Woman in Black (16 page)

Given she didn’t know the person she was working alongside, she watched the footage at a slower speed than she might usually have done. Jessica began with images from the cameras leading from the train station to the cathedral. The thought occurred to her that, with no cameras directly watching the spot the hand had been left at, assuming the person knew their positions as well as they seemed to, there was every chance the hand could have been left undetected by pretty much anyone. Because of that, she specifically watched for people in dark clothing, especially those on their own. With the hot day, she thought it would rule out a lot of people before realising that a huge majority of people leaving the train station were wearing suits for work. She skimmed through the coverage all the way back until the sun had gone down in reverse without seeing anything untoward.

The second set of angles came from the main road. There was one camera pointing directly at the entrance to the pathway running alongside the cathedral and a second one monitoring the opposite side of the road. It gave her fewer people to watch but, aside from a few dangerous driving manoeuvres, she again saw nothing.

The final set of cameras were mounted around the Printworks complex. In the evenings the place was full of people visiting the various bars and restaurants and the cinema. There was a steady stream of pedestrians throughout the day but Jessica’s eyes were feeling tired. She checked the time on her phone and realised she had been watching the videos for almost three hours.

She had also missed a text message from Garry Ashford: ‘Got ur piece in. Did u see?’

She texted him back: ‘Yes. Given latest find I reckon it wudve gone in anyway. Still deal a deal. X’

Jessica couldn’t help but feel Garry had struck lucky. She had given him information his editor hadn’t initially been bothered about but, following the latest hand being found, the media outlets were suddenly after information again and would have been looking to run a story about January in any case.

Jessica paused the footage and phoned Izzy. She told the constable she hadn’t found anything so far and asked what had been going on.

‘A few things,’ Izzy replied. ‘I’ve not found you anything from January that links her to the other players yet. Dave’s got a list of addresses and phone numbers for you from the rest of the team. People are all over the country but you already knew that. He’s been helping the press office.’

‘What about Michael Wright?’

‘Didn’t anyone call you?’

‘No, what’s happened?’

‘He’s spent the last couple of days in hospital.’

‘What with?’

‘I’m not sure. One of his neighbours said he fainted on his doorstep. I spoke to someone at the hospital who said he’s been on a ward the past two nights. They’re doing tests.’

Jessica wondered if her questions had brought back too many bad memories that caused him enough stress to have some sort of breakdown. She hoped not but could at least take a tiny amount of solace in the fact he had an alibi and she shouldn’t have to bother him any longer. ‘How’s everyone else?’ she asked.

‘Just busy and hot. Don’t worry, I’ve not grassed you up for breaking the air-conditioning.’

‘It wasn’t me, it was dodgy workmanship.’

‘Whatever. How long are you going to be?’

‘No idea. There’s no camera looking directly at the spot where the hand was left but I’m on the final set of angles looking towards it. Do we have the formal ID yet?’

‘No. Jacob Chrisp’s mother gave us a sample but it is being tested. Someone said the hand wasn’t in a great state either.’

‘Yeah, I saw it. It looked like it had been out in the sun for a while. I’ll call you when I’m coming back.’

Jessica hung up and started the footage again. Her eyes felt a little rested after a few minutes away from it. The man next to her was clearly bored and jumped in his seat when she made an involuntary squeal. ‘Look.’

The footage was almost back to sunrise but a little later than the times the other hands had been left. The angle she was watching came from a camera pointing at the corner of the pathway leading along the side of the cathedral. The device was across the road so the images weren’t entirely clear because the shot was so wide.

Jessica rewound the footage and played it again as the man watched more intently second time around. A figure in a black cape emerged from out of shot and was walking across the road away from the camera. She paused and zoomed in as best she could. As with the previous footage they had found, there wasn’t anything clear enough to get a precise shot of the person’s face and the hood was pulled forward. She could see the same heels from before and, given the person’s stature, it certainly looked like a woman.

‘Is that who you’re looking for?’ the man asked.

Jessica zoomed out slightly and set the video to play again. ‘I think so.’ They both watched as the figure reached the other side of the road and then gasped at the same time.

‘Did she just do what I think she did?’ the man said. Jessica looked at him and his eyes were wide in disbelief.

Jessica scrolled the images backwards and zoomed in again before pressing play. As it got to the crucial part, the man next to her started laughing gently. ‘I can’t believe it,’ he said.

She paused the stream and pressed a button to store the screen grab. A printer at the back of the room hummed into action and she stood, walking over to it, then returning to her seat with a sheet of paper.

‘They’re waving at the bloody camera,’ she said, barely believing it herself.

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

The rest of the footage hadn’t been much use. After waving, the figure had walked out of shot towards the spot where the hand had been left, then returned the exact same way. There was a second camera which showed the person walking into an alley but the exit of that had no CCTV pointed at it. Other local cameras had shown Jessica nothing while the quality of the images and the way the person kept their hood forward, angling their face away from the recording devices, ensured there was no clear shot.

The hand had been out in the sun for the best part of twelve hours with no one noticing. It wasn’t necessarily a surprise because it had been left slightly away from the main path on a grassy area and Jessica again thought the person who had left it must have known the district incredibly well. Their audacity was unbelievable.

It also proved beyond any doubt that whoever was leaving the appendages wanted them to be found. The blind spot in the cameras around the cathedral could have given them an opportunity to walk through in a crowd of people during daylight, break off to leave the hand and then walk back out again in another group of pedestrians. They hadn’t done that though, going out of their way to show off. With the fact the person had sent her Lewis Barnes’ finger directly too, she felt as if they were leaving her a trail, wanting her to find out why the men had been targeted. They obviously didn’t want to give her too much information, presumably in case it implicated themselves.

The day after Jessica had gone through the video footage saw the local newspapers and television news bulletins lead off with the still-shot of the figure waving at the camera. Phone calls had started to come in from the public but there wasn’t much to go on seeing as the person’s face wasn’t visible. Jessica left a rather grumpy Rowlands to deal with those as she journeyed around the country with Izzy speaking to the other members of the rugby team.

Cole seemed convinced the rugby connection was key but the more she spoke to the players, the more Jessica began to think there was some other link they hadn’t yet found. It became clear the team had got up to various misdeeds but, through the stories people told, Jessica didn’t believe it amounted to much more than drunken stupidity and immaturity. A few players acted a little evasively as others seemingly spilled everything they knew. Some were married and wanted to meet away from their partners, others had no problems talking in front of them. Most of the players told her what had happened to Michael Wright and almost all of them seemed genuinely sorry for it. The two detectives told all of them that three of their team-mates had been harmed and they should be extra careful and report anything suspicious immediately to the police. Putting all ten into protective custody was impractical, especially given the distance between them all.

Jessica and Izzy were sitting on a train back to Manchester after visiting the final player. It had been two and a half days of travelling, talking and then travelling again. Their carriage was fairly quiet and both women had tried to sleep without success.

‘What do you reckon?’ Izzy asked sleepily.

Jessica was in the seat opposite and couldn’t stop herself yawning. ‘I think we’ve done too much moving around this week.’

‘Not got us anywhere though, has it?’

‘No, most of the players were just a bit embarrassed. I always knew young men had dirty minds but I could have done without hearing about those strippers.’

‘Yeah, some of the practical jokes were a bit extreme but none of it was too serious, was it? Nothing worse than what you’d see in some town centres on a Friday night.’

‘Exactly. One or two might have been holding back but, between this lot, Jacob and the two Dave spoke to, I think we probably heard more or less everything. It’s not as if there were any clear motives for someone external to be coming after them and I don’t reckon any of the ones we spoke to were involved.’

‘Did you speak to Dave?’

‘Yeah. He was pretty pissed off at spending three days talking to members of the public but he’d also been out to talk to the friends Jacob had been with the evening he was last seen.’

‘Did they say much?’

‘Just that they’d been to the pub after work and that was the last they’d seen of him. The samples from his mother matched the hand too so we know for sure it’s his. It would just be nice to get some closure for all these people. We’ve got his parents, Lewis Barnes’ mum and Charlie Marks not knowing if their relatives are alive or dead.’

As she spoke, Jessica heard the text message alert tone on her phone and took the device out of her jacket pocket. They must have been in between good reception areas because she had two missed calls from the station even though it hadn’t rung. There was a text message too. Izzy noticed Jessica’s surprise at the content.

‘What?’ the constable asked.

Jessica gulped with surprise. ‘January Forrester has handed herself in.’

FIFTEEN

Any tiredness Jessica had been feeling evaporated instantly. The rest of the train journey seemed to take twice as long as it actually did while she fumed each time it stopped. Jessica tried not to act too angrily when Izzy pointed out it was in fact running on time. When they finally arrived back in Manchester, a taxi took them to Longsight and Jessica almost forgot how hot it was as she hurried through the entrance. The humidity hit her as the desk sergeant said, ‘Suspect’s downstairs,’ as she walked past him.

Before going to see the woman, Jessica took Izzy to find Rowlands. They eventually discovered him in the canteen with a full plate of chips in front of him. The two women sat in a pair of seats across the table from him. ‘How’s the diet?’ Jessica said.

‘What diet?’

‘Exactly. You should be looking after yourself a bit better now you’re the wrong side of thirty.’

‘I need something to keep me going after all the shite you left me with. I can say this with total honesty – the general public are complete morons. We’ve had every type of maniac calling in over the past couple of days while you’ve been on holiday. Someone reckoned this black cape woman was living in their shed. There’ve been loads more calling in to say their wife, daughter or neighbour owns a cloak a bit like the one in the pictures. It’s like the Salem witch trials or something.’

‘Firstly, we’ve not been on holiday, we’ve spent most of our time sat on trains and in taxis. Secondly, isn’t
The Crucible
a bit high-brow for you?’

Rowlands screwed a couple of chips into his mouth. ‘I don’t know why you’re so surprised.’

‘Maybe because you have potato stuck to your chin,’ Jessica said. ‘It doesn’t give off a message that says “literary expert”. Anyway, what’s going on with January?’

The constable wiped his chin and swallowed his mouthful. ‘It was a bit of a weird one. Everyone was working as normal and then a call came through from reception looking for you. There was hardly anyone around so I went through to the front and January was standing there with her arms crossed. The guy on the desk didn’t even know who she was because she’d walked in asking for you.’

‘What did she say?’

‘Nothing, she just asked if you were around. I cautioned her then one of the guys took her to the cells. The DCI was upstairs but he said to wait for you, even if it took until tomorrow. She’s downstairs with the duty solicitor. Do you want her bringing up?’

‘No, sod it, she can wait a while.’ Jessica looked at the woman sat next to her. ‘Do you want something to eat?’

‘Anything but chips,’ Izzy replied. ‘For some reason I’ve gone right off them.’

The three detectives sat and ate, catching up on news from the past couple of days. Dave said DCI Cole had sent around an email the previous day reminding everyone about the community engagement programme that would be going on through the summer. Unsurprisingly not too many people had put their names down. Jessica didn’t know when the careers day was but figured it couldn’t be too far off with the schools breaking up for the summer soon. She hoped the chief inspector would realise how busy she was and forget all about it.

Jessica had to admit she was actually quite enjoying working with a small team of people. There was a good chemistry between her and the two constables and between them she figured they were performing as well as they could do. Any complaining was very much tongue-in-cheek and there was a lot of mutual respect, even if it might not be apparent to other people, given their bickering.

Dave ribbed Jessica about the bridesmaid dress she might have to wear, although she gave nothing away, while Izzy thought up more possibilities for what his tattoo might really say. Most of them seemed to involve words relating to various parts of the male anatomy.