Woman in Black (24 page)

In terms of the robberies, Jessica had worked on enough cases to know things should be fairly straightforward. Jordan’s record would probably be enough to get him remanded, while Erica was likely to get the same treatment because she used a knife. The level of planning, albeit a little unscientific, would go against them too and Jessica thought the pair would spend the months leading up to their Crown Court date behind bars despite their confession.

Things would still need to be checked and compared to her main case. Their house and car were being searched while some officers had already begun to see if there was a link from either of them to the missing victims. None of the hands offered any forensic clues as to who left them, so the two suspects’ DNA wouldn’t be any use from that point of view – but they did at least now have time.

With a regular suspect, they would only have the usual period of questioning before they had to charge or release, which was the problem they had run into when January was in custody. Because the pair were likely to be remanded, if anything unexpected did turn up when they were trying to link them to the victims, they would at least know where the duo were.

Jessica charged Erica with robbery and the woman was led back to the cells. The two would be appearing in the magistrates’ court the following morning.

She went back through to the main area and found Dave and Izzy, who had been tasked with looking into the pair’s backgrounds. ‘Have you found anything to link them to the hands?’ Jessica asked after they found a quiet corner.

The two constables shook their heads almost in unison and it was Izzy who spoke. ‘Nope, neither of them are on our college-leavers’ list and they’re both too old anyway. Erica was brought up out of the area and seemingly only moved here a couple of years ago. Jordan comes from around here but we’ve not got anything that says he knows any of the victims let alone might have a grievance against them.’

Jessica nodded. ‘I thought we’d probably struggle. There’s no violence on either of their records and they don’t seem the type. To be honest, they’re too stupid.’ The two constables exchanged knowing smiles and Jessica continued. ‘You are going to have to keep working on this for a little while though. Check everything and let’s make it official. I don’t want us to miss something and end up looking like fools but I don’t want to waste days looking into something we know is a blind alley either.’

‘How are you anyway?’ Rowlands asked. ‘It’s been a mad few days.’

Jessica nodded. ‘You’re right about that and, because of you, I’ve got to spend tomorrow morning at a bloody primary school talking about careers. I thought it was older kids until I read the email properly.’

‘Can’t someone else go?’ Izzy asked.

‘Are you volunteering?’

‘No…’

‘Jack says it can’t be anyone working on the Christine Johnson case and he wants someone senior. He reckons the super wants it both ways. He doesn’t want any officers taken from the Johnson inquiry but wants us to keep up this community engagement thing. Did you see the coverage the fete got in the paper the other day? They gave that more space than when we were trying to get them interested in the severed hands.’

‘I didn’t see you in any of the pictures,’ Dave said.

‘Yeah, sod that. Because I wasn’t in uniform the photographer didn’t realise I was involved. I went and hid next to some of the parents as he snapped away.’

The two constables laughed in unison. ‘Do you have to give a speech tomorrow?’ Izzy asked.

Jessica realised she had no idea. ‘I bloody hope not.’

Their conversation was interrupted by a young out-of-breath constable in uniform arriving and tapping Jessica on the shoulder. ‘Are you all right?’ Jessica asked.

‘Yeah, they want you back. It’s something to do with the Erica Tomlinson woman.’

‘Where is she?’

‘One of the interview rooms. She’s been asking for you but we weren’t sure where you were.’

Jessica quickly retraced her steps and was surprised to see Cole sitting in the interview room as she entered. She looked quizzically at him but he simply nodded towards Erica, who was sitting next to her solicitor on the opposite side of the table.

‘I hear you’ve been asking for me?’ Jessica said.

‘Yeah, you were saying earlier about being able to stay out of prison for cooperating and that?’

Jessica pursed her lips. ‘Sort of, I said you might get a lesser sentence if you confessed and gave us the details. It wouldn’t be up to us – you still robbed two places carrying a knife and that means you should go to custody.’

‘What if I had information?’

‘It depends what it was about.’

The woman looked nervously to her solicitor then back at Jessica. ‘What if I told you who arranged for that politician’s missus to go missing?’

TWENTY-TWO

One of the first rules of interviewing suspects was to give nothing away but, if it had been a game of poker, Jessica knew full well the whole room would know she had a flush. She wheeled around to face Cole, who had barely suppressed his surprise either.

‘Sorry, can you repeat that?’ Jessica asked.

‘I know who sorted it for the politician’s wife to disappear. I dunno if she’s dead but I know who paid for it.’

‘How do you know this?’

‘I just know people. You hear them talking.’

Jessica was trying to stay calm. ‘Who did you hear talking?’

‘I’m not telling you that.’

‘Okay, so what do you know? Do you know where she is?’

Erica continued to stare at the table. ‘No, I don’t know any of that. I don’t know who took her either but I know who arranged it and why.’

‘Do you have evidence or is it just something you’ve heard?’

‘Something I heard – but the person won’t be wrong.’

Cole leant forward and looked at Erica’s solicitor. ‘We’re going to need a few minutes.’ The two officers left the room, shutting the heavy door behind them and crossing into a nearby room they used for witnesses. It was stifling as they walked across the threshold. The air-conditioning was still not working and, although fans were cooling the interview room, the room they had gone into had none of that.

Jessica used her hand to fan her face as she spoke. ‘What do you reckon?’

‘She’s never going to get what she wants regardless of what she thinks she knows. If she knew who took Mrs Johnson, why they took her and where the woman is, whether she’s alive or dead, then maybe the CPS would talk about things. All she says is that she knows who arranged for it and she won’t even tell us who told her. I think she’s seen too much American TV. It doesn’t work like that here.’

Jessica shrugged. ‘Are you going to talk to the super?’

‘Yes, let’s go back and tell her she’s got no chance first and see if she’s got anything else to add. I don’t know what her solicitor thinks he’s playing at.’

The two detectives walked back into the interview room and sat down. ‘I think there might be a bit of confusion here,’ Jessica said. ‘If you’re going to confess to the robberies in court, they will sentence you. All we can do is tell the people prosecuting you that you’ve been extremely helpful. We’ve had a chat and, in all honesty, neither of us are convinced you’ve got any information you can help us with. Even if you knew where Mrs Johnson was, or who took her, we still couldn’t drop the charges. It doesn’t work like that.’

The woman glanced at the table then scratched her head before nodding towards the solicitor sitting next to her. ‘That’s what he said.’ Jessica looked at the DCI but, before they could say any more, Erica spoke again. ‘It was the husband.’ The tone was lower and softer than the woman’s previous words.

‘Sorry?’ Jessica said.

‘It was the husband who wanted rid of her – the one that’s been all over TV. He paid some people to get rid of her. He’s got some other woman somewhere.’

‘Who told you?’

‘I’m not saying. I don’t know anything else, that’s it.’ She looked to her solicitor. ‘Can I go back downstairs now?’

Erica refused to add anything else and, after she had been returned to the cells, Cole called both Reynolds and Cornish back to the station and told them what had been said. The information was nothing they could use as evidence but, at the same time, the robbery suspect had ended up giving it to them voluntarily. She didn’t have a reason to lie as they hadn’t promised her anything.

Jessica knew officers had discreetly been looking into a situation such as the MP himself being involved but hadn’t come up with anything. It was an awkward thing to examine because they would need a warrant to look at items like bank records, phone logs or emails and, at least until the current moment, the situation hadn’t reached that far. Even if they did get that paperwork, they all knew the politician would have had to be pretty careless to leave a trail. The chief inspector said he would ask DSI Aylesbury what he thought but even that was complicated as he was apparently friends with George Johnson. The priority was still to track down the red van that had been parked outside the gates. Reynolds said they had a likely make and model, which would be shared with the media, but that trying to go via the Royal Mail’s own records of vehicles sold wasn’t getting them anywhere as the files were so patchy across the different areas. All in all, the inspector was undeniably correct when he pointed out that everyone was struggling.

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

The following morning, Jessica had to go to the school for the careers day. She had found out the previous evening that she was expected to give some sort of talk, which might have been useful information to have had a few weeks ago.

It was a late-morning start at the school and, just before she was getting ready to leave the station, news came through via the desk sergeant that magistrates had remanded both Erica and Jordan. In the end, their legal teams hadn’t objected to the refusal of bail, which meant there wouldn’t be any appeal against the decision either.

While that had been going on, it had been more or less accepted that neither were credible suspects to have left the hands. Apart from the cash relating to the first burglary, nothing of note had been found at their house and no connection had been found between either of them and the missing victims. Jessica left Rowlands working through the list of almost a hundred college-leavers to find as much information as possible on each one. A lot of the basics had already been discovered, such as current addresses, but there were still a few they hadn’t had time to look into.

The school wasn’t far from the station and Jessica decided she would walk, hopefully giving her time to figure out what she was going to say. Her own primary school had been one of two in the Cumbrian town she lived in. All of the children on one half of town went to one, while the other school housed the rest. It led to some very competitive sports days but, as there was only one high school, they all ended up going to the same place in the end.

Jessica walked through the school gates into a reception area where a secretary told her she would have to have her identification checked for security purposes. Along with the huge metal railings that ran around the perimeter of the building, it was certainly a change from the school she had gone to. The district it was in wasn’t one of the best in the city but it was nothing compared to some of the ones you read about. Despite that, there was still a metal-detecting gate just inside the doors and a table on either side where bag searches were carried out.

The receptionist finally put her phone down and gave Jessica back her identification. A few moments later a woman came into the area. She had short black hair and walked quickly, almost as if the speed she moved at had to be ruthlessly efficient. She was wearing a bright green cardigan, which clashed with a navy-blue knee-length skirt, and she stretched out a hand for Jessica to shake. The woman introduced herself as the deputy head teacher and led Jessica up a set of stairs to the staff room. The overwhelming smell of coffee drifted from the room as Jessica sat on a low material-backed chair, turning down a hot drink.

When she had made herself a cup of tea, the teacher sat opposite her and started. ‘The students you’re here to speak to are all in year six and in their last few weeks at this school. They head off to secondary school in September. They’re all either ten or eleven years old so shouldn’t give you too much trouble. They’re at that age where they have enough of an attention span as long as you only talk for five or ten minutes but not at the point where the hormones have gone crazy.’

‘What’s with all the security gates downstairs?’ Jessica asked.

The woman shrugged sadly. ‘A sign of the times. Some year five pupil brought a knife to school eighteen months ago and threatened another child. I don’t think he even knew the damage he could do. The governors decided every student should have to pass through a metal detector on their way in now and we have to pay for security guards to stand around.’

‘That’s just…wrong.’ Jessica meant the situation, not the fact the scanners had been put in but the teacher knew what she was getting at.

‘I couldn’t agree more but it’s one of those things. It will be everywhere in a few years.’

‘How does today work then?’

After another sip of her tea, the teacher continued. ‘We’ve organised someone from a different profession to come in every day this week and again next week. There are around forty students. You just need to talk for a few minutes about what you do. Obviously you know the children are still quite young so please don’t be too explicit. We had a fire marshal in yesterday and a journalist is coming tomorrow. The day after that, we’ve got a local author. We’ve got a doctor and a chef next week. It’s not really to get them thinking about jobs specifically – more about the types of thing they like doing. They have to start choosing school subjects to focus on in a while, so it’s just to give them something to reflect on over the summer.’

‘That doesn’t sound too bad actually. I didn’t have a clue what I wanted to do when I left school.’

‘We’ve been doing it for a couple of years now. Are you sure you don’t want a coffee?’