Woman in Black (25 page)

‘Have you got anything stronger?’

Jessica attempt at a joke had clearly been missed and the deputy head looked fairly concerned. ‘Er, no…’

‘Sorry, I was joking. I know I’m an acquired taste,’ Jessica said. ‘I only usually drink before operating heavy machinery and driving.’ The woman pulled another face. ‘Shit, sorry, I make bad jokes when I’m nervous…and, er, swear.’

The woman didn’t seem too impressed. ‘Are you going to be all right to not do that when I take you through?’

‘Yes, sorry. I’m a little nervy. I don’t really deal with children very often.’

‘It’ll be fine. They only bite at the end of the week.’ It was Jessica’s turn to pull a concerned face. ‘Sorry,’ the deputy head added, ‘I guess I make ill-judged jokes too.’

After a few more minutes, the woman stood, leading Jessica down a corridor into an empty classroom. Even though she couldn’t have expected anything else, the height of the tables and chairs took Jessica by surprise. Each desk had four chairs placed around it that barely seemed higher than her knee. The whole room was a mass of colour with measurement charts, paintings and giant pictures of castles. In the corner was a carpeted area surrounded by low bookcases whose spines offered yet more colour.

‘We’re going to have a couple of classes joining into one for your talk,’ the deputy head said. ‘It’s up to you if you want to sit or stand. I’ll get you a chair if you want one.’

‘Standing’s fine. I quite fancy one of those little chairs anyway though. I’ll put one in our interview room to confuse people.’

This time the teacher realised she was joking and laughed. ‘If you want to settle yourself, I’ll go and get everyone.’

Jessica put her phone on silent and turned around to have a look at some of the work pinned to the wall. There was a display showing various students’ handwriting and she had to admit to herself that almost all of the examples were better than what she could have managed. With the way she delegated jobs and the fact most of the work she did was through a computer, Jessica rarely had to write anything down and, when she did, it was generally an untidy scrawl. She wondered if the children knew how little they would most likely have to use a pen as soon as they left education.

The sound of high-pitched chatter interrupted her thoughts and she turned to see a stream of youngsters walking through the door. Some of them were carrying chairs and by the time they had finished arranging themselves, the room was packed. Two other teachers stood at the back as the deputy head came to the front and introduced Jessica.

The students gave a resounding chant-like, ‘Good aft-er-noon, De-tec-tive Dan-i-el’ that was more creepy than anything else. Jessica tried to keep things simple in her speech, talking about how a criminal could be caught by fingerprints or their blood and then saying how they could get a warrant to read people’s emails or text messages. She didn’t want to go into too much depth and there were clearly areas of her job it wouldn’t be appropriate to talk to children about. After that, she reverted to the usual kind of speech a standard police officer might give, telling them about things like dialling 999 in an emergency.

When she began to see heads turning to look at the walls instead of her, she realised it was time to stop and let them ask questions. Jessica had been expecting the students to put their hands up but it was the deputy head that had the first query. ‘Why did you want to become a detective?’

Jessica almost felt as if she were the subject of a dreary magazine article but explained it had never really been an ambition and that applying to join the police force was just something she had done when she wasn’t sure what she wanted to do with her life. It was only once she was working as an officer in uniform, that she had decided to take the step up. She knew it didn’t really answer the question but there wasn’t a better explanation.

From the predictable dreariness of an adult’s question, the children’s queries were far more random and funny. The first, ‘Have you ever shot anyone?’ brought a few giggles from around the room and an apologetic ‘sorry’ from one of the teachers at the back. Jessica didn’t mind answering and struggled not to smile herself. She told the young boy she hadn’t shot anyone as there was a specialist firearms squad and she didn’t carry a weapon. That brought the perhaps inevitable follow-up question, ‘Have you ever wanted to shoot anyone?’

It took a little while for the youngsters to move away from questions relating to guns. Given the security gates below it could have been a little unsettling but there didn’t seem to be any malice, simply kids asking about the things they had no doubt seen on television. She was asked the fastest speed she had ever driven at and whether or not she knew someone’s dad because they were in prison along with a series of other things she couldn’t have predicted.

The final question was the one that tripped her up the most. A young girl near the back asked how they could get away with a crime. Jessica didn’t know if she was just talking about stealing sweets from a shop but either way she couldn’t responsibly answer the question. ‘You’ll always get caught,’ she said, not really believing it herself but at least feeling she might have put someone off committing a crime at such a young age.

After the children left for lunch, the various teachers thanked Jessica and she left to walk back to the station.

The last question had stuck with her because she knew the answer. If you wanted to get away with something, the best way was to make people like her think the crime was committed by someone else. If George Johnson had arranged for his wife to disappear, maybe that was where he had gone wrong? He had left them nothing to go on, instead of something misleading to follow up. With her case they had the woman in the black cloak from the very first day and Jessica wondered if that was where their problem lay? The hands were being left in public places for a reason and Jessica felt as if whoever was behind things wanted her to put the pieces together. There was definitely a degree of showing off, which the wave to the CCTV camera proved, but the full reasoning seemed beyond her.

As she walked, Jessica remembered her phone was still on silent. She took it out of her pocket and thumbed across the welcome screen, noticing she had a text message from Rowlands.

‘Call me, urgent.’

She pressed the button to phone his mobile and the constable picked up on the first ring. ‘Jess, are you on your way back?’

‘Yeah, I’m walking. I’ll be about five minutes.’

‘Are you all right?’

‘Why wouldn’t I be?’

‘Another finger has arrived for you.’

TWENTY-THREE

Jessica instantly asked the question she knew Rowlands wouldn’t have the answer to. ‘Whose is it? We’ve not found a hand.’

‘We don’t know. The forensics team have already been and gone. The envelope was exactly the same and the mail room staff got the DCI involved straight away.’

Jessica raised her voice. ‘Why didn’t anyone call me?’

Rowlands’ tone sounded softer than usual. ‘It was the DCI’s decision. I guess he thought there wasn’t much you could do anyway. None of us could because the science lot were called immediately. The finger and the envelope and all of that have been taken back to the labs.’

Jessica hung up without saying goodbye. She felt angry at not being called, even though there was nothing she could have added if she had have been. As she neared the station, she sat on a wall for a couple of minutes to compose herself. She realised the fury wasn’t something she felt against her colleagues, more towards the person who was sending her body parts. Jessica felt targeted but figured the only way she could escape those feelings was to find out what it was the person was trying to tell her.

Once at the station she acted as calmly as she could as Cole gave her the information she already knew. He put a hand on her shoulder and asked if she was okay. Jessica nodded and replied she was fine.

She had already decided what she wanted to do. ‘I know it’s loads of work but I’m going to take constables Rowlands and Diamond with me to look through CCTV footage from the past few mornings. Before this, we’ve only received fingers after a hand has been found so perhaps it’s still out in the open somewhere?’

‘What exactly are you going to look for?’ Cole asked.

‘Our woman in black I suppose – someone leaving the hand. If things follow the pattern of the others in that it happens early in the morning in a public place, we’ll hopefully come up with something. It’s going to be lots of locations to search through and it could have been left any time in the last few days.’

Cole nodded in agreement. ‘I have one other thing for you. The person from the labs who handled the package said the finger had a letter “A” tattooed just above the knuckle.’

Jessica crinkled her eyes in surprise. ‘Like the “love–hate” thing people put on their hands when they’re in prison?’

‘Possibly. If it’s a ring finger like the others, that could fit but the others were a right hand, so that would make it “hate” on the right hand and “love” on the left. It’s usually the other way around.’

‘You’re right. It’s worth looking at though. Can you spare me some officers?’

Cole shook his head. ‘Not many. How many do you want?’

‘Someone to update our missing persons list with anyone reported since the last time we went through it. After that, I want them to check the names against lists of former prisoners. It could end up being worthless but at least we’re ahead if it does turn out to be from a prison tattoo.’

‘Fine, you go do what you need to and I’ll set someone on this and give them your mobile number.’

After checking with the private security firm that there was space for three officers to invade their offices for an afternoon at least, Jessica drove Dave and Izzy the few miles into the city centre. She drove very carefully given it was apparently open-season on her abilities but that seemed to amuse Rowlands even more. ‘Who stole our DS and replaced her with my gran?’ he asked.

When she wasn’t having the mickey taken out of her, Jessica spent the rest of the journey briefing the constables about what was required. The company said they would set up three individual terminals so they could work separately. Between them, they put together a list of public spots in the city they would watch footage from. To start with, they were assuming the previous three locations wouldn’t be revisited.

The plan was to look at footage from dawn until eight in the morning from the past four days and to work their way through the list of places one by one. If they came up with nothing, they could either go for other locations, a wider time period or even days from further back. Jessica feared the worst in terms of wasting hours and coming up with nothing but began to feel a little more confident as they arrived. She was going to examine footage from the bus and train stations, while Izzy had the outside of the arena, theatres and the remaining public squares. Dave would look at cameras covering the streets around the shopping areas.

Jessica felt sure they would find something – it seemed too inconsistent for the finger to arrive before a hand had been found. It broke the pattern and, considering the way the person had worked in the past, that structure had been consistent.

With no second person to check what she was doing, Jessica kept the speed of the footage at double and watched two monitors at the same time. Izzy worked on two other screens at the back of the small office they were in while Dave was in the room next door. The two female detectives chatted despite having their backs to each other.

‘How was school this morning?’ Izzy asked.

‘Not too bad. All the kids just wanted to talk about shooting each other.’

The constable laughed gently. ‘My brother was all about toy guns and football until he became a teenager, then he’d lock himself in his room and play computer games all the time. Well, that and moan about girls not being interested in him.’

‘Maybe that was because he was in his room all the time?’

‘That’s what Dad used to tell him.’

Jessica had taken on one of the harder jobs because there were more people around the train and bus stations, even in the early hours of the morning. She stopped and scrolled back a piece of footage but realised the person who had grasped her attention was someone wearing a dark jacket.

‘How are things with Mal? He seemed nice enough on Saturday.’ Jessica said.

‘He’s still going on about kids. He ended up playing in this impromptu dads versus lads football game at the park while we were out. I think he was trying to make a point.’

‘I don’t know what to tell you. I’m terrified about being bridesmaid alongside two youngsters next month.’

‘It’s not just that,’ Izzy replied. ‘He wants to carry on working but for me to give all this up. I don’t know if I want to do that at all – but certainly not at the moment.’

‘Have you told him that?’

‘Sort of, it’s not easy. All our friends are expecting me to be pregnant soon as well. It’s part of getting married I suppose.’ There was a short pause before she added, ‘You got anything?’

‘Nothing. One particular cleaner who picks his nose and eats it but that’s not a crime.’

‘It bloody should be. The theatres I’ve been looking at have all had a homeless person sleeping next to them or in the doorways, even after the sun’s up. Maybe they feel safer because people can see them? I don’t know but I think I’m wasting my time with these.’

‘Do you want to start on something else? We can always go back to the theatres, I’m just wary of time.’

‘Yes, can you remember where that tech guy said the other feeds could be accessed from?’ Jessica paused her screens and walked across to her colleague. She brought up a new window with a list of available footage. ‘Thanks,’ Izzy said.

Jessica returned to her seat. ‘What are you going to go over?’

‘Hotels are next on our list.’

Jessica knew the constable didn’t mean every hotel but there were a handful around the city centre that had been converted from old buildings. The former Free Trade Hall on Peter Street was the site of a nineteenth-century massacre, as well as a place where famous musicians had given concerts and politicians made speeches. Others were actually listed buildings, while the tallest property in the city was also owned by a hotel chain.