There were still so many things she would have to figure out, not least how Donald McKenna tied into it all, but at least she knew who she was up against.
Jessica pocketed her own phone and Carrie’s, not even being careful to keep the mess that was on her hands from getting on her clothes. She put the lid down on the bin and stepped back towards the hedge line to walk towards the gate. She was almost halfway towards the exit when she froze. A car had turned off the road and its headlights were now shining through the gate. If she had been five yards further ahead, the lamps would have been pointing straight at her.
Jessica quickly walked backwards as she saw a silhouetted figure get out of the car and walk towards the gates. The person stood next to the box that was by the gate, presumably typing in some sort of code as Jessica dashed backwards towards the garage. She didn’t want to be caught by the headlights and moved into the alley that ran alongside the house.
There was a large plastic water butt next to a side door. Jessica was beginning to feel the pain in her ankle from where she had landed after jumping the gate. Each time she pressed down, she felt jolts flaming up through the joint. She could hear the car moving down the driveway and risked a look around the corner of the house but saw straight away she had made another error. The bin had initially been in an alcove next to the garage but she had bumped it so it was now partially blocking the door.
She watched as Farraday stepped out of the driver’s seat and walked towards the object. Jessica knew she should move backwards so there was no danger of being seen but instead felt transfixed. He pulled the bin backwards and Jessica thought he was going to move it back into place but then felt a twinge in her chest as he flipped the lid over and looked inside. She knew straight away there was something wrong. She had just dumped the torn-open bags on top and, instead of the sealed-up rubbish, he would have seen the unfiltered mess. The car lamps were illuminating the scene for her as she saw him reach in but quickly withdraw his hand, not wanting to touch what was inside. He closed the lid but stood next to the container apparently not knowing what to do.
Jessica crept backwards and hunched behind the water butt, grimacing because of the pain in her ankle and waiting to hear the garage door open or the engine rev again. Instead there was just the sound of the wind and the quiet hum of the car idling in neutral. The size of the water container shielded her from view but she felt watched. She didn’t want to risk peering around towards the end of the building. She closed her eyes and held her breath before finally hearing the garage door sliding upwards. She breathed out slowly as the car pulled in and then the door slid shut again. Jessica didn’t know if the man would have to come back out of the garage to go into the house or if there was an internal door. During the party they had all been to, she hadn’t really left the main living-room area.
Apart from the wind, Jessica couldn’t hear anything. She sat and waited, gently rubbing her ankle before eventually stepping back towards the side of the house. She almost expected to see the chief inspector standing beside the garage door as she looked around the corner but there was nothing. Gritting her teeth and ignoring the pain from her leg, Jessica ran as fast as she could to the gate. She could feel her ankle wanting to give way but ignored it, pushing off on her stronger leg and jumping up onto the gate. It had been much easier to get over the first time around but she used her shoulders and upper arms to pull hard on the top of the gate frames and haul herself over, carefully lowering herself down on the other side.
She didn’t look back as she half-ran, half-hobbled over to her car. She immediately realised that if Farraday had ever taken notice of the vehicle she drove, there was a good chance he would have seen it parked on the road as he pulled his own car in. But seeing as he didn’t seem to know anyone’s first name, that was far from a given.
She unlocked the door and slumped into the driver’s seat, finally feeling able to breathe properly. Jessica dug the key out of her pocket and realised for the first time just how dirty her hands and arms were. She turned the key and felt the engine roar to life but didn’t risk putting the headlights on.
Before she pulled away she looked back at the house and saw a lone silhouette standing in an upstairs window illuminated by the light from inside.
It took three people to ask if she was all right the next morning before Jessica finally snapped and launched into a barrage of swear words that would have shown them she definitely wasn’t.
She had showered when she got in the night before but barely slept, with vivid dreams waking her each time she dropped off. By the time she got to the station, it had almost become a game to add up how little sleep she’d had. She even wrote it down on the notepad she kept on her desk. Her head struggled with the maths but the computer’s calculator helped. She didn’t feel the same person as she wrote ‘6/48’ on the pad.
She estimated she’d had six hours of sleep in the last forty-eight – and that was being generous, adding up the ten minutes here and the fifteen minutes there from the night before.
For some reason she worked out how many hours that would equate to over a week, writing ‘21’ on the pad. Then she looked on an Internet site and read you were supposed to get eight hours’ sleep a night. Again using the calculator to do the maths, she wrote ‘56’.
You were supposed to sleep for fifty-six hours a week but she was on for twenty-one, not even a full day. Jessica looked at the numbers and let her eyes drift in and out of focus.
Her mobile phone beeped and stunned her out of the daze. It was another text message from Adam. She had deleted two more the night before but clicked to open the latest one.
‘RU OK? Miss U. Worried. Pls call. Ad. X’
She read the words over three times and then deleted the message.
In the hours since finding Carrie’s phone, Jessica didn’t know if the figure in Farraday’s upstairs window had seen her or not. A couple of times when she had woken up in the night she had reached out onto her nightstand to make sure Carrie’s phone was still there and that she hadn’t dreamed it. When she finally pulled herself out of bed feeling worse than she had when she got into it, she knew she was on her own. Unless DCI Farraday challenged her directly, she would say nothing to him and not risk testing his authority again.
Herself, Reynolds and Cole had their regular briefing with the chief inspector that morning and if he had recognised Jessica the night before, he didn’t say anything. The first set of autopsy results were back but all they showed was that DC Jones had bled to death due to the stab wound in her neck. The weapon was consistent with the knife that had been used to kill the other four victims but the lab team still had a lot to do.
John Mills had stabilised in hospital and his life was no longer under threat but the doctors still had no idea if he would regain consciousness. He too had been stabbed in the neck and once in the chest but nothing major had been hit. Jessica thought about the injustice that he could survive while her friend hadn’t.
After the briefing, she went back to her office and phoned the labs. Jessica asked the receptionist to put her through to the supervisor directly, knowing there would be no risk of having to talk to Adam.
The lab manager explained that it would be a while until any results would be available because there was such a jumble of blood at the scene. As well as that of DC Jones and Mills, the man’s girlfriend had contaminated the scene by touching the bodies before calling the police. There was also diesel on the driveway which had complicated matters and it would take time to separate it all out.