DS Jessica Daniel series: Locked In/Vigilante/The Woman in Black - Books 1-3 (15 page)

With evidence linking him to the stolen goods but not the scenes and the CPS nervous over whether they would get a conviction, they offered Lapham’s lawyer a concession on the morning of
the trial. If his client pleaded guilty to handling stolen goods, they would drop the burglary charges. It was exactly the kind of thing that infuriated officers who worked hard on cases, not to
mention victims who wanted to see justice. The one thing it did do was keep conviction rates up, meaning the CPS hit their own targets. Lapham, of course, couldn’t believe his luck. He
pleaded guilty and walked free that afternoon after the judge ruled the time he had spent in prison on remand was sufficient punishment.

It couldn’t be a coincidence that two of the houses that had been burgled had now seen murders happen inside them. Regardless of whether he had been found guilty, Lapham was the man they
needed to bring in. Jessica checked the address they had, printed off a copy of his mug shot, went to tell Aylesbury what was going on, and then set off to pick up their only suspect.

This time she would drive.

Uniformed officers had been sent out to check on the three other burglary victims from last year. There was no obvious motive for why a burglar would return to the scene of
their crimes and kill the person who lived there but it’s not as if they had anything else to go on. Seemingly it was the only link between the two murder victims too.

Cole had thought it best they didn’t take marked vehicles, given Lapham’s likely attitude towards the police. That meant Jessica taking her own car, along with Rowlands and a
uniformed officer. Cole was also driving his vehicle – a spotlessly clean silver 4x4 – along with two other regular constables. Six officers might have seemed a bit over the top but no
one knew how Lapham would react to the police turning up at his door, especially given his history with the force. A marked car would also be sent behind them so they could transport their suspect
back to the station when they had him. They would radio for the driver to move in when they were ready.

Despite Rowlands’s complaints about the sound of her exhaust tipping the suspect off while they were still a mile away, Jessica roared down Alan Turing Way towards Oldham Road on their way
out to Moston. It was late afternoon and the Friday traffic had reached its peak with everyone heading off towards the motorway and home. They had barely got out of the station when Jessica left
Cole far behind. He had given way at the junction next to the station’s exit as she put her foot down, probably cut up the guy behind – who beeped his horn – and then accelerated
away through a traffic light that was
definitely
still on amber. Well, probably.

If the roads had been clear, the journey would have taken around twenty minutes but Jessica did it in less than that regardless of the traffic. As she pulled up outside the grubby block of
housing-association flats Lapham was supposed to live in, Rowlands admitted he had been impressed, if mildly terrified, by her driving. The uniformed officer in the back didn’t say anything
but his pale face and relief to get the seatbelt off when she put the handbrake on told the story well enough.

‘Should we wait . . . ?’ Rowlands began to say but Jessica already had her door open and was making her way around the front of the car. Rowlands looked at the officer in the back
seat and shrugged as if to say, ‘I know’.

They found the flat number fairly quickly; it was on the ground floor and they established there was no back door. Jessica sent Rowlands towards the rear of the building anyway, just in case
Lapham tried to make a run for it out of the window.

After he gave her the message to say he was in position, Jessica, with the uniformed officer by her side, knocked on the door. The wood felt thin and the colour was hard to distinguish. It had
probably been blue at some point but it didn’t look like it had ever been cleaned. There was no answer but they could hear a television on inside. Jessica knocked again, louder the second
time. They heard a female voice from behind the door, then it was opened.

The woman standing in front of them had grimy unwashed brown hair tied back into a ponytail, secured with a ludicrously big flowery pink tie that certainly didn’t suit the rest of her
appearance. She was wearing a peach-coloured dressing gown with matching slippers, holding a smouldering cigarette in her left hand, with the right one poised on the door.

‘Who the fuck are you?’ the woman said to Jessica, looking her up and down, before noticing the officer in uniform. ‘Oh for—’ she continued.

Jessica talked over her. ‘Nice to meet you too.’ She pulled out her police identification. ‘Is Wayne in? We’d like to have a little chat with him.’

‘Don’t you pigs ever leave him alone? What do you want this time?’

‘Is he in? He does live here, doesn’t he?’

‘He’s not here.’

‘Are you sure? We could just come in to have a look around . . .’ Jessica motioned to put a hand on the front door but the woman pushed it back against her.

‘If you’ve not got a warrant, you ain’t coming through. He’s not here. Now piss off.’

The woman went to close the door but Jessica stopped her. ‘If he’s not here, then where is he?’

‘I don’t know. The pub? The snooker? I don’t know where he gets to.’

‘
Which
pub?’

‘Don’t take that fuckin’ tone with me,’ the woman started but Jessica was losing patience. She pushed the door fully open and squared up to the woman standing in the
doorway. Jessica was a couple of inches taller than her and the woman took a step back.

‘I’ll take whatever tone I want,’ Jessica said, sounding as fierce as she could. ‘Now tell me where he is or, warrant or no warrant, we’ll turn this shithole upside
down and see if there’s anything we can arrest
you
for.’

The woman was clearly fuming. Jessica knew that much of what she had just said was bluster and was gambling that whoever Lapham’s girlfriend was wouldn’t know that.

‘Fine,’ the woman spat. ‘He goes to that Prince of Wales pub just over on the main road.’ She motioned with her hands the direction she meant but Jessica knew where the
place was because they had driven past it on the way in. The woman took a step back towards Jessica in a clear effort to show she wasn’t intimidated. ‘Now get out of my house, you posh
bitch.’

Jessica did just that, thinking it was the first time she had ever been called ‘posh’. She had the information she needed and, as Cole hadn’t been present, her little bit of
grandstanding wouldn’t be an issue. The uniformed officer certainly hadn’t said anything and Jessica had even seen a half-smirk on his face as they walked back to the car, radioing
Rowlands on the way to say they had what they needed.

As they got back to her car together, Cole was parking his wagon behind them. If he was annoyed they had got there first and were on their way back from the flat empty-handed, he didn’t
mention it. ‘Not in?’ was all he did say after he opened his driver’s-side window with an electric hum.

‘Prince of Wales pub around the corner,’ Jessica said. ‘Let’s walk it, then we’ll get the marked car to park outside when we know he’s there.’

It must have seemed an odd sight as three people in suits and three in uniform walked the few hundred yards to the pub. Jessica showed all of them the mug shot she had printed so they knew who
to look for. The pub was on a main road with a concreted car park at the back. Jessica sent two of the three uniformed officers to wait there, leaving Rowlands and the other uniform at the front.
She and Cole entered through the heavy wooden door.

The pub looked as if it hadn’t been renovated in Jessica’s lifetime. Despite the smoking ban being in effect for years now, Jessica could still smell stale cigarettes and the ceiling
was covered in the brown and black stains that seemed so familiar before the law. On the walls were framed photos and prints of various local football teams. The carpet was thin and completely bare
in places with the stone floor visible. It looked as if it had a red flowery pattern at some stage. Jessica thought it was exactly the type of hole Harry would have loved.

The door opened up into what was essentially one large room with the bar to their right. There were a few railings to try to break the space up but you could more or less see everything from the
door. Jessica scanned the room and Cole did the same. There were only around half-a-dozen people in the whole place and she couldn’t see Lapham. Cole said ‘no’ quietly to indicate
he couldn’t either. He went to check the men’s toilets, which were next to the bar, as Jessica sat on a stool in front of the barman.

The server, who was big and bald, towered over her. He had already been eyeing the two of them suspiciously as they walked in and the fact a potential customer had gone to use the toilets
without buying a drink was no doubt causing him concern.

‘Can I get you . . . ?’ he started to say as Jessica took out her identification from her suit pocket. She also removed the printed photo of the suspect from the other pocket and
held both items up for the barman to look at.

‘Have you seen this man?’ she asked.

‘Who, Wayne? Yeah, he was in here up until a minute ago. He took some call on his phone then bolted out the back. He left half his pint.’ The server indicated a half-finished glass
of bitter on the table a few feet away from Jessica. ‘I didn’t clean it up ’cos I thought he might be coming back.’

Jessica slammed her hand on the bar, startling not only the barman but at least two of the other customers, who looked over towards her. ‘That cow tipped him off.’

Jessica could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times she had run since moving into plain clothes. As a kid she had been a pretty good athlete, especially when it
came to sprinting. Somewhere in a box at her parents’ house would be a certificate or two from her school days. As with most young teenagers, girls especially, the idea of getting sweaty and
dirty while at school became less and less appealing as she got older. As she sprinted back to Wayne Lapham’s house, Jessica thought that, if she hadn’t been so girly when she was
thirteen, this run might have been a tad easier.

Cole had come out of the toilets shaking his head as Jessica shouted to him about Lapham leaving. She dashed for the front door and was halfway down the road they had just walked along with
Cole, Rowlands and three uniformed officers trailing in her wake. To anyone driving past it must have seemed like a bizarre scene being filmed for a sitcom.

She bounded past Cole’s vehicle and her own car, hurdled a hedge and charged towards Lapham’s flat. Rowlands arrived out of breath just after Jessica had finished pounding on the
front door. She would have shouted out the woman’s name if she even knew it, continuing to bang on the door as two of the other officers, Cole, and finally the other officer arrived. Jessica
was out of breath herself but adrenaline was flooding through her and the only emotion she had was blind fury.

‘She tipped him off,’ Jessica said to Cole, and then repeated herself in case anyone was in any doubt as to why she was acting so erratically.

With no answer at the door but no warrant either, she turned to Cole. ‘Can we break it down?’

Cole ummed, so Jessica turned to the biggest officer in their party. He was the only one in uniform who didn’t look as if he was going to keel over after the run. ‘Break it
down.’

The officer looked to Cole for approval, so she shouted the second time. ‘Just
break it down
.’

The uniformed constable was comfortably over six feet tall and looked as if he could smash through doors like this for fun. He ushered them to one side, took a step back and readied himself to
put the full force of his boot through the door when it opened suddenly.

In the doorway stood the woman from before but this time she was fully dressed. The slippers and dressing gown were gone and she was wearing dark blue tracksuit bottoms and some kind of hooded
top with the over-the-top hair tie. The woman looked at the officer who had his foot half-raised and then at Jessica. ‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing?’

Jessica was not in a mood to be mucked about. ‘Where is he?’

The woman gave a small grin, her yellowing teeth clearly visible as she goaded the officers. ‘Who?’

Jessica ignored the taunt and barged past the woman, who let out a ‘hey’ as she was sidelined. She opened the first door on her right, which was the bathroom. The whole house was
full of varying degrees of junk. Broken computer keyboards and other electrical items that didn’t look as if they worked littered the hallway as Jessica went into the kitchen directly
opposite the front door. The draining board was piled high with dirty plates and pans and there was more random scrap on the floor. She didn’t even know if the other officers had followed her
in but Jessica moved into the living room, still hearing the protests of the woman going on behind her.

There was no sign of Lapham.

Jessica made her way back through the living room and kitchen into the hall where she noticed a door she had missed the first time around. In her haste to barge past the woman, she had missed an
opening opposite the bathroom.

The woman was arguing with Cole and Jessica could hear the words ‘my rights’ being shouted. She ignored the noise and went through the door that led into the bedroom. The bed
hadn’t been made and an enormous flatscreen television hung on the wall facing it. A bright purple duvet cover was on the floor and nothing could be seen under the bed. Jessica got down on
her knees and hurled the covers aside, fully expecting to see Wayne Lapham underneath.

He wasn’t there.

She moved to the built-in wardrobe and pushed the doors aside, shoving the clothes on the rail out of the way. He wasn’t there either. Jessica swore to herself and then made her way out to
the front door where the woman was screaming at the officers still there.

The woman jabbed her finger into Jessica’s chest as she pushed past her.

‘I’m going to have you. You can’t do that. I know my rights,’ the woman said.