Woman in Black (23 page)

‘Thanks, you seem…nice too. A little scary though.’

Kelly laughed. ‘Yeah, I’m terrifying.’

Frank enjoyed the rest of the afternoon. Kelly was certainly different and didn’t seem to have any kind of ego. Her intelligence shone through and, the more they spoke, the more Frank realised she had agreed to go out with him not because of his cheesy message to her on the website but because she had looked up the kind of things he liked and known they had a lot in common. She was happy to laugh at him without it being cruel and have him poke fun at her too. Her confidence was a little intimidating but, if that was her worst trait, he figured it was his problem not hers.

After they finished their first drinks and had another each, Kelly said she had to go because she had an evening shift on the reception desk of the hospital where she worked.

Frank was nervous about asking if she would go out with him again but she didn’t give him any option by saying she’d message him to arrange going out on a Friday or Saturday evening. As they said goodbye outside the cafe, Frank stretched his arm out and they shook hands before going their separate ways. The woman had a massive smile on her face and giggled throughout the handshake and Frank could see how absurd it was. He cursed himself for not trying to hug her at the very least.

It was a fairly short walk home for the man and he spent the journey thinking about little things he could have said differently and wondering how he could phrase a text message later that day to say he’d enjoyed himself. As he neared his flat, Frank decided to stop in the off-licence on the next road over to see if his friend was working.

He entered the shop and was delighted to see a familiar face. ‘Hey, Sanj, how are you doing?’ he said.

The young man behind the counter looked up from the magazine he was reading and grinned. ‘Not bad, how are you, fella? We still on for Friday?’

‘Definitely. Can I use your toilet?’

‘Are you still waiting on a plumber?’

‘Our landlord keeps saying he’ll sort it but we still have to flush with a bucket for now.’

The man behind the counter pulled a face. ‘All right, you know where it is but don’t tell my dad I let you back there.’

Frank walked towards the rear of the store and went through the side door he knew led down a short corridor to the small bathroom. Someone had already left a newspaper in there so he skimmed through it while also checking the emails on his phone. He went to flush the toilet but, as he did so, thought he heard raised voices from the main part of the shop. He quietly opened the door and walked towards the voices. There was a curtain of beads that stretched all the way to the floor and Frank peered through the gaps, being careful not to disturb them.

Despite the warmth of the day, he felt a chill tingle down his back as someone in a black hood stood holding a knife at his terrified friend.

TWENTY-ONE

After the conversation with Cole, Jessica knew exactly where she was going. A call had come in from a man apparently in a back room of an off-licence just off Oxford Road saying it was being held up by a woman wearing a familiar-sounding black hooded cloak. He told the operator he was going to intervene and had not given the person time to try to talk him out of it.

Jessica had no idea what to expect at the scene because the man who called them had hung up. She could be going to a situation where somebody had been stabbed or to a shop where the person she was trying to track down had been stopped. As she pulled onto the side street where the shop was, her heart sank. Police had sealed off the area and there was a chaotic mix of officers trying to keep pedestrians away, others securing the scene, and an ambulance blocking one end of the road. She hoped the woman she wanted hadn’t escaped but, above that, wanted to hear no one had been hurt.

Jessica parked on double yellow lines, half on the pavement, and bounded towards the officers. ‘What’s going on?’ she said.

One of the officers recognised her and replied. ‘There’s a woman down on the inside and a paramedic with her. Two men have been separated and are being spoken to.’

‘Is she badly hurt?’ Jessica asked.

‘I don’t think so. I’ve been out here and it’s been a bit crazy.’ The officer broke off to tell a pedestrian who had come a little too close to back away. Jessica looked around and glimpsed a familiar-looking face among the small crowd of people. She didn’t want to spook the person so continued looking around the crowd as if it was a natural thing to do. Jessica walked back towards her car as calmly as she could, then doubled around until she was at the back of the people watching the shop front. A few other pedestrians continued to walk by but Jessica kept her eyes on the back of the man. He was edgy and kept reaching towards the pocket of the three-quarter-length trousers he was wearing. Jessica hoped it was a phone or something similar but wasn’t willing to take any chances.

Still out of sight of the man, she beckoned one of the larger male police officers over and whispered some instructions to him. The crowd had grown a little larger while she had been watching and while she might have usually acted on her own, it wasn’t worth the risk with so many others around.

The officer crept forward quietly with Jessica following. They moved into position in the crowd so they were just behind the man and the police officer acted quickly, taking a grip of the man’s wrists and handcuffing him. Jessica stepped around to look into the face of the person she recognised from the CCTV footage she had been poring over. He was undoubtedly the person who had picked up the magazine from the rack in the off-licence a few days previously and Jessica told him he was under arrest.

Moments later as the man was being led to a waiting police van, the noise from the crowd around the shop increased. Jessica turned and saw a woman wearing dark clothing being led out of the door by two officers. She didn’t appear to be hurt and was wearing a hood slumped around her shoulders. Her face was visible but it didn’t belong to anyone Jessica recognised.

The rest of the day was a blur as Jessica lurched from one job to the next. Before going back to the station to talk to the people who had been detained, she persuaded the shopkeeper and the Scene of Crime team to let her watch some of the CCTV footage on site.

The camera system in the off-licence was more sophisticated than the first one and the young man who said his father owned the shop was much better at using it.

He skilfully manoeuvred through the screens, finding the exact piece of footage Jessica knew they would likely need at a later date. Forty minutes before the robbery had taken place, the man who had been arrested outside the shop entered. Much like on the first occasion, he looked around at the floor layout, made a few brief glances towards where the cameras were placed, then left without buying anything.

Jessica had no idea who the two people were but the plot seemed relatively clear. The man would walk in at a time mid-afternoon when they figured the shop would be quiet and familiarise himself with the layout. Then, at some point not long after, his accomplice would enter the store wearing the robe with a large knife. Presumably the man would be waiting somewhere nearby with a car to make their exit.

Before she left, Jessica checked the buildings around the off-licence to see if there were any cameras around. As far as she could tell there weren’t, which was consistent with the first target. The internal recording devices would be easy to avoid given the disguise but it would be much harder to conceal a car waiting outside if there were a camera there.

Back at the station, the two suspects were separated and put in different cells on the basement level. Neither had a legal representative so the process of them both talking separately to the duty solicitor was taking some time. Jessica didn’t really mind as it gave her the opportunity to gather some evidence before the interview. She got new copies of the still-shots of both the man and hooded figure from the first robbery and harassed one of the computer team to send her through the images of the man from just before the second one. They would work on enhancing the pictures at a later time but it gave her a start.

She was pretty sure the couple were copycats and that the coverage in the papers of the woman leaving hands around the centre of the city had given them a convenient cover to commit crimes.

When the solicitor had finished, Jessica interviewed the man first. They found out his name was Jordan Benson and he had a lengthy record for thefts. He was in his thirties but had almost fifty convictions for crimes ranging from shoplifting minor goods not worth much up to street robbery and burglary. The interview had been mixed affair which started with a stream of ‘no comment’s and ended with the suspect blaming everything on his partner.

According to his version of events his girlfriend, Erica Tomlinson, had planned the whole thing. She had chosen targets for them to rob then sent him in to scout the place out. After that, she would enter in disguise to get the money and they would escape together. Jessica believed the final parts but wasn’t quite so convinced he played as small a part as he claimed. Because of his confession, the still images from the CCTV cameras and the fact they were likely to get fingerprints from the magazine he picked up in the first shop, Jordan was charged with robbery. That charge could be downgraded to conspiracy to rob before he got to court but it would be the Crown Prosecution Service’s ultimate choice. If they felt they could prove he was involved in the planning of the crimes, he would be charged for the more serious offence. If he continued to insist his partner was the one to blame, it would be something their respective legal teams could argue between themselves in court. Jessica didn’t even bother to question him about the hands as it was his girlfriend she was waiting to talk to and he could always be re-interviewed at a later time.

Erica was brought up to the interview room next. She was in her late thirties and had short blonde hair in very tight curls but otherwise seemed very plain except for a series of garish tattoos down her arms. The woman had a criminal record of her own, including a few thefts, but it was all minor compared to Jordan and most of it revolved around drug possession. As soon as they started talking, Jessica realised the woman probably couldn’t spell ‘mastermind’ let alone be one. After giving her name, Erica copied her boyfriend by answering ‘no comment’ to the first few questions.

‘You do know Jordan just told us everything?’ Jessica said. ‘He talked all about how you planned the robberies and sent him in ahead.’

The woman stared back. ‘No he didn’t.’

‘I’m afraid he did. If it wasn’t your idea you should probably say so.’

‘No comment.’

Jessica sighed and reached into an envelope, taking out a series of photographs. She selected the one from the CCTV camera in Piccadilly Gardens of the figure positioning the first hand they had found. ‘Why did you leave this hand?’

The woman picked up the photograph and looked at it before angrily putting it down. ‘It weren’t me.’

Jessica handed her the other photos. ‘What about these hands?’

‘They weren’t me.’

‘It looks like you.’

‘But it weren’t.’

‘Why were you caught robbing from a shop with the exact same outfit then?’

‘No comment.’

Jessica sighed again and leant back in her chair. ‘Do you want to go to prison, Erica?’ The woman said nothing. ‘Right, I’ll assume that’s a “no”. Do you know the starting point for the type of robbery you committed is four years in prison? With some remorse, a confession and the return of the money you might get away with a year, maybe two on a suspended sentence so you stay out. If you’ve done time on remand you might not even get that. The reason I say “might” is because, if you don’t start talking, Jordan’s going to pin all of this on you and that’s not to mention the issue of the hands. We’ve found three so far. Three hands, three people missing, no bodies. That could be three murder charges. That’s life, probably with little chance of parole.’

Jessica knew the outfit on its own wasn’t enough to link the woman to the hands and in their brief initial inquiries they hadn’t managed to connect her to any of the victims as she was a different age and from a different area compared to the three people they had identified.

Erica stared at the table and spoke quietly. ‘I didn’t kill anyone.’

‘Right and I believe that but, if you had nothing to do with it, you need to tell me why you’ve been stealing money while wearing a black robe that looks just like this one.’

The woman sighed and started to cry. Her solicitor passed her some tissues and she took a drink of water. ‘It was Jordan’s idea,’ she said. ‘He’d seen the pictures on the news of this woman in the cloak and reckoned if we robbed some places it would get blamed on whoever that was. I’ve had the outfit for ages because of this fancy dress thing a few years back but not worn it.’

‘Didn’t it cross your mind that, if you got caught first, those more serious crimes would be blamed on you?’

The woman continued to dry her eyes and shook her head. ‘I didn’t think of it like that. The first one went so well we didn’t think we’d get caught. We thought it would be easy money.’

It was pretty much what Jessica suspected. ‘So, just to be clear, are you saying the reason you went in with a knife was because you wanted us to think you were the same person that has been leaving hands?’

‘Yes?’

‘And is that why Jordan did the initial scouting instead of committing the actual robberies?’

‘Yes.’

Erica’s story was actually remarkably similar to her boyfriend’s with the one key difference that she blamed him for planning the robberies, while he insisted it was her idea. Jessica didn’t believe either of them was involved in the main case she was working on but a warrant had been granted for a search team to raid their house. Erica said the cash left over from the first theft was in a box under their bed, which seemed to back up the point neither of them were the sharpest criminals going. The car they had used had also been impounded as evidence after being found around the corner from the second scene.