Vigilante (8 page)

With links to organised crime also seeming unlikely, as Cole had pointed out, it meant their only firm connection was still Donald McKenna, a man behind bars.

Jessica shut the computer down and walked into the reception area in preparation to head out towards her car. She had stayed at Longsight for forty-five minutes longer than she needed to but it wasn’t as if she had anything to rush home to. With dismay she saw the bright autumn day had given way to grey skies and drizzle and what little summer they’d had seemed to be over for another year. She stood in the doorway of the station looking across the fifty or so yards to her car. She hadn’t brought an umbrella or coat to work in the morning, trusting the way the skies had looked when she left her flat earlier on. It was always a foolish assumption to make in Manchester but she never learned her lesson.

She fumbled around her pockets for her car keys and held them at the ready before ducking her head and making a run for it. Rowlands had pointed out to her a few months ago that the force had started hiring recruits that were younger than her car. It was red, rusty and unreliable and Jessica didn’t really know why she hadn’t upgraded to something better. She could afford it if she wanted to but there was something sentimental about the vehicle and she had resigned herself to keeping it until it literally fell apart.

Jessica thought remote central locking would have been nice as she tried to force the key into the car’s lock and ended up accidentally scraping a bit more paint away from the area around the key hole. There were enough scuffs and scratches for her to not worry too much as she eventually fell onto the driver’s seat and shut the door behind her.

It was only as she slammed the door that she realised her phone was ringing. Her wet fingers struggled with the screen more than usual but she just managed to say ‘hello’ before it rang off.

‘Oh hi. It’s Adam, Adam Compton. I didn’t think you were going to answer.’

‘No, I’m here. A bit wet but here.’

‘It’s raining out?’

‘Yeah. Shock, hey?’

‘Oh right. I’ve not been outside all day. Erm, look, I probably shouldn’t be calling you yet because it’s not official but we did find a few things.’

Jessica felt her heart rate suddenly go up. ‘What?’

‘It’s early and nothing will be confirmed until tomorrow but we found a few hairs on the top that Ben Webb was wearing. There’s nothing unusual about that but they’re not his or Des Hughes’. I got your text but someone had already phoned through. We used those samples from the snooker club but they don’t belong to either of the two victims who were beaten up.’

Jessica held back from interrupting, letting him say the exact words she knew he would. ‘They are a direct match for Donald McKenna though.’

NINE

Adam went on to reiterate that things would need to be confirmed. They were going to request a new swab from Donald McKenna in prison. He added that nothing was final and that samples could degrade over time. McKenna’s initial swabs could have been contaminated or could have simply not been stored correctly. They had been on file since he was sent to prison for the armed robbery four years earlier. Nothing would be official until new saliva was taken and then re-tested against everything they had. He said his boss would pass on the first results to someone at the station officially the next morning but request a media blackout until a full re-analysis was done. It was a bit late to stop the release of the murder victims’ names but it would look bad for everyone if it was all linked back to a contaminated sample.

He drifted off into scientific speak she didn’t really understand and then said it was going to take days but Jessica wasn’t really listening. She knew it would all come back to confirm what she felt sure she knew; Donald McKenna had somehow been involved with the murder of three people.

She decided to rest on things that night. Adam had trusted her with information she
technically
shouldn’t have yet and there didn’t seem too much point in passing it on considering it would be phoned through the next morning anyway, albeit with the proviso that the testers wanted new samples.

The following day, there was definitely a different atmosphere in the station. Big crimes always created a buzz and, although Craig Millar’s killing hadn’t got people going, Jessica knew as soon as she walked in that news had broken about the latest DNA results. She didn’t let on that she already knew as the desk sergeant directed her upstairs for a meeting with Farraday.

As soon as she started to walk past the windows of his office, she could see Cole already sitting inside chatting with their boss. She knocked as a courtesy but was waved straight in and took a seat next to Cole on the opposite side of the desk from Farraday. ‘Daniel,’ the DCI said to acknowledge her.

‘Sir.’ The chief inspector proceeded to tell her everything she had already been told by Adam the previous evening. She nodded along in all the right places. If Cole suspected she already knew the details, he said nothing.

The DCI finished by summing up where he saw everything standing. ‘Daniel, I’m moving you up to take lead on this. I know it should really fall to Cole but so far it’s only three arseholes we’re better off without. There are other jobs to do around here. Take whoever you want to the prison today but then we’ll have to wait until the Bradford Park lot have done their jobs. If any more bodies show up, we might have to look again. All right?’

‘What are we telling the media, Sir?’ Jessica asked.

‘Not much. The press office stuck out the victims’ names yesterday. Do I think they’ll put the pieces together and link it to the other killing? Not unless someone gives the game away. It’s not as if they’re the sharpest bunch of knives in the drawer, is it?’

Jessica grimaced at the question he had asked himself but wanted to laugh at his dig about the local reporters. With her last big case a journalist named Garry Ashford who worked for the
Manchester Morning Herald
had actually helped her figure out what was going on, albeit not directly. Still, she liked the description and would tell him the next time she saw him.

‘What exactly do you want me to do at the prison, Sir?’ She wouldn’t normally have asked but, with them in limbo waiting for further test results, there was only so far they could push things.

‘Talk to the governor, check McKenna’s cell, put the shits up them all – that kind of thing. Talk to the wardens, one of them might be bent. Do I think someone there must know more than they’re letting on? Maybe.’

It hadn’t crossed Jessica’s mind that someone who worked on the wings could have helped McKenna in some way. It still seemed far-fetched but it was something she would bear in mind now that Farraday had mentioned it. A warden or someone in a similar position would certainly have more chance at getting blood or hairs from the prisoner than someone on the outside if they wanted to frame him. If they were working together, it would be easier, although still difficult in technical terms. It didn’t get her any closer to coming up with a motive.

The three of them held the morning briefing in the main incident room in the basement of the Longsight station. It essentially consisted of them telling everyone what had been decided in the office. The chief inspector reminded them all of their responsibilities to not leak any details to the papers. Jessica made sure she caught  Rowlands’ eye. She hadn’t been able to prove it at the time but she was as sure as she could be that he had been giving information to Garry Ashford at the time of Randall Anderson’s killing spree. It wasn’t malicious and had drastically enhanced one of his friend’s careers but it still shouldn’t have happened. Neither he nor the journalist had ever owned up to it but the reporter’s knowledge of the police force’s inner workings had certainly stopped appearing in the local paper since Jessica had challenged them. Rowlands wasn’t keen to make eye contact and looked away.

After the briefing was finished, she motioned him over to one side. ‘Fancy a trip to the prison?’

‘You know how to show a guy a good time, don’t you? Hospital one day, prison the next. Are we off to the cemetery tomorrow?’

‘Are you seriously giving out dating advice?’

Rowlands winked at her. ‘Word around the station is that you might be looking for some.’

Jessica didn’t think Cole was the type to gossip and doubted it was him who had said anything about Adam but news travelled pretty quickly around a police station, especially if it involved officers’ private lives.

She thought about asking how Rowlands knew but didn’t think it really mattered. ‘Why? Are you jealous?’

‘Nah, you’re a bit old for me.’

Jessica snorted. ‘Only if you’re talking about mental ages.’

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

On arrival at the prison, they had been greeted by another member of front-office staff who was slightly unnerving. The people who worked there had obviously been given some sort of briefing regarding the police visit and the man was keen to ask questions and try to show how efficient he was. Jessica did her best to ignore him as Rowlands pulled out his phone and had what was almost certainly a fake conversation. Jessica thought she would remember that trick for next time.

If it was a phoney talk, he didn’t have to pretend for too long. They had called to confirm they were visiting after putting off their trip the day before and the governor had been pretty quick to meet them in the reception area. After the usual security checks, he took them through into the main arrivals yard. He told them the large concreted area was where the security vans first arrived. Inmates were either taken back to their blocks if they were already prisoners, or moved into a separate processing office if they were new arrivals.

The governor was outwardly far friendlier on their second visit but his tone definitely seemed forced and a tad over-enthusiastic. He talked them through the areas that had been rebuilt and showed them where the old parts of the establishment had been before the riots. He led them off to an area where he said executions used to take place. Jessica knew the basics but was surprised when he told them the last hangings took place in the 1960s. She wouldn’t have guessed it was quite so recent.

He took them into the main prison area and pointed out the various wings. He mentioned a famous rock star and told them how he had spent six weeks in the prison a few years previously. He offered to show them the cell but Jessica decided that would be a step too far. The pleasantries were at least interesting but they were there on business. If the governor was annoyed at having his impromptu tour interrupted, then he didn’t react, instead walking them through to the wing McKenna was kept on.

It was essentially a wide and long hallway, with cells that went up three storeys high. There was a big gap between the two sides with a couple of pool tables interspersed with a few other chairs in the middle of the hard grey floor. Jessica had been into a few prisons but rarely into the area where prisoners were actually housed. In terms of the actual cells, there wasn’t much sign of the stereotypical vertical bars most people would picture. The main gates in and out of the wings themselves were barred across and needed to be unlocked but the actual cell doors were thick, heavy and made of metal. It wasn’t as grim as she might have guessed but certainly wasn’t as bright and new as the visiting areas always appeared.

‘Everyone gets to spend twelve hours out of their cell between eight and eight,’ the governor explained. ‘There’s a games area towards the bottom of the wing with more pool tables and so on. What we’ve done is move them all down there just for while you’re here. It was a bit cramped so some of them are outside in the rec area. It will give you free access to walk into the cells. You do have to understand that the property they have in their rooms is their own, though. Some get very, er, funny about things being moved.’

Jessica understood. People in pretty much any situation would be annoyed by someone else shuffling their possessions around. In prison, those items would be much more valued simply because the inmates had so little.

The governor continued to speak as he walked them further on to the seemingly deserted wing. ‘If you do want to talk to anyone else, it can be arranged. I’m not sure everyone would want to talk to the authorities but I doubt many would mind that much. Mr McKenna is in a cell next to the interview room and ready whenever you are.’

He was certainly going out of his way to accommodate them. The governor led them off to one side of the hall towards one of the cells. The rooms already had their doors all open. Rowlands asked why. ‘Between eight in the morning and eight at night, doors have to be kept open. If someone is feeling ill or wants to sleep or something like that they can go to the medical area. It’s for everyone’s safety really. Say an incident did happen, the guards wouldn’t be able to see anything or know something was wrong if the doors were closed.’

‘What about after eight?’ Jessica asked.

‘The main lights stay on for about an hour and then are off until around seven the next morning. They can have small lamps in their cells if they want to read and pretty much everyone has a TV in the room. Ultimately we can’t watch them twenty-four hours a day. It’s extremely rare anything happens. Most of the rooms have two people in them and there’s a degree of matching to try to ensure people get along. There’s a separate wing for vulnerable prisoners but genuinely most people just want to do their time.’

‘When I was here a few days ago, Donald McKenna said he had a cell to himself,’ Jessica said.

‘That’s true. A lot of it comes down to how crowded we are. Sometimes every cell has two people in it and we have to use places like the vulnerable wing just to get everyone in. Either that or release inmates who don’t have much left on their sentence. At the moment, we’re not quite at capacity so there are some prisoners who get a cell to themselves.’

‘How is that decided?’ Rowlands asked.

‘Each wing has a senior warden. There’s no way I can oversee everyone all the time but everyone reports back to me. I leave decisions like that up to them. It should come down to behaviour and things like that. Sometimes it just falls to the more senior prisoners though. A lot of it works itself out.’

Given Farraday’s suggestion that someone on the wing might have some sort of involvement, that last part stuck out to Jessica. Ending up in a cell by himself could well indicate some sort of preferential treatment. It was still a far cry from that to either helping McKenna get out of the prison or aiding him to carry out murders but it was something to bear in mind.

The governor pointed them to one of the open doors. ‘It’s that one there. Feel free to take your time. I’ll wait here if you have anything to ask.’

Jessica entered the cell as Rowlands waited by the door. There wasn’t an awful lot of space for the two of them to fit inside. There was a bunk bed immediately on her left and the room was only a little longer than the bed itself. On the opposite wall from the bed was a desk that ran most of the length of the wall. On it was a small portable TV, a Bible and some battered paperbacks. At the end was a small sink with a mirror and some toiletries above it. Opposite the sink, at the end of the bed and only just fitting into the space between the bed and the wall, was a metal toilet. She figured it was certainly made for a man; there was no toilet seat, just four raised pieces of plastic.

At the end of the thin aisle that separated the bed from the table, there was a solid-looking window at the top of the facing wall. The glass was misty and impossible to see out of and there were bars in front of it. It had only taken her a few seconds to look at the whole place. ‘Anything?’ asked Rowlands from the door.

‘You can pretty much see everything I can, Dave.’

She felt stupid for doing it but tried wobbling the four bars that blocked the window. They didn’t budge. She looked under the bed, where there was a pair of dark trainers but nothing else. She pushed and tapped the walls, almost as if she was surveying the place. She didn’t know what she was looking for. It’s not as though she expected there to be a gaping hole in the wall with ‘tunnel’ written over the top but she hadn’t expected something so cramped either.

Jessica tried moving the toilet and the sink, just to see if they were loose from the wall but, aside from a slightly wobbly pipe under the sink, the actual units didn’t shift at all.

Eventually after checking everything a second time, she went back to the doorway and Rowlands moved aside to let her out. ‘You wanna have a look?’ she asked.

‘Not much point really, is there? As you said, I could pretty much see it all anyway.’

‘Have you ever been here before?’

‘We had this training day thing but not in the cells, no.’

‘What do you reckon?’