DS Jessica Daniel series: Locked In/Vigilante/The Woman in Black - Books 1-3 Read Online Free PDF Page A

then get off myself. We’ve got officers going door-to-door and we’re not going to get any results from the labs through until Monday at the
earliest. There’s not much more we can do.’
    Jessica said goodbye to the desk sergeant and asked him to call her mobile if anything interesting happened. She walked out of the station on her own, taking her phone out to check for any new
messages. It was now late afternoon and, though the sun was still out, it had lost much of its heat. She shivered slightly but, as she did, for the second time that day, the phone started to ring
while in her hand. She shook her head, thinking she should definitely change the ringtone to something less energetic, and looked at the screen to see who was calling.
    There was no name displayed, just a mobile number she didn’t recognise. She jabbed at the screen to answer. ‘Hello.’
    The man’s voice on the other end was slightly shaky and whoever it was sounded nervous. ‘Is that Detective Sergeant Jessica Daniel?’
    ‘Yes, who’s this?’
    The person paused for a moment. ‘I’m just calling to talk about the dead body you found this morning.’

4
    Garry Ashford was not happy. The alarm on his phone he didn’t remember setting had gone off and he couldn’t get back to sleep. As he lay in bed, he didn’t
think an electrical item could be smug but his phone certainly looked close to it as it showed him in big LED characters that it was one in the afternoon. There was no way he would have set an
alarm for that time on a Saturday, not after being out until three in the morning, so someone was taking the piss.
    It didn’t help that he was being charged thirty-five pounds a month for the privilege either.
    His head throbbed slightly as he remembered the previous evening. Not only had he endured a bad week but he had spent nearly seventy quid the night before and ended up in the same position he
always did with the opposite sex – precisely nowhere. As one of his supposed mates had pointed out in the taxi a few hours ago, this was more than a sexual barren spell; it was becoming a
life choice.
    Garry threw the duvet off and went to the window to see what the day had to offer him. Opening the curtains, he was surprised to see the bright light of the sun shining into the room. Nice day
or not, there wasn’t an awful lot the sunlight could do about his shambles of a home. He had never been sure whether his rented accommodation actually counted as a flat, a bedsit or a
hovel.
    Everything was in one room, or two if you counted the fact that the bathroom had a door that didn’t quite shut all the way. In the main room, which also doubled as the kitchen and dining
room, his bed folded out from the sofa. It didn’t matter whether you used it as a couch or a bed though; either way the springs had gone. He had a small old-fashioned portable television on a
nearby table with an indoor aerial that never seemed to work properly planted on top pointing at the window. There was a cooker and microwave next to a sink a few feet away and a dining table with
two plastic garden chairs in the centre of the room. On the other side of the bed was a chest of drawers that was, for some reason, the largest item of furniture in the entire flat. Aside from the
faded flowery wallpaper, that was it for the main room.
    The bathroom had a shower cubicle, laughably called a ‘suite’ in the advert he had answered. It had long since been taken over by a black, mouldy damp-type substance Garry was in no
rush to have a fight with. If that wasn’t bad enough, the toilet had a cracked seat and there was no sink in the bathroom; he had to use the one in the kitchen.
    Although he knew it was awful, it was cheap and placed perfectly for his needs. It was very close to the centre of Manchester towards the back of the Oldham Street area, above a shop. Or, as one
of his less-eloquent friends put it, ‘Where all those artsy pricks live’. Its location meant he