The Killer Inside: A gripping serial killer thriller (Detective Jessica Daniel thriller series Book 1) (12 page)

After a third trip to the toilet on his way out, Garry followed the barman’s instructions to the row of flats where Lapham apparently lived. He received no answer from the first door, while the man behind the second looked at him as if he had two heads, then slammed the door in his face. After a rather sweary enquiry as to his identity from the woman behind the third door, he was surprisingly informed this
was
Lapham’s house and that the female was his fiancée, Marie. Even more astoundingly, he was invited in, with the woman promising to tell him how the police were ‘stitching up’ her partner.

The woman was still in her dressing gown, a particularly peach monstrosity. She invited Garry into her kitchen and chain-smoked throughout their conversation, which was more of a one-sided rant. Garry had thought his flat was a mess, but Lapham’s made his look like a hospital ward.

Despite the swearing, lack of cohesion and seemingly baseless accusations, Marie had at least given him some useful information. She said some officer had not long been sent back from her place because her fiancé had handed himself in, and was currently at the police station being questioned. That was the first Garry knew of it. Marie reckoned the police had nothing on Lapham and were, ‘Dredging up old things ’cos they’ve got it in for him’. But she gave him plenty of background on her fiancé and even let Garry borrow a photo, ‘As long as you bring it back.’ From what she said, Lapham was a misunderstood soul on whom the police delighted in picking.

Those claims seemed unlikely but, behind the bravado, Marie actually did seem to care for Wayne Lapham and was genuinely worried for him. She certainly didn’t like the police and more than once went off on a tangent about, ‘That posh bitch officer, forcing her way in here.’ Garry didn’t push the point but had an idea about who the ‘bitch’ could have been.

He thanked her for her time and caught the buses back to write up the story. By then, news had come out that Wayne Lapham had been released. Garry linked everything together and turned it into something of a profile piece about the investigation’s prime suspect. His editor called and said the piece was okay, but he sounded disappointed his reporter hadn’t got more. Quite what he’d expected, Garry wasn’t sure.

The tone of disappointment from his editor had continued into the Monday meeting – but perhaps all that was about to change. On Garry’s phone was a text from the pre-pay number he had memorised.

‘Call me. It’s good.’

Garry did precisely that, feverishly taking notes throughout the call. It
was
good. Good enough to wreck the career of a certain detective sergeant.

J
essica’s day
hadn’t been very productive. She had first taken Rowlands to Yvonne Christensen’s boarded-up house. They were let in through the back by the victim’s ex-husband, Eric, who had been given his son’s keys. Jessica didn’t know what she thought she would get from the visit and hadn’t expected a flash of inspiration where she discovered something others had missed.

Eric didn’t want to enter the house and told them he hadn’t been inside it since the murder. He was in the process of organising a company to go in and clean the house up. When that was complete, he would sell it. Finding a set of cleaners keen enough after he had explained the situation was proving a problem, though.

The house itself looked more or less the same as it had the last time Jessica had been there. The bed upstairs had been stripped, with the sheets taken for analysis. Blood had soaked through to the mattress and was still visible.

Jessica and Rowlands walked around the house looking for something that might have been missed. She checked the attic for the first time herself – but there was no connection to the neighbouring property.

She tried to walk herself through what would have happened, considering the direction Yvonne must have been facing when the wire was wrapped around her neck. Where the killer’s feet must have stood. None of it helped.

They then visited Sandra Prince at her house. It must have been uncomfortable, Jessica thought, for the woman to have gone back to living at the property where her husband’s murdered body had been found. It was unavoidable, though, as she had nowhere else to go.

Sandra was annoyed that Wayne Lapham had been released. She was angry and kept saying that he had already got away with it once – meaning the burglaries. It was hard to argue with her. Jessica asked if she knew of any connection to the Christensen family, but Sandra didn’t recognise the name or photos.

After returning to the station, Jessica checked in with Cole, but there was little to report. The victims of the other three burglaries for which Lapham had been convicted of handling stolen goods had been visited again, but reported nothing untoward. Jessica went to her office to get rid of some paperwork. Reynolds wasn’t in and she had the space to herself, but she couldn’t focus on the work. Her thoughts turned towards her appearance in court the following day, and what would be round two with Peter Hunt.

She had pushed back into her chair and closed her eyes, when her mobile phone rang. She picked it up from the desk, looking at Garry Ashford’s name.

‘I’m busy,’ she said, by way of answering.

‘Hi… Are you alone?’

‘Yes but this isn’t a sex line. Unless you’re paying…’

‘Can I run something by you?’

Jessica’s first thought was that another body had been found and somehow the journalist knew about it before she did. ‘What?’

‘At lunch today, I spoke to a lawyer named Peter Hunt.’

Jessica winced at the mention of that name. ‘Oh.’

‘He was only confirming what I had already heard.’

That was the problem the station’s whispers had caused. The legend of what had
actually
happened in the interview room had grown out of all proportion. In the car on their way to the Christensens’ house earlier, Rowlands had asked her about the incident. She hadn’t told him much – or anyone for that matter – but he had told her the things he had heard. They ranged from something actually approaching the truth, to her having had Peter Hunt up against the interview room’s wall by the throat. Other versions included her turning the table over – despite it being bolted to the floor – and bellowing a string of abuse at both Hunt and Lapham. Somebody else had apparently said she’d attacked the pair of them with a fork from the canteen.

Word would have been around most of the Greater Manchester Police force by now. That wasn’t counting the people Peter Hunt had spoken to.

‘What
have
you heard?’ Jessica asked.

Garry’s version of events was almost exactly as Jessica remembered. He certainly had a very good source, considering there had only been three people in the room and she knew he hadn’t got the information from herself or Wayne Lapham. Hunt may have confirmed details, but she doubted he would have tipped off someone like Garry Ashford in the first place.

‘I can’t really talk about things,’ Jessica said, after he finished telling her his story.

‘I know, but I have to ask.’

‘What are you going to write?’

‘I don’t know yet… Something.’

‘This could ruin me.’ Jessica wasn’t sure what else to say. It wasn’t as if she had been too nice to him before.

‘Would you like to tell me what happened?’

Jessica didn’t know what had come over her in the past few days, what with the anger in the interview room, plus the emotion in the station’s toilet and over the phone with Harry. She had even enjoyed a laugh with the chief inspector, a person with whom she had never got on too well before.

And now… Now, she told Garry Ashford, a journalist and relative stranger, everything. Once she started speaking, she couldn’t stop. He didn’t try to interrupt or ask anything; he let her talk. She told him how Lapham had got under her skin and that Hunt had let him. She spoke about the investigation itself: how the police had got nowhere and were struggling. They weren’t even sure how the murders had happened, let alone who’d done them. She even told him about her own feelings of inadequacy amid a complete lack of leads.

If Internal Investigations were listening in, they would have had a field day. When she had finished, there was a short silence.

Garry eventually broke it. ‘That was a bit…
more
… than I expected.’

‘I don’t know why I told you all that,’ she said. ‘I could be ruined if this all got out. They wouldn’t trust me to go into an interview room again.’

‘What would you like me to do?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘I have an idea. But I would need your help.’

‘Go on…’

‘Do you think you can trust me?’

‘I’m not sure I have much choice.’

Jessica listened as Garry told her to leave it with him but to make sure she got hold of the next day’s paper. ‘I think I’ve got a way to keep you and my editor happy,’ he said.

If he could manage that, he was definitely a lot cleverer than Jessica had previously given him credit for.

H
aving read
the
Herald
’s website on her phone the next morning and then bought the print edition on her way to the station, Jessica was beginning to think she had definitely underestimated Garry Ashford. But if the scruffy little genius had got her off the hook, he had also ensured her colleagues would be taking the piss for weeks.

She had been impressed when she had seen the online version, but it was the actual hard copy that really stood out. The front-page banner headline read: HOUDINI HUNTER. She wasn’t a fan of the ‘Houdini Strangler’ label but, good or bad, it had stuck.

Garry’s front-page piece, which extended over a two-page spread on the inside, was a full profile of her. It was positive throughout, reassuring the public that she and her colleagues were looking out for them and were hard on the trail of the killer. After the previous editorials slating the lack of progress, this piece praised the ‘behind-the-scenes efforts’. Very little of the information had actually come from Jessica but, even if it had, it was written so cleverly no one could have known for sure. It quoted ‘sources close to Detective Sergeant Daniel’ and ‘senior members of the team’.

The journalist must have done his homework the day before. They still didn’t have a great photo of her, coming up with one taken a few years previously, when she was still in uniform. She remembered the photograph being taken but had no idea where the newspaper would have got it from. She definitely looked younger in the shot; more naïve, too.

Jessica was planning only a brief stop at Longsight to pick up some paperwork on her way to court. It would give her something to do while she was hanging around in the witnesses’ waiting room. Court duty was a mixed blessing. On the one hand, it was a day off work. The downside was the sheer amount of waiting around.

At the station, Jessica had walked into a rowdy, sarcastic cheer from the half-a-dozen or so people milling around reception. Before she could make her way through to her office, the desk sergeant pointed towards the stairs. ‘He wants to see you.’

Jessica went up the stairs but, as she made her way past his office window, Detective Chief Inspector Aylesbury didn’t appear to be smiling.

‘DS Daniel,’ he said, as she knocked and entered. She instantly noticed a copy of that morning’s
Herald
on his desk. ‘So you
have
been making friends with the press then?’ he added.

‘Not really, sir. I don’t know where he got most of that information.’

‘But you know where he got
some
of it…?’

Jessica said nothing, but the curious smirk on Aylesbury’s face indicated he wasn’t expecting an answer. He spoke again. ‘I talked to Superintendent Davies this morning and he was
particularly
pleased with today’s media coverage. Delighted, I would say. He asked me to pass a message on to you.’

Aylesbury paused, presumably waiting to see if Jessica would bite. She stayed silent, her face neutral, waiting for her boss to continue. ‘He wanted me to tell you not to worry about either Peter Hunt or any internal investigation. His exact words were, “Tell DS Daniel I’ll handle it”.’

Jessica nodded. ‘Thank you, sir’.

‘I should of course remind you of your responsibilities when dealing with victims, witnesses, suspects and their representatives…’

‘I understand, sir.’

‘Right then. Enjoy your day in court with Mr Hunt. I’m sure he will be positively delighted to meet you again so soon.’

T
here were
two Crown Courts in Manchester. Jessica had been to the Minshull Street one in the north of the city centre a few times, as that was generally where the cases from her district were heard. But the most serious crimes and anything referred up from magistrates’ courts were usually hosted at Crown Square. Given it involved a police officer as the victim, Harry’s case was always going to end up there.

The building was largely the same as any other court precinct Jessica had been into. It was disorganised, with groups of people anxiously checking boards to make sure they were in the right place, and solicitors and ushers racing from various side rooms to the courts, checking on witnesses and defendants. Everyone else sat on the uncomfortable-looking plastic chairs, checking watches and fiddling with mobile phones.

The prosecutor dealing with Harry’s case came enthusiastically bounding across the reception area, appearing from nowhere. He shook Jessica’s hand, reintroduced himself and assured her everything in court was going well. That wasn’t what she had heard, of course…

Harry was nowhere to be seen at first but, as the prosecutor led her into court one, she saw him sitting at the back in the public gallery. The court was a beautiful creation. It had enormous high ceilings with everything exquisitely wood-panelled. The judge’s bench at the front was long, running the full width of the room, with a huge seal on the wall behind. The jurors sat on his right, with the dock, probation seats and press box on his left. The middle of the room was set aside for the lawyers and assorted legal workers, while the public area was at the back. She was directed towards the witness box, which was opposite the jurors.

As a character witness, Jessica was last in line for the prosecution. Given Harry had self-destructed on the stand, she was possibly a last chance to turn things around before Hunt had the chance to call his own witness – Tom Carpenter. The prosecution knew Hunt would claim Harry had provoked a reaction from the accused by threatening him and that, even though a weapon was involved, the knife was a necessary part of Carpenter’s job as a joiner. They would say he had forgotten to take it out of his trousers and things had got out of hand, with disastrous consequences.

Jessica made snap judgements on the twelve jurors. She could instantly tell that two of them weren’t too bothered by the case. One was fairly young, a man in his early twenties. Earphones were just about visible, hanging by his neckline. He scuffed his feet and looked at the floor throughout, showing no enthusiasm on his way in. There was a woman too, much older – in her fifties – who looked utterly bored. When the time came to make a decision, Jessica marked the two of them down as going along with whatever the majority would do – especially if it would get them discharged quicker.

The older man at the front, likely the person who would be foreman, was sharply dressed in a suit, although it wasn’t a necessity when on a jury. He seemed the type to take the most interest and to lead discussions in the retiring room. He probably watched a lot of courtroom or police procedural television shows and thought this was his big moment. He’d be taking copious notes and sticking rigidly to all the judge’s instructions about not reading about the case or talking about it outside of the court. He wouldn’t have seen Jessica on the front of that morning’s paper.

Jessica would have bet money though that, although he hadn’t spoken about the case, he had told anyone who would listen that he was a juror
on
the case and then insisted he couldn’t talk about it. He looked exactly the type who would delight in the fact that he knew things other people didn’t. Jessica figured he was a good person to get on side. He would vigorously put his point across after the jury had retired, and would be hard to sway from that.

There were two women around Jessica’s age sitting on the end of the front row of jurors. It looked as if they had bonded during the case. They were exactly the kind of people who would be key swing votes on a jury: interested enough to listen throughout, forthright enough to not be bullied, open-minded enough to take on other people’s views.

Jessica had no idea if she was right, but being a police officer gave a person a decent grasp on the workings of others. She figured the suited man and these two women would be the key people to convince. These two females especially would stick together and argue their points of view.

The judge was an enormous man, his robes bulging under the strain from his belly. Some people wore their weight well, but the judge definitely wasn’t one of them.

Jessica was introduced by the prosecutor and felt the jury’s eyes on her. She looked over towards them and, as she would have expected, the potential foreman was feverishly making notes, despite the fact she hadn’t yet taken the oath.

As she reached the stand and took a copy of the Bible, Jessica made a special effort to make eye contact with as many of the jurors as she could. The potential foreman was still writing, while headphone boy was looking at his feet. She managed to look at the others and held the eyes of the two female jurors on the front row for a fraction of a second longer.

Jessica confirmed her name, age and rank and then began to answer the initial clarification questions.

She saw Tom Carpenter watching her from the dock. The first time she had seen him was after the stabbing, when he had been questioned after handing himself in. Jessica hadn’t been involved in that but had seen him walking through the station with Hunt. He’d looked different then: unshaven, with a sneer and contemptuous look for the officers around him. Now, he was smartly turned out in a suit, shirt and dark-coloured tie. He had shaved and had shorter hair. Back then, he’d looked exactly the type to carry a knife ready to stab anyone who looked at him the wrong way. Now, he looked the height of suburban respectability, someone to be trusted and relied upon. If comparing with Harry’s unkempt appearance and demeanour in court, a person would struggle to know who was the accused and who was the veteran police officer.

Jessica answered each question as clearly as she could, directing her answers towards the jury. The prosecutor’s examination was as extensive as it could be. He asked her how long she had known Harry, what her relationship had been with him when she’d joined CID and other standard questions, to establish that she knew him pretty well. Considering Harry kept to himself, Jessica figured she knew as much as anyone about him. She confirmed she had never seen him act unprofessionally in the course of duty, nor seen him be aggressive.

After the prosecutor had finished speaking, Peter Hunt stood up for the cross-examination. He looked straight at her – the first time she had noticed him do so. If he was annoyed about what had happened a few days previously, he didn’t show it, and spoke with an even tone and at a steady pace. If anything, he seemed confident things were already done and dusted, that he’d won.

He confirmed a few of the details she’d already spoken about and made a special point of letting her re-emphasise that she had become the person Harry was closest to on the force. The lawyer then asked one of the questions she had been worrying about. ‘If you know the victim so well, how many times you have spoken to Mr Thomas in the last six months?’

It sounded odd hearing Harry called ‘Mr’. He was no longer a detective, so it was technically correct, but it didn’t sound right.

Jessica knew her answer would sound bad, but she had no intention of lying.

‘Once,’ she admitted, perhaps slightly more quietly than some of her other responses. She bowed her head almost subconsciously as she said it. In the way legal professionals seemed to be trained to do, Hunt recoiled in mock surprise. That look of horror or shock must come on day one of legal training, Jessica thought. Before opening any books or taking any exams, a trainee would have to practise appearing stunned when being told information already known to them.

If he did ever get booted out of the legal profession, Hunt could at least go for a job as a daytime soap actor.

‘Just the once?’ he asked.

‘Yes.’

Hunt gave a smaller recoil and then looked directly at the jury, to make the argument that Jessica couldn’t know Harry that well if they had only been in contact once in recent times. She had to concede he had a point.

The juror on the end was frantically adding to his notes as Hunt continued. ‘In your experience, is Mr Thomas a big drinker?’

‘How would you define “big”?’

‘Let me rephrase it. Have you ever seen Mr Thomas drink while on the job?’

‘Not really.’

‘So, yes?’

‘It’s not as simple as that.’ Jessica had seen officers
technically
drink while on duty. She explained to the jury that sometimes it was easier to talk to sources or witnesses in somewhere like a pub, where they themselves felt comfortable. For the old schoolers, it was fairly common practice.

Hunt listened, nodding along, apparently feeling as if his point had been made. For good measure, he added: ‘Even if you were to meet with witnesses and the like in a pub, you wouldn’t
have
to drink yourself, would you?’

‘No,’ Jessica admitted.

Hunt was on a roll. ‘Have you ever seen Mr Thomas act in a questionable way while on duty?’

It was the type of question that was difficult to answer. She had often seen Harry give his homeless contact money and food in return for information – and what about the sealed brown envelope he had given to the same man, whose tip had led directly to an arrest? Was that ‘questionable behaviour’? Technically it could be seen as bribing a witness. She had seen Harry make vague statements in interviews, perhaps claiming to know more about a situation than he actually did. It was definitely a tad dishonest, but was it ‘questionable’?

‘No,’ she answered.

‘Never?’

‘No.’

Hunt’s next question threw her. ‘Have you ever acted in a questionable way yourself while on duty?’

She saw the steely twinkle in his eye as he asked, almost as if he had winked at her. He probably hadn’t, but there was an awful lot behind the question. She remembered Wayne Lapham and the interview room. The prosecutor leapt to his feet, objecting, pointing out Jessica herself wasn’t on trial. The judge interjected, but Hunt hadn’t asked the question because he wanted an answer; he’d asked it to wind Jessica up.

He had switched from looking at the jury to looking at her, fixing her with a steady stare. If his previous question had rattled her, his next one was designed to push things even further. ‘Have you ever been romantically involved with Mr Thomas?’

This time there was definitely a smirk as he eyed her. The jury wouldn’t have been able to see it from their angle. Another objection came, but this time Hunt assured the judge it was a legitimate question, to find out how well the two knew each other. He pointed out that it could prejudice Jessica’s answers if they had been romantically involved.

The judge ruled the question didn’t have to be answered but Jessica turned to the jury and said ‘No’ in any case. She looked at the man on the end and the two women on the front row, the three people she wanted to convince, but knew her answer was irrelevant. Hunt hadn’t asked it because he thought it was true – he had asked it to put the idea in their heads and make them doubt her.

Jessica turned back to Hunt, who looked at the jury and then at her. ‘No further questions.’ His smirk had gone but his eyes told the story.
Take that.