Woman in Black (3 page)

Jessica shook her hand. ‘It’s fine but call me Jess. I’m not big on formalities.’ She could see the sergeant had already made her mark. There were family photos placed in perfect rows on the desk and the keyboard and monitor had been moved so they were exactly perpendicular to edge of the table itself.

The woman was wearing glasses, which she hadn’t been earlier, but took them off and placed them on the desk. ‘Nice to meet you, Jess, I’m Louise.’

Jessica walked across to her side of the room and shoved a stack of folders away from her keyboard, trying not to knock anything onto the floor, then sat down. ‘It’s not always as mad as this.’

Cornish laughed. ‘I’d hope not. I didn’t move up here for the quiet life but I wasn’t expecting something like this on my first day.’

Jessica turned around to face her office mate. ‘Where did you come from?’

Cornish was watching her closely. ‘My husband James originally came from around here but we had been living in the Coventry area for almost ten years. I was a DS there but James’ father has been really ill over the past few years. We’ve got two kids and we both wanted them to get to know their grandfather before he gets too sick. I put in for a transfer over a year ago but it’s taken this long for things to work out.’

‘How old are your children?’

‘Nine and five. James looks after them while I go to work.’

Jessica realised she must have inadvertently pulled some sort of face because the woman instantly defended herself.

‘It was his decision…’

‘Sorry, I didn’t mean anything.’

The sergeant looked away, clearly annoyed, leaving Jessica to feel uncomfortable. Her reaction wasn’t deliberate but she realised how offensive it could have seemed. She didn’t have any strong feelings about child-rearing but there weren’t too many female officers who worked while their partners stayed at home with the children and the situation had caught her off-guard.

Cornish started typing on her keyboard and Jessica knew there wasn’t much more she could add. Within a couple of minutes of properly meeting her new office mate for the first time, she had put her foot in it.

Jessica turned back to her computer and logged into the system, bringing up the Internet browser and loading a couple of news websites. The ones she looked at were already running the still of the woman in black along with their contact number – a good sign – while the first TV news stories should have been aired within the past half-hour or so.

As she read, Jessica could sense a tense atmosphere in the office, the silence only broken by the tapping of keys on the two women’s respective keyboards, the odd click of a mouse and a faint hum of activity from elsewhere in the station.

Jessica logged out and stood. ‘I’m off to the press office if anyone comes looking for me,’ she said. Cornish nodded, mumbling an acknowledgement as Jessica left the room.

On the station’s basement level was the main incident room, some general-use computer terminals, the cells and a few private rooms for lawyers and others. The ground floor was where the main reception area was, as well as the senior officers’ offices. Jessica and Cornish’s was near the canteen, with Reynolds’ just down the hallway. The interview rooms and other private meeting areas were also on the floor along with the press office, Human Resources department and separate press conference room. Upstairs was Cole’s office as well as rooms visiting officers could use and a vast storage area.

As she made her way along the corridor, Jessica could hear a woman’s raised voice coming from the reception area. It wasn’t necessarily a surprise as most days involved at least one person getting angry in their entrance. Often it was someone who had a relative that had been arrested and wanted information or sometimes it was just a person who had been picked up for being drunk and was about to be stuck in a cell for a few hours to sober up. Jessica couldn’t hear anything specific but had to walk through reception to get to the press department.

As she moved, she tried not to catch the desk sergeant’s eye but he called her name out. ‘DS Daniel here might be able to assist you…’

Jessica looked at the officer as if to offer a sarcastic ‘thanks’ and then walked across to the woman who was next to the main reception desk. She was red in the face and looked somewhere between upset and angry. She was in her fifties, short with greying shoulder-length brown hair and wearing clothes that were far too tight for her. Jessica offered a thin smile in an effort to partially placate her. ‘Is everything okay?’

‘I’ve been trying to get someone to listen to me,’ she replied with a sigh. ‘I drove straight here after watching the lunchtime news. I know who your woman in black is.’

THREE

Jessica’s first thought was that the media had only been given a telephone number to pass on, not the address of the station. She guessed the reason the desk sergeant hadn’t immediately contacted either her or Reynolds was because he was trying to figure out if the woman was genuine or another in a long line of attention-seekers.

‘How did you know to come here, rather than call?’ Jessica asked.

‘I didn’t really,’ the woman stammered. ‘This is where I came when my son first went missing. I’ve been in a few times since but there are never any updates. When I saw the news today, I knew what had happened.’

Jessica tried not to appear too puzzled. ‘Okay, right. Do you want to follow me to a more private place?’ She turned and led the woman down a hallway towards one of the station’s meeting rooms. It was where they let witnesses who weren’t suspects sit before they were formally interviewed. Sometimes family members would be allowed to wait in the area. Jessica still wasn’t convinced the woman would have any useful information so wanted to talk to her first before deciding whether they would need to take a full statement.

The room was bright because of the overhead strip light but, despite the heat outside, it felt cold. Jessica opened the door and could hear the air-conditioning unit overhead working noisily. She tried not to shiver and offered the woman a seat. ‘Do you want a cup of tea or something?’ she asked.

‘No, I just want someone to listen to me.’

Jessica nodded, closed the door behind them and sat opposite the woman. ‘What’s your name?’

‘I’m Vicky Barnes, my son is Lewis and I think it’s his girlfriend January who’s your woman in black.’

‘Why do you believe that?’

The woman spoke quickly. ‘Lewis went missing around a month ago. He used to phone or text me every day but I’ve not heard from him. I went around to the flat they shared but January at first told me he was out. Then she changed her mind a few days later and said she hadn’t seen him either. I reported him missing to you lot but no one’s done anything. I always knew that druggie bitch was involved and then I saw her on the news in that cloak thing of hers.’ Jessica saw the woman’s bottom lip start to tremble. The last few words were barely audible. ‘Oh God, does this mean…?’

With the reports talking about a severed hand being found, it was a fair assumption the woman would now be contemplating the fact her son could be dead.

‘Mrs Barnes?’ Jessica put a hand on the woman’s shoulder.

There were a few tears running down her face but she was fighting to stay in control. ‘Yes?’

‘Why do you think the person in the black cloak is your son’s girlfriend?’

Vicky was trying to compose herself. ‘On the news they said the hand belonged to someone between twenty-five and thirty-five. Lewis is exactly thirty. January’s one of these Goth-weirdo types with long black hair and all that. She’s always wearing a hooded top thing that’s exactly like the one that was on the news. When Lewis went missing I just knew it was her.’

Jessica could see the woman was beginning to get angry again. ‘Mrs Barnes, what I’m going to do is ask an officer to come and sit with you for a bit. I’m going to check our files to see what we have on your son Lewis and his partner. Then I’ll come back and we’ll take a formal statement. Is that okay?’

The woman took a tissue out from the bag she was carrying and blew her nose. ‘Yes, thank you.’

‘Can you tell me the full name of your son’s girlfriend?’

‘It’s January Forrester.’

Jessica also took the couple’s address and was about to leave the room when the woman called her back. ‘Sorry, I forgot. Look, I brought this to show you.’ She reached into her bag and took out a photograph, holding it out for Jessica to take. It was a picture of a young woman in heavy make-up clinging to the arm of man. She was wearing a long black robe with a hood that looked a lot like the one from the footage. It was even the same length, the bottom ending just above the woman’s ankles. Both people were smiling widely and it seemed as if they were in a park of some sorts.

‘Is this Lewis and January?’

‘Yes.’

After arranging for a uniformed officer to sit with the woman, Jessica returned to her office. Cornish was sitting in exactly the same place she had been when Jessica left and didn’t move to acknowledge her colleague’s re-entry. Jessica sat at her desk and logged back into the system, muttering ‘come on’ under her breath as the computer took its time. Eventually she got through to the area she wanted and searched for ‘Lewis Barnes’. Everything his mother had told her was true – she had reported him missing in person four weeks ago to the day. From what Jessica could see, aside from the name being logged, very little else had been done other than someone scanning a photo into the system which had been uploaded onto the force’s website.

She closed the record and searched for ‘January Forrester’. The woman was twenty-six and had a criminal record. Jessica could see there were two thefts when she was still a teenager, a drunk and disorderly from two years previously and then, twice within the past year, charges of domestic violence that had been dropped before getting to court. Both incidents involved her hitting or scratching Lewis. From experience Jessica knew a lot of domestic violence cases never got as far as court whether it was a man hitting a woman, as most people would think, or the other way around.

Some people wanted to forget it had happened and went back to their partners, others were keen to move on with their lives away from the attacker. A few would take things as far as they could legally but, even with protection of witness programmes and being able to give evidence behind a screen in court, those were still the minority. Jessica was surprised no one had cross-referenced the missing persons report with the fact Lewis’ girlfriend had recent charges for domestic violence but things like that did sometimes slip through the net.

Jessica again turned the computer off and left the room to tell Reynolds what had happened. At the absolute least she thought they could bring January in for questioning and take a mouth swab from Mrs Barnes that would be tested to see if the hand belonged to her son.

The inspector wasn’t in his office so Jessica walked back through to reception where the desk sergeant pointed her towards Cole’s office. She made her way upstairs and instantly saw both the DI and DCI in conversation through the glass windows of the chief inspector’s room. As Cole noticed her, he waved her in. Jessica sat next to Reynolds across the desk from their boss. She started to tell him what had happened but didn’t get the chance as he spoke first.

‘I was about to come get you. Have you seen the news?’

‘The woman in black stills?’

Cole sounded concerned. ‘Not that. It’s George Johnson.’

‘The MP George Johnson? What about him?’

‘Yes, the Member of Parliament – his wife has gone missing. It’s the top story on the breaking news channels.’

‘Why didn’t we hear about this before?’

Reynolds answered. ‘He’s friends with the superintendent and went straight to him. It’s only just filtered down to us but he spoke to the cameras before anyone took a proper statement. The news crews are outside his house now and have started phoning here but we don’t have anything to tell them because we didn’t know ourselves until twenty minutes ago. We don’t even know how long she’s been gone or if they were separated or anything.’

‘Where does he live?’ Jessica knew he was the MP for the Gorton constituency which covered the Longsight station where they were based but that didn’t mean he lived in the area. Even if he was their representative, it wouldn’t be their case if he resided elsewhere.

Her hopes were instantly dashed as Cole spoke. ‘You know those giant houses on the edge of Platt Fields Park set back from the main road?’

‘Bollocks, so it’s ours then?’ Jessica replied.

‘I wouldn’t have put it quite like that but yes.’

In the years they had worked together, Jessica had never heard the DCI swear and rarely known him to raise his voice or shout. The incident in the briefing that morning was one of a single-digit number of times he had even looked like he might lose his temper when she had been around.

With the news about George Johnson’s missing wife, Jessica had almost forgotten why she had come upstairs in the first place. It came to her just as the chief inspector was about to start speaking. ‘Sorry, I remembered why I was here. A woman walked into reception, claiming she knows who our woman in black is. She says her son went missing a month ago and that his girlfriend has identical cloak.’

Jessica took the photo out of her jacket pocket and slid it across the desk. Cole picked it up and looked at it then turned it around for Reynolds to see. ‘Do you think she’s genuine?’

‘I have no idea but the son’s girlfriend has a record for DV. It’s probably worth bringing her in to speak to and taking a sample from the mother to see if the hand really does belong to her son.’

Cole leant back, exhaling loudly. ‘You’re probably right but Superintendent Aylesbury is obviously very keen on us at least trying to find Johnson’s wife.’ He paused, thinking through his options.

Detective Superintendent William Aylesbury had been the DCI at the station until a year and a half ago. Jessica hadn’t always got on with him but had just begun to see how good he was at his job when he had been promoted to the higher position. It meant he was no longer based at their station, instead overseeing the whole district.