DCI Farraday looked at her but she couldn’t read his face. There might have been concern but it could just be annoyance. ‘Are you going to be okay with that?’ he asked.
‘Yes, Sir. It’s fine.’
He looked back towards the centre of the room, trying to talk to the three of them at once, without singling any of them out. ‘We’re all senior detectives here and it’s us who have to set the example today. Jones was a colleague to us all and I know you must be feeling angry but we have a job to do.’
Jessica knew he was right but hearing her friend called ‘Jones’ sounded cold.
‘Do I think this is linked to the other deaths? I don’t know. We need to start by finding out if this is somehow connected to them and, of course, McKenna. That’s going to take time through the labs but, in the meantime, let’s start with Mills. Someone needs to go back to talk to the girlfriend and someone else needs to get digging. Talk to the other neighbours too. We know what his record is like but let’s really nail him.’
‘What about Carrie?’ Jessica asked, deliberately using her first name.
The DCI turned around to focus solely on her, his eyes narrowing. ‘We all want to push on and find out what happened but we’re going to have to wait for the results.’
‘Do you know her phone is missing?’ Jessica’s question brought an abrupt silence and she could feel the three men looking at her. ‘I checked the records,’ she continued. ‘It wasn’t found at the scene, it’s not on the body and she didn’t lose it in the taxi on the way home.’
Cole and Reynolds turned back to Farraday, who was staring at Jessica. ‘Assuming it wasn’t accidentally left off the Scene of Crime team’s list, she probably dropped it, or it’s in her house. I don’t see why this matters,’ he said.
Jessica met his eyes. ‘I think we should talk to the superintendent about asking the phone company to release her call and text records. Maybe the fact it’s missing is important.’
Farraday hadn’t stopped staring at her, his eyes thin and fixed. ‘I’ve seen that list too, Daniel and, given the fact her purse wasn’t taken, I think we can rule out theft as a motive. Her phone isn’t a priority and there are too many legal hoops to jump through to get those records released that will take people away from focusing on the real work.’
‘If it takes time, surely that’s why we should start the process now?’
The chief inspector stopped tapping his fingers on the desk and the room was silent. ‘Are you questioning my judgement?’
Jessica was prevented from saying something instinctive as Cole cut in. ‘I think we’ve all had a long night and are feeling a little emotional.’
She said nothing but refused to look away from her boss, daring him to take his eyes away first and wanting him to feel uncomfortable and know she was on to him.
Cole spoke again, trying to defuse the tension. ‘What are we going to do about the media?’
It was a question that couldn’t be ignored and Farraday finally stopped eyeing Jessica and turned to the inspector. ‘The press office have started putting together a statement. At the moment we’re going to avoid linking it to the previous cases until the lab results come back. If they put two and two together, there’s not much we can do. The office have said that if anyone wants to make a personal tribute or something similar to Jones, then they are compiling a few before putting out a separate statement later.’
He asked if anyone else had any questions but the three detectives stayed silent and the DCI sent them on their way, saying the four of them would give a briefing to the rest of the team in fifteen minutes. On their way down the stairs, Cole said something about staying calm but Jessica wasn’t listening. She walked straight out of the station, getting into her car, and calling Garry Ashford.
The journalist answered immediately.
Jessica knew she could have given a statement to the press office that would have been distributed with everyone else’s but she wanted to talk to someone she trusted. Garry had already heard about the killing and she told him she couldn’t pass on too many specifics about the crime scene. The truth was she didn’t trust herself to keep her suspicions about Farraday private. Instead she spoke about how highly she thought of the dead constable. She didn’t really know what she was trying to achieve. In one way it was a slight rebellion against the chief inspector by bypassing the press office but it also felt good to talk about Carrie’s best qualities. After speaking for ten minutes, she knew she had to be back at the main meeting and told Garry he could call her later if he wanted to.
The team briefing went well. The chief inspector formally told the officers what had happened the night before and said that, for now, they weren’t officially linking it to the other deaths at least until the lab results came back. DI Cole let everyone know where they were up to with the investigation, which wasn’t far, and handed out the jobs for the day.
Regardless of how she was feeling, Jessica knew Farraday had been right about them setting an example and when it was her turn to talk, she took a deep breath and spoke as calmly as she could manage.
‘I know a lot of you are angry and upset and want to get out there and find who did this but we have to work as the trained professionals we are. We need to be calm and level-headed and not make mistakes. If you’ve been given a job to do, you need to be able to do it to the best of your abilities.’
She paused for a moment to stop her voice from cracking. ‘There’s no shame in being upset and none of us have a problem if any of you need to speak to the counselling staff. But we need to be able to work on this like any other case and, instead of being consumed by our anger, we must use it to drive us and get things done. We all lost a friend this morning – now let’s show everyone what a fantastic team of people Carrie had around her.’
There was complete silence in the room as she finished talking. She felt a lump in her own throat and could see that a few of the officers in front of her seemingly had something in their eyes that needed wiping away.
Farraday dismissed everyone and Jessica returned to her office with Reynolds. With the door shut behind them, he opened his arms and hugged her tight. At first, she didn’t know whether to reciprocate but, despite them being two officers on duty, the moment felt right. After letting her go, he said he had been moved by the way she had talked to the room. It was nice of him to say but didn’t help with Jessica’s own feelings of anger. She had told the rest of the officers they could speak to the counselling staff if they wanted but knew she needed to above anyone. They were just a phone call away but she couldn’t bring herself to dial the number.
Jessica felt in a daze for the rest of the day. She’d had no time to grieve and hardly any sleep but spent the entire time working hard. In the back of her mind was Farraday. She knew it was paranoia but just because she recognised it, that didn’t necessarily mean it was misplaced.
The afternoon had been spent talking to Carrie’s other neighbours. They all said roughly the same thing; she was a joy to live next to and John Mills was a nightmare. None of them had heard anything the previous night.
After finishing taking the statements, Jessica went back to the station to type them up herself. It wasn’t the kind of work she was expected to do but she felt she had to keep going. The rest of the day crew had already gone home by the time she had finished, with some of the night officers openly asking if she wanted them to help her out so she could go. In the end, to get some peace, she closed the door to her office and turned the lights out, with only the glow of the computer monitor stopping the room from being completely dark.
She looked through all the information that had come in that day then re-read everything they already had on file from the previous deaths. Although the killings weren’t being officially linked yet, she knew they were, even if the lab results weren’t expected for at least another twenty-four hours. She wanted to see something in their records that would either confirm her suspicions about the chief inspector or make her realise she was overreacting.