she was at and if she had noticed the envelope, she hadn’t reacted.

Discreetly everything was taken away and Jessica went up the stairs to see Cole while January was processed. She told him about what had happened and admitted she had made a big error in picking up the envelope. He wasn’t too impressed at the finger falling into the dirt but was as calm as he usually seemed to be. He made the point that whoever had sent it was unlikely to have left any obvious clues, so a few careless fingerprints probably wouldn’t cause too much harm, except for making more work for the forensics team.

‘Is there any word from the labs about whether the hand belongs to Lewis Barnes?’ Jessica asked.

Cole shook his head. ‘They only got the sample from his mother an hour or so ago. I spoke to someone over there who said the result will be in by the morning.’