Vigilante Read Online Free PDF

mock-outraged and the other woman was clearly trying not to laugh. ‘Cheeky bastard,’ Jessica said.
    In the same way that Rowlands wasn’t really going grey or wrinkly, Jessica knew she wasn’t getting fat. It was banter that got them through the days. Jessica turned to face Carrie more directly. ‘So how’s this new bloke of yours then?’ she asked.
    The two had forged a good friendship that had been littered with the Welsh detective’s various disasters with boyfriends.
    Since an encounter she regretted with one of Randall’s friends and the way things had turned out with Randall himself, Jessica hadn’t had anything that might even begin to count as a boyfriend. Not that she was bothered; the job was what drove her at the moment.
    Just recently, it seemed as if Carrie had settled on someone she actually liked. Jessica could tell because, whereas before they would hold regular wine-fuelled inquests into disastrous dates, her friend had stayed pretty quiet about the latest man in her life.
    ‘He’s okay,’ she replied with a small smile, slightly more quietly than usual.
    ‘Still don’t want to talk about him, then?’ Jessica didn’t really mind. Her friend would open up when she was ready.
    ‘Nope.’
    ‘So what else is going on? Still having problems with the house?’
    While a lot of police officers rented places while they were young because they could be moved around or apply for posts with other forces, Carrie's father was insistent that renting was throwing money away. Because of that, her parents put up the money for a deposit on a two-bedroom house where she lived on her own a few minutes’ walk away from the Longsight station. Jessica had stopped over the odd night in the spare room after they had gone out together or following team drinks in the station’s local pub. It was in a great area for getting to and from work but not in a terrific place considering the neighbours.
    It wasn’t as rough as the estate where Craig Millar had been killed but it wasn’t too much better. The fact the locals knew she was a police officer just made things worse for her. Bricks had been put through her windows twice in the past year and, while targeting a law-enforcement officer would be an aggravating factor if someone was arrested for the damage, no one had been found.
    ‘It’s not been too bad. That Mills guy is back out of prison.’
    ‘How long was he in this time?’
    ‘Not long. His girlfriend didn’t want to give evidence in the end and they dropped the charges.’
    ‘Did you really think she would?’
    ‘No. It’s always the way, isn’t it? Boyfriend smashes up his girlfriend’s face. She calls us when she wants protection then changes her mind the next day. At least it got him out of the area for a few weeks.’
    John Mills was somebody else very well-known to the local police officers. He was in his fifties but had a long record of being in and out of custody for various, usually violent, offences. He also happened to live half-a-dozen doors down from Jones after buying two houses and converting them into one much bigger property. A few months ago, Carrie had conducted some research in her own time and shown Jessica that crime rates on the estate where she lived directly correlated to whether Mills was in prison. When he was on the outside, he would have a network of low-level drug dealers working for him and things like burglary rates would go up without fail. It was hard to pin very much on him directly, though. There were always middle men to take the fall, with Mills set up as a legitimate businessman, owning a nightclub in the city centre. It was almost certainly where he laundered money but proving that was something far beyond either of their expertise.
    Jessica nodded and the woman continued.
    ‘She visited him every day. She still stayed at his house and I’d see her driving off to the prison for visiting hours when I wasn’t here. You could still see the bruises on her face.