Locked In

Jessica Daniel Book 1

by KERRY WILKINSON

When a body is found in a locked house, Detective Sergeant Jessica Daniel is left to not only find the killer but discover how they got in and out.

With little in the way of leads and a journalist that seems to know more about the case than she does, Jessica is already feeling the pressure and that’s before a second body shows up in identical circumstances to the first.

How can a murderer get to victims in seemingly impossible situations and what, if anything, links the bodies?

Copyright © 2011 Kerry Wilkinson All rights reserved.

Second Edition: October, 2011

The killer used a gloved hand to try the front door handle one final time and make sure it was locked. The back door and windows had already been checked and there was definitely no way in – a good thing considering the body was already dead on the bed upstairs.

Now the first part was complete, the months of careful planning that led to this night finally seemed worth it. Getting into a locked house and back out again wasn't simple on the surface but, once the idea had been struck upon, everything had happened so easily.

The hardest part had been the final act. Until the moment the life had been choked out of the victim, the killer hadn't been sure they could actually complete the deed. Murdering someone wasn't easy but it had been necessary.

There was no regret, no feelings of anything really. The victim certainly deserved it, as would the others to come.

Jessica Daniel screwed her eyes tightly shut and thought about how much she hated morning people. For some, the dawn sun spilling through ridiculously thin curtains would herald a bright new day full of opportunity but, for her, it was just a reminder she
still
hadn’t asked her landlord to fix some better blinds.

Admitting she had lost the battle to stay asleep, she fumbled around for her mobile phone on the table next to her bed. It was always the first point of call in the morning, if only to remind her how little she had going on in her life. She opened her eyes slowly and struggled with the device’s unlock button, before bashing away at the supposedly touch screen front. It only seemed to function to any great degree if your definition of “touch” was actually, “poke very hard until it does what you want”.

She had no texts, no missed calls and the only emails were ones offering her enhancements she definitely wouldn’t be needing without far more invasive and complicated surgery first.

Marvellous.

Jessica went to put the phone back on the nightstand but, before she could, it started to ring. She cursed herself for setting the ringtone to some upbeat pop tune she didn’t even like, the chirpy song really wasn’t suitable for this time of the morning. Her eyes were still seeing a hazy grey around the edges but the caller id clearly showed Detective Inspector Jack Cole’s name. Jessica looked across at the digital alarm clock next to the bed which flashed 06:51. She was pretty sure it was a Saturday too, which just made things worse.

She had been promoted to Detective Sergeant eight weeks ago and calls like this were something she knew she was going to have to get used to. When people were in a more junior position they could often get away with just working regular shifts but now early-morning wake-up calls could be expected more often.

‘Hello,’ Jessica said into her phone, trying not to sound too groggy.

DI Cole didn’t sound much more awake than she did, which at least didn’t mark him down as a morning person either. He told her “something big” had happened but he wasn’t completely sure of the details and tried to give her an address.

She would happily describe herself as messy and disorganised but the one thing she had remembered to do in the past two months was keep a pad and a pen next to her bed just in case of a moment like this. DI Cole started to give her the details and she tried to write them down. At first she just thought her eyes were still struggling with the early hour but then realised her confusion was down to the fact the pen wasn’t working.

‘Hang on, hang on,’ she said, opening the drawer underneath her nightstand just in case there was a spare pen there.

There wasn’t.

It was typical that, even when she had gone out of her way to be organised, things didn’t quite work out. She asked the inspector to send her a text message with the details instead then hung up.

DI Cole was Jessica’s immediate superior and had been promoted at the same time she had. She had always got on fine with him when they had been in more junior roles. He was a decent guy but perhaps just a bit too nice. He was about as normal a bloke as you could ever meet, one of those people whose descriptions you always hated when you were taking statements from a witness. He was average height and weight, with sensible short brown hair and always wore regular unassuming clothes. He didn’t wear glasses or sport any distinguishing scars or facial hair. Even his voice was exactly as you would expect.

In fact, the only thing not really regulation about DI Cole was that he had what most officers didn’t seem to, a proper family life. He was in his mid-forties and married, seemingly happily, with two children. He had family days out with them, still took his wife out for meals and to the cinema and booked his time off sensibly so they could all have weekends away together. Unlike pretty much every other officer, he didn’t drink and Jessica had never heard him swear. Perhaps that was normal to most people but it was anything-but for the job they had.

DI Cole liked working from his desk and saw any real interaction with criminals, witnesses or anyone out of the station as something he would rather not be involved with. To some it showed he didn’t like to get his hands dirty but Jessica understood he just had strengths in different areas.

Sitting on the edge of her bed, Jessica ran her hands through her long dark blonde hair thinking that it needed a wash, as it always seemed to. There was definitely not going to be time for that this morning though. She pulled it back into a loose ponytail and hunted around her room for some suitable clothes.

She thought most of her colleagues took “plain clothes” a bit too literally. Even the younger blokes seemed to take the title “detective” as a chance to start clocking up department store loyalty points with a wardrobe seemingly consisting of identikit dull suit jackets and a pair of chinos. The only difference between the younger guys and the veterans seemed to be the width of their ties. The new guys would start off with skinny monstrosities around their necks but, the longer they spent turning up in those dreary suits, the wider their neckwear seemed to become.

Jessica knew she couldn’t take things too far and still wore a suit to work each day but at least it wasn’t the same one with an egg stain on the pocket, unlike a certain colleague or two she could think of. The detective also made sure she dressed something like her age; she was still only thirty one after all. Hunting through her wardrobe, Jessica pulled out a light grey suit to put on and, just to be a hypocrite, a blouse straight from the floor.

Jessica lived in the Hulme district, just south of the main centre of Manchester. It wasn’t too bad an area, far enough away from the pubs and clubs and the full-on student areas to be able to sleep through the early hours and only ten minutes’ drive to her team’s Longsight base. Far more important than all of that was the fact it was close enough to the curry mile to pick up a good Madras without too much hassle.

DI Cole had messaged Jessica an address in Gorton, on the east of the city. It took her just over fifteen minutes to drive, despite the roads being fairly quiet. There wasn’t too much in the way of traffic but, as ever, the traffic lights constantly seemed to be red. She also nearly ran over some student-type who looked like she was making the dreaded Saturday morning walk of shame. There didn’t seem to be any other reason for a girl in a short purple dress to be walking bare-footed across a main road holding some impossibly tall heels in her hand. Jessica wondered if the girl had actually had a good night as she crunched down through the car’s gears after swerving around her.

The detective’s bright red K-reg Fiat Punto was her pride and sometimes-joy, even if it didn’t give her much pleasure on the cold winter mornings when it wouldn’t start no matter how much she kicked and swore at it. She had been given it as a present for passing her theory test from her mum and dad over ten years ago and had learned to drive in it. It was an attachment to easier, less serious days. How it was still on the road was a mystery far beyond Jessica’s detective skills. The exhaust was perhaps the only thing loud enough to wake her flatmate and best friend Caroline up, while the MOTs were expensive and the piss-taking from colleagues was relentless.

Even her dad gave her stick about it. “We only bought that as a first car, you know?” he would say to her. “You earn a decent salary now…”

Well she earned a
salary
now that was for sure and, as long as they could get her from A to B, or at least close to “B”, she wasn’t really that bothered about cars. In an emergency, she had access to the patrol’s pool of vehicles and, rusting heap or not, it was at least
her
rusting heap.

Jessica pulled up behind two patrol cars outside the address. It wasn’t too far off the main road, fairly close to the speedway stadium. Luckily her superior had sent the basic directions too. She got out and walked towards the plain-clothes officer she recognised by the house’s gate.

Detective Constable David Rowlands had a grin on his face. ‘I didn’t know if they were calling you in or not but then I heard the exhaust on that heap you drive from half-a-mile away.’

‘It’s come to something when someone with hair like
that
takes the piss out of anything,’ Jessica fired back with a grin, flicking him the V just for good measure.

‘I was still asleep when I got called in,’ he protested as a way of explaining away why his usually-spiky and gelled hair was instead decidedly fluffy and floppy.

DC Rowlands was younger that she was, still not out of his twenties and tall with spiky jet-black hair – plus the customary skinny tie. He certainly fancied himself with the opposite sex and had a sharp mouth with a cheeky, dimpled smile that meant it was hard to get angry with him. Even with his constant bragging about various conquests and his obvious cockiness, Jessica had taken an instant liking to him when he had joined the squad a few months after she had.

He had once tried it on with her late one evening a year or so ago. To be honest, given his reputation, she would have been bloody annoyed if he hadn’t at some point or another. She hadn’t been receptive but that wasn’t the point. They had both been drinking after a rare result; some woman who had been sent down for stealing from her own mother. DC Rowlands wasn’t the type to take her rejection too seriously and, if anything, they were better mates afterwards. He was certainly one of the few members of the Criminal Investigation Department she would go out for a drink with.

Jessica breezed past him, ducking under the police tape, to enter the small front garden of the semi-detached house. It was actually quite a nice-looking place. Not all the houses in this area were as well kept. The red brickwork looked fairly clean, as did the upstairs and downstairs bay windows. The only thing spoiling the illusion of middle-class fulfilment was the bright white double-glazed front door just about hanging on to its bottom hinge.

DC Rowlands followed her under the tape. ‘Who did this?’ Jessica asked nodding towards the door as they stepped towards it.

‘Our lot. The tactical entry boys came down this morning.’

‘Bit early for them wasn’t it?’

‘I guess but they get called out to all sorts.’

‘What’s inside?’

‘You’ll see…’

DC Rowlands stopped by the front door while a uniformed officer in the hallway pointed Jessica up the stairs. The house looked as nicely decorated on the inside as it was tidy on the outside with prominent plush shaggy carpets and ornaments in the hallway.

Jessica found DI Cole outside one of the bedrooms. He had his back to the room facing the stairs as she got to the top. ‘Scene of Crime boys are on their way,’ is all he said as he moved aside for Jessica to have a look.

The first thing she noticed was how bright the room was. The bay window to her right had blinds that were fixed into the frames but they were only partly closed. The early morning sun poured into the room, illuminating the magnolia walls and light yellow sheets on the king-size bed opposite.

Jessica first saw a pile of clothes on the floor. She thought it was similar to her own floordrobe but, as her eyes flicked across the room, she saw the body.

She was glad she hadn’t had breakfast that morning.

A woman was lying on her side half underneath bed covers that were pulled back to her waist. Her eyes were bulging and face a light grey, almost pale blue colour. Deep cut marks were visible all around her neck and had bled over the covers. The dark red liquid had pooled and set underneath her, matting into her blonde hair and the sheets. ‘Oh,’ Jessica said.