Locked In (34 page)

‘No worries, it’s fine. It’s nice to get away from the house to be honest. We weren’t allowed back for a couple of days and now it doesn’t really feel right.’

Jessica didn’t even know how to begin to respond to that. It was a horrendous thought to have to return to live in a house where your wife was murdered. He was clearly trying to sound positive but it was obvious he was struggling to cope. She didn’t think going straight in to ask the one question she wanted to would be that tactful. ‘How are you doing?’ she asked.

She knew the answer wouldn’t be terrific but she didn’t want to ask directly about his stepson Scott. Magistrates had refused initial bail, fearing he and the other two who admitted to assaulting Nigel Collins could run. They had all confessed to the crime and it was just a matter of time until it came to court.

‘I don’t really know to be honest. It’s Steven I feel sorry for the most. He’s had to go back to do his final exams with all this hanging over him. With all the funeral arrangements and everything I’ve not really stopped for the past few days. I even went to see Scott yesterday…’

Jessica must have looked surprised because he felt the need to justify what he had said. ‘He’s not a bad kid. He had a bad time when his dad and Mary split up. Don’t get me wrong, I know and he knows that what he did was wrong but…’

He didn’t finish the sentence but Jessica knew what he was alluding to. Most people did something stupid when they were younger. That wasn’t to justify what Scott had done in any way at all but one stupid immature decision when he was barely a teenager had now cost him any semblance of an adult life. She couldn’t help but be impressed by his stepfather. Paul Keegan had every right to hate a son that wasn’t his own flesh and blood but had indirectly caused the death of his wife. But he didn’t, it seemed he had already forgiven him. Jessica was stunned by the man’s compassion. ‘Do you want another?’ she asked, nodding towards his now-empty cup on the table.

‘Yeah, okay.’

‘Anything to eat?’ Paul Keegan shook his head.

Jessica thought he looked as if he could do with a meal but knew she couldn’t force him. She went to the counter and ordered a new mug of tea then returned to the table. When Jessica sat down, he asked her why her team had been removed from the case. She gave the best answer she could, trying to sound professional and remarking that the Serious Crime Division had more training in this type of area now it had essentially become a search for one man. She thought it sounded good, even if she didn’t believe it herself.

‘I just wanted to check one thing with you, if that’s okay?’ Jessica said.

‘Yeah, no worries.’

‘Do you remember when you told me you’d had a few problems with kids recently, what kind of problems did you mean?’

‘Oh, y’know, the usual. Kids out and about at night, just noise and that. Someone ended up putting super glue in our locks. Had to climb out the window, then get someone to change them and get a bunch of new keys cut.’

Jessica almost struggled to speak. How had she not asked this question before? She went to speak but stumbled over her words. It almost seemed as if time had slowed down before she finally managed to reply. ‘How long ago?’

The penny had clearly dropped for Paul Keegan too. ‘Why, do you think…? Umm, a few months, five or six.’

‘Do you know who fixed the locks?’

‘No, I was at work while Mary was off but um…’ he stopped speaking and was clearly mulling something over. ‘Yeah, yeah, I remember. Here’s the thing; we got this flyer through the door literally the day before it happened. It was some kind of special offer thing. Mary always kept the mail and everything so neatly on the table next to the door. It just seemed like a piece of good fortune at the time.’

Jessica’s mind was racing and she prayed the answer to her next question would be positive. ‘Did you keep the flyer?’

‘Oh, er, I don’t know. Mary usually kept things like that just in case. I don’t know if it was one of those things you had to hand in or not.’

‘Can we go look?’

‘Yeah, of course.’

Paul Keegan quickly stood up, clearly understanding what could be happening. He marched towards the door, with Jessica just behind. His house was only a few minutes’ walk away and Jessica followed him along a cut-through towards the estate. Neither of them said a word. Jessica could feel the nerves in her stomach. Suddenly things seemed to be making sense, at least for the final two victims. Nigel Collins had tracked down Claire Hogan and perhaps befriended her as a client. Then he had sabotaged the lock on her front door by squirting glue into it and just happened to be there to fix it for her. It would have been so easy to keep a copy of the key for himself. He could have either let himself in, murdered her, then left, locking up on the way out. Or he could have gone to her as a client, killed her and locked the door behind him.

Even the “why” seemed clear. It was as Hugo had told her – misdirection. While the police were busy trying to find out how the crimes had taken place, they weren’t focusing on what linked the bodies. He had even used the trouble with local kids as another way of directing attention away from himself but this time for the victims. The victims had blamed local children for the trouble, not bothering to trust the police to do anything.

Something similar would have happened with Mary Keegan, except Collins had been even cleverer, all-but ensuring the Keegans would come to him to get their door fixed. He cunningly posted a flyer through their door offering a cheap deal then damaged their locks not long after. It wasn’t entirely foolproof but everyone liked a good bargain.

It would be a pretty good bet the Christensens and Princes had to have had their locks changed after being robbed too. Most people obviously wanted it doing for their own piece of mind but it was usually an insurance requirement after a burglary anyway. How Collins had managed to make sure he had a key for those properties wasn’t exactly clear to her at that moment and there were still gaps, such as how he knew where everyone lived – but she knew she had figured out a large part of everything.

Now she just had to figure out the final but largest part of the puzzle – where was Nigel Collins?

Paul Keegan unlocked the same front door Jessica herself had done so not that long ago when she had discovered Mary’s body and they both went in. She remembered the tidy stack of post on the table next to the front door and it looked as if it had been added to. She was led into the kitchen and Paul opened a drawer to the left of the sink. ‘We keep things like menus and vouchers and so on in here. If it’s not here, it won’t be anywhere.’

He pulled a big pile of glossy pieces of paper and put them all on the kitchen table. Jessica sat on one side of the table while he was seated opposite her. They each started looking through a very large heap. Jessica worked quickly. She could see from some of the vouchers that the expiry date was years old. The whole house was spotless but this seemed to be something of a forbidden drawer, where all sorts of miscellaneous junk was thrown just in case. Her dad kept a similar hoard at home.

She didn’t want to seem disrespectful and copied Paul by putting the pamphlets that weren’t useful in a separate pile. Her stack was twice the size of Mary’s husband, who was taking time to read each piece of paper, while she was far more ruthless. There were lots of menus, plus vouchers for money off fried chicken and pizza, various flyers for local supermarkets or the off-licence on the main road. Between them the initial selection was down to around a quarter of its original size.

Jessica went to put one more sheet on her discard pile and then she saw it. She had been so close to tossing it away but stopped in mid-action and brought the flyer back towards her so she could read it. She scanned the words, her eyes flicking from side to side and reading the contents twice over.

She knew where to find Nigel Collins.

Paul Keegan had seen her take the flyer of course. He had stopped sorting himself and looked up at her. ‘Have you found it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Can I see it?’

‘I’m not sure that’s a good idea.’ Jessica didn’t think he was the type to go storming off looking for revenge but she didn’t want to risk giving it back to him just in case. It looked as if he understood anyway.

He nodded gently and simply made one request. ‘Just make sure you get him,’ he said sadly.

Jessica had followed the details on the flyer to the address it had given. Things sort of made sense to her, though there were still gaps. The location listed would have almost certainly been the place closest to all four homes if they wanted to get keys cut. As well as being the nearest place to their houses, there was a good chance it would be the cheapest too. All of the victims were local and would have been well aware of those facts.

It was quite possible the person that ran the place would have had the skills to replace a lock for Claire Hogan too but, even if he didn’t himself, there was still a very reasonable connection. Jessica didn’t know if she would ever truly know the whole story – unless Nigel Collins was willing to talk after he had been caught. There was perhaps still some coincidence in there but maybe she just didn’t know the whole story yet.

The biggest problem she had at that moment was that she simply couldn’t find the place listed. She knew she was roughly in the right area but found herself walking in circles. She had done at least two laps of the site, weaving in and out of the people and checking each possible location individually. She simply didn’t understand how she could be missing it.

Eventually she decided she just didn’t have enough knowledge of that precise area and decided she should ask someone who did. She was surrounded by people who should know the vicinity a lot better than her, so simply walked up to the closest one, took out the flyer and held it up to the man in front of her. ‘Hi. I was just wondering if you knew where this place is?’

The man squinted to look at the paper in her hand. ‘Hang on a minute, love. I’ll need my glasses.’ The man fiddled with a pocket on the inside of his jacket and took out a case, before removing a pair of bifocals. He put them on and reached out for the flyer. Jessica was reluctant to let it go, given it could well need to be used as evidence at some point, but released her grip on it nonetheless. The man took it and scanned through the words. ‘Sorry love, I’m only here on Saturdays. Not a clue.’

He gave it back but Jessica was silently fuming. “Why didn’t you just bloody say that in the first place,” she thought to herself. She decided to ask a woman fairly close by. Jessica walked over to her and held the flyer out once again. ‘Hi. I was just wondering if you know where this place is?’

The woman took the paper from her and gave it a read. ‘You know the offer’s out-of-date, yeah?’ Jessica felt like shaking the woman. “Of course I bloody know,” she thought. “I do know how to read. Just answer the question.”

Instead, she actually said: ‘Yeah, yeah, it’s okay. I was just looking to find the place rather than use the offer.’

The woman just shrugged at her. ‘It should be on the end just over there.’

The woman pointed back the way the detective had come from. Jessica took the flyer back, put it in her bag, said “thank you” and turned around. She was puzzled as she knew she had checked each place behind her. She figured the woman knew better than her, so walked back the way she had came and paid even more attention to her surroundings.

She reached the place on the end, where the woman told her she should be looking and got as close as she could without drawing too much attention. The woman must surely be wrong – this place didn’t deal with locks…

And then Jessica saw it. It did deal with locks. It also engraved signs and trophies, plus sold batteries and various leather goods but that wasn’t what the main function of the Gorton Market stall was.

Now she could see why she had missed it. Each time she had walked past before she had simply seen the sign for shoe repairs. And then she knew exactly who Nigel Collins was.

There had been no better feeling that ditching the name Nigel Collins. It was something that reminded him of being weak and pathetic, of seeing those fists pounding down upon him until he woke up in hospital. People had thought he was stupid and weird but there was nothing wrong with being quiet. His parents had died for crying out loud and he had been left in a children’s home he despised. What did people want him to say and do? He had only been a child and all the other kids picked on him.

That was a few years ago now and he was finally getting things together. The main thing was getting rid of that name, which had taken a while. He never would have felt able to get on with his life the way things had been after he had left hospital. Luckily, he had made friends living on the street. It was funny that people who were overlooked could be so resourceful. Some of them were just lost to drugs but that had never appealed to him. One of the people he had met had told him he could get him a new ID and national insurance number. You never knew whether or not to believe what you heard on the streets but his friend had come through with a brown envelope containing the few basic documents he would need.

He wouldn’t be able to drive without risking being discovered, or leave the country, but that could change with time. When it came to other homeless people you rarely got anything for nothing but Nigel had found that passing on money from begging and the odd bout of slippery fingers had got him what he wanted. You learned all sorts of new tricks when you needed to.

With a new identity in tow, things had started to come good. He had got a flat. It was horrible but a roof was always better than no roof then he had got a job. It was nothing special, just fixing shoes, engraving and cutting keys on the market but the stall’s owner had been great with him, looking to pass on his skills so he could semi-retire but still take the income from the stall. He had found out lots about himself; how practical and creative he could be. With a new name, somewhere to live and a job, he had found his confidence growing at last. He started making friends and creating a new life.