For Richer, For Poorer

by Kerry Wilkinson

  ‘Try me.’

  Jessica nodded towards the paperwork he was still holding. ‘You’ve got the photos – they were mainly teenagers; the type that we often pick up for dealing.’

  ‘Are you saying that all teenagers do drugs?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘You’re not explaining the reasoning very well.’

  Jessica sighed in exasperation. ‘I can’t put it any better than that – you’ve got the pictures. Some people just have a “look” about them. It doesn’t mean they’re doing anything wrong but it sets alarm bells ringing. When you’ve got neighbours calling in demanding something be done, complaints about noise and then a host of people like that coming in and out, it paints a picture.’

  Inspector Vincent flicked through the photos, biting his bottom lip. ‘Hmmm.’

  Jessica said nothing. They all knew the game – some thought it was about race, gender or age but it wasn’t that, certainly not in her mind. Some people just looked shifty and, coupled with reports about misbehaviour, there was every reason to investigate.

  The inspector peered over his glasses again. ‘What about the house?’

  ‘We were struggling to get a land registry reply back. It had been bought at auction, then the owner was bankrupted and it was put back up for sale again. The trail’s all over the place because it was one of those old council ones which were sold off cheaply and then have been sold over and over ever since. The neighbours who complained said there were people squatting and we couldn’t find anything that told us anything different. There were beer cans, a shopping trolley and all sorts of other rubbish in the front garden. It looked like a case of someone breaking into a house and then dealing drugs out of it.’

  ‘Hmmm.’ He took off his glasses and pursed his lips. ‘Did you personally interview all the neighbours?’

  ‘Personally? There’s only one of me, so of course not. We had statements and phone records.’

  ‘Did you personally check the land deeds?’

  ‘No, this wasn’t the only thing I had going on. I trusted other people – I don’t see why they’d make up the fact that the deeds were hard to get hold of.’

  ‘Did you take part in the surveillance on the Friday and Saturday evenings?’

  ‘No, I was off. I can’t be at work all of the time.’

  ‘So exactly how much were you involved?’

  ‘I was part of the team that examined all of the evidence, applied for the warrant, and went in.’

  They went around in circles as the inspector tried to find new ways of pointing out that the decision was flawed. Quite what he wanted her to say other than ‘All right, I ballsed it up’, Jessica wasn’t sure.

  After an hour, Vincent told her she could leave, saying he’d be in contact in due course – whatever that meant. She wouldn’t have been surprised if ‘due course’ meant she’d find him sniffing the toilet seat in the ladies’ loos. If using a bit of instinct counted as ‘profiling’ then he’d be at the top of her weirdo list.

  Jessica walked quickly through GMP’s Moston Vale headquarters back to her car. As soon as she switched it on, her phone began to ring: someone at the station.

  She turned it off again and threw it onto the passenger seat, Bex’s words from the night before flitting through her mind: ‘Why don’t you go somewhere and do something? Why do you work?’

  Sometimes she didn’t know either and, for now, they could all sod off.

  9

  Jessica sat in her car across the road from the local council’s MOT-testing garage. She was watching a woman struggling to reverse through the gates. A mechanic stood on the pavement, clenched fist drawing a semicircle in the air – the universal sign for ‘turn the wheel’. Eventually, she shot backwards, nearly running him over and then holding a hand up – the universal sign for ‘sorry I nearly killed you’.

  A minute later and the woman was hurrying towards her friend’s car, still apologising as the mechanic explained to his mate how he’d nearly been wiped out by a bright pink Mini. It would have been some way to go. The day was another speckled by a nothing greyness; no rain, no wind, no anything. A different mechanic moved one car out of the garage and parked it on the road before heading towards the pink vehicle. He crumpled himself up just enough to fit inside, awkwardly easing it backwards before climbing out and leaning on the driver’s-side window, staring across the road towards Jessica.

  For a moment they locked eyes and then he began to walk towards her. The thought went through her mind that she should drive away, as she had in the past, but there was something that made Jessica sit tight. The man was in his early fifties, wearing dirty dark blue overalls and heavy boots. As he came closer, Jessica could see a smear of grease along his cheek. He didn’t take his eyes from her until he reached the car, crouching and tapping gently on her window.

  Jessica slid the window down and held his gaze.

  He sighed, like a father disappointed that their child had been sent home from school with a letter explaining they were in trouble. Jessica knew that look.

  ‘Can I help you?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m just sitting here on my lunch break minding my own business.’

  ‘But you’re here a lot – at least a couple of times a week.’

  ‘It’s a peaceful spot.’

  He pointed behind her car. ‘The main road’s there and this is a cut-through to get to Tesco, so we both know that isn’t true.’

  ‘What do you want me to say?’

  The man stood, leaving Jessica to stare at his belly. ‘Do you want a tea?’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘Cup of tea – you are British, aren’t you?’

  Jessica was so surprised by the offer that she didn’t know what to say. The man had already started walking away, peering over his shoulder: ‘Come on then.’

  She locked her car and followed, keeping her distance until he headed into an office at the side of the garage. She entered just as he was telling a younger mechanic to go and do some work. He plucked a once-white kettle from the top of a filing cabinet, filled it up from a sink, and plipped it on.

  ‘You are allowed to sit,’ he said, nodding towards a battered brown sofa underneath a calendar that had a topless woman splayed across a motorbike.

  Jessica sat hesitantly, taking in the rest of the part-office, part-kitchen. A small cream-coloured dining table with matching chairs was covered with greasy fingerprints on one side but the part of the office closer to her had been kept clean – well, except for the calendar.

  ‘I’m Keith,’ the man said, washing his hands furiously at the sink.

  ‘I know.’

  He nodded. ‘Course you do. It’s Jessica, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’ He turned the water off and opened a fridge under the counter, holding up a bottle of milk. ‘Milk, no sugar,’ she added instinctively.

  Keith poured milk into two chipped mugs, heaped four spoonfuls of sugar into his, dropped a tea bag in each, and then filled both to the brim. Squeeze, swirl, squeeze again, then he passed the mug across, before sitting on one of the dining chairs, leaving Jessica by herself on the sofa.

  ‘You can’t keep coming here,’ he said, eyes fixed on her.

  She stared into her mug. ‘It’s a free country.’

  ‘You know what I mean. I’m an honest bloke – I do MOTs for the council. I gave the best opinion I could. It’s intimidating when you come and sit opposite the garage and watch me.’

  Jessica didn’t reply.

  Keith took a drink and then put his mug down on the table. ‘Are you here to ask me something? Or threaten me? Are you going to follow me home? Or come to my house? I’ve got kids – I don’t know what you want from me. This is, what, the sixth or seventh time I’ve seen you out there?’

  Jessica tried to hide behind the mug but the wave of tears hit her from nowhere. Before she knew it, she was clasping her mug with one hand, wiping her eyes with the other.

  Keith leant forwards, ha
lf-stretching an arm towards her. ‘Hey, I didn’t mean to . . .’

  Jessica shook her head, not wanting to be comforted and definitely not wanting him to touch her. He reeled back, picking up his tea again but still watching her.

  Eventually, Jessica regained her voice, though she couldn’t look anywhere but at the floor. ‘When I first saw you at the inquest, I thought you were going to say that you’d found something different, that what happened to my car wasn’t an accident.’

  ‘I only testified to what I saw. They had that guy from BAE Systems too and he said the same thing. I know it’s rare – it’s probably the only time I’ll ever see it but it was one of those things. They had that other guy from the manufacturer who said there was a similar case in South Korea. I told the court then and I’m telling you now: the circuit board which controlled the cooling system in your old vehicle failed. It was an accident that your boyfriend was in the car when it blew up. I’m not going to pretend I know what it’s like when something like that happens because I don’t – but it’s not my fault. They asked me to examine the vehicle and then to give evidence, which is what I did. It’s what the BAE guy did too.’

  ‘Did they offer you money?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Or threaten your kids?’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. The only person I feel threatened by is you.’

  ‘I’m only a woman.’

  ‘You’re a police officer and you hang around my workplace watching me. How is that not intimidating? Am I going to have to put a complaint in?’

  Jessica took a mouthful of tea. The tears had stopped but there was still a lump in her throat making it hard to swallow. Her reply was croaked: ‘Please don’t.’

  He sounded stern now: ‘Give me one reason why I shouldn’t.’

  ‘Because I’m in enough shite as it is.’

  ‘Then what do you want?’

  ‘I want someone to tell me that there’s a chance it wasn’t an accident that my car blew up.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I can’t believe that it was. There were things going on . . . I don’t know.’

  Keith shuffled to the edge of his chair. Jessica could feel him watching her but knew the tears would come again if she looked up. ‘I can only give my verdict on what I saw. The fire caused so much damage that it would be impossible to know anything completely one hundred per cent – but it looked to me as if there was a fault in the cooling system. I’ve worked with engines my entire life and know what I’m talking about. That doesn’t mean I’m perfect but I do have a good idea. When they wanted a second opinion, the BAE guy said the same as me – and he knows more about engines than I do. We didn’t come to that conclusion together; it was independent of each other. Until the inquest, I’d never met him. This all came out in court, so did the story about it happening in Korea.’

  ‘But you can’t be absolutely, completely certain it was an accident?’

  Keith sighed. ‘You’re taking things the wrong way. Of course there’s a chance it was something else – a tiny, minute coincidence that two experts and the manufacturer don’t know anything about. But I didn’t see a sign of anything other than a fault in the cooling system. I’m sorry if that’s not what you want to hear.’

  ‘But there’s a chance . . .’

  Jessica tailed away pathetically but Keith didn’t reply this time. He finished his tea and rinsed the mug before taking his seat again. Jessica had only had a mouthful of hers.

  ‘I can’t help you,’ he eventually said.

  Jessica put the mug on the floor, finally making eye contact. There were tears again but this time she talked through them: ‘It’s just that life is full of fuck-ups. You fuck something up and then you fix it. But this . . . Adam . . . he can’t be fixed. It’s so final – and I can’t believe it was one big accident.’

  10

  Jessica left the garage feeling embarrassed but thankful that Keith had finally come to talk to her. She wasn’t sure that she’d ever felt anything sinister about him or his evidence but she needed someone to blame. Meeting him had made her realise how easy a target he was.

  She turned her phone on briefly, ignored the missed calls, made a quick one of her own and then turned it off again. Whatever was going on at the station could wait for now.

  One of the things Manchester had other than bad weather, too many traffic lights and appalling traffic jams, were long straightish streets leading directly into the centre. Jessica turned onto Oxford Road and started to follow it out of the city, crawling along in the stop-start traffic. As it passed the universities and hospital, the road widened out, turning into Wilmslow Road as she passed Whitworth Park. Jessica turned right into the tight, twisting labyrinth of side streets that were almost entirely occupied by students. Long red-bricked terraces stretched for entire streets, with cars packed nose-to-tail along either side, leaving a narrow space through the centre.

  Jessica checked the address and then squeezed her vehicle in between two others in a piece of parallel parking she wished she could have recorded to show those bastards at the station that she really could drive – even if she would have had to edit out the two instances where she clipped the kerb. Bloody mirrors.

  She knocked on the door of the house on the end and stepped back as it was opened by a young woman wearing bright yellow washing-up gloves, a woollen jumper with rolled-up sleeves, and skinny jeans. She had brown hair loosely tied into a ponytail. ‘Jessica?’

  ‘Sam?’

  ‘Yep, come on in.’ Bex’s friend waited until Jessica was inside, peered both ways along the street, and then closed the door behind her. She led Jessica into the kitchen and then knelt next to a bucket of soapy water, dunking a sponge inside. ‘I’ve been cleaning.’

  ‘Bex is always cleaning too. Is this what teenagers get up to nowadays? Am I really that old?’

  Sam laughed. ‘I get it from my mum – I’m one of three. She’s always tidying up after us.’

  Jessica hovered in the doorway, trying not to get in the way as Sam squeegeed a cupboard door. ‘Bex said you had some sort of problem . . .’

  ‘Rebecca?’

  ‘Is that what you call her?’

  ‘That’s her name . . . isn’t it?’

  It was another thing that Jessica and Bex – Rebecca – had never had a proper conversation about. ‘Yes, sorry. Go on.’

  Sam finished wiping down one door and moved onto the other, half-turning to watch Jessica over her shoulder. ‘I said it wasn’t a big deal. She reckoned I should contact the police but they’re all twats, so I . . . oh . . . sorry. Oops – except you, obviously.’

  Jessica shrugged: GMP’s public relations machine was performing as well as ever.

  ‘Bex said it was something to do with your neighbour.’

  Sam stopped scrubbing, sitting cross-legged on the floor and nodding. She pointed to the wall behind Jessica. ‘This was built as one house but either the landlord or a previous owner turned it into two flats. They built an internal wall behind you to seal off the stairs and then put a second door onto the outside around the side. I live at number forty-two, then there’s a forty-two A.’

  ‘Do they play their music a bit loudly?’

  Sam smiled slightly. ‘How long have you got?’

  Jessica glanced at the clock on the wall. Technically, she’d spent her lunch break at the garage and this was work time. She was investigating a complaint, so . . . ‘Maybe half an hour? I’ll have to head back in a bit.’

  Sam pushed herself to her feet. ‘All right – how about I put the kettle on? It won’t take long.’

  ‘What won’t?’

  ‘You’ll see.’

  Minutes later, Jessica found herself sitting in a surprisingly comfy though rather ragged-looking armchair in Sam’s living room. Sam had found a pair of fluffy boots and was looking particularly snug on the sofa. A line of wire was running around the length and width of the room with various dresses, sparkly tops
and skirts hanging from it.

  ‘Sorry about the mess,’ Sam said. ‘It’s almost impossible to get anything dry around here, so I end up with clothes everywhere. The radiators take ages to warm up too.’

  In the corner there were three pairs of huge heels lined up next to each other: black, bright red and bright blue. Half-hidden behind one of the dresses was a black and white poster of some bloke with his top off that Jessica half-recognised.

  Oh to be young again.

  ‘Do you go to the same college as Bex?’ Jessica asked, feeling slightly out of her depth.

  ‘Sort of – I’m at Manchester Uni doing a philosophy degree but I also chose an elective history module, which is off-campus at the college where she goes. Does Bex live with you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And is she . . . ?’ Sam tailed off, neither an expert nor particularly subtle at fishing for information.

  ‘It’s complicated.’

  ‘I can’t believe she’s only seventeen. I’m nineteen and thought she was older than me. There are a few of us uni students on the module and she was helping us with the work. It’s ridiculous really.’

  Jessica knew the first time she’d met Bex that there was something special about her – but it felt strange to hear somebody else mention it too. ‘She reads a lot – I think that helps.’

  ‘You should persuade her to come out with us. We’re not a bad a lot – I’ll make sure she gets home all right, or she can kip here. I know she’s not eighteen but there are loads of places that’ll let you in around here – and she doesn’t have to drink. One of the other girls drinks tea or water all night. I think her dad’s an alky.’

  ‘It’s up to her; it’s not as if I keep her locked—’

  Jessica was interrupted by a thump from the other side of the wall and the sound of someone walking up the stairs. Sam gave Jessica a small nod to indicate this was what she meant.

  Clunk, clunk, clunk, clunk, SLAM!

  Jessica wanted to say that having noisy stairs wasn’t something she could do much about but Sam held up a hand.

  Muffled voices sounded from above – a female and at least one male – and then there were more footsteps. Thirty seconds later and it began: Eh-eh-eh-eh-eh-eh-eh-eh and then a screamed ‘Ooooooh . . .’