8

Jessica went to the station the next morning with the intention of getting into a marked car with Cole and heading back to the prison. She walked to the detective inspector’s office but saw he was on the phone. He looked up, seeing her in the doorway, and waved her into the room. She could only hear his half of the conversation and couldn’t figure out what he was talking about.

After a few moments he hung up. ‘Ready to set off?’ Jessica asked.

‘There might be a problem with that.’

‘How do you mean? Was that the prison?’

‘No. Someone from North Manchester.’

The GMP’s regular forces were divided up into around a hundred areas, each served by their own neighbourhood station, but the CID departments’ jurisdictions were much wider and separated into North, South, East, West and Metropolitan. Jessica worked for the Metropolitan branch, generally dealing with anything central. There were sometimes tensions between the five divisions, usually over who controlled certain areas, but nothing too serious. Metropolitan were often caught in the middle simply because geographically they were literally in the centre. Crimes could originate in the centre of the city but then there would be obvious links to cases that had begun to be worked on by one of the other branches. Occasionally it worked in reverse but not that often.

‘Why were they calling here?’

‘Someone up there actually has a brain.’

‘That’s the first I’ve heard of it.’

Cole gave a half-laugh. ‘They’d read about Craig Millar’s murder and the details had stuck with them.’

‘Because of some case from the past?’ Jessica’s instant fear was that another situation she had just started to get her teeth into was going to be snatched away because of internal politics.

‘No, far from it. Two fresh bodies were found last night. Some DC was writing up his notes and spotted that the way the pair were stabbed to death seemed very similar to how Craig Millar was killed. He was phoning me to see if things sounded familiar.’

‘Did they?’

‘One knife wound to the neck, two to the chest?’

‘On both of them?’

‘No, just one but it seems close enough. Then he told me the two names.’

‘Go on.’

‘Desmond Hughes and Benjamin Webb.’

‘You’re joking?’ Jessica recognised the names as easily as she had Craig Millar’s. Cole shook his head.

‘So three of Manchester’s most prolific criminals have been taken out within a week of each other?’ Jessica added.

‘Looks like it.’

Jessica shook her head in disbelief. ‘Wow . . . so what’s happening now?’

‘The Scene of Crime boys have taken the bodies and I guess we’re back waiting for test results again. If there’s anything to directly connect our killer to theirs then we’ll have something pretty serious on our hands.’

‘It can’t be a coincidence though, can it? Killed in a similar way and all three with lengthy records.’

‘You wouldn’t have thought so, would you? It would seem to rule the Wright brothers out too.’ Kevin and Phil Wright had been bailed the previous week and weren’t really considered suspects for Craig Millar’s murder but hadn’t been formally excluded either. If these new killings were confirmed as the work of the same person, it would make their involvement even more unlikely.

‘What do you reckon, organised crime?’

Cole shook his head again. ‘No way. It’s not clinical enough. If it were something like that, it would either be far more brutal or there’d be a gun or something. Plus these three might be thugs and nuisances but they’re hardly criminal masterminds, are they?’

Jessica nodded in agreement and breathed out heavily. ‘Did the guy say if the Scene of Crime team found anything on the bodies?’

‘Nope . . . but I guess you’ve got a little friend who could tell you.’ Cole had a serious look on his face throughout their conversation but, with the last remark, he broke into a grin. ‘What was his name, Adam?’ he added mischievously.

Jessica felt herself blushing slightly. ‘Something like that,’ she said, trying to sound calm.

Cole went to tell Farraday about the development as Jessica made her way into the office she shared with Reynolds. Her colleague was already there at his spotlessly clean desk, typing on the keyboard.

Reynolds had been in the job quite a while longer than her. He was black and heavily built but outwardly gentle with it. He was well known as a bit of a wind-up merchant but a really good detective. Jessica often used him as someone to bounce ideas off, even though they rarely worked together directly. He was currently investigating a case involving a string of assaults on students. His theory was that there was some sort of local gang initiation ritual linked to it all but it was difficult to get information either way. Often the students would be drunk or embarrassed, so trying to tie one thing to the other was hard.

She wanted some privacy for her call, so made a quick excuse and walked through to the canteen. Jessica found an empty table in the corner and took her phone out of her suit jacket’s pocket. She hadn’t contacted Adam since the text message and felt a bit awkward. Although she was phoning him for professional reasons, he would most likely ask her about that ‘coffee’. Jessica hadn’t been planning to give him a proper answer but figured she would have to come up with something. She pressed the screen to dial his number. It had barely rung once when he answered.

‘Hello.’

‘Adam?’

‘Yeah, hi.’ He sounded a little nervy but certainly enthusiastic.

‘It’s Detective Sergeant Jessica Daniel. Have you got a couple of minutes?’ She made sure she emphasised her title as if to point out it was a phone call relating to the job.

Adam didn’t take the hint. ‘Oh great. I’m quite busy but I can talk for a bit.’

‘I understand you might have a couple of new arrivals to be working on?’

‘Huh? Oh right . . . Are they yours?’

‘They might be. Have you found anything?’

Adam’s tone lowered as the penny dropped that Jessica was calling for business reasons. ‘Sort of. My boss is on it now. I’m about to go through and help. There’s all sorts on the bodies though. It looks like they’ve both been stabbed but one of them has blood on his knuckles too. It’s going to take a bit of sorting out. I doubt you’ll get any results today apart from formal IDs.’

‘What do you mean, “blood on his knuckles”?’

‘Just that. It looks like he’s been fighting. It’s hard to tell. I don’t want to tell you something that might not be true.’

‘Fair enough. Can you call me if you get anything?’

‘Er, we’re supposed to call it back through to the division it came from first.’

‘I know but I’m asking you to call me.’

‘All right.’ There was an awkward pause broken by Adam. ‘Did you get my text?’

He obviously knew she had.

‘Yeah. It’s pretty mad here at the moment though. I don’t really drink coffee either.’

‘Oh, right . . . ’

Adam sounded disappointed and Jessica felt a little bad. She sighed silently to herself and took a deep breath. ‘How are you fixed for Sunday evening?’ she added.

Adam’s response was instant, his words blending together as he spoke too quickly. ‘Yeah, brilliant, that’s great. I’ll see you there.’

‘Er, where? Do you want to sort out somewhere to meet?’

‘Oh right, yes.’

‘I’ll text you something, okay?’

‘Yeah, of course. Sorry, yeah. Sorry.’

Jessica hung up and giggled quietly to herself. He had given her something to start on though. She went back to her office and logged on to her computer to look at the details that had already been entered for Webb and Hughes. She saw the area the bodies had been found in and clicked through to check details of the previous evening’s emergency calls. There were the usual things she would expect to see but then one particular log jumped out at her: an incident in a snooker club where two men had been assaulted. It was the only call that seemed serious enough to perhaps be linked to Webb and Hughes, given the area their bodies had been found in. If one of them had fresh blood on his knuckles, it would either be from something unreported – or the record she had in front of her. She wrote down the details and picked up the phone, knowing she would have to play a little internal politics herself.