7

Sunday night hadn’t ended in the way Jessica thought it would. The top headline on the Herald’s website had read: ‘MURDERED IN HER OWN HOME’. Underneath that was: ‘LOCKED DOOR MYSTERY’ and the byline: ‘EXCLUSIVE by Garry Ashford’.

Pretty much all the details were there: the victim’s name, the fact the house was locked and that the police had taken two days to respond to Stephanie Wilson’s concerns. That sounded bad straight away. The journalist had also spoken to Mrs Wilson, who had blabbed pretty much everything she had already told them.

Worse than that, he had quoted her: ‘Detective Sergeant Jessica Daniel insisted she had no extra comment to make.’ There was even a complimentary line about her being ‘trusted to head up the inquiry’. That write-up almost certainly meant her bosses were going to think she was the leak. They were going to hit the roof and, seeing as the journalist had phoned her the day before, if Internal Investigations were involved, they would see his phone number on her records.

Jessica still had Garry’s details in her mobile’s previous callers list and, figuring she could be in enough trouble already, phoned him back as she left the pub to walk home. She wasn’t sure whether to go straight in with the full barrage of swear words or to build up in a particularly obscene crescendo. Afterwards, she couldn’t quite recall the full details of the one-sided conversation but definitely remembered promising to do something not at all pleasant with his lower intestines and quite possibly inventing a host of new curses.

She had arrived at the station earlier than usual on the Monday to be greeted by a hard copy of the paper sitting on the reception desk in front of that morning’s desk sergeant. The headline was the same on the print version as it was online, except the article itself was even more terrible than she thought. Jessica saw that, in the absence of any photos of the victim, they had used a picture of her. Worse still, it was a horrible passport-type photo the press office had taken to use on the force’s website.

Under a big banner headline about a murder, she was there grinning like an idiot. Just as she thought her morning couldn’t get much worse, Jessica saw Detective Chief Inspector William Aylesbury bounding through the big double doors into reception.

Most people called William would have the good grace to let you call them ‘Will’ or ‘Bill’. A huge majority would even prefer it but not the DCI. She called him ‘Sir’ of course but, when he introduced himself to anyone, he would pronounce every last syllable of Will. I. Am. Ay. Les. Bury. He would roll the letter ‘r’ as if he were royalty.

He was certainly one of those types who followed the family trade into the police force. His father and grandfather had been senior officers in the Met, while his son had recently joined Greater Manchester Police’s uniformed ranks based at a different station. She had no doubt he would be superintendent in no time with the current one, DSI Dominic Davies, well-known to be retiring in under twelve months.

He was in his early fifties with short grey hair but could have passed for someone ten years younger given the way he looked after himself. He was tall and imposing when he wanted to be and almost always perfectly turned out with expensive-looking suits.

‘Been making friends with the press, have we?’ Aylesbury said, indicating the paper in Jessica’s hand that she hadn’t been quick enough to put down.

He beckoned her into a meeting along with Cole and the woman in charge of press relations. Jessica told them she had spoken to Garry Ashford on Saturday afternoon but only because he had called her. She explained she had not given away any details and didn’t know how the information had appeared in that morning’s paper, although pointed out there were plenty of people who had been at the crime scene.

She was pretty sure Cole believed her but Aylesbury was far too hard to read and the press officer definitely didn’t buy it. The woman stared daggers throughout the meeting but, given she was outranked by everyone present, that was about as much dissatisfaction as she could get away with. Jessica’s opinion of the DCI improved a tiny amount when he dismissed the press officer and told her and Cole he would inform Internal Investigations there was no need to be involved.

They had the powers to start an inquiry regardless of what the chief inspector thought but seeing as nothing had been leaked that was likely to compromise the inquiry – and that he was backing her for now – it seemed probable they would listen to his advice.

That meeting led straight into a second one with the three of them, which was how her morning would have started if it wasn’t for the newspaper story. The next discussion was about how the case would run. Aylesbury confirmed Cole would work from the station with Jessica reporting directly to the inspector, who would keep him up to date.

After that the three of them went downstairs for the main team briefing. They were standing at the front of the station’s large meeting room, with no natural sunlight in the basement hall – the only illumination being provided by bright white strip lighting. Sometimes on the night shift, officers would come to sit in this room just to be kept awake. The whole of the station’s force had been called in to be told what was happening, including most of the uniformed officers. A couple of detectives from neighbouring districts had been loaned to the station, as often happened with murder cases. In all, there were between twenty and thirty people sitting on uncomfortable-looking plastic chairs, or standing near the doors at the back, sipping on cups of coffee, waiting to be filled in.

Behind the three of them were two huge whiteboards pinned to the wall. At the top in the middle of the left-hand one was an enlarged photo of Yvonne Christensen’s neck wounds, next to a recent photo to show how she had usually looked. Her name was written underneath in marker pen, along with the husband and son’s in smaller writing under that.

Jessica thought Aylesbury sounded quite impressive as he spoke, despite his over-pronunciation. He started by reminding everyone of their responsibilities in not talking to the media without prior permission, then thanked everyone for being there and said he had every faith they would catch the person responsible. He told them Cole would be their link person at the station and then handed the floor over to Jessica.

He gave her a full introduction for the benefit of the visiting officers but they would have known exactly who she was because of the ridiculous photo of her gurning on the front of that morning’s paper. Jessica thanked her boss, ignoring the murmurings of amusement from the officers standing in front of her, and then explained how the house had been found locked up.

After that, she moved on to the morning’s developments. ‘We’ve got the initial results back from the labs but there’s not an awful lot to go on,’ she said. ‘We know Yvonne Christensen was killed some time late on Tuesday night or in the early hours of Wednesday which all fits in with Stephanie Wilson’s timings. She was strangled with some type of steel rope or wire but we don’t have anything more specific on that. They have been running tests on the bed sheets and the body but haven’t yet found any samples that don’t belong to the victim.’

‘Do we know why she was in the bedroom?’ someone asked.

Cole answered. ‘Probably. If you were being strangled, the obvious thing you would do is try to pull away the other person’s hands or the rope but there are no cuts to the victim’s fingers. Given that and the estimated time of death, it seems likely she was throttled in her sleep. If she did wake up, it would have been too late.’

Jessica nodded along and then carried on speaking. ‘Obviously this makes it more difficult to figure out what actually happened. Even if the victim had let someone in we wouldn’t know how he or she got out. Because of the findings, it seems very unlikely the killer was a person she opened the door to. The obvious answer is that either her estranged husband or son was involved. As far as we know they are the only family members still alive but there are no life insurance policies in place and no other obvious motive.’